apiece. It was remarkable and people think they must go
there to get rich. Out of that one hundred and seven millionaires only
seven of them made their money in New York, and the others moved to New
York after their fortunes were made, and sixty-seven out of the
remaining hundred made their fortunes in towns of less than six thousand
people, and the richest man in the country at that time lived in a town
of thirty-five hundred inhabitants, and always lived there and never
moved away. It is not so much where you are as what you are. But at the
same time if the largeness of the city comes into the problem, then
remember it is the smaller city that furnishes the great opportunity to
make the millions of money. The best illustration that I can give is in
reference to John Jacob Astor, who was a poor boy and who made all the
money of the Astor family. He made more than his successors have ever
earned, and yet he once held a mortgage on a millinery store in New
York, and because the people could not make enough money to pay the
interest and the rent, he foreclosed the mortgage and took possession of
the store and went into partnership with the man who had failed. He kept
the same stock, did not give them a dollar capital, and he left them
alone and went out and sat down upon a bench in the park. Out there on
that bench in the park he had the most important, and to my mind, the
pleasantest part of that partnership business. He was watching the
ladies as they went by; and where is the man that wouldn't get rich at
that business? But when John Jacob Astor saw a lady pass, with her
shoulders back and her head up, as if she did not care if the whole
world looked on her, he studied her bonnet; and before that bonnet was
out of sight he knew the shape of the frame and the color of the
trimmings, the curl of the--something on a bonnet. Sometimes I try to
describe a woman's bonnet, but it is of little use, for it would be out
of style to-morrow night. So John Jacob Astor went to the store and
said: "Now, put in the show window just such a bonnet as I describe to
you because," said he, "I have just seen a lady who likes just such a
bonnet. Do not make up any more till I come back." And he went out again
and sat on that bench in the park, and another lady of a different form
and complexion passed him with a bonnet of different shape and color, of
course. "Now," said he, "put such a bonnet as that in the show window."
He didn't fill his s