At luncheon I sat at Doctor Green's right, Jay Gould at his left. For the first and last time in its history wine was served at this board; Russell Sage was effusive in his demonstrations of affection and went on with his stories of my boyhood; every one sought to take the chill off the occasion; and we had a most enjoyable time instead of what promised to be rather a frosty formality. When the rest had departed, leaving Doctor Green, Mr. Gould and myself at table, mindful of what I had come for, in a bantering way I said to Doctor Green: "Now that I am a Wall Street ingénu, why don't you tell me something?" Gould leaned across the table and said in his velvet voice: "Buy Texas Pacific." Two or three days after, Texas Pacific fell off sixty points or more. I did not see Big Green again. Five or six months later I received from him a statement of account which I could never have unraveled, with a check for some thousands of dollars, my one-half profit on such and such an operation. Texas Pacific had come back again. Two or three years later I sat at Doctor Green's table with Mr. Gould, just as we had sat the first day. Mr. Gould recalled the circumstance. "I did not think I could afford to have you lose on my suggestion and I went to cover your loss, when I found five thousand shares of Texas Pacific transferred on the books of the company in your name. I knew these could not be yours. I thought the buyer was none other than the man I was after, and I began hammering the stock. I have been curious ever since to make sure whether I was right." "Whom did you suspect, Mr. Gould?" I asked. "My suspect was Victor Newcomb," he replied. I then told him what had happened. "Dear, dear," he cried. "Ned Green! Big Green. Well, well! You do surprise me. I would rather have done him a favor than an injury. I am rejoiced to learn that no harm was done and that, after all, you and he came out ahead." It was about this time Jay Gould had bought of the Thomas A. Scott estate a New York daily newspaper which, in spite of brilliant writers like Manton Marble and William Henry Hurlbut, had never been a moneymaker. This was the _World_. He offered me the editorship with forty-nine of the hundred shares of stock on very easy terms, which nowise tempted me. But two or three years after, I daresay both weary and hopeless of putting up so much money on an unyielding investment, he was willing to sell outright, and Joseph Pulitzer became the purchaser. His career is another illustration of the saying that truth is stranger than fiction. II