The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1886-04-08
OUR NEW YORK LETTER,
[Eom our Regular COrcspondcnt.]
NEW York, April 8, 1886.

[Ffom our Regular Correspondent
NEW YORK, April 8, 1886.
This city is strewn with wrecks, mol
houses or ships, but men who fen
years ago were the central figures in our
financial and commercial life. l make
no account of the Fishs, or The Wards
the Seneys, or the numbers of Others
who went out OF sight in the late hnan
cial cyclone. They went the way of all
flesh and for them there are few regrets
but there are hundreds of others, worthy
men-men who have fought the battle o!
life as we'll as they knew how, and ye'
have. been caught in some passing fnan
cial hurricane and have sunk to rise nc
more. Almost every day I meet an old
gentleman on Broadway led by a young
girl. They are both very poorly clad,
and there have been plenty days this
Winter when have seen her shivering
in her light Summer wrap as the old man
tottered along at her side. Twenty years
ago he was one of the foremost men on
the Street, and his name was spell to
copjure with, and his check was good fol
a million; but it is all gone. Yet he
carried away from Wall street what
thousands have not, his honor spotless
and unsullied. I saw poor Heath few
days before he died. Heath you will
recollect was the great Wall street broker
that old Morisini cast into prison, accus.
ing Heath of defrauding him of $780,
900. The blow broke poor Heath's heart,
and he never raised his head after he
came out of Ludlow street Jail. What a
man he was, for years he was one of the
central figures on change. l have seen
him when tho Street was shaken from
turret to foundation stone; when death
was in the air and ruin all around him,
stocks neutrality-suspicious. in an hour,
chaos on every side; yet there he stood
like rock, cool as an iceberg, his whole
fortune as it were staked on the turn of q
card, and yet without the tremor of a
nerve. I don't know how much money
passed through his hahds-he executed
the largest orders on the Street for years
perhaps a hundred millions or more,
yet last week he died wreck almost
alone in his little room, deserted by the
Summer flies that for years had fattened
on his bounty. While poor Heath was
grubbiDg his life out here, Mrs. Heath
was living in regal style in Paris. A
couple of faithful friends stood by his
bedside when he was dying, they were all
that were left of the army that surround.
ed him only year ago. The late G. X.
Garrison was another notable example.
He was hard, tough man, always rush
ing, always driving; if anything stood
in his way he walked right over and
never paused. He seemed to be made of
steel and India rubber and to bear a
charmed life. He went to the Isthmus
of Panama when the deadly fever was
killing among the foreigners nine men
out of ten. He was always the tenth
man and came through without scratch.
He bought steamship lines and railroads
he was connected with mighty enterprises
all his life, nothing seemed to daunt him,
but when he broke the chord snapped
suddenly and he fell into hopeless ruin.
Jesse Hoyt broke down the same way,
and for months before he died was a
pitiable wreck, exciting even the COM
miseration of those who hated and de-
spised him. I beard a conversation
between a prominent railroad director
and gentleman who was riding in one
of his cars, which was illustrative Of our
present daily life. The passenger wanted
to know why trains did not make sixty
miles an hour. The director replied that
we could not only do it, but seventy it
necessary; but if we did, he said, if
would be at the cost of our road and our
rolling stock, for in little while they
would shake them all to pieces. Poor
Heath was shaken all to pieces still he
was not fifty years of age, and under
favorable circumstances ought to have
been in the very prime of life.
In Brooklyn only couple Of weeks
ago we'll known society man suddenly
disappeared. Anxious inquiries were
made for him by his friends, and in a
few days he was found in the lunatic
department of the County Poor House.
He was a fine gentleman. No man was
better known in our sister city for the
last twenty years. He had served with
distinction in the war; he was for years a
prominent government official, an ad-
vauced member of all the prominent
associations. A famous amateur actor,
quite distinguished as public reader, a
general fayorite everywhere; yet his
overloaded brain breaks down, and the
man is ruin and dead at fifty. We are
going too fast this sixty miles an hour
is shaking lis tc, pieces. Everything
seems to have such an element of wild
excitement about it in the sudden hurry
to get rich. Go into the stock board
when business is lively aud it is hard to
believe that you are not in madhouse
with the lunatics all broke loose. 1t is
the same in the Produce exchange or the
Cotton Exchange, where by the way
there was slaughter of the innocents
last week. 1t would seem if there was
,,.L;nr -nruSuolly eycitinr ahout eggs