s stopping a minute--never stay long, you know; just run in and
say 'Happy New Year!' leave what I have and get out--and so said, 'Good
morning, Aunt Mary!'

"'Good morning, Elihu,' says she.

"'Can't stay long, Aunt Mary,' I said. 'Just want to leave you these.
Happy New Year!'

"Well, sir, you know I was just turning around and starting when she
caught hold of my sleeve and says:

"'Elihu Burridge,' she says, 'give me that hand!' and do you know,
before I knew what she was about she took it up to her lips and kissed
it! Yes, she did--kissed my hand!

"Now," he said, drawing himself up, with eyes bright with intense
feeling, "you know whether I've had my reward or not, don't you?"

_"Vanity, Vanity," Saith the Preacher_

Sometimes a single life will clearly and effectively illustrate a
period. Hence, to me, the importance of this one.

I first met X---- at a time when American financial methods and American
finances were at their apex of daring and splendor, and when the world
was in a more or less tolerant mood toward their grandiose manners and
achievements. It was the golden day of Mr. Morgan, Senior, Mr. Belmont,
Mr. Harriman, Mr. Sage, Mr. Gates, Mr. Brady, and many, many others who
were still extant and ruling distinctly and drastically, as was proved
by the panic of 1907. In opposition to them and yet imitating their
methods, now an old story to those who have read "Frenzied Finance,"
"Lawless Wealth," and other such exposures of the methods which produced
our enormous American fortunes, were such younger men as Charles W.
Morse (the victim of the 1907 panic), F. Augustus Heinze (another if
less conspicuous victim of the same "panic"), E.R. Thomas, an ambitious
young millionaire, himself born to money, David A. Sullivan, and X----.
I refuse to mention his name because he is still alive although no
longer conspicuous, and anxious perhaps to avoid the uncomfortable glare
of publicity when all the honors and comforts which made it endurable in
the first place are absent.

The person who made X---- essentially interesting to me long before I
met him was one Lucien de Shay, a ne'er-do-well pianist and voice
culturist, who was also a connoisseur in the matters of rugs, hangings,
paintings and furniture, things in which X---- was just then most
intensely interested, erecting, as he was, a great house on Long Island
and but newly blossoming into the world of art or fashion or culture or
show--those va