him the richest man in America.  When he first trod the streets of New York, in 1784, the city was a snug, leafy place of twenty-five thousand inhabitants, situated at the extremity of the Island, mostly below Cortlandt Street.  In 1800, when he began to have money to invest, the city had more than doubled in population, and had advanced nearly a mile up the Island.  Now, Astor was a shrewd calculator of the future.  No reason appeared why New York should not repeat this doubling game and this mile of extension every fifteen years.  He acted upon the supposition, and fell into the habit of buying lands and lots just beyond the verge of the city.  One little anecdote will show the wisdom of this proceeding.  He sold a lot in the vicinity of Wall Street, about the year 1810, for eight thousand dollars, which was supposed to be somewhat under its value.  The purchaser, after the papers were signed, seemed disposed to chuckle over his bargain.

“Why, Mr. Astor,” said he, “in a few years this lot will be worth twelve thousand dollars.”

“Very true,” replied Astor; “but now you shall see what I will do with this money.  With eight thousand dollars I buy eighty lots above Canal Street.  By the time your lot is worth twelve thousand dollars, my eighty lots will be worth eighty thousand dollars”; which proved to be the fact.

His purchase of the Richmond Hill estate of Aaron Burr was a case in point.  He bought the hundred and sixty acres at a thousand dollars an acre, and in twelve years the land was worth fifteen hundred dollars a lot.  In the course of time the Island was dotted all over with Astor lands,—­to such an extent that the whole income of his estate for fifty years could be invested in new houses without buying any more land.

His land speculations, however, were by no means confined to the little Island of Manhattan.  Aged readers cannot have forgotten the most celebrated of all his operations of this kind, by which he acquired a legal title to one third of the county of Putnam in this State.  This enormous tract was part of the estate of Roger Morris and Mary his wife, who, by adhering to the King of Great Britain in the Revolutionary War, forfeited their landed property in the State of New York.  Having been duly attainted as public enemies, they fled to England at the close of the war, and the State sold their lands, in small parcels, to honest Whig farmers.  The estate comprised fifty-one thousand one hundred and two acres, upon which were living, in 1809, more than seven hundred families, all relying upon the titles which the State of New York had given.  Now Mr. Astor stepped forward to disturb the security of this community of farmers.  It appeared, and was proved beyond doubt, that Roger and Mary Morris had only possessed a life-interest in this estate, and that, therefore, it was only that life-interest which the State could legally confiscate.  The moment Roger and Mary Morris ceased to live, the