But what
is the use of my saying anything more about the history of last year?
Every one of us remembers it perfectly well. It was a capital year on
the whole, and put money into many a pocket. About that time, Bob and I
commenced operations. Our available capital, or negotiable bullion, in
the language of my friend, amounted to about three hundred pounds,
which we set aside as a joint fund for speculation. Bob, in a series of
learned discourses, had convinced me that it was not only folly, but a
positive sin, to leave this sum lying in the bank at a pitiful rate of
interest, and otherwise unemployed, while every one else in the kingdom
was having a pluck at the public pigeon. Somehow or other, we were
unlucky in our first attempts. Speculators are like wasps; for when they
have once got hold of a ripening and peach-like project, they keep it
rigidly for their own swarm, and repel the approach of interlopers.
Notwithstanding all our efforts, and very ingenious ones they were, we
never, in a single instance, succeeded in procuring an allocation of
original shares; and though we did now and then make a bit by purchase,
we more frequently bought at a premium, and parted with our scrip at a
discount.
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