at a profit. His bank was the Third National of Philadelphia, located in
that center of all Philadelphia and indeed, at that time, of practically
all national finance--Third Street--and its owners conducted a brokerage
business as a side line. There was a perfect plague of State banks,
great and small, in those days, issuing notes practically without
regulation upon insecure and unknown assets and failing and suspending
with astonishing rapidity; and a knowledge of all these was an important
requirement of Mr. Cowperwood's position. As a result, he had become the
soul of caution. Unfortunately, for him, he lacked in a great
measure the two things that are necessary for distinction in any
field--magnetism and vision. He was not destined to be a great
financier, though he was marked out to be a moderately successful one.

Mrs. Cowperwood was of a religious temperament--a small woman, with
light-brown hair and clear, brown eyes, who had been very attractive in
her day, but had become rather prim and matter-of-fact and inclined
to take very seriously the maternal care of her three sons and one
daughter. The former, captained by Frank, the eldest, were a source of
considerable annoyance to her, for they were forever making expeditions
to different parts of the city, getting in with bad boys, probably, and
seeing and hearing things they should neither see nor hear.

Frank Cowperwood, even at ten, was a natural-born leader. At the day
school he attended, and later at the Central High School, he was looked
upon as one whose common sense could unquestionably be trusted in all
cases. He was a sturdy youth, courageous and defiant. From the very
start of his life, he wanted to know about economics and politics. He
cared nothing for books. He was a clean, stalky, shapely boy, with
a bright, clean-cut, incisive face; large, clear, gray eyes; a
wide forehead; short, bristly, dark-brown hair. He had an incisive,