Status Updates From Финансист

“ Vaguely but surely he began to see looming before him, like a fleecy tinted cloud on the horizon, his future fortune. He was to be rich, very, very rich.”

“Her health was really not as good as it had been—the care of two children…having reduced her…she was a little run down nervously and suffered from fits of depression. Cowperwood had noticed this. He tried to be gentle and considerate, but he was too much of a utilitarian and practical–minded observer not to realize that he was likely to have a sickly wife on his hands later.”

“Between them they were rich; but he expected to be much richer. All he needed now was to keep cool. If he succeeded in this bond–issue matter, he could do it again and on a larger scale. There would be more issues.”

“…We can fix the governor, I think. After you get it they may talk to you personally, but that's your business." Cowperwood smiled his inscrutable smile. There were so many ins and outs to this financial life. It was an endless network of underground holes, along which all sorts of influences were moving. A little wit, a little nimbleness, a little luck–time and opportunity—these sometimes availed.”

“ He paused and looked tantalizingly out of the window, knowing full well Cowperwood was greatly interested, and that this talk of political influence and connections could only whet his appetite. Butler wanted him to see clearly that fidelity was the point in this case—fidelity, tact, subtlety, and concealment.”

“One day he saw Lincoln… He watched him enter his carriage, thinking "So that is the railsplitter, the country lawyer. Well, fate has picked a great man for this crisis." …It seemed to him unquestionable that fortuitously he had been permitted to look upon one of the world's really great men. War and statesmanship were not for him; but he knew how important those things were—at times.”

“This current war–spirit was strange. The people seemed to him to want to hear nothing but the sound of the drum and fife, to see nothing but troops, of which there were thousands now passing through…It was a thrilling sentiment, no doubt, great but unprofitable. It meant self–sacrifice, and he could not see that. If he went he might be shot, and what would his noble emotion amount to then?”

“Cowperwood was only twenty–five…He hoped the North would win; but…He did not care to fight. That seemed silly for the individual man to do. Others might—there were many poor, thin–minded, half–baked creatures who would put themselves up to be shot; but they were only fit to be commanded or shot down. As for him, his life was sacred to himself and his family and his personal interests.”

“ There came in this period the slow approach, and finally the declaration, of war between the North and the South, attended with so much excitement that almost all current minds were notably colored by it. It was terrific. Then came meetings, public and stirring, and riots…”

“ It would be impossible to indicate fully how subtle were the material changes which these years involved—changes so gradual that they were, like the lap of soft waters, unnoticeable. Considerable—a great deal, considering how little he had to begin with—wealth was added in the next five years.”

For days and weeks and months and years, at least the first four or five, he took a keen satisfaction in coming home evenings…driving with his wife, having friends in to dinner, talking over with her in an explanatory way the things he intended to do…But love, her pretty body, her lips, her quiet manner—the lure of all these combined, and his two children, when they came—two in four years—held him.”

“As has been said before, he cared nothing for books, but life, pictures, trees, physical contact—these, in spite of his shrewd and already gripping financial calculations, held him. To live richly, joyously, fully—his whole nature craved that.”

“He thought he should never have enough of her, her beautiful face, her lovely arms, her smooth, lymphatic body. They were like two children, billing and cooing, driving, dining, seeing the sights. He was curious to visit the financial sections of both cities. New York and Boston appealed to him as commercially solid.”

“ He wanted her physically. He felt a keen, primitive interest in the children they would have. He wanted to find out if he could make her love him vigorously and could rout out the memory of her former life. Strange ambition. Strange perversion, one might almost say.”

“…Cowperwood was following these financial complications with interest. He was not disturbed by the cause of slavery, or the talk of secession, or the general progress or decline of the country, except in so far as it affected his immediate interests. He longed to become a stable financier; but, now that he saw the inside of the brokerage business, he was not so sure that he wanted to stay in it.”

“ There was really a severe business depression. Money was so scarce that it could fairly be said not to exist at all. Capital, frightened by uncertain trade and money conditions, everywhere, retired to its hiding–places in banks, vaults, tea–kettles, and stockings. The country seemed to be going to the dogs. War with the South or secession was vaguely looming up in the distance.”

“ A man, a real man, must never be an agent, a tool, or a gambler—acting for himself or for others—he must employ such. A real man—a financier—was never a tool. He used tools. He created. He led.”

“ The professional traders were, of course, keen students of psychology; and their success depended on their ability to guess whether or not a broker representing a big manipulator, like Tighe, had an order large enough to affect the market sufficiently to give them an opportunity to "get in and out," as they termed it, at a profit before he had completed the execution of his order.L

“It was useless, as Frank soon found, to try to figure out exactly why stocks rose and fell. Some general reasons there were, of course, as he was told by Tighe, but they could not always be depended on. "Sure, anything can make or break a market"—Tighe explained in his delicate brogue—"from the failure of a bank to the rumor that your second cousin's grandmother has a cold. It's a most unusual world.”

“ For a little while, the false tinsel–glitter of the house of ill repute appealed to him, for there was a certain force to its luxury—rich, as a rule, with red–plush furniture, showy red hangings, some coarse but showily–framed pictures, and, above all, the strong–bodied or sensuously lymphatic women who dwelt there, to (as his mother phrased it) prey on men.”

“Cowperwood's judgment of women was temperamental rather than intellectual. Engrossed as he was by his desire for wealth, prestige, dominance, he was confused, if not chastened by considerations relating to position, presentability and the like. None the less, the homely woman meant nothing to him. And the passionate woman meant much... He preferred to think of people—even women—as honestly, frankly self–interested.”

Streetcars coming to Philadelphia, “…it was thought that in time this mode of locomotion might drive out the hundreds of omnibuses which now crowded and made impassable the downtown streets. Young Cowperwood had been greatly interested from the start. Railway transportation, as a whole, interested him, anyway, but this particular phase was most fascinating.”

“The Cowperwood family was by this time established in its new and larger and more tastefully furnished house on North Front Street, facing the river… And here it was, during the first year of the new life in this house, that Frank met a certain Mrs. Semple, who interested him greatly. Her husband had a pretentious shoe store on Chestnut Street…”

“…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…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...”

“ Because of the unsettled condition of the country, the over–inflation of securities, the slavery agitation, and so forth, there were prospects of hard times. And Tighe—he could not have told you why—was convinced that this young man was worth talking to in regard to all this. He was not really old enough to know, and yet he did know.”