so founded
private banking-houses and built up other prosperous business
establishments on her own account. It would be in bad taste to mention
names unless I had the roll of honor at hand and could read it off
without exception. The President of the Cotton Exchange and nearly forty
per cent. of its members are Southerners. One of the oldest and
strongest firms on the Produce Exchange is essentially Southern. That
private banking-house in Wall Street, which has stood longest without
any change in the personnel of its partnership, and which ranks to-day
with the most reputable and successful establishments of its kind, is
Southern in every branch of its membership. Seven of the National Banks
have Southern men for Presidents, and the list of Southern cashiers and
tellers is long and honorable. It was a Southern boy who, ten years ago,
counted himself lucky on getting the humble place of mail carrier in one
of the greatest banking houses of America. That very boy, when not long
since he resigned to enter business on his own account, was filling one
of the most responsible positions and drawing the third largest salary
in that same great establishment.

Another instance of signal success is told in this short story: Less
than six years ago a young Georgian tacked up a cheap little sign on the
door of a sky-lit room in the "Evening Post" building. To-day his is the
leading name of one of the most conspicuous houses in the Street, and
the rent of his present quarters is more per month than the first office
he occupied cost for a whole year. One of the most famous Southern
leaders in Wall Street to-day [John H. Inman] was so little known when
he first attracted attention there that many people assumed he must in
some way be connected with a certain great ocean steamship line, simply
because he bore the same name. To-day it is just as often supposed that
the steamship line is an offshoot from him, because it bears his name. A
great Italian painter once vitalized a canvas with the expression of his
poetic thought and called it "Aurora." In looking at that masterpiece of
art I have sometimes been reminded of this distinguished Southerner.
Immediately after the war the South was enveloped in darkness. Out of
that gloom this man emerged and came here to the East, where the sun
shines first in the morning. Judging him to-day by the record he has
made, we are warranted in saying that on coming here he adopted
Usefulness as his chari