Year: 1879

Not many years ago there was--as there
has lately been again--a good deal of dis
trust and agitation in commercial circles,
chiefly arising from some very heavy fail
ures. One gigantic firm had fallen, and
brought many others down in its tumble
The alarm naturally felt at this spread
and the rnmors which always attend, and
often cause. IA panic, spread also. so that
scarcely any undertaking, however well
established and solvent, entirely escaped
doubt and suspicion. We do not propose
to enter upon the history of any CONNER
cal panic, or even to sketch one but
every reader can remember, and what is
worse, will see again, the deliberate and
organized efforts to wreck" really sol
vent houses, for the benefit of selfish and
INSCRIPTIONS spectators; and how not
only embarrassed and weak honses went
down in the crash, but houses which-had
time and fair play been given them-were
in fair working condition.


After this preface, short as it had been,
the reader will quite understand how men
who had realized by years of toll, often of
exile and danger, anything like compc-
tence, felt very uneasy as to their invest
ments, no matter how good they had hth-
erto proved and Mr.. Caleb Burton, who
had settled comfortably down in the vicin-
ity of London, after many years labor in
distant colony, felt rs uneasy as the rest
He was tolerably rich man, and was
considerably past his prime yet having
married late in life. he saw young tami-
ly growing up around him. which became
more expensive every day. A small por
ton of his fortune was invested in Eng
land; but the bulk was, and had been for
some years, invested on deposit, at pretty
high interest, in the Gulf of Carpentaria
and Northern Australia Bank, which was
in high repute among all the colonists
from that part of the continent, and which
did more business at its Lontlon Office
than almost any of the colonial banks. He
had been induced to leave his money in
the colony from the fact OF his acquain-
tanceship with most of the Directors;
while the manager at the chief establish
ment, on the Gulf of Carpentaria, Fred
Rockman by name, had been an old chum
when Mr.. Burton was digger, and was
believed to be, and truly so, one of the
most honorable and straightforward of
men. SO Mr.. Burton felt as secure as a
man could feel-at first. But while a
poor man may sleep soundly amid the
crash of banks, discount offices, and great
mercantile firms, it is nigh upon impossi-
BILE for a rich man to do so and the day
soon came when the topping over of first
one great house, and then another whose
names had hitherto stood almost as types
of soundness, alarmed even him, and he
could not refrain from paying daily visits
to London, and haunting certain localities
well known to all interested in financial
transactions, and where-amid thou
sand false reports, it must be admitted
the first whisper of coming disaster would
be sure to circulate.


Like good husband he had tried to
conceal his uneasiness from Mrs. Burton
but on her part, like a good wife, she was
not to be so deceived and when once his
preoccupied manner and occasionally wan
derng replies had attracted attention, the
revelation of his anxiety soon followed,
and she grew more anxious than himself
With mothers anxiety, she trembled for
the fate of Master Caleb and Miss Amelia,
with three OF four other young ladies and
gentlemen whose cots she was wont to
visit, and whose foreheads she was wont to
kiss every night of her life. So her alarm
reacted upon her husband and made him
incomparably more sensitive than before.


All this, however, took but few days
Ill It's STONt IbT Hptlllug Is 81 SWut ds
the changes and fears of commercial
panic; and ten days had hardly passed
since the fall of the aforesaid great house,
before Mr.. Burton commenced his visit to
London. He was in the habit of taking
his lunch at particular tavern where for
eign and colonial merchants greatly con-
gregate, and where he saw many persons
who were known to him in the days when
t,n ,,,t tI,a "a hos hn of.
spoke, sometimes of the old times, but
more frequently of the new. One day u
man entered the coffee-room and looked
round as though in search of some one
Mr.. Burton had occasionally seen and
spoken to this man in his visits to the tav-
ern. He was not very intimate with him,
for his recollection of the man was not al
together favorable he had been engaged
in some very doubtful transactions i'm the
colony, and moreover borrowed money of
Burton under some specious pretense,
which turned out to be wholly false, and
and not one penny of this had he repaid.
Mr.. Burton was Just sitting down to lunch
when he caught the eve of this individual,
who was somewhat SINNER, not to say
greasier, in his hat and clothes than the
majority of the guests, and he looked





by an impulse for which he could hardly
account. Mr.. Burton beckoned him to his
table and invited him to join him at lunch.
He was sorry for it the moment he had
spoken; but the Captain-he was called
the Captain from having once owned
coasting vessel-gave him no time to
change his mind. He accepted the invita-
ton with the greatest alacrity; and al
though his appetite was clearly of the keen
est, strove to make himself agreeable by
communicating all the scandal with which
the very atmosphere was charged, and
in which he reveled. This he fortified
and eked out with such mysterious winks
and mods that half of what he said was un-
Ineligible to his hearer.


At last the meal was finished; and the
Captain, draining the last drop from Il
tumbler of cold brandy and water. to which
he was invited, shook his entertainer by
the hand as the latter rose, and, referring
for the first time to past transactions, de-
clarcd he was the best-hearted and most
forgiving party he knew, and that some