one idea. Their peculiarity was not so much that they wished to be rich
as that Nature itself impelled them to collect wealth as the load-stone
draws towards it iron. Having possessed nothing, they became rich,
having become rich they became richer, having founded their fortunes
on small schemes, they increased them by enormous ones. In time they
attained that omnipotence of wealth which it would seem no circumstance
can control or limit. The first Reuben Vanderpoel could not spell, the
second could, the third was as well educated as a man could be whose
sole profession is money-making. His children were taught all that
expensive teachers and expensive opportunities could teach them. After
the second generation the meagre and mercantile physical type of the
Vanderpoels improved upon itself. Feminine good looks appeared and were
made the most of. The Vanderpoel element invested even good looks to an
advantage. The fourth Reuben Vanderpoel had no son and two daughters.
They were brought up in a brown-stone mansion built upon a fashionable
New York thoroughfare roaring with traffic. To the farthest point of
the Rocky Mountains the number of dollars this "mansion" (it was always
called so) had cost, was known. There may have existed Pueblo Indians
who had heard rumours of the price of it. All the shop-keepers and
farmers in the United States had read newspaper descriptions of its
furnishings and knew the value of the brocade which hung in the bedrooms
and boudoirs of the Misses Vanderpoel. It was a fact much cherished that
Miss Rosalie's bath was of Carrara marble, and to good souls actively
engaged in doing their own washing in small New England or Western
towns, it was a distinct luxury to be aware that the water in the
Carrara marble bath was perfumed with Florentine Iris. Circumstances
such as these seemed to become personal possessions and even to lighten
somewhat the burden of toil.

Rosalie Vanderpoel married an Englishman of title, and part of the