ery and be exposed to the sunlight and the breezes of every day. We
were crossing the ominous tract which divides the trenches of
preparation from the sheltering fortress of attainment, and the hosts
of failure were rallied to dispute our passage.

At this juncture any accident to our venture might affect the whole
American business fabric, and no one realized the danger of the
situation better than Mr. Rogers and myself. During the anxious days
that were passing we canvassed the dire possibilities that the situation
contained, just as children tell each other ghost stories when left
alone in the darkness of the night. The great catastrophes of finance,
we remembered, had all been born of the unexpected--of unforeseen
contingencies--far beyond the range of human foresight. Who knew but
that the hours were pregnant with some terrible potentiality--the
assassination of a king or president, a Chicago or Boston fire, an
epidemic of cholera, a belligerent message from the President, such as
Cleveland's Venezuela ultimatum, a great bank defalcation, the suicide
of an important operator, the death of an eminent capitalist--a breath
of one of these world cyclones would crumble our structure into the dust
and take along with it the neighboring edifices on both sides of the
street. There were also the hidden possibilities of betrayal, of
treachery, for we knew that scores of Wall Street's most ingenious minds
were bent on unravelling and exposing the secret threads of our
enterprise.

On Wednesday morning soon after ten o'clock Mr. Rogers, on his way
downtown, came to the Waldorf. He was plainly excited.

"Lawson," he said, "this is something unheard of, unprecedented. The
bank is being buried under subscriptions. Stillman says he is adding
scores of clerks, but that he cannot possibly keep pace with the
subscriptions. Mr. Rockefeller is very nervous, and I must confess to
feeling a bit of 'rattle' myself. It now looks as though the total would
run into fabulous figures. The Lewisohns are being swamped with orders
from Europe. They alone will probably put in more than ten millions.
Wall Street has lost its head entirely, and our people at 26 Broadway
are coming in asking advice and doubling and trebling their
subscriptions. If we don't keep our heads something bad may happen, for
it looks now as though the cash the subscription is tying up would make
a money-pinch. This affair must not be allowed to run away with us. What
do y