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and he expected to make as much, if not more, to-day. There was no
telling what he could make, he thought, if he could only keep his small
organization in perfect trim and get his assistants to follow his orders
exactly. Ruin for others began early with the suspension of Fisk &
Hatch, Jay Cooke's faithful lieutenants during the Civil War. They had
calls upon them for one million five hundred thousand dollars in the
first fifteen minutes after opening the doors, and at once closed them
again, the failure being ascribed to Collis P. Huntington's Central
Pacific Railroad and the Chesapeake & Ohio. There was a long-continued
run on the Fidelity Trust Company. News of these facts, and of failures
in New York posted on 'change, strengthened the cause Cowperwood was so
much interested in; for he was selling as high as he could and buying
as low as he could on a constantly sinking scale. By twelve o'clock he
figured with his assistants that he had cleared one hundred thousand
dollars; and by three o'clock he had two hundred thousand dollars more.
That afternoon between three and seven he spent adjusting his trades,
and between seven and one in the morning, without anything to eat, in
gathering as much additional information as he could and laying his
plans for the future. Saturday morning came, and he repeated his
performance of the day before, following it up with adjustments on
Sunday and heavy trading on Monday. By Monday afternoon at three o'clock
he figured that, all losses and uncertainties to one side, he was once
more a millionaire, and that now his future lay clear and straight
before him.
As he sat at his desk late that afternoon in his office looking out
into Third Street, where a hurrying of brokers, messengers, and
anxious depositors still maintained, he had the feeling that so far as
Philadelphia and the life here was concerned, his day and its day with
him was over. He did not care anything about the brokerage business here
any more or anywhere. Failures such as this, and disasters such as the
Chicago fire, that had overtaken him two years before, had cured him of
all love of the stock exchange and all feeling for Philadelphia. He had
been very unhappy here in spite of all his previous happiness; and
his experience as a convict had made, him, he could see quite plainly,
unacceptable to the element with whom he had once hoped to associate.
There was nothing else to do, now that he had reestablished himself as
a Philadelphia business man and been pardoned for an offense which
he hoped to make people believe he had never committed, but to leave
Philadelphia to seek a new world.
"If I get out of this safely," he said to himself, "this is the end. I
am going West, and going into some other line of business." He thought
of street-railways, land speculation, some great manufacturing project
of some kind, even mining, on a legitimate basis.
"I have had my lesson," he said to himself, finally getting up and
preparing to leave. "I am as rich as I was, and only a little older.
They caught me once, but they will not catch me again." He talked to
Wingate about following up the campaign on the lines in which he had
started, and he himself intended to follow it up with great energy; but
all the while his mind was running with this one rich thought: "I am a
millionaire. I am a free man. I am only thirty-six, and my future is all
before me."
It was with this thought that he went to visit Aileen, and to plan for
the future.
It was only three months later that a train, speeding through the
mountains of Pennsylvania and over the plains of Ohio and Indiana, bore
to Chicago and the West the young financial aspirant who, in spite of
youth and wealth and a notable vigor of body, was a solemn, conservative
speculator as to what his future might be. The West, as he had carefully
calculated before leaving, held much. He had studied the receipts of the
New York Clearing House recently and the disposition of bank-balances
and the shipment of gold, and had seen that vast quantities of the
latter metal were going to Chicago. He understood finance accurately.
The meaning of gold shipments was clear. Where money was going trade
was--a thriving, developing life. He wished to see clearly for himself
what this world had to offer.
Two years later, following the meteoric appearance of a young speculator
in Duluth, and after Chicago had seen the tentative opening of a
grain and commission company labeled Frank A. Cowperwood & Co., which
ostensibly dealt in the great wheat crops of the West, a quiet divorce
was granted Mrs. Frank A. Cowperwood in Philadelphia, because apparently
she wished it. Time had not seemingly dealt badly with her. Her
financial affairs, once so bad, were now apparently all straightened
out, and she occupied in West Philadelphia, near one of her sisters, a
new and interesting home which was fitted with all the comforts of an
excellent middle-class residence. She was now quite religious once more.
The two children, Frank and Lillian, were in private schools, returning
evenings to their mother. "Wash" Sims was once more the negro general
factotum. Frequent visitors on Sundays were Mr. and Mrs. Henry
Worthington Cowperwood, no longer distressed financially, but subdued
and wearied, the wind completely gone from their once much-favored
sails. Cowperwood, senior, had sufficient money wherewith to sustain
himself, and that without slaving as a petty clerk, but his social joy
in life was gone. He was old, disappointed, sad. He could feel that with
his quondam honor and financial glory, he was the same--and he was not.
His courage and his dreams were gone, and he awaited death.
Here, too, came Anna Adelaide Cowperwood on occasion, a clerk in the
city water office, who speculated much as to the strange vicissitudes of
life. She had great interest in her brother, who seemed destined by fate
to play a conspicuous part in the world; but she could not understand
him. Seeing that all those who were near to him in any way seemed to
rise or fall with his prosperity, she did not understand how justice and
morals were arranged in this world. There seemed to be certain general
principles--or people assumed there were--but apparently there were
exceptions. Assuredly her brother abided by no known rule, and yet
he seemed to be doing fairly well once more. What did this mean? Mrs.
Cowperwood, his former wife, condemned his actions, and yet accepted of
his prosperity as her due. What were the ethics of that?
Cowperwood's every action was known to Aileen Butler, his present
whereabouts and prospects. Not long after his wife's divorce, and after
many trips to and from this new world in which he was now living, these
two left Philadelphia together one afternoon in the winter. Aileen
explained to her mother, who was willing to go and live with Norah, that
she had fallen in love with the former banker and wished to marry
him. The old lady, gathering only a garbled version of it at first,
consented.
Thus ended forever for Aileen this long-continued relationship with this
older world. Chicago was before her--a much more distinguished career,
Frank told her, than ever they could have had in Philadelphia.
"Isn't it nice to be finally going?" she commented.
"It is advantageous, anyhow," he said.
Concerning Mycteroperca Bonaci
There is a certain fish, the scientific name of which is Mycteroperca
Bonaci, its common name Black Grouper, which is of considerable value
as an afterthought in this connection, and which deserves to be better
known. It is a healthy creature, growing quite regularly to a weight of
two hundred and fifty pounds, and lives a comfortable, lengthy existence
because of its very remarkable ability to adapt itself to conditions.
That very subtle thing which we call the creative power, and which
we endow with the spirit of the beatitudes, is supposed to build this
mortal life in such fashion that only honesty and virtue shall prevail.
Witness, then, the significant manner in which it has fashioned
the black grouper. One might go far afield and gather less forceful
indictments--the horrific spider spinning his trap for the unthinking
fly; the lovely Drosera (Sundew) using its crimson calyx for a
smothering-pit in which to seal and devour the victim of its beauty;
the rainbow-colored jellyfish that spreads its prismed tentacles like
streamers of great beauty, only to sting and torture all that falls
within their radiant folds. Man himself is busy digging the pit and
fashioning the snare, but he will not believe it. His feet are in the
trap of circumstance; his eyes are on an illusion.
Mycteroperca moving in its dark world of green waters is as fine
an illustration of the constructive genius of nature, which is
not beatific, as any which the mind of man may discover. Its great
superiority lies in an almost unbelievable power of simulation, which
relates solely to the pigmentation of its skin. In electrical mechanics
we pride ourselves on our ability to make over one brilliant scene into
another in the twinkling of an eye, and flash before the gaze of an
onlooker picture after picture, which appear and disappear as we look.
The directive control of Mycteroperca over its appearance is much more
significant. You cannot look at it long without feeling that you are
witnessing something spectral and unnatural, so brilliant is its power
to deceive. From being black it can become instantly white; from being
an earth-colored brown it can fade into a delightful water-colored
green. Its markings change as the clouds of the sky. One marvels at the
variety and subtlety of its power.
Lying at the bottom of a bay, it can simulate the mud by which it is
surrounded. Hidden in the folds of glorious leaves, it is of the same
markings. Lurking in a flaw of light, it is like the light itself
shining dimly in water. Its power to elude or strike unseen is of the
greatest.
What would you say was the intention of the overruling, intelligent,
constructive force which gives to Mycteroperca this ability? To fit it
to be truthful? To permit it to present an unvarying appearance which
all honest life-seeking fish may know? Or would you say that subtlety,
chicanery, trickery, were here at work? An implement of illusion one
might readily suspect it to be, a living lie, a creature whose business
it is to appear what it is not, to simulate that with which it has
nothing in common, to get its living by great subtlety, the power of its
enemies to forefend against which is little. The indictment is fair.
Would you say, in the face of this, that a beatific, beneficent
creative, overruling power never wills that which is either tricky or
deceptive? Or would you say that this material seeming in which we dwell
is itself an illusion? If not, whence then the Ten Commandments and the
illusion of justice? Why were the Beatitudes dreamed of and how do they
avail?
The Magic Crystal
If you had been a mystic or a soothsayer or a member of that mysterious
world which divines by incantations, dreams, the mystic bowl, or the
crystal sphere, you might have looked into their mysterious depths at
this time and foreseen a world of happenings which concerned these
two, who were now apparently so fortunately placed. In the fumes of
the witches' pot, or the depths of the radiant crystal, might have been
revealed cities, cities, cities; a world of mansions, carriages, jewels,
beauty; a vast metropolis outraged by the power of one man; a great
state seething with indignation over a force it could not control; vast
halls of priceless pictures; a palace unrivaled for its magnificence; a
whole world reading with wonder, at times, of a given name. And sorrow,
sorrow, sorrow.
The three witches that hailed Macbeth upon the blasted heath might in
turn have called to Cowperwood, "Hail to you, Frank Cowperwood, master
of a great railway system! Hail to you, Frank Cowperwood, builder of
a priceless mansion! Hail to you, Frank Cowperwood, patron of arts and
possessor of endless riches! You shall be famed hereafter." But like the
Weird Sisters, they would have lied, for in the glory was also the ashes
of Dead Sea fruit--an understanding that could neither be inflamed by
desire nor satisfied by luxury; a heart that was long since wearied by
experience; a soul that was as bereft of illusion as a windless moon.
And to Aileen, as to Macduff, they might have spoken a more pathetic
promise, one that concerned hope and failure. To have and not to have!
All the seeming, and yet the sorrow of not having! Brilliant society
that shone in a mirage, yet locked its doors; love that eluded as a
will-o'-the-wisp and died in the dark. "Hail to you, Frank Cowperwood,
master and no master, prince of a world of dreams whose reality was
disillusion!" So might the witches have called, the bowl have danced
with figures, the fumes with vision, and it would have been true. What
wise man might not read from such a beginning, such an end?
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