The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1906-02-08
From the New York Journal.

From the New York Journal.
IF THERE are few good novels in the
great mass of American fiction flung
I from the presses every year the fault
is not due to poverty of material. Per-
haps there is too much. It's very SUPER
abundance overwhelms the writer.
The Yerkes affair alone presents enough
raw material to lay the foundations of
another Coincide Humane if novelist
capable of using 1t had the courage of
his genius.
A young quaker builds up an extensive
banking and brokerage business. He
falls. and is in debt to the city of Phila-
delphia for bonds sold on its account. He
refuses to make the city a preferred cred
itor and is sent to the penitentiary. The
sentence is afterward declared illegal.
Marital difficulties are intermingled with
financial difficulties With prison rec
ord against him and second wife he
starts anew, and succeeds in recuperating
his fortunes out of the Jay Cooke failure,
which brings calamity to almost every
body else.
A dozen years later he goes to Chicago
of street railway exploitation. He reor-
ganizes the traction system of the sec
ond city of the continent. He buys
newspaper to defend his methods. He
debauches the city government of Chi
cago as it was never debauched before.
He corrupts the state government OF llli-
nois as it was never corrupted before.
Finally when he has capitalized the past.
the present and the future he unloads
his properties and turns mis- face toward
the east. leaving to the city a legacy of
corruption. economic mischief and social
istic discomfort to plague more than 2ooo,-
600 people for a generation 10 come.
He goes to London and undertakes the
reorganization of an antiquated and in
adequate traction system there. He finds
a different state of society and different
standards of political responsibility. With
true American genius he Immediately
adapts himself to them Corruption is
laid aside for sound business propositions.
Instead of the curses that were justly
heaped upon him in Chicago he is praised
as a great public benefactor
He returns to New York to find him
self stricken with a mortal disease. Scan
dals hover over his death-bed. Until the
very agony of death has come his wife
refuses to visit him, but one of his nu-
merous protegees watches over his pillow,
while another hurries from London to
New York. Day by day reports of his
extraordinary domestic relations dribble
into the newspapers. which can hardly
more than hint at the facts. Louis XIV.
himself never lavished such fortunes upon
his various protegees.
lie dies and there is scarcely a handful
OF mourners at the funeral. notwithstand-
ing the fact that the man had possessed
a wealth OF personal traits less remarlSa-
BILE than his less laudable characters
ties. The funeral itself is grim and
CHASTITY travesty on the vanity of riches.
More tears fall upon the sod that covers
an eastside immigrant. His will Is read,
part of his great fortune and an almost
priceless collection of art treasures to-
the public. which is more interested in
his scandals than in his benefactions. In
the city where he piled up the bulk of
his wealth they forget the ancient admo-
dead, while in London the columns OF
the great newspapers overflow with CRATE
full tributes to the public services which
he rendered
A month after his death the widow
marries a man twenty years her junior.