The railway mania was, as may be judged, a grand time for Happy Jack.  The number of lines of which he was a provisional director, the number of schemes which came out—­and often at good premiums too—­under his auspices; the number of railway journals which he founded, and the number of academies which he established for the instruction of youthful engineers—­are they not written in the annals of the period?  Jack himself started as an engineer without any previous educational ceremony whatever.  His manner of laying out a ‘direct line’ was happy and expeditious.  He took a map and a ruler, and drew upon the one, by the help of the other, a straight stroke in red ink—­which looked professional—­from terminus to terminus.  Afterwards, he stated distinctly in writing, so that there could be no mistake about the matter, that there were no engineering difficulties—­that the landed proprietors along the line were quite enthusiastic in their promotion of the scheme—­and that the probable profits, as deduced from carefully drawn-up traffic-tables, would be about 35 per cent.  At this time, Happy Jack was quite a minor Hudson.  He lived in an atmosphere of shares, scrip, and prospectuses.  Money poured in from every quarter.  A scrap of paper with an application for shares was worth the bright tissue of the Bank—­and Jack lost no time in changing the one for the other.  Amid the mass of railway newspapers, he started The Railway Sleeper Awakened, The Railway Whistle, The Railway Turntable, and The Railway Timetable; and it was in the first number of the last famous organ—­it lived for three weeks—­in which appeared a letter signed ‘A Constant Reader.’  After the bursting of the bubble, Happy Jack appeared to have burst too; for his whereabouts for a long time was unknown, and there were no traditions of his being seen.  Then he began to be heard of from distant and constantly varying quarters of the town.  Now you had a note from Shepherd’s Bush, and next day from Bermondsey.  On Tuesday, Jack dated Little King Street, Clapham Road; on Thursday, the communication reached you from Little Queen Street, Victoria Villas, Hackney; and next week perhaps you were favoured with a note from some of the minor little Inns of Court, where the writer would be found getting up a company on the fourth floor in a grimy room, furnished with a high deal-desk, two three-legged stools, and illimitable foolscap, pens, and ink.

Where Mrs Happy Jack and the young-lady Happy Jacks went to at these times, the boldest speculator has failed to discover:  they vanished, as it were, into thin air, and were seen no more till the sunshine came, when they returned with the swallows.  The lady herself was a meek, mild creature, skilful in the art of living on nothing, and making up dresses without material.  She adored her husband, and believed him the greatest man in the world.  On the occurrence of such little household incidents as an execution, or Jack making a rapid act of cabmanship