than this, he was drawing to himself some really significant personalities.  He brought home with him, socially—­not to talk business, for he disliked that idea—­bankers, investors, customers and prospective customers.  Out on the Schuylkill, the Wissahickon, and elsewhere, were popular dining places where one could drive on Sunday.  He and Mrs. Cowperwood frequently drove out to Mrs. Seneca Davis’s, to Judge Kitchen’s, to the home of Andrew Sharpless, a lawyer whom he knew, to the home of Harper Steger, his own lawyer, and others.  Cowperwood had the gift of geniality.  None of these men or women suspected the depth of his nature—­he was thinking, thinking, thinking, but enjoyed life as he went.

One of his earliest and most genuine leanings was toward paintings.  He admired nature, but somehow, without knowing why, he fancied one could best grasp it through the personality of some interpreter, just as we gain our ideas of law and politics through individuals.  Mrs. Cowperwood cared not a whit one way or another, but she accompanied him to exhibitions, thinking all the while that Frank was a little peculiar.  He tried, because he loved her, to interest her in these things intelligently, but while she pretended slightly, she could not really see or care, and it was very plain that she could not.

The children took up a great deal of her time.  However, Cowperwood was not troubled about this.  It struck him as delightful and exceedingly worth while that she should be so devoted.  At the same time, her lethargic manner, vague smile and her sometimes seeming indifference, which sprang largely from a sense of absolute security, attracted him also.  She was so different from him!  She took her second marriage quite as she had taken her first—­a solemn fact which contained no possibility of mental alteration.  As for himself, however, he was bustling about in a world which, financially at least, seemed all alteration—­there were so many sudden and almost unheard-of changes.  He began to look at her at times, with a speculative eye—­not very critically, for he liked her—­but with an attempt to weigh her personality.  He had known her five years and more now.  What did he know about her?  The vigor of youth—­those first years—­had made up for so many things, but now that he had her safely...

There came in this period the slow approach, and finally the declaration, of war between the North and the South, attended with so much excitement that almost all current minds were notably colored by it.  It was terrific.  Then came meetings, public and stirring, and riots; the incident of John Brown’s body; the arrival of Lincoln, the great commoner, on his way from Springfield, Illinois, to Washington via Philadelphia, to take the oath of office; the battle of Bull Run; the battle of Vicksburg; the battle of Gettysburg, and so on.  Cowperwood was only twenty-five at the time, a cool, determined youth, who thought the slave agitation might be well founded