Vigor of body, was a solemn, conservative speculator as to

“If I get out of this safely,” he said to himself, “this is the what his future might be. The West, as he had carefully calend. I am going West, and going into some other line of culated before leaving, held much. He had studied the re-business.” He thought of street-railways, land speculation, ceipts of the New York Clearing House recently and the dis-some great manufacturing project of some kind, even min-position of bank-balances and the shipment of gold, and had ing, on a legitimate basis.

seen that vast quantities of the latter metal were going to

“I have had my lesson,” he said to himself, finally getting Chicago. He understood finance accurately. The meaning of up and preparing to leave. “I am as rich as I was, and only a gold shipments was clear. Where money was going trade little older. They caught me once, but they will not catch me was—a thriving, developing life. He wished to see clearly for again.” He talked to Wingate about following up the cam-himself what this world had to offer.

paign on the lines in which he had started, and he himself Two years later, following the meteoric appearance of a intended to follow it up with great energy; but all the while young speculator in Duluth, and after Chicago had seen the his mind was running with this one rich thought: “I am a tentative opening of a grain and commission company la-millionaire. I am a free man. I am only thirty-six, and my beled Frank A. Cowperwood & Co., which ostensibly dealt future is all before me.”

In the great wheat crops of the West, a quiet divorce was It was with this thought that he went to visit Aileen, and granted Mrs. Frank a. Cowperwood in Philadelphia, because to plan for the future.

apparently she wished it. Time had not seemingly dealt badly It was only three months later that a train, speeding through with her. Her financial affairs, once so bad, were now appar-the mountains of Pennsylvania and over the plains of Ohio ently all straightened out, and she occupied in West Phila-480

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delphia, near one of her sisters, a new and interesting home rise or fall with his prosperity, she did not understand how which was fitted with all the comforts of an excellent middle-justice and morals were arranged in this world. There seemed class residence. She was now quite religious once more. The to be certain general principles—or people assumed there two children, Frank and Lillian, were in private schools, re-were—but apparently there were exceptions. Assuredly her turning evenings to their mother. “Wash” Sims was once more brother abided by no known rule, and yet he seemed to be the negro general factotum. Frequent visitors on Sundays doing fairly well once more. What did this mean? Mrs.

were Mr. and Mrs. Henry Worthington Cowperwood, no Cowperwood, his former wife, condemned his actions, and longer distressed financially, but subdued and wearied, the yet accepted of his prosperity as her due. What were the eth-wind completely gone from their once much-favored sails.

Ics of that?

Cowperwood, senior, had sufficient money wherewith to Cowperwood’s every action was known to Aileen Butler, sustain himself, and that without slaving as a petty clerk, but his present whereabouts and prospects. Not long after his his social joy in life was gone. He was old, disappointed, sad.

wife’s divorce, and after many trips to and from this new He could feel that with his quondam honor and financial world in which he was now living, these two left Philadel-glory, he was the same—and he was not. His courage and phia together one afternoon in the winter. Aileen explained his dreams were gone, and he awaited death.

to her mother, who was willing to go and live with Norah, Here, too, came Anna Adelaide Cowperwood on occasion, that she had fallen in love with the former banker and wished a clerk in the city water office, who speculated much as to to marry him. The old lady, gathering only a garbled version the strange vicissitudes of life. She had great interest in her of it at first, consented.

brother, who seemed destined by fate to play a conspicuous Thus ended forever for Aileen this long-continued rela-part in the world; but she could not understand him. Seeing tionship with this older world. Chicago was before her—a that all those who were near to him in any way seemed to much more distinguished career, Frank told her, than ever 481

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they could have had in Philadelphia.

smothering-pit in which to seal and devour the victim of its

“Isn’t it nice to be finally going?” she commented.

beauty; the rainbow-colored jellyfish that spreads its prismed

“It is advantageous, anyhow,” he said.

tentacles like streamers of great beauty, only to sting and torture all that falls within their radiant folds. Man himself Concerning Mycteroperca Bonaci is busy digging the pit and fashioning the snare, but he will not believe it. His feet are in the trap of circumstance; his There is a certain fish, the scientific name of which is eyes are on an illusion.

Mycteroperca Bonaci, its common name Black Grouper, Mycteroperca moving in its dark world of green waters is which is of considerable value as an afterthought in this con-as fine an illustration of the constructive genius of nature, nection, and which deserves to be better known. It is a healthy which is not beatific, as any which the mind of man may creature, growing quite regularly to a weight of two hundred discover. Its great superiority lies in an almost unbelievable and fifty pounds, and lives a comfortable, lengthy existence power of simulation, which relates solely to the pigmenta-because of its very remarkable ability to adapt itself to condition of its skin. In electrical mechanics we pride ourselves on tions. That very subtle thing which we call the creative power, our ability to make over one brilliant scene into another in and which we endow with the spirit of the beatitudes, is the twinkling of an eye, and flash before the gaze of an on-supposed to build this mortal life in such fashion that only looker picture after picture, which appear and disappear as honesty and virtue shall prevail. Witness, then, the signifi-we look. The directive control of Mycteroperca over its ap-cant manner in which it has fashioned the black grouper.

pearance is much more significant. You cannot look at it One might go far afield and gather less forceful indictments—

long without feeling that you are witnessing something spec-the horrific spider spinning his trap for the unthinking fly; tral and unnatural, so brilliant is its power to deceive. From the lovely Drosera (Sundew) using its crimson calyx for a being black it can become instantly white; from being an 482

Dreiser

earth-colored brown it can fade into a delightful water-col-ther tricky or deceptive? Or would you say that this material ored green. Its markings change as the clouds of the sky.

seeming in which we dwell is itself an illusion? If not, whence One marvels at the variety and subtlety of its power.

then the Ten Commandments and the illusion of justice?

Lying at the bottom of a bay, it can simulate the mud by Why were the Beatitudes dreamed of and how do they avail?

which it is surrounded. Hidden in the folds of glorious leaves, it is of the same markings. Lurking in a flaw of light, it is like The Magic Crystal

the light itself shining dimly in water. Its power to elude or strike unseen is of the greatest.

If you had been a mystic or a soothsayer or a member of What would you say was the intention of the overruling, that mysterious world which divines by incantations, dreams, intelligent, constructive force which gives to Mycteroperca the mystic bowl, or the crystal sphere, you might have looked this ability? To fit it to be truthful? To permit it to present an into their mysterious depths at this time and foreseen a world unvarying appearance which all honest life-seeking fish may of happenings which concerned these two, who were now know? Or would you say that subtlety, chicanery, trickery, apparently so fortunately placed. In the fumes of the witches’

were here at work? An implement of illusion one might readily pot, or the depths of the radiant crystal, might have been suspect it to be, a living lie, a creature whose business it is to revealed cities, cities, cities; a world of mansions, carriages, appear what it is not, to simulate that with which it has noth-jewels, beauty; a vast metropolis outraged by the power of one ing in common, to get its living by great subtlety, the power man; a great state seething with indignation over a force it of its enemies to forefend against which is little. The indict-could not control; vast halls of priceless pictures; a palace un-ment is fair.

rivaled for its magnificence; a whole world reading with won-Would you say, in the face of this, that a beatific, benefi-der, at times, of a given name. And sorrow, sorrow, sorrow.

cent creative, overruling power never wills that which is eiThe three witches that hailed Macbeth upon the blasted 483

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heath might in turn have called to Cowperwood, “Hail to you, Frank Cowperwood, master of a great railway system!

Hail to you, Frank Cowperwood, builder of a priceless mansion! Hail to you, Frank Cowperwood, patron of arts and possessor of endless riches! You shall be famed hereafter.” But like the Weird Sisters, they would have lied, for in the To return to PSU’s Electronic

glory was also the ashes of Dead Sea fruit—an understanding that could neither be inflamed by desire nor satisfied by Classics Series, go to

luxury; a heart that was long since wearied by experience; a

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soul that was as bereft of illusion as a windless moon. And to

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Aileen, as to Macduff, they might have spoken a more pathetic promise, one that concerned hope and failure. To have To return to the Theodore Dreiser and not to have! All the seeming, and yet the sorrow of not having! Brilliant society that shone in a mirage, yet locked page, go to

its doors; love that eluded as a will-o’-the-wisp and died in

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the dark. “Hail to you, Frank Cowperwood, master and no

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master, prince of a world of dreams whose reality was disillusion!” So might the witches have called, the bowl have danced with figures, the fumes with vision, and it would have been true. What wise man might not read from such a beginning, such an end?

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