morality or public sentiment,
and hesitated at nothing necessary to the success of his schemes. His
great passion was for notoriety, and he cared not what he did so it made
people talk about him. He surrounded himself with a kind of barbaric
splendor, which won him the name of the "Prince of Erie." Some of his
acts were utterly ludicrous, and he had the wit to perceive it, but he
cared not so it made James Fisk, jr., the talk of the day. His influence
upon the community was bad. He had not only his admirers, but his
imitators, and these sought to reproduce his bad qualities rather than
his virtues.

In some respects he was a strange compound of good and evil. He was
utterly unprincipled, yet he was generous to a fault. No one ever came
to him in distress without meeting with assistance, and it adds to the
virtue of these good deeds that he never proclaimed them to the world.
Says one of his intimate friends: "His personal expenses were, at a
liberal estimate, not one-fifth as large as the amount which he spent in
providing for persons in whose affairs he took a kindly interest, who had
seen misfortune in life, and whom he felt to be dependent upon him for
assistance. He gave away constantly enormous amounts in still more
direct charities, concerning which he rarely spoke to any one, and it was
only by accident that even his most intimate friends found out what he
was doing. He supported for some years an entire family of blind persons
without ever saying a word about it to his nearest friends. He was
particularly generous towards actors and actresses, who, whenever they
suffered from misfortune, would always appeal to him; and one lady,
herself an actress of considerable repute and of very generous nature,
was in the habit of coming constantly to Mr. Fisk to appeal to him for
assistance to aged or unfortunate members of their profession, assistance
which he never refused. Very recently a lady, who was formerly a New
York favorite, but who made an unhappy marriage, and to escape from a
drunken husband had carried her child to England, where, after struggling
in provincial theatres for more than a year, she came to almost her last
penny and had hardly the means to return to this country, without a
change of clothing and without being able to bring away her child, made
her case known to the lady before-mentioned, who immediately, after
helping to the extent of her own scanty means, sent her with a note to
Mr. F