And so I came away and left him. There was little else that I could say after that.
It is not the first time that a Western man has been treated with consideration in his own section, only to be frowned upon and frozen when he meets the same man in New York.
Mr. Gould is below the medium height, and is likely to remain so through life. His countenance wears a crafty expression, and yet he allowed himself to be April-fooled by a genial little party of gentlemen from Boston, who salted the Central Branch of the Union Pacific Railroad by holding back all the freight for two weeks in order to have it on the road while Jay was examining the property.
Jay Gould would attract very little attention here on the streets, but he would certainly be looked upon with suspicion in Paradise. A man who would fail to remember that he had $7,000,000 that belonged to the Erie road, but who does not forget to remember whenever he paid his own hotel bills at Washington, is the kind of man who would pull up and pawn the pavements of Paradise within thirty days after he got there.
After looking over the above statement carefully, I feel called upon, in justice to myself, to state that Dr. Burchard did not assist me in constructing the last sentence.
For those boys who wish to emulate the example of Jay Gould, the example of Jay Gould is a good example for them to emulate.
If any little boy in New York on this beautiful Sabbath morning desires to jeopardize his immortal soul in order to be beyond the reach of want, and ride gayly over the sunlit billows where the cruel fangs of the Excise law cannot reach him, let him cultivate a lop-sided memory, swap friends for funds and wise counsel for crooked consols.
If I had thought of all this as I came down the front steps at Irvington the other day, I would have said it to Mr. Gould; but I did not think of it until I got home. A man's best thoughts frequently come to him too late for publication.
But the name of Jay Gould will not go down to future generations linked with those of Howard and Wilberforce. It will not go very far anyway. In this age of millionaires, a millionaire more or less does not count very much, and only the good millionaires who baptize and beautify their wealth in the eternal sunlight of unselfishness will have any claim on immortality.