good-natured as it was combative and self-reliant. His
upper lip was ornamented by a short, gray mustache.

"May heaven preserve me," he said, not long after he came there, "these
Pennsylvanians never pay for anything they can issue bonds for." It
was the period when Pennsylvania's credit, and for that matter
Philadelphia's, was very bad in spite of its great wealth. "If there's
ever a war there'll be battalions of Pennsylvanians marching around
offering notes for their meals. If I could just live long enough I could
get rich buyin' up Pennsylvania notes and bonds. I think they'll pay
some time; but, my God, they're mortal slow! I'll be dead before the
State government will ever catch up on the interest they owe me now."

It was true. The condition of the finances of the state and city was
most reprehensible. Both State and city were rich enough; but there were
so many schemes for looting the treasury in both instances that when any
new work had to be undertaken bonds were necessarily issued to raise the
money. These bonds, or warrants, as they were called, pledged interest
at six per cent.; but when the interest fell due, instead of paying it,
the city or State treasurer, as the case might be, stamped the same with
the date of presentation, and the warrant then bore interest for not
only its original face value, but the amount then due in interest. In
other words, it was being slowly compounded. But this did not help
the man who wanted to raise money, for as security they could not be
hypothecated for more than seventy per cent. of their market value, and
they were not selling at par, but at ninety. A man might buy or accept
them in foreclosure, but he had a long wait. Also, in the final payment
of most of them favoritism ruled, for it was only when the treasurer
knew that certain warrants were in the hands of "a friend" that he would
advertise that such and such warrants--those particular ones that he
knew about--would be paid.

What was more, the money system of the United States was only then
beginning slowly to emerge from something approximating chaos to
something more nearly approaching order. The United States Bank, of
which Nicholas Biddle was the progenitor, had gone completely in 1841,
and the United States Treasury with its subtreasury system had come
in 1846; but still there were many, many wildcat banks, sufficient
in number to make the average exchange-counter broker a walking
encyclopedia of solvent a