TH.

His fortune was the colossus of the times; an object of awe to all
wealth-strivers. Necessary as manufactures were in the social and
industrial system, they, as yet, occupied a strikingly subordinate and
inferior position as an agency in accumulating great fortunes.
Statistics issued in 1844 of manufactures in the United States showed a
total gross amount of $307,196,844 invested. Astor's wealth, then, was
one-fifteenth of the whole amount invested throughout the territory of
the United States in cotton and wool, leather, flax and iron, glass,
sugar, furniture, hats, silks, ships, paper, soap, candles, wagons--in
every kind of goods which the demands of civilization made
indispensable.

The last years of this magnate were passed in an atmosphere of luxury,
laudation and power. On Broadway, by Prince street, he built a
pretentious mansion, and adorned it with works of art which were more
costly than artistic. Of medium height, he was still quite stout, but
his once full, heavy face and his deep set eyes began to sag from the
encroachments of extreme advanced age. He could be seen every weekday
poring over business reports at his office on Prince street--a
one-story, fireproof brick building, the windows of which were guarded
by heavy iron bars. The closing weeks of his life were passed at his
country seat at Eighty-eighth street and the East River. Infirm and
debilitated, so weak and worn that he was forced to get his nourishment
like an infant at a woman's breast, and to have exercise administered by
being tossed in a blanket, he yet retained his faculty of vigilantly
scrutinizing every arrear on the part of tenants, and he compelled his
agent to render daily accounts. Parton relates this story:

One morning this gentleman [the agent] chanced to enter his room
while he was enjoying his blanket exercise. The old man cried out
from the middle of his blanket:

"Has Mrs. ---- paid that rent yet?"

"No," replied the agent.

"Well, but she must pay it," said the poor old man.

"Mr. Astor," rejoined the agent, "she can't pay it now; she has
had misfortunes, and we must give her time."

"No, no," said Astor; "I tell you she can pay it and she will pay
it. You don't go the right way to work with her."

The agent took leave, and mentioned the anxiety of the old
gentleman with regard to this unpaid rent to his son, who counted
out the requisite sum, a