Meanwhile, the failure of Jay Cooke & Co. in Philadelphia was quickly followed there by the suspension of several prominent private banking and stock firms and some small ones, a panic in stocks, and a run upon the banks, involving the failure of two of their number--the Citizens' and the Union Banking Company. Advices of a few suspensions of banks and banking-houses in different parts of the country had also been received, none of much importance, but all serving to deepen the prevailing gloom, and make men fear that the worst was still to come. Representative bankers and merchants had been telegraphing to the government at Washington for some measure of relief from the moment of Jay Cooke & Co.'s suspension, but none had as yet been extended, except in the shape of an order, on Saturday, to buy ten millions of United States bonds, of which the assistant treasurer was, in consequence of the excitement, only able to buy less than two millions and a half at the equivalent of par in gold, the price to which he was limited. The President, who had been on his way from Pittsburg to Long Branch on Saturday, was, in company with the Secretary of the Treasury, at the Fifth Avenue Hotel on Sunday, the 21st, and gave audience to a large number of leading merchants and bankers, who urged upon him the necessity of immediate action on the part of the Treasury to save the country from further disaster, the issue of the "reserve" of forty-four millions of greenbacks as a loan to, or deposit with, the banks being the remedy generally suggested. The President, however, was firmly opposed to this, and suggested that a week of Sundays would probably afford more relief than anything else, but promised to do whatever seemed advisable within the limits of the law. On the next morning the assistant treasurer gave notice that he would continue the purchase of bonds, paying for them at the average prices of the Saturday previous. This he did until Thursday morning, when he ceased buying, twelve millions in all having been bought up to that time, and the available currency balance in the Treasury, without encroaching on the forty-four millions of unissued greenbacks, being exhausted.