pause. Stafford looks at the door through which Jimmie went and his face shows that he now fully realizes the situation) If you hadn't come, I should have had to come to you! I should have had to! And that would have robbed me of everything I've been fighting for. It would have stripped me of my self-respect, it would have made me despise myself. I should never have been able to hold up my head to myself again! But now I shall; now I shall know that I didn't have to do what I knew to be wrong, and it makes me so happy, dear! So happy! So very, very happy! (Virginia, sobbing, kneels beside Stafford and covers her face with her hands. There is a pause) Stafford-Of course I came for you! If I had known all that it meant to you, I should have come long ago. Virginia-Then you did miss me? Stafford-I didn't imagine that any human being could miss another so much! And though I knew I loved you deeply, I didn't think it possible that I could ever love any one as I soon realized that I loved you. Fanny and Jim enter and find them in a warm embrace, and Fanny innocently exclaims that one of Jim's ideas has turned out right, anyway. Jim-Shut up! Fanny-Didn't she know? (Jimmie pantomimes his disgust) Virginia-Know what? Fanny-Why-why -! Virginia What don't I know? What is it? (There is a pause) Robert, tell me. Tell me. Stafford-Well, dear-now please, please don't be worried about it-when I came I thought you had sent for me. Virginia Thought I had-why should you think it? Stafford That was the message I got over the 'phone. Virginia-From whom? Stafford-I'd rather not tell you. Virginia-You thought I had sent for you! Then everything is wrong! Everything! Stafford-No, dear, everything is right. You were fighting for a principle. Have you surrendered it? Have you? Virginia-No. Stafford-You asked for a promise. I gave it and I now repeat it, so that is settled, isn't it? Virginia-Yes. Stafford-You said you wouldn't send for me, and you haven't. Have you? Virginia-No. Stafford Then don't you see, dear, all along the line you won the victory? Jim-It's more than a victory! It's a landslide! Virginia-Victory! When you came, you thought it was yours. You thought I had sent for you. When you found I hadn't, why didn't you tell me? Stafford-Because I knew you were in the right. Because I realized for the first time all it meant to you. Because I loved you and wanted you. Why, even had I been right instead of you, I would have done the same. I simply couldn't have helped it after having held you in my arms again. Jim-(To Fanny) Get that arms thing? I guess I'm bad, eh? Virginia-You thought the victory was yours, but when you found me claiming it and realized what it meant to me, you gave it to me without a word. That was a big thing, too. Stafford-What does anything matter but this: I love you, you love me, and we are together again. That's everything, isn't it? Virginia-Yes, dear. That's everything. Stafford-Then come along, dear. Have you any rubbers? Fanny Jimmie! Jim-Sure! (Jimmie goes out) Stafford-You fix this. (He gives Fanny the veil, etc., for Virginia's head and she adjusts them. Jimmie reënters with rubbers and starts to put them on Virginia) Stafford-Now for the coat. (Stafford takes the coat) By the way, I've something else for you. It's from Tiffany's. Virginia Oh, Robert, didn't I tell you that- ·! Stafford-Wait! Wait! You don't know what it is. (He takes the wedding-ring from his pocket and holds it up. Virginia holds out her hand and he puts the ring on her finger, then he puts the big fur coat about her. Speaking over her shoulder as she looks back at him) And now, dear, let's go home! CURTAIN In the following review, written especially for THE WORLD TO-DAY, Mr. Hovey has HERE is a thoughtless saying, which is only partly true, that Mr. Morgan is not a self-made With him, indeed, there T man. was never anything resembling the famous Rockefeller account book-nine dollars and eighty cents this month received, five-sixty expended "for necessities,"balance, four-twenty toward the distant. Palace of Ambition-written out in a cramped, clear, boyish hand. From the first, he stood at a certain height above the crowd, and began life in New York easily, possessing all the advantages and claims of a successful banker's idolized son. But, although the name and business connections of Junius Morgan furnished him with a substantial pedestal, Pierpont Morgan has made it a mountain. By virtue of all that separates his commonplace, if comfortable, inherited position from his Cyclopean influence and authority to-day, Mr. Morgan is "self-made." His growth was slow; it occupied all of fifty years, counting from the year he began as a banker's clerk in '57. He subordinated himself, first to his father, and afterward. to the Drexels, and he was middle-aged before he became quite his own master and was utterly free. Young J. P. Morgan spent the first fourteen years of his life in Hartford. The Some house in which he was born still stands. It was a small and unpretentious building of red brick which stood on the village street in the center of a few acres of land. years ago it was raised one story and a store was set in under it, and now it is being closely crowded by business blocks in what is the center of Hartford. J. P. Morgan's associations are not with this house, however, for his parents lived here only during the first year or two of his life. Then they moved to the large and comfortable house on Farmington Avenue which Joseph Morgan, J. P. Morgan's grandfather, had had built as a wedding present for his son. After the family moved to Boston, he attended the English High School until his graduation in 1853. The next year he spent at Fayal in the Azores, after which he continued his education abroad, spending a year at Vevay, Switzerland, and two years at the University of Göttingen in Germany. He left Göttingen to enter his father's banking house in London. In the year 1857, the young man was sent to New York as his father's representative with the firm of Duncan, Sherman & Co., and there he met Mr. Dabney, with whom he afterward went into partnership. In the summer of 1859, Mr. Morgan sailed for Paris to see the lady who was soon to become his wife. She was Miss Amelia Sturges, the daughter of Jonathan Sturges of to marry him, declaring that He returned to occupied exclu- J. Pierpont Morgan, sively with the work of a private banker and dealer in exchange. But when the railway mania struck the country in '69, Morgan was drawn into a sensational fight for the control of the Albany & Susquehanna. It was the first big fight of his life, and involved a direct challenge to battle with Jay Gould and "Admiral" Jim Fisk, alias the "Prince of Erie," two of the ablest and least scrupulous men who had come to Wall Street bent on reckless manipulation. When Morgan beat them at the stockholders' meeting, Gould and Fisk sought to gain physical possession of the track and engines. From this time the thinly settled country through which the A. & S. ran was in a state of war. The metropolitan dailies sent their correspondents and the whole State looked on in wonder. While Fisk and Ramsey were fighting in the field, Gould and Morgan were shooting at each other with injunctions; twenty-two suits were begun in connection with this fight. Finding that Gould could best him in the use of such weapons and was continually aided by the so-called Erie judges at his back, Morgan made an adroit move which threw the case into the hands of Governor Hoffman, of the State of New York, and drew his opponents before judges who took the up-State view of the attempted seizure. The Governor had already threatened to run the road with the soldiers if the two parties did not end their differences. Morgan trapped Gould and Fisk into sending a written note to the Governor, stating that it was impossible for the contending parties to agree, that the railroad could not be run as matters stood, and requesting the State to appoint an official to take charge in the interest of public peace. The Governor made the appointment, and during the calm that followed, Morgan obtained from the stockholders the power to lease the property, did so, and placed the A. & S. forever out of the reach of Gould and Fisk. Three years later, Mr. Morgan was approached by the Drexels, of Philadelphia, a very rich and prosperous banking family, and asked to enter the New York branch of that house as a member of the firm. The connection insured him a position of influence and power beyond anything he had yet reached. Consequently, the firm of Dabney, Morgan & Co. was dissolved, and, in 1871, Drexel, Morgan & Co. began business. A plot of ground was bought at the corner of Broad and Wall streets, and a white marble building was erected at a cost of $1,000,000-the same solid structure which, no longer very white, but turned a dull gray-brown, and dwarfed by the surrounding high buildings, is the headquarters of the Morgan enterprises to-day. The railroad rate wars of the eighties and nineties made a terrible inroad on the value of stocks, and although Morgan was not a railroad man but a banker, he called a meeting of all the Western railway presidents with the bankers of New York at his house in Madison Avenue, and told the railroad men with exceeding plainness of speech that if they did not stop rate cutting against each other and the building of useless parallel competing lines the bankers would cut off the supply of funds. He also began his series of railroad reorganizations, which occupied him for ten years. When a railroad finds itself paying, in interest charges on its bonds and floating debt, a greater sum than it can possibly earn, a reorganizathe tion is necessary-the security holders have to be induced to accept a lower rate of interest, with the alternative of Mr. Morgan's museum of art in New York City, perhaps getting no interest at all. In But it was Morgan's famous contract to furnish the U. S. Government with gold in 1895 which first made his name familiar to every one the country over. |