Page:The Wizard of Wall Street and his Wealth.djvu/256

 queer way. After Mr. Vanderbilt had gone Mr. Gould said, 'When I asked you what we had made on that Pacific Mail transaction why did you say we had made $140,000?' I answered, 'Did we want to disgrace ourselves by saying fourteen cents? Why not let them know that we can make money as well as they can?' Mr. Gould was very much amused."

Those men who of late have been most intimately associated in business with Mr. Gould, and those directly connected with the business enterprises of which he was the commanding power, invariably speak of him in the highest terms. The directors of the Manhattan Elevated Railway, the Western Union Telegraph Company, the Missouri Pacific System, and other great corporations in which Mr. Gould's holdings of stock were the controlling interests, have been lavish in the compliments and admiration which they express.

Newspapers throughout the country, in their editorials, seem to have made every effort to be kind, even while expressing, most of them, detestation for Mr. Gould's methods. In the public press, however, he has had few compliments except for his shrewdness and his family life, while criticisms have been very severe on all of the prominent features of his career.

A great number of clergymen, too, have taken occasion to preach sermons on the death of Mr. Gould, some of them very bitter in their denunciation of him. A few have been charitable enough to object entirely to the fact that he made little appli