Chapter 10

Mr. Henry Half acre was a speculator in town-lots--a profession that
was, just then, in high repute in the city of New York. For farms, and all
the more vulgar aspects of real estate, he had a sovereign contempt; but
offer him a bit of land that could be measured by feet and inches, and he
was your man. Mr. Halfacre inherited nothing; but he was a man of
what are called energy and enterprise. In other words, he had a spirit
for running in debt, and never shrunk from jeoparding property that, in
truth, belonged to his creditors. The very morning that his eldest child,
Eudosia, made her valuable acquisition, in my person, Henry Halfacre,
Esq., was the owner of several hundred lots on the island of Manhattan;
of one hundred and twenty-three in the city of Brooklyn; of nearly as
many in Williamsburg; of large undivided interests in Milwaukie,
Chicago, Rock River, Moonville, and other similar places; besides
owning a considerable part of a place called Coney Island. In a word,
the landed estate of Henry Halfacre, Esq., "inventoried," as he
expressed it, just two millions, six hundred and twelve thousand dollars;
a handsome sum, it must be confessed, for a man who, when he began
his beneficent and energetic career in this branch of business, was just
twenty-three thousand, four hundred and seventeen dollars worse than
nothing. It is true, that there was some drawback on all this prosperity;
Mr. Halfacre's bonds, notes, mortgages, and other liabilities, making a
sum total that amounted to the odd six hundred thousand dollars; this
still left him, however, a handsome paper balance of two millions.

Notwithstanding the amount of his "bills payable," Mr. Halfacre
considered himself a very prudent man: first, because he insisted on
having no book debts; second, because he always took another man's
paper for a larger amount than he had given of his own, for any specific
lot or lots; thirdly, and lastly, because he was careful to "extend himself,"
at the risk of other persons. There is no question, had all his lots been
sold as he had inventoried them; had his debts been paid; and had he
not spent his money a little faster than it was bona fide made, that Henry
Halfacre, Esq. would have been a very rich man. As he managed,
however, by means of getting portions of the paper he received
discounted, to maintain a fine figure account in the bank, and to pay all
current demands, he began to be known as the RICH Mr. Halfacre.
But one of his children, the fair Eudosia, was out; and as she had some
distance to make in the better society of the town, ere she could pass
for aristocratic, it was wisely determined that a golden bridge should be
thrown across the dividing chasm. A hundred-dollar pocket-