Home as Found - James Fenimore Cooper (moboreader TXT) 📗

lined, by the manner in which some who frequent it live. Cousin Jack and Sir George are going into the crowd, I see."

We will leave the ladies in their seats, a few minutes, and accompany the gentlemen on their way into the Exchange.

"I shall now show you, Sir George Templemore," said John Effingham, "what is peculiar to this country, and what, if properly improved, it is truly worth a journey across the ocean to see. You have been at the Royal Exchange in London, and at the Bourse of Paris, but you have never witnessed a scene like that which I am about to introduce you to. In Paris, you have beheld the unpleasant spectacle of women gambling publicly in the funds; but it was in driblets, compared to what you will see here."

While speaking, John Effingham led the way upstairs into the office of one of the most considerable auctioneers. The walls were lined with maps, some representing houses, some lots, some streets, some entire towns.

"This is the focus of what Aristabulus Bragg calls the town trade," said John Effingham, when fairly confronted with all these wonders. "Here, then, you may suit yourself with any species of real estate that heart can desire. If a villa is wanted, there are a dozen. Of farms, a hundred are in market; that is merely half-a-dozen streets; and here are towns, of dimensions and value to suit purchasers."

"Explain this; it exceeds comprehension."

"It is simply what it professes to be. Mr. Hammer, do us the favour to step this way. Are you selling to-day?"

"Not much, sir. Only a hundred or two lots on this island, and some six or eight farms, with one western village."

"Can you tell us the history of this particular piece of property, Mr. Hammer?"

"With great pleasure, Mr. Effingham; we know you to have means, and hope you may be induced to purchase. This was the farm of old Volkert Van Brunt, five years since, off of which he and his family had made a livelihood for more than a century, by selling milk. Two years since, the sons sold it to Peter Feeler for a hundred an acre; or for the total sum of five thousand dollars. The next spring Mr. Feeler sold it to John Search, as keen a one as we have, for twenty-five thousand. Search sold it, at private sale, to Nathan Rise for fifty thousand, the next week, and Rise had parted with it, to a company, before the purchase, for a hundred and twelve thousand cash. The map ought to be taken down, for it is now eight months since we sold it out in lots, at auction, for the gross sum of three hundred thousand dollars. As we have received our commission, we look at that land as out of the market, for a time."

"Have you other property, sir, that affords the same wonderful history of a rapid advance in value?" asked the baronet.

"These walls are covered with maps of estates in the same predicament. Some have risen two or three thousand per cent. within five years, and some only a few hundred. There is no calculating in the matter, for it is all fancy."

"And on what is this enormous increase in value founded?--Does the town extend to these fields?"

"It goes much farther, sir; that is to say, on paper. In the way of houses, it is still some miles short of them. A good deal depends on what you call a thing, in this market. Now, if old Volkert Van Brunt's property had been still called a farm, it would have brought a farm price; but, as soon as it was surveyed into lots and mapped--"

"Mapped!"

"Yes, sir; brought into visible lines, with feet and inches. As soon as it was properly mapped, it rose to its just value. We have a good deal of the bottom of the sea that brings fair prices in consequence of being well mapped."

Here the gentlemen expressed their sense of the auctioneer's politeness, and retired.

"We will now go into the sales-room," said John Effingham, "where you shall judge of the spirit, or energy , as it is termed, which, at this moment, actuates this great nation."

Descending, they entered a crowd, where scores were eagerly bidding against each other, in the fearful delusion of growing rich by pushing a fancied value to a point still higher. One was purchasing ragged rocks, another the bottom of rivers, a third a bog, and all on the credit of maps. Our two observers remained some time silent spectators of the scene.

"When I first entered that room," said John Effingham, as they left the place, "it appeared to me to be filled with maniacs. Now, that I have been in it several times, the impression is not much altered."

"And all those persons are hazarding their means of subsistence on the imaginary estimate mentioned by the auctioneer?"

"They are gambling as recklessly as he who places his substance on the cast of the die. So completely has the mania seized every one, that the obvious truth, a truth which is as apparent as any other law of nature, that nothing can be sustained without a foundation, is completely overlooked, and he who should now proclaim, in this building, principles that bitter experience will cause every man to feel, within the next few years, would be happy if he escaped being stoned. I have witnessed many similar excesses in the way of speculations; but never an instance as gross, as wide-spread, and as alarming as this."

"You apprehend serious consequences, then, from the reaction?"

"In that particular, we are better off than older nations, the youth and real stamina of the country averting much of the danger; but I anticipate a terrible blow, and that the day is not remote when this town will awake to a sense of its illusion. What you see here is but a small part of the extravagance that exists, for it pervades the whole community, in one shape or another. Extravagant issues of paper-money, inconsiderate credits that commence in Europe; and extend throughout the land, and false notions as to the value of their possessions, in men who five years since had nothing, has completely destroyed the usual balance of things, and money has got to be so completely the end of life, that few think of it as a means. The history of the world, probably, cannot furnish a parallel instance, of an extensive country that is so absolutely under this malign influence, as is the fact with our own at this present instant. All principles are swallowed up in the absorbing desire for gain; national honour, permanent security, the ordinary rules of society, law, the constitution, and every thing that is usually so dear to men, are forgotten, or are perverted, in order to sustain this unnatural condition of things."

"This is not only extraordinary, but it is fearful!"

"It is both. The entire community is in the situation of a man who is in the incipient stages of an exhilarating intoxication, and who keeps pouring down glass after glass, in the idle notion that he is merely sustaining nature in her ordinary functions. This wide-spread infatuation extends from the coast to the extremest frontiers of the west; for, while there is a justifiable foundation for a good deal of this fancied prosperity, the true is so interwoven with the false, that none but the most observant can draw the distinction, and, as usual, the false predominates."

"By your account, sir, the tulip mania of Holland was trifling compared to this?"

"That was the same in principle as our own, but insignificant in extent. Could I lead you through these streets, and let you into the secret of the interests, hopes, infatuations and follies that prevail in the human breast, you, as a calm spectator, would be astonished at the manner in which your own species can be deluded. But let us move, and something may still occur to offer an example."

"Mr. Effingham--I beg pardon--Mr. Effingham," said a very gentlemanly-looking merchant, who was walking about the hall of the exchange, "what do you think now of our French quarrel?"

"I have told you, Mr. Bale, all I have to say on that subject. When in France, I wrote you that it was not the intention of the French government to comply with the treaty; you have since seen this opinion justified in the result; you have the declaration of the French minister of state, that, without an apology from this government, the money will not be paid; and I have given it as my opinion, that the vane on yonder steeple will not turn more readily than all this policy will be abandoned, should any thing occur in Europe to render it necessary, or could the French ministry believe it possible for this country to fight for a principle. These are my opinions, in all their phases, and you may compare them with facts and judge for yourself."

"It is all General Jackson, sir--all that monster's doings. But for his message, Mr. Effingham, we should have had the money long ago."

"But for his message, or some equally decided step, Mr. Bale, you would never have it."

"Ah, my dear sir, I know your intentions, but I fear you are prejudiced against that excellent man, the King of France! Prejudice, Mr. Effingham, is a sad innovator on justice."

Here Mr. Bale shook his head, laughed, and disappeared in the crowd, perfectly satisfied that John Effingham was a prejudiced man, and that he, himself, was only liberal and just.

"Now, that is a man who wants for neither abilities nor honesty, and yet he permits his interests, and the influence of this very speculating mania, to overshadow all his sense of right, facts plain as noon-day, and the only principles that can rule a country in safety."

"He apprehends war, and has no desire to believe even facts, so long as they serve to increase the danger."

"Precisely so; for even prudence gets to be a perverted quality, when men are living under an infatuation like that which now exists. These men live like the fool who says there is no death."

Here the gentlemen rejoined the ladies, and the carriages drove through a succession of narrow and crooked streets, that were lined with warehouses filled with the products of the civilized world.

"Very much of all this is a part of the same lamentable illusion," said John Effingham, as the carriages made their way slowly through the encumbered streets. "The man who sells his inland lots at a profit, secured by credit, fancies himself enriched, and he extends his manner of living in proportion; the boy from the country becomes a merchant, or what is here called a merchant, and obtains a credit in Europe a hundred times exceeding his means, and caters to these fancied wants; and thus is every avenue of society thronged with adventurers, the ephemera of the same wide-spread spirit of reckless folly. Millions in value pass out of these streets, that go to feed the vanity of those who fancy themselves wealthy, because they hold some ideal pledges for the payment of advances in price like those mentioned by the auctioneer, and which have some such security for the eventual payment, as one can find in calling a thing, that is really worth a dollar, worth a hundred."

"Are the effects of this state of things apparent in your ordinary associations?"

"In every thing. The desire to grow suddenly rich has seized on