BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. " 17 



dence, his remarkable health to advanced age was largely 

 due. Systematic above all in his business. Promptness 

 and punctuality were cardinal virtues with him. He put 

 off nothing: until tomorrow that could as well be done to- 

 day. Whatever he did himself was well done, and what 

 he could not do himself he placed in competent hands, and 

 whenever practicable gave it careful personal supervision. 

 His penmanship was clear and remarkably handsome, and 

 the books which contain the records of his public and pri- 

 vate business would do honor to the best professional 

 accountant. He made out the pay-rolls of both the Gar- 

 den and Park up to the month of his death, and then 

 allowed another to do it only because utterly unable him- 

 self to hold a pen. He managed business matters on 

 strictly business principles, and in so doing knew no differ- 

 ence between a friend and a stranger. He would take no 

 advantage, however legal, of either; but he expected both 

 the friend and the stranger to be as faithful in the dis- 

 chargee of financial obligations and contracts as he himself 

 was — and " his word " was ever "as good as his bond." 

 He was a merchant of the old school, and his ideas of. 

 business honesty and honor belonged to the past rather 

 than to the present ; nor did he ever, under any circum- 

 stances, change them in practice to suit present conditions. 

 Mr. Shaw knew the value of money, as all men do who 

 have labored for it as he did ; but he did not, as many men 

 do, love money for its own sake — for the power itgivesor the 

 luxuries it buys. He had none of that feverish greed of gold 

 of which we see and feel so much. He retired from active 

 business when in the very prime of life, content with what 

 now looks like the quite moderate fortune of $250,000. 

 There is every reason to believe that, with his exceptional 

 qualifications for success in this department, he might 

 easily have increased the $250,000 to $2,500,000 long before 

 he had reached the age of sixty. He retired, not because 

 he was afraid of losing what he had made, or thought he 

 could not make any more ; but because he felt he had 



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