“Yes, sir!”
“Well, when the time comes, if everything is all right and you've behaved yourself and you still want to, I'll help you get a start in business. If I were you and were going to be a banker, I'd first spend a year or so in some good grain and commission house[13]. You'll learn a lot that you ought to know. And, meantime, keep your health and learn all you can.”
He gave the boy a ten-dollar gold piece with which to start a bank-account.
When young Cowperwood was thirteen, he entered into his first business venture. Walking along Front Street one day, he saw an auctioneer's flag hanging out before a wholesale grocery[14] and from the interior came the auctioneer's voice:
“What am I bid for this exceptional lot of Java coffee, twenty-two bags all told, which is now selling in the market for seven dollars and thirty-two cents a bag wholesale? What am I bid? The whole lot must go as one. What am I bid?”
“Eighteen dollars,” suggested a trader standing near the door. Frank paused.
“Twenty-two!” called another.
“Thirty!” a third.
“Thirty-five!” a fourth, and so up to seventy-five, less than half of what it was worth.
“I'm bid seventy-five! I'm bid seventy-five!” called the auctioneer, loudly. “Any other offers? Going once at seventy-five; am I offered eighty? Going twice at seventy-five, and”—he paused, one hand raised dramatically. Then he brought it down with a slap in the palm of the other— “sold to Mr. Silas Gregory[15] for seventy-five. Make a note of that, Jerry,” he called to his red-haired, freckle-faced clerk beside him. Then he turned to another lot of grocery staples.
Young Cowperwood was making a rapid calculation. If, as the auctioneer said, coffee was worth seven dollars and thirty-two cents a bag in the open market, and this buyer was getting this coffee for seventy-five dollars, he was making then and there eighty-six dollars and four cents. As he recalled, his mother was paying twenty-eight cents a pound.
He drew nearer, and watched these operations closely. The starch, as he soon heard, was valued at ten dollars a barrel, and it only brought six. Some kegs of vinegar were knocked down at one-third their value, and so on. He began to wish he could bid; but he had no money, just a little pocket change. The auctioneer noticed him standing almost directly under his nose, and was impressed with the stolidity—solidity—of the boy's expression.