So he had pleased them all, and, I admit, he had pleased me too; but he mostly showed his tact in winning the suffrages of the feminine members of my household. For Mrs Bulkeley is not a cipher by any means, even in my business transactions, and she has an amiable habit of warning me against entering into commercial relations with any one she mistrusts or dislikes. The next day beheld assembled in the showy Pall Mall chambers of Colonel Sling the same quartette that had closed around the mahogany in Magnolia Villa on the preceding day. Tom Harris and I drove down there together from the City, and we found the two Americans awaiting us with a hearty welcome. There were maps on a great table, and plans, and minerals, and parchments, and heaps of papers, carefully stacked and docqueted, and files of letters with great red seals to them that would have carried conviction home to the most incredulous. And the Colonel, after the first salutations were over, and after tenderly inquiring about the health of my womankind, commenced a lucid explanation of the exact position of the Nauvoo and Nebraska Railway—its position, I mean, in a pecuniary point of view, not its geographical position. The latter, we ascertained by a glance at the map, to be in the free State of Iowa, skirting Missouri, and with one terminus in Illinois State and the other in Nebraska Territory. But information now came showering upon us, and the Colonel was extremely careful to prove every fresh axiom which he laid down by an appeal to documents of the most incontrovertible character. There was the original concession of the line, approved by the State Legislature, signed by the governor, registered by the State’s law officers and by the Federal attorney of the district. There were similar documents, to which the autographs of the governors of Nebraska and Illinois were attached. There were the reports of surveyors, the accounts of contractors, subcontractors, architects, machinists, and ironmasters. Moreover, there were specimens of minerals found in the immediate neighbourhood of the line, and within the liberal grant of land which the State had made—which specimens the Colonel showed us, in rather a careless way, as mere incidental advantages. But the eyes of Tom Harris and myself sparkled at the sight; for although we were not adepts in geology, we knew iron ore, and copper ore, and limestone, and hornblende, and fine marble, when we saw them; and visions of mines and quarries to be worked at vast profit, or leased for high rentals, flitted brilliantly before us. What wonder that, on hearing the generous terms on which the two American gentlemen were willing to admit us to a full participation of their advantages, Tom and I shook hands most heartily with Doctor and Colonel, and devoted ourselves from that moment to the establishment of the projected Company? And then Colonel Coriolanus rang the bell for lunch, and we all drank, over and over