Page:The Wizard of Wall Street and his Wealth.djvu/347

 despair shot himself. We see Gould still scheming and endeavoring to drive a sharp bargain with Leupp's daughters and heirs. We see him leading a gang of ruffians to drive out of the tannery the men who were endeavoring to protect it in the interests of Leupp's daughters. We hear the groans of those who were wounded in that battle. We follow the young adventurer to New York. We see him buy his first railroad on credit and clear a handsome fortune out of the operation. We follow him into Wall street, where for twenty years he was to reign as a king and master. We see him in Erie, first as a follower of Daniel Drew and afterward as president. We see him at Albany bribing senators. We see him in New York purchasing judges, defying the law, issuing millions of securities, not a dollar of which represented legitimate expenditures. We see him plundering the great property of which he was nominally the trustee. We see him and his companion, James Fisk, Jr., the gambler and defaulter in a series of wonderful stock operations, cornering even their former leader, Daniel Drew, and fighting with desperation Commodore Vanderbilt. We see him organizing the greatest and most dastardly financial conspiracy the world has ever seen, laying its foundation in the actual bribery of a member of the President's family, and in an attempt to involve in the speculation the President himself—America's greatest captain. We hear the awful crash of Black Friday's earthquake, from which Gould, the arch conspirator, saved himself, but in which hundreds were involved in ruin