Brice's Greatest Play

Brice'a greatest play was building tne Nickel Píate. He put in every dollar he could get, and there carne a time when he had to sell. He went to Vanderbilt, whose road the Nickel Píate paralloled. Vanderbilt would not buy the Nickel Píate. He said he could afford to wait the first mortgage foreclosure and buy it from the sheriff. "If y ou don 't buy it, Jay-Qould will," said Brice. "Oh, no, he won 't," said Vanderbilt. Brice the went to Qould. He knew that he diá iiot want the Nickel Píate, but he had a beautiful scheme to pröpose. He knew Vanderbilt would buy the road before he would allow Gould to get in. Brice thereupon told Gould that if he would sit silent and not contradict, neither affirrn nor deny, any newspaper articles to the effect that be was going to buy the Nickel Píate, aud after this clamlike silence had continued for a week, if he would then ride slowly over the Nickel Píate in an observation car, Vander, lt would boy the road, and he would give Qould $500, OUU. It struck Gould that the whole thing ■would be a majestic joke od Vanderbilt. The papers said that Gould was going to buy the Nickel Píate. Gould, when questioned, looked wise. At the end of a week he raeandered, snaillike, over the Nickel Píate in the rear end of an observation car and had all the air of a man who was looking at a piece of property. Stories were wired about Gould 's trip f rom every water tank and way etation along the line, and, before Gould had reached Chicago, Vanderbilt, in a fit of hysterics, wired Brice that he wonld take the Nickel Píate. He did so, and Brice was saved. - San Francisco Argonauta '