, 1876-04-21


taris nanirl {. the oldest looking man
t.-.i e,sf lived Ia the furry Of Wall
49,. ani entirely paicrnal and benign
= aalfu ard aspect. The rest of the
49, 49, b. him always ''the boys" and
ulI two % one that any individual OPP
aIIiuF q The present generation was my
- h b. fund the old gentleman in a
lunrgnicut m"od Since his calamity with
n ee.i. in 1879. when his dear friend
Grull persuaded him to sell that pleas
ant fsrlun out and buy himself of Erie
M. Gsuld further accommodating him
arliinr him the said Erie to any
a3luuuti. since then, when Nor'west went
~ sod Erie dOwn-tO the extreme en-
tIbpmcut of Uncle Daniel-his rugged
fats and attenuated form have been little
srkn on the street. His last recorded
u4r,ls on that occasion were, "Wa'al,
thAy tell ma NOr'west's a-risin'." He was
ffsi In the street in 1896, and even then
80 forty years old. But it was not till
ke encountered Vanderbilt, whose ally
he pas for long time, in repeated con-
aicts, that he began to have any nick
nanes. Strange as II looks nowadays,
thc ipint efforts Of Vanderbilt and Drew
l1rtd Erie from trouble In 81, but within
lho uuxt ten years a separation entirely
dIiniln VAS effected between them. They
uaft remarkably opposite men. One of
llon wanted for a time to build and
pIan,L and the other for n time to tear
douh and 10 pluck up that which was
r|an|1dl Vanderbilt has been a lifelong
-brU. = probably from a mixture of rea-
Ion4f be has looked more to general 70.
suII.. aluck TO good thing even from
policy lor the good of il as well as for
profit and was a terror to "the street"
duly when'having quietly minded his own
business for a season he found his "Har-
lem" going down under a vicious attack
Then be blazed out and sent it up to the
skies mercilessly as we'll as irresistibly,
and II Uncle Daniel was in the way, as
be was IN 1854, It was bad for Uncle Dan
iel. Drew, on the other hand, with a
ahrewd, subtle mind, has Detted miscel-
laneously the nearest gudgeons, small
fry and large, seizing the nearest oppor-
tunity and looking to the immediate re-
suit He was q "bear" from choice as
Vanderbilt was "bull" from conviction.
He didn't value "sheers" for what they
represented, but for what he could do
with them at such and such juncture.
He worked with enormous sagacity, and
when he was at work, and he was inces-
SAINT from 1850 or thereabouts to 1878, he
was accumulating disaster for some Of the
boys.
II Is not long ago that he was at his
brokers' Offices every day. For a wear
and more he has scarcely once appeared,
and was getting pretty well forgotten.
There Is tradition about a oDe-horse
chaise in which, in his simple way, he
used to drive down to his place of bust
ness every morning, dressed stiffiy and
plainly, like country deacon coming to
Judgment. He has been pretty much the
same within the memory Of man-sol-
emn and dry and curt Of speech. His
eyes, which were forever bright and
twinkling, were the only sign Of life in
the rugged and deeply-seamed face, and
even when it became gray and pinched
with age, the eyes retained all their pierre
ing quality. Tall and meagre always,
ms shoulders have been bowed this ten
years. Like Agag, he went ''delicately,
with a step that might be called cat-like,
only Tor the suspicion that the name might
be deduction rather than description,
and though he has recently been i'll and
yer Is so, his physical appearance in the
past had littletO do with his health. The
boys used to lounge at his brokers
(Groesheck's) in his active DAYS, and
watch the old gentleman pottering about
silently. Sometimes he would talk, al
ways In the country dialect and Yankee
wang, which he affected rather than used
Periorce; but when he talked, he was
oe.'er hand at extracting the "pintsn than
at imparting them.
A curious cynicism seems to have con.
trolled him in his personal intercourse
win other spectators. If it was not his
habit to personally convey to them infor-
malon particularly untrustWorthy, and
Pints' essentially disastrous, all for base
purposes OF gain, he has been singularly
ni-repFeaented. "Yaas, l skinned the
1"yS Is one Of his surviving sayings.
heI'ori even credits him with skinning
o'hef than the boys. He has lived two
tises himself, and at home or in the church
oeen stranger entirely to the specula-
tut Drew. Possibly it was his desire to
ionopolike this "straddlen of the world
ne Is said 10 have invented straddlinQ of
me mafket-that made him delusion
Aua asnare 10 deacons. The bitter stock
eamolng experiences of many deacons
nc ~ The common reportlinked with his
name. lie had been on the street so long
mat "reminiscences of this sort are assum-
lng The mist Of tradition. The common
81 myth goes that unnumbered deacons,
ABOUT the time Mr.. Drew had made his
muniheent gifts to the theological semi
nary which bears his name, firing of the
straight road to wealth that begins in
eorn fields and country grocery stores, de-
eidsd to try, and with his goodly help