his deep set eyes began to sag from the encroachments of extreme advanced age. He could be seen every weekday poring over business reports at his office on Prince street—a one-story, fireproof brick building, the windows of which were guarded by heavy iron bars. The closing weeks of his life were passed at his country seat at Eighty-eighth street and the East River. Infirm and debilitated, so weak and worn that he was forced to get his nourishment like an infant at a woman's breast, and to have exercise administered by being tossed in a blanket, he yet retained his faculty of vigilantly scrutinizing every arrear on the part of tenants, and he compelled his agent to render daily accounts. Parton relates this story:
One morning this gentleman [the agent] chanced to enter his room while he was enjoying his blanket exercise. The old man cried out from the middle of his blanket:
"Has Mrs. —— paid that rent yet?"