can put him up to a thing or two – eh, Bullion? (Whispering me,) – Great capitalist that Bullion! LOOK AT HIM!
Mr Bullion, (gravely.) – A thing or two! If he has capital – you have said it, Mr Tibbets. (Looks round for the pickles – the green spectacles remain fixed upon Uncle Jack's plate.)
Uncle Jack. – All that this colony wants is a few men like us, with capital and spirit. Instead of paying paupers to emigrate, they should pay rich men to come – eh, Speck?
While Uncle Jack turns to Mr Speck, Mr Bullion fixes his fork in a pickled onion in Jack's plate, and transfers it to his own – observing, not as incidentally to the onion, but to truth in general – "A man, gentlemen, in this country, has only to keep his eyes on the look-out, and seize on the first advantage! – resources are incalculable!"
Uncle Jack, returning to the plate and missing the onion, forestalls Mr Speck in seizing the last potato – observing also, and in the same philosophical and generalising spirit as Mr Bullion – "The great thing in this country is to be always beforehand: discovery and invention, promptitude and decision! – that's your go. 'Pon my life, one picks up sad vulgar sayings among the natives here! – 'that's your go!' shocking! What would your poor father say? How is he – good Austin? Well? – that's right: and my dear sister? Ah, that damnable Peck! – still harping on the Anti-Capitalist, eh? But I'll make it up to you all now. Gentlemen, charge your glasses – a bumper-toast" —
Mr Speck, (in an affected tone.) – I respond to the sentiment in a flowing cap. Glasses are not forthcoming.
Uncle Jack. – A bumper-toast to the health of the future millionnaire, whom I present to you in my nephew and sole heir – Pisistratus Caxton, Esq. Yes, gentlemen, I here publicly announce to you that this gentleman will be the inheritor of all my wealth – freehold, leasehold, agricultural, and mineral; and when I am in the cold grave – (takes out his pocket-handkerchief) – and nothing remains of poor John Tibbets, look upon that gentleman, and say, "John Tibbets lives again!"
Mr Speck, (chauntingly.) —
"Let the bumper toast go round."
Guy Bolding. – Hip, hip, hurrah! – three times three! What fun!
Order is restored; dinner-things are cleared; each gentleman lights his pipe.
Vivian. – What news from England?
Mr Bullion. – As to the funds, sir?
Mr Speck. – I suppose you mean, rather, as to the railways: great fortunes will be made there, sir; but still I think that our speculations here will$mdash;
Vivian. – I beg pardon for interrupting you, sir; but I thought, in the last papers, that there seemed something hostile in the temper of the French. No chance of a war?
Major MacBlarney. – Is it the wars you'd be after, young gintleman? If me interest at the Horse Guards can avail you, bedad! you'd make a proud man of Major MacBlarney.
Mr Bullion, (authoritatively.) – No, sir, we won't have a war: the capitalists of Europe and Australia won't have it. The Rothschilds, and a few others that shall be nameless, have only got to do this, sir – (Mr Bullion buttons up his pockets) – and we'll do it too; and then what becomes of your war, sir? (Mr Bullion snaps his pipe in the vehemence with which he brings his hand on the table, turns round the green spectacles, and takes up Mr Speck's pipe, which that gentlemen had laid aside in an unguarded moment.)
Vivian. – But the campaign in India?
Major MacBlarney. – Oh! – and if its the Ingees you'd$mdash;
Bullion, (refilling Speck's pipe from Guy Bolding's exclusive tobacco-pouch, and interrupting the Major.) – India – that's another matter: I don't object to that! War there – rather good for the money market than otherwise!
Vivian. – What news there, then?
Bullion. – Don't know – haven't got India stock.
Mr Speck. – Nor I either. The day for India is over: this is our India now. (Misses his tobacco-pipe; sees it in Bullion's mouth, and stares aghast! – NB. – The pipe is not a clay dodeen, but a small meerschaum – irreplaceable in Bushland.)
Pisistratus. – Well, uncle, but I am at a loss to understand what new scheme you have in hand. Something benevolent, I am sure – something for your fellow-creatures – for philanthropy and mankind?
Mr Bullion, (starting.) – Why, young man, are you as green as all that?
Pisistratus. – I, sir – no – Heaven forbid! But my – (Uncle Jack holds up his forefinger imploringly, and spills his tea over the pantaloons of his nephew!)
Pisistratus, wroth at the effect of the tea, and therefore obdurate to the sign of the forefinger, continues rapidly, "But my uncle is!– some grand national-imperial-colonial-anti-monopoly" —
Uncle Jack. – Pooh! Pooh! What a droll boy it is!
Mr Bullion, (solemnly.) – With these notions, which not even in jest should be fathered on my respectable and intelligent friend here – (Uncle Jack bows) – I am afraid you will never get on in the world, Mr Caxton. I don't think our speculations will suit you! It is growing late, gentlemen: we must push on.
Uncle Jack, (jumping up.) – And I have so much to say to the dear boy. Excuse us: you know the feelings of an uncle! (Takes my arm, and leads me out of the hut.)
Uncle Jack, (as soon as we are in the air.) – You'll ruin us – you, me, and your father and mother. Yes! What do you think I work and slave myself for but for you and yours? – Ruin us all, I say, if you talk in that way before Bullion! His heart is as hard as the Bank of England's – and quite right he is, too. Fellow-creatures! – stuff! I have renounced that delusion – the generous follies of my youth! I begin at last to live for myself – that is, for self and relatives! I shall succeed this time, you'll see!
Pisistratus. – Indeed, uncle, I hope so sincerely; and to do you justice, there is always something very clever in your ideas – only they don't —
Uncle Jack, (interrupting me with a groan.) – The fortunes that other men have gained by my ideas! – shocking to think of! What! – and shall I be reproached if I live no longer for such a set of thieving, greedy, ungrateful knaves? No – no! Number one shall be my maxim; and I'll make you a Crœsus, my boy – I will.
Pisistratus, after grateful acknowledgments for all prospective benefits, inquires how long Jack has been in Australia; what brought him into the colony; and what are his present views. Learns, to his astonishment, that Uncle Jack has been four years in the colony; that he sailed the year after Pisistratus – induced, he says, by that illustrious example, and by some mysterious agency or commission, which he will not explain, emanating either from the Colonial Office, or an Emigration Company. Uncle Jack has been thriving wonderfully since he abandoned his fellow-creatures. His first speculation, on arriving at the colony, was in buying some houses in Sydney, which (by those fluctuations in prices common to the extremes of the colonial mind – which is one while skipping up the rainbow with Hope, and at another plunging into Acherontian abysses with Despair) he bought excessively cheap, and sold excessively dear. But his grand experiment has been in connexion with the infant settlement of Adelaide, of which he considers himself one of the first founders; and as, in the rush of
