Truth we are told is stranger than fiction. I have found it so in the knowledge which has variously come to me of many interesting men and women. Of these Dr. Norvin Green was a striking example. To have sprung from humble parentage in the wilds of Kentucky and to die at the head of the most potential corporation in the world--to have held this place against all comers by force of abilities deemed indispensable to its welfare--to have gone the while his ain gait, disdaining the precepts of Doctor Franklin--who, by the way, did not trouble overmuch to follow them himself--seems so unusual as to rival the most stirring stories of the novel mongers.

When I first met Doctor Green he was president of a Kentucky railway company. He had been, however, one of the organizers of the Western Union Telegraph Company. He deluded himself for a little by political ambitions. He wanted to go to the Senate of the United States, and during a legislative session of prolonged balloting at Frankfort he missed his election by a single vote.

It may be doubted whether he would have cut a considerable figure at Washington. His talents were constructive rather than declamatory. He was called to a greater field--though he never thought it so--and was foremost among those who developed the telegraph system of the country almost from its infancy. He possessed the daring of the typical Kentuckian, with the dead calm of the stoic philosopher; imperturbable; never vexed or querulous or excited; denying himself none of the indulgences of the gentleman of leisure. We grew to be constant comrades and friends, and when he returned to New York to take the important post which to the end of his days he filled so completely his office in the Western Union Building became my downtown headquarters.

There I met Jay Gould familiarly; and resumed acquaintance with Russell Sage, whom I had known when a lad in Washington, he a hayseed member of Congress; and occasionally other of the Wall Street leaders. In a small way--though not for long--I caught the stock-gambling fever. But I was on the "inside," and it was a cold day when I did not "clean up" a goodly amount to waste uptown in the evening. I may say that I gave this over through sheer disgust of acquiring so much and such easy and useless money, for, having no natural love of money--no aptitude for making money breed--no taste for getting it except to spend it--earning by my own accustomed and fruitful toil always a sufficiency--the distractions and dissipations it brought to my annual vacations and occasional visits, affronted in a way my self-respect, and palled upon my rather eager quest of pleasure. Money is purely relative. The root of all evil, too. Too much of it may bring ills as great as not enough.

At the outset of my stock-gambling experience I was one day in the office of President Edward H. Green, of the Louisville and Nashville Railway, no relation of Dr. Norvin Green, but the husband of the famous Hetty Green. He said to me, "How are you in stocks?"

"What do you mean?" said I.

"Why," he said, "do you buy long, or short? Are you lucky or unlucky?"

"You are talking Greek to me," I answered.

"Didn't you ever put up any money on a margin?"

"Never."

"Bless me! You are a virgin. I want to try your luck. Look over this stock list and pick a stock. I will take a crack at it. All I make we'll divide, and all we lose I'll pay."

"Will you leave this open for an hour or two?"

"What is the matter with it--is it not liberal enough?"

"The matter is that I am going over to the Western Union to lunch. The Gould party is to sit in with the Orton-Green party for the first time after their fight, and I am asked especially to be there. I may pick up something."

Big Green, as he was called, paused a moment reflectively. "I don't want any tip--especially from that bunch," said he. "I want to try your virgin luck. But, go ahead, and let me know this afternoon."

At luncheon I sat at Doctor Green's right, Jay Gould at his left. For the first and last time in its history wine was served at this board; Russell Sage was effusive in his demonstrations of affection and went on with his stories of my boyhood; every one sought to take the chill off the occasion; and we had a most enjoyable time instead of what promised to be rather a frosty formality. When the rest had departed, leaving Doctor Green, Mr. Gould and myself at table, mindful of what I had come for, in a bantering way I said to Doctor Green: "Now that I am a Wall Street ingÉnu, why don't you tell me something?"

Gould leaned across the table and said in his velvet voice: "Buy Texas Pacific."

Two or three days after, Texas Pacific fell off sixty points or more. I did not see Big Green again. Five or six months later I received from him a statement of account which I could never have unraveled, with a check for some thousands of dollars, my one-half profit on such and such an operation. Texas Pacific had come back again.

Two or three years later I sat at Doctor Green's table with Mr. Gould, just as we had sat the first day. Mr. Gould recalled the circumstance.

"I did not think I could afford to have you lose on my suggestion and I went to cover your loss, when I found five thousand shares of Texas Pacific transferred on the books of the company in your name. I knew these could not be yours. I thought the buyer was none other than the man I was after, and I began hammering the stock. I have been curious ever since to make sure whether I was right."

"Whom did you suspect, Mr. Gould?" I asked.

"My suspect was Victor Newcomb," he replied.

I then told him what had happened. "Dear, dear," he cried. "Ned Green! Big Green. Well, well! You do surprise me. I would rather have done him a favor than an injury. I am rejoiced to learn that no harm was done and that, after all, you and he came out ahead."

It was about this time Jay Gould had bought of the Thomas A. Scott estate a New York daily newspaper which, in spite of brilliant writers like Manton Marble and William Henry Hurlbut, had never been a moneymaker. This was the World. He offered me the editorship with forty-nine of the hundred shares of stock on very easy terms, which nowise tempted me. But two or three years after, I daresay both weary and hopeless of putting up so much money on an unyielding investment, he was willing to sell outright, and Joseph Pulitzer became the purchaser.

His career is another illustration of the saying that truth is stranger than fiction.