Burroughs, John, 1837-1921 -- Childhood and youth; Naturalists -- New York (State) -- Biography
boy's remembrance of her fresh sweet face, her kindly eyes and gentle
manners. I was greeted by a woman of eighty-two, with dimmed sight and
dulled hearing, but instantly I recognized some vestiges of the charm
and sweetness of my elder schoolmate of so long ago. No cloud was on her
mind or memory and for an hour we again lived among the old people and
scenes.
What a roomful of pupils, many of them young men and women, there was
during those winters, thirty-five or forty each day! In late years there
are never more than five or six. The fountains of population are drying
up more rapidly than are our streams. Of that generous roomful of young
people, many became farmers, a few became business men, three or
four became professional men, and only one, so far as I know, took to
letters; and he, judged by his environment and antecedents, the last one
you would have picked out for such a career. You might have seen in
Jay Gould's Jewish look, bright scholarship, and pride of manners some
promise of an unusual career; but in the boy of his own age whom he was
so fond of wrestling with and of having go home with him at night, but
whose visits he would never return, what was there indicative of the
future? Surely not much that I can now discover. Jay Gould, who became a
sort of Napoleon of finance, early showed a talent for big business and
power to deal with men. He had many characteristic traits which came
out even in his walk. One day in New York, after more than twenty years
since I had known him as a boy, I was walking up Fifth Avenue, when
I saw a man on the other side of the street, more than a block away,
coming toward me, whose gait arrested my attention as something I had
known long before. Who could it be? I thought, and began to ransack my
memory for a clew. I had seen that gait before. As the man came opposite
me I saw he was Jay Gould. That walk in some subtle way differed from
the walk of any other man I had known. It is a curious psychological
fact that the two men outside my own family of whom I have oftenest
dreamed in my sleep are Emerson and Jay Gould; one to whom I owe so
much, the other to whom I owe nothing; one whose name I revere, the
other whose name I associate, as does the world, with the dark way of
speculative finance. The new expounders of the philosophy of dreams
would probably tell me that I had a secret admiration for Jay Gould.
If I have, it slumbers deeply in my sub-conscious self and awakens only
when my conscious self sleeps.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account