 | Bankrupt stories |  |
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.
WILL GIVE AN ACCOUNT OF THE ORIGIN OF THESE STORIES:
A COMPANY of broken merchants and speculators, who
had often been brought together in a certain attorney's
office in the neighbourhood of the City Hall, while undergoing
the legal process of being washed from the taint of debt, one day
being all assembled in the ante-room of their lawyer, began to
question each other in regard to their future prospects of business
and wealth. And upon hearing each other's expectations
there was found to be a most wonderful coincidence in their
prospects, which to say true were no expectations at all; but
rather a hazy kind of an apprehension that the times would
change, and by some unforeseen accident restore them to the
position in which they were once placed. There was
also found to be a most striking coincidence in regard to their
present possessions; for they all confessed to an entire and
very perfect destitution of every thing in the shape of a circulating
medium, whether of paper or metal. Perhaps this
similiarity of condition in these unfortunate gentlemen, should
not, strictly speaking, be called a striking coincidence, since
it is known to all the world that our humane bankrupt law
makes no distinction in its victims, but strips them all alike;
so that the great merchant who has disbursed millions and the
little trader whose debts have hardly reached to thousands,
the man with a dozen children, and the man without any,
suddenly find themselves on as dead a level as though death
himself had struck them down. For the law with great humanity,
takes the gold ring from the bankrupt's wife, which
which misfortune and care have almost obliterated; lest the
unfortunate creditor should lose the tenth part of a mill, which
the sale of it may afford him.
To a man who has been born poor, and who all his life has
lived poor, poverty is not a very terrible evil; it is his natural
condition, to which he has instinctively moulded himself, and
his wants are no greater than his means of satifying them;
his appetite is good, his sleep refreshing, his cares few, and
his friends sincere; for no one thinks it worth his while to
play the hypocrite to a man who has nothing to give or to
lend; the sun shines for him with as bright an aspect as for
the rich; the fresh breeze kisses his cheek and plays with his
locks, as though he were a part of the elements; the whole
world out of doors is open to him, and the outsides of the
houses of the rich, not unfrequently their best parts, are as
much a source of pleasure to him as to their owners. His
children are very dear to him, and almost always rise to a condition
above their father's; and his wife, although compelled
to labour hard and endure what other women might consider
grievous burdens, is always true to him, and loves him better,
as he does her, for the very toil and privation she has had to
encounter for the sake of him and his children. But to the
poor man who has once been rich, poverty is the deadliest ill
that can befal him. When Poverty first comes to his dwelling,
the first glance at her meagre image almost drives him mad, indeed,
it not unfrequently happens that her cold frown kills him
outright. But if he can sustain the first shock of her presence,
the danger will soon be over, and day by day the unwelcome
and hated visitant will grow less and less repulsive, until at
last the poor man will marvel why she should have terrified
him in the beginning. Absolute, unmitigated want, like pain
and disease, must affect all alike, but this is not the kind of poverty
we mean; such a condition is hardly known in our happy
land, where there are few cases of suffering from want,
wretched, whether rich or poor.
The sudden breaking up and overturning in the family of
a merchant when overtaken by bankruptcy, cannot be fully
understood, except by those who have experienced it. It is
like clipping the wings of a wild bird and shutting him up in
a cage, to beat his breast against the cruel wires of his prison,
while he catches a glimpse of the blue ether, where his mate
and his companions are soaring with outstretched pinions above
him. The real deprivation of the luxuries, or even comforts, in
which he had been used to indulge, is not the chief cause of
suffering with the poor bankrupt; it is the altered tone of
those with whom he associated in his prosperity, which gives
him his keenest pang. The easy air of familiarity of his
equal, the deferential respect of his dependants, and above all
the manner of his creditor, are suddenly changed in a night;
his companion becomes cold, his dependant grows insolent,
and his creditor looks at him with a suspicious glance, which
seems to accuse him of embezzlement and fraud. Of a sudden
he feels that his respectability has oozed away from him; and
when he finds that he has got nothing but his character to depend
upon, he begins to distrust his own virtue, as he discovers
that it will neither gain him credit for a dollar, nor insure
him the respect of his acquaintance; and he almost wishes
that he had taken better care of himself when he had it in his
power to do so. But he has given up to his creditors the last
copper in his pocket; and he meets with no compassion from
them, if they get a copper less than their dues. He remembers
in his trouble how differently he had treated those who
were indebted to him, and takes comfort in the recollection,
but he wonders why men will continue to treat their fellow
beings according to their possessions, and not according to
their merits.
But the same cause which estranges the bankrupt from the
world of the prosperous, attaches him with sympathetic bonds
unfortunates having again met together in the dirty ante-room
of their attorney's office, began to devise some means for recruiting
their fortunes, and after a great variety of plans had
been suggested, they at last determined, upon the proposition
of one of their number, who had waited to hear all their plans
before he suggested one himself, to write their histories and
publish them together for the profit of the whole. This plan
was immediately adopted, because it was the only kind of business
in which they could engage that required no capital to
carry it on. But a difficulty arose at the very outset from the
impossibility of selecting one of their number, acceptable to
all the rest, who should act as editor in bringing their enterprize
before the public. It so happened that every member of
the association thought himself the best qualified, and the best
entitled to the office; and as on several ballotings it was found
that each member had one vote, and they were afraid to trust
so important a matter to the decision of chance, lest the one
least qualified should be elected, the whole business was very
near being abandoned, when the member who had first proposed
the plan of the association, now suggested the propriety of
employing a disinterested editor, provided one could be found
willing to undertake the duty for no other compensation than
the honor arising from it, the whole of which he might monopolize,
as it was not considered prudent for either of the
bankrupts to appear in his own proper name, lest his creditors
should put him into chancery to discover his share of the profits.
It will not be necessary to relate by what means the editor who
has undertaken to usher these BANKRUPT STORIES into the
world, was prevailed upon to accept of the office, or whether
or not he consented upon the terms first proposed, namely:
the privilege of appropriating to himself all the honor that
he might be able to gather in the performance of his duties;
but it may be well for the public to know that he stipulated
part of a story which he might not approve.
The number of members of the association in the beginning
was twelve; but as two of them, one a speculator in up-town
lots and the other a stock-broker, confessed that their modesty
would not allow them to publish the history of their past
transactions to the world, and as they doubted their ability to
invent a good story, the number of members was reduced to
ten.
It was further agreed that no distribution of profits should
take place until each member had furnished his proportion of
narrative; and that not more than ten narratives should be published,
unless it should be determined to allow the editor the
compliment of publishing a number at his own risk, by his
furnishing the story himself.
It was also agreed that each story, before it should be put
into the hands of the editor, should be read by its author to the
association, who should then decide by vote whether or not it
were fit for publication, and in case it should be decided not
to print it, the author, out of consideration to his feelings, might
print it at his own expense, and retain all the profits arising
from the sale of it.
These exact and business-like arrangements were urgently
insisted upon by these poor bankrupts, who having suffered
severely by too venturesome speculations, now that they had
nothing to lose, showed a most commendable spirit of prudence.
And perhaps it would be well for other authors if their
works could be tested in some such manner, not only for the
good of the reading public, who might then boldly purchase
a new book without being at the trouble and expense of consulting
a review to learn whether or no it were entitled to notice;
but for the greater security of printers and publishers,
who would thereby save themselves many losses, and be able
to pay successful authors better than they now do; as it is a
principle among publishers as it is with fashionable tailors, to
of their non-paying patrons. And as a man when he buys a
coat must contribute a prorata per centage towards defraying
the expense of his neighbour's out-fit which otherwise would
never be paid for, so must the succesful author have a per
centage deducted from the price of his MS., to help pay for the
cost of publishing the works of the unread authors, whom
his publisher may have had the misfortune to deal with.
This system of compensation, must of course prevail in every
other kind of business, although in these two it appears more
obvious. Whenever you see an idle or a profligate person in
the community, you may be sure that you pay your pro
rata per centage towards his support, although you may not
be able to detect the manner of his abstracting it from your
pocket.
The authors of these Bankrupt Stories might not in an ordinary
state of affairs, have felt themselves free to break
through the established rules of a profession in their very first
exercise of its privileges; but considering their peculiar position
they trust that the trade and the public, without whose approbation
they can have no possible hope of success, will wink
at their innovation, and consent to receive them upon their own
merits, without regard to the manner of their introduction.
At the first regular meeting of the association, held on the
thirty-first day of January A. D. 1843, at their rooms in Liberty
Street, the story of the Haunted Merchant, was read
by one of the late firm of Hoppersmith, Bluntwhistle and Rivetsom.
It was listened to from beginning to end with profound
attention; which was manifested not so much by the
silence of the auditors, as by their frequent enquiries in regard
to dates, and whether such and such a name were meant for
so and so, and whether a certain firm well known to the association
history. To all such questions a very positive negative was
given; and in reply to an enquirer whether or not the narrative
were strictly true, and whether the narrator had impersonated
himself in either of the characters, he replied that the
history was mainly a true history, and that he had not attempted
to impersonate himself, but that he must confess in
regard to the spiritual appearance of one of the parties introduced,
he had no more reliable authority than common report,
although he did himself believe in the reality of that
portion of the history as firmly as in any other. He was at
first inclined to omit that part of it, thinking that it bore too
near a resemblance to some of those uncertain personages
known as the Chevaliers de la table ronde, who were too delicate
in texture for these stern and exacting times, but that he
had recently met with two gentlemen whose communications
had silenced his scruples. One was a Swedenborgian, who
assured him that he had frequently seen spirits, and he looked
upon them as really matter of fact people, as any of the grocers
in Front-st.; the other was a neurologist, who had explained
to him the principle of ghost-seeing, by which it appeared that
there was a ghost organ in the human brain, which enabled
one to see spirits, just as there was an organ of tune which
enabled one to distinguish discords and harmonies in musical
sounds. From which he had come to the conclusion that it
would be as absurd to dispute the existence of ghosts with
one who had a full development of the ghost organ, as it
would be to dispute with a musician the existence of harmony
in one of Beethoven's Symphonies.
Hereupon one of the members of the association, Mr. B.,
stood up and said that he did not consider any apology necessary
for the ghost, at all; and that for his part he liked the
ghost much, as he did ghosts in general, although he had never
had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of one; but that
in his present circumstances, he heartily wished that the
were of that order of beings, as he had understood that they
were extremely partial to being entertained in the open air on
cold nights, and he should be happy to return some of the substantial
favors he had received by giving a soiree to his
friends on the Battery some moonlight night, as it was the
only place for which he could issue “at home” cards. As to
the truth of the thing he had no misgivings, for he had a
friend in whose veracity he would place the most entire reliance,
who went the entire figure for spiritual visitants; he
met this friend but a few days before, and upon asking the
cause of his unusual seriousness of aspect, was told that he
had just had an interview with his departed wife, who expressed
great satisfaction at being permitted to see her husband once
more, and replied in answer to his enquiry whether it would
be agreeable to her that he should marry again, that it was
perfectly indifferent to her; he might consult his own inclination,
only she could assure him upon the word of a ghost that
it was decreed that he would be re united to her forever as
soon as he made his appearance in her present place of abode.
“I wish,” said Mr. J., another member of the association
who had recently come out in a suit of deep mourning, “he
had enquired whether that rule applied in all cases.”
Mr. B. stated that as he had no personal motive for making
the enquiry he did not do so, but that he would state for the
benefit of any gentleman in affliction, as he was always on
hand to do a good natured thing, that he did not doubt but
that the rule was general.
The anxious enquirer in black, heaved a deep sigh in acknowledgement
of the kind heartedness of his friend, but made
no other response.
As the evening was far advanced towards midnight, several
gentleman called out “question, question;” and upon putting
it to vote it was decided by nine votes, almost unanimous,
that the Haunted Merchant should be immediately put
a blank.
A motion to adjourn until the next regular meeting of the
association having been moved and seconded it was put to
vote and carried unanimously, whereupon the meeting adjourned.
| Bankrupt stories | |