He indicated with a whisper and a gesture that he was glad his children were all there. And then he showed a wish to change his position, and as the attendant turned him over, the spark of his life went out as if some breath had blown it.
With the slightest echo of a rattle in his throat Jay Gould was dead.
As soon as all was over George and Edwin took charge of matters and began to prepare for the funeral. Messages were sent to Mrs. Palm, of Camden, N. J., and Mrs. Harris, of Philadelphia, Mr. Gould’s sisters, and to other friends, apprising them of the death; and a telephone message summoned the undertaker and his assistants who had been waiting the word from their headquarters in Forty-fourth street. Vice-President Clark, of the Union Pacific road, who had been waiting for a week at the Windsor to confer with his chief, dropped over to the hotel and sent a number of messages.
Then a huge cravat of black crape was placed upon the door-bell to warn passersby that Death had entered at the door. One by one the flags on the hotels of the city, on the Western Union and some other buildings were raised to half mast. The “L” road engines were draped in black, and soon the voices of the newsboys crying their extras spread the tidings through the city.
Persons loitered about the house where death was master and gazed up curiously at the windows. There was but one Jay Gould, and in his going out lay an infinity of food for curiosity and comment.
During the day carriages continued to stop at the mansion and at the house of Edwin Gould, 1 East Forty-seventh street. The Rev. Dr. Paxton called again in the afternoon, and Chancellor MacCracken was among those admitted. The members of the family were, however, entirely inaccessible to any except their most intimate friends. Cards presented at the house or at the houses of either of the sons, with a view to seeing members of the family, met with the answer that they could not be seen.
In the afternoon, when the usual parade of carriages was moving up and down the avenue, there was quite a jam in front of the Gould house. Ladies would order their coachmen to stop and would peer inquisitively out of their carriage windows. Pedestrians, too, would linger on the corners for a few minutes to look at the house and comment with each other.
As might have been expected, the “cranks” were on hand. Whenever they began to air their ideas too freely a policeman made them move on. One of these cranks started to expound at length on the singular coincidence that it was on the first Friday in December, one year ago, that the bomb thrower Norcross blew up Russell Sage’s office, and that on the first Friday of December Jay Gould had died.
The Rev. Dr. Paxton, in speaking of Mr. Gould’s last hours, said: “He had been unconscious for a number of hours, but as the end approached consciousness returned. He opened his eyes, and they wandered around the room where the family was gathered. He clearly recognized them, and at his whispered request they went to his bedside. To each of them in turn he whispered a few words of farewell. Vitality enough for this was vouchsafed him. When he had spoken to the last one he became unconscious again, and in a few minutes more he passed away.”
The mystery as to the nature of the ailment which wrecked Mr. Gould’s health was one of the features of his last illness. It may be stated as a peculiar fact that his most trusted friends, and even the members of his family, were not aware of the disease from which he was suffering until it became evident that he could only a little longer withstand its ravages.