"Don't say such a foolish, dreadful thing! You are not, I hope, such a coward as to fly from the consequences of your own act. If you have lost the money in fair trading you need not be ashamed to meet them all; others beside you lost by that unfortunate South. Your father would have stood his ground and faced the city," said the old woman, with spirit and pride.
"No doubt, mother, no doubt my father would have had the manliness to stand and face the break; but he was a man of great endurance and nerve; you know I am not. I would do anything rather than meet such a crash and live after it. You know I have been much more out in the world than my father. I am mixed up with such a number of things, am closely connected with such a number of institutions and men, that nothing, no consideration, could induce me to outlive bankruptcy. The people would not believe facts; they would not credit any statement, however plain, that I was insolvent. They would say that I had appropriated the money of the depositors, made a fraudulent pretence of bankruptcy, and concealed the money for my own use. I know the world better than you, mother; I know the world, and what it would say. I may be popular now; but if I fell, the street-boys might kick me through the gutter and no one would take my part, or try to get me fair play."
He dropped his head into his hands and shuddered.
The old woman looked at him with a sad sympathy, which was not wholly destitute of reproach.
"You know, Henry, thousands of men have had to face such things, and have come out of their difficulties without a stain or a hard word----"
"In my case that is impossible. I tell you, mother, they would have no more mercy on me than on a snake. The Bank is a private one, the property of one person, and on that one person all the wrath would fall. It is not like a joint stock, or a limited liability, where many are concerned as principals or shareholders or directors. It would be a case between an individual and his creditors. It would look as if I had borrowed money privately of all the people I knew, and spent it or gambled in dangerous foreign speculations, until I had dissipated their last pennies and left the people beggars. No, mother; the day I shut the Bank door I open the gate of Eternity with a bullet."