“When I entered the Madison Bank as President, I gave up in deference to the wishes of Mr. Stuyvesant all open speculation in Wall Street. But a wife and home such as I then had, are not to be supported on any petty income; and when shortly after your entrance into my home, the opportunity presented itself of investing in a particularly promising silver mine out West, I could not resist the temptation; regarding the affair as legitimate, and the hazard, if such it were, one that I was amply able to bear. But like most enterprises of the kind, one dollar drew another after it, and I soon found that to make available what I had already invested, I was obliged to add to it more and more of my available funds, until—to make myself as intelligible to you as I can—it had absorbed not only all that had remained to me after my somewhat liberal purchase of the Madison Bank stock, but all I could raise on a pledge of the stock itself. But there was nothing in this to alarm me. I had a man at the mine devoted to my interests; and as the present yield was excellent, and the future of more promise still, I went on my way with no special anxiety. But who can trust a silver mine? At the very point where we expected the greatest result, the vein suddenly gave out, and nothing prevented the stock from falling utterly flat on the market, but the discretion of my agent, who kept the fact a secret, while he quietly went about getting another portion of the mine into working order. He was fast succeeding in this, and affairs were looking daily more promising, when suddenly an intimation received by me in a bit of conversation casually overheard at that reception we attended together, convinced me that the secret was transpiring, and that if great care were not taken, we should be swamped before we could get things into working trim again. Filled with this anxiety, I was about to leave the building, in order to telegraph to my agent, when to my great surprise the card of that very person was brought in to me, together with a request for an immediate interview. You remember it, Paula, and how I went out to see him; but what you did not know then, and what I find some difficulty in relating now, is that his message to me was one of total ruin unless I could manage to give into his hand, for immediate use, the sum of a hundred thousand dollars.
“The facts making this demand necessary were not what you may have been led to expect. They had little or nothing to do with the new operations, which were progressing successfully and with every promise of an immediate return, but arose entirely out of a lawsuit then in the hands of a Colorado judge for decision, and which, though it involved well-nigh the whole interest of the mine, had never till this hour given me the least uneasiness, my lawyers having always assured me of my ultimate success. But it seems that notwithstanding all this, the decision was to be rendered in favor of the other party. My agent, who was a man to be trusted in these matters, averred that five days before, he had learned from most authentic sources what the decision was likely to be. That the judge’s opinion had been seen—he did not tell me how, he dared not, nor did I presume to question, but I have since learned that not only had the copyist employed by the judge turned traitor, but that my own agent had been anything but scrupulous in the use he had made of a willing and corruptible instrument—and that if I wanted to save myself and the others connected with me from total and irremediable loss, I must compromise with the other parties at once, who not being advised of the true state of affairs, and having but little faith in their own case, had long ago expressed their willingness to accept the sum of a hundred thousand dollars as a final settlement of the controversy. My agent, if none too nice in his ideas of right and wrong, was, as I have intimated, not the man to make a mistake; and when to my question as to how long a time he would give me to look around among my friends and raise the required sum, he replied, ‘Ten hours and no more,’ I realized my position, and the urgent necessity for immediate action.
“The remainder of the night is a dream to me. There was but one source from which I could hope in the present condition of my affairs, to procure a hundred thousand dollars; and that was from the box where I had stowed away the bonds destined for the use of the Japha heirs. To borrow was impossible, even if I had been in possession of proper securities to give. I was considered as having relinquished speculation and dared not risk the friendship of Mr. Stuyvesant by a public betrayal of my necessity. The Japha bonds or my own fortune must go, and
