“‘What,’ he exclaimed, and looked at me in a queer way. After Mr. Vanderbilt had gone Mr. Gould said, ‘When I asked you what we had made on that Pacific Mail transaction why did you say we had made $140,000?’ I answered, ‘Did we want to disgrace ourselves by saying fourteen cents? Why not let them know that we can make money as well as they can?’ Mr. Gould was very much amused.” Those men who of late have been most intimately associated in business with Mr. Gould, and those directly connected with the business enterprises of which he was the commanding power, invariably speak of him in the highest terms. The directors of the Manhattan Elevated Railway, the Western Union Telegraph Company, the Missouri Pacific System, and other great corporations in which Mr. Gould’s holdings of stock were the controlling interests, have been lavish in the compliments and admiration which they express. Newspapers throughout the country, in their editorials, seem to have made every effort to be kind, even while expressing, most of them, detestation for Mr. Gould’s methods. In the public press, however, he has had few compliments except for his shrewdness and his family life, while criticisms have been very severe on all of the prominent features of his career. A great number of clergymen, too, have taken occasion to preach sermons on the death of Mr. Gould, some of them very bitter in their denunciation of him. A few have been charitable enough to object entirely to the fact that he made little application of his wealth toward benevolences, and have said little about his methods of acquiring it. It is true, however, that the weight of the consensus of opinion has been that Jay Gould’s life was that of a wrecker of fortunes and of honor, that the good that he is done falls far short of balancing the account, and that his loss will be felt less by the world at large than would that of any other man of equal prominence. CHAPTER XVII. THE FAMILY OF GOULD. Jay Gould had no social ambition whatever. He was the most domestic of men, and his affection and attention to his own immediate family was so deep as to apparently leave no place for outside social influences. Mr. Gould was greatly stricken by the death of his wife, which occurred January 13, 1889, after a long and painful illness. When she died there were present besides her husband and Mr. and Mrs. George Gould, her sons, Howard and Edwin; her daughters, Helen and Anna, and her sisters, Mrs. Harris, Mrs. Noyes and Mrs. Dickinson. Mrs. Gould was practically unknown in society, for the reason that she seldom cared to go into the fashionable world. Her home was world enough for her, and she made it a happy one. She was the idol of her children. Many stories are told of the private charities of this modest woman. [Illustration: A FAMILY GROUP.]