The Financier | Page 6

white marble trimmings outlining the front door and windows. There
were trees in the street--plenty of them. The road pavement was of big, round
cobblestones, made bright and clean by the rains; and the sidewalks were of red brick,
and always damp and cool. In the rear was a yard, with trees and grass and sometimes
flowers, for the lots were almost always one hundred feet deep, and the house-fronts,
crowding close to the pavement in front, left a comfortable space in the rear.
The Cowperwoods, father and mother, were not so lean and narrow that they could not

enter into the natural tendency to be happy and joyous with their children; and so this
family, which increased at the rate of a child every two or three years after Frank's birth
until there were four children, was quite an interesting affair when he was ten and they
were ready to move into the New Market Street home. Henry Worthington
Cowperwood's connections were increased as his position grew more responsible, and
gradually he was becoming quite a personage. He already knew a number of the more
prosperous merchants who dealt with his bank, and because as a clerk his duties
necessitated his calling at other banking-houses, he had come to be familiar with and
favorably known in the Bank of the United States, the Drexels, the Edwards, and others.
The brokers knew him as representing a very sound organization, and while he was not
considered brilliant mentally, he was known as a most reliable and trustworthy
individual.
In this progress of his father young Cowperwood definitely shared. He was quite often
allowed to come to the bank on Saturdays, when he would watch with great interest the
deft exchange of bills at the brokerage end of the business. He wanted to know where all
the types of money came from, why discounts were demanded and received, what the
men did with all the money they received. His father, pleased at his interest, was glad to
explain so that even at this early age--from ten to fifteen--the boy gained a wide
knowledge of the condition of the country financially--what a State bank was and what a
national one; what brokers did; what stocks were, and why they fluctuated in value. He
began to see clearly what was meant by money as a medium of exchange, and how all
values were calculated according to one primary value, that of gold. He was a financier
by instinct, and all the knowledge that pertained to that great art was as natural to him as
the emotions and subtleties of life are to a poet. This medium of exchange, gold,
interested him intensely. When his father explained to him how it was mined, he dreamed
that he owned a gold mine and waked to wish that he did. He was likewise curious about
stocks and bonds and he learned that some stocks and bonds were not worth the paper
they were written on, and that others were worth much more than their face value
indicated.
"There, my son," said his father to him one day, "you won't often see a bundle of those
around this neighborhood." He referred to a series of shares in the British East India
Company, deposited as collateral at two-thirds of their face value for a loan of one
hundred thousand dollars. A Philadelphia magnate had hypothecated them for the use of
the ready cash. Young Cowperwood looked at them curiously. "They don't look like
much, do they?" he commented.
"They are worth just four times their face value," said his father, archly.
Frank reexamined them. "The British East India Company," he read. "Ten pounds--that's
pretty near fifty dollars."
"Forty-eight, thirty-five," commented his father, dryly. "Well, if we had a bundle of those
we wouldn't need to work very hard. You'll notice there are scarcely any pin-marks on
them. They aren't sent around very much. I don't suppose these have ever been used as
collateral before."

Young Cowperwood gave them back after a time, but not without a keen sense of the vast
ramifications of finance. What was the East India Company? What did it do? His father
told him.
At home also he listened to considerable talk of financial investment and adventure. He
heard, for one thing, of a curious character by the name of Steemberger, a great beef
speculator from Virginia, who was attracted to Philadelphia in those days by the hope of
large and easy credits. Steemberger, so his father said, was close to Nicholas Biddle,
Lardner, and others of the United States Bank, or at least friendly with them, and seemed
to be able to obtain from that organization nearly all that he asked for. His operations in
the purchase of cattle in Virginia, Ohio, and other States were