Like
all men who knew him well the banker admired and respected the ability
and integrity of David Ormsby. When the ploughmaker came to the city
from a town in Wisconsin to be the master of the plough trust he
offered him the house to use.
The house had come to the banker from his father, a grim determined
old money-making merchant of a past generation who had died hated by
half Chicago after toiling sixteen hours daily for sixty years. In his
old age the merchant had built the house to express the power wealth
had given him. It had floors and woodwork cunningly wrought of
expensive woods by workmen sent to Chicago by a firm in Brussels. In
the long drawing room at the front of the house hung a chandelier that
had cost the merchant ten thousand dollars. The stairway leading to
the floor above was from the palace of a prince in Venice and had been
bought for the merchant and brought over seas to the house in Chicago.
The banker who inherited the house did not want to live in it. Even
before the death of his father and after his own unsuccessful marriage
he lived at a down town club. In his old age the merchant, retired
from business, lived in the house with another old man, an inventor.
He could not rest although he had given up business with that end in
view.
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