When some
rich argosy upon the commercial ocean fired her minute-guns, and sent up
signals of distress, menaced by the furious tempest, lifted high on the
crest of mountainous waves, below which, black and fathomless, yawn the
valleys of death,--a frail ark hovering above the ravening jaws of
all-devouring Poseidon,--Philip Sheldon was among that chosen band of
desperate wreckers who dared to face the storm, and profit by the
tempest and terror. From such argosies, while other men watched and
waited for a gleam of sunlight on the dark horizon, Mr. Sheldon had
obtained for himself goodly merchandise. The debenture of railways that
were in bad odour; Unitas Bank shares, immediately after the discovery of
gigantic embezzlements by Swillenger, the Unitas-Bank secretary; the
Mole-and-Burrow railway stock, when the Mole-and-Burrow scheme was as yet
in the clouds, and the wiseacres prognosticated its failure; the shares
in foreign loans, which the Rothschilds were buying _sub rosa_;--these,
and such as these, had employed Mr. Sheldon's capital; and from the
skilful manipulation of capital thus employed, Mr. Sheldon had trebled
the fortune secured by his alliance with Tom Halliday's widow.
It had been the stockbroker's fate to enter the money market at a time
when fortunes were acquired with an abnormal facility. He had made the
most of his advantages, and neglected none of his opportunities.
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