In later years, he was taught its value by repeated experience in his contact with corporate laws, contracts, property leases, and other matters; and he determined that, whatever the direction of activity taken by his sons, each should spend at least a year in the study of law.
The control of the Western Union Telegraph Company had now passed into the hands of Jay Gould and his companions, and in the many legal matters arising therefrom, Edward saw much, in his office, of "the little wizard of Wall Street." One day, the financier had to dictate a contract, and, coming into Mr.Cary's office, decided to dictate it then and there.

An hour afterward Edward delivered the copy of the contract to Mr.Gould, and the financier was so struck by its accuracy and by the legibility of the handwriting that afterward he almost daily "happened in" to dictate to Mr.Cary's stenographer.

Mr.Gould's private stenographer was in his own office in lower Broadway; but on his way down-town in the morning Mr.Gould invariably stopped at the Western Union Building, at 195 Broadway; and the habit resulted in the installation of a private office there.

He borrowed Edward to do his stenography.

The boy found himself taking not only letters from Mr.
Gould's dictation, but, what interested him particularly, the financier's orders to buy and sell stock.
Edward watched the effects on the stock-market of these little notes which he wrote out and then shot through a pneumatic tube to Mr.
Gould's brokers.