The Steam-Packet: A Tale of the River and the Ocean — page 230: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE STEAM PACKET. 173 _“ Really, my lord, I should he ashamed to give your lordship all this trouble,” said Mr. Smale, passing his fingers through his red hair; ‘“‘ and therefore I should much prefer z “But, my dear fellow,” interrupted Buckram, “ yeu money is gone ! ” _ “Gone ?”’ cried Smale, starting. “¢ Yes—gone—for good—for much good,” answered Buckram. ‘‘ To tell you the real truth, and not to keep you in suspense any longer— although I did mean to reserve this surprise until a future day—lI have already invested your money for you, and to excellent purpose too! You ’ll make a hundred and sixty per cent., and not the slightest risk in the world. I have this very day placed your cash, along with sixty thousand of my own, in the security of which I am speaking! ” ‘**Oh! that alters the case, my lord,’’ said the credulous clerk: ‘I ef course was not aware that your lordship would take so much trouble on my account.” ‘Trouble, my good fellow!” ejaculated Buckram; ‘‘I would do anything I could in the world for you, from placing out your money at interest, oo to—what ?—-why—putting a new seat into your black kersey *‘And might I inquire in what enterprise you have invested the money, my lord?” inquired Mr. Smale, who was too much occupied with the idea of a hundred and sixty per cent. for his little savings, to pay much attention to the latter portion of his patron’s sentence. ‘‘What have I invested the money in?”’ repeated Mr. Buckram, seeming astonished and almost annoyed at being asked a question which he was pleased to appear to think could scarcely require an answer: ‘‘ what have I invested the money in? Why—in what could I have embarked this amount—in what could I have ventured a sum, the loss of which would, I do not hesitate to say, seriously embarrass me,—in what conte I have placed our joint funds, Smale ?—is that your question ?’ “Yes, my lord,” meekly replied the clerk, who little suspected that all these fine flourishes were to enable his patron to rack his imagination for the most attractive name he could bestow upon an enterprise which existed only in his imagination. ‘© What is the speculation?” continued Buckram: “did you say, what is the speculation? Why—what could it be but the Royal ‘ Hot Joints from One to Five Daily’ Company ?” As he uttered these words, Buckram extended his arm and pushed Mr. Smale gently back to the full extent of it, while he surveyed him with a solemnity which certainly impressed the Custom-House clerk Gomichbooks (E(0)