Page:Memoirs of Henry Villard, volume 2.djvu/396

 all business pursuits, most of his friends did not believe that a man accustomed to such extraordinary activity could be content to live in retirement. These sceptics expected him to resume his role in Wall Street upon his return in 1895. But they did not know the man. Although he kept a small office in the financial quarter, and retained his interests as a security-holder in the North American Company and some other corporations in which he had been interested for years, he resolutely declined to become again responsible for their management as director or officer. He was always found ready, however, to help them with money and advice. He had three reasons for this retirement: one was his growing deafness, and a second one his unwillingness, in the light of past lessons of ingratitude from others, ever again to be responsible for the use of other people's money, directly or indirectly. The third reason was the sacrifices he had made as a consequence of his practice, out of kindness and generosity, to assist inexperienced relatives and friends of both sexes in their investments. He always looked upon advice given to such as involving a moral obligation, and never shrank from the personal consequences of this view, as is proved by the fact that he made good losses to numerous sufferers from his counsel, to the extent of hundreds of thousands of dollars, especially from losses in Northern Pacific bonds.

He was rendered proof against Wall Street temptations by another fact. In spite of his all-absorbing material occupations for so long a period, he had never lost his preference for a life devoted to what he considered higher and nobler objects, such as he had followed before he became a business man. With the attainment of freedom from all obligations to others, this feeling grew stronger, and he not only never had a moment's regret because of the obscurity which he had deliberately sought, but he rendered thanks every day for the abundance of leisure it had secured him for extensive reading, literary labor, reform work, and the