To this no objections were made, for it was just to Tom's taste.
"You shall open a broker's shop in Boston next month," said the black
man.
"I'll do it to-morrow, if you wish," said Tom Walker.
"You shall lend money at two per cent a month."
"Egad, I'll charge four!" replied Tom Walker.
"You shall extort bonds, foreclose mortgages, drive the merchant to
bankruptcy--"
"I'll drive him to the d---l," cried Tom Walker, eagerly.
"You are the usurer for my money!" said the black legs, with delight.
"When will you want the rhino?"
"This very night."
"Done!" said the devil.
"Done!" said Tom Walker.--So they shook hands and struck a bargain.
A few days' time saw Tom Walker seated behind his desk in a counting
house in Boston. His reputation for a ready-moneyed man, who would lend
money out for a good consideration, soon spread abroad. Every body
remembers the days of Governor Belcher, when money was particularly
scarce. It was a time of paper credit. The country had been deluged
with government bills; the famous Land Bank had been established; there
had been a rage for speculating; the people had run mad with schemes
for new settlements; for building cities in the wilderness; land
jobbers went about with maps of grants, and townships, and Eldorados,
lying nobody knew where, but which every body was ready to purchase. In
a word, the great speculating fever which breaks out every now and then
in the country, had raged to an alarming degree, and body was dreaming
of making sudden fortunes from nothing.
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