uldt
like to meet him."

And so Cowperwood was manoeuvered into the giant banking office, where
Mr. Gotloeb extended a genial hand.

"I hear much of Chicawkgo," he explained, in his semi-German,
semi-Hebraic dialect, "but almozd more uff you. Are you goink to
swallow up all de street-railwaiss unt elefated roats out dere?"

Cowperwood smiled his most ingenuous smile.

"Why? Would you like me to leave a few for you?"

"Not dot exzagly, but I might not mint sharink in some uff dem wit you."

"You can join with me at any time, Mr. Gotloeb, as you must know. The
door is always very, very wide open for you."

"I musd look into dot some more. It loogs very promising to me. I am
gladt to meet you."

The great external element in Cowperwood's financial success--and one
which he himself had foreseen from the very beginning--was the fact
that Chicago was developing constantly. What had been when he arrived
a soggy, messy plain strewn with shanties, ragged sidewalks, a
higgledy-piggledy business heart, was now truly an astounding
metropolis which had passed the million mark in population and which
stretched proud and strong over the greater part of Cook County. Where
once had been a meager, makeshift financial section, with here and
there only a splendid business building or hotel or a public office of
some kind, there were now canon-like streets lined with fifteen and
even eighteen story office buildings, from the upper stories of which,
as from watch-towers, might be surveyed the vast expanding regions of
simple home life below. Farther out were districts of mansions, parks,
pleasure resorts, great worlds of train-yards and manufacturing areas.
In the commercial heart of this world Frank Algernon Cowperwood had
truly become a figure of giant significance. How wonderful it is that
men grow until, like colossi, they bestride the world, or, like
banyan-trees, they drop roots from every branch and are themselves a
forest--a forest of intricate commercial life, of which a thousand
material aspects are the evidence. His street-railway properties were
like a net--the parasite Gold Thread--linked together as they were, and
draining two of the three important "sides" of the city.

In 1886, when he had first secured a foothold, they had been
capitalized at between six and seven millions (every device for issuing
a dollar on real property having been exhausted). To-day, under his
management, they were capitalized at betw