Excerpt from The Life and Times of Col. James Fisk, Jr.: Being a Full and Impartial Account of the Remarkable Career of a Most Remarkable Man; Together With Sketches of All the Important Personages With Whom He Was Thrown in Contact

NO apology for Offering this book to the public is needed. The tragic occurrence on the 6th of January, 1872, which resulted in the death of Col. James Fisk, Jr., terminated the career of a most remarkable man, whose name had become familiar to nearly every reader in the world. For five years or more he and his deeds were always subjects of general interest; the boldness of his schemes, his seeming reckless ness in every operation in which he engaged, the character of the associates with whom he was most intimately connected, made him at all times remarkable, and the reading public were never tired of discussing him. The manner of his tak ing 05, and the singular circumstances leading to it, have only increased the desire to learn all that may be known Of the man, and it is with the view of fully satisfying that desire that this book has been prepared. He was a man of un bounded ambition; full of generous impulses, though erra tic and somewhat reckless. No enterprise was too vast for his ambition, or too difficult for his genius and no giant of the money world could intimidate him when he had made up his mind to accomplish a given object. Everything he touched was a success. The drama, the.opera, the railroad, the stock-market, and even our local marine found in him a ready capitalist and a shrewd leader. He did not hesitate to grapple with Vanderbilt, one of the financial monarchs oi the age, and the astute and wily Daniel Drew was not loath to secure the aid of the young adventurer. His purse was ever open to the needy, yet his charities were rarely marked by ostentatious display. As the commander of a regiment, he lavished money in supporting his own organization, while he created a spirit of rivalry which infused new life into the whole of the National Guard of New York, and forced from many prominent military men what they had previously denied him, a hearty recognition of his enterprise and public spirit.

One of the most eccentric men that ever basked in the sunshine of prosperity, he was at the same time one of the most kindly. He was wayward, yet clear-headed hot-tem pered, yet easily won by a pleasant word notoriously indif ferent to the Opinion of the world, but ever ready to alleviate humanity's sorrows. His faults were many, but now that he is dead, thousands of people who felt his quiet sympathy, and enjoyed his princely bounty, will forget the follies of the erring man, and remember only the tender solicitude of the benefactor and his prompt and hearty answer to appeals for aid. The world has not had time to forget his labors on be half of the Chicago sufferers; and there are many who can recall that bright sunny Sabbath-day when the news of the battle of Antietam reached Boston, and when Fisk, then an obscure dry-goods salesman, by appeals to the clergy and the congregations of the city, induced them to devote the holy day to the preparation of needful supplies for the sick and wounded braves on that bloody field, and toiled through out the day and night in superintending the transportation of the precious freight.

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