Emperor's Dream

Sad are my thoughts, for I am forty, Sad as the drifting leaves this autumn day. . . .

Until today it seemed my path led upward,

But now I find myself upon a constant downward slope

Which gains in pitch until I see Dim, distantly a void. . . .

Thus in 1937 wrote Robert Ralph Young, a financial wizard given to homespun free verse. He had worked hard gathering unto himself the mammoth railroad empire created by Cleveland's famed, buccaneering Van Sweringen brothers, and it seemed about to slip from his hands.

Last week Robert Young was no...

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