It was in his thirteenth year that young Cowperwood entered into his
first business venture. Walking along Front Street one day, a street of
importing and wholesale establishments, he saw an auctioneer’s flag
hanging out before a wholesale grocery and from the interior came the
auctioneer’s voice: “What am I bid for this exceptional lot of Java
coffee, twenty-two bags all told, which is now selling in the market
for seven dollars and thirty-two cents a bag wholesale? What am I bid?
What am I bid? The whole lot must go as one. What am I bid?”

“Eighteen dollars,” suggested a trader standing near the door, more to
start the bidding than anything else. Frank paused.

“Twenty-two!” called another.

“Thirty!” a third. “Thirty-five!” a fourth, and so up to seventy-five,
less than half of what it was worth.

“I’m bid seventy-five! I’m bid seventy-five!” called the auctioneer,
loudly. “Any other offers? Going once at seventy-five; am I offered
eighty? Going twice at seventy-five, and”—he paused, one hand raised
dramatically. Then he brought it down with a slap in the palm of the
other—“sold to Mr. Silas Gregory for seventy-five. Make a note of that,
Jerry,” he called to his red-haired, freckle-faced clerk beside him.
Then he turned to another lot of grocery staples—this time starch,
eleven barrels of it.

Young Cowperwood was making a rapid calculation. If, as the auctioneer
said, coffee was worth seven dollars and thirty-two cents a bag in the
open market, and this buyer was getting this coffee for seventy-five
dollars, he was making then and there eighty-six dollars and four
cents, to say nothing of what his profit would be if he sold it at
retail. As he recalled, his mother was paying twenty-eight cents a
pound. He drew nearer, his books tucked under his arm, and watched
these operations closely. The starch, as he soon heard, was valued at
ten dollars a barrel, and it only brought six. Some kegs of vinegar
were knocked down at one-third their value, and so on. He began to wish
he could bid; but he had no money, just a little pocket change. The
auctioneer noticed him standing almost directly under his nose, and was
impressed with the stolidity—solidity—of the boy’s expression.

“I am going to offer you now a fine lot of Castile soap—seven cases, no
less—which, as you know, if you know anything about soap, is now
selling at fourteen cents a bar. This soap is worth anywhere at this
moment eleven dollars and seventy-five cents a case. What am I bid?
What am I bid? What am I bid?” He was talking fast in the usual style
of auctioneers, with much unnecessary emphasis; but Cowperwood was not
unduly impressed. He was already rapidly calculating for himself. Seven
cases at eleven dollars and seventy-five cents would be worth just
eighty-two dollars and twenty-five cents; and if it went at half—if it
went at half—

“Twelve dollars,” commented one bidder.

“Fifteen,” bid another.

“Twenty,” called a third.

“Twenty-five,” a fourth.

Then it came to dollar raises, for Castile soap was not such a vital
commodity. “Twenty-six.” “Twenty-seven.” “Twenty-eight.” “Twenty-nine.”
There was a pause. “Thirty,” observed young Cowperwood, decisively.

The auctioneer, a short lean faced, spare man with bushy hair and an
incisive eye, looked at him curiously and almost incredulously but
without pausing. He had, somehow, in spite of himself, been impressed
by the boy’s peculiar eye; and now he felt, without knowing why, that
the offer was probably legitimate enough, and that the boy had the
money. He might be the son of a grocer.

“I’m bid thirty! I’m bid thirty! I’m bid thirty for this fine lot of
Castile soap. It’s a fine lot. It’s worth fourteen cents a bar. Will
any one bid thirty-one? Will any one bid thirty-one? Will any one bid
thirty-one?”

“Thirty-one,” said a voice.

“Thirty-two,” replied Cowperwood. The same process was repeated.

“I’m bid thirty-two! I’m bid thirty-two! I’m bid thirty-two! Will
anybody bid thirty-three? It’s fine soap. Seven cases of fine Castile
soap. Will anybody bid thirty-three?”

Young Cowperwood’s mind was working. He had no money with him; but his
father was teller of the Third National Bank, and he could quote him as
reference. He could sell all of his soap to the family grocer, surely;
or, if not, to other grocers. Other people were anxious to get this
soap at this price. Why not he?

The auctioneer paused.

“Thirty-two once! Am I bid thirty-three? Thirty-two twice! Am I bid
thirty-three? Thirty-two three times! Seven fine cases of soap. Am I
bid anything more? Once, twice! Three times! Am I bid anything
more?”—his hand was up again—“and sold to Mr.—?” He leaned over and
looked curiously into the face of his young bidder.

“Frank Cowperwood, son of the teller of the Third National Bank,”
replied the boy, decisively.

“Oh, yes,” said the man, fixed by his glance.

“Will you wait while I run up to the bank and get the money?”

“Yes. Don’t be gone long. If you’re not here in an hour I’ll sell it
again.”

Young Cowperwood made no reply. He hurried out and ran fast; first, to
his mother’s grocer, whose store was within a block of his home.

Thirty feet from the door he slowed up, put on a nonchalant air, and
strolling in, looked about for Castile soap. There it was, the same
kind, displayed in a box and looking just as his soap looked.

“How much is this a bar, Mr. Dalrymple?” he inquired.

“Sixteen cents,” replied that worthy.

“If I could sell you seven boxes for sixty-two dollars just like this,
would you take them?”

“The same soap?”

“Yes, sir.”

Mr. Dalrymple calculated a moment.

“Yes, I think I would,” he replied, cautiously.

“Would you pay me to-day?”

“I’d give you my note for it. Where is the soap?”

He was perplexed and somewhat astonished by this unexpected proposition
on the part of his neighbor’s son. He knew Mr. Cowperwood well—and
Frank also.

“Will you take it if I bring it to you to-day?”

“Yes, I will,” he replied. “Are you going into the soap business?”

“No. But I know where I can get some of that soap cheap.”

He hurried out again and ran to his father’s bank. It was after banking
hours; but he knew how to get in, and he knew that his father would be
glad to see him make thirty dollars. He only wanted to borrow the money
for a day.

“What’s the trouble, Frank?” asked his father, looking up from his desk
when he appeared, breathless and red faced.

“I want you to loan me thirty-two dollars! Will you?”

“Why, yes, I might. What do you want to do with it?”

“I want to buy some soap—seven boxes of Castile soap. I know where I
can get it and sell it. Mr. Dalrymple will take it. He’s already
offered me sixty-two for it. I can get it for thirty-two. Will you let
me have the money? I’ve got to run back and pay the auctioneer.”

His father smiled. This was the most business-like attitude he had seen
his son manifest. He was so keen, so alert for a boy of thirteen.

“Why, Frank,” he said, going over to a drawer where some bills were,
“are you going to become a financier already? You’re sure you’re not
going to lose on this? You know what you’re doing, do you?”

“You let me have the money, father, will you?” he pleaded. “I’ll show
you in a little bit. Just let me have it. You can trust me.”

He was like a young hound on the scent of game. His father could not
resist his appeal.

“Why, certainly, Frank,” he replied. “I’ll trust you.” And he counted
out six five-dollar certificates of the Third National’s own issue and
two ones. “There you are.”

Frank ran out of the building with a briefly spoken thanks and returned
to the auction room as fast as his legs would carry him. When he came
in, sugar was being auctioned. He made his way to the auctioneer’s
clerk.

“I want to pay for that soap,” he suggested.

“Now?”

“Yes. Will you give me a receipt?”

“Yep.”

“Do you deliver this?”

“No. No delivery. You have to take it away in twenty-four hours.”

That difficulty did not trouble him.

“All right,” he said, and pocketed his paper testimony of purchase.

The auctioneer watched him as he went out. In half an hour he was back
with a drayman—an idle levee-wharf hanger-on who was waiting for a job.

Frank had bargained with him to deliver the soap for sixty cents. In
still another half-hour he was before the door of the astonished Mr.
Dalrymple whom he had come out and look at the boxes before attempting
to remove them. His plan was to have them carried on to his own home if
the operation for any reason failed to go through. Though it was his
first great venture, he was cool as glass.

“Yes,” said Mr. Dalrymple, scratching his gray head reflectively. “Yes,
that’s the same soap. I’ll take it. I’ll be as good as my word. Where’d
you get it, Frank?”

“At Bixom’s auction up here,” he replied, frankly and blandly.

Mr. Dalrymple had the drayman bring in the soap; and after some
formality—because the agent in this case was a boy—made out his note at
thirty days and gave it to him.

Frank thanked him and pocketed the note. He decided to go back to his
father’s bank and discount it, as he had seen others doing, thereby
paying his father back and getting his own profit in ready money. It
couldn’t be done ordinarily on any day after business hours; but his
father would make an exception in his case.

He hurried back, whistling; and his father glanced up smiling when he
came in.

“Well, Frank, how’d you make out?” he asked.

“Here’s a note at thirty days,” he said, producing the paper Dalrymple
had given him. “Do you want to discount that for me? You can take your
thirty-two out of that.”

His father examined it closely. “Sixty-two dollars!” he observed. “Mr.
Dalrymple! That’s good paper! Yes, I can. It will cost you ten per
cent.,” he added, jestingly. “Why don’t you just hold it, though? I’ll
let you have the thirty-two dollars until the end of the month.”

“Oh, no,” said his son, “you discount it and take your money. I may
want mine.”

His father smiled at his business-like air. “All right,” he said. “I’ll
fix it to-morrow. Tell me just how you did this.” And his son told him.

At seven o’clock that evening Frank’s mother heard about it, and in due
time Uncle Seneca.

“What’d I tell you, Cowperwood?” he asked. “He has stuff in him, that
youngster. Look out for him.”

Mrs. Cowperwood looked at her boy curiously at dinner. Was this the son
she had nursed at her bosom not so very long before? Surely he was
developing rapidly.

“Well, Frank, I hope you can do that often,” she said.

“I hope so, too, ma,” was his rather noncommittal reply.

Auction sales were not to be discovered every day, however, and his
home grocer was only open to one such transaction in a reasonable
period of time, but from the very first young Cowperwood knew how to
make money. He took subscriptions for a boys’ paper; handled the agency
for the sale of a new kind of ice-skate, and once organized a band of
neighborhood youths into a union for the purpose of purchasing their
summer straw hats at wholesale. It was not his idea that he could get
rich by saving. From the first he had the notion that liberal spending
was better, and that somehow he would get along.

It was in this year, or a little earlier, that he began to take an
interest in girls. He had from the first a keen eye for the beautiful
among them; and, being good-looking and magnetic himself, it was not
difficult for him to attract the sympathetic interest of those in whom
he was interested. A twelve-year old girl, Patience Barlow, who lived
further up the street, was the first to attract his attention or be
attracted by him. Black hair and snapping black eyes were her portion,
with pretty pigtails down her back, and dainty feet and ankles to match
a dainty figure. She was a Quakeress, the daughter of Quaker parents,
wearing a demure little bonnet. Her disposition, however, was
vivacious, and she liked this self-reliant, self-sufficient,
straight-spoken boy. One day, after an exchange of glances from time to
time, he said, with a smile and the courage that was innate in him:
“You live up my way, don’t you?”

“Yes,” she replied, a little flustered—this last manifested in a
nervous swinging of her school-bag—“I live at number one-forty-one.”

“I know the house,” he said. “I’ve seen you go in there. You go to the
same school my sister does, don’t you? Aren’t you Patience Barlow?” He
had heard some of the boys speak her name. “Yes. How do you know?”

“Oh, I’ve heard,” he smiled. “I’ve seen you. Do you like licorice?”

He fished in his coat and pulled out some fresh sticks that were sold
at the time.

“Thank you,” she said, sweetly, taking one.

“It isn’t very good. I’ve been carrying it a long time. I had some
taffy the other day.”

“Oh, it’s all right,” she replied, chewing the end of hers.

“Don’t you know my sister, Anna Cowperwood?” he recurred, by way of
self-introduction. “She’s in a lower grade than you are, but I thought
maybe you might have seen her.”

“I think I know who she is. I’ve seen her coming home from school.”

“I live right over there,” he confided, pointing to his own home as he
drew near to it, as if she didn’t know. “I’ll see you around here now,
I guess.”

“Do you know Ruth Merriam?” she asked, when he was about ready to turn
off into the cobblestone road to reach his own door.

“No, why?”

“She’s giving a party next Tuesday,” she volunteered, seemingly
pointlessly, but only seemingly.

“Where does she live?”

“There in twenty-eight.”

“I’d like to go,” he affirmed, warmly, as he swung away from her.

“Maybe she’ll ask you,” she called back, growing more courageous as the
distance between them widened. “I’ll ask her.”

“Thanks,” he smiled.

And she began to run gayly onward.

He looked after her with a smiling face. She was very pretty. He felt a
keen desire to kiss her, and what might transpire at Ruth Merriam’s
party rose vividly before his eyes.

This was just one of the early love affairs, or puppy loves, that held
his mind from time to time in the mixture of after events. Patience
Barlow was kissed by him in secret ways many times before he found
another girl. She and others of the street ran out to play in the snow
of a winter’s night, or lingered after dusk before her own door when
the days grew dark early. It was so easy to catch and kiss her then,
and to talk to her foolishly at parties. Then came Dora Fitler, when he
was sixteen years old and she was fourteen; and Marjorie Stafford, when
he was seventeen and she was fifteen. Dora Fitter was a brunette, and
Marjorie Stafford was as fair as the morning, with bright-red cheeks,
bluish-gray eyes, and flaxen hair, and as plump as a partridge.

It was at seventeen that he decided to leave school. He had not
graduated. He had only finished the third year in high school; but he
had had enough. Ever since his thirteenth year his mind had been on
finance; that is, in the form in which he saw it manifested in Third
Street. There had been odd things which he had been able to do to earn
a little money now and then. His Uncle Seneca had allowed him to act as
assistant weigher at the sugar-docks in Southwark, where
three-hundred-pound bags were weighed into the government bonded
warehouses under the eyes of United States inspectors. In certain
emergencies he was called to assist his father, and was paid for it. He
even made an arrangement with Mr. Dalrymple to assist him on Saturdays;
but when his father became cashier of his bank, receiving an income of
four thousand dollars a year, shortly after Frank had reached his
fifteenth year, it was self-evident that Frank could no longer continue
in such lowly employment.

Just at this time his Uncle Seneca, again back in Philadelphia and
stouter and more domineering than ever, said to him one day:

“Now, Frank, if you’re ready for it, I think I know where there’s a
good opening for you. There won’t be any salary in it for the first
year, but if you mind your p’s and q’s, they’ll probably give you
something as a gift at the end of that time. Do you know of Henry
Waterman & Company down in Second Street?”

“I’ve seen their place.”

“Well, they tell me they might make a place for you as a bookkeeper.
They’re brokers in a way—grain and commission men. You say you want to
get in that line. When school’s out, you go down and see Mr.
Waterman—tell him I sent you, and he’ll make a place for you, I think.
Let me know how you come out.”

Uncle Seneca was married now, having, because of his wealth, attracted
the attention of a poor but ambitious Philadelphia society matron; and
because of this the general connections of the Cowperwoods were
considered vastly improved. Henry Cowperwood was planning to move with
his family rather far out on North Front Street, which commanded at
that time a beautiful view of the river and was witnessing the
construction of some charming dwellings. His four thousand dollars a
year in these pre-Civil-War times was considerable. He was making what
he considered judicious and conservative investments and because of his
cautious, conservative, clock-like conduct it was thought he might
reasonably expect some day to be vice-president and possibly president,
of his bank.

This offer of Uncle Seneca to get him in with Waterman & Company seemed
to Frank just the thing to start him off right. So he reported to that
organization at 74 South Second Street one day in June, and was
cordially received by Mr. Henry Waterman, Sr. There was, he soon
learned, a Henry Waterman, Jr., a young man of twenty-five, and a
George Waterman, a brother, aged fifty, who was the confidential inside
man. Henry Waterman, Sr., a man of fifty-five years of age, was the
general head of the organization, inside and out—traveling about the
nearby territory to see customers when that was necessary, coming into
final counsel in cases where his brother could not adjust matters,
suggesting and advising new ventures which his associates and hirelings
carried out. He was, to look at, a phlegmatic type of man—short, stout,
wrinkled about the eyes, rather protuberant as to stomach, red-necked,
red-faced, the least bit popeyed, but shrewd, kindly, good-natured, and
witty. He had, because of his naturally common-sense ideas and rather
pleasing disposition built up a sound and successful business here. He
was getting strong in years and would gladly have welcomed the hearty
cooperation of his son, if the latter had been entirely suited to the
business.

He was not, however. Not as democratic, as quick-witted, or as pleased
with the work in hand as was his father, the business actually offended
him. And if the trade had been left to his care, it would have rapidly
disappeared. His father foresaw this, was grieved, and was hoping some
young man would eventually appear who would be interested in the
business, handle it in the same spirit in which it had been handled,
and who would not crowd his son out.

Then came young Cowperwood, spoken of to him by Seneca Davis. He looked
him over critically. Yes, this boy might do, he thought. There was
something easy and sufficient about him. He did not appear to be in the
least flustered or disturbed. He knew how to keep books, he said,
though he knew nothing of the details of the grain and commission
business. It was interesting to him. He would like to try it.

“I like that fellow,” Henry Waterman confided to his brother the moment
Frank had gone with instructions to report the following morning.
“There’s something to him. He’s the cleanest, briskest, most alive
thing that’s walked in here in many a day.”

“Yes,” said George, a much leaner and slightly taller man, with dark,
blurry, reflective eyes and a thin, largely vanished growth of
brownish-black hair which contrasted strangely with the egg-shaped
whiteness of his bald head. “Yes, he’s a nice young man. It’s a wonder
his father don’t take him in his bank.”

“Well, he may not be able to,” said his brother. “He’s only the cashier
there.”

“That’s right.”

“Well, we’ll give him a trial. I bet anything he makes good. He’s a
likely-looking youth.”

Henry got up and walked out into the main entrance looking into Second
Street. The cool cobble pavements, shaded from the eastern sun by the
wall of buildings on the east—of which his was a part—the noisy trucks
and drays, the busy crowds hurrying to and fro, pleased him. He looked
at the buildings over the way—all three and four stories, and largely
of gray stone and crowded with life—and thanked his stars that he had
originally located in so prosperous a neighborhood. If he had only
brought more property at the time he bought this!

“I wish that Cowperwood boy would turn out to be the kind of man I
want,” he observed to himself, meditatively. “He could save me a lot of
running these days.”

Curiously, after only three or four minutes of conversation with the
boy, he sensed this marked quality of efficiency. Something told him he
would do well.