There seemed to be an impression just then, in fact, that there was no power whatever to check the disciplined but half-starved and desperate rebel hordes. Even those who did not view the affair as any matter of gloom or discouragement, still believed it one of heavy loss that must be submitted to with the best grace possible. One of the young Philadelphia merchants was recognized by a friend, on one of the very last days of June, knocking about the balls in the billiard-room of the Cattskill Mountain House, and questioned by him as to the propriety of his being away from the Quaker City at a time when so heavy a misfortune as the rebel advance to the Delaware seemed to be impending. "Oh," said the merchant, making an eight-shot at the same moment, "I do not see any good that I could do by staying." "And do you not believe that the rebels will reach Philadelphia?" asked the friend. "Well, yes, I rather think they will," answered the nonchalant. "I should not be surprised if they should reach there to-morrow. In fact I telegraphed to my partner from Albany, yesterday, whenever they had taken Harrisburgh to pack up the most valuable of our goods and send them to New York." "And when they have taken New York?" asked the interrogator, not a little amused at that new system of defending valuable property and the country. "Oh," said the merchant, as he sighted another shot and made his carom without the tremor of a pulse--"when they take New York, as I suppose they will in a week or two, we shall move them to Boston, and so keep on working East till they drive us into Canada or the Atlantic." And this was not all a jest, by any means. The player had so telegraphed, and he more than half believed that his goods were at that time in course of removal, while he had no thought whatever of deserting his billiard-table and going down to assist in defending them. He was not alone, meanwhile, in his reprehensible coolness, as history will be at some pains to record of that extraordinary crisis.