Not one who heard went unconvinced; not one but was willing to commence in practical fashion the carrying out of this high financial dream.
It was the romance--for money-making has its romances--and the adventurous uncertainty of the thing, the pushing into the unknown, which formed the lure.

Have you ever considered that nine of ten among those who went with De Soto and Balboa and Coronado and Cortez and Pizarro, if asked by some quiet neighbor, would have refused him the loan of one hundred dollars unless secured by fivefold the value?
And yet the last man jack would peril life and fortune blindly in a voyage to worlds unknown, for profits guessed at, against dangers neither to be counted nor foreseen.

Be not too much stricken of amazement, therefore, when now these cold ones, who would not have bought an American railroad without counting the cross-ties and weighing every spike and fish-plate, were ready to send millions adrift on a sightless invasion of Asia ten thousand miles away.

Besides, as the five with Mr.Harley laid out their campaign, any question of Oriental danger was for the present put aside.
"The way to commence," said one of the five--one grown gray in first looting companies and then scuttling them--"the way to commence is by getting possession of Northern Consolidated.

Once in control of the railroad, we have linked the Pacific with the Great Lakes; after that we can turn to the matter of subsidies for the two steamship lines, and the appointment of those commissions to consider the Canadian Canal." Then, turning to Mr.Harley: "You, of course, speak for Senator Hanway ?" Mr.Harley gave assurance that Senator Hanway, for what might be demanded congressionally, would be with him.