it?" he used to say. He spoke French, a dash of Spanish and could
parley in Choctaw, Ottawa, Mohawk and Huron. But they who speak
several languages must not be expected to speak any one language well.

Yet when John Jacob wrote it was English without a flaw. In all of his
dealings he was uniquely honorable and upright. He paid and he made
others pay. His word was his bond. He was not charitable in the sense
of indiscriminate giving. "To give something for nothing is to weaken
the giver," was one of his favorite sayings. That this attitude
protected a miserly spirit, it is easy to say, but it is not wholly
true. In his later years he carried with him a book containing a
record of his possessions. This was his breviary. In it he took a
very pardonable delight. He would visit a certain piece of property,
and then turn to his book and see what it had cost him ten or twenty
years before. To realize that his prophetic vision had been correct
was to him a great source of satisfaction.

His habits were of the best. He went to bed at nine o'clock, and was
up before six. At seven he was at his office. He knew enough to eat
sparingly and to walk, so he was never sick.

Millionaires as a rule are woefully ignorant. Up to a certain sum,
they grow with their acquisitions. Then they begin to wither at the
heart. The care of a fortune is a penalty. I advise the gentle reader
to think twice before accumulating ten millions.

John Jacob Astor was exceptional in his combined love of money and love
of books. History was at his tongue's end, and geography was his
plaything. Fitz-Greene Halleck was his private secretary, hired on a
basis of literary friendship. Washington Irving was a close friend,
too, and first crossed the Atlantic on an Astor pass. He banked on
Washington Irving's genius, and loaned him money to come and go, and
buy a house. Irving was named in Astor's will as one of the trustees
of the Astor Library Fund, and repaid all favors by writing "Astoria."

Astor died, aged eighty-six. It was a natural death, a thing that very
seldom occurs. The machinery all ran down at once.

Realizing his lack of book advantages, he left by his will four hundred
thousand dollars to found the Astor Library, in order that others might
profit where he had lacked.

He also left fifty thousand dollars to his native town of Waldorf, a
part of which money was used to found an Astor Library there God is
surely good,