I cabled him in Paris and asked that he would look into the situation
through his confidential friends, reporters, and employees, and
if he found the situation warranted his taking a position to do so.
Of course the Herald was an independent and not a party journal
and rarely took sides. But not long afterwards, editorially and
reportorially, the emphatic endorsement of the Herald came, and
positive prediction of success, and were of great help. He was
one of my groomsmen at my wedding in 1901.

Among the thousands of stories which appear and disappear like
butterflies, it is a curious question what vogue and circulation
one can have over others. By an accident I broke one of the
tendons of my heel and was laid up in my house for some time,
unable to walk. The surgeon fixed the bandage in place by a
liquid cement which soon solidified like glass.

Julian Ralph, a brilliant young newspaper reporter, wrote a long
story in the New York Sun about a wonderful glass leg, which had
been substituted for the natural one and did better work. The
story had universal publication not only in the United States
but abroad, and interested scientists and surgeons. My mail grew
to enormous proportions with letters from eager inquirers wanting
to know all the particulars. The multitude of unfortunates who
had lost their legs or were dissatisfied with artificial ones wrote
to me to find out where these wonderful glass legs could be obtained.

The glass-leg story nearly killed me, but it gave Ralph such a
reputation that he was advanced to positions both at home and
abroad, where his literary genius and imagination won him many
honors, but he never repeated his success with my glass leg.

I suppose, having been more than half a century in close contact
with matters of interest to the public, or officially in positions
where I was a party to corporate activities or movements which
might affect the market, I have been more interviewed than any
one living and seen more reporters. No reporter has ever abused
the confidence I reposed in him. He always appreciated what I
told him, even to the verge of indiscretion, and knew what was
proper for him to reveal and what was not for publication. In the
critical situations which often occurred in railway controversies,
this cordial relationship with reporters was of great value in
getting our side before the public.

One reporter especially, a space writer, managed for a long time
to