But the free bus that met all boats solved the difficulty, and gave the cue to hotel men all over the world. The hotel that runs full is a gold mine. Hungry men feed, and the beautiful part about the hotel business is that the customers are hungry the next day--also thirsty. Astor was worth ten million, but he took a personal delight in sitting in the lobby of the Astor House and watching the dollars roll into this palace that his brain had planned. To have an idea--to watch it grow--to then work it out, and see it made manifest in concrete substance, this was his joy. The Astor House was a bigger hostelry in its day than the Waldorf-Astoria is now. Astor was tall, thin, and commanding in appearance. He had only one hallucination, and that was that he spoke the English language. The accent he possessed at thirty was with him in all its pristine effulgence at eighty-five. "Nopody vould know I vas a Cherman--aind't it?" he used to say. He spoke French, a dash of Spanish and could parley in Choctaw, Ottawa, Mohawk and Huron. But they who speak several languages must not be expected to speak any one language well. Yet when John Jacob wrote it was English without a flaw. In all of his dealings he was uniquely honorable and upright. He paid and he made others pay. His word was his bond. He was not charitable in the sense of indiscriminate giving. "To give something for nothing is to weaken the giver," was one of his favorite sayings. That this attitude protected a miserly spirit, it is easy to say, but it is not wholly true. In his later years he carried with him a book containing a record of his possessions. This was his breviary. In it he took a very pardonable delight. He would visit a certain piece of property, and then turn to his book and see what it had cost him ten or twenty years before. To realize that his prophetic vision had been correct was to him a great source of satisfaction. His habits were of the best. He went to bed at nine o'clock, and was up before six. At seven he was at his office. He knew enough to eat sparingly and to walk, so he was never sick. Millionaires as a rule are woefully ignorant. Up to a certain sum, they grow with their acquisitions. Then they begin to wither at the heart. The care of a fortune is a penalty. I advise the gentle reader to think twice before accumulating ten millions. John Jacob Astor was exceptional in his combined love of money and love of books. History was at his tongue's end, and geography was his plaything. Fitz-Greene Halleck was his private secretary, hired on a basis of literary friendship. Washington Irving was a close friend, too, and first crossed the Atlantic on an Astor pass. He banked on Washington Irving's genius, and loaned him money to come and go, and buy a house. Irving was named in Astor's will as one of the trustees of the Astor Library Fund, and repaid all favors by writing "Astoria."