The year 1849 was the year of the cholera and of the “great fire” in St. Louis. “The city was a charnel house; funerals were the principal events and the chief business of the hour; hearses went on a trot when they could not go faster.” Mr. Hine was convalescing from the disease and had been carried from a room at Olive and Main streets to his boarding house. That same night the “great fire” started on the levee. Four hundred buildings in the business heart of the city, which included Olive and Main streets, were destroyed. While living in St. Louis Mr. Hine met Mary Hazard Avery, whose parents had also removed from Connecticut, and was married to Miss Avery in that city July 4, 1853. Before that time he had established himself in New Albany, Ind., where in due course he represented the Adams Express Company, and was secretary of a plank road, notary for two banks and agent for several insurance companies, fire and life. While living here the New Albany Theological Seminary removed to Chicago, leaving a splendid set of buildings vacant, and Mr. Hine thought he saw the opportunity of his life in the establishment of a girls’ seminary. The property was easily obtained, and he spent all the money he had and all he could borrow fitting up the place but, as he once put it, “the New Albany Female Seminary opened simultaneously with the great panic of 1857”. He lost every cent he had and came out of the crash many thousands of dollars in debt. When Mr. Hine wished to enter active business again he bought up the outstanding notes against him in order to protect himself and, although his former creditors had no claim on him thereafter, he gradually paid back every dollar of indebtedness with interest. In this he followed the somewhat unique method of ascertaining who among his old creditors were most in need, and paying these first. As an insurance agent Mr. Hine had represented the Ætna Insurance Company, whose western general agent had said to him: “Mr. Hine, if ever you should want to go into insurance again, please let me know first”, and after the crash Mr Hine promptly sent word to the headquarters in Cincinnati that he wanted a position and as promptly got it. Thereafter he was connected with the western office of the Ætna until he removed to New York in 1865. Mr. Hine was brought east by the offer of the secretaryship of the International Insurance Company, but the methods adopted not being to his liking he resigned. He was then practically offered the position of Superintendent of the Insurance Department of the State of New York, but preferring to be his own master and delighting in editorial work, he purchased the Insurance Monitor in March, 1868, and that became his life work. MR. HINE IN SEARCH OF A HOME.