l the merits which Jay Cooke claimed for it. Its obligations
are again above par. Jay Cooke has paid every dollar of his debt, with
interest, and again lives in affluence and luxury, respected and honored
by the whole country.

Returning to Sweden I passed through Holland, which country I had
visited a couple of times before, as already mentioned. I carried
important business letters from the leading men of the St. Paul &
Pacific Railroad Company, now known as the Great Northern Railroad
Company. Dutch capitalists had advanced the money--about twenty million
dollars--for building this road. The company had received very extensive
land grants from the United States government; but during the first few
years after the construction of the road to Breckenridge the country
through which it passed was so sparsely settled that the traffic of the
road was insufficient to pay its running expenses, hence their stocks
and obligations depreciated very much in value. But the American
railroad officials with whom I had been connected in the capacity of
land agent were firmly convinced that if this road could be extended
about thirty miles to the Northern Pacific railroad, and a little more
time allowed for the settlement of the country along the line, the
enterprise would pay a handsome dividend. It was my task to explain this
to the Dutch capitalists, and persuade them to advance another
$150,000--a mere trifle compared with what they had invested already--to
build said extension, which was to pass through a perfectly level
country. The president of the company, George L. Becker, and its land
commissioner, Herman E. Trott, had previously visited Holland on the
same business. But all our representations were in vain. The Dutch were
stubborn, and would not give out another dollar. "It is of no use," they
said, "to throw away a small sum of good money after a large sum of bad
money, for it is all lost, anyway." The crisis of 1873 aggravated the
situation still more, for this company, and its bonds were continually
depreciating. The St. Paul & Pacific railroad had pledged itself to
accept its own bonds at par in payment for its land, and as I and others
had sold hundreds of thousands of acres of this land to new settlers on
credit, I tried, and also succeeded, in perfecting an arrangement with
the Hollanders, by which the new settlers who had purchased land on
credit, were allowed to buy on time the bonds of the company, at about
twenty