In his youth he had made one voyage round Cape Horn as a cabin boy,
his subsequent nautical experience having been confined to the
presidency of the Blue Star Navigation Company and occasional voyages
as a first-cabin passenger. Notwithstanding this apparent lack of
salt-water wisdom, however, his intimate knowledge of ships and the
men who go down to the sea in them, together with his very distinct
personality, had conduced to provide him with a courtesy title in his
old age.

It is more than probable that, had Alden P. Ricks been a large,
commanding person possessed of the dignity the average citizen
associates with men of equal financial rating, the Street would have
called him Captain Ricks. Had he lacked these characteristics, but
borne nevertheless even a remote resemblance to a retired mariner, his
world would have hailed him as Old Cap Ricks; but since he was what he
was--a dapper, precise, shrewd, lovable little old man with mild,
paternal blue eyes, a keen sense of humor and a Henry Clay collar,
which latter, together with a silk top hat, had distinguished him on
'Change for forty years--it was inevitable that along the Embarcadero
and up California Street he should bear the distinguishing appellation
of Cappy. In any other line of human endeavor he would have been
called Pappy--he was that type of man.

Cappy Ricks had so much money, amassed in the wholesale lumber and
shipping business, that he had to engage some very expensive men to
take care of it for him. He owned the majority of the stock of the
Ricks Lumber and Logging Company, with sawmills and timberlands in
California, Oregon and Washington; his young men had to sell a million
feet of lumber daily in order to keep pace with the output, while the
vessels of the Blue Star Navigation Company, also controlled by Cappy,