Young Australia has a wonderful love for the excitement
of gambling--take him away from the betting ring
and he goes straight to the share market to dabble
in gold and silver shares. The Great Humbug Gold
Mining Company is floated on the Melbourne market—a
perfect fortune in itself, which influential men are
floating in a kind of semi-philanthropic manner to
benefit mankind at large, and themselves in particular.
Report by competent geologists; rich specimens of
the reef exhibited to the confiding public; company
of fifty thousand shares at a pound each; two shillings
on application; two shillings on allotment; the balance
in calls which influential men solemnly assure confiding
public will never be needed. Young Australia
sees a chance of making thousands in a week; buys one
thousand shares at four shillings—only two
hundred pounds; shares will rise and Young Australia
hopefully looks forward to pocketing two or three
thousand by his modest venture of two hundred; company
floated, shares rising slowly. Young Australia
will not sell at a profit, still dazzled by his chimerical
thousands. Calls must be made to put up machinery;
shares have a downward tendency. Never mind,
there will only be one or two calls, so stick to shares
as parents of possible thousands. Machinery erected;
now crushing; two or three ounces to ton a certainty.
Shares have an upward tendency; washing up takes place—two
pennyweights to ton. Despair! Shares run
down to nothing, and Young Australia sees his thousands
disappear like snow in the sun. The Great Humbug
Reef proves itself worthy of its name, and the company
collapses amid the groans of confiding public and
secret joy of influential men, who have sold at the
top price.
Vandeloup knew all about this sort of thing, for he
had seen it occur over and over again in Ballarat
and Melbourne. So many came to the web and never
got out alive, yet fresh flies were always to be found.
Vandeloup was of a speculative nature himself, and
had he been possessed of any surplus cash would, no
doubt, have risked it in the jugglery of the share
market, but as he had none to spare he stood back
and amused himself with looking at the ’spider
and the fly’ business which was constantly going
on. Sometimes, indeed, the fly got the better
of spider number one, but was unable to keep away
from the web, and was sure to fall into the web of
spider number two.
M. Vandeloup, therefore, considered the whole affair
as too risky to be gone into without unlimited cash;
but now he had a chance of making money, he determined
to try his hand at the business. True, he knew
that he was in for a swindle, but then he was behind
the scenes, and would benefit by the knowledge he
had gained. If the question at issue had really
been that of getting gold out of the reef and paying
dividends with the profits, Gaston would have snapped
Copyrights
Madame Midas from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
