Great Southern Company proposed at once
to construct. An act of parliament authorising
a line between Seaville and a certain
station on the Great Southern, was very easily
obtained, the more so as there was really no
one to oppose it. Skeeme, having got into
parliament, worked it through himself. The
shares on this new branch line were not offered
to the public; they were all taken up by Mr.
Skeeme himself, his friends, brother-directors
and their friends—the balance, or unappropriated
shares, being put down to the Great
Southern Railway Company. The way in which
the capital for the undertaking was provided
was simple in the extreme. The amount
required was something considerable—I mean
considerable to the minds of those persons who
had not had a financial training—something
over a million and a half. About a third was
wanted at once, and this Mr. Skeeme, being also
chairman of the "Universal Discount Company."
as also a director of the "General and Universal
Confidence Company," very easily managed.
Having got me to lend my name as nominal
contractor for the line for it was not, perhaps, quite
the thing that his name should appear in that
transaction—I drew bills for the five hundred
thousand pounds upon the Great Southern
Railway Company, and these Mr. Skeeme, in his
capacity as chairman of the company, accepted.
The accepted bills were then taken, some to the
"Universal Discount Company," of which Mr.
Skeeme was chairman, others to the "General
and Universal Confidence Company," of which
he was a director, and they were discounted at
a very respectable figure. With this money
the line was commenced, and when a certain
portion of it was finished, debentures were
offered to the public at something like thirty-
eight pounds in cash for one hundred pounds-
worth of stock. Thus from one hundred and
fifty thousand to two hundred thousand pounds
was raised in addition to the five hundred
thousand pounds previously obtained; and as the
traffic on the line had commenced over that
part that was finished, the receipts were made
to swell the credit side of the Great Southern
Railway account. In the next session of
parliament a bill for another extension line—this
time towards part of a great coal district—was
carried through, and the same process was
repeated with respect to the borrowing
transactions. In all these little financial feats
Skeeme invariably allowed me my little pickings,
which in course of time amounted to something
very respectable, and I began not only
to acquire wealth, but actually to get a taste
for a business in which, as it appeared to
me, it was always certain winning for those
behind the scenes. In my army days, when
I knew nothing of business, I should have
compared my new gains to playing with loaded
dice.

We had, in the course of three years, two
branch lines at work, both of which were so made
to show a profit in the accounts, and to swell the
traffic receipts, that our shares soon began to
move upwards. Thus we carefully published
every month in the newspapers that our traffic
receipts, for instance, in July, were nine thousand
four hundred and eighty-seven pounds four
shillings and twopence, which, as compared with
those of July in the previous year, being eight
thousand one hundred and ten pounds six
shillings and fourpence, or in the July of the year
before that again, being six thousand and nine
pounds nineteen shillings and a penny—facts
which no one could dispute. The figures thus
shown were quite correct, and the comparison
made was perfectly true. But what we did
not think it worth while to enlighten the public
upon, was the fact that for every ten pounds of
increased receipts we had—what with discount
paid for bills, premiums upon debentures, and
all the various losses incidental upon raising
money at ruinous rates sunk for ever at least
two thousand pounds of capital, which had gone
where last year's snow was.

In this way the shares in the Great Southern
rose higher and higher, and as I had invested
money—lent me by Skeeme—in purchasing the
shares at forty, which I now sold for fifty-five,
fifty-eight, and sixty, the speculation turned out
by no means a bad one.

All this time Skeeme must have been rolling
up money very fast. From holding many
thousand pounds-worth of Great Southern scrip, he
had now reduced the amount he held to a mere
trifle, and all he sold were parted with at a
premium. His property in the Seaville and
Coaltown Junction lines he quietly "obliged"
the Great Southern with. The process was not
difficult. At a board meeting he and three or
four other directors who were shareholders in
those branch undertakings, would ask their own
leave that the shares should be bought, and upon
their own consent being given, they entered the
transaction in the minute-book, and ratified the
proceedings at the next board meeting. That
is what the inventor of the process named
"making things pleasant."

Mr. Skeeme is no longer chairman of the
Great Southern Railway. Soon after the little
transactions I have noted in this paper, his
health compelled him to retire from business,
although he still retains his seat upon the
direction of the "Universal Discount Company."
He is now a very wealthy man. He owned one
night lately to me, after a second bottle of the
most unexceptional '20 port I ever tasted, that
he would not take a hundred and fifty thousand
pounds for the money he had invested in India
Bonds, Consols, and Bank of England Stock,
and I believe him. He has sold his house in
Kensington Palace Gardens, and bought a very
splendid "mansion" in the New South
Kensington district. His dinners are much thought
of, and some of the best people in London are to
be met with at his table.

As for myself, I have long given up the situation
I held as private secretary to Mr. Skeeme,
and have set up in business as a Financial
Agent. There is very little doing at present in