The O.B.C. Don't,' Replied The American, Blowing Smoke
Through His Nose.
'This business looks de-ci-ded-ly prob-le-mat-i-cal.
What-at?'
'Oh, they'll pay the depositors in full. Don't you fret,' said a man who
had lost nothing and was anxious to console.
'I'm a shareholder,' said the American, and smoked on.
The rain continued to fall, and the umbrellas dripped in the racks, and
the wet men came and went, circling round the central fact that it was a
bad business, till the day, as was most fit, shut down in drizzling
darkness. There was a refreshing sense of brotherhood in misfortunes in
the little community that had just been electrocuted and did not want
any more shocks. All the pain that in England would be taken home to be
borne in silence and alone was here bulked, as it were, and faced in
line of company. Surely the Christians of old must have fought much
better when they met the lions by fifties at a time.
At last the men departed; the bachelors to cast up accounts by
themselves (there should be some good ponies for sale shortly) and the
married men to take counsel. May heaven help him whose wife does not
stand by him now! But the women of the Overseas settlements are as
thorough as the men. There will be tears for plans forgone, the changing
of the little ones' schools and elder children's careers, unpleasant
letters to be written home, and more unpleasant ones to be received from
relatives who 'told you so from the first.' There will be pinchings too,
and straits of which the outside world will know nothing, but the women
will pull it through smiling.
Beautiful indeed are the operations of modern finance - especially when
anything goes wrong with the machine. To-night there will be trouble in
India among the Ceylon planters, the Calcutta jute and the Bombay
cotton-brokers, besides the little households of small banked savings.
In Hongkong, Singapore, and Shanghai there will be trouble too, and
goodness only knows what wreck at Cheltenham, Bath, St. Leonards,
Torquay, and the other camps of the retired Army officers. They are
lucky in England who know what happens when it happens, but here the
people are at the wrong end of the cables, and the situation is not
good. Only one thing seems certain. There is a notice on a shut door, in
the wet, and by virtue of that notice all the money that was theirs
yesterday is gone away, and it may never come back again. So all the
work that won the money must be done over again; but some of the people
are old, and more are tired, and all are disheartened. It is a very
sorrowful little community that goes to bed to-night, and there must be
as sad ones the world over. Let it be written, however, that of the
sections under fire here (and some are cruelly hit) no man whined, or
whimpered, or broke down.
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