Shortly
before this, when my friend Fennell and I housed together at the west
end of the town, we sent one day to the neighbouring slaughtering-place,
where the custom was to sell by retail to the public the legs of mutton
at 5 pence each, as they had comparatively so little of tallow for
boiling down. We duly got one, cooked it, and found it very good.
No doubt it was in very great measure because money was scarce and dear
that nearly everything was thus cheap. I recollect the sale by auction
at that time of a vacant half-acre allotment in central Collins-street,
next to that on which Mr. George James, wine merchant, had very early
erected his surpassing brick office and dwelling. After some slight
competition, the allotment, put up, I think, at the upset price of 300
pounds, was bought by Mr. Edmund Westby for 344 pounds. The amount is
impressed upon me, because I wondered at the time that anyone should
thus throw away so much good money. But my friend Westby reckoned the
future more accurately than I did, for within nine years after, this
price was hardly the 500th part of the value. To cap the whole tale, the
lot was, I think, in the hands of Government from having been abandoned
by the original buyer, who had forfeited his deposit rather than
complete his supposed bad bargain.
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