John Jacob Astor

“ John Jacob Astor was born of a Dutch family that had migrated down to Heidelberg from Antwerp. Through some strange freak of atavism the father of the boy bred back, and was more or less of a stone-age cave-dweller. He was a butcher by trade, in the little town of Waldorf, a few miles from Heidelberg. A butcher's business then was to travel around and kill the pet pig, or sheep, or cow that the tender-hearted owners dare not harm. The butcher was a pariah, a sort of unofficial, industrial hangman. ”

“ John Jacob Astor once told Washington Irving that it was only business responsibility that prevented his being a novelist; and at other times he declared his intent to take up music as a profession as soon as he had gotten all of his securities properly tied up. And whether he worked out his dreams or not, there is no doubt but that they added to his peace, happiness and length of days. Happy is the man who escapes the critics by leaving his literary masterpiece in the ink. ”

“ One of these boys came to America, and followed his father's trade of butcher.
Jacob Astor, the happy father of John Jacob, used to take the boy with him on his pig-killing expeditions. This for two reasons—one, so the lad would learn a trade, and the other to make sure that the boy did not run away.
Parents who hold their children by force have a very slender claim upon them. The pastor of the local Lutheran Church took pity on this boy, who had such disgust for his father's trade and hired him to work in his garden and run errands. ”

“ The profit on this one voyage was seventy thousand dollars. By Eighteen Hundred and Ten, John Jacob Astor was worth two million dollars. He began to invest all his surplus money in New York real estate. He bought acreage property in the vicinity of Canal Street. Next he bought Richmond Hill, the estate of Aaron Burr. It consisted of one hundred and sixty acres just above Twenty-third Street. He paid for the land a thousand dollars an acre. People said Astor was crazy. In ten years he began to sell lots from the Richmond Hill property at the rate of five thousand dollars an acre. ”

“ On board ship he met a German, twenty years older than himself, who was a fur trader and had been home on a visit.
John Jacob played the flute and the German friend told stories of fur trading among the Indians.
Young Astor's curiosity was excited. The Waldorf-Astoria plan of flute-playing was forgotten. He fed on fur trading.
The habits of the animals, the value of their pelts, the curing of the furs, their final market, was all gone over again and again. The two extra months at sea gave him an insight into a great business and he had the time to fletcherize his ideas. ”

“ The qualities that make a youth a good servant are the basic ones for mastership. Astor's alertness, willingness, loyalty, and ability to obey, delivered his employer over into his hands.
Robert Bowne, the good old Quaker, insisted that Jacob should call him Robert; and from boarding the young man with a near-by war widow who took cheap boarders, Bowne took young Astor to his own house, and raised his pay from two dollars a week to six.
Bowne had made an annual trip to Montreal for many years.
Montreal was the metropolis for furs. ”

“ Honest fools are really no better than rogues, as far as practical purposes are concerned. Bowne once found a man who was honest and also knew furs, but alas! he had a passion for drink, and no prophet could foretell his "periodic," until after it occurred.
Young Astor had been with Bowne only a year. He spoke imperfect English, but he did not drink nor gamble, and he knew furs and was honest.
Bowne started him off for Canada with a belt full of gold; his only weapon was a German flute that he carried in his hand. Bowne being a Quaker did not believe in guns. ”

“ The hotel that runs full is a gold mine. Hungry men feed, and the beautiful part about the hotel business is that the customers are hungry the next day—also thirsty. Astor was worth ten million, but he took a personal delight in sitting in the lobby of the Astor House and watching the dollars roll into this palace that his brain had planned. ”

“ An increase in eccentricity would merely shorten the journey, if aphelion always coincided with opposition, which it would not."
"Let us know how you are getting on," said Deepwaters to Ayrault, "and be sure you have the Callisto properly christened. Step lively there, landlubbers!" he called to Stillman; "I have an appointment at Washington at one, and it is now twenty minutes past twelve. We can lunch on the way." ”

“ He expended all of his money, and even bought on credit, for there are men who always have credit.
Young Astor found Indian nature to be simply human nature.
The savage was a man, and courtesy, gentleness and fairly good flute-playing soothed his savage breast. Astor had beads and blankets, a flute and a smile. The Indians carried his goods by relays and then passed him on with guttural certificates as to character, to other red men, and at last he reached New York without the loss of a pelt or the dampening of his ardor.
Bowne was delighted. To young Astor it was nothing. ”

“ Your unattained ambitions, your hopes, and your ideals will be swallowed in the grave. Your works will secure you a place in history, and many will remember your names until, in time, oblivion covers your memory as the grass conceals your tombs. Are you prepared for the time when your eyes become blind, and your trusted senses fail? ”

“ The marriage brought young Astor into "the best Dutch New York society," a combination that was quite as exclusive then as now.
This marriage was a business partnership as well as marital and proved a success in every way. Sarah was a worker, with all the good old Dutch qualities of patience, persistence, industry and economy. When her husband went on trips she kept store. She was the only partner in which he ever had implicit faith. And faith is the first requisite in success. ”

“ If the spirits and souls of the departed have any command of matter, why may not their intensest thoughts engrave themselves on a moon that, when dead and frozen, may reflect and shine as they did, while immersed in the depths of space? ”

“ He started for New York.
Here he found work with a certain Robert Bowne, a Quaker, who bought and sold furs.
Young Astor set himself to learn the business—every part of it. He was always sitting on the curb at the door before the owner got around in the morning, carrying a big key to open the warehouse. He was the last to leave at night. He pounded furs with a stick, salted them, sorted them, took them to the tanners, brought them home.
He worked, and as he worked, learned.
To secure the absolute confidence of a man, obey him. ”

“ It may be a mere trifle, some unexpected thing, yet the career in the flesh is ended, the eternal life of the liberated spirit begun. The soul slips from earth's grasp, as air from our fingers, and finds itself in the frigid, boundless void of space. ”

“ The warm breeze swayed the long dry grass, causing it to give out a soft rustle; all birds except the flitting bats were asleep among the tall ferns or on the great trees that spread their branches towards heaven. ”

“ Astor hated gamblers. He never confused gambling, as a mode of money getting, with actual production. He knew that gambling produces nothing—it merely transfers wealth, changes ownership. And since it involves loss of time and energy it is a positive waste. ”

“ The souls in hell have an equally keen but distorted counterpart of our senses, so that they see in a magnified form everything vile in themselves and in each other. To their senses only the ugly and hateful side is visible, so that the beauty and perfume of a flower are to them as loathsome as the appearance and fumes of a toadstool. ”

“ I occasionally shed an intangible tear, yet for most of those who strove to obey their consciences, purgatory, when essential, though occasionally giving us a bitter twinge, is a joy-producing state. Not all the glories imaginable or unimaginable could make us happy, were our consciences ill at ease. I have advanced slowly, yet some things are given us at once. After I realized I had irrevocably lost your love, though for a time I had hoped to regain it, I became very restless; earth seemed a prison, and I looked forward to death as my deliverer. ”

“ He also left fifty thousand dollars to his native town of Waldorf, a part of which money was used to found an Astor Library there God is surely good, for if millionaires were immortal, their money would cause them great misery and the swollen fortunes would crowd mankind, not only 'gainst the wall, but into the sea. Death is the deliverer, for Time checks power and equalizes all things, and gives the new generation a chance. ”

“ In an instant the black armored monster rushed down the slope with the speed of a nineteenth-century locomotive, and seemed about as formidable. The sloth turned in the direction of the sound, and for a moment seemed paralyzed with fear; it then started to run, but it was too late, for the next second the enormously exaggerated ant--for such it was--overtook it. The huge mandible shears that when closed had formed the proboscis, snapped viciously, taking off the sloth's legs and then cutting its body to slivers. ”

“ They privately waited upon the British minister, Mr. Jackson, then in New York, laid open to him the whole scheme of Mr. Astor, though intrusted to them in confidence, and dependent, in a great measure, upon secrecy at the outset for its success, and inquired whether they, as British subjects, could lawfully engage in it. The reply satisfied their scruples, while the information they imparted excited the surprise and admiration of Mr. Jackson, that a private individual should have conceived and set on foot at his own risk and expense so great an enterprise. ”

“ I never saw dad look so sorry for a man as he did for Astor, and he told him the only way was to sell out his ranch in London and go back on an emigrant ship, take out his first papers, vote the democratic ticket and eventually become a citizen. Astor was thinking over the proposition, and dad had asked him if he was not afraid of dynamiters, when he shuddered and said every day he expected to be blown sky high, and finally he smelled something burning and said the smell reminded him of an American 4th of July. ”

“ No story of American promotion is more unique than that of the rise of the Astor family from obscurity to a position of power and usefulness, and this story has its early setting in the fur-trading camps of the Far Northwest, where Astoria arose beside the Pacific Sea. ”

“ In the meantime Lewis and Clark had found a route through Louisiana to the Pacific, and Captain Gray of Boston had anchored in the mouth of the Columbia. By land and water the objective point had been reached, and Astor entered upon the great task of his life with ardor and enthusiasm. The very obstacles in his way seemed to augment his [Pg 288] courage, and every repulse fired him to increased exertion. ”

“ He therefore, in blessing his people, lays his hands across, guiding them wittingly and laying the chiefest blessing on the head of Ephraim, or in that providence that sanctifies affliction. Abel-what to the reason of Eve was he, in comparison with Cain? Rachel called Benjamin the son of her sorrow; but Jacob knew how to give him a better name. Jabez, also, though his mother so called him because, as it seems, she brought him forth with more than ordinary sorrow, was yet more honorable, more godly, than his brethren.
He that has skill to judge of providences aright, has a great ability in him "to comprehend with other saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height;" ”

“ They were running to and fro among their own nation, calling upon them to become the children of the promise who are counted for the seed; but it was not of their will, but contrary to it, that "the word" was preached to the Gentiles, opening the kingdom to them. The invitation to our race, as the apostle truly saith, was "of God that showeth mercy".
Pharaoh of Egypt is another illustration of this principle. God purposed to show forth His power that His name might be declared throughout all the earth. This manifestation was not left to the wisdom or pleasure of Moses. ”

“ The crew of the "Adams" was needed on the Great Lakes, and the ship could not go to the Pacific. Astor's hopes fell, but he determined to send the "Enterprise" alone. Then the British blockaded New York, and the last hope of giving help to Astoria was lost. By the "Lark" Astor sent directions to Hunt to guard against British surprise. "Were I on the spot," he wrote with fire, "and had the management of affairs, I would [Pg 296] defy them all; but, as it is, everything depends upon you and your friends about you. Our enterprise is grand, and deserves success, and I hope in God it will meet it. ”

“ The ladder of ages and generations, as I have said, connects the commencing and terminating epochs of a long period of time. Of this interval, nearly four thousand years have elapsed. A few more years only remain, and the top of the ladder will be attained by Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and by all others with them who shall be accounted worthy of the kingdom of God. They will have reached to heaven; not by flying thither as ghosts upon the wings of angels, but by heaven being brought down to earth, when the Lord Jesus shall descend in glory. ”

“ God is merciful; but He is also jealous; and "will by no means clear the wilful". If His children sell their birthright to the world for anything it can tempt them with, His mind, like Isaac's, is immovable; and transgressors cannot change it, though they may seek carefully to do so with tears, and prayers, and with great and exceeding bitter cries.
Jacob having been involuntarily appointed heir of the blessing by Isaac, Esau conceived a hatred of him, and was overheard to threaten him with death when their father was dead. ”