The age-herald., 1897-12-15
BUSINESS AND ROMANCE.

Business is not always business, but the romance of it has seldom been brought out as clearly as MT. J. Macdonald Oxley brings it in the book he calls "rhe Ro- nance of Commerce" There have been times when the most cautious men, mer- chants, bankers and the like, have given up their wealth freely without the least chance of recovery, carried away by some plausible scheme which a moments refec- tion would have shown them to be worth less. Of this kind was the famous Missis- sippi bubble in Paris in the year 1719 and the South Sea bubble of a year later in London In both millions upon millions of money changed hands-men rising from the obscurest positions to great wealth, and men of ability and ancient fortune sink ing into the nameless depths. In every walk of life these changes were made, statesmen, business men and lackeys changing places with bewildering rapidity. So great was the popular credulity that in London a corporation was started with a capital of $15.00O0O0 in order to make good to employers all the losses they might sustain through domestic servants-an in surance device which has remained in ob- scurity from that day to this. Another opened an office which was designed to furnish watches to worthy and deserving persons. The deathless man with the per petual-motion wheel was present and ob- tained something like s5,OOO.OOO from those who wanted to see it go around. Money l making salt water fresh while a minister of the gospel bought great tracts of marsh land and began the importation of Span ish jackasses for the improvement of the English breed of mules-"as if," Mir. Fox Bourne gravely remarked, "there were not jackasses enough in London already"
 Almost century earlier the sober sided Dutchmen of Holland had shown the stead mess of national character was no protec- tion against expensive folly by going cracked on tulip bulbs. It was in 1885 that 10000 fiorins. equivalent to as many dollars of money today, were invested in forty bulbs. They speedily became worth more than gems of the finest water, a weight called a perit, less than a grain, being used with them, just as the carat is used for diamonds and rubies. A root of the Vice roy variety, weighing 400 perits, command ed not less than 5000 forins, and Semper Augustus, just half the size, $500! It is told that a wealthy merchant was brought the news of the arrival of one of his ships by an English sailor. Among other things he sent out and had large red herring fetched for the messenger Looking about for something to help it down he caught sight of a root which looked nightly like an onion; so he pocketed it and went down to the wharves to make a meal He had not had a chance to get it more than down before the merchant discovered that he had lost his most valuable Viceroy bulb. Rushing out in haste he was in time to get term of Imprisonment for grand lar ceny for the sailor, but he got nothing else An English traveller who was nut aware of the mania for tulips sliced up an Admiral van der Eyck in the house Of a merchant to whom he bore letter of credit, and had to stay in jail until he found bail for the 4,000 f1orins at which the root was valued
 But far more romantic than any of these