Once, early in the afternoon, there was what appeared to be a concerted rush for the steps. A number of persons who were evidently under the impression that the public was to be admitted at 3 o’clock made a start at that hour, and two or three hundred others followed. Up they rushed, and, although the policemen shouted, “Get back! You can’t go in,” a few did make their way into the house. They were quickly ejected, however, and thereafter only individual efforts were made to get in. Some of these were persisted in stubbornly, but without success.
Oddly enough, women pleaded the hardest to be allowed to pass through the big oak door, women of more than middle age, most of them, who could give no better reason for wanting to see the face of the dead railway king than that they “just wanted to see it.” Some declared that they had come from great distances for that purpose alone. They went away and returned to beg again. Yet all of them admitted finally that they had never known Mr. Gould or any of the family. His children glanced furtively out of the windows at the motley crowd and gave thanks that the early intention to admit the public had been abandoned.
The throngs began to gather as early as noon, and by 1 o’clock there were 500 or 600 persons near the house. For some time the policemen kept them on the west side of the street, where there was no sunshine and where it was chilly. Yet they held their positions.
In the house during the early afternoon Undertaker Main’s assistants were busy arranging camp chairs in the two parlors, in the dining-room in the rear of the house, and in the spacious hallway which runs from the entrance to the dining-room.
The body of Mr. Gould was taken from the temporary receptacle in which it had been lying since Friday, and placed in the oak casket covered with black broadcloth. At 3 o’clock it was carried down stairs and placed with head toward the east on a standard in front of a broad mirror on the south wall that reached from floor to ceiling.
In the hallway, just back of the reception room, to the left of the entrance and alongside the staircase, was placed a small organ, in front of which the choir of Dr. Paxton’s church was to stand.
Dr. John P. Munn, Mr. Gould’s physician, took up his position in the vestibule soon after 3 o’clock. No one could enter unless he knew them or unless they presented credentials which were not to be questioned. Owing to the sagacity of Roundsman Bingham of the East Fifty-first street police station and a number of central office detectives and police men in citizen’s dress, not a great many reached the doctor whom he had to turn away.
One gray-haired woman, by exhibiting a card, got by the policeman and reached Dr. Munn. To him she said, smiling agreeably, that she had no wish to be intrusive, and then the door being open she sought to push by him. Detective McCloskey, of the central office, who was attending the door, closed it, and a policeman appeared just then and escorted the woman down to the street.
Although the services were not to begin until 4 o’clock the friends began to come before 3. After passing the policemen at the entrance and Dr. Munn, four detectives from police headquarters were encountered. Detective Sergeant Heidelberg stood in the vestibule, Detective Sergeant McCloskey in the inner hall and Detectives Frink and Titus near the dining-room. As the guests were admitted they were shown through the hall to the drawing-room. There they formed in line and passed by the coffin slowly, so that each could get a view of the body, and then passed into the second drawing-room or through the latter to the hall or dining-room. Three ushers found seats for them. None of the family was visible. George Gould had been down earlier in the day and had received some callers, but he retired before the first of the funeral guests arrived. He and the other members of the immediate family, Abraham Gould, Mrs. Northrup and Mrs. Palen, and their children, were gathered in the hall of the second story, where they could hear the music and prayers without being seen by those below. Some remoter relatives and their friends sat in the rear of the second drawing-room. The dining-room was filled first, and here the directors of the Union Pacific, the Manhattan Elevated and the Missouri Pacific railroads and the Western Union Telegraph Company were seated.
The shades were drawn in all the rooms and the electric lights were turned on. At 3:30 o’clock the second drawing-room, the dining-room and the hall were filled. Everybody sat silent during the half hour that elapsed before the services began. The only man who spoke at all, and he confined himself to whispers, was Russell Sage. Except the coffin, the object that attracted the most attention was the oil portrait of Jay Gould, which hung against the rear wall of the dining-room. All in that room and many in the hall could see it, and their eyes were turned toward it a large part of the time. It had been painted before Mr. Gould’s illness, and looked utterly unlike the face in the coffin. Instead of the expression of peace and indifference which marked the latter, there shown out from the countenance of the portrait a look of triumph. The face of the dead man was commonplace beside that in the gilt frame.