SOLILOQUY OF A SHAREBROKER.

Thames Guardian and Mining Record, Volume I, Issue 247, 24 July 1872, Page 3

SOLILOQUY OF A SHAREBROKER.

[a long way after hajilet.] To buy, or not to buy, that is the question. Whether it is wiser for a mau to try By speculation to improve his fortune , Or, to take shares iu tlie Caledonian , Aud. by doing so, improve them- buy aud sell— No more—aud by good luck to say we end The misery aud tne lls that lack of muucy Makes us heir to. .’Tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished. To buy io sed, To sell perchance to loose. Aye, there's the rub ; For in this game of chance what lo -s may come .When we have bought aud cannot :-e!l again. Must give us pause. There’s the r spiet Tiiat maxes penury of so lougufe : For who would bear the bills auu soo.ns of duns, The bailiffs’ wrong, the rich man's cotuumely. Tue sense ofjiiapty pockets, tue lawyer's sway, Tlie drudgery of office, and the spurns Tnat we poor orokers of tlie puuiio ake, Wueu haply lie might his rich t'oi .n ie make By speculation. Who would ill luck bear To curse and moan at loug contracted debts, But that the dread of something afterwards. The half prospected mine, from whose quartz No dividends may return —puzzles the will Aud makes us rather bear the ills we have Than buy up shares we kuow not of. Thus caution does make cowards of us all ; Aud the native hue of speculation Is.sickbed o’er with the pale cast of fear. And glowing visions of great fortune s coming With ttis regard must slowly fane away, Aud die in tame inaction.

A quiet wag rang his neighbor’s door-bell one night. “Is the gcutlem inf in ?” he asked of a servant. “ I don’t kno w. Did you wish to sec him particularly V “ Oh, no ! I merely wanted to tell him his house was on lire.” The following laconic letter was written by Admiral Blake to the Admiralty . “ Please join honors and g'ory, yesterday met the French fleet, beat, killed, took, sunk, aud burned, as per margin.—Youis, &o.” A benevolent elderly gentleman beiug drawn into conversation by some sharpers in a railway carriage in America, was induced by them to buy a draft for 157 dollars, for winch he gave them 200 dollar notes, and received from them 515 dollars in cash. The conductor of the train took the first opportunity to suggest quietly to the innocent old geutlemau that ho was afraid tlie draft was a fraud. “Well,” was the bland response of the imperturbable greeny, “if it is any bigger fraud ihau my two oue hundred dollar notes were, then i am not forty three dollars ahead—which I think I am.”