His wife made application to her father-in-law with better success, however. He gave her a check for $10,000. In a few months afterward she paid another visit to the Commodore, who received her cordially, but expected she had come for another loan, and he was attempting to work up his courage to the point of refusal; for, strong and almost invincibly obdurate as he was in the general affairs of life, in the presence of the fair sex, like Samson when he got his hair cut, he was weak and like another man.
“Well,” said the Commodore, addressing his daughter-in-law with a kindly smile, “what can I do for you now?”
“Well, papa,” she replied in her exceedingly candid and agreeable manner, “we did not need all the money, so I brought you back $1,500.”
The Commodore could hardly believe his ears and eyes, and thought for a moment that he must be under some mysterious delusion, superinduced by the spiritual seances which he then was in the habit of attending. But when the cash was put in his hand he found it was a material reality. This sealed a warm friendship between him and his worthy and economical daughter-in-law, which was only severed by her premature death about ten years before that of her unfortunate husband.
The sympathy that some people manifested for “Young Corneel” was, like his own maladies, of the most morbid or delusive character. He had $200 a week from his father all the time that he was whining to the public about his pinching poverty and denouncing the old man’s niggardliness. This would have been ample, with fair economy, not only for all the necessaries of life, but, under judicious management, would have afforded the recipient many of its luxuries.
With his irresistible propensity for gambling, he would not have been any better off physically, but worse, with the entire income from his father’s 75 or 100 millions. The only difference that should have arisen was that he would have been instrumental in carrying out in part the socialistic and communistic idea of a wider distribution of private property, amassed by thrift, privation and industry, among the drones, lazy “loafers” and criminals of society.
The Commodore’s judgment, therefore, in limiting his prodigal son to $200 a week, was not only comprehensive, but beneficent in its results both to his son and to society at large.
C. Vanderbilt.