enwich Street, and
lived at 223 Broadway, on the site of the present Astor House. In
1801, his store was at 71 Liberty Street, and he had removed his
residence back to 149 Broadway. The year following we find him again
at 223 Broadway, where he continued to reside for a quarter of a
century. His house was such as a fifth-rate merchant would now
consider much beneath his dignity. Mr. Astor, indeed, had a singular
dislike to living in a large house. He had neither expensive tastes
nor wasteful vices. His luxuries were a pipe, a glass of beer, a game
of draughts, a ride on horseback, and the theatre. Of the theatre he
was particularly fond. He seldom missed a good performance in the
palmy days of the "Old Park."

It was his instinctive abhorrence of ostentation and waste that
enabled him, as it were, to glide into the millionaire without being
observed by his neighbors. He used to relate, with a chuckle, that he
was worth a million before any one suspected it. A dandy bank-clerk,
one day, having expressed a doubt as to the sufficiency of his name to
a piece of mercantile paper, Astor asked him how much he thought he
was worth. The clerk mentioned a sum ludicrously less than the real
amount. Astor then asked him how much he supposed this and that
leading merchant, whom he named, was worth. The young man endowed them
with generous sum-totals proportioned to their style of living.
"Well," said Astor, "I am worth more than any of them. I will not say
how much I am worth, but I am worth more than any sum you have
mentioned." "Then," said the clerk, "you are even a greater fool than
I took you for, to work as hard as you do." The old man would tell
this story with great glee, for he always liked a joke.

In the course of his long life he had frequent opportunities of
observing what becomes of those gay merchants who live up to the
incomes of prosperous years, regardless of the inevitable time of
commercial collapse. It must be owned that he held in utter contempt
the dashing style of living and doing business which has too often
prevailed in New York; and he was very slow to give credit to a house
that carried sail out of proportion to its ballast. Nevertheless, he
was himself no plodder when plodding had ceased to be necessary. At
the time when his affairs were on their greatest scale, he would leave
his office at two in the afternoon, go home to an early dinner, then
mount his horse and ride about the Island till it was time