Page:The autobiography of a Pennsylvanian.djvu/134

 was taken before Richard S. Hunter, as master, and as was then the custom, was written out without a stenographer. The case progressed until I put Wilson on the stand and Biddle undertook to cross-examine him. Biddle, a fluent and verbose man, asked a question a page or two long. Wilson had a clothes-basket full of papers, every one of which was of the utmost importance, and taking them and his book gave an answer covering twenty pages. Biddle's long efforts to shorten the response simply called forth further explanations. So it continued until the case fell of its own weight. It never reached a decision and never will. Almost needless to add, Wilson finally encountered financial disaster. The last time I heard of him I sent him ten dollars to relieve the immediate want of bread. Perfectly upright and ever meaning well, he was too much given to exactness and detail.

Wharton Barker thought himself worth a million dollars, probably with truth. He did much for me in many ways. I bought the charter and organized for him the Finance Company of Pennsylvania, now one of the most important of our financial institutions. Through him I once represented Baring Bros. of London and recovered from the Pennsylvania Railroad Company the value of a lot of stolen bonds. Through him I became one of the pioneers in the construction of trusts. Barker, always alert and energetic, but a little lacking in the steadiness which comes from cool judgment, was one of the first men in the world to see the possibilities of the development of relations with China, a goal toward which we are now moving, and he secured a sort of concession for the construction of railroads throughout that empire. In its terms it was so general and vague that I gave him an opinion that it had little or no practical value, and urged him to endeavor to get the Orientals to be more precise. Ma Kie Chang, who was some near relative of Li Hung Chang, came with a retinue to Philadelphia. Psychologically, the interviews were of intense interest. Barker, 124