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The Book of Daniel Drew

EMORIES

ME

I

that's what this thing is going to be. What I remember I'll put down. What I don't remember I won't put down. Or else I'll put it down cautious-like, so you'll know it isn't real gospel but only a sort of think-so. For after going on eighty years, a fellow gets a little mite rusty as to some of the goods packed away in his upper story. Whenever I talked with people I didn't jot it down word for word. Therefore it's only the gist of it that you get here in these papers.

Anyhow I never was much at writer-work. Jay was the boy for that. I mean Jason Gould. (He got to calling himself “Jay,” and so the rest of us called him by that name, too.) In our doings - I mean, the doings of Jim Fisk, Jay Gould and me, for we were in a partnership together a long time — Jay would do most of the writer-work. "Jay, you're the ink slinger," Jimmy would say to him, and would pull him up to the table and slap a pen in his hand. He would do it so rough that Jay, who is a slip of a man, would wince. But Jimmy

had so hearty a way of slapping you on your shoulder with his big paws, that nobody could stay mad at him for very long together.

As I started to say, Jay had a high and noble way of stringing words together a knack which I never could get. See that opening of his "History of Delaware County," which he wrote back in '55, before he came to New York to make money. It's worth reading over and over, if for nothing more than its moral teachings:

"History, with the more and more extensive meaning acquired by the advancement of civilization, by the diffusion of education, and by the elevation of the standard of human liberty, has expanded into a grand and beautiful science. It treats of man in all his social relations, whether civil, religious, or literary, in which he has intercourse with his fellows. The study of history, to a free government like the one in which we live, is an indispensable requisite to the improvement and elevation of the human race. It leads us back through the ages that have succeeded each other in time past; it exhibits the conditions of the human race at each respective period, and by following down its pages from the vast empires and mighty cities now ingulfed in oblivion but which the faithful historian presents in a living light before us, we are enabled profitably to compare and form a more correct appreciation of our own relative position.

"It is certain that the more enlightened and free a people become the more the government devolves upon themselves; and hence the necessity of a care

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ful study of history, which, by showing the height
to which man as an intellectual being is capable
of elevating himself in the scale of usefulness and
moral worth, teaches that the virtues of a good man
are held in sacred emulation by his countrymen for
ages succeeding, long after the scythe of time has
gathered the earthly remains of the actor to the
silent grave.
Such thoughts, or rather such reflec-
tions as these, inspire within the human bosom an
ardent desire to attain that which is good and shun
that which is evil, an honest and laudable ambition
to become both great and good; or, as another has
beautifully written: 'Great only as we are good.'"

You'll have to foot it many a mile to find writing to equal that. Fine, noble words seemed to come to Jay natural-like. If I could write in that fashion I'd be stuck up. But Jay wasn't; in fact, he didn't use to like it when I would remind him of this opening chapter of his "History of Delaware County."

“Twaddle!” he'd say; “it's nothing but a lot of gush, written when I was a youth out there back of the Catskill Mountains." Jay always was modest. He didn't like to be pushed to the front. Jimmy was the boy -I mean Jim Fisk -to occupy the front pew. He never minded it a bit; in fact, would rather sit there than anywhere else in meeting - that is, so to speak; because Jimmy didn't go to meeting really.

Well, as I started to say, I never was much on the

writer-business. So I don't want any one to suppose that I'm trying here to write history, like what Jay wrote. I haven't got big enough words for that. In these diary papers, I just set it down in the first words that come to me. And I'm not scared to put the whole story in, either. "What's the use of digging up dead dogs?" some of the boys might say. But I'm not scared. I have been busy all my days, and now that I'm so old that they won't let me speckilate in stocks as I used to, I've got to keep busy. So I'm going to write out some things. Goodness knows, nobody need be scared at it. Do the best I can, these papers won't stay in order; they're a mixed-up mess of stuff. The pages in the forepart of a chapter get lost somewheres in the desk before I get to the finish. So that, if I can't make head nor tail to the thing three months after I've written it, who else can? Then, too, people have always said, "Nobody on earth can read Uncle Dan Drew's quail tracks." So, what is there to be scared of? Besides, even if the people should get the story, what's the harm? The boys who would be mad at me for ripping up old scores, as they'd call it, are too thin-skinned. They are sensitive to the speech of people. But I'm not sensitive. I don't care a hill of beans for the speech of people. Never did. If people want to know about some of the things that have happened in my life-time, they are welcome. I shan't make any bones of letting them know the whole story.

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