LOVE AND SKATES.
CHAPTER I.
A KNOT AND A MAN TO CUT IT.
Consternation! Consternation in the back office of Benjamin Brummage, Esq., banker in Wall Street.
Yesterday down came Mr. Superintendent Whiffler, from Dunderbunk, up the North River, to say, that, "unless something be done, at once, the Dunderbunk Foundry and Iron-Works must wind up." President Brummage forthwith convoked his Directors. And here they sat around the green table, forlorn as the guests at a Barmecide feast.
Well they might be forlorn! It was the rosy summer solstice, the longest and fairest day of all the year. But rose-color and sunshine had fled from Wall Street. Noisy Crisis towing black Panic, as a puffing steam-tug drags a three-decker cocked and primed for destruction, had suddenly sailed in upon Credit.
As all the green inch-worms vanish on the tenth of every June, so on the tenth of that June all the
