I had long wanted a handsome residence by the sea, and so, when I had nearly completed the work done in connection with the Union Pacific Railway, and there seemed to be ahead of me a period of comparative leisure, I projected this house. My plans were made before I was in the Dublin jail. My wife built the Villa, or began work on it, while I was still in the Marshalsea. The lot on which it stands embraced some two and a half acres in the most delightful region of Newport. In order that my boys might have an opportunity for sport at home, I had a building put up for billiards and bowling. This was, I believe, the first residence in Newport that had a special place of this kind, although of course, many had billiard tables. A fine cottage was also built for my father-in-law, Colonel George T. M. Davis. This cottage was sold recently for $50,000, to the Dolans of Philadelphia. The Villa itself must have cost $100,000, but the truth is, I have never known how much money was lavished upon its building and adornment. I was called rich and had never, at any time, given a thought to the mere details of money. What I wanted I got. In those days that was the substance of my economic system in personal matters. We lived there in manorial style, entertaining so lavishly and freely that the Villa became a free guest-house for all Newport. I also recollect that my living cost me more than $2,000 a week. Now I manage to live on $3 a week in the Mills Hotel, or Palace, as I call it. Here I am more contented than I was at Newport. I seem to be saving $1,997 a week. We turned out, in Newport, six carriages when we went driving; but this was a display that I always set my heart against. It seemed to be mere wastefulness. Since my occupancy, Train Villa, as it is called to this day, has been rented by some of the most prominent persons in the fashionable world. Among those who have lived in it are the Kernochans, the Kips, Governor Lippitt of Rhode Island, some of the Vanderbilts and the Mortimers. At the present time, it is occupied by George B. de Forest. It was formerly rented for $5,000 for three months or the season. It never paid us two per centum on its cost, and finally was sold by the trustee, Colonel Davis. The Villa was once turned into a jail, although I was not the captive in that instance. In the famous Crédit Mobilier case, in '72-'73, a man, who was my guest at the time, was arrested, and, as the Crédit Mobilier men then in Newport could not give bail in the sum of $1,000,000, as demanded, an arrangement was made with the sheriff by which the Villa temporarily became a jail, where my guest was confined. So full of confidence was I that I could be elected President in '72, that I telegraphed from San Francisco that I would reach Newport on a certain day, and wished arrangements made for a "Presidential" banquet. Although this banquet was not the end of the campaign, it was the last flourish of trumpets in my Presidential aspirations.