EARLY AHERICAN FINANCIERS. 



BY GEORGE ALFRED TOWNSEND. 



[George Alfred Townsend ("Gath"), journalist and author; born Georgetown, Del., 

 January 30, 1841; graduated from Philadelphia High School, 1860; became a jour- 

 nalist in 1860 with the Philadelphia Inquirer, and later with the Philadelphia Press 

 and New York Herald; war correspondent New York World, 1864-5, where he made 

 a reputation as a descriptive writer; described Austro-Prussian war for the World, 

 1868. Author, Life of Garibaldi, Real Life of Abraham Lincoln, The New World 

 Compared with the Old, etc.] 



Poets are not of much interest in our day because pov- 

 erty, tranquillity, dignity, humility, the cardinal virtues of 

 many centuries, have lost their charm. To do anything pur- 

 poseful now one must collect wealth first. 



In doing so, the purpose generally loses its soulfulness. 

 The wife of our bosom says : " O, don't be notional ! You can't 

 make the age." We harden by our material fiction. As Bill 

 Travers said, when trying to light his gas with his wife's comb, 

 which he thought was matches: " Tooth is stronger than fric- 

 tion." 



Some men, like Dr. Schliemann, succeed at money, and 

 go and dig Agamemnon up. Others, like the sturdy president 

 of the Chicago university, make letters a character by saying 

 to their rich patrons, "Give me $2,000,000 to start with, or 

 I'll stay a poor tutor." 



Indeed, wealth exercised to great ends is poetry. The 

 transmuting power to give Cinderella a glass slipper, Aladdin 

 a magic lamp or the Christian his heaven, are imagination 

 with a financial requital. 



Science has changed the theme of poetry from barbaric, 

 causeless riches and display to enlightened power and sys- 

 tematic utility. 



Hence the bank is the muse, the banker is the good fairy, 

 the God of the living world is the financial essence and trinity 

 which hears the popular prayers and answers them in showers 

 of treasure. 



We pray for a railroad, not to the same old moral over- 

 looker. We pray for waterworks to the banker god. We ask 



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