e, and in every possible situation until he had a good,
practical, common-sense education.

Garibaldi's father decided that Guiseppe should be a minister, because
the boy was so sorry for a cricket which lost its leg. Samuel Morse's
father concluded that his son would preach well because he could not
keep his head above water in a dangerous attempt to catch bait in the
Mystic River. President Dwight told young Morse he would never make a
painter, and hinted that he never would amount to much any way if he did
not study more. Although under the teaching of West and Allston in
London, he became a tolerable portrait painter, he did not find his
sphere until returning from England on a sailing vessel, he heard
Professor Jackson explain an electrical experiment in Paris, when the
thought of the telegraph flashed into his mind and he found no rest,
until he flashed over the wire the first message, "What hath God
wrought!" on the experimental line between Baltimore and Washington:
this was May 24, 1844.

William H. Vanderbilt was by far the wealthiest man in the world.
Chauncey M. Depew estimated his fortune at two hundred millions. He left
his eight children ten millions each, except Cornelius and William K.,
who had sixty-five millions each. Commodore Vanderbilt, his father,
amassed a fortune of eighty millions of dollars in his own lifetime, and
that too at a time when it was more difficult to make money than it is
now.

Mr. C. P. Huntington is a good example of a self-made man. His father
was a Connecticut farmer. The farm was left to him, but he traded it off
for a lot of clocks which he peddled in mining districts for gold dust
and nuggets. He and Mark Hopkins formed a partnership and opened a
hardware store in California. They united with Leland Stanford in the
construction of a railroad, and they all got rich rapidly. Mr.
Huntington is one of the greatest railroad operators of the country. He
always acted upon the principle that he would control the stock of any
road in which he was interested. He is one of the most methodical men of
all the millionaires of this country. He is very plain in his manner,
strictly temperate, and very abstemious in his living. He said he never
knew what it was to be tired.

Russell Sage used to keep a grocery store in Troy, N. Y. He finally
associated himself with Jay Gould, who used to be a constant borrower of
money of him. Mr. Sage probably keeps more ready money on hand than any
o