His question recalled to my mind the fact that he had given me a little inheritance which had come to his wife, asking me to invest it for him. I had put it into some construction bonds. "What about it?" I asked. He stammered out his story. Some one had told him that I was in a bad shape; he had also read a piece in the paper about the road, and he had become scared. It had not occurred to him to sell his bonds before he preached that little sermon at me; but, now that my sins were apparently about to overtake me, he wished to save his little property from destruction. "Why don't you sell?" I asked. "I have tried to," he admitted, "but the price offered me is very low." I laughed at the fellow's simple egotism. "So you thought I might take your bonds off your hands? Got them there?" "My wife thought, as your--" he stammered. I waived his excuse aside. He drew the bonds from his coat pocket. As I sat down to write a check I said jokingly:-- "Better hustle round to the bank to-morrow and get your cash." "I trust you are not seriously incommoded by this panic," he remarked inquiringly. "Gold's the thing these days!" I laughed. (The cashier at the bank told me afterward that Hardman made such a fuss when he went to cash his check that they actually had to hand him out six thousand dollars in gold coin.) The preacher man had no more than crawled out with profuse words of thanks than I had another caller. This time it was a young doctor of my acquaintance. He was trying to put on an indifferent air, as if he had been used to financial crises all his life. He had his doubts in his eyes, however, and I took him into my confidence. "If you possibly can, stick to what you have got. It may take a long time for prices to get back to the right place, but this tumble is only temporary. Have faith--faith in your judgment, faith in your country!" I knew something of his story, of the hard fight he had made to get his education, of his marriage and his wife's sickness, with success always put off into the future. He had brought me his scrapings and savings, and I had made the most of them. When at last the doctor had gone away somewhat reassured, I sat down to think. There were a good many others like these two--little people or well-to-do, who had put their faith in me and had trusted their money to my enterprises. Not much, each one; but in every case a cruel sum to lose. They had brought me their savings, their legacies, because they knew me or had heard that I had made money rapidly. Could I leave them now?