Now is the time for speculative and dreaming or designing men.  They relate their dreams and projects to the ignorant and credulous, dazzle them with golden visions, and set them maddening after shadows.  The example of one stimulates another; speculation rises on speculation; bubble rises on bubble; every one helps with his breath to swell the windy superstructure, and admires and wonders at the magnitude of the inflation he has contributed to produce.

Speculation is the romance of trade, and casts contempt upon all its sober realities.  It renders the stock-jobber a magician, and the exchange a region of enchantment.  It elevates the merchant into a kind of Knight-errant, or rather a commercial Quixote.  The slow but sure gains of snug percentage become despicable in his eyes:  no “operation” is thought worthy of attention, that does not double or treble the investment.  No business is worth following, that does not promise an immediate fortune.  As he sits musing over his ledger, with pen behind his ear, he is like La Mancha’s hero in his study, dreaming over his books of chivalry.  His dusty counting-house fades before his eyes, or changes into a Spanish mine; he gropes after diamonds, or dives after pearls.  The subterranean garden of Aladdin is nothing to the realms of wealth that break upon his imagination.

When a man of business, therefore, hears on every side rumors of fortunes suddenly acquired; when he finds banks liberal, and brokers busy; when he sees adventurers flush of paper capital, and full of scheme and enterprise; when he perceives a greater disposition to buy than to sell; when trade overflows its accustomed channels, and deluges the country; when he hears of new regions of commercial adventure, of distant marts and distant mines, swallowing merchandise and disgorging gold; when he finds joint stock companies of all kinds forming; railroads, canals, and locomotive engines, springing up on every side; when idlers suddenly become men of business, and dash into the game of commerce as they would into the hazards of the faro table; when he beholds the streets glittering with new equipages, palaces conjured up by the magic of speculation; tradesmen flushed with sudden success, and vying with each other in ostentatious expense; in a word, when he hears the whole community joining in the theme of “unexampled prosperity.” let him look upon the whole as a “weather breeder,” and prepare for the impending storm.

* * * * *

From The Life of Washington.

=_184._= DEATH AND BURIAL OF BRADDOCK.

The proud spirit of Braddock was broken by his defeat.  He remained silent the first evening after the battle, only ejaculating at night, “Who would have thought it!” He was equally silent the following day; yet hope still seemed to linger in his breast, from another ejaculation:  “We shall better know how to deal with them another time!”

He was grateful for the attentions paid to him by Captain Stewart and Washington, and more than once, it is said, expressed his admiration of the gallantry displayed by the Virginians in the action.  It is said, moreover, that in his last moments, he apologized to Washington for the petulance with which he had rejected his advice, and bequeathed to him his favorite charger and his faithful servant, Bishop, who had helped to convey him from the field.