Here are a few of the proposals: a scheme for furnishing funerals to any part of Great Britain; another for making looking glasses and coach glasses, with a capital of £2,000,000; a third for the transmutation of quicksilver into malleable fine metal; a fourth for ensuring and increasing children’s fortunes; a fifth for building and rebuilding houses throughout all England, with a capital of £3,000,000 (this, by the way, is a scheme which might have a chance to-day). Yet a further philanthropic set of gentlemen floated a scheme for supplying the town of Deal with fresh water. Another set, this time more ingenious than philanthropic, proposed to make deal boards out of sawdust. And all these schemes obtained their votaries. The cry went up “Give us something to buy,” and the response was not inadequate. Two schemes stand out especially through the grandeur of their simplicity. The longer one lives, the more clearly it is proved to one that the old and simple dodges never fail. If you want to practice that amiable form of robbery known as the confidence trick, be sure to practice it in its most primæval form. An old man named Le Brun knew the ropes. He had been suitably educated, for as a boy he had sailed with Sir Henry Morgan when Morgan devastated Panama. He had been with Patterson in Darien. He had owned a privateer himself in the days when a privateer was a polite name for a pirate, but like the men of his class he had lived like a fighting cock when he had the money, and in his old age he was poor. The fame of Law in Paris attracted him over the Channel. The fame of the South Sea Company and the doings in Change Alley brought him hot-foot back again. He was, as it were, in his own country. He set out a wonderful project. You had only to possess £5 to reap the full benefit of it. He had an office in Change Alley. It was called simply, broadly, sympathetically--“Office of Insurance and Annuity for Everybody.” “Anybody,” Mr. Le Brun announced, “who paid him five pounds was to be assured of receiving a life income of £100 per annum, as soon as a sufficient number had subscribed!” A great number subscribed--but not a sufficient number. The number had to be ever so great before Mr. Le Brun could be able to put his wonderful scheme into operation.