res.

A group of the leading money men met in the private quarters of one of
their numbers, about whose rugged personality and leadership they
instinctively rallied. More than one night the gray dawning light of the
morning found them, with white, drawn faces, still in conference. The
emergency gripped them. An emergency always does. The habits of life are
upset, helter-skelter, in the effort to avert the threatening danger. That
was an emergency in the money world. Grave danger threatened. Everything
else was forgotten, and every bit of available resource strained to turn
the danger aside. It <i>was</i> turned aside. That was a splendid achievement.
And even though men have been feeling the effects for this whole year,
what they have felt is as nothing compared with what might have come.

<u>Danger and Victory Eying each other.</u>

An emergency means a great danger threatening, perhaps the very life. But
it means, too, that if the danger can be gripped and overcome there will
be great victory. Two possibilities come up close and stare each other
angrily in the face; the possibility of great disaster impending, and of
great victory over it within grasp, if there be a reaching hand to grasp
it. The deciding thing is the human element, the strong, quick hand
stretched out. If strength can be concentrated, the situation gripped,
then great victory is assured. But it takes the utmost concentration of
strength, with rare wisdom and quick steady action, to turn the tide
toward flood. If this is not done, either because of lack of leadership or
of enough strength or enough interest, disaster comes.

Just such emergencies come to us constantly. A severe illness lays its
hand upon a loved one in the home. The crisis comes. Death and life stand
in the sick-room eying each other. Either one may be victor. No one can
tell surely which it will be. And every effort is strained, the habit of
life broken, other matters forgotten and neglected, that death may be
staved off, and life wooed to stay. And when the crisis passes safely the
joy over the new lease of life makes one forget all the cost of strain and
effort.

Who of us cannot recall some time back there, when some emergency came in
personal business matters, and personal and home expenses and plans were
cut down to the lowest notch, to the bleeding-point, that the emergency
might be safely met.

Teachers and parents know that moral emergencies come at intervals in a