The Titan

THE TITAN

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THEODORE DREISER

 

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The Titan
First published in 1914
ISBN 978-1-62012-601-1
Duke Classics
© 2012 Duke Classics and its licensors. All rights reserved.

While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in this edition, Duke Classics does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. Duke Classics does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book.

Contents

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Chapter I - The New City
Chapter II - A Reconnoiter
Chapter III - A Chicago Evening
Chapter IV - Peter Laughlin & Co
Chapter V - Concerning a Wife and Family
Chapter VI - The New Queen of the Home
Chapter VII - Chicago Gas
Chapter VIII - Now this is Fighting
Chapter IX - In Search of Victory
Chapter X - A Test
Chapter XI - The Fruits of Daring
Chapter XII - A New Retainer
Chapter XIII - The Die is Cast
Chapter XIV - Undercurrents
Chapter XV - A New Affection
Chapter XVI - A Fateful Interlude
Chapter XVII - An Overture to Conflict
Chapter XVIII - The Clash
Chapter XIX - “Hell Hath No Fury—”
Chapter XX - “Man and Superman”
Chapter XXI - A Matter of Tunnels
Chapter XXII - Street-Railways at Last
Chapter XXIII - The Power of the Press
Chapter XXIV - The Coming of Stephanie Platow
Chapter XXV - Airs from the Orient
Chapter XXVI - Love and War
Chapter XXVII - A Financier Bewitched
Chapter XXVIII - The Exposure of Stephanie
Chapter XXIX - A Family Quarrel
Chapter XXX - Obstacles
Chapter XXXI - Untoward Disclosures
Chapter XXXII - A Supper Party
Chapter XXXIII - Mr. Lynde to the Rescue
Chapter XXXIV - Enter Hosmer Hand
Chapter XXXV - A Political Agreement
Chapter XXXVI - An Election Draws Near
Chapter XXXVII - Aileen’s Revenge
Chapter XXXVIII - An Hour of Defeat
Chapter XXXIX - The New Administration
Chapter XL - A Trip to Louisville
Chapter XLI - The Daughter of Mrs. Fleming
Chapter XLII - F. A. Cowperwood, Guardian
Chapter XLIII - The Planet Mars
Chapter XLIV - A Franchise Obtained
Chapter XLV - Changing Horizons
Chapter XLVI - Depths and Heights
Chapter XLVII - American Match
Chapter XLVIII - Panic
Chapter XLIX - Mount Olympus
Chapter L - A New York Mansion
Chapter LI - The Revival of Hattie Starr
Chapter LII - Behind the Arras
Chapter LIII - A Declaration of Love
Chapter LIV - Wanted—Fifty-Year Franchises
Chapter LV - Cowperwood and the Governor
Chapter LVI - The Ordeal of Berenice
Chapter LVII - Aileen’s Last Card
Chapter LVIII - A Marauder Upon the Commonwealth
Chapter LIX - Capital and Public Rights
Chapter LX - The Net
Chapter LXI - The Cataclysm
Chapter LXII - The Recompense
In Retrospect

Chapter I - The New City

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When Frank Algernon Cowperwood emerged from the Eastern District Penitentiary in Philadelphia he realized that the old life he had lived in that city since boyhood was ended. His youth was gone, and with it had been lost the great business prospects of his earlier manhood. He must begin again.

It would be useless to repeat how a second panic following upon a tremendous failure—that of Jay Cooke & Co.—had placed a second fortune in his hands. This restored wealth softened him in some degree. Fate seemed to have his personal welfare in charge. He was sick of the stock-exchange, anyhow, as a means of livelihood, and now decided that he would leave it once and for all. He would get in something else—street-railways, land deals, some of the boundless opportunities of the far West. Philadelphia was no longer pleasing to him. Though now free and rich, he was still a scandal to the pretenders, and the financial and social world was not prepared to accept him. He must go his way alone, unaided, or only secretly so, while his quondam friends watched his career from afar. So, thinking of this, he took the train one day, his charming mistress, now only twenty-six, coming to the station to see him off. He looked at her quite tenderly, for she was the quintessence of a certain type of feminine beauty.

“By-by, dearie,” he smiled, as the train-bell signaled the approaching departure. “You and I will get out of this shortly. Don’t grieve. I’ll be back in two or three weeks, or I’ll send for you. I’d take you now, only I don’t know how that country is out there. We’ll fix on some place, and then you watch me settle this fortune question. We’ll not live under a cloud always. I’ll get a divorce, and we’ll marry, and things will come right with a bang. Money will do that.”

He looked at her with his large, cool, penetrating eyes, and she clasped his cheeks between her hands.

“Oh, Frank,” she exclaimed, “I’ll miss you so! You’re all I have.”

“In two weeks,” he smiled, as the train began to move, “I’ll wire or be back. Be good, sweet.”

She followed him with adoring eyes—a fool of love, a spoiled child, a family pet, amorous, eager, affectionate, the type so strong a man would naturally like—she tossed her pretty red gold head and waved him a kiss. Then she walked away with rich, sinuous, healthy strides—the type that men turn to look after.

“That’s her—that’s that Butler girl,” observed one railroad clerk to another. “Gee! a man wouldn’t want anything better than that, would he?”

It was the spontaneous tribute that passion and envy invariably pay to health and beauty. On that pivot swings the world.

Never in all his life until this trip had Cowperwood been farther west than Pittsburg.