In the great financial troubles which followed Andrew Jackson's refusal to renew the charter of the Bank of the United States, several States became bankrupt, and repudiated the obligations incurred by their bonds, to the great indignation of business people in both hemispheres. The State of New York was at one time on the verge of pursuing this course, which my father strenuously opposed. He called meeting after meeting, and was unwearied in his efforts to induce the financiers of the State to hold out. When this appeared well-nigh impossible, he undertook that his firm should negotiate with English correspondents a loan to carry the State over the period of doubt and difficulty. This he was able to effect. My eldest brother came home one day and said to me:-- "As I walked up from Wall Street to-day, I saw a dray loaded with kegs on which were inscribed the letters, 'P. W. & K.' Those kegs contained the gold just sent to the firm from England to help our State through this crisis." My father once gave me some account of his early experiences in Wall Street. He had been sent, almost a boy, to New York, to try his fortune. His connection with Block Island families through his grandmother, Catharine Ray Greene, had probably aided in securing for him a clerk's place in the banking house of Prime and Sands, afterwards Prime, Ward and King. He soon ascertained that the Spanish dollars brought to the port by foreign trading vessels could be sold in Wall Street at a profit. He accordingly employed his leisure hours in the purchase of these coins, which he carried to Wall Street and there sold. This was the beginning of his fortune. A work published a score or more of years since, entitled "The Merchant Princes of Wall Street," concluded some account of my father by the statement that he died without fortune. This was far from true. His death came indeed at a very critical moment, when, having made extensive investments in real estate, his skill was requisite to carry this extremely valuable property over a time of great financial disturbance. His brother, our uncle, who became the guardian of our interests, was familiar with the stock market, but little versed in real estate transactions. By untimely sales, much of my father's valuable estate was scattered; yet it gave to each of his six children a fair inheritance for that time; for the millionaire fever did not break out until long afterwards.