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At Ferncliffe-on-the-Hudson John Jacob Astor has an estate of two thousand acres. This country palace, built in chaste Italian architecture, is fitted with every convenience and luxury. John Jacob Astor's cousin, William Waldorf, some years since expatriated himself from his native country and became a British subject.
Any dullard can be waited on and served, but to serve requires judgment, skill, tact, patience and industry. The qualities that make a youth a good servant are the basic ones for mastership. Astor's alertness, willingness, loyalty, and ability to obey, delivered his employer over into his hands.
Astor's monogram in letters of gold. From the massive hall, with its reproductions of paintings of Marie Antoinette and other old French court characters, its statuary, costly vases and draperies, a wide marble stairway curves gracefully upstairs. To dwell upon all of the luxurious aspects of these residences would compel an extended series of details.
There was a much more convenient way at that time of accomplishing the distance, even to a young man with only two dollars in his pocket. The Black Forest is partly in Astor's native Baden.
The lessee was required to erect his dwelling or business place at his own expense; and during the period of the twenty-one years of the lease, he not only had to pay rent in the form of giving over to Astor five or six per cent of the value of the land, but was responsible for all taxes, repairs and all other charges. When the ground lease expired the buildings became Astor's absolute property.
Our captain, who was not then in Astor's employ, was perfectly aware that if this immense property fell into official hands, as the law required, not one dollar of it would ever again find its way to the coffers of its proprietor. By a series of bold, prompt, and skilful measures, he rescued it from the official maw, and made it yield a profit to the owner. Mr. Astor acknowledged the service.
Our captain, put upon his mettle, employed all his skill to accelerate the speed of his ship, and had such success that he reached New York, with a full cargo of tea, just seven days after the arrival of Mr. Astor's ship. Astor, not expecting another ship for months, and therefore sure of monopolizing the market, had not yet broken bulk, nor even taken off the hatchways.
One of the Nor'westers who entered Astor's service was Alexander Mackay, Mackenzie's companion on the journey to the coast; another was a brother of the Stuart who had accompanied Fraser through New Caledonia; and a third was a brother of the M'Dougall who commanded Fort M'Leod, the first fort built by the Nor'westers in New Caledonia.
Irwin went on to tell how Astor had obtained an order from Gallatin, U. S. Secretary of the Treasury, allowing him, Astor, to land furs at Mackinac from the British post at St. Joseph's. Astor's agent in this transaction was a British subject. "On his way to St.
But there are a few remaining facts without which the story would not be complete, and lacking which it might lose some significance. We have seen how at William B. Astor's death in 1876 the Astor fortune amounted to at least $100,000,000, probably much more. Within sixteen years, by 1892, it had more than doubled in the hands of his two sons.
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