LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume III, Issue 224, 26 February 1875, Page 3

LITERATURE.

THE WHEAL PARADISE. Practically I know nothing whatever about mining and mining operations. To me such terms as lodes, strodes, veins, suinphs, winzes, etc, etc, are all so much Greek. Their significance, I have no doubt, might be easily got at now that the schoolmaster is so much abroad, but in truth I don't care to be enlightened on the subject, and, fcr reasons which may appear, had rather dismiss such details from my mind altogether. What little I say here is said for the sake of others, who perhaps may save their own pockets by learning how mine were drained. Knowing nothing at all about mines, T ought, of course, to have had nothing to do with them. I came to this conviction a long while ago, and have retained it for years ; and if ever I should lose it, which is not a very likely thing, I shall lose all that I have acquired in exchange for a round sum, the amount of which I really feel ashamed to set down. A good many years ago, when I was far more sanguine than I shall ever be again—at a time when a good many bubbles were blowing about the purlieus of the Stock Exchange and were brighter and bigger and more rainbow coloured every day, and almost every hour —I was silly and sanguine enough to invest a few hundreds in mining shares—hundreds which I had carefully hoarded during years of hard labour at the desk in a mercantile house in the city. I was seduced to this step by the good fortune of an acquaintance who had done the same the year before, and who was receiving, as he boasted to me, about 30 per cent per annum from his venture. I wanted to do the same, and looking out for an opportunity, bought at a trifle above par, shares in a tin mine in Cornwall, which I shall call by the name of the Wheal Paradise. I told my friend Larkins, who was my coadjutor in the office, and also my fellow lodger in Islington, what I had done, and he, following my lead, also bought Paradise shares, though to a less amount. At the end of six months wc fancied we had solid reason to congratulate each other, for there came a dividened of 4£- per cent for the half-year, which threw up the shares considerably in the market, but not so high as 1 thought they should have gone. Relishing the 9 per cent per annum, and confidently expecting an increase upon that, I bought more shares at the advanced price, and more than doubled my venture. I had very soon to regret being in such a hurry. Instead of nine per cent., or more, which we had looked for, the returns of the following three years hardly reached on the average two per cent, on our investment. The shares fell in the market as a matter of course; but as they had not risen very much in the prosperous time, neither did they fall so much as it seemed to mo they should have done when times were adverse. The mine, it was said, had a good character, and would be sure to recover itself; and this rumour was so far believed, that even now, money being cheap, I might have sold out without any very considerable, loss. However, I held on, and so did my friend, and we chuckled over our good judgment, when all unexpectedly we were presented with a dividend of 12 per cent., and an official report in glowing colours, shadowing forth a success almost unparalleled, at no very distant day. We could have sold out now, and pocketed a good profit, but we were sanguine, and resisted all temptations that way. Alas ! that was the end of our luck; there were no more dividends. Term after term passed over, and the shares went down, and down, and down—till at length I could not bear to think about them, and turned away from the share-list whenever my eye fell upon it in the newspaper. But we were not suffered to forget the business altogether. After an interval of long silence and no returns, there came to each ofus a call instead of a dividend —a call of 5 per cent, instead of a dividend of twelve. Now began the bitterest part of my experience. The payment of these calls swallowed up about a fourth of my income, and made all the difference between haying a little more than enough and having a little less than enough to meet expenses—a difference which only those can estimate rightly who have had to deal with it. However, I contrived to retrench in various ways —stayed at home more, and indulged less in pleasures of all kinds—and tried to believe that things must come round again. After paying the first call, Larkins got rid of his few shares—gave them away to a speculating acquaintance of his, if I recollect aright—and shortly after married, and

settled in Holloway. I still stuck to my shares, and paid fresh calls, year after year —not, as the reader may imagine, without a, good deal of mortification and indignation, which latter feeling sometimes found vent in my letters to the agent, who invariably replied to representations with the utmost punctuality, and in a sterotyped form of politeness. One evening, in the middle of summer, I was sitting at my lodgings, in a rather brown study, when Larkins came in to have a chat, in the old place. In the course of conversation, he asked me if I still retained my shares in the Wheal Paradise. It was rather a sore subject to touch upon ; but I was not unwilling to talk it over with him, especially as we now rarely met, save on the business affairs of our principals at the office. He seemed to have doubts about the mine—threw out hints as to foul play, and the probability that the shareholders were being gulled. He had been thinking it over, he said, and was inclined to call the whole thing a delusion; he stated as a fact that the shares had drifted clean out of the market, and was decidedly of opinion they would never be quoted again. I had that morning received a fresh call letter, and when I showed it to him, he advised me strongly not to pay a penny of it. ' Don't you see,' he said, * they offer you 5 per cent, discount on the call for prompt payment—that is, before the first of next month—only a fortnight in advance. Why, this is at the rate of cent, per cent, discount per annum. And to urge you further, they add that if the calls are not paid up by the* 15th the shares will be forfeited. What do you think of that?' ' Well,' I said, ' does not that show the shares are valuable? They would hardly wish to take them from the present holders if they really were worth nothing.' ' That is just what they want you to believe,' he rejoined. ' Look here—suppose if instead of paying this call at once, you run down to Cornwall along with me, and have a look at the mine? We can have our holiday next week, if you like; and it will be as pleasant a trip as any, if we set off to Paradise;' and he exploded into a laugh in which I was less ready to join. But 1 liked the proposal well enough, and prepared to carry it out. On the following Tuesday we took the train to Plymouth, where the railway then stopped, and went on to Liskeard the next morning by stage. Prom thence we had to travel in a kind of dog-cart for some twenty odd miles over a rough country, through a district in parts wild enough. The driver professed to know his way to every mine in the county, but unfortunately knew nothing of the name, much less of the position, of the Wheal Paradise. Still, he was confident of hitting it right—knew, as he said, where it must be: doubtless from some instinct common to men of his vocation. At any rate, late in the afternoon he drew up at a small group of cottages, beckoned to him a man who was lounging about, and engaged him as a guide. The man gave us a strange look as he jumped up on the seat, but said nothing; and we drove on over a sort of blind road, leading through a district in which the soil seemed to have been turned inside out. At length we stopped in what appeared a perfect solitude, bounded on all sides by low hills of patchy grass and herbage and artificial mounds of mingled earth and stones, and embraced in a very limited view. Presently the guide stood up on the seat, waved his hat in the air, and shouted at the top of his voice. There was no response to the first appeals, but after awhile a bare-headed boy seemed to rise out of the ground, answered the signal with a shrill cry, and came running towards us with antics of surprise. 1 Where's Tregarthen?' asked the guide. ' Down to the Bull,' was the reply. ' Fetch 'm upjsharp—here's two gents from Lunnon as wants him.' Away went the boy; and as we moved on a little further, up came Tregarthen, a tall but stooping subject, who, the guide said, was, or had been, the 'grass captain,' whatever that may mean, of the Wheal Paradise. The man was respectful and intelligent, but it was very little we could get out of him. He would not be uncivil, but he would not answer a direct question. It struck me that he wanted to get rid of us, for he continually referred us to a Mr Somebody at Redruth, who would give us every information. But we insisted on having the information of our own eyes, and after a time he seemed to prevail upon himself to allow us to see the mine. It was not very far off; a turn or two round some of the low hills, Tregarthen leading the horse, brought us to it. The place told its own tale; for it was plain at a glance that all working of the Wheal Paradise had ceased long ago. The chimney was falling into ruin, the enginehouse was roofless, the shaft was fenced round with a rough stone wall grown about with weeds; and the machinery for lifting and descending had been carried away. I pitched a stone down the shaft, and in a couple of seconds or so heard a splash which gave us more information than the grass captain could have communicated in an hour, had he been as talkative as he was the reverse. 4 Get along home as fast as you can,' I said to the driver. Tregarthen had vanished almost before the words were well out of my mouth, and so had the boy. We dropped the guide where we had picked him up, and before he got down this worthy volunteered the remark that ' there was never much to tell o' got out o' the Whsal Paradise, and that the best on't was picked out years agone.' We made the best of our way to the nearest inn, and ordered dinner, which we leisurely discussed while the horse was bating, and only returned to Liskeard at a late hour. I did not think proper to pay the current call, and I suppose my shares were forfeited, for I never heard anything of them from that time to this Whether the Wheal Paradise was ever wound up I never learned or care to learn.