The original text contains errors and many inconsistencies in spelling, hyphenation and capitalisation. The author acknowledges this in a light-hearted _nota bene_ to the Preface, adding that he “thought it best to leave their correction to the intelligent and good humored reader”. In that spirit, minor punctuation errors have been fixed. Other typographical errors have been corrected as follows: “bim” changed to “him” (enabled him to slide) “both-shores of the atlantic” changed to “both shores of the Atlantic” “ceriificates” changed to “certificates” (bonds or certificates) “cheqners” changed to “chequers” (like children at chequers) “esconce” changed to “ensconce” (he was fain to ensconce himself) “fortuitious” changed to “fortuitous” (fortuitous circumstances) “He” capitalised (He banished the thought at once; but who is) “suthers” changed to “authors” (against the innocent authors of them) “there” changed to “three” (three hundred and fifty thousand dollars) “two” changed to “too” (the too frequent gorging of stocks) Inconsistencies have been fixed where a consensus usage was obvious. Hence the following changes to the original text: “abreviate” changed to “abbreviate” “Apalache” changed to “Apalchi” “accomodations” changed to “accommodations” “Bank-credit” changed to “Bank credit” “controled” changed to “controlled” “embarrasment” changed to “embarrassment” “fancy-stocks” changed to “fancy stocks” “general Jackson” changed to “General Jackson” “indorsing” changed to “endorsing” “land lopers” changed to “landlopers” “major Downing” changed to “Major Downing” (but “the major”, etc., used as per American style) “mastadon” changed to “mastodon” “Mr. Eaves-dropper” changed to “Mr. Eavesdropper” “Mr. Single-eye” changed to “Mr. Single-Eye” “negociating” changed to “negotiating” “negociation” changed to “negotiation” “negociator” changed to “negotiator” “panic-makers” changed to “panic makers” “post mortem” changed to “post-mortem” “rail road” changed to “railroad” “Rail-Road” changed to “Railroad” “state-bonds” changed to “state bonds” “stock-holders” changed to “stockholders” “to-day” changed to “to day” “United States bank” changed to “United States Bank” (but “the bank”, etc., used as per American style) “wholestock” changed to “whole stock” However “New York” and “New-York” have been left unchanged as are other instances of inconsistent hyphenation and capitalisation or archaic/obsolete spelling. The latter includes colloquial usage in quoted conversations and correspondence. The page headers of the book have been inserted in the transcribed text as centred section headers placed above the start of an appropriate paragraph. On pages of the book without any paragraph breaks it has been necessary to create a new paragraph at an appropriate location on the page and the page header placed there as above. This was required at 16 places in the transcribed text.