Tom Harris was quite appeased. He was not a bright personage, Tom, but he did very well on the Stock Exchange, to which he may be said to have been born and bred. He was the only son of the well-known old Peter Harris, the man who made so much, as a bear, at the time of the Nore mutiny. He, Tom—not old Peter—had inherited a great deal of money; and though he set up for a sporting man, and generally hedged so artfully, and made up such ingenious books on the races that his alternative was between great losses and small ones, he was richer than when he came into his father’s fortune. For money accrues to money, as a snowball gathers in rolling; and it no more requires a genius to thrive in the Stock Market than it does to rule in a Cabinet, if Chancellor Oxenstiern tells the truth. And Tom had married a young lady of property, Miss Mungle, daughter of Chuttnee and Mungle, or rather of the junior partner in that great firm. Tom Harris, therefore, was wild for lucrative investments, and so, in a qualified way, was I; and money was plentiful in the City, as the ‘Times’ correspondent daily informed the reading public. We therefore already began to nibble at the tempting bait which the Colonel placed before us so dexterously. “But,” said I, “is the traffic certain to be remunerative? The line runs through rather a thinly-peopled tract of country, doesn’t it?” Colonel Coriolanus Sling slapped his leathery palm upon the polished mahogany with an emphasis that made the glasses ring. “Sir,” said he, “you are the most sensible man I have met in this benighted—I mean this beautiful kingdom. You have hit the exact point, my dear Mr Bulkeley, on which the eligibility of the whole affair pivots, only you must look at it from that sublimely piercing elevation from which the American intellect surveys it. Sir, we must _create_ a population: sir, we must found cities: sir, it must be ours to people the western solitudes and to implant the germs of a nascent commerce, a new learning, a fresh community, where now the coon and the prairie dog dwell unmolested and alone: and, sir, future ages will decree to us colossal statues of imperishable brass; while in this we shall realise the applause of our consciences and of our bankers.” Here the Colonel stopped, overpowered by his feelings, and blew his nose with a martial dissonance. “By Jove!” said Tom Harris, “I’ll speak to old Muggins about it: if he says ‘all right,’ I’ll take a thousand shares in the concern.”