THE FINANCIER
By Theodore Dreiser
Chapter I
The Philadelphia into which Frank Algernon Cowperwood was born was
a city of two hundred and fifty thousand and more. It was set with
handsome parks, notable buildings, and crowded with historic memories.
Many of the things that we and he knew later were not then in
existence--the telegraph, telephone, express company, ocean steamer,
city delivery of mails. There were no postage-stamps or registered
letters. The street car had not arrived. In its place were hosts of
omnibuses, and for longer travel the slowly developing railroad system
still largely connected by canals.
Cowperwood's father was a bank clerk at the time of Frank's birth,
but ten years later, when the boy was already beginning to turn a very
sensible, vigorous eye on the world, Mr. Henry Worthington Cowperwood,
because of the death of the bank's president and the consequent moving
ahead of the other officers, fell heir to the place vacated by the
promoted teller, at the, to him, munificent salary of thirty-five
hundred dollars a year. At once he decided, as he told his wife
joyously, to remove his family from 21 Buttonwood Street to 124 New
Market Street, a much better neighborhood, where there was a nice brick
house of three stories in height as opposed to their present two-storied
domicile. There was the probability that some day they would come into
something even better, but for the present this was sufficient. He was
exceedingly grateful.
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