Page:The Wizard of Wall Street and his Wealth.djvu/269

 largest and most handsomely equipped conservatories in the country. It covers nearly four acres, and from a distance looks like the fabled palace of Kubla Khan. Here there was another source of pleasure for the weary financier. He employed Ferdinand Mangold, Mr. Merritt's former gardener, to take charge of the conservatory, and gave him carte blanche to procure the rarest flowers and exotics from all over the world. Mangold performed his work well. When the leaves grew yellow around Lyndhurst the autumn following the conservatory contained the finest palm garden on the Western hemisphere.

There are over 250 varieties, from the size of a maidenhair fern to great shadowy trees, thirty feet high and with leaves as wide as the jib of a pilot boat. They range in value from $20 to $500; but what is money to a millionaire in pursuit of the butterfly of pleasure. These palms were brought from Africa, Central and South America, Samoa, the Sandwich Islands, the heart of India and from beyond Trebizonde, for the simple purpose of wooing Mr. Gould's pale face into a smile. There were Viridifolium, Hyophorbe Americanlis and Plectocomia Assamica palms without number, and Mr. Gould knew every one of them by name.

In another apartment was a wilderness of roses, pink and white, and gold and Guelder, Burgundy and Austrian in an endless tangle of color and a delirious, odorous atmosphere that would have enraptured the soul of a lotus eater. No wonder that Mr. Gould