The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1886-02-28
WALL STREET GIANTS.
Cyrus W. Field and Some of His Compeers
The Business Outlook Favorable.

Special to the Indianapolis Journal.
NEW YORK, Feb. 2Z-Cyrus w. Field, keen
eyed, alert and vigorous, in his sixty fifth year,
suggests locomotive in trousers. The whole
man suggests power; there is power in the New
England nose. power in the square Jaws and firm
lips. power in the whole bearing of the man. /
was struck with this anew in recent conversation
with him about the silver question. The gray
eyes are usually urbane in their glance, but they
can also peer, half-closed, with penetrating scru
tiny, into those of an interlocutor. They are as
searching as the cold, black eyes of him whom so
many fear-Jay Gould. Mr. Fields offices are
in the seventh story of the Washington Build
ing, corner of Battery Place and State street
It is an eyre worthy of this eagle of finance
Mr.. Gould's Offices look out upon the crumbling
tombstones of Trinity church yard, and all day
long there is the sound of the great clock in
passing hours far above the roar of
Broadway, varied occasionally by the solemn
chimes. Mr.. Fields downtown habitation, on
the other hand, has widely different prospect
for to the south stretches wide and glistening
bay, with the cleaning Narrows connecting the
nearer and further waters as by silver thread;
there is Staten island, whose blue heights look
city; there is Bedoe's island with it's Bartholdi
statue, and Ellis island, with its Notifications
and useless ordnance; and Governors island,
near at hand, where the superb Hancock died;
there, just below, is the battery, the fashionable
resort of another age, with its "reminiscences of
Talleyrand. Louis Philippe and Jerome Napo
leon of Major Andre, Clinton and Lord Corn
wallis. of Louis Kossuth, Washington Irving
and hundred others whose names once filled
the ears of men, but whom busting age has
nearly or quite forgotten
There is the time-worn Castle Garden. where
Jenny Lind, in her glorious youth, nearly forty
years ago, stirred fever in the blood of age
with her matchless voice. There are the old
dormer windowed houses of the Bowling Green,
once the abodes of commercial princes, but now
given over to foreign consulates and steamship
offices, fronting On the little park where, more
than a century ago, the New York patriots seized
the leaden statue of George III to melt it down
for bullets to shoot his soldiers with. The
fnancier's handsome building stands on a site
once occupied by the mansion of Nathaniel
Prime, a ruler of Wall street fifty years ago,
when millionaires were few and John Jacob
Aston was at the height of his commercial re-
nown. 1t was in one of the chambers Of the
ancient mansion that old MAT" Prime, as he
was called, cut his throat through an insane
fear, in spite of his riches, of being reduced to
poverty. On the walls of Mr. Fields lofty and
interesting nook are the portraits of many nota
BILE persons at home and abroad, including Mr..
Gladstone, with whom he has stopped at Ha-
warden.
The quiet. blue-eyed, resolute-looking man.
whom l sometimes meet in the region of the
Stock Exchange, meditatively smoking cigar, as
he walks slowly towards his Office near by. is the
Murat Of Wall street. James r. Keene. He usu-
ally maintains absolute silence respecting his
affairs, bat not few predict that he will yet re-
gain his feet and dazzle Wall street as in former
times by his financial daring. He has recently
come into public notice again through a suit
which he has brought against some of his former
allies in a speculative campaign. who he thinks
have wronged him. Only few years ago he was
worth fully thirteen million dollars; he lost seven
millions in sixty days, largely through unfor-
turate wheat speculation, which really killed his
associate in the enterprise. Jesse Hoyt, whose
will has given the coarts so much trouble. That
even the intrepid James r. Keene, with his fine
strung. nervous organization, should be alive to-
day, after the trying vcissitudes through which
he has passed, seems little less than miracle
One spot on the financial sun has been the ex-
ports of gold, but if our foreign grain trade
should improve as it has of late promised to do.
this matter would right itself, and an advance in
granger stocks would naturally follow, doubtless
| affecting favorably the entire list The public
seems ready to take a cheerful view of the fu-
ture OSCAR WIIIOUGHRy RIGGS