fast line of passenger steamships between New
York and Havre; and finally was attracted to railway development as a
field of enterprise destined to win large returns. In the course of a
few years he had secured control of both the Hudson River and New York
Central roads, and brought both of them to the highest state of
efficiency, and after consolidating them, extended the system to Chicago
by the purchase of the Lake Shore, the Canada Southern and Michigan
Central. He built a great terminal in New York City, and made the system
so profitable that, from it, and a series of fortunate speculations, he
accumulated a fortune of $100,000,000, practically all of which he
bequeathed to his eldest son, William Henry. One million was also given
for the establishment of Vanderbilt University at Nashville, Tennessee.

Cornelius Vanderbilt, for many years, had a very poor opinion of his
son's financial ability, and giving him a small farm on Staten Island,
left him to shift for himself. Everyone has read of the incident which
changed this opinion. William needed some fertilizer for his farm, and
asked his father to give him a load of manure from his stables. His
father told him to go ahead and take a load, and William thereupon
brought a great scow up to the pier near the stables, proceeded to load
it, and when his father protested, pointed out that he had not specified
the kind of load, but that he had meant a scow-load. This bit of sharp
practice pleased his father, and, shortly afterwards, the great success
with which he managed the Staten Island Railroad, as receiver,
established him in his father's confidence. He continued and extended
his father's policy of railway investment, and added to the great
fortune which had been left him, and which still remains one of the
greatest in America, though it has been split up among the different
branches of the Vanderbilt family. William himself distributed about two
millions in various benevolent and public enterprises, one of the
queerest of which was the removal of one of "Cleopatra's Needles" from
Egypt to Central Park, New York City, at a cost of over a hundred
thousand dollars.

In the business world of New York City, half a century ago, no name was
more prominent than that of A. T. Stewart, whose success as a merchant
was one of the most astonishing features of the time. Born near Belfast,
Ireland, in 1803, Stewart was a descendant from one of those hardy and
thrifty Scotch-Irish