Assured of my father's responsibility, the adventurous Peck put plenty of spirit into the first launch of _The Capitalist_. All the walls were placarded with its announcements; circular advertisements ran from one end of of the kingdom to the other. Agents were engaged, correspondents levied _en masse_. The invasion of Xerxes on the Greeks was not more munificently provided for than that of _The Capitalist_ upon the credulity and avarice of mankind. But as Providence bestows upon fishes the instrument of fins, whereby they balance and direct their movements, however rapid and erratic, through the pathless deeps, so to the cold-blooded creatures of our own species--that may be classed under the genus MONEY-MAKERS--the same protective power accords the fin-like properties of prudence and caution, wherewith your true money-getter buoys and guides himself majestically through the great seas of speculation. In short, the fishes the net was cast for were all scared from the surface at the first splash. They came round and smelt at the mesh with their shark bottle-noses, and then, plying those invaluable fins, made off as fast as they could--plunging into the mud--hiding themselves under rocks and coral banks. Metaphor apart, the capitalists buttoned up their pockets, and would have nothing to say to their namesake. Not a word of this change, so abhorrent to all the notions of poor Augustine Caxton, had been breathed to him by Peck or Tibbets. He ate, and slept, and worked at the great Book, occasionally wondering why he had not heard of the advent of the _Literary Times_, unconscious of all the awful responsibilities which _The Capitalist_ was entailing on him;--knowing no more of _The Capitalist_ than he did of the last loan of the Rothschilds.