hpassed strategical position is
winnin' fo' us. We ah just now on the eve of great developments,
Barslow, great developments! All my holdin's ah withdrawn from mahket
until fu'theh notice. Foh, as we ah so much behind the surroundin'
country in growth, we must soon take a great leap fo'wahd. We ah past
the boom stage, I thank God, and what we ah now goin' to get is a rathah
brisk but entiahly healthy growth. A good, healthy growth, Barslow, and
no boom!"

The disposition to moralize comes on with advancing middle age, and I
could not help philosophizing on this perennial optimism of the
Captain's. He had used these very words when, so long ago, we had begun
our "cruise." The financial cycle was complete. The world had passed
from hope to intoxication, from intoxication to panic, from panic to the
depths, from this depression, ascending the long slope of gradual
recovery, to the uplands of hope once more. Now, as twenty years ago,
this feeling covered the whole world, was most pronounced in the newer
and more progressive lands, and was voiced by Captain Tolliver, the
grizzled swashbuckler of the land market. In it I recognized the ripple
on the sands heralding the approach of another wave of speculation,
which must roll shoreward in splendor and might, and, like its
predecessors, must spend itself in thunderous ruin.

I often think of what General Lattimore was accustomed to say about
these matters, and how Josie echoed his words as to the evil of fortunes
coming to those who never earned them. Some time, I hope, we shall grow
wise enough to--

I humbly beg your pardon, Madam, and thank you. That charming gesture of
impatience was the one thing needful to admonish me that lectures are
dull, and that the time has come to write _finis_. The rest of the
story? Cornish--Jim--Josie--Antonia? Oh, this proneness of the business
man to talk shop! Left to myself, I should have allowed their history to
remain to the end of time, unresolved as to entanglements, and them
unhealed as to bruises, bodily and sentimental. And, yet, those were the
things which most filled our minds in the dark days after we missed
connection with the Pendleton special.

In the first spasm of the crisis I was more concerned for Jim's safety
than with the long-feared monetary cataclysm. _That_ was upon us in such
power as to make us helpless; but Jim, wounded and prostrated as he was,
his very life in danger, was a concrete subject of anxiety and a
co