and empty it. He then richly repays this confidence by saying
that if it doesn't rain any more we will have a long dry time. The man
then goes away inflated with the idea that he has a pointer from Mr.
Gould which will materially affect values. A great many men are playing
croquet at the poor-house this summer who owe their prosperity to tips
given them by Mr. Gould.

As a fair sample of the way a story about a great man grows and becomes
distorted at the same time, one incident will be sufficient. Some years
ago, it is said, Mr. Gould bought a general admission ticket to hear
Sarah Bernhardt as Camille. Several gentlemen who were sitting near
where he stood asked him why he did not take a seat. Instead of
answering directly that he could not get one he replied that he did not
care for a seat, as he wanted to be near the door when the building
fell. Shortly after this he had more seats than he could use. I give
this story simply to illustrate how such a thing may be distorted, for
upon investigation it was found to have occurred at a Patti concert, and
not at a Bernhardt exhibition at all.

Mr. Gould's career, with its attendant success, should teach us two
things, at least. One is, that it always pays to do a kind act, for a
great deal of his large fortune has been amassed by assisting men like
Mr. Field, when they were in a tight place, and taking their depressed
stock off their hands while in a shrunken condition. He believes also
that the merciful man is merciful to his stock.

He says he owes much of his success in life to economy and neuralgia. He
also loves to relieve distress on Wall street, and is so passionately
fond of this as he grows older that he has been known to distress other
stock men just for the pleasant thrill it gave him to relieve them.

Jay Gould is also a living illustration of what a young man may do with
nothing but his bare hands in America. John L. Sullivan and Gould are
both that way. Mr. Gould and Col. Sullivan could go into Siberia
to-morrow--little as they are known there--and with a small Gordon
press, a quire of bond paper and a pair of three-pennyweight gloves they
would soon own Siberia, with a right of way across the rest of Europe
and a first mortgage on the Russian throne. As fast as Col. Sullivan
knocked out a dynasty Jay could come in and administer on the estate.
This would be a powerful combination. It would afford us an opportunity
also to get some of those Russian hay-fev