Here's the vocabulary list for The Richest Woman in America: Hetty Green in the Gilded Age by Janet Wallach.
ISBN 978-0-385-53197-9
Wallach, Janet. The Richest Woman in America: Hetty Green in the Gilded Age. Crown, 2013.
Representative Quotes
"New York was celebrating a financial boom. New institutions were opening on every corner, filling the canyons of Wall Street with retail banks, commercial banks, insurance companies, and brokerage firms. Investors in mining, real estate, and transportation were flush with funds. Eager to spend their new wealth, they were tearing down old buildings as fast as they could and putting up new ones so frequently that Harper's Magazine complained the city was unrecognizable for anyone born forty years before. Walt Whitman called it a 'rabid, feverish itching for change.'Newly rich couples filled extravagant mansions with fabulous furnishings and installed bathrooms with hot and cold running water on every floor. Those who earned $10,000 a year and wanted a place in society were expected to have a big new house, a country place, a carriage, and a box at the opera, and, of course, to play host to lavish parties and balls." (p. 22-3)
"While Caroline thrived on New York's social whirl, Hetty sought escape from the city's commotion. While Caroline gushed with friends over the latest fashions, Hetty cocked an ear toward the men conversing on finance. While Caroline was intent on enhancing her position, Hetty was focused on expanding her fortune. The debutantes' world held little attraction for her: she may have enjoyed dancing, and she may have indulged in gossip, but she had no taste for frothy teas, no craving for fussy clothes, no liking for luxuries that money could buy. Hetty hungered for money itself." (p. 30)
"When [Hetty's father] asked her why she still had money in her New York bank account, she told him that with the $1,200 he had given her, she had bought $200 worth of clothes. The rest, she proudly announced, she had invested in bonds that had already grown in value. 'That investment turned out so well that I soon made others,' she told an acquaintance." (p. 31)
"Entrepreneurs willing to build the rail lines prodded the federal government to grant them land along which they could lay the tracks. But even though the land was free, they needed money for payrolls and equipment. Smart investors and shrewd speculators could see the future whizzing before them. Tempted by the possibility of huge returns from railroads and from the development of the land surrounding them into towns, mining centers, and manufacturing hubs, they poured money into New York banks. A flood of new funds arrived from Boston and New Bedford, from Chicago and St. Louis, and from London, Paris, and Frankfurt. Awash in capital, the banks loaned money at easy interest rates to railroad promoters, mining prospectors, land speculators, merchants, and farmers." (p. 33)
"Everyone wanted a piece of the prosperity pie. Eager clients could almost taste their earnings as they bought shares of everything from the Crystal Palace, even as its stock was plummeting from 175 to 53, to the Reading Railroad to Pacific mining ventures. 'You can't lose,' stock salesmen promised naive clients. Trading in railroad stocks zoomed. Canny manipulators devised new instruments that enabled them to purchase more shares with less cash....
That same month Eerie Railroad stocks started sliding. Soon after, investors were agog when the New Haven Railroad announced that its president, Robert Schuyler, a prominent member of New York society, had swindled the company of $2 million. More railroads slipped as confidence fell, and for a few months Wall Street, trading primarily in railroad stocks, ran gloomily off the track. But if speculators who had bought on margin were forced to sell their shares to cover their losses, shrewd investors like Commodore Vanderbilt and speculators like Jay Gould swooped up the stocks at low prices. Hetty Robinson would later do the same.
Railroads were falling, but a feverish rush for gold sent mining stocks soaring. Midwestern banks opened branches in New York so that customers could redeem their notes in the East. Five new bank buildings, commended for their graceful architecture, were under construction on Wall Street, and the total number of banks in the city was on its way to doubling. It seemed as though everyone was becoming rich.
For three years the boom continued. Banks encouraged spending and loaned generously at low interest. When customers reached their credit limit, instead of cutting off further loans, the bankers urged them to borrow more, and then sold the loans at discounted prices to other institutions. With easy money, merchants and manufacturers expanded their businesses. Consumers shopped at a furious pace, importing fancy French furnishings for their oversized mansions....
The country was drunk on prosperity." (p. 35)
"And then the bubble burst. Toward the end of 1857, the news from the Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Company leaked the first bits of air. Unbeknownst to its Midwestern directors, the manager of its New York branch had embezzled millions of dollars. In addition, the bank had borrowed funds from other New York institutions in order to lend money to railroad builders and speculators in railroad stocks. But European demand for American grain had waned with the end of the Crimean War, and with bumper crops around the world, Midwestern farmers received lower prices and shipped fewer foodstuffs by railroad.
"The overextended railroads had borrowed millions of dollars from Ohio Life and could not pay them back. When the insurance company revealed its $2 million loss from the embezzlement plus $5 million in losses on loans to railroad builders, stocks speculators, and in its own trading accounts, the New York banks demanded the money owed them. In response, Ohio Life declared bankruptcy at its New York office and shut its doors.
"Events spiraled downward.
"Midwestern banks were forced to borrow more money from New York. The farmers who withdrew their money from their accounts every summer to cover seasonal costs could not replace it in the fall; nor could they repay the merchants who had extended them credit. N.H. Wolfe, the oldest flour and grain company in New York, declared bankruptcy. The president of a Michigan railroad announced his resignation. Railroad stocks slid to half their prices of four years earlier.
"Big bankers, worried that other clients were overextended, nervously called their customers for immediate repayment of matured loans. But Ohio Life was not the only one that had borrowed far beyond its means. Within weeks other banks and major Wall Street investors, ruined by bad loans, suspended operations or defaulted. Rumors raced through the city, growing more exaggerated at every telling. Crowds huddled in the canyons of Wall Street as panicked creditors, worried that their banks would not be able to pay them, withdrew their money. Although each bank issued its own version of paper money backed by gold, in reality the paper notes were not at par value with the metal. The public demanded the gold. With imports high and confidence low, the banks were forced to make their payments in gold, but their stores of specie, as metal coins were called, were shrinking.
"Dark clouds hovered. 'People look dubious and whisper darkly,' one man wrote, noting that several stock operators suffered serious failures. A few clever men like Russell Sage, a future role model for Hetty, kept substantial amounts of cash on hand and used it to buy stocks at rock-bottom prices. John Pierpont Morgan told his son there was a good lesson to be learned from other people's greed and good bargains to be found in the aftermath. In future times, Hetty would always keep cash available and use it to buy when everyone else was selling. Much later, Warren Buffett would do the same. But most people watched their money wash away in the flood; it felt like the crash and depression that had taken place twenty years before." (pp. 39-40)
" 'Extra! Extra!' 'War has begun!' newsboys shouted on April 12. Looming over New York was the threat that the South would lower its import duties to half the northern tariffs, ship cotton to Europe, and open its harbors to household goods and war materiel. What would happen if southern cotton no longer flowed to New York? If southern loans were no longer paid to the city's banks? If southern orders for goods were no longer sent to New York?
"With visions of ships rotting in the East River and grass growing in the streets, New York businessmen were roused from their neutral slumber. They could no longer afford to rest while another financial panic hit the city. Instead, they rallied to keep the Union intact." (p. 51)
"The rules of the marketplace state that for every seller there must be a buyer. The more the public discounted paper money, pushing it down as low as fifty cents on the dollar, the more Hetty bought. This was the start of the contrary investing she followed for the rest of her life: buying when everyone else was selling; selling when everyone else was buying. 'I buy when things are low and nobody wants them. I keep them until they go up and people are crazy to get them. That is, I believe, the secret of all successful business,' she said.
"Her philosophy reverberates today in the transactions of Warren Buffett. After a tumultuous period in the stock market, he told his shareholders in 2010: 'We've put a lot of money to work during the chaos of the last two years. It's been an ideal period for investors: a climate of fear is their best friend.' " (p. 71)
"The U.S. government provided vast amounts of tax-free land around the tracks in the West and gave rights to the minerals in the ground; but in order to finance the projects, the railroad builders borrowed money, using the land as collateral. American bankers eagerly loaned them the money for construction, and then, to soften their own risk and increase their profits, they issued bonds. Seeking money for the bonds in London, Paris, and Frankfurt, they were welcomed with open arms. The Bank of England was paying interest rates of 3 to 6 percent, while the Americans were offering as much as 18 percent to lenders. Pleased to find such an attractive place for their funds, the Europeans quadrupled their investments to over $200 million in railroads and $1 billion in American stocks and bonds." (p. 78)
"Abigail Adams, who had bought 'State Notes' after the Revolutionary War when there was little confidence in the new government, found out the value of depreciated bonds. Against the objections of her husband, who put his money in land, Abigail used her pin money to buy the bonds, which increased far more in value than her husband's real estate. With Edward's knowledge of railroads and banking, with American industry booming, and with inflation soaring, Hetty increased her share of railroad stocks and U.S. Treasury bonds. The bonds would prove to be an outstanding investment." (p. 79)
"Opportunists in London were also buying greenbacks from local merchants: English businessmen were paid in paper money by American customers but could not exchange the greenbacks for a decent rate at the British banks. Promissory notes, cosigned by prestigious bankers, were being sold at discounts as high as 60 percent. Marcus Goldman, an immigrant from Germany, set up an office on Pine Street to buy and sell this commercial paper. Later he would team with his son-in-law Samuel Sachs, forming the company Goldman Sachs, to raise capital for American companies. When the American government agreed to pay par value for greenbacks, making the paper money almost equal to gold, arbitrageurs like Goldman and the Lazard Brothers, based in California and London, made a fortune." (pp. 79-80)
"New York was flush with money. The city was flooded with an endless stream of funds from Europe, ready credit from the banks for mortgages, 10 percent margin accounts on Wall Street, junk bonds and other newly devised railroad debentures, and other instruments for trading stocks, such as puts and calls - the option to sell (puts) or buy (calls) a stock at a specified price - used by the financier Russell Sage. The abundance of money had encouraged a 500 percent increase in railroad building since the end of the Civil War, gaining land grants for the builders but allowing tracks to be laid that sometimes went aimlessly from point to point. Along with the railroad boom came massive real estate speculation and a rash of consumer spending across the country.
" 'Everybody seemed to be making money,' said one writer, adding, 'nobody suspected he was living in a fool's paradise.' Even Chicago was quickly climbing back on its feet, with orders in place for steel and iron to erect buildings that would make it the most modern city in the country. In New York, where as fast as the stock market dropped, it bounced back, elegant patrons dined on oysters and champagne at Delmonico's new restaurant." (pp. 86-7)
"Central European banks and London financial institutions had money readily available for speculation in railroads and real estate. Developers in Paris, Berlin, and Vienna were furiously erecting elaborate public buildings and private homes in the beaux arts style, even using the promise of future houses as collateral on new mortgages.
"The rampant rush to buy more land at low interest rates sent property prices soaring. Yet even as the costs rose, real estate opportunists continued to borrow until they reached a point where buyers could not afford the land. The speculators were unable to pay back the interest on their loans. When the worthless mortgages caused a few European banks to collapse in the spring of 1873, the British institutions, wary of more shaky mortgages held by the rest of the banks, raised their lending rates. The bubble burst on the Continent.
"Moody's magazine observed a few years later: 'The world as a whole was money mad... All the great European cities seem to have had booms at this time. Vienna and Berlin were the most frenzied. The prices of sites went to purely fictitious figures, and the phenomenon was prevalent of the speculator who bought property, mostly on credit which he did not expect to use, with the expectation of forestalling the deferred payments by a sale at an advance.' The editors continued, 'At the same time, Europe was pouring the oil of its money on the flames of American speculation. Railways spanned the continent and gridironed the states.
" 'Suddenly something snapped, and the machinery stopped. A Vienna banking house broke under the weight of too heavy a load of Missouri, Kansas and Texas securities, followed by another carrying too much Canada Southern. The financial organism winced like a leviathan with a harpoon in his vitals.' As the spasms spread from stock exchanges to banks, and from banks to investors, from Istanbul to Stockholm and from Edinburgh to Alexandria, the world crouched in pain. The wounds had come from speculation, but, said Moody's, 'No war ever made more misery.' " (p. 88)
"The scarcity of funds triggered disaster: merchants defaulted because they could not find money to run their businesses; farmers went bankrupt because they could not borrow to plant their crops; railroads lost income because of the smaller shipments of food. The railroads were already suffering from the Eering Ring outrage with its worthless stock and corrupt activities in Washington; the Union Pacific scandal, which, like the Eerie, uncovered stolen profits and bribed politicians; and a general loss of confidence in railroad management....
"The Northern Pacific Railroad, which had been running at a loss and spending money to lay track faster than it was acquiring funds, announced on September 18, 1873, that it could no longer afford to pay bondholders the 8.5 percent dividend. The railroad folded in default. The highly reputable banking house of Jay Cooke & Company, which earlier had raised hundreds of millions of dollars in bond sales to finance the Civil War, had loaned money to the Northern Pacific. Now the railroad was unable to pay its debts to Jay Cooke, and the prominent firm was forced to close." (p. 89)
"The panic took its toll on almost everyone. It terrorized men who looked as though they had aged ten years in one day. Brokers, vigorous the day before, were walking with their backs bent from the blows of the market. Bankers, so confident yesterday, were leaning on canes, unsteady on their feet today....
"In every case financial crises followed a period of rampant and extravagant speculation." (pp. 90-1)
"At this time when stocks were being abandoned, Hetty wanted to trade.... 'When I see a good thing going for cheap because nobody wants it, I buy a lot of it and tuck it away.' For Hetty, the decline in the market offered an opportunity for the future.... She had a pile of cash when others were scouring for pennies, but she also had a deft mind and the colossal courage to push against the crowd.
"It was far easier to lose money than to make it.... Vanderbilt bought his stocks for cash and was able to wait out the market. But his followers, who risked their money on 10 percent margin, were racing to cover their losses. When a friend complained, he replied, 'If you had bought a hundred shares instead of a thousand, you could have held on. Never be in too great a hurry to get rich.' " (p. 94)
"While government officials and Congress argued over whether to allow deflation or encourage inflation, farmers and even small businessmen resorted to methods of barter. In 1874, a conservative Congress passed a bill to devalue the dollar by printing more money. The following year, after the economy failed to improve, Congress legislated to strengthen the system by backing U.S. dollars with gold. Those like Hetty, who had held on to their discounted greenbacks bought after the Civil War, were now flush with wealth." (p. 95)
"When her cleaning lady gave birth to a son, Hetty gave her a gold piece and told her to deposit it in the bank. Keep it there until he is twenty-one, she advised. Instead of understanding the lesson of compound interest, the woman scorned her for saving instead of spending.... 'Watch your pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves.' " (p. 99)
"Mrs. E.H. Green... is believed to be the richest woman in America, a title earned by her own business sagacity, energy, and watchfulness.... She has lived a frugal life, exercised extraordinary keenness in her investments, and by embracing every good opportunity that the stock market afforded her, she has more than quintupled her heritage." (p. 116)
"I have observed that many a tattered garment hides a package of bonds and that gorgeous clothing does not always cover a millionaire." (p. 118)
"When she had read, quizzed, grilled, interrogated, and investigated enough, when she had studied the costs, analyzed the assets, and dug through the debts, when she had found the answers to suit her, when she knew the true worth of a company and understood its weaknesses, when she was satisfied that its basic values were sound and its assets strong, that the downside risk was low and the upside high, then she invested her money." (p. 121)
"She much preferred common people to the stuffy socialites of the upper class." (p. 121)
"If Mr. Astor did not appear at his wife's glittering balls, neither did many of his colleagues. While their wives and daughters, wearing Parisian gowns (and paying a 50 percent import tax for the privilege), descending from their brownstones and townhouses in the dark of night and, under the gaze of gossip columnists, partied with idle males till 2 a.m., the men who made the money supped early and went to sleep. Jay Gould, James Lenox, and William Vanderbilt, recoiling at the word 'cotillion,' retreated to their private clubs. Henry James understood: 'The highest luxury of all, the supremely expensive thing, is constituted privacy.' " (p. 123)
"When others were failing, Hetty often stepped in and saved them by buying their mortgages. The secret, of course, was available cash. She loved a bargain, and having money on hand to pick up distressed assets gave her a distinct advantage in the marketplace. Then, when the banks allowed foreclosure on her mortgages, Hetty assumed the property.
"Such was the case when she was sued for a mortgage she had purchased years before. In 1873, Hetty had loaned $150,000 for a mortgage, and after three years of nonpayment the bank foreclosed; she bought the property at a bargain price. By 1890 its value had grown to $1 million." (p. 140)
"You should never marry a society man with my consent. I want to see you happily married and in a home of your own, but I want you to marry a poor young man of good principles who is making an honest hard fight for success. I don't care whether he's got $100 or not, provided he is made of the right stuff. You will have more money than you'll ever need and it isn't necessary to look for a young man with money. Now you know my wish and I hope I won't hear anything more about your young man in Newport who knows just about enough to part his hair in the middle and spend his father's money." (p. 147)
"The rich needed to spend their money in order to improve their social position; the newer their money, the more they spent. They were spreading their dollars abroad, buying more clothes, more jewels, more furnishings, more food, and more wines from Europe, creating a demand for more payments in gold from American banks." (pp. 155-6)
"Companies whose stocks had skyrocketed, whose dividends defied gravity, collapsed when their lack of capital was revealed. Money became so tight that short-term interest rates soared as high as 75 percent. The National Cordage Company, one of the most heavily traded stocks on the exchange, could not get credit and declared insolvency. The market plunged. Investors panicked. The Gilded Age, like other eras of avarice, opulence, and easy credit, burst from gluttony." (p. 156)
"Perceptions of Hetty were as varied as those of the Wizard of Oz.... 'I've been reading of Hetty Green. I think she must be crazy....' 'Why, she's worth 40 millions....' 'Then she can't be crazy. She's only eccentric.' " (p. 165)
"The case against the trustees of Edward Robinson's estate was first brought about by the sale of property in Cicero, near Chicago, in 1888. The executors had insisted on selling the vacant land for $650,000 although they had been offered $800,000 for the same acreage. The sale roused Hetty's suspicions: she accused the men of investing her father's money with their own interests in mind. Fees they charged for managing the trust seemed excessive and included payments to their own relatives. Money they paid to public officials 'for improving the morals of the city' went toward procuring improvements on the trustees' property. Improvements they made had no effect on her land but clearly enhanced their own. Claims were made for repairs but no vouchers were produced. And no accounting of the trust had been made in more than a decade. When Hetty asked to see the papers, they balked at bringing them forth." (p. 166)
"Instead of giving her money away lavishly like Annie Leary, she handed it out meagerly, providing jobs, not welfare, avoiding the publicity that led to more requests.... 'Hetty Green has in secret done a vast deal more of philanthropy than the public can give her credit for.' " (p. 170)
"To live content with small means; To seek elegance rather than luxury, And refinement rather than fashion; To be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich." (p. 176)
"With money readily available, investors and manipulators borrowed from the banks to buy stocks. The rash of buying sent prices zooming: men whispered hot tips in one another's ears; rumors roiled of companies going sour; stories spread of huge amounts of money being made overnight. Hetty watched from the sidelines as America swirled in another carnival of speculation; rich and poor rushed to the carousel and reached for the brass ring. Corporate leaders and clerks bought and sold on margin; many bought shares being offered to bankroll the purchases of worthless firms. The irresponsible borrowing echoed the past: 'I wasn't worth a cent two years ago, and now I owe two million dollars,' mocked Mark Twain in The Gilded Age. The reckless use of margin and the razzle-dazzle of new industrial stocks also predicted the future, foreshadowing the dot-com bubble and the frenzy for initial public offerings at the turn of the twenty-first century.
"Everyone but Hetty seemed to be buying. She did not buy industrials, she said, and never bought with borrowed money.... Her approach was far more cautious: 'When good things are so low that no one wants them, I buy them and lay them away in a safe; when owing to some new development, they go up and my shares are so needed that men will pay well for them, I am ready to sell.'
"She watched for bargains but never bought to be in style... In the frantic heat of the market Hetty kept a cool head. She attributed her success to her basic rule: 'always buying when everyone wants to sell, and selling when everyone wants to buy. As easy as her motto appeared, it took restraint to keep from buying while others swooped up stocks in the euphoria of a boom; it took courage to remain calm while the crowd dumped their shares overboard in a wave of panic." (p. 191-2)
"She believed that a knowledge of business would make a woman a better wife. In the past, said Hetty, at the end of the day the only thing a woman could do to relieve her husband's strain was 'to make herself as pretty as a wax doll. But there is no reason why that primitive idea... should continue to exist in the sense it once did.' A woman who understood the pressures on her husband would be a far more sympathetic spouse.
"In spite of her strong words, she had little support for women's suffrage and no desire to see a woman president. 'I should hope not,' she said piercing the interviewer with her steely eyes. 'I don't believe in so-called women's rights. I am willing to leave politics to the men.' Indeed, she had never taken office at any corporate board, nor had she been the public face of any company; she left it to her husband and son to hold those positions. Nonetheless, she wished women had more rights in the world of commerce. 'I could have succeeded much easier had I been a man. I find men will take advantage of women in business that they would not attempt with men.' " (pp. 195-6)
"As the boom continued, more and more Americans were eager to take part, borrowing money from the banks to buy stocks at prices that soared like out-of-control hot-air balloons.
"At the same time, the cost of land skyrocketed around the country, as people raced to buy up real estate in cities, towns, and rural communities. Inevitably, the cost of borrowing the money to buy the land rose precipitously. While others bought, Hetty sold. 'I saw the handwriting on the wall,' she said later. 'Every real estate deal which I could possibly close up was converted into cash.'
"In 1905 the call for money surpassed anything that had come before. The heavy requests pushed interest rates up, causing many people to owe the banks far more than they had....
"Black clouds hung over the debtors; many had little choice but to divest their holdings. Hetty watched as rich men arrived at the Chemical; doffing their top hats, drawing out their expensive engraved cards, and handing them to the clerk at the door, they sought her out to sell off their possessions. As rates rose, more and more of 'the solidest men in Wall Street... financials to legitimate businessmen,' came to call, begging to unload everything from palatial mansions to automobiles." (p. 199)
"When it comes to spending your life, there have to be some things neglected. If you try to do too much, you can never get anywhere. As I was naturally made for work, I just as naturally wasn't made for a fashion plate. I have never bothered about what to wear.... I like to see what other people are wearing. It does me good sometimes and gives me a laugh." (p. 221)
"She had enough of courage to live as she chose and to be as thrifty as she pleased, and she observed such of the world's conventions as seemed to her right and useful, coldly and calmly ignoring all the others." (p. 227)
SAT Vocabulary Words
Brocade: a rich fabric, usually silk, woven with a raised pattern, typically with gold or silver thread.
"buying brocades from Frace" (p. 7)
Mainstay: a thing on which something else is based or depends.
"The Howland and Robinson families were a mainstay of whaling and banking" (p. 8)
Sagacious: having or showing keen mental discernment and good judgment; shrewd.
"sagacious businessman" (p. 8)
Rectitude: morally correct behavior or thinking; righteousness.
"He trusted his brothers in commerce and knew he could rely on them for honesty and goodwill, candor and rectitude." (p. 8)
Vestibule: an antechamber, hall, or lobby next to the outer door of a building.
"advancing no farther than the vestibule" (p. 26)
Frock: a loose outer garment, in particular.
"frock coats" (p. 28)
Watchword: a word or phrase expressing a person's or group's core aim or belief.
"Waste was wicked; frugality was his watchword." (p. 30)
Duds: clothes.
"Take your duds and leave." (p. 55)
Fete: a celebration or festival.
"Ordinary fetes were forgotten as Hetty watched her once-vigorous father waste away." (p. 64)
Conundrum: a question asked for amusement, typically one with a pun in its answer; a riddle.
"conundrums, charades, or chess" (p. 75)
Sultan: a Muslim sovereign.
"sultan of Turkey" (p. 75)
Dapper: (typically of a man) neat and trim in dress, appearance, or bearing.
"dapper entrepreneurs who all hoped for blessings" (p. 77)
Sojourn: a temporary stay.
"sojourned in the country and at the seaside" (p. 83)
Scurrilous: making or spreading scandalous claims about someone with the intention of damaging their reputation.
"the scurrilous Gould and his band of thieves were forced of the Eerie board" (p. 87)
Avowed: that has been asserted, admitted, or stated publicly.
"he had borrowed more against company stock than had been avowed; furthermore, he had falsified the company's statements, claiming far less debt than the real amount" (p. 115)
Penurious: parsimonious; mean.
Parsimonious: unwilling to spend money or use resources; stingy or frugal.
"a penurious man who seated his guests on rickety chairs and served them expensive wine poured into broken mugs" (p. 183)
Fortnight: a period of two weeks.
"for a fortnight he followed her to Hoboken" (p. 184)
Palatial: resembling a palace in being spacious and splendid.
"palatial mansions" (p. 199)
Scion: a descendant of a notable family.
"a scion of a real estate family" (p. 210)
"buying brocades from Frace" (p. 7)
Mainstay: a thing on which something else is based or depends.
"The Howland and Robinson families were a mainstay of whaling and banking" (p. 8)
Sagacious: having or showing keen mental discernment and good judgment; shrewd.
"sagacious businessman" (p. 8)
Rectitude: morally correct behavior or thinking; righteousness.
"He trusted his brothers in commerce and knew he could rely on them for honesty and goodwill, candor and rectitude." (p. 8)
Vestibule: an antechamber, hall, or lobby next to the outer door of a building.
"advancing no farther than the vestibule" (p. 26)
Frock: a loose outer garment, in particular.
"frock coats" (p. 28)
Watchword: a word or phrase expressing a person's or group's core aim or belief.
"Waste was wicked; frugality was his watchword." (p. 30)
Duds: clothes.
"Take your duds and leave." (p. 55)
Fete: a celebration or festival.
"Ordinary fetes were forgotten as Hetty watched her once-vigorous father waste away." (p. 64)
Conundrum: a question asked for amusement, typically one with a pun in its answer; a riddle.
"conundrums, charades, or chess" (p. 75)
Sultan: a Muslim sovereign.
"sultan of Turkey" (p. 75)
Dapper: (typically of a man) neat and trim in dress, appearance, or bearing.
"dapper entrepreneurs who all hoped for blessings" (p. 77)
Sojourn: a temporary stay.
"sojourned in the country and at the seaside" (p. 83)
Scurrilous: making or spreading scandalous claims about someone with the intention of damaging their reputation.
"the scurrilous Gould and his band of thieves were forced of the Eerie board" (p. 87)
Avowed: that has been asserted, admitted, or stated publicly.
"he had borrowed more against company stock than had been avowed; furthermore, he had falsified the company's statements, claiming far less debt than the real amount" (p. 115)
Penurious: parsimonious; mean.
Parsimonious: unwilling to spend money or use resources; stingy or frugal.
"a penurious man who seated his guests on rickety chairs and served them expensive wine poured into broken mugs" (p. 183)
Fortnight: a period of two weeks.
"for a fortnight he followed her to Hoboken" (p. 184)
Palatial: resembling a palace in being spacious and splendid.
"palatial mansions" (p. 199)
Scion: a descendant of a notable family.
"a scion of a real estate family" (p. 210)
