The Freemason's Daughter: A Novel — page 14: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE FREEMASONS DAUGHTER. 5 to say, distracts the attention from business; children were but so many pledges given to poverty and servi- tude. It was upon the last principle, most probably, that in his fifty-fifth year he took as junior partner the cringing, indefatigable Mr. Small, who was too poor to be scrupulous as to the nature of the transactions in which he was engaged, and of which the wealthy head of the firm began to feel ashamed. Small’s family of three sons and as many daughters, were guarantees of his subseryiency; a partner without capital, he was forced to be content with what remained after the lion’s share. The counting-house was entirely under the direction of the junior partner ; for the principal was too wealthy and too great a man to occupy himself with the mere details of the firm. During business hours he remained in his own room, giving audience only to such of his correspondents as were, to a certain extent, independent of him; once entangled in the inextricable web of diffi- culties which the partners well knew how to weave around them, they were contemptuously turned over to Small: the next stage was a compromise with their creditors, or a bankruptcy. The senior clerk was a drunken, dissipated man, named Gridley, who had been employed from boyhood in the firm; a fellow who, for a well-regulated esta- blishment, gave himself strange liberties—came when he hiked, went when he liked, and did only what he liked. Small had repeatedly tried his influence with Grindem COniiclooecl SS (SO