Some one has truly said that in a great commercial city men are known only by their enterprises and their successes; that their antecedents become lost in the magnitude and rapidity with which events revolve.

This is particularly so with us.

The firm of Topman & Gusher had fixed itself in Pearl Street, and gone quietly into business without friends, acquaintances, or endorsers; and in a single year had secured both credit and respectability.

And it had done this on what is too frequently mistaken for energy and enterprise--show and pretension.
Upon Chapman's shoulders, however, the crushing effect of this great disaster fell heaviest.

Stripped of all he had, ruined, disgraced, he stood like one amazed at the suddenness of his own fall.