climates where vegetation is always at work.


_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.