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Rise, Fall and Rise of Jay Cooke and Henry Villard. The First Began the Building of the Northern Pacific Railroad. The Other Made the Great Road an Assured Success. Sketches of Their Busy Lives and Their Magnificent Homes. The receivers of the banking firm of Jay Cooke & Co., of Philadelphia, have just announced their readiness to pay the last dividend to the creditors of that house, and thus at the same time close the trust they have managed and ring down the curtain on the last act of one of the most interesting dramas produced by the development of the material resources of this country. The building of the Northern Pacific railwas one of the most stupendous of the many large undertakings in the era of great achievements. It took an excessive amount of faith and courage to believe in the undertaking, and the even moderately conservative people in the financial world were inclined to look upon those who were firm believers as chimerically sanguine in their anticipations and foolhardy in their hopefal courage. In the history of the building of this great road, the completion of which has already given several states to the Union, there are two men whose names will always be more prominent than any others-Jay Cooke and Henry Villard, One of these began the construction of the road and the other finished it. A crisis in the affairs of the great company administered at different times by these men brought each of them face to face with personal ruin. and on each occasion the disturbance to credits and
