Not particularly exaggerated is “Railroad Speculator” in Punch (Vol. viii., p. 244):
“The night was stormy and dark, the town was shut up in sleep: Only those were abroad who were out on the lark, Or those who’d no beds to keep.
I passed through the lonely street, The wind did sing and blow; I could hear the policeman’s feet, Clapping to and fro.
There stood a potato man, in the midst of all the wet; He stood with his ‘tato can, in the lonely Haymarket.
Two gents of dismal mien, and dank and greasy rags; came out of a shop for gin, swaggering over the flags:
Swaggering over the stones, these shabby bucks did walk; and I went and followed those seedy ones, and listened to their talk.
Was I sober or awake? Could I believe my ears? Those dismal beggars spake of nothing but Railroad Shares.
I wondered more and more: Says one, ‘Good friend of mine, how many shares did you write for? In the Diddlesex Junction line?’
‘I wrote for twenty,’ says Jim, ‘but they wouldn’t give me one’; His comrade straight rebuked him, for the folly he had done.
‘Oh Jim, you are unawares of the ways of this bad town: I always write for five hundred shares, and then they put me down.’