his virtue of patient industry and to build up a solid monument of fact
which, though often dull enough, nevertheless continues generally to
convince, at least in respect to Cowperwood's business enterprises. The
American financier, after all, has rarely had much subtlety in his
make-up. Single-minded, tough-skinned, ruthless, "suggesting a power
which invents man for one purpose and no other, as generals, saints, and
the like are invented," he shoulders and hurls his bulk through a sea of
troubles and carries off his spoils. Such a man as Frank Cowperwood Mr.
Dreiser understands. He understands the march of desire to its goal. He
seems always to have been curious regarding the large operations of
finance, at once stirred on his poetical side by the intoxication of
golden dreams, something as Marlowe was in _The Jew of Malta_, and on
his cynical side struck by the mechanism of craft and courage and
indomitable impulse which the financier employs. Mr. Dreiser writes, it
is true, as an outsider; he simplifies the account of Cowperwood's
adventures after wealth, touching the record here and there with the
naïve hand of a peasant--even though a peasant of genius--wondering how
great riches are actually obtained and guessing somewhat awkwardly at
the mystery. And yet these guesses perhaps come nearer to the truth than
they might have come were either the typical financier or Mr. Dreiser
more subtle. You cannot set a poet to catch a financier and be at all
sure of the prize. As it is, this Trilogy of Desire (never completed in
the third part which was to show Cowperwood extending his mighty foray
into London) is as considerable an epic as American business has yet to
show.

Cowperwood's lighter hours are devoted to pursuits almost as polygamous
as those of the leader of some four-footed herd. In this respect the
novels which celebrate him stand close to the more popular _Sister
Carrie_ and _Jennie Gerhardt_, both of them annals of women who fall as