He was a thoroughly upright man, his transactions were rigidly honest; but as a man, candor compels the acknowledgment that he was not a safe or admirable model.  He was utterly devoid of generosity.  Liberal to an extreme with his own family, he was close and hard with others.  He paid small wages to his employes and never gave more than the man bargained for, no matter what extra service might be rendered.  He carried his economy to a degree of meanness painful to contemplate.  At his death, out of his vast estate, he left to his friend and faithful manager an annuity of only two hundred dollars, which his son increased to fifteen hundred.

One of his captains once succeeded in saving for him property in China to the amount of seven hundred thousand dollars, which had become jeopardized by the sudden death of the agent in charge of it.  This service was purely voluntary, and was one which required the greatest skill, determination, and courage on the part of the captain, and Astor acknowledged it, frequently saying:  “If you had not done just as you did, I should never have seen one dollar of my money; no, not one dollar of it.”  This was the only acknowledgment he made, however.  He was worth ten millions of dollars, and the captain had only his pay—­twelve hundred dollars a year—­and a family.  At his father’s death Mr. William B. Astor sent a considerable sum to the old seaman in return for this service.

“We have all heard much of the closeness, or rather the meanness, of this remarkable man.  Truth compels us to admit that he was not generous, except to his own kindred.  His liberality began and ended in his own family.  Very seldom during his lifetime did he willingly do a generous act, outside of the little circle of his relations and descendants.  To get all he could, and to keep nearly all that he got—­those were the laws of his being....  He enjoyed keenly the consciousness, the feeling, of being rich.  The roll-book of his possessions was his Bible.  He scanned it fondly, and saw, with quiet but deep delight, the catalogue of his property lengthening from month to month.  The love of accumulation grew with his years, until it ruled him like a tyrant.  If at fifty he possessed his millions, at sixty-five his millions possessed him.  Only to his own children and to their children was he liberal; and his liberality to them was all arranged with a view to keeping his estate in the family, and to cause it at every moment to tend toward a final consolidation in one enormous mass.”

This is the estimate of his character formed by Mr. James Parton.  His friend Dr. Coggswell presents him in quite a different light.  He says: