A Queer Race: The Story of a Strange People — page 21: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

18 A QUEER RAOE. mine and Amy’s as well as the directors’—and we began. . to think we were on the highway to prosperity, when a misfortune befell which scattered our hopes to the windsy The Great Nortnern Bank (like our own, a limited labile ity concern of recent creation) suspended at a time whew we had a heavy balance to credit, and the very day after we had paid away several large checks in settlement of claims. The checks, of course, came back to us, and as we had no means of taking them up, we too had to sus- pend. I lost my place, of course—a defunct company has no need of an underwriter; and worse—! had taken a part of my salary in shares, and on these shares there was an un- paid liability which absorbed all my savings. The col- lapse of the company left me as poor as when | entered Combie & Nelson’s office-seven years before; and by way of filling up my cup of bitterness to the brim, Mr. Main- waring informed me (in a letter otherwise very kind and sympathetic) that my engagement with Amy must be con- sidered at an end. He did not forbid me to visit his house, but he said plainly that the seldomer I came the better he should be pleased. ] thought he was hard, but I felt he was right. What was the use of a man being engaged to be married who had no present means of keeping himself, much less a wife? All the same, Amy and I swore eternal constancy, and we vowed that, come weal, come woe, neither of us would ever marry anybody else; and I thought she really meant it—l am sure I did. this conclusion, however satisfactory as far as it went, did not afford much help toward a solution of the press- ing question of the moment: What should I do?—how avoid becoming a burden on my mother? I had asked Mr. Combie to take me back; but my place was filled up, and as a severe financial crisis had just set in there was little chance of my finding a place elsewhere. Firms and banks were falling like ninepins, and men of business looked and talked as if the world were coming to an end. A word to any of them about finding me a situation would have been regarded as an insult to his under- standing. While 1 was revolving these things in my mind, and wondering what on earth i should do, I received a call comicbooks.com