Young Cornelius, in his work as a machinist and office clerk, presents an example which other sons of millionaires could follow with profit. He is not alone, however, among young men of his class in training for a useful life. One of New York’s richest young men is said to be not only a worker, but an authority on mechanics, and is able both to roll up his shirt-sleeves and go to the bench, and to describe in the minutest detail the work on which he is engaged. His ability in the mechanical line would probably have won wealth and success for him, even had he not been born to a vast fortune. At the same time, the course of the next in succession to the control of the Vanderbilt millions, in entering upon an education in skilled labor as a common workingman, is an excellent assurance that the family stock is not degenerating, and that its interests are in trustworthy hands. The ambition of Commodore Vanderbilt to establish and perpetuate a great railway empire seems likely to be fulfilled, so far as the present and the rising generation of the Vanderbilts are concerned. It is the most remarkable experiment of the kind since the beginning of the American republic. XII A Messenger Boy’s Zeal Lifts Him to the Head of the World’s Greatest Telegraph System. WHEN romance can be added to hard facts in telling the life-story of a man, such a narrative becomes more pointed and interesting than the rarest dreams of a fictionist; therefore, the true story of a man who has made himself cannot fail to be instructive as well as interesting. No other man in the United States, to-day, can look back on a more remarkable career than that of Colonel Robert C. Clowry, president of the Western Union Telegraph Company. Mr. Clowry was delivering messages for that company in 1852, with but one object in view,—to hold his position. He is the busiest man, perhaps, in America to-day, and has little time to spend with an interviewer. He dislikes the notoriety that the world gives to men who fight and win, but the story of such a man is of more than passing interest. It is an important, valuable, uplifting factor in the great compound that makes America. It belongs to the people. It is for their use to profit by, and, with this one condition impressed on Mr. Clowry, he agreed to tell what he knows about himself. “I began my telegraph career on April 4, 1852,” he said. “I shall never forget the day. I walked into the office of Judge Caton’s old Illinois and Mississippi Telegraph Company, at Joliet, Illinois, and told the operator that I had come to learn the business. I can see the rickety building now, and the surprised expression on the operator’s face when he looked at me. HE WAS SO POOR HE HAD TO DO HIS OWN COOKING.