has made his own way against stubborn opposition, and
accumulated great wealth--how often, I say, we see such a man exhibit
a degree of simplicity in money making or some other matter that would
seem weak in an untutored boy. When he already has more money than he
knows what to do with, he will perhaps hazard all on some wild cat
speculation, and in a very little while find himself penniless and
unable to furnish support for his family. Again he becomes the victim of
a confidence game, and only learns how he has been played with when he
has lost perhaps fifty thousand dollars by the unscrupulous sharpers
with whom he has been dealing.

Such exhibitions of weakness in men to whom the community looks for an
example are always surprising, always painful; but they teach us the
important fact that human nature is easily influenced, easily molded,
easily led this way or that when the proper influences are brought to
bear upon it.

It is not so strange, then, that young Herbert Randolph, fresh from
the country and as ignorant of the city as a native African, should
have become dazzled by the flattering prospects spread out before him.
What a busy city New York seemed to him when he landed from the boat
in the early morning! Everything was bustle and activity. People were
hurrying along the streets as he had never seen them move in his quiet
country town. No idlers were about. Men and boys alike were full of
business--they showed it in their faces, their every movement. These
facts impressed the young country lad far more than the tall buildings
and fine streets. His own active nature bounded with admiration
at the life and dash on every hand. He had been reared among sleepy
people--people in a rut, whose blood flowed as slowly as the sluggish
current upon which they floated towards their final destiny.

But young Randolph was not of their class. He had inherited an
active mind, and an ambition that made him chafe at his inharmonious
surroundings at home. The very atmosphere, therefore, of this great
city, laden with the hum of activity, was stimulating and even
intoxicating to his boundless ambition. He had been a great reader.
Biography had been his favorite pastime. He knew the struggles and
triumphs of many of our most conspicuous merchant princes. Not a few
familiar names, displayed on great buildings which towered over the tops
of their smaller neighbors, greeted his eyes as he approached the city
by boat, and passed