When I first met Doctor Green he was president of a Kentucky railway company. He had been, however, one of the organizers of the Western Union Telegraph Company. He deluded himself for a little by political ambitions. He wanted to go to the Senate of the United States, and during a legislative session of prolonged balloting at Frankfort he missed his election by a single vote.
It may be doubted whether he would have cut a considerable figure at Washington. His talents were constructive rather than declamatory. He was called to a greater field--though he never thought it so--and was foremost among those who developed the telegraph system of the country almost from its infancy. He possessed the daring of the typical Kentuckian, with the dead calm of the stoic philosopher; imperturbable; never vexed or querulous or excited; denying himself none of the indulgences of the gentleman of leisure. We grew to be constant comrades and friends, and when he returned to New York to take the important post which to the end of his days he filled so completely his office in the Western Union Building became my downtown headquarters.
There I met Jay Gould familiarly; and resumed acquaintance with Russell Sage, whom I had known when a lad in Washington, he a hayseed member of Congress; and occasionally other of the Wall Street leaders. In a small way--though not for long--I caught the stock-gambling fever. But I was on the "inside," and it was a cold day when I did not "clean up" a goodly amount to waste uptown in the evening. I may say that I gave this over through sheer disgust of acquiring so much and such easy and useless money, for, having no natural love of money--no aptitude for making money breed--no taste for getting it except to spend it--earning by my own accustomed and fruitful toil always a sufficiency--the distractions and dissipations it brought to my annual vacations and occasional visits, affronted in a way my self-respect, and palled upon my rather eager quest of pleasure. Money is purely relative. The root of all evil, too. Too much of it may bring ills as great as not enough.
At the outset of my stock-gambling experience I was one day in the office of President Edward H. Green, of the Louisville and Nashville Railway, no relation of Dr. Norvin Green, but the husband of the famous Hetty Green. He said to me, "How are you in stocks?"
"What do you mean?" said I.
"Why," he said, "do you buy long, or short? Are you lucky or unlucky?"
"You are talking Greek to me," I answered.
"Didn't you ever put up any money on a margin?"
"Never."
"Bless me! You are a virgin. I want to try your luck. Look over this stock list and pick a stock. I will take a crack at it. All I make we'll divide, and all we lose I'll pay."