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 vast, amounting, in fact, to an entire
monopoly of the business of supplying beef to Eastern cities. He was a
big man