Page:The Wizard of Wall Street and his Wealth.djvu/326

 wrote and spoke capital English, but he never wrote a word that was not necessary. Judge Usher, who was Secretary of the Interior under Lincoln, an able and great lawyer, once said to me that he had bought a railroad for Mr. Gould, or in his interest, and had written out a contract covering two or three pages of foolscap. The judge, in telling of the incident, said: 'I sent the contract, which I considered a thorough document, to Mr. Gould, and he almost immediately returned it written out on a half page of paper of the same size. When I got the document and found it perfect in its condensed form, I felt ashamed of myself.' Mr. Gould was so self-reliant that he had little use for lawyers. He was his own negotiator and contract maker. When he bought the Iron Mountain road he showed me, the next day, a contract for that great purchase. It was a contract written out in his own handwriting on less than two pages of social note paper.

"He concluded the contract of the purchase of the Missouri Pacific without consulting his lawyers. When shown the contract the next day, his counsel told him he had bought a big lawsuit, and that title to the whole property was in question in the Supreme Court of the United States. He simply said, 'I have given my check for $3,700,000, and the thing is closed. The seller would laugh at me if I went back and expressed a desire to rescind.' He thereupon directed his attorneys to take charge of the case and try to sustain the title of the property bought, which after years of litigation they did.