Peter Laughlin & Co.

The partnership which Cowperwood eventually made with an old-time
Board of Trade operator, Peter Laughlin, was eminently to his
satisfaction. Laughlin was a tall, gaunt speculator who had spent
most of his living days in Chicago, having come there as a boy
from western Missouri. He was a typical Chicago Board of Trade
operator of the old school, having an Andrew Jacksonish countenance,
and a Henry Clay--Davy Crockett--"Long John" Wentworth build of
body.

Cowperwood from his youth up had had a curious interest in quaint
characters, and he was interesting to them; they "took" to him.
He could, if he chose to take the trouble, fit himself in with the
odd psychology of almost any individual. In his early peregrinations
in La Salle Street he inquired after clever traders on 'change,
and then gave them one small commission after another in order to
get acquainted. Thus he stumbled one morning on old Peter Laughlin,
wheat and corn trader, who had an office in La Salle Street near
Madison, and who did a modest business gambling for himself and
others in grain and Eastern railway shares. Laughlin was a shrewd,
canny American, originally, perhaps, of Scotch extraction, who had
all the traditional American blemishes of uncouthness, tobacco-chewing,
profanity, and other small vices. Cowperwood could tell from
looking at him that he must have a fund of information concerning
every current Chicagoan of importance, and this fact alone was
certain to be of value. Then the old man was direct, plain-spoken,
simple-appearing, and wholly unpretentious--qualities which