RECREATION’S ADVERTISER 

The next day he was of necessity in the sad- 
dle again in New York, but all the tide was 
against him, his last bulwark was gone and 
when the Exchange opened the next morning 
the first feature of the day was the announce- 
ment of the failure of the old firm of which he 
was the real head and among the brokers who 
piused a moment—a moment only in their own 
affairs—the whispered truth went abroad that 
Edward Raymond had collapsed physically and 
mentally and was at that moment battling with 
death in an uptown sanitarium. 
Strange to say he survived, but all his former 
powers of aggression were gone. When the en- 
tangled affairs of his house were straightened 
out it was found that the ruin was complete and 
when the courts were through all that was left 
of the splendid fortune was a little house in a 
suburb of Brooklyn, in his wife’s name, some- 
thing she had bought intending to give it to a 
faithful servant some years before. There I 
saw them the last time. She sewing peacefully 
on the little porch, he pottering around the small 
lawn looking after his pet plants and shrubs, 
the two of them living quietly and perhaps more 
happily than ever before on the $1,200 per year 
which comes in from the investment of the 
$25,000 which they received last winter when the 
endowment policy matured. 

Of course the colonel’s death left his tobacco 
deals half finished, his estate losses through 
Raymond’s failure did the remaining execution 
and when the administration had cleared up the 
affairs of Col. Denby Grier, the sole ward be- 
tween his children and complete dependency, 
the only thing to keep his daughters from going 
into the town mills to earn their own living was 
the $50,000 Prudential Insurance policy. In 
the words of old Judge Sam, the colonel’s life- 
long friend, a poor man himself, ‘It stood out 
like a chimney tower above the blackened ruins 
of a mansion that had been swept by fire.” 
So, it seems to me the lesson is complete. In 
setting it forth I am glad it redounds to the bene- 
fit of that great institution which in the stress of 
a late hysterical day has not been found vulner- 
able to assault any more than that mighty rock, 
the impregnable Gibraltar, the Keeper of the 
Eastern Gate, whose staunchness it has taken 
for its emblem. The principle is good and the 
millions who have their welfare bound up in the 
conduct of this company have shown their com- 
plete approval of that same conduct. I cannot 
forget the monition in the sight of Col. Denby 
Grier at the height of a noble and unsullied 
career of success, plunging down to lie white and 
silent before the eyes of those entirely dependent 
on his continued existence, 

