Herman Handle, a mere speck, into the débris. Stocks and bonds and real
estate became paper, with paper value. He clawed about with frantic,
clutching fingers but his voice was lost in the shrieks of thousands
more hopelessly hurt. You saw him sitting for hours together with a
black tin box in front of him, pawing over papers, scribbling down
figures, muttering. The bleak future that confronted them had little of
terror for Hattie Mandle. It presented no contrast with the bleakness of
the past. On the day that she came upon him, his head fallen at a
curious angle against the black tin box, his hands, asprawl, clutching
the papers that strewed the table, she was appalled, not at what she
found, but at the leap her heart gave at what she found. Herman Handle's
sudden death was one of the least of the tragedies that trailed in the
wake of the devastating panic.

Thus it was that Hugo Handle, at twenty-three, became the head of a
household. He did not need to seek work. From the time he was seventeen
he had been employed in a large china-importing house, starting as a
stock boy. Brought up under the harsh circumstances of Hugo's youth, a
boy becomes food for the reformatory or takes on the seriousness and
responsibility of middle age. In Hugo's case the second was true. From
his father he had inherited a mathematical mind and a sense of material
values. From his mother, a certain patience and courage, though he never
attained her iron indomitability.

It had been a terrific struggle. His salary at twenty-three was most
modest, but he was getting on. He intended to be a buyer, some day, and
take trips abroad to the great Austrian and French and English china
houses.

The day after the funeral he said to his mother, "Well, now we've got to