He had
seized Good Fortune by the forelock, and not waited to find the
harridan's bald and slippery crown turned to him in pitiless derision. He
had made only one mistake--and that he made in common with many of his
fellow-players in the great game of speculation always going on eastward
of Temple Bar--he had mistaken the abnormal for the normal: he had
imagined that these splendid opportunities were the natural evolvements
of an endless sequence of everyday events; and when the sequence was
abruptly broken, and when last of the seven fat kine vanished off the
transitory scene of life, to make way for a dismal succession of lean
kine, there was no sanguine youngster newly admitted to the sacred
privileges of "The House" more astounded by the change than Mr. Sheldon.
The panic came like a thief in the night, and it found Mr. Sheldon a
speculator for the rise. The Melampuses and Amphiaraeuses of the Stock
Exchange had agreed in declaring that a man who bought into consols at 90
_must_ see his capital increased; and what was true of this chief among
securities was of course true of other securities. The panic came, and
from 90, consols declined dismally, slowly, hopelessly, to 85-1/2;
securities less secure sank with a rapidity corresponding with their
constitutional weakness. As during the ravages of an epidemic the weaker
are first to fall victims to the destroyer, so while this fever raged on
'Change, the feeble enterprises, the "risky" transactions, sank at an
appalling rate, some to total expiry.
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