The persons whom he had met down in New Leeds, during their brief visits there, were, somehow, very different when met in New York.
Some whom he called on were civil enough to him; but as soon as he broached his business they froze up.

The suggestion that he had coal-property to sell sent them down to zero.

Their eyes would glint with a shrewd light and their faces harden into ice.

One or two told him plainly that they had no money to embark in "wild-cat schemes." Mr.Creamer of Creamer, Crustback & Company, Capitalists, a tall, broad-shouldered man, with a strongly cut nose and chin and keen, gray eyes, that, through long habitude, weighed chances with an infallible appraisement, to whom Keith had a letter from an acquaintance, one of those casual letters that mean anything or nothing, informed him frankly that he had "neither time nor inclination to discuss enterprises, ninety-nine out of every hundred of which were frauds, and the hundredth generally a failure." "This is not a fraud," said Keith, hotly, rising.

"I do not indorse frauds, sir." He began to draw on his gloves.