and going out of business. Then I laid it before Hitchcock and Darling, of
the Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York. They, rich like the Willards, were
also retiring. Then a bright thought occurred to me. I went to the Prince
Imperial of Standard Oil. "Mr. Flagler," I said, "you have hotels at St.
Augustine and you have hotels at Palm Beach. Here is a halfway point
between New York and Florida," and more of the same sort. "My dear friend,"
he answered, "every man has the right to make a fool of himself once in his
life. This I have already done. Never again for me. I have put up my
last dollar south of the Potomac." Then I went to the King of the
transcontinental railways. "Mr. Huntington," I said, "you own a road
extending from St. Louis to Newport News, having a terminal in a cornfield
just out of Hampton Roads. Here is a franchise which gives you a
magnificent site at Hampton Roads itself. Why not?" He gazed upon me with
a blank stare--such I fancy as he usually turned upon his suppliants--and
slowly replied: "I would not spend another dollar in Virginia if the Lord
commanded me. In the event that some supernatural power should take the
Chesapeake & Ohio Railway by the nape of the neck and the seat of the
breeches and pitch it out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean it would be
doing me a favor."

So I returned John his franchise marked "nothing doing." Afterward he put
it in the hands of a very near friend, a great capitalist, who had no
better luck with it. Finally, here and there, literally by piecemeal, he
got together money enough to build and furnish the Hotel Chamberlin, had a
notable opening with half of Congress there to see, and gently laid himself
down and died, leaving little other than friends and debts.



III