We knew just before this fateful day that at last we had undertaken an operation which was to result in loss, and a heavy one, but we never dreamed it was to be our Waterloo--nor would it have been except for the acute stringency in the money market, the result of that Venezuelan message. Our commitments for the end of December and first week of January were unusually heavy. We met them with increasing difficulty until the twenty-eighth of December and then came our failure. I was dazed at the extent of the catastrophe. I could not realize that a business which I had built up from nothing to a volume of nearly fifteen millions a year with more than eight hundred active accounts on the books, and out of which I had made a fortune, was swept away, leaving me only a mountain of debt. Alas, it was only too true. The liabilities were nearly one and one-half millions. Of course, there were large assets, mostly merchandise, but everything was gone, and my wife threw in "Redstone," which had cost me forty thousand dollars, with the rest. As soon as I recovered myself, I had a meeting with my creditors, all of whom were most kindly disposed, and my statement was accepted without any examination of the books of the firm. Outside of our regular bankers we had heavy loans in which there were large equities. Arrangements were made and these loans taken up at once. Our position had been so prominent and our holdings were so large, the news of the failure caused a heavy decline, which carried the price down to almost the lowest figure in the history of the trade; but not one ton of our stock was thrown on the market and we ourselves liquidated the business over a period of several months. Our former clerk, the broker, George Norman, also failed, claiming our failure as the cause. In our operations it was often necessary to cover our identity by using a broker's name, an established custom in many lines of business. We had favored George largely and our business had been very profitable to him. We did not know at the time, but learned a little later, that prices on the contracts made through him were on our books in excess of the prices he had paid the seller, whereas they should have agreed. This really made him a principal instead of a broker. Actually he had bought of sellers for his own account at one price and sold to us at a higher price, he making the difference in addition to his commissions. His representations to us were always that the price we were paying him was the lowest the seller would accept. Norman also had been operating on his own account, and by failing escaped his losses. The general opinion of the trade was that he really made money by his failure.