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Life of Isaiah V. Williamson

promising prospectuses but in the plain actual facts.

Being known to have cash always on hand, he was sought for to join the best things being organized, and almost as constantly the doubtful schemes that wanted the use of his name to give respectability to proposed operations.

On occasions when invited into investments and directorates upon a special and lower basis than other people, he indignantly declined, declaring that to do so would dishonor him in his own sight and prevent him from looking his friends in the face.

He made the most exhaustive inquiries into the situation of everything he thought of investing in, and after he put his money into any undertaking, he kept close watch on its operations and its operators to the extent, sometimes, of becoming a member of its board and serving as a committee man, in order to give personal attention to make the returns profitable to himself and other stockholders. He made much money from the study of and investment in city real estate, in which, by his foresight, he went ahead of the changes and revolutions ever going on in city localities,