Hard Cash. Charles Reade Reade

an inch thick for shares; and turned their little aprons into great pockets; men, stainless hitherto, put down their infants, nurses included, as independent subscribers, and bagged the coupons, capturi tartaros. Nearly everything that had a name, and, by some immense fortuity, could write it, demanded its part in the new and fathomless source of wealth: a charwoman's two sons were living in a garret on fifteen shillings apiece per week; down went their excellencies' names for L. 37,000 worth of bubbling iron; another shareholder applied imperiously from a house in Grosvenor Square; he had breakfasted on the steps. Once more in Time's whirligig gentlemen and their footmen jostled one another on the Exchange, and a motley crew of peers and printers, vicars and admirals, professors, cooks, costermongers, cotton-spinners, waiters, coachmen, priests, potboys, hankers, braziers, dairymen, mail-guards, barristers, spinsters, butchers, beggars, duchesses, rag-merchants—in one word, of Nobs and Snobs; fought and scrambled pell mell for the popular paper, and all to get rich in a day.*