The Titan

by Theodore Dreiser




Chapter I



The New City

When Frank Algernon Cowperwood emerged from the Eastern District
Penitentiary in Philadelphia he realized that the old life he had
lived in that city since boyhood was ended. His youth was gone,
and with it had been lost the great business prospects of his
earlier manhood. He must begin again.

It would be useless to repeat how a second panic following upon a
tremendous failure--that of Jay Cooke & Co.--had placed a second
fortune in his hands. This restored wealth softened him in some
degree. Fate seemed to have his personal welfare in charge. He
was sick of the stock-exchange, anyhow, as a means of livelihood,
and now decided that he would leave it once and for all. He would
get in something else--street-railways, land deals, some of the
boundless opportunities of the far West. Philadelphia was no
longer pleasing to him. Though now free and rich, he was still a
scandal to the pretenders, and the financial and social world was
not prepared to accept him. He must go his way alone, unaided,