Though a portion of this provision is rather whimsical, yet it was ably designed to force “Corneel” to desist from his besetting sin, the gaming table.
If the trustees were permitted to pay him the whole of the interest at whatever period they should choose, it seems harsh that the beneficiary should forfeit it entirely, if he should seek to relieve present and pressing necessities, by borrowing on his future income. It showed that the Commodore, even at the hour of his death, thought that “Corneel” was not fit to be treated otherwise than as a child, and that it was necessary he should be kept under the guardianship of his brother.
This circumstance hurt “Corneel’s” feelings greatly, as he imagined himself a bigger man, mentally, than Wm. H. This opinion, however, no other man could conscientiously endorse, except it might have been Greeley or Colfax.
“Corneel,” though always exclaiming against the old man’s hard-heartedness, had an intense admiration for his father’s abilities, and he was as sensitive as a sunflower when any other person would say a word to disparage the Commodore. While railing constantly at the parsimony of his father, he was as devoted a hero-worshipper of the Commodore as Thomas Carlyle ever was of the greatest of his heroes, and he never grew tired talking of his achievements, with the history of which he was thoroughly familiar. He had even a more intense hatred against Gould than his father had, and solemnly believed that Gould and Fisk had, during the manipulation of the Erie “corner,” conspired to assassinate the Commodore.
Of course this was one of his many hallucinations, and there was not the least ground for it, but he had got it indelibly on the brain, and he would not tolerate contradiction in that notion any more than in any other opinion which he had got fixed in his morbid mind. He once went into an epileptic fit in the presence of a friend of mine who attempted to reason with him on the improbability of such a man as Gould contemplating murder.
He never forgave his father for having him arrested and incarcerated in Bloomingdale Lunatic Asylum. He had run off to California the time of the gold fever, and shipped as a sailor. He was then in his eighteenth year. When he returned, which was pretty soon, as he had no ability to enter into the terrible mental and physical struggle for wealth on the gold coast, his father had him arrested. It was soon discovered that he was no lunatic, however eccentric he might be, and he was released, but he took the matter dreadfully to heart, and it had a melancholy and demoralizing effect upon all his future life. He was petulant, and still complaining, and often acted like a crazy man in that the more any of his intimate friends tried to please him he seemed the more dissatisfied; yet it was impossible to get along with him without humoring him, and it was almost next to impossible to humor him. In this way he could work on the minds of the strongest of his friends, so as almost to put them into a fit as bad as one of his own.
Dr. Swazy’s patience was often put to a very severe test in his attempt to please this eccentric invalid.
“Corneel” was a miser everywhere except at the gaming table, and would cling to a cent with greater tenacity than ordinary people display in holding on to a ten-dollar bill. But among the gamblers either a ten-dollar bill or a hundred-dollar bill was less valuable in his eyes than a cent in the common transactions of every day life. “Faro” and “keno” had terrific power over him. He has often been known to have had an epileptic fit at the gaming-table, get a doze afterwards which seemed like the sleep of death, so cadaverous did he look on those occasions, and then awake up and go on with the play, whose fascination he appeared utterly powerless to resist.
When it came to the ears of the Commodore that Greeley was lending his son hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars at a time, he visited the office of the Tribune. He rushed without ceremony into the sanctum, where Greeley was busy at his high desk, grinding out a tirade against some political or social abuse, and thus addressed the Sage of Chappaqua: “Greeley, I hear yer lendin’ ‘Corneel’ money.” “Yes,” said Greeley, eyeing the monarch of steamboat men through his glasses, with an air of philosophic contempt mixed with commiseration; “I have let him have some.” “I give you fair warning,” replied the Commodore, “that you need not look to me; I won’t pay you.” “Who the devil asked you?” retorted Greeley. “Have I?”
This closed the interview. The Commodore retraced his steps down the rickety stairs into Spruce street, and Greeley continued to grind out his illegible chirography for the profane printers. There is no record, I believe, that the subject was ever reverted to between them. Soon after the death of Greeley the Commodore sent a check for $10,000 each to his two daughters.