belief in luck-omens, portents, or mascots
as had A. T. Stewart. With him success was a sequence--a result--it was
all cause and effect. A. T. Stewart did not trust entirely to luck, for
he, too, carefully devised and planned. But the difference between the
Celtic and the Teutonic mind is shown in that Stewart hoped to succeed,
while Astor knew that he would. One was a bit anxious; the other
exasperatingly placid.

Astor took a deep interest in the Lewis and Clark expedition. He went
to Washington to see Lewis, and questioned him at great length about the
Northwest. Legend says that he gave the hardy discoverer a thousand
dollars, which was a big amount for him to give away.

Once a committee called on him with a subscription-list for some worthy
charity. Astor subscribed fifty dollars. One of the disappointed
committee remarked, "Oh, Mr. Astor, your son William gave us a hundred
dollars." "Yes," said the old man, "but you must remember that William
has a rich father."

Washington Irving has told the story of Astoria at length. It was the
one financial plunge taken by John Jacob Astor. And in spite of the fact
that it failed, the whole affair does credit to the prophetic brain of
Astor. "This country will see a chain of growing and prosperous cities
straight from New York to Astoria, Oregon," said this man in reply to a
doubting questioner.

He laid his plans before Congress, urging a line of army-posts, forty
miles apart, from the western extremity of Lake Superior to the Pacific.

"These forts or army-posts will evolve into cities," said Astor, when he
called on Thomas Jefferson, who was then President of the United States.
Jefferson was interested, but non-committal. Astor exhibited maps of the
Great Lakes, and the country beyond. He argued with a prescience then
not possessed by any living man that at the western extremity of Lake
Superior would grow up a great city. Yet in Eighteen Hundred
Seventy-six, Duluth was ridiculed by the caustic tongue of Proctor
Knott, who asked, "What will become of Duluth when the lumber-crop is
cut?" Astor proceeded to say that another great city would grow up at
the southern extremity of Lake Michigan. General Dearborn, Secretary of
War under Jefferson, had just established Fort Dearborn on the present
site of Chicago. Astor commended this, and said, "From a fort you get a
trading-post, and from a trading-post you will get a city."

He pointed out to Jefferson the site, on his m