change
Alley, the Wall street of the day, was tremendous. So noisy, and
unmanageable and excited was this mob of greedy fools, that the very
same stock was sometimes selling ten per cent. higher at one end of the
Alley than at the other.

The growth of this monstrous, noxious bubble hatched out a multitude of
young cockatrices. Not only was the stock of the India Company, the Bank
of England, and other sound concerns, much increased in price by
sympathy with this fury of speculation, but a great number of utterly
ridiculous schemes and barefaced swindles were advertised and
successfully imposed on the public. Any piece of paper purporting to be
stock could be sold for money. Not the least thought of investigating
the solvency of advertisers seems to have occurred to anybody. Nor was
any rank free from the poison. Almost a hundred projects were before the
public at once, some of them incredibly brazen humbugs. There were
schemes for a wheel for perpetual motion--capital, $5,000,000; for
trading in hair (for wigs), in those days "a big thing;" for furnishing
funerals to any part of Britain; for "improving the art of making soap;"
for importing walnut-trees from Virginia--capital, $10,000,000; for
insuring against losses by servants--capital, $15,000,000; for making
quicksilver malleable; "Puckle's Machine Company," for discharging
cannon-balls and bullets, both round and square, and so on. One colossal
genius in humbugging actually advertised in these words: "A company for
carrying on an undertaking of great advantage, but nobody to know what
it is." The capital he called for was $2,500,000, in shares of $500
each; deposit on subscribing, $10 per share. Each subscriber was
promised $500 per share per annum, and full particulars were to be given
in a month, when the rest of the subscription was to be paid. This great
financier, having put forth his prospectus, opened his office in
Cornhill next morning at nine o'clock. Crowds pressed upon him. At three
P. M., John Bull had paid this immense humbug $10,000, being deposits
on a thousand shares subscribed for. That night, the financier--a shrewd
man!--modestly retired to an unknown place upon the Continent, and was
never heard of again. Another humbug almost as preposterous, was that of
the "Globe Permits." These were square pieces of playing-cards with a
seal on them, having the picture of the Globe Tavern, and with the
words, "Sailcloth Permits." What they "permitted" was a