The shares advanced
enormously. At this time I undertook to negotiate bonds in London for
a bridge to cross the Missouri at Omaha, and while I was absent upon
this business Mr. Scott decided to sell our Union Pacific shares. I
had left instructions with my secretary that Mr. Scott, as one of the
partners in the venture, should have access to the vault, as it might
be necessary in my absence that the securities should be within reach
of some one; but the idea that these should be sold, or that our party
should lose the splendid position we had acquired in connection with
the Union Pacific, never entered my brain.
I returned to find that, instead of being a trusted colleague of the
Union Pacific directors, I was regarded as having used them for
speculative purposes. No quartet of men ever had a finer opportunity
for identifying themselves with a great work than we had; and never
was an opportunity more recklessly thrown away. Mr. Pullman was
ignorant of the matter and as indignant as myself, and I believe that
he at once re-invested his profits in the shares of the Union Pacific.
I felt that much as I wished to do this and to repudiate what had been
done, it would be unbecoming and perhaps ungrateful in me to separate
myself so distinctly from my first of friends, Mr.
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