The Project Gutenberg eBook, Little Visits with Great Americans, Vol. II (of 2), Edited by Orison Swett Marden

LITTLE VISITS WITH GREAT AMERICANS

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.

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.”

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 a moral as well as a material way. I have learned much of my relation to my fellow-men. I have learned that we are all dependent on each other.

“In introducing the shorter workday and trying to establish living wages we have tried to acknowledge, in some measure, the relation of brotherhood that exists between us and all other men; for we must remember that this bond is only limited by the confines of the globe itself.”

“When I first took office I ignored the professional politicians. Some of my friends expostulated with me. They assured me that I was ruining my future. I answered that I did not want a future based upon a disregard of the principle that an office-holder should faithfully serve the people. I told them that I would be glad to sacrifice my chances for a second term as mayor, if I could be equal to the responsibilities that were pressing upon me. They laughed, and called me impracticable—a dreamer. And yet, my way, so far, has proved successful, even from their standard of success, which, in some particulars, is quite remote from my own. My political experience has been of great encouragement to me. It has made me feel that, despite the seeming success of mere self-seekers, honesty of purpose in the discharge of public duties will, in the end, prevail.

YOUNG MEN IN POLITICS.

“And because I believe this is true, I hope to see earnest, honest young men go into politics. If they have strong convictions of what is right, and force of character enough to hold to these convictions against the many wrongful pressures and influences of political life, they will achieve success of the best kind.

“To-day, more than ever before in its history, the country needs men of this kind. Conditions have come into existence which must be changed. From an experience of years in practical business, I say that the young man now starts in commercial life heavily handicapped. In almost every line of business, he must fight great accumulations of capital, that usually either crush him or make a hireling of him. It has been said that the very name of America is a synonym of opportunity. It was so once, but my experience has taught me that this is entirely true no longer.

EVILS OF CONCENTRATION.

“In my opinion, the reason for the present hard conditions for the rank and file of men is the concentration of business within a few hands. This is a vast subject, and I do not intend to discuss it now. I only want to say that the remedy for the evil, which is felt most keenly by young men trying to succeed in life, lies largely in their own hands. Let them interest themselves in politics and insist, in the first place, that public utilities in cities, such as gas works and street-car lines, which all the people must use, and which bring in great revenues, be conducted for the benefit of the people at large, instead of for a few individuals. This would be only the first step to bring about improvement, but it would be a very important one. The present conditions may be worse before they are better, but, sooner or later, the problem will be solved. I have too much faith in the American people not to be sanguine of the future. And even now, although fortunes cannot be acquired as easily as they used to be, there are ample opportunities to acquire true success in life.

A WRONG CONCEPTION OF SUCCESS.

“The trouble with a great many young men is that they have a wrong conception of success. Large numbers imagine it lies in mere money-making. Yet the average millionaire is not a happy or even a contented man. He has been so engrossed from his youth in piling up dollars that he has had no time for the cultivation of the higher qualities of his mind and heart, in the exercise of which the only true happiness is to be found. You may remember that Emerson said: ‘Happiness lies only in the triumph of principle.’

“Of course, a certain amount of money is a necessity, and more of it enables one to enjoy many things which would be an impossibility without it. I am not advising any young man not to do all he can in a legitimate way to make money; but, if he is successful, he must be careful to keep money his servant, and not let it become his master.

SLAVES OF WEALTH.

“Many rich men are the slaves of their own wealth, and their sons, growing up without a purpose in life, never know what real living is. I knew what poverty was when I was a young man, and few have suffered from it more than I. Yet now I am thankful for it, because it made me work. To live, we must work, and one must work to live. It is not birth, nor money, nor a college education, that makes a man; it is work. It has brought me commercial success. I am a practical man, yet I can never express too earnestly my thankfulness that I learned from my good mother to set up usefulness as my standard of success—usefulness to others as well as to myself.”

LIV
A “Forty-niner” who Seized Opportunities Others Failed to See.

I FOUND Mr. Armour in his crowded office at 205 La Salle street, Chicago, an office in which a snowstorm of white letters falls thickly upon a mass of dark desks, and where brass and lamps and electrical instruments abound, yet not much more than do the hurrying men. Such a mobilization of energy to promote the private affairs of one man I had never seen.

“Is Mr. Armour within?” I asked, supposing, since it was but 9:30 A.M., that he had not arrived.

“He is,” said the attendant, “and has been since half-past seven.”

“Does he usually arrive so early?” I inquired.

“Always,” was the significant reply.

I presented my letters, and was soon informed that they were of no avail there. Mr. Armour could see me only after the crush of the day’s affairs—that is, at 6 P.M., and then in the quiet of the Armour Institute, his great philanthropic school for young men and women. He was very courteous, and there was no delay. He took my hand with a firm grasp, evidently reading with his steady gaze such of my characteristics as interested him and saying at the same time, “Well, sir.”

“Mr. Armour,” I said, “will you answer enough questions concerning your life to illustrate for our readers what success means?”

The great Hercules of American industry visibly recoiled at the thought of implied notoriety, having, until the present time, steadily veiled his personality and general affairs as much as possible from public gaze.

“I am only a plain merchant,” he answered.

A BOY’S CHANCE TO-DAY.

“Do you consider,” I said, “that the average American boy of to-day has equally as good a chance to succeed in the world as you had when you began life?”

“Every bit, and better. The affairs of life are larger. There are greater things to do. There was never before such a demand for able men.”

“Were the conditions surrounding your youth especially difficult?”

“No. They were those common to a very small New York town in 1832. I was born at Stockbridge, in Madison County. Our family had its roots in Scotland. My father’s ancestors were the Robertsons, Watsons and McGregors of Scotland; my mother came of the Puritans who settled in Connecticut.”

“Dr. Gunsaulus says,” I ventured, “that all these streams of heredity set toward business affairs.”

INHERITED QUALITIES.

“Perhaps so. I liked trading as well. My father was reasonably prosperous and independent for those times. My mother had been a school-teacher. There were six boys, and, of course, such a household had to be managed with the strictest economy in those days. My mother thought it her duty to bring to our home some of the rigid discipline of the schoolroom. We were all trained to work together, and everything was done as systematically as possible.”

“Had you access to any books?”

“Yes, the Bible, ‘Pilgrim’s Progress,’ and a history of the United States.”

It is said of the latter, by those closest to Mr. Armour, that it was as full of shouting Americanism as anything ever written, and that Mr. Armour’s whole nature was colored by its stout American prejudices; also, that it was read and re-read by the Armour children, though of this the great merchant would not speak.

“Were you always of a robust constitution?” I asked.

“Yes, sir. All our boys were. We were stout enough to be bathed in an ice-cold spring, out of doors, when at home. There weren’t any bath-tubs and warm water arrangements in those days. We had to be strong. My father was a stern Scotchman, and when he laid his plans they were carried out. When he set us boys to work, we worked. It was our mother who insisted on keeping us all at school, and who looked after our educational needs, while our father saw to it that we had plenty of good hard work on the farm.”

“How did you enjoy that sort of life?” I asked.

“Well enough, but not much more than any boy does. Boys are always more or less afraid of hard work.”

The truth is, though Mr. Armour laughed it out of court as not worth discussing, that when he attended the district school he was as full of pranks and capers as the best, and traded jack-knives in summer and bob-sleds in winter.

LEAVING THE FARM.

Young Armour was often to be found, in the winter, coasting down the long hill near the schoolhouse; and, later, his experience at the Cazenovia Seminary was such as to indicate that some of the brightest people finish their education rather more suddenly than their family and friends might desire.

“When did you leave the farm for a mercantile life?” I asked.

“I was clerk in a store in Stockbridge for two years, after I was seventeen, but was mixed up with the farm more or less, and wanted to get out of that life. I was a little over seventeen years old when the gold excitement of 1849 reached our town. Wonderful tales were told of gold already found and the prospects for more on the Pacific coast. I was taken with the fever, and brooded over the difference between tossing hay in the hot sun and digging up gold by handfuls, until one day I threw down my pitchfork and went over to the house and told mother that I had quit that kind of work.

“People with plenty of money could sail around Cape Horn in those days, but I had no money to spare, and so decided to walk across the country. That is, we were carried part of the way by rail and walked the rest. I persuaded one of the neighbor’s boys, Calvin Gilbert, to go along with me, and we started.”

“How did you fare?”

“Rather roughly. I provided myself with an old carpet sack, into which I put my clothes. I bought a new pair of boots, and when we had gone as far as we could on canals and wagons, I bought two oxen. With these we managed for awhile, but eventually reached California afoot.”

A MINING VENTURE.

He suffered a severe illness on the journey, and was nursed by his companion, Gilbert, who gathered herbs and steeped them for his friend’s use, and once rode thirty miles in the rain to get a doctor. When they reached California he fell in with Edward Croarkin, a miner, who nursed him back to health. The manner in which he remembered these men gives keen satisfaction to the friends of the great merchant.

“Did you have any money when you arrived at the gold-fields?”

“Scarcely any. I struck right out, though, and found a place where I could dig, and I struck pay dirt in a little time.”

“Did you work entirely alone?”

“No. It was not long before I met Mr. Croarkin at a little mining camp called Virginia. He had the next claim to mine, and we became partners. After a little while he went away, but came back in a year. We then bought in together. The way we ran things was ‘turn about.’ Croarkin would cook one week and I the next, and then we would have a clean-up every Sunday morning. We baked our own bread, and kept a few hens, which kept us supplied with eggs. There was a man named Chapin who had a little store in the village, and we would take our gold dust there and trade it for groceries.”

“Did you discover much gold?” I asked.

“Oh, I worked with pretty good success—nothing startling. I didn’t waste much, and tried to live as carefully as I ever had. I also studied the business opportunities around, and persuaded some of my friends to join me in buying and developing a ‘ditch’—a kind of aqueduct—to convey water to diggers and washers. That proved more profitable than digging for gold, and at the end of the year the others sold out to me, took their earnings and went home. I stayed and bought up several other water-powers, until, in 1856, I thought I had enough, and so I sold out and came East.”

“How much had you made, altogether?”

“About four thousand dollars.”

“Did you return to Stockbridge?”

HE ENTERS THE GRAIN MARKET.

“For a little while. My ambition was setting in another direction. I had been studying the methods then used for moving the vast and growing food products of the West, such as grain and cattle, and I believed that I could improve them and make money. The idea and the field interested me and I decided to enter it.

“Well, my standing was good, and I raised the money and bought what was then the largest elevator in Milwaukee. This put me in contact with the movement of grain. At that time John Plankinton had been established in Milwaukee a number of years, and, in partnership with Frederick Layton, had built up a good pork-packing concern. I bought in with those gentlemen, and so came in contact with the work I liked. One of my brothers, Herman, had established himself in Chicago some time before in the grain-commission business. I got him to turn that over to the care of another brother, Joseph, so that he might go to New York as a member of the new firm, of which I was a partner. It was important that the Milwaukee and Chicago houses should be able to ship to a house of their own in New York—that is, to themselves. Risks were avoided in this way, and we were certain of obtaining all that the ever-changing markets could offer us.”

“When did you begin to build up your Chicago interests?”

“They were really begun, before the war, by my brother Herman. When he went to New York for us we began adding a small packing-house to the Chicago commission branch. It gradually grew with the growth of the West.”

“Is there any one thing that accounts for the immense growth of the packing industry here?” I asked.

“System and the growth of the West did it. Things were changing at startling rates in those days. The West was growing fast. Its great areas of production offered good profits to men who would handle and ship the products. Railway lines were reaching out in new directions or increasing their capacities and lowering their rates of transportation. These changes and the growth of the country made the creation of a food-gathering and delivering system necessary. Other things helped. At that time (1863) a great many could see that the war was going to terminate favorably for the Union. Farming operations had been enlarged by the war demand and war prices. The State banking system had been done away with, and we had a uniform currency, available everywhere, so that exchanges between the East and the West had become greatly simplified. Nothing more was needed than a steady watchfulness of the markets by competent men in continuous telegraphic communication with each other, and who knew the legitimate demand and supply, in order to sell all products quickly and with profit.”

QUALITIES THAT BRING SUCCESS.

“Do you believe that system does so much?” I ventured.

“System and good measure. Give a measure heaped full and running over and success is certain. That is what it means to be intelligent servants of a great public need. We believed in thoughtfully adopting every attainable improvement, mechanical or otherwise, in the methods and appliances for handling every pound of grain or flesh. Right liberality and right economy will do everything where a public need is being served.”

“Have your methods improved any with years?”

“All the time. There was a time when many parts of cattle were wasted, and the health of the city injured by the refuse. Now, by adopting the best known methods, nothing is wasted, and buttons, fertilizer, glue and other things are made cheaper and better for the world in general out of material that was before a waste and a menace. I believe in finding out the truth about all things—the very latest truth or discovery—and applying it.”

“You attribute nothing to good fortune?”

“Nothing!” Certainly the word came well from a man whose energy, integrity and business ability made more money out of a ditch than other men were making out of rich placers in the gold region.

“May I ask what you consider the turning-point of your career?”

“The time when I began to save the money I earned at the gold-fields.”

“What trait do you consider most essential in young men?”

“Truth. Let them get that. Young men talk about getting capital to work with. Let them get truth on board, and capital follows. It’s easy enough to get that.”

“Did you always desire to follow a commercial rather than a professional life?”

“Not always. I have no talent in any other direction, but I should have liked to be a great orator.”

THE GENESIS OF A GREAT BENEVOLENCE.

Mr. Armour would say no more on this subject, but his admiration for oratory has been demonstrated in a remarkable way. It was after a Sunday morning discourse by the splendid orator, Dr. Gunsaulus, at Plymouth Church, Chicago, in which the latter had set forth his views on the subject of educating children, that Mr. Armour came forward and said:

“You believe in those ideas of yours, do you?”

“I certainly do,” said Dr. Gunsaulus.

“And would you carry them out if you had the opportunity?”

“I would.”

“Well, sir,” said Mr. Armour, “if you will give me five years of your time, I will give you the money.”

“But to carry out my ideas would take a million dollars!” exclaimed Gunsaulus.

“I have made a little money in my time,” returned Mr. Armour, and so the famous Armour Institute of Technology, to which its founder has already given sums aggregating $2,800,000, was associated with Mr. Armour’s love of oratory.

One of his lieutenants says that Gerritt Smith, the old abolitionist, was Armour’s boyhood hero, and that Mr. Armour would go far to hear a good speaker, often remarking that he would have preferred to be a great orator rather than a great capitalist.

“There is no need to ask you,” I continued, “whether you believe in constant, hard labor?”

“I should not call it hard. I believe in close application, of course, while laboring. Overwork is not necessary to success. Every man should have plenty of rest. I have.”

“You must rise early to be at your office at half-past seven?”

“Yes, but I go to bed early. I am not burning the candle at both ends.”

The enormous energy of this man, who was too modest to discuss it, was displayed in the most normal manner. Though he sat all day at a desk which had direct cable connection with London, Liverpool, Calcutta, and other great centers of trade, with which he was in constant connection; though he had at his hand long-distance telephone connection with New York, New Orleans and San Francisco, and direct wires from his room to almost all part of the world, conveying messages in short sentences upon subjects which involved the moving of vast amounts of stock and cereals, and the exchange of millions in money, he was not, seemingly, an overworked man. The great subjects to which he gave calm, undivided attention from early morning until evening were laid aside with the ease with which one doffs his raiment, and outside of his office the cares weighed upon him no more. His mind took up new and simpler things.

“What do you do,” I inquired, “after your hard day’s work—think about it?”

“Not at all. I drive, take up home subjects, and never think of the office until I return to it.”

“Your sleep is never disturbed?”

“Not at all.”

A BUSINESS KING.

And yet the business which this man could forget when he gathered children about him and moved in his simple home circle amounted, in 1897, to over $102,000,000 worth of food products, manufactured and distributed. The hogs killed were 1,750,000; the cattle were 1,080,000; the sheep, 625,000. Eleven thousand men were constantly employed, and the wages paid them were over $5,500,000; the railway cars owned and moving about all parts of the country, four thousand; the wagons of many kinds and of large number, drawn by 750 horses. The glue factory, employing 750 hands, made over twelve million pounds of glue! In his private office, it is he who took care of all the general affairs of this immense world of industry, and yet at half-past four he was done, and the whole subject was comfortably off his mind.

“Do you believe in inherited abilities, or that any boy can be taught and trained, and made a great and able man?”

“I recognize inherited ability. Some people have it, and only in a certain direction; but I think men can be taught and trained so that they become much better and more useful than they would be otherwise. Some boys require more training and teaching than others. There is prosperity for everyone, according to his ability.”

“What would you do with those who are naturally less competent than others?”

“Train them, and give them work according to their ability. I believe that life is all right, and that this difference which nature makes is all right. Everything is good, and is coming out satisfactorily, and we ought to make the most of conditions, and try to use and improve everything. The work needed is here, and everyone should set about doing it.”

When, in 1893, local forces planned to defeat him in the grain market, and everyone was crying that at last the great Goliath had met his David, he was all energy. He had ordered immense quantities of wheat. The opposition had shrewdly secured every available place of storage, and rejoiced that the great packer, having no place to store his property, would suffer immense loss, and must capitulate. He foresaw the fray and its dangers, and, going over on Goose Island, bought property at any price, and began the construction of immense elevators. The town was placarded with the truth that anyone could get work at Armour’s elevators. No one believed they could be done in time, but three shifts of men, working night and day, often under the direct supervision of the millionaire, gradually forced the work ahead; and when, on the appointed day, the great grain-ships began to arrive, the opposition realized failure. The vessels began to pour the contents of their immense holds into these granaries, and the fight was over.

The foresight that sent him to New York in 1864 to sell pork brought him back from Europe in 1893, months before the impending panic was dreamed of by other merchants. It is told of him that he called all his head men to New York, and announced to them:

“Gentlemen, there’s going to be financial trouble soon.”

FOREARMED AGAINST PANIC.

“Why, Mr. Armour,” they said, “you must be mistaken. Things were never better. You have been ill, and are suddenly apprehensive.”

“Oh, no,” he said, “I’m not. There is going to be trouble;” and he gave as his reasons certain conditions which existed in nearly all countries, which none of those present had thought of. “Now,” said he to the first of his many lieutenants, “how much will you need to run your department until next year?”

The head man named his need. The others were asked, each in turn, the same question, and, when all were through, he counted up, and, turning to the company, said:

“Gentlemen, go back and borrow all you need in Chicago on my credit. Use my name for all it will bring in the way of loans.”

The lieutenants returned, and the name of Armour was strained to its utmost limit. When all had been borrowed, the financial flurry suddenly loomed up, but it did not worry the great packer. In his vaults were $8,000,000 in gold. All who had loaned him at interest then hurried to his doors, fearing that he also was imperiled. They found him supplied with ready money, and able to compel them to wait until the stipulated time of payment, or to force them to abandon their claims of interest for their money, and so tide him over the unhappy period. It was a master stroke, and made the name of the great packer a power in the world of finance.

SOME SECRETS OF SUCCESS.

“Do you consider your financial decisions which you make quickly to be brilliant intuitions?” I asked.

“I never did anything worth doing by accident, nor did anything I have come that way. No, I never decide anything without knowing the conditions of the market, and never begin unless satisfied concerning the conclusion.”

“Not everyone could do that,” I said.

“I cannot do everything. Every man can do something, and there is plenty to do.”

“You really believe the latter statement?”

“There was never more. The problems to be solved are greater now than ever before. Never was there more need of able men. I am looking for trained men all the time. More money is being offered for them everywhere than formerly.”

“Do you consider that happiness consists in labor alone?”

“It consists in doing something for others. If you give the world better material, better measure, better opportunities for living respectably, there is happiness in that. You cannot give the world anything without labor, and there is no satisfaction in anything but labor that looks toward doing this, and does it.”

LV
The Blind Yacht Designer Attributes His Conquests to His Mother’s Early Cares.

Thus with the year

Seasons return; but not to me returns

Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn,

Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer’s rose,

Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine;

But cloud instead, and ever-during dark,

Surround me! * * * *

So much the rather thou, celestial Light!

Shine inward, and the mind, through all her powers,

Irradiate; there plant eyes; all mist from thence

Purge and disperse; that I may see and tell

Of things invisible to mortal sight. —Milton.

“SHIPSHAPE and Bristol fashion,” a hundred years ago, more or less, was a phrase often heard on every sea plowed by American or English keels. Sailors everywhere applied it only to vessels in perfect condition, with bright paint, clean bottoms, spars well scraped, rigging taut, spare ropes neatly coiled, sails without mildew and of perfect set, pumps free, and all the thousand-and-one details that tell of ideal seamanship properly attended to. Those four words paid the highest tribute of the craft to the skill of the hardy mariners sailing from the tidy little port near the head of Narragansett Bay.

Bristol’s long streets, bordered from end to end with wide-spreading, aged trees, and lined with great dwellings of the colonial era, savor of a delightful antiquity which has not had time to grow musty, but has been well cared for by successive generations and has a sufficiently close relation to modern life to kindle a real affection in us of recent growth, not unlike that felt by the toddling urchin for his white-haired and gold-spectacled grandmother. These big, old houses suggest comfortable bank accounts, stored up by ancestors who built ships or who sailed away in them to the Indies—East or West—and returned with rich freights that profited much.

They built well, those ancestors, and their handsome dwellings seem as sound to-day as the everlasting hill which is known in history as Mount Hope. What eight-foot clocks and brass-handled bureaus, and bulky, shining chests, capable of hiding away mountains of housewifely linen; what high-backed chairs with fantastically carved legs; what large four-posters; what cavernous fireplaces; what wainscotings and curling balustrades; what mantel shelves with under ornaments of sturdy filigree; what yawning closets, as big as bedrooms of this year of grace; what sets of unimpeachable china, brought home by those same nautical ancestors; what attic stores of spinning-wheels and old books, and revolutionary papers, breathing vengeance against his majesty, King George; what thousand and one treasures of the keepsake order do not these old mansions possess within their generously proportioned walls, to say nothing of quaint porches and curious doors and pseudo-classical piazza pillars outside of them! That Bristol of the old, prosperous, gable-ended, ship-building, ship-sailing, cargo-discharging and cargo-embarking days has gone; but this Bristol lives on the memories and the proceeds of those happier, wooden-walled, shiver-my-timbers times, draws on her bank accounts, and takes it easy.

Amid scenes like these, one expects to find men and women of culture and general ability, but does not look for world-renowned specialists. No one is surprised at a display of enterprise in a “booming” western town, where everybody is “hustling”; but in a place which has once ranked as the third seaport in America, but has seen its maritime glory decline, a man who can establish a marine industry on a higher plane than was ever before known, and attract to his work such world-wide attention as to restore the vanished fame of his town, is no ordinary person. Moreover, if such a man has laid his plans and done his work in the disheartening eclipse of total blindness, he must possess some qualities of the highest order, whatever faults he may have, and is thus eminently fitted to instruct the rising generation.

Pursuant to this idea, I called at the office of the Herreshoff Manufacturing Company, at Bristol. The building, formerly belonging to the Burnside Rifle Company, is substantial, but unpretentious, and is entered by a short stairway on one side. The furniture throughout is also plain, but has been selected with excellent taste, and is suggestive of the most effective adaptation of means to ends in every detail. On the mantel and on the walls are numerous pictures, most of them of vessels, but very few relating directly to any of the great races for the “America’s” cup. The first picture to arrest one’s attention, indeed, is an excellent portrait of the late General Ambrose E. Burnside, who lived in Bristol, and was an intimate friend of John B. Herreshoff.

Previous inquiry had elicited the information that the members of the firm were very busy with various large orders, in addition to the rush of work on the “Columbia” and the “Defender”; so it was a very agreeable surprise when I was invited into the tasteful private office, where the blind president sat, having just concluded a short conversation with an attorney.

“Well, sir,” said he, rising and grasping my hand cordially, “what do you wish?”

“I realize how very busy you must be, Mr. Herreshoff,” I replied, “and will try to be as brief as possible; but I venture to ask a few minutes of your valuable time, with a view to obtaining suggestions and advice from you to young men and women at the threshold of their careers.”

“But why select me, in particular, as an adviser?”

This was “a poser,” at first, especially when he added, noting my hesitation:

LET THE WORK SHOW.

“We are very frequently requested to give interviews in regard to our manufacturing business; but, as it is the settled policy of our house to simply do our work just as well as we possibly can, and then leave it to speak for itself, we have felt obliged to decline all these requests. We have a very pleasant feeling toward the papers and their representatives, for they have treated us very kindly; but it would be repugnant to our sense of propriety to talk in public about our special industry. ‘Let the work show!’ seems to us a good motto.”

“True,” said I. “But the majority of my readers may not care to hear of cutters or ‘skimming dishes,’ center-boards or fin keels, or copper coils versus steel tubes for boilers. They are willing to leave the choice in such matters to you, realizing that you have always proved equal to the situation. What I want now is advice in regard to the great international human race—the race of life—the voyage in which each must be his own captain, but in which the words of others who have successfully sailed the sea before will help to avoid rocks and shoals, and to profit by favoring currents and trade winds. You have been handicapped in an unusual degree, sailing in total darkness and beset by many other difficulties, but have, nevertheless, made a very prosperous voyage. In overcoming such serious obstacles you must have learned much of the true philosophy of both success and failure, and I think you will be willing, like so many other eminent men and women, to help the young with suggestions drawn from your experience.”

“I always want to help young people, or old people, either, for that matter, if anything I can say will do so. But what can I say?”

“What do you call the prime requisite of success?”

“I shall have to answer that by a somewhat humorous but very shrewd suggestion of another—select a good mother. Especially for boys, I consider an intelligent, affectionate but considerate mother an almost indispensable requisite to the highest success. If you would improve the rising generation to the utmost, appeal first to the mothers.”

“In what way?”

“Above all things else, show them that reasonable self-denial is a thousandfold better for a boy than to have his every wish gratified. Teach them to encourage industry, economy, concentration of attention and purpose, and indomitable persistence.”

“But most mothers try to do this, don’t they?”

A MOTHER’S MIGHTY INFLUENCE.

“Yes, in a measure; but many of them, perhaps most of them, do not emphasize the matter half enough. A mother may wish to teach all these lessons to her son, but she thinks too much of him, or believes she does, to have him suffer any deprivation, and so indulges him in things which are luxuries for him, under the circumstances, rather than necessaries. Many a boy, born with ordinary intellect, would follow the example of an industrious father were it not that the mother wishes him to appear as well as any boy in the neighborhood. So, without exactly meaning it, she gets to making a show of her boy, and brings him up with a habit of idling away valuable time, to keep up appearances. The prudent mother, however, sees the folly of this course, and teaches her son to excel in study and work rather than in vain display. The difference in mothers makes all the difference in the world to children. Like brooks, they can be turned very easily in their course of life.”

“What ranks next in importance?”

“Boys and girls themselves, especially as they grow older, and have a chance to understand what life means, should not only help their parents as a matter of duty, but should learn to help themselves, for their own good. I would not have them forego recreation, a reasonable amount every day, but let them learn the reality and earnestness of existence, and resolve to do the whole work and the very best work of thorough, reliable young men and women.”

“What would you advise as to choosing a career?”

“In that I should be governed largely by the bent of each youth. What he likes to do best of all, that he should do and try to do it better than anyone else. That is legitimate emulation. Let him devote his full energy to his work; with the provision, however, that he needs change or recreation more in proportion as he uses his brain more. The more muscular the work, if not too heavy, the more hours, is a good rule; the more brain work, the fewer hours. Children at school should not be expected to work so long or so hard as if engaged in manual labor. Temperament, too, should be considered. A highly organized, nervous person, like a racehorse, may display intense activity for a short time, but it should be followed by a long period of rest; while the phlegmatic person, like the ox or the draft horse, can go all day without injury.”

“Would you advise a college course?”

“I believe in education most thoroughly, and think no one can have too much knowledge, if properly digested. But in many of our colleges, I have often thought, not more than one in five is radically improved by the course. Most collegiates waste too much time in frivolity, and somehow there seems to be little restraining power in the college to prevent this. I agree that students should have self-restraint and application themselves, but, in the absence of these, the college should supply more compulsion than is now the rule.”

“Do you favor reviving the old apprentice system for would-be mechanics?”

“Only in rare cases. As a rule, we have special machines now that do as perfect work as the market requires; some of them, indeed, better work than can be done by hand. A boy or man can soon learn to tend one of these, when he becomes, for ordinary purposes, a specialist. Very few shops now have apprentices. No rule, however, will apply to all, and it may still be best for one to serve an apprenticeship in a trade in which he wishes to advance beyond any predecessor or competitor.”

“Is success dependent more upon ability or opportunity?”

PREPARE TO THE UTMOST: THEN DO YOUR BEST.

“Of course, opportunity is necessary. You couldn’t run a mammoth department store on the desert of Sahara. But, given the possibility, the right man can make his opportunity, and should do so, if it is not at hand, or does not come, after reasonable waiting. Even Napoleon had to wait for his. On the other hand, if there is no ability, none can display itself, and the best opportunity must pass by unimproved. The true way is to first develop your ability to the last ounce, and then you will be ready for your opportunity, when it comes, or to make one, if none offers.”

“Is the chance for a youth as good as it was twenty-five or fifty years ago?”

“Yes, and no! In any country, as it becomes more thickly populated, the chance for purely individual enterprises is almost sure to diminish. One notices this more as he travels through other and older countries, where, far more than with us, boys follow in the footsteps of their fathers, generation after generation. But for those who are willing to adapt themselves to circumstances, the chance to-day, at least from a pecuniary standpoint, is better than ever before for those starting in life. There was doubtless more chance for the individual boat-builder in the days of King Philip, when each Indian made his own canoe, but there is certainly more profit now for an employee of our firm of boat-builders.”

“Granted, however, that he can find employment, how do his chances of rising compare with those of your youth?”

THE MAN IS THE IMPORTANT FACTOR.

“They still depend largely upon the individual. Some seem to have natural executive ability, and others develop it, while most men never possess it. Those who lack it cannot hope to rise far, and never could. Jefferson’s idea that all men are created equal is true enough, perhaps, so far as their political rights are concerned, but from the point of view of efficiency in business it is ridiculous. In any shop of one hundred men you will find one who is acknowledged, at least tacitly, as the leader, and he, sooner or later, becomes so in fact. A rich boy may get and hold a place in an office on account of his wealth or influence; but in the works merit alone will enable a man to hold a place long.”

“But what is his chance of becoming a proprietor?”

THE DEVELOPMENT OF ABILITY.

“That is smaller, of course, as establishments grow larger and more valuable. It is all bosh for every man to expect to become a Vanderbilt or a Rockefeller, or to be President. But, in the long run, a man will still rise and prosper in almost exact proportion to his real value to the business world. He will rise or fall according to his ability.”

“Can he develop ability?”

“Yes, to a certain extent. As I have said, we are not all alike, and no amount of cultivation will make some minds equal to those of others who have had but little training. But, whether great or small, everyone has some weak point; let him first study to overcome that.”

“How can he do it?”

“The only way I know of is to—do it. But this brings me back to what I told you at first. A good mother will show one how to guard against his weak points. She should study each child and develop his individual character, for character is the true foundation, after all. She should check extravagance and encourage industry and self-respect. My mother is one of the best, and I feel that I owe her a debt I can never repay. If I have one thing more than another to be thankful for, it is her care in childhood and her advice and sympathy through life. How often have I thought of her wisdom when I have seen mothers from Europe, where they were satisfied to be peasants, seek to outshine all their neighbors after they have been in America a few years, and so bring financial ruin to their husbands or even goad them into crime, and curse their children with contempt for honest labor in positions for which they are fitted, and a foolish desire to keep up appearances, even by living beyond their means and by seeking positions they cannot fill properly.”

“You must have been quite young when you began to build boats?”

HE WOULD NOT BE DISCOURAGED.

“About thirteen or fourteen years old. You see, my father was an amateur boat-builder, in a small way, and did very good work, but usually not for sale. But I began the work as a business thirty-six years ago, when I was about twenty-two.”

“You must have been terribly handicapped by your blindness?”

“It was an obstacle, but I simply would not allow it to discourage me, and did my best, just the same as if I could see. My mother had taught me to think, and so I made thought and memory take the place of eyes. I acquired a kind of habit of mental projection which has enabled me to see models in my mind, as it were, and to consider their good and bad points intelligently. Besides, I cultivated my powers of observation to the utmost in other respects. Even now I take an occasional trip of observation, for I like to see what others are doing, and so keep abreast of the progress of the age. But I must stop, or I shall get to ‘talking shop,’ the thing I declined to do at first. The main thing for a boy is to have a good mother, to heed her advice, to do his best, and not get a ‘swelled head’ as he rises—in other words, not to expect to put a gallon into a pint cup or a bushel into a peck measure. Concentration, decision, industry and economy should be his watchwords, and invincible determination and persistence his rule of action.”

LVI
A Great Vocalist Shows that Only Years of Labor Can Win the Heights of Song.

OF the five internationally famous singers—Melba, Calvé, Nordica, Eames and Lehmann—none is a greater favorite than Madame Lillian Nordica. She has had honors heaped upon her in every music-loving country, including her own, America. Milan, St. Petersburg, Paris, London, and New York in turn accepted her, and the music-lovers of those cities received her with a furore of praise. Jewel cases filled with bracelets, necklaces, tiaras and diadems of gold and precious stones, attest the unaffected sincerity of her admirers in all the great music-centers of the world. She enjoys, in addition, the distinction of being one of the first two American women to attain to international fame as a singer in grand opera. When Madame Nordica was in New York fulfilling her part in the most brilliant operatic season the city had ever known, she lived in sumptuous style at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, where I met her by appointment. She accepted the statement that the public is interested in the details of her career as most natural, and was pleased to discuss the philosophy of a singer’s success from the view-point of its difficulties.

“You would like to know how distinction in the field of art is earned? Well, it is not thrust upon anyone. The material for a great voice may be born in a person—it is, in fact—but the making of it into a great voice is a work of the most laborious character.”

“Is the matter of nationality of any advantage to an aspirant?”

“You wish to know——”

“Whether, in some countries, the atmosphere is not very favorable to a beginner;—the feeling of the public and the general support given to music not particularly conducive to the musical development of, we will say, a young girl with a promising voice.”

“Yes. I should judge almost any of the greater European nations would be better in this respect than the United States; not much better, however, because nearly all depends on strength of character, determination, and the will to work. If a girl has these, she will rise as high, in the end, anywhere; perhaps not so quickly in some places, but no less surely.”

“You had no European advantages?”

“None whatever.”

“Were you born in the West?”

“No. I come of New England stock. You will understand that more readily when I tell you that my real name is Norton. I was born at Farmington, Maine, and was reared in Boston.”

“Were your parents musically talented?”

“Not at all. Their opinion of music was that it is an airy, inviting art of the devil, used to tempt men’s feet to stray from the solemn path of right. They believed music, as a vocation, to be nearly as reprehensible as a stage career, and for the latter they had no tolerance whatever. I must be just, though, and own that they did make an exception in the case of church music, else I should never have received the slightest encouragement in my aspirations. They considered music in churches to be permissible—even laudable. So, when I displayed some ability as a singer, I was allowed to use it in behalf of religion, and I did. I joined the church choir and sang hymns about the house almost constantly.”

“You had a natural bent for singing.”

“Yes, but I needed a world of training. I had no conception of what work lies ahead of anyone who contemplates singing perfectly. All I knew was that I could sing, and that I would win my way with my voice if I could.”

“How did you accomplish it?”

THERE MUST BE NO PLAY, ONLY STUDY AND PRACTICE.

“By devoting all my time, all my thought, and all my energy to that one object. I devoured church music—all I could get hold of. I practiced new and difficult compositions all the time I could spare.”

“Naturally, your efforts attracted attention?”

“Yes, I became a very good church singer; so much so that, when there were church concerts or important religious ceremonies, I was always in demand. Then there began to be a social demand for my ability, and, later, a public demand in the way of concerts.”

“At Farmington?”

“Oh, no. At Boston. I forgot to say that my parents removed, while I was still quite young, to Boston.”

“Did you give much of your time to public concerts?”

“None at all. I ignored all but church singing. My ambition ran higher than concert singing, and I knew my parents would not consent. I persuaded them to let me have my voice trained. This was not very difficult, because my church singing, as it had improved, became a source of considerable profit, and they saw even greater results for me in the large churches and in the religious field generally. So I went to a teacher of vocal culture.”

“Where, if you please?”

“Professor John O’Neill, one of the instructors in the New England Conservatory of Music, Boston, was a fine old teacher, a man with the highest ideals concerning music, and of the sternest and most exacting method. He made me feel, at first, that the world was mine if I would work. Hard work was his constant cry. There must be no play, no training for lower forms of public entertainment, no anything but study and practice. I must work and perfect myself in private, and then suddenly appear unheralded in the highest class of opera and take the world by storm. It was a fine fancy.”

“Did you manage to work it out so?”

“No. It wouldn’t have been possible. O’Neill was a fine musician. In his mind and heart, all his aspiration was sincere, but it was not to be.”

“Were you ambitious enough?”

“Oh, yes! and most conscientious. Under him I studied the physiology of the voice, and practiced singing oratorios. I also took up Italian, familiarizing myself with the language, with all the songs and endless arias. In fact, I made myself as perfect in Italian as possible.”

“How much time did the training take?”

“Three years.”

“And what was the result?”

“Well, I had greatly improved, but was not perfect. Mr. O’Neill employed methods of making me work which discouraged me. He was a man who would magnify and storm over your slightest error, and make light of or ignore your sincerest achievements. If anything, he put his grade of perfection so high that I began to consider it unattainable, and lost heart. Finally, I gave it up and rested awhile, uncertain of everything.”

“And then?”

“After I had thought awhile and regained some confidence, I came to New York to see Mme. Maretzek. She was not only a teacher, but also a singer quite famous in her day and knew the world of music thoroughly. She considered my voice to be of the right quality for the highest grade of operatic success, and gave me hope that, with a little more training, I could begin my career. She not only did that, but also set me to studying the great operas, ‘Lucia’ and the others, and introduced me to the American musical celebrities. Together we heard whatever was worth hearing in New York. When the renowned Brignola came to New York she took me to the Everett House, where he was stopping, and introduced me. They were good friends, and, after gaining his opinion of my voice, we went to hear him sing ‘Faust.’

“That was a wonderful thing for me. To hear the great Brignola! It fired my ambition. As I listened, I felt that I could also be great, and that people, some day, might listen to me as enraptured as I then was by him. It put new fire into me and caused me to fairly toil over my studies. I would have given up all my hours if I had been allowed or requested to.”

“And then what?”

“Well, so it went until, after several years of study, Madame Maretzek thought I was getting pretty well along and might venture some important public singing. We talked about different ways of appearing, and what I would sing and so on, until finally Gilmore’s band came to Madison Square Garden. He was in the heyday of his success then, both popular and famous, and carried important soloists with him. Madame Maretzek decided that she would take me to see him and get his opinion; and so, one day, toward the very last of his Madison Square engagement, we went to see him. Madame Maretzek was on good terms with him also. I remember that she took me in one morning when he was rehearsing. I saw a stout, kindly, genial looking man who was engaged in tapping for attention, calling certain individuals to notice certain points, and generally fluttering around over a dozen odds and ends. Madame Maretzek talked with him a little while and then called his attention to me. He looked toward me.

“‘Thinks she can sing, eh? Yes, yes. Well, all right! Let her come right along.’

“Then he called to me:

“I WAS TRAVELING ON AIR.”

“‘Come right along, now. Step right up here on the stage. Yes, yes. Now, what can you sing?’

“I told him I could sing almost anything in oratorio or opera, if he so wished. He said: ‘Well, well, have a little from both. Now, what shall it be?’

“I shall never forget his kindly way. He was like a good father, gentle and reassuring, and seemed really pleased to have me there and hear me. I went up on the platform and told him that I would begin with ‘Let the Bright Seraphim,’ and he called the orchestra together and had them accompany me.”

“You must have been slightly nervous.”

“I was at first, but I recovered my equanimity and sang up to my full limit of power. When I was through, he remarked, ‘Very good! very good!’ and then, ‘Now, what else?’ I next sang an aria from ‘Somnambula.’ He did not hesitate to express his approval, which was always, ‘Very good! very good! Now, what you want to do,’ he said, ‘is to get some roses in your cheeks and come along and sing for me.’ After that he continued his conference with Madame Maretzek, and then we went away together.

“I was traveling on air when I left, I can assure you. His company was famous. Its engagement had been most successful. Madame Poppenheim was singing with it, and there were other famous names. There were only two more concerts, concluding his New York engagement, but he had told Madame Maretzek that if I chose to come and sing on these occasions, he would be glad to have me. I was more than glad of the opportunity and agreed to go. We arranged with him by letter, and, when the evening came, I sang.

“My work made a distinct impression on the audience and pleased Mr. Gilmore wonderfully. After the second night, when all was over, he came to me, and said: ‘Now, my dear, of course there is no more concert this summer, but I am going West in the fall. Now, how would you like to go along?’

“I told him that I would like to go very much, if it could be arranged; and, after some negotiation, he agreed to pay the expenses of my mother and myself, and give me one hundred dollars a week besides. I accepted, and when the Western tour began, we went along.”

“How did you succeed on that tour?”

“Very well indeed. I gained thorough control of my nerves in that time and learned something of audiences and of what constitutes distinguished ‘stage presence.’ I studied all the time, and, with the broadening influence of travel, gained a great deal. At the end of the tour my voice was more under my control than ever before, and I was a better singer all around.”

HER FIRST EUROPEAN TOUR.

“You did not begin with grand opera, after all?”

“No, I did not. It was not a perfect conclusion of my dreams, but it was a great deal. My old instructor, Mr. O’Neill, took it worse than I did. He regarded my ambitions as having all come to naught. I remember that he wrote me a letter in which he thus called me to account:

“After all my training, my advice, that you should come to this! A whole lifetime of ambition and years of the hardest study consumed to fit you to go on the road with a brass band! Poh!

“I pocketed the sarcasm in the best of humor, because I was sure of my dear old teacher’s unwavering faith in me, and knew that he wrote only for my own good. Still, I felt that I was doing wisely in getting before the public, and so decided to wait quietly and see if time would not justify me.

“When the season was over Mr. Gilmore came to me again. He was the most kindly man I ever knew. His manner was as gentle and his heart as good as could be.

“‘I am going to Europe,’ he said. ‘I am going to London and Paris and Vienna and Rome, and all the other big cities. There will be a fine chance for you to see all those places and let Europeans hear you. They appreciate good singers. Now, little girl, do you want to come? If you do, you can.’

“I talked it over with my mother and Madame Maretzek, and decided to go; and so, the next season, we were in Europe.”

“Did it profit you as you anticipated?”

“Very much. We gave seventy-eight concerts in England and France. We opened the Trocadero at Paris, and mine was the first voice of any kind to sing there.

“This European tour of the American band really was a great and successful venture. American musicians still recall the furore which it created and the prestige which it gained at home. Mr. Gilmore was proud of his leading soloists. In Paris, where the great audiences went wild over my singing, he came to praise me personally in unmeasured terms. ‘My dear,’ he said, ‘you are going to be a great singer. You are going to be crowned in your own country yet. Mark my words: they are going to put diamonds on your brow!’

“At the end of that tour I decided to spend some of my earnings on further study in Italy. Accordingly, I went to Milan, to the singing teacher San Giovanni. On arriving there, I visited the old teacher and stated my object. I said that I wanted to sing in grand opera.

“WHY DON’T YOU SING IN GRAND OPERA?”

“‘All right!’ he answered; ‘let me hear your voice.’

“I sang an aria from ‘Lucia’; and when I was through, he said dryly: ‘You want to sing in grand opera?’

“‘Yes.’

“‘Well, why don’t you?’

“‘I need training.’

“‘Nonsense!’ he answered. ‘We will attend to that. You need a few months to practice Italian methods—that is all.’

“So I spent three months with him. After much preparation, I made my début as Violetta in Verdi’s opera, ‘La Traviata,’ at the Teatro Grande, in Brescia.”

The details of Madame Nordica’s Italian appearance are very interesting. Her success was instantaneous. Her fame went up and down the land, and across the water—to her home. She next sang in Gounod’s “Faust,” at Geneva, and soon afterwards appeared at Navarro, singing Alice in Meyerbeer’s “Roberto,” the enthusiastic and delighted subscribers presenting her with a handsome set of rubies and pearls. After that she was engaged to sing at the Russian capital, and accordingly went to St. Petersburg, where, in October, 1881, she made her début as La Filma in “Mignon.”

There, also, her success was great. She was the favorite of the society of the court, and received pleasant attentions from every quarter. Presents were made her, and inducements for her continued presence until two winters had passed. Then she decided to revisit France and Paris.

THIS WAS HER CROWNING TRIUMPH.

“I wanted to sing in grand opera at Paris,” she said to me. “I wanted to know that I could appear successfully in that grand place. I counted my achievements nothing until I could do that.”

“And did you?”

“Yes. In July, 1882, I appeared there.”

This was her greatest triumph. In the part of Marguerite she took the house by storm, and won from the composer the highest encomiums. Subsequently, she appeared with equal success as Ophélie, having been specially prepared for both these rôles by the respective composers, Charles Gounod and Ambroise Thomas.

“You should have been satisfied after that,” I said.

“I was,” she answered. “So thoroughly was I satisfied that, soon afterwards, I gave up my career and was married. For two years I remained away from the public, but, after that time, my husband having died, I decided to return. I made my first appearance at the Burton Theater in London, and was doing well enough when Colonel Mapleson came to me. He was going to produce grand opera—in fact, he was going to open Covent Garden, which had been closed for a long time, with a big company. He was another interesting character. I found him to be generous and kind-hearted and happy-spirited as anyone could be. When he came to me it was in the most friendly manner. ‘I am going to open Covent Garden,’ he said. ‘Now, here is your chance to sing there. All the great singers have appeared there—Patti, Gerster, Nilsson, Tietjens—now it’s your turn—come and sing.’

“‘How about terms?’ I asked.

“‘Terms!’ he exclaimed; ‘terms! Don’t let such little details stand in your way. What is money compared to this? Ignore money. Think of the honor, of the memories of the place, of what people think of it;’ and then he waved his arms dramatically.

“Well, we came to terms, not wholly sacrificial on my part, and the season began. Covent Garden had not been open for a long time. It was in the spring of the year, cold and damp. There was a crowded house, though, because fashion accompanied the Prince of Wales there. He came, night after night, and heard the opera through with an overcoat on.

“It was no blessed task for me, or healthy, either, but the Lord has blessed me with a sound constitution. I sang my parts, as they should be sung, some in bare arms and shoulders, with too little clothing for such a temperature. But it was Covent Garden, and so I bore up under it.”

“What was the next venture?”

“Nothing much more interesting. The summer after that season I visited Ems, where the De Reszkes were. One day they said: ‘We are going to Bayreuth to hear the music, don’t you want to go along?’

“I thought it over, and decided that I did. My mother and I packed up and departed. When I got there and saw those splendid performances I was entranced. It was perfectly beautiful. Everything was arranged after an ideal fashion. I had a great desire to sing there, and boasted to my mother that I would. When I came away I was fully determined to carry out that boast.”

“Could you speak German?”

“Not at all. I began, though, at once, to study it; and when I could talk it sufficiently I went to Bayreuth and saw Madame Wagner.”

THE KINDNESS OF FRAU WAGNER.

“Did you find her the imperious old lady she is said to be?”

“Not at all. She welcomed me most heartily; and when I told her that I had come to see if I could not sing there she seemed much pleased. She treated me like a daughter, explained all that she was trying to do, and gave me a world of encouragement. Finally I arranged to sing and create ‘Elsa’ after my own idea of it during the season following the one then approaching.”

“What did you do meanwhile?”

“I came to New York to fulfil my contract for the season of 1894-1895. While doing that I made a study of Wagner’s, and, indeed, of all German music; and when the season was over went back and sang it.”

“To Frau Wagner’s satisfaction?”

“Yes.”

“Have you found your work very exacting?”

“Decidedly so. It leaves little time for anything else.”

“To do what you have done requires a powerful physique, to begin with?”

“Yes, I should judge so.”

“Are you ever put under extraordinary mental strain?”

“Occasionally.”

“In what manner?”

“Why, in my manner of study. I remember once, during my season under Augustus Harris, of an incident of this order. He gave a garden party one Sunday to which several of his company were invited, myself included. When the afternoon was well along he came to me and said: ‘Did you ever sing “Valencia” in “The Huguenots”?’ I told him I had not.

“‘Do you think you could learn the music and sing it by next Saturday night?’

“I felt a little appalled at the question, but ventured to say that I could. I knew that hard work would do it.

“‘Then do,’ he replied; ‘for I must have you sing it.’

“Let me ask you one thing,” I said. “Has America good musical material?”

THE MUSICAL TALENT OF AMERICAN GIRLS.

“As much as any other country, and more, I should think. The higher average of intelligence here should yield a greater percentage of musical intelligence.”

“Then there ought to be a number of great American women singers in the future?”

“There ought to be, but it is a question whether there will be. They are not cut out for the work which it requires to develop a good voice.”

“You think there is good material for great voices in American women, but not sufficient energy?”

“That is my fear, not my belief. I have noticed that young women here seem to underestimate the cost of distinction. It means more than most of them are prepared to give; and when they face the exactions of art they falter and drop out. Hence we have many middle-class singers, but few really powerful ones.”

“What are these exactions you speak of?”

“Time, money, and loss of friends, of pleasure. To be a great singer means, first, to be a great student. To be a great student means that you have no time for balls and parties, very little for friends, and less for carriage rides and pleasant strolls. All that is really left is a shortened allowance of sleep, of time for meals and time for exercise.”

“Did you ever imagine that people leaped into permanent fame when still young and without much effort on their part?”

“I did. But I discovered that real fame—permanent recognition which cannot be taken away from you—is acquired only by a lifetime of most earnest labor. People are never internationally recognized until they have reached middle life. Many persons gain notoriety young, but that goes as quickly as it comes. All true success is founded on real accomplishment, acquired with difficulty; and so, when you see some one accounted great, you will usually find him to be in the prime of life or past it.”

“You grant that many young people have genius?”

“Certainly I do. Many of them have it. They will have waited long, however, before it has been trained into valuable service. The world gives very little recognition for a great deal of labor paid in; and when I earn a thousand dollars for a half hour’s singing sometimes it does not nearly average up for all the years and for the labor much more difficult, which I contributed without recompense.”