The readiness with which shares were attainable first created a class of speculators that has ever since formed a marked feature in periods of excitement, in the dabblers in shares and loans with which the courts and crannies of the parent establishment were crowded. The scene was worthy the pencil of an artist. With huge pocketbook containing worthless scrip; with crafty countenance and cunning eye; with showy jewelry and threadbare coat; with well-greased locks and unpolished boots; with knavery in every curl of the lip, and villany in every thought of the heart; the stag, as he was afterwards termed, was a prominent portrait in the foreground. Grouped together in one corner might be seen a knot of boys eagerly buying and selling at a profit which bore no comparison to the loss of honesty they each day experienced. Day after day were elderly men, with shabby faces and huge umbrellas, witnessed in the same spot, doing business with those whose characters might be judged from their company. At another point, the youth, just rising into manhood, conscious of a few guineas in his purse, with a resolute determination to increase them at any price, gathered a group around, while he delivered his invention to the listening throng, who regarded him as a superior spirit. In every corner, and in every vacant space, might be seen men eagerly discussing the premium of a new company, the rate of a new loan, the rumored profit of some lucky speculator, the rumored failure of some great financier, or wrangling with savage eagerness over the fate of a shilling. The scene has been appropriated by a novelist as not unworthy his pen. “There I found myself,” he writes, “in such company as I had never seen before. Gay sparks, with their hats placed on one side, and their hands in their breeches pockets, walked up and down with a magnificent strut, whistling most harmoniously, or occasionally humming an Italian air. Several grave personages stood in close consultation, scowling on all who approached, and seeming to reprehend my intrusion. Some lads, whose faces announced their Hebrew origin, and whose miscellaneous finery was finely emblematical of Rag-fair, passed in and out; and besides these, there attended a strangely varied rabble, exhibiting, in all sorts of forms and ages, dirty habiliments, calamitous poverty, and grim-visaged villany. It was curious to me to hear with what apparent intelligence they discussed all the concerns of the nation. Every wretch was a statesman; and each could explain, not only all that had been hinted at in Parliament, but all that was at that moment passing in the bosom of the Chancellor of the Exchequer.” The entrance to the Stock Exchange became at last so choked up, that nothing but a fine of £5 on those who stopped the way had any effect in dispersing the nuisance.