intended to take a public-house or an inn?
He replied that neither was at all in his
line, and that he thought he would take an
office in the City, and commence doing a
little for himself in the way of speculating.
At this I laughed, and said he must
have put by something exceedingly
comfortable. He replied in his own grave
way that he had a few pounds more than
was actually necessary for a couple without
incumbrances, and, upon my cross-questioning
him, acknowledged that he had a couple
of houses " down Brompton way," which he
had bought for a mere trifle at the sale of a
bankrupt builder, and which now, between
them, gave him an income of eighty pounds a
year net. In addition to this property, he had
two thousand five hundred in Consols, and about
as much more, which he kept floating in good
bills at from sixty to eighty per cent— money
lent through a discounter to gentlemen of
property, Guardsmen, and others, who were hard
up.

"Lord bless you, sir," said Skeeme, who
became excited with the subject, and was warmed
up with a couple of glasses of wine I had
invited him to drink: " Lord bless you, sir, if
you knew how often I have waited in this very
room upon gentlemen dining with my master,
whose bills for one hundred, two hundred, three
hundred, pounds I had in my pocket, you would
be surprised. Why, no longer ago than last
Friday, there was Sir James Cofden, of the
Blues, sitting at this table, and as the dinner
was finished he pulled out his note-case, and
handed ten ten-pound notes to my master, saying,
' There you are, old fellow; there's the
hundred I lost to you at Ascot. I only got my
rents this morning from Yorkshire, or you
should have had it before.' I knew well enough
what ' rents ' had been paid to Sir James the
night before. I knew that he had done a bill
with old Malden, of Clifford-street, the bill
being drawn by himself, and accepted by Foster
Crib, of the Ninth Hussars, and that for a
three months' ' I promise to pay a hundred
and fifty pounds,' on stamped paper, he had
received Maiden's cheque for one hundred and
twenty pounds. I knew all this, and, indeed,
I had his bill in my pocket at that very
moment, for Malden had done the little business
with my money, and I was the party to
whom reference had to be made ' in the City'
before the transaction was completed. You
seem surprised, sir," he continued, " but I
assure you I have had in my time the acceptances
of half the Household Brigade in my
hands, to say nothing of the brigade of Foot
Guards, and nearly all the crack cavalry
regiments. But the game is too risky. I have now
got very little money afloat in bills, and even
that little I intend to call in as soon as I
possibly can."

At my cousin's marriage, I saw and spoke to
Skeeme, who that day gave up his situation
with " the colonel," and went down, as he told
me, for a week's holiday to Brighton. The time
I write of was the time of the railway mania, and
those who remember the advertising columns
of the Times in those days will not easily forget
the prodigious schemes which, day by day,
were put forth to the world, in the shape of
new railway plans. I recollect one day in
particular. It was about the middle of July,
1845. That morning there were no fewer than
twenty-seven new railways—or rather say plans
of impossible railway schemes— offered to the
public; and a stockbroker told me that in
forty-eight hours every one of the twenty-seven
schemes was at a considerable premium. I was
seized with the mania of speculation. It was
easy to ask for, but by no means so easy to obtain,
shares in those days, unless you knew some of
the directors. I wrote to four or five of the
newest lines, but obtained no favourable reply,
and was one day lamenting my misfortune to
Coxon of the Seventy-first, at the " Rag,"
knowing how well that youthful captain had
increased his modest wealth by having had
shares in new lines allotted to him, and
invariably selling them the moment they
commanded a premium, which was generally the
very next day.

"Look here, old fellow," said my friend, as
we sat at dinner one very hot evening; " for the
last two months I have, on an average, had a
liundred shares a day allotted me in one or more
railway lines, and the average premium I have
sold them at, has been a pound a share. That
makes, at a hundred pounds a day for sixty days,
six thousand pounds; if you come round to my
lodgings to-morrow, I'll show you my banker's
book with five thousand six hundred pounds
to my credit, which will just make the balance
right when I deduct the money I have
spent."

This made my mouth water, for my ill
luck had been as unceasing as my friend's good
fortune had been great. I therefore asked
him how it was he had succeeded in having so
many shares allotted him, and whether he would,
for old acquaintance' sake, " put me up to a
good thing or two."

"I'll tell you what," said Coxon: " I'll tell
you what I'll do. I'll take you into the City
to-morrow and introduce you to a capital fellow,
who is a director upon three or four of the best
new lines that have come out, and who is to
be a director of the " Edinburgh and Cornwall
Direct Line," which will be out in the course
of a few days. You ask him to allot you five or
six hundred shares in that line, and you will sell
them next day for at least a couple of pounds
premium."

"Where did you make the acquaintance of so
estimable a character?" I asked.

"At the office of Malden, the bill-discounter,
in Clifford-street," said Coxon. "I went there
one day about a bit of stamped paper on
which I had written my name, and which
was considerably over-due. Malden either
could, or would, do nothing to help me, but
introduced me to ' the party from the City,'
with whose money the bill had been ' done.'