A DIRECTOR A WEASLE.
Whenever any company is attempted to be established for purposes of public improvement, it is always a prerequisite of success, that in the programme, the expense should be set down at one half, and the profits and advantages at double—and this mode of stating things, although it varies from the actual result only three hundred per cent., is sure to convince, and the public will eagerly catch at the enterprise. The reason of this necessity is, that if the truth were told in the first place, there would be little chance for management in the stock, and none whatever of its being all taken up. But by this shrewd management, it generally happens that an original subscriber, after having paid up in full his subscription, and two or three assessments beyond, loses all confidence, and suffers all he has paid to be forfeited to the company, rather than pay more. Thus the original subscribers generally lose all their money; the stock is resold by the company to some new comer, and the company, in the end, collect a million capital upon a subscription of half that amount. And whoever subscribes to a new fashioned bank, or a railroad, and does not find the directors awake to this management, may hereafter say with truth that he has caught a weasle asleep—there being no other difference whatever in the vermin, than is expressed by the simple affixes bi and quadru.
Such was the character of Mr. Single-Eye, of the Wall-street Stock Company; and the number of similar institutions which now display their gilded signs there by the same means, can only be told by multiplying some of the numericals.
It so happened, however, that the Dutchmen, from their natural stupidity and ingratitude, as Mr. Single-Eye averred—but, as some suppose, from some lurking doubts of his virtue, and a spice of his own cunning—after having paid seventy-five per cent. premium for their stock, through the agency of Mr. Broker—could not be convinced of the propriety of paying more in the shape of assessments, notwithstanding Mr. Single-Eye, and his partners in the directorship, assured them that all was right, and that the money had all been properly expended.
COMMITTEE OF INVESTIGATION.
A committee of examination into the company’s affairs was therefore appointed; whereupon Mr. Single-Eye, being grieved at such indignity offered to his honor, took the “book of minutes” and walked off, leaving the Dutchmen in a state of “confusion worse confounded,” from which they never recovered: thereby establishing a precedent for the tragedy lately enacted in the Water Works Bank, in this city—wherein, if the directors of that institution had consulted the ancient chronicles, they would never have tried to cover their own delinquency, by a contemptible persecution of their late venerable cashier.
The committee of examination, without waiting to come to their senses, adjourned “sine die.” The city wall had been broken down, and its materials were all scattered about in delightful confusion. A complete inroad had been made on the hitherto peaceful and happy homes of the Dutchmen. They had lost all the money invested in the company, with the melancholy satisfaction that it would cost them as much more to clear away the rubbish; and the street was left to the slow progress of time, to assume its present magnificent appearance.
HONORABLE END OF SINGLE-EYE.
It is remarkable, that such fatal results to the first experiment, should not have proved a death blow to all similar enterprises in future. But the Dutchmen overcame their misfortunes by patience and industry. The memory of their wrongs was all washed away by the soothing lethe of time, and their follies were all buried in the deep dark valley of the land of forgetfulness. Mr. Single-Eye, and Mr. Broker, ever afterwards fared sumptuously every day. They lived long and died lamented; and the tablet to their memory, lately removed from the Garden-street church yard, was inscribed with this motto: “Money is good, fame is good, but to know how to improve the follies of others is better than either.” And their descendants, learning wisdom from this law, have ever since continued to follow their example.
THE MORRISON KENNEL.