Hard Cash

is: one forms a judgment on certain statements;

, we go boldly by his character, his habits, or his interest: for these are great f

s naturally inclined, to rely on their insight into character; and, by this br

e him withdraw that dissent: and the fair diviner was much mistaken in detail but right in her conclusion; for Richard Hardie wa

eader, that will incidentally lead him to Mr

ent youth was substantially correct; but something had occurred since then, unkno

able a horse to draw forty-two cwt. instead of seventeen. The coalowners soon used it largely. In 1738, iron rails were invented;

for then an engine built by Trevethick, a great genius frittered for want of pluck, drew carriages, laden with ten tons, five miles an hour on a Welsh railway. Next stout Stephenson came on the scene, and insisted on benefiting m

and triumph

ily, "And suppose a cow should get in the way of your engine, sir?" he replied, "Why, then it wou

on a smooth rail, but leave the carriage in statu quo, he replied by building an engine with Lord Ravensworth's noble aid, hookin

Liverpool and Manchester line was projected. Oh, then, what bit

e tomb echoes

ges ('Aha! thou hast touched us nearly,' said the country gentlemen), the travellers would go slowly to their destination, but swift to destruction." And the Heavy Review, whose motto was "Stemus super turnpikes," offered "to back old Father Thames against the Woolwich railway

er the manner of men, they had manured their benefactor well, they consented to reap him. Railways prevailed, and increased, till lo and behold a Prime Minister with a spade delving one in the valley of the Trent. The tide turned; good working railways from city

rds whose effigies surmount their armorials; our stiffest Peers relaxed into Boards; Bishops warned their clergy against avarice, and buttered Hudson an inch thick for shares; and turned their little aprons into great pockets; men, stainless hitherto, put down their infants, nurses included, as independent subscribers, and bagged the coupons, capturi tartaros. 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'

the time see the par

s, published 1846:

mmercial Crisis; a

ls of

solicited to be a director, but always declined. Once he was offered a canny bribe of a thousand pounds to let his name go on a

e wet blanket; an unpopular institution; but far more s

ve sufficed: today a thousand railway companies are registered, requiring a capital of six hundred million and another thousand projected, to cost another five hundred million. Where is the money to come from? If the world was both cultivated and civilised (instead of neither), and this nation could be sold, with every building, ship, quadruped, jewel, and marketable female in it, it would not fetch the money to make these railways; yet the country undertakes to create them in three years with its floating capital. Arithmetic of Bedlam! The thing cannot last a year without collapsing." Richard Hardie talked like this from first to last. But, when he

thousands weekly by the railway advertisements. The time was so well chosen, and the pin applied, that it was a death-blow: shares declined from that morning, and the inevitable panic was advanced a week or two. The more credulous speculators held on in hopes of a revival; but Hardie, who knew that the collapse had been merely hastened, saw the gravi

glowed, and sickened by turns beneath that steady modulated exterior. And so for months and months he secretly battled with insolvency; sometimes it threatened in the distance, sometimes at hand, but never caught him unawares: he provided for each coming danger, he encountered each immediate attack. But not unscathed in morals. Just as matters looked brighter, came a concentration of liabilities he could not meet without emptying his tills, and so incurring the most frightful danger of all. He had provided for its coming too; but a decline, greater than he had

struggling all alone without a word of comfort-for the price of one grain of sympat

, like a strong swimmer who, long and sore buff

ung Skinner, invited his attention rather significantly to the high amou

ted." He added graciously, as if conferring a great

with him. Bankruptcy seemed coming towards him, slow perhaps, but

who contrived to live up to his income at home, but had never been able to spend a quarter of it abroad, for want of enemies and masters-better known as friends and servants-to help him. So Hardie was safe for some months, unless there should be an extraordinary run on h

, wore out; nay more, this man, who had sacrificed so nobly to commercial integrity, was filled with hate of his idol and contempt of himself. "Idiot!" said he, "to throw away a

his days at the bank poring over the books, and to lay out his arithmetical genius in a subtle process, that should enable him by degrees to withdraw a few thousands from human eyes

ches of my contemporaries, and spare him minute details, that possess scarcely a new feature, except one: in that bank was not only a mole, but a mole-catcher; and, contrary to custom, the mole was the master, the mole-catcher the servant. The latter had no hostile views; far from it: he was rather attached to his master. But his attention was roused by the youngest clerk, a boy of sixteen, being so often sent for

ability to the eye, though ready to crumble at a touch;

owed and his hair thinned by a secret struggle; and of all the things that gnawed him, like the fox, beneath

life, and in case of her death, on the children upon coming of age. The marriage of Alfred or Jane would be sure to expose him; settl

, virtue, and breeding, Alfred had told him hard cash in five figures could be settled by the bride's family on the young couple, he would have welcomed the wedding with great external indifferen

f the Cash, and to what purpose Mrs. Dodd destined it, and then put on board the Agra in the Straits of Gaspar, he would have calmly taken off his coat, and help to defend the bearer of It against all assa