The Montgomery advertiser., 1904-05-23
HALF MILLION
SPENT KNOCKING AT DOORS OF
 SOCIETY.
Yet 1t Was All wasted-Dr. Woodend Finally Comes to Grief--StOry of His Rise and
 Fall.

E4Hts
 How much does it cost to break into
 New York society? Dr. William E. woodend spent $5oo,ooO. and he never
 got within the door, relates the New York Press. At the rate he was going and the way he waged his campaign he could have spent millions and pro-
 bably would not have succeeded. Of
 all the meteors that have flashed over
 Wall Street, Woodend was one of the most picturesque. With $5,0O0 he opened a brokerage office in June, 1901. He had a narrow escape from going to the wall in the first few weeks. He knew little or nothing of the intrica- cies of the stock business, yet in the
 first year he made nearly $6S~s00. He | was the most lavish spender, the most sumptuous entertainer, the handsom- l est dresser and the most spectacular figure the financial district has known ma long time. Few persons who are well informed were surprised when his firm went to smash. The re- markable thing is that he lasted so long Had it not been for his over
 weening ambition to get himself and
 his wife In society he might have made | a fortune.
 There is one thing that can be said
 to his credit; he kept money in circu- lation. With his twenty-two magnih- cent horses, fifteen carriages, eighteen | servants. two automobiles, one town
 and two country houses, with his 100 suits of clothes and his hundreds of employees he made brave show for a
 man who started with what Wall Street calls a "shoestring." Society might have smiled on the Woodends
 and extended its hand had the assault
 been made without the brass band &C., compartment
 It is not a new thing to try to break
 into the citadel of society with the
 horse, but no one ever used so many
 horses and such fine ones as did the
 Woodends. The doctor loves a horse
 and so does Mrs Woodend. but the ex-
 tent to which they worked this fad simply made 1t grotesque The daily
 parade of their horses at Long Branch
 one summer became so much of spec
 tacle that one indignant citizen went
 to the counts, applied for an injunc-
 tion and got 1t. He contended that
 the parade interfered with traffic and
 public comfort. And no wonder, for
 it was the custom to walk the Wood
 end horses about town gay in their
 green and black cockades and with
 groom in green and black livery at
 each horses head.
 Those who know Dr. Woodend best
 say he was not altogether vain in the
 display he made of his possessions
 That he had his full allotment of vani-
 ty there was no doubt and that he loved to see his name in print and de- lighted to create sth is certain, but he saw in all this or appeared to see Tn It, a means by which his business
  come in time. Tho grafters saw in him the softest mark in Wall Street and many were the plays they made on his purse. Few of them failed Go get what they went after. for as long as the money held out the doctor could | not resist them.
 Hundreds of stories are told in Wall street of the games that were put m | on him by sharpers. A year ago A fv- oy-night man went to him with the time-worn swindle of the Stock Ex- ohange book which should be a biog- raphy or the luminaries in the word of finance Anyone who knows anvtbine about Wall Street knows the Stock Ex. change would not countenance such a publication, yet the doctor gave S5n0 to the swindler at once.
 NO omces in the financial district were more finely fitted up than were .he u"ctors at No. 25 Broad Street He believed in elegance. He was an ex- Quislte himself. and his one hundred suits of clothes and one hundred extra pairs of trousers kept one man busv looking after them The sumptuous appointments of his home at No. K west Seventy-frst Street, with it's srotto In the basement, its fountains and its statuary, were the talk of all who visited the house. But although the Woodends entertained Iavishly. all though their dinners were the finest money and an epicurean taste could provide they could not obtain the recognition they desired. The doctor was perfect host--there are few men Tn town who are handsomer or moro distinguished loOking-and Mrs. Wood ehd was charming. Hundreds of per sons were eager to eat their dinners and to shower incense on them. but they were of the class who are eager to eat good dinners wherever and whenever they can get them. Some of me visitors were delightful; some Of them were not
 IL takes a world of money to enter tain on large scale in New York It taxes a small fortune to maintain a stable where the horses are blue ribbon winners and the traps are the best the I can turn out. The in- o"iV "' vanderbilt would have been necessary to meet the drain upon the resources of nr. Woodend. That $60O.- poV came so easy the first year that val Street looked like a gold mine. put the gold mine did not yield so ahundantly after the first year. The 'tagnation that visited the market put crimp in the firms bank account. The expenses of the eighteen or twenty branch offices which woodend had es- throughout the country were IS heavy In dull times as in brisk, but nere was no curtailment of expenses n the Woodend business or in tbe Noodend household. Society was to 'ewon, and any reehng of sails might le taken as an evihanca nf urnnLnnnn