“Egad, I’ll charge four!” replied Tom Walker.

“You shall extort bonds, foreclose mortgages, drive the merchant to bankruptcy—­”

“I’ll drive him to the d—–­l,” cried Tom Walker, eagerly.

“You are the usurer for my money!” said the black legs, with delight.  “When will you want the rhino?”

“This very night.”

“Done!” said the devil.

“Done!” said Tom Walker.—­So they shook hands and struck a bargain.

A few days’ time saw Tom Walker seated behind his desk in a counting house in Boston.  His reputation for a ready-moneyed man, who would lend money out for a good consideration, soon spread abroad.  Every body remembers the days of Governor Belcher, when money was particularly scarce.  It was a time of paper credit.  The country had been deluged with government bills; the famous Land Bank had been established; there had been a rage for speculating; the people had run mad with schemes for new settlements; for building cities in the wilderness; land jobbers went about with maps of grants, and townships, and Eldorados, lying nobody knew where, but which every body was ready to purchase.  In a word, the great speculating fever which breaks out every now and then in the country, had raged to an alarming degree, and body was dreaming of making sudden fortunes from nothing.  As usual, the fever had subsided; the dream had gone off, and the imaginary fortunes with it; the patients were left in doleful plight, and the whole country resounded with the consequent cry of “hard times.”

At this propitious time of public distress did Tom Walker set up as a usurer in Boston.  His door was soon thronged by customers.  The needy and the adventurous; the gambling speculator; the dreaming land jobber; the thriftless tradesman; the merchant with cracked credit; in short, every one driven to raise money by desperate means and desperate sacrifices, hurried to Tom Walker.

Thus Tom was the universal friend of the needy, and he acted like a “friend in need;” that is to say, he always exacted good pay and good security.  In proportion to the distress of the applicant was the hardness of his terms.  He accumulated bonds and mortgages; gradually squeezed his customers closer and closer; and sent them, at length, dry as a sponge from his door.

In this way he made money hand over hand; became a rich and mighty man, and exalted his cocked hat upon ’change.  He built himself, as usual, a vast house, out of ostentation; but left the greater part of it unfinished and unfurnished out of parsimony.  He even set up a carriage in the fullness of his vain-glory, though he nearly starved the horses which drew it; and as the ungreased wheels groaned and screeched on the axle trees, you would have thought you heard the souls of the poor debtors he was squeezing.