Grubemout was as active as a bee at sunrise, and offered his advice gratuitously—but “confidentially”—to any number of anxious inquirers—but some of them having a copper-mine of their own, by the attractive and taking name of “Penny-wise Company,” and others having taken a snap with the “Alligator Mountain Company,” and not liking the bite they received, shook their heads at Fleeceington and looked knowing—the “New Jersey” chaps were quite sprightly, for as their title covered the whole State, they had a fair chance of realizing something when the “Mammoth Shoveling Company” got to work, and lifted the crust off.
Grubemout assured them—“on his honor”—that “the Company did not intend to sell an ounce of its ore to the furnaces. They intended to have ‘a crushing machine’ of their own erected at once, and proceed in a style that would soon settle the whole business.”
Jones was “ready for any number of crushers or mashers, grinders or pounders. Head up the creek—dam it! Put up the water-works and the mill-wheel, and give it to the blasted furnaces! Carry the war into Africa!” said he.
The installment to carry on the adate was paid, though it depressed the stock, but Jones could not see how having paid the company five thousand dollars in installments should depress his stock in the market. “Hang it!” said he, “the company is that much richer in property and excavations, and don’t I belong to the company—haven’t I a thousand shares? It’s only paying money out of one pocket, and putting into the other. Wilkins may laugh, but he’s a fool! That’s a capital idea about the furnace. You’re a boy, Uptosnuff—you are?”
The installment for crushing purposes was soon called in also, and paid, though the stock looked sickly, and trembled as if it had the ague, or had passed through a crushing process on its own hook. It was just composing itself when Uptosnuff discovered that it was of the highest importance to the company to have a small engine and an iron pump erected at the mines at once, as the richest ore is always found below water level!
Jones—the active, energetic Jones—“had no doubt of it at all. The Cornish miners assured him, when he was up, that as soon as they got below water level, they would come to something that couldn’t be trifled with. If Wilkins wasn’t a fool he would go in soon, before it gets out.”
Uptosnuff, too, had had a quantity of the late ore assayed, and Professor Stuffemwell, Geologist to Her Majesty, thought it would do bravely. If ore that yielded fifty per cent. would not, he would like to know how her majesty’s subjects got rich, after paying the miners, on mines that yield but fifteen per cent.
Copper buttons now replenished the pockets of dealers, and the stock made several violent gasps and starts for a desirable existence. But it was consumptive—evidently going into a rapid decline. The crushing process and the iron pump having depressed its spirits, and exhausted still further its vital energy.
Grubemout thought that if the buttons were pressed into bars, and shown upon Change it might be encouraging, and mitigate the violence of the disease; but some wag of a broker suggested that it was “a BAR sinister;” which remark sinister ruffled the backs of the bars, caused the bulls to toss their horns unpleasantly, and shook still further the liveliness of the stock, which drooped visibly under the imputation.
Even Jones—the ardent, trustful Jones—got earnestly anxious about the state of the patient, and “suggested a consultation.”