But his fellow-men interested Fessenden less at this period than the wonderful excursions he was making daily into the new realms of thought and research. It was during the middle of the third year that he gave himself up more particularly to the study of finance, the development of banking, and political economy. He pursued these studies with a curious sense of reviving old memories; he surprised himself at his love of dry details--that even here his imagination saw picturesqueness in the possibilities of concentrating vast sums of money and yet filling the veins of a great country with a life-blood of liquid gold. During his democratic madness he had seriously doubted whether his conscience would permit him to be a rich man; but now, with a chastened yet no less sincere democracy, he made up his mind that for a man of the people to acquire millions and then use them for the amelioration of his less-gifted fellows, to say nothing of glorifying his country, was both wise and poetical. Having satisfied his mind on this point, he astonished the university and Turbine by appearing at church in a suit of clothes not only of harmoniously assorted pieces, but manifestly made to order. He sustained the balance by looking worse than usual during the week. In the vacation preceding Fessenden’s fourth year the university received, from a source which was to remain unknown to all but the president, a large bequest for the departments of banking and finance. The bequest was accompanied by the condition that during the ensuing year certain eminent authorities were to be asked to lecture. Somewhat to the surprise but greatly to the satisfaction of the faculty, invitations to lecture were promptly accepted by the Secretary of the Treasury, the President of the Pennsylvania Railroad, the owner of a great department store, and three leading bank presidents. These gentlemen did not confine themselves to generalities; they described the practical workings of their respective systems, enriched by a wealth of comparison with corresponding systems in other countries; they pointed out the defects and disadvantages of both sides, and analyzed the causes of the remarkable progress of so young a country as the United States; they emphasized the necessity of a sleepless alertness, and the demand for new ideas which should be bold without recklessness and safe without conservatism. Fessenden listened with tingling nerves and legs moving restlessly. He wrote to his father that he regarded this timely benefaction as a direct interposition of Providence in his behalf, and that although he certainly had to work harder than any one in the world, he believed that he had been born under a star of remarkable magnitude. His ambitions had revived long since. He had in his imagination a union of steel and electricity so madly romantic that he dared not confide even in his father. He must make a large sum of money first, for he would trust no one with his secret.