Chapter V
In her desire to forget, to put all the past behind her, Louella even tried to forget her home, her mother and father, and her brother, Templeton.
Not too successfully—as far as her father and mother were concerned. Templeton she had no difficulty in forgetting. He had never been much to her, or in her young life; their interests had never been the same, and there had been that ten years difference in age between them.
Still Louella would not have been surprised to have been told of her brother's success—far away from her. The surprise would have been if he had not been successful.
It was decidedly so—almost from the start. In fact, the career of Templeton Blaine is a story in itself, a story of determination, will power, success. Horatio Alger would have gloried in its unfolding. To make it a perfect Alger it would only have been necessary for him to have started as a bootblack. However he began in the next-best manner—a farm boy, albeit a farm boy who had no interest in the farm.
From almost his earliest days, as soon as he was able to understand what it was all about, Templeton was interested in economics, in banking, law, railroads, in big business generally. He had been born during the Civil War and his childhood was spent in the period of reconstruction. His father had been an out and out Northerner.
Templeton had a quiet, serious nature. He had practically no childhood. Children with their pranks and silly games bored him. But he was respected by the other boys of Galvey because he was a terrific fighter. Only the valiant were willing to come to blows with Templeton Blaine.
His sister, Mary, was about eight years old when Templeton won his Harvard scholarship. He studied law, economics, banking. All his work he found easy. He absorbed knowledge as
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