“Ta-ta,” said Townley; and they sallied forth, Arthur much wondering at these metropolitan methods of doing business; and Townley completed his duties as host and cicerone by giving him a very elaborate lunch at a down-town club and putting his name down among the candidates for membership. “You needn’t feed here unless you like,” said he; “but it’s so convenient to bring a fellow to.” Indeed, Townley had been very friendly to the young countryman; and this was no less than the third club at which he had “put him up” that day. “You can try ’em all, and then make up your mind which ones you’d like to join,” said he. At a word of remonstrance from Arthur, he had glibly anticipated all objection. “Now don’t talk about extravagance,” said he; “I tell you, no fellow ever made money in New York who didn’t spend it first.” And Arthur had been silenced by this paradoxical philosophy. Townley’s friendship had even extended to providing him with a boarding-place, a room in the house where he himself lodged; and toward this the young fellows took their way, early in the afternoon. Arthur was already tired, with his short and idle day; he was overcome by the rush and the whirl and the magnitude of things. He had heard talked of, had handled, had seen the management of, huge sums of money; he had seen millions in the process of their making; but how to divert a rivulet of the Pactolean stream to himself seemed a greater mystery than ever. It took so much to make so little! Such huge heaps of bullion had to be sweated to yield to the manipulator the clippings of one gold dollar! Truly, on the other hand, Townley talked to him of millions made and lost as if they had been blackberries. It was, “There’s old Prime--he made a million in that Panhandle deal,” or “There goes poor old Howard--the shorts in Erie used him up,” until Arthur saw that he was seeing here a most instructive process: nothing less than the creation and founding of American families. Here were the people, the progenitors of future castes; the sources of inherited estate, of culture, of consideration; this old man with the battered hat, that sharp-faced young Israelite, were the ancestors, the probable fathers and grandfathers of the men and maidens who were to be “society” in the future Republic; the first acquirers of--not the broad acres, but the city lots--the rich houses, the stocks and bonds, the whole equipment of life, that was (if our laws are maintained) to make sleek the _jeunesse dorée_ of the twentieth century. A million! It is not much, in many ways, in most ways that we read about in books and bibles; it is not a factor of the Crusades, nor of the War of the Roses, nor yet (as we are informed) of the kingdom of heaven. But most things that Townley saw were multiples of it; and now Townley carefully avoided reading books; for even General Gordon, you remember, writing from Khartoum to posterity, records the reflection that mankind and