He was a quiet, reticent man, who had apparently concentrated every faculty of soul and body on the problem of commercial success.

Trained to business from boyhood, he had allowed it to become his life, and he took it very seriously.
It was to him an absorbing game--his vocation, and not a means to some ulterior end.

He had already accumulated enough to maintain his family in affluence, but he no more thought of retiring from trade than would a veteran whist-player wish to throw up a handful of winning cards.
The events of the world, the fluctuations in prices, over which he had no control, brought to his endeavor the elements of chance, and it was his mission to pit against these uncertainties untiring industry and such skill and foresight as he possessed.
His domestic life was favorable to his ruling passion.

Mary Alden, at the time of her marriage, was a quiet girl, whose early life had been shadowed by sorrow.

She had seen her father pass away in his prime, and her mother become in consequence a sad and failing woman.
The young girl rallied from these early years of depression into cheerfulness, and thoroughly enjoyed what some might regard as a monotonous life; but she never developed any taste for the diversions of society.