The opening of the Suez Canal cost Ismail Pasha more than twenty millions of dollars. Among the notables who were present was the Empress Eugénie, for whose entertainment a grand palace was fitted out at Cairo. My old dragoman told me that he had seen Eugénie during her visit to Egypt and that she had climbed the Pyramids, taken the fatiguing trip to the interior of the greatest of them, and had ridden on a camel to the Sphinx. In the year following its opening some five hundred thousand tons of shipping went through the canal. In less than five years this had increased to more than two million tons and the gross income to almost five million dollars per annum. The British, then seeing that it was a good thing, cast about to find some method of control. They succeeded through Ismail Pasha, who was on the throne of Egypt. Old Ismail was one of the most extravagant tyrants who has ever squeezed money out of an oppressed people. He had aided the French in building the canal. In the allotment of shares, one hundred and seventy-six thousand out of the four hundred thousand had gone to the Egyptian government, so when the Khedive got hard up he concluded to put them on the market. The English cabinet got wind of the matter, and at the same time the French minister at Cairo telegraphed Paris that “unless France buys the Egyptian shares to-morrow, they will be purchased by England.” At that time Parliament was not in session, but Lord Beaconsfield and one or two others took the responsibility of making the trade. Borrowing twenty million dollars from the Rothschilds, they had the whole of Ismail’s stock in the British treasury and John Bull had the control before the world outside had any idea that the bargain was even pending. He had not, it is true, fifty-one per cent. of the entire capital stock, but the other holdings were so scattered that the seven sixteenths which he owned gave him the whip hand, and that he has held ever since. Now, no large block of common stock appears to be held by any individual, corporation, or other government. Indeed, at a meeting some years ago the largest shareholder outside of Great Britain was a Frenchman, who had a little more than fifteen hundred shares. That twenty million dollars was one of the best investments John Bull has ever made, his holdings to-day being worth many times what he paid for them. He has already received from it many millions of dollars in dividends, and by his control of the canal has enormously increased his power and prestige among the nations of the world. His money gain, however, is not quite as great as that of the original stockholders. They paid only about one hundred dollars per share while he paid a little more than one hundred and thirteen dollars.