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_ Nearly
everything that had a name, and, by some immense fortuity, could write
it, demanded its part in the new and fathomless source of wealth: a
charwoman's two sons were living in a garret on fifteen shillings apiece
per week; down went their excellencies' names for L. 37,000 worth of
bubbling iron; another shareholder applied imperiously from a house in
Grosvenor Square; he had breakfasted on the steps. Once more in Time's
whirligig gentlemen and their footmen jostled one another on the
Exchange, and a motley crew of peers and printers, vicars and admirals,
professors, cooks, costermongers, cotton-spinners, waiters, coachmen,
priests, potboys, hankers, braziers, dairymen, mail-guards, barristers,
spinsters, butchers, beggars, duchesses, rag-merchants-- in one word, of
Nobs and Snobs; fought and scrambled pell mell for the popular paper, and
all to get rich in a day.*
*For the humours of the time see the parliamentary return of Railway
Subscribers, published 1846: Francis's British Railway: Evan's Commercial
Crisis; and the pamphlets and journals of the day.


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