Page:The Wizard of Wall Street and his Wealth.djvu/227

 only had induced them to come. They had not hoped to get into the house. While this crowd stood in the street there was a hurry and bustle in the corridor of the Windsor Hotel. The men the poorer people came to see were forming parties. The directors of the great railroad companies, the Union Pacific, the Missouri Pacific, and the others, were getting together. Frank Hain, Julien T. Davies, and Charles A. Gardener, representing the Manhattan Elevated railroad, were among them. William C. Whitney had charge of one party.

Once, early in the afternoon, there was what appeared to be a concerted rush for the steps. A number of persons who were evidently under the impression that the public was to be admitted at 3 o'clock made a start at that hour, and two or three hundred others followed. Up they rushed, and, although the policemen shouted, "Get back! You can't go in," a few did make their way into the house. They were quickly ejected, however, and thereafter only individual efforts were made to get in. Some of these were persisted in stubbornly, but without success.

Oddly enough, women pleaded the hardest to be allowed to pass through the big oak door, women of more than middle age, most of them, who could give no better reason for wanting to see the face of the dead railway king than that they "just wanted to see it." Some declared that they had come from great distances for that purpose alone. They went away and returned to beg again. Yet all of them admitted