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Little Visits with Great Americans, Vol. 2 (of 2)

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Title: Little Visits with Great Americans, Vol. 2 (of 2)

Editor: Orison Swett Marden


        
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      A table of contents for this volume is contained within
      Volume I.





[Illustration: JOYS OF HOME]


LITTLE VISITS WITH GREAT AMERICANS

Or

Success
Ideals and
How to
Attain Them

Edited by

Orison Swett Marden

Author of “Pushing to the Front,” etc., etc., etc.







The Success Company
New York
1905

Copyright, 1903
By
The Success Company
New York

Copyright, 1904
By
The Success Company
New York

All Rights Reserved




XXXIV

A “Printer’s Devil” Whose Perseverance Wins Him Well-Earned Reputation
as a Fun-Maker.


THE felicity of F. Opper’s caricatures is marvelous. His drawings for
the Dinkelspiel stories, by George V. Hobart, in the New York “Morning
Journal” have drawn to him the pleased attention of those whom he has
caused to laugh at the happy expressions of his characters,—at the
ridiculous expressions of the characters,—during Mr. Dinkelspiel’s
“gonversationings,” particularly at Mr. Dinkelspiel’s earnest look.

He is a caricaturist of the “first water,” and in this connection I may
say that a caricature too carefully drawn often loses its humor. Still
Mr. Opper has proved his ability to finish a drawing smoothly. Those
familiar with the back numbers of “Puck” will concede this and much
more.

His life is an example of determination. I called, by appointment, at
his house in Bensonhurst (near Bath Beach), a pretty suburb within the
precincts of Greater New York. We stepped into his library.

He drew my attention to the pictures on the four walls of the room.
“Those are all ‘originals,’ by contemporaries,” he said, “and there is
one by poor Mike Woolf. We were intimate friends, and I attended his
funeral.”


STUDIES OUT HIS IDEAS.

The conversation turned toward Mr. Opper himself, and I asked:—

“How is it you can conceive so many ridiculous ideas and predicaments?”

“It is a matter of study,” he replied. “I work methodically certain
hours of the day, but very seldom at night. We will say it is a
political cartoon on a certain occurrence that I am to draw. I
deliberately sit down and study out my idea. When it is formed, I begin
to draw. I never commence to draw without a conception of what I am
going to do.”

“And when did you first put pencil to paper?” I asked.

“Almost as soon as I could creep. I was born in Madison, Ohio, in
1857, and as far back as I can remember, I had a determination to
become an artist. My path often swerved from my ambition, on account
of necessity, but my determination was back of me, and whenever an
obstacle was removed I advanced thus much farther toward my goal.

“I went to the village school till I was fourteen years of age, and
then I went to work in the village store. Both at school and in the
store, every spare moment found me with pencil and paper, sketching
something comical; so much so, indeed, that I became known for it.”


A PRINTER’S DEVIL.

“I remained in the store for a few months, and then went to work
on the weekly paper, and acted the part of a ‘printer’s devil.’
Afterward, I set type. In about a year, the idea firmly possessed me
that I could draw, and I decided that it was best to go to New York.
But my self-esteem was not so great as to rate myself a full-fledged
artist. My idea was to obtain a position as a compositor in New York,
to draw between times, and gradually to land myself where my hopes
all centered. So my disappointment was great when, on arriving in
the city, I discovered that, to become a compositor, I must serve
an apprenticeship of three years. I was in New York, in an artistic
environment, and had burned my bridges; accordingly I looked for a
place, and obtained one in a store. One of my duties there was to make
window cards, to advertise the whole line, or a particular lot of
goods. I decorated them in my best fashion.”


GOOD USE OF LEISURE TIME.

“All the leisure I had to myself, evenings and holidays, I spent in
making comic sketches, and I took them to the comic papers,—to the
‘Phunny Phellow,’ and ‘Wild Oats.’ I just submitted rough sketches.
Soon the editors permitted me to draw the sketches also, which was
great encouragement. I met Frank Beard, and called on him, by request,
and he proposed that I come into his office. So I left the store,
after having been there eight or nine months, and ceased drawing
show-cards for the windows. I drew for ‘Wild Oats,’ ‘Harper’s Weekly,’
‘Frank Leslie’s,’ and the ‘Century,’ which at that time was Scribner’s
publication; and later for ‘St. Nicholas.’”

It was then that Mr. Opper had an offer from “Leslie’s” to work on the
staff at a salary, which he accepted.

“I was only a little over twenty years of age,” he continued. “I was
a humorous draughtsman, and a special artist, also; going where I was
directed to make sketches of incidents, people and scenes.”

Six years before, Mr. Opper had left the village school with a burning
determination to become an artist. It can be seen how well he sailed
his bark,—tacking and drifting, and finally beating home with the wind
full on the sails. This shows what determination will do.


HIS CONNECTION WITH “PUCK.”

“Three years later,” said Mr. Opper, “I had an offer from the
publishers of ‘Puck’ to work for them,—a connection which I severed
not long ago, although I still hold stock in the company. I not
only made my own drawings, but furnished ideas for others. I have
always furnished my own captions, inscriptions and headings. Indeed,
they are a part of a cartoon, or other humorous work. I think that
I may say that ‘Puck’ owes some of its success to me, for I labored
conscientiously.”

Mr. Opper walked over to a mantelpiece for two books of sketches, which
he handed me to look at. They contained sketches of the country places
he had visited on his summer wanderings.

“And you use these?” I asked.

“Yes; if I want a farmer leaning over a fence with a cow in the
distance. I can use that barnyard scene And that bit of a country road
can be made useful. So can that corncrib with the tin pans turned
upside down on the posts supporting it, to keep the rats off. That old
hay-wagon, and that farmer with a rake and a large straw hat can all be
worked in. I always carry a sketch-book with me, no matter where I go.”


THE “SUBURBAN RESIDENT.”

On “Puck,” Mr. Opper was the originator of the “suburban resident,” who
has since been the subject of much innocent merriment,—the gentleman
with the high silk hat, side whiskers, glasses, an anxious expression,
and bundles, and always on the rush for a train.

“I enjoyed those,” said Mr. Opper, with a laugh, “before I became a
suburban myself.”




XXXV

“A Square Man in a Round Hole” Rejects $5,000 a Year and Becomes a
Sculptor.


“MY LIFE?” repeated F. Wellington Ruckstuhl, one of the foremost
sculptors of America, as we sat in his studio looking up at his
huge figure of “Force.” “When did I begin to sculpture? As a child
I was forever whittling, but I did not have dreams then of becoming
a sculptor. It was not till I was thirty-two years of age. And
love,—disappointment in my first love played a prominent part.”

“But as a boy, Mr. Ruckstuhl?”

“I was a poet. Every sculptor or artist is necessarily a poet. I was
always reaching out and seeking the beautiful. My father was a foreman
in a St. Louis machine shop. He came to this country in a sailing ship
from Alsace, by way of the Gulf, to St. Louis, when I was but six years
old. He was a very pious man and a deacon in a church. One time, Moody
and Sankey came to town, and my father made me attend the meetings. I
think he hoped that I would become a minister. But I decided that ‘many
are called, but few are chosen.’ Between the ages of fourteen and
nineteen, I worked in a photographic supply store; wrote one hundred
poems, and read incessantly. I enlarged a view of the statue of Nelson
in Trafalgar Square, London, into a ‘plaster sketch,’ ten times as
large as the picture, but still I did not know my path. I began the
study of philosophy, and kept up my reading for ten years. My friends
thought I would become a literary man. I wrote for the papers, and
belonged to a prominent literary club. I tried to analyze myself. ‘I
am a man,’ I said, ‘but what am I good for? What am I to make of this
life?’ I drifted from one position to another. Every one was sorry to
part with my services, for I always did my duties as well as they can
be done. When I was twenty-five years of age, the girl to whom I was
attached was forced by her mother to marry a wealthy man. She died a
year afterward, and I ‘pulled up stakes,’ and started on a haphazard,
reckless career. I went to Colorado, drifted into Arizona, prospected,
mined and worked on a ranch. I went to California, and at one time
thought of shipping for China. My experiences would fill a book. Again
I reached St. Louis. For a year I could not find a thing to do, and
became desperate.”


MADE HIS FIRST SKETCH AT TWENTY-FIVE.

“And you had done nothing at art so far?” I asked.

“At that time I saw a clay sketch. I said to myself, ‘I can do as well
as that,’ and I copied it. My second sketch admitted me to the St.
Louis Sketch Club. I told my friends that I would be a sculptor. They
laughed and ridiculed me. I had secured a position in a store, and at
odd times worked at what I had always loved, but had only half realized
it. Notices appeared in the papers about me, for I was popular in the
community. I entered the competition for a statue of General Frank R.
Blair. I received the first prize, but when the committee discovered
that I was only a bill clerk in a store, they argued that I was not
competent to carry out the work, although I was given the first prize
medal and the one hundred and fifty dollars accompanying it.”

“But that inspired you?”

“Yes, but my father and mother put every obstacle in the way possible.
I was driven from room to room. I was not even allowed to work in
the attic.” Here Mr. Ruckstuhl laughed. “You see what genius has to
contend with. I was advanced in position in the store, till I became
assistant manager at two thousand dollars a year. When I told the
proprietor that I had decided to be a sculptor, he gazed at me in blank
astonishment. ‘A sculptor?’ he queried, incredulously, and made a few
very discouraging remarks, emphasized with dashes. ‘Why, young man,
are you going to throw up the chance of a lifetime? I will give you
five thousand dollars a year, and promote you to be manager if you will
remain with me.’”


HE GAVE UP A LARGE SALARY TO PURSUE ART.

“But I had found my life’s work,” said Mr. Ruckstuhl, turning to me. “I
knew it would be a struggle through poverty, till I attained fame. But
I was confident in myself, which is half of the battle.”

“And you went abroad?”

“Yes, with but two hundred and fifty dollars,” he replied. “I traveled
through Europe for five months, and visited the French Salon. I said
to myself, ‘I can do that, and that,’ and my confidence grew. But
there was some work that completely ‘beat’ me. I returned to America
penniless, but with a greater insight into art. I determined that I
would retrace my steps to Paris, and study there for three years, and
thought that would be sufficient to fully develop me. My family and
friends laughed me to scorn, and I was discouraged by everyone. In four
months, in St. Louis, I secured seven orders for busts, at two hundred
dollars each, to be done after my return from France. That shows that
some persons had confidence in me and in my talent.

“O, the student life in Paris! How I look back with pleasure upon those
struggling, yet happy days! In two months, I started on my female
figure of ‘Evening,’ in the nude, that now is in the Metropolitan
Museum of Art. I finished it in nine months, and positively sweat blood
in my work. I sent it to the Salon, and went to Italy. When I returned
to Paris, I saw my name in the paper, with honorable mention. I suppose
you can realize my feelings; I experienced the first flush of victory.
I brought it to America, and exposed it in St. Louis. Strange to
say, I rose in the estimation of even my family. My father actually
congratulated me. A wealthy man in St. Louis gave me three thousand
dollars to have my ‘Evening’ put into marble. I returned with it to
Paris, and in a month and a quarter it was exhibited in the Salon. At
the world’s Fair at Chicago, it had the place of honor, and received
one of the eleven grand medals given to American sculptors. In 1892,
I came to New York. This statue of ‘Force’ will be erected, with my
statue of ‘Wisdom,’ on the new Hall of Records in New York.”

We gazed at it, seated and clothed in partial armor, of the old Roman
type, and holding a sword across its knees. The great muscles spoke of
strength and force, and yet with it all there was an almost benign look
upon the military visage.

“There is force and real action there, withal, although there is
repose,” I said in admiration.


THE INSPIRATION THAT COUNTS.

“Oh,” said Mr. Ruckstuhl, “that’s it, and that is what it is so hard to
get! That is what every sculptor strives for; and, unless he attains
it, his work, from my point of view is worthless. There must be life
in a statue; it must almost breathe. In repose there must be dormant
action that speaks for itself.”

“Is most of your work done under inspiration?” I asked.

“There is nothing, and a great deal, in so-called inspiration. I
firmly believe that we mortals are merely tools, mediums, at work here
on earth. I peg away and bend all my energies to my task. I simply
accomplish nothing. Suddenly, after considerable preparatory toil,
the mist clears away; I see things clearly; everything is outlined
for me. I believe there is a conscious and a subconscious mind. The
subconscious mind is the one that does original work; it cannot be
affected by the mind that is conscious to all our petty environments.
When the conscious mind is lulled and silenced, the subconscious one
begins to work. That I call inspiration.”

“Are you ever discouraged?” I asked out of curiosity.

“Continually,” replied Mr. Ruckstuhl, looking down at his hands,
soiled with the working clay. “Some days I will be satisfied with what
I have done. It will strike me as simply fine. I will be as happy
as a bird, and leave simply joyous. The following morning, when the
cloths are removed, I look at my precious toil, and consider it vile.
I ask myself: ‘Are you a sculptor or not? Do you think that you ever
will be one? Do you consider that art?’ So it is, till your task is
accomplished. You are your own critic, and are continually distressed
at your inability to create your ideals.”

Mr. F. Wellington Ruckstuhl is fifty years of age; neither short nor
tall; a brilliant man, with wonderful powers of endurance, for his work
is more exacting and tedious than is generally supposed.

“I have simply worked a month and a quarter on that statue,” he said.
“Certain work dissatisfied me, and I obliterated it. I have raised that
head three times. My eyes get weary, and I become physically tired. On
such occasions I sit down and smoke a little to distract my thoughts,
and to clear my mind. Then my subconscious mind comes into play again,”
he concluded with a smile.

Mr. Ruckstuhl’s best known works are: “Mercury Teasing the Eagle of
Jupiter,” which is of bronze, nine feet high, which he made in Paris;
a seven-foot statue of Solon, erected in the Congressional Library at
Washington; busts of Franklin, Goethe and Macaulay, on the front of the
same library; and the eleven-foot statue of bronze of “Victory,” for
the Jamaica soldiers’ and sailors’ monument. In competition, he won
the contract for an equestrian statue of General John F. Hartranft,
ex-Governor of Pennsylvania, which he also made in Paris. It is
considered the finest piece of work of its kind in America. Besides
this labor, he has made a number of medallions and busts.

“Art was in me as a child,” he said; “I was discouraged whenever it
beckoned me, but finally it claimed me. I surrendered a good position
to follow it, whether it led through a thorny road or not. A sculptor
is an artist, a musician, a poet, a writer, a dramatist, to throw
action, breath and life, music and a soul into his creation. I can pick
up an instrument and learn it instantly; I can sing, and act, so I am
in touch with the sympathies of the beings that I endeavor to create.
You will find most sculptors and artists of my composite nature.

“There,” said Mr. Ruckstuhl, and he stretched out his arm, with his
palm downward, and moved it through the air, as he gazed into distance,
“you strive to create the imagination of your mind, and it comes to you
as if sent from another world.

“You strive. That is the way to success.”




XXXVI

During Leisure Hours He “Found Himself” and Abandoned the Law for Art.


THERE is a charming lesson in the way Henry Merwin Shrady, the
sculptor, “found himself.” A few years ago, this talented artist, whose
splendid buffalo and moose ornamented the entrance of the Pan-American
Exposition at Buffalo, was employed as an assistant manager in the
match business of his brother-in-law, Edwin Gould. It was by attempts
at self-improvement through painting in oil, during leisure hours, that
he discovered his capacity for art, and, finally, for sculpture of a
high order of merit.

“I always secretly wished,” he said modestly, “to become a great
painter, and, with that in view, dabbled in oils from childhood. My
family wished me to study medicine, but my nature revolted at the
cutting of flesh; so, after a course at Columbia University, I studied
law. An attack of typhoid fever, caught at a Yale-Harvard boat race,
after my graduation, incapacitated me for work for a year. Then I went
into the match business, instead of practicing law.

“After business hours and on holidays, I taught myself painting. I have
never taken a lesson in drawing, in painting, or in sculpture, in my
life. I joined the Bronx Zoölogical Society, that I might the better
study animals, and it was at these gardens that I made the sketches for
my buffalo and moose.”

Mr. Shrady taught himself the art of mixing oils, and then, in spare
hours, called on William H. Beard, at his studio, for the delineator of
“The Bulls and Bears of Wall Street” to criticise his sketches. Once
Mr. Beard said, prophetically, “Some day you will forsake all for art.”


A PET DOG HIS FIRST PAINTING.

The young artist had, at his home, a fox-terrier, of which he was very
fond. He painted a picture of the dog, and his wife, thinking it an
excellent piece of work, offered it clandestinely for exhibition at the
National Academy of Design. It was accepted. Great was his astonishment
when he recognized it there. It was sold for fifty dollars. His next
serious attempt was caused by a little rivalry. His sister brought from
abroad an expensive painting of some French kittens. He instantly took
a dislike to the kittens, and said he would paint her some Angora ones.
To make satisfactory sketches, he carried a sketch-book in his pocket,
on his walks to and from his office, pausing on the pavements before
the different fanciers’ windows to sketch the kittens within. This
picture was also accepted by the National Academy of Design. But he
refused an offer to sell it, as he had promised it to his sister, Mrs.
Gould, for a Christmas present.

“It was on account of the almost impossible feat of getting colorings
at night,” he said, “that I turned to modeling in clay. I wanted to do
something to improve as well as amuse me. I modeled a battery going
into action, but did not finish it till persuaded to do so by Alvin S.
Southworth, a special correspondent of a New York paper in the Crimean
War, and friend of my father, Dr. Shrady. It was to gratify him that
I finished it. A photograph of it, reproduced in ‘The Journalist,’
attracted a gentleman in the employ of the firm of Theodore B. Starr.
He called upon me, and encouraged me to have it made in Russian bronze.
That house purchased it, and advised me to enter the field, as they saw
prospects for American military pieces.”

Mr. Shrady sketched the gun-carriage and harness for his battery in the
Seventh Regiment armory, to which regiment he has belonged for seven
years; and his own saddle horse was his model for the horses of the
battery.

One day Carl Bitter, the sculptor, dropped in at Starr’s, while Mr.
Shrady was there. He noticed the small bronzes,—the buffalo and the
moose. “I think we can use them at the Buffalo Exposition,” he said.
Mr. Bitter offered the sculptor the use of his studio, in Hoboken, and,
in six weeks, by rising at half past five in the morning, and working
ten hours a day, he enlarged his buffalo to eight feet in height, and
his moose, a larger animal, to nine feet. Then glue molds were taken of
both of them, with the greatest care.

“I had never enlarged, or worked in plaster of Paris before,” said Mr.
Shrady. “They gave me the tools and plaster, and told me to go to work.
I didn’t know how to proceed, at first, but eventually learned all
right. I think I could do such work with more ease now,” he added, “for
that was practical experience I could not get in an art school.”

Since then, Mr. Shrady has made a realistic cavalry piece, “Saving the
Colors,”—of two horsemen, one shot and falling, and the other snatching
the colors; also, “The Empty Saddle,”—of a cavalry horse, saddled and
bridled, and quietly grazing at a distance from the scene of the death
of his rider. This was exhibited at the Academy of American Artists.
The Academy of Fine Arts, of Philadelphia, requested Mr. Shrady to
exhibit at its exhibition in January, 1902.

The youthful sculptor has the gift of giving life, expression and
feeling to his animals, which, some say, is unsurpassed.


A UNIQUE EXPERIMENT WITH A HORSE.

“I do not believe,” said he, “in working from an anatomical figure,
or in covering a horse with skin and hair after you have laid in his
muscles. You are apt to make prominent muscles which are not really
prominent. Once I soaked a horse with water, and took photographs of
him, to make a record of the muscles and tendons that really show.
They are practically few, except when in active use. In an art school
you learn little about a horse. The way which I approve is to place
a horse before you, study him and know him, and work till you have
reproduced him. No master, standing over your shoulder, can teach you
more than you can observe, if you have the soul. Corot took his easel
into the woods, and studied close to nature, till he painted truthfully
a landscape. Angelo’s best work was that done to suit his personal view.

“Talent may be born, but it depends upon your own efforts whether
it comes to much. I believe that if your hobby, desire, or talent,
whichever you wish to call it, is to paint or model, you can teach
yourself better than you can be taught, providing you really love your
work, as I do.”

Thus did Mr. Shrady desert a mechanical life he disliked, and start
on a promising career. He is still young, slight, and with delicate
features. His heart is tender toward animals, and he refuses to
hunt. His chief delight is in riding the horse which has figured so
prominently in his work. His success proves two things: the value of
leisure moments, and the wisdom of turning a hobby into a career.




XXXVII

Deformed in Body, His Cheerful Spirit Makes Him the Entertainer of
Princes.


A SCORE of years ago, seated on a bench in Bryant Park, a hungry lad
wept copious tears over his failure to gain a supper or a night’s
lodging. A peddler’s outfit lay beside him. Not a sale had he made that
day. His curiously diminutive body was neatly clad, but his heart was
heavy. He was dreadfully hungry, as only a boy can be.

“Oh, see the funny little man!” exclaimed a quartet of little girls, as
they trooped past the shrinking figure. “Mamma! Come and buy something
from him!”

Down the steps of a brown stone mansion came a young matron, curiosity
shining out of her handsome eyes. The boy looked up and smiled. The
lady did not buy anything, but her mother’s heart was touched, and
before she hurried home with her little girls, she gave him five cents.

Last winter, two members of the Lamb’s Club were about to part on the
club steps. One was “The Prince of Entertainers and the Entertainer of
Princes,” Marshall P. Wilder. The other was a distinguished lawyer.

“Come and dine with me to-night, Mr. Wilder,” said the latter. “You
have never accepted my hospitality, but you have no engagements for
to-night, so come along.”

Ten minutes later, the great entertainer was presented to the wife of
his host and to four beautiful young women.

A curious thrill passed over the guest as he looked into those charming
faces. They seemed familiar. A flash of memory carried him back to that
scene in the park. He turned to the hostess:—

“Do you remember,”—his voice trembled,—“a little chap in the park years
ago, to whom you were kind,—‘a funny little man,’ the children called
him, and you gave him five cents?”

“Yes, yes, I do remember that,—and you—?”

“I am the funny little man.”

It was indeed true. The hungry boy had not forgotten it, though wealth
and fame had come to him in the meanwhile. In a little private diary
that no one sees but himself, he has five new birth dates marked, those
of the mother and her four daughters. “Just to remember those who have
been kind to me,” is the only explanation on the cover of the book.

What a brightly interesting story is Wilder’s, anyway! Who else in
all this great, broad land has made such a record,—from a peddler’s
pack to a fortune of one hundred thousand dollars,—and all because
he is merry and bright and gay in spite of his physical drawbacks.
His nurse dropped him when he was an infant, but for years the injury
did not manifest itself. At three he was a bright baby, the pride of
the dear old father, Doctor Wilder, who still survives to enjoy his
son’s popularity in the world of amusement-makers. It was no fault of
the doctor that Marshall was obliged to go hungry in New York. Doctor
Wilder lived and practiced in Hartford, where his son ought to have
stayed, but he didn’t. At five he was handsome and well formed, but
at twelve he stopped growing. The boys began to tease him about his
diminutive stature.

“I don’t think I’ve grown very much since,—except in experience,” he
said the other day in the course of a morning chat in his handsome
bachelor apartments. “I thought, by leaving home, I might at least grow
up with the country.”

“But you didn’t grow, after all?”

“No, I haven’t found the country yet that can make me grow up with it.
I guess I’ll have to be satisfied with being a plain expansionist.”
[Mr. Wilder is nearly as broad as he is long.]

“How did you happen to choose the amusement profession?” I asked.


NATURE’S LAW OF COMPENSATION.

“I was always a good mimic,” he replied, “and I found my talents lay
in that direction. I created a new business, that of story-teller,
imitator of celebrated people, and of sleight-of-hand performer, all
without the aid of costumes, depending solely on my facial expression
to give point to the humor. Nature had certainly tried to make amends
for her frowns by giving me facial power,—the power to smile away dull
care. There is a niche in life for everyone, a place where one belongs.
Society is like a pack of cards. Some members of it are kings and
others are knaves, while I,—I discovered that I was the little joker.”

Mr. Wilder is a bubbling fountain of wit, whose whimsicalities are
no less entertaining to himself than to his hearers. As he quaintly
expresses it, they are “ripples from the ocean of my moods which have
touched the shore of my life.” His disposition is so cheery that
children and dogs come to him instantly. Eugene Field has the same
trait.


HOW HE TOOK JOSEPH JEFFERSON’S LIFE.

His first appearance on any stage was made in “Rip Van Winkle,” when
he was a boy. Joseph Jefferson carried him on his back as a dwarf.
The great “Rip” has remained his steadfast friend ever since. Only a
few years ago, Wilder left New York to fulfil a church entertainment
engagement in Utica. He got there at three in the afternoon. Mr.
Jefferson’s private car was on the track, containing himself, William
J. Florence, Mrs. John Drew, Viola Allen, and Otis Skinner. They
hailed him instantly and induced him to pass the afternoon in the car
and to take dinner with them. His church engagement was over at half
past eight, and at Mr. Jefferson’s invitation he occupied a box at the
opera house. The house happened to be a small one, while the church had
been crowded to the doors. After the theater, the Jefferson party again
entertained the humorist in the car, keeping him until his train left,
half an hour after midnight. As Mr. Wilder was leaving, Mr. Jefferson
pretended to get very angry and said: “What do you think, my friends?
Here we have entertained this ungrateful young scamp all the afternoon,
and invited him to dinner. Then he goes up to town and plays to a big
audience, leaving me only a very poor house. Then he comes down here,
partakes of our hospitality again, and before leaving takes my life!”
Suiting the action to the word, Mr. Jefferson handed the young man a
copy of his “Life and Recollections.”

His first attempt at wit was at a little church in New York, where he
was one of the audience. A tableau was being given of “Mary, Queen of
Scots,” and in order to make it realistic they had obtained a genuine
butcher’s block and a cleaver. As the executioner stood by, the lights
all turned low, and his dreadful work in progress, a shrill voice arose
from the darkened house:—

“Save me a spare-rib.”

His readiness in an emergency was shown at Flint, Michigan, when he
was before an unresponsive audience. As luck would have it, the gas
suddenly went out.

“Never mind the gas,” he called to the stage manager. “They can see the
points just as well in the dark.” After that he was _en rapport_.

The greatest gift God ever made to man, he admitted to me in strict
confidence, is the ability to laugh and to make his fellowmen laugh.
This more than compensates, he adds, for the reception he gets from
some of the cold audiences in New Jersey.

I asked him what was the funniest experience he had ever had.

“In a lodge room one night with Nat Goodwin,” he replied. “It was,
or ought to have been, a solemn occasion, but there was a German
present who couldn’t repeat the obligation backward. Nat stuffed his
handkerchief into his mouth. I bit my lip trying to keep from laughing.
I knew what an awful breach of decorum it would be if we ever gave way
to our feelings. We had almost gained perfect control of ourselves,
and the beautiful and impressive ceremony was half over, when that
confounded Dutchman was asked once more to repeat the oath backward. He
made such work of it that I yelled right out, while Nat had a spasm and
rolled on the floor. Did they put us out? Well, I guess they did. It
took seven or eight apologies to get us back into that lodge.”

Equally funny was his experience in London. It was on the occasion
of the visit of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery, of Boston. A big
dinner was to be given, and the American ambassador and the Prince of
Wales were to be there. I asked Wilder to tell me the story of his
visit.

“I received an invitation,” he began, “through my friend, B. F. Keith,
who was a member of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery, and who
happened to be in London. The uniforms were something gorgeous. The
members stood in two long lines, awaiting the coming of the prince, who
is always punctual. I was dressed in my usual boy-size clothes, a small
American flag stuck in my Tuxedo coat. I walked around restlessly.
The major-domo was a very grand personage, with a bearskin hat on one
end and long boots on the other. He must have been eight or ten feet
high. He chased me to the rear of the room several times,—evidently
not knowing who I was,—but every time he turned his back I would bob
out again, sometimes between his legs. The prince came, and almost the
first thing he did was to walk across the floor to me and say: ‘Hullo,
little chap. I am very glad to see you.’ I had met him before. Then
Henry Irving bore down on me and shook my hand, and so did Mr. Depew
and others. By this time the major-domo had shrunk in size.

“Who the Dickens is that little chap, anyway?” he asked.

“‘Sh! He belongs to the American army,’ was the answer. ‘He’s a great
marshal or something over there!’”

Wilder is big-hearted. “The biggest fee I ever received,” he stated
in reply to my inquiry, “was the satisfaction I saw depicted on a
poor man’s face. It was on a railway train. A life-prisoner was being
taken, after a long man-hunt in Europe and America, out to Kansas
City. I never saw so dejected a face. I devoted four or five hours to
brightening him up, and when I left he was smiling all over. I had
succeeded in making him forget his misery for at least four hours!”

A wealthy gentleman of New York pays Mr. Wilder a stated sum every year
to “cheer up” the inmates of hospitals and similar institutions.




XXXVIII

Energy and Earnestness Win an Actor Fame.


“WHO will play the part?” asked A. M. Palmer, anxiously, looking over
the members of his “Parisian Romance” company one night when the actor
who had been playing ‘Baron Cheval’ failed to appear.

“I will,” spoke up an obscure young player, a serious, earnest man who
had been “utility” for the company only a short time.

It was Richard Mansfield, and the part was given him. It had not been
a conspicuous part up to that hour, but that night Mr. Mansfield made
it a leading one. He saw in it opportunities for a deeper dramatic
portrayal, for an expression of intense earnestness, and for that
finished acting which ennobles any part in a play, however humble.
Before the performance was over, he had opened the eyes of the company
and the public to the fact that a new actor of great talent had come to
the front at a bound.

In his beautiful home in New York, the other day, I found him
surrounded by the evidences of wealth and artistic taste.

“So you represent SUCCESS,” he exclaimed. “Well, I am pleased to have
you call. Success pays few calls, you know. Ordinarily, we have to
pursue it and make great efforts to keep it from eluding us.”

Mr. Mansfield made this remark with a quizzical, yet half-tired smile,
as if he had himself found the chase exhausting.


HOW TO FIND SUCCESS.

“Yes,” he went on, “success is a most fleet-footed—almost a
phantom—goddess. You pursue her eagerly and seem to grasp her, and then
you see her speeding on in front again. This is, of course, because one
is rarely satisfied with present success. There is always something yet
to be attained. To speak personally, I never worked harder in my life
than I am working now. If I should relax, I fear that the structure
which I have built up would come tumbling about my ears. It is my
desire to advance my standard every year,—to plant it higher up on
the hill, and to never yield a foot of ground. This requires constant
effort. I find my reward, not in financial returns, for these are
hardly commensurate with the outlay of labor; nor in the applause of
others, for this is not always discriminative or judicious; but in the
practice of my art. This suggests what, it seems to me, is the true
secret of success.

“Love your work; then you will do it well. It is its own reward,
though it brings others. If a young man would rather be an actor than
anything else, and he knows what he is about, let him, by all means,
be an actor. He will probably become a good one. It is the same, of
course, in many occupations. If you like your work, hold on to it, and
eventually you are likely to win. If you don’t like it, you can’t be
too quick in getting into something that suits you better.”


HE BEGAN AS A DRY GOODS CLERK.

“I began as a dry goods clerk in Boston, and was a very mediocre clerk.
Afterward I became a painter in London, and was starving at that.
Finally, like water, I found my level in dramatic art.”

The thing about Mr. Mansfield which most inspires those who come
in contact with him is his wonderful store of nervous energy. It
communicates itself to others and makes them keen for work.

“I cannot talk with him five minutes,” said his business
representative, “before I want to grab my hat and ‘hustle’ out and do
about three days’ work without stopping. For persons who have not, or
cannot absorb, some of his own electric spirit, he has little use. He
is a living embodiment of contagious energy.”

His performances before audiences constitute a comparatively small
portion of his work. It is in his elaborate and painstaking preparation
that the labor is involved, and it is to this—to the minute preliminary
care that he gives to every detail of a production,—that his fine
effects and achievements before the footlights are, in considerable
measure, due.


HE GIVES INFINITE ATTENTION TO DETAIL.

The rehearsals are a vital part of the preparatory work, and to them
Mr. Mansfield has devoted a great deal of time. For weeks, between the
hours of eleven in the morning and four in the afternoon, he remains
on the stage with his company, seated in a line four or five deep on
either side of him, like boys and girls at school, deeply engrossed
in impressing upon the minds of individual members of the company his
own ideas of the interpretation and presentation of the various parts.
Again and again, until one would think he himself would become utterly
weary of the repetition, he would have an actor repeat a sentence. Not
until it is exactly right is Mr. Mansfield satisfied. Nothing escapes
his scrutiny. At dress rehearsals he may see, to mention a typical
case, a tall man and a small one of no special importance in the play
standing together, and the tall one may be made up to have a sallow
complexion and beard. Mr. Mansfield glances at them quickly. Something
is wrong. He hastens up to the smaller one and suggests that, for the
sake of contrast, he make himself up to look stout and to have a smooth
face. The improvement is quite noticeable. Mr. Mansfield carefully
notes the effect of light and shadow on the scenery; and sometimes,
at the last moment, will seize the brush and add, here and there, a
heightening or a softening touch.

An incident of his early youth will tend to illustrate his spirit
of self-reliance. His mother was an eminent singer who frequently
appeared before royal families in Europe, and usually had little
Richard with her. On one occasion, after her own performance before
royalty in Germany, the little Crown Prince, who was about the same
age as Richard, and an accomplished boy, played a selection on the
piano, and played it well. When he had left the piano, the company was
very much surprised to see Master Richard Mansfield take his place,
without an invitation, and play the same music, but in a considerably
better manner than had the Crown Prince. When the boy had become a
youth, he was compelled to support himself; and, having come to this
country, he obtained a position as a clerk in the Jordan & Marsh
establishment in Boston. Meanwhile, he was devoting all his spare time
to studying painting. He afterward tried to make a living at it in
London, and failed. He was finally given an opportunity as a comedian
in “Pinafore.” He had the small part of Joseph. It was but a short time
afterward when he entered the employ of Mr. Palmer and got the chance
of his lifetime.




XXXIX

A Father’s Common Sense Gives America a Great Bandmaster.


KIPLING essayed to write verses at thirteen, and John Philip Sousa
entered his apprenticeship in a military band at the age of twelve. The
circumstances, which he related to me during a recent conversation,
make it clear, however, that it was not exactly the realization of
any youthful ambition. “When I was a youngster of twelve,” said the
bandmaster, “I could play the violin fairly well. It was in this
memorable year that a circus came to Washington, D. C., where I then
lived, and remained for two days. During the morning of the first day,
one of the showmen passed the house and heard me playing. He rang the
bell, and when I answered it, asked if I would not like to join the
show. I was at the age when it is the height of every boy’s ambition
to join a circus, and was so delighted that I readily agreed to his
instructions that I was to take my violin, and, without telling anyone,
go quietly to the show grounds late the next evening.

“I couldn’t, however, keep this stroke of good fortune entirely to
myself, so I confided it to my chum, who lived next door. The effect
was entirely unanticipated. He straightway became so jealous at
the thought that I would have an opportunity to witness the circus
performance free that he told his mother, and that good woman promptly
laid the whole matter before my father.”


IN THE MARINE BAND.

“At the time I was, of course, ignorant of this turn of affairs; but
early the next morning my father, without a word of explanation, told
me to put on my best clothes, and, without ceremony, bundled me down to
the office of the Marine Band, where he entered me as an apprentice.
The age limit at which admission could be gained to the band corps
was fourteen years, and I have always retained the two years which my
father unceremoniously added to my age at that time.”

Sousa is of Spanish descent, his father having emigrated from Spain to
Portugal by reason of political entanglements. Thence came the strange
fact that, during the recent war, American troops marched forward to
attack Spaniards to the music of marches written by this descendant
of their race. The director’s remark that his family was one of the
oldest in Spain was supplementary to an amused denial of that pretty
story which has been so widely circulated to the effect that the
bandmaster’s name was originally John Philipso, and that when, after
entering the Marine Band, he signed it with the “U. S. A.” appended,
some intelligent clerk divided it into John Philip Sousa.


HIS FIRST SUCCESSFUL WORK.

In discussing his opera, “El Capitan,” which, when produced by De
Wolf Hopper several seasons ago, achieved such instantaneous success,
the composer remarked that it was the sixth opera he had written, the
others never reaching the dignity of a production.

As Sousa is preëminently a man of action, so his career and
characteristics are best outlined by incidents. One in connection
with his operatic composition strikingly illustrates his pluck and
determination. Before he attained any great degree of prominence in the
musical world, Sousa submitted an opera to Francis Wilson, offering to
sell it outright for one thousand five hundred dollars. Wilson liked
the opera, but the composer was not fortified by a great name, so he
declined to pay more than one thousand dollars for the piece. The
composer replied that he had spent the best part of a year on the work,
and felt that he could not take less than his original demand. Wilson
was obdurate, and Sousa ruefully put the manuscript back into his
portfolio.

Some time afterward a march which the bandmaster sent to a well-known
publishing house caught the public favor. The publishers demanded
another at once. The composer had none at hand, but suddenly thought of
the march in his discarded opera, and forwarded it without waiting to
select a name.

While he was pondering thoughtfully on the subject of a title, Sousa
and a friend one evening went to the Auditorium in Chicago, where
“America” was then being presented. When the mammoth drop curtain,
with the painted representation of the Liberty Bell was lowered, the
bandmaster’s companion said, with the suddenness of an inspiration:
“There is a name for your new march.” That night it was sent on to the
publishers.

Up to date, this one selection from the opera for which Francis
Wilson refused to pay fifteen hundred dollars has netted its composer
thirty-five thousand dollars.


A MAN WHO NEVER RESTS.

Sousa has practically no vacations. Throughout the greater part of
the autumn, winter and spring, his band is _en tour_ through this
country and Canada, giving, as a rule, two concerts each day, usually
in different towns. During the summer, his time is occupied with daily
concerts at Manhattan Beach, near New York. Despite all this, he
finds time to write several marches or other musical selections each
year, and for several years past has averaged each year an operatic
production. Any person who is at all conversant with the subject knows
that the composition of the opera itself is only the beginning of the
composer’s labor, and Sousa has invariably directed the rehearsals with
all the thoroughness and attention to detail that might be expected
from a less busy man.

The bandmaster is a late riser, and in that, as in other details,
the routine of his daily life is the embodiment of regularity
and punctuality. In reply to my question as to what produces his
never-failing good health, he said: “Absolute regularity of life,
plenty of sleep, and good, plain, substantial food.”

His idea of the most valuable aids, if not essentials to success, may
be imagined. They are “persistence and hard work.” The “March King”
believes that it is only worry, and not hard work, that kills people,
and he also has confidence that if there be no literal truth in the
assertion that genius is simply another name for hard work, there is at
least much of wisdom in the saying.

Many persons who have seen Sousa direct his organization make the
assertion that the orders conveyed by his baton are non-essential,—that
the band would be equally well-off without Sousa. This never received
a fuller refutation than during a recent concert in an eastern city.
Two small boys in seats near the front of the hall were tittering, but
so quietly that it would hardly seem possible that it could be noticed
on the stage, especially by the bandmaster, whose back was, of course,
toward the audience. Suddenly, in the middle of a bar, his baton fell.
Instantly, every sound ceased, not a note having been sounded after
the signal, which could not have been anticipated, was given. Wheeling
quickly, the leader ordered the troublesome youngsters to leave the
hall, and almost before the audience had realized what had happened,
the great organization had resumed the rendition of the selection,
without the loss of a chord.


HOW SOUSA WORKS.

In answer to my inquiry as to his methods of work, the director of
America’s foremost band said:—

“I think that any musical composer must essentially find his periods
of work governed largely by inspiration. A march or a waltz depends
perhaps upon some strain that has sufficient melody to carry the entire
composition, and it is the waiting to catch this embryo note that is
sometimes long.

“Take my experience with ‘The Stars and Stripes Forever.’ I worked
for weeks on the strain that I think will impress most persons as the
prettiest in the march. I carried it in my mind all that time, but I
could not get the idea transferred to paper just as I wanted. When
I did accomplish it, there was comparatively little delay with the
remainder.”

When I asked him about his future work, Mr. Sousa said:—

“I of course have commissions to write several operas, and I am at work
on a musical composition which I hope to make the best thing that I
have ever attempted.”

His temperament is well illustrated by an incident on a western
railroad. The Sousa organization, which had been playing in one of the
larger cities, desired to reach a small town in time for a matinée
performance, but, owing to the narrow policy of the railway officials,
the bandmaster was obliged to engage a special train, at a cost of $175.

In the railway yard stood the private coach of the president of the
system, and just before the Sousa train pulled out, the discovery was
made that the regular train, to which it had been intended to attach
the president’s car, was three hours late. A request was made of the
bandmaster that he allow the car to be attached to his train; but
Sousa, with that twinkle in his eye which every person who has seen
him must have noticed, simply smiled, and, with the most extravagant
politeness, replied: “I am sorry, gentlemen, but, having chartered this
train for my especial use, I am afraid I shall have to limit its use to
that purpose.”




XL

Blind, Deaf, and Dumb, Patient Effort Wins for Her Culture and Rare
Womanhood.


“I AM trying to prove that the sum of the areas of two similar
polygons, constructed on the two legs of a right triangle, is equal to
the area of a similar polygon constructed on the hypotenuse. It is a
very difficult demonstration,” she added, and her expressive face, on
which every passing emotion is plainly written, looked serious for a
moment, as she laid her hand upon the work about which I had asked.

Helen Keller, the deaf and blind girl, whose intellectual attainments
have excited the wonder and admiration of our most prominent educators,
is well known to all readers, but Helen Keller, the blithesome,
rosy-cheeked, light-hearted maiden of nineteen, whose smile is a
benediction, and whose ringing laugh is fresh and joyous as that of a
child, is not, perhaps, so familiar.


HELEN KELLER AT HOME.

By kind permission of her teacher, Miss Sullivan, I was granted the
privilege of an interview with Miss Keller at her residence on Newbury
street, Boston, where she was busily at work preparing for the entrance
examinations to Radcliffe College.

After a cordial greeting, Miss Sullivan, whose gracious, kindly manner
makes the visitor feel perfectly at home, introduced me to her pupil.
Seated on a low rocking-chair, in a large, sunny bay-window, the young
girl, fresh as the morning, in her dainty pink shirt-waist over a dress
of plain, dark material, with the sunshine glinting through her waving
brown hair, and kissing her broad white forehead and pink cheeks, made
a picture which one will not willingly forget. On her lap was a small
red cushion, to which wires, representing the geometrical figures
included in the problem on which she was engaged, were fastened. Laying
this aside at a touch from Miss Sullivan, she arose, and, stretching
out her hand, pronounced my name softly, with a peculiar intonation,
which at first makes it a little difficult to understand her words, but
to which the listener soon becomes accustomed. Of course, her teacher
acted as an interpreter during our conversation, though much of what
Helen says is perfectly intelligible even to the untrained ear.

“Yes,” she said, “it is a very difficult problem, but I have a little
light on it now.”


HER AMBITION.

“What will your ambition be when your college course is completed?” I
asked.

“I think I should like to write,—for children. I tell stories to
my little friends a great deal of the time now, but they are not
original,—not yet. Most of them are translations from the Greek, and
I think no one can write anything prettier for the young. Charles
Kingsley has written some equally good things, like ‘Water Babies,’ for
instance. ‘Alice in Wonderland’ is a fine story, too, but none of them
can surpass the Greek tales.”

Many of our advanced thinkers are fond of advancing the theory that the
medium of communication in the future will not be spoken words, but
the more subtle and genuine, if mute, language of the face, the eyes,
the whole body. Sarah Bernhardt forcibly illustrates the effectiveness
of this method, for even those who do not understand a word of French
derive nearly as much pleasure from the great actress’s performances
as those who are thoroughly familiar with the language. Helen Keller’s
dramatic power of expression is equally telling.

She is enthusiastic in her admiration of everything Greek. The
language, the literature, the arts, the history of the classic land
fascinate and enthrall her imagination.

“Oh, yes,” she exclaimed, eagerly, in answer to my query if she
expected to go to Greece sometime, “it is one of my air castles. Ever
since I was as tall as that,” (she held her hand a short distance from
the floor) “I have dreamed about it.”

“Do you believe the dream will some day become a reality?”

“I hope so, but I dare not be too sure,”—and the sober words of wisdom
that followed sounded oddly enough on the girlish lips,—“the world is
full of disappointments and vicissitudes, and I have to be a little
conservative.”

“Which of your studies interest you most?”

“Latin and Greek. I am reading now Virgil’s ‘Eclogues,’ Cicero’s
‘Orations,’ Homer’s ‘Iliad’ and ‘Odyssey,’” she said, and ran rapidly
over a list of classic books which she likes.

Her readiness to perceive a joke and her quickness to detect the
least carelessness in language are distinguishing traits, which she
illustrated even during our brief conversation. Commenting on her love
of everything pertaining to Greece, I remarked that a believer in the
doctrine of metempsychosis might imagine that she possessed the soul
of an old Greek. Instantly she noticed the little slip, and, laughing
gayly, cried: “Oh, no, not the soul of an _old_ Greek, the soul of a
_young_ Greek.”

Helen’s merriment was infectious, and we all joined heartily in
the laugh, Miss Sullivan saying, “She caught you there,” as I was
endeavoring to explain that, of course, I meant the soul of an ancient
Greek.

While taking so deep an interest in matters intellectual, and living
in a world of her own, penetrated by no outward sight or sound, Miss
Keller’s tastes are as normal as those of any girl of nineteen. She
is full of animal spirit, dearly loves a practical joke, is fond of
dancing, enjoys outside exercise and sport, and has the natural desire
of every healthy young maiden to wear pretty things and look her best.

In answer to a question on this latter subject, she said:—

“I used to be very fond of dress, but now I am not particularly so;
it is such a bother. We ought to like dress, though, and wear pretty
things, just as the flowers put on beautiful colors. It would be fine,”
she continued, laughing gleefully, “if we were made with feathers and
wings, like the birds. Then we would have no trouble about dress, and
we could fly where we pleased.”

“You would fly to Greece, first, I suppose?”

“No,” she replied, and her laughing face took on a tender, wistful
look, “I should go home first, to see my loved ones.”


HEREDITY AND CHILDHOOD.

Miss Keller’s home is at Tuscumbia, Alabama, where she was born on
June 27, 1880. Some of the best blood of both the north and the south
flows in her veins, and it is probable that her uncommon mental powers
are in no small degree due to heredity. Her father, Arthur H. Keller,
a polished southern gentleman, with a large, chivalrous nature, fine
intelligence and attractive manners, was the descendant of a family
of Swiss origin, which had settled in Virginia and mixed with some
of the oldest families in that state. He served as a captain in the
Confederate army during the Civil War, and, at the time of Helen’s
birth, was the owner and editor of a paper published at Tuscumbia. On
the maternal side she is descended from one of the Adams families of
Massachusetts, and the same stock of Everetts from which Edward Everett
and Reverend Edward Everett Hale sprang.

Helen Keller was not born deaf and blind, although, at the age of
eighteen months, when a violent fit of convulsions deprived her of the
faculties of seeing and hearing, she had not attempted to speak. When
a child, she was as notable for her stubbornness and resistance to
authority as she is to-day for her gentleness and amiability. Indeed,
it was owing to an exhibition of what seemed a very mischievous spirit
that her parents sought a special instructor for her. Having discovered
the use of a key, she locked her mother into a pantry in a distant
part of the house, where, her hammering on the door not being heard by
the servants, she remained imprisoned for several hours. Helen, seated
on the floor outside, felt the knocking on the door, and seemed to be
enjoying the situation intensely when at length jailer and prisoner
were found. She was then about six years old, and, after this escapade,
Mr. and Mrs. Keller felt that the child’s moral nature must be reached
and her mental powers cultivated, if possible.


HELEN’S FIRST TEACHER.

On the recommendation of Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the
telephone, Michael Anagnos, director of the Perkins Institute for the
Blind at South Boston, sent Miss Annie Mansfield Sullivan to Tuscumbia
to undertake the difficult task of piercing the veil behind which the
intelligence of the little girl lay sleeping. How well this noble and
devoted teacher has succeeded in her work is amply evidenced by the
brilliancy and thoroughness of her pupil’s attainments.

Miss Sullivan’s method of instruction was similar to that adopted
by Dr. Samuel G. Howe in teaching Laura Bridgman. She used the
manual alphabet, and cards bearing, in raised letters, the names
of objects. At first, the pupil violently resisted the teacher’s
efforts to instruct her, and so determined was her opposition, Miss
Sullivan declares, that, if she had not exercised physical force and a
determination even more strenuous than that of her refractory pupil,
she would never have succeeded in teaching her anything. Night and day
she was at her side, watching for the first gleam of conscious mind;
and at length, after seven weeks of what she says was the hardest
work she had ever done, the faithful teacher received her reward in
the sudden dawning of the child’s intelligence. All at once, the
light seemed to burst in upon her wondering soul; she understood then
that the raised letters which she felt on the cards and the groups
of manual signs on her hands, represented words, or the names of
familiar objects. The delight of the pupil and teacher was unbounded,
and from that moment Helen’s education, though still demanding the
greatest patience and loving care on the part of her teacher, was a
comparatively easy matter.

With the awakening of her intellectual faculties, she seemed literally
to have been “born again.” The stubborn, headstrong, self-willed,
almost unmanageable child became patient, gentle and obedient; and,
instead of resisting instruction, her eagerness to learn was so great
that it had to be restrained. So rapid was her progress that, in a few
weeks, anyone who knew the manual alphabet could easily communicate
with her, and in July, 1887, less than a year from the time Miss
Sullivan first saw her, she could write an intelligent letter.


PREPARING FOR COLLEGE.

In September, 1896, accompanied by her teacher, Miss Keller entered
the Cambridge School for Girls, to prepare for Radcliffe College, and
in June, 1897, passed the examinations of the first preparatory year
successfully in every subject, taking “honors” in English and German.
The director of the school, Arthur Gilman, in an article in “American
Annals of the Deaf,” says: “I think that I may say that no candidate
in Harvard or Radcliffe College was graduated higher than Helen in
English. The result is remarkable, especially when we consider that she
had been studying on strictly college preparatory lines for one year
only. She had, it is true, long and careful instruction, and she has
had always the loving ministration of Miss Sullivan, in addition to
the inestimable advantage of a concentration that the rest of us never
know. No other, man or woman,” he adds, “has ever, in my experience,
got ready for those examinations in so brief a time.”

Mr. Gilman, in the same article, pays the following well-deserved
tribute to Miss Sullivan, whose work is as worthy of admiration as that
of her pupil:—

“Miss Sullivan sat at Helen’s side in the classes (in the Cambridge
School), interpreting to her, with infinite patience, the instruction
of every teacher. In study hours, Miss Sullivan’s labors were even
more arduous, for she was obliged to read everything that Helen had
to learn, excepting what was prepared in Braille; she searched the
lexicons and encyclopedias, and gave Helen the benefit of it all.
When Helen went home, Miss Sullivan went with her, and it was hers to
satisfy the busy, unintermitting demands of the intensely active brain;
for, although others gladly helped, there were many matters which
could be treated only by the one teacher who had awakened the activity
and had followed its development from the first. Now, it was a German
grammar which had to be read, now a French story, and then some passage
from ‘Cæsar’s Commentaries.’ It looked like drudgery, and drudgery it
would certainly have been had not love shed its benign influence over
all, lightening each step and turning hardship into pleasure.”

Miss Keller is very patriotic, but large and liberal in her ideas,
which soar far beyond all narrow, partisan or political prejudices.
Her sympathies are with the masses, the burden-bearers, and, like all
friends of the people and of universal progress, she was intensely
interested in the Peace Congress.

Speaking on the subject, she said: “I hope the nations will carry out
the project of disarmament. I wonder which nation will be brave enough
to lay down its arms first!”

“Don’t you hope it will be America?”

“Yes, I hope so, but I do not think it will. We are only just beginning
to fight now,” she went on, sagely, “and I am afraid we like it. I
think it will be one of the old, experienced nations, that has had
enough of war.”


HER IDEAL OF A SUCCESSFUL CAREER.

I asked Miss Keller what she considers most essential to a successful
career.

She thought a moment, and then replied, slowly, “Patience, perseverance
and fidelity.”

“And what do you look upon as the most desirable thing in life?”

“Friends,” was the prompt reply to this broad general question; and, as
she uttered the word, she nestled closely to the friend who has so long
been all in all to her.

“What about material possessions?” I asked; “for instance, which would
you place first,—wealth or education?”

“Education. A good education is a stepping-stone to wealth. But that
does not imply that I want wealth. It is such a care. It would be
worse than dressing. ‘Give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me
contentment,’” she quoted, with a smile.

The future of this most interesting girl will be followed with closest
attention by educators, psychologists, and the public generally. There
is little doubt that the time and care spent on her education will
be amply justified; and that she will personally illustrate her own
ideal of a successful career,—“To live nobly; to be true to one’s best
aspirations,”—is the belief of all who know her.




XLI

Jay Gould’s Chum Chooses “High Thinking, not Money Making,” and Wins
Success Without Riches.


WHEN I visited the hill-top retreat of John Burroughs, the
distinguished lover of nature, at West Park, New York, it was with
the feeling that all success is not material; that mere dollars are
nothing, and that the influential man is the successful man, whether
he be rich or poor. John Burroughs is unquestionably both influential
and poor. On the wooden porch of his little bark-covered cabin I
waited, one June afternoon, until he should come back from the woods
and fields, where he had gone for a ramble. It was so still that
the sound of my rocker moving to and fro on the rough boards of the
little porch seemed to shock the perfect quiet. From afar off came the
plaintive cry of a wood-dove, and then all was still again. Presently
the interpreter of out-door life appeared in the distance, and, seeing
a stranger at his door, hurried homeward. He was without coat or vest,
and looked cool in his white outing shirt and large straw hat. After
some formalities of introduction, we reached the subject which I had
called to discuss, and he said:—

“It is not customary to interview men of my vocation concerning
success.”

“Any one who has made a lasting impression on the minds of his
contemporaries,” I began, “and influenced men and women——”

“Do you refer to me?” he interrupted, naively.


DIFFERENT WAYS OF BEING SUCCESSFUL.

I nodded and he laughed. “I have not endowed a university nor made a
fortune, nor conquered an enemy in battle,” he said.

“And those who have done such things have not written ‘Locusts and Wild
Honey’ and ‘Wake, Robin.’”

“I recognize,” he said, quietly, “that success is not always where
people think it is. There are many ways of being successful, and I do
not approve of the mistake which causes many to consider that a great
fortune acquired means a great success achieved. On the contrary, our
greatest men need very little money to accomplish the greatest work.”

“I thought that anyone leading a life so wholly at variance with the
ordinary ideas and customs would see success in life from a different
point of view,” I observed. “Money is really no object with you?”

“The subject of wealth never disturbs me.”

“You lead a very simple life here?”

“Such as you see.”

The sight would impress anyone. So far is this disciple of nature
away from the ordinary mode of the world that his little cabin, set
in the cup-shaped top of a hill, is practically bare of luxuries and
the so-called comforts of life. His surroundings are of the rudest,
the very rocks and bushes encroaching upon his back door. All about,
the crest of the hill encircles him, and shuts out the world. Only the
birds of the air venture to invade his retreat from the various sides
of the mountain, and there is only a straggling, narrow path, which
branches off a dozen times before it takes the true direction. In his
house are no decorations but such as can be hung upon the exposed wood.
The fireplace is of brick, and quite wide; the floor, rough boards
scrubbed white; the ceiling, a rough array of exposed rafters, and his
bed a rudely constructed work of the hand. Very few and very simple
chairs, a plain table and some shelves for books made the wealth of the
retreat and serve for his ordinary use.

“Many people think,” I said, “that your method of living is an ideal
example of the way people ought to live.”

“There is nothing remarkable in that. A great many people are very
weary of the way they think themselves compelled to live. They are
mistaken in believing that the disagreeable things they find themselves
doing, are the things they ought to do. A great many take their idea of
a proper aim in life from what other people say and do. Consequently,
they are unhappy, and an independent existence such as mine strikes
them as ideal. As a matter of fact, it is very natural.”


A WORTHY AIM IN LIFE.

“Would you say that to work so as to be able to live like this should
be the aim of a young man?”

“By no means. On the contrary, his aim should be to live in such a
way as will give his mind the greatest freedom and peace. This can be
very often obtained by wanting less of material things and more of
intellectual ones. A man who achieved such an aim would be as well off
as the most distinguished man in any field. Money-getting is half a
mania, and some other ‘getting’ propensities are manias also. The man
who gets content comes nearest to being reasonable.”

“I should like,” I said, “to illustrate your point of view from the
details of your own life.”

“Students of nature do not, as a rule, have eventful lives. I was
born in Roxbury, New York, in 1837. That was a time when conditions
were rather primitive. My father was a farmer, and I was raised among
the woods and fields. I came from an uncultivated, unreading class of
society, and grew up amid surroundings the least calculated to awaken
the literary faculty. Yet I have no doubt that daily contact with the
woods and fields awakened my interest in the wonders of nature, and
gave me a bent toward investigation in that direction.”

“Did you begin early to make notes and write upon nature?” I questioned.

“Not before I was sixteen or seventeen. Earlier than that, the art of
composition had anything but charms for me. I remember that while at
school, at the age of fourteen, I was required, like other students,
to write ‘compositions’ at stated times, but I usually evaded the duty
one way or another. On one occasion, I copied something from a comic
almanac, and unblushingly handed it in as my own. But the teacher
detected the fraud, and ordered me to produce a twelve-line composition
before I left school. I remember I racked my brain in vain, and the
short winter day was almost closing when Jay Gould, who sat in the
seat behind me, wrote twelve lines of doggerel on his slate and passed
it slyly over to me. I had so little taste for writing that I coolly
copied that, and handed it in as my own.”


JAY GOULD WAS HIS CHUM.

“You were friendly with Gould then?”

“Oh, yes; ‘chummy,’ they call it now. His father’s farm was only a
little way from ours, and we were fast friends, going home together
every night.”

“His view of life must have been considerably different from yours.”

“It was. I always looked upon success as being a matter of mind, not
money; but Jay wanted the material appearances. I remember that once
we had a wrestling match, and as we were about even in strength, we
agreed to abide by certain rules,—taking what we called ‘holts’ in the
beginning and not breaking them until one or the other was thrown. I
kept to this in the struggle, but when Jay realized that he was in
danger of losing the contest, he broke the ‘holt’ and threw me. When I
remarked that he had broken his agreement, he only laughed and said, ‘I
threw you, didn’t I?’ And to every objection I made, he made the same
answer. The fact of having won (it did not matter how), was pleasing to
him. It satisfied him, although it wouldn’t have contented me.”

“Did you ever talk over success in life with him?”

“Yes; quite often. He was bent on making money and did considerable
trading among us schoolboys,—sold me some of his books. I felt then
that my view of life was more satisfactory to me than his would have
been. I wanted to obtain a competence, and then devote myself to high
thinking instead of to money-making.”

“How did you plan to attain this end?”


HE BEGAN WRITING AT SIXTEEN.

“By study. I began in my sixteenth or seventeenth year to try to
express myself on paper, and when, after I had left the country school,
I attended the seminary at Ashland and at Cooperstown, I often received
the highest marks in composition, though only standing about the
average in general scholarship. My taste ran to essays, and I picked up
the great works in that field at a bookstore, from time to time, and
filled my mind with the essay idea. I bought the whole of Dr. Johnson’s
works at a second-hand bookstore in New York, because, on looking into
them, I found his essays appeared to be of solid literature, which I
thought was just the thing. Almost my first literary attempts were
moral reflections, somewhat in the Johnsonian style.”

“You were supporting yourself during these years?”

“I taught six months and ‘boarded round’ before I went to the seminary.
That put fifty dollars into my pocket, and the fifty paid my way at
the seminary. Working on the farm, studying and teaching filled up the
years until 1863, when I went to Washington and found employment in the
Treasury Department.”

“You were connected with the Treasury, then?”

“Oh, yes; for nearly nine years. I left the department in 1872, to
become receiver of a bank, and subsequently for several years performed
the work of a bank examiner. I considered it only as an opportunity to
earn and save up a little money on which I could retire. I managed to
do that, and came back to this region, where I bought a fruit farm. I
worked that into a paying condition, and then gave all my time to the
pursuit of the studies I like.”

“Had you abandoned your interest in nature during your Washington life?”

“No; I gave as much time to the study of nature and literature as I had
to spare. When I was twenty-three, I wrote an essay on ‘Expression,’
and sent it to the ‘Atlantic.’ It was so Emersonian in style, owing to
my enthusiasm for Emerson at that time, that the editor thought some
one was trying to palm off on him an early essay of Emerson’s which he
had not seen. He found that Emerson had not published any such paper,
however, and printed it, though it had not much merit. I wrote off and
on for the magazines.”

The editor in question was James Russell Lowell, who, instead of
considering it without merit, often expressed afterward the delight
with which he read this contribution from an unknown hand, and the
swift impression of the author’s future distinction which came to him
with that reading.


WHAT NATURE STUDY REALLY MEANS.

“Your successful work, then, has been in what direction?” I said.

“In studying nature. It has all come by living close to the plants
and animals of the woods and fields, and coming to understand them.
There I have been successful. Men who, like myself, are deficient in
self-assertion, or whose personalities are flexible and yielding, make
a poor show in business, but in certain other fields these defects
become advantages. Certainly it is so in my case. I can succeed with
bird or beast, for I have cultivated my ability in that direction. I
can look in the eye of an ugly dog or cow and win, but with an ugly man
I have less success.

“I consider the desire which most individuals have for the luxuries
which money can buy, an error of mind,” he added. “Those things do
not mean anything except a lack of higher tastes. Such wants are not
necessary wants, nor honorable wants. If you cannot get wealth with
a noble purpose, it is better to abandon it and get something else.
Peace of mind is one of the best things to seek, and finer tastes and
feelings. The man who gets these, and maintains himself comfortably,
is much more admirable and successful than the man who gets money and
neglects these. The realm of power has no fascination for me. I would
rather have my seclusion and peace of mind. This log hut, with its bare
floors, is sufficient. I am set down among the beauties of nature, and
in no danger of losing the riches that are scattered all about. No one
will take my walks or my brook away from me. The flowers, birds and
animals are plentifully provided. I have enough to eat and wear, and
time to see how beautiful the world is, and to enjoy it. The entire
world is after your money, or the things you have bought with your
money. It is trying to keep them that makes them seem so precious. I
live to broaden and enjoy my own life, believing that in so doing I do
what is best for everyone. If I ran after birds only to write about
them, I should never have written anything that anyone else would have
cared to read. I must write from sympathy and love,—that is, from
enjoyment,—or not at all. I come gradually to have a feeling that I
want to write upon a given theme. Whenever the subject recurs to me, it
awakens a warm, personal response. My confidence that I ought to write
comes from the feeling or attraction which some subjects exercise over
me. The work is pleasure, and the result gives pleasure.”

“And your work as a naturalist is what?”

“Climbing trees to study birds, lying by the waterside to watch the
fishes, sitting still in the grass for hours to study the insects, and
tramping here and there, always to observe and study whatever is common
to the woods and fields.”

“Men think you have done a great work,” I said.

“I have done a pleasant work,” he said, modestly.

“And the achievements of your schoolmate Gould do not appeal to you as
having anything in them worth aiming for?” I questioned.

“Not for me. I think my life is better for having escaped such vast and
difficult interests.”

The gentle, light-hearted naturalist and recluse came down the long
hillside with me, “to put me right” on the main road. I watched him
as he retraced his steps up the steep, dark path, lantern in hand.
His sixty years sat lightly upon him, and as he ascended I heard
him singing. Long after the light melody had died away, I saw the
serene little light bobbing up and down in his hand, disappearing and
reappearing, as the lone philosopher repaired to his hut and his couch
of content.


WHY HE IS RICH WITHOUT MONEY.

It must not be inferred that Mr. Burroughs has no money. As an author,
he has given us such delightful books, dear to every lover of nature,
as “Wake, Robin,” “Winter Sunshine,” “Locusts and Wild Honey,” “Fresh
Fields,” “Indoor Studies,” “Birds and Poets,” “Pepacton,” “Signs and
Seasons,” “Riverby,” “Whitman,” and “The Light of Day,” published by
Houghton, Mifflin & Company.

His writings produce goodly sums, while his vineyards and gardens
produce as much as he needs; but the charm of it all is, he knows not
the unrest of eagerly seeking it. His is one of the very infrequent
instances in which a man knows when he has enough, and really and
truthfully does not care for more. Nor is he a “hayseed” in the popular
application of that expressive term. When he goes to the city, as he
occasionally does (just to reassure himself that he prefers life in the
country), he is not met at the station by gentlemen in loud checked
suits; he carries no air of the rustic with him. As an Irish wit
recently put it, “When in Paris, he does as the parasites do,” and he
conducts himself and clothes himself as a well regulated citizen should.

So John Burroughs is rich, not in money, but in thought, in simplicity,
in the knowledge that he is making the best of life. He has found out
that money is not everything, that all the money in the world will not
buy a light heart, or a good name,—that there is a place for every
one, and in that place alone can a man be of service to himself or
others,—that there alone can he be successful; there only can he be
“rich without money!”




XLII

A Millionaire’s Daughter Makes Inherited Wealth a Blessing to Thousands.


MISS HELEN MILLER GOULD has won a place for herself in the hearts of
Americans such as few people of great wealth ever gain. She is, indeed,
one of the best known and most popular young women of New York, if not
in the world. Her strong character, common sense, and high ideals, have
made her respected by all, while her munificence and kindness have won
her the love of many.

Her personality is charming. Upon my arrival at her Tarrytown home,
I was made to feel that I was welcome, and everyone who enters her
presence feels the same. The grand mansion, standing high on the hills
overlooking the Hudson, has a home-like appearance that takes away any
awe that may come over the visitor who looks upon so much beauty for
the first time.

Chickens play around the little stone cottage at the grand entrance,
and the grounds are not unlike those of any other country house, with
trees in abundance, and beautiful lawns. There are large beds of
flowers, and in the gardens all the summer vegetables were growing.

Miss Gould takes a very great interest in her famous greenhouses, the
gardens, the flowers, and the chickens, for she is a home-loving woman.
It is a common thing to see her in the grounds, digging and raking and
planting, for all the world like some farmer’s girl. That is one reason
why her neighbors all like her; she seems so unconscious of her wealth
and station.


A FACE FULL OF CHARACTER.

When I entered Lyndhurst, she came forward to meet me in the
pleasantest way imaginable. Her face is not exactly beautiful, but has
a great deal of character written upon it, and is very attractive,
indeed. She held out her hand for me to shake in the good old-fashioned
way, and then we sat down in the wide hall to talk. Miss Gould was
dressed very simply. Her gown was of dark cloth, close-fitting, and
her skirt hung several inches above the ground, for she is a believer
in short skirts for walking. Her entire costume was very becoming.
She never over-dresses, and her garments are neat, and, naturally, of
excellent quality.


HER AMBITIONS AND AIMS.

In the conversation that followed, I was permitted to learn much of
her ambitions and aims. She is ambitious to leave a great impression
on the world,—an impression made by good deeds well done, and this
ambition is gratifying to the utmost. She is modest about her work.
“I cannot find that I am doing much at all,” she said, “when there is
so very much to be done. I suppose I shouldn’t expect to be able to
do everything, but I sometimes feel that I want to, nevertheless.”
Her good works are numerous and many-sided. For a number of years,
she has supported two beds in the Babies’ Shelter, connected with the
Church of the Holy Communion, New York, and the Wayside Day Nursery,
near Bellevue Hospital, has always found in her a good friend. Once a
year she makes a tour through the day nurseries of New York, noting
the special needs of each, and often sending checks and materials for
meeting those needs.


A MOST CHARMING CHARITY.

One of her most charming charities is “Woody Crest,” two miles from
Lyndhurst, a haven of delight where some twoscore waifs are received
at a time for a two-weeks’ visit. She has a personal oversight of
the place, and, by her frequent visits, makes friends with the wee
visitors, who look upon her as a combination of angel and fairy
godmother. Every day, a wagonette, drawn by two horses, takes the
children, in relays, for long drives into the country. Amusements are
provided, and some of those who remain for an entire season at Woody
Crest are instructed in different branches. Twice a month some of the
older boys set the type for a little magazine which is devoted to Woody
Crest matters. There are several portable cottages erected there,
one for the sick, one for servants’ sleeping rooms, and a third for a
laundry.

[Illustration: DOMESTIC TRIALS]

Miss Gould’s patriotism is very real and intense, and is not confined
to times of war. Two years ago, she caused fifty thousand copies of
the national hymn, “America,” to be printed and distributed among the
pupils of the public schools of New York.

“I believe every one should know that hymn and sing it,” she declared,
“if he sings no other. I would like the children to sing it into their
very souls, till it becomes a part of them.”

She strongly favors patriotic services in the churches on the Sunday
preceding the Fourth of July, when she would like to hear such airs as
“America,” “Hail Columbia,” and “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and see the
sacred edifices draped in red, white and blue.


UNHERALDED BENEFACTIONS.

Miss Gould has a strong prejudice against letting her many gifts and
charities be known, and even her dearest friends never know “what
Helen’s doing now.” Of course, her great public charities, as when she
gives a hundred thousand dollars at a time, are heralded. Her recent
gift of that sum to the government, for national defense, has made her
name beloved throughout the land; but, had she been able, she would
have kept that secret also.

I tried to ascertain her views regarding the education of young
women of to-day, and what careers they should follow. This is one of
her particular hobbies, and many are the young girls she has helped to
attain to a better and more satisfactory life.


HER MEANS OF EDUCATION.

“In the first place,” she said, “I believe most earnestly in education
for women; not necessarily the higher education about which we hear so
much, but a good, common school education. As the years pass, girls are
obliged to make their own way in the world more and more, and to do so
they must have good schooling.”

“And what particular career do you think most desirable for young
women?”

“Oh, as to careers, there are many that young women follow, nowadays. I
think, if I had my own way to make, I should fit myself to be a private
secretary. That is a position which, I think, attracts nearly every
young woman; but, to fill it, she must study hard and learn, and then
work hard to keep the place. Then I think there are openings for young
women in the field of legitimate business. I’ve always held that women
know as much about money affairs as men, only most of them haven’t had
much experience. In that field there are hundreds of things that a
woman can do.”


THE EVIL OF IDLENESS.

“But I don’t think it matters much what a girl does so long as she is
active, and doesn’t allow herself to stagnate. There’s nothing, to my
mind, so pathetic as a girl who thinks she can’t do anything, and is
of no use to the world. Why, it’s no wonder there are so many suicides
every day!”

She is consulted by her agents in regard to all her affairs. “I have
no time for society,” she said, “and indeed I do not care for it at
all. It is very well for those who like it,” she added, for she is a
tolerant critic.

Her life at Tarrytown is an ideal one. She runs down to the city at
frequent intervals, to attend to business affairs, for she manages all
her own property; but she lives at Lyndhurst. She entertains but few
visitors, and in turn visits but seldom.

I will not attempt to specify the numerous projects of charity that
have been given life and vigor by Miss Gould. I know her gifts in
recent years have passed the million-dollar mark.

Would you have an idea of her personality?

If so, think of a good young woman in your own town, who loves her
parents and her home; who is devoted to the church; who thinks of the
poor on Thanksgiving Day and Christmas; whose face is bright and manner
unaffected; whose dress is elegant in its simplicity; who takes an
interest in all things, from politics to religion; whom children love
and day-laborers greet by fervently lifting the hat; and who, if she
were graduated from a home seminary or college, would receive a bouquet
from every boy in town. If you can think of such a young woman, and
nearly every community has one, (and ninety-nine times out of a hundred
she is poor,) you have a fair idea of the impression made on a plain
man from a country town in Indiana by Miss Gould.

Helen Miller Gould is just at the threshold of her beautiful career.
What a promise is there in her life and work for the coming century!

She has given much of her fortune for the Hall of Fame on the campus
of the New York University, overlooking the Harlem River. It contains
tablets for the names of fifty distinguished Americans, and proud will
be the descendants of those whose names are inscribed thereon.

The human heart is the tablet upon which Miss Gould has inscribed
her name and her “Hall of Fame” is as broad and high as the Republic
itself.




XLIII

A Self-made Merchant Solves the Problem of Practical Philanthropy


LATE one afternoon, I stopped to converse with a policeman in Central
Park. Another policeman came up. Nathan Strauss was mentioned. “Well, I
tell you,” said the first policeman, stamping his foot, “there is a man!

“Charities! He’s the only man in New York City who gives real
charities. Why, when others want to give, they go to him, and have
him do it for them. He knows what’s what. I tell you, he’s the most
respected man in New York City;” and the other said, “That’s right.”

Go on the east side, and ask about Nathan Strauss, and you will hear
what is as pleasant as it is rare,—the poor giving a rich man unstinted
praise. But do not speak to Mr. Strauss about his work as charity; he
dislikes to have it called by that name.


PRACTICAL BENEFICENCE NOT MERE CHARITY.

The greatest blessing that he has conferred on New York, is helping the
poor to get pure, sterilized milk. No work of beneficence ever before
showed such surprising results. It has reduced the death rate of
infants over fifty per cent. Formerly, almost seventy-five per cent. of
the children of the very poor died.

It was in the summer of 1893 that Mr. Strauss opened his first milk
depot, at which milk was sold for four cents a quart; one and one-half
cents a bottle for sterilized pure milk; one cent a bottle (six
ounces,) for modified milk, and one cent a glass for pure milk.

It was a loss to the benefactor, but he established other depots
throughout the unhealthy portions of the city and in the parks. Doctors
received blanks to fill out for milk for those unable to purchase, and
to such it was given free. A doctor’s prescription was honored. What
followed? The death rate was reduced.

At the instigation of his son,—who died from a cold contracted in
distributing coal,—coal yards had been established on the docks and
elsewhere. The dealers at that time were retailing coal at ten cents
and fourteen cents a basket, which made the price from twelve dollars
to sixteen dollars per ton. At Mr. Strauss’ depots, five-cent tickets
procured twenty and twenty-five pounds; ten-cent tickets, forty and
fifty pounds, and so on. Most of the coal was carried in baskets on
the shoulders and backs of those who, in some cases, had walked miles
to obtain it. During the last financial panic, grocery stores were
started, where five cents procured a large amount of food. Lodging
houses were opened, while a clean bed and a breakfast of coffee and
bread could be procured for five cents, and lunch rooms where two cents
purchased bread and coffee and corned beef.

The great financier, J. Pierpont Morgan, asked Mr. Strauss to be
permitted to assist him in the grocery stores, and a large central
depot was rented at 345 Grand street, for which Mr. Morgan furnished
the money and Mr. Strauss acted as manager.

Although all these charities in which Mr. Strauss has been interested
have entailed a steady loss, a great number of those he benefited and
benefits are under the impression that he does not sustain a loss, and
that they merely buy for less than they would pay elsewhere.


HE DOES NOT WOUND THEIR SELF-RESPECT.

This is exactly the impression he desires them to possess, in his own
words:—

“I do not wish to make a single one feel that he is receiving charity,
or is in any way a pauper. Such an impression is harmful, and lowers
the standard of those who have a right to consider that they are the
sinews of the country. I wish them to feel only that they are buying at
low prices. Suppose that those who buy five cents’ worth of groceries
and trudge a distance for them, are able to pay a little more. The
mere fact that they walk far to save a few cents, proves that their
hard-earned pennies are precious, and that there is the necessity of
getting all that can be obtained for their money.”


HE IS A KEEN, ENERGETIC MANAGER.

Such is the keynote of Mr. Strauss’ love for humanity: He is not a
“lord bountiful,” but a generous man, unsolicitous of thanks. There are
many records of him having helped individuals. Two young men in his
employ were threatened with an early death from consumption. He sent
them to a sanitarium in the Adirondacks for a year, when they returned
sound in health. During their absence, their salaries were paid to
their families.

In business, Mr. Strauss is a strict disciplinarian. He believes that
every man should attend strictly to duty, and this is the fundamental
secret of his success. In his own words, “Any man, with the ordinary
amount of business instinct, can succeed. To succeed, you must be
honest, believe in your own ability, and, after having selected your
path in life, stick to it through thick and thin. With ordinary mental
endowments, there is no reason why any young man should fail.

“Do I think the chances of to-day are as great as some years ago?
They are greater. The thing is to take advantage of opportunities and
utilize them to the best of your ability. Chances, or opportunities,
come to everyone, often, in a lifetime. They should be recognized.
Never let one slip; but weigh the possibilities. The great trouble
is, a great many young men do not bestir themselves. They fall into
a rut, and lack ‘ginger.’ This is a bustling world, and every young
man should be wide-awake and on the lookout, constantly giving
conscientious attention to duty. Duty, integrity and energy are the
watchwords, and will direct you on the road to success. Remember, the
opportunities of to-day are as great as ever!”


ONWARD, EVER; UPWARD, ALWAYS.

But though Mr. Strauss is a tireless worker, he finds time for a little
recreation. He is one of the best gentleman drivers in New York, and he
delights to race on the speedway. Still, the background of his life is
charity. For many years, he desired to establish a sterilizing plant
on Randall’s Island, for the benefit of waifs and foundlings taken
there. The death rate was very high. At length he gained his point, and
a recent unsolicited letter from the matron contained the gratifying
statement “that the death rate, since the installation of the plant,
has been reduced fully fifty per cent.”

In such deeds, Nathan Strauss delights. His life is one of perpetual
attention to duty and to business, and he encourages others who would
succeed, by saying: “Go at it with a will, and stick to your ambitious
aspirations through thick and thin!”

Mr. Strauss himself is an excellent example of the success of the
principle which he urges upon others as a rule of life. His whole
career has been distinguished by tireless energy and industry, and
the interests which are under his control have never suffered for any
lack of careful and thorough attention. He has always been deliberate
and consistent in adopting and adhering to any policy, public or
private, and never deserts those whom he has seen fit to honor with his
confidence, save on absolute proof of their unworthiness.




XLIV

A Varied Career Develops the Resourceful Head of a Great Institutional
Church and College.


IT was misfortune that proved the fortunate turning-point for Dr.
Russell H. Conwell, the pastor of the largest church in America, and
president of Temple College, which has upward of 8,000 students. He had
not been unsuccessful prior to his ordination to the ministry; on the
contrary, he had been a successful newspaper man and lawyer, and had
served with distinction in the Civil War. But, in the panic of 1873, he
lost most of his investments. I quote his own words:—

“I then wondered,—being always of a religious temperament,—why I should
make money my goal.”

We sat in his study, and he spoke thus of his interesting life:—

“I was born at South Worthington, Hampshire County, Massachusetts,
February 15, 1843, on my father’s farm, called the ‘Eagle’s Nest,’ on
account of its high and rocky surroundings. At an early age, I went to
school, and, when I grew older, worked on the farm. I was sometimes
laughed at because I always carried a book around with me, studying
and memorizing as I worked. Yet I was dull and stupid, never stood high
in my classes, and could not grasp a subject as quickly as others. But
I would stick to it. I am just as dull now, but I preserve my old habit
of stick-to-it-iveness. If I am driving a tack and it goes in crooked,
I lift it out, straighten it, and send it home. That is one of my
golden rules that I force myself to obey.”


HE ENLISTED AT EIGHTEEN.

“I went to Wilbraham, and, in 1861, entered Yale College, taking
up law, but the breaking out of the war interrupted my studies. I
enlisted, but, being only eighteen years of age, my father made me
‘right about face’, and come home. If I could not fight, I could speak,
and I delivered orations all over my native state, and was in some
demand in Boston. Finally, in 1862, I could stand the strain no longer,
and my father, already greatly interested in the war, permitted me to
go to the field.

“I returned a colonel, suffering from a wound, campaigns and
imprisonment, and entered the law school of the Albany University, from
which I was graduated in 1865.

“I married and moved to the great far west, to the then small town
of Minneapolis. There I suffered the usual uphill experiences and
privations of a young lawyer trying to make his way single-handed. I
opened a law office in a two-story stone building on Bridge square. My
clients did not come, and poverty stared my wife and me in the face. I
became an agent for Thompson Brothers, of St. Paul, in the sale of land
warrants.

“Fortune favored me in business, and I also became the Minneapolis
correspondent of the St. Paul ‘Press.’ I acquired some real estate, and
took part in politics. Having once dipped into journalism, I started a
paper of my own called ‘Conwell’s Star of the North.’ Then the sheriff
made his appearance, and turned the concern over to a man with more
capital. Next, I brought the Minneapolis daily ‘Chronicle’ to life. It
united with the ‘Atlas,’ and the combined papers formed the foundation
for the great journal of Minneapolis, the ‘Tribune.’”


HOUSEKEEPING IN TWO SMALL ROOMS.

“I continued to practice law. My wife and myself lived in two small
rooms. The front one was my office, and the back one, kitchen, parlor,
sitting room and bedroom. I had never fully recovered from my wound
received in the war. I knew Governor Marshall, and it was he who
appointed me emigration commissioner for the state of Minnesota. My
duties, of course, took me to Europe.”

When Dr. Conwell arrived in Europe, his health, that had been breaking
down, gradually gave way, and he gave up his place as commissioner.
For awhile, he rested; then, for several months, he attended lectures
at the University of Leipsic. That pilgrimage was followed by a number
of other journeys across the Atlantic to the principal countries of
Europe, and to northern Africa.

“In 1870,” continued Dr. Conwell, “I made a tour of the world as
special correspondent for the New York ‘Tribune’ and the Boston
‘Traveler.’ I then exposed the iniquities of Chinese contract
immigration. I next returned to Boston and law, and became editor of
the Boston ‘Traveler.’”

“But, doctor, had you never entertained a desire to enter the
ministry?” I asked.

“All my life I studied theology. The question was before me always:
Shall it be law or the ministry? The change came after I had lost
considerable money in the panic of 1873. Then came death into my home,
and the loss of my first wife. I turned to missionary work in Boston.
As time rolled on, I became more interested. But the turning-point
was really brought about by a law case. There was a meeting house
in Lexington, Massachusetts, in 1877, dilapidated and old. The
congregation had left it, so the few old persons who remained decided
that it should be sold. They wished to consult a lawyer, and called me
to Lexington. Standing on the platform, I asked the few present to vote
upon the question. The edifice had been dear to some of them, and they
hemmed and hawed, and couldn’t decide.

“At length, I suggested that they put new life into the place. But
interest in the building as a place of worship seemed to have departed,
although they did not care to see it torn down.”


HOW HE ENTERED THE MINISTRY.

“On the spur of the moment, I said that, if they would gather there the
following Sunday morning, I would address them. A few came at first,
then more. We had to rent a hall in another place. I suggested that
they should get a pastor.

“To my surprise, they replied that if I would be their pastor, they
would erect a new church.

“I studied for the ministry. One day, I startled the quaint village
of Lexington by demolishing the little old church with an axe. The
people were aroused by my spirit, and gave donations for a new
church. I worked with the men we hired to construct it, and afterward
attended the Newton Theological Seminary. Seventeen years ago, I came
to Philadelphia as pastor of this church, which then worshipped in a
basement some squares away.”

“But Temple College, Doctor; how was that started?”

“About fourteen years ago a poor young man came to me to ask my advice
how to obtain a college education. I offered to be his teacher. Then
others joined until there were six. The number was gradually enlarged
to forty, when the idea came to me to found a people’s college.
Certain gentlemen became interested, and we erected Temple College,
which was then connected with this church, but now is a separate and
distinct institution. We hope shortly to have it like the New York
University. We have rented a number of outside buildings, and have
a law school and a seminary. About four thousand attend the evening
classes, while four thousand attend the special day classes.”


HE IS ALWAYS STUDYING SOMETHING.

“How do you manage to keep up in all the studies?” I asked. “Do you
carry text-books around with you in your pockets?”

“Yes, and I always have. I study all the time. I have acquired several
languages in that way.”

“When do you prepare your sermons?”

“I have never prepared a lecture or a sermon in my life, and I have
lectured for thirty-seven years. I seldom use even notes. When in the
pulpit, I rivet my attention on preaching, and think of nothing else.

“Application in the most severe form, and honesty, are the means by
which true success is attained. No matter what you do, do it to your
utmost. You and I may not do something as well as someone else, but
no stone should be unturned to do it to the best of our individual
ability. I have had a varied life, and many experiences, and I
attribute my success, if you are so pleased to call it, to always
requiring myself to do my level best, if only in driving a tack in
straight.”




XLV

An Inspiring Personality Wins a Noted Preacher Fame.


ONE of the brightest examples of early success in life is Frank W.
Gunsaulus, D.D., one of the sincerest friends of young men striving
to climb upward, that America has produced. Chicago has helped him,
and he has helped Chicago, to do great things. During his six years of
ministry in that city, before he left the pulpit and became president
of Armour Institute, he founded two notable institutions and raised
over $7,000,000 in money for charitable purposes. On the stormiest of
Sunday evenings, after a newspaper announcement that he will speak, an
audience two thousand five hundred strong will gather to hear him. It
was not an uncommon sight, during one of his series of winter sermons,
for men anxious to hear the splendid orator, to be lifted through
windows of Central Music Hall, when no more could get in at the doors.
His most conspicuous labor has been the founding of the famous Armour
Institute of Technology, which now has twelve hundred students, and of
which he is the president.


CAN A PREACHER BE A POWER?

I found him in the president’s office of Armour Institute.

“Do you think,” I said, “that it is more difficult for a preacher to
become a power in a nation than it is for a merchant, a lawyer, or a
politician?”

“Rather hard to say,” he answered. “There are prejudices against and
sympathies in favor of every class and profession. I think, however,
that a preacher is more like a doctor in his career. He is likely
to make a strong local impression, but not apt to become a national
figure. Given powerful convictions, an undertaking of things as they
are to-day, and steady work in the direction of setting things right,
and you may be sure a man is at least heading in the direction of
public favor, whether he ever attains it or not.”

“How did you manage to do the work you have done, in so short a time?”

“In the first place, I don’t think I have done so very much; and, in
the second place, the time seems rather long for what I have done. I
have worked hard, however.

“I thought to be a lawyer in my youth, and did study law and oratory.
My father was a country lawyer at Chesterfield, Ohio, where I was born,
and was a member of the Ohio Legislature during the war. He was a very
effective public speaker himself and thought that I ought to be an
orator. So he did everything to give me a bent in that direction, and
often took me as many as twenty miles to hear a good oration.”


MEN WHO INFLUENCED HIM.

“I admired Fisher Ames, to begin with, and, of course, Webster. I think
Wendell Phillips and Bishop Matthew Simpson, whom I heard a few times,
had the greatest influence on me. I considered them wonderful, moving
speakers, and I do yet. Later on, Henry Ward Beecher and Phillips
Brooks attracted my admiration.”

“Did you have leisure for study and time to hear orations when you were
beginning life?”

“In early years I attended the district school. From the twelfth to
my eighteenth year, I worked on the farm and studied nights. For all
my father’s urgings toward the bar, I always felt an inward drawing
toward the ministry, because I felt that I could do more there.
My father was not a member of any church, though my mother was an
earnest Presbyterian. Without any prompting from my parents, I leaned
toward the ministry, and finally entered it of my own accord. I was
fortunate enough to find a young companion who was also studying for
the ministry. We were the best of friends and helped each other a great
deal. It was our custom to prepare sermons and preach them in each
other’s presence. Our audience in that case, unlike that of the church,
never hesitated to point out errors. The result was that some sermons
ended in arguments between the audience and the preacher, as to facts
involved.”


HE DID NOT PRETEND TO PIETY.

“I was graduated from the Ohio Wesleyan Seminary in debt. I had no
reputation for piety, and I don’t remember that I pretended to any.
I had convictions, however, and a burning desire to do something, to
achieve something for the benefit of my fellowmen, and I was ready for
the first opportunity.”

“Was it long in coming?”

“No, but you would not have considered it much of an opportunity. I
took charge of a small church at Harrisburg, Ohio, at a salary of three
hundred and twenty dollars a year. In preaching regularly I soon found
it necessary to formulate some kind of a theory of life,—to strive for
some definite object. I began to feel the weight of the social problem.”


ARE THE DICE OF LIFE LOADED?

“One important fact began to make itself plain, and that was that the
modern young man is more or less discouraged by the growing belief that
all things are falling into the hands of great corporations and trusts,
and that the individual no longer has much chance. My father had been
more or less of a fatalist in his view of life, and often quoted
Emerson to me, to the effect that the dice of life are loaded, and fall
according to a plan. My mother leaned to the doctrine of Calvin,—to
predestination. I inherited a streak of the same feeling, and the
conditions I observed made me feel that there was probably something
in the theory. I had to battle this down and convince myself that we
are what we choose to make ourselves. Then I had to set to work to
counteract the discouraging view taken by the young people about me.”

“You were a Methodist, then?”

“Yes, I was admitted to preach in that body, but it was not long before
I had an attack of transcendentalism, and fell out with the Methodist
elder of my district. The elder was wholly justified. He was a dry old
gentleman, with a fund of common sense. After one of my flights, in
which I advocated perfection far above the range of humankind, he came
to me and said: ‘My dear young man, don’t you know that people have to
live on this planet?’ The rebuke struck me as earthly then, but it has
grown in humor and common sense since.

“I left voluntarily. I knew I was not satisfactory, and so I went away.
I married when I was twenty. I preached in several places, and obtained
a charge at Columbus, Ohio.”


A MINISTER’S TRUE IDEAL.

“When did you begin to have a visible influence on affairs, such as you
have since exercised?”

“Just as soon as I began to formulate and follow what I considered to
be the true ideal of the minister.”

“And that ideal was?”

“That the question to be handled by a preacher must not be theological,
but sociological.”

“How did this conviction work out at Columbus?”

“The church became too small for the congregation, and so we had to
move to the opera house.

“My work there showed me that any place may be a pulpit,—editorial
chair, managerial chair, almost anything. I began to realize that a
whole and proper work would be to get hold of the Christian forces
outside the ecclesiastical machine and get them organized into
activity. I was not sure about my plan yet, however, so I left Columbus
for Newtonville, Massachusetts, and took time to review my studies.
There I came under the influence of Phillips Brooks. When I began once
more to get a clear idea of what I wanted to do, I went to Baltimore,
on a call, and preached two years at Brown Memorial Presbyterian Church.

“I came to Chicago in 1872. Plymouth Church offered an absolutely
free pulpit, and an opportunity to work out some plans that I thought
desirable.”


HIS WORK IN CHICAGO.

“How did you go about your work in this city?”

“The first thing that seemed necessary for me to do was to find a
place where homeless boys of the city who had drifted into error and
troubles of various kinds could be taken into the country and educated.
I preached a sermon on this subject, and one member gave a fine farm
of two hundred and forty acres for the purpose. Plymouth Church
built Plymouth Cottage there, and the Illinois Training School was
moved there, and other additions were made, gradually adding to its
usefulness.”

“The church grew under your ministration there, did it not?”

“You can leave off that about me. It grew, yes, and we established a
mission.”

“Was there not a sum raised for this?”

“Yes; Mr. Joseph Armour gave a hundred thousand dollars to house this
mission, and the church has since aided it in various ways.”

“This Armour Institute is an idea of yours, is it not?”

“Well, it is in line with my ideas in what it accomplishes. It is the
outcome of Mr. Armour’s great philanthropy.”

“Do you find, now that you have experimented so much, that your ideals
concerning what ought to be done for the world were too high?” I asked.

“On the contrary,” answered Dr. Gunsaulus, “I have sometimes felt that
they were not high enough. If they had been less than they are, I
should not have accomplished what I have.”

“What has been your experience as to working hours?”

“I have worked twelve and fourteen, at times even eighteen hours a day,
particularly when I was working to establish this institution, but I
paid for it dearly. I suffered a paralytic stroke which put me on my
back for nine months, and in that time you see I not only suffered,
but lost all I had gained by the extra hours.”


HOW TO MEET GREAT EMERGENCIES.

“You believe in meeting great emergencies with great individual energy?”

“There doesn’t seem to be any way out of it. A man must work hard,
extra hard, at times, or lose many a battle.”

“You have mingled in public affairs here in Chicago, also, have you
not?”

“Yes, I have always tried to do my share.”

“You believe the chances for young men to-day are as good as in times
gone by?”

“I certainly do. That is my whole doctrine. The duties devolving on
young men are growing greater, more important, more valuable all the
time. The wants of the world seem to grow larger, more urgent every
day. What all young men need to do is to train themselves. They must
train their hands to deftness, train their eyes to see clearly, and
their ears to hear and understand. Look at the call there is going
to be upon young men when this country will be organizing its new
possessions and opening up new fields of activity. What the world needs
is young men equipped to do the work. There is always work to be done.”

“You think, in your own field, there is a call for energetic young men?”

“It never was greater. A young preacher who looks around him, studies
the conditions, finds out just a few of the ten thousand important
things that are going begging for someone to do them, and then proceeds
to work for their accomplishment, will succeed beyond his wildest
dreams.

“The world looks for leaders, it looks for men who are original, able
and practical; and all I have got to say to a young man is simply to
find out clearly all about a need in a certain direction, and then lead
on to the alleviation of it. Money, influence, honor, will all follow
along after, to help.”




XLVI

From the Forge to the Pulpit, a Life of Devotion and Application.


“SO you want me to tell you of myself,—to ‘blaw my ain harn,’ as
we used to say in old Yorkshire. Well, I’m not in love with the
undertaking, for what we call a self-made man usually shows that he
has made a pretty poor fist of it when he begins to describe the job
himself. However, if an outline of my life be of service, I give it
gladly. The beginning was in the hamlet of Ilkley, Yorkshire, England,
seventy-five years ago. I was born well; that is, I was born of simple,
hard-working folk who inspired in me very early a hearty respect for
work. My mother was a noble woman. I can see the old home now,—the bit
of grass in front, the plum tree, the whitewashed walls, and within,
the two rooms with floor of flags, the old prints on the walls, the
highly polished chairs and bureau, the tall clock that was always too
fast at bedtime and in the morning, and always too slow at mealtime,
the little shelf of books,—Bunyan, ‘Robinson Crusoe,’ Goldsmith, and
the Bible, full of pictures. Until I was eight years old, I went to
school to old Willie Hardie, who tried to find in me the spring of
what we called the humanities in the same way that they used to try to
locate a spring of water, namely: with a hazel rod.”


THE RIVALS: BOOKS AND THE MAIDEN.

“All the schooling I ever had under the master was finished in my
eighth year, when I went to earn my own living in a linen factory.
There was an article of faith in our good home creed about which both
my father and mother were of one mind,—the boys must learn a trade.
So, after six years in the factory, I was apprenticed to the village
blacksmith. I was a hard-working, conscientious boy, but full of
mischief and fond of fun. I had, however, a ravenous appetite for
books. I remember once, when quite small, I stood for a long time
before a shop window with a big English penny in my hand, debating
whether I should spend it for a particular kind of candy, of which I
was very fond, or for a little paper-covered book of travels. At length
I went in and bought the book. At meals I used to read, and even when I
was courting the lass whom I made my wife, I read all the books in her
father’s house. I am surprised she did not give me the mitten, and it
would have served me right, too.

“Books were not only pleasing to me, but were my passion. Give a young
man or maiden a passion for anything,—for books, business, painting,
teaching, farming, mechanics or music, I care not what, and you give
him or her a lever with which to lift their world, and a patent of
nobility, if the thing they do is noble. So I call my reading my
college course. It was not an adequate college nor an adequate course,
and there have been times when I felt a trifle sad that there should
have been no chance for me at a good, all-round education. But there
is a chance in the everlasting hunger to read books, and it is with
reading as it is with eating,—you grow choice when there is a plenty.
You instinctively learn to distinguish what is sweet and wholesome and
what is neither, and then you read as you eat,—only the best.

“A great sorrow came to me in 1849. As a result of it, I found my way
into a Methodist meeting house, and began to express what I felt. From
a few words, uttered standing by my seat in the meeting, I began to
preach at irregular intervals; and when I did, it became the custom,
after a while, for some one to go through the village, ringing a bell
and calling out: ‘The blacksmith is going to preach this morning.’
The working people came to hear me because I was one of themselves.
Then they would have me preach regularly,—at nothing a Sunday and find
myself.

“Sometimes I would forget the flight of time and preach for two
hours or more. As I look back upon the poor mortals who sat under my
ministrations for such a length of time, I am reminded of the judge
who, when asked how long a sermon ought to last, replied: ‘About twenty
minutes, with leanings to the side of mercy.’”


THE LIGHT THAT LED OVER THE SEA.

“My only worldly ambition was to make my way as a blacksmith, but
one day there came to me in a flash the thought that I must go to
America, where I would have to bow to no class, but would be as good
a man as any. Many times in my life these sudden burstings of light,
half thought, half feeling, have come to me; and, when they do come, I
cease to reason about the matter. I simply obey the impulse with all
the power of my will. It would have taken tremendous difficulties to
have kept me from embarking for this country after the flash came, and
so, one fine spring morning in 1850, I and my little family, with our
small store of worldly goods, went aboard the old ship ‘Roscius,’ made
ourselves as comfortable as we could in the steerage, and a month later
were in New York.

“I had made up my mind to settle in the vicinity of Philadelphia, and
there I soon found work at the anvil. It was lucky I did, for, when we
reached our destination, my whole capital amounted to only about twenty
dollars. We made ourselves a little home, and I worked at my trade for
the next nine years, except during the panic of 1857, when I carried
the hod and broke stone on the turnpike for a dollar a day. Meanwhile,
I was preaching o’ Sundays, again at nothing a Sunday. In 1859, I was
asked to devote myself altogether to preaching,—to go to Chicago as
a minister to the poor. Well, I went. I said good-by forever to the
anvil, in whose ringing voice I had heard so many years the old sermon
on the nobility of work.”


GENIUS IS DEVOTION AND APPLICATION.

“Before I had been in Chicago a great while, some people got together
and built a church, and appointed me pastor of it, hardly so much as
saying to me ‘by your leave.’ It was named the Unity Church, and I
remained in charge of it till 1879, when I came to New York to preach
in the Church of the Messiah.

“Here I have since remained. My life, you see, is divided into two
sections,—forty years in the pulpit, twenty-one years at the anvil. I
have worked on long lines, and I will say to young men that, when your
homes and your schools have done all they can for you, and you begin
the work of life, you must take hold with a will and be content to work
hard on long lines. People say that such and such a person has genius
for what he or she takes in hand, and that is the secret of the success
attained. But I say that genius means strong devotion and steadfast
application. You may imagine that you can go from the bottom to the top
of the ladder at one jump, but it is not true. Going up the ladder at
one jump is like the toy monkey that goes up at a jump and comes down
head first. The men and women who achieve true success are all hard
climbers. They work in one direction. Our course must not be like a
cow-path, all over the pasture and into the woods, for that may mean
through the woods into the wilderness.

“I want to say, too, that, if we expect to do well in this life, we
must keep well, by all the means in our power;—eat well, and sleep
well eight hours out of the twenty-four. Young men should choose, as
early as they can, a good and true woman for a wife, and look forward
to a noble family of children. My ambition was to have seven, and
the all-wise Father gave me nine. If a young man has good mental and
physical health and works hard, his life will be sweet and clean. He
will do his day’s work well and his life’s work well, and at the end he
will be able to say, with Adam in the play:—

    “‘Though I look old, yet am I strong and lusty,
      For in my youth I never did apply hot and rebellious liquors to
          my blood,
      And did not with unbashful forehead woo
      The means of weakness and debility.
      Therefore my age is lusty winter, frosty, but kindly.’”




XLVII

Canada’s Leading Conservative Extols “the Country of the Twentieth
Century.”


THOUGH he lost his fight against Sir Wilfrid Laurier for the
Premiership of Canada in the general election of 1904, Robert Laird
Borden is still one of the Dominion’s important figures.

He is in the prime of life. He has conspicuous ability, remarkable
energy and an indomitable will. What a man with this combination of
qualities sets his mind upon he usually obtains. Mr. Borden freely
acknowledges his ambition to reach the top notch of political success,
and there are a great many Canadians who believe that he will yet be
Premier.

His party, in spite of his defeat, has strong faith in him, and his
opponents, now triumphant, admit that he is formidable—a menace to
their continuing success. They feel that under the scrutiny of Borden,
who is notably quick to detect weak spots in the armor of the enemy,
and to drive home strong thrusts, they must put their best foot front.
Thus, even in defeat, Mr. Borden is a power.

My first impression of him was obtained in Montreal. He was walking
through a hotel rotunda with the long, swift strides that bespeak
much physical energy. His head was bowed and his eyes were knit. He
struck me at the moment as being a personification of determination and
concentration. It was a little later, in his room, that I had my talk
with him. Mr. Borden’s head is large. His brow rises straight up from
heavy brows and eyes which are deep-set and rather small, and twinkle
with shrewdness and good nature. The lower part of his face is heavy,
indicating the strength of will and purpose which have carried him to
the front in Canadian politics.

“I am much interested in success,” he said with a smile. “Indeed, the
air in Canada nowadays is charged with it. We have a feeling that a far
larger part of the success of Canada lies in the future rather than
in the past. While the United States developed more in the nineteenth
century than any other country in the world, we believe that Canada
will show similar industrial advances within the next quarter of a
century. We entertain the idea that ours will prove to be the country
of the twentieth century. It is not yet as widely known as it should
be that we have a somewhat larger area in land than the United States
and that this land is not rendered sterile by the winter reign of the
mythical personage called ‘our lady of the snows,’ but is capable of
remarkable productivity.

“We are looking forward and not backward, and therefore I am not
particularly interested in the unimportant events of long ago; but
if you must know, I will say that I was born in the village of Grand
Pre, in Nova Scotia, in 1854. Some of my ancestors had lived in the
United States. One of them, my great-grandfather, was the law partner
of Pierpont Edwards, in New Haven, Conn. They had one of the largest
practices in that section of the country, but when the Revolutionary
War broke out my forefather remained loyal to King George. He migrated
with his family to Nova Scotia, and there the family has since remained.

“Yes, my village is the one which Longfellow has described in his poem
‘Evangeline’; and yet, taking full advantage of his poetical license,
Longfellow put much in his picture that is purely imaginary. It is,
however, a little community whose inhabitants lead the simple life,
acquire robust physiques, and strong opinions of right and wrong.

“I know of no better environment than one like this for the passing
of the days of early youth. The impressions stamped on the mind of
a boy by such people and surroundings never forsake him. However
different from the simple beliefs of these villagers his standpoint may
eventually become, these first teachings remain what might be called
the oak rafters of his philosophy.

“I feel that not a little of whatever I have achieved is due to
the fact that the years of my boyhood and youth were spent in an
environment of simplicity. I was an industrious student, and when I
was about fourteen I was made a teacher in the Acadia Villa Academy
in my native country. It was in this school that I had obtained my
preliminary education, and I presume I did right in returning to the
institution as teacher the modicum of knowledge I had acquired. When
I was still in my teens I went to the United States and became an
instructor in Glenwood Institute in New Jersey. This proved to be
excellent training for me. I think that an experience of this kind is
one of the best things in the world for a young man, for the reason
that the necessity in it to command others teaches him the more easily
to command himself. It increases his dignity, self-reliance and
self-respect.

“I decided, however, that I did not care to make teaching my life work,
and so I returned to Nova Scotia in 1874 and began the study of law in
the offices in Halifax of the firm of Weatherby & Graham. In 1878 I was
called to the bar and a few months afterwards was offered a partnership
by J. P. Chapman, of Kentville, now a county court judge.

“Together we worked up quite a large practice, but owing to certain
circumstances I entered the firm of Thompson, Graham & Tupper. It
was not long afterward that the senior member of the firm, Sir John
Thompson, became judge of the Supreme Court, and in the course of time
Sir Charles Tupper, one of the other members, was called to the cabinet
of Sir John A. McDonald. Subsequently Mr. Graham, the third member of
the firm, became Judge in Equity for the Province of Quebec.

“I believe that a large part of anything I have achieved has been due
to the fact that I was associated with able men during the impressible
period of young manhood. While I did not realize it at that time, I
have often thought since that one of the most fortunate circumstances
in my life was my close contact with these men. By this means I not
only absorbed a greater knowledge of the law than otherwise would have
been the case, but also became imbued with certain principles that I
have always retained.

“The calling of these gentlemen to high places under the Government
left me to the position of senior partner, and the firm name eventually
became Borden, Ritchie, Parker & Chisholm. We did a large business,
and on the strength of this I was elected and held for several years
the position of president of the Nova Scotia Barristers Society. It
was in 1896 that I first entered politics, representing Halifax as the
Conservative party’s candidate for the Dominion Parliament.”

“To what in particular, Mr. Borden,” I inquired, “do you attribute the
fact that you speedily arose to leadership of your party in Parliament?”

Mr. Borden pondered a moment, and then said:

“I can hardly answer that question, but I will say that perhaps the
influence I have been able to gain in Parliament has been due to the
fact that I have had very strong convictions on all public questions,
and have let slip few opportunities to express them. I am usually able
to maintain the positions I take in argument, for the reason that I am
always careful to fortify myself with facts and with as extensive a
general knowledge of the subject as possible before going into a debate
or going before the House on any particular issue.

“I believe I have the reputation of being a hard worker. However
this may be, I will say that I have always made it a rule to give
painstaking attention to seemingly unimportant details in my legal
cases, and have frequently won them on this account. This habit,
acquired in my youth, of looking after small matters, has made it much
easier for me to take care of the large affairs of my clients and of my
party since I have entered politics. I know of no surer road to both
general and political success than the obvious highway of hard work,
coupled, of course, with common sense.

“While the law is the profession which most naturally leads the young
man into the political arena, I always like to see the farmer in
politics, for the reason that the latter usually has a certain strong
simplicity and a degree of sense that often discounts and renders
weak in comparison the learning and polish of the professional man.
The farmers will be the dominating class in the development of the
Northwest, and I hope to see more and more of them in politics.”

In his contact with his fellow-men Mr. Borden’s manner is marked by a
quiet dignity and cordiality that has won him many friends. While he
has numerous political enemies, there are few men in the Dominion who
are as popular personally. Mr. Borden likes to meet and exchange views
with the average citizen. A little story is told of him in his recent
campaign which is characteristic. It seems that he was on a night
journey on a train and could not sleep. A like wakefulness afflicted
a young man in the same car, and at midnight they found themselves
together in the smoking compartment. Talk began at once, and throughout
the dragging hours these two discussed the great questions of the
day. The young man, who had just returned from the States, did not
recognize his companion, and the next morning in Montreal he remarked
to his friends upon his very interesting fellow-traveler of the night
before. He said that they had chiefly talked politics and that his
acquaintance had been so convincing that he had been won over to the
Conservative party. He described his fellow-passenger, and very much to
his astonishment was informed that the latter was Mr. Borden himself.




XLVIII

An Eminent Scholar Advocates the Union of Canada and the United States.


CANADA’S “grand old man” is Professor Goldwin Smith. With all his
opinions Canadians do not agree, but they are united in their
admiration for his qualities as a man and a scholar. A mention of his
name brings an expression of liking and pride to the face of every
intelligent resident of the Dominion. A mention of his well-known
belief that Canada and the United States will eventually be one brings
a smile which well expresses the average Canadian’s feeling that their
leading philosopher’s idea of the union of the great commonwealths is
too abstract and remote to arouse alarm in the patriotic breast.

In spite of this difference of opinion the people of the Dominion
highly appreciate Professor Smith’s notable attainments as a student
and a writer. They realize that from his vantage point of long
residence in both England and the United States, as well as in Canada,
and from his careful and enlightened study of the problems of these
countries, his outlook is perhaps broader than that of any other man
in Canada. Professor Smith, now in his eighty-first year, lives in
an ideal way in his Toronto residence, The Grange. It was here that I
called on him.

The Scotch lodgekeeper and his wife, in their quaint little home at
the gate, were quite in keeping with the air of dignified calm which
enfolds The Grange. The house, standing well back in the grounds, is
representative of the best architecture of a century ago. It suggests
reminiscence and contemplation. It has the mellow atmosphere of the
past. When approaching it along the gravel walk you feel that you have
left behind the hurly burly of everyday life; that this is a most
fitting abode for one who stands apart from the crowd to watch the
currents of life flow by.

As the house is, so is the man. Tall, slender and a trifle bent in
figure, with a thin ascetic face, Professor Smith impressed me as a man
who contemplates calmly and critically, but with a very kindly eye, as
from high ground, the agitations and excitements of the times. I made a
remark to him as to the quietude of his surroundings.

“Yes, I am very fond of the old place,” he replied, his eyes kindling
with interest. “I am proud of it. You have noticed that all of the
woodwork is black walnut, which was the prevailing mode in interior
decorations in the early part of the nineteenth century. I have
permitted nothing to be changed. I am fond of old things, perhaps,
because I am old myself.”

“Your activities make it rather difficult to believe that statement,” I
said.

“Well, I have always tried to retain a youthful spirit,” answered
Professor Smith, with the engaging smile which is characteristic of
him, “and I have been able to keep a fair amount of physical vigor by
means of plenty of exercise and regularity in my mode of living. I have
always been very fond of walking, and have done a great deal of it.
While I am not as industrious in this respect as I used to be, I make
a point of driving out in my carriage every afternoon. I rarely let
anything interfere with this, because it has a tendency to give me new
vitality both in spirit and body.”

“While your house is old, Professor Smith,” I remarked, “this country
in which you live, Canada, is young.”

“Yes, we have not progressed as rapidly as the United States; we are
yet, in many respects, a people of beginnings. Canadians look forward
to the future with very optimistic spirit. We see possibilities of
great industrial and agricultural development.”

“The average Canadian does not look as far into the future as you do
yourself.”

“No, perhaps not,” smilingly replied Professor Smith. “I believe that
the great majority of our people are not at all in sympathy with my
opinion that Canada will eventually become a part of the United States.
I have, however, long held this belief. It has been my idea for many
years that the whole continent of North America should be, and will be
eventually, given up to republican institutions. It has been said of me
that I left Great Britain in order to be able to live in the republican
atmosphere of the New World. While this is not altogether true, I am
wonderfully interested in the great experiment of a government by the
people which is now being tried by the United States.

“I think the experiment will prove a success, and that in the end
all of the commonwealths on this side of the Atlantic will come
sufficiently under the influence of this form of government to embrace
it. The Old World powers are by degrees losing their dependencies in
the New World. I long ago said, for example, that Spain’s hold upon
Cuba was becoming weaker and weaker, and would sooner or later become
altogether relaxed. I believe that this is likewise true of Great
Britain in her relationship with Canada. A wide ocean divides the
mother country from her great colony in North America, while merely an
artificial boundary line divides us from the powerful republic to the
South.

“The bond between Canada and the United States is gradually becoming
closer in spite of the little intervening frictions which from time
to time arise. I am aware that many Canadians express an antipathy
for the United States, but this amounts to little more than talk.
Young Canadians have been for many years seeking opportunities in the
United States, and at the present time many thousands of agriculturists
from the Western States are annually migrating into our Northwest to
take advantage there of the productivity of the virgin soil. Numerous
American capitalists are investing their money on our side of the line,
and thus the commercial connection is constantly becoming closer.

“As a matter of fact, there is in some particulars more intimate
union between Canada and the United States than between some of our
own provinces. I have often said to my friends that the beginning of
wisdom in regard to Canada is the realization of the fact that the
natural avenues of traffic and communication lie north and south rather
than east and west. We must remember that between various parts of
the Dominion nature has set up very formidable barriers, great lakes,
high mountains, and wide expanses of uncultivated territory. We must
not forget, furthermore, that there are two distinct races in Canada,
different in religion, sympathies and general characteristics. Thus
it will be seen that without compactness in territory and without a
homogeneous spirit among the people, Canada is not a united country.
She needs the United States and, by the same token, the United States
needs Canada. While I don’t expect to see it in my own time, I feel
justified in prophesying that the passing years of the twentieth
century will bring an equal union between our country and the States.
Together they will rise to greater heights of power, influence and
civilization than any nation has yet attained.

“I like to see Canadians go to the United States and I like to see
young Americans come to Canada. A young man should always have courage
to seek the fields which seem to be most promising for him. I am
inclined to think that a changed environment is a stimulus to his
energy and ambition. A knowledge of the different sections certainly
gives him a broader outlook and adds materially to his equipment for
the battle of life.”




XLIX

After Failure as a Grocer, He Becomes the Ablest Administrator Quebec
Has Ever Had.


“THE busiest man in Canada,” exclaimed a friend in close touch with
the government, when I told him that I desired to meet the Hon. S. N.
Parent, Premier of the Province of Quebec.

“Parent, you know,” continued my informant, “is not only Premier of
the Province, but is also mayor of the City of Quebec, minister of
lands, mines and fisheries, president of the company that is building
a seven-million-dollar bridge across the St. Lawrence, director in the
Quebec Railway Light and Power Company, director in the Grand Trunk
Railway, and a lawyer with the largest practice in the Province.”

This information as to his surprising range of activities, bespeaking a
man of remarkable achievement, made me more than ever anxious to talk
with Mr. Parent, and I said so to my friend.

“Well,” he exclaimed, “the premier is personally one of the most
approachable men alive, but all day long in the ante-rooms of his
various offices there are crowds waiting to see him. He never appears
in the streets of Quebec on foot, but always in his cab, for the simple
reason that if he were walking so many persons would stop him that he
would be hours getting to his destination. His lieutenants hedge him
in, but once past them you are all right.”

“What would be a good time and place to call on him?”

“In answer to that I will give you an outline of his movement for his
business day, and you may judge for yourself. Promptly every morning
at half-past seven he arrives at his law office in Lower Town and sees
clients there until ten o’clock, when he goes to the City Hall to take
up his work as Mayor. Here he keeps in close touch with every detail of
city administration.

“It has been said that not a nail is driven on public property without
his knowledge. This, of course, is an exaggeration, but it is the
truth that he is the first mayor Quebec has had in sixty years who has
been able to run the municipal government without an annual deficit in
the treasury. And yet with all his economy he has instituted numerous
public improvements. On the strength of this work for Quebec he has
several times been reëlected Mayor and has held the office for eleven
years.

“After an hour at the City Hall he is driven to Parliament House, where
he transacts the business of the Province until half-past one. Here, in
addition to his general work, he gives special attention to the land
and fisheries department, which he has made the most important in the
provincial government. He has so developed it that it yields a larger
income than any other.

“Mr. Parent takes a light luncheon at half-past one, and remains in
Parliament House until four o’clock, when he returns to his law office,
where he gives himself up to cases and to his financial interests
until seven. Now comes a dinner which is hardly more hearty than his
luncheon, and after this he attends the meetings of committees, which
assemble in the evening chiefly to suit his convenience. This schedule
is as regular as clockwork. The Premier makes a point of letting
nothing interfere with it. Exactly at the times and places I mention
you can find him.”

Armed with this knowledge, and with a letter of introduction, I sought
the Premier at the House of Parliament—a stately building of massive
stone, standing out against the sky on the heights of the “Gibraltar
of America,” and commanding a huge panoramic view of the Lower Town,
of the St. Lawrence and St. Charles rivers, of the Isle of Orleans,
the wide valley of St. Anne and the sweeping lines of the Laurentian
Mountains.

The ante-room was crowded, as I had been told it would be, but an
attendant at once took in my letter and almost immediately returned.

“The Premier cannot see you to-day,” he said, “but will be very glad
to meet you at this office at twelve sharp to-morrow. If you would
accept a little word of advice,” he added, official manner giving way
to French-Canadian courtesy, “I would say that it would be well to be
exactly on time. By five minutes past twelve, if you are not here, the
Premier will be engaged with some one else, and then your opportunity
will be gone. He never spends time in waiting. This is what you might
call one of his peculiarities.”

I was on time. At precisely twelve an official passed out of the inner
room and I was invited in. As the Premier swung about in his chair with
the quick glance and motion that are characteristic with him, I saw a
man with a high forehead, a prominent nose, keen gray eyes and a small
mustache. His age is fifty-three, but he appears much younger.

“I am interviewing the most successful men in Canada,” I said, “and so,
naturally, have called on you.”

Mr. Parent smiled, with a slight shrug of his shoulders, but made no
comment.

“Would you mind telling me how you made your start toward success?”

The light of reminiscence came into the Premier’s eyes and his smile
was more pronounced. After a very brief pause he said:

“You flatter me by the use of that word success; but if you want to
know how I began my career I will assure you that I began it with a
failure. My father was a merchant across the river in Beauport, where
I was born, and before I was old enough to appreciate how much I did
not know I branched out into business for myself. I started a grocery
store. It failed, and I decided that I was unfit to be a successful
grocer.

“A fair education gained at the normal school enabled me to obtain a
place in a law office of S. B. Langois here in Quebec. After I had
been with him a short time he strongly advised me to take up law as a
profession. I was beginning to feel a pronounced inclination in this
direction, and, stimulated by his encouragement, I began to study hard.
I took the course at Laval University, and after graduation commenced
to practice chiefly at first in the police courts.

“Gradually my clients increased in numbers and my cases in importance.
Politics had always interested me. I became somewhat active in this
field, and, although I have never tried to practice the art of oratory,
for which I have no gift, I was elected to the County Council of Quebec
in 1890. Three years later I was made Mayor of the city and not long
afterwards Premier of the Province. My career since then has been
largely official and a matter of record.”

“It is said that you have given the province and the city the best
business administration they have ever had. You know more about
business now than when you ran the grocery store, for instance.”

“Oh, yes,” laughed Mr. Parent, “a great deal more. For one thing, I
have learned that the price of a business success is eternal vigilance.
I have found that the only way to conduct affairs of a municipality
along strictly business lines is to watch the committees—to watch their
every move. It is in these bodies that the financial leaks are most
likely to occur. Not having to carry the main responsibility for public
expenditures, committees are inclined to be too generous, too confident
of the resources of the treasury. I have no doubt that this is as true
in your country, the United States, as in Canada.

“We have ten committees which are meeting constantly. During the eleven
years I have been in office I have not missed a single meeting, which
is one of the main causes, I think, of whatever success I may have had
as a public administrator.”

“Your position as the representative of a large population of both
French and English must have its difficulties,” I remarked.

“These are not nearly as great as you might imagine,” quickly replied
the Premier. “I don’t pretend to try to please everybody, but I do try
to treat all alike. I myself, as you know, am of French descent. French
was the language of my childhood, but whether a man is English, or
Scotch, or French-Canadian, whether he is a Protestant or Catholic,
has absolutely no weight with me in my attitude toward him in the
discharge of my official duties.

“We French hold to our language and customs because we are proud
of them, but there is complete sympathy between the two races
in the Province of Quebec. The Anglo-Saxon Canadian admires the
French-Canadian because of his honesty, industry and thrift, and the
latter admires the former for virtues too numerous to mention. A union
between the two, already close, is constantly becoming closer, and
it gives me pleasure to think that perhaps I have done something to
advance this movement for the common good.

“We are all working for the prosperity and progress of the province and
city of Quebec. In this connection the possibilities are so great that
even if we were inclined to racial prejudices, which is not true, we
would realize that we could not afford to entertain them.

“Quebec is on the threshold of a new era. The great bridge across
the St. Lawrence will bring important improvements in the railroad
facilities of the city. The harbor, already one of the finest in
existence for vessels of large tonnage, will be made even better by
the extension of the dock system and by other projects now in hand.
The Grand Trunk Pacific Railway, which is about to be built across
the continent, will have its eastern terminus at Quebec, and will
bring to us for export to the markets of the world a vast quantity of
the products of the great Northwest. All this will mean a remarkable
stimulus to our city.

“As for the province as a whole, the fertility of the soil,
particularly in the neighborhood of Lake St. John, warrants the
prediction that it will become the granary of Eastern Canada. The
enormous water powers within our boundaries, harnessed for the
generation of electricity, will mean the rise of many industries. There
is, moreover, an immense wealth of money to be gathered from the many
thousands of miles of territory which offer pulp wood for paper making.
Year by year the pulp industry is extending, but it is as yet at the
very beginning of its development. It will bring many millions of
dollars to the province and its people. Young men now at the outset of
their careers will grow rich from the new industrial activities.

“But in Quebec we have not yet been educated up, or down, to the idea
that the most desirable thing in the world is wealth. We have other
standards of success. None of us have what would be considered from
the American point of view great riches, and we are well content that
this is so. Money, of course, is an excellent thing, and we have no
prejudices against its possession, but we are in no feverish haste to
acquire it. For example, none of our professional men or politicians
are very rich. Political life here offers practically no financial
opportunities. The politician who attempted corrupt practices would
find himself in an isolated position. There would be no coterie to
support him. He would be subjected to adverse opinion that would
quickly terminate his career. In my administration of public affairs in
the province and city of Quebec there has not been, I am happy to say,
five cents’ worth of scandal.

“No, as yet, at least, we are not worshippers of the golden calf. All
we want in our careers and community is a healthy progress. We desire
to keep the city of Quebec, for instance, abreast of the times, to
infuse her veins with new blood, but certainly not at a sacrifice
of the flavor of the past which makes her the most interesting and
picturesque city on the continent. We respect the old, and intend to
keep it and the new in harmonious balance.”

“How were you impressed with Mr. Parent?” inquired my friend when I
informed him that I had had my interview.

“Excellently well,” I answered.

“I knew you would be. He is a high grade man, and is very
representative of the French-Canadians of this generation. He believes
in progress, but not in haste. He has good intentions, and the ability
to carry them out. He is much more of a listener than a talker, but
when he says a thing, or makes a promise, you may depend upon it.”

“You have found, haven’t you, that his political opponents admit
that they respect him? I thought so. It has been said here in Quebec
that in his character there is the combination of the canniness of
the Scot, the progressive energy of the Englishman, the conservatism
and sentiment of the French-Canadian, and the geniality of the Irish
gentleman.”




L

Canada’s Leading Economist Tells Her Sons To Seek Fortune in Her Own
Domain.


SIR WILFRID LAURIER, Premier of Canada, said that in matters pertaining
to railways the Hon. Andrew George Blair was the Dominion’s greatest
authority. Whenever in Canada you mention the name of Mr. Blair,
whether among his friends or political opponents, the comment is,—an
able man.

Since his entrance into political life in 1878, after twelve years
of notably successful practice as a lawyer in his native city of
Fredericton, New Brunswick, he has continually risen. Though defeated
in his first candidacy for the New Brunswick House of Commons, he was
elected the second time he ran, in 1879, and since then has always been
victorious at the polls.

As a matter of course, through the force of his personality and without
apparent effort, he became leader of the minority in the New Brunswick
House, and this minority he changed from weakness to strength. His
personal following grew so steadily that in 1883 the majority was
defeated and Mr. Blair became Premier of the Province. In three
general elections, those of 1886, 1890 and 1894, his leadership was
sustained. “By this time,” remarked a friend of his to me, “Blair was
the whole thing in the Province of New Brunswick.”

However this may have been, it is true that Mr. Blair had become a
figure of national prominence. Long before this he had attracted the
attention of Sir Wilfrid Laurier, and when the latter became Premier
of the Dominion in 1896 he made Mr. Blair a member of his Cabinet,
appointing him to the important place of Minister of Railways and
Canals.

It was in this position that he acquired the mastery of railroad
problems that has made him Canada’s leading authority on
transportation. In 1903, because he disagreed with the governmental
powers on the subject of the projected Grand Trunk Pacific line across
the continent, he resigned his portfolio.

But it very soon became evident that Mr. Blair was a man with whose
services it was difficult to dispense. For the purpose of regulating
the railroads in their relations with the public more specifically
than had been possible by the Ministry of Railways and Canals a Board
of Railway Commissioners was provided for by Parliament early in 1904.
Mr. Blair had been very active in advocating the organization of the
committee, and it was obvious that there was no man in Canada who could
approach him in fitness for the place of chairman. Yet his opposition
to the government in its great scheme for the new transcontinental
road was a very formidable objection to his selection. This difficulty
caused much hesitation on the part of the ruling spirits, but in the
end it was decided that the Government could not get along without Mr.
Blair, and so he was appointed chairman of the committee. After a few
months of very successful work he resigned his place, an act which
threw the party in power into a state of astonishment and consternation.

In his office in Ottawa I called upon Mr. Blair, and was at once
impressed with what might be called his bigness. His face, the lower
part of which is covered with the luxuriant growth of beard which is
characteristic of the Scotchman, is broad. His forehead is high and
wide. His eyes are unusually large. He speaks slowly, and every word
has weight.

If one were to make a military comparison it might be said that he has
much more of the blunt strength of the cannon than of the glittering
sharpness of the sword. And yet this military simile, except at times
of heated debate in the House of Parliament, or when his indignation
is aroused, is not a fair one, for no man’s ordinary manner is more
quiet and benign. His energy is not obtrusive, nor of the kind called
nervous. It seems to have a far deeper source than this. The truth
is, Mr. Blair impressed me as possessing more of the equipment of
the scholar and philosopher than of the lawyer giving and parrying
quick thrusts in court litigation, or of the politician devising ways
and means to hold and increase his power. It is difficult to imagine
him indulging in airy flights of eloquence calculated to arouse
the admiration of the crowd. Indeed, he never indulges in what is
ordinarily called oratory. He depends for effectiveness in his speeches
upon the force of fact and logic, with which in Parliament he has
shattered numerous soaring bubbles of forensic sentiment.

“I don’t care to talk about myself,” he remarked to me. “Those good
friends of mine who differ with me on matters of public policy are
doing that. But I have no objection to saying something on the topic
of success, although the subject is so vital and has such an intimate
relationship to a young man’s ambitions and career that I should have
liked to have a little time to consider it.

“I will say, however, that I have been strongly impressed within very
recent times with the fact that it is no longer necessary for young
Canadians to go to the United States to seek their success. At one
time there were much greater opportunities for them there than here,
and Canada lost many of her best minds and most promising youths.
Not a few of these have achieved distinction in the States, and many
young Canadians, inspired by their example, are still seeking fame
and fortune across the border. But a larger number are now coming in
this direction. The tide has turned. Men with capital, in money or in
brains, are beginning to realize that in this twentieth century Canada
is the land of opportunities.

“Even in the profession of law, which feels the effect of new
conditions rather less quickly than do commercial pursuits, there
has been a marked advance toward more business and larger fees. For
electrical, mechanical and civil engineers there is more and more work
in Canada because of the constant installation of new manufacturing
plants and the extension of the railway systems.

“In the field of railroad construction in particular, on account of
the necessity of thousands of miles more of track in the new territory
which is being opened up, there will be a great deal of work for young
men within the next few years. I do not myself believe that it is
necessary to build new lines with the haste thought advisable in some
quarters, but it is inevitable that sooner or later the country will be
covered by a network of railroads. All this railway building and the
resulting development of new communities will mean, of course, business
and professional openings for a great number of energetic men.

“This will be especially true of our immense Northwest, which is
virtually a new country of a wonderful productivity in grain and
minerals, and of a vastness in territory difficult to imagine. In the
flourishing little city of Edmonton, in the province of Alberta, I
happened to meet a man not long ago who was installing mills for the
grinding of wheat in the territory to the north, and asked him as to
the location of the most northerly mill that he was building. In reply
he mentioned a place which, to my astonishment, was over twelve hundred
miles north of Edmonton. From this you will see that there are wheat
fields nearly sixteen hundred miles north of the boundary line between
Canada and the United States.

“The climate here is tempered by the winds which come through the
passes of the Rocky Mountains from the warm Japanese current of the
Pacific. This makes it possible to grow wheat in the region just east
of the Rockies at a latitude much higher than in the section farther
east, where the balmy winds do not reach, but the fact that there
are wheat fields sixteen hundred miles north of the border will give
you an idea of the marvelous extent of the wheat growing country of
northwestern Canada.

“I have not the slightest doubt that in the course of the next
twenty-five years a great commonwealth will have been developed here,
and this means that many thousands of young men who are honest and
energetic and wide awake enough to see and seize their chances will
acquire comfortable competencies for themselves and families. Some will
unquestionably make large fortunes.

“I do not, however, regard the accumulation of a great deal of money
as a criterion of success. I think that a man who has been able to
build for himself a comfortable home, presided over by a good wife and
enlivened with the presence of a moderate number of children, is apt to
be far more content with his lot than the man who must carry the burden
of a great fortune.

“In the Northwest the conditions will not be such as to enable a man to
amass the fabulous wealth which has marked the industrial development
of the United States. For one thing, we are so regulating our railroads
in their relations to the public that it will be quite impossible for
favored shippers to obtain the preferences in freight rates which, in
the United States, have been the chief source of the menacing wealth of
certain conspicuous capitalists.

“To make impossible all discrimination in rates on the part of
railroads has been one of my principal cares in the discharge of my
official duties as Minister of Railways and as Chairman of the Railway
Commission. If it can be truthfully said that I have accomplished
something in this direction I shall feel that my labors have not been
in vain.”

“What,” I inquired, “do you consider the chief requisite of success in
political life?”

Mr. Blair paused, and turned his eyes reflectively toward the window.
“This is a difficult question,” he answered slowly. “There are,
of course, numerous qualities that combine to give a man success
in politics as in any other pursuit. But I am sure that the prime
essential of the man who is ambitious to hold any lasting influence in
political life is character.

“If he possesses character he is bound to gain and maintain the
respect, not only of his friends, but even of his enemies, and will be
able to keep himself afloat on the tempestuous sea of politics long
after those who have not been able to resist the temptations of a
political career have been engulfed.

“In Canada the political life carries with it no great financial
rewards. The young man who enters politics and devotes himself
zealously to affairs of state must not expect affluence. If his aim
in life is to acquire riches he should by all means keep clear of the
political arena until, at least, he has made his success in business.”

In his administration in the office of Minister of Railways and of
Chairman of the Railway Commission, Mr. Blair showed a pronounced
simplicity and unconventionality in his methods. His aim being to
accomplish as much as possible, he went straight to the mark, with
little regard for formality or red tape. Many times, in his work of
railway supervision, he has traversed the length and breadth of Canada,
preferring to see conditions for himself rather than to judge of them
on hearsay evidence. A single episode may be given as characteristic
of his manner of obtaining results. There had been numerous complaints
about the dangers of a certain crossing on one of the railways. Some of
these complaints had been sent to the office of the Commission, but in
the ordinary routine of business some time would have elapsed before
action upon them could be taken. Meanwhile the railroad was doing
nothing in the matter, and the lives of many children were daily in
danger. Mr. Blair, however, had heard unofficially of the crossing. One
day he happened to meet on a train the superintendent of the road in
question. The train was approaching the dangerous place, when Mr. Blair
suddenly remarked to the superintendent: “By the way, Mr. ——, I have
heard that you have a bad crossing on the line not far from here. Let
us get out and take a look at it.”

The superintendent acquiesced, and when the crossing was reached the
train was stopped and the two gentlemen alighted. For a few moments
they surveyed the woods that concealed the approach of trains and the
other conditions which made the crossing hazardous.

“I think we have seen enough, Mr. ——,” remarked the Chairman. When they
had resumed their seats in the car he said, “Now, see here, it is just
as obvious to you as it is to me that this place should at once be
made safer. It can be done easily. I wish you would interest yourself
personally in the matter.” Within a day or two a gang of workmen had
made the crossing safe.




LI

A Distinguished Educator has Found Contentment in the Simple Life.


“MY life has been very quiet,” said Dr. James Loudon, president of the
University of Toronto, which is the largest educational institution in
Canada. “When I was graduated from this University in the early sixties
I became associated with it as an instructor, and have never had any
other professional connection.

“My birthplace was the city of Toronto, and my parents, like those
of so many people in this province of Ontario, were Scotch. I might
remark, parenthetically, that I think the infant that opens its eyes
upon the world with Scotch blood in its veins has already made a pretty
fair start in life. The typical Scotchman is shrewd and patient, and
is the fortunate possessor of that sense of humor which does so much
to smooth the way, both for himself and for those about him, and is so
conducive to a sane philosophy. Patience, I have always thought, is a
particularly valuable asset for the man who desires steady progress in
his life.”

[Illustration: OUT OF DEBT AT LAST]

“The truth of this is exemplified in your own career,” I suggested.

“Perhaps so,” replied Dr. Loudon. “I well remember Toronto when it was
a comparative village, and I have seen it develop into the present
brisk and impressive city. I remember, too, our University when its
attendance was very small, and I have seen it steadily expand until now
it has over twenty-five hundred students, and its influence has become
widespread. I myself have been carried up with the general growth.
For many years I was professor of mathematics in the University, and
have made a special study of the science of physics. Finally, in 1892,
chiefly on the ground of long service, I was made the president.

“Our progress here has been preëminently healthy—a substantial process
of construction from the foundations up. If, from my observation of
this development, any wisdom for young men can be gleaned, I would say
to them, eliminate impatience and haste from your plans in building the
structure of your career. Build slowly, keeping a careful eye upon the
quality and placing of every beam and stone. It is by this method only
that you will be able to construct an edifice that will be permanently
satisfactory to yourself and impressive to the world.

“A conspicuous evil in the present day life of North America is
hurry. Young men, in haste to achieve success, force themselves.
The able ones rise with a rapidity which, I think is the reverse of
beneficial in the long run. A reaction, an aftermath, is apt to come.
Their mental and physical elasticity is apt to prematurely disappear,
with the result that they will too soon find themselves past the summit
of their careers and traveling the declivity on the other side. The
great cities on this continent, and particularly those of the United
States, have a voracious appetite for the vitality of youth. They
develop a man, yes, but they also exhaust him.

“The mistake of this lies principally in the industrial and social pace
of the present. Young men, influenced by the city life about them,
spend a good deal more money on their living and enjoyment than they
did in the days of my own youth, and in their keen desire to keep in
the hunt, so to speak, they seek the goal of wealth cross-lots instead
of by the more roundabout but much safer highway. The young women who
become their wives have great power in the matter of keeping them away
from the dangerous short-cuts. A wife should have an intimate knowledge
of the varying conditions in her husband’s business, in order that she
may properly adjust her expenditures to these conditions. This seems
obvious, but the wife’s failure in this respect has been the cause of
the undoing of many a man.

“The spirit of materialism and commercialism which is so marked has
been, perhaps, a necessary factor in the development of the resources
of this continent, but I believe that it is gradually losing its
position as the commanding influence in our New World civilization,
and that it will become a subordinate element in a broader and higher
attitude toward life.”

“This development will come sooner, I think, in the United States
than in Canada, for the reason that the former country has had the
start of us in the evolution. The rough work of subduing rebellious
nature, of clearing land, of breaking virgin soil for agriculture, of
building railroads, has been nearly completed across the border, while
on our side it is just beginning. We have a great Northwest, still in
large degree a wilderness, to cover with farms and homes and the other
appurtenances of civilization. We have yet large sections of our East
to dot with the towns and the industries which this territory will
bountifully support.

“It is only within a very few years that we have begun to take hold of
this work with the zeal and determination that brings success. With
this twentieth century there has been born in Canada a new spirit
of enterprise. Even here in the University its effects have been
strongly felt. It was not long ago that a large proportion of our
graduates became teachers, or entered some other professional sphere,
and in these fields most of them sought their opportunities in the
United States. At the present time the majority of our students have
turned toward commercial, mechanical or scientific pursuits, and they
are finding their openings within our own domain. The standard of
pecuniary compensation is advancing, not only in commerce but also in
the professions. For example, even as comparatively a short time as
a decade ago the largest fees or salaries for legal services never
rose above a very few thousand dollars. Now we often hear of Canadian
lawyers receiving many thousands in single fees or in yearly salaries
from railroad, banking and other corporations. The general tendency
is in this direction, and it is a direct result of our industrial
expansion. The interests of Canadian employers of brains and labor are
becoming larger. They want more men, and better trained men, and are
willing to pay them more than in former years.

“Since a university does not completely fulfil its functions unless it
keeps in touch with the life of the people and the currents of broad
activity, we of the University of Toronto are aiming to keep pace with
the new development in Canada. We are equipping young men for many
practical pursuits, and are even establishing close relationships with
numerous specific industries. Often of late we have had applications
from employers for young men capable of assuming responsibilities. We
keep track of the demand for youthful brains and university training,
and make a point of being always ready to supply it. A notable factor
in the practical work of the university is the Agricultural College,
which is located at Guelph, Ontario, and controls 550 acres of land,
upon which all phases of farming are carried on and taught to nearly
six hundred students. We feel that this college is doing work which
is very important. Much of the future wealth of Canada will be
derived from agriculture, and especially from wheat growing in the
Northwest, where hard wheat, the finest in the world, can be produced
in sufficient quantities to supply all the markets of the earth. To
adequately develop the possibilities of this territory we must have
scientific farmers, and this is the kind we are doing our best to train.

“But with all this effort along material lines, we are by no means
forgetting at the University of Toronto what we used to call the broad
humanities. The play of the spirit, the exercise of the imagination,
the stimulus of literature and art, a tolerant and cheerful philosophy
are, after all, the things which make life worth living.”




LII

Beginning as Telegraph Operator He Built the Canadian Pacific.


“WHAT is success?” questioned Sir William Van Horne, half-reclining
within the hospitable arms of a big chair in his luxurious residence in
Shelbrooke Street, Montreal.

“You, Sir William, should surely know,” I remarked. “You are accredited
by the world with being very familiar with it.”

“There are numerous subjects upon which the world and I do not agree,”
replied, with a smile, the famous railroad builder.

“What is success?” he repeated slowly. “You might say, of course that
it is the achievement of a purpose, but in the selection and formation
of your purpose you may have made a failure, and then the whole is
failure.

“Is contentment success? I am sure it is not. Is wealth? Not by any
means. Is power? Not at all.”

Sir William was silent for a moment.

“The truth is,” he said suddenly, “the word success is one of the
hardest in the language to define, and I won’t attempt it. I should
say however, that a man’s real success in life can be pretty accurately
measured by his usefulness as a member of society.

“He may be rich or poor, courted or ignored, but if he does things
which at once or eventually make for progress in the world he is most
assuredly a success. If, for example, he discovers something new in
science, invents a valuable article, paints a great picture, writes a
great book, develops a great industry, or——”

“Or builds a great railroad?” I interrupted.

Sir William smiled, and after a pause remarked, “I suppose you
intend that to be a personal allusion, but we are not discussing
personalities. I will say, however, that some of the men whom down in
the States you call captains of industry have my admiration. I care
very little whether they give money to charity, whether their work is
colored by an active consciousness of its value to anybody outside of
their families, their friends and themselves. Most of the men of this
stamp are just in their dealings, and it is to their initiative force
that the United States owes her material greatness. They have started
wheels of industry that have given honest work and many of the comforts
of life to millions of self-respecting men. They are rich, yes, and we
say that riches do not constitute success. Nevertheless, these men have
achieved it in one of its highest forms.”

It was very plain from his manner that in making these remarks Sir
William’s thoughts were quite remote from his own career. Yet he
himself is one of the most conspicuous and striking representatives on
the continent of the class of men he was discussing. His humble start
as a small boy in a railway station, contrasted with his present place
as a giant in the field of railroading, indicates the height of his own
achievement. His career has been a long series of upward steps.

At an age when most boys are playing marbles in short trousers, young
Van Horne, forced by the death of his father to earn his own living,
obtained a place as general utility boy at a railroad station in the
county in Illinois in which in 1843 he was born. Here he saw and
seized his first opportunity; that is, he taught himself telegraphy.
With this knowledge and a robust personality as his only assets, he
journeyed to Chicago and found a position as telegraph operator in the
offices of the Illinois Central Railroad. But he did not long hold
this place. The telegraphic keys were too small for him. Before he
was twenty-two he had gone over to the Chicago & Alton road and was
dispatching trains—work of so responsible a character that no railroad
company would think for an instant of entrusting it to the ordinary
inexperienced youth. But the chief requisite of the train despatcher is
care, and care was only one of young Van Horne’s conspicuous qualities.
He had a combination of others that overshadowed it and brought him
promotion to the place of superintendent of telegraphy.

His work was still too easy for him, so they made him a division
superintendent. He was now where the officials of other lines could
see him, and the Wabash road took him away from the Chicago & Alton to
make him their general manager. He was about thirty years old at this
time, but he was already looming so large among the railroad men of the
Middle West that when the directors of the Southern Minnesota Railway,
which was in the hands of a receiver, bethought themselves to look
about for a man who could rehabilitate their road, their eyes fell upon
young Van Horne, and they asked him if he thought the line could be
made to pay.

He replied that he thought so, and gave his reasons. They then asked
him to assume the management of the moribund property. He liked then,
as he does now, this kind of a job. There were chances in it far
above the mere satisfactory performance of routine duty. There were
opportunities here to create, to develop, to quicken into new life; and
the young man’s instincts were all in this direction. So he took hold
with enthusiasm, and put the company on a paying basis with a rapidity
that amazed the stockholders who made him president. He went back to
the Chicago & Alton in 1878 as general manager.

In a lifetime of work very few railroad men achieve as much as this,
but Van Horne was still in his thirties and was just beginning.
The Canadian Government had been trying for several years to push
from the Ottawa Valley a road of steel across its vast domain to the
Pacific Ocean, and it had found the task too much for it. Surveys had
been made, but there had been comparatively little work of actual
construction. Finally, in 1880, it was decided to allow the project
to become a private enterprise, and in 1881, under the auspices of
Sir Donald Smith, now Lord Strathcona, the Canadian Pacific Railroad
Company was organized.

After Sir Donald had found the immense amount of money that was
required, his greatest care was to find a man to take charge of the
construction, much of it through unknown wildernesses, of the longest
railway that had ever been projected. The length of the proposed line
and the nature of the country through which it was to pass, made this
the most stupendous railway undertaking the world had seen. It was
necessary to procure a man fitted for a Herculean task. Sir Donald took
stock with the railroad men of the New World and decided that the most
promising of them all was William C. Van Horne.

The latter went into the work like a football player bucking the line
on a university team. An army of men was hired. At an average speed of
three miles a day for many months the steel rails were pushed into the
vast forests and the trackless prairies of the Northwest. At last the
workmen, urged incessantly by the directing mind of General Manager Van
Horne, attacked the Rocky Mountains, and under the charges of picks and
powder the mountains made way. At the end of the third year the summit
of the Rockies had been reached, and before another twelve months had
gone by the forbidding passes in the Selkirks were thundering and
trembling from the assaults of dynamite.

The last rail of the main line was laid in November, 1885. In the
meantime the company had been acquiring branch connections, and before
the end of the year was in possession of nearly forty-five hundred
miles of track. Before another six months had passed a great system
was fully equipped and Canada had her railway from the Atlantic to the
Pacific.

The contract had called for the completion of the road in ten years.
Van Horne and his men had finished it in five. Since then the system
has been extended until now it embraces nearly ten thousand miles of
track, and steamship lines cross the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
One may travel eighteen thousand miles on the route and property of
the Canadian Pacific. Cities and towns, many thousands of farms and
factories, have sprung up along the way. A new commonwealth in the
Northwest has been developed. And it has been done under the general
direction of Sir William C. Van Horne.

This is why Canadians, when asked to name living men who have done
most to develop the Dominion, couple his name with that of Lord
Strathcona. The latter, then Sir Donald Smith, had the courage to
assume a burden of railway construction that had proved too heavy for
the Government. He thus made possible Canada’s only transcontinental
railway. Lord Strathcona financed the road, but Sir William Van Horne
built it. The latter was its president from 1888 until 1899, when,
the creative work being done, the chief difficulties surmounted, he
resigned the presidency in favor of Sir Thomas Shaughnessy, and assumed
work of less detail as chairman of the board of directors.

Plain William C. Van Horne became Sir William in 1894, when he was
knighted by the queen for his high value as a worker in her domains in
North America. Being nothing if not democratic, he was inclined, until
he became used to it, to wax jocular about his title.

“I’ll wager,” he is reported to have said one day soon after he had
received it, “that my old friends among the railroad boys down in
Chicago, who used to call me Bill, will make some pointed remarks when
they learn that I am Sir William now.”

His bluff geniality is one of the things that Canada likes best about
Sir William. She claims him as a citizen, since his greatest work has
been done and he has lived for years within her boundaries. She is
proud of him and he is proud of her.

“Very few people,” he said to me, “have more than a faint idea of
the marvelous resources and possibilities of this country. In the
provinces of Quebec and Ontario the innumerable streams rushing down
from the mountains offer sufficient water power to run the factories
of a nation. A beginning has been made here that will eventually lift
this locality into one of the leading industrial and electrical centers
of the continent. In the making of paper in particular it will be
preëminent. Much of the pulp wood used in paper manufacturing has thus
far been obtained from Maine, but the supply there will be exhausted
in less than five years, and then the paper makers must come to Canada
for their supply of pulp. There are already extensive pulp wood
industries in the Province of Quebec, but these are bound to be greatly
multiplied.”

“It is in the Northwest, however, where millions of acres of land await
only the plow and seed to produce the finest wheat in the world, that
the most inviting opportunities for young men are to be found. The
Canadian Northwest is much as was the great region of the United States
west of the Mississippi River fifty years ago. It is a country at the
outset of its development—a country which needs and will adequately
reward the vigorous efforts of young manhood.”

“In your field of railroad building I presume there will be great
opportunities?” I remarked.

“Undoubtedly,” replied Sir William.

“Is the railroad business a good one for a young man?”

“It is as good as any,” answered Sir William thoughtfully, “if a young
man is content to work for a salary all his life. But he should not
be content with this. The salary habit is a bad one, very easy to
acquire, and very hard to shake off. The man with his stipend every
week is apt to settle into a groove. He adjusts his mode of life to his
Saturday envelope. It gets to be about the most important thing in his
existence. He becomes tied up to it, and is afraid to make a move that
will disturb this pleasant union. Always acting under the direction of
somebody higher up, he loses his power of initial effort, and never
develops to the full extent of his possibilities. He is likely to be
a dependent all his life. If after long years of service he loses his
place, as often happens, he is nearly helpless.

“I should say to the young man, strike out for yourself as soon as you
can. Don’t be afraid to take a chance. Most of the interest of life
lies in its uncertainties. You will have your tumbles, of course, but
the exercise of standing on your own legs will give you strength to get
up again and push on. One of the drawbacks about a salaried place is
that a man is apt to lose keen interest in his work, and interest is at
the foundation of energy, of concentration of inspiration, even, of all
the elements, in brief, that go to make up an adequate performance.

“If you are interested, you will be working with vigor long after most
other men have knocked off, tired out, as they imagine. I don’t care
to talk about myself, but I will say that whatever my efforts have
amounted to they have been impelled by strong interest. The man who
feels no enthusiasm for his work will never accomplish anything worth
while. Work that is interesting does more than all the doctors to keep
men alive and young. I endorse what Russell Sage says about vacations.
I don’t believe in them. When a man who has worked hard for many years
decides that he has earned a long vacation, and retires from business,
it almost invariably means the beginning of the end for him.

“There is nothing strange in this. He has suddenly cut off the
interests of a lifetime, and no longer has momentum to carry him along
the road of life. On the other hand, look at the old men who have not
retired. Russell Sage himself is an excellent illustration; but in his
city, New York, where the business pace is supposed to be very swift
and wearing, there are many others—patriarchs to whom the allotted
span of threescore years and ten is beginning to look like comparative
youth, and yet who still are handling great interests. If they had
stopped work when they had made fortunes, most of them would have been
long since dead.

“Several years ago a London physician of Lord Strathcona informed him
that he was in a bad way; that his friends would be mourning his loss
in a week unless he permitted himself to relax. In less than a month
the death of the doctor made it impossible to withdraw his injunction,
so Lord Strathcona has been on the go ever since. He is over eighty
now, and is so vigorous that he thinks nothing of taking little
business trips from London across the Atlantic and the continent of
North America to Vancouver.

“I believe in recreation of course, but I think it should be of
a kind that involves activity of the brain. My own mental rest I
find in painting pictures. I am very fond of doing landscapes. This
takes my mind into a sphere rather remote from railway earnings and
expenditures, and is refreshing.”

Sir William showed me a number of his paintings. Some were hung on
his walls among those of well-known landscape artists, and in the
comparison they suffered not a particle. I commented upon this fact.

“You can’t be much of a judge of art,” he answered with a smile. In
this matter, however, many good judges are agreed. It is remarkable
that a rough and ready man of affairs, a captain of industry in the
true sense, should be able to paint pictures of a quality that many a
professional artist might well envy. But Sir William has even wider
interests than railroad building and painting. He is largely identified
with financial enterprises of great magnitude in the United States,
and at present is much absorbed in developing the resources of Cuba,
upon which island he believes there are opportunities among the finest
in the world for men of either large or small capital.

In addition to these pursuits he is a botanist and geologist of wide
and accurate knowledge, and has for years been a close student of the
civilization and art of the Orient. Nothing delights him more than a
conversation on the art products of China, and he takes great pleasure
in showing his friends beautiful specimens in his large collection of
Oriental pottery and pictures. Supplement to these interests those of
the practical farmer and you will have a partial idea of the range
of accomplishments of a man who was making his living at the age of
thirteen, and is self-taught.

Sir William has an extensive farm not far from Winnipeg. On a recent
occasion, when the agriculturists of the region were holding a meeting
to discuss their relations with the Canadian Pacific Railway, and to
air some little grievances which they thought they had, Sir William was
present, and was called upon to make a speech. He slowly arose, and the
tillers of the soil settled back in their chairs to listen to words of
great weight and finality from the master spirit of the road.

“I am inclined to think, gentlemen,” said Sir William in one of his
opening sentences, “that we farmers are pretty well treated by this
road.” From this point the agriculturists were with him to a man, and
they left the hall with the feeling that their interests could not be
otherwise than well looked after by the railroad company, since at the
head of it they had a fellow-farmer.




LIII

An Immigrant Boy Becomes a National Figure in Reform.


THERE died recently in Ohio a man who made a high place for himself
in the community. He won a strong hold on the hearts of the working
people. He commanded also the respect and support of the majority of
law-abiding citizens. I refer to Samuel Jones, late head executive and
reform mayor of Toledo. His fame spread fast without the bounds of the
municipality, and throughout the nation. He became as widely known
as Governor Pingree, of Michigan, as a friend of the people, and for
his peculiar yet practical ideas of municipal, social and industrial
reform. He also won distinction as an able writer and fluent speaker on
the social and economic conditions which affect our national life so
strongly to-day.

Besides having been a conspicuous philanthropist, reformer, public
officer, orator and writer, it is to be noted that Mayor Jones was,
first and last, a successful man of business. He was president of
the Acme Oil Company; an inventor and manufacturer of a successful
patent—the Acme sucker-rod—an implement for pumping oil wells. He made
a fortune as a successful operator in oil, and did it without influence
or backing—by dint of industry, honesty and push, starting as a
penniless boy, with only such education as he could acquire by himself.

A man of large heart and broad mind, his life presents a stimulating,
wholesome example of the self-made, conscientious man of wealth
impelled by Christian sympathy, and stung into action by what appeared
to him to be the stress of political, industrial and social injustice.
He embraced the opportunity which his social position afforded, of
carrying out and putting into practice some ideas, of which, quoting
Heine, he said: “They have taken possession of me, and are forcing me
into the conflict whether I will or not.”

As showing the man, a few incidents are apropos. On going to his
factory, one morning, during the hard winter of 1896, Mr. Jones found
that some of his office help had affixed a sign to the outside door,
“No help wanted.” This he ordered taken away as being contrary to the
spirit of the institution. “Men who apply for work should have at least
a decent reception,” he said; “maybe we can help them by kind words,
even if we have no work for them.”

During the years of financial depression the prosperity of the oil
business was affected by the conditions prevalent throughout the
country. Mr. Jones issued an order that his work-people should not
suffer. “Keep a little flour in the barrel and see that they have coal
enough to keep them warm,” was the order.


LOVED BY HIS EMPLOYEES.

He loved to tell how, returning from a trip to Europe, the warmest
welcome (and that which shows the popularity of the man) was that given
by a crowd of his employees gathered at the Toledo depot to greet him
as the train rolled in.

The election of Mr. Jones to the mayoralty of Toledo is an interesting
story. He was the candidate nominated in the spring of 1897 to bridge
the chasm between the two opposing factions in the Republican party.
The saloons, corporations and rings of the city were marshaled against
him, but his stout supporters, the wage-earners and the law-abiding
people, carried the day after a lively campaign.

The frankness and plainness of Mr. Jones pleased the people as well
as his eight-hour day and his ideas of social equality. His messages
as mayor to the common council of Toledo were models of businesslike
integrity and acumen, showing a vital interest in the welfare of
the city, and the value of having a practical and upright business
man at the head of civic affairs. Among measures pertinent and
practical for the city’s self-government advocated by the mayor were
a single-chambered board, city bids, the wage system, a municipal
lighting plant, the abolishment of the contract system, the
establishing of a purchasing agency to stop the waste of department
buying, park and street improvements, etc.

His address before the annual convention of the League of American
Municipalities, at Detroit, on “Municipal Ownership” was characterized
as the best of the convention, and attracted wide attention. It was
repeated at Chicago by request.

Mayor Jones was accorded a warm reception in Boston. He addressed the
Twentieth Century Club at a dinner; he was banqueted by the Mayors’
Organization of Massachusetts; he dined with Mayor Quincy, who is
something of a reformer himself; and he gave utterance to his views at
a public mass-meeting of Boston’s best people. But with characteristic
modesty, he looked upon such invitations merely as new opportunities to
spread the new gospel, and not in any sense as the means of bringing
fame or glory to himself.

The story of Mr. Jones’s successful career carries with it
encouragement and example for the young man who starts in life with no
capital but manliness, courage, persistency, and a willingness to work.


BORN IN A HUMBLE HOME.

Mr. Jones was born in 1846, in Wales. Of his humble home he says: “It
could scarcely be dignified by the name of cottage, for, as I saw it a
few years ago, it seemed a little barren hut, though still occupied.”
It was in memory of this modest birthplace over the sea, which is known
as _Tan y Craig_ (under the rock), that Mr. Jones named his handsome
Toledo mansion Tan y Oderwen (under the oak).

Perhaps the following autobiographical statement will serve better than
anything I could write to present his life story:

“I came with my parents to America when I was three years old, and I
have often heard them tell of the tedious voyage of thirty days in an
emigrant sailing ship, and the subsequent voyage over the Erie Canal to
central New York, where they settled in Lewis County. My parents were
very poor and very pious. The poverty in our family was so stringent
that it was necessary for me to go out and work, and I bear upon my
body to-day the marks of the injustice and wrong of child labor.

“At the age of eighteen I heard of the opportunities in the oil regions
in Pennsylvania, and at once made my way to Titusville. I landed
there with fifteen cents in my pocket, and without an acquaintance
in the State. For three days I went through one of the most trying
experiences of any young man’s life—living without money and seeking
work among strangers. I had promised to write to my mother, and I used
hotel stationery to fulfil my promise, but was without the necessary
three cents then needed to purchase a postage stamp. This was one of
the hardest financial problems of my life. I overcame it through
stratagem. Seeing a man on the way to the post-office with a bundle of
letters I inquired of him: ‘Are you going to the post-office?’ ‘Yes,
sir,’ he said. ‘Will you have the kindness to mail this for me?’ At the
same time I put my hand into my empty pocket in search of the necessary
coin, fumbling my pocket-knife and keys a moment. The gentleman kindly
said: ‘Never mind, I’ll stamp it,’ and the revenue was provided which
took my first letter to my mother.


THE LAND OF OPPORTUNITIES.

“But I was on the right track; I was in a land of opportunities. I soon
found work and a business that was to my taste; a business, too, that
the good Providence has removed in part, at least, from the domain of
the competitive destroyer—the business of producing crude petroleum
from the earth.

“Since 1870 I have been more or less of an oil producer. In 1866, I
came to the Ohio oil fields and began the business of producing oil at
Lima. Since that time I have followed it both in Ohio and Indiana, and
to some extent in Pennsylvania and West Virginia. In 1893 I invented
some improvements in appliances for producing oil, and, finding
manufacturers unwilling to make the articles, fearing there would be
no profit, I concluded to undertake their manufacture. This brought
me in contact with labor conditions in a city for the first time in
my life. As a rule, labor in the oil fields had enjoyed large wages
compared with similar classes outside. I found men working in Toledo
for a fraction of a dollar a day. I began to wonder how it was possible
for men to live on such a small sum of money in a way becoming to
citizens of a free republic. I studied social conditions, and these
led me to feel very keenly the degradation of my fellow-men, and I at
once declared that the ‘going wages’ rule should not govern in the Acme
Sucker-Rod Company, which is the firm name of our business. I said that
the rule that every man is entitled to such a share of the product of
his toil as will enable him to live decently, and in such a way that
he and his children may be fitted to be citizens of the free republic,
should be the rule governing the wages of our establishment.

“To break down the feeling of social inequality, we began to ‘get
together,’—that is, we had little excursions down the bay. We invited
our workmen and their families, and also some other people who live in
big houses and do not work with their hands. We sought to mix them, to
let them understand that we were all people—just people, you know.


GOOD WILL AND FELLOWSHIP IN BUSINESS.

“As our business increased, we took in new men. We made no special
effort to select. We asked no questions as to their habits, their
morals, their religion or their irreligion. We were ignoring the
sacred rule of business, getting along in a sort of free and easy
way, occasionally giving the boys a word of caution, printed on the
envelopes; then, perhaps, a little letter expressing good will and
fellowship. Then we came to feel the need of a rule to govern the
place. We thought, to that extent, we ought to be like other people. So
we had the following printed on a piece of tin and nailed to the wall.
It’s there to-day:

“‘The Rule Governing This Factory: Therefore, whatsoever ye would that
men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them.’

“In 1895, at Christmas time, we made a little cash dividend,
accompanying it with such a letter as we believed would be helpful. In
1896, we repeated the dividend and the letter. In 1897 and 1898 we did
the same.”

In response to the query as to how he would regulate property
interests, Mayor Jones said:

“If you will read the Fourth of Acts and see how property was regarded
and treated by the early Christians, you will read what I believe to be
the one scientific way in which property can be handled for the good of
all. The manifest destiny of the world is to realize brotherhood. We
are brothers, not competitors.”

“What would you advise the rising generation to do to bring about such
a realization?”

“That is an important question,” replied the mayor. “Well, I am free
to answer that I think by far the best thing that the Acme Sucker-Rod
Company has done has been to open the adjoining corner lot as a Golden
Rule park and playground. Here is a spot of God’s green earth in the
heart of the industrial part of our city that is as free to the people
as when the red Indian trod there. And I am sure that the healthful
play of the children and the delightful studies of the older ones as we
discuss the questions of brotherhood, golden rule, and right relations
generally, in our Sunday afternoon meetings, will do more to bring
about the era of peace and good will than all else that has been done
there. And now we have added Golden Rule Hall, where we may continue
these studies, for we must first understand our disease before we can
apply the remedy.


TRYING TO LEARN HOW TO HELP EACH OTHER.

“How delightful are the hours which we pass together in the study of
the question of right social relations! How much like men it makes us
feel to think that we are spending a part of our time in trying to
learn how we can help each other; that is, help all the people, instead
of devoting it all to the piggish business of helping ourselves!

“As an outgrowth of that spirit, during the past year, we have: our
coöperative insurance; the Co-operative Oil Company; the Tuesday Night
Social Study Club; and the Equality Club.

“Our experience has been progressive, and, I believe, profitable, in 

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