the trade to the South Sea, and the company was to assume the entire
debt of England, then amounting to one hundred and forty millions of
dollars. Magnificent project! The English nation talked and dreamed
of nothing but Peruvian gold and Mexican silver, the national debt
liquidated, and Eldorados numberless and illimitable! When five
million pounds of new stock was offered at three hundred pounds per
share, it was all snatched up with avidity. Thirty million dollars
of the stock was subscribed for, when there were but five millions
offered. South Sea went up, until in the midsummer month the stock
stood at one thousand per cent. The whole nation was intoxicated.
Around about this scheme, as might have been expected, others just as
wild arose. A company was formed with ten million dollars of capital
for importing walnut trees from Virginia. A company for developing
a wheel to go by perpetual motion, with a capital of four million
dollars. A company for developing a new kind of soap. A company for
insuring against losses by servants, with fifteen million dollars
capital. One scheme was entitled: "A company for carrying on an
undertaking of great advantage, but nobody to know what it is--capital
two million five hundred thousand dollars, in shares of five hundred
each. Further information to be given in a month."

The books were opened at nine o'clock in the morning. Before night
a thousand shares were taken, and two thousand pounds paid in. So
successful was the day's work, that that night the projector of the
enterprise went out of the business, and forever vanished from the
public. But it was not a perfect loss. The subscribers had their
ornamented certificates of stock to comfort them. Hunt's Merchant's
Magazine, speaking of those times, says "that from morning until
evening 'Change Alley was filled to overflowing with one dense mass of
living beings composed of the most incongruous materials, and, in