Sublime

Among the various guests on board with Flagler on the morning of January 22 was Assistant Secretary of War Robert Shaw Oliver, the personal representative of President Taft, sharing a ride that was so sought after that it took a last-minute call from William Krome to Flagler direct to get himself on board.

He well knew that the rising volume of freight that would come with settlement would far outweigh the value appreciation that would result from holding the properties.

FRANKLIN WAS LITTLE LIKED in Albany. Most of his colleagues found him insufferable. Al Smith wrote him off as a dilettante—“a damn fool” who thought more about political appearances than substantive legislation.

It was strange that a Negro could be an officer and a gentleman and an equal below Parallel Thirty-eight, but not below the Mason-Dixon line.

Jim Hill wasted little time, after gaining full control of the Saint Paul, Minneapolis, and Manitoba, in sending Farley packing. Hill showed little sensitivity to the old man’s ego, to his greed, or to his clear ability to retaliate. When Farley confronted Hill in the spring of 1879 with the impossible demand that he be made a director of the new c

As Burke said in describing his early years in Albany, “Murphy delegates to the point of anarchy.”7