In the halcyon days of
plenty and prosperity men know little of each other; trade has its
accustomed way; balances are smoothly adjusted; notes are given and paid
with smiling faces; one would think that honor and manliness were the
commonest of qualities. Now, every man was put to the severest proof,
and showed the inborn and essential traits of his nature. Like a ship's
crew on a raft, alone on the ocean without provisions, they looked at
each other as they were. There, in their extremity, were to be seen
calm resignation, unmanly terror, moody despair, turbulent passion, and
stealthy, fiendish glances that blinked not at cannibalism itself.
Mr. Sandford, almost for the first time in his life, had been
rendered nervous with apprehension. To be sure, he was not one of the
"sleek-headed men that sleep o' nights"; he was always busy with some
scheme; but, heretofore, success had followed every plan, and he had
gone on with steadfast confidence. Now the keenest foresight was of
no avail; events defied calculation; misfortunes came without end and
without remedy. It was the moment of fate to him. He had gone to the
last verge, exhausted every resource, and, if there were not some help,
as unlooked for as a shower of gold from heaven, he must stop payment
--he, whose credit had been spotless and without limit, whose name in
the financial world was honor itself, whose influence had been a tower
of strength in every undertaking.
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