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The real estate market had been as badly inflated as the stock market, and foreclosures were the order of the day. Properties like the block bounded by Park and Madison Avenue and Seventy-first and Seventy-second streets went under the hammer. John D. Crimmins and his father had paid $475,000 to James Lenox, who repurchased it for $374,150 at the foreclosure sale under the mortgage. Equities disappeared like the snow in spring-time. Where we had once been almost rushed to death with the drawing of mortgages to consummate the many sales, we were now hard pressed to keep pace with foreclosure proceedings.

I took charge of this work for Kurzman, who gave me 10 per cent. of the net fees; the commission was most acceptable, the experience invaluable, but a more depressing task it has never been my lot to perform. The proud and prosperous men that had been our best clients from 1871 to 1873 now returned to shed their wealth and, with it, their self-reliance. One who had owned eight or ten houses was reduced to borrowing $100 from Kurzman for temporary relief. I made up my mind never to “plunge”; if I had not lived through the Panic of ’73, I should to-day be either many times richer than I am or, what is far more likely, penniless.