again, in creaming bumpers of Clicquot, prosperity and success to the Nauvoo and Nebraska Railway. Two day after, out came our prospectus to dazzle the City. A more flowery manifesto, or one more fertile in temptations, I have seldom seen. It proved, moreover, as plainly as that two and two make four, that the investment was as secure as the bank, if not more so, and a hundred-fold more remunerative. Never was there such a railway; never were there directors so opulent, so respectable, so conscientious, so experienced; never was there a line on which the expenses were so trifling, the traffic so enormous, or the dividend so princely, as that of the Nauvoo and Nebraska. Iowa was a State of boundless fertility, of inexhaustible resources—cereal, mineral, commercial. The line would be part of a main highway to the Far West, and the Old World and the New World pour tribute into the cornucopia of its matchless wealth. Cities were to spring up, fair and flourishing provinces were to blossom, where the virgin soil now awaited the spade and the ploughshare: we were to carry tobacco, madder, corn, cattle, immigrants, and ore. The gigantic fortunes we were to make were thrown into the shade by the benefits we were to confer on posterity and our contemporaries. Unborn millions were to canonise the projectors of the Grand Nauvoo and Nebraska; and we were not only to insure for ourselves the smiles and blessings of ages yet to come, but were to feather our nests pretty handsomely in a few short months. Not only were we to take rank as philanthropists of the first water, but to rig the market as well. Nor were the advantages of the new railroad confined to the eminent and clear-sighted capitalists who had first embarked in it. No; in that good cause the widow’s mite was welcome. Never, it was pointed out, was so admirable an opportunity offered to ladies of limited income, to struggling professional men, to decayed gentry or others, to double or treble their little store by means of the splendid dividends, the bonuses, premiums, and other good things, to be expected from the Company. Who has not read many such glowing proclamations as this, promising to realise the dreams of an El Dorado for the lucky speculator, bolstering up each statement by an imposing array of figures, and always concluding by the recommendation that (to prevent disappointment) _immediate_ application be made at the office for shares? We had a secretary and cashier, and Dr Titus A. C. Bett was so kind as to undertake the latter responsible position; while the celebrated Wyldrake Flam, Esq., a gentleman who had been concerned with a good many companies in his time, was happily secured for the former situation. Sir George Gullings, M.P., a rich banker who had earned his baronetcy by his long course of voting for a Whig Ministry, was our chairman; and, of course, Tom Harris, Colonel Sling, and I, were among the managing directors. We took a great many shares amongst us; but, of