Congressman John B. Alley is said to have remarked of him at twenty-four: “I won’t go into anything with that lad. He is the only person I ever saw who inspires me with fear.” Vanderbilt said, “His face is a scoundrel’s.” He was often accused of “milking the street,” “forcing quotations,” “washing,” and “covering his shorts,” but on the other hand, when he agreed to enter a pool he acted squarely with his associates unless he caught them at treachery, and then he quietly waited for an opportunity to pay them off. He was a special partner in several firms of brokers and carefully concealed from each his operations with the others.

JAY GOULD’S DEATHBED.

CHAPTER XIV.
THE KING IS DEAD.

Enormous wealth, power in the world of finance, every luxury that is at the command of man except health, that Jay Gould possessed. On Friday morning, December 3, 1892, at 9:15 o’clock, his wonderful career was ended. It was a perfect December morning when the soul of the magnate went to the undiscovered country, whither it had been trending for so many months. He died, not as he had feared to die, by the hand of the assassin or the dynamite crank, but as peacefully as any babe whose lamp of life has dwindled to a spark ere it flickers and goes out. He died surrounded by his children, in the plain, rear-extension bedroom, with its window looking down upon the conservatory. It was the room in which his wife died before him, and which he had since occupied whenever he was in the city. It led to the little study where only his most intimate friends were admitted. Here the last remnant of his strength ebbed away, and even while an attendant turned him, he was gone, and $100,000,000 were without a master. All the members of his family were at his bedside. There were George J. Gould and his wife, who was Edith Kingdon. There were Edwin Gould and the young woman, Dr. Shrady’s daughter, to whom he was so lately married. There was Miss Helen Miller Gould, named after her mother, who had taken her mother’s place as head of her father’s household. There were Miss Anna and Howard and Frank Gould, the younger children, and there, too, was Dr. John P. Munn, Jay Gould’s medical adviser. Mr. Gould’s sons and daughters had remained by his side until one o’clock the previous morning. Then he fell asleep, and his children, worn out, went to bed. They were around his bed again very early. There lay the Alexander of speculation, the man who sought new financial worlds to conquer, who founded possessions on ruins and wrecks—there lay that man, helpless, weak as a baby. Always physically frail, the wasting disease with which he had suffered had greatly emaciated him. His nose was pinched, his face, half hidden by his grey-black beard, was almost as white as the pillow on which it rested. His hands were like wax, and his languid eyes, dimmed by the shadows that were falling across his brain, moved lazily here and there. For although he had fallen into a stupor during the night, Jay Gould was conscious in the morning. He knew he was about to die. He knew the moment was near that he had fought to delay, fought not through fear of death, but with a mighty pride that abhorred the thought that even death should overthrow him.

For two years or more the great financial manipulator had been battling with the knowledge that in his system lurked the seeds of man’s most insidious foe—consumption. He had phthisis pulmonaris in both lungs. He battled with the knowledge, and he took no man into his confidence besides his private physician, who became a sort of trained body servant to him, and was always within easy call to watch him when he had acute attacks, and his two elder sons, George J. Gould and Edwin. A very master of silence himself, he imposed silence upon these confidants, and it became their bounden duty to deceive all others as to the giant which had laid its grip upon his life.

And so the story went forth that Jay Gould was afflicted with nervous dyspepsia merely, and every now and then he had a bilious attack which “was not dangerous,” a cry which was repeated even when he had entered the shadow of the dark valley. Up to within twelve hours of his death the same cry was repeated. And even after death there were strenuous efforts made for some inexplicable reason to shroud the cause in mystery—a mystery which could have wrought no good to the dead man’s peace and that of his surviving family.

But it was not dyspepsia which sent him to the South of France, in the Atalanta, under the watchful eye of his medical guardian, Dr. John P. Munn, whose occupation is gone indeed. It was not dyspepsia which sent him to Florida and Southern California, and El Paso, and the grand resorts of Colorado, nor which caused him not less than two weeks ago to plan a trip to Mexico—for he did not think he was going to die, even then, and no man ever clung to life more fiercely than this frail and silent embodiment of intellect.

He knew the truth, but he bit his teeth upon it. He would not let men into the secret, and sometimes put himself to actual pain in order to conceal the truth, as when, only a few weeks ago, on October 26, he appeared among the guests at Dr. Shrady’s house and took a quiet part in the Gould-Shrady wedding, which had been somewhat hurried at his request.