"
Mrs. Dodd replied only by a sigh: grand general sentiments like that
never penetrated her mind: they glided off like water from a duck's back.
"We will begin with this mercantile Brutus, then," said she, with such a
curl of the lip. Brutus had rejected her daughter.
"Mr. Richard Hardie was born and bred in a bank; one where no wild thyme
blows, my poor enthusiast, nor cowslips nor the nodding violet grows; but
gold and silver chink, and Things are discounted, and men grow rich,
slowly but surely, by lawful use of other people's money. Breathed upon
by these 'gentle influences,' he was, from his youth, a remarkable man--
measured by Trade's standard. At five-and-twenty divine what he did! He
saved the bank. You have read of bubbles: the Mississippi Bubble and the
South Sea Bubble. Well, in the year 1825, it was not one bubble but a
thousand; mines by the score, and in distant lands; companies by the
hundred; loans to every nation or tribe; down to Guatemala, Patagonia,
and Greece; two hundred new ships were laid on the stocks in one year,
for your dear papa told me; in short, a fever of speculation, and the
whole nation raging with it: my dear, Princes, Dukes, Duchesses, Bishops,
Poets, Lawyers, Physicians, were seen struggling with their own footmen
for a place in the Exchange: and, at last, good, steady, old Mr.
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