For two years or more the great financial manipulator had been battling with the knowledge that in his system lurked the seeds of man’s most insidious foe--consumption. He had phthisis pulmonaris in both lungs. He battled with the knowledge, and he took no man into his confidence besides his private physician, who became a sort of trained body servant to him, and was always within easy call to watch him when he had acute attacks, and his two elder sons, George J. Gould and Edwin. A very master of silence himself, he imposed silence upon these confidants, and it became their bounden duty to deceive all others as to the giant which had laid its grip upon his life. And so the story went forth that Jay Gould was afflicted with nervous dyspepsia merely, and every now and then he had a bilious attack which “was not dangerous,” a cry which was repeated even when he had entered the shadow of the dark valley. Up to within twelve hours of his death the same cry was repeated. And even after death there were strenuous efforts made for some inexplicable reason to shroud the cause in mystery--a mystery which could have wrought no good to the dead man’s peace and that of his surviving family. But it was not dyspepsia which sent him to the South of France, in the Atalanta, under the watchful eye of his medical guardian, Dr. John P. Munn, whose occupation is gone indeed. It was not dyspepsia which sent him to Florida and Southern California, and El Paso, and the grand resorts of Colorado, nor which caused him not less than two weeks ago to plan a trip to Mexico--for he did not think he was going to die, even then, and no man ever clung to life more fiercely than this frail and silent embodiment of intellect. He knew the truth, but he bit his teeth upon it. He would not let men into the secret, and sometimes put himself to actual pain in order to conceal the truth, as when, only a few weeks ago, on October 26, he appeared among the guests at Dr. Shrady’s house and took a quiet part in the Gould-Shrady wedding, which had been somewhat hurried at his request. This was his last appearance in public, unless you can count a visit or two to his office in the Western Union building, to which he went from his home in a closed carriage, and dodged in by way of the basement office before any one could see him. No one who saw him at the wedding would have suspected that he was so near death, and perhaps he would not have been had not an injudicious ride, in company with Dr. Munn, on the day before Thanksgiving, caused a cold which settled on his lungs, brought on a hemorrhage and paved the way to death.