e maternal care of her three sons and one
daughter. The former, captained by Frank, the eldest, were a source of
considerable annoyance to her, for they were forever making expeditions
to different parts of the city, getting in with bad boys, probably, and
seeing and hearing things they should neither see nor hear.

Frank Cowperwood, even at ten, was a natural-born leader. At the day
school he attended, and later at the Central High School, he was looked
upon as one whose common sense could unquestionably be trusted in all
cases. He was a sturdy youth, courageous and defiant. From the very
start of his life, he wanted to know about economics and politics. He
cared nothing for books. He was a clean, stalky, shapely boy, with
a bright, clean-cut, incisive face; large, clear, gray eyes; a
wide forehead; short, bristly, dark-brown hair. He had an incisive,
quick-motioned, self-sufficient manner, and was forever asking questions
with a keen desire for an intelligent reply. He never had an ache or
pain, ate his food with gusto, and ruled his brothers with a rod of
iron. "Come on, Joe!" "Hurry, Ed!" These commands were issued in no
rough but always a sure way, and Joe and Ed came. They looked up to
Frank from the first as a master, and what he had to say was listened to
eagerly.

He was forever pondering, pondering--one fact astonishing him quite as
much as another--for he could not figure out how this thing he had come
into--this life--was organized. How did all these people get into the
world? What were they doing here? Who started things, anyhow? His mother
told him the story of Adam and Eve, but he didn't believe it. There was
a fish-market not so very far from his home, and there, on his way to
see his father at the bank, or conducting his brothers on after-school
expeditions, he liked to look at a certain tank in front of one store
where were kept odd specimens of sea-life brought in by the Delaware Bay
fishermen. He saw once there a sea-horse--just a queer little sea-animal
that looked somewhat like a horse--and another time he saw an electric
eel which Benjamin Franklin's discovery had explained. One day he saw
a squid and a lobster put in the tank, and in connection with them was
witness to a tragedy which stayed with him all his life and cleared
things up considerably intellectually. The lobster, it appeared from
the talk of the idle bystanders, was offered no food, as the squid was
considered his rightful prey. He