Shortly before these pages were written, occurred the episode of what is known in financial circles in America as "the blind pool." Mr. Villard caused it to be known among his circle of followers that he desired the use of eight million dollars. According to statements made on his authority, he not only secured it, but in all fifteen millions were offered him. Quietly and secretly he used the eight millions in buying up stock of the Northern Pacific Railroad in the New York market, nor did he show his hand until he had thus secured twenty-seven millions par value of the stock of that road. When his great gun was thus loaded, he discharged it full at the head of Mr. Billings, the president of the Northern Pacific, and those directors who had loyally coöperated with him in the reorganization of the company and the redemption of its securities from the chaos into which they had fallen following the Jay Cooke failure. And the invader boldly claimed that he had secured the "control" of that company too, and proposed to oust the president, to install a representative of the "blind pool." But an unexpected check was met. It seems that part of the reconstituted stock of the company, amounting to eighteen million dollars, was as yet in the treasury of the company, but was the property of divers persons who had coöperated in or assented to the reconstruction. This being issued, as Mr. Billings and his friends claim, in fulfillment of engagements long since entered into, displaced the center of gravity, and caused it to incline heavily toward the Billings section. A vociferous outcry was of course heard; the courts were appealed to; and the result of what promises to be a long and costly litigation remains to be seen. Even without the entrance on the field of the new forces I am about to describe, the position of the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company appears to be a very perilous one. Under the chieftainship of Mr. Villard, who was no novice at the art of playing with railroad companies as counters in the game of "beggar-my-neighbor," a vast amount of Eastern capital was taken up by the aid of the enormous profits earned by the previously existing Oregon Steamship and Oregon Steam Navigation Company. Then followed naturally an era of really delusive prosperity, while the expenditure of this capital in substituting the new lamps of costly railroads for the magical old lamps of stern-wheel steamboats was going on.