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Show As I Remember Them Isaac L. Requa By C. C. Goodwin" 1 NEVER saw any other man of just such a type as Mr. Requa. ' 3$ v From childhood his life was an exact mat ter of fact. He had not the slightest imagination, imagina-tion, at least if he had he never permitted it to have the slightest influence on his judgment. There are indications on the Comstock which amount to promises. When a strata of rich ore is making in a certain cer-tain direction and growing stronger and more pronounced with every blast that is fired upon it, men watch it expectantly, and after a few days, if it a little more than holds its own, they will begin to gamble that it is leading to a greater or less body of ore. That is, they buy shares confident con-fident that they will advance in value. $i It was not so with Mr. Requa. He would wait until the ore body was developed; then have his assays made and make his measurements, then his estimates and determine how much profit he could already make on each share and then purchase. His thought was, so far as his dealing in stocks was concerned, to eliminate every gam-gling gam-gling elenlent from it. Had every operator been like him, we doubt whether the great lode would ever have been opened deeper than 700 feet. But when other more sanguine men were gambling, he was watching and whenever he saw a condition from which his exact mathematics could figure a profit, he invested and so made a great fortune. He was poor when he reached the Comstock, but was a trained mechanic, and hence could always command high wages, and his work led him where he could see every development made. Other men were alternately elated and depressed, de-pressed, there were no rapids and no eddies in the currents of his life it just flowed on and on. He was six feet two inches in height, his" natural weight with no surplus flesh was two hundred and forty pounds; he had never given up to a vice of any excess, and so when required he could work right along sixteen hours a day and keep it up indefinitely. It was not long until it was understood that there was not money enough in the Comstock to bribe him to make a misstatement. Moreover, that his judgment of every situation was solid, and the bigger plungers began to lean on that judgment, backed, as it was, by absolute truthfulness. truth-fulness. So he was promoted to higher and higher stations sta-tions until at last he was given charge of the Choller-Potosi. The company decided to explore the mine to a great depth, and he directed the tQ work. Of course every foot that the mine was opened deeper he watched with discriminating eyes, and every Indication of change was noted. This led him to stop sinking at a certain point and start a drift in a certain direction not usually made. In that way he developed the great Po-, Po-, tosl bonanza. Later ho resumed sinking, his knowledge of machinery greatly assisting in keeping everything every-thing needed anticipated, and he followed the lead down to the 3,000 level. He had the Choller-Potosi and Halo and Nor- cross in charge many years. When California and Con. Virginia stocks had ' climbed up Into the hundreds ana people believed they were up to the limit, I heard a man ask Mr. Requa what he thought was a good buy. His answer was: "I do not know what would be I good, but I think I know that Con.-Virglnia would J bo an absolutely safe buy." It doubled, in the next twenty-seven days. I i I l He had made the rounds of the great ore body and had consciously' or unconsciously estimated its value as far as opened. When every other operator on the lode and in San Francisco lost in the great Sierra Nevada collapse, I do not believe that Mr. Requa was out a dollar, for no hearsay evidence was an incentive incen-tive for him to buy. "Show me," might have been his watchword, and then he wanted to see it all. While other men made and lost great fortunes for-tunes all around him, he moved in his unostentatious unostenta-tious way among them and was aDout the only one who knew just where he stood financially every night. I do not believe that he ever read a poem or a work of fiction, for he had no imagination which the former could charm, and the fact that the latter did not pretend to be true, was enough to carry him out upon unknown ground of which he could not locate a landmark. ' But a new problem in mechanics was something which he could sit up with all night and enjoy himself with, and the elements of earth and and water and the effects of altitude and temperature tempera-ture on machinery were always solved problems with him. He would have been at home with Archimedes, Archim-edes, and to perfectly adjust a set of platform scales would have given him more pleasure than a new grand march played by a regimental band. Personally he was most approachable and des-" des-" titute of everything like ostentation or exclu-slveness, exclu-slveness, and was most genial and loveable to friends, often admiring their gifts and eccentricities. eccentric-ities. He was most apreclatlve of eminent services in any useful field and forgiving of minor faults in men. His thought seemed to be if a man had a trust placed in his hands to perform, that was as far as any one had a right to go into such a man's private life. He was perfect in the conduct of his own life and his little family were all in all to him. After the great bonanza ceased to yield and the coming of the Sutro tunnel in a great measure meas-ure .changed the methods of working the lead, he changed his home to California. He built him a luxuriant home at Piedmont, back of Oakland, and for many years was an active director of the old Central Pacific railroad. It was during those years after Mark Hopkins Hop-kins died, and when Governor Stanford was thinking more of his university than the exactions and cares of looking after a great railroad property, prop-erty, and when the general management of the mighty property absorbed all Mr. Huntington's strength, without attempting to deal in the details de-tails of the working of the system. I believe that Mr. Requa remained at that post until the purchase by Mr. Harriman. He was, too, president of a bank and followed the steady round of his business with all his old alertness and power until his health broke down and the infirmities of age became too much a burden to him physically, but then his mind retained all Us brightness. He died some six or eight years ago. I can recall no man who lived a more even life, a llfo that seemed to have no more jar than a planet in its roll; a man who never seemed to exult nor be cast down, who had an abiding faith that intelligent work and strict adherence to duty would eventually win. Perhaps his character shone out best as a citizen. cit-izen. Ho made no ostentatious displays of his patriotism, but in those stormy days in Virginia City from I860 to 1866, when party feeling ran iim ! ' ' ii 1 1 i .... . sometimes to the point of explosion, no one H doubted where I. L. Reqiitf stood. With him it H was: "My country when right, but right or wrong, H my country." H He worked forty-five years after he reached H the Comstock. He accumulated a great fortune, -. H but at no other man's expense. It was a fortune H that, he brought to light in the depths of the Com- H stock, where it had lain from the creation of the H world, where it might have remained for yet thousands of years except for him. He fulfilled all his duties, he kept the faith every day -and H when his call came not one reproach attached H to his memory, ont one stain was on his high character. jH |