of St. Augustine, the
oldest town in the United States. There are other towns that look older,
but it is on account of dissipation. New York looks older, but it is
because she always sat up later of nights than St. Augustine did.

Cortez was one of the coarsest men who visited this country. He did not
marry any wealthy American girls, for there were none, but he did
everything else that was wrong, and his unpaid laundry-bills are still
found all over the Spanish-speaking countries. He was especially lawless
and cruel to the Peruvians: "recognizing the Peruvian at once by his
bark," he would treat him with great indignity, instead of using other
things which he had with him. Cortez had a way of capturing the most
popular man in a city, and then he would call on the tax-payers to
redeem him on the instalment plan. Most everybody hated Cortez, and when
he held religious services the neighbors did not attend. The religious
efforts made by Cortez were not successful. He killed a great many
people, but converted but few.

The historian desires at this time to speak briefly of the methods of
Cortez from a commercial stand-point.

Will the reader be good enough to cast his eye on the Cortez securities
as shown in the picture drawn from memory by an artist yet a perfect
gentleman?

[Illustration: BANK OF CORTEZ.]

Notice the bonds Nos. 18 and 27. Do you notice the listening attitude of
No. 18? He is listening to the accumulating interest. Note the aged and
haggard look of No. 27. He has just begun to notice that he is maturing.

Cast your eye on the prone form of No. 31. He has just fallen due, and
in doing so has hurt his crazy-bone (see Appendix).

Be good enough to study the gold-bearing bond behind the screen. See the
look of anguish. Some one has cut off a coupon probably. Cortez was that
kind of a man. He would clip the ear of an Inca and make him scream with
pain, so that his friends would come in and redeem him. Once the bank
examiner came to examine the Cortez bank. He imparted a pleasing flavor
on the following day to the soup.

Spain owned at the close of the sixteenth century the West Indies,
Yucatan, Mexico, and Florida, besides unlimited water facilities and the
Peruvian preserves.

North Carolina was discovered by the French navigator Verrazani, thirty
years later than Cabot did, but as Cabot did not record his claim at the
court-house in Wilmington the Frenchman jumped the claim in 1524, and
the proper