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 TALES
 FROM
 "BLACKWOOD"

 Contents of this Volume

 _The Glenmutchkin Railway. By Professor Aytoun_

 _Vanderdecken's Message Home_

 _The Floating Beacon_

 _Colonna the Painter_

 _Napoleon. By J. G. Lockhart_

 _A Legend of Gibraltar. By Col. E. B. Hamley_

 _The Iron Shroud. By William Mudford_

 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS
 EDINBURGH AND LONDON




TALES FROM "BLACKWOOD."




 HOW WE GOT UP THE GLENMUTCHKIN RAILWAY
 AND HOW WE GOT OUT OF IT

BY PROFESSOR AYTOUN.

[_MAGA._ OCTOBER 1845.]

[The following Tale appeared in the Magazine for October 1845. It was
intended by the writer as a sketch of some of the more striking
features of the railway mania (then in full progress throughout Great
Britain), as exhibited in Glasgow and Edinburgh. Although bearing the
appearance of a burlesque, it was in truth an accurate delineation (as
will be acknowledged by many a gentleman who had the misfortune to be
"out in the Forty-five"); and subsequent disclosures have shown that
it was in no way exaggerated.

Although the "Glenmutchkin line" was purely imaginary, and not
intended by the writer to apply to any particular scheme then before
the public, it was identified in Scotland with more than one reckless
and impracticable project; and even the characters introduced were
supposed to be typical of personages who had attained some notoriety
in the throng of speculation. Any such resemblances must be considered
as fortuitous; for the writer cannot charge himself with the
discourtesy of individual satire or allusion.]


I was confoundedly hard up. My patrimony, never of the largest, had
been for the last year on the decrease--a herald would have emblazoned
it, "ARGENT, a money-bag improper, in detriment"--and though the
attenuating process was not excessively rapid, it was, nevertheless,
proceeding at a steady ratio. As for the ordinary means and appliances
by which men contrive to recruit their exhausted exchequers, I knew
none of them. Work I abhorred with a detestation worthy of a scion of
nobility; and, I believe, you could just as soon have persuaded the
lineal representative of the Howards or Percys to exhibit himself in
the character of a mountebank, as have got me to trust my person on
the pinnacle of a three-legged stool. The rule of three is all very
well for base mechanical souls; but I flatter myself I have an
intellect too large to be limited to a ledger. "Augustus," said my
poor mother to me, while stroking my hyacinthine tresses, one fine
morning, in the very dawn and budding-time of my existence--"Augustus,
my dear boy, whatever you do, never forget that you are a gentleman."
The maternal maxim sunk deeply into my heart, and I never for a moment
have forgotten it.

Notwithstanding this aristocratic resolution, the great practical
question, "How am I to live?" began to thrust itself unpleasantly
before me. I am one of that unfortunate class who have neither uncles
nor aunts. For me, no yellow liverless individual, with characteristic
bamboo and pigtail--emblems of half-a-million--returned to his native
shores from Ceylon or remote Penang. For me, no venerable spinster
hoarded in the Trongate, permitting herself few luxuries during a
long-protracted life, save a lass and a lanthorn, a parrot, and the
invariable baudrons of antiquity. No such luck was mine. Had all
Glasgow perished by some vast epidemic, I should not have found myself
one farthing the richer. There would have been no golden balsam for me
in the accumulated woes of Tradestown, Shettleston, and Camlachie. The
time has been when--according to Washington Irving and other veracious
historians--a young man had no sooner got into difficulties than a
guardian angel appeared to him in a dream, with the information that
at such and such a bridge, or under such and such a tree, he might
find, at a slight expenditure of labour, a gallipot secured with
bladder, and filled with glittering tomauns; or in the extremity
of despair, the youth had only to append himself to a cord, and
straightway the other end thereof, forsaking its staple in the
roof, would disclose amidst the fractured ceiling the glories of a
profitable pose. These blessed days have long since gone by--at any
rate, no such luck was mine. My guardian angel was either woefully
ignorant of metallurgy or the stores had been surreptitiously
ransacked; and as to the other expedient, I frankly confess I should
have liked some better security for its result, than the precedent
of the "Heir of Lynn."

It is a great consolation amidst all the evils of life, to know that,
however bad your circumstances may be, there is always somebody else
in nearly the same predicament. My chosen friend and ally, Bob
M'Corkindale, was equally hard up with myself, and, if possible, more
averse to exertion. Bob was essentially a speculative man--that is, in
a philosophical sense. He had once got hold of a stray volume of Adam
Smith, and muddled his brains for a whole week over the intricacies of
the _Wealth of Nations_. The result was a crude farrago of notions
regarding the true nature of money, the soundness of currency, and
relative value of capital, with which he nightly favoured an admiring
audience at "The Crow;" for Bob was by no means--in the literal
acceptation of the word--a dry philosopher. On the contrary, he
perfectly appreciated the merits of each distinct distillery; and was
understood to be the compiler of a statistical work, entitled, _A Tour
through the Alcoholic Districts of Scotland_. It had very early
occurred to me, who knew as much of political economy as of the
bagpipes, that a gentleman so well versed in the art of accumulating
national wealth, must have some remote ideas of applying his
principles profitably on a smaller scale. Accordingly, I gave
M'Corkindale an unlimited invitation to my lodgings; and, like a good
hearty fellow as he was, he availed himself every evening of the
license; for I had laid in a fourteen-gallon cask of Oban whisky, and
the quality of the malt was undeniable.

These were the first glorious days of general speculation. Railroads
were emerging from the hands of the greater into the fingers of the
lesser capitalists. Two successful harvests had given a fearful
stimulus to the national energy; and it appeared perfectly certain
that all the populous towns would be united, and the rich agricultural
districts intersected, by the magical bands of iron. The columns of
the newspapers teemed every week with the parturition of novel
schemes; and the shares were no sooner announced than they were
rapidly subscribed for. But what is the use of my saying anything more
about the history of last year? Every one of us remembers it perfectly
well. It was a capital year on the whole, and put money into many a
pocket. About that time, Bob and I commenced operations. Our available
capital, or negotiable bullion, in the language of my friend, amounted
to about three hundred pounds, which we set aside as a joint fund for
speculation. Bob, in a series of learned discourses, had convinced me
that it was not only folly, but a positive sin, to leave this sum
lying in the bank at a pitiful rate of interest, and otherwise
unemployed, whilst every one else in the kingdom was having a pluck at
the public pigeon. Somehow or other, we were unlucky in our first
attempts. Speculators are like wasps; for when they have once got hold
of a ripening and peach-like project, they keep it rigidly for their
own swarm, and repel the approach of interlopers. Notwithstanding all
our efforts, and very ingenious ones they were, we never, in a single
instance, succeeded in procuring an allocation of original shares; and
though we did now and then make a hit by purchase, we more frequently
bought at a premium, and parted with our scrip at a discount. At the
end of six months, we were not twenty pounds richer than before.

"This will never do," said Bob, as he sat one evening in my rooms
compounding his second tumbler. "I thought we were living in an
enlightened age; but I find I was mistaken. That brutal spirit of
monopoly is still abroad and uncurbed. The principles of free-trade
are utterly forgotten, or misunderstood. Else how comes it that David
Spreul received but yesterday an allocation of two hundred shares in
the Westermidden Junction; whilst your application and mine, for a
thousand each, were overlooked? Is this a state of things to be
tolerated? Why should he, with his fifty thousand pounds, receive a
slapping premium, whilst our three hundred of available capital
remains unrepresented? The fact is monstrous, and demands the
immediate and serious interference of the legislature."

"It is a burning shame," said I, fully alive to the manifold
advantages of a premium.

"I'll tell you what, Dunshunner," rejoined M'Corkindale, "it's no use
going on in this way. We haven't shown half pluck enough. These
fellows consider us as snobs, because we don't take the bull by the
horns. Now's the time for a bold stroke. The public are quite ready to
subscribe for anything--and we'll start a railway for ourselves."

"Start a railway with three hundred pounds of capital!"

"Pshaw, man! you don't know what you're talking about--we've a great
deal more capital than that. Have not I told you seventy times over,
that everything a man has--his coat, his hat, the tumblers he drinks
from, nay, his very corporeal existence--is absolute marketable
capital? What do you call that fourteen-gallon cask, I should like to
know?"

"A compound of hoops and staves, containing about a quart and a half
of spirits--you have effectually accounted for the rest."

"Then it has gone to the fund of profit and loss, that's all.
Never let me hear you sport those old theories again. Capital is
indestructible, as I am ready to prove to you any day, in half an
hour. But let us sit down seriously to business. We are rich enough to
pay for the advertisements, and that is all we need care for in the
mean time. The public is sure to step in, and bear us out handsomely
with the rest."

"But where in the face of the habitable globe shall the railway be?
England is out of the question, and I hardly know a spot in the
Lowlands that is not occupied already."

"What do you say to a Spanish scheme--the Alcantara Union? Hang me
if I know whether Alcantara is in Spain or Portugal; but nobody
else does, and the one is quite as good as the other. Or what would
you think of the Palermo Railway, with a branch to the sulphur
mines?--that would be popular in the North--or the Pyrenees Direct?
They would all go to a premium."

"I must confess