to suffer a leg amputation, because she delayed so long in looking for a free clinic that his case became incurable. She was wealthy, yet she chose to live like a pauper. In Green's words, "I don't think society means what some rich people would have us believe, I should get very tired of living in one of the great houses in New York, going out all night and sleeping all day. They don't have any real pleasure. It's intercourse with people that I like." Yet she was also a secret philanthropist, avoiding the attention of the press. In her words, "I believe in discreet charity." Hetty also had the reputation of being an effective nurse, caring for her young (apparently with the exception of her son Ned (see above)) and old neighbors. Her favorite poem was William Henry Channing's "My Symphony," which starts with "To live content with small means..." Ken Fisher discusses Green in his 2007 book 100 Minds That Made the Market. Fisher argues that despite her eccentricities, Green was in many ways a better investor than most of her early Wall Street contemporaries. Green clearly understood the power of compound interest, and her focus on regular modest gains of 6% a year and frugal living made her fortune more durable than the likes of Jesse Livermore who repeatedly earned larger sums on more extravagant deals but also went bankrupt through excessive spending and high-risk investments. Later life As a young man, Ned Green moved away from his mother to manage the family's properties in Chicago and, later, Texas. In middle age, he returned to New York; his mother lived her final months with him. Green's daughter Sylvia lived with her mother until her thirties. Green disapproved of all of her daughter's suitors, suspecting that they were after her fortune. Sylvia finally married Matthew Astor Wilks on February 23, 1909, after a two-year courtship. A minor heir to the Astor fortune, Wilks entered the marriage with $2 million of his own, enough to assure Green that he was not a gold digger. Nonetheless, she compelled him to sign a prenuptial agreement waiving his right to inherit Sylvia's fortune. When her grown children left home, Green moved repeatedly among small apartments in Brooklyn Heights and after 1898, in Hoboken, New Jersey, mainly to avoid New York's property tax, though she did loan money to the city at reasonable