"Vanderbilt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... details the circumstances under which Cornelius Vanderbilt, on my request, agreed in the month of July last to carry the ocean mails between our Atlantic and Pacific coasts. Had he not thus acted this important intercommunication must have been suspended, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson
... sprang up, but it has taken hold remarkably. When the Hudson Tubes were opened not quite a decade and a half ago Mr. McAdoo inaugurated what was at that time an almost revolutionary policy. He took the motto, "The Public be Pleased," instead of the one made famous by Mr. Vanderbilt, and posted it all about, had pamphlets distributed, and made a speech on courtesy in railroad management and elsewhere. Since that time, not altogether because of the precedent which had been established, but because people were beginning ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... Washington and met the steamer my conscience troubled me and I should still have been kindness itself to him, if it hadn't been for his proprietary manner (which, by the way, had never annoyed me before), coupled with what I already knew. We had luncheon in the Della Robbia room at the Vanderbilt and I was digging the marrons out of a Nesselrode when, presto, it suddenly came over me that the baroness was right and that I could never marry a foreigner. It came like a thunderclap. But somewhere in that senate of instinct which debates over such things down deep in the secret ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... Guilbert said, "No, send me the Van Bippere book"— So we asked her what she meant and she said, " M. Bourget told me to meet you and to read your Van Bippere Book, you are Mr. Davis, are you not?"— So after that I owned the place and refused to meet Mrs. Vanderbilt. ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... Tennessee, founded in 1873 by the gifts of "Commodore" Vanderbilt, was the first Southern institution with anything approaching an adequate endowment and was the first to insist upon thorough preparation for entrance, though it was compelled to organize a sub-freshman ...
— The New South - A Chronicle Of Social And Industrial Evolution • Holland Thompson
... wealth—not a Rothschild or Vanderbilt fortune but enough to assure me ease and luxury. I have stripped myself of it. I have but a beggarly sum remaining at my bankers. Practically I am ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... "Blouses" could tell. But whenever any famous personage—a millionaire's daughter or an actress, a society beauty or the heroine of a fashionable scandal—enters a big department store, the news of her advent runs from counter to counter like wildfire. In some shops the appearance of an Astor, a Vanderbilt, or a Princess Patricia would send up the mercury of excitement forty degrees higher than that of a Miss or Mr. Rolls. But at the Hands, Peter the Great's son and daughter would have drawn all eyes from the reigning ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... a commercial firm could not be burdened with the fads of any one member. Before I had carried this conclusion to its logical end, we had opportunities of using our skill worthily in several of the new great houses of the time. When the Cornelius Vanderbilt house was erected on Fifth Avenue and Fifty-Seventh Street we received an order for a set of tapestries for the drawing-room walls. These were executed from ideal subjects and of single figures. I remember the "Winged Moon" among them, which was an ideal figure of the new moon lying ...
— The Development of Embroidery in America • Candace Wheeler
... to me who he belongs to? I don't care if he belongs to Vanderbilt, or Aster'ses family. Principle—that is what I am a workin' on; and the same principle that would hender me from buyin' a feller that was poor as a snail, would hender me from buyin' one that had the riches of Creshus; it wouldn't ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... then only beginning to amass the moneys afterward heaped so high, and was still in the condition to be flattered by the condescension of a yet greater millionaire. His contribution to our gaiety was the verbatim report of a call he had made upon William H. Vanderbilt, whom he had found just about starting out of town, with his trunks actually in the front hall, but who had stayed to receive the narrator. He had, in fact, sat down on one of the trunks, and talked with the easiest friendliness, and quite, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Gorringe. The obelisk in Central Park, the expenses for removing which were paid by W.H. Vanderbilt, was examined by the Grand Lodge of New York, and its emblems pronounced to be unmistakably Masonic. This book gives full account of all obelisks brought to Europe from Egypt, their measurements, ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... Colonels! I am with you (I too am a Colonel and on the pension-list); I drink to the lot of you; to Colonels Cleveland, Hitt, Vanderbilt, Chauncey M. Depew, O'Donovan Rossa and the late Colonel Monroe; I drink an egg-flip, a morning-caress, an eye-opener, a maiden-bosom, a vermuth-cocktail, three sherry-cobblers and ...
— The Battle of the Bays • Owen Seaman
... owner, who had refused fifteen hundred dollars, to take nine hundred dollars. President Moore was tempted to pay the fifteen hundred dollars, but he decided that this course would only encourage other property owners to be extortionate. Some trouble was experienced with the Vanderbilt properties, part of which happened to be under water. After considerable negotiating and appeals to the public spirit of the owners, it was adjusted. About seven hundred thousand dollars was paid for leases and about three hundred thousand dollars ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry
... overshadowing fortunes to develop from the ownership and manipulation of railroads was that of Cornelius Vanderbilt. The Havemeyers and other factory owners, whose descendants are now enrolled among the conspicuous multimillionaires, were still in the embryonic stages when Vanderbilt towered aloft in a class by himself with a fortune of $105,000,000. In these times of enormous individual accumulations and ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... staff-officer and have your people cease firing; they are violating the flag." He answered, "I have no staff-officer to send." Whereupon I said that I would let him have one of mine, and calling for Lieutenant Vanderbilt Allen, I directed him to carry General Gordon's orders to General Geary, commanding a small brigade of South Carolina cavalry, to discontinue firing. Allen dashed off with the message and soon delivered it, but was made a prisoner, Geary saying, "I do ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 5 • P. H. Sheridan
... spent the day telephoning to her friends, asking them to let their automobiles be used to meet the Carpathia and take away those who needed surgical care. It was announced that as a result of Mrs. Vanderbilt's efforts 100 limousine automobiles and all the Fifth Avenue and Riverside Drive automobile buses would be ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various
... unmentionables; knickers, knickerbockers; philibeg[obs3], fillibeg[obs3]; pants suit; culottes; jeans, blue jeans, dungarees, denims. [brand names for jeans] Levis, Calvin Klein, Calvins, Bonjour, Gloria Vanderbilt. headdress, headgear; chapeau[Fr], crush hat, opera hat; kaffiyeh; sombrero, jam, tam-o-shanter, tarboosh[obs3], topi, sola topi[Lat], pagri[obs3], puggaree[obs3]; cap, hat, beaver hat, coonskin cap; castor, bonnet, tile, wideawake, billycock[obs3], wimple; nightcap, mobcap[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... starving to death. Right now I could eat a Bowery restaurant clear through to the stovepipe in the alley. Can't you think of nothing, Murray? You sit there with your shoulders scrunched up, giving an imitation of Reginald Vanderbilt driving his coach—what good are them airs doing you now? Think of some place we can get something ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... acme of efficiency in the manufacturing art. The career of Henry Ford has a symbolic significance as well. It may be taken as signalizing the new ideals that have gained the upper hand in American industry. We began this review of American business with Cornelius Vanderbilt as the typical figure. It is a happy augury that it closes with Henry Ford in the foreground. Vanderbilt, valuable as were many of his achievements, represented that spirit of egotism that was rampant for the larger part of the fifty ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... which the reward received is manifestly out of all proportion to the benefit conferred. Consider the fortunes which have been accumulated by some of our Midases of the present decade. It is quite certain that the benefits which Cornelius Vanderbilt, for instance, conferred on the community by his enterprise and business sagacity, by his work in opening new fields of industry, forming new channels for commerce, etc., were so valuable that he honestly earned the right to enjoy a large fortune. It is equally certain ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker
... three musical shows in the next two days, in the hope of spotting her in the chorus. But she wasn't in any of them, and then I simply dragged John home. There was no way of finding her of course, nor of her finding us, because John's given up the Holland House at last and taken to the Vanderbilt. But it ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... war a brisk recovery began and brought to the fore the first of the great railroad magnates and the shrewdest business genius of the day, Cornelius Vanderbilt. Though he had spent his early life and had laid the basis of his fortune in steamboats, he was the first man to appreciate the fact that these two methods of transportation were about to change places—that water transportation was to decline and ...
— The Railroad Builders - A Chronicle of the Welding of the States, Volume 38 in The - Chronicles of America Series • John Moody
... movements thus far. Having reached Troy at 3 o'clock on the afternoon of the day you and I parted, I spent the remainder of the evening until 8 o'clock in the city. At that hour we embarked for New York, and the boys had a very exciting and enthusiastic time on board the steamer Vanderbilt. Wednesday was spent at 648 Broadway, Regimental Headquarters of the "Harris Light Cavalry;" and on that night we came by train to our present camp: or, rather, as near it as we could, for it is two miles from the nearest station. The spot is picturesque enough to ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... U.S., on the Cumberland River, 185 m. SW. of Louisville; a suspension bridge and railway drawbridge joins it with Edgefield suburb; it is an important railway and educational centre, the seat of the Fisk, Vanderbilt, and Nashville universities, and is actively engaged in the manufacture of cotton, tobacco, flour, paper, ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... a doctoral dissertation of Vanderbilt University. The author entered upon this study to show to what extent the southern people "sought to perpetuate, not slavery, but the same method of controlling the emancipated Negro which was in force under ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... young? Then tap new reservoirs of youthful thoughts, irrigate your alkali desert from the fountains of youth, become youthfully active in some new field of work. Vanderbilt added $100,000,000 to his fortune after he was eighty. Wordsworth earned the Laureateship at seventy-three. Theirs established the French Republic and became its first president at seventy-two. Verdi wrote "Falstaff" at eighty. Sir Walter Scott was $600,000 in debt when he was fifty-five, ...
— Supreme Personality • Delmer Eugene Croft
... New Palace—now old, for it was built by Frederick the Great in 1769, during the Seven Years' War, at a cost of nearly half a million sterling—and gaze with interest at the summer residence of the Emperor. If he is an American he may think of his multi-millionaire fellow-citizen, Cornelius Vanderbilt, who, when driving up to call on his erstwhile imperial schoolfellow and friend, was nearly shot at by a sentry for whom the name Vanderbilt was no "Open Sesame." He will see before him a main building, seven hundred feet in length, three stories ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... porter, Trencher, carrying the spoil of his latest coup, departed via one of the Vanderbilt Avenue exits. Diagonally across the avenue was a small drug store still open for business at this hour, as the bright lights within proved. Above its door showed the small blue sign that marked it as containing a telephone pay booth. For Trencher's purposes a closed booth in ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... not living when the ship reached California. That ever he became food for his sailor friends no one can imagine. Therefore his fate must remain a mystery, unless some of my readers happen to know one of the crew of "The Vanderbilt," and can learn from him something ...
— The Nursery, No. 106, October, 1875. Vol. XVIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... it may be that in a year's time these new-fangled ideas about free trade may be law, and it may be much cheaper for us to get our rails from England, as Mr. Vanderbilt did three or four years ago, when he was in ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... cited by number. For a Chronological List of Wartime Agencies (including government corporations) and some account of their creation down to the close of 1942, see chapter on War Powers and Their Administration by Dean Arthur T. Vanderbilt in 1942 Annual Survey of American Law (New York University School of Law, 1945), pp. 106-231. At the close of the war there were 29 agencies grouped under OEM, of which OCD, WMC, and OC were the first to fold up. At the same date there were 101 separate government ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... regarded as wallowing in money. She left off being middle-class, and was received into the lower upper-class, the upper part of this upper-class being reserved for great names like Astor, Rockefeller and Vanderbilt. With these Mrs. Twist could not compete. She would no doubt some day, for Edward was only thirty and there were still coffee-pots; but what he was able to add to the family income helped her for a time to bear the loss of the elder Twist with less of bleakness in her resignation. ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... of earth he was invited to deliver at Vanderbilt University a series of lectures on poetry and literature. Before the invitation reached him he had "fallen into that perfect ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... be broken up. Then the ferryboat people got busy and petitioned the New York Legislature for the right to run their boats to and fro between the New York and New Jersey sides of the river, and it is interesting to remember that it was on one of these ferry routes that Cornelius Vanderbilt, the great American financier, ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... was that the name Dan Carver suggested something, and then, after an interval, blurting, "Carver? Are you the man who used to be a famous race driver two or three years ago? The man who wrecked himself in the Vanderbilt Cup races rather than take a chance on throwing his machine into the crowd at ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... and the chief. Before retiring for the night, which only meant lying down on a blanket, we usually reclined each against a tree, with a demijohn between us, and by the time sleep overcame us the fortunes of Croesus, Astor and Vanderbilt combined were mere trifles compared with our anticipated wealth, for were we not to be soon endowed with ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... did not get discouraged. I was living, and my wife and children were living; and Vanderbilt was not doing any more than that, after all. I felt all the time that I was getting ready. I worked a good deal harder than I have since I achieved my fortune. Somehow, up to the time it came I had not felt equal to my chance; for ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... mused Tutt, "only last week Judge McAlpin granted the petition of one Solomon Swackhamer to change his name to Phillips Brooks Vanderbilt. Is that right? Is that justice? Is it equity? I ask you!—when he turns down the Fat ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... Vanderbilt, Jr., spent the day telephoning to her friends, asking them to let their automobiles be used to meet the Carpathia and take away those who needed surgical care. It was announced that as a result of Mrs. Vanderbilt's efforts 100 limousine automobiles and all the Fifth Avenue and ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various
... line down. Then pushing the kitchen chair to that end of the rope which was farthest from the stove and the sleeping old man, he stood upon it; and having considered a moment whether he would first call up Mr. Astor, or Mr. Vanderbilt, or Mr. Carnegie, or Mr. Rockefeller, decided upon Mr. Astor, and gave a number to a priceless Central who was promptness itself, who never rang the wrong bell, or reported a busy wire, or cut him off in the midst ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... his life, but lives already." That is stirringly said: but, as a matter of fact, most of the Americans whom we recognize as great did not have such a history; nor, if they had it, would they be on that account more American. On the other hand, the careers of men like Jim Fiske and Commodore Vanderbilt might serve very well as illustrations of the above sketch. If we must wait for our character until our geographical advantages and the absence of social distinctions manufacture it for us, we are likely to remain a long while in suspense. When our foreign visitors ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... absorbing thought with Edward Bok. He had mastered a schoolboy's English, but seven years of public-school education was hardly a basis on which to build the work of a lifetime. He saw each day in his duties as office boy some of the foremost men of the time. It was the period of William H. Vanderbilt's ascendancy in Western Union control; and the railroad millionnaire and his companions, Hamilton McK. Twombly, James H. Banker, Samuel F. Barger, Alonzo B. Cornell, Augustus Schell, William Orton, were objects of great interest to the young office boy. Alexander Graham ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... reproductions of Ritter's works. Willy extolled them to the skies; Frederick honestly admired them. The large bas-relief in the corner of the dining-room represented a group of singing boys, for which Ritter, probably at the suggestion of his customer, a Vanderbilt or an Astor, had used the famous relief of Luca della Robbia as a model. In style, nobility and freshness, his work surpassed anything then being done ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... Son in College Does Not Write His Parents Statehood for West Virginia Stocks Have Declined Substitutes Taking Military Possession of Railroads The Animal must Be Very Slim Somewhere To Critics of Emancipation To General U.S. Grant. Treaty with Mexico Vanderbilt What I Deal with Is Too Vast for Malicious Dealing Who Has the Right Needs Not to Fear Will Not Fight to Free Negroes You Were Right and ...
— Widger's Quotations from Abraham Lincoln's Writings • David Widger
... "Vanderbilt is richer, I can assure you. I should change places with you any time." In my heart I remarked, "Yes, I am worth a hundred thousand dollars, while he is probably struggling to make a living, but I can beat him at his own intellectual game, too, even if he has studied anatomy ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... dancing-master, introduced it into England. Then it went out for many years, until Queen Victoria revived it at a bal costum, at Buckingham Palace in 1845. In New York it was revived and ardently practised for Mrs. W. K. Vanderbilt's splendid fancy ball in 1883, and it was much admired. There seems no reason why the grace, the dignity, the continuous movement; the courtesy, the pas grace, the skilfully-managed train, the play with the fan, should not ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... must go fast; Must take the cars—and risk; They can't afford a Special Train, Like VANDERBILT or FISK; They know a curve that's pretty sharp, A bank that's pretty steep, Rocks that may roll upon the ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various
... most truly executive minds in America. Indeed, as respects this feature, we doubt if any exception could be made to according him the very first position among our business men. Others may occasionally equal him in grasp of intellect, as in the instance of George Law, or Cornelius Vanderbilt; but, considered in the point of executive ability, we consider him unapproachable. He has long been chief among American dry goods dealers, and is known far and wide as the largest merchant (that is, ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... I want the chauffeur to have all his juice on—the engine cranked and ready for another Vanderbilt Cup Race." Bobbie gave the waiter one of his best smiles—behind that smile was a manful look, a kindliness of character and a great power of purpose, which rang true, even to this blase and cynical dispenser of the grape. The latter nodded and smiled, ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... Mrs. Vanderbilt has the heels of her shoes set in diamonds, while another great philanthropist has established a pension for aged parrots. Indeed, the stupidity and sad lack of imagination of our philanthropists ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... into his soup, Jim knocked Mrs. Vanderbilt for a loop. Kate drank from her finger bowl, Kate knocked Mrs. Vanderbilt for a goal. Children who perform such tricks Are ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart
... fortunate enough to attract the attention of Mrs. Grover Cleveland, who admired her talent, and, with Mr. George Vanderbilt, sent her abroad. For two years she studied in Paris, and then went to Berlin, where she became a pupil of Joachim. In Berlin she made her debut in 1896, with the Philharmonic Orchestra, which was ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... proved unsatisfactory and though Michigan won her share of games, interest and enthusiasm waned correspondingly, while the baseball and track teams suffered even more. Henceforth the principal opponents were Pennsylvania, Cornell, Syracuse, and for a time Vanderbilt. ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... occasion, when Goodyear desired to cross between Staten Island and New York, he had to give his umbrella to the ferry master as security for his fare, and that the name of the ferry master was Cornelius Vanderbilt, "a man who made much money because he took few chances." The incident may easily have occurred, though the ferry master could hardly have been Vanderbilt himself, unless it had been at an earlier ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... with considerate softness. Mr. Smith smiled a large, expansive smile and leaned back in his chair. The moment was perfect. His apprehensions were over for the time. Maria was with him, she was his, and he was giving her all this. Could an Astor or a Vanderbilt offer more to the woman of his heart? Henry Smith looked at the plush and gilding about ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... men of rank and wealth, and I remember when in New York he wished particularly to meet Mr. Vanderbilt. I ventured to say he would not find him ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... who later took almost sole possession of Mrs Piper's organism, was far from being alone at first; his place was disputed. The first controls, if they themselves are to be believed, were the actress Mrs Siddons, the musician John Sebastian Bach, the poet Longfellow, Commodore Vanderbilt the multi-millionaire, and a young ...
— Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical Research • Michael Sage
... porter at the office seemed to realize his good points, and we only were admitted to the high honor of personal friendship, an honor which I appreciated more as months went on, and by midsummer not Carnegie, Vanderbilt, and Astor together could have raised money enough to buy a quarter of a share in my ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... battles of Williamsburg and West Point crowded with such of the wounded, both Union and Confederate soldiers as could be brought so far from the battle-fields. She spent two or three weeks here, aiding the noble women who were acting as Matrons of these hospitals. From thence she went on board the Vanderbilt, then just taken as a Government Transport for the wounded from the bloody ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... later, arm in arm, they left the Commodore and made their way through a curious, staring crowd along Forty-second Street, and up Vanderbilt Avenue to the Biltmore. There, with sudden cunning, they rose to the occasion and traversed the lobby, walking fast ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... That coat was too jolly much for him. It was for me, too. As I ran down the stairs, its influence so worked on me that I didn't know just which Vanderbilt I was. ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson |
