Life — December 15, 1892 — page 4: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

- LIFE: “While there’s Life there's Hope.” VOL. XX, DECEMBER 15, 1892. No. 520. 28 West Twenty-Tiirp Street, New York. Published every Thursday. $s.coa year in advance. Postage to foreign countries in the Postal Unison, $1.04 a year, extra. Single copies, ro cents. Back nuinbers can be had by applying at this ofice, Single copies of Vols J. and IT, out of print. Vol. T.. bound, $30.00; Vol. TH. bounds $16.00 Hack numbers, one year old, 25 cents per copy. ‘Vols. IIT. to XVE., inclu- sive, bound of in flat numbers, at $10.00 per volume. Subscribers wishing address changed will greatly facilitate matters by sending old address as well as new. Rejected contributions will be destroyed unless accompa and directed envelope. by a stamped ISPARAGING the abilities of the late Mr. Gould, that opinionated contem- porary, the Evening Post—i{ a journal that is always ahead s, or behind them, can be called a contemporary—observes that “every modern city swarms with men capable of making very good Goulds under favoring social condition: But that is not the ver- dict of the Post's newspaper neighbors, nearly all of whom credit Mr. Gould with extraordinary gifts, which, if he had chosen to employ them honestly, would have been amply ade- quate for his respectable support. Hardly any one has sug- gested that Mr. Gould was not a scamp, but it has been al- leged that he was no more scampish than a great many other comparatively reputable men in the same line of busines: and that his pre-eminent notoriety was due to his superior talent rather than to a peculiarly abnormal destitution in the matter of scruples. ‘The title, “ Napoleon of Finance” has become so worn by miscellaneous use, that few of Mr. Gould's obituarians applied it to him, Yet Gould was the man that it really fitted. He was so intelligent and so relentless, that his way of doing things appeared like the operation of natural forces, and it seems almost as absurd to estimate his career according to moral standards as to apply them to sewer gas or cholera germs. As a fiscal bacillus, he had no peer in his generation. He was thorough, workmanlike, remorseless, and of a superior courage. He had no more malice than the glanders, no more compunction than the grip. He did his work admirably, and it cannot be doubted that the great field of American finance is in far better sani- tary condition to-day than it could have been, except for the precautions and improved methods, the need of which he demonstrated. The 7yzdune, which has often been” mis- taken of late, declares that “he has gone where he will be justly judged.” Lire is not so certain as the 7rébune is, that bacilli go anywhere after they get through with earth, but if Mr. Gould’s mundane career does come up for ap- praisement somewhere else, LIFE believes that a large measure of credit will be given him as an effectual microbe. ° F Mr. Gould is to be consid- ered as a man, it is pleasant to be able to point out how much his happiness was promoted by = his admirable discretion in many particulars of personal conduct. He had a feeble stomach, but instead of making a target of it, he treated it like apet canary, so that though it never afforded him much fun, it lasted him fifty seven years, and might have outlived \\ him if his head had not so dominated his system, that when that died he died all over. Besides that, he never lost any sleep sitting up nights at the Patriarchs’ balls. Indeed, it is averred— how truthfully LiFe cannot say—that when solicited to become a Patriarch himself, Mr. Gould expressed his willing- ness to subscribe to the concern’s stock, but declined to pledge his personal attendance at the meetings. . . N° one seems to be worrying about the disposition of the Gould fortune. The impression is that the huge surplus income will go to build more railroads, and Dr. Lyman Abbot said in a sermon last month, that if he were a great rail- road owner he would be puz- zled to know whether his surplus could do more good in extending railroads or missions. The fear ast fortunes seems to be ‘They are looked upon more as institutions, and less as sources of arbitrary power. Large surpluses not only can be made very useful to the community,'but it is something of a problem to find any use for them out of which the community will not get some benefit. Now and then a man will build a million dollar stable, but even that must be put to some real use when he gets done with it. . . * diminishing. NE of the neighbors has been saying that there was an astonishing amount of conspicuous drinking out of flasks at the Yale-Princeton football game. Looking on at a football game in November is cold sport, but flask-work in mixed public assemblages feels a good deal better than it looks. As long though as the stimulation of the circulation by exercise is confined to the players on the tield it is difficult to see just how we are going to dispense with the flask as a necessary adjunct to the game. comicbooks.com