The brokers closed their books; there were no buyers
nor sellers. Trade was coming to the same pass, except the retail
business in eatables; and an observant statesman and economist, that
watched the phenomenon, pronounced that in forty-eight hours more all
dealings would have ceased between man and man, or returned to the
rude and primitive form of barter, or direct exchange of men's several
commodities, labor included.
Finally, things crept into their places; shades of distinction were
drawn between good securities and bad. Shares were forfeited,
companies dissolved, bladders punctured, balloons flattened, bubbles
burst, and thousands of families ruined--thousands of people
beggared--and the nation itself, its paper fever reduced by a severe
bleeding, lay sick, panting, exhausted, and discouraged for a year or
two to await the eternal cycle--torpor, prudence, health, plethora,
blood-letting; torpor, prudence, health, plethora, bloodletting, etc.,
etc., etc., etc., _in secula seculorum._
The journals pitched into "speculation."
Three banks lay in the dust in the town of ----, and Hardie & Son
stood looking calmly down upon the ruins.
Richard Hardie had carried out his double-headed plan.
There was no run upon him--could not be one in the course of nature,
his balances were so low, and his notes were all at home. He created
artificially a run of a very different kind. He dined the same party
of tradesmen--all but one, who could not come, being at supper after
Polonius his fashion.
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