John Potts had been detestable, but now, as a Bank President, he began to be respectable, to say the least. Wealth has a charm about it which fascinates all men, even those of the oldest families, and now that this parvenu showed that he could easily employ his superfluous cash in a banking company, people began to look upon his name as still undoubtedly vulgar, yet as undoubtedly possessing the ring of gold. His first effort to take the county by storm, by an ordinary invitation to Brandon Hall, had been sneered at every where. But this bank was a different thing. Many began to think that perhaps Potts had been an ill-used and slandered man. He had been Brandon’s agent, but who could prove any thing against him after all? There were very many who soon felt the need of the peculiar help which a bank can give if it only chooses. Those who went there found Potts marvelously accommodating. He did not seem so grasping or so suspicious as other bankers. They got what they wanted, laughed at his pleasant jokes, and assured every body that he was a much-belied man. Surely it was by some special inspiration that Potts hit upon this idea of a bank; if he wished to make people look kindly upon him, to “be to his faults a little blind, and to his virtues very kind,” he could not have conceived any better or shorter way toward the accomplishment of so desirable a result. So lenient were these people that they looked upon all those who took part in the bank with equal indulgence. The younger Potts was considered as a very clever man, with a dry, caustic humor, but thoroughly good-hearted. Clark, one of the directors, was regarded as bluff, and shrewd, and cautious, but full of the milk of human kindness; and Philips, the cashier, was universally liked on account of his gentle, obsequious manner. So wide-spread and so active were the operations of this bank that people stood astonished and had nothing to say. The amount of their accommodations was enormous. Those who at first considered it a mushroom concern soon discovered their mistake; for the Brandon Bank had connections in London which seemed to give the command of unlimited means, and any sum whatever that might be needed was at once advanced where the security was at all reliable. Nor was the bank particular about security. John Potts professed to trust much to people’s faces and to their character, and there were times when he would take the security without looking at it, or even decline it and be satisfied with the name. In less than a year the bank had succeeded in gaining the fullest confidence even of those who had at first been most skeptical, and John Potts had grown to be considered without doubt one of the most considerable men in the county.