"Now was the time," Tom Driver had suggested to the colonel, "to
have up the specie ship that was sunk in the Gulf of Mexico, with the
three hundred and eighty thousand dollars on board, besides bars and
doubloons." "The Tredyddlums were very low--to be bought for an old
song--never was such an opportunity for buying shares," Mr. Keightley
insinuated; and Jack Holt pressed forward his tobacco-smuggling
scheme, the audacity of which pleased the colonel more than any other
of the speculations proposed to him. Then of the Harlequin's Head
boys: there was Jack Hackstraw, who knew of a pair of horses which the
colonel must buy; Tom Fleet, whose satirical paper, "The Swell,"
wanted but two hundred pounds of capital to be worth a thousand a year
to any man--"with such a power and influence, colonel, you rogue, and
the _entree_ of all the green-rooms in London," Tom urged; while
little Moss Abrams entreated the colonel not to listen to these absurd
fellows with their humbugging speculations, but to invest his money in
some good bills which Moss could get for him, and which would return
him fifty per cent, as safe as the Bank of England.
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