“It will be a bad thing for my family if I am killed,” said the man, “but I’ll undertake the work.”
“How much money would it take to make you independent out here?” asked Mr. Gould.
“I’d be well off if I had $5,000,” replied the surveyor.
The surveying was done, and one day, some months later, Mr. Gould asked Mr. Morosini what the surveyor’s name was and directed him to send the man a check for $5,000, with the remark:
“We’ll make him the richest man in Colorado.”
One of the stories told of Mr. Gould to illustrate his determination to die a rich man whatever happened was this: In 1884, when it was ascertained that Mr. Gould was in financial danger, he took from his safe $11,000,000 worth of stock of the Manhattan and the Missouri Pacific railroads and stowed it away in an iron box, which he locked and sealed.
He resolved that that box should never be opened until after his death, and that no matter what happened the securities should not be touched. He carried the box, it was said, to the vaults of a safe deposit company, where it was locked up, and the particular vault in which it was placed was sealed, too. Instructions were given to the officers of the company that the seal on the vault was not to be broken until after his death, and then only in the presence of all of his executors.
Ex-Judge John F. Dillon knew Mr. Gould intimately. He first met the financier in 1879, and was his legal adviser in many of his undertakings.
“There were many distinct characteristics about Mr. Gould,” said Mr. Dillon. “I never knew him to utter a profane word, and he was as delicate and sensitive in temperament as a woman. Mr. Gould wrote and spoke capital English, but he never wrote a word that was not necessary. Judge Usher, who was Secretary of the Interior under Lincoln, an able and great lawyer, once said to me that he had bought a railroad for Mr. Gould, or in his interest, and had written out a contract covering two or three pages of foolscap. The judge, in telling of the incident, said: ‘I sent the contract, which I considered a thorough document, to Mr. Gould, and he almost immediately returned it written out on a half page of paper of the same size. When I got the document and found it perfect in its condensed form, I felt ashamed of myself.’ Mr. Gould was so self-reliant that he had little use for lawyers. He was his own negotiator and contract maker. When he bought the Iron Mountain road he showed me, the next day, a contract for that great purchase. It was a contract written out in his own handwriting on less than two pages of social note paper.
“He concluded the contract of the purchase of the Missouri Pacific without consulting his lawyers. When shown the contract the next day, his counsel told him he had bought a big lawsuit, and that title to the whole property was in question in the Supreme Court of the United States. He simply said, ‘I have given my check for $3,700,000, and the thing is closed. The seller would laugh at me if I went back and expressed a desire to rescind.’ He thereupon directed his attorneys to take charge of the case and try to sustain the title of the property bought, which after years of litigation they did.