This was the fragmentary way in which the newspapers indicated the financial storm, and the figures started up in the night, like fiends, haunting the pillows of many a man, in town and in country, who had been induced to “speculate” in a few finance and other shares “just to make a little money”--men who had never touched shares before, and did not even know the “beastly” title affixed to professional buyers and sellers on the Stock Exchange. To them a bull meant an animal that was dangerous in the fields, and grand at agricultural shows; and a bear was an ugly brute that climbed up a pole at the Zoological Gardens. William Jones the grocer and Timothy Robinson the draper, who had been induced to buy a few Overtons, or Orientals, at 3 premium, in the hope of selling at 5 or 6 premium before the half-yearly meeting, were nothing more than bulls, nevertheless, in Stock Exchange phraseology, and only to become despondent and miserable bears at 5 or 10 discount. “Been bulling the market, Mithter Dibble? Pray explain yourself, and don’t offend a woman’s thenthibilities by such terms as that,” said Mrs. Thomas Dibble, leaning back in her chair, and vainly endeavouring to thread a needle. “Bulling means selling, my love,” said Thomas, trembling; “selling shares without having them, you see, and----” “Mithter Dibble, it isn’t as I wish to be severe on you, but I begin to suspect you are drunk, thir!----drunk, drunk, drunk,” said Mrs. Dibble, laying down her needle in despair, and rapping the table with her thimble. “You may call I what you likes,” said Dibble, with a tremendous effort to be bold; “but I’m sober enough. I wishes I were drunk.” “Good heaventh! why, whath come to the man? How dare you wish you were drunk, thir--how dare you, thir!” “Dare? I tell you, Maria, I’m a miserable bull, a dead-beat bull, as ever was,” said Dibble, weeping. “You’re a beast, if that’s what you mean,” said Mrs. Dibble, convinced that her Thomas was intoxicated.