The good Dutchmen at first looked astonished at a project so bold and vast; they next smoked a pipe and doubted; but on an explanation being given by Mr. Solomon Single-Eye, of all its advantages, accompanied with a prompt offer to embark HIS _whole fortune_, and give his services for nothing, the shares were eagerly caught up. And as the scheme rose in public estimation, the shares rose in nominal value, greatly above their subscription price; and such was the clamor for more, that the directors—having nothing in view but the public good—disinterestedly consented to sell out theirs at an advance of only seventy-five per cent., in order to appease public opinion, in respect of their apparent partiality in having retained any for themselves. Still, however, the inquiry for shares was eager and constant, so great was the public confidence in the integrity and shrewdness of the directors, and of Mr. Single-Eye, particularly. At this juncture, Mr. Jacob Broker opened an office near the wall-street, that was to be, for the sale and purchase of shares. MR. JACOB BROKER. Mr. Broker was a man of great shrewdness and penetration. His education, to be sure, had been somewhat neglected, having been superintended in his youth by a strolling professor of the “black art,” whom to follow, he ran away from home at the age of fourteen. But his genius was of that universal kind which all men desire and but few possess—and hence the facility with which he adapted himself to his new employment. His initiation into the black art now stood him instead of capital, and made it easy for him to convince the honest Dutchmen of his power to turn “metals of drossiest ore to purest gold.” To him, therefore, they all went, whether to buy or to sell shares in the Wall-street Stock Company. And as he had often learned by the sad vicissitudes of life, the necessity of turning an honest penny for himself, he reasoned as all philosophers would do in the same circumstances, “that if he took not the tide of fortune at its flood, he might again suffer under the same unhappy conviction.” In other words, he thought, and acted accordingly, that if he did not embrace the opportunity to improve his fortune when it offered, it might never present itself again. He shrewdly guessed that he might greatly aid the rise in the value of the shares by appearing to be _entirely disinterested_—while at the same time he contrived, generally, to be the real purchaser when people employed him to sell, and the seller when they employed him to buy: by which means, as the stock gradually rose in the market,—the commission being considerable, the profit more—and as he bought and sold the whole number of shares several times over, he was enabled to abstract from the pockets of the honest Dutchmen and placing it in his own, in solid cash, nearly the whole amount of the nominal rise in value on all the shares. HONESTY AND DISINTERESTEDNESS.