“The Erie road,” said the gentleman. “It's in the hands of wreckers and pirates who are cutting rates, and are likely to make us all kinds of trouble. The Commodore is buying the stock; it will probably be cornered to-morrow. I'm pretty well loaded, and am going to sell everything but my Hudson River and Harlem stock at the opening.” “I wonder what he wants of more trouble, with all his riches,” I said. “He owns the Harlem, the Hudson River, the Central, the Lake Shore, and a part of the Michigan Southern. Isn't that enough?” “But he wants to build up a great, impregnable system,” said McCarthy, “the one we've been dreaming about. To be sure, he's got all the money he wants for himself and his posterity, but he keeps working and striving and building. Don't you remember that lecture of Mr. Emerson's, in which he spoke of man's love of the permanent? It was that love which slowly raised the Egyptian pyramids and the vast cathedrals of Europe. Now it is expressing itself in railroad systems, and tunnels through miles of mountain rock, and bridges over great rivers. We begin a long task, and know well that we shall never live to finish it; yet we strive and worry and suffer for it. Sometimes we give all for its sake, even our honor and our heart's blood. Like patriotism is our love for the permanent. We _must_ work for those who follow us. It's God's will. Now you can understand why Vanderbilt is buying Erie: it's more rock for his pyramid. He's the great builder of his time. Drew and Gould and Fisk are destroyers; they're working for themselves. Vanderbilt is working for America; he ceased to work for himself long ago. He's Uncle Sam in flesh and blood, that's who he is--a plain, blunt, terrible fighting-man who leads the army of progress. No angel, but square. He could have robbed the Harlem bondholders, but he made them hang on till they got a profit. Next to Lincoln and Grant, he's the greatest man of his time.” CHAPTER IX.--THE SECOND BATTLE OF PEACE [Illustration: 9318] E walked down Broadway next morning, and turned into Wall Street some fifteen minutes before the market opened. Suddenly we heard a shouting and the scamper of many feet behind us. A handsome man with a young woman brilliantly gowned was approaching, followed by a crowd of newsboys. The man, who had a reddish-blond mustache and a white carnation in his buttonhole, was laughing as he flung handfuls of coin into the air, which fell upon the scurrying crowd. The face and carriage of the man were familiar, and I wondered where I had seen him before. We entered a hallway and watched them as they passed, but my eyes saw only the familiar figure of the handsome man. “It was Maud Manning,” said the gentleman, when they passed, “and the man was Jim Fisk, 'the Prince of Erie.'” “Jim Fisk!” I exclaimed. “Jim Fisk,” said he. “Used to peddle drygoods up North. Now he's a millionaire broker, and the greatest rake and dandy of his time.”