and also I put in a very large amount of my own money. My work was to be that of business director, for I did not know an iron or a coal mine from an alabaster ledge in the lunar spheres, and not half as much about an iron smelter as I did about converting whiskers into mermaid's tresses. However, one of the greatest iron men in New England, Aretas Blood, president of the Manchester Locomotive Works, and of the Nashua Steel and Iron Company, was at the head of the enterprise, which apparently safeguarded it. Well, it turned out that there was no iron in the mines—at least not enough to pay for extraction, and the investment simply disappeared. I lost a very large amount—at least, a very large amount for me—but I had to show for it the love and friendship and respect of the inhabitants of one of the fairest places on the earth—a place where brave men and lovely women live in peace and comfort in the knowledge of their own fearless, simple honesty, and their hatred of shams and trickery—in absolute ignorance of frenzied financiers and the "System's" votaries.
The history of Grand Rivers is an open book. There is no secret about my connection with the enterprise. It was a straight and proper venture. The men who are my brokers of to-day fathered it, and they are men of honor, probity, and responsibility, who since my first year in business in 1870 have been my close business associates and personal friends. Why do not Donohoe and his breed of gutter-rooters, when seeking information about me, ask such men as these for facts about my life?—they know what every hour of it has been. Strange as it may seem to such vampires, the men I began to do business with when I was a boy I am doing business with to-day, and they are my associates and friends.
I