William Hepworth Dixon, White Conquest: Volume 1

[158] very rich. Lick, Latham, Hayward, Sharon, are marked five million dollars each. Reese, Ralston, Baldwin, Jones, and Lux are marked still moreseven millions, ten millions, twelve millions each. Flood and Fair, Mackey and O'Brien are said to be richer still. The poor are very poor; not in the sense of Seven Dials and Five Points; yet poor in having little and craving much. A pauper wants to get money, and to get this money in the quickest time. Cards, dice, and share-lists serve him, each in turn. He yearns to be Lick or Ralston-owner of a big hotel, conductor of a prosperous bank; but he neither courts the labour nor endures the selfdenial which have crowned these speculators with wealth. He thinks all life a game of chance; he looks for dollars in the sink and sewer; and stakes his savings, when he has them, on a rise in stocks.

These worthy citizens, tossing their whisky in Montgomery Street, know the lighter and lower portion of their countrymen; and in that knowledge they proceed to form a ring.

A rumour spreads along the streets, and finds an echo in the evening papers, that a great and wonderful discovery has been made in the Virginia mine.