The first of January, 1837, I arranged with the Fairbanks to leave them and locate in either Louisville or St. Louis, and sell their scales and other goods manufactured by them at Pittsburgh, on commission. I returned to Derby and remained there until May, visiting my sister Emeline then teaching in Montreal. I left Derby the fifteenth of May for the South, leaving a few hundred dollars with the Fairbanks and taking some thousands in notes belonging to them to collect between Burlington, Vermont, and Buffalo, New York, and from which collections when made I was to take the money due me and remit to them the balance. I left with my father a fine span of horses, harness, and wagon with which to follow me with my sisters when I should get a home for them. My sister Rosetta had been lame for a year and was under the care of a physician and surgeon. I left home and friends with a sad heart, taking the stage for Burlington, my two most intimate friends riding the first mile with me. One was Stoddart B. Colby, who was afterwards the leading lawyer of Vermont and who died Register of the United States currency and whose wife was burned on the _Swallow_ in the Hudson River; the other, Timothy P. Redfield, now one of the judges of the supreme court of Vermont and brother of my other very dear and most intimate friend, Fletcher Redfield, for many years Chief Justice of Vermont. I have never met either of them since. I had to get out of the stage the first day to steady it over snow drifts. I reached Troy, New York, the third day and that evening the news came there that the banks had suspended specie payment in consequence of General Jackson’s order to the United States treasurer to remove the United States deposits from the United States Bank to the Sub-Treasury. All banks suspended specie redemption and for the time no paper money was current or debts paid. All confidence was destroyed between business men, and such a financial panic was never seen before or since in our country. When I reached Buffalo I had not collected a cent from $27,000 in notes against the best business men on the line of the Erie Canal. In Buffalo I collected in bank bills $70. Here I was with but little money and all business prostrated. I could not see in prospect a time when I could hope to engage in the commission business with success. I had nothing in Vermont to return to. I was lonely and desolate. Young men were being discharged from stores and factories in great numbers, and business men were failing everywhere.