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Consternation! Consternation in the back office
of Benjamin Brummage, Esq., banker in Wall
Street.

Yesterday down came Mr. Superintendent
Whiffler, from Dunderbunk, up the North River,
to say, that, “unless something be done, at once,
the Dunderbunk Foundry and Iron-Works must
wind up.” President Brummage forthwith convoked
his Directors. And here they sat around
the green table, forlorn as the guests at a Barmecide
feast.

Well they might be forlorn! It was the rosy
summer solstice, the longest and fairest day of all
the year. But rose-color and sunshine had fled
from Wall Street. Noisy Crisis towing black
Panic, as a puffing steam-tug drags a three-decker
cocked and primed for destruction, had suddenly
sailed in upon Credit.

As all the green inch-worms vanish on the tenth
of every June, so on the tenth of that June all the

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money in America had buried itself and was as if
it were not. Everybody and everything was ready
to fail. If the hindmost brick went, down would
go the whole file.

There were ten Directors of the Dunderbunk
Foundry.

Now, not seldom, of a Board of ten Directors,
five are wise and five are foolish: five wise, who
bag all the Company's funds in salaries and
commissions for indorsing its paper; five foolish,
who get no salaries, no commissions, no dividends,—
nothing, indeed, but abuse from the stockholders,
and the reputation of thieves. That is to
say, five of the ten are pickpockets; the other five,
pockets to be picked.

It happened that the Dunderbunk Directors
were all honest and foolish but one. He, John
Churm, honest and wise, was off at the West, with
his Herculean shoulders at the wheels of a deadlocked
railroad. These honest fellows did not
wish Dunderbunk to fail for several reasons. First,
it was not pleasant to lose their investment. Second,
one important failure might betray Credit to
Crisis with Panic at its heels, whereupon every investment
would be in danger. Third, what would
become of their Directorial reputations? From
President Brummage down, each of these gentlemen
was one of the pockets to be picked in a great
many companies. Each was of the first Wall-Street
fashion, invited to lend his name and take
stock in every new enterprise. Any one of them

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might have walked down town in a long patchwork
toga made of the newspaper advertisements
of boards in which his name proudly figured. If
Dunderbunk failed, the toga was torn, and might
presently go to rags beyond repair. The first rent
would inaugurate universal rupture. How to
avoid this disaster? — that was the question.

“State the case, Mr. Superintendent Whiffler,”
said President Brummage, in his pompous manner,
with its pomp a little collapsed, pro tempore.

Inefficient Whiffler whimpered out his story.

The confessions of an impotent executive are
sorry stuff to read. Whiffler's long, dismal complaint
shall not be repeated. He had taken a prosperous
concern, had carried on things in his own
way, and now failure was inevitable. He had
bought raw material lavishly, and worked it badly
into half-ripe material, which nobody wanted to
buy. He was in arrears to his hands. He had tried
to bully them, when they asked for their money.
They had insulted him, and threatened to knock
off work, unless they were paid at once. “A set
of horrid ruffians,” Whiffler said, — “and his life
would n't be safe many days among them.”

“Withdraw, if you please, Mr. Superintendent,”
President Brummage requested. “The Board will
discuss measures of relief.”

The more they discussed, the more consternation.
Nobody said anything to the purpose, except Mr.
Sam Gwelp, his late father's lubberly son and successor.

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“Blast!” said he; “we shall have to let it
slide!”

Into this assembly of imbeciles unexpectedly entered
Mr. John Churm. He had set his Western
railroad trains rolling, and was just returned to
town. Now he was ready to put those Herculean
shoulders at any other bemired and rickety no-go-cart.

Mr. Churm was not accustomed to be a Director
in feeble companies. He came into Dunderbunk
recently as executor of his friend Damer, a year
ago bored to death by a silly wife.

Churm's bristly aspect and incisive manner made
him a sharp contrast to Brummage. The latter
personage was flabby in flesh, and the oppressively
civil counter-jumper style of his youth had grown
naturally into a deportment of most imposing pomposity.

The Tenth Director listened to the President's
recitative of their difficulties, chorused by the
Board.

“Gentlemen,” said Director Churm, “you want
two things. The first is Money!”

He pronounced this cabalistic word with such
magic power, that all the air seemed instantly filled
with a cheerful flight of gold American eagles, each
carrying a double eagle on its back and a silver
dollar in its claws; and all the soil of America
seemed to sprout with coin, as after a shower a
meadow sprouts with the yellow buds of the dandelion.

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“Money! yes, Money!” murmured the Directors.

It seemed a word of good omen, now.

“The second thing,” resumed the new-comer,
“is a Man!”

The Directors looked at each other and did not
see such a being.

“The actual Superintendent of Dunderbunk is
a dunderhead,” said Churm.

“Pun!” cried Sam Gwelp, waking up from a
snooze.

Several of the Directors, thus instructed, started
a complimentary laugh.

“Order, gentlemen! Orrderr!” said the President,
severely, rapping with a paper-cutter.

“We must have a Man, not a Whiffler!”
Churm continued. “And I have one in my eye.”

Everybody examined his eye.

“Would you be so good as to name him?” said
Old Brummage, timidly.

He wanted to see a Man, but feared the strange
creature might be dangerous.

“Richard Wade,” says Churm.

They did not know him. The name sounded
forcible.

“He has been in California,” the nominator
said.

A shudder ran around the green table. They
seemed to see a frowzy desperado, shaggy as a
bison, in a red shirt and jackboots, hung about the
waist with an assortment of six-shooters and

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bowieknives, and standing against a background of
mustangs, monte-banks, and lynch-law.

“We must get Wade,” Churm says, with authority.
“He knows Iron by heart. He can
handle Men. I will back him with my blank
check, to any amount, to his order.”

Here a murmur of applause, swelling to a cheer,
burst from the Directors.

Everybody knew that the Geological Bank
deemed Churm's deposits the fundamental stratum
of its wealth. They lay there in the vaults, like
underlying granite. When hot times came, they
boiled up in a mountain to buttress the world.

Churm's blank check seemed to wave in the air
like an oriflamme of victory. Its payee might
come from Botany Bay; he might wear his beard
to his knees, and his belt stuck full of howitzers
and boomerangs; he might have been repeatedly
hung by Vigilance Committees, and as often cut
down and revived by galvanism; but brandishing
that check, good for anything less than a million,
every Director in Wall Street was his slave, his
friend, and his brother.

“Let us vote Mr. Wade in by acclamation,”
cried the Directors.

“But, gentlemen,” Churm interposed, “if I give
him my blank check, he must have carte blanche,
and no one to interfere in his management.”

Every Director, from President Brummage down,
drew a long face at this condition.

It was one of their great privileges to potter in

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the Dunderbunk affairs and propose ludicrous impossibilities.

“Just as you please,” Churm continued. “I
name a competent man, a gentleman and fine fellow.
I back him with all the cash he wants. But
he must have his own way. Now take him, or
leave him!”

Such despotic talk had never been heard before
in that Directors' Room. They relucted a moment.
But they thought of their togas of advertisements
in danger. The blank check shook its blandishments
before their eyes.

“We take him,” they said, and Richard Wade
was the new Superintendent unanimously.

“He shall be at Dunderbunk to take hold to-morrow
morning,” said Churm, and went off to
notify him.

Upon this, Consternation sailed out of the hearts
of Brummage and associates.

They lunched with good appetites over the
green table, and the President confidently remarked, —

“I don't believe there is going to be much of a
crisis, after all.”

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