And when the returns were all in at the office of the old commodore, and that white-whiskered, choleric, kind-hearted, and courageous old bull found that he owned more Erie than ever, at higher prices than those for which he had sold a small part of his holdings, and that the rattan which he had prepared for Gray had fallen upon his own shoulders, he stormed for a while and clothed himself with cursing as with a garment, and then he cooled off and laughed. Then he sent a note, this time not to John Gray’s employer, but to John Gray himself, which read as follows: “Young fellow, you are a genius. Come and dine with me at six o’clock to-day, at Delmonico’s. C. V.” The friendship cemented at that dinner, between the great capitalist and the ex-messenger—for Gray returned no more to his duties as a porter—continued until the day of the commodore’s death. Gray continued to operate in Wall Street, both in small and large ways, and seldom made a loss. When the first loud mutterings of the civil conflict began to shake the land, he became a heavy purchaser of tar, resin, and cotton, and, later, of gold. When the Union armies were defeated and the day looked darkest, and gold mounted to two hundred and eighty premium, he never faltered in his belief in the ultimate triumph of the nation, and he sold gold and bought government bonds, and margined one against the other, and risked little and gained much. A year after the sun went down upon Appomattox, the Yankee peddler was worth $20,000,000, and ten years later he was worth $50,000,000. He abandoned such stock operations as were dependent for their success upon other men’s movements and plans, and only engaged in such as he could absolutely control. He gambled only with marked cards and loaded dice. He bought a control of the stocks and bonds of badly-managed and bankrupt railroads. He consolidated them, re-equipped them, built feeders, opened new sources of traffic, and so doubled, trebled, and quadrupled his investments. He sold short the stock of a prosperous railroad, and obtained, by purchase of proxies, the control of its management. He cut rates, diminished traffic, enlarged expenses, and passed dividends until he depreciated the value of the stock to a point where he could gain millions by covering his shorts, and other millions by again restoring the road to prosperity. In one instance, by his paid emissaries, he promoted a general strike, until, through riot and fires and suspension of traffic, the stock of the afflicted corporation was depreciated to the price at which he desired to purchase a controlling interest.