le to manage this
institution in prosperous times; now if I can only have a chance to
close it up so that no man loses a dollar, when big banks around me
are falling, I will accomplish all I have started to accomplish."

Sure enough, the panic of 1893 arrived, and the young man's
opportunity came. Bank after bank went down; old institutions whose
venerable names had been their sufficient guarantee collapsed in a
day. Most building and loan associations, taking advantage of certain
provisions of the law, and of their charters, refused to pay their
depositors on demand. The men and women who had put their money in
found that they could not "withdraw" for some time, and then only at a
loss.

But not so with the model experiment of my young friend, by which he
proposed to demonstrate his ability to organize, manage, and support a
difficult business, and to properly handle complex financial
questions. He closed his institution up amid the appreciation and
praise of everybody who knew about it.

In the mean time he had worked a little harder than ever for the firm
that employed him. He took part in politics, too. His acquaintance
grew slowly but steadily, and then with ever-increasing rapidity, as
each new-made friend enthusiastically described him to others.

It soon got on the tongues of the people that even in his politics
this young man didn't drink, smoke, nor swear. More marvelous than
all, it was said that he was even religious. And the saying was true.
During all these years when he had no time for anything else, he also
had no time to stay away from Sunday-school and church. He had certain
convictions and spoke them out.

He had no time for "society"; not a moment for parties; not an hour
for the clubs. But he did have time for one girl, and for her he did
not have time enough. All this was not so very long ago. To-day this
young man is a member of the firm for which he began as a common
workman, and which has since grown to be one of the largest concerns
of its kind in the entire country. Successful banks have made him a
director. On all hands his judgment is sought and taken by old and
able men in business, politics, and finance.

And to crown all these achievings, he has builded him a home where all
the righteous joys abound, and over which presides the "girl he went
to see" in the hard days of his beginnings, when he had no time for
"society" except that which he found in her presence. As he was then,
so