philanthropist, and the Honourable Augustus
de Brubber Fleecy, son of the Duke of
Woolley, the celebrated protectionist.

We used to meet about twelve o'clock,
and have a little champagne lunch;
perhaps a basin of turtle, and then settle the
allotments and the premiums. We had our
expenses paid, including boxes at the Opera,
and broughams for those who liked them. I
didn't. I used to go to my lodgings in Blowhard
Square—a guinea a week, including
bed and breakfast—and calculate my profits.
I've got the book now. Of course it was
nothing to anybody if I chose to save my
allowance of five guineas a day.

We thought nothing of a hundred thousand
pounds more or less in those days. I
remember well, just before we started the
Joint Stock Bank Company of Mexico,
Mesopotamia, and New Zealand, that Peter
M'Crawley (the celebrated ship-owner and
patriot—it was before he got into Parliament),
made such an excellent thing by—we tossed
up whether the capital should be one million
or five hundred thousand pounds, and the
million won. We brought that out at two
pounds deposit, and five pounds premium.
It went down the following year to one
pound discount, when M'Crawley bought up
all the shares he could, broke up the
undertaking, and got one pound fifteen shillings
for every one of them. I lost thousands by
mine.

But to return to my partners in the first
transaction. Young Slum went to London
immediately: he travelled up in the same train
with the Honourable Constantine Cudlip,
who had just been obliged to leave Fizzington
Wells after an unsuccessful attack on an
heiress. Cudlip borrowed a thousand pounds
of Slum, introduced him into some of the
best society at Hyde Park Corner, and made
him a member of the Raffle and Riot Club.
So Slum drove a four-in-hand drag—divided
his time between Capel Court and the
"Corner," and took up his abode at the Gin
Sling Hotel, in Cariboo Square, doing the
same business that I did, but in quite a
different style; where I spent a shilling he
spent a hundred pounds. It was astonishing
how Teddy Slum—he called himself Fitz
Teddington Slum—was altered, what with
his clothes and his ways; the station-
master would never have known him; I never
altered.

As for Sleekleigh he left the Bank—set up
as a sharebroker and had ail the best people
in the county for his customers. Besides the
bankers and merchants, there were old ladies
and parsons in crowds, who sold out of consols,
called in mortgages and brought their money
to lay out as he pleased, and he made it a
favour to take it.

I can't make you believe what I was worth
at one time. I know I staid at home one
Sunday, and calculated by the premiums on
the share-lists sent down on Saturday night                                             that I was worth half a million, good. I
determined to retire at a million. Here the
narrator seized a wedge of pork-pie which the
young woman who sat opposite to us kindly
offered to him, and went on masticating and
talking at the same time.

Ah, I was happy then, although I lived
in a fever. I did not waste my money
as Slum did. My bankers never kept me
waiting; I was shown into their parlour the
moment I appeared. In my old black pocket-
book I used to keep a bundle of notes
buttoned in a pocket close over my heart,
and a score of sovereigns in my breeches
pocket. I was never dull while I could
jingle them. To be sure I was not quite
happy at home. Rebecca was never the
best of tempers—used to worry and nag
me out of my life to give her a carriage, and
this and that and the other, and to move to
a better house, although I had never seen the
colour of her money. She took good care
to save up all that I allowed her—as much
as three pounds a week to keep house—quite
enough too. I was not going to waste my
money on coaches and houses after I had
been so infamously cheated about Rebecca's
fortune.

Well, after a time things began to grow
rather flatter, but I had still a large balance at
my banker's. I had sold all the small stuff, and
put it out on good interest; so I reserved my
strength for my direct lines. There was a
fortune. I thought at the lowest calculation
they would pay ten per cent, and that on my
shares would be forty thousand a year.
We had the calculations of the celebrated Mr.
Paul Stretcher, who made a fortune by his
Railway traffic calculations alone in less than
two years.

A good many small people were smashed
in the first panic, my losses were heavy, but
still I had my solid savings to fall back on,
and my direct shares. While Slum—who had
declined to take Lord Cornboy's mansion
and park, because there was stabling for only
twenty horses—was obliged to borrow money
at high interest.

The time came for going to Parliament,
many of our other shareholders, some of our
directors, especially the Right Honorable
ones, hung back. In fact, they had no ready
money, and they had spent their premiums
as fast as they got them. I had to choose
between a great loss and going on. I went
on, with four or five others; we put down our
hard cash, and took the shares of the
defaulters, with the forfeit of what they had
paid. I could have retired then with
something handsome.

That was the most dreadful time of all.
Every day the engineers, or the lawyers were
at us for money. It was like putting a pistol
to one's throat. It was pay, or lose all.

While the railway committees were going
on in Commons and Lords—sometimes
winning, sometimes losing—my visits to