Word: sageness
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...while her husband lives; another will argue that she is entitled to personal property for her private use. In the view of one lenient rabbi, the Sabbath was made for man; another will demand the strict observance of so many Sabbath regulations that they seem, says a Talmudic sage, "like a chain of mountains hanging on a hair." Only by years of study can Talmudic scholars learn how to make the subtle distinction between an authoritative opinion and an erroneous one, and how to correctly apply the wisdom of the past to the problems of the present...
Soon he promoted himself to railroads. A typical operation was the La Crosse & Milwaukie Railroad, which he built in 1852. Sage gave away some $1,000,000 in La Crosse bonds as bribes to state officials, legislators, newsmen in an effort to have awarded to the railroad a major part of the Wisconsin land grant. When the bribery was exposed, he arranged to put the La Crosse into receivership (Sage men were of course the receivers), then created the new Milwaukee & Minnesota Railroad Co., which succeeded to the assets, but not the liabilities, of the La Crosse road. His personal...
Front Man. Richer pickings were to come. Sage expanded his moneylending business (sometimes extracting interest as high as 80%), barely escaped serving a jail term for usury, supplied money to both Vanderbiit and Gould in their battle for control of the Erie Railroad, netted $10 million in ten days during the Panic of 1873, and most important, acquired the brilliant, heaviIy indebted Gould as front man and junior partner...
...more money Sage accumulated, the more he wanted. But he dressed like a man who had just come from a rummage sale: shiny serge jacket, frayed grey vest, floppy black trousers, and square-toed brogans. One day a demented broker marched into Sage's office. In one hand he held a note demanding that Sage give him $1,200,000; in the other hand he held a bag of dynamite. Sage eased a visitor between himself and the dynamite, dashed for the exit. When the smoke cleared away, the broker was dead, the visitor was badly mangled, Sage...
...worshiped his first wife Marie-Henrie blindly, and when she died he blundered into marriage with Olivia Slocum, a blueblooded schoolmistress whose father he had ruined. He spent the rest of his life taunting Olivia with memories of Marie-Henrie. Olivia liked dogs; Sage acquired cats (which Marie-Henrie loved and he detested). Olivia wanted Sage to decorate their house with works of art; Sage hung photographs of locomotives and maps of his railroad holdings. Olivia liked Oriental rugs and bric-a-brac; Sage littered the parlor with buffalo robes. But Olivia got even. When Sage died in 1906, leaving...