When Markham opened the letter, he was still more grieved and surprised to find that its brief and hastily-written contents announced his father’s failure. It had been the young man’s opinion and full persuasion, that his father had been for a shopkeeper rather an opulent man. In such towns as he dwelt in, though the gentry look down with contempt upon shopkeepers, yet there are among shopkeepers an almost infinite variety of gradations and degrees of dignity and rank. Mr. Markham the elder was one of the principal shopkeepers, and he held his head considerably above many of the tradespeople in his own town; and his intimacy was rather with professional than with trading people. But, unfortunately, in order to keep up his rank in society, he had lived somewhat too expensively; and by the untoward introduction of an underselling, semi-roguish draper into the town, Mr. Markham’s business fell off most pitiably, and he was compelled to propose to his creditors the horrors of a composition. We say here, and in this instance, the horrors of a composition, inasmuch as to such a man as Mr. Markham there was something in it most truly distressing and painful. We have indeed heard that there are those who by means of such arrangements grow wealthy, and unblushingly rise in the world; these, we apprehend, can never become part of the Corinthian capital of society, they may be rather described as of the Composite order. This calamity, which had so unexpectedly befallen the elder Markham, afflicted him most deeply; and he communicated the information to his son in language so desponding, and with such broken-heartedness, that the young man was quite overwhelmed with the information. Breaking through every other engagement, he hastened down to the country to condole with his father on the calamity which had overtaken him; and not without some faint hope that there might be a possibility of averting the blow. The letter simply stated that a composition had been proposed. Markham the younger, therefore, thought that it might perhaps be within the compass of his power to obviate the necessity of bringing that negotiation to a conclusion. He made therefore as rapid and at the same time as accurate a calculation as he could of the means which were in his power, and forthwith hastened to the scene of perplexity and difficulty.