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PUNCHINELLO IN WALL STREET.

That it is not PUNCHINELLO’S intention to overlook Wall street, may be absolutely taken at par.  To look over Wall street is quite another matter, and P. knows how to do it to a T. Many a time at midnight, from his perch on the tip of the spire of Old Trinity, (a tip-top point from which to look over Wall street—­you see the point?) has PUNCHINELLO beheld the ghosts of dead speculations floating hopelessly through the murky air.  It could not be said of them that there was “no speculation in those eyes.”  The ghost of a dead speculation was never so utterly damned, the eyes of a ghost of a dead speculation were never so absolutely dimmed, but that speculation of some kind might be discerned fluttering like a mummy-cloth from the shadowy outline of the former, and gleaming feebly from the gloomy goggles of the latter.  Gleam on, poor ghosts!  Goggle while you may, and gibber.  PUNCHINELLO watches you with interest, (25 per cent.,) as you are weighed down to the very dirt of The Street by the night-fog of Despair, flapping your wings on a very small “margin,” as if attempting vainly to “operate for a rise.”  Go down, poor ghosts; repair to your incandescent place below, for there is no hope for you.  As we sit here upon our spire, we can not say to you, Dum spiramus speramus.  Alas! no.  We would like to do so, of course; but our sense of truth revolts against the enunciation of such a taradiddle.

Soon after daylight has been fully turned on, it is the wont of PUNCHINELLO to descend from his perch on the church, (rhyme,) and roam waywardly and invisibly among the denizens who occupy the dens of The Street.  He knows all the ins and outs of the place, and has long been disgustingly familiar with its ups and downs.  Gently has he dabbled in stocks, and no modern operator is half so conversant an he is with the juggles of the Stock Exchange.  PUNCHINELLO, though as fresh and frisky, in mind and body, as a kid on a June morning, is older than he chooses to let every body know.  Bless you all, readers dear! he was by when the Tulip Mania was hatched, (mixed figure,) and it was he who punctured the great South Sea Bubble, and sent it on a burst.  Ha! ha! he-e-e!—­how he laughs when he recurs to those days of the long, long ago, with their miserable little swindles, no better than farthing candles, (allowable rhyme,) and their puny dodges devised for flagellating LUCIFER round a stump.

Just think of a lot of fellows pretending to play at Tulipmaniacs bolting Bubble-and-squeak, and not a jockey among them all had ever heard of “puts” and “calls.”  Deuce a one of them know a “corner” from a cockatrice’s egg, and if you had mentioned a “scoop” to the most intelligent of them, he’d have sworn that you had been and gone and swallowed a Scandinavian dictionary. (N.B.  In this application the nave in Scandinavian might properly be spelt with a k.) Ah! yes, yes:  What-d’ye-call him was wide-awake when he remarked to Thingumbob that “the world does move.”