Unwelcome Truth.
Plain speaking was Mousetrap's distinctive characteristic; his conversation abounded in blunt truisms, founded upon a course of thinking somewhat peculiar to himself, but which, when tried by the test of human vice and human folly, proved very frequently to be a great deal more accurate than agreeable.
Stockbrokers.
"I know some of them brokering boys are worth a million on Monday, and threepence on Thursday—all in high feather one week, and poor waddling creturs the next."
Mercantile Life.
A dark hole of a counting-house, with a couple of clerk chaps, cocked up upon long-legged stools, writing out letters—a smoky fireplace—two or three files, stuck full of dirty papers, hanging against the wall—an almanack, and a high-railed desk, with a slit in a panel, with "bills for acceptance" painted over it. They are the chaps "wot" makes time-bargains—they speculate for thousands, having nothing in the world—and then at the wind-up of a week or two, pay each other what they call the difference: that is to say, the change between what they cannot get, and what they have not got.
The Secret Spring.
There are with all great affairs smaller affairs connected, so that in the watch-work of society, the most skilful artist is sometimes puzzled to fix upon the very little wheel by which the greater wheels are worked.
"Bad Company."
The subject under discussion was the great advantages likely to arise from the establishment of the North Shields Sawdust Consolidation Company, in which Apperton told Maxwell there were still seventy-four shares to be purchased: they were hundred pound shares, and were actually down at eighty-nine, would be at fifteen premium on the following Saturday, and must eventually rise to two hundred and thirty, for reasons which he gave in the most plausible manner, and which were in themselves perfectly satisfactory, as he said, to the "meanest capacity;" a saying with which it might have been perfectly safe to agree.