'T is no new story--'t is the old story, scarcely with variations. I am sixty-one years old--almost sixty-two. In 1837 I was a leading importer of silk goods in this city. I lived in what was then a superb house in Broadway, a little above Bond-street. I visited Europe frequently--on business, it is true; but my tastes were refined, and my education good; for, although destined to a commercial life, my father, who took a wide and liberal view of what was required for an accomplished merchant, had sent me to 'Yale,' where I graduated respectably, and from whence I entered a counting-room. These European trips, therefore, were not thrown away on me. My wife, sometimes, went with me, till the care of young children prevented. The crisis of 1837 swept over the entire country like a tornado, and it carried our firm irretrievably under. I was in the very vigor of manhood, and I laughed at calamity. I only felt the stronger to resist and to conquer. Just as soon as we could discover the extent of the disaster, I set to work to clear the wreck and to prepare a statement, so that I could put a clean sheet before our creditors, offer to them all we had, and request a discharge. But our creditors were not to be found. They, in their turn, had gone down, had made assignments, had no power to give discharges; all was blended in a general insolvency--a universal ruin; and so our firm made an assignment, like the rest. I was not discouraged. I occupied myself, for a time, in aiding the assignee, at our old counting-room. We still had our house, as before--it was the inheritance of my wife--and I felt no shame in living in it, since I had surrendered every dollar's worth of my own property to the assignee. Soon, I discovered that it was a hopeless task to endeavor to make any thing out of our bankrupt estate. What should I do? I could attempt no business in my own name, and I saw no hope of relief from thraldom. A man in the prime of life, full of energy and courage and resolution, to be chained hand and foot, and kept in perpetual bondage! About this time, my friend Russell remarked to me (Russell had, through his wife, come into possession of a large fortune, consisting principally of unincumbered real estate in the city, and did nothing but look carefully to the collection of the rents)--Russell, I say, remarked to me, in his cool, supercilious way: 'I tell you what it is, Parkinson, there is no necessity for a man's failing--none whatever. Just look at me, now!' At that moment, I was in a very bitter mood, and I am afraid I cursed Russell in my heart. I do not know, but I think I have hated him ever since; for, in after-years, when I used to walk wearily past his house, (I saved sixpence by not riding,) I saw him stepping into his carriage for an evening drive, glossy and sleek and full-fed, sometimes--GOD forgive me--yes, sometimes, between my close compressed teeth have escaped, as if spontaneously and not to be repressed, the words, 'damn him!' I mention this, because I do not believe, with some, that poverty tends to improve and subdue the evil in our hearts; if it does, why, looking thus at Russell, in his fine, open landau, did the gall so rise and overflow? Well, two or three years ran away. We had preserved an outward semblance of our old life. Friends had not absolutely dropped off. I had no rent to pay, and my wife knew how to economize. But, every now and then, visions of the wolf began to haunt me. It was only the head which appeared, thrust through the door into the parlor, exhibiting the slightest possible curl in the long, sharp mouth, disclosing two pointed ivory fangs--disclosing, but for an instant, two pointed ivory fangs, and then quickly concealed, and the head as quickly withdrawn. My GOD! reader, do _you_ know by experience any thing of the sensations produced by such an apparition? Do you know what it is to have a wife, who clings to you, quite safe in her protector, and young children, who look to 'papa' as to OMNIPOTENCE?... At last the year of Jubilee was announced. A general Bankrupt Law! Men's faces brightened with hope again. Hurried congratulations passed from lip to lip. Hands were grasped with an almost unnatural fervor.