Nevertheless this fellow will finally sell his mine, or his alleged mine. All he has to do is to wait long enough, and he will find some credulous Englishman who will bite at the naked hook, and put his name and influence to it, and it will be done. Then he will go home and establish himself in good style, and be a prominent man. But what becomes of the English investors? Echo answers. It is a conundrum that goes echoing down the ages, and will only be answered in that period of the next world when everything shall be made plain. The poor widow who put her little pittance in the hands of these sharks doubtless started a private school, if she was qualified for it, or made use of her one accomplishment, painting, music or what not, to earn a miserable existence. The poor clerk who was saving to purchase a home of his own, went back to his lodgings and put his nose freshly upon the grindstone, and the young tradesman went into bankruptcy, his shop passed out of his hands, and he served where he had once commanded. And the shark, if an English one, shelters himself behind his assumed name, or goes to the Continent, and lives in luxury all his days. Inasmuch as these things have been going on ever since the South Sea bubble it would seem that people would get wiser, and know better than to put their all in such wild-cat schemes. But bear this in mind, the loser never admits that he lost in so stupid a way, and his fellows are never fully informed about it, and besides there are children born every day, a certain percentage of them with sharp teeth, and the rest with fat. The teeth find the fat, the shark finds the gudgeon invariably. That's his business. When I read these prospectuses I find myself getting up a great deal of respect for the old barons who, when they wanted money, seized a rich Jew and starved him awhile in a dungeon, and if that gentle treatment did not suffice to extract the requisite cash, pulled out his teeth, one by one, till he disgorged. In those days a venerable Jew whose teeth were all gone was as fortunate as the man caught by the Indians who was bald and wore a wig--he saved his scalp. [Illustration: THE OLD ENGLISH WAY OF PROCURING A LOAN.] [Sidenote: LONDON QUACKS.] These ancient robbers did not add grandiloquent lying to theft. It was with them a simple taking of what they wanted without circumlocution. It was highway robbery to picking pockets, and was certainly the preferable of the two. Were I an Emperor, with absolute power, I should immediately discharge the honest soldier, who would work for a living were he out of the service, and draft in the army all these fellows. And the regiments composed of them should lead every forlorn hope, charge every battery, and do all the dangerous and fatiguing work that soldiers have to do. A country could afford to lose a great many battles to rid itself of these worse than thieves.