n sleep. Nobody respected him any more than they did every other
honest man. Only a few toadies would act toward him as though he was a
world's wonder, on account of his wealth. People with souls, and health,
and good nature, in the West, got rich as he, and went to New York, and
knew how to spend money and have fun, and do good with it; and Astor
couldn't understand it. He wanted to be considered the only, but he
never had learned how to blow in money to make others happy. If he gave
to the poor, an agent did it for him, and squeezed it, and made a
memorandum and showed it to him once a year, and he frowned, and his
stomach ached, and he took a pill, and sighed. I suppose two girls from
California, daughters of an old Roman of the mines and the railroads,
who died too soon, a senator with a soul, taught Astor how to do good
with money, and maybe scared him out of the country. Those girls seemed
to, know where there was a chance for suffering among the poor, and they
kept people in their employ on the run to get to places before the bread
was all gone, until half a million of the people that only knew there
was an Astor by the signs on buildings for rent, knew these Fair girls
by sight, and worshiped them as they passed. The girls are married now,
but they give just the same, and wherever they are in the world there is
the crowd, and there is the love of those who believe them angels. Astor
could not find any one to love him for any good he ever did that did not
have rent or interest as the object, and he went away where a man is
respected in a half-way manner, in proportion to the money he spends on
royalty, in imitating royalty, and he will run a race there, and get
tired of it; and some day, if he lives, he will come back to this
country in the steerage, as his ancestors did, and take out his first
papers and vote, and maybe he will be happy. The only way for a rich man
to be very happy is to find avenues for getting his congested wealth off
his mind, where it will cause some one who is poor and suffering to look
up to him, and say that riches have not spoiled him. But to inherit
money and go through life letting it accumulate, and not finding any
avenue where it can leak out and be caught in the apron of a needy soul,
is tough. No, you boys need not worry about the desertion of Astor. If
we have a war with Great Britain, you would find Astor taking a night
trip across the channel, and France would draw him in the lotte