He began life as a Vermont peddler, but at the age of twenty-five carried his New England education, his capacity for calculation, his retentive memory, his frugal habits, and his tireless energy into New York City, where he began as porter and messenger in the office of a broker. He soon learned the history and methods of the principal operators of the Wall Street of that day, and his savings were shrewdly, quietly, and boldly invested on “points” which he picked up while delivering messages or awaiting replies. He soon accumulated a large sum of money, yet he kept his humble place, and his employer never suspected when he paid the faithful porter his $40 at the end of each month, that the quiet and deferential young man could have purchased not only his employer’s business, but the building in which it was conducted. Gray remained as porter and messenger for five years, declining all offers which were made to him of promotion to a desk and a higher salary. The place he held gave him opportunities which could be obtained in no other way. None suspected the quiet and stolid-looking man, who seemed so dull of comprehension when any verbal message was intrusted to him; and words were dropped and conversations held in his presence which, when fitted by his quick and comprehensive brain into other words and conversations held in other offices, often enabled him to forecast events. The man who by any means is accurately advised of the real intentions of the leaders of Wall Street a day or even an hour before their execution, has a key to wealth, and Gray used this key, conducting all his operations through one broker, who was pledged to secrecy. At the time of the great deal in Harlem, so successfully engineered before the war by Commodore Vanderbilt, Gray was still occupying his place as messenger. He overheard a conversation held in the commodore’s private office between that gentleman and his confidential clerk, and, comprehending the magnitude of the opportunity, he directed that all his resources, which then amounted to nearly $200,000, be placed in Harlem stock. He was enabled, under the system of margins which prevailed in Wall Street, to purchase $2,000,000 worth of the stock, which he sold at an average advance of fifty per cent, clearing $1,000,000 by the operation. The old commodore, who had himself made $6,000,000 by the deal, found that somebody had been sharing profits with him to the extent of $1,000,000, and, not supposing that this was the result of guesswork, he used means to discover who was the cunning operator and what were the sources of his information. Without much difficulty he traced the transactions to John Gray, and, remembering the presence of that young man in the anteroom at the time of giving directions to his confidential clerk, he was not at a loss to determine how it came about.