When Frank Algernon Cowperwood emerged from the Eastern District Penitentiary in Philadelphia he realized that the old life he had lived in that city since boyhood was ended. His youth was gone, and w...

The city of Chicago, with whose development the personality of Frank Algernon Cowperwood was soon to be definitely linked! To whom may the laurels as laureate of this Florence of the West yet fall? Th...

After his first visit to the bank over which Addison presided, and an informal dinner at the latter’s home, Cowperwood had decided that he did not care to sail under any false colors so far as Addison...

The partnership which Cowperwood eventually made with an old-time Board of Trade operator, Peter Laughlin, was eminently to his satisfaction. Laughlin was a tall, gaunt speculator who had spent most o...

If anyone fancies for a moment that this commercial move on the part of Cowperwood was either hasty or ill-considered they but little appreciate the incisive, apprehensive psychology of the man. His t...

The day Cowperwood and Aileen were married⁠—it was in an obscure village called Dalston, near Pittsburg, in western Pennsylvania, where they had stopped off to manage this matter⁠—he had said to her: ...

Old Peter Laughlin, rejuvenated by Cowperwood’s electric ideas, was making money for the house. He brought many bits of interesting gossip from the floor, and such shrewd guesses as to what certain gr...

When Cowperwood, after failing in his overtures to the three city gas companies, confided to Addison his plan of organizing rival companies in the suburbs, the banker glared at him appreciatively. “Yo...

In the meantime the social affairs of Aileen had been prospering in a small way, for while it was plain that they were not to be taken up at once⁠—that was not to be expected⁠—it was also plain that t...

The opening of the house in Michigan Avenue occurred late in November in the fall of eighteen seventy-eight, when Aileen and Cowperwood had been in Chicago about two years. Altogether, between people ...

Next morning, over the breakfast cups at the Norrie Simmses’ and elsewhere, the import of the Cowperwoods’ social efforts was discussed and the problem of their eventual acceptance or nonacceptance ca...

Cowperwood, who had rebuffed Schryhart so courteously but firmly, was to learn that he who takes the sword may well perish by the sword. His own watchful attorney, on guard at the state capitol, where...

The significance of this visit was not long in manifesting itself. At the top, in large affairs, life goes off into almost inexplicable tangles of personalities. Mr. McKenty, now that the matter had b...

It was during the year that followed their social repudiation, and the next and the next, that Cowperwood achieved a keen realization of what it would mean to spend the rest of his days in social isol...

The growth of a relationship between Cowperwood and Rita Sohlberg was fostered quite accidentally by Aileen, who took a foolishly sentimental interest in Harold which yet was not based on anything of ...

Cowperwood was enchanted. He kept the proposed tryst with eagerness and found her all that he had hoped. She was sweeter, more colorful, more elusive than anybody he had ever known. In their charming ...

The result of this understanding was not so important to Cowperwood as it was to Antoinette. In a vagrant mood he had unlocked a spirit here which was fiery, passionate, but in his case hopelessly wor...

The peculiar personality of Rita Sohlberg was such that by her very action she ordinarily allayed suspicion, or rather distracted it. Although a novice, she had a strange ease, courage, or balance of ...

Rita was not dead by any means⁠—only seriously bruised, scratched, and choked. Her scalp was cut in one place. Aileen had repeatedly beaten her head on the floor, and this might have resulted seriousl...

It is a sad commentary on all save the most chemic unions⁠—those dark red flowers of romance that bloom most often only for a tragic end⁠—that they cannot endure the storms of disaster that are wont t...

The question of Sohlberg adjusted thus simply, if brutally, Cowperwood turned his attention to Mrs. Sohlberg. But there was nothing much to be done. He explained that he had now completely subdued Ail...

Among the directors of the North Chicago City company there was one man, Edwin L. Kaffrath, who was young and of a forward-looking temperament. His father, a former heavy stockholder of this company, ...

The morning papers, in spite of the efforts of Cowperwood and his friends to keep this transfer secret, shortly thereafter were full of rumors of a change in “North Chicago.” Frank Algernon Cowperwood...

During this period of what might have been called financial and commercial progress, the affairs of Aileen and Cowperwood had been to a certain extent smoothed over. Each summer now, partly to take Ai...

Cowperwood gained his first real impression of Stephanie at the Garrick Players, where he went with Aileen once to witness a performance of Elektra. He liked Stephanie particularly in this part, and t...

It was during the earlier phases of his connection with Chicago street-railways that Cowperwood, ardently interesting himself in Stephanie Platow, developed as serious a sex affair as any that had yet...

It was interesting to note how, able though he was, and bound up with this vast street-railway enterprise which was beginning to affect several thousand men, his mind could find intense relief and sat...

At the same time the thought of readjusting her relations so that they would avoid disloyalty to Cowperwood was never further from Stephanie’s mind. Let no one quarrel with Stephanie Platow. She was a...

It chanced that shortly before this liaison was broken off, some troubling information was quite innocently conveyed to Aileen by Stephanie Platow’s own mother. One day Mrs. Platow, in calling on Mrs....

The impediments that can arise to baffle a great and swelling career are strange and various. In some instances all the cross-waves of life must be cut by the strong swimmer. With other personalities ...

Coincident with these public disturbances and of subsequent hearing upon them was the discovery by Editor Haguenin of Cowperwood’s relationship with Cecily. It came about not through Aileen, who was n...

Since the days in which Aileen had been left more or less lonely by Cowperwood, however, no two individuals had been more faithful in their attentions than Taylor Lord and Kent McKibben. Both were fon...

The interested appearance of a man like Polk Lynde at this stage of Aileen’s affairs was a bit of fortuitous or gratuitous humor on the part of fate, which is involved with that subconscious chemistry...

It is needless to say that the solemn rage of Hand, to say nothing of the pathetic anger of Haguenin, coupled with the wrath of Redmond Purdy, who related to all his sad story, and of young MacDonald ...

In the first and second wards of Chicago at this time⁠—wards including the business heart, South Clark Street, the waterfront, the river-levee, and the like⁠—were two men, Michael (alias Smiling Mike)...

Subsequently Mr. Kerrigan called on Mr. Tiernan casually. Mr. Tiernan returned the call. A little later Messrs. Tiernan, Kerrigan, and Gilgan, in a parlor-room in a small hotel in Milwaukee (in order ...

The interesting Polk Lynde, rising one morning, decided that his affair with Aileen, sympathetic as it was, must culminate in the one fashion satisfactory to him here and now⁠—this day, if possible, o...

The stoic Cowperwood, listening to the blare and excitement that went with the fall campaign, was much more pained to learn of Aileen’s desertion than to know that he had arrayed a whole social elemen...

Oliver Marchbanks, the youthful fox to whom Stimson had assigned the task of trapping Mr. Sluss in some legally unsanctioned act, had by scurrying about finally pieced together enough of a story to ma...

The most serious difficulty confronting Cowperwood from now on was really not so much political as financial. In building up and financing his Chicago street-railway enterprises he had, in those days ...

Berenice Fleming, at the time Cowperwood first encountered her mother, was an inmate of the Misses Brewster’s School for Girls, then on Riverside Drive, New York, and one of the most exclusive establi...

It was some time after this first encounter before Cowperwood saw Berenice again, and then only for a few days in that region of the Pocono Mountains where Mrs. Carter had her summer home. It was an i...

The banking hostility to Cowperwood, which in its beginning had made necessary his trip to Kentucky and elsewhere, finally reached a climax. It followed an attempt on his part to furnish funds for the...

The money requisite for the construction of elevated roads having been thus pyrotechnically obtained, the acquisition of franchises remained no easy matter. It involved, among other problems, the tami...

The effect of all this was to arouse in Cowperwood the keenest feelings of superiority he had ever yet enjoyed. Hitherto he had fancied that his enemies might worst him, but at last his path seemed cl...

The complications which had followed his various sentimental affairs left Cowperwood in a quandary at times as to whether there could be any peace or satisfaction outside of monogamy, after all. Altho...

Following Cowperwood’s coup in securing cash by means of his seeming gift of three hundred thousand dollars for a telescope his enemies rested for a time, but only because of a lack of ideas wherewith...

On August 4, 1896, the city of Chicago, and for that matter the entire financial world, was startled and amazed by the collapse of American Match, one of the strongest of market securities, and the co...

By eight o’clock, at which hour the conference was set, the principal financial personages of Chicago were truly in a great turmoil. Messrs. Hand, Schryhart, Merrill, and Arneel were personally intere...

The failure of American Match the next morning was one of those events that stirred the city and the nation and lingered in the minds of men for years. At the last moment it was decided that in lieu o...

Engrossed in the pleasures and entertainments which Cowperwood’s money was providing, Berenice had until recently given very little thought to her future. Cowperwood had been most liberal. “She is you...

Berenice, perusing the apology from Beales Chadsey, which her mother⁠—very much fagged and weary⁠—handed her the next morning, thought that it read like the overnight gallantry of someone who was seek...

For the first time in her life Berenice now pondered seriously what she could do. She thought of marriage, but decided that instead of sending for Braxmar or taking up some sickening chase of an indiv...

Whatever his momentary satisfaction in her friendly acceptance of his confession, the uncertain attitude of Berenice left Cowperwood about where he was before. By a strange stroke of fate Braxmar, his...

A Public-service-commission law might, ipso facto, have been quietly passed at this session, if the arbitrary franchise-extending proviso had not been introduced, and this on the thin excuse that so n...

At the news that Swanson had refused to sign the bill and that the legislature lacked sufficient courage to pass it over his veto both Schryhart and Hand literally rubbed their hands in comfortable sa...

It was not until some little time after they were established in the new house that Aileen first came upon any evidence of the existence of Berenice Fleming. In a general way she assumed that there we...

The spring and summer months of 1897 and the late fall of 1898 witnessed the final closing battle between Frank Algernon Cowperwood and the forces inimical to him in so far as the city of Chicago, the...

Between the passage on June 5, 1897, of the Mears bill⁠—so christened after the doughty representative who had received a small fortune for introducing it⁠—and its presentation to the Chicago City Cou...

The storm which burst in connection with Cowperwood’s machinations at Springfield early in 1897, and continued without abating until the following fall, attracted such general attention that it was la...

And now at last Chicago is really facing the thing which it has most feared. A giant monopoly is really reaching out to enfold it with an octopus-like grip. And Cowperwood is its eyes, its tentacles, ...

You have seen, perhaps, a man whose heart was weighted by a great woe. You have seen the eye darken, the soul fag, and the spirit congeal under the breath of an icy disaster. At ten-thirty of this par...

The world is dosed with too much religion. Life is to be learned from life, and the professional moralist is at best but a manufacturer of shoddy wares. At the ultimate remove, God or the life force, ...