Another of New York’s leading men was Daniel Drew.  His father died when he was fifteen years of age, and he came to New York to seek his fortune.  Resolved to do something, and having nothing better to do, he became a soldier as a substitute for another.  Then he took to stock-keeping, and droves of over 2,000 cattle crossed the Alleghanies under his direction.  In 1834, he began the steam-boat enterprise.  In 1836, he appeared in Wall Street.  For eleven years his firm was very celebrated.  Mr. Drew was a rapid, bold, and successful operator.  His connection with the Erie Railroad, guaranteeing the paper of that company to the amount of a million and a-half of dollars, showed the magnitude of his transactions.  In 1857, as treasurer¹⁷⁷ of the company, his own paper, endorsed¹⁷⁸ by Vanderbilt to the amount of a million and a-half of dollars saved the Erie from bankruptcy¹⁷⁹.  During that year, amidst p. 55universal ruin, Mr. Drew’s losses were immense; but he never flinched¹⁸⁰, met his paper promptly, and said that, during all that crisis, he had not lost one hour’s sleep.  In conjunction with Vanderbilt, he relieved the Harlem Road from its floating debt, and replaced it in a prosperous condition.

 

“It would be unpardonable to forget the great Barnum,” says a New York writer, “one of our most remarkable¹⁸¹ men.  He lives among the millionaires in a costly brown-stone house in Fifth Avenue, corner of Thirty-ninth Street, and is a millionaire himself.  He has retired¹⁸² from the details of actual life, though he has the controlling interest of the Barnum and Van Amburgh Museum.  He has made and lost several fortunes; but, in the evening of life, he is in possession of wealth, which he expends¹⁸³ with great liberality and a genial hospitality.  He was born at Bethel, Connecticut, and was trained in a village tavern kept by his father.  He had a hopeful buoyant

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