These commercial panics occur periodically, after the fashion of comets and earthquakes and other disagreeable things.

Such a panic took place in New Orleans in the year 18—­, and my father’s banking-house went to pieces in the crash.

Of a comparatively large fortune nothing remained after paying his debts excepting a few thousand dollars, with which he proposed to return North and embark in some less hazardous enterprise.  In the meantime it was necessary for him to stay in New Orleans to wind up the business.

My grandfather was in some way involved in this failure, and lost, I fancy, a considerable sum of money; but he never talked much on the subject.  He was an unflinching believer in the spilt-milk proverb.

“It can’t be gathered up,” he would say, “and it’s no use crying over it.  Pitch into the cow and get some more milk, is my motto.”

The suspension of the banking-house was bad enough, but there was an attending circumstance that gave us, at Rivermouth, a great deal more anxiety.  The cholera, which someone predicted would visit the country that year, and which, indeed, had made its appearance in a mild form at several points along the Mississippi River, had broken out with much violence at New Orleans.

The report that first reached us through the newspapers was meagre and contradictory; many people discredited it; but a letter from my mother left us no room for doubt.  The sickness was in the city.  The hospitals were filling up, and hundreds of the citizens were flying from the stricken place by every steamboat.  The unsettled state of my father’s affairs made it imperative for him to remain at his post; his desertion at that moment would have been at the sacrifice of all he had saved from the general wreck.

As he would be detained in New Orleans at least three months, my mother declined to come North without him.

After this we awaited with feverish impatience the weekly news that came to us from the South.  The next letter advised us that my parents were well, and that the sickness, so far, had not penetrated to the faubourg, or district, where they lived.  The following week brought less cheering tidings.  My father’s business, in consequence of the flight of the other partners, would keep him in the city beyond the period he had mentioned.  The family had moved to Pass Christian, a favorite watering-place on Lake Pontchartrain, near New Orleans, where he was able to spend part of each week.  So the return North was postponed indefinitely.

It was now that the old longing to see my parents came back to me with irresistible force.  I knew my grandfather would not listen to the idea of my going to New Orleans at such a dangerous time, since he had opposed the journey so strongly when the same objection did not exist.  But I determined to go nevertheless.

I think I have mentioned the fact that all the male members of our family, on my father’s side—­as far back as the Middle Ages—­have exhibited in early youth a decided talent for running away.  It was an hereditary talent.  It ran in the blood to run away.  I do not pretend to explain the peculiarity.  I simply admit it.