aight nose and a chin that tended to be pointed. His
eyebrows were bushy, emphasizing vague, grayish-green eyes, and his hair
was short and smooth and nicely parted. He wore a frock-coat always--it
was quite the thing in financial circles in those days--and a high hat.
And he kept his hands and nails immaculately clean. His manner might
have been called severe, though really it was more cultivated than
austere.

Being ambitious to get ahead socially and financially, he was very
careful of whom or with whom he talked. He was as much afraid of
expressing a rabid or unpopular political or social opinion as he was
of being seen with an evil character, though he had really no opinion
of great political significance to express. He was neither anti- nor
pro-slavery, though the air was stormy with abolition sentiment and its
opposition. He believed sincerely that vast fortunes were to be made
out of railroads if one only had the capital and that curious thing, a
magnetic personality--the ability to win the confidence of others. He
was sure that Andrew Jackson was all wrong in his opposition to Nicholas
Biddle and the United States Bank, one of the great issues of the day;
and he was worried, as he might well be, by the perfect storm of wildcat
money which was floating about and which was constantly coming to his
bank--discounted, of course, and handed out again to anxious borrowers
at a profit. His bank was the Third National of Philadelphia, located in
that center of all Philadelphia and indeed, at that time, of practically
all national finance--Third Street--and its owners conducted a brokerage
business as a side line. There was a perfect plague of State banks,
great and small, in those days, issuing notes practically without
regulation upon insecure and unknown assets and failing and suspending
with astonishing rapidity; and a knowledge of all these was an important
requirement of Mr. Cowperwood's position. As a result, he had become the
soul of caution. Unfortunately, for him, he lacked in a great
measure the two things that are necessary for distinction in any
field--magnetism and vision. He was not destined to be a great
financier, though he was marked out to be a moderately successful one.

Mrs. Cowperwood was of a religious temperament--a small woman, with
light-brown hair and clear, brown eyes, who had been very attractive in
her day, but had become rather prim and matter-of-fact and inclined
to take very seriously th