At last, the market became, to a certain extent, steady, but at appallingly low rates. Even at these Mr. Townsend felt disposed to sell, but every one said “No!” so emphatically, and so confidently predicted an advance, that he hesitated and delayed, day after day, week after week, and month after month, while the price still went down, until shares that had cost him from a dollar and ten cents to a dollar and twenty, were quoted at twenty cents nominally, and the tendency still downward.
To describe Mr. Townsend’s state of mind during the few months that this steady decline in the price of shares continued, would be impossible. No man could be more wretched than he was. Carefully did he conceal from his family the condition of his affairs, fearing all the time to look his wife or daughters steadily in the face, lest they should read the truth in his eyes.
In the mean time the precarious state of Mr. Townsend’s worldly affairs became pretty well known in business circles, and all manner of comments were made thereon. Every one could see and be astonished at his folly in withdrawing his capital from commerce, in which he had amassed a handsome fortune, and investing it in the stock of a single institution, whose very name was a fraud upon the community, and ought to have been a fact sufficiently conclusive to destroy all confidence in its safety. Many were the conversations held on the subject, much after this tenor:
“Poor Townsend, I pity him.”
“It’s more than I do, then. Any man who plays the fool, as he has, deserves to lose his money. I have no charity for him. He had made two or three hundred thousand dollars in fair, honest, regular trade, and not content with that, must sell his ships and go to speculating in western towns.”
“He was certainly very indiscreet.”
“Indiscreet! He was a fool! How any man, thoroughly educated as a merchant, and in the habit of dealing in only such commodities as possess an intrinsic value, could be so mad as to give forty or fifty thousand dollars for lots in an imaginary western city, on the mere word of a speculating sharper, passes my comprehension.”
“One of the strange occurrences of the present strange times. Had Townsend much money in United States’ Bank stock?”
“Every dollar he is worth, I am told.”
“It can’t be possible! What could have possessed him to make such a disposition of his property?”