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Show mm n mi The Eise, Fall and Final Triumphs of the Celebrated Railroad Magnates, Jay Cook and Henry Villard. BEGINNING THE NORTHERN LINE Under the Management of Cooke and How it Was Brought to Completion Com-pletion by Villard. The receivers of the banking firm of Jay Cooke & Co., of Philadelphia, have just announced their readiness to pay tbe last dividend to the creditors of that house, and thus at the same time close the trimt they have managed and rimr Ojjont. who was known to Mr. Cooke ( when he was a little boy and lived at Sandusky, O. The old chief frequently visited the home of Mr. Cooke's parent's and carried the little lad about on his shoulders, teaching him many secrets of hunting and fishing. It is from this Indian cliief that the country place of Mr. Cooke takes its name, and "Ogontz" and its hospitalities are known far and near. Mr. Cooke has other places beside this, and he is now at one of them with hiR son, Jay Cooke, Jr., and the children of the hitter. This place is in Lycoming county, Fa., where he has a hunting lodge. The brooks about there are alive with front, and he is now hunting thes wary beauties in their chosen pools. He has another lodge in Cumberland county. coun-ty. Pa., at Pine Grove, where he owns some 10,000 acres of forest land. Much charcoal is made here and there is also a big output of tine charcoal iron. When Mr. Cooke's firm failed he gave up everything for the benefit of his creditors, cred-itors, and, though there was much lond clamor at first, he preserved at all times the sincere respect of those who knew him and his aims and object. Long before be-fore this he sottled in full with all of his personal creditors, and for several years past he has been again counted among the American millionaires; and in Philadelphia, Phila-delphia, at least, he is now one of the factors in the large financial affairs. Mr. Henry Villard is another kind of a man from Mr. Cooke. He is of German birth, and was already a man when he came to this country some twenty-five years ago to seek his fortune. Being a man of some education and no special training he drifted from one occupation to anotker until he at length found his vocation. At onetime he was a reporter, and, doubtless, at that period of his life, added much to the mental equipment he had brought with him from the futher- ... CT JAY COOKE. down the curtain in the last act of one of the most interesting dramas produced by the development of the material resources re-sources of this country. The building of the Northern Pacific railway was one of the most stupendous of the many large undertakings in the era of gre.it achievi?-ments. achievi?-ments. It took an excessive amount of faith and courage- to believe in the undertaking, un-dertaking, and the even moderately conservative con-servative people in the financial world were inclined to look upon those who were firm believers as chimerically sanguine san-guine in their anticipations and foolhardy fool-hardy in their hopeful courage. In the history of the building of this great road, the completion of which has nlready given several states to the Union, thore' are two men whose names will always be more prominent than any others Jay Cooke and Henry Villard. One of those began the construction of the road and the other finished it. A crisis in the affairs of the great company com-pany administered at different times by these men brought each of them face to face with personal ruin, and on each occasion oc-casion the disturbance to credit and values val-ues was so great that not a man in the length and breadth of the land failed to feel the effect of the shock. Fortunately, Fortunate-ly, however, each of these men has recovered re-covered from his difficulties just as the business prosperity of tho country survived sur-vived the blow it received when Jay Cooke & Co. .suspended payments, and again many years later when, after the railroad had been finished and the sacrifices sacri-fices he had made to that end had been made public by Mr.Villard, ho was compelled com-pelled to sever his connection with tho company he had controlled. When it was known wha t treasure had been spent in building the road the public lost confidence con-fidence in nearly all railroad property and ita management, and the result was temporarily disastrous. No disaster, however, appeared great enough to shake the confidence of either of these men, and that confidence has brought to each of them ample reward. The elder of these men, Jay Cooke, is a j FRONT VI KW OF OOONTZ. bind. It was not long after he became a railroad man that he was known in the northwest as a person of large ideas and great audacity in the conception of schemes for the consolidation of kindred interests under one management. Iu succeesf ully carrying out such projects proj-ects he in a very few years got control of the Northern Pacific railroad, aud with a wonderful energy he worked for its completion. He scared cautious investors in-vestors out of their frits, but the world seemed to go well with him and for a year or so before the railroad was finished fin-ished he was accorded the confidence which success compels. During that time he built a palace for himself in New York and purchased a large property prop-erty up the Hudson river, near Dobbs Ferry, in the famoiw and romantic neighborhood neigh-borhood of Tarrytown. When the reckoning reck-oning came after the completion of the railroad, and when Mr. Villard was compelled com-pelled to disclose all that he had done in raising the inonoy required to build the great railway, he waa obliged to part with his city palace, but tho Hudson river property beltiu; in his wife's name lie held on to that, and now that he is again at, the head of the great corporation corpora-tion this country place is his home, and a magnificent home it is. High above tbe Hudson where it bends and broadens Mr. Villard has bnilt a most elegant home. The roada ail aloiit have been improved by him so that they are always hard and clean and he can drive for miles, and so can bis neighbors for that matter, upon pavemente which he has made up hill and down dale, through forests and fields. From a point of lana at his gatfw and juhi txiforo entering en-tering the forest in which his house i situated one can see from the euntmer house here perched for miles up and down and across the river. There in not a hill in sight unadorned by a splendid mausion, and standing there it is easy to realize that the rich people of America are more and more making their real homes in tbe country rather than in town. American citiea change so rapidly rapid-ly tout no sooner Ooea a person gc fortably settled in a house than the neighborhood so changes that hia home is untenable or needed for something else. There are few more splendid homes than Mr. Villard'i, and if he really now have the wheel of fortune fastly locked with himself on top we may expect before be-fore this generation passes away that the Villards of "Thorwood" will be as considerable in the social world aa ban been Henry Villard of the Northern Pacific. Jko. Grmna Hpekp. APPROACH TO OOONTZ. typical American, with firm faith in big things. His character is kid out in broad lines and there is nothing narrow in his mind or life. He is counted as a Philadelphia man, but in reality he is a western product, and that which is Philadelphian about him has come to him not by nature but by contact, just as fair hands and cheeks become brown when tanned by the sin. He spends every morning in his office in Fonrth street in Philadelphia, but shortly before 12 every day he leaves to catch a train of the Reading railroad and go to hifi country place at Chelttn Hills, some eight miles from town. Mr. Cooke gives enough time to his office to keep in touch with current affairs, and to give a general gen-eral supervision over ha business interests. inter-ests. But hia heart seems to be in the broad fields of his farm, and his affections affec-tions are pinned to the trees which shade his lawn. Once there he is no longer the banker or railroad magnate, but the enthusiastic farmer watching with keen interest tbsmarvelous and inexplicable changes which occur rora day to day in tbe vegetable world as the sun shines and the rains fall. Everything in relation to the rotation of crops, the purchase and sale of cattle, sheep, rwine and horses is decided upon by him in person. It is his habit to gather with his own hands the first crops of early vegetables, fruits and berries, ber-ries, and his success in kitchen gardening garden-ing has been so great that all about Philadelphia he is noted for being always a little ahead, of his neighbors. There is nothing of tbe nabob at any time in Mr. Cooke's appearance, but he gives up in the country even the little deference be pays to convention while in town, and on the roads and in the fields he looks like c very fanner, not afraid of the soil he cultivates or those substances he places upon it for its enrichment en-richment Eia famous soft hat, which twenty years ago was so familiar in Wall street, is laid, ie for an old straw contrivance of generous: trim, and rough ctcthes are put oa suitable to the employment of a farmer who lends haxd whenever he feels inclined. His hothouses furnish him with all the luxuries possible, and everything about the place is complete. The picture here given shows Mr. Cooky's house very fairly, and makes any description unnecessary- In a niche of the staircase is a bronze med&HifUUit- thejanvma JWnarachiaf. |