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The summer exodus from New York was still several weeks distant, and the place was full of prosperous-looking lunchers, not one of whom appeared to have a care or an unpaid bill in the world. The atmosphere was redolent of substantial bank-balances. Solvency shone from the closely shaven faces of the men and reflected itself in the dresses of the women. Jimmy sighed. "I suppose so," he said.

Solidity, wealth, trade, ponderous ledgers, capacious ships' bottoms, merchandise transformed to magnificence, an ample-stomached bourgeoisie, this is what comes to one's mind as one faces the broad walk in front of Fort William and looks across the open space to the palaces, the domes, the columns of modern and English Calcutta; or again as one wanders along the strand in the evening when the aristocrats of commerce do congregate, and, as it were, gazette the lengths of their bank-balances in the glitter of their equipages and appointments; or again as one strolls about the great public gardens or the amplitudes of Tank Square, whose great tank of water suggests the luxury of the dwellers hereabout; or the numerous other paths of comfort which are kept so by constant lustrations from the skins of the water-bearers.

It seemed so homy and happy-go-lucky and soul-satisfying in its completeness, and we weren't forever fretting about bank-balances and taxes and over-drafts. I was just a rancher's wife then and I can't help feeling that all along there was something in that simple life we didn't value enough.

He had studied the receipts of the New York Clearing House recently and the disposition of bank-balances and the shipment of gold, and had seen that vast quantities of the latter metal were going to Chicago. He understood finance accurately. The meaning of gold shipments was clear. Where money was going trade was a thriving, developing life.