You shall open a broker's shop in Boston next month," said the black
man.

"I'll do it to-morrow, if you wish," said Tom Walker.

"You shall lend money at two per cent a month."

"Egad, I'll charge four!" replied Tom Walker.

"You shall extort bonds, foreclose mortgages, drive the merchant to
bankruptcy--"

"I'll drive him to the d---l," cried Tom Walker, eagerly.

"You are the usurer for my money!" said the black legs, with delight.
"When will you want the rhino?"

"This very night."

"Done!" said the devil.

"Done!" said Tom Walker.--So they shook hands and struck a bargain.

A few days' time saw Tom Walker seated behind his desk in a counting
house in Boston. His reputation for a ready-moneyed man, who would lend
money out for a good consideration, soon spread abroad. Every body
remembers the days of Governor Belcher, when money was particularly
scarce. It was a time of paper credit. The country had been deluged
with government bills; the famous Land Bank had been established; there
had been a rage for speculating; the people had run mad with schemes
for new settlements; for building cities in the wilderness; land
jobbers went about with maps of grants, and townships, and Eldorados,
lying nobody knew where, but which every body was ready to purchase. In
a word, the great speculating fever which breaks out every now and then
in the country, had raged to an alarming degree, and body was dreaming
of making sudden fortunes from nothing. As usual, the fever had
subsided; the dream had gone off, and the imaginary fortunes with it;
the patients were left in doleful plight, and the whole country
resounded with the consequent cry of "hard times."

At this propitious time of public distress did Tom Walker set up as a
usurer in Boston. His door was soon thronged by customers. The needy
and the adventurous; the gambling speculator; the dreaming land jobber;
the thriftless tradesman; the merchant with cracked credit; in short,
every one driven to raise money by desperate means and desperate
sacrifices, hurried to Tom Walker.

Thus Tom was the universal friend of the needy, and he acted like a
"friend in need;" that is to say, he always exacted good pay and good
security. In proportion to the distress of the applicant was the
hardness of his terms. He accumulated bonds and mortgages; gradually
squeezed his customers closer and closer; and sent them, at length, dry
as a sponge from his door.

In this way he made mo