Page:The Wizard of Wall Street and his Wealth.djvu/200

 to the astonished vision of these associates $23,000,000 of Western Union, $12,000,000 of Missouri Pacific, and $19,000,000 of other stocks. Russell Sage said: "There is not another man in America except Vanderbilt who could make such a display of stock as that." In 1884 Gould made another exhibition of his securities to John T. Terry and others, and the display was even bigger than two years before.

The panic of 1884 is believed to have caused Mr. Gould much anxiety. It came suddenly and without warning. There had been earlier in the year, it is true, the collapse and resignation of Henry Villard, soon followed by the failure of James R. Keene, but these disasters would not have produced the financial earthquake that shook Wall street in May. The failure of the Marine Bank and Grant & Ward, with the revelations which followed of embezzlement on a scale never before witnessed in the street, and the suspension on the memorable 13th and 14th of the month of the Metropolitan Bank, George I. Seney and seven or eight prominent banking-houses in this city and two banks in Brooklyn and Newark, caused a panic like that of 1869 and 1873, and from the depressing effects of which the street did not rally for several years. Gould's fortune melted like snow in the decline of values which accompanied this panic. He came out of it probably $20,000,000 poorer than when it began. But this loss, it is true, was chiefly on paper. He was able to hold most of his securities, the value of which afterward increased. But it is believed that he was at one time