The Wizard of Wall Street and His Wealth; or, The Life and Deeds of Jay GouldWhite, Trumbull
History
The Wizard of Wall Street and His Wealth; or, The Life and Deeds of Jay Gould
White, Trumbull
Businessmen -- United States -- Biography; Capitalists and financiers -- United States -- Biography; Gould, Jay, 1836-1892
“The subsequent winding up of this famous conspiracy may be stated
in few words. But no account could possibly be complete which failed
to reproduce in full the story of Mr. Fisk’s last interview with Mr.
Corbin, as told by Fisk himself. ‘I went down to the neighborhood of
Wall street Friday morning, and the history of that morning you know.
When I got back to our office, you can imagine I was in no enviable
state of mind, and the moment I got up street that afternoon I started
right around to old Corbin’s to rake him out. I went into the room and
sent word that Mr. Fisk wanted to see him in the dining-room. I was too
mad to say anything civil, and when he came into the room, said I, ‘You
damned old scoundrel, do you know what you have done here, you and your
people?’ He began to wring his hands, and ‘Oh!’ he says, ‘this is a
horrible position. Are you ruined?’ I said I didn’t know whether I was
or not; and I asked him again if he knew what had happened? He had been
crying, and said he had just heard; that he had been sure everything
was all right, but that something had occurred entirely different from
what he had anticipated. Said I, ‘That don’t amount to anything; we
know that gold ought not to be at 31, and that it would not be but
for such performances as you have had this last week; you know damned
well it would not if you had not failed.’ I knew that somebody had run
a saw right into us, and said I, ‘This whole damned thing has turned
out just as I told you it would.’ I considered the whole party a pack
of cowards, and I expected that when we came to clear our hands they
would sock it right into us. I said to him, ‘I don’t know whether you
have lied or not, and I don’t know what ought to be done with you.’
He was on the other side of the table, weeping and wailing, and I was
gnashing my teeth. ‘Now,’ he says, ‘you must quiet yourself.’ I told
him I didn’t want to be quiet. I had no desire to ever be quiet again,
and probably never should be quiet again. He says, ‘But, my dear sir,
you will lose your reason.’ Says I, ‘Speyers’ (a broker employed by
him that day) ‘has already lost his reason; reason has gone out of
everybody but me.’ I continued, ‘Now what are you going to do? You have
got us into this thing, and what are you going to do to get out of
it?’ He says, ‘I don’t know. I will go and get my wife.’ I said, ‘Get
her down here.’ The soft talk was all over. He went up stairs and they
returned, tottling into the room, looking older than Stephen Hopkins.
His wife and he both looked like death. He was tottling just like that.
(Illustrated by a trembling movement of the body.) ‘I have never seen
him from that day to this.’
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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