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Making Money

Making Money

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Chapter 1 THE ARRIVAL

Word Count: 3798    |    Released on: 01/12/2017

f great wealth, the feverish home-bound masses which poured into upper Fifth Avenue with the awakening of the electric night were greeted by the strangest of

inging easily up the Avenue as though he were striding among green fields, head up, shoulders squared like a grenadier, without a care in the world, so visibly delighted at the nov

ly without that strained metropolitan gaze of trying to decide something of importance, either he is on his way to the station with a

ed dominion-The World. He went his way with long, swinging steps, smiling from the pure delight of being alive, amazed at everything: at the tangled stream of nations flowing past him; at the prodigious number of entrancing eyes which glanced at him fro

ring for the winter's campaign. In the crush of the Avenue was the note of home-coming, in taxicabs and coupés piled high with luggage and brown-faced children hanging at the windows, accla

s before he felt this imperative need of a stimulating dream, a career to emulate-a master of industry or a master of men-and, sublimely confident, he imagined that some day, not too distant, he would take his place in the luxurious flight of automobiles, a person

im, and he hailed him with enthusiasm as though the most amazing and delightful

! Hallo

hand, and rattled off in business manner: "Why, Boj

," said Crocker, s

in the devil of a rush-call me up

ker with a thwarted sense of comradeship could recover himself. A little later

prosperous; making lots of money, I s

stone flights seemed to have risen with the hour. Dazzling electric signs flashed in and out, transferring themselves into bewildering combinations with the necessity of startling this wonder-surfeited city into an instant's recognition. Electricity was i

roup and that, weaving his way as though there was something precious ahead, an object to be gained by the first arrival. All at once he perceived how unconsciously he had surrendered

her s

m bound for

a week. I saw Marsh and old Granny yeste

g to stick toget

so-

ng mo

his lips before he noticed the ado

any loose change I can put you on to a cinch. Step in

hrough the indifferent multitude. It was something to return as even a moderate-sized frog to the small puddle. He wandered from group to group, ensconced at round tables for a snatched moment before the call of the evening. The vitality of these groups, the conflict of sounds in the low room,

oe- I'll tell yo

cleaned up two th

tion's bound

business now; let

in the law sch

e P. a

crowd made fifteen m

oss Bozer

cout, they tell me you'

was bound to shoot up or to tumble down. Every one seemed to be making money or certain to do so soon, cocksure of his opinion, prognosticating the trend of industry with sure mastery. Bojo was rather dazed by this academic fervo

sinner-you com

nstinctively of the opposition. Marsh, finding himself in a complacent society, became a terrific radical, perhaps more from the necessity of dramatic sensations which was inherent in his brilliant nature than from a profound conviction. His features were irregular, the nose powerful and aquiline, the eyebrows arched with a suggestion of eloquence and imagination, the eyes gray and domineering, t

ates and messenger-boys for?" said Marsh when the greetings were over

hour

. You're a pampered darling, Bojo, to get

said Bojo with a half laugh and a whirl of his

et you t

one making money in this place? I've

will find out," said Marsh with a laugh. "However, this place's a regul

treet too, I suppose. I sp

daug

"I think I'll have a good opening the

s of the day. "Well, you ought to get plenty of excitement out of that. No

there," he said solemnly. "I've got to fight it out with the old

your G

rouble is we're

made up y

ills and drud

r mind, you've made it up,"

im. He liked most men, so genuinely interested in their problems and point of view that few could resist his good nature. Mentally and in the knowledge of the world he was much the younger. There was a boyishness and an unsophistication about him that was in the clear forehead and laughing brown eyes, in the spontaneous quality of his smile, the spring in his feet, the gene

got?" asked Bojo, who had left

ee it-you'd never believe it. Hidden as safe as a needle in a haysta

waiting, without having altered his pace made a wide detour amid a jam of automobiles, dodged two surface cars and a file of trucks, and arrived at the opposite curb considerably after Crocker, w

on it that will last five years. Take away the electric advertisements and you'll see it as it is-a main street in a mining town. All the rest is shanty civilization, that will come tumbl

ing currents of automobiles and the mingled throngs of late workers and early

cathedrals a year, that has an opera house with the front of a warehouse and ca

nging down a squalid side street with tenements in the dark distances, when Mar

OVER

OR APA

all at one end and at the other by the blazing glass back of a great restaurant. In the heart of the noisiest, vilest, most brutal struggle of the city lay this little bit of the Old World, decked in green plots, with vine-covered fountain and a stone Cupid perched on tip-toe, and above a group of dream trees filling the lucent yellow and green enclosure wi

ossi

l it. That's what a touch of imagination can do in New York. I say,

vorced from all the ugliness at its feet, rose like an historic campanile played about by timid stars. Over the roof-tops the hum of the city, never stilled, turned like a great wheel, incessantly, with faint, detached sounds pleasantly audible: a bell; a truck moving like a shrieking shell; the impertinent honk of taxis; urchin

w on the second floor a shadowy figure appeared, the s

at Bojo with you? Come up

g entrance, he found himself in a cozy den, almost thrown off his feet by the g

Bojo said at last, flinging him across

himself up. "Haven't a chance, living with two poli

ls were a hundred mementoes of school and college, while a couple of lounges and several great chairs were ind

led, him out yet," sa

th expulsion for one scrape after another more times than he could remember. But there was something that instantly disarmed anger in the odd star-pointing nose, the twinkly eyes,

mock contrition. "I'm getting to be an old man

self at the piano, where h

ares o

eadful

take

ange t

ven'

atrim

t to hand

s in

like a

ing around. "Do they or don't they? Any

's in

like a

tell h

ess the

, the doorway was ruled with a great body and George Granning came

it's good to

o on," said DeLancy j

ar individualities could not have been molded together except by the curious selective processes of an academic society system. The Big Four, as they had been dubbed (there is always a

n mills of New England; DeLancy from Detroit, of more modest means, son of a small business man, to whom his education had meant a genuine sacrifice; while George Granning, older by many years

, high-cheekbones. He was tow-headed and blue-eyed, of unfailing good humor, like most men of great strength. Only once had he been known to lose his temper, and that was in a football match in his first year in the varsity. His opponent, doubtless hoping

s had been given over to work in foundries and in preparation for the business career he had chosen long ago. He was deeply religious in a quiet, unostentatious way. That there had been sto

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