Six months later—that is, last week—I doubled the outstanding capital stock and at the same time increased the dividend from five per cent. to six. It is now earning forty-two per cent. on my total actual investment—a satisfactory property, quite up to my expectations.
My wife has gone abroad with Helen. Poor woman! She has never been the same since her dream collapsed. However, she no longer irritates or opposes me. And Natalie is the most satisfactory of daughters-in-law, and Walter the most docile of sons. As for Aurora, I have been unexpectedly able to get a hold upon her, and through her upon Kirkby. She rules him in every matter except one. He keeps her on short, absurdly short, supplies for the household and her personal expenses. “When I found that he carried a change purse, I had a foreboding,” said she to me the other day. “And when I saw how he looked as he opened it, took a nickel out and closed it, I knew what I had to look forward to.” I have raised her hopes for a large allowance from me in the near future, and a fortune under my will. Presently, through my efforts, combined with hers, I think I shall have Kirkby for a colossal undertaking I am working out.
Altogether, my affairs are in a thoroughly satisfactory condition. If it weren’t for old age, and certain pains at times in the back of my head—though they may be largely imaginary. Then there is the matter of sleep. I haven’t had a night’s sleep in seven years, and for the last year I have had only three hours’, pieced out with a nap in my carriage on the way up-town.
“Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.” But—it wears a crown!
VI
When I began to build my palace in New York City, in Fifth Avenue near Fifty-ninth Street, I intended it to be the seat of my family for many generations. My architect obeyed my orders and planned the most imposing residence in the city; but, before it was finished—indeed, before we had any considerable amount of furniture collected for it—no less than seven palaces were under way, each excelling mine in every respect—in extent, in costliness of site and structure, in taste, and in spaciousness of interior arrangement. This was mortifying, for it warned me that within a few years my palace would be completely, even absurdly, in eclipse, for it would stand among towering flat-houses and hotels—a second-class neighbourhood.
But, irritating and expensive though the lesson was, it was of inestimable value to me with my ability to see and to profit. It taught me my own ignorance and so set me to educating myself in matters most important to the dignity of my family line. Also it taught me how I was underestimating New York and its expansive power, and therefore the expansive power of the whole country. I began to acquire large amounts of real estate which have already vindicated my judgment; and I made bolder and more sweeping moves in my industrial and railway developments—those moves that have frightened many of my associates. Naturally, to the short-sighted, the far-sighted seem visionary. A man may stake his soul, or even his life, on something beyond his vision, and therefore, to him, visionary; but he won’t stake enough of his money in it seriously to impair his fortune if he loses. That’s why large success is only for the far-sighted.
While I was debating the palace problem, along came the craze for country establishments near New York—palaces set in the midst of parks. I was suspicious of this apparently serious movement among the people of my class, for I knew that at bottom we Americans of all classes are a show-off people—that is, are human. Only the city can furnish the crowd we want as a background for our prosperity and as spectators of it; we are not content with the gaping of a few undiscriminating, dull hayseeds. We like intelligent gaping—the kind that can come pretty near to putting the price-marks on houses, jewels, and dresses. We’d put them there ourselves, even the most “refined” of us, if custom, made, by the way, by the poor people with their so-called culture, did not forbid it. So, though I was too good a judge of business matters to have much faith in the country-house movement, I bought “Ocean Farm” and planned my house there on a vast scale. It is, as a little study of it will reveal, ingeniously arranged, so that, if the country-seat fashion shall ever revive, it can be expanded without upsetting proportions, and splendid improvements can easily be made in the handsome, five-hundred-acre park which surrounds it.
But just as I was taking up the problem of an establishment for Walter, the shrewdness of my doubts about the country began to appear. I had been investing in real estate in and near upper Fifth Avenue; I determined to build myself a new palace there that would be monumental. It will never be possible for a private establishment in New York to cover more surface than a block, so I fixed on and bought the entire block between —— and —— Streets and Fifth and Madison Avenues. Then I ordered my architect to drop everything else and spend a year abroad in careful study of the great houses of Europe, both old and new. This detailing of a distinguished architect for a year might seem to be an extravagance; in fact, it was one of those wise economies which are peculiarly characteristic of me.
Money spent upon getting the best possible in the best possible way is never extravagance. People incapable of thinking in large sums do not see that to lay out five millions economically one must adopt methods proportionately broader than those one would use in laying out five thousand or five hundred thousand to the best advantage. It has cost me hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, to learn that lesson.