only son, and snatched the weapon as her fallen | pious! Ananias and Saphia-" Well, well, foe dropped. And now, my mamma, seeing the Saphia of these young wags was made to old Mr. Rudge sitting in a ghastly state of terror rhyme incorrectly with a word beginning with in the corner, rushed at the grocer, and in one L. Nor was this the only punishment which minute, with butt and thong, inflicted a score befell the unhappy Rudge: Mrs. Wing and sevof lashes over his face, nose, and eyes, for which eral of his chief patrons took away their custom any body who chooses may pity him. "Ah, from him and dealt henceforth with the opposi you will call my boy a thief, will you? Ah, tion grocer. Not long after my affair, Miss you will take my Denny before the justices, will Sukey married the toothless apprentice, who you? Prends moi ça, gredin! Attrape, lâche! got a bad bargain with her, sweet-heart or wife. Nimmt noch ein paar Schläge, Spitzbube!" cries I shall have to tell presently what a penalty out mother, in that polyglot language of En- they (and some others) had to pay for their glish, French, High-Dutch, which she always wickedness; and of an act of contrition on poor used when excited. My good mother could Miss Sukey's part, whom, I am sure, I heartily shave and dress gentlemen's heads as well as forgive. Then was cleared up that mystery any man; and faith I am certain that no man (which I could not understand, and Dr. Barin all Europe got a better dressing than Mr. nard could not, or would not) of the persecuRudge on that evening. tions directed against an humble lad, who never, except in self-defense, did harm to any mortal. I shouldered the trunks, causes of the late lamentable war, and put them into mother's cart, into which I was about to mount, but the shrewd old lady would not let me take a place beside her. "I can drive well enough. Go thou in the chaise with the doctor. He can talk to thee better, my son, than an ignorant woman like me. Neighbor Jephson told me how the good gentleman stood by thee in the justice-court. If ever I or mine can do any thing to repay him, he may command me. Houp, Schimmel! Fort! Shalt soon be to house!" And with this she was off with my bag and baggage, as the night was beginning to fall. Bless me! I have written near a page to describe a battle which could not have lasted five minutes. Mother's cart was drawn up at the side-street while she was victoriously engaged within. Meanwhile, Dr. Barnard's chaise had come to the front door of the shop, and he strode through it, and found us conquerors in possession of both fields. Since my last battle with Bevil, we both knew that I was more than a match for him. "In the king's name, I charge you drop your daggers," as the man says in the play. Our wars were over on the appearance of the man of peace. Mother left off plying the horsewhip over Rudge; Miss Sukey came out from under the table; Mr. Bevil rose, and slunk off to wash his bleeding face; and when the wretched Rudge whimpered out that he would have the law for this assault, the doctor sternly said, "You were three to one during part of the battle, three to two afterward, and after your testimony to-day, you perjured old miscreant, do you suppose any magistrate will believe you?" I went out of the Rudges' house, into which I have never since set foot. I took my place in the chaise by my kind Dr. Barnard. We passed through Winchelsea gate, and dipped down into the marshy plain beyond with bright glimpses of the Channel shining beside us, and the stars glittering overhead. We talked of the affair of the day, of course-the affair most interesting, that is, to me, who could think of nothing but magistrates, and committals, and acquittals. The doctor repeated his firm conviction that there was a great smuggling conspiracy all along the coast and neighborhood. Master Rudge was a member of the fraternity (which, indeed, I knew, having been out with his people once or twice, as I have told, to my shame). "Per No. Nobody did believe them. A punishment fell on these bad people. I don't know who gave the name, but Rudge and his daughter were called Ananias and Sapphira in Rye; and from that day the old man's affairs seemed to turn to the bad. When our boys of Pocock's met the grocer, his daughter, or his apprentice, the little miscreants would cry out, "Who put the money in Denny's box?" "Who bore false witness against his neigh-haps there were other people of my acquaintbor?" "Kiss the book, Sukey my dear, and tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, do you hear?" They had a dreadful life, that poor grocer's family. As for that rogue Tom Parrot, he comes into the shop one market-day when the place was full, and asks for a penn'orth of sugar-candy, in payment for which he offers a penny to old Rudge sitting at his books behind his high desk. "It's a good bit of money," says Tom (as bold as the brass which he was tendering). "It ain't marked, Mr. Rudge, like Denny Duval's money!" And, no doubt, at a signal from the young reprobate, a chorus of boys posted outside began to sing, "Ananias, Ananias! He pretends to be so ance who belonged to the same society?" the doctor said, dryly. "Gee up, Daisy! There were other people of my acquaintance who were to be found at Winchelsea as well as at Rye. Your precious one-eyed enemy is in it; so, I have no doubt, is Monsieur le Chevalier de la Motte; so is-can you guess the name of any one besides, Denny?" "Yes, Sir," I said, sadly; I knew my own grandfather was engaged in that traffic. "But if-if others are, I promise you, on my honor, I never will embark in it," I added. "Twill be more dangerous now than it has been. There will be obstacles, to crossing the Channel which the contraband gentlemen have heard the news?" not known for some time past. Have you not them. Protestant Frenchmen, it was agreed, were of a different sort; and I think the banished Huguenots of France have not been unworthy subjects of our new sovereign. "What news?" Indeed I had thought of none but my own affairs. A post had come in that very evening from London, bringing intelligence of no little importance even to poor me, as it turned out. And the news was that his Majesty the King, having been informed that a treaty of amity and commerce had been signed between the Court of France and certain persons employed by his Majesty's revolted subjects in North America, has judged it necessary to send orders to his embassador to withdraw from the French Court......and relying with the firmest confidence upon the zealous and affectionate support of his faithful people, he is determined to prepare to exert, if it should be necessary, all the forces and resources of his kingdoms, which he trusts will be adequate to repel every insult and attack, and to maintain and uphold the power and reputation of this country. So as I was coming out of Rye court-house, thinking of nothing but my enemies, and my trials, and my triumphs, post-boys were galloping all over the land to announce that we were at war with France. One of them, as we made our way home, clattered past us with his twanging horn, crying his news of war with France. As we wound along the plain, we could see the French lights across the Channel. My life has lasted for fifty years since then, and scarcely ever since, but for very, very brief intervals has that baleful war-light ceased to burn. There was one dear little Frenchwoman in Winchelsea who I own was a sad rebel. When Mrs. Barnard, talking about the war, turned round to Agnes, and said, "Agnes, my child, on what side are you?" Mademoiselle de Barr blushed very red, and said, "I am a French girl, and I am of the side of my country. Vive la France! vive le Roi!" "Oh, Agnes! oh, you perverted, ungrateful little, little monster!" cries Mrs. Barnard, beginning to weep. But the doctor, far from being angry, smiled and looked pleased; and making Agnes a mock reverence, he said, "Mademoiselle de Saverne, I think a little Frenchwoman should be for France; and here is the tray, and we won't fight until after supper." And as he spoke that night the prayer appointed by his Church for the time of war-prayed that we might be armed with His defense who is the only giver of all victory-I thought I never heard the good man's voice more touching and solemn. When this daily and nightly ceremony was performed at the Rectory, a certain little person who belonged to the Roman Catholic faith used to sit aloof, her spiritual instructors forbidding her to take part in our English worship. When it was over, and the doctor's household had withdrawn, Miss Agnes had a flushed, almost angry face. "But what am I to do, aunt Barnard ?" said the little rebel. "If I pray for you, I pray that my country may be conquered, and that you may be saved and delivered out of our hands." "No, faith, my child, I think we will not call upon thee for Amen," says the doctor, patting her cheek. The messenger who bore this important news arrived after we left Rye, but, riding at a much quicker pace than that which our doctor's nag practiced, overtook us ere we had reached our own town of Winchelsea. All our town was alive with the news in half an hour; and in the market-place, the public houses, and from house to house, people assembled and talked. So we were at war again with our neighbors across the Channel, as well as with our rebellious children "I don't know why you should wish to prein America; and the rebellious children were vail over my country," whimpers the little maid. having the better of the parent at this time. "I am sure I won't pray that any harm may We boys at Pocock's had fought the war stoutly happen to you, and aunt Barnard, and Denny and with great elation at first. Over our maps-never, never!" And in a passion of tears we had pursued the rebels, and beaten them in repeated encounters. We routed them on Long Island. We conquered them at Brandywine. We vanquished them gloriously at Bunker's Hill. We marched triumphantly into Philadelphia with Howe. We were quite bewildered when we had to surrender with General Burgoyne at Saratoga; being, somehow, not accustomed to hear of British armies surrendering, and British valor being beat. "We had a halfholiday for Long Island," says Tom Parrot, sitting next to me in school. "I suppose we shall be flogged all round for Saratoga." As for those Frenchmen, we knew of their treason for a long time past, and were gathering up wrath against she buried her head against the breast of the good man, and we were all not a little moved. Hand in hand we two young ones walked from the Rectory to the Priory House, which was only too near. I paused ere I rang at the bell, still holding her wistful little hand in mine. "You will never be my enemy, Denny, will you ?" she said, looking up. "My dear," I faltered out, "I will love you for ever and ever!" I thought of the infant whom I brought home in my arms from the seashore, and once more my dearest maiden was held in them, and my heart throbbed with an exquisite bliss. THE FORTUNES OF WAR. HOW THEY ARE MADE AND SPENT. but appeal to the enterprise of trade to supply its pressing necessities. The appeal, with the treasure of the whole nation to sustain it, was not made in vain. Another army-the army of contractors-then came forward no less prompt diers. These with their lives as their offering asking nothing in exchange, and receiving only a bare subsistence; the former, no less liberal of the contents of their docks, ships, fields, stables, granaries, warehouses, and shops, demanding a great price, and getting it. HE strangest and most frequently repeated boasts for boasts we make, such is our national vanity, on all occasions whether of pros-ly than the hundred thousands of citizen solperity or adversity—is that we don't feel this war. Above the shock of battle, the groans of the wounded and dying, the sobs of the bereaved, the murmurs of defeat, and the shouts of victory, rises the triumphant exclamation, We don't feel it! Is this insensibility? Is it the delight in ruin? Is it indifference to failure or success? No! It is worse than either of these, for it embraces them all; it is the chuckling of gain over its pockets filling with the treasure of the country, while our brave soldiers are pouring out their blood in its defense. Think of the immense activity with which trade was inspired by the numerous and multifarious demands of the Government! Contractors for meat, contractors for bread, contractors for tents, contractors for clothing, contractors for arms, contractors for ammunition, contractWe don't feel the war! is the exulting cry of ors for equipments, contractors for wagons, conthe contractors, money-changers, and specula- tractors for horses, contractors for mules, contors, whose shouts of revel stifle the tearful voice tractors for forage, contractors for railway conof misery. It is in our large cities especially veyance, contractors for steamers, contractors for where this boasted insensibility to the havoc of ships, contractors for coal, contractors for hoswar is found. It is there in the market-place pitals, contractors for surgical instruments, conand exchange, where fortunes are being made tractors for drugs, and contractors for every with such marvelous rapidity, and in the haunts thing else required for human use and consumpof pleasure, where they are being spent with tion in order not only to sustain life but to desuch wanton extravagance, that they don't feel stroy it, suddenly started into existence. The this war. They are at a banquet of abundance Government, pressed by a necessity which adand delight, from which they are not to be un-mitted of no hesitation in regard to time, charseated, though the ghosts of the hundreds of thou-acter, quantity, quality, and cost, accepted alsands of their slaughtered countrymen shake their gory locks at them. most every offer, and paid almost any price. It is true, that political allies and social friends and relatives were favored with the earliest information and the best places in the general race and scramble for the national treasure. That eager While the national wealth has been poured out with a profuse generosity in behalf of a cause dear to the national heart, there have been immense fortunes made by enterprising money-get-partisans and devoted brothers, cousins and ters, seeking only to fill their own pockets. When the war suddenly burst upon the nation, and before it was able to arouse its gigantic energies, the Government was so helpless that it besought aid at any cost. It was then, as our brave fellow-citizens came forward in multitudes to defend their country, there arose an urgent demand for arms, clothing, and subsistence. Every thing required for the use and consumption of the soldier was wanted, and wanted at Tents and blankets to protect him from the weather-clothes, from cap to shoe, to dress him-bread and meat and all the varied necessaries of the daily ration, even to the salt, to feed him-the knapsack, haversack, belt, and cartridge box, to equip him-muskets, pistols, cannon, swords, sabres, powder, shot, and percussion caps to fight with-horses and mules, wagons, railways, steam and sailing vessels of all kinds, for transportation. once. A hundred thousand men or more in the immediate and continued want not only of all the ordinary necessaries of life, but of the many additional requirements for war, were to be provided for without delay. The Government, with a commissariat organized only for an army of some sixteen thousand soldiers, and suddenly called upon to clothe, arm, and subsist more than six times the number, could do nothing brothers-in-law, having taken the shortest road, should come in ahead and grasp the first and biggest prizes, was not unnatural. There was one of these lucky favorites who made a fortune of a hundred thousand dollars or more as easily as these words which state the fact are written. Having secured a contract or agency for the purchase of transport steamers and other vessels, he fulfilled it with no more cost to himself than a cigar or two over the preliminary negotiation, and no greater effort than signing his name. The fortune was made by a minimum of personal labor given and a maximum of pay received. The contractors of all kinds, with their contracts signed and sealed, hastened to pocket the profits. In many cases, with a mere dash of their pens, they transferred their bargains at an advance, and made snug fortunes, without the labor of an hour or the expense of a shilling. In other instances they fulfilled their contracts in a way more profitable to themselves than useful to the Government. The quality of the article they heeded little, provided it bore the name and the semblance of the thing, and could be had for almost nothing, or for much less than they were to receive for it. Thus shoddy, a villainous compound, the refuse stuff and sweepings of the shop, pounded, rolled, glued, and smoothed to the external form and gloss of cloth, but no more like the genuine article than the shadow is to the substance, was hastily got up, at the smallest expense, and supplied to the Government at the greatest. Our soldiers, on the first day's march, or in the earliest storm, found their clothes, over-coats, and blankets, scattering to the winds in rags, or dissolving into their primitive elements of dust under the pelting rain. Splendid looking warriors to-day, in their bran-new uniforms! To-morrow, in their rags and nakedness more pitiful objects than the ragged regiment of Falstaff, without a whole shirt among 'em! Shoddy, with the external gloss and form of a substantial thing but with the inherent weakness and solubility of its reflected image, has ever since become a word, in the vocabulary of the people, always quick in their forcible and incisive rhetoric to catch and appropriate a simple and expressive figure to represent a familiar idea. The ostentatious nouveau riche, the fraudulent contractor who makes a display of his ill-gotten gains, and vulgar pretenders of all kinds, will forever, in the popular eye, bear upon their emblazoned coaches, the fronts of their palatial residences, the liveries of their coachmen, and on their own backs of superfine cloths and glistening silks, the broad mark SHODDY. It is a good and significant word, and expresses exactly the opposite of a longused term in popular parlance, to wit: Made of whole cloth, aptly applied to a complete thing of any kind or to a person of sound integrity. Shoddy, false pretension will be called as long as false pretension exists. It is obvious how large fortunes were made in this way, when contractors received immense sums for cloth and delivered only valueless shoddy. This carbine has nev "Respectfully returned. But in spite of all this the lucky proprietor, having a friend at court, got a contract for his carbines, which, we venture to declare in answer to the submissive inquiry of the modest inspector, it was not "advisable" for the Gov. ernment to buy at any price. This is one of the many easy ways in which the large fortunes of this war have been made. The carbine proprietor may exult in his sudden wealth, but he and his "friend at court" are emblazoned all over in letters of light with "shoddy." There were fifty millions of dollars spent by the Government in a few months, at the beginning of the war, for arms alone. Out of this a dozen or more contractors enriched themselves for life. Poor men thus became rich between the rising and setting of the same day's sun; while the hundreds of thousands of dollars of the wealthy increased to millions in the same brief space of time. It is said that one of our great merchant princes gained from his transactions with Government two millions of dollars in a single year. It was not only in the contracts for clothing, but in those for almost every other supply that Government paying for the substance was mocked by the shadow. For sugar it often got sand; for coffee, rye; for leather, something no better than brown paper; for sound horses and mules, spavined beasts and dying donkeys; and for serviceable muskets and pistols the experimental failures of sanguine inventors, or the refuse of shops and foreign armories. There was, it is true, a show of caution on the part The proprietors of coal-mines came in for a of the authorities in the form of a Government-large share of the national treasure. One comal inspection; but the object of this was often pany made such enormous profits from its supthwarted by haste, negligence, collusion, or fa- plies of coal to the Government, and the genervoritism. al rise in price in consequence of the increased demand, that it was enabled to declare, in a single year, dividends that, in the aggregate, amounted to two-thirds of its capital. Its stock, which a few years since could hardly tempt a purchaser at ten dollars a share, has arisen since the war to more than two hundred dollars, and is eagerly caught up at that price. One shareholder, A proprietor of a patent breach-loading carbine, who had been for years groaning over his unfortunate speculation, was suddenly animated with the hope of making a fortune out of what had long since reposed and been mourned over among his "dead stock." He did make his fortune, for the Government gave him a contract, received the carbines, paid largely for, but nev-in a twelvemonth, received in dividends no less er, it is believed, used them. There was, however, a valiant resistance on the part of an honest inspector of the Ordnance Department. The proposal of the adventurous dealer in carbines The "good time" of the contractors has, howwas sent back to him with the indorsement-ever, now gone. The Government, with the than a hundred and fifty thousand dollars for a stock which cost him less than that sum, but which he could now sell for a million. experience of three years' war, and with its commissariat thoroughly organized, is no longer at the mercy of the fraudulent and extortionate. In fact, it is said that in some later contracts the Government, more thanks to its luck than shrewdness, has, with the depreciation of the currency and the consequent rise in prices, got the best of the bargain. benefiting by the fluctuations of price. Purchase and sale are essential means for the exchange of products, without which, no doubt, the productive power of the country would be paralyzed. The merchant, the broker, and trader are to it what the sensitive and motor nerves are to the brain-subordinate to its functions, but necessary to its action. The nerves may be active, though the brain be torpid, but the result is a St. Vitus's dance of excited sensation, and perpetual and irregular movement, which waste the power, and finally destroy the organization. So it is when the merchant, broker, and trader make their function of exchange, which should be subordinate, paramount to the productive power of labor. This is what the rage of speculation is doing, and it requires no prophet to tell the result. Ruin must come with the certainty of the fulfillment of a natural As fortunes can be no longer made in a day out of the national treasury the cager moneyseekers have taken to the stock exchange to make them out of each other. The rage of speculation-excitement is too mild a wordwhich has seized upon the community, and is fast making us a nation of stock-jobbers, has never been equaled since the days of John Law during the French regency of the Duc d'Orleans. The city exchanges and their approaches are already crowded with a frenzied throng of eager speculators, as was the Rue de Quin-law. campoir of old. Streets are blocked up by a mass so frenzied by the general passion for gain that almost all regard for individual safety and respect for personal propriety seems lost. The drayman can only make his way by the dint of whip, curse, and the brute strength of his sturdy beast through the heaving but coherent multitude, whose reluctant flanks, as they are forced aside, are still so absorbed by the ruling passion that, while pressed upon by hoof and grazed by grinding wheels, they seem unconscious of their danger. The stranger goes to take a look at the speculators at the hour of exchange as he does at a collection of wild beasts at feeding-time, and comes away with the same impression, namely, that in their hunger to get their fill they are ready to devour each other. The prudent citizen turns the street, and shuns the place as dangerous to his morals and his person. If not tempted to risk his fortune, he is sure to be so hustled by the unruly crowd as to spoil his temper or his clothes, and perhaps endanger his limbs or life. Yet, when the passion of speculation, however obvious the fatal consequences, has once fevered the blood of a people, it unfortunately is seldom checked, except by its own retributive effect of exhaustion. The homilies of the pulpit, the daily warnings of the press, and the demonstrations of political economy are unheeded by ears ringing with the jubilant shouts of the favorites of fortune. When they hear of one who was a bankrupt but a few months since, but now counts by millions his fortune, made in a short half year at the stock exchange, or rather in "the street"-for his credit was never clean enough for admission to the fastidious company of gentlemen at "the Board;" when they hear of another who was but yesterday a vendor of apples and peanuts at the street corner, and is to-day, by fortunate speculations, the possessor of hundreds of thousands; and again of a third, who, in the course of a flying visit from a neighboring city to New York, took a chance, merely pour passer le temps, in the lottery of Cumberland or Mariposa, and went home, after a week's absence, with a prize of a hundred thousand dollars in his pocket-when they hear of these and the like, as we all do every day, they are loth to turn from so brilliant examples of success to listen to the sober precepts of Prudence. The small voice of Prudence, moreover, is hourly becoming fainter and fainter, drowned as it is in the general shout of triumph. Prudence, it is feared, will soon cease altogether, for want of a listener, from uttering further warnings, and leave to retributive justice to vindicate a natural law, the abuse of which she could not prevent. The passion for stock-gambling is fast extending to every class of society. Merchants, mechanics, and traders of all kinds are abandoning their counting-houses, their work-shops, and their stalls, and thronging into Wall Street. The daily industry, the constant self-denial, the vigilant prudence, and the patient expectation necessary to acquire a decent competence are scorned for the chances of making a fortune in a day. The number of brokers has more than quadrupled in a few months, such has been the enormous increase of stock-jobbing. Their aggregate business, in the city of New York alone, has arisen from twenty-five to more than a hun- The mania of speculation is wondrously condred millions a day. The transactions of sev-tagious, especially among a people so gregarieral sum up to the amount of millions each in ous and sympathetic as we are. What touches a morning, with a profit in commissions alone one is apt to be felt by all. As men of every of more than a thousand dollars daily. There class, age, and business are already thronging would be a cause of congratulation if this enor- Wall Street, it may not be long before our women mous business was an indication of the increased shall be seen, as in the times of John Law in productive wealth of the nation; but it is no- France, and of the South Sea bubble in England, thing of the kind. It is only a proof of the pas-trailing their silks and satins in the dust of the sion for buying and selling, with the hope of exchange, and raising their voice in its din of |