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10th of May saw all the banks reduced to suspend specie payments; and upon no man did that disastrous day close with deeper mortification than upon him. Personally, and in his business relations, this event affected Mr. Ward as little possibly as any one at all connected with affairs; but, in his estimation, it vitally wounded the commercial honor and character of the city.
He was not, however, a man to waste, in unavailing regrets, hours that might be more advantageously employed to repair the evil, and he therefore at once set about the arrangement of measures for inducing and enabling the banks to resume at the earliest possible moment.”
1
This was accomplished within the year.
About the same time the Bank of England sent to Prime, Ward & King a loan of nearly five million dollars in gold.
Mr. King says, “This extraordinary mark of confidence, this well-earned tribute to the prudence and integrity of the house, Mr. Ward did not affect to undervalue, and confirming, as it did, the sagacity of his own views, and the results which he had so confidently foretold, it was not lost upon the community in the midst of which he lived.”
Our mother never forgot the afternoon when Brother Sam came into her study on his return from Wall Street and cried out to her:--
“Julia, men have been going up and down the office stairs all day long, carrying little wooden kegs of gold on their backs, marked ‘Prime, Ward & King’ and filled with English gold!”
1 The Late Samuel Ward, by Mr. Charles King.
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