I had thought of all this as I came down the front steps at Irvington
the other day, I would have said it to Mr. Gould; but I did not think of
it until I got home. A man's best thoughts frequently come to him too
late for publication.

[Illustration]

But the name of Jay Gould will not go down to future generations linked
with those of Howard and Wilberforce. It will not go very far anyway. In
this age of millionaires, a millionaire more or less does not count very
much, and only the good millionaires who baptize and beautify their
wealth in the eternal sunlight of unselfishness will have any claim on
immortality.

In this period of progress and high-grade civilization, when Satan takes
humanity up to the top of a high mountain and shows his railroads and
his kerosene oil and his distilleries and his coffers filled with pure
leaf lard, and says: "All this will I give for a seat in the Senate," a
common millionaire with no originality of design does not excite any
more curiosity on Broadway than a young man who is led about by a little
ecru dog.

I do not wish to crush capital with labor, or to further intensify the
feeling which already exists between the two, for I am a land-holder and
taxpayer myself, but I say that the man who never mixes up with the
common people unless he is summoned to explain something and shake the
moths out of his memory will some day, when the grass grows green over
his own grave, find himself confronted by the same kind of a memory on
the part of mankind.

I do not say all this because I was treated in an off-hand manner by Mr.
Gould, but because I think it ought to be said.

As I said before, Jay Gould is considerably below the medium height, and
I am not going to take it back.

He is a man who will some day sit out on the corner of a new-laid planet
with his little pink railroad maps on his knees and ask, "Where am I?"
and the echoes from every musty corner of miasmatic oblivion will take
up the question and refer it to the judiciary committee; but it will
curl up and die like the minority report against a big railroad land
grant.

[Illustration: "A Brave Refrain."]

When snow is here, and the trees look weird,
And the knuckled twigs are gloved with frost;
When the breath congeals in the drover's beard,
And the old pathway to the barn is lost:

When the rooster's crow is sad to hear,
And the stamp of the stabled horse is vain,