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A first-person confessional narrative traces a man's relentless pursuit of wealth, chronicling his rise from a clerk in a dry-goods house to junior partner and the envy and resentment that fuel his willingness to compromise principle to secure a lump-sum fortune. The account examines ambition, social climbing, and the moral costs of seizing opportunity within business and personal relationships, portraying how calculated choices, rivalry with inherited privilege, and compromises alter his domestic life and conscience. Episodes reveal schemes, betrayals, and emotional consequences as he confronts the ramifications of attaining the power and status he long desired.
Copyright, 1903, by
McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO
Published September, 1903
| “The Razor cut me, and dropped to the floor” | Frontispiece |
Facing Page | |
| “‘Don’t get apoplectic,’ he said, calmly; ‘you know you stole your start’” | 39 |
| “‘You liar! you forger!’” | 73 |
| “‘Not to have told you would have been a lie’” | 119 |
| “‘You will marry on the sixteenth of April, at noon. Get yourself ready’” | 129 |
| “I came upon Helen, sitting in the alcove, sobbing” | 218 |