d the poor poorer. But Jack remarked that of the
speakers there was not one who owned a little plot of ground, or had a
bank-account. Two of them were disaffected English weavers, a third an
Irishman, and the only Yerbury man was a quick-tongued, but shiftless
fellow who had started in business for himself, and failed; a kind of
handy Jack-at-all-trades, and correspondingly good for nothing.

Before the close of the week the men in Watkins's shoe-shop had struck.
There was quite an army of them now. The saloons were filled daily and
nightly. Jack thought, with a little grimness, that they might better
save their money for next week's bread.

Several of the men in his room dropped in to see what he thought; and
the result was, that on the following Monday morning ten of them
presented themselves with a tolerably cheerful demeanor, and accepted
the situation. By Tuesday night every vacant place was filled with
hungry, haggard-looking men from Coldbridge. They were jeered at, and
annoyed in various ways: the Yerbury men were called rats and turncoats
and cowards. The mills were driven. There was another great and
successful sale; in fact, amid the failures and difficulties about, Hope
Mills loomed up like a star of the first magnitude.

In the spring Mrs. Eastman and Miss Lawrence went to Europe; and Fred
joined a party of young men on a pleasure-tour through California. Even
Mrs. Lawrence was persuaded to try Saratoga in the summer. The great
house was muffled, and left in the charge of servants; but greenhouses,
graperies, and all the elegant adjuncts were cared for as assiduously as
ever. David Lawrence used to think it over. Sometimes he was tempted to
sell out his palatial residence, but who was there to buy? Other men had
been caught with just such elephants on their hands. The papers were
full of offers "at an immense sacrifice."

Business grew duller and duller. There was a very great overplus of
every thing, it seemed, in the world. Harvests were so abundant, and
prices so low, they were not worth the moving. Fruit lay and rotted on
the ground: you could get nothing for it. And yet there were wan-eyed
and hungry women and children who would have feasted regally on this
waste. Mothers of families turned and patched and darned, and said there
could be no new garments this winter, while store-shelves groaned under
the accumulation of goods. Men were failing on this side and that; the
Alton & West Line Railway stoc