After he had read this, Mr. Townsend understood the meaning of that expression in Cleveland’s face, which had struck him as peculiar. He had, doubtless, seen this paragraph, and learned therefrom, that the bubble he had helped to blow up, was ready to explode. Of course, he didn’t want “Eldorado” property at any price. In a day or two, the paragraph from the western paper appeared in all the city papers, and with various comments from the different editors. In one of them it was remarked, that a certain shipping merchant had, only a few weeks before, paid seventy thousand dollars for half of the “city.” “Of course,” the article went on to say, “here are seventy thousand dollars lost in a single gambling operation. When such splendid stakes as these are lost and won, we must not be astonished if we hear of failures by the dozens in the ranks of our merchant princes. In this number we shall not be at all surprised to find the owner of half of ‘Eldorado.’” Mr. Townsend read this with pain, mortification, and a strange fear about his heart. In a little over a year, property, amounting to nearly a hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars, had melted away, and passed from his hands, irrecoverably. It seemed like a dream, so rapidly had transpired the singularly disastrous incidents. But worse than the mere loss of money, was the effect produced upon the merchant. His confidence in all business operations was gone; and he came into the unhappy state of those who believe that the fates are against them. If a ship came in, he was afraid to send her forth again, lest the voyage should prove unsuccessful; and he sold to even his best customers with timidity. To continue to do business in such a state of doubt as to the result, was not possible for Mr. Townsend, and he concluded, after a long and anxious consideration of the subject, to withdraw from trade, and seek some safe investment of the remainder of his property; the interest from which would be ample for the maintenance of his family in the style of elegance in which they had been accustomed to live. The execution of this determination was hastened by the loss of another ship and cargo in a typhoon in the Indian Ocean. In this case insurance had been regularly effected; and the loss was promptly paid; but the disaster completed the overthrow of Mr. Townsend’s confidence in all business operations. More clearly than he had ever perceived it in his life, did he see the uncertainty that, as a natural consequence, must attend all commercial adventures, subject as they were to fluctuations and disturbances in the markets; the caprices of the winds and the waves, and the doubtful integrity of man. He wondered at the signal success that had attended his career as a merchant, and felt that something more than his own sagacity was involved therein.