But he was one of the first to foresee the coming subordination of steamboats to railroads, and to realize the immense possibilities of the latter system of transportation, which was then hardly out of its infancy. Gradually abandoning his marine interests, he sought a firm footing upon land by buying up the stock of the Harlem Railroad. Getting a controlling interest, he used his power to inflict merciless punishment upon the Wall Street speculators who ventured to interfere with his plans, and to meddle with the securities of his road. From the comparatively insignificant Harlem, he went on to the New York Central, the nucleus of the far reaching highways of steel that are now known as “the Vanderbilt system of railroads.” When the Commodore died, in January, 1887, in his eighty third year, he left two sons. The younger, Cornelius Jeremiah, was the nearest approach to a black sheep among his numerous posterity. This statement must not be interpreted too severely, for together with utter lack of financial ability, “young Corneel” possessed many amiable traits of character, and retained to the last the friendship of some of the foremost of his contemporaries, notably Horace Greeley. His father, who regarded his peccadilloes with unrelenting severity, bequeathed him only the interest upon the sum of $200,000. After other legacies amounting in all to about $15,000,000, the remainder of the Commodore’s accumulations were left to his other son, William H. Vanderbilt. The man who thus, at the age of fifty six, inherited a fortune estimated at seventy five millions of dollars, was perhaps the most remarkable member of a remarkable family. He was born during his father’s early days of comparative poverty, on Staten Island, and brought up there under a household regime of rigid strictness. For years after the Commodore became a power in the financial world, William H. lived the prosaic life of a plain Richmond County farmer, and the multiplication of the father’s millions brought no luxury or ostentation to the homestead of the son. The Commodore had undoubtedly determined his choice of an heir and successor long before he gave his son any encouragement to count upon the prospect of great wealth. He tested the young man’s capacity for railroad management by having him appointed receiver of a little bankrupt line on Staten Island. The experiment was so successful that William was promoted to be Vice President of the Harlem road, a position in which he proved himself invaluable to his father and to the property. Thereafter he kept pace with every forward step of the Commodore and was a very important factor in building up the prosperity of his undertakings. As Vice President of the consolidated New York Central and Hudson River he performed an amount of work which, as some of his friends think, contributed to his death—a comparatively premature one in a family distinguished for longevity.