wealth, but he has most conclusively proven that such possession is in
no sense a bar to a faithful and efficient service of his fellow
citizens in positions of trust and honor. His rare executive ability has
been of good service to the Commonwealth, in whose affairs he has
exercised the same good judgment and marked executive ability, as in his
own.

It is, perhaps, as a financier that Oliver Ames has won his widest
reputation. Upon the death of his father the management of the vast
enterprises which the later had controlled, suddenly devolved upon him.
The greatness of the man showed itself in that he found himself equal to
the emergency. The Oakes Ames estate was, at the time he took upon his
shoulders its settlement, not only one in which immense and diversified
interests were involved, scattered throughout different states of the
Union, but it was also burdened with obligations to the extent of eight
millions of dollars. The times were most unpropitious, the country being
just on the eve of a great financial panic when immense properties were
crumbling to pittances. He undertook the Herculean task of rescuing at
this time this estate from threatened ruin, and of vindicating the good
name of his father from undeserved censure. He had in this gigantic work
to meet and thwart the plots of rapacious railroad wreckers, and
schemers; but his thorough mental discipline united with his intensely
practical business training, and coupled with his native energy, tact,
good sense, and fertility of resources, stood him in good stead. He
inspired capitalists with confidence, money was forthcoming to further
his carefully matured plans, and the ship freighted with the fortunes of
his family, was, by his steady hand, piloted securely amidst the shoals
and quicksands of disaster, and by rocks strewn with the wrecks of
princely fortunes, to a safe anchorage. He rescued the property from
peril, met and paid the enormous indebtedness resting upon it, paid a