his
personal equation. These he possessed in common with other men because
he, too, was human: passions in common, ambitions in common, weaknesses
in common, and last, but not least, the pursuance of a common end--the
accumulation of riches.

The sum of these minus quantities added to the total of temperamental
characteristics and inherited traits left, unfortunately, in balancing
the personal equation a minus quantity. Not that he had any realization
of such a result--what man has? On the contrary, he firmly believed that
his inherited obstinate perseverance, his buoyant temperament, his
fortunate business connection with the great financier, his position as
the meeting-point of the hitherto divided family interests in Flamsted,
his intimacy with the Van Ostends--the distant tie of blood confirming
this at all points--plus his college education and cosmopolitan business
training in the financial capitals of Europe, were potent factors in
finding the value of _x_--this representing to him an, as yet, unknown
quantity of accumulated wealth.

He had not yet asked himself how large a sum he wished to amass, but he
said to himself almost daily, "I have shown my power along certain lines
to-day," these lines converging in his consciousness always to monetary
increment.

He worked with a will. His energy was tireless. He learned constantly
and much from other men powerful in the world of affairs--of their
methods of speculation, some legitimate, others quite the contrary; of
their manipulation of stocks, weak and strong; of their strengthening
the market when the strengthening was necessary to fill a threatened
deficit in their treasury and of their weakening a line of investment to
prevent over-loading and consequent depletion of the same. He was
thoroughly interested in all he heard and saw of the development of
mines and industries for the benefit of certain banking cliques and land
syndicates. If now and then a mine proved to have no bottom and the
small investor's insignificant sums dropped out of sight in this
bottomless pit, that did not concern him--it was all in the game, and
the game was an enticing one to be played to the end. The two facts that
nothing is certain at all times, and that everything is uncertain at
some time, added the excitement of chance to his business interest.

At times, for instance when walking up the Avenue on a bracing October
day, he felt as if he owned all in sight--a condition of min