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people feel a keen enjoyment in a rapid rise, a lurid passion in a rapid fall.
Their mouths are full of wondrous tales.
Paupers of yesterday are rich men this evening; millionaires of last week are to be sold up on Monday next.
Such passages of fortune make the drama of their lives.
Four times within a dozen years, a craze has come on San Francisco, like the phrenzy which consumes her now. Fortunes have been won and lost almost as rapidly as though they had been staked on a throw of dice.
A man may have a hundred shares in the Belcher Mine, his only wealth.
One day they sell at a dollar each,--the man is worth twenty pounds; another day they sell at five hundred dollars each — the man is worth ten thousand pounds. This record of an actual fact is but a sample of the thousand stories told you at the Union and Pacific Clubs.
Two years ago, when prices shot up suddenly, shares in Crown Point advanced in a few weeks from ten shillings a share to ninety-two pounds. A man of my acquaintance in this city held a thousand of these shares.
In March they would have brought him five hundred pounds, in October they were sold for ninety-two thousand
1875.
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