our English cousins, this stock would have ceased to be a disturbing element in the market for a great while longer. Although old Drew was badly treated, yet there was little sympathy for him, since he had merely become the victim of his own avarice, vacillation, treachery and scheming to catch others in the same net. He could not justly complain of his former partners, and Fisk told him so, for their methods of operation, and the immense inflation of the Erie stock by which he was ruined had been accomplished by the machinery which he, himself, had set in motion, only his _ci-devant_ colleagues had improved upon it, and had received various new patents on inventions and improvements, which they had joined to the old one invented by “Uncle Daniel,” mating one of the best combinations for the purpose of creating and working “corners” that had ever been devised in Wall Street. But the unkindest cut of all was the way in which Fisk taunted him, on the eve of his crushing defeat, with the absurdity of his complaints about the management of Erie matters. “You should be the last man,” said this worthy pupil, sneeringly, to his dear old preceptor, “that should whine over any position in which you may be placed in Erie.” It was a sad truth, heartlessly uttered by the generous “Jim.” Drew had no mercy on others, and could not expect to be shown any of that “twice blessed quality” towards himself. The private scene in the Erie office between old Drew and Fisk and Gould, just prior to their final and victorious charge upon him, was deeply pathetic, yet none of the three showed more conspicuously that they were destitute of that proverbial honor among “boodlers” than Drew himself. He had secured Vanderbilt to assist him in the courts, and also in the market, against the machinations of the Erie clique, and then, turning around, he went straight to Gould. and to him betrayed his ally and the plans he had arranged with him, expecting mercy from his old colleague by this dastardly act of humiliation and deception. He must have lost his head at this crisis, for he ought to have known Gould better. He begged and pleaded with Gould and Fisk, and was ready to throw himself at their feet. He implored them to join him, with the remnant of his fortune, in giving the old paper mill another turn to grind out more Erie stock, that he might be permitted to emerge from that cruel “corner” in which he was placed like a scorpion girt by fire, brooding over his guilty woes.