was feasible.

The town was founded and soon became a centre of commercial activity.
Had Astor been on the ground to take personal charge, a city like
Seattle would have bloomed and blossomed on the Pacific, fifty years
ago. But power at Astoria was subdivided among several little men, who
wore themselves out in a struggle for honors, and to see who would be
greatest in the kingdom of heaven. John Jacob Astor was too far away
to send a current of electricity through the vacuum of their minds,
light up the recesses with reason, and shock them into sanity. Like
those first settlers at Jamestown, the pioneers at Astoria saw only
failure ahead, and that which we fear, we bring to pass. To settle a
continent with men is almost as difficult as Nature's attempt to form a
soil on a rocky surface.

There came a grand grab at Astoria and it was each for himself and the
devil take the hindermost--it was a stampede.

System and order went by the board. The strongest stole the most, as
usual, but all got a little. And England's gain in citizens was our
loss.

Astor lost a million dollars by the venture. He smiled calmly and
said, "The plan was right, but my men were weak, that is all. The
gateway to China will be from the northwest. My plans were correct.
Time will vindicate my reasoning."

When the block on Broadway, bounded by Vesey and Barclay Streets, was
cleared of its plain two story houses, preparatory to building the
Astor House, wise men shook their heads and said, "It's too far uptown."

But the free bus that met all boats solved the difficulty, and gave the
cue to hotel men all over the world. The hotel that runs full is a
gold mine. Hungry men feed, and the beautiful part about the hotel
business is that the customers are hungry the next day--also thirsty.
Astor was worth ten million, but he took a personal delight in sitting
in the lobby of the Astor House and watching the dollars roll into this
palace that his brain had planned. To have an idea--to watch it
grow--to then work it out, and see it made manifest in concrete
substance, this was his joy. The Astor House was a bigger hostelry in
its day than the Waldorf-Astoria is now.

Astor was tall, thin, and commanding in appearance. He had only one
hallucination, and that was that he spoke the English language. The
accent he possessed at thirty was with him in all its pristine
effulgence at eighty-five. "Nopody vould know I vas a Cherman--aind't