PEGGY-IN-THE-RAIN
continually find one out. With pardonable curiosity he turned back and began to read the article. "New York's Landed Proprietors—How the Old Knickerbocker families, together with a few More Recent Arrivals, have gained control of over a Billion Dollars worth of Manhattan Island—By Margaret Mill." There was little in the story that hadn't been told time and time before, but the facts were presented brightly and crisply, round numbers of seven, eight and nine figures were sprinkled through the text with breath-taking carelessness, and the accompanying illustrations showed bejeweled ladies and frock-coated men with lavish prodigality. It was a veritable Romance of Money. It started with the penniless butcher's son who, with the money accumulated in fur trading, purchased farm lands which now, in the fourth generation, were valued at almost a half-billion dollars. It told of the son of the Huguenot refugee who set up his ironmonger's shop and founded a fortune approximately represented to-day by nine figures. And so it went, tracing the development of one fortune after another so enticingly that Gordon, meaning only to skim the story, found himself reading it with
56
