In a day or two I found, much to my chagrin, that the stock I had so fortunately purchased, instead of being on the high road to one hundred and ten, began to grow tired of advancing, as though it were leg-weary, and turning suddenly about, took, like a school-boy coming home, “cross lots” the shortest possible way back to its old position on the wrong side of par. I ascribe this sudden change to two causes; first, _I_ was the owner of some of the stock, which reason was enough of itself to knock down that or any other security; as I never in my life touched any thing of the kind that did not immediately become “heavy,” and of less value than it was before. Tom Moore complained most beautifully of similar ill-luck, and said, in his own inimitable way, “I never nursed a dear gazelle, To glad me with its soft black eye, But when it came to know me well, And love me, it was sure to die.” And I can and do say with more truth, (for Tom evidently fibbed, or rather made Hinda do so,) and with equally good rhymes, that I never bought a single mill Of stock, in that vile street named Wall, That rose a peg, or e’en stood still; Dod rot it!—_it was sure to fall._ Secondly, a paragraph appeared in the Herald, saying something about England and war; and this circumstance, combined with the fact of my being a holder, was too much for Ohio sixes, and down they went. Nothing short of a miracle could have sustained them under such a pressure. But this was not all; for, in the incipient stage of the panic which followed, the wind suddenly veered round to north-east, and a storm came on to increase the difficulty. Such a scene as ensued has rarely been witnessed since Wall street became a theatre for speculation. Faces became elongated many hundred feet in the aggregate; eyes opened to their widest capacity, and seemed to be looking wildly about for that greatest of bug-bears, the British; and every speculator’s heart, like Macbeth’s, did ————“Knock at the ribs, Against the use of nature,” as though some terrible calamity, involving the annihilation of every thing in the shape of stocks and money, were impending. If some giant from another globe had come upon the earth, and suddenly knocked the foundation stones from under that noble structure, the merchants’ exchange, the crash would hardly have been greater or more alarming than that which took place, on the day in question, among the stocks. I stood silently by, and saw my property vanish, as it were, before my eyes; but I will not attempt to describe my feelings, for I am sure that I should not be able to convey an idea of them to the reader’s mind. Suffice it to say that I was hurt—cut to the very soul. “Farewell, Niagara, Quebec, and Montreal,” thought I; “if I can keep out of the almshouse, the way things are going, I shall be remarkably lucky.”