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This condition was very general throughout the City of New York. The boom days of real estate had disappeared, and with them, the optimistic speculators. Real estate was unsalable, and those who had received mortgages in payment of some of their capital and all their profits were confronted with the choice of either abandoning their mortgages or foreclosing them and again assuming control of their property. The conferences between the delinquent owners and the mortgagees to adjust these matters reminded one as much of funerals as the joyous meetings in the wine cellars had of weddings. These middle-class investors whom I met in ’72 and ’73 were completely wiped out and never came back. Quite the contrary was the case with most of those intrepid builders and operators like John D. Crimmins and Terrence Farley, who forgot their losses and went at it again with fresh vigour and new courage as soon as the liquidation had ended. In 1879, when specie payment had been resumed, the superintendents of both the insurance and bank departments urged institutions under their supervision to market their real estate as soon as possible. Their efforts and those of other recent plaintiffs to dispose of their holdings started a new active period. Real estate again became fashionable, and the plucky operators and builders who had survived the drastic punishment they had received were soon reinforced by a new set of men, of whom I was one.