One might find these great domains anywhere around the city, at a distance of from thirty to sixty miles; there were two or three hundred of them, and incredible were the sums of money which had been spent upon their decoration.  One saw an artificial lake of ten thousand acres, made upon land which had cost several hundred dollars an acre; one saw gardens with ten thousand rose-bushes, and a quarter of a million dollars’ worth of lilies from Japan; there was one estate in which had been planted a million dollars’ worth of rare trees, imported from all over the world.  Some rich men, who had nothing else to amuse them, would make their estates over and over again, changing the view about their homes as one changes the scenery in a play.  Over in New Jersey the Hegans were building a castle upon a mountain-top, and had built a special railroad simply to carry the materials.  Here, also, was the estate of the tobacco king, upon which three million dollars had been spent before the plans of the mansion had even been drawn; there were artificial lakes and streams, and fantastic bridges and statuary, and scores of little model plantations and estates, according to the whim of the owner.  And here in the Pocantico Hills was the estate of the oil king, about four square miles, with thirty miles of model driveways; many car-loads of rare plants had been imported for its gardens, and it took six hundred men to keep it in order.  There was a golf course, a little miniature Alps, upon which the richest man in the world pursued his lost health, with armed guards and detectives patrolling the dace all day, and a tower with a search-light, whereby at night he could flood the grounds with light by pressing a button.

In one of these places lived the heir of the great house of Devon.  His cousin dwelt in Europe, saying that America was not a fit place for a gentleman to live in.  Each of them owned a hundred million dollars’ worth of New York real estate, and drew their tribute of rents from the toil of the swarming millions of the city.  And always, according to the policy of the family, they bought new real estate.  They were directors of the great railroads tributary to the city, and in touch with the political machines, and in every other way in position to know what was under way:  if a new subway were built to set the swarming millions free, the millions would find the land all taken up, and apartment-houses newly built for them—­and the Devons were the owners.  They had a score of the city’s greatest hotels—­and also slum tenements, and brothels and dives in the Tenderloin.  They did not even have to know what they owned; they did not have to know anything, or do anything—­they lived in their palaces, at home or abroad, and in their offices in the city the great rent-gathering machine ground on.