He knows his world thoroughly, whatever that world
is, and he knows how to enjoy every gift and every advantage which
Providence has bestowed upon him.
Mr. Smithson was a great authority on the Stock Exchange, though he had
ceased for the last three or four years to frequent the 'House,' or to
be seen in the purlieus of Throgmorton Street. Indeed he had an air of
hardly knowing his way to the City, of being acquainted with that part
of London only by hearsay. He complained that his horses shied at
passing Temple Bar. And yet a few years ago Mr. Smithson's city
operations had been on a very extensive scale: It was in the rise and
fall of commodities rather than of stocks and shares that Horace
Smithson had made his money. He had exercised occult influences upon the
trade of the great city, of the world itself, whereof that city is in a
manner the keystone. Iron had risen or fallen at his beck. At the breath
of his nostrils cochineal had gone up in the market at an almost magical
rate, as if the whole civilised world had become suddenly intent upon
dyeing its garments red, nay, as if even the naked savages of the Gold
Coast and the tribes of Central Africa were bent on staining their dusky
skins with the bodies of the female coccus.
Pages:
458
459
460
461
462
463
464
465
466
467
468
469
470
471
472
473
474
475
476
477
478
479
480
481
482