Did this dismay the young German-American?  Not much.  “This is just what I am looking for,” said he.  “I have been able to manage this institution in prosperous times; now if I can only have a chance to close it up so that no man loses a dollar, when big banks around me are falling, I will accomplish all I have started to accomplish.”

Sure enough, the panic of 1893 arrived, and the young man’s opportunity came.  Bank after bank went down; old institutions whose venerable names had been their sufficient guarantee collapsed in a day.  Most building and loan associations, taking advantage of certain provisions of the law, and of their charters, refused to pay their depositors on demand.  The men and women who had put their money in found that they could not “withdraw” for some time, and then only at a loss.

But not so with the model experiment of my young friend, by which he proposed to demonstrate his ability to organize, manage, and support a difficult business, and to properly handle complex financial questions.  He closed his institution up amid the appreciation and praise of everybody who knew about it.

In the mean time he had worked a little harder than ever for the firm that employed him.  He took part in politics, too.  His acquaintance grew slowly but steadily, and then with ever-increasing rapidity, as each new-made friend enthusiastically described him to others.

It soon got on the tongues of the people that even in his politics this young man didn’t drink, smoke, nor swear.  More marvelous than all, it was said that he was even religious.  And the saying was true.  During all these years when he had no time for anything else, he also had no time to stay away from Sunday-school and church.  He had certain convictions and spoke them out.

He had no time for “society”; not a moment for parties; not an hour for the clubs.  But he did have time for one girl, and for her he did not have time enough.  All this was not so very long ago.  To-day this young man is a member of the firm for which he began as a common workman, and which has since grown to be one of the largest concerns of its kind in the entire country.  Successful banks have made him a director.  On all hands his judgment is sought and taken by old and able men in business, politics, and finance.

And to crown all these achievings, he has builded him a home where all the righteous joys abound, and over which presides the “girl he went to see” in the hard days of his beginnings, when he had no time for “society” except that which he found in her presence.  As he was then, so he is now—­“clean to the bone,” strong, upright, faithful, joyous in the unsullied happiness of the manly living of a manly life.

Very well, I tell you over again that this man did not go to college because he could not go to college; that he had no opportunities, no friends, few acquaintances.  But he did have right principles, good health, and an understanding that every drop of his blood must be wrought into a deed, every minute of his time compounded into power.  And this young man is not yet forty years of age.