Chamberss Edinburgh Journal, No. 422 | Page 3

he had done rather more for free-trade than Cobden. Not, he said,
that he was jealous of the Manchester champion; circumstances had
made the latter better known--that he admitted; still he could not but
know--and knowing, feel--in his own heart of hearts, his own merits,
and his own exertions.
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
from his own hearth to the cheerful residence of Mr Levi in Cursitor
Street, the poor little woman, after having indulged herself in the small
luxury of a 'good cry,' would go to work to pack up shirts and socks
manfully, and with great foresight, would always bring Jack's daily
food in a basket, seeing that Mr Levi's bills are constructed upon a scale
of uncommon dimensions; after which, she would eat the dinner with
him in the coffee-room, drink to better days, play cribbage, and at last
get very nearly as joyous in that greasy, grimy, sorrow-laden room,
with bars on the outside of the windows, as if it were the happy home
she possessed a few weeks ago, and which she always hoped to possess
again. As for the girls, they were trained by too good a master and
mistress not to become apt scholars. They knew what a bill of sale was
from their tenderest years; the broker's was no unfamiliar face; and they
quite understood how to treat a man in possession. Their management
of duns was consummate. Happy Jack used to listen to the comedy of
excuses and coaxings; and when the importunate had departed,
grumblingly and unpaid, he used solemnly to kiss his daughters on the
forehead, and invoke all sorts of blessings upon his preservers, his good
angels, his little girls, who were so clever, and so faithful, and so true.

And in many respects they were good girls.