disastrous consequences are treated in full, also the investigation of the Senatorial Committee and Gould’s connection with Missouri Pacific and Western Union. His domestic life, his yacht, his home on the Hudson, his magnificent conservatory, all indications of the spirit and tastes of the man, are also given careful attention. The early life of such a man must perforce afford an interesting study, and no apology is necessary for a pretty full account of Jay Gould’s boyhood, youth and early manhood. CHAPTER II. YOUTH AND ANCESTRY OF JAY GOULD. Many who knew Mr. Gould intimately are in the habit of asserting that his origin must have been Hebraic. No one pretends to say how many generations back the Jewish blood was in the family, or that Mr. Gould was aware of its existence in him. But both his names, Jason, or Jay, and Gould, served to strengthen this belief in those who held it. The twisted form, “Gould,” was suspected of being changed from “Gold,” which is a common prefix in the names of inanimate and natural objects which certain Jews in Europe were compelled to adopt as surnames in one period of their history. His habits of thought and his extraordinary intellect were both Jewish, these people assert, with how much or how little basis in the actual fact of his origin, no one can ever decide. Mr. Gould was certainly American in the character and extent of his self-creation and success. Born of poor parents, on a poorer farm, he began to make money to pay his way through school, and he was a partner in business enterprises while yet a lad. [Illustration: YOUNG GOULD IN HIS FATHER’S DAIRY.] But so far as Mr. Gould himself has been able to decide, he came of Puritan stock than which none is more diametrically removed from the Hebraic. He was born on May 27, 1836, in the little post-village of Roxbury, Delaware county, New York state. Nearly half a century before, while Delaware, Ulster and Otsego counties were yet one, his grandfather came with half a dozen Puritan families from Fairfield county, Connecticut, and took up land near the land which became Jay Gould’s birth-place. This grandfather was Captain Abram Gould. He had been a Revolutionary soldier and was described as a “grim, earnest, honest man.” To him was born in 1792, a son who was named John B. Gould, the first male child born in the new settlement. John B. grew to manhood, was three times married, and Jay was his son by his first wife. The boy’s mother was a pious woman, a regular attendant of the Methodist services held in the “yaller meetin’ house,” where Jay also imbibed such religious notions as found a foothold in a nature not much given to the contemplation of spiritual things. The father was a small farmer and kept a dairy of twenty cows.