Explore "Kate Meredith, Financier" by Cutcliffe Hyne on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Now, Godfrey O'Neill, deceased, was a man who at various times in his life had extracted from West Africa very considerable sums of money. He was shrewd, he was popular, he had the knack of resisting sickly climates, and he knew the possibilities of the Oil Rivers seaboard down to the last bag of kernels.
According to his own account he had started life as a ship's purser. People who were more fond of accuracy mentioned that as a matter of history he had first gone as cabin-boy in a palm oil brig. But be that as it may, he had been associated with the Coast from his earliest days, and at the age of five-and-twenty was trading there on his own account.