d Cornish took his price.

The day after Harper went away we were busy all day long, drawing notes
and mortgages. Every unincumbered piece of our property, the orts,
dregs, and offcast of our operations, were made the subjects of
transfers to the rag-tag and bobtail of Lattimore society. A lot worth
little or nothing was conveyed to Tom, Dick, or Harry for a great
nominal price, and a mortgage for from two-thirds to three-fourths of
the sum given back by this straw-man purchaser. Our mill was grinding
mortgages.

I do not expect that any one will say that this course was justified or
justifiable; but, if anything can excuse it, the terrible difficulty of
our position ought to be considered in mitigation, if not excuse.
Pressed upon from without, and wounded by blows dealt in the dark from
within; with dreadful failure threatening, and with brilliant success,
and the averting of wide-spread calamity as the reward of only a little
delay, we used the only expedient at hand, and fought the battle
through. We were caught in the mighty swirl of a modern business
maelstrom, and, with unreasoning reflexes, clutched at man or log
indifferently, as we felt the waters rising over us; and broadcast all
over the East were sown the slips of paper ground out by our mill,
through the spout of the Grain Belt Trust Company; and wherever they
fell they were seized upon by the banks, which had through years of
experience learned to look upon our notes and bonds as good.

"Past the bulge," quoted Jim, "and into the slump! We'll see what the
whelp says when he finds that, in spite of all his attempts to scuttle,
there isn't going to be any slump!"

By which observation it will appear that, as our operations began to
bring in returns in almost their old abundance, our courage rose. At the
very last, some bank failures in New York, and a bad day on 'Change in
Chicago, cut off the stream, and we had to ask Harper to carry over a
part of the Frugality and Indemnity loan until we could settle with
Pendleton; but this was a small matter running into only five figures.

Perhaps it was because we saw only a part of the situation that our
courage rose. We saw things at Lattimore with vivid clearness. But we
failed to see that like centers of stress were sprinkled all over the
map, from ocean to ocean; that in the mountains of the South were the
Lattimores of iron, steel, coal, and the winter-resort boom; and in the
central valleys were other Lat