General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1913 Original Publisher: Moffat, Yard and company Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER IV 1. Luke had never expected to be possessed of so much money. His father’s income was comfortable, but it was well understood that the family lived somewhat beyond it, and that what might be left at the Congressman’s death would go to his widow for life and, after that, to Luke’s sister Jane. The Philadelphia aunt had inherited her fortune from her husband, and her affection for her relatives was generally supposed to be slight. Luke, consequently, found himself in a position for which he was totally unprepared.
I suppose, he said to Ruysdael, to whom he went for advice,
that I ought to invest it.

You ought to lose no time, counseled Ruysdael.
A hundred thousand dollars is too much for a young man to have at his call in New York. It’s not enough to spend, and it’s too much to gamble with in the bucket-shops. Ruysdael thought he knew a safe investment.
There’s a man named Forbes, he said –
Wallace K. Forbes, who came to the offices of our estate the other day when I happened to be there. He wanted to borrow just the amount you name, and my agent says it’s a good thing; but we happened to have a bigger one on hand. His concern’s an old one, one of the oldest American firms in its line; this man’s the third generation of his family to be in it, so it’s well- established and has the good old-fashioned element of family pride behind it. Nowadays, you don’t find many men regard their businesses the way an English landed gentleman used to regard his estates and his family honor; but Forbes seems to be an exception.

What is th…