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When Parliament meets in February I shall either be comfortably dead or
so uncomfortably alive that I shall not care.
_Ce que c'est que de nous!_ I wonder how far Simon de Gex and I are
deceiving each other?

There is no deception about my old friend Latimer, who called on me a
day or two ago. He is on the Stock Exchange, and, muddle-headed creature
that he is, has been "bearing" the wrong things. They have gone up
sky-high. Settling-day is drawing near, and how to pay for the shares he
is bound to deliver he has not the faintest notion.
He stamped up and down the room, called down curses on the prying fools
who came across the unexpected streak of copper in the failing mine,
drew heart-rending pictures of his wife and family singing hymns in the
street, and asked me for a drink of prussic acid. I rang the bell and
ordered Rogers to give him a brandy and soda.
"Now," said I, "talk sense. How much can you raise?"
He went into figures and showed me that, although he stretched his
credit to the utmost, there were still ten thousand pounds to be
provided.


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