their motion is carried, I must at once resign my
seat at the board, and shall publish in to-morrow's
Times and Daily News the reason why I have
left the company."

These few words were spoken in that quiet,
unpretending, non-blustering style, which says
little, but means much. Mr. Grass had too much
good sense to make a quarrel with the best man
at our board. He was well aware that if the
chairman of this company had resigned, the
whole affair would suffer most seriously, and the
shares go down to par, or even discount.

For a few minutes I thought that my last
hope of making anything out of the company
was gone; but up rose Mr. Wood. He began
by praising the " noble lord who so ably
presided over our meeting;" and then he mentioned
in the highest terms the "two honourable
members of the House of Commons, who had
recently spoken." After a speech of twenty-five
minutes, he proposed that "although the number
of shares which Mr. Grass proposed to be allotted
each member of the board was too great, there
could be no harm in such directors as wished
having each three hundred shares allotted to
them." He said that, " putting the premium
on such shares as only ten pounds, there would
be a clear profit of three thousand pounds for
each of them, and that, considering all things,
they should 'rest and be thankful' with that
amount."

Eventually the struggle between honesty and
the lust of gain was compounded thus:—the
greedy party should have their three hundred
shares, or nothing. Lord Dunstraw at once
declared that if a motion in favour of each
director getting three hundred shares was
carried, he would not oppose it, although he for
one would not accept of more than twenty-five,
for which he had at first put his name down,
and fifty extra shares which he had applied for
apart from those he had taken to qualify himself.

Mr. Grass looked like a hungry tiger
deprived of its prey. For a short time he tried
what blustering would do; and with vulgar
insolence declared that he, too, could ruin the
undertaking if he liked, and if he left the direction
the concern would certainly not prosper.
But he was met by Mr. Currie, who very
quietly reminded him that it was not the fact
of this or that director resigning his seat at the
board that would injure the company, but the
reasons which could be brought forward as to
the cause of their leaving. Still, Mr. Grass
would be heard; but I happened to sit next him
at the board, and whispered that he had better,
to use an American phrase, " let things slide."
Moreover, I reminded him that any damage he
now did the company would be as much an injury
to the Universal Financial Association as to us,
for that office, having undertaken to bring us
out, if the business turned out a failure, the
Universal would suffer to as great an extent as we
should. Mr. Grass merely asked me to go
aside with him into the outer room, and when
once we were there he made me the following
proposition, speaking in a voice shaking with
passion, and in a language which was quite as
much German as English.

"Look here," he said, " that chairman of ours
is a fool, he is not a man of business, and would
ruin anything. Now, I have a proposition to
make. Let Lord Dunstraw, Mr. Currie, General
Foster, and the rest of that party, resign
their seats. I will be your chairman, and I
will bring in half a dozen City men of the right
sort. We will then allot to each director his
three thousand shares, and each of us will
make a fortune, yourself included."

The coolness of this proposition certainly
startled me. However, I saw at once it was
of no use whatever to argue with him, and so,
very curtly, declined entertaining his proposition.
Upon this, nothing abashed, he said,
"You are a friend of the chairman's?" I
replied that I was. "Well," he asked, "you
want me to side with his lordship, and to vote
as he votes?" I said that of course Mr. Grass
was at liberty to vote as he pleased; but that
I thought Lord Dunstraw would always be
found on the side of honour and fair dealing.
"Now then," he said, " give me an answer—yes
or no—in five minutes, to the following
proposition. If you agree, in writing, to give me
a third of all the promotion money you get for
this company, directly or indirectly—that is,
I must share equally with Mr. Wilson and yourself
in all your profits—on this condition, and
only on this, I will undertake to vote at every
board meeting as you or the chairman wishes
me to do, for one year from this date."

The audacity of Mr. Grass's first proposition
astonished me, his second amazed me. He
had been thwarted in his expected feast,
and this made him all the more ravenous.
I therefore said to him: " Mr. Grass, if you
give me an undertaking that you will vote
as the chairman votes at every meeting of the
board for the next twelve months, I will
give you, not a third, but a fourth of all the
promotion money we receive. I don't want
your promise in writing, merely your word,
given in the presence of my friend Mr. Wilson.
But, to set your mind at ease, I will give you
my undertaking in writing, without ascribing
any reason for doing so, that I will pay you
one-fourth of all I receive for bringing out this
company."

To this he agreed; his promise was given to
me in the presence of Mr. Wilson, and we
returned to the board-room, where the
business of allotting the shares was now going on.
There were certain parties to whom we were
almost obliged to allot shares—brokers,
stock-jobbers, bankers, merchants, and such-like. As
it was, not more than a tenth of the number
of the shares applied for was given to any
save a favoured few. This, of course, created
a great deal of discontent; but still it showed
those who got any shares that there had been
an immense demand for them, and thus served
to run up the price. In the list of applications
sent in by the Universal Financial