giving up four or five years to taking care of the business of his
father, who was growing old, finally became connected with the Bank of
Columbia, and in 1837 began a brokerage business in Washington in a
little store 10 x 16 feet on Pennsylvania Avenue near 15th Street. He
was so successful that he eventually took into partnership George W.
Riggs, also of Georgetown, and changed the name to Corcoran and Riggs.
In 1845 this firm purchased the old United States Bank on the corner of
15th Street and New York Avenue. And so the Riggs National Bank, today
one of the strongest banks in the United States, was born. A little
later George W. Riggs retired and Elisha, his brother, was made a junior
partner.

In 1847 Mr. Corcoran sent to all people to whom he had been able to pay
only 50% in his failure of 1823, the full amount due them, with
interest, amounting to about forty-six thousand dollars, to their great
surprise, as evidenced by letters I have read from them to him. Of all
his great benefactions, this seems to me to have been the very finest
thing he ever did.

He must have been a man of very remarkable personality, witness his
going to Europe, the first of the very, very many trips he made in his
life, on one day's notice, and against much discouragement, persuading
Thomas Baring of the great London banking firm of Baring Brothers, to
assist him in a sale of five millions of government bonds. At that time
the firm of Corcoran and Riggs took, on its own account, nearly all the
loans made by the United States.

On his return to New York he was greeted by everyone with enthusiasm, as
this was the first sale of American securities abroad since 1837--eleven
years.

In April, 1854, Mr. Corcoran withdrew from the firm, thinking he had
made enough money, and spent the rest of his long life of ninety
years--forty-five years more--spending his money in a manner unknown
before that time.

Apropos of his money-making faculty, I have often been told by my aunt
how her father, Henry Dunlop, when a boy, was walking along the street
with young Corcoran, just his own age, when Henry, whose family was
rather well-off in those days, seeing a penny lying on the pavement,
kicked it ahead of him in his stride, as boys will do, but young
Corcoran, stooping down, put it in his pocket saying, "Henry, you will
never be a rich man." That prophecy came true, for Henry spent his life
in farming, and you know what that means!

Among Mr. Co