strikes a
man down from affluence to poverty, and, in place of wealth and power,
leaves him nothing but insignificance and ruin!"

"Good heavens, father! is your brain wandering? What fancies are these
that are flitting across your mind?"

"Sad and stern truths, my poor boy," replied the old man, grasping his
son's hand in his fevered palm. "A few weeks more will see the great
house of Onslow bankrupt. These things cannot be told too briefly,
George," said he, speaking with a tremulous and eager rapidity. "One
should hear misfortune early, to gain more time for future measures. A
great crash has fallen upon the moneyed interest of England. The vast
speculations in railways have overreached themselves; failures of great
houses abroad have added to the difficulty. The correspondents whose
solvency we never doubted are tottering to ruin. Every post brings
tidings of some new failure; and from Odessa, from Hamburg, and from
the ports of the Baltic to the distant shores of the New World, there is
nothing but bankruptcy."

"But you have large estates, sir; you possess property of various kinds
beyond the reach of these casualties."

"I own nothing to which my creditors have not a just right; nor, if I
did, could I exercise the privilege of retaining it, George," said the
old man. "From what Grounsell tells me, there will be sufficient to meet
every claim, but no more. There will remain nothing after. Lady Hester's
settlement will, of course, secure to her a moderate competence; and
we--you and I must look about, and see how we can face this same world
we have been feasting so long. My time in it will needs be brief; but
you, who may look forward with hope to long years of life, must bethink
you at once of the new path before you. Arouse yourself, then, to the
task, and I do not know but I may be prouder of you yet, buffeting
the wild waves of adversity, and fighting the manful part of a bold,
courageous spirit, than I have ever been in seeing you in the brilliant
circle of all your high and titled acquaintances. Ay, George, the
English merchant never died out in my heart, for all the aristocratic
leaven which accident mixed up with my fortunes. I never ceased to glory
in the pride of wealth accumulated by generous enterprises and honorable
toil. I loved the life of labor that disciplined the faculties,
and exercised not alone intelligence, but turned to use the gentler
charities of life, linking man to man, as brethren jo