Before eleven o'clock the run had assumed ugly proportions and no amount of argument could stay the onslaught.

Colonel Drew and the directors, at first mildly distressed, and then seeing that the affair had become serious, grew more alarmed than they could afford to let the public see.

The loans of all the banks were unusually large.

Incipient runs on some had put all of them in an attitude of caution, and there was a natural reluctance to expose their own interests to jeopardy by coming to the relief of the Bank of Manhattan Island.
Monty Brewster had something like $200,000 in Colonel Drew's bank.

He would not have regretted on his own account the collapse of this institution, but he realized what it meant to the hundreds of other depositors, and for the first time he appreciated what his money could accomplish.