472965 Storage PROPER T'Y O v i T S SCIN A ER17 TA' ARTE S S C X E N T 1 A VERI TA' THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW 1/ ~C ~. - ~ '1C r$' 'g if',) 4(, ' y G. ^^; X,: ".:. *- ^ ^. -. r ' *;. - v' —Y -*^ *r *.:,..,;<.- & ^ THE BOOK OF A Glimpse of the Fisk-Gould-Tweed Regime fro~m the Inside By BOUCK WHITE GARDEN CIT~Y NEW YORK DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 1913'; v lgrc'~- *"C5<~ F ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN COPYRIGHT, I910, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY PUBLISHED APRIL, IQIO Q, _. - s_6- a2 gf.:i L679 2 EDITOR'S NOTE A caution to the reader is necessary. From the fact that these papers are put in the first person throughout, one unwarned would get the impression that they were left by Mr. Drew in finished form, and that my task as editor had been merely to dig up from the rubbish of some attic a bundle of manuscript undiscovered these thirty years since his death, and hand it over to the printer. This view would be the more natural, because of the following article (I quote it in part), which appeared in the New York Tribune, February 8, 1905: " A diary of Daniel Drew, containing pen pictures of former Wall Street celebrities and accounts of old-time financial transactions, has been discovered. It came to New York the other day in an old trunk which was shipped down from Putnam County to a grandniece of the financier from the Drew estate in Carmel. Yesterday, in going through her consignment, she came upon the diary. 'Jim' Fisk is mentioned often in its pages, and also Cornelius Vanderbilt. Events of ' Black Friday' are touched on." The article goes on to state that the diary would be prepared for publication. From this one might infer that the papers which follow were received from the pen of Mr. Drew in the connected form in which they here are V vi THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW given. Which impression would be quite erroneous. As a matter of fact the material out of which this series of papers has been made, were in the most jumbled and helter-skelter form imaginable. Even where I have had the clear words of Mr. Drew to guide me, I have had to "English" it for the easy comprehension of the reader. For, as the pages themselves state, schools were not plentiful in our rural districts a hundred years ago; and an education of the book kind was not only hard to get, but was also little valued in comparison with practical skill-the ability to bring things to pass. In altering his grammar and spelling, therefore, so as to make for easy reading, much of the tang and individuality which, to those who knew him, Daniel Drew possessed to an uncommon degree, has undoubtedly been sacrificed. In order to whip the life story here recorded into something approaching coherence and clearness, I have had to shape the thing from the start. In fact, my share in the preparation of this volume has had to be so large, even writing with my own hand parts which were needed in order to supply the connection-putting these also, as in the case of historical drama, in the first person-that I had doubts as to whether plain biography might not have been the better form, as being less liable to misconstruction. But I decided to let it go forth in the first person throughout, provided it could be accom EDITOR'S NOTE ViI panied by a foreword of explanation. In historical drama, the poetic form is sufficient notice to the reader that the speeches are not stenographic reports, though the situations and spirit of the whole are true to history. In the present case I have sought to convey the same notification by means of this introduction. That errors have crept into a work pieced as this has been out of scraps and fragments, is to be expected. But I venture to state that these will be found to concern matters of unessential detail alone. In the drift and temper of the work as a whole, I pledged myself to absolute adherence to the originals. The events narrated constitute a stirring and important era in our nation's history. The development of navigation on the Hudson River, brought recently to the front by the tri-centennial celebration; the Erie Railroad and its vicissitudes; early days in Wall Street; the religious spirit of a former age, a spirit which to-day in all of the churches is changing rapidly for the better; the Tweed Ring in New York City-these and other events touched on in the papers which here follow, are not without historical value. Some of the facts and viewpoints here given have not, to my knowledge, found their way elsewhere into print. BOUCK WHITE. Head Resident's Study, Trinity Neighborhood House New York City. CONTENTS tPAG I. Jay Gould's "History"........ 3 II. A Militiaman in the War of I82..... 7 III. Early Circus Days.......... 21 IV. Life as a Drover...... 28 V. A Backslider........... 36 VI. Origin of the Wall Street Term, "Watered Stock"............. 42 VII. Astor Seeks an Interview.. * 55 VIII. Life at the "Bulls Head" Tavern..... 6I IX. Pioneer Cattle Driving........ 76 X. Farewell to a Drover's Life....... 87 XI. Early Steamboat Days on the Hudson... 92 XII. Commodore Vanderbilt Loses a Steamboat Race.............. o08 XIII. Wall Street............ 113 XIV. The Church on Mulberry Street..... 123 XV. The Erie Railroad.......... I29 XVI. Gets Control of the Erie........ I39 XVII. Wall Street in the Civil War...... I55 XVIII. A Visit from Boss Tweed........ 163 XIX. The Railroad to Harlem........ 170 XX. Building of Churches. "California" Parker. I82 ix x CONTENTS PAGI XXI. Meets "Jim" Fisk..........198 XXII. War with Vanderbilt.........207 XXIII. The Printing Press......... 219 XXIV. Escape to Jersey City...... 233 XXV. "Fort" Taylor............ 242 XXVI. End of the War and Treaty of Peace.. 257 XXVII. Drew Theological Seminary...... 282 XXVIII. A Red Letter Day.......... 291 XXIX. A Wreck on the Erie........ 302 XXX. Prosperity............. 309 XXXI. Trade Secrets...........316 XXXII. The Lock Up of Greenbacks:..... 324 XXXIII. Light Women........... 333 XXXIV. Golden Wedding.......... 347 XXXV. Inside History........... 354 XXXVI. A Prayer That Went Wrong..... 362 XXXVII. Shooting of Fisk by Ed. Stokes.... 380 XXXVIII. Outwitted by Gould........ 391 XXXIX. Panic of '73........ 403 XL. The End............ 46 THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW The Book of Daniel Drew I vM t ifEMORIES -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 3 4 THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW 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 THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW 5 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 reflections 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 6 THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW 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. II JAY wrote his history about Delaware County in York State. My story - the first part- will have to be about Putnam County, on the other side of the Hudson. For I was born there in I797. It was in Carmel, on a farm above the Lake, on the "Pond Hill Road," alongside of Whangtown Brook. Follow up that brook until you come to a hill on the left as steep as a meetinghouse roof. Climb to the top. And there, just at the fork of the road where it turns to go to Farmer's Mills, is where the house stood. There were locust trees in the front yard, and a well of cool water alongside the house, in the back yard. My father's name was Gilbert Drew. He was of English extraction. My mother was a Catherine Muckelworth, of Scotch blood, as you could guess by the name. She was a master-hand in sickness, and kept in the house a store of roots and herbs. There was boneset and pennyroyal, smartweed, catnip, skunk cabbage, sarsaparilla, wild turnip, and such like. In those days it was a good thing to have a parent that knew something about medicine. Because the saddle-bag doctor was hard to locate 7 8 THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW just when you wanted him. He wasn't always very knowing either. "Old Bleed'em, Puke'em, and Purge'em," was what we used to call him "Old Blisters" was another name. I didn't get much schooling - somehow never took to it. In fact there wasn't much book-learning to take to in those days. Carmel then wasn't built up around where the village now stands. What there was of the village nestled around Old Gilead Meeting-house, at the other end of the Lake from us. Old Gilead was near Mt. Pisgah, and a good two miles from my home. It was a different kind of a place from Brimstone Hollow, a mile or two beyond. Old Gilead used to be known only as "Gregory's Parish," until he preached -Parson Nathan Gregory, I mean - that wonderful sermon of his from the text, "Is there no balm in Gilead?" whereby the entire meeting was so set on fire with godliness that they named the church "Gilead Meeting-house" from that day. Carmel was settled by people from Barnstable County, on Cape Cod, and had lots of religion even in its earliest days. Well, as I started to say, in my day the preacher used to have both parishes, Gilead and another, called Red Mills, a few miles away. He would take turns, living for a spell at one place and then for a spell at the other. During his stays at Gilead he kept a school in his house. So that I got a little THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW 9 education. But it was only in snatches, so to speak. When you've got to walk three miles for it, the amount of book-learning you're going to bring back with you isn't going to be very hefty. Of course, there were the spelling-bees. But I had never got much beyond the "b-a, baker," in school; and so I always got spelled down the very first time round. But I never minded that very much. I never did care two pins what people thought of me. I'd take / my place in any spell-down, no matter how many people were looking on. Then, too, even when there was a parson-teacher at Gilead, there was no end to the things that used to pop up and keep me from school. Whangtown Brook used to have some of the biggest trout you ever saw. And when a boy brings home a good string of fish for the table, his ma isn't going to scold him much for playing hookey from school. And I was needed a good deal around the farm. Not that we were poor. For those days we were comfortably well off -that is, compared to the rest of the people. We had a farm of nigh on to a hundred acres, and that was what lots of people didn't have. In those days nobody up in our part of the state had any great store of this world's goods. For this was, as everybody knows, just after the Revolutionary War. In the war, our part of York State was what was known as the Debated Country. The Red Coats were stationed down in New York City, the patriot Io THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW troops up in the neighbourhood of Albany. This left Putnam and Westchester Counties between the two, like a grain of wheat between the upper and nether mill-stones, as Scripture says. The region was well nigh ground to pieces. First the Red Coats would overrun the county. Then the Patriots would take a turn at it. Until, by the time they both got through, the farms looked about as handsome as a skinned rabbit. Sugar was very high. We used maple sugar a good deal. Father also would drive over to Fishkill on the Hudson, and get of the store-keeper a molasses barrel after the molasses had been drawn out. In the bottom of an empty molasses barrel is a whole lot of caked molasses that makes as fine sugar as a man ever put in his mouth. But even with these shifts, sugar and sweetening were scarce things. Sometimes, when we were to have company and sweetening was scarce, mother in making a pie would sweeten only one end of it. She would place it on the table in such a way that the company would get the sweet end; and we boys, Tom and I (Tom was my brother, a little older than me), would have to steer for the sour end. Molasses was good for medicine also. Because the itch was almost everywhere in those days. It was well nigh the most bothersome complaint we had. Lice are not so serious. After you get used to them they don't bother you much. But the itch is a pestersome THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW II thing. Unless you keep it down with a powerful hand it will break out all over you. And molassesand-sulphur was a sovereign remedy. Tom and I had to work hard, often during school term. Father was old, mother being his second wife. And our farm, besides, was almighty rough and hilly. Some parts of it were as steep as the shingles on a house. Then there were the stones and rocks to clear away. How sick I got of prying those rocks out of the fields, with an old axle for a crowbar, and stone-boating them over to the boundaries to make fences of. The woods were so plentiful that the farm was not of much use except for stock-raising. And stock-raising means work pretty nigh all the time. Because there were always poor spots in the fences. And, trust me, there is no critter like a heifer or a bull calf for finding weak spots in a fence, particularly if it's a line fence. And when your cattle get over into the other fellow's field, you have to get after them mighty quick. Also our pasture lots were for the most part woods. We had earmarks in those days by which we could tell our cattle if they got mixed up with others. For example, the left ear would be notched on the top with the right ear cropped off square and a hole in the middle. So that if we found a critter with a notch in the right ear instead of the left, we knew he belonged to somebody else. When you have to look through the 12 THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW woods for your milch cows, to bring them home at night for milking, with nothing to go by but the sound of the bell dingling from the cow's neck, and sometimes not even that, they would be so far off; why, it means that you've got work on your hands. When there was nothing out in the fields to do, the chores had to be looked after. And then, just like as not, mother would say, "Dan, I need a new broom." That would mean that I'd have to look up a straight birch sapling from the woods, and with a sharp jackknife cut one end of it into splints and bind them around, so as to make a new broom. We had to cart our farm truck, or young calves, eighteen miles across country to Peekskill-on-the-Hudson. From there a sloop ran to New York, for carrying passengers and freight. Later on, a line of market wagons went through Carmel to Peekskill twice a week, and gathered up the produce of the farms. But in the early days, each farmer had to do his own marketing. So I reached the age of fifteen without much book-learning. Then came the War of 1812. And the school-teacher wasn't heard of any more. The farms, as I said, had been left so spoiled by the Revolutionary War as hardly to make grazing for a goose. And now, just when the farmers were getting on their feet again, along comes the War of 1812 and knocks things gaily west once more. We knew in Putnam County that a war was on, even THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW I3 though there wasn't any fighting in our section. Because we used to get news regular, although it would be sometimes a little late in coming. There was the Red Bird line of stages from Albany to New York. They changed horses at Luddington's Tavern, in Carmel -these stages ran only in winter, because in summer travel from New York to Albany was by sloop. In the summertime, also, when the boats were sailing on the river, there was another line of stages, running from Carmel to Peekskill, by the turnpike which went just south of the Fishkill Mountains across Peekskill hollow. We got our news from the stage-driver, as he drove up to Carmel in the great stage that was painted bright red, and with the bells jingling on the four horses. These stages would come once a day on their way through Somers, to Carmel, to Luddingtonville, and so on up north. (It took four days for the stage to make the trip from New York to Stockbridge, Mass., and Bennington, Vt., through Dingle Ridge.) There were also postriders, who came into the town every Saturday afternoon on horseback with newspapers from Hartford and Poughkeepsie. Then, too, we used to learn the news in a general way when the cobbler came to the house once a year to make up the year's supply of boots and shoes for the household. "Whipping the cat" used to be what we called his visit - I guess likely from his 14 THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW always driving the cat away from his work bench, for she seemed possessed to hang around and get his waxed ends jummixed up. This visit of the cobbler was quite an event each year. Father would prepare for it by swapping a pair of cattle or a load of potatoes down at Foster's tan-yard, a mile the other side of Luddington's Tavern, for a few sides of leather. Then the cobbler would come for a week or so and make the leather up into foot-wear. So when the news he brought was about a war, and about the goings-on in the great world outside, a boy of fifteen was going to listen with both ears. When the cobbler came it was the boy's work to whittle out the pegs for him. A boy would really get more news from the cobbler than any other member of the family, since he would be nearer to him. In these ways, little by little, we learned about the victory of Commodore Perry on Lake Erie, and the big doings of our navy out on the high seas. But it seems that these victories on water hadn't done much good; because the military campaign along the entire northern frontier of our country was going against us. The English were pushing in on every side. It looked as though New York might be taken. The President had issued a draft for troops to defend the country. And men were paying as high as a hundred dollars for a substitute. That hundred dollars looked big to me. It seemed an easy way to earn a large lump of money. Times THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW I5 were getting harder and harder out on our hillside farm; for banks all over the country were stopping specie payment, and silver was getting as scarce as hens' teeth. So when, on top of it all, my father died, I decided that the time had come. I made up my mind to leave the farm in charge of my brother Tom (he being the oldest, he was by rights the one to stay home and take care of things), and go out and see the world, and make money as a substitute in the army. First along mother didn't exactly take to the idea. But I showed her I was sure to make big money. I was to get one hundred dollars out of hand; and as my board in the army wouldn't cost me anything, the money would be clear gain. It was a powerful argument, because she was thrifty. A hundred dollars all in a lump looked pretty nigh as big to her as it did to me. But just then she happened to think of another thing. For mother was old-fashioned. "See here, Danny," said she; "you're under age, and to get into the service you'd have to tell a lie. And besides, you might get killed; and then where would the hundred dollars be?" I answered that I would agree to leave the hundred dollars with her to keep for me, before I started. As to my being under age, I told her not to bother herself about that point. I would take care of that. Women, anyhow, are apt to be squeamish about business transactions. Men are more sensible - they know that if a cat would i6 THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW eat fish she must be willing to wet her feet. And I told mother that I would take care of the age limit. I calculated that, for a fellow as tall for his years as I was, I could fix my age all right. And I did. The Government was hard pressed for men. So the recruiting sergeant didn't narrow me down very close when I told him I was of age. I got my hundred dollars, handed it over to mother to keep for me, and in full regimentals of the State Militia, with knapsack on back and musket over my shoulder, I set out for Peekskill. There I found a sloop going to New York, and got aboard. These sloops were big affairs. They carried people, live stock and freight, all huddled together. When the wind and tide were contrary, or when the wind died down altogether, they anchored, and you would be out all night just in making the trip to New York. In that case you'd have to sleep the best way you could. But you could find a good berth on the hay or straw which usually formed a part of the boat's cargo. As long as it didn't rain, you could pass a night very comfortable. It was a great event in my life, this trip to New York. When finally we came to where the Harlem River empties out into the North River, the man at the helm pointed it out to the passengers, and said, "there was the island, and the city was at the lower end of it." Another hour of sailing brought us to where the city lay. We landed at a wharf alongside THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW I7 where the Washington Market now stands. (The shore at that point has been filled in a good deal since that day. Back in those days, boats of light draft could sail right in and land pretty near to the market.) They marched me off along with the rest, and took me across the North River to Fort Gainesvort, opposite New York City. It was near Paulus Hook (which is now Jersey City). Theremy company was stationed, I suppose to protect New York. And now my good luck in enlisting showed itself. For my company didn't have to do a smitch of fighting. I just lived there in the camp, without it costing me a cent for food or lodging; and at the end of three months, on a February's day, a British sloop-of-war from Europe sailed into New York Harbour with the news that our Peace Commissioners at Ghent had succeeded in making a treaty. The war was over. It was mighty good news for everybody. That winter had been one of the hardest New York City had ever seen. The weather was so severe, the North River froze over to Paulus Hook. Hickory wood sold in New York that winter for $20 a cord, and hogs fetched $II a hundred. (That price for butcher's meat set me thinking, as will be seen a little later.) Milk was a shilling a quart. And the President, when the news came, had been just on the point of calling for 75,000 more militia. I was as glad as the rest. Perhaps a little more so. i8 THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW I never was cut out to be a soldier. Not that I worried much about the hardships of life in camp. When a fellow has been reared on a hill-side farm, his cradle a sap-trough, and has been brought up to eat from wooden plates, he's used to pot-luck, and life in an army camp doesn't seem hard at all. Still I was glad when the news came of peace. In a battle there's always a danger from bullets and bayonets, and from cannon balls. I'm by nature a peaceable man. And I had cleaned up a hundred dollars in the space of three months. It was a good stroke of business. I set out for home as soon as I was mustered out. And for a few days I was glad to be back. But I soon saw that I wasn't intended for a humdrum life. I had had a smack of big things, and now the everlasting chores on the farm didn't gee with my tastes. My brother Tom was there to take care of those things. (He said, with something pretty near to cuss words, when I spoke to him on the subject, that since I was such a gadabout, somebody had to buckle down and run the farm, in order to take care of mother.) So I made my plans. Going to mother, I said, "Mother, I want my substitute money. I'm going into business." "Goodness sakes!" she replied; "what is it this time? Some new fangle, I'll bet, to waste your money on. THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW I9 "No new fangle at all," said I; "I'm going to be a drover. I'm going to buy up cattle for the city market. And I need the hundred dollars to start me off. I'm young. But that's the time to start in. Early sow, early mow." "But are you sure, Danny," said she (for the idea began to take hold of her); "are you sure that you won't lose your money?" I told her I'd planned the thing all out; it was going to be a money-maker. She handed the hundred dollars over to me, and I became a drover. Not exactly a drover, either, in the full sense of the word. I became a buyer of bob calves. The laws against bob-veal weren't very strict in those days - that is, they weren't enforced. If you could get anybody to buy the stuff, the law didn't poke its nose in and stop you. And so, I would go around among the farmers and buy a calf very soon after it had been dropped. I had my troubles. Bob-calves are shaky on their legs. Then, too, there's its mother to bother you. I found it easier to get around the law objection against bob-veal than the mother objection - so to speak - that pair of wicked horns, when you go to take the calf away from its dam! But the right kind of handling would do it. And then, by hurrying the calf to market, I would get the critter off my hands before it sickened and died. I dare say that the flesh now and then was pretty soft for real good eating. Peo 20 THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW pie used to say, "Veal bought from that young Dan Drew can be sucked through a quill." But then, folks who said these things were jealous of me, because I worked hard and managed to get along. Besides, with me it was a case of calves or nothing. Because I didn't have the money to go into the grown-up cattle business. You can buy calves on a small capital -yes, sometimes without capital at all. Because, a farmer who has a bull calf on his hands and doesn't want to feed it, will often let you have it on credit. Sometimes the farmer thinks that a calf is so misshapen and puny that it is going to die; and then he will be glad to get it off of his hands on any terms. But when it comes to parting with his grown-up critters, a farmer is almighty particular about whom he trusts. III T HESE years of mine as a calf-drover were broken in upon a little later. I went into the circus business. Some time after the War of 1812, the travelling circus came into fashion. The people in those days lived in little settlements. They were lonely. They didn't have much amusement. So, when times became settled once more and the farmers had recovered from the war, the Rolling Show came in and did lots of business. Only we didn't call it a show in those days, nor a circus - no siree! The people wouldn't have come near us. Because the preachers thundered against circuses and all such worldliness. To get the trade of the church people, we called it a "Menagerie" and "The Great Moral and Educational Exhibition." Putnam and Westchester counties were headquarters for the circus business in early days, particularly Star's Ridge, in the town of South-east, and Purdy's Station, just below Croton Falls. I guess the reason for this was, because those two counties are just north of New York City. Being a beautiful farming region, with Bridgeport, Conn., and Dan21 22 THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW bury just across the State line, this region became naturally the winter quarters for the New York shows. The circuses would start out from our section each spring, and come back to us in the fall, for winter quarters. In this way all our part of the State got to talking circus. There was old Hakaliah Bailey, of Somers - Somerstown Plains it was, back in my day -five miles below Carmel. He brought over the first elephant ever seen in the county. "Old Bett," he called her. In front of the tavern there in Somers - the Old Elephant Hotel they called it - you can see even yet a pedestal with an elephant carved on top of it. And Seth Howe, down at Turk's Hill, near Brewsters', when he came to make his fine summer home there, had stone animals carved and stuck around the grounds here and there. Besides, there was Gerard Crane, of Somers - everybody has heard of "Howe and Crane's Great London Circus." Then there was Turner, of Bailey and Turner, of Danbury; and later on, Phineas Barnum, from Bridgeport. Isaac Van Amberg also started his menagerie from our section. The Weekses, also well-known in the circus business, came from Carmel. The town was full of circus, back in those early days. So when Nate Howe, from down Brewsters' way -he was Seth Howe's brother - rounded me up one day as I was on one of my calf-buying trips, and said he was looking for a smart and handy young THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW 23 man like me, to be a driver and an all-round man with his show, I got the fever and started in. They put me at all sorts of work. In those days the circus was a one-horse affair compared to what it has grown to now, and one man would have to help out in a dozen different kinds of work. He would be a mule-driver, canvas-man, gate-keeper and feeder of the animals, sometimes all in one day. And most like as not, now and then he would have to turn in and help out with the clown's part. The clowns in those days had speaking parts. They cracked jokes on the politicians and local celebrities in the village where the show was exhibiting, sang the ballad, "Betsy Baker," and did flipflaps. Then, too, since there wasn't much advertising in those days, when we landed in a town and while the workmen were getting the canvas up, the one of us who was acting the clown for the day would go along the street, togged out in his tom-fooleries, and with a bugler parading in front. After he had got a crowd around him he would mount a barrelhead in front of the village tavern-about the time the stage arrived, if possible - and from that stump would announce the show, tell where it was to be found, and read off the list of the animals that would be shown. I used to like the part of clown. It was fun to crack jokes and set the boys and girls to laughing. I always did like a good joke, anyhow. Inside the canvas we used to have the animals 24 THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW arranged along one side, with the seats for the people along the other side. The performers' ring was in the middle, between the two. I was a good hand with the beasts, because I knew how to handle them. With the hay animals, such as deer, elk, zebu-cows and so forth, I was right at home, having been raised on a farm. Elephants were regarded in those days as dangersome; but my farmer training with horses and horned critters made me now a good man for handling risky beasts of all kinds. Then, when it came to the big cats, such as tigers and other bloodthirsty varmints, I knew how to get butchers' meat for them of the right kind and in the right way. Because I'd been, so to speak, in the butcher's line also. Upon landing in town, if it was the day for feeding them - we used to feed the cats only every other day, so as to keep them healthy; because in their native state they don't eat much oftener than that - I would look up some butcher and get him to give me a basket of bones and scraps for the cats. I would pay him by getting the clown to make mention of the butcher's name in some flattering manner, during the performance that afternoon. Sometimes a butcher would give me all the scrap meat I needed, on condition that he wasn't to be hit by any of the jokes - this would be after I'd hinted to him that the clown was going to get off some good jokes at those merchants in the town who didn't support the show. I knew how to handle THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW 25 men, as well as animals. And being smart and handy at all sorts of work, I was promoted higher and higher; finally I was offered a part ownership in the show. Like as not I would have taken it. But just then something happened: I got religion. The churches were not very numerous in those days. So when a preacher wanted to get up a revival in a part of his circuit away from his meetinghouse, he would use a grove, if it was summer time, or a schoolhouse, in the winter. It was good business policy for us circus people, on a Sunday, to be seen in church along with the godly; because it kind of gave respectability to our business -it helped out the "Great Moral Exhibition," on our showbills. Never shall I forget that day, or that meeting, when I first got converted. First along during the meeting I was cold as an icicle -just a looker-on. But pretty soon the religious melodies began to get hold of me. Those were hymns with an edge to them, in those days. Seems as if hymns we sing nowadays aren't anywheres near so searching powerful as those we used to hear: "Tremble, my soul, and kiss the sun; Sinner, obey thy Saviour's call; Else your damnation hastens on, And hell gapes wide to wait your fall." I tell you, tunes like that don't let you forget them. 26 THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW They keep ringing in your head, no matter how many years have passed since. In those days they didn't mince matters: "Far in the deep, where darkness dwells, A realm of horror and despair, Justice has built a dismal hell And laid her stores of vengeance there. "Eternal plagues and heavy chains, Tormenting racks and fiery coals, And darts to inflict immortal pains, Dyed in the blood of damned souls." I got religion then and there. When the preacher called out, "Hasten, sinner, to be wise," I hastened. I didn't stop to ask what my old companions would think of it. (I never did care what people thought of me, anyhow.) All I thought of was to get to the mourners' bench. And so it wasn't long before I was up there, in front of the whole congregation. I told them I had a fervent desire to flee from the wrath to come. It made considerable of a stir, this conversion of mine. For a circus man to come over onto the Lord's side, was a triumph for the army of Gideon. The brethren gathered around me with great joy. The preacher pressed me to tell the congregation how I felt. I rose and spoke. Words always did come sort of easy with me- that is, the plain, THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW 27 every-day words. Besides, when a young fellow has practised speaking from a barrel-head in front of a village tavern, dressed in outlandish fashion, and telling the people the way to the circus grounds, he isn't going to be scared at a congregation of people inside a church. So on the present occasion I had wondrous liberty. In fact I gave in my testimony with such acceptance that the minister came to me after the service and told me I ought to become a preacher. This was a side of the matter I hadn't looked at. In my testimony I had told the people that "from this time forth I was going to serve the Lord." But as to taking up preaching, that was a different matter. There isn't much chance in preaching to get rich. So, after turning it over in my mind, I told him that I didn't feel any call. And I went back to the drover's business. I was glad that I had become converted. Because the circus business didn't promise to bring me in any such money as I felt I could make buying cattle, now that I'd saved up capital enough to start in. IV N OW began the real work of my life. For until this time I had been earning money hit or miss, as the chance offered. I was getting nowhere. But, starting now into the drover's business in good earnest, I found my main bent. About this time a wave of prosperity was setting in throughout the country. The nation had recovered from the effects of the war. The banks were resuming specie payments. Trade revived. New York City was calling for butcher's meat. During the war she had had a long fast, so to speak. Now she began to eat. Her population was growing like sixty. City Hall Park had formerly been way up town. Now it was getting to be in the centre, with houses all around. To keep this big and growing city in butcher's meat was a work in itself. That was where we drovers got a living. Putnam County and the region round about is so hilly that it is fit for raising stock better than for anything else. A steer or a sheep can thrive on hillsides where a plough would tip over. Besides, it is on the same side of the Hudson River as New York, and only a few miles above it. Thus the Harlem Valley, 28 THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW 29 leading down through Westchester County, soon became a channel through which drovers brought cattle to feed the thousands of hungry mouths in the city at the foot of Manhattan Island. As a drover I had trouble first along, the same as when I went into the calf business, because the farmers didn't like to sell me their cattle on credit. But I managed to get around them in one way or another. I would ride up to a farmer's house during this time of my life I was rarely out of the saddle except to eat or sleep, occasionally even driving cattle at night to save time, for hunger in the belly puts spurs to the heels - and, instead of starting in with talk about buying, I would say: "Hello, Brother So-and-So" (the news of how I had got religion helped me with the farmers); "how are you off for fat stock?" Upon his answering that he had a pair or so of fit cattle, I'd say: "Well, now, I'm taking a drove into the city next week. If you say so, I'll take yours along, too, and sell them for you, for old acquaintance's sake. I know two or three butchers down there in the city, and calculate I can sell those critters for you at a top price." I had learnt good and early that if you haven't got honey in the crock, you must have it in the mouth. The plan worked fine. That is, first along. I got several hundred head of cattle on these terms, 30 THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW and they seldom failed to bring a good price in the city. So that before long I had scraped together a nice little capital. To be sure, the farmers who let me have the stock on these terms would keep pestering me for the money. But I put them off with one excuse or another. Sometimes I would soften a man's anger by paying him part of what was coming to him, and tell him he'd have to wait for the balance until after my next trip. In cases where I couldn't quiet a creditor in this way, I had still another shift, for I always was a resourceful fellow. I would change my base of operations to another part of the county, so far away that the farmers I had traded with the last time couldn't reach me. Unfortunately, word would sometimes get around ahead of me, so that when I'd ride up to a farmhouse and try to get cattle without paying cash, I would be turned down. There was Len Clift, over near Brewsters', for one. I had agreed with him on the price of a calf. Then, as I was about to lead the critter off, I told him he would have to trust me a few days, as I was a little short of ready cash just at that moment. "Trust you?" said he. "Wouldn't trust you no further than you can throw a hog by the tail." I didn't get riled up. Getting riled up is poor business. A man isn't fit for a business career until he has learned never to get riled up; or leastwise, never to show it on the outside, even if he is all THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW 31 riled up inside. I sort of explained the thing to Len and coaxed; but he answered a plump "No" every time. "You'll get the calf when I get the money. Not a minute sooner." "Len," said I, finally, when I saw that he wasn't to be moved; "you won't trust me for the price of one lousy little calf? All right. But, Len Clift, the time'll come when I'll have money enough to buy your whole farm. Remember what I'm a-telling you." And the time did come, too. After I had made my fortune I bought his farm and made it into my country seat. I have got my family burying lot on that farm, now. "Drewsclift" I named the place. It's that beautiful farm just on the other side of the hill over from Brewsters' Village. The burying lot is out by the willow trees across the road from the house, down in the meadows. My parents had been buried in old Gilead Burying Ground at Carmel. I got the bodies dug up and carried over to this new burying lot, so I could establish a family cemetery. When a man makes a name for himself, he wants to make a family seat to go with the name. But though I had a turn-down once in a while, such as this one from Len Clift, I found many a farmer obliging enough to sell me calves and cows and steers and sheep on credit. A very good device, I found, was first to haggle with the farmer over the 32 THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW price, and beat him down to the lowest penny. For, strange as it might sound, this inclines the farmer to trust you. You see, his mind figures it out something like this: "That there drover is anxious to get a bottom figure, because he's good pay, and means, when the time comes, to settle up promptly and penny for penny. He wants to get a good contract because he is the kind of a fellow to live up to it word for word. To be sure, he is a tight fellow to deal with, but at least he is a safe fellow, and so I guess I'll let him have this pair of cattle on credit." In these ways, working now one plan and now another, I got together a nice little sum of money. It was about this time that the field of business for drovers was widened to take in the great Mohawk valley. The city on Manhattan Island was growing so fast that our little section up in the Harlem valley couldn't raise cattle fast enough to supply her butchers. So a new region now was tapped, the country to the north, across the Hudson. For some time back I had been on the look-out for a new place to move to. Change of pasture makes fat steers; and it's sometimes good for a business man, too. So I got to going on trips "out West," as we called it. I would ride up north and cross over into the region around Cherry Valley (that is where the massacre in the Revolutionary War by those red savages took place). There I would get THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW 33 a drove of cattle and start with them back towards New York City. We had regular routes which we followed with our droves. The taking of live stock overland to the New York market had got to be an established business by this time, with regular stopping places. There were tavern-keepers here and there along the route who catered to drovers. They would have a big pasture lot alongside the tavern, divided into two or three pastures to take care of several herds at once. When, hot and sore at the end of a day's drive, I reached one of these taverns, the inn-keeper would be there with his "Hello, Dan! I thought you'd be coming along about this time. Been expecting you these two weeks or more. Put your critters out in the orchard lot. The pasture there is as fine as a fiddle just now; and come in and rest your bones. Boy, take his horse." From Cherry Valley we would strike across and into the old Schoharie Valley. This we would follow until we got to Middleburgh, an old Dutch settlement. We hired sloughters here to drive the cattle (in that locality they call a low, worthless fellow a "sloughter"). There we would put up for the night at a tavern called "The Bull's Head." I mention this tavern in particular, because of another "Bull's Head Inn" which I will tell you about later on. This "Bull's Head" at Middleburgh got its name from a big bull's head that was painted on a shed opposite the tavern, on the other 34 THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW side of the road, to show that drovers were taken care of there. The tavern was a long, plain, twostory house, just where the turnpike crosses a creek. The creek flows down from the high hills back of the inn, and had sweet and soft water at every season of the year. The cattle used to like the water in that brook. This whole valley is as level as a barn floor, and flowing with pastures. About nine miles further along from Middleburgh was an inn kept by young Brom Scutt, at a place called Livingstonville. He had a sign painted and hung up, "'Drovers' Holm." (There used to be a saying around, that that sign wasn't spelled right; but we drovers never set much store by spelling; we were a mighty sight more particular about good feed and water in the pasture back of the tavern, than for good spelling on the sign-board in front of the tavern.) From there we'd go on to Preston's Hollow and Cairo. Then to Catskill on the Hudson River. Here we'd ferry across and then would be on the New York City side of the river. (By thus skirting close around the Catskill Mountains, we had saved miles and miles in the journey from the Mohawk down and into the Harlem valley.) Then when we were safely on the east side of the Hudson, we would veer in a south-easterly direction into Dutchess County. There were drovers' taverns at Dover Wings, Hurd's Corners, Haviland's Corners, Sodom, and Somers, Then down into THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW 35 and through the Harlem Valley, which I have mentioned before, and so across the Harlem River by the King's Bridge. Once across the King's Bridge, it was but a day's travel down Manhattan Island to New York. v IT WAS about this time in my life that I got married -to an estimable young lady in my home county. For, though my drover trips were now taking me far afield, I didn't cut loose from Putnam County altogether. Winter time would find me back home. You can't drive cattle in the winter time. The hard roads and sharp ice would make them hoof-sore very quick. For drovers, winter time is rest time. (For that matter midsummer is also a bad time for the drover business, because in very hot weather a drove of cattle would sweat pounds of good fat off their flanks before you'd get them across even one county.) For drovers springtime and fall are the favourable seasons. So every winter would find me back in Carmel, doing what I could at odd jobs to earn my board, until the roads thawed out again in the spring. Winter was the time for society affairs in Carmel. I never was much of a hand for society, being more fitted to size up a critter and buy him at a good figure than I was to make much of a shine in social circles. Still, I knew how to spark the girls. Of a winter's 36 THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW 37 night at Carmel we used to have high old times at sleigh rides and the mite societies. Then there were the paring-bees-we used to call them "applecuts" - and the singing school, nut-cracking parties, candy-pulls -what not? I was ratherish slow at getting started off to one of these shindigs. But once there and into the thick of it, I could carry my part with any of them. There was an applecut one night that I remember as well as I do my own name. We were playing the game "Wink and follow." After a while my turn came to be It. I caught one of the girls and said: "Laura, now I've got you." She looked me straight in the eyes and said: "Dan, you're not going to kiss me unless you're stronger than I be. And I know you be." I was. When it would come time for the refreshments, I used to step forward and help pass the fried cake, new cider, apples and hickory nuts, fine as anything. Well, as I started to say, I got married. It was more or less this way. My brother Tom, two years before, had married one of the Mead girls, who lived over on Turk's Hill (just below where Seth Howe built his fine home with those imitation animals - I think I've wrote about it further back). Their father was a farm labourer. This Abigail Mead, my brother's wife, had a sister who was younger, just as I was younger than my brother Tom. Her name was Roxana - Roxana Mead. 38 THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW (That's where the name "Mead Hall," at Drew Theological Seminary, comes from. That's my wife's picture in the Hall. But I'm getting ahead of my story.) What more natural, than that I and Roxana should get acquainted. When your brother has got a wife, and that wife has got a sister, there are going to be no end of chances for you and that sister to get to know each other. And, to make a long story short, we up and married. She was tall. So was I. Folks said we made a fine-looking pair as we stood side by side to be yoked together by the preacher. I am sorry to say that I had lost my religion during these drover days. It's hard, anyhow, for a cattle dealer to keep religion. He is away from home too much. During these days I was always on the go -never was one of your lazy-bones; better to wear out shoes than sheets, was my motto. And when you're away from home you get sort of careless-like. You haven't got your own people around to kind of keep you straightened up. More than that, it is hard to keep religion when you haven't any one church to go to. In these days I was scurrying from pillar to post, sleeping outdoors or in barns, farmhouses, strange taverns - where not? And the upshot was, I by and by drifted from the means of grace. I backslided. But I didn't slip back so far as to be unmindful THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW 39 of my lost condition. Now and then I would feel some movings of the spirit when I would pass a burying lot, particularly if it was at night. The white stones would stand out so ghostlike, it would sometimes make me clutch the bridle to keep from shivering. And the old words I had heard so often in meeting, would ring in my ears: "Hark, from the tombs a doleful sound; Mine ears attend the cry. Ye living men, come, view the ground Where you must shortly lie. "And you, mine eyes, look down and view The hollow, gaping tomb. This gloomy prison waits for you Whene'er the summons comes." At such times I accounted myself a mortal worm, fallen from grace, and open to all the bolts and fiery darts of heaven. From which it can be seen that, though I no longer had the joy which first I felt, but had lost the witness of my adoption, nevertheless the spirit was not entirely quenched within me. Accordingly, when a revival broke out in Carmel at about the time of which I am now writing, I went. The sermon that night was powerful searching, even to the dividing asunder of the joints and marrow. And before 40 THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW the meeting came to an end, I was wondrously saved. "Glory to God who treads the sky, And sends his blessings through; Who tells his saints of joys on high, And gives a taste below!" I tell you, though I'm not much on singing myself, I swung in on the rest of that hymn: "Glory to God who stoops his throne, That dust and worms may see it; And brings a glimpse of glory down Around his sacred feet." Besides, it was a help in business for me to be back among the church people; because, being married now, I wanted to kind of settle down at Carmel. But there were a number of farmers thereabouts who were cold-shouldering me, saying I owed them for calves and steers. And as they were for the most part church people, I was glad to get religion once more and be taken back into good company. Now I began to be a person of consequence in the community. I was married. I was back in the church. And, what is more, I was a man of money. In fact, as to money, I was piling it up pretty fast these days. For New York seemed to THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW 41 be getting hungrier every day for fat steers. 'Most every one of my trips there helped now to line my jacket. Besides, at about this time I hit upon a scheme one day, as I was going to the city with a drove of cattle, which sluiced a lot more money into my pocket. VI F ORMERLY drovers into New York City had to take their droves to the old " Bull's Head," which was on the Bowery Lane, not far from where the Bowery Theatre stands. There the butchers from'the stalls down on Fulton Street would meet the drovers coming into town and buy their stock. But there was a butcher by the name of Astor Henry Astor, his name was - who got into the habit, whenever a drover would be reported as coming into town, of leaving his brother butchers tippling at the Bowery "Bull's Head," skip out through the back door of the tavern, mount his horse, ride up the Bowery Road, and meet the drove before it got down to where the other butchers were waiting. Astor would stop the drove and pick out the prime beeves before any one else had a chance at them. By and by the other butchers got on to his trick and also began to ride up to the Bowery to meet the herds. In this way a new "Bull's Head" was established, way out on the Boston Road, where Twentysixth Street now is. (The "Boston Road" is now Third Avenue.) By my time this new "Bull's 42 THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW 43 Head" had got to be the cattle market, the drovers' headquarters for the city. Henry Astor - I got to know him well - was one of the most thriving butchers in the city. He was a German. He had come over in the Revolutionary War as a sutler following the Hessian Troops. His brother, John Jacob Astor, came over a little later; and Henry started him in business as a peddler of knickknacks among the trading sloops that were tied up at the wharves. It was in this way, I guess, that John Jacob got in with the fur traders, and later made a peck of money; so that his son gave the Astor Library there, a little below where my "Bull's Head" tavern was located. But this is getting ahead of my story. As I was driving my herd down through the Harlem valley one day, I got to thinking how anxious Henry Astor always was to get fat cattle. (I worked the scheme on any number of the New York butchers as time went on, so it will be understood that I'm now taking Astor merely as a type, because he is one of the best-known butchers of that time and because I got to know him perhaps better than I did the others.) As I was riding along, suddenly I hit upon the idea. And with me, to think of doing a thing means to begin to do it. We came on along the Bronx River by old man Williams's bridge and across Gun Hill Road, which was deep and heavy - almost as heavy, I reckoned, 44 THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW as the time when the cannons sunk on that hill up to the hubs and General George Washington had to leave them to the British. Then crossing the Harlem on the King's Bridge, I brought the drove over to Harlem Village on the easterly side of the Island, about where Third Avenue now crosses I25th Street. There I put up for the night, since there was a good inn with several pasture lots alongside, in that village. I told my cattle boys to turn in early and get a good sleep, for we would be in New York City on the morrow. That night, when all the rest were asleep - the cattle boys used to sleep in the barn on the hayloft - I went out to the drove in the pasture alongside the tavern, and emptied sacks of salt on the ground, scattering it so every critter could get some. Then I saw that all the bars were tight. I didn't want any of them to get out and drink. I'll explain why when I get along a little further. People have heard tell of the expression, "watered stock," that is used in Wall Street. This is where that there Wall Street term came from. So I want to write it down in proper order. After the cattle had been well salted and the bars all safe and tight, I turned in and went asleep. Next morning I got up good and early. Didn't need any one to wake me. The cattle were lowing long before the sun was up, as though they wanted something or other almighty bad. By the time I got downstairs THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW 45 a couple of cattle boys were up and getting ready to let down the bars, to lead them out to water. "Hey, there, what are you louts doing?" I called out. " Put up those bars right away and bring back that critter you've let out." "But, boss," said one of them, "they're choked for water." "What if they are?" said I. "Would you poison these critters by giving them water they aren't used to? These cattle are fresh from the country. This here is an island surrounded by the salt sea. The water here isn't what it is up country. We must get them used to this new region first. I guess I know my business. Not one of these critters gets a smitch of water until I give the word. D'ye hear? Go now; get a bite of feed, and we'll start for the city." Thus I kept the drove from water; and as soon as breakfast was over, started them along the turnpike. At the same time I sent word ahead by a rider to Henry Astor, telling him that I was coming with some prime cattle and for him to meet me at the "Bull's Head" about noon. We trudged along, going slow; it was hot as mustard, and I didn't want to sweat any meat off my critters. Below Yorkville -that's the village that used to be over on the Boston Road, about where Eighty-sixth Street now crosses it-was a little stream called the Saw-Kill, with a bridge crossing it. It was 46 THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW called "Kissing Bridge," because couples walking out that way used to kiss whenever they came to the bridge. It was a recognized custom. The bridge itself was below Yorkville, not far from where Seventy-seventh Street now cuts through. It was a low stone bridge, and hardly to be told from the road itself. But I guess young sparks and their sweethearts never failed to know when they were crossing it. Well, by the time the cattle got to that stream, on the drive down from Harlem Village, they were all-fired thirsty. The cattle boys, too, were glad to see the water. (We used to call these boys "ankle beaters," because they had orders when they were beating the cattle not to strike any higher than the ankle, for fear of bruising the flesh and making it unsound for market.) The boys had been feeling for the poor, suffering critters, and now were laying out to give them a good, long drink. But I had other fish to fry. I rode back to where they were. In taking a drove along the turnpike I used to ride ahead to pick out the road, leaving the boys to follow behind with the cattle. I said to them: "Boys, line up along the road there by the bridge, or those critters will get off away from you." "Oh, they'll be all right," piped up one of the lads. "They smell the water already, and will make for it without any help from us." "Make for nothing!" said I. I knew how to put command in my tone, when it was herd-boys I THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW 47 was dealing with. "I don't want one of those critters to get to that there brook. Didn't you hear me tell you this morning about the poison that's in this salt air and this island water, to critters that have been raised in fresh water-regions? Not a drop do they get, and pelt them with dirt clods if you've got to. Get them over the bridge dry-shod." They minded me. They had to. They had seen me plaster mud all over a steer when he didn't go to suit me, and they knew I could do it to them, too, if they didn't mind. I got the drove over the bridge high and dry. Pretty soon we were at the "Bull's Head." I told the boys to take the cattle into the pasture pen that was back of the tavern, where the well was. Then I went around in front to the tap-room, as soon as I had put my horse out, to look for Astor. He wasn't come yet, so I went in to dinner. Then I waited for him on the stoop in front of the tavern, alongside the Boston Road. Pretty soon I saw him come up the turnpike, riding his horse. I got up and shook him by the hand. "Got my message, I see," said I, as he was getting off his horse. "You know whom to come to when you want prime stock." "Well," said he. "I don't know as I'm buying much to-day. Market's mighty poor. But thought I would ride up for friendship's sake, and take a look at your critters." (Being a German, he spoke 48 THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW crooked English. It was curious to hear him. I wish I could set it down here the way he spoke it.) I was in hopes he'd go into the tap-room and take something. Because when you're bargaining with a man it's always easier if he's got something inside. For then he takes a rosy view of things and doesn't stop to haggle over pennies. Get ale inside of a man, it makes him speak as he thinks. But Astor wouldn't take anything. He only asked the landlord for a drink of water. Then I saw that I had an uphill job on my hands. I was glad that he hadn't come in a gig and brought his wife along, because then I'd have had two of them against me; and Hen Astor's wife, Dorothy, was a money-maker, just like himself. She used to help him in the slaughterhouse, doing up butcher's small meats - that is, the tongue, liver, kidneys and such like; she helped make him the rich man that he got to be after a while. I knew that with Hen Astor by himself I was going to have my hands full. But I went to it with a will. I asked him to wait for me a minute while I stepped out to see if my horse was being fed. With this as an excuse, I skipped around to where my cattle boys were. I said: "My lads, I guess those critters are used to the climate by this time, and can now drink in safety. Buckle to and give them all the water they can drink." You should have seen them get to work. Cattle boys get real fond of their critters. A drover likes THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW 49 his critters because they mean money to him. "Ankle-beaters" often get to like them out of real affection. And you should have seen the cattle go at it, too. You'd have thought they'd not had a drink for an age. The salt had done its work. A quart of salt to every pair of cattle is a fair allowance; in the present case I had allowed them a little more than that. So that now they sucked the water in like sponges. Do the best they could, the boys couldn't keep the trough full. The steers fairly fought with each other for a drink. So I told off a couple of the boys to take part of the herd over to another pasture across the road, where there was a big pump, and start that going too. Then, when I saw that the thing was nicely under way, I went back to the tavern, where Astor was waiting for me. "It beats all how these hostlers need looking after," said I. "If I hadn't gone out there to the barn they'd have starved that mare of mine. A thimbleful of oats no bigger than that, as true as you live, that's what they were giving my mare. And she as big as two ordinary horses. But how are you, anyhow?" And I seated myself beside him on the stoop. I took a fresh chew of tobacco, and offered him some. I thought it a good plan to sit and visit for a spell. It gets your customer into a neighbourly frame of mind; and then, too, in this present case it would give my boys time for the watering. 50 THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW "I'm not so very chirpy," he grumbled. "How are you?" "Fine as a fiddle," said I; "and what's ailing you?" "All kinds of troubles," he went on. "The life of a cattle butcher, Dan, isn't what it used to be. There are so many in the business nowadays. And housewives come to my stall there in the Fulton Market and buy my best meats -top slices, no second cuts for them - and then, when I or Dorothy go to see them, they won't pay their bills. And the stall is getting so crowded, the hucksters and salad women have been signing a paper against me, because, they say, I've built my stall across the whole end of the market, and have crowded them out under the eaves, where they're exposed to the sun and weather. I'm a licensed victualler - I guess I've got some rights there. And then, too, the city fathers these days are getting so pernickety. You remember the market used to be on Maiden Lane -it was built over a running stream that was used as a city sewer. Very handy for us, because we could drop the swill and such like right through a hole in the floor. But the City Board didn't do anything else but talk everlastingly about 'nauseous and pestilential vapours,' and kept it up till we moved the market up onto Fulton Street. And now they're getting more pernickety still. Why, Dan, since the small-pox came they are getting THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW 51 so they won't allow our hogs to run in the streets any longer." "Heinrich Astor!" said I (he liked to be called by his German name); "what won't they be ordering next? Pigs in the street are the best scavengers a city can have. You mark what I tell you, Hen; if they shut the pigs up, the gutters will get so full of slops and stuff, there won't be any living inside the city limits. Why, it would take a herd of swine to clean up what your slaughter-houses alone dump into the street." "There you are again," he broke in. He was getting riled up. "That fussy old board of city fathers have gone and passed another ordinance, that butchers mustn't empty any more refuse in the street gutters. So now we have to cart the blood and guts way over to the river. I'd like to know how dogs, to say nothing of the hogs, are going to get a living inside the city limits, if this sort of thing keeps on. And without dogs, where would we be, at night? Why, just the other day a farm below me on the Bowery Road lost no end of chickens by the foxes." "That loss of poultry will make more call for cow meat," said I; "and, Hen, between you and me, I've brought you some of the fittest beeves this trip that ever set foot on Manhattan Island. We'll step out and take a look, if you say so." I knew by this time that the boys would be through with the watering. So we went out. 52 THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW Sure enough, when we got out into the pasture, you couldn't see a sign of a water-pail. And there, as plump and fat-looking as a man ever saw, stood the critters. I noticed out of the tail of my eye that Astor got interested all to once. "There are two or three good-sized ones in the bunch," he remarked. "I suppose you want to sell the drove at a lump sum. I wasn't calculating on buying any stock to-day. But seeing it's you, I might be able to make an offer for the drove as a whole - say, at so much a critter." "No," said I, "they go by the pound, this trip. Prime cattle such as these take a sight of time and fodder to fatten. I've had to get this herd together one at a time, the very best from a hundred farms. But it's worth the pains," I added, "when a fellow can bring to market a drove like this." He punched his thumb into two or three of the critters, and found them firm and solid. "Tolerable good," said he, "tolerable good. But I'm afeared most of them will be tough. I suppose, though, I could use them up for soup meat. Tell you what I'll do. I'll give you two and a quarter a pound just as they stand, and for one or all." I said that the figure I had set for this drove was four cents. He gave a snort and started towards the tavern as though disgusted. I didn't make any move to call him back; I knew that when a butcher THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW 53 finds what he thinks to be a drove of fat cattle, he isn't going to give up at the first crack. He likes the thought of a nice, fat carcass hanging from the hooks at his stall in the market. So, pretty soon, back he came. "Donner and Himmel!" he exclaimed, and he was red in the face. "You drovers take us townspeople for suckers. I'll give you two and a half, and not a speck more. You can take it or leave it. Anyhow, I'm expecting another drover in from Long Island next week, and only came up to-day to just kind of look around." I met him by coming down half a cent. I hadn't thought for a minute that I could get the four-cent price I had named. I had mentioned that figure in order to have something to back away from, when we got down to business. You must ask much to get a little. He snorted off once more; but he didn't get so far this time. "Two and three quarters," said he, coming back. "And there isn't a cent in it for me at that figure, so help me Gott!" I told him the very best I could do was three and a quarter, and only made it that figure because he was willing to take the whole drove. "It's the beneathenest price I ever saw offered for choice stock such as these," said I. "It costs money, Hen, to pump corn into a heifer until her loins stand out like the hams on a hog." 54 THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW He backed away. We dickered a spell longer. Finally we hit on a flat three-cent price. The cattle were driven on the scales. (They weighed up fine, as you can believe.) He paid over the money, and took them off down to his slaughter-pen, not far from the Bowery. I was happy, and he went off happy, too. Because a butcher likes to get heavy critters. To be sure they cost him more, but fat beef in a butcher's stall goes like hot cakes, where stringy joints wouldn't sell at all. So it was what I call a good bargain, seeing that both of us were pleased. It can be seen now what a lucky thought it was for me -that salting device. The salt cost but a few pennies a bag, and by means of it nigh onto fifty pounds had been added to the selling weight of every critter in the drove - a full-grown critter will drink that weight of water if you get her good and thirsty. Thus I took in as my profits on this trip as fine a penny as a man could ask. VII I FELT so rich from my stock-watering deal that I stayed at the "Bull's Head" tavern a spell. And, a day or two after the business with Astor, I started down to the city to see about getting a new saddle. My old one was so worn that the stuffing was coming out; for, although I had been making money for some years back, I hadn't felt like spending any more of it than I could help. My idea in those days was: Better a hen to-morrow than an egg to-day. Small savings, if you keep them up long enough, mean big savings by and by. If a fellow is going to be rich, he must get money working for him early in life. A swarm of bees in May is worth a load of hay; but a swarm in July isn't worth a fly. Now, however, I felt rich enough to afford a new saddle. So I mounted my mare and started down to New York. I went by the Bowery Lane. I had to. That was the only road into the city in those days. I knew that it would take me past Hen Astor's house, and I had felt it would be best not to see him for a spell, if I could help it. But there wasn't any other way into the city. The Broad Way, 55 56 THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW which is now the main thoroughfare right through the middle of the island, hadn't been laid out then. The place where that road now runs was swamp and low land - "the Lispenard Meadows" we called it. A farmer who bought a tract of it was joshed a good deal, his friends all saying it would be a good farm for raising a fine crop of frogs. So I rode boldly down the Bowery Lane. But just before I got to Henry's place, I thought better of the matter and turned off to the right, across lots. I found a lane there that led into the meadows, these being dry enough this time of the year for safe walking for the horse. The Broad Way by this time had run up from the city a little beyond and across the stream where Canal Street now is. (Canal Street got its name when they dug out that stream and made a good-sized canal there, in order to drain the swamp and the Collect Pond just above City Hall Park.) I calculated on reaching this road across lots, and then following it down into the city. It took me some time to reach it, because I had to wind in and out to dodge the water-holes. But I got out onto the Broad Way road at last. Then I was all right; for in dry weather it was from here on a good thoroughfare into the city - almost as hard and safe, in fact, as the Bowery Road. It crossed the Canal Street Brook on a low stone bridge. Just beyond was the Stone Bridge Tavern. I knew the locality, because around this tavern was a horse THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW 57 exchange, where old plugs and broken nags were sold to the street hawkers and fish-men of the city. Just above what is now White Street I had to dismount; for there was a pair of bars at this point to keep the cattle of the Lispenard Meadows from getting into the city. My mare wasn't enough of a hunter to jump the bar; and I wasn't anxious for it, either. Because a drover, if he is going to lay up money, doesn't have any time to break in hunters, or do much in the hunting business himself, either. So I led her through, backed her once more, and was soon down to New York. Reaching Wall Street, I hitched my mare to a lamppost and started out to the saddler's. There were a number of good hotels down in New York at this time, with horse sheds attached, such as the Franklin House, over on the Broad Way, corner of Dey Street, and the Park Place Hotel, corner of Park Place. But the hostlers in those city hotels charged a fee even for tying your horse under the shed. It has always been my motto: Never feel rich, even though you have money in every bank in town. There are some young men so spendthrifty, they eat the calf while yet inside the cow. But not I. In those days a lamp-post was just as safe a place for a quiet mare as a hotel shed; and was good enough for me. I soon found that my dodging of Astor's place on the Bowery had been in vain. Because, as I was walking down towards "Dirty Lane" -that's the 58 THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW name that used to be given to South William Street - I happened to look back and spied him a-hurrying after to catch up with me. He must have seen me cut across lots to dodge going by his house; or maybe he had come over from his stall at the Fulton Market onto Wall Street, and had chanced to spy me. At any rate, there he was, a-following after. I didn't want to meet him just then and there; I could see that he was in a temper. So I turned the corner into William Street, and stepped into a tavern that was not far down the street. I guess I wasn't quick enough; for a minute or two later Astor came in the front door also. "Hey, you," said he, busting in through the door and puffinghard,"You tamned Dan Drew." (Hen Astor's English was more crooked than ever when he was excited.) "I vant to speak yust one word mit you, you -" But I didn't wait. It never pays to argue with a man when he's excited, and Hen now was very red in the face; I saw at a glance, that he was in no state of mind to talk a matter over calmly. So I hurried on through the tavern and out by the back door. There I cut over onto the other street through a lane before he could see which way I went, and so lost him. I decided, after thinking the matter over, that I wouldn't stay in the city to get a saddle this trip, after all. So I went back to my mare, unhitched THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW 59 her, and was soon back to the "Bull's Head," safe and sound. Then I rode away to Putnam County for another drove of cattle. The saying, "selling watered stock," has now got to be well-known in the financial world. So I've wrote down in this paper about the affair of salting my critters. Some time later I became an operator in the New York Stock Exchange; I hung out my shingle on Broad Street. And the scheme was even more profitable with railroad stocks. If a fellow can make money selling a critter just after she has drunk up fifty pounds of water, what can't he make by issuing a lot of new shares of a railroad or steamboat company, and then selling this just as though it was the original shares? But for this drover time in my life, these smaller profits seemed mighty big. For I didn't let the salting scheme rest with only the one trial. After I got back to Putnam County I lost no time in getting another drove together and hurrying it back to the city. Astor didn't care to buy of me this second trip. Not that he kept mad for any length of time. He was the kind of a fellow to cool off after a few weeks. On this, my next trip to the city, I found him as civil as I could wish. But he wouldn't buy my cattle - made a number of excuses. He showed his friendly spirit, however, by introducing me to one of his fellow butchers in the Fulton Market; so that on the present 60 THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW trip I dealt with this other butcher. In fact, I found that the stock-watering plan, while a moneymaker, had certain drawbacks. Because from now on it compelled me to deal with a different butcher 'most every trip. But that wasn't so bad as it might seem. For there were lots of butchers in the city; and in most cases I found that the butcher I'd dealt with the last time was willing to introduce me to one of his competitors, as a drover that handled choice stock. I took in profits with a big spoon. VIII B Y THIS and other devices, one way or another, I had by this time got to be tolerable well off. In fact I had become known as one of the richest drovers that brought cattle to the New York market. When, therefore, not long after, the "Bull's Head" tavern found itself without a proprietor, what more natural than that I should step in and take the position? I hadn't had any experience as an inn-keeper; but I'd had no end of dealings with inn-keepers. And I reckoned that a man who could make money taking care of droves, could also make money taking care of drovers. So I dickered with the people in charge, and got the place. I left Putnam County and moved down to the "Bull's Head." By this time there was a little settlement growing up around the tavern, known as "Bull's Head Village." My tavern was the centre of this village. So that, although we were some miles out from the city, we were never lonely for a minute. It was the centre of the New York live-stock market. Drovers came to the "Bull's Head" from York State, Connecticut, Jersey, and Long Island, bringing their 6i 62 THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW droves with them. Around my tavern there were cattle pens for the care of fifteen hundred head of cattle at once. There is nothing but the horsemarket there now to show what the place used to be. New York's cattle yards have moved since then. They moved from the "Bull's Head," first up to Forty-second Street; then to Ninety-fourth Street; and now they are moving over to Jersey City. But in my time there wasn't a minute in the day when you couldn't hear there the moo of a heifer, the bleat of a lamb, or the neigh of a horse. Pretty soon a slaughter-house was built across the post-road and below the lane which is now 26th Street. Here and there, also, were little houses for the hired men to live in. There was a store for groceries and general merchandise. All in all, quite a village was growing up around the place. And I, as proprietor of the " Bull's Head," was the king-pin of it all. Not that I owned the tavern. That belonged to the Peter Lorillard family. They had had a farm where the " Bull's Head" stood, back in Revolutionary times. General George Washington stayed at the house once and took a meal of victuals there. When finally the "Bull's Head" tavern was built, the mahogany table from the Lorillard house was put into the tavern as a part of the furniture. When I had any guests that I wanted to honour, I would set them at that table for dinner and tell them how General George Washington had eaten from it. THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW 63 The tap-room of the tavern was on the corner. This was also the office and all-around room. The dining room was across the hall, and looked out onto the post-road, which is now Third Avenue. People eating in the dining room could peer out through the windows and see riders and vehicles passing well-nigh all the time, because this was the turnpike. It was the highroad to Boston. In that day all the through travel to New York City went by my tavern. Back in my time the tavern was seated on a hill, and you had to go down in order to reach the road. When the city streets were put through, this hill was cut down and a ground floor put in underneath. Out in the hall, a wide staircase with a mahogany railing led to the second floor. Upstairs the hallways were narrow and crooked. A fellow could get lost in them. In fact these winding passageways, I'm sorry to say, were the cause of a good many fights. The "Bull's Head" was noted for its fine liquors, such as hot "Tom and-Jerry," toddy, and such like. A drover starting upstairs for bed, after spending half the night in the tap-room drinking or playing "crack-loo," would often get lost upstairs in trying to find his room, and sometimes would get so turned around that he couldn't even find his way back to the office. Then from somewheres in an upper hall he'd holler out loud enough to wake the dead. He'd get mad as a Durham bull. He 64 THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW would call for some one to come and show him where he was. The sleepers near-by would turn out and cuss him for making such a noise; then the fat would be in the fire. Sometimes, instead of bellowing for help, the man, when he found that he was lost, would go into the first room he came to (since we didn't have keys and locks in those days), swear that it was his, and set to turn the other fellows out. Which would also result in a hell-roaring fight. In truth, the hallways were so crooked that I have known of a perfectly sober man to come downstairs of a morning, after a sight of muffled groans and swear-words from somewhere upstairs, wipe the sweat from his forehead, and out with a "Mighty Lord, but it's good to get here; I thought I never would find that stairway." Now and then of a night I'd have a guest arrive at the inn late. And then I'd have to light a candle, take him upstairs, and put him in with one of my boarders. This would sometimes make the boarder mad. He'd cuss around in high fashion because I hadn't let him know beforehand who was going to be his bedfellow. As if I could help it that all of my rooms were full, and another guest arrived. Now and then I used to have a fight on my hands from this cause, some of my boarders were that unreasonable. There was a big wheat-field behind the tavern, and not far beyond that a grove of trees. Being on the post-road, picnic parties used to drive out from THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW 65 the city and spend the day in the grove. Cato's Tavern, further up by Yorkville, was more of a resort for society people of the city, in their drives into the country. But for turtle feasts, turkey shoots and such like affairs, the "Bull's Head" was the leading resort. In the fall of the year, around Thanksgiving time, we could put up a placard telling we were going to run a turkey shoot on such and such a date; and there would be going on to a hundred men there when the time came. I would advertise it on the bill something like this: Resting shot at 40 yds.,.... o cts. Off-hand shot, at 40... 5 Resting shot at 30 ".... 15" Off-hand shot at 30 "..... o" Any shot drawing blood, takes the bird. Perhaps these prices for shots may look to be ruinously low, seeing that it costs money to fatten up a turkey. But in these turkey shoots the birds were not slaughtered as handily as you might think. Because on these occasions I'd manage it so that the shooters got a glass or two of toddy, or of whiskeypunch sweetened with currant jelly, before the shooting began. Something toothsome like that was usually a coaxer for another glass; and then the fellow couldn't shoot straight. The liquor helped also in another way. Because, when a fellow's 66 THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW got liquor aboard, he's pot-valiant. He thinks he can hit any mark at any distance; which leads him to pay for no end of shots, thus making more money for me without taking any more of my birds. So, even when, in order to get a fellow drinking, I had to give him the stuff first along without charge, in the end it more than paid. These turkey shoots were profitable in another way also. Because if the day was a good one, a lot of people would come to look on. So that, besides the fees for the shots, I made money from meals, shed room, horse feed, drinks, and such like. These shoots and like affairs were held back of the tavern towards the "Winding Creek," as we called it - Crumassie Vly, in Dutch. (That's where Gramercy Park gets its name.) This creek flowed through the farm of Jim Duane, and widened out into a pond just where Madison Square now is. Alongside the pond was the Bloomingdale Road (that is now the continuation of the Broad Way). Around the "Bull's Head" village other settlements were beginning to spring up, so that we had neighbours on all sides. Not long before I came, there had been a yellow fever scourge in the City of New York, which had driven the people out to the suburbs for the summer. When the summer was over and the fever was finally checked, many of the people liked it so well in the open country that they stayed. Thus the suburbs THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW 67 were built up. T'.ere was a settlement below us on the Boston Road called "Bowery Village." Peter Cooper kept a grocery store there. The children used to spend their pennies with him, buying taffy, gingerbread, a bunch of raisins, or those round, sour candies that later on got the name, "Jackson Balls." Peter's house stood where the great Bible House now is. When he moved his home up to a spot back of my tavern on the Ruggles Place alongside the Gramercy Pond, he was that methodical, he took his house to pieces, marked each beam, and set it all up again on the new site. On another side from us was the farm of Jake Kip, alongside the East River. His house was a big double building, made of bricks brought from Holland. I was sorry when it burned down a little while later. Further over, just above us on the "Middle Road," as we called it, was Quaker Murray's summer house, set on a high hill. The hill is called after him to this day. (That's where Captain Vanderbilt dug his wonderful tunnel for the railroad, which maybe I will write of later on.) Sunfish Pond lay just at the foot of this hill, between my place and Murray's. Peter Cooper had his glue factory on the shores of this pond, and made no end of money there. The pond was a great place for eels, and was sure to have some visitors from my tavern, whenever a drover would stay over a day or two - that is, in seasons when the fish 68 THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW ing was good. The pond used to dry up in summer. That wasn't much inconvenience to me, because in summer I was too busy, anyhow, to go fishing. What fishing I did, I had to do in the cold season, when the "Bull's Head" wasn't so full of drovers. The whole region roundabout was filled with gardens and apple orchards. Peter Stuyvesant's pear tree (the one he brought from across the ocean) was still standing in my day, just below the "Bull's Head" by the side of the Boston Road. Along this road all the way into the city, since it widened out and was called the "Bowery," were the summer homes of rich New Yorkers. Over where Union Square now is, the old powder house used to stand. Above that, on the east side of the Bloomingdale Road, was a neighbour of mine, the "Buck's Horn" tavern. It had a sign of a buck's head and horns nailed onto a post by the side of the road, the house being set some distance back. There was a horseshed running out to the road. It was a pretty good place; but it didn't hurt me much. I had my drovers' trade all to myself. The "Buck's Horn" on that side of me, and Cato's on the other side, were more for fashionable sports on their drives out from the city. There were several ferry lines running over to Long Island. One of them was an ingenious contraption. It had paddle-wheels worked by six horses, which walked around a kind of windlass in THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW 69 the centre of the boat. The truck wagons and passengers would be placed on the deck along the two sides. Farmers and young work hands used to come into the city from Long Island by this ferry to market their crops. They all put up at the "Bull's Head." They were good customers of mine, these Long Island farm hands. Usually they were glad to get to the city, like a sailor to get to port. About all they thought of was to have a good time and see the sights, and would swap the farm produce they had fetched with them for board at my tavern. So I didn't have to buy much farm truck for my table. These Long Island farm hands were good-natured boys, and trustful; they left all the book-keeping to the host. Also, if they had any money, they gave it to me to take care of for them, while they were seeing the city. In fact, besides my work as a tavern-keeper, I was also at this time a kind of banker. Because, with a village growing up around the tavern, there was no other place where money could be kept. So a big safe was built into the wall of the "Bull's Head," at the rear of the tap-room. It wasn't much like the bank safes to-day. This one was just a big iron box with double doors, and opened with an ordinary house-key. Here I would put the money that the people wanted me to take care of. Sometimes I had so much of it on hand that I was able to take it down to the banking houses in 70 THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW the city and invest it there. Seeing that I kept the money for my guests, I didn't have the trouble which some hotel-keepers have to-day, of people jumping their tavern bill. When a man would hand me his money to keep, I would put it into an unsealed envelope-a kind of open wallet-and lock it away in the safe. Since I was the only one that had the key, I thus had the first call on that money. So, if a man got losing all the money he had and more too, gambling -there was a back room upstairs where "crack-loo" was played, and sometimes drovers would keep at it all night and late into the next day- I would see to it when I handed him back his money on his leaving, that his bill to the tavern was paid out first. Also, if there was any dispute over the size of his bill, I was in position to carry my point. But we didn't have very many disputes of that sort. Drovers are a rough-and-ready, good-natured lot. Whenever they would make a trip to the city they would usually rake in a big walletful of profits, and so were not close in counting the pennies, when it came to settling their score at my tavern. On such holidays as "Evacuation Day," when the people celebrated the evacuation of the city by the British troops in the War of the Revolution, my house would be filled with young drovers and farm hands from the country, come in to see the sights. Sometimes I would have to put three in a bed, and THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW 7I also stow away some of them in the barn to sleep on the hay-mow. These celebrations were something worth seeing. There would be a parade in the morning by mounted and foot soldiers, artillery, the fire companies, the Tammany Society, target companies, and such like. At these times City Hall Park, which had a great iron fence around it, would be surrounded by booths where they sold roast pig, cider, egg-nog, and spruce beer. The day would close with a display of fireworks. At other times the young farm hands, "with money to burn and boots to collop," as we say, could have good times at the Vauxhall Gardens, which were on the Bowery Road, just below Peter Cooper's grocery store. These gardens stretched clean over to what is now Broadway, on the site where Astor built his public library. They had a high wooden fence all around with a row of trees just inside. When you got in - the gate was on the Boweryyou found a beautiful garden with gravelled walks winding in and out between the flower beds. Around the sides, between the trees, were little booths for two or three people, with a table where ginger pop, cakes, baked pears swimming in molasses, and such-like delicacies were sold. In the centre of all was a pavilion for music and performances. I didn't encourage my guests to go to such places, but to stay up at the "Bull's Head" and 72 THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW spend their money there. They could find enough excitement at my place. For my tavern was one of the road-houses for the stage which went between Park Row, New York, and Harlem Village every day. The stage would reach us a little before nine in the morning, having left Harlem at seven o'clock. Arriving at Park Row at ten, it would start back in the afternoon at three, get to the "Bull's Head" about four and arrive in Harlem at supper-time. Also, there would be everlasting dickerings in horseflesh to furnish excitement and keep the blood stirring. For the "Bull's Head" was becoming the horse-exchange as well as the cattle exchange for New York City. Those two lines of trade go together, anyhow. Farmers would bring in their horses from the country to my tavern, and the city people would come there to look them over. In this way, from being a master hand in judging cattle, I pretty soon came to have great skill in horse-flesh also. It stood me in hand to be up in it. Sound animals find quick buyers. Skill in horse-flesh shows itself in selling an unsound animal. After a time I got so that I could turn a good penny in a horse deal. It is a curious thing how a brokendown plug can be doctored up and made into a fairly good-looking beast, for purposes of a trade or sale. If he's got holes back of his eyes through age, by working carefully you can prick a hole through and blow under the skin, and so puff the THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW 73 hollow up, smooth as the forehead of a two-yearold. Another good dodge to make an old horse look young, is to take a file and bishop his teeth; for a buyer is sure to look in the mouth the first thing. Or you can sometimes burn into a horse's teeth the marks which go with coltishness. With thickwinded animals a good dose of tar poured down the throat will often stop broken wind long enough to get the animal sold. Roarers are harder to fix. They give you away 'most every time. But even with this kind of beast there is a way, if you are on to it. Well-greased shot poured down the roarer's throat will ease off the roarings and make him - for an hour or two - quite a sound-winded animal. Besides all these, a favourite device, when a young ninny would come along that didn't know a horsecolt from a mare, was to offer him the animal for sale with the harness on. In such cases he usually thinks he is getting a bargain, because the harness seems thrown in. Whereas the truth is, you have tucked that on to the price, and meanwhile the harness is covering up some galled spots on the animal that otherwise would stand out like a sore thumb. In nine cases out of ten the young booby jumps at the bargain, like a hen at a gooseberry. For amusement at night there was no end of things going on. Of a summer's evening there were quoits, wrestling matches, and boxing bouts, out 74 THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW in the road in front of the tavern. While in the winter the guests would gather about the big fireplace in the tap-room, and smoke and chew while some one read the news out loud. Over in one corner was a table for checkers and backgammon. We didn't have spittoons in those days. We didn't need them; because I used to keep the floor of the tap-room good and clean by means of a layer of white sand from Rockaway. One newspaper would last a company for several evenings, because politics ran high in those days, and discussions would last sometimes far into a winter's night. When Andrew Jackson's bank measure went through, there was such high feeling, and the parties were that bitter, my guests sometimes had fist-fights before the discussion was over. Another topic of discussion one time was a book by a Mr. Fenimore Cooper, called "The Spy." It made no end of talk about the time of which I am now speaking. Because 'most every other man you met had his own idea as to who was the real original of "The Spy" in the story. I never read books of any kind, and novels are a sinful kind of book, anyhow. But I couldn't help hearing a lot about this book, because everybody was talking about it. And when finally it came out that the original of "The Spy" was no other than the same Enoch Crosby that is in the Gilead burying ground up in Carmel, I was mighty interested. I had a whole lot to tell about the man THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW 75 to the people who came to the tavern. It would be a mercy to put up a tombstone to mark Crosby's grave. I almost believe I would do it myself. Only just now I am giving orders for a tombstone in my own family burying lot at Drewsclift - a big cross, carved out of solid granite. IX T HESE talks of a winter's night around the fireplace in the "Bull's Head" tap-room, were great places for getting the news. Every man who had something new not only liked to tell it but was expected to. Because newspapers were not very numerous, and besides, there were lots of people who couldn't read it even when they had one. Accordingly news got around in great part by word of mouth. There was much excitement, I remember, over the news of the invention of brimstone matches - sticks of wood which would light themselves. For, one day, the news came to us that children had been seen down on the streets of New York City selling pine sticks about five inches long, with something on the end of each stick, so that by rubbing it the stick would break out into a blaze. It made a lot of stir when some of these pine shavings were actually shown in the tap-room one night, and it was seen that the backlog and flint-and-tinder were now out of date. But these loco-focos, as they were called, were rather expensive. So I didn't put them into the tavern right away. New-fangled things usually 76 THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW 77 cost more than they are worth; I was getting rich by saving the pennies, here one and there one, like a hen fills her crop, one grain at a time. So the fire tongs which hung by the fireplace for use by the guests to light their pipes with cinders from the fire, were not taken down. I never was much of a hand, anyhow, for new-fashioned things. Another piece of news which was beginning to be noised around, up in our tavern, was of a rich country out West beyond the Alleghanies. It was not often that we got a traveller from so far away as that. So when we did, we made him tell all he knew. In this way I heard tell how there was a rich valley out in Ohio, called the Scioto Valley, where there was some of the finest beef cattle ever known. And these cattle could be bought out there for a song. A man by the name of Lewis Sanders, across the Ohio River in Kentucky, had imported three bulls and three heifers from England, of the short-horn variety. The Pattens (I think it was), from the South Fork, in Virginia, had also taken with them into that Western country some blooded stock, and had brought out the bull Pluto. A blooded short-horn cow, Venus, bulled by Pluto, had helped to people all the pastures throughout the Scioto region. This importing of foundation stocks from England was also helped along by General Van Rensselaer, up at Albany, who had just been bringing over from Europe the bull Wash 78 THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW ington, and two short-horn heifers. The short-horns make one of the best beef breeds I have ever seen. Our American cattle were mostly of the Devon, the Hereford, the Sussex and the Norfolk,of England; the Ayrshire and the Galloway, of Scotland; the Kerrys, of Ireland; the Alderney, Guernsey and Jersey breeds of the Channel Islands; with the Holsteins and Holstein-Friesians from Holland. All of these imported breeds, out in the rich Ohio and Kentucky reservations, had bred into an even finer beef cattle than on their native soil. Perhaps this was because of the rich grass and good quality of water. The short-horns were particularly sought out by us drovers, because they were beef breeds. In that day beeves were more important than dairy cattle. Beef is easier to transport than butter or cheese, because it will drive overland of itself. In that day we didn't have hardly any other means of transporting food-stuff long distances, except to drive it on its own legs. Not that the short-horns are not good milkers, too; but they are especially good for butcher purposes. When I heard these stories about the Western lands, I became mighty interested, because the city of New York was growing so all-fired fast, it was hard to find enough beeves in the regions roundabout; so that the price of fit cattle was going higher and higher. I pondered the matter. I made up my mind. Calling Chamberlain to me one day THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW 79 he had been my bartender at the "Bull's Head," and had married my daughter- I said to him: "Roswell," said I, "you've got to take care of the place here for two or three months. I'm going out to Ohio to get a drove of cattle." He looked at me with eyes as big as saucers. "What's that?" said he. "Just what I say," I answered. "I'm going to bring some of those there critters from the West, right here into the New York market." "How in the world are you going to get them over the mountains?" said he. "It's a wild-goose chase; they'll die if you drive them that far." "Leave that to me, son," said I, "leave that to me. I calculate to manage it fine as a fiddle." So I began to make my plans. First I went to Henry Astor, the butcher. He had been pretty well riled up against me once, because of some deals we had had together. I think I've wrote about it, somewhere in these papers. But he got over being mad after a time, and he and I had become good friends once more. He had made a peck of money as a butcher in the Fulton Market. So much, in fact, that he had retired and now was a kind of private banker. I went to him and got a loan of money to make the Western trip. I saw that it wouldn't pay to drive just a herd of ordinary size that distance. I had to do it on a big scale 80 THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW or not at all. So I got the money from him -he made me give all-fired heavy security - and started out. I took a Mr. Robinson with me. He later went in with me in the banking business, when I became a Wall Street operator. He was an A No. I drover; I wanted that kind of a partner. I also took along our cow-dogs. A good cow-dog is not to be picked up everywheres. A drover learns, when he once gets a good animal of that type, to keep him. They are marvellous intelligent. I've had cow-dogs that knew almost as much as I did about driving cattle or sheep. And they are faithful, too. They aren't spiggot-suckers, like some of your hired help. They will work for you night and day, and for pay only ask a few bones and a pan of milk at night. We started out in the stage coach, going by day's journeys through Jersey and Pennsylvania - Robinson, the dogs, and myself. The dogs were lots of company on the journey out. Much of the way through Pennsylvania the woods were thick; the dogs, following behind, would do some hunting on the side, and often brought in a rabbit, partridge, or such like game. It took over a week to get to Ohio. Out there I found that what I had heard tell about the richness of that Western country was gospel. The Scioto Valley was full of fat beef cattle which could be bought - for cash - at a price that would have made a farmer out East turn up his nose at the THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW 8i offer. I had no trouble in getting together a drove of fine cattle and other stock -over two thousand head in all. Then we started towards home. I didn't know how long it was going to take to get back. Because this was pioneer work. No drove of cattle had ever been taken across the Alleghany Mountains before. So I was anxious to get started. Besides, I wanted to get them into the New York market before the heat of summer came on. We got along prosperous. The spring of the year is a good time for drover's work. In the first place, it is the right time to buy the cattle from the farmers. Then again, at this season the roads are soft, so as not to lame the animals. And besides, there is lots of water for drinking purposes, and plenty of pasture at night. In taking a big drove, the order of march is for the drover to ride ahead, sometimes several miles in advance, in order to pick out the road and to make arrangements for sheltering the animals at nightfall. In the present case that work fell to me. Another duty of mine was to find fit places for fording the rivers - either a natural ford, or else some places where the animals could get down into the water safely, swim over, and get up again onto the bank opposite. Because those were early days in the Western country. The roads didn't have bridges at all places. And although there were ferries for the stage-coach, there wasn't any ferry big enough to take care of two 82 THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW thousand head of live stock. So we had to swim or ford the rivers. In driving a herd, the cattle are placed first. The dogs are trained to follow along just behind and alongside the cattle; because the sheep will come along behind of themselves, being timid. They don't need much tending. After the first day or two they get to know the cattle, and crowd in close behind them without any urging. It's curious, anyhow, to see how a drove of live stock will form itself into a herd after one or two days of marching. They seem to get acquainted with each other, they become a kind of a big family - the cows, the sheep, the dogs, the horses and the boys. They get introduced, so to speak, and hang together after that as though they had growed up on one farm. This flocking spirit was a great help on the journey. Because pretty soon after leaving Ohio and getting over into Pennsylvania, the country became so wild that, unless the animals had learned to herd together, they could easily have strayed and many would have been lost. In fact, the country became so much of a wilderness after a while that I wasn't always able to find cattle boys when I wanted them. On a long drive like this, you don't have cattle boys for the entire journey. Boys such as you hire for this kind of business are youngsters, and aren't allowed to go far from home. Therefore, we used to pick up a set of boys in the settlements THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW 83 we passed through, take them with us for a day's drive, and let them go back the next day, taking a new set in their place. But when we came to the mountains, the settlements were so scattered that sometimes we had to use the same set of boys for several days' journeys. The farmers along the road were very obliging. They seemed to know that this was the first of what would probably become a frequent custom, and so helped me along. Fodder and living were cheap out there, anyhow. At nightfall, when I would put up at a farmhouse and ask for accommodations for the drove, they would let me have it at a most reasonable figure. Sometimes I paid these bills by leaving with the farmer the lambs or calves that had been dropped during that day's march. They were very trustful farmers out there. All I would need to do, sometimes, would be to say: "Neighbour, a couple of miles back, down by that ledge of rock, you'll find a ewe. She dropped a lamb yesterday, and we left her behind. Pretty good pair. Send your boy down and you can have them. We can't stop to take them with us. These new-born youngsters would delay our march." Two or three of that kind would sometimes pay our entire bill for the night's lodging. Besides, there were the cattle that got sick. A critter is often too sick to drive; when, if he can only have a little spell to rest up under a cattle-shed, he'll 84 THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW get well again and thrive. I helped pay my lodging bills by means of these sick critters which I left behind. Besides, the farmers were glad to have a drover come to take their own fatlings. Often I could make a swap, leaving some new-dropped calves or lambs, and take instead good healthy stock. There were places where we had to camp out at night. When we got up into the Alleghany Mountains and started crossing that wilderness, there were sometimes no farm clearings for mile after mile. When nightfall would overtake us here, we would have to shift the best way we could. But you get used to sleeping out, after a while. Cut browse for the horses, let the critters pick a meal from the grass and leaves, wherever they can find it; and, with a blanket over some hemlock boughs, make a bed for yourself; in the morning you eat as though there was a wolf in your belly. Real wolves sometimes used to scare us. Wolves are very fond of veal, and at that time they had not yet been cleared out of the Western mountains. The states were trying their best to get rid of the pestersome varmints and used to offer a bounty for wolves' scalps. In fact, in some places the killing of wolves was quite a business. A trapper could take a wolf's scalp to the justice of the peace and get a scalp certificate payable by the tax-gatherer when the next tax was gathered. But he didn't THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW 85 have to wait for the tax-gatherer, because these scalp certificates were good at 'most any store for merchandise. The country out there was so uncleared that there were still plenty of wolves in the mountains. In fact, some trappers were so abandoned, and the bounty on scalps so high - for a full-grown wolf, $40, and for whelps, half that price - that they would keep a she-wolf and her litter of whelps out in some secluded place in the mountains, in order to sell the scalps when they were full-grown. We met with this danger. But here again the herding spirit of my critters was a help. At night, when they would hear a pack of fifteen or twenty wolves a-yelping in the darkness, the cattle and sheep would crowd in together, shivering with fear. They wouldn't need any dogs or boys to round them up. In fact they would hug in so tight that they would well-nigh smother to death a weakling that might be in the middle of the herd. With all my care I lost a sight of critters before I got the drove through. There were those devoured by the wolves; and the stray-aways, because we couldn't stop to hunt up a lost steer, if he got too far from the drove. Also, some died of mud-fever on the legs and belly, due to sloppy roads. Then there were the accidents that happen on a journey through a wild country and across deep and sometimes swift rivers. Out of a drove of two thousand, we lost four or five hundred at least. And, do the best we 86 THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW could, we made slow time. Delays were all the time happening. A horse would get a wind-gall on the fetlock, or my mare would get a swollen hock and would need to be coddled. Finally, after delays and losses, we got the drove into the New York market. And now I found that the trip was worth all the time and pains which it had cost. I had picked up the cattle dirt cheap in Ohio, and the price of young, fat critters in the New York market was so high that I cleared up over $30 on every head of cattle in the drove. x I HAD done so well on the Ohio trip that I followed it up with several more. These times I went into Kentucky and even as far west as Illinois. Because now I knew that it could be done, and also more or less how to do it. There were accidents and delays. But New York was growing so fast and the price of butcher's meat was climbing at such a rate, that I found each time a fine profit when I had cleaned up the deal. I gave Astor back the money he had loaned me, and had enough besides to pay me for my trouble. Of course, these Western trips didn't take up all my time during these years. I paid attention, off and on, to running the "Bull's Head." I was also making short trips out around New York to pick up a herd of cattle here and there. There were some fine grazing bottoms out through Orange County. I got to know some of those southern counties of York State, as well as the near-by regions of Jersey and Pennsylvania. One day something happened to me whilst on a cattle trip I was taking up near the Harlem River, which had a great effect upon my life. It was my 87 88 THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW remarkable escape from death by lightning, and my return to religion. For I had by this time - I grieve to state it - backslided once more. The life at the "Bull's Head" tavern was not very favourable to growth in grace. Besides, I was trotting about here and there. Churches were not very numerous, and my religious life got like the dead ashes in the fireplace, here and there perhaps a live spark, but the fire, for the most part, died out. I say, there were still some live sparks; because all during this time of my backslidden state I had periods when I was under conviction; which means that the spirit was still striving with my soul. But I was not yielding to these strivings of the spirit. I seemed to have become hardened. Now something was to happen which was to bring me back once more within the fold, never again to wander. I had driven up to Manhattanville, in the upper part of Manhattan Island, some miles from the Bull's Head village. I was in a gig, for I had a man with me. My visit was for the purpose of looking over some cattle which were on a farm up near that town. We reached the place, tied the gig at the gate, and went out into the field where the cattle were. Whilst I was looking them over I noticed a hard thunder-shower brewing, and hurried through the work. This I could do easily, because I had by this time become one of the best judges of critters to be met with anywheres. I THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW 89 could take in the parts of a steer with one sweep of my eye. As soon as the job was done we got back to the gig and started to drive to shelter before the storm should break. But it was providentially to be otherwise. We had hardly got the horse unhitched and started on our way, when the storm broke all around us. We tried to press on. Suddenly we were blinded by a blaze of light brighter than a hundred suns at noonday. I guess it was followed by a terrific thunder-clap. But of this I am not sure, because, after that blaze of light, I don't remember anything. How long I lay unconscious I don't know, but it must have been some time. Because, when I came to, the rain had ceased and the storm had cleared away. I found that my companion had also been stunned and now was likewise coming out of the fit. When we got back some of our senses we looked around. There before us the horse lay, dead in the harness. It was by a miracle that my life had been spared. Then and there I gave myself once more to the Lord. As can be seen, it took a great deal of the grace of God to reach me. He had to try so many times before he finally got me landed safe and sound on his side. I promised that I would never backslide again. Not that I was ever very bad. Even in my backslideful states I had never been a profane, bad man, and I had always held infidels in great horror. Over 9~ THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW in Greenwich village, across Bloomingdale Road from the "Bull's Head," was the house where a man by the name of Tom Paine had lived. He had written a bad book called "The Age of Reason." To reach his village from my side of the island, I had to go through the potter's field, where public hangings used to be held. The gallows stood right in the middle of what is now Washington Square. On top of that gallows many a poor fellow used to stand, never to walk again - "jerked to Jesus" is what we called it back in those days. I don't see how any one, if he had any spark of grace about him, could go by that gallows and across that potter's field to the road where Paine's house was, without feeling a horror for bad men and infidels. I was glad, after I had fully recovered from the fit into which that stroke of lightning threw me, that I had gone through the experience, and had become at last soundly converted. Because, as it later turned out, the drover business was not to be my work all through life. Just as I was beginning middle life, I left it, said good-bye to my life at the "Bull's Head" tavern, and got into the steamboat business. An owner of steamboats ought to be religious and respectable-like. It may not be so bad for a drover to stay away from church, because his business is a rough-and-ready business, anyhow. People don't expect much of him. But a steamboat proprietor is in a higher seat. A man of promi THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW 91 nence is called upon to be godly in his walk and conversation; he should hold his head up - like a hen drinking water. There was Peter Cooper. He was godly. He was superintendent of the Sundayschool, there below the "Bull's Head," from which the Bowery Village Church started. He was a man that feared God and went to meeting on Sundays. I was glad that I, too, was now on the Lord's side. And though I have suffered many losses since then, I am thankful to say that from that day to this I have never lost my religion. XI Y START into the steamboat business came about more or less haphazard. There was a little boat run between Peekskill and New York, by Jake Vanderbilt, a brother of Cornelius Vanderbilt. It was in connection with a boat designed to compete with this one of Vanderbilt's, that I made the start. This was back in the early days, when steamboating on the Hudson River was just getting under way. The old sailing sloops were still in use, but were rapidly becoming back numbers. A sloop would sometimes take nine days in going from New York to Albany. When the Chancellor Livingston made the trip once in nineteen hours and a half, people thought it a miracle, and gave her the name, Skimmer of the River. But even the sloops were an improvement over the old stagecoach, because the fare by stage-coach from New York to Albany was $8, and it never took less than two days and one night. Besides being slow, the sloops were also inconvenient; yes, even dangersome, because the winds on the Hudson are fluky, squalls rushing out, often without any warning, from 92 THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW 93 behind the headlands which line both sides of the river. The boom of one of the old packet sloops was sometimes ninety feet long, and when it jibed unlooked-for, would sweep everything before it. There was Dunham, a merchant of New York City and of a considerable name. He was making the trip one day on a sloop down from Albany, when the sail jibed; the boom knocked him overboard like a nine-pin, and he was drowned. So when Fulton, with his partner, Livingston, showed that steam-engines could be put into a boat and would propel it even against wind and tide, it made a great change. For some years, however, the effect of the new invention was not noticeable. Because Fulton had got a grant from the Legislature giving to him and Livingston exclusive right to steamboat navigation on the tide waters of York State. This kept rival boats off. At last, some time before I started in, this monopoly had been done away. It came about through that famous suit of "Gibbons against Ogden." Thomas Gibbons was the owner of a steamboat, Bellona, which plied between New York and Elizabethtown, New Jersey. (He was the one who built that beautiful estate down at Bottle Hill, New Jersey, which I bought from his son, William Gibbons, and turned into the Drew Theological Seminary, years after.) Ogden had got from Fulton and Livingston a grant to carry on 94 THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW their monopoly. So, when Gibbons started in, Ogden had him arrested. Then Dan Webster, Gibbons's counsel, made that famous speech of his before the Supreme Court, which broke up the monopoly and opened the tide waters of all the states to free navigation. When Gibbons found himself free to run boats, he went ahead with lots of push. He got a young man by the name of Cornelius Vanderbilt, who had been running a sailing sloop between New York and Staten Island, to be captain of his boat, the Bellona. This ran from New York to Elizabethtown, where it shipped its passengers to the stage-coach, which carried them on to Philadelphia and the South. Vanderbilt did so well there that he became superintendent of the line, and used to go up to Bottle Hill to report to the owner concerning the boat. Gibbons by and by sold the boat to the Stevens Brothers, of Hoboken. Then young Cornelius Vanderbilt took up navigation on the Hudson. He started a small boat called the General Jackson, to run between New York and Peekskill, and put his brother Jake on as captain. Those early steamboats were funny things, compared with the great boats which are seen to-day, such as the Drew, and the Dean Richmond. Back in the early days they didn't have any pilothouse. The steersman was nothing more than the old sloop steersman; only, instead of working a THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW 95 tiller at the stern, he was placed up on top of the cabin, with a tiller wheel connecting to the rudder by a rope, and was exposed to the wind and weather. His station was directly over the engine. He signalled to the engineer by tapping with a cane on the roof. One tap meant, "Go ahead"; two taps, "Back up." Well, as I started to say, the General Yackson one day blew up. That line between Peekskill and New York had interested me more or less, anyhow, because it had become the great way of getting back and forth between the city and my old home in Putnam County. But I hadn't thought of going into the business myself. I counted on buying and selling cattle all my life. But one day, soon after Jake Vanderbilt's boat, the General 7ackson, blew up, a friend of mine came and told me about a new steamboat, the Water Witch, which he was planning to run as a competitor with the Vanderbilt Brothers on the Peekskill route. He talked me into investing a thousand dollars in the boat. I had some money lying around loose. My cattle trips, together with what money I made from running the "Bull's Head," had been bringing me in good profits. I was glad to make a small investment in the steamboat business, even though it looked somewhat risky. And it was risky. The thing turned out a loss the very first season. As soon as we put our boat 96 THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW on, Captain Cornelius Vanderbilt, who was a spunky fellow, built another boat for the Peekskill route, which he called the Cinderella. We ran each other hard. The result was that my boat lost that season $Io,ooo. Cornelius met me one day on the wharf, just at the time when our boat was running behind like old Sambo. He was in high spirits. "You'll meddle with my business, will you?" said he, in a joking way. "See here, you drover, let me tell you something. You don't know anything about running boats. You know a good deal about judging cattle. That's your line. Boats is my line. Water transportation is a trade all by itself. You don't understand it. Stick to your steers, Drew, stick to your steers." That got my dander up. I got in with a man named Jim Smith. We two went up into Putnam and Westchester Counties and stirred things up good and lively. We told the people up there that they had been charged too much by Vanderbilt. We asked them to come in and put money into our line, because we were an independent company trying to take the side of the people against the monopoly which had been oppressing them. They flocked into our pen, because this Peekskill route was their main means of communication with New York City. It stood them in hand to build up a competing line. Now we were in shape for business. We had THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW 97 money -working capital. We began to slash the rates. We showed the Cinderella what business enterprise was. We kept at it until the fare was a shilling - twelve and a half cents a head - from Peekskill to the city. More than that, we showed the other boat that we were able to keep that game up just as long as they wanted it. When I met Captain Cornelius the next time, I served him with his own sauce. I said: "Hello, Captain; do you think now that I know anything about the steamboat business?" "Drew," said he- Cornelius was a frank man to own up when he had made a mistake or had misjudged anybody, "I don't think anything about it. I know you do." Cornelius was very nice to me after that, even sociable-like. He used to come around and call on me. We got to be good friends. In fact, we got so friendly that Smith and I sold out our boat to Vanderbilt and let him have control of the Peekskill route once more. We did this without letting the other fellows in our company know. We were afraid they might put some obstacle in the way if they knew it beforehand. As a matter of fact, when they heard of it they were as mad as a wet hen. " Because, Drew," said they, "we went in with you and Smith to break up the monopoly and in order to get decent transportation for our region. And now, after putting our hard cash into the thing and providing capital enough to bring the other 98 THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW side to their knees, you skunks up and sell us out - you make terms with the enemy behind our backs, and we lose what we put in." / But I had other irons on the anvil. I didn't feel called upon to keep myself back, just in order to provide better transportation for Putnam County farmers. I had my own fortune to make - my own career to carve out. Any fellow, except he's a natural-born fool, will look out for number one first. There were bigger prizes to be got in the Hudson River steamboat business than the Peekskill route. It was these that I was after. The Hudson River Association was running a line of boats from New York to Albany. Captain Vanderbilt had had a falling out with one of the directors of that association, and had put two rival boats on that route so successfully that he had compelled them to buy him out; he agreeing to withdraw from the boat business on that route for ten years. This left the coast clear. If Vanderbilt, by running competition boats, could scare them into buying him out at a good figure, I didn't see why I couldn't do the same. So I bought two boats, put them on the line to Albany, and ran them in competition with the River Association. This lasted for a year. At the end of that time it turned out as I had expected. The Association took me in with them on a pooling arrangement, my boats sharing the total earnings of the partnership. THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW 99 This lasted a little while, and I was feeling big to be in with the company that was running so big a line of water transportation. By and by I wanted to make still more money. So I hit upon a scheme. While I was still in the Hudson River Association, I put another boat on the route as a competitor. Only, I ran it under the name of another fellow, giving out that he was the owner, so as to keep my own part in the matter hid. Then I cut prices on that independent boat in such a way as to hurt the Association like sixty. Whenever we would hold a directors' meeting of the Association, if they were not already talking about it, I would steer the conversation around to the subject of this rival boat, and ask if something couldn't be done about it. Because, as I showed them, if we allowed that boat to run against us so freely, other fellows would be encouraged also to put boats on, and we would soon be nowheres. Finally I got the directors to pass a resolution to buy up this troublesome rival. And I got them to appoint me the agent to go and see her owner with our proposition. "I think I can find him right away," said I. "His office is only a spit and a stride from here, so to speak." They said they would hold the meeting until I got back. So I left the room, went out, walked around the block, and came back with my report. "A penny more buys the whistle," said I. "I've 0oo THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW seen the owner and he is willing to sell. Only our figure isn't quite high enough. He says he is making money hand over fist. Pretty soon he thinks he will be able to put another boat on. But he doesn't want to be mean. He is willing to sell if we do what he thinks reasonable. If we tack $8,ooo more onto the offer, he'll close with us." The directors debated. The boat was hurting us. Anybody could see that. I put a word in now and then, hinting how this pestersome competitor was probably in a position to hurt us still more, unless we got him out of the way right off. Finally we voted to give the $8,000 more which the man had asked. I left them there in the meeting, went out, walked around the block again, came back and said the man had accepted; and if they would make out the papers then and there I would take them over to him and get the deed of sale. I saw from this incident that I could match my wits against most anybody's. Besides, this $8,ooo which I had turned into my pocket out of the company's funds was not only so much clear gain to me, but was so much clear loss to them. So now I became bold as a lion. I saw that this Hudson River route to Albany was making no end of money, and I wanted to own it, hook, line and sinker. So I picked a quarrel with one of my fellow-directors, and started out on a rival line of my own. My Westchester was a good starter in this fight. Still they had the THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW 10I best of me, because their boat was the handsomer. So I bought the Bright Emerald for $26,ooo, and ran her as a night boat to Albany. More than that, a little later that same year I bought the Rochester - paid $50o,ooo for her. The Hudson River Association hit back by buying the Swallow; and now the fight was on. We raced each other up and down the river, trying to beat the other fellow in rates, and boasting that each had the swiftest boat. Finally, it came to a race between the two. Both boats started at four o'clock one afternoon, from the dock near to the ferry which ran to Jersey City. This was in 1836. Up the river they ran, nip and tuck. The Swallow was so anxious to win that she speeded her engine beyond what it was built for. She got a little in the lead, but couldn't hold out. Just below Hudson her engine broke down. She had to stop a few minutes for repairs. This gave the Rochester the lead. By the time the Swallow got under headway once more, my boat was so far in front that she couldn't overtake us. At Van Wies Point, a hundred and forty miles from New York, the race ended. My Rochester had won. This finished the fight. I had got the fare down so low that the Hudson River Association, weakened as they were by that loss of $8,ooo (which was just so much additional ammunition in my own magazine), gave in. I bought them out. And whereas the fare had been so low until then that I 102 THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW myself couldn't have stood it very much longer, now that I was in control, I put the rate to Albany back to $3, and made enough money to pay me for all I had lost in the fight. Those were the days before the railroad. Since the Hudson is so wide and deep and slow a river, while both banks are rocky and high so as to make railroad engineering difficult, steamboat navigation between New York and Albany came many years before the railroad. Thus the traffic by water was large. Competition boats were springing up all the time, and we were everlastingly running each other. Steamboat rivalry was very high in those days. In making speed on our trips, we got so we didn't make full stops at the landings to let passengers off. When we would come near to a landing, we would put the passengers who were to stop off in a rowboat and towed it behind the steamboat. Then the steamboat would veer in towards the dock and slacken her speed a little. This would permit the steersman in the rowboat to sheer his boat alongside the dock, and as she went past the passengers had to scramble out and onto the dock. Sometimes they landed on the dock, and sometimes in the water. One day, while trying to make this kind of a landing at Poughkeepsie, several passengers were drowned. The Legislature then passed a law putting a stop to these landings "on the fly." This craze for speed was bad, also, because it put the THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW I03 boilers under such pressure of steam that it wasn't always safe. In a close race engineers would tie down the safety valve, plug up the mercury pipe in the pressure gauge so the stuff wouldn't blow out, and then crowd on steam until the boiler plates would bulge out into bumps as big as a saucepan; and the boiler would be weaker for the remainder of its life. Besides that, the pilots would take a hand, and in racing with a rival boat would sometimes in a narrow place in the river crowd the other boat onto the shoals or against a barge. Rate-cutting was so sharp that I had to try all kinds of schemes and dodges to keep my end up. A good scheme, I found, was to make different rates for alternate nights - fifty cents for one night, and $1.50 for the next night. This worked well. For people, hearing tell of the lower rates, would forget on which night the lower rate was given, and when they got to the wharf all packed up and ready to travel, were usually willing to pay the extra rate rather than go back and wait over another day. Sometimes we carried people from New York to Albany for two shillings. And one time, when a rival boat, the Wave, started up, our boats carried passengers free. The Wave wasn't very heavily financed. She lasted just three days. Sometimes we would even pay passengers a shilling to take our boat rather than the boat of the opposition line. But this wasn't so wasteful as it might seem, because 104 THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW after you've got a passenger aboard your boat and out in the middle of the river, he's at your mercy. For the first hour or two he thinks he's getting off fine. But by and by he gets hungry; besides, night is coming on, and he wants a place to sleep. Then we would stick on enough extra for meals and sleeping privilege, not only to make up what we had paid him for taking our boat, but also to pay us a profit besides. Since I was now the chief owner of the big line of steamboats on the river, I was powerful, and new competitors didn't have much chance. I felt that competition had to be put down with a strong hand. There was a man by the name of Hancox. He put on a small boat in opposition to our regular line. He called it the Napoleon. It was a poor boat. It didn't have much show, anyhow. But it wouldn't do to take any chances. His New York pier was further down than ours. So one morning in June our boat, the DeWYitt Clinton, was waiting at her dock working her engines full stroke. When the Napoleon was a short distance from the lower side of the dock, the hawsers of the DeWitt Clinton were cut with a sharp axe. She sprung out under a full head of steam and hit the Napoleon just forward of the wheel. You'd have thought it would have put that miserable little boat out of commission altogether. It didn't succeed as completely as that. But it careened her over until her THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW Io5 guard was under water, and gave her passengers a scare that they didn't forget for a long time. But there were still other ways of getting around a competitor; and we left no stone unturned. Hancox, who wasn't man enough to continue the fight on a business plane, began to squeal. He put out an advertisement like this: "TO THE PUBLIC: "It is the first time in my life that I have been forced to appeal directly to the public; but after having been persecuted as I have been for the last three days by one of the greatest monopolies of this country, my duty towards my family, as I owe them a support, makes it necessary that I should inform the public of my situation. "I purchased the steamboat Napoleon last winter, and associated with myself E. C. Corwin, and James Cochrane, who became equal partners with me in the boat, and the Articles of Co-partnership were drawn in such a manner that the boat was to run to Albany and nowhere else. Recently, the monopoly, after ascertaining that I was determined not to remove the boat from this route has made extravagant offers, made in such a way that I was to be left alone; and consequently, as my means are small, I must, without doubt, be ruined and my family beggared. I now simply appeal to my friends to assist me in supporting the Napoleon; for as long as she does not lose, no money that can be provided will prevent me from running. io6 THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW But if she does, an injunction will be immediately served on the boat. I can also state that E. C. Corwin has spurned their offers, even at a sacrifice of $6,000. "J. W. HANCOX." When a powerful company like mine is threatened with competitors on all sides, it does not pay to fool with a man, even though he is just a small toad in the puddle. One of the ways we used to work it in order to get passengers and hurt an opposing line, was by employing runners to go to the other's dock and discourage passengers from going by that line. These runners used to be very enterprising fellows. One of their favourite dodges was to scare the passengers by saying that the boat they were about to take was unsafe, in fact was liable to blow up any minute. This dodge was particularly useful if any of the passengers were women. So this man Hancox, a few days later, squealed again, in another advertisement: "MONOPOLIES AND PERSECUTIONS "Are the people aware of the disgraceful manner in which the Hudson River monopoly persecutes the steamboat Napoleon and her owners, especially by hiring the most abandoned and profligate wretches to run against her for passengers and making use of the most disgraceful language to prevent passengers from going on board of her? They a