"Boss" Tweed : the story of a grim generation / by Denis Tilden Lynch.

96 "Boss" Tweed
from his boyhood scenes. The young rustic was born in the
Catskills, in the little village of Roxbury. Here, too, was John
Burroughs born, and here the naturalist sleeps his last, long
sleep. It seems strange that the small village which produced
a John Burroughs should also produce a Jason Gould, or Jay
Gould, as he began calling himself about the time 'he came to
the Metropolis with a mousetrap under his arm.
The Metropolis dazzled the country youth. He laid his
mousetrap on the seat of a horse car on which he was riding
while he went out on the driver's platform to see more of the
sights of the town. While the car was in motion a fellowpassenger jumped off the rear platform. Gould, suspicious
of all men, at once thought of his mousetrap. It was gone.
He looked after the passenger who had leaped unceremoniously
from the rear platform. He had Jay Gould's invention under
his arm. Gould now made an unceremonious leap, and after a
sharp sprint, overtook the thief, who was glad to surrender
the package containing the mousetrap and make his escape.
Gould sold his invention and took his departure from the city.
It was not until six years later that he returned to New York
to make it his home. Here he continued his plundering and
betraying, only on a larger and unprecedented scale. He was
an unscrupulous fellow, of whom but one good word has been
said. It is said that he was faithful to his wife. We are all
familiar with that phrase. We have heard it said of the most
corrupt scoundrels in public life. We will cease to hear it
when a Constitutional Amendment is adopted decreeing that
only the epicene may hold office or positions of quasi-public
trust. Let us give Gould the benefit of the doubt, a doubt
raised by his constant companionship and partnership with a
man who used the flesh of women as one of his forms of bribery,
a doubt raised by his frequent presence in the house of a beautiful and notorious harlot which was the rendezvous of Tweed
and his cronies.
Gould had made his own way in the world from the age of
fourteen. Late in life, when a phase of his piratical operations
in Wall Street was under investigation by a committee of the
United States Senate, Gould thus described his early struggles: