THE COLLAPSE OF THE BANK 91 
deposited there. Some of them, while strongly assuring 
me of its soundness had withdrawn their money and 
opened accounts elsewhere. 
Gradually I discovered that the bank had, through dis- 
honest agents, sustained heavy losses at the South; that 
there was a discrepancy on the books of forty thousand 
dollars for which no account could be given, and that, 
instead of our assets being equal to our liabilities, we 
could not in all likelihoods of the case pay seventy-two 
cents on the dollar. There was an air of mystery, too, 
about the spacious and elegant apartments of the bank 
building, which greatly troubled me, and which I have 
only been able to explain to myself on the supposition 
that the employees, from the actuary and the inspector 
down to the messengers, were (perhaps) naturally anxious 
to hold their places, and consequently have the business 
continued. I am not a violent advocate of the doctrine of 
total depravity of human nature. I am inclined, on the 
whole, to believe it a tolerable good nature, yet instances 
do occur which oblige me to concede that men can and 
do act from mere personal and selfish motives. In this 
case, at any rate, it seemed not unreasonable to conclude 
that the finely dressed young gentlemen, adorned with 
pens and bouquets, the most fashionable and genteel of 
all our colored youth, stationed behind those marble 
counters, should desire to retain their places as long as 
there was money in the vaults to pay them their salaries. 
Standing on the platform of this large and complicated 
establishment, with its thirty-four branches, extending 
from New Orleans to Philadelphia, its machinery in full 
operation, its correspondence carried on in cipher, its 
actuary dashing in and out of the bank with an air of 
pressing business, if not of bewilderment, I found the path 
of enquiry I was pursuing an exceedingly difficult one. I 
knew there had been very lately several runs on the bank, 
and that there had been a héavy draft made upon its 
reserve fund, but I did not know, what I should have been 
told before being allowed to enter upon the duties of my 
office, that this reserve, which the bank by its charter was 
required to keep, had been entirely exhausted, and that 
hence there was nothing left to meet any future emergency.