The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1891-08-09
BoBB1Na FOR DEAD SEA APPLES.


Our dispatches recently announced the
suicide at San Francisco of John E. Dixon,
once wealthy man, who had been re-
duced to poverty by years of stock gamb-
ling. From the Atlantic coast comes the
news that A. b. Stockwell. who twenty
years ago was worth at least million. was
president of the Howe Sewing Machine
company, president of the Pacific Mail
Steamship company, has again failed for
an amount so small that his collapse may
be regarded as the last gurgling cry of
once strong swimming Speculation in his
agony; likely henceforth to be poor
wandering curbstone broker until he
"sinks into the depths with bubbling groan
Unknelled, uncoffined and unknown"
These men had gamblers ambition; a
gamblers greed gamblers fate and re-
ward or punishment as we may choose to
regard it. They add another unsightly
wreck to the stranded pirate craft that, min
gled with the burnt prizes of pirates, line
the rocks and shoals of stock gambling.
Sometimes your Wall street wreck is a
happy-go-lucky pigeon, like John Tobin;
sometimes he is predaceous hawk, like
Daniel Drew. who helped pluck many a
pigeon until the bald eagles of the street
hunted this hawk to death; sometimes he
is a purse proud peacock, like Stockwell,
who in his egotism thinks sharp country
trader can beat the whole school of Wall
street sharks at their own game.
ha 10 1aua CtonEmalI al hifa
fifteen years ago, of which he has been
bleeding to death ever since. Stockwell
lost his head to the sharks long ago, and
has only been Weighing his toes ever since,
and now the sharks have utterly swallowed
him. There need be no tears shed over
such fellows. Stockwell was nothing but
q vain-glorious sharper himself who went
into Wall street with his million thinking
he could beat the game, and confident that
he would take the scalp of the street and
hang it at the war girdle of his Sewing
Machine Company, but he has lost not
only his own scalp but his financial life.
His purpose was not a whit more honest
than that of the conceited gambler, who,
successful in shearing country lambs,
thinks he is smart enough to trap wolf
and strong enough to hold him while he
shears him, too. But wolves don't submit
to be sheared by clumsy country shep-
herd and the result is that Stockwell, who
went forth to shear the wolf, has come
home not only shorn by the wolf, but
bitten to death in the struggle. He
thought he could break the faro bank, but
the faro bank has broken him.
If he had won he would have spared no
body; his arrogant methods when he
thought he had the key to the combina-
ton showed that, so when Wall street
once got him down they never let him up,
so long as there was grain of wheat to be
threshed out of his PROSTATE body. He
thought he was a Triton, but to Wall
street he was only another silly minnow
with the appetite and rapacity of shark.
His fate is miserable enough, but it is only
the fate he intended for others; he is hoist
by his own petard, beheaded by his own
axe, tortured to death by the same rack
upon which he was eager to stretch others;
he has been bobbing for the Dead Sea
all the honest wealth that decent man
could uprightly enjoy or employ, and now
he has not even the apple left; nothing but
the bitter, brackish Dead Sea of disap-
pointment and humiliation to drink; he
is the wounded catamount of "the street."
that dies, writhing, wailing and biting its
own flesh with the fangs il meant TO fasten
in the neck of its victims and then leisurely
suck their life blood away; the crushed and
dying tragedian in the drama of THE
Bitter Bitten"
What was the matter with this man?
The matter with him was that he had
low and mean ambition; he did not re-
gard great wealth as a valuable and desir-
able means to good end when fairly won
and virtuously employed; it was not to
him high trust, like fine native parts or
grand opportunities; it was to his vulgar,
greedy nature golden ladder by which
he meant TO mount the worlds elephant
childish spectators, filling the air with the
hosannas with which Hindoo city greets
the approach Of their bedizened and be-
diamoned tyrant. lie wanted to ''cut a
big swath," but he handled his scythe so
recklessly that it cut no grass that
would make hay and ended his lit
tie day by cutting down and hopelessly
crlppling himself. His own barns were
full; his house was full when he began to
gamble and play bandit in business; he
was at the head of large. useful, i'm
portant, legitimate industry, ample to
employ ali mis- honest brains, crafty all
his honest ambition, and to open honor
able avenues for the exercise of wise public
and private benevolence, but he staked his
business, all his best assurance of a long.
happy. useful and honorable life for the
chance of winning the baseiess fabric of
visionary wealth, whose cIoud-capped
towers and gorgeous palaces he saw in the
glitteying mirage of Wall street.
AL That this silly, greedy Spectator in
herised has dissolved; tie insubstantial
pageant of his sir-born speculative riches
has faded, leaving him an old man, wan
dering 20 and fro dismally amid the
gloomy rains of the once proud edifce of
his sordid hopes. He might have blessed
his day and generation, If he had chosen
the better part; had remained \ legitimate
man OF business instead Of becoming a
greedy gambler, raging 20 sent a swath"
at the risk of losing his soul; he
chose the worse part; he is food for