That's a financial crisis, in one sense--twenty-five senses, if I may say so.
When this same thing happens, on a grander scale, in the mercantile world, it produces what is called a panic.

One man's inability to pay his debts ruins another man, who, in turn, ruins someone else, and so on, until failure after failure makes even the richest capitalists tremble.

Public confidence is suspended, and the smaller fry of merchants are knocked over like tenpins.
These commercial panics occur periodically, after the fashion of comets and earthquakes and other disagreeable things.
Such a panic took place in New Orleans in the year 18--, and my father's banking-house went to pieces in the crash.
Of a comparatively large fortune nothing remained after paying his debts excepting a few thousand dollars, with which he proposed to return North and embark in some less hazardous enterprise.

In the meantime it was necessary for him to stay in New Orleans to wind up the business.
My grandfather was in some way involved in this failure, and lost, I fancy, a considerable sum of money; but he never talked much on the subject.

He was an unflinching believer in the spilt-milk proverb.
"It can't be gathered up," he would say, "and it's no use crying over it.