some good grain and commission house. There's good
training to be had there. You'll learn a lot that you ought to know.
And, meantime, keep your health and learn all you can. Wherever I am,
you let me know, and I'll write and find out how you've been conducting
yourself."

He gave the boy a ten-dollar gold piece with which to start a
bank-account. And, not strange to say, he liked the whole Cowperwood
household much better for this dynamic, self-sufficient, sterling youth
who was an integral part of it.

Chapter III

It was in his thirteenth year that young Cowperwood entered into his
first business venture. Walking along Front Street one day, a street
of importing and wholesale establishments, he saw an auctioneer's flag
hanging out before a wholesale grocery and from the interior came the
auctioneer's voice: "What am I bid for this exceptional lot of Java
coffee, twenty-two bags all told, which is now selling in the market for
seven dollars and thirty-two cents a bag wholesale? What am I bid? What
am I bid? The whole lot must go as one. What am I bid?"

"Eighteen dollars," suggested a trader standing near the door, more to
start the bidding than anything else. Frank paused.

"Twenty-two!" called another.

"Thirty!" a third. "Thirty-five!" a fourth, and so up to seventy-five,
less than half of what it was worth.

"I'm bid seventy-five! I'm bid seventy-five!" called the auctioneer,
loudly. "Any other offers? Going once at seventy-five; am I offered
eighty? Going twice at seventy-five, and"--he paused, one hand raised
dramatically. Then he brought it down with a slap in the palm of the
other--"sold to Mr. Silas Gregory for seventy-five. Make a note of that,
Jerry," he called to his red-haired, freckle-faced clerk beside him.
Then he turned to another lot of grocery staples--this time starch,
eleven barrels of it.

Young Cowperwood was making a rapid calculation. If, as the auctioneer
said, coffee was worth seven dollars and thirty-two cents a bag in the
open market, and this buyer was getting this coffee for seventy-five
dollars, he was making then and there eighty-six dollars and four cents,
to say nothing of what his profit would be if he sold it at retail. As
he recalled, his mother was paying twenty-eight cents a pound. He drew
nearer, his books tucked under his arm, and watched these operations
closely. The starch, as he soon heard, was valued at ten dollars a
barrel, and it only brought six. Som