iness. The warning
of the merchant, if it did not repress his desire to get rich in haste,
caused him to look more closely than he would otherwise have done into
every transaction he was about to make. This saved him from many
serious losses.

The want of more capital soon began to be felt. He saw good operations
every day, that might be made if he had capital enough to enter into
them.

"A man deserves no credit for getting rich, if he have capital enough
to work with," was a favourite remark. "There is plenty of business to
be done, and ways of making money in abundance, if the means are only
at hand."

One week, if he had only been in the possession of means, he would have
purchased a cotton-factory; the next week become possessor of a ship,
and entered into the East India trade; and, the next week after that,
purchased an interest in a lead-mine on the Upper Mississippi.

Money, money, more money, was ever his cry, for he saw golden
opportunities constantly passing unimproved. A neighbour, to whom he
was expressing his desire for the use of larger capital, said to him,
one day--

"I'll tell you how you can get more money!"

"How?" was the eager question.

"Get into the direction of some bank, push through the notes of a
business friend, in whom you have confidence, who will do the same for
you in another bank of which he is one of the managers. There are
wheels within wheels in those moneyed institutions, from which the few
and not the many reap the most benefit. Connect yourself with as many
as you can of them, and make the most of the opportunities such
connections will afford. You know Balmier?"

"Yes."

"And what a rushing business he does?"

"Yes."

"He dragged heavily enough, and was always flying about for money,
until he took a hint and got elected into the Citizens and Traders'
Bank. Since then he has been as easy as an old shoe, and has done five
times as much business as before."

"Is it possible?"

"Oh, yes! You are not fully up to the tricks of trade yet, I see,
shrewd as you are."

"I know well enough how to use money, but I have not yet learned how to
get it."

"That will all come in good time. We are just now getting up a petition
for the charter of a new bank in which I am to be a director, and I can
easily manage to get you in if you will subscribe pretty liberally to
the stock. It is to be called the People's Bank."

"But I have no money to invest in stock. That would be ta