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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made, by
+James D. McCabe, Jr., Illustrated by G. F. and E. B. Bensell
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made
+
+Author: James D. McCabe, Jr.
+
+Release Date: February 24, 2005  [eBook #15161]
+
+Language: english
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GREAT FORTUNES, AND HOW THEY WERE
+MADE***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Dave Macfarlane, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 15161-h.htm or 15161-h.zip:
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/5/1/6/15161/15161-h/15161-h.htm)
+      or
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/5/1/6/15161/15161-h.zip)
+
+
+
+
+
+GREAT FORTUNES, AND HOW THEY WERE MADE
+
+Or, The Struggles and Triumphs of Our Self-Made Men
+
+by
+
+JAMES D. MCCABE, JR.,
+
+Author of _Planting the Wilderness_, etc., etc.
+
+Numerous Illustrations from Original Designs by G. F. & E. B. Bensell
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: CONSTERNATION AT THE SIGHT OF FULTON'S MONSTER.]
+
+
+
+
+"MAN, it is not thy works, which are mortal, infinitely little, and the
+greatest no greater than the least, but only the _spirit thou workest
+in_, that can have worth or continuance."--CARLYLE.
+
+
+
+
+George Maclean,
+Philadelphia, New York and Boston
+Electrotyped at the Franklin Type Foundry, Cincinnati
+
+1871
+
+
+
+
+"The physical industries of this world have two relations in them: one
+to the actor, and one to the public. Honest business is more really a
+contribution to the public than it is to the manager of the business
+himself. Although it seems to the man, and generally to the community,
+that the active business man is a self-seeker, and although his motive
+may be self-aggrandizement, yet, in point of fact, no man ever manages a
+legitimate business in this life, that he is not doing a thousand-fold
+more for other men than he is trying to do even for himself. For, in the
+economy of God's providence, every right and well organized business is
+a beneficence and not a selfishness. And not less is it so because the
+merchant, the mechanic, the publisher, the artist, think merely of their
+profit. They are in fact working more for others than they are for
+themselves."
+
+HENRY WARD BEECHER.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+The chief glory of America is, that it is the country in which genius
+and industry find their speediest and surest reward. Fame and fortune
+are here open to all who are willing to work for them. Neither class
+distinctions nor social prejudices, neither differences of birth,
+religion, nor ideas, can prevent the man of true merit from winning the
+just reward of his labors in this favored land. We are emphatically a
+nation of self-made men, and it is to the labors of this worthy class
+that our marvelous national prosperity is due.
+
+This being the case, it is but natural that there should be manifested
+by our people a very decided desire to know the history of those who
+have risen to the front rank of their respective callings. Men are
+naturally cheered and encouraged by the success of others, and those who
+are worthy of a similar reward will not fail to learn valuable lessons
+from the examples of the men who have preceded them.
+
+With the hope of gratifying this laudable desire for information, and
+encouraging those who are still struggling in the lists of fame and
+fortune, I offer this book to the reader. I have sought to tell simply
+and truthfully the story of the trials and triumphs of our self-made
+men, to show how they overcame where others failed, and to offer the
+record of their lives as models worthy of the imitation of the young men
+of our country. No one can hope to succeed in life merely by the force
+of his own genius, any more than he can hope to live without exerting
+some degree of influence for good or evil upon the community in which
+his lot is cast. Success in life is not the effect of accident or of
+chance: it is the result of the intelligent application of certain fixed
+principles to the affairs of every day. Each man must make this
+application according to the circumstances by which he is surrounded,
+and he can derive no greater assistance or encouragement in this
+undertaking than by informing himself how other men of acknowledged
+merit have succeeded in the same departments of the world's industry.
+That this is true is shown by the fact that many of the most eminent men
+attribute their great achievements to the encouragement with which the
+perusal of the biographies of others inspired them at critical periods
+of their careers. It is believed that the narrations embraced in these
+pages afford ample instruction and entertainment to the young, as well
+as food for earnest reflection on the part of those who are safely
+advanced upon their pathway to success, and that they will prove
+interesting to all classes of intelligent readers.
+
+Some explanation is due to the reader respecting the title that has been
+chosen for the work. The term "Great Fortunes" is not used here to
+designate pecuniary success exclusively. A few of the men whose lives
+are herein recorded never amassed great wealth. Yet they achieved the
+highest success in their vocations, and their lives are so full of
+interest and instruction that this work must have been incomplete and
+unsatisfactory had they been passed over in silence. The aim of the
+writer has been to present the histories of those who have won the
+highest fame and achieved the greatest good in their respective
+callings, whether that success has brought them riches or not, and above
+all, of those whose labors have not only opened the way to fortune for
+themselves, but also for others, and have thus conferred lasting
+benefits upon their country.
+
+In short, I have sought to make this work the story of the _Genius of
+America_, believing as I do that he whose achievements have contributed
+to the increase of the national wealth, the development of the national
+resources, and the elevation of the national character, though he
+himself be poor in purse, has indeed won a great fortune, of which no
+reverse can ever deprive him.
+
+J.D. McC., JR.
+
+NEW YORK, _24th October, 1870_.
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+CONSTERNATION AT SIGHT OF FULTON'S MONSTER (Frontispiece)
+GIRARD COLLEGE
+GIRARD'S HEROISM
+ASTOR'S FIRST TRIP FOR FURS
+"MY MEN SHALL NOT SUFFER"
+PORTRAIT OF GEORGE PEABODY
+PEABODY PAYING FOR A NIGHT'S LODGING
+PORTRAIT OF CORNELIUS VANDERBILT
+VANDERBILT EARNING HIS FIRST HUNDRED DOLLARS
+VANDERBILT CARRYING OFF THE SHERIFF
+FOUNDING A GREAT FORTUNE
+PORTRAIT OF ROBERT FULTON
+AN AMAZING REVELATION
+"THE MADHOUSE IS THE PROPER PLACE FOR HIM"
+WHITNEY WATCHING THE FIRST COTTON-GIN
+PORTRAIT OF ELIAS HOWE, JR.
+HOWE'S FIRST IDEA OF THE SEWING-MACHINE
+THE BOY COLT INVENTING THE REVOLVER
+PORTRAIT OF SAMUEL F.B. MORSE
+HOW THE NEW YORK HERALD BEGAN
+MARSHALL'S DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY
+PORTRAIT OF JAMES T. BRADY
+"THEY ARE GOING TO HANG MY BROTHER; YOU CAN SAVE HIM!"
+THE TRUANT'S SECRET DISCOVERED
+PORTRAIT OF HIRAM POWERS
+POWERS' DISTRUST OF THE HUNTERS
+FILIAL DEVOTION SHAPES A GREAT CAREER
+CARTWRIGHT CALLING UP THE DEVIL
+PORTRAIT OF NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
+JEFFERSON, AS RIP VAN WINKLE
+PRESCRIBING AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE
+"PRESIDENT LINCOLN HAS BEEN MURDERED!"
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+I. MERCHANTS.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+STEPHEN GIRARD.
+
+The fog in the Delaware--News of the war--Alarm of the French skipper--A
+narrow escape from capture--Arrival of Girard in Philadelphia--Early
+history of Stephen Girard--An unhappy childhood--Goes to sea--Is
+licensed to command--Becomes a trader in Philadelphia--Marries Mary
+Lum--Unfortunate issue of the marriage--Capture of Philadelphia by the
+British--Early commercial life of Stephen Girard--How he earned his
+first money, and the use he made of it--Aid from St. Domingo--His rigid
+attention to business--Thoroughness of his knowledge--One of his letters
+of instructions--His subordinates required to obey orders though they
+ruin him--Anecdote of Girard and one of his captains--His promptness and
+fidelity in business--He never breaks his word--How he lost five hundred
+dollars--Buys the old Bank of the United States and becomes a
+banker--Cuts down the salaries of his clerks--Refuses his watchman an
+overcoat--Indifference to his employés--Contrast between his personal
+and business habits--His liberality in financial operations--He
+subscribes for the entire Government loan in 1814, and enables the
+United States to carry on the war--His generosity toward the
+Government--The suspension of specie payments--Financial troubles--How
+Girard saved his own notes--His public spirit--How he made half a
+million of dollars on a captured ship--Personal characteristics--Why he
+valued money--His ambition--His infidelity--Causes of the defects of his
+character--A favorable view--Heroic conduct of Stephen Girard during
+the prevalence of the yellow fever in Philadelphia--The Good
+Samaritan--He practices medicine, and congratulates himself that he has
+killed none of his patients--His industry--Visit of Mr. Baring to Mr.
+Girard--A curious reception--Failing health and death of Stephen
+Girard--His will--His noble bequests--Establishment of Girard College.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+JOHN JACOB ASTOR.
+
+Legitimate business the field of success--Reasons for claiming Astor as
+an American--Birth and early life--Religious training--The village of
+Waldorf--Poverty--The jolly butcher--Young Astor's repugnance to his
+father's trade--Unhappy at home--Loses his mother--His desire to
+emigrate to the "New Land"--Leaves home--His voyage down the
+Rhine--Reaches London and enters the service of his brother--His efforts
+to prepare for emigration--Learns to speak English--Peace between the
+United States and Great Britain--The road to the "New Land" open--Astor
+sets out for America--His first ventures in commerce--The voyage--How he
+proposed to save his Sunday clothes--Arrival in the Chesapeake--The
+ice-blockade--Astor makes a friend--The fur trader's story--Astor sees
+the way to fortune--Reaches New York--His first situation--Learning the
+business--His method of proceeding--An example to young men--His capacity
+for business operations--He is promoted--His journeys to Canada, and
+their results--Sets up in business for himself--The fur trade of North
+America--A survey of the field of Astor's operations--His capital--His
+tramps into the wilderness in search of furs--Predictions as to the
+future settlement of the country--His first consignment to England--His
+marriage--A good wife--Improvement in his prospects--Buys his first
+ship--The secret of his success--Close attention to business--His
+economical habits--His indorsement disputed by a bank clerk--Statements
+of the profits on furs--He engages in the Chinese trade--How the
+Government aided the early China traders--Amount made by Astor in his
+legitimate business--His real estate operations--His foresight and
+courage--How eight thousand dollars yielded eighty thousand--His real
+estate in the City of New York--Purchases the half of Putnam County--The
+Roger and Mary Morris estate controversy--Astor wins his suit, and makes
+half a million of dollars--Astor's scheme of colonization--A grand
+enterprise--Settlement of Astoria--Betrayed by his agents, and the
+scheme brought to failure--Astor withdraws from active business--His
+boyhood's vow and its fulfillment--Builds the Astor House--His voyage to
+Europe--The return--The troubles of a millionaire--The great man
+seasick--A curious draft--The last years of his life--His fondness for
+literary men--His death and burial--His will--Opposite views of his
+character--How his refusal to buy a chronometer cost him seventy
+thousand dollars--He remembers an old friend--His gift of a lease--His
+humor--"William has a rich father."
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+ALEXANDER T. STEWART.
+
+Birth and early life--Becomes his grandfather's ward--Designed for the
+ministry--A change in his plans--Comes to America--Teaches school in New
+York--Becomes a dry goods merchant--Receives a legacy--His first
+importation--How he began business--An energetic trader--His sample lots
+and their history--Success of his enterprise--He begins by encouraging
+honesty in trade--Wins a name for reliability--The system of selling at
+one price--Inaugurates the "selling off at cost" feature--His courage in
+business--How he raised the money to meet his note--Improvement in his
+business--He enlarges his store--As an inducement to the ladies, employs
+for clerks handsome young men--The crisis of 1837--Stewart comes out of
+it a rich man--How he did so--Builds his lower store--Predictions of
+failure--The result--Compels the Government to purchase goods from
+him--His foresight and liberality--Charged with superstition--Lucky and
+unlucky persons--Story of the old apple woman--Remarks at the opening of
+the St. Nicholas Hotel--Reasons of Stewart's success--A hard worker--How
+he receives visitors--Running the gauntlet--How he gets rid of
+troublesome persons--Estimate of Mr. Stewart's real estate in New
+York--His new residence--His benevolence--Aid for Ireland, and free
+passages to America--Home for women--Political sentiments--Mr. Stewart's
+appointment as Secretary of the Treasury--Feeling of the country--The
+retail store of A.T. Stewart & Co.--A palace of glass and iron--Internal
+arrangements--The managers and salesmen--List of sales--Wages
+given--Visitors--The principal salesroom--The parcel department--The
+wagons and stables--Extravagant purchases--Mr. Stewart's supervision of
+the upper store--The system of buying--The foreign agencies--Statement
+of the duties paid each day--Personal appearance of Mr. Stewart.
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+AMOS LAWRENCE.
+
+The Lawrence family--A poor boy--Early education--Delicate
+health--Obtains a situation at Dunstable--Returns to Groton--Becomes Mr.
+Brazer's apprentice--The variety store--An amateur doctor--Importance of
+Groton in "old times"--Responsibility of young Lawrence--Is put in
+charge of the business--High character--Drunkenness the curse of New
+England--Lawrence resolves to abstain from liquors and tobacco--His
+self-command--Completes his apprenticeship--Visits Boston--An unexpected
+offer--Enters into business in Boston--Is offered a partnership, but
+declines it--His sagacity justified--Begins business for
+himself--Commercial importance of Boston--Aid from his father--A narrow
+escape--lesson for life--Amos Lawrence's method of doing business---An
+example for young men--His business habits--He leaves nothing unfinished
+over Sunday--Avoids speculation--His views upon the subject--Introduces
+double entry in book-keeping into Boston--His liberality to his
+debtors--Does not allow his business to master him--Property gained by
+some kinds of sacrifices not worth having--Forms a partnership with his
+brother Abbott--Business of the firm--They engage in manufactures--Safe
+business principles--A noble letter--Political opinions--His
+charities--Statement of his donations--Requests that no public
+acknowledgment of his gifts be made--Character as a merchant and a
+man--Advice to his son--His religious character--Loss of his health--His
+patience and resignation--The model American merchant.
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+ANDREW V. STOUT.
+
+Early struggles--Acquires an education--Undertakes the support of his
+family--The boy teacher--Hard work--Is made instructor of Latin--A
+trying position--How he conquered his difficulties--Is made principal of
+a public school--His first business ventures--Engages in the building of
+houses--His platform of integrity--His success--A great mistake--He
+indorses a note--The consequence of a false step--Liberal action of the
+bank--Mr. Stout resolves to accept no accommodation--Pays the notes, and
+loses twenty-three thousand dollars--Establishes himself as a wholesale
+boot and shoe dealer--Enters the dry goods trade--Close attention to
+business--His system and its success--Organization of the Shoe and
+Leather Bank of New York--Mr. Stout is made Vice President, and
+subsequently President--Character as a citizen--Is made City
+Chamberlain--Generosity to the police force--Interest in church
+affairs--Kindness to the poor--Encouragement which his career affords
+others.
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+JONAS CHICKERING.
+
+The largest building in the United States--The Chickering piano
+factory--Birth of Jonas Chickering--Early love of music--Is apprenticed
+to a cabinet-maker--Is employed to repair a piano--Succeeds in the
+undertaking--Consequence of this success--Becomes a piano-maker--Removes
+to Boston--Is employed as a journeyman--The labor of his life--His
+patience and skill--Is known as the best workman in the
+establishment--History of the piano--Chickering's first discovery--His
+hope of success based on intelligence--Becomes a master of the theory of
+sound--His studies and their result--Makes an improvement in the framing
+of pianos--Invents the circular scale for square pianos--Generously
+makes his invention free--A noble gift to the world--His business
+operations--Increase in the demand for his instruments--Death of Captain
+Mackay--Mr. Chickering undertakes the sole charge of his affairs--Fears
+of his friends--Magnitude of the business--The lawyer's question
+answered--The mortgages paid--Rapid success of Mr. Chickering--His
+varied duties--Sharp competition--A bogus Chickering--How a Boston bank
+lost his custom--His independence in business--His character as a
+merchant--Trains his sons to succeed him in business--The result of his
+efforts--The present house of Chickering & Sons--Destruction of the
+factory--Offers of aid--Mr. Chickering's kindness to his workmen--Sets
+to work to re-establish his business--The new factory begun--Sudden
+death of Mr. Chickering.
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+NICHOLAS LONGWORTH.
+
+The grape interest of the United States--Growing demand for American
+wines--Instrumentality of Mr. Longworth in producing this success--Early
+life of Mr. Longworth--Apprenticed to a shoemaker--Removes to South
+Carolina--Returns to Newark and studies law--Removes to
+Cincinnati--Admitted to the bar--His first case--Is paid in whisky
+stills, and trades them for lands which make his fortune--Rapid growth
+of Cincinnati--The oldest native inhabitant of Chicago--Longworth's
+investments in real estate--Immense profits realized by him--His
+experiments in wine growing--History of the Catawba grape--Longworth
+decides to cultivate it entirely--His efforts to promote the grape
+culture in the Ohio Valley--Offers a market for all the grape juice that
+can be brought to him--The result of his labors seen in the Ohio
+vineyards of to-day--His wine cellars--Amount of wine made annually by
+him--The process used--How "Sparkling Catawba" is made--Longworth's
+experiments with strawberries--His liberality--Gift of land to the
+Observatory--His challenge to a grumbler--Estimate of his character--His
+eccentricities--His generosity to his tenants--How he made money by
+helping others to grow rich--His politics--How he subscribed one hundred
+dollars to elect Clay--His hatred of vagabondage--His stone quarry--How
+he provided it with laborers--His system of helping the poor--Is charged
+with stinginess--The "devil's poor"--Personal appearance--The
+"Hard-times" overcoat--Charity to a millionaire--Death of Mr. Longworth.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+GEORGE PEABODY.
+
+Birth and parentage--Early education--His first lessons in business--An
+apprentice in a country store--Youthful ambition--A desire for
+change--The visit to Post Mills--Removal to Newburyport--Reasons for his
+attachment to that place--His first patron--Peabody goes south--A
+soldier in the War of 1812-15--A young merchant--A change of
+prospects--A partner in the house of Riggs & Peabody--Peabody's business
+capacity--An irregular banker--His reputation as a business
+man--Promising opening of a brilliant career--Retirement of Mr.
+Riggs--Growth of the business--A branch house in London--Mr. Peabody
+saves the credit of the State of Maryland--Tribute from Edward
+Everett--Success in London--A model American merchant--Establishment of
+the house of George Peabody & Co.--The Fourth of July dinner--The
+exhibition of 1851--Patriotism of Mr. Peabody--How he saved the United
+States from humiliation--Admission of the "London Times"--Mr. Peabody's
+business habits--His economy--Adventure with a conductor--Finds a
+conscientious hackman--Personal simplicity--Visits to the United
+States--His munificent donations--His last visit--Returns to London and
+dies--Honors paid to his memory--The funeral ceremonies--His burial at
+Peabody--Statement of his donations and bequests--His example
+encouraging to the young.
+
+
+II. CAPITALISTS.
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+CORNELIUS VANDERBILT.
+
+Staten Island seventy-six years ago--The establishment of the Staten
+Island ferry--Birth of Cornelius Vanderbilt--His boyhood--Defective
+education--A famous rider--His early reputation for
+firmness--Superintends the removal of a ship's cargo at the age of
+twelve--How he pawned a horse--Becomes a boatman--How he bought his
+boat--A disastrous voyage--His life as a boatman--His economy and
+industry--Earns three thousand dollars--The alarm at Fort
+Richmond--Vanderbilt's perilous voyage for aid for the forts--His
+marriage--His first contract--How he supplied the harbor
+defenses--Builds his first schooner--His winter voyages--Becomes a
+steamboat captain--His foresight--Leases the hotel at New Brunswick--The
+dangers of navigating the New York waters--The steamboat war--How
+Captain Vanderbilt eluded the sheriff--Becomes manager of the steamboat
+line--Declines an increase of salary--Only wants to carry his
+point--Refuses to buy Mr. Gibbons's interest in the steamboat company,
+and builds his own boat--Narrow escape from ruin--Final
+triumph--Systematic management of his vessels--How he ruined the
+"Collins Line"--The "North Star"--Becomes a railroad director--How he
+foiled a plan to ruin him--dishonest legislature--Vanderbilt's
+triumph--His gift to the Government--His office in New York--Vanderbilt
+in business hours--Personal characteristics--Love for horses--His
+family.
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+DANIEL DREW.
+
+Birth-place--Birth and parentage--A farmer's boy--Goes to New York to
+seek his fortune--Becomes a cattle drover--Leases the Bull's Head
+Tavern--His energy and success in his business--Brings the first western
+cattle to New York--Helps a friend to build a steamboat--The fight with
+Vanderbilt--Drew buys out his friend, and becomes a steamboat
+owner--Vanderbilt endeavors to discourage him--He perseveres--His
+success--Formation of the "People's Line" on the Hudson River--The
+floating palaces--Forms a partnership with George Law, and establishes
+the Stonington line--Opening of the Hudson River Railway--Drew's
+foresight--Room enough for the locomotive and the steamboat--Buys out
+the Champlain Company--Causes of his success as a steamboat
+manager--Becomes a banker--His success in Wall Street--Indorses the
+acceptances of the Erie Railway Company--His courage and calmness in the
+panic of 1857--He saves "Erie" from ruin--Elected a director of the Erie
+Road--Is made Treasurer--His interest in the road--His operations in
+Wall Street--His farm in Putnam County--Joins the Methodist Church--His
+liberality--Builds a church in New York--Founds the Drew Theological
+Seminary--Estimate of his wealth--His family--Personal appearance.
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+JAMES B. EADS.
+
+Birth--Childhood--Fondness for machinery--Early mechanical
+skill--Constructs a steam engine at the age of nine years--His
+work-shop--Death of his father--Works his way to St. Louis--Sells apples
+on the streets--Finds employment and a friend--Efforts to
+improve--Becomes a clerk on a Mississippi steamer--Undertakes the
+recovery of wrecked steamboats--Success of his undertaking--Offers to
+remove the obstacles to the navigation of the Mississippi--Failure of
+his health--Retires from business--Breaking out of the war--Summoned to
+Washington--His plan for the defense of the western rivers--Associated
+with Captain Rodgers in the purchase of gunboats--His first contract
+with the Government--Undertakes to build seven ironclads in sixty-five
+days--Magnitude of the undertaking--His promptness--Builds other
+gunboats during the war--The gunboat fleet at Forts Henry and Donelson
+the private property of Mr. Eads--Excellence of the vessels built by
+him--A model contractor--Residence in St. Louis.
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+CYRUS W. FIELD.
+
+Birth--Parentage--Early education--Goes to New York in search of
+employment--Obtains a clerkship in a city house, and in a few years
+becomes a partner--A rich man at thirty-four--Retires from
+business--Travels in South America--Meets Mr. Gisborne--Plan of the
+Newfoundland Telegraph Company--Mr. Field declines to embark in
+it--Conceives the idea of a telegraph across the Atlantic
+Ocean--Correspondence with Lieut. Maury and Prof. Morse--The scheme
+pronounced practicable--Mr. Field secures the co-operation of four New
+York capitalists--Organization of the New York, Newfoundland, and London
+Telegraph Company--Building of the line from New York to St. John's--A
+herculean task--The Governmental ocean surveys of the United States and
+England--Efforts to secure aid in England--Liberal action of the
+Government--Organization of the Atlantic Telegraph Company--A hard-won
+success in America--Passage of the bill by Congress--The first attempt
+to lay the cable--The expedition of 1857--The telegraph fleet--Scenes on
+board--Loss of the cable--Failure of the expedition--Difficulties
+remedied--The new "paying-out" machinery--The expedition of 1858--The
+second attempt to lay the cable--Dangerous storm--Failures--Loss of the
+cable--The third attempt--The cable laid successfully--Messages across
+the Atlantic--Celebrations in England and the United States--The signals
+cease--The cable a failure--Discouraging state of affairs--Courage of
+Mr. Field--Generous offer of the British Government--Fresh
+soundings--Investigations of the Telegraph Board--Efforts of Mr. Field
+to raise new capital--Purchase of the Great Eastern--The fourth attempt
+to lay the cable--Expedition of 1865--Voyage of the Great Eastern--Loss
+of the cable--Efforts to recover it unsuccessful--What the expedition
+demonstrated--Efforts to raise more capital--They are pronounced
+illegal--The new company--The fifth attempt to lay the cable--Voyage of
+the Great Eastern--The cable laid at last--Fishing up and splicing the
+cable of 1865--The final triumph--Credit due to Mr. Field.
+
+
+III. INVENTORS.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+ROBERT FULTON.
+
+Trinity churchyard--The Livingston vault--An interesting place--Fulton's
+tomb--Birth of Robert Fulton--Boyhood--Early mechanical skill--Robert
+astonishes his tutor--Robert's fireworks--"Nothing is
+impossible"--"Quicksilver Bob"--The fishing excursion--The first
+paddle-wheel boat--Fulton's success as an artist--His gift to his
+mother--His removal to England--Intimacy with Benjamin West--Goes to
+Devonshire--Acquaintance with the Duke of Bridgewater--His interest in
+canal navigation--His first inventions--Goes to Paris--Residence with
+Mr. Barlow--Studies in engineering--Invents the diving boat--The
+infernal machine--His patriotic reply to the British ministry--His
+marriage--Returns to America--The General Government declines to
+purchase his torpedo--Brief history of the first experiments in steam
+navigation--Fulton's connection with Livingston--The trial boat on the
+Seine--Determines to build a boat on the Hudson--Fulton and Livingston
+are given the sole right to navigate the waters of New York by
+steam--Popular ridicule--Disbelief of scientific men--Launch of the
+"Clermont"--The trial trip--The first voyage up the Hudson--Fulton's
+triumph--Scenes along the river--Efforts to sink the
+steamer--Establishment of steam navigation on the Hudson River--The
+first New York ferry-boats--The floating docks--Boats for the West--New
+York threatened by the British fleet in 1814--Fulton's plan for a steam
+frigate--The "Fulton the First"--The steamboat war--Illness of
+Fulton--His death and burial--His last will--True character of his
+invention.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+CHARLES GOODYEAR.
+
+Discovery of India-rubber--Mode of collecting it--Preparation and use by
+the natives--Its introduction into the United States--Mr. E.M. Chaffee's
+process--The India-rubber fever--Brief success of the India-rubber
+companies--Their sudden failure--Visit of Mr. Goodyear to New York--He
+invents an improvement in the life preserver--Early history of Charles
+Goodyear--His failure as a merchant--Offers his invention to the Roxbury
+Company--The agent's disclosures--Mr. Goodyear finds his mission--His
+first efforts--A failure--Discouraging state of his affairs--Renews his
+efforts--Experiments in India-rubber--Coldness of his friends--His
+courage and perseverance--Goes to New York--Accidental discovery of the
+aqua fortis process--Partial success--Ruined--Life on Staten
+Island--Removes to Boston--Delusive prosperity--The mail bag
+contract--His friends urge him to abandon his efforts--He refuses--On
+the verge of success--Discovers the usefulness of sulphur--The
+inventor's hope--The revelation--Discovers the secret of
+vulcanization--Down in the depths--Kept back by poverty--A beggar--A
+test of his honesty--Starvation at hand--The timely loan--Removal to New
+York--Difficulties in the way--Death of his youngest child--Finds
+friends in New York--His experiments in vulcanization--Final
+success--His heart in his work--Fails to secure patents in Europe--His
+losses from dishonest rivals--Declaration of the Commissioner of
+Patents--Death of Mr. Goodyear--Congress refuses to extend his
+patent--His true reward.
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+ELI WHITNEY.
+
+The home of General Greene in Georgia--The soldier's widow--An arrival
+from New England--The young schoolmaster--A mechanical genius--Early
+history of Whitney--Mrs. Greene's invitation--Visit of the
+planters--State of the cotton culture in 1792--A despondent
+planter--Mrs. Greene advises them to try Whitney--Origin of the cotton
+gin--Whitney's first efforts--His workshop--The secret labors--How he
+provided himself with materials--Finds a partner--Betrayal of his
+secret--He is robbed of his model--He recovers it and completes it--The
+first cotton gin--Statement of the revolution produced by the invention
+in the cotton culture of the South--Opinion of Judge Johnson--The story
+of an inventor's wrongs--Whitney is cheated and robbed of his
+rights--The worthlessness of a patent--A long and disheartening
+struggle--Honorable action of North Carolina--Congress refuses to extend
+the patent--Whitney abandons the cotton gin--Engages in the manufacture
+of firearms--His improvements in them--Establishes an armory in
+Connecticut, and makes a fortune--Death.
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+CHAUNCEY JEROME.
+
+The old-fashioned clocks--Their expensiveness--Condition of the clock
+trade of Connecticut sixty years ago--Early history of Chauncey
+Jerome--A hard life--Death of his father--Becomes a farmer's boy--Is
+anxious to become a clock-maker--An over-wise guardian--Hardships of an
+apprentice--How Jerome became a carpenter--Hires his winters from his
+master--Becomes a dial-maker--The clock-making expedition--Jerome's
+first savings--Takes a wife--A master carpenter--Poor pay and hard
+work--Buys a house--A dull winter--Enters Mr. Terry's factory--The
+wooden clock business--Sets up in business for himself--Industry and
+energy rewarded--His first order--Sends his clocks South--Enlarges his
+business--Improvements in his clocks--Losses on southern shipments from
+dampness--Depression of business--Jerome's anxiety--A wakeful
+night--Invention of the brass--A new era in the clock trade--Beneficial
+effects of Jerome's invention--Magnitude of the Connecticut clock trade
+at present--Growth of Jerome's business--Makes a fortune--Organization
+of the "Jerome Clock-making Company"--Practical withdrawal of Mr.
+Jerome--Difficulties of the company--Jerome a ruined man--Honest
+independence--Finds employment--Becomes the manager of the Chicago
+Company.
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+ELIAS HOWE, JR.
+
+The first sewing-machine--Birth of Elias Howe--A poor man's son--Raised
+to hard work--His first employment--The little mill-boy--Delicate
+health--Goes to Lowell to seek his fortune--Thrown out of
+employment--Removes to Cambridge--Works in a machine shop with N.P.
+Banks--Marries--A rash step--Growing troubles--A hard lot--Conceives the
+idea of a sewing-machine--His first experiments unsuccessful--Invents
+the lock stitch and perfects the sewing-machine--Hindered by his
+poverty--A hard struggle--Finds a partner--His winter's task--His attic
+work-shop--Completion of the model--Perfection of Howe's
+invention--Efforts to dispose of the invention--Disappointed
+hopes--Popular incredulity--Becomes an engine driver--Amasa Howe goes to
+England with the sewing-machine--Bargain with the London
+merchant--Elias removes to London--Loses his situation--The rigors of
+poverty--Returns to America--Death of his wife--Fate's last blow--The
+sewing-machine becomes better known--Adoption by the public--A tardy
+recognition--Elias Howe sets up in business for himself--Buys out his
+partner's interest--The sewing-machine war--Rapid growth of the
+sewing-machine interest--Earnings of the inventor--A royal
+income--Honors conferred upon him--Enlists in the United States Army--A
+liberal private--Last illness and death.
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+RICHARD M. HOE.
+
+Growth of the art of printing--Birth of Richard M. Hoe--Sketch of the
+career of Robert Hoe--He comes to America--His marriage--Founds the
+house of "Robert Hoe & Co."--The first steam printing presses--He
+retires from business--Richard M. Hoe is brought up in the business--The
+mechanical genius of the house--The new firm--Richard Hoe's first
+invention--Obtains a patent for it--Visits England--Invents the
+double-cylinder press--Demand for increased facilities for printing--Mr.
+Hoe's experiments with his press--His failures--How the "Lightning
+Press" was invented--A good night's work--Patents his invention--The
+first "Lightning Press"--Demand for it--Rapid growth of the business of
+the firm--Statement of the operations of the house--Personal
+characteristics of Richard M. Hoe--The "Lightning Press" at work.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+SAMUEL COLT.
+
+Birth and parentage--A restless boy--Dislikes school--Early fondness for
+mechanical inventions--Is sent to boarding-school--Runs away to sea--The
+story of a boy's invention, and what came of it--Origin of the
+revolver--Returns home--His chemical studies--Dr. Coult--The lecturing
+tour--His success--Completes his design for the revolver--Patents his
+invention--Visits England--Discovery at the Tower of London--Returns
+home--Formation of the "Patent Arms Company"--Objections of the
+officers of the army and navy to the revolver--The Florida War--It is
+decided by the revolver--Triumph of Col. Colt--Cessation of the demand
+for arms--Failure of the company--Beginning of the Mexican War--Action
+of General Taylor--No revolvers to be had--A strange dilemma for an
+inventor--The new model--Contracts with the Government--Success of the
+revolver in Mexico--The demand from the frontier--Emigration to
+California and Australia--Permanent establishment of Col. Colt's
+business--The improved weapon--Builds a new armory--Description of his
+works at Hartford--A liberal employer--Other inventions of Col.
+Colt--His submarine telegraph--His fortune--His marriage--Visits to
+Europe--Attentions from European dignitaries--Witnesses the coronation
+of the Emperor of Russia--His last illness and death.
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+SAMUEL F.B. MORSE.
+
+Birth--Parentage--Early education--Graduates at Yale College--Becomes an
+artist--His masters--Visits England--His first attempt--"The Dying
+Hercules"--Opinion of Benjamin West--Wins the medal of the Adelphi
+Society of Arts--Ambition as an artist--His cold reception by the
+Americans--Mr. Tuckerman's comments--Organizes the National Academy of
+Design--Visits Europe the second time--The homeward voyage in the
+"Sully"--News of the experiments at Paris with the electro-magnet--How
+the electric telegraph was invented--Morse is made a professor in the
+University of New York--Completion of his model--An imperfect
+telegraph--His first experiments--The duplicate finished--First
+exhibition of the telegraph--Morse applies for a patent--Visits Europe
+to introduce his invention--His failure--Seeks aid from Congress--A
+disheartening effort--A long struggle--Independence of Morse--Despondent
+at last--A sudden lifting of the cloud--The experimental line--The
+trial--A curious Cabinet Minister--Success of the
+telegraph--Establishment of companies in the United States--Professor
+Morse wins fame and fortune--The telegraph in Europe--Honors at home and
+abroad--A list of his rewards--Morse originates submarine telegraphy,
+and predicts the laying of an Atlantic telegraph--Personal characteristics.
+
+
+IV. PUBLISHERS.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+JAMES HARPER.
+
+The Brothers Harper--Birth and parentage of James Harper--The Long
+Island home--James Harper goes to New York--Becomes a "devil"--Winning
+his way--How he gave his card to a stranger--Arrival of "Brother
+John"---Good habits--Sets up for himself--"J. & J. Harper,
+Printers"--How they started in business--Integrity rewarded--First
+job--Their first effort at stereotyping--The Harpers become publishers
+on their own account--Their early ventures--Feeling their way to
+success--Their publications--Character of their books--How they drove
+the "yellow covers" out of the market--Their prosperity--Admission of
+new partners--The great fire--Destruction of the establishment of Harper
+& Brothers--Energy of the firm--Re-establishment of their
+business--Their new premises--Description of the buildings--Personal
+characteristics of Mr. James Harper--Religious life--Liberality of
+sentiment--His industry--Elected Mayor of New York--Kindness to his
+operatives--Physical Vigor--"The Lord knows best"--Accident to Mr.
+Harper and his daughter--His death.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+JAMES T. FIELDS.
+
+The old "Corner Book-store" in Boston and its associations--Carter &
+Bendee employ a new clerk--Birth and early life of James T. Fields--His
+literary talent--Governor Woodbury's advice--Enters mercantile
+life--Determined to rise--His studies--The result--Associated with
+Edward Everett at the age of eighteen--His business talent--Steady
+promotion--Becomes head clerk with Allen & Ticknor--Establishment of the
+firm of Ticknor & Fields--Success as a publisher--High character of his
+house--Relations toward authors--Publications of Ticknor &
+Fields--Removal--Organization of the firm of Fields, Osgood & Co.--The
+new book-store--An elegant establishment--Mr. Field's literary
+success--Statement of a friend--"Common Sense"--His contributions to the
+periodicals of the firm--Travels in Europe--Personal appearance.
+
+
+V. EDITORS.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+JAMES GORDON BENNETT.
+
+Birth--Intended for the Romish priesthood--How he was induced to come to
+America--Arrival in Halifax--Comes to the United States--What came of a
+shilling--Employment in Boston--Reaches New York--Attempts to establish
+a school--Becomes connected with the press--Success of his Washington
+letters--Services on the "Courier and Inquirer"--Leaves that
+journal--Removes to Philadelphia--Establishes "The
+Pennsylvanian"--Ingratitude of his political associates--Returns to New
+York--Establishment of "The New York Herald"--Early difficulties of that
+paper, and how Bennett surmounted them--The first "Herald" office--A
+determined effort to succeed--First numbers of "The Herald"--How one man
+carried on a newspaper--A lucky hit--The first "money article"--The
+office burned down--The great fire--Bennett's reports of the
+disaster--Success of "The Herald"--His first advertising
+contract--Increasing prosperity--The journal of to-day--How it is
+conducted--The new "Herald" office--Bennett's pride in his
+paper--Personal characteristics--His independence.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+ROBERT BONNER.
+
+Birth and parentage--Emigration to America--Becomes a printer--A
+first-class compositor--Engaged upon the "Evening Mirror"--The
+"Merchant's Ledger"--Bonner purchases the paper, and changes its name to
+the "New York Ledger"--The new literary journal--Predictions of
+failure--Bonner confident of success--Engages Fanny Fern to write for
+him--A handsome price for a story--Wonderful success of the
+"Ledger"--Skillful advertising--Popularity of the paper--How Bonner
+silenced the critics--"Edward Everett writes for the 'Ledger'"--How
+Bonner treats his contributors--"Henry Ward Beecher writes for the
+'Ledger'"--Immense circulation of the paper--The new "Ledger"
+building--Private residence of Mr. Bonner--His stable--His love for
+horses.
+
+
+VI. LAWYERS.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+JOHN MARSHALL.
+
+The model American lawyer--Birth and early life of John Marshall--A
+devoted father--Early education--The young patriot--Troubles with
+England--Marshall becomes a soldier--The "Culpepper Minute
+Men"--Marshall's popularity in the army--Finishes his law studies--His
+journey from Williamsburg to Philadelphia--Commences the practice of the
+law--Elected to the Legislature--Establishes himself in Richmond--The
+power of a powdered wig and velvet coat--Marshall's services in the
+Virginia Convention of 1798--Becomes the champion of Washington's
+Administration--Refuses public honors--Is made Minister to France
+--Public reception in New York--Elected Member of Congress--His
+memorable speech--Enters the Cabinet of President Adams as Secretary of
+State--Is made Chief Justice of the United States--His record--His "Life
+of Washington"--Personal characteristics--His generosity--William
+Wirt's pen and ink sketch of him--His courtesy and kindness--Fondness
+for manly sports--The quoit club--How he carried a proud man's turkey
+home--The supper party--The Chief Justice loses the wager--Mode of
+traveling on his circuit--The scene at Maguire's Hotel in Winchester,
+Virginia--The unknown champion of Christianity--A brilliant
+defense--Last illness and death of Judge Marshall.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+JAMES T. BRADY.
+
+Birth and early life--His "big head"--His kindliness of
+disposition--Enters his father's office to study law--Merry nature--How
+he studied law--A model for ambitious youths--His father's opinion of
+him--Admitted to the bar--His first case--The newsboy case--sudden rise
+in popularity--Practices in the Supreme Court--The India-rubber suit--A
+compliment from Daniel Webster--Brady's integrity--Professional success
+and generosity--His readiness in managing his cases--Conduct toward
+witnesses--His fearlessness--A bold declaration in Tammany Hall--His
+profound knowledge of his profession--His industry--His disinterested
+kindness--His humor--Meets his match--Political life--Personal
+appearance--A genial old bachelor--Literary tastes and labors--His
+generosity to the poor--Devotion to his relatives--Last appearance in
+public--Forebodings--Death.
+
+
+VII. ARTISTS.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+BENJAMIN WEST.
+
+A native of Pennsylvania--Circumstances attending his birth--The child
+of promise--First indications of genius--The baby's portrait--Lessons
+from the Indians--The box of colors--The truant pupil--The mother's
+discovery---West's opinion of his first picture--The little portrait
+painter--The first attempt at historical painting--"The Death of
+Socrates"--Choosing a profession--Dedicated to his work--A fighting
+Quaker--Establishes himself in New York--Visits Europe--Arrival at Rome,
+and reception there--Visit to the Apollo Belvidere--West's
+criticism--Travels and labors on the continent--Visits England--His
+reception there--Urged to stay--Decides to make England his home--Sends
+for his bride--Marriage--"Agrippina Landing with the Ashes of
+Germanicus"--Success of the picture--The king becomes his friend--The
+most famous works of Benjamin West--"The Death of Wolfe"--Reception of
+the picture by the public--West triumphs over the critics, and
+inaugurates a new era of historical painting--Death of the king--West is
+elected President of the National Academy--His resignation and
+re-election--Closing years of a great career--Personal appearance--Leigh
+Hunt's description of him--Death--Burial in St. Paul's Cathedral.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+JOHN ROGERS.
+
+Birth--Early years--Begins life as a clerk in a dry goods
+store--Artistic talent--Opposition of his parents--A change in his
+plans--Becomes an engineer--Failure of his eyes--Voyage to Spain--Return
+home--Becomes a machinist--Promoted--Learns to model in clay--Commences
+his studies in art--A hard life, and a noble perseverance--A change for
+the better--A sudden reverse--Out of work--Visits Europe to study his
+art--Returns home in despair--Enters the service of the surveyor of the
+city of Chicago--His first statuettes--Their success--A new field opened
+to him--Visits New York, and learns the new method of casting
+figures--Establishes himself in New York--His first studio--Immediate
+popularity of his works--Description of them--Removes to a new
+studio--His later works--Process by which they are made-Originality of
+the artist rewarded by the public--Personal characteristics.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+HIRAM POWERS.
+
+Birth--Juvenile mechanical skill--The life of a Vermont boy--Hard
+times--Removal of the Powers family to the West--The new
+farm--Misfortunes never come singly--Breaking up of the
+household--Hiram's first employment--The reading-room scheme--Hiram
+becomes a collector of bad debts--Reminiscences of the young
+West--Powers becomes a mechanic--Story of the brass plates--Rapid
+promotion--The silver watch--How Hiram purchased it--The Cincinnati
+Museum--The artist's first lessons in modeling--His first sitter--The
+trial of skill--The king of the Cannibal Islands--The man-eater--Hiram
+becomes interested in the museum--How he played the devil in
+Cincinnati--A dishonest employer--Mr. Longworth's offer--Powers goes to
+Washington--His success there--Visit to "Old Hickory"--The first
+critic--Kindness of Senator Preston--Powers goes to Italy--Arrival in
+Florence--His first works in Italy--Visit to Thorwaldsen--Works of
+Powers--His rapid success--His life in Italy--Views of Mr. Powers
+respecting an artist life--Personal characteristics--Popularity with
+artists.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+EMMANUEL LEUTZE.
+
+An American by adoption--Early life and education--How he learned to
+draw--Becomes an artist--His first picture--The evils of too much
+haste--His first professional engagement--Despondency--A ramble through
+the Virginia woods, and what came of it--A friend in need--Greater
+success--Friendship of Mr. Carey--Leutze goes to Europe--Studies at
+Dusseldorf-His reception there--Becomes Lessing's pupil--His first
+picture finds a purchaser--Travels and studies in Europe--Returns to
+Dusseldorf, marries, and makes his home in that place--His
+paintings--Returns to New York--Success in America--The Government
+commission--Journey to the Rocky Mountains--The great fresco in the
+Capitol--"Westward the Star of Empire takes it Way"--Revisits
+Dusseldorf--Reception by the artists--Returns to the United
+States--Further commissions from the Government--His sudden death--His
+unfinished works--Mr. Tuckerman's remarks.
+
+
+VIII. DIVINES.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+HENRY WARD BEECHER.
+
+A Connecticut boy--The minister's family--A gloomy childhood--Ma'arm
+Kilbourn's school--The loss of his curls--The dull boy--A bad voice for
+an orator--His first religious impressions--Aunt Esther--The Sunday
+catechism--Sent to boarding school--Love of nature--Enters his sister's
+school--The hopeless case--An inveterate joker and an indifferent
+scholar--Removal to Boston--Gets through the Latin school--The sea-going
+project--Dr. Beecher's ruse--Life at Mount Pleasant--Conquers
+mathematics--Embraces religion at a revival--Resolves to become a
+minister--Removal to Cincinnati--Course at the Lane Seminary--How he
+learned to preach--Marries--His first charge--Life at
+Lawrenceburg--Removal to Indianapolis--Life in the West--His
+popularity--His theory of preaching and its success--Conversion of his
+brother--Mr. Beecher accepts a call to Plymouth Church in
+Brooklyn--Political record--Literary labors--Pastoral work--A large
+audience--Government of Plymouth Church--Description of the edifice--The
+congregation--The services--Mr. Beecher as a preacher--Sympathy between
+the pastor and his hearers--His ideas of religion--How he prepares his
+sermons--His prayers unstudied--The social receptions--The Friday
+evening meeting--A characteristic scene--Labors during the war--Visit to
+Europe--An unpopular sermon in a good cause--Personal characteristics.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+PETER CARTWRIGHT.
+
+Birth--Removal to Kentucky--"Rogue's harbor"--Condition of the country
+and the people--Frontier life--Early life of a preacher--Becomes a
+Christian--His account of his conversion--Is made an exhorter in the
+Methodist Church--Removal to Lewiston County--Begins
+preaching--Qualifications of a backwoods preacher--His energy--The
+jerks--How Peter frightened a bully--A brimstone angel--Enters the
+ministry--Appointed to the Marietta Circuit--A good school--Hard
+times--Marries--Quiet heroism--How the old-time people married--His
+devotion to the Methodist Church--Troubles with other denominations--How
+he argued with a Universalist--How he met a wrathful dame--Encounter
+with a Baptist preacher--Adventure with Father Teel--Taming a
+shrew--Removal to Illinois--His reasons for taking that step--Death of
+his daughter--Arrival at his new home--Life on the frontier--A large
+district--The Methodist circuit riders of sixty years ago--Perils of
+frontier traveling--Success of Cartwright's ministry--How he was
+superannuated--His courage--How he cleared a camp of rowdies--Encounter
+on a ferry-boat--Frightens a bully--Advocates temperance--A practical
+joke--Is elected to the Legislature--His opinion of politics--How he
+raised the devil--"Another sinner down"--Missionaries from the
+East--Indignation of the backwoods preacher--The proposed mission to New
+England--Cartwright declines it--He visits Boston--His reception--How he
+preached for Father Taylor--Summing up--Sixty-seven years of a
+preacher's life.
+
+
+IX. AUTHORS.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.
+
+Birth and early life--The old house by the sea--College life--Early
+literary productions--Becomes a professor in Bowdoin College--Travels in
+Europe--Marriage--Literary labors--"Outre Mer"--Is made a professor in
+Harvard College--His second visit to Europe--Death of his wife--Goes to
+live in the Craigie House--Historical associations--Washington's
+headquarters--A congenial home--Literary labors--"Hyperion"--Great
+popularity of the book--"Voices of the Night"--"The Spanish
+Student"--Mr. Longfellow buys the Craigie House--Summary of his
+works--The "Song of Hiawatha"--Death of Mrs. Longfellow--Mr. Longfellow
+again visits Europe--His popularity with the English-speaking
+race--Cause of his popularity--"Resignation"--Scene from "The Golden
+Legend"--The poet's home.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.
+
+The Hawthornes of Salem--A sea-going race--Birth of Nathaniel
+Hawthorne--A sad home--Early life--His college days--Longfellow's
+recollection of him--Returns home--The young recluse--Literary
+efforts--"Twice-Told Tales"--"The most unknown author in
+America"--Enters the Boston Custom House--His duties--Popularity with
+the sailors--Loses his office--Becomes a member of the Brook Farm
+Community--Marries and goes to live at Concord--"The Old Manse"--Life at
+Concord--Curiosity of the village people--"Mosses from an Old
+Manse"--Hawthorne's visitors--Hawthorne and his friends--George William
+Curtis' recollections--Removes to Salem--Is made surveyor of that
+port--"The Scarlet Letter"--Removal to the Berkshire Hills--"The House
+of the Seven Gables"--Returns to Concord--"Life of Franklin Pierce"--Is
+made Consul to Liverpool---Life abroad--Depressed by the war--Moncure D.
+Conway's recollections--Juvenile works--Death of Mr. Ticknor--Effect
+upon Hawthorne--Goes traveling with Ex-President Pierce--Sudden death of
+Hawthorne--Burial at Concord.
+
+
+X. ACTORS.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+EDWIN BOOTH.
+
+The elder Booth--His success as an actor--His sons--Birth of Edwin
+Booth--Early life--Brought up on the stage--Admiration for his
+father--Travels with him--First appearance--Appears frequently with his
+father--Plays Richard III. in New York--A bold venture--Learns the
+details of his profession--Visits Australia and the Sandwich
+Islands--Re-appearance in New York in 1857--Recollections of him at that
+time--His labors in his profession--Successful tours throughout the
+country--Visits England--Appears at the Haymarket Theater in
+London--Studies on the continent--Appearance at the Winter Garden--The
+Shakespearian revivals--Destruction of the Winter Garden by fire--Loss
+of Mr. Booth's theatrical wardrobe--Popular sympathy--The new
+theater--Opening of the building--Description of Booth's Theater--A
+magnificent establishment--A splendid stage--Novel mode of setting the
+scenes--Magnificent mounting of the plays produced there--Mr. Booth's
+performances--Personal--Genius as an actor--Beneficial influence upon
+the drama.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+JOSEPH JEFFERSON.
+
+The Jefferson family--A race of actors--Jefferson the first--"Old
+Jefferson"--Jefferson the third--Birth of Joseph
+Jefferson--Childhood--Brought up on the stage--Olive Logan's
+reminiscence--First appearance in public--Early training--Career as a
+stock actor--Becomes a "star"--His success--Visits Australia, the
+player's El Dorado--Pecuniary success of Jefferson in Australia--His
+merits as an actor--Visits England--First appearance at the Adelphi
+Theater--"Our American Cousin"--Production of Rip Van Winkle--Makes the
+part his specialty--Description of his performance of Rip Van
+Winkle--Personal characteristics--Devotion to his profession--Love of
+art--A capital sportsman--Buys a panorama--A visit to John Sefton--"The
+Golden Farmer"--Private life.
+
+
+XI. PHYSICIANS.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII.
+
+BENJAMIN RUSH.
+
+Birth and early life--Adopts medicine as a profession--Studies in
+Europe--Returns home, and is made a professor in the Philadelphia
+Medical College--Political career--Elected to the Provincial Conference
+of Pennsylvania--Action with respect to the independence of the
+colonies--Elected to the Continental Congress--Signs the Declaration of
+Independence--Marriage--Is made Surgeon-General of the army--Becomes
+Physician-General--Troubles--Resigns his commission--Letters to the
+people of Pennsylvania--Services in the State conventions--Resumes his
+practice in Philadelphia--Plans the Philadelphia Dispensary--Resumes his
+professor's chair--The yellow fever in Philadelphia--A scene of
+terror--"The Hundred Days"--Dr. Rush's treatment of the
+disease--Opposition of the Faculty--Success of Rush's
+treatment--Testimony of Dr. Ramsay--Suit for damages--Dr. Rush's
+services during the fever--Reminiscences--Honors from European
+sovereigns--Is made Treasurer of the United States Mint--Literary
+labors--Zeal in behalf of Christianity--His connection with the Bible
+Society--Death.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+
+VALENTINE MOTT.
+
+Birth--Early life--Enters Columbia College--His medical
+studies--Continues his studies in Europe--Great surgical genius--His
+early success as an operator--Returns home--Is made Professor of Surgery
+in Columbia College--His career and success as a teacher--Introduces the
+system of clinical instruction--Difficulty of procuring "subjects" for
+dissection--Desperate expedients--midnight adventure--A ready
+rebuke--Success and skill as a surgeon--Tribute from Sir Astley
+Cooper--A wonderful operation--Sketch of his original operations--His
+mode of operating--Careful preparation--Success as a physician--A
+progressive mind--Professional honors--Visits Europe--Reception
+abroad--Operates upon the Sultan of Turkey--A cool
+proposition--Personal--His last illness and death--"President Lincoln
+murdered."
+
+[Illustration: GIRARD COLLEGE]
+
+
+I.
+
+MERCHANTS.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+STEPHEN GIRARD.
+
+
+One May morning, in the year 1776, the mouth of the Delaware Bay was
+shrouded in a dense fog, which cleared away toward noon, and revealed
+several vessels just off the capes. From one of these, a sloop, floated
+the flag of France and a signal of distress. An American ship ran
+alongside the stranger, in answer to her signal, and found that the
+French captain had lost his reckoning in a fog, and was in total
+ignorance of his whereabouts. His vessel, he said, was bound from New
+Orleans to a Canadian port, and he was anxious to proceed on his voyage.
+The American skipper informed him of his locality, and also apprised him
+of the fact that war had broken out between the colonies and Great
+Britain, and that the American coast was so well lined with British
+cruisers that he would never reach port but as a prize. "What shall I
+do?" cried the Frenchman, in great alarm. "Enter the bay, and make a
+push for Philadelphia," was the reply. "It is your only chance."
+
+The Frenchman protested that he did not know the way, and had no pilot.
+The American captain, pitying his distress, found him a pilot, and even
+loaned him five dollars, which the pilot demanded in advance. The sloop
+got under weigh again, and passed into the Delaware, beyond the defenses
+which had been erected for its protection, just in time to avoid capture
+by a British war vessel which now made its appearance at the mouth of
+the bay. Philadelphia was reached in due time, and, as the war bade fair
+to put an end to his voyages, the captain sold the sloop and her cargo,
+of which he was part owner, and, entering a small store in Water Street,
+began the business of a grocer and wine-bottler. His capital was small,
+his business trifling in extent, and he himself labored under the
+disadvantage of being almost unable to speak the English language. In
+person he was short and stout, with a dull, repulsive countenance, which
+his bushy eyebrows and solitary eye (being blind in the other) made
+almost hideous. He was cold and reserved in manner, and was disliked by
+his neighbors, the most of whom were afraid of him.
+
+This man was Stephen Girard, who was afterward destined to play so
+important a part in the history of the city to which the mere chances of
+war sent him a stranger.
+
+He was born at Bordeaux, in France, on the 21st of May, 1750, and was
+the eldest of the five children of Captain Pierre Girard, a mariner of
+that city. His life at home was a hard one. At the age of eight years,
+he discovered that he was blind in one eye, and the mortification and
+grief which this discovery caused him appear to have soured his entire
+life. He afterward declared that his father treated him with
+considerable neglect, and that, while his younger brothers were sent to
+college, he was made to content himself with the barest rudiments of an
+education, with merely a knowledge of reading and writing. When he was
+quite young, his mother died, and, as his father soon married again,
+the severity of a step-mother was added to his other troubles. When
+about thirteen years of age, he left home, with his father's consent,
+and began, as a cabin-boy, the life of a mariner. For nine years he
+sailed between Bordeaux and the French West Indies, rising steadily from
+his position of cabin-boy to that of mate. He improved his leisure time
+at sea, until he was not only master of the art of navigation, but
+generally well informed for a man in his station. His father possessed
+sufficient influence to procure him the command of a vessel, in spite of
+the law of France which required that no man should be made master of a
+ship unless he had sailed two cruises in the royal navy and was
+twenty-five years old. Gradually Girard was enabled to amass a small sum
+of money, which he invested in cargoes easily disposed of in the ports
+to which he sailed. Three years after he was licensed to command, he
+made his first appearance in the port of Philadelphia. He was then
+twenty-six years old.
+
+From the time of his arrival in Philadelphia he devoted himself to
+business with an energy and industry which never failed. He despised no
+labor, and was willing to undertake any honest means of increasing his
+subsistence. He bought and sold any thing, from groceries to old "junk."
+His chief profit, however, was in his wine and cider, which he bottled
+and sold readily. His business prospered, and he was regarded as a
+thriving man from the start.
+
+In July, 1777, he married Mary Lum, a servant girl of great beauty, and
+something of a virago as well. The union was an unhappy one, as the
+husband and wife were utterly unsuited to each other. Seven years after
+her marriage, Mrs. Girard showed symptoms of insanity, which became so
+decided that her husband was compelled to place her in the State Asylum
+for the Insane. He appears to have done every thing in his power to
+restore her to reason. Being pronounced cured, she returned to her
+home, but in 1790 He was compelled to place her permanently in the
+Pennsylvania Hospital, where, nine months after, she gave birth to a
+female child, which happily died. Mrs. Girard never recovered her
+reason, but died in 1815, and was buried in the hospital grounds.
+
+Girard fled from Philadelphia, with his wife, in September, 1777, at the
+approach of the British, and purchased a house at Mount Holly, near
+Burlington, New Jersey, where he carried on his bottling business. His
+claret commanded a ready sale among the British in Philadelphia, and his
+profits were large. In June, 1778, the city was evacuated by Lord Howe,
+and he was allowed to return to his former home.
+
+Though he traded with the British, Girard considered himself a true
+patriot, as indeed he was. On the 27th of October, 1778, he took the
+oath of allegiance required by the State of Pennsylvania, and renewed it
+the year following. The war almost annihilated the commerce of the
+country, which was slow in recovering its former prosperity; but, in
+spite of this discouraging circumstance, Girard worked on steadily,
+scorning no employment, however humble, that would yield a profit.
+Already he had formed the plans which led to his immense wealth, and he
+was now patiently carrying out the most trying and disheartening
+preliminaries. Whatever he undertook prospered, and though his gains
+were small, they were carefully husbanded, and at the proper time
+invested in such a manner as to produce a still greater yield. Stephen
+Girard knew the value of little things, and he knew how to take
+advantage of the most trifling circumstance. His career teaches what may
+be done with these little things, and shows how even a few dollars,
+properly managed, may be made to produce as many thousands.
+
+In 1780, Mr. Girard again entered upon the New Orleans and St. Domingo
+trade, in which he was engaged at the breaking out of the Revolution. He
+was very successful in his ventures, and was enabled in a year or two to
+greatly enlarge his operations. In 1782, he took a lease of ten years on
+a range of frame buildings in Water Street, one of which he occupied
+himself, with the privilege of a renewal for a similar period. Rents
+were very low at that time, as business was prostrated and people were
+despondent; but Girard, looking far beyond the present, saw a prosperous
+future. He was satisfied that it would require but a short time to
+restore to Philadelphia its old commercial importance, and he was
+satisfied that his leases would be the best investment he had ever made.
+The result proved the correctness of his views. His profits on these
+leases were enormous.
+
+About this time he entered into partnership with his brother, Captain
+John Girard, in the West India trade. But the brothers could not conduct
+their affairs harmoniously, and in 1790 the firm was dissolved by mutual
+consent. Stephen Girard's share of the profits at the dissolution
+amounted to thirty thousand dollars. His wealth was greatly increased by
+a terrible tragedy which happened soon afterward.
+
+At the outbreak of the great insurrection in St. Domingo, Girard had two
+vessels lying in one of the ports of that island. At the first signal of
+danger, a number of planters sent their valuables on board of these
+ships for safe-keeping, and went back to their estates for the purpose
+of securing more. They never returned, doubtless falling victims to the
+fury of the brutal negroes, and when the vessels were ready to sail
+there was no one to claim the property they contained. It was taken to
+Philadelphia, and was most liberally advertised by Mr. Girard, but as no
+owner ever appeared to demand it, it was sold, and the proceeds--about
+fifty thousand dollars--turned into the merchant's own coffers. This was
+a great assistance to him, and the next year he began the building of
+those splendid ships which enabled him to engage so actively in the
+Chinese and East India trades.
+
+His course was now onward and upward to wealth. At first his ships
+merely sailed between Philadelphia and the port to which they were
+originally destined; but at length he was enabled to do more than this.
+Loading one of his ships with grain, he would send it to Bordeaux, where
+the proceeds of her cargo would be invested in wine and fruit. These she
+would take to St. Petersburg and exchange for hemp and iron, which were
+sold at Amsterdam for coin. From Amsterdam she would proceed to China
+and India, and, purchasing a cargo of silks and teas, sail for
+Philadelphia, where the final purchase was sold by the owner for cash or
+negotiable paper. His success was uniform, and was attributed by his
+brother merchants to _luck_.
+
+Stephen Girard had no faith in luck. He never trusted any thing to
+chance. He was a thorough navigator, and was perfect master of the
+knowledge required in directing long voyages. He understood every
+department of his business so well that he was always prepared to survey
+the field of commerce from a high stand-point. He was familiar with the
+ports with which he dealt, and was always able to obtain such
+information concerning them as he desired, in advance of his
+competitors. He trusted nothing of importance to others. His
+instructions to the commanders of his ships were always full and
+precise. These documents afford the best evidence of the statements I
+have made concerning his system, as the following will show:
+
+
+     _Copy of Stephen Girard's Letter to Mr. ----, Commander and
+     Supercargo of the ship ----, bound to Batavia._
+
+     PHILADELPHIA, ----.
+
+     SIR--I confirm my letters to you of the ---- ult., and the ----
+     inst. Having recently heard of the decease of Mr. ----, merchant at
+     Batavia, also of the probable dissolution of his house, under the
+     firm of Messrs. ----, I have judged it prudent to request my
+     Liverpool correspondents to consign the ship ----, cargo, and
+     specie on board, to Mr. ----, merchant at Batavia, subject to your
+     control, and have requested said Liverpool friends to make a
+     separate invoice and bill of lading for the specie, which they will
+     ship on my account, on board of the ship ----, and similar
+     documents for the merchandise, which they will ship in the same
+     manner; therefore, I request that you will sign in conformity.
+
+     I am personally acquainted with Mr. ----, but not with Mr. ----,
+     but I am on very friendly terms with some particular friends of the
+     latter gentleman, and consequently I give him the preference. I am
+     sorry to observe, however, that he is alone in a country where a
+     partner appears to me indispensable to a commercial house, as well
+     for the safety of his own capital as for the security of the
+     interests of those who may confide to them property, and reside in
+     distant parts of the globe.
+
+     The foregoing reflections, together with the detention of my ship
+     V----, at Batavia, from June last, epoch of her arrival at that
+     port, until the 15th of September, ----, when she had on board only
+     nineteen hundred peculs of coffee, are the motives which have
+     compelled me to request of my Liverpool friends to consign the
+     specie and goods, which they will ship on my account, on board of
+     the ship ----, under your command, to said Mr. ----, subject to
+     your control.
+
+     Therefore, relying upon your activity, perseverance, correctness,
+     zeal, and attention for my interest, I proceed in pointing out to
+     you the plan of conduct which I wish you to pursue on your arrival
+     at Batavia, and during your stay at that or any port of that
+     island, until your departure for Cowes, on the Isle of Wight, to
+     await my subsequent orders.
+
+     First. On your arrival at Batavia, you are to go on shore and
+     ascertain Mr. ----'s residence, and, if you have reason to believe
+     that he is still considered at that place as a man of good credit,
+     and merits full confidence, you are to deliver to him my Liverpool
+     consignees' letters to his address, and also the goods which you
+     have on board, in such proportion as he may request, except the
+     specie, which is to continue on board, as mentioned in the next
+     article.
+
+     Second. The specie funds of the ship ----, which will consist of
+     old Carolus dollars, you are to retain on board untouched, and in
+     the said boxes or packages as they were in when shipped from
+     Liverpool, well secured, and locked up in your powder magazine, in
+     the after run of the said ship under the cabin floor.
+
+     The bulkhead and floor of said magazine, scuttle, iron bar,
+     staples, etc., must be made sufficiently strong, if not already so,
+     while you are at Liverpool, where you are to procure a strong
+     padlock and key, for the purpose of securing said specie in the
+     most complete and safest manner; and when you have the certainty
+     that it is wanted to pay for the coffee purchased on account of the
+     ship ----, then you are to receive the said coffee, and pay or
+     deliver to your consignee Spanish dollars to the amount of said
+     purchase, and no more, having due regard to the premium or advance
+     allowed at Batavia on old Spanish dollars; and in that way you are
+     to continue paying or delivering dollars as fast as you receive
+     coffee, which is not to exceed the quantity which can be
+     conveniently stowed on board said ship ----, observing to take a
+     receipt for each payment, and to see that the net proceeds of the
+     goods, which will have been shipped at Liverpool, must be invested
+     in coffee, as far as the sales will permit, and shipped on board of
+     said ship.
+
+     Should it happen that on your arrival at Batavia you should find
+     that death, absence, etc., should deprive you of the services of
+     Mr. ----, or that, owing to some causes before mentioned, it would
+     be prudent to confide my interests elsewhere, in either case you
+     are to apply to Messrs. ----, merchants of that place, to
+     communicate your instructions relative to the disposal of the
+     Liverpool cargo, on board of the ship ----, the loading of that
+     ship with good merchantable coffee, giving the preference to the
+     first quality whenever it can be purchased on reasonable terms for
+     cash, or received in payment for the sales of the said Liverpool
+     cargo, or for a part thereof, observing that I wished said coffee
+     to be purchased at Samarang, or any other out-port, if practicable;
+     and in all cases it must be attentively examined when delivered,
+     and put up in double gunny bags.
+
+     If the purchase of said cargo is made at an out-port, the ship
+     ----must proceed there to take it in.
+
+     On the subject of purchasing coffee at government sales, I have no
+     doubt that it is an easy way to obtain a cargo, but I am of opinion
+     that it is a very dear one, particularly as the fair purchaser, who
+     has no other object in view but to invest his money, does not stay
+     on the footing of competitors, who make their payments with
+     Netherland bills of exchange, or wish to raise the prices of their
+     coffee which they may have on hand for sale.
+
+     Under these impressions, I desire that all the purchases of coffee
+     on my account be made from individuals, as far as practicable, and
+     if the whole quantity necessary to load the ship can not be
+     obtained at private sale, recourse must then be had to government
+     sales.
+
+     In many instances I have experienced that whenever I had a vessel
+     at Batavia, the prices of coffee at the government sales have risen
+     from five to ten per cent., and sometimes higher.
+
+     On the subject of coffee I would remark that, owing to the increase
+     of the culture of that bean, together with the immense imports of
+     tea into the several ports of Europe, the price of that leaf has
+     been lowered to such a degree as to induce the people of those
+     countries, principally of the north, to use the latter article in
+     preference to the first.
+
+     That circumstance has, for these past three years, created a
+     gradual deduction from the consumption of coffee, which has
+     augmented the stock on hand throughout every commercial city of the
+     northern part of the globe, so as to present a future unfavorable
+     prospect to the importers of that article. Indeed, I am convinced
+     that, within a few months from this date, coffee will be ten per
+     cent. cheaper in the United States than what it has been at Batavia
+     for these two years past; nevertheless, being desirous to employ my
+     ships as advantageously as circumstances will permit, and
+     calculating also that the price at Java and other places of its
+     growth will fall considerably, I have no objection to adventure.
+
+     Therefore, you must use every means in your power to facilitate
+     the success of the voyage.
+
+     Should the invoice-cost of the entire cargo of coffee shipped at
+     Java, on board of the ship ----, together with the disbursements of
+     that ship (which must be conducted with the greatest economy), not
+     amount to the specie funds and net proceeds of her Liverpool cargo,
+     in that event you are to deliver the surplus to your consignee, who
+     will give you a receipt for the same, with a duplicate, expressing
+     that it is on my account, for the purpose of being invested on the
+     most advantageous terms, in good dry coffee, to be kept at my order
+     and disposal.
+
+     Then you will retain the original in your possession, and forward
+     to me the duplicate by first good vessel to the United States, or
+     via Europe, to care of my correspondents at Liverpool, London,
+     Antwerp, or Amsterdam, the names of whom you are familiar with.
+
+     If you should judge it imprudent, however, to leave that money at
+     Batavia, you are to bring it back in Spanish dollars, which you
+     will retain on board for that purpose.
+
+     Although I wish you to make a short voyage, and with as quick
+     dispatch at Java as practicable, yet I desire you not to leave that
+     island unless your consignee has finally closed the sales of the
+     Liverpool cargo, so that you may be the bearer of all the
+     documents, and account-current, relative to the final transactions
+     of the consignment of the ship ---- and cargo. Duplicate and
+     triplicate of said documents to be forwarded to me by your
+     consignees, by the two first safe conveyances for the ports of the
+     United States.
+
+     Being in the habit of dispatching my ships for Batavia from this
+     port, Liverpool, or Amsterdam, as circumstances render it
+     convenient, it is interesting to me to be from time to time
+     informed of the several articles of produce and manufactures from
+     each of those places which are the most in demand and quickest of
+     sale at Java. Also of the quantity of each, size of package, and
+     the probable price which they may sell for, cash, adding the
+     Batavia duty, charges for selling, etc. Please to communicate this
+     to your Batavia consignee.
+
+     The rates of commission I will allow for transacting the business
+     relative to the ship and cargo at Java are two and a half per cent,
+     for selling, and two and a half per cent, for purchasing and
+     shipping coffee and other articles.
+
+     The consignees engaging to place on board of each prow one or two
+     men of confidence, to see that the goods are safely delivered on
+     board of the ship, to prevent pilfering, which is often practiced
+     by those who conduct the lighter.
+
+     I am informed that the expenses for two men are trifling,
+     comparatively, to the plunder which has been committed on board of
+     the prows which deliver coffee on board of the ships.
+
+     No commissions whatever are to be allowed in the disbursements of
+     my ships, whenever ship and cargo belong to me, and are consigned
+     to some house.
+
+     While you remain at Batavia, I recommend you to stay on board of
+     your ship, and not to go on shore except when the business of your
+     ship and cargo may render it necessary.
+
+     Inclosed is an introductory letter to ----, which I request you to
+     deliver, after you have made the necessary arrangements with Mr.
+     ----for the consignment of the ship and cargo, or after the
+     circumstance aforementioned has compelled you to look elsewhere for
+     a consignee. Then you are to call upon said Messrs. ----, deliver
+     them the aforesaid letter and the consignment of the ship ---- and
+     cargo, after having agreed with them in writing, which they will
+     sign and deliver to you, that they engage to transact the business
+     of the ship and cargo on the terms and conditions herein stated;
+     and when that business is well understood and finally closed, you
+     are to press them in a polite manner, so that they many give you a
+     quick dispatch, without giving too great a price for the coffee,
+     particularly at this present moment, when its price is declining
+     throughout those countries where it is consumed.
+
+     Indeed, on the subject of purchasing coffee for the ship ----, the
+     greatest caution and prudence should be exercised. Therefore, I
+     request that you will follow the plan of conduct laid down for you
+     throughout. Also, to keep to yourself the intention of the voyage,
+     and the amount of specie you have on board; and in view to satisfy
+     the curious, tell them that it is probable that the ship will take
+     in molasses, rice, and sugar, if the price of that produce is very
+     low, adding that the whole will depend on the success in selling
+     the small Liverpool cargo. The consignees of said cargo should
+     follow the same line of conduct, and if properly attended to by
+     yourself and them, I am convinced that the cargo of coffee can be
+     purchased ten per cent. cheaper than it would be if it is publicly
+     known there is a quantity of Spanish dollars on board, besides a
+     valuable cargo of British goods intended to be invested in coffee
+     for Stephen Girard, of Philadelphia.
+
+     During my long commercial experience, I have noticed that no
+     advantage results from telling one's business to others, except to
+     create jealousy or competitors when we are fortunate, and to
+     gratify our enemies when otherwise.
+
+     If my remarks are correct, I have no doubt they will show you the
+     necessity of being silent, and to attend with activity,
+     perseverance, and modesty, to the interests of your employer.
+
+     As my letters of instruction embrace several interesting objects, I
+     request you to peruse them in rotation, when at sea in fine
+     climates, during your voyage to Batavia, and to take correct
+     extracts, so as to render yourself master of the most essential
+     parts. I conclude by directing your attention to your health and
+     that of your crew.
+
+     I am yours, respectfully,
+
+     STEPHEN GIRARD.
+
+
+Mr. Girard was not only rigidly precise in his instructions, but he
+permitted no departure from them. He regarded it as dangerous to allow
+discretion to any one in the execution of _his_ plans. Where a deviation
+from his instructions might cause success in one case, it would cause
+loss in ninety-nine others. It was understood among all his employés
+that a rigid obedience to orders, in even the most trifling particulars,
+was expected, and would be exacted. If loss came under such
+circumstances, the merchant assumed the entire responsibility for it.
+
+Upon one occasion one of his best captains was instructed to purchase
+his cargo of teas at a certain port. Upon reaching home he was summoned
+by the merchant to his presence.
+
+"Captain ----," said Mr. Girard, sternly, "your instructions required
+you to purchase your cargo at ----."
+
+"That is true, Mr. Girard," replied the Captain, "but upon reaching that
+port I found I could do so much better at ----, that I felt justified in
+proceeding to the latter place."
+
+"You should have obeyed your orders, sir," was the stern retort.
+
+"I was influenced by a desire to serve your interests, sir. The result
+ought to justify me in my act, since it puts many thousands more into
+your pocket than if I had bought where I was instructed."
+
+"Captain ----," said Girard, "I take care of my own interests. You
+should have obeyed your orders if you had broken me. Nothing can excuse
+your disobedience. You will hand in your accounts, sir, and consider
+yourself discharged from my service."
+
+He was as good as his word, and, though the captain's disobedience had
+vastly increased the profit of the voyage, he dismissed him, nor would
+he ever receive him into his service again.
+
+To his knowledge of his business Mr. Girard joined an unusual capacity
+for such ventures. He was, it must be said, hard and illiberal in his
+bargains, and remorseless in exacting the last cent due him. He was
+prompt and faithful in the execution of every contract, never departed
+in the slightest from his plighted word, and never engaged in any
+venture which he was not perfectly able to undertake. He was prudent and
+cautious in the fullest sense of those terms, but his ventures were
+always made with a boldness which was the sure forerunner of success.
+
+His fidelity to his word is well shown by a circumstance which had
+occurred long after he was one of the "money kings" of the land. He was
+once engaged with his cashier in a discussion as to the length of time a
+man would consume in counting a million of dollars, telling out each
+dollar separately. The dispute became animated, and the cashier declared
+that he could make a million of dots with ink in a few hours.
+
+"I'll tell you what I'll do," said Girard, who was thoroughly vexed by
+the opposition of the other, "I'll wager five hundred dollars that I can
+ride in my gig from here to my farm, spend two hours there, and return
+before you can make your million of dots with ink."
+
+The cashier, after a moment's reflection, accepted the wager, and Mr.
+Girard departed to his farm. He returned in a few hours, confident that
+he had won. The cashier met him with a smile.
+
+"Where is my money?" asked Girard, triumphantly.
+
+"The money is mine," replied the cashier. "Come and see."
+
+He led the merchant to an unused room of the bank, and there, to his
+dismay, Girard saw the walls and ceiling covered with spots of ink,
+which the cashier had dashed on them with a brush.
+
+"Do you mean to say there are a million of dots here?" he cried,
+angrily.
+
+"Count them, and see," replied his subordinate, laughing. "You know the
+wager was a million of dots with ink."
+
+"But I expected you would make them with the pen."
+
+"I did not undertake any thing of the kind."
+
+The joke was too good, and the merchant not only paid the amount of the
+wager, but the cost of cleaning the walls.
+
+In 1810 the question of renewing the charter of the old Bank of the
+United States was actively discussed. Girard was a warm friend of that
+institution, which he believed had been the cause of a very great part
+of the prosperity of the country, and was firmly convinced that Congress
+would renew the charter. In this belief he ordered the Barings, of
+London, to invest all his funds in their hands in shares of the Bank of
+the United States, which was done, during the following year, to the
+amount of half a million of dollars. When the charter expired, he was
+the principal creditor of that institution, which Congress refused to
+renew. Discovering that he could purchase the old Bank and the cashier's
+house for one hundred and twenty thousand dollars, he at once secured
+them, and on the 12th of May, 1812, opened the Girard Bank, with a
+capital of one million two hundred thousand dollars, which he increased
+the next year by one hundred thousand dollars more. He retained all the
+old officers of the Bank of the United States, especially the cashier,
+Mr. Simpson, to whose skill and experience he was greatly indebted for
+his subsequent success.
+
+Finding that the salaries which had been paid by the Government were
+higher than those paid elsewhere, he cut them down to the rate given by
+the other banks. The watchman had always received from the old Bank the
+gift of an overcoat at Christmas, but Girard put a stop to this. He gave
+no gratuities to any of his employés, but confined them to the
+compensation for which they had bargained; yet he contrived to get out
+of them service more devoted than was received by other men who paid
+higher wages and made presents. Appeals to him for aid were unanswered.
+No poor man ever came full-handed from his presence. He turned a deaf
+ear to the entreaties of failing merchants to help them on their feet
+again. He was neither generous nor charitable. When his faithful cashier
+died, after long years spent in his service, he manifested the most
+hardened indifference to the bereavement of the family of that
+gentleman, and left them to struggle along as best they could.
+
+Yet from the first he was liberal and sometimes magnificent in the
+management of his bank. He would discount none but good paper, but it
+was his policy to grant accommodations to small traders, and thus
+encourage beginners, usually giving the preference to small notes, by
+this system doing very much to avert the evils that would of necessity
+have sprung from the suspension of the old Bank of the United States.
+The Government credit was almost destroyed, and money was needed to
+carry on the war. He made repeated advances to the treasury, unsolicited
+by the authorities, and on more than one occasion kept the Government
+supplied with the sinews of war. In 1814, when our prospects, both
+military and financial, were at their lowest ebb, when the British
+forces had burned Washington and the New England States were threatening
+to withdraw from the Union, the Government asked for a loan of five
+millions of dollars, with the most liberal inducements to subscribers.
+Only twenty thousand dollars could be obtained, and the project seemed
+doomed to failure, when it was announced that Stephen Girard had
+subscribed for the whole amount. This announcement at once restored the
+public confidence, and Mr. Girard was beset with requests from persons
+anxious to take a part of the loan, even at an advanced rate. They were
+allowed to do so upon the original terms. When the Government could not,
+for want of funds, pay the interest on its debt to him, he wrote to the
+Secretary of the Treasury:
+
+"I am of opinion that those who have any claim for interest on public
+stock, etc., should patiently wait for a more favorable moment, or at
+least receive in payment treasury notes. Should you be under the
+necessity of resorting to either of these plans, as one of the public
+creditors, I shall not murmur."
+
+"A circumstance soon occurred, however, which was a source of no little
+discomfiture to the financial arrangements of his individual
+institution. This fact was the suspension of specie payments by the
+State banks, resulting from the non-intercourse act, the suspension of
+the old bank, and the combined causes tending to produce a derangement
+of the currency of the country. It was then a matter of great doubt with
+him how he should preserve the integrity of his own institution, while
+the other banks were suspending their payments; but the credit of his
+own bank was effectually secured by the suggestion of his cashier, Mr.
+Simpson, who advised the recalling of his own notes by redeeming them
+with specie, and by paying out the notes of the State banks. In this
+mode not a single note of his own was suffered to be depreciated, and he
+was thus enabled, in 1817, to contribute effectually to the restoration
+of specie payments."
+
+He was instrumental in securing the establishment of the new Bank of the
+United States, and was its largest stockholder and one of its directors.
+He even offered to unite his own institution with it upon certain
+liberal conditions, which were refused. Yet he was always a firm friend
+to it.
+
+"One of the characteristics of Mr. Girard was his public spirit. At one
+time he freely subscribed one hundred and ten thousand dollars for the
+navigation of the Schuylkill; at another time he loaned the company two
+hundred and sixty-five thousand eight hundred and fifty dollars. When
+the credit of the State of Pennsylvania was prostrated by what was
+believed to have been an injudicious system of internal improvement, and
+it was found expedient for the Governor to resort to its metropolis in
+order to replenish its coffers, he made a voluntary loan to Governor
+Shultz of one hundred thousand dollars. So far was his disposition to
+promote the fiscal prosperity of the country manifested, that, as late
+as 1831, when the country was placed in extreme embarrassment from the
+scarcity of money, he perceived the cause in the fact that the balance
+of trade was against us to a considerable extent, and he accordingly
+drew upon the house of Baring Brothers & Co. for bills of exchange to
+the amount of twelve thousand pounds sterling, which he disposed of to
+the Bank of the United States at an advance of ten per cent., which
+draft was followed up by another for ten thousand, which was disposed of
+in like manner to other institutions. This act tended to reduce the
+value of bills, and the rate of exchange suddenly fell. The same spirit
+which he manifested toward the national currency he exhibited to the
+corporation of Philadelphia, by erecting new blocks of buildings, and
+beautifying and adorning its streets; less, apparently, from a desire of
+profit than from a wish to improve the place which was his adopted home,
+and where he had reaped his fortunes. His subscription of two hundred
+thousand dollars to the Danville and Pottsville Railroad, in 1831, was
+an action in keeping with the whole tenor of his life; and his
+subscription of ten thousand dollars toward the erection of an exchange
+looked to the same result."
+
+The war of 1812, which brought financial ruin to so many others, simply
+increased Girard's wealth. He never lost a ship, and as war prices
+prevailed, his profits were in accordance with them. One of his ships
+was taken by a British cruiser at the mouth of the Delaware, in the
+spring of 1813. Fearing that his prize would be recaptured by an
+American ship of war if he attempted to send her into port, the English
+admiral dispatched a flag of truce to Mr. Girard, and proposed to him to
+ransom the vessel for one hundred and eighty thousand dollars in coin.
+Girard consented, paid the money, and the ship was allowed to come up to
+the city. Her cargo consisted of silks, nankeens, and teas, and afforded
+her owner a profit of half a million of dollars.
+
+Yet in the midst of all his wealth, which in 1828 was estimated at ten
+millions of dollars, he was a solitary old man.
+
+He lived in a dingy little house in Water Street. His wife had died in
+an insane asylum, and he was childless. He was repulsive in person. He
+was feared by his subordinates--by all who had dealings with him--and
+liked by none. He was mean and close in his personal habits, living on
+less, perhaps, than any of his clerks, and deriving little or no benefit
+from his vast wealth, so far as his individual comfort was concerned. He
+gave nothing in charity. Lazarus would have lain at his doors a
+life-time without being noticed by him. He was solitary, soured, cold,
+with a heart of stone, and fully conscious of his personal unpopularity.
+Yet he valued wealth--valued it for the power it gave him over men.
+Under that cold, hardened exterior reigned an ambition as profound as
+that which moved Napoleon. He was ambitious of regulating the financial
+operations of the land, and proud of his power in this respect, and it
+should be remembered in his favor that he did not abuse that power after
+it had passed into his hands.
+
+He had no vices, no dissipations; his whole soul was in his business. He
+was conscious that his only hope of distinction above his fellow-men was
+in his wealth, and he was resolved that nothing should make him swerve
+from his endeavor to accumulate a fortune which should make him all
+powerful in life and remembered in death. He sought no friends, and was
+reticent as to his career, saying to those who questioned him about it,
+"Wait till I am dead; my deeds will show what I was."
+
+Religion had no place in his heart. He was an avowed unbeliever, making
+a boast of his disbelief. He always worked on Sunday, in order that he
+might show his disapproval of the observance of it as a day of rest.
+Rest, he said, made a man rusty, and attendance upon the worship of God
+he denounced as worse than folly. His favorite books were the works of
+Voltaire, and he named his best ships after the most celebrated French
+infidels.
+
+Yet this man, so unloved, so undeserving of love, is said to have once
+had a warm heart. His early troubles and his domestic griefs are said to
+have soured and estranged him from mankind.
+
+"No one who has had access to his private papers can fail to be
+impressed with the belief that these early disappointments furnish the
+key to his entire character. Originally of warm and generous impulses,
+the belief in childhood that he had not been given his share of the love
+and kindness which were extended to others, changed the natural current
+of his feelings, and, acting on a warm and passionate temperament,
+alienated him from his home, his parents, and his friends. And when in
+after time there were superadded years of bitter anguish, resulting from
+his unfortunate and ill-adapted marriage, rendered even more poignant by
+the necessity of concealment, and the consequent injustice of public
+sentiment, marring all his cherished expectations, it may be readily
+understood why constant occupation became a necessity and labor a
+pleasure."
+
+This is the testimony of Mr. Henry W. Arey, the distinguished secretary
+of Girard College, in whose keeping are the papers of the subject of
+this memoir, and it must be confessed that his view of Girard's
+character is sustained by the following incidents, the narration of
+which I have passed over until now, in order that the history of his
+commercial career might not be interrupted:
+
+In the summer of 1793 the yellow fever broke out with fearful violence
+in Philadelphia. The citizens fled in dismay, leaving the plague-smitten
+city to its fate. Houses were left tenantless, and the streets were
+deserted. It was a season of horror and dread. Those who could not get
+away avoided each other, and the sufferers were left to languish and
+die. Money could not buy nurses in sufficient numbers, and often the
+victims lay unburied for days in the places where they had died. So
+terrible was the panic that it seemed that nothing could stay it.
+
+On the 10th of September the _Federal Gazette_, the only paper which had
+not suspended its publication, contained an anonymous card, stating that
+of the visitors of the poor all but three had succumbed to the disease
+or fled from the city, and begging assistance from such benevolent
+citizens as would consent to render their aid. On the 12th and 14th,
+meetings were held at the City Hall, at the last of which a volunteer
+committee was appointed to superintend the measures to be taken for
+checking the pestilence. Twenty-seven men volunteered to serve, but only
+twelve had the courage to fulfill their promise. They set to work
+promptly. The hospital at Bush Hill was reported by the physician to be
+in a deplorable state--without order, dirty and foul, and in need of
+nurses. The last, he stated, could not be had for any price. Two of the
+committee now stepped forward and nobly offered themselves as managers
+of the hospital. They were Stephen Girard and Peter Helm.
+
+Girard was now a man of wealth and influence, and with a brilliant
+commercial career opening before him. Above all, he was a foreigner, and
+unpopular in the city. Yet he did not hesitate to take the post from
+which others shrank. He and Helm were regarded as doomed men, but they
+did not falter from their self-imposed task. They went to work at once.
+Girard chose the post of honor, which was the post of danger--the
+management of the interior of the hospital. His decisive character was
+at once felt. Order began to appear, medicines and nurses were procured,
+and the very next day the committee were informed that the hospital had
+been cleaned and reorganized, and was prepared to receive patients.
+
+Girard opened his purse liberally, and spared no expense where money
+would avail. But this was not all. Besides personally superintending the
+interior of the hospital, he went about through the city seeking the
+sick and conveying them to the hospital.
+
+"In the great scarcity of help, he used frequently to receive the sick
+and dying at the gate, assist in carrying them to their beds, nurse
+them, receive their last messages, watch for their last breath, and
+then, wrapping them in the sheet on which they had died, carry them out
+to the burial ground and place them in the trench. He had a vivid
+recollection of the difficulty of finding any kind of fabric in which to
+wrap the dead, when the vast number of interments had exhausted the
+supply of sheets. 'I would put them,' he would say, 'in any old rag I
+could find.'"
+
+[Illustration: GIRARD'S HEROISM.]
+
+"If he ever left the hospital, it was to visit the infected districts,
+and assist in removing the sick from the houses in which they were dying
+without help. One scene of this kind, witnessed by a merchant who was
+hurrying past with camphored handkerchief pressed to his mouth, affords
+us a vivid glimpse of this heroic man engaged in his sublime vocation. A
+carriage, rapidly driven by a black man, broke the silence of the
+deserted and grass-grown street. It stopped before a frame house, and
+the driver, first having bound a handkerchief over his mouth, opened the
+door of the carriage, and quickly remounted to the box. A short,
+thick-set man stepped from the coach and entered the house. In a minute
+or two the observer, who stood at a safe distance watching the
+proceedings, heard a shuffling noise in the entry, and soon saw the
+stout little man supporting with extreme difficulty a tall, gaunt,
+yellow-visaged victim of the pestilence. Girard held round the waist the
+sick man, whose yellow face rested against his own; his long, damp,
+tangled hair mingled with Girard's; his feet dragging helpless upon the
+pavement. Thus he drew him to the carriage door, the driver averting his
+face from the spectacle, far from offering to assist. Partly dragging,
+partly lifting, Girard succeeded, after long and severe exertion, in
+getting him into the vehicle. He then entered it himself, closed the
+door, and the carriage drove away toward the hospital."[A]
+
+For sixty days Mr. Girard continued to discharge his duties, never
+absenting himself from his post, being nobly sustained by Peter Helm.
+
+Again, in 1797 and 1798, when the city was scourged a second and a third
+time with the fever, he volunteered his services, and more than earned
+the gratitude of his fellow-citizens. In the absence of physicians, he
+took upon himself the office of prescribing for the sick, and as his
+treatment involved careful nursing and the use of simple remedies only,
+he was very successful. In 1799 he wrote to his friend Devize, then in
+France, but who had been the physician at the Bush Hill Hospital in
+1793:
+
+"During all this frightful time I have constantly remained in the city,
+and, without neglecting any public duties, I have played a part which
+will make you smile. Would you believe it, my friend, that I have
+visited as many as fifteen sick people in a day, and what will surprise
+you still more, I have lost only one patient, an Irishman, who would
+drink a little. I do not flatter myself that I have cured one single
+person, but you will think with me that in my quality of Philadelphia
+physician I have been very moderate, and that not one of my confreres
+have killed fewer than myself."
+
+[Footnote A: James Parton.]
+
+Such acts as these should go far in his favor in estimating his
+character, for they are the very height of true heroism.
+
+Mr. Girard was never idle. Work, as has before been said, was a
+necessity with him. Nothing would draw him from his labors. His only
+recreation was to drive to his little farm, which lay a few miles out of
+the city, and engage with his own hands in the work of tilling it. He
+was very proud of the vegetables and fruits he raised himself, and took
+great interest in improving their growth. During the visit of the
+present head of the house of Baring Bros, (then a young man) to this
+country, that gentleman supposed he would give Mr. Girard pleasure by
+informing him of the safe arrival of one of his ships, the Voltaire,
+from India. Engaging a carriage, he drove to the banker's farm, and
+inquired for Mr. Girard.
+
+"He is in the hay-loft," was the answer.
+
+"Inform him that I wish to see him," said Mr. Baring; but almost before
+the words had left his lips Girard was before him.
+
+"I came to inform you," he said, addressing the banker, "that your ship,
+the Voltaire, has arrived safely."
+
+"I knew that she would reach port safely," said Girard; "my ships always
+arrive safe. She is a good ship. Mr. Baring, you must excuse me; I am
+much engaged in my hay." And so saying, he ascended to the loft again.
+
+To the last he was active. In 1830, having reached the age of eighty, he
+began to lose the sight of his eye; yet he would have no assistance. In
+attempting to cross a crowded street, he was knocked down by a passing
+wagon and injured severely. His ear was cut off, his face bruised, and
+his sight entirely destroyed. His health now declined rapidly, and on
+the 26th of December, 1831, he died, in the back room of his plain
+little house in Water Street.
+
+His immense wealth was carefully divided by his will. He gave to his
+surviving brother and eleven of his nieces sums ranging from five to
+twenty thousand dollars, and to his remaining niece, who was the mother
+of a very large family, he gave sixty thousand dollars. He gave to each
+of the captains then in his employ who had made two voyages in his
+service, and who should bring his ship safely into port, fifteen hundred
+dollars. To each of his apprentices he gave five hundred dollars. To his
+old servants he gave annuities, ranging from three to five hundred
+dollars each.
+
+He gave thirty thousand dollars to the Pennsylvania Hospital, in which
+his wife had been cared for; twenty thousand to the Deaf and Dumb
+Asylum; ten thousand to the Orphan Asylum; ten thousand to the Lancaster
+schools; ten thousand for the purpose of providing the poor in
+Philadelphia with free fuel; ten thousand to the Society for the Relief
+of Distressed Sea-Captains and their Families; twenty thousand to the
+Masonic Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania, for the relief of poor members; six
+thousand for the establishment of a free school in Passyunk, near
+Philadelphia; five hundred thousand dollars to the Corporation of
+Philadelphia for certain improvements in the city; three hundred
+thousand to the State of Pennsylvania for her canals; and a portion of
+his valuable estates in Louisiana to the Corporation of New Orleans, for
+the improvement of that city.
+
+The remainder of his property, worth then about six millions of dollars,
+he left to trustees for the erection and endowment of the noble College
+for Orphans, in Philadelphia, which bears his name.
+
+Thus it will be seen that this man, who seemed steeled to resist appeals
+for private charity in life, in death devoted all the results of his
+unusual genius in his calling to the noblest of purposes, and to
+enterprises of the most benignant character, which will gratefully hand
+his name down to the remotest ages of posterity.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+JOHN JACOB ASTOR.
+
+
+Those who imagine that the mercantile profession is incapable of
+developing the element of greatness in the mind of man, find a perfect
+refutation in the career of the subject of this memoir, who won his
+immense fortune by the same traits which would have raised him to
+eminence as a statesman. It may be thought by some that he has no claim
+to a place in the list of famous Americans, since he was not only German
+by birth, but German in character to his latest day; but it must be
+borne in mind that America was the theater of his exploits, and that he
+owed the greater part of his success to the wise and beneficent
+institutions of the "New Land," as he termed it. In his own country he
+would have had no opportunity for the display of his great abilities,
+and it was only by placing himself in the midst of institutions
+favorable to progress that he was enabled to make use of his talents. It
+is for this reason, therefore, that we may justly claim him as one of
+the most celebrated of American merchants.
+
+John Jacob Astor was born in the village of Waldorf, near Heidelberg, in
+the Grand Duchy of Baden, on the 17th of July, 1763. This year was
+famous for the conclusion of the Treaties of Paris and Hubertsburg,
+which placed all the fur-yielding regions of America, from the Gulf of
+Mexico to the Frozen Sea, in the hands of England. He was the youngest
+of four sons, and was born of Protestant parents. He was early taught to
+read Luther's Bible and the Prayer-book, and throughout his whole life
+remained a zealous Protestant. He was trained to the habit of rising
+early, and giving the first of his waking hours to reading the Bible and
+Prayer-book. This habit he continued all through life, and he often
+declared that it was to him the source of unfailing pleasure and
+comfort. His religious impressions were mainly due to his mother, who
+was a pious, thrifty, and hard-working woman, given to saving, and
+devoted to her family.
+
+His father, on the contrary, was a jolly "ne'er do well," a butcher by
+trade, and not overburdened with industry. The business of a butcher in
+so small a village as Waldorf, where meat was a luxury to the
+inhabitants, was merely a nominal calling. It knew but one season of
+real profit. It was at that time the custom in Germany for every farmer
+to set apart a calf, pig, or bullock, and fatten it against harvest
+time. As that season approached, the village butcher passed from house
+to house to slaughter the animal, cure its flesh, or make sausage meat
+of it, spending, sometimes, several days at each house. This season
+brought Jacob Astor an abundance of work, and enabled him to provide
+liberally for the simple wants of his family; but during the rest of the
+year it was with difficulty that he could make bread for them. Yet Jacob
+took his hard lot cheerfully. He was merry over his misfortunes, and
+sought to forget them in the society of companions who gathered at the
+village beer-house. His wife's remonstrances against such a course of
+life were sometimes so energetic that the house became any thing but a
+pleasant place for the children.
+
+Here John Jacob grew up to boyhood. His brothers left home to earn their
+livelihood elsewhere, as soon as they were old enough to do so, and he
+alone remained under the paternal roof. His father destined him for his
+own calling, but the boy shrank from it with disgust. To crown his
+misfortunes, his mother died, and his father married again, and this
+time a woman who looked with no favor upon the son. The newly-married
+pair quarreled continually, and the boy was glad to escape occasionally
+to the house of a schoolmate, where he passed the night in a garret or
+outhouse. By daylight he was back at his father's slaughter-house, to
+assist in carrying out the meat. He was poorly clad and badly fed, and
+his father's bad reputation wounded him so keenly that he shrank from
+playing with other boys, and led a life of comparative isolation.
+
+Fortunately for him, he had a teacher, Valentine Jeune by name, the son
+of French Protestants, who was better fitted for his position than the
+majority of the more liberally-patronized Catholic instructors. He was
+well taught by Valentine Jeune in the rudiments of a plain education,
+and the tutor and the Protestant minister of the village together
+succeeded so well in his religious instruction that at the age of
+fourteen he was confirmed. Confirmation is the decisive point in the
+career of the German youth. Until then he is only a child. Afterward he
+is regarded as on the threshold of manhood, and is given to understand
+that the time has come for him to make choice of a career in life.
+
+To the German peasant two courses only lie open, to learn a trade or go
+out to service. John Jacob was resolved not to do the latter, and he was
+in no condition to adopt the former. He was already familiar with his
+father's trade, but he shrank from it with disgust, and he could not
+hope to obtain money enough to pay for his tuition as an apprentice in
+any other calling. No workman in the village would receive him as an
+apprentice for less than fifty dollars, and fifty dollars were then
+further beyond his reach than as many millions in after years. The
+harvest was approaching, and Jacob Astor, seeing an unusual amount of
+work in store for him at that season, decided the matter for his son by
+informing him that he must prepare to settle down as his assistant. He
+obeyed, but discontentedly, and with a determination to abandon his home
+at the earliest practicable moment.
+
+His chief desire was to leave Germany and emigrate to America. The
+American Revolution had brought the "New Land" into great prominence;
+and one of the brothers, Henry Astor, had already settled in New York as
+a butcher, and his letters had the effect of increasing John Jacob's
+desire to follow him. It was impossible to do so then, for the war which
+was raging in this country made it any thing but inviting to an
+emigrant, and the boy was entirely ignorant of the English language.
+Nevertheless, he knew that the war could not last always, and he
+resolved to go as soon as peace would allow him. Meanwhile he wished to
+join his elder brother, who had removed to London, and was now engaged
+with his uncle in the manufacture of musical instruments. In London he
+thought he could acquire a knowledge of English, and save from his wages
+the amount necessary to pay his passage from England to America. He
+could reach some of the seaports of the Continent by walking. But he
+needed money to pay his passage from there to Great Britain. His
+determination thus formed, he made no secret of it, and succeeded at
+length in extorting a reluctant consent from his father, who was not
+inclined to expect very much from the future career of his son. His
+teacher, however, had more faith in him, and said to the butcher, on the
+morning of the lad's departure: "I am not afraid of John Jacob; he'll
+get through the world. He has a clear head, and every thing right behind
+the ears."
+
+He was seventeen years old when he left home; was stout and well built,
+and had a constitution of iron. He was possessed of a good plain
+education, and a remarkable degree of common sense. He had no vicious
+habits or propensities, and was resolved that he would never set foot
+again in his native town until he could do so as a rich man.
+
+Ardently as he was bent on seeking his fortune in distant lands, it cost
+him a struggle to go away, for he was a true German in his attachment to
+his home and family. This attachment he never lost. After providing
+liberally for his relatives in his will, he made a munificent donation
+to his native village for the benefit of its poor children.
+
+With his scanty wardrobe in a bundle, which he slung over his shoulder
+by a stick, and a mere pittance in his purse, he set out from Waldorf,
+on foot, for the Rhine. "Soon after I left the village," said he, in
+after-life, "I sat down beneath a tree to rest, and there I made three
+resolutions: to be honest, to be industrious, and not to gamble." He had
+but two dollars in his pocket; but this was enough for his purpose. The
+Rhine was not far distant from his native village, and this part of his
+journey he easily accomplished on foot. Upon reaching the river, he is
+said to have secured a place as oarsman on a timber raft. The timber
+which is cut in the Black Forest for shipment is made up into rafts on
+the Rhine, but instead of being suffered to float down the stream, as in
+this country, is rowed by oarsmen, each raft having from sixty to eighty
+men attached to it. As the labor is severe and attended with some risk,
+the wages are high, and the lot of the oarsmen not altogether a hard
+one, as they manage to have a great deal of sport among themselves. The
+amount paid as wages on these voyages is about ten dollars, besides the
+coarse fare furnished the men, and the time occupied is about two weeks.
+
+Upon reaching the Dutch seaport at the mouth of the Rhine, young Astor
+received his wages--the largest sum he had ever possessed--and took
+passage in a vessel for London, where he was welcomed cordially by his
+brother, and provided with employment in his manufactory.
+
+He now set to work to prepare himself for his emigration to America. His
+industry was unflagging. He worked literally from dawn till dark, and
+practiced the most rigid economy in his expenditures. His leisure time,
+which was brief, was spent in trying to master the English language, and
+in acquiring information respecting America. He had anticipated great
+difficulty in his efforts to learn English, but succeeded beyond his
+hopes. In six weeks he could make himself understood in that language,
+and some time before starting for America could speak it with ease,
+though he never could at any period of his life rid himself of his
+strong German accent. He was never able to write English correctly, but
+after being some years in this country acquired a style which was
+striking and to the point, in spite of its inaccuracy. England, however,
+was not a favorable place for acquiring information respecting America.
+The Colonies had exasperated the mother country by their heroic struggle
+for freedom, which was just drawing to its close, and the New World was
+pictured to the imagination of the young German in any thing but a
+favorable light. His most accurate information was gained from those who
+had returned from America, and these persons, as often as chance threw
+them in his way, he questioned with eagerness and precision; their
+answers were carefully stored up in his memory.
+
+In September, 1783, the news of the peace which established the
+independence of the United States was published in Europe. Young Astor
+had now been in London two years, and had saved money enough to take him
+to America. He was the possessor of a suit of good clothes, besides his
+ordinary wearing apparel, and fifteen guineas in English money, which he
+had saved from his slender earnings by the absolute denial to himself of
+every thing not essential to his existence. The way to America was now
+open, and he resolved to set out at once. For five guineas he bought a
+steerage passage in a ship bound for Baltimore, and reserving about five
+pounds sterling of the remainder of his capital in money, invested the
+rest in seven German flutes, which he bought of his brother, and
+embarked for the "New Land."
+
+The winter was memorable on land and sea for its severity, and our
+hero's first voyage was a stormy one. It is said that on one occasion,
+when the tempest was unusually violent, and the ship in imminent danger,
+he made his appearance in his Sunday clothes. In reply to those who
+asked his reason for so strange an act, he said that if he should reach
+land he would save his best clothes, and that if he was drowned it was
+immaterial what became of them.
+
+Although the ship sailed in November, it did not reach the Chesapeake
+until near the end of January, and there, when only one day distant from
+Baltimore, was caught in the ice, where it was compelled to remain until
+late in March. This delay was very vexatious to the young emigrant, but
+it proved in the end the greatest blessing that could have befallen him.
+During the voyage Astor had made the acquaintance of one of his fellow
+passengers, a German, somewhat older than himself, and, while the ship
+lay fast in the ice, the two were constantly together. As a consequence
+of the intimacy which thus sprung up between them, they exchanged
+confidences, told each other their history, and their purpose in coming
+to America. Astor learned that his friend had emigrated to the New World
+a few years before, friendless and penniless, but that, beginning in a
+little way, he had managed to become a fur trader. He bought his furs
+from the Indians, and from the boatmen plying on the Hudson River. These
+he sold at a small profit to larger dealers, until he had accumulated a
+considerable sum for one in his position. Believing that he could find a
+better market in Europe than in America, he had embarked all his capital
+in skins, which he had taken to England and sold at a heavy advance. The
+proceeds he had invested in toys and trinkets valued by the savages, and
+was now on his way back with them, intending to go into the wilderness
+himself and purchase an additional stock of furs from the Indians. He
+recommended Astor to enter upon the same business; gave him valuable
+information as to the value of peltries in America and in England; told
+him the best way of buying, packing, preserving, and shipping the skins,
+and gave him the names of the leading furriers in New York, Montreal,
+and London. Astor was deeply impressed with the views of his friend, but
+he could not see his own way clear to such a success, as he had no
+capital. His friend assured him that capital was unnecessary if he was
+willing to begin in an humble way. He could buy valuable furs on the
+wharves of New York for toys and trinkets, and even for cakes, from the
+Indians who visited the city, and these he could sell at an advance to
+the New York dealers. He advised the young man, however, not to be
+satisfied with the American market, but to work for a position which
+would enable him to send his furs to England, where they would bring
+four or five times as much as in this country. Astor carefully treasured
+up all that his friend said to him, and quietly resolved that he would
+lose no time in entering upon this business, which seemed to promise so
+much.
+
+The two friends traveled together from Baltimore to New York, where they
+were warmly received by Aster's brother, Henry, who had succeeded in
+laying the foundation of a prosperous business as a butcher, in which he
+afterward made a large fortune. Both brothers were men of business
+habits, and on the very first evening after the arrival of the new-comer
+they began to discuss plans for his future. Astor's friend stated all
+the advantages of the fur trade, and convinced Henry Astor that it was a
+fine field for the energies of his brother; and it was agreed that it
+would be best for the young man to seek employment in the service of
+some furrier in the city, in order that he might thoroughly learn the
+business, and familiarize himself with the country and its customs. To
+his great delight, young Astor learned that, so far from being compelled
+to pay his employer for learning him the business, as in Europe, he
+would be certain here to receive his board and nominal wages from the
+first. The next day the three started out, and succeeded in obtaining a
+situation for the young man in the store of Mr. Robert Bowne, a Quaker,
+and a merchant of long experience in the business, as well as a most
+estimable man. He is said to have engaged Astor at two dollars per week
+and his board.
+
+Astor was at once set to work by his employer to beat furs, this method
+of treating them being required to prevent the moths from lodging in and
+destroying them. From the first he applied himself to the task of
+learning the business. He bent all the powers of his remarkable mind to
+acquiring an intimate knowledge of furs, and of fur-bearing animals, and
+their haunts and habits. His opportunities for doing so were very good,
+as many of the skins were sold over Bowne's counters by the hunters who
+had taken them. These men he questioned with a minuteness that
+astonished them, and the result was that in a few years he was as
+thoroughly familiar with the animals, their habits, their country, and
+the mode of taking them, as many of the trappers themselves. He is said
+to have been in his prime the best judge of furs in America. He
+appreciated the fact that no man can succeed in any business or
+profession without fully understanding it, and he was too much
+determined upon success to be satisfied with a superficial knowledge. He
+was resolved that there should be no detail in the business, however
+minute, with which he was unfamiliar, and he toiled patiently to acquire
+information which most salesmen in his place would have esteemed
+trivial. Nothing was trivial with him, however, and it is remarkable
+that he never embarked in any scheme until he had mastered its most
+trifling details. Few men have ever shown a deeper and more far-reaching
+knowledge of their profession and the issues involved in it than he. He
+fully understood that his knowledge would give him a power which a man
+of less information could not obtain, and he never failed to use that
+knowledge as a power. His instructions to his subordinates were always
+drawn up with the strictest regard to details, and show not only how
+thoroughly he had mastered the subject before him, but also how much
+importance he attached to the conscientious fulfillment of a
+well-digested plan of operations. He recognized no such thing as luck.
+Every thing with him was the result of a deliberate plan based upon
+knowledge. In this respect his career affords one of the best models to
+be found in our history.
+
+[Illustration: ASTOR'S FIRST TRIP FOR FURS.]
+
+Astor's employer was not insensible to his merits, and soon promoted him
+to a better place. In a little while the latter intrusted him with the
+buying of the furs from the men who brought them to the store, and he
+gave such satisfaction to his employer that he was rewarded with a still
+more confidential post. Montreal was at that time the chief fur depot of
+the country, and it was the custom of Mr. Bowne to make an annual
+journey to that city for the purpose of replenishing his stock. The
+journey was long and fatiguing, and as soon as the old gentleman found
+that he could intrust the mission to his clerk, he sent him in his
+place. Ascending the Hudson to Albany, Astor, with a pack on his back,
+struck out across the country, which was then almost unsettled, to Lake
+George, up which he passed into Lake Champlain. Sailing to the head of
+the lake, he made his way to Montreal. Then returning in the same way,
+he employed Indians to transport his furs from Lake George to Albany,
+and dropped down the Hudson in the way he had come. Mr. Bowne was
+delighted with the success of his clerk, who proved more than a match
+for the shrewd Indians in his bargains. It was doubtless here that Mr.
+Astor obtained that facility in "driving a hard bargain" for which he
+was afterwards noted.
+
+As soon as Mr. Astor felt himself master of his business, he left the
+employ of Mr. Bowne, and began life on his own account. The field upon
+which he purposed entering was extensive, but it was one of which he had
+made a careful survey. Previous to the peace of 1763, the French and
+English divided the control of the fur-bearing regions of America. The
+British possessions, extending from Canada to the unexplored regions of
+the North, had been granted by a charter of Charles II. to Prince
+Rupert, and were, by virtue of that instrument, under the exclusive
+control of the Hudson Bay Company. Large quantities of furs were
+obtained in this region, and collected at the principal settlement, York
+Factory, from which they were shipped to England.
+
+South of this region was Canada, then possessed by the French, who
+carried on an extensive trade with the Indians, who brought their furs
+down to Montreal in their birch canoes. The French finally settled in
+the country of the savages, and married among the natives,
+thenceforward entirely devoting themselves to the life of the trapper
+and hunter. These marriages produced a race of half-breeds who were
+especially successful in securing furs. The cession of Canada to England
+was a severe blow to the French traders, as it opened the country to the
+enterprise of the English, a few of whom were quick to avail themselves
+of its advantages. The French and Indians at first regarded them with
+hostility, but gradually became reconciled to their presence.
+
+Under the French rule the savages had not been furnished with liquors,
+but the English soon sold whisky and rum in great quantities to them,
+receiving the best furs in return. As a consequence, intemperance spread
+rapidly among the savages, and threatened to put an end to their
+industry as gatherers of furs. To check the evil results of this
+irregular trading, a company was established in 1785, called the
+North-west Company. It was managed by twelve partners, some of whom
+resided at Montreal, and others at the trading posts in the interior.
+Their chief station was at Fort William, on Lake Superior. Here, at
+stated times, the agents would come up from Montreal and hold a
+consultation for the purchase of furs. These meetings always drew crowds
+of French and Indian trappers, boatmen, and others, who brought in large
+quantities of skins.
+
+A few years later a third company was organized, with its principal
+station at Michilimackinac, near Lake Huron. It was called the Mackinaw
+Company, and its field of operations was the country bordering Lake
+Superior, and that lying between the Mississippi and the Rocky
+Mountains. The company was English, but did not hesitate to operate in
+American territory, so little regard did Great Britain pay to the rights
+of the infant republic.
+
+"Although peace had been concluded, the frontier forts had not been
+given up. Oswego, Niagara, Detroit, Michilimackinac, and other posts
+were still in the hands of the English. The Indian tribes continued
+hostile, being under English influence. No company had as yet been
+formed in the United States. Several French houses at St. Louis traded
+with the Indians, but it was not until 1807 that an association of
+twelve partners, with a capital of forty thousand dollars, was formed at
+St. Louis, under the name of the Missouri Company.
+
+"The trade, it will thus be seen, was almost wholly in the hands of the
+English companies--the Hudson's Bay Company in the north, the North-west
+Company in the Canadas, the Mackinaw Company in the territories of the
+United States--and the few American traders in the field had to rely on
+their individual resources, with no aid from a Government too feeble in
+its infancy to do more than establish a few Indian agencies, and without
+constitutional power to confer charter privileges."
+
+The voyage of Captain Cook had brought to the notice of the fur dealers
+of the world the sea otter of the northern Pacific, and the announcement
+made upon the return of the expedition drew large numbers of adventurers
+to the west coast of America, in search of the valuable skins of these
+animals. In 1792, there were twenty-one vessels, principally American,
+on the coast.
+
+It was into this field, already occupied by powerful and hostile
+corporations, that the young German entered. He was perfectly aware of
+the opposition his efforts would encounter from them, but he was not
+dismayed. He began business in 1786, in a small store in Water Street,
+which he furnished with a few toys and notions suited to the tastes of
+the Indians who had skins to sell. His entire capital consisted of only
+a few hundred dollars, a portion of which was loaned him by his
+brother. He had no assistants. He did all his own work. He bought his
+skins, cured, beat, and sold them himself.
+
+Several times during the year he made journeys on foot through western
+New York, buying skins from the settlers, farmers, trappers, savages,
+wherever he could find them. He tramped over nearly the entire State in
+this way, and is said to have had a better knowledge of its geography
+and topography than any man living.
+
+"He used to boast, late in life, when the Erie Canal had called into
+being a line of thriving towns through the center of the State, that he
+had himself, in his numberless tramps, designated the sites of those
+towns, and predicted that one day they would be the centers of business
+and population. Particularly he noted the spots where Rochester and
+Buffalo now stand, one having a harbor on Lake Erie and the other upon
+Lake Ontario. He predicted that those places would one day be large and
+prosperous cities; and that prediction he made when there was scarcely a
+settlement at Buffalo, and only wigwams on the site of Rochester."
+
+During these tramps his business in the city was managed by a partner,
+with whom he was finally compelled to associate himself.
+
+As soon as he had collected a certain number of bales of skins he
+shipped them to London, and took a steerage passage in the vessel which
+conveyed them. He sold his skins in that city at a fine profit, and
+succeeded in forming business connections which enabled him afterward to
+ship his goods direct to London, and draw regularly upon the houses to
+which they were consigned. He also made an arrangement with the house of
+Astor & Broadwood, in which his brother was a partner, by which he
+became the agent in New York for the sale of their musical instruments,
+a branch of his business which became quite profitable to him. He is
+said to have been the first man in New York who kept a regular stock of
+musical instruments on hand.
+
+Slowly, and by unremitting industry, Mr. Astor succeeded in building up
+a certain business. His personal journeys made him acquainted with the
+trappers, and enabled him to win their good will. The savages sold their
+skins to him readily, and he found a steady market and a growing demand
+for his commodities in the Old World.
+
+It was about this time that he married Miss Sarah Todd, of New York. She
+was a connection of the Brevoort family, and was of better social
+position than her husband. She entered heartily into his business, doing
+much of the buying and beating of the furs herself. She was a true
+helpmate to him, and long after he was a millionaire, he used to boast
+of her skill in judging furs and conducting business operations.
+
+In 1794, Jay's treaty placed the frontier forts in the hands of the
+Americans, and thus increased the opportunities of our own traders to
+extend their business. It was of the greatest service to Mr. Astor. It
+enabled him to enlarge the field of his operations, and, at the same
+time, to send his agents on the long journeys which he formerly made,
+while he himself remained in New York to direct his business; which by
+this time had grown to considerable proportions.
+
+He was now on the road to wealth. He had scores of trappers and hunters
+working for him in the great wilderness, and his agents were kept busy
+buying and shipping the skins to New York. As soon as he was able to do
+so he purchased a ship, in which he sent his furs to London,
+occasionally making a voyage thither himself. He manifested the greatest
+interest in the markets of the Old World, especially in those of Asia,
+and informed himself so accurately concerning them that he was always
+enabled to furnish his captains with instructions covering the most
+minute detail of their transactions in those markets; and it is said
+that he was never unsuccessful in his ventures there, except when his
+instructions were disobeyed.
+
+In this again, as in the fur trade, we see him patiently acquiring
+knowledge of the eastern trade before venturing to engage in it. His
+first step was always to fully comprehend his task, to examine it from
+every possible point of view, so that he should be prepared to encounter
+any sudden reverse, or ready to take advantage of good fortune. Here lay
+the secret of his success--that he never embarked in an enterprise until
+he had learned how to use it to advantage.
+
+Under his skillful management his business grew rapidly; but he avoided
+speculation, and confined himself to legitimate commerce. He was plain
+and simple in his habits, carrying this trait to an extreme long after
+economy had ceased to be necessary to him. He worked hard, indulged in
+no pleasures except horseback exercise and the theater, of both which he
+was very fond. It was only after he had amassed a large fortune that he
+ever left his business before the close of the day. Then he would leave
+his counting-room at two in the afternoon, and, partaking of an early
+dinner, would pass the rest of the day in riding about the island. So
+plain was his style of living that, before he became generally known as
+a wealthy man, a bank clerk once superciliously informed him that his
+indorsement of a note would not be sufficient, as it was not likely he
+would be able to pay it in case the bank should be forced to call upon
+him.
+
+"Indeed," said Mr. Astor, "how much do you suppose I am worth?"
+
+The clerk named a moderate amount, at which the merchant smiled
+quietly.
+
+"Would the indorsement of Mr. ----, or Mr. ----, be sufficient?" asked
+Mr. Astor, naming several well-known merchants who lived in great style.
+
+"Entirely sufficient," was the reply. "Each one of them is known to be
+wealthy."
+
+"How much do you think each is worth?"
+
+The clerk named large sums in connection with each of the gentlemen.
+
+"Well, my friend," said the merchant, "I am worth more than any of them.
+I will not tell you how much I am worth, but it is more than any sum you
+have named."
+
+The clerk looked at him in surprise, and then said, bluntly, "Then you
+are a greater fool than I took you for, to work as hard as you do."
+
+Mr. Astor was very fond of telling this story, which he regarded as one
+of the best jokes of the day.
+
+All this time Mr. Astor had lived over his store, but in 1800, after he
+had been in business fifteen years, he moved his dwelling to 223
+Broadway, on the site of the Astor House of to-day. He lived here, with
+one removal, for upwards of twenty-five years. The house was plain and
+simple, but he was satisfied with it. He was now worth a quarter of a
+million dollars, and his business was growing rapidly. The fur trade was
+exceedingly profitable. A beaver skin could be bought from the trappers
+in western New York for one dollar and sold in London for six dollars
+and a quarter. By investing this amount in English manufactures, the six
+dollars and a quarter received for the skin could be made to produce ten
+dollars paid for the English goods in New York.
+
+The Chinese trade was also very profitable. China was an excellent
+market for furs. They brought high prices, and the proceeds could always
+be invested in teas and silks, which sold well in New York. His profit
+on a voyage would sometimes reach seventy thousand dollars, and the
+average gain on a lucky venture of this kind was thirty thousand
+dollars. The high prices produced by the war of 1812-15 were also in Mr.
+Astor's favor. His ships were all remarkably lucky in escaping capture
+by the enemy, and he was almost the only merchant who had a cargo of tea
+in the market. Tea having reached double its usual price, he was enabled
+to reap immense profits from his ventures.
+
+Mr. Francis, in his _Old Merchants of New York_, makes the following
+revelation of the manner in which Mr. Astor found it possible to carry
+on such an immense business. He says:
+
+"A house that could raise money enough, thirty years ago, to send
+$260,000 in specie, could soon have an uncommon capital; and this was
+the working of the old system. The Griswolds owned the ship Panama. They
+started her from New York in the month of May, with a cargo of perhaps
+$30,000 worth of ginseng, spelter, lead, iron, etc., and $170,000 in
+Spanish dollars. The ship goes on the voyage, reaches Whampoa in safety
+(a few miles below Canton). Her supercargo, in two months, has her
+loaded with tea, some chinaware, a great deal of cassia, or false
+cinnamon, and a few other articles. Suppose the cargo mainly tea,
+costing about thirty-seven cents (at that time) per pound on the
+average.
+
+"The duty was enormous in those days. It was twice the cost of the tea,
+at least; so that a cargo of $200,000, when it had paid duty of
+seventy-five cents per pound (which would be $400,000), amounted to
+$600,000. The profit was at least fifty per cent, on the original cost,
+or $100,000, and would make the cargo worth $700,000.
+
+"The cargo of teas would be sold almost on arrival (say eleven or
+twelve months after the ship left New York in May), to wholesale
+grocers, for their notes at four and six months--say for $700,000. In
+those years there was _credit given by the United States_ of nine,
+twelve, and eighteen months! So that the East India or Canton merchant,
+after his ship had made one voyage, had the use of Government capital to
+the extent of $400,000, on the ordinary cargo of a China ship.
+
+"No sooner had the ship Panama arrived (or any of the regular East
+Indiamen), than her cargo would be exchanged for grocers' notes for
+$700,000. These notes could be turned into specie very easily, and the
+owner had only to pay his bonds for duty at nine, twelve, and eighteen
+months, giving him time actually to send two more ships, with $200,000
+each, to Canton, and have them back again in New York before the bonds
+on the first cargo were due.
+
+"John Jacob Astor, at one period of his life, had several vessels
+operating in this way. They would go to the Pacific, and carry furs from
+thence to Canton. These would be sold at large profits. Then the cargoes
+of tea to New York would pay enormous duties, which Astor did not have
+to pay to the United States for a year and a half. His tea cargoes would
+be sold for good four and six months paper, or perhaps cash; so that,
+for eighteen or twenty years, John Jacob Astor had what was actually a
+free-of-interest loan from Government of over _five millions_ of
+dollars."
+
+It is estimated that Mr. Astor made about two millions of dollars by his
+trade in furs and teas. The bulk of his immense fortune was made by
+investments in real estate. His estate was estimated at twenty millions
+of dollars at the time of his death, and has now increased to over forty
+millions. He had a firm faith in the magnificent future of New York as
+the greatest city of the continent, and as fast as his gains from his
+business came in, they were regularly invested in real estate. A part
+was expended in leasing for a long period property which the owners
+would not sell, and the rest in buying property in fee simple. These
+leases, some of which have but recently expired, were extremely
+profitable. In his purchases of land Mr. Astor was very fortunate. He
+pursued a regular system in making them. Whenever a favorable purchase
+could be made in the heart of the city, he availed himself of the
+opportunity, but as a rule he bought his lands in what was then the
+suburb of the city, and which few besides himself expected to see built
+up during their lifetime. His sagacity and foresight have been more than
+justified by the course of events. His estate now lies principally in
+the heart of New York, and has yielded an increase greater even than he
+had ventured to hope for. Seventy hundred and twenty houses are said to
+figure on the rent roll of the Astor estate at present, and besides
+these are a number of lots not yet built upon, but which are every day
+increasing in value. "When Mr. Astor bought Richmond Hill, the estate of
+Aaron Burr, he gave one thousand dollars an acre for the hundred and
+sixty acres. Twelve years later, the land was valued at fifteen hundred
+dollars per lot."
+
+In 1810, he sold a lot near Wall Street for eight thousand dollars. The
+price was so low that a purchaser for cash was found at once, and this
+gentleman, after the sale, expressed his surprise that Mr. Astor should
+ask only eight thousand for a lot which in a few years would sell for
+twelve thousand.
+
+"That is true," said Mr. Astor, "but see what I intend doing with these
+eight thousand dollars. I shall buy eighty lots above Canal Street, and
+by the time your one lot is worth twelve thousand dollars, my eighty
+lots will be worth eighty thousand dollars."
+
+His expectations were realized.
+
+During the war of the Revolution, Roger Morris and his wife, Mary, of
+Putnam County, were obliged to flee from the country to England for
+adhering to the cause of King George, and, being attainted by the
+authorities as public enemies, their immense estate, consisting of
+fifty-one thousand one hundred and two acres, was seized by the State of
+New York, and sold in small parcels to farmers, who believed the title
+thus acquired valid. In 1809, there were upwards of seven hundred
+families residing on this land. Mr. Astor, having learned that Roger and
+Mary Morris possessed only a life interest in their property, and having
+ascertained to his satisfaction that the State could not confiscate the
+rights of the heirs, purchased their claim, which was good not only for
+the land, but for all the improvements that had been put upon it. He
+paid twenty thousand pounds sterling for it. A few years previous to the
+death of Mrs. Morris, who survived her husband some years, Mr. Astor
+presented his claim. The occupants of the land were thunderstruck, but
+the right was on his side. The State of New York had simply robbed the
+heirs of their rights. There was no weak point in the claim. Having
+given defective titles to the farmers, the State was of course
+responsible for the claim; and upon finding out their mistake, the
+authorities asked Mr. Astor to name the sum for which he would be
+willing to compromise. The lands were valued at six hundred and
+sixty-seven thousand dollars, but Mr. Astor expressed his willingness to
+sell for three hundred thousand dollars. His offer was refused. In 1819,
+a second proposition was made to Mr. Astor by the Legislature of the
+State. He replied: "In 1813 or 1814 a similar proposition was made to me
+by the commissioners then appointed by the Honorable the Legislature of
+this State when I offered to compromise for the sum of three hundred
+thousand dollars, which, considering the value of the property in
+question, was thought very reasonable, and, at the present period, when
+the life of Mrs. Morris is, according to calculation, worth little or
+nothing, she being near eighty-six years of age, and the property more
+valuable than it was in 1813. I am still willing to receive the amount
+which I then stated, with interest on the same, payable in money or
+stock, bearing an interest of -- per cent., payable quarterly. The stock
+may be made payable at such periods as the Honorable the Legislature may
+deem proper. This offer will, I trust, be considered as liberal, and as
+a proof of my willingness to compromise on terms which are reasonable,
+considering the value of the property, the price which it cost me, and
+the inconvenience of having so long _lain out_ of my money, which, if
+employed in commercial operations, would most likely have produced
+better profits."
+
+This offer was not accepted by the Legislature, and the cause was
+delayed until 1827, when it was brought before the courts. It was argued
+by such men as Daniel Webster and Martin Van Buren, on the part of the
+State, and by Thomas Addis Emmett, Ogden, and others for Astor. The
+State had no case, and the matter was decided in Astor's favor. Then the
+State consented to compromise. The famous Astor stock, which paid that
+gentleman about five hundred thousand dollars, was issued, and the
+titles of the possessors of the lands confirmed.
+
+The most important of all of Mr. Astor's undertakings was his effort at
+founding the settlement of Astoria, on the coast of Oregon. This
+enterprise has been made so familiar to the majority of readers by the
+pen of Washington Irving, that I can only refer to it here. "His
+design," says a writer of thirteen years ago, "was to organize and
+control the fur trade from the lakes to the Pacific, by establishing
+trading posts along the Missouri and Columbia to its mouth. He designed
+establishing a central depot and post at the mouth of the Columbia. He
+proposed sending regular supply-ships to the Pacific posts around the
+Horn. By these, stores were to be sent also to the Russian
+establishments. It was part of his plan, if possible, to obtain
+possession of one of the Sandwich Islands as a station, for from the
+Pacific coast he knew that the Chinese market for his peltries could be
+most conveniently reached, and thus the necessity for a long and
+circuitous voyage be avoided. Instead of bringing the furs intended for
+China to New York, they could be sent from the Pacific. By the
+supply-ships, too, the stock of goods suitable for the Indian trade
+would be kept up there, and the cargoes purchased with the proceeds of
+the furs sold in China brought back to New York. The line of posts
+across the continent would become a line of towns; emigration would
+follow, and civilization would belt the continent.
+
+"In this grand scheme, Mr. Astor was only anticipating the course of
+events which, fifty years later, we are beginning to witness. When he
+laid his plans before the Government, Mr. Jefferson, who was then
+President, 'considered as a great acquisition,' as he afterward
+expressed himself in a letter to Mr. Astor, 'the commencement of a
+settlement on the western coast of America, and looked forward with
+gratification to the time when its descendants should have spread
+themselves through the whole length of that coast, covering it with free
+and independent Americans, unconnected with us except by ties of blood
+and interest, and enjoying, like us, the rights of self-government.'
+Even Jefferson's mind, wide as it was, could not take in the idea of a
+national unity embracing both ends of the continent; but not so thought
+Astor. The merchant saw farther than the statesman. It was precisely
+this political unity which gave him hope and chance of success in his
+worldwide schemes. When the Constitution was adopted, the chief source
+of apprehension for its permanence with men like Patrick Henry, and
+other wise statesmen, was the extent of our territory. The Alleghanies,
+it was thought, had put asunder communities whom no paper constitution
+could unite. But at that early day, when Ohio was the far West, and no
+steamboat had yet gone up the Mississippi, Astor looked beyond the Ohio,
+beyond the Mississippi, and the Rocky Mountains, and saw the whole
+American territory, from ocean to ocean, the domain of one united
+nation, the seat of trade and industry. He saw lines of trading posts
+uniting the Western settlements with the Pacific; following this line of
+trading posts, he saw the columns of a peaceful emigration crossing the
+plains, crossing the mountains, descending the Columbia, and towns and
+villages taking the places of the solitary posts, and cultivated fields
+instead of the hunting-grounds of the Indian and the trapper.
+
+"No enterprise, unless it be the Atlantic telegraph, engages more deeply
+the public attention than a railroad communication with the Pacific
+coast.[A] The rapid settlement of Oregon and California, the constant
+communication by steam to the Pacific coast, render it easy now to feel
+the nearness of that region, and the oneness of the nationality which
+covers the continent. But to Astor's eye the thing was as palpable then
+as now. And yet but two or three attempts had then been made to explore
+the overland routes."
+
+It would be deeply interesting to examine the details of this fast
+scheme of colonization and trade, for it is certain that Mr. Astor was
+as anxious to do an act which, by building up the continent, should hand
+his name down to posterity as a national benefactor, as to increase his
+business; but the limits of this article forbid more than a mere glance
+at the subject.
+
+[Footnote A: The reader will bear in mind that the above extract was
+written in 1857.]
+
+A company was formed, at the head of which stood Mr. Astor, and an
+elaborate and carefully-arranged plan of operations prepared. Two
+expeditions were dispatched to the mouth of the Columbia, one by land
+and the other by sea. Many hardships were encountered, but the
+foundation of a settlement was successfully made on the Columbia. In
+spite of the war with England (1812-15), which now occurred, the
+enterprise would have been successful had Mr. Astor's positive
+instructions been obeyed. They were utterly disregarded, however, and
+his partners and agents not only betrayed him in every instance, but
+sold his property to a rival British company for a mere trifle. His
+pecuniary loss was over a million of dollars, and his disappointment
+bitter beyond expression. When the enterprise was on the point of
+failure, and while he was still chafing at the conduct of his
+treacherous subordinates, he wrote to Mr. Hunt, the most faithful of all
+his agents: "Were I on the spot, and, had the management of affairs, I
+would defy them all; but as it is, every thing depends on you and your
+friends about you. Our enterprise is grand, and deserves success, and I
+hope in God it will meet it. _If my object was merely gain of money_, I
+should say, think whether it is best to save what we can, and abandon
+the place; but the very idea is like a dagger to my heart." When the
+news of the final betrayal reached him, he wrote to the same gentleman:
+"Had our place and property been fairly captured, I should have
+preferred it; I should not feel as if I were disgraced."
+
+Mr. Astor remained in active business for fifty years. During that
+entire period he scarcely committed an error of judgment which led to a
+loss in business. He was thorough master of every thing pertaining to
+his affairs, and his strength and accuracy of judgment was remarkable.
+The particulars of his transactions were indelibly impressed upon his
+mind. His intellect was vigorous and quick, and he grasped a subject
+with a readiness which seemed like intuition. He was always careful of
+the present, but he loved to undertake enterprises which extended far
+into the future. He was a man of the utmost punctuality in all his
+habits. He rose early, and, until he was fifty-five years old, was
+always in his office before seven o'clock. His capacity for work was
+very great, so that, in spite of his heavy labors, he was always able to
+leave his office by two o'clock, while many of his associates, who
+really did less than he, were compelled to remain in their
+counting-rooms until four or five. He was noted for his unvarying
+calmness, which he doubtless owed to his German temperament. In the
+midst of disaster and loss he was cooler and more cheerful than ever. To
+those who chafed at their troubles, he would say, smilingly, "Keep
+quiet; keep cool." This was his safeguard.
+
+He was a devoted citizen of the United States, and, though he took no
+active interest in politics, was a steady supporter of the Whig party.
+Henry Clay was his personal friend, and his last donation to any
+political cause was a subscription of fifteen hundred dollars to aid the
+election of his old friend to the Presidency.
+
+About the year 1830, Mr. Astor, now the possessor of millions, began to
+withdraw from active business, confining his efforts chiefly to such
+investments as the management of his immense estate made necessary. He
+now put into execution an enterprise which he had long cherished. When a
+poor stranger in the city, he had once stopped in Broadway to notice a
+row of buildings which had just been erected, and which were considered
+the finest in the street, and had then made a vow that he would one day
+build a larger and finer house than any in Broadway. He now set to work
+to carry out the plan he had cherished ever since. He owned the entire
+block on Broadway, between Vesey and Barclay streets, with the
+exception of one house, which was the property of a Mr. Coster, a
+merchant who had amassed a large fortune and retired from business. Mr.
+Astor made him many offers for his house, but the old gentleman was
+unwilling to remove. Mr. Astor offered him the full value of his house,
+which was thirty thousand dollars, and increased the bid to forty
+thousand, but Mr. Coster was obstinate. At length Mr. Astor, in despair,
+was compelled to reveal his plan to his neighbor.
+
+"I want to build a hotel," said he. "I have got all the other lots. Now
+name your own price."
+
+Mr. Coster replied that he would sell for sixty thousand dollars if his
+wife would consent, and that Mr. Astor could see her the next morning.
+Mr. Astor was punctual to the appointment, and his offer was accepted by
+the good lady, who said to him, condescendingly, "I don't want to sell
+the house, but we are such old friends that I am willing for your sake."
+
+Mr. Astor used to remark with great glee that any one could afford to
+exhibit such condescension after receiving double the value of a piece
+of property.
+
+Having got possession of the entire block, he commenced the demolition
+of the old buildings, and on their site reared the Astor House, then the
+largest and most elegant hotel in the country. This building, when
+completed, he gave to his eldest son, William B. Astor.
+
+In 1832, Mr. Astor sailed for Europe to visit one of his daughters, who
+had married a nobleman, and remained abroad until 1835. In that year he
+was compelled to return home by the action of General Jackson with
+regard to the Bank of the United States. "He reached Havre," says Mr.
+Parton, "when the ship, on the point of sailing, had every stateroom
+engaged, but he was so anxious to get home, that the captain, who had
+commanded ships for him in former years, gave up to him his own
+stateroom. Head winds and boisterous seas kept the vessel beating about
+and tossing in the channel for many days. The great man was very sick,
+and still more alarmed. At length, being persuaded that he should not
+survive the voyage, he asked the captain to run in and set him ashore on
+the coast of England. The captain dissuaded him. The old man urged his
+request at every opportunity, and said, at last, 'I give you tousand
+dollars to put me aboard a pilot boat.' He was so vehement and
+importunate, that one day the captain, worried out of all patience,
+promised him that if he did not get out of the channel before next
+morning, he would run in and put him ashore. It happened that the wind
+changed in the afternoon and wafted the ship into the broad ocean. But
+the troubles of the sea-sick millionaire had only just begun. A heavy
+gale of some days' duration blew the vessel along the western coast of
+Ireland. Mr. Astor, now thoroughly panic-stricken, offered the captain
+ten thousand dollars if he would put him ashore anywhere on the wild and
+rocky coast of the Emerald Isle. In vain the captain remonstrated. In
+vain he reminded the old gentleman of the danger of forfeiting his
+insurance.
+
+"'Insurance!' exclaimed Astor, 'can't I insure your ship my self?'
+
+"In vain the captain mentioned the rights of the other passengers. In
+vain he described the solitary and rock-bound coast, and detailed the
+dangers and difficulties which attended its approach. Nothing would
+appease him. He said he would take all the responsibility, brave all the
+perils, endure all the consequences, only let him once more feel the
+firm ground under his feet. The gale having abated, the captain yielded
+to his entreaties, and engaged, if the other passengers would consent to
+the delay, to stand in, and put him ashore. Mr. Astor went into the
+cabin, and proceeded to write what was expected to be a draft for ten
+thousand dollars in favor of the owners of the ship on his agent in New
+York. He handed to the captain the result of his efforts. It was a paper
+covered with writing that was totally illegible.
+
+"'What is this?' asked the captain.
+
+"'A draft upon my son for ten thousand dollars,' was the reply.
+
+"'But no one can read it.'
+
+"'O yes, my son will know what it is. My hand trembles so that I can not
+write any better.'
+
+"'But,' said the captain, 'you can at least write your name. I am acting
+for the owners of the ship, and I can not risk their property for a
+piece of paper that no one can read. Let one of the gentlemen draw up a
+draft in proper form; you sign it, and I will put you ashore.'
+
+"The old gentleman would not consent to this mode of proceeding, and the
+affair was dropped."
+
+During the last twenty years of his life Mr. Astor lived in the
+retirement of his family, leaving even the greater part of the
+management of his estate to the hands of others. He was exceedingly fond
+of literary men. Irving was his friend, and Halleck his business
+manager. He died at the age of eighty-four years and eight months,
+literally from old age. He was buried in St. Thomas's Church, on
+Broadway.
+
+His immense estate was left to his children, the bulk of it being
+bequeathed to his eldest son. All of his relatives were made
+comfortable. The village of Waldorf, his native place, received a legacy
+of fifty thousand dollars for the benefit of its poor, and an amount in
+land and funds equal to four hundred thousand dollars was left to
+certain trustees to establish the Astor Library in the city of New York.
+Besides these, several charitable and benevolent associations received
+handsome donations from him.
+
+His career has been related in these pages as an example to those who
+are seeking to rise in legitimate commerce. It is the Best instance on
+record of the facility with which success may be won by patient and
+intelligent industry. In his capacity for grasping and carrying out an
+enterprise, in his prudent and economical management of his business,
+in his tact, courage, sagacity, Mr. Astor's example is one which will
+lead many to success, and none to injury.
+
+He was a thoroughly upright man, his transactions were rigidly honest;
+but as a man, candor compels the acknowledgment that he was not a safe
+or admirable model. He was utterly devoid of generosity. Liberal to an
+extreme with his own family, he was close and hard with others. He paid
+small wages to his employés and never gave more than the man bargained
+for, no matter what extra service might be rendered. He carried his
+economy to a degree of meanness painful to contemplate. At his death,
+out of his vast estate, he left to his friend and faithful manager an
+annuity of only two hundred dollars, which his son increased to fifteen
+hundred.
+
+One of his captains once succeeded in saving for him property in China
+to the amount of seven hundred thousand dollars, which had become
+jeopardized by the sudden death of the agent in charge of it. This
+service was purely voluntary, and was one which required the greatest
+skill, determination, and courage on the part of the captain, and Astor
+acknowledged it, frequently saying: "If you had not done just as you
+did, I should never have seen one dollar of my money; no, not one dollar
+of it." This was the only acknowledgment he made, however. He was worth
+ten millions of dollars, and the captain had only his pay--twelve
+hundred dollars a year--and a family. At his father's death Mr. William
+B. Astor sent a considerable sum to the old seaman in return for this
+service.
+
+"We have all heard much of the closeness, or rather the meanness, of
+this remarkable man. Truth compels us to admit that he was not generous,
+except to his own kindred. His liberality began and ended in his own
+family. Very seldom during his lifetime did he willingly do a generous
+act, outside of the little circle of his relations and descendants. To
+get all he could, and to keep nearly all that he got--those were the
+laws of his being.... He enjoyed keenly the consciousness, the feeling,
+of being rich. The roll-book of his possessions was his Bible. He
+scanned it fondly, and saw, with quiet but deep delight, the catalogue
+of his property lengthening from month to month. The love of
+accumulation grew with his years, until it ruled him like a tyrant. If
+at fifty he possessed his millions, at sixty-five his millions possessed
+him. Only to his own children and to their children was he liberal; and
+his liberality to them was all arranged with a view to keeping his
+estate in the family, and to cause it at every moment to tend toward a
+final consolidation in one enormous mass."
+
+This is the estimate of his character formed by Mr. James Parton. His
+friend Dr. Coggswell presents him in quite a different light. He says:
+
+"Mr. Astor lived to the good old age of four score and four years and
+eight months. For some years previous to his death, which happened March
+29, 1848, his manly form was bowed down by age, and his bodily strength
+greatly enfeebled, but his mind retained much of its original Vigor and
+brightness. Considering his extraordinary activity until a late period
+of his life, he submitted to the helplessness of age with uncommon
+resignation. When his impaired eye-sight no longer permitted him to
+read, his principal relief from the wearisomeness of unoccupied time was
+in the society of his friends and near relatives. All who knew him well
+were strongly attached to him, and none but those who were ignorant of
+his true character believed him unamiable and repulsive.
+
+"His smile was peculiarly benignant and expressive of genuine kindness
+of heart, and his whole manner cordial and courteous to every one
+entitled to his respect. There was something so impressive in his
+appearance, no one could stand before him without feeling that he was in
+the presence of a superior intelligence. His deep, sunken eye, beneath
+his overarched brow, denoted the prophetic--it might almost be said the
+inspired--mind within. Although he lived many years beyond the age when
+the grasshopper is a burden, and was the victim of much suffering, he
+did not murmur, nor did he become unreasonable and peevish. He was not
+wont to talk much on the subject of religion, or freely communicate his
+views in relation to the life beyond the grave; but it can not be
+doubted that such tranquility as he exhibited in his near approach to
+it must have been derived from 'that peace which the world can neither
+give nor take away,'"
+
+Perhaps a medium between Mr. Parton's bitterness and Dr. Coggswell's
+enthusiasm will be as correct an estimate of his personal character as
+can be formed. It is a singular fact that Mr. Astor managed, in spite of
+the closeness which marked his operations, in spite of the small wages
+he paid, to inspire his employés with a zeal in his service that made
+them willing to undertake any thing, to endure any amount of labor, for
+him.
+
+"He once lost seventy thousand dollars by committing a piece of petty
+injustice toward his best captain. This gallant sailor, being notified
+by an insurance office of the necessity of having a chronometer on
+board his ship, spoke to Mr. Astor on the subject, who advised the
+captain to buy one.
+
+"'But,' said the captain, 'I have no five hundred dollars to spare for
+such a purpose; the chronometer should belong to the ship.'
+
+"'Well,' said the merchant, 'you need not pay for it now; pay for it at
+your convenience,'
+
+"The captain still objecting, Astor, after a prolonged higgling,
+authorized him to buy a chronometer and charge it to the ship's account,
+which was done.
+
+"Sailing day was at hand. The ship was hauled into the stream. The
+captain, as is the custom, handed in his account. Astor, subjecting it
+to his usual close scrutiny, observed the novel item of five hundred
+dollars for the chronometer. He objected, averring that it was
+understood between them that the captain was to pay for the instrument.
+The worthy sailor recalled the conversation, and firmly held to his
+recollection of it. Astor insisting on his own view of the matter, the
+captain was so profoundly disgusted that, important as the command of
+the ship was to him, he resigned his post. Another captain was soon
+found, and the ship sailed for China.
+
+"Another house, which was then engaged in the China trade, knowing the
+worth of this 'king of captains,' as Astor himself used to style him,
+bought him a ship and dispatched him to Canton two months after the
+departure of Astor's vessel. Our captain, put upon his mettle, employed
+all his skill to accelerate the speed of his ship, and had such success
+that he reached New York, with a full cargo of tea, just seven days
+after the arrival of Mr. Astor's ship. Astor, not expecting another ship
+for months, and therefore sure of monopolizing the market, had not yet
+broken bulk, nor even taken off the hatchways. Our captain arrived on a
+Saturday. Advertisements and handbills were immediately issued, and on
+the Wednesday morning following, as the custom then was, the auction
+sale of the tea began on the wharf--two barrels of punch contributing to
+the _eclat_ and hilarity of the occasion. The cargo was sold to good
+advantage, and the market was glutted. Astor lost in consequence the
+entire profits of the voyage, not less than the sum previously named.
+Meeting the captain some time after in Broadway, he said:
+
+"'I had better have paid for that chronometer of yours,'"
+
+Yet he could do a kind act when he was in the humor. When he was poor
+and struggling for fortune, he had a friend in the city named Pell, a
+coachmaker. As he advanced in the world he lost sight of his friend. One
+day a young man called on him to ask if he would sell one of his leases
+which he (the visitor) then held. He replied promptly and decidedly that
+he would not sell.
+
+"But what is your name?" he asked.
+
+"It is Pell," was the reply.
+
+"Pell--Pell--" said the old man, hesitating a moment, "I knew a man by
+that name once; he was a dear friend of mine, but I have not seen him
+for years."
+
+"That man," said the visitor, "was my father."
+
+"Indeed," exclaimed the old man, warmly; "your father? Why, he used to
+give me rides in his coaches. How I should like to see him."
+
+Then pausing a moment, and smiling as he recalled the past to his mind,
+he said:
+
+"You shall have the lease, young man. Go home, have the papers drawn,
+come here at eleven o'clock on Thursday, and I'll sign them. But don't
+put in any consideration."
+
+The engagement was kept punctually by both parties.
+
+"Have you got the papers?" asked the merchant. "Did you put in the
+consideration? Well, let it be one hundred dollars. Have you got the
+money about you? Well, no matter, Bruce will keep the lease till you
+come and pay. I've given you two thousand dollars, young man. Don't you
+buy any more, for I sha'n't do it again. You tell your father that I
+remember him, and that I have given you two thousand dollars."
+
+Mr. Astor dearly liked a joke, and occasionally indulged in a sly bit of
+humor himself. On one occasion a committee called upon him to solicit a
+donation for some charitable object. The old man took the subscription
+list, and, after examining it, signed it and gave the committee a check
+for fifty dollars. They had expected much more, and one of them ventured
+to say:
+
+"We did hope for more, Mr. Astor. Your son gave us a hundred dollars."
+
+"Ah!" replied the old man, dryly, "William has a rich father. Mine was
+very poor."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+ALEXANDER T. STEWART.
+
+
+In the year 1818, a European vessel anchored in the harbor of New York,
+after a long and weary voyage from the Old World. She brought many
+passengers to the young metropolis, the majority of whom came with the
+intention of seeking fortunes in this land of promise.
+
+Among them was a young Irishman who had left his home in his native land
+to seek in America the means of bettering his condition. This was
+ALEXANDER T. STEWART. He was the son of Scotch-Irish parents, and was
+born in Belfast in 1802. Being only three years old when his father
+died, his grandfather took charge of him, and proved a kind and
+judicious guardian. As he was designed for the ministry by his relative,
+and as his own tastes inclined him to that profession, he was given a
+good common school education, and placed at college, where he made
+favorable progress in his class. He was particularly successful in the
+classics, and is said to retain his relish for them at the present day.
+
+During his second term his grandfather died, and he was by this event
+obliged to leave college. Abandoning the idea of entering the ministry,
+he embarked for America, determined to make a fortune in the New World.
+He came sufficiently supplied with ready money to insure him against
+immediate want, and with letters of introduction which at once secured
+him an excellent social position.
+
+After trying in vain for some time to secure employment in a business
+house, he obtained a position as assistant in a commercial school. This
+he soon resigned for a similar place in a more celebrated school. His
+salary here was $300, which was considered ample compensation in those
+days.
+
+Not wishing to continue in this career, however, he opened a small
+retail dry goods store in New York, and began business on a humble
+scale. Here he remained until the age of twenty-one, manifesting no
+extraordinary business capacity, and in no way distinguished from the
+many small dealers around him. Upon reaching his majority he returned to
+Ireland, to look after the inheritance left him by his grandfather. The
+amount which thus came to him was nearly one thousand pounds, and the
+greater part of this he invested in "insertions" and "scollop
+trimmings," which he shipped to America by the vessel in which he
+returned. He rented a little store, on his return, at 283 Broadway, and
+there displayed his stock, which met with a ready sale at a fair profit.
+
+Without mercantile experience, and possessing little advantage, save his
+own Scotch-Irish energy and courage, Mr. Stewart started boldly on what
+proved the road to fortune. No young merchant ever worked harder than
+he. From fourteen to eighteen hours each day were given to his business.
+He was his own book-keeper, salesman, and porter. He could not afford to
+employ help. Credit was hard to obtain in those days, and young
+merchants were not favorites with those who had such favors to bestow.
+Mr. Stewart was one of the least favored, inasmuch as he was almost a
+total stranger to the business community in which he lived. He kept a
+small stock of goods on hand, which he purchased for cash chiefly at
+the auction sales. He was a regular attendant at these sales, and his
+purchases were invariably "sample lots"--that is, collections of small
+quantities of various articles thrown together in confusion, and sold in
+heaps for what they would bring. He had these purchases conveyed to his
+store, and after the business of the day was over, he and his wife would
+take these "sample lots," and by carefully assorting them, bring order
+out of the confusion. Every article was patiently gone over. Gloves were
+redressed and smoothed out, laces pressed free from the creases which
+careless bidders had twisted into them, and hose made to look as fresh
+as if they had never been handled. Each article being good in itself,
+was thus restored to its original excellence. The goods were then
+arranged in their proper places on the shelves of the store, and by
+being offered at a lower price than that charged by retail dealers
+elsewhere in the city, met with a ready sale. Even at this low price the
+profit was great, since they had been purchased for a mere trifle. For
+six years Mr. Stewart continued to conduct his business in this way,
+acquiring every day a larger and more profitable trade. Here he laid
+down those principles of business and personal integrity from which he
+has never departed, and which have led-him to the honorable position he
+now holds.
+
+"His first rule was _honesty_ between seller and buyer. His career is a
+perfect exemplification of Poor Richard's maxim: 'Honesty is the best
+policy,' and of the poet's declaration: 'Nothing can need a lie,' His
+interest consorted with his inclination, his policy with his principles,
+and the business with the man, when he determined that the truth should
+be told over his counter, and that no misrepresentation of his goods
+should be made. He never asked, he never would suffer, a clerk to
+misrepresent the quality of his merchandise. Clerks who had been
+educated at other stores to cheat customers, and then to laugh off the
+transaction as 'cuteness,' or defend it as 'diamond cut diamond,' found
+no such slipshod morality at Stewart's little store, and learned
+frankness and fairness in representation at the peril of dismissal.
+Their employer asked no gain from deceit in trade. On his part, too, in
+buying, he rarely gave a seller a second opportunity to misrepresent
+goods to him.
+
+"A second innovation of the young dry goods dealer was selling at _one
+price_--a custom which has also lasted without interruption, and which
+has spread to all the great houses. He fixed his price, after careful
+consideration, at what he thought the goods could and would bring, and
+would not deviate from it for any haggling, or to suit individual cases.
+Of course, he followed the fluctuations of the market, and marked his
+goods up or down in accordance with it; but no difference in the price
+was made to different people. Perhaps those who had some art in 'beating
+down' prices were offended, but people in general were pleased.
+
+"The third principle he adopted was that of _cash on delivery_. It is
+said that his own early experience of buying on credit, and selling on
+credit, drove him to this rule.
+
+"A fourth principle with him was to conduct business as business--not as
+sentiment. His aim was honorable profit, and he had no purpose of
+confusing it by extraneous considerations."
+
+While still engaged in his first struggles in his little store, Mr.
+Stewart found himself called on to make arrangements to pay a note which
+would soon become due. It was for a considerable sum, and he had neither
+the money nor the means of borrowing it. It was a time when the
+mercantile community of New York regarded a failure to pay a note as a
+crime, and when such a failure was sure to bring ruin to any new man.
+Mr. Stewart knew this, and felt that he must act with greater resolution
+and daring than he had ever before exhibited, if he would save himself
+from dishonor. To meet the crisis he adopted a bold and skillful
+maneuver. He marked down every article in his store far below the
+wholesale price. This done, he had a number of handbills printed,
+announcing that he would sell off his entire stock of goods below cost,
+within a given time. He scattered these handbills broadcast through the
+city, and it was not long before purchasers began to flock to his store
+to secure the great bargains which his advertisements offered them. His
+terms were "cash," and he had little difficulty in selling. Purchasers
+found that they thus secured the best goods in the market at a lower
+figure than they had ever been offered before in New York, and each one
+was prompt to advise relatives and friends to avail themselves of the
+favorable opportunity. Customers were plentiful; the little Broadway
+store was thronged all day, and long before the expiration of the period
+he had fixed for the duration of his sales, Mr. Stewart found his
+shelves empty and his treasury full. He paid his note with a part of the
+money he had thus received, and with the rest laid in a fresh stock of
+goods. He was fortunate in his purchases at this time, for, as the
+market was extremely dull and ready money scarce, he, by paying cash,
+bought his goods at very low prices.
+
+The energy, industry, patience, and business tact displayed by Mr.
+Stewart during these first years of his commercial life brought him
+their sure reward, and in 1828, just six years after commencing
+business, he found his little store too small and humble for the large
+and fashionable trade which had come to him. Three new stores had just
+been erected on Broadway, between Chambers and Warren Streets, and he
+leased the smallest of these and moved into it. It was a modest
+building, only three stories high and but thirty feet deep, but it was a
+great improvement on his original place. He was enabled to fill it with
+a larger and more attractive stock of goods, and his business was
+greatly benefited by the change. He remained in this store for four
+years, and in 1832 removed to a two-story building located on Broadway,
+between Murray and Warren Streets. Soon after occupying it, he was
+compelled, by the growth of his business, to add twenty feet to the
+depth of the store and a third story to the building. A year or two
+later a fourth story was added, and in 1837 a fifth story, so rapidly
+did he prosper.
+
+His trade was now with the wealthy and fashionable class of the city. He
+had surmounted all his early difficulties, and laid the foundation of
+that splendid fortune which he has since won. The majority of his
+customers were ladies, and he now resolved upon an expedient for
+increasing their number. He had noticed that the ladies, in "shopping,"
+were given to the habit of gossiping, and even flirting with the clerks,
+and he adopted the expedient of employing as his salesmen the handsomest
+men he could procure, a practice which has since become common. The plan
+was successful from the first. Women came to his store in greater
+numbers than before, and "Stewart's nice young men" were the talk of the
+town.
+
+The great crisis of 1837 found Mr. Stewart a prosperous and rising man,
+and that terrible financial storm which wrecked so many of the best of
+the city firms did not so much as leave its mark on him. Indeed, while
+other men were failing all around him, he was coining money. It had
+always been his habit to watch the market closely, in order to profit by
+any sudden change in it, and his keen sagacity enabled him to see the
+approach of the storm long before it broke, and to prepare for it.
+
+He at once marked down all his goods as low as possible, and began to
+"sell for cost," originating the system which is now so popular. The
+prices were very low, and the goods of the best quality. Every body
+complained of the hard times, and all were glad to save money by
+availing themselves of "Stewart's bargains." In this way he carried on a
+retail cash trade of five thousand dollars per day in the midst of the
+most terrible crisis the country has ever seen. Other merchants were
+reduced to every possible expedient, and were compelled to send their
+goods to auction to be sold for what they would bring, so great was
+their need of ready money. Stewart attended all these auctions
+regularly, and purchased the goods thus offered. These he sold rapidly
+by means of his "cost system," realizing an average profit of forty per
+cent. It is said that he purchased fifty thousand dollars worth of silks
+in this way, and sold the whole lot in a few days, making a profit of
+twenty thousand dollars on the transaction. Thus he not only passed
+through the "crisis," but made a fortune in the midst of it.
+
+From that time to the present day his march to fortune has been
+uninterrupted. Nearly a quarter of a century ago he purchased the
+property which is now the site of his wholesale store, and commenced to
+erect the splendid marble warehouse which he still occupies. His friends
+were surprised at his temerity. They told him it was too far up town,
+and on the wrong side of Broadway, but he quietly informed them that a
+few years would vindicate his wisdom, and see his store the center of
+the most flourishing business neighborhood of New York. His predictions
+have been more than realized.
+
+He moved into his new store in 1846, and continued to expand and enlarge
+his business every year. Some years ago he purchased the old
+Ninth-Street Dutch Church and the lots adjacent to it, comprising the
+entire block lying between Ninth and Tenth Streets, Broadway and Fourth
+Avenue. When he found the retail trade going up town, and deserting its
+old haunts below Canal Street, he erected a fine iron building at the
+corner of Broadway and Tenth Street, to which he removed the retail
+department of his business, continuing his wholesale trade at his old
+store on Chambers Street. This new "upper store" has increased with the
+business. The building now covers the entire block upon which it is
+erected, and is the largest, most complete, and magnificent
+establishment of its kind in the world.
+
+Though he took no active part in politics, he was too much interested in
+public affairs, by reason of his immense wealth, not to watch them
+closely. He was satisfied, some time before our late troubles began,
+that war must come, and quietly made contracts with nearly all the
+manufacturers for all their productions for a considerable period of
+time. Accordingly, when the war did come, it was found that nearly all
+the articles of clothing, blankets, etc., needed for the army had been
+monopolized by him. His profits on these transactions amounted to many
+millions of dollars, though it should be remarked that his dealings with
+the Government were characterized by an unusual degree of liberality.
+The gains thus realized by him more than counterbalanced the losses he
+sustained by the sudden cessation of his Southern trade.
+
+Fifty years have now passed away since the young school-teacher landed
+in New York, and he stands to-day at the head of the mercantile
+interests of the New World. In the half-century which has elapsed since
+then, he has won a fortune which is variously estimated at from
+twenty-five to forty millions of dollars. He has gained all this wealth
+fairly, not by trickery and deceit, or even by a questionable honesty,
+but by a series of mercantile transactions the minutest of which bears
+the impress of his sterling integrity, and by a patience, energy, tact,
+and genius of which few men are possessed. Surely, then, it must be a
+proud thought to him that he has done all this _himself_, by his own
+unaided efforts, and that amid all his wonderful success there does not
+rest one single stain upon his good name as a man or a merchant.
+
+It is said that Mr. Stewart regards himself as a "lucky man," rather
+than as one who has risen by the force of his own genius. A writer in
+the New York _Herald_ relates the following incident, as illustrative of
+the superstition which this feeling of "luck" has given rise to with
+him: "When he kept his store on Broadway, between Murray and Warren
+Streets, there sat on the sidewalk before it, on an orange box, an old
+woman, whose ostensible occupation was the selling of apples. This
+business was, however, merely a pretense; the main object being beggary.
+As years rolled on, Mr. Stewart became impressed with the idea that the
+old dame was his guardian angel of good luck, and this impression took
+so firm a hold upon his mind that when he removed to Chambers Street,
+he, in person, took up the old woman's box, and removed her to the front
+of his new establishment. In further illustration of Mr. Stewart's faith
+in the Irish traditional belief in 'lucky' and 'unlucky' persons, it may
+be mentioned that, after the completion of the St. Nicholas Hotel in
+this city, an undertaking in which he was largely interested, and when
+the building was just about to be opened for the reception of guests,
+the millionaire, standing in the drawing-room, ejaculated, 'It is now
+finished; I hope its first visitors may be lucky people.'
+
+"A gentleman present, who had heard of Mr. Stewart's care for the aged
+apple vendor, remarked, 'I presume, sir, you do not in reality care
+about lucky or unlucky persons;' to which he immediately replied,
+'Indeed, I do. There are persons who are unlucky. I sometimes open a
+case of goods, and sell the first from it to some person who is unlucky,
+and lose on it to the end. I frequently see persons to whom I would not
+sell if I could avoid it.'"
+
+The first incident, if true, doubtless illustrates the quiet kindness
+with which Mr. Stewart watches over the poor that he takes under his
+care--and they are many. He has won his success too fairly to be a
+believer in mere _luck_. There is no such thing as chance in this world.
+Men are the architects of their own fortunes.
+
+One of the principal reasons of his success is the rigid system with
+which he conducts his business. He has a place for every thing, and a
+time for every duty, and requires the same regularity from his
+subordinates. His salesmen and managers are thoroughly versed in their
+duties, and the more important of them are selected with great care.
+Every thing works smoothly under the master's eye, and there is a
+penalty for each and every delinquency, which is rigidly exacted.
+
+Mr. Stewart is one of the hardest workers in his establishment. His
+partners relieve him of the details, but the general management of his
+immense business he trusts to no other hands. His eye is on every thing.
+He is familiar with every detail, though he does not take upon himself
+its direction. He goes to his business between nine and ten in the
+morning, stopping first at his upper store. He makes a brief but
+thorough inspection here, and learns the general progress of the day,
+and then repairs to his lower or wholesale store, where he remains
+during business hours, and returns home between five and six in the
+afternoon, stopping again at the upper store. He works hard, and is
+never absent from his post unless detained by sickness.
+
+His time is valuable, and he is not willing to waste it.
+
+Many persons endeavor to see him merely to gratify their impertinent
+curiosity, and others wish to intrude upon him for purposes which would
+simply consume his time. To protect himself, he has been compelled to
+resort to the following expedient: A gentleman is kept on guard near the
+main door of the store, whose duty is to inquire the business of
+visitors. If the visitor wishes to see Mr. Stewart, the "sentinel"
+informs him that he must first state his business to him. If the visitor
+urges that it is private, he is told that Mr. Stewart has no private
+business. If his errand meets the approval of the gentleman on guard, he
+is allowed to go up stairs, where he is met by the confidential agent of
+the great merchant, to whom he must repeat the object of his visit. If
+this gentleman is satisfied, or can not get rid of the visitor, he
+enters the private office of his employer and lays the case before him.
+If the business of the visitor is urgent he is admitted, otherwise, he
+is refused an interview. If admitted, the conference is brief and to the
+point. There is no time lost. Matters are dispatched with a method and
+promptitude which astonish strangers. If the visitor attempts to draw
+the merchant into a friendly conversation, or indulges in useless
+complimentary phrases, after the matter on which he came is settled, Mr.
+Stewart's manner instantly becomes cold and repelling, and troublesome
+persons are sometimes given a hint which hastens their departure. This
+is his working time, and it is precious to him. He can not afford to
+waste it upon idlers. In social life he is said to be exceedingly
+affable.
+
+The greater portion of Mr. Stewart's immense fortune is invested in real
+estate. Besides his two stores on Broadway, he owns the Metropolitan
+Hotel and the New York Theater, also on Broadway; nearly all of Bleecker
+Street from Broadway to Depauw Row, several churches, a number of
+buildings, and many valuable lots. He resides at the north-east corner
+of the Fifth Avenue and Thirty-fourth Street. Immediately opposite he is
+building one of the finest residences in the world, and the most superb
+in America. He owns more real estate than any man in America except
+William B. Astor, and is the most successful merchant in the world.
+
+Mr. Stewart is said to be extremely liberal in his donations to objects
+which meet with his sympathy. The majority of these donations are
+quietly made, as he has a repugnance to public charities. He gave
+liberally to the cause of the Union during the war. During that struggle
+he sent a cargo of provisions to Ireland, where much distress existed,
+and then invited as many emigrants as the vessel would carry to take
+passage to America in her, free of charge. One hundred and thirty-nine
+persons availed themselves of his offer, and upon reaching America were
+all provided with good situations by him. At present he is engaged in
+erecting on the Fourth Avenue a large building, in which homes will be
+provided for poor working females, at a small expense to them. It is
+said that this noble project will require an outlay of several millions
+of dollars. His friends--and he has many--speak of him as exceedingly
+kind and liberal, and seem much attached to him.
+
+As I have said before, Mr. Stewart has not cared for political
+distinction, but has rather shunned it. He was a member of the Union
+Defense Committee during the war, and in 1866 was one of the signers of
+the Saratoga address, calling on the people of the country to sustain
+the policy of President Johnson. His warm friendship for General Grant
+caused him to be one of the earliest advocates of the election of the
+latter to the Presidency. He was a candidate for Presidential Elector on
+the Republican ticket for the State of New York, but was defeated, with
+his associates, by the Democracy.
+
+His intimate relations with General Grant, together with his vast
+financial experience, induced many persons to believe that he would be
+offered a place in the Cabinet of the new President. These expectations
+were realized by his nomination to the post of Secretary of the
+Treasury, on the 5th of March, 1869, and his immediate and unanimous
+confirmation by the Senate. He was about to enter upon his new duties,
+when it was discovered that there existed an old and almost forgotten
+law forbidding any merchant from becoming the head of the Treasury
+Department. As soon as this discovery was made, Mr. Stewart expressed
+his desire to withdraw from the position, and thus relieve the President
+of all embarrassment upon the subject, but the latter, wishing, if
+possible, to retain him in the Cabinet, urged him to delay his action,
+with the hope that the difficulty might be obviated. Willing to oblige
+his friend, and anxious to serve the country, Mr. Stewart consented to
+do this, but finding that certain persons were seeking to make his
+nomination a source of trouble to the Administration, offered either to
+resign the place or to relinquish his entire interest in his business
+during the period of his Secretaryship, and to donate his immense
+profits for that time to the poor of the city of New York. This
+sacrifice, he hoped, would render him eligible; but the President was
+unwilling to accept the princely offer--the noblest ever made by any
+man--and Mr. Stewart finally withdrew from the contest.
+
+There can be no doubt that he would have been the best Secretary that
+could have been placed at the head of the Treasury. His great financial
+experience and his unquestioned ability were better qualifications than
+those possessed by any politician in the land. Perhaps the best proof of
+the satisfaction which his appointment produced in the minds of the
+thinking men of the country is the manner in which the news affected
+the money market. Gold fell as soon as the announcement was made.
+
+Few strangers ever come to New York and depart without visiting
+Stewart's famous store at the corner of Tenth Street and Broadway. The
+lower, or wholesale store, is far more important to its owner; but it
+conducts its operations exclusively with dealers, and in such a quiet
+and systematic way that it seems to attract but little attention among
+the masses. It is the upper or retail store that is the wonder of the
+great city in which it is located.
+
+It is constructed of iron, in the style of arcade upon arcade, and is
+lighted by numerous windows. It fronts two hundred feet on Broadway, and
+three hundred feet on Ninth and Tenth Streets. It covers an area of
+about two acres, is five stories and an attic in height, and has two
+cellars underneath. It is warmed by steam, and contains several
+steam-engines for hoisting goods, running the machines employed in the
+manufacturing department, and forcing water into the immense tank at the
+top of the building. Six elevators and several handsome stairways
+connect the various floors. Three of the elevators are used for
+conveying customers up and down, and the others for hoisting and
+lowering goods. The building is lighted by several thousand gas jets,
+which are all set aflame simultaneously by electricity.
+
+The various floors, with the exception of the first, are broken only by
+a rotunda, which extends to the roof, and is inclosed at each floor by a
+massive iron balustrade. Leaning over one of these balustrades, and
+looking up or down, the sight is brilliant and attractive. Thousands of
+persons are scattered about the floors making purchases. Hundreds of
+clerks, salesmen, and cash boys are busy serving them, and the buzz and
+hum of human voices under the vast roof sounds like the droning of a
+hive of bees.
+
+The service of this immense establishment is arranged as follows: There
+is one general superintendent, with nineteen assistants, each of whom is
+at the head of a department. Nine cashiers receive and pay out money;
+twenty-five book-keepers keep the record of the day; thirty ushers
+direct purchasers to the department they seek; two hundred cash boys
+receive the money and bring back the change of purchasers; four hundred
+and seventy clerks, a few of whom are females, make the sales of the
+day; fifty porters do the heavy work, and nine hundred seamstresses are
+employed in the manufacturing department. Besides these, there are
+usually about five hundred other persons employed about the
+establishment in various capacities, bringing the total strength of the
+_personelle_ of the house to twenty-two hundred.
+
+The accounts of each department are kept separate, and the sales of each
+for the day constitute a separate return. These sales will average
+something like the following figures:
+
+
+  Silks       $15,000
+  Dress goods   6,000
+  Muslins       3,000
+  Laces         2,000
+  Shawls        2,500
+  Suits         1,000
+  Calicoes      1,500
+  Velvets       2,000
+  Gloves        1,000
+  Furs          1,000
+  Hosiery         600
+  Boys' clothing  700
+  Notions         600
+  Embroideries  1,000
+  Carpets       5,500
+
+
+The total daily receipts average $60,000, and have been known to amount
+to $87,000.
+
+Salaries of subordinate clerks range from $5 to $25 per week. The cash
+boys receive $5 per week. If not fined for misconduct they receive a
+reward of $1 per month, and a further reward of $5 at the end of each
+half year. They are promoted as fast as their conduct and vacancies in
+the force of salesmen will allow. The number of employés being so large,
+the proprietor is compelled to keep them under the constant espionage of
+two experienced detectives, and each evening when they leave the store
+they are required to do so through a private door on Ninth Street, where
+the detectives are stationed to see that none of them carry away
+articles which do not belong to them.
+
+The number of visitors to the establishment in the busy season is very
+large. On special occasions, such as opening days, it is said to have
+reached fifty thousand, but the general average is placed at fifteen
+thousand, and they represent every grade in life. Rich and poor mingle
+here freely.
+
+The floors are arranged simply, and with regard to business rather than
+for show, but every thing is elegant and tasteful. The sub-cellar is
+used as a store-room for goods in cases. Here the fabrics are opened and
+sent to their departments. The cellar is the carpet sales-room. The
+first floor is the general sales-room, and is the most attractive place
+in the building. It is three hundred feet long by two hundred wide, and
+is provided with one hundred counters, each fifty feet in length. Behind
+these counters the goods are arranged, with no effort at display, on the
+shelves, which rise but a few feet above the counters. There is an
+abundance of light in all parts of the house, especially over the silk
+counters, which are just under the rotunda. The second floor is taken up
+with ladies' suits, shawls, curtain goods, etc., and the next floor is
+devoted to the same purpose. The fourth floor is used as a manufactory
+for making up the suits, etc., placed on sale or ordered by customers;
+on the fifth is the fur-room and upholstery manufactory; and the sixth
+is occupied as a laundry. The most perfect order is maintained in every
+part of the establishment, the mere direction of which requires
+administrative ability of a very high character.
+
+As fast as the sales are made, the articles, unless taken away by the
+purchaser, are sent to the parcel desk, which is located in the cellar.
+This is the busiest department in the house, and one of the most
+important. Each order is accompanied by a ticket stating the quality and
+amount of the goods, the price, and the address of the purchaser. It is
+remeasured and examined here, so that any error on the part of the
+salesman may be detected and repaired. Errors of this kind, however, are
+rare, and the burden of the labor in this department consists of making
+the goods up into secure packages and sending them to their
+destinations. The tickets delivered at the parcel desk are then sent to
+the checking desk, which is also in the basement, where they are
+compared with those delivered by the salesmen to the cashiers, and if no
+error is discovered, the goods are sent to the wagons for delivery.
+
+The wagon department constitutes a very important branch of the
+business. The vehicles and horses are accommodated in a fine stable on
+Amity Street, near Broadway. The building was formerly a Baptist church,
+and was presided over by the Rev. Dr. Williams. When the congregation
+went higher up town, they sold the old church, which found a purchaser
+in Mr. Stewart. He converted it into a stable, and has since more than
+doubled its size. The floor was taken up, a sewer built to carry off the
+waste water, and the place paved with brick and cement. It is now one of
+the best stables in the city. It contains over forty horses, and five
+grooms are on hand to attend to them. There are eight wagons employed at
+the up-town store to deliver parcels to purchasers, while thirteen
+single wagons are used by the lower store to cart single cases around
+town. In addition to these, there are ten double trucks to haul heavy
+goods. Twenty-seven drivers are employed, and thirteen hundred bushels
+of oats and fifty tons of hay are fed out during a year. The place is in
+charge of a watchman at night, and during the day is managed by a
+superintendent. At half-past eight the trucks report at the down-town
+store, and remain there all day. At the same moment one of the light
+wagons is dispatched to the retail store, and at once takes out the
+early sales. In an hour another wagon follows it, and this course is
+pursued all day until six o'clock, when the last wagon takes the last
+sales. By this system purchasers receive their parcels with dispatch,
+and the immense business of the day is entirely finished. Every week the
+superintendent of the stables makes a report of the condition of the
+horses and wagons, and this "stable report" is carefully inspected at
+head-quarters. In case of sickness or stubborn lameness, the horses are
+sent to the country to recruit.
+
+Mr. Stewart has a farm at Tuckahoe, where the invalid horses are kept,
+and where much of their provender is raised. This farm is noted for the
+valuable marble quarry which furnished the stone from which his new
+mansion on Fifth Avenue is built.
+
+The retail store contains fabrics of every description and price. The
+wife of a millionaire can gratify her fancy here to its utmost limit,
+while the poor sewing-girl can obtain her simple necessities at the same
+price which is demanded for them from the rich. In the shawl department,
+there are "wraps" worth as much as $4,500, but not more than one or two
+find a purchaser in the course of a year. Shawls at $3,000 find a sale
+of about twenty a year, and the number of purchasers increases as the
+price diminishes. The wealthy ladies of New York deal here extensively.
+One of the clerks of the establishment recently made a statement that a
+fashionable lady ran up a bill of $20,000 here in two months.
+
+Mr. Stewart, though leaving the details of the retail business in the
+hands of Mr. Tuller, the general superintendent, yet keeps himself
+thoroughly informed respecting it, and exercises over it a general
+supervision, to which its increasing success is due. He knows exactly
+what is in the house, how much is on hand, and how it is selling. He
+fixes the prices himself, and keeps them always at a popular figure. He
+is said to have an aversion to keeping goods over from one season to
+another, and would rather sacrifice them than do so. He has no dead
+stock on hand. His knowledge of the popular taste and its variations is
+intuitive, and his great experience enables him to anticipate its
+changes.
+
+"There can not be so much selling without proportionate buying, and
+Stewart is as systematic in the latter as the former. Of late he has not
+acted personally in making purchases, but has trusted to the system
+which he organized some years ago, and which he has found to admirably
+answer as his substitute. He has branch establishments exercising
+purchasing functions only in Boston and Philadelphia, in the United
+States; in Manchester, England; and in Paris and Lyons, France. But
+while these are his agencies, his buyers haunt the marts of the whole
+world. There is no center of commerce or manufacture of the wide range
+of articles in which he deals, on either of the continents, where he is
+not always present by deputy to seize upon favorable fluctuations of the
+market, or pounce upon some exceptionally excellent productions. He
+owns entire the manufactory of the celebrated Alexandre kid-glove. He
+has a body of men in Persia, organized under the inevitable
+superintendent, chasing down the Astrachan goat heavy with young, from
+which the unborn kids are taken and stripped of their skins, thus
+sacrificing two animals for every skin obtained. He rifles Lyons of its
+choicest silks, the famous productions of Bonnet and Ponson. Holland and
+Ireland yield him the first fruits of their looms. Belgium contributes
+the rarest of her laces, and the North sends down the finest of its
+Russian sables. All the looms of France, England, Belgium, and the
+United States are closely watched, and the finest fabrics in dress
+goods, muslins, carpets, and calicoes are caught up the moment the
+workmen put on the finishing touches. He buys for cash the world over,
+and is a customer every-where so recognized as desirable that he has his
+choice of industrial productions, and on more advantageous terms than
+his rivals can purchase what he leaves. He has been so long in the
+business, and has become so thoroughly versed in the productions of
+different looms in different countries, that it is now his practice to
+select certain mills noted for excellence of work, and take their entire
+supply, and thus it happens that there are many looms in the busiest
+haunts of the Old and New Worlds that toil unceasingly on his account.
+
+"By buying thus largely in foreign lands, he is, of course, the largest
+importer in the nation, and his duties average $30,000 gold per day.
+Every year his business steadily increases, and there is apparently no
+practical limit at which it will stop. As prudent in vast affairs as
+other men are in small, he insures liberally, and has policies renewed
+every third day throughout the year. But, while leaning upon the
+insurance companies, he is utterly independent of the banks; he has
+never asked one of them to 'carry' him through a crisis, and should such
+a contingency arise, there is no bank in the world competent to the
+task."
+
+Mr. Stewart is now sixty-eight years old, but looks much younger, being
+still as vigorous and active, both mentally and physically, as most men
+of forty-five. He is of the medium size, has light-brown hair and beard,
+which are closely trimmed. His features are sharp, well cut, his eye
+bright, and his general expression calm and thoughtful. His manner is
+reserved, and to all but his intimate friends cold. He dresses with
+great simplicity, but with taste, and in the style of the day. His
+habits are simple, and he avoids publicity in all things. Standing as he
+does at the head of the mercantile interests of the country, he affords
+a fine example of the calm and dignified manner in which a man of true
+merit may enjoy his legitimate success, and of the good use he may make
+of its fruits.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+AMOS LAWRENCE.
+
+
+Amos Lawrence was born at Groton, Massachusetts, on the 22d of April,
+1786. His ancestor came of a good English family, and was one of the
+company which sailed from England for the New World under Governor
+Winthrop, in 1630, and which, according to Grahame, contained "several
+wealthy and high-born persons, both men and women, who expressed their
+determination to follow truth and liberty into a desert, rather than to
+enjoy all the pleasures of the world under the dominion of superstition
+and slavery." This Lawrence settled in Watertown, and was one of the
+original proprietors of the town of Groton, which was founded in 1655.
+Samuel Lawrence, the father of the subject of this memoir, was the fifth
+in descent from the founder of the family, and was himself a gallant
+officer of the American army in the War of the Revolution, the close of
+which found him the possessor of a small farm, which yielded a modest
+support for his family.
+
+Young Amos was brought up on the farm, with none of the advantages of
+wealth, and with but a limited education, which he gained at the village
+schools, and which was seriously interfered with by his delicate health.
+He received his final training at the Groton Academy, to which, in after
+life, he became a liberal patron. "As we children came forward," he
+wrote, late in life, "we were carefully looked after, but were taught
+to use the talents intrusted to us; and every nerve was strained to
+provide for us the academy which is now doing so much there." Toward the
+close of the year 1799, when but a little over thirteen years of age, he
+took his final departure from school, and entered a store in the village
+of Dunstable, as clerk.
+
+He remained there but a few months, and then returned to Groton, where
+he obtained a place as apprentice in the store of a Mr. Brazer. This was
+the largest establishment in the place, and conducted a very important
+trade with the country for miles around. Boston was so far, and so
+difficult to reach in those days, that Groton came in for nearly all the
+business of its vicinity which the railroads have now taken to the city.
+Mr. Brazer's establishment, which was known as a "variety store," came
+in for the best part of this trade. Every thing was sold there;
+"puncheons of rum and brandy, bales of cloth, kegs of tobacco, with
+hardware and hosiery, shared attention in common with silks and threads,
+and all other articles for female use." Even medicines were sold there;
+and Dr. Wm. B. Lawrence, the son of our hero, assures us that his father
+was obliged to sell medicines, not only to customers, but to all the
+physicians within a circuit of twenty miles, who depended on this
+establishment for their supplies. "The confidence in his good judgment,"
+he adds, "was such that he was often consulted in preference to the
+physician, by those who were suffering from minor ails; and many were
+the extemporaneous doses which he administered for the weal or woe of
+the patient."
+
+The Brazer store was a prominent feature in Groton. It was a place of
+general resort, and close by was the tavern where the mail coaches
+stopped. Travelers were constantly passing through the town, bringing
+the news of those stirring days when Napoleon was rushing over Europe
+with his armies, overturning old states and building up new ones, and
+changing the destinies of the world. The domestic politics of the day
+were exciting, and it is likely that they aided, together with the
+events in the Old World, in imparting to the character of Mr. Lawrence
+the earnestness and gravity for which he was noted when a mere lad.
+
+Mr. Brazer had in his employ a number of clerks, but it was not long
+before the energy and business talent of young Lawrence made him the
+most trusted of all. Mr. Brazer did not give much personal attention to
+the store, and when he found that his young clerk was so admirable and
+reliable a manager, he left the business entirely in his hands. This was
+a post of unusual responsibility for one so young, but Amos Lawrence
+accepted it promptly, and labored to discharge its duties faithfully. He
+at once established the character for probity and fairness which
+distinguished him through life; his simple assertion was sufficient in
+any matter, being received with implicit trust by all who knew him. His
+duties kept him constantly employed, and though he lived within a mile
+of his father's house, weeks sometimes passed without giving him the
+opportunity of visiting it.
+
+Drunkenness was at that day the curse of New England. Every body drank,
+and such fiery fluids as brandy, whisky, rum, and gin were the
+favorites. Men, women, and children were addicted to the vice, and
+Groton was no exception to the rule. Mr. Brazer's store was famous for
+the good liquors served out to its customers, and his clerks were aware
+that their employer did not object to their helping themselves when they
+felt thirsty. Amos Lawrence fell into the habit to which all were given,
+and for some time went along with the rest; but at length he came to the
+conclusion that such indulgence was wantonly ruining his health, and he
+resolved to abstain entirely. "We five boys," said he, years afterward,
+"were in the habit, every forenoon, of making a drink compounded of rum,
+raisins, sugar, nutmegs, etc., with biscuit--all palatable to eat and
+drink. After being in the store four weeks, I found myself admonished by
+my appetite of the approach of the hour for indulgence. Thinking the
+habit might make trouble if allowed to grow stronger, without further
+apology to my seniors, I declined partaking with them. My first
+resolution was to abstain for a week, and, when the week was out, for a
+month, and then for a year. Finally, I resolved to abstain for the rest
+of my apprenticeship, which was for five years longer. During that whole
+period I never drank a spoonful, though I mixed gallons daily for my old
+master and his customers."
+
+At the same time, Mr. Lawrence determined that he would not use tobacco
+in any form. He was very fond of the odor of "the weed," and at one
+period of his life always kept a fine Havana in his drawer that he might
+enjoy the scent of it; but he was totally free from our disgusting
+national vice in any of its forms. In this respect, as indeed in all
+others, he offers a fine example to the rising youth of the present
+generation.
+
+On the 22d of April, 1807, Mr. Lawrence completed his twenty-first year,
+and his seven years' apprenticeship with Mr. Brazer came to an end. He
+was now of an age to enter into business for himself, and it was his
+intention to open a small store in Groton, in connection with a brother
+apprentice, but before doing so he decided to visit Boston for the
+purpose of establishing a credit. He reached the city with but twenty
+dollars in his pocket, richer, he subsequently declared, in his own
+estimation, than he ever felt before or afterward. While in the city, he
+received the offer of a clerkship from a mercantile house of good
+standing. It was entirely unsolicited, and took him by surprise, but he
+decided to accept it, and abandoned his idea of going into business for
+himself in Groton; and this act led to a career entirely different from
+that to which he had looked forward.
+
+Boston, in 1807, had a population of about thirty thousand, and the
+commercial position of the city was relatively much greater than at
+present. The foreign trade of the United States was enormous, and was
+carried on in American ships, and not, as at present, in foreign
+vessels. The total tonnage of American shipping engaged in this trade
+was seven hundred thousand tons, and of this Boston possessed a fair
+share. Her domestic trade was also important.
+
+"The merchants of Boston had then high places in the estimation of the
+world. The Perkinses, the Sargeants, the Mays, the Cabots, the
+Higginsons, and others, were known throughout the world for their
+integrity, their mercantile skill, and the extent and beneficial
+character of their operations. These were the golden days of Boston's
+commerce.... The standard of integrity was high, and though it would be
+absurd to suppose that there was not the usual amount of evil in the
+place, it may be assumed that in no part of the world was the young
+trader more likely to find severer judges of character and conduct, or
+to be better treated if he should afford unquestionable proofs of
+capacity and honesty."
+
+It was into this community that Mr. Lawrence now entered, and in which
+his life was spent. He gave such satisfaction to his employers that,
+when he had been with them a short time, they astonished him with the
+offer of a partnership. He was but partially acquainted with their
+affairs, but their manner of conducting their business did not please
+him, and he declined their offer. His sagacity was verified by the
+result. In a few months the firm failed, and the creditors appointed
+him to settle their affairs, which he did to their satisfaction.
+
+Being now out of employment, he resolved to commence business on his own
+account in Boston. He had made such a favorable impression upon the
+merchants of the city that he had no difficulty in obtaining credit. He
+rented a store in Cornhill, stocked it with dry goods, and began his
+career as a merchant. Four months after this, his father, who was keenly
+interested in his son's success, without consulting the latter,
+mortgaged his farm for one thousand dollars, and, repairing to Boston,
+placed the money in Amos Lawrence's hands. Mr. Lawrence was profoundly
+affected by this proof of his father's devotion, but he regretted it
+none the less, as he knew that his failure would bring ruin to his
+parent as well as to himself. "I told him," said he, forty years later,
+"that he did wrong to place himself in a situation to be made unhappy if
+I lost the money. He told me he _guessed I wouldn't lose it_, and I gave
+him my note." Mr. Lawrence made a prompt use of the money, and paid the
+mortgage at the proper time; but he had a narrow escape from loss, as
+the bank on which he had bills for the amount of the mortgage failed
+almost immediately after he had obtained specie for them.
+
+"This incident," he said, "shows how dangerous it is to the independence
+and comfort of families for parents to take pecuniary responsibilities
+for their sons in trade, beyond their power of meeting them without
+embarrassment. Had any Hillsborough bank-notes not been paid as they
+were, nearly the whole amount would have been lost, and myself and my
+family might have been ruined. The incident was so striking that I have
+uniformly discouraged young men who have applied to me for credit,
+offering their fathers as bondsmen; and by doing so I believe I have
+saved some respectable families from ruin. My advice, however, has
+sometimes been rejected with anger. A young man who can not get along
+without such aid will not be likely to get along with it."
+
+He began his business upon principles of prudence and economy, which he
+rigidly maintained throughout his whole life. He never allowed himself
+to anticipate his gains, and having fixed his personal expenses at a
+certain sum, he never went beyond it. His system, which is thus stated
+by himself, is offered here as a safe and admirable rule for all
+persons:
+
+"When I commenced, the embargo had just been laid, and with such
+restrictions on trade that many were induced to leave it. But I felt
+great confidence that, by industry, economy, and integrity, I could get
+a living; and the experiment showed that I was right. Most of the young
+men who commenced at that period failed by spending too much money, and
+using credit too freely.
+
+"I adopted the plan of keeping an accurate account of merchandise bought
+and sold each day, with the profit, as far as practicable. This plan was
+pursued for a number of years, and I never found my merchandise fall
+short in taking an account of stock, which I did as often at least as
+once in each year. I was thus enabled to form an opinion of my actual
+state as a business man. I adopted also the rule always to have
+property, after my second year's business, to represent forty per cent,
+at least more than I owed--that is, never to be in debt more than two
+and a half times my capital. This caution saved me from ever getting
+embarrassed. If it were more generally adopted, we should see fewer
+failures in business. Excessive credit is the rock on which so many
+business men are broken."
+
+Mr. Lawrence was very successful from the first. His profits during his
+first year were fifteen hundred dollars, and over four thousand during
+the second. In seven years he made over fifty thousand dollars. He paid
+the closest attention to his business, and nothing could draw him from
+it in working hours. After these were over he would take his pleasure.
+His aim was to keep every thing in the most complete state possible.
+During the first seven years of his business he never allowed a bill
+against him to stand unsettled over the Sabbath. If he made a purchase
+of goods on Saturday, and they were delivered to him that day, he always
+examined and settled the bill by note, or by crediting it, and leaving
+it clear, so that there should be no unfinished business to go over to
+the next week, and make trouble for his clerks in case he should not be
+at his post. "Thus," said he, "I always kept my business _before_ me,
+instead of allowing it to drive me."
+
+The first years of Mr. Lawrence's mercantile experience covered the
+darkest period of the history of the Republic. They were marked by the
+embargo, the crippling of our commerce by the hostility of England and
+France, and the second war with Great Britain, in all of which there was
+much to dis-hearten a beginner, even if he escaped positive loss.
+Nothing was certain. The events of a single hour might undo the labor of
+years, and baffle the best laid plans. Yet he persevered, and went
+steadily on to fortune. He was remarkable for his keen foresight, as
+well as for his prudence, and was always on the alert to profit by the
+fluctuations of the market. Yet he abominated speculation. He averred
+that speculation made men desperate and unfit for legitimate business,
+and that it led them, when under excitement, to the commission of acts
+against which their cooler judgment would have warned them. The fair
+profits of legitimate business were, in his opinion, sure to reward any
+honest and capable man. His aim was to elevate commerce, and not to
+degrade it. He introduced into Boston the system of double-entry in
+book-keeping, in advance of any other city merchant. He was prompt and
+faithful in the performance of every contract, and required a similar
+course toward himself from all indebted to him, as long as they were
+able to do so. When they became unfortunate, he was kind and generous,
+ready to compromise upon the most liberal terms, or to give them their
+own time for payment; and it is recorded of him that he never dealt
+harshly with a debtor who had failed in business.
+
+As long as such a course was necessary, Mr. Lawrence devoted himself
+entirely to his business, but after he had placed it on a safe footing,
+he was careful to reserve to himself time for other duties and for
+relaxation. No man, he said, had the right to allow his business to
+engross his entire life. "Property acquired at such sacrifices as I have
+been obliged to make the past year," he wrote at the commencement of
+1826, "costs more than it is worth; and the anxiety in protecting it is
+the extreme of folly." He never lost sight of the fact that man is a
+responsible, intelligent being, placed in the world for other purposes
+than the mere acquisition of wealth.
+
+In October, 1808, his brother, Abbott Lawrence, afterward famous as a
+merchant and statesman, came to him as an apprentice, and on the 1st of
+January, 1814, he was admitted to partnership, the style of the firm
+being A. & A. Lawrence. This partnership was terminated only by the
+death of the elder brother in 1852. Their business was the importation
+and sale of foreign manufactures, and the firm soon took its place at
+the head of the Boston merchants engaged in this trade. The tariffs of
+1816 and 1824 gave a new and powerful impetus to the manufacture of
+woolens and cottons in this country, and the Lawrences entered largely
+into the sale of these goods on commission. In 1830, they became
+interested in the cotton mills at Lowell; and on the establishment of
+the Suffolk, Tremont, and Lawrence Companies, as well as subsequently in
+other corporations, they became large proprietors. From this time their
+business as selling agents was on the most extensive scale, and their
+income from all sources large in proportion. They amassed large
+fortunes, and won names which are the most precious heritages of their
+children.
+
+Perhaps the best exposition of the principles upon which these brothers
+conducted their commercial operations is found in the following letter
+from the elder to the younger, written on the 11th of March, 1815, upon
+the occasion of a visit to England by the latter on business for the
+firm:
+
+
+     MY DEAR BROTHER--I have thought best, before you go abroad, to
+     suggest a few hints for your benefit in your intercourse with the
+     people among whom you are going. As a first and leading principle,
+     let every transaction be of that pure and honest character that you
+     would not be ashamed to have appear before the whole world as
+     clearly as to yourself. In addition to the advantages arising from
+     an honest course of conduct with your fellow-men, there is the
+     satisfaction of reflecting within yourself that you have endeavored
+     to do your duty; and however greatly the best may fall short of
+     doing all they ought, they will be sure not to do more than their
+     principles enjoin.
+
+     It is, therefore, of the highest consequence that you should not
+     only cultivate correct principles, but that you should place your
+     standard of action so high as to require great vigilance in living
+     up to it.
+
+     In regard to your business transactions, let every thing be so
+     registered in your books, that any person, without difficulty, can
+     understand the whole of your concerns. You may be cut off in the
+     midst of your pursuits, and it is of no small consequence that your
+     temporal affairs should always be so arranged that you may be in
+     readiness.
+
+     If it is important that you should be well prepared in this point
+     of view, how much more important is it that you should be prepared
+     in that which relates to eternity!
+
+     You are young, and the course of life seems open, and pleasant
+     prospects greet your ardent hopes; but you must remember that the
+     race is not always to the swift, and that, however flattering may
+     be our prospects, and however zealously you may seek pleasure, you
+     can never find it except by cherishing pure principles and
+     practicing right conduct. My heart is full on this subject, my dear
+     brother, and it is the only one on which I feel the least anxiety.
+
+     While here, your conduct has been such as to meet my entire
+     approbation; but the scenes of another land may be more than your
+     principles will stand against. I say _may be_, because young men of
+     as fair promise as yourself have been lost by giving a small
+     latitude (innocent in the first instance) to their propensities.
+     But I pray the Father of all mercies to have you in his keeping,
+     and preserve you amid temptations.
+
+     I can only add my wish to have you write me frequently and
+     particularly, and that you will embrace every opportunity of
+     gaining information.
+
+     Your affectionate brother, AMOS LAWRENCE.
+
+     TO ABBOTT LAWRENCE.
+
+
+In his politics, Mr. Lawrence was a Federalist, and then a Whig. He
+served for one term in the State Legislature as a Representative from
+Boston, with credit to himself, but afterward avoided any active
+participation in public events. When his nephew-by-marriage, General
+Pierce, was a candidate for the Presidency, he was very much gratified
+personally by the selection of the Democracy, but declined to vote for
+him. In a letter to a friend, written at this time, he said: "I had a
+charming ride yesterday with my nephew, Frank Pierce, and told him I
+thought he must occupy the White House the next term, but that I would
+go for Scott. Pierce is a fine, spirited fellow, and will do his duty
+wherever placed. Scott will be my choice for President of the United
+States."
+
+Regarding himself as a steward of the riches committed to him, Amos
+Lawrence was liberal in his charities. During the last twenty-four years
+of his life he kept an accurate account of the sums he thus distributed,
+but with no idea that the statement, which he intended for his own eye
+only, would ever be made public. During this period he gave away six
+hundred and thirty-nine thousand dollars. The greater part of this was
+given away in ten years, and during a period when his average income was
+sixty thousand dollars a year. He was a liberal patron of education,
+giving large sums to its extension; and it was his delight to assist
+poor clergymen, without regard to denominations. He gave away clothing,
+food, books, etc., in large quantities, as well as ready money. "Two
+rooms in his house," says his son and biographer, "and sometimes three,
+were used principally for the reception of useful articles for
+distribution. There, when stormy weather or ill-health prevented him
+from taking his usual drive, he was in the habit of passing hours in
+selecting and packing up articles which he considered suitable to the
+wants of those whom he wished to aid." He did not forget the children,
+and many of his packages contained toys, and books, and other things
+calculated to promote their enjoyment.
+
+He was beset with beggars of all kinds, many of whom he was compelled to
+refuse. In his diary, he wrote on the 11th of April, 1849, "Applications
+come in from all quarters, for all objects. The reputation of giving
+freely is a very bad reputation, so far as my personal comfort is
+concerned."
+
+It pained him to have his charities made public, and he frequently
+requested the recipients to say nothing about them. He once made a
+present of some books to the Johnson school for girls, and the gift
+being acknowledged through the columns of a newspaper, he wrote to the
+principal of the school: "I merely want to say that I hope you will not
+put me in the newspaper at present, and when my work is done here, if
+you have any thing to say about me that will not hurt my children and
+grandchildren, say on," To another party he wrote: "I must request that
+my name be not thrust forward, as though I was to be a by-word for my
+vanity. I want to do good, but am sorry to be published, as in the
+recent case."
+
+As a merchant, Mr. Lawrence was upright, prudent, far-seeing, sagacious,
+and courageous; as a citizen, he was patriotic, public-spirited, and
+devoted; and as a man, he was a sincere, earnest, Christian husband,
+father, and friend. Viewed in any light, his character affords one of
+the most perfect models to be found in our history. He was the Christian
+_gentleman_ in all things, even in the minutest detail of his business.
+His standard was very high, but he came up to it. Courteous and
+dignified in manner, with a face handsome and winning in youth, and
+gentle and benignant in age, he made scores of friends wherever he went,
+for it was a true index to his character. It is a significant and
+interesting fact that, during the hottest passages of the old
+nullification times, although his views were known to be
+uncompromisingly opposed to the attitude of the South, he never lost the
+warmest friendship of some of the most advanced of the South Carolina
+leaders. When one thinks of the friendships that were wrecked amid the
+passions of those days, this fact speaks volumes for the personal
+attributes of Mr. Lawrence.
+
+He was a true American--proud of his country's past, hopeful for her
+future, and desiring nothing better than to live and die in the land of
+his birth. He sent his children abroad that they might see the Old
+World, and profit by the lessons learned there, but he strove earnestly
+to keep them true to their country. To his son, who was traveling in
+France in 1829, he wrote:
+
+"Bring home no foreign fancies which are inapplicable to our state of
+society. It is very common for our young men to come home and appear
+quite ridiculous in attempting to introduce their foreign fashions. It
+should be always kept in mind that the state of society is widely
+different here from that in Europe; and our comfort and character
+require it should long remain so. Those who strive to introduce many of
+the European habits and fashions, by displacing our own, do a serious
+injury to the republic, and deserve censure. An idle person, with good
+powers of mind, becomes torpid and inactive after a few years of
+indulgence, and is incapable of making any high effort. Highly important
+it is, then, to avoid this enemy of mental and moral improvement. I have
+no wish that you pursue trade; I would rather see you on a farm, or
+studying any profession.
+
+"It should always be your aim so to conduct yourself that those whom you
+value most in the world would approve your conduct, if your actions were
+laid bare to their inspection; and thus you will be pretty sure that He
+who sees the motive of all our actions will accept the good designed,
+though it fall short in its accomplishment. You are young, and are
+placed in a situation of great peril, and are, perhaps, sometimes
+tempted to do things which you would not do if you knew yourself under
+the eye of your guardian. The blandishments of a beautiful city may lead
+you to forget that you are always surrounded, supported, and seen by
+that best Guardian."
+
+He was an eminently just man, and he carried this trait into the little
+details of his domestic life. His household adored him; and his friends
+were bound to him by ties unusually strong. He was firm and positive in
+his own opinions; but he was tolerant of those who differed from him. He
+was a man of quick, nervous temperament, but he possessed a powerful
+self-control. He was a sincere and earnest Christian, and while
+attaching himself to the sect of his choice, his sympathies and aid went
+out to the whole Christian Church.
+
+Denominational differences had no place in his heart. He stood on the
+broad platform of the "faith of Christ crucified."
+
+During the last years of his life, Mr. Lawrence was a constant invalid.
+To a man of his temperament this was a great trial, but he bore it
+unflinchingly, exhibiting, in the long years of feeble health which
+preceded his death, a cheerfulness and patience which plainly showed the
+aid of the Arm on which he leaned for support. For sixteen years he did
+not take a meal with his family. His food and drink, of the simplest
+kind, were regularly weighed, a pair of scales being kept in his chamber
+for that purpose. He wrote to his friend President Hopkins, of Williams
+College: "If your young folks want to know the meaning of epicureanism,
+tell them to take some bits of coarse bread (one ounce or a little
+more), soak them in three gills of coarse meal gruel, and make their
+dinner of them, and nothing else; beginning very hungry, and leaving off
+more hungry."
+
+Mr. Lawrence continued in this condition until December, 1852, when he
+was seized with a severe attack of the stomachic trouble to which he was
+a martyr. He died peacefully, on the last day of that month and year, at
+the age of sixty-six years, eight months, and eight days. He was buried
+in Mount Auburn Cemetery, and was followed to the grave by a host of
+friends who mourned him as a brother, and by strangers to whom his
+kindness in life had brought relief from many a care and suffering.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+ANDREW V. STOUT.
+
+
+There are few men in the city of New York who have won more fairly their
+proud positions in the mercantile world than he whose name stands at the
+top of this page. For more than forty years he has carried on a large
+and increasing business with an energy, skill, and probity which could
+not fail of success.
+
+ANDREW V. STOUT was born in the city of New York, at No. 6 Canal Street,
+or, as it was then called, Pump Street, about the year 1814. When he was
+scarcely more than a child he was left fatherless, and thrown upon his
+own resources for a living. He was a manly little fellow, and, young as
+he was, was fully alive to the importance of the position he was
+compelled to assume. He was resolved not only to support himself, but
+also to acquire a good education, and by studying hard while most boys
+are at play, mastered the ordinary English branches by the time he was
+twelve years old.
+
+He had a mother and sister to support, and applied himself manfully to
+the task of accomplishing this. He was well grown for his age, and was
+generally supposed to be several years older than he really was. When he
+was fourteen years old he applied for and received a position as
+assistant teacher of the English branches in one of the public schools
+of the city. The trustees of the school supposed he was at least
+eighteen or nineteen years old. Had his true age been known to them, it
+is probable he would not have received the appointment. He was not
+questioned upon the subject, and he was wise enough to keep his own
+counsel. He performed the duties of his position to the entire
+satisfaction of the school officials, and made such a good impression on
+his friends that at the age of sixteen he was made assistant principal
+in one of the most important and popular private schools of the day,
+taught by Shepherd Johnson, a name well known to the old residents of
+New York.
+
+He was very young to fill this position, and, as may be supposed, it was
+peculiarly trying to one whose learning was mainly self-acquired. He was
+determined to succeed, however, and he applied himself energetically to
+master the course he was teaching. He studied harder and more constantly
+than any of his pupils, and was always fresh on the lessons for the day.
+
+When he was sixteen years old he was so well grown and so mature that he
+passed for twenty. Having succeeded so well in the management of his
+English classes, he was offered the position of instructor of Latin,
+with an increase of his salary. The offer at first dismayed him. He was
+thoroughly ignorant of the Latin language, and utterly unprepared for
+the duties demanded of him. He was very anxious to have the place,
+however, for he needed the increase of salary offered him, and, after
+hesitating a little while, accepted it. He purchased a Latin grammar,
+and engaged a private tutor. He studied hard, and soon mastered the
+rudiments of the language. In this way he managed to keep ahead of his
+classes. If a question was asked him which he could not answer, he
+postponed his reply, looked into the matter at night, and explained it
+the next morning. By such hard study and patient efforts did this boy,
+himself a mere novice, turn out what was admitted by all to be the best
+drilled Latin class Shepherd Johnson's school had ever boasted of.
+
+When he was eighteen years old he was made principal of Public School
+No. 2 of New York. He was living at Bushwick, where he resided with his
+mother and sister in a cozy little cottage, the garden of which was his
+pride, since he tended it with his own hands. It was his custom to rise
+every morning at four o'clock, and work in his garden until seven. Then
+he rode into the city, and attended to his school duties until four
+o'clock, when he returned home.
+
+He was now in possession of a comfortable living; but he was not
+satisfied to do this and nothing more. He was anxious to win fortune, to
+enter upon a more active and stirring pursuit, and he kept himself
+always on the watch for an opening. About the time he became the head of
+the public school we have referred to, he commenced to engage in various
+ventures of a commercial nature, devoting to them his evenings, and the
+hours of the day not demanded by his school.
+
+One of his relatives was a builder, with a fair trade, and had made some
+money by erecting houses in New York. Young Stout, who had saved a
+little money, proposed to him that they should take out a contract for
+building a number of dwellings on the then fashionable thoroughfare of
+East Broadway. The elder man was pleased with the plan, and at once
+consented to it. The houses were built at a handsome profit; others
+followed them, and by attending closely to this business, as well as his
+other duties, Andrew Stout, by the time he was twenty years old, had
+saved seventeen thousand dollars--a very large sum in those steady-going
+days.
+
+He was greatly aided by the custom of doing business on time, which
+then prevailed, but he never allowed one of his notes to be protested,
+and never asked for an extension. When he began business, he did so with
+the firm resolve that he would conduct his most insignificant
+transaction as a Christian man of honor. If he could not make money
+honestly, he would remain poor. Every body saw the energy and judgment
+with which he conducted his affairs, and the strict integrity which
+marked them all, and he was not long in building up a reputation as a
+business man of which any one might have been proud. The promptness and
+apparent ease with which he met every contract, and took up every note,
+caused it to be generally believed that he was a very rich man. Further
+than this, it was known that he was a zealous and earnest Christian, one
+who carried his religion into his business, and who lived up to his
+professions. He was an active member of the Methodist Church, and the
+business man of the congregation to which he belonged. In his hands its
+finances prospered as they had never done before. Such was the
+reputation of this young man, who had not yet attained his majority.
+
+He held his position in the public school for several years after his
+appointment to it, but the requirements of his business at length
+compelled him to relinquish it.
+
+In the midst of his prosperity Mr. Stout made one mistake. A friend with
+whom he had been interested in building wished to procure some money
+from the bank, and Mr. Stout was induced, with considerable reluctance,
+to indorse his note for five thousand dollars. One false step in
+business, as in other affairs of life, leads to another, and, in order
+to save this money, Mr. Stout was forced to renew his indorsements until
+his liabilities amounted to twenty-three thousand dollars. To his dismay
+he was now informed by the builder for whose sake he had incurred this
+risk, that he (the builder) had failed, without making provision for the
+payment of the notes, and that Mr. Stout would have to account to the
+bank for them.
+
+"Several methods of relief were open to Mr. Stout. He was worth
+seventeen thousand dollars, which he had earned by nights of toil, by
+economy, and by daily and earnest attention to business. To pay the
+notes would not only sweep away every penny that he had, but would leave
+him six thousand dollars in debt. He had never realized one cent from
+the money, and his name was used simply to accommodate the builder.
+Besides, he was not of age, though nobody suspected that fact, and he
+could repudiate his debts as a minor. He took no counsel, made no
+statement of his affairs to any one, shut himself up in his own room,
+and considered thoughtfully what he should do, and then followed out the
+decision that he had reached. Having become bankrupt in money, he
+concluded he would not be so in character. He had earned seventeen
+thousand dollars, and could earn seventeen thousand dollars more. He did
+confide in one friend. He went to a relative, and asked him to lend him
+six thousand dollars, the sum necessary to take up all the notes. The
+relative was astonished at the request, and insisted upon knowing the
+facts in the case. Mr. Stout made a full and frank statement. It was met
+with the remark, 'Well, Andrew, I thought you would be a rich man, but
+if this is the way you do your business, you will never be worth any
+thing,' But Mr. Stout did not want preaching, he wanted money; and as
+the relative seemed to hesitate about loaning the money, as no security
+was offered, Mr. Stout curtly told him he could do as he pleased about
+it; he could get the money somewhere, and pay the notes. The money was
+promised, and he went on his way.
+
+"The bank watched the young financier with a great deal of interest.
+The whole matter had been discussed often in the bank, and the wonder
+was how young Stout would meet the blow. It was supposed that he would
+ask for an extension; and it was agreed to give it to him, and to make
+the time of payment convenient to his ability. Had he proposed to
+compromise the matter by paying one-half, the bank would have accepted
+it. That would have left him a capital of nearly eight thousand dollars
+for a fresh start. Had he offered his seventeen thousand dollars on
+condition that he was released from all liability, the notes would have
+been canceled with alacrity. He did neither. He proposed no compromise,
+asked no extension, and attempted to negotiate no settlement. When the
+first note became due, he paid it. He did the same with the second and
+third. After the third payment, he was called into the office of the
+president. Reference was made to the notes, and to the fact that he had
+obtained no benefit from the money. The president told him the bank was
+ready to renew the notes, and to give him any accommodation that he
+might ask. Mr. Stout simply replied that the blow was a heavy one, but
+that having assumed the obligation, he should discharge it; that he
+asked no favors, and as the notes matured he should take them up. He
+paid every dollar due, and every one was certain that his wealth must be
+very large. His manliness, pluck, and integrity, which carried him
+through that crisis, became the sure foundation-stone on which his great
+fortune was laid. He took the front rank among successful financiers,
+and his honorable course in that crisis established his fame as an
+honest man, in whom it would be safe to confide. Years of earnest and
+active business life have not changed that character, nor allowed a blot
+or stain to cloud that reputation."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: Matthew Hale Smith.]
+
+Some years later, Mr. Stout became a merchant. He established a
+wholesale boot and shoe store, and engaged actively in that business. He
+brought to his new calling the energy, prudence, and integrity which had
+distinguished him all through his life, and was successful from the
+first. He worked hard. His business hours were from seven in the morning
+until six in the evening. During his busy season, four months in the
+year, he worked until ten, and often until twelve, paying his employés
+extra wages for labor performed after the regular business hours.
+Sometimes he worked until four in the morning, but that did not deter
+him from being in the store at the usual hour for opening. He was always
+the last to go home, never leaving the store until the business of the
+day was over and the house was closed. He extended his operations into
+dry goods, meeting with equal success in this department. As his
+business expanded, he was compelled to form various partnerships, but in
+all these arrangements he reserved to himself, like Stewart, the
+exclusive management of the finances.
+
+About eighteen years ago, the shoe and leather merchants of the city
+decided to organize a bank, in which their interests should be the
+principal consideration. Mr. Stout engaged in the effort with great
+enthusiasm, and the Shoe and Leather Bank of New York was at length
+organized under the most auspicious circumstances. Mr. Stout was the
+largest stockholder in the new bank, and was elected one of its
+directors. His influence was potent in directing its first operations,
+and the next year he was elected vice-president, in which position he
+really had the control of the enterprise left to him. A year later he
+was elected president of the bank, a position which he still holds,
+being in point of service the oldest bank president in New York. Upon
+questions of banking and finance, his views are listened to with great
+respect by his associates, who have proof of their soundness in the
+splendid success of the institution over which he presides; and it may
+be truly said that there are few men in the city who enjoy so large a
+share of the public confidence as is bestowed upon him.
+
+As a citizen, he is public-spirited and liberal. Some years ago, he held
+the office of city chamberlain, and during his administration of it a
+difficulty arose in regard to paying the police force their wages.
+Knowing that the men and their families would suffer if the money were
+not promptly paid them, Mr. Stout generously advanced the necessary sum
+from his private means, looking to the city to reimburse him. In
+grateful acknowledgment of this practical sympathy for them, the force
+presented him with a handsome testimonial. His fortune is immense, and
+is used liberally in behalf of the cause of the Christian religion. His
+charities are said to be large, but one rarely hears of them, so quietly
+are they done. He is married and has a family.
+
+No man's career holds out more encouragement to young men seeking to
+rise than that of Andrew V. Stout. It shows that courage, patient
+industry, and business capacity will bring fortune to any honest worker.
+His uniform success speaks volumes in favor of a young man's striving to
+lead a Christian life in the midst of his business cares and struggles.
+God's blessing follows such an one at every step, and he will succeed in
+the end, whatever trials may beset his path at first. It is a great
+mistake to suppose that a man's success depends on his "sharpness."
+Shrewdness is a valuable quality, but it must be coupled with a plain,
+practical honesty, or it will amount to nothing in the end. A man must
+be faithful to his God if he would have his work stand.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+JONAS CHICKERING.
+
+
+On Tremont Street, in the City of Boston, near the Roxbury line, there
+stands an immense building of brick, said to be larger than any edifice
+in the United States, save the Capitol at Washington. It is built in the
+form of a hollow square, with a large court-yard in the center, and the
+building and court-yard together cover an area of five acres. It is five
+stories in height on the outer side, and six on the inner, the
+court-yard being one story lower than the street. The building is two
+hundred and sixty-two feet in length from east to west, and two hundred
+and forty-five from north to south, the shorter distance being the
+length on Tremont Street. The width of the building all around the
+court-yard is fifty feet. It contains nine hundred windows, with eleven
+thousand panes of glass, and when lighted up at night seems almost a
+solid mass of fire. From five to six hundred men are employed here in
+various capacities, and an immense steam engine of one hundred and
+twenty horse-power furnishes the motive power for the machinery.
+Altogether, it is one of the most prominent and interesting of all the
+sights of Boston, and the visitor is surprised to learn that it is due
+entirely to the energy and genius of one who, but thirty-four years
+previous to its erection, came to Boston a penniless stranger. The
+building is the famous piano-forte manufactory of Chickering & Sons, and
+its founder was Jonas Chickering, the subject of this sketch.
+
+JONAS CHICKERING was born at New Ipswich, New Hampshire, on the 5th of
+April, 1798. His father was a blacksmith by trade, and employed his
+leisure time in cultivating a small farm of which he was the owner. He
+was esteemed by his neighbors as an upright, reliable man, and prudent
+and careful in his temporal affairs. The family being poor, young Jonas
+was required to do his share toward cultivating the farm, and received
+only such education as was afforded by the district schools in the
+vicinity. He was noted at an early age for his passionate love of music.
+When a mere child, he learned to play on the fife, and was such a
+proficient performer that he was called upon with the town drummer to
+furnish music for the militia musters, which were then the pride of the
+town. These were happy days for the lad, but his pleasure was marred by
+the ridicule which the contrast between his slender figure and the
+stalwart frame of the "six-foot drummer" caused the fun-loving
+towns-people to indulge in. Soon after this he learned to play on the
+clarionet, and when only seventeen or eighteen years old, was so
+advanced in his art that he could read at sight music of the most
+difficult character.
+
+At the age of seventeen he was apprenticed to a cabinet-maker to learn
+his trade, and remained with him for three years, exerting himself to
+become thorough master of every detail of the business. Toward the close
+of his apprenticeship, an event occurred which changed the whole current
+of his life, and placed him in what proved to him the road to fame and
+fortune.
+
+One of the wealthiest citizens of New Ipswich was the fortunate owner of
+a piano, the only instrument of the kind in the place; but his treasure
+was almost useless to him, for the reason that it was out of tune and
+seriously damaged in some respects. It had lain in this condition for a
+long time, no one in or near the place being able to make the necessary
+repairs. In this extremity the owner bethought him of Jonas Chickering,
+who had acquired an enviable reputation for skill in his trade, and it
+was thought that a good cabinet-maker ought of necessity to be a clever
+piano-maker. Young Chickering, thus appealed to, consented to undertake
+the task, as much for the purpose of becoming familiar with the
+instrument as of earning the sum the owner of it proposed to pay for the
+repairs. He had not the slightest knowledge of its internal
+organization, but he believed that by patient investigation he could
+master it, and he knew that the correctness of his ear would enable him
+to tune it. He made a careful study of the instrument and of every
+separate part, spent days over the task, discovered the injury and the
+cause of it, and not only took the instrument to pieces and restored it
+to its former condition, but did his work so well that the piano was
+pronounced fully as good in every respect as when it was new. This was
+not all. He discovered defects in the instrument which even its maker
+was not able to remedy, and his fertile brain at once suggested to him a
+plan for removing them.
+
+Here was a chance for him, and he resolved to profit by it. He would
+abandon cabinet-making and learn the manufacture of pianos. Then, when
+master of his trade, he would make use of his discoveries, and earn both
+fame and fortune. When his determination to change his business was made
+known, his friends attributed it to his desire to be in the midst of
+musical instruments, and where he could gratify his love of music; but
+this was only a part of the motive which influenced him. He meant to
+rise in the world, and he was sure that he held in his hands the means
+of doing so.
+
+In 1818, when twenty years old, he removed to Boston, and obtained
+employment with a cabinet-maker. He did this in order to give him time
+to look about him, to become familiar with the city and city life, and
+to acquire such other information as would enable him to decide upon the
+best means of putting his plans into execution. He saved his wages with
+the greatest care, and at the end of his first year in Boston had
+accumulated a modest little sum, which he meant should support him while
+he was learning his new trade.
+
+On the 15th of February, 1819, without the loss of a day, he began work
+with a piano-maker.
+
+He had now entered upon what he meant should be the business of his
+life, and he was resolved that he would be master of it. From the first
+he took rank in his employer's factory as the most careful workman in
+it. He spared no pains to make his knowledge full in every detail. Time
+was of no consequence compared with knowledge, and he was never anxious
+to hurry through with his work. It soon came to be recognized by his
+employer and fellow-workmen that he was the best fitted for those
+portions of the work upon the instrument which required the greatest
+patience as well as the greatest care, and the most difficult and
+delicate work was always intrusted to him, his wages being, of course,
+in proportion. Other men had no thought but to earn a living. This man
+meant to win fame and fortune, and to enlarge the scope of that art to
+which he was so passionately devoted. He labored with his mind as well
+as his hands, familiarizing himself with every detail of the
+manufacture, and devising in silence the means for improving the
+instrument and the implements used in its construction. He could afford
+to wait, to be slower than his fellows. Every moment spent over his
+task made his workmanship the better, and opened to his mind new sources
+of improvement. He spent three years as a journeyman, and then went into
+business for himself. He associated himself with a Mr. Stewart, under
+the firm of Stewart & Chickering.
+
+Fifty years ago the piano-forte was a wretched piece of mechanism
+compared with the superb instrument of to-day. It was originally a
+progressive growth from the ancient lyre, through the harp, psaltery,
+dulcimer, clavictherium, clavichord, virginal, spinet, harpsichord, to
+the piano of Christofali in the early years of the last century. At the
+period of Mr. Chickering's entrance into business, it was still very
+imperfect, and the various manufacturers of the instrument were
+earnestly endeavoring to discover some means of remedying the defects of
+which they were all conscious. There are four divisions in the
+manufacture of a piano, each of which requires great skill and care.
+These are: First, The making of the framing and the sound-board; Second,
+The stringing; Third, The keys and action; Fourth, The case and
+ornamental work. The framing requires strength and simplicity. It is
+this portion of the instrument which sustains the tension of the
+strings, which in full to large-sized pianos is not less than from six
+to twelve tons, and it is a matter of prime necessity that the portions
+which serve as a strut or stretcher between the ends of the strings, and
+which are to resist this enormous pull, must be made correspondingly
+strong and rigid, since by any gradual yielding under the pull of the
+strings, their lengths and tensions, and hence their tone, must undergo
+proportionate change. In the old pianos, the frames were of wood, and it
+was impossible to use any but small, short strings, for the reason given
+above. Fullness and power were not to be thought of, and builders were
+obliged to confine themselves to securing truthfulness of tone. A
+multitude of causes, among which were the changes in the weather,
+combined to render it impossible to keep the old-fashioned instrument in
+tune. It was this defect which first attracted the attention of Jonas
+Chickering, and his first endeavor was to produce an instrument which
+would withstand the climatic changes which were so troublesome to the
+old ones. He was fully aware of the fact that the piano trade in this
+country was then so unimportant that it offered but little inducement to
+a man who could manufacture only the old instrument; but he believed
+that by producing an instrument of better proportions, and one fuller,
+richer, and more lasting in tone, he could create a demand for it which
+would insure the sale of all he could manufacture. His hope of success
+lay not in the old, but in an improved and nobler instrument. That he
+was correct in his belief, the magnificent instrument of to-day which
+bears his name, and the lucrative business he has left to his sons,
+amply demonstrate. Others besides himself were working for the same end,
+and he knew that he would have to bear the test of determined and
+intelligent competition. He applied himself to his purpose with
+enthusiasm. He carefully studied the theory of atmospheric vibration and
+musical combination, as well as an application of the principles of
+mechanical philosophy to the construction of the instrument. He went
+deep into the science involved in his work, into the philosophy of
+melody. Passionately devoted to music, he was ambitious of placing that
+which has been so truly called "the king of instruments" within the
+reach of all lovers of harmony, and to give them the best instrument
+that human invention could produce--an instrument which should not only
+withstand atmospheric changes, but which should yield the richest,
+fullest volume of melody, with the least exertion to the performer. His
+progress was slow, but it was sure. Beginning with an improvement in
+the action, he accomplished, in a great measure (in 1838), his plan for
+preserving the permanence and purity of the tone of the instrument by
+casting the entire iron framing with the parallel bars in one piece.
+Iron had for some time before this been in general use for framing, but
+the frame was cast in a few separate parts, which were put together by
+means of bolts and screws, a plan which is still used to a considerable
+extent in Europe. By his plan of casting the frame and its supporting
+bars in one solid piece, Mr. Chickering not only prevented the frame
+from yielding to the pull of the strings, thus securing permanence and
+purity of tone, but was enabled to use larger frames and more strings,
+which greatly increased the capacity of the instrument.
+
+Several other improvements were made by him, the most important of which
+was the invention, in 1845, of the circular scale for square pianos,
+which is now in general use in this country and in Europe. "This consists
+in giving to the row of tuning pins and wrest-planks--previously
+straight in these instruments--a curved disposition, answering nearly to
+an arc of a circle, the advantage being that the strings become less
+crowded, larger hammers, and a more direct blow can be secured, and the
+tone is both strengthened and improved." With a rare generosity, Mr.
+Chickering declined to patent this improvement, which would have enabled
+him to drive competition out of the market. He regarded it as so
+necessary to a good piano that he declared that all makers ought to have
+the use of it, as it would thus be within the power of all persons able
+to purchase a piano to avail themselves of it, whether they bought a
+"Chickering" or not. Such generosity is too rare to fail to receive the
+praise it merits.
+
+Mr. Chickering did not continue long in business with Mr. Stewart. The
+latter withdrew in a few years, and Mr. Chickering carried on the
+business alone. In 1830 he formed a partnership with Captain John
+Mackay, a retired ship-merchant. In the new firm Captain Mackay took
+charge of the finances and the office business, while Mr. Chickering
+devoted himself entirely to the mechanical department. The operations of
+the new house were very successful. The improvements made by Mr.
+Chickering from the first created a demand for their instruments which
+was sometimes so great that it was difficult to supply it. This demand
+continued to increase, until the house was perfectly easy as to money
+matters, and able to enlarge its facilities very greatly. It was Mr.
+Chickering's design that each separate instrument should be an
+improvement upon those which had preceded it, and he was careful that
+this plan should not miscarry. In a few years the firm was enabled to
+import the foreign materials needed, by the cargo, thus saving the
+profit which they had hitherto been compelled to pay the importer.
+Besides this saving, they were enabled to keep on hand a large stock of
+the woods used in the instrument, and thus it was allowed to become more
+thoroughly seasoned than that which they had been compelled to purchase,
+from time to time, in small quantities. In 1841, Captain Mackay sailed
+from Boston for South America, for the purpose of obtaining a supply of
+the woods needed by the firm; but he never returned, and as no tidings
+of him or his ship were ever received, it is supposed that the vessel
+went down at sea with all on board.
+
+Mr. Chickering now decided to continue the business without a partner.
+His friends supposed that in assuming the management of the concern, in
+addition to the direction of the mechanical department, and the constant
+mental labor to which he subjected himself in his efforts to improve the
+piano, he was undertaking more than he was capable of performing. They
+feared his health would break down under it. Besides, it was generally
+believed that, in spite of Mr. Chickering's undoubted skill in his own
+department, he was not much of a business man. He was confident of his
+own ability, however, and did not hesitate to assume the new
+responsibility.
+
+The business of which he now became the owner was very heavy and
+extensive. Soon after the beginning of his connection with Captain
+Mackay, the firm erected a large factory for the purpose of carrying on
+their business. One hundred hands were employed in it when opened, but
+in a few years it was necessary to employ more than twice that number,
+so rapidly did the business increase. The supply of materials needed was
+ample and of the very best quality, for Mr. Chickering never allowed an
+inferior article to be used. The warerooms were large and handsomely
+fitted up, and were filled with instruments ranging in price from a
+thousand dollars downward. It was generally believed that while Mr.
+Chickering's genius had created the demand for the pianos, it was
+Captain Mackay's business knowledge and experience that had placed
+affairs on their present footing, and when Mr. Chickering proposed to
+buy Captain Mackay's interest from his heirs, which was valued at
+several hundred thousand dollars, there was a very general belief, which
+found expression, that he was incurring certain ruin. The condition of
+the sale was that the purchase-money should be divided into
+installments, for each of which Mr. Chickering should give his note,
+secured by a mortgage on the premises. At Mr. Chickering's request each
+note was made payable "on or before" a given day. The lawyer who
+conducted the transaction smiled skeptically as he inserted this clause,
+and asked the purchaser if he _ever_ expected to pay the notes at all.
+
+"If I did not expect to pay them promptly, I should not give them," was
+the simple reply. He was as good as his word. The notes were met
+promptly, and although Captain Mackay's family requested that they might
+stand as an investment for them, Mr. Chickering took up the last one at
+its maturity.
+
+With the business in his own hands, Mr. Chickering continued its
+operations, displaying an ease in his mercantile transactions which
+astonished and delighted his friends. The business prospered to a
+greater degree than before, and all the while Mr. Chickering continued
+his labors for the improvement of his instruments with still greater
+success than in former years. His pianos were universally regarded as
+the best in the market, and his competitors were unable to excel him.
+Although conducting a business which required the constant exercise of
+the highest mercantile talent, he did not relax his energy in the
+mechanical department. To the end of his life, long after he had become
+a wealthy and prominent man, he had his own little working-cabinet, with
+an exquisite set of tools, with which he himself put the finishing touch
+to each of his splendid instruments, a touch he would not intrust to any
+other hands.
+
+His competitors did all in their power to equal him, but he distanced
+them all. One of them adopted a most startling expedient. He obtained
+permission from the Legislature of Massachusetts to change his name to
+_Chickering_, and at once sent out his instruments marked with his new
+name, his object of course being to deceive the public, and Jonas
+Chickering had the mortification of seeing the inferior instruments of
+another maker mistaken for his own. He promptly laid before the
+Legislature a petition for redress, setting forth the facts of the case
+and the motives of his rival. The result was that the Legislature
+reconsidered its action, and compelled the bogus Chickering to resume
+his original name.
+
+Mr. Chickering was noted for his simplicity and straight-forwardness in
+business transactions. Conscious of his own integrity, he listened to no
+proposition of a doubtful character, nor would he ever allow his credit
+as a merchant to be questioned with impunity. Upon one occasion, he
+applied through his clerk to the bank, with which he had dealt for many
+years, for an accommodation which he needed. The president of the bank
+sent for him, and told him that security would be required.
+
+"I shall give you none," he replied. "I have done my business at this
+bank for a long time, and if you do not know me, I shall apply where I
+am better known."
+
+The president was firm in his position, and Mr. Chickering applied to
+another bank, which readily granted him the desired discount, and to
+which he at once transferred his business, which was worth to the bank
+about ten thousand dollars a year. Shortly after, a director of the
+institution at which he had formerly dealt called on him, and urged him
+to restore his business to the bank, assuring him that in future it
+would readily grant him any accommodation he might desire.
+
+"No," he replied; "I will deal with no institution which, having had the
+opportunity of knowing me, suspects my responsibility."
+
+Again having need of accommodation, he sent his notes for a large sum to
+one of the city banks for discount. The president said an indorser would
+be required.
+
+"I shall indorse them myself," said Mr. Chickering.
+
+"That will never do," replied the president.
+
+"Very well," was the simple answer, and, without further words, he took
+the notes to another bank, which promptly loaned him the money on them.
+
+He tolerated no irregularity in his own business. He was true to the
+spirit as well as to the letter of a contract, and never, during the
+whole course of his long life, was he guilty of a transaction in which
+the most rigid moralist could find a taint of sharp practice. What a
+refutation of the theories of those who hold that cunning and trickery
+are unavoidable some time in the course of a long and successful
+mercantile career lies in the story of this man, who, beginning life
+penniless, filled with a burning ambition to be rich and famous, never
+swerved from the straight path of integrity, and by the exercise of only
+the highest traits of his nature more than realized his boyish dreams!
+Ponder it well, young man, and learn from it that honesty is indeed the
+best policy in any calling.
+
+Mr. Chickering had married early in life, and now had three sons just
+entering upon manhood. These were carefully educated at the public
+schools for which Boston is so justly famed, and then put into their
+father's factory to learn the mechanical part of the business. It was
+the father's ambition to be succeeded by his sons, but he was not
+willing to trust the labor of his life to ignorant or incompetent hands.
+At the age of seventeen, Thomas Chickering, the eldest son, was taken
+from school, and, under his father's eye, taught every detail of the
+mechanical branch of the business, until he understood it as well as the
+senior Chickering himself. George, the second son, in due time passed
+through the same course of training; while Francis, the youngest, was
+brought up in the warehouse. The father thoroughly imbued his sons with
+his own system and energy, and to-day we see the result. The firm of
+Chickering & Sons is still the most prominent in America. Thomas is now
+the acting head of the house, and has led it on to continued success;
+Francis is the presiding genius of the mechanical department, and has
+made many important improvements in the field in which his father won
+success; and George exercises a general supervision at the immense
+factory in Boston. The mantle of the father has fallen upon the sons,
+and his labors have found their highest reward in their success.
+
+Mr. Chickering's good fortune was not entirely uninterrupted. On the 1st
+of December, 1852, his factory was burned to the ground, with all its
+valuable patterns, stock, etc., involving a loss to him of two hundred
+thousand dollars. The interruption to his business was very serious,
+apart from the loss of his property. Expressions of sympathy poured in
+upon him from his friends, coupled with offers of pecuniary assistance
+in his efforts to reëstablish his business. His disaster seemed merely
+to inspire him with fresh energy, but the kindness of his friends
+entirely overcame him.
+
+[Illustration: "MY MEN SHALL NOT SUFFER."]
+
+He wasted no time in vain regrets, but at once went to work. He was
+fifty-four years old, but he showed an energy and determination which
+more than rivaled the fire of his young manhood. The loss of his factory
+was not only a severe blow to him, but to the three hundred workmen who
+had been employed in it, and who were dependent upon their wages for
+their support. His first care was to assure them that they should not
+suffer, but that they should continue to receive their wages as
+regularly as though nothing had happened to interrupt their labor. He
+had always been kind and generous to his employés, paying liberal wages,
+and rewarding especial merit, but this act of kindness did more to
+endear him to them than any previous benefaction. Having provided for
+his men, he set to work to prepare temporary accommodations for his
+business, and then began his arrangements for the construction of a new
+factory. He took a great degree of interest in the plans for the new
+building, the architect being almost entirely guided by his suggestions,
+and the result of his labors is the magnificent building to which
+reference was made at the opening of this chapter. He did not live to
+see it completed, however. He died at the house of a friend from the
+rupture of a blood-vessel, produced, it is believed, by severe mental
+labor, on the 8th of December, 1853. His fortune at the time of his
+death was estimated at a quarter of a million of dollars. His sons
+assumed the charge of the business, which they still conduct.
+
+The loss of Mr. Chickering was felt by all classes of his
+fellow-citizens--especially by the poor. To them he had been a kind and
+generous friend. Distress never appealed to him in vain, and he proved a
+faithful steward of the riches committed to his care. Yet he performed
+his charities with such a modesty and reticence that few beside the
+grateful recipients were aware of them. Indeed, it was his custom to
+enjoin secrecy upon those whom he assisted; but they would not remain
+quiet. His liberality is in striking contrast with the closeness of many
+who were worth more than twenty times his wealth, but who lacked his
+warm and sympathizing nature.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+NICHOLAS LONGWORTH.
+
+
+The grape culture of the United States is yet in its infancy. Although
+the annual wine product is estimated at nearly three millions of
+gallons, there can be no doubt that ere many years shall have elapsed
+America will rank as one of the most important wine countries of the
+world. California is already extending her vineyards for miles along her
+smiling valleys, where the clear sky and the balmy air, which are
+unchangeable at the season of the grape harvest, permit a degree of
+perfection in the fruit unattainable in any European country. Already
+her wines are commanding an enviable place in the markets of the world,
+with no apparent limits to the growing demand for them. The hillsides of
+the lower Ohio Valley are lined with thriving vineyards, whose rich
+clusters of Catawba and Isabella grapes delight the eye on every hand,
+and thousands of acres are now given to successful grape culture, where
+formerly only a few straggling vines were seen. More than five hundred
+thousand gallons of wine are now annually produced in the neighborhood
+of Cincinnati alone, and find a market in that city, and what was but a
+few years ago a mere experiment is now one of the chief sources of the
+wonderful prosperity of the Ohio Valley, and one of the most important
+features in the commerce of the Queen City of the West. The success
+which has attended this branch of our industry must be a matter of
+congratulation to the whole country, and the man to whose courage,
+energy, and liberality it is mainly due must be regarded as a public
+benefactor.
+
+This man, NICHOLAS LONGWORTH by name, was born at Newark, New Jersey, on
+the 16th of January, 1782. His father had been a man of large property,
+but in consequence of being a Tory during the Revolution, his
+possessions were confiscated, and he and his family impoverished. Young
+Nicholas's childhood was passed in indigence, and it is said that he was
+apprenticed to a shoemaker, when a mere lad, to learn the trade as a
+means of livelihood. However this may be, it is certain that when very
+young he went to South Carolina as a clerk for his elder brother. The
+climate of the South, however, did not suit his health, and he returned
+to Newark, and began the study of the law.
+
+He was poor, and the East was overcrowded, even at that early day, and
+offered but few inducements to a young man entirely dependent upon his
+own efforts. Ohio was then the "Far West," and emigration was setting in
+toward it rapidly. Those who had seen the country related what then
+seemed marvelous tales of its wonderful fertility and progress. Few
+professional men were seeking the distant land, and Longworth felt
+convinced that the services of such as did go would assuredly be in
+demand, and he resolved to cast his lot with the West.
+
+In 1803, at the age of twenty-one, he removed to the little village of
+Cincinnati, and, having fixed upon this place as his future home,
+entered the law office of Judge Jacob Burnet, long the ablest jurist in
+Ohio. He soon won the confidence and esteem of his instructor, and
+succeeded so well in his studies that in an unusually short time he was
+admitted to the bar.
+
+He entered upon the practice of his profession with energy, and soon
+acquired a profitable business, which increased rapidly. He was a man of
+simple habits, and lived economically. His savings were considerable,
+and were regularly invested by him in real estate in the suburbs of the
+town. Land was cheap at that time, some of his lots costing him but ten
+dollars each. Long before his death they were worth more than as many
+thousands. He had a firm conviction that Cincinnati was destined to
+become one of the largest and most flourishing cities in the Union, and
+that his real estate would increase in value at a rate which would
+render him wealthy in a very few years.
+
+His first client was a man accused of horse-stealing, in those days the
+most heinous offense known to Western law. Longworth secured his
+acquittal, but the fellow had no money to pay his counsel, and in the
+absence of funds gave Longworth two second-hand copper stills, which
+were his property. These the lawyer accepted, thinking that he could
+easily dispose of them for cash, as they were rare and valuable there in
+those days. They were in the keeping of Mr. Joel Williams, who carried
+on a tavern adjacent to the river, and who was afterward one of the
+largest property-holders in Cincinnati. Mr. Williams was building a
+distillery at the time, and, as he had confidently reckoned upon using
+the two stills in his possession, was considerably nonplussed when
+Longworth presented his order for them. In his extremity he offered to
+purchase them from the lawyer for a lot of thirty-three acres of barren
+land in the town, which was then worth little or nothing. Longworth
+hesitated, for although he had an almost prophetic belief in the future
+value of the land, he was sorely in need of ready money; but at length
+he accepted the offer. The deed for the land was made out in his name,
+and the stills became the property of Mr. Williams. The distillery was
+built, and its owner realized a fortune; but Longworth did more. His
+thirty-three acres of barren land were soon in the very heart of
+Cincinnati, and long before his death were valued at two millions of
+dollars.
+
+The foresight of Mr. Longworth was fully justified by the course of
+events. The growth of Cincinnati was almost marvelous in its rapidity.
+In 1802, it contained about 800 inhabitants; in 1810, 2,540; in 1820,
+9,060; in 1830, 24,831; in 1840, 46,338; in 1850, 118,761; and in 1860,
+just three years before Mr. Longworth's death, 171,293 inhabitants. The
+reader can easily imagine the immense profits which a half century's
+increase placed in the hands of the far-seeing lawyer. It seems almost
+like reading some old fairy tale to peruse the accounts of successful
+ventures in real estate in American cities. They have sprung up as if by
+magic, and it is impossible to say where their development will end.
+Said a gentleman of less than thirty-five years of age to the writer of
+these pages, "I am the oldest native-born citizen of Chicago. When I
+first saw the light, my native place could not boast even the dignity of
+a village; and young as I am, I have witnessed all this wonderful
+growth." The prosperity of Cincinnati was scarcely less marked, as the
+career of Mr. Longworth shows. The investment of a comparatively
+insignificant sum laid the foundation of his fortune, and the first
+counsel fee he ever earned, a sum trifling in itself, placed him in
+possession of millions.
+
+Mr. Longworth continued carefully to invest his gains in real estate.
+The prices paid by him increased, of course, with the rise in the value
+of property, but as he was persuaded that the limit had not yet been
+reached, he extended his operations without fear of loss. He sold many
+of his original purchases, but continued until the day of his death the
+largest land-owner in the city. In 1850 his taxes were over $17,000, and
+in the same year the taxes of William B. Astor amounted to $23,116. At
+the time of his death Mr. Longworth's estate was valued at fifteen
+millions of dollars, and is doubtless worth fully one-third more at the
+present day.
+
+Mr. Longworth retired from the practice of the law in 1819, to devote
+himself to the management of his property, which was already
+sufficiently important to require his undivided attention. He had always
+been an enthusiast in horticultural matters, and believing that the
+climate of the Ohio Valley was admirably adapted to the production of
+grapes, had for some time been making experiments in that direction; but
+he fell into the error of believing that only the foreign vines were
+worth cultivating, and his experiments were unsuccessful. The foreign
+grape did not mature well, and the wine produced from it was not good.
+In 1828 his friend Major Adlum sent him some specimens of the Catawba
+grape, which he had procured from the garden of a German living near
+Washington City, and be began to experiment with it in his own vineyard.
+
+The Catawba grape, now so popular and well-known throughout the country,
+was then a comparative stranger to our people, and was regarded even by
+many who were acquainted with it as unfit for vintage purposes. It was
+first discovered in a wild condition about 1801, near Asheville,
+Buncombe County, North Carolina, near the source of the Catawba River.
+General Davy, of Rocky Mount, on that river, afterward Senator from
+North Carolina, is supposed to have given the German in whose garden
+Major Adlum found the grape a few of the vines to experiment upon.
+General Davy always regarded the bringing of this grape into notice as
+the greatest act of his life. "I have done my country a greater benefit
+in introducing this grape into public notice," said he, in after years,
+"than I would have done if I had paid the national debt."
+
+Mr. Longworth's experiments with the Catawba were highly successful,
+and induced him to abandon all his efforts with foreign vines, and
+undertake only the Catawba, to which he afterward added the Isabella. He
+now entered systematically upon grape-growing. He established a large
+vineyard upon a hillside sloping down to the river, about four miles
+above the city, and employed German laborers, whose knowledge of
+vine-dressing, acquired in the Fatherland, made them the best workmen he
+could have. He caused it to be announced that all the grape juice
+produced by the small growers in the vicinity would find a cash
+purchaser in him, no matter in what quantities offered. At the same time
+he offered n reward of five hundred dollars for any improvement in the
+quality of the Catawba grape.
+
+The enthusiasm which he manifested, as well as the liberality of his
+offer, had a decidedly beneficial effect upon the small growers in the
+neighborhood. "It proved a great stimulus to the growth of the Catawba
+vine in the country around Cincinnati," to know that a man of Mr.
+Longworth's means stood ready to pay cash, at the rate of from a dollar
+to a dollar and a quarter a gallon, for all the grape-juice that might
+be brought to him, without reference to the quantity. It was in this
+way, and by urgent popular appeals through the columns of the
+newspapers, that he succeeded, after many failures, and against the
+depressing influence of much doubt and indifference, in bringing the
+enterprise up to its present high and stable position. When he took the
+matter in hand there was much to discourage any one not possessed of the
+traits of constancy of purpose and perseverance peculiar to Mr.
+Longworth. Many had tried the manufacture of wine, and had failed to
+give it any economical or commercial importance. It was not believed,
+until Mr. Longworth practically demonstrated it, that a native grape
+was the only one upon which any hope could be placed, and that the
+Catawba offered the most assured promise of success, and was the one
+upon which all vine-growers might with confidence depend. It took years
+of unremitted care, multiplied and wide-spread investigations, and the
+expenditure of large sums of money, to establish this fact, and bring
+the agricultural community to accept it and act under its guidance. The
+success attained by Mr. Longworth soon induced other gentlemen resident
+in the vicinity of Cincinnati, and favorably situated for the purpose,
+to undertake the culture of the Catawba, and several of them are now
+regularly and extensively engaged in the manufacture of wine. The
+impetus and encouragement thus given to the business soon led the German
+citizens of Hamilton County to perceive its advantages, and, under their
+thrifty management, thousands of acres, stretching up from the banks of
+the Ohio, are now covered with luxuriant and profitable vineyards,
+rivaling in profusion and beauty the vine-clad hills of Italy and
+France. The oldest vineyard in the county of Hamilton is of Mr.
+Longworth's planting.
+
+Mr. Longworth subsequently increased the size of his vineyard to two
+hundred acres, and toward the close of his life his wine houses annually
+produced one hundred and fifty thousand bottles of wine. His vaults
+usually contained a stock of three hundred thousand bottles in course of
+thorough ripening.
+
+His cellars were situated on the declivity of East Sixth Street, on the
+road to Observatory Hill. They occupied a space ninety feet by one
+hundred and twenty-five in size, and consisted of two tiers of massive
+stone vaults, the lower of which was twenty-five feet below the surface
+of the ground. The manufacture of the wine was placed under the charge
+of a celebrated chemist from Rheims, and the mode of preparation was as
+follows:
+
+After the pressing of the grape, the juice is subjected to the vinous
+fermentation, by which ten or eleven per cent, of alcohol is developed.
+In the following spring, it is mixed with a small quantity of sugar, and
+put into strong bottles, the corks of which are secured with twine and
+wire. The sugar accelerates a second fermentation, which always takes
+place about this time, and thus a strong movement is produced inside the
+glass, which generates gas enough to burst the vessels briskly, adding
+thereby considerably to the cost. This is known as the gaseous
+fermentation, and the effect of it is to render the wine more
+enlivening, more stinging to the taste, and more fruity. "This last
+effect results from this, that the flavor of the fruit mostly passes off
+with the carbonic acid gas, which is largely generated in the first or
+vinous fermentation, and in a less degree in this second or gaseous
+fermentation." It is impossible to avoid the loss of the flavor in the
+first fermentation, but the strong bottles and securely-fastened corks
+preserve it in the second. The liquid, which is muddy at first, becomes
+clear in about a year, a thick sediment having collected at the bottom
+of the bottle. The bottles are then placed in racks, with their necks
+downward, and are shaken vigorously every day for about three weeks.
+This forces the sediment to settle down in the neck against the cork.
+When it is all in the neck, the wires are cut, and the cork blown out by
+the gas, carrying the sediment with it. Fresh sugar, for sweetness, is
+now added, new corks are driven in and secured, and in a few weeks the
+wine is ready for the market.
+
+Mr. Longworth continued his wine trade with great success for about
+twenty-five years, and though for some time his expenditures were
+largely in excess of his income from this source, he at length reaped a
+steady and increasing profit from it, which more than reimbursed him for
+his former losses. He was very fond of the strawberry, and succeeded,
+by careful and expensive cultivation, in making several very important
+improvements in that delicious fruit. His experiments in the sexual
+character of the strawberry are highly interesting, but must be passed
+by here. He manifested no selfishness with respect to his fruits. He was
+anxious that their cultivation should become general, and his
+discoveries and improvements were always at the service of any and every
+one who desired to make use of them.
+
+He was thoroughly devoted to his adopted home, and anxious to secure its
+steady improvement. When it was proposed to establish an observatory,
+the Mount Adams property, then owned by him, was regarded as the most
+fitting site for it. He was asked to name the price for which he would
+sell the property. To the astonishment of the parties in charge of the
+enterprise, he made a free gift of the land--four acres in extent--to
+the trustees. A gentleman who had hoped to dispose of some of his own
+property for this purpose charged Mr. Longworth, through the press, with
+being influenced by a desire to improve his adjoining property by the
+erection of the observatory on Mount Adams. Longworth promptly replied
+that if the writer of the article in question would donate four acres of
+his own property for an observatory, he (Longworth) would put up, at his
+own expense, a building on it equal to that which had been erected on
+Mount Adams, and transfer the latter place to the city as a permanent
+pleasure ground. He quietly added that in this way his accuser might
+himself receive, for his adjacent property, all the benefits of such an
+improvement, and at the same time win for himself the lasting gratitude
+of the people of Cincinnati. This settled the matter, and no more was
+heard from the other side.
+
+"Longworth," says one who knew him, "is a problem and a riddle--a
+problem worthy of the study of those who delight in exploring that
+labyrinth of all that is hidden and mysterious, the human heart; and a
+riddle to himself and others. He is a wit and a humorist of a high
+order; of keen sagacity and shrewdness in many other respects than in
+money matters; one who can be exact to a dollar, and liberal, when he
+chooses, with thousands; of marked peculiarity and tenacity in his own
+opinions, yet of abundant tolerance to the opinions, however
+extravagant, of others--a man of great public spirit and sound general
+judgment.
+
+"In addition to all this, it would be difficult to find an individual of
+his position and standing so perfectly free from pride, in the ordinary
+sense. He has absolutely none, unless it be the pride of eccentricity.
+It is no uncommon circumstance for men to become rich by the
+concentration of time, and labor, and attention to some one object of
+profitable employment. This is the ordinary phase of money-getting, as
+closing the ear and pocket to applications for aid is that of
+money-saving. Longworth has become a rich man on a different principle.
+He appears to have started upon the calculation that if he could put any
+individual in the way of making a dollar for Longworth, and a dollar for
+himself at the same time, by aiding him with ground for a lot, or in
+building him a house on it; and if, moreover, he could multiply cases of
+the kind by hundreds, or perhaps thousands, he would promote his own
+interests just in the same measure as he was advancing those of others.
+At the same time he could not be unconscious that, while their half was
+subdivided into small possessions, owned by a thousand or more
+individuals, his half was a vast, boundless aggregate, since it was the
+property of one man alone. The event has done justice to his sagacity.
+Hundreds, if not thousands, in and adjacent to Cincinnati, now own
+houses and lots, and many have become wealthy, who would, in all
+probability, have lived and died as tenants under a different state of
+case. Had not Mr. Longworth adopted this course, he would have occupied
+that relation to society which many wealthy men now sustain, that of
+getting all they can and keeping all they get."
+
+In politics, Mr. Longworth was a Whig, and afterward a Republican.
+During the famous Clay campaign he was asked to give one hundred dollars
+to help defray the expenses of the party.
+
+"I never give something for nothing," said he. "We might fail to elect
+Clay, as we did before, and I should fling away the hundred dollars."
+
+The applicant, who was himself a man of wealth, assured him that there
+was no doubt of Clay's election.
+
+"There can be no chance of your losing," he said.
+
+"Well," replied Longworth, "I'll tell you what I will do. I will give
+you the hundred dollars, but mind, you shall be personally responsible
+to me for its return if Clay is not elected."
+
+The offer was accepted; and when the campaign resulted in the defeat of
+Clay, Longworth demanded his money from the politician, who was
+compelled to return it out of his own pocket.
+
+In his own way--and a quaint, singular way it was--Mr. Longworth was
+exceedingly charitable. Long after he was worth millions, and when every
+moment of his time was valuable, he was supernumerary township trustee.
+This was an office which required the expenditure of a considerable
+portion of his time, and brought him in constant contact with some of
+the most wretched of the lowest class of the poor. He was always in his
+office, at stated times, and with a patience and kindness worthy of all
+admiration, the millionaire listened to their sad tales, and provided
+such aid as was necessary, oftentimes giving it out of his own purse
+when the public funds failed.
+
+He was a bitter foe to vagabondage and mendicity. If people in need were
+willing to work, he would place them in the way of doing so. He was the
+owner of a stone quarry on Deer Creek, the traces of which may still be
+seen in the lines of the new Gilbert Avenue; and he kept in his office
+a supply of picks and shovels. When a stout beggar asked him for alms,
+he would inquire if he was willing to go to work. If answered
+affirmatively, he would give him a pick and shovel, and start him for
+the quarry, where the wages were promptly paid out every night. Many
+availed themselves of the opportunity, and worked for him faithfully;
+but others gave the quarry "a wide berth," and sold the pick and shovel
+for money or liquor. It was his custom to buy large quantities of bread
+tickets from the bakers, and to distribute them to those whom he
+considered worthy; and he would also keep on hand large quantities of
+shoes, dry goods, etc., which he gave away in the same manner.
+
+Mr. Frank Pentland, who was once in his employ, relates the following
+incident:
+
+"One morning, just after Mr. Longworth had gone to his office, near the
+Third-Street entrance, where he was accustomed to receive applicants for
+charity, he was accosted by a man who craved assistance. In answer to a
+question as to his needs, he replied that his main want was a pair of
+shoes, and a glance at his feet showed that he spoke truthfully. Mr.
+Longworth appeared 'to take his measure' at a glance, and impulsively
+shaking his right foot (he seldom wore his shoes tied), kicked the shoe
+over to the applicant, saying:
+
+"'Try that on, my man. How does it fit?'
+
+"'Illigant, yer honor,'
+
+"'Well, try that, now,' said he, kicking off the other. 'How will they
+do?'
+
+"Illigant, yer honor; illigant! May many a blessing'--
+
+"'Well, well, go now--that'll do,' and turning to Pentland, who was then
+a young boy in his service, ordered him to the house to get another
+pair. Frank obeyed, but was told by Mrs. Longworth that those he wore
+away from the house were all that he had. The result was that Frank was
+hurried off to William Hart's shoe store, on Fifth Street, for new ones,
+with instructions to 'Ask Mr. Hart for the kind I always buy, and don't
+pay over a dollar and a half for them.'"
+
+Yet many persons charged this man with stinginess--a charge to which
+every rich man lays himself open who does not give to all who ask him.
+Even the rich must refuse sometimes, for there is no reason why they
+should answer _all_ the calls made upon them--a course which would soon
+impoverish them. They must discriminate somewhere, and how this shall be
+done is a question which each must decide for himself. Longworth
+exercised this discrimination in an eccentric manner, eminently
+characteristic of him. He invariably refused cases that commended
+themselves to others. A gentleman once applied to him for assistance for
+a widow in destitute circumstances.
+
+"Who is she?" asked the millionaire. "Do you know her? Is she a
+deserving object?"
+
+"She is not only a woman of excellent character," answered his friend,
+"but she is doing all in her power to support a large family of
+children."
+
+"Very well, then," said Mr. Longworth, "I shan't give a cent. Such
+persons will always find a plenty to relieve them."
+
+He was firm, and turned coldly from the entreaties of his friend. Yet
+he opened his purse liberally to those whom others refused. Vagabonds,
+drunkards, fallen women, those who had gone down far into the depths of
+misery and wretchedness, and from whom respectable people shrank in
+disgust, never appealed to him in vain. "The devil's poor," he
+whimsically called them. He would listen to them patiently, moved to the
+depths of his soul by their sad stories, and would send them away
+rejoicing that they were not utterly friendless. "Decent paupers will
+always find a plenty to help them," he would say, "but no one cares for
+these poor wretches. Every body damns them, and as no one else will help
+them, I must." Yet he aided them in such a manner as to encourage them
+to rise above their wretchedness.
+
+In his personal appearance Mr. Longworth was not prepossessing. He was
+dry and caustic in his remarks, and rarely spared the object of his
+satire. He was plain and careless in his dress, looking more like a
+beggar than a millionaire. He cared nothing for dress, except, perhaps,
+that he preferred common clothes to fine ones. One of his acquaintances
+relates the following story in illustration of this phase of his
+character:
+
+"Many winters ago, it will be remembered that a style of striped goods
+was quite popular with poor people on account of its cheapness, and that
+it acquired the name of 'Hard Times.' Every body with scant purses wore
+coats or pants of it, for the reason that they could not very well buy
+any other kind. As the story goes, it appears that 'Old Nick,' as he was
+familiarly called, invested in an overcoat of this material, and took
+great pride in wearing it, much to the annoyance of the women folks. It
+happened that one cold, stormy night the faithful family coachman was at
+the house without an overcoat, and Mrs. Longworth, after very feelingly
+depicting his forlorn condition to her husband, solicited the privilege
+of giving him the aforesaid overcoat. Much to her gratification, Mr.
+Longworth assented, and the coachman wore off the 'Hard Times,' the good
+wife replacing it by an elegant broadcloth that she had quietly provided
+for the occasion. The next morning 'Old Nick' very innocently (?)
+overlooked the new coat, and went off to make his usual morning rounds
+without one; but it would be impossible to portray the annoyance of the
+household when they saw him returning to dinner wearing a duplicate of
+the veritable 'Hard Times,' and for weeks afterward it was no uncommon
+occurrence to see the 'master and man' flitting about the old homestead
+dressed in their gray stripes."
+
+The shabbiness of his dress once led to an amusing adventure, which he
+enjoyed very much. Climbing one of the hilly streets of the city one
+broiling summer day, he sat down on a pile of bricks, under the cool
+shade of a tree, to rest. Taking off his well-worn hat, he laid it on
+his knee, and closing his eyes, sat enjoying the breeze which had just
+then sprung up. He was very tired, and his whole figure expressed his
+weariness. As he sat there in his shabby dress, with his eyes closed,
+and his hat resting on his knees, he looked the very picture of a blind
+beggar soliciting charity. For such, indeed, he was mistaken by a
+working man who passed by a few minutes later, and who, pitying the
+supposed unfortunate, tossed a few pennies into his hat. The noise of
+the coppers made the old man open his eyes and look up; and to his
+amazement the workman recognized in the object of his charity Nicholas
+Longworth, the millionaire. Mr. Longworth looked at him a moment in his
+dry, quizzical way, and then, thanking him politely, put the coins in
+his pocket, and, closing his eyes, once more resumed his former
+position.
+
+Mr. Longworth had erected a magnificent mansion in the midst of his
+vineyard. He gathered there a fine library, and a collection of
+paintings, statuary, and other art treasures, which were his pride. He
+died there on the 10th of February, 1863, at the age of eighty-one. His
+loss was severely felt by the community, especially by his "devil's
+poor," for whom he had cared so tenderly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+GEORGE PEABODY.
+
+
+It is not often that men who pass their lives in the acquisition of
+money are able to retain the desire to give it to others who have had no
+share in the earning of it. In European countries, the wealthy merchant
+commonly uses his fortune for the purpose of founding a family, and
+securing sometimes a title of nobility. His wealth is entailed, that it
+may remain in his family and benefit remote generations; but few save
+those of his own blood enjoy any benefit from it, and the world is no
+better off for his life and success than if he had never been born. In
+America, instances of personal generosity and benevolence on a large
+scale are of more common occurrence than in the Old World. We have
+already borne witness to the munificence of Girard, Astor, Lawrence,
+Longworth, and Stewart, and shall yet present to the reader other
+instances of this kind in the remaining pages of this work. We have now
+to trace the career of one who far exceeded any of these in the extent
+and magnitude of his liberality, and who, while neglecting none
+connected with him by ties of blood, took the whole English-speaking
+race for his family, and by scattering his blessings far and wide on
+both sides of the Atlantic, has won a proud name
+
+    "As one who loved his fellow-men."
+
+
+[Illustration: GEORGE PEABODY.]
+
+GEORGE PEABODY came of an old English family, which traced its
+descent back to the year of our Lord 61, the days of the heroic
+Boadicea, down through the brilliant circle of the Knights of the Round
+Table, to Francis Peabody, who in 1635 went from St. Albans, in
+Hertfordshire, to the New World, and settled in Danvers, Massachusetts,
+where the subject of this memoir was born one hundred and sixty years
+later, on the 18th of February, 1795. The parents of George Peabody were
+poor, and hard work was the lot to which he was born, a lot necessary to
+develop his sterling qualities of mind and heart. He was possessed of a
+strong, vigorous constitution, and a quick, penetrating intellect. His
+education was limited, for he was taken from school at the age of
+eleven, and set to earning his living. Upon leaving school, he was
+apprenticed to a Mr. Sylvester Proctor, who kept a "country store" in
+Danvers. Here he worked hard and faithfully for four or five years,
+devoting himself, with an energy and determination surprising in one so
+young, to learn the first principles of business. His mind matured more
+rapidly than his body, and he was a man in intellect long before he was
+out of his teens. Having gained all the information it was possible to
+acquire in so small an establishment, he began to wish for a wider field
+for the exercise of his abilities. A retail grocery store was no longer
+the place for one possessed of such talents, and thoroughly conscious of
+them at such an early age, and it was natural that he should desire some
+more important and responsible position.
+
+Accordingly, he left Mr. Proctor's employment, and spent a year with his
+maternal grandfather at Post Mills village, Thetford, Vermont. "George
+Peabody's year at Post Mills," says a writer who knew him, "must have
+been a year of intense quiet, with good examples always before him, and
+good advice whenever occasion called for it; for Mr. Dodge and his wife
+were both too shrewd to bore him with it needlessly.
+
+"It was on his return from this visit that he spent a night at a tavern
+in Concord, N.H., and paid for his entertainment by sawing wood the next
+morning. That, however, must have been a piece of George's own voluntary
+economy, for Jeremiah Dodge would never have sent his grandson home to
+Danvers without the means of procuring the necessaries of life on the
+way, and still less, if possible, would Mrs. Dodge...."
+
+[Illustration: PEABODY PAYING FOR A NIGHT'S LODGING.]
+
+"The interest with which Mr. Peabody remembered this visit to Post Mills
+is shown by his second visit so late in life, and his gift of a
+library--as large a library as that place needs. Of its influence on his
+subsequent career, of course, there is no record. Perhaps it was not
+much. But, at least, it gave him a good chance for quiet thinking, at an
+age when he needed it; and the labors of the farm may have been useful
+both to mind and body."
+
+At the age of sixteen, in the year 1811, he went to Newburyport, and
+became a clerk in the store of his elder brother, David Peabody, who was
+engaged in the dry goods business at that place. He exhibited unusual
+capacity and promise in his calling, and soon drew upon himself the
+favorable attention of the merchants of the place. He was prompt,
+reliable, and energetic, and from the first established an enviable
+reputation for personal and professional integrity. It is said that he
+earned here the first money he ever made outside of his business. This
+was by writing ballots for the Federal party in Newburyport. Printed
+ballots had not then come into use.
+
+He did not stay long in Newburyport, as a great fire, which burned up a
+considerable part of the town, destroyed his brother's store, and
+obliged him to seek employment elsewhere. He always retained a warm
+attachment to the place, however, an attachment which a resident of the
+town explains as follows:
+
+"The cause of Mr. George Peabody's interest in Newburyport was not alone
+that he had lived here for a brief period, or that his relatives had
+lived here; but rather it was the warm friendship that had been shown
+him, which was, in fact, the basis of his subsequent prosperity. He left
+here in 1811, and returned in 1857. The forty-six intervening years had
+borne to the grave most of the persons with whom he had formed
+acquaintance. Among those he recognized were several who were in
+business, or clerks, on State Street in 1811,--Messrs. John Porter,
+Moses Kimball, Prescott Spaulding, and a few others. Mr. Spaulding was
+fourteen years older than Mr. Peabody, and in business when the latter
+was a clerk with his uncle, Colonel John Peabody. Mr. Peabody was here
+in 1857, on the day of the Agricultural Fair, and was walking in the
+procession with the late Mayor Davenport, when he saw Mr. Spaulding on
+the sidewalk, and at once left the procession to greet him.
+
+"Mr. Spaulding had rendered him the greatest of services. When Mr.
+Peabody left Newburyport, he was under age, and not worth a dollar. Mr.
+Spaulding gave him letters of credit in Boston, through which he
+obtained two thousand dollars' worth of merchandise of Mr. James Reed,
+who was so favorably impressed with his appearance, that he subsequently
+gave him credit for a larger amount. This was his start in life, as he
+afterward acknowledged; for at a public entertainment in Boston, when
+his credit was good for any amount, and in any part of the world, Mr.
+Peabody laid his hand on Mr. Reed's shoulder, and said to those present,
+'My friends, here is my first patron; and he is the man who sold me my
+first bill of goods.' After he was established in Georgetown, D.C., the
+first consignment made to him was by the late Francis Todd, of
+Newburyport. It was from these facts that Newburyport was always
+pleasant in his memory; and the donation he made to the Public Library
+was on his own suggestion, that he desired to do something of a public
+nature for our town."
+
+From New England, George Peabody turned his face southward, and entered
+the employment of his uncle, Mr. John Peabody, who was engaged in the
+dry goods business in Georgetown, in the District of Columbia. He
+reached that place in the spring of 1812; but, as the second war with
+England broke out about the same time, was not able to give his
+immediate attention to business. He became a member of a volunteer
+company of artillery, which was stationed at Fort Warburton, but as no
+active duty was required of the company, he soon went back to his
+uncle's store. His uncle was a poor man and a bad manager, and for two
+years the business was conducted by George Peabody, and in his own name;
+but at the end of that time, seeing the business threatened with ruin by
+his uncle's incapacity, he resigned his situation, and entered the
+service of Mr. Elisha Riggs, who had just established a wholesale dry
+goods house in Georgetown. Mr. Riggs furnished the capital for the
+concern, and Mr. Peabody was given the management of it. Soon after
+this, the latter became a partner in the house. It is said that when Mr.
+Riggs invited Mr. Peabody to become his partner, the latter informed him
+that he could not legally assume the responsibilities of the business,
+as he was only nineteen years old. This was no objection in the mind of
+the merchant, as he wanted a young and active assistant, and had
+discerned in his boy-manager the qualities which never fail to win
+success.
+
+The new business in which he was engaged consisted chiefly in the
+importation and sale of European goods, and consignments of dry goods
+from the northern cities. It extended over a wide field, and gave Mr.
+Peabody a fine opportunity for the display of his abilities. Mr. Riggs'
+friends blamed him very much for leaving his business so entirely in the
+hands of a boy of nineteen; but he had better proof than they that his
+affairs were not only in good but in the best hands, and he answered
+them all by telling them that time would justify his course. Mr. Peabody
+traveled extensively in establishing his business, often journeying into
+the wild and unsettled regions of the border States on horseback. He
+worked with energy and intelligence, and in 1815 the business was found
+to be so extensive that a removal to Baltimore became necessary. About
+this time a sort of irregular banking business was added to the
+operations of the house. This was chiefly the suggestion of Mr. Peabody,
+and proved a source of great profit.
+
+Mr. Peabody quickly took a prominent rank among the merchants of
+Baltimore. His manner was frank and engaging, and won him many friends.
+He was noted for "a judgment quick and cautious, clear and sound, a
+decided purpose, a firm will, energetic and persevering industry,
+punctuality and fidelity in every engagement, justice and honor
+controlling every transaction, and courtesy--that true courtesy which
+springs from genuine kindness--presiding over the intercourse of life."
+His business continued to increase, and in 1822 it became necessary to
+establish branches in Philadelphia and New York, over which Mr. Peabody
+exercised a careful supervision. He was thoroughly familiar with every
+detail of his business, and never suffered his vigilance to relax,
+however competent might be the subordinates in the immediate charge of
+those details. In 1827 he went to England on business for his firm, and
+during the next ten years made frequent voyages between New York and
+London.
+
+In 1829 Mr. Riggs withdrew from the firm, and Mr. Peabody become the
+actual head of the house, the style of the firm, which had previously
+been "Riggs & Peabody," being changed to "Peabody, Riggs & Co." The firm
+had for some time been the financial agents of the State of Maryland,
+and had managed the negotiations confided to them with great skill and
+success; and every year their banking department became more important
+and more profitable.
+
+In 1836 Mr. Peabody determined to extend his business, which was already
+very large, to England, and to open a branch house in London. In 1837 he
+removed to that city for the purpose of taking charge of his house
+there, and from that time London became his home.
+
+The summer of this year was marked by one of the most terrible
+commercial crises the United States has ever known. A large number of
+the banks suspended specie payment, and the majority of the mercantile
+houses were either ruined or in the greatest distress. Thousands of
+merchants, until then prosperous, were hopelessly ruined. "That great
+sympathetic nerve of the commercial world, credit," said Edward Everett,
+"as far as the United States was concerned, was for the time paralyzed.
+At that moment Mr. Peabody not only stood firm himself, but was the
+cause of firmness in others. There were not at that time, probably, half
+a dozen other men in Europe who, upon the subject of American
+securities, would have been listened to for a moment in the parlor of
+the Bank of England. But his judgment commanded respect; his integrity
+won back the reliance which men had been accustomed to place in American
+securities. The reproach in which they were all involved was gradually
+wiped away from those of a substantial character; and if, on this solid
+basis of unsuspected good faith, he reared his own prosperity, let it be
+remembered that at the same time he retrieved the credit of the State of
+Maryland, of which he was agent--performing that miracle by which the
+word of an honest man turns paper into gold."
+
+The conduct of Mr. Peabody, as well as the evidences which he gave of
+his remarkable capacity for business, in this crisis, placed him among
+the foremost merchants of London. He carried on his business upon a
+large scale from his base of operations in that city. He bought British
+manufactures in all parts of England and shipped them to the United
+States. His vessels brought back in return all kinds of American produce
+which would command a ready sale in England. Profitable as these
+ventures were, there was another branch of his business much more
+remunerative to him. The merchants and manufacturers on both sides of
+the Atlantic who consigned their goods to him frequently procured from
+him advances upon the goods long before they were sold. At other times
+they would leave large sums in his hands long after the goods were
+disposed of, knowing that they could draw whenever they needed, and that
+in the meanwhile their money was being so profitably invested that they
+were certain of a proper interest for their loans. Thus Mr. Peabody
+gradually became a banker, in which pursuit he was as successful as he
+had been as a merchant. In 1843 he withdrew from the house of Peabody,
+Riggs & Co., and established the house of "George Peabody & Company, of
+Warnford Court, City."
+
+His dealings were chiefly with America, and in American securities, and
+he was always regarded as one of the best specimens of the American
+merchant ever seen in London. He was very proud of his country; and
+though he passed so many years of his life abroad, he never forgot that
+he was an American. In speaking of the manner in which he organized his
+business establishment, he once said: "I have endeavored, in the
+constitution of its members and the character of its business, to make
+it an American house, and to give it an American atmosphere; to furnish
+it with American journals; to make it a center of American news, and an
+agreeable place for my American friends visiting London."
+
+It was his custom, from his first settlement in England, to celebrate
+the anniversary of the independence of his country by an entertainment
+at one of the public houses in the city, to which the most distinguished
+Americans in London were always invited, as were also many of the
+prominent men of Great Britain; and this dinner was only discontinued in
+deference to the general celebration of the day which was afterward
+instituted by the whole body of Americans resident in the British
+metropolis. In the year 1851, when it was thought that there would be no
+representation of the achievements of American skill and industry in the
+Great Exhibition of that year, from a lack of funds, Mr. Peabody
+generously supplied the sum of fifteen thousand dollars, which enabled
+the Commissioners to make a suitable display of the American
+contributions. Said the Hon. Edward Everett, alluding to this act:
+
+"In most, perhaps in all other countries, this exhibition had been a
+government affair. Commissioners were appointed by authority to protect
+the interests of the exhibitors; and, what was more important,
+appropriations of money had been made to defray their expenses. No
+appropriations were made by Congress. Our exhibitors arrived friendless,
+some of them penniless, in the great commercial Babel of the world. They
+found the portion of the Crystal Palace assigned to our country
+unprepared for the specimens of art and industry which they had brought
+with them; naked and unadorned by the side of the neighboring arcades
+and galleries fitted up with elegance and splendor by the richest
+governments in Europe. The English press began to launch its too ready
+sarcasms at the sorry appearance which Brother Jonathan seemed likely to
+make; and all the exhibitors from this country, as well as those who
+felt an interest in their success, were disheartened. At this critical
+moment, our friend stepped forward. He did what Congress should have
+done. By liberal advances on his part, the American department was
+fitted up; and day after day, as some new product of American ingenuity
+and taste was added to the list,--McCormick's reaper, Colt's revolver,
+Powers's Greek Slave, Hobbs's unpickable lock, Hoe's wonderful printing
+presses, and Bond's more wonderful spring governor,---it began to be
+suspected that Brother Jonathan was not quite so much of a simpleton as
+had been thought. He had contributed his full share, if not to the
+splendor, at least to the utilities of the exhibition. In fact, the
+leading journal at London, with a magnanimity which did it honor,
+admitted that England had derived more real benefit from the
+contributions of the United States than from those of any other
+country."
+
+As has been said, Mr. Peabody made the bulk of his colossal fortune in
+the banking business. He had a firm faith in American securities, and
+dealt in them largely, and with confidence. His business instinct was
+remarkable, his judgment in mercantile and financial matters almost
+infallible, and he made few mistakes. His course was now onward and
+upward, and each year marked an increase of his wealth. His business
+operations were conducted in pursuance of a rigid system which was never
+relaxed. To the very close of his life he never abandoned the exact or
+business-like manner in which he sought to make money. He gave away
+millions with a generosity never excelled, yet he could be exacting to a
+penny in the fulfillment of a contract.
+
+In his youth he contracted habits of economy, and these he retained to
+the last. Being unmarried, he did not subject himself to the expense of
+a complete domestic establishment, but lived in chambers, and
+entertained his friends at his club or at a coffee-house. His habits
+were simple in every respect, and he was often seen making his dinner on
+a mutton-chop at a table laden (at his cost) with the most sumptuous and
+tempting viands. His personal expenses for ten years did not average
+three thousand dollars per annum.
+
+The conductor on an English railway once overcharged him a shilling for
+fare. He promptly complained to the directors, and had the man
+discharged. "Not," said he, "that I could not afford to pay the
+shilling, but the man was cheating many travelers to whom the swindle
+would be offensive."
+
+Several years ago he chanced to ride in a hack in Salem, Massachusetts,
+and upon reaching his destination tendered the driver his usual fee of
+fifty cents.
+
+"Here's your change, sir," said the man, handing him back fifteen cents.
+
+"Change!" exclaimed Mr. Peabody; "why, I'm not entitled to any."
+
+"Yes, you are; I don't charge but thirty-five cents for a ride in my
+hack."
+
+"How do you live, then?"
+
+"By fair dealing, sir. I don't believe in making a man pay more than a
+thing is worth just because I have an opportunity."
+
+Mr. Peabody was so much pleased with this reply, that as long as he
+remained in Salem he sought this man out and gave him his custom.
+
+In his dress Mr. Peabody was simple and unostentatious. He was
+scrupulously neat and tasteful, but there was nothing about him to
+indicate his vast wealth. He seldom wore any jewelry, using merely a
+black band for his watch-guard. Display of all kinds he abominated.
+
+He made several visits to his native country during his last residence
+in London, and commemorated each one of them by acts of princely
+munificence. He gave large sums to the cause of education, and to
+religious and charitable objects, and made each one of his near kindred
+wealthy. None of his relatives received less than one hundred thousand
+dollars, and some were given as much as three times that sum. He gave
+immense sums to the poor of London, and became their benefactor to such
+an extent that Queen Victoria sent him her portrait, which she had
+caused to be executed for him at a cost of over forty thousand dollars,
+in token of her appreciation of his services in behalf of the poor of
+her realm.
+
+Mr. Peabody made another visit to the United States in 1866, and upon
+this occasion added large sums to many of the donations he had already
+made in this country. He remained here until May, 1867, when he returned
+to England. He came back in June, 1869, but soon sailed again for
+England. His health had become very feeble, and it was his belief that
+it would be better in the atmosphere of London, to which he had been so
+long accustomed. His hope of recovery was vain. He failed to rally upon
+reaching London, and died in that city on the 4th of November, 1869.
+
+The news of his death created a profound sadness on both sides of the
+Atlantic, for his native and his adopted country alike revered him as a
+benefactor. The Queen caused his body to be placed in a vault in
+Westminster Abbey, amidst the greatest and noblest of her kingdom, until
+all was in readiness for its transportation to the United States in a
+royal man-of-war. The Congress of the United States authorized the
+President to make such arrangements for the reception of the body as he
+should deem necessary. Sovereigns, statesmen, and warriors united to do
+homage to the mortal remains of this plain, simple man, who, beginning
+life a poor boy, and never departing from the character of an unassuming
+citizen, had made humanity his debtor by his generosity and goodness. He
+was borne across the ocean with kingly honors, two great nations acting
+as chief mourners, and then, when the pomp and the splendor of the
+occasion were ended, they laid him down in his native earth by the side
+of the mother from whom he had imbibed those principles of integrity and
+goodness which were the foundation of his fame and fortune.
+
+It is impossible to obtain an accurate statement of the donations made
+by Mr. Peabody to the objects which enlisted his sympathy. In addition
+to those mentioned in the list below, he gave away for various public
+purposes sums ranging from two hundred and fifty to one thousand
+dollars, and extending back as far as the year 1835. He divided among
+his relatives the sum of about three millions of dollars, giving them a
+portion during his last visit to this country, and leaving them the
+remainder at his death.
+
+The following is a statement of his more important donations during his
+life, including the bequests contained in his last will and testament:
+
+To the State of Maryland, for negotiating the
+   loan of $8,000,000.................................    $60,000
+To the Peabody Institute, Baltimore, Md., including
+   accrued interest...................................  1,500,000
+To the Southern Education Fund........................  3,000,000
+To Yale College.......................................    150,000
+To Harvard College....................................    150,000
+To Peabody Academy, Massachusetts.....................    140,000
+To Phillips Academy, Massachusetts....................     25,000
+To Peabody Institute, etc., at Peabody, Mass..........    250,000
+To Kenyon College, Ohio...............................     25,000
+To Memorial Church, in Georgetown, Mass...............    100,000
+To Homes for the Poor in London.......................  3,000,000
+To Libraries in Georgetown, Massachusetts,
+   and Thetford, Vermont..............................     10,000
+To Kane's Arctic Expedition...........................     10,000
+To different Sanitary Fairs...........................     10,000
+To unpaid moneys advanced to uphold the
+   credit of States...................................     40,000
+
+Total................................................. $8,470,000
+
+The life of such a man affords lessons full of hope and encouragement to
+others. In 1856, when on a visit to Danvers, now named Peabody, in honor
+of him, its most distinguished son and greatest benefactor, he said:
+
+"Though Providence has granted me an unvaried and unusual success in the
+pursuit of fortune in other lands, I am still in heart the humble boy
+who left yonder unpretending dwelling. There is not a youth within the
+sound of my voice whose early opportunities and advantages are not very
+much greater than were my own, and I have since achieved nothing that is
+impossible to the most humble boy among you."
+
+
+[Illustration: CORNELIUS VANDERBILT.]
+
+II.
+
+CAPITALISTS.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+CORNELIUS VANDERBILT.
+
+
+Staten Island lies in the beautiful bay of New York, seven miles distant
+from the great city. Its lofty heights shut in the snug anchorage of the
+inner bay, and protect it from the rude storms which howl along the
+coast. It lies full in sight of the city, and is one of the most
+beautiful and attractive of its suburbs. The commanding heights and
+embowered shores are covered with villas and cottages, and afford a
+pleasant and convenient summer resort for the people of New York. It now
+contains a large and flourishing population, and maintains a speedy and
+constant communication with the metropolis by means of steam
+ferry-boats, the total travel on which sometimes reaches as many as ten
+or twelve thousand passengers per day.
+
+Seventy-six years ago, Staten Island was a mere country settlement, and
+its communications with the city were maintained by means of a few
+sail-boats, which made one trip each way per day.
+
+One of these boats was owned and navigated by Cornelius Vanderbilt, a
+thriving farmer, who owned a small but well cultivated estate on Staten
+Island, near the present Quarantine Grounds. He was a man of exemplary
+character, great industry, and was generally regarded as one of the most
+prudent and reliable men on the island. Having a considerable amount of
+produce to sell in the city, he purchased a boat of his own for the
+purpose of transporting it thither. Frequently, residents of the island
+would secure passage in this boat to the city in the morning, and return
+with it in the evening. He realized a considerable sum of money in this
+way, and finally ran his boat regularly between the island and the city.
+This was the beginning of the New York and Staten Island Ferry. Mr.
+Vanderbilt, by close application to his farm and boat, soon acquired a
+property, which, though small, was sufficient to enable him to maintain
+his family independently. His wife was a woman of more than usual
+character, and aided him nobly in making his way in the world.
+
+This admirable couple were blessed with nine children. The oldest of
+these, CORNELIUS, the subject of this sketch, was born at the old
+farm-house on Staten Island, on the 27th of May, 1794. He was a healthy,
+active boy, fond of all manner of out-door sports, and manifesting an
+unusual repugnance to the confinement and labors of the school-room. He
+has since declared that the only books he remembers using at school were
+the New Testament and the spelling-book. The result was, that he merely
+learned to read, write, and cipher, and that imperfectly. He was
+passionately fond of the water, and was never so well pleased as when
+his father allowed him to assist in sailing his boat. He was also a
+famous horseman from his earliest childhood, and even now recalls with
+evident pride the fact that when but six years old he rode a race-horse
+at full speed. When he set himself to accomplish any thing, he was not,
+like most boys, deterred by the difficulties of his undertaking, but
+persevered until success crowned his efforts. So early did he establish
+his reputation for overcoming obstacles, that his boyish friends learned
+to regard any task which he undertook as already virtually performed.
+
+When he was only twelve years old his father contracted to remove the
+cargo from a ship which had gone ashore near Sandy Hook, and to convey
+it to New York. The lighters which were to carry the goods to the city
+could not reach the ship, and it was necessary to haul the cargo,
+transported in wagons, across the sands from the vessel to them. In
+spite of his tender age, little Cornelius was placed by his father in
+charge of the undertaking, which he accomplished promptly and
+successfully. He loaded his lighters, sent them up to New York, and then
+started for home with his wagons. Upon reaching South Amboy, where he
+was to cross over to Staten Island, he found himself, with his wagons,
+horses, and men, without any money to pay his ferriage across to the
+island. The ferriage would amount to six dollars, and how he was to
+raise this sum he was, for a time, at a loss to determine. Finally, he
+went to the keeper of the tavern, to whom he was a stranger, and asked
+for the loan of six dollars, offering to leave one of his horses as a
+pledge for the money, which he promised to return within two days. The
+tavern-keeper was so well pleased with the boy's energy, that he loaned
+him the money, and the party crossed over to Staten Island. The pawned
+horse was promptly redeemed.
+
+Young Vanderbilt was always anxious to become a sailor, and, as he
+approached his seventeenth year, he determined to begin life as a
+boatman in the harbor of New York. On the 1st of May, 1810, he informed
+his mother of his determination, and asked her to lend him one hundred
+dollars to buy a boat.
+
+The good lady had always opposed her son's wish to go to sea, and
+regarded this new scheme as equally hair-brained. As a means of
+discouraging him, she told him if he would plow, harrow, and plant with
+corn a certain ten-acre lot belonging to the farm, by the twenty-seventh
+of that month, on which day he would be seventeen years old, she would
+lend him the money. The field was the worst in the whole farm; it was
+rough, hard, and stony; but by the appointed time the work was done, and
+well done, and the boy claimed and received his money. He hurried off to
+a neighboring village, and bought his boat, in which he set out for
+home. He had not gone far, however, when the boat struck a sunken wreck,
+and filled so rapidly that the boy had barely time to get into shoal
+water before it sank.
+
+[Illustration: VANDERBILT EARNING HIS FIRST HUNDRED DOLLARS.]
+
+"Undismayed at this mishap," says Mr. Parton, from whose graphic memoir
+the leading incidents of this sketch are taken, "he began his new
+career. His success, as we have intimated, was speedy and great. He made
+a thousand dollars during each of the next three summers. Often he
+worked all night; but he was never absent from his post by day, and he
+soon had the cream of the boating business of the port.
+
+"At that day parents claimed the services and earnings of their children
+till they were twenty-one. In other words, families made common cause
+against the common enemy, Want. The arrangement between this young
+boatman and his parents was, that he should give them all his day
+earnings and half his night earnings. He fulfilled his engagement
+faithfully until his parents released him from it, and with his own half
+of his earnings by night, he bought all his clothes. He had forty
+competitors in the business, who, being all grown men, could dispose of
+their gains as they chose; but of all the forty, he alone has emerged to
+prosperity and distinction. Why was this? There were several reasons. He
+soon became the best boatman in the port. He attended to his business
+more regularly and strictly than any other. He had no vices. His
+comrades spent at night much of what they earned by day, and when the
+winter suspended their business, instead of living on their last
+summer's savings, they were obliged to lay up debts for the next
+summer's gains to discharge. In those three years of willing servitude
+to his parents, Cornelius Vanderbilt added to the family's common stock
+of wealth, and gained for himself three things--a perfect knowledge of
+his business, habits of industry and self-control, and the best boat in
+the harbor."
+
+During the War of 1812, young Vanderbilt was kept very busy. All the
+harbor defenses were fully manned, and a number of war vessels were in
+port all the time. The travel between these and the city was very great,
+and boatmen were in demand.
+
+In September, 1813, a British fleet attempted to run past Fort Richmond,
+during a heavy gale. The commanding officer was anxious to send to New
+York for reinforcements, but it was blowing so hard that none of the old
+boatmen were willing to venture upon the bay. They all declared that if
+the voyage could be made at all, Cornelius Vanderbilt was the only man
+who could make it. The commandant at once sent for the young man, who,
+upon learning the urgency of the case, expressed his belief that he
+could carry the messengers to the city. "But," said he, "I shall have to
+carry them part of the way under water." He set out with the messengers,
+and in an hour landed them safe, but drenched through, at the foot of
+Whitehall Street, which was then the landing place of all the boatmen of
+the harbor.
+
+He was now so prosperous in his calling that he determined to marry. He
+had wooed and won the heart of Sophia Johnson, the daughter of a
+neighbor, and he now asked his parents' consent to his marriage, and
+also requested them to allow him to retain his own earnings, in order
+that he might be able to support a wife. Both of his petitions received
+the approval of his parents, and in the winter of 1813 he was married.
+His wife was a woman of unusual personal beauty and strength of
+character, and proved the best of partners. He has often declared since
+that he owed his success in life as much to her counsel and assistance
+as to his own efforts.
+
+In the spring of 1814, it became known in America that the British were
+fitting out a formidable military and naval expedition for the purpose
+of attacking one of the Atlantic ports of the United States. The whole
+coast was on the lookout, and, as it was feared that the blow would be
+struck at New York, every precaution was taken to be ready. The militia
+were called into service for three months, under a heavy penalty for
+refusing to obey the call. The term of service thus marked out covered
+the most prosperous season of the boatmen, and made the call fall
+particularly hard upon them. About this time, an advertisement was
+inserted in the city journals by the Commissary-General of the army,
+calling for bids from boatmen for the purpose of conveying provisions
+from New York to the various military posts in the vicinity. The labor
+was to be performed during the three months for which the militia were
+called out, and the contractor was to be exempted from all military duty
+during that time. Bids poured in from the boatmen, who offered to do the
+work at ridiculously low figures--the chief object of each one being to
+secure the exemption.
+
+Young Vanderbilt, knowing that the work could not be done at the rates
+at which his comrades offered to perform it, at first decided not to bid
+for it, but at length--and more to please his father than because he
+expected to succeed--offered to transport the provisions at a price
+which would enable him to be sure of doing it well and thoroughly. He
+felt so little hope of success that he did not even trouble himself to
+go to the office of the Commissary on the day of the awarding of the
+contract, until he learned from his companions that all their efforts to
+secure it had been ineffectual. Then he called on the Commissary, merely
+through curiosity, to learn the name of the fortunate man, and to his
+utter astonishment was told that the contract had been awarded to
+himself. The Government was satisfied, from his sensible offer, that he
+would do the business thoroughly, and this the Commissary assured him
+was the reason why they had selected him.
+
+There were six posts to be supplied--Harlem, Hell Gate, Ward's Island,
+the Narrows, and one other in the harbor, each of which was to be
+furnished with one load per week. The young contractor made arrangements
+to have a daily load of stores ready for him each evening at six
+o'clock, and thus performed all the duties of his contract at night,
+which left him free to attend to his boating during the day. He never
+failed to make a single delivery of stores, or to be absent from his
+post on the beach at Whitehall one single day during the whole three
+months. He was often without sleep, and performed an immense amount of
+labor during this period; but his indomitable energy and powerful
+physical organization carried him safely through it all.
+
+He made a great deal of money that summer, and with his earnings built a
+splendid little schooner, which he named the "Dread." In 1815, in
+connection with his brother-in-law, Captain De Forrest, he built a fine
+schooner, called the "Charlotte," for the coasting service. She was
+celebrated for the beauty of her model and her great speed. He continued
+to ply his boat in the harbor during the summer, but in the fall and
+winter made voyages along the coast, often as far south as Charleston.
+During the three years succeeding the termination of the war he saved
+nine thousand dollars in cash, and built two or three small vessels.
+This was his condition in 1818.
+
+By this time it had become demonstrated to his satisfaction that the new
+system of steamboats was a success, and was destined to come into
+general use at no very distant day. He therefore determined to identify
+himself with it at once, and thereby secure the benefits which he felt
+sure would result from a prompt connection with it. Accordingly, in
+1818, to the surprise and dismay of his friends, he gave up his
+flourishing business, in order to accept the captaincy of a steamboat
+which was offered him by Mr. Thomas Gibbons. The salary attached to this
+position was one thousand dollars, and Captain Vanderbilt's friends
+frankly told him that he was very foolish in abandoning a lucrative
+business for so insignificant a sum. Turning a deaf ear to their
+remonstrances, however, he entered promptly upon the duties of his new
+career, and was given command of a steamboat plying between New York and
+New Brunswick.
+
+Passengers to Philadelphia, at that day, were transported by steamer
+from New York to New Brunswick, where they remained all night. The next
+morning they took the stage for Trenton, from which they were conveyed
+by steamer to Philadelphia. The hotel at New Brunswick was a miserable
+affair, and had never paid expenses. When Captain Vanderbilt took
+command of the steamer, he was offered the hotel rent free, and accepted
+the offer. He placed the house in charge of his wife, under whose
+vigorous administration it soon acquired a popularity which was of the
+greatest benefit to the line.
+
+For seven years he was harassed and hampered by the hostility of the
+State of New York, which had granted to Fulton and Livingston the sole
+right to navigate New York waters by steam. Thomas Gibbons believed this
+law to be unconstitutional, and ran his boats in defiance of it. The
+authorities of the State resented his disregard of their monopoly, and a
+long and vexatious warfare sprang up between them, which was ended only
+in 1824, by the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in
+favor of Mr. Gibbons.
+
+As a means of crippling Gibbons, the New York authorities at one time
+determined to arrest Vanderbilt and his crew; but the wary captain was
+too cunning for them. He would land his crew in Jersey City, and take
+charge of the engine himself, while a lady managed the helm. In this way
+he approached the wharf at New York, landed his passengers, and took on
+more. As soon as he had made his boat fast, he concealed himself in the
+hold until the moment of his departure. As soon as he appeared on deck,
+the Sheriff's officer (who was changed every day to avoid recognition)
+would approach him with a warrant for his arrest. His reply was an
+order to let go the line. The officer, unwilling to be carried off to
+New Jersey, where he was threatened with imprisonment in the
+penitentiary for interfering with the steamer, would at once jump
+ashore, or beg to be landed. This was kept up for two months, but the
+captain successfully baffled his enemies during the whole of that
+period. The opponents of Mr. Gibbons offered a larger and better boat
+than the one he commanded if he would enter their service, but he firmly
+declined all their offers, avowing his determination to remain with Mr.
+Gibbons until the difficulty was settled.
+
+After the decision of the Supreme Court placed Mr. Gibbons in the full
+enjoyment of his rights, Captain Vanderbilt was allowed to manage the
+line in his own way, and conducted it with so much skill and vigor that
+it paid its owner an annual profit of forty thousand dollars. Mr.
+Gibbons offered to increase his salary to five thousand dollars, but he
+refused to accept the offer.
+
+"I did it on principle," he said, afterward. "The other captains had but
+one thousand, and they were already jealous enough of me. Besides, I
+never cared for money. All I ever cared for was to carry my point."
+
+[Illustration: VANDERBILT CARRYING OFF THE SHERIFF.]
+
+In 1829 he determined to leave the service of Mr. Gibbons, with whom he
+had been connected for eleven years. He was thirty-five years old, and
+had saved thirty thousand dollars. He resolved to build a steamer of his
+own, and command her himself, and accordingly made known his intention
+to his employer. Mr. Gibbons at once declared that he could not carry on
+the line without his assistance, and told him he might make his own
+terms if he would stay with him. Captain Vanderbilt had formed his
+decision after much thought, and being satisfied that he was doing
+right, he persisted in his determination to set up for himself. Mr.
+Gibbons then offered to sell him the line on the spot, and to take his
+pay as the money should be earned. It was a splendid offer, but it was
+firmly and gratefully refused. The captain knew the men among whom he
+would be thrown, and that they could never act together harmoniously. He
+believed his own ideas to be the best, and wished to be free to carry
+them out.
+
+After leaving Mr. Gibbons he built a small steamer, called the
+"Caroline," which he commanded himself. In a few years he was the owner
+of several other small steamers plying between New York and the
+neighboring towns. He made slow progress at first, for he had strong
+opposition to overcome. The steamboat interest was in the hands of
+powerful companies, backed by immense capital, and these companies were
+not disposed to tolerate the interference of any new-comer. They met
+their match in all cases, however, for Vanderbilt inaugurated so sharp a
+business opposition that the best of them were forced to compromise with
+him. These troubles were very annoying to him, and cost him nearly every
+dollar he was worth, but he persevered, and at length "carried his
+point."
+
+From that time he made his way gradually in his business, until he rose
+to the head of the steamboat interest of the United States. He has owned
+or been interested in one hundred steam vessels, and has been
+instrumental in a greater degree than any other man in bringing down the
+tariff of steamboat fares. He never builds a vessel without giving his
+personal superintendence to every detail, so that all his various craft
+have been models of their kind. He selects his officers with the
+greatest care, pays them liberal salaries, and, as long as they do their
+duty, sustains them against all outside interference or intrigue. In
+this way he inspires them with zeal, and the result is that he has never
+lost a vessel by fire, explosion, or wreck.
+
+He built the famous steamer "North Star," and made a triumphal cruise
+in her to the Old World. It is said that he was at one time very anxious
+to divide the business of the ocean with the Collins Line of steamers.
+When the "Arctic" was lost he applied to Mr. Collins to allow his
+steamer to run in her place. He promised to make no claim for the mail
+subsidy which Collins received, and to take the vessel off as soon as
+Collins could build another to take her place. Mr. Collins was afraid to
+let Mr. Vanderbilt get any hold on the foreign trade of the country, and
+not only refused his request, but did so in a manner which roused the
+anger of the veteran, who thereupon told Mr. Collins that he would run
+his line off the ocean if it took his whole life and entire fortune to
+do it. He kept his word. He at once offered the Government to carry the
+mails more promptly and regularly than had ever been done before, and to
+do this for a term of years without asking one single cent as subsidy.
+It was well known that he was perfectly able to do what he promised, and
+he pressed the matter upon the Government so vigorously that he was
+successful. The subsidy to Collins was withdrawn, and the magnificent
+line soon fell to pieces in consequence of the bankruptcy of its owner,
+who might have averted his fate by the exercise of a little liberality.
+
+Of late years, Mr. Vanderbilt has been withdrawing his money from ships
+and steamers, and investing it in railroads and iron works. Success has
+attended him in all his ventures, and he is to-day worth over thirty
+millions of dollars. He controls the Hudson River, Harlem, and New York
+Central Roads, and is largely interested in many others. He is all
+powerful in the stock market, and can move it as he will.
+
+A few years ago he wished to consolidate the Hudson River and Harlem
+Railroads, and when the scheme was presented before the Legislature of
+New York, secured a sufficient number of votes to insure the passage of
+the bill authorizing the consolidation. Before the bill was called up on
+its final passage, however, he learned from a trustworthy source that
+the members of the Legislature who had promised to vote for the bill
+were determined to vote against it, with the hope of ruining him. The
+stock of Harlem Road was then selling very high, in consequence of the
+expected consolidation. The defeat of the bill would, of course, cause
+it to fall immediately. The unprincipled legislators at once commenced a
+shrewd game. They sold Harlem right and left, to be delivered at a
+future day, and found plenty of purchasers. They let their friends into
+the secret, and there was soon a great deal of "selling 'short'" in this
+stock.[A] Commodore Vanderbilt, although indignant at the treachery of
+which he was to be made the victim, held his peace. He went into the
+market quietly, with all the funds he could raise, purchased every
+dollar's worth of Harlem stock he could lay his hands on, and locked it
+up in his safe. When the bill came before the Legislature on its final
+passage, the members who had pledged themselves to vote for it voted
+against it, and it was rejected.
+
+
+[Footnote A: For the benefit of the uninitiated reader, we will explain
+the "game" more clearly. Harlem stock was selling at a high price, in
+consequence of the expected consolidation. Those who sold "short" at
+this time sold at the market price, which, as we have said, was high. By
+engaging to deliver at some future day, they expected to be able to buy
+the stock for little or nothing after the defeat of the bill, and then
+to demand for it the price for which they had sold it in the first
+place. Such a transaction was infamous, but would have enabled those
+engaged in it to realize immense sums by the difference in the price of
+the stock.]
+
+The speculators were jubilant. They were sure that the defeat of the
+bill would bring down "Harlem" with a rush. To their astonishment,
+however, "Harlem" did not fall. It remained stationary the first day,
+and then, to their dismay, began to rise steadily. Those to whom they
+had sold demanded the delivery of the stock, but the speculators found
+it impossible to buy it. There was none in the market at any price.
+Being unable to deliver stock, they were forced to pay its equivalent in
+money, and the result was, that all who were engaged in the infamous
+scheme were ruined. One of the shrewdest operators in New York lost over
+two hundred thousand dollars. He refused to pay, but his name was at
+once stricken from the list of stock-brokers. This brought him to terms,
+and he made good his contracts. Vanderbilt made enough money out of this
+effort to crush him to pay for all the stock he owned in the Harlem
+Road.
+
+During the rebellion, Commodore Vanderbilt was one of the stanchest
+supporters of the Government. Early in the struggle he equipped his
+splendid steamer, the "Vanderbilt," as a man-of-war, and offered her to
+the Navy Department at a fair price. He found that, in order to sell the
+vessel, he would have to pay a percentage of the price received for her
+to certain parties who stood between the Government and the purchase,
+and levied black mail upon every ship the Government bought. Indignant
+and disgusted, he withdrew his ship, and declared she was not for sale.
+Then, satisfying himself that she was in perfect condition, he presented
+her to the Navy Department _as a free gift to the nation_.
+
+Says a recent writer, whose fondness for courtly similes the reader must
+pardon, for the sake of the information he imparts: "No man is felt in
+Wall Street more than Commodore Vanderbilt, yet he is seldom seen there.
+All of his business is done in his office in Fourth Street. Here his
+brokers meet him, receive their orders, and give reports. Here the plans
+are laid that shake the street, and Wall Street trembles at the foot of
+an invisible autocrat. If the reader would care to visit the court of
+that great railroad king, whose name has become the terror of Wall
+Street, he may accompany us to a plain brick residence in Fourth Street,
+near Broadway, and distant from Wall Street nearly two miles. No sign
+indicates its imperial occupant, except that the upper story being
+occupied as a millinery establishment bears a legend of that character.
+However, as we enter the hall, we notice the word 'office,' and open the
+door thus inscribed. Here we see a table, a few chairs, and a desk, at
+which a solitary clerk of middle age is standing at work.
+
+"The walls are bare, with the exception of a few pictures of those
+steamships which originated the title of 'Commodore,' This is the
+ante-chamber, and a pair of folding doors screen the king from vulgar
+gaze. He is closeted with his marshals, and this privy council will last
+an hour or so. One after the other they depart, and before three o'clock
+the effect of this council will not only be felt in Wall Street, but
+will be flashed over the Union. At length you are permitted to enter.
+The folding door is opened, and you behold an office as plain in
+appearance as the one just described. It contains a few arm-chairs and a
+long business-table, thrown flush before you, on the opposite side of
+which sits a large man, with his face fronting you. He is writing, and
+his eyes are fixed on the paper, so that you have a moment to note the
+dignity of frame and the vast development of brain. In a few minutes the
+countenance raises, and you meet its expansive and penetrating glance.
+
+"You face the king. He smiles in a pleasant and whole-souled manner, and
+in a moment puts you at ease. No stiffness nor formality here. His
+kingship is in himself, not in etiquette. He is ready for a pleasantry,
+and will initiate one if it comes in the line of conversation. You note
+those wonderful eyes, bright and piercing, and so large and rich that
+one is fascinated, and does not know how to stop gazing into them. Such
+is the appearance of the railway king, and you take your leave,
+conscious that some men, as Shakespeare says, 'are born great.' Indeed,
+we know a man who would rather give five dollars to sit and look at
+Commodore Vanderbilt for an hour than to see any other sight in this
+city. Next door to the office is a building of brown stone, with
+spacious doors and a roadway. This is the Commodore's stable, where are
+some of the finest horses in the country.
+
+"Every afternoon he is wont to take an airing, and after tea a game of
+whist affords an evening amusement. The Commodore is simple in his
+manners and habits. He is a representative of a former age, when men
+lived less artificially than at the present time, and when there was
+more happiness and less show. As for business, it is his nature. He can
+not help being king. He is but developing himself, and any other mode of
+life would be painful. He has in the Central afforded a third wonder,
+the Harlem and the Hudson River being the first and second, and if he
+gets the Erie he will soon show the world another wonder. On Sundays the
+Commodore attends Dr. Hutton's church on Washington Square, and here his
+tall and dignified form may be seen, head and shoulders above the rest
+of the congregation. He is a friend of the pastor, who takes a deep
+interest in his welfare, and we hope will meet him in a better world. He
+stood by the Commodore's side when his wife was laid in the tomb, and
+cheered him in that dark and trying hour. Among his more recent works is
+the completing of a tomb in the old Moravian burial-ground in Staten
+Island. The subterranean chamber is about thirty feet square, and is
+surmounted by a lofty shaft, and a statue of grief adds a peculiar
+finish to the spot. The cemetery is on an eminence, from which one gets
+a fine view of the ocean, dotted with ships."
+
+Commodore Vanderbilt's early passion for horses still survives, and his
+stable contains some of the finest in the world. Nothing pleases him so
+well as to sit behind a fast team, with the reins in his hands, and fly
+along the road with almost the speed of the wind.
+
+He is extremely generous to his friends, and gives liberally to
+charitable objects. He never puts his name to a subscription paper, but
+his donations are none the less liberal for that. His old
+acquaintances--especially those of his boyhood--find him a tender
+friend, and many of them owe to his bounty the comforts which surround
+their age.[A]
+
+He is the father of thirteen children--nine daughters and four
+sons--nearly all of whom are still living. A few years ago, at the
+celebration of his golden wedding, over one hundred and forty of his
+descendants and relatives assembled to congratulate him. He lost a
+promising son during the war, and his wife died two years ago. Not long
+since he married a second time. He is still one of the handsomest and
+most imposing men in New York, and will doubtless live to see his
+children's grandchildren.
+
+[Footnote A: In July, 1870, Mr. Vanderbilt chanced to hear that the Rev.
+Dr. Deems, of New York, was in want of a church. Admiring the energy
+with which the reverend gentleman had built up his congregation in the
+short space of three years, Mr. Vanderbilt quietly made up his mind that
+he should not want in vain. Accordingly he bought the Mercer Street
+Presbyterian Church, and made the Doctor a present of it, keeping him in
+ignorance of his intention until he placed the title deeds in his hand.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+DANIEL DREW.
+
+
+The name of DANIEL DREW has so long been familiar in the financial
+circles of the country, that it is surprising that the history of his
+life is not more generally known.
+
+He was born at Carmel, in Putnam County, New York, on the 29th of July,
+1797. His father was a small farmer, with limited means, and had to work
+hard to provide his family with food and clothing. Young Daniel was
+brought up to work on the farm, and at such times as he could be spared
+from this work, was sent to the country school in the neighborhood,
+where he acquired but a meager stock of learning. When he was fifteen
+years old, his father died, leaving his family in an almost helpless
+condition. Young Daniel remained on the farm three years longer, and in
+1815, being then eighteen years old, stared out to try and earn a living
+for himself.
+
+He came to New York in search of employment, but the country, just then,
+was in too depressed a condition to afford him a chance in any regular
+business. After looking around for awhile, he at length became a cattle
+drover. He spent five years in driving cattle from Putnam County to New
+York for sale, but failed to make any money at the business.
+
+In 1820, he removed to New York, and established his headquarters at
+the famous Bull's Head Tavern, in the Bowery, which was the great resort
+of the butchers and drovers doing business in the city. He kept this
+tavern a part of the time, and found it quite a profitable investment.
+He soon formed a partnership with two other drovers, and commenced
+buying cattle in the adjoining counties and bringing them to New York
+for sale.
+
+[Illustration: FOUNDING A GREAT FORTUNE]
+
+These ventures were so successful that the operations of the firm were
+extended into Pennsylvania, and finally into Ohio and the other States
+of the great West. Mr. Drew and his partners brought over the mountains
+the first drove of cattle that ever came from the West into New York
+city. The cattle, two thousand in number, were collected into droves of
+one hundred each, and were driven by experienced and careful men. The
+journey occupied two months, and the total cost of the purchase and trip
+was twenty-four dollars per head. The profit on the venture was very
+large.
+
+Mr. Drew continued in this business for fourteen years, slowly and
+carefully laying the foundations of that immense fortune which has made
+him so conspicuous, an example to others who have entered upon the
+life-struggle since then.
+
+In 1834, an event occurred which changed the whole tenor of his career.
+In that year, the steamer "General Jackson," owned by Jacob Vanderbilt
+(a brother of the famous Commodore), and plying between New York and
+Peekskill, blew up at Grassy Point. A friend of Mr. Drew at once put a
+boat called the "Water Witch" in her place, and Mr. Drew, to oblige his
+friend, advanced one thousand dollars toward the enterprise. Commodore
+Vanderbilt was not willing that any rival should contest the river trade
+with him, and built a steamer called the "Cinderella," with which he ran
+a sharp opposition to Mr. Drew. The contest was so sharp that fares and
+freights were lowered to a ridiculous figure, and both parties lost
+heavily. At the end of the season, the owner of the "Water Witch" found
+himself ten thousand dollars in debt, and sold his boat to Drew, Kelly &
+Richards for twenty thousand dollars.
+
+Finding that Mr. Drew was not frightened off by his opposition,
+Commodore Vanderbilt urged him to withdraw from his attempt, telling him
+he knew nothing of the management of steamboats. Mr. Drew refused to be
+intimidated; however, and continued his efforts. Since then, there have
+been fifty attempts to run him off the river, but all alike have failed
+of success.
+
+In 1836, the "Water Witch" was replaced by a fine steamer called the
+"Westchester," which was subsequently run as a day boat to Hartford,
+Connecticut. The "Westchester" was run against the Hudson River Line,
+from New York to Albany. The Hudson River Line at that time owned the
+"De Witt Clinton," the "North America," and others--the finest
+steamboats then afloat--and it seemed at first foolhardiness for any
+one to attempt to oppose so popular a company. Mr. Drew and his
+partners bought the "Bright Emerald," for which they gave twenty-six
+thousand dollars, and ran her as a night boat between New York and
+Albany, reducing the fare from three dollars to one dollar. During the
+season, they bought the "Rochester" for fifty thousand dollars, and also
+bought out the Hudson River Line, after which they restored the fare to
+three dollars.
+
+Several years later, Isaac Newton, who was largely interested in the
+towing business of the Hudson, built two splendid passenger steamers
+called the "North America" and the "South America." In 1840, Mr. Drew
+formed a partnership with Mr. Newton, and the celebrated "People's Line"
+was organized, which purchased all the passenger steamers owned by Drew
+and Newton. Mr. Drew was the largest stockholder in this company, which,
+to-day, after a lapse of nearly thirty years, still owns the most
+magnificent and popular steamers in the world. Soon after its
+organization, the company built the "Isaac Newton," the first of those
+floating palaces for which the Hudson is famed. Since then, it has built
+the "New World," the "St. John," the "Dean Richmond," and the "Drew,"
+the last two of which cost over seven' hundred thousand dollars each.
+Repeated efforts have been made to drive this line from the river, but
+it has been conducted so judiciously and energetically, that, for nearly
+thirty years, it has held the first place in the public favor.
+
+In 1847, George Law and Daniel Drew formed a partnership, and
+established a line of steamers between New York and Stonington, for the
+purpose of connecting with the railroad from the latter place to Boston.
+The "Oregon" and the "Knickerbocker" were placed on the route, and the
+enterprise proved a success. Mr. Drew and Commodore Vanderbilt secured a
+sufficient amount of stock in the railroad to give them a controlling
+interest in it, and by the year 1850 the Stonington Steamboat Line was
+firmly established.
+
+When the Hudson River Railroad was opened, in 1852, it was confidently
+expected that the steamboat trade on the river would be destroyed, and
+the friends and enemies of Mr. Drew alike declared that he might as well
+lay up his boats, as he would find it impossible to compete with the
+faster time of the railroad. He was not dismayed, however, for he was
+satisfied that the land route could not afford to carry freight and
+passengers as cheap as they could be transported by water. He knew that
+it would only be necessary to reduce his passenger and freight rates
+below those of the railroad, to continue in the enjoyment of his immense
+business, and his faith in the steady expansion of the trade of the city
+induced him to believe that the time was close at hand when railroad and
+steamers would all have as much as they could do to accommodate it. His
+views were well founded, and his hopes have been more than realized. The
+river trade has steadily increased, while the Hudson River Railroad is
+taxed to its utmost capacity to accommodate its immense traffic.
+
+In 1849, Mr. Drew, in connection with other parties, bought out the
+Champlain Transportation Company. This corporation had a capital of one
+hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and ran a line of five steamers from
+White Hall to the Canada end of the lake. The new proprietors ran the
+line seven years, and in 1856 sold out to the Saratoga and White Hall
+Railroad Company.
+
+As a steamboat manager, Daniel Drew has few equals and no superiors. His
+ventures on the water have all been crowned with success, a result due
+entirely to his judicious and liberal management His employés are chosen
+with the greatest care, and generally remain with him during their
+lives. He is very liberal in his dealings with those who serve him
+faithfully, but will not tolerate a single careless or incompetent man,
+however unimportant may be his position. The steamers owned by him are
+almost entirely free from accidents, and such misfortunes as have
+befallen them have been those against which no skill or foresight could
+guard. He refuses to insure his boats, holding that care and prudence
+are the best safeguards against accidents, and thus saves half a million
+dollars. When the "Dean Richmond" was run down by the "Vanderbilt," a
+year or two ago, he lost nearly three hundred thousand dollars. He paid
+every claim presented by shippers and passengers, as soon as made,
+without submitting one of them to the adjudication of the courts.
+
+In 1836, Mr. Drew entered the banking business in Wall Street, and in
+1840 established the widely-known firm of Drew, Robinson & Co. This
+house engaged largely in the financial operations of the day, and became
+known as one of the most uniformly successful in its dealings of any in
+the city. Mr. Drew remained at the head of it for thirteen years, but in
+1855 withdrew to make room for his son-in-law, Mr. Kelley. This
+gentleman died soon after his connection with the firm, and Mr. Drew
+resumed his old place.
+
+Having succeeded so well in all his ventures, Mr. Drew now determined to
+enter another field. Railroad stocks were very profitable, and might be
+made to yield him an immense return for his investments, and he decided
+to invest a considerable part of his fortune in them. In 1855, he
+endorsed the acceptances of the Erie Railroad Company for five hundred
+thousand dollars. This was the first decided evidence the public had
+received of his immense wealth, and in 1857 another was given by his
+endorsement of a fresh lot of Erie acceptances amounting to a million
+and a half of dollars. This last indorsement was made in the midst of
+the great financial panic of 1857, and occasioned no little comment. Men
+could admire, though they could not understand, the sublime confidence
+which enabled Mr. Drew to risk a million and a half of dollars in the
+midst of such a terrible crisis. Some one asked him if he could sleep
+quietly at night with such large interests at stake. "Sir," he replied,
+calmly, "I have never lost a night's rest on account of business in my
+life."
+
+In 1857, Mr. Drew was elected a director of the Erie Railroad Company, a
+position he held until recently. He was subsequently elected treasurer
+of the company, and is one of the principal holders of Erie stock. He is
+also one of the principal creditors of the company. The recent
+proceedings in the New York courts to prevent the Erie Road from issuing
+the new stock necessary to complete its broad-gauge connections with the
+West, are too fresh in the mind of the reader to need a recital of them
+here. It was proposed to issue ten millions of dollars worth of new
+stock, and Mr. Drew was to guarantee the bonds. After a tedious and
+costly suit, in which the New York Central Road endeavored to prevent
+the issue of the stock, in the hope of keeping the Erie Road from
+forming through connections with the West, the New York Legislature
+legalized the new issue, and a compromise was effected between Mr. Drew,
+in behalf of the Erie Road, and Commodore Vanderbilt, who represented
+the New York Central.
+
+Mr. Drew still continues his operations in Wall Street, where he is
+known as one of the boldest and most extensive, as well as one of the
+most successful, of all the operators in railroad stocks. Though losing
+heavily at times, he has nevertheless been one of fortune's favorites.
+His efforts have not been confined to the Erie Road. He owns stock in
+other roads, and, together with Commodore Vanderbilt, took up the
+floating debt of over half a million of dollars which weighed down the
+Harlem Road, and placed it in its present prosperous condition.
+
+He owns a fine grazing farm on the Harlem Railroad, about fifty miles
+from New York. It is situated in Carmel, in Putnam County; is nearly one
+thousand acres in extent, and includes the old farm on which he was
+born. He has made it one of the finest and most profitable in the State,
+and, it is said, values it above all his other possessions. He has
+improved and beautified it upon an extensive scale, and near the old
+grave-yard, where his parents lie sleeping, he has built one of the most
+beautiful churches in the land.
+
+In 1811, Mr. Drew became a member of the Methodist Church, but for
+twenty-five years this connection was merely nominal. During all the
+years of his drover's life he kept himself free from the sins of
+intemperance and swearing. Once while riding out in a buggy with a
+friend, to look at some cattle, a thunder-storm came on, and his horse
+was killed in the shafts by lightning. This narrow escape from death
+made a deep impression on his mind, and in 1841 he united with the
+Mulberry Street Methodist Church, of which he became an active member
+and a trustee. The elegant marble structure now standing at the corner
+of Fourth Avenue and Twenty-second Street attests his liberality to this
+congregation. He is a trustee in the Wesleyan University, and has
+largely endowed that institution; and within the past few years has
+contributed several hundred thousand dollars for the endowment of the
+Drew Theological Seminary, which has been established at Madison, New
+Jersey, for the education of candidates for the Methodist ministry. He
+gives largely in aid of missionary work, and is one of the most liberal
+men in his denomination. It is said that he gives away at least one
+hundred thousand dollars annually in private charities, besides the
+large donations with which the public are familiar. He selects his own
+charities, and refuses promptly to aid those which do not commend
+themselves to him.
+
+His property is estimated at twenty millions of dollars, and he is said
+to earn at least half a million of dollars every year. He has two
+children, a son and a daughter, the latter of whom is the wife of a
+clergyman of the Baptist Church.
+
+Mr. Drew is about five feet ten inches high, and slenderly made. He is
+very active and vigorous for his age, and looks a much younger man than
+he is. His expression is firm, but withal pleasant. His features are
+regular, but dark and deeply marked, while his black hair is still
+unstreaked with gray. He is courteous and friendly in his intercourse,
+and is very much liked by his acquaintances.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+JAMES B. EADS.
+
+
+James B. Eads was born in Lawrenceburg, Indiana, in the year 1820. His
+father was a man of moderate means, and was able to give him a fair
+English education. From his earliest childhood he evinced a remarkable
+fondness for all sorts of machinery and mechanical arrangements. This
+fondness became at length a passion, and excited the surprise of his
+friends, who could not imagine why a mere child should be so much
+interested in such things. His greatest delight was to go to the machine
+shops in his neighborhood, in which he had many friends, and watch the
+workings of the various inventions employed therein.
+
+When he was nine years old his father removed to Louisville, Kentucky.
+During the voyage down the Ohio, young Eads passed the most of his time
+in watching the engines of the steamer. The engineer was so much pleased
+to see his interest in the machinery that he explained the whole system
+of the steam-engine to him. The boy listened eagerly, and every word
+remained fixed in his mind. Two years later, with no further instruction
+on the subject, he constructed a miniature engine, which was worked by
+steam. This, for a boy of eleven years, was no insignificant triumph of
+genius. His father, anxious to encourage such unmistakable talent, now
+fitted up a small workshop for him, in which he constructed models of
+saw mills, fire engines, steamboats, and electrotyping machines. When he
+was only twelve years old he was able to take to pieces and reset the
+family clock and a patent lever watch, using no tool for this purpose
+but his pocket-knife.
+
+At the age of thirteen his pleasant employment was brought to a sudden
+end. His father lost all his property by the failure of some commercial
+transactions, and the family was brought to the verge of ruin. It now
+became necessary for young Eads to labor for his own support, and for
+that of his mother and sisters. Boy as he was, he faced the crisis
+bravely. Having in vain sought employment in Louisville, he resolved to
+go to St. Louis. He worked his passage there on a river steamer, and
+landed in that city so poor that he had neither shoes to his feet nor a
+coat to his back. He found it as difficult to procure work here as it
+had been in Louisville, and was at length compelled to resort to
+peddling apples on the street in order to secure a living. He did this
+for some time, never relaxing his efforts to obtain more desirable
+employment.
+
+After many attempts he succeeded in getting a situation in a mercantile
+house, at a fair salary. One of his employers was a man of wealth and
+culture, and was possessed of one of the finest private libraries in the
+West. Learning the extraordinary mechanical talent possessed by his
+young clerk, this gentleman placed his library at his disposal. The
+offer was promptly and gratefully accepted, and young Eads devoted
+almost all his leisure time to the study of mechanics, machinery, and
+civil engineering. He remained with this house for several years, and
+then obtained a clerkship on one of the Mississippi River steamers,
+where he passed several years more. During this time he became
+intimately acquainted with the great river and its tributaries, and
+acquired an extensive knowledge of all subjects appertaining to western
+navigation, which proved of great service to him in his after life.
+
+In 1842, being then twenty-two years old, and having saved a moderate
+sum of money, he formed a copartnership with Messrs. Case & Nelson, boat
+builders, of St. Louis, for the purpose of recovering steamboats and
+their cargoes which had been sunk or wrecked in the Mississippi.
+Accidents of this kind were then very common in those waters, and the
+business bade fair to be very profitable. The enterprise succeeded
+better than had been expected, and the operations of the wrecking
+company extended from Galena, Illinois, to the Balize, and into many of
+the tributaries of the great river. The parties interested in the scheme
+realized a handsome profit on their investments. Mr. Eads was the
+practical man of the concern, and worked hard to establish it upon a
+successful footing. In 1845 he sold out his interest in the company, and
+established a glass manufactory in St. Louis. This was the first
+enterprise of the kind ever attempted west of the Mississippi. Two years
+later, in 1847, he organized a new company for the purpose of recovering
+boats and cargoes lost in the Mississippi and its tributaries. This
+company started with a capital of fifteen hundred dollars. It was slow
+work at first, but a steady improvement was made every year, and in
+1857, just ten years from the date of their organization, the property
+of the firm was valued at more than half a million of dollars. During
+the winter of 1856-'57, Mr. Eads laid before Congress a formal
+proposition to remove the obstructions from the western rivers and keep
+them open for a term of years, upon payment of a reasonable sum by the
+General Government. Had this proposition been accepted, the benefits
+thereby secured to all who were engaged in the navigation of those
+rivers would have been very great. A bill was reported in Congress
+authorizing the acceptance of Mr. Eads' offer, but was defeated through
+the influence of the Senators from Mississippi (Jefferson Davis) and
+Louisiana (J.P. Benjamin).
+
+In 1857, Mr. Eads was compelled, on account of ill-health, to retire
+from business. He had earned a handsome fortune by his industry and
+enterprise, and could well afford to rest for a short time, preparatory,
+as it afterward proved, to the most important part of his whole career.
+
+When the secession troubles began to agitate the country, toward the
+close of the year 1860, Mr. Eads cast the weight of his private and
+public influence on the side of the Union. He felt that the war, if it
+should come, would be a very serious affair for the West, as the
+prosperity of that section depends largely upon the absolute freedom of
+the navigation of the Mississippi. The Confederates well understood
+this, and prepared from the first to close the great river until their
+independence should be acknowledged by the General Government. Dr.
+Boynton, in his "History of the United States Navy During the
+Rebellion," thus describes the condition of affairs in the West, a
+proper understanding of which will show the reader the importance of the
+services subsequently rendered by Mr. Eads:
+
+
+     The main features of the rebel plan of war in the West were to
+     seize and hold Missouri, and, as a consequence, Kansas and
+     Nebraska, and thus threaten or invade the free States of the
+     North-west from that point; to hold Kentucky and Tennessee, and, if
+     possible, to cross the Ohio, and make the Northern States the
+     theater of the war; or, in case they should be unable to invade the
+     North, to maintain their battle line unbroken along the Ohio and
+     through Missouri; to keep the great rivers closed, and thus holding
+     back the North, and being secure within their own territory, at
+     length compel the recognition of their independence. They certainly
+     presented to the North a most formidable front, a line of defenses
+     which was indeed impregnable to any means of assault which the
+     Government at first possessed. No army could be moved into
+     Tennessee by land alone, because the line of communication with a
+     Northern base could not be held secure, and a defeat far from the
+     Ohio would be the destruction of an army, and open the road for an
+     invasion of Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, and the destruction of
+     their cities.
+
+     It was quite evident that no impression could be made upon the
+     power of the rebellion in the West, until a firm foothold could be
+     gained in Kentucky and Tennessee, and until the Mississippi could
+     be wrested from the conspirators' control. It was clear that the
+     whole seaboard might be regained, even to Florida, and yet the
+     rebellion remain as dangerous as ever, if the rebels could hold the
+     Mississippi River and the valley up to or near the Ohio.
+
+     France was looking with eager eyes toward Texas, in the hope of
+     securing and extending her Mexican usurpation. England was ready to
+     give all the assistance in her power to any step which would weaken
+     the North; and had the rebels been pressed back from the seaports
+     and the Northern Atlantic slope, they would have had it in their
+     power, if still holding the Mississippi, the South-west, including
+     Tennessee, and the great natural fortresses of the mountains, to
+     have so connected themselves with Mexico and France as to have
+     caused the most serious embarrassment. It became absolutely
+     necessary to the success of the Government that the rebels'
+     northern line of defenses should be broken through, and that the
+     Mississippi should be opened to its mouth.
+
+     At first, and before the nature of the work was fully understood,
+     the whole was placed under the direction of the War Department, as
+     it was thought the few armed transports which would be needed would
+     be a mere appendage of the army. The idea of a formidable river
+     navy of a hundred powerful steamers did not in the beginning enter
+     into the minds of any.
+
+     It was soon seen, however, that an entirely new description of
+     craft was needed for this work. It was clear that the river boats,
+     which had been built for the common purposes of freight and
+     passage, were not capable of resisting the fire of heavy artillery,
+     and that the batteries of the rebels could not be captured nor even
+     passed by them. They could not even be safely employed alone in the
+     transportation of troops, for they could be sunk or crippled by the
+     field batteries that could be moved from point to point. The
+     question of iron-clads was proposed, but with only the ocean
+     iron-clads as a guide, who should conceive the proper form of an
+     armored boat which could navigate our rivers and compete
+     successfully with the heavy guns, rifled as well as smooth-bore, of
+     the fortifications. It was by no means easy to solve this problem,
+     but it was absolutely necessary that the attempt should be made....
+     These forts could only be reduced by the aid of gunboats, and
+     these were almost literally to be created.
+
+
+There was in the Cabinet of President Lincoln at this time a western
+man, intimately acquainted with the steamboat interest of the
+Mississippi. This was Edward Bates, the Attorney-General of the United
+States. He was an old friend of Mr. Eads, and felt assured that in case
+of war the services of that gentleman would be of the greatest value to
+the country. When it was found that hostilities could not be avoided, he
+mentioned the name of Mr. Eads to the Cabinet, and strongly urged that
+his services should be secured at the earliest possible moment. On the
+17th of April, 1861, three days after Fort Sumter had fallen, he wrote
+to Mr. Eads, who was living in comfortable retirement, at St. Louis: "Be
+not surprised if you are called here suddenly by telegram. If called,
+come instantly. In a certain contingency it will be necessary to have
+the aid of the most thorough knowledge of our western rivers, and the
+use of steam on them, and in that event I have advised that you should
+be consulted."
+
+A few days later Mr. Eads was summoned to Washington. Mr. Bates there
+explained to him in full a plan he had conceived for occupying Cairo,
+and endeavoring to hold the Mississippi by means of gunboats. Mr. Eads
+warmly indorsed the plan, and was introduced by Mr. Bates to the
+President and members of the Cabinet. When the plan was proposed to the
+Cabinet, the Secretary of War pronounced it unnecessary and
+impracticable, but the Secretary of the Navy was much impressed with
+it, and requested Mr. Eads to submit his views in writing, which was
+done. The paper embodied Judge Bates's general plan in addition to Mr.
+Eads's own views, and contained suggestions as to the kind of boats best
+fitted for service on the western rivers, and also in regard to the best
+points on those streams for the erection of land batteries. This paper
+was submitted to the Navy Department on the 29th of April, 1861, and was
+referred by the Secretary to Commodore Paulding, who reported in favor
+of its adoption.
+
+The Secretary of the Navy now detailed Captain John Rodgers to accompany
+Mr. Eads to the West, and purchase and fit out such steamers as should
+be found necessary for the service. Up to this time the Secretary of War
+had manifested the most supreme indifference in regard to the whole
+subject, but he now claimed entire jurisdiction in the matter, and this
+interference caused considerable vexation and delay. At length he issued
+an order to Mr. Eads and Captain Rodgers to proceed with their
+purchases. These gentlemen obtained the approval of General McClellan,
+in whose department the purchases were to be made, and began their
+operations.
+
+Upon arriving at Cairo, they found one of the old snag-boat fleet,
+called the "Benton." Mr. Eads knew the boat well, as he had formerly
+owned her, and proposed to purchase and arm her, but Captain Rodgers did
+not approve the plan for converting her into a gunboat. Mr. Eads then
+proposed to purchase and arm several of the strong, swift boats used for
+the navigation of the Missouri River, and equip them at St. Louis, from
+which point there would always be water enough to get them below Cairo.
+Captain Rodgers disapproved this plan also, and went to Cincinnati,
+where he purchased and equipped the "Conestoga," "Tyler," and
+"Lexington," and started them down the river. They were not iron-clad,
+but were merely protected around the boilers with coal bunkers, and
+provided with bullet-proof oaken bulwarks. Mr. Eads had warned Captain
+Rodgers that he could not depend upon the Ohio to get his boats down to
+Cairo, and his predictions were realized. The boats were started from
+Cincinnati some time in July; they were detained on the bars of the Ohio
+for six or seven weeks, and did not reach Cairo until about the first of
+September; then the bottom of the "Tyler" was found to be so badly
+damaged by sand-bars that she had to be put on the marine railway for
+repairs.
+
+In July, 1861, the War Department advertised for proposals to construct
+a number of iron-clad gunboats for service on the Mississippi River. On
+the 5th of August, when the bids were opened, it was found that Mr. Eads
+proposed to build these boats in a shorter time and upon more favorable
+terms than any one else. His offer was accepted, and on the 7th of
+August he signed a contract with Quartermaster-General Meigs to have
+ready for their crews and armaments, _in sixty-five days_, seven
+vessels, of about six hundred tons each, each to draw six feet of water,
+to carry thirteen heavy guns, to be plated with iron two and a half
+inches thick, and to steam nine miles per hour. "They were one hundred
+and seventy-five feet long, and fifty-one and a half feet wide; the
+hulls of wood; their sides placed out from the bottom of the boat to the
+water line at an angle of about thirty-five degrees, and from the water
+line the sides fell back at about the same angle, to form a slanting
+casemate, the gun-deck being but a foot above water. This slanting
+casemate extended across the hull, near the bow and stern, forming a
+quadrilateral gun-deck. Three nine or ten-inch guns were placed in the
+bow, four similar ones on each side, and two smaller ones astern. The
+casemate inclosed the wheel, which was placed in a recess at the stern
+of the vessel. The plating was two and a half inches thick, thirteen
+inches wide, and was rabbeted on the edges to make a more perfect
+joint."
+
+In undertaking to complete these vessels in sixty-five days, Mr. Eads
+had assumed a heavy responsibility. The manufacturing interests of the
+West were sadly crippled by the sudden commencement of hostilities, and
+doubt and distrust prevailed every-where. The worst feature of all was,
+that skilled workmen were either enlisting in the army or seeking
+employment in States more remote from the scene of war. Every thing
+needed for the gunboats was to be made. Even the timber for their hulls
+was still standing in the forest, and the huge machinery which was to
+roll out and harden their iron plates had yet to be constructed. No
+single city, no two cities, however great in resources, could possibly
+supply every thing needed within the stipulated time, and it was
+necessary to employ help wherever it could be obtained.
+
+The very day the contract was signed, the telegraph was kept busy
+sending instructions all over the West for the commencement of the
+various parts of the work. The saw-mills in Kentucky, Tennessee,
+Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Minnesota, and Missouri were set to getting out
+the timber, which was hurried to St. Louis by railroad and steamboat as
+fast as it was ready. There were twenty-one steam engines and
+thirty-five boilers to be made, and the machine-shops in St. Louis,
+Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh were put to work upon them. The huge
+rolling-mills of Cincinnati and Portsmouth, Ohio, Newport, Kentucky, and
+St. Louis were engaged in making the iron plates, and employed for this
+purpose no less than four thousand men. Night and day, Sundays included,
+the work went on with an almost superhuman swiftness. Mr. Eads paid the
+workmen on the hulls large sums from his own pocket, in addition to
+their wages, to induce them to continue steadily at their work.
+
+On the 12th of October, 1861, just forty-five days from the time of
+laying her keel, the first iron-clad, belonging to the United States,
+was launched, with her engines and boilers on board. Rear Admiral Foote
+(then a flag officer), appointed to command the Mississippi squadron,
+named her the "St. Louis," but upon being transferred to the Navy
+Department her name was changed to the "Baron de Kalb." She was followed
+by the other vessels in rapid succession, all being completed within the
+stipulated time.
+
+In September, 1861, General Fremont ordered the purchase of the snag
+boat "Benton," which had been proposed by Mr. Eads and rejected by
+Captain Rodgers, and sent her to Mr. Eads to be armored and equipped as
+a gunboat. Work was at once begun on her, and pushed forward with the
+same energy that had been displayed in the construction of the other
+iron-clads. Her performances during the war fully sustained the high
+esteem in which she was held by the officers of the navy. Admirals Foote
+and Davis pronounced her the "best iron-clad in the world."
+
+By dint of such skill and energy as we have described, Mr. Eads, in the
+brief period of one hundred days, built and had ready for service a
+powerful iron-clad fleet of eight steamers, carrying one hundred and
+seven heavy guns, and having an aggregate capacity of five thousand
+tons. Such a work was one of the greatest in magnitude ever performed,
+and, as may be supposed, required a heavy capital to carry it to
+perfection. Mr. Eads soon exhausted his own means, and but for the
+assistance of friends, whose confidence in his integrity and capacity
+induced them to advance him large sums, would have been compelled to
+abandon the undertaking; for the Government, upon various pretexts,
+delayed for months the stipulated payments, and by its criminal
+negligence came near bringing the iron-clad fleet, so necessary to its
+success, to an untimely end. It was prompt enough, however, to
+commission the vessels as soon as they were ready. At the time they
+rendered such good service in the conquest of Forts Henry and Donelson,
+and compelled the fall of Island No. 10, they were still unpaid for, and
+the private property of Mr. Eads.
+
+In the spring of 1862, Mr. Eads, in accordance with the desire of the
+Navy Department, submitted plans for light-draught armored vessels for
+service on the western rivers. He proposed an ingenious revolving turret
+to be used on these vessels, the performance of which he agreed to
+guarantee to the satisfaction of the Department; but the Government
+decided to use the Ericsson turret, which the recent encounter between
+the Monitor and Merrimac had proved to be a success. Mr. Eads was
+allowed, however, to modify the Ericsson turret considerably, in order
+to avoid making the draft of his steamers greater than was desired. He
+built the "Osage" and "Neosho," and when these vessels were launched,
+with all their weight on board, it was found that they were really
+lighter than the contract called for, a circumstance which permitted the
+thickness of their armor to be afterward increased half an inch without
+injuring their draught or speed.
+
+In May, 1862, at the request of the Navy Department, Mr. Eads submitted
+plans for four iron-clads, iron hull propellers, to carry two turrets
+each of eight inches thickness, four eleven inch guns, and
+three-quarters inch deck armor, to steam nine nautical miles per hour,
+to carry three days' coal, and not to exceed a draught of six feet of
+water. His plans were accepted, and he constructed the "Winnebago,"
+"Kickapoo," "Milwaukee," and "Chickasaw." Like the "Osage" and "Neosho,"
+these vessels were found to be of lighter draught than had been agreed
+upon, and the Department ordered all four to have an extra plating of
+three-quarters inch armor, which was done. Three of the vessels were
+also reported, by the officers of the navy sent to examine them, to
+exceed the speed required by the contract, while the fourth was fully up
+to the standard.
+
+Of how many "Government Contractors" during the war can it be said that
+their work was much better than they had agreed to furnish? Verily, we
+think Mr. Eads stands almost alone in this respect, his proud position
+made still more honorable by its comparative isolation.
+
+Mr. Eads built, during the war, fourteen heavily armored gunboats, four
+heavy mortar boats, and converted seven transports into musket-proof
+gunboats, or "tin-clads," as they were called on the river. He had a
+share in other enterprises of a similar nature during the war, and
+besides rendering good service to the Union, was enabled to retire at
+the close of the struggle with a handsome fortune, won by his own
+patriotic skill and energy.
+
+Whatever may be the distinction awarded to others, to him belongs the
+credit of having been the first to provide the Government with the means
+of securing that firm hold upon the great river of the West which, once
+gained, was never relaxed.
+
+Mr. Eads resides in St. Louis. He is still in the prime of life, is
+admired and honored by his fellow-citizens, and affords a splendid
+example of what genius and industry can do for a poor, friendless boy in
+that glorious western country which is one day to be the seat of empire
+in the New World.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+CYRUS W. FIELD.
+
+
+Cyrus far we have been considering the struggles of men who have risen
+from obscure positions in life, by the aid of their own genius,
+industry, and courage, to the front rank of their respective callings.
+We shall now relate the story of one who having already won fortune,
+periled it all upon an enterprise in which his own genius had recognized
+the path to fame and to still greater success, but which the almost
+united voice of the people of his country condemned as visionary, and
+from which they coldly held aloof until its brilliant success compelled
+them to acknowledge the wisdom and foresight of its projector.
+
+Fifteen years ago very few persons had heard of Cyrus W. Field. Ten
+years ago he had achieved considerable notoriety as a visionary who was
+bent on sinking his handsome fortune in the sea. To-day, the world is
+full of his fame, as the man to whom, above all others, it is indebted
+for the successful completion of the Atlantic Telegraph; and those who
+were formerly loudest in ridiculing him are now foremost in his praise.
+"Nothing succeeds like success," and what was once in their eyes mere
+folly, and worthy only of ridicule, they now hail as the evidences of
+his courage, foresight, and profound wisdom, and wonder that they never
+could see them in their true light before.
+
+Cyrus West Field was born at Stockbridge, Massachusetts, on the 30th day
+of November, 1819, and is the son of the Rev. David Dudley Field, a
+distinguished clergyman of that State. He was carefully educated in the
+primary and grammar schools of his native county, and at the age of
+fifteen went to New York to seek his fortune. He had no difficulty in
+obtaining a clerkship in an enterprising mercantile house in that city,
+and, from the first, gave evidence of unusual business capacity. His
+employers, pleased with his promise, advanced him rapidly, and in a few
+years he became a partner in the house. His success as a merchant was
+uniform and marked--so marked, indeed, that in 1853, when only
+thirty-four years old, he was able to partially retire from business
+with a large fortune as the substantial reward of his mercantile career.
+
+Mr. Field had devoted himself so closely to his business that, at his
+retirement, he resolved to seek recreation and change of scene in
+foreign travel, and accordingly he left New York, and passed the next
+six months in journeying through the mountains of South America. Upon
+his return home, at the close of the year 1853, he declared his
+intention to withdraw entirely from active participation in business,
+and to engage in no new schemes.
+
+He had scarcely returned home, however, when his brother, Mr. Matthew D.
+Field, a successful and well-known civil engineer, informed him that he
+had just become acquainted with a Mr. Frederick N. Gisborne, of
+Newfoundland, who had come to New York for the purpose of interesting
+some American capitalists in a company which had been organized in
+Newfoundland for the purpose of procuring news in America and Europe,
+and transmitting it between the two continents with greater dispatch
+than was possible in the then existing mode of communication between the
+two countries. The scheme of Mr. Gisborne had commended itself to Mr.
+Matthew Field, and he urged his brother to meet that gentleman and hear
+his statements. Mr. Cyrus Field at once declined to undertake any share
+in the enterprise, and said that it would be useless for him to meet Mr.
+Gisborne; but his brother was so urgent that he at last consented to
+grant Mr. Gisborne an interview, and at least hear what he had to say.
+At the appointed time, Mr. Field received Mr. Gisborne at his house, and
+was there made acquainted with the proposed plan of operations of the
+"Electric Telegraph Company of Newfoundland." This company had gone into
+bankruptcy a short time previous, but Mr. Gisborne hoped to be able to
+revive it by the aid of American capital. The scheme which he laid
+before Mr. Field, can not be better stated than by quoting the following
+extract from the charter which the Legislature of Newfoundland had
+granted the bankruptcy company:
+
+"The telegraph line of this company is designed to be strictly an
+'Inter-Continental Telegraph,' Its termini will be New York, in the
+United States, and London, in the Kingdom of Great Britain; these points
+are to be connected by a line of electric telegraph from New York to St.
+John's, Newfoundland, partly on poles, partly laid in the ground, and
+partly through the water, and a line of the swiftest steamships ever
+built, from that point to Ireland. The trips of these steamships, it is
+expected, will not exceed five days, and as very little time will be
+occupied in transmitting messages between St. John's and New York, the
+communication between the latter city and London or Liverpool, will be
+effected in _six days,_ or less. The company will have likewise
+stationed at St. John's a steam yacht, for the purpose of intercepting
+the European and American steamships, so that no opportunity may be
+lost in forwarding intelligence in advance of the ordinary channels of
+communication."
+
+Mr. Field listened attentively to his visitor, but declined to commit
+himself to more than an expression of sympathy with the enterprise.
+After the departure of his guest, he took the globe which stood in his
+library, and turning it over, began to examine the proposed route of the
+telegraph line and the distance to be traversed by the steamers. While
+engaged in this examination, the idea flashed across his mind that
+instead of undertaking such a complicated scheme, it would be better to
+attempt to stretch a telegraph wire entirely across the ocean, from the
+shores of Newfoundland to the coast of Ireland. The vastness of this
+scheme pleased him, and its usefulness to the entire world, if it could
+be carried out, was clear to his mind from the first.
+
+He at once set to work to ascertain if such an undertaking as an
+Atlantic telegraph was practicable. He wrote to Lieutenant Maury, then
+the Chief of the National Observatory at Washington, and asked if the
+laying of such a wire was possible; and to Professor Morse, the inventor
+of the telegraph, to know if such a wire would be available for sending
+messages if it could be laid. Lieutenant Maury promptly replied,
+inclosing a copy of a report he had just made to the Secretary of the
+Navy on the subject, from which Mr. Field learned that the idea of
+laying a telegraph across the ocean was not original with himself. In
+this report Lieutenant Maury demonstrated the entire practicability of
+such an enterprise, and sustained his conclusions by a statement of the
+recent discoveries concerning the bed of the ocean, made by Lieutenant
+Berryman. Professor Morse came in person to visit Mr. Field, and assured
+him of his entire faith in the possibility of sending telegraphic
+messages across the ocean with rapidity and success.
+
+The two highest authorities in the world thus having assured him of the
+entire practicability of the undertaking, Mr. Field declared his
+readiness, if he could procure the assistance of a sufficient number of
+capitalists in the United States, to undertake the laying of a telegraph
+across the Atlantic between Europe and America. Further deliberation
+only made him better satisfied with the undertaking, and he set to work
+to find ten capitalists, each of whom he proposed should contribute one
+hundred thousand dollars, making the capital of the proposed company one
+million of dollars. Mr. Field was convinced that the undertaking would
+be expensive, but he had then but a faint conception of its magnitude,
+and was very far from supposing that "he might yet be drawn on to stake
+upon its success the whole fortune he had accumulated; that he was to
+sacrifice for it all the peace and quiet he had hoped to enjoy, and that
+for twelve years he was to be almost without a home, crossing and
+recrossing the sea, urging his enterprise in Europe and America."
+
+The scientific questions involved in the undertaking were so little
+understood at the time by the public, and the popular judgment regarded
+the attempt to stretch a cable across the deep, mysterious ocean with so
+much incredulity, that Mr. Field had considerable trouble in finding
+gentlemen willing or prepared to share his faith in the enterprise. His
+first effort was to induce Mr. Peter Cooper, of New York, his next door
+neighbor, to join him, and he succeeded so well that Mr. Cooper
+consented to do so if several others would unite with them. Encouraged
+by his success with Mr. Cooper, whose name was a tower of strength to
+his cause, Mr. Field renewed his efforts, and succeeded in winning over
+the following gentlemen, and in the order named: Moses Taylor, Marshall
+O. Roberts, and Chandler White. These gentlemen were very slow to accept
+the views of Mr. Field, but, once having done so, they never lost faith
+in the ultimate success of the undertaking. The more thoroughly they
+became acquainted with its magnitude and costliness, the stronger grew
+their confidence in it, for this increase of knowledge not only showed
+them more plainly its difficulties and dangers, but developed new
+grounds on which to base their hopes.
+
+Mr. Field was about to continue his efforts to procure additional names,
+when Mr. Cooper proposed that the five gentlemen already pledged to the
+scheme should undertake its entire cost without waiting for the other
+four. The proposition was agreed to, and it was decided to take the
+necessary steps to procure a charter for their company from the
+Legislature of Newfoundland. Mr. Field consented to undertake this, and
+at once set off for St. John's, accompanied by his brother, Mr. David
+Dudley Field, who was made the legal adviser of the company. At St.
+John's they were greatly aided by Mr. Archibald, then the
+Attorney-General of the Colony, and afterward the British Consul at New
+York, and by the Governor of Newfoundland. They succeeded in obtaining a
+charter from the Legislature under the name of the "New York,
+Newfoundland, and London Telegraph Company," with liberal grants in land
+and money. This accomplished, they assumed and paid the liabilities of
+the old Telegraph Company which had been brought to Mr. Field's notice
+by Mr. Gisborne, and thus removed the last difficulty in their way. This
+much accomplished, Mr. Field hastened back to New York, and on the 6th
+of May, 1854, the Company was formally organized at the residence of Mr.
+David Dudley Field. Messrs. Cooper, Taylor, Field, Roberts, and White
+were the first directors. Mr. Cooper, was made President of the
+Company, Mr. White, Vice-President, and Mr. Taylor Secretary. A capital
+of one million and a half of dollars was subscribed on the spot, Mr.
+Field contributing about two hundred thousand dollars in cash.
+
+Work was at once begun on the section between New York and St. John's.
+There was no road across the island of Newfoundland, and the Company had
+not only to build their telegraph line, but to construct a road by the
+side of it through an almost unbroken wilderness. It was a work which
+required the highest executive ability, and the services of an army of
+men. The distance across the island was four hundred miles, and there
+were numerous rocky gorges, morasses, and rivers in the way. The country
+was a desolation, and it was found that supplies would have to be
+transported from St. John's. The execution of the work was committed to
+Mr. White, the Vice-President, who went to St. John's to act as the
+general agent of the Company, and to Mr. Matthew D. Field, who was
+appointed constructing engineer. These gentlemen displayed such skill
+and energy in their respective positions that in two years the Company
+had not only built a telegraph line and a road of four hundred miles
+across the island, but had constructed another line of one hundred and
+forty miles in the island of Cape Breton, and had stretched a submarine
+cable across the Gulf of St. Lawrence.[A] The line was now in working
+order from New York to St. John's, Newfoundland, a distance of one
+thousand miles, and it had required about a million of dollars for its
+construction. It now remained to complete the great work by laying the
+cable between Newfoundland and Ireland.
+
+
+[Footnote A: The first effort to lay a cable in the Gulf of St. Lawrence
+was made by this Company, in August, 1855. It was a failure, and the
+cable was lost. The second attempt was made in the summer of 1856, and
+was entirely successful.]
+
+It being desirable to examine still further the bed of the ocean over
+which the cable was to be laid, Mr. Field requested the Government of
+the United States to send out an expedition over the route for the
+purpose of taking deep sea soundings. His request was promptly granted,
+and an expedition under Lieut. Berryman was dispatched, which proceeded
+to examine the ocean bed, with the most satisfactory results. This was
+accomplished in the summer of 1856, and the next year the same route was
+surveyed by Commander Daymon, with the British war steamer Cyclops--this
+survey being ordered by the Lords of the Admiralty, at Mr. Field's
+request. These surveys made it plain beyond question that a cable could
+lie safely on the bed of the sea, at a depth sufficient to protect it
+from vessels' anchors, from icebergs, and from submarine currents, and
+that it would receive sufficient support from that bed to free it from
+all undue tension. There was no doubt of the ultimate success of the
+enterprise in the minds of the directors, but it was necessary to
+convince the public in both Europe and America that it was not an
+impossibility, and also to enlist the sympathies of the Governments of
+Great Britain and the United States, and secure their assistance.
+
+Mr. Field, who had made several voyages to England and to Newfoundland
+in behalf of the company, was elected Vice-President after the death of
+Mr. White, in 1856, and was charged with the duty of proceeding to
+England to obtain the assistance of the British Government, and to
+organize the company in London. Thus far the directors had borne the
+entire cost of the undertaking, and it was but fair that they should
+seek the means for completing their work in the country which was to be
+so much benefited by it. Mr. Field sailed for England in the summer of
+1856, and upon reaching that country proceeded to consult some of its
+most eminent engineers and electricians. The English people were slow to
+believe that so long a cable could be successfully worked, even if laid
+intact, and to remove their doubts, the opinions of Professor Morse and
+Lieutenant Maury were published in their newspapers; and this
+publication brought out communications from many scientific men on the
+subject, a number of them advocating the undertaking. Thus, the
+attention of the English public was gained. Experiments were made by
+Professor Morse, Mr. Bright, and Dr. Whitehouse, which proved beyond all
+doubt the ease with which a continuous line of more than two thousand
+miles of wire could be worked; and Professor Morse was able, from these
+experiments, to declare his conviction that an electric current could
+pass between London and New York, on such a wire, in the space of one
+second.
+
+Science had now done its utmost, and had in every thing sustained the
+great plan. It was now necessary to ask the aid of Her Majesty's
+Government. This effort was intrusted to Mr. Field, who carried it
+through successfully. The English Government agreed to furnish the ships
+necessary for making soundings and surveys, and to furnish vessels to
+assist in laying the cable. It also agreed to pay to the company an
+annual subsidy of fourteen thousand pounds for the transmission of the
+government messages until the net profits of the company were equal to a
+dividend of six pounds per cent., when the payment was to be reduced to
+ten thousand pounds per annum, for a period of twenty-five years.
+Provision was made for extra payment, in case the government messages
+exceeded a certain amount; and it was provided that the messages of the
+Governments of Great Britain and the United States should be placed upon
+an equal footing, and should have priority in the order in which they
+arrived at the stations. This last provision exhibited a decided
+liberality on the part of the English Government, since both ends of the
+proposed cable would be in British territory. Indeed, throughout the
+whole negotiation, Great Britain cheerfully accorded to the United
+States every privilege which she claimed for herself.
+
+Having secured the aid of the Queen's Government on such liberal terms,
+Mr. Field now undertook the organization of the company, in addition to
+the task of raising a capital of three hundred and fifty thousand
+pounds. In both efforts he was effectively assisted by Mr. John W.
+Brett, who had laid the first cable across the English Channel, and by
+Mr. Charles T. Bright and Dr. Edward O.W. Whitehouse. The efforts of
+these gentlemen were successful. In a few weeks the whole capital was
+subscribed. It had been divided into three hundred and fifty shares of a
+thousand pounds each. One hundred and one of these were taken up in
+London, eighty-six in Liverpool, thirty-seven in Glasgow, twenty-eight
+in Manchester, and a few in other parts of England. Mr. Field, at the
+final division of shares, took eighty-eight. He did not design making
+this investment on his own account, but thinking it but fair that at
+least one-fourth of the stock should be held in America, he made this
+subscription with the intention of disposing of his shares after his
+return home. Owing to his continued absence from New York, and the
+straitened condition of the money market, it was nearly a year before he
+could succeed in selling as much as twenty-seven shares. The company was
+organized in December, 1856, a Board of Directors elected, and a
+contract made for the cable, half of which was to be made in London and
+the other half in Liverpool.
+
+The day after the organization of the company, Mr. Field sailed for New
+York, from which place he at once made a voyage to Newfoundland, to look
+after some matters which required his presence. Returning home, he
+hurried to Washington, to secure the aid of the General Government. He
+met with more opposition here than he had encountered in England. A
+powerful lobby opposed him, and a spirit of hostility to his bill
+exhibited itself in Congress, and to such a degree that the measure
+passed the Senate by a majority of only one vote. It came very near
+failing in the House, but at length got through, and received the
+President's signature on the 3d of March, 1857.
+
+In the summer of 1857, Mr. Field having returned to England, the cable
+was declared to be in readiness for laying. The United States Government
+now placed at the disposal of the Telegraph Company the magnificent new
+steam frigate "Niagara," as the most suitable vessel for laying the
+cable, and ordered the "Susquehanna," the largest side-wheel frigate in
+the service, to accompany her in the expedition. The British Government
+provided the steam frigate "Agamemnon," a splendid vessel, which had
+been the flagship of the English fleet at the bombardment of Sebastopol,
+and ordered the "Leopard" to accompany her as an escort. The "Niagara"
+was commanded by Captain W.L. Hudson, of the United States Navy, and the
+"Agamemnon" by Captain Noddal, of the Royal Navy. The "Niagara" took on
+her share of the cable at Liverpool, and the "Agamemnon" received hers
+at London. It was agreed that the "Niagara" should begin the laying of
+the cable, and continue it until her portion of it should be exhausted
+in mid-ocean, when her end of it should be united with the cable on
+board the "Agamemnon," which ship should continue laying the line until
+the shores of Newfoundland were reached. After taking on the cable, the
+ships were ordered to Queenstown.
+
+The vessels left England in the midst of general rejoicings, and arrived
+at the rendezvous at the proper time. Thence they sailed for the harbor
+of Valentia, which was to be the eastern terminus of the line and the
+starting point of the expedition. They were greeted every-where with
+enthusiasm, and the greatest confidence in the success of the
+enterprise was manifested by those on board. Mr. Field, Professor Morse,
+and several other officers of the company were on board the "Niagara,"
+as that ship was to conduct the first part of the sinking of the cable.
+
+At length all was in readiness. The shore end of the cable was landed
+and made fast on Wednesday afternoon, the 5th of August, and the next
+morning the fleet stood out to sea. "Before they had gone five miles the
+heavy shore end of the cable caught in the machinery and parted. The
+'Niagara' put back, and the cable was 'underrun' the whole distance. At
+length the end was lifted out of the water and spliced to the gigantic
+coil, and as it dropped safely to the bottom of the sea, the mighty ship
+began to stir. At first she moved very slowly, not more than two miles
+an hour, to avoid the danger of accident; but the feeling that they are
+at last away is itself a relief. The ships are all in sight, and so near
+that they can hear each other's bells. The 'Niagara,' as if knowing that
+she is bound for the land out of whose forests she came, bends her head
+to the waves, as her prow is turned toward her native shores.
+
+"Slowly passed the hours of that day. But all went well, and the ships
+were moving out into the broad Atlantic. At length the sun went down in
+the west, and stars came out on the face of the deep. But no man slept.
+A thousand eyes were watching a great experiment, as those who have a
+personal interest in the issue. All through that night, and through the
+anxious days and nights that followed, there was a feeling in every soul
+on board as if a friend in the cabin were at the turning-point of life
+or death, and they were watching beside him. There was a strange,
+unnatural silence in the ship. Men paced the deck with soft and muffled
+tread, speaking only in whispers, as if a loud voice or a heavy footfall
+might snap the vital cord. So much had they grown to feel for the
+enterprise, that the cable seemed to them like a human creature, on
+whose fate they hung, as if it were to decide their own destiny.
+
+"There are some who will never forget that first night at sea. Perhaps
+the reaction from the excitement on shore made the impression the
+deeper. What strange thoughts came to them as they stood on the deck and
+watched that mysterious cord disappearing in the darkness, and gliding
+to its ocean bed! There are certain moments in life when every thing
+comes back upon us--when the events of years seem crowded into an hour.
+What memories came up in those long night hours! How many on board that
+ship thought of homes beyond the sea, of absent ones, of the distant and
+the dead! Such thoughts, mingling with those suggested by the scene
+around, added to the solemnity of the hour, had left an impression which
+can never be forgotten.
+
+"But with the work in hand all is going on well. There are vigilant eyes
+on deck. Mr. Bright, the engineer of the company, is there, and Mr.
+Everett, Mr. De Sauty, the electrician, and Professor Morse. The
+paying-out machinery does its work, and though it makes a constant
+rumble in the ship, that dull, heavy sound is music to their ears, as it
+tells them that all is well. If one should drop to sleep, and wake up at
+night, he has only to hear the sound of 'the old coffee-mill,' and his
+fears are relieved, and he goes to sleep again."
+
+Saturday and Sunday passed away without accident, but on Monday, when
+two hundred miles at sea, in deep water, and safely beyond the great
+submarine mountain, the electrical continuity was suddenly lost. This
+interruption amazed and perplexed all on board, but no one was able to
+remedy it, or to account for it satisfactorily. It lasted for two hours,
+and then, just as the order was about to be given to cut the cable and
+endeavor to wind it in, it came back as suddenly and mysteriously as it
+had disappeared. The greatest delight was now manifested by all on
+board. "You could see," says the correspondent of the London _Times_,
+"the tears of joy standing in the eyes of some as they almost cried for
+joy, and told their mess-mates that it was all right."
+
+That night, however, the expedition came to grief. The cable was running
+out freely at the rate of six miles per hour, while the ship was making
+only four. This was supposed to be owing to a powerful undercurrent. To
+check this waste of the cable the engineer applied the brakes firmly,
+which at once stopped the machine. The effect was to bring a heavy
+strain on the cable that was in the water. The stern of the ship was
+down in the trough of the sea, and as it rose upward on the swell, the
+pressure was too great, and the cable parted. The alarm was at once
+given, and the greatest consternation and grief prevailed on board. "It
+made all hands of us through the day," says Captain Hudson, "like a
+household or family which had lost their dearest friend, for officers
+and men had been deeply interested in the success of the enterprise."
+
+The fleet immediately put about and returned to England, where Mr. Field
+at once informed the directors of the extent of the disaster. The
+remaining portions of the cable were landed and stored safely away, and
+the vessels were returned to their respective Governments. Orders were
+given for the manufacture of seven hundred miles of cable to replace the
+portion which had been lost, and to allow for waste in paying it out,
+and the most energetic preparations were made for another attempt.
+
+Being satisfied that the machine used for paying out the cable was
+defective, Mr. Field went to Washington and procured from the Navy
+Department the services of Mr. Wm. E. Everett, the chief engineer of the
+"Niagara," stating to that gentleman the necessity for a new machine,
+and urging him to invent it. This Mr. Everett succeeded in doing during
+the winter. His machine was regarded as a great improvement on that
+which had been used on the "Niagara." "It was much smaller and lighter.
+It would take up only about one third as much room on the deck, and had
+only one fourth the weight of the old machine. Its construction was much
+more simple. Instead of four heavy wheels, it had but two, and these
+were made to revolve with ease, and without danger of sudden check, by
+the application of what were known as self-releasing brakes. These were
+the invention of Mr. Appold, of London, a gentleman of fortune, but with
+a strong taste for mechanics, which led him to spend his time and wealth
+in exercising his mechanical ingenuity. These brakes were so adjusted as
+to bear only a certain strain, when they released themselves. This
+ingenious contrivance was applied by Mr. Everett to the paying-out
+machinery. The strength of the cable was such that it would not break
+except under a pressure of a little over three tons. The machinery was
+so adjusted that not more than half that strain could possibly come upon
+the cable, when the brakes would relax their grasp, the wheels revolve
+easily, and the cable run out into the sea 'at its own sweet will.' The
+paying-out machine, therefore, we are far from claiming as wholly an
+American invention. This part of the mechanism was English. The merit of
+Mr. Everett lay in the skill with which he adapted it to the laying of
+the Atlantic cable, and in his great improvements of other parts of the
+machinery. The whole construction, as it afterward stood upon the decks
+of the 'Niagara' and the 'Agamemnon,' was the combined product of
+English and American invention."
+
+In January, 1858, the Board of Directors offered Mr. Field the sum of
+five thousand dollars per annum if he would assume the post of general
+manager of the company. He at once undertook the duties of the
+position, but declined all compensation.
+
+Every thing being in readiness for the second attempt at laying the
+cable, the "Niagara" sailed from New York in March, 1858, to take on her
+portion of the cable at Plymouth. The "Agamemnon" was again ordered to
+assist in the undertaking, and the "Gorgon" was made her consort Mr.
+Field had hoped that the "Susquehanna" would again be the consort of the
+"Niagara," but a few days before the sailing of the fleet he was
+officially informed that he could not have the ship, as she was then in
+the West Indies, with the greater part of her crew down with the yellow
+fever. This was a keen disappointment, as every arrangement had been
+made with the expectation of having the assistance of the "Susquehanna."
+It was too late to ask the Government at Washington for another ship,
+and it was by no means certain that the request would be granted if
+made. In this dilemma Mr. Field frankly stated his disappointment to the
+Lords of the Admiralty of England, and asked for a ship to accompany the
+"Niagara." He was informed that the English Government was at that
+moment chartering vessels to convey troops to Malta, as it had not ships
+enough of its own, and that it was doubtful whether it could contribute
+a third ship to the expedition. Still, so greatly did the government
+desire the success of the enterprise, that a little later on the same
+day the "Valorous" was ordered to take the place of the "Susquehanna" in
+the telegraph fleet. This generous assistance was all the more
+praiseworthy, as it was given at a time when the need of England for
+ships was very urgent.
+
+After shipping the cable, the squadron sailed from Plymouth on the 29th
+of May, 1868, for the Bay of Biscay, where the cable was subjected to
+numerous and thorough tests, which demonstrated its strength and its
+sensitiveness to the electric current. This accomplished, the vessels
+returned to Plymouth.
+
+"Among the matters of _personal_ solicitude and anxiety at this time,
+next to the success of the expedition, was Mr. Field himself. He was
+working with an activity which was unnatural--which could only be kept
+up by great excitement, and which involved the most serious danger. The
+strain on the man was more than the strain on the cable, and we were in
+fear that both would break together. Often he had no sleep, except such
+as he caught flying on the railway. Indeed, when we remonstrated, he
+said he could rest better there than anywhere else, for then he was not
+tormented with the thought of any thing undone. For the time being he
+could do no more; and then, putting his head in the cushioned corner of
+the carriage, he got an hour or two of broken sleep.
+
+"Of this activity we had an instance while in Plymouth. The ships were
+then lying in the Sound, only waiting orders from the Admiralty to go to
+sea; but some business required one of the directors to go to Paris,
+and, as usual, it fell upon him. He left on Sunday night, and went to
+Bristol, and thence, by the first morning train, to London. Monday he
+was busy all day, and that night went to Paris. Tuesday, another busy
+day, and that night back to London. Wednesday, occupied every minute
+till the departure of the Great Western train. That night back to
+Plymouth. Thursday morning on board the 'Niagara,' and immediately the
+squadron sailed."
+
+The plan of operations this time was for the vessels to proceed to a
+given point in mid-ocean, and there unite the two ends of the cable,
+after which the "Niagara" should proceed toward Newfoundland and the
+"Agamemnon" toward Ireland, and it was supposed that each vessel would
+make land about the same time. This was believed to be a better plan
+than the one pursued in the first expedition.
+
+The squadron sailed from Plymouth on the 10th of June. The weather was
+favorable for the first two or three clays of the voyage, but on the
+13th a severe gale set in, which lasted for over a week, and came near
+causing the "Agamemnon" to founder beneath her immense load, a portion
+of which broke loose in her hold. All the vessels succeeded in
+weathering the storm, however, and on the 25th reached the rendezvous in
+mid-ocean. The next day the splice was made, and the ships set out for
+their respective destinations. Before they had gone three miles the
+machinery of the "Niagara" caught the cable and broke it. A second
+splice was made, but when each ship had paid out about forty miles, the
+electric current suddenly ceased. The cable was cut promptly, and the
+two vessels at once returned to the rendezvous, where they rejoined each
+other on the 28th. A comparison of the logs of the two ships "showed the
+painful and mysterious fact that at the same second of time each vessel
+discovered that a total fracture had taken place, at a distance of
+certainly not less than ten miles from each ship, in fact, as well as can
+be judged, at the bottom of the ocean." A third splice was made without
+delay, and the two ships again set out for the opposite shores of the
+Atlantic. This time about two hundred miles of the cable were
+successfully laid, when it parted about twenty feet from the stern of
+the "Agamemnon." The "Niagara," being unable to communicate with the
+English frigate, bore away for Queenstown, where she was joined a few
+days later by the "Agamemnon."
+
+This second failure greatly disheartened the directors, and it required
+all Mr. Field's persuasiveness to induce them to sanction another
+attempt. Yet he prevailed, and, hastening from London to Queenstown,
+sailed with the telegraph fleet on the third attempt to lay the cable,
+leaving Queenstown on the 17th of July. The rendezvous was reached on
+the 28th, and on the 29th the splice was made; and the "Niagara" and
+"Agamemnon" parted company. This time the undertaking was successful.
+The cable was laid across the Atlantic, the "Niagara" reaching Trinity
+Bay, Newfoundland, on the 5th of August, and the "Agamemnon" arriving
+at Valentia, Ireland, a few hours later on the same day. Signals were
+sent across the entire length of the line, from shore to shore, with
+ease and rapidity, and nothing occurred to mar the success of the mighty
+undertaking.
+
+The successful laying of the cable was hailed with the liveliest joy on
+both sides of the Atlantic, and those who had participated in it were
+regarded as heroes. But great as was the achievement, it was not
+destined to be a lasting success. After working for four weeks, the
+electric current suddenly ceased on the 1st of September. It never
+worked _perfectly_ at any period of its existence, but it did transmit a
+number of messages with intelligibleness, and thus put an end to all
+doubt in the minds of the scientific men of the expedition of the
+feasibility of laying a successful line across the ocean.
+
+The public generally and the directors of the company were greatly
+disappointed, and many of-the latter and nearly all of the former
+declared that all such attempts must of necessity fail. Some persons
+even went so far as to avow their belief that the statements as to the
+successful transmission of signals over the wire were false; but the
+proofs that the wire did work properly for awhile are too strong to
+allow us to accord the slightest weight to this disbelief. But whether
+signals had passed over the wire or not, there could be no doubt that
+the cable had ceased to respond to the efforts of the electricians, and
+was a total failure, and the discouragement of nearly every one
+connected with it was most profound.
+
+Mr. Field and one or two others were the only persons who retained the
+slightest confidence in the enterprise, and it was clear to them that
+any further effort to secure the aid of private capital would be useless
+just then. An appeal was made to the British Government. It was urged
+that the work was too great to be undertaken by private capital alone,
+and that, since it was to be more of a public than a private nature, it
+was but just that the Government should undertake it. The company asked
+the Government to guarantee the interest on a certain amount of stock,
+even if the second attempt should not prove a complete success. The
+failure of the Red Sea cable, to which the British Government had given
+an unconditional guarantee, had just occurred, and had caused a
+considerable loss to the treasury, and the Government was not willing to
+assume another such risk. Anxious, however, for the success of the
+Atlantic telegraph, it increased its subsidy from fourteen thousand to
+twenty thousand pounds, and agreed to guarantee eight per cent, on six
+hundred thousand pounds of new capital for twenty-five years, upon the
+single condition that the cable should be made to work successfully.
+
+This was not all, however. The Government caused further soundings to be
+made off the coast of Ireland, which effectually dispelled all the fears
+which had been entertained of a submarine mountain which would prove an
+impassable barrier in the path of an ocean telegraph. In addition to
+this, it caused the organization of a board of distinguished scientific
+men for the purpose of determining all the difficult problems of
+submarine telegraphy. This board met in 1859, and sat two years. The
+result of its experiments and investigations was a declaration, signed
+by the members, that a cable properly made, "and paid into the ocean
+with the most improved machinery, possesses every prospect of not only
+being successfully laid in the first instance, but may reasonably be
+relied upon to continue many years in an efficient-state for the
+transmission of signals."
+
+Meanwhile, Mr. Field labored energetically to revive the company. The
+war which had broken out in the United States brought home to our
+Government the urgent need of telegraphic communication with Europe, and
+Mr. Field had no difficulty in obtaining from the President an assurance
+that this Government would be most happy to join with Great Britain in
+promoting this great international work. He addressed meetings of
+merchants in various American cities, and displayed the greatest energy
+in his efforts to enlist the aid of American capital. Very little was
+accomplished, however, until 1863. By this time the success of the lines
+in the Mediterranean and in the Persian Gulf had demonstrated the
+practicability of long submarine telegraphs, and the public confidence
+in the attempt had been revived to such an extent that the directors
+ventured to call for proposals for the manufacture of a cable. Seventeen
+offers were made, from which that of Messrs. Glass, Elliott & Co., of
+London, was selected. Mr. Field now renewed his indomitable efforts, and
+in a few months the new capital of six hundred thousand pounds was
+subscribed, Messrs. Glass, Elliott &, Co. taking three hundred and
+fifteen thousand pounds, besides one hundred thousand pounds in bonds.
+This was accomplished in 1864, and work on the cable was immediately
+begun. The cable now adopted was very different from, and much more
+sensitive than, those which had been used before. It was heavier, and
+less liable to be injured by the water.
+
+The "Great Eastern" steamship, the greatest wonder of naval
+architecture, was at this time advertised for sale, and it occurred to
+several of the gentlemen interested in the telegraph company that she
+was the best vessel for laying the cable that could be found. They at
+once organized themselves into a company, purchased the ship, and fitted
+her up for that service. They were fortunate in securing the services of
+Captain James Anderson, and placing him in charge of her, sent her to
+Sheerness, where the cable was sent down to her in lighters from the
+factory at Greenwich. When the cable was on board, and all the other
+arrangements had been completed, the big ship left the Thames and sailed
+for Valentia harbor.
+
+The point of landing had been changed from Valentia harbor, five or six
+miles, to Foilhommerum Bay. On the 23d of July, 1865, the shore end was
+connected with the cable on board the ship, and the voyage was begun. It
+would be interesting to follow the huge steamer on this remarkable
+voyage, and to relate to the reader the almost marvelous manner in which
+faults were detected in the line hundreds of miles from the shore, and
+how the cable was successfully hauled in and the damage repaired. All
+went well until twelve hundred miles of cable had been paid out, and the
+ship was but six hundred miles from the shores of Newfoundland, when the
+cable broke again and plunged into the sea.
+
+Mr. Canning, the engineer in charge, was dismayed, but not disheartened.
+For nine days the ship hung around the spot grappling for the cable, in
+the hope of raising it, and sinking its grapnels for this purpose to a
+depth of two miles. The cable was caught several times, but the rope
+which held the grapnel broke each time, and the precious coil fell back
+again into the deep. At length, having marked the place where the cable
+was lost with buoys, the ship put back for England, and the enterprise
+was abandoned for that year.
+
+Though unsuccessful in carrying the cable across the ocean, this
+expedition was by no means a failure. Its results are thus summed up by
+the officers in charge of it:
+
+
+     1. It was proved by the expedition of 1858 that a submarine
+     telegraph cable could be laid between Ireland and Newfoundland, and
+     messages transmitted through the same.
+
+     By the expedition of 1865 it has been fully demonstrated:
+
+     2. That the insulation of a cable improves very much after its
+     submersion in the cold deep water of the Atlantic, and that its
+     conducting power is considerably increased thereby.
+
+     3. That the steamship "Great Eastern," from her size and constant
+     steadiness, and from the control over her afforded by the joint use
+     of paddles and screw, renders it safe to lay an Atlantic cable in
+     any weather.
+
+     4. That in a depth of over two miles four attempts were made to
+     grapple the cable. In three of them the cable was caught by the
+     grapnel, and in the other the grapnel was fouled by the chain
+     attached to it.
+
+     5. That the paying-out machinery used on board the Great Eastern
+     worked perfectly, and can be confidently relied on for laying
+     cables across the Atlantic.
+
+     6. That with the improved telegraphic instruments for long
+     submarine lines, a speed of more than eight words per minute can be
+     obtained through such a cable as the present Atlantic one between
+     Ireland and Newfoundland, as the amount of slack actually paid out
+     did not exceed fourteen per cent., which would have made the total
+     cable laid between Valentia and Heart's Content nineteen hundred
+     miles.
+
+     7. That the present Atlantic cable, though capable of bearing a
+     strain of seven tons, did not experience more than fourteen
+     hundred-weight in being paid out into the deepest water of the
+     Atlantic between Ireland and Newfoundland.
+
+     8. That there is no difficulty in mooring buoys in the deep water
+     of the Atlantic between Ireland and Newfoundland, and that two
+     buoys even when moored by a piece of the Atlantic cable itself,
+     which had been previously lifted from the bottom, have ridden out a
+     gale.
+
+     9. That more than four nautical miles of the Atlantic cable have
+     been recovered from a depth of over two miles, and that the
+     insulation of the gutta-percha covered wire was in no way whatever
+     impaired by the depth of water or the strains to which it had been
+     subjected by lifting and passing through the hauling-in apparatus.
+
+     10. That the cable of 1865, owing to the improvements introduced
+     into the manufacture of the gutta-percha core, was more than one
+     hundred times better insulated than cables made in 1858, then
+     considered perfect and still working.
+
+     11. That the electrical testing can be conducted with such unerring
+     accuracy as to enable the electricians to discover the existence of
+     a fault immediately after its production or development, and very
+     quickly to ascertain its position in the cable.
+
+     12. That with a steam-engine attached to the paying-out machinery,
+     should a fault be discovered on board whilst laying the cable, it
+     is possible that it might be recovered before it had reached the
+     bottom of the Atlantic, and repaired at once.
+
+
+It was now placed beyond the possibility of a doubt that the cable would
+be laid within the next year. More than this, it was determined not only
+to lay a new cable between the two continents, but to fish up the cable
+of 1865, splice it and continue it to Newfoundland, thus giving the
+company two working lines.
+
+It was necessary, however, to raise more capital, and in this effort Mr.
+Field again put forth his restless and indomitable energies. As the
+public confidence in the scheme had been effectually restored, it was
+resolved to raise six hundred thousand pounds of new capital by the
+issue of one hundred and twenty thousand shares of five pounds each,
+which should be preferential shares, entitled to a dividend of twelve
+per cent, before the eight per cent, dividend to be paid on the former
+preference shares, and the four per cent, on the ordinary stock. They at
+once proceeded to issue these bonds, when they were informed by the
+Attorney-General that the proceeding was contrary to law.
+
+In this dilemma work on the new cable was at once stopped, and the money
+which had been paid in returned to the subscribers. As Parliament was
+not in session, and a new issue of stock could not be made by the
+company without its authorization, and as to wait for this would be to
+postpone the laying of the cable for another year, Mr. Field was now
+advised by Mr. Daniel Gooch, M.P., that the only way out of the
+difficulty was to organize a new company at once, which should assume
+the work, issue its own shares, and raise its own capital. Eminent legal
+gentlemen sustained Mr. Gooch in this opinion, and Mr. Field again set
+to work to organize a new company, under the name of the "Anglo-American
+Telegraph Company." The capital was fixed at six hundred thousand
+pounds, Mr. Field taking ten thousand pounds. The whole amount was
+raised in a short time, and the company "contracted with the Atlantic
+Cable Company to manufacture and lay down a cable in the summer of 1866,
+for doing which it is to be entitled to what virtually amounts to a
+preference dividend of twenty-five per cent., as a first claim is
+secured to them by the Atlantic Telegraph Company upon the revenue of
+the cable or cables (after the working expenses have been provided for)
+to the extent of one hundred and twenty-five thousand pounds per annum,
+and the New York, Newfoundland, and London Telegraph Company undertake
+to contribute from their revenue a further annual sum of twenty-five
+thousand pounds, on condition that a cable shall be working during
+1866."
+
+Once more the furnaces glowed and the hammers rang in the manufacture of
+the cable. Great improvements were made in the cable itself and in the
+machinery for laying it, and the "Great Eastern" was thoroughly
+overhauled. The cable was completed and put on board in June, and the
+big ship left the Medway on the last of the month and proceeded to
+Berehaven, in Ireland, where she took on her final stores of coal. This
+done, she proceeded to Valentia, where she arrived on the seventh of
+July.
+
+The shore end was successfully laid and made fast to the cable on board
+the "Great Eastern," and on Friday morning, the 13th of July, 1866, the
+huge ship set sail for Newfoundland, accompanied by her consorts of the
+telegraph fleet. The voyage occupied fourteen days, the ship making an
+average run of about one hundred and eighteen miles per day, and paying
+out about one hundred and thirty-one miles of cable in the same period
+of time. The weather was fair during the whole voyage, but the anxiety
+of the officers in charge was none the less on that account. There were
+accidents to be dreaded more than unfavorable weather. The ship was run
+at moderate speed all the way, as it was thought she had once or twice
+run too fast on the last voyage, and exposed the cable to danger. "The
+total slack of the cable was less than twelve per cent., showing that
+the cable was laid almost in a straight line, allowing for the swells
+and hollows in the bottom of the sea.
+
+"As the next week drew toward its close, it was evident that they were
+approaching the end of their voyage. By Thursday they had passed the
+great depths of the Atlantic, and were off soundings. Besides, their
+daily observations, there were many signs well known to mariners that
+they were near the coast. There were the sea-birds, and even the smell
+of the land, such as once greeted the sharp senses of Columbus, and made
+him sure that he was floating to some undiscovered shore. Captain
+Anderson had timed his departure so that he should approach the American
+coast at the full moon; and so, for the last two or three nights, as
+they drew near the Western shore, the round orb rose behind them,
+casting its soft light over sea and sky; and these happy men seemed like
+heavenly voyagers, floating gently on to a haven of rest.
+
+"In England the progress of the expedition was known from day to day,
+but on this side of the ocean all was uncertainty. Some had gone to
+Heart's Content, hoping to witness the arrival of the fleet, but not so
+many as the last year, for the memory of their disappointment was too
+fresh, and they feared the same result again. But still a faithful few
+were there, who kept their daily watch. Two weeks have passed. It is
+Friday morning, the 27th of July. They are up early, and looking
+eastward to see the day break, when a ship is seen in the offing. She is
+far down on the horizon. Spy-glasses are turned toward her. She comes
+nearer; and look, there is another, and another! And now the hull of the
+'Great Eastern' looms up all glorious in that morning sky. They are
+coming! Instantly all is wild excitement on shore. Boats put off to row
+toward the fleet. The 'Albany' is the first to round the point and enter
+the bay. The 'Terrible' is close behind; the 'Medway' stops an hour or
+two to join on the heavy shore end, while the 'Great Eastern,' gliding
+calmly in as if she had done nothing remarkable, drops her anchor in
+front of the telegraph house, having trailed behind her a chain of two
+thousand miles, to bind the old world to the new.
+
+"Although the expedition reached Newfoundland on Friday, the 27th, yet,
+as the cable across the Gulf of St. Lawrence was broken, the news was
+not received in New York till the 29th. It was early Sunday morning,
+before the Sabbath bells had rung their call to prayer, that the tidings
+came. The first announcement was brief: 'Heart's Content, July 27th. We
+arrived here at nine o'clock this morning. All well. Thank God, the
+cable is laid, and is in perfect working order. Cyrus W. Field.'"
+
+There was no failure in the communication this time. The electric
+current has continued to flow strongly and uninterruptedly from that day
+until the present, and experience has demonstrated for the wonderful
+wire a capacity far beyond the hopes of its projectors.
+
+Having laid the cable, the "Great Eastern" proceeded with surprising
+accuracy to where the line had been lost the year before, and succeeded
+in grappling and raising it to the surface. It was tested, and found to
+be in perfect order, messages being sent with ease from the ship to
+Valentia, and from that point back again. A splice was then made, and
+the line was continued to Newfoundland. Both cables are still working,
+and bid fair to be serviceable for many years to come.
+
+Many persons had contributed to this great success, but to Cyrus W.
+Field must be assigned the chief praise. His energy and perseverance
+kept the subject constantly before the public. His courage inspired
+others, and his faith in its ultimate success alone kept its best
+friends from abandoning it in its darkest hours. In its behalf he spent
+twelve years of constant toil, and made over fifty voyages, more than
+thirty of which were across the Atlantic. He devoted his entire fortune
+to the undertaking, of which he was the projector and cheerfully
+incurred the risk of poverty rather than abandon it. Therefore, it is
+but just that he, who was the chief instrument in obtaining for the
+world this great benefit, should receive the chief measure of the praise
+which it has brought to all connected with it.
+
+[Illustration: ROBERT FULTON.]
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+INVENTORS
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+ROBERT FULTON.
+
+
+One of the pleasantest as well as one of the most prominent places in
+the city of New York is the grave-yard of old Trinity Church. A handsome
+iron railing separates it from Broadway, and the thick rows of
+grave-stones, all crumbling and stained with age, present a strange
+contrast to the bustle, vitality, and splendor with which they are
+surrounded. They stare solemnly down into Wall Street, and offer a
+bitter commentary upon the struggles and anxiety of the money kings of
+the great city. Work, toil, plan, combine as you may, they seem to say,
+and yet it must all come to this.
+
+Not far from the south door of the church, and shaded by a venerable
+tree, is a plain brown stone slab, bearing this inscription: "The vault
+of Walter and Robert C. Livingston, sons of Robert Livingston, of the
+manor of Livingston." A stranger would pass it by without a second
+glance; yet it is one of the Meccas of the world of science, for the
+mortal part of Robert Fulton sleeps in the vault below, without monument
+or legendary stone to his memory, but in sight of the mighty steam
+fleets which his genius called forth. Very few visitors ever see this
+part of the churchyard, and the grave of Fulton is unknown to nine out
+of ten of his countrymen. Yet this man, sleeping so obscurely in his
+grave without a name, did far more for the world than either Napoleon or
+Wellington. He revolutionized commerce and manufactures, changed the
+entire system of navigation, triumphed over the winds and the waves, and
+compelled the adoption of a new system of modern warfare. Now he lies in
+a grave not his own, with no monument or statue erected to his memory in
+all this broad land.
+
+ROBERT FULTON was born in the township of Little Britain (now called
+Fulton), in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in 1765. He was of Irish
+descent, and his father was a farmer in moderate circumstances. He was
+the eldest son and third child of a family of five children. The farm
+upon which he was born was conveyed by his father in 1766 to Joseph
+Swift, in whose family it still remains. It contains three hundred and
+sixty-four acres, and is one of the handsomest farms in Lancaster
+County.
+
+After disposing of his farm, Mr. Fulton, senior, removed to the town of
+Lancaster, where he died in 1768, and there young Robert grew up under
+the care of his mother. He learned to read and write quickly, but did
+not manifest much fondness for his books after mastering his elementary
+studies. He early exhibited an unusual talent for drawing, however,
+greatly preferring the employment of his pencil to the more serious
+duties of the school. His instructors and companions considered him a
+dull boy, though all admitted that he showed no disposition to be idle.
+All his leisure time was spent either in drawing, or in visiting the
+shops of the mechanics in the place and eagerly watching their
+operations. He displayed a remarkable talent for mechanism, which was
+greatly assisted by his skill in drawing, and his visits to the machine
+shops were always welcomed by both the apprentices and their employers,
+who recognized the unusual genius of the boy, and predicted great things
+for him in the future. But to his teacher, who seems to have been rather
+more belligerent than is usual with Quakers, Robert's neglect of his
+studies and visits to the machine shops were so many indications of
+growing worthlessness. The indignant pedagogue once took occasion to
+remonstrate with him upon his course, and, failing to convince him by
+argument, rapped him sharply over the knuckles with a ruler, telling him
+he would make him do something. Robert at once placed his arms akimbo,
+and, looking his tutor sternly in the face, replied: "Sir, I came here
+to have something beat into my brains, not into my knuckles."
+
+Some time after this Mrs. Fulton, in conversation with the teacher,
+expressed her solicitude lest her son should "turn out nothing," since
+he neglected his books so entirely. The teacher frankly confessed that
+he had done all in his power for the boy, but that he was discouraged,
+and added: "Only yesterday, madam, Robert pertinaciously declared to me
+that his head was so full of original notions that there was no vacant
+chamber to store away the contents of any dusty books." The lad was only
+ten years of age at the time, and, as may be supposed, the good Quaker
+who directed his education was not a little dismayed by such a remark.
+
+The boyhood of Fulton was passed during the stormy period of the
+Revolution, and in a section so close to the theater of war that he was
+in the midst of all the excitement engendered by the conflict. He was an
+ardent patriot from the first, and used his pencil freely to caricature
+all who showed the slightest leaning to the cause of the enemy.
+
+In 1778 the supply of candles was so low in Lancaster that the town
+authorities advised the people to refrain from illuminating their houses
+on the 4th of July of that year, in order to save their candles. Robert,
+at this time but thirteen years old, was determined not to forego a
+patriotic display of some sort. He had prepared a quantity of candles
+for the occasion, and after the proclamation of the Town Council was
+issued, he took them to a Mr. John Fisher, who kept a store in the
+place, and sold powder and shot. Mr. Fisher was somewhat astonished at
+Robert's desire to part with the candles, which were at that time scarce
+articles, and asked his reason for so doing. The boy replied: "Our
+rulers have requested the citizens to refrain from illuminating their
+windows and streets; as good citizens we should comply with their
+request, and I prefer illuminating the heavens with sky-rockets." Having
+procured the powder, he left Mr. Fisher's, and entered a small variety
+store kept by a Mr. Cossart, where he purchased several sheets of
+large-sized pasteboard. As Mr. Cossart was about to roll them, the boy
+stopped him, saying he wished to carry them open. Mr. Cossart, knowing
+Robert's mechanical genius, asked him what he was about to invent.
+
+"Why," said the boy, "we are prohibited from illuminating our windows
+with candles, and I'm going to shoot my candles through the air."
+
+"Tut, tut, tut," said Mr. Cossart, laughingly; "that's an
+impossibility."
+
+"No, sir," said Robert, "there is nothing impossible."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: He proved that this was not impossible, for he had his
+display, making his rockets himself, and after his own model.]
+
+"Robert was known," says one of his biographers, "to purchase small
+quantities of quicksilver from Dr. Adam Simon Kuhn, druggist, residing
+opposite the market-house. He was trying some experiments that he did
+not wish to make public, and which the workmen in Mr. Fenno's and Mr.
+Christian Isch's shops were anxious to find out, but could not. He was
+in the habit almost daily of visiting those shops, and was a favorite
+among the workmen, who took advantage of his talent for drawing by
+getting him to make ornamental designs for guns, and sketches of the
+size and shape of guns, and then giving the calculations of the force,
+size of the bore and balls, and the distances they would fire; and he
+would accompany them to the open commons near by potter's field, to
+prove his calculations by shooting at a mark. On account of his
+expertness in his calculations, and of their ineffectual efforts to
+discover the use he was making of quicksilver, the shop-hands nicknamed
+him 'quicksilver Bob.'
+
+"Mr. Messersmith and Mr. Christian Isch were employed by the Government
+to make and repair the arms for the troops; and on several occasions
+guards were stationed at their shops to watch and see that the workmen
+were constantly employed during whole nights and on Sunday, to prevent
+any delay. The workmen had so much reliance and confidence in
+'quicksilver Bob's' judgment and mechanical skill, that every suggestion
+he would make as to the alteration of a gun, or any additional ornament
+that he would design, was invariably adopted by common consent.
+
+"In the summer of 1779, Robert Fulton evinced an extraordinary fondness
+for inventions. He was a frequent visitor at Mr. Messersmith's and Mr.
+Fenno's gunsmith shops, almost daily, and endeavored to manufacture a
+small air-gun."
+
+Among the acquaintances of Robert Fulton at this time was a young man,
+about eighteen years of age, named Christopher Gumpf, who used
+frequently to accompany his father in his fishing excursions on the
+Conestoga. Mr. Gumpf, Sen., being an experienced angler, readily
+consented to allow Robert to join himself and his son in these
+expeditions, and made the two boys earn their pleasure by pushing the
+boat about the stream, as he desired to move from point to point. As the
+means of propulsion was simply a pole, the labor was very severe, and
+Robert soon became tired of it. Not wishing, however, to give up his
+pleasant fishing trips, he determined to devise some means of lightening
+the labor.
+
+"He absented himself a week, having gone to Little Britain township to
+spend a few days at his aunt's; and while there he planned and completed
+a small working model of a fishing boat, with paddle-wheels. On leaving
+his aunt's, he placed the model in the garret, with a request that it
+should not be destroyed. Many years afterward, that simple model was the
+attraction of friends, and became, instead of lumber in the garret, an
+ornament in the aunt's parlor, who prized it highly. That model was the
+result of Robert's fishing excursions with Christopher Gumpf; and when
+he returned from his aunt's he told Christopher that he must make a set
+of paddles to work at the sides of the boat, to be operated by a double
+crank, and then they could propel the old gentleman's fishing-boat with
+greater ease. Two arms or pieces of timber were then fastened together
+at right angles, with a paddle at each end, and the crank was attached
+to the boat across it near the stern, with a paddle operating on a pivot
+as a rudder; and Fulton's first invention was tried on the Conestoga
+River, opposite Rockford, in the presence of Peter and Christopher
+Gumpf. The boys were so pleased with the experiment, that they hid the
+paddles in the bushes on the shore, lest others might use and break
+them, and attached them to the boat whenever they chose; and thus did
+they enjoy very many fishing excursions."
+
+This was the first experiment in the science of navigation attempted by
+the man who afterward became the author of a new system.
+
+Having chosen the profession of an artist and portrait painter, young
+Fulton removed to Philadelphia at the age of seventeen, and remained
+there, pursuing his vocation, until the completion of his twenty-first
+year. He formed there the acquaintance of Benjamin Franklin, by whom he
+was much noticed. His success was rapid, and upon attaining his majority
+he was enabled to purchase and stock a farm of eighty-four acres in
+Washington County, Pennsylvania, which he gave to his mother for a home
+as long as she should live. Having thus insured her comfort, he went to
+England for the purpose of completing his studies in his profession. He
+took with him letters to Benjamin West, then at the height of his fame,
+and living in London. He was cordially received by Mr. West, who was
+also a native of Pennsylvania, and remained an inmate of his family for
+several years. West was then the President of the Royal Academy of Great
+Britain, and was thus enabled to extend to Fulton, to whom he became
+deeply attached, many advantages, both social and professional, of which
+the young artist was prompt to avail himself.
+
+Upon leaving the family of Mr. West, Fulton commenced a tour for the
+purpose of examining the treasures of art contained in the residences of
+the English nobility, and remained for two years in Devonshire. There he
+became acquainted with the Duke of Bridgewater, to whom England is
+indebted for the introduction of the canal system within her limits; and
+it is said that he was induced by this nobleman to abandon the
+profession of an artist, and enter upon that of a civil engineer. This
+nobleman being devoted to mechanical investigations, proved a very
+congenial acquaintance to Fulton. He was engaged at the time on a scheme
+of steam navigation by a propeller, modeled after the foot of a water
+fowl. His plan did not commend itself to Fulton's judgment, and he
+addressed him a letter, setting forth its defects, and advancing some of
+the views upon which he acted himself in after life. Here he also met
+with Watt, who had just produced the steam-engine, which Fulton studied
+enthusiastically. His own inventive genius was not idle, and while
+living in Devonshire, he produced an improved mill for sawing marble,
+which won him the thanks and medal of the British Society for the
+Promotion of the Arts and Commerce; a machine for spinning flax and
+making ropes; and an excavator for scooping out the channels of canals
+and aqueducts, all of which were patented. He published a number of
+communications on the subject of canals in one of the leading London
+journals, and a treatise upon the same subject. Having obtained a patent
+in England for canal improvements, he went to France in 1797, with the
+design of introducing them in that country.
+
+Upon reaching Paris, he took up his residence with Mr. Joel Barlow, and
+thus was laid the foundation of a friendship between these two gentlemen
+which lasted during their lives. He remained in Paris seven years,
+residing during that time with Mr. Barlow, and devoting himself to the
+study of modern languages, and engineering and its kindred sciences.
+
+His work was continuous and severe in Paris. He invented and painted the
+first panorama ever exhibited in that city, which he sold for the
+purpose of raising money for his experiments in steam navigation; he
+also designed a series of splendid colored illustrations for _The
+Columbiad_, the famous poem of his friend Mr. Barlow. Besides these, he
+invented a number of improvements in canals, aqueducts, inclined planes,
+boats, and guns, which yielded him considerable credit, but very little
+profit.
+
+In 1801, he invented a submarine boat which he called the "Nautilus,"
+which is thus described by M. de St. Aubin, a member of the Tribunate:
+
+"The diving-boat, in the construction of which he is now employed, will
+be capacious enough to contain eight men and provision for twenty days,
+and will be of sufficient strength and power to enable him to plunge one
+hundred feet under water, if necessary. He has contrived a reservoir of
+air, which will enable eight men to remain under water eight hours. When
+the boat is above water, it has two sails, and looks just like a common
+boat; when it is to dive, the mast and sails are struck.
+
+"In making his experiments, Mr. Fulton not only remained a whole hour
+under water, with three of his companions, but had the boat parallel to
+the horizon at any given distance. He proved that the compass points as
+correctly under water as on the surface, and that while under water the
+boat made way at the rate of half a league an hour, by means contrived
+for that purpose.
+
+"It is not twenty years since all Europe was astonished at the first
+ascension of men in balloons: perhaps in a few years they will not be
+less surprised to see a flotilla of diving-boats, which, on a given
+signal, shall, to avoid the pursuit of an enemy, plunge under water, and
+rise again several leagues from the place where they descended!
+
+"But if we have not succeeded in steering the balloon, and even were it
+impossible to attain that object, the case is different with the
+diving-boat, which can be conducted under water in the same manner as
+upon the surface. It has the advantage of sailing like the common boat,
+and also of diving when it is pursued. With these qualities, it is fit
+for carrying secret orders, to succor a blockaded fort, and to examine
+the force and position of an enemy in their harbors."
+
+In connection with this boat, Fulton invented a torpedo, or infernal
+machine, for the purpose of destroying vessels of war by approaching
+them under water and breaking up their hulls by the explosion. He
+offered his invention several times to the French Government, and once
+to the Ambassador of Holland at Paris, without being able to induce them
+to consider it. Somewhat later, he visited London, at the request of the
+British Ministry, and explained his invention to them. Although he
+succeeded in blowing up a vessel of two hundred tons with one hundred
+and seventy pounds of powder, and in extorting from Mr. Pitt the
+acknowledgment that, if introduced into practice, the torpedo would
+annihilate all navies, his invention was rejected, through the influence
+of Lord Melville, who feared that its adoption might injure England more
+than it would benefit her. At the first, when it was thought that
+England would purchase Fulton's invention, it was intimated to him that
+he would be required to pledge himself not to dispose of it to any other
+power. He replied promptly:
+
+"Whatever may be your award, I never will consent to let these
+inventions lie dormant should my country at any time have need of them.
+Were you to grant me an annuity of twenty thousand pounds, I would
+sacrifice all to the safety and independence of my country."
+
+In 1806, Mr. Fulton returned to New York, and in the same year he
+married Miss Harriet Livingston, a niece of Chancellor Livingston, by
+whom he had four children. He offered his torpedo to the General
+Government, but the trial to which it was subjected by the Navy
+Department was unsuccessful for him, and the Government declined to
+purchase the invention.
+
+But it was not as the inventor of engines of destruction that Robert
+Fulton was to achieve fame. A still nobler triumph was reserved for
+him--one which was to bring joy instead of sorrow to the world. From the
+time that Fulton had designed the paddle-wheels for his fishing-boat, he
+had never ceased to give his attention to the subject of propelling
+vessels by machinery, and after his acquaintance with Watt, he was more
+than ever convinced that the steam-engine could, under proper
+circumstances, be made to furnish the motive power.
+
+Several eminent and ingenious men, previous to this, had proposed to
+propel vessels by steam power, among whom were Dr. Papin, of France,
+Savery, the Marquis of Worcester, and Dr. John Allen, of London, in
+1726. In 1786, Oliver Evans, of Philadelphia, and about the same time
+Dr. Franklin, proposed to accomplish this result by forcing a quantity
+of water, by means of steam power, through an opening made for that
+purpose in the stern of the hull of the boat.
+
+In 1737, Jonathan Hulls issued a pamphlet proposing to construct a boat
+to be moved by steam power, for the purpose of towing vessels out of
+harbors against tide and winds. In his plan the paddle-wheel was used,
+and was secured to a frame placed far out over the stern of the boat. It
+was given this position by the inventor because water fowls propelled
+themselves by pushing their feet behind them.
+
+In 1787, Mr. James Rumsey, of Shepherdstown, Virginia, constructed and
+navigated the first steamboat in actual use. His boat was eighty feet in
+length, and was propelled by means of a vertical pump in the middle of
+the vessel, by which the water was drawn in at the bow and expelled at
+the stern through a horizontal trough in her hull. The engine weighed
+about one third of a ton, and the boat had a capacity of about three
+tons burthen. When thus laden, a speed of about four miles an hour could
+be attained. The boiler held only five gallons of water, and needed but
+a pint at a time. Rumsey went to England to exhibit his plan on the
+Thames, and died there in 1793.
+
+About the same time the Marquis de Joffrey launched a steamer one
+hundred feet long on the Loire, at Lyons, using paddles revolving on an
+endless chain, but only to find his experiment a failure.
+
+In December, 1786, John Fitch published the following account of a
+steamer with which he had made several experiments on the Delaware, at
+Philadelphia, and which came nearer to success than any thing that had
+at that time been invented:
+
+"The cylinder is to be horizontal, and the steam to work with equal
+force at each end. The mode by which we obtain what I term a vacuum is,
+it is believed, entirely new, as is also the method of letting the water
+into it, and throwing it off against the atmosphere without any
+friction. It is expected that the cylinder, which is of twelve inches
+diameter, will move a clear force of eleven or twelve cwt. after the
+frictions are deducted: this force is to be directed against a wheel of
+eighteen inches diameter. The piston moves about three feet, and each
+vibration of it gives the axis about forty revolutions. Each revolution
+of the axis moves twelve oars or paddles five and a half feet: they work
+perpendicularly, and are represented by the strokes of a paddle of a
+canoe. As six of the paddles are raised from the water, six more are
+entered, and the two sets of paddles make their strokes of about eleven
+feet in each revolution. The crank of the axis acts upon the paddles
+about one-third of their length from their lower ends, on which part of
+the oar the whole force of the axis is applied. The engine is placed in
+the bottom of the boat, about one-third from the stern, and both the
+action and reaction turn the wheel the same way."
+
+Fitch was unfortunate in his affairs, and became so disheartened that
+he ceased to attempt to improve his invention, and finally committed
+suicide by drowning himself in the Alleghany River at Pittsburgh.
+
+In 1787, Mr. Patrick Miller, of Dalwinston, Scotland, designed a double
+vessel, propelled by a wheel placed in the stern between the two keels.
+This boat is said to have been very successful, but it was very small,
+the cylinder being only four inches in diameter. In 1789, Mr. Miller
+produced a larger vessel on the same plan, which made seven miles per
+hour in the still water of the Forth and Clyde Canal, but it proved too
+weak for its machinery, which had to be taken out.
+
+It was in the face of these failures that Fulton applied himself to the
+task of designing a successful steamboat. During his residence in Paris
+he had made the acquaintance of Mr. Robert R. Livingston, then the
+American minister in France, who had previously been connected with some
+unsuccessful steamboat experiments at home. Mr. Livingston was delighted
+to find a man of Fulton's mechanical genius so well satisfied of the
+practicability of steam navigation, and joined heartily with him in his
+efforts to prove his theories by experiments. Several small working
+models made by Fulton convinced Mr. Livingston that the former had
+discovered and had overcome the cause of the failure of the experiments
+of other inventors, and it was finally agreed between them to build a
+large boat for trial on the Seine. This experimental steamer was
+furnished with paddle wheels, and was completed and launched early in
+the spring of 1803. On the very morning appointed for the trial, Fulton
+was aroused from his sleep by a messenger from the boat, who rushed into
+his chamber, pale and breathless, exclaiming, "Oh, sir, the boat has
+broken in pieces and gone to the bottom!" Hastily dressing and hurrying
+to the spot, he found that the weight of the machinery had broken the
+boat in half and carried the whole structure to the bottom of the river.
+He at once set to work to raise the machinery, devoting twenty-four
+hours, without resting or eating, to the undertaking, and succeeded in
+doing so, but inflicted upon his constitution a strain from which he
+never entirely recovered. The machinery was very slightly damaged, but
+it was necessary to rebuild the boat entirely. This was accomplished by
+July of the same year, and the boat was tried in August with triumphant
+success, in the presence of the French National Institute and a vast
+crowd of the citizens of Paris.
+
+This steamer was very defective, but still so great an improvement upon
+all that had preceded it, that Messrs. Fulton and Livingston determined
+to build one on a larger scale in the waters of New York, the right of
+navigating which by steam vessels had been secured by the latter as far
+back as 1798. The law which granted this right had been continued from
+time to time through Mr. Livingston's influence, and was finally amended
+so as to include Fulton within its provisions. Having resolved to return
+home, Fulton set out as soon as possible, stopping in England on his
+return, to order an engine for his boat from Watt and Boulton. He gave
+an exact description of the engine, which was built in strict accordance
+with his plan, but declined to state the use to which he intended
+putting it.
+
+Very soon after his arrival in New York, he commenced building his first
+American boat, and finding that her cost would greatly exceed his
+estimate, he offered for sale a third interest in the monopoly of the
+navigation of the waters of New York, held by Livingston and himself, in
+order to raise money to build the boat, and thus lighten the burdens of
+himself and his partner, but he could find no one willing to risk money
+in such a scheme. Indeed, steam navigation was universally regarded in
+America as a mere chimera, and Fulton and Livingston were ridiculed for
+their faith in it. The bill granting the monopoly held by Livingston was
+regarded as so utterly absurd by the Legislature of New York, that that
+wise body could with difficulty be induced to consider it seriously.
+Even among scientific men the project was considered impracticable. A
+society in Rotterdam had, several years before Fulton's return home,
+applied to the American Philosophical Society to be informed whether any
+and what improvements had been made in the construction of steam-engines
+in America. A reply to this inquiry was prepared, at the request of the
+Society, by Mr. Benjamin H. Latrobe, a distinguished engineer. The
+following extracts from this paper will show the reader how Fulton's
+scheme was regarded by one who was confessedly one of the most brilliant
+engineers of his day, and who has since accomplished so much for the
+improvement of steam travel:
+
+
+     During the general lassitude of mechanical exertion which succeeded
+     the American Revolution, We utility of steam-engines appears to
+     have been forgotten; but the subject afterward started into very
+     general notice in a form in which it could not possibly be attended
+     with success. A sort of mania began to prevail, which, indeed, has
+     not yet entirely subsided, for impelling boats by steam-engines.
+     Dr. Franklin proposed to force forward the boat by the immediate
+     application of the steam upon the water. Many attempts to simplify
+     the working of the engine, and more to employ a means of dispensing
+     with the beam in converting the _libratory_ into a rotatory motion,
+     were made. For a short time, a passage-boat, rowed by a
+     steam-engine, was established between Borden-town and Philadelphia,
+     but it was soon laid aside. The best and most powerful steam-engine
+     which has been employed for this purpose--excepting, perhaps, one
+     constructed by Dr. Kinsey, with the performance of which I am not
+     sufficiently acquainted--belonged to a gentleman of New York. It
+     was made to act, by way of experiment, upon oars, upon paddles, and
+     upon flutter-wheels. Nothing in the success of any of these
+     experiments appeared to be sufficient compensation for the expense
+     and the extreme inconvenience of the steam-engine in the vessel.
+
+     There are, indeed, general objections to the use of the
+     steam-engine for impelling boats, from which no particular mode of
+     application can be free. These are:
+
+     First. The weight of the engine and of the fuel.
+
+     Second. The large space it occupies.
+
+     Third. The tendency of its action to rack the vessel, and render it
+     leaky.
+
+     Fourth. The expense of maintenance.
+
+     Fifth. The irregularity of its motion, and the motion of the water
+     in the boiler and cistern, and of the fuel-vessel in rough water.
+
+     Sixth. The difficulty arising from the liability of the paddles and
+     oars to break, if light, and from the weight, if made strong.
+
+     Nor have I ever heard of an instance, verified by other testimony
+     than that of the inventor, of a speedy and agreeable voyage having
+     been performed in a steamboat of any construction.
+
+     I am well aware that there are still many very respectable and
+     ingenious men who consider the application of the steam-engine to
+     the purpose of navigation as highly important, and as very
+     practicable, especially on the rapid waters of the Mississippi, and
+     who would feel themselves almost offended at the expression of an
+     opposite opinion. And, perhaps, some of the objections against it
+     may be avoided. That founded on the expense and weight of the fuel
+     may not, for some years, exist on the Mississippi, where there is a
+     redundance of wood on the banks; but the cutting and loading will
+     be almost as great an evil.
+
+
+Scientific men and amateurs all agreed in pronouncing Fulton's scheme
+impracticable; but he went on with his work, his boat attracting no less
+attention and exciting no less ridicule than the ark had received from
+the scoffers in the days of Noah. The steam-engine ordered from Boulton
+and Watt was received in the latter part of 1806; and in the following
+spring the boat was launched from the ship-yard of Charles Brown, on the
+East River. Fulton named her the "Clermont," after the country-seat of
+his friend and partner, Chancellor Livingston. She was one hundred and
+sixty tons burthen, one hundred and thirty feet long, eighteen feet
+wide, and seven feet deep. Her engine was made with a single cylinder,
+two feet in diameter, and of four feet stroke; and her boiler was twenty
+feet long, seven feet deep, and eight feet broad. The diameter of the
+paddle-wheels was fifteen feet, the boards four feet long, and dipping
+two feet in the water. The boat was completed about the last of August,
+and she was moved by her machinery from the East River into the Hudson,
+and over to the Jersey shore. This trial, brief as it was, satisfied
+Fulton of its success, and he announced that in a few days the steamer
+would sail from New York for Albany. A few friends, including several
+scientific men and mechanics, were invited to take passage in the boat,
+to witness her performance; and they accepted the invitation with a
+general conviction that they were to do but little more than witness
+another failure.
+
+Monday, September 10, 1807, came at length, and a vast crowd assembled
+along the shore of the North River to witness the starting. As the hour
+for sailing drew near, the crowd increased, and jokes were passed on all
+sides at the expense of the inventor, who paid little attention to them,
+however, but busied himself in making a final and close inspection of
+the machinery. Says Fulton, "The morning I left New York, there were
+not, perhaps, thirty persons in the city who believed that the boat
+would ever move one mile per hour, or be of the least utility; and while
+we were putting off from the wharf, which was crowded with spectators, I
+heard a number of sarcastic remarks."
+
+One o'clock, the hour for sailing, came, and expectation was at its
+highest. The friends of the inventor were in a state of feverish anxiety
+lest the enterprise should come to grief, and the scoffers on the wharf
+were all ready to give vent to their shouts of derision. Precisely as
+the hour struck, the moorings were thrown off, and the "Clermont" moved
+slowly out into the stream. Volumes of smoke and sparks from her
+furnaces, which were fed with pine wood, rushed forth from her chimney,
+and her wheels, which were uncovered, scattered the spray far behind
+her. The spectacle she presented as she moved out gradually from her
+dock was certainly novel to the people of those days, and the crowd on
+the wharf broke into shouts of ridicule. Soon, however, the jeers grew
+silent, for it was seen that the steamer was by degrees increasing her
+speed. In a little while she was fairly under weigh, and making a steady
+progress up the stream at the rate of five miles per hour. The
+incredulity of the spectators had been succeeded by astonishment, and
+now this feeling gave way to undisguised delight, and cheer after cheer
+went up from the vast throng. Many people followed the boat for some
+distance up the river shore. In a little while, however, the boat was
+observed to stop, and the enthusiasm of the people on the shore at once
+subsided. The scoffers were again in their glory, and unhesitatingly
+pronounced the boat a failure. Their chagrin may be imagined when, after
+a short delay, the steamer once more proceeded on her way, and this time
+even more rapidly than before. Fulton had discovered that the paddles
+were too long, and took too deep a hold on the water, and had stopped
+the boat for the purpose of shortening them.
+
+Having remedied this defect, the "Clermont" continued her voyage during
+the rest of the day and all night, without stopping, and at one o'clock
+the next day ran alongside the landing at Clermont, the seat of
+Chancellor Livingston. She lay there until nine the next morning, when
+she continued her voyage toward Albany, reaching that city at five in
+the afternoon, having made the entire distance between New York and
+Albany (one hundred and fifty miles) in thirty-two hours of actual
+running time, an average speed of nearly five miles per hour. On her
+return trip, she reached New York in thirty hours running time--exactly
+five miles per hour. Fulton states that during both trips he encountered
+a head wind.
+
+The river was at this time navigated entirely with sailing vessels, and
+large numbers of these were encountered by the "Clermont" during her up
+and down trips. The surprise and dismay excited among the crews of these
+vessels by the appearance of the steamer was extreme. These simple
+people, the majority of whom had heard nothing of Fulton's experiments,
+beheld what they supposed to be a huge monster, vomiting fire and smoke
+from its throat, lashing the water with its fins, and shaking the river
+with its roar, approaching rapidly in the very face of both wind and
+tide. Some threw themselves flat on the deck of their vessels, where
+they remained in an agony of terror until the monster had passed, while
+others took to their boats and made for the shore in dismay, leaving
+their vessels to drift helplessly down the stream. Nor was this terror
+confined to the sailors. The people dwelling along the shore crowded the
+banks to gaze upon the steamer as she passed by. A former resident of
+the neighborhood of Poughkeepsie thus describes the scene at that place,
+which will serve as a specimen of the conduct of the people along the
+entire river below Albany:
+
+"It was in the early autumn of the year 1807 that a knot of villagers
+was gathered on a high bluff just opposite Poughkeepsie, on the west
+bank of the Hudson, attracted by the appearance of a strange,
+dark-looking craft, which was slowly making its way up the river. Some
+imagined it to be a sea-monster, while others did not hesitate to
+express their belief that it was a sign of the approaching judgment
+What seemed strange in the vessel was the substitution of lofty and
+straight black smoke-pipes, rising from the deck, instead of the
+gracefully tapered masts that commonly stood on the vessels navigating
+the stream, and, in place of the spars and rigging, the curious play of
+the working-beam and pistons, and the slow turning and splashing of the
+huge and naked paddle-wheels, met the astonished gaze. The dense clouds
+of smoke, as they rose wave upon wave, added still more to the
+wonderment of the rustics.
+
+"This strange-looking craft was the 'Clermont,' on her trial trip to
+Albany; and of the little knot of villagers mentioned above, the writer,
+then a boy in his eighth year, with his parents, formed a part. I well
+remember the scene, one so well fitted to impress a lasting picture upon
+the mind of a child accustomed to watch the vessels that passed up and
+down the river.
+
+"The forms of four persons were distinctly visible on the deck as she
+passed the bluff--one of whom, doubtless, was Robert Fulton, who had on
+board with him all the cherished hopes of years, the most precious cargo
+the wonderful boat could carry.
+
+"On her return trip, the curiosity she excited was scarcely less
+intense. The whole country talked of nothing but the sea-monster,
+belching forth fire and smoke. The fishermen became terrified, and rowed
+homewards, and they saw nothing but destruction devastating their
+fishing-grounds; while the wreaths of black vapor, and rushing noise of
+the paddle-wheels, foaming with the stirred-up waters, produced great
+excitement among the boatmen, which continued without abatement, until
+the character of that curious boat, and the nature of the enterprise
+which she was pioneering, had been understood."
+
+The alarm of the sailors and dwellers on the river shore disappeared as
+the character of the steamer became better known; but when it was found
+that the "Clermont" was to run regularly between New York and Albany, as
+a packet-boat, she became the object of the most intense hatred on the
+part of the boatmen on the river, who feared that she would entirely
+destroy their business. In many quarters Fulton and his invention were
+denounced as baneful to society, and frequent attempts were made by
+captains of sailing vessels to sink the "Clermont" by running into her.
+She was several times damaged in this way, and the hostility of the
+boatmen became so great that it was necessary for the Legislature of New
+York to pass a law declaring combinations to destroy her, or willful
+attempts to injure her, public offenses punishable by fine and
+imprisonment.
+
+It had been supposed that Fulton's object was to produce a steamer
+capable of navigating the Mississippi River, and much surprise was
+occasioned by the announcement that the "Clermont" was to be permanently
+employed upon the Hudson. She continued to ply regularly between New
+York and Albany until the close of navigation for that season, always
+carrying a full complement of passengers, and more or less freight.
+During the winter she was overhauled and enlarged, and her speed
+improved. In the spring of 1808 she resumed her regular trips, and since
+then steam navigation on the Hudson has not ceased for a single day,
+except during the closing of the river by ice.
+
+In 1811 and 1812, Fulton built two steam ferry-boats for the North
+River, and soon after added a third for the East River. These boats were
+the beginning of the magnificent steam ferry system which is to-day one
+of the chief wonders of New York. They were what are called twin-boats,
+each of them consisting of two complete hulls, united by a deck or
+bridge. They were sharp at both ends, and moved equally well with
+either end foremost, so that they could cross and re-cross without being
+turned around. These boats were given engines of sufficient power to
+enable them to overcome the force of strong ebb tides; and in order to
+facilitate their landing, Fulton contrived a species of floating dock,
+and a means of decreasing the shock caused by the striking of the boat
+against the dock. These boats could accommodate eight four-wheel
+carriages, twenty-nine horses, and four hundred passengers. Their
+average time across the North River, a mile and a half wide, was twenty
+minutes.
+
+The introduction of the steamboat gave a powerful impetus to the
+internal commerce of the Union. It opened to navigation many important
+rivers (whose swift currents had closed them to sailing craft), and made
+rapid and easy communication between the most distant parts of the
+country practicable. The public soon began to appreciate this, and
+orders came in rapidly for steamboats for various parts of the country.
+Fulton executed these as fast as possible, and among the number several
+for boats for the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers.
+
+Early in 1814, the city of New York was seriously menaced with an attack
+from the British fleet, and Fulton was called on by a committee of
+citizens to furnish a plan for a means of defending the harbor. He
+exhibited to the committee his plans for a vessel of war to be propelled
+by steam, capable of carrying a strong battery, with furnaces for
+red-hot shot, and which, he represented, would move at the rate of four
+miles an hour. These plans were also submitted to a number of naval
+officials, among whom were Commodore Decatur, Captain Jones, Captain
+Evans, Captain Biddle, Commodore Perry, Captain Warrington, and Captain
+Lewis, all of whom warmly united in urging the Government to undertake
+the construction of the proposed steamer. The citizens of New York
+offered, if the Government would employ and pay for her after she was
+built, to advance the sum ($320,000) necessary for her construction. The
+subject was vigorously pressed, and in March, 1814, Congress authorized
+the building of one or more floating batteries after the plan presented
+by Fulton. Her keel was laid on the 20th of June, 1814, and on the 31st
+of October, of the same year, she was launched, amid great rejoicings,
+from the ship-yard of Adam and Noah Brown. In May, 1815, her engines
+were put on board, and on the 4th of July of that year she made a trial
+trip to Sandy Hook and back, accomplishing the round trip--a distance of
+fifty-three miles--in eight hours and twenty minutes, under steam alone.
+Before this, however, peace had been proclaimed, and Fulton had gone to
+rest from his labors.
+
+The ship was a complete success, and was the first steam vessel of war
+ever built. She was called the "Fulton the First," and was for many
+years used as the receiving ship at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. She was an
+awkward and unwieldy mass, but was regarded as the most formidable
+vessel afloat; and as the pioneer of the splendid war steamers of to-day
+is still an object of great interest. The English regarded her with
+especial uneasiness, and put in circulation the most marvelous stories
+concerning her. One of these I take from a treatise on steam navigation
+published in Scotland at this period, the author of which assures his
+readers that he has taken the utmost pains to obtain full and accurate
+information respecting the American war steamer. His description is as
+follows:
+
+"Length on deck three hundred feet, breadth two hundred feet, thickness
+of her sides, thirteen feet, of alternate oak plank and corkwood;
+carries forty-four guns, four of which are 100-pounders, quarter-deck
+and forcastle guns, 44-pounders; and further, to annoy an enemy
+attempting to board, can discharge one hundred gallons of boiling water
+in a minute, and by mechanism brandishes three hundred cutlasses, with
+the utmost regularity, over her gunwales; works also an equal number of
+heavy iron pikes of great length, darting them from her sides with
+prodigious force, and withdrawing them every quarter of a minute!"
+
+Fulton followed up the "Clermont," in 1807, with a larger boat, called
+the "Car of Neptune," which was placed on the Albany route as soon as
+completed. The Legislature of New York had enacted a law, immediately
+upon his first success, giving to Livingston and himself the exclusive
+right to navigate the waters of the State by steam, for five years for
+every additional boat they should build in the State, provided the whole
+term should not exceed thirty years. "In the following year the
+Legislature passed another act, confirmatory of the prior grants, and
+giving new remedies to the grantees for any invasion of them, and
+subjecting to forfeiture any vessel propelled by steam which should
+enter the waters of the State without their license. In 1809 Fulton
+obtained his first patent from the United States; and in 1811 he took
+out a second patent for some improvement in his boats and machinery. His
+patents were limited to the simple means of adapting paddle wheels to
+the axle of the crank of Watt's engine.
+
+"Meanwhile the power of the Legislature to grant the steamboat monopoly
+was denied, and a company was formed at Albany to establish another line
+of steam passage boats on the Hudson, between that city and New York.
+The State grantees filed a bill in equity, and prayed for an injunction,
+which was refused by Chancellor Lansing, on the ground that the act of
+the State Legislature was repugnant to the Constitution of the United
+States, and against common right. This decree was unanimously reversed
+by the Court of Errors, and a compromise was effected with the Albany
+company by an assignment to them of the right to employ steam on the
+waters of Lake Champlain.
+
+"Legislative aid was again invoked, and an act was passed directing
+peremptorily the allowance of an injunction on the prayer of the State
+grantees, and the seizure of any hostile boat at the commencement of the
+suit. Litigation was thus effectually arrested in New York, though by an
+arbitrary and unconstitutional enactment, and the waters of the State
+remained in the exclusive possession of Fulton and his partner during
+the lifetime of the former. A similar controversy with Colonel Aaron
+Ogden, of New Jersey, was compromised by advantageous concessions, which
+converted the opponent of the monopoly into its firmest friend, and left
+him many years afterward the defeated party in the famous suit of
+Gibbons and Ogden, in the Supreme Court of the United States."
+
+In January, 1815, Fulton was summoned to Trenton, New Jersey, as a
+witness in one of the numerous suits which grew out of the efforts to
+break down his monopoly. During his examination he was very much
+exposed, as the hall of the Legislature was uncommonly cold. In
+returning home, he crossed the Hudson in an open boat, and was detained
+on the river several hours. This severe exposure brought on an attack of
+sickness, which for a short time confined him to his bed. The steam
+frigate, then almost ready for her engines, occasioned him great anxiety
+at the time, and before he had fairly recovered his strength he went to
+the ship-yard to give some directions to the workmen employed on her,
+and thus exposed himself again to the inclemency of the weather. In a
+few days his indisposition prostrated him again, and, growing rapidly
+worse, he died on the 24th of February, 1815, at the age of fifty
+years. His death was universally regarded as a national calamity, and
+appropriate honors were paid to his memory by the General Government and
+by many of the State and municipal governments of the Union. He was
+buried from his residence, No. 1 State Street, on the 25th of February,
+and his body was placed in the vault of the Livingston family, in
+Trinity church-yard.
+
+He left a widow and four children. By the terms of his will he
+bequeathed to his wife an income of nine thousand dollars a year, and
+five hundred dollars to each of his children until they were twelve
+years old, after which they were each to receive one thousand dollars a
+year until they should attain the age of twenty-one years.
+
+In person, Fulton was tall and handsome. His manner was polished,
+cordial, and winning. He made friends rapidly, and never failed in his
+efforts to enlist capital and influence in support of his schemes. He
+was manly, fearless, and independent in character, and joined to a
+perfect integrity a patience and indomitable resolution which enabled
+him to bear up under every disappointment, and which won him in the end
+a glorious success. His name and fame will always be dear to his
+countrymen, for while we can not claim that he was (nor did he ever
+assume to be) the inventor of steam navigation, or even the inventor of
+the means of such navigation, we do claim for him the honor of being the
+first man to cross the gulf which lies between experiment and
+achievement, the man whose skill and perseverance first conquered the
+difficulties which had baffled so many others, and made steam navigation
+both practicable and profitable. The Committee of the London Exhibition
+of 1851 gave utterance in their report to a declaration which places his
+fame beyond assault, as follows:
+
+"Many persons, in various countries, claim the honor of having first
+invented small boats propelled by steam, but it is to the undaunted
+perseverance and exertions of the American Fulton that is due the
+everlasting honor of having produced this revolution, both in naval
+architecture and navigation."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+CHARLES GOODYEAR.
+
+
+In the year 1735, a party of astronomers, sent by the French Government
+to Peru for purposes of scientific investigation, discovered a curious
+tree growing in that country, the like of which no European had ever
+seen before. It grew to a considerable size, and yielded a peculiar sap
+or gum. It was the custom of the natives to make several incisions in
+each tree with an ax, in the morning, and to place under each incision a
+cup or jar made of soft clay. Late in the afternoon, the fluid thus
+obtained was collected in a large clay vessel, each incision yielding
+about a gill of sap per day. This process was repeated for several days
+in succession, until the tree had been thoroughly drained. This sap was
+simply a species of liquid gum, which, though clear and colorless in its
+native state, had the property of becoming hard and tough when exposed
+to the sun or artificial heat. It was used by the natives for the
+manufacture of a few rude and simple articles, by a process similar to
+that by which the old-fashioned "tallow-dip" candles were made. It was
+poured over a pattern of clay or a wooden mold or last covered with
+clay, and successive coatings were applied as fast as the former ones
+dried, until the article had attained the desired thickness, the whole
+taking the shape of the mold over which the gum was poured. As the
+layers were applied, their drying was hastened by exposure to the heat
+and smoke of a fire, the latter giving to the gum a dark-black hue.
+Dried without exposure to the smoke, or by the sun alone, the gum became
+white within and yellowish-brown without. The drying process required
+several days, and during its progress the gum was ornamented with
+characters or lines made with a stick. When it was completed, the clay
+mold was broken to pieces and shaken out of the opening. The natives in
+this manner made a species of rough, clumsy shoe, and an equally rough
+bottle. In some parts of South America, the natives make it a rule to
+present their guests with one of these bottles, furnished with a hollow
+stern, which serves as a syringe for squirting water into the mouth in
+order to cleanse it after eating. The articles thus made were liable to
+become stiff and unmanageable in cold weather, and soft and sticky in
+warm. The French astronomers, upon their return to their own country,
+were quick to call attention to this remarkable gum, which was afterward
+discovered in Cayenne by Trismau, in 1751. At present it is found in
+large quantities in various parts of South America, but the chief
+supplies used in commerce are produced in the province of Para, which
+lies south of the equator, in Brazil. It is also grown largely in the
+East Indies, vast and inexhaustible forests of the trees which yield it
+being found in Assam, beyond the Ganges, although the quality can not
+compare with that of the South American article.
+
+This substance, variously known as cachuchu, caoutchouc, gum elastic,
+and India-rubber, was first introduced into Europe in 1730, where it was
+regarded merely as a curiosity, useful for erasing pencil marks, but
+valueless for any practical use. Ships from South America brought it
+over as ballast, but it was not until ninety years after its first
+appearance in Europe that any effort was made to utilize it. About the
+year 1820 it began to be used in France in the manufacture of suspenders
+and garters, India-rubber threads being mixed with the materials used in
+weaving those articles. It was also used in blacking and varnish, and
+some years later, Mackintosh brought it into prominent notice by using
+it in his famous water-proof coats, which were made by spreading a layer
+of the gum between two pieces of cloth. The gum was thus protected from
+the air, and preserved from injury.
+
+Up to this time, it was almost an unknown article in the United States,
+but in 1820 a pair of India-rubber shoes were exhibited in Boston. Even
+then they were regarded as merely a curiosity, and were covered with
+gilt foil to hide their natural ugliness. In 1823, a merchant, engaged
+in the South American trade, imported five hundred pairs from the Para
+district. He had no difficulty in disposing of them; and so great was
+the favor with which they were received, that in a few years the annual
+importation of India-rubber shoes amounted to five hundred thousand
+pairs. It had become a matter of fashion to wear these shoes, and no
+person's toilet was complete in wet weather unless the feet were incased
+in them; yet they were terribly rough and clumsy. They had scarcely any
+shape to them, and were not to be depended on in winter or summer. In
+the cold season they froze so hard that they could be used only after
+being thawed by the fire, and in summer they could be preserved only by
+keeping them on ice; and if, during the thawing process, they were
+placed too near the fire, there was danger that they would melt into a
+shapeless and useless mass. They cost from three to five dollars per
+pair, which was very high for an article so perishable in its nature.
+
+The great popularity of India-rubber induced Mr. E.M. Chaflee, of
+Boston, the foreman of a patent leather factory in that city, to attempt
+to apply the new substance to some of the uses to which patent leather
+was then put. His hope was that, by spreading the liquid gum upon cloth,
+he could produce an article which, while possessing the durability and
+flexibility of patent leather, would also be water-proof. His
+experiments extended over a period of several months, during which time
+he kept his plan a secret. He dissolved a pound of the gum in three
+quarts of spirits of turpentine, and added to the mixture enough
+lamp-black to produce a bright black color, and was so well satisfied
+with his compound, that he felt sure that the only thing necessary to
+his entire success was a machine for spreading it properly on the cloth.
+Like a true son of New England, he soon overcame this difficulty by
+inventing the desired machine. His compound was spread on the cloth, and
+dried in the sun, producing a hard, smooth surface, and one sufficiently
+flexible to be twisted into any shape without cracking. Mr. Chaffee was
+now sure that he had mastered the difficulty. Taking a few capitalists
+into his confidence, he succeeded so well in convincing them of the
+excellence of his invention, that in February, 1833, a company, called
+the "Roxbury India-rubber Company," was organized, with a capital of
+thirty thousand dollars. In three years this sum was increased to four
+hundred thousand dollars. The new company manufactured India-rubber
+cloth according to Mr. Chaffee's process, and from it made wagon-covers,
+piano-covers, caps, coats, and a few other articles, and, in a little
+while, added to their list of products shoes without fiber. They had no
+difficulty in disposing of their stock. Every body had taken the
+"India-rubber fever," as the excitement caused by Mr. Chaffee's
+discovery was called; and so high were the hopes of the public raised by
+it, that buyers were found in abundance whenever the bonds of the
+numerous India-rubber companies were offered for sale. The extraordinary
+success of the Roxbury Company led to the establishment of similar
+enterprises at Boston, Framingham, Salem, Lynn, Chelsea, Troy, and
+Staten Island. The Roxbury Company could not supply the demand for its
+articles, and the others appeared to have as much business as they could
+attend to. Apparently, they were all on the high road to wealth.
+
+Their prosperity was only fictitious, however, and a day of fearful
+disaster was pending over them. The bulk of the goods produced in 1833
+and 1834 had been manufactured in the cold weather, and the greater part
+of them had succumbed to the heat of the ensuing summer. The shoes had
+melted to a soft mass, and the caps, wagon-covers, and coats had become
+sticky and useless in summer, and rigid in the cold of winter. In some
+cases the articles had borne the test of one year's use, but the second
+summer had ruined them. To make the matter worse, they emitted an odor
+so offensive that it was necessary to bury them in the ground to get rid
+of the smell. Twenty thousand dollars' worth were thrown back on the
+hands of the Roxbury Company alone, and the directors were appalled by
+the ruin which threatened them. It was useless for them to go on
+manufacturing goods which might prove worthless at any moment; and, as
+their capital was already taxed to its utmost, it was plain that unless
+a better process should be speedily discovered, they must become
+involved in irretrievable disaster. Their efforts were unavailing,
+however. No better process was found, and the disgust of the public with
+their goods was soon general and unmitigable. India-rubber stock fell
+rapidly, and by the end of the year 1836 there was not a solvent company
+in the Union. The loss of the stockholders was complete, and amounted in
+the aggregate to two millions of dollars. People came to detest the
+very name of India-rubber, since it reminded them only of blighted hopes
+and heavy losses.
+
+Before the final disaster, however, it chanced that a bankrupt merchant
+of Philadelphia, being one day in New York on business, was led by
+curiosity to visit the salesroom of the agency of the Roxbury Company in
+that city. His visit resulted in the purchase of a life-preserver, which
+he took home with him for the purpose of examining it. Subjecting it to
+a careful investigation, he discovered a defect in the valve used for
+inflating it, and promptly devised a simpler and better apparatus.
+
+This man, afterward so famous in the history of India-rubber
+manufacture, was CHARLES GOODYEAR. He was born at New Haven,
+Connecticut, on the 29th of December, 1800. He attended a public school
+during his boyhood, thus acquiring a limited education. When quite a
+youth, he removed with his family to Philadelphia, where his father
+entered into the hardware business. Upon coming of age, he was admitted
+to partnership with his father and one of his brothers, the style of the
+firm being A. Goodyear & Sons. The house was extensively engaged in the
+manufacture of hardware, and among the other articles which they
+introduced was a light hay-fork, made of spring steel, which gradually
+took the place of the heavy wrought iron implement formerly in general
+use among the farmers. It required a large outlay and a great deal of
+time to introduce this fork, but, once in use, it rapidly drove the old
+one out of the market, and proved a source of considerable profit to its
+inventor. The prosperity of the house, however, soon began to wane, and
+it was brought to bankruptcy by the crisis of 1836.
+
+Mr. Goodyear's attention had for some time been attracted to the
+wonderful apparent success of the India-rubber companies of the country,
+and he was hopeful that his improvement in the inflating apparatus of
+the life-preserver would bring him the means of partially extricating
+himself from his difficulties. Repairing to New York, he called on the
+agent of the Roxbury Company, and explaining his invention to him,
+offered to sell it to the company. The agent was struck with the skill
+displayed in the improvement of Mr. Goodyear, but, instead of offering
+to buy it, astounded the inventor by informing him of the real state of
+the India-rubber trade of the country. He urged Mr. Goodyear to exert
+his inventive skill to discover some means of imparting durability to
+India-rubber goods, and assured him that if he could discover a process
+which would secure that end, the various companies of the United States
+would eagerly buy it at his own price. He explained to him the process
+then in use, and pointed out its imperfections. Mr. Goodyear listened
+carefully to his statements, forgot all about his disappointment in
+failing to sell his improved inflating apparatus, and went home firmly
+convinced that he had found his true mission in life. In after years,
+when success had crowned his labors, he modestly referred to this period
+of his career in language the substance of which is thus recorded:
+
+"From the time that his attention was first given to the subject, a
+strong and abiding impression was made upon his mind that an object so
+desirable and important, and so necessary to man's comfort, as the
+making of gum elastic available to his use was most certainly placed
+within his reach. Having this presentiment, of which he could not divest
+himself under the most trying adversity, he was stimulated with the
+hope, of ultimately attaining this object. Beyond this, he would refer
+the whole to the great Creator, who directs the operations of the mind
+to the development of properties of matter, in his own way, at the time
+when they are specially needed, influencing some mind for every work or
+calling."
+
+There was something sublime in the attitude of this one man, now feeble
+in health, the only dependence of a young family, a bankrupt in
+business, starting out to seek success in a field in which so many had
+found only ruin. He was convinced in his own mind that he would master
+the secret, while his friends were equally sure that he would but
+increase his difficulties. The firm of which he had been a member had
+surrendered all their property to their creditors; but they still owed
+thirty thousand dollars, and immediately upon his return from New York,
+after his visit to the agent of the Roxbury Company, he was arrested for
+debt, and though not actually thrown in jail, was compelled to take up
+his residence within prison limits.
+
+Strong in the conviction before named, that he was the man of all others
+to discover the secret of controlling India-rubber, he at once began his
+experiments. This was in the winter of 1834-35. The gum had fallen in
+price to five cents per pound, and, poor as he was, he had no difficulty
+in procuring a sufficient quantity to begin with. By melting and working
+the gum thoroughly, and by rolling it upon a stone table with a
+rolling-pin, he succeeded in producing sheets of India-rubber which
+seemed to him to possess the properties which those of Mr. Chaffee had
+lacked. He explained his process to a friend, who, becoming interested
+in it, loaned him the money to manufacture a number of shoes, which at
+first seemed all that could be desired. Fearful, however, of meeting the
+fate which had befallen the Roxbury Company, Mr. Goodyear put his shoes
+away until the next summer, to ascertain whether they would bear the
+heat. His doubts were more than realized. The warm weather completely
+ruined them, reducing them to a mass of so offensive an odor that he was
+glad to throw them away.
+
+The friend of the inventor was thoroughly disheartened by this failure,
+and refused to have any thing more to do with Goodyear's schemes; but
+the latter, though much disappointed, did not despair. He set to work to
+discover the cause of his failure, and traced it, as he supposed, to the
+mixing of the gum with the turpentine and lamp-black. Having procured
+some barrels of the gum in its native liquid state, he spread it on
+cloth without smoking it or mixing it with any thing else. He succeeded
+in producing a very handsome white rubber cloth, but it was one that
+became soft and sticky as quickly as the other had done.
+
+It now occurred to him that there must be some mineral substance which,
+mixed with the gum, would render it durable, and he began to experiment
+with almost every substance that he could lay his hands on. All these
+proved total failures, with the exception of magnesia. By mixing half a
+pound of magnesia with a pound of the gum, he produced a compound much
+whiter than the pure gum, and one which was at first as firm and
+flexible as leather. He made book-covers and piano-covers out of it, and
+for a time it seemed that he had discovered the longed-for secret; but
+in a month his pretty product was ruined. The heat caused it to soften;
+then fermentation set in, and, finally, it became as hard and brittle as
+thin glass.
+
+His friends, who had aided him at first, now turned from him coldly,
+regarding him as a dreamer; and his own stock of money was exhausted. In
+his extremity he was forced to pawn all his own valuables, and even some
+of the trinkets of his wife. In spite of this, he felt sure that he was
+on the road to success, and that he would very soon be enabled to rise
+above his present difficulties, and win both fame and fortune. He was
+obliged for the time, however, to remove his family to the country,
+depositing with his landlord, as security for the payment of the first
+quarter's rent, some linen which had been spun by his wife, and which he
+was never able to redeem. Having settled his family in the country, he
+set out for New York, where he hoped to find some one willing to aid him
+in extending his researches still further.
+
+Arrived in the great city, he found two old acquaintances, to whom he
+stated his plans and his hopes. One of them offered him the use of a
+room in Gold Street, as a laboratory, and the other, who was a druggist,
+agreed to let him have such chemicals as he needed on credit. He now
+proceeded to boil the gum, mixed with magnesia, in quicklime and water,
+and, as the result, obtained sheets of his compound whose firmness and
+smoothness of surface won them a medal at the fair of the American
+Institute in 1835. He seemed now on the point of success, and readily
+disposed of all the sheets he could manufacture. The newspapers spoke
+highly of his invention, for which he obtained a patent; and he was
+about to endeavor to enlist some persons of means in its manufacture on
+a large scale, when, to his dismay, he discovered that a single drop of
+the weakest acid, such as the juice of an apple, or diluted vinegar,
+would utterly destroy the influence of the lime in the compound, and
+reduce it to the old sticky substance that had baffled him so often.
+
+His next step was to mix quicklime with the gum. In order to work the
+compound thoroughly, he used to carry the vessel containing it, on his
+shoulder, to a place three miles distant from his laboratory, where he
+had the use of horse power. The lime, however, utterly destroyed the
+gum, and nothing came of this experiment.
+
+The discovery which followed was the result of accident, and brought him
+on the very threshold of success, yet did not entirely conquer his
+difficulties. He was an ardent lover of the beautiful, and it was a
+constant effort with him to render his productions as attractive to the
+eye as possible. Upon one occasion, while bronzing a piece of rubber
+cloth, he applied aqua fortis to it for the purpose of removing the
+bronze from a certain part. It took away the bronze as he had designed,
+but it also discolored the cloth to such a degree that he supposed it
+ruined, and threw it away. A day or two later, he chanced to remember
+that he had not examined very closely into the effect of the aqua fortis
+upon the rubber, and thereupon instituted a search for it. He was
+fortunate enough to find it, and was overjoyed to discover that the
+rubber had undergone a remarkable change, and that the effect of the
+acid was to harden it to such an extent that it would now stand a degree
+of heat which would have melted it before. When the reader remembers
+that aqua fortis is a compound two-fifths of which is sulphuric acid, he
+will understand that Mr. Goodyear had almost mastered the secret of
+vulcanizing rubber. He does not appear, however, to have known the true
+nature of aqua fortis, and called his process the "curing" of
+India-rubber by the use of that acid.
+
+The "cured" India-rubber was subjected to many tests, and passed through
+them successfully, thus demonstrating its adaptability to many important
+uses. Mr. Goodyear readily obtained a patent for his process, and a
+partner with a large capital was found ready to aid him. He hired the
+old India-rubber works on Staten Island, and opened a salesroom in
+Broadway. He was thrown back for six weeks at this important time by an
+accident, which happened to him while experimenting with his fabrics,
+and which came near causing his death. Just as he was recovering and
+preparing to commence the manufacture of his goods on a large scale, the
+terrible commercial crisis of 1836 swept over the country, and, by
+destroying his partner's fortune at one blow, reduced Goodyear to
+absolute beggary. His family had joined him in New York, and he was
+entirely without the means of supporting them. As the only resource at
+hand, he decided to pawn an article of value, one of the few which he
+possessed, in order to raise money enough to procure one day's supply of
+provisions. At the very door of the pawnbroker's shop he met one of his
+creditors, who kindly asked if he could be of any further assistance to
+him. Weak with hunger, and overcome by the generosity of his friend, the
+poor man burst into tears, and replied that, as his family was on the
+point of starvation, a loan of fifteen dollars would greatly oblige him.
+The money was given him on the spot, and the necessity for visiting the
+pawnbroker averted for several days longer. Still he was a frequent
+visitor to that individual during the year; and thus, one by one, the
+relics of his better days disappeared. Another friend loaned him one
+hundred dollars, which enabled him to remove his family to Staten
+Island, in the neighborhood of the abandoned rubber works, which the
+owners gave him permission to use as far as he could. He contrived in
+this way to manufacture enough of his "cured" cloth, which sold readily,
+to enable him to keep his family from starvation. He made repeated
+efforts to induce capitalists to come to the factory and see his samples
+and the process by which they were made, but no one would venture near
+him. There had been money enough lost in such experiments, they said,
+and they were determined to risk no more.
+
+Indeed, in all the broad land there was but one man who had the
+slightest hope of accomplishing any thing with India-rubber, and that
+one was Charles Goodyear. His friends regarded him as a monomaniac. He
+not only manufactured his cloth, but even dressed in clothes made of it,
+wearing it for the purpose of testing its durability, as well as of
+advertising it. He was certainly an odd figure, and in his appearance
+justified the remark of one of his friends, who, upon being asked how
+Mr. Goodyear could be recognized, replied: "If you see a man with an
+India-rubber coat on, India-rubber shoes, an India-rubber cap, and in
+his pocket an India-rubber purse, with not a cent in it, that is
+Goodyear."
+
+In September, 1836, a new gleam of hope lit up his pathway. A friend
+having loaned him a small sum of money, he went to Roxbury, taking with
+him some of his best specimens. Although the Roxbury Company had gone
+down with such a fearful crash, Mr. Chaffee, the inventor of the process
+in this country, was still firm in his faith that India-rubber would at
+some future time justify the expectations of its earliest friends. He
+welcomed Mr. Goodyear cordially, and allowed him to use the abandoned
+works of the company for his experiments. The result was that Goodyear
+succeeded in making slides and cloths of India-rubber of a quality so
+much better than any that had yet been seen in America, that the hopes
+of the friends of India-rubber were raised to a high point. Offers to
+purchase rights for certain portions of the country came in rapidly, and
+by the sale of them Goodyear realized between four and five thousand
+dollars. He was now able to bring his family to Roxbury, and for the
+time fortune seemed to smile upon him.
+
+His success was but temporary, however. He obtained an order from the
+General Government for one hundred and fifty India-rubber mail-bags,
+which he succeeded in producing, and as they came out smooth, highly
+polished, hard, well shaped, and entirely impervious to moisture, he was
+delighted, and summoned his friends to inspect and admire them. All who
+saw them pronounced them a perfect success; but, alas! in a single month
+they began to soften and ferment, and finally became useless. Poor
+Goodyear's hopes were dashed to the ground. It was found that the aqua
+fortis merely "cured" the surface of the material, and that only very
+thin cloth made in this way was durable. His other goods began to prove
+worthless, and his promising business came to a sudden and disastrous
+end. All his possessions were seized and sold for debt, and once more he
+was reduced to poverty. His position was even worse than before, for his
+family had increased in size, and his aged father also had become
+dependent upon him for support.
+
+Friends, relatives, and even his wife, all demanded that he should
+abandon his empty dreams, and turn his attention to something that would
+yield a support to his family. Four years of constant failure, added to
+the unfortunate experience of those who had preceded him, ought to
+convince him, they said, that he was hoping against hope. Hitherto his
+conduct, they said, had been absurd, though they admitted that he was to
+some extent excused for it by his partial success; but to persist in it
+would now be criminal. The inventor was driven to despair, and being a
+man of tender feelings and ardently devoted to his family, might have
+yielded to them had he not felt that lie was nearer than ever to the
+discovery of the secret that had eluded him so long.
+
+Just before the failure of his mail-bags had brought ruin upon him, he
+had taken into his employ a man named Nathaniel Hayward, who had been
+the foreman of the old Roxbury works, and who was still in charge of
+them when Goodyear came to Roxbury, making a few rubber articles on his
+own account. He hardened his compound by mixing a little powdered
+sulphur with the gum, or by sprinkling sulphur on the rubber cloth, and
+drying it in the sun. He declared that the process had been revealed to
+him in a dream, but could give no further account of it. Goodyear was
+astonished to find that the sulphur cured the India-rubber as thoroughly
+as the aqua fortis, the principal objection being that the sulphurous
+odor of the goods was frightful in hot weather. Hayward's process was
+really the same as that employed by Goodyear, the "curing" of the
+India-rubber being due in each case to the agency of sulphur, the
+principal difference between them being that Hayward's goods were dried
+by the sun, and Goodyear's with nitric acid. Hay ward set so small a
+value upon his discovery that he had readily sold it to his new
+employer.
+
+[Illustration: AN AMAZING REVELATION.]
+
+Goodyear felt that he had now all but conquered his difficulties. It was
+plain that sulphur was the great controller of India-rubber, for he had
+proved that when applied to thin cloth it would render it available for
+most purposes. The problem that now remained was how to mix sulphur and
+the gum in a mass, so that every part of the rubber should be subjected
+to the agency of the sulphur. He experimented for weeks and months with
+the most intense eagerness, but the mystery completely baffled him. His
+friends urged him to go to work to do something for his family, but he
+could not turn back. The goal was almost in sight, and he felt that he
+would be false to his mission were he to abandon his labors now. To the
+world he seemed a crack-brained dreamer, and some there were who, seeing
+the distress of his family, did not hesitate to apply still harsher
+names to him; but to the Great Eye that reads all hearts, how different
+did this man appear! It saw the anguish that wrung the heart of Charles
+Goodyear, and knew the more than heroic firmness with which, in the
+midst of his poverty and suffering, he agonized for the great discovery.
+Had it been merely wealth that he was working for, doubtless he would
+have turned back and sought some other means of obtaining it; but he
+sought more. He was striving for the good of his fellow-men, and
+ambitious of becoming a benefactor of the race. He felt that he had a
+mission to fulfill, and no one else could perform it.
+
+He was right. A still greater success was about to crown his labors, but
+in a manner far different from his expectations. His experiments had
+developed nothing; chance was to make the revelation. It was in the
+spring of 1839 that this revelation came to him, and in the following
+manner: Standing before a stove in a store at Woburn, Massachusetts, he
+was explaining to some acquaintances the properties of a piece of
+sulphur-cured India-rubber which he held in his hand. They listened to
+him good-naturedly, but with evident incredulity, when suddenly he
+dropped the rubber on the stove, which was red hot. His old cloths would
+have melted instantly from contact with such heat; but, to his surprise,
+this piece underwent no such change. In amazement, he examined it, and
+found that while it had charred or shriveled, like leather, it had not
+softened at all. The bystanders attached no importance to this
+phenomenon, but to him it was a revelation. He renewed his experiments
+with enthusiasm, and in a little while established the facts that
+India-rubber, when mixed with sulphur and exposed to a certain degree of
+heat for a certain time, would not melt or even soften at any degree of
+heat, that it would only char at two hundred and eighty degrees, and
+that it would not stiffen from exposure to any degree of cold. The
+difficulty now consisted in finding out the exact degree of heat
+necessary for the perfection of the rubber, and the exact length of time
+required for the heating.
+
+He made this discovery in his darkest days; when, in fact, he was in
+constant danger of arrest for debt, having already been a frequent
+inmate of the debtor's prison. He was in the depths of bitter poverty,
+and in such feeble health that he was constantly haunted by the fear of
+dying before he had perfected his discovery--before he had fulfilled his
+mission. His poverty was a greater drawback to him than ever before. He
+needed an apparatus for producing a high and uniform heat for his
+experiments, and he was unable to obtain it. He used to bake his
+compound in his wife's bread oven, and steam it over the spout of her
+tea-kettle, and to press the kitchen fire into his service as far as it
+would go. When this failed, he would go to the shops in the vicinity of
+Woburn, and beg to be allowed to use the ovens and boilers after working
+hours were over. The workmen regarded him as a lunatic, but were too
+good-natured to deny him the request. Finally, he induced a bricklayer
+to make him an oven, and paid him in mason's aprons of India-rubber. The
+oven was a failure. Sometimes it would turn out pieces of perfectly
+vulcanized cloth, and again the goods would be charred and ruined.
+Goodyear was in despair.
+
+All this time he lived on the charity of his friends. His neighbors
+pretended to lend him money, but in reality gave him the means of
+keeping his family from starvation. He has declared that all the while
+he felt sure he would, before long, be able to pay them back, but they
+declared with equal emphasis that, at that time, they never expected to
+witness his success. He was yellow and shriveled in face, with a gaunt,
+lean figure, and his habit of wearing an India-rubber coat, which was
+charred and blackened from his frequent experiments with it, gave him a
+wild and singular appearance. People shook their heads solemnly when
+they saw him, and said that the mad-house was the proper place for him.
+
+The winter of 1839-40 was long and severe. At the opening of the season,
+Mr. Goodyear received a letter from a house in Paris, making him a
+handsome offer for the use of his process of curing India-rubber with
+aqua fortis. Here was a chance for him to rise out of his misery. A year
+before he would have closed with the offer, but since then he had
+discovered the effects of sulphur and heat on his compound, and had
+passed far beyond the aqua fortis stage. Disappointment and want had not
+warped his honesty, and he at once declined to enter into any
+arrangements with the French house, informing them that although the
+process they desired to purchase was a valuable one, it was about to be
+entirely replaced by another which he was then on the point of
+perfecting, and which he would gladly sell them as soon as he had
+completed it. His friends declared that he was mad to refuse such an
+offer; but he replied that nothing would induce him to sell a process
+which he knew was about to be rendered worthless by still greater
+discoveries.
+
+A few weeks later, a terrible snow-storm passed over the land, one of
+the worst that New England has ever known, and in the midst of it
+Goodyear made the appalling discovery that he had not a particle of fuel
+or a mouthful of food in the house. He was ill enough to be in bed
+himself, and his purse was entirely empty. It was a terrible position,
+made worse, too, by the fact that his friends who had formerly aided him
+had turned from him, vexed with his pertinacity, and abandoned him to
+his fate. In his despair, he bethought him of a mere acquaintance who
+lived several miles from his cottage, and who but a few days before had
+spoken to him with more of kindness than he had received of late. This
+gentleman, he thought, would aid him in his distress, if he could but
+reach his house, but in such a snow the journey seemed hopeless to a man
+in his feeble health. Still the effort must be made. Nerved by despair,
+he set out, and pushed his way resolutely through the heavy drifts. The
+way was long, and it seemed to him that he would never accomplish it.
+Often he fell prostrate on the snow, almost fainting with fatigue and
+hunger, and again he would sit down wearily in the road, feeling that he
+would gladly die if his discovery were but completed. At length,
+however, he reached the end of his journey, and fortunately found his
+acquaintance at home. To this gentleman he told the story of his
+discovery, his hopes, his struggles, and his present sufferings, and
+implored him to aid him. Mr. Coolidge[A]--for such was the gentleman's
+name--listened to him kindly, and after expressing the warmest sympathy
+for him, loaned him money enough to support his family during the severe
+weather, and to enable him to continue his experiments.
+
+[Footnote A: O.B. Coolidge, of Woburn.]
+
+"Seeing no prospect of success in Massachusetts, he now resolved to make
+a desperate effort to get to New York, feeling confident that the
+specimens he could take with him would convince some one of the
+superiority of his new method. He was beginning to understand the causes
+of his many failures, but he saw clearly that his compound could not be
+worked with certainty without expensive apparatus. It was a very
+delicate operation, requiring exactness and promptitude. The conditions
+upon which success depended were numerous, and the failure of one
+spoiled all.... It cost him thousands of failures to learn that a little
+acid in his sulphur caused the blistering; that his compound must be
+heated almost immediately after being mixed, or it would never
+vulcanize; that a portion of white lead in the compound greatly
+facilitated the operation and improved the result; and when he had
+learned these facts, it still required costly and laborious experiments
+to devise the best methods of compounding his ingredients, the best
+proportions, the best mode of heating, the proper duration of the
+heating, and the various useful effects that could be produced by
+varying the proportions and the degree of heat. He tells us that many
+times when, by exhausting every resource, he had prepared a quantity of
+his compound for heating, it was spoiled because he could not, with his
+inadequate apparatus, apply the heat soon enough.
+
+"To New York, then, he directed his thoughts. Merely to get there cost
+him a severer and a longer effort than men in general are capable of
+making. First he walked to Boston, ten miles distant, where he hoped to
+borrow from an old acquaintance fifty dollars, with which to provide for
+his family and pay his fare to New York. He not only failed in this, but
+he was arrested for debt and thrown into prison. Even in prison, while
+his father was negotiating to procure his release, he labored to
+interest men of capital in his discovery, and made proposals for
+founding a factory in Boston. Having obtained his liberty, he went to a
+hotel, and spent a week in vain efforts to effect a small loan. Saturday
+night came, and with it his hotel bill, which he had no means of
+discharging. In an agony of shame and anxiety, he went to a friend and
+entreated the sum of five dollars to enable him to return home. He was
+met with a point blank refusal. In the deepest dejection, he walked the
+streets till late in the night, and strayed at length, almost beside
+himself, to Cambridge, where he ventured to call upon a friend and ask
+shelter for the night. He was hospitably entertained, and the next
+morning walked wearily home, penniless and despairing. At the door of
+his house a member of his family met him with the news that his youngest
+child, two years old, whom he had left in perfect health, was dying. In
+a few hours he had in his house a dead child, but not the means of
+burying it, and five living dependents without a morsel of food to give
+them. A storekeeper near by had promised to supply the family, but,
+discouraged by the unforeseen length of the father's absence, he had
+that day refused to trust them further. In these terrible circumstances,
+he applied to a friend upon whose generosity he knew he could rely, one
+who never failed him. He received in reply a letter of severe and
+cutting reproach, inclosing seven dollars, which his friend explained
+was given only out of pity for his innocent and suffering family. A
+stranger who chanced to be present when this letter arrived sent them a
+barrel of flour--a timely and blessed relief. The next day the family
+followed on foot the remains of the little child to the grave."
+
+He had now reached the lowest ebb of his misery, and a brighter day was
+in store for him. Obtaining fifty dollars from a relative, he went to
+New York, where he succeeded in interesting in his discovery two
+brothers, William and Emory Rider. They agreed to advance him a certain
+sum to support his family and continue his experiments. By means of this
+aid he was enabled to keep his family from want in the future, and from
+that time his experiments never flagged. Before entire success crowned
+his efforts, the brothers Rider failed; but he had advanced his
+experiments so greatly that his brother-in-law, William De Forrest, a
+rich woolen manufacturer, came to his support, and supplied him with the
+means to go on with his labors. Mr. De Forrest's total advances amounted
+to forty-six thousand dollars, from which fact the reader may gain some
+idea of the obstacles overcome by Goodyear in this last stage of his
+invention.
+
+The prize for which he had labored so long and so heroically was secured
+at last, and in 1844, ten years after the commencement of his
+experiments, he was able to produce perfectly vulcanized India-rubber
+with expedition and economy, and, above all, with certainty. He had won
+a success which added a new material to art and commerce, and one which
+could be applied in a thousand different ways, and all of them useful to
+man. But great as his success was, he was not satisfied with it. To the
+end of his life his constant effort was to improve his invention, and
+apply it to new uses. He had an unlimited faith in its adaptability,
+believing that there was scarcely any article of general use that could
+not be made of it. Upon one occasion he read in a newspaper that twenty
+persons perished every hour by drowning. The statement impressed him
+deeply, and his wife noticed that for several nights he scarcely slept
+at all. "Try to compose yourself, and sleep," she said to him. "Sleep!"
+he exclaimed, "how can I sleep when twenty human beings are drowning
+every hour, and I am the man that can save them?" And at this time it
+was his constant endeavor to invent some article of India-rubber which
+could be easily carried by travelers, and which would render it
+impossible for them to sink in water.
+
+Having brought his process to a successful completion in this country,
+and obtained patents for it, he went to Europe to secure similar
+protections in the principal countries of the Old World. "The French
+laws require that the patentee shall put and keep his invention in
+public use in France within two years from its date. Goodyear had, at
+great inconvenience and expense, endeavored to comply with this and with
+all other requirements of the French laws, and thought he had
+effectually done so; but the courts of France decided that he had not in
+every particular complied with the strict requisitions of the law, and
+that, therefore, his patent in France had become void. In England he was
+still more unfortunate. Having sent specimens of vulcanized fabrics to
+Charles Mackintosh & Co., in 1842, and having opened with them a
+negotiation for the sale of the secret of the invention or discovery,
+one of the partners of that firm, named Thomas Hancock, availing
+himself, as he admits, of the hints and opportunities thus presented to
+him, rediscovered, as he affirms, the process of vulcanization, and
+described it in a patent for England, which was enrolled on May 21,
+1844, _about five weeks after_ the specification and publication of the
+discovery to the world by Goodyear's patent for vulcanization in France.
+And the patent of Hancock, held good according to a peculiarity of
+English law, thus superseded Goodyear's English patent for
+vulcanization, which bore date a few days later. Goodyear, however,
+obtained the great council medal of the exhibition of all nations at
+London, the grand medal of the world's exhibition at Paris, and the
+ribbon of the Legion of Honor, presented by Napoleon III."
+
+In his own country, Mr. Goodyear was scarcely less unfortunate. His
+patents were infringed and violated by others, even after the decision
+of the courts seemed to place his rights beyond question. He was too
+thoroughly the inventor and too little the man of business to protect
+himself from the robberies of the wretches who plundered him of the
+profits of his invention. It is said that his inability to manage sharp
+transactions made him the victim of many who held nominally fair
+business relations with him. The United States Commissioner of Patents,
+in 1858, thus spoke of his losses:
+
+"No inventor, probably, has ever been so harassed, so trampled upon, so
+plundered by that sordid and licentious class of infringers known in the
+parlance of the world, with no exaggeration of phrase, as 'pirates.' The
+spoliation of their incessant guerrilla warfare upon his defenseless
+rights have, unquestionably, amounted to millions."
+
+Failing to accomplish any thing in Europe, Mr. Goodyear returned to this
+country, and continued his labors. His health, never strong, gave way
+under the continued strain, and he died in New York in July, 1860, in
+the sixtieth year of his age, completely worn out. Notwithstanding his
+great invention--an invention which has made millions for those engaged
+in its manufacture--he died insolvent, and left his family heavily in
+debt. A few years after his death an effort was made to procure from
+Congress a further seven years' extension of his patent for
+vulcanization, for the benefit of his family and his creditors. The men
+who had trampled his rights under foot while living were resolved,
+however, that he should not have justice done him in death; and, through
+their influence, that august body, in strange contrast with its usual
+lavish generosity in the matter of land grants and the like, coldly
+declined to do any thing for the family of the man to whom civilization
+owes so much, and the effort proved abortive.
+
+But, though unfortunate in a pecuniary sense, though he died without
+freeing himself from the embarrassments which haunted him through life,
+there can be no question that Charles Goodyear richly merits the place
+which we have given him in this gallery of "Our Self-made Men;" not only
+on account of the great merit and usefulness of his discovery or
+invention, but because that invention has been the source of many a
+"great fortune" to others, as it might, indeed, have been to him, had
+his rights been respected, or properly protected when infringed. It is
+sad to reflect that he died poor who has given wealth to so many, and
+accomplished results so beneficent to mankind. Yet he did not fail
+entirely of his reward in life; he lived to see his invention give rise
+to large factories in the United States, and in England, France, and
+Germany, which employ sixty thousand operatives, and produce over five
+hundred different kinds of articles, to the amount of eight millions of
+dollars annually. He lived to see boots and shoes, clothing, caps, hats,
+articles of commerce and of pleasure, mechanical, scientific, and
+surgical instruments, toys, belting for machinery, packing for the
+steam-engine, and many other articles now in common use, made of the
+material, the discovery and perfection of which cost him long and
+sorrowful years of toil. He lived to hear his name mentioned by millions
+as one of their greatest benefactors; to know that he had conferred upon
+the world benefits of which those who had robbed him could not deprive
+his fellow-men; and to feel that he had at length accomplished his
+mission--a mission which has been productive of good alone.
+
+[Illustration: "THE MADHOUSE IS THE PROPER PLACE FOR HIM."]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+ELI WHITNEY.
+
+
+At the close of the Revolution the States of South Carolina and Georgia
+presented large tracts of land to the gallant General Nathaniel Greene,
+to whose genius they were indebted for their relief from British
+tyranny. Soon after this grant was made, General Greene removed his
+family to Mulberry Grove, a fine plantation on the Georgia side of the
+Savannah River. Here he died in 1786, from sunstroke, but his family
+continued to reside on the place. The mansion of Mrs. Greene was noted
+for its hospitality, and was frequently filled with guests who came to
+pay their respects to the widow of the most brilliant and best trusted
+subordinate of the immortal Washington.
+
+To this mansion there came one day, in the year 1792, ELI WHITNEY, then
+a young man recently from New England. He was a native of Westborough,
+Massachusetts, where he was born on the 8th of December, 1765. Of his
+youth but little is known, save that he was gifted with unusual
+mechanical genius, the employment of which enabled him to overcome some
+of the difficulties incident to his poverty, and to acquire the means of
+obtaining a good common school education. Adding to this the labors of a
+teacher, he earned a sum sufficient to carry him through Yale College,
+where he was graduated in the summer of 1702, a few months before his
+arrival in Georgia. He had come South to accept the offer of a situation
+as teacher, but the place had been filled before his arrival, and, being
+without friends in that section, he sought employment from Mrs. Greene.
+Though pleased with his modesty and intelligence, that lady could not
+avail herself of his services as a tutor, but invited him to make her
+house his home as long as he should desire to remain in Georgia. He was
+sick in body and disheartened by his first failure, and gladly accepted
+her invitation. While her guest he made her a tambour frame of an
+improved pattern, and a number of ingenious toys for her children, which
+so delighted the good lady that she enthusiastically declared him
+capable of doing any thing.
+
+Not long after Mr. Whitney's arrival at the plantation, Mrs. Greene was
+entertaining a number of visitors from the surrounding country, several
+planters of considerable wealth being among the number, when one of the
+guests turned the conversation upon the subject of cotton-raising, by
+declaring that he had met with such poor success that he was ready to
+abandon the undertaking. His trouble was not, he said, that cotton would
+not grow in his land, for it yielded an abundant return, but that the
+labor of clearing it from the seed was so enormous that he could not do
+more than pay expenses after selling it.
+
+His case was simply one among a thousand. The far Southern States were
+admitted by every one to be admirably adapted to the cultivation of
+cotton, but, after it was grown and picked, the expense of cleaning it
+destroyed nearly all the profits of the transaction. The cleaning
+process was performed by hand, and it was as much as an able-bodied
+negro could do to clean one pound per day in this manner. Disheartened
+by this difficulty, which no one had yet been able to remove, the
+planters of the South were seriously contemplating the entire
+abandonment of this portion of their industry, since it only involved
+them in debt. Their lands were heavily mortgaged, and general ruin
+seemed to threaten them. All felt that the invention of a machine for
+cleaning or ginning the cotton would not only remove their difficulties,
+but enable them to plant the green cotton-seed, from the use of which
+they were then almost entirely debarred, because, although more
+productive and of a better quality than the black, and adapted by nature
+to a much greater variety of climate, it was much more difficult to
+clean, and therefore less profitable to cultivate.
+
+These facts were discussed in the conversation at Mrs. Greene's table,
+and it was suggested by one of the company that perhaps the very urgency
+of the case would induce some ingenious man to invent a machine which
+should solve the problem, and remove all the difficulties in the way.
+
+"Is it a machine you want?" said Mrs. Greene, eagerly. "Then, gentlemen,
+you should apply to my young friend, Mr. Whitney; _he_ can make any
+thing."
+
+She at once sent for Whitney, and introduced him to her guests, who
+repeated to him the substance of their conversation, and urged him to
+undertake the invention of what was so much needed. The young man
+protested that he had never seen either a pod of cotton or a cotton-seed
+in his life, and was utterly incompetent for the task they proposed. In
+spite of this, however, his new acquaintances urged him to attempt it,
+and assured him that if successful his invention would make his fortune.
+Whitney would promise nothing more than to think of the matter, and the
+planters departed in the belief that nothing would come of their
+entreaties, and that the culture of cotton would languish until it
+should finally die out.
+
+Whitney _did_ think of the matter, and the result was that he decided
+to attempt the production of a machine which should clean cotton both
+expeditiously and cheaply. It was late in the season, and unginned
+cotton, or cotton from which the seeds had not been removed, was hard to
+procure. With considerable difficulty he succeeded in finding a few
+pounds on the wharf at Savannah, and at once securing his prize, he
+carried it home in his hands.
+
+[Illustration: WHITNEY WATCHING THE FIRST COTTON-GIN]
+
+Mrs. Greene being confidentially informed of his plans, provided him
+with a room in the cellar of her house, where he could carry on his work
+in secret. All that winter he worked at it, with a patience and energy
+which could not fail of success. Many difficulties confronted him. To
+carry on his work successfully, he needed tools of a certain
+description, which were not to be had in Savannah, or even in
+Charleston, upon any terms. But when was the genius of a Yankee ever
+baffled by difficulties? Whitney's mechanical skill came to his aid, and
+he conquered this obstacle by manufacturing all the implements he
+needed. He wanted wire, but none was to be found, and he was compelled
+to make all that he used. A score or more of drawbacks presented
+themselves, and were overcome in this way, and all through the winter
+the young inventor applied himself with diligence to his task. The
+children and servants regarded him with the greatest curiosity. They
+heard him hammering and sawing in his room, the doors of which were
+always kept locked, and into which they were never allowed to enter.
+Mrs. Greene was kept fully informed of his progress. When sure of
+success, Whitney revealed the secret to a Mr. Miller, a gentleman of
+means, who consented to enter into a copartnership with him for the
+manufacture of the machines, after the completion of the model should
+have enabled Whitney to secure a patent for his invention.
+
+Whitney had hoped to keep his work secret from all others, but this
+proved to be impossible. It became rumored about the country that the
+young man from New England, who was living at Mrs. Greene's, was engaged
+in inventing a machine which would clean cotton with the rapidity of
+thought, and the most intense eagerness was manifested to see the
+wonderful production, which every one felt would entirely revolutionize
+cotton culture in the South. Whitney endeavored to guard his invention
+from the public curiosity, but without success. Before he had completed
+his model, some scoundrels broke into the place containing it, and
+carried it off by night. He succeeded in recovering it, but the
+principle upon which it depended was made public, and before the model
+was completed and a patent secured, a number of machines based on his
+invention had been surreptitiously made, and were in operation.
+
+In spite of this discouraging circumstance, Whitney brought his
+invention to perfection, and in the spring of 1793 set up his first
+cotton gin, under a shed on Mrs. Greene's plantation, and invited a
+number of the neighboring planters to witness its operation.
+
+His machine was very simple, but none the less ingenious on that
+account. The cotton was placed in a trough, the bottom of which
+consisted of parallel rows of wire, placed like the bars in a grating,
+but so close together that the seed could not pass through them.
+Underneath this trough revolved an iron roller, armed with teeth formed
+of strong wires projecting from the roller, which passed between the
+wire bars, and, seizing the cotton, drew it through the bars and passed
+it behind the roller, where it was brushed off the wire teeth by means
+of a cylindrical brush. The seed, unable to pass through the bars, were
+left behind, and, completely stripped of the fiber, ran out in a stream
+through a spout at one end of the trough. It was found that the cotton
+thus ginned was cleaned thoroughly,[A] and far better than it could be
+done by hand, and that a single man, by this process, could clean as
+much as three hundred pounds in a day.
+
+[Footnote A: The cotton for which Whitney's machine accomplished so
+much, was the short staple, which is the principal product of the South.
+The Sea Island cotton could not be cleaned by it, on account of the
+length and delicacy of its fiber; and this species, for the want of some
+cheap and expeditious method of preparing it, has seldom been grown to a
+greater quantity than fifty thousand bags of three hundred pounds each.
+Consequently, it has always commanded a high price.]
+
+The spectators were delighted with Whitney's machine, and urged him to
+lose no time in putting it in the market. They predicted an unlimited
+success for it, and assured the inventor that it would not only make his
+own fortune, but also render cotton culture the source of wealth to the
+South. They did not exaggerate. As soon as it was made known to the
+public, Whitney's machine came into general use. Planters had no longer
+any thing to fear from the labor and expense of preparing their great
+staple for market. Whitney's genius had swept away all their
+difficulties, and they reaped a golden harvest from it. They were
+enabled to send their cotton promptly and cheaply to market, where it
+brought good prices. With the money thus obtained they paid their debts,
+and increased their capacity for cultivation. Every year the area
+devoted to cotton-growing became more extended, and the prosperity of
+the South became greater and more durable. In 1793, the total export of
+cotton from the United States was ten thousand bales; in 1860, it was
+over four millions of bales. Hundreds of millions of dollars were
+brought into the South by this invention--so that it is no exaggeration
+to say that the remarkable prosperity enjoyed by the South at the
+commencement of our late civil war was due entirely to the genius of Eli
+Whitney. This opinion is fortified by the following remarks of Judge
+Johnson, uttered in a charge to the jury in a suit brought by Whitney,
+in Savannah, in 1807, to sustain the validity of his patent:
+
+"With regard to the utility of this discovery ... the whole interior of
+the Southern States was languishing, and its inhabitants emigrating for
+want of some object to engage their attention and employ their industry,
+when the invention of this machine at once opened views to them which
+set the whole country in active motion. From childhood to age it has
+presented to us a lucrative employment. Individuals who were depressed
+with poverty, and sunk in idleness, have suddenly risen to wealth and
+respectability. Our debts have been paid off, our capitals have
+increased, and our lands have trebled themselves in value. We can not
+express the weight of the obligation which the country owes to this
+invention. The extent of it can not now be seen."
+
+Surely, the reader will exclaim, if such was the profit of this
+invention to the country at large, what a vast fortune must it have
+been to its inventor! Let us see. In May, 1793, Whitney and Miller went
+to Connecticut and established a factory for the construction of cotton
+gins. They were in possession of a patent which was supposed to pledge
+to them the protection of the United States. The demand for the machine
+was increasing every day, and it seemed that they would reap a golden
+harvest from it. They were disappointed. The machine was so simple that
+any competent mechanic could easily manufacture one after examining the
+model, and this temptation to dishonesty proved too strong for the
+morality of the cotton-growing community. In a short time there were
+hundreds of fraudulent machines at work in the South, made and sold in
+direct and open violation of Whitney's rights. In vain the inventor
+brought suit against those who infringed his patent. It was rare that a
+jury in a cotton State gave a verdict in his favor. In Georgia it was
+boldly asserted that Whitney was not the inventor of the cotton gin, but
+that some persons in Switzerland had invented something similar to it,
+and the substitution of teeth, cut in an iron plate, instead of wire,
+was claimed as superseding his invention. The Legislature of South
+Carolina granted him the beggarly sum of $50,000 for the use of his
+invention by the planters of that State; but it was only by going to
+law, and after several tedious and vexatious suits, that he was able to
+secure this sum. Tennessee agreed to allow him a percentage for the use
+of each saw for a certain period, but afterward repudiated her contract.
+The action of North Carolina forms the only bright page in this history
+of fraud and wrong. That State allowed him a percentage for the use of
+each saw for the term of five years, and promptly collected the money
+and paid it over to the patentee. For fourteen years Whitney continued
+to manufacture his machines, reaping absolutely no profit from his
+investments, and earning merely a bare support. During all this time his
+rights were systematically violated, suits were wrongfully decided
+against him by various Southern courts, and he was harassed and
+plundered on every side. America never presented a more shameful
+spectacle than was exhibited when the courts of the cotton-growing
+regions united with the piratical infringers of Whitney's rights in
+robbing their greatest benefactor. In 1807, Whitney's partner died, and
+his factory was destroyed by fire. In the same year his patent expired,
+and he sought its renewal from Congress. Here again he was met with the
+ingratitude of the cotton States. The Southern members, then all
+powerful in the Government, united in opposing the extension of his
+patent, and his petition was rejected. At the same time a report was
+industriously circulated that his machine injured the fiber of the
+cotton; but it is a significant fact that, although the planters
+insisted vehemently upon this assertion while Whitney was seeking an
+extension of his patent, not one of them discontinued the use of his
+machine, or sought to remedy the alleged defect.
+
+Whitney, thoroughly disheartened, now abandoned the manufacture of
+cotton gins in disgust, wound up his affairs, and found himself a poor
+man. In spite of the far-reaching benefits of his invention, he had not
+realized one dollar above his expenses. He had given millions upon
+millions of dollars to the cotton-growing States, he had opened the way
+for the establishment of the vast cotton-spinning interests of his own
+country and Europe, and yet, after fourteen years of hard labor, he was
+a poor man, the victim of a wealthy, powerful, and, in his case, a
+dishonest class, who had robbed him of his rights and of the fortune he
+had so fairly earned. Truly, "wisdom is better than strength, but the
+poor man's wisdom is despised."
+
+Whitney, however, was not the man to waste his time in repining. He
+abandoned his efforts to protect his cotton gin because of his
+conviction that there was not honesty enough in the country to sustain
+him in his rights, but he did not abandon with it the idea of winning
+fortune. He promptly turned his genius in another direction, and this
+time with success.
+
+The fire-arms then in use were heavy, clumsy weapons, and effective only
+at very short range. He examined the system closely, and quickly
+designed several important improvements in them, especially in the
+old-fashioned musket. Although his improved arms were not to be compared
+with the terribly effective weapons of to-day, they were admitted to be
+the best then in use. By examining the Springfield musket, which is due
+almost entirely to his genius, the reader can form an accurate estimate
+of the service he rendered in this respect. He has the honor of being
+the inaugurator of the system of progressive improvement in fire-arms,
+which has gone on steadily and without flagging for now fully sixty
+years past.
+
+Some time before abandoning the manufacture of the cotton gin, Mr.
+Whitney established an arms factory in New Haven, and obtained a
+contract from the Government for ten thousand stand of arms, to be
+delivered in two years. At this time he not only had to manufacture the
+machinery needed by him for this purpose, but had to invent the greater
+part of it. This delayed the execution of his contract for eight years,
+but at the expiration of that time he had so far perfected his
+establishment, which had been removed to Whitneyville, Conn., that he at
+once entered into contracts for thirty thousand more arms, which he
+delivered promptly at the appointed time. His factory was the most
+complete in the country, and was fitted up in a great measure with the
+machinery which he had invented, and without which the improved weapons
+could not be fabricated. He introduced a new system into the
+manufacture of fire-arms, and one which greatly increased the rapidity
+of construction. "He was the first manufacturer of fire-arms who carried
+the division of labor to the extent of leaking it the duty of each
+workman to perform by machinery but one or two operations on a single
+portion of the gun, and thus rendered all the parts adapted to any one
+of the thousands of arms in process of manufacture at the same time."
+
+His success was now marked and rapid. His factory was taxed to its
+fullest capacity to supply the demand for arms. His genius was rewarded
+at last, and he acquired a fortune which enabled him not only to pass
+the evening of his days in comfort, but also to leave a handsome estate
+to his family. He married a daughter of Judge Pierpont Edwards, a lady
+of fine accomplishments and high character. He died at New Haven on the
+8th of January, 1825, in his sixtieth year.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+CHAUNCEY JEROME.
+
+
+Any readers of these pages doubtless remember the huge old-fashioned
+clocks, tower-like in shape, that in the days of their childhood
+ornamented the remote corner of the hall, or stood solemnly near the
+chimney in the sitting-room of the old homestead,--such a clock as that
+which greeted little Paul Dombey, when he commenced to be a man, with
+its "How, is, my, lit, tle, friend?--how, is, my, lit, tle, friend?"
+Very different from the bright, pretty timepieces of to-day, which go
+ticking away, as if running a race with time, was the clock of the olden
+days, as it stood, solemn and dark, in its accustomed corner, from which
+the strength of two men was necessary to move it, sending the sound of
+its slow, steady strokes into all parts of the house. And in the night,
+when all within was still, how its deep beats throbbed in the dark hall
+louder and sterner even than in the day. There was something eminently
+respectable about an old clock of this kind, and it would have been
+audacity unheard of for any member of the family to doubt its
+reliability. Set once a year, it was expected to retain its steady-going
+habits for the rest of the twelvemonth. You dared not charge it with
+being slow; and as for being too fast, why, the very idea was absurd.
+There was sure to be some white-capped, silver-haired old lady, whose
+long years had been counted by the venerable pendulum with unerring
+precision, ready to defend the cause of the clock, to vouch for its
+accuracy, and to plead its cause so well and so skillfully, that you
+were ready to hide your face in shame at the thought of having even
+suspected the veracity of so venerable and so honored an institution.
+
+Truth to say, however, these old clocks, to the masses of the people of
+this country, were objects of admiration, and nothing more; for their
+exceeding high price placed them beyond the reach of all save the
+wealthier classes. A good clock cost from seventy-five to one hundred
+and fifty dollars, and the most indifferent article in the market could
+not be obtained for less than twenty-five dollars. At the opening of the
+present century, the demand for them was so small that but three hundred
+and fifty clocks were made in the State of Connecticut, which was then,
+as at present, the one most largely engaged in this branch of American
+industry. To-day the annual manufacture of Connecticut is about six
+hundred thousand clocks of all kinds, which command a wholesale price of
+from fifty cents upward, the greater number bringing the maker less than
+five dollars. Thus the reader will see that, while the business of the
+clock-maker has prospered so extraordinarily, valuable timepieces have
+been brought within the reach of even the poorest.
+
+The man to whom the country is indebted for this wonderful and
+beneficial increase is CHAUNCEY JEROME, who was born at Canaan,
+Connecticut, in 1793. His father was a blacksmith and nail-maker, to
+which trade he added the cultivation of the little farm on which he
+lived; and being poor, it was necessary for him to labor hard in all his
+callings in order to provide his family with a plain subsistence. Young
+Chauncey had little or no time given him for acquiring an education.
+
+He learned to read and write, but went no further; for, when he was but
+a little more than seven years old, and barely able to do the lightest
+kind of labor, he was put to work on the farm to help his father, who
+kept him at this until he was nine, when he took him into his shop. All
+the nails then in use were made by hand, for there were no huge iron
+works in the country to send them out by the ton; and such articles were
+scarce and high. The boy was set to work to make nails, and for two
+years pursued his vocation steadily. He was a manly little fellow, and
+worked at his hammer and anvil with a will, resolved that he would
+become thorough master of his trade; but when he had reached the age of
+eleven, the sudden death of his father made an entire change in his
+career, and threw him upon the world a helpless and penniless orphan.
+
+In order to earn his bread, he hired himself to a farmer, receiving for
+his labor nothing but his "victuals and clothes," the latter being of
+the plainest and scantiest kind. He worked very hard; but his employer
+was cold and indifferent to him at all times, and occasionally used him
+very badly. The boy was naturally of a cheerful disposition, and it did
+him good service now in helping to sustain him in his hard lot. Four
+years were passed in this way, and when he was fifteen years old his
+guardian informed him that he had now reached an age when he must begin
+his apprenticeship to some regular trade.
+
+The boy was very anxious to learn clock-making, and begged his guardian
+to apprentice him to that trade; but the wise individual who controlled
+his affairs replied, sagely, that clock-making was a business in which
+he would starve, as it was already overdone in Connecticut. There was
+one man, he said, engaged in that trade who had been silly enough to
+make two hundred clocks in one year, and he added that it would take the
+foolish man a life-time to sell them, or if they went off quickly, the
+market would be so glutted that no dealer would have need to increase
+his stock for years to come. Clock-making, he informed the boy, had
+already reached the limit of its expansion in Connecticut, and offered
+no opportunities at all. The carpenter's trade, on the other hand, was
+never crowded with good workmen, and always offered the prospect of
+success to any enterprising and competent man. It was the custom then to
+regard boys as little animals, possessed of a capacity for hard work,
+but without any reasoning powers of their own. To the adage that
+"children should be seen and not heard," the good people of that day
+added another clause, in effect, "and should never pretend to think for
+themselves." It was this profound conviction that induced parents and
+guardians, in so many instances, to disregard the wishes of the children
+committed to their care, and to condemn so many to lives for which they
+were utterly unfitted. So it was with the guardian of Chauncey Jerome.
+He listened to the boy's expression of a preference, it is true, but
+paid no attention to it, and ended by apprenticing his ward to a
+carpenter.
+
+The life of an apprentice is always hard, and in those days it was
+especially so. No negro slave ever worked harder, and but few fared
+worse, so far as their bodily comfort was concerned, than the New
+England apprentices of the olden time. Masters seemed almost to regard
+the lads indentured to them as their property, and in return for the
+support they gave them exacted from them the maximum amount of work they
+were capable of performing. They granted them no privileges, allowed
+them no holidays, except those required by the law, and never permitted
+the slightest approach to laziness. Chauncey Jerome's master proved no
+exception to the rule, and when the boy exhibited an unusual proficiency
+and quickness in his trade, the only notice his employer took of it was
+to require more work of him. When only a little over sixteen years old,
+this boy was able to do the work of a full-grown man, and a man's work
+was rigorously exacted of him. When sent to work at a distance from his
+employer's home, he invariably had to make the entire journey on foot,
+with his tools on his back, sometimes being required to go as far as
+thirty miles in one day in this way. His mother was living at some
+distance from the place where his master resided, and whenever he
+visited her, he had to walk all night in order to avoid using his
+master's time, not one hour of which was allowed him.
+
+In 1811, he informed his master that he was willing to undertake to
+clothe himself if he could have the five months of the cold season to
+himself. As this part of the year was always a dull period, and
+apprentices were little more than an expense to their masters, young
+Jerome's employer promptly consented to the proposed arrangement.
+Jerome, now eighteen years old, had never relinquished his old desire to
+become a clock-maker. He had watched the market closely, and questioned
+the persons engaged in the business, and he found that, so far from the
+market being over-stocked, there was a ready sale for every clock made.
+Greatly encouraged by this, he resolved to devote the five months of his
+freedom to learning the business, and to apply himself entirely to it at
+the expiration of his apprenticeship. As soon as he had concluded his
+bargain with his master, he set out for Waterbury on foot, and upon
+arriving there, sought and obtained work from a man who made clock-dials
+for the manufacturers of clocks.
+
+He worked with his new employer awhile, and then formed an arrangement
+with two journeymen clock-makers. Having perfected their plans, the
+three set out for New Jersey in a lumber wagon, carrying their
+provisions with them. The two clock-makers were to make and set up the
+works, and Jerome was to make the cases whenever they should succeed in
+selling a clock on their journey. Clock-making was then considered
+almost perfect. It had been reduced to a regular system, and the cost of
+construction had been very greatly lessened. A good clock, with a case
+seven feet high, could now be made for forty dollars, at which price it
+yielded a fair profit to the maker. The three young men were tolerably
+successful in their venture. Jerome worked fifteen hours a day at
+case-making, and by living economically, managed to carry some money
+with him when he went back to his master's shop in the spring. For the
+remaining three years of his apprenticeship he employed his winters in
+learning the various branches of clock-making, and not only earned
+enough money to clothe himself, but laid by a modest sum besides.
+
+In 1814, being twenty-one years of age and his own master, he set up a
+carpenter shop of his own, being not yet sufficiently master of
+clock-making to undertake that on his own account. In 1815, he married.
+Times were hard. The war with England had just ended, and labor was
+poorly compensated. He is said at this time to have "finished the whole
+interior of a three-story house, including twenty-seven doors and an oak
+floor, nothing being found for him but the timber," for the beggarly sum
+of eighty-seven dollars--a task which no builder would undertake to-day
+for less than a thousand dollars. Still, he declared that, in spite of
+this poor rate of compensation, he was enabled to save enough to make a
+partial payment on a small dwelling for himself. It required a constant
+struggle, however, to live at this rate, and in the winter of 1816,
+being out of work, and having a payment on his house to meet in the
+spring, he determined to go to Baltimore to seek work during the winter.
+He was on the eve of starting, when he learned that Mr. Eli Terry, the
+inventor of the wooden clocks which were so popular fifty years ago, was
+about to open a large factory for them in an adjoining town. He walked
+to the town, and made his application to Mr. Terry, who at once engaged
+him at liberal wages. Mr. Terry's factory was then the largest in the
+country, and, as he used wooden instead of metal works, he was able to
+manufacture his best clocks at fifteen dollars, and other grades in
+proportion. This reduction in price largely increased the sale of his
+clocks, and in a comparatively short time after opening his factory, Mr.
+Terry made and sold about six thousand clocks a year.
+
+Jerome was determined that he would spare no pains to make himself
+master of every detail of clock-making, and applied himself to the
+business with so much intelligence and energy, that by the spring of
+1817 he felt himself competent to undertake their manufacture on his own
+account. He began his operations very cautiously, at first buying the
+works already made, putting them together, and making the cases himself.
+When he had finished two or three, he would carry them about for sale,
+and as his work was well done, he rarely had any difficulty in disposing
+of them. Gradually he increased his business, and in a year or two was
+able to sell every clock he could make, which kept him constantly busy.
+A Southern dealer having seen one of his clocks, was so well pleased
+with it that he gave the maker an order for twelve exactly like it,
+which the latter agreed to furnish at twelve dollars each. It was an
+enormous order to Jerome, and seemed to him almost too good to be real.
+He completed the clocks at the stipulated time, and conveyed them in a
+farmer's wagon to the place where the purchaser had agreed to receive
+them. The money was paid to him in silver, and as the broad pieces were
+counted into his hand, he was almost ready to weep for joy. One hundred
+and forty-four dollars was the largest sum he had ever possessed at one
+time, and it seemed almost a fortune to him. His clocks were taken to
+Charleston, South Carolina, and sold. They gave entire satisfaction; and
+when, some years later, he commenced to ship regular consignments to the
+Southern cities, he found no difficulty in disposing of his wares.
+
+Mr. Jerome's success was now more decided. He was enabled to pay for his
+house in a short time, and having, soon afterward, an opportunity to
+dispose of it at a fair profit, he did so, and took clock-works in
+payment. He bought land and timber, and paid for them in clocks, and his
+affairs prospered so well that, before long, he began to employ workmen
+to assist him, and to dispose of his clocks to peddlers and merchants,
+instead of carrying them around for sale himself. As his business
+increased, he invented and patented labor-saving machinery for the
+manufacture of the various parts of the clock, and thus greatly
+decreased the cost of construction. He designed new and ornamental
+cases, and exerted himself to render the exterior of his clocks as
+tasteful and attractive as possible. His business now increased rapidly,
+and he was soon compelled to take in a partner. He began to ship his
+clocks to the Southern States, sending them by sea. They met with a
+ready sale, but all his ventures of this kind were subject to serious
+risks. The works, being of wood, would frequently become damp and
+swollen on the voyage, thus rendering them unfit for use. Mr. Jerome
+endeavored in various ways to remedy this defect, but was finally
+compelled to admit that, until he could change the nature of the wood,
+he could not prevent it from being influenced by moisture.
+
+He passed many sleepless nights while engaged in seeking this remedy,
+for he plainly foresaw that unless the defect could be removed, the days
+of the wooden clock business were numbered.
+
+In the midst of his depression, the idea occurred to him, one night
+while lying awake, that the works of a clock could be manufactured as
+cheaply of brass as of wood. The thought came to him with the force of a
+revelation. He sprang out of bed, lit his candle, and passed the rest of
+the night in making calculations which proved to him that he could not
+only make brass works as cheaply as wooden ones, but, by the employment
+of certain labor-saving machinery, at a cost decidedly less. There was
+one important obstacle in his way, however. The machinery requisite for
+cutting brass works cheaply was not in existence. Before making known
+his plans, Mr. Jerome set to work to invent the clock-making machinery
+which has made him famous among American inventors. When he had
+completed it, he commenced to make brass clocks, which he sold at such a
+low price that wooden clocks were speedily driven out of the market.
+Little by little, he brought his machinery to perfection, applying it to
+the manufacture of all parts of the clock; and to-day, thanks to his
+patience and genius, clock-making in the United States has become a very
+simple affair. By the aid of Jerome's machinery, one man and one boy can
+saw veneers enough for three hundred clock cases in a single day. By the
+aid of this same machinery, six men can manufacture the works of one
+thousand clocks in a day; and a factory employing twenty-five workmen
+can turn out two thousand clocks per week. By the aid of this same
+machinery, the total cost of producing a good clock of small size has
+been brought down to forty cents.
+
+As the reader will suppose, Jerome made a large fortune--a princely
+fortune--for himself, and entirely revolutionized the clock-making trade
+of the Union. Thanks to him, scores of fortunes have been made by other
+manufacturers also, and American clocks have become famous all over the
+world for their excellence and cheapness. "Go where you will, in
+Europe, Asia, Africa, or America, you will be sure to come upon Yankee
+clocks. To England they go by the shipload. Germany, France, Russia,
+Spain, Italy, all take large quantities. Many have been sent to China
+and to the East Indies. At Jerusalem, Connecticut clocks tick on many a
+shelf, and travelers have found them far up the Nile, in Guinea, at the
+Cape of Good Hope, and in all the accessible places of South America."
+
+After conducting his business for some years, Mr. Jerome organized the
+Jerome Clock-Making Company, of New Haven. It began its operations with
+a large capital, and conducted them upon an extensive scale. In a few
+years Mr. Jerome retired from the active management of its affairs, but
+continued nominally at its head as its president. He built for himself
+an elegant mansion in New Haven, where he gathered about him his family
+and the friends which his sterling qualities and upright character had
+drawn to him, and here he hoped to pass the remainder of his days.
+
+He was doomed to a bitter disappointment. Although nominally at the head
+of the Clock Company, he left its control entirely to his partners, who,
+by injudicious management, brought it at length to the verge of
+bankruptcy. They made energetic efforts to ward off the final
+catastrophe, but without success, and in 1860, almost before Mr. Jerome
+was aware of the full extent of the trouble, the Company was ruined. Its
+liabilities were heavy, and every dollar's worth of Jerome's property
+was taken to meet them. Honest to the core, he gave up every thing. His
+elegant mansion was sold, and he was forced to remove to an humble
+cottage, a poorer man than when he had first set up for himself as a
+carpenter.
+
+He was not the man to repine, however, and he at once began to look
+about him for employment. He was sixty-seven years old, and it was hard
+to go out into the world to earn his bread again, but he bore his
+misfortunes bravely, and soon succeeded in obtaining the employment he
+desired. The great Clock Company of Chicago engaged him at a liberal
+salary to superintend their manufactory in that city, which position he
+still holds. The Company manufacture his own clocks, and are fortunate
+in having the benefit of his genius and experience. Were he a younger
+man, there can be no doubt that he would win a second fortune equal to
+that which was swept from him so cruelly, through no fault of his own.
+As it is, we can only venture to hope that his sturdy independence and
+indomitable energy will provide him with the means of passing the
+closing years of his life in comfort. Few men have done the world better
+service, or been more worthy of its rewards.
+
+[Illustration: ELIAS HOWE, JR.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+ELIAS HOWE, JR.
+
+
+One of the busiest parts of the busy thoroughfare of Broadway, in the
+city of New York, is the point of its intersection with Fourth Street.
+Thousands and tens of thousands of people pass and repass there daily,
+but few ever pause to look at the curious machine which stands in the
+window of the shop at the north-west corner of these two streets. This
+machine, clumsy and odd-looking as it is, nevertheless has a history
+which makes it one of the most interesting of all the sights of the
+great city. It is the first sewing-machine that was ever made.
+
+ELIAS HOWE, its maker, was born in the town of Spencer, Massachusetts,
+in 1819. He was one of eight children, and it was no small undertaking
+on the part of his father to provide a maintenance for such a household.
+Mr. Howe, Sen., was a farmer and miller, and, as was the custom at that
+time in the country towns of New England, carried on in his family some
+of those minor branches of industry suited to the capacity of children,
+with which New England abounds. When Elias was six years old, he was
+set, with his brothers and sisters, to sticking wire teeth through the
+leather straps used for making cotton cards. When he became old enough
+he assisted his father in his saw-mill and grist-mill, and during the
+winter months picked up a meager education at the district school. He
+has said that it was the rude and imperfect mills of his father that
+first turned his attention to machinery. He was not fitted for hard
+work, however, as he was frail in constitution and incapable of bearing
+much fatigue. Moreover, he inherited a species of lameness which proved
+a great obstacle to any undertaking on his part, and gave him no little
+trouble all through life. At the age of eleven he went to live out on
+the farm of a neighbor, but the labor proving too severe for him, he
+returned home and resumed his place in his father's mills, where he
+remained until he was sixteen years old.
+
+When at this age, he conceived an ardent desire to go to Lowell to seek
+his fortune. One of his friends had just returned from that place, and
+had given him such a wonderful description of the city and its huge
+mills, that he was eager to go there and see the marvel for himself.
+Obtaining his father's consent, he went to Lowell, and found employment
+as a learner in one of the large cotton-mills of the city. He remained
+there two years, when the great financial disaster of 1837 threw him out
+of employment and compelled him to look for work elsewhere. He obtained
+a place at Cambridge, in a machine-shop, and was put to work upon the
+new hemp-carding machinery of Professor Treadwell. His cousin, Nathaniel
+P. Banks, afterward governor of Massachusetts, member of Congress, and
+major-general, worked in the same shop with him, and boarded at the same
+house. Howe remained in Cambridge only a few months, however, and was
+then given a place in the machine-shop of Ari Davis, of Boston.
+
+At the age of twenty-one he married. This was a rash step for him, as
+his health was very delicate, and his earnings were but nine dollars per
+week. Three children were born to him in quick succession, and he found
+it no easy task to provide food, shelter, and clothing for his little
+family. The light-heartedness for which he had formerly been noted
+entirely deserted him, and he became sad and melancholy. His health did
+not improve, and it was with difficulty that he could perform his daily
+task. His strength was so slight that he would frequently return home
+from his day's work too much exhausted to eat. He could only go to bed,
+and in his agony he wished "to lie in bed forever and ever." Still he
+worked faithfully and conscientiously, for his wife and children were
+very dear to him; but he did so with a hopelessness which only those who
+have tasted the depths of poverty can understand.
+
+[Illustration: HOWE'S FIRST IDEA OF THE SEWING-MACHINE.]
+
+About this time he heard it said that the great necessity of the age was
+a machine for doing sewing. The immense amount of fatigue incurred and
+the delay in hand-sewing were obvious, and it was conceded by all who
+thought of the matter at all that the man who could invent a machine
+which would remove these difficulties would make a fortune. Howe's
+poverty inclined him to listen to these remarks with great interest. No
+man needed money more than he, and he was confident that his mechanical
+skill was of an order which made him as competent as any one else to
+achieve the task proposed. He set to work to accomplish it, and, as he
+knew well the dangers which surround an inventor, kept his own counsel.
+At his daily labor, in all his waking hours, and even in his dreams, he
+brooded over this invention. He spent many a wakeful night in these
+meditations, and his health was far from being benefited by this severe
+mental application. Success is not easily won in any great undertaking,
+and Elias Howe found that he had entered upon a task which required the
+greatest patience, perseverance, energy, and hopefulness. He watched his
+wife as she sewed, and his first effort was to devise a machine which
+should do what she was doing. He made a needle pointed at both ends,
+with the eye in the middle, that should work up and down through the
+cloth, and carry the thread through at each thrust; but his elaboration
+of this conception would not work satisfactorily. It was not until 1844,
+fully a year after he began the attempt to invent the machine, that he
+came to the conclusion that the movement of a machine need not of
+necessity be an imitation of the performance of the hand. It was plain
+to him that there must be another stitch, and that if he could discover
+it his difficulties would all be ended. A little later he conceived the
+idea of using two threads, and forming a stitch by the aid of a shuttle
+and a curved needle with the eye near the point. This was the triumph of
+his skill. He had now invented a perfect sewing-machine, and had
+discovered the essential principles of every subsequent modification of
+his conception. Satisfied that he had at length solved the problem, he
+constructed a rough model of his machine of wood and wire, in October,
+1844, and operated it to his perfect satisfaction. His invention is
+thus described:
+
+"He used a needle and a shuttle of novel construction, and combined them
+with holding surfaces, feed mechanism and other devices, as they had
+never before been brought together, in one machine One of the principal
+features of Mr. Howe's invention is the combination of a grooved needle,
+having an eye near its point, and vibrating in the direction of its
+length, with a side-pointed shuttle for effecting a locked stitch, and
+forming, with the threads, one on each side of the cloth, a firm and
+lasting seam not easily ripped. The main action of the machine consists
+in the interlocking of the loop, made by the thread carried in the point
+of the needle through the cloth, with another thread passed through this
+loop by means of a shuttle entering and leaving it at every stitch. The
+thread attached to this shuttle remains in the loop and secures the
+stitch as the needle is withdrawn to be ready to make the next one. At
+the same time the cloth, held by little projecting pins to the baster
+plate, is carried along with this by what is called the 'feed motion'
+just the length of a stitch, the distance being readily adjusted for
+finer or coarser work. .... The cloth is held in a vertical position in
+the machine, and the part to be sewed is pressed against the side of the
+shuttle-race by a presser plate hinged on its upper edge, and capable of
+exerting any required pressure on the cloth, according as the adjusting
+screw that regulates it is turned. A slot, or perforation through the
+plate, also extended through the side of the shuttle-race near the
+bottom, admits the passage of the needle; and when this is pushed in the
+shuttle can still pass freely over it. The shuttle is pushed one way and
+then the other through its race or trough by picker staves. The thread
+for the needle is supplied by a bobbin, the movement of which is
+checked by a friction band, this securing the proper tension, and the
+slack of the thread is duly taken up by a suitable contrivance for the
+purpose. Thus, all the essential features of the most approved
+sewing-machine were first found in that of Mr. Howe; and the machines of
+later date are, in fact, but modifications of it."
+
+At this time, he had abandoned his work as a journeyman mechanic, and
+had removed to his father's house. Mr. Howe, Sen., had established in
+Cambridge a machine-shop for the cutting of strips of palm-leaf used in
+the manufacture of hats. Elias and his family lived under his father's
+roof, and in the garret of the house the half-sick inventor put up a
+lathe, where he did a little work on his own account, and labored on his
+sewing-machine. He was miserably poor, and could scarcely earn enough to
+provide food for his family; and, to make matters worse, his father, who
+was disposed to help him, lost his shop and its contents by fire. Poor
+Elias was in a most deplorable condition. He had his model in his head,
+and was fully satisfied of its excellence, but he had not the money to
+buy the materials needed in making a perfect machine, which would have
+to be constructed of steel and iron, and without which he could not hope
+to convince others of its value. His great invention was useless to him
+without the five hundred dollars which he needed in the construction of
+a working model.
+
+In this dilemma, he applied to a friend, Mr. George Fisher, a coal and
+wood merchant of Cambridge, who was a man of some means. He explained
+his invention to him, and succeeded in forming a partnership with him.
+Fisher agreed to take Howe and his family to board with him while the
+latter was making the machine, to allow his garret to be used as a
+workshop, and to advance the five hundred dollars necessary for the
+purchase of tools and the construction of a model. In return for this he
+was to receive one-half of the patent, if Howe succeeded in patenting
+his machine. About the first of December, 1844, Howe and his family
+accordingly moved into Fisher's house, and the little workshop was set
+up in the garret. All that winter he worked on his model. There was
+little to delay him in its construction, as the conception was perfectly
+clear in his mind. He worked all day, and sometimes nearly all night,
+and in April, 1845, had his machine so far advanced that he sewed a seam
+with it. By the middle of May the machine was completed, and in July he
+sewed with it the seams of two woolen suits, one for himself and the
+other for Mr. Fisher. The sewing was so well done that it outlasted the
+cloth.
+
+It has been stated by Professor Renwick and other scientific men that
+Elias Howe "carried the invention of the sewing-machine further on
+toward its complete and final utility than any other inventor has ever
+brought a first-rate invention at the first trial." Those who doubt this
+assertion should examine the curious machine at the corner of Broadway
+and Fourth Street, and their doubts will be dispelled; for they will
+find in it all the essentials of the best sewing-machine of to-day.
+
+Having patented his machine, Howe endeavored to bring it into use. He
+was full of hope, and had no doubt that it would be adopted at once by
+those who were so much interested in the saving of labor. He first
+offered it to the tailors of Boston; but they, while admitting its
+usefulness, told him it would never be adopted by their trade, as it
+would ruin them. Considering the number of machines now used by the
+tailoring interest throughout the world, this assertion seems
+ridiculous. Other efforts were equally unsuccessful. Every one admitted
+and praised the ingenuity of the machine but no one would invest a
+dollar in it. Fisher became disgusted, and withdrew from his
+partnership, and Howe and his family moved back to his father's house.
+Thoroughly disheartened, he abandoned his machine. He then obtained a
+place as engineer on a railroad, and drove a locomotive until his health
+entirely broke down.
+
+With the loss of his health his hopes revived, and he determined to seek
+in England the victory which he had failed to win here. Unable to go
+himself, he sent his machine by his brother Amasa, in October, 1846.
+Upon reaching London, Amasa sought out Mr. William Thomas, of Cheapside,
+and explained to him his brother's invention. He found Mr. Thomas
+willing to use the machine in his business, but upon terms more
+favorable to himself than to the inventor. He offered the sum of twelve
+hundred and fifty dollars for the machine which Amasa Howe had brought
+with him, and agreed to pay Elias fifteen dollars per week if he would
+enter his service, and adapt the machine to his business of umbrella and
+corset making. As this was his only hope of earning a livelihood, Elias
+accepted the offer, and, upon his brother's return to the United States,
+sailed for England. He remained in Mr. Thomas's employ for about eight
+months, and at the end of that time left him, having found him hard,
+exacting, and unreasonable.
+
+Meanwhile his sick wife and three children had joined him in London, and
+he had found it hard to provide for them on the wages given him by Mr.
+Thomas; but after being thrown out of employment his condition was
+desperate indeed. He was in a strange country, without friends or money,
+and often he and his little family went whole days without food. Their
+sufferings were very great, but at length Howe was able (probably by
+assistance from home) to send his family back to his father's house. He
+himself remained in London, still hoping to bring his machine into use.
+It was in vain, however, and so, collecting what few household goods he
+had acquired in England, he shipped them to America, and followed them
+thither himself in another vessel, pawning his model and patent papers
+to pay his passage. When he landed in New York he had half a crown in
+his pocket, and there came to him on the same day a letter telling him
+that his wife was dying with consumption in Cambridge. He could not go
+to her at once, as he had no money, and was too feeble to undertake the
+distance on foot. He was compelled to wait several days until he could
+obtain the money for his fare to Cambridge, but at length succeeded in
+reaching that place just in time to see his wife die. In the midst of
+his grief he received the announcement that the vessel containing the
+few household goods which he had shipped from England had been lost at
+sea. It seemed to him that Fate was bent upon destroying him, so rapid
+and stunning were the blows she dealt him.
+
+But a great success was now in store for him, and he was to rise out of
+his troubles to the realization of his brightest hopes. Soon after his
+return home he obtained profitable employment, and, better still,
+discovered that his machine had become famous during his absence.
+Facsimiles of it had been constructed by unscrupulous mechanics, who
+paid no attention to the patents of the^inventor, and these copies had
+been exhibited in many places as "wonders," and had even been adopted in
+many important branches of manufacture. Howe at once set to work to
+defend his rights. He found friends to aid him, and in August, 1850,
+began those famous suits which continued for four years, and were at
+length decided in his favor. His adversaries made a bold resistance, but
+the decision of Judge Sprague, in 1854, settled the matter, and
+triumphantly established the rights of the inventor.
+
+In 1850, Howe removed to New York, and began in a small way to
+manufacture machines to order. He was in partnership with a Mr. Bliss,
+but for several years the business was so unimportant that upon the
+death of his partner, in 1855, he was enabled to buy out that
+gentleman's interest, and thus become the sole proprietor of his patent.
+Soon after this his business began to increase, and continued until his
+own proper profits and the royalty which the courts compelled other
+manufacturers to pay him for the use of his invention grew from $300 to
+$200,000 per annum. In 1867, when the extension of his patent expired,
+it is stated that he had earned a total of two millions of dollars by
+it. It cost him large sums to defend his rights, however, and he was
+very far from being as wealthy as was commonly supposed, although a very
+rich man.
+
+In the Paris Exposition of 1867, he exhibited his machines, and received
+the gold medal of the Exposition, and the Cross of the Legion of Honor,
+in addition, as a compliment to him as a manufacturer and inventor.
+
+He contributed money liberally to the aid of the Union in the late war,
+and enlisted as a private soldier in the Seventeenth Regiment of
+Connecticut Volunteers, with which command he went to the field,
+performing all the duties of his position until failing health compelled
+him to leave the service. Upon one occasion the Government was so much
+embarrassed that it could not pay the regiment of which he was a member.
+Mr. Howe promptly advanced the money, and his comrades were saved from
+the annoyances which would have attended the delay in paying them. He
+died at Brooklyn, Long Island, on the 3d of October, 1867.
+
+Mr. Howe will always rank among the most distinguished of American
+inventors; not only because of the unusual degree of completeness shown
+in his first conception of the sewing-machine, but because of the great
+benefits which have sprung from it. It has revolutionized the industry
+of the world, opened new sources of wealth to enterprise, and lightened
+the labor of hundreds of thousands of working people. Many a pale-faced,
+hollow-eyed woman, who formerly sat sewing her life away for a mere
+pittance, blesses the name of Elias Howe, and there is scarcely a
+community in the civilized world but contains the evidence of his
+genius, and honors him as the benefactor of the human race.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+RICHARD M. HOE.
+
+
+To write the complete history of the printing press would require years
+of patient labor and research, and a much larger space than the limits
+of the present work will permit. There are few subjects more attractive
+or more worthy of consideration than the history of this wonderful
+invention, which seems more like a romance than a narration of facts.
+The historian who should essay the task would be required to carry his
+reader back to the darkest ages of the world, and, beginning with the
+stamps used for affixing hieroglyphical characters to the now crumbling
+ruins of Egypt and Nineveh, trace the gradual development of the
+beneficent conception from the signets of the Israelites, and the stamps
+used by the Romans for marking certain kinds of merchandise, through the
+rude process of the Chinese, Japanese, and Tartars, to the invention of
+Johannes Guttenberg, and, finally, to the wonderful lightning
+steam-presses of to-day.
+
+In these pages it is not proposed to offer to the reader any such
+narrative. On the contrary, the story of the printing press will be
+taken up just as it was on the point of reaching its greatest
+perfection, since our subject concerns only the man who brought it to
+that state.
+
+This man, RICHARD MARCH HOE by name, was born in the city of New York,
+on the 12th of September, 1812. His father, Robert Hoe, was a native of
+the village of Hose, Leicester, England, and the son of a wealthy
+farmer. Disliking his father's pursuit, he apprenticed himself to a
+carpenter. When only sixteen years old, the elder Hoe purchased his
+indentures from his master and sailed for the United States. He was
+almost penniless when he reached New York, and in this condition entered
+the store of Mr. Grant Thorburn one day in search of employment. Mr.
+Thorburn manifested a sudden and strong liking to the youth, took him to
+his own house, and when he was prostrated with the yellow fever, during
+the epidemic of 1804, nursed him tenderly throughout. Setting to work
+immediately upon his arrival in New York, he made friends rapidly, and
+prospered in his trade so well that when but twenty years old he was
+able to marry. His bride was a daughter of Matthew Smith, of
+Westchester, and a sister of Peter Smith, the inventor of the hand
+printing press, which bears his name. With this gentleman and Matthew
+Smith, jr., his brother, Robert Hoe entered into partnership. Their
+business was that of carpentering and printers' joinery; but after Peter
+Smith had completed the invention of his hand press, it gradually grew
+into the manufacture of presses and printers' materials. Both of the
+brothers died in 1823, and Robert Hoe succeeded to the entire business.
+
+The manufactory of "Robert Hoe & Co." was originally located in the
+centre of the old block between Pearl and William Streets, and Pine
+Street and Maiden Lane. Soon after their establishment there, the city
+authorities ran Cedar Street right through their building, and they
+removed to Gold Street, near John. They have been twice burned out here,
+but still occupy these premises with their counting-room and lower shop.
+
+Printing by steam had long attracted the attention of persons engaged
+in the art, and many essays had been made in this direction by different
+inventors, both in this country and in Europe. The most successful
+results were the Adams press, the invention of Mr. Isaac Adams, of
+Boston, Mass., and the Napier press, that of a British artisan. It was
+the latter which was the means of identifying Mr. Hoe with the steam
+press.
+
+The Napier press was introduced into this country in 1830, by the
+proprietors of the _National Intelligencer_, but when it arrived, these
+gentlemen were not able to release it from the Custom-house. Major Noah,
+himself the proprietor of a newspaper, was at that time Collector of the
+port of New York, and he, being anxious to see the press in operation,
+requested Mr. Hoe to put it together. Mr. Hoe performed this task
+successfully, although the press was a novelty to him, and was permitted
+to take models of its various parts before it was reshipped to England.
+It was found to be a better press than any that had ever been seen in
+this country, and the _Commercial Advertiser,_ of New York, and the
+_Chronicle_, of Philadelphia, at once ordered duplicates of it from
+England.
+
+Mr. Hoe was very much pleased with this press, but believed that he
+could construct a much better one. "To this end he despatched his new
+partner, Mr. Sereno Newton, to England to examine all the improvements
+in machinery there, and bring home samples of such as he thought might
+be advantageously adopted in this country. Mr. Newton, besides being an
+ingenious mechanic, was well-read in books, and was considered one of
+the first mathematicians in New York. Returning from his mission, he
+constructed a new two-cylinder press, which soon superseded all others
+then in use." Mr. Hoe's health failed, compelling him, in 1832, to
+retire from the business.
+
+Young Richard M. Hoe had been brought up in his father's business,
+after receiving a fair education. He inherited his father's inventive
+genius, combined with a rare business capacity, and from the first was
+regarded as the future hope of the establishment. Upon the withdrawal of
+his father, a partnership was established between himself, his brother
+Robert, Mr. Newton, and his cousin Matthew Smith, but the style of the
+firm remained unchanged.
+
+Richard Hoe's first invention was conceived in 1837, and consisted of a
+valuable improvement in the manufacture of grinding saws. Having
+obtained a patent for it in the United States, he visited England in
+that year for the same purpose. By his process circular saws may be
+ground with accuracy to any desired thickness. He readily obtained a
+patent in England, as the excellence of his invention commended it to
+every one. While there he gave especial attention to the improvements
+which had been made in the printing press, in the manufacture of which
+his firm was still largely engaged. Returning to New York, he devoted
+himself entirely to this branch of his business, and soon produced the
+machine known as "Hoe's Double-Cylinder Press," which was capable of
+making about six thousand impressions per hour. The first press of this
+kind ever made was ordered by the New York _Sun_, and was the admiration
+of all the printers of the city. This style of press is now used
+extensively for printing country newspapers.
+
+As long as the newspaper interest of the country stood still, "Hoe's
+Double-Cylinder Press" was amply sufficient for its wants, but as the
+circulation of the journals of the large cities began to increase, the
+"double-cylinder" was often taxed far beyond its powers. A printing
+press capable of striking off papers with much greater rapidity was felt
+to be an imperative and still-increasing need. It was often necessary
+to hold the forms back until nearly daylight for the purpose of issuing
+the latest news, and in the hurry which ensued to get out the morning
+edition, the press very frequently met with accidents.
+
+Mr. Hoe was fully alive to the importance of improving his press, and,
+in 1842, he began to experiment with it for the purpose of obtaining
+greater speed. It was a serious undertaking, however, and at every step
+fresh difficulties arose. He spent four years in experimenting, and at
+the end of that time was almost ready to confess that the obstacles were
+too great to be overcome. One night, in. 1846, while in this mood, he
+resumed his experiments. The more he pondered over the subject the more
+difficult it seemed. In despair, he was about to relinquish the effort
+for the night, when suddenly there flashed across his mind a plan for
+securing the type on a horizontal cylinder. This had been his great
+difficulty, and he now felt that he had mastered it. He sat up all
+night, working out his design, and making a note of every idea that
+occurred to him, in order that nothing should escape him. By morning the
+problem which had baffled him so long had been solved, and the
+magnificent "Lightning Press" already had a being in the inventor's
+fertile brain.
+
+He carried his model rapidly to perfection, and, proceeding with it to
+Washington, obtained a patent. On his return home he met Mr. Swain, the
+proprietor of the Baltimore _Sun_ and Philadelphia _Ledger_, and
+explained his invention to him. Mr. Swain was so much pleased with it
+that he at once ordered a four-cylinder press, which was completed and
+ready for use on the 31st of December, 1848. This press was capable of
+making ten thousand impressions per hour, and did its work with entire
+satisfaction in every respect.
+
+This was a success absolutely unprecedented--so marked, in fact, that
+some persons were inclined to doubt it. The news flew rapidly from city
+to city, and across the ocean to foreign lands, and soon wherever a
+newspaper was printed men were talking of Hoe's wonderful invention.
+Orders came pouring in upon the inventor with such rapidity that he soon
+had as many on hand as he could fill in several years. In a
+comparatively brief period the _Herald_, _Tribune_, and _Sun_, of New
+York, were boasting of their "Lightning Presses," and soon the
+_Traveller_ and _Daily Journal_, in Boston, followed their example. Mr.
+Hoe was now not only a famous man, but possessed of an assured business
+for the future, which was certain to result in a large fortune. By the
+year 1860, besides supplying the principal cities of the Union (fifteen
+lightning presses being used in the city of New York alone), he had
+shipped eighteen presses to Great Britain, four to France, and one to
+Australia. Two of the presses sent to England were ordered for the
+London _Times_.
+
+Mr. Hoe continued to improve his invention, adding additional cylinders
+as increased, speed was desired, and at length brought it to the degree
+of perfection exhibited in the splendid ten-cylinder press now in use in
+the offices of our leading journals, which strikes off twenty-five
+thousand sheets per hour. Whether more will be accomplished with this
+wonderful machine the future alone can determine, but the inventor is
+said to be still laboring to improve it.
+
+In 1858, Mr. Hoe purchased the patent rights and manufactory of Isaac
+Adams, in Boston, and since then has carried on the manufacture of the
+Adams press from that place. He has also established a manufactory in
+England, where he conducts a profitable business in both the Adams and
+the Hoe press. Over a million and a half of dollars are invested in
+these establishments in New York, Boston, and London, in land,
+buildings, and stock. The firm manufacture presses of all kinds, and
+all materials used by printers except type and ink. They also
+manufacture circular saws, made according to Mr. Hoe's process.
+
+Mr. Hoe, now fifty-eight years of age, is still as vigorous and active
+as many a younger man. Besides being one of the most prominent and
+distinguished inventors and manufacturers in the country, he is justly
+esteemed for his many virtues and his commanding business talents. He is
+still the active head of the house which he has carried to such a
+brilliant success, and is the possessor of an ample fortune, which his
+genius and industry have secured to him. He is courteous and obliging to
+all, and very liberal to those whose needs commend them to his
+benevolence.
+
+The ten-cylinder press costs fifty thousand dollars, and is regarded as
+cheap at that immense sum. It is one of the most interesting inventions
+ever made. Those who have seen it working in the subterranean
+press-rooms of the journals of the great metropolis will not soon forget
+the wonderful sight. The ear is deafened with the incessant clashing of
+the machinery; the printed sheets issue from the sides of the huge
+engine in an unceasing stream; the eye is bewildered with the mass of
+lines and bands; and it seems hard to realize that one single mind could
+ever have adjusted all the various parts to work harmoniously.
+
+The following is a description of the ten-cylinder steam printing-press
+now used in the office of the New York _World_. It is one of the best
+specimens of its kind to be seen in the great city:
+
+The dimensions of the press are as follows: Entire length, 40 feet;
+width, 15 feet; height, 16 feet. The large horizontal cylinder in the
+center is about 4-1/2 feet in diameter, and on it are placed the "forms" of
+type for the four pages of one side of the paper. Each of these
+constitutes a segment of a circle, and the whole four occupy a segment
+of only about one-fourth of the surface of the cylinder, the other
+three-fourths being used as an ink-distributing surface. Around this
+main cylinder, and parallel with it, are ten smaller impression
+cylinders, according to the number of which a press is termed a four,
+six, or ten-cylinder press. The large cylinder being set in revolution,
+the form of types is carried successively to all the impression
+cylinders, at each of which a sheet is introduced and receives the
+impression of the types as the form passes. Thus as many sheets are
+printed at each revolution of the main cylinder as there are impression
+cylinders around it. One person is required at each impression cylinder
+to supply the sheets of paper, which are taken at the proper moment by
+fingers or grippers, and after being printed are conveyed out by tapes
+and laid in heaps by means of self-acting flyers, thereby dispensing
+with the hands required in ordinary machines to receive and pile the
+sheets. The grippers hold the sheet securely, so that the thinnest
+newspaper can be printed without waste.
+
+The ink is contained in a fountain placed beneath the main cylinder, and
+is conveyed by means of distributing rollers to the distributing surface
+on the main cylinder. This surface being lower or less in diameter than
+the form of types, passes by the impression cylinders without touching
+them. For each impression there are two inking rollers, which receive
+their supply of ink from the distributing surface of the main cylinder,
+and raise and ink the form as it passes under them, after which they
+again fall to the distributing surface.
+
+Each page of the paper is locked up on a detached segment of the large
+cylinder, called by the compositors a "turtle," and this constitutes its
+bed and chase. The column-rules run parallel with the shaft of the
+cylinder, and are consequently straight, while the head, advertising,
+and dash-rules are in the form of segments of a circle. The column-rules
+are in the form of a wedge, with the thin part directed toward the axis
+of the cylinder, so as to bind the type securely, and at the same time
+to keep the ink from collecting between the types and the rules. They
+are held down to the bed by tongues projecting at intervals along their
+length, which slide into rebated grooves, cut crosswise in the face of
+the bed. The spaces in the grooves between the column-rules are
+accurately fitted with sliding blocks of metal even with the surface of
+the bed, the ends of the blocks being cut away underneath to receive a
+projection on the sides of the tongues of the column-rules. The form of
+type is locked up in the bed by means of screws at the foot and sides,
+by which the type is held as securely as in the ordinary manner upon a
+flat bed, if not even more so. The speed of the machine is limited only
+by the ability of the feeders to supply the sheets. Twenty-five hundred
+is about as many as a man can supply in an hour, and multiplying this by
+ten--one man being at each cylinder--we have 25,000 sheets an hour as
+the capacity of the press.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+SAMUEL COLT.
+
+
+Samuel Colt was born at Hartford, Connecticut, on the 19th of July,
+1814. He was descended from one of the original settlers of that city,
+and his father, who possessed some means, was a man of great energy,
+intelligence, and enterprise. The senior Colt began life as a merchant,
+and afterward became a manufacturer of woolen, cotton, and silk goods.
+The mother of our hero was the daughter of Major John Caldwell, a
+prominent banker of Hartford, and is said to have been a woman of
+superior character and fine mental attainments.
+
+It was within the power of the parents of Samuel Colt to give him a
+thorough education, and this they were anxious to do; but he was always
+so full of restless energy that he greatly preferred working in the
+factory to going to school. He loved to be where he could hear the busy
+looms at work, and see the play of the intricate machinery in the great
+building. In order to gratify him, his father placed him in his factory
+at the age of ten years, and there he remained for about three years,
+leaving it only at rare intervals and for short periods of time, which
+he passed in attendance upon school and working on a farm. When he was
+thirteen his father declared that he would not permit him to grow up
+without an education, and sent him to a boarding-school at Amherst,
+Massachusetts. He did not remain there long, for the spirit of adventure
+came over him with such force that he could not resist it. He ran away
+from school and shipped as a boy before the mast on a vessel bound for
+the East Indies. The ship was called the Coroo, and was commanded by
+Captain Spaulding.
+
+[Illustration: THE BOY COLT INVENTING THE REVOLVER.]
+
+The voyage was long, and the lad was subjected to great hardships, which
+soon convinced him that running away to sea was not as romantic in real
+life as in the books he had read, but his experience, though
+uncomfortable enough, failed to conquer his restless spirit. While at
+sea in the Coroo he had an abundance of leisure time for reflection, but
+instead of devoting it to meditating upon the folly of his course, he
+spent it in inventing a revolving pistol, a rough model of which he cut
+in wood with his jack-knife. This was the germ of the invention which
+afterward gave him such fame, and it is not a little singular that the
+conception of such a weapon should have come to a boy of fourteen.
+
+Returning home, he became an apprentice in his father's factory at
+Ware, Massachusetts. He was put into the dyeing and bleaching
+department, and was thoroughly trained in it by Mr. William T. Smith, a
+scientific man, and one of the best practical chemists in New England.
+Young Holt manifested a remarkable aptitude for chemistry, and when but
+a mere boy was known as one of the most successful and dexterous
+manipulators in New England.
+
+When he had reached his eighteenth year, the old spirit of restlessness
+came over him again, and he embarked in an unusually bold undertaking
+for one so young, in which, however, he was much favored by the
+circumstance that he was very much older in appearance than in reality,
+commonly passing for a full-grown man. Assuming the name of Dr. Coult,
+he traveled throughout the Union and British America, visiting nearly
+every town of two thousand inhabitants and over, lecturing upon
+chemistry, and illustrating his lectures with a series of skillful and
+highly popular experiments. His tour was entirely successful, and he
+realized in the two years over which it extended quite a handsome sum.
+The use which he made of the money thus acquired was characteristic of
+the man.
+
+He had never abandoned the design of a revolving pistol which he had
+conceived on board the Coroo, and he now set to work to perfect it,
+using the proceeds of his lectures to enable him to take out patents in
+this country and in Europe. He spent two years in working on his model,
+making improvements in it at every step, and by 1835 had brought it to
+such a state of excellence that he was enabled to apply for a patent in
+the United States. His application was successful. Before it was
+decided, however, he visited England and France, and patented his
+invention in those countries. Though now only twenty-one years old, he
+had given seven years of study and labor to his "revolver," and had
+brought it to a state of perfection which was far in advance of his
+early hopes.
+
+"At this time, and, indeed, for several years after, he was not aware
+that any person before himself had ever conceived the idea of a fire-arm
+with a rotating chambered breech. On a subsequent visit to Europe, while
+exploring the collection of fire-arms in the Tower of London and other
+repositories of weapons of war in England and on the continent, he found
+several guns having the chambered breech, but all were so constructed as
+to be of little practical value, being far more liable to explode
+prematurely and destroy the man who should use them than the objects at
+which they might be aimed. Unwilling, however, to seem to claim that
+which had been previously invented, he read before the Institution of
+Civil Engineers in England (of which he was the only American
+associate), in 1851, an elaborate paper on the subject, in which he
+described and illustrated, with appropriate drawings, the various early
+inventions of revolving fire-arms, and demonstrated the principles on
+which his were constructed."
+
+Having secured patents in the United States and in the principal
+countries of Europe, Mr. Colt exerted himself to organize a company for
+the manufacture of his revolver. He met with considerable opposition,
+for it was commonly asserted that his pistol would never be of any
+practical value. The wise ones said it was too complicated for general
+use, and that its adoption would be attended by the killing or maiming
+of the majority of those who used it. The inventor disregarded these
+birds of ill omen, however, and, persevering in his efforts, finally
+succeeded in securing the aid of some capitalists in New York. A company
+was formed in 1835, called the "Patent Arms Company," with a capital of
+$300,000, and an armory was established at Paterson, New Jersey. Mr.
+Colt then endeavored to induce the Government of the United States to
+adopt the arm in the military and naval service. Strange as it now
+seems, however, the officers of the army and navy were not disposed to
+regard the revolver with favor. They declared that the percussion cap
+was entirely unreliable, and that no weapon requiring it could be
+depended on with certainty; that there was great danger that two or more
+of the charges would explode at the same time; and that the arm was
+liable to get out of order very easily. They further protested that it
+was much more difficult to repair than the arms then in use, and that
+this alone rendered it unfit for adoption by the Government.
+Notwithstanding these objections were fully met by Mr. Colt, who
+explained carefully the principles of his weapon, it was two years
+before the Government consented to give the revolver a trial.
+
+In 1837, the Florida war raged with great violence, and the Seminoles,
+secure in their fastnesses in the Everglades, were enabled to bid
+defiance to all the efforts of the army of the United States. Their
+superior skill in the use of the rifle gave them an advantage which the
+bravery and determination of our troops could not overcome. In this
+emergency, the Government consented to make a trial of Colt's revolver.
+A regiment under Lieutenant-Colonel Harvey was armed with this weapon,
+and its success was so marked from the first that the Government
+promptly gave an order for more, and ended by making it the principal
+arm of the troops in Florida. The savages were astounded and
+disheartened at seeing the troops fire six or eight times without
+reloading; and when the war was brought to a close, as it soon was, it
+was plain to all that the revolver had played a decisive part in the
+struggle. It was a great triumph for Colonel Colt, but in the end proved
+a source of misfortune. The speedy termination of the war put an end to
+the demand for his weapon, and his business fell off so greatly that in
+1842 the Patent Arms Company was compelled to close its establishment
+and wind up its affairs.
+
+For five years none of the revolvers were manufactured, and, meanwhile,
+the stock which had been put in the market was entirely exhausted by the
+demand which had set in from Texas and the Indian frontier. In 1847 the
+war with Mexico began, and General Taylor, who had witnessed the
+performance of the revolver in Florida, was anxious to arm the Texan
+Rangers with that weapon. He sent Captain Walker, the commander of the
+Rangers, to Colonel Colt to purchase a supply. Walker was unsuccessful.
+Colt had parted with the last one that he possessed, and had not even a
+model to serve as a guide in making others. The Government now gave him
+an order for one thousand, which he agreed to make for $28,000; but
+there was still the difficulty caused by having no model to work by. In
+this dilemma, he advertised extensively for one of his old pistols, to
+serve as a model, but failing to procure one, was compelled to make a
+new model. This was really a fortunate circumstance, as he made several
+improvements in the weapon, which officers who had used it suggested to
+him, so that his weapons were very much better than the old ones. Having
+no factory of his own, Colonel Colt hired an armory at Whitneyville,
+near New Haven, where he produced the first thousand pistols ordered by
+the Government. These gave entire satisfaction, and further orders from
+the War Department came in rapidly. Colonel Colt now hired and fitted up
+larger and more complete workshops in Hartford, and began business on
+his own account, supplying promptly every order that was given him. The
+weapon proved most effective during the Mexican War, and the orders of
+the Government were sufficiently large to allow the inventor to reap a
+handsome profit from them, and lay the foundations of his subsequent
+business success.
+
+At the close of the war, Colonel Colt was apprehensive that the demand
+for his weapon would again drop off, as it had done after the Florida
+campaign; but he was agreeably disappointed. The success of the revolver
+in Mexico had made it generally and favorably known throughout the
+country, and there was now a steady and even a growing demand for it.
+The discovery of gold in California, which so quickly followed the
+cessation of hostilities, greatly stimulated this demand, for the most
+essential part of the gold seeker's outfit was a revolver; and the
+extraordinary emigration to Australia, which set in somewhat later,
+still further extended the market for his weapon. Convinced by this time
+that there would be no considerable falling off in his orders, Colonel
+Colt began to take steps to assure the permanency of his business.
+
+The experience of the American officers during the Mexican War enabled
+them to point out many improvements to the inventor, who promptly
+adopted them. This made his pistol almost a new weapon, and the most
+formidable small arm then in use. He obtained a new patent for it, as
+thus improved, and it was adopted by the Government as the regular arm
+of the army and navy, different sizes being made for each service. The
+Crimean and Indian wars, which followed soon after, brought the inventor
+large orders from the British Government, and during the next few years
+his weapon was formally introduced into the armies of the leading States
+of Europe.
+
+His success was so rapid that, as early as 1851, it became necessary to
+provide still more ample accommodations for his manufactory. The next
+year he began the execution of a plan, the magnitude of which caused
+many of his friends to tremble for his future prosperity. He resolved to
+build the largest and most perfect armory in the world, one which should
+enable him to manufacture his weapons with greater rapidity and nicety
+than had ever yet been possible.
+
+Just to the south of the Little or Mill River there was a piece of
+meadow land, about two hundred and fifty acres in extent, generally
+regarded as useless, in consequence of its being submerged every spring
+by the freshets in the river. Colonel Colt bought this meadow for a
+nominal sum, and, to the astonishment of the good people of Hartford,
+proceeded to surround it with a strong dike, or embankment. This
+embankment was two miles in length, one hundred and fifty feet wide at
+the base, from thirty to sixty feet wide at the top, and from ten to
+twenty-five feet high. Its strength was further increased by planting
+willows along the sides; and it was thoroughly tested just after its
+completion by a freshet of unusual severity. Having drained the meadow,
+Colonel Colt began the erection of his armory upon the land inclosed by
+the embankment. It was constructed of Portland stone, and consisted of
+three buildings--two long edifices, with a third connecting them in the
+center, the whole being in the form of the letter H. The front parallel
+was five hundred by sixty feet, the rear parallel five hundred by forty
+feet, and the central building two hundred and fifty by fifty feet--the
+front parallel and central building being three stories in height.
+Connected with these buildings were other smaller edifices for offices,
+warerooms, watchmen's houses, etc.
+
+In 1861, the demand for the arms had become so enormous that the armory
+was doubled in size, the new buildings being similar in style to the
+old. "In this establishment there is ample accommodation for the
+manufacture of one thousand fire-arms per day," which is more than the
+arsenals at Harper's Ferry and Springfield combined could turn out in
+the same time previous to the war. In 1861, Colt's armory turned out
+about one hundred and twenty thousand stand of arms, and in 1860, the
+two armories before mentioned made about thirty-five thousand between
+them. A portion of the armory at Hartford is devoted to the fabrication
+of the machinery invented by Colonel Colt for the manufacture of his
+pistols. This machinery is usually sold to all parties purchasing the
+right to manufacture the revolver. Colonel Colt supplied in this way a
+large part of the machinery used in the Government manufactory at
+Enfield, in England, and all of that used in the Imperial armory at
+Tulin, in Russia. Near the armory, and in the area inclosed by the dike,
+Colonel Colt erected a number of tasteful cottages for his workmen, and
+warehouses for other kinds of business. His entire expenditure upon his
+land and buildings here amounted to more than two million five hundred
+thousand dollars.
+
+"Among his other cares, the intellectual and social welfare of his
+numerous employés were not forgotten. Few mechanics are favored with as
+convenient residences as those he has erected for them; and a public
+hall, a library, courses of lectures, concerts, the organization of a
+fine band of music, formed entirely from his own workmen, to whom he
+presented a superb set of musical instruments, and of a military company
+of his operatives, provided by him with a tasteful uniform, and
+otherwise treated by him with great liberality, were among the methods
+by which he demonstrated his sympathy with the sons of toil."
+
+The Hartford armory is the largest and most complete in the world, in
+extent and perfection of machinery. All the articles needed with the
+revolver, such as the powder flask, balls, lubricator, bullet molds,
+cartridges, etc., are made here on a large scale. The establishment is a
+noble monument to the inventive genius and business capacity of its
+founder.
+
+In addition to his inventions of fire-arms, Colonel Colt invented a
+submarine battery, which was thoroughly tested by the officers of the
+United States Navy, and is said to be one of the most formidable engines
+for harbor defense ever known. He also invented a submarine telegraph
+cable, which he laid and operated with perfect success, in 1843, from
+Coney Island and Fire Island to the city of New York, and from the
+Merchants Exchange to the mouth of the harbor. His insulating material
+consisted of a combination of cotton yarn with asphaltum and beeswax;
+the whole was inclosed in a lead pipe. This was one of the most
+successful experiments of the early days of submarine telegraphy, and
+entitles Colonel Colt to a conspicuous place in the list of those who
+brought that science to perfection.
+
+After the permanent establishment of his business, in 1847 and 1848,
+Colonel Colt's success was rapid. He acquired a large fortune, and built
+an elegant and tasteful mansion in Hartford, where he resided,
+surrounded with all the luxuries of wealth and taste. In 1855, he
+married Miss Elizabeth Jarvis, daughter of the Rev. Dr. Jarvis, of
+Portland, Connecticut, a lady of great beauty and superior character and
+accomplishments. She still survives him.
+
+He repeatedly visited Europe after his settlement at Hartford, and as
+the excellence of his weapons had made his name famous the world over,
+he was the recipient of many attentions from the most distinguished
+soldiers of Europe, and even from some of the monarchs of the Old World.
+In 1856, being on a visit to Russia, with his family, he was invited
+with them to be present at the coronation of the Emperor Alexander II.
+He was decorated by nearly all the Governments of Europe, and by some of
+the Asiatic sovereigns, with orders of merit, diplomas, medals, and
+rings, in acknowledgment of the great services he had rendered to the
+world by his invention.
+
+He died, at his residence in Hartford, on the 10th of January, 1862, in
+the forty-eighth year of his age. The community of which he was a member
+lost in him one of its most enterprising and public-spirited citizens,
+and the country one of the best representatives of the American
+character it has ever produced.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+SAMUEL F.B. MORSE.
+
+
+Samuel Finley Breese Morse is the eldest son of the late Jedediah Morse,
+one of the most distinguished Presbyterian clergymen of New England. He
+was born at Charlestown, Massachusetts, on the 27th of April, 1791, was
+carefully educated in the common schools of his native town, and at an
+early age entered Yale College, where he graduated in 1810. He exhibited
+an early fondness for art as well as studies of a scientific character,
+and while a student at Yale displayed an especial aptness for chemistry
+and natural philosophy. Upon leaving college he decided to adopt the
+profession of an artist, and was sent abroad to study under the tuition
+of West and Copley and Allston.
+
+[Illustration: SAMUEL F.B. MORSE.]
+
+"When Allston was painting his 'Dead Man Restored to Life,' in London,"
+says Mr. Tuckerman, in his _Book of the Artists_, "he first modeled his
+figure in clay, and explained to Morse, who was then his pupil, the
+advantages resulting from a plan so frequently adopted by the old
+masters. His young countryman was at this time meditating his first
+composition--a dying Hercules--and proceeded at once to act upon this
+suggestion. Having prepared a model that exhibited the upper part of the
+body--which alone would be visible in the picture--he submitted it to
+Allston, who recognized so much truth in the anatomy and expression that
+he urgently advised its completion. After six weeks of careful labor,
+the statue was finished and sent to West for inspection. That venerable
+artist, upon entering the room, put on his spectacles, and as he walked
+around the model, carefully examining its details and general effect, a
+look of genuine satisfaction beamed from his face. He rang for an
+attendant and bade him call his son. 'Look here, Raphael,' he exclaimed,
+as the latter appeared; 'did I not always tell you that every painter
+could be a sculptor?' We may imagine the delight of the student at such
+commendation. The same day one of his fellow pupils called his attention
+to a notice issued by the Adelphi Society of Arts, offering a prize for
+the best single figure, to be modeled and sent to the rooms of the
+association within a certain period. The time fixed would expire in
+three days. Morse profited by the occasion, and placed his 'Dying
+Hercules' with the thirteen other specimens already entered. He was
+consequently invited to the meeting of the society on the evening when
+the decision was to be announced, and received from the hands of the
+Duke of Norfolk, the presiding officer, and in the presence of the
+foreign ambassadors, the gold medal. Perhaps no American ever started in
+the career of an artist under more flattering auspices; and we can not
+wonder that a beginning so successful encouraged the young painter to
+devote himself assiduously to study, with a view of returning to his own
+country fully prepared to illustrate the historical department of the
+art."
+
+Morse spent four years in Europe in close study, and was then obliged to
+return to America by lack of means to carry on his education in the Old
+World. He had not indeed reached the high degree of proficiency which he
+had hoped to obtain before returning home, but he was possessed of
+natural talents and acquired skill, which fairly entitled him to
+recognition as one of our leading artists. This recognition never came
+to him, however, and his artist life in this country was a series of
+sorrowful disappointments. He found no opportunity of devoting himself
+to the higher branches of his art, and was obliged to confine himself
+entirely to portrait painting as a means of livelihood. His artist
+career is thus referred to by Mr. Tuckerman:
+
+
+     "Morse went abroad under the care of Allston, and was the pupil of
+     West and Copley. Hence he is naturally regarded by a later
+     generation as the connecting bond that unites the present and the
+     past in the brief annals of our artist history. But his claim to
+     such recognition does not lie altogether in the fact that he was a
+     pioneer; it has been worthily evidenced by his constant devotion to
+     the great cause itself. Younger artists speak of him with affection
+     and respect, because he has ever been zealous in the promotion of a
+     taste for, and a study of, the fine arts. Having entered the field
+     at too early a period to realize the promise of his youth, and
+     driven by circumstances from the high aims he cherished,
+     misanthropy was never suffered to grow out of personal
+     disappointment. He gazed reverently upon the goal it was not
+     permitted him to reach, and ardently encouraged the spirit which he
+     felt was only to be developed when wealth and leisure had given his
+     countrymen opportunities to cultivate those tastes upon the
+     prevalence of which the advancement of his favorite pursuit
+     depends. When, after the failure of one of his elaborate projects,
+     he resolved to establish himself in New York, he was grieved to
+     find that many petty dissensions kept the artists from each other.
+     He made it his business to heal these wounds and reconcile the
+     animosities that thus retarded the progress of their common object.
+     He sought out and won the confidence of his isolated brothers, and
+     one evening invited them all to his room ostensibly to eat
+     strawberries and cream, but really to beguile them into something
+     like agreeable intercourse. He had experienced the good effect of a
+     drawing club at Charleston, where many of the members were
+     amateurs; and on the occasion referred to covered his table with
+     prints, and scattered inviting casts around the apartment. A very
+     pleasant evening was the result, a mutual understanding was
+     established, and weekly meetings unanimously agreed upon. This
+     auspicious gathering was the germ of the National Academy of
+     Design, of which Morse became the first president, and before which
+     he delivered the first course of lectures on the fine arts ever
+     given in this country."
+
+
+In 1829 Mr. Morse went abroad for the purpose of completing his art
+studies. He remained in Europe for more than three years, residing in
+the principal cities of the Continent. During his absence he was elected
+"Professor of the Literature of the Fine" in the University of the City
+of New York. He set out on his return home to accept this professorship
+in the autumn of 1832, sailing from Havre on board the packet-ship
+"Sully."
+
+As has been stated, he had manifested a decided fondness for Chemistry
+and Natural Philosophy while at Yale College, where he was a pupil of
+Professor Silliman in the former science, and of Professor Day in the
+latter, and after his departure from college he had devoted all his
+leisure time to the pursuit of these studies. So great was his fondness
+for them that some of his friends declared their belief that he ought to
+abandon art and devote himself to science. In 1826-27 he had delivered,
+at the Athenæum in New York, the course of fine-art lectures to which
+reference has been made, and on alternate nights of the same season
+Professor J. Freeman Dana had lectured upon electro-magnetism,
+illustrating his remarks with the first electro-magnet (on Sturgeon's
+principle) ever seen in this country. Morse and Dana had been intimate
+friends, and had often held long conversations upon the subject of
+magnetism, and the magnet referred to had at length been given to the
+former by Professor Torrey. The interest which he had thus conceived in
+this instrument had never diminished, and his investigations and studies
+had never ceased, so that at the time of his departure from France in
+the "Sully," in 1832, he was one of the best informed men upon the
+subject to be found in any country.
+
+Among his fellow-passengers were a number of persons of intelligence and
+cultivation, one of whom had but recently witnessed in Paris some highly
+interesting experiments with the electro-magnet, the object of which was
+to prove how readily the electric spark could be obtained from the
+magnet, and the rapidity with which it could be disseminated. To most of
+the passengers this relation was deeply interesting, but to all save one
+it was merely the recital of a curious experiment. That one exception
+was Mr. Morse. To him the development of this newly-discovered property
+of electricity was more than interesting. It showed him his true mission
+in life, the way to his true destiny. Art was not his proper field now,
+for however great his abilities as an artist, he was possessed of genius
+of a higher, more useful type, and it was henceforth his duty to employ
+it. He thought long and earnestly upon the subject which the words of
+his fellow-passenger had so freshly called up, pacing the deck under the
+silent stars, and rocked in his wakeful berth by the ocean whose terrors
+his genius was to tame, and whose vast depths his great invention was to
+set at naught. He had long been convinced that electricity was to
+furnish the means of rapid communication between distant points, of
+which the world was so much in need; and the experiments which his new
+acquaintance had witnessed in Paris removed from his mind the last doubt
+of the feasibility of the scheme. Being of an eminently practical
+character, he at once set to work to discover how this could be done,
+and succeeded so well that before the "Sully" reached New York he had
+conceived "not merely the idea of an electric telegraph, but of an
+electro-magnetic and chemical recording telegraph, substantially and
+essentially as it now exists," and had invented an alphabet of signs,
+the same in all important respects as that now in use. "The testimony to
+the paternity of the idea in Morse's mind, and to his acts and drawings
+on board the ship, is ample. His own testimony is corroborated by all
+the passengers (with a single exception), who testified with him before
+the courts, and was considered conclusive by the judges; and the date of
+1832 is therefore fixed by this evidence as the date of Morse's
+conception, and realization also--so far as the drawings could embody
+the conception--of the telegraph system which now bears his name."
+
+But though invented in 1832, it was not until 1835 (during which time he
+was engaged in the discharge of the duties of his professorship in the
+University of the City of New York) that he was enabled to complete his
+first recording instrument. This was but a poor, rude instrument, at the
+best, and was very far from being equal to his perfected invention. It
+embodied his idea, however, and was a good basis for subsequent
+improvements. By its aid he was able to send signals from a given point
+to the end of a wire half a mile in length, but as yet there was no
+means of receiving them back again from the other extremity. He
+continued to experiment on his invention, and made several improvements
+in it. It was plain from the first that he needed a duplicate of his
+instrument at the other end of his wire, but he was unable for a long
+time to have one made. At length he acquired the necessary funds, and
+in July, 1837, had a duplicate instrument constructed, and thus
+perfected his plan. His telegraph now worked to his entire satisfaction,
+and he could easily send his signals to the remote end of his line and
+receive replies in return, and answer signals sent from that terminus.
+Having brought it to a successful completion, he exhibited it to large
+audiences at the University of New York, in September, 1837. In October,
+1837, Professor Morse filed a caveat to secure his invention, but his
+patent was not obtained until 1840.
+
+He now entered upon that period of the inventor's life which has proved
+so disastrous to many, and so wearying and disheartening to all--the
+effort to bring his invention into general use. It was commonly believed
+that, although the invention was successful when used for such short
+distances as had been tried in the City of New York, it would fail when
+tested by longer lines. Morse was confident, however, that this was not
+the case, and in December, 1837, he went to Washington to solicit from
+the Government an appropriation for the construction of an experimental
+line from Washington City to Baltimore--a distance of forty miles. This
+line he declared would thoroughly test the practicability and utility of
+the telegraph. His petition was laid before Congress, and a committee
+appointed to consider it. He stated his plan to this body, and proved
+its practicability by actual experiments with his instruments.
+Considerable interest in the subject was thus aroused in Congress and
+throughout the country, but he derived no benefit from it. If men spoke
+of his telegraph, it was only to ridicule it, or to express their doubts
+of its success. This was especially the case in Congress, and it was
+very uncertain whether that body would sustain the report from the
+committee in favor of the invention. The session wore away in this
+manner, and at length ended without any action being taken in the
+matter.
+
+Having failed to secure the assistance of Congress, Professor Morse went
+to Europe in the spring of 1838, for the purpose of enlisting the aid of
+the governments there in bringing his invention into use. He was
+unsuccessful. In England a patent was refused him, and in France he
+merely obtained a worthless _brevet d'invention._ He tried several other
+countries, but was equally unsuccessful in all, and he returned home
+almost disheartened, but not entirely cast down. For four years he had
+to struggle hard for a living. He was very poor, and, as one of his
+friends has since declared, had literally "to coin his mind for bread."
+His sturdy independence of character would not allow him to accept
+assistance from any one, although there were friends ready and even
+anxious to help him in his troubles. Alone and manfully he fought his
+way through these dark days, still hopeful of success for his invention,
+and patiently seeking to improve it wherever opportunity presented
+itself. At length, in 1840, he received his long-delayed patent from the
+General Government, and, encouraged by this, determined to make another
+effort to bring his telegraph into use.
+
+He was not able to do so until the session of Congress of 1842-43, when
+he presented a second petition to that body, asking its aid in the
+construction of an experimental line between Baltimore and Washington.
+He had to encounter a great degree of skepticism and ridicule, with many
+other obstacles, not the least of which was the difficulty of meeting
+the expense of remaining in Washington and urging his invention upon the
+Government. Still he persevered, although it seemed to be hoping against
+hope, as the session drew near its close, and his scanty stock of money
+grew daily smaller. On the evening of the 3d of March, 1843, he
+returned from the Capitol to his lodgings utterly disheartened. It was
+the last night of the session, and nothing had been done in the matter
+of his petition. He sat up late into the night arranging his affairs so
+as to take his departure for home on the following day. It was useless
+to remain in Washington any longer. Congress would adjourn the next day,
+and his last hope of success had been shattered.
+
+On the morning of the 4th of March he came down to the breakfast-table
+gloomy and despondent. Taking up the morning journal, he ran over it
+listlessly. Suddenly his eye rested upon a paragraph which caused him to
+spring to his feet in complete amazement. It was an announcement that,
+at the very last hour of the session of the previous night, a bill had
+been passed by Congress appropriating the sum of thirty thousand dollars
+for the purpose of enabling Professor Morse to construct an experimental
+line of telegraph between Baltimore and Washington. He could scarcely
+believe it real, and, as soon as possible, hastened to the Capitol to
+seek authentic information. The statement was confirmed by the proper
+authorities, and Morse's dearest wish was realized. The hour of his
+triumph was at hand, and his long and patient waiting was rewarded at
+last.
+
+Work on the telegraph line was immediately begun, and carried on
+actively. At first, an insulated wire was buried under ground in a lead
+pipe, but this failing to give satisfaction, the wire was elevated upon
+poles. On the 27th of May, 1844, the line was completed, and the first
+trial of it made in the presence of the Government officials and many
+other distinguished men. Professor Morse was confident of success; but
+this occasion was a period of the most intense anxiety to him, for he
+knew that his entire future was staked upon the result of this hour.
+Among the company present to witness the trial was the Secretary of the
+Treasury, John C. Spencer. Although very much interested in the
+undertaking, he was entirely ignorant of the principles involved in it,
+and, therefore, very apprehensive of its failure. It was upon this
+occasion that he asked one of Professor Morse's assistants how large a
+bundle could be sent over the wires, and if the United States mail could
+not be sent in the same way.
+
+When all was in readiness, Professor Morse seated himself at the
+instrument, and sent his first message to Baltimore. An answer was
+promptly returned, and messages were sent and replies received with a
+rapidity and accuracy which placed the triumph of the invention beyond
+the possibility of doubt. Congratulations were showered upon the
+inventor, who received them as calmly as he had previously borne the
+scoffs of many of these same men. Yet his heart throbbed all the while
+with a brilliant triumph. Fame and fortune both rose proudly before him.
+He had won a great victory, and conferred a lasting benefit upon his
+race.
+
+The success of the experimental line brought Professor Morse numerous
+offers for the use of his invention. Telegraph companies were organized
+all over the country, and the stock issued by them was taken up as fast
+as offered. At the present day, not only the United States, but the
+whole world, is covered with telegraph lines. In July, 1862, just
+eighteen years after the completion of Morse's experimental line, it was
+estimated that the lines then in operation throughout the world amounted
+to an aggregate length of 150,000 miles. The Morse system is adopted on
+the principal lines of the United States, on all the lines of the
+Eastern continent, and exclusively on all the continental lines of
+Europe, "from the extreme Russian north to the Italian and Spanish
+south, eastward through the Turkish empire, south into Egypt and
+northern Africa, and through India, Australia, and parts of China."
+
+The rapid growth of the telegraph interest of the United States placed
+Professor Morse in the possession of a large fortune, which was greatly
+increased by the adoption of his invention in Europe. The countries
+which had refused him patents at first now did honor to his genius. Nor
+was he the only gainer by this. In France, especially, the benefits of
+his invention were great. The old system of semaphore telegraphs had
+been an annual expense to the government of that country of 1,100,000
+francs, but Morse's telegraph yielded to the French Government, in the
+first three years after its introduction, a total revenue of 6,000,000
+francs.
+
+Fortune was not Morse's only reward. Honors were showered upon him from
+all parts of the world. In 1848, his _alma mater_, Yale College,
+conferred on him the complimentary degree of LL.D., and since then he
+has been made a member of nearly all the American scientific and art
+academies. From European Governments and scientific and art associations
+he has received more honors than have ever fallen to the share of any
+other American. In 1848, he received from the Sultan of Turkey the
+decoration of the _Nishaun Iftiohar_ in diamonds, and subsequently gold
+medals of scientific merit were awarded him by the King of Prussia, the
+King of Würtemburg, and the Emperor of Austria. The gift of the King of
+Prussia was set in a massive gold snuff-box. In 1856, the Emperor
+Napoleon III gave him the Cross of Chevalier of the Legion of Honor; in
+1857, he received from the King of Denmark the Cross of Knight of the
+Danebrog; and in 1858, the Queen of Spain sent him the Cross of Knight
+Commander of the order of Isabella the Catholic. In 1859, a convention
+of the representatives of the various European powers met in Paris, at
+the instance of the Emperor Napoleon III, for the purpose of
+determining upon the best means of giving Professor Morse a collective
+testimonial. France, Russia, Sweden, Belgium, Holland, Austria,
+Sardinia, Tuscany, Turkey, and the Holy See were represented, and their
+deliberations resulted in the presentation to Professor Morse, in the
+name of their united governments, of the sum of 400,000 francs, as an
+honorary and personal reward for his labors. In 1856, the telegraph
+companies of Great Britain gave him a banquet in London, at which Mr.
+William Fothergill Corke, himself the distinguished inventor of a system
+of telegraphy, presided.
+
+Professor Morse is also the inventor of submarine telegraphy. In 1842,
+he laid the first submarine telegraph line ever put down, across the
+harbor of New York, and for this achievement received the gold medal of
+the American Institute. On the 10th of August, 1843, he addressed a
+communication to the Secretary of the Treasury, in which he avowed his
+belief that a telegraphic cable could and would be laid across the
+Atlantic ocean, for the purpose of connecting Europe and America. His
+words upon this occasion clearly prove that the idea of the Atlantic
+telegraph originated with him. They were as follows: "The practical
+inference from this law is, that a telegraphic communication on the
+electro-magnetic plan may with certainty be established across the
+Atlantic ocean. Startling as this may now seem, I am confident the time
+will come when this project will be realized."
+
+In February, 1854, Mr. Cyrus W. Field, of New York, ignorant of
+Professor Morse's views upon this subject, wrote to him to ask if he
+considered the working of a cable across the Atlantic practicable. The
+Professor at once sought an interview with Mr. Field, and assured him of
+his entire confidence in the undertaking. He entered heartily into Mr.
+Field's scheme, and rendered great aid in the noble enterprise which
+has been described elsewhere in these pages. He was present at each
+attempt to lay the cable, and participated in the final triumph by which
+his prediction, made twenty-three years previous, was verified.
+
+Professor Morse is now in his eightieth year. He resides during the
+winter in the city of New York, and passes his summers at his beautiful
+country seat near Poughkeepsie, on the Hudson. He bears his great honors
+with the same modesty which marked his early struggles, and is the
+center of a host of friends whom he has attached to himself by the
+tenderest ties. "Courage and patience have been his watchwords, and
+although the snows of time have bleached his hair, the same intelligence
+and enterprising spirit, the same urbane disposition that endeared him
+to the friends of his youth, still cause all who know him to rejoice in
+the honorable independence which his great invention has secured to his
+age."
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+PUBLISHERS.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+JAMES HARPER.
+
+
+Some years ago a gentleman having business with the great house of
+Harper & Brothers asked one of the employés of that establishment,
+"Which one is Harper, and which are the brothers?" He was answered,
+"Either one is Harper, and all the rest are the brothers." This reply
+fully sets forth the difficulty which must be experienced by any one
+attempting to write the story of the life of either member of this
+house. In such an undertaking it is very difficult to select "Harper,"
+and impossible to pass by the "Brothers." The interests of each were so
+thoroughly in harmony with those of all the others, and there was such
+perfect unanimity of sentiment existing between them with regard to
+their private as well as their public affairs, that it is hardly
+possible to separate them. Since, however, it is not consistent with the
+design of this work to relate the history of the "house," it is the
+purpose of the writer to select the eldest of the brothers as the
+representative of the group, and to offer him to the reader as a type of
+the American publisher.
+
+The grandfather of JAMES HARPER came to this country from England about
+the year 1740, and was one of the first of the American Methodists. His
+son Joseph was born in 1766. He married Elizabeth Kollyer, and settled
+at Newtown, on Long Island, as a farmer. It was here that James, their
+eldest child, was born, on the 13th of April, 1795. He grew up with a
+vigorous constitution, and the pure influences of his home, together
+with the sound religious training which he received from his parents,
+laid the foundation of those simple and steady habits for which he was
+noted through life. In the winter he attended the district school, and
+in the summer he worked on his father's farm. Thus his life passed away
+quietly and healthfully until he had completed his fifteenth year.
+
+It now became necessary for him to make some choice of a profession in
+life, and when the matter was presented to him he promptly decided to
+become a printer. His father cheerfully seconded his wishes, and he was
+accordingly apprenticed to a printer in New York. On the morning of his
+departure from home, when the family assembled for "prayers," his
+mother, who was a woman of superior character, took the father's place
+and led the worship. With trembling tones she commended her boy to the
+love and protection of the Saviour, and when the moment of leave-taking
+came she sent him forth into the world with the tender warning never to
+forget his home or his religious duties, or "that he had good blood in
+him."
+
+The change from his happy home to the place of "devil" in the printing
+office was one which tried the lad's fortitude to the utmost. His
+position was but little better than that of a menial, and not only was
+all the drudgery and disagreeable work put upon him, but he was made the
+sport of the workmen, some of whom used him even roughly. He bore it all
+good-naturedly, however, devoting himself to his trade with the
+determination to master it.
+
+The printing office in which he was employed was located near Franklin
+Square, then occupied by the best people of the city. Often, as young
+Harper passed across the square to and from his work, his rough "country
+clothes" drew upon him the ridicule of the children of these "goodly
+citizens." They teazed and insulted him, and sometimes carried their
+cruelty to the extremity of offering him bodily violence. He bore it
+patiently for a time, but at length determined to put a stop to it. He
+was physically the superior of any of his tormentors, and had put up
+with their conduct merely from his sincere desire to avoid a "street
+fight." In accordance with his new resolution, however, when one of them
+approached him one day and asked for his card, he set down a bucket
+which he was carrying, and, seizing the fellow, kicked him across the
+square, saying to him: "That's my card, take good care of it. When I am
+out of my time, and set up for myself, and you need employment, as you
+will, come to me, bring the card, and I will give you work." "Forty-one
+years after," says the writer upon whose authority this incident is
+related, "when Mr. Harper's establishment was known throughout all the
+land, after he had borne the highest municipal honors of the city, and
+had become one of our wealthiest men, the person who had received the
+card came to Mr. James Harper's establishment and asked employment,
+claiming it on the ground that he had kept the card given him forty-one
+years before."
+
+In a little while James was joined by his brother John, who was
+apprenticed to another printer in the city, and the two lads spent with
+each other much of their leisure time. Both worked hard. James soon
+became noted as the best pressman in the city, his great personal
+strength enabling him to work the old-fashioned hand-press with ease. It
+is said that if he disliked a fellow pressman and wished to be rid of
+him, he merely put forth his immense strength and outworked him. The
+man being unable to keep up with him, was obliged to retire.
+
+"The habits of his rural home followed him to the city. In an age when
+every body drank ardent spirits freely, he was strictly temperate, and
+the cold water disciple justified his faith by his works. With the
+cheerful constancy of the fathers of his church he quietly resisted the
+temptations of the city. He opened a prayer-meeting in the house of an
+old colored woman in Ann Street, and joined the John Street Methodist
+Church. Meanwhile, to their simple and thrifty method of life, James and
+his brother added work out of hours, so that when their apprenticeship
+was ended they had a little money saved."
+
+James' excellent habits and great skill as a workman had given entire
+satisfaction to his master during the whole period of his
+apprenticeship, and he informed the young man at the expiration of his
+indentures that he was willing to employ him again at fair wages. The
+young workman surprised him by telling him that he intended to set up
+for himself, and that all he wanted from him now was a certificate that
+he was fit to be trusted with a book. This was given, and James and his
+brother John took their little capital, which was increased by a loan of
+a few hundred dollars from their father, and renting a small room in
+Dover Street, set up an office on their own account, and began business
+under the firm name of J. & J. Harper. Their capital was small--less
+than the annual wages of some of their workmen to-day--but they were
+sustained by industry, determination, and high moral principle. When
+they began business, it was with a tacit agreement that each would
+endeavor to deserve the confidence of the other, and of their
+fellow-men. There was to be no evasion of principle, no sharp practice,
+in their house. They were resolved to make money, but to make it
+honestly. They would engage in no transaction which should cause a
+doubt of their integrity in the breast of the good mother who had sent
+them forth with her blessing.
+
+More than fifty years have passed away since then, and the Harpers have
+prospered steadily, and so greatly, too, that for many years their house
+has stood at the head of the publishing interest of America. Their
+career is an instructive one, giving an emphatic denial to the assertion
+we hear so often repeated, that an "over-honest" man can not make money
+in New York. Shut your ears to the calumny, young man, just staring out
+in life. "Honesty _is_ the best policy;" and it is only by scrupulous
+honesty that enduring success can be obtained. Trickery and sharp
+practice may earn wealth rapidly, but depend upon it they have their
+reward; for it is a curious fact in the history of man that wealth
+acquired by knavery rarely stays with its possessors for more than a
+generation, if so long.
+
+In starting out, the young Harpers printed books to order, attempting
+nothing at their own risk. They did a part of the composition and
+press-work with their own hands, and were, perhaps, the hardest workers
+in their establishment. Their first job was two thousand copies of
+Seneca's Morals, and was intrusted to them by Evert Duyckinck, a famous
+publisher of that day. The books were delivered in August, 1817, and
+gave entire satisfaction.
+
+Immediately after this, they undertook to stereotype an edition of the
+"Book of Common Prayer" for the Protestant Episcopal Church of New York,
+supposing that they would be able to make a fair profit at the rate at
+which they had agreed to do the work. It was their original intention to
+do the composition themselves, and have the stereotyping done at one of
+the large establishments of the city; but upon a closer investigation
+they found that this would cost them more than they had agreed to do the
+work for. In this dilemma, they resolved to learn the art of
+stereotyping themselves, and perform that portion of their contract on
+their own premises. It was a tedious undertaking; but they went through
+with it determinedly, and at the proper time delivered the books to the
+officials of the Episcopal Church. Their profit was not very large, but
+they had become stereotypers as well as printers, and had added a
+valuable department to their business. Further than this, their Prayer
+Book was pronounced the best piece of stereotyping that had ever been
+seen in the city, and won the young men congratulations on all sides.
+They next undertook twenty-five hundred copies of Mair's "Introduction
+to Latin," which they delivered in December, 1817.
+
+In April, 1818, they put forth their first venture on their own account.
+This consisted of five hundred copies of Locke's "Essay upon the Human
+Understanding." These were readily disposed of, and their success
+encouraged them to further efforts. They proceeded very cautiously, and
+it was for a long time their custom, when contemplating the publication
+of a book, and especially in the case of a reprint, to send to the
+leading booksellers in the large cities of the Union, and ascertain how
+many copies each one would take. Thus they pushed their way forward,
+seizing upon every favorable opportunity for the publication of original
+and foreign works. They rarely made an unsuccessful venture, and as each
+worked hard, and had constantly in view, above all other subjects, the
+success of the house, they gradually extended their business until they
+secured the foremost place among the publishers of the United States.
+
+Beginning with works of a dry, philosophic nature, the Harpers have
+extended their operations into every department of literature. Their
+catalogue of publications, issued in 1869, lies on the writer's table.
+It is a duodecimo volume of two hundred and ninety-six closely-printed
+pages, and embraces a list of several thousand volumes. In this list are
+histories, biographies, travels, adventures, novels, poems, educational
+works, works on science, art, philosophy, metaphysics--in short, books
+on every topic familiar to man. In the department of fiction, the
+success of this house has been remarkable. They have published between
+four and five hundred novels, in cloth and paper bindings, and the
+demand for their early publications of this kind is still sufficiently
+active to compel them to keep a stock always on hand. When they began to
+issue their Library of Select Novels, they did so with a distinct
+purpose in view. Novel-reading has always been a passion with Americans,
+but at the period referred to the best novels were published at such
+high prices that but few could afford to buy them. The masses were
+compelled to put up with the cheap, flashy stories which were so well
+known some years ago as "yellow covers." This style of fiction, now
+confined to the lowest class of readers, at that time found its way into
+almost every house, and the popular taste was at a very low ebb. The
+Harpers felt sure that by issuing the best, and only the best, English
+novels at a low price, they would not only meet a real want on the part
+of the public, but in great measure supersede the "yellow covers," with
+all their pernicious influences. The sequel proved the correctness of
+these views, and resulted in large profits to them.
+
+Soon after commencing business, James and John Harper received their
+younger brothers, Joseph Wesley and Fletcher, into their establishment
+as apprentices. These young men were taught the business thoroughly, and
+when they had completed their apprenticeship were admitted into the firm
+as partners, the former entering the firm in 1823, and the latter in
+1826. In 1825 the style of the firm was changed to Harper & Brothers,
+and the business was removed to 81 and 82 Cliff Street, on a portion of
+the site of the present establishment. It was then the largest
+printing-house in New York, employing fifty workmen and ten hand
+presses.
+
+In 1850; the Harpers decided to commence the publication of a monthly
+periodical, and, accordingly, in the summer of that year they issued the
+first number of "Harper's New Monthly Magazine," which, in point of
+popularity, stands today, after a career of twenty years, at the head of
+American magazines, and boasts of a circulation of 180,000 copies. The
+recognition of another want of the public led, in 1857, to the
+establishment of an illustrated newspaper, "Harper's Weekly," which has
+at present a circulation of 100,000 copies. In 1869 they began the
+publication of a new weekly fashion paper, called "the Bazaar," which
+has reached a circulation of 75,000 copies.
+
+From the first, the Harpers made their house a popular establishment.
+They sought public favor by legitimate means, and generally managed to
+retain it in the same way. From an early period in their history, their
+imprint on a book has been sufficient to secure its sale; and they have
+managed to identify themselves so thoroughly with American progress that
+the whole country feels an interest in their success. By studying the
+popular taste closely, they were enabled to publish in rapid succession
+works suited to it; and by fair and liberal dealings with authors they
+soon drew around them a corps of the best writers in the Union.
+
+Their success was rapid, and by the year 1853 their establishment had
+increased in size so much that it occupied "nine large contiguous
+buildings, full of costly machinery of every kind, with stores of plates
+and books." On the 10th of December of that year, a workman in one of
+the upper rooms carelessly threw a piece of lighted paper into what he
+supposed to be a pail of water, but which proved to be camphene. In a
+few minutes the building was in flames; all efforts to save it were in
+vain. The fire spread rapidly, and in a few hours the entire
+establishment was in ruins. The loss was one million of dollars, of
+which sum only about one-fourth was covered by insurance.
+
+It was a terrible blow, but James Harper and his brothers wasted no time
+in repining. Before the embers had ceased smoking they were taking
+active measures to reëstablish their business. From the wreck of their
+establishment they saved a part of the stereotype plates, which had been
+stored in the vaults, out of the way of the fire. They immediately
+rented Sheffield's paper warehouse, at the corner of Beckman and Gold
+Streets, and went to work with greater energy than ever. "Presses were
+employed in New York, Philadelphia, and Boston. Nothing was forgotten.
+The next monthly issue of the _Magazine_ had been made ready, and it was
+reproduced at the earliest moment. One regular contributor, then in
+Chicago, received the first news of the fire by a brief telegram: 'Copy
+destroyed. Send fresh copy immediately.' Before the ruins were cleared
+away the plans of the new buildings were ready, and the buildings
+themselves were rapidly finished."
+
+The new establishment of Harper & Brothers is one of the wonders of the
+great city in which it is located. The buildings are of iron and brick,
+and cover half an acre of ground. The establishment really consists of
+two buildings. The front building faces Franklin Square, and is a
+magnificent iron structure, painted white. Behind this is the second
+building, which fronts on Cliff Street. A court-yard intervenes between
+them, spanned by several bridges, connecting them. Each building is
+seven stories in height, and completely fire-proof.
+
+There are no openings in the floors for communication, but the various
+floors are connected by circular stairways of iron, placed outside the
+building. The front building, or that which faces Franklin Square, is
+used for storerooms, salesrooms, and the editorial and business offices
+of the establishment. In the rear building the various branches of the
+book manufacture are carried on. The author's manuscript is received
+here and sent back to him a complete book. Every portion of the work is
+done under the same roof, and it is well done. The building is filled
+with the most costly and complete machinery for saving time and labor.
+Besides the machinery used in other departments, it contains in its
+press-room forty-three Adams presses for book work, and five cylinder
+presses for printing the "Weekly" and the "Bazaar." About 600 persons,
+250 of whom are females, are employed in the establishment; and it is to
+the credit of both employers and employés that but few changes occur in
+this force. Many of the employés have been with the firm since its first
+entrance into business. The old man in charge of the vaults--a curiosity
+in his way--has been in the service of the house for fifty years, and to
+leave it now would, doubtless, break his heart; for none of the Harpers
+are as proud of their reputation as he is. The most perfect system
+reigns throughout every department, and every thing goes on promptly and
+in its proper place.
+
+"Of course," says a writer who many years has witnessed the operations
+of the house, "the development and organization of such a business were
+due not to one brother alone, but to the cooperation of all.... The
+business was to James, as to the others, the great central interest, but
+prosperity could not relax his steady character. He did not forget his
+early faith, nor the counsels and the habits of his Long Island home. He
+remained strictly a 'temperance man,' and his marvelous physical vigor
+was claimed by the temperance advocates as that of a cold-water mans He
+was long an official member of John-Street Church, and when he left his
+house in Rose Street, and went to live in the upper part of the city, he
+joined the congregation of St. Paul's Church, in the Fourth Avenue. But
+with all his fidelity to his ancestral faith, he cherished the largest
+charity, and by much experience of the world had learned to agree with
+his favorite apostle, James, that pure religion and undefiled, is to
+visit the fatherless and widows, and keep himself unspotted from the
+world. Thus, with all his conviction and devotion, there was nothing
+hard or fanatical in his feeling or conduct, and he held pleasant
+personal relations with men of every faith. Few men indulged in so
+little harsh criticism of others, and he expressed censure or
+disapprobation by humorous indirection rather than by open accusation.
+'We must not be too hard,' he was fond of saying, 'it is so difficult to
+know all the circumstances. If you should insist, for instance, that the
+use of tobacco is a sin, dear me! dear me!'
+
+"Mr. Harper was a Whig during the days of that party, and a natural
+conservative. But in politics he showed the same moderation and
+toleration. 'Don't try to drive men too roughly, my dear sir; it is much
+easier to draw than to push.' He took no conspicuous or active part in
+politics, except in 1844, when he was elected Mayor of the city. He was
+constantly asked to serve in Congress and in other public stations, but
+he steadily declined, saying, with a sly smile, that he preferred to
+stick to the business that he understood.
+
+"To that business his heart and life were given. Of late years its
+active cares had naturally fallen into the hands of his younger
+associates; but he never relaxed his interest and devotion. 'While I was
+dressing,' said a much younger neighbor, 'I used to see Mayor Harper
+coming out of his house to go down town, and felt ashamed of myself.
+Early at the office, he opened and looked over the mail, and during the
+hours of the morning he passed from one room to another, his shrewd eye
+seeing every thing, and measuring men and work, chatting and jesting as
+he went. But out of those shrewd eyes looked a kind and gentle heart. He
+knew by name the men and women and children employed in the various
+parts of the great buildings, interested himself in their family
+stories, and often won a confidence that was never betrayed. His
+charities, which were ample, were thus intelligent and effective, and
+poor men as well as women bent to kiss his calm, unchanged face as he
+lay in his coffin."
+
+To the very last, James Harper retained his physical and mental vigor,
+and was looked up to by all the members of the house as its brightest
+ornament. To the last, he was one of the best known and most honored
+citizens of the great metropolis. His great wealth had not ruffled the
+serenity of his spirit, or caused the slightest variation in his
+conduct. To the last he was the Christian merchant, citizen, and father,
+offering to his children in himself a noble model by which to shape
+their lives.
+
+It had been his custom at family prayers to ask of God protection from
+sudden death, but for some time before his death he ceased to do so. His
+family noticed this, and one of them asked his reason for the omission.
+He answered quietly, "The Lord knows best."
+
+On the 25th of March, 1869, he was at his usual post in his office, and
+after business hours, as was his habit, set out with his daughter for a
+drive in the Central Park, As he neared the Park the pole of his
+carriage broke suddenly, and the horses, becoming frightened, dashed off
+furiously, dragging the carriage after them. Mr. Harper and his
+daughter were both thrown violently upon the pavement. The latter was
+but slightly injured, but Mr. Harper was taken up insensible, and
+conveyed to St. Luke's Hospital, which was close at hand. He never
+regained consciousness, but lingered until fifteen minutes after seven
+on the evening of the 27th, when he expired, surrounded by all his
+family, excepting his wife, who had long been an invalid. His death was
+regarded as a calamity to the city, and all classes of the community
+united to do honor to his memory.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+JAMES T. FIELDS.
+
+
+The old "corner book-store" at the intersection of Washington and School
+Streets, in the city of Boston, is one of the most notable places in the
+New England metropolis. The memory of the oldest inhabitant can not
+recall a time when this corner was not devoted to its present uses; and
+around it, in the long years that have passed since the first book
+merchant first displayed his wares here, there have gathered a host of
+the most interesting, as well as the most brilliant, souvenirs of our
+literary history. Here were sold, in "the days that tried men's souls,"
+those stirring pamphlets that sounded the death-knell of British tyranny
+in the New World; and it was from this old corner that the tender songs
+of Longfellow, the weird conceptions of Hawthorne, the philosophic
+utterances of Emerson, first found their way to the hearts of the
+people.
+
+In 1884, the corner book-store was kept by Carter & Bendee, and was then
+the leading book-house in Boston. One morning in that year there entered
+the office of the proprietors a young lad from New Hampshire, who stated
+that he came to seek employment in their service. His bright,
+intelligent appearance was in his favor, scarcely less than the
+testimonials which he brought, vouching for his integrity and industry.
+His application was successful, and he entered the service of Messrs.
+Carter & Bendee, being given the lowest clerkship in the establishment
+and a salary barely sufficient to support him.
+
+This lad was JAMES T. FIELDS. He was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire,
+on the 30th of December, 1820. His father was a captain in the merchant
+service, and died when the boy was only four years old, leaving him to
+the care and guidance of one of the best of mothers. He was educated at
+the common schools of the city, and was thence transferred to the high
+school. He exhibited a remarkable fondness for study, and at the early
+age of thirteen graduated at the high school, taking the first honors of
+his class. He was regarded as one of the best classical scholars in the
+institution, and during his course took several prizes in Latin and
+Greek composition. Unusual abilities as a poet were also manifested very
+early, and when but twelve years old he wrote a poem in blank verse,
+which attracted the attention of the late Chief Justice Woodbury, then
+Governor of New Hampshire, who was so much surprised and gratified to
+find such talent in so young a boy, that he earnestly advised him to
+endeavor to complete his studies at Harvard University. This, indeed,
+was the chief desire of the boy, but a collegiate education required
+means which he could not command, and he was forced to go out into the
+world to seek his fortune. Having secured a good elementary education,
+however, he was resolved that he would not abandon his efforts to
+acquire knowledge. All his leisure time, after going to Boston to live,
+was devoted to reading and study. While neglecting no duty in his
+business, he gave the hours which most boys devote to amusement to
+severe mental labor. Young as he was, he was ambitious.
+
+He knew that knowledge was power, especially in the community in which
+he lived, and he was resolved that this power should be his. The result
+is plainly seen in his subsequent career. Although deprived of the
+advantages of a collegiate course, Mr. Fields has more than made up that
+deficiency by his faithful labors, and there are few men in New England
+to-day possessed of more varied and extensive mental accomplishments
+than he. Upon going to Boston he promptly identified himself with the
+Mercantile Library Association of that place, availing himself of its
+advantages, and exerting all the influence of which he was possessed to
+insure its success. When but eighteen years old, he was chosen to
+deliver an anniversary poem before the association. The value of the
+compliment will be better appreciated by the reader when it is stated
+that the oration upon that occasion was pronounced by Edward Everett.
+His industry in his business duties was great. He entered the house of
+Carter & Bendee with the determination to rise in it. He worked
+faithfully, and was the first at his post in the morning, and the last
+to leave it at night. When the style of the firm was changed to Allen &
+Ticknor, he was promoted to a more important place. He proved himself
+from the first one of the most valuable and trustworthy assistants in
+the house, and his merits were promptly recognized. From the lowest
+place in the house, he worked his way up steadily until he became the
+manager of the establishment. Each promotion brought with it an increase
+of salary. Knowing well that "a penny saved at present is a pound gained
+in future" to a young man striving to rise in the world, he practiced
+the most conscientious economy. He made himself thoroughly acquainted
+with every detail of the publishing trade; and although, of late years,
+he has had the supervision more especially of the literary department of
+his large business, there are few publishers in this country more
+intimate with the business and mechanical branches of their trade.
+
+In 1846, just twelve years after his entrance into the house, his
+clerkship came to an end, and he became a partner in the establishment,
+the style of the firm being Ticknor & Fields. He took an active share in
+the business; and while full credit must be given to Mr. Ticknor for the
+extraordinary success which the firm enjoyed, it can not be denied that
+Mr. Fields' share in this work was very great, and fully equal to that
+of his partner. His acknowledged literary abilities won him friends
+among the most gifted writers of the country, and these naturally sought
+his assistance in presenting their works to the world. Their friendship
+induced an intelligent confidence in his literary taste and mercantile
+integrity, and it was a decided gain for them to secure one so generally
+esteemed and trusted as their publisher. Young writers, still struggling
+for fame, felt that in submitting their works to his inspection they
+would receive the patient examination of not only a conscientious
+reader, but of one whose own literary abilities rendered him unusually
+competent for the task. The public generally learned to share this
+confidence in his literary judgment. And so it came to pass that the
+imprint of Ticknor & Fields was universally accepted as a sufficient
+guarantee of the excellence of any book, and rarely failed to insure its
+success. Naturally, the house was proud of this confidence, and it is
+pleasant to record that they have never abused it. There is, perhaps, no
+other publishing firm in the Union whose catalogue is so free from
+objectionable or worthless publications as that issued by this house.
+
+Gradually Messrs. Ticknor & Fields became the recognized publishers of a
+large number of the leading writers of this country and of Great
+Britain. In their catalogue we find the names of Longfellow, Bryant,
+Whittier, Holmes, Aldrich, Agassiz, Beecher, Alice Gary, Cummins, Dana,
+Emerson, Hawthorne, Gail Hamilton, Lowell, Parton, Saxe, Sprague, Stowe,
+Bayard Taylor, Thoreau, and Tuckerman, in American literature; and in
+English literature, the names of Browning, Dickens, George Eliot, Mrs.
+Jameson, Kingsley, Owen Meredith, Charles Reade, and Tennyson. With
+their English authors they maintain the pleasantest relations,
+recognizing their moral right to their works, and paying them a fair
+royalty upon the sales of their books. Of their relations with their
+American authors, a popular periodical says:
+
+"There are no business men more honorable or generous than the
+publishers of the United States, and especially honorable and
+considerate toward authors. The relation usually existing between author
+and publisher in the United States is that of a warm and lasting
+friendship, such as now animates and dignifies the intercourse between
+the literary men of New England and Messrs. Ticknor & Fields.... The
+relation, too, is one of a singular mutual trustfulness. The author
+receives his semi-annual account from the publisher with as ablute a
+faith in its correctness as though he had himself counted the volumes
+sold."
+
+In 1865, the firm removed from the old corner stand to a new and elegant
+establishment on Tremont Street, near the Common, and in the same year
+Mr. Howard Ticknor, who had succeeded his father in the business,
+withdrew from it. New partners were admitted, and the style of the firm
+became Fields, Osgood & Co., Mr. Fields still remaining at the head of
+the house.
+
+The new book store is one of the handsomest and most attractive in the
+country. The store proper is eighty feet deep by fifty feet wide, and is
+fitted up handsomely in hard wood.
+
+There is no paint about it, every piece of wood in use presenting its
+natural appearance. On the right in entering are the book shelves and
+counters, and on the opposite side the desks devoted to the magazine
+department. At the rear are the counting rooms and the private office of
+Mr. J.R. Osgood, the active business man of the concern. The second
+story is elegantly and tastefully fitted up. It contains the luxurious
+private office of Mr. Fields, in which are to be seen excellent
+likenesses of his two dearest friends, Longfellow and Dickens; and the
+parlor of the establishment, which is known as the Author's Room. This
+is a spacious and handsomely-appointed room, whose windows, overlooking
+the Common, command one of the prettiest views in New England. It is
+supplied with the leading periodicals of the day, and choice volumes of
+current literature. Here one may always find one or more of the "gifted
+few," whose names are familiar to the reader; and frequent reunions of
+the book-making fraternity are designed to be held here, under the
+genial auspices of the literary partner of the house.
+
+It is not often that men win success in both literature and mercantile
+life. Good authors have usually made very poor business managers, and
+_vice versa_; but the subject of this memoir, besides winning a great
+success as a merchant, and that in one of the most hazardous branches of
+mercantile life, has also won an enviable reputation as a man of
+letters. His poems have made him well known, both in this country and in
+England. Besides the poems recited before various literary associations,
+he has published two volumes of fugitive pieces. The first appeared in
+1843, while he was still a clerk, and the second in 1858. His poems
+abound in humor, pathos, and a delicate, beautiful fancy. One of his
+friends has said of him:
+
+"Little of the sad travail of the historic poet has Mr. Fields known.
+Of the emaciated face, the seedy garment, the collapsed purse, the
+dog-eared and often rejected manuscript, he has never known, save from
+well-authenticated tradition. His muse was born in sunshine, and has
+only been sprinkled with the tears of affection. Every effort has been
+cheered to the echo, and it is impossible for so genial a fellow to fail
+of an ample and approving audience for whatever may fall from his lip or
+pen."
+
+The following lines, from his second volume, will serve as a specimen of
+the "homely beauty" of Mr. Fields' muse, though it hardly sets forth all
+his powers:
+
+
+     She came among the gathering crowd
+       A maiden fair, without pretense,
+     And when they asked her humble name,
+       She whispered mildly, "Common Sense."
+
+     Her modest garb drew every eye,
+       Her ample cloak, her shoes of leather;
+     And when they sneered, she simply said,
+       "I dress according to the weather."
+
+     They argued long and reasoned loud,
+       In dubious Hindoo phrase mysterious;
+     While she, poor child, could not divine
+       Why girls so young should be so serious.
+
+     They knew the length of Plato's beard,
+       And how the scholars wrote in Laturn;
+     She studied authors not so deep,
+       And took the Bible for her pattern.
+
+     And so she said, "Excuse me, friends,
+       I feel all have their proper places,
+     And _Common Sense_ should stay at home
+       With cheerful hearts and smiling faces."
+
+
+Mr. Fields has been a frequent contributor to his own periodicals, his
+latest effort being a paper devoted to personal recollections of Charles
+Dickens, which was published in the "Atlantic Monthly" soon after the
+death of the great master.
+
+He has made several extended tours throughout Europe, where he has
+enjoyed social advantages rarely opened to travelers. One of his friends
+says that, in his first visit to the Old World, "he passed several
+months in England, Scotland, France, and Germany, visiting the principal
+places of interest, and forming most delightful and profitable
+intimacies with the most distinguished _literateurs_ of the day. He was
+a frequent guest at the well-known breakfasts of the great banker-poet
+of 'The Pleasures of Memory' and of 'Italy,' and listened or added his
+own contributions to the exuberant riches of the hour, when such
+visitors as Talfourd, Dickens, Moore, and Landor were the talkers." He
+also formed a warm friendship with Wordsworth, and, during his stay in
+Edinburgh, with Professor Wilson and De Quincey. The writings of the
+last-named author were published by Ticknor and Fields, in eighteen
+volumes, and were edited by Mr. Fields, at the author's own request.
+
+Mr. Fields is now in his fiftieth year, but shows no sign of age, save
+the whitening of his heavy, curling beard. He is still young and active
+in mind and body. He is of medium height, and well proportioned, with an
+erect carriage. Polished and courteous in manner, he is easily
+accessible to all. To young writers he is especially kind, and it is a
+matter of the truest pleasure to him to seek out and bring to notice
+genuine literary merit. He has a host of friends, and is widely popular
+with all classes.
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+EDITORS.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+JAMES GORDON BENNETT.
+
+
+James Gordon Bennett was born at New Mill, Keith, in Banffshire, on the
+north-eastern coast of Scotland, about the year 1800. His relatives were
+Roman Catholics, and he was brought up in a Catholic family of French
+origin. In his fourteenth year, having passed through the primary
+schools of his native place, he entered the Roman Catholic Seminary at
+Aberdeen, for the purpose of studying for the priesthood of that Church.
+During the two or three years which he passed here he was a close
+student, and acquired the basis of an excellent education.
+
+In 1817 he came into possession of a copy of Benjamin Franklin's
+autobiography, which had been recently published in Scotland. The
+perusal of this little book changed the course of his whole life. It
+induced him to abandon all thoughts of the priesthood, and to try his
+fortune in the New World, in which the great philosopher had succeeded
+so well before him. A little more than a year later he left Glasgow, and
+in May, 1819, being now about twenty years old, landed at Halifax, Nova
+Scotia. He had less than twenty-five dollars in his purse, knew no
+vocation save that of a book-keeper, and had not a friend on this side
+of the ocean.
+
+He secured a few pupils in Halifax, and gave lessons in book-keeping,
+but his profits were so small that he determined to reach the United
+States as soon as possible. Accordingly he made his way along the coast
+to Portland, Maine, where he took passage for Boston in a small
+schooner. He found great difficulty in procuring employment, for Boston
+then, as now, offered but few inducements to new-comers. He parted with
+his last penny, and was reduced to the most pressing want. For two whole
+days he went without food, and a third day would doubtless have been
+added to his fast had he not been fortunate enough to find a shilling on
+the Common, with which he procured the means of relieving his hunger. He
+now obtained a salesman's place in the bookstore of Messrs. Wells &
+Lilly, who, upon discovering his fitness for the place, transferred him
+to their printing-office as proof-reader; but his employers failed about
+two years after his connection with them began, and he was again thrown
+out of employment.
+
+From Boston he went, in 1822, to New York, where he obtained a situation
+on a newspaper. Soon after his arrival in the metropolis he was offered,
+by Mr. Wellington, the proprietor of the "Charleston (S.C.) Courier,"
+the position of translator from the Spanish, and general assistant. He
+accepted the offer, and at once repaired to Charleston. He remained
+there only a few months, however, and then returned to New York.
+
+He now proposed to open a "Permanent Commercial School," at 148 Fulton
+Street, and advertised to teach the usual branches "in the inductive
+method." His advertisement set forth that his pupils would be taught
+"reading, elocution, penmanship, and arithmetic; algebra; astronomy,
+history, and geography; moral philosophy, commercial law, and political
+economy; English grammar and composition, and, also, if required, the
+French and Spanish languages by natives of those countries." This
+elaborate scheme was never put into execution, as Mr. Bennett did not
+receive a sufficient number of applications to warrant him in opening
+the school. He next attempted a course of lectures on political economy
+at the old Dutch Church in Ann Street, but this enterprise was also a
+pecuniary failure. In 1825 he purchased the "New York Courier," a Sunday
+paper, but did not succeed with it. He continued to write for the press,
+principally for one or two papers, selling his articles where he could,
+and in 1826 formed a regular connection with the "National Advocate," a
+Democratic journal. To his duties in this position he applied himself
+with an energy and industry never surpassed, and rarely equaled, in his
+profession. He took an active part in politics, and wrote regularly and
+constantly for his paper, acquiring considerable reputation by his
+articles against the tariff and on banks and banking. He now embarked in
+journalism as the business of his life, and with the determination to
+succeed. In order to win success, he knew he must first learn to master
+himself. He neither smoked, drank, nor gambled. He indulged in no
+species of dissipation, but was temperate and prudent in all things. A
+few years later he said of himself, "I eat and drink to live, not live
+to eat and drink. Social glasses of wine are my aversion; public dinners
+are my abomination; all species of gormandizing my utter scorn and
+contempt. When I am hungry, I eat; when thirsty, drink. Wine or viands
+taken for society, or to stimulate conversation, tend only to
+dissipation, indolence, poverty, contempt, and death."
+
+In 1827 the "National Advocate" changed hands, and, under its new
+proprietors, supported John Quincy Adams for President. Mr. Bennett,
+being a supporter of Martin Van Buren, then a United States Senator,
+resigned his position on the paper, and soon after, in connection with
+the late M.M. Noah, established "The Enquirer," which warmly espoused
+the cause of Andrew Jackson in the Presidential canvass of 1828. About
+this time he became a recognized member of the Tammany Society.
+
+In the spring of 1828 he went to Washington, where he resided for some
+time as the correspondent of "The Enquirer." In looking through the
+library of Congress one day, he found an edition of Horace Walpole's
+letters, which he read with a keen relish. These suggested the idea of a
+series of similar letters to his own paper, and he at once put his plan
+into execution. His letters were written and published. They were
+"spicy," pleasant in style, full of gossip about the distinguished
+personages who thronged the capital every winter, and, withal, free from
+any offensive personality. They were read with eagerness, and widely
+copied by the press throughout the country. Yet he was poorly paid for
+them, and at a time when he had made a "real hit" was forced to labor
+hard for a bare subsistence. He did all kinds of literary work. He wrote
+editorials, letters, sketches, poetry, stories, police reports, in
+short, every thing that a newspaper had use for, and yet his earnings
+were barely more than sufficient to afford him a decent support.
+
+In 1829, the "Courier and Enquirer" were united under one management,
+and Mr. Bennett was made assistant editor, with James Watson Webb as his
+chief. In the autumn of that year he became associate editor. Says Mr.
+James Parton (by no means an ardent admirer of Mr. Bennett):
+
+"During the great days of the 'Courier and Enquirer,' from 1829 to 1832,
+when It was incomparably the best newspaper on the continent, James
+Gordon Bennett was its most efficient hand. It lost him in 1832, when
+the paper abandoned General Jackson and took up Nicholas Biddle, and in
+losing him lost its chance of retaining the supremacy among American
+newspapers to this day. We can truly say that at that time journalism,
+as a thing by itself and for itself, had no existence in the United
+States. Newspapers were mere appendages of party, and the darling object
+of each journal was to be recognized as the organ of the party it
+supported. As to the public, the great public, hungry for interesting
+news, no one thought of it. Forty years ago, in the city of New York, a
+copy of a newspaper could not be bought for money. If any one wished to
+see a newspaper, he had either to go to the office and subscribe, or
+repair to a bar-room and buy a glass of something to drink, or bribe a
+carrier to rob one of his customers. The circulation of the 'Courier and
+Enquirer' was considered something marvelous when it printed thirty-five
+hundred copies a day, and its business was thought immense when its
+daily advertising averaged fifty-five dollars. It is not very unusual
+for a newspaper now to receive for advertising, in one day, six hundred
+times that sum. Bennett, in the course of time, had a chance been given
+to him, would have made the 'Courier and Enquirer' powerful enough to
+cast off all party ties, and this he would have done merely by improving
+it as a vehicle of news. But he was kept down upon one of those
+ridiculous, tantalizing, corrupting salaries, which are a little more
+than a single man needs, but not enough for him to marry upon. This
+salary was increased by the proprietors giving him a small share in the
+small profits of the printing-office; so that, after fourteen years of
+hard labor and Scotch economy, he found himself, on leaving the great
+paper, a capitalist to the extent of a few hundred dollars. The chief
+editor of the paper which he now abandoned sometimes lost as much in a
+single evening at the card-table. It probably never occurred to him
+that this poor, ill-favored Scotchman was destined to destroy his paper
+and all the class of papers to which it belonged. Any one who examines a
+file of the 'Courier and Enquirer' of that time, and knows its interior
+circumstances, will see plainly enough that the possession of this man
+was the vital element in its prosperity. He alone knew the rudiments of
+his trade. He alone had the physical stamina, the indefatigable
+industry, the sleepless vigilance, the dexterity, tact, and audacity
+needful for keeping up a daily newspaper in the face of keen
+competition."
+
+Mr. Bennett left the "Courier and Enquirer" in 1832, the cause of his
+action being the desertion of General Jackson by that journal. He at
+once started a cheap partisan paper, called "The Globe," devoted to the
+interests of Jackson and Van Buren. It failed to receive the support of
+the Democratic party, however, and went down after a precarious
+existence of thirty days.
+
+Undismayed by this failure, Mr. Bennett removed to Philadelphia, and
+invested the remainder of his capital in a daily Democratic journal,
+called "The Pennsylvanian," of which he was the principal editor,
+laboring hard to win for it the assistance and support of the party. He
+had rendered good and admitted service to the Democracy, but was to
+experience the ingratitude for which political organizations are
+proverbial. He applied to Martin Van Buren and other prominent leaders
+of the party to aid him in securing a loan of twenty-five hundred
+dollars for two years, which sum would have enabled him to establish his
+paper on a paying basis, but the politicians turned deaf ears to his
+appeals, and his paper failed, after a brief and desperate struggle.
+
+He came back to New York about the beginning of 1835, a little sore
+from his unsuccessful battle with fate, but far from being dismayed or
+cast down. His failures to establish party organs had convinced him that
+success in journalism does not depend upon political favor, and he
+determined to make one more effort to build up a paper of his own, and
+this time one which should aim to please no party but the public. That
+there was need of an independent journal of this kind he felt sure, and
+he knew the people of the country well enough to be confident that if
+such a journal could be properly placed before them, it would succeed.
+The problem with him was how to get it properly before them. He had
+little or no money, and it required considerable capital to carry
+through the most insignificant effort of the kind. He made several
+efforts to inspire other persons with his confidence before he
+succeeded. One of these efforts Mr. Parton thus describes, in his _Life
+of Horace Greeley:_ "An incident connected with the job-office of
+Greeley & Co. is perhaps worth mentioning here. One James Gordon
+Bennett, a person then well known as a smart writer for the press, came
+to Horace Greeley, and, exhibiting a fifty-dollar bill and some other
+notes of smaller denominations as his cash capital, wanted him to join
+in setting up a new daily paper, 'The New York Herald.' Our hero
+declined the offer, but recommended James Gordon to apply to another
+printer, naming one, who he thought would like to share in such an
+enterprise. To him the editor of 'The Herald' did apply, and with
+success."
+
+The parties to whom Mr. Greeley referred Mr. Bennett were two young
+printers, whom he persuaded, after much painstaking, to print his paper
+and share with him its success or failure. He had about enough cash in
+hand to sustain the paper for ten days, after which it must make its own
+way. He proposed to make it cheap--to sell it at one penny per copy,
+and to make it meet the current wants of the day. The "Sun," a penny
+paper, was already in existence, and was paying well, and this
+encouraged Mr. Bennett to hope for success in his own enterprise.
+
+He rented a cellar in Wall Street, in which he established his office,
+and on the 6th of May, 1835, issued the first number of "The Morning
+Herald." His cellar was bare and poverty-stricken in appearance. It
+contained nothing but a desk made of boards laid upon flour barrels. On
+one end of this desk lay a pile of "Heralds" ready for purchasers, and
+at the other sat the proprietor writing his articles for his journal and
+managing his business. Says Mr. William Gowans, the famous Nassau-Street
+bookseller: "I remember to have entered the subterranean office of its
+editor early in its career, and purchased a single copy of the paper,
+for which I paid the sum of one cent United States currency. On this
+occasion the proprietor, editor, and vendor was seated at his desk,
+busily engaged in writing, and appeared to pay little or no attention to
+me as I entered. On making known my object in coming in, he requested me
+to put my money down on the counter and help myself to a paper, all this
+time he continuing his writing operations. The office was a single
+oblong underground room; its furniture consisted of a counter, which
+also served as a desk, constructed from two flour barrels, perhaps
+empty, standing apart from each other about four feet, with a single
+plank covering both; a chair, placed in the center, upon which sat the
+editor busy at his vocation, with an inkstand by his right hand; on the
+end nearest the door were placed the papers for sale."
+
+[Illustration: HOW THE "NEW YORK HERALD" BEGAN.]
+
+Standing on Broadway now, and looking at the marble palace from which
+the greatest and wealthiest newspaper in the Union sends forth its huge
+editions, one finds it hard to realize that just thirty-four years
+ago this great journal was born in a cellar, an obscure little penny
+sheet, with a poor man for its proprietor. Yet such was the beginning of
+"The New York Herald."
+
+The prospect was not a pleasant one to contemplate, but Mr. Bennett did
+not shrink from it. He knew that it was in him to succeed, and he meant
+to do it, no matter through what trials or vicissitudes his path to
+fortune lay. Those who heard his expressions of confidence shook their
+heads sagely, and said the young man's air-castles would soon fade away
+before the blighting breath of experience. Indeed, it did seem a
+hopeless struggle, the effort of this one poor man to raise his little
+penny sheet from its cellar to the position of "a power in the land." He
+was almost unknown. He could bring no support or patronage to his
+journal by the influence of his name, or by his large acquaintance. The
+old newspaper system, with its clogs and dead-weights, was still in
+force, and as for newsboys to hawk the new journal over the great city,
+they were a race not then in existence. He had to fight his battle with
+poverty alone and without friends, and he did fight it bravely. He was
+his own clerk, reporter, editor, and errand boy. He wrote all the
+articles that appeared in "The Herald," and many of the advertisements,
+and did all the work that was to be performed about his humble office.
+
+"The Herald" was a small sheet of four pages of four columns each.
+Nearly every line of it was fresh news. Quotations from other papers
+were scarce. Originality was then, as now, the motto of the
+establishment. Small as it was, the paper was attractive. The story that
+its first numbers were scurrilous and indecent is not true, as a
+reference to the old files of the journal will prove. They were of a
+character similar to that of "The Herald" of to-day, and were marked by
+the same industry, tact, and freshness, which make the paper to-day the
+most salable in the land.
+
+Says Mr. Parton: "The first numbers were filled with nonsense and gossip
+about the city of New York, to which his poverty confined him. He had no
+boat with which to board arriving ships, no share in the pony express
+from Washington, and no correspondents in other cities. All he could do
+was to catch the floating gossip, scandal, and folly of the town, and
+present as much of them every day as one man could get upon paper by
+sixteen hours' labor. He laughed at every thing and every body,--not
+excepting himself and his squint eye,--and though his jokes were not
+always good, they were generally good enough. People laughed, and were
+willing to expend a cent the next day to see what new folly the man
+would commit or relate. We all like to read about our own neighborhood;
+this paper gratified the propensity.
+
+"The man, we repeat, had really a vein of poetry in him, and the first
+numbers of 'The Herald' show it. He had occasion one day to mention that
+Broadway was about to be paved with wooden blocks. This was not a very
+promising subject for a poetical comment, but he added: 'When this is
+done, every vehicle will have to wear sleigh-bells, as in sleighing
+times, and Broadway will be so quiet that you can pay a compliment to a
+lady, in passing, and she will hear you.' This was nothing in itself;
+but here was a man wrestling with fate in a cellar, who could turn you
+out two hundred such paragraphs a week, the year round. Men can growl in
+a cellar; this man could laugh, and keep laughing, and make the floating
+population of a city laugh with him. It must be owned, too, that he had
+a little real insight into the nature of things around him--a little
+Scotch sense, as well as an inexhaustible fund of French vivacity.
+Alluding, once, to the 'hard money' cry by which the lying politicians
+of the day carried elections, he exploded that nonsense in two lines:
+'If a man gets the wearable or the eatable he wants, what cares he if he
+has gold or paper money?' He devoted two sentences to the Old School and
+New School Presbyterian controversy: 'Great trouble among the
+Presbyterians just now. The question is whether or not a man can do any
+thing toward saving his own soul.' He had also an article upon the
+Methodists, in which he said that the two religions nearest akin were
+the Methodist and the Roman Catholic. We should add to these trifling
+specimens the fact that he uniformly maintained, from 1835 to the crash
+of 1837, that the prosperity of the country was unreal, and would end in
+disaster."
+
+These things served the end for which they were intended. They brought
+"The Herald" conspicuously before the public. While engaged in them,
+the proprietor was anxiously planning the means of making his paper a
+great _newspaper_. He worked sixteen or seventeen hours each day. He
+rose before five o'clock in the morning, and gave three hours to writing
+his editorials and the witty paragraphs to which allusion has been made.
+At eight o'clock he went to his cellar, or "office," and was at his post
+there during the morning, selling his papers, receiving advertisements,
+and often writing them for those who were not able to prepare them,
+doing such other work as was necessary, and finishing his editorial
+labors. At one o'clock he went into Wall Street, gathering up financial
+news and interesting items of the street. He returned to his office at
+four o'clock, and remained there until six, when the business of the day
+was over. In the evening he went to the theater, a ball, concert, or
+some public gathering, to pick up fresh items for his paper.
+
+All this while, however, he was losing money. He had a heavy load to
+carry, and though he bore it unflinchingly and determinedly, the
+enterprise seemed doomed to failure for lack of funds. At this juncture,
+he resolved to make the financial news of the day a special feature of
+"The Herald." The monetary affairs of the country were in great
+confusion--a confusion which was but the prelude to the crash of 1837;
+and Wall Street was the vortex of the financial whirlpool whose eddies
+were troubling the whole land. Every body was anxious to get the first
+news from the street, and to get it as full and reliable as possible. At
+this time, too, our relations with France were exceedingly critical--a
+circumstance which served to increase the trouble in financial matters.
+Appreciating the anxiety which was generally felt on this subject, Mr.
+Bennett resolved to create a demand for "The Herald" among the business
+men of the country. On the 13th of June, 1835, just five weeks after the
+establishment of the paper, he printed his first money article--the
+first that ever appeared in an American newspaper. It was as follows:
+
+
+     COMMERCIAL.
+
+     Stocks yesterday maintained their prices during the session of the
+     Board, several going up. Utica went up 2 per cent.; the others
+     stationary. Large quantities were sold. After the Board adjourned
+     and the news from France was talked over, the fancy stocks
+     generally went down 1 to 1-1/2 per cent.; the other stocks quite
+     firm. A rally was made by the bulls in the evening under the trees,
+     but it did not succeed. There will be a great fight in the Board
+     to-day. The good people up town are anxious to know what the
+     brokers think of Mr. Livingston. We shall find out, and let them
+     know.
+
+     The cotton and flour markets rallied a little. The rise of cotton
+     in Liverpool drove it up here a cent or so. The last shippers will
+     make 2-1/2 per cent. Many are endeavoring to produce the impression
+     that there will be a war. If the impression prevails, naval stores
+     will go up a good deal. Every eye is outstretched for the
+     "Constitution." Hudson, of the Merchants News Room, says he will
+     hoist out the first flag. Gilpin, of the Exchange News Room, says
+     he will have her name down in his room one hour before his
+     competitor. The latter claims having beat Hudson yesterday by an
+     hour and ten minutes in chronicling the "England."
+
+
+The money article was a success, and appeared regularly in "The Herald"
+after this. It created a demand for the paper among the merchants, and
+increased its circulation so decidedly that at the end of the third
+month the daily receipts and expenditures balanced each other. Mr.
+Bennett now ventured to engage a cheap police reporter, which gave him
+more time to attend to other duties.
+
+The paper now seemed on the point of becoming a success, when it
+received a severe and unlooked-for blow. The printing-office was burned
+down, and the gentlemen who had printed "The Herald" were so much
+discouraged that they refused to renew their connection with it. Mr.
+Bennett knew that he was too near to success to abandon the enterprise,
+and courageously put his wits to work to devise means to carry on the
+paper. By the greatest and most indomitable exertions he managed to
+secure the means of going on with it, and bravely resumed its
+publication alone.
+
+A few months after this the "great fire" swept over New York, and laid
+nearly the whole business portion of the city in ashes. This was Mr.
+Bennett's opportunity. The other journals of the city devoted a brief
+portion of their space to general and ponderous descriptions of the
+catastrophe, but Mr. Bennett went among the ruins, note-book and pencil
+in hand, and gathered up the most minute particulars of the fire. He
+spent one-half of each day in this way, and the other half in writing
+out reports of what he thus learned. These reports he published in "The
+Herald." They were free, graphic, off-hand sketches of the fire and its
+consequences, and were so full and complete that they left little or
+nothing connected with the incidents they described to be added. Mr.
+Bennett also went to the expense of publishing a picture of the burning
+of the Merchants Exchange, and a map of the burnt district--a heavy
+expense for his little journal. The result proved the sagacity of his
+views. "The Herald" reports of the fire created a heavy demand for the
+paper, and its circulation increased rapidly. Yet its success was not
+assured.
+
+When his first year closed, Mr. Bennett found his paper still struggling
+for existence, but with a fair prospect of success, if it could follow
+up the "hit" it had made with its reports of the fire. About this time
+he received an offer from Dr. Benjamin Brandreth to advertise his pills
+in "The Herald," and a contract was at once concluded between them. The
+money thus paid to the paper was a considerable sum, and proved of the
+greatest assistance to it. All the money received was conscientiously
+expended in the purchase of news. The circulation grew larger as its
+news facilities increased, and for some years its proprietor expended
+all his profits in making the paper more attractive.
+
+At the close of the fifteenth month of its career Mr. Bennett increased
+the size of "The Herald," and raised the price of it to two cents per
+copy. His success was now assured, and continued to increase, as, under
+his able and far-seeing management, his paper expanded and enlarged its
+facilities for securing and making public the promptest and most
+reliable news of the day. Since that time his success has been
+unvarying. He has made "The Herald" the leading newspaper of the world,
+for no other journal upon the globe can compare with it in liberality
+and energy in the collection of news or in promptness and completeness
+of detail in laying it before the public. Its growth has been slow, but
+sure. Every step has been won by hard and conscientious labor, as well
+as by the force of real genius. Other journals have been compelled to
+follow the example of "The Herald," but none have surpassed it. It still
+stands at the head of the newspaper press of the world, and we are
+justified in believing that it will continue to stand there as long as
+its founder's hand controls it.
+
+Instead of the little penny sheet of thirty-four years ago, "The New
+York Herald" of to-day is an immense journal, generally of twelve, and
+often of sixteen pages of six columns each, making a total of from
+seventy-two to ninety-six closely printed columns of matter. From four
+to nine pages are filled with advertisements, classified with the utmost
+exactness. No reader has to search the paper over for the article or
+advertisement he wishes to see; each subject has its separate place,
+which can be discovered at a glance. Its advertisements have reference
+to every trade, profession, or calling known to civilized man, and are a
+faithful mirror of the busy age in which we live. Its news reports are
+the freshest, most complete, and most graphic of any American journal,
+and are collected at an expenditure of more time, care, and money than
+any other journal sees fit to lay out. It has its correspondents in all
+parts of the world, and when news is worth sending, these are instructed
+to spare no pains or expense in transmitting it at once. During the late
+war it had a small army of attachés in the field, and its reports were
+the most eagerly sought of all by the public. During the Abyssinian war
+its reporters and correspondents furnished the London press with
+reliable news _in advance of their own correspondents_. Any price is
+paid for news, for it is the chief wish of Mr. Bennett that "The Herald"
+shall be the first to chronicle the events of the day.
+
+"The Herald" office is now located at the corner of Broadway and Ann
+Street. The building, of white marble, is five stories in height, and
+is one of the handsomest in the country. It is the most complete
+newspaper establishment in existence. It has two cellars, in which are
+placed the two steam-engines that drive the huge presses which strike
+off the various editions of "The Herald." Every thing is in perfect
+order, and the machinery shines like polished gold and silver. The
+proprietor's eye is upon the whole establishment, and he is quick to
+notice and reprimand a fault. The street floor contains the business
+office of the journal, a magnificent room, gorgeous with marble,
+plate-glass, black walnut, and frescoes. The editorial rooms are above,
+and near them are the reporters' rooms. The top floor constitutes the
+finest composing room in the world, from which speaking-tubes and
+vertical railways communicate with all the other parts of the building.
+Every department of the paper has a responsible head, and the most rigid
+discipline prevails throughout the office. There are twelve editors,
+thirty-five reporters, and four hundred and fifty-three other employés,
+making a total force of five hundred men engaged upon "The Herald." The
+circulation of the various editions of the paper amounts to tens of
+thousands. It is to be found in every town of importance in the land,
+and its daily receipts from advertisements alone are counted by tens of
+thousands of dollars.
+
+Mr. Bennett rarely writes for the paper now. He assembles his editors in
+his council at noon every day, hears their suggestions, decides what
+topics shall be treated in the next day's issue, and assigns to each man
+the subject upon which he is to write. In his absence his place at the
+council-board is filled by his son, or by the managing editor. Mr.
+Bennett in this way exercises a close supervision over all the articles
+that appear in "The Herald," and imparts to them a considerable share of
+his personality.
+
+Mr. Bennett is married, and has two children, a son, James Gordon
+Bennett, jr., who will succeed his father in the ownership of "The
+Herald," and a daughter. He lives on Fifth Avenue at present, his
+favorite residence, at Washington Heights, having been recently
+destroyed by fire. He is said to be a courtly and agreeable host, and
+one who rarely fails to send away his visitors with a pleasant
+impression of himself.
+
+In person he is tall and firmly built, and walks with a dignified
+carriage. His head is large, and his features are prominent and
+irregular. He has a thoroughly Scotch face, and is cross-eyed. His
+forehead is broad and high, betokening great capacity and force of
+character. His expression is firm and somewhat cold--that of a man who
+has had a hard fight with fortune, and has conquered it. He is reserved
+in his manner to strangers, but always courteous and approachable. To
+his friends he is genial and unreserved. He is finely educated, and is
+said to be a man of excellent taste. His favorite studies are history
+and biography, and he still pursues them with a keen relish. His home is
+one of the most elegant in the city. He is proud of his success, as he
+may well be, and very proud of the fact that he owes it to himself
+alone. While he was building the new "Herald" office, he was waited on
+by the president of one of the national banks of the city, who said to
+him:
+
+"Mr. Bennett, we know that you are at great expense in erecting this
+building, besides carrying on your immense business. If you want any
+accommodation, you can have it at our bank."
+
+"Mr. ----," replied Mr. Bennett, "before I purchased the land, or began
+to build, I had on deposit two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in the
+Chemical Bank. There is not a dollar due on 'The Herald' building that
+I can not pay. I would pay off the mortgage to-morrow, if the owner
+would allow me to do so. When the building is opened, I shall not owe
+one dollar to any man, if I am allowed to pay. I owe nothing that I can
+not discharge in an hour. I have not touched one dollar of the money on
+deposit in the bank, and while that remains I need no accommodation."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+ROBERT BONNER.
+
+
+Robert Bonner was born in the north of Ireland, near the town of
+Londonderry, about the year 1824. He came to this country when a mere
+child, and was brought up in the State of Connecticut, where he received
+a good common-school education.
+
+Manifesting a decided liking for the printer's trade, he was placed at
+an early age in the office of the "Hartford Courant," where he took his
+first lessons in the art of setting type. He entered upon the business
+with the determination to learn it thoroughly, and when he had mastered
+his trade soon acquired the reputation of being the best workman in
+Hartford. As a compositor, he was not only neat and thorough, but was
+remarkably rapid as well. On one occasion, when the "Courant" was
+endeavoring to publish the "President's Message" in advance of all its
+competitors, Mr. Bonner is said to have worked at the rate of seventeen
+hundred ems an hour--a feat absolutely unparalleled.
+
+In 1844, he removed to New York and engaged in the office of a new
+journal, called the "American Republican," then lately established as
+the organ of the American party in that city, upon which he worked
+steadily during its brief career. His wages were small, and it was only
+by practicing the most rigid economy that he could live upon them.
+
+When the "Republican" suspended publication, Mr. Bonner was employed in
+the office of the "Evening Mirror," published by Morris, Willis &
+Fuller. Here he made himself so useful, that the business of getting up
+or displaying advertisements attractively was soon left entirely to him.
+His taste in this department was almost faultless, and the
+advertisements of the "Mirror" soon became noted for their neat and
+handsome appearance.
+
+At this time there was published in New York a small, struggling paper,
+exclusively mercantile in its character, called the "Merchants' Ledger."
+This paper was almost entirely dependent upon its advertising patronage,
+and the attention of its proprietor was called to Mr. Bonner's skill, as
+exhibited in the "Mirror," in displaying advertisements to the greatest
+advantage. The result was that Mr. Bonner received an offer, which he
+accepted, to take charge of this paper. This was the origin of his
+connection with the journal which he has since rendered famous.
+
+Being fond of composition, he made frequent contributions to the
+editorial columns of the paper, which were well received by the general
+public, but which seem to have aroused the petty jealousy of the
+proprietor of the "Ledger."
+
+Soon after forming his connection with the "Ledger," Mr. Bonner
+purchased it. From his boyhood up, it had been his ambition to become
+the proprietor of a journal which should be carried out upon his own
+ideas, and he believed that the "Ledger" offered him the best means of
+doing this. It was generally doubted at that time that a literary paper
+could flourish in New York--Boston and Philadelphia having apparently
+monopolized such enterprises. Mr. Bonner, however, had a clearer view
+of the matter, and was convinced from the first that the great center of
+American industry was the very best place for such an undertaking. He
+proceeded very cautiously at first, however, changing the character of
+his paper very gradually, from a commercial to a literary journal.
+
+At this time Fanny Fern was the great literary sensation of the day. She
+had just published her "Ruth Hall," which had attracted universal
+attention, and had given rise to a sharp discussion in the public press
+as to whether she was the sister of N.P. Willis or not. Mr. Bonner
+resolved to profit by her sudden notoriety, and requested her to write a
+story for the "Ledger," for which he offered to pay her twenty-five
+dollars per column. She declined the proposition. He then offered her
+fifty dollars a column, and, upon a second refusal, increased his offer
+to seventy-five dollars a column. She was pleased with the energy
+exhibited by Mr. Bonner, and flattered by his eagerness to secure her
+services, but declared that she would write no more for the newspapers.
+A little later Mr. Bonner was offered a story from her, about ten
+columns long. He at once accepted her proposition, and upon the receipt
+of the manuscript sent her a check for one thousand dollars.
+
+With this story began that wonderful career of the "Ledger" which seems
+more like a dream than hard reality. The story was double-leaded, and
+made to fill twenty columns of the paper. The "Ledger" itself was
+changed from its old style to its present form, and made a purely
+literary journal. The price paid for the story was unparalleled in the
+history of American journalism, and Mr. Bonner spread the announcement
+far and wide that he was publishing a serial for which he had given one
+hundred dollars a column. His advertisements were to be seen in almost
+every newspaper of respectable circulation throughout the Union. In form
+they were different from any that had preceded them. "Fanny Fern
+writes for the 'Ledger.'" "Buy the 'New York Ledger,'" etc., appeared,
+dozens of times repeated, until men were absolutely tired of seeing the
+announcement. Nothing had ever been brought to the public notice so
+prominently before. For awhile people were astonished at the audacious
+boldness of "the 'Ledger' man." Then they began to buy the paper. Since
+then the demand for it has steadily increased.
+
+The venture was successful. Fanny Fern's reputation and Mr. Bonner's
+energy and boldness made a demand for the "Ledger," at once, and out of
+the profits of the story for which he had paid such an unheard-of price
+Mr. Bonner purchased a handsome residence in New York City.
+
+There was as much originality as boldness in the peculiar style in which
+Mr. Bonner advertised his paper. As before stated, nothing of the kind
+had ever been seen before, and the novelty of the announcements at once
+attracted attention. It was seen that they were expensive also, and
+people naturally felt some curiosity to see for themselves the paper for
+which a man was willing to assume such risk and expense. These
+announcements sometimes covered a whole page of a daily paper; sometimes
+the page would be almost entirely blank, with only a few lines in each
+column containing the announcement. Again the advertisement would be the
+opening chapters of a story, which would be sure to excite the curiosity
+of the reader, and induce him to purchase the remaining chapters in the
+"Ledger" itself. It is to the credit of the "Ledger" that it rarely
+loses a subscriber. It has become a family paper.
+
+A recent writer thus refers to Mr. Bonner's early experience
+advertising:--
+
+
+"His mode of advertising was new, and it excited both astonishment and
+ridicule. His ruin was predicted over and over again. But as he paid as
+he went along, he alone would be the sufferer. He was assailed in
+various ways. Men sneered at his writers, as well as at the method in
+which he made them known. He had no competition. Just then it was
+announced that the Harpers were to put a first-class weekly into the
+field. The announcement was hailed with delight by many classes. Men who
+had been predicting Bonner's ruin from the start were anxious to see it
+accomplished. He had agents in all the leading cities in the land. These
+held a monopoly of the 'Ledger.' The book men and newspaper men, who
+were left out, were quite willing to have the 'Ledger' go under. The
+respectability and wealth of the house, its enterprise, with the class
+of writers it could secure, made the new paper a dangerous rival. Mr.
+Bonner concluded to make the first issue serviceable to himself. His
+paragraph advertising was considered sensational, and smacking of the
+charlatan. He resolved to make it respectable. He wrote half a column in
+sensational style: 'Buy Harper's Weekly!'--'Buy Harper's Weekly!'--'Buy
+Harper's Weekly!'--'Buy Harper's Weekly!'--and so on through the half
+column. Through his advertising agent he sent this advertisement to the
+'Herald,' 'Tribune,' and 'Times,' and paid for its insertion. Among the
+astonished readers of this 'Ledger' style of advertising were the quiet
+gentlemen who do business on Franklin Square. The community were
+astonished. 'The Harpers are waking up!' 'This is the Bonner style!'
+'This is the way the Ledger man does it!' were heard on all sides. The
+young Harpers were congratulated by the book men every-where on the
+enterprise with which they were pushing the new publication. They said
+nothing, and took the joke in good part. But it settled the
+respectability of the 'Ledger' style of advertising. It is now imitated
+by the leading publishers, insurance men, and most eminent dry goods
+men in the country. The sums spent by Mr. Bonner in advertising are
+perfectly marvelous. He never advertises unless he has something new to
+present to the public. He pays from five to twenty-five thousand dollars
+a week when he advertises."
+
+Mr. Bonner well knew that all his advertising would be worth nothing in
+the end unless he made the "Ledger" worthy of the public patronage, and
+he exerted himself from the first to secure the services of a corps of
+able and popular writers. In his arrangements with his contributors, he
+inaugurated a system of liberality and _justness_ which might well put
+his rivals to shame.
+
+When Mr. Everett was engaged in his noble effort to assist the ladies of
+the Mount Vernon Association in purchasing the home and tomb of
+Washington, Mr. Bonner proposed to him to write a series of papers for
+the "Ledger," for which he offered him ten thousand dollars, the money
+to be appropriated to the purchase of Mount Vernon. Mr. Everett accepted
+the offer, and the celebrated Mount Vernon Papers were the result. This
+was a far-sighted move on the part of Robert Bonner. Under ordinary
+circumstances Mr. Everett would probably have declined to "write for the
+'Ledger;'" but in a cause so worthy he could not refuse. The association
+of his name with the journal was of incalculable service to it, and the
+Mount Vernon Papers were to its proprietor his very best advertisement.
+(We are viewing the matter commercially.) The sale of the paper was
+wonderfully increased, and a golden harvest was reaped.
+
+This connection of Mr. Everett with the "Ledger" led to a warm personal
+friendship between himself and its proprietor, which was broken only by
+the statesman's death--a circumstance which speaks volumes for the
+private worth of the younger man. Mr. Everett continued to write for
+the paper after his Mount Vernon articles were finished, and is said to
+have earned over fifty thousand dollars by his able contributions to it.
+
+Soon after the completion of the Mount Vernon Papers, Mr. Bonner secured
+the services of George Bancroft, the historian, who contributed a series
+of admirable articles. Mr. Everett's connection with the "Ledger" had
+settled the question that it was not beneath the dignity of the most
+eminent literateur in the land to write for it. Fanny Fern's husband,
+Mr. James Parton, Alice and Phoebe Carey, Mrs. Southworth, and a host of
+others have helped, and still help, to fill its columns.
+
+But perhaps its most profitable contributor, next to Mr. Everett, is
+Henry Ward Beecher. That wonderful gift of the great preacher which
+enables him to touch so constantly upon subjects nearest to the hearts
+of most men, would make him invaluable to any paper. Mr. Bonner was
+struck with this after hearing him preach several times, and resolved to
+secure his services for the "Ledger." He proposed, to the parson's utter
+astonishment, that Mr. Beecher should write a story for the paper, and
+coupled it with the offer of a sum which many persons would consider a
+fortune. The field was utterly new to Mr. Beecher. Novel-writing was
+something he had never even thought of; but after some hesitation he
+accepted the offer. Soon after this, the publication of "Norwood" was
+begun in the columns of the "Ledger." The story was longer than was at
+first agreed upon, and Mr. Bonner paid its author a handsome sum in
+addition to the amount originally offered. The reward was princely, but
+not out of proportion to the service rendered by Mr. Beecher, who has
+won thousands of readers for the paper. Mr. Beecher still writes for the
+"Ledger," and there is no present prospect of his genial and useful
+contributions coming to a close.
+
+Mr. Bonner has made his paper useful to young people as well as those of
+maturer years. Each number contains articles, briefly and pointedly
+written, upon some popular and useful topic, so that thousands find not
+only amusement, but valuable hints and profitable instruction in the
+"Ledger."
+
+It was for a long time the custom of the newspaper press to indulge in
+sneers at the "Ledger," and, at the least, to treat it with a species of
+mild contempt. In order to stop this, its proprietor secured and
+published a series of articles from James Gordon Bennett of "The
+Herald," Henry J. Raymond of "The Times," and Horace Greeley of "The
+Tribune." By thus identifying the leading journalists of the country
+with his enterprise, he effectually silenced the scoffers, and with them
+the "lesser lights" of the press.
+
+It was said by some over-careful persons that the "Ledger" was not a
+proper paper for young persons to read. Mr. Bonner at once secured the
+services of the Presidents of the twelve principal colleges of the
+Union, and articles from each of these gentlemen appeared in his paper.
+After this it was not to be presumed that a journal which had among its
+contributors twelve such distinguished guides of youth could be unfit
+for any one to read.
+
+In order to make still less room for doubt on this subject, a series of
+articles by twelve distinguished clergymen soon after appeared in the
+"Ledger."
+
+Indeed, the greatest care is exercised to exclude from the columns of
+the paper any thing savoring in the least of impurity. It is the
+proprietor's aim to make it a help as well as an amusement to its
+readers, and his object is to elevate, not to degrade them.
+
+The "Ledger" now circulates over three hundred thousand copies per
+week, and is growing in the public favor. From the profits of his
+business Mr. Bonner has built a splendid marble publishing-house at the
+corner of William and Spruce Streets, in New York, from which the
+"Ledger" is now issued. It is one of the most complete establishments in
+the world, and is fitted up with every convenience necessary to the
+performance of the work upon the paper in the most perfect and
+expeditious manner. Mr. Bonner has created all this by his own energy
+and business talent, and richly deserves the success he enjoys. He
+resides in an elegant mansion in New York, and has also a handsome
+country seat at Morrisania, in Westchester County. He is married, and
+has a family.
+
+Mr. Bonner's great wealth has enabled him to achieve a distinction of
+another kind. He is famous as the owner of the finest horses in America.
+His stables are located in Twenty-seventh Street, and are the most
+perfect of their kind in this country. They contain every thing needed
+for the comfort and care of the horses, and the men employed in them are
+thoroughly skilled in their business. The horses are seven in number.
+First on the list is "Dexter," who has made his mile in the
+unprecedented time of 2:17-1/4 in harness, and 2:18 under the saddle. He
+is the fastest horse in the world. "Lantern," a splendid bay, fifteen
+and a half hands high, has made his mile in 2:20. "Pocahontas," the most
+perfectly formed horse in existence, has made her mile in 2:23; while
+"Peerless," a fine gray mare, has followed close on to her in 2:23-1/4.
+"Lady Palmer" has made two miles with a three hundred and fifty pound
+wagon and driver in 4:59, while her companion, "Flatbush Mare," has made
+a two-mile heat to a road wagon in 5:01-1/4. The "Auburn Horse," a large
+sorrel, sixteen and a half hands high, with four white feet and a white
+face, was declared by Hiram Woodruff to be the fastest horse he ever
+drove. These horses cost their owner over two hundred thousand dollars,
+and he would not part with them for double that sum. He does not race
+them for money, but drives them for his own use, and holds the reins
+himself.
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+LAWYERS.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+JOHN MARSHALL.
+
+
+To the writer's mind the most perfect specimen of the American lawyer
+known to our history was JOHN MARSHALL, of Virginia, Chief Justice of
+the United States. Profoundly learned in the law, irresistible in
+argument, and possessed of an eloquence which drew men in throngs to
+listen to him, he was also the soul of honor. Neither in his private nor
+professional life could the most malicious find an action open to
+reproach. Simple and earnest as a child, he was yet a tower of strength
+to the cause of justice. Occupying the highest place in our judiciary
+system, he was never unduly elated by his honors, and while gaining and
+awarding fortunes in the discharge of his professional duties, he was
+himself so true a man that the most brazen suitor would not have dared
+to offer him a bribe. He was in all things the simple, honest gentleman,
+the fearless advocate, the just judge, and the meek and earnest follower
+of his Saviour. Although belonging to a past generation, his story is
+presented here because I wish to offer to those who seek to follow him
+in his noble calling the purest and highest model our history affords.
+
+John Marshall was born in Fauquier County, Virginia, on the 24th of
+September, 1755. He was the oldest of a family of fifteen children, and
+was the son of Colonel Thomas Marshall, a planter of moderate fortune.
+During the Revolution, Colonel Marshall commanded a regiment of Virginia
+troops, and won considerable distinction at the battles of the Great
+Bridge, Germantown, Brandywine, and Monmouth. At the Brandywine the
+regiment bore the brunt of the attack of the British army, led by
+Cornwallis in person.
+
+John Marshall was born in a region so thinly settled as to be almost cut
+off from civilization. The people were plain and even rough in their
+habits, and the mode of life which prevailed in his native county
+doubtless did much to lay the foundation of those habits of simplicity
+for which he was noted in after life. Schools were almost unknown in
+this region, and such as were in operation were so rude in character
+that Colonel Marshall, who was a man of education and culture, decided
+not to attempt to train his children in them. Being unable to raise the
+means of sending them to better schools in other parts of the Colony, he
+determined to become their teacher himself, and applied himself to his
+task with a devotion which was signally rewarded by the brilliant career
+of his eldest son. He laid especial weight upon their acquiring a
+thorough knowledge of the English language and of history, and sought to
+cultivate in them a love for the poetry of their native tongue.
+Referring in after life to his father's devoted labors, Judge Marshall
+once said, with great feeling, "To him I owe the solid foundation of all
+my success in life." John Marshall did ample justice to his father's
+labors, and when only fourteen years old was thoroughly familiar with
+the writings of Shakespeare, Dryden, Milton, and Pope, and could repeat
+by heart nearly the whole of the "Essay on Man." These poets were always
+his favorites, and in mature life he would quote them with readiness and
+the keenest relish.
+
+He showed such marked talent that his father determined to make an
+effort to secure him a better education than his private labors could
+impart to him, and accordingly sent him for a year to the school of the
+Rev. Mr. Campbell, in Westmoreland County, where he received a good
+drilling in English and Latin. At this school began his acquaintance
+with James Monroe, who was then one of Mr. Campbell's pupils. Returning
+home at the end of the year, he continued his studies under the Rev. Mr.
+Thompson.
+
+He studied hard and was an industrious reader. Poetry and romance were
+his favorites, but he read history with the deepest interest. He was
+quiet and thoughtful in manner, and full of a dreamy, poetic enthusiasm.
+He loved to wander in the thick woods, and would pass many of his
+leisure hours in gazing at the beauties of nature. His constitution was
+a sound and vigorous one, and he was not only fond of manly and athletic
+sports, but excelled in them. He had no inclination toward dissipation,
+and the simple, healthful life of his home was calculated to develop his
+physical powers to the utmost. Colonel Marshall did not neglect the
+moral training of his children, but always impressed upon them the
+importance of Christianity as the basis of their characters, rearing
+them in that simple code of true gentility which was so dear to our
+fathers, but of which we of to-day are fast losing sight.
+
+Being destined for the bar, young Marshall began his legal studies at
+the age of eighteen, but in two years they were interrupted by the
+troubles with Great Britain, which terminated in open hostilities. A
+volunteer company was raised in the neighborhood, and John Marshall
+promptly attached himself to it. He took a prominent part in the
+questions of the day, and expressed himself boldly in favor of
+resistance. In 1775 Patrick Henry made his memorable appeal for
+volunteers to drive the Loyalist Governor, Lord Dunmore, out of
+Virginia. Three companies were immediately organized in Marshall's
+neighborhood. Among these were the famous "Culpepper Minute Men."
+Marshall's father was elected major of the regiment, and he himself was
+chosen a lieutenant in the Minute Men. The force at once hastened to the
+lower counties, and bore a conspicuous part in the battle of Great
+Bridge. In July, 1776, Marshall's company was assigned to the Eleventh
+Virginia Regiment of the Continental Army, and sent North. In May, 1777,
+he was made captain of his company. He participated in the fight at Iron
+Hill, and in the battles of Germantown, Brandywine, and Monmouth, and
+shared the sufferings of the army at the memorable encampment of Valley
+Forge. Until the close of 1779 he was constantly in active service. He
+was always patient, cheerful, and hopeful. In the severest hardships to
+which the army was exposed his spirits never sank. One of his comrades
+said that he did more than any other man to keep alive the hopes of the
+army during the terrible winter at Valley Forge, and another has
+declared that "the officers of the Virginia line appeared to idolize
+him." His conduct attracted the attention of Washington, who conceived a
+warm friendship for him, and Marshall, on his part, returned the
+friendship of his chief with a feeling almost of worship. Washington
+frequently appointed him deputy judge advocate during the winter.
+
+At the close of 1779 he went to Virginia to take command of a new corps
+which the Legislature was about to raise. The project remaining under
+discussion for some months, he passed the time in attendance upon a
+course of lectures on law, delivered by George Wythe, and a course of
+lectures on natural philosophy, delivered by the Rev. Dr. Madison,
+afterward Bishop of Virginia, at William and Mary College, in
+Williamsburg. The next summer he received his license to practice law.
+Meanwhile, the project for raising troops had taken the shape of a
+definite failure, and he now set out to rejoin the army. Too poor to pay
+his passage to the North, he walked the entire distance from
+Williamsburg, Virginia, to Philadelphia, upon reaching which city he was
+so travel-worn and shabby in appearance, that the landlord of the hotel
+at which he wished to stop refused him admittance. He joined the army in
+due time, and remained with it until the spring of 1781, when he
+resigned his commission, a few months before the close of the war.
+
+With the return of peace the courts were again thrown open, and Marshall
+began that brilliant legal career which has made him one of the most
+famous men in our history. His success was marked from the first, as his
+professional talents were such as to make themselves felt anywhere, and
+his personal popularity aided him greatly in overcoming the difficulties
+which lie in the path of a young aspirant to legal honors. In 1782, the
+people of Fauquier elected him to the House of Delegates in the General
+Assembly of the Commonwealth, and in the fall of that year he was
+appointed one of the Council of State. In January, 1783, he was married
+to Miss Mary Willis Ambler, with whom he lived in the most perfect
+happiness for over fifty years. His bride was a woman of great personal
+beauty, and in every respect a fitting helpmate for such a man--than
+which no higher tribute could be paid her. About this time, Mr. Marshall
+decided not to return to Fauquier, but to locate himself permanently in
+Richmond, where he could enjoy many more professional advantages. In
+spite of this, however, his old friends in Fauquier re-elected him to
+the Legislature, and in 1787 he sat in that body as representative from
+the county of Henrico.
+
+He was very plain and even careless in his personal attire, and this
+often led to amusing occurrences. Soon after he began the practice of
+his profession in Richmond, he was strolling through the streets one
+morning, dressed in a plain linen suit and a straw hat. The hat was held
+under his arm, and was filled with cherries, of which he ate as he
+walked. In passing the Eagle Hotel, he stopped to exchange salutations
+with the landlord, and then continued his walk. Sitting near the
+landlord, on the hotel porch, was a Mr. P----, an elderly gentleman from
+the country, who had come to the city to engage counsel in an important
+case which was to be tried in a day or two. The landlord referred him to
+Marshall as the best lawyer in the city; but the old gentleman was so
+much prejudiced against the young advocate, by his careless appearance,
+that he refused to engage him. On entering court, Mr. P---- was a second
+time referred to Marshall by the clerk of the court, and a second time
+he refused to employ him. At this moment entered Mr. V----, a
+venerable-looking legal gentleman, in a powdered wig and black coat,
+whose dignified appearance produced such an impression on Mr. P---- that
+he engaged him at once. In the first case which came on, Marshall and
+Mr. V---- each addressed the court. "The vast inferiority of his
+advocate was so apparent that at the close of the case Mr. P----
+introduced himself to young Marshall, frankly stated the prejudice which
+had caused him, in opposition to advice, to employ Mr. V----; that he
+extremely regretted the error, but knew not how to remedy it. He had
+come to the city with one hundred dollars as his lawyer's fee, which he
+had paid, and had but five left, which, if Marshall chose, he would
+cheerfully give him for assisting in the case. Marshall, pleased with
+the incident, accepted the offer, not, however, without passing a sly
+joke at the _omnipotence_ of a powdered wig and black coat."
+
+In 1788, Mr. Marshall was elected to the Virginia Convention which met
+in June of that year for the purpose of considering the question of the
+adoption or rejection of the Federal Constitution. The debates in this
+body were among the most brilliant in history. Marshall took a decided
+stand in favor of the Constitution, and is believed to have done more
+than any other man, save Mr. Madison, to secure its adoption. He added
+greatly to his reputation by his labors in this body, and the close of
+the session found his practice very much enlarged. He was anxious to
+devote himself entirely to his professional duties; but he was urged so
+vehemently to accept a seat in the Legislature from the city of
+Richmond, that he was forced to consent. He sat in that body from 1789
+to 1791, and in those sessions which were marked by the brilliant
+contests between the Federalists and Republicans took a decided stand
+with the former, and sustained his position by an array of arguments
+against which his opponents were powerless. The struggle was one of
+great bitterness, but Marshall, although victorious in it, made no
+enemies among his antagonists.
+
+For the next three years he devoted himself industriously to his
+profession, appearing in public only to defend with masterly eloquence
+the course of President Washington with reference to the insolent
+conduct of Citizen Genet, the French Agent. In 1795, he was again
+elected to the Legislature, "not only without his approbation, but
+against his known wishes;" but yielding to the desires of his friends he
+took his seat in that body. The great question of the day was the
+adoption of "Jay's Treaty" with Great Britain. In Virginia, a bitter
+opposition assailed the treaty, and the entire State rang with
+denunciations of it. Even the influence of Washington was powerless to
+stay the tide of popular passion excited against the treaty and those
+who upheld it. Meetings were held in Richmond, and the treaty was
+fiercely denounced. Marshall now came to the rescue, and before a
+meeting of the citizens of that place made such an unanswerable argument
+in favor of the treaty, that the men who had been foremost in assailing
+it now united in the adoption of resolutions indorsing the policy of the
+Administration. In the Legislature his efforts were equally successful,
+and the opponents of the Administration were forced to abandon their
+constitutional objections to the treaty, and to content themselves with
+a simple denial of the expediency of the measure at that time. President
+Washington attached so much importance to these services that he offered
+to his old friend and comrade the position of Attorney-General of the
+United States, but Marshall declined the offer, as he wished to devote
+himself to his practice, which had now become very lucrative. He
+continued to sit in the Legislature, which did not interfere with his
+private business, and remained the constant and vigilant friend of
+Washington's Administration. In 1796, he was offered the post of
+Minister to France, as Mr. Monroe's successor, but he declined it for
+the same reason which had made him refuse the Attorney-Generalship. In
+1797, when the offer was repeated, this time by President Adams,
+Marshall yielded to the entreaties of Washington, and went to France
+with Pinckney and Gerry, as Envoy Extraordinary. The object of the
+mission was to remove the obstructions placed by France in the way of
+American commerce. The Envoys were unsuccessful, but a correspondence
+took place between Marshall and Talleyrand, which was a source of great
+satisfaction to American publicists, and raised Marshall still higher
+in their esteem and confidence. Upon his return home in 1798, he was
+given a public reception in New York by the citizens, and a public
+dinner by the two Houses of Congress, "as an evidence of affection for
+his person, and of their grateful approbation of the patriotic firmness
+with which he had sustained the dignity of his country during his
+important mission." He subsequently took a prominent part in support of
+the measures of retaliation directed against France by the
+Administration, which were sharply assailed by the opposition. He
+resumed his practice in Richmond, but was again drawn from it by a
+message from Washington, who requested him to visit him at Mt. Vernon.
+He did so, and the result was that he yielded to the solicitations of
+his old chieftain, and consented to accept a seat in Congress. He was
+elected to the Lower House of that body in 1799. During the canvass,
+President Adams offered him a seat in the Supreme Court of the United
+States, but he declined it.
+
+His career in Congress was brief, but brilliant. The Federalist party
+was hard pressed by the Republicans, and he promptly arrayed himself on
+the side of the former, as the champion of the Administration of John
+Adams. The excitement over the "Alien and Sedition Laws" was intense,
+but he boldly and triumphantly defended the course of the
+Administration. Mr. Binney says of him that, in the debates on the great
+constitutional questions, "he was confessedly the first man in the
+House. When he discussed them, he exhausted them; nothing more remained
+to be said; and the impression of his argument effaced that of every one
+else."
+
+His great triumph was his speech in the Jonathan Robbins affair. Robbins
+had committed a murder on board an English ship-of-war, and had sought
+refuge from punishment in the United States. In accordance with one of
+the provisions of Jay's Treaty, his surrender had been demanded by the
+British Minister, on the ground that he was a British subject, and he
+had been surrendered by President Adams. The opposition in Congress made
+this act a pretext for a famous assault upon the Administration, and a
+resolution was introduced into the House of Representatives by Mr.
+Livingston, censuring the President for his course in the matter. This
+resolution produced an extended debate in the House, in the course of
+which Marshall defended the President in a speech of great force and
+eloquence. Judge Story has said of this speech, that "it was _rêponse
+sans réplique_--an answer so irresistible that it admitted of no reply.
+It silenced opposition, and settled then and forever the points of
+national law upon which the controversy hinged."
+
+In May, 1800, Mr. Adams offered Marshall a seat in his Cabinet as
+Secretary of War, but before he could enter upon the duties of that
+office he was made Secretary of State, in which capacity he acted for a
+short while, conducting several important negotiations during that time,
+and leaving behind him several of the most magnificent state papers to
+be found in our archives. During his occupancy of this position, it
+became necessary to appoint a Chief Justice of the United States, and
+Marshall took advantage of the occasion to urge upon the President the
+propriety of tendering the place to a distinguished gentleman who had
+been a faithful friend to the Administration; but Mr. Adams quietly
+informed him that he had made up his mind to confer the honor upon the
+man best suited to it, and that he had sent to the Senate the name of
+John Marshall, of Virginia. This appointment, which came to him entirely
+unsolicited, was made on the 31st of January, 1801, and was unanimously
+confirmed by the Senate.
+
+He held the position of Chief Justice for more than thirty-four years,
+and this period is justly regarded as the most brilliant portion of the
+history of our highest court, a court of which a famous judge has said:
+
+"The decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States have raised the
+renown of the country not less than they have confirmed the
+Constitution. In all parts of the world its judgments are spoken of with
+respect. Its adjudications of prize law are a code for all future time.
+Upon commercial law it has brought us nearly to one system, befitting
+the probity of a great commercial nation. Over its whole path, learning
+and intelligence and integrity have shed their combined luster."
+
+Although holding so high a post in the General Government, he continued
+to take a warm interest in the affairs of his native State, and in 1828
+was a delegate to the Charlottesville Convention, which met for the
+purpose of recommending to the Legislature a system of internal
+improvements best suited to the needs of the State. In 1829, he was a
+member of the Convention which met in Richmond for the purpose of
+revising the Constitution of the State. Though now quite old and feeble,
+he took an active part in the debates of the Convention, and was mainly
+instrumental in effecting the settlement of the disputes between the
+eastern and western sections of the State.
+
+In 1805, Judge Marshall published, in five volumes, his "Life of
+Washington." The first volume was devoted to the history of the
+Colonies, from their settlement to the commencement of the Revolution.
+This work has always held the first position in our Revolutionary
+annals, and won for its author a place in the front rank of American
+writers. It is, all in all, the best biography of Washington in
+existence.
+
+Sterling honesty was exemplified in Judge Marshall's whole career. His
+word was indeed as good as his bond. He would never argue in behalf of a
+cause which he had reason to think unjust, and he scorned to take a
+legal advantage at the expense of moral honesty. He once indorsed a
+bond to the amount of several thousand dollars. The drawer failed, and
+Marshall paid it, although he knew he could avoid it, as the holder had
+forfeited his claim in law by requiring more than legal interest.
+
+He was generous to a fault. Once, as he passed through Culpepper County,
+he met with Captain S----, one of his old comrades in the Revolution. In
+the course of the conversation which ensued, S---- told him that his
+estate was burdened with a mortgage for $3,000, which was about to fall
+due, and that, as he was unable to pay it, he saw nothing but ruin in
+store for him. At his departure, Marshall handed a note to the servant
+who brought his horse to the door, and told him to give it to his
+master. This was done as Marshall was riding away, and upon opening the
+note Mr. S--- found that it contained a check for the amount of the
+mortgage. Mounting his horse, he soon overtook Marshall, and, though he
+thanked him warmly for his generosity, refused to accept it. Marshall
+strenuously urged its acceptance, but the other persistently refused.
+Finally, the former suggested a compromise. Marshall took up the
+mortgage, and thus satisfied the first claim, but as his friend was
+never prosperous, he never asked for the payment of the debt.
+
+William Wirt has left us the following description of his personal
+appearance: "He is tall, meager, emaciated; his muscles relaxed, and his
+joints so loosely connected as not only to disqualify him apparently for
+any vigorous exertion of body, but to destroy every thing like harmony
+in his air or movements. Indeed, in his whole appearance and
+demeanor,--dress, attitudes, gesture, sitting, standing, or walking,--he
+is as far removed from the idolized graces of Lord Chesterfield as any
+other gentleman on earth."
+
+"In spite, however, of this ungainly person," says a writer, "no one
+was a greater social favorite than the Chief Justice. The people of
+Richmond regarded his eccentric figure with strong personal affection as
+well as respect. The black eyes, under their bushy gray brows, beamed
+with good nature, and the lips were habitually smiling. The courtesy of
+the Judge was one of his most beautiful traits. It was the spontaneous
+exhibition of the simple and kindly emotions of his heart. Pure
+benevolence and philanthropy displayed itself in every word which he
+uttered. He gave his hand to the plain yeoman clad in homespun as
+courteously and sincerely as to the greatest personage in the country.
+He had the same simple smile and good-humored jest for both, and seemed
+to recognize no difference between them. It was instructive to estimate
+in the good Chief Justice the basis and character of true politeness.
+John Randolph, one of the most fastidious and aristocratic of men, left
+his opinion that Marshall's manner was perfect good breeding. In dress
+and bearing, it would be difficult to imagine any one more simple than
+Judge Marshall. He presented the appearance of a plain countryman,
+rather than a Chief Justice of the United States. He had a farm in
+Fauquier County, and another near Richmond, and he would often return
+from the latter to take his seat on the bench with burrs sticking to his
+clothes. His great passion was the game of quoits, and he was a member
+of the club which met, as it still meets, at Buchanan's Spring, near the
+city, to play at this game. Here the Governor of Virginia, the Chief
+Justice, and the most eminent lawyers of the Court of Appeals, were
+found by a French gentleman, Baron Quinet, with their coats off, gayly
+pitching quoits, with the ardor of a party of urchins. In these simple
+amusements passed the hours of leisure which Judge Marshall could steal
+from his exhausting judicial toil. At such times he seemed to become a
+boy again, and to forget the ermine. His fondness for other social
+enjoyments was great. He was the center of a brilliant circle of men,
+many of whom were famous, and the tradition of their dinner parties, and
+the jests which they circulated, is still preserved."
+
+It was his custom always to provide for his table himself when at home,
+and he might be seen every morning at the Shockoe Hill Market, with his
+basket on his arm, engaged in making his purchases. Upon one of these
+occasions he noticed a fashionably-dressed young man, swearing violently
+because he could not find any one willing to carry home for him a turkey
+which he had just purchased, and which his foolish pride would not
+permit him to carry himself. Approaching him quietly, the Judge asked
+where he lived, and upon being told, said, "I am going that way, and
+will carry it for you." Taking the turkey, he set out and soon reached
+the young man's door. Upon receiving his turkey, the young man thanked
+him for his trouble, and asked, "How much shall I pay you?" "Oh,
+nothing," replied the Judge, smiling, "you are welcome. It was on my
+way, and no trouble." So saying, the Judge departed, and the young man,
+with a faint suspicion of the truth, turned to a bystander, and asked,
+in some confusion, "Who is that polite old gentleman who brought home my
+turkey for me?" "That is John Marshall, the Chief Justice of the United
+States," was the reply. "Why, then, did _he_ bring home my turkey?"
+stammered the fop. "To give you a deserved rebuke," said the gentleman,
+"and to teach you to conquer your silly pride."
+
+Reference has been made to his carelessness in regard to his personal
+appearance. A wager was once laid among his friends in Richmond that he
+could not dress himself without leaving about his clothing some mark of
+his carelessness. The Judge good-humoredly accepted the wager. A supper
+was to be given to him upon these conditions. If his dress was found
+faultless upon that occasion, the other parties were to pay for the
+entertainment; but if any carelessness could be detected about his dress
+or in his appearance, the expense was to fall upon him. Upon the
+appointed evening the gentlemen and the Judge met at the place agreed
+upon, and to the surprise of all, the Judge's dress seemed faultless. He
+appeared the very perfection of neatness and taste. The supper followed,
+the Judge being in high glee over his victory. Near the close of the
+repast, however, one of the guests, who sat next to Judge Marshall,
+chanced to drop his napkin, and stooping down to pick it up, discovered
+that the Judge had put on one of his stockings with the wrong side out.
+Of course the condition of affairs was immediately reversed, and, amid
+roars of laughter, the Chief Justice acknowledged his defeat.
+
+The means of locomotion in the Southern States being limited in the days
+of Judge Marshall, it was his custom to travel about the country, when
+holding his circuit courts, in an old-fashioned and very much
+dilapidated gig. His plain and even rusty appearance often led him into
+ludicrous adventures, which he related to his friends with keen
+enjoyment. At other times people to whom he was personally unknown were
+astonished to find that this shabbily-dressed old man was the famous
+Chief-Justice Marshall. One of his adventures is thus related by an
+eye-witness:
+
+"It is not long since a gentleman was traveling in one of the counties
+of Virginia, and about the close of the day stopped at a public-house to
+obtain refreshment and spend the night. He had been there but a short
+time when an old man alighted from his gig, with the apparent intention
+of becoming his fellow-guest at the same house. As the old man drove up,
+he observed that both the shafts of his gig were broken, and that they
+were held together by withes formed from the bark of a hickory sapling.
+Our traveler observed, further, that he was plainly clad, that his
+knee-buckles were loosened, and that something like negligence pervaded
+his dress. Conceiving him to be one of the honest yeomanry of our land,
+the courtesies of strangers passed between them, and they entered the
+tavern. It was about the same time that an addition of three or four
+young gentlemen was made to their number--most of them, if not all, of
+the legal profession. As soon as they became conveniently accommodated,
+the conversation was turned by the latter upon an eloquent harangue
+which had that day been delivered at the bar. The other replied that he
+had witnessed the same day a degree of eloquence no doubt equal, but
+that it was from the pulpit. Something like a sarcastic rejoinder was
+made to the eloquence of the pulpit, and a warm and able altercation
+ensued, in which the merits of the Christian religion became the subject
+of discussion. From six o'clock until eleven the young champions wielded
+the sword of argument, adducing with ingenuity and ability every thing
+that could be said pro and con. During this protracted period, the old
+gentleman listened with all the meekness and modesty of a child, as if
+he was adding new information to the stores of his own mind; or perhaps
+he was observing, with philosophic eye, the faculties of the youthful
+mind, and how new energies are evolved by repeated action; or, perhaps,
+with patriotic emotion, he was reflecting upon the future destinies of
+his country, and on the rising generation upon whom these future
+destinies must devolve; or, most probably, with a sentiment of moral and
+religious feeling, he was collecting an argument which--characteristic
+of himself--no art would be 'able to elude and no force resist.' Our
+traveler remained a spectator, and took no part in what was said."
+
+[Illustration: MARSHALL'S DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY]
+
+"At last one of the young men, remarking that it was impossible to
+combat with long-established prejudices, wheeled around, and, with some
+familiarity, exclaimed, 'Well, my old gentleman, what think you of these
+things?' If, said the traveler, a streak of vivid lightning had at that
+moment crossed the room, their amazement could not have been greater
+than it was with what followed. The most eloquent and unanswerable
+appeal was made, for nearly an hour, by the old gentleman, that he ever
+heard or read. So perfect was his recollection, that every argument used
+against the Christian religion was met in the order in which it was
+advanced. Hume's sophistry on the subject of miracles was, if possible,
+more perfectly answered than it had already been done by Campbell. And
+in the whole lecture there was so much simplicity and energy, pathos and
+sublimity, that not another word was uttered. An attempt to describe it,
+said the traveler, would be an attempt to paint the sunbeams. It was now
+a matter of curiosity and inquiry who the old gentleman was. The
+traveler concluded it was the preacher from whom the pulpit eloquence
+was heard; but no--it was the Chief Justice of the United States."
+
+Judge Marshall was a simple and earnest Christian, and held in the
+deepest abhorrence the fashionable skepticism of his day. His conduct
+was consistent with his profession, and to the last this good and great
+man repeated night and morning the simple prayer he had learned at his
+mother's knee.
+
+For many years he suffered from an affection of the bladder, and was at
+length compelled to resort to a surgical operation for relief. This had
+the desired effect, but he was soon after taken with an attack of "liver
+complaint." He repaired to Philadelphia for medical treatment, but
+failed to derive any benefit from it, and died in that city on the 6th
+of July, 1835.
+
+His body was conveyed to Richmond for interment, and he now sleeps by
+the side of his wife in the Shockoe Hill Cemetery in that city. The spot
+is marked by a plain slab of marble, over which the weeds and the rank
+grass are growing, and on which may be read the following inscription,
+dictated (saving the last date) by himself:
+
+"John Marshall, son of Thomas and Mary Marshall, was born 24th of
+September, 1755; intermarried with Mary Willis Ambler, the 3d of
+January, 1783; departed this life the 6th day of July, 1835."
+
+
+
+[Illustration: JAMES T. BRADY.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+JAMES T. BRADY.
+
+
+The father of James T. Brady was born in Ireland, and came to this
+country during the second war with England, and just after his marriage.
+Mr. Brady opened a school for boys, in New York, soon after his arrival,
+and it was in that city, on the 9th of April, 1815, that his eldest son,
+JAMES TOPHAM BRADY, was born. Other children followed, there being seven
+in all, two boys (James T., and Judge John R. Brady) and five girls. Mr.
+Brady, senior, was a man of rare abilities, and his wife was a woman of
+great personal beauty and high character, "one of those mothers," says a
+distinguished gentleman, who knew her, "whose quiet virtues shed their
+blessed influence over families, and are felt so long in their durable
+effect upon children."
+
+James T. Brady grew up with a sound, vigorous constitution, and at an
+early age was put at his studies in his father's school. He was only
+seven years old when he began, and though so young, he worked hard,
+storing his "big head"--which seemed too big for the little feet below
+it--with knowledge. He endeared himself very greatly to his
+school-fellows, and formed with several of them friendships which
+continued through life. "He was so noted," says one of his former
+school-fellows, "for his loving kindliness as a boy, that it almost
+obliterates every other recollection." His amiable traits developed with
+his years. He always delighted in acts of kindness, and could never bear
+to give pain, even to the most insignificant animal or insect. He
+detested hunting and fishing, which he regarded as a needless sacrifice
+of life. Yet while so tender and gentle in his disposition, he was brave
+and fearless, unusually independent, and, above all, as mirthful and
+fond of a jest at fifty as at sixteen.
+
+Before he had completed his education, his father abandoned the
+profession of teaching for that of a lawyer, and young Brady entered his
+office as office-boy and student, it being his desire to become an
+advocate. He was bright, quick-witted, and remarkably apt in his
+studies. His buoyant spirits and ready repartee often led him into
+encounters with his elders, who were generally forced to confess that
+his tongue was too much for them. His father encouraged him to form his
+own opinions, and to hold them tenaciously until convinced of his error.
+He made rapid progress in his legal studies, and soon acquired such
+proficiency in the management of the details of the office business that
+every thing which did not absolutely need his father's personal
+attention was left to him.
+
+Although fond of social enjoyment, and full of the fire and joyfulness
+of youth, he knew how to seclude himself from the pleasures he relished
+so much. He was a hard and faithful student, allowing nothing to draw
+him from his books when he meant to devote himself to them. He read not
+only law, but history, poetry, biography, romance, in short, every thing
+that could store his mind with useful knowledge or add to its natural
+graces. He slept at the office, and often sat up the entire night
+engaged in study. Abbott speaks as follows of the early studies of
+Napoleon II., and it requires no straining of language or ideas to
+apply his remarks to this portion of the life of James T. Brady: "So
+great was his ardor for intellectual improvement that he considered
+every day as lost in which he had not made perceptible progress in
+knowledge. By this rigid mental discipline he acquired that wonderful
+power of concentration by which he was ever enabled to simplify subjects
+the most difficult and complicated." Mr. Brady, senior, was very proud
+of the energy and talent displayed by his son, and when the latter was
+nineteen years old the father said to a friend who had been speaking to
+him of the promise of the boy: "Yes, sir; he is a boy of great promise,
+a boy of splendid intellect and noble character. Young as he is, I
+regard him as a walking encyclopoedia; his mind seems to gild every
+subject it touches."
+
+In the year 1835, when but twenty years old, Mr. Brady was admitted to
+the bar. "There were giants in those days" at the New York bar, and the
+young man was now entering an arena in which his powers were to be
+tested to the utmost. His native eloquence was well known to his
+friends, and naturally he was not ignorant of it; but he did not, like
+so many young men in his calling, trust entirely to his powers of
+pleading. He had long since recognized the truth of Lord Erskine's
+declaration that "no man can be a great advocate who is no lawyer," and
+had stored his mind with a knowledge of the theories of his profession
+which few men in coming to the bar have ever equaled.
+
+In his first important case he was opposed to Charles O'Conor, and was
+unsuccessful. He was engaged in a suit to recover a certain sum of money
+from an insurance company, which his client claimed was due him for
+certain goods which had been destroyed by fire. As Brady himself saw, he
+had a very weak case, and Mr. O'Conor had no trouble in demolishing it;
+yet the young counsel conducted it with a skill and an eloquence which
+made him from that hour a marked man in his profession. Yet he had to
+contend against that obstacle which meets most public men at the outset
+of their careers--the feeling which actors call "stage fright." He said
+that on this occasion every thing around him grew suddenly black, and he
+could not even see the jury. By steadying himself against his table, and
+keeping his eyes in the direction of the jury, he continued to speak
+until he had recovered his self-control.
+
+The case which brought him most prominently before the public, and which
+may be said to have established his fame as a lawyer, was a peculiar
+one. Some newsboys had been arrested for selling the "Sunday Morning
+News" on the morning of the Sabbath day. It was claimed that the selling
+of the paper on the streets on Sunday was contrary to law, and that the
+boys disturbed the congregations in the churches by their cries. One of
+these boys had been arrested at the instance of Mr. Gerard, and this
+brought on a suit to determine the rights of the lads, in which Mr.
+Brady appeared for the newsboys. Considerable feeling was manifested on
+the subject, and when the trial came on the court-room was crowded. The
+verdict of the jury was against him, but Mr. Brady won a remarkable
+triumph by his management of the case, and the whole city rang with his
+eloquence. So great was the effect of his speech upon the audience, that
+many of them who were total strangers to him crowded around him as he
+left the court-house to congratulate him. Though defeated in the verdict
+of the jury, this case was a great triumph for Mr. Brady. It established
+his fame as an advocate, and advanced him at once to a foremost place at
+the bar. Business flowed in upon him more rapidly than he could attend
+to it, and from this time to the close of his labors he was always in
+the possession of a large and lucrative practice.
+
+Mr. McKeon has said of him: "We may refer to the period of his
+introduction to the bar of this city as an epoch in its history. In
+looking back at the past, we see rising before us George Wood, treading
+with no uncertain step through the labyrinth of the law of real
+property; Daniel Lord, following, with his legal eye, commerce over the
+long and dreary waste of waters; David Graham, the younger, and Ogden
+Hoffman, standing in full panoply of intellectual power before our
+criminal tribunals. Into the lists where stood these proud knights young
+Brady sprang, ready to contend with the mightiest of them. How well he
+contended many of you well remember, and the honors paid to his memory
+are justified by the triumphs he has won."
+
+He grew rapidly in popularity, and in the esteem and confidence of his
+fellow-citizens, and was intrusted with numerous cases of a class which
+had rarely until then been seen in the hands of a young lawyer. His
+practice soon extended into the Supreme Court of the State, which at
+that time met quarterly, at New York, Albany, Utica, and Rochester. The
+practice of this court was entirely in the hands of men of high standing
+in their profession,--the great lawyers of the State,--and it was no
+slight honor to our young lawyer to hold a place, and a proud place,
+too, among them.
+
+He won additional honors in the famous India-rubber suits, which have
+been mentioned elsewhere in this volume, acting as one of the counsel of
+Charles Goodyear, and being associated with Daniel Webster. Brady
+applied himself with intense energy to master the case, and when the
+trial came off at Trenton, in the United States Circuit Court, before
+Justices Grier and Dickerson, he opened the case in a speech which
+lasted two days, and which Daniel Webster said in the beginning of his
+remarks had so exhausted it as to leave him nothing to say.
+
+Turning to Mr. Brady, Mr. Webster said, "You have cut a highway through
+this case, and if it is won, it will be because of the manner in which
+you have brought it before the court." The suit was won by Goodyear.
+
+"In connection with the India-rubber cases is a fact which testifies to
+his character. A salary of twenty-live thousand dollars a year for life
+was offered to be settled on him by the rubber company, if he would
+advise a certain course; but not deeming it right, he rejected the
+offer. When in France, in 1851, the rubber cases coming in controversy
+there, Mr. Brady substantially gave in French, to Etienne Blanc, the
+French advocate, the materials for his brief."
+
+Mr. Brady practiced law for thirty-four years, and during the major part
+of that time there was scarcely a case of great importance, in either
+the civil or criminal courts, in which he did not figure. He was
+compelled to refuse case after case from lack of time to give to it; and
+yet he frequently found time to respond to the appeals of the courts to
+defend men indicted for capital offenses who were unable to procure
+counsel. In some of these cases he had scarcely any chance of
+preparation, but he always managed to secure the acquittal of his
+client, in spite of this drawback. The spirit of kindliness which had so
+endeared him to his boyhood's friends pervaded every action of his
+maturer life, and he never displayed more energy, more unceasing
+vigilance, more irresistible eloquence, than when pleading the cause of
+some poor wretch who could only reward him with his thanks.
+
+His readiness in mastering a case was remarkable, and was greatly
+assisted by his profound knowledge of the law. As a rule, in the
+ordinary run of cases, it was merely necessary for him to comprehend the
+particular case under consideration, since he was already familiar with
+the law bearing upon it.
+
+This readiness is admirably illustrated in the following reminiscence
+related of him by the Hon. Luther R. Marsh. Mr. Marsh was engaged in a
+case of great importance, in which he desired Mr. Brady's assistance in
+the trial. Marsh had thoroughly and patiently studied the case, but
+Brady was totally ignorant of it. Nevertheless, he told Mr. Marsh he
+would do his best, and that he (Marsh) must open the case as fully and
+exhaustively as he could, without reference to him. Mr. Marsh did so,
+and says that when he sat down he thought he had _exhausted_ the case,
+and was wondering what Brady could find to say in addition to it. To his
+astonishment and delight, Brady rose, and in his argument presented
+seven new and telling points.
+
+In the examination of a witness, he could be severe and decisive when he
+had occasion to suspect that the person was trying to evade the truth;
+but in general his manner was kind and considerate, and he succeeded in
+eliciting evidence by his forbearance which others could not have
+extorted by bullying. Upon one occasion, he was convinced that a witness
+was about to relate a "made-up" story, and he at once fixed upon the man
+a look so piercing that the fellow was overwhelmed with confusion and
+could not go on with his evidence. Brady promptly changed his tactics,
+sent for a glass of water for the witness, and soothed him so
+effectually that the heart of the man was won, and, abandoning his false
+tale, he made a simple statement of the truth.
+
+The independence of character exhibited by Mr. Brady has already been
+adverted to. Having once traced out the line of duty, nothing could make
+him swerve from it, and he was as bold in the defense of the rights of
+his clients as of his own. Mr. Edwards Clarke, from whose excellent
+memoir is gleaned much of the information upon which this sketch is
+based, relates the following incidents in illustration of this quality
+of the man:
+
+"The trial of Baker for the murder of Poole furnished a notable instance
+of Mr. Brady's intrepidity in behalf of a client. It was at the height
+of the 'Know-Nothing' excitement, and Poole, after receiving the fatal
+bullet, having exclaimed, 'I die an American,' succeeded in causing
+himself to be regarded as a martyr to the cause. Lingering for days
+with--as the _post-mortem_ proved--a bullet deeply imbedded in his
+heart, the interest and excitement became intense; and on the day of his
+funeral twenty thousand men walked in solemn procession behind the
+coffin of the martyred 'rough.' In such a state of public feeling, Baker
+was put on trial for his life. At the opening of the charge by the
+judge, aroused by its tenor, Mr. Brady seized a pen and commenced
+writing rapidly, indignation showing itself in his set lips and frowning
+brow. The moment the judge ceased he was on his feet, and began: 'You
+have charged the jury thus and thus. I protest against your so stating
+it.' The judge said he would listen to the objections after the jury had
+retired. 'No!' exclaimed the indignant orator, 'I choose that the jury
+should hear those objections;' and, defying interference, he poured
+forth impetuously forty-five separate and formal objections, couching
+them all emphatically in words of personal protest to the judge. The
+force of the judge's charge on that jury was pretty effectually broken.
+The indignation of the advocate at this time was real, not simulated;
+and he, at least, of the New York bar dared to defy and to denounce
+injustice, even when clad in ermine.
+
+"Another instance of his intrepidity before a judge was in the Busteed
+case. The judge had threatened to convict him for contempt. Busteed had
+apologized, and Brady also, with his matchless grace and courtesy, had
+tendered Busteed's apology; but the judge still said that he should
+send him to prison. 'You will, will you?' said Brady; 'I say you will
+not.' And, citing authority after authority against his power to do so,
+he dared him to thus stretch his prerogative. The judge thought best to
+excuse Mr. Busteed."
+
+Perhaps one of the best instances of his moral courage to be found was
+his conduct with reference to the late Edwin M. Stanton. He was
+associated with Mr. Stan ton in the Sickles trial, and conceived a warm
+personal attachment to him. Mr. Brady remained a Democrat to the last,
+and was an active member of Tammany Hall. Upon one occasion, during a
+meeting of the Tammany Committee, when the name of Stanton was received
+with hisses and yells of objurgation, Brady rose, and facing the crowd
+told them "that he knew they hated Edwin M. Stanton, but he, a Democrat,
+knew him, and held him in his heart of hearts." It was a bold
+declaration, considering the time and place, even for one so highly
+esteemed as James T. Brady.
+
+As before remarked, Mr. Brady never relied upon his eloquence alone for
+success at the bar. He had a profound respect for his profession, and
+scorned its trickeries. He worked faithfully over the cases intrusted to
+him, studied them carefully, and never brought them to trial till he was
+thorough master of the law bearing upon them. This enabled him
+frequently to present issues which a less learned man would not have
+dreamed of. When he was retained as counsel for Huntington the forger,
+he conceived the idea that the man was morally unaccountable for his
+deed, and his theory of moral insanity, as developed by him in this
+case, is one of the most powerful arguments upon the subject to be found
+in any language. He read every thing he could find on the subject of
+insanity, and when he went into court there was not a physician in the
+land better informed with respect to it than he. The cases in which he
+was frequently engaged required an unusual acquaintance with medical
+jurisprudence, and he was regarded as one of the best authorities on the
+subject in the country.
+
+His power over a jury was remarkable. He never lost sight of the "twelve
+peers," and by his dexterous management soon had them so thoroughly
+under the influence of his magnetic mind that they hung upon his words,
+followed his every act, laughed or cried as he willed, and seemed
+capable of thinking only as he permitted them. He defended fifty-one men
+for their lives in the course of his practice, and brought them all off
+in safety.
+
+[Illustration: "THEY ARE GOING TO HANG MY BROTHER, AND YOU CAN SAVE
+HIM!"]
+
+Mr. Clarke, from whose memoir I have already quoted, relates the
+following incidents in his career:
+
+"The case of a young man charged with murder, in what was claimed to be
+an accidental fracas, attracted a good deal of interest. He was a Mason,
+and that society applied to Mr. Brady to defend him, tendering
+twenty-five hundred dollars as a fee; but for some cause he declined the
+case. Not long after, one afternoon, a neatly-dressed, modest young girl
+came to the office and asked for Mr. Brady. Told to walk into his
+private office, she timidly approached his desk, and saying, 'Mr. Brady,
+they are going to hang my brother, and you can save him. I've brought
+you this money; please don't let my brother die,' she burst into tears.
+It was a roll of two hundred and fifty dollars, which the poor girl had
+begged in sums of five and ten dollars. The kind-hearted man heard her
+story. 'They shall not hang your brother, my child,' said he, and
+putting the roll of bills in an envelope, told her to take it to her
+mother, and he would ask for it when he wanted it. The boy was cleared.
+In Mr. Brady's parlor hangs an exquisite picture, by Durand, with a
+letter on the back asking him to accept it as a mark of appreciation for
+his generous kindness in defending this poor boy. Mr. Brady prized
+_that_ picture....
+
+"Once when, in the height of his appeal to the jury, a dog began barking
+vigorously, he whirled around, shook his finger at the dog and said,
+gravely, with the quickness of thought, 'I am Sir Oracle, and when I ope
+my lips let no dog bark!'
+
+"An Irishman once came to his office: 'And are yez Misther Brady?' 'I
+am; come in, Patrick. What is it you wish?' 'I ax yer pardon; I oughtn't
+to intrude upon yez,' 'But what is it, Patrick?' 'Well, yer honor, it
+isn't for the likes o' me to be comin' troublin' yer honor.' 'But tell
+me what you want, Pat.' 'Well, yer honor, I came to see ye about a
+friend of mine as met wid an accident.' 'An accident?' said Mr. Brady;
+'then why don't you go for a doctor?' 'Arrah, sure, you're the docther
+for my friend; he had an accident which wants yer honor.' 'Well, what
+_was_ it?' 'Well, yer honor, he was arristed for a thrifle of a
+burglary, shure.' Quick as Mr. Brady was, with the readiness of his
+race, for repartee, he sometimes met his match among his own countrymen.
+He was once examining an unwilling witness who persistently called him
+Mr. O'Brady. At length, even his proverbial good nature being a little
+ruffled, he said to the witness: 'You need not call me Mr. O'Brady. I've
+mended my name since I came here and dropped the O.' 'Have ye, now? 'Pon
+my sowl it's a pity ye didn't mend yer manners at the same time.'"
+
+In politics Mr. Brady was a Democrat of the States-Rights school, yet he
+always maintained that it was the duty of the citizen to render the
+promptest obedience to the General Government. At the outset of the late
+war he gave his support to the Government in its war measures, though he
+did not separate himself from the Democratic party. He was frequently
+solicited by his friends to accept political honors, but he steadily
+refused, saying that he wanted no honors outside of his profession.
+
+In person Mr. Brady was slender and delicate in appearance. What
+attracted the gazer at once was his massive head--a head which measured
+in its circumference twenty-four and three-eighths inches. Age seemed to
+have no effect upon his face. Severe mental labor in the course of years
+took away some of the rosy hues of youth, but otherwise it continued as
+fresh and as winning as when a boy.
+
+Mr. Brady never married, but no one was more widely removed from the
+typical old bachelor than he. If he had no family of his own, he was the
+head of a family of devoted relatives, who gave him ample scope for the
+exercise of the domestic affections which were so strong in him. Very
+soon after entering upon the practice of his profession his parents
+died, leaving his brother and five sisters, all much younger than
+himself, helpless. The young lawyer at once declared that the care of
+these dear ones should be his first thought, and he devoted himself to
+his practice with redoubled energy, in order to provide for them. He
+brought his personal expenses down to a low figure, and resolutely kept
+them there, yet all the while he was lavish in his generosity to those
+whom he loved. He once said to a friend who asked him why he had never
+married: "When my father died he left five daughters, who looked to me
+for support. All the affection which I could have had for a wife went
+out to those sisters, and I have never desired to recall it." He
+transferred a share of this affection to the children of those sisters
+and of his brother, and was never so happy as when in their company. In
+his will he mentions one of his nieces as his "dearly beloved Toot."
+
+He was very fond of literature, especially of poetry, and devoted a
+considerable portion of his time to literary efforts of his own. His
+great fame as a lawyer so overshadowed the success he won in literature
+that few besides himself knew how much pleasure the popularity of his
+writings gave him.
+
+In the exercise of his profession Mr. Brady won a large fortune. His
+income was princely during the greater part of his life, but he saved
+comparatively little. He delighted in giving to others. His relatives
+were the constant recipients of substantial evidences of his affection
+for them, and his charities to the poor were in keeping with his
+generous nature. He could not look upon suffering unmoved, and "never
+turned his face from any poor man."
+
+His last appearance in public was at the Gerard dinner, where he was as
+brilliant and genial as ever. He seemed to have a foreboding of his
+approaching end, however, for the next day he said to one of his family:
+"I feel that it is the last time I shall ever appear on a like public
+occasion." His fears were prophetic. He was seized with an attack of
+paralysis on the morning of the 9th of February, 1869, and breathed his
+last at five o'clock in the afternoon of the same day. He died in the
+communion of the Catholic Church, and was buried from St. Patrick's
+Cathedral, in the city of New York. His death drew forth expressions of
+sympathy and respect from all parts of the Union and from men of all
+shades of opinion. All felt that a good and useful man, a great
+advocate, and an incorruptible citizen had been taken away.
+
+His was a happy fate. He died in the fullness of his fame, before age
+had weakened his faculties or chilled his heart, and dying thus, it may
+be said of him, as he once said of another, that he was "a man who had
+no guile in his nature, and who died leaving no living creature to
+rejoice at his death."
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+ARTISTS.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+BENJAMIN WEST.
+
+
+At a time when America was regarded in Europe as a savage region, and
+when Americans were looked upon as little better than barbarians by the
+people of the mother country, it was no slight achievement for an
+American artist to rise by the force of his genius to the proud position
+of President of the Royal Academy of Great Britain.
+
+The man who won this triumph was BENJAMIN WEST. He was born in
+Springfield, Pennsylvania, on the 10th of October, 1738. His parents
+were Quakers, plain, simple people, who feared God, lived a just life,
+and desired above all other things that their children should become
+pious and useful men and women. The old mansion-house where the future
+artist was born was situated in Chester County, and is still standing.
+It is not far from Philadelphia, and the place is now called Westdale.
+His father's family emigrated from England to America with William Penn,
+at his second visit, in 1699. John West married the daughter of Thomas
+Pearson, by whom he had ten children. Of these, Benjamin was the
+youngest son. His mother was a woman of great piety, and, being once in
+attendance upon a memorable religious revival, at which she was terribly
+agitated by the preaching of one Edward Peckover, an itinerant Quaker
+minister, was taken with premature labor, of which Benjamin West was
+born.
+
+It was predicted that a child who had been brought into the world under
+such circumstances would be a man of more than ordinary fame, and the
+good mother treasured these prophecies in her heart, and watched the
+career of her boy with the keenest interest.
+
+When he was but seven years old, he was left one day to watch beside the
+cradle of the infant child of his eldest sister, who, though married,
+was still living at home. Being unusually silent for a long time, his
+mother concluded that she would go and see what he was doing. Upon
+entering the room where he had been left with his charge, she saw him
+kneeling by a chair which he had placed close up to the cradle, gazing
+at the infant, and making what she supposed to be marks on a paper which
+lay on the chair. Stealing up behind him softly, she saw to her
+astonishment that this boy, only seven years old, had executed, with
+black and red ink and a pen, an accurate though rude likeness of the
+sleeping babe. This was the first evidence he had ever given of his
+predilection for art, and was indeed a most surprising performance for
+so young a child.
+
+[Illustration: THE TRUANT'S SECRET DISCOVERED.]
+
+The next summer a party of Indians came to Springfield to pay their
+annual visit, and to please them little Benjamin showed them some
+sketches of birds and flowers which he had executed with pen and ink.
+The savages were delighted with them, and presented him with the red and
+yellow pigments with which they colored their ornaments. In addition to
+this gift, they taught him how to prepare these colors, to which he
+added another, namely, indigo, which his mother gave him from her
+laundry. His colors were rude enough, but his pencils were ruder. They
+were made of the hairs which he had pulled from a cat's back and
+fastened in the end of a goose-quill. Soon after this, a relative from
+Philadelphia, chancing to visit the old homestead, was struck with the
+talent of the little fellow, and upon his return to the city sent him a
+box of colors, with pencils and canvas and a few prints. He was only
+nine years old, but he was a born artist. He had never seen any painting
+of merit, and the few prints which his relative gave him were the most
+finished productions he had ever seen. The box of colors was his most
+precious possession, and it opened to him new fields of enjoyment. The
+day of its arrival he gave himself up entirely to the pleasure of
+examining it. "Even after going to sleep," says his biographer, "he
+awoke more than once during the night, and anxiously put out his hand to
+the box, which he had placed by his bedside, half afraid that he might
+find his riches only a dream. Next morning he rose at break of day, and,
+carrying his colors and canvas to the garret, proceeded to work. Every
+thing else was now unheeded; even his attendance at school was given up.
+As soon as he got out of the sight of his father and mother, he stole to
+his garret, and there passed the hours in a world of his own. At last,
+after he had been absent from school some days, the master called at his
+father's house to inquire what had become of him. This led to the
+discovery of his secret occupation. His mother, proceeding to the
+garret, found the truant; but so much was she astonished and delighted
+by the creation of his pencil, which also met her view when she entered
+the apartment, that, instead of rebuking him, she could only take him in
+her arms and kiss him with transports of affection. He made a new
+composition of his own out of two of the engravings, which he had
+colored from his own feeling of the proper tints; and so perfect did
+the appearance already appear to his mother, that, although half the
+canvas yet remained uncovered, she would not suffer him to add another
+touch to what he had done. Mr. Gait, West's biographer, saw the picture
+in the state in which it had thus been left sixty-seven years afterward;
+and the artist himself used to acknowledge that in none of his
+subsequent efforts had he been able to excel some of the touches of
+invention in this his first essay."
+
+His next effort was a landscape, which comprehended a view of a river,
+with vessels in the stream and cattle browsing on the banks. He could
+not have been much over ten years of age at this time, and the picture,
+though insignificant in itself, is remarkable as the work of a child. He
+subsequently presented it to his friend, Mr. William Henry, of
+Lancaster, whose family still retain possession of it. He visited
+Philadelphia soon after, and received a few simple instructions in the
+practical portion of his art, after which he went about through the
+towns of the vicinity of his home, painting portraits of his friends. At
+length he was sent for by Mrs. Ross, of Lancaster, a lady famed for her
+great beauty, to paint the portraits of herself and her family--a great
+honor for a lad of twelve.
+
+It was in Lancaster, in the year 1750, that he made the acquaintance of
+Mr. William Henry. That gentleman became deeply interested in the
+precocious boy, and frequently came to watch him at his
+portrait-painting. One day he said to Benjamin, that if he (Henry) could
+paint equally well he would not waste his time upon portraits, but would
+devote himself to historical subjects. In the course of the conversation
+to which this remark gave rise, Mr. Henry proposed to him to make an
+attempt in this direction, and suggested to him "The Death of Socrates"
+as his first subject. The little artist frankly avowed that he had
+never heard of the great philosopher, and Mr. Henry at once went to his
+library and brought out a volume of Plutarch, from which he read to the
+boy the beautiful story of the wise man's death. West listened with the
+deepest interest, and expressed his perfect readiness to undertake the
+task, but feared he would have difficulty in painting the figure of the
+slave who presented the poison, and which he thought ought to be naked,
+since he had hitherto painted only men with their clothes on. Mr. Henry
+had in his employ a young man of fine appearance, and upon hearing
+West's objection at once sent for him. As the workman entered the room
+Henry pointed to him, and said to West, "There's your model." West took
+the hint, painted the picture, which was purchased by Mr. Henry, and
+thenceforth determined that in his art he would look only into nature
+for his models.
+
+At the age of sixteen he returned to Springfield. He was anxious to
+continue his career as an artist, and as his parents were satisfied that
+he was now old enough to enter upon some permanent occupation, they
+agreed that his wishes should be submitted to a public meeting of the
+Society of Friends. The meeting was called, and the matter was laid
+before them, the boy himself being present. His relatives and friends
+were all very proud of his talents, but as the profession of an artist
+was so entirely at variance with all Quaker habits and ideas, they felt
+that the subject was one which ought not to be rashly decided. Silence
+prevailed for a long time after the opening of the meeting, but at
+length John Williamson, moved by the Spirit, rose and addressed the
+assemblage, declaring his belief that as the youth had not derived his
+fondness for art from any of his associations or surroundings, and since
+it was so manifestly a special gift from the Creator, it was their plain
+duty to bid him go forward in the path that had been marked out for
+him, and to wish him God-speed in his efforts. At the close of his
+remarks silence again fell upon the assembly. Then the women rose, and
+approaching the lad, one by one, kissed him on the cheek, and the men,
+laying their hands on his head, prayed that the Lord might verify in his
+life the value of the gift which had induced them, in spite of their
+religious tenets on the subject, to allow him to enter upon the
+permanent exercises of the profession so dear to his heart.
+
+Thus was he dedicated to his art, and at the same time separated to a
+certain degree from his Quaker brethren. Not long after this he violated
+every principle of the Quaker dispensation by volunteering under Major
+Sir Peter Halket to go in search of the remains of Braddock's army.
+
+In 1756, at the age of eighteen, he established himself in Philadelphia
+as a portrait painter, and soon after removed to New York, where he
+painted portraits at five guineas a head, occasionally attempting an
+historical piece. When he was twenty years old he made a visit to
+Europe--a visit which decided his destiny. A famine in the south of
+Europe induced a Philadelphia merchant to dispatch a vessel laden with
+flour to Leghorn, and his son, who was to take passage in the ship,
+proposed to West to accompany him, and thus secure an opportunity of
+seeing the art-treasures of the Old World. West promptly accepted the
+invitation, and some of his friends in New York provided him with an
+outfit for the voyage. Upon arriving at Gibraltar, the vessel was
+boarded by a British officer, who proved to be a kinsman of the son of
+the owner of the ship, and he not only passed them without molestation,
+but enabled them to secure unusual facilities in the voyage up the
+Mediterranean. West arrived in Rome in July, 1759, and was kindly
+received by the English Lord Grantham, to whom he bore letters of
+introduction.
+
+"Among the distinguished persons whom Mr. West found in Rome, was the
+celebrated Cardinal Albani. At an evening party, the Cardinal became
+curious to witness the effect which the works of art in the Belvidere
+and Vatican would produce on the young artist. The whole company, which
+consisted of the principal Roman nobility and strangers of distinction
+then in Rome, were interested in the event, and it was arranged, in the
+course of the evening, that, on the following morning, they should
+accompany West to the palaces. At the hour appointed, the company
+assembled, and a procession consisting of upwards of thirty of the most
+magnificent equipages in the capital of Christendom, and filled with
+some of the most erudite characters in Europe, conducted the young
+Quaker to view the masterpieces of art. It was agreed that the 'Apollo'
+should be first submitted to his view, because it was the most perfect
+work among all the ornaments of Rome, and, consequently, the best
+calculated to produce that effect which the company were anxious to
+witness. The statue then stood in a case, inclosed with doors, which
+could be so opened as to disclose it at once to full view. West was
+placed in the situation where it was seen to the most advantage, and the
+spectators arranged themselves on each side. When the keeper threw open
+the doors, the artist felt himself surprised with a sudden recollection
+altogether different from the gratification which he had expected, and
+without being aware of the force of what he said, exclaimed, 'My God!
+how like it is to a young Mohawk warrior.' The Italians, observing his
+surprise and hearing the exclamation, were excessively mortified to find
+that the god of their idolatry was compared to a savage. They mentioned
+their chagrin, and asked West to give some more distinct explanation, by
+informing them what sort of people the Mohawk Indians were. He described
+to them their education, their dexterity with the bow and arrow, the
+admirable elasticity of their limbs, and how much their active life
+expands the chest, while the quick breathing of their speed in the chase
+dilates the nostrils with that apparent consciousness of vigor which is
+so nobly depicted in the 'Apollo.' 'I have seen them often,' added he,
+'standing in that very attitude, and pursuing with an intense eye the
+arrow which they had just discharged from the bow,' The Italians were
+delighted with this descriptive explanation, and allowed that a better
+criticism had never been pronounced on the merits of the statue."
+
+Soon after his arrival in Rome, West painted a portrait of Lord
+Grantham, which won him considerable reputation. It was at first
+attributed to Raphael Meugs, but when the true artist was announced, and
+the circumstances of his history became known, West found himself
+suddenly famous, with orders enough to place him at once in comfortable
+circumstances. Cardinal Albani and Lord Grantham were very kind to him
+during his stay in Rome, and Raphael Meugs advised him to make a careful
+tour of study through the Italian art capitals. While in Rome he painted
+two pictures, "Cimon and Iphigenia," and "Angelica and Medora," which
+were well received, and during this period he was elected a member by
+the Academies of Florence, Bologna, and Parma. He made the tour advised
+by Meugs, remaining in Italy several years. Thence he proceeded to
+France, where he passed a short time in studying the French masters,
+after which he went to England, intending to sail from that country for
+America, where he had left his heart behind him in the keeping of a
+young Quakeress of Philadelphia.
+
+He reached London in 1763, and while continuing his studies here,
+whither his reputation had preceded him from Italy, undertook some
+commissions for Archbishop Drummond and several other church
+dignitaries. These attracted general admiration, and his countrymen
+residing in London were prompt to recognize and proclaim his genius. He
+had relatives living in England, so that he was not an entire stranger
+there. His success was marked from the first, and his friends urged him
+to profit by so favorable a beginning, give up his idea of returning to
+America, and make his permanent home in England. This he at length
+decided to do, and devoted himself with increased ardor to his labors.
+In two years he considered himself sufficiently well established to send
+to Philadelphia for his betrothed. This lady, Miss Elizabeth Shewell,
+came out to England under the care of his father, and in the same year,
+1765, West was married to her in London. She was a lady of great
+amiability of character, and by the English was often spoken of as the
+Philadelphia beauty.
+
+Soon after his arrival in England he produced a large painting on a
+subject from Tacitus, "Agrippina Landing with the Ashes of Germanicus."
+It was a decided success. George the Third was deeply impressed with it,
+and congratulated West warmly upon its merits. At the same time the king
+gave him a commission for a painting,--the subject to be "The Death of
+Regulus,"--and thus began the friendship between the monarch and the
+artist, which lasted for nearly forty years. He was a hard worker, and
+during his long life his pictures followed each other in rapid
+succession. They are estimated by a writer in Blackwood's Magazine at
+three thousand in number. Mr. Dunlap says that they would cover a wall
+ten feet high and a quarter of a mile long if arranged side by side on a
+flat surface. The most famous are his "Death of Wolfe;" "Regulus, a
+Prisoner to the Carthaginians;" "The Battle of La Hogue;" "The Death of
+Bayard;" "Hamilcar Swearing the Infant Hannibal at the Altar;" "The
+Departure of Regulus;" "Agrippina Landing with the Ashes of
+Germanicus;" "Christ Healing the Sick;" "Death on the Pale Horse;" "The
+Descent of the Holy Ghost on the Saviour in the Jordan;" "The
+Crucifixion;" and "Christ Rejected."
+
+The picture which brought him most prominently before the public, and
+which placed his popularity beyond dispute, was "The Death of Wolfe at
+Quebec." It was fashionable at this time to treat nothing but subjects
+from ancient history, and when West announced his intention of painting
+a picture of contemporary history his friends warned him that he was
+incurring a serious risk. Nevertheless he finished his "Death of Wolfe,"
+and it was exhibited in the National Gallery. The public "acknowledged
+its excellence at once, but the lovers of old art--called
+classical--complained of the barbarism of boots, buttons, and
+blunderbusses, and cried out for naked warriors, with bows, bucklers,
+and battering rams." Lord Grosvenor was much pleased with the picture,
+and finally purchased it, though he did so with hesitation, daunted to
+some extent by the fierce storm of opposition with which the critics
+received it. Sir Joshua Reynolds, then the President of the Royal
+Academy, and the Archbishop of York, called on West and protested
+against his barbarous innovation, but he declared to them that "the
+event to be commemorated happened in the year 1759, in a region of the
+world unknown to Greeks and Romans, and at a period of the world when no
+warrior who wore classic costume existed. The same rule which gives law
+to the historian should rule the painter." When the king saw the picture
+he was delighted both with it and West's originality, and declared that
+he was sorry Lord Grosvenor had been before him in purchasing it. This
+was the inauguration of a new era in British art, and Sir Joshua
+Reynolds was obliged to declare, "West has conquered. I foresee that
+this picture will not only become one of the most popular, but will
+occasion a revolution in art." This frank avowal was as honorable to Sir
+Joshua as to West.
+
+West painted for George the Third a number of subjects taken from the
+early history of England, and received from the same monarch a
+commission for a series of paintings illustrating the progress of
+revealed religion, with which the king designed to ornament the chapel
+at Windsor Castle. Of these twenty-eight were finished when the Prince
+of Wales, afterward George the Fourth, came into power as Prince Regent,
+and the commission was withdrawn. The artist then began a series of
+grand religious subjects, upon which he was still engaged when death
+called him to rest from all his labors. Of those which were completed,
+"Death on the Pale Horse" and "Christ Healing the Sick" are the best
+known in this country.
+
+In 1792, upon the death of Sir Joshua Reynolds, West was made President
+of the Royal Academy. The king wished to confer upon him the honor of
+knighthood, but he declined it, alleging that he was not wealthy enough
+to support the dignity of the position. In consequence of dissensions in
+the Academy, West resigned his presidency in 1802. The post was filled
+for a year by James Wyatt, the architect, and at the close of that time
+West was re-elected by every ballot but one--that of Fuseli, who voted
+for Mrs. Lloyd, a member of the Academy, declaring that he considered
+"one old woman as good as another." West continued in this office until
+his death.
+
+The close of his life was blessed with ample means, and, as he was in
+the full possession of all his faculties and covered with art's
+supremest honors, it may be regarded as the happiest portion of his
+career. His house was always open to Americans visiting England, and few
+things pleased him more than to listen to news from his native village.
+He was a kind and judicious friend to young artists, especially to those
+of his own country studying in England, and took a lively pleasure in
+their success. Leigh Hunt, whose mother was a relative of West, has left
+us the following description of him:
+
+"The appearance of West was so gentlemanly that the moment he changed
+his gown for a coat he seemed to be full dressed. The simplicity and
+self-possession of the young Quaker, not having time enough to grow
+stiff--for he went early to Rome--took up, I suppose, with more ease
+than most would have done, the urbanities of his new position. Yet this
+man, so well bred, and so indisputably clever in his art, whatever might
+be the amount of his genius, had received a homely or careless
+education, and pronounced some of his words with a puritanical
+barbarism; he would talk of his art all day. There were strong
+suspicions of his leaning to his native side in politics, and he could
+not restrain his enthusiasm for Bonaparte. How he managed these matters
+with the higher powers in England I can not say."
+
+Possessed originally of a sound and vigorous constitution, which he had
+not weakened by any species of dissipation, West lived to a good old
+age, and died in London on the 11th of March, 1820, in his eighty-second
+year. He was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral, by the side of Sir Joshua
+Reynolds, and under the same great dome which covers the tombs of Nelson
+and Wellington.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+JOHN ROGERS.
+
+
+There is scarcely a family of means and taste in the country but is the
+possessor of one or more of Rogers's groups in plaster. You see them in
+every art or book-store window, and they are constantly finding new
+admirers, and rendering the name of the talented sculptor more and more
+a household word.
+
+JOHN ROGERS, to whom the world is indebted for this new branch of art,
+was born at Salem, Massachusetts, on the 30th of October, 1829. His
+ancestors were among the original settlers of the colony, and have
+resided in Salem for generations. His father, a merchant of moderate
+means and good reputation, was anxious to train his son to some regular
+and profitable business. As the basis of this, he gave the boy a good
+education in the common schools of the town, and in 1845, when he was
+sixteen years old, placed him in a dry-goods store in Boston to learn
+the business. He remained there for two years.
+
+He gave early evidence of his artistic genius, and when a mere child had
+shown a taste and talent for drawing which increased with his years, and
+made him eager to become an artist. His parents, however, were desirous
+of seeing him rich rather than famous, and did all in their power to
+discourage him from making choice of a vocation which they considered
+but little better than vagabondage. They magnified the difficulties and
+trials of an artist's career, and so far succeeded in their efforts that
+he entirely abandoned his wish to make art a means of livelihood. He was
+not willing to forsake it altogether, however--he was too true an artist
+at heart for that--but contented himself for the time with continuing
+his efforts, merely as a means of personal enjoyment.
+
+In 1847, feeling satisfied that he was not suited to a mercantile life,
+Mr. Rogers gave up his clerkship in Boston, and obtained a place in the
+corps of engineers engaged in the construction of the Cochituate Water
+Works. Here he had a fine opportunity for cultivating his talent for
+drawing, but the constant labor which he underwent so injured his eyes
+that he was compelled to give up his position. His physician advised him
+to make an ocean voyage for the purpose of re-establishing his health.
+Acting upon this advice, he made a short visit to Spain, and returned
+home very much improved by the voyage and the rest his eyes had enjoyed.
+
+In 1848, soon after his return to this country, he entered a machine
+shop in Manchester, New Hampshire, to learn the trade of a machinist. He
+worked at this trade for a period of seven years, applying himself to it
+with great diligence and determination, and acquiring much mechanical
+skill and a thorough knowledge of the trade. He rose steadily through
+the various grades of his new calling--from the bench of the apprentice
+to the post of draughtsman in the designing department.
+
+During this period he devoted himself enthusiastically to his art. Soon
+after his return from Spain, he had observed a young man modeling a
+figure in clay, and by closely observing him had learned the process,
+which until then was unknown to him. The labor of the youth pleased him
+very much, and the more because he saw in it a new means of artistic
+expression. He at once procured some clay, and, taking it to his room,
+commenced to practice upon the lesson which he had just received. From
+this time forward he continued his art labors, giving to them all the
+leisure time he could spare from his duties in the shop, where he was
+compelled to work from five A.M. until seven P.M. He would go to his
+room after supper, and by the light of a tallow candle work late into
+the night, modeling figures in clay, and bringing new fancies into
+shape. He says that frequently, although exhausted by his severe labor
+at the shop, he would be unable to sleep until he had molded into clay
+the idea which possessed his mind. These night studies, superadded to
+his daily duties, proved very trying to him. Yet he persevered,
+encouraged by his success with his figures. He endeavored to persuade
+some of his relatives to aid him in securing a better education as an
+artist, such as would have enabled him to abandon the machine shop; but
+they turned a deaf ear to him, and he was thus compelled to continue his
+daily task, which, under these circumstances, naturally grew more and
+more irksome.
+
+In 1856, he was enabled to better his condition for a short time. He was
+offered the place of manager of a railroad machine-shop at Hannibal,
+Missouri, and promptly accepted it. In six months, however, he was out
+of employment, the panic of 1857 having caused the machine-shop to
+suspend operations. Having a little money in hand, which he had saved
+from his wages, he resolved to visit Europe, and study the works of the
+great masters in his art, and, if he could, to take lessons in sculpture
+from some competent teacher in the Old World. He went to Paris and Rome,
+remaining in those cities for a period of eight months, and endeavoring
+to share the enthusiasm for the great works around him which the artist
+world manifested. At the end of that time he came home convinced that
+classic art had no attractions for him, and was almost ready to declare
+that he had none of the true inspiration of an artist.
+
+He did not stop long in the East upon his return. Going West at once, he
+obtained a situation in the office of the Surveyor of the city of
+Chicago. In this position he worked hard and faithfully, and his
+employers soon found that in him they had obtained a prize.
+
+Meantime, although so much disheartened by his failure to accomplish any
+thing in Europe, he did not abandon his art studies, but continued to
+model figures in clay, and shortly after his arrival in Chicago, gave
+one of his groups to some ladies of that city, to be sold at a fair in
+behalf of some benevolent purpose. This was the "Checker Players," and
+was the first of his efforts ever submitted to the public. Its success
+was immediate. It proved one of the most attractive features of the
+fair, and the newspapers pronounced it one of the most satisfactory
+evidences of native genius ever seen in Chicago. Mr. Rogers was much
+pleased with its success, and soon followed it with "The Town Pump," one
+of his most popular compositions.
+
+The popularity which these efforts attained, opened John Rogers's eyes
+to a correct perception of his true mission in life. He was not capable
+of accomplishing any thing in classic art, but here was a field in which
+a renown, unique and brilliant, might be won, and in which he might
+endear himself to thousands of hearts in the great world in which he
+lived. Both fame and wealth seemed opening up before him. He did not
+hesitate long, but resolved to follow the leadings of his genius. Having
+heard that a new process of flexible molds had been invented, by which
+the most intricate designs could be cast with ease, he came to New York
+in 1859, bringing with him his "Checker Players" and "Town Pump," and
+the model of a new group on which he was then engaged. Seeking an
+Italian familiar with the new process, he engaged him to cast his
+figures in plaster by means of it, and from him he learned how to
+practice the new method himself.
+
+He now put forth his "Slave Auction," which he had modeled in Chicago
+and brought to New York with him. The antislavery excitement was then at
+its height, and this effort aroused the sympathy and won Mr. Rogers the
+support of the greater part of the people of the Northern States. There
+was a large demand for the group, and Mr. Rogers soon found himself
+obliged to employ assistance to fill the orders which kept crowding in
+upon him. By selecting a subject which was of the deepest interest to
+the people of the country, he had thus attracted attention to his
+merits, and he felt sure that by keeping the people supplied with works
+illustrative of the topics of the day, he would win the success to which
+he aspired.
+
+He now ventured to establish himself permanently in New York, and,
+renting the garret of a Broadway building, set up his studio in it, and
+issued this modest card: "John Rogers, Artist, Designs and Executes
+Groups of Figures in Composition at his Studio, 599 Broadway." The
+success of his works had been so marked as to induce him to believe that
+he would have no difficulty in establishing a permanent business, and he
+set to work with enthusiasm. In quick succession he produced his
+"Fairy's Whisper" and "Air Castles," the latter of which is the only
+commission he has ever executed. The war began soon after, and supplied
+him with an abundance of popular subjects. These war subjects attracted
+universal attention, and sold as rapidly as he could supply them. A New
+York journal thus describes the "sensation" which they created in that
+city:
+
+"All day, and every day, week in and week out, there is an
+ever-changing crowd of men, women, and children standing stationary amid
+the ever-surging tides of Broadway, before the windows of Williams &
+Stevens, gazing with eager interest upon the statuettes and groups of
+John Rogers, the sculptor. These works appeal to a deep popular
+sentiment. They are not pretentious displays of gods, goddesses, ideal
+characters, or stupendous, world-compelling heroes. They are
+illustrations of American domestic and especially of American military
+life--not of our great generals or our bold admirals, or the men whose
+praises fill all the newspapers, but of the common soldier of the Union;
+not of the common soldier, either, in what might be called his high
+heroic moods and moments, when, with waving sword and flaming eye, he
+dashes upon the enemy's works, but of the soldier in the ordinary
+moments and usual occupations of every-day camp life. For the last year
+or more Mr. Rogers has been at work mainly on groups of this latter
+class and character. Thus he has given us 'The Returned Volunteer, or
+How the Fort was Taken,' being a group of three gathered in a
+blacksmith's shop, the characters consisting of the blacksmith himself,
+standing with his right foot on the anvil block, and his big hammer in
+his hands, listening eagerly, with his little girl, to a soldier who
+sits close by on his haunches, narrating 'how the fort was taken,' We
+have also another group of three, 'The Picket Guard,' spiritedly
+sketched, as in eager, close, and nervous search for the enemy; the
+'Sharpshooters,' another group of three, or rather of two men and a
+scarecrow, illustrating a curious practice in our army of deceiving the
+enemy; the 'Town Pump,' a scene in which a soldier, uniformed and
+accoutered, is slaking his thirst and holding blessed converse beside
+the pump with a pretty girl who has come for a pail of water; the 'Union
+Refugees,' a pathetic and noble group, consisting of a stalwart and
+sad-faced East Tennesseean or Virginian, who accompanied by his wife,
+who leans her head upon his bosom, and by his little boy, who looks up
+eagerly into his face, has started off from home with only his gun upon
+his shoulder and his powder-horn by his side, to escape the tyranny of
+the rebels; 'The Camp Fire, or Making Friends with the Cook,' in which a
+hungry soldier, seated upon an inverted basket, is reading a newspaper
+to an 'intelligent contraband,' who is stirring the contents of a huge
+and ebullient pot hung over the fire; 'Wounded to the Rear, or One More
+Shot,' in which a soldier is represented as dressing his wounded leg,
+while his companion, with his left arm in a sling, is trying to load his
+gun to take another shot at the enemy, at whom he looks defiantly; 'Mail
+Day,' which tells its own story of a speculative soldier, seated on a
+stone and racking his poor brains to find some ideas to transcribe upon
+the paper which he holds upon his knee, to be sent perchance to her he
+loves; 'The Country Postmaster, or News from the Army,' which, though a
+scene from civil life, tells of the anxiety of the soldier's wife or
+sweetheart to get tidings from the brave volunteer who is periling his
+life on the battle-field; 'The Wounded Scout, or a Friend in the Swamp,'
+representing a soldier, torn, and bleeding, and far gone, rescued and
+raised up by a faithful and kind-hearted negro--which we think is one of
+the best, if not the very best, of Mr. Rogers's works; and lastly, a
+group called 'The Home Guard, or Midnight on the Border,' in which a
+heroic woman, accompanied by a little girl, is represented as stepping
+out, pistol in hand, to confront the assailants of her humble home."
+
+In 1862 Mr. Rogers removed his studio to the corner of Fifth Avenue and
+Twenty-sixth Street, where he still remains. He has followed up the
+earlier productions named above with "The Bushwhacker," a scene
+representing a Tennessee loyalist dogging the footsteps of the Southern
+army; "Taking the Oath and Drawing Rations," the best and certainly the
+most popular of his works,--a group of four, representing a Southern
+lady with her little boy, compelled to take the oath of allegiance in
+order to obtain rations for her family. A negro boy, bearing a basket
+for his mistress, leans on the barrel watching the proceeding with the
+most intense interest. The woman's face is wonderful, and it expresses
+eloquently the struggle in her breast between her devotion to the South
+and her love for the boy before her, and the officer tendering the oath
+almost speaks the sympathy which her suffering has awakened in him. The
+other works of our artist are "Uncle Ned's School," "The Charity
+Patient," "The School Examination," "The Council of War," "The Courtship
+in Sleepy Hollow," "The Fugitive's Story," "Challenging the Union Vote,"
+and "Rip Van Winkle."
+
+The process by which these exquisite groups are produced is exceedingly
+simple, but is one requiring considerable skill and delicacy of
+manipulation, and although the casting could readily be done by
+competent assistants, Mr. Rogers conscientiously gives his personal
+attention to every detail of the process. The artist takes a mass of wet
+clay of the desired consistency and size, and fashions it roughly with
+his hands to something like the proper shape. "It is sometimes necessary
+to make a little frame of wire upon which to lay the clay, to hold it in
+its proper place, the wire being easily made to take any form. The rough
+figure is then finished with the molding stick, which is simply a stick
+of pine with a little spoon of box-wood attached to each end, one spoon
+being more delicate than the other. With this instrument the artist
+works upon the clay with surprising ease. The way in which the works are
+reproduced is as follows: When the clay model is complete, a single
+plaster cast is taken for a pattern, and is finished with the most
+scrupulous care by Mr. Rogers himself. This cast is used as a pattern
+for making whatever number of molds may be needed to supply the demand
+for any particular group or statue. The molds are made of glue softened
+with water, so as to be about as limber as India-rubber. This is poured
+over the pattern while in a warm and liquid condition; it is, therefore,
+necessary to surround the pattern with a stiff case to hold the glue in
+place. This case is made of plaster, and is built up by hand around the
+pattern. When the glue has become sufficiently hard, it is cut by a thin
+sharp knife and pulled off the pattern. The parts are put together and
+bound by cord, making a perfect glue mold. The plaster of Paris is then
+poured into the mold inverted. A number of crooked pieces of wire are
+also placed in the mold to strengthen the figure. In about twenty
+minutes the plaster sets so as to allow the case to be opened, and the
+glue mold to be pulled off. To his proficiency in the mechanical part of
+his art Mr. Rogers attributes a considerable measure of his success, as
+it enables him to execute with facility every suggestion of his
+imagination, and to secure the perfect reproduction of his works by
+those to whom he intrusts that labor."
+
+By placing his works at popular prices, ranging from $10 to $25 each,
+Mr. Rogers has insured the largest sale and greatest popularity for
+them, and has thus become a national benefactor. It is now within the
+power of every person of moderate means to possess one or more of his
+exquisite groups, and in this way the artist has not only secured to
+himself a sure means of wealth, but has done much to encourage and
+foster a popular love for, and appreciation of, the art of which he is
+so bright an ornament.
+
+It was a bold venture to depart so entirely from all the precedents of
+art, but the result has vindicated both the artist's genius and his
+quick appreciation of the intelligence of his countrymen. "We can not
+enter into the feelings of ancient Greece," says a popular journal, in
+summing up his efforts, "and our artists who spend their time in
+attempting to reproduce that ancient art are only imitators. Their works
+interest only a small class of connoisseurs, and that interest is an
+antiquarian interest. It is not a vital, living interest, such as a
+Greek felt in his own work. It is not the natural, healthful, artistic
+feeling, the feeling for the beauty of realities, except in so far as it
+represents the feeling for the eternal attributes of beautiful form. It
+is an effort on the part of our artists to impose the forms and features
+of another age upon this one,--a task as impossible in art as in
+society, religion, and national politics."
+
+Mr. Rogers is now in his forty-first year, and of all our American
+artists is, perhaps, the one best known to the masses, and the most
+popular. He is of medium height, carries himself erectly, and is quick
+and energetic in his movements. His face is frank, manly, and open, and
+the expression, though firm and resolute,--as that of a man who has
+fought so hard for success must be,--is winning and genial. He is a
+gentleman of great cultivation of mind, and is said by his friends to be
+one of the most entertaining of companions. In 1865 he married a
+daughter of Mr. C.S. Francis, of New York, and his fondness for domestic
+life leads him to pass his leisure hours chiefly by his own fireside.
+
+
+[Illustration: HIRAM POWERS.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+HIRAM POWERS.
+
+
+Hiram Powers was born in Woodstock, Vermont, on the 29th of July, 1805.
+He was the eighth in a family of nine children, and was the son of a
+farmer who found it hard to provide his little household with the
+necessaries of life. He grew up as most New England boys do, sound and
+vigorous in health, passing the winters in attendance upon the district
+schools, and the summers in working on the farm. "The only distinctive
+trait exhibited by the child was mechanical ingenuity; he excelled in
+caricature, was an adept in constructiveness, having made countless
+wagons, windmills, and weapons for his comrades, attaining the height of
+juvenile reputation as the inventor of what he called a 'patent fuse.'"
+
+The Powers family lived just over the river, opposite the village, and
+all joined heartily in the effort to keep the wolf from the doors. Mr.
+Powers, Sen., was induced to become security for one of his friends,
+and, as frequently happens, lost all he had in consequence. Following
+close upon this disaster came a dreadful famine in the State, caused by
+an almost total failure of the crops. "I recollect," says Mr. Powers,
+"we cut down the trees, and fed our few cows on the browse. We lived so
+long wholly on milk and potatoes, that we got almost to loathe them.
+There were seven of us children, five at home, and it was hard work to
+feed us."
+
+One of the sons had managed to secure an education at Dartmouth College,
+and had removed to Cincinnati, where he was at this time editing a
+newspaper. Thither his father, discouraged by the famine, determined to
+follow him. Accordingly, placing his household goods and his family in
+three wagons, and being joined by another family, he set out on the long
+journey to the West. This was in 1819, when young Hiram was fourteen
+years old. It cost him a sharp struggle to leave his old home, and as
+they climbed the hills beyond Woodstock he lingered behind with his
+mother to take a last view of the place. They crossed the State, and
+passing through western New York came to the vicinity of Niagara Falls.
+They were near enough to the great cataract to hear its solemn roar
+sounding high above the silent woods. The boy was eager to visit it, but
+the distance was too great to the falls, and he was forced to relinquish
+this pleasure. Continuing their journey westward, they reached the Ohio
+River, down which stream they floated on a flatboat until they came to
+Cincinnati, then a city of fourteen thousand inhabitants.
+
+Through the assistance of his eldest son, the editor, Mr. Powers was
+enabled to secure a farm not far from Cincinnati, and removing his
+family to it, began the task of clearing and cultivating it.
+Unfortunately for the new-comers, the farm was located on the edge of a
+pestilential marsh, the poisonous exhalations of which soon brought the
+whole family down with the ague. Mr. Powers the elder died from this
+disease, and Hiram was ill and disabled from it for a whole year. The
+family was broken up and scattered, and our hero, incapable of
+performing hard work so soon after his sickness, obtained a place in a
+produce store in Cincinnati, his duty being to watch the principal road
+by which the farmers' wagons, laden with grain and corn whisky, came
+into the city, and to inform the men in charge of them that they could
+obtain better prices for their produce from his employers than from any
+other merchants in the city. It was also a part of his duty to help to
+roll the barrels from the wagons to the store. He made a very good
+"drummer," and gave satisfaction to his employers, but as the concern
+soon broke up, he was again without employment.
+
+His brother, the editor, now came to his assistance, and made a bargain
+with the landlord of a hotel in the city to establish a reading-room at
+his hotel. The landlord was to provide the room and obtain a few paying
+subscribers; the editor was to stock it with his exchange newspapers,
+and Hiram was to be put in charge of it and receive what could be made
+by it. The reading-room was established, but as the landlord failed to
+comply with his agreement, Powers was forced to abandon the undertaking.
+
+[Illustration: POWERS' DISTRUST OF THE HUNTERS.]
+
+"About that time," said he, in relating his early life to the Rev. Dr.
+Bellows, some years ago, "looking around anxiously for the means of
+living, I fell in with a worthy man, a clock-maker and organ-builder,
+who was willing to employ me to collect bad debts in the country. He put
+me on an old horse which had one very bad fault. He was afflicted with
+what the Western people called the 'swaleys,' and could not go downhill.
+I frequently had to dismount and back him down, as the only way of
+getting along. The road often lay through forests and clearings, in
+mire, and among the roots of the beeches, with which my poor beast was
+constantly struggling. I would sometimes emerge from a dark wood, five
+miles through, perhaps, and find myself near a clearing where the
+farmer's house I was seeking lay, half a mile off the road. Picking up
+a stout club to defend myself against the inevitable dog, which, in the
+absence of men-folks, guarded every log-house, I plodded across the
+plowed field, soon to be met by the ferocious beast, who, not seeing a
+stranger more than once a month, was always furious and dangerous. Out
+would come, at length, the poor woman, too curious to see who it was
+that broke up her monotonous solitude, to call off the dog, who
+generally grew fiercer as he felt his backer near him, and it was
+commonly with a feeling as of a bare escape of my life that I finally
+got into the house. It was sad enough, too, often to find sickness and
+death in those fever-stricken abodes--a wan mother nursing one dying
+child, with perhaps another dead in the house. My business, too, was not
+the most welcome. I came to dun a delinquent debtor, who had perhaps
+been inveigled by some peddler of our goods into an imprudent purchase,
+for a payment which it was inconvenient or impossible to make. There, in
+the corner, hung the wooden clock, the payment for which I was after,
+ticking off the last minutes of the sick child--the only ornament of the
+poor cabin. It was very painful to urge my business under such
+circumstances. However, I succeeded, by kindness, in getting more money
+than I expected from our debtors, who would always pay when they could.
+I recollect, one night, almost bewailing my success. I had reached the
+entrance of a forest, at least nine miles through, and finding a little
+tavern there, concluded it was prudent to put up and wait till morning.
+There were two rough-looking fellows around, hunters, with rifles in
+their hands, whose appearance did not please me, and I fancied they
+looked at each other significantly when the landlord took off my
+saddle-bags and weighted them, feeling the hundred dollars of silver I
+had collected. I was put into the attic, reached by a ladder, and,
+barricading the trap-door as well as I could, went to sleep with one
+eye open. Nothing, however, occurred, and in the morning I found my
+wild-looking men up as early as I, and was not a little disturbed when
+they proposed to keep me company across the forest. Afraid to show any
+suspicion, I consented, and then went and looked at the little
+flint-pistol I carried, formidable only to sparrows, but which was my
+only defense.
+
+"About two miles into the wood, my fierce-looking friends, after some
+exchange of understanding as to their respective ways and meeting-point,
+started off on different sides of the road in search of game, as they
+said, but, as I feared, with the purpose of robbing and perhaps
+murdering me at some darker spot in the forest. I had gone perhaps two
+miles farther, when I heard the breaking of a twig, and, looking on one
+side, saw a hand signaling me to stop. Presently an eye came out behind
+the tree, and then an arm, and I verily thought my hour had come. But,
+keeping straight on, I perceived, almost instantly, to my great relief,
+two fine deer, who appeared not at all disturbed by a man on horseback,
+though ready enough to fly from a gun, and began to suspect that the
+robber I was dreading was, after all, only a hunter in the honest
+pursuit of his living. The crack of the rifle soon proved that the deer,
+and not my saddle-bags, were the game aimed at, and I found my
+imagination had for twelve hours been converting very harmless huntsmen
+into highwaymen of a most malicious aspect."
+
+His employer was so well pleased with the success of his young collector
+that he offered to give him a place in the factory, saying there would
+always be plenty of rough work at which an inexperienced hand could
+employ himself. "I could refuse no proposition that promised me bread
+and clothes," said he, "for I was often walking the streets hungry, with
+my arms pressed close to my sides to conceal the holes in my coat
+sleeves." His first task was to thin down with a file some brass plates
+which were to be used as parts of the stops of an organ. Powers was
+expected to do merely the rough work, after which the plates were to
+pass into the hands of the regular finisher. His employer, knowing that
+the task was one which would require time, told him he would look in in
+a few days, and see how he had succeeded. The young man's mechanical
+talent, on which he had prided himself when a boy in Vermont, now did
+him good service, and he applied himself to his task with skill and
+determination. When his employer asked for the plates, he was astonished
+to find that Powers had not only done the rough work, but had finished
+them much better than the regular finisher had ever done, and this
+merely by his greater nicety of eye and his undaunted energy. He had
+blistered his hands terribly, but had done his work well. His employer
+was delighted, and, finding him so valuable an assistant, soon gave him
+the superintendence of all his machinery, and took him to live in his
+own family.
+
+As has been stated, his employer's business was the manufacture of
+organs and clocks. Powers displayed great skill in the management of the
+mechanical department of the business, and this, added to the favor
+shown him by the "boss," drew upon him the jealousy of the other
+workmen. There hung in the shop at this time an old silver bull's-eye
+watch, a good time-piece, but very clumsy and ungainly in appearance.
+Powers was anxious to become its owner. Being too poor to buy it, he hit
+upon the following expedient for obtaining it. He had carefully studied
+the machine used in the shop for cutting out wooden clock wheels, and
+had suggested to his employer several improvements in it. The workmen,
+however, had ridiculed his suggestions, and had denounced as the most
+barefaced presumption his belief that he could improve a machine which
+had come all the way from Connecticut, where, they said, people were
+supposed to know something about clocks. Nevertheless, he maintained his
+opinions, and told his employer that if he would give him the silver
+watch, he would invent a much better machine. His offer was accepted,
+and in ten days he produced a machine, not only much simpler than the
+old one, but capable of performing twice as much and better work. The
+workmen promptly acknowledged his success, and his employer gave him the
+watch. "The old watch," said he, a few years ago, "has ticked all my
+children into existence, and three of them out of this world. It still
+hangs at the head of my bed."
+
+About this time, in a chance visit to the Museum in Cincinnati, he saw a
+plaster cast of Houdon's "Washington." It was the first bust he had ever
+seen, and he says it moved him strangely. He had an intense desire to
+know how it was done, and a vague consciousness that he could do work of
+the same kind if he could find an instructor. The instructor he soon
+found in a German living in the city, who made plaster casts and busts,
+and from him he learned the secret of the art. He proved an apt pupil,
+and surprised his teacher by his proficiency. His first effort at
+modeling from life was the bust of a little daughter of Mr. John P.
+Foote. She sat to him during the hours he could spare from his regular
+work. His model was made of beeswax, as he was afraid that clay would
+freeze or stiffen. His success encouraged him very greatly. "I found I
+had a correct eye," said he, "and a hand which steadily improved in its
+obedience to my eye. I saw the likeness, and knew it depended on the
+features, and that, if I could copy the features exactly, the likeness
+would follow just as surely as the blood follows the knife. I found
+early that all the talk about catching the expression was mere twaddle;
+the expression would take care of itself if I copied the features
+exactly."
+
+The true principles of his art seemed to come to him naturally, and
+having the genius to comprehend them so readily, he had the courage to
+hold on to them often in the face of adverse criticism. While conscious
+of having a perfectly correct eye, however, he did not scorn the humbler
+method of obtaining exactness by mathematical measurement. The following
+incident, which he related to Dr. Bellows, illustrates this:
+
+"One of the first busts I ever made was of an artist, a Frenchman, who
+came over with Mrs. Trollope. He proposed to paint my picture, while I
+was to make his bust. He was older, and considered himself much my
+superior, and, indeed, undertook to be my instructor. I was to begin.
+His first _canon_ was that I was to use no measurements, and he quoted
+Michael Angelo's saying--'A sculptor should carry his compasses in his
+eyes, not in his fingers,' I humbly submitted to his authority, and
+finished the bust without a single measurement. He was very triumphant
+at what he called the success of his method. I begged permission of him,
+now that the bust was completed, to verify my work by the dividers. He
+graciously consented, and I was pleased to find how nearly I had hit the
+mark. A few imperfections, however, appeared, and these, in spite of his
+objections, I corrected without his knowledge, for I was determined to
+have the bust as near right as I could make it. It had taken me,
+however, at least five times as long to measure the distances with my
+eyes as it would have done to measure them with the calipers, and I saw
+no advantage in the longer and more painful effort. The measurements are
+mere preparations for the artist's true work, and are, like the
+surveyor's lines, preparatory to the architect's labor. When my subject,
+in his turn, undertook my portrait, he was true to his own principles,
+and finished it without measurements. I then, though with some horror at
+my temerity, asked permission to verify his work with the dividers, and
+found at the first stroke a difference of at least half an inch in the
+distance between the eyes. He looked very much mortified, but said that
+it was done to 'give the effect.' I have had no misgivings since about
+the economy and wisdom of using the calipers freely. To be useful, they
+must be applied with the greatest precision--so small are the
+differences upon which all the infinite variety in human countenances
+depends. With the aid of my careful measurements, I do in one day what
+it would cost me a week or two's work to accomplish without, and I am
+then able to give my exclusive attention to the modeling."
+
+He did not regularly devote himself to his art, however, but remained in
+the employment of the organ and clock maker for some time longer, giving
+his leisure hours to constant practice. When he was about twenty-three
+years old, a Frenchman named Herview opened in Cincinnati a museum of
+natural history and wax figures. The latter had been very much broken
+and disfigured in transportation, and their owner, in despair, begged
+Powers to undertake the task of restoring them. The figures were
+representations of distinguished men and women, and as Powers readily
+saw that it would be impossible to repair them without having proper
+likenesses as his guides, he proposed to the Frenchman to make an
+entirely new composition of the old materials, and one which should
+attract attention by its oddity. This was agreed to, and the result was
+a hideous and ungainly figure, which Powers proposed should be called
+the "King of the Cannibal Islands," but to his amazement the Frenchman
+advertised it as the embalmed body of a South Sea man-eater, "secured at
+immense expense." Powers declared to his employer that the audience
+would discover the cheat and tear down the museum; but the "man-eater"
+drew immense crowds, and was regarded as the most wonderful natural
+curiosity ever seen in the West. The Frenchman was so well pleased with
+it that he employed the artist permanently as inventor, wax-figure
+maker, and general mechanical contriver in the museum.
+
+Powers remained in the Frenchman's employ for seven years, hoping all
+the while to earn money enough to devote himself entirely to art, which
+had now become his great ambition. His experience was not a pleasant
+one. Some of it was so singular, not to say ludicrous, that he shall
+relate one portion of it in his own language:
+
+"One of the first things I undertook, in company with Herview, was a
+representation of the infernal regions after Dante's description. Behind
+a grating I made certain dark grottoes, full of stalactites and
+stalagmites, with shadowy ghosts and pitchforked figures, all calculated
+to work on the easily-excited imaginations of a Western audience, as the
+West then was. I found it very popular and attractive, but occasionally
+some countryman would suggest to his fellow spectator that a little
+motion in the figures would add much to the reality of the show. After
+much reflection I concluded to go in among the figures dressed like the
+Evil One, in a dark robe, with a death's-head and cross-bones wrought
+upon it, and with a lobster's claw for a nose. I had bought and fixed up
+an old electrical machine, and connected it with a wire, so that, from a
+wand in my hand, I could discharge quite a serious shock upon any body
+venturing too near the grating. The plan worked admirably, and excited
+great interest; but I found acting the part of wax-figure two hours
+every evening in the cold no sinecure, and was put to my wits to devise
+a figure that could be moved by strings, and which would fill my place.
+I succeeded so well that it ended in my inventing a whole series of
+automata, for which the old wax-figures furnished the materials, in
+part, and which became so popular and so rewarding, that I was kept
+seven years at the business, my employer promising me, from time to
+time, an interest in the business, which he quite forgot to fulfill.
+When, at last, I found out the vanity of my expectations, I left him. He
+knew I kept no accounts, but he did not know that I reported all the
+money he gave me to my wife, who did keep our accounts. He tried to
+cheat me, but I was able to baffle him through her prudence and method.
+For I had married in this interval, and had a wife and children to
+support."
+
+Powers was now thirty years old, and had acquired considerable
+reputation in Cincinnati as an artist. His abilities coming to the
+notice of Mr. Nicholas Longworth, of that city, that good genius of
+young men of talent called on him and offered to buy out the museum and
+establish him in the business. The offer was declined with thanks. Mr.
+Longworth then proposed to send him to Italy to study his profession,
+but this, too, being declined, Mr. Longworth urged him to go to
+Washington and try his fortune with the public men of the country. To
+this Powers consented, and, aided by his generous friend, he repaired to
+the national capital in 1835, and spent two years there. During this
+period he modeled busts of Andrew Jackson, J.Q. Adams, Calhoun, Chief
+Justice Marshall, Woodbury, Van Buren, and others. Being unable to
+secure a model of Webster in Washington, the statesman invited him to go
+with him to Marshfield for that purpose. Powers accepted the invitation,
+and declares that he looks back upon his sojourn there as one of the
+most delightful portions of his life.
+
+General Jackson was very kind to him, and won his lasting esteem and
+gratitude. Upon being asked if he would sit for his bust, the old hero
+hesitated, and, looking at the artist nervously, asked: "Do you daub any
+thing over the face? Because," he added, "I recollect poor Mr. Jefferson
+got nearly smothered when they tried to take his bust. The plaster
+hardened before they got ready to release him, and they pounded it with
+mallets till they nearly stunned him, and then almost tore off a piece
+of his ear in their haste to pull off a sticking fragment of the mold. I
+should not like that." Powers assured him that such a terrible process
+would not be necessary, but that he only wished to look at him for an
+hour a day, sitting in his chair. The General brightened up at once, and
+cordially told him it would give him pleasure to sit for him. He at once
+installed the artist in a room in the White House, and gave him a
+sitting of an hour every morning until the model was done.
+
+Mr. Powers regards the bust of Jackson as one of his best efforts, and
+the President himself was very much pleased with it. After he had
+completed his model, Mr. Edward Everett brought Baron Krudener, the
+Prussian Minister to Washington, to see it. The Baron was a famous art
+critic, and poor Powers was terribly nervous as he showed him the bust.
+The Baron examined it closely, and then said to the artist, "You have
+got the General completely: his head, his face, his courage, his
+firmness, his identical self; and yet it will not do! You have also got
+all his wrinkles, all his age and decay. You forget that he is President
+of the United States and the idol of the people. You should have given
+him a dignity and elegance he does not possess. You should have employed
+your _art_, sir, and not merely your _nature_." The artist listened in
+silence, and Mr. Everett stood by without saying a word, "conscious," as
+he afterward confessed, "of a very poor right to speak on such a
+subject," after listening to so famous a critic. "_I_ did not dare,"
+says Powers, "in my humility and reverence for these two great men, to
+say what I wanted to in reply; to tell the Baron that my 'art' consisted
+in concealing art, and that my 'nature' was the highest art I knew or
+could conceive of. I was content that the 'truth' of my work had been so
+fully acknowledged, and the Baron only confirmed my resolution to make
+truth my only model and guide in all my future undertakings."
+
+One of his sitters in Washington was Senator Preston, of South Carolina,
+who conceived such an interest in him that he wrote to his brother,
+General Preston, of Columbia, South Carolina, a gentleman of great
+wealth, urging him to come to the artist's assistance, and send him to
+Italy. General Preston at once responded to this appeal, of which Powers
+was ignorant, and wrote to the artist to draw on him for a thousand
+dollars, and go to Italy at once, and to draw on him annually for a
+similar sum for several years. Powers was profoundly touched by this
+noble offer, and accepted it as frankly as it had been made. He sent his
+models to Italy, and took his departure for the Old World in 1837.
+Speaking of Mr. Preston's generosity, he said, two years ago: "I have
+endeavored to requite his kindness by sending him works of mine, equal
+in money value to his gifts; but I can never extinguish my great
+obligations. I fear he don't like me since the war,--for I could not
+suppress my strong national feelings for any man's friendship,--but I
+like and honor him; I would do any thing in my power to show him my
+inextinguishable gratitude."
+
+He reached Florence in advance of his models, and while waiting for them
+made two busts, one of a professor in Harvard College, and the other of
+an American lady. A severe domestic affliction, however, which came upon
+him soon after his arrival in Italy, affected him so greatly that he was
+not able to return to his work for a long time. Then he applied himself
+to his busts, which were warmly praised by the artists in Florence and
+by his countrymen traveling abroad. Thorwaldsen visited him in his
+studio, and pronounced his bust of Webster the best work of its kind in
+modern times, and praises from other distinguished artists were equally
+as warm. Orders came in rapidly from English and Italians, and from
+Americans in Europe, and the sculptor soon had as much business as he
+could attend to. He gave his leisure time to work on an ideal figure,
+which, when completed, was purchased by an English gentleman of wealth.
+This was "The Greek Slave," the most popular of all his works.
+Duplicates of it were exhibited in America and at the Crystal Palace in
+England, and won him praise from all quarters. This single work
+established his fame as an artist, and brought him orders from all parts
+of the civilized world. His statue of "Eve," which had preceded "The
+Greek Slave" by a year, had been pronounced by Thorwaldsen fit to be any
+man's master-piece, but it had not created such a furore as "The Greek
+Slave." Subsequently he made an exquisite bust of the Grand Duchess of
+Tuscany, with which the Grand Duke was so pleased that he called on
+Powers, and asked him as a favor to himself to apply to him whenever he
+could do him a service. Powers asked permission to take a cast of the
+Venus, and this much-coveted boon, which had been denied to other
+artists for years, was at once granted to him.
+
+Since then his works have been numerous. Among these are "The Fisher
+Boy," of which three duplicates in marble have been made;
+"Il Penseroso;" "Proserpine," a bust; "California;" "America," modeled
+for the Crystal Palace at Sydenham, England; "Washington" and "Calhoun,"
+portrait statues, the former for the State of Louisiana, and the latter
+for the State of South Carolina; and "Benjamin Franklin" and "Thomas
+Jefferson," in the Capitol at Washington. His works are all marked by
+beauty and vigor of conception as well as by exquisite finish. Beautiful
+as his ideal figures are, he yet excels in his busts and statues of the
+great men of his native land. His "Jefferson" and "Franklin" are
+wonderful works, and his "Calhoun" is said to be almost life-like. This
+last was wrecked on the coast of Long Island on its voyage to America,
+and remained in the sea for some time, but being well packed was found,
+when raised, to be only slightly damaged by the water.
+
+Mr. Powers has now resided in Italy for thirty-three years. Motives of
+economy have controlled his action, for he would gladly return to his
+own land did he feel justified in doing so. He has thus stated the
+reasons which have influenced his long residence abroad:
+
+
+     Sculpture is universal. The human form is of no country, and may be
+     studied with equal advantage at home and abroad. The opportunities
+     of studying it abroad are so immeasurably greater than at home,
+     that I do not see how it is possible, without great loss, to
+     neglect them.
+
+     1. It is impossible to model successfully without living models;
+     and in America, in my time, it was almost at the peril of
+     reputation, both for model and sculptor, that an artist employed
+     the living model, even if he could procure it. Now, I understand, a
+     few models may be obtained in New York; but they are so rare and so
+     expensive, that it is almost ruinous to employ them. It costs two
+     or three dollars there to secure a model which here may be had for
+     half a day for forty cents. There is no want of models here; but
+     their history is a sad one, and makes one often seriously lament
+     the necessity for employing them. Young women, especially, are
+     driven to this employment by the want of bread. I have numerous
+     offers of their services made by parents who are in great distress.
+     I make it a point to discourage all who come to me from entering
+     the business, and am only conquered when I feel sure that, if I
+     decline, they will be driven to other studios. I prefer only
+     professional models, already thoroughly committed to the calling,
+     as I shrink from the responsibility of leading any into so perilous
+     a vocation. They are usually accompanied by their mothers, and I
+     strive to treat them in a way to save their self-respect and
+     delicacy--a very hard task, which too often breaks down in less
+     scrupulous hands.
+
+     2. The opportunities of anatomical studies are here nearly perfect,
+     and free from all expense. The medical schools not only illustrate
+     anatomy by surgery on the cadaver, but standing by the side of the
+     dead body is a living one, in which the action of the muscles
+     dissected before the student may be studied in life. These colleges
+     are open to all artists, and furnish the best possible schooling in
+     anatomy, a thorough acquaintance with which is indispensable to the
+     sculptor, and can only be obtained in America at great cost.
+
+     3. Marble is no cheaper here than in New York, the long
+     sea-carriage costing no more to America than the short
+     land-carriage does from the quarries to Florence or Rome. But good
+     workmen, who can not be dispensed with, are so abundant and so
+     cheap here, so rare and so dear at home, that that alone is a
+     decisive reason for coming abroad. Even here it is a heavy expense
+     to procure sufficient and competent workmen; at home it is almost
+     at ruinous cost and with nearly insuperable difficulty. I have two
+     workmen--as good, certainly, as the best in America--to the finest
+     of whom I pay only four dollars a day. He could make twice that
+     cutting weeping-willows on American tomb-stones. What could he not
+     justly demand in wages from a New York sculptor? I employ a dozen
+     workmen in my studios; the poorest, at work on pedestals and rough
+     work, earn about half a dollar a day; the moderately skilled, a
+     little over a dollar. The whole cost me about fifteen dollars per
+     day, which is wonderfully low. Then, my rent--which could not, for
+     my extensive accommodations, be less than two thousand five hundred
+     dollars a year in any eligible position which the public would
+     visit--reaches only about four hundred and fifty dollars, annually.
+
+     But, 4. The general expenses of maintaining a family are so much
+     less here than at home, that a man without capital, possessing a
+     profession so slow in reaching its pecuniary returns as an
+     artist's, finds an immense inducement to live abroad. It is true
+     that, music and accomplishment in languages apart, the
+     opportunities of a substantial education for one's children are not
+     as good here as at home. There are, however, less temptations to
+     vice, and less exposures to the American habit of hard drinking
+     among young men; but, no doubt, the general influences here, in
+     the way of developing a manly, energetic, and self-relying
+     character, are less favorable than at home. There is a softness, a
+     disposition to take life easy, and a want of moral earnestness in
+     Italy, which are not favorable to youthful ambition and
+     independence. On the other hand, the money-getting propensities and
+     social rivalries of America tend to harden human character, and to
+     bring out a severe selfishness which is offensive. On the whole,
+     the balance is on our side, and, other things apart, American youth
+     are better brought up in America. But the artist must make this
+     sacrifice to his art.
+
+
+Mr. Powers is sixty-five years old, but is in full possession of his
+mental and physical strength. He is a genuine American, notwithstanding
+his long residence abroad, and has always a warm welcome for his
+countrymen visiting his studio. He is a favorite with the younger
+artists, who find in him a kind and judicious friend. Scorning servile
+imitation, he still exhibits in his works the freshness of his youth and
+the genuine originality which was the basis of his fame.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+EMMANUEL LEUTZE.
+
+
+Emmanuel Leutze, by adoption an American, was born in the village of
+Emingen, near the city of Reutlingen, in Wurtemberg, on the 24th of May,
+1816. His father emigrated to America during the infancy of his son, and
+the future artist spent his youth in the city of Philadelphia and the
+town of Fredericksburg, Virginia. He received a good common school
+education, and passed his time in comparative seclusion from society,
+reading and studying, but showing no especial fondness for art. At
+length, during his father's last illness, in which he nursed him with
+great devotion, he took up drawing to beguile the weary hours of the
+sick-room, and succeeded so well in his attempts that after his father's
+death he continued his efforts under the instruction of a competent
+drawing master. He improved rapidly, and was so well satisfied with his
+success that he determined to adopt the profession of an artist as the
+one best suited to his talents and inclination.
+
+[Illustration: FILIAL DEVOTION SHAPES A GREAT CAREER]
+
+Having acquired considerable skill in drawing, he attempted rude
+portraits of men and beasts, and at length undertook to copy from memory
+a colored print after Westall. He completed it, and resolved to show it
+to some of his friends. In his impatience for the colors to dry, he
+placed the painting before the fire and went to summon his friends,
+but found, to his dismay, upon returning with them, that the heat had
+blistered the canvas so that the picture was hardly recognizable. Yet,
+in spite of this, his critics saw such evidences of genius in the
+painting that they urged the young artist to continue his labors, and
+predicted a great success for him.
+
+Leutze, however, was not willing to venture upon another composition,
+either partly or wholly original, but applied himself with zeal to learn
+the rudiments of his art, and with such success that when his portraits
+appeared at the Artist's Fund Exhibition, a year or two later, they
+received high praise, both from critics and the public. An enterprising
+publisher, attracted by these portraits, engaged him to go to Washington
+and paint the portraits of the leading statesmen of the country, to be
+engraved for a "national work." Leutze at once proceeded to the capital,
+full of hope and enthusiasm, but soon found that the schemes of the
+politicians whose faces he was to transmit to canvas engrossed them so
+much that they would not give him the sittings he desired. After waiting
+impatiently for a considerable time he threw up the engagement in
+disgust, and went into the woods of Virginia to console himself by
+communing with nature. For some time he wandered about, making desultory
+sketches, and abandoning himself to a melancholy which was closely akin
+to despair. When this feeling was at its height, a friend, before
+unknown, came to his aid.
+
+"A gentleman, whose rich domain he chanced to approach in his wayward
+rovings, perceived his abilities, understood his unhappiness, and
+aroused him from inaction by a call upon his professional skill. The
+artist obeyed, but he could not subdue the mood which possessed him. No
+brilliant scene arose to his fancy, no humorous incident took form and
+color from his pencil, and the fair landscape around appeared to mock
+rather than cheer his destiny. He could not bring himself into relation
+with subjects thus breathing of hope and gayety, but found inspiration
+only in the records of human sorrow. As the royal mourner bade her
+companions sit upon the ground and 'tell sad stories of the death of
+kings,' the pensive artist found something analogous to his own fate in
+the story of Hagar and Ishmael. He painted them as having followed up a
+spent water-course, in hopes of finding wherewith to quench their
+thirst, and sinking under the disappointment. He neither saw nor painted
+the angel of God who showed the fountain in the wilderness, and yet the
+angel was there, for now the sufferer acknowledges that early
+vicissitudes nerved him for high endeavor, rendered his vision piercing,
+his patience strong, and his confidence firm, and that this incidental
+effort to triumph over difficulties was the first of a series which
+inspired his subsequent career."
+
+In 1840 he produced a painting which he called "An Indian Contemplating
+the Setting Sun." It was exhibited in Philadelphia, and won general
+praise for the artist. Better than this, it secured him the friendship
+of the late Edward L. Carey, of that city, who, recognizing his genius,
+determined to help him on in his labors. Mr. Carey was successful in
+inducing his friends to give Leutze a number of commissions, and these
+enabled him to carry out his wish to visit Europe and complete his
+studies. Instead of going to Italy, as was then the almost universal
+practice, he determined to study in Germany, and accordingly sailed for
+that country. He went by way of Holland, and after a long and trying
+voyage reached Amsterdam in January, 1841. Pausing here for awhile to
+familiarize himself with the master-pieces of the Dutch school, he
+repaired to Dusseldorf, where he became a pupil of the celebrated
+painter Lessing, under whom he made marked progress. His reception by
+the artists of Dusseldorf was at once hearty and encouraging, and won
+for that school and its members his enthusiastic devotion. He became
+Lessing's pupil at the personal request of the master, and these two
+gifted men were soon bound to each other by the ties of an undying
+friendship.
+
+Leutze devoted himself to historical subjects from the first, and soon
+after his arrival in Dusseldorf began his picture of "Columbus Before
+the Council of Salamanca." When it was finished, it was visited by
+Director V. Schadow, who praised it warmly, and requested the artist to
+offer it to the Art Union of Dusseldorf, which at once purchased it.
+This high compliment to a beginner and a stranger proved an additional
+stimulus to Leutze, and he soon after produced a companion picture to
+his first, "Columbus in Chains," which procured him the gold medal of
+the Brussels Art Exhibition, and was subsequently purchased by the Art
+Union of New York.
+
+Remaining two years in Dusseldorf, Leutze went to Munich to study the
+works of Cornelius and Kaulbach, and while there painted another scene
+in the life of the Great Discoverer, "Columbus before the Queen." Upon
+completing this picture he went to Venice, Rome, and the other Italian
+cities, making careful studies of the masters of that school. He gave
+two years to his travels, visiting the Tyrol, and reveling in the
+magnificent scenery through which he journeyed. He went into
+Switzerland, sketching the glorious beauties of its Alps, and reached
+the Rhine at Strasbourg. Then, sailing down that beautiful river, he set
+foot once more in Dusseldorf, glad, as he declared, to end his
+wanderings in the midst of his friends. Here he determined to locate
+himself permanently, and soon after his return he married.
+
+He lived in Dusseldorf for fourteen years, devoting himself assiduously
+to his art. His labors were incessant. Historic subjects make up the
+vast bulk of his productions during this period, and in his treatment of
+them he adhered closely to the style of the Dusseldorf school. The best
+known of his works during this portion of his career are "The Landing of
+the Norsemen in America;" "Cromwell and his Daughter;" "The Court of
+Queen Elizabeth;" "Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyn;" "The Iconoclast," and
+his famous and brilliant series of pictures illustrative of the events
+of the American War of Independence. The most prominent of these were,
+"Washington Crossing the Delaware;" "Washington at Monmouth;"
+"Washington at the Battle of Monongahela;" "News from Lexington;"
+"Sergeant Jasper," and "Washington at Princeton." These are fine
+paintings, possessing striking characteristics, and are all more or less
+popular. "Washington Crossing the Delaware" is perhaps the best known,
+since it has been engraved, and sold in all parts of the country in that
+form.
+
+During his absence in Germany, Leutze did not forget the country of his
+choice, as his devotion to American subjects amply testifies. When he
+had won a proud name in his art by his labors in Dusseldorf, and had
+laid by money enough to justify him in returning to a land where art was
+in its infancy, and not over-remunerative, he came back to the United
+States, after an absence of eighteen years, and opened a studio in New
+York. He found a vast improvement in the public taste and in the demand
+for works of art since his departure for the Old World, and, better
+still, found that his peculiar field, the historic, was the one most
+suited to the tastes of the American public.
+
+It was his intention, in coming back to this country, to devote the time
+during which he supposed he would be compelled to wait for orders, to
+looking around him and familiarizing himself with the changes that had
+taken place in the Union during his absence; but he was never able to
+carry out this design, as he had no leisure time. His European
+reputation had preceded him hither, and he had scarcely opened his doors
+in New York before he was obliged to refuse orders, for lack of time to
+execute them. His hands were full from the first, and he at once took
+rank as the most thoroughly popular and accomplished artist in the
+country.
+
+Early in 1860 he received from the Government of the United States a
+commission to decorate one of the marble stairways in the Capitol at
+Washington with a mural painting. The painting was to be executed in
+fresco, and he chose as his subject, "Westward the Star of Empire Takes
+its Way." He entered upon the undertaking with the keenest delight, and
+in order to make himself thoroughly acquainted with the true character
+of frontier scenery and life, performed what was then the long and
+difficult journey to the Rocky Mountains, where he made numerous
+sketches. Returning to the States, he sailed for Europe, and went to
+Munich to learn from Kaulbach the new stereochromatic process which has
+now superseded the fresco-painting of the middle ages. Returning to
+Washington, he applied himself to his task, and in a couple of years
+completed it.
+
+The picture is the largest and finest mural painting in America, and
+adorns the magnificent stairway at the north end of the west corridor of
+the House of Representatives. It is lighted from a sky-light in the
+roof, and is seen to the best advantage from the upper corridor. The
+coloring is softer and more life-like than is often seen in such
+paintings. The surface of the wall is rough, but the work has been done
+by such a master hand that one seems to be gazing upon real life. It is
+a wonderful picture--one that will repay weeks of study.
+
+The scene represents a train of emigrants crossing the Rocky Mountains.
+They have reached the summit of the range, from which a glorious view
+stretches out before them to the westward. The adventurers consist of
+the usual class of emigrants, men, women, and children. There are
+several wagons and a number of horses in the train. The faces of the
+emigrants express the various emotions which fill their hearts as they
+gaze upon the glorious scene before them. Some are full of life and
+vigor, and hope beams in every feature, while others are struggling with
+sickness and despair. The advance of the train has been momentarily
+checked by a huge tree which has fallen across the trail, and two stout
+men, under the direction of the leader of the party, who is sitting on
+his horse, are engaged in hewing it away with axes. Two others have
+climbed to the summit of the neighboring rocky crag, on which they have
+planted the banner of the Republic, which is seen flapping proudly from
+its lofty perch. In the foreground stands a manly youth, clasping his
+father's long rifle firmly, and gazing toward the promised land with a
+countenance glowing with hope and energy. His sister, as hopeful as
+himself, is seated by her mother's side, on a buffalo-robe which has
+been thrown over a rock. The mother's face is sad, but patient. She
+knows well the privations, toils, and hardships which await them in the
+new home-land, but she tries to share the enthusiasm and hope of her
+children. She clasps her nursing infant to her breast, and listens to
+her husband, who stands by and points her to the new country where they
+will have a home of their own. Her face is inexpressibly beautiful. The
+rich, warm light of the rising sun streams brightly over the whole
+scene, and gives to it a magical glow. The legend, "Westward the Star of
+Empire Takes its Way," is inscribed over the painting, in letters of
+gold.
+
+An elaborate illuminated border, illustrative of the advance of
+civilization in the West, surrounds the painting, and is in itself one
+of the most perfect works of art in the Capitol.
+
+Leutze received the sum of $20,000 for this painting. After completing
+it, some matters connected with his family required him to make a visit
+to Dusseldorf, and upon reaching that place he was warmly welcomed by
+the artists, on the 10th of June, 1863, at their club. "About one
+hundred and fifty lords of art," says a letter from Dusseldorf,
+"assembled at the 'Mahlkasten,' just outside of the Hof-Garten. This is
+the club-house of the painters, and, with its gardens, is their
+property. Leutze was received with music, and when he came within reach
+of the assembled company, there was a general rush to shake his hands,
+kiss his cheeks, and hug him. The old fellows were much affected at the
+scene, and were heartily glad to see their old companion once more. The
+guest made a short and feeling address, whereupon all went in to supper.
+Here two of the artists had arrayed themselves, one as a negro, the
+other as an Indian; and these brought in the first dishes and handed
+them to Leutze. Andreas Achenbach sat at Leutze's right, and his old
+friend Tryst at his left. After dinner, the calumet cf peace was passed
+around; there was speaking and drinking of healths, with songs afterward
+in the illuminated garden. The occasion appears to have been a very
+pleasant and right merry one, and is said to have been the happiest
+festival ever given by the Society of Artists."
+
+Returning to the United States a few months later, Leutze repaired to
+Washington, where he had permanently settled. He was given several
+commissions by the Government, and at once began to design his subjects.
+They were only in the cartoon, however, at the time of his death. One of
+these, "Civilization," was to have been placed in the Senate Chamber,
+and was partly finished. It is said to have given promise of being his
+finest production. He also left a sketch of an immense picture, "The
+Emancipation." He was always a hard worker, and this doubtless
+contributed to bring about his death, which took place on the 18th of
+July, 1868. The immediate cause was apoplexy, superinduced by the
+intense heat.
+
+"Mr. Leutze," says a writer in the Annual Cyclopedia, "was altogether
+the best educated artist in America, possessed of vast technical
+learning, of great genius, and fine powers of conception. His weakest
+point was in his coloring, but even here he was superior to most
+others."
+
+"Leutze," says Mr. Tuckerman, "delights in representing adventure. He
+ardently sympathizes with chivalric action and spirit-stirring events:
+not the abstractly beautiful or the simply true, but the heroic, the
+progressive, the individual, and earnest phases of life, warm his fancy
+and attract his pencil. His forte is the dramatic.... If Leutze were not
+a painter, he would certainly join some expedition to the Rocky
+Mountains, thrust himself into a fiery political controversy, or seek to
+wrest a new truth from the arcana of science.... We remember hearing a
+brother artist describe him in his studio at Home, engaged for hours
+upon a picture, deftly shifting palette, cigar, and maul-stick from hand
+to hand, as occasion required; absorbed, rapid, intent, and then
+suddenly breaking from his quiet task to vent his constrained spirits in
+a jovial song, or a romp with his great dog, whose vociferous barking he
+thoroughly enjoyed; and often abandoning his quiet studies for some
+wild, elaborate frolic, as if a row was essential to his happiness. His
+very jokes partook of this bold heartiness of disposition. He scorned
+all ultra refinement, and found his impulse to art not so much in
+delicate perception as in vivid sensation. There was ever a reaction
+from the meditative. His temperament is Teutonic--hardy, cordial, and
+brave. Such men hold the conventional in little reverence, and their
+natures gush like mountain streams, with wild freedom and unchastened
+enthusiasm."
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+DIVINES.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+HENRY WARD BEECHER.
+
+
+Henry Ward Beecher was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, on the 24th of
+June, 1813, and was the eighth child of Dr. Lyman Beecher, the famous
+Presbyterian divine of New England. Dr. Beecher was regarded as one of
+the most powerful champions of orthodox Christianity in the land of the
+pilgrims, and had the good fortune to be the father of a family whose
+members have become celebrated for their intellectual gifts.
+
+The most of these gave early promise of their future distinction, but
+the subject of this memoir was regarded as the dunce of the family. He
+grew up as the children of most New England clergymen of that day
+climbed the road to manhood. His father's family was large, and the
+salary paid by the congregation never exceeded eight hundred dollars,
+and was not always promptly paid at that. The good people of the land of
+steady habits well knew how to drive hard bargains with the Lord's
+messengers, and were adepts in the art of securing the "best talent" at
+the lowest price. The stern, hard struggle for a livelihood in which
+the father was engaged prevented him from giving much personal attention
+to his children, and the mother of young Henry dying when he was but
+three years old, the boy was left very much to himself. Like most
+ministers' children, he was obliged to "set an example to the village,"
+and this boy was dosed with Catechism and his father's stern and gloomy
+theological tenets until he was sick of them.
+
+"In those days," says Mrs. Stowe, "none of the attentions were paid to
+children that are now usual. The community did not recognize them..
+There was no child's literature; there were no children's books. The
+Sunday-school was yet an experiment in a fluctuating, uncertain state of
+trial. There were no children's days of presents and _fetes_, no
+Christmas or New Year's festivals. The annual thanksgiving was only
+associated with one day's unlimited range of pies of every sort--too
+much for one day--and too soon things of the past. The childhood of
+Henry Ward was unmarked by the possession of a single child's toy as a
+gift from any older person, or a single _fete_. Very early, too, strict
+duties devolved upon him. A daily portion of the work of the
+establishment, the care of the domestic animals, the cutting and piling
+of wood, or tasks in the garden, strengthened his muscles and gave vigor
+and tone to his nerves. From his father and mother he inherited a
+perfectly solid, healthy organization of brain, muscle, and nerves, and
+the uncaressing, let-alone system under which he was brought up gave him
+early habits of vigor and self-reliance."
+
+When but three or four years old he was sent to the Widow Kilbourn's
+school, where he said his letters twice a day, and passed the rest of
+his time in hemming a brown towel or a checked apron. It was not
+expected that he would learn very much from Marm Kilbourn, but the
+school kept him out of the way of the "home folks" for the greater part
+of the day.
+
+He was a winning, sweet-faced child, with long golden curls, of which
+he was very proud. Some of his female playfellows at school, thinking it
+a shame that a boy should look so much like a girl, cut off one or two
+of his curls with a pair of shears made of scraps of tin, and when the
+little fellow complained of his loss at home it was decided that the
+best way to protect him from such attacks in future was to cut his hair
+close to his head, which was done at once. Little Henry was commonly
+thought a dull child. His memory was lamentably deficient, and his
+utterance was thick and indistinct, so much so that he could scarcely be
+understood in reading or speaking. This was caused partly by an
+enlargement of the tonsils of his throat, and partly by timidity. The
+policy of repression worked badly in his case, and had there not been so
+much real good at the basis of his character it might have led this
+gentle, yearning boy far from the useful channel along which his life
+has flown.
+
+His stepmother was a lady of fine mental culture, of elegant breeding
+and high character, but she was an invalid, and withal thoroughly imbued
+with the gloomy sternness of her husband's faith. One day little Henry,
+who was barely able to manage the steady-going old family horse, was
+driving her in the chaise. They passed a church on their way, and the
+bell was tolling for a death. "Henry," said Mrs. Beecher, solemnly,
+"what do you think of when you hear a bell tolling like that?" The boy
+colored and hung his head in silence, and the good lady went on. "_I_
+think, was that soul prepared? It has gone into _eternity_." The little
+fellow shuddered, in spite of himself, and thought, no doubt, what a
+dreadful thing it was to be a Christian.
+
+So it was with the religion that was crammed into him. There was no
+effort made to draw him to religion by its beauty and tenderness. He
+rarely heard of the Saviour as the loving one who took little children
+in His arms and blessed them, but was taught to regard Him as a stern
+and merciless judge, as one who, instead of being "touched with the
+feeling of our infirmities," makes those infirmities the means of
+wringing fresh sufferings from us. Sunday was a day of terror to him,
+for on that day the Catechism was administered to him until he was more
+than sick of it. "I think," said he to his congregation, not long since,
+referring to this part of his life, "that to force childhood to
+associate religion with such dry morsels is to violate the spirit, not
+only of the New Testament, but of common sense as well. I know one
+thing, that if I am 'lax and latitudinarian,' the Sunday Catechism is to
+blame for a part of it. The dinners that I have lost because I could not
+go through 'sanctification,' and 'justification,' and 'adoption,' and
+all such questions, lie heavily on my memory! I do not know that they
+have brought forth any blossoms. I have a kind of grudge against many of
+those truths that I was taught in my childhood, and I am not conscious
+that they have waked up a particle of faith in me. My good old aunt in
+heaven--I wonder what she is doing. I take it that she now sits
+beauteous, clothed in white, that round about her sit chanting cherub
+children, and that she is opening to them from her larger range sweet
+stories, every one fraught with thought, and taste, and feeling, and
+lifting them up to a higher plane. One Sunday afternoon with my aunt
+Esther did me more good than forty Sundays in church with my father. He
+thundered over my head, and she sweetly instructed me down in my heart.
+The promise that she would read Joseph's history to me on Sunday was
+enough to draw a silver thread of obedience through the entire week; and
+if I was tempted to break my promise, I said, 'No; Aunt Esther is going
+to read on Sunday;' and I would do, or I would not do, all through the
+week, for the sake of getting that sweet instruction on Sunday.
+
+"And to parents I say, Truth is graded. Some parts of God's truth are
+for childhood, some parts are for the nascent intellectual period, and
+some parts are for later spiritual developments. Do not take the last
+things first. Do not take the latest processes of philosophy and bring
+them prematurely to the understanding. In teaching truth to your
+children, you are to avoid tiring them."
+
+"The greatest trial of those days," says Mrs. Stowe, "was the Catechism.
+Sunday lessons were considered by the mother-in-law as inflexible duty,
+and the Catechism as the _sine qua non_. The other children memorized
+readily, and were brilliant reciters, but Henry, blushing, stammering,
+confused, and hopelessly miserable, stuck fast on some sand-bank of what
+is required or forbidden by this or that commandment, his mouth choking
+up with the long words which he hopelessly miscalled, was sure to be
+accused of idleness or inattention, and to be solemnly talked to, which
+made him look more stolid and miserable than ever, but appeared to have
+no effect in quickening his dormant faculties."
+
+At the age of ten he was a well-grown, stout, stocky boy, strong and
+hearty, trained to hard work, and to patient obedience of his elders. He
+was tolerably well drilled in Calvinism, and had his head pretty well
+filled with snatches of doctrine which he caught from his father's
+constant discussions; but he was very backward in his education. He was
+placed at the school of the Rev. Mr. Langdon, at Bethlehem, Connecticut,
+and it was hoped that the labors of this excellent tutor would result in
+making something of him. He spent a winter at this school, and boarded
+at a neighboring farm-house, whose kind-hearted mistress soon became so
+much attached to him that she indulged him to an extent which he had
+never known at home. With his gun on his shoulder, he passed the greater
+part of his hours out of school in tramping over the pretty Connecticut
+hills, in search of game, or, lying down on the soft grass, would pass
+hours in gazing on the beautiful landscape, listening to the dull whirr
+of the partridges in the stubble-field or the dropping of the ripe
+apples in the orchard. The love of nature was strong in the boy, and his
+wonderful mistress taught him many of the profoundest lessons of his
+life. He made poor progress at the school, however, and his father was
+almost in despair. The whole family shook their heads in solemn
+forebodings over the failure of this child of ten to become a mental
+prodigy.
+
+Miss Catharine Beecher, his eldest sister, was then teaching a young
+ladies' school in Hartford, and she proposed to take the boy and see
+what could be done with him. There were thirty or forty girls in the
+school, and but this one boy, and the reader may imagine the amount of
+studying he did. The girls were full of spirits, and in their society
+the fun-loving feature of his disposition burst out and grew with
+amazing rapidity. He was always in mischief of some kind, to the great
+delight of the girls, with whom he was extremely popular, and to the
+despair of his sister, who began to fear that he was hopelessly stupid.
+
+The school was divided into two divisions in grammar recitations, each
+of which had its leader. The leaders chose their "sides" with great
+care, as these contests in grammar were esteemed the most important part
+of the daily exercises. Henry's name was generally called last, for no
+one chose him except as a matter of necessity. He was sure to be a dead
+weight to his leader.
+
+"The fair leader of one of these divisions took the boy aside to a
+private apartment, to put into him with female tact and insinuation
+those definitions and distinctions on which the honor of the class
+depended.
+
+"'Now, Henry, A is the indefinite article, you see, and must be used
+only with the singular noun. You can say _a man_, but you can't say _a
+men_, can you?' 'Yes, I can say _Amen_, too,' was the ready rejoinder.
+'Father says it always at the end of his prayers.'
+
+"'Come, Henry, now don't be joking. Now, decline He.' 'Nominative he,
+possessive his, objective him.' 'You see, his is possessive. Now, you
+can say his book, but you can't say him book.' 'Yes, I do say hymn book,
+too,' said the impracticable scholar, with a quizzical twinkle. Each one
+of these sallies made his young teacher laugh, which was the victory he
+wanted.
+
+"'But now, Henry, seriously, just attend to the active and passive
+voice. Now, _I strike_, is active, you see, because if you strike you do
+something. But, _I am struck_, is passive, because if you are struck you
+don't do any thing, do you?'
+
+"'Yes, I do; I strike back again.'
+
+"Sometimes his views of philosophical subjects were offered
+gratuitously. Being held rather of a frisky nature, his sister appointed
+his seat at her elbow when she heard her classes. A class in natural
+philosophy, not very well prepared, was stumbling through the theory of
+the tides. 'I can explain that,' said Henry. 'Well, you see, the sun, he
+catches hold of the moon and pulls her, and she catches hold of the sea
+and pulls that, and this makes the spring tides.'
+
+"'But what makes the neap tides?'
+
+"'Oh, that's when the sun stops to spit on his hands.'"
+
+It will hardly surprise the reader to be told that Master Henry
+remained with his sister only six months, and was returned at the end of
+that time to his father as an indifferent scholar and a most inveterate
+joker.
+
+A change now occurred in his life. When he was twelve years old his
+father removed to Boston to assume the charge of the Hanover-Street
+Church. Here the boy had a chance to see something more than nature, and
+to employ his powers of observation in receiving impressions from the
+daily life and aspect of a large and crowded city. His father entered
+him at the Boston Latin School, and appealed to him not to disgrace his
+name any longer by his stupidity. The appeal roused the little fellow's
+pride, and he set to work to show to his family that he was not the
+dunce they had thought him. He went at his studies manfully, mastering
+the tedious puzzle of the Latin verbs and nouns, and acquiring a
+respectable acquaintance with the grammar of that language. It was a
+terrible task to him, for he had no liking for the language, and did his
+work merely to please his father and escape disgrace. His success cost
+him a share of his health, and his vigorous constitution began to show
+the effects of such intense application. His father noticed this, and as
+a diversion to his mind advised him to enter upon a course of
+biographical reading. He read the lives of Captain Cook, Nelson, and the
+great naval commanders of the world, and at once became possessed of the
+desire to go to sea. This feeling made him restless and discontented,
+and he resolved to leave home and ship on board some vessel sailing from
+the harbor. He hovered about the wharves, conversing with the sailors
+and captains, and sometimes carrying his little bundle with him. But the
+thoughts of home were too strong for him, and he could never quite
+summon up resolution enough to run away. In a fit of desperation he
+wrote a letter to his brother, telling him of his wish to go to sea, and
+informing him that he should first ask his father's permission, and if
+that were not granted he should go without it. This letter he dropped
+where his father would be sure to find it. The old gentleman soon
+discovered it, and, reading it, put it into his pocket without comment.
+The next day he asked the boy if he had ever thought of any definite
+avocation for his future life.
+
+"Yes," said Henry, "I want to go to sea. I want to enter the navy, be a
+midshipman, and rise to be a commander."
+
+"Oh, I see," said the Doctor, cheerfully; "but in order to prepare for
+that you must study mathematics and navigation."
+
+"I am ready, sir."
+
+"Very well. I'll send you up to Amherst next week, to Mount Pleasant,
+and then you'll begin your preparatory studies at once. As soon as you
+are well prepared, I presume I can make interest to get you an
+appointment."
+
+The boy was delighted, and the next week started for Amherst. The Doctor
+felt sure that the sailor scheme would never come to any thing, and
+exclaimed, exultantly, as he bade his son good-by, "I shall have that
+boy in the ministry yet."
+
+At the Mount Pleasant Institute he roomed with his teacher in
+mathematics, a young man named Fitzgerald, and a warm friendship sprung
+up between them. Fitzgerald saw that his pupil had no natural talent or
+taste for mathematics; but instead of despairing in consequence of this
+discovery, he redoubled his efforts. Appealing to his pupil's pride and
+ambition, he kept him well to his task, and succeeded in implanting in
+him a fair knowledge of the science. Young Beecher also took lessons in
+elocution from Professor John E. Lovell. Under the instructions of this
+able teacher, he learned to manage his voice, and to overcome the
+thickness and indistinctness of utterance which previous to this had
+troubled him so much. He continued at this school for three years,
+devoting himself to study with determination and success, and taking
+rank as one of the most promising pupils of the school.
+
+During his first year at Mount Pleasant, he became deeply impressed with
+a sense of his religious responsibility at a famous revival which was
+held in the place, and from that time resolved to devote himself
+entirely to preparing for his entrance into the ministry when he should
+attain the proper age. Henceforth he applied himself with characteristic
+energy to his studies and to his religious duties, and rose steadily in
+the esteem of his teachers and friends. He entered Amherst College upon
+the completion of his preparatory course, and graduated from that
+institution in 1834.
+
+In 1832, Dr. Beecher removed from Boston to Cincinnati, to enter upon
+the Presidency of Lane Seminary, to which he had been elected. Henry
+followed him to the West after his graduation at Amherst, and completed
+his theological studies at the seminary, under the tuition of his father
+and Professor Stowe, the latter of whom married Henry's sister Harriet,
+in 1836. Having finished his course, he was ordained.
+
+"As the time drew near in which Mr. Beecher was to assume the work of
+the ministry," says Mrs. Stowe, "he was oppressed by a deep melancholy.
+He had the most exalted ideas of what ought to be done by a Christian
+minister. He had transferred to that profession all those ideals of
+courage, enterprise, zeal, and knightly daring which were the dreams of
+his boyhood, and which he first hoped to realize in the naval
+profession. He felt that the holy calling stood high above all others;
+that to enter it from any unholy motive, or to enter and not do a worthy
+work in it, was a treason to all honor.
+
+"His view of the great object of the ministry was sincerely and heartily
+the same with that of his father, to secure the regeneration of the
+individual heart by the Divine Spirit, and thereby to effect the
+regeneration of human society. The problem that oppressed him was, how
+to do this. His father had used certain moral and intellectual weapons,
+and used them strongly and effectively, because employing them with
+undoubting faith. So many other considerations had come into his mind to
+qualify and limit that faith, so many new modes of thought and inquiry,
+that were partially inconsistent with the received statements of his
+party, that he felt he could never grasp and wield them with the force
+which could make them efficient. It was no comfort to him that he could
+wield the weapons of his theological party so as to dazzle and confound
+objectors, while all the time conscious in his own soul of objections
+more profound and perplexities more bewildering. Like the shepherd boy
+of old, he saw the giant of sin stalking through the world, defying the
+armies of the living God, and longed to attack him, but the armor in
+which he had been equipped for the battle was no help, but only an
+incumbrance!
+
+"His brother, who studied with him, had already become an unbeliever and
+thrown up the design of preaching, and he could not bear to think of
+adding to his father's trials by deserting the standard. Yet his
+distress and perplexity were so great that at times he seriously
+contemplated going into some other profession....
+
+"In his last theological term he took a Bible class in the city of
+Cincinnati, and began studying and teaching the Evangelists. With the
+course of this study and teaching came a period of spiritual
+clairvoyance. His mental perplexities were relieved, and the great
+question of 'what to preach' was solved. The shepherd boy laid aside his
+cumbrous armor, and found in a clear brook a simple stone that smote
+down the giant; and so, from the clear waters of the Gospel narrative
+Mr. Beecher drew forth that 'white stone with a new name,' which was to
+be the talisman of his ministry. To present Jesus Christ personally as
+the Friend and Helper of humanity, Christ as God impersonate, eternally
+and by a necessity of His nature helpful, and remedial, and restorative;
+the Friend of each individual soul, and thus the Friend of all
+society,--this was the one thing which his soul rested on as a worthy
+object in entering the ministry. He afterward said, in speaking of his
+feelings at this time,'I was like the man in the story to whom a fairy
+gave a purse with a single piece of money in it, which he found always
+came again as soon as he had spent it. I thought I knew at least one
+thing to preach. I found it included every thing.'"
+
+Upon being ordained, Mr. Beecher married, and accepted a call to
+Lawrenceburg, Indiana, a little town on the Ohio River, about twenty
+miles below Cincinnati. His salary was small and the work was hard. He
+was not only pastor, but sexton as well, and in this capacity he swept
+out the church, made the fires, filled and trimmed the lamps, and rang
+the bell. Says he, "I did all but come to hear myself preach--that they
+had to do."
+
+He did not remain here long, however, but soon accepted a call to
+Indianapolis, the capital of the State, where he lived for eight years.
+He occupied a tasteful cottage on the outskirts of the town, and
+gathered about him his household treasures, which consisted of his
+family, his library, his horse, cow, pigs, and chickens. He was an
+enthusiast in matters of agriculture and horticulture, and besides
+importing from the East the best varieties of fruit-trees, roses, etc.,
+he edited a horticultural paper, which had a fair circulation.
+
+The eight years of his ministry in Indianapolis make up a period of hard
+and useful work. He held two services on Sunday, and five meetings
+during the week in various parts of the city, and with the consent of
+his people gave three months of each year to missionary work in other
+parts of the State. While engaged in this latter duty he traveled about
+the State on horseback and preached daily.
+
+His experience in the ministry, as well as his study of the lives of the
+apostles, convinced him that success in his profession--by which I mean
+the successful winning of souls to God--was not to be won by preaching
+controversial or dry doctrinal sermons. He must seize upon some vital
+truth, admitted by all parties, and bring that home to men's minds. He
+must preach to them of their daily, hourly trials and temptations, joys
+and comforts, and he resolved that this should be the character of his
+preaching. Then came the question, how shall one man know that which is
+uppermost in the thoughts of the many? He went into the places of public
+resort, where men were accustomed to lounge and to gather to hear the
+news, and made it his practice to listen to their conversations. In this
+way he began to know the people to whom he preached as few pastors know
+their flocks, and he was enabled by this knowledge to apply his
+teachings to their daily lives, and to send them forth to their duties
+warned by his reproofs or cheered by his intelligent counsel and
+sympathy. This practice, modified at times as circumstances have
+required, he has steadfastly continued, and in it lies the secret of his
+success as a preacher. Said a gentleman, not long since, himself a
+member of a different denomination, "Beecher's sermons do me more good
+than any I hear elsewhere. They never fail to touch upon some topic of
+importance that has engaged my thoughts during the week. Dropping all
+doctrinal technicalities, and steering clear of the vexed questions of
+theology, he talks to me in such a way that I am able to carry Christ
+into the most trifling of my daily affairs, and to carry Him there as my
+Sympathizer and Helper, as well as my Judge." He soon became the most
+popular preacher in the city, and, thanks to the genuineness of his
+gifts and the earnestness of his zeal, he was enabled to add many to the
+kingdom of Christ who had been drawn to hear him merely by their
+curiosity. Among these was his brother Charles, whose skepticism has
+been spoken of elsewhere in this chapter. Becoming deeply impressed at a
+revival in Indianapolis, Charles Beecher, by his brother's advice, took
+a Bible class, and began to teach the story of Christ. The plan worked
+most happily. Charles solved all the questions which had perplexed his
+mind, reentered upon his religious life with increased fervor, and soon
+afterward entered the ministry.
+
+In August, 1847, Mr. Beecher received a call to Plymouth Church,
+Brooklyn, which had just been founded. He promptly accepted it. Breaking
+up his home in Indiana, he removed to Brooklyn, and was publicly
+installed pastor of Plymouth Church on the 11th of November, 1847. He at
+once "announced in Plymouth pulpit the same principles that he had in
+Indianapolis, namely, his determination to preach Christ among them not
+as an absolute system of doctrines, not as a bygone historical
+personage, but as the living Lord and God, and to bring all the ways and
+usages of society to the test of His standards. He announced to all whom
+it might concern, that he considered temperance and antislavery as a
+part of the Gospel of Christ, and should preach them to the people
+accordingly."
+
+It is no part of my purpose to consider Mr. Beecher as a politician. I
+deal with him here not as the partisan of a political organization, but
+as a minister of the Gospel. In politics he has always been a Republican
+of the Radical type, but has generally inclined to a conservative
+construction of that creed. Many of his warmest friends take issue with
+him in his political views, and he has not always been able to lead his
+congregation with him in this respect.
+
+Soon after assuming the charge of Plymouth Church Mr. Beecher became a
+regular contributor to "The Independent," a paper which he had helped to
+establish. His articles were marked with an asterisk, and were widely
+read. They dealt with every topic of interest, principally with slavery,
+and were vigorous and full of thought. A number of them were afterward
+collected and published in book form as the "Star Papers." Since then he
+has acted as editor of "The Independent," and is at present the editor
+of "The Christian Union." He has written a novel of New England life,
+called "Norwood," for "The New York Ledger," and still writes a weekly
+paper for that journal. He is at present engaged upon a "Life of
+Christ," which is to be the crowning labor of his life. Besides these
+labors, he has been until recently almost constantly in the lecture
+field, and has spoken frequently before popular assemblies on the
+political questions of the day.
+
+These labors have filled up the leisure time left him after discharging
+his duties as pastor of his church, which have never been neglected upon
+any occasion. In this field his work has been faithful and constant. He
+has labored in it for nearly twenty-three years, and his work has not
+been without its reward. Such sermons as his could not fail of doing
+good even if spoken to half a dozen people. How great, then, must be
+their effect when addressed to the vast audiences to which he speaks!
+His congregation averages over twenty-five hundred at every service,
+being the largest regular congregation in existence. His sermons are
+reported by a stenographer, and are printed each week in pamphlet form,
+and in this manner find their way into thousands of hands. The "Plymouth
+Pulpit," in which they are published, has a regular weekly circulation
+of six thousand copies, and it is estimated that each copy is read by
+at least five persons, which gives the preacher, in addition to his own
+congregation, an audience of more than thirty thousand persons per week.
+
+When Plymouth Church was organized, the wise heads predicted a failure
+for it; but it has grown and prospered, until it is now the most compact
+and the best organized congregation in America. It is dependent upon no
+synod or other religious body, but manages its affairs entirely as
+it pleases. The control is vested in a board of trustees, of which Mr.
+Beecher is _ex-officio_ a member. He has no superiority in this board
+unless called by its members to preside over its meetings. His influence
+is of course all-powerful; but as the trustees are shrewd business men,
+they sometimes carry out their own views in preference to his. The
+church is supported by the sale of its pews. This yields it an annual
+income of between forty and fifty thousand dollars. The pastor receives
+a handsome salary--said to be the largest in the United States--and the
+rest goes into the treasury of the church. As the period of the annual
+sale of pews approaches, Mr. Beecher makes it his practice to preach a
+sermon in which he reviews the questions of the day, and as far as
+possible marks out his course with regard to them during the ensuing
+year. This he does in order that every one purchasing a seat in Plymouth
+Church may know just what is in store for him from the pulpit. The
+surplus revenue, after the pastor's salary and the current expenses are
+paid, has until recently been devoted to extinguishing the debt upon the
+church. That burden now being off the shoulders of the congregation, the
+money is applied to missionary work in Brooklyn. "Two missions have been
+largely supported by the funds derived from Plymouth Church, and the
+time and personal labor of its members. A mechanics' reading-room is
+connected with one of these. No church in the country furnishes a
+larger body of lay teachers, exhorters, and missionaries in every
+department of human and Christian labor."
+
+Plymouth Church is located in Orange Street, between Hicks and Henry
+Streets, in Brooklyn, and not far from the Fulton Ferry. Many strangers,
+whose expectations are based upon the fame of the pastor, are
+disappointed in the plain and simple exterior of red brick, as they come
+prepared to see a magnificent Gothic temple. The interior, however,
+rarely fails to please all comers. It is plain and simple, but elegant
+and comfortable. It is a vast hall, around the four sides of which
+sweeps an immense gallery. The interior is painted white, with a tinge
+of pink, and the carpets and cushions of the seats are of a rich, warm
+red. The rows of seats in the body of the church are semicircular, and
+those in the gallery rise as in an amphitheater, from the front to the
+wall. At the far end of the church is a raised platform containing
+merely a chair and a table. The table is a pretty ornament, and is the
+"Plymouth Pulpit." It is made of wood brought from the Garden of
+Gethsemane. In the gallery behind the pulpit is the great organ--one of
+the largest and finest in the Union. The church will seat over
+twenty-five hundred people, but in order to do this, chairs are placed
+in the aisles. These chairs are sold as well as the pews.
+
+Every Sunday morning the streets are filled with persons on their way to
+attend the services at Plymouth Church. They come not only from
+Brooklyn, but from New York, and even from Jersey City and Hoboken. The
+yard and street in front of the church are quickly filled with the
+throng, but the doors are guarded by policemen, and none but pew-holders
+are permitted to enter the church until ten minutes before the hour for
+service. Without this precaution the regular congregation would be
+crowded out of their seats every Sunday by strangers.
+
+At ten minutes before the hour for service the doors are thrown open,
+and very soon there is not even standing room in the vast interior, and
+generally the vestibules are full.
+
+Near the pulpit is placed a basket of exquisite flowers, and sometimes
+the entire platform is decorated in the same way. Most commonly some
+little child perches itself up among the flowers, and this pretty sight
+never fails to bring a smile of pleasure to the pastor's face as he
+enters the church. He comes in through a little door under the gallery,
+behind the pulpit. He is dressed in a plain suit of black, with a Byron
+collar and a black stock. His movements are quiet and graceful, although
+quick and energetic. His manner in opening the services is quiet and
+earnest, and at once impresses his hearers with the solemnity of the
+occasion. He reads the Bible in an easy, unconstrained manner, as if he
+enjoyed the task, and in his prayers, which are extempore, he carries
+the hearts of all his hearers with him to the Throne of Grace. He joins
+heartily in the singing, which is congregational. It was feared that the
+organ would prove a great temptation to do away with this style of
+singing, but this has not been the case. The magnificent instrument is
+used only to accompany the congregation, and there swells up such a
+volume of harmony from this vast throng as is never listened to outside
+of Plymouth Church. The singing is wonderful.
+
+The gem of the whole service, however, is the sermon; and these sermons
+are characteristic of the man. They come warm and fresh from his heart,
+and they go home to the hearer, giving him food for thought for days
+afterward. To attempt to describe his manner would be to paint the
+sunbeam. Eloquence can be felt, but it can not be described. He enchains
+the attention of his auditors from the first, and they hang upon his
+utterances with rapt eagerness until the close of the sermon.
+
+He knows human nature thoroughly, and he talks to his people of what
+they have been thinking of during the week, of trials that have
+perplexed them, and of joys which have blessed them. He takes the clerk
+and the merchant to task for their conduct in the walks of business, and
+warns them of the snares and pitfalls which lie along their paths. He
+strips the thin guise of honesty from the questionable transactions of
+Wall Street, and holds them up to public scorn. He startles many a one
+by his sudden penetration and denunciation of what that one supposes to
+be the secrets of his heart. His dramatic power is extraordinary. He can
+hardly be responsible for it, since it breaks forth almost without his
+will. It is simply unavoidable with him. He moves his audience to tears,
+or brings a mirthful smile to their lips, with a power that is
+irresistible. His illustrations and figures are drawn chiefly from
+nature, and are fresh and striking. They please the subtlest philosopher
+who hears him, and illuminate the mind of the average listener with a
+flood of light. He can startle his people with the terrors of the law,
+but he prefers to preach the Gospel of Love. "God's love for those who
+are scattered and lost," he says, "is intenser and deeper than the love
+even of a mother.... God longs to bring you home more than you long to
+get there. He has been calling, calling, calling, and listening for your
+answer. And when you are found, and you lay your head on the bosom of
+Jesus, and you are at rest, you will not be so glad as He will be who
+declared that, like a shepherd, he had joy over one sinner that repented
+more than over ninety and nine just persons that needed no repentance."
+
+Religion is to him an abiding joy; it is perfect love, and casteth out
+fear. It has no gloom, no terror in it, and he says to his people: "If
+God gave you gayety and cheer of spirits, lift up the careworn by it.
+Wherever you go, shine and sing. In every household there is drudgery;
+in every household there is sorrow; in every household there is
+low-thoughted evil. If you come as a prince, with a cheerful, buoyant
+nature, in the name of God, do not lay aside those royal robes of yours.
+Let humor bedew duty; let it flash across care. Let gayety take charge
+of dullness. So employ these qualities that they shall be to life what
+carbonic acid is to wine, making it foam and sparkle."
+
+The sum and substance, the burden of all his preaching is Christ:
+"'Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world!' I
+present Jesus to you as the atoning Saviour; as God's sacrifice for sin;
+as that new and living way by which alone a sinful creature can ascend
+and meet a pure and just God. I bring this question home to you as a
+sinner. O man! full of transgressions, habitual in iniquities, tainted
+and tarnished, utterly undone before God, what will you do with this
+Jesus that comes as God's appointed sacrifice for sin, your only hope
+and your only Saviour? Will you accept him? Will you, by personal and
+living faith, accept him as your Saviour from sin? I ask not that you
+should go with me into a discourse upon the relations of Christ's life,
+of his sufferings, of his death; to the law of God, or to the government
+of God. Whatever may be the philosophy of those relations, the matter in
+hand is one of faith rather than of philosophy; and the question is,
+Will you take Christ to be your soul's Saviour?"
+
+Having selected his theme, and formed a general plan of treatment, Mr.
+Beecher trusts a great deal to the inspiration of the moment for his
+language and illustrations. Some time ago, in reply to a friend who
+asked how he prepared his sermons, he said he generally has an idea
+during the week as to what he will preach about on Sunday, but does not
+attempt any thing like systematic preparation until an hour or two
+before going into the pulpit. Sometimes it is easy to block out a
+sermon; but again it is hard work, and he does not fairly get into it
+until the first bell rings. He writes out the headings of his subject,
+and marks the proper places for illustration. He does not confine
+himself to this written outline, however, but, once in the pulpit,
+changes it according to the impulse of the moment. He never preaches the
+same sermon twice, though he may use the same text several times,
+treating it in a different way each time. He endeavors to preach his
+best sermons on stormy days, in order that the desire to hear his best
+efforts may keep his congregation from degenerating into "fair-weather
+Christians." "Once," he said, laughing, "it snowed or rained every
+Sabbath in a certain winter, and the effort I had to make to remain
+faithful to this rule came near killing me." When asked if he studied
+his prayers, he answered promptly: "Never. I carry a feeling with me
+such as a mother would have for her children were they lost in a great
+forest. I feel that on every side my people are in danger, and that many
+of them are like babes, weak and helpless. My heart goes out in sorrow
+and in anxiety toward them, and at times I seem to carry all their
+burdens. I find that when one's heart is wrapped and twined around the
+hearts of others, it is not difficult to pray."
+
+The church is provided with a large lecture-room, a study for the
+pastor, and an elegant parlor. Mr. Beecher does not pay pastoral visits
+to his people, unless he is sent for to visit the sick and dying, or
+persons seeking help in their religious struggles. His parishioners are
+scattered over so wide a territory that a systematic course of visiting
+would consume all his time. In place of these visits, he meets his
+congregation at stated times in social gatherings in the church parlor,
+and these evenings are looked forward to with eagerness by both pastor
+and people.
+
+The most characteristic meeting of this congregation, however, even more
+so than the Sunday services, is the Friday evening meeting, which is
+held in the lecture-room. This room is plain and simple. It is provided
+with comfortable seats and a grand piano. There is no pulpit in it, but
+a small table and a chair are placed for the pastor on a low platform
+covered with green baize. The object is to banish every thing like
+formalism, and to make the meeting as free and unconstrained as a social
+gathering. As at the Sunday services, the house is full, but now the
+persons present are almost entirely members of the church. Strangers
+rarely come to these meetings, and in staying away from them miss the
+chance of seeing the true inner life of Plymouth Church. A gentleman who
+was present at one of them, a few years ago, wrote the following account
+of it for the "Atlantic Monthly:"
+
+
+     Mr. Beecher took his seat on the platform, and, after a short
+     pause, began the exercises by saying, in a low tone, these words:
+     "Six twenty-two."
+
+     A rustling of the leaves of hymn-books interpreted the meaning of
+     this mystical utterance, which otherwise might have been taken as
+     announcing a discourse upon the prophetic numbers. The piano
+     confirmed the interpretation; and then the company burst into one
+     of those joyous and unanimous singings which are so enchanting a
+     feature of the services of this church. Loud rose the beautiful
+     harmony of voices, constraining every one to join in the song, even
+     those most unused to sing. When it was ended, the pastor, in the
+     same low tone, pronounced a name, upon which one of the brethren
+     rose to his feet, and the rest slightly inclined v their heads....
+     The prayers were all brief, perfectly quiet and simple, and free
+     from the routine or regulation expressions. There were but two or
+     three of them, alternating with singing; and when that part of the
+     exercises was concluded, Mr. Beecher had scarcely spoken. The
+     meeting ran alone, in the most spontaneous and pleasant manner....
+     There was a pause after the last hymn died away, and then Mr.
+     Beecher, still seated, began, in the tone of conversation, to speak
+     somewhat after this manner:
+
+     "When," said he, "I first began to walk as a Christian, in my
+     youthful zeal I made many resolutions that were well meant, but
+     indiscreet. Among others, I remember I resolved to pray, at least
+     once, in some way, every hour that I was awake. I tried faithfully
+     to keep this resolution, but never having succeeded a single day, I
+     suffered the pangs of self-reproach, until reflection satisfied me
+     that the only wisdom possible, with regard to such a resolve, was
+     to break it. I remember, too, that I made a resolution to speak
+     upon religion to every person with whom I conversed,--on
+     steamboats, in the streets, anywhere. In this, also, I failed, as I
+     ought; and I soon learned that, in the sowing of such seed, as in
+     other sowings, times, and seasons, and methods must be considered
+     and selected, or a man may defeat his own object, and make religion
+     loathsome."
+
+     In language like this he introduced the topic of the evening's
+     conversation, which was, How far, and on what occasions, and in
+     what manner, one person may invade, so to speak, the personality of
+     another, and speak to him upon his moral condition. The pastor
+     expressed his own opinion, always in the conversational tone, in a
+     talk of ten minutes' duration, in the course of which he applauded,
+     not censured, the delicacy which causes most people to shrink from
+     doing it. He said that a man's personality was not a macadamized
+     road for every vehicle to drive upon at will, but rather a sacred
+     inclosure, to be entered, if at all, with the consent of the owner,
+     and with deference to his feelings and tastes. He maintained,
+     however, that there _were_ times and modes in which this might
+     properly be done, and that every one _had_ a duty to perform of
+     this nature. When he had finished his observations, he said the
+     subject was open to the remarks of others; whereupon a brother
+     instantly rose and made a very honest confession.
+
+     He said that he had never attempted to perform the duty in question
+     without having a palpitation of the heart, and a complete turning
+     over of his inner man. He had often reflected upon this curious
+     fact, but was not able to account for it. He had not allowed this
+     repugnance to prevent his doing the duty; but he always had to rush
+     at it and perform it by a sort of _coup de main_, for if he allowed
+     himself to think about the matter, he could not do it at all. He
+     concluded by saying that he should be very much obliged to any one
+     if he could explain this mystery.
+
+     The pastor said: "May it not be the natural delicacy we feel, and
+     ought to feel, in approaching the interior consciousness of another
+     person?"
+
+     Another brother rose. There was no hanging back at this meeting;
+     there were no awkward pauses; every one seemed full of matter. The
+     new speaker was not inclined to admit the explanation suggested by
+     the pastor. "Suppose," said he, "we were to see a man in imminent
+     danger of immediate destruction, and there was one way of escape,
+     and but one, which _we_ saw, and he did not, should we feel any
+     delicacy in running up to him and urging him to fly for his life?
+     Is it not a want of faith on our part that causes the reluctance
+     and hesitation we all feel in urging others to avoid a peril so
+     much more momentous?"
+
+     Mr. Beecher said the cases were not parallel. Irreligious persons,
+     he remarked, were not in imminent danger of immediate death; they
+     might die to-morrow; but in all probability they would not, and an
+     ill-timed or injudicious admonition might forever repel them. We
+     must accept the doctrine of probabilities, and act in accordance
+     with it in this particular, as in all others.
+
+     Another brother had a puzzle to present for solution. He said that
+     he too had experienced the repugnance to which allusion had been
+     made; but what surprised him most was, that the more he loved a
+     person, and the nearer he was related to him, the more difficult he
+     found it to converse with him upon his spiritual state. Why is
+     this? "I should like to have this question answered," said he, "if
+     there _is_ an answer to it."
+
+     Mr. Beecher observed that this was the universal experience, and he
+     was conscious himself of a peculiar reluctance and embarrassment in
+     approaching one of his own household on the subject in question. He
+     thought it was due to the fact that we respect more the personal
+     rights of those near to us than we do those of others, and it was
+     more difficult to break in upon the routine of our ordinary
+     familiarity with them. We are accustomed to a certain tone which it
+     is highly embarrassing to jar upon.
+
+     Captain Duncan related two amusing anecdotes to illustrate the
+     right way and the wrong way of introducing religious conversation.
+     In his office there was sitting one day a sort of lay preacher, who
+     was noted for lugging in his favorite topic in the most forbidding
+     and abrupt manner. A sea captain came in, who was introduced to
+     this individual.
+
+     "Captain Porter," said he, with awful solemnity, "are you a captain
+     in Israel?"
+
+     The honest sailor was so abashed and confounded at this novel
+     salutation, that he could only stammer out an incoherent reply; and
+     he was evidently disposed to give the tactless zealot a piece of
+     his mind, expressed in the language of the quarter-deck. When the
+     solemn man took his leave, the disgusted captain said, "If ever I
+     should be coming to your office again, and that man should be here,
+     I wish you would send me word, and I'll stay away."
+
+     A few days after another clergyman chanced to be in the office, no
+     other than Mr. Beecher himself, and another captain came in, a
+     roistering, swearing, good-hearted fellow. The conversation fell
+     upon sea-sickness, a malady to which Mr. Beecher is peculiarly
+     liable. The captain also was one of the few sailors who are always
+     sea-sick in going to sea, and gave a moving account of his
+     sufferings from that cause. Mr. Beecher, after listening
+     attentively to his tale, said, "Captain Duncan, if I was a preacher
+     to such sailors as your friend here, I should represent hell as an
+     eternal voyage, with every man on board in the agonies of
+     sea-sickness, the crisis always imminent, but never coming."
+
+     This ludicrous and most unprofessional picture amused the old salt
+     exceedingly, and won his entire good will toward the author of it;
+     so that after Mr. Beecher left, he said, "That's a good fellow,
+     Captain Duncan. I like _him_, and I'd like to hear him talk more."
+
+     Captain Duncan contended that this free and easy way of address was
+     just the thing for such characters. Mr. Beecher had shown him, to
+     his great surprise, that a man could be a decent and comfortable
+     human being although he was a minister, and had so gained his
+     confidence and good will that he could say _any thing_ to him at
+     their next interview. Captain Duncan finished his remarks by a
+     decided expression of his disapproval of the canting regulation
+     phrases so frequently employed by religious people, which are
+     perfectly nauseous to men of the world.
+
+     This interesting conversation lasted about three-quarters of an
+     hour, and ended, not because the theme seemed exhausted, but
+     because the time was up. We have only given enough of it to convey
+     some little idea of its spirit. The company again broke into one
+     of their cheerful hymns, and the meeting was dismissed in the usual
+     manner.
+
+
+During the late war, Mr. Beecher took an active and energetic part in
+support of the cause of the Union. His labors were so severe that his
+health was considerably impaired, and his voice began to fail him. His
+physicians ordered him to seek rest and recreation in a tour through
+Europe, and he reluctantly obeyed them. He was much benefited by his
+visit to the Continent, but on his return to England, on his way home,
+being solicited to speak in that country in behalf of the Union, he
+delivered a series of powerful appeals, which exhausted the greater part
+of the strength he had gained on the Continent, and caused him to return
+home almost as ill as when he went abroad.
+
+Soon after his return the war closed, and he went to Charleston to
+deliver the address at Fort Sumter upon the occasion of the rehoisting
+of the flag of the United States over that work. The news of the
+assassination of Mr. Lincoln met him upon his return to Brooklyn, and
+drew from him one of his most memorable sermons. At the close of
+hostilities, he preached a sermon to his congregation, urging
+forgiveness and conciliation toward the South as the policy of the hour,
+saying truly that that crisis was a rare opportunity which would never
+come again, if spurned. The sermon was unpopular, and caused him some
+trouble even in his own congregation.
+
+Mr. Beecher is now fifty-seven years old, but is still in the flush of
+his intellectual vigor. His eye is as bright, his step as firm and
+elastic, and his voice as clear and ringing as when he preached his
+first sermon. His powers have grown with his work, and every year he
+seems to rise higher in his intellectual supremacy. As a pulpit orator,
+he has no superior, and certainly there is no man in all this round
+earth whose eloquence has been productive of greater good to the cause
+he serves. He is a stout, stocky man in appearance, with a large square
+face and heavy features. It is the face of a great orator and a genial,
+warm-hearted man. He is careful and temperate in all his habits--except
+that he will work too hard--and enjoys robust health. He lives plainly
+and dresses simply. He impresses one at once with his immense energy,
+and you would recognize him immediately as a man of unusual power in his
+community. Said a friend not long since, "I was standing by Beecher in a
+book-store to-day. He was perfectly still, as he was waiting for a
+parcel to be done up, but he reminded me of a big locomotive full of
+steam and fire, and ready to display its immense force at any moment."
+
+Mr. Beecher is not only a preacher, but a capital farmer. He has a model
+farm at Peekskill, on the Hudson, and is brimful of agricultural and
+horticultural theories, which he carries into practice successfully. His
+love for flowers is a perfect passion, and dates from his boyhood. He is
+an excellent mechanic, and makes the repairs on his own premises, as far
+as he can, with a keen relish, which he has doubtless inherited from his
+father. He is thoroughly read in history, and as an art critic has no
+superior. His house is filled with art gems, which are his pride. He has
+not lost the love of reverie which marked his boyhood, but he is
+eminently a practical man, and prefers the practical questions of
+theology to those merely theoretical. He is as little like the typical
+parson as one can imagine, and yet he is one whose place will be hard to
+fill when he is gone, and whose works will live in the grateful memory
+of those whom his counsel has saved from sin, and his sympathy
+encouraged to continue in the path of duty.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+PETER CARTWRIGHT.
+
+
+One of the most remarkable men in the American ministry is PETER
+CARTWRIGHT, the "Backwoods Preacher." Sixty-seven years of ministerial
+labors have passed over his head, and yet he still continues in the
+field in which he has done such good service, and retains all the
+popularity and much of the fire of his younger days.
+
+He was born in Amherst County, Virginia, on the 1st of September, 1785.
+His father had been a soldier in the Revolutionary War, and his mother
+was an orphan. Shortly after the close of the war, the Cartwrights
+removed from Virginia to Kentucky, which was then an almost unbroken
+wilderness. The journey was accompanied with considerable danger, as the
+Indians were not yet driven west of the Ohio, but the family reached
+their destination in safety. For two years they lived on a rented farm
+in Lincoln County, Kentucky, and at the end of that time removed to what
+was called the Green River Country, and settled in Logan County, nine
+miles south of Russellville, the county seat, and within one mile of the
+State line of Tennessee.
+
+The portion of Logan County in which young Cartwright's childhood and
+youth were passed was the very last place one Would have cared to bring
+up a candidate for the ministry. It was called "Rogue's Harbor," and was
+thickly settled with fugitives from justice from all parts of the Union.
+They actually constituted a majority of the inhabitants of the district,
+and when the respectable citizens sought to bring them to justice they
+readily "swore each other clear," and thus set the law at defiance. They
+carried on such a course of outrage and violence that the respectable
+citizens were at length compelled to combine for defence against them by
+means of an organization known as the Regulators. Several fierce
+encounters took place between the desperadoes and the Regulators, in
+which many lives were lost, before the supremacy of the law was
+established.
+
+"When my lather settled in Logan County," says Mr. Cartwright, "there
+was not a newspaper printed South of Green River, no mill short of forty
+miles, and no schools worth the name. Sunday was a day set apart for
+hunting, fishing, horse-racing, card-playing, balls, dances, and all
+kinds of jollity and mirth. We killed our meat out in the woods, wild,
+and beat our meal and hominy with a pestle and mortar. We stretched a
+deer-skin over a hoop, burned holes in it with the prongs of a fork,
+sifted our meal, baked our bread, eat it, and it was first-rate eating,
+too. We raised, or gathered out of the woods, our own tea. We had sage,
+bohea, cross-vine, spice, and sassafras teas in abundance. As for
+coffee, I am not sure that I ever smelled it for ten years. We made our
+sugar out of the water of the maple-tree, and our molasses, too. These
+were great luxuries in those days. We raised our own cotton and flax. We
+water-rotted our flax, broke it by hand, scutched it, picked the seed
+out of the cotton with our fingers; our mothers and sisters carded,
+spun, and wove it into cloth, and they cut and made our garments and
+bed-clothes, etc. And when we got on a new suit thus manufactured, and
+sallied out into company, we thought ourselves as _big as any body_."
+
+Young Peter grew up in this rough country with a constitution of iron,
+and a fair share of Western courage, independence, and energy. He was
+sent by his father to a neighboring school, but the teacher was an
+indifferent one, and he learned merely to read and write and cipher
+imperfectly.
+
+He was a "wild, wicked boy," he tells us, and grew up to delight in
+horse-racing, card-playing, and dancing. His father seems to have
+enjoyed having so dashing a son, but his mother, who was a pious woman,
+took his course seriously to heart, and wept and prayed over her boy as
+only a Christian mother can. She often talked to him, and moved him so
+deeply that he frequently vowed to lead a better life; but his pleasures
+were too tempting, and he fell back again into his old habits. His
+father presented him with a race-horse and a pack of cards, and he
+became known among his youthful companions as one of the most fearless
+riders and the luckiest fellow at cards in the county. The good mother
+wept and prayed all the more, and the boy hid his cards from her to keep
+her from burning them.
+
+In 1801, when he was sixteen years old, a change came over him. He had
+been out with his father and brother to attend a wedding in the
+neighborhood. The affair was conducted with all the uproarious merriment
+incident to those days, and when Peter returned home and began to think
+over it, he felt condemned at having passed his time in such a manner.
+"My mother was in bed," says he. "It seemed to me, all of a sudden, my
+blood rushed to my head, my heart palpitated, in a few minutes I turned
+blind, an awful impression rested on my mind that death had come to me
+and I was unprepared to die. I fell on my knees and began to ask God to
+have mercy on me. My mother sprang from her bed, and was soon on her
+knees by my side, praying for me, and exhorting me to look to Christ for
+mercy, and then and there I promised the Lord if he would spare me I
+would seek and serve Him, and I never fully broke that promise. My
+mother prayed for me a long time. At length we lay down, but there was
+little sleep for me. Next morning I rose, feeling wretched beyond
+expression. I tried to read in the Testament, and retired many times to
+secret prayer through the day, but found no relief. I gave up my
+race-horse to my father and requested him to sell him. I went and
+brought my pack of cards and gave them to mother, who threw them into
+the fire, and they were consumed. I fasted, watched, and prayed, and
+engaged in regular reading of the Testament. I was so distressed and
+miserable that I was incapable of any regular business."
+
+Several months passed away, during which time Peter had seasons of
+comfort and hopes of forgiveness, but during the greater portion he was
+wretched and miserable, filled with such a fear of the devil that he was
+almost convinced that Satan was really present with him to keep him from
+God. A camp-meeting, held in the vicinity of his father's house, in the
+spring of 1801, completed his conversion and gave him peace.
+
+"To this meeting," says he, "I repaired a guilty, wretched sinner. On
+the Saturday evening of said meeting I went, with weeping multitudes,
+and bowed before the stand, and earnestly prayed for mercy. In the midst
+of a solemn struggle of soul, an impression was made on my mind as
+though a voice said to me: 'Thy sins are all forgiven thee,' Divine
+light flashed all around me, unspeakable joy sprang up in my soul. I
+rose to my feet, opened my eyes, and it really seemed to me as if I was
+in heaven; the trees, the leaves on them, and every thing seemed, and I
+really thought were, praising God. My mother raised the shout, my
+Christian friends crowded around me and joined me in praising God.... I
+have never doubted that the Lord did, then and there, forgive my sins
+and give me religion." He went on his way rejoicing, and in June, 1801,
+was formally received into the Methodist Episcopal Church. In May, 1802,
+he was appointed an exhorter. He shrank from accepting the position, as
+he distrusted his own abilities, but finally yielded to his presiding
+elder's wishes and entered upon his work. In the fall of that year his
+parents removed to Lewiston County, toward the mouth of the Cumberland
+River.
+
+Although he was but eighteen years old, his presiding elder had detected
+in him signs of unusual promise, and had resolved to bring him into
+active labor for the Church at once, and accordingly, upon his departure
+for his new home, Peter was given authority to lay out and organize a
+new circuit, the plan of which he was to submit to the presiding elder
+for approval. The boy hesitated, frightened by the magnitude of the
+task, but being encouraged by his superiors, accepted the trust, and
+thus began his labors as a preacher of the Word. Upon reaching his new
+home, he attended a tolerably good school in the vicinity, hoping to
+acquire a better education, but the pupils and teacher persecuted him so
+sorely that he was obliged to withdraw. Determining to lose no time in
+waiting for an education, he at once began the work of preaching. Being
+possessed of strong natural sense, a ready wit, and being thoroughly
+imbued with the spirit of frontier life, he was just the man to carry
+the Gospel home to the hearts of the rude pioneers of the great West.
+His manner was that of a backwoodsman, and he had no city airs and
+graces to offend the plain, rough people to whom he preached. He was
+emphatically one of them. He offered them the plain Gospel, and gave
+theological theories a wide berth.
+
+His plan of operations was adapted to the rudest intellect. It was to
+thunder the terrors of the law into the ears of his converts, or, in his
+own words, to "shake them over hell until they smelt brimstone right
+strong," and make them see the fearful condition in which they lay by
+reason of their sin. Man was to him a wretched, degraded creature, and
+the only way to bring him to God was to drive him there by the terrors
+of the law. Our preacher had very little faith in the quieter, more
+persuasive means of grace. His first effort was to give the souls of his
+hearers a good shaking up, bring them face to face with hell and its
+torments, and then, having forced them to flee from the wrath to come,
+to trust to their future Christian experience for the means of acquiring
+a knowledge of the tender mercies of the Saviour. It must be confessed
+that this was the only plan open to him in the field in which he
+labored. The people to whom he preached were a rude, rough set, mainly
+ignorant and superstitious, and many of them sunk in the depths of
+drunkenness and viciousness. The Western country was almost a
+wilderness. Vast forests and boundless prairies lay on every hand, with
+but here and there a clearing with a solitary log cabin in it, or but
+two or three at the most. The people lived in the most perfect solitude,
+rarely seeing any but the members of their own households. Solitude and
+danger made them superstitious, and the absence of schools kept them in
+ignorance. They drank to keep off the blues, and when they came together
+for amusement they made the most of their opportunities, and plunged
+into the most violent sports, which were not always kept within the
+bounds of propriety. Churches were as scarce as schools, and until the
+Methodist circuit riders made their appearance in the West, the people
+were little better than heathen. The law had scarcely any hold upon
+these frontiersmen. They were wild and untamed, and personal freedom was
+kept in restraint mainly by the law of personal accountability. They
+were generous and improvident, frank, fearless, easy-going, and filled
+with an intense scorn for every thing that smacked of Eastern refinement
+or city life. They were proud of their buckskin and linsey-woolsey
+clothes, their squirrel caps, and their horny hands and rough faces.
+They would have been miserable in a city mansion, but they were lords
+and kings in their log-cabins. To have sent a preacher bred in the
+learned schools of New England to such a people would have been folly.
+The smooth cadences, the polished gestures, and, above all, the
+manuscript sermon of a Boston divine, would have disgusted the men and
+women of the frontier. What cared they for predestination or free-will,
+or for any of the dogmas of the schools? They wanted to hear the simple,
+fundamental truths of the Gospel, and they wanted to hear them from a
+man of their own stamp. They wanted a "fire and brimstone" preacher, one
+whose fiery eloquence could stir the very depths of their souls, and set
+their simple imaginations all ablaze; one who could shout and sing with
+true Western abandon; who could preach in his shirt-sleeves, sleep with
+them on the bare ground, brave all the dangers of a frontier life, and,
+if necessary, thrash any one who dared to insult him. Such was the man
+for these sturdy, simple Western folk, and such a man they found in
+Peter Cartwright.
+
+Peter went at the task before him with a will. The country being
+sparsely settled, people had to travel a long way to get to church, and
+it became a matter of expediency for the clergy to hold religious
+gatherings at stated points, and to continue them for several days, so
+that those who desired to attend might be able to avoid the necessity of
+going home every evening and coming back next day. Church edifices being
+scarce, these meetings were held in the woods, and a large encampment
+was formed by the people in attendance. This was the origin of the
+camp-meeting system, which for many years was the only effective way of
+spreading the Gospel in the West. It was at a camp-meeting that Peter
+obtained religion, and he has ever since been a zealous advocate of, and
+a hard worker at, them. From the first he was successful. The fame of
+the "boy preacher" went abroad into all the land, and people came in to
+the camp from a hundred miles around to hear him. He had little
+education, but he knew his Bible thoroughly, and was a ready speaker,
+and, above all, he knew how to deal with the people to whom he preached.
+He made many converts, and from the first took rank as the most popular
+preacher in the West.
+
+Peter not only believed in the overruling power of God, but he was
+firmly convinced of the active and personal agency of the devil in human
+affairs. Many of the follies and faults of the people around him took
+place, he averred, because they were possessed of devils. Each
+camp-meeting was to him a campaign against Satan, and in his opinion
+Satan never failed to make a good fight for his kingdom. Certainly some
+very singular things did occur at the meetings at which he was present,
+and, naturally, perhaps, some persons began to believe that Peter
+Cartwright possessed supernatural powers. The following incident,
+related by him, not only explains some of the phenomena to which I
+allude, but also the manner in which he was regarded by some of the
+unconverted:
+
+"A new exercise broke out among us, called the 'jerks,' which was
+overwhelming in its effects upon the bodies and minds of the people. No
+matter whether they were saints or sinners, they would be taken under a
+warm song or sermon, and seized with a convulsive jerking all over,
+which they could not by any possibility avoid, and the more they
+resisted, the more they jerked. If they would not strive against it,
+and pray in good earnest, the jerking would usually abate. I have seen
+more than five hundred persons jerking at one time in my large
+congregations. Most usually persons taken with the jerks, to obtain
+relief, as they said, would rise up and dance. Some would run, but could
+not get away. Some would resist; on such the jerks were very severe.
+
+"To see those proud young gentlemen and young ladies, dressed in their
+silks, jewelry, and prunella, from top to toe, take the jerks, would
+often excite my risibilities. The first jerk or so you would see their
+fine bonnets, caps, and combs fly, and so sudden would be the jerking of
+the head that their long, loose hair would crack almost as loud as a
+wagoner's whip.
+
+"At one of my appointments, in 1804, there was a very large congregation
+turned out to hear the 'Kentucky boy,' as they called me. Among the rest
+there were two very finely dressed, fashionable young ladies, attended
+by two brothers with loaded horsewhips. Although the house was large, it
+was crowded. The two young ladies, coming in late, took their seats near
+where I stood, and their two brothers stood in the door. I was a little
+unwell, and I had a phial of peppermint in my pocket. Before I commenced
+preaching I took out my phial and swallowed a little of the peppermint.
+While I was preaching the congregation was melted into tears. The two
+young gentlemen moved off to the yard fence, and both the young ladies
+took the jerks, and they were greatly mortified about it....
+
+"As I dismissed the assembly, a man stepped up to me and warned me to be
+on my guard, for he had heard the two brothers swear they would
+horsewhip me when meeting was out for giving their sisters the jerks.
+'Well,' said I, 'I'll see to that.'
+
+"I went out and said to the young men that I understood they intended
+to horsewhip me for giving their sisters the jerks. One replied that he
+did. I undertook to expostulate with him on the absurdity of the charge
+against me, but he swore I need not deny it, for he had seen me take out
+a phial in which I carried some truck that gave his sisters the jerks.
+As quick as thought came into my mind how I would get clear of my
+whipping, and, jerking out the peppermint phial, said I, 'Yes; if I gave
+your sisters the jerks I'll give them to you,' In a moment I saw he was
+scared. I moved toward him, he backed, I advanced, and he wheeled and
+ran, warning me not to come near him or he would kill me. It raised the
+laugh on him, and I escaped my whipping....
+
+"I always looked upon the jerks as a judgment sent from God, first, to
+bring sinners to repentance, and, secondly, that God could work with or
+without means, and that he could work over and above means and do
+whatsoever seemeth him good to the glory of his grace and the salvation
+of the world. There is no doubt in my mind that, with weak-minded,
+ignorant, and superstitious persons, there was a great deal of
+sympathetic feeling with many that claimed to be under the influence of
+this jerking exercise, and yet with many it was perfectly involuntary.
+It was on all occasions my practice to recommend fervent prayer as a
+remedy, and it almost universally proved an effectual antidote."
+
+The excitement of the religious revivals plunged many of the people into
+excesses. They prophesied, dreamed dreams, and saw visions, and troubled
+the young preacher exceedingly, but he set his face sternly against all
+such disorders, and pronounced their visions and messages to be from the
+devil. One of these dreamers came to him one day and told him he had a
+message from heaven for him.
+
+"Well," said Cartwright, "what is it?"
+
+"It has been revealed to me," said the fellow, "that you are never to
+die, but are to live forever."
+
+"Who revealed that to you?"
+
+"An angel."
+
+"Did you see him?" asked Cartwright, dryly.
+
+"O, yes; he was a beautiful, white, shining being."
+
+"Did you smell him?" asked Peter, bluntly.
+
+The man looked at him in amazement, and the preacher continued, sternly,
+"Well, did the angel you saw smell of brimstone? He must have smelled of
+brimstone, for he was from a region that burns with fire and brimstone,
+and consequently from hell, for he revealed a great lie to you if he
+told you I was to live forever."
+
+The dreamer turned off abruptly, and disappeared amidst the jeers of the
+crowd that had listened to the conversation.
+
+On the 16th of September, 1806, Mr. Cartwright was ordained a deacon in
+the Methodist Episcopal Church by Bishop Asbury, and on the 4th of
+October, 1808, Bishop McKendree ordained him an elder. Upon receiving
+deacon's orders he was assigned to the Marietta Circuit. His appointment
+dismayed him. Says he: "It was a poor, hard circuit at that time.
+Marietta and the country round were settled at an early day by a colony
+of Yankees. At the time of my appointment I had never seen a Yankee, and
+I had heard dismal stories about them. It was said they lived almost
+entirely on pumpkins, molasses, fat meat, and bohea tea; moreover, that
+they could not bear loud and zealous sermons, and they had brought on
+their learned preachers with them, and they read their sermons and were
+always criticising us poor backwoods preachers. When my appointment was
+read out it distressed me greatly. I went to Bishop Asbury and begged
+him to supply my place and let me go home. The old father took me in
+his arms and said: 'O, no, my son; go in the name of the Lord. It will
+make a man of you.'
+
+"Ah, thought I, if this is the way to make men, I do not want to be a
+man. I cried over it bitterly, and prayed, too. But on I started,
+cheered by my presiding elder, Brother J. Sale. If I ever saw hard
+times, surely it was this year; yet many of the people were kind and
+treated me friendly. I had hard work to keep soul and body together. The
+first Methodist house I came to the brother was a Universalist. I
+crossed over the Muskingum River to Marietta. The first Methodist family
+I stopped with there, the lady was a member of the Methodist Episcopal
+Church, but a thorough Universalist. She was a thin-faced, Roman-nosed,
+loquacious Yankee, glib on the tongue, and you may depend upon it I had
+a hard race to keep up with her, though I found it a good school, for it
+set me to reading my Bible. And here permit me to say, of all the isms I
+ever heard of, they were here. These descendants of the Puritans were
+generally educated, but their ancestors were rigid predestinarians, and
+as they were sometimes favored with a little light on their moral
+powers, and could just 'see men as trees walking,' they jumped into
+Deism, Universalism, Unitarianism, etc., etc. I verily believe it was
+the best school I ever entered. They waked me up on all sides; Methodism
+was feeble, and I had to battle or run, and I resolved on the former."
+
+Just before he was made an elder, Mr. Cartwright left his circuit, and
+went home on a visit to recruit. He had made a good fight with poverty
+during his labors, and at the time of his departure for home he was in a
+condition sufficiently hard to test any man's fortitude. "I had been
+from my father's house for three years," says he; "was five hundred
+miles from home, my horse had gone blind, my saddle was worn out, my
+bridle reins had been eaten up and replaced (after a sort) at least a
+dozen times, and my clothes had been patched till it was difficult to
+detect the original. I had concluded to make my way home and get another
+outfit. I was in Marietta, and had just seventy-five cents in my pocket.
+How I would get home and pay my way I could not tell."
+
+He did reach home, however, after many characteristic adventures, and
+obtained another outfit, and while there he took an important step--he
+married. "After a mature deliberation and prayer," he says, "I thought
+it was my duty to marry, and was joined in marriage to Frances Gaines,
+on the 18th of August, 1808, which was her nineteenth birthday." Peter
+and his bride knew that a hard life was in store for them, but they felt
+strong in the love they bore each other. They were simple backwoods
+folk, and their wants were few. "When I started as a traveling
+preacher," he said fifty-three years afterward, "a single preacher was
+allowed to receive eighty dollars per annum if his circuit would give it
+to him; but single preachers in those days seldom received over thirty
+or forty dollars, and often much less; and had it not been for a few
+presents made us by the benevolent friends of the church, and a few
+dollars we made as marriage fees, we must have suffered much more than
+we did. But the Lord provided, and, strange as it may appear to the
+present generation, we got along without starving or going naked." There
+is something awe-inspiring in the simple trust in God which this good
+man displayed in every stage of his life. Once satisfied that he was in
+the path of duty, he never allowed the future to trouble him. He
+provided for it as far as he could, and left the rest to the Master
+whose work he was doing. Poverty and hardship had no terrors for this
+brave young couple, and it was very far from their thoughts to wait
+until a better day to marry. They would go out hand in hand into the
+world and meet their trials together. Children would come, they knew,
+and those little mouths would have to be fed, but they would be
+industrious, saving, and patient, and "God would provide."
+
+Peter Cartwright's mission was to plant the Methodist Episcopal Church
+in the West as well as to preach the Gospel. For that end he worked and
+prayed. The Methodist Episcopal Church was his haven of safety. Without,
+all was storm and darkness; within its fold all was peace and light. He
+believed his church to be the best door to heaven, if indeed it was not
+in his estimation the only one. He was a fanatic, pure and simple, as
+regarded his own denomination, but a fanatic full of high and noble
+purposes, and one whose zeal was productive only of good. This
+fanaticism was necessary to the success of his labors. It was his
+perfect belief that his was the only church in which sinners could find
+perfect peace that carried him through the difficulties which
+encompassed him. Men were dying all around him, and they must come into
+his church. They had other denominations close at hand, but they, in his
+estimation, would not do. The Methodist Episcopal Church was a necessity
+for sinners, therefore it must be planted in all parts of the land. No
+sacrifice was too great for the accomplishment of this object. He has
+lived to see those sacrifices rewarded, to see his church one of the
+most numerous and powerful religious bodies in the country.
+
+Being so zealous in behalf of his own church, it is not strange that he
+should have clashed frequently with other denominations. He got along
+very well with the majority, but with the Baptists and Universalists he
+was always on the war path. The latter especially excited his
+uncompromising hostility, and he never failed to attack their doctrines
+with all his forces wherever he encountered them. "I have thought,"
+says he, "and do still think, if I were to set out to form a plan to
+contravene the laws of God, to encourage wickedness of all kinds, to
+corrupt the morals and encourage vice, and crowd hell with the lost and
+the wailings of the damned, the Universalist plan should be the plan,
+the very plan that I would adopt....
+
+"A few years ago," he continues, "I had a neighbor who professed to be a
+confirmed Universalist. He contended with me that there was no devil but
+the evil disposition in man, and that there was no hell but the bad
+feelings that men had when they did wrong: that this was all the
+punishment any body would suffer. When this neighbor's father lay on his
+dying bed (a confirmed Universalist, professedly) there was a faithful
+minister of Christ who believed it his duty to visit this old
+Universalist, warn him of his danger, and try to awaken his conscience,
+if not seared, to a just view of his real situation. The minister,
+however, failed in his faithful attempt and well-meant endeavors, for
+the old man, then on his dying pillow, was greatly offended at the
+preacher, and told him that he did not thank him for trying to shake his
+faith in his dying moments. This neighbor of mine, and son of this old,
+hardened sinner, was greatly enraged at the preacher, and cursed and
+abused him in a violent manner. A few days after the demise of the old
+man, he, in a furious rage, began to abuse and curse the preacher in my
+presence, and said:
+
+"D---- him; I wish he was in hell and the devil had him.'
+
+"I stopped him short by saying, 'Pooh, pooh, man, what are you talking
+about? There is no hell but the bad feelings that a man has when he does
+wrong, and no devil but the evil disposition that is in man.' Thus
+answering a fool according to his folly.
+
+"'Well,' said he, 'if there is no hell there ought to be, to put such
+preachers in.'
+
+"'Now, sir,' said I, 'you see the utter untenableness of your creed, for
+a man even in trying to do good honestly draws down your wrath, and, in
+a moment, you want a hell to put him into and a devil to torment him for
+giving you an offense, and for doing what no good man ought to be
+offended about. But God must be insulted, his name blasphemed, his laws
+trampled under foot, yet he must have no hell to put such a wretch in,
+no devil to torment him. Now I would be ashamed of myself if I were in
+your place, and let the seal of truth close my lips forever hereafter.'
+
+"Although he was confounded, he still clave to his God-dishonoring
+doctrine, waxing worse and worse, till it was generally believed he was
+guilty of a most heinous crime."
+
+Argumentative battles were not the only troubles Cartwright had to
+encounter from Universalists. They came to his revivals, he says, to
+hoot and create disturbance. At one of these meetings two sisters,
+Universalists in belief, were present. They came to "make fun," but one
+of them was overcome by Cartwright's preaching, and went up to the
+mourner's bench to be prayed for. When her sister heard of it, she
+commenced to make her way to the altar, with the angry determination to
+force the penitent from it. "I rose and met her in the crowded aisle,"
+says Mr. Cartwright, "and told her to be calm and desist. She made
+neither better nor worse of it than to draw back her arm and give me a
+severe slap in the face with her open hand. I confess this rather took
+me by surprise, and, as the common saying is, made the fire fly out of
+my eyes in tremendous sparkling brilliancy, but, collecting my best
+judgment, I caught her by the arms near her shoulders and wheeled her to
+the right about, moved her forward to the door, and said, 'Gentlemen,
+please open the door; the devil in this Universalist lady has got
+fighting hot, and I want to set her outside to cool.' The door was
+opened, and I landed her out."
+
+Concerning his tilts with the Baptists, he has given a mass of curious
+reminiscences, from which we take the following:
+
+"We preached in new settlements, and the Lord poured out his Spirit, and
+we had many convictions and many conversions. It was the order of the
+day, (though I am sorry to say it,) that we were constantly followed by
+a certain set of proselyting Baptist preachers. These new and wicked
+settlements were seldom visited by these Baptist preachers until the
+Methodist preachers entered them; then, when a revival was gotten up, or
+the work of the Lord revived, these Baptist preachers came rushing in,
+and they generally sung their sermons; and when they struck the _long
+roll_, or their sing-song mode of preaching, in substance it was:
+'Water! water! You must follow your blessed Lord down into the water!' I
+had preached several times in a large, populous, and wicked settlement,
+and there was serious attention, deep convictions, and a good many
+conversions; but, between my occasional appointments these preachers
+would rush in and try to take off our converts into the water; and
+indeed they made so much ado about baptism by immersion that the
+uninformed would suppose that heaven was an island, and there was no way
+to get there _but by diving or swimming_."
+
+He once preached a sermon on the true nature of baptism, at which were
+present the daughters of a Baptist minister, one of whom was converted.
+That night it rained violently, and all the neighboring streams
+overflowed their banks. Riding along the next day, he met the Baptist
+minister on the road.
+
+"We've had a tremendous rain," said Cartwright.
+
+"Yes, sir," said the Baptist brother, "the Lord sent this rain to
+convince you of your error."
+
+"Ah! what error?"
+
+"Why, about baptism. The Lord sent this flood to convince you that much
+water was necessary."
+
+"Very good, sir," said Cartwright, "and in like manner he sent this
+flood to convince you of your error."
+
+"What error?" asked the Baptist brother.
+
+"Why," replied Cartwright, triumphantly, "to show you that water comes
+by pouring, and not by immersion."
+
+Free and easy as he was in his manner, our preacher had a deep sense of
+the dignity of his mission, and he was resolved that others should share
+the feeling, and accord him, in his ministerial capacity, the respect
+and deference that were his due. His manner of accomplishing this was
+characteristic, as the following incident will show: Traveling on his
+circuit in 1805, he put up on one occasion at the house of an old man
+known as Father Teel, a whimsical old fellow, and supposed to be
+Cartwright's match in oddity. He had been warned that the old man,
+though a good Methodist, showed little deference to preachers. It was
+his custom to rise early, and, as soon as dressed, to give out his hymn,
+sing it himself, and then go to prayers, without waiting for his family
+to get up. He served preachers in the same way. Cartwright resolved to
+beat him at his own game, but the old man was too wary for him.
+
+"Just as day broke," says Cartwright, "I awoke, rose up, and began to
+dress, but had not nigh accomplished it when I heard Teel give out his
+hymn and commence singing, and about the time I had got dressed, I heard
+him commence praying. He gave thanks to God that they had been spared
+during the night, and were all permitted to see the light of a new day,
+while at the same time I suppose every one of his family was fast
+asleep. I deliberately opened the door and walked out to the well,
+washed myself, and then walked back to my cabin. Just as I got to the
+door, the old brother opened his door, and, seeing me, said, 'Good
+morning, sir. Why, I didn't know you were up.'
+
+"'Yes, said I, 'I have been up some time.'
+
+"'Well, brother,' said he, 'why did you not come in to prayers?'
+
+"'Because,' said I, 'it is wrong to pray of a morning in the family
+before we wash.'
+
+"The old brother passed on, and no more was said at that time. That
+evening, just before we were about to retire to rest, the old brother
+set out the book and said to me: 'Brother, hold prayers with us.'
+
+"'No, sir,' said I.
+
+"Said he, 'Come, brother, take the book and pray with us.'
+
+"'No, sir,' said I; 'you love to pray so well, you may do it yourself.'
+
+"He insisted, but I persistently refused, saying: 'You are so fond of
+praying yourself, that you even thanked God this morning that he had
+spared you all to see the light of a new day, when your family had not
+yet opened their eyes, but were all fast asleep. And you have such an
+absurd way of holding prayers in your family, that I do not wish to have
+any thing to do with it.'
+
+"He then took the book, read, and said prayers, but you may rely on it,
+the next morning things were much changed. He waited for me, and had all
+his family up in order. He acknowledged his error, and told me it was
+one of the best reproofs he ever got. I then prayed with the family, and
+after that all went well."
+
+Among his clerical brethren was a poor hen-pecked husband, whose wife
+was possessed of a temper that made her the terror of the neighborhood.
+Cartwright had often been invited by the poor man to go home with him;
+"but," he says, "I frankly confess I was afraid to trust myself" but at
+length, yielding to his importunities, he went home with his oppressed
+brother, intending to spend the night with him. His visit roused the
+fury of the wife, and "I saw in a minute," says our preacher, "that the
+devil was in her as big as an alligator, and I determined on my course."
+The woman held her tongue until after supper, when her husband asked her
+kindly to join them in prayers. She flew into a rage, and swore there
+should be no praying in her house that night. Cartwright tried to reason
+with her, but she cursed him roundly. Then, facing her sternly, he said,
+"Madam, if you were my wife, I would break you of your bad ways, or I
+would break your neck."
+
+"The devil you would," said she. "Yes, you are a pretty Christian, ain't
+you?"
+
+She continued cursing him, but Cartwright sternly bade her hold her
+peace, and let them pray. She declared she would not.
+
+"Now," said he to her, "if you do not be still, and behave yourself,
+I'll put you out of doors."
+
+"At this," says he, "she clenched her fist and swore she was one-half
+alligator and the other half snapping-turtle, and that it would take a
+better man than I was to put her out. It was a small cabin we were in,
+and we were not far from the door, which was then standing open. I
+caught her by the arm, and swinging her round in a circle, brought her
+right up to the door, and shoved her out. She jumped up, tore her hair,
+foamed, and such swearing as she uttered was seldom equaled, and never
+surpassed. The door, or shutter of the door, was very strongly made, to
+keep out hostile Indians; I shut it tight, barred it, and went to
+prayer, and I prayed as best I could; but I have no language at my
+command to describe my feelings. At the same time, I was determined to
+conquer, or die in the attempt. While she was raging and foaming in the
+yard and around the cabin, I started a spiritual song, and sung loud, to
+drawn her voice as much as possible. The five or six little children ran
+and squatted about and crawled under the beds. Poor things, they were
+scared almost to death.
+
+"I sang on, and she roared and thundered on outside, till she became
+perfectly exhausted, and panted for breath. At length, when she had
+spent her force, she became perfectly calm and still, and then knocked
+at the door, saying, 'Mr. Cartwright, please let me in.'
+
+"'Will you behave yourself if I let you in?' said I.
+
+"'O yes,' said she, 'I will;' and throwing myself on my guard, and
+perfectly self-possessed, I opened the door, took her by the hand, led
+her in, and seated her near the fire-place. She had roared and foamed
+until she was in a high perspiration, and looked pale as death. After
+she took her seat, 'O,' said she, 'what a fool I am,'
+
+"'Yes,' said I, 'about one of the biggest fools I ever saw in all my
+life.'... Brother C. and I kneeled down, and both prayed. She was as
+quiet as a lamb."
+
+Six months later, our preacher tells us, this woman was converted, and
+became "as bold in the cause of God as she had been in the cause of the
+wicked one."
+
+In 1823, Mr. Cartwright resolved to move across the Ohio, and selected
+Illinois as his new home. The reasons which influenced his actions are
+thus stated by him:
+
+"I had seen with painful emotions the increase of a disposition to
+justify slavery.... and the legislatures in the slave States made the
+laws more and more stringent, with a design to prevent emancipation.
+Moreover, rabid abolitionism spread and dreadfully excited the South. I
+had a young and growing family of children, two sons and four daughters;
+was poor, owned a little farm of about one hundred and fifty acres;
+lands around me were high and rising in value. My daughters would soon
+be grown up. I did not see any probable means by which I could settle
+them around or near us. Moreover, I had no right to expect our children
+to marry into wealthy families, and I did not desire it, if it could be
+so; and by chance they might marry into slave families. This I did not
+desire. Besides, I saw there was a marked distinction made among the
+people generally between young people raised without work and those that
+had to work for their living.... I thought I saw clear indications of
+Providence that I should leave my comfortable little home, and move into
+a free State or territory, for the following reasons: First, I would get
+entirely clear of the evil of slavery. Second, I could raise my children
+to work where work was not considered a degradation. Third, I believed I
+could better my temporal circumstances, and procure lands for my
+children as they grew up. And fourth, I could carry the Gospel to
+destitute souls that had, by removal into some new country, been
+deprived of the means of grace."
+
+It was the last reason, no doubt, that decided our preacher. Men of his
+stamp were needed west of the Ohio. Kentucky was becoming too old a
+State for him, and he felt that his true field of labor was still on the
+frontier, and thither he turned his steps. Setting out first on
+horseback to seek an eligible location, he reached Sangamon County,
+Illinois, where he bought a claim on Richland Creek. He then returned to
+Kentucky and wound up his affairs there, obtained a regular transfer
+from the Kentucky Conference to the Indiana Conference, which then
+controlled Illinois, and in October, 1824, set out for his new home in
+Sangamon County. A great affliction overtook him on the way, in the
+death of his third daughter, who was killed by the falling of a tree
+upon their camp. The affliction was made more grievous by the heartless
+refusal of the people in the vicinity to render them any aid. "We were
+in great distress," he says, "and no one even to pity our condition....
+I discovered that the tree had sprung up, and did not press the child;
+and we drew her out from under it, and carefully laid her in our feed
+trough, and moved on about twenty miles to an acquaintance's in Hamilton
+County, Illinois, where we buried her."
+
+Leaving that lonely little grave behind them, they hurried on to their
+new home. Springfield, the capital of the State, was but a small
+collection of shanties and log huts, and Sangamon County was the extreme
+frontier. It was the most northern county of Illinois, and just beyond
+it lay the unbroken Indian country. Numbers of Indians roamed through
+the Sangamon River bottom, and spent their winters there. It was as wild
+and unsettled a region as our preacher could have desired, and one which
+gave him a fine field for the exercise of his peculiar abilities. Mr.
+Cartwright was promptly received into the Indiana Conference, and he
+lost no time in looking about him. He at once established his family in
+their new home, and then set about his work. The work was hard, and
+money was scarce. The first year he traveled the Sangamon Circuit he
+received forty dollars, and the next year sixty dollars, which he says
+was a great improvement in his financial affairs. He was successful from
+the first, and in the two years referred to added one hundred and sixty
+persons to the Methodist Church in this thinly settled district. For
+forty-six years he has labored in this region, adding many souls to the
+kingdom of God.
+
+Arduous as his labors had been in the Kentucky Conference, they now
+increased very greatly. He had a larger amount of territory to travel
+over, people were more scattered, and the dangers to be encountered were
+greater. In 1827, he was made presiding elder, and given the Illinois
+District, then a very extensive region, and in 1828 Galena charge was
+added to this district. The district thus enlarged extended from the
+mouth of the Ohio River to Galena, the entire length of the present
+State of Illinois, and over this immense distance our preacher was
+obliged to travel four times in the year. The journeys were made either
+on horseback or in an old-fashioned sulky or one-seat gig. There were
+miles of lonely prairie and many rapid streams to cross, and roads,
+bridges, or ferry-boats were almost unknown. Yet Peter Cartwright was
+not the man to be deterred by obstacles. When he set out on his official
+journeys, he allowed nothing that it was possible to overcome to prevent
+him from keeping his appointments. In crossing the prairies, he would
+guide himself by the points of timber, for there were no roads over
+these vast plains. Oftentimes the streams to be crossed were swollen,
+and then he would swim his horse across them, or ride along the shore
+until he found a tree fallen over the current. Stripping himself, he
+would carry his clothes and riding equipments to the opposite bank, and
+then, returning, mount his horse and swim him across the river. Dressing
+again, he would continue his journey, and perhaps repeat the proceeding
+several times during the day. When overtaken by night, he would seek a
+place in some grove, and, lighting a fire with his tinder-box and steel,
+tie up his horse, and, throwing himself on the ground, sleep as
+peacefully as on a bed of down. Sometimes night would come on before he
+had crossed the prairie or made his way to the timber point he was
+aiming for, and then he would sit down on the ground, in the darkness
+and alone, and, holding his horse by the bridle, await the return of
+light to enable him to see his landmark. Sometimes he would find a
+little log-hut with a settler's family in it, and he says it was "a
+great treat" to come upon one of these lonely cabins and enjoy the
+privilege of a night's lodging. If the family were Methodists, there was
+sure to be preaching that night; and if they were strangers to that
+church, our preacher set to work at once to convert them. He labored
+faithfully, faring hard, and braving dangers from which his city
+brethren would have shrunk appalled. He carried the Gospel and the
+Methodist Episcopal Church into all parts of the great State of
+Illinois, and even into Iowa and the Indian country.
+
+In 1832, the first Illinois Conference met in the town of Jacksonville,
+and Mr. Cartwright attended it. He had now been a traveling preacher for
+twenty-eight years, and, as he felt himself sorely in need of rest, he
+asked and obtained a superannuated relation for one year. On the same
+day, Bishop Soule, who presided at the Conference, came to him to ask
+his advice with reference to the Quincy District. It was very important,
+but the bishop could not find a presiding elder willing to take charge
+of it, as it was an almost unbroken wilderness. The bishop was in sore
+distress, as he feared that he would be obliged to merge it into another
+district. The spirit of the backwoods preacher at once took fire, and,
+declaring that so important a field ought not to be neglected, he
+expressed his willingness to relinquish his superannuated relation and
+accept the charge. The bishop took him at his word and appointed him to
+the district, which he served faithfully. His adventures in traveling
+from place to place to fill his appointments are intensely interesting,
+and I would gladly reproduce them here did the limits of this chapter
+permit.
+
+It required no small amount of courage to perform the various duties of
+a backwoods preacher, and in this quality our preacher was not
+deficient. He was frequently called upon to exercise it in his camp
+meetings. These assemblies never failed to gather large crowds from all
+parts of the surrounding country, and among others came numerous
+rowdies, whose delight it was to annoy the preachers and worshipers in
+every conceivable way. Cartwright put up with the annoyance as long as
+he could, and then determined to put a stop to it. He believed in
+fighting the devil with fire, and put down many a disturbance. The
+following is the way he went about it:
+
+"Our last quarterly meeting was a camp meeting. We had a great many
+tents and a large turnout for a new country, and, perhaps, there never
+was a greater collection of rabble and rowdies. They came drunk and
+armed with dirks, clubs, knives, and horsewhips, and swore they would
+break up the meeting. After interrupting us very much on Saturday night,
+they collected on Sunday morning, determined on a general riot. At eight
+o'clock I was appointed to preach. About the time I was half through my
+discourse, two very fine-dressed young men marched into the congregation
+with loaded horsewhips, and hats on, and rose up and stood in the midst
+of the ladies, and began to laugh and talk. They were near the stand,
+and I requested them to desist and get off the seats; but they cursed me
+and told me to mind my own business, and said they would not get down. I
+stopped trying to preach, and called for a magistrate. There were two at
+hand, but I saw they were both afraid. I ordered them to take these two
+men into custody, but they said they could not do it. I told them as I
+left the stand to command me to take them, and I would do it at the risk
+of my life. I advanced toward them. They ordered me to stand off, but I
+advanced. One of them made a pass at my head, but I closed in with him
+and jerked him off the seat. A regular scuffle ensued. The congregation
+by this time were all in commotion. I heard the magistrates giving
+general orders, commanding all friends of order to aid in suppressing
+the riot. In the scuffle I threw my prisoner down, and held him fast;
+he tried his best to get loose. I told him to be quiet, or I would
+pound his chest well. The mob rose and rushed to the rescue of the two
+prisoners, for they had taken the other young man also. An old, drunken
+magistrate came up to me, and ordered me to let my prisoner go. I told
+him I should not. He swore if I did not he would knock me down. I told
+him to crack away. Then one of my friends, at my request, took hold of
+my prisoner, and the drunken justice made a pass at me; but I parried
+the stroke, and, seizing him by the collar and the hair of the head, and
+fetching him a sudden jerk forward, brought him to the ground and jumped
+on him. I told him to be quiet, or I would pound him well. The mob then
+rushed to the scene; they knocked down seven magistrates, several
+preachers, and others. I gave up my drunken prisoner to another, and
+threw myself in front of the friends of order. Just at this moment, the
+ringleader of the mob and I met; he made three passes at me, intending
+to knock me down. The last time he struck at me, by the force of his own
+effort he threw the side of his face toward me. It seemed at that moment
+I had not power to resist temptation, and I struck a sudden blow in the
+burr of the ear and dropped him to the earth. Just at this moment, the
+friends of order rushed by hundreds on the mob, knocking them down in
+every direction."
+
+Once, while crossing a river on a ferry-boat, he overheard a man cursing
+Peter Cartwright and threatening dire vengeance against him, and
+boasting that he could "whip any preacher the Lord ever made." This
+roused our preacher's ire, and accosting the man, he told him he was
+Peter Cartwright, and that if he wanted to whip him he must do so then.
+The fellow became confused, and said he did not believe him.
+
+"I tell you," said Cartwright, sternly, "I am the man. Now, sir, you
+have to whip me, as you threatened, or quit cursing me, or I will put
+you in the river and baptize you in the name of the devil, for you
+surely belong to him." "This," says Cartwright, "settled him."
+
+Once, having gone into the woods with a young man who had sworn he would
+whip him, he sprained his foot slightly in getting over a fence, and
+involuntarily placed his hand to his side. "My redoubtable antagonist,"
+says he, "had got on the fence, and, looking down at me, said, 'D----
+you, you are feeling for a dirk, are you?'
+
+"As quick as thought it occurred to me how to get clear of a whipping.
+
+"'Yes,' said I, 'and I will give you the benefit of all the dirks I
+have,' and advanced rapidly toward him.
+
+"He sprang back on the other side of the fence from me; I jumped over
+after him, and a regular foot race followed."
+
+"It may be asked," says the old man, naively, "what I would have done if
+this fellow had gone with me to the woods. This is hard to answer, for
+it was a part of my creed to love every body, but to fear no one, and I
+did not permit myself to believe that any man could whip me until it was
+tried, and I did not permit myself to premeditate expedients in such
+cases. I should no doubt have proposed to him to have prayer first, and
+then followed the openings of Providence."
+
+Mr. Cartwright was from the beginning of his ministry an ardent advocate
+of temperance, and, long before the first temperance society was
+organized in the country, he waged a fierce war against dram-drinking.
+This fearless advocate of temperance came very near getting drunk once.
+He had stopped with a fellow preacher at a tavern kept by an Otterbein
+Methodist, who, thinking to play them a trick, put whisky into the new
+cider which he offered them. Cartwright drank sparingly of the beverage,
+though he considered it harmless, but, "with all my forbearance," he
+says, "presently I began to feel light-headed. I instantly ordered our
+horses, fearing we were snapped for once.... When we had rode about a
+mile, being in the rear, I saw Brother Walker was nodding at a mighty
+rate. I suddenly rode up to Brother Walker and cried out, 'Wake up! wake
+up!' He roused up, his eyes watering freely. 'I believe,' said I, 'we
+are both drunk. Let us turn out of the road and lie down and take a nap
+till we get sober,' But we rode on without stopping. We were not drunk,
+but we both evidently felt it flying to our heads."
+
+In 1826 Mr. Cartwright was elected to the Legislature of the State, and
+at the expiration of his first term was reflected from Sangamon County.
+He was induced to accept this position because of his desire to aid in
+preventing the introduction of slavery into the State. He had no liking
+for political strife, however, and was disgusted with the dishonesty
+which he saw around him. "I say," he declares, "without any desire to
+speak evil of the rulers of the people, I found a great deal of
+corruption in our Legislature, and I found that almost every measure had
+to be carried by a corrupt bargain and sale which should cause every
+honest man to blush for his country."
+
+He was full of a quaint humor, which seemed to burst out from every line
+of his features, and twinkle merrily in his bright eyes. Often in the
+midst of his most exciting revivals he could not resist the desire to
+fasten his dry jokes upon one of his converts. No man loved a joke
+better, or was quicker to make a good use of it. He was traveling one
+day on his circuit, and stopped for the night at a cabin in which he
+found a man and woman. Suspecting that all was not right, he questioned
+the woman, and drew from her the confession that the man was her lover.
+Her husband, she said, was away, and would not return for two days, and
+she had received this man in his absence.
+
+
+
+[Illustration: CARTWRIGHT CALLING UP THE DEVIL.]
+
+Cartwright then began to remonstrate with the guilty pair upon their
+conduct, and while he was speaking to them the husband's voice was heard
+in the yard. In an agony of terror the woman implored Cartwright to
+assist her in getting her lover out of the way, and our preacher, upon
+receiving from each a solemn promise of reformation, agreed to do so.
+There was standing by the chimney a large barrel of raw cotton, and as
+there was no time to get the man out of the house, Cartwright put him
+into the barrel and piled the cotton over him.
+
+The husband entered, and Cartwright soon engaged him in conversation.
+The man said he had often heard of Peter Cartwright, and that it was the
+common opinion in that part of the country that among his other
+wonderful gifts our preacher had the power to call up the devil.
+
+"That's the easiest thing in the world to do," said Cartwright. "Would
+you like to see it?"
+
+The man hesitated for awhile, and then expressed his readiness to
+witness the performance.
+
+"Very well," said Cartwright; "take your stand by your wife, and don't
+move or speak. I'll let the door open to give him a chance to get out,
+or he may carry the roof away."
+
+So saying, he opened the door, and, taking a handful of cotton, held it
+in the fire and lighted it. Then plunging it into the barrel of raw
+cotton, he shouted lustily, "Devil, rise!" In an instant the barrel was
+wrapped in flames, and the lover, in utter dismay, leaped out and rushed
+from the house. The husband was greatly terrified, and ever afterward
+avowed himself a believer in Cartwright's intimacy with "Old Scratch,"
+for had he not had ocular proof of it?
+
+Riding out of Springfield one day, he saw a wagon some distance ahead of
+him containing a young lady and two young men. As he came near them they
+recognized him, though he was totally unacquainted with them, and began
+to sing camp-meeting hymns with great animation. In a little while the
+young lady began to shout, and said, "Glory to God! Glory to God!" and
+the driver cried out, "Amen! Glory to God!"
+
+"My first impressions," says Mr. Cartwright, "were, that they had been
+across the Sangamon River to a camp meeting that I knew was in progress
+there, and had obtained religion, and were happy. As I drew a little
+nearer, the young lady began to sing and shout again. The young man who
+was not driving fell down, and cried aloud for mercy; the other two,
+shouting at the top of their voices, cried out, 'Glory to God! another
+sinner down.' Then they fell to exhorting the young man that was down,
+saying, 'Pray on, brother; pray on, brother; you'll soon get religion.'
+Presently up jumped the young man that was down, and shouted aloud,
+saying, 'God has blessed my soul. Halleluiah! halleluiah! Glory to
+God!'"
+
+Thinking that these were genuine penitents, Cartwright rode rapidly
+toward them, intending to join in their rejoicings; but as he drew near
+them, he detected certain unmistakable evidences that they were shamming
+religious fervor merely for the purpose of annoying him. He then
+endeavored to get rid of them, but as they were all going the same
+direction, the party in the wagon managed to remain near him by driving
+fast when he tried to pass them, and falling back when he drew up to let
+them go ahead. "I thought," says our preacher, "I would ride up and
+horsewhip both of these young men; and if the woman had not been in
+company, I think I should have done so; but I forebore."
+
+In a little while the road plunged into a troublesome morass. Around the
+worst part of this swamp wound a bridle path, by which Mr. Cartwright
+determined to escape his tormentors, who would be compelled to take the
+road straight through the swamp. The party in the wagon saw his object,
+and forgetting prudence in their eagerness to keep up with him, whipped
+their horses violently. The horses bounded off at full speed, and the
+wagon was whirled through the swamp at a furious rate. When nearly
+across, one of the wheels struck a large stump, and over went the wagon.
+"Fearing it would turn entirely over and catch them under," says Mr.
+Cartwright, "the two young men took a leap into the mud, and when they
+lighted they sunk up to the middle. The young lady was dressed in white,
+and as the wagon went over, she sprang as far as she could, and lighted
+on all fours; her hands sunk into the mud up to her arm-pits, her mouth
+and the whole of her face immersed in the muddy water, and she certainly
+would have strangled if the young men had not relieved her. As they
+helped her up and out, I had wheeled my horse to see the fun. I rode up
+to the edge of the mud, stopped my horse, reared in my stirrups, and
+shouted, at the top of my voice, 'Glory to God! Glory to God!
+Halleluiah! another sinner down! Glory to God! Halleluiah! Glory!
+Halleluiah!'
+
+"If ever mortals felt mean, these youngsters did; and well they might,
+for they had carried on all this sport to make light of religion, and to
+insult a minister, a total stranger to them. When I became tired of
+shouting over them, I said to them:
+
+"'Now, you poor, dirty, mean sinners, take this as a just judgment of
+God upon you for your meanness, and repent of your dreadful wickedness;
+and let this be the last time that you attempt to insult a preacher; for
+if you repeat your abominable sport and persecutions, the next time God
+will serve you worse, and the devil will get you.'
+
+"They felt so badly that they never uttered one word of reply."
+
+Our preacher was determined that his work should be recognized, and as
+he and his fellow traveling ministers had done a good work on the
+frontier, he was in no humor to relish the accounts of the religious
+condition of the West, which the missionaries from the East spread
+through the older States in their letters home. "They would come," says
+he, "with a tolerable education, and a smattering knowledge of the old
+Calvinistic system of theology. They were generally tolerably well
+furnished with old manuscript sermons, that had been preached, or
+written, perhaps a hundred years before. Some of these sermons they had
+memorized, but in general they read them to the people. This way of
+reading sermons was out of fashion altogether in this Western world, and
+of course they produced no effect among the people. The great mass of
+our Western people wanted a preacher that could mount a stump or a
+block, or stand in the bed of a wagon, and, without note or manuscript,
+quote, expound, and apply the word of God to the hearts and consciences
+of the people. The result of the efforts of these Eastern missionaries
+was not very flattering; and although the Methodist preachers were in
+reality the pioneer heralds of the cross through the entire West, and
+although they had raised up numerous societies every five miles, and
+notwithstanding we had hundreds of traveling and local preachers,
+accredited and useful ministers of the Lord Jesus Christ, yet these
+newly-fledged missionaries would write back to the old States hardly any
+thing else but wailings and lamentations over the moral wastes and
+destitute condition of the West."
+
+The indignation of our preacher was fully shared by the people of the
+West, who considered themselves as good Christians; as their New England
+brethren, and the people of Quincy called a meeting, irrespective of
+denomination, and pledged themselves to give Peter Cartwright one
+thousand dollars per annum, and pay his traveling expenses, if he would
+"go as a missionary to the New England States, and enlighten them on
+this and other subjects, of which they were profoundly ignorant."
+Circumstances beyond his control prevented his acceptance of this offer.
+"How gladly and willingly would I have undertaken this labor of love,"
+says he, "and gloried in enlightening them down East, that they might
+keep their home-manufactured clergy at home, or give them some honorable
+employ, better suited to their genius than that of reading old musty and
+worm-eaten sermons."
+
+Our preacher did visit New England in 1852, not as a missionary,
+however, but as a delegate to the General Conference which met that year
+in Boston. His fame had preceded him, and he was one of the marked men
+of that body. Every one had heard some quaint story of his devotion to
+his cause, his fearlessness, or his eccentricities, and crowds came out
+to hear him preach. But our backwoods preacher was ill at ease. The
+magnificence of the city, and the prim decorum of the Boston churches,
+subdued him, and he could not preach with the fire and freedom of the
+frontier log chapel. The crowds that came to hear him were disappointed,
+and more than once they told him so.
+
+"Is this Peter Cartwright, from Illinois, the old Western pioneer?" they
+asked him once.
+
+He answered them, "I am the very man."
+
+"Well," said several of them, "brother, we are much disappointed; you
+have fallen very much under our expectations, we expected to hear a much
+greater sermon than that you preached to-day."
+
+It was a regular Bostonian greeting, and it not only mortified and
+disheartened the old pioneer, but it irritated him. "I tell you," says
+he, "they roused me, and provoked what little religious patience I
+had.... I left them abruptly, and in very gloomy mood retreated to my
+lodgings, but took very little rest in sleep that night. I constantly
+asked myself this question: Is it so, that I can not preach? or what is
+the matter? I underwent a tremendous crucifixion in feeling."
+
+The result was that he came to the conclusion that he _could_ preach,
+and that the people of Boston had not "sense enough to know a good
+sermon when they heard it." A little later old Father Taylor, that good
+genius of the Boston Bethel, a man after Cartwright's own heart, came to
+him and asked him to preach for him, and this, after hesitating, our
+preacher agreed to do, upon the condition that he should be allowed to
+conduct the services in regular Western style.
+
+"In the meantime," says he, "I had learned from different sources that
+the grand reason of my falling under the expectations of the
+congregations I had addressed was substantially this: almost all those
+curious incidents that had gained currency throughout the country
+concerning Methodist preachers had been located on me, and that when the
+congregations came to hear me, they expected little else but a bundle of
+eccentricities and singularities, and when they did not realize
+according to their anticipations, they were disappointed, and that this
+was the reason they were disappointed. So on the Sabbath, when I came to
+the Bethel, we had a good congregation, and after telling them that
+Brother Taylor had given me the liberty to preach to them after the
+Western fashion, I took my text, and after a few common-place remarks, I
+commenced giving them some Western anecdotes, which had a thrilling
+effect on the congregation, and excited them immoderately--I can not say
+religiously; but I thought if ever I saw animal excitement, it was then
+and there. This broke the charm. During my stay, after this, I could
+pass anywhere for Peter Cartwright, the old pioneer of the West. I am
+not sure that after this I fell under the expectations of my
+congregations among them."
+
+Sixty-seven years have passed away since the old pioneer began his
+preaching, and still he labors in the cause of his Master. Age has not
+subdued his zeal or dimmed his eye. His labors make up the history of
+the West. Where he first reared his humble log-hut, smiling farms and
+tasteful mansions cover the fertile prairies of the West; cities and
+towns mark the spot where his backwoods camp-meetings drew thousands
+into the kingdom of God; the iron horse dashes with the speed of the
+wind over the boundless prairies which he first crossed with only the
+points of timber for his guides; the floating palaces of the West plow
+the streams over which he swam his horse or was ferried in a bark canoe;
+and stately churches stand where the little log chapels of the infant
+West were built by him. It is a long and a noble life upon which he
+looks back, the only survivor of the heroic band who started with him to
+carry Christ into the Western wilds. He has outlived all his father's
+family, every member of the class he joined in 1800, every member of the
+Western Conference of 1804, save perhaps one or two, every member of the
+General Conference of 1816, the first to which he was elected, all his
+early bishops, every presiding elder under whom he ever ministered, and
+thousands of those whom he brought into the Church. "I have lived too
+long," he said, in a recent lecture; but we take issue with him. He has
+not lived too long whose declining age is cheered by the glorious
+fruition of the seed sown in his youth and prime. Few, indeed, are given
+so great a privilege; and few, having lived so long and worked so hard,
+can say with him, that during such a long and exposed career, "I have
+never been overtaken in any scandalous sin, though my shortcomings and
+imperfections have been without number." A man who can boast such a
+record, though he be as poor in purse as this simple-hearted backwoods
+preacher, has earned a Great Fortune indeed, for his treasure is one
+that can not be taken from him, since it is laid up in Heaven, "where
+neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break
+through nor steal."
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+AUTHORS.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.
+
+
+Wherever the English language is spoken, the name of HENRY WADSWORTH
+LONGFELLOW has become a household word, and there is scarcely a library,
+however humble, but can boast a well-worn volume of his tender
+songs,--songs that
+
+     "Have power to quiet
+       The restless pulse of care,
+     And come like the benediction
+       That follows after prayer."
+
+He was born in the city of Portland, Maine, on the 27th of February,
+1807, and was the son of the Hon. Stephen Longfellow, a distinguished
+lawyer of that city. The house in which he was born was a square wooden
+structure, built many years before, and large and roomy. It stood upon
+the outskirts of the town, on the edge of the sea, and was separated
+from the water only by a wide street. From its windows the dreamy boy,
+who grew up within its walls, could look out upon the dark, mysterious
+ocean, and, lying awake in his little bed in the long winter nights, he
+could listen to its sorrowful roar as it broke heavily upon the shore.
+That he was keenly alive to the fascination of such close intimacy with
+the ocean, we have abundant proof in his writings.
+
+He was carefully educated in the best schools of the city, and at the
+age of fourteen entered Bowdoin College, at Brunswick, where he
+graduated in his nineteenth year. He was an industrious student, and
+stood high in his classes. He gave brilliant promise of his future
+eminence as a poet in several productions written during his college
+days, which were published in a Boston journal called the "United States
+Literary Gazette." Among these were the "Hymn of the Moravian Nuns,"
+"The Spirit of Poetry," "Woods in Winter," and "Sunrise on the Hills."
+
+Upon leaving college he entered his father's office, in Portland, with
+the half-formed design of studying law, which he never carried into
+execution, as more congenial employment soon presented itself to him. In
+1826 he was appointed Professor of Modern Languages and Literature at
+Bowdoin College, with the privilege of passing several years abroad for
+observation and study. He accepted the appointment with unaffected
+delight, and promptly went abroad. He passed his first year in France,
+studying the language and literature of that country, and the next in
+Spain, engaged in similar pursuits. Italy claimed his third year, and
+Germany his fourth. He traveled extensively, and made many pleasant
+acquaintances among the most gifted men and women of the Old World.
+Returning home toward the close of 1829, he entered upon the active
+duties of his professorship, and for five years held this position,
+winning considerable distinction by his academic labors.
+
+During his professorship our poet married, and the years that followed
+were very happy and very quiet. The life he led at Bowdoin was peaceful,
+and in a measure retired, giving him ample opportunity for study and for
+laying the sure foundation of his future fame. During this period of his
+life he contributed articles to the "North American Review," and
+extended his acquaintance gradually among the literary men of New
+England. He was fond of recalling the experiences of his life abroad,
+and being unwilling that they should be lost from his memory, determined
+to transmit them to paper before they faded quite away. These sketches
+he finally concluded to give to the public, under the title of "Outre
+Mer; or, Sketches from Beyond Sea." They appeared originally in numbers,
+and were published by Samuel Colman, of Portland. They were well
+received, and brought Professor Longfellow into notice in New England.
+Soon afterward he published a translation of the ode upon "Coplas de
+Manrique," by his son, Don Jose Manrique, which won him additional
+credit. His fugitive poems had become very popular, and had made his
+name familiar to his countrymen, but as yet he had not collected them in
+book form.
+
+In 1835, on the resignation of Mr. George Ticknor, he was appointed
+Professor of Modern Languages and Belles Lettres in Harvard College, and
+accepted the position. Before entering upon his duties, however, he
+resolved to devote two years more to foreign travel and improvement, and
+accordingly sailed for Europe the second time. Before leaving America,
+however, he committed the publication of "Outre Mer" to the Harpers, of
+New York, who issued it complete in two volumes in 1835. Its popularity
+was very decided. Soon after reaching Europe, Mr. Longfellow was visited
+with a sad bereavement in the loss of his wife, who died at Rotterdam.
+He devoted this European visit to the northern part of the continent,
+Denmark, Sweden, Germany, and Holland, and to England, and spent some
+time in Paris. Returning in the autumn of 1836, he entered upon his
+duties at Harvard, and made his home in Cambridge. He continued his
+contributions to the "North American Review," and a number of fugitive
+pieces flowed from his pen into print.
+
+In the summer of 1837 he went to live in the house which has ever since
+been his home. This is the old Craigie House, in Cambridge, famous in
+our history as having been the headquarters of Washington during the
+siege of Boston. It had been built by Colonel John Vassal about the
+middle of the last century, and had finally passed into the hands of
+Andrew Craigie, "Apothecary General to the Northern Provincial Army" of
+the infant Republic. Craigie had ruined himself by his lavish
+hospitality, and his widow, a stately old lady, and worthy in every
+respect of a better fate, had been reduced to the necessity of letting
+rooms and parting with the greater portion of the lands which had
+belonged to the mansion. Mr. Longfellow had been attracted to the house
+not only by its winning and home-like appearance, but by its historical
+associations. Mrs. Craigie had decided at the time to let no more rooms,
+but the young professor's gentle, winning manner conquered her
+determination, and she not only received him into the old mansion, but
+installed him in the south-east corner room in the second story, which
+had been used by Washington as his bed-chamber.
+
+It was just the home for our poet. Its windows looked out upon one of
+the loveliest landscapes in New England, with the bright river winding
+through the broad meadow beyond the house, and the blue Milton Hills
+dotting the distant background. The bright verdure of New England
+sparkled on every side, and the stately old elms that stood guard by the
+house screened it from the prying eyes of the passers on the public
+road. The whole place was hallowed to its new inmate by the memories of
+the brave soldiers, wise statesmen, and brilliant ladies who had graced
+its heroic age, and of which the stately hostess was the last and worthy
+representative. The old house was as serene and still as the dearest
+lover of quiet could wish. The mistress lived quite apart from her
+lodger, and left him to follow the bent of his own fancies; and rare
+fancies they were, for it was of them that some of his best works were
+born in this upper chamber. Here he wrote "Hyperion," in 1838 and 1839.
+Its publication, which was undertaken by John Owen, the University
+publisher in Cambridge, marked an era in American literature. Every body
+read the book, and every body talked of it. It was a poem in prose, and
+none the less the work of a poet because professedly "a romance of
+travel." The young read it with enthusiasm, and it sent hundreds to
+follow Paul Flemming's footsteps in the distant Fatherland, where the
+"romance of travel" became their guidebook. The merchant and the lawyer,
+the journalist and the mechanic, reading its pages, found that the stern
+realities of life had not withered up all the romance of their natures,
+and under its fascinations they became boys again. Even Horace Greeley,
+that most practical and unimaginative of men, became rapturous over it.
+It was a great success, and established the poet's fame beyond all
+question, and since then its popularity has never waned.
+
+In 1840, he published the "Voices of the Night," which he had heard
+sounding to him in his haunted chamber. This was his first volume, and
+its popularity was even greater than that of "Hyperion," although some
+of the poems had appeared before, in the "Knickerbocker Magazine." In
+1841, he published his volume of "Ballads, and Other Poems," which but
+added to his fame, and the next year bade the old house under the elms
+a temporary adieu, and sailed for Europe, where he passed the summer on
+the Rhine. On the voyage home, he composed his "Poems on Slavery," and
+soon after his return wrote "The Spanish Student," a drama, "which
+smells of the utmost South, and was a strange blossoming for the garden
+of Thomas Tracy."
+
+In 1843 the stately mistress of the old house died, and Professor
+Longfellow bought the homestead of Andrew Craigie, with eight acres of
+land, including the meadow, which sloped down to the pretty river. There
+have been very few prouder or happier moments in his life than that in
+which he first felt that the old house under the elms was his. Yet he
+must have missed the stately old lady who first had admitted him to a
+place in it, and whom he had grown to love as a dear friend. She seemed
+so thoroughly a part and parcel of the place, that he must have missed
+the rustle of her heavy silks along the wide and echoing halls, and have
+listened some time for the sound of her old-fashioned spinet in the huge
+drawing-room below, and, entering the room where she was wont to receive
+her guests, he must have missed her from the old window where she was
+accustomed to sit, with the open book in her lap, and her eyes fixed on
+the far-off sky, thinking, no doubt, of the days when in her royal
+beauty, she moved a queen through the brilliant home of Andrew Craigie. A
+part of the veneration which he felt for the old house had settled upon
+its ancient mistress, and the poet doubtless felt that the completeness
+of the quaint old establishment was broken up when she passed away.
+
+In 1846, Mr. Longfellow published "The Belfry of Bruges, and Other
+Poems;" in 1847, "Evangeline" (by many considered his greatest work); in
+1850, "Seaside and Fireside;" in 1851, "The Golden Legend;" in 1855,
+"The Song of Hiawatha;" in 1858, "The Courtship of Miles Standish;" in
+1863, "The Wayside Inn;" in 1866, "The Flower de Luce;" in 1867, his
+translation of the "Divina Commedia," in three volumes; and in 1868,
+"The New England Tragedies." Besides these, he published, in 1845, a
+work on the "Poets and Poetry of Europe," and in 1849, "Kavanagh," a
+novel.
+
+Mr. Longfellow continued to discharge his duties in the University for
+seventeen years, winning fresh laurels every year, and in 1854 resigned
+his position, and was succeeded in it by Mr. James Russell Lowell. He
+now devoted himself exclusively to his profession, the income from his
+writings affording him a handsome maintenance. In 1855. "The Song of
+Hiawatha" was given to the public, and its appearance may be styled an
+event in the literary history of the world. It was not only original in
+the story it told, and in the method of treatment, but the rhythm was
+new. It was emphatically an American poem, and was received by the
+people with delight. It met with an immense sale, and greatly increased
+its author's popularity with his countrymen.
+
+In 1861 a terrible affliction befell the poet in his family. He had
+married, some years after the death of his first wife, a lady whose many
+virtues had endeared her to all who knew her. She was standing by the
+open fire in the sitting-room, one day in the winter of 1861, when her
+clothing took fire, and before her husband, summoned by her cries, could
+extinguish the flames, she was terribly burned. Her injuries were
+internal, and she soon afterwards died.
+
+In 1868, Mr. Longfellow again visited Europe, and remained abroad more
+than a year. His reception by all classes of the people of the Old World
+was eminently gratifying to his countrymen. This welcome, so genuine and
+heartfelt, was due, however, to the genius of the man, and not to his
+nationality.
+
+He had overstepped the bounds of country, and had made himself the poet
+of the English-speaking race. A man of vast learning and varied
+acquirements, thoroughly versed in the ways of the world, he is still as
+simple and unaffected in thought and ways as when he listened to and
+wondered at the dashing of the wild waves on the shore in his boyhood's
+home. A most gifted and accomplished artist, he has been faithful to
+nature in all things. Earnest and aspiring himself, he has given to his
+poems the ring of a true manhood. There is nothing bitter, nothing
+sarcastic in his writings. He views all things with a loving eye, and it
+is the exquisite tenderness of his sympathy with his fellow-men that has
+enabled him to find his way so readily to their hearts. Without seeking
+to represent the intensity of passion, he deals with the fresh, simple
+emotions of the human soul, and in his simplicity lies his power. He
+touches a chord that finds an echo in every heart, and his poems have a
+humanity in them that is irresistible. We admire the "grand old
+masters," but shrink abashed from their sublime measures. Longfellow is
+so human, he understands us so well, that we turn instinctively to his
+simple, tender songs for comfort in sorrow, or for the greater
+perfection of our happiness.
+
+Perhaps I can not better illustrate the power of his simplicity than by
+the following quotations:
+
+     There is no flock, however watched and tended,
+         But one dead lamb is there!
+     There is no fireside, howsoe'er defended,
+         But has one vacant chair!
+
+     The air is full of farewell to the dying,
+         And mournings for the dead;
+     The heart of Rachel, for her children crying,
+         Will not be comforted.
+
+     Let us be patient! These severe afflictions
+         Not from the ground arise,
+     But oftentimes celestial benedictions
+         Assume this dark disguise.
+
+     We see but dimly through the mists and vapors,
+         Amid these earthly damps;
+     What seem to us but sad funereal tapers,
+         May be heaven's distant lamps.
+
+     There is no death! What seems so is transition;
+         This life of mortal breath
+     Is but a suburb of the life elysian,
+         Whose portal we call Death.
+
+     She is not dead--the child of our affection--
+         But gone unto that school
+     Where she no longer needs our poor protection,
+         And Christ himself doth rule.
+
+     In that great cloister's stillness and seclusion,
+         By guardian angels led,
+     Safe from temptation, safe from sin's pollution,
+         She lives, whom we call dead.
+
+     Day after day we think what she is doing
+         In those bright realms of air;
+     Year after year, her tender steps pursuing,
+         Behold her grow more fair.
+
+     Thus do we walk with her, and keep unbroken
+         The bond which nature gives,
+     Thinking that our remembrance, though unspoken,
+         May reach her where she lives.
+
+     Not as a child shall we again behold her;
+         For when with raptures wild
+     In our embraces we again enfold her,
+         She will not be a child--
+
+     But a fair maiden, in her Father's mansion,
+         Clothed with celestial grace,
+     And beautiful with all the soul's expansion
+         Shall we behold her face.
+
+     And though at times impetuous with emotion,
+         And anguish long suppressed,
+     The swelling heart heaves, moaning like the ocean,
+         That can not be at rest--
+
+     We will be patient, and assuage the feeling
+         We can not wholly stay;
+     By silence sanctifying, not concealing,
+         The grief that must have way.
+
+
+
+FROM THE GOLDEN LEGEND.
+
+SCENE.--_The Chamber of_ GOTTLIEB _and_ URSULA.--_Midnight_.--ELSIE
+_standing by their bedside weeping_.
+
+
+GOTTLIEB. The wind is roaring; the rushing rain
+Is loud upon the roof and window-pane,
+As if the wild Huntsman of Rodenstein,
+Boding evil to me and mine,
+Were abroad to-night with his ghostly train!
+In the brief lulls of the tempest wild,
+The dogs howl in the yard; and hark!
+Some one is sobbing in the dark,
+Here in the chamber.
+
+ELSIE.              It is I.
+
+URSULA.  Elsie! What ails thee, my poor child?
+
+ELSIE.  I am disturbed and much distressed,
+In thinking our dear Prince must die;
+I can not close my eyes, nor rest.
+
+GOTTLIEB. What wouldst thou? In the Power Divine
+His healing lies, not in our own;
+It is in the hand of God alone.
+
+ELSIE.  Nay, He has put it into mine,
+And into my heart.
+
+GOTTLIEB.          Thy words are wild.
+
+URSULA.  What dost thou mean? my child! my child!
+
+ELSIE.  That for our dear Prince Henry's sake
+I will myself the offering make,
+And give my life to purchase his.
+
+URSULA.  Am I still dreaming, or awake?
+Thou speakest carelessly of death,
+And yet thou knowest not what it is.
+
+ELSIE.  'Tis the cessation of our breath.
+Silent and motionless we lie;
+And no one knoweth more than this.
+I saw our little Gertrude die;
+She left off breathing, and no more
+I smoothed the pillow beneath her head.
+She was more beautiful than before.
+Like violets faded were her eyes;
+By this we knew that she was dead.
+Through the open window looked the skies
+Into the chamber where she lay,
+And the wind was like the sound of wings,
+As if angels came to bear her away.
+Ah! when I saw and felt these things,
+I found it difficult to stay;
+I longed to die, as she had died,
+And go forth with her, side by side.
+The saints are dead, the martyrs dead,
+And Mary, and our Lord; and I
+Would follow in humility
+The way by them illumined.
+
+URSULA.  My child I my child! thou must not die.
+
+ELSIE.  Why should I live? Do I not know
+The life of woman is full of woe?
+Toiling on, and on, and on,
+With breaking heart, and tearful eyes,
+And silent lips, and in the soul
+The secret longings that arise,
+Which this world never satisfies!
+Some more, some less, but of the whole
+Not one quite happy; no, not one!
+
+URSULA.  It is the malediction of Eve!
+
+ELSIE.  In place of it, let me receive
+The benediction of Mary, then.
+
+GOTTLIEB. Ah, woe is me! Ah, woe is me!
+Most wretched am I among men.
+
+URSULA.  Alas! that I should live to see
+Thy death, beloved, and to stand
+Above thy grave! Ah, woe the day!
+
+ELSIE.  Thou wilt not see it. I shall lie
+Beneath the flowers of another land;
+For at Salerno, far away
+Over the mountains, over the sea,
+It is appointed me to die!
+And it will seem no more to thee
+Than if at the village on market day
+I should a little longer stay
+Than I am used.
+
+URSULA.         Even as thou sayest!
+And how my heart beats when thou stayest!
+I can not rest until my sight
+Is satisfied with seeing thee.
+What, then, if thou wert dead?
+
+GOTTLIEB.                      Ah me,
+Of our old eyes thou art the light!
+The joy of our old hearts art thou!
+And wilt thou die?
+
+URSULA.            Not now! not now!
+
+ELSIE.  Christ died for me, and shall not I
+Be willing for my Prince to die?
+You both are silent; you can not speak.
+This said I, at our Saviour's feast,
+After confession, to the priest,
+And even he made no reply.
+Does he not warn us all to seek
+The happier, better land on high,
+Where flowers immortal never wither;
+And could he forbid me to go thither?
+
+GOTTLIEB. In God's own time, my heart's delight!
+When He shall call thee, not before!
+
+ELSIE.  I heard Him call. When Christ ascended
+Triumphantly, from star to star,
+He left the gates of heaven ajar.
+I had a vision in the night,
+And saw Him standing at the door
+Of His Father's mansion, vast and splendid,
+And beckoning to me from afar.
+I can not stay!
+
+GOTTLIEB.       She speaks almost
+As if it were the Holy Ghost
+Spake through her lips and in her stead!
+What if this were of God?
+
+URSULA.                   Ah, then
+Gainsay it dare we not.
+
+GOTTLIEB.               Amen!
+
+
+The old house under the elms is still the poet's home, and dear, as
+such, to every lover of poetry. It is a stately building, of the style
+of more than one hundred years ago, and is a very home-like place in its
+general appearance. Entering by the main door-way, which is in the
+center of the house, the visitor finds himself in a wide, old-fashioned
+hall, with doors opening upon it on either hand.
+
+"The library of the poet is the long north-eastern room upon the lower
+floor," said a writer seventeen years ago. "It opens upon the garden,
+which retains still the quaint devices of an antique design, harmonious
+with the house. The room is surrounded with handsome book-cases, and one
+stands also between two Corinthian columns at one end, which imparts
+dignity and richness to the apartment. A little table by the northern
+window, looking upon the garden, is the usual seat of the poet. A bust
+or two, the rich carvings of the cases, the spaciousness of the room, a
+leopard-skin lying upon the floor, and a few shelves of strictly
+literary curiosities, reveal not only the haunt of the elegant scholar
+and poet, but the favorite resort of the family circle. But the northern
+gloom of a New England winter is intolerant of this serene delight, this
+beautiful domesticity, and urges the inmates to the smaller room in
+front of the house, communicating with the library, and the study of
+General Washington. This is still distinctively 'the study,' as the rear
+room is 'the library,' Books are here, and all the graceful detail of an
+elegant household, and upon the walls hang crayon portraits of Emerson,
+Sumner, and Hawthorne.
+
+"Emerging into the hall, the eyes of the enamored visitor fall upon the
+massive old staircase, with the clock upon the landing. Directly he
+hears a singing in his mind:
+
+
+      'Somewhat back from the village street,
+       Stands the old-fashioned country-seat;
+       Across its antique portico
+       Tall poplar trees their shadows throw,
+       And from its station in the hall
+       An ancient time-piece says to all,
+           "Forever--never!
+           Never--forever!"'
+
+
+"But he does not see the particular clock of the poem, which stood upon
+another staircase, in another quaint old mansion,--although the verse
+belongs truly to all old clocks in all old country-seats, just as the
+'Village Blacksmith' and his smithy are not alone the stalwart man and
+dingy shop under the 'spreading chestnut-tree' which the Professor daily
+passes on his way to his college duties, but belong wherever a smithy
+stands. Through the meadows in front flows the placid Charles."
+
+So calmly flows the poet's life. The old house has other charms for him
+now besides those with which his fancy invested it when he first set
+foot within its walls, for here have come to him the joys and sorrows of
+his maturer life, and here, "when the evening lamps are lighted," come
+to him the memories of the loved and lost, who but wait for him in the
+better land. Here, too, cluster the memories of those noble achievements
+in his glorious career which have made him now and for all times the
+people's poet. Others, as the years go by, will woo us with their lays,
+but none so winningly and tenderly as this our greatest master. There
+was but one David in Israel, and when he passed away no other filled his
+place.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.
+
+
+There came to the old town of Salem, in the Province of Massachusetts,
+in the early part of the seventeenth century, an English family named
+Hawthorne--Puritans, like all the other inhabitants of that growing
+town. They proved their fidelity to Puritan principles by entering
+readily into all the superstitions of the day, and became noted for the
+zeal with which they persecuted the Quakers and hung the witches. The
+head of the family was a sea captain, and for many generations the men
+of the family followed the same avocation, "a gray-haired shipmaster, in
+each generation, retiring from the quarter-deck to the homestead, while
+a boy of fourteen took the hereditary place before the mast, confronting
+the salt spray and the gale, which had blustered against his sire and
+grandsire."
+
+[Illustration: NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.]
+
+Of such a race came NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, who was born at Salem, on the
+4th, of July, 1804. His father was a sea captain, and died of the yellow
+fever at Havana, in 1810. His mother was a woman of great beauty and
+extreme sensibility, and it was from her that Nathaniel derived the
+peculiarities of character which distinguished him through life. The
+death of her husband filled her with the profoundest grief, and though
+the violence of her sorrow subsided with time, she passed the
+remainder of her life in strict seclusion, constantly grieving in her
+quiet way for her departed lord. Her son grew up to the age of ten in
+this sad and lonely house, passing four of the most susceptible years of
+his life in the society of his sorrowful mother. He became a shy boy,
+and avoided the company of other children. His health began to suffer
+from the effects of such an unnatural state of affairs, and at the age
+of ten he was sent to live on a farm belonging to the family, on the
+shore of Sebago Lake, in Maine. The active out-door life which he led
+here entirely restored his health, which was naturally strong and
+vigorous; here, also, he acquired that fondness for boating which was
+his chief amusement in after years. Returning to Salem, he completed his
+studies in the preparatory schools, after which he entered Bowdoin
+College, where he graduated in 1825, at the age of twenty-one. He was a
+classmate of Longfellow and George B. Cheever, with whom he was only
+slightly acquainted; and he formed a warm and lasting friendship with
+Franklin Pierce, who was in the class next before him. Longfellow has
+preserved a recollection of him in his student days as "a shy youth in a
+bright-buttoned coat, flitting across the college grounds."
+
+After graduating, he went back to his home in Salem, where he resided
+for many years, leading a life of seclusion, which he passed in
+meditation and study. His strong literary inclination now vented itself
+in efforts which were in every way characteristic of the man. He wrote
+numerous wild tales, the most of which he burned, but a few of which
+found their way into the newspapers and magazines of the country. They
+were full of a wild gloominess, and were told with a power which proved
+that their author was no ordinary man. Few, however, dreamed that they
+were the work of the pale recluse of Salem, for he led a life of such
+strict seclusion that not even the members of his own family could tell
+with certainty what he did. His days were passed in his chamber, and at
+night he took long walks alone on the sea-shore or into the woods. He
+shunned all society, and seemed to find companionship only in nature,
+and in the creations of his fancy. Yet he was not a morose or unhappy
+man. On the contrary, he seems to have been a very happy one, full of
+generous and kindly feelings, and finding only a strange pleasure where
+others would have found bitterness and cynicism. Like the melancholy
+Jacques, he might have said of his pensive shyness, "It is a melancholy
+of mine own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many
+objects; ... which, by often rumination, wraps me in a most humorous
+sadness."
+
+In 1837 he collected his published tales, which, while they had charmed
+a few cultivated readers, had scarcely been noticed by the masses, and
+published them in a volume to which he gave the name of "Twice-Told
+Tales." The book was well received by the public, but its circulation
+was limited, although Mr. Longfellow warmly welcomed it in the "North
+American Review," and pronounced it the "work of a man of genius and a
+true poet." Still it was neglected by the masses, and Hawthorne says
+himself that he was at that time "the most unknown author in America."
+There was more truth in this assertion than lies on its face, for the
+people who read the book supposed that the name of Nathaniel Hawthorne
+was merely a pseudonyme, and declared that as Nathaniel was evidently
+selected by the author because of the fondness of the old-time Puritans
+for Scripture names, so Hawthorne was chosen by him as expressive of one
+of the most beautiful features of the New England landscape. The merits
+of the book were too genuine, however, for it to lack admirers, and the
+small class which greeted its first appearance with delight gradually
+increased, and finally the demand for the book became so great that in
+1842 Hawthorne ventured to issue a second series of "Twice-Told Tales,"
+the most of which had appeared in the "Democratic Review," then edited
+by his friend O'Sullivan. Of these volumes, Mr. George William Curtis
+says: "They are full of glancing wit, of tender satire, of exquisite
+natural description, of subtle and strange analysis of human life,
+darkly passionate and weird."
+
+In 1838 George Bancroft was Collector of the Port of Boston, and, having
+been deeply impressed with the genius displayed in the first volume of
+"Twice-Told Tales," sought out Hawthorne and offered him a place in the
+Boston Custom-House as weigher and gauger. Hawthorne accepted the
+position, and at once entered upon his duties. Leaving his solitude and
+the weird phantoms that had been his companions for so long, he passed
+immediately into the busy bustle of the great New England port. It was a
+new world to him, and one which interested him keenly. His duties kept
+him constantly on the wharf, and threw him daily into contact with
+captains and sailors from all parts of the world. He became a great
+favorite with these, and they told him many a strange story of their
+adventures and of the sights they had seen in distant lands, and these,
+as they were listened to by him, took each a distinctive form in his
+imagination. Not less interesting to him were the men among whom his
+duties threw him. They were more to him than the ordinary beings that
+thronged the streets of the great city, for they had been victorious in
+many a battle with the mighty deep, and they had looked on the wondrous
+sights of the far-off lands of the Old World. Queer people they were,
+too, each a Captain Cuttle or a Dirk Hatteraick in himself, and many an
+hour did the dreamy writer spend with them, apparently listening to
+their rude stories, but really making keen studies of the men
+themselves.
+
+He discharged his duties faithfully in the Boston Custom-House,
+performing each with an exactness thoroughly characteristic of him,
+until 1841, when the accession of President Harrison to power obliged
+him to withdraw to make way for a Whig.
+
+From the Custom-house he went to live at Brook Farm as one of that
+singular community of dreamers and enthusiasts which was to inaugurate a
+new era of men and things in the world, but which came at last to a most
+inglorious termination. He was thrown into intimate association here
+with many who have since become prominent in our literary history, and
+for some of them conceived a warm attachment. He took his share of the
+farm labors, to which he was very partial, but remained at the community
+less than a year, and then returned to Boston. In his "Blithedale
+Romance" he has given us a picture of the life at Brook Farm, though he
+denies having sketched his characters from his old associates at that
+place.
+
+In 1843 he married Miss Peabody, a member of a family distinguished for
+their various achievements in the world of letters. Besides being an
+artist of no mean pretensions, she was herself a writer of considerable
+promise, though her writings had no other critics than her family and
+most intimate friends. "Her husband shrank from seeing her name in the
+reviews, and in this, as in all other things, his feelings were sacredly
+respected by her." She was a lady of rare strength of character and
+great beauty, and was in every respect a fitting wife for such a man.
+The twenty-one years of their wedded life make up a period of unbroken
+happiness to both. Hawthorne was very proud of his wife, and in his
+quiet way never failed to show it. Their friends often remarked that
+the wedded life of this happy pair seemed like one long courtship.
+
+Hawthorne took his bride on his wedding-day to a new home. He had rented
+the old parsonage adjoining the battle-field of Concord, from whose
+windows the pastor of those heroic days had watched his congregation
+fight the British in his yard. It was a gloomy and partially dilapidated
+"Old Manse," and doubtless Hawthorne had chosen it because of its quaint
+aspect. He has himself drawn the picture of it, and given us an
+exquisite collection of "Mosses" from it. It lay back from the main
+road, and was approached by an avenue of ancient black-ash trees, whose
+deep shade added much to the quiet appearance of "the gray front of the
+old parsonage." It was just the home for him, and here passed three of
+the happiest years of his life. Here he wrote his "Mosses from an Old
+Manse," and here his first child was born.
+
+The life he led at Concord was very secluded. He avoided the society of
+the village people, who sought in vain to penetrate his retirement and
+satisfy their curiosity concerning him. But they were disappointed. He
+lived on in his deep seclusion, happy in having his wife and child with
+him, but caring for no other society. During the day he remained in his
+study, which overlooked the old battle-field, or, passing down the lawn
+at the back of the house to the river, spent the afternoon in rowing on
+the pretty stream. At night he would take long walks, or row up the
+river to the bridge by which the British crossed the stream, and enjoy
+his favorite luxury--a bath. The village people were full of curiosity
+to know something about him, for he was absolutely unknown to them; and
+any one who understands what the curiosity of a New England villager is
+can readily imagine the feelings with which the people of Concord
+regarded their mysterious neighbor. They were never satisfied, however,
+for Hawthorne shrank from prying eyes with indescribable horror. He kept
+his ways, and compelled them to let him alone. He could easily avoid the
+town in his walks or his rides upon the river, and he was rarely seen
+passing through the streets unless compelled to do so by matters which
+needed his attention in Concord.
+
+Yet the "Old Manse" was not without its guests. Hawthorne was a man of
+many friends, and these came often to see him. They were men after his
+own heart, and among them were Emerson, Ellery, Channing, Thoreau,
+Whittier, Longfellow, and George William Curtis. The last-named has left
+us this pleasant picture of our author in the midst of his friends:
+
+"During Hawthorne's first year's residence in Concord, I had driven up
+with some friends to an esthetic tea at Mr. Emerson's. It was in the
+winter, and a great wood-fire blazed upon the hospitable hearth. There
+were various men and women of note assembled, and I, who listened
+attentively to all the fine things that were said, was for some time
+scarcely aware of a man who sat upon the edge of the circle, a little
+withdrawn, his head slightly thrown forward upon his breast, and his
+bright eyes clearly burning under his black brow. As I drifted down the
+stream of talk, this person who sat silent as a shadow looked to me as
+Webster might have looked had he been a poet--a kind of poetic Webster.
+He rose and walked to the window, and stood quietly there for a long
+time, watching the dead white landscape. No appeal was made to him,
+nobody looked after him, the conversation flowed as steadily on as if
+every one understood that his silence was to be respected. It was the
+same thing at table. In vain the silent man imbibed esthetic tea.
+Whatever fancies it inspired did not flower at his lips. But there was a
+light in his eye which assured me that nothing was lost. So supreme was
+his silence, that it presently engrossed me to the exclusion of every
+thing else. There was brilliant discourse, but this silence was much
+more poetic and fascinating. Fine things were said by the philosophers,
+but much finer things were implied by the dumbness of this gentleman
+with heavy brows and black hair. When presently he rose and went,
+Emerson, with the 'slow, wise smile' that breaks over his face, like day
+over the sky, said: 'Hawthorne rides well his horse of the night.'"
+Later on, after he knew him better, Curtis added to this picture, "His
+own sympathy was so broad and sure, that, although nothing had been said
+for hours, his companion knew that not a thing had escaped his eye, nor
+had a single pulse of beauty in the day, or scene, or society failed to
+thrill his heart. In this way his silence was most social. Every thing
+seemed to have been said."
+
+At the close of the third year of his residence at Concord, Hawthorne
+was obliged to give up the "Old Manse," as the owner was coming back to
+occupy it. The Democrats had now come into power again under Mr. Polk,
+and Mr. Bancroft was in the Cabinet. The Secretary, mindful of his
+friend, procured him the post of Surveyor of the Port of Salem, and
+Hawthorne went with his little family to live in his native town. The
+Salem Custom-house was a sleepy sort of a place, and his duties were
+merely nominal. He had an abundance of leisure time, and from that
+leisure was born his masterpiece, "The Scarlet Letter"--the most
+powerful romance which ever flowed from an American author's pen. It was
+published in 1850, and in the preface to it the reader will find an
+excellent description of the author's life in Salem. He held his
+position in that place for three years, and then the election of General
+Taylor obliged him to retire.
+
+He withdrew to the Berkshire Hills, and took a house in the town of
+Lenox. It was a little red cottage, and was situated on the shore of a
+diminutive lake called the Stockbridge Bowl. He was now the most famous
+novelist in America, and had thousands of admirers in the Old World. His
+"Scarlet Letter" had won him fame, and had brought his earlier works
+more prominently before the public than ever.
+
+During his residence at Lenox, he wrote "The House of the Seven Gables,"
+which was published in Boston in 1851. It was not less successful than
+the "Scarlet Letter," though it was not so finished a piece of
+workmanship.
+
+Yet, though so famous, he was not freed from the trials incident to the
+first years of an author's life. Mr. Tuckerman says of him at this time:
+"He had the fortitude and pride, as well as the sensitiveness and
+delicacy, of true and high genius. Not even his nearest country
+neighbors knew aught of his meager larder or brave economies. He never
+complained, even when editors were dilatory in their remuneration and
+friends forgetful of their promises. When the poor author had the money,
+he would buy a beefsteak for dinner; when he had not, he would make a
+meal of chestnuts and potatoes. He had the self-control and the probity
+to fulfill that essential condition of self-respect, alike for those who
+subsist by brain work and those who inherit fortunes--he always lived
+within his income; and it was only by a kind of pious fraud that a trio
+of his oldest friends occasionally managed to pay his rent." His friend
+and publisher, Mr. Ticknor, "received and invested the surplus earnings
+of the absentee author when American Consul at Liverpool, and had
+obtained from Hawthorne a promise on the eve of his departure for his
+post, ... that he would send him all he could spare from his official
+income, to be carefully nursed into a competence for his family. Never
+was better advice given or wiser service performed by publisher to
+author. The investments thus made became the means of comfort to the
+returned writer in the maturity of his years and his fame."
+
+In 1852 he returned to Concord and purchased a small house which had
+once been the residence of the philosopher Alcott. Here he made his
+permanent home and gathered about him his household treasures. In the
+Presidential campaign of 1852, his friend Franklin Pierce was the
+candidate of the Democracy, and Hawthorne wrote a short biography of him
+which was used by the Democrats as a campaign document. It was a labor
+of love, for the friendship that had been begun between these two men in
+their college days had never been broken, and though naturally averse to
+every thing that savored of politics, our author made this contribution
+to the cause of his friend with all the heartiness of his nature. Pierce
+was profoundly touched by this unexpected aid, for he knew how utterly
+Hawthorne detested political strife, and when seated in the Presidential
+chair he showed his appreciation of it by offering his friend the
+consulship to Liverpool--one of the most lucrative offices within the
+gift of the executive. Hawthorne broke up his home in Concord and sailed
+for Liverpool in 1853, and remained there until 1857, when he resigned
+his consulship and traveled on the continent with his family, residing
+for some time in Italy for the benefit of his health. His European
+residence had the effect of drawing him out of his shyness and reserve
+to a certain extent, and during the closing years of his life he was
+more social with the persons about him than he had ever been. After his
+return he went back to Concord, where he enlarged and beautified his old
+home, intending to remain there for the balance of his life. He wrote
+the "Marble Faun" and "Our Old Home" just after his return from Europe.
+The former was suggested by his residence in Italy, and the latter was
+a collection of English sketches and reminiscences.
+
+The war between the two sections of the country affected him very
+deeply. It seemed to him a terrible tragedy, to which there could be no
+end but utter ruin for the country. He sympathized strongly with the
+cause of the Union, but at the same time his heart bled at the
+sufferings of the people of the south. It was one long agony to him, and
+only those who knew him intimately can understand how much he suffered
+during this unhappy period.
+
+Mr. Moncure D. Conway gives the following reminiscence of him about this
+time: "I passed a night under the same roof with him at the house of Mr.
+Fields, his publisher. He seemed much dejected. Mr. Fields had invited a
+little company, but, after the first arrivals, Hawthorne made his escape
+to his room, from which he did not emerge until the next morning at
+breakfast time. He then came in with the amusing look of a naughty
+child, and pleaded that he had become lost the night before in Defoe's
+ghost stories until it was too late to make his appearance in the
+company. He must, I should think, have been contemplating some
+phantasmal production at that time, for I remember his asking me many
+questions about the ghost-beliefs of the negroes, among whom I had
+passed my early life."
+
+Besides the works already mentioned, Hawthorne was the author of "True
+Stories from History and Biography" and "The Wonder Book for Boys and
+Girls," both published in 1851; "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told
+Tales," published in 1852; and "Tanglewood Tales," published in 1853,
+all juveniles. At the time of his death he was engaged upon a novel
+which was to have been published in the "Atlantic Monthly," but it was
+left incomplete.
+
+In the spring of 1864 his friend and publisher, Mr. W.D. Ticknor, of
+Boston, seeing how feeble Hawthorne had become, asked him to accompany
+him on an excursion, hoping that a rapid change of scene and cheerful
+company would benefit him. They set out in April, and went direct to
+Philadelphia. Upon arriving at the hotel, Mr. Ticknor was suddenly taken
+very ill, and died on the 10th of April in his friend's arms. Hawthorne
+was profoundly shocked by this melancholy occurrence, and it is said
+that he never fully recovered from its effects upon him. His melancholy
+seemed to deepen, and though his friends exerted themselves to cheer
+him, he seemed to feel that his end was near. Ex-President Pierce,
+hoping to rouse him from his sad thoughts, induced him to accompany him
+on an excursion to the White Mountains. Upon reaching Plymouth, which
+they took on their route, they stopped at the Pemigewasset House for the
+night. Mr. Pierce was so full of anxiety concerning his friend, who had
+been quieter and sadder than usual that day, that he went softly into
+his room in the middle of the night to look after him. Hawthorne was
+lying very still, and seemed to be sleeping sweetly. Mr. Pierce stole
+softly away, fearing to disturb him. In the morning he went back to
+rouse his friend, and found him lying lifeless in the position he had
+noticed in the night. He had been dead some hours.
+
+The announcement of Hawthorne's death caused a feeling of deep sadness
+in all parts of the Union. His body was taken to Concord for burial, and
+was accompanied to the grave by the best and most gifted of the land, to
+each of whom he had endeared himself in life.
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+ACTORS.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+EDWIN BOOTH.
+
+
+There are many persons who remember the elder Booth, the "Great Booth,"
+as he was called, in his palmy days, when the bare announcement of his
+name was sufficient to cram our old-fashioned theaters from pit to dome.
+He was sublime in the stormy passions which he delineated, and never
+failed to draw down from the gods of the gallery the uproarious yells
+with which they testify their approval; even the more dignified
+occupants of the boxes found themselves breaking into outbursts of
+applause which they were powerless to restrain. He was a favorite with
+all classes, and a deserved one, and the lovers of the drama looked
+forward with genuine regret to the period when he should be no longer
+with them. They felt that the glories of the stage would pass away with
+him. It was in vain that they were told that he had sons destined to the
+same profession. They shook their heads, and said it was impossible that
+the mantle of the great tragedian should rest upon any of his sons, for
+it was then, as now, a popular belief that great men never have great
+children. How very much these good people were mistaken we will see in
+the progress of this chapter.
+
+One of these sons was destined in the course of time to eclipse the fame
+won by his father, and to endear himself to the American people as a
+more finished, if less stormy, actor. This was EDWIN BOOTH. He was born
+on his father's farm near Baltimore, Maryland, In 1833, and after
+receiving a good common-school education, began his training for the
+stage. The elder Booth was quick to see that his boy had inherited his
+genius, and he took great pains to develop the growing powers of the
+lad, and to incline them toward those paths which his experience had
+taught him were the surest roads to success. He took him with him on his
+starring engagements, and kept him about him so constantly that the boy
+may be said to have grown up on the stage from his infancy. He was
+enthusiastically devoted to his father, and it was his delight to stand
+at the wings and watch the great tragedian in his personations, and the
+thunders of applause which proclaimed some fresh triumph were sweeter to
+the boy, perhaps, than to the man.
+
+In 1849, at the age of sixteen, he made his first appearance on the
+stage as Tyrrell, in "Richard III.," and gave great satisfaction by his
+rendition of the character. From this time he continued to appear at
+various places with his father, and in 1851 won his first great success
+in the city of New York. His father was playing an engagement at the
+Chatham Theater at the time, and was announced for Richard III., which
+was his masterpiece. When the hour for performance came, he was too ill
+to appear. The manager was in despair, for the house was filled with a
+large audience, who were impatient for the appearance of the humpbacked
+king. In this emergency Edwin Booth offered to take his father's place,
+and the manager, pleased with the novelty of the proposal, accepted it.
+Young Booth was but eighteen years old, and had not even studied the
+part, and it was a perilous thing to venture before an audience in a
+role in which one of his name had won such great fame. But he was
+confident of his own powers, and he had so often hung with delight upon
+his father's rendition of the part, that he needed but a hasty reference
+to the book to perfect him in the text. He won a decided triumph, and
+the public promptly acknowledged that he gave promise of being an
+unusually fine actor.
+
+In 1852 Mr. Booth went to California, and engaged for the "utility
+business." He spent two years in careful and patient study in the
+humbler walks of his profession, learning its details, and doing much of
+the drudgery essential to a thorough knowledge of his art. In 1854, he
+went to Australia, and played a successful engagement there, stopping on
+his way at several of the Pacific islands. On his return, he played an
+engagement, with marked success, at the Sandwich Islands, and then went
+back to California.
+
+In 1857 he returned to New York, and, on the 4th of May, appeared at
+Burton's Theater, in the character of Richard III. A writer who
+witnessed his performance on that occasion thus speaks of him: "The
+company was not strong in tragedy; the young actor came without
+reputation; the season was late. But he conquered his place. His Richard
+was intellectual, brilliant, rapid, handsome, picturesque, villainous.
+But the villainy was servant to the ambition--not master of it, as a
+coarse player makes it. The action was original; the dress was
+perfect--the smirched gauntlets and flung-on mantle of the scheming,
+busy duke, the splendid vestments of the anointed king, the glittering
+armor of the monarch in the field. His clear beauty, his wonderful
+voice--which he had not learned to use--his grace, his fine artistic
+sense, made all triumphs seem possible to this young man. Evidently
+there was great power in the new actor--power untrained, vigor ill
+directed. But what was plainest to be seen, was the nervous, impulsive
+temperament, which would leave him no rest save in achievement. He might
+come back to us a robustious, periwig-pated fellow, the delight and
+wonder of the galleries. He might come back the thorough artist, great
+in repose as in action. But it was clear enough that what he was then in
+Richard, in Richelieu, in Sir Edward Mortimer, he would never be again."
+
+He followed this appearance by a general tour through the country, and
+returned to New York in 1858, where he won fresh laurels. In 1860 he
+reappeared at Burton's Theater, then called the Winter Garden, and added
+Hamlet to his role. He had improved greatly during the time that had
+elapsed since his last appearance at this theater, and had gained very
+much in power and artistic finish. The most critical audiences in the
+country received him with delight, crowded his houses, and hailed his
+efforts with thunders of applause. This season silenced all the critics,
+and placed him among the great actors of the American stage. He bore his
+honors modestly, and though he was proud of the triumphs he had won,
+they did not satisfy him. There were still greater successes to be
+achieved before the highest honors of his profession could be his, and
+it was upon these that his eye was fixed from the first. The applause
+which greeted him in every city in which he appeared only served to
+stimulate him to fresh exertions.
+
+In the summer of 1861, he visited England, and played an engagement at
+the Haymarket Theater in London, where he was favorably received by the
+British playgoers. At the close of this engagement, he spent a year on
+the continent, in travel and in the study of his profession. He also
+made careful studies of the scenes of the great historic dramas of the
+English stage, both in England and on the continent, and of the dresses
+and other appointments needed for them. By thoroughly familiarizing
+himself with these details, he has been able to produce his plays with
+entire fidelity to history.
+
+Returning once more to New York, he appeared at the Winter Garden, in
+the winter of 1863-64, in a series of Shakespearean revivals. He played
+Hamlet for over one hundred nights, and followed it during that season
+and the next with "Merchant of Venice" and "Othello" (in the latter
+playing the parts of Othello and Iago on alternate nights). During the
+same seasons he appeared also in "Richelieu," "Ruy Blas," "The Fool's
+Revenge," and "Don Cæsar de Bazan." These performances were extended
+into the season of 1866-67, when they were suddenly cut short by the
+total destruction of the Winter Garden Theater by fire on the night of
+the 23d of March, 1867. In this fire Mr. Booth lost his entire wardrobe,
+including many relics of his father, Kemble, and Mrs. Siddons.
+
+The destruction of a theater has seldom drawn forth a more universal
+expression of regret than that which poured in upon Mr. Booth from all
+parts of the country. It was feared that the loss of his valuable
+wardrobe would be irremediable, as indeed it was in a certain sense. All
+over the Union a general wish was expressed that the great actor should
+have a new theater in some of our large cities, and one which should be
+worthy of his genius. Mr. Booth had chosen the city of New York for his
+permanent home, and after the destruction of the Winter Garden Theater
+began to arrange his plans for the erection of a new building of his
+own, which he was resolved should be the most magnificent and the best
+appointed theater in the world. The site chosen was the south-eastern
+corner of the Sixth Avenue and Twenty-third Street in New York, and in
+the summer of 1867 the work of clearing away the old buildings and
+digging the foundations of the new theater was begun. It was carried
+forward steadily, and the building was completed and opened to the
+public in January, 1869.
+
+It is in the Rennaissance style of architecture, and stands seventy feet
+high from the sidewalk to the main cornice, crowning which is a Mansard
+roof of twenty-four feet. "The theater proper fronts one hundred and
+forty-nine feet on Twenty-third Street, and is divided into three parts,
+so combined as to form an almost perfect whole, with arched entrances at
+either extremity on the side, for the admission of the public, and on
+the other for another entrance, and the use of the actors and those
+employed in the house. On either side of these main entrances are broad
+and lofty windows; and above them, forming a part of the second story,
+are niches for statues, surrounded by coupled columns resting on finely
+sculptured pedestals. The central or main niche is flanked on either
+side by quaintly contrived blank windows; and between the columns, at
+the depth of the recesses, are simple pilasters sustaining the elliptic
+arches, which serve to top and span the niches, the latter to be
+occupied by statues of the great creators and interpreters of the drama
+in every age and country. The finest Concord granite, from the best
+quarries in New Hampshire, is the material used in the entire façade, as
+well as in the Sixth Avenue side.... The glittering granite mass,
+exquisitely poised, adorned with rich and appropriate carving, statuary,
+columns, pilasters, and arches, and capped by the springing French roof,
+fringed with its shapely balustrades, offers an imposing and majestic
+aspect, and forms one of the architectural jewels of the city."
+
+In its internal arrangements the theater is in keeping with its external
+magnificence. Entering through a sumptuous vestibule, the visitor passes
+into the magnificent auditorium, which is in itself a rare piece of
+decorative art. The seats are admirably arranged, each one commanding a
+view of the stage. The floor is richly carpeted, and the seats are
+luxuriously upholstered. Three elegant light galleries rise above the
+parquet. The walls and ceiling are exquisitely frescoed, and ornamented
+with bas reliefs in plaster. The proscenium is beautifully frescoed and
+carved, and is adorned with busts of the elder Booth and the proprietor
+of the theater; and in the sides before the curtain are arranged six
+sumptuous private boxes. The curtain is a beautiful landscape. The
+decoration of the house is not done in the rough scenic style so common
+in the most of the theaters of the country, but is the perfection of
+frescoe painting, and is capable of bearing the closest examination. The
+stage is very large, and slopes gradually from the rear to the
+footlights. The orchestra pen is sunk below the level of the stage, so
+that the heads of the musicians do not cut off the view of the audience.
+The dressing of the stage is novel. The side scenes or wings, instead of
+being placed at right angles to the spectator as in most theaters, are
+so arranged that the scene appears to extend to the right and left as
+well as to the rear. In this way the spectator is saved the annoyance of
+often looking through the wings, a defect which in most theaters
+completely dispels the illusion of the play. The scenery here is not set
+by hand, but is moved by machinery, and with such regularity and
+precision that these changes have very much the effect of "dissolving
+views." The scenes themselves are the works of highly educated artists,
+and never degenerate into the rough daubs with which most playgoers are
+familiar. The building is fire-proof, and is warmed and ventilated in a
+peculiar manner. The great central chandelier and the lights around the
+cornice of the auditorium are lighted by electricity.
+
+The plays presented here are superbly put on the stage. The scenery is
+strictly accurate when meant to represent some historic locality, and
+is the finest to be found in America. Perhaps the grandest stage picture
+ever given to an audience was the grave-yard scene in "Hamlet," which
+"held the boards" for over one hundred nights last winter. The dresses,
+equipments, and general "make up" of the actors are in keeping with the
+scenery. Even the minutest detail is carefully attended to. Nothing is
+so unimportant as to be overlooked in this establishment.
+
+It is Mr. Booth's custom to open the season with engagements of other
+distinguished actors, and to follow them himself about the beginning of
+the winter, and to continue his performances until the approach of
+spring, when he again gives way to others. When he is performing, it is
+impossible to procure a seat after the rising of the curtain. Every
+available place is filled, and thousands come from all parts of the
+country to see him. Sometimes it is necessary to secure seats a week in
+advance.
+
+Mr. Booth is still a young man, being now thirty-seven years old. In
+person he is over the medium height, and is well built. His hair is
+black and is worn long, and his dark eyes are large and dreamy. His face
+is that of a poet, strikingly handsome, with an expression of mingled
+sweetness and sadness playing over it. He wears neither beard nor
+moustache. He dresses simply and without ornament, and is grave and
+retiring in his demeanor. He is exceedingly amiable in disposition, and
+is the center of a large circle of devoted friends. He has been married
+twice, and has one child, a daughter, by his first wife. He is a man of
+irreproachable life, and in every thing a high-toned gentleman, and it
+is the high character he bears not less than his genius that has enabled
+him to do such honor to his profession. He is very wealthy, and is in a
+fair way to become a millionaire.
+
+As an actor Mr. Booth is without an equal. His impersonations are
+marked by rare genius and by the most careful study. His Hamlet is
+perhaps his most finished part, as his Richelieu is the most popular
+with the masses. It has been said that his Hamlet is not Shakespeare's
+Hamlet, and this may be true: but it is so exquisite, so perfect, that
+whether it be the conception of Shakespeare or Edwin Booth, it is the
+most powerful, the most life-like counterfeit of "the melancholy Dane"
+ever seen on any stage, and leaves nothing to be desired. His
+personation of the grim old cardinal, whose decrepit body is alone
+sustained by his indomitable will, is masterly, and we see before us,
+not Edwin Booth, the actor of to-day, but the crafty, unscrupulous,
+witty, determined prime minister of France, who bends kings and princes
+to his will. It is absolutely life-like, and to those who have seen the
+portraits of the old cardinal in the museums of France, the accuracy
+with which Booth has counterfeited the personal appearance of Richelieu
+is positively startling. The plays are so superbly set upon the stage
+that we lose sight of the little space they occupy, and seem to be
+gazing upon a real world. His Richard has such a strong humanity in it,
+that it more than half vindicates the humpbacked tyrant's memory, and
+the death scene of this play, as given by Booth, is simply appalling.
+
+It is in vain, however, that we select special characters or attempt
+descriptions of them. No one can truly understand Edwin Booth's acting
+without seeing it. He has studied his heroes so profoundly, analyzed
+their characters so subtly, and entered so heartily into sympathy with
+them, that he has, become able, by the aid of his wonderful genius, to
+entirely discard his own personality, and assume theirs at will.
+
+Mr. Booth has steadily risen in power and finish as an actor, for his
+labors have been unceasing. Great as his triumphs have been, he does
+not regard himself as freed from the necessity of study. His studies
+have become more intelligent than in former years, but not the less
+faithful. He has the true artist's aspiration after the rarest
+perfection in his art, though to those of us without the charmed circle
+it is difficult to see how he can excel his present excellence. Yet that
+he does so we have undoubted proof, for we see him rising higher in the
+admiration and esteem of the world every year, and each year we gather
+fresh laurels to twine around his brows.
+
+He has steadily educated his audiences, and has elevated the standard of
+his art among his countrymen. He has shown them what fine acting really
+is, and has taught them to enjoy it. He has kept them true to the
+legitimate drama, and has done more than any other man to rescue the
+American stage from the insignificance with which it was threatened. It
+speaks volumes for him as an actor and a manager, that when New York
+seemed wholly given up to ballet, burlesque, and opera bouffe, he was
+able to make the almost forgotten masterpieces of Shakespeare the most
+popular and most profitable dramatic ventures of the year.
+
+
+
+[Illustration: JEFFERSON, AS RIP VAN WINKLE.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+JOSEPH JEFFERSON.
+
+
+The subject of this sketch is one of a race of actors. His
+great-grandfather was a contemporary of some of the brightest ornaments
+of the English stage, and was himself a famous actor and the intimate
+friend of Garrick, Sam Foote, and Barr. He was a man of amiable and
+winning disposition, and was strikingly handsome in person. He occupies
+a prominent place in the history of the English stage, and is said to
+have been, socially, one of the most brilliant men of his day. He died
+in 1807. In 1795 his son came to America. Of him, Dunlap, in his
+"History of the American Stage," says, referring to him, in February,
+1797: "He was then a youth, but even then an artist. Of a small and
+light figure, well formed, with a singular physiognomy, a nose perfectly
+Grecian, and blue eyes full of laughter, he had the faculty of exciting
+mirth to as great a degree by power of feature, although handsome, as
+any ugly-featured low comedian ever seen." F.C. Wemyss has said of him
+at a later day: "Mr. Joseph Jefferson was an actor formed in Nature's
+merriest mood--a genuine son of Momus. There was a vein of rich humor
+running through all he did, which forced you to laugh despite of
+yourself. He discarded grimace as unworthy of him, although no actor
+ever possessed a greater command over the muscles of his own face, or
+the faces of his audience, compelling you to laugh or cry at his
+pleasure. His excellent personation of old men acquired for him, before
+he had reached the meridian of life, the title of 'Old Jefferson.' The
+astonishment of strangers at seeing a good-looking young man pointed out
+on the street as Old Jefferson, whom they had seen the night previous at
+the theater tottering apparently on the verge of existence, was the
+greatest compliment that could be paid to the talent of the actor. His
+versatility was astonishing--light comedy, old men, pantomime, low
+comedy, and occasionally juvenile tragedy. Educated in the very best
+school for acquiring knowledge in his profession, ... Jefferson was an
+adept in all the trickery of the stage, which, when it suited his
+purpose, he could turn to excellent account.... In his social relations,
+he was what a gentleman should be--a kind husband, an affectionate
+father, a warm friend, and a truly honest man." The second Jefferson
+enjoyed a brilliant career of thirty-six years in this country, and died
+in 1832, during an engagement at the theater at Harrisburg, which was
+then managed by his son. This son, named Joseph, after his father, was
+born in Philadelphia in 1804, and died at the age of thirty-eight. He
+was not so famous as an actor as his father or grandfather, but like
+them passed his life on the stage. He had a decided talent for painting,
+and was partially educated as an artist, but he never accomplished any
+thing with his pencil. He was a man of most amiable disposition, and was
+possessed of scores of warm and devoted friends; but he was a poor
+business manager, and was always more or less involved in pecuniary
+troubles. He married Mrs. Burke, the famous vocalist, and mother of
+Burke, the comedian.
+
+To this couple, in the city of Philadelphia, was born the JOSEPH
+JEFFERSON of to-day, on the 20th of February, 1829.
+
+This boy was literally brought up on the stage, as he made his first
+appearance upon the boards in a combat scene at the Park Theater in New
+York, when he was but three years old. He soon after went with his
+parents to the West. Olive Logan says of him, at this period of his
+life, "While they were both still children, he and my sister Eliza used
+to sing little comic duets together on the stage of various western
+towns."
+
+He received as good a common-school education as the rapid manner in
+which he was moved about from place to place would permit, and was
+carefully trained in the profession of an actor, to which he was
+destined by his parents, and to which he was drawn by the bent of his
+genius. He appeared in public frequently during his boyhood, but his
+first appearance as a man was at Chanfrau's National Theater, in 1849.
+He met with fair success, and from that time devoted himself entirely
+and carefully to his profession. He began at the bottom of the ladder of
+fame, and gradually worked his way up to his present high position.
+Playing engagements in various minor theaters of the United States, he
+at length secured a position as low comedian at Niblo's Garden in New
+York, where he won golden opinions from the critical audiences of the
+metropolis. In 1857, he closed a most successful engagement as low
+comedian at the theater in Richmond, Virginia, and with that engagement
+ended his career as a stock actor. He had by careful and patient study
+rendered himself capable of assuming the highest place in his
+profession, and these studies, joined to his native genius, had made him
+famous throughout the country as the best low comedian of the day.
+
+Feeling that he had now a right to the honors of a "star" in his
+profession, and urged by the public to assume the position to which his
+genius entitled him, he began a series of engagements throughout the
+Union, in which he more than fulfilled the expectations of his friends.
+He was received with delight wherever he went, and at once became the
+most popular of American comedians.
+
+About a year or two later, he left the United States and made a voyage
+to Australia, through which country he traveled, playing at the
+principal towns. He was extremely successful. His genial, sunny
+character won him hosts of friends among the people of that far-off
+land, and his great genius as an actor made him as famous there as he
+had been in his own country. Australia was then a sort of theatrical El
+Dorado. The prices paid for admission to the theaters were very high,
+and the sums offered to distinguished stars in order to attract them
+thither were immense. Mr. Jefferson reaped a fair share of this golden
+harvest, and at the close of his Australian engagements found himself
+the possessor of a handsome sum. It was this which formed the basis of
+his large fortune; for, unlike his father, he is a man of excellent
+business capacity, and understands how to care for the rewards of his
+labors, so that they shall be a certain protection to him in his old
+age, and an assistance to those whom he shall leave behind him.
+
+Returning to the United States, Mr. Jefferson appeared with increased
+success in the leading cities of the Northern and Western States. His
+principal success at this time was won in the character of Asa
+Trenchard, in the play of "Our American Cousin." His personation of the
+rough, eccentric, but true-hearted Yankee was regarded as one of the
+finest pieces of acting ever witnessed on the American stage, and drew
+crowded houses wherever he went. His range of characters included the
+most refined comedy and the broadest farce, but each delineation bore
+evidence of close and careful study, and was marked by great originality
+and delicacy. There was in his performances a freshness, a
+distinctiveness, and, above all, an entire freedom from any thing
+coarse or offensive, which charmed his audiences from the first. One of
+his critics has well said of him: "As Caleb Plummer he unites in another
+way the full appreciation of mingled humor and pathos--the greatest
+delicacy and affection with rags and homely speech. As Old Phil
+Stapleton he is the patriarch of the village and the incarnation of
+content. As Asa Trenchard he is the diamond in the rough, combining
+shrewdness with simplicity, and elevating instead of degrading the
+Yankee character. As Dr. Ollapod, and Dr. Pangloss, and Tobias Shortcut,
+he has won laurels that would make him a comedian of the first rank. His
+Bob Acres is a picture. There is almost as much to look at as in his Rip
+Van Winkle. There is nearly the same amount of genius, art, experience,
+and intelligence in its personation. Hazlitt says that the author has
+overdone the part, and adds that 'it calls for a great effort of animal
+spirits and a peculiar aptitude of genius to go through with it;' Mr.
+Jefferson has so much of the latter that he can--and to a great extent
+does--dispense with the former requisite. His quiet undercurrent of
+humor subserves the same purpose in the _role_ of Bob Acres that it does
+in other characters. It is full of points, so judiciously chosen, so
+thoroughly apt, so naturally made and so characteristically preserved,
+that the part with Jefferson is a great one. The man of the 'oath
+referential, or sentimental swearing,' makes the entire scope of the
+part an 'echo to the sense.' Even in so poor a farce as that of 'A
+Regular Fix,' Mr. Jefferson makes the eccentricities of Hugh de Brass
+immensely funny. The same style is preserved in every character, but
+with an application that gives to each a separate being."
+
+After a season of great success in this country Mr. Jefferson decided to
+visit England. He appeared at the Adelphi Theater, in London, and at
+once became as popular as he had been at home. His Asa Trenchard, in
+"Our American Cousin," was received by the English with delight; but his
+greatest triumphs were won in Boucicault's version of "Rip Van Winkle,"
+which he has since immortalized. This play was first produced at the
+Adelphi, where it enjoyed an uninterrupted run of nearly two hundred
+nights.
+
+Returning to the United States in the autumn of 1867, Mr. Jefferson
+appeared at the Olympic Theater, in New York, in the play of "Rip Van
+Winkle." Since then he has traveled extensively throughout the United
+States, and has devoted himself exclusively to the character of Rip Van
+Winkle; so exclusively, indeed, that many persons are ignorant of his
+great merits in other roles. By adopting this as his specialty, he has
+rendered himself so perfect in it that he has almost made the
+improvident, light-hearted Rip a living creature. A writer in a popular
+periodical draws the following graphic sketch of his performance of this
+character:
+
+
+     If there is something especially charming in the ideal of Rip Van
+     Winkle that Irving has drawn, there is something even more human,
+     sympathetic and attractive in the character reproduced by
+     Jefferson. A smile that reflects the generous impulses of the man;
+     a face that is the mirror of character; great, luminous eyes that
+     are rich wells of expression; a grace that is statuesque without
+     being studied; an inherent laziness which commands the respect of
+     no one, but a gentle nature that wins the affections of all; poor
+     as he is honest, jolly as he is poor, unfortunate as he is jolly,
+     yet possessed of a spontaneity of nature that springs up and flows
+     along like a rivulet after a rain; the man who can not forget the
+     faults of the character which Jefferson pictures, nor feel like
+     taking good-natured young Rip Van Winkle by the hand and offering a
+     support to tottering old Rip Van Winkle, must have become hardened
+     to all natural as well as artistic influences. It is scarcely
+     necessary to enter into the details of Mr. Jefferson's acting of
+     the Dutch Tam O'Shanter. Notwithstanding the fact that the
+     performance is made up of admirable points that might he enumerated
+     and described, the picture is complete as a whole and in its
+     connections. Always before the public; preserving the interest
+     during two acts of the play after a telling climax; sustaining the
+     realities of his character in a scene of old superstition, and in
+     which no one speaks but himself,--the impersonation requires a
+     greater evenness of merit and dramatic effect than any other that
+     could have been chosen. Rip Van Winkle is imbued with the most
+     marked individuality, and the identity is so conscientiously
+     preserved that nothing is overlooked or neglected. Mr. Jefferson's
+     analysis penetrates even into the minutiæ of the part, but there is
+     a perfect unity in the conception and its embodiment. Strong and
+     irresistible in its emotion, and sly and insinuating in its humor,
+     Mr. Jefferson's Rip Van Winkle is marked by great vigor, as well as
+     by an almost pre-Raphaelite finish.
+
+     The bibulous Rip is always present by the ever-recurring and
+     favorite toast of "Here's your goot healt' and your family's, and
+     may dey live long and prosper." The meditative and philosophic Rip
+     is signaled by the abstract "Ja," which sometimes means _yes_, and
+     sometimes means _no_. The shrewd and clear-sighted Rip is marked by
+     the interview with Derrick Van Beekman. The thoughtful and
+     kind-hearted Rip makes his appearance in that sad consciousness of
+     his uselessness and the little influence he exerts when he says to
+     the children, talking of their future marriage: "I thought maybe
+     you might want to ask me about it," which had never occurred to the
+     children. The improvident Rip is discovered when Dame Van Winkle
+     throws open the inn window-shutter, which contains the enormous
+     score against her husband, and when Rip drinks from the bottle over
+     the dame's shoulder as he promises to reform. The most popular and
+     the most thriftless man in the village; the most intelligent and
+     the least ambitious; the best-hearted and the most careless;--the
+     numerous contrasts which the _role_ presents demand versatility in
+     design and delicacy in execution. They are worked out with a
+     moderation and a suggestiveness that are much more natural than if
+     they were presented more decidedly. The sympathy of Mr. Jefferson's
+     creation is the greatest secret of its popularity. In spite of
+     glaring faults, and almost a cruel disregard of the family's
+     welfare, Rip Van Winkle has the audience with him from the very
+     beginning. His ineffably sad but quiet realization of his desolate
+     condition when his wife turns him out into the storm, leaves
+     scarcely a dry eye in the theatre. His living in others and not in
+     himself makes him feel the changes of his absence all the more
+     keenly. His return after his twenty years' sleep is painful to
+     witness; and when he asks, with such heart-rending yet subdued
+     despair, "Are we so soon forgot when we are gone?" it is no wonder
+     that sobs are heard throughout the house. His pleading with his
+     child Meenie is not less affecting, and nothing could be more
+     genuine in feeling. Yet all this emotion is attained in the most
+     quiet and unobtrusive manner. Jefferson's sly humor crops out at
+     all times, and sparkles through the veil of sadness that overhangs
+     the later life of Rip Van Winkle. His wonder that his wife's
+     "clapper" could ever be stopped is expressed in the same breath
+     with his real sorrow at hearing of her death. "Then who the devil
+     am I?" he asks with infinite wit just before he pulls away at the
+     heartstrings of the audience in refusing the proffered assistance
+     to his tottering steps. He has the rare faculty of bringing a smile
+     to the lips and a tear to the eye at the same time. From the first
+     picture, which presents young Rip Van Winkle leaning carelessly and
+     easily upon the table as he drinks his schnapps, to the last
+     picture of the decrepit but happy old man, surrounded by his family
+     and dismissing the audience with his favorite toast, the character,
+     in Mr. Jefferson's hands, endears itself to all, and adds another
+     to the few real friendships which one may enjoy in this life.
+
+
+Mr. Jefferson is a thoroughly American actor. Abandoning all sensational
+shams, he devotes himself to pure art. His highest triumphs have been
+won in the legitimate branches of his profession, and won by the force
+of his genius, aided only by the most careful study and an intelligent
+analysis of the parts assumed by him. He has the happy faculty of
+entering into perfect sympathy with his characters, and for the time
+being he is less the actor than the individual he personates. It is this
+that gives the sparkle to his eye, the ring to his laughter, and the
+exquisite feeling to his pathos; and feeling thus, he is quick to
+establish a sympathy between himself and his audience, so that he moves
+them at will, convulsing them with laughter at the sallies of the
+light-hearted Rip, or dissolving them in tears at the desolations of the
+lonely old man, so soon forgot after he has gone.
+
+Mr. Jefferson has inherited from his father the genial, sunny
+disposition for which the latter was famous. He is an essentially
+cheerful man, and trouble glances lightly off from him. He is generous
+to a fault, and carries his purse in his hand. Misfortune never appeals
+to him in vain, and many are the good works he has done in the humbler
+walks of his own calling. He is enthusiastically devoted to his
+profession, and enjoys his acting quite as much as his auditors. In
+putting his pieces on the stage, he is lavish of expense, and whenever
+he can control this part of the performance, it leaves nothing to be
+desired. Some years ago he brought out "A Midsummer Night's Dream" at a
+Philadelphia theater, in a style of magnificence rarely witnessed on any
+stage. The scenery was exquisite, and was a collection of artistic gems.
+The success of the piece was very decided in Philadelphia, but when it
+was reproduced, with the same scenery and appointments, in a Western
+city, the public would scarcely go to see it, and the theater incurred a
+heavy loss in consequence. Jefferson's remark to the manager, when the
+failure became apparent, was characteristic: "It is all right," said he.
+"We have done our duty, and have made an artistic success of the piece.
+If the people will not come to see it, it is more their misfortune than
+ours."
+
+He has inherited also from his father considerable talent as an artist,
+and sketches with decided merit, though he makes no pretensions to
+artistic skill. In his vacations, which he passes in the country, his
+sketch-book is his constant companion. He is a famous sportsman and
+fisherman, and in the summer is rarely to be found without his gun and
+rod. It is his delight to tramp over miles of country in search of
+game, or to sit quietly in some cozy nook, and, dropping his line into
+the water, pass the hours in reveries broken only by the exertion
+necessary to secure a finny prize.
+
+Not long since his love of art led him to buy a panorama merely because
+he admired it. He put it in charge of an agent in whom he knew he could
+confide, and started it on a tour throughout the country. In a month or
+two he received a gloomy letter from the agent, telling him that the
+exhibition had failed to draw spectators, and that he despaired of its
+ever paying expenses. "Never mind," wrote Jefferson in reply, "it will
+be a gratification for those who do go to see it, and you may draw on me
+for what money you need." The losses on the panorama, however, were so
+great that Jefferson was compelled to abandon it.
+
+Several years before the death of John Sefton, Jefferson paid him a
+visit at his home in Paradise Valley, during one of his summer rambles.
+Upon reaching Sefton's farm, he found the owner "with his breeches and
+coat sleeves both rolled up, and standing in the middle of a clear and
+shallow stream, where one could scarcely step without spoiling the
+sports of the brook trout, which sparkled through the crystal waters.
+Sefton stood in a crouching attitude, watching, with mingled
+disappointment and good humor, a little pig which the stream was
+carrying down its current, and which, pig-like, had slipped from the
+hands of its owner in its natural aversion to being washed. Jefferson,
+with the true instinct of an artist, dropped his fishing tackle and took
+his sketch-book to transfer the ludicrous scene to paper. Sefton
+appreciated the humor of the situation, and only objected when Jefferson
+began to fill in the background with a dilapidated old barn, at which
+the old gentleman demurred on account of its wretched appearance. The
+artist insisted that it was picturesque, however, and proceeded to put
+it down. Sefton had to submit; but he had his revenge, by writing back
+to New York that 'Jefferson is here, drawing the worst "houses" I ever
+saw.'"
+
+In private life, Mr. Jefferson is a cultivated gentleman, and is
+possessed of numbers of warm and devoted friends. He has been married
+twice. The first Mrs. Jefferson was a Miss Lockyer, of New York, and by
+her he had two children, a son and a daughter. The former is about
+eighteen years of age, and is destined to his father's profession, in
+which he has already shown unusual promise. The present Mrs. Jefferson
+was a Miss Warren, and is a niece of the veteran actor, William Warren,
+of Boston. She was married to her husband early in 1868, and has never
+been an actress.
+
+Mr. Jefferson is the possessor of a large fortune, acquired in the
+exercise of his profession, and being thus comfortably situated, is
+enabled to enjoy more rest from his labors than falls to the lot of most
+American actors. He resides in Orange County, New Jersey, about an
+hour's ride from New York, where he has a handsome country seat, which
+he has adorned with all the attractions that wealth and taste can
+command.
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+PHYSICIANS.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII.
+
+BENJAMIN RUSH.
+
+
+It is not often that a man, however gifted, is capable of rising to
+eminence in two distinct branches of public life, especially in two so
+widely separated from each other as medicine and politics. The subject
+of this sketch was one of the few who have achieved such distinction.
+
+BENJAMIN RUSH was born on Poquestion Creek, near Philadelphia, on the
+24th of December, 1745. He was carefully educated at the best common
+schools of his native county, and then entered Princeton College, where
+he graduated in 1760, at the age of fifteen. He decided, upon leaving
+Princeton, to adopt medicine as his vocation, and began his studies in
+Philadelphia. He gave nine years to preparing himself for his
+profession, and after completing his course in Philadelphia, sailed for
+Europe, where he continued his studies in Edinburgh, London, and Paris.
+He returned home in 1769, and began the practice of medicine in
+Philadelphia, and was at once elected Professor of Chemistry in the
+medical college of that city. He was successful in rapidly acquiring a
+large and lucrative practice, and experienced very few of the
+difficulties and trials which lie in the way of a young physician.
+
+In 1770 he began his career as an author, and for many years his
+writings were numerous. He devoted himself chiefly to medical subjects,
+but history, philosophy, and politics, and even romance, frequently
+claimed his attention. He adopted the patriot cause at the outset of his
+career, and with his pen and voice constantly advocated resistance to
+the injustice of Great Britain. This drew upon him the attention of his
+fellow-citizens, and he was chosen to a seat in the Provincial
+Conference of Pennsylvania. In that body he introduced a resolution
+setting forth the necessity of a declaration of independence of the
+mother country. His resolution was referred to a committee, of which he
+was made the chairman, and this committee having reported affirmatively,
+the resolution was unanimously adopted by the Conference, and was
+communicated to the Continental Congress, then in session in
+Philadelphia, about the last of June, 1776. When it became evident that
+the Congress would declare the independence of the colonies, five
+members of the Pennsylvania delegation withdrew from that body. Their
+places were at once supplied by Rush and four others, and when the
+Declaration was finally adopted Benjamin Rush affixed his signature to
+it as a delegate from Pennsylvania.
+
+In 1776 Dr. Rush was married to Miss Julia Stockton, daughter of Richard
+Stockton, of New Jersey, also a signer of the Declaration. In April,
+1777, he was made Surgeon-General of the Continental army for the Middle
+Department, and in July, 1777, was made Physician-General. He devoted
+himself to his duties with energy and intelligence, and succeeded in
+placing the affairs of his department in as satisfactory a condition as
+the means at the command of the Congress would permit. He was not able,
+however, to arrange every thing as his judgment assured him was best,
+and was subjected to many annoyances and great inconvenience by the
+incompetence and mismanagement of other officials, whom he could not
+control. The management of the hospital supplies of the army was
+especially defective, and was the cause of much suffering to the troops.
+He made repeated efforts to effect a reform in this particular, but
+failing to accomplish any thing, and indignant at the wrongs inflicted
+upon the soldiers, he resigned his commission and retired to private
+life.
+
+During his connection with the army, he had watched the course of
+affairs in his native State with the keenest interest, and in a series
+of four letters to the people of Pennsylvania, called their attention to
+the serious defects of their Constitution of 1776, the chief of which he
+declared to be the giving of the legislative power to one house only.
+His appeals had the effect of bringing about an entire change in the
+form of State government, which was subsequently accomplished by a
+general convention of the people. After the close of the war Dr. Rush
+was elected a member of the State Convention which ratified the
+Constitution of the United States, and distinguished himself in that
+body by his earnest and brilliant advocacy of that instrument. He was
+also a member of the convention which adopted a new State Constitution,
+embodying the reforms he had advised in the letters referred to, and
+labored hard to have incorporated in it his views respecting a penal
+code and a public school system, both of which features he ably
+advocated through the public press.
+
+With this closed his public career, which, though brief, was brilliant,
+and raised him to a proud place among the fathers of the Republic.
+
+Returning to Philadelphia after resigning his position in the army, he
+resumed the practice of medicine, and with increased success. His
+personal popularity and his great skill as a physician brought him all
+the employment he could desire, and he soon took his place at the head
+of the medical faculty of the country.
+
+In 1785 he planned the Philadelphia Dispensary, the first institution of
+the kind in the United States, and to the close of his life remained its
+warm and energetic supporter. In 1789 he was made Professor of the
+Theory and Practice of Medicine in the Philadelphia Medical College, and
+when that institution was merged in the University, in 1791, he was
+elected to the chair of the Institute and Clinical Medicine. In 1797 he
+took the professorship of Clinical Practice also, as it was vacant, and
+was formally elected to it in 1805. These three professorships he held
+until the day of his death, discharging the duties of each with
+characteristic brilliancy and fidelity.
+
+The great professional triumph of his life occurred in the year 1793. In
+that year the yellow fever broke out with great malignancy in
+Philadelphia, and raged violently for about one hundred days, from about
+the last of July until the first of November. Nothing seemed capable of
+checking it. The people fled in dismay from their homes, and the city
+seemed given over to desolation. In the terrible "hundred days," during
+which the fever prevailed, four thousand persons died, and the deaths
+occurred so rapidly that it was frequently impossible to bury the bodies
+for several days. The physicians of the city, though they remained
+heroically at their posts, and labored indefatigably in their exertions
+to stay the plague, were powerless against it, and several of them were
+taken sick and died. Few had any hope of checking the fever, and every
+one looked forward with eagerness to the approach of the season of
+frosts, as the only means of saving those that remained in the stricken
+city.
+
+At the outset of the disease, Dr. Rush had treated it in the same manner
+as that adopted by the medical faculty of the city; but the ill success
+which attended this course soon satisfied him that the treatment was
+wrong. He therefore undertook to subdue it by purging and bleeding the
+patient, and succeeded. The new practice met with the fiercest
+opposition from the other physicians, but Rush could triumphantly point
+to the fact that while their patients were dying his were getting well;
+and he continued to carry out his treatment with firmness and success.
+Dr. Ramsey, of South Carolina, estimates that Rush, by this treatment,
+saved not less than six thousand of his patients from death in the
+"hundred days." Nevertheless, the medical war went on with great
+bitterness, and the opposition to Rush became furious when he boldly
+declared that the fever was not an importation from abroad, as was
+popularly believed, but had been generated by the filthy condition of
+the city during the early part of the summer. Some time after the fever
+had subsided, a paper called "Peter Porcupine's Gazette," edited by
+William Cobbett, made a series of outrageous attacks upon Dr. Rush and
+his treatment of the fever. This exhausted the forbearance of the
+doctor, and he instituted a suit against Cobbett, in which he was
+successful, and secured a verdict of $5,000 damages against his defamer.
+
+During the prevalence of the fever, Dr. Rush's labors were unceasing. He
+was constantly going his rounds, visiting the sick, attending sometimes
+over one hundred patients in a single day. He was called on at all hours
+of the day and night, and it may be said that he scarcely slept or
+enjoyed two hours, uninterrupted rest during the "hundred days."
+
+[Illustration: PRESCRIBING AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.]
+
+For weeks he never sat down to his meals without being surrounded by
+dozens of patients, whose complaints he listened to and prescribed for
+as he ate. These were chiefly the poor, and at such times his house was
+literally thronged with them. He was a kind friend to them; rendering
+his services promptly and heartily, without the slightest wish to
+receive pay in return for them; and during all this terrible summer he
+was to be seen ministering to these poor creatures in the foulest, most
+plague-stricken quarters of the city, shrinking from no danger, and
+deterred from his work of mercy by no thought of his own safety. He has
+left us the following picture of the city during this terrible summer:
+
+
+
+     The disease appeared in many parts of the town remote from the spot
+     where it originated; although in every instance it was easily
+     traced to it. This set the city in motion. The streets and roads
+     leading from the city were crowded with families flying in every
+     direction for safety, to the country. Business began to languish.
+     Water Street, between Market and Race Streets, became a desert.
+     The poor were the first victims of the fever. From the sudden
+     interruption of business, they suffered for a while from poverty as
+     well as disease. A large and airy house at Bush-hill, about a mile
+     from the city, was opened for their reception. This house, after it
+     became the charge of a committee appointed by the citizens on the
+     14th of September, was regulated and governed with the order and
+     cleanliness of an old and established hospital. An American and
+     French physician had the exclusive medical care of it after the 22d
+     of September.
+
+     The contagion, after the second week in September, spared no rank
+     of citizens. Whole families were confined by it. There was a
+     deficiency of nurses for the sick, and many of those who were
+     employed were unqualified for their business. There was likewise a
+     great deficiency of physicians, from the desertion of some and the
+     sickness and death of others. At one time there were only three
+     physicians able to do business out of their houses, and at this
+     time there were probably not less than six thousand persons ill
+     with the fever.
+
+     During the first three or four weeks of the prevalence of the
+     disorder, I seldom went into a house the first time without meeting
+     the parents or children of the sick in tears. Many wept aloud in my
+     entry or parlor, who came to ask advice for their relations. Grief
+     after a while descended below weeping, and I was much struck in
+     observing that many persons submitted to the loss of relations and
+     friends without shedding a tear, or manifesting any other of the
+     common signs of grief.
+
+     A cheerful countenance was scarcely to be seen in the city for six
+     weeks. I recollect once, on entering the house of a poor man, to
+     have met a child of two years old that smiled in my face. I was
+     strangely affected with this sight (so discordant to my feelings
+     and the state of the city), before I recollected the age and
+     ignorance of the child. I was confined the next day by an attack of
+     the fever, and was sorry to hear, upon my recovery, that the father
+     and mother of this little creature died a few days after my last
+     visit to them.
+
+     The streets every-where discovered marks of the distress that
+     pervaded the city. More than one-half the houses were shut up,
+     although not more than one-third of the inhabitants had fled into
+     the country. In walking, for many hundred yards, few persons were
+     met, except such as were in quest of a physician, a nurse, a
+     bleeder, or the men who buried the dead. The hearse alone kept up
+     the remembrance of the noise of carriages or carts in the streets.
+     Funeral processions were laid aside. A black man leading or driving
+     a horse, with a corpse on a pair of chair-wheels, with now and then
+     half a dozen relations or friends following at a distance from it,
+     met the eye in most of the streets of the city, at every hour of
+     the day, while the noise of the same wheels passing slowly over the
+     pavements, kept alive anguish and fear in the sick and well, every
+     hour of the night.
+
+
+The population of Philadelphia at this time was but sixty thousand, and
+the reader will see that a loss of four thousand was a heavy percentage
+for so short a period.
+
+Dr. Rush's skill and heroic conduct in his efforts to stay the ravages
+of the plague made him famous, not only in his own country, but
+throughout Europe, and during the latter part of his life he received
+most gratifying evidences of this fact. In 1805 the King of Prussia sent
+him a coronation medal, and the King of Spain tendered him his thanks
+for his replies to certain questions addressed to him concerning the
+causes and proper treatment of yellow fever. In 1807 the Queen of
+Etruria presented him with a gold medal as a mark of respect; and in
+1811 the Emperor of Russia sent him a testimonial of his admiration of
+his medical character.
+
+In 1799 he was made treasurer of the United States Mint, which position
+he held until his death.
+
+Dr. Rush's writings were voluminous, and embraced a variety of subjects.
+His medical productions occupy a high place in the literature of the
+profession, and his political essays were one of the features of his
+day. He was a man of profound learning, and it is astonishing that one
+so constantly occupied with the duties of an engrossing profession
+should have found the time for such close and thorough general reading.
+
+He was a sincere and earnest Christian, and held the Bible in the
+highest veneration. He wrote an able defense of the use of it as a
+school-book, and for many years was vice-president of the Philadelphia
+Bible Society, which he helped to establish, and the constitution of
+which he drafted. He held skepticism and atheism in the deepest
+abhorrence, and in his own life affords a powerful refutation of the
+assertion one hears so often, that profound medical knowledge is apt to
+make men infidels.
+
+He died in Philadelphia on the 19th of April, 1813, at the good old age
+of sixty-eight, leaving a son who was destined to render additional
+luster to his name by achieving the highest distinction as a statesman.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+
+VALENTINE MOTT.
+
+
+Valentine Mott was born at Glen Cove, on Long Island, on the 20th of
+August, 1785. His father, Dr. Henry Mott, was an eminent practitioner in
+the city of New York, where he died in 1840, at the age of eighty-three.
+Valentine Mott was carefully educated by private tutors until he reached
+the age of nineteen, when he entered Columbia College, New York, as a
+medical student, and at the same time became a private medical pupil of
+his kinsman, Dr. Valentine Seaman. At the age of twenty-one he graduated
+with the degree of M.D.; but feeling that he had not acquired as good a
+medical education as the schools of the Old World could afford, he
+sailed for Europe in 1806, within a few weeks after his graduation at
+Columbia College. Proceeding to London, he was for more than a year a
+regular attendant upon St. Thomas', Bartholomew's, and Guy's hospitals,
+where he conducted his clinical studies under the direction of
+Abernethy, Sir Charles Bell, and Sir Astley Cooper. He chose Sir Astley
+Cooper as his private instructor, and became one of his favorite pupils;
+and also attended the lectures of Currie and Haighton. From London he
+went to Edinburgh, where he attended the lectures of Hope, Playfair, and
+Gregory, as well as the prelections of Dugald Stewart. From Edinburgh
+he went to Paris, and completed his studies in the great hospitals of
+that city.
+
+He gave evidence at an early day of his great surgical abilities. He was
+indeed a born surgeon, possessing in a remarkable degree that peculiar
+adaptation to this branch of his profession, without which no amount of
+study can make a great operator. While a student in the Old World, he
+performed leading operations with a skill and natural readiness which
+astonished his instructors as much as they delighted them. He was
+possessed of a firmness and dexterity of hand, a calm, cool brain, a
+quick, unfailing eye, a calmness of nerve, a strength of will, and a
+physical endurance which were Nature's gifts to him, and which rendered
+him a great surgeon even before he had received his diploma. He did not
+trust to these natural gifts alone, however, but applied himself to the
+theory of his profession with a determination and eagerness which
+nothing could daunt. He was an enthusiast in his studies, and soon
+became known as the most profoundly-learned _young_ physician of his
+day. As he advanced in life, he maintained his reputation, keeping up
+his studies to the last. The great men under whom he studied abroad were
+delighted with him, and Sir Astley Cooper was loud in his praise. He
+exhibited so much skill as an operator that he was often called upon to
+perform operations which the professors would never have dreamed of
+intrusting to any one else, and he went through each trial of this kind
+with a readiness and precision which few even of his instructors
+excelled.
+
+His reputation was unusually flattering to one who had not yet entered
+upon the practice of his profession, and upon his return to the United
+States, in 1809, he was met with an offer of the chair of surgery in
+Columbia College, his _alma mater_. He promptly accepted the position,
+and held it until 1813, when the medical department of Columbia College
+was merged in the College of Physicians and Surgeons. He was at once
+called to the same chair in the new college, and occupied it until 1826.
+In that year he resigned his place in the faculty, in consequence of a
+misunderstanding between the professors and the trustees of the college
+on the principles of college government. Withdrawing entirely from the
+school, he united with Drs. Hosack, Mitchell, Francis, and several
+others, in founding the Rutgers Medical College. This college, after a
+short career of four years, was compelled by the Legislature to
+discontinue its operations, in consequence of an alleged invalidity in
+its charter.
+
+In 1830, Dr. Mott returned to the College of Physicians and Surgeons as
+Professor of Surgery, and in 1840 he became President of the Faculty and
+Professor of Surgery and Relative Anatomy in the new University Medical
+School. The science of Relative Anatomy is of the highest importance to
+the surgeon, and of this science Dr. Mott is generally regarded as the
+author. He held his position in the University for twenty years, and in
+1860, after a period of fifty years spent in the active duties of his
+professorship, retired from the immediate discharge of them, and was
+made Professor Emeritus, in which capacity he occasionally lectured to
+the classes during each of the remaining years of his life.
+
+As a professor and teacher of surgical science Dr. Mott won a brilliant
+reputation, and was considered one of the most thoroughly successful
+instructors in the Union. He had the power of winning the attention of
+his pupils at the opening of his lectures and of retaining it until the
+close. He made even the most difficult operations so clear and simple in
+his lectures that the dullest intellects could comprehend them; and his
+system of practical demonstration of his subjects was vastly superior
+to any thing that had ever been seen in America. He was the first to
+introduce into this country the system of delivering clinical lectures,
+or lectures at the bedside of the patient, whose ailments were operated
+upon during the course of his remarks. This system is naturally the most
+repugnant to the patient, but its advantages to the student are so great
+that they outweigh all other considerations. Other professors had shrunk
+from subjecting their patients to such an ordeal, but Dr. Mott had seen
+enough, during his attendance upon such lectures abroad, to satisfy him
+that it was the only method by which a thorough knowledge of the
+profession of surgery could be imparted, and immediately upon
+establishing himself in this country he introduced it. He met with
+opposition at first, but he gradually overcame it, and made the
+advantages of his system so apparent to all that at length the
+opposition entirely ceased.
+
+The greatest difficulty to which American medical schools have always
+been subject has been the almost utter impossibility of procuring dead
+bodies for dissection. It was this want that compelled Dr. Mott, as it
+has compelled so many others, to seek a practical education in Europe;
+and when he came back to the college as professor, he was met by the
+same drawback to thorough instruction. The law forbade the taking of
+dead bodies for dissection, under severe penalties. If a student was
+ever found in possession of a limb, he was liable to fine and
+imprisonment; and popular sentiment was so strong against the practice
+of dissection that those who engaged in it ran serious risk of incurring
+violence at the hands of the mob. Dr. Mott was often driven to desperate
+expedients in the procuring of subjects. He was fond of relating one of
+his adventures of this kind, which will show the reader how he was
+enabled to carry on his lectures.
+
+It was in the winter of 1815, and it had been found impossible to
+procure a supply of subjects for the season. They could not be obtained
+at any price, and it was evident that if any were to be had, the doctor
+and his pupils would have to take the matter in their own hands. There
+was a grave-yard just outside the city, in which a number of interments
+had recently been made, and the doctor resolved upon securing these
+bodies for his dissecting-room. It was a dangerous undertaking, as
+discovery would subject all engaged in it to the direst penalties of the
+law, if, indeed, they should be lucky enough to escape being lynched by
+the people. In spite of the dangers, however, the students volunteered
+to assist the doctor in the attempt, and at an appointed time proceeded
+to the cemetery, properly disguised, and began the removal of the bodies
+from the graves. The night was intensely dark, and the wind was high,
+both of which circumstances favored their undertaking, but every sound,
+every snapping of a twig or rustling of a leaf caused them to start with
+alarm and gaze anxiously into the darkness. It was near midnight when
+they had finished their task, and, this done, they waited in anxious
+silence for the arrival of the means of removing their prey. Their
+movements had been accurately timed, and they had scarcely completed
+their labors when a cart, driven by a man dressed in the rough clothing
+of a laborer, approached the cemetery at a rapid pace. Signals were
+exchanged between the driver and the students, and the latter fell to
+work to place the bodies, eleven in number, in the cart. Having
+accomplished this, they covered them over in such a manner as to make it
+appear that the cart was loaded with country produce, bound for the city
+markets. When every thing was properly arranged, the students
+disappeared in the darkness, each seeking the means by which he had come
+out from the city, and the driver, turning his cart about, drove off
+rapidly in the direction of New York. It was a long ride, and to an
+imaginative man, carrying eleven dead bodies that had been torn from
+their quiet graves through the darkness of that winter night would have
+been a terrible undertaking. But this man was not imaginative, and,
+besides this, he was keenly alive to the tremendous consequences of
+discovery. He knew that he was carrying his life in his hand, and that
+he needed all the coolness and decision of which he was master. Reaching
+the city long after midnight, he drove rapidly down Broadway and turned
+into Barclay Street. The lights of the college shone out brightly, and
+they had never seemed so welcome as then. The cart was driven rapidly to
+the college entrance, where the students were in readiness to receive
+it. In a few moments the bodies were removed from the cart and conveyed
+to the dissecting-room, and the cart turned over to its owner. The
+driver accompanied the students to the dissecting-room, and, throwing
+off his disguise, revealed the handsome but excited and eager
+countenance of Dr. Mott. He had shared the dangers to which his pupils
+had subjected themselves, and had even borne the part in the enterprise
+attended with the greatest risk. The affair had succeeded admirably, a
+winter's supply of "subjects" had been obtained, and after this the
+lectures went on without interruption.
+
+"A story is told of his readiness in the lecture-room. A mother brought
+into the amphitheater, one morning, an extremely dirty, sickly,
+miserable-looking child, for the purpose of having a tumor removed. He
+exhibited the tumor to the class, but informed the mother that he could
+not operate upon the child without the consent of her husband. One of
+the students, in his eagerness to examine the tumor, jumped over into
+the little inclosure designed for the operator and his patients. Dr.
+Mott, observing this intrusion, turned to the student and asked him,
+with the most innocent expression of countenance: 'Are you the father of
+this child?' Thunders of applause and laughter greeted this ingenious
+rebuke, during which the intruder returned to his place crestfallen."
+
+He was equally as successful in his private practice as in his labors in
+the medical school. His brilliant reputation preceded him in his return
+to his native country, and immediately upon opening his office in New
+York he entered upon a large and lucrative practice. His skill as a
+surgeon was in constant demand, and it is said that during his long
+career he tied the common carotid artery forty-six times, cut for stone
+one hundred and sixty-five times, and amputated nearly one thousand
+limbs. His old preceptor, Sir Astley Cooper, proud of the distinction
+won by his favorite pupil, said of him exultingly: "He has performed
+more of the great operations than any man living, or that ever did
+live."
+
+When he was but thirty-three years old (in 1818) he placed a ligature
+around the bracheo-cephalic trunk or arteria innominata, within two
+inches of the heart, for aneurism of the right subclavian artery. This
+was the first time this wonderful operation had ever been performed, and
+the skill and success with which he accomplished it stamped him as one
+of the brightest lights of his profession. "The patient survived the
+operation twenty-eight days, and thus demonstrated the feasibility of
+this hazardous and thus far unparalleled undertaking. He discovered in
+this case that, though all supply of blood to the blood-vessels of the
+right arm was apparently cut off, the circulation was kept up by the
+interosculating blood-vessels, the pulsation at the wrist maintained,
+and no evidence of loss of vitality or warmth manifested in the limb.
+The patient finally died from secondary hemorrhage."
+
+In 1828 he performed successfully the most difficult and dangerous
+operation known to surgery. A clergyman called upon him to remove an
+enormous tumor in the neck, in which were imbedded and twisted many of
+the great arteries. In this operation it became necessary to take out
+entire the right clavicle or collar bone, to lay bare the membrane which
+surrounds the lungs, to search for and dissect around the arteries which
+ran through the tumor, to make forty ligatures, and to remove an immense
+mass of diseased matter. This terrible operation had never been
+attempted before, and was performed by Dr. Mott without the aid of
+chloroform; yet it was done so skillfully that the patient survived it,
+and in 1865 was still living and discharging his ministerial duties. It
+was thirty years before it was attempted again in any part of the world.
+It was a great triumph of the genius of the operator, and won him
+praises from men of science in all countries.
+
+In 1821 "he performed the first operation for osteo-sarcoma of the lower
+jaw. In 1822 he introduced his original operation for immobility of the
+lower jaw. He was the first surgeon who removed the lower jaw for
+necrosis, and the first to tie successfully the primitive iliac artery
+for aneurism. Other of his original operations were cutting out two
+inches of the deep jugular vein, inseparably imbedded in a tumor, and
+tying both ends of the vein, and closing, with a fine ligature, wounds
+of large veins of a longitudinal or transverse kind, even where an
+olive-sliced piece had been cut out."
+
+It was invariably his practice before attempting an operation on a
+living subject to perform it on a dead body, and by the most minute and
+patient examination to render himself absolute master of the anatomy of
+the parts to be operated upon. He was a thoroughly conscientious man in
+the exercise of his profession, and was always on his guard to resist
+that greatest danger of the skillful surgeon--the temptation to use the
+knife needlessly. It was his practice to investigate his cases
+thoroughly, and never to use the knife unless his judgment was satisfied
+that an operation was necessary. "That he decided in favor of operating
+when some of his associates hesitated, was due rather to his large
+experience than to an overweening fondness for the use of the knife." In
+his operations he was firm and decided. Gifted with an unusual
+steadiness of nerve and strength of muscle, he never allowed his
+sympathy for the patient to cause him to hesitate or inflict one pang
+less than the case required. He was prompt and ready in the event of
+unforeseen complications, and never permitted any thing to take him by
+surprise. His manner toward his patients was tender and sympathizing to
+a remarkable degree, and his brother surgeons used to say of him, that
+he seemed to have the power of cutting with less pain to the patient
+than was possessed by most operators. During forty years of his practice
+anæsthetics were unknown, and he had to operate with the full
+consciousness that his patient was suffering the keenest agony. Besides
+attaining such an exalted position as a surgeon, Dr. Mott won an
+enviable reputation as a physician. His practice was confined almost
+entirely to the best class of the people of New York, and he was for
+many years the favorite accoucheur in a large circle of families in that
+city.
+
+He was an eminently progressive man. He fully recognized the advance of
+science with the growth of the world, and was always prompt to welcome
+any valuable discovery in medicine or surgery. He was among the first to
+adopt and advocate the use of anæsthetics, for no man had had more cause
+to understand the necessity of such assistants. He was himself the
+inventor of many valuable surgical instruments, but he gladly welcomed
+the introduction of others, even though they superseded his own in use.
+To the close of his life he was a diligent student, and watched the
+progress of his science with a keen and intelligent eye. He was the
+author of several works of merit, including a volume of travels, and the
+translator of "Velpau's Operative Surgery," to which he made extensive
+and valuable additions and annotations. He received numerous literary
+and scientific honors from colleges, universities, and learned bodies in
+the United States and Europe.
+
+In 1835 he visited Europe for the purpose of resting from his arduous
+labors, and spent several years in traveling extensively in England, on
+the continent, and in the East. His great achievements had made him as
+famous in the Old World as at home, and he was received wherever he went
+with great distinction. He was cordially welcomed by the most eminent
+surgeons of Paris, and Louis Philippe conceived a warm friendship for
+him. During his visit to Constantinople, he was called upon to attend
+professionally the reigning Sultan Abdul Medjid, who was suffering from
+a tumor in the head. Dr. Mott successfully removed this tumor, and was
+afterwards invested by the Sultan with the order of Knight of
+Medjidechi, of Constantinople.
+
+During his visit to Paris, a circumstance occurred which he related upon
+his return home, and which will serve to show the extremes to which
+professional skill and vanity will sometimes carry men. One of the most
+eminent surgeons in Paris asked him if he would like to see him perform
+his original operation. Dr. Mott replied that nothing would give him
+more pleasure. "Then you shall see it to-morrow," said the Frenchman.
+"But stay," he added, "now I think of it, there is no patient in the
+hospital who has that malady. No matter, my dear friend, there is a poor
+devil in ward No. ---- who is of no use to himself or any body else, and
+if you'll come to-morrow, I'll operate beautifully on him." Dr. Mott at
+once declined to attend the operation or to countenance in any way so
+horrible an outrage.
+
+In person Dr. Mott was a thorough gentleman of the old school. He was an
+exceedingly handsome man, and was possessed of an erect and
+well-developed figure. His hair was as white as snow, and his dress,
+which consisted of a simple suit of spotless black, with linen of
+matchless purity, was in the most perfect taste. He was grave and
+dignified in his deportment, and polished and courteous in every action.
+Even in his most difficult and trying operations the services of the
+assistants were always promptly acknowledged with scrupulous politeness.
+He was possessed of many friends, and was regarded with pride and
+veneration by his profession throughout the world.
+
+During the last winter of his life he had lectured once or twice at the
+Medical School, and had performed several operations of importance in
+his private practice. Although nearly eighty, he was still erect and
+vigorous, and was far from considering himself too old for his work.
+
+On the morning of the 15th of April, 1865, he sent for his barber, as
+was his custom, and submitted himself to the hands of the man who had
+been his attendant in this capacity for years. He was sitting in his
+dressing-room, and, being in fine spirits, began conversing with the
+barber, who, during the conversation, asked him if he had heard the
+terrible news of the day.
+
+"What is the news?" asked the doctor.
+
+"President Lincoln was killed last night at the theater in Washington,"
+was the reply.
+
+The doctor turned as pale as death, and, trembling violently, motioned
+the barber aside, and tottered into the chamber adjoining, in which his
+wife was dressing.
+
+"My dear," he gasped, scarcely able to speak, "I have received such a
+shock. President Lincoln has been murdered."
+
+[Illustration: "PRESIDENT LINCOLN HAS BEEN MURDERED!"]
+
+His agitation had now become so great that he could say no more. He sank
+down into a chair, pale and trembling, and so feeble that he could
+scarcely sit up. He was seized in a short time with acute pains in the
+back, and at the same time his vigor seemed to desert him entirely, and
+he became a weak and broken old man. He was obliged to seek his bed,
+from which he never rose. He grew feebler every day, and died on the
+26th of April, 1865.
+
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GREAT FORTUNES, AND HOW THEY WERE
+MADE***
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+<body>
+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made, by
+James D. McCabe, Jr., Illustrated by G. F. and E. B. Bensell</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made</p>
+<p>Author: James D. McCabe, Jr.</p>
+<p>Release Date: February 24, 2005  [eBook #15161]</p>
+<p>Language: english</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GREAT FORTUNES, AND HOW THEY WERE MADE***</p>
+<br><br><h3>E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Dave Macfarlane,<br>
+            and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team</h3><br><br>
+<hr class="full" noshade>
+    <br>
+
+
+    <div class="full">
+        <a name='illust6801'></a>
+        <a href='images/6801.jpg'><img src='images/6801.jpg'
+                width='650' border=0
+                alt=
+                'CONSTERNATION AT THE SIGHT OF FULTON&#39;S MONSTER.'></a><br>
+         CONSTERNATION AT THE SIGHT OF FULTON'S MONSTER.
+    </div><br>
+     <br>
+     <br>
+
+
+    <h1>GREAT FORTUNES,</h1>
+
+    <h4>AND</h4>
+
+    <h2>HOW THEY WERE MADE;</h2>
+
+    <h4>OR THE</h4>
+
+    <h2><i>Struggles and Triumphs of our Self-Made Men</i>.</h2>
+
+    <h3>BY</h3>
+
+    <h2><span class="small-caps">JAMES D. McCABE, Jr</span>.,</h2>
+
+    <h3>AUTHOR OF "PLANTING THE WILDERNESS," ETC., ETC.</h3>
+
+    <h3><i>Numerous Illustrations</i>,</h3>
+
+    <h4>FROM ORIGINAL DESIGNS BY G.F. &amp; E.B. BENSELL.</h4>
+    <hr style='width: 45%;'>
+
+    <p class="center">"<span class="small-caps">Man</span>,
+    it is not thy works, which are mortal,
+    infinitely little, and the greatest no greater than the least,
+    but only the <i>spirit thou workest in</i>, that can have worth
+    or continuance."&mdash;<span class="small-caps">Carlyle</span>.</p>
+    <hr style='width: 45%;'>
+
+    <h3>GEORGE MACLEAN,</h3>
+
+    <h4>PHILADELPHIA, NEW YORK AND BOSTON.<br>
+     1871.</h4>
+    <hr style='width: 45%;'>
+
+    <h4>Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870,
+    by</h4>
+
+    <h3>E. HANNAFORD &amp; CO.,</h3>
+
+    <h4>In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington,
+    D.C.</h4>
+    <hr style='width: 45%;'>
+
+    <h5>ELECTROTYPED AT THE FRANKLIN TYPE FOUNDRY, CINCINNATI.</h5>
+    <hr style='width: 65%;'>
+    <br>
+     <br>
+
+
+    <p class='blkquot'>"The physical industries of this world have
+    two relations in them: one to the actor, and one to the public.
+    Honest business is more really a contribution to the public
+    than it is to the manager of the business himself. Although it
+    seems to the man, and generally to the community, that the
+    active business man is a self-seeker, and although his motive
+    may be self-aggrandizement, yet, in point of fact, no man ever
+    manages a legitimate business in this life, that he is not
+    doing a thousand-fold more for other men than he is trying to
+    do even for himself. For, in the economy of God's providence,
+    every right and well organized business is a beneficence and
+    not a selfishness. And not less is it so because the merchant,
+    the mechanic, the publisher, the artist, think merely of their
+    profit. They are in fact working more for others than they are
+    for themselves."</p><br>
+
+
+    <p class="author">HENRY WARD BEECHER.</p>
+    <hr style='width: 65%;'>
+    <a name='PREFACE'></a>
+
+    <h2>PREFACE.</h2><br>
+
+
+    <p>The chief glory of America is, that it is the country in
+    which genius and industry find their speediest and surest
+    reward. Fame and fortune are here open to all who are willing
+    to work for them. Neither class distinctions nor social
+    prejudices, neither differences of birth, religion, nor ideas,
+    can prevent the man of true merit from winning the just reward
+    of his labors in this favored land. We are emphatically a
+    nation of self-made men, and it is to the labors of this worthy
+    class that our marvelous national prosperity is due.</p>
+
+    <p>This being the case, it is but natural that there should be
+    manifested by our people a very decided desire to know the
+    history of those who have risen to the front rank of their
+    respective callings. Men are naturally cheered and encouraged
+    by the success of others, and those who are worthy of a similar
+    reward will not fail to learn valuable lessons from the
+    examples of the men who have preceded them.</p>
+
+    <p>With the hope of gratifying this laudable desire for
+    information, and encouraging those who are still struggling in
+    the lists of fame and fortune, I offer this book to the reader.
+    I have sought to tell simply and truthfully the story of the
+    trials and triumphs of our self-made men, to show how they
+    overcame where others failed, and to offer the record of their
+    lives as models worthy of the imitation of the young men of our
+    country. No one can hope to succeed in life merely by the force
+    of his own genius, any more than he can hope to live without
+    exerting some degree of influence for good or evil upon the
+    community in which his lot is cast. Success in life is not the
+    effect of accident or of chance: it is the result of the
+    intelligent application of certain fixed principles to the
+    affairs of every day. Each man must make this application
+    according to the circumstances by which he is surrounded, and
+    he can derive no greater assistance or encouragement in this
+    undertaking than by informing himself how other men of
+    acknowledged merit have succeeded in the same departments of
+    the world's industry. That this is true is shown by the fact
+    that many of the most eminent men attribute their great
+    achievements to the encouragement with which the perusal of the
+    biographies of others inspired them at critical periods of
+    their careers. It is believed that the narrations embraced in
+    these pages afford ample instruction and entertainment to the
+    young, as well as food for earnest reflection on the part of
+    those who are safely advanced upon their pathway to success,
+    and that they will prove interesting to all classes of
+    intelligent readers.</p>
+
+    <p>Some explanation is due to the reader respecting the title
+    that has been chosen for the work. The term "Great Fortunes" is
+    not used here to designate pecuniary success exclusively. A few
+    of the men whose lives are herein recorded never amassed great
+    wealth. Yet they achieved the highest success in their
+    vocations, and their lives are so full of interest and
+    instruction that this work must have been incomplete and
+    unsatisfactory had they been passed over in silence. The aim of
+    the writer has been to present the histories of those who have
+    won the highest fame and achieved the greatest good in their
+    respective callings, whether that success has brought them
+    riches or not, and above all, of those whose labors have not
+    only opened the way to fortune for themselves, but also for
+    others, and have thus conferred lasting benefits upon their
+    country.</p>
+
+    <p>In short, I have sought to make this work the story of the
+    <i>Genius of America</i>, believing as I do that he whose
+    achievements have contributed to the increase of the national
+    wealth, the development of the national resources, and the
+    elevation of the national character, though he himself be poor
+    in purse, has indeed won a great fortune, of which no reverse
+    can ever deprive him.</p>
+
+    <p class="author">J.D. McC., Jr.</p>
+
+    <p><span class="small-caps">New York</span>, <i>24th October,
+    1870</i>.</p><br>
+     <br>
+
+
+    <h3>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.</h3>
+    <hr>
+    <div class="illus">
+        <p><a href="#illust6801">Consternation At Sight Of Fulton's
+        Monster. <i>Frontispiece</i>.</a></p>
+
+        <p><a href='#illust6821'>Girard College</a></p>
+
+        <p><a href='#illust6841'>Girard's Heroism</a></p>
+
+        <p><a href='#illust6861'>Astor's First Trip For
+        Furs</a></p>
+
+        <p><a href='#illust6881'>"My Men Shall Not Suffer"</a></p>
+
+        <p><a href='#illust6901'>Portrait Of George Peabody</a></p>
+
+        <p><a href='#illust6921'>Peabody Paying For A Night's
+        Lodging</a></p>
+
+        <p><a href='#illust6941'>Portrait Of Cornelius
+        Vanderbilt</a></p>
+
+        <p><a href='#illust6961'>Vanderbilt Earning His First
+        Hundred Dollars</a></p>
+
+        <p><a href='#illust6981'>Vanderbilt Carrying Off The
+        Sheriff</a></p>
+
+        <p><a href='#illust7001'>Founding A Great Fortune</a></p>
+
+        <p><a href='#illust7021'>Portrait Of Robert Fulton</a></p>
+
+        <p><a href='#illust7041'>An Amazing Revelation</a></p>
+
+        <p><a href='#illust7061'>"The Madhouse Is The Proper Place
+        For Him"</a></p>
+
+        <p><a href='#illust7081'>Whitney Watching The First
+        Cotton-Gin</a></p>
+
+        <p><a href='#illust7101'>Portrait Of Elias Howe,
+        Jr.</a></p>
+
+        <p><a href='#illust7121'>Howe's First Idea Of The
+        Sewing-Machine</a></p>
+
+        <p><a href='#illust7141'>The Boy Colt Inventing The
+        Revolver</a></p>
+
+        <p><a href='#illust7161'>Portrait Of Samuel F.B.
+        Morse</a></p>
+
+        <p><a href='#illust7181'>How The New York Herald
+        Began</a></p>
+
+        <p><a href='#illust7201'>Marshall's Defence Of
+        Christianity</a></p>
+
+        <p><a href='#illust7221'>Portrait Of James T. Brady</a></p>
+
+        <p><a href='#illust7241'>"They Are Going To Hang My
+        Brother; You Can Save Him!"</a></p>
+
+        <p><a href='#illust7261'>The Truant's Secret
+        Discovered</a></p>
+
+        <p><a href='#illust7281'>Portrait Of Hiram Powers</a></p>
+
+        <p><a href='#illust7301'>Powers' Distrust Of The
+        Hunters</a></p>
+
+        <p><a href='#illust7321'>Filial Devotion Shapes A Great
+        Career</a></p>
+
+        <p><a href='#illust7341'>Cartwright Calling Up The
+        Devil</a></p>
+
+        <p><a href='#illust7361'>Portrait Of Nathaniel
+        Hawthorne</a></p>
+
+        <p><a href='#illust7381'>Jefferson, As Rip Van
+        Winkle</a></p>
+
+        <p><a href='#illust7401'>Prescribing At The
+        Breakfast-Table</a></p>
+
+        <p><a href='#illust7421'>"President Lincoln Has Been
+        Murdered!"</a></p>
+    </div><br>
+     <br>
+     <br>
+
+    <h2>CONTENTS.</h2>
+    <hr>
+    <h2><a href='#merchants'>I. MERCHANTS.</a></h2><br>
+
+    <hr>
+    <h3><a href='#CHAPTER_I'>CHAPTER I.</a></h3><br>
+
+
+    <h3>STEPHEN GIRARD.</h3>
+
+    <p>The fog in the Delaware&mdash;News of the war&mdash;Alarm of
+    the French skipper&mdash;A narrow escape from
+    capture&mdash;Arrival of Girard in Philadelphia&mdash;Early
+    history of Stephen Girard&mdash;An unhappy childhood&mdash;Goes
+    to sea&mdash;Is licensed to command&mdash;Becomes a trader in
+    Philadelphia&mdash;Marries Mary Lum&mdash;Unfortunate issue of
+    the marriage&mdash;Capture of Philadelphia by the
+    British&mdash;Early commercial life of Stephen Girard&mdash;How
+    he earned his first money, and the use he made of it&mdash;Aid
+    from St. Domingo&mdash;His rigid attention to
+    business&mdash;Thoroughness of his knowledge&mdash;One of his
+    letters of instructions&mdash;His subordinates required to obey
+    orders though they ruin him&mdash;Anecdote of Girard and one of
+    his captains&mdash;His promptness and fidelity in
+    business&mdash;He never breaks his word&mdash;How he lost five
+    hundred dollars&mdash;Buys the old Bank of the United States
+    and becomes a banker&mdash;Cuts down the salaries of his
+    clerks&mdash;Refuses his watchman an
+    overcoat&mdash;Indifference to his
+    employ&eacute;s&mdash;Contrast between his personal and
+    business habits&mdash;His liberality in financial
+    operations&mdash;He subscribes for the entire Government loan
+    in 1814, and enables the United States to carry on the
+    war&mdash;His generosity toward the Government&mdash;The
+    suspension of specie payments&mdash;Financial
+    troubles&mdash;How Girard saved his own notes&mdash;His public
+    spirit&mdash;How he made half a million of dollars on a
+    captured ship&mdash;Personal characteristics&mdash;Why he
+    valued money&mdash;His ambition&mdash;His
+    infidelity&mdash;Causes of the defects of his character&mdash;A
+    favorable view&mdash;Heroic conduct of Stephen Girard during
+    the prevalence of the yellow fever in Philadelphia&mdash;The
+    Good Samaritan&mdash;He practices medicine, and congratulates
+    himself that he has killed none of his patients&mdash;His
+    industry&mdash;Visit of Mr. Baring to Mr. Girard&mdash;A
+    curious reception&mdash;Failing health and death of Stephen
+    Girard&mdash;His will&mdash;His noble
+    bequests&mdash;Establishment of Girard College.</p><br>
+
+
+    <h3><a href='#CHAPTER_II'>CHAPTER II.</a></h3><br>
+
+
+    <h3>JOHN JACOB ASTOR.</h3>
+
+    <p>Legitimate business the field of success&mdash;Reasons for
+    claiming Astor as an American&mdash;Birth and early
+    life&mdash;Religious training&mdash;The village of
+    Waldorf&mdash;Poverty&mdash;The jolly butcher&mdash;Young
+    Astor's repugnance to his father's trade&mdash;Unhappy at
+    home&mdash;Loses his mother&mdash;His desire to emigrate to the
+    "New Land"&mdash;Leaves home&mdash;His voyage down the
+    Rhine&mdash;Reaches London and enters the service of his
+    brother&mdash;His efforts to prepare for
+    emigration&mdash;Learns to speak English&mdash;Peace between
+    the United States and Great Britain&mdash;The road to the "New
+    Land" open&mdash;Astor sets out for America&mdash;His first
+    ventures in commerce&mdash;The voyage&mdash;How he proposed to
+    save his Sunday clothes&mdash;Arrival in the
+    Chesapeake&mdash;The ice-blockade&mdash;Astor makes a
+    friend&mdash;The fur trader's story&mdash;Astor sees the way to
+    fortune&mdash;Reaches New York&mdash;His first
+    situation&mdash;Learning the business&mdash;His method of
+    proceeding&mdash;An example to young men&mdash;His capacity for
+    business operations&mdash;He is promoted&mdash;His journeys to
+    Canada, and their results&mdash;Sets up in business for
+    himself&mdash;The fur trade of North America&mdash;A survey of
+    the field of Astor's operations&mdash;His capital&mdash;His
+    tramps into the wilderness in search of furs&mdash;Predictions
+    as to the future settlement of the country&mdash;His first
+    consignment to England&mdash;His marriage&mdash;A good
+    wife&mdash;Improvement in his prospects&mdash;Buys his first
+    ship&mdash;The secret of his success&mdash;Close attention to
+    business&mdash;His economical habits&mdash;His indorsement
+    disputed by a bank clerk&mdash;Statements of the profits on
+    furs&mdash;He engages in the Chinese trade&mdash;How the
+    Government aided the early China traders&mdash;Amount made by
+    Astor in his legitimate business&mdash;His real estate
+    operations&mdash;His foresight and courage&mdash;How eight
+    thousand dollars yielded eighty thousand&mdash;His real estate
+    in the City of New York&mdash;Purchases the half of Putnam
+    County&mdash;The Roger and Mary Morris estate
+    controversy&mdash;Astor wins his suit, and makes half a million
+    of dollars&mdash;Astor's scheme of colonization&mdash;A grand
+    enterprise&mdash;Settlement of Astoria&mdash;Betrayed by his
+    agents, and the scheme brought to failure&mdash;Astor withdraws
+    from active business&mdash;His boyhood's vow and its
+    fulfillment&mdash;Builds the Astor House&mdash;His voyage to
+    Europe&mdash;The return&mdash;The troubles of a
+    millionaire&mdash;The great man seasick&mdash;A curious
+    draft&mdash;The last years of his life&mdash;His fondness for
+    literary men&mdash;His death and burial&mdash;His
+    will&mdash;Opposite views of his character&mdash;How his
+    refusal to buy a chronometer cost him seventy thousand
+    dollars&mdash;He remembers an old friend&mdash;His gift of a
+    lease&mdash;His humor&mdash;"William has a rich
+    father."</p><br>
+
+
+    <h3><a href='#CHAPTER_III'>CHAPTER III.</a></h3><br>
+
+
+    <h3>ALEXANDER T. STEWART.</h3>
+
+    <p>Birth and early life&mdash;Becomes his grandfather's
+    ward&mdash;Designed for the ministry&mdash;A change in his
+    plans&mdash;Comes to America&mdash;Teaches school in New
+    York&mdash;Becomes a dry goods merchant&mdash;Receives a
+    legacy&mdash;His first importation&mdash;How he began
+    business&mdash;An energetic trader&mdash;His sample lots and
+    their history&mdash;Success of his enterprise&mdash;He begins
+    by encouraging honesty in trade&mdash;Wins a name for
+    reliability&mdash;The system of selling at one
+    price&mdash;Inaugurates the "selling off at cost"
+    feature&mdash;His courage in business&mdash;How he raised the
+    money to meet his note&mdash;Improvement in his
+    business&mdash;He enlarges his store&mdash;As an inducement to
+    the ladies, employs for clerks handsome young men&mdash;The
+    crisis of 1837&mdash;Stewart comes out of it a rich
+    man&mdash;How he did so&mdash;Builds his lower
+    store&mdash;Predictions of failure&mdash;The
+    result&mdash;Compels the Government to purchase goods from
+    him&mdash;His foresight and liberality&mdash;Charged with
+    superstition&mdash;Lucky and unlucky persons&mdash;Story of the
+    old apple woman&mdash;Remarks at the opening of the St.
+    Nicholas Hotel&mdash;Reasons of Stewart's success&mdash;A hard
+    worker&mdash;How he receives visitors&mdash;Running the
+    gauntlet&mdash;How he gets rid of troublesome
+    persons&mdash;Estimate of Mr. Stewart's real estate in New
+    York&mdash;His new residence&mdash;His benevolence&mdash;Aid
+    for Ireland, and free passages to America&mdash;Home for
+    women&mdash;Political sentiments&mdash;Mr. Stewart's
+    appointment as Secretary of the Treasury&mdash;Feeling of the
+    country&mdash;The retail store of A.T. Stewart &amp;
+    Co.&mdash;A palace of glass and iron&mdash;Internal
+    arrangements&mdash;The managers and salesmen&mdash;List of
+    sales&mdash;Wages given&mdash;Visitors&mdash;The principal
+    salesroom&mdash;The parcel department&mdash;The wagons and
+    stables&mdash;Extravagant purchases&mdash;Mr. Stewart's
+    supervision of the upper store&mdash;The system of
+    buying&mdash;The foreign agencies&mdash;Statement of the duties
+    paid each day&mdash;Personal appearance of Mr. Stewart.</p><br>
+
+
+    <h3><a href='#CHAPTER_IV'>CHAPTER IV.</a></h3><br>
+
+
+    <h3>AMOS LAWRENCE.</h3>
+
+    <p>The Lawrence family&mdash;A poor boy&mdash;Early
+    education&mdash;Delicate health&mdash;Obtains a situation at
+    Dunstable&mdash;Returns to Groton&mdash;Becomes Mr. Brazer's
+    apprentice&mdash;The variety store&mdash;An amateur
+    doctor&mdash;Importance of Groton in "old
+    times"&mdash;Responsibility of young Lawrence&mdash;Is put in
+    charge of the business&mdash;High character&mdash;Drunkenness
+    the curse of New England&mdash;Lawrence resolves to abstain
+    from liquors and tobacco&mdash;His self-command&mdash;Completes
+    his apprenticeship&mdash;Visits Boston&mdash;An unexpected
+    offer&mdash;Enters into business in Boston&mdash;Is offered a
+    partnership, but declines it&mdash;His sagacity
+    justified&mdash;Begins business for himself&mdash;Commercial
+    importance of Boston&mdash;Aid from his father&mdash;A narrow
+    escape&mdash;lesson for life&mdash;Amos Lawrence's method of
+    doing business&mdash;-An example for young men&mdash;His
+    business habits&mdash;He leaves nothing unfinished over
+    Sunday&mdash;Avoids speculation&mdash;His views upon the
+    subject&mdash;Introduces double entry in book-keeping into
+    Boston&mdash;His liberality to his debtors&mdash;Does not allow
+    his business to master him&mdash;Property gained by some kinds
+    of sacrifices not worth having&mdash;Forms a partnership with
+    his brother Abbott&mdash;Business of the firm&mdash;They engage
+    in manufactures&mdash;Safe business principles&mdash;A noble
+    letter&mdash;Political opinions&mdash;His
+    charities&mdash;Statement of his donations&mdash;Requests that
+    no public acknowledgment of his gifts be made&mdash;Character
+    as a merchant and a man&mdash;Advice to his son&mdash;His
+    religious character&mdash;Loss of his health&mdash;His patience
+    and resignation&mdash;The model American merchant.</p><br>
+
+
+    <h3><a href='#CHAPTER_V'>CHAPTER V.</a></h3><br>
+
+
+    <h3>ANDREW V. STOUT.</h3>
+
+    <p>Early struggles&mdash;Acquires an education&mdash;Undertakes
+    the support of his family&mdash;The boy teacher&mdash;Hard
+    work&mdash;Is made instructor of Latin&mdash;A trying
+    position&mdash;How he conquered his difficulties&mdash;Is made
+    principal of a public school&mdash;His first business
+    ventures&mdash;Engages in the building of houses&mdash;His
+    platform of integrity&mdash;His success&mdash;A great
+    mistake&mdash;He indorses a note&mdash;The consequence of a
+    false step&mdash;Liberal action of the bank&mdash;Mr. Stout
+    resolves to accept no accommodation&mdash;Pays the notes, and
+    loses twenty-three thousand dollars&mdash;Establishes himself
+    as a wholesale boot and shoe dealer&mdash;Enters the dry goods
+    trade&mdash;Close attention to business&mdash;His system and
+    its success&mdash;Organization of the Shoe and Leather Bank of
+    New York&mdash;Mr. Stout is made Vice President, and
+    subsequently President&mdash;Character as a citizen&mdash;Is
+    made City Chamberlain&mdash;Generosity to the police
+    force&mdash;Interest in church affairs&mdash;Kindness to the
+    poor&mdash;Encouragement which his career affords
+    others.</p><br>
+
+
+    <h3><a href='#CHAPTER_VI'>CHAPTER VI.</a></h3><br>
+
+
+    <h3>JONAS CHICKERING.</h3>
+
+    <p>The largest building in the United States&mdash;The
+    Chickering piano factory&mdash;Birth of Jonas
+    Chickering&mdash;Early love of music&mdash;Is apprenticed to a
+    cabinet-maker&mdash;Is employed to repair a
+    piano&mdash;Succeeds in the undertaking&mdash;Consequence of
+    this success&mdash;Becomes a piano-maker&mdash;Removes to
+    Boston&mdash;Is employed as a journeyman&mdash;The labor of his
+    life&mdash;His patience and skill&mdash;Is known as the best
+    workman in the establishment&mdash;History of the
+    piano&mdash;Chickering's first discovery&mdash;His hope of
+    success based on intelligence&mdash;Becomes a master of the
+    theory of sound&mdash;His studies and their result&mdash;Makes
+    an improvement in the framing of pianos&mdash;Invents the
+    circular scale for square pianos&mdash;Generously makes his
+    invention free&mdash;A noble gift to the world&mdash;His
+    business operations&mdash;Increase in the demand for his
+    instruments&mdash;Death of Captain Mackay&mdash;Mr. Chickering
+    undertakes the sole charge of his affairs&mdash;Fears of his
+    friends&mdash;Magnitude of the business&mdash;The lawyer's
+    question answered&mdash;The mortgages paid&mdash;Rapid success
+    of Mr. Chickering&mdash;His varied duties&mdash;Sharp
+    competition&mdash;A bogus Chickering&mdash;How a Boston bank
+    lost his custom&mdash;His independence in business&mdash;His
+    character as a merchant&mdash;Trains his sons to succeed him in
+    business&mdash;The result of his efforts&mdash;The present
+    house of Chickering &amp; Sons&mdash;Destruction of the
+    factory&mdash;Offers of aid&mdash;Mr. Chickering's kindness to
+    his workmen&mdash;Sets to work to re-establish his
+    business&mdash;The new factory begun&mdash;Sudden death of Mr.
+    Chickering.</p><br>
+
+
+    <h3><a href='#CHAPTER_VII'>CHAPTER VII.</a></h3><br>
+
+
+    <h3>NICHOLAS LONGWORTH.</h3>
+
+    <p>The grape interest of the United States&mdash;Growing demand
+    for American wines&mdash;Instrumentality of Mr. Longworth in
+    producing this success&mdash;Early life of Mr.
+    Longworth&mdash;Apprenticed to a shoemaker&mdash;Removes to
+    South Carolina&mdash;Returns to Newark and studies
+    law&mdash;Removes to Cincinnati&mdash;Admitted to the
+    bar&mdash;His first case&mdash;Is paid in whisky stills, and
+    trades them for lands which make his fortune&mdash;Rapid growth
+    of Cincinnati&mdash;The oldest native inhabitant of
+    Chicago&mdash;Longworth's investments in real
+    estate&mdash;Immense profits realized by him&mdash;His
+    experiments in wine growing&mdash;History of the Catawba
+    grape&mdash;Longworth decides to cultivate it
+    entirely&mdash;His efforts to promote the grape culture in the
+    Ohio Valley&mdash;Offers a market for all the grape juice that
+    can be brought to him&mdash;The result of his labors seen in
+    the Ohio vineyards of to-day&mdash;His wine
+    cellars&mdash;Amount of wine made annually by him&mdash;The
+    process used&mdash;How "Sparkling Catawba" is
+    made&mdash;Longworth's experiments with strawberries&mdash;His
+    liberality&mdash;Gift of land to the Observatory&mdash;His
+    challenge to a grumbler&mdash;Estimate of his
+    character&mdash;His eccentricities&mdash;His generosity to his
+    tenants&mdash;How he made money by helping others to grow
+    rich&mdash;His politics&mdash;How he subscribed one hundred
+    dollars to elect Clay&mdash;His hatred of vagabondage&mdash;His
+    stone quarry&mdash;How he provided it with laborers&mdash;His
+    system of helping the poor&mdash;Is charged with
+    stinginess&mdash;The "devil's poor"&mdash;Personal
+    appearance&mdash;The "Hard-times" overcoat&mdash;Charity to a
+    millionaire&mdash;Death of Mr. Longworth.</p><br>
+
+
+    <h3><a href='#CHAPTER_VIII'>CHAPTER VIII.</a></h3><br>
+
+
+    <h3>GEORGE PEABODY.</h3>
+
+    <p>Birth and parentage&mdash;Early education&mdash;His first
+    lessons in business&mdash;An apprentice in a country
+    store&mdash;Youthful ambition&mdash;A desire for
+    change&mdash;The visit to Post Mills&mdash;Removal to
+    Newburyport&mdash;Reasons for his attachment to that
+    place&mdash;His first patron&mdash;Peabody goes south&mdash;A
+    soldier in the War of 1812-15&mdash;A young merchant&mdash;A
+    change of prospects&mdash;A partner in the house of Riggs &amp;
+    Peabody&mdash;Peabody's business capacity&mdash;An irregular
+    banker&mdash;His reputation as a business man&mdash;Promising
+    opening of a brilliant career&mdash;Retirement of Mr.
+    Riggs&mdash;Growth of the business&mdash;A branch house in
+    London&mdash;Mr. Peabody saves the credit of the State of
+    Maryland&mdash;Tribute from Edward Everett&mdash;Success in
+    London&mdash;A model American merchant&mdash;Establishment of
+    the house of George Peabody &amp; Co.&mdash;The Fourth of July
+    dinner&mdash;The exhibition of 1851&mdash;Patriotism of Mr.
+    Peabody&mdash;How he saved the United States from
+    humiliation&mdash;Admission of the "London Times"&mdash;Mr.
+    Peabody's business habits&mdash;His economy&mdash;Adventure
+    with a conductor&mdash;Finds a conscientious
+    hackman&mdash;Personal simplicity&mdash;Visits to the United
+    States&mdash;His munificent donations&mdash;His last
+    visit&mdash;Returns to London and dies&mdash;Honors paid to his
+    memory&mdash;The funeral ceremonies&mdash;His burial at
+    Peabody&mdash;Statement of his donations and bequests&mdash;His
+    example encouraging to the young.</p><br>
+
+
+    <h2><a href='#capitalists'>II. CAPITALISTS.</a></h2><br>
+     <br>
+     <br>
+
+
+    <h3><a href='#CHAPTER_IX'>CHAPTER IX.</a></h3><br>
+
+
+    <h3>CORNELIUS VANDERBILT.</h3>
+
+    <p>Staten Island seventy-six years ago&mdash;The establishment
+    of the Staten Island ferry&mdash;Birth of Cornelius
+    Vanderbilt&mdash;His boyhood&mdash;Defective education&mdash;A
+    famous rider&mdash;His early reputation for
+    firmness&mdash;Superintends the removal of a ship's cargo at
+    the age of twelve&mdash;How he pawned a horse&mdash;Becomes a
+    boatman&mdash;How he bought his boat&mdash;A disastrous
+    voyage&mdash;His life as a boatman&mdash;His economy and
+    industry&mdash;Earns three thousand dollars&mdash;The alarm at
+    Fort Richmond&mdash;Vanderbilt's perilous voyage for aid for
+    the forts&mdash;His marriage&mdash;His first contract&mdash;How
+    he supplied the harbor defenses&mdash;Builds his first
+    schooner&mdash;His winter voyages&mdash;Becomes a steamboat
+    captain&mdash;His foresight&mdash;Leases the hotel at New
+    Brunswick&mdash;The dangers of navigating the New York
+    waters&mdash;The steamboat war&mdash;How Captain Vanderbilt
+    eluded the sheriff&mdash;Becomes manager of the steamboat
+    line&mdash;Declines an increase of salary&mdash;Only wants to
+    carry his point&mdash;Refuses to buy Mr. Gibbons's interest in
+    the steamboat company, and builds his own boat&mdash;Narrow
+    escape from ruin&mdash;Final triumph&mdash;Systematic
+    management of his vessels&mdash;How he ruined the "Collins
+    Line"&mdash;The "North Star"&mdash;Becomes a railroad
+    director&mdash;How he foiled a plan to ruin him&mdash;dishonest
+    legislature&mdash;Vanderbilt's triumph&mdash;His gift to the
+    Government&mdash;His office in New York&mdash;Vanderbilt in
+    business hours&mdash;Personal characteristics&mdash;Love for
+    horses&mdash;His family.</p><br>
+
+
+    <h3><a href='#CHAPTER_X'>CHAPTER X.</a></h3><br>
+
+
+    <h3>DANIEL DREW.</h3>
+
+    <p>Birth-place&mdash;Birth and parentage&mdash;A farmer's
+    boy&mdash;Goes to New York to seek his fortune&mdash;Becomes a
+    cattle drover&mdash;Leases the Bull's Head Tavern&mdash;His
+    energy and success in his business&mdash;Brings the first
+    western cattle to New York&mdash;Helps a friend to build a
+    steamboat&mdash;The fight with Vanderbilt&mdash;Drew buys out
+    his friend, and becomes a steamboat owner&mdash;Vanderbilt
+    endeavors to discourage him&mdash;He perseveres&mdash;His
+    success&mdash;Formation of the "People's Line" on the Hudson
+    River&mdash;The floating palaces&mdash;Forms a partnership with
+    George Law, and establishes the Stonington line&mdash;Opening
+    of the Hudson River Railway&mdash;Drew's foresight&mdash;Room
+    enough for the locomotive and the steamboat&mdash;Buys out the
+    Champlain Company&mdash;Causes of his success as a steamboat
+    manager&mdash;Becomes a banker&mdash;His success in Wall
+    Street&mdash;Indorses the acceptances of the Erie Railway
+    Company&mdash;His courage and calmness in the panic of
+    1857&mdash;He saves "Erie" from ruin&mdash;Elected a director
+    of the Erie Road&mdash;Is made Treasurer&mdash;His interest in
+    the road&mdash;His operations in Wall Street&mdash;His farm in
+    Putnam County&mdash;Joins the Methodist Church&mdash;His
+    liberality&mdash;Builds a church in New York&mdash;Founds the
+    Drew Theological Seminary&mdash;Estimate of his
+    wealth&mdash;His family&mdash;Personal appearance.</p><br>
+
+
+    <h3><a href='#CHAPTER_XI'>CHAPTER XI.</a></h3><br>
+
+
+    <h3>JAMES B. EADS.</h3>
+
+    <p>Birth&mdash;Childhood&mdash;Fondness for
+    machinery&mdash;Early mechanical skill&mdash;Constructs a steam
+    engine at the age of nine years&mdash;His work-shop&mdash;Death
+    of his father&mdash;Works his way to St. Louis&mdash;Sells
+    apples on the streets&mdash;Finds employment and a
+    friend&mdash;Efforts to improve&mdash;Becomes a clerk on a
+    Mississippi steamer&mdash;Undertakes the recovery of wrecked
+    steamboats&mdash;Success of his undertaking&mdash;Offers to
+    remove the obstacles to the navigation of the
+    Mississippi&mdash;Failure of his health&mdash;Retires from
+    business&mdash;Breaking out of the war&mdash;Summoned to
+    Washington&mdash;His plan for the defense of the western
+    rivers&mdash;Associated with Captain Rodgers in the purchase of
+    gunboats&mdash;His first contract with the
+    Government&mdash;Undertakes to build seven ironclads in
+    sixty-five days&mdash;Magnitude of the undertaking&mdash;His
+    promptness&mdash;Builds other gunboats during the war&mdash;The
+    gunboat fleet at Forts Henry and Donelson the private property
+    of Mr. Eads&mdash;Excellence of the vessels built by
+    him&mdash;A model contractor&mdash;Residence in St.
+    Louis.</p><br>
+
+
+    <h3><a href='#CHAPTER_XII'>CHAPTER XII.</a></h3><br>
+
+
+    <h3>CYRUS W. FIELD.</h3>
+
+    <p>Birth&mdash;Parentage&mdash;Early education&mdash;Goes to
+    New York in search of employment&mdash;Obtains a clerkship in a
+    city house, and in a few years becomes a partner&mdash;A rich
+    man at thirty-four&mdash;Retires from business&mdash;Travels in
+    South America&mdash;Meets Mr. Gisborne&mdash;Plan of the
+    Newfoundland Telegraph Company&mdash;Mr. Field declines to
+    embark in it&mdash;Conceives the idea of a telegraph across the
+    Atlantic Ocean&mdash;Correspondence with Lieut. Maury and Prof.
+    Morse&mdash;The scheme pronounced practicable&mdash;Mr. Field
+    secures the co-operation of four New York
+    capitalists&mdash;Organization of the New York, Newfoundland,
+    and London Telegraph Company&mdash;Building of the line from
+    New York to St. John's&mdash;A herculean task&mdash;The
+    Governmental ocean surveys of the United States and
+    England&mdash;Efforts to secure aid in England&mdash;Liberal
+    action of the Government&mdash;Organization of the Atlantic
+    Telegraph Company&mdash;A hard-won success in
+    America&mdash;Passage of the bill by Congress&mdash;The first
+    attempt to lay the cable&mdash;The expedition of 1857&mdash;The
+    telegraph fleet&mdash;Scenes on board&mdash;Loss of the
+    cable&mdash;Failure of the expedition&mdash;Difficulties
+    remedied&mdash;The new "paying-out" machinery&mdash;The
+    expedition of 1858&mdash;The second attempt to lay the
+    cable&mdash;Dangerous storm&mdash;Failures&mdash;Loss of the
+    cable&mdash;The third attempt&mdash;The cable laid
+    successfully&mdash;Messages across the
+    Atlantic&mdash;Celebrations in England and the United
+    States&mdash;The signals cease&mdash;The cable a
+    failure&mdash;Discouraging state of affairs&mdash;Courage of
+    Mr. Field&mdash;Generous offer of the British
+    Government&mdash;Fresh soundings&mdash;Investigations of the
+    Telegraph Board&mdash;Efforts of Mr. Field to raise new
+    capital&mdash;Purchase of the Great Eastern&mdash;The fourth
+    attempt to lay the cable&mdash;Expedition of 1865&mdash;Voyage
+    of the Great Eastern&mdash;Loss of the cable&mdash;Efforts to
+    recover it unsuccessful&mdash;What the expedition
+    demonstrated&mdash;Efforts to raise more capital&mdash;They are
+    pronounced illegal&mdash;The new company&mdash;The fifth
+    attempt to lay the cable&mdash;Voyage of the Great
+    Eastern&mdash;The cable laid at last&mdash;Fishing up and
+    splicing the cable of 1865&mdash;The final triumph&mdash;Credit
+    due to Mr. Field.</p><br>
+     <br>
+     <br>
+
+
+    <h2><a href='#inventors'>III. INVENTORS.</a></h2><br>
+
+
+    <h3><a href='#CHAPTER_XIII'>CHAPTER XIII.</a></h3><br>
+
+
+    <h3>ROBERT FULTON.</h3>
+
+    <p>Trinity churchyard&mdash;The Livingston vault&mdash;An
+    interesting place&mdash;Fulton's tomb&mdash;Birth of Robert
+    Fulton&mdash;Boyhood&mdash;Early mechanical skill&mdash;Robert
+    astonishes his tutor&mdash;Robert's fireworks&mdash;"Nothing is
+    impossible"&mdash;"Quicksilver Bob"&mdash;The fishing
+    excursion&mdash;The first paddle-wheel boat&mdash;Fulton's
+    success as an artist&mdash;His gift to his mother&mdash;His
+    removal to England&mdash;Intimacy with Benjamin West&mdash;Goes
+    to Devonshire&mdash;Acquaintance with the Duke of
+    Bridgewater&mdash;His interest in canal navigation&mdash;His
+    first inventions&mdash;Goes to Paris&mdash;Residence with Mr.
+    Barlow&mdash;Studies in engineering&mdash;Invents the diving
+    boat&mdash;The infernal machine&mdash;His patriotic reply to
+    the British ministry&mdash;His marriage&mdash;Returns to
+    America&mdash;The General Government declines to purchase his
+    torpedo&mdash;Brief history of the first experiments in steam
+    navigation&mdash;Fulton's connection with Livingston&mdash;The
+    trial boat on the Seine&mdash;Determines to build a boat on the
+    Hudson&mdash;Fulton and Livingston are given the sole right to
+    navigate the waters of New York by steam&mdash;Popular
+    ridicule&mdash;Disbelief of scientific men&mdash;Launch of the
+    "Clermont"&mdash;The trial trip&mdash;The first voyage up the
+    Hudson&mdash;Fulton's triumph&mdash;Scenes along the
+    river&mdash;Efforts to sink the steamer&mdash;Establishment of
+    steam navigation on the Hudson River&mdash;The first New York
+    ferry-boats&mdash;The floating docks&mdash;Boats for the
+    West&mdash;New York threatened by the British fleet in
+    1814&mdash;Fulton's plan for a steam frigate&mdash;The "Fulton
+    the First"&mdash;The steamboat war&mdash;Illness of
+    Fulton&mdash;His death and burial&mdash;His last
+    will&mdash;True character of his invention.</p><br>
+
+
+    <h3><a href='#CHAPTER_XIV'>CHAPTER XIV.</a></h3><br>
+
+
+    <h3>CHARLES GOODYEAR.</h3>
+
+    <p>Discovery of India-rubber&mdash;Mode of collecting
+    it&mdash;Preparation and use by the natives&mdash;Its
+    introduction into the United States&mdash;Mr. E.M. Chaffee's
+    process&mdash;The India-rubber fever&mdash;Brief success of the
+    India-rubber companies&mdash;Their sudden failure&mdash;Visit
+    of Mr. Goodyear to New York&mdash;He invents an improvement in
+    the life preserver&mdash;Early history of Charles
+    Goodyear&mdash;His failure as a merchant&mdash;Offers his
+    invention to the Roxbury Company&mdash;The agent's
+    disclosures&mdash;Mr. Goodyear finds his mission&mdash;His
+    first efforts&mdash;A failure&mdash;Discouraging state of his
+    affairs&mdash;Renews his efforts&mdash;Experiments in
+    India-rubber&mdash;Coldness of his friends&mdash;His courage
+    and perseverance&mdash;Goes to New York&mdash;Accidental
+    discovery of the aqua fortis process&mdash;Partial
+    success&mdash;Ruined&mdash;Life on Staten Island&mdash;Removes
+    to Boston&mdash;Delusive prosperity&mdash;The mail bag
+    contract&mdash;His friends urge him to abandon his
+    efforts&mdash;He refuses&mdash;On the verge of
+    success&mdash;Discovers the usefulness of sulphur&mdash;The
+    inventor's hope&mdash;The revelation&mdash;Discovers the secret
+    of vulcanization&mdash;Down in the depths&mdash;Kept back by
+    poverty&mdash;A beggar&mdash;A test of his
+    honesty&mdash;Starvation at hand&mdash;The timely
+    loan&mdash;Removal to New York&mdash;Difficulties in the
+    way&mdash;Death of his youngest child&mdash;Finds friends in
+    New York&mdash;His experiments in vulcanization&mdash;Final
+    success&mdash;His heart in his work&mdash;Fails to secure
+    patents in Europe&mdash;His losses from dishonest
+    rivals&mdash;Declaration of the Commissioner of
+    Patents&mdash;Death of Mr. Goodyear&mdash;Congress refuses to
+    extend his patent&mdash;His true reward.</p><br>
+
+
+    <h3><a href='#CHAPTER_XV'>CHAPTER XV.</a></h3><br>
+
+
+    <h3>ELI WHITNEY.</h3>
+
+    <p>The home of General Greene in Georgia&mdash;The soldier's
+    widow&mdash;An arrival from New England&mdash;The young
+    schoolmaster&mdash;A mechanical genius&mdash;Early history of
+    Whitney&mdash;Mrs. Greene's invitation&mdash;Visit of the
+    planters&mdash;State of the cotton culture in 1792&mdash;A
+    despondent planter&mdash;Mrs. Greene advises them to try
+    Whitney&mdash;Origin of the cotton gin&mdash;Whitney's first
+    efforts&mdash;His workshop&mdash;The secret labors&mdash;How he
+    provided himself with materials&mdash;Finds a
+    partner&mdash;Betrayal of his secret&mdash;He is robbed of his
+    model&mdash;He recovers it and completes it&mdash;The first
+    cotton gin&mdash;Statement of the revolution produced by the
+    invention in the cotton culture of the South&mdash;Opinion of
+    Judge Johnson&mdash;The story of an inventor's
+    wrongs&mdash;Whitney is cheated and robbed of his
+    rights&mdash;The worthlessness of a patent&mdash;A long and
+    disheartening struggle&mdash;Honorable action of North
+    Carolina&mdash;Congress refuses to extend the
+    patent&mdash;Whitney abandons the cotton gin&mdash;Engages in
+    the manufacture of firearms&mdash;His improvements in
+    them&mdash;Establishes an armory in Connecticut, and makes a
+    fortune&mdash;Death.</p><br>
+
+
+    <h3><a href='#CHAPTER_XVI'>CHAPTER XVI.</a></h3><br>
+
+
+    <h3>CHAUNCEY JEROME.</h3>
+
+    <p>The old-fashioned clocks&mdash;Their
+    expensiveness&mdash;Condition of the clock trade of Connecticut
+    sixty years ago&mdash;Early history of Chauncey Jerome&mdash;A
+    hard life&mdash;Death of his father&mdash;Becomes a farmer's
+    boy&mdash;Is anxious to become a clock-maker&mdash;An over-wise
+    guardian&mdash;Hardships of an apprentice&mdash;How Jerome
+    became a carpenter&mdash;Hires his winters from his
+    master&mdash;Becomes a dial-maker&mdash;The clock-making
+    expedition&mdash;Jerome's first savings&mdash;Takes a
+    wife&mdash;A master carpenter&mdash;Poor pay and hard
+    work&mdash;Buys a house&mdash;A dull winter&mdash;Enters Mr.
+    Terry's factory&mdash;The wooden clock business&mdash;Sets up
+    in business for himself&mdash;Industry and energy
+    rewarded&mdash;His first order&mdash;Sends his clocks
+    South&mdash;Enlarges his business&mdash;Improvements in his
+    clocks&mdash;Losses on southern shipments from
+    dampness&mdash;Depression of business&mdash;Jerome's
+    anxiety&mdash;A wakeful night&mdash;Invention of the
+    brass&mdash;A new era in the clock trade&mdash;Beneficial
+    effects of Jerome's invention&mdash;Magnitude of the
+    Connecticut clock trade at present&mdash;Growth of Jerome's
+    business&mdash;Makes a fortune&mdash;Organization of the
+    "Jerome Clock-making Company"&mdash;Practical withdrawal of Mr.
+    Jerome&mdash;Difficulties of the company&mdash;Jerome a ruined
+    man&mdash;Honest independence&mdash;Finds
+    employment&mdash;Becomes the manager of the Chicago
+    Company.</p><br>
+
+
+    <h3><a href='#CHAPTER_XVII'>CHAPTER XVII.</a></h3><br>
+
+
+    <h3>ELIAS HOWE, JR.</h3>
+
+    <p>The first sewing-machine&mdash;Birth of Elias Howe&mdash;A
+    poor man's son&mdash;Raised to hard work&mdash;His first
+    employment&mdash;The little mill-boy&mdash;Delicate
+    health&mdash;Goes to Lowell to seek his fortune&mdash;Thrown
+    out of employment&mdash;Removes to Cambridge&mdash;Works in a
+    machine shop with N.P. Banks&mdash;Marries&mdash;A rash
+    step&mdash;Growing troubles&mdash;A hard lot&mdash;Conceives
+    the idea of a sewing-machine&mdash;His first experiments
+    unsuccessful&mdash;Invents the lock stitch and perfects the
+    sewing-machine&mdash;Hindered by his poverty&mdash;A hard
+    struggle&mdash;Finds a partner&mdash;His winter's
+    task&mdash;His attic work-shop&mdash;Completion of the
+    model&mdash;Perfection of Howe's invention&mdash;Efforts to
+    dispose of the invention&mdash;Disappointed hopes&mdash;Popular
+    incredulity&mdash;Becomes an engine driver&mdash;Amasa Howe
+    goes to England with the sewing-machine&mdash;Bargain with the
+    London merchant&mdash;Elias removes to London&mdash;Loses his
+    situation&mdash;The rigors of poverty&mdash;Returns to
+    America&mdash;Death of his wife&mdash;Fate's last
+    blow&mdash;The sewing-machine becomes better
+    known&mdash;Adoption by the public&mdash;A tardy
+    recognition&mdash;Elias Howe sets up in business for
+    himself&mdash;Buys out his partner's interest&mdash;The
+    sewing-machine war&mdash;Rapid growth of the sewing-machine
+    interest&mdash;Earnings of the inventor&mdash;A royal
+    income&mdash;Honors conferred upon him&mdash;Enlists in the
+    United States Army&mdash;A liberal private&mdash;Last illness
+    and death.</p><br>
+
+
+    <h3><a href='#CHAPTER_XVIII'>CHAPTER XVIII.</a></h3><br>
+
+
+    <h3>RICHARD M. HOE.</h3>
+
+    <p>Growth of the art of printing&mdash;Birth of Richard M.
+    Hoe&mdash;Sketch of the career of Robert Hoe&mdash;He comes to
+    America&mdash;His marriage&mdash;Founds the house of "Robert
+    Hoe &amp; Co."&mdash;The first steam printing presses&mdash;He
+    retires from business&mdash;Richard M. Hoe is brought up in the
+    business&mdash;The mechanical genius of the house&mdash;The new
+    firm&mdash;Richard Hoe's first invention&mdash;Obtains a patent
+    for it&mdash;Visits England&mdash;Invents the double-cylinder
+    press&mdash;Demand for increased facilities for
+    printing&mdash;Mr. Hoe's experiments with his press&mdash;His
+    failures&mdash;How the "Lightning Press" was invented&mdash;A
+    good night's work&mdash;Patents his invention&mdash;The first
+    "Lightning Press"&mdash;Demand for it&mdash;Rapid growth of the
+    business of the firm&mdash;Statement of the operations of the
+    house&mdash;Personal characteristics of Richard M.
+    Hoe&mdash;The "Lightning Press" at work.</p><br>
+
+
+    <h3><a href='#CHAPTER_XIX'>CHAPTER XIX.</a></h3><br>
+
+
+    <h3>SAMUEL COLT.</h3>
+
+    <p>Birth and parentage&mdash;A restless boy&mdash;Dislikes
+    school&mdash;Early fondness for mechanical inventions&mdash;Is
+    sent to boarding-school&mdash;Runs away to sea&mdash;The story
+    of a boy's invention, and what came of it&mdash;Origin of the
+    revolver&mdash;Returns home&mdash;His chemical
+    studies&mdash;Dr. Coult&mdash;The lecturing tour&mdash;His
+    success&mdash;Completes his design for the
+    revolver&mdash;Patents his invention&mdash;Visits
+    England&mdash;Discovery at the Tower of London&mdash;Returns
+    home&mdash;Formation of the "Patent Arms
+    Company"&mdash;Objections of the officers of the army and navy
+    to the revolver&mdash;The Florida War&mdash;It is decided by
+    the revolver&mdash;Triumph of Col. Colt&mdash;Cessation of the
+    demand for arms&mdash;Failure of the company&mdash;Beginning of
+    the Mexican War&mdash;Action of General Taylor&mdash;No
+    revolvers to be had&mdash;A strange dilemma for an
+    inventor&mdash;The new model&mdash;Contracts with the
+    Government&mdash;Success of the revolver in Mexico&mdash;The
+    demand from the frontier&mdash;Emigration to California and
+    Australia&mdash;Permanent establishment of Col. Colt's
+    business&mdash;The improved weapon&mdash;Builds a new
+    armory&mdash;Description of his works at Hartford&mdash;A
+    liberal employer&mdash;Other inventions of Col. Colt&mdash;His
+    submarine telegraph&mdash;His fortune&mdash;His
+    marriage&mdash;Visits to Europe&mdash;Attentions from European
+    dignitaries&mdash;Witnesses the coronation of the Emperor of
+    Russia&mdash;His last illness and death.</p><br>
+
+
+    <h3><a href='#CHAPTER_XX'>CHAPTER XX.</a></h3><br>
+
+
+    <h3>SAMUEL F.B. MORSE.</h3>
+
+    <p>Birth&mdash;Parentage&mdash;Early education&mdash;Graduates
+    at Yale College&mdash;Becomes an artist&mdash;His
+    masters&mdash;Visits England&mdash;His first attempt&mdash;"The
+    Dying Hercules"&mdash;Opinion of Benjamin West&mdash;Wins the
+    medal of the Adelphi Society of Arts&mdash;Ambition as an
+    artist&mdash;His cold reception by the Americans&mdash;Mr.
+    Tuckerman's comments&mdash;Organizes the National Academy of
+    Design&mdash;Visits Europe the second time&mdash;The homeward
+    voyage in the "Sully"&mdash;News of the experiments at Paris
+    with the electro-magnet&mdash;How the electric telegraph was
+    invented&mdash;Morse is made a professor in the University of
+    New York&mdash;Completion of his model&mdash;An imperfect
+    telegraph&mdash;His first experiments&mdash;The duplicate
+    finished&mdash;First exhibition of the telegraph&mdash;Morse
+    applies for a patent&mdash;Visits Europe to introduce his
+    invention&mdash;His failure&mdash;Seeks aid from
+    Congress&mdash;A disheartening effort&mdash;A long
+    struggle&mdash;Independence of Morse&mdash;Despondent at
+    last&mdash;A sudden lifting of the cloud&mdash;The experimental
+    line&mdash;The trial&mdash;A curious Cabinet
+    Minister&mdash;Success of the telegraph&mdash;Establishment of
+    companies in the United States&mdash;Professor Morse wins fame
+    and fortune&mdash;The telegraph in Europe&mdash;Honors at home
+    and abroad&mdash;A list of his rewards&mdash;Morse originates
+    submarine telegraphy, and predicts the laying of an Atlantic
+    telegraph&mdash;Personal characteristics.</p><br>
+     <br>
+     <br>
+
+
+    <h2><a href='#publishers'>IV. PUBLISHERS.</a></h2><br>
+
+
+    <h3><a href='#CHAPTER_XXI'>CHAPTER XXI.</a></h3><br>
+
+
+    <h3>JAMES HARPER.</h3>
+
+    <p>The Brothers Harper&mdash;Birth and parentage of James
+    Harper&mdash;The Long Island home&mdash;James Harper goes to
+    New York&mdash;Becomes a "devil"&mdash;Winning his
+    way&mdash;How he gave his card to a stranger&mdash;Arrival of
+    "Brother John"&mdash;-Good habits&mdash;Sets up for
+    himself&mdash;"J. &amp; J. Harper, Printers"&mdash;How they
+    started in business&mdash;Integrity rewarded&mdash;First
+    job&mdash;Their first effort at stereotyping&mdash;The Harpers
+    become publishers on their own account&mdash;Their early
+    ventures&mdash;Feeling their way to success&mdash;Their
+    publications&mdash;Character of their books&mdash;How they
+    drove the "yellow covers" out of the market&mdash;Their
+    prosperity&mdash;Admission of new partners&mdash;The great
+    fire&mdash;Destruction of the establishment of Harper &amp;
+    Brothers&mdash;Energy of the firm&mdash;Re-establishment of
+    their business&mdash;Their new premises&mdash;Description of
+    the buildings&mdash;Personal characteristics of Mr. James
+    Harper&mdash;Religious life&mdash;Liberality of
+    sentiment&mdash;His industry&mdash;Elected Mayor of New
+    York&mdash;Kindness to his operatives&mdash;Physical
+    Vigor&mdash;"The Lord knows best"&mdash;Accident to Mr. Harper
+    and his daughter&mdash;His death.</p><br>
+
+
+    <h3><a href='#CHAPTER_XXII'>CHAPTER XXII.</a></h3><br>
+
+
+    <h3>JAMES T. FIELDS.</h3>
+
+    <p>The old "Corner Book-store" in Boston and its
+    associations&mdash;Carter &amp; Bendee employ a new
+    clerk&mdash;Birth and early life of James T. Fields&mdash;His
+    literary talent&mdash;Governor Woodbury's advice&mdash;Enters
+    mercantile life&mdash;Determined to rise&mdash;His
+    studies&mdash;The result&mdash;Associated with Edward Everett
+    at the age of eighteen&mdash;His business talent&mdash;Steady
+    promotion&mdash;Becomes head clerk with Allen &amp;
+    Ticknor&mdash;Establishment of the firm of Ticknor &amp;
+    Fields&mdash;Success as a publisher&mdash;High character of his
+    house&mdash;Relations toward authors&mdash;Publications of
+    Ticknor &amp; Fields&mdash;Removal&mdash;Organization of the
+    firm of Fields, Osgood &amp; Co.&mdash;The new
+    book-store&mdash;An elegant establishment&mdash;Mr. Field's
+    literary success&mdash;Statement of a friend&mdash;"Common
+    Sense"&mdash;His contributions to the periodicals of the
+    firm&mdash;Travels in Europe&mdash;Personal appearance.</p><br>
+     <br>
+     <br>
+
+
+    <h2><a href='#editors'>V. EDITORS.</a></h2><br>
+
+
+    <h3><a href='#CHAPTER_XXIII'>CHAPTER XXIII.</a></h3><br>
+
+
+    <h3>JAMES GORDON BENNETT.</h3>
+
+    <p>Birth&mdash;Intended for the Romish priesthood&mdash;How he
+    was induced to come to America&mdash;Arrival in
+    Halifax&mdash;Comes to the United States&mdash;What came of a
+    shilling&mdash;Employment in Boston&mdash;Reaches New
+    York&mdash;Attempts to establish a school&mdash;Becomes
+    connected with the press&mdash;Success of his Washington
+    letters&mdash;Services on the "Courier and
+    Inquirer"&mdash;Leaves that journal&mdash;Removes to
+    Philadelphia&mdash;Establishes "The
+    Pennsylvanian"&mdash;Ingratitude of his political
+    associates&mdash;Returns to New York&mdash;Establishment of
+    "The New York Herald"&mdash;Early difficulties of that paper,
+    and how Bennett surmounted them&mdash;The first "Herald"
+    office&mdash;A determined effort to succeed&mdash;First numbers
+    of "The Herald"&mdash;How one man carried on a
+    newspaper&mdash;A lucky hit&mdash;The first "money
+    article"&mdash;The office burned down&mdash;The great
+    fire&mdash;Bennett's reports of the disaster&mdash;Success of
+    "The Herald"&mdash;His first advertising
+    contract&mdash;Increasing prosperity&mdash;The journal of
+    to-day&mdash;How it is conducted&mdash;The new "Herald"
+    office&mdash;Bennett's pride in his paper&mdash;Personal
+    characteristics&mdash;His independence.</p><br>
+
+
+    <h3><a href='#CHAPTER_XXIV'>CHAPTER XXIV.</a></h3><br>
+
+
+    <h3>ROBERT BONNER.</h3>
+
+    <p>Birth and parentage&mdash;Emigration to
+    America&mdash;Becomes a printer&mdash;A first-class
+    compositor&mdash;Engaged upon the "Evening Mirror"&mdash;The
+    "Merchant's Ledger"&mdash;Bonner purchases the paper, and
+    changes its name to the "New York Ledger"&mdash;The new
+    literary journal&mdash;Predictions of failure&mdash;Bonner
+    confident of success&mdash;Engages Fanny Fern to write for
+    him&mdash;A handsome price for a story&mdash;Wonderful success
+    of the "Ledger"&mdash;Skillful advertising&mdash;Popularity of
+    the paper&mdash;How Bonner silenced the critics&mdash;"Edward
+    Everett writes for the 'Ledger'"&mdash;How Bonner treats his
+    contributors&mdash;"Henry Ward Beecher writes for the
+    'Ledger'"&mdash;Immense circulation of the paper&mdash;The new
+    "Ledger" building&mdash;Private residence of Mr.
+    Bonner&mdash;His stable&mdash;His love for horses.</p><br>
+     <br>
+     <br>
+
+
+    <h2><a href='#lawyers'>VI. LAWYERS.</a></h2><br>
+
+
+    <h3><a href='#CHAPTER_XXV'>CHAPTER XXV.</a></h3><br>
+
+
+    <h3>JOHN MARSHALL.</h3>
+
+    <p>The model American lawyer&mdash;Birth and early life of John
+    Marshall&mdash;A devoted father&mdash;Early education&mdash;The
+    young patriot&mdash;Troubles with England&mdash;Marshall
+    becomes a soldier&mdash;The "Culpepper Minute
+    Men"&mdash;Marshall's popularity in the army&mdash;Finishes his
+    law studies&mdash;His journey from Williamsburg to
+    Philadelphia&mdash;Commences the practice of the
+    law&mdash;Elected to the Legislature&mdash;Establishes himself
+    in Richmond&mdash;The power of a powdered wig and velvet
+    coat&mdash;Marshall's services in the Virginia Convention of
+    1798&mdash;Becomes the champion of Washington's
+    Administration&mdash;Refuses public honors&mdash;Is made
+    Minister to France &mdash;Public reception in New
+    York&mdash;Elected Member of Congress&mdash;His memorable
+    speech&mdash;Enters the Cabinet of President Adams as Secretary
+    of State&mdash;Is made Chief Justice of the United
+    States&mdash;His record&mdash;His "Life of
+    Washington"&mdash;Personal characteristics&mdash;His
+    generosity&mdash;William Wirt's pen and ink sketch of
+    him&mdash;His courtesy and kindness&mdash;Fondness for manly
+    sports&mdash;The quoit club&mdash;How he carried a proud man's
+    turkey home&mdash;The supper party&mdash;The Chief Justice
+    loses the wager&mdash;Mode of traveling on his
+    circuit&mdash;The scene at Maguire's Hotel in Winchester,
+    Virginia&mdash;The unknown champion of Christianity&mdash;A
+    brilliant defense&mdash;Last illness and death of Judge
+    Marshall.</p><br>
+
+
+    <h3><a href='#CHAPTER_XXVI'>CHAPTER XXVI.</a></h3><br>
+
+
+    <h3>JAMES T. BRADY.</h3>
+
+    <p>Birth and early life&mdash;His "big head"&mdash;His
+    kindliness of disposition&mdash;Enters his father's office to
+    study law&mdash;Merry nature&mdash;How he studied law&mdash;A
+    model for ambitious youths&mdash;His father's opinion of
+    him&mdash;Admitted to the bar&mdash;His first case&mdash;The
+    newsboy case&mdash;sudden rise in popularity&mdash;Practices in
+    the Supreme Court&mdash;The India-rubber suit&mdash;A
+    compliment from Daniel Webster&mdash;Brady's
+    integrity&mdash;Professional success and generosity&mdash;His
+    readiness in managing his cases&mdash;Conduct toward
+    witnesses&mdash;His fearlessness&mdash;A bold declaration in
+    Tammany Hall&mdash;His profound knowledge of his
+    profession&mdash;His industry&mdash;His disinterested
+    kindness&mdash;His humor&mdash;Meets his match&mdash;Political
+    life&mdash;Personal appearance&mdash;A genial old
+    bachelor&mdash;Literary tastes and labors&mdash;His generosity
+    to the poor&mdash;Devotion to his relatives&mdash;Last
+    appearance in public&mdash;Forebodings&mdash;Death.</p><br>
+     <br>
+     <br>
+
+
+    <h2><a href='#artists'>VII. ARTISTS.</a></h2><br>
+
+
+    <h3><a href='#CHAPTER_XXVII'>CHAPTER XXVII.</a></h3><br>
+
+
+    <h3>BENJAMIN WEST.</h3>
+
+    <p>A native of Pennsylvania&mdash;Circumstances attending his
+    birth&mdash;The child of promise&mdash;First indications of
+    genius&mdash;The baby's portrait&mdash;Lessons from the
+    Indians&mdash;The box of colors&mdash;The truant
+    pupil&mdash;The mother's discovery&mdash;-West's opinion of his
+    first picture&mdash;The little portrait painter&mdash;The first
+    attempt at historical painting&mdash;"The Death of
+    Socrates"&mdash;Choosing a profession&mdash;Dedicated to his
+    work&mdash;A fighting Quaker&mdash;Establishes himself in New
+    York&mdash;Visits Europe&mdash;Arrival at Rome, and reception
+    there&mdash;Visit to the Apollo Belvidere&mdash;West's
+    criticism&mdash;Travels and labors on the
+    continent&mdash;Visits England&mdash;His reception
+    there&mdash;Urged to stay&mdash;Decides to make England his
+    home&mdash;Sends for his bride&mdash;Marriage&mdash;"Agrippina
+    Landing with the Ashes of Germanicus"&mdash;Success of the
+    picture&mdash;The king becomes his friend&mdash;The most famous
+    works of Benjamin West&mdash;"The Death of
+    Wolfe"&mdash;Reception of the picture by the public&mdash;West
+    triumphs over the critics, and inaugurates a new era of
+    historical painting&mdash;Death of the king&mdash;West is
+    elected President of the National Academy&mdash;His resignation
+    and re-election&mdash;Closing years of a great
+    career&mdash;Personal appearance&mdash;Leigh Hunt's description
+    of him&mdash;Death&mdash;Burial in St. Paul's
+    Cathedral.</p><br>
+
+
+    <h3><a href='#CHAPTER_XXVIII'>CHAPTER XXVIII.</a></h3><br>
+
+
+    <h3>JOHN ROGERS.</h3>
+
+    <p>Birth&mdash;Early years&mdash;Begins life as a clerk in a
+    dry goods store&mdash;Artistic talent&mdash;Opposition of his
+    parents&mdash;A change in his plans&mdash;Becomes an
+    engineer&mdash;Failure of his eyes&mdash;Voyage to
+    Spain&mdash;Return home&mdash;Becomes a
+    machinist&mdash;Promoted&mdash;Learns to model in
+    clay&mdash;Commences his studies in art&mdash;A hard life, and
+    a noble perseverance&mdash;A change for the better&mdash;A
+    sudden reverse&mdash;Out of work&mdash;Visits Europe to study
+    his art&mdash;Returns home in despair&mdash;Enters the service
+    of the surveyor of the city of Chicago&mdash;His first
+    statuettes&mdash;Their success&mdash;A new field opened to
+    him&mdash;Visits New York, and learns the new method of casting
+    figures&mdash;Establishes himself in New York&mdash;His first
+    studio&mdash;Immediate popularity of his
+    works&mdash;Description of them&mdash;Removes to a new
+    studio&mdash;His later works&mdash;Process by which they are
+    made-Originality of the artist rewarded by the
+    public&mdash;Personal characteristics.</p><br>
+
+
+    <h3><a href='#CHAPTER_XXIX'>CHAPTER XXIX.</a></h3><br>
+
+
+    <h3>HIRAM POWERS.</h3>
+
+    <p>Birth&mdash;Juvenile mechanical skill&mdash;The life of a
+    Vermont boy&mdash;Hard times&mdash;Removal of the Powers family
+    to the West&mdash;The new farm&mdash;Misfortunes never come
+    singly&mdash;Breaking up of the household&mdash;Hiram's first
+    employment&mdash;The reading-room scheme&mdash;Hiram becomes a
+    collector of bad debts&mdash;Reminiscences of the young
+    West&mdash;Powers becomes a mechanic&mdash;Story of the brass
+    plates&mdash;Rapid promotion&mdash;The silver watch&mdash;How
+    Hiram purchased it&mdash;The Cincinnati Museum&mdash;The
+    artist's first lessons in modeling&mdash;His first
+    sitter&mdash;The trial of skill&mdash;The king of the Cannibal
+    Islands&mdash;The man-eater&mdash;Hiram becomes interested in
+    the museum&mdash;How he played the devil in Cincinnati&mdash;A
+    dishonest employer&mdash;Mr. Longworth's offer&mdash;Powers
+    goes to Washington&mdash;His success there&mdash;Visit to "Old
+    Hickory"&mdash;The first critic&mdash;Kindness of Senator
+    Preston&mdash;Powers goes to Italy&mdash;Arrival in
+    Florence&mdash;His first works in Italy&mdash;Visit to
+    Thorwaldsen&mdash;Works of Powers&mdash;His rapid
+    success&mdash;His life in Italy&mdash;Views of Mr. Powers
+    respecting an artist life&mdash;Personal
+    characteristics&mdash;Popularity with artists.</p><br>
+
+
+    <h3><a href='#CHAPTER_XXX'>CHAPTER XXX.</a></h3><br>
+
+
+    <h3>EMMANUEL LEUTZE.</h3>
+
+    <p>An American by adoption&mdash;Early life and
+    education&mdash;How he learned to draw&mdash;Becomes an
+    artist&mdash;His first picture&mdash;The evils of too much
+    haste&mdash;His first professional
+    engagement&mdash;Despondency&mdash;A ramble through the
+    Virginia woods, and what came of it&mdash;A friend in
+    need&mdash;Greater success&mdash;Friendship of Mr.
+    Carey&mdash;Leutze goes to Europe&mdash;Studies at
+    Dusseldorf-His reception there&mdash;Becomes Lessing's
+    pupil&mdash;His first picture finds a purchaser&mdash;Travels
+    and studies in Europe&mdash;Returns to Dusseldorf, marries, and
+    makes his home in that place&mdash;His paintings&mdash;Returns
+    to New York&mdash;Success in America&mdash;The Government
+    commission&mdash;Journey to the Rocky Mountains&mdash;The great
+    fresco in the Capitol&mdash;"Westward the Star of Empire takes
+    it Way"&mdash;Revisits Dusseldorf&mdash;Reception by the
+    artists&mdash;Returns to the United States&mdash;Further
+    commissions from the Government&mdash;His sudden
+    death&mdash;His unfinished works&mdash;Mr. Tuckerman's
+    remarks.</p><br>
+     <br>
+     <br>
+
+
+    <h2><a href='#divines'>VIII. DIVINES.</a></h2><br>
+
+
+    <h3><a href='#CHAPTER_XXXI'>CHAPTER XXXI.</a></h3><br>
+
+
+    <h3>HENRY WARD BEECHER.</h3>
+
+    <p>A Connecticut boy&mdash;The minister's family&mdash;A gloomy
+    childhood&mdash;Ma'arm Kilbourn's school&mdash;The loss of his
+    curls&mdash;The dull boy&mdash;A bad voice for an
+    orator&mdash;His first religious impressions&mdash;Aunt
+    Esther&mdash;The Sunday catechism&mdash;Sent to boarding
+    school&mdash;Love of nature&mdash;Enters his sister's
+    school&mdash;The hopeless case&mdash;An inveterate joker and an
+    indifferent scholar&mdash;Removal to Boston&mdash;Gets through
+    the Latin school&mdash;The sea-going project&mdash;Dr.
+    Beecher's ruse&mdash;Life at Mount Pleasant&mdash;Conquers
+    mathematics&mdash;Embraces religion at a revival&mdash;Resolves
+    to become a minister&mdash;Removal to Cincinnati&mdash;Course
+    at the Lane Seminary&mdash;How he learned to
+    preach&mdash;Marries&mdash;His first charge&mdash;Life at
+    Lawrenceburg&mdash;Removal to Indianapolis&mdash;Life in the
+    West&mdash;His popularity&mdash;His theory of preaching and its
+    success&mdash;Conversion of his brother&mdash;Mr. Beecher
+    accepts a call to Plymouth Church in Brooklyn&mdash;Political
+    record&mdash;Literary labors&mdash;Pastoral work&mdash;A large
+    audience&mdash;Government of Plymouth Church&mdash;Description
+    of the edifice&mdash;The congregation&mdash;The
+    services&mdash;Mr. Beecher as a preacher&mdash;Sympathy between
+    the pastor and his hearers&mdash;His ideas of
+    religion&mdash;How he prepares his sermons&mdash;His prayers
+    unstudied&mdash;The social receptions&mdash;The Friday evening
+    meeting&mdash;A characteristic scene&mdash;Labors during the
+    war&mdash;Visit to Europe&mdash;An unpopular sermon in a good
+    cause&mdash;Personal characteristics.</p><br>
+
+
+    <h3><a href='#CHAPTER_XXXII'>CHAPTER XXXII.</a></h3><br>
+
+
+    <h3>PETER CARTWRIGHT.</h3>
+
+    <p>Birth&mdash;Removal to Kentucky&mdash;"Rogue's
+    harbor"&mdash;Condition of the country and the
+    people&mdash;Frontier life&mdash;Early life of a
+    preacher&mdash;Becomes a Christian&mdash;His account of his
+    conversion&mdash;Is made an exhorter in the Methodist
+    Church&mdash;Removal to Lewiston County&mdash;Begins
+    preaching&mdash;Qualifications of a backwoods
+    preacher&mdash;His energy&mdash;The jerks&mdash;How Peter
+    frightened a bully&mdash;A brimstone angel&mdash;Enters the
+    ministry&mdash;Appointed to the Marietta Circuit&mdash;A good
+    school&mdash;Hard times&mdash;Marries&mdash;Quiet
+    heroism&mdash;How the old-time people married&mdash;His
+    devotion to the Methodist Church&mdash;Troubles with other
+    denominations&mdash;How he argued with a Universalist&mdash;How
+    he met a wrathful dame&mdash;Encounter with a Baptist
+    preacher&mdash;Adventure with Father Teel&mdash;Taming a
+    shrew&mdash;Removal to Illinois&mdash;His reasons for taking
+    that step&mdash;Death of his daughter&mdash;Arrival at his new
+    home&mdash;Life on the frontier&mdash;A large
+    district&mdash;The Methodist circuit riders of sixty years
+    ago&mdash;Perils of frontier traveling&mdash;Success of
+    Cartwright's ministry&mdash;How he was superannuated&mdash;His
+    courage&mdash;How he cleared a camp of rowdies&mdash;Encounter
+    on a ferry-boat&mdash;Frightens a bully&mdash;Advocates
+    temperance&mdash;A practical joke&mdash;Is elected to the
+    Legislature&mdash;His opinion of politics&mdash;How he raised
+    the devil&mdash;"Another sinner down"&mdash;Missionaries from
+    the East&mdash;Indignation of the backwoods preacher&mdash;The
+    proposed mission to New England&mdash;Cartwright declines
+    it&mdash;He visits Boston&mdash;His reception&mdash;How he
+    preached for Father Taylor&mdash;Summing up&mdash;Sixty-seven
+    years of a preacher's life.</p><br>
+     <br>
+     <br>
+
+
+    <h2><a href='#authors'>IX. AUTHORS.</a></h2><br>
+
+
+    <h3><a href='#CHAPTER_XXXIII'>CHAPTER XXXIII.</a></h3><br>
+
+
+    <h3>HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.</h3>
+
+    <p>Birth and early life&mdash;The old house by the
+    sea&mdash;College life&mdash;Early literary
+    productions&mdash;Becomes a professor in Bowdoin
+    College&mdash;Travels in Europe&mdash;Marriage&mdash;Literary
+    labors&mdash;"Outre Mer"&mdash;Is made a professor in Harvard
+    College&mdash;His second visit to Europe&mdash;Death of his
+    wife&mdash;Goes to live in the Craigie House&mdash;Historical
+    associations&mdash;Washington's headquarters&mdash;A congenial
+    home&mdash;Literary labors&mdash;"Hyperion"&mdash;Great
+    popularity of the book&mdash;"Voices of the Night"&mdash;"The
+    Spanish Student"&mdash;Mr. Longfellow buys the Craigie
+    House&mdash;Summary of his works&mdash;The "Song of
+    Hiawatha"&mdash;Death of Mrs. Longfellow&mdash;Mr. Longfellow
+    again visits Europe&mdash;His popularity with the
+    English-speaking race&mdash;Cause of his
+    popularity&mdash;"Resignation"&mdash;Scene from "The Golden
+    Legend"&mdash;The poet's home.</p><br>
+
+
+    <h3><a href='#CHAPTER_XXXIV'>CHAPTER XXXIV.</a></h3><br>
+
+
+    <h3>NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.</h3>
+
+    <p>The Hawthornes of Salem&mdash;A sea-going race&mdash;Birth
+    of Nathaniel Hawthorne&mdash;A sad home&mdash;Early
+    life&mdash;His college days&mdash;Longfellow's recollection of
+    him&mdash;Returns home&mdash;The young recluse&mdash;Literary
+    efforts&mdash;"Twice-Told Tales"&mdash;"The most unknown author
+    in America"&mdash;Enters the Boston Custom House&mdash;His
+    duties&mdash;Popularity with the sailors&mdash;Loses his
+    office&mdash;Becomes a member of the Brook Farm
+    Community&mdash;Marries and goes to live at Concord&mdash;"The
+    Old Manse"&mdash;Life at Concord&mdash;Curiosity of the village
+    people&mdash;"Mosses from an Old Manse"&mdash;Hawthorne's
+    visitors&mdash;Hawthorne and his friends&mdash;George William
+    Curtis' recollections&mdash;Removes to Salem&mdash;Is made
+    surveyor of that port&mdash;"The Scarlet Letter"&mdash;Removal
+    to the Berkshire Hills&mdash;"The House of the Seven
+    Gables"&mdash;Returns to Concord&mdash;"Life of Franklin
+    Pierce"&mdash;Is made Consul to Liverpool&mdash;-Life
+    abroad&mdash;Depressed by the war&mdash;Moncure D. Conway's
+    recollections&mdash;Juvenile works&mdash;Death of Mr.
+    Ticknor&mdash;Effect upon Hawthorne&mdash;Goes traveling with
+    Ex-President Pierce&mdash;Sudden death of
+    Hawthorne&mdash;Burial at Concord.</p><br>
+     <br>
+     <br>
+
+
+    <h2><a href='#actors'>X. ACTORS.</a></h2><br>
+
+
+    <h3><a href='#CHAPTER_XXXV'>CHAPTER XXXV.</a></h3><br>
+
+
+    <h3>EDWIN BOOTH.</h3>
+
+    <p>The elder Booth&mdash;His success as an actor&mdash;His
+    sons&mdash;Birth of Edwin Booth&mdash;Early life&mdash;Brought
+    up on the stage&mdash;Admiration for his father&mdash;Travels
+    with him&mdash;First appearance&mdash;Appears frequently with
+    his father&mdash;Plays Richard III. in New York&mdash;A bold
+    venture&mdash;Learns the details of his profession&mdash;Visits
+    Australia and the Sandwich Islands&mdash;Re-appearance in New
+    York in 1857&mdash;Recollections of him at that time&mdash;His
+    labors in his profession&mdash;Successful tours throughout the
+    country&mdash;Visits England&mdash;Appears at the Haymarket
+    Theater in London&mdash;Studies on the
+    continent&mdash;Appearance at the Winter Garden&mdash;The
+    Shakespearian revivals&mdash;Destruction of the Winter Garden
+    by fire&mdash;Loss of Mr. Booth's theatrical
+    wardrobe&mdash;Popular sympathy&mdash;The new
+    theater&mdash;Opening of the building&mdash;Description of
+    Booth's Theater&mdash;A magnificent establishment&mdash;A
+    splendid stage&mdash;Novel mode of setting the
+    scenes&mdash;Magnificent mounting of the plays produced
+    there&mdash;Mr. Booth's
+    performances&mdash;Personal&mdash;Genius as an
+    actor&mdash;Beneficial influence upon the drama.</p><br>
+
+
+    <h3><a href='#CHAPTER_XXXVI'>CHAPTER XXXVI.</a></h3><br>
+
+
+    <h3>JOSEPH JEFFERSON.</h3>
+
+    <p>The Jefferson family&mdash;A race of actors&mdash;Jefferson
+    the first&mdash;"Old Jefferson"&mdash;Jefferson the
+    third&mdash;Birth of Joseph
+    Jefferson&mdash;Childhood&mdash;Brought up on the
+    stage&mdash;Olive Logan's reminiscence&mdash;First appearance
+    in public&mdash;Early training&mdash;Career as a stock
+    actor&mdash;Becomes a "star"&mdash;His success&mdash;Visits
+    Australia, the player's El Dorado&mdash;Pecuniary success of
+    Jefferson in Australia&mdash;His merits as an
+    actor&mdash;Visits England&mdash;First appearance at the
+    Adelphi Theater&mdash;"Our American Cousin"&mdash;Production of
+    Rip Van Winkle&mdash;Makes the part his
+    specialty&mdash;Description of his performance of Rip Van
+    Winkle&mdash;Personal characteristics&mdash;Devotion to his
+    profession&mdash;Love of art&mdash;A capital
+    sportsman&mdash;Buys a panorama&mdash;A visit to John
+    Sefton&mdash;"The Golden Farmer"&mdash;Private life.</p><br>
+     <br>
+     <br>
+
+
+    <h2><a href='#physicians'>XI. PHYSICIANS.</a></h2><br>
+
+
+    <h3><a href='#CHAPTER_XXXVII'>CHAPTER XXXVII.</a></h3><br>
+
+
+    <h3>BENJAMIN RUSH.</h3>
+
+    <p>Birth and early life&mdash;Adopts medicine as a
+    profession&mdash;Studies in Europe&mdash;Returns home, and is
+    made a professor in the Philadelphia Medical
+    College&mdash;Political career&mdash;Elected to the Provincial
+    Conference of Pennsylvania&mdash;Action with respect to the
+    independence of the colonies&mdash;Elected to the Continental
+    Congress&mdash;Signs the Declaration of
+    Independence&mdash;Marriage&mdash;Is made Surgeon-General of
+    the army&mdash;Becomes
+    Physician-General&mdash;Troubles&mdash;Resigns his
+    commission&mdash;Letters to the people of
+    Pennsylvania&mdash;Services in the State
+    conventions&mdash;Resumes his practice in
+    Philadelphia&mdash;Plans the Philadelphia
+    Dispensary&mdash;Resumes his professor's chair&mdash;The yellow
+    fever in Philadelphia&mdash;A scene of terror&mdash;"The
+    Hundred Days"&mdash;Dr. Rush's treatment of the
+    disease&mdash;Opposition of the Faculty&mdash;Success of Rush's
+    treatment&mdash;Testimony of Dr. Ramsay&mdash;Suit for
+    damages&mdash;Dr. Rush's services during the
+    fever&mdash;Reminiscences&mdash;Honors from European
+    sovereigns&mdash;Is made Treasurer of the United States
+    Mint&mdash;Literary labors&mdash;Zeal in behalf of
+    Christianity&mdash;His connection with the Bible
+    Society&mdash;Death.</p><br>
+
+
+    <h3><a href='#CHAPTER_XXXVIII'>CHAPTER XXXVIII.</a></h3><br>
+
+
+    <h3>VALENTINE MOTT.</h3>
+
+    <p>Birth&mdash;Early life&mdash;Enters Columbia
+    College&mdash;His medical studies&mdash;Continues his studies
+    in Europe&mdash;Great surgical genius&mdash;His early success
+    as an operator&mdash;Returns home&mdash;Is made Professor of
+    Surgery in Columbia College&mdash;His career and success as a
+    teacher&mdash;Introduces the system of clinical
+    instruction&mdash;Difficulty of procuring "subjects" for
+    dissection&mdash;Desperate expedients&mdash;midnight
+    adventure&mdash;A ready rebuke&mdash;Success and skill as a
+    surgeon&mdash;Tribute from Sir Astley Cooper&mdash;A wonderful
+    operation&mdash;Sketch of his original operations&mdash;His
+    mode of operating&mdash;Careful preparation&mdash;Success as a
+    physician&mdash;A progressive mind&mdash;Professional
+    honors&mdash;Visits Europe&mdash;Reception
+    abroad&mdash;Operates upon the Sultan of Turkey&mdash;A cool
+    proposition&mdash;Personal&mdash;His last illness and
+    death&mdash;"President Lincoln murdered."</p><br>
+
+    <hr style='width: 65%;'>
+    <br>
+
+
+    <div class="full">
+         <a name='illust6821'></a>
+         <a href='images/6821.jpg'><img src='images/6821.jpg'
+                width='650' border=0
+                alt='GIRARD COLLEGE'></a><br>
+         GIRARD COLLEGE
+    </div><br>
+     <br>
+     <a name='merchants'></a>
+
+    <h1>I.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; MERCHANTS.</h1>
+    <hr style='width: 65%;'>
+    <a name='CHAPTER_I'></a>
+
+    <h2>CHAPTER I.</h2>
+
+    <h3>STEPHEN GIRARD.</h3><br>
+
+
+    <p>One May morning, in the year 1776, the mouth of the Delaware
+    Bay was shrouded in a dense fog, which cleared away toward
+    noon, and revealed several vessels just off the capes. From one
+    of these, a sloop, floated the flag of France and a signal of
+    distress. An American ship ran alongside the stranger, in
+    answer to her signal, and found that the French captain had
+    lost his reckoning in a fog, and was in total ignorance of his
+    whereabouts. His vessel, he said, was bound from New Orleans to
+    a Canadian port, and he was anxious to proceed on his voyage.
+    The American skipper informed him of his locality, and also
+    apprised him of the fact that war had broken out between the
+    colonies and Great Britain, and that the American coast was so
+    well lined with British cruisers that he would never reach port
+    but as a prize. "What shall I do?" cried the Frenchman, in
+    great alarm. "Enter the bay, and make a push for Philadelphia,"
+    was the reply. "It is your only chance."</p>
+
+    <p>The Frenchman protested that he did not know the way, and
+    had no pilot. The American captain, pitying his distress, found
+    him a pilot, and even loaned him five dollars, which the pilot
+    demanded in advance. The sloop got under weigh again, and
+    passed into the Delaware, beyond the defenses which had been
+    erected for its protection, just in time to avoid capture by a
+    British war vessel which now made its appearance at the mouth
+    of the bay. Philadelphia was reached in due time, and, as the
+    war bade fair to put an end to his voyages, the captain sold
+    the sloop and her cargo, of which he was part owner, and,
+    entering a small store in Water Street, began the business of a
+    grocer and wine-bottler. His capital was small, his business
+    trifling in extent, and he himself labored under the
+    disadvantage of being almost unable to speak the English
+    language. In person he was short and stout, with a dull,
+    repulsive countenance, which his bushy eyebrows and solitary
+    eye (being blind in the other) made almost hideous. He was cold
+    and reserved in manner, and was disliked by his neighbors, the
+    most of whom were afraid of him.</p>
+
+    <p>This man was Stephen Girard, who was afterward destined to
+    play so important a part in the history of the city to which
+    the mere chances of war sent him a stranger.</p>
+
+    <p>He was born at Bordeaux, in France, on the 21st of May,
+    1750, and was the eldest of the five children of Captain Pierre
+    Girard, a mariner of that city. His life at home was a hard
+    one. At the age of eight years, he discovered that he was blind
+    in one eye, and the mortification and grief which this
+    discovery caused him appear to have soured his entire life. He
+    afterward declared that his father treated him with
+    considerable neglect, and that, while his younger brothers were
+    sent to college, he was made to content himself with the barest
+    rudiments of an education, with merely a knowledge of reading
+    and writing. When he was quite young, his mother died, and, as
+    his father soon married again, the severity of a step-mother
+    was added to his other troubles. When about thirteen years of
+    age, he left home, with his father's consent, and began, as a
+    cabin-boy, the life of a mariner. For nine years he sailed
+    between Bordeaux and the French West Indies, rising steadily
+    from his position of cabin-boy to that of mate. He improved his
+    leisure time at sea, until he was not only master of the art of
+    navigation, but generally well informed for a man in his
+    station. His father possessed sufficient influence to procure
+    him the command of a vessel, in spite of the law of France
+    which required that no man should be made master of a ship
+    unless he had sailed two cruises in the royal navy and was
+    twenty-five years old. Gradually Girard was enabled to amass a
+    small sum of money, which he invested in cargoes easily
+    disposed of in the ports to which he sailed. Three years after
+    he was licensed to command, he made his first appearance in the
+    port of Philadelphia. He was then twenty-six years old.</p>
+
+    <p>From the time of his arrival in Philadelphia he devoted
+    himself to business with an energy and industry which never
+    failed. He despised no labor, and was willing to undertake any
+    honest means of increasing his subsistence. He bought and sold
+    any thing, from groceries to old "junk." His chief profit,
+    however, was in his wine and cider, which he bottled and sold
+    readily. His business prospered, and he was regarded as a
+    thriving man from the start.</p>
+
+    <p>In July, 1777, he married Mary Lum, a servant girl of great
+    beauty, and something of a virago as well. The union was an
+    unhappy one, as the husband and wife were utterly unsuited to
+    each other. Seven years after her marriage, Mrs. Girard showed
+    symptoms of insanity, which became so decided that her husband
+    was compelled to place her in the State Asylum for the Insane.
+    He appears to have done every thing in his power to restore her
+    to reason. Being pronounced cured, she returned to her home,
+    but in 1790 He was compelled to place her permanently in the
+    Pennsylvania Hospital, where, nine months after, she gave birth
+    to a female child, which happily died. Mrs. Girard never
+    recovered her reason, but died in 1815, and was buried in the
+    hospital grounds.</p>
+
+    <p>Girard fled from Philadelphia, with his wife, in September,
+    1777, at the approach of the British, and purchased a house at
+    Mount Holly, near Burlington, New Jersey, where he carried on
+    his bottling business. His claret commanded a ready sale among
+    the British in Philadelphia, and his profits were large. In
+    June, 1778, the city was evacuated by Lord Howe, and he was
+    allowed to return to his former home.</p>
+
+    <p>Though he traded with the British, Girard considered himself
+    a true patriot, as indeed he was. On the 27th of October, 1778,
+    he took the oath of allegiance required by the State of
+    Pennsylvania, and renewed it the year following. The war almost
+    annihilated the commerce of the country, which was slow in
+    recovering its former prosperity; but, in spite of this
+    discouraging circumstance, Girard worked on steadily, scorning
+    no employment, however humble, that would yield a profit.
+    Already he had formed the plans which led to his immense
+    wealth, and he was now patiently carrying out the most trying
+    and disheartening preliminaries. Whatever he undertook
+    prospered, and though his gains were small, they were carefully
+    husbanded, and at the proper time invested in such a manner as
+    to produce a still greater yield. Stephen Girard knew the value
+    of little things, and he knew how to take advantage of the most
+    trifling circumstance. His career teaches what may be done with
+    these little things, and shows how even a few dollars, properly
+    managed, may be made to produce as many thousands.</p>
+
+    <p>In 1780, Mr. Girard again entered upon the New Orleans and
+    St. Domingo trade, in which he was engaged at the breaking out
+    of the Revolution. He was very successful in his ventures, and
+    was enabled in a year or two to greatly enlarge his operations.
+    In 1782, he took a lease of ten years on a range of frame
+    buildings in Water Street, one of which he occupied himself,
+    with the privilege of a renewal for a similar period. Rents
+    were very low at that time, as business was prostrated and
+    people were despondent; but Girard, looking far beyond the
+    present, saw a prosperous future. He was satisfied that it
+    would require but a short time to restore to Philadelphia its
+    old commercial importance, and he was satisfied that his leases
+    would be the best investment he had ever made. The result
+    proved the correctness of his views. His profits on these
+    leases were enormous.</p>
+
+    <p>About this time he entered into partnership with his
+    brother, Captain John Girard, in the West India trade. But the
+    brothers could not conduct their affairs harmoniously, and in
+    1790 the firm was dissolved by mutual consent. Stephen Girard's
+    share of the profits at the dissolution amounted to thirty
+    thousand dollars. His wealth was greatly increased by a
+    terrible tragedy which happened soon afterward.</p>
+
+    <p>At the outbreak of the great insurrection in St. Domingo,
+    Girard had two vessels lying in one of the ports of that
+    island. At the first signal of danger, a number of planters
+    sent their valuables on board of these ships for safe-keeping,
+    and went back to their estates for the purpose of securing
+    more. They never returned, doubtless falling victims to the
+    fury of the brutal negroes, and when the vessels were ready to
+    sail there was no one to claim the property they contained. It
+    was taken to Philadelphia, and was most liberally advertised by
+    Mr. Girard, but as no owner ever appeared to demand it, it was
+    sold, and the proceeds&mdash;about fifty thousand
+    dollars&mdash;turned into the merchant's own coffers. This was
+    a great assistance to him, and the next year he began the
+    building of those splendid ships which enabled him to engage so
+    actively in the Chinese and East India trades.</p>
+
+    <p>His course was now onward and upward to wealth. At first his
+    ships merely sailed between Philadelphia and the port to which
+    they were originally destined; but at length he was enabled to
+    do more than this. Loading one of his ships with grain, he
+    would send it to Bordeaux, where the proceeds of her cargo
+    would be invested in wine and fruit. These she would take to
+    St. Petersburg and exchange for hemp and iron, which were sold
+    at Amsterdam for coin. From Amsterdam she would proceed to
+    China and India, and, purchasing a cargo of silks and teas,
+    sail for Philadelphia, where the final purchase was sold by the
+    owner for cash or negotiable paper. His success was uniform,
+    and was attributed by his brother merchants to <i>luck</i>.</p>
+
+    <p>Stephen Girard had no faith in luck. He never trusted any
+    thing to chance. He was a thorough navigator, and was perfect
+    master of the knowledge required in directing long voyages. He
+    understood every department of his business so well that he was
+    always prepared to survey the field of commerce from a high
+    stand-point. He was familiar with the ports with which he
+    dealt, and was always able to obtain such information
+    concerning them as he desired, in advance of his competitors.
+    He trusted nothing of importance to others. His instructions to
+    the commanders of his ships were always full and precise. These
+    documents afford the best evidence of the statements I have
+    made concerning his system, as the following will show:</p><br>
+
+
+    <p class="center"><i>Copy of Stephen Girard's Letter to Mr.
+    &mdash;&mdash;, Commander and Supercargo of the ship
+    &mdash;&mdash;, bound to Batavia.</i></p>
+
+    <div class='blkquot'>
+        <p class="author">Philadelphia, &mdash;&mdash;.</p>
+
+        <p>&nbsp;<span class="small-caps">Sir</span>&mdash;I
+        confirm my letters to you of the &mdash;&mdash; ult., and
+        the &mdash;&mdash; inst. Having recently heard of the
+        decease of Mr. &mdash;&mdash;, merchant at Batavia, also of
+        the probable dissolution of his house, under the firm of
+        Messrs. &mdash;&mdash;, I have judged it prudent to request
+        my Liverpool correspondents to consign the ship
+        &mdash;&mdash;, cargo, and specie on board, to Mr.
+        &mdash;&mdash;, merchant at Batavia, subject to your
+        control, and have requested said Liverpool friends to make
+        a separate invoice and bill of lading for the specie, which
+        they will ship on my account, on board of the ship
+        &mdash;&mdash;, and similar documents for the merchandise,
+        which they will ship in the same manner; therefore, I
+        request that you will sign in conformity.</p>
+
+        <p>&nbsp;I am personally acquainted with Mr.
+        &mdash;&mdash;, but not with Mr. &mdash;&mdash;, but I am
+        on very friendly terms with some particular friends of the
+        latter gentleman, and consequently I give him the
+        preference. I am sorry to observe, however, that he is
+        alone in a country where a partner appears to me
+        indispensable to a commercial house, as well for the safety
+        of his own capital as for the security of the interests of
+        those who may confide to them property, and reside in
+        distant parts of the globe.</p>
+
+        <p>&nbsp;The foregoing reflections, together with the
+        detention of my ship V&mdash;&mdash;, at Batavia, from June
+        last, epoch of her arrival at that port, until the 15th of
+        September, &mdash;&mdash;, when she had on board only
+        nineteen hundred peculs of coffee, are the motives which
+        have compelled me to request of my Liverpool friends to
+        consign the specie and goods, which they will ship on my
+        account, on board of the ship &mdash;&mdash;, under your
+        command, to said Mr. &mdash;&mdash;, subject to your
+        control.</p>
+
+        <p>&nbsp;Therefore, relying upon your activity,
+        perseverance, correctness, zeal, and attention for my
+        interest, I proceed in pointing out to you the plan of
+        conduct which I wish you to pursue on your arrival at
+        Batavia, and during your stay at that or any port of that
+        island, until your departure for Cowes, on the Isle of
+        Wight, to await my subsequent orders.</p>
+
+        <p>&nbsp;First. On your arrival at Batavia, you are to go
+        on shore and ascertain Mr. &mdash;&mdash;'s residence, and,
+        if you have reason to believe that he is still considered
+        at that place as a man of good credit, and merits full
+        confidence, you are to deliver to him my Liverpool
+        consignees' letters to his address, and also the goods
+        which you have on board, in such proportion as he may
+        request, except the specie, which is to continue on board,
+        as mentioned in the next article.</p>
+
+        <p>&nbsp;Second. The specie funds of the ship
+        &mdash;&mdash;, which will consist of old Carolus dollars,
+        you are to retain on board untouched, and in the said boxes
+        or packages as they were in when shipped from Liverpool,
+        well secured, and locked up in your powder magazine, in the
+        after run of the said ship under the cabin floor.</p>
+
+        <p>&nbsp;The bulkhead and floor of said magazine, scuttle,
+        iron bar, staples, etc., must be made sufficiently strong,
+        if not already so, while you are at Liverpool, where you
+        are to procure a strong padlock and key, for the purpose of
+        securing said specie in the most complete and safest
+        manner; and when you have the certainty that it is wanted
+        to pay for the coffee purchased on account of the ship
+        &mdash;&mdash;, then you are to receive the said coffee,
+        and pay or deliver to your consignee Spanish dollars to the
+        amount of said purchase, and no more, having due regard to
+        the premium or advance allowed at Batavia on old Spanish
+        dollars; and in that way you are to continue paying or
+        delivering dollars as fast as you receive coffee, which is
+        not to exceed the quantity which can be conveniently stowed
+        on board said ship &mdash;&mdash;, observing to take a
+        receipt for each payment, and to see that the net proceeds
+        of the goods, which will have been shipped at Liverpool,
+        must be invested in coffee, as far as the sales will
+        permit, and shipped on board of said ship.</p>
+
+        <p>&nbsp;Should it happen that on your arrival at Batavia
+        you should find that death, absence, etc., should deprive
+        you of the services of Mr. &mdash;&mdash;, or that, owing
+        to some causes before mentioned, it would be prudent to
+        confide my interests elsewhere, in either case you are to
+        apply to Messrs. &mdash;&mdash;, merchants of that place,
+        to communicate your instructions relative to the disposal
+        of the Liverpool cargo, on board of the ship
+        &mdash;&mdash;, the loading of that ship with good
+        merchantable coffee, giving the preference to the first
+        quality whenever it can be purchased on reasonable terms
+        for cash, or received in payment for the sales of the said
+        Liverpool cargo, or for a part thereof, observing that I
+        wished said coffee to be purchased at Samarang, or any
+        other out-port, if practicable; and in all cases it must be
+        attentively examined when delivered, and put up in double
+        gunny bags.</p>
+
+        <p>&nbsp;If the purchase of said cargo is made at an
+        out-port, the ship &mdash;&mdash;must proceed there to take
+        it in.</p>
+
+        <p>&nbsp;On the subject of purchasing coffee at government
+        sales, I have no doubt that it is an easy way to obtain a
+        cargo, but I am of opinion that it is a very dear one,
+        particularly as the fair purchaser, who has no other object
+        in view but to invest his money, does not stay on the
+        footing of competitors, who make their payments with
+        Netherland bills of exchange, or wish to raise the prices
+        of their coffee which they may have on hand for sale.</p>
+
+        <p>&nbsp;Under these impressions, I desire that all the
+        purchases of coffee on my account be made from individuals,
+        as far as practicable, and if the whole quantity necessary
+        to load the ship can not be obtained at private sale,
+        recourse must then be had to government sales.</p>
+
+        <p>&nbsp;In many instances I have experienced that whenever
+        I had a vessel at Batavia, the prices of coffee at the
+        government sales have risen from five to ten per cent., and
+        sometimes higher.</p>
+
+        <p>&nbsp;On the subject of coffee I would remark that,
+        owing to the increase of the culture of that bean, together
+        with the immense imports of tea into the several ports of
+        Europe, the price of that leaf has been lowered to such a
+        degree as to induce the people of those countries,
+        principally of the north, to use the latter article in
+        preference to the first.</p>
+
+        <p>&nbsp;That circumstance has, for these past three years,
+        created a gradual deduction from the consumption of coffee,
+        which has augmented the stock on hand throughout every
+        commercial city of the northern part of the globe, so as to
+        present a future unfavorable prospect to the importers of
+        that article. Indeed, I am convinced that, within a few
+        months from this date, coffee will be ten per cent. cheaper
+        in the United States than what it has been at Batavia for
+        these two years past; nevertheless, being desirous to
+        employ my ships as advantageously as circumstances will
+        permit, and calculating also that the price at Java and
+        other places of its growth will fall considerably, I have
+        no objection to adventure.</p>
+
+        <p>&nbsp;Therefore, you must use every means in your power
+        to facilitate the success of the voyage.</p>
+
+        <p>&nbsp;Should the invoice-cost of the entire cargo of
+        coffee shipped at Java, on board of the ship
+        &mdash;&mdash;, together with the disbursements of that
+        ship (which must be conducted with the greatest economy),
+        not amount to the specie funds and net proceeds of her
+        Liverpool cargo, in that event you are to deliver the
+        surplus to your consignee, who will give you a receipt for
+        the same, with a duplicate, expressing that it is on my
+        account, for the purpose of being invested on the most
+        advantageous terms, in good dry coffee, to be kept at my
+        order and disposal.</p>
+
+        <p>&nbsp;Then you will retain the original in your
+        possession, and forward to me the duplicate by first good
+        vessel to the United States, or via Europe, to care of my
+        correspondents at Liverpool, London, Antwerp, or Amsterdam,
+        the names of whom you are familiar with.</p>
+
+        <p>&nbsp;If you should judge it imprudent, however, to
+        leave that money at Batavia, you are to bring it back in
+        Spanish dollars, which you will retain on board for that
+        purpose.</p>
+
+        <p>&nbsp;Although I wish you to make a short voyage, and
+        with as quick dispatch at Java as practicable, yet I desire
+        you not to leave that island unless your consignee has
+        finally closed the sales of the Liverpool cargo, so that
+        you may be the bearer of all the documents, and
+        account-current, relative to the final transactions of the
+        consignment of the ship &mdash;&mdash; and cargo. Duplicate
+        and triplicate of said documents to be forwarded to me by
+        your consignees, by the two first safe conveyances for the
+        ports of the United States.</p>
+
+        <p>&nbsp;Being in the habit of dispatching my ships for
+        Batavia from this port, Liverpool, or Amsterdam, as
+        circumstances render it convenient, it is interesting to me
+        to be from time to time informed of the several articles of
+        produce and manufactures from each of those places which
+        are the most in demand and quickest of sale at Java. Also
+        of the quantity of each, size of package, and the probable
+        price which they may sell for, cash, adding the Batavia
+        duty, charges for selling, etc. Please to communicate this
+        to your Batavia consignee.</p>
+
+        <p>&nbsp;The rates of commission I will allow for
+        transacting the business relative to the ship and cargo at
+        Java are two and a half per cent, for selling, and two and
+        a half per cent, for purchasing and shipping coffee and
+        other articles.</p>
+
+        <p>&nbsp;The consignees engaging to place on board of each
+        prow one or two men of confidence, to see that the goods
+        are safely delivered on board of the ship, to prevent
+        pilfering, which is often practiced by those who conduct
+        the lighter.</p>
+
+        <p>&nbsp;I am informed that the expenses for two men are
+        trifling, comparatively, to the plunder which has been
+        committed on board of the prows which deliver coffee on
+        board of the ships.</p>
+
+        <p>&nbsp;No commissions whatever are to be allowed in the
+        disbursements of my ships, whenever ship and cargo belong
+        to me, and are consigned to some house.</p>
+
+        <p>&nbsp;While you remain at Batavia, I recommend you to
+        stay on board of your ship, and not to go on shore except
+        when the business of your ship and cargo may render it
+        necessary.</p>
+
+        <p>&nbsp;Inclosed is an introductory letter to
+        &mdash;&mdash;, which I request you to deliver, after you
+        have made the necessary arrangements with Mr.
+        &mdash;&mdash;for the consignment of the ship and cargo, or
+        after the circumstance aforementioned has compelled you to
+        look elsewhere for a consignee. Then you are to call upon
+        said Messrs. &mdash;&mdash;, deliver them the aforesaid
+        letter and the consignment of the ship &mdash;&mdash; and
+        cargo, after having agreed with them in writing, which they
+        will sign and deliver to you, that they engage to transact
+        the business of the ship and cargo on the terms and
+        conditions herein stated; and when that business is well
+        understood and finally closed, you are to press them in a
+        polite manner, so that they many give you a quick dispatch,
+        without giving too great a price for the coffee,
+        particularly at this present moment, when its price is
+        declining throughout those countries where it is
+        consumed.</p>
+
+        <p>&nbsp;Indeed, on the subject of purchasing coffee for
+        the ship &mdash;&mdash;, the greatest caution and prudence
+        should be exercised. Therefore, I request that you will
+        follow the plan of conduct laid down for you throughout.
+        Also, to keep to yourself the intention of the voyage, and
+        the amount of specie you have on board; and in view to
+        satisfy the curious, tell them that it is probable that the
+        ship will take in molasses, rice, and sugar, if the price
+        of that produce is very low, adding that the whole will
+        depend on the success in selling the small Liverpool cargo.
+        The consignees of said cargo should follow the same line of
+        conduct, and if properly attended to by yourself and them,
+        I am convinced that the cargo of coffee can be purchased
+        ten per cent. cheaper than it would be if it is publicly
+        known there is a quantity of Spanish dollars on board,
+        besides a valuable cargo of British goods intended to be
+        invested in coffee for Stephen Girard, of Philadelphia.</p>
+
+        <p>&nbsp;During my long commercial experience, I have
+        noticed that no advantage results from telling one's
+        business to others, except to create jealousy or
+        competitors when we are fortunate, and to gratify our
+        enemies when otherwise.</p>
+
+        <p>&nbsp;If my remarks are correct, I have no doubt they
+        will show you the necessity of being silent, and to attend
+        with activity, perseverance, and modesty, to the interests
+        of your employer.</p>
+
+        <p>&nbsp;As my letters of instruction embrace several
+        interesting objects, I request you to peruse them in
+        rotation, when at sea in fine climates, during your voyage
+        to Batavia, and to take correct extracts, so as to render
+        yourself master of the most essential parts. I conclude by
+        directing your attention to your health and that of your
+        crew.</p>
+
+        <p style="text-indent:2em;">I am yours, respectfully,</p>
+
+        <p class="author">Stephen Girard.</p>
+    </div><br>
+
+
+    <p>Mr. Girard was not only rigidly precise in his instructions,
+    but he permitted no departure from them. He regarded it as
+    dangerous to allow discretion to any one in the execution of
+    <i>his</i> plans. Where a deviation from his instructions might
+    cause success in one case, it would cause loss in ninety-nine
+    others. It was understood among all his employ&eacute;s that a
+    rigid obedience to orders, in even the most trifling
+    particulars, was expected, and would be exacted. If loss came
+    under such circumstances, the merchant assumed the entire
+    responsibility for it.</p>
+
+    <p>Upon one occasion one of his best captains was instructed to
+    purchase his cargo of teas at a certain port. Upon reaching
+    home he was summoned by the merchant to his presence.</p>
+
+    <p>"Captain &mdash;&mdash;," said Mr. Girard, sternly, "your
+    instructions required you to purchase your cargo at
+    &mdash;&mdash;."</p>
+
+    <p>"That is true, Mr. Girard," replied the Captain, "but upon
+    reaching that port I found I could do so much better at
+    &mdash;&mdash;, that I felt justified in proceeding to the
+    latter place."</p>
+
+    <p>"You should have obeyed your orders, sir," was the stern
+    retort.</p>
+
+    <p>"I was influenced by a desire to serve your interests, sir.
+    The result ought to justify me in my act, since it puts many
+    thousands more into your pocket than if I had bought where I
+    was instructed."</p>
+
+    <p>"Captain &mdash;&mdash;," said Girard, "I take care of my
+    own interests. You should have obeyed your orders if you had
+    broken me. Nothing can excuse your disobedience. You will hand
+    in your accounts, sir, and consider yourself discharged from my
+    service."</p>
+
+    <p>He was as good as his word, and, though the captain's
+    disobedience had vastly increased the profit of the voyage, he
+    dismissed him, nor would he ever receive him into his service
+    again.</p>
+
+    <p>To his knowledge of his business Mr. Girard joined an
+    unusual capacity for such ventures. He was, it must be said,
+    hard and illiberal in his bargains, and remorseless in exacting
+    the last cent due him. He was prompt and faithful in the
+    execution of every contract, never departed in the slightest
+    from his plighted word, and never engaged in any venture which
+    he was not perfectly able to undertake. He was prudent and
+    cautious in the fullest sense of those terms, but his ventures
+    were always made with a boldness which was the sure forerunner
+    of success.</p>
+
+    <p>His fidelity to his word is well shown by a circumstance
+    which had occurred long after he was one of the "money kings"
+    of the land. He was once engaged with his cashier in a
+    discussion as to the length of time a man would consume in
+    counting a million of dollars, telling out each dollar
+    separately. The dispute became animated, and the cashier
+    declared that he could make a million of dots with ink in a few
+    hours.</p>
+
+    <p>"I'll tell you what I'll do," said Girard, who was
+    thoroughly vexed by the opposition of the other, "I'll wager
+    five hundred dollars that I can ride in my gig from here to my
+    farm, spend two hours there, and return before you can make
+    your million of dots with ink."</p>
+
+    <p>The cashier, after a moment's reflection, accepted the
+    wager, and Mr. Girard departed to his farm. He returned in a
+    few hours, confident that he had won. The cashier met him with
+    a smile.</p>
+
+    <p>"Where is my money?" asked Girard, triumphantly.</p>
+
+    <p>"The money is mine," replied the cashier. "Come and
+    see."</p>
+
+    <p>He led the merchant to an unused room of the bank, and
+    there, to his dismay, Girard saw the walls and ceiling covered
+    with spots of ink, which the cashier had dashed on them with a
+    brush.</p>
+
+    <p>"Do you mean to say there are a million of dots here?" he
+    cried, angrily.</p>
+
+    <p>"Count them, and see," replied his subordinate, laughing.
+    "You know the wager was a million of dots with ink."</p>
+
+    <p>"But I expected you would make them with the pen."</p>
+
+    <p>"I did not undertake any thing of the kind."</p>
+
+    <p>The joke was too good, and the merchant not only paid the
+    amount of the wager, but the cost of cleaning the walls.</p>
+
+    <p>In 1810 the question of renewing the charter of the old Bank
+    of the United States was actively discussed. Girard was a warm
+    friend of that institution, which he believed had been the
+    cause of a very great part of the prosperity of the country,
+    and was firmly convinced that Congress would renew the charter.
+    In this belief he ordered the Barings, of London, to invest all
+    his funds in their hands in shares of the Bank of the United
+    States, which was done, during the following year, to the
+    amount of half a million of dollars. When the charter expired,
+    he was the principal creditor of that institution, which
+    Congress refused to renew. Discovering that he could purchase
+    the old Bank and the cashier's house for one hundred and twenty
+    thousand dollars, he at once secured them, and on the 12th of
+    May, 1812, opened the Girard Bank, with a capital of one
+    million two hundred thousand dollars, which he increased the
+    next year by one hundred thousand dollars more. He retained all
+    the old officers of the Bank of the United States, especially
+    the cashier, Mr. Simpson, to whose skill and experience he was
+    greatly indebted for his subsequent success.</p>
+
+    <p>Finding that the salaries which had been paid by the
+    Government were higher than those paid elsewhere, he cut them
+    down to the rate given by the other banks. The watchman had
+    always received from the old Bank the gift of an overcoat at
+    Christmas, but Girard put a stop to this. He gave no gratuities
+    to any of his employ&eacute;s, but confined them to the
+    compensation for which they had bargained; yet he contrived to
+    get out of them service more devoted than was received by other
+    men who paid higher wages and made presents. Appeals to him for
+    aid were unanswered. No poor man ever came full-handed from his
+    presence. He turned a deaf ear to the entreaties of failing
+    merchants to help them on their feet again. He was neither
+    generous nor charitable. When his faithful cashier died, after
+    long years spent in his service, he manifested the most
+    hardened indifference to the bereavement of the family of that
+    gentleman, and left them to struggle along as best they
+    could.</p>
+
+    <p>Yet from the first he was liberal and sometimes magnificent
+    in the management of his bank. He would discount none but good
+    paper, but it was his policy to grant accommodations to small
+    traders, and thus encourage beginners, usually giving the
+    preference to small notes, by this system doing very much to
+    avert the evils that would of necessity have sprung from the
+    suspension of the old Bank of the United States. The Government
+    credit was almost destroyed, and money was needed to carry on
+    the war. He made repeated advances to the treasury, unsolicited
+    by the authorities, and on more than one occasion kept the
+    Government supplied with the sinews of war. In 1814, when our
+    prospects, both military and financial, were at their lowest
+    ebb, when the British forces had burned Washington and the New
+    England States were threatening to withdraw from the Union, the
+    Government asked for a loan of five millions of dollars, with
+    the most liberal inducements to subscribers. Only twenty
+    thousand dollars could be obtained, and the project seemed
+    doomed to failure, when it was announced that Stephen Girard
+    had subscribed for the whole amount. This announcement at once
+    restored the public confidence, and Mr. Girard was beset with
+    requests from persons anxious to take a part of the loan, even
+    at an advanced rate. They were allowed to do so upon the
+    original terms. When the Government could not, for want of
+    funds, pay the interest on its debt to him, he wrote to the
+    Secretary of the Treasury:</p>
+
+    <p>"I am of opinion that those who have any claim for interest
+    on public stock, etc., should patiently wait for a more
+    favorable moment, or at least receive in payment treasury
+    notes. Should you be under the necessity of resorting to either
+    of these plans, as one of the public creditors, I shall not
+    murmur."</p>
+
+    <p>"A circumstance soon occurred, however, which was a source
+    of no little discomfiture to the financial arrangements of his
+    individual institution. This fact was the suspension of specie
+    payments by the State banks, resulting from the non-intercourse
+    act, the suspension of the old bank, and the combined causes
+    tending to produce a derangement of the currency of the
+    country. It was then a matter of great doubt with him how he
+    should preserve the integrity of his own institution, while the
+    other banks were suspending their payments; but the credit of
+    his own bank was effectually secured by the suggestion of his
+    cashier, Mr. Simpson, who advised the recalling of his own
+    notes by redeeming them with specie, and by paying out the
+    notes of the State banks. In this mode not a single note of his
+    own was suffered to be depreciated, and he was thus enabled, in
+    1817, to contribute effectually to the restoration of specie
+    payments."</p>
+
+    <p>He was instrumental in securing the establishment of the new
+    Bank of the United States, and was its largest stockholder and
+    one of its directors. He even offered to unite his own
+    institution with it upon certain liberal conditions, which were
+    refused. Yet he was always a firm friend to it.</p>
+
+    <p>"One of the characteristics of Mr. Girard was his public
+    spirit. At one time he freely subscribed one hundred and ten
+    thousand dollars for the navigation of the Schuylkill; at
+    another time he loaned the company two hundred and sixty-five
+    thousand eight hundred and fifty dollars. When the credit of
+    the State of Pennsylvania was prostrated by what was believed
+    to have been an injudicious system of internal improvement, and
+    it was found expedient for the Governor to resort to its
+    metropolis in order to replenish its coffers, he made a
+    voluntary loan to Governor Shultz of one hundred thousand
+    dollars. So far was his disposition to promote the fiscal
+    prosperity of the country manifested, that, as late as 1831,
+    when the country was placed in extreme embarrassment from the
+    scarcity of money, he perceived the cause in the fact that the
+    balance of trade was against us to a considerable extent, and
+    he accordingly drew upon the house of Baring Brothers &amp; Co.
+    for bills of exchange to the amount of twelve thousand pounds
+    sterling, which he disposed of to the Bank of the United States
+    at an advance of ten per cent., which draft was followed up by
+    another for ten thousand, which was disposed of in like manner
+    to other institutions. This act tended to reduce the value of
+    bills, and the rate of exchange suddenly fell. The same spirit
+    which he manifested toward the national currency he exhibited
+    to the corporation of Philadelphia, by erecting new blocks of
+    buildings, and beautifying and adorning its streets; less,
+    apparently, from a desire of profit than from a wish to improve
+    the place which was his adopted home, and where he had reaped
+    his fortunes. His subscription of two hundred thousand dollars
+    to the Danville and Pottsville Railroad, in 1831, was an action
+    in keeping with the whole tenor of his life; and his
+    subscription of ten thousand dollars toward the erection of an
+    exchange looked to the same result."</p>
+
+    <p>The war of 1812, which brought financial ruin to so many
+    others, simply increased Girard's wealth. He never lost a ship,
+    and as war prices prevailed, his profits were in accordance
+    with them. One of his ships was taken by a British cruiser at
+    the mouth of the Delaware, in the spring of 1813. Fearing that
+    his prize would be recaptured by an American ship of war if he
+    attempted to send her into port, the English admiral dispatched
+    a flag of truce to Mr. Girard, and proposed to him to ransom
+    the vessel for one hundred and eighty thousand dollars in coin.
+    Girard consented, paid the money, and the ship was allowed to
+    come up to the city. Her cargo consisted of silks, nankeens,
+    and teas, and afforded her owner a profit of half a million of
+    dollars.</p>
+
+    <p>Yet in the midst of all his wealth, which in 1828 was
+    estimated at ten millions of dollars, he was a solitary old
+    man.</p>
+
+    <p>He lived in a dingy little house in Water Street. His wife
+    had died in an insane asylum, and he was childless. He was
+    repulsive in person. He was feared by his subordinates&mdash;by
+    all who had dealings with him&mdash;and liked by none. He was
+    mean and close in his personal habits, living on less, perhaps,
+    than any of his clerks, and deriving little or no benefit from
+    his vast wealth, so far as his individual comfort was
+    concerned. He gave nothing in charity. Lazarus would have lain
+    at his doors a life-time without being noticed by him. He was
+    solitary, soured, cold, with a heart of stone, and fully
+    conscious of his personal unpopularity. Yet he valued
+    wealth&mdash;valued it for the power it gave him over men.
+    Under that cold, hardened exterior reigned an ambition as
+    profound as that which moved Napoleon. He was ambitious of
+    regulating the financial operations of the land, and proud of
+    his power in this respect, and it should be remembered in his
+    favor that he did not abuse that power after it had passed into
+    his hands.</p>
+
+    <p>He had no vices, no dissipations; his whole soul was in his
+    business. He was conscious that his only hope of distinction
+    above his fellow-men was in his wealth, and he was resolved
+    that nothing should make him swerve from his endeavor to
+    accumulate a fortune which should make him all powerful in life
+    and remembered in death. He sought no friends, and was reticent
+    as to his career, saying to those who questioned him about it,
+    "Wait till I am dead; my deeds will show what I was."</p>
+
+    <p>Religion had no place in his heart. He was an avowed
+    unbeliever, making a boast of his disbelief. He always worked
+    on Sunday, in order that he might show his disapproval of the
+    observance of it as a day of rest. Rest, he said, made a man
+    rusty, and attendance upon the worship of God he denounced as
+    worse than folly. His favorite books were the works of
+    Voltaire, and he named his best ships after the most celebrated
+    French infidels.</p>
+
+    <p>Yet this man, so unloved, so undeserving of love, is said to
+    have once had a warm heart. His early troubles and his domestic
+    griefs are said to have soured and estranged him from
+    mankind.</p>
+
+    <p>"No one who has had access to his private papers can fail to
+    be impressed with the belief that these early disappointments
+    furnish the key to his entire character. Originally of warm and
+    generous impulses, the belief in childhood that he had not been
+    given his share of the love and kindness which were extended to
+    others, changed the natural current of his feelings, and,
+    acting on a warm and passionate temperament, alienated him from
+    his home, his parents, and his friends. And when in after time
+    there were superadded years of bitter anguish, resulting from
+    his unfortunate and ill-adapted marriage, rendered even more
+    poignant by the necessity of concealment, and the consequent
+    injustice of public sentiment, marring all his cherished
+    expectations, it may be readily understood why constant
+    occupation became a necessity and labor a pleasure."</p>
+
+    <p>This is the testimony of Mr. Henry W. Arey, the
+    distinguished secretary of Girard College, in whose keeping are
+    the papers of the subject of this memoir, and it must be
+    confessed that his view of Girard's character is sustained by
+    the following incidents, the narration of which I have passed
+    over until now, in order that the history of his commercial
+    career might not be interrupted:</p>
+
+    <p>In the summer of 1793 the yellow fever broke out with
+    fearful violence in Philadelphia. The citizens fled in dismay,
+    leaving the plague-smitten city to its fate. Houses were left
+    tenantless, and the streets were deserted. It was a season of
+    horror and dread. Those who could not get away avoided each
+    other, and the sufferers were left to languish and die. Money
+    could not buy nurses in sufficient numbers, and often the
+    victims lay unburied for days in the places where they had
+    died. So terrible was the panic that it seemed that nothing
+    could stay it.</p>
+
+    <p>On the 10th of September the <i>Federal Gazette</i>, the
+    only paper which had not suspended its publication, contained
+    an anonymous card, stating that of the visitors of the poor all
+    but three had succumbed to the disease or fled from the city,
+    and begging assistance from such benevolent citizens as would
+    consent to render their aid. On the 12th and 14th, meetings
+    were held at the City Hall, at the last of which a volunteer
+    committee was appointed to superintend the measures to be taken
+    for checking the pestilence. Twenty-seven men volunteered to
+    serve, but only twelve had the courage to fulfill their
+    promise. They set to work promptly. The hospital at Bush Hill
+    was reported by the physician to be in a deplorable
+    state&mdash;without order, dirty and foul, and in need of
+    nurses. The last, he stated, could not be had for any price.
+    Two of the committee now stepped forward and nobly offered
+    themselves as managers of the hospital. They were Stephen
+    Girard and Peter Helm.</p>
+
+    <p>Girard was now a man of wealth and influence, and with a
+    brilliant commercial career opening before him. Above all, he
+    was a foreigner, and unpopular in the city. Yet he did not
+    hesitate to take the post from which others shrank. He and Helm
+    were regarded as doomed men, but they did not falter from their
+    self-imposed task. They went to work at once. Girard chose the
+    post of honor, which was the post of danger&mdash;the
+    management of the interior of the hospital. His decisive
+    character was at once felt. Order began to appear, medicines
+    and nurses were procured, and the very next day the committee
+    were informed that the hospital had been cleaned and
+    reorganized, and was prepared to receive patients.</p>
+
+    <p>Girard opened his purse liberally, and spared no expense
+    where money would avail. But this was not all. Besides
+    personally superintending the interior of the hospital, he went
+    about through the city seeking the sick and conveying them to
+    the hospital.</p>
+
+    <p>"In the great scarcity of help, he used frequently to
+    receive the sick and dying at the gate, assist in carrying them
+    to their beds, nurse them, receive their last messages, watch
+    for their last breath, and then, wrapping them in the sheet on
+    which they had died, carry them out to the burial ground and
+    place them in the trench. He had a vivid recollection of the
+    difficulty of finding any kind of fabric in which to wrap the
+    dead, when the vast number of interments had exhausted the
+    supply of sheets. 'I would put them,' he would say, 'in any old
+    rag I could find.'"</p>
+
+    <div class="full">
+        <a name='illust6841'></a>
+        <a href='images/6841.jpg'><img src='images/6841.jpg'
+                width='650' border=0
+                alt="GIRARD'S HEROISM."></a><br>
+         GIRARD'S HEROISM
+    </div>
+
+    <p>"If he ever left the hospital, it was to visit the infected
+    districts, and assist in removing the sick from the houses in
+    which they were dying without help. One scene of this kind,
+    witnessed by a merchant who was hurrying past with camphored
+    handkerchief pressed to his mouth, affords us a vivid glimpse
+    of this heroic man engaged in his sublime vocation. A carriage,
+    rapidly driven by a black man, broke the silence of the
+    deserted and grass-grown street. It stopped before a frame
+    house, and the driver, first having bound a handkerchief over
+    his mouth, opened the door of the carriage, and quickly
+    remounted to the box. A short, thick-set man stepped from the
+    coach and entered the house. In a minute or two the observer,
+    who stood at a safe distance watching the proceedings, heard a
+    shuffling noise in the entry, and soon saw the stout little man
+    supporting with extreme difficulty a tall, gaunt,
+    yellow-visaged victim of the pestilence. Girard held round the
+    waist the sick man, whose yellow face rested against his own;
+    his long, damp, tangled hair mingled with Girard's; his feet
+    dragging helpless upon the pavement. Thus he drew him to the
+    carriage door, the driver averting his face from the spectacle,
+    far from offering to assist. Partly dragging, partly lifting,
+    Girard succeeded, after long and severe exertion, in getting
+    him into the vehicle. He then entered it himself, closed the
+    door, and the carriage drove away toward the
+       hospital."<a id="footnotetagA"
+       name="footnotetagA"></a> <a href=
+       "#footnoteA"><sup>[A]</sup></a></p>
+
+    <p>For sixty days Mr. Girard continued to discharge his duties,
+    never absenting himself from his post, being nobly sustained by
+    Peter Helm.</p>
+
+    <p>Again, in 1797 and 1798, when the city was scourged a second
+    and a third time with the fever, he volunteered his services,
+    and more than earned the gratitude of his fellow-citizens. In
+    the absence of physicians, he took upon himself the office of
+    prescribing for the sick, and as his treatment involved careful
+    nursing and the use of simple remedies only, he was very
+    successful. In 1799 he wrote to his friend Devize, then in
+    France, but who had been the physician at the Bush Hill
+    Hospital in 1793:</p>
+
+    <p>"During all this frightful time I have constantly remained
+    in the city, and, without neglecting any public duties, I have
+    played a part which will make you smile. Would you believe it,
+    my friend, that I have visited as many as fifteen sick people
+    in a day, and what will surprise you still more, I have lost
+    only one patient, an Irishman, who would drink a little. I do
+    not flatter myself that I have cured one single person, but you
+    will think with me that in my quality of Philadelphia physician
+    I have been very moderate, and that not one of my confreres
+    have killed fewer than myself."</p>
+
+    <p>Such acts as these should go far in his favor in estimating
+    his character, for they are the very height of true
+    heroism.</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Girard was never idle. Work, as has before been said,
+    was a necessity with him. Nothing would draw him from his
+    labors. His only recreation was to drive to his little farm,
+    which lay a few miles out of the city, and engage with his own
+    hands in the work of tilling it. He was very proud of the
+    vegetables and fruits he raised himself, and took great
+    interest in improving their growth. During the visit of the
+    present head of the house of Baring Bros, (then a young man) to
+    this country, that gentleman supposed he would give Mr. Girard
+    pleasure by informing him of the safe arrival of one of his
+    ships, the Voltaire, from India. Engaging a carriage, he drove
+    to the banker's farm, and inquired for Mr. Girard.</p>
+
+    <p>"He is in the hay-loft," was the answer.</p>
+
+    <p>"Inform him that I wish to see him," said Mr. Baring; but
+    almost before the words had left his lips Girard was before
+    him.</p>
+
+    <p>"I came to inform you," he said, addressing the banker,
+    "that your ship, the Voltaire, has arrived safely."</p>
+
+    <p>"I knew that she would reach port safely," said Girard; "my
+    ships always arrive safe. She is a good ship. Mr. Baring, you
+    must excuse me; I am much engaged in my hay." And so saying, he
+    ascended to the loft again.</p>
+
+    <p>To the last he was active. In 1830, having reached the age
+    of eighty, he began to lose the sight of his eye; yet he would
+    have no assistance. In attempting to cross a crowded street, he
+    was knocked down by a passing wagon and injured severely. His
+    ear was cut off, his face bruised, and his sight entirely
+    destroyed. His health now declined rapidly, and on the 26th of
+    December, 1831, he died, in the back room of his plain little
+    house in Water Street.</p>
+
+    <p>His immense wealth was carefully divided by his will. He
+    gave to his surviving brother and eleven of his nieces sums
+    ranging from five to twenty thousand dollars, and to his
+    remaining niece, who was the mother of a very large family, he
+    gave sixty thousand dollars. He gave to each of the captains
+    then in his employ who had made two voyages in his service, and
+    who should bring his ship safely into port, fifteen hundred
+    dollars. To each of his apprentices he gave five hundred
+    dollars. To his old servants he gave annuities, ranging from
+    three to five hundred dollars each.</p>
+
+    <p>He gave thirty thousand dollars to the Pennsylvania
+    Hospital, in which his wife had been cared for; twenty thousand
+    to the Deaf and Dumb Asylum; ten thousand to the Orphan Asylum;
+    ten thousand to the Lancaster schools; ten thousand for the
+    purpose of providing the poor in Philadelphia with free fuel;
+    ten thousand to the Society for the Relief of Distressed
+    Sea-Captains and their Families; twenty thousand to the Masonic
+    Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania, for the relief of poor members;
+    six thousand for the establishment of a free school in
+    Passyunk, near Philadelphia; five hundred thousand dollars to
+    the Corporation of Philadelphia for certain improvements in the
+    city; three hundred thousand to the State of Pennsylvania for
+    her canals; and a portion of his valuable estates in Louisiana
+    to the Corporation of New Orleans, for the improvement of that
+    city.</p>
+
+    <p>The remainder of his property, worth then about six millions
+    of dollars, he left to trustees for the erection and endowment
+    of the noble College for Orphans, in Philadelphia, which bears
+    his name.</p>
+
+    <p>Thus it will be seen that this man, who seemed steeled to
+    resist appeals for private charity in life, in death devoted
+    all the results of his unusual genius in his calling to the
+    noblest of purposes, and to enterprises of the most benignant
+    character, which will gratefully hand his name down to the
+    remotest ages of posterity.</p>
+
+    <blockquote class="footnote">
+        <a id="footnoteA"
+                    name="footnoteA"></a> <b>Footnote A</b>:
+                    <a href="#footnotetagA">(return)</a>
+
+        <p>James Parton.</p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <hr style='width: 65%;'>
+    <a name='CHAPTER_II'></a>
+
+    <h2>CHAPTER II.</h2>
+
+    <h3>JOHN JACOB ASTOR.</h3><br>
+
+
+    <p>Those who imagine that the mercantile profession is
+    incapable of developing the element of greatness in the mind of
+    man, find a perfect refutation in the career of the subject of
+    this memoir, who won his immense fortune by the same traits
+    which would have raised him to eminence as a statesman. It may
+    be thought by some that he has no claim to a place in the list
+    of famous Americans, since he was not only German by birth, but
+    German in character to his latest day; but it must be borne in
+    mind that America was the theater of his exploits, and that he
+    owed the greater part of his success to the wise and beneficent
+    institutions of the "New Land," as he termed it. In his own
+    country he would have had no opportunity for the display of his
+    great abilities, and it was only by placing himself in the
+    midst of institutions favorable to progress that he was enabled
+    to make use of his talents. It is for this reason, therefore,
+    that we may justly claim him as one of the most celebrated of
+    American merchants.</p>
+
+    <p>John Jacob Astor was born in the village of Waldorf, near
+    Heidelberg, in the Grand Duchy of Baden, on the 17th of July,
+    1763. This year was famous for the conclusion of the Treaties
+    of Paris and Hubertsburg, which placed all the fur-yielding
+    regions of America, from the Gulf of Mexico to the Frozen Sea,
+    in the hands of England. He was the youngest of four sons, and
+    was born of Protestant parents. He was early taught to read
+    Luther's Bible and the Prayer-book, and throughout his whole
+    life remained a zealous Protestant. He was trained to the habit
+    of rising early, and giving the first of his waking hours to
+    reading the Bible and Prayer-book. This habit he continued all
+    through life, and he often declared that it was to him the
+    source of unfailing pleasure and comfort. His religious
+    impressions were mainly due to his mother, who was a pious,
+    thrifty, and hard-working woman, given to saving, and devoted
+    to her family.</p>
+
+    <p>His father, on the contrary, was a jolly "ne'er do well," a
+    butcher by trade, and not overburdened with industry. The
+    business of a butcher in so small a village as Waldorf, where
+    meat was a luxury to the inhabitants, was merely a nominal
+    calling. It knew but one season of real profit. It was at that
+    time the custom in Germany for every farmer to set apart a
+    calf, pig, or bullock, and fatten it against harvest time. As
+    that season approached, the village butcher passed from house
+    to house to slaughter the animal, cure its flesh, or make
+    sausage meat of it, spending, sometimes, several days at each
+    house. This season brought Jacob Astor an abundance of work,
+    and enabled him to provide liberally for the simple wants of
+    his family; but during the rest of the year it was with
+    difficulty that he could make bread for them. Yet Jacob took
+    his hard lot cheerfully. He was merry over his misfortunes, and
+    sought to forget them in the society of companions who gathered
+    at the village beer-house. His wife's remonstrances against
+    such a course of life were sometimes so energetic that the
+    house became any thing but a pleasant place for the
+    children.</p>
+
+    <p>Here John Jacob grew up to boyhood. His brothers left home
+    to earn their livelihood elsewhere, as soon as they were old
+    enough to do so, and he alone remained under the paternal roof.
+    His father destined him for his own calling, but the boy shrank
+    from it with disgust. To crown his misfortunes, his mother
+    died, and his father married again, and this time a woman who
+    looked with no favor upon the son. The newly-married pair
+    quarreled continually, and the boy was glad to escape
+    occasionally to the house of a schoolmate, where he passed the
+    night in a garret or outhouse. By daylight he was back at his
+    father's slaughter-house, to assist in carrying out the meat.
+    He was poorly clad and badly fed, and his father's bad
+    reputation wounded him so keenly that he shrank from playing
+    with other boys, and led a life of comparative isolation.</p>
+
+    <p>Fortunately for him, he had a teacher, Valentine Jeune by
+    name, the son of French Protestants, who was better fitted for
+    his position than the majority of the more liberally-patronized
+    Catholic instructors. He was well taught by Valentine Jeune in
+    the rudiments of a plain education, and the tutor and the
+    Protestant minister of the village together succeeded so well
+    in his religious instruction that at the age of fourteen he was
+    confirmed. Confirmation is the decisive point in the career of
+    the German youth. Until then he is only a child. Afterward he
+    is regarded as on the threshold of manhood, and is given to
+    understand that the time has come for him to make choice of a
+    career in life.</p>
+
+    <p>To the German peasant two courses only lie open, to learn a
+    trade or go out to service. John Jacob was resolved not to do
+    the latter, and he was in no condition to adopt the former. He
+    was already familiar with his father's trade, but he shrank
+    from it with disgust, and he could not hope to obtain money
+    enough to pay for his tuition as an apprentice in any other
+    calling. No workman in the village would receive him as an
+    apprentice for less than fifty dollars, and fifty dollars were
+    then further beyond his reach than as many millions in after
+    years. The harvest was approaching, and Jacob Astor, seeing an
+    unusual amount of work in store for him at that season, decided
+    the matter for his son by informing him that he must prepare to
+    settle down as his assistant. He obeyed, but discontentedly,
+    and with a determination to abandon his home at the earliest
+    practicable moment.</p>
+
+    <p>His chief desire was to leave Germany and emigrate to
+    America. The American Revolution had brought the "New Land"
+    into great prominence; and one of the brothers, Henry Astor,
+    had already settled in New York as a butcher, and his letters
+    had the effect of increasing John Jacob's desire to follow him.
+    It was impossible to do so then, for the war which was raging
+    in this country made it any thing but inviting to an emigrant,
+    and the boy was entirely ignorant of the English language.
+    Nevertheless, he knew that the war could not last always, and
+    he resolved to go as soon as peace would allow him. Meanwhile
+    he wished to join his elder brother, who had removed to London,
+    and was now engaged with his uncle in the manufacture of
+    musical instruments. In London he thought he could acquire a
+    knowledge of English, and save from his wages the amount
+    necessary to pay his passage from England to America. He could
+    reach some of the seaports of the Continent by walking. But he
+    needed money to pay his passage from there to Great Britain.
+    His determination thus formed, he made no secret of it, and
+    succeeded at length in extorting a reluctant consent from his
+    father, who was not inclined to expect very much from the
+    future career of his son. His teacher, however, had more faith
+    in him, and said to the butcher, on the morning of the lad's
+    departure: "I am not afraid of John Jacob; he'll get through
+    the world. He has a clear head, and every thing right behind
+    the ears."</p>
+
+    <p>He was seventeen years old when he left home; was stout and
+    well built, and had a constitution of iron. He was possessed of
+    a good plain education, and a remarkable degree of common
+    sense. He had no vicious habits or propensities, and was
+    resolved that he would never set foot again in his native town
+    until he could do so as a rich man.</p>
+
+    <p>Ardently as he was bent on seeking his fortune in distant
+    lands, it cost him a struggle to go away, for he was a true
+    German in his attachment to his home and family. This
+    attachment he never lost. After providing liberally for his
+    relatives in his will, he made a munificent donation to his
+    native village for the benefit of its poor children.</p>
+
+    <p>With his scanty wardrobe in a bundle, which he slung over
+    his shoulder by a stick, and a mere pittance in his purse, he
+    set out from Waldorf, on foot, for the Rhine. "Soon after I
+    left the village," said he, in after-life, "I sat down beneath
+    a tree to rest, and there I made three resolutions: to be
+    honest, to be industrious, and not to gamble." He had but two
+    dollars in his pocket; but this was enough for his purpose. The
+    Rhine was not far distant from his native village, and this
+    part of his journey he easily accomplished on foot. Upon
+    reaching the river, he is said to have secured a place as
+    oarsman on a timber raft. The timber which is cut in the Black
+    Forest for shipment is made up into rafts on the Rhine, but
+    instead of being suffered to float down the stream, as in this
+    country, is rowed by oarsmen, each raft having from sixty to
+    eighty men attached to it. As the labor is severe and attended
+    with some risk, the wages are high, and the lot of the oarsmen
+    not altogether a hard one, as they manage to have a great deal
+    of sport among themselves. The amount paid as wages on these
+    voyages is about ten dollars, besides the coarse fare furnished
+    the men, and the time occupied is about two weeks.</p>
+
+    <p>Upon reaching the Dutch seaport at the mouth of the Rhine,
+    young Astor received his wages&mdash;the largest sum he had
+    ever possessed&mdash;and took passage in a vessel for London,
+    where he was welcomed cordially by his brother, and provided
+    with employment in his manufactory.</p>
+
+    <p>He now set to work to prepare himself for his emigration to
+    America. His industry was unflagging. He worked literally from
+    dawn till dark, and practiced the most rigid economy in his
+    expenditures. His leisure time, which was brief, was spent in
+    trying to master the English language, and in acquiring
+    information respecting America. He had anticipated great
+    difficulty in his efforts to learn English, but succeeded
+    beyond his hopes. In six weeks he could make himself understood
+    in that language, and some time before starting for America
+    could speak it with ease, though he never could at any period
+    of his life rid himself of his strong German accent. He was
+    never able to write English correctly, but after being some
+    years in this country acquired a style which was striking and
+    to the point, in spite of its inaccuracy. England, however, was
+    not a favorable place for acquiring information respecting
+    America. The Colonies had exasperated the mother country by
+    their heroic struggle for freedom, which was just drawing to
+    its close, and the New World was pictured to the imagination of
+    the young German in any thing but a favorable light. His most
+    accurate information was gained from those who had returned
+    from America, and these persons, as often as chance threw them
+    in his way, he questioned with eagerness and precision; their
+    answers were carefully stored up in his memory.</p>
+
+    <p>In September, 1783, the news of the peace which established
+    the independence of the United States was published in Europe.
+    Young Astor had now been in London two years, and had saved
+    money enough to take him to America. He was the possessor of a
+    suit of good clothes, besides his ordinary wearing apparel, and
+    fifteen guineas in English money, which he had saved from his
+    slender earnings by the absolute denial to himself of every
+    thing not essential to his existence. The way to America was
+    now open, and he resolved to set out at once. For five guineas
+    he bought a steerage passage in a ship bound for Baltimore, and
+    reserving about five pounds sterling of the remainder of his
+    capital in money, invested the rest in seven German flutes,
+    which he bought of his brother, and embarked for the "New
+    Land."</p>
+
+    <p>The winter was memorable on land and sea for its severity,
+    and our hero's first voyage was a stormy one. It is said that
+    on one occasion, when the tempest was unusually violent, and
+    the ship in imminent danger, he made his appearance in his
+    Sunday clothes. In reply to those who asked his reason for so
+    strange an act, he said that if he should reach land he would
+    save his best clothes, and that if he was drowned it was
+    immaterial what became of them.</p>
+
+    <p>Although the ship sailed in November, it did not reach the
+    Chesapeake until near the end of January, and there, when only
+    one day distant from Baltimore, was caught in the ice, where it
+    was compelled to remain until late in March. This delay was
+    very vexatious to the young emigrant, but it proved in the end
+    the greatest blessing that could have befallen him. During the
+    voyage Astor had made the acquaintance of one of his fellow
+    passengers, a German, somewhat older than himself, and, while
+    the ship lay fast in the ice, the two were constantly together.
+    As a consequence of the intimacy which thus sprung up between
+    them, they exchanged confidences, told each other their
+    history, and their purpose in coming to America. Astor learned
+    that his friend had emigrated to the New World a few years
+    before, friendless and penniless, but that, beginning in a
+    little way, he had managed to become a fur trader. He bought
+    his furs from the Indians, and from the boatmen plying on the
+    Hudson River. These he sold at a small profit to larger
+    dealers, until he had accumulated a considerable sum for one in
+    his position. Believing that he could find a better market in
+    Europe than in America, he had embarked all his capital in
+    skins, which he had taken to England and sold at a heavy
+    advance. The proceeds he had invested in toys and trinkets
+    valued by the savages, and was now on his way back with them,
+    intending to go into the wilderness himself and purchase an
+    additional stock of furs from the Indians. He recommended Astor
+    to enter upon the same business; gave him valuable information
+    as to the value of peltries in America and in England; told him
+    the best way of buying, packing, preserving, and shipping the
+    skins, and gave him the names of the leading furriers in New
+    York, Montreal, and London. Astor was deeply impressed with the
+    views of his friend, but he could not see his own way clear to
+    such a success, as he had no capital. His friend assured him
+    that capital was unnecessary if he was willing to begin in an
+    humble way. He could buy valuable furs on the wharves of New
+    York for toys and trinkets, and even for cakes, from the
+    Indians who visited the city, and these he could sell at an
+    advance to the New York dealers. He advised the young man,
+    however, not to be satisfied with the American market, but to
+    work for a position which would enable him to send his furs to
+    England, where they would bring four or five times as much as
+    in this country. Astor carefully treasured up all that his
+    friend said to him, and quietly resolved that he would lose no
+    time in entering upon this business, which seemed to promise so
+    much.</p>
+
+    <p>The two friends traveled together from Baltimore to New
+    York, where they were warmly received by Aster's brother,
+    Henry, who had succeeded in laying the foundation of a
+    prosperous business as a butcher, in which he afterward made a
+    large fortune. Both brothers were men of business habits, and
+    on the very first evening after the arrival of the new-comer
+    they began to discuss plans for his future. Astor's friend
+    stated all the advantages of the fur trade, and convinced Henry
+    Astor that it was a fine field for the energies of his brother;
+    and it was agreed that it would be best for the young man to
+    seek employment in the service of some furrier in the city, in
+    order that he might thoroughly learn the business, and
+    familiarize himself with the country and its customs. To his
+    great delight, young Astor learned that, so far from being
+    compelled to pay his employer for learning him the business, as
+    in Europe, he would be certain here to receive his board and
+    nominal wages from the first. The next day the three started
+    out, and succeeded in obtaining a situation for the young man
+    in the store of Mr. Robert Bowne, a Quaker, and a merchant of
+    long experience in the business, as well as a most estimable
+    man. He is said to have engaged Astor at two dollars per week
+    and his board.</p>
+
+    <p>Astor was at once set to work by his employer to beat furs,
+    this method of treating them being required to prevent the
+    moths from lodging in and destroying them. From the first he
+    applied himself to the task of learning the business. He bent
+    all the powers of his remarkable mind to acquiring an intimate
+    knowledge of furs, and of fur-bearing animals, and their haunts
+    and habits. His opportunities for doing so were very good, as
+    many of the skins were sold over Bowne's counters by the
+    hunters who had taken them. These men he questioned with a
+    minuteness that astonished them, and the result was that in a
+    few years he was as thoroughly familiar with the animals, their
+    habits, their country, and the mode of taking them, as many of
+    the trappers themselves. He is said to have been in his prime
+    the best judge of furs in America. He appreciated the fact that
+    no man can succeed in any business or profession without fully
+    understanding it, and he was too much determined upon success
+    to be satisfied with a superficial knowledge. He was resolved
+    that there should be no detail in the business, however minute,
+    with which he was unfamiliar, and he toiled patiently to
+    acquire information which most salesmen in his place would have
+    esteemed trivial. Nothing was trivial with him, however, and it
+    is remarkable that he never embarked in any scheme until he had
+    mastered its most trifling details. Few men have ever shown a
+    deeper and more far-reaching knowledge of their profession and
+    the issues involved in it than he. He fully understood that his
+    knowledge would give him a power which a man of less
+    information could not obtain, and he never failed to use that
+    knowledge as a power. His instructions to his subordinates were
+    always drawn up with the strictest regard to details, and show
+    not only how thoroughly he had mastered the subject before him,
+    but also how much importance he attached to the conscientious
+    fulfillment of a well-digested plan of operations. He
+    recognized no such thing as luck. Every thing with him was the
+    result of a deliberate plan based upon knowledge. In this
+    respect his career affords one of the best models to be found
+    in our history.</p>
+
+    <div class="full">
+        <a name='illust6861'></a>
+        <a href='images/6861.jpg'><img src='images/6861.jpg'
+                width='650' border=0
+                alt="ASTOR'S FIRST TRIP FOR FURS."></a><br>
+         ASTOR'S FIRST TRIP FOR FURS.
+    </div>
+
+    <p>Astor's employer was not insensible to his merits, and soon
+    promoted him to a better place. In a little while the latter
+    intrusted him with the buying of the furs from the men who
+    brought them to the store, and he gave such satisfaction to his
+    employer that he was rewarded with a still more confidential
+    post. Montreal was at that time the chief fur depot of the
+    country, and it was the custom of Mr. Bowne to make an annual
+    journey to that city for the purpose of replenishing his stock.
+    The journey was long and fatiguing, and as soon as the old
+    gentleman found that he could intrust the mission to his clerk,
+    he sent him in his place. Ascending the Hudson to Albany,
+    Astor, with a pack on his back, struck out across the country,
+    which was then almost unsettled, to Lake George, up which he
+    passed into Lake Champlain. Sailing to the head of the lake, he
+    made his way to Montreal. Then returning in the same way, he
+    employed Indians to transport his furs from Lake George to
+    Albany, and dropped down the Hudson in the way he had come. Mr.
+    Bowne was delighted with the success of his clerk, who proved
+    more than a match for the shrewd Indians in his bargains. It
+    was doubtless here that Mr. Astor obtained that facility in
+    "driving a hard bargain" for which he was afterwards noted.</p>
+
+    <p>As soon as Mr. Astor felt himself master of his business, he
+    left the employ of Mr. Bowne, and began life on his own
+    account. The field upon which he purposed entering was
+    extensive, but it was one of which he had made a careful
+    survey. Previous to the peace of 1763, the French and English
+    divided the control of the fur-bearing regions of America. The
+    British possessions, extending from Canada to the unexplored
+    regions of the North, had been granted by a charter of Charles
+    II. to Prince Rupert, and were, by virtue of that instrument,
+    under the exclusive control of the Hudson Bay Company. Large
+    quantities of furs were obtained in this region, and collected
+    at the principal settlement, York Factory, from which they were
+    shipped to England.</p>
+
+    <p>South of this region was Canada, then possessed by the
+    French, who carried on an extensive trade with the Indians, who
+    brought their furs down to Montreal in their birch canoes. The
+    French finally settled in the country of the savages, and
+    married among the natives, thenceforward entirely devoting
+    themselves to the life of the trapper and hunter. These
+    marriages produced a race of half-breeds who were especially
+    successful in securing furs. The cession of Canada to England
+    was a severe blow to the French traders, as it opened the
+    country to the enterprise of the English, a few of whom were
+    quick to avail themselves of its advantages. The French and
+    Indians at first regarded them with hostility, but gradually
+    became reconciled to their presence.</p>
+
+    <p>Under the French rule the savages had not been furnished
+    with liquors, but the English soon sold whisky and rum in great
+    quantities to them, receiving the best furs in return. As a
+    consequence, intemperance spread rapidly among the savages, and
+    threatened to put an end to their industry as gatherers of
+    furs. To check the evil results of this irregular trading, a
+    company was established in 1785, called the North-west Company.
+    It was managed by twelve partners, some of whom resided at
+    Montreal, and others at the trading posts in the interior.
+    Their chief station was at Fort William, on Lake Superior.
+    Here, at stated times, the agents would come up from Montreal
+    and hold a consultation for the purchase of furs. These
+    meetings always drew crowds of French and Indian trappers,
+    boatmen, and others, who brought in large quantities of
+    skins.</p>
+
+    <p>A few years later a third company was organized, with its
+    principal station at Michilimackinac, near Lake Huron. It was
+    called the Mackinaw Company, and its field of operations was
+    the country bordering Lake Superior, and that lying between the
+    Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains. The company was English,
+    but did not hesitate to operate in American territory, so
+    little regard did Great Britain pay to the rights of the infant
+    republic.</p>
+
+    <p>"Although peace had been concluded, the frontier forts had
+    not been given up. Oswego, Niagara, Detroit, Michilimackinac,
+    and other posts were still in the hands of the English. The
+    Indian tribes continued hostile, being under English influence.
+    No company had as yet been formed in the United States. Several
+    French houses at St. Louis traded with the Indians, but it was
+    not until 1807 that an association of twelve partners, with a
+    capital of forty thousand dollars, was formed at St. Louis,
+    under the name of the Missouri Company.</p>
+
+    <p>"The trade, it will thus be seen, was almost wholly in the
+    hands of the English companies&mdash;the Hudson's Bay Company
+    in the north, the North-west Company in the Canadas, the
+    Mackinaw Company in the territories of the United
+    States&mdash;and the few American traders in the field had to
+    rely on their individual resources, with no aid from a
+    Government too feeble in its infancy to do more than establish
+    a few Indian agencies, and without constitutional power to
+    confer charter privileges."</p>
+
+    <p>The voyage of Captain Cook had brought to the notice of the
+    fur dealers of the world the sea otter of the northern Pacific,
+    and the announcement made upon the return of the expedition
+    drew large numbers of adventurers to the west coast of America,
+    in search of the valuable skins of these animals. In 1792,
+    there were twenty-one vessels, principally American, on the
+    coast.</p>
+
+    <p>It was into this field, already occupied by powerful and
+    hostile corporations, that the young German entered. He was
+    perfectly aware of the opposition his efforts would encounter
+    from them, but he was not dismayed. He began business in 1786,
+    in a small store in Water Street, which he furnished with a few
+    toys and notions suited to the tastes of the Indians who had
+    skins to sell. His entire capital consisted of only a few
+    hundred dollars, a portion of which was loaned him by his
+    brother. He had no assistants. He did all his own work. He
+    bought his skins, cured, beat, and sold them himself.</p>
+
+    <p>Several times during the year he made journeys on foot
+    through western New York, buying skins from the settlers,
+    farmers, trappers, savages, wherever he could find them. He
+    tramped over nearly the entire State in this way, and is said
+    to have had a better knowledge of its geography and topography
+    than any man living.</p>
+
+    <p>"He used to boast, late in life, when the Erie Canal had
+    called into being a line of thriving towns through the center
+    of the State, that he had himself, in his numberless tramps,
+    designated the sites of those towns, and predicted that one day
+    they would be the centers of business and population.
+    Particularly he noted the spots where Rochester and Buffalo now
+    stand, one having a harbor on Lake Erie and the other upon Lake
+    Ontario. He predicted that those places would one day be large
+    and prosperous cities; and that prediction he made when there
+    was scarcely a settlement at Buffalo, and only wigwams on the
+    site of Rochester."</p>
+
+    <p>During these tramps his business in the city was managed by
+    a partner, with whom he was finally compelled to associate
+    himself.</p>
+
+    <p>As soon as he had collected a certain number of bales of
+    skins he shipped them to London, and took a steerage passage in
+    the vessel which conveyed them. He sold his skins in that city
+    at a fine profit, and succeeded in forming business connections
+    which enabled him afterward to ship his goods direct to London,
+    and draw regularly upon the houses to which they were
+    consigned. He also made an arrangement with the house of Astor
+    &amp; Broadwood, in which his brother was a partner, by which
+    he became the agent in New York for the sale of their musical
+    instruments, a branch of his business which became quite
+    profitable to him. He is said to have been the first man in New
+    York who kept a regular stock of musical instruments on
+    hand.</p>
+
+    <p>Slowly, and by unremitting industry, Mr. Astor succeeded in
+    building up a certain business. His personal journeys made him
+    acquainted with the trappers, and enabled him to win their good
+    will. The savages sold their skins to him readily, and he found
+    a steady market and a growing demand for his commodities in the
+    Old World.</p>
+
+    <p>It was about this time that he married Miss Sarah Todd, of
+    New York. She was a connection of the Brevoort family, and was
+    of better social position than her husband. She entered
+    heartily into his business, doing much of the buying and
+    beating of the furs herself. She was a true helpmate to him,
+    and long after he was a millionaire, he used to boast of her
+    skill in judging furs and conducting business operations.</p>
+
+    <p>In 1794, Jay's treaty placed the frontier forts in the hands
+    of the Americans, and thus increased the opportunities of our
+    own traders to extend their business. It was of the greatest
+    service to Mr. Astor. It enabled him to enlarge the field of
+    his operations, and, at the same time, to send his agents on
+    the long journeys which he formerly made, while he himself
+    remained in New York to direct his business; which by this time
+    had grown to considerable proportions.</p>
+
+    <p>He was now on the road to wealth. He had scores of trappers
+    and hunters working for him in the great wilderness, and his
+    agents were kept busy buying and shipping the skins to New
+    York. As soon as he was able to do so he purchased a ship, in
+    which he sent his furs to London, occasionally making a voyage
+    thither himself. He manifested the greatest interest in the
+    markets of the Old World, especially in those of Asia, and
+    informed himself so accurately concerning them that he was
+    always enabled to furnish his captains with instructions
+    covering the most minute detail of their transactions in those
+    markets; and it is said that he was never unsuccessful in his
+    ventures there, except when his instructions were
+    disobeyed.</p>
+
+    <p>In this again, as in the fur trade, we see him patiently
+    acquiring knowledge of the eastern trade before venturing to
+    engage in it. His first step was always to fully comprehend his
+    task, to examine it from every possible point of view, so that
+    he should be prepared to encounter any sudden reverse, or ready
+    to take advantage of good fortune. Here lay the secret of his
+    success&mdash;that he never embarked in an enterprise until he
+    had learned how to use it to advantage.</p>
+
+    <p>Under his skillful management his business grew rapidly; but
+    he avoided speculation, and confined himself to legitimate
+    commerce. He was plain and simple in his habits, carrying this
+    trait to an extreme long after economy had ceased to be
+    necessary to him. He worked hard, indulged in no pleasures
+    except horseback exercise and the theater, of both which he was
+    very fond. It was only after he had amassed a large fortune
+    that he ever left his business before the close of the day.
+    Then he would leave his counting-room at two in the afternoon,
+    and, partaking of an early dinner, would pass the rest of the
+    day in riding about the island. So plain was his style of
+    living that, before he became generally known as a wealthy man,
+    a bank clerk once superciliously informed him that his
+    indorsement of a note would not be sufficient, as it was not
+    likely he would be able to pay it in case the bank should be
+    forced to call upon him.</p>
+
+    <p>"Indeed," said Mr. Astor, "how much do you suppose I am
+    worth?"</p>
+
+    <p>The clerk named a moderate amount, at which the merchant
+    smiled quietly.</p>
+
+    <p>"Would the indorsement of Mr. &mdash;&mdash;, or Mr.
+    &mdash;&mdash;, be sufficient?" asked Mr. Astor, naming several
+    well-known merchants who lived in great style.</p>
+
+    <p>"Entirely sufficient," was the reply. "Each one of them is
+    known to be wealthy."</p>
+
+    <p>"How much do you think each is worth?"</p>
+
+    <p>The clerk named large sums in connection with each of the
+    gentlemen.</p>
+
+    <p>"Well, my friend," said the merchant, "I am worth more than
+    any of them. I will not tell you how much I am worth, but it is
+    more than any sum you have named."</p>
+
+    <p>The clerk looked at him in surprise, and then said, bluntly,
+    "Then you are a greater fool than I took you for, to work as
+    hard as you do."</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Astor was very fond of telling this story, which he
+    regarded as one of the best jokes of the day.</p>
+
+    <p>All this time Mr. Astor had lived over his store, but in
+    1800, after he had been in business fifteen years, he moved his
+    dwelling to 223 Broadway, on the site of the Astor House of
+    to-day. He lived here, with one removal, for upwards of
+    twenty-five years. The house was plain and simple, but he was
+    satisfied with it. He was now worth a quarter of a million
+    dollars, and his business was growing rapidly. The fur trade
+    was exceedingly profitable. A beaver skin could be bought from
+    the trappers in western New York for one dollar and sold in
+    London for six dollars and a quarter. By investing this amount
+    in English manufactures, the six dollars and a quarter received
+    for the skin could be made to produce ten dollars paid for the
+    English goods in New York.</p>
+
+    <p>The Chinese trade was also very profitable. China was an
+    excellent market for furs. They brought high prices, and the
+    proceeds could always be invested in teas and silks, which sold
+    well in New York. His profit on a voyage would sometimes reach
+    seventy thousand dollars, and the average gain on a lucky
+    venture of this kind was thirty thousand dollars. The high
+    prices produced by the war of 1812-15 were also in Mr. Astor's
+    favor. His ships were all remarkably lucky in escaping capture
+    by the enemy, and he was almost the only merchant who had a
+    cargo of tea in the market. Tea having reached double its usual
+    price, he was enabled to reap immense profits from his
+    ventures.</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Francis, in his <i>Old Merchants of New York</i>, makes
+    the following revelation of the manner in which Mr. Astor found
+    it possible to carry on such an immense business. He says:</p>
+
+    <p>"A house that could raise money enough, thirty years ago, to
+    send $260,000 in specie, could soon have an uncommon capital;
+    and this was the working of the old system. The Griswolds owned
+    the ship Panama. They started her from New York in the month of
+    May, with a cargo of perhaps $30,000 worth of ginseng, spelter,
+    lead, iron, etc., and $170,000 in Spanish dollars. The ship
+    goes on the voyage, reaches Whampoa in safety (a few miles
+    below Canton). Her supercargo, in two months, has her loaded
+    with tea, some chinaware, a great deal of cassia, or false
+    cinnamon, and a few other articles. Suppose the cargo mainly
+    tea, costing about thirty-seven cents (at that time) per pound
+    on the average.</p>
+
+    <p>"The duty was enormous in those days. It was twice the cost
+    of the tea, at least; so that a cargo of $200,000, when it had
+    paid duty of seventy-five cents per pound (which would be
+    $400,000), amounted to $600,000. The profit was at least fifty
+    per cent, on the original cost, or $100,000, and would make the
+    cargo worth $700,000.</p>
+
+    <p>"The cargo of teas would be sold almost on arrival (say
+    eleven or twelve months after the ship left New York in May),
+    to wholesale grocers, for their notes at four and six
+    months&mdash;say for $700,000. In those years there was
+    <i>credit given by the United States</i> of nine, twelve, and
+    eighteen months! So that the East India or Canton merchant,
+    after his ship had made one voyage, had the use of Government
+    capital to the extent of $400,000, on the ordinary cargo of a
+    China ship.</p>
+
+    <p>"No sooner had the ship Panama arrived (or any of the
+    regular East Indiamen), than her cargo would be exchanged for
+    grocers' notes for $700,000. These notes could be turned into
+    specie very easily, and the owner had only to pay his bonds for
+    duty at nine, twelve, and eighteen months, giving him time
+    actually to send two more ships, with $200,000 each, to Canton,
+    and have them back again in New York before the bonds on the
+    first cargo were due.</p>
+
+    <p>"John Jacob Astor, at one period of his life, had several
+    vessels operating in this way. They would go to the Pacific,
+    and carry furs from thence to Canton. These would be sold at
+    large profits. Then the cargoes of tea to New York would pay
+    enormous duties, which Astor did not have to pay to the United
+    States for a year and a half. His tea cargoes would be sold for
+    good four and six months paper, or perhaps cash; so that, for
+    eighteen or twenty years, John Jacob Astor had what was
+    actually a free-of-interest loan from Government of over
+    <i>five millions</i> of dollars."</p>
+
+    <p>It is estimated that Mr. Astor made about two millions of
+    dollars by his trade in furs and teas. The bulk of his immense
+    fortune was made by investments in real estate. His estate was
+    estimated at twenty millions of dollars at the time of his
+    death, and has now increased to over forty millions. He had a
+    firm faith in the magnificent future of New York as the
+    greatest city of the continent, and as fast as his gains from
+    his business came in, they were regularly invested in real
+    estate. A part was expended in leasing for a long period
+    property which the owners would not sell, and the rest in
+    buying property in fee simple. These leases, some of which have
+    but recently expired, were extremely profitable. In his
+    purchases of land Mr. Astor was very fortunate. He pursued a
+    regular system in making them. Whenever a favorable purchase
+    could be made in the heart of the city, he availed himself of
+    the opportunity, but as a rule he bought his lands in what was
+    then the suburb of the city, and which few besides himself
+    expected to see built up during their lifetime. His sagacity
+    and foresight have been more than justified by the course of
+    events. His estate now lies principally in the heart of New
+    York, and has yielded an increase greater even than he had
+    ventured to hope for. Seventy hundred and twenty houses are
+    said to figure on the rent roll of the Astor estate at present,
+    and besides these are a number of lots not yet built upon, but
+    which are every day increasing in value. "When Mr. Astor bought
+    Richmond Hill, the estate of Aaron Burr, he gave one thousand
+    dollars an acre for the hundred and sixty acres. Twelve years
+    later, the land was valued at fifteen hundred dollars per
+    lot."</p>
+
+    <p>In 1810, he sold a lot near Wall Street for eight thousand
+    dollars. The price was so low that a purchaser for cash was
+    found at once, and this gentleman, after the sale, expressed
+    his surprise that Mr. Astor should ask only eight thousand for
+    a lot which in a few years would sell for twelve thousand.</p>
+
+    <p>"That is true," said Mr. Astor, "but see what I intend doing
+    with these eight thousand dollars. I shall buy eighty lots
+    above Canal Street, and by the time your one lot is worth
+    twelve thousand dollars, my eighty lots will be worth eighty
+    thousand dollars."</p>
+
+    <p>His expectations were realized.</p>
+
+    <p>During the war of the Revolution, Roger Morris and his wife,
+    Mary, of Putnam County, were obliged to flee from the country
+    to England for adhering to the cause of King George, and, being
+    attainted by the authorities as public enemies, their immense
+    estate, consisting of fifty-one thousand one hundred and two
+    acres, was seized by the State of New York, and sold in small
+    parcels to farmers, who believed the title thus acquired valid.
+    In 1809, there were upwards of seven hundred families residing
+    on this land. Mr. Astor, having learned that Roger and Mary
+    Morris possessed only a life interest in their property, and
+    having ascertained to his satisfaction that the State could not
+    confiscate the rights of the heirs, purchased their claim,
+    which was good not only for the land, but for all the
+    improvements that had been put upon it. He paid twenty thousand
+    pounds sterling for it. A few years previous to the death of
+    Mrs. Morris, who survived her husband some years, Mr. Astor
+    presented his claim. The occupants of the land were
+    thunderstruck, but the right was on his side. The State of New
+    York had simply robbed the heirs of their rights. There was no
+    weak point in the claim. Having given defective titles to the
+    farmers, the State was of course responsible for the claim; and
+    upon finding out their mistake, the authorities asked Mr. Astor
+    to name the sum for which he would be willing to compromise.
+    The lands were valued at six hundred and sixty-seven thousand
+    dollars, but Mr. Astor expressed his willingness to sell for
+    three hundred thousand dollars. His offer was refused. In 1819,
+    a second proposition was made to Mr. Astor by the Legislature
+    of the State. He replied: "In 1813 or 1814 a similar
+    proposition was made to me by the commissioners then appointed
+    by the Honorable the Legislature of this State when I offered
+    to compromise for the sum of three hundred thousand dollars,
+    which, considering the value of the property in question, was
+    thought very reasonable, and, at the present period, when the
+    life of Mrs. Morris is, according to calculation, worth little
+    or nothing, she being near eighty-six years of age, and the
+    property more valuable than it was in 1813. I am still willing
+    to receive the amount which I then stated, with interest on the
+    same, payable in money or stock, bearing an interest of &mdash;
+    per cent., payable quarterly. The stock may be made payable at
+    such periods as the Honorable the Legislature may deem proper.
+    This offer will, I trust, be considered as liberal, and as a
+    proof of my willingness to compromise on terms which are
+    reasonable, considering the value of the property, the price
+    which it cost me, and the inconvenience of having so long
+    <i>lain out</i> of my money, which, if employed in commercial
+    operations, would most likely have produced better
+    profits."</p>
+
+    <p>This offer was not accepted by the Legislature, and the
+    cause was delayed until 1827, when it was brought before the
+    courts. It was argued by such men as Daniel Webster and Martin
+    Van Buren, on the part of the State, and by Thomas Addis
+    Emmett, Ogden, and others for Astor. The State had no case, and
+    the matter was decided in Astor's favor. Then the State
+    consented to compromise. The famous Astor stock, which paid
+    that gentleman about five hundred thousand dollars, was issued,
+    and the titles of the possessors of the lands confirmed.</p>
+
+    <p>The most important of all of Mr. Astor's undertakings was
+    his effort at founding the settlement of Astoria, on the coast
+    of Oregon. This enterprise has been made so familiar to the
+    majority of readers by the pen of Washington Irving, that I can
+    only refer to it here. "His design," says a writer of thirteen
+    years ago, "was to organize and control the fur trade from the
+    lakes to the Pacific, by establishing trading posts along the
+    Missouri and Columbia to its mouth. He designed establishing a
+    central depot and post at the mouth of the Columbia. He
+    proposed sending regular supply-ships to the Pacific posts
+    around the Horn. By these, stores were to be sent also to the
+    Russian establishments. It was part of his plan, if possible,
+    to obtain possession of one of the Sandwich Islands as a
+    station, for from the Pacific coast he knew that the Chinese
+    market for his peltries could be most conveniently reached, and
+    thus the necessity for a long and circuitous voyage be avoided.
+    Instead of bringing the furs intended for China to New York,
+    they could be sent from the Pacific. By the supply-ships, too,
+    the stock of goods suitable for the Indian trade would be kept
+    up there, and the cargoes purchased with the proceeds of the
+    furs sold in China brought back to New York. The line of posts
+    across the continent would become a line of towns; emigration
+    would follow, and civilization would belt the continent.</p>
+
+    <p>"In this grand scheme, Mr. Astor was only anticipating the
+    course of events which, fifty years later, we are beginning to
+    witness. When he laid his plans before the Government, Mr.
+    Jefferson, who was then President, 'considered as a great
+    acquisition,' as he afterward expressed himself in a letter to
+    Mr. Astor, 'the commencement of a settlement on the western
+    coast of America, and looked forward with gratification to the
+    time when its descendants should have spread themselves through
+    the whole length of that coast, covering it with free and
+    independent Americans, unconnected with us except by ties of
+    blood and interest, and enjoying, like us, the rights of
+    self-government.' Even Jefferson's mind, wide as it was, could
+    not take in the idea of a national unity embracing both ends of
+    the continent; but not so thought Astor. The merchant saw
+    farther than the statesman. It was precisely this political
+    unity which gave him hope and chance of success in his
+    worldwide schemes. When the Constitution was adopted, the chief
+    source of apprehension for its permanence with men like Patrick
+    Henry, and other wise statesmen, was the extent of our
+    territory. The Alleghanies, it was thought, had put asunder
+    communities whom no paper constitution could unite. But at that
+    early day, when Ohio was the far West, and no steamboat had yet
+    gone up the Mississippi, Astor looked beyond the Ohio, beyond
+    the Mississippi, and the Rocky Mountains, and saw the whole
+    American territory, from ocean to ocean, the domain of one
+    united nation, the seat of trade and industry. He saw lines of
+    trading posts uniting the Western settlements with the Pacific;
+    following this line of trading posts, he saw the columns of a
+    peaceful emigration crossing the plains, crossing the
+    mountains, descending the Columbia, and towns and villages
+    taking the places of the solitary posts, and cultivated fields
+    instead of the hunting-grounds of the Indian and the
+    trapper.</p>
+
+    <p>"No enterprise, unless it be the Atlantic telegraph, engages
+    more deeply the public attention than a railroad communication
+    with the Pacific coast.<a id="footnotetagB"
+       name="footnotetagB"></a><a href=
+       "#footnoteB"><sup>[B]</sup></a> The rapid settlement of
+       Oregon and California, the constant communication by steam
+       to the Pacific coast, render it easy now to feel the
+       nearness of that region, and the oneness of the nationality
+       which covers the continent. But to Astor's eye the thing was
+       as palpable then as now. And yet but two or three attempts
+       had then been made to explore the overland routes."</p>
+
+    <p>It would be deeply interesting to examine the details of
+    this fast scheme of colonization and trade, for it is certain
+    that Mr. Astor was as anxious to do an act which, by building
+    up the continent, should hand his name down to posterity as a
+    national benefactor, as to increase his business; but the
+    limits of this article forbid more than a mere glance at the
+    subject.</p>
+
+    <p>A company was formed, at the head of which stood Mr. Astor,
+    and an elaborate and carefully-arranged plan of operations
+    prepared. Two expeditions were dispatched to the mouth of the
+    Columbia, one by land and the other by sea. Many hardships were
+    encountered, but the foundation of a settlement was
+    successfully made on the Columbia. In spite of the war with
+    England (1812-15), which now occurred, the enterprise would
+    have been successful had Mr. Astor's positive instructions been
+    obeyed. They were utterly disregarded, however, and his
+    partners and agents not only betrayed him in every instance,
+    but sold his property to a rival British company for a mere
+    trifle. His pecuniary loss was over a million of dollars, and
+    his disappointment bitter beyond expression. When the
+    enterprise was on the point of failure, and while he was still
+    chafing at the conduct of his treacherous subordinates, he
+    wrote to Mr. Hunt, the most faithful of all his agents: "Were I
+    on the spot, and, had the management of affairs, I would defy
+    them all; but as it is, every thing depends on you and your
+    friends about you. Our enterprise is grand, and deserves
+    success, and I hope in God it will meet it. <i>If my object was
+    merely gain of money</i>, I should say, think whether it is
+    best to save what we can, and abandon the place; but the very
+    idea is like a dagger to my heart." When the news of the final
+    betrayal reached him, he wrote to the same gentleman: "Had our
+    place and property been fairly captured, I should have
+    preferred it; I should not feel as if I were disgraced."</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Astor remained in active business for fifty years.
+    During that entire period he scarcely committed an error of
+    judgment which led to a loss in business. He was thorough
+    master of every thing pertaining to his affairs, and his
+    strength and accuracy of judgment was remarkable. The
+    particulars of his transactions were indelibly impressed upon
+    his mind. His intellect was vigorous and quick, and he grasped
+    a subject with a readiness which seemed like intuition. He was
+    always careful of the present, but he loved to undertake
+    enterprises which extended far into the future. He was a man of
+    the utmost punctuality in all his habits. He rose early, and,
+    until he was fifty-five years old, was always in his office
+    before seven o'clock. His capacity for work was very great, so
+    that, in spite of his heavy labors, he was always able to leave
+    his office by two o'clock, while many of his associates, who
+    really did less than he, were compelled to remain in their
+    counting-rooms until four or five. He was noted for his
+    unvarying calmness, which he doubtless owed to his German
+    temperament. In the midst of disaster and loss he was cooler
+    and more cheerful than ever. To those who chafed at their
+    troubles, he would say, smilingly, "Keep quiet; keep cool."
+    This was his safeguard.</p>
+
+    <p>He was a devoted citizen of the United States, and, though
+    he took no active interest in politics, was a steady supporter
+    of the Whig party. Henry Clay was his personal friend, and his
+    last donation to any political cause was a subscription of
+    fifteen hundred dollars to aid the election of his old friend
+    to the Presidency.</p>
+
+    <p>About the year 1830, Mr. Astor, now the possessor of
+    millions, began to withdraw from active business, confining his
+    efforts chiefly to such investments as the management of his
+    immense estate made necessary. He now put into execution an
+    enterprise which he had long cherished. When a poor stranger in
+    the city, he had once stopped in Broadway to notice a row of
+    buildings which had just been erected, and which were
+    considered the finest in the street, and had then made a vow
+    that he would one day build a larger and finer house than any
+    in Broadway. He now set to work to carry out the plan he had
+    cherished ever since. He owned the entire block on Broadway,
+    between Vesey and Barclay streets, with the exception of one
+    house, which was the property of a Mr. Coster, a merchant who
+    had amassed a large fortune and retired from business. Mr.
+    Astor made him many offers for his house, but the old gentleman
+    was unwilling to remove. Mr. Astor offered him the full value
+    of his house, which was thirty thousand dollars, and increased
+    the bid to forty thousand, but Mr. Coster was obstinate. At
+    length Mr. Astor, in despair, was compelled to reveal his plan
+    to his neighbor.</p>
+
+    <p>"I want to build a hotel," said he. "I have got all the
+    other lots. Now name your own price."</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Coster replied that he would sell for sixty thousand
+    dollars if his wife would consent, and that Mr. Astor could see
+    her the next morning. Mr. Astor was punctual to the
+    appointment, and his offer was accepted by the good lady, who
+    said to him, condescendingly, "I don't want to sell the house,
+    but we are such old friends that I am willing for your
+    sake."</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Astor used to remark with great glee that any one could
+    afford to exhibit such condescension after receiving double the
+    value of a piece of property.</p>
+
+    <p>Having got possession of the entire block, he commenced the
+    demolition of the old buildings, and on their site reared the
+    Astor House, then the largest and most elegant hotel in the
+    country. This building, when completed, he gave to his eldest
+    son, William B. Astor.</p>
+
+    <p>In 1832, Mr. Astor sailed for Europe to visit one of his
+    daughters, who had married a nobleman, and remained abroad
+    until 1835. In that year he was compelled to return home by the
+    action of General Jackson with regard to the Bank of the United
+    States. "He reached Havre," says Mr. Parton, "when the ship, on
+    the point of sailing, had every stateroom engaged, but he was
+    so anxious to get home, that the captain, who had commanded
+    ships for him in former years, gave up to him his own
+    stateroom. Head winds and boisterous seas kept the vessel
+    beating about and tossing in the channel for many days. The
+    great man was very sick, and still more alarmed. At length,
+    being persuaded that he should not survive the voyage, he asked
+    the captain to run in and set him ashore on the coast of
+    England. The captain dissuaded him. The old man urged his
+    request at every opportunity, and said, at last, 'I give you
+    tousand dollars to put me aboard a pilot boat.' He was so
+    vehement and importunate, that one day the captain, worried out
+    of all patience, promised him that if he did not get out of the
+    channel before next morning, he would run in and put him
+    ashore. It happened that the wind changed in the afternoon and
+    wafted the ship into the broad ocean. But the troubles of the
+    sea-sick millionaire had only just begun. A heavy gale of some
+    days' duration blew the vessel along the western coast of
+    Ireland. Mr. Astor, now thoroughly panic-stricken, offered the
+    captain ten thousand dollars if he would put him ashore
+    anywhere on the wild and rocky coast of the Emerald Isle. In
+    vain the captain remonstrated. In vain he reminded the old
+    gentleman of the danger of forfeiting his insurance.</p>
+
+    <p>"'Insurance!' exclaimed Astor, 'can't I insure your ship my
+    self?'</p>
+
+    <p>"In vain the captain mentioned the rights of the other
+    passengers. In vain he described the solitary and rock-bound
+    coast, and detailed the dangers and difficulties which attended
+    its approach. Nothing would appease him. He said he would take
+    all the responsibility, brave all the perils, endure all the
+    consequences, only let him once more feel the firm ground under
+    his feet. The gale having abated, the captain yielded to his
+    entreaties, and engaged, if the other passengers would consent
+    to the delay, to stand in, and put him ashore. Mr. Astor went
+    into the cabin, and proceeded to write what was expected to be
+    a draft for ten thousand dollars in favor of the owners of the
+    ship on his agent in New York. He handed to the captain the
+    result of his efforts. It was a paper covered with writing that
+    was totally illegible.</p>
+
+    <p>"'What is this?' asked the captain.</p>
+
+    <p>"'A draft upon my son for ten thousand dollars,' was the
+    reply.</p>
+
+    <p>"'But no one can read it.'</p>
+
+    <p>"'O yes, my son will know what it is. My hand trembles so
+    that I can not write any better.'</p>
+
+    <p>"'But,' said the captain, 'you can at least write your name.
+    I am acting for the owners of the ship, and I can not risk
+    their property for a piece of paper that no one can read. Let
+    one of the gentlemen draw up a draft in proper form; you sign
+    it, and I will put you ashore.'</p>
+
+    <p>"The old gentleman would not consent to this mode of
+    proceeding, and the affair was dropped."</p>
+
+    <p>During the last twenty years of his life Mr. Astor lived in
+    the retirement of his family, leaving even the greater part of
+    the management of his estate to the hands of others. He was
+    exceedingly fond of literary men. Irving was his friend, and
+    Halleck his business manager. He died at the age of eighty-four
+    years and eight months, literally from old age. He was buried
+    in St. Thomas's Church, on Broadway.</p>
+
+    <p>His immense estate was left to his children, the bulk of it
+    being bequeathed to his eldest son. All of his relatives were
+    made comfortable. The village of Waldorf, his native place,
+    received a legacy of fifty thousand dollars for the benefit of
+    its poor, and an amount in land and funds equal to four hundred
+    thousand dollars was left to certain trustees to establish the
+    Astor Library in the city of New York. Besides these, several
+    charitable and benevolent associations received handsome
+    donations from him.</p>
+
+    <p>His career has been related in these pages as an example to
+    those who are seeking to rise in legitimate commerce. It is the
+    Best instance on record of the facility with which success may
+    be won by patient and intelligent industry. In his capacity for
+    grasping and carrying out an enterprise, in his prudent and
+    economical management of his business, in his tact, courage,
+    sagacity, Mr. Astor's example is one which will lead many to
+    success, and none to injury.</p>
+
+    <p>He was a thoroughly upright man, his transactions were
+    rigidly honest; but as a man, candor compels the acknowledgment
+    that he was not a safe or admirable model. He was utterly
+    devoid of generosity. Liberal to an extreme with his own
+    family, he was close and hard with others. He paid small wages
+    to his employ&eacute;s and never gave more than the man
+    bargained for, no matter what extra service might be rendered.
+    He carried his economy to a degree of meanness painful to
+    contemplate. At his death, out of his vast estate, he left to
+    his friend and faithful manager an annuity of only two hundred
+    dollars, which his son increased to fifteen hundred.</p>
+
+    <p>One of his captains once succeeded in saving for him
+    property in China to the amount of seven hundred thousand
+    dollars, which had become jeopardized by the sudden death of
+    the agent in charge of it. This service was purely voluntary,
+    and was one which required the greatest skill, determination,
+    and courage on the part of the captain, and Astor acknowledged
+    it, frequently saying: "If you had not done just as you did, I
+    should never have seen one dollar of my money; no, not one
+    dollar of it." This was the only acknowledgment he made,
+    however. He was worth ten millions of dollars, and the captain
+    had only his pay&mdash;twelve hundred dollars a year&mdash;and
+    a family. At his father's death Mr. William B. Astor sent a
+    considerable sum to the old seaman in return for this
+    service.</p>
+
+    <p>"We have all heard much of the closeness, or rather the
+    meanness, of this remarkable man. Truth compels us to admit
+    that he was not generous, except to his own kindred. His
+    liberality began and ended in his own family. Very seldom
+    during his lifetime did he willingly do a generous act, outside
+    of the little circle of his relations and descendants. To get
+    all he could, and to keep nearly all that he got&mdash;those
+    were the laws of his being.... He enjoyed keenly the
+    consciousness, the feeling, of being rich. The roll-book of his
+    possessions was his Bible. He scanned it fondly, and saw, with
+    quiet but deep delight, the catalogue of his property
+    lengthening from month to month. The love of accumulation grew
+    with his years, until it ruled him like a tyrant. If at fifty
+    he possessed his millions, at sixty-five his millions possessed
+    him. Only to his own children and to their children was he
+    liberal; and his liberality to them was all arranged with a
+    view to keeping his estate in the family, and to cause it at
+    every moment to tend toward a final consolidation in one
+    enormous mass."</p>
+
+    <p>This is the estimate of his character formed by Mr. James
+    Parton. His friend Dr. Coggswell presents him in quite a
+    different light. He says:</p>
+
+    <p>"Mr. Astor lived to the good old age of four score and four
+    years and eight months. For some years previous to his death,
+    which happened March 29, 1848, his manly form was bowed down by
+    age, and his bodily strength greatly enfeebled, but his mind
+    retained much of its original Vigor and brightness. Considering
+    his extraordinary activity until a late period of his life, he
+    submitted to the helplessness of age with uncommon resignation.
+    When his impaired eye-sight no longer permitted him to read,
+    his principal relief from the wearisomeness of unoccupied time
+    was in the society of his friends and near relatives. All who
+    knew him well were strongly attached to him, and none but those
+    who were ignorant of his true character believed him unamiable
+    and repulsive.</p>
+
+    <p>"His smile was peculiarly benignant and expressive of
+    genuine kindness of heart, and his whole manner cordial and
+    courteous to every one entitled to his respect. There was
+    something so impressive in his appearance, no one could stand
+    before him without feeling that he was in the presence of a
+    superior intelligence. His deep, sunken eye, beneath his
+    overarched brow, denoted the prophetic&mdash;it might almost be
+    said the inspired&mdash;mind within. Although he lived many
+    years beyond the age when the grasshopper is a burden, and was
+    the victim of much suffering, he did not murmur, nor did he
+    become unreasonable and peevish. He was not wont to talk much
+    on the subject of religion, or freely communicate his views in
+    relation to the life beyond the grave; but it can not be
+    doubted that such tranquility as he exhibited in his near
+    approach to it must have been derived from 'that peace which
+    the world can neither give nor take away,'"</p>
+
+    <p>Perhaps a medium between Mr. Parton's bitterness and Dr.
+    Coggswell's enthusiasm will be as correct an estimate of his
+    personal character as can be formed. It is a singular fact that
+    Mr. Astor managed, in spite of the closeness which marked his
+    operations, in spite of the small wages he paid, to inspire his
+    employ&eacute;s with a zeal in his service that made them
+    willing to undertake any thing, to endure any amount of labor,
+    for him.</p>
+
+    <p>"He once lost seventy thousand dollars by committing a piece
+    of petty injustice toward his best captain. This gallant
+    sailor, being notified by an insurance office of the necessity
+    of having a chronometer on board his ship, spoke to Mr. Astor
+    on the subject, who advised the captain to buy one.</p>
+
+    <p>"'But,' said the captain, 'I have no five hundred dollars to
+    spare for such a purpose; the chronometer should belong to the
+    ship.'</p>
+
+    <p>"'Well,' said the merchant, 'you need not pay for it now;
+    pay for it at your convenience,'</p>
+
+    <p>"The captain still objecting, Astor, after a prolonged
+    higgling, authorized him to buy a chronometer and charge it to
+    the ship's account, which was done.</p>
+
+    <p>"Sailing day was at hand. The ship was hauled into the
+    stream. The captain, as is the custom, handed in his account.
+    Astor, subjecting it to his usual close scrutiny, observed the
+    novel item of five hundred dollars for the chronometer. He
+    objected, averring that it was understood between them that the
+    captain was to pay for the instrument. The worthy sailor
+    recalled the conversation, and firmly held to his recollection
+    of it. Astor insisting on his own view of the matter, the
+    captain was so profoundly disgusted that, important as the
+    command of the ship was to him, he resigned his post. Another
+    captain was soon found, and the ship sailed for China.</p>
+
+    <p>"Another house, which was then engaged in the China trade,
+    knowing the worth of this 'king of captains,' as Astor himself
+    used to style him, bought him a ship and dispatched him to
+    Canton two months after the departure of Astor's vessel. Our
+    captain, put upon his mettle, employed all his skill to
+    accelerate the speed of his ship, and had such success that he
+    reached New York, with a full cargo of tea, just seven days
+    after the arrival of Mr. Astor's ship. Astor, not expecting
+    another ship for months, and therefore sure of monopolizing the
+    market, had not yet broken bulk, nor even taken off the
+    hatchways. Our captain arrived on a Saturday. Advertisements
+    and handbills were immediately issued, and on the Wednesday
+    morning following, as the custom then was, the auction sale of
+    the tea began on the wharf&mdash;two barrels of punch
+    contributing to the <i>eclat</i> and hilarity of the occasion.
+    The cargo was sold to good advantage, and the market was
+    glutted. Astor lost in consequence the entire profits of the
+    voyage, not less than the sum previously named. Meeting the
+    captain some time after in Broadway, he said:</p>
+
+    <p>"'I had better have paid for that chronometer of
+    yours,'"</p>
+
+    <p>Yet he could do a kind act when he was in the humor. When he
+    was poor and struggling for fortune, he had a friend in the
+    city named Pell, a coachmaker. As he advanced in the world he
+    lost sight of his friend. One day a young man called on him to
+    ask if he would sell one of his leases which he (the visitor)
+    then held. He replied promptly and decidedly that he would not
+    sell.</p>
+
+    <p>"But what is your name?" he asked.</p>
+
+    <p>"It is Pell," was the reply.</p>
+
+    <p>"Pell&mdash;Pell&mdash;" said the old man, hesitating a
+    moment, "I knew a man by that name once; he was a dear friend
+    of mine, but I have not seen him for years."</p>
+
+    <p>"That man," said the visitor, "was my father."</p>
+
+    <p>"Indeed," exclaimed the old man, warmly; "your father? Why,
+    he used to give me rides in his coaches. How I should like to
+    see him."</p>
+
+    <p>Then pausing a moment, and smiling as he recalled the past
+    to his mind, he said:</p>
+
+    <p>"You shall have the lease, young man. Go home, have the
+    papers drawn, come here at eleven o'clock on Thursday, and I'll
+    sign them. But don't put in any consideration."</p>
+
+    <p>The engagement was kept punctually by both parties.</p>
+
+    <p>"Have you got the papers?" asked the merchant. "Did you put
+    in the consideration? Well, let it be one hundred dollars. Have
+    you got the money about you? Well, no matter, Bruce will keep
+    the lease till you come and pay. I've given you two thousand
+    dollars, young man. Don't you buy any more, for I sha'n't do it
+    again. You tell your father that I remember him, and that I
+    have given you two thousand dollars."</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Astor dearly liked a joke, and occasionally indulged in
+    a sly bit of humor himself. On one occasion a committee called
+    upon him to solicit a donation for some charitable object. The
+    old man took the subscription list, and, after examining it,
+    signed it and gave the committee a check for fifty dollars.
+    They had expected much more, and one of them ventured to
+    say:</p>
+
+    <p>"We did hope for more, Mr. Astor. Your son gave us a hundred
+    dollars."</p>
+
+    <p>"Ah!" replied the old man, dryly, "William has a rich
+    father. Mine was very poor."</p>
+
+    <blockquote class="footnote">
+        <a id="footnoteB"
+                    name="footnoteB"></a> <b>Footnote B</b>:
+                    <a href="#footnotetagB">(return)</a>
+
+        <p>The reader will bear in mind that the above extract was
+        written in 1857.</p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <hr style='width: 65%;'>
+    <a name='CHAPTER_III'></a>
+
+    <h2>CHAPTER III.</h2>
+
+    <h3>ALEXANDER T. STEWART.</h3><br>
+
+
+    <p>In the year 1818, a European vessel anchored in the harbor
+    of New York, after a long and weary voyage from the Old World.
+    She brought many passengers to the young metropolis, the
+    majority of whom came with the intention of seeking fortunes in
+    this land of promise.</p>
+
+    <p>Among them was a young Irishman who had left his home in his
+    native land to seek in America the means of bettering his
+    condition. This was <span class="small-caps">Alexander T.
+    Stewart</span>. He was the son of Scotch-Irish parents, and was
+    born in Belfast in 1802. Being only three years old when his
+    father died, his grandfather took charge of him, and proved a
+    kind and judicious guardian. As he was designed for the
+    ministry by his relative, and as his own tastes inclined him to
+    that profession, he was given a good common school education,
+    and placed at college, where he made favorable progress in his
+    class. He was particularly successful in the classics, and is
+    said to retain his relish for them at the present day.</p>
+
+    <p>During his second term his grandfather died, and he was by
+    this event obliged to leave college. Abandoning the idea of
+    entering the ministry, he embarked for America, determined to
+    make a fortune in the New World. He came sufficiently supplied
+    with ready money to insure him against immediate want, and with
+    letters of introduction which at once secured him an excellent
+    social position.</p>
+
+    <p>After trying in vain for some time to secure employment in a
+    business house, he obtained a position as assistant in a
+    commercial school. This he soon resigned for a similar place in
+    a more celebrated school. His salary here was $300, which was
+    considered ample compensation in those days.</p>
+
+    <p>Not wishing to continue in this career, however, he opened a
+    small retail dry goods store in New York, and began business on
+    a humble scale. Here he remained until the age of twenty-one,
+    manifesting no extraordinary business capacity, and in no way
+    distinguished from the many small dealers around him. Upon
+    reaching his majority he returned to Ireland, to look after the
+    inheritance left him by his grandfather. The amount which thus
+    came to him was nearly one thousand pounds, and the greater
+    part of this he invested in "insertions" and "scollop
+    trimmings," which he shipped to America by the vessel in which
+    he returned. He rented a little store, on his return, at 283
+    Broadway, and there displayed his stock, which met with a ready
+    sale at a fair profit.</p>
+
+    <p>Without mercantile experience, and possessing little
+    advantage, save his own Scotch-Irish energy and courage, Mr.
+    Stewart started boldly on what proved the road to fortune. No
+    young merchant ever worked harder than he. From fourteen to
+    eighteen hours each day were given to his business. He was his
+    own book-keeper, salesman, and porter. He could not afford to
+    employ help. Credit was hard to obtain in those days, and young
+    merchants were not favorites with those who had such favors to
+    bestow. Mr. Stewart was one of the least favored, inasmuch as
+    he was almost a total stranger to the business community in
+    which he lived. He kept a small stock of goods on hand, which
+    he purchased for cash chiefly at the auction sales. He was a
+    regular attendant at these sales, and his purchases were
+    invariably "sample lots"&mdash;that is, collections of small
+    quantities of various articles thrown together in confusion,
+    and sold in heaps for what they would bring. He had these
+    purchases conveyed to his store, and after the business of the
+    day was over, he and his wife would take these "sample lots,"
+    and by carefully assorting them, bring order out of the
+    confusion. Every article was patiently gone over. Gloves were
+    redressed and smoothed out, laces pressed free from the creases
+    which careless bidders had twisted into them, and hose made to
+    look as fresh as if they had never been handled. Each article
+    being good in itself, was thus restored to its original
+    excellence. The goods were then arranged in their proper places
+    on the shelves of the store, and by being offered at a lower
+    price than that charged by retail dealers elsewhere in the
+    city, met with a ready sale. Even at this low price the profit
+    was great, since they had been purchased for a mere trifle. For
+    six years Mr. Stewart continued to conduct his business in this
+    way, acquiring every day a larger and more profitable trade.
+    Here he laid down those principles of business and personal
+    integrity from which he has never departed, and which have
+    led-him to the honorable position he now holds.</p>
+
+    <p>"His first rule was <i>honesty</i> between seller and buyer.
+    His career is a perfect exemplification of Poor Richard's
+    maxim: 'Honesty is the best policy,' and of the poet's
+    declaration: 'Nothing can need a lie,' His interest consorted
+    with his inclination, his policy with his principles, and the
+    business with the man, when he determined that the truth should
+    be told over his counter, and that no misrepresentation of his
+    goods should be made. He never asked, he never would suffer, a
+    clerk to misrepresent the quality of his merchandise. Clerks
+    who had been educated at other stores to cheat customers, and
+    then to laugh off the transaction as 'cuteness,' or defend it
+    as 'diamond cut diamond,' found no such slipshod morality at
+    Stewart's little store, and learned frankness and fairness in
+    representation at the peril of dismissal. Their employer asked
+    no gain from deceit in trade. On his part, too, in buying, he
+    rarely gave a seller a second opportunity to misrepresent goods
+    to him.</p>
+
+    <p>"A second innovation of the young dry goods dealer was
+    selling at <i>one price</i>&mdash;a custom which has also
+    lasted without interruption, and which has spread to all the
+    great houses. He fixed his price, after careful consideration,
+    at what he thought the goods could and would bring, and would
+    not deviate from it for any haggling, or to suit individual
+    cases. Of course, he followed the fluctuations of the market,
+    and marked his goods up or down in accordance with it; but no
+    difference in the price was made to different people. Perhaps
+    those who had some art in 'beating down' prices were offended,
+    but people in general were pleased.</p>
+
+    <p>"The third principle he adopted was that of <i>cash on
+    delivery</i>. It is said that his own early experience of
+    buying on credit, and selling on credit, drove him to this
+    rule.</p>
+
+    <p>"A fourth principle with him was to conduct business as
+    business&mdash;not as sentiment. His aim was honorable profit,
+    and he had no purpose of confusing it by extraneous
+    considerations."</p>
+
+    <p>While still engaged in his first struggles in his little
+    store, Mr. Stewart found himself called on to make arrangements
+    to pay a note which would soon become due. It was for a
+    considerable sum, and he had neither the money nor the means of
+    borrowing it. It was a time when the mercantile community of
+    New York regarded a failure to pay a note as a crime, and when
+    such a failure was sure to bring ruin to any new man. Mr.
+    Stewart knew this, and felt that he must act with greater
+    resolution and daring than he had ever before exhibited, if he
+    would save himself from dishonor. To meet the crisis he adopted
+    a bold and skillful maneuver. He marked down every article in
+    his store far below the wholesale price. This done, he had a
+    number of handbills printed, announcing that he would sell off
+    his entire stock of goods below cost, within a given time. He
+    scattered these handbills broadcast through the city, and it
+    was not long before purchasers began to flock to his store to
+    secure the great bargains which his advertisements offered
+    them. His terms were "cash," and he had little difficulty in
+    selling. Purchasers found that they thus secured the best goods
+    in the market at a lower figure than they had ever been offered
+    before in New York, and each one was prompt to advise relatives
+    and friends to avail themselves of the favorable opportunity.
+    Customers were plentiful; the little Broadway store was
+    thronged all day, and long before the expiration of the period
+    he had fixed for the duration of his sales, Mr. Stewart found
+    his shelves empty and his treasury full. He paid his note with
+    a part of the money he had thus received, and with the rest
+    laid in a fresh stock of goods. He was fortunate in his
+    purchases at this time, for, as the market was extremely dull
+    and ready money scarce, he, by paying cash, bought his goods at
+    very low prices.</p>
+
+    <p>The energy, industry, patience, and business tact displayed
+    by Mr. Stewart during these first years of his commercial life
+    brought him their sure reward, and in 1828, just six years
+    after commencing business, he found his little store too small
+    and humble for the large and fashionable trade which had come
+    to him. Three new stores had just been erected on Broadway,
+    between Chambers and Warren Streets, and he leased the smallest
+    of these and moved into it. It was a modest building, only
+    three stories high and but thirty feet deep, but it was a great
+    improvement on his original place. He was enabled to fill it
+    with a larger and more attractive stock of goods, and his
+    business was greatly benefited by the change. He remained in
+    this store for four years, and in 1832 removed to a two-story
+    building located on Broadway, between Murray and Warren
+    Streets. Soon after occupying it, he was compelled, by the
+    growth of his business, to add twenty feet to the depth of the
+    store and a third story to the building. A year or two later a
+    fourth story was added, and in 1837 a fifth story, so rapidly
+    did he prosper.</p>
+
+    <p>His trade was now with the wealthy and fashionable class of
+    the city. He had surmounted all his early difficulties, and
+    laid the foundation of that splendid fortune which he has since
+    won. The majority of his customers were ladies, and he now
+    resolved upon an expedient for increasing their number. He had
+    noticed that the ladies, in "shopping," were given to the habit
+    of gossiping, and even flirting with the clerks, and he adopted
+    the expedient of employing as his salesmen the handsomest men
+    he could procure, a practice which has since become common. The
+    plan was successful from the first. Women came to his store in
+    greater numbers than before, and "Stewart's nice young men"
+    were the talk of the town.</p>
+
+    <p>The great crisis of 1837 found Mr. Stewart a prosperous and
+    rising man, and that terrible financial storm which wrecked so
+    many of the best of the city firms did not so much as leave its
+    mark on him. Indeed, while other men were failing all around
+    him, he was coining money. It had always been his habit to
+    watch the market closely, in order to profit by any sudden
+    change in it, and his keen sagacity enabled him to see the
+    approach of the storm long before it broke, and to prepare for
+    it.</p>
+
+    <p>He at once marked down all his goods as low as possible, and
+    began to "sell for cost," originating the system which is now
+    so popular. The prices were very low, and the goods of the best
+    quality. Every body complained of the hard times, and all were
+    glad to save money by availing themselves of "Stewart's
+    bargains." In this way he carried on a retail cash trade of
+    five thousand dollars per day in the midst of the most terrible
+    crisis the country has ever seen. Other merchants were reduced
+    to every possible expedient, and were compelled to send their
+    goods to auction to be sold for what they would bring, so great
+    was their need of ready money. Stewart attended all these
+    auctions regularly, and purchased the goods thus offered. These
+    he sold rapidly by means of his "cost system," realizing an
+    average profit of forty per cent. It is said that he purchased
+    fifty thousand dollars worth of silks in this way, and sold the
+    whole lot in a few days, making a profit of twenty thousand
+    dollars on the transaction. Thus he not only passed through the
+    "crisis," but made a fortune in the midst of it.</p>
+
+    <p>From that time to the present day his march to fortune has
+    been uninterrupted. Nearly a quarter of a century ago he
+    purchased the property which is now the site of his wholesale
+    store, and commenced to erect the splendid marble warehouse
+    which he still occupies. His friends were surprised at his
+    temerity. They told him it was too far up town, and on the
+    wrong side of Broadway, but he quietly informed them that a few
+    years would vindicate his wisdom, and see his store the center
+    of the most flourishing business neighborhood of New York. His
+    predictions have been more than realized.</p>
+
+    <p>He moved into his new store in 1846, and continued to expand
+    and enlarge his business every year. Some years ago he
+    purchased the old Ninth-Street Dutch Church and the lots
+    adjacent to it, comprising the entire block lying between Ninth
+    and Tenth Streets, Broadway and Fourth Avenue. When he found
+    the retail trade going up town, and deserting its old haunts
+    below Canal Street, he erected a fine iron building at the
+    corner of Broadway and Tenth Street, to which he removed the
+    retail department of his business, continuing his wholesale
+    trade at his old store on Chambers Street. This new "upper
+    store" has increased with the business. The building now covers
+    the entire block upon which it is erected, and is the largest,
+    most complete, and magnificent establishment of its kind in the
+    world.</p>
+
+    <p>Though he took no active part in politics, he was too much
+    interested in public affairs, by reason of his immense wealth,
+    not to watch them closely. He was satisfied, some time before
+    our late troubles began, that war must come, and quietly made
+    contracts with nearly all the manufacturers for all their
+    productions for a considerable period of time. Accordingly,
+    when the war did come, it was found that nearly all the
+    articles of clothing, blankets, etc., needed for the army had
+    been monopolized by him. His profits on these transactions
+    amounted to many millions of dollars, though it should be
+    remarked that his dealings with the Government were
+    characterized by an unusual degree of liberality. The gains
+    thus realized by him more than counterbalanced the losses he
+    sustained by the sudden cessation of his Southern trade.</p>
+
+    <p>Fifty years have now passed away since the young
+    school-teacher landed in New York, and he stands to-day at the
+    head of the mercantile interests of the New World. In the
+    half-century which has elapsed since then, he has won a fortune
+    which is variously estimated at from twenty-five to forty
+    millions of dollars. He has gained all this wealth fairly, not
+    by trickery and deceit, or even by a questionable honesty, but
+    by a series of mercantile transactions the minutest of which
+    bears the impress of his sterling integrity, and by a patience,
+    energy, tact, and genius of which few men are possessed.
+    Surely, then, it must be a proud thought to him that he has
+    done all this <i>himself</i>, by his own unaided efforts, and
+    that amid all his wonderful success there does not rest one
+    single stain upon his good name as a man or a merchant.</p>
+
+    <p>It is said that Mr. Stewart regards himself as a "lucky
+    man," rather than as one who has risen by the force of his own
+    genius. A writer in the New York <i>Herald</i> relates the
+    following incident, as illustrative of the superstition which
+    this feeling of "luck" has given rise to with him: "When he
+    kept his store on Broadway, between Murray and Warren Streets,
+    there sat on the sidewalk before it, on an orange box, an old
+    woman, whose ostensible occupation was the selling of apples.
+    This business was, however, merely a pretense; the main object
+    being beggary. As years rolled on, Mr. Stewart became impressed
+    with the idea that the old dame was his guardian angel of good
+    luck, and this impression took so firm a hold upon his mind
+    that when he removed to Chambers Street, he, in person, took up
+    the old woman's box, and removed her to the front of his new
+    establishment. In further illustration of Mr. Stewart's faith
+    in the Irish traditional belief in 'lucky' and 'unlucky'
+    persons, it may be mentioned that, after the completion of the
+    St. Nicholas Hotel in this city, an undertaking in which he was
+    largely interested, and when the building was just about to be
+    opened for the reception of guests, the millionaire, standing
+    in the drawing-room, ejaculated, 'It is now finished; I hope
+    its first visitors may be lucky people.'</p>
+
+    <p>"A gentleman present, who had heard of Mr. Stewart's care
+    for the aged apple vendor, remarked, 'I presume, sir, you do
+    not in reality care about lucky or unlucky persons;' to which
+    he immediately replied, 'Indeed, I do. There are persons who
+    are unlucky. I sometimes open a case of goods, and sell the
+    first from it to some person who is unlucky, and lose on it to
+    the end. I frequently see persons to whom I would not sell if I
+    could avoid it.'"</p>
+
+    <p>The first incident, if true, doubtless illustrates the quiet
+    kindness with which Mr. Stewart watches over the poor that he
+    takes under his care&mdash;and they are many. He has won his
+    success too fairly to be a believer in mere <i>luck</i>. There
+    is no such thing as chance in this world. Men are the
+    architects of their own fortunes.</p>
+
+    <p>One of the principal reasons of his success is the rigid
+    system with which he conducts his business. He has a place for
+    every thing, and a time for every duty, and requires the same
+    regularity from his subordinates. His salesmen and managers are
+    thoroughly versed in their duties, and the more important of
+    them are selected with great care. Every thing works smoothly
+    under the master's eye, and there is a penalty for each and
+    every delinquency, which is rigidly exacted.</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Stewart is one of the hardest workers in his
+    establishment. His partners relieve him of the details, but the
+    general management of his immense business he trusts to no
+    other hands. His eye is on every thing. He is familiar with
+    every detail, though he does not take upon himself its
+    direction. He goes to his business between nine and ten in the
+    morning, stopping first at his upper store. He makes a brief
+    but thorough inspection here, and learns the general progress
+    of the day, and then repairs to his lower or wholesale store,
+    where he remains during business hours, and returns home
+    between five and six in the afternoon, stopping again at the
+    upper store. He works hard, and is never absent from his post
+    unless detained by sickness.</p>
+
+    <p>His time is valuable, and he is not willing to waste it.</p>
+
+    <p>Many persons endeavor to see him merely to gratify their
+    impertinent curiosity, and others wish to intrude upon him for
+    purposes which would simply consume his time. To protect
+    himself, he has been compelled to resort to the following
+    expedient: A gentleman is kept on guard near the main door of
+    the store, whose duty is to inquire the business of visitors.
+    If the visitor wishes to see Mr. Stewart, the "sentinel"
+    informs him that he must first state his business to him. If
+    the visitor urges that it is private, he is told that Mr.
+    Stewart has no private business. If his errand meets the
+    approval of the gentleman on guard, he is allowed to go up
+    stairs, where he is met by the confidential agent of the great
+    merchant, to whom he must repeat the object of his visit. If
+    this gentleman is satisfied, or can not get rid of the visitor,
+    he enters the private office of his employer and lays the case
+    before him. If the business of the visitor is urgent he is
+    admitted, otherwise, he is refused an interview. If admitted,
+    the conference is brief and to the point. There is no time
+    lost. Matters are dispatched with a method and promptitude
+    which astonish strangers. If the visitor attempts to draw the
+    merchant into a friendly conversation, or indulges in useless
+    complimentary phrases, after the matter on which he came is
+    settled, Mr. Stewart's manner instantly becomes cold and
+    repelling, and troublesome persons are sometimes given a hint
+    which hastens their departure. This is his working time, and it
+    is precious to him. He can not afford to waste it upon idlers.
+    In social life he is said to be exceedingly affable.</p>
+
+    <p>The greater portion of Mr. Stewart's immense fortune is
+    invested in real estate. Besides his two stores on Broadway, he
+    owns the Metropolitan Hotel and the New York Theater, also on
+    Broadway; nearly all of Bleecker Street from Broadway to Depauw
+    Row, several churches, a number of buildings, and many valuable
+    lots. He resides at the north-east corner of the Fifth Avenue
+    and Thirty-fourth Street. Immediately opposite he is building
+    one of the finest residences in the world, and the most superb
+    in America. He owns more real estate than any man in America
+    except William B. Astor, and is the most successful merchant in
+    the world.</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Stewart is said to be extremely liberal in his donations
+    to objects which meet with his sympathy. The majority of these
+    donations are quietly made, as he has a repugnance to public
+    charities. He gave liberally to the cause of the Union during
+    the war. During that struggle he sent a cargo of provisions to
+    Ireland, where much distress existed, and then invited as many
+    emigrants as the vessel would carry to take passage to America
+    in her, free of charge. One hundred and thirty-nine persons
+    availed themselves of his offer, and upon reaching America were
+    all provided with good situations by him. At present he is
+    engaged in erecting on the Fourth Avenue a large building, in
+    which homes will be provided for poor working females, at a
+    small expense to them. It is said that this noble project will
+    require an outlay of several millions of dollars. His
+    friends&mdash;and he has many&mdash;speak of him as exceedingly
+    kind and liberal, and seem much attached to him.</p>
+
+    <p>As I have said before, Mr. Stewart has not cared for
+    political distinction, but has rather shunned it. He was a
+    member of the Union Defense Committee during the war, and in
+    1866 was one of the signers of the Saratoga address, calling on
+    the people of the country to sustain the policy of President
+    Johnson. His warm friendship for General Grant caused him to be
+    one of the earliest advocates of the election of the latter to
+    the Presidency. He was a candidate for Presidential Elector on
+    the Republican ticket for the State of New York, but was
+    defeated, with his associates, by the Democracy.</p>
+
+    <p>His intimate relations with General Grant, together with his
+    vast financial experience, induced many persons to believe that
+    he would be offered a place in the Cabinet of the new
+    President. These expectations were realized by his nomination
+    to the post of Secretary of the Treasury, on the 5th of March,
+    1869, and his immediate and unanimous confirmation by the
+    Senate. He was about to enter upon his new duties, when it was
+    discovered that there existed an old and almost forgotten law
+    forbidding any merchant from becoming the head of the Treasury
+    Department. As soon as this discovery was made, Mr. Stewart
+    expressed his desire to withdraw from the position, and thus
+    relieve the President of all embarrassment upon the subject,
+    but the latter, wishing, if possible, to retain him in the
+    Cabinet, urged him to delay his action, with the hope that the
+    difficulty might be obviated. Willing to oblige his friend, and
+    anxious to serve the country, Mr. Stewart consented to do this,
+    but finding that certain persons were seeking to make his
+    nomination a source of trouble to the Administration, offered
+    either to resign the place or to relinquish his entire interest
+    in his business during the period of his Secretaryship, and to
+    donate his immense profits for that time to the poor of the
+    city of New York. This sacrifice, he hoped, would render him
+    eligible; but the President was unwilling to accept the
+    princely offer&mdash;the noblest ever made by any man&mdash;and
+    Mr. Stewart finally withdrew from the contest.</p>
+
+    <p>There can be no doubt that he would have been the best
+    Secretary that could have been placed at the head of the
+    Treasury. His great financial experience and his unquestioned
+    ability were better qualifications than those possessed by any
+    politician in the land. Perhaps the best proof of the
+    satisfaction which his appointment produced in the minds of the
+    thinking men of the country is the manner in which the news
+    affected the money market. Gold fell as soon as the
+    announcement was made.</p>
+
+    <p>Few strangers ever come to New York and depart without
+    visiting Stewart's famous store at the corner of Tenth Street
+    and Broadway. The lower, or wholesale store, is far more
+    important to its owner; but it conducts its operations
+    exclusively with dealers, and in such a quiet and systematic
+    way that it seems to attract but little attention among the
+    masses. It is the upper or retail store that is the wonder of
+    the great city in which it is located.</p>
+
+    <p>It is constructed of iron, in the style of arcade upon
+    arcade, and is lighted by numerous windows. It fronts two
+    hundred feet on Broadway, and three hundred feet on Ninth and
+    Tenth Streets. It covers an area of about two acres, is five
+    stories and an attic in height, and has two cellars underneath.
+    It is warmed by steam, and contains several steam-engines for
+    hoisting goods, running the machines employed in the
+    manufacturing department, and forcing water into the immense
+    tank at the top of the building. Six elevators and several
+    handsome stairways connect the various floors. Three of the
+    elevators are used for conveying customers up and down, and the
+    others for hoisting and lowering goods. The building is lighted
+    by several thousand gas jets, which are all set aflame
+    simultaneously by electricity.</p>
+
+    <p>The various floors, with the exception of the first, are
+    broken only by a rotunda, which extends to the roof, and is
+    inclosed at each floor by a massive iron balustrade. Leaning
+    over one of these balustrades, and looking up or down, the
+    sight is brilliant and attractive. Thousands of persons are
+    scattered about the floors making purchases. Hundreds of
+    clerks, salesmen, and cash boys are busy serving them, and the
+    buzz and hum of human voices under the vast roof sounds like
+    the droning of a hive of bees.</p>
+
+    <p>The service of this immense establishment is arranged as
+    follows: There is one general superintendent, with nineteen
+    assistants, each of whom is at the head of a department. Nine
+    cashiers receive and pay out money; twenty-five book-keepers
+    keep the record of the day; thirty ushers direct purchasers to
+    the department they seek; two hundred cash boys receive the
+    money and bring back the change of purchasers; four hundred and
+    seventy clerks, a few of whom are females, make the sales of
+    the day; fifty porters do the heavy work, and nine hundred
+    seamstresses are employed in the manufacturing department.
+    Besides these, there are usually about five hundred other
+    persons employed about the establishment in various capacities,
+    bringing the total strength of the <i>personelle</i> of the
+    house to twenty-two hundred.</p>
+
+    <p>The accounts of each department are kept separate, and the
+    sales of each for the day constitute a separate return. These
+    sales will average something like the following
+    figures:</p><br>
+     <br>
+
+
+    <table align='center'
+           border='0'
+           cellpadding='2'
+           cellspacing='5'
+           summary='Daily Sales'>
+        <tr>
+            <td align='left'>Silks</td>
+
+            <td align='right'>$15,000</td>
+        </tr>
+
+        <tr>
+            <td align='left'>Dress goods</td>
+
+            <td align='right'>6,000</td>
+        </tr>
+
+        <tr>
+            <td align='left'>Muslins</td>
+
+            <td align='right'>3,000</td>
+        </tr>
+
+        <tr>
+            <td align='left'>Laces</td>
+
+            <td align='right'>2,000</td>
+        </tr>
+
+        <tr>
+            <td align='left'>Shawls</td>
+
+            <td align='right'>2,500</td>
+        </tr>
+
+        <tr>
+            <td align='left'>Suits</td>
+
+            <td align='right'>1,000</td>
+        </tr>
+
+        <tr>
+            <td align='left'>Calicoes</td>
+
+            <td align='right'>1,500</td>
+        </tr>
+
+        <tr>
+            <td align='left'>Velvets</td>
+
+            <td align='right'>2,000</td>
+        </tr>
+
+        <tr>
+            <td align='left'>Gloves</td>
+
+            <td align='right'>1,000</td>
+        </tr>
+
+        <tr>
+            <td align='left'>Furs</td>
+
+            <td align='right'>1,000</td>
+        </tr>
+
+        <tr>
+            <td align='left'>Hosiery</td>
+
+            <td align='right'>600</td>
+        </tr>
+
+        <tr>
+            <td align='left'>Boys' clothing</td>
+
+            <td align='right'>700</td>
+        </tr>
+
+        <tr>
+            <td align='left'>Notions</td>
+
+            <td align='right'>600</td>
+        </tr>
+
+        <tr>
+            <td align='left'>Embroideries</td>
+
+            <td align='right'>1,000</td>
+        </tr>
+
+        <tr>
+            <td align='left'>Carpets</td>
+
+            <td align='right'>5,500</td>
+        </tr>
+    </table>
+
+    <p>The total daily receipts average $60,000, and have been
+    known to amount to $87,000.</p>
+
+    <p>Salaries of subordinate clerks range from $5 to $25 per
+    week. The cash boys receive $5 per week. If not fined for
+    misconduct they receive a reward of $1 per month, and a further
+    reward of $5 at the end of each half year. They are promoted as
+    fast as their conduct and vacancies in the force of salesmen
+    will allow. The number of employ&eacute;s being so large, the
+    proprietor is compelled to keep them under the constant
+    espionage of two experienced detectives, and each evening when
+    they leave the store they are required to do so through a
+    private door on Ninth Street, where the detectives are
+    stationed to see that none of them carry away articles which do
+    not belong to them.</p>
+
+    <p>The number of visitors to the establishment in the busy
+    season is very large. On special occasions, such as opening
+    days, it is said to have reached fifty thousand, but the
+    general average is placed at fifteen thousand, and they
+    represent every grade in life. Rich and poor mingle here
+    freely.</p>
+
+    <p>The floors are arranged simply, and with regard to business
+    rather than for show, but every thing is elegant and tasteful.
+    The sub-cellar is used as a store-room for goods in cases. Here
+    the fabrics are opened and sent to their departments. The
+    cellar is the carpet sales-room. The first floor is the general
+    sales-room, and is the most attractive place in the building.
+    It is three hundred feet long by two hundred wide, and is
+    provided with one hundred counters, each fifty feet in length.
+    Behind these counters the goods are arranged, with no effort at
+    display, on the shelves, which rise but a few feet above the
+    counters. There is an abundance of light in all parts of the
+    house, especially over the silk counters, which are just under
+    the rotunda. The second floor is taken up with ladies' suits,
+    shawls, curtain goods, etc., and the next floor is devoted to
+    the same purpose. The fourth floor is used as a manufactory for
+    making up the suits, etc., placed on sale or ordered by
+    customers; on the fifth is the fur-room and upholstery
+    manufactory; and the sixth is occupied as a laundry. The most
+    perfect order is maintained in every part of the establishment,
+    the mere direction of which requires administrative ability of
+    a very high character.</p>
+
+    <p>As fast as the sales are made, the articles, unless taken
+    away by the purchaser, are sent to the parcel desk, which is
+    located in the cellar. This is the busiest department in the
+    house, and one of the most important. Each order is accompanied
+    by a ticket stating the quality and amount of the goods, the
+    price, and the address of the purchaser. It is remeasured and
+    examined here, so that any error on the part of the salesman
+    may be detected and repaired. Errors of this kind, however, are
+    rare, and the burden of the labor in this department consists
+    of making the goods up into secure packages and sending them to
+    their destinations. The tickets delivered at the parcel desk
+    are then sent to the checking desk, which is also in the
+    basement, where they are compared with those delivered by the
+    salesmen to the cashiers, and if no error is discovered, the
+    goods are sent to the wagons for delivery.</p>
+
+    <p>The wagon department constitutes a very important branch of
+    the business. The vehicles and horses are accommodated in a
+    fine stable on Amity Street, near Broadway. The building was
+    formerly a Baptist church, and was presided over by the Rev.
+    Dr. Williams. When the congregation went higher up town, they
+    sold the old church, which found a purchaser in Mr. Stewart. He
+    converted it into a stable, and has since more than doubled its
+    size. The floor was taken up, a sewer built to carry off the
+    waste water, and the place paved with brick and cement. It is
+    now one of the best stables in the city. It contains over forty
+    horses, and five grooms are on hand to attend to them. There
+    are eight wagons employed at the up-town store to deliver
+    parcels to purchasers, while thirteen single wagons are used by
+    the lower store to cart single cases around town. In addition
+    to these, there are ten double trucks to haul heavy goods.
+    Twenty-seven drivers are employed, and thirteen hundred bushels
+    of oats and fifty tons of hay are fed out during a year. The
+    place is in charge of a watchman at night, and during the day
+    is managed by a superintendent. At half-past eight the trucks
+    report at the down-town store, and remain there all day. At the
+    same moment one of the light wagons is dispatched to the retail
+    store, and at once takes out the early sales. In an hour
+    another wagon follows it, and this course is pursued all day
+    until six o'clock, when the last wagon takes the last sales. By
+    this system purchasers receive their parcels with dispatch, and
+    the immense business of the day is entirely finished. Every
+    week the superintendent of the stables makes a report of the
+    condition of the horses and wagons, and this "stable report" is
+    carefully inspected at head-quarters. In case of sickness or
+    stubborn lameness, the horses are sent to the country to
+    recruit.</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Stewart has a farm at Tuckahoe, where the invalid horses
+    are kept, and where much of their provender is raised. This
+    farm is noted for the valuable marble quarry which furnished
+    the stone from which his new mansion on Fifth Avenue is
+    built.</p>
+
+    <p>The retail store contains fabrics of every description and
+    price. The wife of a millionaire can gratify her fancy here to
+    its utmost limit, while the poor sewing-girl can obtain her
+    simple necessities at the same price which is demanded for them
+    from the rich. In the shawl department, there are "wraps" worth
+    as much as $4,500, but not more than one or two find a
+    purchaser in the course of a year. Shawls at $3,000 find a sale
+    of about twenty a year, and the number of purchasers increases
+    as the price diminishes. The wealthy ladies of New York deal
+    here extensively. One of the clerks of the establishment
+    recently made a statement that a fashionable lady ran up a bill
+    of $20,000 here in two months.</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Stewart, though leaving the details of the retail
+    business in the hands of Mr. Tuller, the general
+    superintendent, yet keeps himself thoroughly informed
+    respecting it, and exercises over it a general supervision, to
+    which its increasing success is due. He knows exactly what is
+    in the house, how much is on hand, and how it is selling. He
+    fixes the prices himself, and keeps them always at a popular
+    figure. He is said to have an aversion to keeping goods over
+    from one season to another, and would rather sacrifice them
+    than do so. He has no dead stock on hand. His knowledge of the
+    popular taste and its variations is intuitive, and his great
+    experience enables him to anticipate its changes.</p>
+
+    <p>"There can not be so much selling without proportionate
+    buying, and Stewart is as systematic in the latter as the
+    former. Of late he has not acted personally in making
+    purchases, but has trusted to the system which he organized
+    some years ago, and which he has found to admirably answer as
+    his substitute. He has branch establishments exercising
+    purchasing functions only in Boston and Philadelphia, in the
+    United States; in Manchester, England; and in Paris and Lyons,
+    France. But while these are his agencies, his buyers haunt the
+    marts of the whole world. There is no center of commerce or
+    manufacture of the wide range of articles in which he deals, on
+    either of the continents, where he is not always present by
+    deputy to seize upon favorable fluctuations of the market, or
+    pounce upon some exceptionally excellent productions. He owns
+    entire the manufactory of the celebrated Alexandre kid-glove.
+    He has a body of men in Persia, organized under the inevitable
+    superintendent, chasing down the Astrachan goat heavy with
+    young, from which the unborn kids are taken and stripped of
+    their skins, thus sacrificing two animals for every skin
+    obtained. He rifles Lyons of its choicest silks, the famous
+    productions of Bonnet and Ponson. Holland and Ireland yield him
+    the first fruits of their looms. Belgium contributes the rarest
+    of her laces, and the North sends down the finest of its
+    Russian sables. All the looms of France, England, Belgium, and
+    the United States are closely watched, and the finest fabrics
+    in dress goods, muslins, carpets, and calicoes are caught up
+    the moment the workmen put on the finishing touches. He buys
+    for cash the world over, and is a customer every-where so
+    recognized as desirable that he has his choice of industrial
+    productions, and on more advantageous terms than his rivals can
+    purchase what he leaves. He has been so long in the business,
+    and has become so thoroughly versed in the productions of
+    different looms in different countries, that it is now his
+    practice to select certain mills noted for excellence of work,
+    and take their entire supply, and thus it happens that there
+    are many looms in the busiest haunts of the Old and New Worlds
+    that toil unceasingly on his account.</p>
+
+    <p>"By buying thus largely in foreign lands, he is, of course,
+    the largest importer in the nation, and his duties average
+    $30,000 gold per day. Every year his business steadily
+    increases, and there is apparently no practical limit at which
+    it will stop. As prudent in vast affairs as other men are in
+    small, he insures liberally, and has policies renewed every
+    third day throughout the year. But, while leaning upon the
+    insurance companies, he is utterly independent of the banks; he
+    has never asked one of them to 'carry' him through a crisis,
+    and should such a contingency arise, there is no bank in the
+    world competent to the task."</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Stewart is now sixty-eight years old, but looks much
+    younger, being still as vigorous and active, both mentally and
+    physically, as most men of forty-five. He is of the medium
+    size, has light-brown hair and beard, which are closely
+    trimmed. His features are sharp, well cut, his eye bright, and
+    his general expression calm and thoughtful. His manner is
+    reserved, and to all but his intimate friends cold. He dresses
+    with great simplicity, but with taste, and in the style of the
+    day. His habits are simple, and he avoids publicity in all
+    things. Standing as he does at the head of the mercantile
+    interests of the country, he affords a fine example of the calm
+    and dignified manner in which a man of true merit may enjoy his
+    legitimate success, and of the good use he may make of its
+    fruits.</p>
+    <hr style='width: 65%;'>
+    <a name='CHAPTER_IV'></a>
+
+    <h2>CHAPTER IV.</h2>
+
+    <h3>AMOS LAWRENCE.</h3><br>
+
+
+    <p>AMOS LAWRENCE was born at Groton, Massachusetts, on the 22d
+    of April, 1786. His ancestor came of a good English family, and
+    was one of the company which sailed from England for the New
+    World under Governor Winthrop, in 1630, and which, according to
+    Grahame, contained "several wealthy and high-born persons, both
+    men and women, who expressed their determination to follow
+    truth and liberty into a desert, rather than to enjoy all the
+    pleasures of the world under the dominion of superstition and
+    slavery." This Lawrence settled in Watertown, and was one of
+    the original proprietors of the town of Groton, which was
+    founded in 1655. Samuel Lawrence, the father of the subject of
+    this memoir, was the fifth in descent from the founder of the
+    family, and was himself a gallant officer of the American army
+    in the War of the Revolution, the close of which found him the
+    possessor of a small farm, which yielded a modest support for
+    his family.</p>
+
+    <p>Young Amos was brought up on the farm, with none of the
+    advantages of wealth, and with but a limited education, which
+    he gained at the village schools, and which was seriously
+    interfered with by his delicate health. He received his final
+    training at the Groton Academy, to which, in after life, he
+    became a liberal patron. "As we children came forward," he
+    wrote, late in life, "we were carefully looked after, but were
+    taught to use the talents intrusted to us; and every nerve was
+    strained to provide for us the academy which is now doing so
+    much there." Toward the close of the year 1799, when but a
+    little over thirteen years of age, he took his final departure
+    from school, and entered a store in the village of Dunstable,
+    as clerk.</p>
+
+    <p>He remained there but a few months, and then returned to
+    Groton, where he obtained a place as apprentice in the store of
+    a Mr. Brazer. This was the largest establishment in the place,
+    and conducted a very important trade with the country for miles
+    around. Boston was so far, and so difficult to reach in those
+    days, that Groton came in for nearly all the business of its
+    vicinity which the railroads have now taken to the city. Mr.
+    Brazer's establishment, which was known as a "variety store,"
+    came in for the best part of this trade. Every thing was sold
+    there; "puncheons of rum and brandy, bales of cloth, kegs of
+    tobacco, with hardware and hosiery, shared attention in common
+    with silks and threads, and all other articles for female use."
+    Even medicines were sold there; and Dr. Wm. B. Lawrence, the
+    son of our hero, assures us that his father was obliged to sell
+    medicines, not only to customers, but to all the physicians
+    within a circuit of twenty miles, who depended on this
+    establishment for their supplies. "The confidence in his good
+    judgment," he adds, "was such that he was often consulted in
+    preference to the physician, by those who were suffering from
+    minor ails; and many were the extemporaneous doses which he
+    administered for the weal or woe of the patient."</p>
+
+    <p>The Brazer store was a prominent feature in Groton. It was a
+    place of general resort, and close by was the tavern where the
+    mail coaches stopped. Travelers were constantly passing through
+    the town, bringing the news of those stirring days when
+    Napoleon was rushing over Europe with his armies, overturning
+    old states and building up new ones, and changing the destinies
+    of the world. The domestic politics of the day were exciting,
+    and it is likely that they aided, together with the events in
+    the Old World, in imparting to the character of Mr. Lawrence
+    the earnestness and gravity for which he was noted when a mere
+    lad.</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Brazer had in his employ a number of clerks, but it was
+    not long before the energy and business talent of young
+    Lawrence made him the most trusted of all. Mr. Brazer did not
+    give much personal attention to the store, and when he found
+    that his young clerk was so admirable and reliable a manager,
+    he left the business entirely in his hands. This was a post of
+    unusual responsibility for one so young, but Amos Lawrence
+    accepted it promptly, and labored to discharge its duties
+    faithfully. He at once established the character for probity
+    and fairness which distinguished him through life; his simple
+    assertion was sufficient in any matter, being received with
+    implicit trust by all who knew him. His duties kept him
+    constantly employed, and though he lived within a mile of his
+    father's house, weeks sometimes passed without giving him the
+    opportunity of visiting it.</p>
+
+    <p>Drunkenness was at that day the curse of New England. Every
+    body drank, and such fiery fluids as brandy, whisky, rum, and
+    gin were the favorites. Men, women, and children were addicted
+    to the vice, and Groton was no exception to the rule. Mr.
+    Brazer's store was famous for the good liquors served out to
+    its customers, and his clerks were aware that their employer
+    did not object to their helping themselves when they felt
+    thirsty. Amos Lawrence fell into the habit to which all were
+    given, and for some time went along with the rest; but at
+    length he came to the conclusion that such indulgence was
+    wantonly ruining his health, and he resolved to abstain
+    entirely. "We five boys," said he, years afterward, "were in
+    the habit, every forenoon, of making a drink compounded of rum,
+    raisins, sugar, nutmegs, etc., with biscuit&mdash;all palatable
+    to eat and drink. After being in the store four weeks, I found
+    myself admonished by my appetite of the approach of the hour
+    for indulgence. Thinking the habit might make trouble if
+    allowed to grow stronger, without further apology to my
+    seniors, I declined partaking with them. My first resolution
+    was to abstain for a week, and, when the week was out, for a
+    month, and then for a year. Finally, I resolved to abstain for
+    the rest of my apprenticeship, which was for five years longer.
+    During that whole period I never drank a spoonful, though I
+    mixed gallons daily for my old master and his customers."</p>
+
+    <p>At the same time, Mr. Lawrence determined that he would not
+    use tobacco in any form. He was very fond of the odor of "the
+    weed," and at one period of his life always kept a fine Havana
+    in his drawer that he might enjoy the scent of it; but he was
+    totally free from our disgusting national vice in any of its
+    forms. In this respect, as indeed in all others, he offers a
+    fine example to the rising youth of the present generation.</p>
+
+    <p>On the 22d of April, 1807, Mr. Lawrence completed his
+    twenty-first year, and his seven years' apprenticeship with Mr.
+    Brazer came to an end. He was now of an age to enter into
+    business for himself, and it was his intention to open a small
+    store in Groton, in connection with a brother apprentice, but
+    before doing so he decided to visit Boston for the purpose of
+    establishing a credit. He reached the city with but twenty
+    dollars in his pocket, richer, he subsequently declared, in his
+    own estimation, than he ever felt before or afterward. While in
+    the city, he received the offer of a clerkship from a
+    mercantile house of good standing. It was entirely unsolicited,
+    and took him by surprise, but he decided to accept it, and
+    abandoned his idea of going into business for himself in
+    Groton; and this act led to a career entirely different from
+    that to which he had looked forward.</p>
+
+    <p>Boston, in 1807, had a population of about thirty thousand,
+    and the commercial position of the city was relatively much
+    greater than at present. The foreign trade of the United States
+    was enormous, and was carried on in American ships, and not, as
+    at present, in foreign vessels. The total tonnage of American
+    shipping engaged in this trade was seven hundred thousand tons,
+    and of this Boston possessed a fair share. Her domestic trade
+    was also important.</p>
+
+    <p>"The merchants of Boston had then high places in the
+    estimation of the world. The Perkinses, the Sargeants, the
+    Mays, the Cabots, the Higginsons, and others, were known
+    throughout the world for their integrity, their mercantile
+    skill, and the extent and beneficial character of their
+    operations. These were the golden days of Boston's commerce....
+    The standard of integrity was high, and though it would be
+    absurd to suppose that there was not the usual amount of evil
+    in the place, it may be assumed that in no part of the world
+    was the young trader more likely to find severer judges of
+    character and conduct, or to be better treated if he should
+    afford unquestionable proofs of capacity and honesty."</p>
+
+    <p>It was into this community that Mr. Lawrence now entered,
+    and in which his life was spent. He gave such satisfaction to
+    his employers that, when he had been with them a short time,
+    they astonished him with the offer of a partnership. He was but
+    partially acquainted with their affairs, but their manner of
+    conducting their business did not please him, and he declined
+    their offer. His sagacity was verified by the result. In a few
+    months the firm failed, and the creditors appointed him to
+    settle their affairs, which he did to their satisfaction.</p>
+
+    <p>Being now out of employment, he resolved to commence
+    business on his own account in Boston. He had made such a
+    favorable impression upon the merchants of the city that he had
+    no difficulty in obtaining credit. He rented a store in
+    Cornhill, stocked it with dry goods, and began his career as a
+    merchant. Four months after this, his father, who was keenly
+    interested in his son's success, without consulting the latter,
+    mortgaged his farm for one thousand dollars, and, repairing to
+    Boston, placed the money in Amos Lawrence's hands. Mr. Lawrence
+    was profoundly affected by this proof of his father's devotion,
+    but he regretted it none the less, as he knew that his failure
+    would bring ruin to his parent as well as to himself. "I told
+    him," said he, forty years later, "that he did wrong to place
+    himself in a situation to be made unhappy if I lost the money.
+    He told me he <i>guessed I wouldn't lose it</i>, and I gave him
+    my note." Mr. Lawrence made a prompt use of the money, and paid
+    the mortgage at the proper time; but he had a narrow escape
+    from loss, as the bank on which he had bills for the amount of
+    the mortgage failed almost immediately after he had obtained
+    specie for them.</p>
+
+    <p>"This incident," he said, "shows how dangerous it is to the
+    independence and comfort of families for parents to take
+    pecuniary responsibilities for their sons in trade, beyond
+    their power of meeting them without embarrassment. Had any
+    Hillsborough bank-notes not been paid as they were, nearly the
+    whole amount would have been lost, and myself and my family
+    might have been ruined. The incident was so striking that I
+    have uniformly discouraged young men who have applied to me for
+    credit, offering their fathers as bondsmen; and by doing so I
+    believe I have saved some respectable families from ruin. My
+    advice, however, has sometimes been rejected with anger. A
+    young man who can not get along without such aid will not be
+    likely to get along with it."</p>
+
+    <p>He began his business upon principles of prudence and
+    economy, which he rigidly maintained throughout his whole life.
+    He never allowed himself to anticipate his gains, and having
+    fixed his personal expenses at a certain sum, he never went
+    beyond it. His system, which is thus stated by himself, is
+    offered here as a safe and admirable rule for all persons:</p>
+
+    <p>"When I commenced, the embargo had just been laid, and with
+    such restrictions on trade that many were induced to leave it.
+    But I felt great confidence that, by industry, economy, and
+    integrity, I could get a living; and the experiment showed that
+    I was right. Most of the young men who commenced at that period
+    failed by spending too much money, and using credit too
+    freely.</p>
+
+    <p>"I adopted the plan of keeping an accurate account of
+    merchandise bought and sold each day, with the profit, as far
+    as practicable. This plan was pursued for a number of years,
+    and I never found my merchandise fall short in taking an
+    account of stock, which I did as often at least as once in each
+    year. I was thus enabled to form an opinion of my actual state
+    as a business man. I adopted also the rule always to have
+    property, after my second year's business, to represent forty
+    per cent, at least more than I owed&mdash;that is, never to be
+    in debt more than two and a half times my capital. This caution
+    saved me from ever getting embarrassed. If it were more
+    generally adopted, we should see fewer failures in business.
+    Excessive credit is the rock on which so many business men are
+    broken."</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Lawrence was very successful from the first. His profits
+    during his first year were fifteen hundred dollars, and over
+    four thousand during the second. In seven years he made over
+    fifty thousand dollars. He paid the closest attention to his
+    business, and nothing could draw him from it in working hours.
+    After these were over he would take his pleasure. His aim was
+    to keep every thing in the most complete state possible. During
+    the first seven years of his business he never allowed a bill
+    against him to stand unsettled over the Sabbath. If he made a
+    purchase of goods on Saturday, and they were delivered to him
+    that day, he always examined and settled the bill by note, or
+    by crediting it, and leaving it clear, so that there should be
+    no unfinished business to go over to the next week, and make
+    trouble for his clerks in case he should not be at his post.
+    "Thus," said he, "I always kept my business <i>before</i> me,
+    instead of allowing it to drive me."</p>
+
+    <p>The first years of Mr. Lawrence's mercantile experience
+    covered the darkest period of the history of the Republic. They
+    were marked by the embargo, the crippling of our commerce by
+    the hostility of England and France, and the second war with
+    Great Britain, in all of which there was much to dis-hearten a
+    beginner, even if he escaped positive loss. Nothing was
+    certain. The events of a single hour might undo the labor of
+    years, and baffle the best laid plans. Yet he persevered, and
+    went steadily on to fortune. He was remarkable for his keen
+    foresight, as well as for his prudence, and was always on the
+    alert to profit by the fluctuations of the market. Yet he
+    abominated speculation. He averred that speculation made men
+    desperate and unfit for legitimate business, and that it led
+    them, when under excitement, to the commission of acts against
+    which their cooler judgment would have warned them. The fair
+    profits of legitimate business were, in his opinion, sure to
+    reward any honest and capable man. His aim was to elevate
+    commerce, and not to degrade it. He introduced into Boston the
+    system of double-entry in book-keeping, in advance of any other
+    city merchant. He was prompt and faithful in the performance of
+    every contract, and required a similar course toward himself
+    from all indebted to him, as long as they were able to do so.
+    When they became unfortunate, he was kind and generous, ready
+    to compromise upon the most liberal terms, or to give them
+    their own time for payment; and it is recorded of him that he
+    never dealt harshly with a debtor who had failed in
+    business.</p>
+
+    <p>As long as such a course was necessary, Mr. Lawrence devoted
+    himself entirely to his business, but after he had placed it on
+    a safe footing, he was careful to reserve to himself time for
+    other duties and for relaxation. No man, he said, had the right
+    to allow his business to engross his entire life. "Property
+    acquired at such sacrifices as I have been obliged to make the
+    past year," he wrote at the commencement of 1826, "costs more
+    than it is worth; and the anxiety in protecting it is the
+    extreme of folly." He never lost sight of the fact that man is
+    a responsible, intelligent being, placed in the world for other
+    purposes than the mere acquisition of wealth.</p>
+
+    <p>In October, 1808, his brother, Abbott Lawrence, afterward
+    famous as a merchant and statesman, came to him as an
+    apprentice, and on the 1st of January, 1814, he was admitted to
+    partnership, the style of the firm being A. &amp; A. Lawrence.
+    This partnership was terminated only by the death of the elder
+    brother in 1852. Their business was the importation and sale of
+    foreign manufactures, and the firm soon took its place at the
+    head of the Boston merchants engaged in this trade. The tariffs
+    of 1816 and 1824 gave a new and powerful impetus to the
+    manufacture of woolens and cottons in this country, and the
+    Lawrences entered largely into the sale of these goods on
+    commission. In 1830, they became interested in the cotton mills
+    at Lowell; and on the establishment of the Suffolk, Tremont,
+    and Lawrence Companies, as well as subsequently in other
+    corporations, they became large proprietors. From this time
+    their business as selling agents was on the most extensive
+    scale, and their income from all sources large in proportion.
+    They amassed large fortunes, and won names which are the most
+    precious heritages of their children.</p>
+
+    <p>Perhaps the best exposition of the principles upon which
+    these brothers conducted their commercial operations is found
+    in the following letter from the elder to the younger, written
+    on the 11th of March, 1815, upon the occasion of a visit to
+    England by the latter on business for the firm:</p>
+
+    <div class='blkquot'>
+        <p><span class="small-caps">My Dear Brother</span>&mdash;I
+        have thought best, before you go abroad, to suggest a few
+        hints for your benefit in your intercourse with the people
+        among whom you are going. As a first and leading principle,
+        let every transaction be of that pure and honest character
+        that you would not be ashamed to have appear before the
+        whole world as clearly as to yourself. In addition to the
+        advantages arising from an honest course of conduct with
+        your fellow-men, there is the satisfaction of reflecting
+        within yourself that you have endeavored to do your duty;
+        and however greatly the best may fall short of doing all
+        they ought, they will be sure not to do more than their
+        principles enjoin.</p>
+
+        <p>It is, therefore, of the highest consequence that you
+        should not only cultivate correct principles, but that you
+        should place your standard of action so high as to require
+        great vigilance in living up to it.</p>
+
+        <p>In regard to your business transactions, let every thing
+        be so registered in your books, that any person, without
+        difficulty, can understand the whole of your concerns. You
+        may be cut off in the midst of your pursuits, and it is of
+        no small consequence that your temporal affairs should
+        always be so arranged that you may be in readiness.</p>
+
+        <p>If it is important that you should be well prepared in
+        this point of view, how much more important is it that you
+        should be prepared in that which relates to eternity!</p>
+
+        <p>You are young, and the course of life seems open, and
+        pleasant prospects greet your ardent hopes; but you must
+        remember that the race is not always to the swift, and
+        that, however flattering may be our prospects, and however
+        zealously you may seek pleasure, you can never find it
+        except by cherishing pure principles and practicing right
+        conduct. My heart is full on this subject, my dear brother,
+        and it is the only one on which I feel the least
+        anxiety.</p>
+
+        <p>While here, your conduct has been such as to meet my
+        entire approbation; but the scenes of another land may be
+        more than your principles will stand against. I say <i>may
+        be</i>, because young men of as fair promise as yourself
+        have been lost by giving a small latitude (innocent in the
+        first instance) to their propensities. But I pray the
+        Father of all mercies to have you in his keeping, and
+        preserve you amid temptations.</p>
+
+        <p>I can only add my wish to have you write me frequently
+        and particularly, and that you will embrace every
+        opportunity of gaining information.</p>
+
+        <p class="center">Your affectionate brother,</p>
+
+        <p class="author">Amos Lawrence.</p>
+
+        <p style="font-variant:small-caps;">To Abbott Lawrence.</p>
+    </div><br>
+
+
+    <p>In his politics, Mr. Lawrence was a Federalist, and then a
+    Whig. He served for one term in the State Legislature as a
+    Representative from Boston, with credit to himself, but
+    afterward avoided any active participation in public events.
+    When his nephew-by-marriage, General Pierce, was a candidate
+    for the Presidency, he was very much gratified personally by
+    the selection of the Democracy, but declined to vote for him.
+    In a letter to a friend, written at this time, he said: "I had
+    a charming ride yesterday with my nephew, Frank Pierce, and
+    told him I thought he must occupy the White House the next
+    term, but that I would go for Scott. Pierce is a fine, spirited
+    fellow, and will do his duty wherever placed. Scott will be my
+    choice for President of the United States."</p>
+
+    <p>Regarding himself as a steward of the riches committed to
+    him, Amos Lawrence was liberal in his charities. During the
+    last twenty-four years of his life he kept an accurate account
+    of the sums he thus distributed, but with no idea that the
+    statement, which he intended for his own eye only, would ever
+    be made public. During this period he gave away six hundred and
+    thirty-nine thousand dollars. The greater part of this was
+    given away in ten years, and during a period when his average
+    income was sixty thousand dollars a year. He was a liberal
+    patron of education, giving large sums to its extension; and it
+    was his delight to assist poor clergymen, without regard to
+    denominations. He gave away clothing, food, books, etc., in
+    large quantities, as well as ready money. "Two rooms in his
+    house," says his son and biographer, "and sometimes three, were
+    used principally for the reception of useful articles for
+    distribution. There, when stormy weather or ill-health
+    prevented him from taking his usual drive, he was in the habit
+    of passing hours in selecting and packing up articles which he
+    considered suitable to the wants of those whom he wished to
+    aid." He did not forget the children, and many of his packages
+    contained toys, and books, and other things calculated to
+    promote their enjoyment.</p>
+
+    <p>He was beset with beggars of all kinds, many of whom he was
+    compelled to refuse. In his diary, he wrote on the 11th of
+    April, 1849, "Applications come in from all quarters, for all
+    objects. The reputation of giving freely is a very bad
+    reputation, so far as my personal comfort is concerned."</p>
+
+    <p>It pained him to have his charities made public, and he
+    frequently requested the recipients to say nothing about them.
+    He once made a present of some books to the Johnson school for
+    girls, and the gift being acknowledged through the columns of a
+    newspaper, he wrote to the principal of the school: "I merely
+    want to say that I hope you will not put me in the newspaper at
+    present, and when my work is done here, if you have any thing
+    to say about me that will not hurt my children and
+    grandchildren, say on," To another party he wrote: "I must
+    request that my name be not thrust forward, as though I was to
+    be a by-word for my vanity. I want to do good, but am sorry to
+    be published, as in the recent case."</p>
+
+    <p>As a merchant, Mr. Lawrence was upright, prudent,
+    far-seeing, sagacious, and courageous; as a citizen, he was
+    patriotic, public-spirited, and devoted; and as a man, he was a
+    sincere, earnest, Christian husband, father, and friend. Viewed
+    in any light, his character affords one of the most perfect
+    models to be found in our history. He was the Christian
+    <i>gentleman</i> in all things, even in the minutest detail of
+    his business. His standard was very high, but he came up to it.
+    Courteous and dignified in manner, with a face handsome and
+    winning in youth, and gentle and benignant in age, he made
+    scores of friends wherever he went, for it was a true index to
+    his character. It is a significant and interesting fact that,
+    during the hottest passages of the old nullification times,
+    although his views were known to be uncompromisingly opposed to
+    the attitude of the South, he never lost the warmest friendship
+    of some of the most advanced of the South Carolina leaders.
+    When one thinks of the friendships that were wrecked amid the
+    passions of those days, this fact speaks volumes for the
+    personal attributes of Mr. Lawrence.</p>
+
+    <p>He was a true American&mdash;proud of his country's past,
+    hopeful for her future, and desiring nothing better than to
+    live and die in the land of his birth. He sent his children
+    abroad that they might see the Old World, and profit by the
+    lessons learned there, but he strove earnestly to keep them
+    true to their country. To his son, who was traveling in France
+    in 1829, he wrote:</p>
+
+    <p>"Bring home no foreign fancies which are inapplicable to our
+    state of society. It is very common for our young men to come
+    home and appear quite ridiculous in attempting to introduce
+    their foreign fashions. It should be always kept in mind that
+    the state of society is widely different here from that in
+    Europe; and our comfort and character require it should long
+    remain so. Those who strive to introduce many of the European
+    habits and fashions, by displacing our own, do a serious injury
+    to the republic, and deserve censure. An idle person, with good
+    powers of mind, becomes torpid and inactive after a few years
+    of indulgence, and is incapable of making any high effort.
+    Highly important it is, then, to avoid this enemy of mental and
+    moral improvement. I have no wish that you pursue trade; I
+    would rather see you on a farm, or studying any profession.</p>
+
+    <p>"It should always be your aim so to conduct yourself that
+    those whom you value most in the world would approve your
+    conduct, if your actions were laid bare to their inspection;
+    and thus you will be pretty sure that He who sees the motive of
+    all our actions will accept the good designed, though it fall
+    short in its accomplishment. You are young, and are placed in a
+    situation of great peril, and are, perhaps, sometimes tempted
+    to do things which you would not do if you knew yourself under
+    the eye of your guardian. The blandishments of a beautiful city
+    may lead you to forget that you are always surrounded,
+    supported, and seen by that best Guardian."</p>
+
+    <p>He was an eminently just man, and he carried this trait into
+    the little details of his domestic life. His household adored
+    him; and his friends were bound to him by ties unusually
+    strong. He was firm and positive in his own opinions; but he
+    was tolerant of those who differed from him. He was a man of
+    quick, nervous temperament, but he possessed a powerful
+    self-control. He was a sincere and earnest Christian, and while
+    attaching himself to the sect of his choice, his sympathies and
+    aid went out to the whole Christian Church.</p>
+
+    <p>Denominational differences had no place in his heart. He
+    stood on the broad platform of the "faith of Christ
+    crucified."</p>
+
+    <p>During the last years of his life, Mr. Lawrence was a
+    constant invalid. To a man of his temperament this was a great
+    trial, but he bore it unflinchingly, exhibiting, in the long
+    years of feeble health which preceded his death, a cheerfulness
+    and patience which plainly showed the aid of the Arm on which
+    he leaned for support. For sixteen years he did not take a meal
+    with his family. His food and drink, of the simplest kind, were
+    regularly weighed, a pair of scales being kept in his chamber
+    for that purpose. He wrote to his friend President Hopkins, of
+    Williams College: "If your young folks want to know the meaning
+    of epicureanism, tell them to take some bits of coarse bread
+    (one ounce or a little more), soak them in three gills of
+    coarse meal gruel, and make their dinner of them, and nothing
+    else; beginning very hungry, and leaving off more hungry."</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Lawrence continued in this condition until December,
+    1852, when he was seized with a severe attack of the stomachic
+    trouble to which he was a martyr. He died peacefully, on the
+    last day of that month and year, at the age of sixty-six years,
+    eight months, and eight days. He was buried in Mount Auburn
+    Cemetery, and was followed to the grave by a host of friends
+    who mourned him as a brother, and by strangers to whom his
+    kindness in life had brought relief from many a care and
+    suffering.</p>
+    <hr style='width: 65%;'>
+    <a name='CHAPTER_V'></a>
+
+    <h2>CHAPTER V.</h2>
+
+    <h3>ANDREW V. STOUT.</h3><br>
+
+
+    <p>There are few men in the city of New York who have won more
+    fairly their proud positions in the mercantile world than he
+    whose name stands at the top of this page. For more than forty
+    years he has carried on a large and increasing business with an
+    energy, skill, and probity which could not fail of success.</p>
+
+    <p><span class="small-caps">Andrew V. Stout</span> was born in
+    the city of New York, at No. 6 Canal Street, or, as it was then
+    called, Pump Street, about the year 1814. When he was scarcely
+    more than a child he was left fatherless, and thrown upon his
+    own resources for a living. He was a manly little fellow, and,
+    young as he was, was fully alive to the importance of the
+    position he was compelled to assume. He was resolved not only
+    to support himself, but also to acquire a good education, and
+    by studying hard while most boys are at play, mastered the
+    ordinary English branches by the time he was twelve years
+    old.</p>
+
+    <p>He had a mother and sister to support, and applied himself
+    manfully to the task of accomplishing this. He was well grown
+    for his age, and was generally supposed to be several years
+    older than he really was. When he was fourteen years old he
+    applied for and received a position as assistant teacher of the
+    English branches in one of the public schools of the city. The
+    trustees of the school supposed he was at least eighteen or
+    nineteen years old. Had his true age been known to them, it is
+    probable he would not have received the appointment. He was not
+    questioned upon the subject, and he was wise enough to keep his
+    own counsel. He performed the duties of his position to the
+    entire satisfaction of the school officials, and made such a
+    good impression on his friends that at the age of sixteen he
+    was made assistant principal in one of the most important and
+    popular private schools of the day, taught by Shepherd Johnson,
+    a name well known to the old residents of New York.</p>
+
+    <p>He was very young to fill this position, and, as may be
+    supposed, it was peculiarly trying to one whose learning was
+    mainly self-acquired. He was determined to succeed, however,
+    and he applied himself energetically to master the course he
+    was teaching. He studied harder and more constantly than any of
+    his pupils, and was always fresh on the lessons for the
+    day.</p>
+
+    <p>When he was sixteen years old he was so well grown and so
+    mature that he passed for twenty. Having succeeded so well in
+    the management of his English classes, he was offered the
+    position of instructor of Latin, with an increase of his
+    salary. The offer at first dismayed him. He was thoroughly
+    ignorant of the Latin language, and utterly unprepared for the
+    duties demanded of him. He was very anxious to have the place,
+    however, for he needed the increase of salary offered him, and,
+    after hesitating a little while, accepted it. He purchased a
+    Latin grammar, and engaged a private tutor. He studied hard,
+    and soon mastered the rudiments of the language. In this way he
+    managed to keep ahead of his classes. If a question was asked
+    him which he could not answer, he postponed his reply, looked
+    into the matter at night, and explained it the next morning. By
+    such hard study and patient efforts did this boy, himself a
+    mere novice, turn out what was admitted by all to be the best
+    drilled Latin class Shepherd Johnson's school had ever boasted
+    of.</p>
+
+    <p>When he was eighteen years old he was made principal of
+    Public School No. 2 of New York. He was living at Bushwick,
+    where he resided with his mother and sister in a cozy little
+    cottage, the garden of which was his pride, since he tended it
+    with his own hands. It was his custom to rise every morning at
+    four o'clock, and work in his garden until seven. Then he rode
+    into the city, and attended to his school duties until four
+    o'clock, when he returned home.</p>
+
+    <p>He was now in possession of a comfortable living; but he was
+    not satisfied to do this and nothing more. He was anxious to
+    win fortune, to enter upon a more active and stirring pursuit,
+    and he kept himself always on the watch for an opening. About
+    the time he became the head of the public school we have
+    referred to, he commenced to engage in various ventures of a
+    commercial nature, devoting to them his evenings, and the hours
+    of the day not demanded by his school.</p>
+
+    <p>One of his relatives was a builder, with a fair trade, and
+    had made some money by erecting houses in New York. Young
+    Stout, who had saved a little money, proposed to him that they
+    should take out a contract for building a number of dwellings
+    on the then fashionable thoroughfare of East Broadway. The
+    elder man was pleased with the plan, and at once consented to
+    it. The houses were built at a handsome profit; others followed
+    them, and by attending closely to this business, as well as his
+    other duties, Andrew Stout, by the time he was twenty years
+    old, had saved seventeen thousand dollars&mdash;a very large
+    sum in those steady-going days.</p>
+
+    <p>He was greatly aided by the custom of doing business on
+    time, which then prevailed, but he never allowed one of his
+    notes to be protested, and never asked for an extension. When
+    he began business, he did so with the firm resolve that he
+    would conduct his most insignificant transaction as a Christian
+    man of honor. If he could not make money honestly, he would
+    remain poor. Every body saw the energy and judgment with which
+    he conducted his affairs, and the strict integrity which marked
+    them all, and he was not long in building up a reputation as a
+    business man of which any one might have been proud. The
+    promptness and apparent ease with which he met every contract,
+    and took up every note, caused it to be generally believed that
+    he was a very rich man. Further than this, it was known that he
+    was a zealous and earnest Christian, one who carried his
+    religion into his business, and who lived up to his
+    professions. He was an active member of the Methodist Church,
+    and the business man of the congregation to which he belonged.
+    In his hands its finances prospered as they had never done
+    before. Such was the reputation of this young man, who had not
+    yet attained his majority.</p>
+
+    <p>He held his position in the public school for several years
+    after his appointment to it, but the requirements of his
+    business at length compelled him to relinquish it.</p>
+
+    <p>In the midst of his prosperity Mr. Stout made one mistake. A
+    friend with whom he had been interested in building wished to
+    procure some money from the bank, and Mr. Stout was induced,
+    with considerable reluctance, to indorse his note for five
+    thousand dollars. One false step in business, as in other
+    affairs of life, leads to another, and, in order to save this
+    money, Mr. Stout was forced to renew his indorsements until his
+    liabilities amounted to twenty-three thousand dollars. To his
+    dismay he was now informed by the builder for whose sake he had
+    incurred this risk, that he (the builder) had failed, without
+    making provision for the payment of the notes, and that Mr.
+    Stout would have to account to the bank for them.</p>
+
+    <p>"Several methods of relief were open to Mr. Stout. He was
+    worth seventeen thousand dollars, which he had earned by nights
+    of toil, by economy, and by daily and earnest attention to
+    business. To pay the notes would not only sweep away every
+    penny that he had, but would leave him six thousand dollars in
+    debt. He had never realized one cent from the money, and his
+    name was used simply to accommodate the builder. Besides, he
+    was not of age, though nobody suspected that fact, and he could
+    repudiate his debts as a minor. He took no counsel, made no
+    statement of his affairs to any one, shut himself up in his own
+    room, and considered thoughtfully what he should do, and then
+    followed out the decision that he had reached. Having become
+    bankrupt in money, he concluded he would not be so in
+    character. He had earned seventeen thousand dollars, and could
+    earn seventeen thousand dollars more. He did confide in one
+    friend. He went to a relative, and asked him to lend him six
+    thousand dollars, the sum necessary to take up all the notes.
+    The relative was astonished at the request, and insisted upon
+    knowing the facts in the case. Mr. Stout made a full and frank
+    statement. It was met with the remark, 'Well, Andrew, I thought
+    you would be a rich man, but if this is the way you do your
+    business, you will never be worth any thing,' But Mr. Stout did
+    not want preaching, he wanted money; and as the relative seemed
+    to hesitate about loaning the money, as no security was
+    offered, Mr. Stout curtly told him he could do as he pleased
+    about it; he could get the money somewhere, and pay the notes.
+    The money was promised, and he went on his way.</p>
+
+    <p>"The bank watched the young financier with a great deal of
+    interest. The whole matter had been discussed often in the
+    bank, and the wonder was how young Stout would meet the blow.
+    It was supposed that he would ask for an extension; and it was
+    agreed to give it to him, and to make the time of payment
+    convenient to his ability. Had he proposed to compromise the
+    matter by paying one-half, the bank would have accepted it.
+    That would have left him a capital of nearly eight thousand
+    dollars for a fresh start. Had he offered his seventeen
+    thousand dollars on condition that he was released from all
+    liability, the notes would have been canceled with alacrity. He
+    did neither. He proposed no compromise, asked no extension, and
+    attempted to negotiate no settlement. When the first note
+    became due, he paid it. He did the same with the second and
+    third. After the third payment, he was called into the office
+    of the president. Reference was made to the notes, and to the
+    fact that he had obtained no benefit from the money. The
+    president told him the bank was ready to renew the notes, and
+    to give him any accommodation that he might ask. Mr. Stout
+    simply replied that the blow was a heavy one, but that having
+    assumed the obligation, he should discharge it; that he asked
+    no favors, and as the notes matured he should take them up. He
+    paid every dollar due, and every one was certain that his
+    wealth must be very large. His manliness, pluck, and integrity,
+    which carried him through that crisis, became the sure
+    foundation-stone on which his great fortune was laid. He took
+    the front rank among successful financiers, and his honorable
+    course in that crisis established his fame as an honest man, in
+    whom it would be safe to confide. Years of earnest and active
+    business life have not changed that character, nor allowed a
+    blot or stain to cloud that reputation."<a id="footnotetagC"
+       name="footnotetagC"></a><a href=
+       "#footnoteC"><sup>[C]</sup></a></p>
+
+    <p>Some years later, Mr. Stout became a merchant. He
+    established a wholesale boot and shoe store, and engaged
+    actively in that business. He brought to his new calling the
+    energy, prudence, and integrity which had distinguished him all
+    through his life, and was successful from the first. He worked
+    hard. His business hours were from seven in the morning until
+    six in the evening. During his busy season, four months in the
+    year, he worked until ten, and often until twelve, paying his
+    employ&eacute;s extra wages for labor performed after the
+    regular business hours. Sometimes he worked until four in the
+    morning, but that did not deter him from being in the store at
+    the usual hour for opening. He was always the last to go home,
+    never leaving the store until the business of the day was over
+    and the house was closed. He extended his operations into dry
+    goods, meeting with equal success in this department. As his
+    business expanded, he was compelled to form various
+    partnerships, but in all these arrangements he reserved to
+    himself, like Stewart, the exclusive management of the
+    finances.</p>
+
+    <p>About eighteen years ago, the shoe and leather merchants of
+    the city decided to organize a bank, in which their interests
+    should be the principal consideration. Mr. Stout engaged in the
+    effort with great enthusiasm, and the Shoe and Leather Bank of
+    New York was at length organized under the most auspicious
+    circumstances. Mr. Stout was the largest stockholder in the new
+    bank, and was elected one of its directors. His influence was
+    potent in directing its first operations, and the next year he
+    was elected vice-president, in which position he really had the
+    control of the enterprise left to him. A year later he was
+    elected president of the bank, a position which he still holds,
+    being in point of service the oldest bank president in New
+    York. Upon questions of banking and finance, his views are
+    listened to with great respect by his associates, who have
+    proof of their soundness in the splendid success of the
+    institution over which he presides; and it may be truly said
+    that there are few men in the city who enjoy so large a share
+    of the public confidence as is bestowed upon him.</p>
+
+    <p>As a citizen, he is public-spirited and liberal. Some years
+    ago, he held the office of city chamberlain, and during his
+    administration of it a difficulty arose in regard to paying the
+    police force their wages. Knowing that the men and their
+    families would suffer if the money were not promptly paid them,
+    Mr. Stout generously advanced the necessary sum from his
+    private means, looking to the city to reimburse him. In
+    grateful acknowledgment of this practical sympathy for them,
+    the force presented him with a handsome testimonial. His
+    fortune is immense, and is used liberally in behalf of the
+    cause of the Christian religion. His charities are said to be
+    large, but one rarely hears of them, so quietly are they done.
+    He is married and has a family.</p>
+
+    <p>No man's career holds out more encouragement to young men
+    seeking to rise than that of Andrew V. Stout. It shows that
+    courage, patient industry, and business capacity will bring
+    fortune to any honest worker. His uniform success speaks
+    volumes in favor of a young man's striving to lead a Christian
+    life in the midst of his business cares and struggles. God's
+    blessing follows such an one at every step, and he will succeed
+    in the end, whatever trials may beset his path at first. It is
+    a great mistake to suppose that a man's success depends on his
+    "sharpness." Shrewdness is a valuable quality, but it must be
+    coupled with a plain, practical honesty, or it will amount to
+    nothing in the end. A man must be faithful to his God if he
+    would have his work stand.</p>
+
+    <blockquote class="footnote">
+        <a id="footnoteC"
+                    name="footnoteC"></a> <b>Footnote C</b>:
+                    <a href="#footnotetagC">(return)</a>
+
+        <p>Matthew Hale Smith.</p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <hr style='width: 65%;'>
+    <a name='CHAPTER_VI'></a>
+
+    <h2>CHAPTER VI.</h2>
+
+    <h3>JONAS CHICKERING.</h3><br>
+
+
+    <p>On Tremont Street, in the City of Boston, near the Roxbury
+    line, there stands an immense building of brick, said to be
+    larger than any edifice in the United States, save the Capitol
+    at Washington. It is built in the form of a hollow square, with
+    a large court-yard in the center, and the building and
+    court-yard together cover an area of five acres. It is five
+    stories in height on the outer side, and six on the inner, the
+    court-yard being one story lower than the street. The building
+    is two hundred and sixty-two feet in length from east to west,
+    and two hundred and forty-five from north to south, the shorter
+    distance being the length on Tremont Street. The width of the
+    building all around the court-yard is fifty feet. It contains
+    nine hundred windows, with eleven thousand panes of glass, and
+    when lighted up at night seems almost a solid mass of fire.
+    From five to six hundred men are employed here in various
+    capacities, and an immense steam engine of one hundred and
+    twenty horse-power furnishes the motive power for the
+    machinery. Altogether, it is one of the most prominent and
+    interesting of all the sights of Boston, and the visitor is
+    surprised to learn that it is due entirely to the energy and
+    genius of one who, but thirty-four years previous to its
+    erection, came to Boston a penniless stranger. The building is
+    the famous piano-forte manufactory of Chickering &amp; Sons,
+    and its founder was Jonas Chickering, the subject of this
+    sketch.</p>
+
+    <p><span class="small-caps">Jonas Chickering</span> was born at
+    New Ipswich, New Hampshire, on the 5th of April, 1798. His
+    father was a blacksmith by trade, and employed his leisure time
+    in cultivating a small farm of which he was the owner. He was
+    esteemed by his neighbors as an upright, reliable man, and
+    prudent and careful in his temporal affairs. The family being
+    poor, young Jonas was required to do his share toward
+    cultivating the farm, and received only such education as was
+    afforded by the district schools in the vicinity. He was noted
+    at an early age for his passionate love of music. When a mere
+    child, he learned to play on the fife, and was such a
+    proficient performer that he was called upon with the town
+    drummer to furnish music for the militia musters, which were
+    then the pride of the town. These were happy days for the lad,
+    but his pleasure was marred by the ridicule which the contrast
+    between his slender figure and the stalwart frame of the
+    "six-foot drummer" caused the fun-loving towns-people to
+    indulge in. Soon after this he learned to play on the
+    clarionet, and when only seventeen or eighteen years old, was
+    so advanced in his art that he could read at sight music of the
+    most difficult character.</p>
+
+    <p>At the age of seventeen he was apprenticed to a
+    cabinet-maker to learn his trade, and remained with him for
+    three years, exerting himself to become thorough master of
+    every detail of the business. Toward the close of his
+    apprenticeship, an event occurred which changed the whole
+    current of his life, and placed him in what proved to him the
+    road to fame and fortune.</p>
+
+    <p>One of the wealthiest citizens of New Ipswich was the
+    fortunate owner of a piano, the only instrument of the kind in
+    the place; but his treasure was almost useless to him, for the
+    reason that it was out of tune and seriously damaged in some
+    respects. It had lain in this condition for a long time, no one
+    in or near the place being able to make the necessary repairs.
+    In this extremity the owner bethought him of Jonas Chickering,
+    who had acquired an enviable reputation for skill in his trade,
+    and it was thought that a good cabinet-maker ought of necessity
+    to be a clever piano-maker. Young Chickering, thus appealed to,
+    consented to undertake the task, as much for the purpose of
+    becoming familiar with the instrument as of earning the sum the
+    owner of it proposed to pay for the repairs. He had not the
+    slightest knowledge of its internal organization, but he
+    believed that by patient investigation he could master it, and
+    he knew that the correctness of his ear would enable him to
+    tune it. He made a careful study of the instrument and of every
+    separate part, spent days over the task, discovered the injury
+    and the cause of it, and not only took the instrument to pieces
+    and restored it to its former condition, but did his work so
+    well that the piano was pronounced fully as good in every
+    respect as when it was new. This was not all. He discovered
+    defects in the instrument which even its maker was not able to
+    remedy, and his fertile brain at once suggested to him a plan
+    for removing them.</p>
+
+    <p>Here was a chance for him, and he resolved to profit by it.
+    He would abandon cabinet-making and learn the manufacture of
+    pianos. Then, when master of his trade, he would make use of
+    his discoveries, and earn both fame and fortune. When his
+    determination to change his business was made known, his
+    friends attributed it to his desire to be in the midst of
+    musical instruments, and where he could gratify his love of
+    music; but this was only a part of the motive which influenced
+    him. He meant to rise in the world, and he was sure that he
+    held in his hands the means of doing so.</p>
+
+    <p>In 1818, when twenty years old, he removed to Boston, and
+    obtained employment with a cabinet-maker. He did this in order
+    to give him time to look about him, to become familiar with the
+    city and city life, and to acquire such other information as
+    would enable him to decide upon the best means of putting his
+    plans into execution. He saved his wages with the greatest
+    care, and at the end of his first year in Boston had
+    accumulated a modest little sum, which he meant should support
+    him while he was learning his new trade.</p>
+
+    <p>On the 15th of February, 1819, without the loss of a day, he
+    began work with a piano-maker.</p>
+
+    <p>He had now entered upon what he meant should be the business
+    of his life, and he was resolved that he would be master of it.
+    From the first he took rank in his employer's factory as the
+    most careful workman in it. He spared no pains to make his
+    knowledge full in every detail. Time was of no consequence
+    compared with knowledge, and he was never anxious to hurry
+    through with his work. It soon came to be recognized by his
+    employer and fellow-workmen that he was the best fitted for
+    those portions of the work upon the instrument which required
+    the greatest patience as well as the greatest care, and the
+    most difficult and delicate work was always intrusted to him,
+    his wages being, of course, in proportion. Other men had no
+    thought but to earn a living. This man meant to win fame and
+    fortune, and to enlarge the scope of that art to which he was
+    so passionately devoted. He labored with his mind as well as
+    his hands, familiarizing himself with every detail of the
+    manufacture, and devising in silence the means for improving
+    the instrument and the implements used in its construction. He
+    could afford to wait, to be slower than his fellows. Every
+    moment spent over his task made his workmanship the better, and
+    opened to his mind new sources of improvement. He spent three
+    years as a journeyman, and then went into business for himself.
+    He associated himself with a Mr. Stewart, under the firm of
+    Stewart &amp; Chickering.</p>
+
+    <p>Fifty years ago the piano-forte was a wretched piece of
+    mechanism compared with the superb instrument of to-day. It was
+    originally a progressive growth from the ancient lyre, through
+    the harp, psaltery, dulcimer, clavictherium, clavichord,
+    virginal, spinet, harpsichord, to the piano of Christofali in
+    the early years of the last century. At the period of Mr.
+    Chickering's entrance into business, it was still very
+    imperfect, and the various manufacturers of the instrument were
+    earnestly endeavoring to discover some means of remedying the
+    defects of which they were all conscious. There are four
+    divisions in the manufacture of a piano, each of which requires
+    great skill and care. These are: First, The making of the
+    framing and the sound-board; Second, The stringing; Third, The
+    keys and action; Fourth, The case and ornamental work. The
+    framing requires strength and simplicity. It is this portion of
+    the instrument which sustains the tension of the strings, which
+    in full to large-sized pianos is not less than from six to
+    twelve tons, and it is a matter of prime necessity that the
+    portions which serve as a strut or stretcher between the ends
+    of the strings, and which are to resist this enormous pull,
+    must be made correspondingly strong and rigid, since by any
+    gradual yielding under the pull of the strings, their lengths
+    and tensions, and hence their tone, must undergo proportionate
+    change. In the old pianos, the frames were of wood, and it was
+    impossible to use any but small, short strings, for the reason
+    given above. Fullness and power were not to be thought of, and
+    builders were obliged to confine themselves to securing
+    truthfulness of tone. A multitude of causes, among which were
+    the changes in the weather, combined to render it impossible to
+    keep the old-fashioned instrument in tune. It was this defect
+    which first attracted the attention of Jonas Chickering, and
+    his first endeavor was to produce an instrument which would
+    withstand the climatic changes which were so troublesome to the
+    old ones. He was fully aware of the fact that the piano trade
+    in this country was then so unimportant that it offered but
+    little inducement to a man who could manufacture only the old
+    instrument; but he believed that by producing an instrument of
+    better proportions, and one fuller, richer, and more lasting in
+    tone, he could create a demand for it which would insure the
+    sale of all he could manufacture. His hope of success lay not
+    in the old, but in an improved and nobler instrument. That he
+    was correct in his belief, the magnificent instrument of to-day
+    which bears his name, and the lucrative business he has left to
+    his sons, amply demonstrate. Others besides himself were
+    working for the same end, and he knew that he would have to
+    bear the test of determined and intelligent competition. He
+    applied himself to his purpose with enthusiasm. He carefully
+    studied the theory of atmospheric vibration and musical
+    combination, as well as an application of the principles of
+    mechanical philosophy to the construction of the instrument. He
+    went deep into the science involved in his work, into the
+    philosophy of melody. Passionately devoted to music, he was
+    ambitious of placing that which has been so truly called "the
+    king of instruments" within the reach of all lovers of harmony,
+    and to give them the best instrument that human invention could
+    produce&mdash;an instrument which should not only withstand
+    atmospheric changes, but which should yield the richest,
+    fullest volume of melody, with the least exertion to the
+    performer. His progress was slow, but it was sure. Beginning
+    with an improvement in the action, he accomplished, in a great
+    measure (in 1838), his plan for preserving the permanence and
+    purity of the tone of the instrument by casting the entire iron
+    framing with the parallel bars in one piece. Iron had for some
+    time before this been in general use for framing, but the frame
+    was cast in a few separate parts, which were put together by
+    means of bolts and screws, a plan which is still used to a
+    considerable extent in Europe. By his plan of casting the frame
+    and its supporting bars in one solid piece, Mr. Chickering not
+    only prevented the frame from yielding to the pull of the
+    strings, thus securing permanence and purity of tone, but was
+    enabled to use larger frames and more strings, which greatly
+    increased the capacity of the instrument.</p>
+
+    <p>Several other improvements were made by him, the most
+    important of which was the invention, in 1845, of the circular
+    scale for square pianos, which is now in general use in this
+    country and in Europe. "This consists in giving to the row of
+    tuning pins and wrest-planks&mdash;previously straight in these
+    instruments&mdash;a curved disposition, answering nearly to an
+    arc of a circle, the advantage being that the strings become
+    less crowded, larger hammers, and a more direct blow can be
+    secured, and the tone is both strengthened and improved." With
+    a rare generosity, Mr. Chickering declined to patent this
+    improvement, which would have enabled him to drive competition
+    out of the market. He regarded it as so necessary to a good
+    piano that he declared that all makers ought to have the use of
+    it, as it would thus be within the power of all persons able to
+    purchase a piano to avail themselves of it, whether they bought
+    a "Chickering" or not. Such generosity is too rare to fail to
+    receive the praise it merits.</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Chickering did not continue long in business with Mr.
+    Stewart. The latter withdrew in a few years, and Mr. Chickering
+    carried on the business alone. In 1830 he formed a partnership
+    with Captain John Mackay, a retired ship-merchant. In the new
+    firm Captain Mackay took charge of the finances and the office
+    business, while Mr. Chickering devoted himself entirely to the
+    mechanical department. The operations of the new house were
+    very successful. The improvements made by Mr. Chickering from
+    the first created a demand for their instruments which was
+    sometimes so great that it was difficult to supply it. This
+    demand continued to increase, until the house was perfectly
+    easy as to money matters, and able to enlarge its facilities
+    very greatly. It was Mr. Chickering's design that each separate
+    instrument should be an improvement upon those which had
+    preceded it, and he was careful that this plan should not
+    miscarry. In a few years the firm was enabled to import the
+    foreign materials needed, by the cargo, thus saving the profit
+    which they had hitherto been compelled to pay the importer.
+    Besides this saving, they were enabled to keep on hand a large
+    stock of the woods used in the instrument, and thus it was
+    allowed to become more thoroughly seasoned than that which they
+    had been compelled to purchase, from time to time, in small
+    quantities. In 1841, Captain Mackay sailed from Boston for
+    South America, for the purpose of obtaining a supply of the
+    woods needed by the firm; but he never returned, and as no
+    tidings of him or his ship were ever received, it is supposed
+    that the vessel went down at sea with all on board.</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Chickering now decided to continue the business without
+    a partner. His friends supposed that in assuming the management
+    of the concern, in addition to the direction of the mechanical
+    department, and the constant mental labor to which he subjected
+    himself in his efforts to improve the piano, he was undertaking
+    more than he was capable of performing. They feared his health
+    would break down under it. Besides, it was generally believed
+    that, in spite of Mr. Chickering's undoubted skill in his own
+    department, he was not much of a business man. He was confident
+    of his own ability, however, and did not hesitate to assume the
+    new responsibility.</p>
+
+    <p>The business of which he now became the owner was very heavy
+    and extensive. Soon after the beginning of his connection with
+    Captain Mackay, the firm erected a large factory for the
+    purpose of carrying on their business. One hundred hands were
+    employed in it when opened, but in a few years it was necessary
+    to employ more than twice that number, so rapidly did the
+    business increase. The supply of materials needed was ample and
+    of the very best quality, for Mr. Chickering never allowed an
+    inferior article to be used. The warerooms were large and
+    handsomely fitted up, and were filled with instruments ranging
+    in price from a thousand dollars downward. It was generally
+    believed that while Mr. Chickering's genius had created the
+    demand for the pianos, it was Captain Mackay's business
+    knowledge and experience that had placed affairs on their
+    present footing, and when Mr. Chickering proposed to buy
+    Captain Mackay's interest from his heirs, which was valued at
+    several hundred thousand dollars, there was a very general
+    belief, which found expression, that he was incurring certain
+    ruin. The condition of the sale was that the purchase-money
+    should be divided into installments, for each of which Mr.
+    Chickering should give his note, secured by a mortgage on the
+    premises. At Mr. Chickering's request each note was made
+    payable "on or before" a given day. The lawyer who conducted
+    the transaction smiled skeptically as he inserted this clause,
+    and asked the purchaser if he <i>ever</i> expected to pay the
+    notes at all.</p>
+
+    <p>"If I did not expect to pay them promptly, I should not give
+    them," was the simple reply. He was as good as his word. The
+    notes were met promptly, and although Captain Mackay's family
+    requested that they might stand as an investment for them, Mr.
+    Chickering took up the last one at its maturity.</p>
+
+    <p>With the business in his own hands, Mr. Chickering continued
+    its operations, displaying an ease in his mercantile
+    transactions which astonished and delighted his friends. The
+    business prospered to a greater degree than before, and all the
+    while Mr. Chickering continued his labors for the improvement
+    of his instruments with still greater success than in former
+    years. His pianos were universally regarded as the best in the
+    market, and his competitors were unable to excel him. Although
+    conducting a business which required the constant exercise of
+    the highest mercantile talent, he did not relax his energy in
+    the mechanical department. To the end of his life, long after
+    he had become a wealthy and prominent man, he had his own
+    little working-cabinet, with an exquisite set of tools, with
+    which he himself put the finishing touch to each of his
+    splendid instruments, a touch he would not intrust to any other
+    hands.</p>
+
+    <p>His competitors did all in their power to equal him, but he
+    distanced them all. One of them adopted a most startling
+    expedient. He obtained permission from the Legislature of
+    Massachusetts to change his name to <i>Chickering</i>, and at
+    once sent out his instruments marked with his new name, his
+    object of course being to deceive the public, and Jonas
+    Chickering had the mortification of seeing the inferior
+    instruments of another maker mistaken for his own. He promptly
+    laid before the Legislature a petition for redress, setting
+    forth the facts of the case and the motives of his rival. The
+    result was that the Legislature reconsidered its action, and
+    compelled the bogus Chickering to resume his original name.</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Chickering was noted for his simplicity and
+    straight-forwardness in business transactions. Conscious of his
+    own integrity, he listened to no proposition of a doubtful
+    character, nor would he ever allow his credit as a merchant to
+    be questioned with impunity. Upon one occasion, he applied
+    through his clerk to the bank, with which he had dealt for many
+    years, for an accommodation which he needed. The president of
+    the bank sent for him, and told him that security would be
+    required.</p>
+
+    <p>"I shall give you none," he replied. "I have done my
+    business at this bank for a long time, and if you do not know
+    me, I shall apply where I am better known."</p>
+
+    <p>The president was firm in his position, and Mr. Chickering
+    applied to another bank, which readily granted him the desired
+    discount, and to which he at once transferred his business,
+    which was worth to the bank about ten thousand dollars a year.
+    Shortly after, a director of the institution at which he had
+    formerly dealt called on him, and urged him to restore his
+    business to the bank, assuring him that in future it would
+    readily grant him any accommodation he might desire.</p>
+
+    <p>"No," he replied; "I will deal with no institution which,
+    having had the opportunity of knowing me, suspects my
+    responsibility."</p>
+
+    <p>Again having need of accommodation, he sent his notes for a
+    large sum to one of the city banks for discount. The president
+    said an indorser would be required.</p>
+
+    <p>"I shall indorse them myself," said Mr. Chickering.</p>
+
+    <p>"That will never do," replied the president.</p>
+
+    <p>"Very well," was the simple answer, and, without further
+    words, he took the notes to another bank, which promptly loaned
+    him the money on them.</p>
+
+    <p>He tolerated no irregularity in his own business. He was
+    true to the spirit as well as to the letter of a contract, and
+    never, during the whole course of his long life, was he guilty
+    of a transaction in which the most rigid moralist could find a
+    taint of sharp practice. What a refutation of the theories of
+    those who hold that cunning and trickery are unavoidable some
+    time in the course of a long and successful mercantile career
+    lies in the story of this man, who, beginning life penniless,
+    filled with a burning ambition to be rich and famous, never
+    swerved from the straight path of integrity, and by the
+    exercise of only the highest traits of his nature more than
+    realized his boyish dreams! Ponder it well, young man, and
+    learn from it that honesty is indeed the best policy in any
+    calling.</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Chickering had married early in life, and now had three
+    sons just entering upon manhood. These were carefully educated
+    at the public schools for which Boston is so justly famed, and
+    then put into their father's factory to learn the mechanical
+    part of the business. It was the father's ambition to be
+    succeeded by his sons, but he was not willing to trust the
+    labor of his life to ignorant or incompetent hands. At the age
+    of seventeen, Thomas Chickering, the eldest son, was taken from
+    school, and, under his father's eye, taught every detail of the
+    mechanical branch of the business, until he understood it as
+    well as the senior Chickering himself. George, the second son,
+    in due time passed through the same course of training; while
+    Francis, the youngest, was brought up in the warehouse. The
+    father thoroughly imbued his sons with his own system and
+    energy, and to-day we see the result. The firm of Chickering
+    &amp; Sons is still the most prominent in America. Thomas is
+    now the acting head of the house, and has led it on to
+    continued success; Francis is the presiding genius of the
+    mechanical department, and has made many important improvements
+    in the field in which his father won success; and George
+    exercises a general supervision at the immense factory in
+    Boston. The mantle of the father has fallen upon the sons, and
+    his labors have found their highest reward in their
+    success.</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Chickering's good fortune was not entirely
+    uninterrupted. On the 1st of December, 1852, his factory was
+    burned to the ground, with all its valuable patterns, stock,
+    etc., involving a loss to him of two hundred thousand dollars.
+    The interruption to his business was very serious, apart from
+    the loss of his property. Expressions of sympathy poured in
+    upon him from his friends, coupled with offers of pecuniary
+    assistance in his efforts to re&euml;stablish his business. His
+    disaster seemed merely to inspire him with fresh energy, but
+    the kindness of his friends entirely overcame him.</p>
+
+    <div class="full">
+        <a name='illust6881'></a>
+        <a href='images/6881.jpg'><img src='images/6881.jpg'
+                width='650' border=0
+                alt='"MY MEN SHALL NOT SUFFER."'></a>
+    </div>
+
+    <p>He wasted no time in vain regrets, but at once went to work.
+    He was fifty-four years old, but he showed an energy and
+    determination which more than rivaled the fire of his young
+    manhood. The loss of his factory was not only a severe blow to
+    him, but to the three hundred workmen who had been employed in
+    it, and who were dependent upon their wages for their support.
+    His first care was to assure them that they should not suffer,
+    but that they should continue to receive their wages as
+    regularly as though nothing had happened to interrupt their
+    labor. He had always been kind and generous to his
+    employ&eacute;s, paying liberal wages, and rewarding especial
+    merit, but this act of kindness did more to endear him to them
+    than any previous benefaction. Having provided for his men, he
+    set to work to prepare temporary accommodations for his
+    business, and then began his arrangements for the construction
+    of a new factory. He took a great degree of interest in the
+    plans for the new building, the architect being almost entirely
+    guided by his suggestions, and the result of his labors is the
+    magnificent building to which reference was made at the opening
+    of this chapter. He did not live to see it completed, however.
+    He died at the house of a friend from the rupture of a
+    blood-vessel, produced, it is believed, by severe mental labor,
+    on the 8th of December, 1853. His fortune at the time of his
+    death was estimated at a quarter of a million of dollars. His
+    sons assumed the charge of the business, which they still
+    conduct.</p>
+
+    <p>The loss of Mr. Chickering was felt by all classes of his
+    fellow-citizens&mdash;especially by the poor. To them he had
+    been a kind and generous friend. Distress never appealed to him
+    in vain, and he proved a faithful steward of the riches
+    committed to his care. Yet he performed his charities with such
+    a modesty and reticence that few beside the grateful recipients
+    were aware of them. Indeed, it was his custom to enjoin secrecy
+    upon those whom he assisted; but they would not remain quiet.
+    His liberality is in striking contrast with the closeness of
+    many who were worth more than twenty times his wealth, but who
+    lacked his warm and sympathizing nature.</p>
+    <hr style='width: 65%;'>
+    <a name='CHAPTER_VII'></a>
+
+    <h2>CHAPTER VII.</h2>
+
+    <h3>NICHOLAS LONGWORTH.</h3><br>
+
+
+    <p>The grape culture of the United States is yet in its
+    infancy. Although the annual wine product is estimated at
+    nearly three millions of gallons, there can be no doubt that
+    ere many years shall have elapsed America will rank as one of
+    the most important wine countries of the world. California is
+    already extending her vineyards for miles along her smiling
+    valleys, where the clear sky and the balmy air, which are
+    unchangeable at the season of the grape harvest, permit a
+    degree of perfection in the fruit unattainable in any European
+    country. Already her wines are commanding an enviable place in
+    the markets of the world, with no apparent limits to the
+    growing demand for them. The hillsides of the lower Ohio Valley
+    are lined with thriving vineyards, whose rich clusters of
+    Catawba and Isabella grapes delight the eye on every hand, and
+    thousands of acres are now given to successful grape culture,
+    where formerly only a few straggling vines were seen. More than
+    five hundred thousand gallons of wine are now annually produced
+    in the neighborhood of Cincinnati alone, and find a market in
+    that city, and what was but a few years ago a mere experiment
+    is now one of the chief sources of the wonderful prosperity of
+    the Ohio Valley, and one of the most important features in the
+    commerce of the Queen City of the West. The success which has
+    attended this branch of our industry must be a matter of
+    congratulation to the whole country, and the man to whose
+    courage, energy, and liberality it is mainly due must be
+    regarded as a public benefactor.</p>
+
+    <p>This man, NICHOLAS LONGWORTH by name, was born at Newark,
+    New Jersey, on the 16th of January, 1782. His father had been a
+    man of large property, but in consequence of being a Tory
+    during the Revolution, his possessions were confiscated, and he
+    and his family impoverished. Young Nicholas's childhood was
+    passed in indigence, and it is said that he was apprenticed to
+    a shoemaker, when a mere lad, to learn the trade as a means of
+    livelihood. However this may be, it is certain that when very
+    young he went to South Carolina as a clerk for his elder
+    brother. The climate of the South, however, did not suit his
+    health, and he returned to Newark, and began the study of the
+    law.</p>
+
+    <p>He was poor, and the East was overcrowded, even at that
+    early day, and offered but few inducements to a young man
+    entirely dependent upon his own efforts. Ohio was then the "Far
+    West," and emigration was setting in toward it rapidly. Those
+    who had seen the country related what then seemed marvelous
+    tales of its wonderful fertility and progress. Few professional
+    men were seeking the distant land, and Longworth felt convinced
+    that the services of such as did go would assuredly be in
+    demand, and he resolved to cast his lot with the West.</p>
+
+    <p>In 1803, at the age of twenty-one, he removed to the little
+    village of Cincinnati, and, having fixed upon this place as his
+    future home, entered the law office of Judge Jacob Burnet, long
+    the ablest jurist in Ohio. He soon won the confidence and
+    esteem of his instructor, and succeeded so well in his studies
+    that in an unusually short time he was admitted to the bar.</p>
+
+    <p>He entered upon the practice of his profession with energy,
+    and soon acquired a profitable business, which increased
+    rapidly. He was a man of simple habits, and lived economically.
+    His savings were considerable, and were regularly invested by
+    him in real estate in the suburbs of the town. Land was cheap
+    at that time, some of his lots costing him but ten dollars
+    each. Long before his death they were worth more than as many
+    thousands. He had a firm conviction that Cincinnati was
+    destined to become one of the largest and most flourishing
+    cities in the Union, and that his real estate would increase in
+    value at a rate which would render him wealthy in a very few
+    years.</p>
+
+    <p>His first client was a man accused of horse-stealing, in
+    those days the most heinous offense known to Western law.
+    Longworth secured his acquittal, but the fellow had no money to
+    pay his counsel, and in the absence of funds gave Longworth two
+    second-hand copper stills, which were his property. These the
+    lawyer accepted, thinking that he could easily dispose of them
+    for cash, as they were rare and valuable there in those days.
+    They were in the keeping of Mr. Joel Williams, who carried on a
+    tavern adjacent to the river, and who was afterward one of the
+    largest property-holders in Cincinnati. Mr. Williams was
+    building a distillery at the time, and, as he had confidently
+    reckoned upon using the two stills in his possession, was
+    considerably nonplussed when Longworth presented his order for
+    them. In his extremity he offered to purchase them from the
+    lawyer for a lot of thirty-three acres of barren land in the
+    town, which was then worth little or nothing. Longworth
+    hesitated, for although he had an almost prophetic belief in
+    the future value of the land, he was sorely in need of ready
+    money; but at length he accepted the offer. The deed for the
+    land was made out in his name, and the stills became the
+    property of Mr. Williams. The distillery was built, and its
+    owner realized a fortune; but Longworth did more. His
+    thirty-three acres of barren land were soon in the very heart
+    of Cincinnati, and long before his death were valued at two
+    millions of dollars.</p>
+
+    <p>The foresight of Mr. Longworth was fully justified by the
+    course of events. The growth of Cincinnati was almost marvelous
+    in its rapidity. In 1802, it contained about 800 inhabitants;
+    in 1810, 2,540; in 1820, 9,060; in 1830, 24,831; in 1840,
+    46,338; in 1850, 118,761; and in 1860, just three years before
+    Mr. Longworth's death, 171,293 inhabitants. The reader can
+    easily imagine the immense profits which a half century's
+    increase placed in the hands of the far-seeing lawyer. It seems
+    almost like reading some old fairy tale to peruse the accounts
+    of successful ventures in real estate in American cities. They
+    have sprung up as if by magic, and it is impossible to say
+    where their development will end. Said a gentleman of less than
+    thirty-five years of age to the writer of these pages, "I am
+    the oldest native-born citizen of Chicago. When I first saw the
+    light, my native place could not boast even the dignity of a
+    village; and young as I am, I have witnessed all this wonderful
+    growth." The prosperity of Cincinnati was scarcely less marked,
+    as the career of Mr. Longworth shows. The investment of a
+    comparatively insignificant sum laid the foundation of his
+    fortune, and the first counsel fee he ever earned, a sum
+    trifling in itself, placed him in possession of millions.</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Longworth continued carefully to invest his gains in
+    real estate. The prices paid by him increased, of course, with
+    the rise in the value of property, but as he was persuaded that
+    the limit had not yet been reached, he extended his operations
+    without fear of loss. He sold many of his original purchases,
+    but continued until the day of his death the largest land-owner
+    in the city. In 1850 his taxes were over $17,000, and in the
+    same year the taxes of William B. Astor amounted to $23,116. At
+    the time of his death Mr. Longworth's estate was valued at
+    fifteen millions of dollars, and is doubtless worth fully
+    one-third more at the present day.</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Longworth retired from the practice of the law in 1819,
+    to devote himself to the management of his property, which was
+    already sufficiently important to require his undivided
+    attention. He had always been an enthusiast in horticultural
+    matters, and believing that the climate of the Ohio Valley was
+    admirably adapted to the production of grapes, had for some
+    time been making experiments in that direction; but he fell
+    into the error of believing that only the foreign vines were
+    worth cultivating, and his experiments were unsuccessful. The
+    foreign grape did not mature well, and the wine produced from
+    it was not good. In 1828 his friend Major Adlum sent him some
+    specimens of the Catawba grape, which he had procured from the
+    garden of a German living near Washington City, and be began to
+    experiment with it in his own vineyard.</p>
+
+    <p>The Catawba grape, now so popular and well-known throughout
+    the country, was then a comparative stranger to our people, and
+    was regarded even by many who were acquainted with it as unfit
+    for vintage purposes. It was first discovered in a wild
+    condition about 1801, near Asheville, Buncombe County, North
+    Carolina, near the source of the Catawba River. General Davy,
+    of Rocky Mount, on that river, afterward Senator from North
+    Carolina, is supposed to have given the German in whose garden
+    Major Adlum found the grape a few of the vines to experiment
+    upon. General Davy always regarded the bringing of this grape
+    into notice as the greatest act of his life. "I have done my
+    country a greater benefit in introducing this grape into public
+    notice," said he, in after years, "than I would have done if I
+    had paid the national debt."</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Longworth's experiments with the Catawba were highly
+    successful, and induced him to abandon all his efforts with
+    foreign vines, and undertake only the Catawba, to which he
+    afterward added the Isabella. He now entered systematically
+    upon grape-growing. He established a large vineyard upon a
+    hillside sloping down to the river, about four miles above the
+    city, and employed German laborers, whose knowledge of
+    vine-dressing, acquired in the Fatherland, made them the best
+    workmen he could have. He caused it to be announced that all
+    the grape juice produced by the small growers in the vicinity
+    would find a cash purchaser in him, no matter in what
+    quantities offered. At the same time he offered n reward of
+    five hundred dollars for any improvement in the quality of the
+    Catawba grape.</p>
+
+    <p>The enthusiasm which he manifested, as well as the
+    liberality of his offer, had a decidedly beneficial effect upon
+    the small growers in the neighborhood. "It proved a great
+    stimulus to the growth of the Catawba vine in the country
+    around Cincinnati," to know that a man of Mr. Longworth's means
+    stood ready to pay cash, at the rate of from a dollar to a
+    dollar and a quarter a gallon, for all the grape-juice that
+    might be brought to him, without reference to the quantity. It
+    was in this way, and by urgent popular appeals through the
+    columns of the newspapers, that he succeeded, after many
+    failures, and against the depressing influence of much doubt
+    and indifference, in bringing the enterprise up to its present
+    high and stable position. When he took the matter in hand there
+    was much to discourage any one not possessed of the traits of
+    constancy of purpose and perseverance peculiar to Mr.
+    Longworth. Many had tried the manufacture of wine, and had
+    failed to give it any economical or commercial importance. It
+    was not believed, until Mr. Longworth practically demonstrated
+    it, that a native grape was the only one upon which any hope
+    could be placed, and that the Catawba offered the most assured
+    promise of success, and was the one upon which all vine-growers
+    might with confidence depend. It took years of unremitted care,
+    multiplied and wide-spread investigations, and the expenditure
+    of large sums of money, to establish this fact, and bring the
+    agricultural community to accept it and act under its guidance.
+    The success attained by Mr. Longworth soon induced other
+    gentlemen resident in the vicinity of Cincinnati, and favorably
+    situated for the purpose, to undertake the culture of the
+    Catawba, and several of them are now regularly and extensively
+    engaged in the manufacture of wine. The impetus and
+    encouragement thus given to the business soon led the German
+    citizens of Hamilton County to perceive its advantages, and,
+    under their thrifty management, thousands of acres, stretching
+    up from the banks of the Ohio, are now covered with luxuriant
+    and profitable vineyards, rivaling in profusion and beauty the
+    vine-clad hills of Italy and France. The oldest vineyard in the
+    county of Hamilton is of Mr. Longworth's planting.</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Longworth subsequently increased the size of his
+    vineyard to two hundred acres, and toward the close of his life
+    his wine houses annually produced one hundred and fifty
+    thousand bottles of wine. His vaults usually contained a stock
+    of three hundred thousand bottles in course of thorough
+    ripening.</p>
+
+    <p>His cellars were situated on the declivity of East Sixth
+    Street, on the road to Observatory Hill. They occupied a space
+    ninety feet by one hundred and twenty-five in size, and
+    consisted of two tiers of massive stone vaults, the lower of
+    which was twenty-five feet below the surface of the ground. The
+    manufacture of the wine was placed under the charge of a
+    celebrated chemist from Rheims, and the mode of preparation was
+    as follows:</p>
+
+    <p>After the pressing of the grape, the juice is subjected to
+    the vinous fermentation, by which ten or eleven per cent, of
+    alcohol is developed. In the following spring, it is mixed with
+    a small quantity of sugar, and put into strong bottles, the
+    corks of which are secured with twine and wire. The sugar
+    accelerates a second fermentation, which always takes place
+    about this time, and thus a strong movement is produced inside
+    the glass, which generates gas enough to burst the vessels
+    briskly, adding thereby considerably to the cost. This is known
+    as the gaseous fermentation, and the effect of it is to render
+    the wine more enlivening, more stinging to the taste, and more
+    fruity. "This last effect results from this, that the flavor of
+    the fruit mostly passes off with the carbonic acid gas, which
+    is largely generated in the first or vinous fermentation, and
+    in a less degree in this second or gaseous fermentation." It is
+    impossible to avoid the loss of the flavor in the first
+    fermentation, but the strong bottles and securely-fastened
+    corks preserve it in the second. The liquid, which is muddy at
+    first, becomes clear in about a year, a thick sediment having
+    collected at the bottom of the bottle. The bottles are then
+    placed in racks, with their necks downward, and are shaken
+    vigorously every day for about three weeks. This forces the
+    sediment to settle down in the neck against the cork. When it
+    is all in the neck, the wires are cut, and the cork blown out
+    by the gas, carrying the sediment with it. Fresh sugar, for
+    sweetness, is now added, new corks are driven in and secured,
+    and in a few weeks the wine is ready for the market.</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Longworth continued his wine trade with great success
+    for about twenty-five years, and though for some time his
+    expenditures were largely in excess of his income from this
+    source, he at length reaped a steady and increasing profit from
+    it, which more than reimbursed him for his former losses. He
+    was very fond of the strawberry, and succeeded, by careful and
+    expensive cultivation, in making several very important
+    improvements in that delicious fruit. His experiments in the
+    sexual character of the strawberry are highly interesting, but
+    must be passed by here. He manifested no selfishness with
+    respect to his fruits. He was anxious that their cultivation
+    should become general, and his discoveries and improvements
+    were always at the service of any and every one who desired to
+    make use of them.</p>
+
+    <p>He was thoroughly devoted to his adopted home, and anxious
+    to secure its steady improvement. When it was proposed to
+    establish an observatory, the Mount Adams property, then owned
+    by him, was regarded as the most fitting site for it. He was
+    asked to name the price for which he would sell the property.
+    To the astonishment of the parties in charge of the enterprise,
+    he made a free gift of the land&mdash;four acres in
+    extent&mdash;to the trustees. A gentleman who had hoped to
+    dispose of some of his own property for this purpose charged
+    Mr. Longworth, through the press, with being influenced by a
+    desire to improve his adjoining property by the erection of the
+    observatory on Mount Adams. Longworth promptly replied that if
+    the writer of the article in question would donate four acres
+    of his own property for an observatory, he (Longworth) would
+    put up, at his own expense, a building on it equal to that
+    which had been erected on Mount Adams, and transfer the latter
+    place to the city as a permanent pleasure ground. He quietly
+    added that in this way his accuser might himself receive, for
+    his adjacent property, all the benefits of such an improvement,
+    and at the same time win for himself the lasting gratitude of
+    the people of Cincinnati. This settled the matter, and no more
+    was heard from the other side.</p>
+
+    <p>"Longworth," says one who knew him, "is a problem and a
+    riddle&mdash;a problem worthy of the study of those who delight
+    in exploring that labyrinth of all that is hidden and
+    mysterious, the human heart; and a riddle to himself and
+    others. He is a wit and a humorist of a high order; of keen
+    sagacity and shrewdness in many other respects than in money
+    matters; one who can be exact to a dollar, and liberal, when he
+    chooses, with thousands; of marked peculiarity and tenacity in
+    his own opinions, yet of abundant tolerance to the opinions,
+    however extravagant, of others&mdash;a man of great public
+    spirit and sound general judgment.</p>
+
+    <p>"In addition to all this, it would be difficult to find an
+    individual of his position and standing so perfectly free from
+    pride, in the ordinary sense. He has absolutely none, unless it
+    be the pride of eccentricity. It is no uncommon circumstance
+    for men to become rich by the concentration of time, and labor,
+    and attention to some one object of profitable employment. This
+    is the ordinary phase of money-getting, as closing the ear and
+    pocket to applications for aid is that of money-saving.
+    Longworth has become a rich man on a different principle. He
+    appears to have started upon the calculation that if he could
+    put any individual in the way of making a dollar for Longworth,
+    and a dollar for himself at the same time, by aiding him with
+    ground for a lot, or in building him a house on it; and if,
+    moreover, he could multiply cases of the kind by hundreds, or
+    perhaps thousands, he would promote his own interests just in
+    the same measure as he was advancing those of others. At the
+    same time he could not be unconscious that, while their half
+    was subdivided into small possessions, owned by a thousand or
+    more individuals, his half was a vast, boundless aggregate,
+    since it was the property of one man alone. The event has done
+    justice to his sagacity. Hundreds, if not thousands, in and
+    adjacent to Cincinnati, now own houses and lots, and many have
+    become wealthy, who would, in all probability, have lived and
+    died as tenants under a different state of case. Had not Mr.
+    Longworth adopted this course, he would have occupied that
+    relation to society which many wealthy men now sustain, that of
+    getting all they can and keeping all they get."</p>
+
+    <p>In politics, Mr. Longworth was a Whig, and afterward a
+    Republican. During the famous Clay campaign he was asked to
+    give one hundred dollars to help defray the expenses of the
+    party.</p>
+
+    <p>"I never give something for nothing," said he. "We might
+    fail to elect Clay, as we did before, and I should fling away
+    the hundred dollars."</p>
+
+    <p>The applicant, who was himself a man of wealth, assured him
+    that there was no doubt of Clay's election.</p>
+
+    <p>"There can be no chance of your losing," he said.</p>
+
+    <p>"Well," replied Longworth, "I'll tell you what I will do. I
+    will give you the hundred dollars, but mind, you shall be
+    personally responsible to me for its return if Clay is not
+    elected."</p>
+
+    <p>The offer was accepted; and when the campaign resulted in
+    the defeat of Clay, Longworth demanded his money from the
+    politician, who was compelled to return it out of his own
+    pocket.</p>
+
+    <p>In his own way&mdash;and a quaint, singular way it
+    was&mdash;Mr. Longworth was exceedingly charitable. Long after
+    he was worth millions, and when every moment of his time was
+    valuable, he was supernumerary township trustee. This was an
+    office which required the expenditure of a considerable portion
+    of his time, and brought him in constant contact with some of
+    the most wretched of the lowest class of the poor. He was
+    always in his office, at stated times, and with a patience and
+    kindness worthy of all admiration, the millionaire listened to
+    their sad tales, and provided such aid as was necessary,
+    oftentimes giving it out of his own purse when the public funds
+    failed.</p>
+
+    <p>He was a bitter foe to vagabondage and mendicity. If people
+    in need were willing to work, he would place them in the way of
+    doing so. He was the owner of a stone quarry on Deer Creek, the
+    traces of which may still be seen in the lines of the new
+    Gilbert Avenue; and he kept in his office a supply of picks and
+    shovels. When a stout beggar asked him for alms, he would
+    inquire if he was willing to go to work. If answered
+    affirmatively, he would give him a pick and shovel, and start
+    him for the quarry, where the wages were promptly paid out
+    every night. Many availed themselves of the opportunity, and
+    worked for him faithfully; but others gave the quarry "a wide
+    berth," and sold the pick and shovel for money or liquor. It
+    was his custom to buy large quantities of bread tickets from
+    the bakers, and to distribute them to those whom he considered
+    worthy; and he would also keep on hand large quantities of
+    shoes, dry goods, etc., which he gave away in the same
+    manner.</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Frank Pentland, who was once in his employ, relates the
+    following incident:</p>
+
+    <p>"One morning, just after Mr. Longworth had gone to his
+    office, near the Third-Street entrance, where he was accustomed
+    to receive applicants for charity, he was accosted by a man who
+    craved assistance. In answer to a question as to his needs, he
+    replied that his main want was a pair of shoes, and a glance at
+    his feet showed that he spoke truthfully. Mr. Longworth
+    appeared 'to take his measure' at a glance, and impulsively
+    shaking his right foot (he seldom wore his shoes tied), kicked
+    the shoe over to the applicant, saying:</p>
+
+    <p>"'Try that on, my man. How does it fit?'</p>
+
+    <p>"'Illigant, yer honor,'</p>
+
+    <p>"'Well, try that, now,' said he, kicking off the other. 'How
+    will they do?'</p>
+
+    <p>"Illigant, yer honor; illigant! May many a
+    blessing'&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>"'Well, well, go now&mdash;that'll do,' and turning to
+    Pentland, who was then a young boy in his service, ordered him
+    to the house to get another pair. Frank obeyed, but was told by
+    Mrs. Longworth that those he wore away from the house were all
+    that he had. The result was that Frank was hurried off to
+    William Hart's shoe store, on Fifth Street, for new ones, with
+    instructions to 'Ask Mr. Hart for the kind I always buy, and
+    don't pay over a dollar and a half for them.'"</p>
+
+    <p>Yet many persons charged this man with stinginess&mdash;a
+    charge to which every rich man lays himself open who does not
+    give to all who ask him. Even the rich must refuse sometimes,
+    for there is no reason why they should answer <i>all</i> the
+    calls made upon them&mdash;a course which would soon impoverish
+    them. They must discriminate somewhere, and how this shall be
+    done is a question which each must decide for himself.
+    Longworth exercised this discrimination in an eccentric manner,
+    eminently characteristic of him. He invariably refused cases
+    that commended themselves to others. A gentleman once applied
+    to him for assistance for a widow in destitute
+    circumstances.</p>
+
+    <p>"Who is she?" asked the millionaire. "Do you know her? Is
+    she a deserving object?"</p>
+
+    <p>"She is not only a woman of excellent character," answered
+    his friend, "but she is doing all in her power to support a
+    large family of children."</p>
+
+    <p>"Very well, then," said Mr. Longworth, "I shan't give a
+    cent. Such persons will always find a plenty to relieve
+    them."</p>
+
+    <p>He was firm, and turned coldly from the entreaties of his
+    friend. Yet he opened his purse liberally to those whom others
+    refused. Vagabonds, drunkards, fallen women, those who had gone
+    down far into the depths of misery and wretchedness, and from
+    whom respectable people shrank in disgust, never appealed to
+    him in vain. "The devil's poor," he whimsically called them. He
+    would listen to them patiently, moved to the depths of his soul
+    by their sad stories, and would send them away rejoicing that
+    they were not utterly friendless. "Decent paupers will always
+    find a plenty to help them," he would say, "but no one cares
+    for these poor wretches. Every body damns them, and as no one
+    else will help them, I must." Yet he aided them in such a
+    manner as to encourage them to rise above their
+    wretchedness.</p>
+
+    <p>In his personal appearance Mr. Longworth was not
+    prepossessing. He was dry and caustic in his remarks, and
+    rarely spared the object of his satire. He was plain and
+    careless in his dress, looking more like a beggar than a
+    millionaire. He cared nothing for dress, except, perhaps, that
+    he preferred common clothes to fine ones. One of his
+    acquaintances relates the following story in illustration of
+    this phase of his character:</p>
+
+    <p>"Many winters ago, it will be remembered that a style of
+    striped goods was quite popular with poor people on account of
+    its cheapness, and that it acquired the name of 'Hard Times.'
+    Every body with scant purses wore coats or pants of it, for the
+    reason that they could not very well buy any other kind. As the
+    story goes, it appears that 'Old Nick,' as he was familiarly
+    called, invested in an overcoat of this material, and took
+    great pride in wearing it, much to the annoyance of the women
+    folks. It happened that one cold, stormy night the faithful
+    family coachman was at the house without an overcoat, and Mrs.
+    Longworth, after very feelingly depicting his forlorn condition
+    to her husband, solicited the privilege of giving him the
+    aforesaid overcoat. Much to her gratification, Mr. Longworth
+    assented, and the coachman wore off the 'Hard Times,' the good
+    wife replacing it by an elegant broadcloth that she had quietly
+    provided for the occasion. The next morning 'Old Nick' very
+    innocently (?) overlooked the new coat, and went off to make
+    his usual morning rounds without one; but it would be
+    impossible to portray the annoyance of the household when they
+    saw him returning to dinner wearing a duplicate of the
+    veritable 'Hard Times,' and for weeks afterward it was no
+    uncommon occurrence to see the 'master and man' flitting about
+    the old homestead dressed in their gray stripes."</p>
+
+    <p>The shabbiness of his dress once led to an amusing
+    adventure, which he enjoyed very much. Climbing one of the
+    hilly streets of the city one broiling summer day, he sat down
+    on a pile of bricks, under the cool shade of a tree, to rest.
+    Taking off his well-worn hat, he laid it on his knee, and
+    closing his eyes, sat enjoying the breeze which had just then
+    sprung up. He was very tired, and his whole figure expressed
+    his weariness. As he sat there in his shabby dress, with his
+    eyes closed, and his hat resting on his knees, he looked the
+    very picture of a blind beggar soliciting charity. For such,
+    indeed, he was mistaken by a working man who passed by a few
+    minutes later, and who, pitying the supposed unfortunate,
+    tossed a few pennies into his hat. The noise of the coppers
+    made the old man open his eyes and look up; and to his
+    amazement the workman recognized in the object of his charity
+    Nicholas Longworth, the millionaire. Mr. Longworth looked at
+    him a moment in his dry, quizzical way, and then, thanking him
+    politely, put the coins in his pocket, and, closing his eyes,
+    once more resumed his former position.</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Longworth had erected a magnificent mansion in the midst
+    of his vineyard. He gathered there a fine library, and a
+    collection of paintings, statuary, and other art treasures,
+    which were his pride. He died there on the 10th of February,
+    1863, at the age of eighty-one. His loss was severely felt by
+    the community, especially by his "devil's poor," for whom he
+    had cared so tenderly.</p>
+    <hr style='width: 65%;'>
+    <a name='CHAPTER_VIII'></a>
+
+    <h2>CHAPTER VIII.</h2>
+
+    <h3>GEORGE PEABODY.</h3><br>
+
+
+    <p>It is not often that men who pass their lives in the
+    acquisition of money are able to retain the desire to give it
+    to others who have had no share in the earning of it. In
+    European countries, the wealthy merchant commonly uses his
+    fortune for the purpose of founding a family, and securing
+    sometimes a title of nobility. His wealth is entailed, that it
+    may remain in his family and benefit remote generations; but
+    few save those of his own blood enjoy any benefit from it, and
+    the world is no better off for his life and success than if he
+    had never been born. In America, instances of personal
+    generosity and benevolence on a large scale are of more common
+    occurrence than in the Old World. We have already borne witness
+    to the munificence of Girard, Astor, Lawrence, Longworth, and
+    Stewart, and shall yet present to the reader other instances of
+    this kind in the remaining pages of this work. We have now to
+    trace the career of one who far exceeded any of these in the
+    extent and magnitude of his liberality, and who, while
+    neglecting none connected with him by ties of blood, took the
+    whole English-speaking race for his family, and by scattering
+    his blessings far and wide on both sides of the Atlantic, has
+    won a proud name</p>
+
+    <p class="center">"As one who loved his fellow-men."</p><br>
+
+
+    <center>
+        <a name='illust6901'></a>
+        <a href='images/6901.jpg'><img src='images/6901.jpg'
+                height='500' border=0
+                alt='GEORGE PEABODY.'></a><br>
+         GEORGE PEABODY
+    </center>
+
+    <p><span class="small-caps">George Peabody</span> came of an
+    old English family, which traced its descent back to the year
+    of our Lord 61, the days of the heroic Boadicea, down through
+    the brilliant circle of the Knights of the Round Table, to
+    Francis Peabody, who in 1635 went from St. Albans, in
+    Hertfordshire, to the New World, and settled in Danvers,
+    Massachusetts, where the subject of this memoir was born one
+    hundred and sixty years later, on the 18th of February, 1795.
+    The parents of George Peabody were poor, and hard work was the
+    lot to which he was born, a lot necessary to develop his
+    sterling qualities of mind and heart. He was possessed of a
+    strong, vigorous constitution, and a quick, penetrating
+    intellect. His education was limited, for he was taken from
+    school at the age of eleven, and set to earning his living.
+    Upon leaving school, he was apprenticed to a Mr. Sylvester
+    Proctor, who kept a "country store" in Danvers. Here he worked
+    hard and faithfully for four or five years, devoting himself,
+    with an energy and determination surprising in one so young, to
+    learn the first principles of business. His mind matured more
+    rapidly than his body, and he was a man in intellect long
+    before he was out of his teens. Having gained all the
+    information it was possible to acquire in so small an
+    establishment, he began to wish for a wider field for the
+    exercise of his abilities. A retail grocery store was no longer
+    the place for one possessed of such talents, and thoroughly
+    conscious of them at such an early age, and it was natural that
+    he should desire some more important and responsible
+    position.</p>
+
+    <p>Accordingly, he left Mr. Proctor's employment, and spent a
+    year with his maternal grandfather at Post Mills village,
+    Thetford, Vermont. "George Peabody's year at Post Mills," says
+    a writer who knew him, "must have been a year of intense quiet,
+    with good examples always before him, and good advice whenever
+    occasion called for it; for Mr. Dodge and his wife were both
+    too shrewd to bore him with it needlessly.</p>
+
+    <p>"It was on his return from this visit that he spent a night
+    at a tavern in Concord, N.H., and paid for his entertainment by
+    sawing wood the next morning. That, however, must have been a
+    piece of George's own voluntary economy, for Jeremiah Dodge
+    would never have sent his grandson home to Danvers without the
+    means of procuring the necessaries of life on the way, and
+    still less, if possible, would Mrs. Dodge...."</p>
+
+    <div class="full">
+        <a name='illust6921'></a>
+        <a href='images/6921.jpg'><img src='images/6921.jpg'
+                width='625' border=0
+                alt="PEABODY PAYING FOR A NIGHT'S LODGING."></a>
+    </div>
+
+    <p>"The interest with which Mr. Peabody remembered this visit
+    to Post Mills is shown by his second visit so late in life, and
+    his gift of a library&mdash;as large a library as that place
+    needs. Of its influence on his subsequent career, of course,
+    there is no record. Perhaps it was not much. But, at least, it
+    gave him a good chance for quiet thinking, at an age when he
+    needed it; and the labors of the farm may have been useful both
+    to mind and body."</p>
+
+    <p>At the age of sixteen, in the year 1811, he went to
+    Newburyport, and became a clerk in the store of his elder
+    brother, David Peabody, who was engaged in the dry goods
+    business at that place. He exhibited unusual capacity and
+    promise in his calling, and soon drew upon himself the
+    favorable attention of the merchants of the place. He was
+    prompt, reliable, and energetic, and from the first established
+    an enviable reputation for personal and professional integrity.
+    It is said that he earned here the first money he ever made
+    outside of his business. This was by writing ballots for the
+    Federal party in Newburyport. Printed ballots had not then come
+    into use.</p>
+
+    <p>He did not stay long in Newburyport, as a great fire, which
+    burned up a considerable part of the town, destroyed his
+    brother's store, and obliged him to seek employment elsewhere.
+    He always retained a warm attachment to the place, however, an
+    attachment which a resident of the town explains as
+    follows:</p>
+
+    <p>"The cause of Mr. George Peabody's interest in Newburyport
+    was not alone that he had lived here for a brief period, or
+    that his relatives had lived here; but rather it was the warm
+    friendship that had been shown him, which was, in fact, the
+    basis of his subsequent prosperity. He left here in 1811, and
+    returned in 1857. The forty-six intervening years had borne to
+    the grave most of the persons with whom he had formed
+    acquaintance. Among those he recognized were several who were
+    in business, or clerks, on State Street in 1811,&mdash;Messrs.
+    John Porter, Moses Kimball, Prescott Spaulding, and a few
+    others. Mr. Spaulding was fourteen years older than Mr.
+    Peabody, and in business when the latter was a clerk with his
+    uncle, Colonel John Peabody. Mr. Peabody was here in 1857, on
+    the day of the Agricultural Fair, and was walking in the
+    procession with the late Mayor Davenport, when he saw Mr.
+    Spaulding on the sidewalk, and at once left the procession to
+    greet him.</p>
+
+    <p>"Mr. Spaulding had rendered him the greatest of services.
+    When Mr. Peabody left Newburyport, he was under age, and not
+    worth a dollar. Mr. Spaulding gave him letters of credit in
+    Boston, through which he obtained two thousand dollars' worth
+    of merchandise of Mr. James Reed, who was so favorably
+    impressed with his appearance, that he subsequently gave him
+    credit for a larger amount. This was his start in life, as he
+    afterward acknowledged; for at a public entertainment in
+    Boston, when his credit was good for any amount, and in any
+    part of the world, Mr. Peabody laid his hand on Mr. Reed's
+    shoulder, and said to those present, 'My friends, here is my
+    first patron; and he is the man who sold me my first bill of
+    goods.' After he was established in Georgetown, D.C., the first
+    consignment made to him was by the late Francis Todd, of
+    Newburyport. It was from these facts that Newburyport was
+    always pleasant in his memory; and the donation he made to the
+    Public Library was on his own suggestion, that he desired to do
+    something of a public nature for our town."</p>
+
+    <p>From New England, George Peabody turned his face southward,
+    and entered the employment of his uncle, Mr. John Peabody, who
+    was engaged in the dry goods business in Georgetown, in the
+    District of Columbia. He reached that place in the spring of
+    1812; but, as the second war with England broke out about the
+    same time, was not able to give his immediate attention to
+    business. He became a member of a volunteer company of
+    artillery, which was stationed at Fort Warburton, but as no
+    active duty was required of the company, he soon went back to
+    his uncle's store. His uncle was a poor man and a bad manager,
+    and for two years the business was conducted by George Peabody,
+    and in his own name; but at the end of that time, seeing the
+    business threatened with ruin by his uncle's incapacity, he
+    resigned his situation, and entered the service of Mr. Elisha
+    Riggs, who had just established a wholesale dry goods house in
+    Georgetown. Mr. Riggs furnished the capital for the concern,
+    and Mr. Peabody was given the management of it. Soon after
+    this, the latter became a partner in the house. It is said that
+    when Mr. Riggs invited Mr. Peabody to become his partner, the
+    latter informed him that he could not legally assume the
+    responsibilities of the business, as he was only nineteen years
+    old. This was no objection in the mind of the merchant, as he
+    wanted a young and active assistant, and had discerned in his
+    boy-manager the qualities which never fail to win success.</p>
+
+    <p>The new business in which he was engaged consisted chiefly
+    in the importation and sale of European goods, and consignments
+    of dry goods from the northern cities. It extended over a wide
+    field, and gave Mr. Peabody a fine opportunity for the display
+    of his abilities. Mr. Riggs' friends blamed him very much for
+    leaving his business so entirely in the hands of a boy of
+    nineteen; but he had better proof than they that his affairs
+    were not only in good but in the best hands, and he answered
+    them all by telling them that time would justify his course.
+    Mr. Peabody traveled extensively in establishing his business,
+    often journeying into the wild and unsettled regions of the
+    border States on horseback. He worked with energy and
+    intelligence, and in 1815 the business was found to be so
+    extensive that a removal to Baltimore became necessary. About
+    this time a sort of irregular banking business was added to the
+    operations of the house. This was chiefly the suggestion of Mr.
+    Peabody, and proved a source of great profit.</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Peabody quickly took a prominent rank among the
+    merchants of Baltimore. His manner was frank and engaging, and
+    won him many friends. He was noted for "a judgment quick and
+    cautious, clear and sound, a decided purpose, a firm will,
+    energetic and persevering industry, punctuality and fidelity in
+    every engagement, justice and honor controlling every
+    transaction, and courtesy&mdash;that true courtesy which
+    springs from genuine kindness&mdash;presiding over the
+    intercourse of life." His business continued to increase, and
+    in 1822 it became necessary to establish branches in
+    Philadelphia and New York, over which Mr. Peabody exercised a
+    careful supervision. He was thoroughly familiar with every
+    detail of his business, and never suffered his vigilance to
+    relax, however competent might be the subordinates in the
+    immediate charge of those details. In 1827 he went to England
+    on business for his firm, and during the next ten years made
+    frequent voyages between New York and London.</p>
+
+    <p>In 1829 Mr. Riggs withdrew from the firm, and Mr. Peabody
+    become the actual head of the house, the style of the firm,
+    which had previously been "Riggs &amp; Peabody," being changed
+    to "Peabody, Riggs &amp; Co." The firm had for some time been
+    the financial agents of the State of Maryland, and had managed
+    the negotiations confided to them with great skill and success;
+    and every year their banking department became more important
+    and more profitable.</p>
+
+    <p>In 1836 Mr. Peabody determined to extend his business, which
+    was already very large, to England, and to open a branch house
+    in London. In 1837 he removed to that city for the purpose of
+    taking charge of his house there, and from that time London
+    became his home.</p>
+
+    <p>The summer of this year was marked by one of the most
+    terrible commercial crises the United States has ever known. A
+    large number of the banks suspended specie payment, and the
+    majority of the mercantile houses were either ruined or in the
+    greatest distress. Thousands of merchants, until then
+    prosperous, were hopelessly ruined. "That great sympathetic
+    nerve of the commercial world, credit," said Edward Everett,
+    "as far as the United States was concerned, was for the time
+    paralyzed. At that moment Mr. Peabody not only stood firm
+    himself, but was the cause of firmness in others. There were
+    not at that time, probably, half a dozen other men in Europe
+    who, upon the subject of American securities, would have been
+    listened to for a moment in the parlor of the Bank of England.
+    But his judgment commanded respect; his integrity won back the
+    reliance which men had been accustomed to place in American
+    securities. The reproach in which they were all involved was
+    gradually wiped away from those of a substantial character; and
+    if, on this solid basis of unsuspected good faith, he reared
+    his own prosperity, let it be remembered that at the same time
+    he retrieved the credit of the State of Maryland, of which he
+    was agent&mdash;performing that miracle by which the word of an
+    honest man turns paper into gold."</p>
+
+    <p>The conduct of Mr. Peabody, as well as the evidences which
+    he gave of his remarkable capacity for business, in this
+    crisis, placed him among the foremost merchants of London. He
+    carried on his business upon a large scale from his base of
+    operations in that city. He bought British manufactures in all
+    parts of England and shipped them to the United States. His
+    vessels brought back in return all kinds of American produce
+    which would command a ready sale in England. Profitable as
+    these ventures were, there was another branch of his business
+    much more remunerative to him. The merchants and manufacturers
+    on both sides of the Atlantic who consigned their goods to him
+    frequently procured from him advances upon the goods long
+    before they were sold. At other times they would leave large
+    sums in his hands long after the goods were disposed of,
+    knowing that they could draw whenever they needed, and that in
+    the meanwhile their money was being so profitably invested that
+    they were certain of a proper interest for their loans. Thus
+    Mr. Peabody gradually became a banker, in which pursuit he was
+    as successful as he had been as a merchant. In 1843 he withdrew
+    from the house of Peabody, Riggs &amp; Co., and established the
+    house of "George Peabody &amp; Company, of Warnford Court,
+    City."</p>
+
+    <p>His dealings were chiefly with America, and in American
+    securities, and he was always regarded as one of the best
+    specimens of the American merchant ever seen in London. He was
+    very proud of his country; and though he passed so many years
+    of his life abroad, he never forgot that he was an American. In
+    speaking of the manner in which he organized his business
+    establishment, he once said: "I have endeavored, in the
+    constitution of its members and the character of its business,
+    to make it an American house, and to give it an American
+    atmosphere; to furnish it with American journals; to make it a
+    center of American news, and an agreeable place for my American
+    friends visiting London."</p>
+
+    <p>It was his custom, from his first settlement in England, to
+    celebrate the anniversary of the independence of his country by
+    an entertainment at one of the public houses in the city, to
+    which the most distinguished Americans in London were always
+    invited, as were also many of the prominent men of Great
+    Britain; and this dinner was only discontinued in deference to
+    the general celebration of the day which was afterward
+    instituted by the whole body of Americans resident in the
+    British metropolis. In the year 1851, when it was thought that
+    there would be no representation of the achievements of
+    American skill and industry in the Great Exhibition of that
+    year, from a lack of funds, Mr. Peabody generously supplied the
+    sum of fifteen thousand dollars, which enabled the
+    Commissioners to make a suitable display of the American
+    contributions. Said the Hon. Edward Everett, alluding to this
+    act:</p>
+
+    <p>"In most, perhaps in all other countries, this exhibition
+    had been a government affair. Commissioners were appointed by
+    authority to protect the interests of the exhibitors; and, what
+    was more important, appropriations of money had been made to
+    defray their expenses. No appropriations were made by Congress.
+    Our exhibitors arrived friendless, some of them penniless, in
+    the great commercial Babel of the world. They found the portion
+    of the Crystal Palace assigned to our country unprepared for
+    the specimens of art and industry which they had brought with
+    them; naked and unadorned by the side of the neighboring
+    arcades and galleries fitted up with elegance and splendor by
+    the richest governments in Europe. The English press began to
+    launch its too ready sarcasms at the sorry appearance which
+    Brother Jonathan seemed likely to make; and all the exhibitors
+    from this country, as well as those who felt an interest in
+    their success, were disheartened. At this critical moment, our
+    friend stepped forward. He did what Congress should have done.
+    By liberal advances on his part, the American department was
+    fitted up; and day after day, as some new product of American
+    ingenuity and taste was added to the list,&mdash;McCormick's
+    reaper, Colt's revolver, Powers's Greek Slave, Hobbs's
+    unpickable lock, Hoe's wonderful printing presses, and Bond's
+    more wonderful spring governor,&mdash;-it began to be suspected
+    that Brother Jonathan was not quite so much of a simpleton as
+    had been thought. He had contributed his full share, if not to
+    the splendor, at least to the utilities of the exhibition. In
+    fact, the leading journal at London, with a magnanimity which
+    did it honor, admitted that England had derived more real
+    benefit from the contributions of the United States than from
+    those of any other country."</p>
+
+    <p>As has been said, Mr. Peabody made the bulk of his colossal
+    fortune in the banking business. He had a firm faith in
+    American securities, and dealt in them largely, and with
+    confidence. His business instinct was remarkable, his judgment
+    in mercantile and financial matters almost infallible, and he
+    made few mistakes. His course was now onward and upward, and
+    each year marked an increase of his wealth. His business
+    operations were conducted in pursuance of a rigid system which
+    was never relaxed. To the very close of his life he never
+    abandoned the exact or business-like manner in which he sought
+    to make money. He gave away millions with a generosity never
+    excelled, yet he could be exacting to a penny in the
+    fulfillment of a contract.</p>
+
+    <p>In his youth he contracted habits of economy, and these he
+    retained to the last. Being unmarried, he did not subject
+    himself to the expense of a complete domestic establishment,
+    but lived in chambers, and entertained his friends at his club
+    or at a coffee-house. His habits were simple in every respect,
+    and he was often seen making his dinner on a mutton-chop at a
+    table laden (at his cost) with the most sumptuous and tempting
+    viands. His personal expenses for ten years did not average
+    three thousand dollars per annum.</p>
+
+    <p>The conductor on an English railway once overcharged him a
+    shilling for fare. He promptly complained to the directors, and
+    had the man discharged. "Not," said he, "that I could not
+    afford to pay the shilling, but the man was cheating many
+    travelers to whom the swindle would be offensive."</p>
+
+    <p>Several years ago he chanced to ride in a hack in Salem,
+    Massachusetts, and upon reaching his destination tendered the
+    driver his usual fee of fifty cents.</p>
+
+    <p>"Here's your change, sir," said the man, handing him back
+    fifteen cents.</p>
+
+    <p>"Change!" exclaimed Mr. Peabody; "why, I'm not entitled to
+    any."</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes, you are; I don't charge but thirty-five cents for a
+    ride in my hack."</p>
+
+    <p>"How do you live, then?"</p>
+
+    <p>"By fair dealing, sir. I don't believe in making a man pay
+    more than a thing is worth just because I have an
+    opportunity."</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Peabody was so much pleased with this reply, that as
+    long as he remained in Salem he sought this man out and gave
+    him his custom.</p>
+
+    <p>In his dress Mr. Peabody was simple and unostentatious. He
+    was scrupulously neat and tasteful, but there was nothing about
+    him to indicate his vast wealth. He seldom wore any jewelry,
+    using merely a black band for his watch-guard. Display of all
+    kinds he abominated.</p>
+
+    <p>He made several visits to his native country during his last
+    residence in London, and commemorated each one of them by acts
+    of princely munificence. He gave large sums to the cause of
+    education, and to religious and charitable objects, and made
+    each one of his near kindred wealthy. None of his relatives
+    received less than one hundred thousand dollars, and some were
+    given as much as three times that sum. He gave immense sums to
+    the poor of London, and became their benefactor to such an
+    extent that Queen Victoria sent him her portrait, which she had
+    caused to be executed for him at a cost of over forty thousand
+    dollars, in token of her appreciation of his services in behalf
+    of the poor of her realm.</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Peabody made another visit to the United States in 1866,
+    and upon this occasion added large sums to many of the
+    donations he had already made in this country. He remained here
+    until May, 1867, when he returned to England. He came back in
+    June, 1869, but soon sailed again for England. His health had
+    become very feeble, and it was his belief that it would be
+    better in the atmosphere of London, to which he had been so
+    long accustomed. His hope of recovery was vain. He failed to
+    rally upon reaching London, and died in that city on the 4th of
+    November, 1869.</p>
+
+    <p>The news of his death created a profound sadness on both
+    sides of the Atlantic, for his native and his adopted country
+    alike revered him as a benefactor. The Queen caused his body to
+    be placed in a vault in Westminster Abbey, amidst the greatest
+    and noblest of her kingdom, until all was in readiness for its
+    transportation to the United States in a royal man-of-war. The
+    Congress of the United States authorized the President to make
+    such arrangements for the reception of the body as he should
+    deem necessary. Sovereigns, statesmen, and warriors united to
+    do homage to the mortal remains of this plain, simple man, who,
+    beginning life a poor boy, and never departing from the
+    character of an unassuming citizen, had made humanity his
+    debtor by his generosity and goodness. He was borne across the
+    ocean with kingly honors, two great nations acting as chief
+    mourners, and then, when the pomp and the splendor of the
+    occasion were ended, they laid him down in his native earth by
+    the side of the mother from whom he had imbibed those
+    principles of integrity and goodness which were the foundation
+    of his fame and fortune.</p>
+
+    <p>It is impossible to obtain an accurate statement of the
+    donations made by Mr. Peabody to the objects which enlisted his
+    sympathy. In addition to those mentioned in the list below, he
+    gave away for various public purposes sums ranging from two
+    hundred and fifty to one thousand dollars, and extending back
+    as far as the year 1835. He divided among his relatives the sum
+    of about three millions of dollars, giving them a portion
+    during his last visit to this country, and leaving them the
+    remainder at his death.</p>
+
+    <p>The following is a statement of his more important donations
+    during his life, including the bequests contained in his last
+    will and testament:</p>
+
+    <table align='center'
+           border='0'
+           cellpadding='2'
+           cellspacing='0'
+           summary='Donations'>
+        <tr>
+            <td align='left'>To the State of Maryland, for
+            negotiating the loan of $8,000,000</td>
+
+            <td align='right'>$60,000</td>
+        </tr>
+
+        <tr>
+            <td align='left'>To the Peabody Institute, Baltimore,
+            Md., including accrued interest</td>
+
+            <td align='right'>1,500,000</td>
+        </tr>
+
+        <tr>
+            <td align='left'>To the Southern Education Fund</td>
+
+            <td align='right'>3,000,000</td>
+        </tr>
+
+        <tr>
+            <td align='left'>To Yale College</td>
+
+            <td align='right'>150,000</td>
+        </tr>
+
+        <tr>
+            <td align='left'>To Harvard College</td>
+
+            <td align='right'>150,000</td>
+        </tr>
+
+        <tr>
+            <td align='left'>To Peabody Academy, Massachusetts</td>
+
+            <td align='right'>140,000</td>
+        </tr>
+
+        <tr>
+            <td align='left'>To Phillips Academy,
+            Massachusetts</td>
+
+            <td align='right'>25,000</td>
+        </tr>
+
+        <tr>
+            <td align='left'>To Peabody Institute, etc., at
+            Peabody, Mass.</td>
+
+            <td align='right'>250,000</td>
+        </tr>
+
+        <tr>
+            <td align='left'>To Kenyon College, Ohio</td>
+
+            <td align='right'>25,000</td>
+        </tr>
+
+        <tr>
+            <td align='left'>To Memorial Church, in Georgetown,
+            Mass.</td>
+
+            <td align='right'>100,000</td>
+        </tr>
+
+        <tr>
+            <td align='left'>To Homes for the Poor in London</td>
+
+            <td align='right'>3,000,000</td>
+        </tr>
+
+        <tr>
+            <td align='left'>To Libraries in Georgetown,
+            Massachusetts, and Thetford, Vermont</td>
+
+            <td align='right'>10,000</td>
+        </tr>
+
+        <tr>
+            <td align='left'>To Kane's Arctic Expedition</td>
+
+            <td align='right'>10,000</td>
+        </tr>
+
+        <tr>
+            <td align='left'>To different Sanitary Fairs</td>
+
+            <td align='right'>10,000</td>
+        </tr>
+
+        <tr>
+            <td align='left'>To unpaid moneys advanced to uphold
+            the credit of States</td>
+
+            <td align='right'>40,000</td>
+        </tr>
+
+        <tr>
+            <td align='left'></td>
+
+            <td align='right'></td>
+        </tr>
+
+        <tr>
+            <td align='left'>Total</td>
+
+            <td align='right'>$8,470,000</td>
+        </tr>
+    </table><br>
+     <br>
+
+
+    <p>The life of such a man affords lessons full of hope and
+    encouragement to others. In 1856, when on a visit to Danvers,
+    now named Peabody, in honor of him, its most distinguished son
+    and greatest benefactor, he said:</p>
+
+    <p>"Though Providence has granted me an unvaried and unusual
+    success in the pursuit of fortune in other lands, I am still in
+    heart the humble boy who left yonder unpretending dwelling.
+    There is not a youth within the sound of my voice whose early
+    opportunities and advantages are not very much greater than
+    were my own, and I have since achieved nothing that is
+    impossible to the most humble boy among you."</p><br>
+
+    <hr style='width: 65%;'>
+    <a name='capitalists'></a>
+
+    <h1>II.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; CAPITALISTS.</h1>
+    <hr style='width: 65%;'>
+
+    <center>
+        <a name='illust6941'></a>
+        <a href='images/6941.jpg'><img src='images/6941.jpg'
+                height='500' border=0
+                alt='CORNELIUS VANDERBILT.'></a><br>
+         CORNELIUS VANDERBILT.
+    </center><a name='CHAPTER_IX'></a>
+
+    <h2>CHAPTER IX.</h2>
+
+    <h3>CORNELIUS VANDERBILT.</h3><br>
+
+
+    <p>STATEN ISLAND lies in the beautiful bay of New York, seven
+    miles distant from the great city. Its lofty heights shut in
+    the snug anchorage of the inner bay, and protect it from the
+    rude storms which howl along the coast. It lies full in sight
+    of the city, and is one of the most beautiful and attractive of
+    its suburbs. The commanding heights and embowered shores are
+    covered with villas and cottages, and afford a pleasant and
+    convenient summer resort for the people of New York. It now
+    contains a large and flourishing population, and maintains a
+    speedy and constant communication with the metropolis by means
+    of steam ferry-boats, the total travel on which sometimes
+    reaches as many as ten or twelve thousand passengers per
+    day.</p>
+
+    <p>Seventy-six years ago, Staten Island was a mere country
+    settlement, and its communications with the city were
+    maintained by means of a few sail-boats, which made one trip
+    each way per day.</p>
+
+    <p>One of these boats was owned and navigated by Cornelius
+    Vanderbilt, a thriving farmer, who owned a small but well
+    cultivated estate on Staten Island, near the present Quarantine
+    Grounds. He was a man of exemplary character, great industry,
+    and was generally regarded as one of the most prudent and
+    reliable men on the island. Having a considerable amount of
+    produce to sell in the city, he purchased a boat of his own for
+    the purpose of transporting it thither. Frequently, residents
+    of the island would secure passage in this boat to the city in
+    the morning, and return with it in the evening. He realized a
+    considerable sum of money in this way, and finally ran his boat
+    regularly between the island and the city. This was the
+    beginning of the New York and Staten Island Ferry. Mr.
+    Vanderbilt, by close application to his farm and boat, soon
+    acquired a property, which, though small, was sufficient to
+    enable him to maintain his family independently. His wife was a
+    woman of more than usual character, and aided him nobly in
+    making his way in the world.</p>
+
+    <p>This admirable couple were blessed with nine children. The
+    oldest of these, <span class="small-caps">Cornelius</span>, the
+    subject of this sketch, was born at the old farm-house on
+    Staten Island, on the 27th of May, 1794. He was a healthy,
+    active boy, fond of all manner of out-door sports, and
+    manifesting an unusual repugnance to the confinement and labors
+    of the school-room. He has since declared that the only books
+    he remembers using at school were the New Testament and the
+    spelling-book. The result was, that he merely learned to read,
+    write, and cipher, and that imperfectly. He was passionately
+    fond of the water, and was never so well pleased as when his
+    father allowed him to assist in sailing his boat. He was also a
+    famous horseman from his earliest childhood, and even now
+    recalls with evident pride the fact that when but six years old
+    he rode a race-horse at full speed. When he set himself to
+    accomplish any thing, he was not, like most boys, deterred by
+    the difficulties of his undertaking, but persevered until
+    success crowned his efforts. So early did he establish his
+    reputation for overcoming obstacles, that his boyish friends
+    learned to regard any task which he undertook as already
+    virtually performed.</p>
+
+    <p>When he was only twelve years old his father contracted to
+    remove the cargo from a ship which had gone ashore near Sandy
+    Hook, and to convey it to New York. The lighters which were to
+    carry the goods to the city could not reach the ship, and it
+    was necessary to haul the cargo, transported in wagons, across
+    the sands from the vessel to them. In spite of his tender age,
+    little Cornelius was placed by his father in charge of the
+    undertaking, which he accomplished promptly and successfully.
+    He loaded his lighters, sent them up to New York, and then
+    started for home with his wagons. Upon reaching South Amboy,
+    where he was to cross over to Staten Island, he found himself,
+    with his wagons, horses, and men, without any money to pay his
+    ferriage across to the island. The ferriage would amount to six
+    dollars, and how he was to raise this sum he was, for a time,
+    at a loss to determine. Finally, he went to the keeper of the
+    tavern, to whom he was a stranger, and asked for the loan of
+    six dollars, offering to leave one of his horses as a pledge
+    for the money, which he promised to return within two days. The
+    tavern-keeper was so well pleased with the boy's energy, that
+    he loaned him the money, and the party crossed over to Staten
+    Island. The pawned horse was promptly redeemed.</p>
+
+    <p>Young Vanderbilt was always anxious to become a sailor, and,
+    as he approached his seventeenth year, he determined to begin
+    life as a boatman in the harbor of New York. On the 1st of May,
+    1810, he informed his mother of his determination, and asked
+    her to lend him one hundred dollars to buy a boat.</p>
+
+    <p>The good lady had always opposed her son's wish to go to
+    sea, and regarded this new scheme as equally hair-brained. As a
+    means of discouraging him, she told him if he would plow,
+    harrow, and plant with corn a certain ten-acre lot belonging to
+    the farm, by the twenty-seventh of that month, on which day he
+    would be seventeen years old, she would lend him the money. The
+    field was the worst in the whole farm; it was rough, hard, and
+    stony; but by the appointed time the work was done, and well
+    done, and the boy claimed and received his money. He hurried
+    off to a neighboring village, and bought his boat, in which he
+    set out for home. He had not gone far, however, when the boat
+    struck a sunken wreck, and filled so rapidly that the boy had
+    barely time to get into shoal water before it sank.</p>
+
+    <div class="full">
+        <a name='illust6961'></a>
+        <a href='images/6961.jpg'><img src='images/6961.jpg'
+                width='625' border=0
+                alt=
+                'VANDERBILT EARNING HIS FIRST HUNDRED DOLLARS.'></a><br>
+         VANDERBILT EARNING HIS FIRST HUNDRED DOLLARS.
+    </div>
+
+    <p>"Undismayed at this mishap," says Mr. Parton, from whose
+    graphic memoir the leading incidents of this sketch are taken,
+    "he began his new career. His success, as we have intimated,
+    was speedy and great. He made a thousand dollars during each of
+    the next three summers. Often he worked all night; but he was
+    never absent from his post by day, and he soon had the cream of
+    the boating business of the port.</p>
+
+    <p>"At that day parents claimed the services and earnings of
+    their children till they were twenty-one. In other words,
+    families made common cause against the common enemy, Want. The
+    arrangement between this young boatman and his parents was,
+    that he should give them all his day earnings and half his
+    night earnings. He fulfilled his engagement faithfully until
+    his parents released him from it, and with his own half of his
+    earnings by night, he bought all his clothes. He had forty
+    competitors in the business, who, being all grown men, could
+    dispose of their gains as they chose; but of all the forty, he
+    alone has emerged to prosperity and distinction. Why was this?
+    There were several reasons. He soon became the best boatman in
+    the port. He attended to his business more regularly and
+    strictly than any other. He had no vices. His comrades spent at
+    night much of what they earned by day, and when the winter
+    suspended their business, instead of living on their last
+    summer's savings, they were obliged to lay up debts for the
+    next summer's gains to discharge. In those three years of
+    willing servitude to his parents, Cornelius Vanderbilt added to
+    the family's common stock of wealth, and gained for himself
+    three things&mdash;a perfect knowledge of his business, habits
+    of industry and self-control, and the best boat in the
+    harbor."</p>
+
+    <p>During the War of 1812, young Vanderbilt was kept very busy.
+    All the harbor defenses were fully manned, and a number of war
+    vessels were in port all the time. The travel between these and
+    the city was very great, and boatmen were in demand.</p>
+
+    <p>In September, 1813, a British fleet attempted to run past
+    Fort Richmond, during a heavy gale. The commanding officer was
+    anxious to send to New York for reinforcements, but it was
+    blowing so hard that none of the old boatmen were willing to
+    venture upon the bay. They all declared that if the voyage
+    could be made at all, Cornelius Vanderbilt was the only man who
+    could make it. The commandant at once sent for the young man,
+    who, upon learning the urgency of the case, expressed his
+    belief that he could carry the messengers to the city. "But,"
+    said he, "I shall have to carry them part of the way under
+    water." He set out with the messengers, and in an hour landed
+    them safe, but drenched through, at the foot of Whitehall
+    Street, which was then the landing place of all the boatmen of
+    the harbor.</p>
+
+    <p>He was now so prosperous in his calling that he determined
+    to marry. He had wooed and won the heart of Sophia Johnson, the
+    daughter of a neighbor, and he now asked his parents' consent
+    to his marriage, and also requested them to allow him to retain
+    his own earnings, in order that he might be able to support a
+    wife. Both of his petitions received the approval of his
+    parents, and in the winter of 1813 he was married. His wife was
+    a woman of unusual personal beauty and strength of character,
+    and proved the best of partners. He has often declared since
+    that he owed his success in life as much to her counsel and
+    assistance as to his own efforts.</p>
+
+    <p>In the spring of 1814, it became known in America that the
+    British were fitting out a formidable military and naval
+    expedition for the purpose of attacking one of the Atlantic
+    ports of the United States. The whole coast was on the lookout,
+    and, as it was feared that the blow would be struck at New
+    York, every precaution was taken to be ready. The militia were
+    called into service for three months, under a heavy penalty for
+    refusing to obey the call. The term of service thus marked out
+    covered the most prosperous season of the boatmen, and made the
+    call fall particularly hard upon them. About this time, an
+    advertisement was inserted in the city journals by the
+    Commissary-General of the army, calling for bids from boatmen
+    for the purpose of conveying provisions from New York to the
+    various military posts in the vicinity. The labor was to be
+    performed during the three months for which the militia were
+    called out, and the contractor was to be exempted from all
+    military duty during that time. Bids poured in from the
+    boatmen, who offered to do the work at ridiculously low
+    figures&mdash;the chief object of each one being to secure the
+    exemption.</p>
+
+    <p>Young Vanderbilt, knowing that the work could not be done at
+    the rates at which his comrades offered to perform it, at first
+    decided not to bid for it, but at length&mdash;and more to
+    please his father than because he expected to
+    succeed&mdash;offered to transport the provisions at a price
+    which would enable him to be sure of doing it well and
+    thoroughly. He felt so little hope of success that he did not
+    even trouble himself to go to the office of the Commissary on
+    the day of the awarding of the contract, until he learned from
+    his companions that all their efforts to secure it had been
+    ineffectual. Then he called on the Commissary, merely through
+    curiosity, to learn the name of the fortunate man, and to his
+    utter astonishment was told that the contract had been awarded
+    to himself. The Government was satisfied, from his sensible
+    offer, that he would do the business thoroughly, and this the
+    Commissary assured him was the reason why they had selected
+    him.</p>
+
+    <p>There were six posts to be supplied&mdash;Harlem, Hell Gate,
+    Ward's Island, the Narrows, and one other in the harbor, each
+    of which was to be furnished with one load per week. The young
+    contractor made arrangements to have a daily load of stores
+    ready for him each evening at six o'clock, and thus performed
+    all the duties of his contract at night, which left him free to
+    attend to his boating during the day. He never failed to make a
+    single delivery of stores, or to be absent from his post on the
+    beach at Whitehall one single day during the whole three
+    months. He was often without sleep, and performed an immense
+    amount of labor during this period; but his indomitable energy
+    and powerful physical organization carried him safely through
+    it all.</p>
+
+    <p>He made a great deal of money that summer, and with his
+    earnings built a splendid little schooner, which he named the
+    "Dread." In 1815, in connection with his brother-in-law,
+    Captain De Forrest, he built a fine schooner, called the
+    "Charlotte," for the coasting service. She was celebrated for
+    the beauty of her model and her great speed. He continued to
+    ply his boat in the harbor during the summer, but in the fall
+    and winter made voyages along the coast, often as far south as
+    Charleston. During the three years succeeding the termination
+    of the war he saved nine thousand dollars in cash, and built
+    two or three small vessels. This was his condition in 1818.</p>
+
+    <p>By this time it had become demonstrated to his satisfaction
+    that the new system of steamboats was a success, and was
+    destined to come into general use at no very distant day. He
+    therefore determined to identify himself with it at once, and
+    thereby secure the benefits which he felt sure would result
+    from a prompt connection with it. Accordingly, in 1818, to the
+    surprise and dismay of his friends, he gave up his flourishing
+    business, in order to accept the captaincy of a steamboat which
+    was offered him by Mr. Thomas Gibbons. The salary attached to
+    this position was one thousand dollars, and Captain
+    Vanderbilt's friends frankly told him that he was very foolish
+    in abandoning a lucrative business for so insignificant a sum.
+    Turning a deaf ear to their remonstrances, however, he entered
+    promptly upon the duties of his new career, and was given
+    command of a steamboat plying between New York and New
+    Brunswick.</p>
+
+    <p>Passengers to Philadelphia, at that day, were transported by
+    steamer from New York to New Brunswick, where they remained all
+    night. The next morning they took the stage for Trenton, from
+    which they were conveyed by steamer to Philadelphia. The hotel
+    at New Brunswick was a miserable affair, and had never paid
+    expenses. When Captain Vanderbilt took command of the steamer,
+    he was offered the hotel rent free, and accepted the offer. He
+    placed the house in charge of his wife, under whose vigorous
+    administration it soon acquired a popularity which was of the
+    greatest benefit to the line.</p>
+
+    <p>For seven years he was harassed and hampered by the
+    hostility of the State of New York, which had granted to Fulton
+    and Livingston the sole right to navigate New York waters by
+    steam. Thomas Gibbons believed this law to be unconstitutional,
+    and ran his boats in defiance of it. The authorities of the
+    State resented his disregard of their monopoly, and a long and
+    vexatious warfare sprang up between them, which was ended only
+    in 1824, by the decision of the Supreme Court of the United
+    States in favor of Mr. Gibbons.</p>
+
+    <p>As a means of crippling Gibbons, the New York authorities at
+    one time determined to arrest Vanderbilt and his crew; but the
+    wary captain was too cunning for them. He would land his crew
+    in Jersey City, and take charge of the engine himself, while a
+    lady managed the helm. In this way he approached the wharf at
+    New York, landed his passengers, and took on more. As soon as
+    he had made his boat fast, he concealed himself in the hold
+    until the moment of his departure. As soon as he appeared on
+    deck, the Sheriff's officer (who was changed every day to avoid
+    recognition) would approach him with a warrant for his arrest.
+    His reply was an order to let go the line. The officer,
+    unwilling to be carried off to New Jersey, where he was
+    threatened with imprisonment in the penitentiary for
+    interfering with the steamer, would at once jump ashore, or beg
+    to be landed. This was kept up for two months, but the captain
+    successfully baffled his enemies during the whole of that
+    period. The opponents of Mr. Gibbons offered a larger and
+    better boat than the one he commanded if he would enter their
+    service, but he firmly declined all their offers, avowing his
+    determination to remain with Mr. Gibbons until the difficulty
+    was settled.</p>
+
+    <p>After the decision of the Supreme Court placed Mr. Gibbons
+    in the full enjoyment of his rights, Captain Vanderbilt was
+    allowed to manage the line in his own way, and conducted it
+    with so much skill and vigor that it paid its owner an annual
+    profit of forty thousand dollars. Mr. Gibbons offered to
+    increase his salary to five thousand dollars, but he refused to
+    accept the offer.</p>
+
+    <p>"I did it on principle," he said, afterward. "The other
+    captains had but one thousand, and they were already jealous
+    enough of me. Besides, I never cared for money. All I ever
+    cared for was to carry my point."</p>
+
+    <div class="full">
+        <a name='illust6981'></a>
+        <a href='images/6981.jpg'><img src='images/6981.jpg'
+                width='625' border=0
+                alt='VANDERBILT CARRYING OFF THE SHERIFF.'></a><br>
+         VANDERBILT CARRYING OFF THE SHERIFF.
+    </div>
+
+    <p>In 1829 he determined to leave the service of Mr. Gibbons,
+    with whom he had been connected for eleven years. He was
+    thirty-five years old, and had saved thirty thousand dollars.
+    He resolved to build a steamer of his own, and command her
+    himself, and accordingly made known his intention to his
+    employer. Mr. Gibbons at once declared that he could not carry
+    on the line without his assistance, and told him he might make
+    his own terms if he would stay with him. Captain Vanderbilt had
+    formed his decision after much thought, and being satisfied
+    that he was doing right, he persisted in his determination to
+    set up for himself. Mr. Gibbons then offered to sell him the
+    line on the spot, and to take his pay as the money should be
+    earned. It was a splendid offer, but it was firmly and
+    gratefully refused. The captain knew the men among whom he
+    would be thrown, and that they could never act together
+    harmoniously. He believed his own ideas to be the best, and
+    wished to be free to carry them out.</p>
+
+    <p>After leaving Mr. Gibbons he built a small steamer, called
+    the "Caroline," which he commanded himself. In a few years he
+    was the owner of several other small steamers plying between
+    New York and the neighboring towns. He made slow progress at
+    first, for he had strong opposition to overcome. The steamboat
+    interest was in the hands of powerful companies, backed by
+    immense capital, and these companies were not disposed to
+    tolerate the interference of any new-comer. They met their
+    match in all cases, however, for Vanderbilt inaugurated so
+    sharp a business opposition that the best of them were forced
+    to compromise with him. These troubles were very annoying to
+    him, and cost him nearly every dollar he was worth, but he
+    persevered, and at length "carried his point."</p>
+
+    <p>From that time he made his way gradually in his business,
+    until he rose to the head of the steamboat interest of the
+    United States. He has owned or been interested in one hundred
+    steam vessels, and has been instrumental in a greater degree
+    than any other man in bringing down the tariff of steamboat
+    fares. He never builds a vessel without giving his personal
+    superintendence to every detail, so that all his various craft
+    have been models of their kind. He selects his officers with
+    the greatest care, pays them liberal salaries, and, as long as
+    they do their duty, sustains them against all outside
+    interference or intrigue. In this way he inspires them with
+    zeal, and the result is that he has never lost a vessel by
+    fire, explosion, or wreck.</p>
+
+    <p>He built the famous steamer "North Star," and made a
+    triumphal cruise in her to the Old World. It is said that he
+    was at one time very anxious to divide the business of the
+    ocean with the Collins Line of steamers. When the "Arctic" was
+    lost he applied to Mr. Collins to allow his steamer to run in
+    her place. He promised to make no claim for the mail subsidy
+    which Collins received, and to take the vessel off as soon as
+    Collins could build another to take her place. Mr. Collins was
+    afraid to let Mr. Vanderbilt get any hold on the foreign trade
+    of the country, and not only refused his request, but did so in
+    a manner which roused the anger of the veteran, who thereupon
+    told Mr. Collins that he would run his line off the ocean if it
+    took his whole life and entire fortune to do it. He kept his
+    word. He at once offered the Government to carry the mails more
+    promptly and regularly than had ever been done before, and to
+    do this for a term of years without asking one single cent as
+    subsidy. It was well known that he was perfectly able to do
+    what he promised, and he pressed the matter upon the Government
+    so vigorously that he was successful. The subsidy to Collins
+    was withdrawn, and the magnificent line soon fell to pieces in
+    consequence of the bankruptcy of its owner, who might have
+    averted his fate by the exercise of a little liberality.</p>
+
+    <p>Of late years, Mr. Vanderbilt has been withdrawing his money
+    from ships and steamers, and investing it in railroads and iron
+    works. Success has attended him in all his ventures, and he is
+    to-day worth over thirty millions of dollars. He controls the
+    Hudson River, Harlem, and New York Central Roads, and is
+    largely interested in many others. He is all powerful in the
+    stock market, and can move it as he will.</p>
+
+    <p>A few years ago he wished to consolidate the Hudson River
+    and Harlem Railroads, and when the scheme was presented before
+    the Legislature of New York, secured a sufficient number of
+    votes to insure the passage of the bill authorizing the
+    consolidation. Before the bill was called up on its final
+    passage, however, he learned from a trustworthy source that the
+    members of the Legislature who had promised to vote for the
+    bill were determined to vote against it, with the hope of
+    ruining him. The stock of Harlem Road was then selling very
+    high, in consequence of the expected consolidation. The defeat
+    of the bill would, of course, cause it to fall immediately. The
+    unprincipled legislators at once commenced a shrewd game. They
+    sold Harlem right and left, to be delivered at a future day,
+    and found plenty of purchasers. They let their friends into the
+    secret, and there was soon a great deal of "selling 'short'" in
+    this stock.<a id="footnotetagD"
+       name="footnotetagD"></a> <a href=
+       "#footnoteD"><sup>[D]</sup></a> Commodore Vanderbilt,
+       although indignant at the treachery of which he was to be
+       made the victim, held his peace. He went into the market
+       quietly, with all the funds he could raise, purchased every
+       dollar's worth of Harlem stock he could lay his hands on,
+       and locked it up in his safe. When the bill came before the
+       Legislature on its final passage, the members who had
+       pledged themselves to vote for it voted against it, and it
+       was rejected.</p>
+
+    <p>The speculators were jubilant. They were sure that the
+    defeat of the bill would bring down "Harlem" with a rush. To
+    their astonishment, however, "Harlem" did not fall. It remained
+    stationary the first day, and then, to their dismay, began to
+    rise steadily. Those to whom they had sold demanded the
+    delivery of the stock, but the speculators found it impossible
+    to buy it. There was none in the market at any price. Being
+    unable to deliver stock, they were forced to pay its equivalent
+    in money, and the result was, that all who were engaged in the
+    infamous scheme were ruined. One of the shrewdest operators in
+    New York lost over two hundred thousand dollars. He refused to
+    pay, but his name was at once stricken from the list of
+    stock-brokers. This brought him to terms, and he made good his
+    contracts. Vanderbilt made enough money out of this effort to
+    crush him to pay for all the stock he owned in the Harlem
+    Road.</p>
+
+    <p>During the rebellion, Commodore Vanderbilt was one of the
+    stanchest supporters of the Government. Early in the struggle
+    he equipped his splendid steamer, the "Vanderbilt," as a
+    man-of-war, and offered her to the Navy Department at a fair
+    price. He found that, in order to sell the vessel, he would
+    have to pay a percentage of the price received for her to
+    certain parties who stood between the Government and the
+    purchase, and levied black mail upon every ship the Government
+    bought. Indignant and disgusted, he withdrew his ship, and
+    declared she was not for sale. Then, satisfying himself that
+    she was in perfect condition, he presented her to the Navy
+    Department <i>as a free gift to the nation</i>.</p>
+
+    <p>Says a recent writer, whose fondness for courtly similes the
+    reader must pardon, for the sake of the information he imparts:
+    "No man is felt in Wall Street more than Commodore Vanderbilt,
+    yet he is seldom seen there. All of his business is done in his
+    office in Fourth Street. Here his brokers meet him, receive
+    their orders, and give reports. Here the plans are laid that
+    shake the street, and Wall Street trembles at the foot of an
+    invisible autocrat. If the reader would care to visit the court
+    of that great railroad king, whose name has become the terror
+    of Wall Street, he may accompany us to a plain brick residence
+    in Fourth Street, near Broadway, and distant from Wall Street
+    nearly two miles. No sign indicates its imperial occupant,
+    except that the upper story being occupied as a millinery
+    establishment bears a legend of that character. However, as we
+    enter the hall, we notice the word 'office,' and open the door
+    thus inscribed. Here we see a table, a few chairs, and a desk,
+    at which a solitary clerk of middle age is standing at
+    work.</p>
+
+    <p>"The walls are bare, with the exception of a few pictures of
+    those steamships which originated the title of 'Commodore,'
+    This is the ante-chamber, and a pair of folding doors screen
+    the king from vulgar gaze. He is closeted with his marshals,
+    and this privy council will last an hour or so. One after the
+    other they depart, and before three o'clock the effect of this
+    council will not only be felt in Wall Street, but will be
+    flashed over the Union. At length you are permitted to enter.
+    The folding door is opened, and you behold an office as plain
+    in appearance as the one just described. It contains a few
+    arm-chairs and a long business-table, thrown flush before you,
+    on the opposite side of which sits a large man, with his face
+    fronting you. He is writing, and his eyes are fixed on the
+    paper, so that you have a moment to note the dignity of frame
+    and the vast development of brain. In a few minutes the
+    countenance raises, and you meet its expansive and penetrating
+    glance.</p>
+
+    <p>"You face the king. He smiles in a pleasant and whole-souled
+    manner, and in a moment puts you at ease. No stiffness nor
+    formality here. His kingship is in himself, not in etiquette.
+    He is ready for a pleasantry, and will initiate one if it comes
+    in the line of conversation. You note those wonderful eyes,
+    bright and piercing, and so large and rich that one is
+    fascinated, and does not know how to stop gazing into them.
+    Such is the appearance of the railway king, and you take your
+    leave, conscious that some men, as Shakespeare says, 'are born
+    great.' Indeed, we know a man who would rather give five
+    dollars to sit and look at Commodore Vanderbilt for an hour
+    than to see any other sight in this city. Next door to the
+    office is a building of brown stone, with spacious doors and a
+    roadway. This is the Commodore's stable, where are some of the
+    finest horses in the country.</p>
+
+    <p>"Every afternoon he is wont to take an airing, and after tea
+    a game of whist affords an evening amusement. The Commodore is
+    simple in his manners and habits. He is a representative of a
+    former age, when men lived less artificially than at the
+    present time, and when there was more happiness and less show.
+    As for business, it is his nature. He can not help being king.
+    He is but developing himself, and any other mode of life would
+    be painful. He has in the Central afforded a third wonder, the
+    Harlem and the Hudson River being the first and second, and if
+    he gets the Erie he will soon show the world another wonder. On
+    Sundays the Commodore attends Dr. Hutton's church on Washington
+    Square, and here his tall and dignified form may be seen, head
+    and shoulders above the rest of the congregation. He is a
+    friend of the pastor, who takes a deep interest in his welfare,
+    and we hope will meet him in a better world. He stood by the
+    Commodore's side when his wife was laid in the tomb, and
+    cheered him in that dark and trying hour. Among his more recent
+    works is the completing of a tomb in the old Moravian
+    burial-ground in Staten Island. The subterranean chamber is
+    about thirty feet square, and is surmounted by a lofty shaft,
+    and a statue of grief adds a peculiar finish to the spot. The
+    cemetery is on an eminence, from which one gets a fine view of
+    the ocean, dotted with ships."</p>
+
+    <p>Commodore Vanderbilt's early passion for horses still
+    survives, and his stable contains some of the finest in the
+    world. Nothing pleases him so well as to sit behind a fast
+    team, with the reins in his hands, and fly along the road with
+    almost the speed of the wind.</p>
+
+    <p>He is extremely generous to his friends, and gives liberally
+    to charitable objects. He never puts his name to a subscription
+    paper, but his donations are none the less liberal for that.
+    His old acquaintances&mdash;especially those of his
+    boyhood&mdash;find him a tender friend, and many of them owe to
+    his bounty the comforts which surround their age.<a id=
+    "footnotetagE"
+       name="footnotetagE"></a><a href=
+       "#footnoteE"><sup>[E]</sup></a></p>
+
+    <p>He is the father of thirteen children&mdash;nine daughters
+    and four sons&mdash;nearly all of whom are still living. A few
+    years ago, at the celebration of his golden wedding, over one
+    hundred and forty of his descendants and relatives assembled to
+    congratulate him. He lost a promising son during the war, and
+    his wife died two years ago. Not long since he married a second
+    time. He is still one of the handsomest and most imposing men
+    in New York, and will doubtless live to see his children's
+    grandchildren.</p>
+
+    <blockquote class="footnote">
+        <a id="footnoteD"
+                    name="footnoteD"></a> <b>Footnote D</b>:
+                    <a href="#footnotetagD">(return)</a>
+
+        <p>For the benefit of the uninitiated reader, we will
+        explain the "game" more clearly. Harlem stock was selling
+        at a high price, in consequence of the expected
+        consolidation. Those who sold "short" at this time sold at
+        the market price, which, as we have said, was high. By
+        engaging to deliver at some future day, they expected to be
+        able to buy the stock for little or nothing after the
+        defeat of the bill, and then to demand for it the price for
+        which they had sold it in the first place. Such a
+        transaction was infamous, but would have enabled those
+        engaged in it to realize immense sums by the difference in
+        the price of the stock.</p>
+    </blockquote>
+
+    <blockquote class="footnote">
+        <a id="footnoteE"
+                    name="footnoteE"></a> <b>Footnote E</b>:
+                    <a href="#footnotetagE">(return)</a>
+
+        <p>In July, 1870, Mr. Vanderbilt chanced to hear that the
+        Rev. Dr. Deems, of New York, was in want of a church.
+        Admiring the energy with which the reverend gentleman had
+        built up his congregation in the short space of three
+        years, Mr. Vanderbilt quietly made up his mind that he
+        should not want in vain. Accordingly he bought the Mercer
+        Street Presbyterian Church, and made the Doctor a present
+        of it, keeping him in ignorance of his intention until he
+        placed the title deeds in his hand.</p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <hr style='width: 65%;'>
+    <a name='CHAPTER_X'></a>
+
+    <h2>CHAPTER X.</h2>
+
+    <h3>DANIEL DREW.</h3><br>
+
+
+    <p>The name of <span class="small-caps">Daniel Drew</span> has
+    so long been familiar in the financial circles of the country,
+    that it is surprising that the history of his life is not more
+    generally known.</p>
+
+    <p>He was born at Carmel, in Putnam County, New York, on the
+    29th of July, 1797. His father was a small farmer, with limited
+    means, and had to work hard to provide his family with food and
+    clothing. Young Daniel was brought up to work on the farm, and
+    at such times as he could be spared from this work, was sent to
+    the country school in the neighborhood, where he acquired but a
+    meager stock of learning. When he was fifteen years old, his
+    father died, leaving his family in an almost helpless
+    condition. Young Daniel remained on the farm three years
+    longer, and in 1815, being then eighteen years old, stared out
+    to try and earn a living for himself.</p>
+
+    <p>He came to New York in search of employment, but the
+    country, just then, was in too depressed a condition to afford
+    him a chance in any regular business. After looking around for
+    awhile, he at length became a cattle drover. He spent five
+    years in driving cattle from Putnam County to New York for
+    sale, but failed to make any money at the business.</p>
+
+    <p>In 1820, he removed to New York, and established his
+    headquarters at the famous Bull's Head Tavern, in the Bowery,
+    which was the great resort of the butchers and drovers doing
+    business in the city. He kept this tavern a part of the time,
+    and found it quite a profitable investment. He soon formed a
+    partnership with two other drovers, and commenced buying cattle
+    in the adjoining counties and bringing them to New York for
+    sale.</p>
+
+    <div class="full">
+        <a name='illust7001'></a>
+        <a href='images/7001.jpg'><img src='images/7001.jpg'
+                width='625' border=0
+                alt='FOUNDING A GREAT FORTUNE'></a><br>
+         FOUNDING A GREAT FORTUNE
+    </div>
+
+    <p>These ventures were so successful that the operations of the
+    firm were extended into Pennsylvania, and finally into Ohio and
+    the other States of the great West. Mr. Drew and his partners
+    brought over the mountains the first drove of cattle that ever
+    came from the West into New York city. The cattle, two thousand
+    in number, were collected into droves of one hundred each, and
+    were driven by experienced and careful men. The journey
+    occupied two months, and the total cost of the purchase and
+    trip was twenty-four dollars per head. The profit on the
+    venture was very large.</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Drew continued in this business for fourteen years,
+    slowly and carefully laying the foundations of that immense
+    fortune which has made him so conspicuous, an example to others
+    who have entered upon the life-struggle since then.</p>
+
+    <p>In 1834, an event occurred which changed the whole tenor of
+    his career. In that year, the steamer "General Jackson," owned
+    by Jacob Vanderbilt (a brother of the famous Commodore), and
+    plying between New York and Peekskill, blew up at Grassy Point.
+    A friend of Mr. Drew at once put a boat called the "Water
+    Witch" in her place, and Mr. Drew, to oblige his friend,
+    advanced one thousand dollars toward the enterprise. Commodore
+    Vanderbilt was not willing that any rival should contest the
+    river trade with him, and built a steamer called the
+    "Cinderella," with which he ran a sharp opposition to Mr. Drew.
+    The contest was so sharp that fares and freights were lowered
+    to a ridiculous figure, and both parties lost heavily. At the
+    end of the season, the owner of the "Water Witch" found himself
+    ten thousand dollars in debt, and sold his boat to Drew, Kelly
+    &amp; Richards for twenty thousand dollars.</p>
+
+    <p>Finding that Mr. Drew was not frightened off by his
+    opposition, Commodore Vanderbilt urged him to withdraw from his
+    attempt, telling him he knew nothing of the management of
+    steamboats. Mr. Drew refused to be intimidated; however, and
+    continued his efforts. Since then, there have been fifty
+    attempts to run him off the river, but all alike have failed of
+    success.</p>
+
+    <p>In 1836, the "Water Witch" was replaced by a fine steamer
+    called the "Westchester," which was subsequently run as a day
+    boat to Hartford, Connecticut. The "Westchester" was run
+    against the Hudson River Line, from New York to Albany. The
+    Hudson River Line at that time owned the "De Witt Clinton," the
+    "North America," and others&mdash;the finest steamboats then
+    afloat&mdash;and it seemed at first foolhardiness for any one
+    to attempt to oppose so popular a company. Mr. Drew and his
+    partners bought the "Bright Emerald," for which they gave
+    twenty-six thousand dollars, and ran her as a night boat
+    between New York and Albany, reducing the fare from three
+    dollars to one dollar. During the season, they bought the
+    "Rochester" for fifty thousand dollars, and also bought out the
+    Hudson River Line, after which they restored the fare to three
+    dollars.</p>
+
+    <p>Several years later, Isaac Newton, who was largely
+    interested in the towing business of the Hudson, built two
+    splendid passenger steamers called the "North America" and the
+    "South America." In 1840, Mr. Drew formed a partnership with
+    Mr. Newton, and the celebrated "People's Line" was organized,
+    which purchased all the passenger steamers owned by Drew and
+    Newton. Mr. Drew was the largest stockholder in this company,
+    which, to-day, after a lapse of nearly thirty years, still owns
+    the most magnificent and popular steamers in the world. Soon
+    after its organization, the company built the "Isaac Newton,"
+    the first of those floating palaces for which the Hudson is
+    famed. Since then, it has built the "New World," the "St.
+    John," the "Dean Richmond," and the "Drew," the last two of
+    which cost over seven' hundred thousand dollars each. Repeated
+    efforts have been made to drive this line from the river, but
+    it has been conducted so judiciously and energetically, that,
+    for nearly thirty years, it has held the first place in the
+    public favor.</p>
+
+    <p>In 1847, George Law and Daniel Drew formed a partnership,
+    and established a line of steamers between New York and
+    Stonington, for the purpose of connecting with the railroad
+    from the latter place to Boston. The "Oregon" and the
+    "Knickerbocker" were placed on the route, and the enterprise
+    proved a success. Mr. Drew and Commodore Vanderbilt secured a
+    sufficient amount of stock in the railroad to give them a
+    controlling interest in it, and by the year 1850 the Stonington
+    Steamboat Line was firmly established.</p>
+
+    <p>When the Hudson River Railroad was opened, in 1852, it was
+    confidently expected that the steamboat trade on the river
+    would be destroyed, and the friends and enemies of Mr. Drew
+    alike declared that he might as well lay up his boats, as he
+    would find it impossible to compete with the faster time of the
+    railroad. He was not dismayed, however, for he was satisfied
+    that the land route could not afford to carry freight and
+    passengers as cheap as they could be transported by water. He
+    knew that it would only be necessary to reduce his passenger
+    and freight rates below those of the railroad, to continue in
+    the enjoyment of his immense business, and his faith in the
+    steady expansion of the trade of the city induced him to
+    believe that the time was close at hand when railroad and
+    steamers would all have as much as they could do to accommodate
+    it. His views were well founded, and his hopes have been more
+    than realized. The river trade has steadily increased, while
+    the Hudson River Railroad is taxed to its utmost capacity to
+    accommodate its immense traffic.</p>
+
+    <p>In 1849, Mr. Drew, in connection with other parties, bought
+    out the Champlain Transportation Company. This corporation had
+    a capital of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and ran a
+    line of five steamers from White Hall to the Canada end of the
+    lake. The new proprietors ran the line seven years, and in 1856
+    sold out to the Saratoga and White Hall Railroad Company.</p>
+
+    <p>As a steamboat manager, Daniel Drew has few equals and no
+    superiors. His ventures on the water have all been crowned with
+    success, a result due entirely to his judicious and liberal
+    management His employ&eacute;s are chosen with the greatest
+    care, and generally remain with him during their lives. He is
+    very liberal in his dealings with those who serve him
+    faithfully, but will not tolerate a single careless or
+    incompetent man, however unimportant may be his position. The
+    steamers owned by him are almost entirely free from accidents,
+    and such misfortunes as have befallen them have been those
+    against which no skill or foresight could guard. He refuses to
+    insure his boats, holding that care and prudence are the best
+    safeguards against accidents, and thus saves half a million
+    dollars. When the "Dean Richmond" was run down by the
+    "Vanderbilt," a year or two ago, he lost nearly three hundred
+    thousand dollars. He paid every claim presented by shippers and
+    passengers, as soon as made, without submitting one of them to
+    the adjudication of the courts.</p>
+
+    <p>In 1836, Mr. Drew entered the banking business in Wall
+    Street, and in 1840 established the widely-known firm of Drew,
+    Robinson &amp; Co. This house engaged largely in the financial
+    operations of the day, and became known as one of the most
+    uniformly successful in its dealings of any in the city. Mr.
+    Drew remained at the head of it for thirteen years, but in 1855
+    withdrew to make room for his son-in-law, Mr. Kelley. This
+    gentleman died soon after his connection with the firm, and Mr.
+    Drew resumed his old place.</p>
+
+    <p>Having succeeded so well in all his ventures, Mr. Drew now
+    determined to enter another field. Railroad stocks were very
+    profitable, and might be made to yield him an immense return
+    for his investments, and he decided to invest a considerable
+    part of his fortune in them. In 1855, he endorsed the
+    acceptances of the Erie Railroad Company for five hundred
+    thousand dollars. This was the first decided evidence the
+    public had received of his immense wealth, and in 1857 another
+    was given by his endorsement of a fresh lot of Erie acceptances
+    amounting to a million and a half of dollars. This last
+    indorsement was made in the midst of the great financial panic
+    of 1857, and occasioned no little comment. Men could admire,
+    though they could not understand, the sublime confidence which
+    enabled Mr. Drew to risk a million and a half of dollars in the
+    midst of such a terrible crisis. Some one asked him if he could
+    sleep quietly at night with such large interests at stake.
+    "Sir," he replied, calmly, "I have never lost a night's rest on
+    account of business in my life."</p>
+
+    <p>In 1857, Mr. Drew was elected a director of the Erie
+    Railroad Company, a position he held until recently. He was
+    subsequently elected treasurer of the company, and is one of
+    the principal holders of Erie stock. He is also one of the
+    principal creditors of the company. The recent proceedings in
+    the New York courts to prevent the Erie Road from issuing the
+    new stock necessary to complete its broad-gauge connections
+    with the West, are too fresh in the mind of the reader to need
+    a recital of them here. It was proposed to issue ten millions
+    of dollars worth of new stock, and Mr. Drew was to guarantee
+    the bonds. After a tedious and costly suit, in which the New
+    York Central Road endeavored to prevent the issue of the stock,
+    in the hope of keeping the Erie Road from forming through
+    connections with the West, the New York Legislature legalized
+    the new issue, and a compromise was effected between Mr. Drew,
+    in behalf of the Erie Road, and Commodore Vanderbilt, who
+    represented the New York Central.</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Drew still continues his operations in Wall Street,
+    where he is known as one of the boldest and most extensive, as
+    well as one of the most successful, of all the operators in
+    railroad stocks. Though losing heavily at times, he has
+    nevertheless been one of fortune's favorites. His efforts have
+    not been confined to the Erie Road. He owns stock in other
+    roads, and, together with Commodore Vanderbilt, took up the
+    floating debt of over half a million of dollars which weighed
+    down the Harlem Road, and placed it in its present prosperous
+    condition.</p>
+
+    <p>He owns a fine grazing farm on the Harlem Railroad, about
+    fifty miles from New York. It is situated in Carmel, in Putnam
+    County; is nearly one thousand acres in extent, and includes
+    the old farm on which he was born. He has made it one of the
+    finest and most profitable in the State, and, it is said,
+    values it above all his other possessions. He has improved and
+    beautified it upon an extensive scale, and near the old
+    grave-yard, where his parents lie sleeping, he has built one of
+    the most beautiful churches in the land.</p>
+
+    <p>In 1811, Mr. Drew became a member of the Methodist Church,
+    but for twenty-five years this connection was merely nominal.
+    During all the years of his drover's life he kept himself free
+    from the sins of intemperance and swearing. Once while riding
+    out in a buggy with a friend, to look at some cattle, a
+    thunder-storm came on, and his horse was killed in the shafts
+    by lightning. This narrow escape from death made a deep
+    impression on his mind, and in 1841 he united with the Mulberry
+    Street Methodist Church, of which he became an active member
+    and a trustee. The elegant marble structure now standing at the
+    corner of Fourth Avenue and Twenty-second Street attests his
+    liberality to this congregation. He is a trustee in the
+    Wesleyan University, and has largely endowed that institution;
+    and within the past few years has contributed several hundred
+    thousand dollars for the endowment of the Drew Theological
+    Seminary, which has been established at Madison, New Jersey,
+    for the education of candidates for the Methodist ministry. He
+    gives largely in aid of missionary work, and is one of the most
+    liberal men in his denomination. It is said that he gives away
+    at least one hundred thousand dollars annually in private
+    charities, besides the large donations with which the public
+    are familiar. He selects his own charities, and refuses
+    promptly to aid those which do not commend themselves to
+    him.</p>
+
+    <p>His property is estimated at twenty millions of dollars, and
+    he is said to earn at least half a million of dollars every
+    year. He has two children, a son and a daughter, the latter of
+    whom is the wife of a clergyman of the Baptist Church.</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Drew is about five feet ten inches high, and slenderly
+    made. He is very active and vigorous for his age, and looks a
+    much younger man than he is. His expression is firm, but withal
+    pleasant. His features are regular, but dark and deeply marked,
+    while his black hair is still unstreaked with gray. He is
+    courteous and friendly in his intercourse, and is very much
+    liked by his acquaintances.</p>
+    <hr style='width: 65%;'>
+    <a name='CHAPTER_XI'></a>
+
+    <h2>CHAPTER XI.</h2>
+
+    <h3>JAMES B. EADS.</h3><br>
+
+
+    <p>JAMES B. EADS was born in Lawrenceburg, Indiana, in the year
+    1820. His father was a man of moderate means, and was able to
+    give him a fair English education. From his earliest childhood
+    he evinced a remarkable fondness for all sorts of machinery and
+    mechanical arrangements. This fondness became at length a
+    passion, and excited the surprise of his friends, who could not
+    imagine why a mere child should be so much interested in such
+    things. His greatest delight was to go to the machine shops in
+    his neighborhood, in which he had many friends, and watch the
+    workings of the various inventions employed therein.</p>
+
+    <p>When he was nine years old his father removed to Louisville,
+    Kentucky. During the voyage down the Ohio, young Eads passed
+    the most of his time in watching the engines of the steamer.
+    The engineer was so much pleased to see his interest in the
+    machinery that he explained the whole system of the
+    steam-engine to him. The boy listened eagerly, and every word
+    remained fixed in his mind. Two years later, with no further
+    instruction on the subject, he constructed a miniature engine,
+    which was worked by steam. This, for a boy of eleven years, was
+    no insignificant triumph of genius. His father, anxious to
+    encourage such unmistakable talent, now fitted up a small
+    workshop for him, in which he constructed models of saw mills,
+    fire engines, steamboats, and electrotyping machines. When he
+    was only twelve years old he was able to take to pieces and
+    reset the family clock and a patent lever watch, using no tool
+    for this purpose but his pocket-knife.</p>
+
+    <p>At the age of thirteen his pleasant employment was brought
+    to a sudden end. His father lost all his property by the
+    failure of some commercial transactions, and the family was
+    brought to the verge of ruin. It now became necessary for young
+    Eads to labor for his own support, and for that of his mother
+    and sisters. Boy as he was, he faced the crisis bravely. Having
+    in vain sought employment in Louisville, he resolved to go to
+    St. Louis. He worked his passage there on a river steamer, and
+    landed in that city so poor that he had neither shoes to his
+    feet nor a coat to his back. He found it as difficult to
+    procure work here as it had been in Louisville, and was at
+    length compelled to resort to peddling apples on the street in
+    order to secure a living. He did this for some time, never
+    relaxing his efforts to obtain more desirable employment.</p>
+
+    <p>After many attempts he succeeded in getting a situation in a
+    mercantile house, at a fair salary. One of his employers was a
+    man of wealth and culture, and was possessed of one of the
+    finest private libraries in the West. Learning the
+    extraordinary mechanical talent possessed by his young clerk,
+    this gentleman placed his library at his disposal. The offer
+    was promptly and gratefully accepted, and young Eads devoted
+    almost all his leisure time to the study of mechanics,
+    machinery, and civil engineering. He remained with this house
+    for several years, and then obtained a clerkship on one of the
+    Mississippi River steamers, where he passed several years more.
+    During this time he became intimately acquainted with the great
+    river and its tributaries, and acquired an extensive knowledge
+    of all subjects appertaining to western navigation, which
+    proved of great service to him in his after life.</p>
+
+    <p>In 1842, being then twenty-two years old, and having saved a
+    moderate sum of money, he formed a copartnership with Messrs.
+    Case &amp; Nelson, boat builders, of St. Louis, for the purpose
+    of recovering steamboats and their cargoes which had been sunk
+    or wrecked in the Mississippi. Accidents of this kind were then
+    very common in those waters, and the business bade fair to be
+    very profitable. The enterprise succeeded better than had been
+    expected, and the operations of the wrecking company extended
+    from Galena, Illinois, to the Balize, and into many of the
+    tributaries of the great river. The parties interested in the
+    scheme realized a handsome profit on their investments. Mr.
+    Eads was the practical man of the concern, and worked hard to
+    establish it upon a successful footing. In 1845 he sold out his
+    interest in the company, and established a glass manufactory in
+    St. Louis. This was the first enterprise of the kind ever
+    attempted west of the Mississippi. Two years later, in 1847, he
+    organized a new company for the purpose of recovering boats and
+    cargoes lost in the Mississippi and its tributaries. This
+    company started with a capital of fifteen hundred dollars. It
+    was slow work at first, but a steady improvement was made every
+    year, and in 1857, just ten years from the date of their
+    organization, the property of the firm was valued at more than
+    half a million of dollars. During the winter of 1856-'57, Mr.
+    Eads laid before Congress a formal proposition to remove the
+    obstructions from the western rivers and keep them open for a
+    term of years, upon payment of a reasonable sum by the General
+    Government. Had this proposition been accepted, the benefits
+    thereby secured to all who were engaged in the navigation of
+    those rivers would have been very great. A bill was reported in
+    Congress authorizing the acceptance of Mr. Eads' offer, but was
+    defeated through the influence of the Senators from Mississippi
+    (Jefferson Davis) and Louisiana (J.P. Benjamin).</p>
+
+    <p>In 1857, Mr. Eads was compelled, on account of ill-health,
+    to retire from business. He had earned a handsome fortune by
+    his industry and enterprise, and could well afford to rest for
+    a short time, preparatory, as it afterward proved, to the most
+    important part of his whole career.</p>
+
+    <p>When the secession troubles began to agitate the country,
+    toward the close of the year 1860, Mr. Eads cast the weight of
+    his private and public influence on the side of the Union. He
+    felt that the war, if it should come, would be a very serious
+    affair for the West, as the prosperity of that section depends
+    largely upon the absolute freedom of the navigation of the
+    Mississippi. The Confederates well understood this, and
+    prepared from the first to close the great river until their
+    independence should be acknowledged by the General Government.
+    Dr. Boynton, in his "History of the United States Navy During
+    the Rebellion," thus describes the condition of affairs in the
+    West, a proper understanding of which will show the reader the
+    importance of the services subsequently rendered by Mr.
+    Eads:</p>
+
+    <div class='blkquot'>
+        <p>The main features of the rebel plan of war in the West
+        were to seize and hold Missouri, and, as a consequence,
+        Kansas and Nebraska, and thus threaten or invade the free
+        States of the North-west from that point; to hold Kentucky
+        and Tennessee, and, if possible, to cross the Ohio, and
+        make the Northern States the theater of the war; or, in
+        case they should be unable to invade the North, to maintain
+        their battle line unbroken along the Ohio and through
+        Missouri; to keep the great rivers closed, and thus holding
+        back the North, and being secure within their own
+        territory, at length compel the recognition of their
+        independence. They certainly presented to the North a most
+        formidable front, a line of defenses which was indeed
+        impregnable to any means of assault which the Government at
+        first possessed. No army could be moved into Tennessee by
+        land alone, because the line of communication with a
+        Northern base could not be held secure, and a defeat far
+        from the Ohio would be the destruction of an army, and open
+        the road for an invasion of Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio,
+        and the destruction of their cities.</p>
+
+        <p>It was quite evident that no impression could be made
+        upon the power of the rebellion in the West, until a firm
+        foothold could be gained in Kentucky and Tennessee, and
+        until the Mississippi could be wrested from the
+        conspirators' control. It was clear that the whole seaboard
+        might be regained, even to Florida, and yet the rebellion
+        remain as dangerous as ever, if the rebels could hold the
+        Mississippi River and the valley up to or near the
+        Ohio.</p>
+
+        <p>France was looking with eager eyes toward Texas, in the
+        hope of securing and extending her Mexican usurpation.
+        England was ready to give all the assistance in her power
+        to any step which would weaken the North; and had the
+        rebels been pressed back from the seaports and the Northern
+        Atlantic slope, they would have had it in their power, if
+        still holding the Mississippi, the South-west, including
+        Tennessee, and the great natural fortresses of the
+        mountains, to have so connected themselves with Mexico and
+        France as to have caused the most serious embarrassment. It
+        became absolutely necessary to the success of the
+        Government that the rebels' northern line of defenses
+        should be broken through, and that the Mississippi should
+        be opened to its mouth.</p>
+
+        <p>At first, and before the nature of the work was fully
+        understood, the whole was placed under the direction of the
+        War Department, as it was thought the few armed transports
+        which would be needed would be a mere appendage of the
+        army. The idea of a formidable river navy of a hundred
+        powerful steamers did not in the beginning enter into the
+        minds of any.</p>
+
+        <p>It was soon seen, however, that an entirely new
+        description of craft was needed for this work. It was clear
+        that the river boats, which had been built for the common
+        purposes of freight and passage, were not capable of
+        resisting the fire of heavy artillery, and that the
+        batteries of the rebels could not be captured nor even
+        passed by them. They could not even be safely employed
+        alone in the transportation of troops, for they could be
+        sunk or crippled by the field batteries that could be moved
+        from point to point. The question of iron-clads was
+        proposed, but with only the ocean iron-clads as a guide,
+        who should conceive the proper form of an armored boat
+        which could navigate our rivers and compete successfully
+        with the heavy guns, rifled as well as smooth-bore, of the
+        fortifications. It was by no means easy to solve this
+        problem, but it was absolutely necessary that the attempt
+        should be made.... These forts could only be reduced by the
+        aid of gunboats, and these were almost literally to be
+        created.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <p>There was in the Cabinet of President Lincoln at this time a
+    western man, intimately acquainted with the steamboat interest
+    of the Mississippi. This was Edward Bates, the Attorney-General
+    of the United States. He was an old friend of Mr. Eads, and
+    felt assured that in case of war the services of that gentleman
+    would be of the greatest value to the country. When it was
+    found that hostilities could not be avoided, he mentioned the
+    name of Mr. Eads to the Cabinet, and strongly urged that his
+    services should be secured at the earliest possible moment. On
+    the 17th of April, 1861, three days after Fort Sumter had
+    fallen, he wrote to Mr. Eads, who was living in comfortable
+    retirement, at St. Louis: "Be not surprised if you are called
+    here suddenly by telegram. If called, come instantly. In a
+    certain contingency it will be necessary to have the aid of the
+    most thorough knowledge of our western rivers, and the use of
+    steam on them, and in that event I have advised that you should
+    be consulted."</p>
+
+    <p>A few days later Mr. Eads was summoned to Washington. Mr.
+    Bates there explained to him in full a plan he had conceived
+    for occupying Cairo, and endeavoring to hold the Mississippi by
+    means of gunboats. Mr. Eads warmly indorsed the plan, and was
+    introduced by Mr. Bates to the President and members of the
+    Cabinet. When the plan was proposed to the Cabinet, the
+    Secretary of War pronounced it unnecessary and impracticable,
+    but the Secretary of the Navy was much impressed with it, and
+    requested Mr. Eads to submit his views in writing, which was
+    done. The paper embodied Judge Bates's general plan in addition
+    to Mr. Eads's own views, and contained suggestions as to the
+    kind of boats best fitted for service on the western rivers,
+    and also in regard to the best points on those streams for the
+    erection of land batteries. This paper was submitted to the
+    Navy Department on the 29th of April, 1861, and was referred by
+    the Secretary to Commodore Paulding, who reported in favor of
+    its adoption.</p>
+
+    <p>The Secretary of the Navy now detailed Captain John Rodgers
+    to accompany Mr. Eads to the West, and purchase and fit out
+    such steamers as should be found necessary for the service. Up
+    to this time the Secretary of War had manifested the most
+    supreme indifference in regard to the whole subject, but he now
+    claimed entire jurisdiction in the matter, and this
+    interference caused considerable vexation and delay. At length
+    he issued an order to Mr. Eads and Captain Rodgers to proceed
+    with their purchases. These gentlemen obtained the approval of
+    General McClellan, in whose department the purchases were to be
+    made, and began their operations.</p>
+
+    <p>Upon arriving at Cairo, they found one of the old snag-boat
+    fleet, called the "Benton." Mr. Eads knew the boat well, as he
+    had formerly owned her, and proposed to purchase and arm her,
+    but Captain Rodgers did not approve the plan for converting her
+    into a gunboat. Mr. Eads then proposed to purchase and arm
+    several of the strong, swift boats used for the navigation of
+    the Missouri River, and equip them at St. Louis, from which
+    point there would always be water enough to get them below
+    Cairo. Captain Rodgers disapproved this plan also, and went to
+    Cincinnati, where he purchased and equipped the "Conestoga,"
+    "Tyler," and "Lexington," and started them down the river. They
+    were not iron-clad, but were merely protected around the
+    boilers with coal bunkers, and provided with bullet-proof oaken
+    bulwarks. Mr. Eads had warned Captain Rodgers that he could not
+    depend upon the Ohio to get his boats down to Cairo, and his
+    predictions were realized. The boats were started from
+    Cincinnati some time in July; they were detained on the bars of
+    the Ohio for six or seven weeks, and did not reach Cairo until
+    about the first of September; then the bottom of the "Tyler"
+    was found to be so badly damaged by sand-bars that she had to
+    be put on the marine railway for repairs.</p>
+
+    <p>In July, 1861, the War Department advertised for proposals
+    to construct a number of iron-clad gunboats for service on the
+    Mississippi River. On the 5th of August, when the bids were
+    opened, it was found that Mr. Eads proposed to build these
+    boats in a shorter time and upon more favorable terms than any
+    one else. His offer was accepted, and on the 7th of August he
+    signed a contract with Quartermaster-General Meigs to have
+    ready for their crews and armaments, <i>in sixty-five days</i>,
+    seven vessels, of about six hundred tons each, each to draw six
+    feet of water, to carry thirteen heavy guns, to be plated with
+    iron two and a half inches thick, and to steam nine miles per
+    hour. "They were one hundred and seventy-five feet long, and
+    fifty-one and a half feet wide; the hulls of wood; their sides
+    placed out from the bottom of the boat to the water line at an
+    angle of about thirty-five degrees, and from the water line the
+    sides fell back at about the same angle, to form a slanting
+    casemate, the gun-deck being but a foot above water. This
+    slanting casemate extended across the hull, near the bow and
+    stern, forming a quadrilateral gun-deck. Three nine or ten-inch
+    guns were placed in the bow, four similar ones on each side,
+    and two smaller ones astern. The casemate inclosed the wheel,
+    which was placed in a recess at the stern of the vessel. The
+    plating was two and a half inches thick, thirteen inches wide,
+    and was rabbeted on the edges to make a more perfect
+    joint."</p>
+
+    <p>In undertaking to complete these vessels in sixty-five days,
+    Mr. Eads had assumed a heavy responsibility. The manufacturing
+    interests of the West were sadly crippled by the sudden
+    commencement of hostilities, and doubt and distrust prevailed
+    every-where. The worst feature of all was, that skilled workmen
+    were either enlisting in the army or seeking employment in
+    States more remote from the scene of war. Every thing needed
+    for the gunboats was to be made. Even the timber for their
+    hulls was still standing in the forest, and the huge machinery
+    which was to roll out and harden their iron plates had yet to
+    be constructed. No single city, no two cities, however great in
+    resources, could possibly supply every thing needed within the
+    stipulated time, and it was necessary to employ help wherever
+    it could be obtained.</p>
+
+    <p>The very day the contract was signed, the telegraph was kept
+    busy sending instructions all over the West for the
+    commencement of the various parts of the work. The saw-mills in
+    Kentucky, Tennessee, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Minnesota, and
+    Missouri were set to getting out the timber, which was hurried
+    to St. Louis by railroad and steamboat as fast as it was ready.
+    There were twenty-one steam engines and thirty-five boilers to
+    be made, and the machine-shops in St. Louis, Cincinnati, and
+    Pittsburgh were put to work upon them. The huge rolling-mills
+    of Cincinnati and Portsmouth, Ohio, Newport, Kentucky, and St.
+    Louis were engaged in making the iron plates, and employed for
+    this purpose no less than four thousand men. Night and day,
+    Sundays included, the work went on with an almost superhuman
+    swiftness. Mr. Eads paid the workmen on the hulls large sums
+    from his own pocket, in addition to their wages, to induce them
+    to continue steadily at their work.</p>
+
+    <p>On the 12th of October, 1861, just forty-five days from the
+    time of laying her keel, the first iron-clad, belonging to the
+    United States, was launched, with her engines and boilers on
+    board. Rear Admiral Foote (then a flag officer), appointed to
+    command the Mississippi squadron, named her the "St. Louis,"
+    but upon being transferred to the Navy Department her name was
+    changed to the "Baron de Kalb." She was followed by the other
+    vessels in rapid succession, all being completed within the
+    stipulated time.</p>
+
+    <p>In September, 1861, General Fremont ordered the purchase of
+    the snag boat "Benton," which had been proposed by Mr. Eads and
+    rejected by Captain Rodgers, and sent her to Mr. Eads to be
+    armored and equipped as a gunboat. Work was at once begun on
+    her, and pushed forward with the same energy that had been
+    displayed in the construction of the other iron-clads. Her
+    performances during the war fully sustained the high esteem in
+    which she was held by the officers of the navy. Admirals Foote
+    and Davis pronounced her the "best iron-clad in the world."</p>
+
+    <p>By dint of such skill and energy as we have described, Mr.
+    Eads, in the brief period of one hundred days, built and had
+    ready for service a powerful iron-clad fleet of eight steamers,
+    carrying one hundred and seven heavy guns, and having an
+    aggregate capacity of five thousand tons. Such a work was one
+    of the greatest in magnitude ever performed, and, as may be
+    supposed, required a heavy capital to carry it to perfection.
+    Mr. Eads soon exhausted his own means, and but for the
+    assistance of friends, whose confidence in his integrity and
+    capacity induced them to advance him large sums, would have
+    been compelled to abandon the undertaking; for the Government,
+    upon various pretexts, delayed for months the stipulated
+    payments, and by its criminal negligence came near bringing the
+    iron-clad fleet, so necessary to its success, to an untimely
+    end. It was prompt enough, however, to commission the vessels
+    as soon as they were ready. At the time they rendered such good
+    service in the conquest of Forts Henry and Donelson, and
+    compelled the fall of Island No. 10, they were still unpaid
+    for, and the private property of Mr. Eads.</p>
+
+    <p>In the spring of 1862, Mr. Eads, in accordance with the
+    desire of the Navy Department, submitted plans for
+    light-draught armored vessels for service on the western
+    rivers. He proposed an ingenious revolving turret to be used on
+    these vessels, the performance of which he agreed to guarantee
+    to the satisfaction of the Department; but the Government
+    decided to use the Ericsson turret, which the recent encounter
+    between the Monitor and Merrimac had proved to be a success.
+    Mr. Eads was allowed, however, to modify the Ericsson turret
+    considerably, in order to avoid making the draft of his
+    steamers greater than was desired. He built the "Osage" and
+    "Neosho," and when these vessels were launched, with all their
+    weight on board, it was found that they were really lighter
+    than the contract called for, a circumstance which permitted
+    the thickness of their armor to be afterward increased half an
+    inch without injuring their draught or speed.</p>
+
+    <p>In May, 1862, at the request of the Navy Department, Mr.
+    Eads submitted plans for four iron-clads, iron hull propellers,
+    to carry two turrets each of eight inches thickness, four
+    eleven inch guns, and three-quarters inch deck armor, to steam
+    nine nautical miles per hour, to carry three days' coal, and
+    not to exceed a draught of six feet of water. His plans were
+    accepted, and he constructed the "Winnebago," "Kickapoo,"
+    "Milwaukee," and "Chickasaw." Like the "Osage" and "Neosho,"
+    these vessels were found to be of lighter draught than had been
+    agreed upon, and the Department ordered all four to have an
+    extra plating of three-quarters inch armor, which was done.
+    Three of the vessels were also reported, by the officers of the
+    navy sent to examine them, to exceed the speed required by the
+    contract, while the fourth was fully up to the standard.</p>
+
+    <p>Of how many "Government Contractors" during the war can it
+    be said that their work was much better than they had agreed to
+    furnish? Verily, we think Mr. Eads stands almost alone in this
+    respect, his proud position made still more honorable by its
+    comparative isolation.</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Eads built, during the war, fourteen heavily armored
+    gunboats, four heavy mortar boats, and converted seven
+    transports into musket-proof gunboats, or "tin-clads," as they
+    were called on the river. He had a share in other enterprises
+    of a similar nature during the war, and besides rendering good
+    service to the Union, was enabled to retire at the close of the
+    struggle with a handsome fortune, won by his own patriotic
+    skill and energy.</p>
+
+    <p>Whatever may be the distinction awarded to others, to him
+    belongs the credit of having been the first to provide the
+    Government with the means of securing that firm hold upon the
+    great river of the West which, once gained, was never
+    relaxed.</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Eads resides in St. Louis. He is still in the prime of
+    life, is admired and honored by his fellow-citizens, and
+    affords a splendid example of what genius and industry can do
+    for a poor, friendless boy in that glorious western country
+    which is one day to be the seat of empire in the New World.</p>
+    <hr style='width: 65%;'>
+    <a name='CHAPTER_XII'></a>
+
+    <h2>CHAPTER XII.</h2>
+
+    <h3>CYRUS W. FIELD.</h3><br>
+
+
+    <p>Cyrus far we have been considering the struggles of men who
+    have risen from obscure positions in life, by the aid of their
+    own genius, industry, and courage, to the front rank of their
+    respective callings. We shall now relate the story of one who
+    having already won fortune, periled it all upon an enterprise
+    in which his own genius had recognized the path to fame and to
+    still greater success, but which the almost united voice of the
+    people of his country condemned as visionary, and from which
+    they coldly held aloof until its brilliant success compelled
+    them to acknowledge the wisdom and foresight of its
+    projector.</p>
+
+    <p>Fifteen years ago very few persons had heard of Cyrus W.
+    Field. Ten years ago he had achieved considerable notoriety as
+    a visionary who was bent on sinking his handsome fortune in the
+    sea. To-day, the world is full of his fame, as the man to whom,
+    above all others, it is indebted for the successful completion
+    of the Atlantic Telegraph; and those who were formerly loudest
+    in ridiculing him are now foremost in his praise. "Nothing
+    succeeds like success," and what was once in their eyes mere
+    folly, and worthy only of ridicule, they now hail as the
+    evidences of his courage, foresight, and profound wisdom, and
+    wonder that they never could see them in their true light
+    before.</p>
+
+    <p><span class="small-caps">Cyrus West Field</span> was born at
+    Stockbridge, Massachusetts, on the 30th day of November, 1819,
+    and is the son of the Rev. David Dudley Field, a distinguished
+    clergyman of that State. He was carefully educated in the
+    primary and grammar schools of his native county, and at the
+    age of fifteen went to New York to seek his fortune. He had no
+    difficulty in obtaining a clerkship in an enterprising
+    mercantile house in that city, and, from the first, gave
+    evidence of unusual business capacity. His employers, pleased
+    with his promise, advanced him rapidly, and in a few years he
+    became a partner in the house. His success as a merchant was
+    uniform and marked&mdash;so marked, indeed, that in 1853, when
+    only thirty-four years old, he was able to partially retire
+    from business with a large fortune as the substantial reward of
+    his mercantile career.</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Field had devoted himself so closely to his business
+    that, at his retirement, he resolved to seek recreation and
+    change of scene in foreign travel, and accordingly he left New
+    York, and passed the next six months in journeying through the
+    mountains of South America. Upon his return home, at the close
+    of the year 1853, he declared his intention to withdraw
+    entirely from active participation in business, and to engage
+    in no new schemes.</p>
+
+    <p>He had scarcely returned home, however, when his brother,
+    Mr. Matthew D. Field, a successful and well-known civil
+    engineer, informed him that he had just become acquainted with
+    a Mr. Frederick N. Gisborne, of Newfoundland, who had come to
+    New York for the purpose of interesting some American
+    capitalists in a company which had been organized in
+    Newfoundland for the purpose of procuring news in America and
+    Europe, and transmitting it between the two continents with
+    greater dispatch than was possible in the then existing mode of
+    communication between the two countries. The scheme of Mr.
+    Gisborne had commended itself to Mr. Matthew Field, and he
+    urged his brother to meet that gentleman and hear his
+    statements. Mr. Cyrus Field at once declined to undertake any
+    share in the enterprise, and said that it would be useless for
+    him to meet Mr. Gisborne; but his brother was so urgent that he
+    at last consented to grant Mr. Gisborne an interview, and at
+    least hear what he had to say. At the appointed time, Mr. Field
+    received Mr. Gisborne at his house, and was there made
+    acquainted with the proposed plan of operations of the
+    "Electric Telegraph Company of Newfoundland." This company had
+    gone into bankruptcy a short time previous, but Mr. Gisborne
+    hoped to be able to revive it by the aid of American capital.
+    The scheme which he laid before Mr. Field, can not be better
+    stated than by quoting the following extract from the charter
+    which the Legislature of Newfoundland had granted the
+    bankruptcy company:</p>
+
+    <p>"The telegraph line of this company is designed to be
+    strictly an 'Inter-Continental Telegraph,' Its termini will be
+    New York, in the United States, and London, in the Kingdom of
+    Great Britain; these points are to be connected by a line of
+    electric telegraph from New York to St. John's, Newfoundland,
+    partly on poles, partly laid in the ground, and partly through
+    the water, and a line of the swiftest steamships ever built,
+    from that point to Ireland. The trips of these steamships, it
+    is expected, will not exceed five days, and as very little time
+    will be occupied in transmitting messages between St. John's
+    and New York, the communication between the latter city and
+    London or Liverpool, will be effected in <i>six days,</i> or
+    less. The company will have likewise stationed at St. John's a
+    steam yacht, for the purpose of intercepting the European and
+    American steamships, so that no opportunity may be lost in
+    forwarding intelligence in advance of the ordinary channels of
+    communication."</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Field listened attentively to his visitor, but declined
+    to commit himself to more than an expression of sympathy with
+    the enterprise. After the departure of his guest, he took the
+    globe which stood in his library, and turning it over, began to
+    examine the proposed route of the telegraph line and the
+    distance to be traversed by the steamers. While engaged in this
+    examination, the idea flashed across his mind that instead of
+    undertaking such a complicated scheme, it would be better to
+    attempt to stretch a telegraph wire entirely across the ocean,
+    from the shores of Newfoundland to the coast of Ireland. The
+    vastness of this scheme pleased him, and its usefulness to the
+    entire world, if it could be carried out, was clear to his mind
+    from the first.</p>
+
+    <p>He at once set to work to ascertain if such an undertaking
+    as an Atlantic telegraph was practicable. He wrote to
+    Lieutenant Maury, then the Chief of the National Observatory at
+    Washington, and asked if the laying of such a wire was
+    possible; and to Professor Morse, the inventor of the
+    telegraph, to know if such a wire would be available for
+    sending messages if it could be laid. Lieutenant Maury promptly
+    replied, inclosing a copy of a report he had just made to the
+    Secretary of the Navy on the subject, from which Mr. Field
+    learned that the idea of laying a telegraph across the ocean
+    was not original with himself. In this report Lieutenant Maury
+    demonstrated the entire practicability of such an enterprise,
+    and sustained his conclusions by a statement of the recent
+    discoveries concerning the bed of the ocean, made by Lieutenant
+    Berryman. Professor Morse came in person to visit Mr. Field,
+    and assured him of his entire faith in the possibility of
+    sending telegraphic messages across the ocean with rapidity and
+    success.</p>
+
+    <p>The two highest authorities in the world thus having assured
+    him of the entire practicability of the undertaking, Mr. Field
+    declared his readiness, if he could procure the assistance of a
+    sufficient number of capitalists in the United States, to
+    undertake the laying of a telegraph across the Atlantic between
+    Europe and America. Further deliberation only made him better
+    satisfied with the undertaking, and he set to work to find ten
+    capitalists, each of whom he proposed should contribute one
+    hundred thousand dollars, making the capital of the proposed
+    company one million of dollars. Mr. Field was convinced that
+    the undertaking would be expensive, but he had then but a faint
+    conception of its magnitude, and was very far from supposing
+    that "he might yet be drawn on to stake upon its success the
+    whole fortune he had accumulated; that he was to sacrifice for
+    it all the peace and quiet he had hoped to enjoy, and that for
+    twelve years he was to be almost without a home, crossing and
+    recrossing the sea, urging his enterprise in Europe and
+    America."</p>
+
+    <p>The scientific questions involved in the undertaking were so
+    little understood at the time by the public, and the popular
+    judgment regarded the attempt to stretch a cable across the
+    deep, mysterious ocean with so much incredulity, that Mr. Field
+    had considerable trouble in finding gentlemen willing or
+    prepared to share his faith in the enterprise. His first effort
+    was to induce Mr. Peter Cooper, of New York, his next door
+    neighbor, to join him, and he succeeded so well that Mr. Cooper
+    consented to do so if several others would unite with them.
+    Encouraged by his success with Mr. Cooper, whose name was a
+    tower of strength to his cause, Mr. Field renewed his efforts,
+    and succeeded in winning over the following gentlemen, and in
+    the order named: Moses Taylor, Marshall O. Roberts, and
+    Chandler White. These gentlemen were very slow to accept the
+    views of Mr. Field, but, once having done so, they never lost
+    faith in the ultimate success of the undertaking. The more
+    thoroughly they became acquainted with its magnitude and
+    costliness, the stronger grew their confidence in it, for this
+    increase of knowledge not only showed them more plainly its
+    difficulties and dangers, but developed new grounds on which to
+    base their hopes.</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Field was about to continue his efforts to procure
+    additional names, when Mr. Cooper proposed that the five
+    gentlemen already pledged to the scheme should undertake its
+    entire cost without waiting for the other four. The proposition
+    was agreed to, and it was decided to take the necessary steps
+    to procure a charter for their company from the Legislature of
+    Newfoundland. Mr. Field consented to undertake this, and at
+    once set off for St. John's, accompanied by his brother, Mr.
+    David Dudley Field, who was made the legal adviser of the
+    company. At St. John's they were greatly aided by Mr.
+    Archibald, then the Attorney-General of the Colony, and
+    afterward the British Consul at New York, and by the Governor
+    of Newfoundland. They succeeded in obtaining a charter from the
+    Legislature under the name of the "New York, Newfoundland, and
+    London Telegraph Company," with liberal grants in land and
+    money. This accomplished, they assumed and paid the liabilities
+    of the old Telegraph Company which had been brought to Mr.
+    Field's notice by Mr. Gisborne, and thus removed the last
+    difficulty in their way. This much accomplished, Mr. Field
+    hastened back to New York, and on the 6th of May, 1854, the
+    Company was formally organized at the residence of Mr. David
+    Dudley Field. Messrs. Cooper, Taylor, Field, Roberts, and White
+    were the first directors. Mr. Cooper, was made President of the
+    Company, Mr. White, Vice-President, and Mr. Taylor Secretary. A
+    capital of one million and a half of dollars was subscribed on
+    the spot, Mr. Field contributing about two hundred thousand
+    dollars in cash.</p>
+
+    <p>Work was at once begun on the section between New York and
+    St. John's. There was no road across the island of
+    Newfoundland, and the Company had not only to build their
+    telegraph line, but to construct a road by the side of it
+    through an almost unbroken wilderness. It was a work which
+    required the highest executive ability, and the services of an
+    army of men. The distance across the island was four hundred
+    miles, and there were numerous rocky gorges, morasses, and
+    rivers in the way. The country was a desolation, and it was
+    found that supplies would have to be transported from St.
+    John's. The execution of the work was committed to Mr. White,
+    the Vice-President, who went to St. John's to act as the
+    general agent of the Company, and to Mr. Matthew D. Field, who
+    was appointed constructing engineer. These gentlemen displayed
+    such skill and energy in their respective positions that in two
+    years the Company had not only built a telegraph line and a
+    road of four hundred miles across the island, but had
+    constructed another line of one hundred and forty miles in the
+    island of Cape Breton, and had stretched a submarine cable
+    across the Gulf of St. Lawrence. <a id="footnotetagF"
+       name="footnotetagF"></a><a href=
+       "#footnoteF"><sup>[F]</sup></a> The line was now in working
+       order from New York to St. John's, Newfoundland, a distance
+       of one thousand miles, and it had required about a million
+       of dollars for its construction. It now remained to complete
+       the great work by laying the cable between Newfoundland and
+       Ireland.</p>
+
+    <p>It being desirable to examine still further the bed of the
+    ocean over which the cable was to be laid, Mr. Field requested
+    the Government of the United States to send out an expedition
+    over the route for the purpose of taking deep sea soundings.
+    His request was promptly granted, and an expedition under
+    Lieut. Berryman was dispatched, which proceeded to examine the
+    ocean bed, with the most satisfactory results. This was
+    accomplished in the summer of 1856, and the next year the same
+    route was surveyed by Commander Daymon, with the British war
+    steamer Cyclops&mdash;this survey being ordered by the Lords of
+    the Admiralty, at Mr. Field's request. These surveys made it
+    plain beyond question that a cable could lie safely on the bed
+    of the sea, at a depth sufficient to protect it from vessels'
+    anchors, from icebergs, and from submarine currents, and that
+    it would receive sufficient support from that bed to free it
+    from all undue tension. There was no doubt of the ultimate
+    success of the enterprise in the minds of the directors, but it
+    was necessary to convince the public in both Europe and America
+    that it was not an impossibility, and also to enlist the
+    sympathies of the Governments of Great Britain and the United
+    States, and secure their assistance.</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Field, who had made several voyages to England and to
+    Newfoundland in behalf of the company, was elected
+    Vice-President after the death of Mr. White, in 1856, and was
+    charged with the duty of proceeding to England to obtain the
+    assistance of the British Government, and to organize the
+    company in London. Thus far the directors had borne the entire
+    cost of the undertaking, and it was but fair that they should
+    seek the means for completing their work in the country which
+    was to be so much benefited by it. Mr. Field sailed for England
+    in the summer of 1856, and upon reaching that country proceeded
+    to consult some of its most eminent engineers and electricians.
+    The English people were slow to believe that so long a cable
+    could be successfully worked, even if laid intact, and to
+    remove their doubts, the opinions of Professor Morse and
+    Lieutenant Maury were published in their newspapers; and this
+    publication brought out communications from many scientific men
+    on the subject, a number of them advocating the undertaking.
+    Thus, the attention of the English public was gained.
+    Experiments were made by Professor Morse, Mr. Bright, and Dr.
+    Whitehouse, which proved beyond all doubt the ease with which a
+    continuous line of more than two thousand miles of wire could
+    be worked; and Professor Morse was able, from these
+    experiments, to declare his conviction that an electric current
+    could pass between London and New York, on such a wire, in the
+    space of one second.</p>
+
+    <p>Science had now done its utmost, and had in every thing
+    sustained the great plan. It was now necessary to ask the aid
+    of Her Majesty's Government. This effort was intrusted to Mr.
+    Field, who carried it through successfully. The English
+    Government agreed to furnish the ships necessary for making
+    soundings and surveys, and to furnish vessels to assist in
+    laying the cable. It also agreed to pay to the company an
+    annual subsidy of fourteen thousand pounds for the transmission
+    of the government messages until the net profits of the company
+    were equal to a dividend of six pounds per cent., when the
+    payment was to be reduced to ten thousand pounds per annum, for
+    a period of twenty-five years. Provision was made for extra
+    payment, in case the government messages exceeded a certain
+    amount; and it was provided that the messages of the
+    Governments of Great Britain and the United States should be
+    placed upon an equal footing, and should have priority in the
+    order in which they arrived at the stations. This last
+    provision exhibited a decided liberality on the part of the
+    English Government, since both ends of the proposed cable would
+    be in British territory. Indeed, throughout the whole
+    negotiation, Great Britain cheerfully accorded to the United
+    States every privilege which she claimed for herself.</p>
+
+    <p>Having secured the aid of the Queen's Government on such
+    liberal terms, Mr. Field now undertook the organization of the
+    company, in addition to the task of raising a capital of three
+    hundred and fifty thousand pounds. In both efforts he was
+    effectively assisted by Mr. John W. Brett, who had laid the
+    first cable across the English Channel, and by Mr. Charles T.
+    Bright and Dr. Edward O.W. Whitehouse. The efforts of these
+    gentlemen were successful. In a few weeks the whole capital was
+    subscribed. It had been divided into three hundred and fifty
+    shares of a thousand pounds each. One hundred and one of these
+    were taken up in London, eighty-six in Liverpool, thirty-seven
+    in Glasgow, twenty-eight in Manchester, and a few in other
+    parts of England. Mr. Field, at the final division of shares,
+    took eighty-eight. He did not design making this investment on
+    his own account, but thinking it but fair that at least
+    one-fourth of the stock should be held in America, he made this
+    subscription with the intention of disposing of his shares
+    after his return home. Owing to his continued absence from New
+    York, and the straitened condition of the money market, it was
+    nearly a year before he could succeed in selling as much as
+    twenty-seven shares. The company was organized in December,
+    1856, a Board of Directors elected, and a contract made for the
+    cable, half of which was to be made in London and the other
+    half in Liverpool.</p>
+
+    <p>The day after the organization of the company, Mr. Field
+    sailed for New York, from which place he at once made a voyage
+    to Newfoundland, to look after some matters which required his
+    presence. Returning home, he hurried to Washington, to secure
+    the aid of the General Government. He met with more opposition
+    here than he had encountered in England. A powerful lobby
+    opposed him, and a spirit of hostility to his bill exhibited
+    itself in Congress, and to such a degree that the measure
+    passed the Senate by a majority of only one vote. It came very
+    near failing in the House, but at length got through, and
+    received the President's signature on the 3d of March,
+    1857.</p>
+
+    <p>In the summer of 1857, Mr. Field having returned to England,
+    the cable was declared to be in readiness for laying. The
+    United States Government now placed at the disposal of the
+    Telegraph Company the magnificent new steam frigate "Niagara,"
+    as the most suitable vessel for laying the cable, and ordered
+    the "Susquehanna," the largest side-wheel frigate in the
+    service, to accompany her in the expedition. The British
+    Government provided the steam frigate "Agamemnon," a splendid
+    vessel, which had been the flagship of the English fleet at the
+    bombardment of Sebastopol, and ordered the "Leopard" to
+    accompany her as an escort. The "Niagara" was commanded by
+    Captain W.L. Hudson, of the United States Navy, and the
+    "Agamemnon" by Captain Noddal, of the Royal Navy. The "Niagara"
+    took on her share of the cable at Liverpool, and the
+    "Agamemnon" received hers at London. It was agreed that the
+    "Niagara" should begin the laying of the cable, and continue it
+    until her portion of it should be exhausted in mid-ocean, when
+    her end of it should be united with the cable on board the
+    "Agamemnon," which ship should continue laying the line until
+    the shores of Newfoundland were reached. After taking on the
+    cable, the ships were ordered to Queenstown.</p>
+
+    <p>The vessels left England in the midst of general rejoicings,
+    and arrived at the rendezvous at the proper time. Thence they
+    sailed for the harbor of Valentia, which was to be the eastern
+    terminus of the line and the starting point of the expedition.
+    They were greeted every-where with enthusiasm, and the greatest
+    confidence in the success of the enterprise was manifested by
+    those on board. Mr. Field, Professor Morse, and several other
+    officers of the company were on board the "Niagara," as that
+    ship was to conduct the first part of the sinking of the
+    cable.</p>
+
+    <p>At length all was in readiness. The shore end of the cable
+    was landed and made fast on Wednesday afternoon, the 5th of
+    August, and the next morning the fleet stood out to sea.
+    "Before they had gone five miles the heavy shore end of the
+    cable caught in the machinery and parted. The 'Niagara' put
+    back, and the cable was 'underrun' the whole distance. At
+    length the end was lifted out of the water and spliced to the
+    gigantic coil, and as it dropped safely to the bottom of the
+    sea, the mighty ship began to stir. At first she moved very
+    slowly, not more than two miles an hour, to avoid the danger of
+    accident; but the feeling that they are at last away is itself
+    a relief. The ships are all in sight, and so near that they can
+    hear each other's bells. The 'Niagara,' as if knowing that she
+    is bound for the land out of whose forests she came, bends her
+    head to the waves, as her prow is turned toward her native
+    shores.</p>
+
+    <p>"Slowly passed the hours of that day. But all went well, and
+    the ships were moving out into the broad Atlantic. At length
+    the sun went down in the west, and stars came out on the face
+    of the deep. But no man slept. A thousand eyes were watching a
+    great experiment, as those who have a personal interest in the
+    issue. All through that night, and through the anxious days and
+    nights that followed, there was a feeling in every soul on
+    board as if a friend in the cabin were at the turning-point of
+    life or death, and they were watching beside him. There was a
+    strange, unnatural silence in the ship. Men paced the deck with
+    soft and muffled tread, speaking only in whispers, as if a loud
+    voice or a heavy footfall might snap the vital cord. So much
+    had they grown to feel for the enterprise, that the cable
+    seemed to them like a human creature, on whose fate they hung,
+    as if it were to decide their own destiny.</p>
+
+    <p>"There are some who will never forget that first night at
+    sea. Perhaps the reaction from the excitement on shore made the
+    impression the deeper. What strange thoughts came to them as
+    they stood on the deck and watched that mysterious cord
+    disappearing in the darkness, and gliding to its ocean bed!
+    There are certain moments in life when every thing comes back
+    upon us&mdash;when the events of years seem crowded into an
+    hour. What memories came up in those long night hours! How many
+    on board that ship thought of homes beyond the sea, of absent
+    ones, of the distant and the dead! Such thoughts, mingling with
+    those suggested by the scene around, added to the solemnity of
+    the hour, had left an impression which can never be
+    forgotten.</p>
+
+    <p>"But with the work in hand all is going on well. There are
+    vigilant eyes on deck. Mr. Bright, the engineer of the company,
+    is there, and Mr. Everett, Mr. De Sauty, the electrician, and
+    Professor Morse. The paying-out machinery does its work, and
+    though it makes a constant rumble in the ship, that dull, heavy
+    sound is music to their ears, as it tells them that all is
+    well. If one should drop to sleep, and wake up at night, he has
+    only to hear the sound of 'the old coffee-mill,' and his fears
+    are relieved, and he goes to sleep again."</p>
+
+    <p>Saturday and Sunday passed away without accident, but on
+    Monday, when two hundred miles at sea, in deep water, and
+    safely beyond the great submarine mountain, the electrical
+    continuity was suddenly lost. This interruption amazed and
+    perplexed all on board, but no one was able to remedy it, or to
+    account for it satisfactorily. It lasted for two hours, and
+    then, just as the order was about to be given to cut the cable
+    and endeavor to wind it in, it came back as suddenly and
+    mysteriously as it had disappeared. The greatest delight was
+    now manifested by all on board. "You could see," says the
+    correspondent of the London <i>Times</i>, "the tears of joy
+    standing in the eyes of some as they almost cried for joy, and
+    told their mess-mates that it was all right."</p>
+
+    <p>That night, however, the expedition came to grief. The cable
+    was running out freely at the rate of six miles per hour, while
+    the ship was making only four. This was supposed to be owing to
+    a powerful undercurrent. To check this waste of the cable the
+    engineer applied the brakes firmly, which at once stopped the
+    machine. The effect was to bring a heavy strain on the cable
+    that was in the water. The stern of the ship was down in the
+    trough of the sea, and as it rose upward on the swell, the
+    pressure was too great, and the cable parted. The alarm was at
+    once given, and the greatest consternation and grief prevailed
+    on board. "It made all hands of us through the day," says
+    Captain Hudson, "like a household or family which had lost
+    their dearest friend, for officers and men had been deeply
+    interested in the success of the enterprise."</p>
+
+    <p>The fleet immediately put about and returned to England,
+    where Mr. Field at once informed the directors of the extent of
+    the disaster. The remaining portions of the cable were landed
+    and stored safely away, and the vessels were returned to their
+    respective Governments. Orders were given for the manufacture
+    of seven hundred miles of cable to replace the portion which
+    had been lost, and to allow for waste in paying it out, and the
+    most energetic preparations were made for another attempt.</p>
+
+    <p>Being satisfied that the machine used for paying out the
+    cable was defective, Mr. Field went to Washington and procured
+    from the Navy Department the services of Mr. Wm. E. Everett,
+    the chief engineer of the "Niagara," stating to that gentleman
+    the necessity for a new machine, and urging him to invent it.
+    This Mr. Everett succeeded in doing during the winter. His
+    machine was regarded as a great improvement on that which had
+    been used on the "Niagara." "It was much smaller and lighter.
+    It would take up only about one third as much room on the deck,
+    and had only one fourth the weight of the old machine. Its
+    construction was much more simple. Instead of four heavy
+    wheels, it had but two, and these were made to revolve with
+    ease, and without danger of sudden check, by the application of
+    what were known as self-releasing brakes. These were the
+    invention of Mr. Appold, of London, a gentleman of fortune, but
+    with a strong taste for mechanics, which led him to spend his
+    time and wealth in exercising his mechanical ingenuity. These
+    brakes were so adjusted as to bear only a certain strain, when
+    they released themselves. This ingenious contrivance was
+    applied by Mr. Everett to the paying-out machinery. The
+    strength of the cable was such that it would not break except
+    under a pressure of a little over three tons. The machinery was
+    so adjusted that not more than half that strain could possibly
+    come upon the cable, when the brakes would relax their grasp,
+    the wheels revolve easily, and the cable run out into the sea
+    'at its own sweet will.' The paying-out machine, therefore, we
+    are far from claiming as wholly an American invention. This
+    part of the mechanism was English. The merit of Mr. Everett lay
+    in the skill with which he adapted it to the laying of the
+    Atlantic cable, and in his great improvements of other parts of
+    the machinery. The whole construction, as it afterward stood
+    upon the decks of the 'Niagara' and the 'Agamemnon,' was the
+    combined product of English and American invention."</p>
+
+    <p>In January, 1858, the Board of Directors offered Mr. Field
+    the sum of five thousand dollars per annum if he would assume
+    the post of general manager of the company. He at once
+    undertook the duties of the position, but declined all
+    compensation.</p>
+
+    <p>Every thing being in readiness for the second attempt at
+    laying the cable, the "Niagara" sailed from New York in March,
+    1858, to take on her portion of the cable at Plymouth. The
+    "Agamemnon" was again ordered to assist in the undertaking, and
+    the "Gorgon" was made her consort Mr. Field had hoped that the
+    "Susquehanna" would again be the consort of the "Niagara," but
+    a few days before the sailing of the fleet he was officially
+    informed that he could not have the ship, as she was then in
+    the West Indies, with the greater part of her crew down with
+    the yellow fever. This was a keen disappointment, as every
+    arrangement had been made with the expectation of having the
+    assistance of the "Susquehanna." It was too late to ask the
+    Government at Washington for another ship, and it was by no
+    means certain that the request would be granted if made. In
+    this dilemma Mr. Field frankly stated his disappointment to the
+    Lords of the Admiralty of England, and asked for a ship to
+    accompany the "Niagara." He was informed that the English
+    Government was at that moment chartering vessels to convey
+    troops to Malta, as it had not ships enough of its own, and
+    that it was doubtful whether it could contribute a third ship
+    to the expedition. Still, so greatly did the government desire
+    the success of the enterprise, that a little later on the same
+    day the "Valorous" was ordered to take the place of the
+    "Susquehanna" in the telegraph fleet. This generous assistance
+    was all the more praiseworthy, as it was given at a time when
+    the need of England for ships was very urgent.</p>
+
+    <p>After shipping the cable, the squadron sailed from Plymouth
+    on the 29th of May, 1868, for the Bay of Biscay, where the
+    cable was subjected to numerous and thorough tests, which
+    demonstrated its strength and its sensitiveness to the electric
+    current. This accomplished, the vessels returned to
+    Plymouth.</p>
+
+    <p>"Among the matters of <i>personal</i> solicitude and anxiety
+    at this time, next to the success of the expedition, was Mr.
+    Field himself. He was working with an activity which was
+    unnatural&mdash;which could only be kept up by great
+    excitement, and which involved the most serious danger. The
+    strain on the man was more than the strain on the cable, and we
+    were in fear that both would break together. Often he had no
+    sleep, except such as he caught flying on the railway. Indeed,
+    when we remonstrated, he said he could rest better there than
+    anywhere else, for then he was not tormented with the thought
+    of any thing undone. For the time being he could do no more;
+    and then, putting his head in the cushioned corner of the
+    carriage, he got an hour or two of broken sleep.</p>
+
+    <p>"Of this activity we had an instance while in Plymouth. The
+    ships were then lying in the Sound, only waiting orders from
+    the Admiralty to go to sea; but some business required one of
+    the directors to go to Paris, and, as usual, it fell upon him.
+    He left on Sunday night, and went to Bristol, and thence, by
+    the first morning train, to London. Monday he was busy all day,
+    and that night went to Paris. Tuesday, another busy day, and
+    that night back to London. Wednesday, occupied every minute
+    till the departure of the Great Western train. That night back
+    to Plymouth. Thursday morning on board the 'Niagara,' and
+    immediately the squadron sailed."</p>
+
+    <p>The plan of operations this time was for the vessels to
+    proceed to a given point in mid-ocean, and there unite the two
+    ends of the cable, after which the "Niagara" should proceed
+    toward Newfoundland and the "Agamemnon" toward Ireland, and it
+    was supposed that each vessel would make land about the same
+    time. This was believed to be a better plan than the one
+    pursued in the first expedition.</p>
+
+    <p>The squadron sailed from Plymouth on the 10th of June. The
+    weather was favorable for the first two or three clays of the
+    voyage, but on the 13th a severe gale set in, which lasted for
+    over a week, and came near causing the "Agamemnon" to founder
+    beneath her immense load, a portion of which broke loose in her
+    hold. All the vessels succeeded in weathering the storm,
+    however, and on the 25th reached the rendezvous in mid-ocean.
+    The next day the splice was made, and the ships set out for
+    their respective destinations. Before they had gone three miles
+    the machinery of the "Niagara" caught the cable and broke it. A
+    second splice was made, but when each ship had paid out about
+    forty miles, the electric current suddenly ceased. The cable
+    was cut promptly, and the two vessels at once returned to the
+    rendezvous, where they rejoined each other on the 28th. A
+    comparison of the logs of the two ships "showed the painful and
+    mysterious fact that at the same second of time each vessel
+    discovered that a total fracture had taken place, at a distance
+    of certainly not less than ten miles from each ship, in fact,
+    as well as can be judged, at the bottom of the ocean." A third
+    splice was made without delay, and the two ships again set out
+    for the opposite shores of the Atlantic. This time about two
+    hundred miles of the cable were successfully laid, when it
+    parted about twenty feet from the stern of the "Agamemnon." The
+    "Niagara," being unable to communicate with the English
+    frigate, bore away for Queenstown, where she was joined a few
+    days later by the "Agamemnon."</p>
+
+    <p>This second failure greatly disheartened the directors, and
+    it required all Mr. Field's persuasiveness to induce them to
+    sanction another attempt. Yet he prevailed, and, hastening from
+    London to Queenstown, sailed with the telegraph fleet on the
+    third attempt to lay the cable, leaving Queenstown on the 17th
+    of July. The rendezvous was reached on the 28th, and on the
+    29th the splice was made; and the "Niagara" and "Agamemnon"
+    parted company. This time the undertaking was successful. The
+    cable was laid across the Atlantic, the "Niagara" reaching
+    Trinity Bay, Newfoundland, on the 5th of August, and the
+    "Agamemnon" arriving at Valentia, Ireland, a few hours later on
+    the same day. Signals were sent across the entire length of the
+    line, from shore to shore, with ease and rapidity, and nothing
+    occurred to mar the success of the mighty undertaking.</p>
+
+    <p>The successful laying of the cable was hailed with the
+    liveliest joy on both sides of the Atlantic, and those who had
+    participated in it were regarded as heroes. But great as was
+    the achievement, it was not destined to be a lasting success.
+    After working for four weeks, the electric current suddenly
+    ceased on the 1st of September. It never worked
+    <i>perfectly</i> at any period of its existence, but it did
+    transmit a number of messages with intelligibleness, and thus
+    put an end to all doubt in the minds of the scientific men of
+    the expedition of the feasibility of laying a successful line
+    across the ocean.</p>
+
+    <p>The public generally and the directors of the company were
+    greatly disappointed, and many of-the latter and nearly all of
+    the former declared that all such attempts must of necessity
+    fail. Some persons even went so far as to avow their belief
+    that the statements as to the successful transmission of
+    signals over the wire were false; but the proofs that the wire
+    did work properly for awhile are too strong to allow us to
+    accord the slightest weight to this disbelief. But whether
+    signals had passed over the wire or not, there could be no
+    doubt that the cable had ceased to respond to the efforts of
+    the electricians, and was a total failure, and the
+    discouragement of nearly every one connected with it was most
+    profound.</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Field and one or two others were the only persons who
+    retained the slightest confidence in the enterprise, and it was
+    clear to them that any further effort to secure the aid of
+    private capital would be useless just then. An appeal was made
+    to the British Government. It was urged that the work was too
+    great to be undertaken by private capital alone, and that,
+    since it was to be more of a public than a private nature, it
+    was but just that the Government should undertake it. The
+    company asked the Government to guarantee the interest on a
+    certain amount of stock, even if the second attempt should not
+    prove a complete success. The failure of the Red Sea cable, to
+    which the British Government had given an unconditional
+    guarantee, had just occurred, and had caused a considerable
+    loss to the treasury, and the Government was not willing to
+    assume another such risk. Anxious, however, for the success of
+    the Atlantic telegraph, it increased its subsidy from fourteen
+    thousand to twenty thousand pounds, and agreed to guarantee
+    eight per cent, on six hundred thousand pounds of new capital
+    for twenty-five years, upon the single condition that the cable
+    should be made to work successfully.</p>
+
+    <p>This was not all, however. The Government caused further
+    soundings to be made off the coast of Ireland, which
+    effectually dispelled all the fears which had been entertained
+    of a submarine mountain which would prove an impassable barrier
+    in the path of an ocean telegraph. In addition to this, it
+    caused the organization of a board of distinguished scientific
+    men for the purpose of determining all the difficult problems
+    of submarine telegraphy. This board met in 1859, and sat two
+    years. The result of its experiments and investigations was a
+    declaration, signed by the members, that a cable properly made,
+    "and paid into the ocean with the most improved machinery,
+    possesses every prospect of not only being successfully laid in
+    the first instance, but may reasonably be relied upon to
+    continue many years in an efficient-state for the transmission
+    of signals."</p>
+
+    <p>Meanwhile, Mr. Field labored energetically to revive the
+    company. The war which had broken out in the United States
+    brought home to our Government the urgent need of telegraphic
+    communication with Europe, and Mr. Field had no difficulty in
+    obtaining from the President an assurance that this Government
+    would be most happy to join with Great Britain in promoting
+    this great international work. He addressed meetings of
+    merchants in various American cities, and displayed the
+    greatest energy in his efforts to enlist the aid of American
+    capital. Very little was accomplished, however, until 1863. By
+    this time the success of the lines in the Mediterranean and in
+    the Persian Gulf had demonstrated the practicability of long
+    submarine telegraphs, and the public confidence in the attempt
+    had been revived to such an extent that the directors ventured
+    to call for proposals for the manufacture of a cable. Seventeen
+    offers were made, from which that of Messrs. Glass, Elliott
+    &amp; Co., of London, was selected. Mr. Field now renewed his
+    indomitable efforts, and in a few months the new capital of six
+    hundred thousand pounds was subscribed, Messrs. Glass, Elliott
+    &amp;, Co. taking three hundred and fifteen thousand pounds,
+    besides one hundred thousand pounds in bonds. This was
+    accomplished in 1864, and work on the cable was immediately
+    begun. The cable now adopted was very different from, and much
+    more sensitive than, those which had been used before. It was
+    heavier, and less liable to be injured by the water.</p>
+
+    <p>The "Great Eastern" steamship, the greatest wonder of naval
+    architecture, was at this time advertised for sale, and it
+    occurred to several of the gentlemen interested in the
+    telegraph company that she was the best vessel for laying the
+    cable that could be found. They at once organized themselves
+    into a company, purchased the ship, and fitted her up for that
+    service. They were fortunate in securing the services of
+    Captain James Anderson, and placing him in charge of her, sent
+    her to Sheerness, where the cable was sent down to her in
+    lighters from the factory at Greenwich. When the cable was on
+    board, and all the other arrangements had been completed, the
+    big ship left the Thames and sailed for Valentia harbor.</p>
+
+    <p>The point of landing had been changed from Valentia harbor,
+    five or six miles, to Foilhommerum Bay. On the 23d of July,
+    1865, the shore end was connected with the cable on board the
+    ship, and the voyage was begun. It would be interesting to
+    follow the huge steamer on this remarkable voyage, and to
+    relate to the reader the almost marvelous manner in which
+    faults were detected in the line hundreds of miles from the
+    shore, and how the cable was successfully hauled in and the
+    damage repaired. All went well until twelve hundred miles of
+    cable had been paid out, and the ship was but six hundred miles
+    from the shores of Newfoundland, when the cable broke again and
+    plunged into the sea.</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Canning, the engineer in charge, was dismayed, but not
+    disheartened. For nine days the ship hung around the spot
+    grappling for the cable, in the hope of raising it, and sinking
+    its grapnels for this purpose to a depth of two miles. The
+    cable was caught several times, but the rope which held the
+    grapnel broke each time, and the precious coil fell back again
+    into the deep. At length, having marked the place where the
+    cable was lost with buoys, the ship put back for England, and
+    the enterprise was abandoned for that year.</p>
+
+    <p>Though unsuccessful in carrying the cable across the ocean,
+    this expedition was by no means a failure. Its results are thus
+    summed up by the officers in charge of it:</p>
+
+    <div class="blkquot">
+        <p>1. It was proved by the expedition of 1858 that a
+        submarine telegraph cable could be laid between Ireland and
+        Newfoundland, and messages transmitted through the
+        same.</p>
+
+        <p>By the expedition of 1865 it has been fully
+        demonstrated:</p>
+
+        <p>2. That the insulation of a cable improves very much
+        after its submersion in the cold deep water of the
+        Atlantic, and that its conducting power is considerably
+        increased thereby.</p>
+
+        <p>3. That the steamship "Great Eastern," from her size and
+        constant steadiness, and from the control over her afforded
+        by the joint use of paddles and screw, renders it safe to
+        lay an Atlantic cable in any weather.</p>
+
+        <p>4. That in a depth of over two miles four attempts were
+        made to grapple the cable. In three of them the cable was
+        caught by the grapnel, and in the other the grapnel was
+        fouled by the chain attached to it.</p>
+
+        <p>5. That the paying-out machinery used on board the Great
+        Eastern worked perfectly, and can be confidently relied on
+        for laying cables across the Atlantic.</p>
+
+        <p>6. That with the improved telegraphic instruments for
+        long submarine lines, a speed of more than eight words per
+        minute can be obtained through such a cable as the present
+        Atlantic one between Ireland and Newfoundland, as the
+        amount of slack actually paid out did not exceed fourteen
+        per cent., which would have made the total cable laid
+        between Valentia and Heart's Content nineteen hundred
+        miles.</p>
+
+        <p>7. That the present Atlantic cable, though capable of
+        bearing a strain of seven tons, did not experience more
+        than fourteen hundred-weight in being paid out into the
+        deepest water of the Atlantic between Ireland and
+        Newfoundland.</p>
+
+        <p>8. That there is no difficulty in mooring buoys in the
+        deep water of the Atlantic between Ireland and
+        Newfoundland, and that two buoys even when moored by a
+        piece of the Atlantic cable itself, which had been
+        previously lifted from the bottom, have ridden out a
+        gale.</p>
+
+        <p>9. That more than four nautical miles of the Atlantic
+        cable have been recovered from a depth of over two miles,
+        and that the insulation of the gutta-percha covered wire
+        was in no way whatever impaired by the depth of water or
+        the strains to which it had been subjected by lifting and
+        passing through the hauling-in apparatus.</p>
+
+        <p>10. That the cable of 1865, owing to the improvements
+        introduced into the manufacture of the gutta-percha core,
+        was more than one hundred times better insulated than
+        cables made in 1858, then considered perfect and still
+        working.</p>
+
+        <p>11. That the electrical testing can be conducted with
+        such unerring accuracy as to enable the electricians to
+        discover the existence of a fault immediately after its
+        production or development, and very quickly to ascertain
+        its position in the cable.</p>
+
+        <p>12. That with a steam-engine attached to the paying-out
+        machinery, should a fault be discovered on board whilst
+        laying the cable, it is possible that it might be recovered
+        before it had reached the bottom of the Atlantic, and
+        repaired at once.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <p>It was now placed beyond the possibility of a doubt that the
+    cable would be laid within the next year. More than this, it
+    was determined not only to lay a new cable between the two
+    continents, but to fish up the cable of 1865, splice it and
+    continue it to Newfoundland, thus giving the company two
+    working lines.</p>
+
+    <p>It was necessary, however, to raise more capital, and in
+    this effort Mr. Field again put forth his restless and
+    indomitable energies. As the public confidence in the scheme
+    had been effectually restored, it was resolved to raise six
+    hundred thousand pounds of new capital by the issue of one
+    hundred and twenty thousand shares of five pounds each, which
+    should be preferential shares, entitled to a dividend of twelve
+    per cent, before the eight per cent, dividend to be paid on the
+    former preference shares, and the four per cent, on the
+    ordinary stock. They at once proceeded to issue these bonds,
+    when they were informed by the Attorney-General that the
+    proceeding was contrary to law.</p>
+
+    <p>In this dilemma work on the new cable was at once stopped,
+    and the money which had been paid in returned to the
+    subscribers. As Parliament was not in session, and a new issue
+    of stock could not be made by the company without its
+    authorization, and as to wait for this would be to postpone the
+    laying of the cable for another year, Mr. Field was now advised
+    by Mr. Daniel Gooch, M.P., that the only way out of the
+    difficulty was to organize a new company at once, which should
+    assume the work, issue its own shares, and raise its own
+    capital. Eminent legal gentlemen sustained Mr. Gooch in this
+    opinion, and Mr. Field again set to work to organize a new
+    company, under the name of the "Anglo-American Telegraph
+    Company." The capital was fixed at six hundred thousand pounds,
+    Mr. Field taking ten thousand pounds. The whole amount was
+    raised in a short time, and the company "contracted with the
+    Atlantic Cable Company to manufacture and lay down a cable in
+    the summer of 1866, for doing which it is to be entitled to
+    what virtually amounts to a preference dividend of twenty-five
+    per cent., as a first claim is secured to them by the Atlantic
+    Telegraph Company upon the revenue of the cable or cables
+    (after the working expenses have been provided for) to the
+    extent of one hundred and twenty-five thousand pounds per
+    annum, and the New York, Newfoundland, and London Telegraph
+    Company undertake to contribute from their revenue a further
+    annual sum of twenty-five thousand pounds, on condition that a
+    cable shall be working during 1866."</p>
+
+    <p>Once more the furnaces glowed and the hammers rang in the
+    manufacture of the cable. Great improvements were made in the
+    cable itself and in the machinery for laying it, and the "Great
+    Eastern" was thoroughly overhauled. The cable was completed and
+    put on board in June, and the big ship left the Medway on the
+    last of the month and proceeded to Berehaven, in Ireland, where
+    she took on her final stores of coal. This done, she proceeded
+    to Valentia, where she arrived on the seventh of July.</p>
+
+    <p>The shore end was successfully laid and made fast to the
+    cable on board the "Great Eastern," and on Friday morning, the
+    13th of July, 1866, the huge ship set sail for Newfoundland,
+    accompanied by her consorts of the telegraph fleet. The voyage
+    occupied fourteen days, the ship making an average run of about
+    one hundred and eighteen miles per day, and paying out about
+    one hundred and thirty-one miles of cable in the same period of
+    time. The weather was fair during the whole voyage, but the
+    anxiety of the officers in charge was none the less on that
+    account. There were accidents to be dreaded more than
+    unfavorable weather. The ship was run at moderate speed all the
+    way, as it was thought she had once or twice run too fast on
+    the last voyage, and exposed the cable to danger. "The total
+    slack of the cable was less than twelve per cent., showing that
+    the cable was laid almost in a straight line, allowing for the
+    swells and hollows in the bottom of the sea.</p>
+
+    <p>"As the next week drew toward its close, it was evident that
+    they were approaching the end of their voyage. By Thursday they
+    had passed the great depths of the Atlantic, and were off
+    soundings. Besides, their daily observations, there were many
+    signs well known to mariners that they were near the coast.
+    There were the sea-birds, and even the smell of the land, such
+    as once greeted the sharp senses of Columbus, and made him sure
+    that he was floating to some undiscovered shore. Captain
+    Anderson had timed his departure so that he should approach the
+    American coast at the full moon; and so, for the last two or
+    three nights, as they drew near the Western shore, the round
+    orb rose behind them, casting its soft light over sea and sky;
+    and these happy men seemed like heavenly voyagers, floating
+    gently on to a haven of rest.</p>
+
+    <p>"In England the progress of the expedition was known from
+    day to day, but on this side of the ocean all was uncertainty.
+    Some had gone to Heart's Content, hoping to witness the arrival
+    of the fleet, but not so many as the last year, for the memory
+    of their disappointment was too fresh, and they feared the same
+    result again. But still a faithful few were there, who kept
+    their daily watch. Two weeks have passed. It is Friday morning,
+    the 27th of July. They are up early, and looking eastward to
+    see the day break, when a ship is seen in the offing. She is
+    far down on the horizon. Spy-glasses are turned toward her. She
+    comes nearer; and look, there is another, and another! And now
+    the hull of the 'Great Eastern' looms up all glorious in that
+    morning sky. They are coming! Instantly all is wild excitement
+    on shore. Boats put off to row toward the fleet. The 'Albany'
+    is the first to round the point and enter the bay. The
+    'Terrible' is close behind; the 'Medway' stops an hour or two
+    to join on the heavy shore end, while the 'Great Eastern,'
+    gliding calmly in as if she had done nothing remarkable, drops
+    her anchor in front of the telegraph house, having trailed
+    behind her a chain of two thousand miles, to bind the old world
+    to the new.</p>
+
+    <p>"Although the expedition reached Newfoundland on Friday, the
+    27th, yet, as the cable across the Gulf of St. Lawrence was
+    broken, the news was not received in New York till the 29th. It
+    was early Sunday morning, before the Sabbath bells had rung
+    their call to prayer, that the tidings came. The first
+    announcement was brief: 'Heart's Content, July 27th. We arrived
+    here at nine o'clock this morning. All well. Thank God, the
+    cable is laid, and is in perfect working order. Cyrus W.
+    Field.'"</p>
+
+    <p>There was no failure in the communication this time. The
+    electric current has continued to flow strongly and
+    uninterruptedly from that day until the present, and experience
+    has demonstrated for the wonderful wire a capacity far beyond
+    the hopes of its projectors.</p>
+
+    <p>Having laid the cable, the "Great Eastern" proceeded with
+    surprising accuracy to where the line had been lost the year
+    before, and succeeded in grappling and raising it to the
+    surface. It was tested, and found to be in perfect order,
+    messages being sent with ease from the ship to Valentia, and
+    from that point back again. A splice was then made, and the
+    line was continued to Newfoundland. Both cables are still
+    working, and bid fair to be serviceable for many years to
+    come.</p>
+
+    <p>Many persons had contributed to this great success, but to
+    Cyrus W. Field must be assigned the chief praise. His energy
+    and perseverance kept the subject constantly before the public.
+    His courage inspired others, and his faith in its ultimate
+    success alone kept its best friends from abandoning it in its
+    darkest hours. In its behalf he spent twelve years of constant
+    toil, and made over fifty voyages, more than thirty of which
+    were across the Atlantic. He devoted his entire fortune to the
+    undertaking, of which he was the projector and cheerfully
+    incurred the risk of poverty rather than abandon it. Therefore,
+    it is but just that he, who was the chief instrument in
+    obtaining for the world this great benefit, should receive the
+    chief measure of the praise which it has brought to all
+    connected with it.</p>
+
+    <blockquote class="footnote">
+        <a id="footnoteF"
+                    name="footnoteF"></a> <b>Footnote F</b>:
+                    <a href="#footnotetagF">(return)</a>
+
+        <p>The first effort to lay a cable in the Gulf of St.
+        Lawrence was made by this Company, in August, 1855. It was
+        a failure, and the cable was lost. The second attempt was
+        made in the summer of 1856, and was entirely
+        successful.</p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <hr style='width: 65%;'>
+    <a name='inventors'></a>
+
+    <h1>III.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; INVENTORS.</h1>
+    <hr style='width: 65%;'>
+
+    <center>
+        <a name='illust7021'></a>
+        <a href='images/7021.jpg'><img src='images/7021.jpg'
+                height='500' border=0
+                alt='ROBERT FULTON.'></a><br>
+         ROBERT FULTON.
+    </center><a name='CHAPTER_XIII'></a>
+
+    <h2>CHAPTER XIII.</h2>
+
+    <h3>ROBERT FULTON.</h3><br>
+
+
+    <p>One of the pleasantest as well as one of the most prominent
+    places in the city of New York is the grave-yard of old Trinity
+    Church. A handsome iron railing separates it from Broadway, and
+    the thick rows of grave-stones, all crumbling and stained with
+    age, present a strange contrast to the bustle, vitality, and
+    splendor with which they are surrounded. They stare solemnly
+    down into Wall Street, and offer a bitter commentary upon the
+    struggles and anxiety of the money kings of the great city.
+    Work, toil, plan, combine as you may, they seem to say, and yet
+    it must all come to this.</p>
+
+    <p>Not far from the south door of the church, and shaded by a
+    venerable tree, is a plain brown stone slab, bearing this
+    inscription: "The vault of Walter and Robert C. Livingston,
+    sons of Robert Livingston, of the manor of Livingston." A
+    stranger would pass it by without a second glance; yet it is
+    one of the Meccas of the world of science, for the mortal part
+    of Robert Fulton sleeps in the vault below, without monument or
+    legendary stone to his memory, but in sight of the mighty steam
+    fleets which his genius called forth. Very few visitors ever
+    see this part of the churchyard, and the grave of Fulton is
+    unknown to nine out of ten of his countrymen. Yet this man,
+    sleeping so obscurely in his grave without a name, did far more
+    for the world than either Napoleon or Wellington. He
+    revolutionized commerce and manufactures, changed the entire
+    system of navigation, triumphed over the winds and the waves,
+    and compelled the adoption of a new system of modern warfare.
+    Now he lies in a grave not his own, with no monument or statue
+    erected to his memory in all this broad land.</p>
+
+    <p><span class="small-caps">Robert Fulton</span> was born in
+    the township of Little Britain (now called Fulton), in
+    Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in 1765. He was of Irish
+    descent, and his father was a farmer in moderate circumstances.
+    He was the eldest son and third child of a family of five
+    children. The farm upon which he was born was conveyed by his
+    father in 1766 to Joseph Swift, in whose family it still
+    remains. It contains three hundred and sixty-four acres, and is
+    one of the handsomest farms in Lancaster County.</p>
+
+    <p>After disposing of his farm, Mr. Fulton, senior, removed to
+    the town of Lancaster, where he died in 1768, and there young
+    Robert grew up under the care of his mother. He learned to read
+    and write quickly, but did not manifest much fondness for his
+    books after mastering his elementary studies. He early
+    exhibited an unusual talent for drawing, however, greatly
+    preferring the employment of his pencil to the more serious
+    duties of the school. His instructors and companions considered
+    him a dull boy, though all admitted that he showed no
+    disposition to be idle. All his leisure time was spent either
+    in drawing, or in visiting the shops of the mechanics in the
+    place and eagerly watching their operations. He displayed a
+    remarkable talent for mechanism, which was greatly assisted by
+    his skill in drawing, and his visits to the machine shops were
+    always welcomed by both the apprentices and their employers,
+    who recognized the unusual genius of the boy, and predicted
+    great things for him in the future. But to his teacher, who
+    seems to have been rather more belligerent than is usual with
+    Quakers, Robert's neglect of his studies and visits to the
+    machine shops were so many indications of growing
+    worthlessness. The indignant pedagogue once took occasion to
+    remonstrate with him upon his course, and, failing to convince
+    him by argument, rapped him sharply over the knuckles with a
+    ruler, telling him he would make him do something. Robert at
+    once placed his arms akimbo, and, looking his tutor sternly in
+    the face, replied: "Sir, I came here to have something beat
+    into my brains, not into my knuckles."</p>
+
+    <p>Some time after this Mrs. Fulton, in conversation with the
+    teacher, expressed her solicitude lest her son should "turn out
+    nothing," since he neglected his books so entirely. The teacher
+    frankly confessed that he had done all in his power for the
+    boy, but that he was discouraged, and added: "Only yesterday,
+    madam, Robert pertinaciously declared to me that his head was
+    so full of original notions that there was no vacant chamber to
+    store away the contents of any dusty books." The lad was only
+    ten years of age at the time, and, as may be supposed, the good
+    Quaker who directed his education was not a little dismayed by
+    such a remark.</p>
+
+    <p>The boyhood of Fulton was passed during the stormy period of
+    the Revolution, and in a section so close to the theater of war
+    that he was in the midst of all the excitement engendered by
+    the conflict. He was an ardent patriot from the first, and used
+    his pencil freely to caricature all who showed the slightest
+    leaning to the cause of the enemy.</p>
+
+    <p>In 1778 the supply of candles was so low in Lancaster that
+    the town authorities advised the people to refrain from
+    illuminating their houses on the 4th of July of that year, in
+    order to save their candles. Robert, at this time but thirteen
+    years old, was determined not to forego a patriotic display of
+    some sort. He had prepared a quantity of candles for the
+    occasion, and after the proclamation of the Town Council was
+    issued, he took them to a Mr. John Fisher, who kept a store in
+    the place, and sold powder and shot. Mr. Fisher was somewhat
+    astonished at Robert's desire to part with the candles, which
+    were at that time scarce articles, and asked his reason for so
+    doing. The boy replied: "Our rulers have requested the citizens
+    to refrain from illuminating their windows and streets; as good
+    citizens we should comply with their request, and I prefer
+    illuminating the heavens with sky-rockets." Having procured the
+    powder, he left Mr. Fisher's, and entered a small variety store
+    kept by a Mr. Cossart, where he purchased several sheets of
+    large-sized pasteboard. As Mr. Cossart was about to roll them,
+    the boy stopped him, saying he wished to carry them open. Mr.
+    Cossart, knowing Robert's mechanical genius, asked him what he
+    was about to invent.</p>
+
+    <p>"Why," said the boy, "we are prohibited from illuminating
+    our windows with candles, and I'm going to shoot my candles
+    through the air."</p>
+
+    <p>"Tut, tut, tut," said Mr. Cossart, laughingly; "that's an
+    impossibility."</p>
+
+    <p>"No, sir," said Robert, "there is nothing
+       impossible."<a id="footnotetagG"
+       name="footnotetagG"></a><a href=
+       "#footnoteG"><sup>[G]</sup></a></p>
+
+    <p>"Robert was known," says one of his biographers, "to
+    purchase small quantities of quicksilver from Dr. Adam Simon
+    Kuhn, druggist, residing opposite the market-house. He was
+    trying some experiments that he did not wish to make public,
+    and which the workmen in Mr. Fenno's and Mr. Christian Isch's
+    shops were anxious to find out, but could not. He was in the
+    habit almost daily of visiting those shops, and was a favorite
+    among the workmen, who took advantage of his talent for drawing
+    by getting him to make ornamental designs for guns, and
+    sketches of the size and shape of guns, and then giving the
+    calculations of the force, size of the bore and balls, and the
+    distances they would fire; and he would accompany them to the
+    open commons near by potter's field, to prove his calculations
+    by shooting at a mark. On account of his expertness in his
+    calculations, and of their ineffectual efforts to discover the
+    use he was making of quicksilver, the shop-hands nicknamed him
+    'quicksilver Bob.'</p>
+
+    <p>"Mr. Messersmith and Mr. Christian Isch were employed by the
+    Government to make and repair the arms for the troops; and on
+    several occasions guards were stationed at their shops to watch
+    and see that the workmen were constantly employed during whole
+    nights and on Sunday, to prevent any delay. The workmen had so
+    much reliance and confidence in 'quicksilver Bob's' judgment
+    and mechanical skill, that every suggestion he would make as to
+    the alteration of a gun, or any additional ornament that he
+    would design, was invariably adopted by common consent.</p>
+
+    <p>"In the summer of 1779, Robert Fulton evinced an
+    extraordinary fondness for inventions. He was a frequent
+    visitor at Mr. Messersmith's and Mr. Fenno's gunsmith shops,
+    almost daily, and endeavored to manufacture a small
+    air-gun."</p>
+
+    <p>Among the acquaintances of Robert Fulton at this time was a
+    young man, about eighteen years of age, named Christopher
+    Gumpf, who used frequently to accompany his father in his
+    fishing excursions on the Conestoga. Mr. Gumpf, Sen., being an
+    experienced angler, readily consented to allow Robert to join
+    himself and his son in these expeditions, and made the two boys
+    earn their pleasure by pushing the boat about the stream, as he
+    desired to move from point to point. As the means of propulsion
+    was simply a pole, the labor was very severe, and Robert soon
+    became tired of it. Not wishing, however, to give up his
+    pleasant fishing trips, he determined to devise some means of
+    lightening the labor.</p>
+
+    <p>"He absented himself a week, having gone to Little Britain
+    township to spend a few days at his aunt's; and while there he
+    planned and completed a small working model of a fishing boat,
+    with paddle-wheels. On leaving his aunt's, he placed the model
+    in the garret, with a request that it should not be destroyed.
+    Many years afterward, that simple model was the attraction of
+    friends, and became, instead of lumber in the garret, an
+    ornament in the aunt's parlor, who prized it highly. That model
+    was the result of Robert's fishing excursions with Christopher
+    Gumpf; and when he returned from his aunt's he told Christopher
+    that he must make a set of paddles to work at the sides of the
+    boat, to be operated by a double crank, and then they could
+    propel the old gentleman's fishing-boat with greater ease. Two
+    arms or pieces of timber were then fastened together at right
+    angles, with a paddle at each end, and the crank was attached
+    to the boat across it near the stern, with a paddle operating
+    on a pivot as a rudder; and Fulton's first invention was tried
+    on the Conestoga River, opposite Rockford, in the presence of
+    Peter and Christopher Gumpf. The boys were so pleased with the
+    experiment, that they hid the paddles in the bushes on the
+    shore, lest others might use and break them, and attached them
+    to the boat whenever they chose; and thus did they enjoy very
+    many fishing excursions."</p>
+
+    <p>This was the first experiment in the science of navigation
+    attempted by the man who afterward became the author of a new
+    system.</p>
+
+    <p>Having chosen the profession of an artist and portrait
+    painter, young Fulton removed to Philadelphia at the age of
+    seventeen, and remained there, pursuing his vocation, until the
+    completion of his twenty-first year. He formed there the
+    acquaintance of Benjamin Franklin, by whom he was much noticed.
+    His success was rapid, and upon attaining his majority he was
+    enabled to purchase and stock a farm of eighty-four acres in
+    Washington County, Pennsylvania, which he gave to his mother
+    for a home as long as she should live. Having thus insured her
+    comfort, he went to England for the purpose of completing his
+    studies in his profession. He took with him letters to Benjamin
+    West, then at the height of his fame, and living in London. He
+    was cordially received by Mr. West, who was also a native of
+    Pennsylvania, and remained an inmate of his family for several
+    years. West was then the President of the Royal Academy of
+    Great Britain, and was thus enabled to extend to Fulton, to
+    whom he became deeply attached, many advantages, both social
+    and professional, of which the young artist was prompt to avail
+    himself.</p>
+
+    <p>Upon leaving the family of Mr. West, Fulton commenced a tour
+    for the purpose of examining the treasures of art contained in
+    the residences of the English nobility, and remained for two
+    years in Devonshire. There he became acquainted with the Duke
+    of Bridgewater, to whom England is indebted for the
+    introduction of the canal system within her limits; and it is
+    said that he was induced by this nobleman to abandon the
+    profession of an artist, and enter upon that of a civil
+    engineer. This nobleman being devoted to mechanical
+    investigations, proved a very congenial acquaintance to Fulton.
+    He was engaged at the time on a scheme of steam navigation by a
+    propeller, modeled after the foot of a water fowl. His plan did
+    not commend itself to Fulton's judgment, and he addressed him a
+    letter, setting forth its defects, and advancing some of the
+    views upon which he acted himself in after life. Here he also
+    met with Watt, who had just produced the steam-engine, which
+    Fulton studied enthusiastically. His own inventive genius was
+    not idle, and while living in Devonshire, he produced an
+    improved mill for sawing marble, which won him the thanks and
+    medal of the British Society for the Promotion of the Arts and
+    Commerce; a machine for spinning flax and making ropes; and an
+    excavator for scooping out the channels of canals and
+    aqueducts, all of which were patented. He published a number of
+    communications on the subject of canals in one of the leading
+    London journals, and a treatise upon the same subject. Having
+    obtained a patent in England for canal improvements, he went to
+    France in 1797, with the design of introducing them in that
+    country.</p>
+
+    <p>Upon reaching Paris, he took up his residence with Mr. Joel
+    Barlow, and thus was laid the foundation of a friendship
+    between these two gentlemen which lasted during their lives. He
+    remained in Paris seven years, residing during that time with
+    Mr. Barlow, and devoting himself to the study of modern
+    languages, and engineering and its kindred sciences.</p>
+
+    <p>His work was continuous and severe in Paris. He invented and
+    painted the first panorama ever exhibited in that city, which
+    he sold for the purpose of raising money for his experiments in
+    steam navigation; he also designed a series of splendid colored
+    illustrations for <i>The Columbiad</i>, the famous poem of his
+    friend Mr. Barlow. Besides these, he invented a number of
+    improvements in canals, aqueducts, inclined planes, boats, and
+    guns, which yielded him considerable credit, but very little
+    profit.</p>
+
+    <p>In 1801, he invented a submarine boat which he called the
+    "Nautilus," which is thus described by M. de St. Aubin, a
+    member of the Tribunate:</p>
+
+    <p>"The diving-boat, in the construction of which he is now
+    employed, will be capacious enough to contain eight men and
+    provision for twenty days, and will be of sufficient strength
+    and power to enable him to plunge one hundred feet under water,
+    if necessary. He has contrived a reservoir of air, which will
+    enable eight men to remain under water eight hours. When the
+    boat is above water, it has two sails, and looks just like a
+    common boat; when it is to dive, the mast and sails are
+    struck.</p>
+
+    <p>"In making his experiments, Mr. Fulton not only remained a
+    whole hour under water, with three of his companions, but had
+    the boat parallel to the horizon at any given distance. He
+    proved that the compass points as correctly under water as on
+    the surface, and that while under water the boat made way at
+    the rate of half a league an hour, by means contrived for that
+    purpose.</p>
+
+    <p>"It is not twenty years since all Europe was astonished at
+    the first ascension of men in balloons: perhaps in a few years
+    they will not be less surprised to see a flotilla of
+    diving-boats, which, on a given signal, shall, to avoid the
+    pursuit of an enemy, plunge under water, and rise again several
+    leagues from the place where they descended!</p>
+
+    <p>"But if we have not succeeded in steering the balloon, and
+    even were it impossible to attain that object, the case is
+    different with the diving-boat, which can be conducted under
+    water in the same manner as upon the surface. It has the
+    advantage of sailing like the common boat, and also of diving
+    when it is pursued. With these qualities, it is fit for
+    carrying secret orders, to succor a blockaded fort, and to
+    examine the force and position of an enemy in their
+    harbors."</p>
+
+    <p>In connection with this boat, Fulton invented a torpedo, or
+    infernal machine, for the purpose of destroying vessels of war
+    by approaching them under water and breaking up their hulls by
+    the explosion. He offered his invention several times to the
+    French Government, and once to the Ambassador of Holland at
+    Paris, without being able to induce them to consider it.
+    Somewhat later, he visited London, at the request of the
+    British Ministry, and explained his invention to them. Although
+    he succeeded in blowing up a vessel of two hundred tons with
+    one hundred and seventy pounds of powder, and in extorting from
+    Mr. Pitt the acknowledgment that, if introduced into practice,
+    the torpedo would annihilate all navies, his invention was
+    rejected, through the influence of Lord Melville, who feared
+    that its adoption might injure England more than it would
+    benefit her. At the first, when it was thought that England
+    would purchase Fulton's invention, it was intimated to him that
+    he would be required to pledge himself not to dispose of it to
+    any other power. He replied promptly:</p>
+
+    <p>"Whatever may be your award, I never will consent to let
+    these inventions lie dormant should my country at any time have
+    need of them. Were you to grant me an annuity of twenty
+    thousand pounds, I would sacrifice all to the safety and
+    independence of my country."</p>
+
+    <p>In 1806, Mr. Fulton returned to New York, and in the same
+    year he married Miss Harriet Livingston, a niece of Chancellor
+    Livingston, by whom he had four children. He offered his
+    torpedo to the General Government, but the trial to which it
+    was subjected by the Navy Department was unsuccessful for him,
+    and the Government declined to purchase the invention.</p>
+
+    <p>But it was not as the inventor of engines of destruction
+    that Robert Fulton was to achieve fame. A still nobler triumph
+    was reserved for him&mdash;one which was to bring joy instead
+    of sorrow to the world. From the time that Fulton had designed
+    the paddle-wheels for his fishing-boat, he had never ceased to
+    give his attention to the subject of propelling vessels by
+    machinery, and after his acquaintance with Watt, he was more
+    than ever convinced that the steam-engine could, under proper
+    circumstances, be made to furnish the motive power.</p>
+
+    <p>Several eminent and ingenious men, previous to this, had
+    proposed to propel vessels by steam power, among whom were Dr.
+    Papin, of France, Savery, the Marquis of Worcester, and Dr.
+    John Allen, of London, in 1726. In 1786, Oliver Evans, of
+    Philadelphia, and about the same time Dr. Franklin, proposed to
+    accomplish this result by forcing a quantity of water, by means
+    of steam power, through an opening made for that purpose in the
+    stern of the hull of the boat.</p>
+
+    <p>In 1737, Jonathan Hulls issued a pamphlet proposing to
+    construct a boat to be moved by steam power, for the purpose of
+    towing vessels out of harbors against tide and winds. In his
+    plan the paddle-wheel was used, and was secured to a frame
+    placed far out over the stern of the boat. It was given this
+    position by the inventor because water fowls propelled
+    themselves by pushing their feet behind them.</p>
+
+    <p>In 1787, Mr. James Rumsey, of Shepherdstown, Virginia,
+    constructed and navigated the first steamboat in actual use.
+    His boat was eighty feet in length, and was propelled by means
+    of a vertical pump in the middle of the vessel, by which the
+    water was drawn in at the bow and expelled at the stern through
+    a horizontal trough in her hull. The engine weighed about one
+    third of a ton, and the boat had a capacity of about three tons
+    burthen. When thus laden, a speed of about four miles an hour
+    could be attained. The boiler held only five gallons of water,
+    and needed but a pint at a time. Rumsey went to England to
+    exhibit his plan on the Thames, and died there in 1793.</p>
+
+    <p>About the same time the Marquis de Joffrey launched a
+    steamer one hundred feet long on the Loire, at Lyons, using
+    paddles revolving on an endless chain, but only to find his
+    experiment a failure.</p>
+
+    <p>In December, 1786, John Fitch published the following
+    account of a steamer with which he had made several experiments
+    on the Delaware, at Philadelphia, and which came nearer to
+    success than any thing that had at that time been invented:</p>
+
+    <p>"The cylinder is to be horizontal, and the steam to work
+    with equal force at each end. The mode by which we obtain what
+    I term a vacuum is, it is believed, entirely new, as is also
+    the method of letting the water into it, and throwing it off
+    against the atmosphere without any friction. It is expected
+    that the cylinder, which is of twelve inches diameter, will
+    move a clear force of eleven or twelve cwt. after the frictions
+    are deducted: this force is to be directed against a wheel of
+    eighteen inches diameter. The piston moves about three feet,
+    and each vibration of it gives the axis about forty
+    revolutions. Each revolution of the axis moves twelve oars or
+    paddles five and a half feet: they work perpendicularly, and
+    are represented by the strokes of a paddle of a canoe. As six
+    of the paddles are raised from the water, six more are entered,
+    and the two sets of paddles make their strokes of about eleven
+    feet in each revolution. The crank of the axis acts upon the
+    paddles about one-third of their length from their lower ends,
+    on which part of the oar the whole force of the axis is
+    applied. The engine is placed in the bottom of the boat, about
+    one-third from the stern, and both the action and reaction turn
+    the wheel the same way."</p>
+
+    <p>Fitch was unfortunate in his affairs, and became so
+    disheartened that he ceased to attempt to improve his
+    invention, and finally committed suicide by drowning himself in
+    the Alleghany River at Pittsburgh.</p>
+
+    <p>In 1787, Mr. Patrick Miller, of Dalwinston, Scotland,
+    designed a double vessel, propelled by a wheel placed in the
+    stern between the two keels. This boat is said to have been
+    very successful, but it was very small, the cylinder being only
+    four inches in diameter. In 1789, Mr. Miller produced a larger
+    vessel on the same plan, which made seven miles per hour in the
+    still water of the Forth and Clyde Canal, but it proved too
+    weak for its machinery, which had to be taken out.</p>
+
+    <p>It was in the face of these failures that Fulton applied
+    himself to the task of designing a successful steamboat. During
+    his residence in Paris he had made the acquaintance of Mr.
+    Robert R. Livingston, then the American minister in France, who
+    had previously been connected with some unsuccessful steamboat
+    experiments at home. Mr. Livingston was delighted to find a man
+    of Fulton's mechanical genius so well satisfied of the
+    practicability of steam navigation, and joined heartily with
+    him in his efforts to prove his theories by experiments.
+    Several small working models made by Fulton convinced Mr.
+    Livingston that the former had discovered and had overcome the
+    cause of the failure of the experiments of other inventors, and
+    it was finally agreed between them to build a large boat for
+    trial on the Seine. This experimental steamer was furnished
+    with paddle wheels, and was completed and launched early in the
+    spring of 1803. On the very morning appointed for the trial,
+    Fulton was aroused from his sleep by a messenger from the boat,
+    who rushed into his chamber, pale and breathless, exclaiming,
+    "Oh, sir, the boat has broken in pieces and gone to the
+    bottom!" Hastily dressing and hurrying to the spot, he found
+    that the weight of the machinery had broken the boat in half
+    and carried the whole structure to the bottom of the river. He
+    at once set to work to raise the machinery, devoting
+    twenty-four hours, without resting or eating, to the
+    undertaking, and succeeded in doing so, but inflicted upon his
+    constitution a strain from which he never entirely recovered.
+    The machinery was very slightly damaged, but it was necessary
+    to rebuild the boat entirely. This was accomplished by July of
+    the same year, and the boat was tried in August with triumphant
+    success, in the presence of the French National Institute and a
+    vast crowd of the citizens of Paris.</p>
+
+    <p>This steamer was very defective, but still so great an
+    improvement upon all that had preceded it, that Messrs. Fulton
+    and Livingston determined to build one on a larger scale in the
+    waters of New York, the right of navigating which by steam
+    vessels had been secured by the latter as far back as 1798. The
+    law which granted this right had been continued from time to
+    time through Mr. Livingston's influence, and was finally
+    amended so as to include Fulton within its provisions. Having
+    resolved to return home, Fulton set out as soon as possible,
+    stopping in England on his return, to order an engine for his
+    boat from Watt and Boulton. He gave an exact description of the
+    engine, which was built in strict accordance with his plan, but
+    declined to state the use to which he intended putting it.</p>
+
+    <p>Very soon after his arrival in New York, he commenced
+    building his first American boat, and finding that her cost
+    would greatly exceed his estimate, he offered for sale a third
+    interest in the monopoly of the navigation of the waters of New
+    York, held by Livingston and himself, in order to raise money
+    to build the boat, and thus lighten the burdens of himself and
+    his partner, but he could find no one willing to risk money in
+    such a scheme. Indeed, steam navigation was universally
+    regarded in America as a mere chimera, and Fulton and
+    Livingston were ridiculed for their faith in it. The bill
+    granting the monopoly held by Livingston was regarded as so
+    utterly absurd by the Legislature of New York, that that wise
+    body could with difficulty be induced to consider it seriously.
+    Even among scientific men the project was considered
+    impracticable. A society in Rotterdam had, several years before
+    Fulton's return home, applied to the American Philosophical
+    Society to be informed whether any and what improvements had
+    been made in the construction of steam-engines in America. A
+    reply to this inquiry was prepared, at the request of the
+    Society, by Mr. Benjamin H. Latrobe, a distinguished engineer.
+    The following extracts from this paper will show the reader how
+    Fulton's scheme was regarded by one who was confessedly one of
+    the most brilliant engineers of his day, and who has since
+    accomplished so much for the improvement of steam travel:</p>
+
+    <div class='blkquot'>
+        <p>During the general lassitude of mechanical exertion
+        which succeeded the American Revolution, We utility of
+        steam-engines appears to have been forgotten; but the
+        subject afterward started into very general notice in a
+        form in which it could not possibly be attended with
+        success. A sort of mania began to prevail, which, indeed,
+        has not yet entirely subsided, for impelling boats by
+        steam-engines. Dr. Franklin proposed to force forward the
+        boat by the immediate application of the steam upon the
+        water. Many attempts to simplify the working of the engine,
+        and more to employ a means of dispensing with the beam in
+        converting the <i>libratory</i> into a rotatory motion,
+        were made. For a short time, a passage-boat, rowed by a
+        steam-engine, was established between Borden-town and
+        Philadelphia, but it was soon laid aside. The best and most
+        powerful steam-engine which has been employed for this
+        purpose&mdash;excepting, perhaps, one constructed by Dr.
+        Kinsey, with the performance of which I am not sufficiently
+        acquainted&mdash;belonged to a gentleman of New York. It
+        was made to act, by way of experiment, upon oars, upon
+        paddles, and upon flutter-wheels. Nothing in the success of
+        any of these experiments appeared to be sufficient
+        compensation for the expense and the extreme inconvenience
+        of the steam-engine in the vessel.</p>
+
+        <p>There are, indeed, general objections to the use of the
+        steam-engine for impelling boats, from which no particular
+        mode of application can be free. These are:</p>
+
+        <p>First. The weight of the engine and of the fuel.</p>
+
+        <p>Second. The large space it occupies.</p>
+
+        <p>Third. The tendency of its action to rack the vessel,
+        and render it leaky.</p>
+
+        <p>Fourth. The expense of maintenance.</p>
+
+        <p>Fifth. The irregularity of its motion, and the motion of
+        the water in the boiler and cistern, and of the fuel-vessel
+        in rough water.</p>
+
+        <p>Sixth. The difficulty arising from the liability of the
+        paddles and oars to break, if light, and from the weight,
+        if made strong.</p>
+
+        <p>Nor have I ever heard of an instance, verified by other
+        testimony than that of the inventor, of a speedy and
+        agreeable voyage having been performed in a steamboat of
+        any construction.</p>
+
+        <p>I am well aware that there are still many very
+        respectable and ingenious men who consider the application
+        of the steam-engine to the purpose of navigation as highly
+        important, and as very practicable, especially on the rapid
+        waters of the Mississippi, and who would feel themselves
+        almost offended at the expression of an opposite opinion.
+        And, perhaps, some of the objections against it may be
+        avoided. That founded on the expense and weight of the fuel
+        may not, for some years, exist on the Mississippi, where
+        there is a redundance of wood on the banks; but the cutting
+        and loading will be almost as great an evil.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <p>Scientific men and amateurs all agreed in pronouncing
+    Fulton's scheme impracticable; but he went on with his work,
+    his boat attracting no less attention and exciting no less
+    ridicule than the ark had received from the scoffers in the
+    days of Noah. The steam-engine ordered from Boulton and Watt
+    was received in the latter part of 1806; and in the following
+    spring the boat was launched from the ship-yard of Charles
+    Brown, on the East River. Fulton named her the "Clermont,"
+    after the country-seat of his friend and partner, Chancellor
+    Livingston. She was one hundred and sixty tons burthen, one
+    hundred and thirty feet long, eighteen feet wide, and seven
+    feet deep. Her engine was made with a single cylinder, two feet
+    in diameter, and of four feet stroke; and her boiler was twenty
+    feet long, seven feet deep, and eight feet broad. The diameter
+    of the paddle-wheels was fifteen feet, the boards four feet
+    long, and dipping two feet in the water. The boat was completed
+    about the last of August, and she was moved by her machinery
+    from the East River into the Hudson, and over to the Jersey
+    shore. This trial, brief as it was, satisfied Fulton of its
+    success, and he announced that in a few days the steamer would
+    sail from New York for Albany. A few friends, including several
+    scientific men and mechanics, were invited to take passage in
+    the boat, to witness her performance; and they accepted the
+    invitation with a general conviction that they were to do but
+    little more than witness another failure.</p>
+
+    <p>Monday, September 10, 1807, came at length, and a vast crowd
+    assembled along the shore of the North River to witness the
+    starting. As the hour for sailing drew near, the crowd
+    increased, and jokes were passed on all sides at the expense of
+    the inventor, who paid little attention to them, however, but
+    busied himself in making a final and close inspection of the
+    machinery. Says Fulton, "The morning I left New York, there
+    were not, perhaps, thirty persons in the city who believed that
+    the boat would ever move one mile per hour, or be of the least
+    utility; and while we were putting off from the wharf, which
+    was crowded with spectators, I heard a number of sarcastic
+    remarks."</p>
+
+    <p>One o'clock, the hour for sailing, came, and expectation was
+    at its highest. The friends of the inventor were in a state of
+    feverish anxiety lest the enterprise should come to grief, and
+    the scoffers on the wharf were all ready to give vent to their
+    shouts of derision. Precisely as the hour struck, the moorings
+    were thrown off, and the "Clermont" moved slowly out into the
+    stream. Volumes of smoke and sparks from her furnaces, which
+    were fed with pine wood, rushed forth from her chimney, and her
+    wheels, which were uncovered, scattered the spray far behind
+    her. The spectacle she presented as she moved out gradually
+    from her dock was certainly novel to the people of those days,
+    and the crowd on the wharf broke into shouts of ridicule. Soon,
+    however, the jeers grew silent, for it was seen that the
+    steamer was by degrees increasing her speed. In a little while
+    she was fairly under weigh, and making a steady progress up the
+    stream at the rate of five miles per hour. The incredulity of
+    the spectators had been succeeded by astonishment, and now this
+    feeling gave way to undisguised delight, and cheer after cheer
+    went up from the vast throng. Many people followed the boat for
+    some distance up the river shore. In a little while, however,
+    the boat was observed to stop, and the enthusiasm of the people
+    on the shore at once subsided. The scoffers were again in their
+    glory, and unhesitatingly pronounced the boat a failure. Their
+    chagrin may be imagined when, after a short delay, the steamer
+    once more proceeded on her way, and this time even more rapidly
+    than before. Fulton had discovered that the paddles were too
+    long, and took too deep a hold on the water, and had stopped
+    the boat for the purpose of shortening them.</p>
+
+    <p>Having remedied this defect, the "Clermont" continued her
+    voyage during the rest of the day and all night, without
+    stopping, and at one o'clock the next day ran alongside the
+    landing at Clermont, the seat of Chancellor Livingston. She lay
+    there until nine the next morning, when she continued her
+    voyage toward Albany, reaching that city at five in the
+    afternoon, having made the entire distance between New York and
+    Albany (one hundred and fifty miles) in thirty-two hours of
+    actual running time, an average speed of nearly five miles per
+    hour. On her return trip, she reached New York in thirty hours
+    running time&mdash;exactly five miles per hour. Fulton states
+    that during both trips he encountered a head wind.</p>
+
+    <p>The river was at this time navigated entirely with sailing
+    vessels, and large numbers of these were encountered by the
+    "Clermont" during her up and down trips. The surprise and
+    dismay excited among the crews of these vessels by the
+    appearance of the steamer was extreme. These simple people, the
+    majority of whom had heard nothing of Fulton's experiments,
+    beheld what they supposed to be a huge monster, vomiting fire
+    and smoke from its throat, lashing the water with its fins, and
+    shaking the river with its roar, approaching rapidly in the
+    very face of both wind and tide. Some threw themselves flat on
+    the deck of their vessels, where they remained in an agony of
+    terror until the monster had passed, while others took to their
+    boats and made for the shore in dismay, leaving their vessels
+    to drift helplessly down the stream. Nor was this terror
+    confined to the sailors. The people dwelling along the shore
+    crowded the banks to gaze upon the steamer as she passed by. A
+    former resident of the neighborhood of Poughkeepsie thus
+    describes the scene at that place, which will serve as a
+    specimen of the conduct of the people along the entire river
+    below Albany:</p>
+
+    <p>"It was in the early autumn of the year 1807 that a knot of
+    villagers was gathered on a high bluff just opposite
+    Poughkeepsie, on the west bank of the Hudson, attracted by the
+    appearance of a strange, dark-looking craft, which was slowly
+    making its way up the river. Some imagined it to be a
+    sea-monster, while others did not hesitate to express their
+    belief that it was a sign of the approaching judgment What
+    seemed strange in the vessel was the substitution of lofty and
+    straight black smoke-pipes, rising from the deck, instead of
+    the gracefully tapered masts that commonly stood on the vessels
+    navigating the stream, and, in place of the spars and rigging,
+    the curious play of the working-beam and pistons, and the slow
+    turning and splashing of the huge and naked paddle-wheels, met
+    the astonished gaze. The dense clouds of smoke, as they rose
+    wave upon wave, added still more to the wonderment of the
+    rustics.</p>
+
+    <p>"This strange-looking craft was the 'Clermont,' on her trial
+    trip to Albany; and of the little knot of villagers mentioned
+    above, the writer, then a boy in his eighth year, with his
+    parents, formed a part. I well remember the scene, one so well
+    fitted to impress a lasting picture upon the mind of a child
+    accustomed to watch the vessels that passed up and down the
+    river.</p>
+
+    <p>"The forms of four persons were distinctly visible on the
+    deck as she passed the bluff&mdash;one of whom, doubtless, was
+    Robert Fulton, who had on board with him all the cherished
+    hopes of years, the most precious cargo the wonderful boat
+    could carry.</p>
+
+    <p>"On her return trip, the curiosity she excited was scarcely
+    less intense. The whole country talked of nothing but the
+    sea-monster, belching forth fire and smoke. The fishermen
+    became terrified, and rowed homewards, and they saw nothing but
+    destruction devastating their fishing-grounds; while the
+    wreaths of black vapor, and rushing noise of the paddle-wheels,
+    foaming with the stirred-up waters, produced great excitement
+    among the boatmen, which continued without abatement, until the
+    character of that curious boat, and the nature of the
+    enterprise which she was pioneering, had been understood."</p>
+
+    <p>The alarm of the sailors and dwellers on the river shore
+    disappeared as the character of the steamer became better
+    known; but when it was found that the "Clermont" was to run
+    regularly between New York and Albany, as a packet-boat, she
+    became the object of the most intense hatred on the part of the
+    boatmen on the river, who feared that she would entirely
+    destroy their business. In many quarters Fulton and his
+    invention were denounced as baneful to society, and frequent
+    attempts were made by captains of sailing vessels to sink the
+    "Clermont" by running into her. She was several times damaged
+    in this way, and the hostility of the boatmen became so great
+    that it was necessary for the Legislature of New York to pass a
+    law declaring combinations to destroy her, or willful attempts
+    to injure her, public offenses punishable by fine and
+    imprisonment.</p>
+
+    <p>It had been supposed that Fulton's object was to produce a
+    steamer capable of navigating the Mississippi River, and much
+    surprise was occasioned by the announcement that the "Clermont"
+    was to be permanently employed upon the Hudson. She continued
+    to ply regularly between New York and Albany until the close of
+    navigation for that season, always carrying a full complement
+    of passengers, and more or less freight. During the winter she
+    was overhauled and enlarged, and her speed improved. In the
+    spring of 1808 she resumed her regular trips, and since then
+    steam navigation on the Hudson has not ceased for a single day,
+    except during the closing of the river by ice.</p>
+
+    <p>In 1811 and 1812, Fulton built two steam ferry-boats for the
+    North River, and soon after added a third for the East River.
+    These boats were the beginning of the magnificent steam ferry
+    system which is to-day one of the chief wonders of New York.
+    They were what are called twin-boats, each of them consisting
+    of two complete hulls, united by a deck or bridge. They were
+    sharp at both ends, and moved equally well with either end
+    foremost, so that they could cross and re-cross without being
+    turned around. These boats were given engines of sufficient
+    power to enable them to overcome the force of strong ebb tides;
+    and in order to facilitate their landing, Fulton contrived a
+    species of floating dock, and a means of decreasing the shock
+    caused by the striking of the boat against the dock. These
+    boats could accommodate eight four-wheel carriages, twenty-nine
+    horses, and four hundred passengers. Their average time across
+    the North River, a mile and a half wide, was twenty
+    minutes.</p>
+
+    <p>The introduction of the steamboat gave a powerful impetus to
+    the internal commerce of the Union. It opened to navigation
+    many important rivers (whose swift currents had closed them to
+    sailing craft), and made rapid and easy communication between
+    the most distant parts of the country practicable. The public
+    soon began to appreciate this, and orders came in rapidly for
+    steamboats for various parts of the country. Fulton executed
+    these as fast as possible, and among the number several for
+    boats for the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers.</p>
+
+    <p>Early in 1814, the city of New York was seriously menaced
+    with an attack from the British fleet, and Fulton was called on
+    by a committee of citizens to furnish a plan for a means of
+    defending the harbor. He exhibited to the committee his plans
+    for a vessel of war to be propelled by steam, capable of
+    carrying a strong battery, with furnaces for red-hot shot, and
+    which, he represented, would move at the rate of four miles an
+    hour. These plans were also submitted to a number of naval
+    officials, among whom were Commodore Decatur, Captain Jones,
+    Captain Evans, Captain Biddle, Commodore Perry, Captain
+    Warrington, and Captain Lewis, all of whom warmly united in
+    urging the Government to undertake the construction of the
+    proposed steamer. The citizens of New York offered, if the
+    Government would employ and pay for her after she was built, to
+    advance the sum ($320,000) necessary for her construction. The
+    subject was vigorously pressed, and in March, 1814, Congress
+    authorized the building of one or more floating batteries after
+    the plan presented by Fulton. Her keel was laid on the 20th of
+    June, 1814, and on the 31st of October, of the same year, she
+    was launched, amid great rejoicings, from the ship-yard of Adam
+    and Noah Brown. In May, 1815, her engines were put on board,
+    and on the 4th of July of that year she made a trial trip to
+    Sandy Hook and back, accomplishing the round trip&mdash;a
+    distance of fifty-three miles&mdash;in eight hours and twenty
+    minutes, under steam alone. Before this, however, peace had
+    been proclaimed, and Fulton had gone to rest from his
+    labors.</p>
+
+    <p>The ship was a complete success, and was the first steam
+    vessel of war ever built. She was called the "Fulton the
+    First," and was for many years used as the receiving ship at
+    the Brooklyn Navy Yard. She was an awkward and unwieldy mass,
+    but was regarded as the most formidable vessel afloat; and as
+    the pioneer of the splendid war steamers of to-day is still an
+    object of great interest. The English regarded her with
+    especial uneasiness, and put in circulation the most marvelous
+    stories concerning her. One of these I take from a treatise on
+    steam navigation published in Scotland at this period, the
+    author of which assures his readers that he has taken the
+    utmost pains to obtain full and accurate information respecting
+    the American war steamer. His description is as follows:</p>
+
+    <p>"Length on deck three hundred feet, breadth two hundred
+    feet, thickness of her sides, thirteen feet, of alternate oak
+    plank and corkwood; carries forty-four guns, four of which are
+    100-pounders, quarter-deck and forcastle guns, 44-pounders; and
+    further, to annoy an enemy attempting to board, can discharge
+    one hundred gallons of boiling water in a minute, and by
+    mechanism brandishes three hundred cutlasses, with the utmost
+    regularity, over her gunwales; works also an equal number of
+    heavy iron pikes of great length, darting them from her sides
+    with prodigious force, and withdrawing them every quarter of a
+    minute!"</p>
+
+    <p>Fulton followed up the "Clermont," in 1807, with a larger
+    boat, called the "Car of Neptune," which was placed on the
+    Albany route as soon as completed. The Legislature of New York
+    had enacted a law, immediately upon his first success, giving
+    to Livingston and himself the exclusive right to navigate the
+    waters of the State by steam, for five years for every
+    additional boat they should build in the State, provided the
+    whole term should not exceed thirty years. "In the following
+    year the Legislature passed another act, confirmatory of the
+    prior grants, and giving new remedies to the grantees for any
+    invasion of them, and subjecting to forfeiture any vessel
+    propelled by steam which should enter the waters of the State
+    without their license. In 1809 Fulton obtained his first patent
+    from the United States; and in 1811 he took out a second patent
+    for some improvement in his boats and machinery. His patents
+    were limited to the simple means of adapting paddle wheels to
+    the axle of the crank of Watt's engine.</p>
+
+    <p>"Meanwhile the power of the Legislature to grant the
+    steamboat monopoly was denied, and a company was formed at
+    Albany to establish another line of steam passage boats on the
+    Hudson, between that city and New York. The State grantees
+    filed a bill in equity, and prayed for an injunction, which was
+    refused by Chancellor Lansing, on the ground that the act of
+    the State Legislature was repugnant to the Constitution of the
+    United States, and against common right. This decree was
+    unanimously reversed by the Court of Errors, and a compromise
+    was effected with the Albany company by an assignment to them
+    of the right to employ steam on the waters of Lake
+    Champlain.</p>
+
+    <p>"Legislative aid was again invoked, and an act was passed
+    directing peremptorily the allowance of an injunction on the
+    prayer of the State grantees, and the seizure of any hostile
+    boat at the commencement of the suit. Litigation was thus
+    effectually arrested in New York, though by an arbitrary and
+    unconstitutional enactment, and the waters of the State
+    remained in the exclusive possession of Fulton and his partner
+    during the lifetime of the former. A similar controversy with
+    Colonel Aaron Ogden, of New Jersey, was compromised by
+    advantageous concessions, which converted the opponent of the
+    monopoly into its firmest friend, and left him many years
+    afterward the defeated party in the famous suit of Gibbons and
+    Ogden, in the Supreme Court of the United States."</p>
+
+    <p>In January, 1815, Fulton was summoned to Trenton, New
+    Jersey, as a witness in one of the numerous suits which grew
+    out of the efforts to break down his monopoly. During his
+    examination he was very much exposed, as the hall of the
+    Legislature was uncommonly cold. In returning home, he crossed
+    the Hudson in an open boat, and was detained on the river
+    several hours. This severe exposure brought on an attack of
+    sickness, which for a short time confined him to his bed. The
+    steam frigate, then almost ready for her engines, occasioned
+    him great anxiety at the time, and before he had fairly
+    recovered his strength he went to the ship-yard to give some
+    directions to the workmen employed on her, and thus exposed
+    himself again to the inclemency of the weather. In a few days
+    his indisposition prostrated him again, and, growing rapidly
+    worse, he died on the 24th of February, 1815, at the age of
+    fifty years. His death was universally regarded as a national
+    calamity, and appropriate honors were paid to his memory by the
+    General Government and by many of the State and municipal
+    governments of the Union. He was buried from his residence, No.
+    1 State Street, on the 25th of February, and his body was
+    placed in the vault of the Livingston family, in Trinity
+    church-yard.</p>
+
+    <p>He left a widow and four children. By the terms of his will
+    he bequeathed to his wife an income of nine thousand dollars a
+    year, and five hundred dollars to each of his children until
+    they were twelve years old, after which they were each to
+    receive one thousand dollars a year until they should attain
+    the age of twenty-one years.</p>
+
+    <p>In person, Fulton was tall and handsome. His manner was
+    polished, cordial, and winning. He made friends rapidly, and
+    never failed in his efforts to enlist capital and influence in
+    support of his schemes. He was manly, fearless, and independent
+    in character, and joined to a perfect integrity a patience and
+    indomitable resolution which enabled him to bear up under every
+    disappointment, and which won him in the end a glorious
+    success. His name and fame will always be dear to his
+    countrymen, for while we can not claim that he was (nor did he
+    ever assume to be) the inventor of steam navigation, or even
+    the inventor of the means of such navigation, we do claim for
+    him the honor of being the first man to cross the gulf which
+    lies between experiment and achievement, the man whose skill
+    and perseverance first conquered the difficulties which had
+    baffled so many others, and made steam navigation both
+    practicable and profitable. The Committee of the London
+    Exhibition of 1851 gave utterance in their report to a
+    declaration which places his fame beyond assault, as
+    follows:</p>
+
+    <p>"Many persons, in various countries, claim the honor of
+    having first invented small boats propelled by steam, but it is
+    to the undaunted perseverance and exertions of the American
+    Fulton that is due the everlasting honor of having produced
+    this revolution, both in naval architecture and
+    navigation."</p>
+
+    <blockquote class="footnote">
+        <a id="footnoteG"
+                    name="footnoteG"></a> <b>Footnote G</b>:
+                    <a href="#footnotetagG">(return)</a>
+
+        <p>He proved that this was not impossible, for he had his
+        display, making his rockets himself, and after his own
+        model.</p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <hr style='width: 65%;'>
+    <a name='CHAPTER_XIV'></a>
+
+    <h2>CHAPTER XIV.</h2>
+
+    <h3>CHARLES GOODYEAR.</h3><br>
+
+
+    <p>In the year 1735, a party of astronomers, sent by the French
+    Government to Peru for purposes of scientific investigation,
+    discovered a curious tree growing in that country, the like of
+    which no European had ever seen before. It grew to a
+    considerable size, and yielded a peculiar sap or gum. It was
+    the custom of the natives to make several incisions in each
+    tree with an ax, in the morning, and to place under each
+    incision a cup or jar made of soft clay. Late in the afternoon,
+    the fluid thus obtained was collected in a large clay vessel,
+    each incision yielding about a gill of sap per day. This
+    process was repeated for several days in succession, until the
+    tree had been thoroughly drained. This sap was simply a species
+    of liquid gum, which, though clear and colorless in its native
+    state, had the property of becoming hard and tough when exposed
+    to the sun or artificial heat. It was used by the natives for
+    the manufacture of a few rude and simple articles, by a process
+    similar to that by which the old-fashioned "tallow-dip" candles
+    were made. It was poured over a pattern of clay or a wooden
+    mold or last covered with clay, and successive coatings were
+    applied as fast as the former ones dried, until the article had
+    attained the desired thickness, the whole taking the shape of
+    the mold over which the gum was poured. As the layers were
+    applied, their drying was hastened by exposure to the heat and
+    smoke of a fire, the latter giving to the gum a dark-black hue.
+    Dried without exposure to the smoke, or by the sun alone, the
+    gum became white within and yellowish-brown without. The drying
+    process required several days, and during its progress the gum
+    was ornamented with characters or lines made with a stick. When
+    it was completed, the clay mold was broken to pieces and shaken
+    out of the opening. The natives in this manner made a species
+    of rough, clumsy shoe, and an equally rough bottle. In some
+    parts of South America, the natives make it a rule to present
+    their guests with one of these bottles, furnished with a hollow
+    stern, which serves as a syringe for squirting water into the
+    mouth in order to cleanse it after eating. The articles thus
+    made were liable to become stiff and unmanageable in cold
+    weather, and soft and sticky in warm. The French astronomers,
+    upon their return to their own country, were quick to call
+    attention to this remarkable gum, which was afterward
+    discovered in Cayenne by Trismau, in 1751. At present it is
+    found in large quantities in various parts of South America,
+    but the chief supplies used in commerce are produced in the
+    province of Para, which lies south of the equator, in Brazil.
+    It is also grown largely in the East Indies, vast and
+    inexhaustible forests of the trees which yield it being found
+    in Assam, beyond the Ganges, although the quality can not
+    compare with that of the South American article.</p>
+
+    <p>This substance, variously known as cachuchu, caoutchouc, gum
+    elastic, and India-rubber, was first introduced into Europe in
+    1730, where it was regarded merely as a curiosity, useful for
+    erasing pencil marks, but valueless for any practical use.
+    Ships from South America brought it over as ballast, but it was
+    not until ninety years after its first appearance in Europe
+    that any effort was made to utilize it. About the year 1820 it
+    began to be used in France in the manufacture of suspenders and
+    garters, India-rubber threads being mixed with the materials
+    used in weaving those articles. It was also used in blacking
+    and varnish, and some years later, Mackintosh brought it into
+    prominent notice by using it in his famous water-proof coats,
+    which were made by spreading a layer of the gum between two
+    pieces of cloth. The gum was thus protected from the air, and
+    preserved from injury.</p>
+
+    <p>Up to this time, it was almost an unknown article in the
+    United States, but in 1820 a pair of India-rubber shoes were
+    exhibited in Boston. Even then they were regarded as merely a
+    curiosity, and were covered with gilt foil to hide their
+    natural ugliness. In 1823, a merchant, engaged in the South
+    American trade, imported five hundred pairs from the Para
+    district. He had no difficulty in disposing of them; and so
+    great was the favor with which they were received, that in a
+    few years the annual importation of India-rubber shoes amounted
+    to five hundred thousand pairs. It had become a matter of
+    fashion to wear these shoes, and no person's toilet was
+    complete in wet weather unless the feet were incased in them;
+    yet they were terribly rough and clumsy. They had scarcely any
+    shape to them, and were not to be depended on in winter or
+    summer. In the cold season they froze so hard that they could
+    be used only after being thawed by the fire, and in summer they
+    could be preserved only by keeping them on ice; and if, during
+    the thawing process, they were placed too near the fire, there
+    was danger that they would melt into a shapeless and useless
+    mass. They cost from three to five dollars per pair, which was
+    very high for an article so perishable in its nature.</p>
+
+    <p>The great popularity of India-rubber induced Mr. E.M.
+    Chaflee, of Boston, the foreman of a patent leather factory in
+    that city, to attempt to apply the new substance to some of the
+    uses to which patent leather was then put. His hope was that,
+    by spreading the liquid gum upon cloth, he could produce an
+    article which, while possessing the durability and flexibility
+    of patent leather, would also be water-proof. His experiments
+    extended over a period of several months, during which time he
+    kept his plan a secret. He dissolved a pound of the gum in
+    three quarts of spirits of turpentine, and added to the mixture
+    enough lamp-black to produce a bright black color, and was so
+    well satisfied with his compound, that he felt sure that the
+    only thing necessary to his entire success was a machine for
+    spreading it properly on the cloth. Like a true son of New
+    England, he soon overcame this difficulty by inventing the
+    desired machine. His compound was spread on the cloth, and
+    dried in the sun, producing a hard, smooth surface, and one
+    sufficiently flexible to be twisted into any shape without
+    cracking. Mr. Chaffee was now sure that he had mastered the
+    difficulty. Taking a few capitalists into his confidence, he
+    succeeded so well in convincing them of the excellence of his
+    invention, that in February, 1833, a company, called the
+    "Roxbury India-rubber Company," was organized, with a capital
+    of thirty thousand dollars. In three years this sum was
+    increased to four hundred thousand dollars. The new company
+    manufactured India-rubber cloth according to Mr. Chaffee's
+    process, and from it made wagon-covers, piano-covers, caps,
+    coats, and a few other articles, and, in a little while, added
+    to their list of products shoes without fiber. They had no
+    difficulty in disposing of their stock. Every body had taken
+    the "India-rubber fever," as the excitement caused by Mr.
+    Chaffee's discovery was called; and so high were the hopes of
+    the public raised by it, that buyers were found in abundance
+    whenever the bonds of the numerous India-rubber companies were
+    offered for sale. The extraordinary success of the Roxbury
+    Company led to the establishment of similar enterprises at
+    Boston, Framingham, Salem, Lynn, Chelsea, Troy, and Staten
+    Island. The Roxbury Company could not supply the demand for its
+    articles, and the others appeared to have as much business as
+    they could attend to. Apparently, they were all on the high
+    road to wealth.</p>
+
+    <p>Their prosperity was only fictitious, however, and a day of
+    fearful disaster was pending over them. The bulk of the goods
+    produced in 1833 and 1834 had been manufactured in the cold
+    weather, and the greater part of them had succumbed to the heat
+    of the ensuing summer. The shoes had melted to a soft mass, and
+    the caps, wagon-covers, and coats had become sticky and useless
+    in summer, and rigid in the cold of winter. In some cases the
+    articles had borne the test of one year's use, but the second
+    summer had ruined them. To make the matter worse, they emitted
+    an odor so offensive that it was necessary to bury them in the
+    ground to get rid of the smell. Twenty thousand dollars' worth
+    were thrown back on the hands of the Roxbury Company alone, and
+    the directors were appalled by the ruin which threatened them.
+    It was useless for them to go on manufacturing goods which
+    might prove worthless at any moment; and, as their capital was
+    already taxed to its utmost, it was plain that unless a better
+    process should be speedily discovered, they must become
+    involved in irretrievable disaster. Their efforts were
+    unavailing, however. No better process was found, and the
+    disgust of the public with their goods was soon general and
+    unmitigable. India-rubber stock fell rapidly, and by the end of
+    the year 1836 there was not a solvent company in the Union. The
+    loss of the stockholders was complete, and amounted in the
+    aggregate to two millions of dollars. People came to detest the
+    very name of India-rubber, since it reminded them only of
+    blighted hopes and heavy losses.</p>
+
+    <p>Before the final disaster, however, it chanced that a
+    bankrupt merchant of Philadelphia, being one day in New York on
+    business, was led by curiosity to visit the salesroom of the
+    agency of the Roxbury Company in that city. His visit resulted
+    in the purchase of a life-preserver, which he took home with
+    him for the purpose of examining it. Subjecting it to a careful
+    investigation, he discovered a defect in the valve used for
+    inflating it, and promptly devised a simpler and better
+    apparatus.</p>
+
+    <p>This man, afterward so famous in the history of India-rubber
+    manufacture, was CHARLES GOODYEAR. He was born at New Haven,
+    Connecticut, on the 29th of December, 1800. He attended a
+    public school during his boyhood, thus acquiring a limited
+    education. When quite a youth, he removed with his family to
+    Philadelphia, where his father entered into the hardware
+    business. Upon coming of age, he was admitted to partnership
+    with his father and one of his brothers, the style of the firm
+    being A. Goodyear &amp; Sons. The house was extensively engaged
+    in the manufacture of hardware, and among the other articles
+    which they introduced was a light hay-fork, made of spring
+    steel, which gradually took the place of the heavy wrought iron
+    implement formerly in general use among the farmers. It
+    required a large outlay and a great deal of time to introduce
+    this fork, but, once in use, it rapidly drove the old one out
+    of the market, and proved a source of considerable profit to
+    its inventor. The prosperity of the house, however, soon began
+    to wane, and it was brought to bankruptcy by the crisis of
+    1836.</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Goodyear's attention had for some time been attracted to
+    the wonderful apparent success of the India-rubber companies of
+    the country, and he was hopeful that his improvement in the
+    inflating apparatus of the life-preserver would bring him the
+    means of partially extricating himself from his difficulties.
+    Repairing to New York, he called on the agent of the Roxbury
+    Company, and explaining his invention to him, offered to sell
+    it to the company. The agent was struck with the skill
+    displayed in the improvement of Mr. Goodyear, but, instead of
+    offering to buy it, astounded the inventor by informing him of
+    the real state of the India-rubber trade of the country. He
+    urged Mr. Goodyear to exert his inventive skill to discover
+    some means of imparting durability to India-rubber goods, and
+    assured him that if he could discover a process which would
+    secure that end, the various companies of the United States
+    would eagerly buy it at his own price. He explained to him the
+    process then in use, and pointed out its imperfections. Mr.
+    Goodyear listened carefully to his statements, forgot all about
+    his disappointment in failing to sell his improved inflating
+    apparatus, and went home firmly convinced that he had found his
+    true mission in life. In after years, when success had crowned
+    his labors, he modestly referred to this period of his career
+    in language the substance of which is thus recorded:</p>
+
+    <p>"From the time that his attention was first given to the
+    subject, a strong and abiding impression was made upon his mind
+    that an object so desirable and important, and so necessary to
+    man's comfort, as the making of gum elastic available to his
+    use was most certainly placed within his reach. Having this
+    presentiment, of which he could not divest himself under the
+    most trying adversity, he was stimulated with the hope, of
+    ultimately attaining this object. Beyond this, he would refer
+    the whole to the great Creator, who directs the operations of
+    the mind to the development of properties of matter, in his own
+    way, at the time when they are specially needed, influencing
+    some mind for every work or calling."</p>
+
+    <p>There was something sublime in the attitude of this one man,
+    now feeble in health, the only dependence of a young family, a
+    bankrupt in business, starting out to seek success in a field
+    in which so many had found only ruin. He was convinced in his
+    own mind that he would master the secret, while his friends
+    were equally sure that he would but increase his difficulties.
+    The firm of which he had been a member had surrendered all
+    their property to their creditors; but they still owed thirty
+    thousand dollars, and immediately upon his return from New
+    York, after his visit to the agent of the Roxbury Company, he
+    was arrested for debt, and though not actually thrown in jail,
+    was compelled to take up his residence within prison
+    limits.</p>
+
+    <p>Strong in the conviction before named, that he was the man
+    of all others to discover the secret of controlling
+    India-rubber, he at once began his experiments. This was in the
+    winter of 1834-35. The gum had fallen in price to five cents
+    per pound, and, poor as he was, he had no difficulty in
+    procuring a sufficient quantity to begin with. By melting and
+    working the gum thoroughly, and by rolling it upon a stone
+    table with a rolling-pin, he succeeded in producing sheets of
+    India-rubber which seemed to him to possess the properties
+    which those of Mr. Chaffee had lacked. He explained his process
+    to a friend, who, becoming interested in it, loaned him the
+    money to manufacture a number of shoes, which at first seemed
+    all that could be desired. Fearful, however, of meeting the
+    fate which had befallen the Roxbury Company, Mr. Goodyear put
+    his shoes away until the next summer, to ascertain whether they
+    would bear the heat. His doubts were more than realized. The
+    warm weather completely ruined them, reducing them to a mass of
+    so offensive an odor that he was glad to throw them away.</p>
+
+    <p>The friend of the inventor was thoroughly disheartened by
+    this failure, and refused to have any thing more to do with
+    Goodyear's schemes; but the latter, though much disappointed,
+    did not despair. He set to work to discover the cause of his
+    failure, and traced it, as he supposed, to the mixing of the
+    gum with the turpentine and lamp-black. Having procured some
+    barrels of the gum in its native liquid state, he spread it on
+    cloth without smoking it or mixing it with any thing else. He
+    succeeded in producing a very handsome white rubber cloth, but
+    it was one that became soft and sticky as quickly as the other
+    had done.</p>
+
+    <p>It now occurred to him that there must be some mineral
+    substance which, mixed with the gum, would render it durable,
+    and he began to experiment with almost every substance that he
+    could lay his hands on. All these proved total failures, with
+    the exception of magnesia. By mixing half a pound of magnesia
+    with a pound of the gum, he produced a compound much whiter
+    than the pure gum, and one which was at first as firm and
+    flexible as leather. He made book-covers and piano-covers out
+    of it, and for a time it seemed that he had discovered the
+    longed-for secret; but in a month his pretty product was
+    ruined. The heat caused it to soften; then fermentation set in,
+    and, finally, it became as hard and brittle as thin glass.</p>
+
+    <p>His friends, who had aided him at first, now turned from him
+    coldly, regarding him as a dreamer; and his own stock of money
+    was exhausted. In his extremity he was forced to pawn all his
+    own valuables, and even some of the trinkets of his wife. In
+    spite of this, he felt sure that he was on the road to success,
+    and that he would very soon be enabled to rise above his
+    present difficulties, and win both fame and fortune. He was
+    obliged for the time, however, to remove his family to the
+    country, depositing with his landlord, as security for the
+    payment of the first quarter's rent, some linen which had been
+    spun by his wife, and which he was never able to redeem. Having
+    settled his family in the country, he set out for New York,
+    where he hoped to find some one willing to aid him in extending
+    his researches still further.</p>
+
+    <p>Arrived in the great city, he found two old acquaintances,
+    to whom he stated his plans and his hopes. One of them offered
+    him the use of a room in Gold Street, as a laboratory, and the
+    other, who was a druggist, agreed to let him have such
+    chemicals as he needed on credit. He now proceeded to boil the
+    gum, mixed with magnesia, in quicklime and water, and, as the
+    result, obtained sheets of his compound whose firmness and
+    smoothness of surface won them a medal at the fair of the
+    American Institute in 1835. He seemed now on the point of
+    success, and readily disposed of all the sheets he could
+    manufacture. The newspapers spoke highly of his invention, for
+    which he obtained a patent; and he was about to endeavor to
+    enlist some persons of means in its manufacture on a large
+    scale, when, to his dismay, he discovered that a single drop of
+    the weakest acid, such as the juice of an apple, or diluted
+    vinegar, would utterly destroy the influence of the lime in the
+    compound, and reduce it to the old sticky substance that had
+    baffled him so often.</p>
+
+    <p>His next step was to mix quicklime with the gum. In order to
+    work the compound thoroughly, he used to carry the vessel
+    containing it, on his shoulder, to a place three miles distant
+    from his laboratory, where he had the use of horse power. The
+    lime, however, utterly destroyed the gum, and nothing came of
+    this experiment.</p>
+
+    <p>The discovery which followed was the result of accident, and
+    brought him on the very threshold of success, yet did not
+    entirely conquer his difficulties. He was an ardent lover of
+    the beautiful, and it was a constant effort with him to render
+    his productions as attractive to the eye as possible. Upon one
+    occasion, while bronzing a piece of rubber cloth, he applied
+    aqua fortis to it for the purpose of removing the bronze from a
+    certain part. It took away the bronze as he had designed, but
+    it also discolored the cloth to such a degree that he supposed
+    it ruined, and threw it away. A day or two later, he chanced to
+    remember that he had not examined very closely into the effect
+    of the aqua fortis upon the rubber, and thereupon instituted a
+    search for it. He was fortunate enough to find it, and was
+    overjoyed to discover that the rubber had undergone a
+    remarkable change, and that the effect of the acid was to
+    harden it to such an extent that it would now stand a degree of
+    heat which would have melted it before. When the reader
+    remembers that aqua fortis is a compound two-fifths of which is
+    sulphuric acid, he will understand that Mr. Goodyear had almost
+    mastered the secret of vulcanizing rubber. He does not appear,
+    however, to have known the true nature of aqua fortis, and
+    called his process the "curing" of India-rubber by the use of
+    that acid.</p>
+
+    <p>The "cured" India-rubber was subjected to many tests, and
+    passed through them successfully, thus demonstrating its
+    adaptability to many important uses. Mr. Goodyear readily
+    obtained a patent for his process, and a partner with a large
+    capital was found ready to aid him. He hired the old
+    India-rubber works on Staten Island, and opened a salesroom in
+    Broadway. He was thrown back for six weeks at this important
+    time by an accident, which happened to him while experimenting
+    with his fabrics, and which came near causing his death. Just
+    as he was recovering and preparing to commence the manufacture
+    of his goods on a large scale, the terrible commercial crisis
+    of 1836 swept over the country, and, by destroying his
+    partner's fortune at one blow, reduced Goodyear to absolute
+    beggary. His family had joined him in New York, and he was
+    entirely without the means of supporting them. As the only
+    resource at hand, he decided to pawn an article of value, one
+    of the few which he possessed, in order to raise money enough
+    to procure one day's supply of provisions. At the very door of
+    the pawnbroker's shop he met one of his creditors, who kindly
+    asked if he could be of any further assistance to him. Weak
+    with hunger, and overcome by the generosity of his friend, the
+    poor man burst into tears, and replied that, as his family was
+    on the point of starvation, a loan of fifteen dollars would
+    greatly oblige him. The money was given him on the spot, and
+    the necessity for visiting the pawnbroker averted for several
+    days longer. Still he was a frequent visitor to that individual
+    during the year; and thus, one by one, the relics of his better
+    days disappeared. Another friend loaned him one hundred
+    dollars, which enabled him to remove his family to Staten
+    Island, in the neighborhood of the abandoned rubber works,
+    which the owners gave him permission to use as far as he could.
+    He contrived in this way to manufacture enough of his "cured"
+    cloth, which sold readily, to enable him to keep his family
+    from starvation. He made repeated efforts to induce capitalists
+    to come to the factory and see his samples and the process by
+    which they were made, but no one would venture near him. There
+    had been money enough lost in such experiments, they said, and
+    they were determined to risk no more.</p>
+
+    <p>Indeed, in all the broad land there was but one man who had
+    the slightest hope of accomplishing any thing with
+    India-rubber, and that one was Charles Goodyear. His friends
+    regarded him as a monomaniac. He not only manufactured his
+    cloth, but even dressed in clothes made of it, wearing it for
+    the purpose of testing its durability, as well as of
+    advertising it. He was certainly an odd figure, and in his
+    appearance justified the remark of one of his friends, who,
+    upon being asked how Mr. Goodyear could be recognized, replied:
+    "If you see a man with an India-rubber coat on, India-rubber
+    shoes, an India-rubber cap, and in his pocket an India-rubber
+    purse, with not a cent in it, that is Goodyear."</p>
+
+    <p>In September, 1836, a new gleam of hope lit up his pathway.
+    A friend having loaned him a small sum of money, he went to
+    Roxbury, taking with him some of his best specimens. Although
+    the Roxbury Company had gone down with such a fearful crash,
+    Mr. Chaffee, the inventor of the process in this country, was
+    still firm in his faith that India-rubber would at some future
+    time justify the expectations of its earliest friends. He
+    welcomed Mr. Goodyear cordially, and allowed him to use the
+    abandoned works of the company for his experiments. The result
+    was that Goodyear succeeded in making slides and cloths of
+    India-rubber of a quality so much better than any that had yet
+    been seen in America, that the hopes of the friends of
+    India-rubber were raised to a high point. Offers to purchase
+    rights for certain portions of the country came in rapidly, and
+    by the sale of them Goodyear realized between four and five
+    thousand dollars. He was now able to bring his family to
+    Roxbury, and for the time fortune seemed to smile upon him.</p>
+
+    <p>His success was but temporary, however. He obtained an order
+    from the General Government for one hundred and fifty
+    India-rubber mail-bags, which he succeeded in producing, and as
+    they came out smooth, highly polished, hard, well shaped, and
+    entirely impervious to moisture, he was delighted, and summoned
+    his friends to inspect and admire them. All who saw them
+    pronounced them a perfect success; but, alas! in a single month
+    they began to soften and ferment, and finally became useless.
+    Poor Goodyear's hopes were dashed to the ground. It was found
+    that the aqua fortis merely "cured" the surface of the
+    material, and that only very thin cloth made in this way was
+    durable. His other goods began to prove worthless, and his
+    promising business came to a sudden and disastrous end. All his
+    possessions were seized and sold for debt, and once more he was
+    reduced to poverty. His position was even worse than before,
+    for his family had increased in size, and his aged father also
+    had become dependent upon him for support.</p>
+
+    <p>Friends, relatives, and even his wife, all demanded that he
+    should abandon his empty dreams, and turn his attention to
+    something that would yield a support to his family. Four years
+    of constant failure, added to the unfortunate experience of
+    those who had preceded him, ought to convince him, they said,
+    that he was hoping against hope. Hitherto his conduct, they
+    said, had been absurd, though they admitted that he was to some
+    extent excused for it by his partial success; but to persist in
+    it would now be criminal. The inventor was driven to despair,
+    and being a man of tender feelings and ardently devoted to his
+    family, might have yielded to them had he not felt that lie was
+    nearer than ever to the discovery of the secret that had eluded
+    him so long.</p>
+
+    <p>Just before the failure of his mail-bags had brought ruin
+    upon him, he had taken into his employ a man named Nathaniel
+    Hayward, who had been the foreman of the old Roxbury works, and
+    who was still in charge of them when Goodyear came to Roxbury,
+    making a few rubber articles on his own account. He hardened
+    his compound by mixing a little powdered sulphur with the gum,
+    or by sprinkling sulphur on the rubber cloth, and drying it in
+    the sun. He declared that the process had been revealed to him
+    in a dream, but could give no further account of it. Goodyear
+    was astonished to find that the sulphur cured the India-rubber
+    as thoroughly as the aqua fortis, the principal objection being
+    that the sulphurous odor of the goods was frightful in hot
+    weather. Hayward's process was really the same as that employed
+    by Goodyear, the "curing" of the India-rubber being due in each
+    case to the agency of sulphur, the principal difference between
+    them being that Hayward's goods were dried by the sun, and
+    Goodyear's with nitric acid. Hay ward set so small a value upon
+    his discovery that he had readily sold it to his new
+    employer.</p>
+
+    <div class="full">
+        <a name='illust7041'></a>
+        <a href='images/7041.jpg'><img src='images/7041.jpg'
+                width='625' border=0
+                alt='AN AMAZING REVELATION.'></a><br>
+         AN AMAZING REVELATION.
+    </div>
+
+    <p>Goodyear felt that he had now all but conquered his
+    difficulties. It was plain that sulphur was the great
+    controller of India-rubber, for he had proved that when applied
+    to thin cloth it would render it available for most purposes.
+    The problem that now remained was how to mix sulphur and the
+    gum in a mass, so that every part of the rubber should be
+    subjected to the agency of the sulphur. He experimented for
+    weeks and months with the most intense eagerness, but the
+    mystery completely baffled him. His friends urged him to go to
+    work to do something for his family, but he could not turn
+    back. The goal was almost in sight, and he felt that he would
+    be false to his mission were he to abandon his labors now. To
+    the world he seemed a crack-brained dreamer, and some there
+    were who, seeing the distress of his family, did not hesitate
+    to apply still harsher names to him; but to the Great Eye that
+    reads all hearts, how different did this man appear! It saw the
+    anguish that wrung the heart of Charles Goodyear, and knew the
+    more than heroic firmness with which, in the midst of his
+    poverty and suffering, he agonized for the great discovery. Had
+    it been merely wealth that he was working for, doubtless he
+    would have turned back and sought some other means of obtaining
+    it; but he sought more. He was striving for the good of his
+    fellow-men, and ambitious of becoming a benefactor of the race.
+    He felt that he had a mission to fulfill, and no one else could
+    perform it.</p>
+
+    <p>He was right. A still greater success was about to crown his
+    labors, but in a manner far different from his expectations.
+    His experiments had developed nothing; chance was to make the
+    revelation. It was in the spring of 1839 that this revelation
+    came to him, and in the following manner: Standing before a
+    stove in a store at Woburn, Massachusetts, he was explaining to
+    some acquaintances the properties of a piece of sulphur-cured
+    India-rubber which he held in his hand. They listened to him
+    good-naturedly, but with evident incredulity, when suddenly he
+    dropped the rubber on the stove, which was red hot. His old
+    cloths would have melted instantly from contact with such heat;
+    but, to his surprise, this piece underwent no such change. In
+    amazement, he examined it, and found that while it had charred
+    or shriveled, like leather, it had not softened at all. The
+    bystanders attached no importance to this phenomenon, but to
+    him it was a revelation. He renewed his experiments with
+    enthusiasm, and in a little while established the facts that
+    India-rubber, when mixed with sulphur and exposed to a certain
+    degree of heat for a certain time, would not melt or even
+    soften at any degree of heat, that it would only char at two
+    hundred and eighty degrees, and that it would not stiffen from
+    exposure to any degree of cold. The difficulty now consisted in
+    finding out the exact degree of heat necessary for the
+    perfection of the rubber, and the exact length of time required
+    for the heating.</p>
+
+    <p>He made this discovery in his darkest days; when, in fact,
+    he was in constant danger of arrest for debt, having already
+    been a frequent inmate of the debtor's prison. He was in the
+    depths of bitter poverty, and in such feeble health that he was
+    constantly haunted by the fear of dying before he had perfected
+    his discovery&mdash;before he had fulfilled his mission. His
+    poverty was a greater drawback to him than ever before. He
+    needed an apparatus for producing a high and uniform heat for
+    his experiments, and he was unable to obtain it. He used to
+    bake his compound in his wife's bread oven, and steam it over
+    the spout of her tea-kettle, and to press the kitchen fire into
+    his service as far as it would go. When this failed, he would
+    go to the shops in the vicinity of Woburn, and beg to be
+    allowed to use the ovens and boilers after working hours were
+    over. The workmen regarded him as a lunatic, but were too
+    good-natured to deny him the request. Finally, he induced a
+    bricklayer to make him an oven, and paid him in mason's aprons
+    of India-rubber. The oven was a failure. Sometimes it would
+    turn out pieces of perfectly vulcanized cloth, and again the
+    goods would be charred and ruined. Goodyear was in despair.</p>
+
+    <p>All this time he lived on the charity of his friends. His
+    neighbors pretended to lend him money, but in reality gave him
+    the means of keeping his family from starvation. He has
+    declared that all the while he felt sure he would, before long,
+    be able to pay them back, but they declared with equal emphasis
+    that, at that time, they never expected to witness his success.
+    He was yellow and shriveled in face, with a gaunt, lean figure,
+    and his habit of wearing an India-rubber coat, which was
+    charred and blackened from his frequent experiments with it,
+    gave him a wild and singular appearance. People shook their
+    heads solemnly when they saw him, and said that the mad-house
+    was the proper place for him.</p>
+
+    <p>The winter of 1839-40 was long and severe. At the opening of
+    the season, Mr. Goodyear received a letter from a house in
+    Paris, making him a handsome offer for the use of his process
+    of curing India-rubber with aqua fortis. Here was a chance for
+    him to rise out of his misery. A year before he would have
+    closed with the offer, but since then he had discovered the
+    effects of sulphur and heat on his compound, and had passed far
+    beyond the aqua fortis stage. Disappointment and want had not
+    warped his honesty, and he at once declined to enter into any
+    arrangements with the French house, informing them that
+    although the process they desired to purchase was a valuable
+    one, it was about to be entirely replaced by another which he
+    was then on the point of perfecting, and which he would gladly
+    sell them as soon as he had completed it. His friends declared
+    that he was mad to refuse such an offer; but he replied that
+    nothing would induce him to sell a process which he knew was
+    about to be rendered worthless by still greater
+    discoveries.</p>
+
+    <p>A few weeks later, a terrible snow-storm passed over the
+    land, one of the worst that New England has ever known, and in
+    the midst of it Goodyear made the appalling discovery that he
+    had not a particle of fuel or a mouthful of food in the house.
+    He was ill enough to be in bed himself, and his purse was
+    entirely empty. It was a terrible position, made worse, too, by
+    the fact that his friends who had formerly aided him had turned
+    from him, vexed with his pertinacity, and abandoned him to his
+    fate. In his despair, he bethought him of a mere acquaintance
+    who lived several miles from his cottage, and who but a few
+    days before had spoken to him with more of kindness than he had
+    received of late. This gentleman, he thought, would aid him in
+    his distress, if he could but reach his house, but in such a
+    snow the journey seemed hopeless to a man in his feeble health.
+    Still the effort must be made. Nerved by despair, he set out,
+    and pushed his way resolutely through the heavy drifts. The way
+    was long, and it seemed to him that he would never accomplish
+    it. Often he fell prostrate on the snow, almost fainting with
+    fatigue and hunger, and again he would sit down wearily in the
+    road, feeling that he would gladly die if his discovery were
+    but completed. At length, however, he reached the end of his
+    journey, and fortunately found his acquaintance at home. To
+    this gentleman he told the story of his discovery, his hopes,
+    his struggles, and his present sufferings, and implored him to
+    aid him. Mr. Coolidge<a id="footnotetagH"
+       name="footnotetagH"></a><a href=
+       "#footnoteH"><sup>[H]</sup></a> &mdash;for such was the
+       gentleman's name&mdash;listened to him kindly, and after
+       expressing the warmest sympathy for him, loaned him money
+       enough to support his family during the severe weather, and
+       to enable him to continue his experiments.</p>
+
+    <p>"Seeing no prospect of success in Massachusetts, he now
+    resolved to make a desperate effort to get to New York, feeling
+    confident that the specimens he could take with him would
+    convince some one of the superiority of his new method. He was
+    beginning to understand the causes of his many failures, but he
+    saw clearly that his compound could not be worked with
+    certainty without expensive apparatus. It was a very delicate
+    operation, requiring exactness and promptitude. The conditions
+    upon which success depended were numerous, and the failure of
+    one spoiled all.... It cost him thousands of failures to learn
+    that a little acid in his sulphur caused the blistering; that
+    his compound must be heated almost immediately after being
+    mixed, or it would never vulcanize; that a portion of white
+    lead in the compound greatly facilitated the operation and
+    improved the result; and when he had learned these facts, it
+    still required costly and laborious experiments to devise the
+    best methods of compounding his ingredients, the best
+    proportions, the best mode of heating, the proper duration of
+    the heating, and the various useful effects that could be
+    produced by varying the proportions and the degree of heat. He
+    tells us that many times when, by exhausting every resource, he
+    had prepared a quantity of his compound for heating, it was
+    spoiled because he could not, with his inadequate apparatus,
+    apply the heat soon enough.</p>
+
+    <p>"To New York, then, he directed his thoughts. Merely to get
+    there cost him a severer and a longer effort than men in
+    general are capable of making. First he walked to Boston, ten
+    miles distant, where he hoped to borrow from an old
+    acquaintance fifty dollars, with which to provide for his
+    family and pay his fare to New York. He not only failed in
+    this, but he was arrested for debt and thrown into prison. Even
+    in prison, while his father was negotiating to procure his
+    release, he labored to interest men of capital in his
+    discovery, and made proposals for founding a factory in Boston.
+    Having obtained his liberty, he went to a hotel, and spent a
+    week in vain efforts to effect a small loan. Saturday night
+    came, and with it his hotel bill, which he had no means of
+    discharging. In an agony of shame and anxiety, he went to a
+    friend and entreated the sum of five dollars to enable him to
+    return home. He was met with a point blank refusal. In the
+    deepest dejection, he walked the streets till late in the
+    night, and strayed at length, almost beside himself, to
+    Cambridge, where he ventured to call upon a friend and ask
+    shelter for the night. He was hospitably entertained, and the
+    next morning walked wearily home, penniless and despairing. At
+    the door of his house a member of his family met him with the
+    news that his youngest child, two years old, whom he had left
+    in perfect health, was dying. In a few hours he had in his
+    house a dead child, but not the means of burying it, and five
+    living dependents without a morsel of food to give them. A
+    storekeeper near by had promised to supply the family, but,
+    discouraged by the unforeseen length of the father's absence,
+    he had that day refused to trust them further. In these
+    terrible circumstances, he applied to a friend upon whose
+    generosity he knew he could rely, one who never failed him. He
+    received in reply a letter of severe and cutting reproach,
+    inclosing seven dollars, which his friend explained was given
+    only out of pity for his innocent and suffering family. A
+    stranger who chanced to be present when this letter arrived
+    sent them a barrel of flour&mdash;a timely and blessed relief.
+    The next day the family followed on foot the remains of the
+    little child to the grave."</p>
+
+    <p>He had now reached the lowest ebb of his misery, and a
+    brighter day was in store for him. Obtaining fifty dollars from
+    a relative, he went to New York, where he succeeded in
+    interesting in his discovery two brothers, William and Emory
+    Rider. They agreed to advance him a certain sum to support his
+    family and continue his experiments. By means of this aid he
+    was enabled to keep his family from want in the future, and
+    from that time his experiments never flagged. Before entire
+    success crowned his efforts, the brothers Rider failed; but he
+    had advanced his experiments so greatly that his
+    brother-in-law, William De Forrest, a rich woolen manufacturer,
+    came to his support, and supplied him with the means to go on
+    with his labors. Mr. De Forrest's total advances amounted to
+    forty-six thousand dollars, from which fact the reader may gain
+    some idea of the obstacles overcome by Goodyear in this last
+    stage of his invention.</p>
+
+    <p>The prize for which he had labored so long and so heroically
+    was secured at last, and in 1844, ten years after the
+    commencement of his experiments, he was able to produce
+    perfectly vulcanized India-rubber with expedition and economy,
+    and, above all, with certainty. He had won a success which
+    added a new material to art and commerce, and one which could
+    be applied in a thousand different ways, and all of them useful
+    to man. But great as his success was, he was not satisfied with
+    it. To the end of his life his constant effort was to improve
+    his invention, and apply it to new uses. He had an unlimited
+    faith in its adaptability, believing that there was scarcely
+    any article of general use that could not be made of it. Upon
+    one occasion he read in a newspaper that twenty persons
+    perished every hour by drowning. The statement impressed him
+    deeply, and his wife noticed that for several nights he
+    scarcely slept at all. "Try to compose yourself, and sleep,"
+    she said to him. "Sleep!" he exclaimed, "how can I sleep when
+    twenty human beings are drowning every hour, and I am the man
+    that can save them?" And at this time it was his constant
+    endeavor to invent some article of India-rubber which could be
+    easily carried by travelers, and which would render it
+    impossible for them to sink in water.</p>
+
+    <p>Having brought his process to a successful completion in
+    this country, and obtained patents for it, he went to Europe to
+    secure similar protections in the principal countries of the
+    Old World. "The French laws require that the patentee shall put
+    and keep his invention in public use in France within two years
+    from its date. Goodyear had, at great inconvenience and
+    expense, endeavored to comply with this and with all other
+    requirements of the French laws, and thought he had effectually
+    done so; but the courts of France decided that he had not in
+    every particular complied with the strict requisitions of the
+    law, and that, therefore, his patent in France had become void.
+    In England he was still more unfortunate. Having sent specimens
+    of vulcanized fabrics to Charles Mackintosh &amp; Co., in 1842,
+    and having opened with them a negotiation for the sale of the
+    secret of the invention or discovery, one of the partners of
+    that firm, named Thomas Hancock, availing himself, as he
+    admits, of the hints and opportunities thus presented to him,
+    rediscovered, as he affirms, the process of vulcanization, and
+    described it in a patent for England, which was enrolled on May
+    21, 1844, <i>about five weeks after</i> the specification and
+    publication of the discovery to the world by Goodyear's patent
+    for vulcanization in France. And the patent of Hancock, held
+    good according to a peculiarity of English law, thus superseded
+    Goodyear's English patent for vulcanization, which bore date a
+    few days later. Goodyear, however, obtained the great council
+    medal of the exhibition of all nations at London, the grand
+    medal of the world's exhibition at Paris, and the ribbon of the
+    Legion of Honor, presented by Napoleon III."</p>
+
+    <p>In his own country, Mr. Goodyear was scarcely less
+    unfortunate. His patents were infringed and violated by others,
+    even after the decision of the courts seemed to place his
+    rights beyond question. He was too thoroughly the inventor and
+    too little the man of business to protect himself from the
+    robberies of the wretches who plundered him of the profits of
+    his invention. It is said that his inability to manage sharp
+    transactions made him the victim of many who held nominally
+    fair business relations with him. The United States
+    Commissioner of Patents, in 1858, thus spoke of his losses:</p>
+
+    <p>"No inventor, probably, has ever been so harassed, so
+    trampled upon, so plundered by that sordid and licentious class
+    of infringers known in the parlance of the world, with no
+    exaggeration of phrase, as 'pirates.' The spoliation of their
+    incessant guerrilla warfare upon his defenseless rights have,
+    unquestionably, amounted to millions."</p>
+
+    <p>Failing to accomplish any thing in Europe, Mr. Goodyear
+    returned to this country, and continued his labors. His health,
+    never strong, gave way under the continued strain, and he died
+    in New York in July, 1860, in the sixtieth year of his age,
+    completely worn out. Notwithstanding his great
+    invention&mdash;an invention which has made millions for those
+    engaged in its manufacture&mdash;he died insolvent, and left
+    his family heavily in debt. A few years after his death an
+    effort was made to procure from Congress a further seven years'
+    extension of his patent for vulcanization, for the benefit of
+    his family and his creditors. The men who had trampled his
+    rights under foot while living were resolved, however, that he
+    should not have justice done him in death; and, through their
+    influence, that august body, in strange contrast with its usual
+    lavish generosity in the matter of land grants and the like,
+    coldly declined to do any thing for the family of the man to
+    whom civilization owes so much, and the effort proved
+    abortive.</p>
+
+    <p>But, though unfortunate in a pecuniary sense, though he died
+    without freeing himself from the embarrassments which haunted
+    him through life, there can be no question that Charles
+    Goodyear richly merits the place which we have given him in
+    this gallery of "Our Self-made Men;" not only on account of the
+    great merit and usefulness of his discovery or invention, but
+    because that invention has been the source of many a "great
+    fortune" to others, as it might, indeed, have been to him, had
+    his rights been respected, or properly protected when
+    infringed. It is sad to reflect that he died poor who has given
+    wealth to so many, and accomplished results so beneficent to
+    mankind. Yet he did not fail entirely of his reward in life; he
+    lived to see his invention give rise to large factories in the
+    United States, and in England, France, and Germany, which
+    employ sixty thousand operatives, and produce over five hundred
+    different kinds of articles, to the amount of eight millions of
+    dollars annually. He lived to see boots and shoes, clothing,
+    caps, hats, articles of commerce and of pleasure, mechanical,
+    scientific, and surgical instruments, toys, belting for
+    machinery, packing for the steam-engine, and many other
+    articles now in common use, made of the material, the discovery
+    and perfection of which cost him long and sorrowful years of
+    toil. He lived to hear his name mentioned by millions as one of
+    their greatest benefactors; to know that he had conferred upon
+    the world benefits of which those who had robbed him could not
+    deprive his fellow-men; and to feel that he had at length
+    accomplished his mission&mdash;a mission which has been
+    productive of good alone.</p>
+
+    <blockquote class="footnote">
+        <a id="footnoteH"
+                    name="footnoteH"></a> <b>Footnote H</b>:
+                    <a href="#footnotetagH">(return)</a>
+
+        <p>O.B. Coolidge, of Woburn.</p>
+    </blockquote>
+
+    <div class="full">
+        <a name='illust7061'></a>
+        <a href='images/7061.jpg'><img src='images/7061.jpg'
+                width='650' border=0
+                alt=
+                '"THE MADHOUSE IS THE PROPER PLACE FOR HIM."'></a><br>
+         "THE MADHOUSE IS THE PROPER PLACE FOR HIM."
+    </div>
+    <hr style='width: 65%;'>
+    <a name='CHAPTER_XV'></a>
+
+    <h2>CHAPTER XV.</h2>
+
+    <h3>ELI WHITNEY.</h3><br>
+
+
+    <p>At the close of the Revolution the States of South Carolina
+    and Georgia presented large tracts of land to the gallant
+    General Nathaniel Greene, to whose genius they were indebted
+    for their relief from British tyranny. Soon after this grant
+    was made, General Greene removed his family to Mulberry Grove,
+    a fine plantation on the Georgia side of the Savannah River.
+    Here he died in 1786, from sunstroke, but his family continued
+    to reside on the place. The mansion of Mrs. Greene was noted
+    for its hospitality, and was frequently filled with guests who
+    came to pay their respects to the widow of the most brilliant
+    and best trusted subordinate of the immortal Washington.</p>
+
+    <p>To this mansion there came one day, in the year 1792,
+    <span class="small-caps">Eli Whitney</span>, then a young man
+    recently from New England. He was a native of Westborough,
+    Massachusetts, where he was born on the 8th of December, 1765.
+    Of his youth but little is known, save that he was gifted with
+    unusual mechanical genius, the employment of which enabled him
+    to overcome some of the difficulties incident to his poverty,
+    and to acquire the means of obtaining a good common school
+    education. Adding to this the labors of a teacher, he earned a
+    sum sufficient to carry him through Yale College, where he was
+    graduated in the summer of 1702, a few months before his
+    arrival in Georgia. He had come South to accept the offer of a
+    situation as teacher, but the place had been filled before his
+    arrival, and, being without friends in that section, he sought
+    employment from Mrs. Greene. Though pleased with his modesty
+    and intelligence, that lady could not avail herself of his
+    services as a tutor, but invited him to make her house his home
+    as long as he should desire to remain in Georgia. He was sick
+    in body and disheartened by his first failure, and gladly
+    accepted her invitation. While her guest he made her a tambour
+    frame of an improved pattern, and a number of ingenious toys
+    for her children, which so delighted the good lady that she
+    enthusiastically declared him capable of doing any thing.</p>
+
+    <p>Not long after Mr. Whitney's arrival at the plantation, Mrs.
+    Greene was entertaining a number of visitors from the
+    surrounding country, several planters of considerable wealth
+    being among the number, when one of the guests turned the
+    conversation upon the subject of cotton-raising, by declaring
+    that he had met with such poor success that he was ready to
+    abandon the undertaking. His trouble was not, he said, that
+    cotton would not grow in his land, for it yielded an abundant
+    return, but that the labor of clearing it from the seed was so
+    enormous that he could not do more than pay expenses after
+    selling it.</p>
+
+    <p>His case was simply one among a thousand. The far Southern
+    States were admitted by every one to be admirably adapted to
+    the cultivation of cotton, but, after it was grown and picked,
+    the expense of cleaning it destroyed nearly all the profits of
+    the transaction. The cleaning process was performed by hand,
+    and it was as much as an able-bodied negro could do to clean
+    one pound per day in this manner. Disheartened by this
+    difficulty, which no one had yet been able to remove, the
+    planters of the South were seriously contemplating the entire
+    abandonment of this portion of their industry, since it only
+    involved them in debt. Their lands were heavily mortgaged, and
+    general ruin seemed to threaten them. All felt that the
+    invention of a machine for cleaning or ginning the cotton would
+    not only remove their difficulties, but enable them to plant
+    the green cotton-seed, from the use of which they were then
+    almost entirely debarred, because, although more productive and
+    of a better quality than the black, and adapted by nature to a
+    much greater variety of climate, it was much more difficult to
+    clean, and therefore less profitable to cultivate.</p>
+
+    <p>These facts were discussed in the conversation at Mrs.
+    Greene's table, and it was suggested by one of the company that
+    perhaps the very urgency of the case would induce some
+    ingenious man to invent a machine which should solve the
+    problem, and remove all the difficulties in the way.</p>
+
+    <p>"Is it a machine you want?" said Mrs. Greene, eagerly.
+    "Then, gentlemen, you should apply to my young friend, Mr.
+    Whitney; <i>he</i> can make any thing."</p>
+
+    <p>She at once sent for Whitney, and introduced him to her
+    guests, who repeated to him the substance of their
+    conversation, and urged him to undertake the invention of what
+    was so much needed. The young man protested that he had never
+    seen either a pod of cotton or a cotton-seed in his life, and
+    was utterly incompetent for the task they proposed. In spite of
+    this, however, his new acquaintances urged him to attempt it,
+    and assured him that if successful his invention would make his
+    fortune. Whitney would promise nothing more than to think of
+    the matter, and the planters departed in the belief that
+    nothing would come of their entreaties, and that the culture of
+    cotton would languish until it should finally die out.</p>
+
+    <p>Whitney <i>did</i> think of the matter, and the result was
+    that he decided to attempt the production of a machine which
+    should clean cotton both expeditiously and cheaply. It was late
+    in the season, and unginned cotton, or cotton from which the
+    seeds had not been removed, was hard to procure. With
+    considerable difficulty he succeeded in finding a few pounds on
+    the wharf at Savannah, and at once securing his prize, he
+    carried it home in his hands.</p>
+
+    <div class="full">
+        <a name='illust7081'></a>
+        <a href='images/7081.jpg'><img src='images/7081.jpg'
+                width='600' border=0
+                alt='WHITNEY WATCHING THE FIRST COTTON-GIN'></a>
+    </div>
+
+    <p>Mrs. Greene being confidentially informed of his plans,
+    provided him with a room in the cellar of her house, where he
+    could carry on his work in secret. All that winter he worked at
+    it, with a patience and energy which could not fail of success.
+    Many difficulties confronted him. To carry on his work
+    successfully, he needed tools of a certain description, which
+    were not to be had in Savannah, or even in Charleston, upon any
+    terms. But when was the genius of a Yankee ever baffled by
+    difficulties? Whitney's mechanical skill came to his aid, and
+    he conquered this obstacle by manufacturing all the implements
+    he needed. He wanted wire, but none was to be found, and he was
+    compelled to make all that he used. A score or more of
+    drawbacks presented themselves, and were overcome in this way,
+    and all through the winter the young inventor applied himself
+    with diligence to his task. The children and servants regarded
+    him with the greatest curiosity. They heard him hammering and
+    sawing in his room, the doors of which were always kept locked,
+    and into which they were never allowed to enter. Mrs. Greene
+    was kept fully informed of his progress. When sure of success,
+    Whitney revealed the secret to a Mr. Miller, a gentleman of
+    means, who consented to enter into a copartnership with him for
+    the manufacture of the machines, after the completion of the
+    model should have enabled Whitney to secure a patent for his
+    invention.</p>
+
+    <p>Whitney had hoped to keep his work secret from all others,
+    but this proved to be impossible. It became rumored about the
+    country that the young man from New England, who was living at
+    Mrs. Greene's, was engaged in inventing a machine which would
+    clean cotton with the rapidity of thought, and the most intense
+    eagerness was manifested to see the wonderful production, which
+    every one felt would entirely revolutionize cotton culture in
+    the South. Whitney endeavored to guard his invention from the
+    public curiosity, but without success. Before he had completed
+    his model, some scoundrels broke into the place containing it,
+    and carried it off by night. He succeeded in recovering it, but
+    the principle upon which it depended was made public, and
+    before the model was completed and a patent secured, a number
+    of machines based on his invention had been surreptitiously
+    made, and were in operation.</p>
+
+    <p>In spite of this discouraging circumstance, Whitney brought
+    his invention to perfection, and in the spring of 1793 set up
+    his first cotton gin, under a shed on Mrs. Greene's plantation,
+    and invited a number of the neighboring planters to witness its
+    operation.</p>
+
+    <p>His machine was very simple, but none the less ingenious on
+    that account. The cotton was placed in a trough, the bottom of
+    which consisted of parallel rows of wire, placed like the bars
+    in a grating, but so close together that the seed could not
+    pass through them. Underneath this trough revolved an iron
+    roller, armed with teeth formed of strong wires projecting from
+    the roller, which passed between the wire bars, and, seizing
+    the cotton, drew it through the bars and passed it behind the
+    roller, where it was brushed off the wire teeth by means of a
+    cylindrical brush. The seed, unable to pass through the bars,
+    were left behind, and, completely stripped of the fiber, ran
+    out in a stream through a spout at one end of the trough. It
+    was found that the cotton thus ginned was cleaned
+    thoroughly,<a id="footnotetagI"
+       name="footnotetagI"></a><a href=
+       "#footnoteI"><sup>[I]</sup></a> and far better than it could
+       be done by hand, and that a single man, by this process,
+       could clean as much as three hundred pounds in a day.</p>
+
+    <p>The spectators were delighted with Whitney's machine, and
+    urged him to lose no time in putting it in the market. They
+    predicted an unlimited success for it, and assured the inventor
+    that it would not only make his own fortune, but also render
+    cotton culture the source of wealth to the South. They did not
+    exaggerate. As soon as it was made known to the public,
+    Whitney's machine came into general use. Planters had no longer
+    any thing to fear from the labor and expense of preparing their
+    great staple for market. Whitney's genius had swept away all
+    their difficulties, and they reaped a golden harvest from it.
+    They were enabled to send their cotton promptly and cheaply to
+    market, where it brought good prices. With the money thus
+    obtained they paid their debts, and increased their capacity
+    for cultivation. Every year the area devoted to cotton-growing
+    became more extended, and the prosperity of the South became
+    greater and more durable. In 1793, the total export of cotton
+    from the United States was ten thousand bales; in 1860, it was
+    over four millions of bales. Hundreds of millions of dollars
+    were brought into the South by this invention&mdash;so that it
+    is no exaggeration to say that the remarkable prosperity
+    enjoyed by the South at the commencement of our late civil war
+    was due entirely to the genius of Eli Whitney. This opinion is
+    fortified by the following remarks of Judge Johnson, uttered in
+    a charge to the jury in a suit brought by Whitney, in Savannah,
+    in 1807, to sustain the validity of his patent:</p>
+
+    <p>"With regard to the utility of this discovery ... the whole
+    interior of the Southern States was languishing, and its
+    inhabitants emigrating for want of some object to engage their
+    attention and employ their industry, when the invention of this
+    machine at once opened views to them which set the whole
+    country in active motion. From childhood to age it has
+    presented to us a lucrative employment. Individuals who were
+    depressed with poverty, and sunk in idleness, have suddenly
+    risen to wealth and respectability. Our debts have been paid
+    off, our capitals have increased, and our lands have trebled
+    themselves in value. We can not express the weight of the
+    obligation which the country owes to this invention. The extent
+    of it can not now be seen."</p>
+
+    <p>Surely, the reader will exclaim, if such was the profit of
+    this invention to the country at large, what a vast fortune
+    must it have been to its inventor! Let us see. In May, 1793,
+    Whitney and Miller went to Connecticut and established a
+    factory for the construction of cotton gins. They were in
+    possession of a patent which was supposed to pledge to them the
+    protection of the United States. The demand for the machine was
+    increasing every day, and it seemed that they would reap a
+    golden harvest from it. They were disappointed. The machine was
+    so simple that any competent mechanic could easily manufacture
+    one after examining the model, and this temptation to
+    dishonesty proved too strong for the morality of the
+    cotton-growing community. In a short time there were hundreds
+    of fraudulent machines at work in the South, made and sold in
+    direct and open violation of Whitney's rights. In vain the
+    inventor brought suit against those who infringed his patent.
+    It was rare that a jury in a cotton State gave a verdict in his
+    favor. In Georgia it was boldly asserted that Whitney was not
+    the inventor of the cotton gin, but that some persons in
+    Switzerland had invented something similar to it, and the
+    substitution of teeth, cut in an iron plate, instead of wire,
+    was claimed as superseding his invention. The Legislature of
+    South Carolina granted him the beggarly sum of $50,000 for the
+    use of his invention by the planters of that State; but it was
+    only by going to law, and after several tedious and vexatious
+    suits, that he was able to secure this sum. Tennessee agreed to
+    allow him a percentage for the use of each saw for a certain
+    period, but afterward repudiated her contract. The action of
+    North Carolina forms the only bright page in this history of
+    fraud and wrong. That State allowed him a percentage for the
+    use of each saw for the term of five years, and promptly
+    collected the money and paid it over to the patentee. For
+    fourteen years Whitney continued to manufacture his machines,
+    reaping absolutely no profit from his investments, and earning
+    merely a bare support. During all this time his rights were
+    systematically violated, suits were wrongfully decided against
+    him by various Southern courts, and he was harassed and
+    plundered on every side. America never presented a more
+    shameful spectacle than was exhibited when the courts of the
+    cotton-growing regions united with the piratical infringers of
+    Whitney's rights in robbing their greatest benefactor. In 1807,
+    Whitney's partner died, and his factory was destroyed by fire.
+    In the same year his patent expired, and he sought its renewal
+    from Congress. Here again he was met with the ingratitude of
+    the cotton States. The Southern members, then all powerful in
+    the Government, united in opposing the extension of his patent,
+    and his petition was rejected. At the same time a report was
+    industriously circulated that his machine injured the fiber of
+    the cotton; but it is a significant fact that, although the
+    planters insisted vehemently upon this assertion while Whitney
+    was seeking an extension of his patent, not one of them
+    discontinued the use of his machine, or sought to remedy the
+    alleged defect.</p>
+
+    <p>Whitney, thoroughly disheartened, now abandoned the
+    manufacture of cotton gins in disgust, wound up his affairs,
+    and found himself a poor man. In spite of the far-reaching
+    benefits of his invention, he had not realized one dollar above
+    his expenses. He had given millions upon millions of dollars to
+    the cotton-growing States, he had opened the way for the
+    establishment of the vast cotton-spinning interests of his own
+    country and Europe, and yet, after fourteen years of hard
+    labor, he was a poor man, the victim of a wealthy, powerful,
+    and, in his case, a dishonest class, who had robbed him of his
+    rights and of the fortune he had so fairly earned. Truly,
+    "wisdom is better than strength, but the poor man's wisdom is
+    despised."</p>
+
+    <p>Whitney, however, was not the man to waste his time in
+    repining. He abandoned his efforts to protect his cotton gin
+    because of his conviction that there was not honesty enough in
+    the country to sustain him in his rights, but he did not
+    abandon with it the idea of winning fortune. He promptly turned
+    his genius in another direction, and this time with
+    success.</p>
+
+    <p>The fire-arms then in use were heavy, clumsy weapons, and
+    effective only at very short range. He examined the system
+    closely, and quickly designed several important improvements in
+    them, especially in the old-fashioned musket. Although his
+    improved arms were not to be compared with the terribly
+    effective weapons of to-day, they were admitted to be the best
+    then in use. By examining the Springfield musket, which is due
+    almost entirely to his genius, the reader can form an accurate
+    estimate of the service he rendered in this respect. He has the
+    honor of being the inaugurator of the system of progressive
+    improvement in fire-arms, which has gone on steadily and
+    without flagging for now fully sixty years past.</p>
+
+    <p>Some time before abandoning the manufacture of the cotton
+    gin, Mr. Whitney established an arms factory in New Haven, and
+    obtained a contract from the Government for ten thousand stand
+    of arms, to be delivered in two years. At this time he not only
+    had to manufacture the machinery needed by him for this
+    purpose, but had to invent the greater part of it. This delayed
+    the execution of his contract for eight years, but at the
+    expiration of that time he had so far perfected his
+    establishment, which had been removed to Whitneyville, Conn.,
+    that he at once entered into contracts for thirty thousand more
+    arms, which he delivered promptly at the appointed time. His
+    factory was the most complete in the country, and was fitted up
+    in a great measure with the machinery which he had invented,
+    and without which the improved weapons could not be fabricated.
+    He introduced a new system into the manufacture of fire-arms,
+    and one which greatly increased the rapidity of construction.
+    "He was the first manufacturer of fire-arms who carried the
+    division of labor to the extent of leaking it the duty of each
+    workman to perform by machinery but one or two operations on a
+    single portion of the gun, and thus rendered all the parts
+    adapted to any one of the thousands of arms in process of
+    manufacture at the same time."</p>
+
+    <p>His success was now marked and rapid. His factory was taxed
+    to its fullest capacity to supply the demand for arms. His
+    genius was rewarded at last, and he acquired a fortune which
+    enabled him not only to pass the evening of his days in
+    comfort, but also to leave a handsome estate to his family. He
+    married a daughter of Judge Pierpont Edwards, a lady of fine
+    accomplishments and high character. He died at New Haven on the
+    8th of January, 1825, in his sixtieth year.</p>
+
+    <blockquote class="footnote">
+        <a id="footnoteI"
+                    name="footnoteI"></a> <b>Footnote I</b>:
+                    <a href="#footnotetagI">(return)</a>
+
+        <p>The cotton for which Whitney's machine accomplished so
+        much, was the short staple, which is the principal product
+        of the South. The Sea Island cotton could not be cleaned by
+        it, on account of the length and delicacy of its fiber; and
+        this species, for the want of some cheap and expeditious
+        method of preparing it, has seldom been grown to a greater
+        quantity than fifty thousand bags of three hundred pounds
+        each. Consequently, it has always commanded a high
+        price.</p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <hr style='width: 65%;'>
+    <a name='CHAPTER_XVI'></a>
+
+    <h2>CHAPTER XVI.</h2>
+
+    <h3>CHAUNCEY JEROME.</h3><br>
+
+
+    <p>Any readers of these pages doubtless remember the huge
+    old-fashioned clocks, tower-like in shape, that in the days of
+    their childhood ornamented the remote corner of the hall, or
+    stood solemnly near the chimney in the sitting-room of the old
+    homestead,&mdash;such a clock as that which greeted little Paul
+    Dombey, when he commenced to be a man, with its "How, is, my,
+    lit, tle, friend?&mdash;how, is, my, lit, tle, friend?" Very
+    different from the bright, pretty timepieces of to-day, which
+    go ticking away, as if running a race with time, was the clock
+    of the olden days, as it stood, solemn and dark, in its
+    accustomed corner, from which the strength of two men was
+    necessary to move it, sending the sound of its slow, steady
+    strokes into all parts of the house. And in the night, when all
+    within was still, how its deep beats throbbed in the dark hall
+    louder and sterner even than in the day. There was something
+    eminently respectable about an old clock of this kind, and it
+    would have been audacity unheard of for any member of the
+    family to doubt its reliability. Set once a year, it was
+    expected to retain its steady-going habits for the rest of the
+    twelvemonth. You dared not charge it with being slow; and as
+    for being too fast, why, the very idea was absurd. There was
+    sure to be some white-capped, silver-haired old lady, whose
+    long years had been counted by the venerable pendulum with
+    unerring precision, ready to defend the cause of the clock, to
+    vouch for its accuracy, and to plead its cause so well and so
+    skillfully, that you were ready to hide your face in shame at
+    the thought of having even suspected the veracity of so
+    venerable and so honored an institution.</p>
+
+    <p>Truth to say, however, these old clocks, to the masses of
+    the people of this country, were objects of admiration, and
+    nothing more; for their exceeding high price placed them beyond
+    the reach of all save the wealthier classes. A good clock cost
+    from seventy-five to one hundred and fifty dollars, and the
+    most indifferent article in the market could not be obtained
+    for less than twenty-five dollars. At the opening of the
+    present century, the demand for them was so small that but
+    three hundred and fifty clocks were made in the State of
+    Connecticut, which was then, as at present, the one most
+    largely engaged in this branch of American industry. To-day the
+    annual manufacture of Connecticut is about six hundred thousand
+    clocks of all kinds, which command a wholesale price of from
+    fifty cents upward, the greater number bringing the maker less
+    than five dollars. Thus the reader will see that, while the
+    business of the clock-maker has prospered so extraordinarily,
+    valuable timepieces have been brought within the reach of even
+    the poorest.</p>
+
+    <p>The man to whom the country is indebted for this wonderful
+    and beneficial increase is <span class="small-caps">Chauncey
+    Jerome</span>, who was born at Canaan, Connecticut, in 1793.
+    His father was a blacksmith and nail-maker, to which trade he
+    added the cultivation of the little farm on which he lived; and
+    being poor, it was necessary for him to labor hard in all his
+    callings in order to provide his family with a plain
+    subsistence. Young Chauncey had little or no time given him for
+    acquiring an education.</p>
+
+    <p>He learned to read and write, but went no further; for, when
+    he was but a little more than seven years old, and barely able
+    to do the lightest kind of labor, he was put to work on the
+    farm to help his father, who kept him at this until he was
+    nine, when he took him into his shop. All the nails then in use
+    were made by hand, for there were no huge iron works in the
+    country to send them out by the ton; and such articles were
+    scarce and high. The boy was set to work to make nails, and for
+    two years pursued his vocation steadily. He was a manly little
+    fellow, and worked at his hammer and anvil with a will,
+    resolved that he would become thorough master of his trade; but
+    when he had reached the age of eleven, the sudden death of his
+    father made an entire change in his career, and threw him upon
+    the world a helpless and penniless orphan.</p>
+
+    <p>In order to earn his bread, he hired himself to a farmer,
+    receiving for his labor nothing but his "victuals and clothes,"
+    the latter being of the plainest and scantiest kind. He worked
+    very hard; but his employer was cold and indifferent to him at
+    all times, and occasionally used him very badly. The boy was
+    naturally of a cheerful disposition, and it did him good
+    service now in helping to sustain him in his hard lot. Four
+    years were passed in this way, and when he was fifteen years
+    old his guardian informed him that he had now reached an age
+    when he must begin his apprenticeship to some regular
+    trade.</p>
+
+    <p>The boy was very anxious to learn clock-making, and begged
+    his guardian to apprentice him to that trade; but the wise
+    individual who controlled his affairs replied, sagely, that
+    clock-making was a business in which he would starve, as it was
+    already overdone in Connecticut. There was one man, he said,
+    engaged in that trade who had been silly enough to make two
+    hundred clocks in one year, and he added that it would take the
+    foolish man a life-time to sell them, or if they went off
+    quickly, the market would be so glutted that no dealer would
+    have need to increase his stock for years to come.
+    Clock-making, he informed the boy, had already reached the
+    limit of its expansion in Connecticut, and offered no
+    opportunities at all. The carpenter's trade, on the other hand,
+    was never crowded with good workmen, and always offered the
+    prospect of success to any enterprising and competent man. It
+    was the custom then to regard boys as little animals, possessed
+    of a capacity for hard work, but without any reasoning powers
+    of their own. To the adage that "children should be seen and
+    not heard," the good people of that day added another clause,
+    in effect, "and should never pretend to think for themselves."
+    It was this profound conviction that induced parents and
+    guardians, in so many instances, to disregard the wishes of the
+    children committed to their care, and to condemn so many to
+    lives for which they were utterly unfitted. So it was with the
+    guardian of Chauncey Jerome. He listened to the boy's
+    expression of a preference, it is true, but paid no attention
+    to it, and ended by apprenticing his ward to a carpenter.</p>
+
+    <p>The life of an apprentice is always hard, and in those days
+    it was especially so. No negro slave ever worked harder, and
+    but few fared worse, so far as their bodily comfort was
+    concerned, than the New England apprentices of the olden time.
+    Masters seemed almost to regard the lads indentured to them as
+    their property, and in return for the support they gave them
+    exacted from them the maximum amount of work they were capable
+    of performing. They granted them no privileges, allowed them no
+    holidays, except those required by the law, and never permitted
+    the slightest approach to laziness. Chauncey Jerome's master
+    proved no exception to the rule, and when the boy exhibited an
+    unusual proficiency and quickness in his trade, the only notice
+    his employer took of it was to require more work of him. When
+    only a little over sixteen years old, this boy was able to do
+    the work of a full-grown man, and a man's work was rigorously
+    exacted of him. When sent to work at a distance from his
+    employer's home, he invariably had to make the entire journey
+    on foot, with his tools on his back, sometimes being required
+    to go as far as thirty miles in one day in this way. His mother
+    was living at some distance from the place where his master
+    resided, and whenever he visited her, he had to walk all night
+    in order to avoid using his master's time, not one hour of
+    which was allowed him.</p>
+
+    <p>In 1811, he informed his master that he was willing to
+    undertake to clothe himself if he could have the five months of
+    the cold season to himself. As this part of the year was always
+    a dull period, and apprentices were little more than an expense
+    to their masters, young Jerome's employer promptly consented to
+    the proposed arrangement. Jerome, now eighteen years old, had
+    never relinquished his old desire to become a clock-maker. He
+    had watched the market closely, and questioned the persons
+    engaged in the business, and he found that, so far from the
+    market being over-stocked, there was a ready sale for every
+    clock made. Greatly encouraged by this, he resolved to devote
+    the five months of his freedom to learning the business, and to
+    apply himself entirely to it at the expiration of his
+    apprenticeship. As soon as he had concluded his bargain with
+    his master, he set out for Waterbury on foot, and upon arriving
+    there, sought and obtained work from a man who made clock-dials
+    for the manufacturers of clocks.</p>
+
+    <p>He worked with his new employer awhile, and then formed an
+    arrangement with two journeymen clock-makers. Having perfected
+    their plans, the three set out for New Jersey in a lumber
+    wagon, carrying their provisions with them. The two
+    clock-makers were to make and set up the works, and Jerome was
+    to make the cases whenever they should succeed in selling a
+    clock on their journey. Clock-making was then considered almost
+    perfect. It had been reduced to a regular system, and the cost
+    of construction had been very greatly lessened. A good clock,
+    with a case seven feet high, could now be made for forty
+    dollars, at which price it yielded a fair profit to the maker.
+    The three young men were tolerably successful in their venture.
+    Jerome worked fifteen hours a day at case-making, and by living
+    economically, managed to carry some money with him when he went
+    back to his master's shop in the spring. For the remaining
+    three years of his apprenticeship he employed his winters in
+    learning the various branches of clock-making, and not only
+    earned enough money to clothe himself, but laid by a modest sum
+    besides.</p>
+
+    <p>In 1814, being twenty-one years of age and his own master,
+    he set up a carpenter shop of his own, being not yet
+    sufficiently master of clock-making to undertake that on his
+    own account. In 1815, he married. Times were hard. The war with
+    England had just ended, and labor was poorly compensated. He is
+    said at this time to have "finished the whole interior of a
+    three-story house, including twenty-seven doors and an oak
+    floor, nothing being found for him but the timber," for the
+    beggarly sum of eighty-seven dollars&mdash;a task which no
+    builder would undertake to-day for less than a thousand
+    dollars. Still, he declared that, in spite of this poor rate of
+    compensation, he was enabled to save enough to make a partial
+    payment on a small dwelling for himself. It required a constant
+    struggle, however, to live at this rate, and in the winter of
+    1816, being out of work, and having a payment on his house to
+    meet in the spring, he determined to go to Baltimore to seek
+    work during the winter. He was on the eve of starting, when he
+    learned that Mr. Eli Terry, the inventor of the wooden clocks
+    which were so popular fifty years ago, was about to open a
+    large factory for them in an adjoining town. He walked to the
+    town, and made his application to Mr. Terry, who at once
+    engaged him at liberal wages. Mr. Terry's factory was then the
+    largest in the country, and, as he used wooden instead of metal
+    works, he was able to manufacture his best clocks at fifteen
+    dollars, and other grades in proportion. This reduction in
+    price largely increased the sale of his clocks, and in a
+    comparatively short time after opening his factory, Mr. Terry
+    made and sold about six thousand clocks a year.</p>
+
+    <p>Jerome was determined that he would spare no pains to make
+    himself master of every detail of clock-making, and applied
+    himself to the business with so much intelligence and energy,
+    that by the spring of 1817 he felt himself competent to
+    undertake their manufacture on his own account. He began his
+    operations very cautiously, at first buying the works already
+    made, putting them together, and making the cases himself. When
+    he had finished two or three, he would carry them about for
+    sale, and as his work was well done, he rarely had any
+    difficulty in disposing of them. Gradually he increased his
+    business, and in a year or two was able to sell every clock he
+    could make, which kept him constantly busy. A Southern dealer
+    having seen one of his clocks, was so well pleased with it that
+    he gave the maker an order for twelve exactly like it, which
+    the latter agreed to furnish at twelve dollars each. It was an
+    enormous order to Jerome, and seemed to him almost too good to
+    be real. He completed the clocks at the stipulated time, and
+    conveyed them in a farmer's wagon to the place where the
+    purchaser had agreed to receive them. The money was paid to him
+    in silver, and as the broad pieces were counted into his hand,
+    he was almost ready to weep for joy. One hundred and forty-four
+    dollars was the largest sum he had ever possessed at one time,
+    and it seemed almost a fortune to him. His clocks were taken to
+    Charleston, South Carolina, and sold. They gave entire
+    satisfaction; and when, some years later, he commenced to ship
+    regular consignments to the Southern cities, he found no
+    difficulty in disposing of his wares.</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Jerome's success was now more decided. He was enabled to
+    pay for his house in a short time, and having, soon afterward,
+    an opportunity to dispose of it at a fair profit, he did so,
+    and took clock-works in payment. He bought land and timber, and
+    paid for them in clocks, and his affairs prospered so well
+    that, before long, he began to employ workmen to assist him,
+    and to dispose of his clocks to peddlers and merchants, instead
+    of carrying them around for sale himself. As his business
+    increased, he invented and patented labor-saving machinery for
+    the manufacture of the various parts of the clock, and thus
+    greatly decreased the cost of construction. He designed new and
+    ornamental cases, and exerted himself to render the exterior of
+    his clocks as tasteful and attractive as possible. His business
+    now increased rapidly, and he was soon compelled to take in a
+    partner. He began to ship his clocks to the Southern States,
+    sending them by sea. They met with a ready sale, but all his
+    ventures of this kind were subject to serious risks. The works,
+    being of wood, would frequently become damp and swollen on the
+    voyage, thus rendering them unfit for use. Mr. Jerome
+    endeavored in various ways to remedy this defect, but was
+    finally compelled to admit that, until he could change the
+    nature of the wood, he could not prevent it from being
+    influenced by moisture.</p>
+
+    <p>He passed many sleepless nights while engaged in seeking
+    this remedy, for he plainly foresaw that unless the defect
+    could be removed, the days of the wooden clock business were
+    numbered.</p>
+
+    <p>In the midst of his depression, the idea occurred to him,
+    one night while lying awake, that the works of a clock could be
+    manufactured as cheaply of brass as of wood. The thought came
+    to him with the force of a revelation. He sprang out of bed,
+    lit his candle, and passed the rest of the night in making
+    calculations which proved to him that he could not only make
+    brass works as cheaply as wooden ones, but, by the employment
+    of certain labor-saving machinery, at a cost decidedly less.
+    There was one important obstacle in his way, however. The
+    machinery requisite for cutting brass works cheaply was not in
+    existence. Before making known his plans, Mr. Jerome set to
+    work to invent the clock-making machinery which has made him
+    famous among American inventors. When he had completed it, he
+    commenced to make brass clocks, which he sold at such a low
+    price that wooden clocks were speedily driven out of the
+    market. Little by little, he brought his machinery to
+    perfection, applying it to the manufacture of all parts of the
+    clock; and to-day, thanks to his patience and genius,
+    clock-making in the United States has become a very simple
+    affair. By the aid of Jerome's machinery, one man and one boy
+    can saw veneers enough for three hundred clock cases in a
+    single day. By the aid of this same machinery, six men can
+    manufacture the works of one thousand clocks in a day; and a
+    factory employing twenty-five workmen can turn out two thousand
+    clocks per week. By the aid of this same machinery, the total
+    cost of producing a good clock of small size has been brought
+    down to forty cents.</p>
+
+    <p>As the reader will suppose, Jerome made a large
+    fortune&mdash;a princely fortune&mdash;for himself, and
+    entirely revolutionized the clock-making trade of the Union.
+    Thanks to him, scores of fortunes have been made by other
+    manufacturers also, and American clocks have become famous all
+    over the world for their excellence and cheapness. "Go where
+    you will, in Europe, Asia, Africa, or America, you will be sure
+    to come upon Yankee clocks. To England they go by the shipload.
+    Germany, France, Russia, Spain, Italy, all take large
+    quantities. Many have been sent to China and to the East
+    Indies. At Jerusalem, Connecticut clocks tick on many a shelf,
+    and travelers have found them far up the Nile, in Guinea, at
+    the Cape of Good Hope, and in all the accessible places of
+    South America."</p>
+
+    <p>After conducting his business for some years, Mr. Jerome
+    organized the Jerome Clock-Making Company, of New Haven. It
+    began its operations with a large capital, and conducted them
+    upon an extensive scale. In a few years Mr. Jerome retired from
+    the active management of its affairs, but continued nominally
+    at its head as its president. He built for himself an elegant
+    mansion in New Haven, where he gathered about him his family
+    and the friends which his sterling qualities and upright
+    character had drawn to him, and here he hoped to pass the
+    remainder of his days.</p>
+
+    <p>He was doomed to a bitter disappointment. Although nominally
+    at the head of the Clock Company, he left its control entirely
+    to his partners, who, by injudicious management, brought it at
+    length to the verge of bankruptcy. They made energetic efforts
+    to ward off the final catastrophe, but without success, and in
+    1860, almost before Mr. Jerome was aware of the full extent of
+    the trouble, the Company was ruined. Its liabilities were
+    heavy, and every dollar's worth of Jerome's property was taken
+    to meet them. Honest to the core, he gave up every thing. His
+    elegant mansion was sold, and he was forced to remove to an
+    humble cottage, a poorer man than when he had first set up for
+    himself as a carpenter.</p>
+
+    <p>He was not the man to repine, however, and he at once began
+    to look about him for employment. He was sixty-seven years old,
+    and it was hard to go out into the world to earn his bread
+    again, but he bore his misfortunes bravely, and soon succeeded
+    in obtaining the employment he desired. The great Clock Company
+    of Chicago engaged him at a liberal salary to superintend their
+    manufactory in that city, which position he still holds. The
+    Company manufacture his own clocks, and are fortunate in having
+    the benefit of his genius and experience. Were he a younger
+    man, there can be no doubt that he would win a second fortune
+    equal to that which was swept from him so cruelly, through no
+    fault of his own. As it is, we can only venture to hope that
+    his sturdy independence and indomitable energy will provide him
+    with the means of passing the closing years of his life in
+    comfort. Few men have done the world better service, or been
+    more worthy of its rewards.</p>
+    <hr style='width: 65%;'>
+
+    <center>
+        <a name='illust7101'></a>
+        <a href='images/7101.jpg'><img src='images/7101.jpg'
+                height='500' border=0
+                alt='ELIAS HOWE, JR.'></a><br>
+         ELIAS HOWE, JR.
+    </center><a name='CHAPTER_XVII'></a>
+
+    <h2>CHAPTER XVII.</h2>
+
+    <h3>ELIAS HOWE, JR.</h3><br>
+
+
+    <p>One of the busiest parts of the busy thoroughfare of
+    Broadway, in the city of New York, is the point of its
+    intersection with Fourth Street. Thousands and tens of
+    thousands of people pass and repass there daily, but few ever
+    pause to look at the curious machine which stands in the window
+    of the shop at the north-west corner of these two streets. This
+    machine, clumsy and odd-looking as it is, nevertheless has a
+    history which makes it one of the most interesting of all the
+    sights of the great city. It is the first sewing-machine that
+    was ever made.</p>
+
+    <p><span class="small-caps">Elias Howe</span>, its maker, was
+    born in the town of Spencer, Massachusetts, in 1819. He was one
+    of eight children, and it was no small undertaking on the part
+    of his father to provide a maintenance for such a household.
+    Mr. Howe, Sen., was a farmer and miller, and, as was the custom
+    at that time in the country towns of New England, carried on in
+    his family some of those minor branches of industry suited to
+    the capacity of children, with which New England abounds. When
+    Elias was six years old, he was set, with his brothers and
+    sisters, to sticking wire teeth through the leather straps used
+    for making cotton cards. When he became old enough he assisted
+    his father in his saw-mill and grist-mill, and during the
+    winter months picked up a meager education at the district
+    school. He has said that it was the rude and imperfect mills of
+    his father that first turned his attention to machinery. He was
+    not fitted for hard work, however, as he was frail in
+    constitution and incapable of bearing much fatigue. Moreover,
+    he inherited a species of lameness which proved a great
+    obstacle to any undertaking on his part, and gave him no little
+    trouble all through life. At the age of eleven he went to live
+    out on the farm of a neighbor, but the labor proving too severe
+    for him, he returned home and resumed his place in his father's
+    mills, where he remained until he was sixteen years old.</p>
+
+    <p>When at this age, he conceived an ardent desire to go to
+    Lowell to seek his fortune. One of his friends had just
+    returned from that place, and had given him such a wonderful
+    description of the city and its huge mills, that he was eager
+    to go there and see the marvel for himself. Obtaining his
+    father's consent, he went to Lowell, and found employment as a
+    learner in one of the large cotton-mills of the city. He
+    remained there two years, when the great financial disaster of
+    1837 threw him out of employment and compelled him to look for
+    work elsewhere. He obtained a place at Cambridge, in a
+    machine-shop, and was put to work upon the new hemp-carding
+    machinery of Professor Treadwell. His cousin, Nathaniel P.
+    Banks, afterward governor of Massachusetts, member of Congress,
+    and major-general, worked in the same shop with him, and
+    boarded at the same house. Howe remained in Cambridge only a
+    few months, however, and was then given a place in the
+    machine-shop of Ari Davis, of Boston.</p>
+
+    <p>At the age of twenty-one he married. This was a rash step
+    for him, as his health was very delicate, and his earnings were
+    but nine dollars per week. Three children were born to him in
+    quick succession, and he found it no easy task to provide food,
+    shelter, and clothing for his little family. The
+    light-heartedness for which he had formerly been noted entirely
+    deserted him, and he became sad and melancholy. His health did
+    not improve, and it was with difficulty that he could perform
+    his daily task. His strength was so slight that he would
+    frequently return home from his day's work too much exhausted
+    to eat. He could only go to bed, and in his agony he wished "to
+    lie in bed forever and ever." Still he worked faithfully and
+    conscientiously, for his wife and children were very dear to
+    him; but he did so with a hopelessness which only those who
+    have tasted the depths of poverty can understand.</p>
+
+    <div class="full">
+        <a name='illust7121'></a>
+        <a href='images/7121.jpg'><img src='images/7121.jpg'
+                width='600' border=0
+                alt="HOWE'S FIRST IDEA OF THE SEWING-MACHINE."></a><br>
+         HOWE'S FIRST IDEA OF THE SEWING-MACHINE.
+    </div>
+
+    <p>About this time he heard it said that the great necessity of
+    the age was a machine for doing sewing. The immense amount of
+    fatigue incurred and the delay in hand-sewing were obvious, and
+    it was conceded by all who thought of the matter at all that
+    the man who could invent a machine which would remove these
+    difficulties would make a fortune. Howe's poverty inclined him
+    to listen to these remarks with great interest. No man needed
+    money more than he, and he was confident that his mechanical
+    skill was of an order which made him as competent as any one
+    else to achieve the task proposed. He set to work to accomplish
+    it, and, as he knew well the dangers which surround an
+    inventor, kept his own counsel. At his daily labor, in all his
+    waking hours, and even in his dreams, he brooded over this
+    invention. He spent many a wakeful night in these meditations,
+    and his health was far from being benefited by this severe
+    mental application. Success is not easily won in any great
+    undertaking, and Elias Howe found that he had entered upon a
+    task which required the greatest patience, perseverance,
+    energy, and hopefulness. He watched his wife as she sewed, and
+    his first effort was to devise a machine which should do what
+    she was doing. He made a needle pointed at both ends, with the
+    eye in the middle, that should work up and down through the
+    cloth, and carry the thread through at each thrust; but his
+    elaboration of this conception would not work satisfactorily.
+    It was not until 1844, fully a year after he began the attempt
+    to invent the machine, that he came to the conclusion that the
+    movement of a machine need not of necessity be an imitation of
+    the performance of the hand. It was plain to him that there
+    must be another stitch, and that if he could discover it his
+    difficulties would all be ended. A little later he conceived
+    the idea of using two threads, and forming a stitch by the aid
+    of a shuttle and a curved needle with the eye near the point.
+    This was the triumph of his skill. He had now invented a
+    perfect sewing-machine, and had discovered the essential
+    principles of every subsequent modification of his conception.
+    Satisfied that he had at length solved the problem, he
+    constructed a rough model of his machine of wood and wire, in
+    October, 1844, and operated it to his perfect satisfaction. His
+    invention is thus described:</p>
+
+    <p>"He used a needle and a shuttle of novel construction, and
+    combined them with holding surfaces, feed mechanism and other
+    devices, as they had never before been brought together, in one
+    machine One of the principal features of Mr. Howe's invention
+    is the combination of a grooved needle, having an eye near its
+    point, and vibrating in the direction of its length, with a
+    side-pointed shuttle for effecting a locked stitch, and
+    forming, with the threads, one on each side of the cloth, a
+    firm and lasting seam not easily ripped. The main action of the
+    machine consists in the interlocking of the loop, made by the
+    thread carried in the point of the needle through the cloth,
+    with another thread passed through this loop by means of a
+    shuttle entering and leaving it at every stitch. The thread
+    attached to this shuttle remains in the loop and secures the
+    stitch as the needle is withdrawn to be ready to make the next
+    one. At the same time the cloth, held by little projecting pins
+    to the baster plate, is carried along with this by what is
+    called the 'feed motion' just the length of a stitch, the
+    distance being readily adjusted for finer or coarser work. ....
+    The cloth is held in a vertical position in the machine, and
+    the part to be sewed is pressed against the side of the
+    shuttle-race by a presser plate hinged on its upper edge, and
+    capable of exerting any required pressure on the cloth,
+    according as the adjusting screw that regulates it is turned. A
+    slot, or perforation through the plate, also extended through
+    the side of the shuttle-race near the bottom, admits the
+    passage of the needle; and when this is pushed in the shuttle
+    can still pass freely over it. The shuttle is pushed one way
+    and then the other through its race or trough by picker staves.
+    The thread for the needle is supplied by a bobbin, the movement
+    of which is checked by a friction band, this securing the
+    proper tension, and the slack of the thread is duly taken up by
+    a suitable contrivance for the purpose. Thus, all the essential
+    features of the most approved sewing-machine were first found
+    in that of Mr. Howe; and the machines of later date are, in
+    fact, but modifications of it."</p>
+
+    <p>At this time, he had abandoned his work as a journeyman
+    mechanic, and had removed to his father's house. Mr. Howe,
+    Sen., had established in Cambridge a machine-shop for the
+    cutting of strips of palm-leaf used in the manufacture of hats.
+    Elias and his family lived under his father's roof, and in the
+    garret of the house the half-sick inventor put up a lathe,
+    where he did a little work on his own account, and labored on
+    his sewing-machine. He was miserably poor, and could scarcely
+    earn enough to provide food for his family; and, to make
+    matters worse, his father, who was disposed to help him, lost
+    his shop and its contents by fire. Poor Elias was in a most
+    deplorable condition. He had his model in his head, and was
+    fully satisfied of its excellence, but he had not the money to
+    buy the materials needed in making a perfect machine, which
+    would have to be constructed of steel and iron, and without
+    which he could not hope to convince others of its value. His
+    great invention was useless to him without the five hundred
+    dollars which he needed in the construction of a working
+    model.</p>
+
+    <p>In this dilemma, he applied to a friend, Mr. George Fisher,
+    a coal and wood merchant of Cambridge, who was a man of some
+    means. He explained his invention to him, and succeeded in
+    forming a partnership with him. Fisher agreed to take Howe and
+    his family to board with him while the latter was making the
+    machine, to allow his garret to be used as a workshop, and to
+    advance the five hundred dollars necessary for the purchase of
+    tools and the construction of a model. In return for this he
+    was to receive one-half of the patent, if Howe succeeded in
+    patenting his machine. About the first of December, 1844, Howe
+    and his family accordingly moved into Fisher's house, and the
+    little workshop was set up in the garret. All that winter he
+    worked on his model. There was little to delay him in its
+    construction, as the conception was perfectly clear in his
+    mind. He worked all day, and sometimes nearly all night, and in
+    April, 1845, had his machine so far advanced that he sewed a
+    seam with it. By the middle of May the machine was completed,
+    and in July he sewed with it the seams of two woolen suits, one
+    for himself and the other for Mr. Fisher. The sewing was so
+    well done that it outlasted the cloth.</p>
+
+    <p>It has been stated by Professor Renwick and other scientific
+    men that Elias Howe "carried the invention of the
+    sewing-machine further on toward its complete and final utility
+    than any other inventor has ever brought a first-rate invention
+    at the first trial." Those who doubt this assertion should
+    examine the curious machine at the corner of Broadway and
+    Fourth Street, and their doubts will be dispelled; for they
+    will find in it all the essentials of the best sewing-machine
+    of to-day.</p>
+
+    <p>Having patented his machine, Howe endeavored to bring it
+    into use. He was full of hope, and had no doubt that it would
+    be adopted at once by those who were so much interested in the
+    saving of labor. He first offered it to the tailors of Boston;
+    but they, while admitting its usefulness, told him it would
+    never be adopted by their trade, as it would ruin them.
+    Considering the number of machines now used by the tailoring
+    interest throughout the world, this assertion seems ridiculous.
+    Other efforts were equally unsuccessful. Every one admitted and
+    praised the ingenuity of the machine but no one would invest a
+    dollar in it. Fisher became disgusted, and withdrew from his
+    partnership, and Howe and his family moved back to his father's
+    house. Thoroughly disheartened, he abandoned his machine. He
+    then obtained a place as engineer on a railroad, and drove a
+    locomotive until his health entirely broke down.</p>
+
+    <p>With the loss of his health his hopes revived, and he
+    determined to seek in England the victory which he had failed
+    to win here. Unable to go himself, he sent his machine by his
+    brother Amasa, in October, 1846. Upon reaching London, Amasa
+    sought out Mr. William Thomas, of Cheapside, and explained to
+    him his brother's invention. He found Mr. Thomas willing to use
+    the machine in his business, but upon terms more favorable to
+    himself than to the inventor. He offered the sum of twelve
+    hundred and fifty dollars for the machine which Amasa Howe had
+    brought with him, and agreed to pay Elias fifteen dollars per
+    week if he would enter his service, and adapt the machine to
+    his business of umbrella and corset making. As this was his
+    only hope of earning a livelihood, Elias accepted the offer,
+    and, upon his brother's return to the United States, sailed for
+    England. He remained in Mr. Thomas's employ for about eight
+    months, and at the end of that time left him, having found him
+    hard, exacting, and unreasonable.</p>
+
+    <p>Meanwhile his sick wife and three children had joined him in
+    London, and he had found it hard to provide for them on the
+    wages given him by Mr. Thomas; but after being thrown out of
+    employment his condition was desperate indeed. He was in a
+    strange country, without friends or money, and often he and his
+    little family went whole days without food. Their sufferings
+    were very great, but at length Howe was able (probably by
+    assistance from home) to send his family back to his father's
+    house. He himself remained in London, still hoping to bring his
+    machine into use. It was in vain, however, and so, collecting
+    what few household goods he had acquired in England, he shipped
+    them to America, and followed them thither himself in another
+    vessel, pawning his model and patent papers to pay his passage.
+    When he landed in New York he had half a crown in his pocket,
+    and there came to him on the same day a letter telling him that
+    his wife was dying with consumption in Cambridge. He could not
+    go to her at once, as he had no money, and was too feeble to
+    undertake the distance on foot. He was compelled to wait
+    several days until he could obtain the money for his fare to
+    Cambridge, but at length succeeded in reaching that place just
+    in time to see his wife die. In the midst of his grief he
+    received the announcement that the vessel containing the few
+    household goods which he had shipped from England had been lost
+    at sea. It seemed to him that Fate was bent upon destroying
+    him, so rapid and stunning were the blows she dealt him.</p>
+
+    <p>But a great success was now in store for him, and he was to
+    rise out of his troubles to the realization of his brightest
+    hopes. Soon after his return home he obtained profitable
+    employment, and, better still, discovered that his machine had
+    become famous during his absence. Facsimiles of it had been
+    constructed by unscrupulous mechanics, who paid no attention to
+    the patents of the^inventor, and these copies had been
+    exhibited in many places as "wonders," and had even been
+    adopted in many important branches of manufacture. Howe at once
+    set to work to defend his rights. He found friends to aid him,
+    and in August, 1850, began those famous suits which continued
+    for four years, and were at length decided in his favor. His
+    adversaries made a bold resistance, but the decision of Judge
+    Sprague, in 1854, settled the matter, and triumphantly
+    established the rights of the inventor.</p>
+
+    <p>In 1850, Howe removed to New York, and began in a small way
+    to manufacture machines to order. He was in partnership with a
+    Mr. Bliss, but for several years the business was so
+    unimportant that upon the death of his partner, in 1855, he was
+    enabled to buy out that gentleman's interest, and thus become
+    the sole proprietor of his patent. Soon after this his business
+    began to increase, and continued until his own proper profits
+    and the royalty which the courts compelled other manufacturers
+    to pay him for the use of his invention grew from $300 to
+    $200,000 per annum. In 1867, when the extension of his patent
+    expired, it is stated that he had earned a total of two
+    millions of dollars by it. It cost him large sums to defend his
+    rights, however, and he was very far from being as wealthy as
+    was commonly supposed, although a very rich man.</p>
+
+    <p>In the Paris Exposition of 1867, he exhibited his machines,
+    and received the gold medal of the Exposition, and the Cross of
+    the Legion of Honor, in addition, as a compliment to him as a
+    manufacturer and inventor.</p>
+
+    <p>He contributed money liberally to the aid of the Union in
+    the late war, and enlisted as a private soldier in the
+    Seventeenth Regiment of Connecticut Volunteers, with which
+    command he went to the field, performing all the duties of his
+    position until failing health compelled him to leave the
+    service. Upon one occasion the Government was so much
+    embarrassed that it could not pay the regiment of which he was
+    a member. Mr. Howe promptly advanced the money, and his
+    comrades were saved from the annoyances which would have
+    attended the delay in paying them. He died at Brooklyn, Long
+    Island, on the 3d of October, 1867.</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Howe will always rank among the most distinguished of
+    American inventors; not only because of the unusual degree of
+    completeness shown in his first conception of the
+    sewing-machine, but because of the great benefits which have
+    sprung from it. It has revolutionized the industry of the
+    world, opened new sources of wealth to enterprise, and
+    lightened the labor of hundreds of thousands of working people.
+    Many a pale-faced, hollow-eyed woman, who formerly sat sewing
+    her life away for a mere pittance, blesses the name of Elias
+    Howe, and there is scarcely a community in the civilized world
+    but contains the evidence of his genius, and honors him as the
+    benefactor of the human race.</p>
+    <hr style='width: 65%;'>
+    <a name='CHAPTER_XVIII'></a>
+
+    <h2>CHAPTER XVIII.</h2>
+
+    <h3>RICHARD M. HOE.</h3><br>
+
+
+    <p>To write the complete history of the printing press would
+    require years of patient labor and research, and a much larger
+    space than the limits of the present work will permit. There
+    are few subjects more attractive or more worthy of
+    consideration than the history of this wonderful invention,
+    which seems more like a romance than a narration of facts. The
+    historian who should essay the task would be required to carry
+    his reader back to the darkest ages of the world, and,
+    beginning with the stamps used for affixing hieroglyphical
+    characters to the now crumbling ruins of Egypt and Nineveh,
+    trace the gradual development of the beneficent conception from
+    the signets of the Israelites, and the stamps used by the
+    Romans for marking certain kinds of merchandise, through the
+    rude process of the Chinese, Japanese, and Tartars, to the
+    invention of Johannes Guttenberg, and, finally, to the
+    wonderful lightning steam-presses of to-day.</p>
+
+    <p>In these pages it is not proposed to offer to the reader any
+    such narrative. On the contrary, the story of the printing
+    press will be taken up just as it was on the point of reaching
+    its greatest perfection, since our subject concerns only the
+    man who brought it to that state.</p>
+
+    <p>This man, <span class="small-caps">Richard March Hoe</span>
+    by name, was born in the city of New York, on the 12th of
+    September, 1812. His father, Robert Hoe, was a native of the
+    village of Hose, Leicester, England, and the son of a wealthy
+    farmer. Disliking his father's pursuit, he apprenticed himself
+    to a carpenter. When only sixteen years old, the elder Hoe
+    purchased his indentures from his master and sailed for the
+    United States. He was almost penniless when he reached New
+    York, and in this condition entered the store of Mr. Grant
+    Thorburn one day in search of employment. Mr. Thorburn
+    manifested a sudden and strong liking to the youth, took him to
+    his own house, and when he was prostrated with the yellow
+    fever, during the epidemic of 1804, nursed him tenderly
+    throughout. Setting to work immediately upon his arrival in New
+    York, he made friends rapidly, and prospered in his trade so
+    well that when but twenty years old he was able to marry. His
+    bride was a daughter of Matthew Smith, of Westchester, and a
+    sister of Peter Smith, the inventor of the hand printing press,
+    which bears his name. With this gentleman and Matthew Smith,
+    jr., his brother, Robert Hoe entered into partnership. Their
+    business was that of carpentering and printers' joinery; but
+    after Peter Smith had completed the invention of his hand
+    press, it gradually grew into the manufacture of presses and
+    printers' materials. Both of the brothers died in 1823, and
+    Robert Hoe succeeded to the entire business.</p>
+
+    <p>The manufactory of "Robert Hoe &amp; Co." was originally
+    located in the centre of the old block between Pearl and
+    William Streets, and Pine Street and Maiden Lane. Soon after
+    their establishment there, the city authorities ran Cedar
+    Street right through their building, and they removed to Gold
+    Street, near John. They have been twice burned out here, but
+    still occupy these premises with their counting-room and lower
+    shop.</p>
+
+    <p>Printing by steam had long attracted the attention of
+    persons engaged in the art, and many essays had been made in
+    this direction by different inventors, both in this country and
+    in Europe. The most successful results were the Adams press,
+    the invention of Mr. Isaac Adams, of Boston, Mass., and the
+    Napier press, that of a British artisan. It was the latter
+    which was the means of identifying Mr. Hoe with the steam
+    press.</p>
+
+    <p>The Napier press was introduced into this country in 1830,
+    by the proprietors of the <i>National Intelligencer</i>, but
+    when it arrived, these gentlemen were not able to release it
+    from the Custom-house. Major Noah, himself the proprietor of a
+    newspaper, was at that time Collector of the port of New York,
+    and he, being anxious to see the press in operation, requested
+    Mr. Hoe to put it together. Mr. Hoe performed this task
+    successfully, although the press was a novelty to him, and was
+    permitted to take models of its various parts before it was
+    reshipped to England. It was found to be a better press than
+    any that had ever been seen in this country, and the
+    <i>Commercial Advertiser,</i> of New York, and the
+    <i>Chronicle</i>, of Philadelphia, at once ordered duplicates
+    of it from England.</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Hoe was very much pleased with this press, but believed
+    that he could construct a much better one. "To this end he
+    despatched his new partner, Mr. Sereno Newton, to England to
+    examine all the improvements in machinery there, and bring home
+    samples of such as he thought might be advantageously adopted
+    in this country. Mr. Newton, besides being an ingenious
+    mechanic, was well-read in books, and was considered one of the
+    first mathematicians in New York. Returning from his mission,
+    he constructed a new two-cylinder press, which soon superseded
+    all others then in use." Mr. Hoe's health failed, compelling
+    him, in 1832, to retire from the business.</p>
+
+    <p>Young Richard M. Hoe had been brought up in his father's
+    business, after receiving a fair education. He inherited his
+    father's inventive genius, combined with a rare business
+    capacity, and from the first was regarded as the future hope of
+    the establishment. Upon the withdrawal of his father, a
+    partnership was established between himself, his brother
+    Robert, Mr. Newton, and his cousin Matthew Smith, but the style
+    of the firm remained unchanged.</p>
+
+    <p>Richard Hoe's first invention was conceived in 1837, and
+    consisted of a valuable improvement in the manufacture of
+    grinding saws. Having obtained a patent for it in the United
+    States, he visited England in that year for the same purpose.
+    By his process circular saws may be ground with accuracy to any
+    desired thickness. He readily obtained a patent in England, as
+    the excellence of his invention commended it to every one.
+    While there he gave especial attention to the improvements
+    which had been made in the printing press, in the manufacture
+    of which his firm was still largely engaged. Returning to New
+    York, he devoted himself entirely to this branch of his
+    business, and soon produced the machine known as "Hoe's
+    Double-Cylinder Press," which was capable of making about six
+    thousand impressions per hour. The first press of this kind
+    ever made was ordered by the New York <i>Sun</i>, and was the
+    admiration of all the printers of the city. This style of press
+    is now used extensively for printing country newspapers.</p>
+
+    <p>As long as the newspaper interest of the country stood
+    still, "Hoe's Double-Cylinder Press" was amply sufficient for
+    its wants, but as the circulation of the journals of the large
+    cities began to increase, the "double-cylinder" was often taxed
+    far beyond its powers. A printing press capable of striking off
+    papers with much greater rapidity was felt to be an imperative
+    and still-increasing need. It was often necessary to hold the
+    forms back until nearly daylight for the purpose of issuing the
+    latest news, and in the hurry which ensued to get out the
+    morning edition, the press very frequently met with
+    accidents.</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Hoe was fully alive to the importance of improving his
+    press, and, in 1842, he began to experiment with it for the
+    purpose of obtaining greater speed. It was a serious
+    undertaking, however, and at every step fresh difficulties
+    arose. He spent four years in experimenting, and at the end of
+    that time was almost ready to confess that the obstacles were
+    too great to be overcome. One night, in. 1846, while in this
+    mood, he resumed his experiments. The more he pondered over the
+    subject the more difficult it seemed. In despair, he was about
+    to relinquish the effort for the night, when suddenly there
+    flashed across his mind a plan for securing the type on a
+    horizontal cylinder. This had been his great difficulty, and he
+    now felt that he had mastered it. He sat up all night, working
+    out his design, and making a note of every idea that occurred
+    to him, in order that nothing should escape him. By morning the
+    problem which had baffled him so long had been solved, and the
+    magnificent "Lightning Press" already had a being in the
+    inventor's fertile brain.</p>
+
+    <p>He carried his model rapidly to perfection, and, proceeding
+    with it to Washington, obtained a patent. On his return home he
+    met Mr. Swain, the proprietor of the Baltimore <i>Sun</i> and
+    Philadelphia <i>Ledger</i>, and explained his invention to him.
+    Mr. Swain was so much pleased with it that he at once ordered a
+    four-cylinder press, which was completed and ready for use on
+    the 31st of December, 1848. This press was capable of making
+    ten thousand impressions per hour, and did its work with entire
+    satisfaction in every respect.</p>
+
+    <p>This was a success absolutely unprecedented&mdash;so marked,
+    in fact, that some persons were inclined to doubt it. The news
+    flew rapidly from city to city, and across the ocean to foreign
+    lands, and soon wherever a newspaper was printed men were
+    talking of Hoe's wonderful invention. Orders came pouring in
+    upon the inventor with such rapidity that he soon had as many
+    on hand as he could fill in several years. In a comparatively
+    brief period the <i>Herald</i>, <i>Tribune</i>, and <i>Sun</i>,
+    of New York, were boasting of their "Lightning Presses," and
+    soon the <i>Traveller</i> and <i>Daily Journal</i>, in Boston,
+    followed their example. Mr. Hoe was now not only a famous man,
+    but possessed of an assured business for the future, which was
+    certain to result in a large fortune. By the year 1860, besides
+    supplying the principal cities of the Union (fifteen lightning
+    presses being used in the city of New York alone), he had
+    shipped eighteen presses to Great Britain, four to France, and
+    one to Australia. Two of the presses sent to England were
+    ordered for the London <i>Times</i>.</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Hoe continued to improve his invention, adding
+    additional cylinders as increased, speed was desired, and at
+    length brought it to the degree of perfection exhibited in the
+    splendid ten-cylinder press now in use in the offices of our
+    leading journals, which strikes off twenty-five thousand sheets
+    per hour. Whether more will be accomplished with this wonderful
+    machine the future alone can determine, but the inventor is
+    said to be still laboring to improve it.</p>
+
+    <p>In 1858, Mr. Hoe purchased the patent rights and manufactory
+    of Isaac Adams, in Boston, and since then has carried on the
+    manufacture of the Adams press from that place. He has also
+    established a manufactory in England, where he conducts a
+    profitable business in both the Adams and the Hoe press. Over a
+    million and a half of dollars are invested in these
+    establishments in New York, Boston, and London, in land,
+    buildings, and stock. The firm manufacture presses of all
+    kinds, and all materials used by printers except type and ink.
+    They also manufacture circular saws, made according to Mr.
+    Hoe's process.</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Hoe, now fifty-eight years of age, is still as vigorous
+    and active as many a younger man. Besides being one of the most
+    prominent and distinguished inventors and manufacturers in the
+    country, he is justly esteemed for his many virtues and his
+    commanding business talents. He is still the active head of the
+    house which he has carried to such a brilliant success, and is
+    the possessor of an ample fortune, which his genius and
+    industry have secured to him. He is courteous and obliging to
+    all, and very liberal to those whose needs commend them to his
+    benevolence.</p>
+
+    <p>The ten-cylinder press costs fifty thousand dollars, and is
+    regarded as cheap at that immense sum. It is one of the most
+    interesting inventions ever made. Those who have seen it
+    working in the subterranean press-rooms of the journals of the
+    great metropolis will not soon forget the wonderful sight. The
+    ear is deafened with the incessant clashing of the machinery;
+    the printed sheets issue from the sides of the huge engine in
+    an unceasing stream; the eye is bewildered with the mass of
+    lines and bands; and it seems hard to realize that one single
+    mind could ever have adjusted all the various parts to work
+    harmoniously.</p>
+
+    <p>The following is a description of the ten-cylinder steam
+    printing-press now used in the office of the New York
+    <i>World</i>. It is one of the best specimens of its kind to be
+    seen in the great city:</p>
+
+    <div class="blkquot">
+        <p>The dimensions of the press are as follows: Entire
+        length, 40 feet; width, 15 feet; height, 16 feet. The large
+        horizontal cylinder in the center is about 4-1/2 feet in
+        diameter, and on it are placed the "forms" of type for the
+        four pages of one side of the paper. Each of these
+        constitutes a segment of a circle, and the whole four
+        occupy a segment of only about one-fourth of the surface of
+        the cylinder, the other three-fourths being used as an
+        ink-distributing surface. Around this main cylinder, and
+        parallel with it, are ten smaller impression cylinders,
+        according to the number of which a press is termed a four,
+        six, or ten-cylinder press. The large cylinder being set in
+        revolution, the form of types is carried successively to
+        all the impression cylinders, at each of which a sheet is
+        introduced and receives the impression of the types as the
+        form passes. Thus as many sheets are printed at each
+        revolution of the main cylinder as there are impression
+        cylinders around it. One person is required at each
+        impression cylinder to supply the sheets of paper, which
+        are taken at the proper moment by fingers or grippers, and
+        after being printed are conveyed out by tapes and laid in
+        heaps by means of self-acting flyers, thereby dispensing
+        with the hands required in ordinary machines to receive and
+        pile the sheets. The grippers hold the sheet securely, so
+        that the thinnest newspaper can be printed without
+        waste.</p>
+
+        <p>The ink is contained in a fountain placed beneath the
+        main cylinder, and is conveyed by means of distributing
+        rollers to the distributing surface on the main cylinder.
+        This surface being lower or less in diameter than the form
+        of types, passes by the impression cylinders without
+        touching them. For each impression there are two inking
+        rollers, which receive their supply of ink from the
+        distributing surface of the main cylinder, and raise and
+        ink the form as it passes under them, after which they
+        again fall to the distributing surface.</p>
+
+        <p>Each page of the paper is locked up on a detached
+        segment of the large cylinder, called by the compositors a
+        "turtle," and this constitutes its bed and chase. The
+        column-rules run parallel with the shaft of the cylinder,
+        and are consequently straight, while the head, advertising,
+        and dash-rules are in the form of segments of a circle. The
+        column-rules are in the form of a wedge, with the thin part
+        directed toward the axis of the cylinder, so as to bind the
+        type securely, and at the same time to keep the ink from
+        collecting between the types and the rules. They are held
+        down to the bed by tongues projecting at intervals along
+        their length, which slide into rebated grooves, cut
+        crosswise in the face of the bed. The spaces in the grooves
+        between the column-rules are accurately fitted with sliding
+        blocks of metal even with the surface of the bed, the ends
+        of the blocks being cut away underneath to receive a
+        projection on the sides of the tongues of the column-rules.
+        The form of type is locked up in the bed by means of screws
+        at the foot and sides, by which the type is held as
+        securely as in the ordinary manner upon a flat bed, if not
+        even more so. The speed of the machine is limited only by
+        the ability of the feeders to supply the sheets.
+        Twenty-five hundred is about as many as a man can supply in
+        an hour, and multiplying this by ten&mdash;one man being at
+        each cylinder&mdash;we have 25,000 sheets an hour as the
+        capacity of the press.</p>
+    </div>
+    <hr style='width: 65%;'>
+    <a name='CHAPTER_XIX'></a>
+
+    <h2>CHAPTER XIX.</h2>
+
+    <h3>SAMUEL COLT.</h3><br>
+
+
+    <p>SAMUEL COLT was born at Hartford, Connecticut, on the 19th
+    of July, 1814. He was descended from one of the original
+    settlers of that city, and his father, who possessed some
+    means, was a man of great energy, intelligence, and enterprise.
+    The senior Colt began life as a merchant, and afterward became
+    a manufacturer of woolen, cotton, and silk goods. The mother of
+    our hero was the daughter of Major John Caldwell, a prominent
+    banker of Hartford, and is said to have been a woman of
+    superior character and fine mental attainments.</p>
+
+    <p>It was within the power of the parents of Samuel Colt to
+    give him a thorough education, and this they were anxious to
+    do; but he was always so full of restless energy that he
+    greatly preferred working in the factory to going to school. He
+    loved to be where he could hear the busy looms at work, and see
+    the play of the intricate machinery in the great building. In
+    order to gratify him, his father placed him in his factory at
+    the age of ten years, and there he remained for about three
+    years, leaving it only at rare intervals and for short periods
+    of time, which he passed in attendance upon school and working
+    on a farm. When he was thirteen his father declared that he
+    would not permit him to grow up without an education, and sent
+    him to a boarding-school at Amherst, Massachusetts. He did not
+    remain there long, for the spirit of adventure came over him
+    with such force that he could not resist it. He ran away from
+    school and shipped as a boy before the mast on a vessel bound
+    for the East Indies. The ship was called the Coroo, and was
+    commanded by Captain Spaulding.</p>
+
+    <div class="full">
+        <a name='illust7141'></a>
+        <a href='images/7141.jpg'><img src='images/7141.jpg'
+                width='625' border=0
+                alt='THE BOY COLT INVENTING THE REVOLVER.'></a><br>
+         THE BOY COLT INVENTING THE REVOLVER.
+    </div>
+
+    <p>The voyage was long, and the lad was subjected to great
+    hardships, which soon convinced him that running away to sea
+    was not as romantic in real life as in the books he had read,
+    but his experience, though uncomfortable enough, failed to
+    conquer his restless spirit. While at sea in the Coroo he had
+    an abundance of leisure time for reflection, but instead of
+    devoting it to meditating upon the folly of his course, he
+    spent it in inventing a revolving pistol, a rough model of
+    which he cut in wood with his jack-knife. This was the germ of
+    the invention which afterward gave him such fame, and it is not
+    a little singular that the conception of such a weapon should
+    have come to a boy of fourteen.</p>
+
+    <p>Returning home, he became an apprentice in his father's
+    factory at Ware, Massachusetts. He was put into the dyeing and
+    bleaching department, and was thoroughly trained in it by Mr.
+    William T. Smith, a scientific man, and one of the best
+    practical chemists in New England. Young Holt manifested a
+    remarkable aptitude for chemistry, and when but a mere boy was
+    known as one of the most successful and dexterous manipulators
+    in New England.</p>
+
+    <p>When he had reached his eighteenth year, the old spirit of
+    restlessness came over him again, and he embarked in an
+    unusually bold undertaking for one so young, in which, however,
+    he was much favored by the circumstance that he was very much
+    older in appearance than in reality, commonly passing for a
+    full-grown man. Assuming the name of Dr. Coult, he traveled
+    throughout the Union and British America, visiting nearly every
+    town of two thousand inhabitants and over, lecturing upon
+    chemistry, and illustrating his lectures with a series of
+    skillful and highly popular experiments. His tour was entirely
+    successful, and he realized in the two years over which it
+    extended quite a handsome sum. The use which he made of the
+    money thus acquired was characteristic of the man.</p>
+
+    <p>He had never abandoned the design of a revolving pistol
+    which he had conceived on board the Coroo, and he now set to
+    work to perfect it, using the proceeds of his lectures to
+    enable him to take out patents in this country and in Europe.
+    He spent two years in working on his model, making improvements
+    in it at every step, and by 1835 had brought it to such a state
+    of excellence that he was enabled to apply for a patent in the
+    United States. His application was successful. Before it was
+    decided, however, he visited England and France, and patented
+    his invention in those countries. Though now only twenty-one
+    years old, he had given seven years of study and labor to his
+    "revolver," and had brought it to a state of perfection which
+    was far in advance of his early hopes.</p>
+
+    <p>"At this time, and, indeed, for several years after, he was
+    not aware that any person before himself had ever conceived the
+    idea of a fire-arm with a rotating chambered breech. On a
+    subsequent visit to Europe, while exploring the collection of
+    fire-arms in the Tower of London and other repositories of
+    weapons of war in England and on the continent, he found
+    several guns having the chambered breech, but all were so
+    constructed as to be of little practical value, being far more
+    liable to explode prematurely and destroy the man who should
+    use them than the objects at which they might be aimed.
+    Unwilling, however, to seem to claim that which had been
+    previously invented, he read before the Institution of Civil
+    Engineers in England (of which he was the only American
+    associate), in 1851, an elaborate paper on the subject, in
+    which he described and illustrated, with appropriate drawings,
+    the various early inventions of revolving fire-arms, and
+    demonstrated the principles on which his were constructed."</p>
+
+    <p>Having secured patents in the United States and in the
+    principal countries of Europe, Mr. Colt exerted himself to
+    organize a company for the manufacture of his revolver. He met
+    with considerable opposition, for it was commonly asserted that
+    his pistol would never be of any practical value. The wise ones
+    said it was too complicated for general use, and that its
+    adoption would be attended by the killing or maiming of the
+    majority of those who used it. The inventor disregarded these
+    birds of ill omen, however, and, persevering in his efforts,
+    finally succeeded in securing the aid of some capitalists in
+    New York. A company was formed in 1835, called the "Patent Arms
+    Company," with a capital of $300,000, and an armory was
+    established at Paterson, New Jersey. Mr. Colt then endeavored
+    to induce the Government of the United States to adopt the arm
+    in the military and naval service. Strange as it now seems,
+    however, the officers of the army and navy were not disposed to
+    regard the revolver with favor. They declared that the
+    percussion cap was entirely unreliable, and that no weapon
+    requiring it could be depended on with certainty; that there
+    was great danger that two or more of the charges would explode
+    at the same time; and that the arm was liable to get out of
+    order very easily. They further protested that it was much more
+    difficult to repair than the arms then in use, and that this
+    alone rendered it unfit for adoption by the Government.
+    Notwithstanding these objections were fully met by Mr. Colt,
+    who explained carefully the principles of his weapon, it was
+    two years before the Government consented to give the revolver
+    a trial.</p>
+
+    <p>In 1837, the Florida war raged with great violence, and the
+    Seminoles, secure in their fastnesses in the Everglades, were
+    enabled to bid defiance to all the efforts of the army of the
+    United States. Their superior skill in the use of the rifle
+    gave them an advantage which the bravery and determination of
+    our troops could not overcome. In this emergency, the
+    Government consented to make a trial of Colt's revolver. A
+    regiment under Lieutenant-Colonel Harvey was armed with this
+    weapon, and its success was so marked from the first that the
+    Government promptly gave an order for more, and ended by making
+    it the principal arm of the troops in Florida. The savages were
+    astounded and disheartened at seeing the troops fire six or
+    eight times without reloading; and when the war was brought to
+    a close, as it soon was, it was plain to all that the revolver
+    had played a decisive part in the struggle. It was a great
+    triumph for Colonel Colt, but in the end proved a source of
+    misfortune. The speedy termination of the war put an end to the
+    demand for his weapon, and his business fell off so greatly
+    that in 1842 the Patent Arms Company was compelled to close its
+    establishment and wind up its affairs.</p>
+
+    <p>For five years none of the revolvers were manufactured, and,
+    meanwhile, the stock which had been put in the market was
+    entirely exhausted by the demand which had set in from Texas
+    and the Indian frontier. In 1847 the war with Mexico began, and
+    General Taylor, who had witnessed the performance of the
+    revolver in Florida, was anxious to arm the Texan Rangers with
+    that weapon. He sent Captain Walker, the commander of the
+    Rangers, to Colonel Colt to purchase a supply. Walker was
+    unsuccessful. Colt had parted with the last one that he
+    possessed, and had not even a model to serve as a guide in
+    making others. The Government now gave him an order for one
+    thousand, which he agreed to make for $28,000; but there was
+    still the difficulty caused by having no model to work by. In
+    this dilemma, he advertised extensively for one of his old
+    pistols, to serve as a model, but failing to procure one, was
+    compelled to make a new model. This was really a fortunate
+    circumstance, as he made several improvements in the weapon,
+    which officers who had used it suggested to him, so that his
+    weapons were very much better than the old ones. Having no
+    factory of his own, Colonel Colt hired an armory at
+    Whitneyville, near New Haven, where he produced the first
+    thousand pistols ordered by the Government. These gave entire
+    satisfaction, and further orders from the War Department came
+    in rapidly. Colonel Colt now hired and fitted up larger and
+    more complete workshops in Hartford, and began business on his
+    own account, supplying promptly every order that was given him.
+    The weapon proved most effective during the Mexican War, and
+    the orders of the Government were sufficiently large to allow
+    the inventor to reap a handsome profit from them, and lay the
+    foundations of his subsequent business success.</p>
+
+    <p>At the close of the war, Colonel Colt was apprehensive that
+    the demand for his weapon would again drop off, as it had done
+    after the Florida campaign; but he was agreeably disappointed.
+    The success of the revolver in Mexico had made it generally and
+    favorably known throughout the country, and there was now a
+    steady and even a growing demand for it. The discovery of gold
+    in California, which so quickly followed the cessation of
+    hostilities, greatly stimulated this demand, for the most
+    essential part of the gold seeker's outfit was a revolver; and
+    the extraordinary emigration to Australia, which set in
+    somewhat later, still further extended the market for his
+    weapon. Convinced by this time that there would be no
+    considerable falling off in his orders, Colonel Colt began to
+    take steps to assure the permanency of his business.</p>
+
+    <p>The experience of the American officers during the Mexican
+    War enabled them to point out many improvements to the
+    inventor, who promptly adopted them. This made his pistol
+    almost a new weapon, and the most formidable small arm then in
+    use. He obtained a new patent for it, as thus improved, and it
+    was adopted by the Government as the regular arm of the army
+    and navy, different sizes being made for each service. The
+    Crimean and Indian wars, which followed soon after, brought the
+    inventor large orders from the British Government, and during
+    the next few years his weapon was formally introduced into the
+    armies of the leading States of Europe.</p>
+
+    <p>His success was so rapid that, as early as 1851, it became
+    necessary to provide still more ample accommodations for his
+    manufactory. The next year he began the execution of a plan,
+    the magnitude of which caused many of his friends to tremble
+    for his future prosperity. He resolved to build the largest and
+    most perfect armory in the world, one which should enable him
+    to manufacture his weapons with greater rapidity and nicety
+    than had ever yet been possible.</p>
+
+    <p>Just to the south of the Little or Mill River there was a
+    piece of meadow land, about two hundred and fifty acres in
+    extent, generally regarded as useless, in consequence of its
+    being submerged every spring by the freshets in the river.
+    Colonel Colt bought this meadow for a nominal sum, and, to the
+    astonishment of the good people of Hartford, proceeded to
+    surround it with a strong dike, or embankment. This embankment
+    was two miles in length, one hundred and fifty feet wide at the
+    base, from thirty to sixty feet wide at the top, and from ten
+    to twenty-five feet high. Its strength was further increased by
+    planting willows along the sides; and it was thoroughly tested
+    just after its completion by a freshet of unusual severity.
+    Having drained the meadow, Colonel Colt began the erection of
+    his armory upon the land inclosed by the embankment. It was
+    constructed of Portland stone, and consisted of three
+    buildings&mdash;two long edifices, with a third connecting them
+    in the center, the whole being in the form of the letter H. The
+    front parallel was five hundred by sixty feet, the rear
+    parallel five hundred by forty feet, and the central building
+    two hundred and fifty by fifty feet&mdash;the front parallel
+    and central building being three stories in height. Connected
+    with these buildings were other smaller edifices for offices,
+    warerooms, watchmen's houses, etc.</p>
+
+    <p>In 1861, the demand for the arms had become so enormous that
+    the armory was doubled in size, the new buildings being similar
+    in style to the old. "In this establishment there is ample
+    accommodation for the manufacture of one thousand fire-arms per
+    day," which is more than the arsenals at Harper's Ferry and
+    Springfield combined could turn out in the same time previous
+    to the war. In 1861, Colt's armory turned out about one hundred
+    and twenty thousand stand of arms, and in 1860, the two
+    armories before mentioned made about thirty-five thousand
+    between them. A portion of the armory at Hartford is devoted to
+    the fabrication of the machinery invented by Colonel Colt for
+    the manufacture of his pistols. This machinery is usually sold
+    to all parties purchasing the right to manufacture the
+    revolver. Colonel Colt supplied in this way a large part of the
+    machinery used in the Government manufactory at Enfield, in
+    England, and all of that used in the Imperial armory at Tulin,
+    in Russia. Near the armory, and in the area inclosed by the
+    dike, Colonel Colt erected a number of tasteful cottages for
+    his workmen, and warehouses for other kinds of business. His
+    entire expenditure upon his land and buildings here amounted to
+    more than two million five hundred thousand dollars.</p>
+
+    <p>"Among his other cares, the intellectual and social welfare
+    of his numerous employ&eacute;s were not forgotten. Few
+    mechanics are favored with as convenient residences as those he
+    has erected for them; and a public hall, a library, courses of
+    lectures, concerts, the organization of a fine band of music,
+    formed entirely from his own workmen, to whom he presented a
+    superb set of musical instruments, and of a military company of
+    his operatives, provided by him with a tasteful uniform, and
+    otherwise treated by him with great liberality, were among the
+    methods by which he demonstrated his sympathy with the sons of
+    toil."</p>
+
+    <p>The Hartford armory is the largest and most complete in the
+    world, in extent and perfection of machinery. All the articles
+    needed with the revolver, such as the powder flask, balls,
+    lubricator, bullet molds, cartridges, etc., are made here on a
+    large scale. The establishment is a noble monument to the
+    inventive genius and business capacity of its founder.</p>
+
+    <p>In addition to his inventions of fire-arms, Colonel Colt
+    invented a submarine battery, which was thoroughly tested by
+    the officers of the United States Navy, and is said to be one
+    of the most formidable engines for harbor defense ever known.
+    He also invented a submarine telegraph cable, which he laid and
+    operated with perfect success, in 1843, from Coney Island and
+    Fire Island to the city of New York, and from the Merchants
+    Exchange to the mouth of the harbor. His insulating material
+    consisted of a combination of cotton yarn with asphaltum and
+    beeswax; the whole was inclosed in a lead pipe. This was one of
+    the most successful experiments of the early days of submarine
+    telegraphy, and entitles Colonel Colt to a conspicuous place in
+    the list of those who brought that science to perfection.</p>
+
+    <p>After the permanent establishment of his business, in 1847
+    and 1848, Colonel Colt's success was rapid. He acquired a large
+    fortune, and built an elegant and tasteful mansion in Hartford,
+    where he resided, surrounded with all the luxuries of wealth
+    and taste. In 1855, he married Miss Elizabeth Jarvis, daughter
+    of the Rev. Dr. Jarvis, of Portland, Connecticut, a lady of
+    great beauty and superior character and accomplishments. She
+    still survives him.</p>
+
+    <p>He repeatedly visited Europe after his settlement at
+    Hartford, and as the excellence of his weapons had made his
+    name famous the world over, he was the recipient of many
+    attentions from the most distinguished soldiers of Europe, and
+    even from some of the monarchs of the Old World. In 1856, being
+    on a visit to Russia, with his family, he was invited with them
+    to be present at the coronation of the Emperor Alexander II. He
+    was decorated by nearly all the Governments of Europe, and by
+    some of the Asiatic sovereigns, with orders of merit, diplomas,
+    medals, and rings, in acknowledgment of the great services he
+    had rendered to the world by his invention.</p>
+
+    <p>He died, at his residence in Hartford, on the 10th of
+    January, 1862, in the forty-eighth year of his age. The
+    community of which he was a member lost in him one of its most
+    enterprising and public-spirited citizens, and the country one
+    of the best representatives of the American character it has
+    ever produced.</p>
+    <hr style='width: 65%;'>
+    <a name='CHAPTER_XX'></a>
+
+    <h2>CHAPTER XX.</h2>
+
+    <h3>SAMUEL F.B. MORSE.</h3><br>
+
+
+    <p>SAMUEL FINLEY BREESE MORSE is the eldest son of the late
+    Jedediah Morse, one of the most distinguished Presbyterian
+    clergymen of New England. He was born at Charlestown,
+    Massachusetts, on the 27th of April, 1791, was carefully
+    educated in the common schools of his native town, and at an
+    early age entered Yale College, where he graduated in 1810. He
+    exhibited an early fondness for art as well as studies of a
+    scientific character, and while a student at Yale displayed an
+    especial aptness for chemistry and natural philosophy. Upon
+    leaving college he decided to adopt the profession of an
+    artist, and was sent abroad to study under the tuition of West
+    and Copley and Allston.</p>
+
+    <center>
+        <a name='illust7161'></a>
+        <a href='images/7161.jpg'><img src='images/7161.jpg'
+                height='500' border=0
+                alt='SAMUEL F. B. MORSE.'></a><br>
+         SAMUEL F.B. MORSE.
+    </center>
+
+    <p>"When Allston was painting his 'Dead Man Restored to Life,'
+    in London," says Mr. Tuckerman, in his <i>Book of the
+    Artists</i>, "he first modeled his figure in clay, and
+    explained to Morse, who was then his pupil, the advantages
+    resulting from a plan so frequently adopted by the old masters.
+    His young countryman was at this time meditating his first
+    composition&mdash;a dying Hercules&mdash;and proceeded at once
+    to act upon this suggestion. Having prepared a model that
+    exhibited the upper part of the body&mdash;which alone would be
+    visible in the picture&mdash;he submitted it to Allston, who
+    recognized so much truth in the anatomy and expression that he
+    urgently advised its completion. After six weeks of careful
+    labor, the statue was finished and sent to West for inspection.
+    That venerable artist, upon entering the room, put on his
+    spectacles, and as he walked around the model, carefully
+    examining its details and general effect, a look of genuine
+    satisfaction beamed from his face. He rang for an attendant and
+    bade him call his son. 'Look here, Raphael,' he exclaimed, as
+    the latter appeared; 'did I not always tell you that every
+    painter could be a sculptor?' We may imagine the delight of the
+    student at such commendation. The same day one of his fellow
+    pupils called his attention to a notice issued by the Adelphi
+    Society of Arts, offering a prize for the best single figure,
+    to be modeled and sent to the rooms of the association within a
+    certain period. The time fixed would expire in three days.
+    Morse profited by the occasion, and placed his 'Dying Hercules'
+    with the thirteen other specimens already entered. He was
+    consequently invited to the meeting of the society on the
+    evening when the decision was to be announced, and received
+    from the hands of the Duke of Norfolk, the presiding officer,
+    and in the presence of the foreign ambassadors, the gold medal.
+    Perhaps no American ever started in the career of an artist
+    under more flattering auspices; and we can not wonder that a
+    beginning so successful encouraged the young painter to devote
+    himself assiduously to study, with a view of returning to his
+    own country fully prepared to illustrate the historical
+    department of the art."</p>
+
+    <p>Morse spent four years in Europe in close study, and was
+    then obliged to return to America by lack of means to carry on
+    his education in the Old World. He had not indeed reached the
+    high degree of proficiency which he had hoped to obtain before
+    returning home, but he was possessed of natural talents and
+    acquired skill, which fairly entitled him to recognition as one
+    of our leading artists. This recognition never came to him,
+    however, and his artist life in this country was a series of
+    sorrowful disappointments. He found no opportunity of devoting
+    himself to the higher branches of his art, and was obliged to
+    confine himself entirely to portrait painting as a means of
+    livelihood. His artist career is thus referred to by Mr.
+    Tuckerman:</p>
+
+    <div class='blkquot'>
+        <p>"Morse went abroad under the care of Allston, and was
+        the pupil of West and Copley. Hence he is naturally
+        regarded by a later generation as the connecting bond that
+        unites the present and the past in the brief annals of our
+        artist history. But his claim to such recognition does not
+        lie altogether in the fact that he was a pioneer; it has
+        been worthily evidenced by his constant devotion to the
+        great cause itself. Younger artists speak of him with
+        affection and respect, because he has ever been zealous in
+        the promotion of a taste for, and a study of, the fine
+        arts. Having entered the field at too early a period to
+        realize the promise of his youth, and driven by
+        circumstances from the high aims he cherished, misanthropy
+        was never suffered to grow out of personal disappointment.
+        He gazed reverently upon the goal it was not permitted him
+        to reach, and ardently encouraged the spirit which he felt
+        was only to be developed when wealth and leisure had given
+        his countrymen opportunities to cultivate those tastes upon
+        the prevalence of which the advancement of his favorite
+        pursuit depends. When, after the failure of one of his
+        elaborate projects, he resolved to establish himself in New
+        York, he was grieved to find that many petty dissensions
+        kept the artists from each other. He made it his business
+        to heal these wounds and reconcile the animosities that
+        thus retarded the progress of their common object. He
+        sought out and won the confidence of his isolated brothers,
+        and one evening invited them all to his room ostensibly to
+        eat strawberries and cream, but really to beguile them into
+        something like agreeable intercourse. He had experienced
+        the good effect of a drawing club at Charleston, where many
+        of the members were amateurs; and on the occasion referred
+        to covered his table with prints, and scattered inviting
+        casts around the apartment. A very pleasant evening was the
+        result, a mutual understanding was established, and weekly
+        meetings unanimously agreed upon. This auspicious gathering
+        was the germ of the National Academy of Design, of which
+        Morse became the first president, and before which he
+        delivered the first course of lectures on the fine arts
+        ever given in this country."</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <p>In 1829 Mr. Morse went abroad for the purpose of completing
+    his art studies. He remained in Europe for more than three
+    years, residing in the principal cities of the Continent.
+    During his absence he was elected "Professor of the Literature
+    of the Fine" in the University of the City of New York. He set
+    out on his return home to accept this professorship in the
+    autumn of 1832, sailing from Havre on board the packet-ship
+    "Sully."</p>
+
+    <p>As has been stated, he had manifested a decided fondness for
+    Chemistry and Natural Philosophy while at Yale College, where
+    he was a pupil of Professor Silliman in the former science, and
+    of Professor Day in the latter, and after his departure from
+    college he had devoted all his leisure time to the pursuit of
+    these studies. So great was his fondness for them that some of
+    his friends declared their belief that he ought to abandon art
+    and devote himself to science. In 1826-27 he had delivered, at
+    the Athen&aelig;um in New York, the course of fine-art lectures
+    to which reference has been made, and on alternate nights of
+    the same season Professor J. Freeman Dana had lectured upon
+    electro-magnetism, illustrating his remarks with the first
+    electro-magnet (on Sturgeon's principle) ever seen in this
+    country. Morse and Dana had been intimate friends, and had
+    often held long conversations upon the subject of magnetism,
+    and the magnet referred to had at length been given to the
+    former by Professor Torrey. The interest which he had thus
+    conceived in this instrument had never diminished, and his
+    investigations and studies had never ceased, so that at the
+    time of his departure from France in the "Sully," in 1832, he
+    was one of the best informed men upon the subject to be found
+    in any country.</p>
+
+    <p>Among his fellow-passengers were a number of persons of
+    intelligence and cultivation, one of whom had but recently
+    witnessed in Paris some highly interesting experiments with the
+    electro-magnet, the object of which was to prove how readily
+    the electric spark could be obtained from the magnet, and the
+    rapidity with which it could be disseminated. To most of the
+    passengers this relation was deeply interesting, but to all
+    save one it was merely the recital of a curious experiment.
+    That one exception was Mr. Morse. To him the development of
+    this newly-discovered property of electricity was more than
+    interesting. It showed him his true mission in life, the way to
+    his true destiny. Art was not his proper field now, for however
+    great his abilities as an artist, he was possessed of genius of
+    a higher, more useful type, and it was henceforth his duty to
+    employ it. He thought long and earnestly upon the subject which
+    the words of his fellow-passenger had so freshly called up,
+    pacing the deck under the silent stars, and rocked in his
+    wakeful berth by the ocean whose terrors his genius was to
+    tame, and whose vast depths his great invention was to set at
+    naught. He had long been convinced that electricity was to
+    furnish the means of rapid communication between distant
+    points, of which the world was so much in need; and the
+    experiments which his new acquaintance had witnessed in Paris
+    removed from his mind the last doubt of the feasibility of the
+    scheme. Being of an eminently practical character, he at once
+    set to work to discover how this could be done, and succeeded
+    so well that before the "Sully" reached New York he had
+    conceived "not merely the idea of an electric telegraph, but of
+    an electro-magnetic and chemical recording telegraph,
+    substantially and essentially as it now exists," and had
+    invented an alphabet of signs, the same in all important
+    respects as that now in use. "The testimony to the paternity of
+    the idea in Morse's mind, and to his acts and drawings on board
+    the ship, is ample. His own testimony is corroborated by all
+    the passengers (with a single exception), who testified with
+    him before the courts, and was considered conclusive by the
+    judges; and the date of 1832 is therefore fixed by this
+    evidence as the date of Morse's conception, and realization
+    also&mdash;so far as the drawings could embody the
+    conception&mdash;of the telegraph system which now bears his
+    name."</p>
+
+    <p>But though invented in 1832, it was not until 1835 (during
+    which time he was engaged in the discharge of the duties of his
+    professorship in the University of the City of New York) that
+    he was enabled to complete his first recording instrument. This
+    was but a poor, rude instrument, at the best, and was very far
+    from being equal to his perfected invention. It embodied his
+    idea, however, and was a good basis for subsequent
+    improvements. By its aid he was able to send signals from a
+    given point to the end of a wire half a mile in length, but as
+    yet there was no means of receiving them back again from the
+    other extremity. He continued to experiment on his invention,
+    and made several improvements in it. It was plain from the
+    first that he needed a duplicate of his instrument at the other
+    end of his wire, but he was unable for a long time to have one
+    made. At length he acquired the necessary funds, and in July,
+    1837, had a duplicate instrument constructed, and thus
+    perfected his plan. His telegraph now worked to his entire
+    satisfaction, and he could easily send his signals to the
+    remote end of his line and receive replies in return, and
+    answer signals sent from that terminus. Having brought it to a
+    successful completion, he exhibited it to large audiences at
+    the University of New York, in September, 1837. In October,
+    1837, Professor Morse filed a caveat to secure his invention,
+    but his patent was not obtained until 1840.</p>
+
+    <p>He now entered upon that period of the inventor's life which
+    has proved so disastrous to many, and so wearying and
+    disheartening to all&mdash;the effort to bring his invention
+    into general use. It was commonly believed that, although the
+    invention was successful when used for such short distances as
+    had been tried in the City of New York, it would fail when
+    tested by longer lines. Morse was confident, however, that this
+    was not the case, and in December, 1837, he went to Washington
+    to solicit from the Government an appropriation for the
+    construction of an experimental line from Washington City to
+    Baltimore&mdash;a distance of forty miles. This line he
+    declared would thoroughly test the practicability and utility
+    of the telegraph. His petition was laid before Congress, and a
+    committee appointed to consider it. He stated his plan to this
+    body, and proved its practicability by actual experiments with
+    his instruments. Considerable interest in the subject was thus
+    aroused in Congress and throughout the country, but he derived
+    no benefit from it. If men spoke of his telegraph, it was only
+    to ridicule it, or to express their doubts of its success. This
+    was especially the case in Congress, and it was very uncertain
+    whether that body would sustain the report from the committee
+    in favor of the invention. The session wore away in this
+    manner, and at length ended without any action being taken in
+    the matter.</p>
+
+    <p>Having failed to secure the assistance of Congress,
+    Professor Morse went to Europe in the spring of 1838, for the
+    purpose of enlisting the aid of the governments there in
+    bringing his invention into use. He was unsuccessful. In
+    England a patent was refused him, and in France he merely
+    obtained a worthless <i>brevet d'invention.</i> He tried
+    several other countries, but was equally unsuccessful in all,
+    and he returned home almost disheartened, but not entirely cast
+    down. For four years he had to struggle hard for a living. He
+    was very poor, and, as one of his friends has since declared,
+    had literally "to coin his mind for bread." His sturdy
+    independence of character would not allow him to accept
+    assistance from any one, although there were friends ready and
+    even anxious to help him in his troubles. Alone and manfully he
+    fought his way through these dark days, still hopeful of
+    success for his invention, and patiently seeking to improve it
+    wherever opportunity presented itself. At length, in 1840, he
+    received his long-delayed patent from the General Government,
+    and, encouraged by this, determined to make another effort to
+    bring his telegraph into use.</p>
+
+    <p>He was not able to do so until the session of Congress of
+    1842-43, when he presented a second petition to that body,
+    asking its aid in the construction of an experimental line
+    between Baltimore and Washington. He had to encounter a great
+    degree of skepticism and ridicule, with many other obstacles,
+    not the least of which was the difficulty of meeting the
+    expense of remaining in Washington and urging his invention
+    upon the Government. Still he persevered, although it seemed to
+    be hoping against hope, as the session drew near its close, and
+    his scanty stock of money grew daily smaller. On the evening of
+    the 3d of March, 1843, he returned from the Capitol to his
+    lodgings utterly disheartened. It was the last night of the
+    session, and nothing had been done in the matter of his
+    petition. He sat up late into the night arranging his affairs
+    so as to take his departure for home on the following day. It
+    was useless to remain in Washington any longer. Congress would
+    adjourn the next day, and his last hope of success had been
+    shattered.</p>
+
+    <p>On the morning of the 4th of March he came down to the
+    breakfast-table gloomy and despondent. Taking up the morning
+    journal, he ran over it listlessly. Suddenly his eye rested
+    upon a paragraph which caused him to spring to his feet in
+    complete amazement. It was an announcement that, at the very
+    last hour of the session of the previous night, a bill had been
+    passed by Congress appropriating the sum of thirty thousand
+    dollars for the purpose of enabling Professor Morse to
+    construct an experimental line of telegraph between Baltimore
+    and Washington. He could scarcely believe it real, and, as soon
+    as possible, hastened to the Capitol to seek authentic
+    information. The statement was confirmed by the proper
+    authorities, and Morse's dearest wish was realized. The hour of
+    his triumph was at hand, and his long and patient waiting was
+    rewarded at last.</p>
+
+    <p>Work on the telegraph line was immediately begun, and
+    carried on actively. At first, an insulated wire was buried
+    under ground in a lead pipe, but this failing to give
+    satisfaction, the wire was elevated upon poles. On the 27th of
+    May, 1844, the line was completed, and the first trial of it
+    made in the presence of the Government officials and many other
+    distinguished men. Professor Morse was confident of success;
+    but this occasion was a period of the most intense anxiety to
+    him, for he knew that his entire future was staked upon the
+    result of this hour. Among the company present to witness the
+    trial was the Secretary of the Treasury, John C. Spencer.
+    Although very much interested in the undertaking, he was
+    entirely ignorant of the principles involved in it, and,
+    therefore, very apprehensive of its failure. It was upon this
+    occasion that he asked one of Professor Morse's assistants how
+    large a bundle could be sent over the wires, and if the United
+    States mail could not be sent in the same way.</p>
+
+    <p>When all was in readiness, Professor Morse seated himself at
+    the instrument, and sent his first message to Baltimore. An
+    answer was promptly returned, and messages were sent and
+    replies received with a rapidity and accuracy which placed the
+    triumph of the invention beyond the possibility of doubt.
+    Congratulations were showered upon the inventor, who received
+    them as calmly as he had previously borne the scoffs of many of
+    these same men. Yet his heart throbbed all the while with a
+    brilliant triumph. Fame and fortune both rose proudly before
+    him. He had won a great victory, and conferred a lasting
+    benefit upon his race.</p>
+
+    <p>The success of the experimental line brought Professor Morse
+    numerous offers for the use of his invention. Telegraph
+    companies were organized all over the country, and the stock
+    issued by them was taken up as fast as offered. At the present
+    day, not only the United States, but the whole world, is
+    covered with telegraph lines. In July, 1862, just eighteen
+    years after the completion of Morse's experimental line, it was
+    estimated that the lines then in operation throughout the world
+    amounted to an aggregate length of 150,000 miles. The Morse
+    system is adopted on the principal lines of the United States,
+    on all the lines of the Eastern continent, and exclusively on
+    all the continental lines of Europe, "from the extreme Russian
+    north to the Italian and Spanish south, eastward through the
+    Turkish empire, south into Egypt and northern Africa, and
+    through India, Australia, and parts of China."</p>
+
+    <p>The rapid growth of the telegraph interest of the United
+    States placed Professor Morse in the possession of a large
+    fortune, which was greatly increased by the adoption of his
+    invention in Europe. The countries which had refused him
+    patents at first now did honor to his genius. Nor was he the
+    only gainer by this. In France, especially, the benefits of his
+    invention were great. The old system of semaphore telegraphs
+    had been an annual expense to the government of that country of
+    1,100,000 francs, but Morse's telegraph yielded to the French
+    Government, in the first three years after its introduction, a
+    total revenue of 6,000,000 francs.</p>
+
+    <p>Fortune was not Morse's only reward. Honors were showered
+    upon him from all parts of the world. In 1848, his <i>alma
+    mater</i>, Yale College, conferred on him the complimentary
+    degree of LL.D., and since then he has been made a member of
+    nearly all the American scientific and art academies. From
+    European Governments and scientific and art associations he has
+    received more honors than have ever fallen to the share of any
+    other American. In 1848, he received from the Sultan of Turkey
+    the decoration of the <i>Nishaun Iftiohar</i> in diamonds, and
+    subsequently gold medals of scientific merit were awarded him
+    by the King of Prussia, the King of W&uuml;rtemburg, and the
+    Emperor of Austria. The gift of the King of Prussia was set in
+    a massive gold snuff-box. In 1856, the Emperor Napoleon III
+    gave him the Cross of Chevalier of the Legion of Honor; in
+    1857, he received from the King of Denmark the Cross of Knight
+    of the Danebrog; and in 1858, the Queen of Spain sent him the
+    Cross of Knight Commander of the order of Isabella the
+    Catholic. In 1859, a convention of the representatives of the
+    various European powers met in Paris, at the instance of the
+    Emperor Napoleon III, for the purpose of determining upon the
+    best means of giving Professor Morse a collective testimonial.
+    France, Russia, Sweden, Belgium, Holland, Austria, Sardinia,
+    Tuscany, Turkey, and the Holy See were represented, and their
+    deliberations resulted in the presentation to Professor Morse,
+    in the name of their united governments, of the sum of 400,000
+    francs, as an honorary and personal reward for his labors. In
+    1856, the telegraph companies of Great Britain gave him a
+    banquet in London, at which Mr. William Fothergill Corke,
+    himself the distinguished inventor of a system of telegraphy,
+    presided.</p>
+
+    <p>Professor Morse is also the inventor of submarine
+    telegraphy. In 1842, he laid the first submarine telegraph line
+    ever put down, across the harbor of New York, and for this
+    achievement received the gold medal of the American Institute.
+    On the 10th of August, 1843, he addressed a communication to
+    the Secretary of the Treasury, in which he avowed his belief
+    that a telegraphic cable could and would be laid across the
+    Atlantic ocean, for the purpose of connecting Europe and
+    America. His words upon this occasion clearly prove that the
+    idea of the Atlantic telegraph originated with him. They were
+    as follows: "The practical inference from this law is, that a
+    telegraphic communication on the electro-magnetic plan may with
+    certainty be established across the Atlantic ocean. Startling
+    as this may now seem, I am confident the time will come when
+    this project will be realized."</p>
+
+    <p>In February, 1854, Mr. Cyrus W. Field, of New York, ignorant
+    of Professor Morse's views upon this subject, wrote to him to
+    ask if he considered the working of a cable across the Atlantic
+    practicable. The Professor at once sought an interview with Mr.
+    Field, and assured him of his entire confidence in the
+    undertaking. He entered heartily into Mr. Field's scheme, and
+    rendered great aid in the noble enterprise which has been
+    described elsewhere in these pages. He was present at each
+    attempt to lay the cable, and participated in the final triumph
+    by which his prediction, made twenty-three years previous, was
+    verified.</p>
+
+    <p>Professor Morse is now in his eightieth year. He resides
+    during the winter in the city of New York, and passes his
+    summers at his beautiful country seat near Poughkeepsie, on the
+    Hudson. He bears his great honors with the same modesty which
+    marked his early struggles, and is the center of a host of
+    friends whom he has attached to himself by the tenderest ties.
+    "Courage and patience have been his watchwords, and although
+    the snows of time have bleached his hair, the same intelligence
+    and enterprising spirit, the same urbane disposition that
+    endeared him to the friends of his youth, still cause all who
+    know him to rejoice in the honorable independence which his
+    great invention has secured to his age."</p>
+    <hr style='width: 65%;'>
+    <a name='publishers'></a>
+
+    <h1>IV.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; PUBLISHERS.</h1>
+    <hr style='width: 65%;'>
+    <a name='CHAPTER_XXI'></a>
+
+    <h2>CHAPTER XXI.</h2>
+
+    <h3>JAMES HARPER.</h3><br>
+
+
+    <p>Some years ago a gentleman having business with the great
+    house of Harper &amp; Brothers asked one of the employ&eacute;s
+    of that establishment, "Which one is Harper, and which are the
+    brothers?" He was answered, "Either one is Harper, and all the
+    rest are the brothers." This reply fully sets forth the
+    difficulty which must be experienced by any one attempting to
+    write the story of the life of either member of this house. In
+    such an undertaking it is very difficult to select "Harper,"
+    and impossible to pass by the "Brothers." The interests of each
+    were so thoroughly in harmony with those of all the others, and
+    there was such perfect unanimity of sentiment existing between
+    them with regard to their private as well as their public
+    affairs, that it is hardly possible to separate them. Since,
+    however, it is not consistent with the design of this work to
+    relate the history of the "house," it is the purpose of the
+    writer to select the eldest of the brothers as the
+    representative of the group, and to offer him to the reader as
+    a type of the American publisher.</p>
+
+    <p>The grandfather of <span class="small-caps">James
+    Harper</span> came to this country from England about the year
+    1740, and was one of the first of the American Methodists. His
+    son Joseph was born in 1766. He married Elizabeth Kollyer, and
+    settled at Newtown, on Long Island, as a farmer. It was here
+    that James, their eldest child, was born, on the 13th of April,
+    1795. He grew up with a vigorous constitution, and the pure
+    influences of his home, together with the sound religious
+    training which he received from his parents, laid the
+    foundation of those simple and steady habits for which he was
+    noted through life. In the winter he attended the district
+    school, and in the summer he worked on his father's farm. Thus
+    his life passed away quietly and healthfully until he had
+    completed his fifteenth year.</p>
+
+    <p>It now became necessary for him to make some choice of a
+    profession in life, and when the matter was presented to him he
+    promptly decided to become a printer. His father cheerfully
+    seconded his wishes, and he was accordingly apprenticed to a
+    printer in New York. On the morning of his departure from home,
+    when the family assembled for "prayers," his mother, who was a
+    woman of superior character, took the father's place and led
+    the worship. With trembling tones she commended her boy to the
+    love and protection of the Saviour, and when the moment of
+    leave-taking came she sent him forth into the world with the
+    tender warning never to forget his home or his religious
+    duties, or "that he had good blood in him."</p>
+
+    <p>The change from his happy home to the place of "devil" in
+    the printing office was one which tried the lad's fortitude to
+    the utmost. His position was but little better than that of a
+    menial, and not only was all the drudgery and disagreeable work
+    put upon him, but he was made the sport of the workmen, some of
+    whom used him even roughly. He bore it all good-naturedly,
+    however, devoting himself to his trade with the determination
+    to master it.</p>
+
+    <p>The printing office in which he was employed was located
+    near Franklin Square, then occupied by the best people of the
+    city. Often, as young Harper passed across the square to and
+    from his work, his rough "country clothes" drew upon him the
+    ridicule of the children of these "goodly citizens." They
+    teazed and insulted him, and sometimes carried their cruelty to
+    the extremity of offering him bodily violence. He bore it
+    patiently for a time, but at length determined to put a stop to
+    it. He was physically the superior of any of his tormentors,
+    and had put up with their conduct merely from his sincere
+    desire to avoid a "street fight." In accordance with his new
+    resolution, however, when one of them approached him one day
+    and asked for his card, he set down a bucket which he was
+    carrying, and, seizing the fellow, kicked him across the
+    square, saying to him: "That's my card, take good care of it.
+    When I am out of my time, and set up for myself, and you need
+    employment, as you will, come to me, bring the card, and I will
+    give you work." "Forty-one years after," says the writer upon
+    whose authority this incident is related, "when Mr. Harper's
+    establishment was known throughout all the land, after he had
+    borne the highest municipal honors of the city, and had become
+    one of our wealthiest men, the person who had received the card
+    came to Mr. James Harper's establishment and asked employment,
+    claiming it on the ground that he had kept the card given him
+    forty-one years before."</p>
+
+    <p>In a little while James was joined by his brother John, who
+    was apprenticed to another printer in the city, and the two
+    lads spent with each other much of their leisure time. Both
+    worked hard. James soon became noted as the best pressman in
+    the city, his great personal strength enabling him to work the
+    old-fashioned hand-press with ease. It is said that if he
+    disliked a fellow pressman and wished to be rid of him, he
+    merely put forth his immense strength and outworked him. The
+    man being unable to keep up with him, was obliged to
+    retire.</p>
+
+    <p>"The habits of his rural home followed him to the city. In
+    an age when every body drank ardent spirits freely, he was
+    strictly temperate, and the cold water disciple justified his
+    faith by his works. With the cheerful constancy of the fathers
+    of his church he quietly resisted the temptations of the city.
+    He opened a prayer-meeting in the house of an old colored woman
+    in Ann Street, and joined the John Street Methodist Church.
+    Meanwhile, to their simple and thrifty method of life, James
+    and his brother added work out of hours, so that when their
+    apprenticeship was ended they had a little money saved."</p>
+
+    <p>James' excellent habits and great skill as a workman had
+    given entire satisfaction to his master during the whole period
+    of his apprenticeship, and he informed the young man at the
+    expiration of his indentures that he was willing to employ him
+    again at fair wages. The young workman surprised him by telling
+    him that he intended to set up for himself, and that all he
+    wanted from him now was a certificate that he was fit to be
+    trusted with a book. This was given, and James and his brother
+    John took their little capital, which was increased by a loan
+    of a few hundred dollars from their father, and renting a small
+    room in Dover Street, set up an office on their own account,
+    and began business under the firm name of J. &amp; J. Harper.
+    Their capital was small&mdash;less than the annual wages of
+    some of their workmen to-day&mdash;but they were sustained by
+    industry, determination, and high moral principle. When they
+    began business, it was with a tacit agreement that each would
+    endeavor to deserve the confidence of the other, and of their
+    fellow-men. There was to be no evasion of principle, no sharp
+    practice, in their house. They were resolved to make money, but
+    to make it honestly. They would engage in no transaction which
+    should cause a doubt of their integrity in the breast of the
+    good mother who had sent them forth with her blessing.</p>
+
+    <p>More than fifty years have passed away since then, and the
+    Harpers have prospered steadily, and so greatly, too, that for
+    many years their house has stood at the head of the publishing
+    interest of America. Their career is an instructive one, giving
+    an emphatic denial to the assertion we hear so often repeated,
+    that an "over-honest" man can not make money in New York. Shut
+    your ears to the calumny, young man, just staring out in life.
+    "Honesty <i>is</i> the best policy;" and it is only by
+    scrupulous honesty that enduring success can be obtained.
+    Trickery and sharp practice may earn wealth rapidly, but depend
+    upon it they have their reward; for it is a curious fact in the
+    history of man that wealth acquired by knavery rarely stays
+    with its possessors for more than a generation, if so long.</p>
+
+    <p>In starting out, the young Harpers printed books to order,
+    attempting nothing at their own risk. They did a part of the
+    composition and press-work with their own hands, and were,
+    perhaps, the hardest workers in their establishment. Their
+    first job was two thousand copies of Seneca's Morals, and was
+    intrusted to them by Evert Duyckinck, a famous publisher of
+    that day. The books were delivered in August, 1817, and gave
+    entire satisfaction.</p>
+
+    <p>Immediately after this, they undertook to stereotype an
+    edition of the "Book of Common Prayer" for the Protestant
+    Episcopal Church of New York, supposing that they would be able
+    to make a fair profit at the rate at which they had agreed to
+    do the work. It was their original intention to do the
+    composition themselves, and have the stereotyping done at one
+    of the large establishments of the city; but upon a closer
+    investigation they found that this would cost them more than
+    they had agreed to do the work for. In this dilemma, they
+    resolved to learn the art of stereotyping themselves, and
+    perform that portion of their contract on their own premises.
+    It was a tedious undertaking; but they went through with it
+    determinedly, and at the proper time delivered the books to the
+    officials of the Episcopal Church. Their profit was not very
+    large, but they had become stereotypers as well as printers,
+    and had added a valuable department to their business. Further
+    than this, their Prayer Book was pronounced the best piece of
+    stereotyping that had ever been seen in the city, and won the
+    young men congratulations on all sides. They next undertook
+    twenty-five hundred copies of Mair's "Introduction to Latin,"
+    which they delivered in December, 1817.</p>
+
+    <p>In April, 1818, they put forth their first venture on their
+    own account. This consisted of five hundred copies of Locke's
+    "Essay upon the Human Understanding." These were readily
+    disposed of, and their success encouraged them to further
+    efforts. They proceeded very cautiously, and it was for a long
+    time their custom, when contemplating the publication of a
+    book, and especially in the case of a reprint, to send to the
+    leading booksellers in the large cities of the Union, and
+    ascertain how many copies each one would take. Thus they pushed
+    their way forward, seizing upon every favorable opportunity for
+    the publication of original and foreign works. They rarely made
+    an unsuccessful venture, and as each worked hard, and had
+    constantly in view, above all other subjects, the success of
+    the house, they gradually extended their business until they
+    secured the foremost place among the publishers of the United
+    States.</p>
+
+    <p>Beginning with works of a dry, philosophic nature, the
+    Harpers have extended their operations into every department of
+    literature. Their catalogue of publications, issued in 1869,
+    lies on the writer's table. It is a duodecimo volume of two
+    hundred and ninety-six closely-printed pages, and embraces a
+    list of several thousand volumes. In this list are histories,
+    biographies, travels, adventures, novels, poems, educational
+    works, works on science, art, philosophy, metaphysics&mdash;in
+    short, books on every topic familiar to man. In the department
+    of fiction, the success of this house has been remarkable. They
+    have published between four and five hundred novels, in cloth
+    and paper bindings, and the demand for their early publications
+    of this kind is still sufficiently active to compel them to
+    keep a stock always on hand. When they began to issue their
+    Library of Select Novels, they did so with a distinct purpose
+    in view. Novel-reading has always been a passion with
+    Americans, but at the period referred to the best novels were
+    published at such high prices that but few could afford to buy
+    them. The masses were compelled to put up with the cheap,
+    flashy stories which were so well known some years ago as
+    "yellow covers." This style of fiction, now confined to the
+    lowest class of readers, at that time found its way into almost
+    every house, and the popular taste was at a very low ebb. The
+    Harpers felt sure that by issuing the best, and only the best,
+    English novels at a low price, they would not only meet a real
+    want on the part of the public, but in great measure supersede
+    the "yellow covers," with all their pernicious influences. The
+    sequel proved the correctness of these views, and resulted in
+    large profits to them.</p>
+
+    <p>Soon after commencing business, James and John Harper
+    received their younger brothers, Joseph Wesley and Fletcher,
+    into their establishment as apprentices. These young men were
+    taught the business thoroughly, and when they had completed
+    their apprenticeship were admitted into the firm as partners,
+    the former entering the firm in 1823, and the latter in 1826.
+    In 1825 the style of the firm was changed to Harper &amp;
+    Brothers, and the business was removed to 81 and 82 Cliff
+    Street, on a portion of the site of the present establishment.
+    It was then the largest printing-house in New York, employing
+    fifty workmen and ten hand presses.</p>
+
+    <p>In 1850; the Harpers decided to commence the publication of
+    a monthly periodical, and, accordingly, in the summer of that
+    year they issued the first number of "Harper's New Monthly
+    Magazine," which, in point of popularity, stands today, after a
+    career of twenty years, at the head of American magazines, and
+    boasts of a circulation of 180,000 copies. The recognition of
+    another want of the public led, in 1857, to the establishment
+    of an illustrated newspaper, "Harper's Weekly," which has at
+    present a circulation of 100,000 copies. In 1869 they began the
+    publication of a new weekly fashion paper, called "the Bazaar,"
+    which has reached a circulation of 75,000 copies.</p>
+
+    <p>From the first, the Harpers made their house a popular
+    establishment. They sought public favor by legitimate means,
+    and generally managed to retain it in the same way. From an
+    early period in their history, their imprint on a book has been
+    sufficient to secure its sale; and they have managed to
+    identify themselves so thoroughly with American progress that
+    the whole country feels an interest in their success. By
+    studying the popular taste closely, they were enabled to
+    publish in rapid succession works suited to it; and by fair and
+    liberal dealings with authors they soon drew around them a
+    corps of the best writers in the Union.</p>
+
+    <p>Their success was rapid, and by the year 1853 their
+    establishment had increased in size so much that it occupied
+    "nine large contiguous buildings, full of costly machinery of
+    every kind, with stores of plates and books." On the 10th of
+    December of that year, a workman in one of the upper rooms
+    carelessly threw a piece of lighted paper into what he supposed
+    to be a pail of water, but which proved to be camphene. In a
+    few minutes the building was in flames; all efforts to save it
+    were in vain. The fire spread rapidly, and in a few hours the
+    entire establishment was in ruins. The loss was one million of
+    dollars, of which sum only about one-fourth was covered by
+    insurance.</p>
+
+    <p>It was a terrible blow, but James Harper and his brothers
+    wasted no time in repining. Before the embers had ceased
+    smoking they were taking active measures to re&euml;stablish
+    their business. From the wreck of their establishment they
+    saved a part of the stereotype plates, which had been stored in
+    the vaults, out of the way of the fire. They immediately rented
+    Sheffield's paper warehouse, at the corner of Beckman and Gold
+    Streets, and went to work with greater energy than ever.
+    "Presses were employed in New York, Philadelphia, and Boston.
+    Nothing was forgotten. The next monthly issue of the
+    <i>Magazine</i> had been made ready, and it was reproduced at
+    the earliest moment. One regular contributor, then in Chicago,
+    received the first news of the fire by a brief telegram: 'Copy
+    destroyed. Send fresh copy immediately.' Before the ruins were
+    cleared away the plans of the new buildings were ready, and the
+    buildings themselves were rapidly finished."</p>
+
+    <p>The new establishment of Harper &amp; Brothers is one of the
+    wonders of the great city in which it is located. The buildings
+    are of iron and brick, and cover half an acre of ground. The
+    establishment really consists of two buildings. The front
+    building faces Franklin Square, and is a magnificent iron
+    structure, painted white. Behind this is the second building,
+    which fronts on Cliff Street. A court-yard intervenes between
+    them, spanned by several bridges, connecting them. Each
+    building is seven stories in height, and completely
+    fire-proof.</p>
+
+    <p>There are no openings in the floors for communication, but
+    the various floors are connected by circular stairways of iron,
+    placed outside the building. The front building, or that which
+    faces Franklin Square, is used for storerooms, salesrooms, and
+    the editorial and business offices of the establishment. In the
+    rear building the various branches of the book manufacture are
+    carried on. The author's manuscript is received here and sent
+    back to him a complete book. Every portion of the work is done
+    under the same roof, and it is well done. The building is
+    filled with the most costly and complete machinery for saving
+    time and labor. Besides the machinery used in other
+    departments, it contains in its press-room forty-three Adams
+    presses for book work, and five cylinder presses for printing
+    the "Weekly" and the "Bazaar." About 600 persons, 250 of whom
+    are females, are employed in the establishment; and it is to
+    the credit of both employers and employ&eacute;s that but few
+    changes occur in this force. Many of the employ&eacute;s have
+    been with the firm since its first entrance into business. The
+    old man in charge of the vaults&mdash;a curiosity in his
+    way&mdash;has been in the service of the house for fifty years,
+    and to leave it now would, doubtless, break his heart; for none
+    of the Harpers are as proud of their reputation as he is. The
+    most perfect system reigns throughout every department, and
+    every thing goes on promptly and in its proper place.</p>
+
+    <p>"Of course," says a writer who many years has witnessed the
+    operations of the house, "the development and organization of
+    such a business were due not to one brother alone, but to the
+    cooperation of all.... The business was to James, as to the
+    others, the great central interest, but prosperity could not
+    relax his steady character. He did not forget his early faith,
+    nor the counsels and the habits of his Long Island home. He
+    remained strictly a 'temperance man,' and his marvelous
+    physical vigor was claimed by the temperance advocates as that
+    of a cold-water mans He was long an official member of
+    John-Street Church, and when he left his house in Rose Street,
+    and went to live in the upper part of the city, he joined the
+    congregation of St. Paul's Church, in the Fourth Avenue. But
+    with all his fidelity to his ancestral faith, he cherished the
+    largest charity, and by much experience of the world had
+    learned to agree with his favorite apostle, James, that pure
+    religion and undefiled, is to visit the fatherless and widows,
+    and keep himself unspotted from the world. Thus, with all his
+    conviction and devotion, there was nothing hard or fanatical in
+    his feeling or conduct, and he held pleasant personal relations
+    with men of every faith. Few men indulged in so little harsh
+    criticism of others, and he expressed censure or disapprobation
+    by humorous indirection rather than by open accusation. 'We
+    must not be too hard,' he was fond of saying, 'it is so
+    difficult to know all the circumstances. If you should insist,
+    for instance, that the use of tobacco is a sin, dear me! dear
+    me!'</p>
+
+    <p>"Mr. Harper was a Whig during the days of that party, and a
+    natural conservative. But in politics he showed the same
+    moderation and toleration. 'Don't try to drive men too roughly,
+    my dear sir; it is much easier to draw than to push.' He took
+    no conspicuous or active part in politics, except in 1844, when
+    he was elected Mayor of the city. He was constantly asked to
+    serve in Congress and in other public stations, but he steadily
+    declined, saying, with a sly smile, that he preferred to stick
+    to the business that he understood.</p>
+
+    <p>"To that business his heart and life were given. Of late
+    years its active cares had naturally fallen into the hands of
+    his younger associates; but he never relaxed his interest and
+    devotion. 'While I was dressing,' said a much younger neighbor,
+    'I used to see Mayor Harper coming out of his house to go down
+    town, and felt ashamed of myself. Early at the office, he
+    opened and looked over the mail, and during the hours of the
+    morning he passed from one room to another, his shrewd eye
+    seeing every thing, and measuring men and work, chatting and
+    jesting as he went. But out of those shrewd eyes looked a kind
+    and gentle heart. He knew by name the men and women and
+    children employed in the various parts of the great buildings,
+    interested himself in their family stories, and often won a
+    confidence that was never betrayed. His charities, which were
+    ample, were thus intelligent and effective, and poor men as
+    well as women bent to kiss his calm, unchanged face as he lay
+    in his coffin."</p>
+
+    <p>To the very last, James Harper retained his physical and
+    mental vigor, and was looked up to by all the members of the
+    house as its brightest ornament. To the last, he was one of the
+    best known and most honored citizens of the great metropolis.
+    His great wealth had not ruffled the serenity of his spirit, or
+    caused the slightest variation in his conduct. To the last he
+    was the Christian merchant, citizen, and father, offering to
+    his children in himself a noble model by which to shape their
+    lives.</p>
+
+    <p>It had been his custom at family prayers to ask of God
+    protection from sudden death, but for some time before his
+    death he ceased to do so. His family noticed this, and one of
+    them asked his reason for the omission. He answered quietly,
+    "The Lord knows best."</p>
+
+    <p>On the 25th of March, 1869, he was at his usual post in his
+    office, and after business hours, as was his habit, set out
+    with his daughter for a drive in the Central Park, As he neared
+    the Park the pole of his carriage broke suddenly, and the
+    horses, becoming frightened, dashed off furiously, dragging the
+    carriage after them. Mr. Harper and his daughter were both
+    thrown violently upon the pavement. The latter was but slightly
+    injured, but Mr. Harper was taken up insensible, and conveyed
+    to St. Luke's Hospital, which was close at hand. He never
+    regained consciousness, but lingered until fifteen minutes
+    after seven on the evening of the 27th, when he expired,
+    surrounded by all his family, excepting his wife, who had long
+    been an invalid. His death was regarded as a calamity to the
+    city, and all classes of the community united to do honor to
+    his memory.</p>
+    <hr style='width: 65%;'>
+    <a name='CHAPTER_XXII'></a>
+
+    <h2>CHAPTER XXII.</h2>
+
+    <h3>JAMES T. FIELDS.</h3><br>
+
+
+    <p>The old "corner book-store" at the intersection of
+    Washington and School Streets, in the city of Boston, is one of
+    the most notable places in the New England metropolis. The
+    memory of the oldest inhabitant can not recall a time when this
+    corner was not devoted to its present uses; and around it, in
+    the long years that have passed since the first book merchant
+    first displayed his wares here, there have gathered a host of
+    the most interesting, as well as the most brilliant, souvenirs
+    of our literary history. Here were sold, in "the days that
+    tried men's souls," those stirring pamphlets that sounded the
+    death-knell of British tyranny in the New World; and it was
+    from this old corner that the tender songs of Longfellow, the
+    weird conceptions of Hawthorne, the philosophic utterances of
+    Emerson, first found their way to the hearts of the people.</p>
+
+    <p>In 1884, the corner book-store was kept by Carter &amp;
+    Bendee, and was then the leading book-house in Boston. One
+    morning in that year there entered the office of the
+    proprietors a young lad from New Hampshire, who stated that he
+    came to seek employment in their service. His bright,
+    intelligent appearance was in his favor, scarcely less than the
+    testimonials which he brought, vouching for his integrity and
+    industry. His application was successful, and he entered the
+    service of Messrs. Carter &amp; Bendee, being given the lowest
+    clerkship in the establishment and a salary barely sufficient
+    to support him.</p>
+
+    <p>This lad was <span class="small-caps">James T.
+    Fields</span>. He was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on the
+    30th of December, 1820. His father was a captain in the
+    merchant service, and died when the boy was only four years
+    old, leaving him to the care and guidance of one of the best of
+    mothers. He was educated at the common schools of the city, and
+    was thence transferred to the high school. He exhibited a
+    remarkable fondness for study, and at the early age of thirteen
+    graduated at the high school, taking the first honors of his
+    class. He was regarded as one of the best classical scholars in
+    the institution, and during his course took several prizes in
+    Latin and Greek composition. Unusual abilities as a poet were
+    also manifested very early, and when but twelve years old he
+    wrote a poem in blank verse, which attracted the attention of
+    the late Chief Justice Woodbury, then Governor of New
+    Hampshire, who was so much surprised and gratified to find such
+    talent in so young a boy, that he earnestly advised him to
+    endeavor to complete his studies at Harvard University. This,
+    indeed, was the chief desire of the boy, but a collegiate
+    education required means which he could not command, and he was
+    forced to go out into the world to seek his fortune. Having
+    secured a good elementary education, however, he was resolved
+    that he would not abandon his efforts to acquire knowledge. All
+    his leisure time, after going to Boston to live, was devoted to
+    reading and study. While neglecting no duty in his business, he
+    gave the hours which most boys devote to amusement to severe
+    mental labor. Young as he was, he was ambitious.</p>
+
+    <p>He knew that knowledge was power, especially in the
+    community in which he lived, and he was resolved that this
+    power should be his. The result is plainly seen in his
+    subsequent career. Although deprived of the advantages of a
+    collegiate course, Mr. Fields has more than made up that
+    deficiency by his faithful labors, and there are few men in New
+    England to-day possessed of more varied and extensive mental
+    accomplishments than he. Upon going to Boston he promptly
+    identified himself with the Mercantile Library Association of
+    that place, availing himself of its advantages, and exerting
+    all the influence of which he was possessed to insure its
+    success. When but eighteen years old, he was chosen to deliver
+    an anniversary poem before the association. The value of the
+    compliment will be better appreciated by the reader when it is
+    stated that the oration upon that occasion was pronounced by
+    Edward Everett. His industry in his business duties was great.
+    He entered the house of Carter &amp; Bendee with the
+    determination to rise in it. He worked faithfully, and was the
+    first at his post in the morning, and the last to leave it at
+    night. When the style of the firm was changed to Allen &amp;
+    Ticknor, he was promoted to a more important place. He proved
+    himself from the first one of the most valuable and trustworthy
+    assistants in the house, and his merits were promptly
+    recognized. From the lowest place in the house, he worked his
+    way up steadily until he became the manager of the
+    establishment. Each promotion brought with it an increase of
+    salary. Knowing well that "a penny saved at present is a pound
+    gained in future" to a young man striving to rise in the world,
+    he practiced the most conscientious economy. He made himself
+    thoroughly acquainted with every detail of the publishing
+    trade; and although, of late years, he has had the supervision
+    more especially of the literary department of his large
+    business, there are few publishers in this country more
+    intimate with the business and mechanical branches of their
+    trade.</p>
+
+    <p>In 1846, just twelve years after his entrance into the
+    house, his clerkship came to an end, and he became a partner in
+    the establishment, the style of the firm being Ticknor &amp;
+    Fields. He took an active share in the business; and while full
+    credit must be given to Mr. Ticknor for the extraordinary
+    success which the firm enjoyed, it can not be denied that Mr.
+    Fields' share in this work was very great, and fully equal to
+    that of his partner. His acknowledged literary abilities won
+    him friends among the most gifted writers of the country, and
+    these naturally sought his assistance in presenting their works
+    to the world. Their friendship induced an intelligent
+    confidence in his literary taste and mercantile integrity, and
+    it was a decided gain for them to secure one so generally
+    esteemed and trusted as their publisher. Young writers, still
+    struggling for fame, felt that in submitting their works to his
+    inspection they would receive the patient examination of not
+    only a conscientious reader, but of one whose own literary
+    abilities rendered him unusually competent for the task. The
+    public generally learned to share this confidence in his
+    literary judgment. And so it came to pass that the imprint of
+    Ticknor &amp; Fields was universally accepted as a sufficient
+    guarantee of the excellence of any book, and rarely failed to
+    insure its success. Naturally, the house was proud of this
+    confidence, and it is pleasant to record that they have never
+    abused it. There is, perhaps, no other publishing firm in the
+    Union whose catalogue is so free from objectionable or
+    worthless publications as that issued by this house.</p>
+
+    <p>Gradually Messrs. Ticknor &amp; Fields became the recognized
+    publishers of a large number of the leading writers of this
+    country and of Great Britain. In their catalogue we find the
+    names of Longfellow, Bryant, Whittier, Holmes, Aldrich,
+    Agassiz, Beecher, Alice Gary, Cummins, Dana, Emerson,
+    Hawthorne, Gail Hamilton, Lowell, Parton, Saxe, Sprague, Stowe,
+    Bayard Taylor, Thoreau, and Tuckerman, in American literature;
+    and in English literature, the names of Browning, Dickens,
+    George Eliot, Mrs. Jameson, Kingsley, Owen Meredith, Charles
+    Reade, and Tennyson. With their English authors they maintain
+    the pleasantest relations, recognizing their moral right to
+    their works, and paying them a fair royalty upon the sales of
+    their books. Of their relations with their American authors, a
+    popular periodical says:</p>
+
+    <p>"There are no business men more honorable or generous than
+    the publishers of the United States, and especially honorable
+    and considerate toward authors. The relation usually existing
+    between author and publisher in the United States is that of a
+    warm and lasting friendship, such as now animates and dignifies
+    the intercourse between the literary men of New England and
+    Messrs. Ticknor &amp; Fields.... The relation, too, is one of a
+    singular mutual trustfulness. The author receives his
+    semi-annual account from the publisher with as ablute a faith
+    in its correctness as though he had himself counted the volumes
+    sold."</p>
+
+    <p>In 1865, the firm removed from the old corner stand to a new
+    and elegant establishment on Tremont Street, near the Common,
+    and in the same year Mr. Howard Ticknor, who had succeeded his
+    father in the business, withdrew from it. New partners were
+    admitted, and the style of the firm became Fields, Osgood &amp;
+    Co., Mr. Fields still remaining at the head of the house.</p>
+
+    <p>The new book store is one of the handsomest and most
+    attractive in the country. The store proper is eighty feet deep
+    by fifty feet wide, and is fitted up handsomely in hard
+    wood.</p>
+
+    <p>There is no paint about it, every piece of wood in use
+    presenting its natural appearance. On the right in entering are
+    the book shelves and counters, and on the opposite side the
+    desks devoted to the magazine department. At the rear are the
+    counting rooms and the private office of Mr. J.R. Osgood, the
+    active business man of the concern. The second story is
+    elegantly and tastefully fitted up. It contains the luxurious
+    private office of Mr. Fields, in which are to be seen excellent
+    likenesses of his two dearest friends, Longfellow and Dickens;
+    and the parlor of the establishment, which is known as the
+    Author's Room. This is a spacious and handsomely-appointed
+    room, whose windows, overlooking the Common, command one of the
+    prettiest views in New England. It is supplied with the leading
+    periodicals of the day, and choice volumes of current
+    literature. Here one may always find one or more of the "gifted
+    few," whose names are familiar to the reader; and frequent
+    reunions of the book-making fraternity are designed to be held
+    here, under the genial auspices of the literary partner of the
+    house.</p>
+
+    <p>It is not often that men win success in both literature and
+    mercantile life. Good authors have usually made very poor
+    business managers, and <i>vice versa</i>; but the subject of
+    this memoir, besides winning a great success as a merchant, and
+    that in one of the most hazardous branches of mercantile life,
+    has also won an enviable reputation as a man of letters. His
+    poems have made him well known, both in this country and in
+    England. Besides the poems recited before various literary
+    associations, he has published two volumes of fugitive pieces.
+    The first appeared in 1843, while he was still a clerk, and the
+    second in 1858. His poems abound in humor, pathos, and a
+    delicate, beautiful fancy. One of his friends has said of
+    him:</p>
+
+    <p>"Little of the sad travail of the historic poet has Mr.
+    Fields known. Of the emaciated face, the seedy garment, the
+    collapsed purse, the dog-eared and often rejected manuscript,
+    he has never known, save from well-authenticated tradition. His
+    muse was born in sunshine, and has only been sprinkled with the
+    tears of affection. Every effort has been cheered to the echo,
+    and it is impossible for so genial a fellow to fail of an ample
+    and approving audience for whatever may fall from his lip or
+    pen."</p>
+
+    <p>The following lines, from his second volume, will serve as a
+    specimen of the "homely beauty" of Mr. Fields' muse, though it
+    hardly sets forth all his powers:</p>
+
+    <div class="poem">
+        <div class="stanza">
+            <p>She came among the gathering crowd</p>
+
+            <p class="i2">A maiden fair, without pretense,</p>
+
+            <p>And when they asked her humble name,</p>
+
+            <p class="i2">She whispered mildly, "Common Sense."</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div class="stanza">
+            <p>Her modest garb drew every eye,</p>
+
+            <p class="i2">Her ample cloak, her shoes of
+            leather;</p>
+
+            <p>And when they sneered, she simply said,</p>
+
+            <p class="i2">"I dress according to the weather."</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div class="stanza">
+            <p>They argued long and reasoned loud,</p>
+
+            <p class="i2">In dubious Hindoo phrase mysterious;</p>
+
+            <p>While she, poor child, could not pine</p>
+
+            <p class="i2">Why girls so young should be so
+            serious.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div class="stanza">
+            <p>They knew the length of Plato's beard,</p>
+
+            <p class="i2">And how the scholars wrote in Laturn;</p>
+
+            <p>She studied authors not so deep,</p>
+
+            <p class="i2">And took the Bible for her pattern.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div class="stanza">
+            <p>And so she said, "Excuse me, friends,</p>
+
+            <p class="i2">I feel all have their proper places,</p>
+
+            <p>And <i>Common Sense</i> should stay at home</p>
+
+            <p class="i2">With cheerful hearts and smiling
+            faces."</p>
+        </div>
+    </div>
+
+    <p>Mr. Fields has been a frequent contributor to his own
+    periodicals, his latest effort being a paper devoted to
+    personal recollections of Charles Dickens, which was published
+    in the "Atlantic Monthly" soon after the death of the great
+    master.</p>
+
+    <p>He has made several extended tours throughout Europe, where
+    he has enjoyed social advantages rarely opened to travelers.
+    One of his friends says that, in his first visit to the Old
+    World, "he passed several months in England, Scotland, France,
+    and Germany, visiting the principal places of interest, and
+    forming most delightful and profitable intimacies with the most
+    distinguished <i>literateurs</i> of the day. He was a frequent
+    guest at the well-known breakfasts of the great banker-poet of
+    'The Pleasures of Memory' and of 'Italy,' and listened or added
+    his own contributions to the exuberant riches of the hour, when
+    such visitors as Talfourd, Dickens, Moore, and Landor were the
+    talkers." He also formed a warm friendship with Wordsworth,
+    and, during his stay in Edinburgh, with Professor Wilson and De
+    Quincey. The writings of the last-named author were published
+    by Ticknor and Fields, in eighteen volumes, and were edited by
+    Mr. Fields, at the author's own request.</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Fields is now in his fiftieth year, but shows no sign of
+    age, save the whitening of his heavy, curling beard. He is
+    still young and active in mind and body. He is of medium
+    height, and well proportioned, with an erect carriage. Polished
+    and courteous in manner, he is easily accessible to all. To
+    young writers he is especially kind, and it is a matter of the
+    truest pleasure to him to seek out and bring to notice genuine
+    literary merit. He has a host of friends, and is widely popular
+    with all classes.</p>
+    <hr style='width: 65%;'>
+    <a name='editors'></a>
+
+    <h1>V.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;EDITORS.</h1>
+    <hr style='width: 65%;'>
+    <a name='CHAPTER_XXIII'></a>
+
+    <h2>CHAPTER XXIII.</h2>
+
+    <h3>JAMES GORDON BENNETT.</h3><br>
+
+
+    <p>JAMES GORDON BENNETT was born at New Mill, Keith, in
+    Banffshire, on the north-eastern coast of Scotland, about the
+    year 1800. His relatives were Roman Catholics, and he was
+    brought up in a Catholic family of French origin. In his
+    fourteenth year, having passed through the primary schools of
+    his native place, he entered the Roman Catholic Seminary at
+    Aberdeen, for the purpose of studying for the priesthood of
+    that Church. During the two or three years which he passed here
+    he was a close student, and acquired the basis of an excellent
+    education.</p>
+
+    <p>In 1817 he came into possession of a copy of Benjamin
+    Franklin's autobiography, which had been recently published in
+    Scotland. The perusal of this little book changed the course of
+    his whole life. It induced him to abandon all thoughts of the
+    priesthood, and to try his fortune in the New World, in which
+    the great philosopher had succeeded so well before him. A
+    little more than a year later he left Glasgow, and in May,
+    1819, being now about twenty years old, landed at Halifax, Nova
+    Scotia. He had less than twenty-five dollars in his purse, knew
+    no vocation save that of a book-keeper, and had not a friend on
+    this side of the ocean.</p>
+
+    <p>He secured a few pupils in Halifax, and gave lessons in
+    book-keeping, but his profits were so small that he determined
+    to reach the United States as soon as possible. Accordingly he
+    made his way along the coast to Portland, Maine, where he took
+    passage for Boston in a small schooner. He found great
+    difficulty in procuring employment, for Boston then, as now,
+    offered but few inducements to new-comers. He parted with his
+    last penny, and was reduced to the most pressing want. For two
+    whole days he went without food, and a third day would
+    doubtless have been added to his fast had he not been fortunate
+    enough to find a shilling on the Common, with which he procured
+    the means of relieving his hunger. He now obtained a salesman's
+    place in the bookstore of Messrs. Wells &amp; Lilly, who, upon
+    discovering his fitness for the place, transferred him to their
+    printing-office as proof-reader; but his employers failed about
+    two years after his connection with them began, and he was
+    again thrown out of employment.</p>
+
+    <p>From Boston he went, in 1822, to New York, where he obtained
+    a situation on a newspaper. Soon after his arrival in the
+    metropolis he was offered, by Mr. Wellington, the proprietor of
+    the "Charleston (S.C.) Courier," the position of translator
+    from the Spanish, and general assistant. He accepted the offer,
+    and at once repaired to Charleston. He remained there only a
+    few months, however, and then returned to New York.</p>
+
+    <p>He now proposed to open a "Permanent Commercial School," at
+    148 Fulton Street, and advertised to teach the usual branches
+    "in the inductive method." His advertisement set forth that his
+    pupils would be taught "reading, elocution, penmanship, and
+    arithmetic; algebra; astronomy, history, and geography; moral
+    philosophy, commercial law, and political economy; English
+    grammar and composition, and, also, if required, the French and
+    Spanish languages by natives of those countries." This
+    elaborate scheme was never put into execution, as Mr. Bennett
+    did not receive a sufficient number of applications to warrant
+    him in opening the school. He next attempted a course of
+    lectures on political economy at the old Dutch Church in Ann
+    Street, but this enterprise was also a pecuniary failure. In
+    1825 he purchased the "New York Courier," a Sunday paper, but
+    did not succeed with it. He continued to write for the press,
+    principally for one or two papers, selling his articles where
+    he could, and in 1826 formed a regular connection with the
+    "National Advocate," a Democratic journal. To his duties in
+    this position he applied himself with an energy and industry
+    never surpassed, and rarely equaled, in his profession. He took
+    an active part in politics, and wrote regularly and constantly
+    for his paper, acquiring considerable reputation by his
+    articles against the tariff and on banks and banking. He now
+    embarked in journalism as the business of his life, and with
+    the determination to succeed. In order to win success, he knew
+    he must first learn to master himself. He neither smoked,
+    drank, nor gambled. He indulged in no species of dissipation,
+    but was temperate and prudent in all things. A few years later
+    he said of himself, "I eat and drink to live, not live to eat
+    and drink. Social glasses of wine are my aversion; public
+    dinners are my abomination; all species of gormandizing my
+    utter scorn and contempt. When I am hungry, I eat; when
+    thirsty, drink. Wine or viands taken for society, or to
+    stimulate conversation, tend only to dissipation, indolence,
+    poverty, contempt, and death."</p>
+
+    <p>In 1827 the "National Advocate" changed hands, and, under
+    its new proprietors, supported John Quincy Adams for President.
+    Mr. Bennett, being a supporter of Martin Van Buren, then a
+    United States Senator, resigned his position on the paper, and
+    soon after, in connection with the late M.M. Noah, established
+    "The Enquirer," which warmly espoused the cause of Andrew
+    Jackson in the Presidential canvass of 1828. About this time he
+    became a recognized member of the Tammany Society.</p>
+
+    <p>In the spring of 1828 he went to Washington, where he
+    resided for some time as the correspondent of "The Enquirer."
+    In looking through the library of Congress one day, he found an
+    edition of Horace Walpole's letters, which he read with a keen
+    relish. These suggested the idea of a series of similar letters
+    to his own paper, and he at once put his plan into execution.
+    His letters were written and published. They were "spicy,"
+    pleasant in style, full of gossip about the distinguished
+    personages who thronged the capital every winter, and, withal,
+    free from any offensive personality. They were read with
+    eagerness, and widely copied by the press throughout the
+    country. Yet he was poorly paid for them, and at a time when he
+    had made a "real hit" was forced to labor hard for a bare
+    subsistence. He did all kinds of literary work. He wrote
+    editorials, letters, sketches, poetry, stories, police reports,
+    in short, every thing that a newspaper had use for, and yet his
+    earnings were barely more than sufficient to afford him a
+    decent support.</p>
+
+    <p>In 1829, the "Courier and Enquirer" were united under one
+    management, and Mr. Bennett was made assistant editor, with
+    James Watson Webb as his chief. In the autumn of that year he
+    became associate editor. Says Mr. James Parton (by no means an
+    ardent admirer of Mr. Bennett):</p>
+
+    <p>"During the great days of the 'Courier and Enquirer,' from
+    1829 to 1832, when It was incomparably the best newspaper on
+    the continent, James Gordon Bennett was its most efficient
+    hand. It lost him in 1832, when the paper abandoned General
+    Jackson and took up Nicholas Biddle, and in losing him lost its
+    chance of retaining the supremacy among American newspapers to
+    this day. We can truly say that at that time journalism, as a
+    thing by itself and for itself, had no existence in the United
+    States. Newspapers were mere appendages of party, and the
+    darling object of each journal was to be recognized as the
+    organ of the party it supported. As to the public, the great
+    public, hungry for interesting news, no one thought of it.
+    Forty years ago, in the city of New York, a copy of a newspaper
+    could not be bought for money. If any one wished to see a
+    newspaper, he had either to go to the office and subscribe, or
+    repair to a bar-room and buy a glass of something to drink, or
+    bribe a carrier to rob one of his customers. The circulation of
+    the 'Courier and Enquirer' was considered something marvelous
+    when it printed thirty-five hundred copies a day, and its
+    business was thought immense when its daily advertising
+    averaged fifty-five dollars. It is not very unusual for a
+    newspaper now to receive for advertising, in one day, six
+    hundred times that sum. Bennett, in the course of time, had a
+    chance been given to him, would have made the 'Courier and
+    Enquirer' powerful enough to cast off all party ties, and this
+    he would have done merely by improving it as a vehicle of news.
+    But he was kept down upon one of those ridiculous, tantalizing,
+    corrupting salaries, which are a little more than a single man
+    needs, but not enough for him to marry upon. This salary was
+    increased by the proprietors giving him a small share in the
+    small profits of the printing-office; so that, after fourteen
+    years of hard labor and Scotch economy, he found himself, on
+    leaving the great paper, a capitalist to the extent of a few
+    hundred dollars. The chief editor of the paper which he now
+    abandoned sometimes lost as much in a single evening at the
+    card-table. It probably never occurred to him that this poor,
+    ill-favored Scotchman was destined to destroy his paper and all
+    the class of papers to which it belonged. Any one who examines
+    a file of the 'Courier and Enquirer' of that time, and knows
+    its interior circumstances, will see plainly enough that the
+    possession of this man was the vital element in its prosperity.
+    He alone knew the rudiments of his trade. He alone had the
+    physical stamina, the indefatigable industry, the sleepless
+    vigilance, the dexterity, tact, and audacity needful for
+    keeping up a daily newspaper in the face of keen
+    competition."</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Bennett left the "Courier and Enquirer" in 1832, the
+    cause of his action being the desertion of General Jackson by
+    that journal. He at once started a cheap partisan paper, called
+    "The Globe," devoted to the interests of Jackson and Van Buren.
+    It failed to receive the support of the Democratic party,
+    however, and went down after a precarious existence of thirty
+    days.</p>
+
+    <p>Undismayed by this failure, Mr. Bennett removed to
+    Philadelphia, and invested the remainder of his capital in a
+    daily Democratic journal, called "The Pennsylvanian," of which
+    he was the principal editor, laboring hard to win for it the
+    assistance and support of the party. He had rendered good and
+    admitted service to the Democracy, but was to experience the
+    ingratitude for which political organizations are proverbial.
+    He applied to Martin Van Buren and other prominent leaders of
+    the party to aid him in securing a loan of twenty-five hundred
+    dollars for two years, which sum would have enabled him to
+    establish his paper on a paying basis, but the politicians
+    turned deaf ears to his appeals, and his paper failed, after a
+    brief and desperate struggle.</p>
+
+    <p>He came back to New York about the beginning of 1835, a
+    little sore from his unsuccessful battle with fate, but far
+    from being dismayed or cast down. His failures to establish
+    party organs had convinced him that success in journalism does
+    not depend upon political favor, and he determined to make one
+    more effort to build up a paper of his own, and this time one
+    which should aim to please no party but the public. That there
+    was need of an independent journal of this kind he felt sure,
+    and he knew the people of the country well enough to be
+    confident that if such a journal could be properly placed
+    before them, it would succeed. The problem with him was how to
+    get it properly before them. He had little or no money, and it
+    required considerable capital to carry through the most
+    insignificant effort of the kind. He made several efforts to
+    inspire other persons with his confidence before he succeeded.
+    One of these efforts Mr. Parton thus describes, in his <i>Life
+    of Horace Greeley:</i> "An incident connected with the
+    job-office of Greeley &amp; Co. is perhaps worth mentioning
+    here. One James Gordon Bennett, a person then well known as a
+    smart writer for the press, came to Horace Greeley, and,
+    exhibiting a fifty-dollar bill and some other notes of smaller
+    denominations as his cash capital, wanted him to join in
+    setting up a new daily paper, 'The New York Herald.' Our hero
+    declined the offer, but recommended James Gordon to apply to
+    another printer, naming one, who he thought would like to share
+    in such an enterprise. To him the editor of 'The Herald' did
+    apply, and with success."</p>
+
+    <p>The parties to whom Mr. Greeley referred Mr. Bennett were
+    two young printers, whom he persuaded, after much painstaking,
+    to print his paper and share with him its success or failure.
+    He had about enough cash in hand to sustain the paper for ten
+    days, after which it must make its own way. He proposed to make
+    it cheap&mdash;to sell it at one penny per copy, and to make it
+    meet the current wants of the day. The "Sun," a penny paper,
+    was already in existence, and was paying well, and this
+    encouraged Mr. Bennett to hope for success in his own
+    enterprise.</p>
+
+    <p>He rented a cellar in Wall Street, in which he established
+    his office, and on the 6th of May, 1835, issued the first
+    number of "The Morning Herald." His cellar was bare and
+    poverty-stricken in appearance. It contained nothing but a desk
+    made of boards laid upon flour barrels. On one end of this desk
+    lay a pile of "Heralds" ready for purchasers, and at the other
+    sat the proprietor writing his articles for his journal and
+    managing his business. Says Mr. William Gowans, the famous
+    Nassau-Street bookseller: "I remember to have entered the
+    subterranean office of its editor early in its career, and
+    purchased a single copy of the paper, for which I paid the sum
+    of one cent United States currency. On this occasion the
+    proprietor, editor, and vendor was seated at his desk, busily
+    engaged in writing, and appeared to pay little or no attention
+    to me as I entered. On making known my object in coming in, he
+    requested me to put my money down on the counter and help
+    myself to a paper, all this time he continuing his writing
+    operations. The office was a single oblong underground room;
+    its furniture consisted of a counter, which also served as a
+    desk, constructed from two flour barrels, perhaps empty,
+    standing apart from each other about four feet, with a single
+    plank covering both; a chair, placed in the center, upon which
+    sat the editor busy at his vocation, with an inkstand by his
+    right hand; on the end nearest the door were placed the papers
+    for sale."</p>
+
+    <div class="full">
+        <a name='illust7181'></a>
+        <a href='images/7181.jpg'><img src='images/7181.jpg'
+                width='625' border=0
+                alt='HOW THE "NEW YORK HERALD" BEGAN.'></a><br>
+         HOW THE "NEW YORK HERALD" BEGAN.
+    </div>
+
+    <p>Standing on Broadway now, and looking at the marble palace
+    from which the greatest and wealthiest newspaper in the Union
+    sends forth its huge editions, one finds it hard to realize
+    that just thirty-four years ago this great journal was born in
+    a cellar, an obscure little penny sheet, with a poor man for
+    its proprietor. Yet such was the beginning of "The New York
+    Herald."</p>
+
+    <p>The prospect was not a pleasant one to contemplate, but Mr.
+    Bennett did not shrink from it. He knew that it was in him to
+    succeed, and he meant to do it, no matter through what trials
+    or vicissitudes his path to fortune lay. Those who heard his
+    expressions of confidence shook their heads sagely, and said
+    the young man's air-castles would soon fade away before the
+    blighting breath of experience. Indeed, it did seem a hopeless
+    struggle, the effort of this one poor man to raise his little
+    penny sheet from its cellar to the position of "a power in the
+    land." He was almost unknown. He could bring no support or
+    patronage to his journal by the influence of his name, or by
+    his large acquaintance. The old newspaper system, with its
+    clogs and dead-weights, was still in force, and as for newsboys
+    to hawk the new journal over the great city, they were a race
+    not then in existence. He had to fight his battle with poverty
+    alone and without friends, and he did fight it bravely. He was
+    his own clerk, reporter, editor, and errand boy. He wrote all
+    the articles that appeared in "The Herald," and many of the
+    advertisements, and did all the work that was to be performed
+    about his humble office.</p>
+
+    <p>"The Herald" was a small sheet of four pages of four columns
+    each. Nearly every line of it was fresh news. Quotations from
+    other papers were scarce. Originality was then, as now, the
+    motto of the establishment. Small as it was, the paper was
+    attractive. The story that its first numbers were scurrilous
+    and indecent is not true, as a reference to the old files of
+    the journal will prove. They were of a character similar to
+    that of "The Herald" of to-day, and were marked by the same
+    industry, tact, and freshness, which make the paper to-day the
+    most salable in the land.</p>
+
+    <p>Says Mr. Parton: "The first numbers were filled with
+    nonsense and gossip about the city of New York, to which his
+    poverty confined him. He had no boat with which to board
+    arriving ships, no share in the pony express from Washington,
+    and no correspondents in other cities. All he could do was to
+    catch the floating gossip, scandal, and folly of the town, and
+    present as much of them every day as one man could get upon
+    paper by sixteen hours' labor. He laughed at every thing and
+    every body,&mdash;not excepting himself and his squint
+    eye,&mdash;and though his jokes were not always good, they were
+    generally good enough. People laughed, and were willing to
+    expend a cent the next day to see what new folly the man would
+    commit or relate. We all like to read about our own
+    neighborhood; this paper gratified the propensity.</p>
+
+    <p>"The man, we repeat, had really a vein of poetry in him, and
+    the first numbers of 'The Herald' show it. He had occasion one
+    day to mention that Broadway was about to be paved with wooden
+    blocks. This was not a very promising subject for a poetical
+    comment, but he added: 'When this is done, every vehicle will
+    have to wear sleigh-bells, as in sleighing times, and Broadway
+    will be so quiet that you can pay a compliment to a lady, in
+    passing, and she will hear you.' This was nothing in itself;
+    but here was a man wrestling with fate in a cellar, who could
+    turn you out two hundred such paragraphs a week, the year
+    round. Men can growl in a cellar; this man could laugh, and
+    keep laughing, and make the floating population of a city laugh
+    with him. It must be owned, too, that he had a little real
+    insight into the nature of things around him&mdash;a little
+    Scotch sense, as well as an inexhaustible fund of French
+    vivacity. Alluding, once, to the 'hard money' cry by which the
+    lying politicians of the day carried elections, he exploded
+    that nonsense in two lines: 'If a man gets the wearable or the
+    eatable he wants, what cares he if he has gold or paper money?'
+    He devoted two sentences to the Old School and New School
+    Presbyterian controversy: 'Great trouble among the
+    Presbyterians just now. The question is whether or not a man
+    can do any thing toward saving his own soul.' He had also an
+    article upon the Methodists, in which he said that the two
+    religions nearest akin were the Methodist and the Roman
+    Catholic. We should add to these trifling specimens the fact
+    that he uniformly maintained, from 1835 to the crash of 1837,
+    that the prosperity of the country was unreal, and would end in
+    disaster."</p>
+
+    <p>These things served the end for which they were intended.
+    They brought "The Herald" conspicuously before the public.
+    While engaged in them, the proprietor was anxiously planning
+    the means of making his paper a great <i>newspaper</i>. He
+    worked sixteen or seventeen hours each day. He rose before five
+    o'clock in the morning, and gave three hours to writing his
+    editorials and the witty paragraphs to which allusion has been
+    made. At eight o'clock he went to his cellar, or "office," and
+    was at his post there during the morning, selling his papers,
+    receiving advertisements, and often writing them for those who
+    were not able to prepare them, doing such other work as was
+    necessary, and finishing his editorial labors. At one o'clock
+    he went into Wall Street, gathering up financial news and
+    interesting items of the street. He returned to his office at
+    four o'clock, and remained there until six, when the business
+    of the day was over. In the evening he went to the theater, a
+    ball, concert, or some public gathering, to pick up fresh items
+    for his paper.</p>
+
+    <p>All this while, however, he was losing money. He had a heavy
+    load to carry, and though he bore it unflinchingly and
+    determinedly, the enterprise seemed doomed to failure for lack
+    of funds. At this juncture, he resolved to make the financial
+    news of the day a special feature of "The Herald." The monetary
+    affairs of the country were in great confusion&mdash;a
+    confusion which was but the prelude to the crash of 1837; and
+    Wall Street was the vortex of the financial whirlpool whose
+    eddies were troubling the whole land. Every body was anxious to
+    get the first news from the street, and to get it as full and
+    reliable as possible. At this time, too, our relations with
+    France were exceedingly critical&mdash;a circumstance which
+    served to increase the trouble in financial matters.
+    Appreciating the anxiety which was generally felt on this
+    subject, Mr. Bennett resolved to create a demand for "The
+    Herald" among the business men of the country. On the 13th of
+    June, 1835, just five weeks after the establishment of the
+    paper, he printed his first money article&mdash;the first that
+    ever appeared in an American newspaper. It was as follows:</p>
+
+    <h4>COMMERCIAL.</h4>
+
+    <div class='blkquot'>
+        <p>Stocks yesterday maintained their prices during the
+        session of the Board, several going up. Utica went up 2 per
+        cent.; the others stationary. Large quantities were sold.
+        After the Board adjourned and the news from France was
+        talked over, the fancy stocks generally went down 1 to
+        1-1/2 per cent.; the other stocks quite firm. A rally was
+        made by the bulls in the evening under the trees, but it
+        did not succeed. There will be a great fight in the Board
+        to-day. The good people up town are anxious to know what
+        the brokers think of Mr. Livingston. We shall find out, and
+        let them know.</p>
+
+        <p>The cotton and flour markets rallied a little. The rise
+        of cotton in Liverpool drove it up here a cent or so. The
+        last shippers will make 2-1/2 per cent. Many are
+        endeavoring to produce the impression that there will be a
+        war. If the impression prevails, naval stores will go up a
+        good deal. Every eye is outstretched for the
+        "Constitution." Hudson, of the Merchants News Room, says he
+        will hoist out the first flag. Gilpin, of the Exchange News
+        Room, says he will have her name down in his room one hour
+        before his competitor. The latter claims having beat Hudson
+        yesterday by an hour and ten minutes in chronicling the
+        "England."</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <p>The money article was a success, and appeared regularly in
+    "The Herald" after this. It created a demand for the paper
+    among the merchants, and increased its circulation so decidedly
+    that at the end of the third month the daily receipts and
+    expenditures balanced each other. Mr. Bennett now ventured to
+    engage a cheap police reporter, which gave him more time to
+    attend to other duties.</p>
+
+    <p>The paper now seemed on the point of becoming a success,
+    when it received a severe and unlooked-for blow. The
+    printing-office was burned down, and the gentlemen who had
+    printed "The Herald" were so much discouraged that they refused
+    to renew their connection with it. Mr. Bennett knew that he was
+    too near to success to abandon the enterprise, and courageously
+    put his wits to work to devise means to carry on the paper. By
+    the greatest and most indomitable exertions he managed to
+    secure the means of going on with it, and bravely resumed its
+    publication alone.</p>
+
+    <p>A few months after this the "great fire" swept over New
+    York, and laid nearly the whole business portion of the city in
+    ashes. This was Mr. Bennett's opportunity. The other journals
+    of the city devoted a brief portion of their space to general
+    and ponderous descriptions of the catastrophe, but Mr. Bennett
+    went among the ruins, note-book and pencil in hand, and
+    gathered up the most minute particulars of the fire. He spent
+    one-half of each day in this way, and the other half in writing
+    out reports of what he thus learned. These reports he published
+    in "The Herald." They were free, graphic, off-hand sketches of
+    the fire and its consequences, and were so full and complete
+    that they left little or nothing connected with the incidents
+    they described to be added. Mr. Bennett also went to the
+    expense of publishing a picture of the burning of the Merchants
+    Exchange, and a map of the burnt district&mdash;a heavy expense
+    for his little journal. The result proved the sagacity of his
+    views. "The Herald" reports of the fire created a heavy demand
+    for the paper, and its circulation increased rapidly. Yet its
+    success was not assured.</p>
+
+    <p>When his first year closed, Mr. Bennett found his paper
+    still struggling for existence, but with a fair prospect of
+    success, if it could follow up the "hit" it had made with its
+    reports of the fire. About this time he received an offer from
+    Dr. Benjamin Brandreth to advertise his pills in "The Herald,"
+    and a contract was at once concluded between them. The money
+    thus paid to the paper was a considerable sum, and proved of
+    the greatest assistance to it. All the money received was
+    conscientiously expended in the purchase of news. The
+    circulation grew larger as its news facilities increased, and
+    for some years its proprietor expended all his profits in
+    making the paper more attractive.</p>
+
+    <p>At the close of the fifteenth month of its career Mr.
+    Bennett increased the size of "The Herald," and raised the
+    price of it to two cents per copy. His success was now assured,
+    and continued to increase, as, under his able and far-seeing
+    management, his paper expanded and enlarged its facilities for
+    securing and making public the promptest and most reliable news
+    of the day. Since that time his success has been unvarying. He
+    has made "The Herald" the leading newspaper of the world, for
+    no other journal upon the globe can compare with it in
+    liberality and energy in the collection of news or in
+    promptness and completeness of detail in laying it before the
+    public. Its growth has been slow, but sure. Every step has been
+    won by hard and conscientious labor, as well as by the force of
+    real genius. Other journals have been compelled to follow the
+    example of "The Herald," but none have surpassed it. It still
+    stands at the head of the newspaper press of the world, and we
+    are justified in believing that it will continue to stand there
+    as long as its founder's hand controls it.</p>
+
+    <p>Instead of the little penny sheet of thirty-four years ago,
+    "The New York Herald" of to-day is an immense journal,
+    generally of twelve, and often of sixteen pages of six columns
+    each, making a total of from seventy-two to ninety-six closely
+    printed columns of matter. From four to nine pages are filled
+    with advertisements, classified with the utmost exactness. No
+    reader has to search the paper over for the article or
+    advertisement he wishes to see; each subject has its separate
+    place, which can be discovered at a glance. Its advertisements
+    have reference to every trade, profession, or calling known to
+    civilized man, and are a faithful mirror of the busy age in
+    which we live. Its news reports are the freshest, most
+    complete, and most graphic of any American journal, and are
+    collected at an expenditure of more time, care, and money than
+    any other journal sees fit to lay out. It has its
+    correspondents in all parts of the world, and when news is
+    worth sending, these are instructed to spare no pains or
+    expense in transmitting it at once. During the late war it had
+    a small army of attach&eacute;s in the field, and its reports
+    were the most eagerly sought of all by the public. During the
+    Abyssinian war its reporters and correspondents furnished the
+    London press with reliable news <i>in advance of their own
+    correspondents</i>. Any price is paid for news, for it is the
+    chief wish of Mr. Bennett that "The Herald" shall be the first
+    to chronicle the events of the day.</p>
+
+    <p>"The Herald" office is now located at the corner of Broadway
+    and Ann Street. The building, of white marble, is five stories
+    in height, and is one of the handsomest in the country. It is
+    the most complete newspaper establishment in existence. It has
+    two cellars, in which are placed the two steam-engines that
+    drive the huge presses which strike off the various editions of
+    "The Herald." Every thing is in perfect order, and the
+    machinery shines like polished gold and silver. The
+    proprietor's eye is upon the whole establishment, and he is
+    quick to notice and reprimand a fault. The street floor
+    contains the business office of the journal, a magnificent
+    room, gorgeous with marble, plate-glass, black walnut, and
+    frescoes. The editorial rooms are above, and near them are the
+    reporters' rooms. The top floor constitutes the finest
+    composing room in the world, from which speaking-tubes and
+    vertical railways communicate with all the other parts of the
+    building. Every department of the paper has a responsible head,
+    and the most rigid discipline prevails throughout the office.
+    There are twelve editors, thirty-five reporters, and four
+    hundred and fifty-three other employ&eacute;s, making a total
+    force of five hundred men engaged upon "The Herald." The
+    circulation of the various editions of the paper amounts to
+    tens of thousands. It is to be found in every town of
+    importance in the land, and its daily receipts from
+    advertisements alone are counted by tens of thousands of
+    dollars.</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Bennett rarely writes for the paper now. He assembles
+    his editors in his council at noon every day, hears their
+    suggestions, decides what topics shall be treated in the next
+    day's issue, and assigns to each man the subject upon which he
+    is to write. In his absence his place at the council-board is
+    filled by his son, or by the managing editor. Mr. Bennett in
+    this way exercises a close supervision over all the articles
+    that appear in "The Herald," and imparts to them a considerable
+    share of his personality.</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Bennett is married, and has two children, a son, James
+    Gordon Bennett, jr., who will succeed his father in the
+    ownership of "The Herald," and a daughter. He lives on Fifth
+    Avenue at present, his favorite residence, at Washington
+    Heights, having been recently destroyed by fire. He is said to
+    be a courtly and agreeable host, and one who rarely fails to
+    send away his visitors with a pleasant impression of
+    himself.</p>
+
+    <p>In person he is tall and firmly built, and walks with a
+    dignified carriage. His head is large, and his features are
+    prominent and irregular. He has a thoroughly Scotch face, and
+    is cross-eyed. His forehead is broad and high, betokening great
+    capacity and force of character. His expression is firm and
+    somewhat cold&mdash;that of a man who has had a hard fight with
+    fortune, and has conquered it. He is reserved in his manner to
+    strangers, but always courteous and approachable. To his
+    friends he is genial and unreserved. He is finely educated, and
+    is said to be a man of excellent taste. His favorite studies
+    are history and biography, and he still pursues them with a
+    keen relish. His home is one of the most elegant in the city.
+    He is proud of his success, as he may well be, and very proud
+    of the fact that he owes it to himself alone. While he was
+    building the new "Herald" office, he was waited on by the
+    president of one of the national banks of the city, who said to
+    him:</p>
+
+    <p>"Mr. Bennett, we know that you are at great expense in
+    erecting this building, besides carrying on your immense
+    business. If you want any accommodation, you can have it at our
+    bank."</p>
+
+    <p>"Mr. &mdash;&mdash;," replied Mr. Bennett, "before I
+    purchased the land, or began to build, I had on deposit two
+    hundred and fifty thousand dollars in the Chemical Bank. There
+    is not a dollar due on 'The Herald' building that I can not
+    pay. I would pay off the mortgage to-morrow, if the owner would
+    allow me to do so. When the building is opened, I shall not owe
+    one dollar to any man, if I am allowed to pay. I owe nothing
+    that I can not discharge in an hour. I have not touched one
+    dollar of the money on deposit in the bank, and while that
+    remains I need no accommodation."</p>
+    <hr style='width: 65%;'>
+    <a name='CHAPTER_XXIV'></a>
+
+    <h2>CHAPTER XXIV.</h2>
+
+    <h3>ROBERT BONNER.</h3><br>
+
+
+    <p>ROBERT BONNER was born in the north of Ireland, near the
+    town of Londonderry, about the year 1824. He came to this
+    country when a mere child, and was brought up in the State of
+    Connecticut, where he received a good common-school
+    education.</p>
+
+    <p>Manifesting a decided liking for the printer's trade, he was
+    placed at an early age in the office of the "Hartford Courant,"
+    where he took his first lessons in the art of setting type. He
+    entered upon the business with the determination to learn it
+    thoroughly, and when he had mastered his trade soon acquired
+    the reputation of being the best workman in Hartford. As a
+    compositor, he was not only neat and thorough, but was
+    remarkably rapid as well. On one occasion, when the "Courant"
+    was endeavoring to publish the "President's Message" in advance
+    of all its competitors, Mr. Bonner is said to have worked at
+    the rate of seventeen hundred ems an hour&mdash;a feat
+    absolutely unparalleled.</p>
+
+    <p>In 1844, he removed to New York and engaged in the office of
+    a new journal, called the "American Republican," then lately
+    established as the organ of the American party in that city,
+    upon which he worked steadily during its brief career. His
+    wages were small, and it was only by practicing the most rigid
+    economy that he could live upon them.</p>
+
+    <p>When the "Republican" suspended publication, Mr. Bonner was
+    employed in the office of the "Evening Mirror," published by
+    Morris, Willis &amp; Fuller. Here he made himself so useful,
+    that the business of getting up or displaying advertisements
+    attractively was soon left entirely to him. His taste in this
+    department was almost faultless, and the advertisements of the
+    "Mirror" soon became noted for their neat and handsome
+    appearance.</p>
+
+    <p>At this time there was published in New York a small,
+    struggling paper, exclusively mercantile in its character,
+    called the "Merchants' Ledger." This paper was almost entirely
+    dependent upon its advertising patronage, and the attention of
+    its proprietor was called to Mr. Bonner's skill, as exhibited
+    in the "Mirror," in displaying advertisements to the greatest
+    advantage. The result was that Mr. Bonner received an offer,
+    which he accepted, to take charge of this paper. This was the
+    origin of his connection with the journal which he has since
+    rendered famous.</p>
+
+    <p>Being fond of composition, he made frequent contributions to
+    the editorial columns of the paper, which were well received by
+    the general public, but which seem to have aroused the petty
+    jealousy of the proprietor of the "Ledger."</p>
+
+    <p>Soon after forming his connection with the "Ledger," Mr.
+    Bonner purchased it. From his boyhood up, it had been his
+    ambition to become the proprietor of a journal which should be
+    carried out upon his own ideas, and he believed that the
+    "Ledger" offered him the best means of doing this. It was
+    generally doubted at that time that a literary paper could
+    flourish in New York&mdash;Boston and Philadelphia having
+    apparently monopolized such enterprises. Mr. Bonner, however,
+    had a clearer view of the matter, and was convinced from the
+    first that the great center of American industry was the very
+    best place for such an undertaking. He proceeded very
+    cautiously at first, however, changing the character of his
+    paper very gradually, from a commercial to a literary
+    journal.</p>
+
+    <p>At this time Fanny Fern was the great literary sensation of
+    the day. She had just published her "Ruth Hall," which had
+    attracted universal attention, and had given rise to a sharp
+    discussion in the public press as to whether she was the sister
+    of N.P. Willis or not. Mr. Bonner resolved to profit by her
+    sudden notoriety, and requested her to write a story for the
+    "Ledger," for which he offered to pay her twenty-five dollars
+    per column. She declined the proposition. He then offered her
+    fifty dollars a column, and, upon a second refusal, increased
+    his offer to seventy-five dollars a column. She was pleased
+    with the energy exhibited by Mr. Bonner, and flattered by his
+    eagerness to secure her services, but declared that she would
+    write no more for the newspapers. A little later Mr. Bonner was
+    offered a story from her, about ten columns long. He at once
+    accepted her proposition, and upon the receipt of the
+    manuscript sent her a check for one thousand dollars.</p>
+
+    <p>With this story began that wonderful career of the "Ledger"
+    which seems more like a dream than hard reality. The story was
+    double-leaded, and made to fill twenty columns of the paper.
+    The "Ledger" itself was changed from its old style to its
+    present form, and made a purely literary journal. The price
+    paid for the story was unparalleled in the history of American
+    journalism, and Mr. Bonner spread the announcement far and wide
+    that he was publishing a serial for which he had given one
+    hundred dollars a column. His advertisements were to be seen in
+    almost every newspaper of respectable circulation throughout
+    the Union. In form they were different from any that had
+    preceded them. "Fanny Fern writes for the 'Ledger.'" "Buy the
+    'New York Ledger,'" etc., appeared, dozens of times repeated,
+    until men were absolutely tired of seeing the announcement.
+    Nothing had ever been brought to the public notice so
+    prominently before. For awhile people were astonished at the
+    audacious boldness of "the 'Ledger' man." Then they began to
+    buy the paper. Since then the demand for it has steadily
+    increased.</p>
+
+    <p>The venture was successful. Fanny Fern's reputation and Mr.
+    Bonner's energy and boldness made a demand for the "Ledger," at
+    once, and out of the profits of the story for which he had paid
+    such an unheard-of price Mr. Bonner purchased a handsome
+    residence in New York City.</p>
+
+    <p>There was as much originality as boldness in the peculiar
+    style in which Mr. Bonner advertised his paper. As before
+    stated, nothing of the kind had ever been seen before, and the
+    novelty of the announcements at once attracted attention. It
+    was seen that they were expensive also, and people naturally
+    felt some curiosity to see for themselves the paper for which a
+    man was willing to assume such risk and expense. These
+    announcements sometimes covered a whole page of a daily paper;
+    sometimes the page would be almost entirely blank, with only a
+    few lines in each column containing the announcement. Again the
+    advertisement would be the opening chapters of a story, which
+    would be sure to excite the curiosity of the reader, and induce
+    him to purchase the remaining chapters in the "Ledger" itself.
+    It is to the credit of the "Ledger" that it rarely loses a
+    subscriber. It has become a family paper.</p>
+
+    <p>A recent writer thus refers to Mr. Bonner's early experience
+    advertising:&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>"His mode of advertising was new, and it excited both
+    astonishment and ridicule. His ruin was predicted over and over
+    again. But as he paid as he went along, he alone would be the
+    sufferer. He was assailed in various ways. Men sneered at his
+    writers, as well as at the method in which he made them known.
+    He had no competition. Just then it was announced that the
+    Harpers were to put a first-class weekly into the field. The
+    announcement was hailed with delight by many classes. Men who
+    had been predicting Bonner's ruin from the start were anxious
+    to see it accomplished. He had agents in all the leading cities
+    in the land. These held a monopoly of the 'Ledger.' The book
+    men and newspaper men, who were left out, were quite willing to
+    have the 'Ledger' go under. The respectability and wealth of
+    the house, its enterprise, with the class of writers it could
+    secure, made the new paper a dangerous rival. Mr. Bonner
+    concluded to make the first issue serviceable to himself. His
+    paragraph advertising was considered sensational, and smacking
+    of the charlatan. He resolved to make it respectable. He wrote
+    half a column in sensational style: 'Buy Harper's
+    Weekly!'&mdash;'Buy Harper's Weekly!'&mdash;'Buy Harper's
+    Weekly!'&mdash;'Buy Harper's Weekly!'&mdash;and so on through
+    the half column. Through his advertising agent he sent this
+    advertisement to the 'Herald,' 'Tribune,' and 'Times,' and paid
+    for its insertion. Among the astonished readers of this
+    'Ledger' style of advertising were the quiet gentlemen who do
+    business on Franklin Square. The community were astonished.
+    'The Harpers are waking up!' 'This is the Bonner style!' 'This
+    is the way the Ledger man does it!' were heard on all sides.
+    The young Harpers were congratulated by the book men
+    every-where on the enterprise with which they were pushing the
+    new publication. They said nothing, and took the joke in good
+    part. But it settled the respectability of the 'Ledger' style
+    of advertising. It is now imitated by the leading publishers,
+    insurance men, and most eminent dry goods men in the country.
+    The sums spent by Mr. Bonner in advertising are perfectly
+    marvelous. He never advertises unless he has something new to
+    present to the public. He pays from five to twenty-five
+    thousand dollars a week when he advertises."</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Bonner well knew that all his advertising would be worth
+    nothing in the end unless he made the "Ledger" worthy of the
+    public patronage, and he exerted himself from the first to
+    secure the services of a corps of able and popular writers. In
+    his arrangements with his contributors, he inaugurated a system
+    of liberality and <i>justness</i> which might well put his
+    rivals to shame.</p>
+
+    <p>When Mr. Everett was engaged in his noble effort to assist
+    the ladies of the Mount Vernon Association in purchasing the
+    home and tomb of Washington, Mr. Bonner proposed to him to
+    write a series of papers for the "Ledger," for which he offered
+    him ten thousand dollars, the money to be appropriated to the
+    purchase of Mount Vernon. Mr. Everett accepted the offer, and
+    the celebrated Mount Vernon Papers were the result. This was a
+    far-sighted move on the part of Robert Bonner. Under ordinary
+    circumstances Mr. Everett would probably have declined to
+    "write for the 'Ledger;'" but in a cause so worthy he could not
+    refuse. The association of his name with the journal was of
+    incalculable service to it, and the Mount Vernon Papers were to
+    its proprietor his very best advertisement. (We are viewing the
+    matter commercially.) The sale of the paper was wonderfully
+    increased, and a golden harvest was reaped.</p>
+
+    <p>This connection of Mr. Everett with the "Ledger" led to a
+    warm personal friendship between himself and its proprietor,
+    which was broken only by the statesman's death&mdash;a
+    circumstance which speaks volumes for the private worth of the
+    younger man. Mr. Everett continued to write for the paper after
+    his Mount Vernon articles were finished, and is said to have
+    earned over fifty thousand dollars by his able contributions to
+    it.</p>
+
+    <p>Soon after the completion of the Mount Vernon Papers, Mr.
+    Bonner secured the services of George Bancroft, the historian,
+    who contributed a series of admirable articles. Mr. Everett's
+    connection with the "Ledger" had settled the question that it
+    was not beneath the dignity of the most eminent literateur in
+    the land to write for it. Fanny Fern's husband, Mr. James
+    Parton, Alice and Phoebe Carey, Mrs. Southworth, and a host of
+    others have helped, and still help, to fill its columns.</p>
+
+    <p>But perhaps its most profitable contributor, next to Mr.
+    Everett, is Henry Ward Beecher. That wonderful gift of the
+    great preacher which enables him to touch so constantly upon
+    subjects nearest to the hearts of most men, would make him
+    invaluable to any paper. Mr. Bonner was struck with this after
+    hearing him preach several times, and resolved to secure his
+    services for the "Ledger." He proposed, to the parson's utter
+    astonishment, that Mr. Beecher should write a story for the
+    paper, and coupled it with the offer of a sum which many
+    persons would consider a fortune. The field was utterly new to
+    Mr. Beecher. Novel-writing was something he had never even
+    thought of; but after some hesitation he accepted the offer.
+    Soon after this, the publication of "Norwood" was begun in the
+    columns of the "Ledger." The story was longer than was at first
+    agreed upon, and Mr. Bonner paid its author a handsome sum in
+    addition to the amount originally offered. The reward was
+    princely, but not out of proportion to the service rendered by
+    Mr. Beecher, who has won thousands of readers for the paper.
+    Mr. Beecher still writes for the "Ledger," and there is no
+    present prospect of his genial and useful contributions coming
+    to a close.</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Bonner has made his paper useful to young people as well
+    as those of maturer years. Each number contains articles,
+    briefly and pointedly written, upon some popular and useful
+    topic, so that thousands find not only amusement, but valuable
+    hints and profitable instruction in the "Ledger."</p>
+
+    <p>It was for a long time the custom of the newspaper press to
+    indulge in sneers at the "Ledger," and, at the least, to treat
+    it with a species of mild contempt. In order to stop this, its
+    proprietor secured and published a series of articles from
+    James Gordon Bennett of "The Herald," Henry J. Raymond of "The
+    Times," and Horace Greeley of "The Tribune." By thus
+    identifying the leading journalists of the country with his
+    enterprise, he effectually silenced the scoffers, and with them
+    the "lesser lights" of the press.</p>
+
+    <p>It was said by some over-careful persons that the "Ledger"
+    was not a proper paper for young persons to read. Mr. Bonner at
+    once secured the services of the Presidents of the twelve
+    principal colleges of the Union, and articles from each of
+    these gentlemen appeared in his paper. After this it was not to
+    be presumed that a journal which had among its contributors
+    twelve such distinguished guides of youth could be unfit for
+    any one to read.</p>
+
+    <p>In order to make still less room for doubt on this subject,
+    a series of articles by twelve distinguished clergymen soon
+    after appeared in the "Ledger."</p>
+
+    <p>Indeed, the greatest care is exercised to exclude from the
+    columns of the paper any thing savoring in the least of
+    impurity. It is the proprietor's aim to make it a help as well
+    as an amusement to its readers, and his object is to elevate,
+    not to degrade them.</p>
+
+    <p>The "Ledger" now circulates over three hundred thousand
+    copies per week, and is growing in the public favor. From the
+    profits of his business Mr. Bonner has built a splendid marble
+    publishing-house at the corner of William and Spruce Streets,
+    in New York, from which the "Ledger" is now issued. It is one
+    of the most complete establishments in the world, and is fitted
+    up with every convenience necessary to the performance of the
+    work upon the paper in the most perfect and expeditious manner.
+    Mr. Bonner has created all this by his own energy and business
+    talent, and richly deserves the success he enjoys. He resides
+    in an elegant mansion in New York, and has also a handsome
+    country seat at Morrisania, in Westchester County. He is
+    married, and has a family.</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Bonner's great wealth has enabled him to achieve a
+    distinction of another kind. He is famous as the owner of the
+    finest horses in America. His stables are located in
+    Twenty-seventh Street, and are the most perfect of their kind
+    in this country. They contain every thing needed for the
+    comfort and care of the horses, and the men employed in them
+    are thoroughly skilled in their business. The horses are seven
+    in number. First on the list is "Dexter," who has made his mile
+    in the unprecedented time of 2:17-1/4 in harness, and 2:18
+    under the saddle. He is the fastest horse in the world.
+    "Lantern," a splendid bay, fifteen and a half hands high, has
+    made his mile in 2:20. "Pocahontas," the most perfectly formed
+    horse in existence, has made her mile in 2:23; while
+    "Peerless," a fine gray mare, has followed close on to her in
+    2:23-1/4. "Lady Palmer" has made two miles with a three hundred
+    and fifty pound wagon and driver in 4:59, while her companion,
+    "Flatbush Mare," has made a two-mile heat to a road wagon in
+    5:01-1/4. The "Auburn Horse," a large sorrel, sixteen and a
+    half hands high, with four white feet and a white face, was
+    declared by Hiram Woodruff to be the fastest horse he ever
+    drove. These horses cost their owner over two hundred thousand
+    dollars, and he would not part with them for double that sum.
+    He does not race them for money, but drives them for his own
+    use, and holds the reins himself.</p>
+    <hr style='width: 65%;'>
+    <a name='lawyers'></a>
+
+    <h1>VI.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;LAWYERS.</h1>
+    <hr style='width: 65%;'>
+    <a name='CHAPTER_XXV'></a>
+
+    <h2>CHAPTER XXV.</h2>
+
+    <h3>JOHN MARSHALL.</h3><br>
+
+
+    <p>To the writer's mind the most perfect specimen of the
+    American lawyer known to our history was <span class=
+    "small-caps">John Marshall</span>, of Virginia, Chief Justice
+    of the United States. Profoundly learned in the law,
+    irresistible in argument, and possessed of an eloquence which
+    drew men in throngs to listen to him, he was also the soul of
+    honor. Neither in his private nor professional life could the
+    most malicious find an action open to reproach. Simple and
+    earnest as a child, he was yet a tower of strength to the cause
+    of justice. Occupying the highest place in our judiciary
+    system, he was never unduly elated by his honors, and while
+    gaining and awarding fortunes in the discharge of his
+    professional duties, he was himself so true a man that the most
+    brazen suitor would not have dared to offer him a bribe. He was
+    in all things the simple, honest gentleman, the fearless
+    advocate, the just judge, and the meek and earnest follower of
+    his Saviour. Although belonging to a past generation, his story
+    is presented here because I wish to offer to those who seek to
+    follow him in his noble calling the purest and highest model
+    our history affords.</p>
+
+    <p>John Marshall was born in Fauquier County, Virginia, on the
+    24th of September, 1755. He was the oldest of a family of
+    fifteen children, and was the son of Colonel Thomas Marshall, a
+    planter of moderate fortune. During the Revolution, Colonel
+    Marshall commanded a regiment of Virginia troops, and won
+    considerable distinction at the battles of the Great Bridge,
+    Germantown, Brandywine, and Monmouth. At the Brandywine the
+    regiment bore the brunt of the attack of the British army, led
+    by Cornwallis in person.</p>
+
+    <p>John Marshall was born in a region so thinly settled as to
+    be almost cut off from civilization. The people were plain and
+    even rough in their habits, and the mode of life which
+    prevailed in his native county doubtless did much to lay the
+    foundation of those habits of simplicity for which he was noted
+    in after life. Schools were almost unknown in this region, and
+    such as were in operation were so rude in character that
+    Colonel Marshall, who was a man of education and culture,
+    decided not to attempt to train his children in them. Being
+    unable to raise the means of sending them to better schools in
+    other parts of the Colony, he determined to become their
+    teacher himself, and applied himself to his task with a
+    devotion which was signally rewarded by the brilliant career of
+    his eldest son. He laid especial weight upon their acquiring a
+    thorough knowledge of the English language and of history, and
+    sought to cultivate in them a love for the poetry of their
+    native tongue. Referring in after life to his father's devoted
+    labors, Judge Marshall once said, with great feeling, "To him I
+    owe the solid foundation of all my success in life." John
+    Marshall did ample justice to his father's labors, and when
+    only fourteen years old was thoroughly familiar with the
+    writings of Shakespeare, Dryden, Milton, and Pope, and could
+    repeat by heart nearly the whole of the "Essay on Man." These
+    poets were always his favorites, and in mature life he would
+    quote them with readiness and the keenest relish.</p>
+
+    <p>He showed such marked talent that his father determined to
+    make an effort to secure him a better education than his
+    private labors could impart to him, and accordingly sent him
+    for a year to the school of the Rev. Mr. Campbell, in
+    Westmoreland County, where he received a good drilling in
+    English and Latin. At this school began his acquaintance with
+    James Monroe, who was then one of Mr. Campbell's pupils.
+    Returning home at the end of the year, he continued his studies
+    under the Rev. Mr. Thompson.</p>
+
+    <p>He studied hard and was an industrious reader. Poetry and
+    romance were his favorites, but he read history with the
+    deepest interest. He was quiet and thoughtful in manner, and
+    full of a dreamy, poetic enthusiasm. He loved to wander in the
+    thick woods, and would pass many of his leisure hours in gazing
+    at the beauties of nature. His constitution was a sound and
+    vigorous one, and he was not only fond of manly and athletic
+    sports, but excelled in them. He had no inclination toward
+    dissipation, and the simple, healthful life of his home was
+    calculated to develop his physical powers to the utmost.
+    Colonel Marshall did not neglect the moral training of his
+    children, but always impressed upon them the importance of
+    Christianity as the basis of their characters, rearing them in
+    that simple code of true gentility which was so dear to our
+    fathers, but of which we of to-day are fast losing sight.</p>
+
+    <p>Being destined for the bar, young Marshall began his legal
+    studies at the age of eighteen, but in two years they were
+    interrupted by the troubles with Great Britain, which
+    terminated in open hostilities. A volunteer company was raised
+    in the neighborhood, and John Marshall promptly attached
+    himself to it. He took a prominent part in the questions of the
+    day, and expressed himself boldly in favor of resistance. In
+    1775 Patrick Henry made his memorable appeal for volunteers to
+    drive the Loyalist Governor, Lord Dunmore, out of Virginia.
+    Three companies were immediately organized in Marshall's
+    neighborhood. Among these were the famous "Culpepper Minute
+    Men." Marshall's father was elected major of the regiment, and
+    he himself was chosen a lieutenant in the Minute Men. The force
+    at once hastened to the lower counties, and bore a conspicuous
+    part in the battle of Great Bridge. In July, 1776, Marshall's
+    company was assigned to the Eleventh Virginia Regiment of the
+    Continental Army, and sent North. In May, 1777, he was made
+    captain of his company. He participated in the fight at Iron
+    Hill, and in the battles of Germantown, Brandywine, and
+    Monmouth, and shared the sufferings of the army at the
+    memorable encampment of Valley Forge. Until the close of 1779
+    he was constantly in active service. He was always patient,
+    cheerful, and hopeful. In the severest hardships to which the
+    army was exposed his spirits never sank. One of his comrades
+    said that he did more than any other man to keep alive the
+    hopes of the army during the terrible winter at Valley Forge,
+    and another has declared that "the officers of the Virginia
+    line appeared to idolize him." His conduct attracted the
+    attention of Washington, who conceived a warm friendship for
+    him, and Marshall, on his part, returned the friendship of his
+    chief with a feeling almost of worship. Washington frequently
+    appointed him deputy judge advocate during the winter.</p>
+
+    <p>At the close of 1779 he went to Virginia to take command of
+    a new corps which the Legislature was about to raise. The
+    project remaining under discussion for some months, he passed
+    the time in attendance upon a course of lectures on law,
+    delivered by George Wythe, and a course of lectures on natural
+    philosophy, delivered by the Rev. Dr. Madison, afterward Bishop
+    of Virginia, at William and Mary College, in Williamsburg. The
+    next summer he received his license to practice law. Meanwhile,
+    the project for raising troops had taken the shape of a
+    definite failure, and he now set out to rejoin the army. Too
+    poor to pay his passage to the North, he walked the entire
+    distance from Williamsburg, Virginia, to Philadelphia, upon
+    reaching which city he was so travel-worn and shabby in
+    appearance, that the landlord of the hotel at which he wished
+    to stop refused him admittance. He joined the army in due time,
+    and remained with it until the spring of 1781, when he resigned
+    his commission, a few months before the close of the war.</p>
+
+    <p>With the return of peace the courts were again thrown open,
+    and Marshall began that brilliant legal career which has made
+    him one of the most famous men in our history. His success was
+    marked from the first, as his professional talents were such as
+    to make themselves felt anywhere, and his personal popularity
+    aided him greatly in overcoming the difficulties which lie in
+    the path of a young aspirant to legal honors. In 1782, the
+    people of Fauquier elected him to the House of Delegates in the
+    General Assembly of the Commonwealth, and in the fall of that
+    year he was appointed one of the Council of State. In January,
+    1783, he was married to Miss Mary Willis Ambler, with whom he
+    lived in the most perfect happiness for over fifty years. His
+    bride was a woman of great personal beauty, and in every
+    respect a fitting helpmate for such a man&mdash;than which no
+    higher tribute could be paid her. About this time, Mr. Marshall
+    decided not to return to Fauquier, but to locate himself
+    permanently in Richmond, where he could enjoy many more
+    professional advantages. In spite of this, however, his old
+    friends in Fauquier re-elected him to the Legislature, and in
+    1787 he sat in that body as representative from the county of
+    Henrico.</p>
+
+    <p>He was very plain and even careless in his personal attire,
+    and this often led to amusing occurrences. Soon after he began
+    the practice of his profession in Richmond, he was strolling
+    through the streets one morning, dressed in a plain linen suit
+    and a straw hat. The hat was held under his arm, and was filled
+    with cherries, of which he ate as he walked. In passing the
+    Eagle Hotel, he stopped to exchange salutations with the
+    landlord, and then continued his walk. Sitting near the
+    landlord, on the hotel porch, was a Mr. P&mdash;&mdash;, an
+    elderly gentleman from the country, who had come to the city to
+    engage counsel in an important case which was to be tried in a
+    day or two. The landlord referred him to Marshall as the best
+    lawyer in the city; but the old gentleman was so much
+    prejudiced against the young advocate, by his careless
+    appearance, that he refused to engage him. On entering court,
+    Mr. P&mdash;&mdash; was a second time referred to Marshall by
+    the clerk of the court, and a second time he refused to employ
+    him. At this moment entered Mr. V&mdash;&mdash;, a
+    venerable-looking legal gentleman, in a powdered wig and black
+    coat, whose dignified appearance produced such an impression on
+    Mr. P&mdash;&mdash; that he engaged him at once. In the first
+    case which came on, Marshall and Mr. V&mdash;&mdash; each
+    addressed the court. "The vast inferiority of his advocate was
+    so apparent that at the close of the case Mr. P&mdash;&mdash;
+    introduced himself to young Marshall, frankly stated the
+    prejudice which had caused him, in opposition to advice, to
+    employ Mr. V&mdash;&mdash;; that he extremely regretted the
+    error, but knew not how to remedy it. He had come to the city
+    with one hundred dollars as his lawyer's fee, which he had
+    paid, and had but five left, which, if Marshall chose, he would
+    cheerfully give him for assisting in the case. Marshall,
+    pleased with the incident, accepted the offer, not, however,
+    without passing a sly joke at the <i>omnipotence</i> of a
+    powdered wig and black coat."</p>
+
+    <p>In 1788, Mr. Marshall was elected to the Virginia Convention
+    which met in June of that year for the purpose of considering
+    the question of the adoption or rejection of the Federal
+    Constitution. The debates in this body were among the most
+    brilliant in history. Marshall took a decided stand in favor of
+    the Constitution, and is believed to have done more than any
+    other man, save Mr. Madison, to secure its adoption. He added
+    greatly to his reputation by his labors in this body, and the
+    close of the session found his practice very much enlarged. He
+    was anxious to devote himself entirely to his professional
+    duties; but he was urged so vehemently to accept a seat in the
+    Legislature from the city of Richmond, that he was forced to
+    consent. He sat in that body from 1789 to 1791, and in those
+    sessions which were marked by the brilliant contests between
+    the Federalists and Republicans took a decided stand with the
+    former, and sustained his position by an array of arguments
+    against which his opponents were powerless. The struggle was
+    one of great bitterness, but Marshall, although victorious in
+    it, made no enemies among his antagonists.</p>
+
+    <p>For the next three years he devoted himself industriously to
+    his profession, appearing in public only to defend with
+    masterly eloquence the course of President Washington with
+    reference to the insolent conduct of Citizen Genet, the French
+    Agent. In 1795, he was again elected to the Legislature, "not
+    only without his approbation, but against his known wishes;"
+    but yielding to the desires of his friends he took his seat in
+    that body. The great question of the day was the adoption of
+    "Jay's Treaty" with Great Britain. In Virginia, a bitter
+    opposition assailed the treaty, and the entire State rang with
+    denunciations of it. Even the influence of Washington was
+    powerless to stay the tide of popular passion excited against
+    the treaty and those who upheld it. Meetings were held in
+    Richmond, and the treaty was fiercely denounced. Marshall now
+    came to the rescue, and before a meeting of the citizens of
+    that place made such an unanswerable argument in favor of the
+    treaty, that the men who had been foremost in assailing it now
+    united in the adoption of resolutions indorsing the policy of
+    the Administration. In the Legislature his efforts were equally
+    successful, and the opponents of the Administration were forced
+    to abandon their constitutional objections to the treaty, and
+    to content themselves with a simple denial of the expediency of
+    the measure at that time. President Washington attached so much
+    importance to these services that he offered to his old friend
+    and comrade the position of Attorney-General of the United
+    States, but Marshall declined the offer, as he wished to devote
+    himself to his practice, which had now become very lucrative.
+    He continued to sit in the Legislature, which did not interfere
+    with his private business, and remained the constant and
+    vigilant friend of Washington's Administration. In 1796, he was
+    offered the post of Minister to France, as Mr. Monroe's
+    successor, but he declined it for the same reason which had
+    made him refuse the Attorney-Generalship. In 1797, when the
+    offer was repeated, this time by President Adams, Marshall
+    yielded to the entreaties of Washington, and went to France
+    with Pinckney and Gerry, as Envoy Extraordinary. The object of
+    the mission was to remove the obstructions placed by France in
+    the way of American commerce. The Envoys were unsuccessful, but
+    a correspondence took place between Marshall and Talleyrand,
+    which was a source of great satisfaction to American
+    publicists, and raised Marshall still higher in their esteem
+    and confidence. Upon his return home in 1798, he was given a
+    public reception in New York by the citizens, and a public
+    dinner by the two Houses of Congress, "as an evidence of
+    affection for his person, and of their grateful approbation of
+    the patriotic firmness with which he had sustained the dignity
+    of his country during his important mission." He subsequently
+    took a prominent part in support of the measures of retaliation
+    directed against France by the Administration, which were
+    sharply assailed by the opposition. He resumed his practice in
+    Richmond, but was again drawn from it by a message from
+    Washington, who requested him to visit him at Mt. Vernon. He
+    did so, and the result was that he yielded to the solicitations
+    of his old chieftain, and consented to accept a seat in
+    Congress. He was elected to the Lower House of that body in
+    1799. During the canvass, President Adams offered him a seat in
+    the Supreme Court of the United States, but he declined it.</p>
+
+    <p>His career in Congress was brief, but brilliant. The
+    Federalist party was hard pressed by the Republicans, and he
+    promptly arrayed himself on the side of the former, as the
+    champion of the Administration of John Adams. The excitement
+    over the "Alien and Sedition Laws" was intense, but he boldly
+    and triumphantly defended the course of the Administration. Mr.
+    Binney says of him that, in the debates on the great
+    constitutional questions, "he was confessedly the first man in
+    the House. When he discussed them, he exhausted them; nothing
+    more remained to be said; and the impression of his argument
+    effaced that of every one else."</p>
+
+    <p>His great triumph was his speech in the Jonathan Robbins
+    affair. Robbins had committed a murder on board an English
+    ship-of-war, and had sought refuge from punishment in the
+    United States. In accordance with one of the provisions of
+    Jay's Treaty, his surrender had been demanded by the British
+    Minister, on the ground that he was a British subject, and he
+    had been surrendered by President Adams. The opposition in
+    Congress made this act a pretext for a famous assault upon the
+    Administration, and a resolution was introduced into the House
+    of Representatives by Mr. Livingston, censuring the President
+    for his course in the matter. This resolution produced an
+    extended debate in the House, in the course of which Marshall
+    defended the President in a speech of great force and
+    eloquence. Judge Story has said of this speech, that "it was
+    <i>r&ecirc;ponse sans r&eacute;plique</i>&mdash;an answer so
+    irresistible that it admitted of no reply. It silenced
+    opposition, and settled then and forever the points of national
+    law upon which the controversy hinged."</p>
+
+    <p>In May, 1800, Mr. Adams offered Marshall a seat in his
+    Cabinet as Secretary of War, but before he could enter upon the
+    duties of that office he was made Secretary of State, in which
+    capacity he acted for a short while, conducting several
+    important negotiations during that time, and leaving behind him
+    several of the most magnificent state papers to be found in our
+    archives. During his occupancy of this position, it became
+    necessary to appoint a Chief Justice of the United States, and
+    Marshall took advantage of the occasion to urge upon the
+    President the propriety of tendering the place to a
+    distinguished gentleman who had been a faithful friend to the
+    Administration; but Mr. Adams quietly informed him that he had
+    made up his mind to confer the honor upon the man best suited
+    to it, and that he had sent to the Senate the name of John
+    Marshall, of Virginia. This appointment, which came to him
+    entirely unsolicited, was made on the 31st of January, 1801,
+    and was unanimously confirmed by the Senate.</p>
+
+    <p>He held the position of Chief Justice for more than
+    thirty-four years, and this period is justly regarded as the
+    most brilliant portion of the history of our highest court, a
+    court of which a famous judge has said:</p>
+
+    <p>"The decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States
+    have raised the renown of the country not less than they have
+    confirmed the Constitution. In all parts of the world its
+    judgments are spoken of with respect. Its adjudications of
+    prize law are a code for all future time. Upon commercial law
+    it has brought us nearly to one system, befitting the probity
+    of a great commercial nation. Over its whole path, learning and
+    intelligence and integrity have shed their combined
+    luster."</p>
+
+    <p>Although holding so high a post in the General Government,
+    he continued to take a warm interest in the affairs of his
+    native State, and in 1828 was a delegate to the Charlottesville
+    Convention, which met for the purpose of recommending to the
+    Legislature a system of internal improvements best suited to
+    the needs of the State. In 1829, he was a member of the
+    Convention which met in Richmond for the purpose of revising
+    the Constitution of the State. Though now quite old and feeble,
+    he took an active part in the debates of the Convention, and
+    was mainly instrumental in effecting the settlement of the
+    disputes between the eastern and western sections of the
+    State.</p>
+
+    <p>In 1805, Judge Marshall published, in five volumes, his
+    "Life of Washington." The first volume was devoted to the
+    history of the Colonies, from their settlement to the
+    commencement of the Revolution. This work has always held the
+    first position in our Revolutionary annals, and won for its
+    author a place in the front rank of American writers. It is,
+    all in all, the best biography of Washington in existence.</p>
+
+    <p>Sterling honesty was exemplified in Judge Marshall's whole
+    career. His word was indeed as good as his bond. He would never
+    argue in behalf of a cause which he had reason to think unjust,
+    and he scorned to take a legal advantage at the expense of
+    moral honesty. He once indorsed a bond to the amount of several
+    thousand dollars. The drawer failed, and Marshall paid it,
+    although he knew he could avoid it, as the holder had forfeited
+    his claim in law by requiring more than legal interest.</p>
+
+    <p>He was generous to a fault. Once, as he passed through
+    Culpepper County, he met with Captain S&mdash;&mdash;, one of
+    his old comrades in the Revolution. In the course of the
+    conversation which ensued, S&mdash;&mdash; told him that his
+    estate was burdened with a mortgage for $3,000, which was about
+    to fall due, and that, as he was unable to pay it, he saw
+    nothing but ruin in store for him. At his departure, Marshall
+    handed a note to the servant who brought his horse to the door,
+    and told him to give it to his master. This was done as
+    Marshall was riding away, and upon opening the note Mr.
+    S&mdash;- found that it contained a check for the amount of the
+    mortgage. Mounting his horse, he soon overtook Marshall, and,
+    though he thanked him warmly for his generosity, refused to
+    accept it. Marshall strenuously urged its acceptance, but the
+    other persistently refused. Finally, the former suggested a
+    compromise. Marshall took up the mortgage, and thus satisfied
+    the first claim, but as his friend was never prosperous, he
+    never asked for the payment of the debt.</p>
+
+    <p>William Wirt has left us the following description of his
+    personal appearance: "He is tall, meager, emaciated; his
+    muscles relaxed, and his joints so loosely connected as not
+    only to disqualify him apparently for any vigorous exertion of
+    body, but to destroy every thing like harmony in his air or
+    movements. Indeed, in his whole appearance and
+    demeanor,&mdash;dress, attitudes, gesture, sitting, standing,
+    or walking,&mdash;he is as far removed from the idolized graces
+    of Lord Chesterfield as any other gentleman on earth."</p>
+
+    <p>"In spite, however, of this ungainly person," says a writer,
+    "no one was a greater social favorite than the Chief Justice.
+    The people of Richmond regarded his eccentric figure with
+    strong personal affection as well as respect. The black eyes,
+    under their bushy gray brows, beamed with good nature, and the
+    lips were habitually smiling. The courtesy of the Judge was one
+    of his most beautiful traits. It was the spontaneous exhibition
+    of the simple and kindly emotions of his heart. Pure
+    benevolence and philanthropy displayed itself in every word
+    which he uttered. He gave his hand to the plain yeoman clad in
+    homespun as courteously and sincerely as to the greatest
+    personage in the country. He had the same simple smile and
+    good-humored jest for both, and seemed to recognize no
+    difference between them. It was instructive to estimate in the
+    good Chief Justice the basis and character of true politeness.
+    John Randolph, one of the most fastidious and aristocratic of
+    men, left his opinion that Marshall's manner was perfect good
+    breeding. In dress and bearing, it would be difficult to
+    imagine any one more simple than Judge Marshall. He presented
+    the appearance of a plain countryman, rather than a Chief
+    Justice of the United States. He had a farm in Fauquier County,
+    and another near Richmond, and he would often return from the
+    latter to take his seat on the bench with burrs sticking to his
+    clothes. His great passion was the game of quoits, and he was a
+    member of the club which met, as it still meets, at Buchanan's
+    Spring, near the city, to play at this game. Here the Governor
+    of Virginia, the Chief Justice, and the most eminent lawyers of
+    the Court of Appeals, were found by a French gentleman, Baron
+    Quinet, with their coats off, gayly pitching quoits, with the
+    ardor of a party of urchins. In these simple amusements passed
+    the hours of leisure which Judge Marshall could steal from his
+    exhausting judicial toil. At such times he seemed to become a
+    boy again, and to forget the ermine. His fondness for other
+    social enjoyments was great. He was the center of a brilliant
+    circle of men, many of whom were famous, and the tradition of
+    their dinner parties, and the jests which they circulated, is
+    still preserved."</p>
+
+    <p>It was his custom always to provide for his table himself
+    when at home, and he might be seen every morning at the Shockoe
+    Hill Market, with his basket on his arm, engaged in making his
+    purchases. Upon one of these occasions he noticed a
+    fashionably-dressed young man, swearing violently because he
+    could not find any one willing to carry home for him a turkey
+    which he had just purchased, and which his foolish pride would
+    not permit him to carry himself. Approaching him quietly, the
+    Judge asked where he lived, and upon being told, said, "I am
+    going that way, and will carry it for you." Taking the turkey,
+    he set out and soon reached the young man's door. Upon
+    receiving his turkey, the young man thanked him for his
+    trouble, and asked, "How much shall I pay you?" "Oh, nothing,"
+    replied the Judge, smiling, "you are welcome. It was on my way,
+    and no trouble." So saying, the Judge departed, and the young
+    man, with a faint suspicion of the truth, turned to a
+    bystander, and asked, in some confusion, "Who is that polite
+    old gentleman who brought home my turkey for me?" "That is John
+    Marshall, the Chief Justice of the United States," was the
+    reply. "Why, then, did <i>he</i> bring home my turkey?"
+    stammered the fop. "To give you a deserved rebuke," said the
+    gentleman, "and to teach you to conquer your silly pride."</p>
+
+    <p>Reference has been made to his carelessness in regard to his
+    personal appearance. A wager was once laid among his friends in
+    Richmond that he could not dress himself without leaving about
+    his clothing some mark of his carelessness. The Judge
+    good-humoredly accepted the wager. A supper was to be given to
+    him upon these conditions. If his dress was found faultless
+    upon that occasion, the other parties were to pay for the
+    entertainment; but if any carelessness could be detected about
+    his dress or in his appearance, the expense was to fall upon
+    him. Upon the appointed evening the gentlemen and the Judge met
+    at the place agreed upon, and to the surprise of all, the
+    Judge's dress seemed faultless. He appeared the very perfection
+    of neatness and taste. The supper followed, the Judge being in
+    high glee over his victory. Near the close of the repast,
+    however, one of the guests, who sat next to Judge Marshall,
+    chanced to drop his napkin, and stooping down to pick it up,
+    discovered that the Judge had put on one of his stockings with
+    the wrong side out. Of course the condition of affairs was
+    immediately reversed, and, amid roars of laughter, the Chief
+    Justice acknowledged his defeat.</p>
+
+    <p>The means of locomotion in the Southern States being limited
+    in the days of Judge Marshall, it was his custom to travel
+    about the country, when holding his circuit courts, in an
+    old-fashioned and very much dilapidated gig. His plain and even
+    rusty appearance often led him into ludicrous adventures, which
+    he related to his friends with keen enjoyment. At other times
+    people to whom he was personally unknown were astonished to
+    find that this shabbily-dressed old man was the famous
+    Chief-Justice Marshall. One of his adventures is thus related
+    by an eye-witness:</p>
+
+    <p>"It is not long since a gentleman was traveling in one of
+    the counties of Virginia, and about the close of the day
+    stopped at a public-house to obtain refreshment and spend the
+    night. He had been there but a short time when an old man
+    alighted from his gig, with the apparent intention of becoming
+    his fellow-guest at the same house. As the old man drove up, he
+    observed that both the shafts of his gig were broken, and that
+    they were held together by withes formed from the bark of a
+    hickory sapling. Our traveler observed, further, that he was
+    plainly clad, that his knee-buckles were loosened, and that
+    something like negligence pervaded his dress. Conceiving him to
+    be one of the honest yeomanry of our land, the courtesies of
+    strangers passed between them, and they entered the tavern. It
+    was about the same time that an addition of three or four young
+    gentlemen was made to their number&mdash;most of them, if not
+    all, of the legal profession. As soon as they became
+    conveniently accommodated, the conversation was turned by the
+    latter upon an eloquent harangue which had that day been
+    delivered at the bar. The other replied that he had witnessed
+    the same day a degree of eloquence no doubt equal, but that it
+    was from the pulpit. Something like a sarcastic rejoinder was
+    made to the eloquence of the pulpit, and a warm and able
+    altercation ensued, in which the merits of the Christian
+    religion became the subject of discussion. From six o'clock
+    until eleven the young champions wielded the sword of argument,
+    adducing with ingenuity and ability every thing that could be
+    said pro and con. During this protracted period, the old
+    gentleman listened with all the meekness and modesty of a
+    child, as if he was adding new information to the stores of his
+    own mind; or perhaps he was observing, with philosophic eye,
+    the faculties of the youthful mind, and how new energies are
+    evolved by repeated action; or, perhaps, with patriotic
+    emotion, he was reflecting upon the future destinies of his
+    country, and on the rising generation upon whom these future
+    destinies must devolve; or, most probably, with a sentiment of
+    moral and religious feeling, he was collecting an argument
+    which&mdash;characteristic of himself&mdash;no art would be
+    'able to elude and no force resist.' Our traveler remained a
+    spectator, and took no part in what was said."</p>
+
+    <div class="full">
+        <a name='illust7201'></a>
+        <a href='images/7201.jpg'><img src='images/7201.jpg'
+                width='625' border=0
+                alt="MARSHALL'S DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY"></a><br>
+         MARSHALL'S DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
+    </div>
+
+    <p>"At last one of the young men, remarking that it was
+    impossible to combat with long-established prejudices, wheeled
+    around, and, with some familiarity, exclaimed, 'Well, my old
+    gentleman, what think you of these things?' If, said the
+    traveler, a streak of vivid lightning had at that moment
+    crossed the room, their amazement could not have been greater
+    than it was with what followed. The most eloquent and
+    unanswerable appeal was made, for nearly an hour, by the old
+    gentleman, that he ever heard or read. So perfect was his
+    recollection, that every argument used against the Christian
+    religion was met in the order in which it was advanced. Hume's
+    sophistry on the subject of miracles was, if possible, more
+    perfectly answered than it had already been done by Campbell.
+    And in the whole lecture there was so much simplicity and
+    energy, pathos and sublimity, that not another word was
+    uttered. An attempt to describe it, said the traveler, would be
+    an attempt to paint the sunbeams. It was now a matter of
+    curiosity and inquiry who the old gentleman was. The traveler
+    concluded it was the preacher from whom the pulpit eloquence
+    was heard; but no&mdash;it was the Chief Justice of the United
+    States."</p>
+
+    <p>Judge Marshall was a simple and earnest Christian, and held
+    in the deepest abhorrence the fashionable skepticism of his
+    day. His conduct was consistent with his profession, and to the
+    last this good and great man repeated night and morning the
+    simple prayer he had learned at his mother's knee.</p>
+
+    <p>For many years he suffered from an affection of the bladder,
+    and was at length compelled to resort to a surgical operation
+    for relief. This had the desired effect, but he was soon after
+    taken with an attack of "liver complaint." He repaired to
+    Philadelphia for medical treatment, but failed to derive any
+    benefit from it, and died in that city on the 6th of July,
+    1835.</p>
+
+    <p>His body was conveyed to Richmond for interment, and he now
+    sleeps by the side of his wife in the Shockoe Hill Cemetery in
+    that city. The spot is marked by a plain slab of marble, over
+    which the weeds and the rank grass are growing, and on which
+    may be read the following inscription, dictated (saving the
+    last date) by himself:</p>
+
+    <p>"John Marshall, son of Thomas and Mary Marshall, was born
+    24th of September, 1755; intermarried with Mary Willis Ambler,
+    the 3d of January, 1783; departed this life the 6th day of
+    July, 1835."</p><br>
+
+    <hr style='width: 65%;'>
+
+    <center>
+        <a name='illust7221'></a>
+        <a href='images/7221.jpg'><img src='images/7221.jpg'
+                height='500' border=0
+                alt='JAMES T. BRADY.'></a><br>
+         JAMES T. BRADY.
+    </center><a name='CHAPTER_XXVI'></a>
+
+    <h2>CHAPTER XXVI.</h2>
+
+    <h3>JAMES T. BRADY.</h3><br>
+
+
+    <p>The father of James T. Brady was born in Ireland, and came
+    to this country during the second war with England, and just
+    after his marriage. Mr. Brady opened a school for boys, in New
+    York, soon after his arrival, and it was in that city, on the
+    9th of April, 1815, that his eldest son, JAMES TOPHAM BRADY,
+    was born. Other children followed, there being seven in all,
+    two boys (James T., and Judge John R. Brady) and five girls.
+    Mr. Brady, senior, was a man of rare abilities, and his wife
+    was a woman of great personal beauty and high character, "one
+    of those mothers," says a distinguished gentleman, who knew
+    her, "whose quiet virtues shed their blessed influence over
+    families, and are felt so long in their durable effect upon
+    children."</p>
+
+    <p>James T. Brady grew up with a sound, vigorous constitution,
+    and at an early age was put at his studies in his father's
+    school. He was only seven years old when he began, and though
+    so young, he worked hard, storing his "big head"&mdash;which
+    seemed too big for the little feet below it&mdash;with
+    knowledge. He endeared himself very greatly to his
+    school-fellows, and formed with several of them friendships
+    which continued through life. "He was so noted," says one of
+    his former school-fellows, "for his loving kindliness as a boy,
+    that it almost obliterates every other recollection." His
+    amiable traits developed with his years. He always delighted in
+    acts of kindness, and could never bear to give pain, even to
+    the most insignificant animal or insect. He detested hunting
+    and fishing, which he regarded as a needless sacrifice of life.
+    Yet while so tender and gentle in his disposition, he was brave
+    and fearless, unusually independent, and, above all, as
+    mirthful and fond of a jest at fifty as at sixteen.</p>
+
+    <p>Before he had completed his education, his father abandoned
+    the profession of teaching for that of a lawyer, and young
+    Brady entered his office as office-boy and student, it being
+    his desire to become an advocate. He was bright, quick-witted,
+    and remarkably apt in his studies. His buoyant spirits and
+    ready repartee often led him into encounters with his elders,
+    who were generally forced to confess that his tongue was too
+    much for them. His father encouraged him to form his own
+    opinions, and to hold them tenaciously until convinced of his
+    error. He made rapid progress in his legal studies, and soon
+    acquired such proficiency in the management of the details of
+    the office business that every thing which did not absolutely
+    need his father's personal attention was left to him.</p>
+
+    <p>Although fond of social enjoyment, and full of the fire and
+    joyfulness of youth, he knew how to seclude himself from the
+    pleasures he relished so much. He was a hard and faithful
+    student, allowing nothing to draw him from his books when he
+    meant to devote himself to them. He read not only law, but
+    history, poetry, biography, romance, in short, every thing that
+    could store his mind with useful knowledge or add to its
+    natural graces. He slept at the office, and often sat up the
+    entire night engaged in study. Abbott speaks as follows of the
+    early studies of Napoleon II., and it requires no straining of
+    language or ideas to apply his remarks to this portion of the
+    life of James T. Brady: "So great was his ardor for
+    intellectual improvement that he considered every day as lost
+    in which he had not made perceptible progress in knowledge. By
+    this rigid mental discipline he acquired that wonderful power
+    of concentration by which he was ever enabled to simplify
+    subjects the most difficult and complicated." Mr. Brady,
+    senior, was very proud of the energy and talent displayed by
+    his son, and when the latter was nineteen years old the father
+    said to a friend who had been speaking to him of the promise of
+    the boy: "Yes, sir; he is a boy of great promise, a boy of
+    splendid intellect and noble character. Young as he is, I
+    regard him as a walking encyclopoedia; his mind seems to gild
+    every subject it touches."</p>
+
+    <p>In the year 1835, when but twenty years old, Mr. Brady was
+    admitted to the bar. "There were giants in those days" at the
+    New York bar, and the young man was now entering an arena in
+    which his powers were to be tested to the utmost. His native
+    eloquence was well known to his friends, and naturally he was
+    not ignorant of it; but he did not, like so many young men in
+    his calling, trust entirely to his powers of pleading. He had
+    long since recognized the truth of Lord Erskine's declaration
+    that "no man can be a great advocate who is no lawyer," and had
+    stored his mind with a knowledge of the theories of his
+    profession which few men in coming to the bar have ever
+    equaled.</p>
+
+    <p>In his first important case he was opposed to Charles
+    O'Conor, and was unsuccessful. He was engaged in a suit to
+    recover a certain sum of money from an insurance company, which
+    his client claimed was due him for certain goods which had been
+    destroyed by fire. As Brady himself saw, he had a very weak
+    case, and Mr. O'Conor had no trouble in demolishing it; yet the
+    young counsel conducted it with a skill and an eloquence which
+    made him from that hour a marked man in his profession. Yet he
+    had to contend against that obstacle which meets most public
+    men at the outset of their careers&mdash;the feeling which
+    actors call "stage fright." He said that on this occasion every
+    thing around him grew suddenly black, and he could not even see
+    the jury. By steadying himself against his table, and keeping
+    his eyes in the direction of the jury, he continued to speak
+    until he had recovered his self-control.</p>
+
+    <p>The case which brought him most prominently before the
+    public, and which may be said to have established his fame as a
+    lawyer, was a peculiar one. Some newsboys had been arrested for
+    selling the "Sunday Morning News" on the morning of the Sabbath
+    day. It was claimed that the selling of the paper on the
+    streets on Sunday was contrary to law, and that the boys
+    disturbed the congregations in the churches by their cries. One
+    of these boys had been arrested at the instance of Mr. Gerard,
+    and this brought on a suit to determine the rights of the lads,
+    in which Mr. Brady appeared for the newsboys. Considerable
+    feeling was manifested on the subject, and when the trial came
+    on the court-room was crowded. The verdict of the jury was
+    against him, but Mr. Brady won a remarkable triumph by his
+    management of the case, and the whole city rang with his
+    eloquence. So great was the effect of his speech upon the
+    audience, that many of them who were total strangers to him
+    crowded around him as he left the court-house to congratulate
+    him. Though defeated in the verdict of the jury, this case was
+    a great triumph for Mr. Brady. It established his fame as an
+    advocate, and advanced him at once to a foremost place at the
+    bar. Business flowed in upon him more rapidly than he could
+    attend to it, and from this time to the close of his labors he
+    was always in the possession of a large and lucrative
+    practice.</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. McKeon has said of him: "We may refer to the period of
+    his introduction to the bar of this city as an epoch in its
+    history. In looking back at the past, we see rising before us
+    George Wood, treading with no uncertain step through the
+    labyrinth of the law of real property; Daniel Lord, following,
+    with his legal eye, commerce over the long and dreary waste of
+    waters; David Graham, the younger, and Ogden Hoffman, standing
+    in full panoply of intellectual power before our criminal
+    tribunals. Into the lists where stood these proud knights young
+    Brady sprang, ready to contend with the mightiest of them. How
+    well he contended many of you well remember, and the honors
+    paid to his memory are justified by the triumphs he has
+    won."</p>
+
+    <p>He grew rapidly in popularity, and in the esteem and
+    confidence of his fellow-citizens, and was intrusted with
+    numerous cases of a class which had rarely until then been seen
+    in the hands of a young lawyer. His practice soon extended into
+    the Supreme Court of the State, which at that time met
+    quarterly, at New York, Albany, Utica, and Rochester. The
+    practice of this court was entirely in the hands of men of high
+    standing in their profession,&mdash;the great lawyers of the
+    State,&mdash;and it was no slight honor to our young lawyer to
+    hold a place, and a proud place, too, among them.</p>
+
+    <p>He won additional honors in the famous India-rubber suits,
+    which have been mentioned elsewhere in this volume, acting as
+    one of the counsel of Charles Goodyear, and being associated
+    with Daniel Webster. Brady applied himself with intense energy
+    to master the case, and when the trial came off at Trenton, in
+    the United States Circuit Court, before Justices Grier and
+    Dickerson, he opened the case in a speech which lasted two
+    days, and which Daniel Webster said in the beginning of his
+    remarks had so exhausted it as to leave him nothing to say.</p>
+
+    <p>Turning to Mr. Brady, Mr. Webster said, "You have cut a
+    highway through this case, and if it is won, it will be because
+    of the manner in which you have brought it before the court."
+    The suit was won by Goodyear.</p>
+
+    <p>"In connection with the India-rubber cases is a fact which
+    testifies to his character. A salary of twenty-live thousand
+    dollars a year for life was offered to be settled on him by the
+    rubber company, if he would advise a certain course; but not
+    deeming it right, he rejected the offer. When in France, in
+    1851, the rubber cases coming in controversy there, Mr. Brady
+    substantially gave in French, to Etienne Blanc, the French
+    advocate, the materials for his brief."</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Brady practiced law for thirty-four years, and during
+    the major part of that time there was scarcely a case of great
+    importance, in either the civil or criminal courts, in which he
+    did not figure. He was compelled to refuse case after case from
+    lack of time to give to it; and yet he frequently found time to
+    respond to the appeals of the courts to defend men indicted for
+    capital offenses who were unable to procure counsel. In some of
+    these cases he had scarcely any chance of preparation, but he
+    always managed to secure the acquittal of his client, in spite
+    of this drawback. The spirit of kindliness which had so
+    endeared him to his boyhood's friends pervaded every action of
+    his maturer life, and he never displayed more energy, more
+    unceasing vigilance, more irresistible eloquence, than when
+    pleading the cause of some poor wretch who could only reward
+    him with his thanks.</p>
+
+    <p>His readiness in mastering a case was remarkable, and was
+    greatly assisted by his profound knowledge of the law. As a
+    rule, in the ordinary run of cases, it was merely necessary for
+    him to comprehend the particular case under consideration,
+    since he was already familiar with the law bearing upon it.</p>
+
+    <p>This readiness is admirably illustrated in the following
+    reminiscence related of him by the Hon. Luther R. Marsh. Mr.
+    Marsh was engaged in a case of great importance, in which he
+    desired Mr. Brady's assistance in the trial. Marsh had
+    thoroughly and patiently studied the case, but Brady was
+    totally ignorant of it. Nevertheless, he told Mr. Marsh he
+    would do his best, and that he (Marsh) must open the case as
+    fully and exhaustively as he could, without reference to him.
+    Mr. Marsh did so, and says that when he sat down he thought he
+    had <i>exhausted</i> the case, and was wondering what Brady
+    could find to say in addition to it. To his astonishment and
+    delight, Brady rose, and in his argument presented seven new
+    and telling points.</p>
+
+    <p>In the examination of a witness, he could be severe and
+    decisive when he had occasion to suspect that the person was
+    trying to evade the truth; but in general his manner was kind
+    and considerate, and he succeeded in eliciting evidence by his
+    forbearance which others could not have extorted by bullying.
+    Upon one occasion, he was convinced that a witness was about to
+    relate a "made-up" story, and he at once fixed upon the man a
+    look so piercing that the fellow was overwhelmed with confusion
+    and could not go on with his evidence. Brady promptly changed
+    his tactics, sent for a glass of water for the witness, and
+    soothed him so effectually that the heart of the man was won,
+    and, abandoning his false tale, he made a simple statement of
+    the truth.</p>
+
+    <p>The independence of character exhibited by Mr. Brady has
+    already been adverted to. Having once traced out the line of
+    duty, nothing could make him swerve from it, and he was as bold
+    in the defense of the rights of his clients as of his own. Mr.
+    Edwards Clarke, from whose excellent memoir is gleaned much of
+    the information upon which this sketch is based, relates the
+    following incidents in illustration of this quality of the
+    man:</p>
+
+    <p>"The trial of Baker for the murder of Poole furnished a
+    notable instance of Mr. Brady's intrepidity in behalf of a
+    client. It was at the height of the 'Know-Nothing' excitement,
+    and Poole, after receiving the fatal bullet, having exclaimed,
+    'I die an American,' succeeded in causing himself to be
+    regarded as a martyr to the cause. Lingering for days
+    with&mdash;as the <i>post-mortem</i> proved&mdash;a bullet
+    deeply imbedded in his heart, the interest and excitement
+    became intense; and on the day of his funeral twenty thousand
+    men walked in solemn procession behind the coffin of the
+    martyred 'rough.' In such a state of public feeling, Baker was
+    put on trial for his life. At the opening of the charge by the
+    judge, aroused by its tenor, Mr. Brady seized a pen and
+    commenced writing rapidly, indignation showing itself in his
+    set lips and frowning brow. The moment the judge ceased he was
+    on his feet, and began: 'You have charged the jury thus and
+    thus. I protest against your so stating it.' The judge said he
+    would listen to the objections after the jury had retired.
+    'No!' exclaimed the indignant orator, 'I choose that the jury
+    should hear those objections;' and, defying interference, he
+    poured forth impetuously forty-five separate and formal
+    objections, couching them all emphatically in words of personal
+    protest to the judge. The force of the judge's charge on that
+    jury was pretty effectually broken. The indignation of the
+    advocate at this time was real, not simulated; and he, at
+    least, of the New York bar dared to defy and to denounce
+    injustice, even when clad in ermine.</p>
+
+    <p>"Another instance of his intrepidity before a judge was in
+    the Busteed case. The judge had threatened to convict him for
+    contempt. Busteed had apologized, and Brady also, with his
+    matchless grace and courtesy, had tendered Busteed's apology;
+    but the judge still said that he should send him to prison.
+    'You will, will you?' said Brady; 'I say you will not.' And,
+    citing authority after authority against his power to do so, he
+    dared him to thus stretch his prerogative. The judge thought
+    best to excuse Mr. Busteed."</p>
+
+    <p>Perhaps one of the best instances of his moral courage to be
+    found was his conduct with reference to the late Edwin M.
+    Stanton. He was associated with Mr. Stan ton in the Sickles
+    trial, and conceived a warm personal attachment to him. Mr.
+    Brady remained a Democrat to the last, and was an active member
+    of Tammany Hall. Upon one occasion, during a meeting of the
+    Tammany Committee, when the name of Stanton was received with
+    hisses and yells of objurgation, Brady rose, and facing the
+    crowd told them "that he knew they hated Edwin M. Stanton, but
+    he, a Democrat, knew him, and held him in his heart of hearts."
+    It was a bold declaration, considering the time and place, even
+    for one so highly esteemed as James T. Brady.</p>
+
+    <p>As before remarked, Mr. Brady never relied upon his
+    eloquence alone for success at the bar. He had a profound
+    respect for his profession, and scorned its trickeries. He
+    worked faithfully over the cases intrusted to him, studied them
+    carefully, and never brought them to trial till he was thorough
+    master of the law bearing upon them. This enabled him
+    frequently to present issues which a less learned man would not
+    have dreamed of. When he was retained as counsel for Huntington
+    the forger, he conceived the idea that the man was morally
+    unaccountable for his deed, and his theory of moral insanity,
+    as developed by him in this case, is one of the most powerful
+    arguments upon the subject to be found in any language. He read
+    every thing he could find on the subject of insanity, and when
+    he went into court there was not a physician in the land better
+    informed with respect to it than he. The cases in which he was
+    frequently engaged required an unusual acquaintance with
+    medical jurisprudence, and he was regarded as one of the best
+    authorities on the subject in the country.</p>
+
+    <p>His power over a jury was remarkable. He never lost sight of
+    the "twelve peers," and by his dexterous management soon had
+    them so thoroughly under the influence of his magnetic mind
+    that they hung upon his words, followed his every act, laughed
+    or cried as he willed, and seemed capable of thinking only as
+    he permitted them. He defended fifty-one men for their lives in
+    the course of his practice, and brought them all off in
+    safety.</p>
+
+    <div class="full">
+        <a name='illust7241'></a>
+        <a href='images/7241.jpg'><img src='images/7241.jpg'
+                width='600' border=0
+                alt=
+                '"THEY ARE GOING TO HANG MY BROTHER, AND YOU CAN SAVE HIM!"'></a>
+        <br>
+         "THEY ARE GOING TO HANG MY BROTHER, AND YOU CAN SAVE
+        HIM!".
+    </div>
+
+    <p>Mr. Clarke, from whose memoir I have already quoted, relates
+    the following incidents in his career:</p>
+
+    <p>"The case of a young man charged with murder, in what was
+    claimed to be an accidental fracas, attracted a good deal of
+    interest. He was a Mason, and that society applied to Mr. Brady
+    to defend him, tendering twenty-five hundred dollars as a fee;
+    but for some cause he declined the case. Not long after, one
+    afternoon, a neatly-dressed, modest young girl came to the
+    office and asked for Mr. Brady. Told to walk into his private
+    office, she timidly approached his desk, and saying, 'Mr.
+    Brady, they are going to hang my brother, and you can save him.
+    I've brought you this money; please don't let my brother die,'
+    she burst into tears. It was a roll of two hundred and fifty
+    dollars, which the poor girl had begged in sums of five and ten
+    dollars. The kind-hearted man heard her story. 'They shall not
+    hang your brother, my child,' said he, and putting the roll of
+    bills in an envelope, told her to take it to her mother, and he
+    would ask for it when he wanted it. The boy was cleared. In Mr.
+    Brady's parlor hangs an exquisite picture, by Durand, with a
+    letter on the back asking him to accept it as a mark of
+    appreciation for his generous kindness in defending this poor
+    boy. Mr. Brady prized <i>that</i> picture....</p>
+
+    <p>"Once when, in the height of his appeal to the jury, a dog
+    began barking vigorously, he whirled around, shook his finger
+    at the dog and said, gravely, with the quickness of thought, 'I
+    am Sir Oracle, and when I ope my lips let no dog bark!'</p>
+
+    <p>"An Irishman once came to his office: 'And are yez Misther
+    Brady?' 'I am; come in, Patrick. What is it you wish?' 'I ax
+    yer pardon; I oughtn't to intrude upon yez,' 'But what is it,
+    Patrick?' 'Well, yer honor, it isn't for the likes o' me to be
+    comin' troublin' yer honor.' 'But tell me what you want, Pat.'
+    'Well, yer honor, I came to see ye about a friend of mine as
+    met wid an accident.' 'An accident?' said Mr. Brady; 'then why
+    don't you go for a doctor?' 'Arrah, sure, you're the docther
+    for my friend; he had an accident which wants yer honor.'
+    'Well, what <i>was</i> it?' 'Well, yer honor, he was arristed
+    for a thrifle of a burglary, shure.' Quick as Mr. Brady was,
+    with the readiness of his race, for repartee, he sometimes met
+    his match among his own countrymen. He was once examining an
+    unwilling witness who persistently called him Mr. O'Brady. At
+    length, even his proverbial good nature being a little ruffled,
+    he said to the witness: 'You need not call me Mr. O'Brady. I've
+    mended my name since I came here and dropped the O.' 'Have ye,
+    now? 'Pon my sowl it's a pity ye didn't mend yer manners at the
+    same time.'"</p>
+
+    <p>In politics Mr. Brady was a Democrat of the States-Rights
+    school, yet he always maintained that it was the duty of the
+    citizen to render the promptest obedience to the General
+    Government. At the outset of the late war he gave his support
+    to the Government in its war measures, though he did not
+    separate himself from the Democratic party. He was frequently
+    solicited by his friends to accept political honors, but he
+    steadily refused, saying that he wanted no honors outside of
+    his profession.</p>
+
+    <p>In person Mr. Brady was slender and delicate in appearance.
+    What attracted the gazer at once was his massive head&mdash;a
+    head which measured in its circumference twenty-four and
+    three-eighths inches. Age seemed to have no effect upon his
+    face. Severe mental labor in the course of years took away some
+    of the rosy hues of youth, but otherwise it continued as fresh
+    and as winning as when a boy.</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Brady never married, but no one was more widely removed
+    from the typical old bachelor than he. If he had no family of
+    his own, he was the head of a family of devoted relatives, who
+    gave him ample scope for the exercise of the domestic
+    affections which were so strong in him. Very soon after
+    entering upon the practice of his profession his parents died,
+    leaving his brother and five sisters, all much younger than
+    himself, helpless. The young lawyer at once declared that the
+    care of these dear ones should be his first thought, and he
+    devoted himself to his practice with redoubled energy, in order
+    to provide for them. He brought his personal expenses down to a
+    low figure, and resolutely kept them there, yet all the while
+    he was lavish in his generosity to those whom he loved. He once
+    said to a friend who asked him why he had never married: "When
+    my father died he left five daughters, who looked to me for
+    support. All the affection which I could have had for a wife
+    went out to those sisters, and I have never desired to recall
+    it." He transferred a share of this affection to the children
+    of those sisters and of his brother, and was never so happy as
+    when in their company. In his will he mentions one of his
+    nieces as his "dearly beloved Toot."</p>
+
+    <p>He was very fond of literature, especially of poetry, and
+    devoted a considerable portion of his time to literary efforts
+    of his own. His great fame as a lawyer so overshadowed the
+    success he won in literature that few besides himself knew how
+    much pleasure the popularity of his writings gave him.</p>
+
+    <p>In the exercise of his profession Mr. Brady won a large
+    fortune. His income was princely during the greater part of his
+    life, but he saved comparatively little. He delighted in giving
+    to others. His relatives were the constant recipients of
+    substantial evidences of his affection for them, and his
+    charities to the poor were in keeping with his generous nature.
+    He could not look upon suffering unmoved, and "never turned his
+    face from any poor man."</p>
+
+    <p>His last appearance in public was at the Gerard dinner,
+    where he was as brilliant and genial as ever. He seemed to have
+    a foreboding of his approaching end, however, for the next day
+    he said to one of his family: "I feel that it is the last time
+    I shall ever appear on a like public occasion." His fears were
+    prophetic. He was seized with an attack of paralysis on the
+    morning of the 9th of February, 1869, and breathed his last at
+    five o'clock in the afternoon of the same day. He died in the
+    communion of the Catholic Church, and was buried from St.
+    Patrick's Cathedral, in the city of New York. His death drew
+    forth expressions of sympathy and respect from all parts of the
+    Union and from men of all shades of opinion. All felt that a
+    good and useful man, a great advocate, and an incorruptible
+    citizen had been taken away.</p>
+
+    <p>His was a happy fate. He died in the fullness of his fame,
+    before age had weakened his faculties or chilled his heart, and
+    dying thus, it may be said of him, as he once said of another,
+    that he was "a man who had no guile in his nature, and who died
+    leaving no living creature to rejoice at his death."</p>
+    <hr style='width: 65%;'>
+    <a name='artists'></a>
+
+    <h1>VII.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;ARTISTS.</h1>
+    <hr style='width: 65%;'>
+    <a name='CHAPTER_XXVII'></a>
+
+    <h2>CHAPTER XXVII.</h2>
+
+    <h3>BENJAMIN WEST.</h3><br>
+
+
+    <p>At a time when America was regarded in Europe as a savage
+    region, and when Americans were looked upon as little better
+    than barbarians by the people of the mother country, it was no
+    slight achievement for an American artist to rise by the force
+    of his genius to the proud position of President of the Royal
+    Academy of Great Britain.</p>
+
+    <p>The man who won this triumph was <span class=
+    "small-caps">Benjamin West</span>. He was born in Springfield,
+    Pennsylvania, on the 10th of October, 1738. His parents were
+    Quakers, plain, simple people, who feared God, lived a just
+    life, and desired above all other things that their children
+    should become pious and useful men and women. The old
+    mansion-house where the future artist was born was situated in
+    Chester County, and is still standing. It is not far from
+    Philadelphia, and the place is now called Westdale. His
+    father's family emigrated from England to America with William
+    Penn, at his second visit, in 1699. John West married the
+    daughter of Thomas Pearson, by whom he had ten children. Of
+    these, Benjamin was the youngest son. His mother was a woman of
+    great piety, and, being once in attendance upon a memorable
+    religious revival, at which she was terribly agitated by the
+    preaching of one Edward Peckover, an itinerant Quaker minister,
+    was taken with premature labor, of which Benjamin West was
+    born.</p>
+
+    <p>It was predicted that a child who had been brought into the
+    world under such circumstances would be a man of more than
+    ordinary fame, and the good mother treasured these prophecies
+    in her heart, and watched the career of her boy with the
+    keenest interest.</p>
+
+    <p>When he was but seven years old, he was left one day to
+    watch beside the cradle of the infant child of his eldest
+    sister, who, though married, was still living at home. Being
+    unusually silent for a long time, his mother concluded that she
+    would go and see what he was doing. Upon entering the room
+    where he had been left with his charge, she saw him kneeling by
+    a chair which he had placed close up to the cradle, gazing at
+    the infant, and making what she supposed to be marks on a paper
+    which lay on the chair. Stealing up behind him softly, she saw
+    to her astonishment that this boy, only seven years old, had
+    executed, with black and red ink and a pen, an accurate though
+    rude likeness of the sleeping babe. This was the first evidence
+    he had ever given of his predilection for art, and was indeed a
+    most surprising performance for so young a child.</p>
+
+    <center>
+        <a name='illust7261'></a><img src='images/7261.jpg'
+                width='505'
+                height='352'
+                alt="THE TRUANT'S SECRET DISCOVERED."><br>
+         THE TRUANT'S SECRET DISCOVERED.
+    </center>
+
+    <p>The next summer a party of Indians came to Springfield to
+    pay their annual visit, and to please them little Benjamin
+    showed them some sketches of birds and flowers which he had
+    executed with pen and ink. The savages were delighted with
+    them, and presented him with the red and yellow pigments with
+    which they colored their ornaments. In addition to this gift,
+    they taught him how to prepare these colors, to which he added
+    another, namely, indigo, which his mother gave him from her
+    laundry. His colors were rude enough, but his pencils were
+    ruder. They were made of the hairs which he had pulled from a
+    cat's back and fastened in the end of a goose-quill. Soon after
+    this, a relative from Philadelphia, chancing to visit the old
+    homestead, was struck with the talent of the little fellow, and
+    upon his return to the city sent him a box of colors, with
+    pencils and canvas and a few prints. He was only nine years
+    old, but he was a born artist. He had never seen any painting
+    of merit, and the few prints which his relative gave him were
+    the most finished productions he had ever seen. The box of
+    colors was his most precious possession, and it opened to him
+    new fields of enjoyment. The day of its arrival he gave himself
+    up entirely to the pleasure of examining it. "Even after going
+    to sleep," says his biographer, "he awoke more than once during
+    the night, and anxiously put out his hand to the box, which he
+    had placed by his bedside, half afraid that he might find his
+    riches only a dream. Next morning he rose at break of day, and,
+    carrying his colors and canvas to the garret, proceeded to
+    work. Every thing else was now unheeded; even his attendance at
+    school was given up. As soon as he got out of the sight of his
+    father and mother, he stole to his garret, and there passed the
+    hours in a world of his own. At last, after he had been absent
+    from school some days, the master called at his father's house
+    to inquire what had become of him. This led to the discovery of
+    his secret occupation. His mother, proceeding to the garret,
+    found the truant; but so much was she astonished and delighted
+    by the creation of his pencil, which also met her view when she
+    entered the apartment, that, instead of rebuking him, she could
+    only take him in her arms and kiss him with transports of
+    affection. He made a new composition of his own out of two of
+    the engravings, which he had colored from his own feeling of
+    the proper tints; and so perfect did the appearance already
+    appear to his mother, that, although half the canvas yet
+    remained uncovered, she would not suffer him to add another
+    touch to what he had done. Mr. Gait, West's biographer, saw the
+    picture in the state in which it had thus been left sixty-seven
+    years afterward; and the artist himself used to acknowledge
+    that in none of his subsequent efforts had he been able to
+    excel some of the touches of invention in this his first
+    essay."</p>
+
+    <p>His next effort was a landscape, which comprehended a view
+    of a river, with vessels in the stream and cattle browsing on
+    the banks. He could not have been much over ten years of age at
+    this time, and the picture, though insignificant in itself, is
+    remarkable as the work of a child. He subsequently presented it
+    to his friend, Mr. William Henry, of Lancaster, whose family
+    still retain possession of it. He visited Philadelphia soon
+    after, and received a few simple instructions in the practical
+    portion of his art, after which he went about through the towns
+    of the vicinity of his home, painting portraits of his friends.
+    At length he was sent for by Mrs. Ross, of Lancaster, a lady
+    famed for her great beauty, to paint the portraits of herself
+    and her family&mdash;a great honor for a lad of twelve.</p>
+
+    <p>It was in Lancaster, in the year 1750, that he made the
+    acquaintance of Mr. William Henry. That gentleman became deeply
+    interested in the precocious boy, and frequently came to watch
+    him at his portrait-painting. One day he said to Benjamin, that
+    if he (Henry) could paint equally well he would not waste his
+    time upon portraits, but would devote himself to historical
+    subjects. In the course of the conversation to which this
+    remark gave rise, Mr. Henry proposed to him to make an attempt
+    in this direction, and suggested to him "The Death of Socrates"
+    as his first subject. The little artist frankly avowed that he
+    had never heard of the great philosopher, and Mr. Henry at once
+    went to his library and brought out a volume of Plutarch, from
+    which he read to the boy the beautiful story of the wise man's
+    death. West listened with the deepest interest, and expressed
+    his perfect readiness to undertake the task, but feared he
+    would have difficulty in painting the figure of the slave who
+    presented the poison, and which he thought ought to be naked,
+    since he had hitherto painted only men with their clothes on.
+    Mr. Henry had in his employ a young man of fine appearance, and
+    upon hearing West's objection at once sent for him. As the
+    workman entered the room Henry pointed to him, and said to
+    West, "There's your model." West took the hint, painted the
+    picture, which was purchased by Mr. Henry, and thenceforth
+    determined that in his art he would look only into nature for
+    his models.</p>
+
+    <p>At the age of sixteen he returned to Springfield. He was
+    anxious to continue his career as an artist, and as his parents
+    were satisfied that he was now old enough to enter upon some
+    permanent occupation, they agreed that his wishes should be
+    submitted to a public meeting of the Society of Friends. The
+    meeting was called, and the matter was laid before them, the
+    boy himself being present. His relatives and friends were all
+    very proud of his talents, but as the profession of an artist
+    was so entirely at variance with all Quaker habits and ideas,
+    they felt that the subject was one which ought not to be rashly
+    decided. Silence prevailed for a long time after the opening of
+    the meeting, but at length John Williamson, moved by the
+    Spirit, rose and addressed the assemblage, declaring his belief
+    that as the youth had not derived his fondness for art from any
+    of his associations or surroundings, and since it was so
+    manifestly a special gift from the Creator, it was their plain
+    duty to bid him go forward in the path that had been marked out
+    for him, and to wish him God-speed in his efforts. At the close
+    of his remarks silence again fell upon the assembly. Then the
+    women rose, and approaching the lad, one by one, kissed him on
+    the cheek, and the men, laying their hands on his head, prayed
+    that the Lord might verify in his life the value of the gift
+    which had induced them, in spite of their religious tenets on
+    the subject, to allow him to enter upon the permanent exercises
+    of the profession so dear to his heart.</p>
+
+    <p>Thus was he dedicated to his art, and at the same time
+    separated to a certain degree from his Quaker brethren. Not
+    long after this he violated every principle of the Quaker
+    dispensation by volunteering under Major Sir Peter Halket to go
+    in search of the remains of Braddock's army.</p>
+
+    <p>In 1756, at the age of eighteen, he established himself in
+    Philadelphia as a portrait painter, and soon after removed to
+    New York, where he painted portraits at five guineas a head,
+    occasionally attempting an historical piece. When he was twenty
+    years old he made a visit to Europe&mdash;a visit which decided
+    his destiny. A famine in the south of Europe induced a
+    Philadelphia merchant to dispatch a vessel laden with flour to
+    Leghorn, and his son, who was to take passage in the ship,
+    proposed to West to accompany him, and thus secure an
+    opportunity of seeing the art-treasures of the Old World. West
+    promptly accepted the invitation, and some of his friends in
+    New York provided him with an outfit for the voyage. Upon
+    arriving at Gibraltar, the vessel was boarded by a British
+    officer, who proved to be a kinsman of the son of the owner of
+    the ship, and he not only passed them without molestation, but
+    enabled them to secure unusual facilities in the voyage up the
+    Mediterranean. West arrived in Rome in July, 1759, and was
+    kindly received by the English Lord Grantham, to whom he bore
+    letters of introduction.</p>
+
+    <p>"Among the distinguished persons whom Mr. West found in
+    Rome, was the celebrated Cardinal Albani. At an evening party,
+    the Cardinal became curious to witness the effect which the
+    works of art in the Belvidere and Vatican would produce on the
+    young artist. The whole company, which consisted of the
+    principal Roman nobility and strangers of distinction then in
+    Rome, were interested in the event, and it was arranged, in the
+    course of the evening, that, on the following morning, they
+    should accompany West to the palaces. At the hour appointed,
+    the company assembled, and a procession consisting of upwards
+    of thirty of the most magnificent equipages in the capital of
+    Christendom, and filled with some of the most erudite
+    characters in Europe, conducted the young Quaker to view the
+    masterpieces of art. It was agreed that the 'Apollo' should be
+    first submitted to his view, because it was the most perfect
+    work among all the ornaments of Rome, and, consequently, the
+    best calculated to produce that effect which the company were
+    anxious to witness. The statue then stood in a case, inclosed
+    with doors, which could be so opened as to disclose it at once
+    to full view. West was placed in the situation where it was
+    seen to the most advantage, and the spectators arranged
+    themselves on each side. When the keeper threw open the doors,
+    the artist felt himself surprised with a sudden recollection
+    altogether different from the gratification which he had
+    expected, and without being aware of the force of what he said,
+    exclaimed, 'My God! how like it is to a young Mohawk warrior.'
+    The Italians, observing his surprise and hearing the
+    exclamation, were excessively mortified to find that the god of
+    their idolatry was compared to a savage. They mentioned their
+    chagrin, and asked West to give some more distinct explanation,
+    by informing them what sort of people the Mohawk Indians were.
+    He described to them their education, their dexterity with the
+    bow and arrow, the admirable elasticity of their limbs, and how
+    much their active life expands the chest, while the quick
+    breathing of their speed in the chase dilates the nostrils with
+    that apparent consciousness of vigor which is so nobly depicted
+    in the 'Apollo.' 'I have seen them often,' added he, 'standing
+    in that very attitude, and pursuing with an intense eye the
+    arrow which they had just discharged from the bow,' The
+    Italians were delighted with this descriptive explanation, and
+    allowed that a better criticism had never been pronounced on
+    the merits of the statue."</p>
+
+    <p>Soon after his arrival in Rome, West painted a portrait of
+    Lord Grantham, which won him considerable reputation. It was at
+    first attributed to Raphael Meugs, but when the true artist was
+    announced, and the circumstances of his history became known,
+    West found himself suddenly famous, with orders enough to place
+    him at once in comfortable circumstances. Cardinal Albani and
+    Lord Grantham were very kind to him during his stay in Rome,
+    and Raphael Meugs advised him to make a careful tour of study
+    through the Italian art capitals. While in Rome he painted two
+    pictures, "Cimon and Iphigenia," and "Angelica and Medora,"
+    which were well received, and during this period he was elected
+    a member by the Academies of Florence, Bologna, and Parma. He
+    made the tour advised by Meugs, remaining in Italy several
+    years. Thence he proceeded to France, where he passed a short
+    time in studying the French masters, after which he went to
+    England, intending to sail from that country for America, where
+    he had left his heart behind him in the keeping of a young
+    Quakeress of Philadelphia.</p>
+
+    <p>He reached London in 1763, and while continuing his studies
+    here, whither his reputation had preceded him from Italy,
+    undertook some commissions for Archbishop Drummond and several
+    other church dignitaries. These attracted general admiration,
+    and his countrymen residing in London were prompt to recognize
+    and proclaim his genius. He had relatives living in England, so
+    that he was not an entire stranger there. His success was
+    marked from the first, and his friends urged him to profit by
+    so favorable a beginning, give up his idea of returning to
+    America, and make his permanent home in England. This he at
+    length decided to do, and devoted himself with increased ardor
+    to his labors. In two years he considered himself sufficiently
+    well established to send to Philadelphia for his betrothed.
+    This lady, Miss Elizabeth Shewell, came out to England under
+    the care of his father, and in the same year, 1765, West was
+    married to her in London. She was a lady of great amiability of
+    character, and by the English was often spoken of as the
+    Philadelphia beauty.</p>
+
+    <p>Soon after his arrival in England he produced a large
+    painting on a subject from Tacitus, "Agrippina Landing with the
+    Ashes of Germanicus." It was a decided success. George the
+    Third was deeply impressed with it, and congratulated West
+    warmly upon its merits. At the same time the king gave him a
+    commission for a painting,&mdash;the subject to be "The Death
+    of Regulus,"&mdash;and thus began the friendship between the
+    monarch and the artist, which lasted for nearly forty years. He
+    was a hard worker, and during his long life his pictures
+    followed each other in rapid succession. They are estimated by
+    a writer in Blackwood's Magazine at three thousand in number.
+    Mr. Dunlap says that they would cover a wall ten feet high and
+    a quarter of a mile long if arranged side by side on a flat
+    surface. The most famous are his "Death of Wolfe;" "Regulus, a
+    Prisoner to the Carthaginians;" "The Battle of La Hogue;" "The
+    Death of Bayard;" "Hamilcar Swearing the Infant Hannibal at the
+    Altar;" "The Departure of Regulus;" "Agrippina Landing with the
+    Ashes of Germanicus;" "Christ Healing the Sick;" "Death on the
+    Pale Horse;" "The Descent of the Holy Ghost on the Saviour in
+    the Jordan;" "The Crucifixion;" and "Christ Rejected."</p>
+
+    <p>The picture which brought him most prominently before the
+    public, and which placed his popularity beyond dispute, was
+    "The Death of Wolfe at Quebec." It was fashionable at this time
+    to treat nothing but subjects from ancient history, and when
+    West announced his intention of painting a picture of
+    contemporary history his friends warned him that he was
+    incurring a serious risk. Nevertheless he finished his "Death
+    of Wolfe," and it was exhibited in the National Gallery. The
+    public "acknowledged its excellence at once, but the lovers of
+    old art&mdash;called classical&mdash;complained of the
+    barbarism of boots, buttons, and blunderbusses, and cried out
+    for naked warriors, with bows, bucklers, and battering rams."
+    Lord Grosvenor was much pleased with the picture, and finally
+    purchased it, though he did so with hesitation, daunted to some
+    extent by the fierce storm of opposition with which the critics
+    received it. Sir Joshua Reynolds, then the President of the
+    Royal Academy, and the Archbishop of York, called on West and
+    protested against his barbarous innovation, but he declared to
+    them that "the event to be commemorated happened in the year
+    1759, in a region of the world unknown to Greeks and Romans,
+    and at a period of the world when no warrior who wore classic
+    costume existed. The same rule which gives law to the historian
+    should rule the painter." When the king saw the picture he was
+    delighted both with it and West's originality, and declared
+    that he was sorry Lord Grosvenor had been before him in
+    purchasing it. This was the inauguration of a new era in
+    British art, and Sir Joshua Reynolds was obliged to declare,
+    "West has conquered. I foresee that this picture will not only
+    become one of the most popular, but will occasion a revolution
+    in art." This frank avowal was as honorable to Sir Joshua as to
+    West.</p>
+
+    <p>West painted for George the Third a number of subjects taken
+    from the early history of England, and received from the same
+    monarch a commission for a series of paintings illustrating the
+    progress of revealed religion, with which the king designed to
+    ornament the chapel at Windsor Castle. Of these twenty-eight
+    were finished when the Prince of Wales, afterward George the
+    Fourth, came into power as Prince Regent, and the commission
+    was withdrawn. The artist then began a series of grand
+    religious subjects, upon which he was still engaged when death
+    called him to rest from all his labors. Of those which were
+    completed, "Death on the Pale Horse" and "Christ Healing the
+    Sick" are the best known in this country.</p>
+
+    <p>In 1792, upon the death of Sir Joshua Reynolds, West was
+    made President of the Royal Academy. The king wished to confer
+    upon him the honor of knighthood, but he declined it, alleging
+    that he was not wealthy enough to support the dignity of the
+    position. In consequence of dissensions in the Academy, West
+    resigned his presidency in 1802. The post was filled for a year
+    by James Wyatt, the architect, and at the close of that time
+    West was re-elected by every ballot but one&mdash;that of
+    Fuseli, who voted for Mrs. Lloyd, a member of the Academy,
+    declaring that he considered "one old woman as good as
+    another." West continued in this office until his death.</p>
+
+    <p>The close of his life was blessed with ample means, and, as
+    he was in the full possession of all his faculties and covered
+    with art's supremest honors, it may be regarded as the happiest
+    portion of his career. His house was always open to Americans
+    visiting England, and few things pleased him more than to
+    listen to news from his native village. He was a kind and
+    judicious friend to young artists, especially to those of his
+    own country studying in England, and took a lively pleasure in
+    their success. Leigh Hunt, whose mother was a relative of West,
+    has left us the following description of him:</p>
+
+    <p>"The appearance of West was so gentlemanly that the moment
+    he changed his gown for a coat he seemed to be full dressed.
+    The simplicity and self-possession of the young Quaker, not
+    having time enough to grow stiff&mdash;for he went early to
+    Rome&mdash;took up, I suppose, with more ease than most would
+    have done, the urbanities of his new position. Yet this man, so
+    well bred, and so indisputably clever in his art, whatever
+    might be the amount of his genius, had received a homely or
+    careless education, and pronounced some of his words with a
+    puritanical barbarism; he would talk of his art all day. There
+    were strong suspicions of his leaning to his native side in
+    politics, and he could not restrain his enthusiasm for
+    Bonaparte. How he managed these matters with the higher powers
+    in England I can not say."</p>
+
+    <p>Possessed originally of a sound and vigorous constitution,
+    which he had not weakened by any species of dissipation, West
+    lived to a good old age, and died in London on the 11th of
+    March, 1820, in his eighty-second year. He was buried in St.
+    Paul's Cathedral, by the side of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and under
+    the same great dome which covers the tombs of Nelson and
+    Wellington.</p>
+    <hr style='width: 65%;'>
+    <a name='CHAPTER_XXVIII'></a>
+
+    <h2>CHAPTER XXVIII.</h2>
+
+    <h3>JOHN ROGERS.</h3><br>
+
+
+    <p>There is scarcely a family of means and taste in the country
+    but is the possessor of one or more of Rogers's groups in
+    plaster. You see them in every art or book-store window, and
+    they are constantly finding new admirers, and rendering the
+    name of the talented sculptor more and more a household
+    word.</p>
+
+    <p><span class="small-caps">John Rogers</span>, to whom the
+    world is indebted for this new branch of art, was born at
+    Salem, Massachusetts, on the 30th of October, 1829. His
+    ancestors were among the original settlers of the colony, and
+    have resided in Salem for generations. His father, a merchant
+    of moderate means and good reputation, was anxious to train his
+    son to some regular and profitable business. As the basis of
+    this, he gave the boy a good education in the common schools of
+    the town, and in 1845, when he was sixteen years old, placed
+    him in a dry-goods store in Boston to learn the business. He
+    remained there for two years.</p>
+
+    <p>He gave early evidence of his artistic genius, and when a
+    mere child had shown a taste and talent for drawing which
+    increased with his years, and made him eager to become an
+    artist. His parents, however, were desirous of seeing him rich
+    rather than famous, and did all in their power to discourage
+    him from making choice of a vocation which they considered but
+    little better than vagabondage. They magnified the difficulties
+    and trials of an artist's career, and so far succeeded in their
+    efforts that he entirely abandoned his wish to make art a means
+    of livelihood. He was not willing to forsake it altogether,
+    however&mdash;he was too true an artist at heart for
+    that&mdash;but contented himself for the time with continuing
+    his efforts, merely as a means of personal enjoyment.</p>
+
+    <p>In 1847, feeling satisfied that he was not suited to a
+    mercantile life, Mr. Rogers gave up his clerkship in Boston,
+    and obtained a place in the corps of engineers engaged in the
+    construction of the Cochituate Water Works. Here he had a fine
+    opportunity for cultivating his talent for drawing, but the
+    constant labor which he underwent so injured his eyes that he
+    was compelled to give up his position. His physician advised
+    him to make an ocean voyage for the purpose of re-establishing
+    his health. Acting upon this advice, he made a short visit to
+    Spain, and returned home very much improved by the voyage and
+    the rest his eyes had enjoyed.</p>
+
+    <p>In 1848, soon after his return to this country, he entered a
+    machine shop in Manchester, New Hampshire, to learn the trade
+    of a machinist. He worked at this trade for a period of seven
+    years, applying himself to it with great diligence and
+    determination, and acquiring much mechanical skill and a
+    thorough knowledge of the trade. He rose steadily through the
+    various grades of his new calling&mdash;from the bench of the
+    apprentice to the post of draughtsman in the designing
+    department.</p>
+
+    <p>During this period he devoted himself enthusiastically to
+    his art. Soon after his return from Spain, he had observed a
+    young man modeling a figure in clay, and by closely observing
+    him had learned the process, which until then was unknown to
+    him. The labor of the youth pleased him very much, and the more
+    because he saw in it a new means of artistic expression. He at
+    once procured some clay, and, taking it to his room, commenced
+    to practice upon the lesson which he had just received. From
+    this time forward he continued his art labors, giving to them
+    all the leisure time he could spare from his duties in the
+    shop, where he was compelled to work from five A.M. until seven
+    P.M. He would go to his room after supper, and by the light of
+    a tallow candle work late into the night, modeling figures in
+    clay, and bringing new fancies into shape. He says that
+    frequently, although exhausted by his severe labor at the shop,
+    he would be unable to sleep until he had molded into clay the
+    idea which possessed his mind. These night studies, superadded
+    to his daily duties, proved very trying to him. Yet he
+    persevered, encouraged by his success with his figures. He
+    endeavored to persuade some of his relatives to aid him in
+    securing a better education as an artist, such as would have
+    enabled him to abandon the machine shop; but they turned a deaf
+    ear to him, and he was thus compelled to continue his daily
+    task, which, under these circumstances, naturally grew more and
+    more irksome.</p>
+
+    <p>In 1856, he was enabled to better his condition for a short
+    time. He was offered the place of manager of a railroad
+    machine-shop at Hannibal, Missouri, and promptly accepted it.
+    In six months, however, he was out of employment, the panic of
+    1857 having caused the machine-shop to suspend operations.
+    Having a little money in hand, which he had saved from his
+    wages, he resolved to visit Europe, and study the works of the
+    great masters in his art, and, if he could, to take lessons in
+    sculpture from some competent teacher in the Old World. He went
+    to Paris and Rome, remaining in those cities for a period of
+    eight months, and endeavoring to share the enthusiasm for the
+    great works around him which the artist world manifested. At
+    the end of that time he came home convinced that classic art
+    had no attractions for him, and was almost ready to declare
+    that he had none of the true inspiration of an artist.</p>
+
+    <p>He did not stop long in the East upon his return. Going West
+    at once, he obtained a situation in the office of the Surveyor
+    of the city of Chicago. In this position he worked hard and
+    faithfully, and his employers soon found that in him they had
+    obtained a prize.</p>
+
+    <p>Meantime, although so much disheartened by his failure to
+    accomplish any thing in Europe, he did not abandon his art
+    studies, but continued to model figures in clay, and shortly
+    after his arrival in Chicago, gave one of his groups to some
+    ladies of that city, to be sold at a fair in behalf of some
+    benevolent purpose. This was the "Checker Players," and was the
+    first of his efforts ever submitted to the public. Its success
+    was immediate. It proved one of the most attractive features of
+    the fair, and the newspapers pronounced it one of the most
+    satisfactory evidences of native genius ever seen in Chicago.
+    Mr. Rogers was much pleased with its success, and soon followed
+    it with "The Town Pump," one of his most popular
+    compositions.</p>
+
+    <p>The popularity which these efforts attained, opened John
+    Rogers's eyes to a correct perception of his true mission in
+    life. He was not capable of accomplishing any thing in classic
+    art, but here was a field in which a renown, unique and
+    brilliant, might be won, and in which he might endear himself
+    to thousands of hearts in the great world in which he lived.
+    Both fame and wealth seemed opening up before him. He did not
+    hesitate long, but resolved to follow the leadings of his
+    genius. Having heard that a new process of flexible molds had
+    been invented, by which the most intricate designs could be
+    cast with ease, he came to New York in 1859, bringing with him
+    his "Checker Players" and "Town Pump," and the model of a new
+    group on which he was then engaged. Seeking an Italian familiar
+    with the new process, he engaged him to cast his figures in
+    plaster by means of it, and from him he learned how to practice
+    the new method himself.</p>
+
+    <p>He now put forth his "Slave Auction," which he had modeled
+    in Chicago and brought to New York with him. The antislavery
+    excitement was then at its height, and this effort aroused the
+    sympathy and won Mr. Rogers the support of the greater part of
+    the people of the Northern States. There was a large demand for
+    the group, and Mr. Rogers soon found himself obliged to employ
+    assistance to fill the orders which kept crowding in upon him.
+    By selecting a subject which was of the deepest interest to the
+    people of the country, he had thus attracted attention to his
+    merits, and he felt sure that by keeping the people supplied
+    with works illustrative of the topics of the day, he would win
+    the success to which he aspired.</p>
+
+    <p>He now ventured to establish himself permanently in New
+    York, and, renting the garret of a Broadway building, set up
+    his studio in it, and issued this modest card: "John Rogers,
+    Artist, Designs and Executes Groups of Figures in Composition
+    at his Studio, 599 Broadway." The success of his works had been
+    so marked as to induce him to believe that he would have no
+    difficulty in establishing a permanent business, and he set to
+    work with enthusiasm. In quick succession he produced his
+    "Fairy's Whisper" and "Air Castles," the latter of which is the
+    only commission he has ever executed. The war began soon after,
+    and supplied him with an abundance of popular subjects. These
+    war subjects attracted universal attention, and sold as rapidly
+    as he could supply them. A New York journal thus describes the
+    "sensation" which they created in that city:</p>
+
+    <p>"All day, and every day, week in and week out, there is an
+    ever-changing crowd of men, women, and children standing
+    stationary amid the ever-surging tides of Broadway, before the
+    windows of Williams &amp; Stevens, gazing with eager interest
+    upon the statuettes and groups of John Rogers, the sculptor.
+    These works appeal to a deep popular sentiment. They are not
+    pretentious displays of gods, goddesses, ideal characters, or
+    stupendous, world-compelling heroes. They are illustrations of
+    American domestic and especially of American military
+    life&mdash;not of our great generals or our bold admirals, or
+    the men whose praises fill all the newspapers, but of the
+    common soldier of the Union; not of the common soldier, either,
+    in what might be called his high heroic moods and moments,
+    when, with waving sword and flaming eye, he dashes upon the
+    enemy's works, but of the soldier in the ordinary moments and
+    usual occupations of every-day camp life. For the last year or
+    more Mr. Rogers has been at work mainly on groups of this
+    latter class and character. Thus he has given us 'The Returned
+    Volunteer, or How the Fort was Taken,' being a group of three
+    gathered in a blacksmith's shop, the characters consisting of
+    the blacksmith himself, standing with his right foot on the
+    anvil block, and his big hammer in his hands, listening
+    eagerly, with his little girl, to a soldier who sits close by
+    on his haunches, narrating 'how the fort was taken,' We have
+    also another group of three, 'The Picket Guard,' spiritedly
+    sketched, as in eager, close, and nervous search for the enemy;
+    the 'Sharpshooters,' another group of three, or rather of two
+    men and a scarecrow, illustrating a curious practice in our
+    army of deceiving the enemy; the 'Town Pump,' a scene in which
+    a soldier, uniformed and accoutered, is slaking his thirst and
+    holding blessed converse beside the pump with a pretty girl who
+    has come for a pail of water; the 'Union Refugees,' a pathetic
+    and noble group, consisting of a stalwart and sad-faced East
+    Tennesseean or Virginian, who accompanied by his wife, who
+    leans her head upon his bosom, and by his little boy, who looks
+    up eagerly into his face, has started off from home with only
+    his gun upon his shoulder and his powder-horn by his side, to
+    escape the tyranny of the rebels; 'The Camp Fire, or Making
+    Friends with the Cook,' in which a hungry soldier, seated upon
+    an inverted basket, is reading a newspaper to an 'intelligent
+    contraband,' who is stirring the contents of a huge and
+    ebullient pot hung over the fire; 'Wounded to the Rear, or One
+    More Shot,' in which a soldier is represented as dressing his
+    wounded leg, while his companion, with his left arm in a sling,
+    is trying to load his gun to take another shot at the enemy, at
+    whom he looks defiantly; 'Mail Day,' which tells its own story
+    of a speculative soldier, seated on a stone and racking his
+    poor brains to find some ideas to transcribe upon the paper
+    which he holds upon his knee, to be sent perchance to her he
+    loves; 'The Country Postmaster, or News from the Army,' which,
+    though a scene from civil life, tells of the anxiety of the
+    soldier's wife or sweetheart to get tidings from the brave
+    volunteer who is periling his life on the battle-field; 'The
+    Wounded Scout, or a Friend in the Swamp,' representing a
+    soldier, torn, and bleeding, and far gone, rescued and raised
+    up by a faithful and kind-hearted negro&mdash;which we think is
+    one of the best, if not the very best, of Mr. Rogers's works;
+    and lastly, a group called 'The Home Guard, or Midnight on the
+    Border,' in which a heroic woman, accompanied by a little girl,
+    is represented as stepping out, pistol in hand, to confront the
+    assailants of her humble home."</p>
+
+    <p>In 1862 Mr. Rogers removed his studio to the corner of Fifth
+    Avenue and Twenty-sixth Street, where he still remains. He has
+    followed up the earlier productions named above with "The
+    Bushwhacker," a scene representing a Tennessee loyalist dogging
+    the footsteps of the Southern army; "Taking the Oath and
+    Drawing Rations," the best and certainly the most popular of
+    his works,&mdash;a group of four, representing a Southern lady
+    with her little boy, compelled to take the oath of allegiance
+    in order to obtain rations for her family. A negro boy, bearing
+    a basket for his mistress, leans on the barrel watching the
+    proceeding with the most intense interest. The woman's face is
+    wonderful, and it expresses eloquently the struggle in her
+    breast between her devotion to the South and her love for the
+    boy before her, and the officer tendering the oath almost
+    speaks the sympathy which her suffering has awakened in him.
+    The other works of our artist are "Uncle Ned's School," "The
+    Charity Patient," "The School Examination," "The Council of
+    War," "The Courtship in Sleepy Hollow," "The Fugitive's Story,"
+    "Challenging the Union Vote," and "Rip Van Winkle."</p>
+
+    <p>The process by which these exquisite groups are produced is
+    exceedingly simple, but is one requiring considerable skill and
+    delicacy of manipulation, and although the casting could
+    readily be done by competent assistants, Mr. Rogers
+    conscientiously gives his personal attention to every detail of
+    the process. The artist takes a mass of wet clay of the desired
+    consistency and size, and fashions it roughly with his hands to
+    something like the proper shape. "It is sometimes necessary to
+    make a little frame of wire upon which to lay the clay, to hold
+    it in its proper place, the wire being easily made to take any
+    form. The rough figure is then finished with the molding stick,
+    which is simply a stick of pine with a little spoon of box-wood
+    attached to each end, one spoon being more delicate than the
+    other. With this instrument the artist works upon the clay with
+    surprising ease. The way in which the works are reproduced is
+    as follows: When the clay model is complete, a single plaster
+    cast is taken for a pattern, and is finished with the most
+    scrupulous care by Mr. Rogers himself. This cast is used as a
+    pattern for making whatever number of molds may be needed to
+    supply the demand for any particular group or statue. The molds
+    are made of glue softened with water, so as to be about as
+    limber as India-rubber. This is poured over the pattern while
+    in a warm and liquid condition; it is, therefore, necessary to
+    surround the pattern with a stiff case to hold the glue in
+    place. This case is made of plaster, and is built up by hand
+    around the pattern. When the glue has become sufficiently hard,
+    it is cut by a thin sharp knife and pulled off the pattern. The
+    parts are put together and bound by cord, making a perfect glue
+    mold. The plaster of Paris is then poured into the mold
+    inverted. A number of crooked pieces of wire are also placed in
+    the mold to strengthen the figure. In about twenty minutes the
+    plaster sets so as to allow the case to be opened, and the glue
+    mold to be pulled off. To his proficiency in the mechanical
+    part of his art Mr. Rogers attributes a considerable measure of
+    his success, as it enables him to execute with facility every
+    suggestion of his imagination, and to secure the perfect
+    reproduction of his works by those to whom he intrusts that
+    labor."</p>
+
+    <p>By placing his works at popular prices, ranging from $10 to
+    $25 each, Mr. Rogers has insured the largest sale and greatest
+    popularity for them, and has thus become a national benefactor.
+    It is now within the power of every person of moderate means to
+    possess one or more of his exquisite groups, and in this way
+    the artist has not only secured to himself a sure means of
+    wealth, but has done much to encourage and foster a popular
+    love for, and appreciation of, the art of which he is so bright
+    an ornament.</p>
+
+    <p>It was a bold venture to depart so entirely from all the
+    precedents of art, but the result has vindicated both the
+    artist's genius and his quick appreciation of the intelligence
+    of his countrymen. "We can not enter into the feelings of
+    ancient Greece," says a popular journal, in summing up his
+    efforts, "and our artists who spend their time in attempting to
+    reproduce that ancient art are only imitators. Their works
+    interest only a small class of connoisseurs, and that interest
+    is an antiquarian interest. It is not a vital, living interest,
+    such as a Greek felt in his own work. It is not the natural,
+    healthful, artistic feeling, the feeling for the beauty of
+    realities, except in so far as it represents the feeling for
+    the eternal attributes of beautiful form. It is an effort on
+    the part of our artists to impose the forms and features of
+    another age upon this one,&mdash;a task as impossible in art as
+    in society, religion, and national politics."</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Rogers is now in his forty-first year, and of all our
+    American artists is, perhaps, the one best known to the masses,
+    and the most popular. He is of medium height, carries himself
+    erectly, and is quick and energetic in his movements. His face
+    is frank, manly, and open, and the expression, though firm and
+    resolute,&mdash;as that of a man who has fought so hard for
+    success must be,&mdash;is winning and genial. He is a gentleman
+    of great cultivation of mind, and is said by his friends to be
+    one of the most entertaining of companions. In 1865 he married
+    a daughter of Mr. C.S. Francis, of New York, and his fondness
+    for domestic life leads him to pass his leisure hours chiefly
+    by his own fireside.</p><br>
+
+    <hr style='width: 65%;'>
+
+    <center>
+        <a name='illust7281'></a>
+        <a href='images/7281.jpg'><img src='images/7281.jpg'
+                height='500' border=0
+                alt='HIRAM POWERS.'></a><br>
+         HIRAM POWERS.
+    </center><a name='CHAPTER_XXIX'></a>
+
+    <h2>CHAPTER XXIX.</h2>
+
+    <h3>HIRAM POWERS.</h3><br>
+
+
+    <p>HIRAM POWERS was born in Woodstock, Vermont, on the 29th of
+    July, 1805. He was the eighth in a family of nine children, and
+    was the son of a farmer who found it hard to provide his little
+    household with the necessaries of life. He grew up as most New
+    England boys do, sound and vigorous in health, passing the
+    winters in attendance upon the district schools, and the
+    summers in working on the farm. "The only distinctive trait
+    exhibited by the child was mechanical ingenuity; he excelled in
+    caricature, was an adept in constructiveness, having made
+    countless wagons, windmills, and weapons for his comrades,
+    attaining the height of juvenile reputation as the inventor of
+    what he called a 'patent fuse.'"</p>
+
+    <p>The Powers family lived just over the river, opposite the
+    village, and all joined heartily in the effort to keep the wolf
+    from the doors. Mr. Powers, Sen., was induced to become
+    security for one of his friends, and, as frequently happens,
+    lost all he had in consequence. Following close upon this
+    disaster came a dreadful famine in the State, caused by an
+    almost total failure of the crops. "I recollect," says Mr.
+    Powers, "we cut down the trees, and fed our few cows on the
+    browse. We lived so long wholly on milk and potatoes, that we
+    got almost to loathe them. There were seven of us children,
+    five at home, and it was hard work to feed us."</p>
+
+    <p>One of the sons had managed to secure an education at
+    Dartmouth College, and had removed to Cincinnati, where he was
+    at this time editing a newspaper. Thither his father,
+    discouraged by the famine, determined to follow him.
+    Accordingly, placing his household goods and his family in
+    three wagons, and being joined by another family, he set out on
+    the long journey to the West. This was in 1819, when young
+    Hiram was fourteen years old. It cost him a sharp struggle to
+    leave his old home, and as they climbed the hills beyond
+    Woodstock he lingered behind with his mother to take a last
+    view of the place. They crossed the State, and passing through
+    western New York came to the vicinity of Niagara Falls. They
+    were near enough to the great cataract to hear its solemn roar
+    sounding high above the silent woods. The boy was eager to
+    visit it, but the distance was too great to the falls, and he
+    was forced to relinquish this pleasure. Continuing their
+    journey westward, they reached the Ohio River, down which
+    stream they floated on a flatboat until they came to
+    Cincinnati, then a city of fourteen thousand inhabitants.</p>
+
+    <p>Through the assistance of his eldest son, the editor, Mr.
+    Powers was enabled to secure a farm not far from Cincinnati,
+    and removing his family to it, began the task of clearing and
+    cultivating it. Unfortunately for the new-comers, the farm was
+    located on the edge of a pestilential marsh, the poisonous
+    exhalations of which soon brought the whole family down with
+    the ague. Mr. Powers the elder died from this disease, and
+    Hiram was ill and disabled from it for a whole year. The family
+    was broken up and scattered, and our hero, incapable of
+    performing hard work so soon after his sickness, obtained a
+    place in a produce store in Cincinnati, his duty being to watch
+    the principal road by which the farmers' wagons, laden with
+    grain and corn whisky, came into the city, and to inform the
+    men in charge of them that they could obtain better prices for
+    their produce from his employers than from any other merchants
+    in the city. It was also a part of his duty to help to roll the
+    barrels from the wagons to the store. He made a very good
+    "drummer," and gave satisfaction to his employers, but as the
+    concern soon broke up, he was again without employment.</p>
+
+    <p>His brother, the editor, now came to his assistance, and
+    made a bargain with the landlord of a hotel in the city to
+    establish a reading-room at his hotel. The landlord was to
+    provide the room and obtain a few paying subscribers; the
+    editor was to stock it with his exchange newspapers, and Hiram
+    was to be put in charge of it and receive what could be made by
+    it. The reading-room was established, but as the landlord
+    failed to comply with his agreement, Powers was forced to
+    abandon the undertaking.</p>
+
+    <div class="full">
+        <a name='illust7301'></a>
+        <a href='images/7301.jpg'><img src='images/7301.jpg'
+                width='600' border=0
+                alt="POWERS' DISTRUST OF THE HUNTERS."></a><br>
+         POWERS' DISTRUST OF THE HUNTERS.
+    </div>
+
+    <p>"About that time," said he, in relating his early life to
+    the Rev. Dr. Bellows, some years ago, "looking around anxiously
+    for the means of living, I fell in with a worthy man, a
+    clock-maker and organ-builder, who was willing to employ me to
+    collect bad debts in the country. He put me on an old horse
+    which had one very bad fault. He was afflicted with what the
+    Western people called the 'swaleys,' and could not go downhill.
+    I frequently had to dismount and back him down, as the only way
+    of getting along. The road often lay through forests and
+    clearings, in mire, and among the roots of the beeches, with
+    which my poor beast was constantly struggling. I would
+    sometimes emerge from a dark wood, five miles through, perhaps,
+    and find myself near a clearing where the farmer's house I was
+    seeking lay, half a mile off the road. Picking up a stout club
+    to defend myself against the inevitable dog, which, in the
+    absence of men-folks, guarded every log-house, I plodded across
+    the plowed field, soon to be met by the ferocious beast, who,
+    not seeing a stranger more than once a month, was always
+    furious and dangerous. Out would come, at length, the poor
+    woman, too curious to see who it was that broke up her
+    monotonous solitude, to call off the dog, who generally grew
+    fiercer as he felt his backer near him, and it was commonly
+    with a feeling as of a bare escape of my life that I finally
+    got into the house. It was sad enough, too, often to find
+    sickness and death in those fever-stricken abodes&mdash;a wan
+    mother nursing one dying child, with perhaps another dead in
+    the house. My business, too, was not the most welcome. I came
+    to dun a delinquent debtor, who had perhaps been inveigled by
+    some peddler of our goods into an imprudent purchase, for a
+    payment which it was inconvenient or impossible to make. There,
+    in the corner, hung the wooden clock, the payment for which I
+    was after, ticking off the last minutes of the sick
+    child&mdash;the only ornament of the poor cabin. It was very
+    painful to urge my business under such circumstances. However,
+    I succeeded, by kindness, in getting more money than I expected
+    from our debtors, who would always pay when they could. I
+    recollect, one night, almost bewailing my success. I had
+    reached the entrance of a forest, at least nine miles through,
+    and finding a little tavern there, concluded it was prudent to
+    put up and wait till morning. There were two rough-looking
+    fellows around, hunters, with rifles in their hands, whose
+    appearance did not please me, and I fancied they looked at each
+    other significantly when the landlord took off my saddle-bags
+    and weighted them, feeling the hundred dollars of silver I had
+    collected. I was put into the attic, reached by a ladder, and,
+    barricading the trap-door as well as I could, went to sleep
+    with one eye open. Nothing, however, occurred, and in the
+    morning I found my wild-looking men up as early as I, and was
+    not a little disturbed when they proposed to keep me company
+    across the forest. Afraid to show any suspicion, I consented,
+    and then went and looked at the little flint-pistol I carried,
+    formidable only to sparrows, but which was my only defense.</p>
+
+    <p>"About two miles into the wood, my fierce-looking friends,
+    after some exchange of understanding as to their respective
+    ways and meeting-point, started off on different sides of the
+    road in search of game, as they said, but, as I feared, with
+    the purpose of robbing and perhaps murdering me at some darker
+    spot in the forest. I had gone perhaps two miles farther, when
+    I heard the breaking of a twig, and, looking on one side, saw a
+    hand signaling me to stop. Presently an eye came out behind the
+    tree, and then an arm, and I verily thought my hour had come.
+    But, keeping straight on, I perceived, almost instantly, to my
+    great relief, two fine deer, who appeared not at all disturbed
+    by a man on horseback, though ready enough to fly from a gun,
+    and began to suspect that the robber I was dreading was, after
+    all, only a hunter in the honest pursuit of his living. The
+    crack of the rifle soon proved that the deer, and not my
+    saddle-bags, were the game aimed at, and I found my imagination
+    had for twelve hours been converting very harmless huntsmen
+    into highwaymen of a most malicious aspect."</p>
+
+    <p>His employer was so well pleased with the success of his
+    young collector that he offered to give him a place in the
+    factory, saying there would always be plenty of rough work at
+    which an inexperienced hand could employ himself. "I could
+    refuse no proposition that promised me bread and clothes," said
+    he, "for I was often walking the streets hungry, with my arms
+    pressed close to my sides to conceal the holes in my coat
+    sleeves." His first task was to thin down with a file some
+    brass plates which were to be used as parts of the stops of an
+    organ. Powers was expected to do merely the rough work, after
+    which the plates were to pass into the hands of the regular
+    finisher. His employer, knowing that the task was one which
+    would require time, told him he would look in in a few days,
+    and see how he had succeeded. The young man's mechanical
+    talent, on which he had prided himself when a boy in Vermont,
+    now did him good service, and he applied himself to his task
+    with skill and determination. When his employer asked for the
+    plates, he was astonished to find that Powers had not only done
+    the rough work, but had finished them much better than the
+    regular finisher had ever done, and this merely by his greater
+    nicety of eye and his undaunted energy. He had blistered his
+    hands terribly, but had done his work well. His employer was
+    delighted, and, finding him so valuable an assistant, soon gave
+    him the superintendence of all his machinery, and took him to
+    live in his own family.</p>
+
+    <p>As has been stated, his employer's business was the
+    manufacture of organs and clocks. Powers displayed great skill
+    in the management of the mechanical department of the business,
+    and this, added to the favor shown him by the "boss," drew upon
+    him the jealousy of the other workmen. There hung in the shop
+    at this time an old silver bull's-eye watch, a good time-piece,
+    but very clumsy and ungainly in appearance. Powers was anxious
+    to become its owner. Being too poor to buy it, he hit upon the
+    following expedient for obtaining it. He had carefully studied
+    the machine used in the shop for cutting out wooden clock
+    wheels, and had suggested to his employer several improvements
+    in it. The workmen, however, had ridiculed his suggestions, and
+    had denounced as the most barefaced presumption his belief that
+    he could improve a machine which had come all the way from
+    Connecticut, where, they said, people were supposed to know
+    something about clocks. Nevertheless, he maintained his
+    opinions, and told his employer that if he would give him the
+    silver watch, he would invent a much better machine. His offer
+    was accepted, and in ten days he produced a machine, not only
+    much simpler than the old one, but capable of performing twice
+    as much and better work. The workmen promptly acknowledged his
+    success, and his employer gave him the watch. "The old watch,"
+    said he, a few years ago, "has ticked all my children into
+    existence, and three of them out of this world. It still hangs
+    at the head of my bed."</p>
+
+    <p>About this time, in a chance visit to the Museum in
+    Cincinnati, he saw a plaster cast of Houdon's "Washington." It
+    was the first bust he had ever seen, and he says it moved him
+    strangely. He had an intense desire to know how it was done,
+    and a vague consciousness that he could do work of the same
+    kind if he could find an instructor. The instructor he soon
+    found in a German living in the city, who made plaster casts
+    and busts, and from him he learned the secret of the art. He
+    proved an apt pupil, and surprised his teacher by his
+    proficiency. His first effort at modeling from life was the
+    bust of a little daughter of Mr. John P. Foote. She sat to him
+    during the hours he could spare from his regular work. His
+    model was made of beeswax, as he was afraid that clay would
+    freeze or stiffen. His success encouraged him very greatly. "I
+    found I had a correct eye," said he, "and a hand which steadily
+    improved in its obedience to my eye. I saw the likeness, and
+    knew it depended on the features, and that, if I could copy the
+    features exactly, the likeness would follow just as surely as
+    the blood follows the knife. I found early that all the talk
+    about catching the expression was mere twaddle; the expression
+    would take care of itself if I copied the features
+    exactly."</p>
+
+    <p>The true principles of his art seemed to come to him
+    naturally, and having the genius to comprehend them so readily,
+    he had the courage to hold on to them often in the face of
+    adverse criticism. While conscious of having a perfectly
+    correct eye, however, he did not scorn the humbler method of
+    obtaining exactness by mathematical measurement. The following
+    incident, which he related to Dr. Bellows, illustrates
+    this:</p>
+
+    <p>"One of the first busts I ever made was of an artist, a
+    Frenchman, who came over with Mrs. Trollope. He proposed to
+    paint my picture, while I was to make his bust. He was older,
+    and considered himself much my superior, and, indeed, undertook
+    to be my instructor. I was to begin. His first <i>canon</i> was
+    that I was to use no measurements, and he quoted Michael
+    Angelo's saying&mdash;'A sculptor should carry his compasses in
+    his eyes, not in his fingers,' I humbly submitted to his
+    authority, and finished the bust without a single measurement.
+    He was very triumphant at what he called the success of his
+    method. I begged permission of him, now that the bust was
+    completed, to verify my work by the dividers. He graciously
+    consented, and I was pleased to find how nearly I had hit the
+    mark. A few imperfections, however, appeared, and these, in
+    spite of his objections, I corrected without his knowledge, for
+    I was determined to have the bust as near right as I could make
+    it. It had taken me, however, at least five times as long to
+    measure the distances with my eyes as it would have done to
+    measure them with the calipers, and I saw no advantage in the
+    longer and more painful effort. The measurements are mere
+    preparations for the artist's true work, and are, like the
+    surveyor's lines, preparatory to the architect's labor. When my
+    subject, in his turn, undertook my portrait, he was true to his
+    own principles, and finished it without measurements. I then,
+    though with some horror at my temerity, asked permission to
+    verify his work with the dividers, and found at the first
+    stroke a difference of at least half an inch in the distance
+    between the eyes. He looked very much mortified, but said that
+    it was done to 'give the effect.' I have had no misgivings
+    since about the economy and wisdom of using the calipers
+    freely. To be useful, they must be applied with the greatest
+    precision&mdash;so small are the differences upon which all the
+    infinite variety in human countenances depends. With the aid of
+    my careful measurements, I do in one day what it would cost me
+    a week or two's work to accomplish without, and I am then able
+    to give my exclusive attention to the modeling."</p>
+
+    <p>He did not regularly devote himself to his art, however, but
+    remained in the employment of the organ and clock maker for
+    some time longer, giving his leisure hours to constant
+    practice. When he was about twenty-three years old, a Frenchman
+    named Herview opened in Cincinnati a museum of natural history
+    and wax figures. The latter had been very much broken and
+    disfigured in transportation, and their owner, in despair,
+    begged Powers to undertake the task of restoring them. The
+    figures were representations of distinguished men and women,
+    and as Powers readily saw that it would be impossible to repair
+    them without having proper likenesses as his guides, he
+    proposed to the Frenchman to make an entirely new composition
+    of the old materials, and one which should attract attention by
+    its oddity. This was agreed to, and the result was a hideous
+    and ungainly figure, which Powers proposed should be called the
+    "King of the Cannibal Islands," but to his amazement the
+    Frenchman advertised it as the embalmed body of a South Sea
+    man-eater, "secured at immense expense." Powers declared to his
+    employer that the audience would discover the cheat and tear
+    down the museum; but the "man-eater" drew immense crowds, and
+    was regarded as the most wonderful natural curiosity ever seen
+    in the West. The Frenchman was so well pleased with it that he
+    employed the artist permanently as inventor, wax-figure maker,
+    and general mechanical contriver in the museum.</p>
+
+    <p>Powers remained in the Frenchman's employ for seven years,
+    hoping all the while to earn money enough to devote himself
+    entirely to art, which had now become his great ambition. His
+    experience was not a pleasant one. Some of it was so singular,
+    not to say ludicrous, that he shall relate one portion of it in
+    his own language:</p>
+
+    <p>"One of the first things I undertook, in company with
+    Herview, was a representation of the infernal regions after
+    Dante's description. Behind a grating I made certain dark
+    grottoes, full of stalactites and stalagmites, with shadowy
+    ghosts and pitchforked figures, all calculated to work on the
+    easily-excited imaginations of a Western audience, as the West
+    then was. I found it very popular and attractive, but
+    occasionally some countryman would suggest to his fellow
+    spectator that a little motion in the figures would add much to
+    the reality of the show. After much reflection I concluded to
+    go in among the figures dressed like the Evil One, in a dark
+    robe, with a death's-head and cross-bones wrought upon it, and
+    with a lobster's claw for a nose. I had bought and fixed up an
+    old electrical machine, and connected it with a wire, so that,
+    from a wand in my hand, I could discharge quite a serious shock
+    upon any body venturing too near the grating. The plan worked
+    admirably, and excited great interest; but I found acting the
+    part of wax-figure two hours every evening in the cold no
+    sinecure, and was put to my wits to devise a figure that could
+    be moved by strings, and which would fill my place. I succeeded
+    so well that it ended in my inventing a whole series of
+    automata, for which the old wax-figures furnished the
+    materials, in part, and which became so popular and so
+    rewarding, that I was kept seven years at the business, my
+    employer promising me, from time to time, an interest in the
+    business, which he quite forgot to fulfill. When, at last, I
+    found out the vanity of my expectations, I left him. He knew I
+    kept no accounts, but he did not know that I reported all the
+    money he gave me to my wife, who did keep our accounts. He
+    tried to cheat me, but I was able to baffle him through her
+    prudence and method. For I had married in this interval, and
+    had a wife and children to support."</p>
+
+    <p>Powers was now thirty years old, and had acquired
+    considerable reputation in Cincinnati as an artist. His
+    abilities coming to the notice of Mr. Nicholas Longworth, of
+    that city, that good genius of young men of talent called on
+    him and offered to buy out the museum and establish him in the
+    business. The offer was declined with thanks. Mr. Longworth
+    then proposed to send him to Italy to study his profession, but
+    this, too, being declined, Mr. Longworth urged him to go to
+    Washington and try his fortune with the public men of the
+    country. To this Powers consented, and, aided by his generous
+    friend, he repaired to the national capital in 1835, and spent
+    two years there. During this period he modeled busts of Andrew
+    Jackson, J.Q. Adams, Calhoun, Chief Justice Marshall, Woodbury,
+    Van Buren, and others. Being unable to secure a model of
+    Webster in Washington, the statesman invited him to go with him
+    to Marshfield for that purpose. Powers accepted the invitation,
+    and declares that he looks back upon his sojourn there as one
+    of the most delightful portions of his life.</p>
+
+    <p>General Jackson was very kind to him, and won his lasting
+    esteem and gratitude. Upon being asked if he would sit for his
+    bust, the old hero hesitated, and, looking at the artist
+    nervously, asked: "Do you daub any thing over the face?
+    Because," he added, "I recollect poor Mr. Jefferson got nearly
+    smothered when they tried to take his bust. The plaster
+    hardened before they got ready to release him, and they pounded
+    it with mallets till they nearly stunned him, and then almost
+    tore off a piece of his ear in their haste to pull off a
+    sticking fragment of the mold. I should not like that." Powers
+    assured him that such a terrible process would not be
+    necessary, but that he only wished to look at him for an hour a
+    day, sitting in his chair. The General brightened up at once,
+    and cordially told him it would give him pleasure to sit for
+    him. He at once installed the artist in a room in the White
+    House, and gave him a sitting of an hour every morning until
+    the model was done.</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Powers regards the bust of Jackson as one of his best
+    efforts, and the President himself was very much pleased with
+    it. After he had completed his model, Mr. Edward Everett
+    brought Baron Krudener, the Prussian Minister to Washington, to
+    see it. The Baron was a famous art critic, and poor Powers was
+    terribly nervous as he showed him the bust. The Baron examined
+    it closely, and then said to the artist, "You have got the
+    General completely: his head, his face, his courage, his
+    firmness, his identical self; and yet it will not do! You have
+    also got all his wrinkles, all his age and decay. You forget
+    that he is President of the United States and the idol of the
+    people. You should have given him a dignity and elegance he
+    does not possess. You should have employed your <i>art</i>,
+    sir, and not merely your <i>nature</i>." The artist listened in
+    silence, and Mr. Everett stood by without saying a word,
+    "conscious," as he afterward confessed, "of a very poor right
+    to speak on such a subject," after listening to so famous a
+    critic. "<i>I</i> did not dare," says Powers, "in my humility
+    and reverence for these two great men, to say what I wanted to
+    in reply; to tell the Baron that my 'art' consisted in
+    concealing art, and that my 'nature' was the highest art I knew
+    or could conceive of. I was content that the 'truth' of my work
+    had been so fully acknowledged, and the Baron only confirmed my
+    resolution to make truth my only model and guide in all my
+    future undertakings."</p>
+
+    <p>One of his sitters in Washington was Senator Preston, of
+    South Carolina, who conceived such an interest in him that he
+    wrote to his brother, General Preston, of Columbia, South
+    Carolina, a gentleman of great wealth, urging him to come to
+    the artist's assistance, and send him to Italy. General Preston
+    at once responded to this appeal, of which Powers was ignorant,
+    and wrote to the artist to draw on him for a thousand dollars,
+    and go to Italy at once, and to draw on him annually for a
+    similar sum for several years. Powers was profoundly touched by
+    this noble offer, and accepted it as frankly as it had been
+    made. He sent his models to Italy, and took his departure for
+    the Old World in 1837. Speaking of Mr. Preston's generosity, he
+    said, two years ago: "I have endeavored to requite his kindness
+    by sending him works of mine, equal in money value to his
+    gifts; but I can never extinguish my great obligations. I fear
+    he don't like me since the war,&mdash;for I could not suppress
+    my strong national feelings for any man's friendship,&mdash;but
+    I like and honor him; I would do any thing in my power to show
+    him my inextinguishable gratitude."</p>
+
+    <p>He reached Florence in advance of his models, and while
+    waiting for them made two busts, one of a professor in Harvard
+    College, and the other of an American lady. A severe domestic
+    affliction, however, which came upon him soon after his arrival
+    in Italy, affected him so greatly that he was not able to
+    return to his work for a long time. Then he applied himself to
+    his busts, which were warmly praised by the artists in Florence
+    and by his countrymen traveling abroad. Thorwaldsen visited him
+    in his studio, and pronounced his bust of Webster the best work
+    of its kind in modern times, and praises from other
+    distinguished artists were equally as warm. Orders came in
+    rapidly from English and Italians, and from Americans in
+    Europe, and the sculptor soon had as much business as he could
+    attend to. He gave his leisure time to work on an ideal figure,
+    which, when completed, was purchased by an English gentleman of
+    wealth. This was "The Greek Slave," the most popular of all his
+    works. Duplicates of it were exhibited in America and at the
+    Crystal Palace in England, and won him praise from all
+    quarters. This single work established his fame as an artist,
+    and brought him orders from all parts of the civilized world.
+    His statue of "Eve," which had preceded "The Greek Slave" by a
+    year, had been pronounced by Thorwaldsen fit to be any man's
+    master-piece, but it had not created such a furore as "The
+    Greek Slave." Subsequently he made an exquisite bust of the
+    Grand Duchess of Tuscany, with which the Grand Duke was so
+    pleased that he called on Powers, and asked him as a favor to
+    himself to apply to him whenever he could do him a service.
+    Powers asked permission to take a cast of the Venus, and this
+    much-coveted boon, which had been denied to other artists for
+    years, was at once granted to him.</p>
+
+    <p>Since then his works have been numerous. Among these are
+    "The Fisher Boy," of which three duplicates in marble have been
+    made; "Il Penseroso;" "Proserpine," a bust; "California;"
+    "America," modeled for the Crystal Palace at Sydenham, England;
+    "Washington" and "Calhoun," portrait statues, the former for
+    the State of Louisiana, and the latter for the State of South
+    Carolina; and "Benjamin Franklin" and "Thomas Jefferson," in
+    the Capitol at Washington. His works are all marked by beauty
+    and vigor of conception as well as by exquisite finish.
+    Beautiful as his ideal figures are, he yet excels in his busts
+    and statues of the great men of his native land. His
+    "Jefferson" and "Franklin" are wonderful works, and his
+    "Calhoun" is said to be almost life-like. This last was wrecked
+    on the coast of Long Island on its voyage to America, and
+    remained in the sea for some time, but being well packed was
+    found, when raised, to be only slightly damaged by the
+    water.</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Powers has now resided in Italy for thirty-three years.
+    Motives of economy have controlled his action, for he would
+    gladly return to his own land did he feel justified in doing
+    so. He has thus stated the reasons which have influenced his
+    long residence abroad:</p>
+
+    <div class='blkquot'>
+        <p>Sculpture is universal. The human form is of no country,
+        and may be studied with equal advantage at home and abroad.
+        The opportunities of studying it abroad are so immeasurably
+        greater than at home, that I do not see how it is possible,
+        without great loss, to neglect them.</p>
+
+        <p>1. It is impossible to model successfully without living
+        models; and in America, in my time, it was almost at the
+        peril of reputation, both for model and sculptor, that an
+        artist employed the living model, even if he could procure
+        it. Now, I understand, a few models may be obtained in New
+        York; but they are so rare and so expensive, that it is
+        almost ruinous to employ them. It costs two or three
+        dollars there to secure a model which here may be had for
+        half a day for forty cents. There is no want of models
+        here; but their history is a sad one, and makes one often
+        seriously lament the necessity for employing them. Young
+        women, especially, are driven to this employment by the
+        want of bread. I have numerous offers of their services
+        made by parents who are in great distress. I make it a
+        point to discourage all who come to me from entering the
+        business, and am only conquered when I feel sure that, if I
+        decline, they will be driven to other studios. I prefer
+        only professional models, already thoroughly committed to
+        the calling, as I shrink from the responsibility of leading
+        any into so perilous a vocation. They are usually
+        accompanied by their mothers, and I strive to treat them in
+        a way to save their self-respect and delicacy&mdash;a very
+        hard task, which too often breaks down in less scrupulous
+        hands.</p>
+
+        <p>2. The opportunities of anatomical studies are here
+        nearly perfect, and free from all expense. The medical
+        schools not only illustrate anatomy by surgery on the
+        cadaver, but standing by the side of the dead body is a
+        living one, in which the action of the muscles dissected
+        before the student may be studied in life. These colleges
+        are open to all artists, and furnish the best possible
+        schooling in anatomy, a thorough acquaintance with which is
+        indispensable to the sculptor, and can only be obtained in
+        America at great cost.</p>
+
+        <p>3. Marble is no cheaper here than in New York, the long
+        sea-carriage costing no more to America than the short
+        land-carriage does from the quarries to Florence or Rome.
+        But good workmen, who can not be dispensed with, are so
+        abundant and so cheap here, so rare and so dear at home,
+        that that alone is a decisive reason for coming abroad.
+        Even here it is a heavy expense to procure sufficient and
+        competent workmen; at home it is almost at ruinous cost and
+        with nearly insuperable difficulty. I have two
+        workmen&mdash;as good, certainly, as the best in
+        America&mdash;to the finest of whom I pay only four dollars
+        a day. He could make twice that cutting weeping-willows on
+        American tomb-stones. What could he not justly demand in
+        wages from a New York sculptor? I employ a dozen workmen in
+        my studios; the poorest, at work on pedestals and rough
+        work, earn about half a dollar a day; the moderately
+        skilled, a little over a dollar. The whole cost me about
+        fifteen dollars per day, which is wonderfully low. Then, my
+        rent&mdash;which could not, for my extensive
+        accommodations, be less than two thousand five hundred
+        dollars a year in any eligible position which the public
+        would visit&mdash;reaches only about four hundred and fifty
+        dollars, annually.</p>
+
+        <p>But, 4. The general expenses of maintaining a family are
+        so much less here than at home, that a man without capital,
+        possessing a profession so slow in reaching its pecuniary
+        returns as an artist's, finds an immense inducement to live
+        abroad. It is true that, music and accomplishment in
+        languages apart, the opportunities of a substantial
+        education for one's children are not as good here as at
+        home. There are, however, less temptations to vice, and
+        less exposures to the American habit of hard drinking among
+        young men; but, no doubt, the general influences here, in
+        the way of developing a manly, energetic, and self-relying
+        character, are less favorable than at home. There is a
+        softness, a disposition to take life easy, and a want of
+        moral earnestness in Italy, which are not favorable to
+        youthful ambition and independence. On the other hand, the
+        money-getting propensities and social rivalries of America
+        tend to harden human character, and to bring out a severe
+        selfishness which is offensive. On the whole, the balance
+        is on our side, and, other things apart, American youth are
+        better brought up in America. But the artist must make this
+        sacrifice to his art.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <p>Mr. Powers is sixty-five years old, but is in full
+    possession of his mental and physical strength. He is a genuine
+    American, notwithstanding his long residence abroad, and has
+    always a warm welcome for his countrymen visiting his studio.
+    He is a favorite with the younger artists, who find in him a
+    kind and judicious friend. Scorning servile imitation, he still
+    exhibits in his works the freshness of his youth and the
+    genuine originality which was the basis of his fame.</p>
+    <hr style='width: 65%;'>
+    <a name='CHAPTER_XXX'></a>
+
+    <h2>CHAPTER XXX.</h2>
+
+    <h3>EMMANUEL LEUTZE.</h3><br>
+
+
+    <p>EMMANUEL LEUTZE, by adoption an American, was born in the
+    village of Emingen, near the city of Reutlingen, in Wurtemberg,
+    on the 24th of May, 1816. His father emigrated to America
+    during the infancy of his son, and the future artist spent his
+    youth in the city of Philadelphia and the town of
+    Fredericksburg, Virginia. He received a good common school
+    education, and passed his time in comparative seclusion from
+    society, reading and studying, but showing no especial fondness
+    for art. At length, during his father's last illness, in which
+    he nursed him with great devotion, he took up drawing to
+    beguile the weary hours of the sick-room, and succeeded so well
+    in his attempts that after his father's death he continued his
+    efforts under the instruction of a competent drawing master. He
+    improved rapidly, and was so well satisfied with his success
+    that he determined to adopt the profession of an artist as the
+    one best suited to his talents and inclination.</p>
+
+    <div class="full">
+        <a name='illust7321'></a>
+        <a href='images/7321.jpg'><img src='images/7321.jpg'
+                width='600' border=0
+                alt='FILIAL DEVOTION SHAPES A GREAT CAREER'></a><br>
+         FILIAL DEVOTION SHAPES A GREAT CAREER.
+    </div>
+
+    <p>Having acquired considerable skill in drawing, he attempted
+    rude portraits of men and beasts, and at length undertook to
+    copy from memory a colored print after Westall. He completed
+    it, and resolved to show it to some of his friends. In his
+    impatience for the colors to dry, he placed the painting before
+    the fire and went to summon his friends, but found, to his
+    dismay, upon returning with them, that the heat had blistered
+    the canvas so that the picture was hardly recognizable. Yet, in
+    spite of this, his critics saw such evidences of genius in the
+    painting that they urged the young artist to continue his
+    labors, and predicted a great success for him.</p>
+
+    <p>Leutze, however, was not willing to venture upon another
+    composition, either partly or wholly original, but applied
+    himself with zeal to learn the rudiments of his art, and with
+    such success that when his portraits appeared at the Artist's
+    Fund Exhibition, a year or two later, they received high
+    praise, both from critics and the public. An enterprising
+    publisher, attracted by these portraits, engaged him to go to
+    Washington and paint the portraits of the leading statesmen of
+    the country, to be engraved for a "national work." Leutze at
+    once proceeded to the capital, full of hope and enthusiasm, but
+    soon found that the schemes of the politicians whose faces he
+    was to transmit to canvas engrossed them so much that they
+    would not give him the sittings he desired. After waiting
+    impatiently for a considerable time he threw up the engagement
+    in disgust, and went into the woods of Virginia to console
+    himself by communing with nature. For some time he wandered
+    about, making desultory sketches, and abandoning himself to a
+    melancholy which was closely akin to despair. When this feeling
+    was at its height, a friend, before unknown, came to his
+    aid.</p>
+
+    <p>"A gentleman, whose rich domain he chanced to approach in
+    his wayward rovings, perceived his abilities, understood his
+    unhappiness, and aroused him from inaction by a call upon his
+    professional skill. The artist obeyed, but he could not subdue
+    the mood which possessed him. No brilliant scene arose to his
+    fancy, no humorous incident took form and color from his
+    pencil, and the fair landscape around appeared to mock rather
+    than cheer his destiny. He could not bring himself into
+    relation with subjects thus breathing of hope and gayety, but
+    found inspiration only in the records of human sorrow. As the
+    royal mourner bade her companions sit upon the ground and 'tell
+    sad stories of the death of kings,' the pensive artist found
+    something analogous to his own fate in the story of Hagar and
+    Ishmael. He painted them as having followed up a spent
+    water-course, in hopes of finding wherewith to quench their
+    thirst, and sinking under the disappointment. He neither saw
+    nor painted the angel of God who showed the fountain in the
+    wilderness, and yet the angel was there, for now the sufferer
+    acknowledges that early vicissitudes nerved him for high
+    endeavor, rendered his vision piercing, his patience strong,
+    and his confidence firm, and that this incidental effort to
+    triumph over difficulties was the first of a series which
+    inspired his subsequent career."</p>
+
+    <p>In 1840 he produced a painting which he called "An Indian
+    Contemplating the Setting Sun." It was exhibited in
+    Philadelphia, and won general praise for the artist. Better
+    than this, it secured him the friendship of the late Edward L.
+    Carey, of that city, who, recognizing his genius, determined to
+    help him on in his labors. Mr. Carey was successful in inducing
+    his friends to give Leutze a number of commissions, and these
+    enabled him to carry out his wish to visit Europe and complete
+    his studies. Instead of going to Italy, as was then the almost
+    universal practice, he determined to study in Germany, and
+    accordingly sailed for that country. He went by way of Holland,
+    and after a long and trying voyage reached Amsterdam in
+    January, 1841. Pausing here for awhile to familiarize himself
+    with the master-pieces of the Dutch school, he repaired to
+    Dusseldorf, where he became a pupil of the celebrated painter
+    Lessing, under whom he made marked progress. His reception by
+    the artists of Dusseldorf was at once hearty and encouraging,
+    and won for that school and its members his enthusiastic
+    devotion. He became Lessing's pupil at the personal request of
+    the master, and these two gifted men were soon bound to each
+    other by the ties of an undying friendship.</p>
+
+    <p>Leutze devoted himself to historical subjects from the
+    first, and soon after his arrival in Dusseldorf began his
+    picture of "Columbus Before the Council of Salamanca." When it
+    was finished, it was visited by Director V. Schadow, who
+    praised it warmly, and requested the artist to offer it to the
+    Art Union of Dusseldorf, which at once purchased it. This high
+    compliment to a beginner and a stranger proved an additional
+    stimulus to Leutze, and he soon after produced a companion
+    picture to his first, "Columbus in Chains," which procured him
+    the gold medal of the Brussels Art Exhibition, and was
+    subsequently purchased by the Art Union of New York.</p>
+
+    <p>Remaining two years in Dusseldorf, Leutze went to Munich to
+    study the works of Cornelius and Kaulbach, and while there
+    painted another scene in the life of the Great Discoverer,
+    "Columbus before the Queen." Upon completing this picture he
+    went to Venice, Rome, and the other Italian cities, making
+    careful studies of the masters of that school. He gave two
+    years to his travels, visiting the Tyrol, and reveling in the
+    magnificent scenery through which he journeyed. He went into
+    Switzerland, sketching the glorious beauties of its Alps, and
+    reached the Rhine at Strasbourg. Then, sailing down that
+    beautiful river, he set foot once more in Dusseldorf, glad, as
+    he declared, to end his wanderings in the midst of his friends.
+    Here he determined to locate himself permanently, and soon
+    after his return he married.</p>
+
+    <p>He lived in Dusseldorf for fourteen years, devoting himself
+    assiduously to his art. His labors were incessant. Historic
+    subjects make up the vast bulk of his productions during this
+    period, and in his treatment of them he adhered closely to the
+    style of the Dusseldorf school. The best known of his works
+    during this portion of his career are "The Landing of the
+    Norsemen in America;" "Cromwell and his Daughter;" "The Court
+    of Queen Elizabeth;" "Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyn;" "The
+    Iconoclast," and his famous and brilliant series of pictures
+    illustrative of the events of the American War of Independence.
+    The most prominent of these were, "Washington Crossing the
+    Delaware;" "Washington at Monmouth;" "Washington at the Battle
+    of Monongahela;" "News from Lexington;" "Sergeant Jasper," and
+    "Washington at Princeton." These are fine paintings, possessing
+    striking characteristics, and are all more or less popular.
+    "Washington Crossing the Delaware" is perhaps the best known,
+    since it has been engraved, and sold in all parts of the
+    country in that form.</p>
+
+    <p>During his absence in Germany, Leutze did not forget the
+    country of his choice, as his devotion to American subjects
+    amply testifies. When he had won a proud name in his art by his
+    labors in Dusseldorf, and had laid by money enough to justify
+    him in returning to a land where art was in its infancy, and
+    not over-remunerative, he came back to the United States, after
+    an absence of eighteen years, and opened a studio in New York.
+    He found a vast improvement in the public taste and in the
+    demand for works of art since his departure for the Old World,
+    and, better still, found that his peculiar field, the historic,
+    was the one most suited to the tastes of the American
+    public.</p>
+
+    <p>It was his intention, in coming back to this country, to
+    devote the time during which he supposed he would be compelled
+    to wait for orders, to looking around him and familiarizing
+    himself with the changes that had taken place in the Union
+    during his absence; but he was never able to carry out this
+    design, as he had no leisure time. His European reputation had
+    preceded him hither, and he had scarcely opened his doors in
+    New York before he was obliged to refuse orders, for lack of
+    time to execute them. His hands were full from the first, and
+    he at once took rank as the most thoroughly popular and
+    accomplished artist in the country.</p>
+
+    <p>Early in 1860 he received from the Government of the United
+    States a commission to decorate one of the marble stairways in
+    the Capitol at Washington with a mural painting. The painting
+    was to be executed in fresco, and he chose as his subject,
+    "Westward the Star of Empire Takes its Way." He entered upon
+    the undertaking with the keenest delight, and in order to make
+    himself thoroughly acquainted with the true character of
+    frontier scenery and life, performed what was then the long and
+    difficult journey to the Rocky Mountains, where he made
+    numerous sketches. Returning to the States, he sailed for
+    Europe, and went to Munich to learn from Kaulbach the new
+    stereochromatic process which has now superseded the
+    fresco-painting of the middle ages. Returning to Washington, he
+    applied himself to his task, and in a couple of years completed
+    it.</p>
+
+    <p>The picture is the largest and finest mural painting in
+    America, and adorns the magnificent stairway at the north end
+    of the west corridor of the House of Representatives. It is
+    lighted from a sky-light in the roof, and is seen to the best
+    advantage from the upper corridor. The coloring is softer and
+    more life-like than is often seen in such paintings. The
+    surface of the wall is rough, but the work has been done by
+    such a master hand that one seems to be gazing upon real life.
+    It is a wonderful picture&mdash;one that will repay weeks of
+    study.</p>
+
+    <p>The scene represents a train of emigrants crossing the Rocky
+    Mountains. They have reached the summit of the range, from
+    which a glorious view stretches out before them to the
+    westward. The adventurers consist of the usual class of
+    emigrants, men, women, and children. There are several wagons
+    and a number of horses in the train. The faces of the emigrants
+    express the various emotions which fill their hearts as they
+    gaze upon the glorious scene before them. Some are full of life
+    and vigor, and hope beams in every feature, while others are
+    struggling with sickness and despair. The advance of the train
+    has been momentarily checked by a huge tree which has fallen
+    across the trail, and two stout men, under the direction of the
+    leader of the party, who is sitting on his horse, are engaged
+    in hewing it away with axes. Two others have climbed to the
+    summit of the neighboring rocky crag, on which they have
+    planted the banner of the Republic, which is seen flapping
+    proudly from its lofty perch. In the foreground stands a manly
+    youth, clasping his father's long rifle firmly, and gazing
+    toward the promised land with a countenance glowing with hope
+    and energy. His sister, as hopeful as himself, is seated by her
+    mother's side, on a buffalo-robe which has been thrown over a
+    rock. The mother's face is sad, but patient. She knows well the
+    privations, toils, and hardships which await them in the new
+    home-land, but she tries to share the enthusiasm and hope of
+    her children. She clasps her nursing infant to her breast, and
+    listens to her husband, who stands by and points her to the new
+    country where they will have a home of their own. Her face is
+    inexpressibly beautiful. The rich, warm light of the rising sun
+    streams brightly over the whole scene, and gives to it a
+    magical glow. The legend, "Westward the Star of Empire Takes
+    its Way," is inscribed over the painting, in letters of
+    gold.</p>
+
+    <p>An elaborate illuminated border, illustrative of the advance
+    of civilization in the West, surrounds the painting, and is in
+    itself one of the most perfect works of art in the Capitol.</p>
+
+    <p>Leutze received the sum of $20,000 for this painting. After
+    completing it, some matters connected with his family required
+    him to make a visit to Dusseldorf, and upon reaching that place
+    he was warmly welcomed by the artists, on the 10th of June,
+    1863, at their club. "About one hundred and fifty lords of
+    art," says a letter from Dusseldorf, "assembled at the
+    'Mahlkasten,' just outside of the Hof-Garten. This is the
+    club-house of the painters, and, with its gardens, is their
+    property. Leutze was received with music, and when he came
+    within reach of the assembled company, there was a general rush
+    to shake his hands, kiss his cheeks, and hug him. The old
+    fellows were much affected at the scene, and were heartily glad
+    to see their old companion once more. The guest made a short
+    and feeling address, whereupon all went in to supper. Here two
+    of the artists had arrayed themselves, one as a negro, the
+    other as an Indian; and these brought in the first dishes and
+    handed them to Leutze. Andreas Achenbach sat at Leutze's right,
+    and his old friend Tryst at his left. After dinner, the calumet
+    cf peace was passed around; there was speaking and drinking of
+    healths, with songs afterward in the illuminated garden. The
+    occasion appears to have been a very pleasant and right merry
+    one, and is said to have been the happiest festival ever given
+    by the Society of Artists."</p>
+
+    <p>Returning to the United States a few months later, Leutze
+    repaired to Washington, where he had permanently settled. He
+    was given several commissions by the Government, and at once
+    began to design his subjects. They were only in the cartoon,
+    however, at the time of his death. One of these,
+    "Civilization," was to have been placed in the Senate Chamber,
+    and was partly finished. It is said to have given promise of
+    being his finest production. He also left a sketch of an
+    immense picture, "The Emancipation." He was always a hard
+    worker, and this doubtless contributed to bring about his
+    death, which took place on the 18th of July, 1868. The
+    immediate cause was apoplexy, superinduced by the intense
+    heat.</p>
+
+    <p>"Mr. Leutze," says a writer in the Annual Cyclopedia, "was
+    altogether the best educated artist in America, possessed of
+    vast technical learning, of great genius, and fine powers of
+    conception. His weakest point was in his coloring, but even
+    here he was superior to most others."</p>
+
+    <p>"Leutze," says Mr. Tuckerman, "delights in representing
+    adventure. He ardently sympathizes with chivalric action and
+    spirit-stirring events: not the abstractly beautiful or the
+    simply true, but the heroic, the progressive, the individual,
+    and earnest phases of life, warm his fancy and attract his
+    pencil. His forte is the dramatic.... If Leutze were not a
+    painter, he would certainly join some expedition to the Rocky
+    Mountains, thrust himself into a fiery political controversy,
+    or seek to wrest a new truth from the arcana of science.... We
+    remember hearing a brother artist describe him in his studio at
+    Home, engaged for hours upon a picture, deftly shifting
+    palette, cigar, and maul-stick from hand to hand, as occasion
+    required; absorbed, rapid, intent, and then suddenly breaking
+    from his quiet task to vent his constrained spirits in a jovial
+    song, or a romp with his great dog, whose vociferous barking he
+    thoroughly enjoyed; and often abandoning his quiet studies for
+    some wild, elaborate frolic, as if a row was essential to his
+    happiness. His very jokes partook of this bold heartiness of
+    disposition. He scorned all ultra refinement, and found his
+    impulse to art not so much in delicate perception as in vivid
+    sensation. There was ever a reaction from the meditative. His
+    temperament is Teutonic&mdash;hardy, cordial, and brave. Such
+    men hold the conventional in little reverence, and their
+    natures gush like mountain streams, with wild freedom and
+    unchastened enthusiasm."</p>
+    <hr style='width: 65%;'>
+    <a name='divines'></a>
+
+    <h1>VIII.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;DIVINES.</h1>
+    <hr style='width: 65%;'>
+    <a name='CHAPTER_XXXI'></a>
+
+    <h2>CHAPTER XXXI.</h2>
+
+    <h3>HENRY WARD BEECHER.</h3><br>
+
+
+    <p>HENRY WARD BEECHER was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, on
+    the 24th of June, 1813, and was the eighth child of Dr. Lyman
+    Beecher, the famous Presbyterian divine of New England. Dr.
+    Beecher was regarded as one of the most powerful champions of
+    orthodox Christianity in the land of the pilgrims, and had the
+    good fortune to be the father of a family whose members have
+    become celebrated for their intellectual gifts.</p>
+
+    <p>The most of these gave early promise of their future
+    distinction, but the subject of this memoir was regarded as the
+    dunce of the family. He grew up as the children of most New
+    England clergymen of that day climbed the road to manhood. His
+    father's family was large, and the salary paid by the
+    congregation never exceeded eight hundred dollars, and was not
+    always promptly paid at that. The good people of the land of
+    steady habits well knew how to drive hard bargains with the
+    Lord's messengers, and were adepts in the art of securing the
+    "best talent" at the lowest price. The stern, hard struggle for
+    a livelihood in which the father was engaged prevented him from
+    giving much personal attention to his children, and the mother
+    of young Henry dying when he was but three years old, the boy
+    was left very much to himself. Like most ministers' children,
+    he was obliged to "set an example to the village," and this boy
+    was dosed with Catechism and his father's stern and gloomy
+    theological tenets until he was sick of them.</p>
+
+    <p>"In those days," says Mrs. Stowe, "none of the attentions
+    were paid to children that are now usual. The community did not
+    recognize them.. There was no child's literature; there were no
+    children's books. The Sunday-school was yet an experiment in a
+    fluctuating, uncertain state of trial. There were no children's
+    days of presents and <i>fetes</i>, no Christmas or New Year's
+    festivals. The annual thanksgiving was only associated with one
+    day's unlimited range of pies of every sort&mdash;too much for
+    one day&mdash;and too soon things of the past. The childhood of
+    Henry Ward was unmarked by the possession of a single child's
+    toy as a gift from any older person, or a single <i>fete</i>.
+    Very early, too, strict duties devolved upon him. A daily
+    portion of the work of the establishment, the care of the
+    domestic animals, the cutting and piling of wood, or tasks in
+    the garden, strengthened his muscles and gave vigor and tone to
+    his nerves. From his father and mother he inherited a perfectly
+    solid, healthy organization of brain, muscle, and nerves, and
+    the uncaressing, let-alone system under which he was brought up
+    gave him early habits of vigor and self-reliance."</p>
+
+    <p>When but three or four years old he was sent to the Widow
+    Kilbourn's school, where he said his letters twice a day, and
+    passed the rest of his time in hemming a brown towel or a
+    checked apron. It was not expected that he would learn very
+    much from Marm Kilbourn, but the school kept him out of the way
+    of the "home folks" for the greater part of the day.</p>
+
+    <p>He was a winning, sweet-faced child, with long golden curls,
+    of which he was very proud. Some of his female playfellows at
+    school, thinking it a shame that a boy should look so much like
+    a girl, cut off one or two of his curls with a pair of shears
+    made of scraps of tin, and when the little fellow complained of
+    his loss at home it was decided that the best way to protect
+    him from such attacks in future was to cut his hair close to
+    his head, which was done at once. Little Henry was commonly
+    thought a dull child. His memory was lamentably deficient, and
+    his utterance was thick and indistinct, so much so that he
+    could scarcely be understood in reading or speaking. This was
+    caused partly by an enlargement of the tonsils of his throat,
+    and partly by timidity. The policy of repression worked badly
+    in his case, and had there not been so much real good at the
+    basis of his character it might have led this gentle, yearning
+    boy far from the useful channel along which his life has
+    flown.</p>
+
+    <p>His stepmother was a lady of fine mental culture, of elegant
+    breeding and high character, but she was an invalid, and withal
+    thoroughly imbued with the gloomy sternness of her husband's
+    faith. One day little Henry, who was barely able to manage the
+    steady-going old family horse, was driving her in the chaise.
+    They passed a church on their way, and the bell was tolling for
+    a death. "Henry," said Mrs. Beecher, solemnly, "what do you
+    think of when you hear a bell tolling like that?" The boy
+    colored and hung his head in silence, and the good lady went
+    on. "<i>I</i> think, was that soul prepared? It has gone into
+    <i>eternity</i>." The little fellow shuddered, in spite of
+    himself, and thought, no doubt, what a dreadful thing it was to
+    be a Christian.</p>
+
+    <p>So it was with the religion that was crammed into him. There
+    was no effort made to draw him to religion by its beauty and
+    tenderness. He rarely heard of the Saviour as the loving one
+    who took little children in His arms and blessed them, but was
+    taught to regard Him as a stern and merciless judge, as one
+    who, instead of being "touched with the feeling of our
+    infirmities," makes those infirmities the means of wringing
+    fresh sufferings from us. Sunday was a day of terror to him,
+    for on that day the Catechism was administered to him until he
+    was more than sick of it. "I think," said he to his
+    congregation, not long since, referring to this part of his
+    life, "that to force childhood to associate religion with such
+    dry morsels is to violate the spirit, not only of the New
+    Testament, but of common sense as well. I know one thing, that
+    if I am 'lax and latitudinarian,' the Sunday Catechism is to
+    blame for a part of it. The dinners that I have lost because I
+    could not go through 'sanctification,' and 'justification,' and
+    'adoption,' and all such questions, lie heavily on my memory! I
+    do not know that they have brought forth any blossoms. I have a
+    kind of grudge against many of those truths that I was taught
+    in my childhood, and I am not conscious that they have waked up
+    a particle of faith in me. My good old aunt in heaven&mdash;I
+    wonder what she is doing. I take it that she now sits
+    beauteous, clothed in white, that round about her sit chanting
+    cherub children, and that she is opening to them from her
+    larger range sweet stories, every one fraught with thought, and
+    taste, and feeling, and lifting them up to a higher plane. One
+    Sunday afternoon with my aunt Esther did me more good than
+    forty Sundays in church with my father. He thundered over my
+    head, and she sweetly instructed me down in my heart. The
+    promise that she would read Joseph's history to me on Sunday
+    was enough to draw a silver thread of obedience through the
+    entire week; and if I was tempted to break my promise, I said,
+    'No; Aunt Esther is going to read on Sunday;' and I would do,
+    or I would not do, all through the week, for the sake of
+    getting that sweet instruction on Sunday.</p>
+
+    <p>"And to parents I say, Truth is graded. Some parts of God's
+    truth are for childhood, some parts are for the nascent
+    intellectual period, and some parts are for later spiritual
+    developments. Do not take the last things first. Do not take
+    the latest processes of philosophy and bring them prematurely
+    to the understanding. In teaching truth to your children, you
+    are to avoid tiring them."</p>
+
+    <p>"The greatest trial of those days," says Mrs. Stowe, "was
+    the Catechism. Sunday lessons were considered by the
+    mother-in-law as inflexible duty, and the Catechism as the
+    <i>sine qua non</i>. The other children memorized readily, and
+    were brilliant reciters, but Henry, blushing, stammering,
+    confused, and hopelessly miserable, stuck fast on some
+    sand-bank of what is required or forbidden by this or that
+    commandment, his mouth choking up with the long words which he
+    hopelessly miscalled, was sure to be accused of idleness or
+    inattention, and to be solemnly talked to, which made him look
+    more stolid and miserable than ever, but appeared to have no
+    effect in quickening his dormant faculties."</p>
+
+    <p>At the age of ten he was a well-grown, stout, stocky boy,
+    strong and hearty, trained to hard work, and to patient
+    obedience of his elders. He was tolerably well drilled in
+    Calvinism, and had his head pretty well filled with snatches of
+    doctrine which he caught from his father's constant
+    discussions; but he was very backward in his education. He was
+    placed at the school of the Rev. Mr. Langdon, at Bethlehem,
+    Connecticut, and it was hoped that the labors of this excellent
+    tutor would result in making something of him. He spent a
+    winter at this school, and boarded at a neighboring farm-house,
+    whose kind-hearted mistress soon became so much attached to him
+    that she indulged him to an extent which he had never known at
+    home. With his gun on his shoulder, he passed the greater part
+    of his hours out of school in tramping over the pretty
+    Connecticut hills, in search of game, or, lying down on the
+    soft grass, would pass hours in gazing on the beautiful
+    landscape, listening to the dull whirr of the partridges in the
+    stubble-field or the dropping of the ripe apples in the
+    orchard. The love of nature was strong in the boy, and his
+    wonderful mistress taught him many of the profoundest lessons
+    of his life. He made poor progress at the school, however, and
+    his father was almost in despair. The whole family shook their
+    heads in solemn forebodings over the failure of this child of
+    ten to become a mental prodigy.</p>
+
+    <p>Miss Catharine Beecher, his eldest sister, was then teaching
+    a young ladies' school in Hartford, and she proposed to take
+    the boy and see what could be done with him. There were thirty
+    or forty girls in the school, and but this one boy, and the
+    reader may imagine the amount of studying he did. The girls
+    were full of spirits, and in their society the fun-loving
+    feature of his disposition burst out and grew with amazing
+    rapidity. He was always in mischief of some kind, to the great
+    delight of the girls, with whom he was extremely popular, and
+    to the despair of his sister, who began to fear that he was
+    hopelessly stupid.</p>
+
+    <p>The school was divided into two divisions in grammar
+    recitations, each of which had its leader. The leaders chose
+    their "sides" with great care, as these contests in grammar
+    were esteemed the most important part of the daily exercises.
+    Henry's name was generally called last, for no one chose him
+    except as a matter of necessity. He was sure to be a dead
+    weight to his leader.</p>
+
+    <p>"The fair leader of one of these divisions took the boy
+    aside to a private apartment, to put into him with female tact
+    and insinuation those definitions and distinctions on which the
+    honor of the class depended.</p>
+
+    <p>"'Now, Henry, A is the indefinite article, you see, and must
+    be used only with the singular noun. You can say <i>a man</i>,
+    but you can't say <i>a men</i>, can you?' 'Yes, I can say
+    <i>Amen</i>, too,' was the ready rejoinder. 'Father says it
+    always at the end of his prayers.'</p>
+
+    <p>"'Come, Henry, now don't be joking. Now, decline He.'
+    'Nominative he, possessive his, objective him.' 'You see, his
+    is possessive. Now, you can say his book, but you can't say him
+    book.' 'Yes, I do say hymn book, too,' said the impracticable
+    scholar, with a quizzical twinkle. Each one of these sallies
+    made his young teacher laugh, which was the victory he
+    wanted.</p>
+
+    <p>"'But now, Henry, seriously, just attend to the active and
+    passive voice. Now, <i>I strike</i>, is active, you see,
+    because if you strike you do something. But, <i>I am
+    struck</i>, is passive, because if you are struck you don't do
+    any thing, do you?'</p>
+
+    <p>"'Yes, I do; I strike back again.'</p>
+
+    <p>"Sometimes his views of philosophical subjects were offered
+    gratuitously. Being held rather of a frisky nature, his sister
+    appointed his seat at her elbow when she heard her classes. A
+    class in natural philosophy, not very well prepared, was
+    stumbling through the theory of the tides. 'I can explain
+    that,' said Henry. 'Well, you see, the sun, he catches hold of
+    the moon and pulls her, and she catches hold of the sea and
+    pulls that, and this makes the spring tides.'</p>
+
+    <p>"'But what makes the neap tides?'</p>
+
+    <p>"'Oh, that's when the sun stops to spit on his hands.'"</p>
+
+    <p>It will hardly surprise the reader to be told that Master
+    Henry remained with his sister only six months, and was
+    returned at the end of that time to his father as an
+    indifferent scholar and a most inveterate joker.</p>
+
+    <p>A change now occurred in his life. When he was twelve years
+    old his father removed to Boston to assume the charge of the
+    Hanover-Street Church. Here the boy had a chance to see
+    something more than nature, and to employ his powers of
+    observation in receiving impressions from the daily life and
+    aspect of a large and crowded city. His father entered him at
+    the Boston Latin School, and appealed to him not to disgrace
+    his name any longer by his stupidity. The appeal roused the
+    little fellow's pride, and he set to work to show to his family
+    that he was not the dunce they had thought him. He went at his
+    studies manfully, mastering the tedious puzzle of the Latin
+    verbs and nouns, and acquiring a respectable acquaintance with
+    the grammar of that language. It was a terrible task to him,
+    for he had no liking for the language, and did his work merely
+    to please his father and escape disgrace. His success cost him
+    a share of his health, and his vigorous constitution began to
+    show the effects of such intense application. His father
+    noticed this, and as a diversion to his mind advised him to
+    enter upon a course of biographical reading. He read the lives
+    of Captain Cook, Nelson, and the great naval commanders of the
+    world, and at once became possessed of the desire to go to sea.
+    This feeling made him restless and discontented, and he
+    resolved to leave home and ship on board some vessel sailing
+    from the harbor. He hovered about the wharves, conversing with
+    the sailors and captains, and sometimes carrying his little
+    bundle with him. But the thoughts of home were too strong for
+    him, and he could never quite summon up resolution enough to
+    run away. In a fit of desperation he wrote a letter to his
+    brother, telling him of his wish to go to sea, and informing
+    him that he should first ask his father's permission, and if
+    that were not granted he should go without it. This letter he
+    dropped where his father would be sure to find it. The old
+    gentleman soon discovered it, and, reading it, put it into his
+    pocket without comment. The next day he asked the boy if he had
+    ever thought of any definite avocation for his future life.</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes," said Henry, "I want to go to sea. I want to enter the
+    navy, be a midshipman, and rise to be a commander."</p>
+
+    <p>"Oh, I see," said the Doctor, cheerfully; "but in order to
+    prepare for that you must study mathematics and
+    navigation."</p>
+
+    <p>"I am ready, sir."</p>
+
+    <p>"Very well. I'll send you up to Amherst next week, to Mount
+    Pleasant, and then you'll begin your preparatory studies at
+    once. As soon as you are well prepared, I presume I can make
+    interest to get you an appointment."</p>
+
+    <p>The boy was delighted, and the next week started for
+    Amherst. The Doctor felt sure that the sailor scheme would
+    never come to any thing, and exclaimed, exultantly, as he bade
+    his son good-by, "I shall have that boy in the ministry
+    yet."</p>
+
+    <p>At the Mount Pleasant Institute he roomed with his teacher
+    in mathematics, a young man named Fitzgerald, and a warm
+    friendship sprung up between them. Fitzgerald saw that his
+    pupil had no natural talent or taste for mathematics; but
+    instead of despairing in consequence of this discovery, he
+    redoubled his efforts. Appealing to his pupil's pride and
+    ambition, he kept him well to his task, and succeeded in
+    implanting in him a fair knowledge of the science. Young
+    Beecher also took lessons in elocution from Professor John E.
+    Lovell. Under the instructions of this able teacher, he learned
+    to manage his voice, and to overcome the thickness and
+    indistinctness of utterance which previous to this had troubled
+    him so much. He continued at this school for three years,
+    devoting himself to study with determination and success, and
+    taking rank as one of the most promising pupils of the
+    school.</p>
+
+    <p>During his first year at Mount Pleasant, he became deeply
+    impressed with a sense of his religious responsibility at a
+    famous revival which was held in the place, and from that time
+    resolved to devote himself entirely to preparing for his
+    entrance into the ministry when he should attain the proper
+    age. Henceforth he applied himself with characteristic energy
+    to his studies and to his religious duties, and rose steadily
+    in the esteem of his teachers and friends. He entered Amherst
+    College upon the completion of his preparatory course, and
+    graduated from that institution in 1834.</p>
+
+    <p>In 1832, Dr. Beecher removed from Boston to Cincinnati, to
+    enter upon the Presidency of Lane Seminary, to which he had
+    been elected. Henry followed him to the West after his
+    graduation at Amherst, and completed his theological studies at
+    the seminary, under the tuition of his father and Professor
+    Stowe, the latter of whom married Henry's sister Harriet, in
+    1836. Having finished his course, he was ordained.</p>
+
+    <p>"As the time drew near in which Mr. Beecher was to assume
+    the work of the ministry," says Mrs. Stowe, "he was oppressed
+    by a deep melancholy. He had the most exalted ideas of what
+    ought to be done by a Christian minister. He had transferred to
+    that profession all those ideals of courage, enterprise, zeal,
+    and knightly daring which were the dreams of his boyhood, and
+    which he first hoped to realize in the naval profession. He
+    felt that the holy calling stood high above all others; that to
+    enter it from any unholy motive, or to enter and not do a
+    worthy work in it, was a treason to all honor.</p>
+
+    <p>"His view of the great object of the ministry was sincerely
+    and heartily the same with that of his father, to secure the
+    regeneration of the individual heart by the Divine Spirit, and
+    thereby to effect the regeneration of human society. The
+    problem that oppressed him was, how to do this. His father had
+    used certain moral and intellectual weapons, and used them
+    strongly and effectively, because employing them with
+    undoubting faith. So many other considerations had come into
+    his mind to qualify and limit that faith, so many new modes of
+    thought and inquiry, that were partially inconsistent with the
+    received statements of his party, that he felt he could never
+    grasp and wield them with the force which could make them
+    efficient. It was no comfort to him that he could wield the
+    weapons of his theological party so as to dazzle and confound
+    objectors, while all the time conscious in his own soul of
+    objections more profound and perplexities more bewildering.
+    Like the shepherd boy of old, he saw the giant of sin stalking
+    through the world, defying the armies of the living God, and
+    longed to attack him, but the armor in which he had been
+    equipped for the battle was no help, but only an
+    incumbrance!</p>
+
+    <p>"His brother, who studied with him, had already become an
+    unbeliever and thrown up the design of preaching, and he could
+    not bear to think of adding to his father's trials by deserting
+    the standard. Yet his distress and perplexity were so great
+    that at times he seriously contemplated going into some other
+    profession....</p>
+
+    <p>"In his last theological term he took a Bible class in the
+    city of Cincinnati, and began studying and teaching the
+    Evangelists. With the course of this study and teaching came a
+    period of spiritual clairvoyance. His mental perplexities were
+    relieved, and the great question of 'what to preach' was
+    solved. The shepherd boy laid aside his cumbrous armor, and
+    found in a clear brook a simple stone that smote down the
+    giant; and so, from the clear waters of the Gospel narrative
+    Mr. Beecher drew forth that 'white stone with a new name,'
+    which was to be the talisman of his ministry. To present Jesus
+    Christ personally as the Friend and Helper of humanity, Christ
+    as God impersonate, eternally and by a necessity of His nature
+    helpful, and remedial, and restorative; the Friend of each
+    individual soul, and thus the Friend of all society,&mdash;this
+    was the one thing which his soul rested on as a worthy object
+    in entering the ministry. He afterward said, in speaking of his
+    feelings at this time,'I was like the man in the story to whom
+    a fairy gave a purse with a single piece of money in it, which
+    he found always came again as soon as he had spent it. I
+    thought I knew at least one thing to preach. I found it
+    included every thing.'"</p>
+
+    <p>Upon being ordained, Mr. Beecher married, and accepted a
+    call to Lawrenceburg, Indiana, a little town on the Ohio River,
+    about twenty miles below Cincinnati. His salary was small and
+    the work was hard. He was not only pastor, but sexton as well,
+    and in this capacity he swept out the church, made the fires,
+    filled and trimmed the lamps, and rang the bell. Says he, "I
+    did all but come to hear myself preach&mdash;that they had to
+    do."</p>
+
+    <p>He did not remain here long, however, but soon accepted a
+    call to Indianapolis, the capital of the State, where he lived
+    for eight years. He occupied a tasteful cottage on the
+    outskirts of the town, and gathered about him his household
+    treasures, which consisted of his family, his library, his
+    horse, cow, pigs, and chickens. He was an enthusiast in matters
+    of agriculture and horticulture, and besides importing from the
+    East the best varieties of fruit-trees, roses, etc., he edited
+    a horticultural paper, which had a fair circulation.</p>
+
+    <p>The eight years of his ministry in Indianapolis make up a
+    period of hard and useful work. He held two services on Sunday,
+    and five meetings during the week in various parts of the city,
+    and with the consent of his people gave three months of each
+    year to missionary work in other parts of the State. While
+    engaged in this latter duty he traveled about the State on
+    horseback and preached daily.</p>
+
+    <p>His experience in the ministry, as well as his study of the
+    lives of the apostles, convinced him that success in his
+    profession&mdash;by which I mean the successful winning of
+    souls to God&mdash;was not to be won by preaching controversial
+    or dry doctrinal sermons. He must seize upon some vital truth,
+    admitted by all parties, and bring that home to men's minds. He
+    must preach to them of their daily, hourly trials and
+    temptations, joys and comforts, and he resolved that this
+    should be the character of his preaching. Then came the
+    question, how shall one man know that which is uppermost in the
+    thoughts of the many? He went into the places of public resort,
+    where men were accustomed to lounge and to gather to hear the
+    news, and made it his practice to listen to their
+    conversations. In this way he began to know the people to whom
+    he preached as few pastors know their flocks, and he was
+    enabled by this knowledge to apply his teachings to their daily
+    lives, and to send them forth to their duties warned by his
+    reproofs or cheered by his intelligent counsel and sympathy.
+    This practice, modified at times as circumstances have
+    required, he has steadfastly continued, and in it lies the
+    secret of his success as a preacher. Said a gentleman, not long
+    since, himself a member of a different denomination, "Beecher's
+    sermons do me more good than any I hear elsewhere. They never
+    fail to touch upon some topic of importance that has engaged my
+    thoughts during the week. Dropping all doctrinal
+    technicalities, and steering clear of the vexed questions of
+    theology, he talks to me in such a way that I am able to carry
+    Christ into the most trifling of my daily affairs, and to carry
+    Him there as my Sympathizer and Helper, as well as my Judge."
+    He soon became the most popular preacher in the city, and,
+    thanks to the genuineness of his gifts and the earnestness of
+    his zeal, he was enabled to add many to the kingdom of Christ
+    who had been drawn to hear him merely by their curiosity. Among
+    these was his brother Charles, whose skepticism has been spoken
+    of elsewhere in this chapter. Becoming deeply impressed at a
+    revival in Indianapolis, Charles Beecher, by his brother's
+    advice, took a Bible class, and began to teach the story of
+    Christ. The plan worked most happily. Charles solved all the
+    questions which had perplexed his mind, reentered upon his
+    religious life with increased fervor, and soon afterward
+    entered the ministry.</p>
+
+    <p>In August, 1847, Mr. Beecher received a call to Plymouth
+    Church, Brooklyn, which had just been founded. He promptly
+    accepted it. Breaking up his home in Indiana, he removed to
+    Brooklyn, and was publicly installed pastor of Plymouth Church
+    on the 11th of November, 1847. He at once "announced in
+    Plymouth pulpit the same principles that he had in
+    Indianapolis, namely, his determination to preach Christ among
+    them not as an absolute system of doctrines, not as a bygone
+    historical personage, but as the living Lord and God, and to
+    bring all the ways and usages of society to the test of His
+    standards. He announced to all whom it might concern, that he
+    considered temperance and antislavery as a part of the Gospel
+    of Christ, and should preach them to the people
+    accordingly."</p>
+
+    <p>It is no part of my purpose to consider Mr. Beecher as a
+    politician. I deal with him here not as the partisan of a
+    political organization, but as a minister of the Gospel. In
+    politics he has always been a Republican of the Radical type,
+    but has generally inclined to a conservative construction of
+    that creed. Many of his warmest friends take issue with him in
+    his political views, and he has not always been able to lead
+    his congregation with him in this respect.</p>
+
+    <p>Soon after assuming the charge of Plymouth Church Mr.
+    Beecher became a regular contributor to "The Independent," a
+    paper which he had helped to establish. His articles were
+    marked with an asterisk, and were widely read. They dealt with
+    every topic of interest, principally with slavery, and were
+    vigorous and full of thought. A number of them were afterward
+    collected and published in book form as the "Star Papers."
+    Since then he has acted as editor of "The Independent," and is
+    at present the editor of "The Christian Union." He has written
+    a novel of New England life, called "Norwood," for "The New
+    York Ledger," and still writes a weekly paper for that journal.
+    He is at present engaged upon a "Life of Christ," which is to
+    be the crowning labor of his life. Besides these labors, he has
+    been until recently almost constantly in the lecture field, and
+    has spoken frequently before popular assemblies on the
+    political questions of the day.</p>
+
+    <p>These labors have filled up the leisure time left him after
+    discharging his duties as pastor of his church, which have
+    never been neglected upon any occasion. In this field his work
+    has been faithful and constant. He has labored in it for nearly
+    twenty-three years, and his work has not been without its
+    reward. Such sermons as his could not fail of doing good even
+    if spoken to half a dozen people. How great, then, must be
+    their effect when addressed to the vast audiences to which he
+    speaks! His congregation averages over twenty-five hundred at
+    every service, being the largest regular congregation in
+    existence. His sermons are reported by a stenographer, and are
+    printed each week in pamphlet form, and in this manner find
+    their way into thousands of hands. The "Plymouth Pulpit," in
+    which they are published, has a regular weekly circulation of
+    six thousand copies, and it is estimated that each copy is read
+    by at least five persons, which gives the preacher, in addition
+    to his own congregation, an audience of more than thirty
+    thousand persons per week.</p>
+
+    <p>When Plymouth Church was organized, the wise heads predicted
+    a failure for it; but it has grown and prospered, until it is
+    now the most compact and the best organized congregation in
+    America. It is dependent upon no synod or other religious body,
+    but manages its affairs entirely as it pleases. The control is
+    vested in a board of trustees, of which Mr. Beecher is
+    <i>ex-officio</i> a member. He has no superiority in this board
+    unless called by its members to preside over its meetings. His
+    influence is of course all-powerful; but as the trustees are
+    shrewd business men, they sometimes carry out their own views
+    in preference to his. The church is supported by the sale of
+    its pews. This yields it an annual income of between forty and
+    fifty thousand dollars. The pastor receives a handsome
+    salary&mdash;said to be the largest in the United
+    States&mdash;and the rest goes into the treasury of the church.
+    As the period of the annual sale of pews approaches, Mr.
+    Beecher makes it his practice to preach a sermon in which he
+    reviews the questions of the day, and as far as possible marks
+    out his course with regard to them during the ensuing year.
+    This he does in order that every one purchasing a seat in
+    Plymouth Church may know just what is in store for him from the
+    pulpit. The surplus revenue, after the pastor's salary and the
+    current expenses are paid, has until recently been devoted to
+    extinguishing the debt upon the church. That burden now being
+    off the shoulders of the congregation, the money is applied to
+    missionary work in Brooklyn. "Two missions have been largely
+    supported by the funds derived from Plymouth Church, and the
+    time and personal labor of its members. A mechanics'
+    reading-room is connected with one of these. No church in the
+    country furnishes a larger body of lay teachers, exhorters, and
+    missionaries in every department of human and Christian
+    labor."</p>
+
+    <p>Plymouth Church is located in Orange Street, between Hicks
+    and Henry Streets, in Brooklyn, and not far from the Fulton
+    Ferry. Many strangers, whose expectations are based upon the
+    fame of the pastor, are disappointed in the plain and simple
+    exterior of red brick, as they come prepared to see a
+    magnificent Gothic temple. The interior, however, rarely fails
+    to please all comers. It is plain and simple, but elegant and
+    comfortable. It is a vast hall, around the four sides of which
+    sweeps an immense gallery. The interior is painted white, with
+    a tinge of pink, and the carpets and cushions of the seats are
+    of a rich, warm red. The rows of seats in the body of the
+    church are semicircular, and those in the gallery rise as in an
+    amphitheater, from the front to the wall. At the far end of the
+    church is a raised platform containing merely a chair and a
+    table. The table is a pretty ornament, and is the "Plymouth
+    Pulpit." It is made of wood brought from the Garden of
+    Gethsemane. In the gallery behind the pulpit is the great
+    organ&mdash;one of the largest and finest in the Union. The
+    church will seat over twenty-five hundred people, but in order
+    to do this, chairs are placed in the aisles. These chairs are
+    sold as well as the pews.</p>
+
+    <p>Every Sunday morning the streets are filled with persons on
+    their way to attend the services at Plymouth Church. They come
+    not only from Brooklyn, but from New York, and even from Jersey
+    City and Hoboken. The yard and street in front of the church
+    are quickly filled with the throng, but the doors are guarded
+    by policemen, and none but pew-holders are permitted to enter
+    the church until ten minutes before the hour for service.
+    Without this precaution the regular congregation would be
+    crowded out of their seats every Sunday by strangers.</p>
+
+    <p>At ten minutes before the hour for service the doors are
+    thrown open, and very soon there is not even standing room in
+    the vast interior, and generally the vestibules are full.</p>
+
+    <p>Near the pulpit is placed a basket of exquisite flowers, and
+    sometimes the entire platform is decorated in the same way.
+    Most commonly some little child perches itself up among the
+    flowers, and this pretty sight never fails to bring a smile of
+    pleasure to the pastor's face as he enters the church. He comes
+    in through a little door under the gallery, behind the pulpit.
+    He is dressed in a plain suit of black, with a Byron collar and
+    a black stock. His movements are quiet and graceful, although
+    quick and energetic. His manner in opening the services is
+    quiet and earnest, and at once impresses his hearers with the
+    solemnity of the occasion. He reads the Bible in an easy,
+    unconstrained manner, as if he enjoyed the task, and in his
+    prayers, which are extempore, he carries the hearts of all his
+    hearers with him to the Throne of Grace. He joins heartily in
+    the singing, which is congregational. It was feared that the
+    organ would prove a great temptation to do away with this style
+    of singing, but this has not been the case. The magnificent
+    instrument is used only to accompany the congregation, and
+    there swells up such a volume of harmony from this vast throng
+    as is never listened to outside of Plymouth Church. The singing
+    is wonderful.</p>
+
+    <p>The gem of the whole service, however, is the sermon; and
+    these sermons are characteristic of the man. They come warm and
+    fresh from his heart, and they go home to the hearer, giving
+    him food for thought for days afterward. To attempt to describe
+    his manner would be to paint the sunbeam. Eloquence can be
+    felt, but it can not be described. He enchains the attention of
+    his auditors from the first, and they hang upon his utterances
+    with rapt eagerness until the close of the sermon.</p>
+
+    <p>He knows human nature thoroughly, and he talks to his people
+    of what they have been thinking of during the week, of trials
+    that have perplexed them, and of joys which have blessed them.
+    He takes the clerk and the merchant to task for their conduct
+    in the walks of business, and warns them of the snares and
+    pitfalls which lie along their paths. He strips the thin guise
+    of honesty from the questionable transactions of Wall Street,
+    and holds them up to public scorn. He startles many a one by
+    his sudden penetration and denunciation of what that one
+    supposes to be the secrets of his heart. His dramatic power is
+    extraordinary. He can hardly be responsible for it, since it
+    breaks forth almost without his will. It is simply unavoidable
+    with him. He moves his audience to tears, or brings a mirthful
+    smile to their lips, with a power that is irresistible. His
+    illustrations and figures are drawn chiefly from nature, and
+    are fresh and striking. They please the subtlest philosopher
+    who hears him, and illuminate the mind of the average listener
+    with a flood of light. He can startle his people with the
+    terrors of the law, but he prefers to preach the Gospel of
+    Love. "God's love for those who are scattered and lost," he
+    says, "is intenser and deeper than the love even of a
+    mother.... God longs to bring you home more than you long to
+    get there. He has been calling, calling, calling, and listening
+    for your answer. And when you are found, and you lay your head
+    on the bosom of Jesus, and you are at rest, you will not be so
+    glad as He will be who declared that, like a shepherd, he had
+    joy over one sinner that repented more than over ninety and
+    nine just persons that needed no repentance."</p>
+
+    <p>Religion is to him an abiding joy; it is perfect love, and
+    casteth out fear. It has no gloom, no terror in it, and he says
+    to his people: "If God gave you gayety and cheer of spirits,
+    lift up the careworn by it. Wherever you go, shine and sing. In
+    every household there is drudgery; in every household there is
+    sorrow; in every household there is low-thoughted evil. If you
+    come as a prince, with a cheerful, buoyant nature, in the name
+    of God, do not lay aside those royal robes of yours. Let humor
+    bedew duty; let it flash across care. Let gayety take charge of
+    dullness. So employ these qualities that they shall be to life
+    what carbonic acid is to wine, making it foam and sparkle."</p>
+
+    <p>The sum and substance, the burden of all his preaching is
+    Christ: "'Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of
+    the world!' I present Jesus to you as the atoning Saviour; as
+    God's sacrifice for sin; as that new and living way by which
+    alone a sinful creature can ascend and meet a pure and just
+    God. I bring this question home to you as a sinner. O man! full
+    of transgressions, habitual in iniquities, tainted and
+    tarnished, utterly undone before God, what will you do with
+    this Jesus that comes as God's appointed sacrifice for sin,
+    your only hope and your only Saviour? Will you accept him? Will
+    you, by personal and living faith, accept him as your Saviour
+    from sin? I ask not that you should go with me into a discourse
+    upon the relations of Christ's life, of his sufferings, of his
+    death; to the law of God, or to the government of God. Whatever
+    may be the philosophy of those relations, the matter in hand is
+    one of faith rather than of philosophy; and the question is,
+    Will you take Christ to be your soul's Saviour?"</p>
+
+    <p>Having selected his theme, and formed a general plan of
+    treatment, Mr. Beecher trusts a great deal to the inspiration
+    of the moment for his language and illustrations. Some time
+    ago, in reply to a friend who asked how he prepared his
+    sermons, he said he generally has an idea during the week as to
+    what he will preach about on Sunday, but does not attempt any
+    thing like systematic preparation until an hour or two before
+    going into the pulpit. Sometimes it is easy to block out a
+    sermon; but again it is hard work, and he does not fairly get
+    into it until the first bell rings. He writes out the headings
+    of his subject, and marks the proper places for illustration.
+    He does not confine himself to this written outline, however,
+    but, once in the pulpit, changes it according to the impulse of
+    the moment. He never preaches the same sermon twice, though he
+    may use the same text several times, treating it in a different
+    way each time. He endeavors to preach his best sermons on
+    stormy days, in order that the desire to hear his best efforts
+    may keep his congregation from degenerating into "fair-weather
+    Christians." "Once," he said, laughing, "it snowed or rained
+    every Sabbath in a certain winter, and the effort I had to make
+    to remain faithful to this rule came near killing me." When
+    asked if he studied his prayers, he answered promptly: "Never.
+    I carry a feeling with me such as a mother would have for her
+    children were they lost in a great forest. I feel that on every
+    side my people are in danger, and that many of them are like
+    babes, weak and helpless. My heart goes out in sorrow and in
+    anxiety toward them, and at times I seem to carry all their
+    burdens. I find that when one's heart is wrapped and twined
+    around the hearts of others, it is not difficult to pray."</p>
+
+    <p>The church is provided with a large lecture-room, a study
+    for the pastor, and an elegant parlor. Mr. Beecher does not pay
+    pastoral visits to his people, unless he is sent for to visit
+    the sick and dying, or persons seeking help in their religious
+    struggles. His parishioners are scattered over so wide a
+    territory that a systematic course of visiting would consume
+    all his time. In place of these visits, he meets his
+    congregation at stated times in social gatherings in the church
+    parlor, and these evenings are looked forward to with eagerness
+    by both pastor and people.</p>
+
+    <p>The most characteristic meeting of this congregation,
+    however, even more so than the Sunday services, is the Friday
+    evening meeting, which is held in the lecture-room. This room
+    is plain and simple. It is provided with comfortable seats and
+    a grand piano. There is no pulpit in it, but a small table and
+    a chair are placed for the pastor on a low platform covered
+    with green baize. The object is to banish every thing like
+    formalism, and to make the meeting as free and unconstrained as
+    a social gathering. As at the Sunday services, the house is
+    full, but now the persons present are almost entirely members
+    of the church. Strangers rarely come to these meetings, and in
+    staying away from them miss the chance of seeing the true inner
+    life of Plymouth Church. A gentleman who was present at one of
+    them, a few years ago, wrote the following account of it for
+    the "Atlantic Monthly:"</p>
+
+    <div class='blkquot'>
+        <p>Mr. Beecher took his seat on the platform, and, after a
+        short pause, began the exercises by saying, in a low tone,
+        these words: "Six twenty-two."</p>
+
+        <p>A rustling of the leaves of hymn-books interpreted the
+        meaning of this mystical utterance, which otherwise might
+        have been taken as announcing a discourse upon the
+        prophetic numbers. The piano confirmed the interpretation;
+        and then the company burst into one of those joyous and
+        unanimous singings which are so enchanting a feature of the
+        services of this church. Loud rose the beautiful harmony of
+        voices, constraining every one to join in the song, even
+        those most unused to sing. When it was ended, the pastor,
+        in the same low tone, pronounced a name, upon which one of
+        the brethren rose to his feet, and the rest slightly
+        inclined v their heads.... The prayers were all brief,
+        perfectly quiet and simple, and free from the routine or
+        regulation expressions. There were but two or three of
+        them, alternating with singing; and when that part of the
+        exercises was concluded, Mr. Beecher had scarcely spoken.
+        The meeting ran alone, in the most spontaneous and pleasant
+        manner.... There was a pause after the last hymn died away,
+        and then Mr. Beecher, still seated, began, in the tone of
+        conversation, to speak somewhat after this manner:</p>
+
+        <p>"When," said he, "I first began to walk as a Christian,
+        in my youthful zeal I made many resolutions that were well
+        meant, but indiscreet. Among others, I remember I resolved
+        to pray, at least once, in some way, every hour that I was
+        awake. I tried faithfully to keep this resolution, but
+        never having succeeded a single day, I suffered the pangs
+        of self-reproach, until reflection satisfied me that the
+        only wisdom possible, with regard to such a resolve, was to
+        break it. I remember, too, that I made a resolution to
+        speak upon religion to every person with whom I
+        conversed,&mdash;on steamboats, in the streets, anywhere.
+        In this, also, I failed, as I ought; and I soon learned
+        that, in the sowing of such seed, as in other sowings,
+        times, and seasons, and methods must be considered and
+        selected, or a man may defeat his own object, and make
+        religion loathsome."</p>
+
+        <p>In language like this he introduced the topic of the
+        evening's conversation, which was, How far, and on what
+        occasions, and in what manner, one person may invade, so to
+        speak, the personality of another, and speak to him upon
+        his moral condition. The pastor expressed his own opinion,
+        always in the conversational tone, in a talk of ten
+        minutes' duration, in the course of which he applauded, not
+        censured, the delicacy which causes most people to shrink
+        from doing it. He said that a man's personality was not a
+        macadamized road for every vehicle to drive upon at will,
+        but rather a sacred inclosure, to be entered, if at all,
+        with the consent of the owner, and with deference to his
+        feelings and tastes. He maintained, however, that there
+        <i>were</i> times and modes in which this might properly be
+        done, and that every one <i>had</i> a duty to perform of
+        this nature. When he had finished his observations, he said
+        the subject was open to the remarks of others; whereupon a
+        brother instantly rose and made a very honest
+        confession.</p>
+
+        <p>He said that he had never attempted to perform the duty
+        in question without having a palpitation of the heart, and
+        a complete turning over of his inner man. He had often
+        reflected upon this curious fact, but was not able to
+        account for it. He had not allowed this repugnance to
+        prevent his doing the duty; but he always had to rush at it
+        and perform it by a sort of <i>coup de main</i>, for if he
+        allowed himself to think about the matter, he could not do
+        it at all. He concluded by saying that he should be very
+        much obliged to any one if he could explain this
+        mystery.</p>
+
+        <p>The pastor said: "May it not be the natural delicacy we
+        feel, and ought to feel, in approaching the interior
+        consciousness of another person?"</p>
+
+        <p>Another brother rose. There was no hanging back at this
+        meeting; there were no awkward pauses; every one seemed
+        full of matter. The new speaker was not inclined to admit
+        the explanation suggested by the pastor. "Suppose," said
+        he, "we were to see a man in imminent danger of immediate
+        destruction, and there was one way of escape, and but one,
+        which <i>we</i> saw, and he did not, should we feel any
+        delicacy in running up to him and urging him to fly for his
+        life? Is it not a want of faith on our part that causes the
+        reluctance and hesitation we all feel in urging others to
+        avoid a peril so much more momentous?"</p>
+
+        <p>Mr. Beecher said the cases were not parallel.
+        Irreligious persons, he remarked, were not in imminent
+        danger of immediate death; they might die to-morrow; but in
+        all probability they would not, and an ill-timed or
+        injudicious admonition might forever repel them. We must
+        accept the doctrine of probabilities, and act in accordance
+        with it in this particular, as in all others.</p>
+
+        <p>Another brother had a puzzle to present for solution. He
+        said that he too had experienced the repugnance to which
+        allusion had been made; but what surprised him most was,
+        that the more he loved a person, and the nearer he was
+        related to him, the more difficult he found it to converse
+        with him upon his spiritual state. Why is this? "I should
+        like to have this question answered," said he, "if there
+        <i>is</i> an answer to it."</p>
+
+        <p>Mr. Beecher observed that this was the universal
+        experience, and he was conscious himself of a peculiar
+        reluctance and embarrassment in approaching one of his own
+        household on the subject in question. He thought it was due
+        to the fact that we respect more the personal rights of
+        those near to us than we do those of others, and it was
+        more difficult to break in upon the routine of our ordinary
+        familiarity with them. We are accustomed to a certain tone
+        which it is highly embarrassing to jar upon.</p>
+
+        <p>Captain Duncan related two amusing anecdotes to
+        illustrate the right way and the wrong way of introducing
+        religious conversation. In his office there was sitting one
+        day a sort of lay preacher, who was noted for lugging in
+        his favorite topic in the most forbidding and abrupt
+        manner. A sea captain came in, who was introduced to this
+        individual.</p>
+
+        <p>"Captain Porter," said he, with awful solemnity, "are
+        you a captain in Israel?"</p>
+
+        <p>The honest sailor was so abashed and confounded at this
+        novel salutation, that he could only stammer out an
+        incoherent reply; and he was evidently disposed to give the
+        tactless zealot a piece of his mind, expressed in the
+        language of the quarter-deck. When the solemn man took his
+        leave, the disgusted captain said, "If ever I should be
+        coming to your office again, and that man should be here, I
+        wish you would send me word, and I'll stay away."</p>
+
+        <p>A few days after another clergyman chanced to be in the
+        office, no other than Mr. Beecher himself, and another
+        captain came in, a roistering, swearing, good-hearted
+        fellow. The conversation fell upon sea-sickness, a malady
+        to which Mr. Beecher is peculiarly liable. The captain also
+        was one of the few sailors who are always sea-sick in going
+        to sea, and gave a moving account of his sufferings from
+        that cause. Mr. Beecher, after listening attentively to his
+        tale, said, "Captain Duncan, if I was a preacher to such
+        sailors as your friend here, I should represent hell as an
+        eternal voyage, with every man on board in the agonies of
+        sea-sickness, the crisis always imminent, but never
+        coming."</p>
+
+        <p>This ludicrous and most unprofessional picture amused
+        the old salt exceedingly, and won his entire good will
+        toward the author of it; so that after Mr. Beecher left, he
+        said, "That's a good fellow, Captain Duncan. I like
+        <i>him</i>, and I'd like to hear him talk more."</p>
+
+        <p>Captain Duncan contended that this free and easy way of
+        address was just the thing for such characters. Mr. Beecher
+        had shown him, to his great surprise, that a man could be a
+        decent and comfortable human being although he was a
+        minister, and had so gained his confidence and good will
+        that he could say <i>any thing</i> to him at their next
+        interview. Captain Duncan finished his remarks by a decided
+        expression of his disapproval of the canting regulation
+        phrases so frequently employed by religious people, which
+        are perfectly nauseous to men of the world.</p>
+
+        <p>This interesting conversation lasted about
+        three-quarters of an hour, and ended, not because the theme
+        seemed exhausted, but because the time was up. We have only
+        given enough of it to convey some little idea of its
+        spirit. The company again broke into one of their cheerful
+        hymns, and the meeting was dismissed in the usual
+        manner.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <p>During the late war, Mr. Beecher took an active and
+    energetic part in support of the cause of the Union. His labors
+    were so severe that his health was considerably impaired, and
+    his voice began to fail him. His physicians ordered him to seek
+    rest and recreation in a tour through Europe, and he
+    reluctantly obeyed them. He was much benefited by his visit to
+    the Continent, but on his return to England, on his way home,
+    being solicited to speak in that country in behalf of the
+    Union, he delivered a series of powerful appeals, which
+    exhausted the greater part of the strength he had gained on the
+    Continent, and caused him to return home almost as ill as when
+    he went abroad.</p>
+
+    <p>Soon after his return the war closed, and he went to
+    Charleston to deliver the address at Fort Sumter upon the
+    occasion of the rehoisting of the flag of the United States
+    over that work. The news of the assassination of Mr. Lincoln
+    met him upon his return to Brooklyn, and drew from him one of
+    his most memorable sermons. At the close of hostilities, he
+    preached a sermon to his congregation, urging forgiveness and
+    conciliation toward the South as the policy of the hour, saying
+    truly that that crisis was a rare opportunity which would never
+    come again, if spurned. The sermon was unpopular, and caused
+    him some trouble even in his own congregation.</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Beecher is now fifty-seven years old, but is still in
+    the flush of his intellectual vigor. His eye is as bright, his
+    step as firm and elastic, and his voice as clear and ringing as
+    when he preached his first sermon. His powers have grown with
+    his work, and every year he seems to rise higher in his
+    intellectual supremacy. As a pulpit orator, he has no superior,
+    and certainly there is no man in all this round earth whose
+    eloquence has been productive of greater good to the cause he
+    serves. He is a stout, stocky man in appearance, with a large
+    square face and heavy features. It is the face of a great
+    orator and a genial, warm-hearted man. He is careful and
+    temperate in all his habits&mdash;except that he will work too
+    hard&mdash;and enjoys robust health. He lives plainly and
+    dresses simply. He impresses one at once with his immense
+    energy, and you would recognize him immediately as a man of
+    unusual power in his community. Said a friend not long since,
+    "I was standing by Beecher in a book-store to-day. He was
+    perfectly still, as he was waiting for a parcel to be done up,
+    but he reminded me of a big locomotive full of steam and fire,
+    and ready to display its immense force at any moment."</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Beecher is not only a preacher, but a capital farmer. He
+    has a model farm at Peekskill, on the Hudson, and is brimful of
+    agricultural and horticultural theories, which he carries into
+    practice successfully. His love for flowers is a perfect
+    passion, and dates from his boyhood. He is an excellent
+    mechanic, and makes the repairs on his own premises, as far as
+    he can, with a keen relish, which he has doubtless inherited
+    from his father. He is thoroughly read in history, and as an
+    art critic has no superior. His house is filled with art gems,
+    which are his pride. He has not lost the love of reverie which
+    marked his boyhood, but he is eminently a practical man, and
+    prefers the practical questions of theology to those merely
+    theoretical. He is as little like the typical parson as one can
+    imagine, and yet he is one whose place will be hard to fill
+    when he is gone, and whose works will live in the grateful
+    memory of those whom his counsel has saved from sin, and his
+    sympathy encouraged to continue in the path of duty.</p>
+    <hr style='width: 65%;'>
+    <a name='CHAPTER_XXXII'></a>
+
+    <h2>CHAPTER XXXII.</h2>
+
+    <h3>PETER CARTWRIGHT.</h3><br>
+
+
+    <p>One of the most remarkable men in the American ministry is
+    <span class="small-caps">Peter Cartwright</span>, the
+    "Backwoods Preacher." Sixty-seven years of ministerial labors
+    have passed over his head, and yet he still continues in the
+    field in which he has done such good service, and retains all
+    the popularity and much of the fire of his younger days.</p>
+
+    <p>He was born in Amherst County, Virginia, on the 1st of
+    September, 1785. His father had been a soldier in the
+    Revolutionary War, and his mother was an orphan. Shortly after
+    the close of the war, the Cartwrights removed from Virginia to
+    Kentucky, which was then an almost unbroken wilderness. The
+    journey was accompanied with considerable danger, as the
+    Indians were not yet driven west of the Ohio, but the family
+    reached their destination in safety. For two years they lived
+    on a rented farm in Lincoln County, Kentucky, and at the end of
+    that time removed to what was called the Green River Country,
+    and settled in Logan County, nine miles south of Russellville,
+    the county seat, and within one mile of the State line of
+    Tennessee.</p>
+
+    <p>The portion of Logan County in which young Cartwright's
+    childhood and youth were passed was the very last place one
+    Would have cared to bring up a candidate for the ministry. It
+    was called "Rogue's Harbor," and was thickly settled with
+    fugitives from justice from all parts of the Union. They
+    actually constituted a majority of the inhabitants of the
+    district, and when the respectable citizens sought to bring
+    them to justice they readily "swore each other clear," and thus
+    set the law at defiance. They carried on such a course of
+    outrage and violence that the respectable citizens were at
+    length compelled to combine for defence against them by means
+    of an organization known as the Regulators. Several fierce
+    encounters took place between the desperadoes and the
+    Regulators, in which many lives were lost, before the supremacy
+    of the law was established.</p>
+
+    <p>"When my lather settled in Logan County," says Mr.
+    Cartwright, "there was not a newspaper printed South of Green
+    River, no mill short of forty miles, and no schools worth the
+    name. Sunday was a day set apart for hunting, fishing,
+    horse-racing, card-playing, balls, dances, and all kinds of
+    jollity and mirth. We killed our meat out in the woods, wild,
+    and beat our meal and hominy with a pestle and mortar. We
+    stretched a deer-skin over a hoop, burned holes in it with the
+    prongs of a fork, sifted our meal, baked our bread, eat it, and
+    it was first-rate eating, too. We raised, or gathered out of
+    the woods, our own tea. We had sage, bohea, cross-vine, spice,
+    and sassafras teas in abundance. As for coffee, I am not sure
+    that I ever smelled it for ten years. We made our sugar out of
+    the water of the maple-tree, and our molasses, too. These were
+    great luxuries in those days. We raised our own cotton and
+    flax. We water-rotted our flax, broke it by hand, scutched it,
+    picked the seed out of the cotton with our fingers; our mothers
+    and sisters carded, spun, and wove it into cloth, and they cut
+    and made our garments and bed-clothes, etc. And when we got on
+    a new suit thus manufactured, and sallied out into company, we
+    thought ourselves as <i>big as any body</i>."</p>
+
+    <p>Young Peter grew up in this rough country with a
+    constitution of iron, and a fair share of Western courage,
+    independence, and energy. He was sent by his father to a
+    neighboring school, but the teacher was an indifferent one, and
+    he learned merely to read and write and cipher imperfectly.</p>
+
+    <p>He was a "wild, wicked boy," he tells us, and grew up to
+    delight in horse-racing, card-playing, and dancing. His father
+    seems to have enjoyed having so dashing a son, but his mother,
+    who was a pious woman, took his course seriously to heart, and
+    wept and prayed over her boy as only a Christian mother can.
+    She often talked to him, and moved him so deeply that he
+    frequently vowed to lead a better life; but his pleasures were
+    too tempting, and he fell back again into his old habits. His
+    father presented him with a race-horse and a pack of cards, and
+    he became known among his youthful companions as one of the
+    most fearless riders and the luckiest fellow at cards in the
+    county. The good mother wept and prayed all the more, and the
+    boy hid his cards from her to keep her from burning them.</p>
+
+    <p>In 1801, when he was sixteen years old, a change came over
+    him. He had been out with his father and brother to attend a
+    wedding in the neighborhood. The affair was conducted with all
+    the uproarious merriment incident to those days, and when Peter
+    returned home and began to think over it, he felt condemned at
+    having passed his time in such a manner. "My mother was in
+    bed," says he. "It seemed to me, all of a sudden, my blood
+    rushed to my head, my heart palpitated, in a few minutes I
+    turned blind, an awful impression rested on my mind that death
+    had come to me and I was unprepared to die. I fell on my knees
+    and began to ask God to have mercy on me. My mother sprang from
+    her bed, and was soon on her knees by my side, praying for me,
+    and exhorting me to look to Christ for mercy, and then and
+    there I promised the Lord if he would spare me I would seek and
+    serve Him, and I never fully broke that promise. My mother
+    prayed for me a long time. At length we lay down, but there was
+    little sleep for me. Next morning I rose, feeling wretched
+    beyond expression. I tried to read in the Testament, and
+    retired many times to secret prayer through the day, but found
+    no relief. I gave up my race-horse to my father and requested
+    him to sell him. I went and brought my pack of cards and gave
+    them to mother, who threw them into the fire, and they were
+    consumed. I fasted, watched, and prayed, and engaged in regular
+    reading of the Testament. I was so distressed and miserable
+    that I was incapable of any regular business."</p>
+
+    <p>Several months passed away, during which time Peter had
+    seasons of comfort and hopes of forgiveness, but during the
+    greater portion he was wretched and miserable, filled with such
+    a fear of the devil that he was almost convinced that Satan was
+    really present with him to keep him from God. A camp-meeting,
+    held in the vicinity of his father's house, in the spring of
+    1801, completed his conversion and gave him peace.</p>
+
+    <p>"To this meeting," says he, "I repaired a guilty, wretched
+    sinner. On the Saturday evening of said meeting I went, with
+    weeping multitudes, and bowed before the stand, and earnestly
+    prayed for mercy. In the midst of a solemn struggle of soul, an
+    impression was made on my mind as though a voice said to me:
+    'Thy sins are all forgiven thee,' Divine light flashed all
+    around me, unspeakable joy sprang up in my soul. I rose to my
+    feet, opened my eyes, and it really seemed to me as if I was in
+    heaven; the trees, the leaves on them, and every thing seemed,
+    and I really thought were, praising God. My mother raised the
+    shout, my Christian friends crowded around me and joined me in
+    praising God.... I have never doubted that the Lord did, then
+    and there, forgive my sins and give me religion." He went on
+    his way rejoicing, and in June, 1801, was formally received
+    into the Methodist Episcopal Church. In May, 1802, he was
+    appointed an exhorter. He shrank from accepting the position,
+    as he distrusted his own abilities, but finally yielded to his
+    presiding elder's wishes and entered upon his work. In the fall
+    of that year his parents removed to Lewiston County, toward the
+    mouth of the Cumberland River.</p>
+
+    <p>Although he was but eighteen years old, his presiding elder
+    had detected in him signs of unusual promise, and had resolved
+    to bring him into active labor for the Church at once, and
+    accordingly, upon his departure for his new home, Peter was
+    given authority to lay out and organize a new circuit, the plan
+    of which he was to submit to the presiding elder for approval.
+    The boy hesitated, frightened by the magnitude of the task, but
+    being encouraged by his superiors, accepted the trust, and thus
+    began his labors as a preacher of the Word. Upon reaching his
+    new home, he attended a tolerably good school in the vicinity,
+    hoping to acquire a better education, but the pupils and
+    teacher persecuted him so sorely that he was obliged to
+    withdraw. Determining to lose no time in waiting for an
+    education, he at once began the work of preaching. Being
+    possessed of strong natural sense, a ready wit, and being
+    thoroughly imbued with the spirit of frontier life, he was just
+    the man to carry the Gospel home to the hearts of the rude
+    pioneers of the great West. His manner was that of a
+    backwoodsman, and he had no city airs and graces to offend the
+    plain, rough people to whom he preached. He was emphatically
+    one of them. He offered them the plain Gospel, and gave
+    theological theories a wide berth.</p>
+
+    <p>His plan of operations was adapted to the rudest intellect.
+    It was to thunder the terrors of the law into the ears of his
+    converts, or, in his own words, to "shake them over hell until
+    they smelt brimstone right strong," and make them see the
+    fearful condition in which they lay by reason of their sin. Man
+    was to him a wretched, degraded creature, and the only way to
+    bring him to God was to drive him there by the terrors of the
+    law. Our preacher had very little faith in the quieter, more
+    persuasive means of grace. His first effort was to give the
+    souls of his hearers a good shaking up, bring them face to face
+    with hell and its torments, and then, having forced them to
+    flee from the wrath to come, to trust to their future Christian
+    experience for the means of acquiring a knowledge of the tender
+    mercies of the Saviour. It must be confessed that this was the
+    only plan open to him in the field in which he labored. The
+    people to whom he preached were a rude, rough set, mainly
+    ignorant and superstitious, and many of them sunk in the depths
+    of drunkenness and viciousness. The Western country was almost
+    a wilderness. Vast forests and boundless prairies lay on every
+    hand, with but here and there a clearing with a solitary log
+    cabin in it, or but two or three at the most. The people lived
+    in the most perfect solitude, rarely seeing any but the members
+    of their own households. Solitude and danger made them
+    superstitious, and the absence of schools kept them in
+    ignorance. They drank to keep off the blues, and when they came
+    together for amusement they made the most of their
+    opportunities, and plunged into the most violent sports, which
+    were not always kept within the bounds of propriety. Churches
+    were as scarce as schools, and until the Methodist circuit
+    riders made their appearance in the West, the people were
+    little better than heathen. The law had scarcely any hold upon
+    these frontiersmen. They were wild and untamed, and personal
+    freedom was kept in restraint mainly by the law of personal
+    accountability. They were generous and improvident, frank,
+    fearless, easy-going, and filled with an intense scorn for
+    every thing that smacked of Eastern refinement or city life.
+    They were proud of their buckskin and linsey-woolsey clothes,
+    their squirrel caps, and their horny hands and rough faces.
+    They would have been miserable in a city mansion, but they were
+    lords and kings in their log-cabins. To have sent a preacher
+    bred in the learned schools of New England to such a people
+    would have been folly. The smooth cadences, the polished
+    gestures, and, above all, the manuscript sermon of a Boston
+    divine, would have disgusted the men and women of the frontier.
+    What cared they for predestination or free-will, or for any of
+    the dogmas of the schools? They wanted to hear the simple,
+    fundamental truths of the Gospel, and they wanted to hear them
+    from a man of their own stamp. They wanted a "fire and
+    brimstone" preacher, one whose fiery eloquence could stir the
+    very depths of their souls, and set their simple imaginations
+    all ablaze; one who could shout and sing with true Western
+    abandon; who could preach in his shirt-sleeves, sleep with them
+    on the bare ground, brave all the dangers of a frontier life,
+    and, if necessary, thrash any one who dared to insult him. Such
+    was the man for these sturdy, simple Western folk, and such a
+    man they found in Peter Cartwright.</p>
+
+    <p>Peter went at the task before him with a will. The country
+    being sparsely settled, people had to travel a long way to get
+    to church, and it became a matter of expediency for the clergy
+    to hold religious gatherings at stated points, and to continue
+    them for several days, so that those who desired to attend
+    might be able to avoid the necessity of going home every
+    evening and coming back next day. Church edifices being scarce,
+    these meetings were held in the woods, and a large encampment
+    was formed by the people in attendance. This was the origin of
+    the camp-meeting system, which for many years was the only
+    effective way of spreading the Gospel in the West. It was at a
+    camp-meeting that Peter obtained religion, and he has ever
+    since been a zealous advocate of, and a hard worker at, them.
+    From the first he was successful. The fame of the "boy
+    preacher" went abroad into all the land, and people came in to
+    the camp from a hundred miles around to hear him. He had little
+    education, but he knew his Bible thoroughly, and was a ready
+    speaker, and, above all, he knew how to deal with the people to
+    whom he preached. He made many converts, and from the first
+    took rank as the most popular preacher in the West.</p>
+
+    <p>Peter not only believed in the overruling power of God, but
+    he was firmly convinced of the active and personal agency of
+    the devil in human affairs. Many of the follies and faults of
+    the people around him took place, he averred, because they were
+    possessed of devils. Each camp-meeting was to him a campaign
+    against Satan, and in his opinion Satan never failed to make a
+    good fight for his kingdom. Certainly some very singular things
+    did occur at the meetings at which he was present, and,
+    naturally, perhaps, some persons began to believe that Peter
+    Cartwright possessed supernatural powers. The following
+    incident, related by him, not only explains some of the
+    phenomena to which I allude, but also the manner in which he
+    was regarded by some of the unconverted:</p>
+
+    <p>"A new exercise broke out among us, called the 'jerks,'
+    which was overwhelming in its effects upon the bodies and minds
+    of the people. No matter whether they were saints or sinners,
+    they would be taken under a warm song or sermon, and seized
+    with a convulsive jerking all over, which they could not by any
+    possibility avoid, and the more they resisted, the more they
+    jerked. If they would not strive against it, and pray in good
+    earnest, the jerking would usually abate. I have seen more than
+    five hundred persons jerking at one time in my large
+    congregations. Most usually persons taken with the jerks, to
+    obtain relief, as they said, would rise up and dance. Some
+    would run, but could not get away. Some would resist; on such
+    the jerks were very severe.</p>
+
+    <p>"To see those proud young gentlemen and young ladies,
+    dressed in their silks, jewelry, and prunella, from top to toe,
+    take the jerks, would often excite my risibilities. The first
+    jerk or so you would see their fine bonnets, caps, and combs
+    fly, and so sudden would be the jerking of the head that their
+    long, loose hair would crack almost as loud as a wagoner's
+    whip.</p>
+
+    <p>"At one of my appointments, in 1804, there was a very large
+    congregation turned out to hear the 'Kentucky boy,' as they
+    called me. Among the rest there were two very finely dressed,
+    fashionable young ladies, attended by two brothers with loaded
+    horsewhips. Although the house was large, it was crowded. The
+    two young ladies, coming in late, took their seats near where I
+    stood, and their two brothers stood in the door. I was a little
+    unwell, and I had a phial of peppermint in my pocket. Before I
+    commenced preaching I took out my phial and swallowed a little
+    of the peppermint. While I was preaching the congregation was
+    melted into tears. The two young gentlemen moved off to the
+    yard fence, and both the young ladies took the jerks, and they
+    were greatly mortified about it....</p>
+
+    <p>"As I dismissed the assembly, a man stepped up to me and
+    warned me to be on my guard, for he had heard the two brothers
+    swear they would horsewhip me when meeting was out for giving
+    their sisters the jerks. 'Well,' said I, 'I'll see to
+    that.'</p>
+
+    <p>"I went out and said to the young men that I understood they
+    intended to horsewhip me for giving their sisters the jerks.
+    One replied that he did. I undertook to expostulate with him on
+    the absurdity of the charge against me, but he swore I need not
+    deny it, for he had seen me take out a phial in which I carried
+    some truck that gave his sisters the jerks. As quick as thought
+    came into my mind how I would get clear of my whipping, and,
+    jerking out the peppermint phial, said I, 'Yes; if I gave your
+    sisters the jerks I'll give them to you,' In a moment I saw he
+    was scared. I moved toward him, he backed, I advanced, and he
+    wheeled and ran, warning me not to come near him or he would
+    kill me. It raised the laugh on him, and I escaped my
+    whipping....</p>
+
+    <p>"I always looked upon the jerks as a judgment sent from God,
+    first, to bring sinners to repentance, and, secondly, that God
+    could work with or without means, and that he could work over
+    and above means and do whatsoever seemeth him good to the glory
+    of his grace and the salvation of the world. There is no doubt
+    in my mind that, with weak-minded, ignorant, and superstitious
+    persons, there was a great deal of sympathetic feeling with
+    many that claimed to be under the influence of this jerking
+    exercise, and yet with many it was perfectly involuntary. It
+    was on all occasions my practice to recommend fervent prayer as
+    a remedy, and it almost universally proved an effectual
+    antidote."</p>
+
+    <p>The excitement of the religious revivals plunged many of the
+    people into excesses. They prophesied, dreamed dreams, and saw
+    visions, and troubled the young preacher exceedingly, but he
+    set his face sternly against all such disorders, and pronounced
+    their visions and messages to be from the devil. One of these
+    dreamers came to him one day and told him he had a message from
+    heaven for him.</p>
+
+    <p>"Well," said Cartwright, "what is it?"</p>
+
+    <p>"It has been revealed to me," said the fellow, "that you are
+    never to die, but are to live forever."</p>
+
+    <p>"Who revealed that to you?"</p>
+
+    <p>"An angel."</p>
+
+    <p>"Did you see him?" asked Cartwright, dryly.</p>
+
+    <p>"O, yes; he was a beautiful, white, shining being."</p>
+
+    <p>"Did you smell him?" asked Peter, bluntly.</p>
+
+    <p>The man looked at him in amazement, and the preacher
+    continued, sternly, "Well, did the angel you saw smell of
+    brimstone? He must have smelled of brimstone, for he was from a
+    region that burns with fire and brimstone, and consequently
+    from hell, for he revealed a great lie to you if he told you I
+    was to live forever."</p>
+
+    <p>The dreamer turned off abruptly, and disappeared amidst the
+    jeers of the crowd that had listened to the conversation.</p>
+
+    <p>On the 16th of September, 1806, Mr. Cartwright was ordained
+    a deacon in the Methodist Episcopal Church by Bishop Asbury,
+    and on the 4th of October, 1808, Bishop McKendree ordained him
+    an elder. Upon receiving deacon's orders he was assigned to the
+    Marietta Circuit. His appointment dismayed him. Says he: "It
+    was a poor, hard circuit at that time. Marietta and the country
+    round were settled at an early day by a colony of Yankees. At
+    the time of my appointment I had never seen a Yankee, and I had
+    heard dismal stories about them. It was said they lived almost
+    entirely on pumpkins, molasses, fat meat, and bohea tea;
+    moreover, that they could not bear loud and zealous sermons,
+    and they had brought on their learned preachers with them, and
+    they read their sermons and were always criticising us poor
+    backwoods preachers. When my appointment was read out it
+    distressed me greatly. I went to Bishop Asbury and begged him
+    to supply my place and let me go home. The old father took me
+    in his arms and said: 'O, no, my son; go in the name of the
+    Lord. It will make a man of you.'</p>
+
+    <p>"Ah, thought I, if this is the way to make men, I do not
+    want to be a man. I cried over it bitterly, and prayed, too.
+    But on I started, cheered by my presiding elder, Brother J.
+    Sale. If I ever saw hard times, surely it was this year; yet
+    many of the people were kind and treated me friendly. I had
+    hard work to keep soul and body together. The first Methodist
+    house I came to the brother was a Universalist. I crossed over
+    the Muskingum River to Marietta. The first Methodist family I
+    stopped with there, the lady was a member of the Methodist
+    Episcopal Church, but a thorough Universalist. She was a
+    thin-faced, Roman-nosed, loquacious Yankee, glib on the tongue,
+    and you may depend upon it I had a hard race to keep up with
+    her, though I found it a good school, for it set me to reading
+    my Bible. And here permit me to say, of all the isms I ever
+    heard of, they were here. These descendants of the Puritans
+    were generally educated, but their ancestors were rigid
+    predestinarians, and as they were sometimes favored with a
+    little light on their moral powers, and could just 'see men as
+    trees walking,' they jumped into Deism, Universalism,
+    Unitarianism, etc., etc. I verily believe it was the best
+    school I ever entered. They waked me up on all sides; Methodism
+    was feeble, and I had to battle or run, and I resolved on the
+    former."</p>
+
+    <p>Just before he was made an elder, Mr. Cartwright left his
+    circuit, and went home on a visit to recruit. He had made a
+    good fight with poverty during his labors, and at the time of
+    his departure for home he was in a condition sufficiently hard
+    to test any man's fortitude. "I had been from my father's house
+    for three years," says he; "was five hundred miles from home,
+    my horse had gone blind, my saddle was worn out, my bridle
+    reins had been eaten up and replaced (after a sort) at least a
+    dozen times, and my clothes had been patched till it was
+    difficult to detect the original. I had concluded to make my
+    way home and get another outfit. I was in Marietta, and had
+    just seventy-five cents in my pocket. How I would get home and
+    pay my way I could not tell."</p>
+
+    <p>He did reach home, however, after many characteristic
+    adventures, and obtained another outfit, and while there he
+    took an important step&mdash;he married. "After a mature
+    deliberation and prayer," he says, "I thought it was my duty to
+    marry, and was joined in marriage to Frances Gaines, on the
+    18th of August, 1808, which was her nineteenth birthday." Peter
+    and his bride knew that a hard life was in store for them, but
+    they felt strong in the love they bore each other. They were
+    simple backwoods folk, and their wants were few. "When I
+    started as a traveling preacher," he said fifty-three years
+    afterward, "a single preacher was allowed to receive eighty
+    dollars per annum if his circuit would give it to him; but
+    single preachers in those days seldom received over thirty or
+    forty dollars, and often much less; and had it not been for a
+    few presents made us by the benevolent friends of the church,
+    and a few dollars we made as marriage fees, we must have
+    suffered much more than we did. But the Lord provided, and,
+    strange as it may appear to the present generation, we got
+    along without starving or going naked." There is something
+    awe-inspiring in the simple trust in God which this good man
+    displayed in every stage of his life. Once satisfied that he
+    was in the path of duty, he never allowed the future to trouble
+    him. He provided for it as far as he could, and left the rest
+    to the Master whose work he was doing. Poverty and hardship had
+    no terrors for this brave young couple, and it was very far
+    from their thoughts to wait until a better day to marry. They
+    would go out hand in hand into the world and meet their trials
+    together. Children would come, they knew, and those little
+    mouths would have to be fed, but they would be industrious,
+    saving, and patient, and "God would provide."</p>
+
+    <p>Peter Cartwright's mission was to plant the Methodist
+    Episcopal Church in the West as well as to preach the Gospel.
+    For that end he worked and prayed. The Methodist Episcopal
+    Church was his haven of safety. Without, all was storm and
+    darkness; within its fold all was peace and light. He believed
+    his church to be the best door to heaven, if indeed it was not
+    in his estimation the only one. He was a fanatic, pure and
+    simple, as regarded his own denomination, but a fanatic full of
+    high and noble purposes, and one whose zeal was productive only
+    of good. This fanaticism was necessary to the success of his
+    labors. It was his perfect belief that his was the only church
+    in which sinners could find perfect peace that carried him
+    through the difficulties which encompassed him. Men were dying
+    all around him, and they must come into his church. They had
+    other denominations close at hand, but they, in his estimation,
+    would not do. The Methodist Episcopal Church was a necessity
+    for sinners, therefore it must be planted in all parts of the
+    land. No sacrifice was too great for the accomplishment of this
+    object. He has lived to see those sacrifices rewarded, to see
+    his church one of the most numerous and powerful religious
+    bodies in the country.</p>
+
+    <p>Being so zealous in behalf of his own church, it is not
+    strange that he should have clashed frequently with other
+    denominations. He got along very well with the majority, but
+    with the Baptists and Universalists he was always on the war
+    path. The latter especially excited his uncompromising
+    hostility, and he never failed to attack their doctrines with
+    all his forces wherever he encountered them. "I have thought,"
+    says he, "and do still think, if I were to set out to form a
+    plan to contravene the laws of God, to encourage wickedness of
+    all kinds, to corrupt the morals and encourage vice, and crowd
+    hell with the lost and the wailings of the damned, the
+    Universalist plan should be the plan, the very plan that I
+    would adopt....</p>
+
+    <p>"A few years ago," he continues, "I had a neighbor who
+    professed to be a confirmed Universalist. He contended with me
+    that there was no devil but the evil disposition in man, and
+    that there was no hell but the bad feelings that men had when
+    they did wrong: that this was all the punishment any body would
+    suffer. When this neighbor's father lay on his dying bed (a
+    confirmed Universalist, professedly) there was a faithful
+    minister of Christ who believed it his duty to visit this old
+    Universalist, warn him of his danger, and try to awaken his
+    conscience, if not seared, to a just view of his real
+    situation. The minister, however, failed in his faithful
+    attempt and well-meant endeavors, for the old man, then on his
+    dying pillow, was greatly offended at the preacher, and told
+    him that he did not thank him for trying to shake his faith in
+    his dying moments. This neighbor of mine, and son of this old,
+    hardened sinner, was greatly enraged at the preacher, and
+    cursed and abused him in a violent manner. A few days after the
+    demise of the old man, he, in a furious rage, began to abuse
+    and curse the preacher in my presence, and said:</p>
+
+    <p>"D&mdash;&mdash; him; I wish he was in hell and the devil
+    had him.'</p>
+
+    <p>"I stopped him short by saying, 'Pooh, pooh, man, what are
+    you talking about? There is no hell but the bad feelings that a
+    man has when he does wrong, and no devil but the evil
+    disposition that is in man.' Thus answering a fool according to
+    his folly.</p>
+
+    <p>"'Well,' said he, 'if there is no hell there ought to be, to
+    put such preachers in.'</p>
+
+    <p>"'Now, sir,' said I, 'you see the utter untenableness of
+    your creed, for a man even in trying to do good honestly draws
+    down your wrath, and, in a moment, you want a hell to put him
+    into and a devil to torment him for giving you an offense, and
+    for doing what no good man ought to be offended about. But God
+    must be insulted, his name blasphemed, his laws trampled under
+    foot, yet he must have no hell to put such a wretch in, no
+    devil to torment him. Now I would be ashamed of myself if I
+    were in your place, and let the seal of truth close my lips
+    forever hereafter.'</p>
+
+    <p>"Although he was confounded, he still clave to his
+    God-dishonoring doctrine, waxing worse and worse, till it was
+    generally believed he was guilty of a most heinous crime."</p>
+
+    <p>Argumentative battles were not the only troubles Cartwright
+    had to encounter from Universalists. They came to his revivals,
+    he says, to hoot and create disturbance. At one of these
+    meetings two sisters, Universalists in belief, were present.
+    They came to "make fun," but one of them was overcome by
+    Cartwright's preaching, and went up to the mourner's bench to
+    be prayed for. When her sister heard of it, she commenced to
+    make her way to the altar, with the angry determination to
+    force the penitent from it. "I rose and met her in the crowded
+    aisle," says Mr. Cartwright, "and told her to be calm and
+    desist. She made neither better nor worse of it than to draw
+    back her arm and give me a severe slap in the face with her
+    open hand. I confess this rather took me by surprise, and, as
+    the common saying is, made the fire fly out of my eyes in
+    tremendous sparkling brilliancy, but, collecting my best
+    judgment, I caught her by the arms near her shoulders and
+    wheeled her to the right about, moved her forward to the door,
+    and said, 'Gentlemen, please open the door; the devil in this
+    Universalist lady has got fighting hot, and I want to set her
+    outside to cool.' The door was opened, and I landed her
+    out."</p>
+
+    <p>Concerning his tilts with the Baptists, he has given a mass
+    of curious reminiscences, from which we take the following:</p>
+
+    <p>"We preached in new settlements, and the Lord poured out his
+    Spirit, and we had many convictions and many conversions. It
+    was the order of the day, (though I am sorry to say it,) that
+    we were constantly followed by a certain set of proselyting
+    Baptist preachers. These new and wicked settlements were seldom
+    visited by these Baptist preachers until the Methodist
+    preachers entered them; then, when a revival was gotten up, or
+    the work of the Lord revived, these Baptist preachers came
+    rushing in, and they generally sung their sermons; and when
+    they struck the <i>long roll</i>, or their sing-song mode of
+    preaching, in substance it was: 'Water! water! You must follow
+    your blessed Lord down into the water!' I had preached several
+    times in a large, populous, and wicked settlement, and there
+    was serious attention, deep convictions, and a good many
+    conversions; but, between my occasional appointments these
+    preachers would rush in and try to take off our converts into
+    the water; and indeed they made so much ado about baptism by
+    immersion that the uninformed would suppose that heaven was an
+    island, and there was no way to get there <i>but by diving or
+    swimming</i>."</p>
+
+    <p>He once preached a sermon on the true nature of baptism, at
+    which were present the daughters of a Baptist minister, one of
+    whom was converted. That night it rained violently, and all the
+    neighboring streams overflowed their banks. Riding along the
+    next day, he met the Baptist minister on the road.</p>
+
+    <p>"We've had a tremendous rain," said Cartwright.</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes, sir," said the Baptist brother, "the Lord sent this
+    rain to convince you of your error."</p>
+
+    <p>"Ah! what error?"</p>
+
+    <p>"Why, about baptism. The Lord sent this flood to convince
+    you that much water was necessary."</p>
+
+    <p>"Very good, sir," said Cartwright, "and in like manner he
+    sent this flood to convince you of your error."</p>
+
+    <p>"What error?" asked the Baptist brother.</p>
+
+    <p>"Why," replied Cartwright, triumphantly, "to show you that
+    water comes by pouring, and not by immersion."</p>
+
+    <p>Free and easy as he was in his manner, our preacher had a
+    deep sense of the dignity of his mission, and he was resolved
+    that others should share the feeling, and accord him, in his
+    ministerial capacity, the respect and deference that were his
+    due. His manner of accomplishing this was characteristic, as
+    the following incident will show: Traveling on his circuit in
+    1805, he put up on one occasion at the house of an old man
+    known as Father Teel, a whimsical old fellow, and supposed to
+    be Cartwright's match in oddity. He had been warned that the
+    old man, though a good Methodist, showed little deference to
+    preachers. It was his custom to rise early, and, as soon as
+    dressed, to give out his hymn, sing it himself, and then go to
+    prayers, without waiting for his family to get up. He served
+    preachers in the same way. Cartwright resolved to beat him at
+    his own game, but the old man was too wary for him.</p>
+
+    <p>"Just as day broke," says Cartwright, "I awoke, rose up, and
+    began to dress, but had not nigh accomplished it when I heard
+    Teel give out his hymn and commence singing, and about the time
+    I had got dressed, I heard him commence praying. He gave thanks
+    to God that they had been spared during the night, and were all
+    permitted to see the light of a new day, while at the same time
+    I suppose every one of his family was fast asleep. I
+    deliberately opened the door and walked out to the well, washed
+    myself, and then walked back to my cabin. Just as I got to the
+    door, the old brother opened his door, and, seeing me, said,
+    'Good morning, sir. Why, I didn't know you were up.'</p>
+
+    <p>"'Yes, said I, 'I have been up some time.'</p>
+
+    <p>"'Well, brother,' said he, 'why did you not come in to
+    prayers?'</p>
+
+    <p>"'Because,' said I, 'it is wrong to pray of a morning in the
+    family before we wash.'</p>
+
+    <p>"The old brother passed on, and no more was said at that
+    time. That evening, just before we were about to retire to
+    rest, the old brother set out the book and said to me:
+    'Brother, hold prayers with us.'</p>
+
+    <p>"'No, sir,' said I.</p>
+
+    <p>"Said he, 'Come, brother, take the book and pray with
+    us.'</p>
+
+    <p>"'No, sir,' said I; 'you love to pray so well, you may do it
+    yourself.'</p>
+
+    <p>"He insisted, but I persistently refused, saying: 'You are
+    so fond of praying yourself, that you even thanked God this
+    morning that he had spared you all to see the light of a new
+    day, when your family had not yet opened their eyes, but were
+    all fast asleep. And you have such an absurd way of holding
+    prayers in your family, that I do not wish to have any thing to
+    do with it.'</p>
+
+    <p>"He then took the book, read, and said prayers, but you may
+    rely on it, the next morning things were much changed. He
+    waited for me, and had all his family up in order. He
+    acknowledged his error, and told me it was one of the best
+    reproofs he ever got. I then prayed with the family, and after
+    that all went well."</p>
+
+    <p>Among his clerical brethren was a poor hen-pecked husband,
+    whose wife was possessed of a temper that made her the terror
+    of the neighborhood. Cartwright had often been invited by the
+    poor man to go home with him; "but," he says, "I frankly
+    confess I was afraid to trust myself" but at length, yielding
+    to his importunities, he went home with his oppressed brother,
+    intending to spend the night with him. His visit roused the
+    fury of the wife, and "I saw in a minute," says our preacher,
+    "that the devil was in her as big as an alligator, and I
+    determined on my course." The woman held her tongue until after
+    supper, when her husband asked her kindly to join them in
+    prayers. She flew into a rage, and swore there should be no
+    praying in her house that night. Cartwright tried to reason
+    with her, but she cursed him roundly. Then, facing her sternly,
+    he said, "Madam, if you were my wife, I would break you of your
+    bad ways, or I would break your neck."</p>
+
+    <p>"The devil you would," said she. "Yes, you are a pretty
+    Christian, ain't you?"</p>
+
+    <p>She continued cursing him, but Cartwright sternly bade her
+    hold her peace, and let them pray. She declared she would
+    not.</p>
+
+    <p>"Now," said he to her, "if you do not be still, and behave
+    yourself, I'll put you out of doors."</p>
+
+    <p>"At this," says he, "she clenched her fist and swore she was
+    one-half alligator and the other half snapping-turtle, and that
+    it would take a better man than I was to put her out. It was a
+    small cabin we were in, and we were not far from the door,
+    which was then standing open. I caught her by the arm, and
+    swinging her round in a circle, brought her right up to the
+    door, and shoved her out. She jumped up, tore her hair, foamed,
+    and such swearing as she uttered was seldom equaled, and never
+    surpassed. The door, or shutter of the door, was very strongly
+    made, to keep out hostile Indians; I shut it tight, barred it,
+    and went to prayer, and I prayed as best I could; but I have no
+    language at my command to describe my feelings. At the same
+    time, I was determined to conquer, or die in the attempt. While
+    she was raging and foaming in the yard and around the cabin, I
+    started a spiritual song, and sung loud, to drawn her voice as
+    much as possible. The five or six little children ran and
+    squatted about and crawled under the beds. Poor things, they
+    were scared almost to death.</p>
+
+    <p>"I sang on, and she roared and thundered on outside, till
+    she became perfectly exhausted, and panted for breath. At
+    length, when she had spent her force, she became perfectly calm
+    and still, and then knocked at the door, saying, 'Mr.
+    Cartwright, please let me in.'</p>
+
+    <p>"'Will you behave yourself if I let you in?' said I.</p>
+
+    <p>"'O yes,' said she, 'I will;' and throwing myself on my
+    guard, and perfectly self-possessed, I opened the door, took
+    her by the hand, led her in, and seated her near the
+    fire-place. She had roared and foamed until she was in a high
+    perspiration, and looked pale as death. After she took her
+    seat, 'O,' said she, 'what a fool I am,'</p>
+
+    <p>"'Yes,' said I, 'about one of the biggest fools I ever saw
+    in all my life.'... Brother C. and I kneeled down, and both
+    prayed. She was as quiet as a lamb."</p>
+
+    <p>Six months later, our preacher tells us, this woman was
+    converted, and became "as bold in the cause of God as she had
+    been in the cause of the wicked one."</p>
+
+    <p>In 1823, Mr. Cartwright resolved to move across the Ohio,
+    and selected Illinois as his new home. The reasons which
+    influenced his actions are thus stated by him:</p>
+
+    <p>"I had seen with painful emotions the increase of a
+    disposition to justify slavery.... and the legislatures in the
+    slave States made the laws more and more stringent, with a
+    design to prevent emancipation. Moreover, rabid abolitionism
+    spread and dreadfully excited the South. I had a young and
+    growing family of children, two sons and four daughters; was
+    poor, owned a little farm of about one hundred and fifty acres;
+    lands around me were high and rising in value. My daughters
+    would soon be grown up. I did not see any probable means by
+    which I could settle them around or near us. Moreover, I had no
+    right to expect our children to marry into wealthy families,
+    and I did not desire it, if it could be so; and by chance they
+    might marry into slave families. This I did not desire.
+    Besides, I saw there was a marked distinction made among the
+    people generally between young people raised without work and
+    those that had to work for their living.... I thought I saw
+    clear indications of Providence that I should leave my
+    comfortable little home, and move into a free State or
+    territory, for the following reasons: First, I would get
+    entirely clear of the evil of slavery. Second, I could raise my
+    children to work where work was not considered a degradation.
+    Third, I believed I could better my temporal circumstances, and
+    procure lands for my children as they grew up. And fourth, I
+    could carry the Gospel to destitute souls that had, by removal
+    into some new country, been deprived of the means of
+    grace."</p>
+
+    <p>It was the last reason, no doubt, that decided our preacher.
+    Men of his stamp were needed west of the Ohio. Kentucky was
+    becoming too old a State for him, and he felt that his true
+    field of labor was still on the frontier, and thither he turned
+    his steps. Setting out first on horseback to seek an eligible
+    location, he reached Sangamon County, Illinois, where he bought
+    a claim on Richland Creek. He then returned to Kentucky and
+    wound up his affairs there, obtained a regular transfer from
+    the Kentucky Conference to the Indiana Conference, which then
+    controlled Illinois, and in October, 1824, set out for his new
+    home in Sangamon County. A great affliction overtook him on the
+    way, in the death of his third daughter, who was killed by the
+    falling of a tree upon their camp. The affliction was made more
+    grievous by the heartless refusal of the people in the vicinity
+    to render them any aid. "We were in great distress," he says,
+    "and no one even to pity our condition.... I discovered that
+    the tree had sprung up, and did not press the child; and we
+    drew her out from under it, and carefully laid her in our feed
+    trough, and moved on about twenty miles to an acquaintance's in
+    Hamilton County, Illinois, where we buried her."</p>
+
+    <p>Leaving that lonely little grave behind them, they hurried
+    on to their new home. Springfield, the capital of the State,
+    was but a small collection of shanties and log huts, and
+    Sangamon County was the extreme frontier. It was the most
+    northern county of Illinois, and just beyond it lay the
+    unbroken Indian country. Numbers of Indians roamed through the
+    Sangamon River bottom, and spent their winters there. It was as
+    wild and unsettled a region as our preacher could have desired,
+    and one which gave him a fine field for the exercise of his
+    peculiar abilities. Mr. Cartwright was promptly received into
+    the Indiana Conference, and he lost no time in looking about
+    him. He at once established his family in their new home, and
+    then set about his work. The work was hard, and money was
+    scarce. The first year he traveled the Sangamon Circuit he
+    received forty dollars, and the next year sixty dollars, which
+    he says was a great improvement in his financial affairs. He
+    was successful from the first, and in the two years referred to
+    added one hundred and sixty persons to the Methodist Church in
+    this thinly settled district. For forty-six years he has
+    labored in this region, adding many souls to the kingdom of
+    God.</p>
+
+    <p>Arduous as his labors had been in the Kentucky Conference,
+    they now increased very greatly. He had a larger amount of
+    territory to travel over, people were more scattered, and the
+    dangers to be encountered were greater. In 1827, he was made
+    presiding elder, and given the Illinois District, then a very
+    extensive region, and in 1828 Galena charge was added to this
+    district. The district thus enlarged extended from the mouth of
+    the Ohio River to Galena, the entire length of the present
+    State of Illinois, and over this immense distance our preacher
+    was obliged to travel four times in the year. The journeys were
+    made either on horseback or in an old-fashioned sulky or
+    one-seat gig. There were miles of lonely prairie and many rapid
+    streams to cross, and roads, bridges, or ferry-boats were
+    almost unknown. Yet Peter Cartwright was not the man to be
+    deterred by obstacles. When he set out on his official
+    journeys, he allowed nothing that it was possible to overcome
+    to prevent him from keeping his appointments. In crossing the
+    prairies, he would guide himself by the points of timber, for
+    there were no roads over these vast plains. Oftentimes the
+    streams to be crossed were swollen, and then he would swim his
+    horse across them, or ride along the shore until he found a
+    tree fallen over the current. Stripping himself, he would carry
+    his clothes and riding equipments to the opposite bank, and
+    then, returning, mount his horse and swim him across the river.
+    Dressing again, he would continue his journey, and perhaps
+    repeat the proceeding several times during the day. When
+    overtaken by night, he would seek a place in some grove, and,
+    lighting a fire with his tinder-box and steel, tie up his
+    horse, and, throwing himself on the ground, sleep as peacefully
+    as on a bed of down. Sometimes night would come on before he
+    had crossed the prairie or made his way to the timber point he
+    was aiming for, and then he would sit down on the ground, in
+    the darkness and alone, and, holding his horse by the bridle,
+    await the return of light to enable him to see his landmark.
+    Sometimes he would find a little log-hut with a settler's
+    family in it, and he says it was "a great treat" to come upon
+    one of these lonely cabins and enjoy the privilege of a night's
+    lodging. If the family were Methodists, there was sure to be
+    preaching that night; and if they were strangers to that
+    church, our preacher set to work at once to convert them. He
+    labored faithfully, faring hard, and braving dangers from which
+    his city brethren would have shrunk appalled. He carried the
+    Gospel and the Methodist Episcopal Church into all parts of the
+    great State of Illinois, and even into Iowa and the Indian
+    country.</p>
+
+    <p>In 1832, the first Illinois Conference met in the town of
+    Jacksonville, and Mr. Cartwright attended it. He had now been a
+    traveling preacher for twenty-eight years, and, as he felt
+    himself sorely in need of rest, he asked and obtained a
+    superannuated relation for one year. On the same day, Bishop
+    Soule, who presided at the Conference, came to him to ask his
+    advice with reference to the Quincy District. It was very
+    important, but the bishop could not find a presiding elder
+    willing to take charge of it, as it was an almost unbroken
+    wilderness. The bishop was in sore distress, as he feared that
+    he would be obliged to merge it into another district. The
+    spirit of the backwoods preacher at once took fire, and,
+    declaring that so important a field ought not to be neglected,
+    he expressed his willingness to relinquish his superannuated
+    relation and accept the charge. The bishop took him at his word
+    and appointed him to the district, which he served faithfully.
+    His adventures in traveling from place to place to fill his
+    appointments are intensely interesting, and I would gladly
+    reproduce them here did the limits of this chapter permit.</p>
+
+    <p>It required no small amount of courage to perform the
+    various duties of a backwoods preacher, and in this quality our
+    preacher was not deficient. He was frequently called upon to
+    exercise it in his camp meetings. These assemblies never failed
+    to gather large crowds from all parts of the surrounding
+    country, and among others came numerous rowdies, whose delight
+    it was to annoy the preachers and worshipers in every
+    conceivable way. Cartwright put up with the annoyance as long
+    as he could, and then determined to put a stop to it. He
+    believed in fighting the devil with fire, and put down many a
+    disturbance. The following is the way he went about it:</p>
+
+    <p>"Our last quarterly meeting was a camp meeting. We had a
+    great many tents and a large turnout for a new country, and,
+    perhaps, there never was a greater collection of rabble and
+    rowdies. They came drunk and armed with dirks, clubs, knives,
+    and horsewhips, and swore they would break up the meeting.
+    After interrupting us very much on Saturday night, they
+    collected on Sunday morning, determined on a general riot. At
+    eight o'clock I was appointed to preach. About the time I was
+    half through my discourse, two very fine-dressed young men
+    marched into the congregation with loaded horsewhips, and hats
+    on, and rose up and stood in the midst of the ladies, and began
+    to laugh and talk. They were near the stand, and I requested
+    them to desist and get off the seats; but they cursed me and
+    told me to mind my own business, and said they would not get
+    down. I stopped trying to preach, and called for a magistrate.
+    There were two at hand, but I saw they were both afraid. I
+    ordered them to take these two men into custody, but they said
+    they could not do it. I told them as I left the stand to
+    command me to take them, and I would do it at the risk of my
+    life. I advanced toward them. They ordered me to stand off, but
+    I advanced. One of them made a pass at my head, but I closed in
+    with him and jerked him off the seat. A regular scuffle ensued.
+    The congregation by this time were all in commotion. I heard
+    the magistrates giving general orders, commanding all friends
+    of order to aid in suppressing the riot. In the scuffle I threw
+    my prisoner down, and held him fast; he tried his best to get
+    loose. I told him to be quiet, or I would pound his chest well.
+    The mob rose and rushed to the rescue of the two prisoners, for
+    they had taken the other young man also. An old, drunken
+    magistrate came up to me, and ordered me to let my prisoner go.
+    I told him I should not. He swore if I did not he would knock
+    me down. I told him to crack away. Then one of my friends, at
+    my request, took hold of my prisoner, and the drunken justice
+    made a pass at me; but I parried the stroke, and, seizing him
+    by the collar and the hair of the head, and fetching him a
+    sudden jerk forward, brought him to the ground and jumped on
+    him. I told him to be quiet, or I would pound him well. The mob
+    then rushed to the scene; they knocked down seven magistrates,
+    several preachers, and others. I gave up my drunken prisoner to
+    another, and threw myself in front of the friends of order.
+    Just at this moment, the ringleader of the mob and I met; he
+    made three passes at me, intending to knock me down. The last
+    time he struck at me, by the force of his own effort he threw
+    the side of his face toward me. It seemed at that moment I had
+    not power to resist temptation, and I struck a sudden blow in
+    the burr of the ear and dropped him to the earth. Just at this
+    moment, the friends of order rushed by hundreds on the mob,
+    knocking them down in every direction."</p>
+
+    <p>Once, while crossing a river on a ferry-boat, he overheard a
+    man cursing Peter Cartwright and threatening dire vengeance
+    against him, and boasting that he could "whip any preacher the
+    Lord ever made." This roused our preacher's ire, and accosting
+    the man, he told him he was Peter Cartwright, and that if he
+    wanted to whip him he must do so then. The fellow became
+    confused, and said he did not believe him.</p>
+
+    <p>"I tell you," said Cartwright, sternly, "I am the man. Now,
+    sir, you have to whip me, as you threatened, or quit cursing
+    me, or I will put you in the river and baptize you in the name
+    of the devil, for you surely belong to him." "This," says
+    Cartwright, "settled him."</p>
+
+    <p>Once, having gone into the woods with a young man who had
+    sworn he would whip him, he sprained his foot slightly in
+    getting over a fence, and involuntarily placed his hand to his
+    side. "My redoubtable antagonist," says he, "had got on the
+    fence, and, looking down at me, said, 'D&mdash;&mdash; you, you
+    are feeling for a dirk, are you?'</p>
+
+    <p>"As quick as thought it occurred to me how to get clear of a
+    whipping.</p>
+
+    <p>"'Yes,' said I, 'and I will give you the benefit of all the
+    dirks I have,' and advanced rapidly toward him.</p>
+
+    <p>"He sprang back on the other side of the fence from me; I
+    jumped over after him, and a regular foot race followed."</p>
+
+    <p>"It may be asked," says the old man, naively, "what I would
+    have done if this fellow had gone with me to the woods. This is
+    hard to answer, for it was a part of my creed to love every
+    body, but to fear no one, and I did not permit myself to
+    believe that any man could whip me until it was tried, and I
+    did not permit myself to premeditate expedients in such cases.
+    I should no doubt have proposed to him to have prayer first,
+    and then followed the openings of Providence."</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Cartwright was from the beginning of his ministry an
+    ardent advocate of temperance, and, long before the first
+    temperance society was organized in the country, he waged a
+    fierce war against dram-drinking. This fearless advocate of
+    temperance came very near getting drunk once. He had stopped
+    with a fellow preacher at a tavern kept by an Otterbein
+    Methodist, who, thinking to play them a trick, put whisky into
+    the new cider which he offered them. Cartwright drank sparingly
+    of the beverage, though he considered it harmless, but, "with
+    all my forbearance," he says, "presently I began to feel
+    light-headed. I instantly ordered our horses, fearing we were
+    snapped for once.... When we had rode about a mile, being in
+    the rear, I saw Brother Walker was nodding at a mighty rate. I
+    suddenly rode up to Brother Walker and cried out, 'Wake up!
+    wake up!' He roused up, his eyes watering freely. 'I believe,'
+    said I, 'we are both drunk. Let us turn out of the road and lie
+    down and take a nap till we get sober,' But we rode on without
+    stopping. We were not drunk, but we both evidently felt it
+    flying to our heads."</p>
+
+    <p>In 1826 Mr. Cartwright was elected to the Legislature of the
+    State, and at the expiration of his first term was reflected
+    from Sangamon County. He was induced to accept this position
+    because of his desire to aid in preventing the introduction of
+    slavery into the State. He had no liking for political strife,
+    however, and was disgusted with the dishonesty which he saw
+    around him. "I say," he declares, "without any desire to speak
+    evil of the rulers of the people, I found a great deal of
+    corruption in our Legislature, and I found that almost every
+    measure had to be carried by a corrupt bargain and sale which
+    should cause every honest man to blush for his country."</p>
+
+    <p>He was full of a quaint humor, which seemed to burst out
+    from every line of his features, and twinkle merrily in his
+    bright eyes. Often in the midst of his most exciting revivals
+    he could not resist the desire to fasten his dry jokes upon one
+    of his converts. No man loved a joke better, or was quicker to
+    make a good use of it. He was traveling one day on his circuit,
+    and stopped for the night at a cabin in which he found a man
+    and woman. Suspecting that all was not right, he questioned the
+    woman, and drew from her the confession that the man was her
+    lover. Her husband, she said, was away, and would not return
+    for two days, and she had received this man in his
+    absence.</p><br>
+
+
+    <div class="full">
+        <a name='illust7341'></a>
+        <a href='images/7341.jpg'><img src='images/7341.jpg'
+                width='625' border=0
+                alt='CARTWRIGHT CALLING UP THE DEVIL.'></a><br>
+         CARTWRIGHT CALLING UP THE DEVIL.
+    </div>
+
+    <p>Cartwright then began to remonstrate with the guilty pair
+    upon their conduct, and while he was speaking to them the
+    husband's voice was heard in the yard. In an agony of terror
+    the woman implored Cartwright to assist her in getting her
+    lover out of the way, and our preacher, upon receiving from
+    each a solemn promise of reformation, agreed to do so. There
+    was standing by the chimney a large barrel of raw cotton, and
+    as there was no time to get the man out of the house,
+    Cartwright put him into the barrel and piled the cotton over
+    him.</p>
+
+    <p>The husband entered, and Cartwright soon engaged him in
+    conversation. The man said he had often heard of Peter
+    Cartwright, and that it was the common opinion in that part of
+    the country that among his other wonderful gifts our preacher
+    had the power to call up the devil.</p>
+
+    <p>"That's the easiest thing in the world to do," said
+    Cartwright. "Would you like to see it?"</p>
+
+    <p>The man hesitated for awhile, and then expressed his
+    readiness to witness the performance.</p>
+
+    <p>"Very well," said Cartwright; "take your stand by your wife,
+    and don't move or speak. I'll let the door open to give him a
+    chance to get out, or he may carry the roof away."</p>
+
+    <p>So saying, he opened the door, and, taking a handful of
+    cotton, held it in the fire and lighted it. Then plunging it
+    into the barrel of raw cotton, he shouted lustily, "Devil,
+    rise!" In an instant the barrel was wrapped in flames, and the
+    lover, in utter dismay, leaped out and rushed from the house.
+    The husband was greatly terrified, and ever afterward avowed
+    himself a believer in Cartwright's intimacy with "Old Scratch,"
+    for had he not had ocular proof of it?</p>
+
+    <p>Riding out of Springfield one day, he saw a wagon some
+    distance ahead of him containing a young lady and two young
+    men. As he came near them they recognized him, though he was
+    totally unacquainted with them, and began to sing camp-meeting
+    hymns with great animation. In a little while the young lady
+    began to shout, and said, "Glory to God! Glory to God!" and the
+    driver cried out, "Amen! Glory to God!"</p>
+
+    <p>"My first impressions," says Mr. Cartwright, "were, that
+    they had been across the Sangamon River to a camp meeting that
+    I knew was in progress there, and had obtained religion, and
+    were happy. As I drew a little nearer, the young lady began to
+    sing and shout again. The young man who was not driving fell
+    down, and cried aloud for mercy; the other two, shouting at the
+    top of their voices, cried out, 'Glory to God! another sinner
+    down.' Then they fell to exhorting the young man that was down,
+    saying, 'Pray on, brother; pray on, brother; you'll soon get
+    religion.' Presently up jumped the young man that was down, and
+    shouted aloud, saying, 'God has blessed my soul. Halleluiah!
+    halleluiah! Glory to God!'"</p>
+
+    <p>Thinking that these were genuine penitents, Cartwright rode
+    rapidly toward them, intending to join in their rejoicings; but
+    as he drew near them, he detected certain unmistakable
+    evidences that they were shamming religious fervor merely for
+    the purpose of annoying him. He then endeavored to get rid of
+    them, but as they were all going the same direction, the party
+    in the wagon managed to remain near him by driving fast when he
+    tried to pass them, and falling back when he drew up to let
+    them go ahead. "I thought," says our preacher, "I would ride up
+    and horsewhip both of these young men; and if the woman had not
+    been in company, I think I should have done so; but I
+    forebore."</p>
+
+    <p>In a little while the road plunged into a troublesome
+    morass. Around the worst part of this swamp wound a bridle
+    path, by which Mr. Cartwright determined to escape his
+    tormentors, who would be compelled to take the road straight
+    through the swamp. The party in the wagon saw his object, and
+    forgetting prudence in their eagerness to keep up with him,
+    whipped their horses violently. The horses bounded off at full
+    speed, and the wagon was whirled through the swamp at a furious
+    rate. When nearly across, one of the wheels struck a large
+    stump, and over went the wagon. "Fearing it would turn entirely
+    over and catch them under," says Mr. Cartwright, "the two young
+    men took a leap into the mud, and when they lighted they sunk
+    up to the middle. The young lady was dressed in white, and as
+    the wagon went over, she sprang as far as she could, and
+    lighted on all fours; her hands sunk into the mud up to her
+    arm-pits, her mouth and the whole of her face immersed in the
+    muddy water, and she certainly would have strangled if the
+    young men had not relieved her. As they helped her up and out,
+    I had wheeled my horse to see the fun. I rode up to the edge of
+    the mud, stopped my horse, reared in my stirrups, and shouted,
+    at the top of my voice, 'Glory to God! Glory to God!
+    Halleluiah! another sinner down! Glory to God! Halleluiah!
+    Glory! Halleluiah!'</p>
+
+    <p>"If ever mortals felt mean, these youngsters did; and well
+    they might, for they had carried on all this sport to make
+    light of religion, and to insult a minister, a total stranger
+    to them. When I became tired of shouting over them, I said to
+    them:</p>
+
+    <p>"'Now, you poor, dirty, mean sinners, take this as a just
+    judgment of God upon you for your meanness, and repent of your
+    dreadful wickedness; and let this be the last time that you
+    attempt to insult a preacher; for if you repeat your abominable
+    sport and persecutions, the next time God will serve you worse,
+    and the devil will get you.'</p>
+
+    <p>"They felt so badly that they never uttered one word of
+    reply."</p>
+
+    <p>Our preacher was determined that his work should be
+    recognized, and as he and his fellow traveling ministers had
+    done a good work on the frontier, he was in no humor to relish
+    the accounts of the religious condition of the West, which the
+    missionaries from the East spread through the older States in
+    their letters home. "They would come," says he, "with a
+    tolerable education, and a smattering knowledge of the old
+    Calvinistic system of theology. They were generally tolerably
+    well furnished with old manuscript sermons, that had been
+    preached, or written, perhaps a hundred years before. Some of
+    these sermons they had memorized, but in general they read them
+    to the people. This way of reading sermons was out of fashion
+    altogether in this Western world, and of course they produced
+    no effect among the people. The great mass of our Western
+    people wanted a preacher that could mount a stump or a block,
+    or stand in the bed of a wagon, and, without note or
+    manuscript, quote, expound, and apply the word of God to the
+    hearts and consciences of the people. The result of the efforts
+    of these Eastern missionaries was not very flattering; and
+    although the Methodist preachers were in reality the pioneer
+    heralds of the cross through the entire West, and although they
+    had raised up numerous societies every five miles, and
+    notwithstanding we had hundreds of traveling and local
+    preachers, accredited and useful ministers of the Lord Jesus
+    Christ, yet these newly-fledged missionaries would write back
+    to the old States hardly any thing else but wailings and
+    lamentations over the moral wastes and destitute condition of
+    the West."</p>
+
+    <p>The indignation of our preacher was fully shared by the
+    people of the West, who considered themselves as good
+    Christians; as their New England brethren, and the people of
+    Quincy called a meeting, irrespective of denomination, and
+    pledged themselves to give Peter Cartwright one thousand
+    dollars per annum, and pay his traveling expenses, if he would
+    "go as a missionary to the New England States, and enlighten
+    them on this and other subjects, of which they were profoundly
+    ignorant." Circumstances beyond his control prevented his
+    acceptance of this offer. "How gladly and willingly would I
+    have undertaken this labor of love," says he, "and gloried in
+    enlightening them down East, that they might keep their
+    home-manufactured clergy at home, or give them some honorable
+    employ, better suited to their genius than that of reading old
+    musty and worm-eaten sermons."</p>
+
+    <p>Our preacher did visit New England in 1852, not as a
+    missionary, however, but as a delegate to the General
+    Conference which met that year in Boston. His fame had preceded
+    him, and he was one of the marked men of that body. Every one
+    had heard some quaint story of his devotion to his cause, his
+    fearlessness, or his eccentricities, and crowds came out to
+    hear him preach. But our backwoods preacher was ill at ease.
+    The magnificence of the city, and the prim decorum of the
+    Boston churches, subdued him, and he could not preach with the
+    fire and freedom of the frontier log chapel. The crowds that
+    came to hear him were disappointed, and more than once they
+    told him so.</p>
+
+    <p>"Is this Peter Cartwright, from Illinois, the old Western
+    pioneer?" they asked him once.</p>
+
+    <p>He answered them, "I am the very man."</p>
+
+    <p>"Well," said several of them, "brother, we are much
+    disappointed; you have fallen very much under our expectations,
+    we expected to hear a much greater sermon than that you
+    preached to-day."</p>
+
+    <p>It was a regular Bostonian greeting, and it not only
+    mortified and disheartened the old pioneer, but it irritated
+    him. "I tell you," says he, "they roused me, and provoked what
+    little religious patience I had.... I left them abruptly, and
+    in very gloomy mood retreated to my lodgings, but took very
+    little rest in sleep that night. I constantly asked myself this
+    question: Is it so, that I can not preach? or what is the
+    matter? I underwent a tremendous crucifixion in feeling."</p>
+
+    <p>The result was that he came to the conclusion that he
+    <i>could</i> preach, and that the people of Boston had not
+    "sense enough to know a good sermon when they heard it." A
+    little later old Father Taylor, that good genius of the Boston
+    Bethel, a man after Cartwright's own heart, came to him and
+    asked him to preach for him, and this, after hesitating, our
+    preacher agreed to do, upon the condition that he should be
+    allowed to conduct the services in regular Western style.</p>
+
+    <p>"In the meantime," says he, "I had learned from different
+    sources that the grand reason of my falling under the
+    expectations of the congregations I had addressed was
+    substantially this: almost all those curious incidents that had
+    gained currency throughout the country concerning Methodist
+    preachers had been located on me, and that when the
+    congregations came to hear me, they expected little else but a
+    bundle of eccentricities and singularities, and when they did
+    not realize according to their anticipations, they were
+    disappointed, and that this was the reason they were
+    disappointed. So on the Sabbath, when I came to the Bethel, we
+    had a good congregation, and after telling them that Brother
+    Taylor had given me the liberty to preach to them after the
+    Western fashion, I took my text, and after a few common-place
+    remarks, I commenced giving them some Western anecdotes, which
+    had a thrilling effect on the congregation, and excited them
+    immoderately&mdash;I can not say religiously; but I thought if
+    ever I saw animal excitement, it was then and there. This broke
+    the charm. During my stay, after this, I could pass anywhere
+    for Peter Cartwright, the old pioneer of the West. I am not
+    sure that after this I fell under the expectations of my
+    congregations among them."</p>
+
+    <p>Sixty-seven years have passed away since the old pioneer
+    began his preaching, and still he labors in the cause of his
+    Master. Age has not subdued his zeal or dimmed his eye. His
+    labors make up the history of the West. Where he first reared
+    his humble log-hut, smiling farms and tasteful mansions cover
+    the fertile prairies of the West; cities and towns mark the
+    spot where his backwoods camp-meetings drew thousands into the
+    kingdom of God; the iron horse dashes with the speed of the
+    wind over the boundless prairies which he first crossed with
+    only the points of timber for his guides; the floating palaces
+    of the West plow the streams over which he swam his horse or
+    was ferried in a bark canoe; and stately churches stand where
+    the little log chapels of the infant West were built by him. It
+    is a long and a noble life upon which he looks back, the only
+    survivor of the heroic band who started with him to carry
+    Christ into the Western wilds. He has outlived all his father's
+    family, every member of the class he joined in 1800, every
+    member of the Western Conference of 1804, save perhaps one or
+    two, every member of the General Conference of 1816, the first
+    to which he was elected, all his early bishops, every presiding
+    elder under whom he ever ministered, and thousands of those
+    whom he brought into the Church. "I have lived too long," he
+    said, in a recent lecture; but we take issue with him. He has
+    not lived too long whose declining age is cheered by the
+    glorious fruition of the seed sown in his youth and prime. Few,
+    indeed, are given so great a privilege; and few, having lived
+    so long and worked so hard, can say with him, that during such
+    a long and exposed career, "I have never been overtaken in any
+    scandalous sin, though my shortcomings and imperfections have
+    been without number." A man who can boast such a record, though
+    he be as poor in purse as this simple-hearted backwoods
+    preacher, has earned a Great Fortune indeed, for his treasure
+    is one that can not be taken from him, since it is laid up in
+    Heaven, "where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where
+    thieves do not break through nor steal."</p>
+    <hr style='width: 65%;'>
+    <a name='authors'></a>
+
+    <h1>IX.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;AUTHORS.</h1>
+    <hr style='width: 65%;'>
+    <a name='CHAPTER_XXXIII'></a>
+
+    <h2>CHAPTER XXXIII.</h2>
+
+    <h3>HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.</h3><br>
+
+
+    <p>Wherever the English language is spoken, the name of
+    <span class="small-caps">Henry Wadsworth Longfellow</span> has
+    become a household word, and there is scarcely a library,
+    however humble, but can boast a well-worn volume of his tender
+    songs,&mdash;songs that</p>
+
+    <div class="poem">
+        <div class="stanza">
+            <p>"Have power to quiet</p>
+
+            <p class="i2">The restless pulse of care,</p>
+
+            <p>And come like the benediction</p>
+
+            <p class="i2">That follows after prayer."</p>
+        </div>
+    </div>
+
+    <p>He was born in the city of Portland, Maine, on the 27th of
+    February, 1807, and was the son of the Hon. Stephen Longfellow,
+    a distinguished lawyer of that city. The house in which he was
+    born was a square wooden structure, built many years before,
+    and large and roomy. It stood upon the outskirts of the town,
+    on the edge of the sea, and was separated from the water only
+    by a wide street. From its windows the dreamy boy, who grew up
+    within its walls, could look out upon the dark, mysterious
+    ocean, and, lying awake in his little bed in the long winter
+    nights, he could listen to its sorrowful roar as it broke
+    heavily upon the shore. That he was keenly alive to the
+    fascination of such close intimacy with the ocean, we have
+    abundant proof in his writings.</p>
+
+    <p>He was carefully educated in the best schools of the city,
+    and at the age of fourteen entered Bowdoin College, at
+    Brunswick, where he graduated in his nineteenth year. He was an
+    industrious student, and stood high in his classes. He gave
+    brilliant promise of his future eminence as a poet in several
+    productions written during his college days, which were
+    published in a Boston journal called the "United States
+    Literary Gazette." Among these were the "Hymn of the Moravian
+    Nuns," "The Spirit of Poetry," "Woods in Winter," and "Sunrise
+    on the Hills."</p>
+
+    <p>Upon leaving college he entered his father's office, in
+    Portland, with the half-formed design of studying law, which he
+    never carried into execution, as more congenial employment soon
+    presented itself to him. In 1826 he was appointed Professor of
+    Modern Languages and Literature at Bowdoin College, with the
+    privilege of passing several years abroad for observation and
+    study. He accepted the appointment with unaffected delight, and
+    promptly went abroad. He passed his first year in France,
+    studying the language and literature of that country, and the
+    next in Spain, engaged in similar pursuits. Italy claimed his
+    third year, and Germany his fourth. He traveled extensively,
+    and made many pleasant acquaintances among the most gifted men
+    and women of the Old World. Returning home toward the close of
+    1829, he entered upon the active duties of his professorship,
+    and for five years held this position, winning considerable
+    distinction by his academic labors.</p>
+
+    <p>During his professorship our poet married, and the years
+    that followed were very happy and very quiet. The life he led
+    at Bowdoin was peaceful, and in a measure retired, giving him
+    ample opportunity for study and for laying the sure foundation
+    of his future fame. During this period of his life he
+    contributed articles to the "North American Review," and
+    extended his acquaintance gradually among the literary men of
+    New England. He was fond of recalling the experiences of his
+    life abroad, and being unwilling that they should be lost from
+    his memory, determined to transmit them to paper before they
+    faded quite away. These sketches he finally concluded to give
+    to the public, under the title of "Outre Mer; or, Sketches from
+    Beyond Sea." They appeared originally in numbers, and were
+    published by Samuel Colman, of Portland. They were well
+    received, and brought Professor Longfellow into notice in New
+    England. Soon afterward he published a translation of the ode
+    upon "Coplas de Manrique," by his son, Don Jose Manrique, which
+    won him additional credit. His fugitive poems had become very
+    popular, and had made his name familiar to his countrymen, but
+    as yet he had not collected them in book form.</p>
+
+    <p>In 1835, on the resignation of Mr. George Ticknor, he was
+    appointed Professor of Modern Languages and Belles Lettres in
+    Harvard College, and accepted the position. Before entering
+    upon his duties, however, he resolved to devote two years more
+    to foreign travel and improvement, and accordingly sailed for
+    Europe the second time. Before leaving America, however, he
+    committed the publication of "Outre Mer" to the Harpers, of New
+    York, who issued it complete in two volumes in 1835. Its
+    popularity was very decided. Soon after reaching Europe, Mr.
+    Longfellow was visited with a sad bereavement in the loss of
+    his wife, who died at Rotterdam. He devoted this European visit
+    to the northern part of the continent, Denmark, Sweden,
+    Germany, and Holland, and to England, and spent some time in
+    Paris. Returning in the autumn of 1836, he entered upon his
+    duties at Harvard, and made his home in Cambridge. He continued
+    his contributions to the "North American Review," and a number
+    of fugitive pieces flowed from his pen into print.</p>
+
+    <p>In the summer of 1837 he went to live in the house which has
+    ever since been his home. This is the old Craigie House, in
+    Cambridge, famous in our history as having been the
+    headquarters of Washington during the siege of Boston. It had
+    been built by Colonel John Vassal about the middle of the last
+    century, and had finally passed into the hands of Andrew
+    Craigie, "Apothecary General to the Northern Provincial Army"
+    of the infant Republic. Craigie had ruined himself by his
+    lavish hospitality, and his widow, a stately old lady, and
+    worthy in every respect of a better fate, had been reduced to
+    the necessity of letting rooms and parting with the greater
+    portion of the lands which had belonged to the mansion. Mr.
+    Longfellow had been attracted to the house not only by its
+    winning and home-like appearance, but by its historical
+    associations. Mrs. Craigie had decided at the time to let no
+    more rooms, but the young professor's gentle, winning manner
+    conquered her determination, and she not only received him into
+    the old mansion, but installed him in the south-east corner
+    room in the second story, which had been used by Washington as
+    his bed-chamber.</p>
+
+    <p>It was just the home for our poet. Its windows looked out
+    upon one of the loveliest landscapes in New England, with the
+    bright river winding through the broad meadow beyond the house,
+    and the blue Milton Hills dotting the distant background. The
+    bright verdure of New England sparkled on every side, and the
+    stately old elms that stood guard by the house screened it from
+    the prying eyes of the passers on the public road. The whole
+    place was hallowed to its new inmate by the memories of the
+    brave soldiers, wise statesmen, and brilliant ladies who had
+    graced its heroic age, and of which the stately hostess was the
+    last and worthy representative. The old house was as serene and
+    still as the dearest lover of quiet could wish. The mistress
+    lived quite apart from her lodger, and left him to follow the
+    bent of his own fancies; and rare fancies they were, for it was
+    of them that some of his best works were born in this upper
+    chamber. Here he wrote "Hyperion," in 1838 and 1839. Its
+    publication, which was undertaken by John Owen, the University
+    publisher in Cambridge, marked an era in American literature.
+    Every body read the book, and every body talked of it. It was a
+    poem in prose, and none the less the work of a poet because
+    professedly "a romance of travel." The young read it with
+    enthusiasm, and it sent hundreds to follow Paul Flemming's
+    footsteps in the distant Fatherland, where the "romance of
+    travel" became their guidebook. The merchant and the lawyer,
+    the journalist and the mechanic, reading its pages, found that
+    the stern realities of life had not withered up all the romance
+    of their natures, and under its fascinations they became boys
+    again. Even Horace Greeley, that most practical and
+    unimaginative of men, became rapturous over it. It was a great
+    success, and established the poet's fame beyond all question,
+    and since then its popularity has never waned.</p>
+
+    <p>In 1840, he published the "Voices of the Night," which he
+    had heard sounding to him in his haunted chamber. This was his
+    first volume, and its popularity was even greater than that of
+    "Hyperion," although some of the poems had appeared before, in
+    the "Knickerbocker Magazine." In 1841, he published his volume
+    of "Ballads, and Other Poems," which but added to his fame, and
+    the next year bade the old house under the elms a temporary
+    adieu, and sailed for Europe, where he passed the summer on the
+    Rhine. On the voyage home, he composed his "Poems on Slavery,"
+    and soon after his return wrote "The Spanish Student," a drama,
+    "which smells of the utmost South, and was a strange blossoming
+    for the garden of Thomas Tracy."</p>
+
+    <p>In 1843 the stately mistress of the old house died, and
+    Professor Longfellow bought the homestead of Andrew Craigie,
+    with eight acres of land, including the meadow, which sloped
+    down to the pretty river. There have been very few prouder or
+    happier moments in his life than that in which he first felt
+    that the old house under the elms was his. Yet he must have
+    missed the stately old lady who first had admitted him to a
+    place in it, and whom he had grown to love as a dear friend.
+    She seemed so thoroughly a part and parcel of the place, that
+    he must have missed the rustle of her heavy silks along the
+    wide and echoing halls, and have listened some time for the
+    sound of her old-fashioned spinet in the huge drawing-room
+    below, and, entering the room where she was wont to receive her
+    guests, he must have missed her from the old window where she
+    was accustomed to sit, with the open book in her lap, and her
+    eyes fixed on the far-off sky, thinking, no doubt, of the days
+    when in her royal beauty, she moved a queen through the
+    brilliant home of Andrew Craigie. A part of the veneration
+    which he felt for the old house had settled upon its ancient
+    mistress, and the poet doubtless felt that the completeness of
+    the quaint old establishment was broken up when she passed
+    away.</p>
+
+    <p>In 1846, Mr. Longfellow published "The Belfry of Bruges, and
+    Other Poems;" in 1847, "Evangeline" (by many considered his
+    greatest work); in 1850, "Seaside and Fireside;" in 1851, "The
+    Golden Legend;" in 1855, "The Song of Hiawatha;" in 1858, "The
+    Courtship of Miles Standish;" in 1863, "The Wayside Inn;" in
+    1866, "The Flower de Luce;" in 1867, his translation of the
+    "Divina Commedia," in three volumes; and in 1868, "The New
+    England Tragedies." Besides these, he published, in 1845, a
+    work on the "Poets and Poetry of Europe," and in 1849,
+    "Kavanagh," a novel.</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Longfellow continued to discharge his duties in the
+    University for seventeen years, winning fresh laurels every
+    year, and in 1854 resigned his position, and was succeeded in
+    it by Mr. James Russell Lowell. He now devoted himself
+    exclusively to his profession, the income from his writings
+    affording him a handsome maintenance. In 1855. "The Song of
+    Hiawatha" was given to the public, and its appearance may be
+    styled an event in the literary history of the world. It was
+    not only original in the story it told, and in the method of
+    treatment, but the rhythm was new. It was emphatically an
+    American poem, and was received by the people with delight. It
+    met with an immense sale, and greatly increased its author's
+    popularity with his countrymen.</p>
+
+    <p>In 1861 a terrible affliction befell the poet in his family.
+    He had married, some years after the death of his first wife, a
+    lady whose many virtues had endeared her to all who knew her.
+    She was standing by the open fire in the sitting-room, one day
+    in the winter of 1861, when her clothing took fire, and before
+    her husband, summoned by her cries, could extinguish the
+    flames, she was terribly burned. Her injuries were internal,
+    and she soon afterwards died.</p>
+
+    <p>In 1868, Mr. Longfellow again visited Europe, and remained
+    abroad more than a year. His reception by all classes of the
+    people of the Old World was eminently gratifying to his
+    countrymen. This welcome, so genuine and heartfelt, was due,
+    however, to the genius of the man, and not to his
+    nationality.</p>
+
+    <p>He had overstepped the bounds of country, and had made
+    himself the poet of the English-speaking race. A man of vast
+    learning and varied acquirements, thoroughly versed in the ways
+    of the world, he is still as simple and unaffected in thought
+    and ways as when he listened to and wondered at the dashing of
+    the wild waves on the shore in his boyhood's home. A most
+    gifted and accomplished artist, he has been faithful to nature
+    in all things. Earnest and aspiring himself, he has given to
+    his poems the ring of a true manhood. There is nothing bitter,
+    nothing sarcastic in his writings. He views all things with a
+    loving eye, and it is the exquisite tenderness of his sympathy
+    with his fellow-men that has enabled him to find his way so
+    readily to their hearts. Without seeking to represent the
+    intensity of passion, he deals with the fresh, simple emotions
+    of the human soul, and in his simplicity lies his power. He
+    touches a chord that finds an echo in every heart, and his
+    poems have a humanity in them that is irresistible. We admire
+    the "grand old masters," but shrink abashed from their sublime
+    measures. Longfellow is so human, he understands us so well,
+    that we turn instinctively to his simple, tender songs for
+    comfort in sorrow, or for the greater perfection of our
+    happiness.</p>
+
+    <p>Perhaps I can not better illustrate the power of his
+    simplicity than by the following quotations:</p>
+
+    <div class="poem">
+        <div class="stanza">
+            <p>There is no flock, however watched and tended,</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">But one dead lamb is there!</p>
+
+            <p>There is no fireside, howsoe'er defended,</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">But has one vacant chair!</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div class="stanza">
+            <p>The air is full of farewell to the dying,</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">And mournings for the dead;</p>
+
+            <p>The heart of Rachel, for her children crying,</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">Will not be comforted.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div class="stanza">
+            <p>Let us be patient! These severe afflictions</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">Not from the ground arise,</p>
+
+            <p>But oftentimes celestial benedictions</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">Assume this dark disguise.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div class="stanza">
+            <p>We see but dimly through the mists and vapors,</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">Amid these earthly damps;</p>
+
+            <p>What seem to us but sad funereal tapers,</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">May be heaven's distant lamps.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div class="stanza">
+            <p>There is no death! What seems so is transition;</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">This life of mortal breath</p>
+
+            <p>Is but a suburb of the life elysian,</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">Whose portal we call Death.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div class="stanza">
+            <p>She is not dead&mdash;the child of our
+            affection&mdash;</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">But gone unto that school</p>
+
+            <p>Where she no longer needs our poor protection,</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">And Christ himself doth rule.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div class="stanza">
+            <p>In that great cloister's stillness and
+            seclusion,</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">By guardian angels led,</p>
+
+            <p>Safe from temptation, safe from sin's pollution,</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">She lives, whom we call dead.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div class="stanza">
+            <p>Day after day we think what she is doing</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">In those bright realms of air;</p>
+
+            <p>Year after year, her tender steps pursuing,</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">Behold her grow more fair.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div class="stanza">
+            <p>Thus do we walk with her, and keep unbroken</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">The bond which nature gives,</p>
+
+            <p>Thinking that our remembrance, though unspoken,</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">May reach her where she lives.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div class="stanza">
+            <p>Not as a child shall we again behold her;</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">For when with raptures wild</p>
+
+            <p>In our embraces we again enfold her,</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">She will not be a child&mdash;</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div class="stanza">
+            <p>But a fair maiden, in her Father's mansion,</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">Clothed with celestial grace,</p>
+
+            <p>And beautiful with all the soul's expansion</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">Shall we behold her face.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div class="stanza">
+            <p>And though at times impetuous with emotion,</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">And anguish long suppressed,</p>
+
+            <p>The swelling heart heaves, moaning like the
+            ocean,</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">That can not be at rest&mdash;</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div class="stanza">
+            <p>We will be patient, and assuage the feeling</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">We can not wholly stay;</p>
+
+            <p>By silence sanctifying, not concealing,</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">The grief that must have way.</p>
+        </div>
+    </div><br>
+
+
+    <h4 style="font-variant:small-caps">From THE GOLDEN
+    LEGEND.</h4>
+
+    <p class="center"><span class=
+    "small-caps">Scene</span>.&mdash;<i>The Chamber of</i>
+    <span class="small-caps">Gottlieb</span> <i>and</i>
+          <span class="small-caps">Ursula</span>.&mdash;<i>Midnight</i>.&mdash;<span class="small-caps">
+    Elsie</span> <i>standing by their bedside weeping</i>.</p>
+
+    <div class="poem">
+        <div class="stanza">
+            <span class="speaker">Gottlieb.</span>
+
+            <p class="i4">The wind is roaring; the rushing rain</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">Is loud upon the roof and
+            window-pane,</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">As if the wild Huntsman of
+            Rodenstein,</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">Boding evil to me and mine,</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">Were abroad to-night with his ghostly
+            train!</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">In the brief lulls of the tempest
+            wild,</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">The dogs howl in the yard; and hark!</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">Some one is sobbing in the dark,</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">Here in the chamber.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div class="stanza">
+            <span class="speaker">Elsie.</span>
+
+            <p class="i20">It is I.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div class="stanza">
+            <span class="speaker">Ursula.</span>
+
+            <p class="i4">Elsie! What ails thee, my poor child?</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div class="stanza">
+            <span class="speaker">Elsie.</span>
+
+            <p class="i4">I am disturbed and much distressed,</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">In thinking our dear Prince must die;</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">I can not close my eyes, nor rest.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div class="stanza">
+            <span class="speaker">Gottlieb.</span>
+
+            <p class="i4">What wouldst thou? In the Power
+            Divine</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">His healing lies, not in our own;</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">It is in the hand of God alone.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div class="stanza">
+            <span class="speaker">Elsie.</span>
+
+            <p class="i4">Nay, He has put it into mine,</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">And into my heart.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div class="stanza">
+            <span class="speaker">Gottlieb.</span>
+
+            <p class="i20">Thy words are wild.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div class="stanza">
+            <span class="speaker">Ursula.</span>
+
+            <p class="i4">What dost thou mean? my child! my
+            child!</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div class="stanza">
+            <span class="speaker">Elsie.</span>
+
+            <p class="i4">That for our dear Prince Henry's sake</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">I will myself the offering make,</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">And give my life to purchase his.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div class="stanza">
+            <span class="speaker">Ursula.</span>
+
+            <p class="i4">Am I still dreaming, or awake?</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">Thou speakest carelessly of death,</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">And yet thou knowest not what it is.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div class="stanza">
+            <span class="speaker">Elsie.</span>
+
+            <p class="i4">'Tis the cessation of our breath.</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">Silent and motionless we lie;</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">And no one knoweth more than this.</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">I saw our little Gertrude die;</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">She left off breathing, and no more</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">I smoothed the pillow beneath her
+            head.</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">She was more beautiful than before.</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">Like violets faded were her eyes;</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">By this we knew that she was dead.</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">Through the open window looked the
+            skies</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">Into the chamber where she lay,</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">And the wind was like the sound of
+            wings,</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">As if angels came to bear her away.</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">Ah! when I saw and felt these things,</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">I found it difficult to stay;</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">I longed to die, as she had died,</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">And go forth with her, side by side.</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">The saints are dead, the martyrs
+            dead,</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">And Mary, and our Lord; and I</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">Would follow in humility</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">The way by them illumined.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div class="stanza">
+            <span class="speaker">Ursula.</span>
+
+            <p class="i4">My child I my child! thou must not
+            die.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div class="stanza">
+            <span class="speaker">Elsie.</span>
+
+            <p class="i4">Why should I live? Do I not know</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">The life of woman is full of woe?</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">Toiling on, and on, and on,</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">With breaking heart, and tearful
+            eyes,</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">And silent lips, and in the soul</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">The secret longings that arise,</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">Which this world never satisfies!</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">Some more, some less, but of the
+            whole</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">Not one quite happy; no, not one!</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div class="stanza">
+            <span class="speaker">Ursula.</span>
+
+            <p class="i4">It is the malediction of Eve!</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div class="stanza">
+            <span class="speaker">Elsie.</span>
+
+            <p class="i4">In place of it, let me receive</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">The benediction of Mary, then.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div class="stanza">
+            <span class="speaker">Gottlieb.</span>
+
+            <p class="i4">Ah, woe is me! Ah, woe is me!</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">Most wretched am I among men.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div class="stanza">
+            <span class="speaker">Ursula.</span>
+
+            <p class="i4">Alas! that I should live to see</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">Thy death, beloved, and to stand</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">Above thy grave! Ah, woe the day!</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div class="stanza">
+            <span class="speaker">Elsie.</span>
+
+            <p class="i4">Thou wilt not see it. I shall lie</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">Beneath the flowers of another land;</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">For at Salerno, far away</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">Over the mountains, over the sea,</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">It is appointed me to die!</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">And it will seem no more to thee</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">Than if at the village on market day</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">I should a little longer stay</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">Than I am used.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div class="stanza">
+            <span class="speaker">Ursula.</span>
+
+            <p class="i20">Even as thou sayest!</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">And how my heart beats when thou
+            stayest!</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">I can not rest until my sight</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">Is satisfied with seeing thee.</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">What, then, if thou wert dead?</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div class="stanza">
+            <span class="speaker">Gottlieb.</span>
+
+            <p class="i20">Ah me,</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">Of our old eyes thou art the light!</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">The joy of our old hearts art thou!</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">And wilt thou die?</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div class="stanza">
+            <span class="speaker">Ursula.</span>
+
+            <p class="i20">Not now! not now!</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div class="stanza">
+            <span class="speaker">Elsie.</span>
+
+            <p class="i4">Christ died for me, and shall not I</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">Be willing for my Prince to die?</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">You both are silent; you can not
+            speak.</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">This said I, at our Saviour's feast,</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">After confession, to the priest,</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">And even he made no reply.</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">Does he not warn us all to seek</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">The happier, better land on high,</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">Where flowers immortal never wither;</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">And could he forbid me to go thither?</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div class="stanza">
+            <span class="speaker">Gottlieb.</span>
+
+            <p class="i4">In God's own time, my heart's
+            delight!</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">When He shall call thee, not before!</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div class="stanza">
+            <span class="speaker">Elsie.</span>
+
+            <p class="i4">I heard Him call. When Christ
+            ascended</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">Triumphantly, from star to star,</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">He left the gates of heaven ajar.</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">I had a vision in the night,</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">And saw Him standing at the door</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">Of His Father's mansion, vast and
+            splendid,</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">And beckoning to me from afar.</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">I can not stay!</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div class="stanza">
+            <span class="speaker">Gottlieb.</span>
+
+            <p class="i20">She speaks almost</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">As if it were the Holy Ghost</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">Spake through her lips and in her
+            stead!</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">What if this were of God?</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div class="stanza">
+            <span class="speaker">Ursula.</span>
+
+            <p class="i20">Ah, then</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">Gainsay it dare we not.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div class="stanza">
+            <span class="speaker">Gottlieb.</span>
+
+            <p class="i20">Amen!</p>
+        </div>
+    </div><br>
+
+
+    <p>The old house under the elms is still the poet's home, and
+    dear, as such, to every lover of poetry. It is a stately
+    building, of the style of more than one hundred years ago, and
+    is a very home-like place in its general appearance. Entering
+    by the main door-way, which is in the center of the house, the
+    visitor finds himself in a wide, old-fashioned hall, with doors
+    opening upon it on either hand.</p>
+
+    <p>"The library of the poet is the long north-eastern room upon
+    the lower floor," said a writer seventeen years ago. "It opens
+    upon the garden, which retains still the quaint devices of an
+    antique design, harmonious with the house. The room is
+    surrounded with handsome book-cases, and one stands also
+    between two Corinthian columns at one end, which imparts
+    dignity and richness to the apartment. A little table by the
+    northern window, looking upon the garden, is the usual seat of
+    the poet. A bust or two, the rich carvings of the cases, the
+    spaciousness of the room, a leopard-skin lying upon the floor,
+    and a few shelves of strictly literary curiosities, reveal not
+    only the haunt of the elegant scholar and poet, but the
+    favorite resort of the family circle. But the northern gloom of
+    a New England winter is intolerant of this serene delight, this
+    beautiful domesticity, and urges the inmates to the smaller
+    room in front of the house, communicating with the library, and
+    the study of General Washington. This is still distinctively
+    'the study,' as the rear room is 'the library,' Books are here,
+    and all the graceful detail of an elegant household, and upon
+    the walls hang crayon portraits of Emerson, Sumner, and
+    Hawthorne.</p>
+
+    <p>"Emerging into the hall, the eyes of the enamored visitor
+    fall upon the massive old staircase, with the clock upon the
+    landing. Directly he hears a singing in his mind:</p>
+
+    <div class="poem">
+        <div class="stanza">
+            <p>'Somewhat back from the village street,</p>
+
+            <p>Stands the old-fashioned country-seat;</p>
+
+            <p>Across its antique portico</p>
+
+            <p>Tall poplar trees their shadows throw,</p>
+
+            <p>And from its station in the hall</p>
+
+            <p>An ancient time-piece says to all,</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">"Forever&mdash;never!</p>
+
+            <p class="i4">Never&mdash;forever!"'</p>
+        </div>
+    </div>
+
+    <p>"But he does not see the particular clock of the poem, which
+    stood upon another staircase, in another quaint old
+    mansion,&mdash;although the verse belongs truly to all old
+    clocks in all old country-seats, just as the 'Village
+    Blacksmith' and his smithy are not alone the stalwart man and
+    dingy shop under the 'spreading chestnut-tree' which the
+    Professor daily passes on his way to his college duties, but
+    belong wherever a smithy stands. Through the meadows in front
+    flows the placid Charles."</p>
+
+    <p>So calmly flows the poet's life. The old house has other
+    charms for him now besides those with which his fancy invested
+    it when he first set foot within its walls, for here have come
+    to him the joys and sorrows of his maturer life, and here,
+    "when the evening lamps are lighted," come to him the memories
+    of the loved and lost, who but wait for him in the better land.
+    Here, too, cluster the memories of those noble achievements in
+    his glorious career which have made him now and for all times
+    the people's poet. Others, as the years go by, will woo us with
+    their lays, but none so winningly and tenderly as this our
+    greatest master. There was but one David in Israel, and when he
+    passed away no other filled his place.</p>
+    <hr style='width: 65%;'>
+    <a name='CHAPTER_XXXIV'></a>
+
+    <h2>CHAPTER XXXIV.</h2>
+
+    <h3>NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.</h3><br>
+
+
+    <p>There came to the old town of Salem, in the Province of
+    Massachusetts, in the early part of the seventeenth century, an
+    English family named Hawthorne&mdash;Puritans, like all the
+    other inhabitants of that growing town. They proved their
+    fidelity to Puritan principles by entering readily into all the
+    superstitions of the day, and became noted for the zeal with
+    which they persecuted the Quakers and hung the witches. The
+    head of the family was a sea captain, and for many generations
+    the men of the family followed the same avocation, "a
+    gray-haired shipmaster, in each generation, retiring from the
+    quarter-deck to the homestead, while a boy of fourteen took the
+    hereditary place before the mast, confronting the salt spray
+    and the gale, which had blustered against his sire and
+    grandsire."</p>
+
+    <center>
+        <a name='illust7361'></a><img src='images/7361.jpg'
+                width='500'
+                height='564'
+                alt='NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.'><br>
+         NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.
+    </center>
+
+    <p>Of such a race came <span class="small-caps">Nathaniel
+    Hawthorne</span>, who was born at Salem, on the 4th, of July,
+    1804. His father was a sea captain, and died of the yellow
+    fever at Havana, in 1810. His mother was a woman of great
+    beauty and extreme sensibility, and it was from her that
+    Nathaniel derived the peculiarities of character which
+    distinguished him through life. The death of her husband filled
+    her with the profoundest grief, and though the violence of her
+    sorrow subsided with time, she passed the remainder of her life
+    in strict seclusion, constantly grieving in her quiet way for
+    her departed lord. Her son grew up to the age of ten in this
+    sad and lonely house, passing four of the most susceptible
+    years of his life in the society of his sorrowful mother. He
+    became a shy boy, and avoided the company of other children.
+    His health began to suffer from the effects of such an
+    unnatural state of affairs, and at the age of ten he was sent
+    to live on a farm belonging to the family, on the shore of
+    Sebago Lake, in Maine. The active out-door life which he led
+    here entirely restored his health, which was naturally strong
+    and vigorous; here, also, he acquired that fondness for boating
+    which was his chief amusement in after years. Returning to
+    Salem, he completed his studies in the preparatory schools,
+    after which he entered Bowdoin College, where he graduated in
+    1825, at the age of twenty-one. He was a classmate of
+    Longfellow and George B. Cheever, with whom he was only
+    slightly acquainted; and he formed a warm and lasting
+    friendship with Franklin Pierce, who was in the class next
+    before him. Longfellow has preserved a recollection of him in
+    his student days as "a shy youth in a bright-buttoned coat,
+    flitting across the college grounds."</p>
+
+    <p>After graduating, he went back to his home in Salem, where
+    he resided for many years, leading a life of seclusion, which
+    he passed in meditation and study. His strong literary
+    inclination now vented itself in efforts which were in every
+    way characteristic of the man. He wrote numerous wild tales,
+    the most of which he burned, but a few of which found their way
+    into the newspapers and magazines of the country. They were
+    full of a wild gloominess, and were told with a power which
+    proved that their author was no ordinary man. Few, however,
+    dreamed that they were the work of the pale recluse of Salem,
+    for he led a life of such strict seclusion that not even the
+    members of his own family could tell with certainty what he
+    did. His days were passed in his chamber, and at night he took
+    long walks alone on the sea-shore or into the woods. He shunned
+    all society, and seemed to find companionship only in nature,
+    and in the creations of his fancy. Yet he was not a morose or
+    unhappy man. On the contrary, he seems to have been a very
+    happy one, full of generous and kindly feelings, and finding
+    only a strange pleasure where others would have found
+    bitterness and cynicism. Like the melancholy Jacques, he might
+    have said of his pensive shyness, "It is a melancholy of mine
+    own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects;
+    ... which, by often rumination, wraps me in a most humorous
+    sadness."</p>
+
+    <p>In 1837 he collected his published tales, which, while they
+    had charmed a few cultivated readers, had scarcely been noticed
+    by the masses, and published them in a volume to which he gave
+    the name of "Twice-Told Tales." The book was well received by
+    the public, but its circulation was limited, although Mr.
+    Longfellow warmly welcomed it in the "North American Review,"
+    and pronounced it the "work of a man of genius and a true
+    poet." Still it was neglected by the masses, and Hawthorne says
+    himself that he was at that time "the most unknown author in
+    America." There was more truth in this assertion than lies on
+    its face, for the people who read the book supposed that the
+    name of Nathaniel Hawthorne was merely a pseudonyme, and
+    declared that as Nathaniel was evidently selected by the author
+    because of the fondness of the old-time Puritans for Scripture
+    names, so Hawthorne was chosen by him as expressive of one of
+    the most beautiful features of the New England landscape. The
+    merits of the book were too genuine, however, for it to lack
+    admirers, and the small class which greeted its first
+    appearance with delight gradually increased, and finally the
+    demand for the book became so great that in 1842 Hawthorne
+    ventured to issue a second series of "Twice-Told Tales," the
+    most of which had appeared in the "Democratic Review," then
+    edited by his friend O'Sullivan. Of these volumes, Mr. George
+    William Curtis says: "They are full of glancing wit, of tender
+    satire, of exquisite natural description, of subtle and strange
+    analysis of human life, darkly passionate and weird."</p>
+
+    <p>In 1838 George Bancroft was Collector of the Port of Boston,
+    and, having been deeply impressed with the genius displayed in
+    the first volume of "Twice-Told Tales," sought out Hawthorne
+    and offered him a place in the Boston Custom-House as weigher
+    and gauger. Hawthorne accepted the position, and at once
+    entered upon his duties. Leaving his solitude and the weird
+    phantoms that had been his companions for so long, he passed
+    immediately into the busy bustle of the great New England port.
+    It was a new world to him, and one which interested him keenly.
+    His duties kept him constantly on the wharf, and threw him
+    daily into contact with captains and sailors from all parts of
+    the world. He became a great favorite with these, and they told
+    him many a strange story of their adventures and of the sights
+    they had seen in distant lands, and these, as they were
+    listened to by him, took each a distinctive form in his
+    imagination. Not less interesting to him were the men among
+    whom his duties threw him. They were more to him than the
+    ordinary beings that thronged the streets of the great city,
+    for they had been victorious in many a battle with the mighty
+    deep, and they had looked on the wondrous sights of the far-off
+    lands of the Old World. Queer people they were, too, each a
+    Captain Cuttle or a Dirk Hatteraick in himself, and many an
+    hour did the dreamy writer spend with them, apparently
+    listening to their rude stories, but really making keen studies
+    of the men themselves.</p>
+
+    <p>He discharged his duties faithfully in the Boston
+    Custom-House, performing each with an exactness thoroughly
+    characteristic of him, until 1841, when the accession of
+    President Harrison to power obliged him to withdraw to make way
+    for a Whig.</p>
+
+    <p>From the Custom-house he went to live at Brook Farm as one
+    of that singular community of dreamers and enthusiasts which
+    was to inaugurate a new era of men and things in the world, but
+    which came at last to a most inglorious termination. He was
+    thrown into intimate association here with many who have since
+    become prominent in our literary history, and for some of them
+    conceived a warm attachment. He took his share of the farm
+    labors, to which he was very partial, but remained at the
+    community less than a year, and then returned to Boston. In his
+    "Blithedale Romance" he has given us a picture of the life at
+    Brook Farm, though he denies having sketched his characters
+    from his old associates at that place.</p>
+
+    <p>In 1843 he married Miss Peabody, a member of a family
+    distinguished for their various achievements in the world of
+    letters. Besides being an artist of no mean pretensions, she
+    was herself a writer of considerable promise, though her
+    writings had no other critics than her family and most intimate
+    friends. "Her husband shrank from seeing her name in the
+    reviews, and in this, as in all other things, his feelings were
+    sacredly respected by her." She was a lady of rare strength of
+    character and great beauty, and was in every respect a fitting
+    wife for such a man. The twenty-one years of their wedded life
+    make up a period of unbroken happiness to both. Hawthorne was
+    very proud of his wife, and in his quiet way never failed to
+    show it. Their friends often remarked that the wedded life of
+    this happy pair seemed like one long courtship.</p>
+
+    <p>Hawthorne took his bride on his wedding-day to a new home.
+    He had rented the old parsonage adjoining the battle-field of
+    Concord, from whose windows the pastor of those heroic days had
+    watched his congregation fight the British in his yard. It was
+    a gloomy and partially dilapidated "Old Manse," and doubtless
+    Hawthorne had chosen it because of its quaint aspect. He has
+    himself drawn the picture of it, and given us an exquisite
+    collection of "Mosses" from it. It lay back from the main road,
+    and was approached by an avenue of ancient black-ash trees,
+    whose deep shade added much to the quiet appearance of "the
+    gray front of the old parsonage." It was just the home for him,
+    and here passed three of the happiest years of his life. Here
+    he wrote his "Mosses from an Old Manse," and here his first
+    child was born.</p>
+
+    <p>The life he led at Concord was very secluded. He avoided the
+    society of the village people, who sought in vain to penetrate
+    his retirement and satisfy their curiosity concerning him. But
+    they were disappointed. He lived on in his deep seclusion,
+    happy in having his wife and child with him, but caring for no
+    other society. During the day he remained in his study, which
+    overlooked the old battle-field, or, passing down the lawn at
+    the back of the house to the river, spent the afternoon in
+    rowing on the pretty stream. At night he would take long walks,
+    or row up the river to the bridge by which the British crossed
+    the stream, and enjoy his favorite luxury&mdash;a bath. The
+    village people were full of curiosity to know something about
+    him, for he was absolutely unknown to them; and any one who
+    understands what the curiosity of a New England villager is can
+    readily imagine the feelings with which the people of Concord
+    regarded their mysterious neighbor. They were never satisfied,
+    however, for Hawthorne shrank from prying eyes with
+    indescribable horror. He kept his ways, and compelled them to
+    let him alone. He could easily avoid the town in his walks or
+    his rides upon the river, and he was rarely seen passing
+    through the streets unless compelled to do so by matters which
+    needed his attention in Concord.</p>
+
+    <p>Yet the "Old Manse" was not without its guests. Hawthorne
+    was a man of many friends, and these came often to see him.
+    They were men after his own heart, and among them were Emerson,
+    Ellery, Channing, Thoreau, Whittier, Longfellow, and George
+    William Curtis. The last-named has left us this pleasant
+    picture of our author in the midst of his friends:</p>
+
+    <p>"During Hawthorne's first year's residence in Concord, I had
+    driven up with some friends to an esthetic tea at Mr.
+    Emerson's. It was in the winter, and a great wood-fire blazed
+    upon the hospitable hearth. There were various men and women of
+    note assembled, and I, who listened attentively to all the fine
+    things that were said, was for some time scarcely aware of a
+    man who sat upon the edge of the circle, a little withdrawn,
+    his head slightly thrown forward upon his breast, and his
+    bright eyes clearly burning under his black brow. As I drifted
+    down the stream of talk, this person who sat silent as a shadow
+    looked to me as Webster might have looked had he been a
+    poet&mdash;a kind of poetic Webster. He rose and walked to the
+    window, and stood quietly there for a long time, watching the
+    dead white landscape. No appeal was made to him, nobody looked
+    after him, the conversation flowed as steadily on as if every
+    one understood that his silence was to be respected. It was the
+    same thing at table. In vain the silent man imbibed esthetic
+    tea. Whatever fancies it inspired did not flower at his lips.
+    But there was a light in his eye which assured me that nothing
+    was lost. So supreme was his silence, that it presently
+    engrossed me to the exclusion of every thing else. There was
+    brilliant discourse, but this silence was much more poetic and
+    fascinating. Fine things were said by the philosophers, but
+    much finer things were implied by the dumbness of this
+    gentleman with heavy brows and black hair. When presently he
+    rose and went, Emerson, with the 'slow, wise smile' that breaks
+    over his face, like day over the sky, said: 'Hawthorne rides
+    well his horse of the night.'" Later on, after he knew him
+    better, Curtis added to this picture, "His own sympathy was so
+    broad and sure, that, although nothing had been said for hours,
+    his companion knew that not a thing had escaped his eye, nor
+    had a single pulse of beauty in the day, or scene, or society
+    failed to thrill his heart. In this way his silence was most
+    social. Every thing seemed to have been said."</p>
+
+    <p>At the close of the third year of his residence at Concord,
+    Hawthorne was obliged to give up the "Old Manse," as the owner
+    was coming back to occupy it. The Democrats had now come into
+    power again under Mr. Polk, and Mr. Bancroft was in the
+    Cabinet. The Secretary, mindful of his friend, procured him the
+    post of Surveyor of the Port of Salem, and Hawthorne went with
+    his little family to live in his native town. The Salem
+    Custom-house was a sleepy sort of a place, and his duties were
+    merely nominal. He had an abundance of leisure time, and from
+    that leisure was born his masterpiece, "The Scarlet
+    Letter"&mdash;the most powerful romance which ever flowed from
+    an American author's pen. It was published in 1850, and in the
+    preface to it the reader will find an excellent description of
+    the author's life in Salem. He held his position in that place
+    for three years, and then the election of General Taylor
+    obliged him to retire.</p>
+
+    <p>He withdrew to the Berkshire Hills, and took a house in the
+    town of Lenox. It was a little red cottage, and was situated on
+    the shore of a diminutive lake called the Stockbridge Bowl. He
+    was now the most famous novelist in America, and had thousands
+    of admirers in the Old World. His "Scarlet Letter" had won him
+    fame, and had brought his earlier works more prominently before
+    the public than ever.</p>
+
+    <p>During his residence at Lenox, he wrote "The House of the
+    Seven Gables," which was published in Boston in 1851. It was
+    not less successful than the "Scarlet Letter," though it was
+    not so finished a piece of workmanship.</p>
+
+    <p>Yet, though so famous, he was not freed from the trials
+    incident to the first years of an author's life. Mr. Tuckerman
+    says of him at this time: "He had the fortitude and pride, as
+    well as the sensitiveness and delicacy, of true and high
+    genius. Not even his nearest country neighbors knew aught of
+    his meager larder or brave economies. He never complained, even
+    when editors were dilatory in their remuneration and friends
+    forgetful of their promises. When the poor author had the
+    money, he would buy a beefsteak for dinner; when he had not, he
+    would make a meal of chestnuts and potatoes. He had the
+    self-control and the probity to fulfill that essential
+    condition of self-respect, alike for those who subsist by brain
+    work and those who inherit fortunes&mdash;he always lived
+    within his income; and it was only by a kind of pious fraud
+    that a trio of his oldest friends occasionally managed to pay
+    his rent." His friend and publisher, Mr. Ticknor, "received and
+    invested the surplus earnings of the absentee author when
+    American Consul at Liverpool, and had obtained from Hawthorne a
+    promise on the eve of his departure for his post, ... that he
+    would send him all he could spare from his official income, to
+    be carefully nursed into a competence for his family. Never was
+    better advice given or wiser service performed by publisher to
+    author. The investments thus made became the means of comfort
+    to the returned writer in the maturity of his years and his
+    fame."</p>
+
+    <p>In 1852 he returned to Concord and purchased a small house
+    which had once been the residence of the philosopher Alcott.
+    Here he made his permanent home and gathered about him his
+    household treasures. In the Presidential campaign of 1852, his
+    friend Franklin Pierce was the candidate of the Democracy, and
+    Hawthorne wrote a short biography of him which was used by the
+    Democrats as a campaign document. It was a labor of love, for
+    the friendship that had been begun between these two men in
+    their college days had never been broken, and though naturally
+    averse to every thing that savored of politics, our author made
+    this contribution to the cause of his friend with all the
+    heartiness of his nature. Pierce was profoundly touched by this
+    unexpected aid, for he knew how utterly Hawthorne detested
+    political strife, and when seated in the Presidential chair he
+    showed his appreciation of it by offering his friend the
+    consulship to Liverpool&mdash;one of the most lucrative offices
+    within the gift of the executive. Hawthorne broke up his home
+    in Concord and sailed for Liverpool in 1853, and remained there
+    until 1857, when he resigned his consulship and traveled on the
+    continent with his family, residing for some time in Italy for
+    the benefit of his health. His European residence had the
+    effect of drawing him out of his shyness and reserve to a
+    certain extent, and during the closing years of his life he was
+    more social with the persons about him than he had ever been.
+    After his return he went back to Concord, where he enlarged and
+    beautified his old home, intending to remain there for the
+    balance of his life. He wrote the "Marble Faun" and "Our Old
+    Home" just after his return from Europe. The former was
+    suggested by his residence in Italy, and the latter was a
+    collection of English sketches and reminiscences.</p>
+
+    <p>The war between the two sections of the country affected him
+    very deeply. It seemed to him a terrible tragedy, to which
+    there could be no end but utter ruin for the country. He
+    sympathized strongly with the cause of the Union, but at the
+    same time his heart bled at the sufferings of the people of the
+    south. It was one long agony to him, and only those who knew
+    him intimately can understand how much he suffered during this
+    unhappy period.</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Moncure D. Conway gives the following reminiscence of
+    him about this time: "I passed a night under the same roof with
+    him at the house of Mr. Fields, his publisher. He seemed much
+    dejected. Mr. Fields had invited a little company, but, after
+    the first arrivals, Hawthorne made his escape to his room, from
+    which he did not emerge until the next morning at breakfast
+    time. He then came in with the amusing look of a naughty child,
+    and pleaded that he had become lost the night before in Defoe's
+    ghost stories until it was too late to make his appearance in
+    the company. He must, I should think, have been contemplating
+    some phantasmal production at that time, for I remember his
+    asking me many questions about the ghost-beliefs of the
+    negroes, among whom I had passed my early life."</p>
+
+    <p>Besides the works already mentioned, Hawthorne was the
+    author of "True Stories from History and Biography" and "The
+    Wonder Book for Boys and Girls," both published in 1851; "The
+    Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales," published in 1852; and
+    "Tanglewood Tales," published in 1853, all juveniles. At the
+    time of his death he was engaged upon a novel which was to have
+    been published in the "Atlantic Monthly," but it was left
+    incomplete.</p>
+
+    <p>In the spring of 1864 his friend and publisher, Mr. W.D.
+    Ticknor, of Boston, seeing how feeble Hawthorne had become,
+    asked him to accompany him on an excursion, hoping that a rapid
+    change of scene and cheerful company would benefit him. They
+    set out in April, and went direct to Philadelphia. Upon
+    arriving at the hotel, Mr. Ticknor was suddenly taken very ill,
+    and died on the 10th of April in his friend's arms. Hawthorne
+    was profoundly shocked by this melancholy occurrence, and it is
+    said that he never fully recovered from its effects upon him.
+    His melancholy seemed to deepen, and though his friends exerted
+    themselves to cheer him, he seemed to feel that his end was
+    near. Ex-President Pierce, hoping to rouse him from his sad
+    thoughts, induced him to accompany him on an excursion to the
+    White Mountains. Upon reaching Plymouth, which they took on
+    their route, they stopped at the Pemigewasset House for the
+    night. Mr. Pierce was so full of anxiety concerning his friend,
+    who had been quieter and sadder than usual that day, that he
+    went softly into his room in the middle of the night to look
+    after him. Hawthorne was lying very still, and seemed to be
+    sleeping sweetly. Mr. Pierce stole softly away, fearing to
+    disturb him. In the morning he went back to rouse his friend,
+    and found him lying lifeless in the position he had noticed in
+    the night. He had been dead some hours.</p>
+
+    <p>The announcement of Hawthorne's death caused a feeling of
+    deep sadness in all parts of the Union. His body was taken to
+    Concord for burial, and was accompanied to the grave by the
+    best and most gifted of the land, to each of whom he had
+    endeared himself in life.</p>
+    <hr style='width: 65%;'>
+    <a name='actors'></a>
+
+    <h1>X.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;ACTORS.</h1>
+    <hr style='width: 65%;'>
+    <a name='CHAPTER_XXXV'></a>
+
+    <h2>CHAPTER XXXV.</h2>
+
+    <h3>EDWIN BOOTH.</h3><br>
+
+
+    <p>There are many persons who remember the elder Booth, the
+    "Great Booth," as he was called, in his palmy days, when the
+    bare announcement of his name was sufficient to cram our
+    old-fashioned theaters from pit to dome. He was sublime in the
+    stormy passions which he delineated, and never failed to draw
+    down from the gods of the gallery the uproarious yells with
+    which they testify their approval; even the more dignified
+    occupants of the boxes found themselves breaking into outbursts
+    of applause which they were powerless to restrain. He was a
+    favorite with all classes, and a deserved one, and the lovers
+    of the drama looked forward with genuine regret to the period
+    when he should be no longer with them. They felt that the
+    glories of the stage would pass away with him. It was in vain
+    that they were told that he had sons destined to the same
+    profession. They shook their heads, and said it was impossible
+    that the mantle of the great tragedian should rest upon any of
+    his sons, for it was then, as now, a popular belief that great
+    men never have great children. How very much these good people
+    were mistaken we will see in the progress of this chapter.</p>
+
+    <p>One of these sons was destined in the course of time to
+    eclipse the fame won by his father, and to endear himself to
+    the American people as a more finished, if less stormy, actor.
+    This was <span class="small-caps">Edwin Booth</span>. He was
+    born on his father's farm near Baltimore, Maryland, In 1833,
+    and after receiving a good common-school education, began his
+    training for the stage. The elder Booth was quick to see that
+    his boy had inherited his genius, and he took great pains to
+    develop the growing powers of the lad, and to incline them
+    toward those paths which his experience had taught him were the
+    surest roads to success. He took him with him on his starring
+    engagements, and kept him about him so constantly that the boy
+    may be said to have grown up on the stage from his infancy. He
+    was enthusiastically devoted to his father, and it was his
+    delight to stand at the wings and watch the great tragedian in
+    his personations, and the thunders of applause which proclaimed
+    some fresh triumph were sweeter to the boy, perhaps, than to
+    the man.</p>
+
+    <p>In 1849, at the age of sixteen, he made his first appearance
+    on the stage as Tyrrell, in "Richard III.," and gave great
+    satisfaction by his rendition of the character. From this time
+    he continued to appear at various places with his father, and
+    in 1851 won his first great success in the city of New York.
+    His father was playing an engagement at the Chatham Theater at
+    the time, and was announced for Richard III., which was his
+    masterpiece. When the hour for performance came, he was too ill
+    to appear. The manager was in despair, for the house was filled
+    with a large audience, who were impatient for the appearance of
+    the humpbacked king. In this emergency Edwin Booth offered to
+    take his father's place, and the manager, pleased with the
+    novelty of the proposal, accepted it. Young Booth was but
+    eighteen years old, and had not even studied the part, and it
+    was a perilous thing to venture before an audience in a role in
+    which one of his name had won such great fame. But he was
+    confident of his own powers, and he had so often hung with
+    delight upon his father's rendition of the part, that he needed
+    but a hasty reference to the book to perfect him in the text.
+    He won a decided triumph, and the public promptly acknowledged
+    that he gave promise of being an unusually fine actor.</p>
+
+    <p>In 1852 Mr. Booth went to California, and engaged for the
+    "utility business." He spent two years in careful and patient
+    study in the humbler walks of his profession, learning its
+    details, and doing much of the drudgery essential to a thorough
+    knowledge of his art. In 1854, he went to Australia, and played
+    a successful engagement there, stopping on his way at several
+    of the Pacific islands. On his return, he played an engagement,
+    with marked success, at the Sandwich Islands, and then went
+    back to California.</p>
+
+    <p>In 1857 he returned to New York, and, on the 4th of May,
+    appeared at Burton's Theater, in the character of Richard III.
+    A writer who witnessed his performance on that occasion thus
+    speaks of him: "The company was not strong in tragedy; the
+    young actor came without reputation; the season was late. But
+    he conquered his place. His Richard was intellectual,
+    brilliant, rapid, handsome, picturesque, villainous. But the
+    villainy was servant to the ambition&mdash;not master of it, as
+    a coarse player makes it. The action was original; the dress
+    was perfect&mdash;the smirched gauntlets and flung-on mantle of
+    the scheming, busy duke, the splendid vestments of the anointed
+    king, the glittering armor of the monarch in the field. His
+    clear beauty, his wonderful voice&mdash;which he had not
+    learned to use&mdash;his grace, his fine artistic sense, made
+    all triumphs seem possible to this young man. Evidently there
+    was great power in the new actor&mdash;power untrained, vigor
+    ill directed. But what was plainest to be seen, was the
+    nervous, impulsive temperament, which would leave him no rest
+    save in achievement. He might come back to us a robustious,
+    periwig-pated fellow, the delight and wonder of the galleries.
+    He might come back the thorough artist, great in repose as in
+    action. But it was clear enough that what he was then in
+    Richard, in Richelieu, in Sir Edward Mortimer, he would never
+    be again."</p>
+
+    <p>He followed this appearance by a general tour through the
+    country, and returned to New York in 1858, where he won fresh
+    laurels. In 1860 he reappeared at Burton's Theater, then called
+    the Winter Garden, and added Hamlet to his role. He had
+    improved greatly during the time that had elapsed since his
+    last appearance at this theater, and had gained very much in
+    power and artistic finish. The most critical audiences in the
+    country received him with delight, crowded his houses, and
+    hailed his efforts with thunders of applause. This season
+    silenced all the critics, and placed him among the great actors
+    of the American stage. He bore his honors modestly, and though
+    he was proud of the triumphs he had won, they did not satisfy
+    him. There were still greater successes to be achieved before
+    the highest honors of his profession could be his, and it was
+    upon these that his eye was fixed from the first. The applause
+    which greeted him in every city in which he appeared only
+    served to stimulate him to fresh exertions.</p>
+
+    <p>In the summer of 1861, he visited England, and played an
+    engagement at the Haymarket Theater in London, where he was
+    favorably received by the British playgoers. At the close of
+    this engagement, he spent a year on the continent, in travel
+    and in the study of his profession. He also made careful
+    studies of the scenes of the great historic dramas of the
+    English stage, both in England and on the continent, and of the
+    dresses and other appointments needed for them. By thoroughly
+    familiarizing himself with these details, he has been able to
+    produce his plays with entire fidelity to history.</p>
+
+    <p>Returning once more to New York, he appeared at the Winter
+    Garden, in the winter of 1863-64, in a series of Shakespearean
+    revivals. He played Hamlet for over one hundred nights, and
+    followed it during that season and the next with "Merchant of
+    Venice" and "Othello" (in the latter playing the parts of
+    Othello and Iago on alternate nights). During the same seasons
+    he appeared also in "Richelieu," "Ruy Blas," "The Fool's
+    Revenge," and "Don C&aelig;sar de Bazan." These performances
+    were extended into the season of 1866-67, when they were
+    suddenly cut short by the total destruction of the Winter
+    Garden Theater by fire on the night of the 23d of March, 1867.
+    In this fire Mr. Booth lost his entire wardrobe, including many
+    relics of his father, Kemble, and Mrs. Siddons.</p>
+
+    <p>The destruction of a theater has seldom drawn forth a more
+    universal expression of regret than that which poured in upon
+    Mr. Booth from all parts of the country. It was feared that the
+    loss of his valuable wardrobe would be irremediable, as indeed
+    it was in a certain sense. All over the Union a general wish
+    was expressed that the great actor should have a new theater in
+    some of our large cities, and one which should be worthy of his
+    genius. Mr. Booth had chosen the city of New York for his
+    permanent home, and after the destruction of the Winter Garden
+    Theater began to arrange his plans for the erection of a new
+    building of his own, which he was resolved should be the most
+    magnificent and the best appointed theater in the world. The
+    site chosen was the south-eastern corner of the Sixth Avenue
+    and Twenty-third Street in New York, and in the summer of 1867
+    the work of clearing away the old buildings and digging the
+    foundations of the new theater was begun. It was carried
+    forward steadily, and the building was completed and opened to
+    the public in January, 1869.</p>
+
+    <p>It is in the Rennaissance style of architecture, and stands
+    seventy feet high from the sidewalk to the main cornice,
+    crowning which is a Mansard roof of twenty-four feet. "The
+    theater proper fronts one hundred and forty-nine feet on
+    Twenty-third Street, and is divided into three parts, so
+    combined as to form an almost perfect whole, with arched
+    entrances at either extremity on the side, for the admission of
+    the public, and on the other for another entrance, and the use
+    of the actors and those employed in the house. On either side
+    of these main entrances are broad and lofty windows; and above
+    them, forming a part of the second story, are niches for
+    statues, surrounded by coupled columns resting on finely
+    sculptured pedestals. The central or main niche is flanked on
+    either side by quaintly contrived blank windows; and between
+    the columns, at the depth of the recesses, are simple pilasters
+    sustaining the elliptic arches, which serve to top and span the
+    niches, the latter to be occupied by statues of the great
+    creators and interpreters of the drama in every age and
+    country. The finest Concord granite, from the best quarries in
+    New Hampshire, is the material used in the entire
+    fa&ccedil;ade, as well as in the Sixth Avenue side.... The
+    glittering granite mass, exquisitely poised, adorned with rich
+    and appropriate carving, statuary, columns, pilasters, and
+    arches, and capped by the springing French roof, fringed with
+    its shapely balustrades, offers an imposing and majestic
+    aspect, and forms one of the architectural jewels of the
+    city."</p>
+
+    <p>In its internal arrangements the theater is in keeping with
+    its external magnificence. Entering through a sumptuous
+    vestibule, the visitor passes into the magnificent auditorium,
+    which is in itself a rare piece of decorative art. The seats
+    are admirably arranged, each one commanding a view of the
+    stage. The floor is richly carpeted, and the seats are
+    luxuriously upholstered. Three elegant light galleries rise
+    above the parquet. The walls and ceiling are exquisitely
+    frescoed, and ornamented with bas reliefs in plaster. The
+    proscenium is beautifully frescoed and carved, and is adorned
+    with busts of the elder Booth and the proprietor of the
+    theater; and in the sides before the curtain are arranged six
+    sumptuous private boxes. The curtain is a beautiful landscape.
+    The decoration of the house is not done in the rough scenic
+    style so common in the most of the theaters of the country, but
+    is the perfection of frescoe painting, and is capable of
+    bearing the closest examination. The stage is very large, and
+    slopes gradually from the rear to the footlights. The orchestra
+    pen is sunk below the level of the stage, so that the heads of
+    the musicians do not cut off the view of the audience. The
+    dressing of the stage is novel. The side scenes or wings,
+    instead of being placed at right angles to the spectator as in
+    most theaters, are so arranged that the scene appears to extend
+    to the right and left as well as to the rear. In this way the
+    spectator is saved the annoyance of often looking through the
+    wings, a defect which in most theaters completely dispels the
+    illusion of the play. The scenery here is not set by hand, but
+    is moved by machinery, and with such regularity and precision
+    that these changes have very much the effect of "dissolving
+    views." The scenes themselves are the works of highly educated
+    artists, and never degenerate into the rough daubs with which
+    most playgoers are familiar. The building is fire-proof, and is
+    warmed and ventilated in a peculiar manner. The great central
+    chandelier and the lights around the cornice of the auditorium
+    are lighted by electricity.</p>
+
+    <p>The plays presented here are superbly put on the stage. The
+    scenery is strictly accurate when meant to represent some
+    historic locality, and is the finest to be found in America.
+    Perhaps the grandest stage picture ever given to an audience
+    was the grave-yard scene in "Hamlet," which "held the boards"
+    for over one hundred nights last winter. The dresses,
+    equipments, and general "make up" of the actors are in keeping
+    with the scenery. Even the minutest detail is carefully
+    attended to. Nothing is so unimportant as to be overlooked in
+    this establishment.</p>
+
+    <p>It is Mr. Booth's custom to open the season with engagements
+    of other distinguished actors, and to follow them himself about
+    the beginning of the winter, and to continue his performances
+    until the approach of spring, when he again gives way to
+    others. When he is performing, it is impossible to procure a
+    seat after the rising of the curtain. Every available place is
+    filled, and thousands come from all parts of the country to see
+    him. Sometimes it is necessary to secure seats a week in
+    advance.</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Booth is still a young man, being now thirty-seven years
+    old. In person he is over the medium height, and is well built.
+    His hair is black and is worn long, and his dark eyes are large
+    and dreamy. His face is that of a poet, strikingly handsome,
+    with an expression of mingled sweetness and sadness playing
+    over it. He wears neither beard nor moustache. He dresses
+    simply and without ornament, and is grave and retiring in his
+    demeanor. He is exceedingly amiable in disposition, and is the
+    center of a large circle of devoted friends. He has been
+    married twice, and has one child, a daughter, by his first
+    wife. He is a man of irreproachable life, and in every thing a
+    high-toned gentleman, and it is the high character he bears not
+    less than his genius that has enabled him to do such honor to
+    his profession. He is very wealthy, and is in a fair way to
+    become a millionaire.</p>
+
+    <p>As an actor Mr. Booth is without an equal. His
+    impersonations are marked by rare genius and by the most
+    careful study. His Hamlet is perhaps his most finished part, as
+    his Richelieu is the most popular with the masses. It has been
+    said that his Hamlet is not Shakespeare's Hamlet, and this may
+    be true: but it is so exquisite, so perfect, that whether it be
+    the conception of Shakespeare or Edwin Booth, it is the most
+    powerful, the most life-like counterfeit of "the melancholy
+    Dane" ever seen on any stage, and leaves nothing to be desired.
+    His personation of the grim old cardinal, whose decrepit body
+    is alone sustained by his indomitable will, is masterly, and we
+    see before us, not Edwin Booth, the actor of to-day, but the
+    crafty, unscrupulous, witty, determined prime minister of
+    France, who bends kings and princes to his will. It is
+    absolutely life-like, and to those who have seen the portraits
+    of the old cardinal in the museums of France, the accuracy with
+    which Booth has counterfeited the personal appearance of
+    Richelieu is positively startling. The plays are so superbly
+    set upon the stage that we lose sight of the little space they
+    occupy, and seem to be gazing upon a real world. His Richard
+    has such a strong humanity in it, that it more than half
+    vindicates the humpbacked tyrant's memory, and the death scene
+    of this play, as given by Booth, is simply appalling.</p>
+
+    <p>It is in vain, however, that we select special characters or
+    attempt descriptions of them. No one can truly understand Edwin
+    Booth's acting without seeing it. He has studied his heroes so
+    profoundly, analyzed their characters so subtly, and entered so
+    heartily into sympathy with them, that he has, become able, by
+    the aid of his wonderful genius, to entirely discard his own
+    personality, and assume theirs at will.</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Booth has steadily risen in power and finish as an
+    actor, for his labors have been unceasing. Great as his
+    triumphs have been, he does not regard himself as freed from
+    the necessity of study. His studies have become more
+    intelligent than in former years, but not the less faithful. He
+    has the true artist's aspiration after the rarest perfection in
+    his art, though to those of us without the charmed circle it is
+    difficult to see how he can excel his present excellence. Yet
+    that he does so we have undoubted proof, for we see him rising
+    higher in the admiration and esteem of the world every year,
+    and each year we gather fresh laurels to twine around his
+    brows.</p>
+
+    <p>He has steadily educated his audiences, and has elevated the
+    standard of his art among his countrymen. He has shown them
+    what fine acting really is, and has taught them to enjoy it. He
+    has kept them true to the legitimate drama, and has done more
+    than any other man to rescue the American stage from the
+    insignificance with which it was threatened. It speaks volumes
+    for him as an actor and a manager, that when New York seemed
+    wholly given up to ballet, burlesque, and opera bouffe, he was
+    able to make the almost forgotten masterpieces of Shakespeare
+    the most popular and most profitable dramatic ventures of the
+    year.</p><br>
+
+    <hr style='width: 65%;'>
+
+    <center>
+        <a name='illust7381'></a>
+        <a href='images/7381.jpg'><img src='images/7381.jpg'
+                height='500' border=0
+                alt='JEFFERSON, AS RIP VAN WINKLE.'></a><br>
+         JEFFERSON, AS RIP VAN WINKLE.
+    </center><a name='CHAPTER_XXXVI'></a>
+
+    <h2>CHAPTER XXXVI.</h2>
+
+    <h3>JOSEPH JEFFERSON.</h3><br>
+
+
+    <p>The subject of this sketch is one of a race of actors. His
+    great-grandfather was a contemporary of some of the brightest
+    ornaments of the English stage, and was himself a famous actor
+    and the intimate friend of Garrick, Sam Foote, and Barr. He was
+    a man of amiable and winning disposition, and was strikingly
+    handsome in person. He occupies a prominent place in the
+    history of the English stage, and is said to have been,
+    socially, one of the most brilliant men of his day. He died in
+    1807. In 1795 his son came to America. Of him, Dunlap, in his
+    "History of the American Stage," says, referring to him, in
+    February, 1797: "He was then a youth, but even then an artist.
+    Of a small and light figure, well formed, with a singular
+    physiognomy, a nose perfectly Grecian, and blue eyes full of
+    laughter, he had the faculty of exciting mirth to as great a
+    degree by power of feature, although handsome, as any
+    ugly-featured low comedian ever seen." F.C. Wemyss has said of
+    him at a later day: "Mr. Joseph Jefferson was an actor formed
+    in Nature's merriest mood&mdash;a genuine son of Momus. There
+    was a vein of rich humor running through all he did, which
+    forced you to laugh despite of yourself. He discarded grimace
+    as unworthy of him, although no actor ever possessed a greater
+    command over the muscles of his own face, or the faces of his
+    audience, compelling you to laugh or cry at his pleasure. His
+    excellent personation of old men acquired for him, before he
+    had reached the meridian of life, the title of 'Old Jefferson.'
+    The astonishment of strangers at seeing a good-looking young
+    man pointed out on the street as Old Jefferson, whom they had
+    seen the night previous at the theater tottering apparently on
+    the verge of existence, was the greatest compliment that could
+    be paid to the talent of the actor. His versatility was
+    astonishing&mdash;light comedy, old men, pantomime, low comedy,
+    and occasionally juvenile tragedy. Educated in the very best
+    school for acquiring knowledge in his profession, ... Jefferson
+    was an adept in all the trickery of the stage, which, when it
+    suited his purpose, he could turn to excellent account.... In
+    his social relations, he was what a gentleman should be&mdash;a
+    kind husband, an affectionate father, a warm friend, and a
+    truly honest man." The second Jefferson enjoyed a brilliant
+    career of thirty-six years in this country, and died in 1832,
+    during an engagement at the theater at Harrisburg, which was
+    then managed by his son. This son, named Joseph, after his
+    father, was born in Philadelphia in 1804, and died at the age
+    of thirty-eight. He was not so famous as an actor as his father
+    or grandfather, but like them passed his life on the stage. He
+    had a decided talent for painting, and was partially educated
+    as an artist, but he never accomplished any thing with his
+    pencil. He was a man of most amiable disposition, and was
+    possessed of scores of warm and devoted friends; but he was a
+    poor business manager, and was always more or less involved in
+    pecuniary troubles. He married Mrs. Burke, the famous vocalist,
+    and mother of Burke, the comedian.</p>
+
+    <p>To this couple, in the city of Philadelphia, was born the
+    <span class="small-caps">Joseph Jefferson</span> of to-day, on
+    the 20th of February, 1829.</p>
+
+    <p>This boy was literally brought up on the stage, as he made
+    his first appearance upon the boards in a combat scene at the
+    Park Theater in New York, when he was but three years old. He
+    soon after went with his parents to the West. Olive Logan says
+    of him, at this period of his life, "While they were both still
+    children, he and my sister Eliza used to sing little comic
+    duets together on the stage of various western towns."</p>
+
+    <p>He received as good a common-school education as the rapid
+    manner in which he was moved about from place to place would
+    permit, and was carefully trained in the profession of an
+    actor, to which he was destined by his parents, and to which he
+    was drawn by the bent of his genius. He appeared in public
+    frequently during his boyhood, but his first appearance as a
+    man was at Chanfrau's National Theater, in 1849. He met with
+    fair success, and from that time devoted himself entirely and
+    carefully to his profession. He began at the bottom of the
+    ladder of fame, and gradually worked his way up to his present
+    high position. Playing engagements in various minor theaters of
+    the United States, he at length secured a position as low
+    comedian at Niblo's Garden in New York, where he won golden
+    opinions from the critical audiences of the metropolis. In
+    1857, he closed a most successful engagement as low comedian at
+    the theater in Richmond, Virginia, and with that engagement
+    ended his career as a stock actor. He had by careful and
+    patient study rendered himself capable of assuming the highest
+    place in his profession, and these studies, joined to his
+    native genius, had made him famous throughout the country as
+    the best low comedian of the day.</p>
+
+    <p>Feeling that he had now a right to the honors of a "star" in
+    his profession, and urged by the public to assume the position
+    to which his genius entitled him, he began a series of
+    engagements throughout the Union, in which he more than
+    fulfilled the expectations of his friends. He was received with
+    delight wherever he went, and at once became the most popular
+    of American comedians.</p>
+
+    <p>About a year or two later, he left the United States and
+    made a voyage to Australia, through which country he traveled,
+    playing at the principal towns. He was extremely successful.
+    His genial, sunny character won him hosts of friends among the
+    people of that far-off land, and his great genius as an actor
+    made him as famous there as he had been in his own country.
+    Australia was then a sort of theatrical El Dorado. The prices
+    paid for admission to the theaters were very high, and the sums
+    offered to distinguished stars in order to attract them thither
+    were immense. Mr. Jefferson reaped a fair share of this golden
+    harvest, and at the close of his Australian engagements found
+    himself the possessor of a handsome sum. It was this which
+    formed the basis of his large fortune; for, unlike his father,
+    he is a man of excellent business capacity, and understands how
+    to care for the rewards of his labors, so that they shall be a
+    certain protection to him in his old age, and an assistance to
+    those whom he shall leave behind him.</p>
+
+    <p>Returning to the United States, Mr. Jefferson appeared with
+    increased success in the leading cities of the Northern and
+    Western States. His principal success at this time was won in
+    the character of Asa Trenchard, in the play of "Our American
+    Cousin." His personation of the rough, eccentric, but
+    true-hearted Yankee was regarded as one of the finest pieces of
+    acting ever witnessed on the American stage, and drew crowded
+    houses wherever he went. His range of characters included the
+    most refined comedy and the broadest farce, but each
+    delineation bore evidence of close and careful study, and was
+    marked by great originality and delicacy. There was in his
+    performances a freshness, a distinctiveness, and, above all, an
+    entire freedom from any thing coarse or offensive, which
+    charmed his audiences from the first. One of his critics has
+    well said of him: "As Caleb Plummer he unites in another way
+    the full appreciation of mingled humor and pathos&mdash;the
+    greatest delicacy and affection with rags and homely speech. As
+    Old Phil Stapleton he is the patriarch of the village and the
+    incarnation of content. As Asa Trenchard he is the diamond in
+    the rough, combining shrewdness with simplicity, and elevating
+    instead of degrading the Yankee character. As Dr. Ollapod, and
+    Dr. Pangloss, and Tobias Shortcut, he has won laurels that
+    would make him a comedian of the first rank. His Bob Acres is a
+    picture. There is almost as much to look at as in his Rip Van
+    Winkle. There is nearly the same amount of genius, art,
+    experience, and intelligence in its personation. Hazlitt says
+    that the author has overdone the part, and adds that 'it calls
+    for a great effort of animal spirits and a peculiar aptitude of
+    genius to go through with it;' Mr. Jefferson has so much of the
+    latter that he can&mdash;and to a great extent
+    does&mdash;dispense with the former requisite. His quiet
+    undercurrent of humor subserves the same purpose in the
+    <i>role</i> of Bob Acres that it does in other characters. It
+    is full of points, so judiciously chosen, so thoroughly apt, so
+    naturally made and so characteristically preserved, that the
+    part with Jefferson is a great one. The man of the 'oath
+    referential, or sentimental swearing,' makes the entire scope
+    of the part an 'echo to the sense.' Even in so poor a farce as
+    that of 'A Regular Fix,' Mr. Jefferson makes the eccentricities
+    of Hugh de Brass immensely funny. The same style is preserved
+    in every character, but with an application that gives to each
+    a separate being."</p>
+
+    <p>After a season of great success in this country Mr.
+    Jefferson decided to visit England. He appeared at the Adelphi
+    Theater, in London, and at once became as popular as he had
+    been at home. His Asa Trenchard, in "Our American Cousin," was
+    received by the English with delight; but his greatest triumphs
+    were won in Boucicault's version of "Rip Van Winkle," which he
+    has since immortalized. This play was first produced at the
+    Adelphi, where it enjoyed an uninterrupted run of nearly two
+    hundred nights.</p>
+
+    <p>Returning to the United States in the autumn of 1867, Mr.
+    Jefferson appeared at the Olympic Theater, in New York, in the
+    play of "Rip Van Winkle." Since then he has traveled
+    extensively throughout the United States, and has devoted
+    himself exclusively to the character of Rip Van Winkle; so
+    exclusively, indeed, that many persons are ignorant of his
+    great merits in other roles. By adopting this as his specialty,
+    he has rendered himself so perfect in it that he has almost
+    made the improvident, light-hearted Rip a living creature. A
+    writer in a popular periodical draws the following graphic
+    sketch of his performance of this character:</p>
+
+    <div class='blkquot'>
+        <p>If there is something especially charming in the ideal
+        of Rip Van Winkle that Irving has drawn, there is something
+        even more human, sympathetic and attractive in the
+        character reproduced by Jefferson. A smile that reflects
+        the generous impulses of the man; a face that is the mirror
+        of character; great, luminous eyes that are rich wells of
+        expression; a grace that is statuesque without being
+        studied; an inherent laziness which commands the respect of
+        no one, but a gentle nature that wins the affections of
+        all; poor as he is honest, jolly as he is poor, unfortunate
+        as he is jolly, yet possessed of a spontaneity of nature
+        that springs up and flows along like a rivulet after a
+        rain; the man who can not forget the faults of the
+        character which Jefferson pictures, nor feel like taking
+        good-natured young Rip Van Winkle by the hand and offering
+        a support to tottering old Rip Van Winkle, must have become
+        hardened to all natural as well as artistic influences. It
+        is scarcely necessary to enter into the details of Mr.
+        Jefferson's acting of the Dutch Tam O'Shanter.
+        Notwithstanding the fact that the performance is made up of
+        admirable points that might he enumerated and described,
+        the picture is complete as a whole and in its connections.
+        Always before the public; preserving the interest during
+        two acts of the play after a telling climax; sustaining the
+        realities of his character in a scene of old superstition,
+        and in which no one speaks but himself,&mdash;the
+        impersonation requires a greater evenness of merit and
+        dramatic effect than any other that could have been chosen.
+        Rip Van Winkle is imbued with the most marked
+        individuality, and the identity is so conscientiously
+        preserved that nothing is overlooked or neglected. Mr.
+        Jefferson's analysis penetrates even into the minuti&aelig;
+        of the part, but there is a perfect unity in the conception
+        and its embodiment. Strong and irresistible in its emotion,
+        and sly and insinuating in its humor, Mr. Jefferson's Rip
+        Van Winkle is marked by great vigor, as well as by an
+        almost pre-Raphaelite finish.</p>
+
+        <p>The bibulous Rip is always present by the ever-recurring
+        and favorite toast of "Here's your goot healt' and your
+        family's, and may dey live long and prosper." The
+        meditative and philosophic Rip is signaled by the abstract
+        "Ja," which sometimes means <i>yes</i>, and sometimes means
+        <i>no</i>. The shrewd and clear-sighted Rip is marked by
+        the interview with Derrick Van Beekman. The thoughtful and
+        kind-hearted Rip makes his appearance in that sad
+        consciousness of his uselessness and the little influence
+        he exerts when he says to the children, talking of their
+        future marriage: "I thought maybe you might want to ask me
+        about it," which had never occurred to the children. The
+        improvident Rip is discovered when Dame Van Winkle throws
+        open the inn window-shutter, which contains the enormous
+        score against her husband, and when Rip drinks from the
+        bottle over the dame's shoulder as he promises to reform.
+        The most popular and the most thriftless man in the
+        village; the most intelligent and the least ambitious; the
+        best-hearted and the most careless;&mdash;the numerous
+        contrasts which the <i>role</i> presents demand versatility
+        in design and delicacy in execution. They are worked out
+        with a moderation and a suggestiveness that are much more
+        natural than if they were presented more decidedly. The
+        sympathy of Mr. Jefferson's creation is the greatest secret
+        of its popularity. In spite of glaring faults, and almost a
+        cruel disregard of the family's welfare, Rip Van Winkle has
+        the audience with him from the very beginning. His
+        ineffably sad but quiet realization of his desolate
+        condition when his wife turns him out into the storm,
+        leaves scarcely a dry eye in the theatre. His living in
+        others and not in himself makes him feel the changes of his
+        absence all the more keenly. His return after his twenty
+        years' sleep is painful to witness; and when he asks, with
+        such heart-rending yet subdued despair, "Are we so soon
+        forgot when we are gone?" it is no wonder that sobs are
+        heard throughout the house. His pleading with his child
+        Meenie is not less affecting, and nothing could be more
+        genuine in feeling. Yet all this emotion is attained in the
+        most quiet and unobtrusive manner. Jefferson's sly humor
+        crops out at all times, and sparkles through the veil of
+        sadness that overhangs the later life of Rip Van Winkle.
+        His wonder that his wife's "clapper" could ever be stopped
+        is expressed in the same breath with his real sorrow at
+        hearing of her death. "Then who the devil am I?" he asks
+        with infinite wit just before he pulls away at the
+        heartstrings of the audience in refusing the proffered
+        assistance to his tottering steps. He has the rare faculty
+        of bringing a smile to the lips and a tear to the eye at
+        the same time. From the first picture, which presents young
+        Rip Van Winkle leaning carelessly and easily upon the table
+        as he drinks his schnapps, to the last picture of the
+        decrepit but happy old man, surrounded by his family and
+        dismissing the audience with his favorite toast, the
+        character, in Mr. Jefferson's hands, endears itself to all,
+        and adds another to the few real friendships which one may
+        enjoy in this life.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <p>Mr. Jefferson is a thoroughly American actor. Abandoning all
+    sensational shams, he devotes himself to pure art. His highest
+    triumphs have been won in the legitimate branches of his
+    profession, and won by the force of his genius, aided only by
+    the most careful study and an intelligent analysis of the parts
+    assumed by him. He has the happy faculty of entering into
+    perfect sympathy with his characters, and for the time being he
+    is less the actor than the individual he personates. It is this
+    that gives the sparkle to his eye, the ring to his laughter,
+    and the exquisite feeling to his pathos; and feeling thus, he
+    is quick to establish a sympathy between himself and his
+    audience, so that he moves them at will, convulsing them with
+    laughter at the sallies of the light-hearted Rip, or dissolving
+    them in tears at the desolations of the lonely old man, so soon
+    forgot after he has gone.</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Jefferson has inherited from his father the genial,
+    sunny disposition for which the latter was famous. He is an
+    essentially cheerful man, and trouble glances lightly off from
+    him. He is generous to a fault, and carries his purse in his
+    hand. Misfortune never appeals to him in vain, and many are the
+    good works he has done in the humbler walks of his own calling.
+    He is enthusiastically devoted to his profession, and enjoys
+    his acting quite as much as his auditors. In putting his pieces
+    on the stage, he is lavish of expense, and whenever he can
+    control this part of the performance, it leaves nothing to be
+    desired. Some years ago he brought out "A Midsummer Night's
+    Dream" at a Philadelphia theater, in a style of magnificence
+    rarely witnessed on any stage. The scenery was exquisite, and
+    was a collection of artistic gems. The success of the piece was
+    very decided in Philadelphia, but when it was reproduced, with
+    the same scenery and appointments, in a Western city, the
+    public would scarcely go to see it, and the theater incurred a
+    heavy loss in consequence. Jefferson's remark to the manager,
+    when the failure became apparent, was characteristic: "It is
+    all right," said he. "We have done our duty, and have made an
+    artistic success of the piece. If the people will not come to
+    see it, it is more their misfortune than ours."</p>
+
+    <p>He has inherited also from his father considerable talent as
+    an artist, and sketches with decided merit, though he makes no
+    pretensions to artistic skill. In his vacations, which he
+    passes in the country, his sketch-book is his constant
+    companion. He is a famous sportsman and fisherman, and in the
+    summer is rarely to be found without his gun and rod. It is his
+    delight to tramp over miles of country in search of game, or to
+    sit quietly in some cozy nook, and, dropping his line into the
+    water, pass the hours in reveries broken only by the exertion
+    necessary to secure a finny prize.</p>
+
+    <p>Not long since his love of art led him to buy a panorama
+    merely because he admired it. He put it in charge of an agent
+    in whom he knew he could confide, and started it on a tour
+    throughout the country. In a month or two he received a gloomy
+    letter from the agent, telling him that the exhibition had
+    failed to draw spectators, and that he despaired of its ever
+    paying expenses. "Never mind," wrote Jefferson in reply, "it
+    will be a gratification for those who do go to see it, and you
+    may draw on me for what money you need." The losses on the
+    panorama, however, were so great that Jefferson was compelled
+    to abandon it.</p>
+
+    <p>Several years before the death of John Sefton, Jefferson
+    paid him a visit at his home in Paradise Valley, during one of
+    his summer rambles. Upon reaching Sefton's farm, he found the
+    owner "with his breeches and coat sleeves both rolled up, and
+    standing in the middle of a clear and shallow stream, where one
+    could scarcely step without spoiling the sports of the brook
+    trout, which sparkled through the crystal waters. Sefton stood
+    in a crouching attitude, watching, with mingled disappointment
+    and good humor, a little pig which the stream was carrying down
+    its current, and which, pig-like, had slipped from the hands of
+    its owner in its natural aversion to being washed. Jefferson,
+    with the true instinct of an artist, dropped his fishing tackle
+    and took his sketch-book to transfer the ludicrous scene to
+    paper. Sefton appreciated the humor of the situation, and only
+    objected when Jefferson began to fill in the background with a
+    dilapidated old barn, at which the old gentleman demurred on
+    account of its wretched appearance. The artist insisted that it
+    was picturesque, however, and proceeded to put it down. Sefton
+    had to submit; but he had his revenge, by writing back to New
+    York that 'Jefferson is here, drawing the worst "houses" I ever
+    saw.'"</p>
+
+    <p>In private life, Mr. Jefferson is a cultivated gentleman,
+    and is possessed of numbers of warm and devoted friends. He has
+    been married twice. The first Mrs. Jefferson was a Miss
+    Lockyer, of New York, and by her he had two children, a son and
+    a daughter. The former is about eighteen years of age, and is
+    destined to his father's profession, in which he has already
+    shown unusual promise. The present Mrs. Jefferson was a Miss
+    Warren, and is a niece of the veteran actor, William Warren, of
+    Boston. She was married to her husband early in 1868, and has
+    never been an actress.</p>
+
+    <p>Mr. Jefferson is the possessor of a large fortune, acquired
+    in the exercise of his profession, and being thus comfortably
+    situated, is enabled to enjoy more rest from his labors than
+    falls to the lot of most American actors. He resides in Orange
+    County, New Jersey, about an hour's ride from New York, where
+    he has a handsome country seat, which he has adorned with all
+    the attractions that wealth and taste can command.</p>
+    <hr style='width: 65%;'>
+    <a name='physicians'></a>
+
+    <h1>XI.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;PHYSICIANS.</h1>
+    <hr style='width: 65%;'>
+    <a name='CHAPTER_XXXVII'></a>
+
+    <h2>CHAPTER XXXVII.</h2>
+
+    <h3>BENJAMIN RUSH.</h3><br>
+
+
+    <p>It is not often that a man, however gifted, is capable of
+    rising to eminence in two distinct branches of public life,
+    especially in two so widely separated from each other as
+    medicine and politics. The subject of this sketch was one of
+    the few who have achieved such distinction.</p>
+
+    <p><span class="small-caps">Benjamin Rush</span> was born on
+    Poquestion Creek, near Philadelphia, on the 24th of December,
+    1745. He was carefully educated at the best common schools of
+    his native county, and then entered Princeton College, where he
+    graduated in 1760, at the age of fifteen. He decided, upon
+    leaving Princeton, to adopt medicine as his vocation, and began
+    his studies in Philadelphia. He gave nine years to preparing
+    himself for his profession, and after completing his course in
+    Philadelphia, sailed for Europe, where he continued his studies
+    in Edinburgh, London, and Paris. He returned home in 1769, and
+    began the practice of medicine in Philadelphia, and was at once
+    elected Professor of Chemistry in the medical college of that
+    city. He was successful in rapidly acquiring a large and
+    lucrative practice, and experienced very few of the
+    difficulties and trials which lie in the way of a young
+    physician.</p>
+
+    <p>In 1770 he began his career as an author, and for many years
+    his writings were numerous. He devoted himself chiefly to
+    medical subjects, but history, philosophy, and politics, and
+    even romance, frequently claimed his attention. He adopted the
+    patriot cause at the outset of his career, and with his pen and
+    voice constantly advocated resistance to the injustice of Great
+    Britain. This drew upon him the attention of his
+    fellow-citizens, and he was chosen to a seat in the Provincial
+    Conference of Pennsylvania. In that body he introduced a
+    resolution setting forth the necessity of a declaration of
+    independence of the mother country. His resolution was referred
+    to a committee, of which he was made the chairman, and this
+    committee having reported affirmatively, the resolution was
+    unanimously adopted by the Conference, and was communicated to
+    the Continental Congress, then in session in Philadelphia,
+    about the last of June, 1776. When it became evident that the
+    Congress would declare the independence of the colonies, five
+    members of the Pennsylvania delegation withdrew from that body.
+    Their places were at once supplied by Rush and four others, and
+    when the Declaration was finally adopted Benjamin Rush affixed
+    his signature to it as a delegate from Pennsylvania.</p>
+
+    <p>In 1776 Dr. Rush was married to Miss Julia Stockton,
+    daughter of Richard Stockton, of New Jersey, also a signer of
+    the Declaration. In April, 1777, he was made Surgeon-General of
+    the Continental army for the Middle Department, and in July,
+    1777, was made Physician-General. He devoted himself to his
+    duties with energy and intelligence, and succeeded in placing
+    the affairs of his department in as satisfactory a condition as
+    the means at the command of the Congress would permit. He was
+    not able, however, to arrange every thing as his judgment
+    assured him was best, and was subjected to many annoyances and
+    great inconvenience by the incompetence and mismanagement of
+    other officials, whom he could not control. The management of
+    the hospital supplies of the army was especially defective, and
+    was the cause of much suffering to the troops. He made repeated
+    efforts to effect a reform in this particular, but failing to
+    accomplish any thing, and indignant at the wrongs inflicted
+    upon the soldiers, he resigned his commission and retired to
+    private life.</p>
+
+    <p>During his connection with the army, he had watched the
+    course of affairs in his native State with the keenest
+    interest, and in a series of four letters to the people of
+    Pennsylvania, called their attention to the serious defects of
+    their Constitution of 1776, the chief of which he declared to
+    be the giving of the legislative power to one house only. His
+    appeals had the effect of bringing about an entire change in
+    the form of State government, which was subsequently
+    accomplished by a general convention of the people. After the
+    close of the war Dr. Rush was elected a member of the State
+    Convention which ratified the Constitution of the United
+    States, and distinguished himself in that body by his earnest
+    and brilliant advocacy of that instrument. He was also a member
+    of the convention which adopted a new State Constitution,
+    embodying the reforms he had advised in the letters referred
+    to, and labored hard to have incorporated in it his views
+    respecting a penal code and a public school system, both of
+    which features he ably advocated through the public press.</p>
+
+    <p>With this closed his public career, which, though brief, was
+    brilliant, and raised him to a proud place among the fathers of
+    the Republic.</p>
+
+    <p>Returning to Philadelphia after resigning his position in
+    the army, he resumed the practice of medicine, and with
+    increased success. His personal popularity and his great skill
+    as a physician brought him all the employment he could desire,
+    and he soon took his place at the head of the medical faculty
+    of the country.</p>
+
+    <p>In 1785 he planned the Philadelphia Dispensary, the first
+    institution of the kind in the United States, and to the close
+    of his life remained its warm and energetic supporter. In 1789
+    he was made Professor of the Theory and Practice of Medicine in
+    the Philadelphia Medical College, and when that institution was
+    merged in the University, in 1791, he was elected to the chair
+    of the Institute and Clinical Medicine. In 1797 he took the
+    professorship of Clinical Practice also, as it was vacant, and
+    was formally elected to it in 1805. These three professorships
+    he held until the day of his death, discharging the duties of
+    each with characteristic brilliancy and fidelity.</p>
+
+    <p>The great professional triumph of his life occurred in the
+    year 1793. In that year the yellow fever broke out with great
+    malignancy in Philadelphia, and raged violently for about one
+    hundred days, from about the last of July until the first of
+    November. Nothing seemed capable of checking it. The people
+    fled in dismay from their homes, and the city seemed given over
+    to desolation. In the terrible "hundred days," during which the
+    fever prevailed, four thousand persons died, and the deaths
+    occurred so rapidly that it was frequently impossible to bury
+    the bodies for several days. The physicians of the city, though
+    they remained heroically at their posts, and labored
+    indefatigably in their exertions to stay the plague, were
+    powerless against it, and several of them were taken sick and
+    died. Few had any hope of checking the fever, and every one
+    looked forward with eagerness to the approach of the season of
+    frosts, as the only means of saving those that remained in the
+    stricken city.</p>
+
+    <p>At the outset of the disease, Dr. Rush had treated it in the
+    same manner as that adopted by the medical faculty of the city;
+    but the ill success which attended this course soon satisfied
+    him that the treatment was wrong. He therefore undertook to
+    subdue it by purging and bleeding the patient, and succeeded.
+    The new practice met with the fiercest opposition from the
+    other physicians, but Rush could triumphantly point to the fact
+    that while their patients were dying his were getting well; and
+    he continued to carry out his treatment with firmness and
+    success. Dr. Ramsey, of South Carolina, estimates that Rush, by
+    this treatment, saved not less than six thousand of his
+    patients from death in the "hundred days." Nevertheless, the
+    medical war went on with great bitterness, and the opposition
+    to Rush became furious when he boldly declared that the fever
+    was not an importation from abroad, as was popularly believed,
+    but had been generated by the filthy condition of the city
+    during the early part of the summer. Some time after the fever
+    had subsided, a paper called "Peter Porcupine's Gazette,"
+    edited by William Cobbett, made a series of outrageous attacks
+    upon Dr. Rush and his treatment of the fever. This exhausted
+    the forbearance of the doctor, and he instituted a suit against
+    Cobbett, in which he was successful, and secured a verdict of
+    $5,000 damages against his defamer.</p>
+
+    <p>During the prevalence of the fever, Dr. Rush's labors were
+    unceasing. He was constantly going his rounds, visiting the
+    sick, attending sometimes over one hundred patients in a single
+    day. He was called on at all hours of the day and night, and it
+    may be said that he scarcely slept or enjoyed two hours,
+    uninterrupted rest during the "hundred days."</p>
+
+    <div class="full">
+        <a name='illust7401'></a>
+        <a href='images/7401.jpg'><img src='images/7401.jpg'
+                width='600' border=0
+                alt='PRESCRIBING AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.'></a><br>
+         PRESCRIBING AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
+    </div>
+
+    <p>For weeks he never sat down to his meals without being
+    surrounded by dozens of patients, whose complaints he listened
+    to and prescribed for as he ate. These were chiefly the poor,
+    and at such times his house was literally thronged with them.
+    He was a kind friend to them; rendering his services promptly
+    and heartily, without the slightest wish to receive pay in
+    return for them; and during all this terrible summer he was to
+    be seen ministering to these poor creatures in the foulest,
+    most plague-stricken quarters of the city, shrinking from no
+    danger, and deterred from his work of mercy by no thought of
+    his own safety. He has left us the following picture of the
+    city during this terrible summer:</p>
+
+    <div class='blkquot'>
+        <p>The disease appeared in many parts of the town remote
+        from the spot where it originated; although in every
+        instance it was easily traced to it. This set the city in
+        motion. The streets and roads leading from the city were
+        crowded with families flying in every direction for safety,
+        to the country. Business began to languish. Water Street,
+        between Market and Race Streets, became a desert. The poor
+        were the first victims of the fever. From the sudden
+        interruption of business, they suffered for a while from
+        poverty as well as disease. A large and airy house at
+        Bush-hill, about a mile from the city, was opened for their
+        reception. This house, after it became the charge of a
+        committee appointed by the citizens on the 14th of
+        September, was regulated and governed with the order and
+        cleanliness of an old and established hospital. An American
+        and French physician had the exclusive medical care of it
+        after the 22d of September.</p>
+
+        <p>The contagion, after the second week in September,
+        spared no rank of citizens. Whole families were confined by
+        it. There was a deficiency of nurses for the sick, and many
+        of those who were employed were unqualified for their
+        business. There was likewise a great deficiency of
+        physicians, from the desertion of some and the sickness and
+        death of others. At one time there were only three
+        physicians able to do business out of their houses, and at
+        this time there were probably not less than six thousand
+        persons ill with the fever.</p>
+
+        <p>During the first three or four weeks of the prevalence
+        of the disorder, I seldom went into a house the first time
+        without meeting the parents or children of the sick in
+        tears. Many wept aloud in my entry or parlor, who came to
+        ask advice for their relations. Grief after a while
+        descended below weeping, and I was much struck in observing
+        that many persons submitted to the loss of relations and
+        friends without shedding a tear, or manifesting any other
+        of the common signs of grief.</p>
+
+        <p>A cheerful countenance was scarcely to be seen in the
+        city for six weeks. I recollect once, on entering the house
+        of a poor man, to have met a child of two years old that
+        smiled in my face. I was strangely affected with this sight
+        (so discordant to my feelings and the state of the city),
+        before I recollected the age and ignorance of the child. I
+        was confined the next day by an attack of the fever, and
+        was sorry to hear, upon my recovery, that the father and
+        mother of this little creature died a few days after my
+        last visit to them.</p>
+
+        <p>The streets every-where discovered marks of the distress
+        that pervaded the city. More than one-half the houses were
+        shut up, although not more than one-third of the
+        inhabitants had fled into the country. In walking, for many
+        hundred yards, few persons were met, except such as were in
+        quest of a physician, a nurse, a bleeder, or the men who
+        buried the dead. The hearse alone kept up the remembrance
+        of the noise of carriages or carts in the streets. Funeral
+        processions were laid aside. A black man leading or driving
+        a horse, with a corpse on a pair of chair-wheels, with now
+        and then half a dozen relations or friends following at a
+        distance from it, met the eye in most of the streets of the
+        city, at every hour of the day, while the noise of the same
+        wheels passing slowly over the pavements, kept alive
+        anguish and fear in the sick and well, every hour of the
+        night.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <p>The population of Philadelphia at this time was but sixty
+    thousand, and the reader will see that a loss of four thousand
+    was a heavy percentage for so short a period.</p>
+
+    <p>Dr. Rush's skill and heroic conduct in his efforts to stay
+    the ravages of the plague made him famous, not only in his own
+    country, but throughout Europe, and during the latter part of
+    his life he received most gratifying evidences of this fact. In
+    1805 the King of Prussia sent him a coronation medal, and the
+    King of Spain tendered him his thanks for his replies to
+    certain questions addressed to him concerning the causes and
+    proper treatment of yellow fever. In 1807 the Queen of Etruria
+    presented him with a gold medal as a mark of respect; and in
+    1811 the Emperor of Russia sent him a testimonial of his
+    admiration of his medical character.</p>
+
+    <p>In 1799 he was made treasurer of the United States Mint,
+    which position he held until his death.</p>
+
+    <p>Dr. Rush's writings were voluminous, and embraced a variety
+    of subjects. His medical productions occupy a high place in the
+    literature of the profession, and his political essays were one
+    of the features of his day. He was a man of profound learning,
+    and it is astonishing that one so constantly occupied with the
+    duties of an engrossing profession should have found the time
+    for such close and thorough general reading.</p>
+
+    <p>He was a sincere and earnest Christian, and held the Bible
+    in the highest veneration. He wrote an able defense of the use
+    of it as a school-book, and for many years was vice-president
+    of the Philadelphia Bible Society, which he helped to
+    establish, and the constitution of which he drafted. He held
+    skepticism and atheism in the deepest abhorrence, and in his
+    own life affords a powerful refutation of the assertion one
+    hears so often, that profound medical knowledge is apt to make
+    men infidels.</p>
+
+    <p>He died in Philadelphia on the 19th of April, 1813, at the
+    good old age of sixty-eight, leaving a son who was destined to
+    render additional luster to his name by achieving the highest
+    distinction as a statesman.</p>
+    <hr style='width: 65%;'>
+    <a name='CHAPTER_XXXVIII'></a>
+
+    <h2>CHAPTER XXXVIII.</h2>
+
+    <h3>VALENTINE MOTT.</h3><br>
+
+
+    <p>VALENTINE MOTT was born at Glen Cove, on Long Island, on the
+    20th of August, 1785. His father, Dr. Henry Mott, was an
+    eminent practitioner in the city of New York, where he died in
+    1840, at the age of eighty-three. Valentine Mott was carefully
+    educated by private tutors until he reached the age of
+    nineteen, when he entered Columbia College, New York, as a
+    medical student, and at the same time became a private medical
+    pupil of his kinsman, Dr. Valentine Seaman. At the age of
+    twenty-one he graduated with the degree of M.D.; but feeling
+    that he had not acquired as good a medical education as the
+    schools of the Old World could afford, he sailed for Europe in
+    1806, within a few weeks after his graduation at Columbia
+    College. Proceeding to London, he was for more than a year a
+    regular attendant upon St. Thomas', Bartholomew's, and Guy's
+    hospitals, where he conducted his clinical studies under the
+    direction of Abernethy, Sir Charles Bell, and Sir Astley
+    Cooper. He chose Sir Astley Cooper as his private instructor,
+    and became one of his favorite pupils; and also attended the
+    lectures of Currie and Haighton. From London he went to
+    Edinburgh, where he attended the lectures of Hope, Playfair,
+    and Gregory, as well as the prelections of Dugald Stewart. From
+    Edinburgh he went to Paris, and completed his studies in the
+    great hospitals of that city.</p>
+
+    <p>He gave evidence at an early day of his great surgical
+    abilities. He was indeed a born surgeon, possessing in a
+    remarkable degree that peculiar adaptation to this branch of
+    his profession, without which no amount of study can make a
+    great operator. While a student in the Old World, he performed
+    leading operations with a skill and natural readiness which
+    astonished his instructors as much as they delighted them. He
+    was possessed of a firmness and dexterity of hand, a calm, cool
+    brain, a quick, unfailing eye, a calmness of nerve, a strength
+    of will, and a physical endurance which were Nature's gifts to
+    him, and which rendered him a great surgeon even before he had
+    received his diploma. He did not trust to these natural gifts
+    alone, however, but applied himself to the theory of his
+    profession with a determination and eagerness which nothing
+    could daunt. He was an enthusiast in his studies, and soon
+    became known as the most profoundly-learned <i>young</i>
+    physician of his day. As he advanced in life, he maintained his
+    reputation, keeping up his studies to the last. The great men
+    under whom he studied abroad were delighted with him, and Sir
+    Astley Cooper was loud in his praise. He exhibited so much
+    skill as an operator that he was often called upon to perform
+    operations which the professors would never have dreamed of
+    intrusting to any one else, and he went through each trial of
+    this kind with a readiness and precision which few even of his
+    instructors excelled.</p>
+
+    <p>His reputation was unusually flattering to one who had not
+    yet entered upon the practice of his profession, and upon his
+    return to the United States, in 1809, he was met with an offer
+    of the chair of surgery in Columbia College, his <i>alma
+    mater</i>. He promptly accepted the position, and held it until
+    1813, when the medical department of Columbia College was
+    merged in the College of Physicians and Surgeons. He was at
+    once called to the same chair in the new college, and occupied
+    it until 1826. In that year he resigned his place in the
+    faculty, in consequence of a misunderstanding between the
+    professors and the trustees of the college on the principles of
+    college government. Withdrawing entirely from the school, he
+    united with Drs. Hosack, Mitchell, Francis, and several others,
+    in founding the Rutgers Medical College. This college, after a
+    short career of four years, was compelled by the Legislature to
+    discontinue its operations, in consequence of an alleged
+    invalidity in its charter.</p>
+
+    <p>In 1830, Dr. Mott returned to the College of Physicians and
+    Surgeons as Professor of Surgery, and in 1840 he became
+    President of the Faculty and Professor of Surgery and Relative
+    Anatomy in the new University Medical School. The science of
+    Relative Anatomy is of the highest importance to the surgeon,
+    and of this science Dr. Mott is generally regarded as the
+    author. He held his position in the University for twenty
+    years, and in 1860, after a period of fifty years spent in the
+    active duties of his professorship, retired from the immediate
+    discharge of them, and was made Professor Emeritus, in which
+    capacity he occasionally lectured to the classes during each of
+    the remaining years of his life.</p>
+
+    <p>As a professor and teacher of surgical science Dr. Mott won
+    a brilliant reputation, and was considered one of the most
+    thoroughly successful instructors in the Union. He had the
+    power of winning the attention of his pupils at the opening of
+    his lectures and of retaining it until the close. He made even
+    the most difficult operations so clear and simple in his
+    lectures that the dullest intellects could comprehend them; and
+    his system of practical demonstration of his subjects was
+    vastly superior to any thing that had ever been seen in
+    America. He was the first to introduce into this country the
+    system of delivering clinical lectures, or lectures at the
+    bedside of the patient, whose ailments were operated upon
+    during the course of his remarks. This system is naturally the
+    most repugnant to the patient, but its advantages to the
+    student are so great that they outweigh all other
+    considerations. Other professors had shrunk from subjecting
+    their patients to such an ordeal, but Dr. Mott had seen enough,
+    during his attendance upon such lectures abroad, to satisfy him
+    that it was the only method by which a thorough knowledge of
+    the profession of surgery could be imparted, and immediately
+    upon establishing himself in this country he introduced it. He
+    met with opposition at first, but he gradually overcame it, and
+    made the advantages of his system so apparent to all that at
+    length the opposition entirely ceased.</p>
+
+    <p>The greatest difficulty to which American medical schools
+    have always been subject has been the almost utter
+    impossibility of procuring dead bodies for dissection. It was
+    this want that compelled Dr. Mott, as it has compelled so many
+    others, to seek a practical education in Europe; and when he
+    came back to the college as professor, he was met by the same
+    drawback to thorough instruction. The law forbade the taking of
+    dead bodies for dissection, under severe penalties. If a
+    student was ever found in possession of a limb, he was liable
+    to fine and imprisonment; and popular sentiment was so strong
+    against the practice of dissection that those who engaged in it
+    ran serious risk of incurring violence at the hands of the mob.
+    Dr. Mott was often driven to desperate expedients in the
+    procuring of subjects. He was fond of relating one of his
+    adventures of this kind, which will show the reader how he was
+    enabled to carry on his lectures.</p>
+
+    <p>It was in the winter of 1815, and it had been found
+    impossible to procure a supply of subjects for the season. They
+    could not be obtained at any price, and it was evident that if
+    any were to be had, the doctor and his pupils would have to
+    take the matter in their own hands. There was a grave-yard just
+    outside the city, in which a number of interments had recently
+    been made, and the doctor resolved upon securing these bodies
+    for his dissecting-room. It was a dangerous undertaking, as
+    discovery would subject all engaged in it to the direst
+    penalties of the law, if, indeed, they should be lucky enough
+    to escape being lynched by the people. In spite of the dangers,
+    however, the students volunteered to assist the doctor in the
+    attempt, and at an appointed time proceeded to the cemetery,
+    properly disguised, and began the removal of the bodies from
+    the graves. The night was intensely dark, and the wind was
+    high, both of which circumstances favored their undertaking,
+    but every sound, every snapping of a twig or rustling of a leaf
+    caused them to start with alarm and gaze anxiously into the
+    darkness. It was near midnight when they had finished their
+    task, and, this done, they waited in anxious silence for the
+    arrival of the means of removing their prey. Their movements
+    had been accurately timed, and they had scarcely completed
+    their labors when a cart, driven by a man dressed in the rough
+    clothing of a laborer, approached the cemetery at a rapid pace.
+    Signals were exchanged between the driver and the students, and
+    the latter fell to work to place the bodies, eleven in number,
+    in the cart. Having accomplished this, they covered them over
+    in such a manner as to make it appear that the cart was loaded
+    with country produce, bound for the city markets. When every
+    thing was properly arranged, the students disappeared in the
+    darkness, each seeking the means by which he had come out from
+    the city, and the driver, turning his cart about, drove off
+    rapidly in the direction of New York. It was a long ride, and
+    to an imaginative man, carrying eleven dead bodies that had
+    been torn from their quiet graves through the darkness of that
+    winter night would have been a terrible undertaking. But this
+    man was not imaginative, and, besides this, he was keenly alive
+    to the tremendous consequences of discovery. He knew that he
+    was carrying his life in his hand, and that he needed all the
+    coolness and decision of which he was master. Reaching the city
+    long after midnight, he drove rapidly down Broadway and turned
+    into Barclay Street. The lights of the college shone out
+    brightly, and they had never seemed so welcome as then. The
+    cart was driven rapidly to the college entrance, where the
+    students were in readiness to receive it. In a few moments the
+    bodies were removed from the cart and conveyed to the
+    dissecting-room, and the cart turned over to its owner. The
+    driver accompanied the students to the dissecting-room, and,
+    throwing off his disguise, revealed the handsome but excited
+    and eager countenance of Dr. Mott. He had shared the dangers to
+    which his pupils had subjected themselves, and had even borne
+    the part in the enterprise attended with the greatest risk. The
+    affair had succeeded admirably, a winter's supply of "subjects"
+    had been obtained, and after this the lectures went on without
+    interruption.</p>
+
+    <p>"A story is told of his readiness in the lecture-room. A
+    mother brought into the amphitheater, one morning, an extremely
+    dirty, sickly, miserable-looking child, for the purpose of
+    having a tumor removed. He exhibited the tumor to the class,
+    but informed the mother that he could not operate upon the
+    child without the consent of her husband. One of the students,
+    in his eagerness to examine the tumor, jumped over into the
+    little inclosure designed for the operator and his patients.
+    Dr. Mott, observing this intrusion, turned to the student and
+    asked him, with the most innocent expression of countenance:
+    'Are you the father of this child?' Thunders of applause and
+    laughter greeted this ingenious rebuke, during which the
+    intruder returned to his place crestfallen."</p>
+
+    <p>He was equally as successful in his private practice as in
+    his labors in the medical school. His brilliant reputation
+    preceded him in his return to his native country, and
+    immediately upon opening his office in New York he entered upon
+    a large and lucrative practice. His skill as a surgeon was in
+    constant demand, and it is said that during his long career he
+    tied the common carotid artery forty-six times, cut for stone
+    one hundred and sixty-five times, and amputated nearly one
+    thousand limbs. His old preceptor, Sir Astley Cooper, proud of
+    the distinction won by his favorite pupil, said of him
+    exultingly: "He has performed more of the great operations than
+    any man living, or that ever did live."</p>
+
+    <p>When he was but thirty-three years old (in 1818) he placed a
+    ligature around the bracheo-cephalic trunk or arteria
+    innominata, within two inches of the heart, for aneurism of the
+    right subclavian artery. This was the first time this wonderful
+    operation had ever been performed, and the skill and success
+    with which he accomplished it stamped him as one of the
+    brightest lights of his profession. "The patient survived the
+    operation twenty-eight days, and thus demonstrated the
+    feasibility of this hazardous and thus far unparalleled
+    undertaking. He discovered in this case that, though all supply
+    of blood to the blood-vessels of the right arm was apparently
+    cut off, the circulation was kept up by the interosculating
+    blood-vessels, the pulsation at the wrist maintained, and no
+    evidence of loss of vitality or warmth manifested in the limb.
+    The patient finally died from secondary hemorrhage."</p>
+
+    <p>In 1828 he performed successfully the most difficult and
+    dangerous operation known to surgery. A clergyman called upon
+    him to remove an enormous tumor in the neck, in which were
+    imbedded and twisted many of the great arteries. In this
+    operation it became necessary to take out entire the right
+    clavicle or collar bone, to lay bare the membrane which
+    surrounds the lungs, to search for and dissect around the
+    arteries which ran through the tumor, to make forty ligatures,
+    and to remove an immense mass of diseased matter. This terrible
+    operation had never been attempted before, and was performed by
+    Dr. Mott without the aid of chloroform; yet it was done so
+    skillfully that the patient survived it, and in 1865 was still
+    living and discharging his ministerial duties. It was thirty
+    years before it was attempted again in any part of the world.
+    It was a great triumph of the genius of the operator, and won
+    him praises from men of science in all countries.</p>
+
+    <p>In 1821 "he performed the first operation for osteo-sarcoma
+    of the lower jaw. In 1822 he introduced his original operation
+    for immobility of the lower jaw. He was the first surgeon who
+    removed the lower jaw for necrosis, and the first to tie
+    successfully the primitive iliac artery for aneurism. Other of
+    his original operations were cutting out two inches of the deep
+    jugular vein, inseparably imbedded in a tumor, and tying both
+    ends of the vein, and closing, with a fine ligature, wounds of
+    large veins of a longitudinal or transverse kind, even where an
+    olive-sliced piece had been cut out."</p>
+
+    <p>It was invariably his practice before attempting an
+    operation on a living subject to perform it on a dead body, and
+    by the most minute and patient examination to render himself
+    absolute master of the anatomy of the parts to be operated
+    upon. He was a thoroughly conscientious man in the exercise of
+    his profession, and was always on his guard to resist that
+    greatest danger of the skillful surgeon&mdash;the temptation to
+    use the knife needlessly. It was his practice to investigate
+    his cases thoroughly, and never to use the knife unless his
+    judgment was satisfied that an operation was necessary. "That
+    he decided in favor of operating when some of his associates
+    hesitated, was due rather to his large experience than to an
+    overweening fondness for the use of the knife." In his
+    operations he was firm and decided. Gifted with an unusual
+    steadiness of nerve and strength of muscle, he never allowed
+    his sympathy for the patient to cause him to hesitate or
+    inflict one pang less than the case required. He was prompt and
+    ready in the event of unforeseen complications, and never
+    permitted any thing to take him by surprise. His manner toward
+    his patients was tender and sympathizing to a remarkable
+    degree, and his brother surgeons used to say of him, that he
+    seemed to have the power of cutting with less pain to the
+    patient than was possessed by most operators. During forty
+    years of his practice an&aelig;sthetics were unknown, and he
+    had to operate with the full consciousness that his patient was
+    suffering the keenest agony. Besides attaining such an exalted
+    position as a surgeon, Dr. Mott won an enviable reputation as a
+    physician. His practice was confined almost entirely to the
+    best class of the people of New York, and he was for many years
+    the favorite accoucheur in a large circle of families in that
+    city.</p>
+
+    <p>He was an eminently progressive man. He fully recognized the
+    advance of science with the growth of the world, and was always
+    prompt to welcome any valuable discovery in medicine or
+    surgery. He was among the first to adopt and advocate the use
+    of an&aelig;sthetics, for no man had had more cause to
+    understand the necessity of such assistants. He was himself the
+    inventor of many valuable surgical instruments, but he gladly
+    welcomed the introduction of others, even though they
+    superseded his own in use. To the close of his life he was a
+    diligent student, and watched the progress of his science with
+    a keen and intelligent eye. He was the author of several works
+    of merit, including a volume of travels, and the translator of
+    "Velpau's Operative Surgery," to which he made extensive and
+    valuable additions and annotations. He received numerous
+    literary and scientific honors from colleges, universities, and
+    learned bodies in the United States and Europe.</p>
+
+    <p>In 1835 he visited Europe for the purpose of resting from
+    his arduous labors, and spent several years in traveling
+    extensively in England, on the continent, and in the East. His
+    great achievements had made him as famous in the Old World as
+    at home, and he was received wherever he went with great
+    distinction. He was cordially welcomed by the most eminent
+    surgeons of Paris, and Louis Philippe conceived a warm
+    friendship for him. During his visit to Constantinople, he was
+    called upon to attend professionally the reigning Sultan Abdul
+    Medjid, who was suffering from a tumor in the head. Dr. Mott
+    successfully removed this tumor, and was afterwards invested by
+    the Sultan with the order of Knight of Medjidechi, of
+    Constantinople.</p>
+
+    <p>During his visit to Paris, a circumstance occurred which he
+    related upon his return home, and which will serve to show the
+    extremes to which professional skill and vanity will sometimes
+    carry men. One of the most eminent surgeons in Paris asked him
+    if he would like to see him perform his original operation. Dr.
+    Mott replied that nothing would give him more pleasure. "Then
+    you shall see it to-morrow," said the Frenchman. "But stay," he
+    added, "now I think of it, there is no patient in the hospital
+    who has that malady. No matter, my dear friend, there is a poor
+    devil in ward No. &mdash;&mdash; who is of no use to himself or
+    any body else, and if you'll come to-morrow, I'll operate
+    beautifully on him." Dr. Mott at once declined to attend the
+    operation or to countenance in any way so horrible an
+    outrage.</p>
+
+    <p>In person Dr. Mott was a thorough gentleman of the old
+    school. He was an exceedingly handsome man, and was possessed
+    of an erect and well-developed figure. His hair was as white as
+    snow, and his dress, which consisted of a simple suit of
+    spotless black, with linen of matchless purity, was in the most
+    perfect taste. He was grave and dignified in his deportment,
+    and polished and courteous in every action. Even in his most
+    difficult and trying operations the services of the assistants
+    were always promptly acknowledged with scrupulous politeness.
+    He was possessed of many friends, and was regarded with pride
+    and veneration by his profession throughout the world.</p>
+
+    <p>During the last winter of his life he had lectured once or
+    twice at the Medical School, and had performed several
+    operations of importance in his private practice. Although
+    nearly eighty, he was still erect and vigorous, and was far
+    from considering himself too old for his work.</p>
+
+    <p>On the morning of the 15th of April, 1865, he sent for his
+    barber, as was his custom, and submitted himself to the hands
+    of the man who had been his attendant in this capacity for
+    years. He was sitting in his dressing-room, and, being in fine
+    spirits, began conversing with the barber, who, during the
+    conversation, asked him if he had heard the terrible news of
+    the day.</p>
+
+    <p>"What is the news?" asked the doctor.</p>
+
+    <p>"President Lincoln was killed last night at the theater in
+    Washington," was the reply.</p>
+
+    <p>The doctor turned as pale as death, and, trembling
+    violently, motioned the barber aside, and tottered into the
+    chamber adjoining, in which his wife was dressing.</p>
+
+    <p>"My dear," he gasped, scarcely able to speak, "I have
+    received such a shock. President Lincoln has been
+    murdered."</p>
+
+    <div class="full">
+        <a name='illust7421'></a>
+        <a href='images/7421.jpg'><img src='images/7421.jpg'
+                width='600' border=0
+                alt='"PRESIDENT LINCOLN HAS BEEN MURDERED!"'></a><br>
+         "PRESIDENT LINCOLN HAS BEEN MURDERED!"
+    </div>
+
+    <p>His agitation had now become so great that he could say no
+    more. He sank down into a chair, pale and trembling, and so
+    feeble that he could scarcely sit up. He was seized in a short
+    time with acute pains in the back, and at the same time his
+    vigor seemed to desert him entirely, and he became a weak and
+    broken old man. He was obliged to seek his bed, from which he
+    never rose. He grew feebler every day, and died on the 26th of
+    April, 1865.</p>
+
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr class="full" noshade>
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GREAT FORTUNES, AND HOW THEY WERE MADE***</p>
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+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
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+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #15161 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/15161)
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made, by
+James D. McCabe, Jr., Illustrated by G. F. and E. B. Bensell
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made
+
+Author: James D. McCabe, Jr.
+
+Release Date: February 24, 2005  [eBook #15161]
+
+Language: english
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GREAT FORTUNES, AND HOW THEY WERE
+MADE***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Dave Macfarlane, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 15161-h.htm or 15161-h.zip:
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/5/1/6/15161/15161-h/15161-h.htm)
+      or
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/5/1/6/15161/15161-h.zip)
+
+
+
+
+
+GREAT FORTUNES, AND HOW THEY WERE MADE
+
+Or, The Struggles and Triumphs of Our Self-Made Men
+
+by
+
+JAMES D. MCCABE, JR.,
+
+Author of _Planting the Wilderness_, etc., etc.
+
+Numerous Illustrations from Original Designs by G. F. & E. B. Bensell
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: CONSTERNATION AT THE SIGHT OF FULTON'S MONSTER.]
+
+
+
+
+"MAN, it is not thy works, which are mortal, infinitely little, and the
+greatest no greater than the least, but only the _spirit thou workest
+in_, that can have worth or continuance."--CARLYLE.
+
+
+
+
+George Maclean,
+Philadelphia, New York and Boston
+Electrotyped at the Franklin Type Foundry, Cincinnati
+
+1871
+
+
+
+
+"The physical industries of this world have two relations in them: one
+to the actor, and one to the public. Honest business is more really a
+contribution to the public than it is to the manager of the business
+himself. Although it seems to the man, and generally to the community,
+that the active business man is a self-seeker, and although his motive
+may be self-aggrandizement, yet, in point of fact, no man ever manages a
+legitimate business in this life, that he is not doing a thousand-fold
+more for other men than he is trying to do even for himself. For, in the
+economy of God's providence, every right and well organized business is
+a beneficence and not a selfishness. And not less is it so because the
+merchant, the mechanic, the publisher, the artist, think merely of their
+profit. They are in fact working more for others than they are for
+themselves."
+
+HENRY WARD BEECHER.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+The chief glory of America is, that it is the country in which genius
+and industry find their speediest and surest reward. Fame and fortune
+are here open to all who are willing to work for them. Neither class
+distinctions nor social prejudices, neither differences of birth,
+religion, nor ideas, can prevent the man of true merit from winning the
+just reward of his labors in this favored land. We are emphatically a
+nation of self-made men, and it is to the labors of this worthy class
+that our marvelous national prosperity is due.
+
+This being the case, it is but natural that there should be manifested
+by our people a very decided desire to know the history of those who
+have risen to the front rank of their respective callings. Men are
+naturally cheered and encouraged by the success of others, and those who
+are worthy of a similar reward will not fail to learn valuable lessons
+from the examples of the men who have preceded them.
+
+With the hope of gratifying this laudable desire for information, and
+encouraging those who are still struggling in the lists of fame and
+fortune, I offer this book to the reader. I have sought to tell simply
+and truthfully the story of the trials and triumphs of our self-made
+men, to show how they overcame where others failed, and to offer the
+record of their lives as models worthy of the imitation of the young men
+of our country. No one can hope to succeed in life merely by the force
+of his own genius, any more than he can hope to live without exerting
+some degree of influence for good or evil upon the community in which
+his lot is cast. Success in life is not the effect of accident or of
+chance: it is the result of the intelligent application of certain fixed
+principles to the affairs of every day. Each man must make this
+application according to the circumstances by which he is surrounded,
+and he can derive no greater assistance or encouragement in this
+undertaking than by informing himself how other men of acknowledged
+merit have succeeded in the same departments of the world's industry.
+That this is true is shown by the fact that many of the most eminent men
+attribute their great achievements to the encouragement with which the
+perusal of the biographies of others inspired them at critical periods
+of their careers. It is believed that the narrations embraced in these
+pages afford ample instruction and entertainment to the young, as well
+as food for earnest reflection on the part of those who are safely
+advanced upon their pathway to success, and that they will prove
+interesting to all classes of intelligent readers.
+
+Some explanation is due to the reader respecting the title that has been
+chosen for the work. The term "Great Fortunes" is not used here to
+designate pecuniary success exclusively. A few of the men whose lives
+are herein recorded never amassed great wealth. Yet they achieved the
+highest success in their vocations, and their lives are so full of
+interest and instruction that this work must have been incomplete and
+unsatisfactory had they been passed over in silence. The aim of the
+writer has been to present the histories of those who have won the
+highest fame and achieved the greatest good in their respective
+callings, whether that success has brought them riches or not, and above
+all, of those whose labors have not only opened the way to fortune for
+themselves, but also for others, and have thus conferred lasting
+benefits upon their country.
+
+In short, I have sought to make this work the story of the _Genius of
+America_, believing as I do that he whose achievements have contributed
+to the increase of the national wealth, the development of the national
+resources, and the elevation of the national character, though he
+himself be poor in purse, has indeed won a great fortune, of which no
+reverse can ever deprive him.
+
+J.D. McC., JR.
+
+NEW YORK, _24th October, 1870_.
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+CONSTERNATION AT SIGHT OF FULTON'S MONSTER (Frontispiece)
+GIRARD COLLEGE
+GIRARD'S HEROISM
+ASTOR'S FIRST TRIP FOR FURS
+"MY MEN SHALL NOT SUFFER"
+PORTRAIT OF GEORGE PEABODY
+PEABODY PAYING FOR A NIGHT'S LODGING
+PORTRAIT OF CORNELIUS VANDERBILT
+VANDERBILT EARNING HIS FIRST HUNDRED DOLLARS
+VANDERBILT CARRYING OFF THE SHERIFF
+FOUNDING A GREAT FORTUNE
+PORTRAIT OF ROBERT FULTON
+AN AMAZING REVELATION
+"THE MADHOUSE IS THE PROPER PLACE FOR HIM"
+WHITNEY WATCHING THE FIRST COTTON-GIN
+PORTRAIT OF ELIAS HOWE, JR.
+HOWE'S FIRST IDEA OF THE SEWING-MACHINE
+THE BOY COLT INVENTING THE REVOLVER
+PORTRAIT OF SAMUEL F.B. MORSE
+HOW THE NEW YORK HERALD BEGAN
+MARSHALL'S DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY
+PORTRAIT OF JAMES T. BRADY
+"THEY ARE GOING TO HANG MY BROTHER; YOU CAN SAVE HIM!"
+THE TRUANT'S SECRET DISCOVERED
+PORTRAIT OF HIRAM POWERS
+POWERS' DISTRUST OF THE HUNTERS
+FILIAL DEVOTION SHAPES A GREAT CAREER
+CARTWRIGHT CALLING UP THE DEVIL
+PORTRAIT OF NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
+JEFFERSON, AS RIP VAN WINKLE
+PRESCRIBING AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE
+"PRESIDENT LINCOLN HAS BEEN MURDERED!"
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+I. MERCHANTS.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+STEPHEN GIRARD.
+
+The fog in the Delaware--News of the war--Alarm of the French skipper--A
+narrow escape from capture--Arrival of Girard in Philadelphia--Early
+history of Stephen Girard--An unhappy childhood--Goes to sea--Is
+licensed to command--Becomes a trader in Philadelphia--Marries Mary
+Lum--Unfortunate issue of the marriage--Capture of Philadelphia by the
+British--Early commercial life of Stephen Girard--How he earned his
+first money, and the use he made of it--Aid from St. Domingo--His rigid
+attention to business--Thoroughness of his knowledge--One of his letters
+of instructions--His subordinates required to obey orders though they
+ruin him--Anecdote of Girard and one of his captains--His promptness and
+fidelity in business--He never breaks his word--How he lost five hundred
+dollars--Buys the old Bank of the United States and becomes a
+banker--Cuts down the salaries of his clerks--Refuses his watchman an
+overcoat--Indifference to his employés--Contrast between his personal
+and business habits--His liberality in financial operations--He
+subscribes for the entire Government loan in 1814, and enables the
+United States to carry on the war--His generosity toward the
+Government--The suspension of specie payments--Financial troubles--How
+Girard saved his own notes--His public spirit--How he made half a
+million of dollars on a captured ship--Personal characteristics--Why he
+valued money--His ambition--His infidelity--Causes of the defects of his
+character--A favorable view--Heroic conduct of Stephen Girard during
+the prevalence of the yellow fever in Philadelphia--The Good
+Samaritan--He practices medicine, and congratulates himself that he has
+killed none of his patients--His industry--Visit of Mr. Baring to Mr.
+Girard--A curious reception--Failing health and death of Stephen
+Girard--His will--His noble bequests--Establishment of Girard College.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+JOHN JACOB ASTOR.
+
+Legitimate business the field of success--Reasons for claiming Astor as
+an American--Birth and early life--Religious training--The village of
+Waldorf--Poverty--The jolly butcher--Young Astor's repugnance to his
+father's trade--Unhappy at home--Loses his mother--His desire to
+emigrate to the "New Land"--Leaves home--His voyage down the
+Rhine--Reaches London and enters the service of his brother--His efforts
+to prepare for emigration--Learns to speak English--Peace between the
+United States and Great Britain--The road to the "New Land" open--Astor
+sets out for America--His first ventures in commerce--The voyage--How he
+proposed to save his Sunday clothes--Arrival in the Chesapeake--The
+ice-blockade--Astor makes a friend--The fur trader's story--Astor sees
+the way to fortune--Reaches New York--His first situation--Learning the
+business--His method of proceeding--An example to young men--His capacity
+for business operations--He is promoted--His journeys to Canada, and
+their results--Sets up in business for himself--The fur trade of North
+America--A survey of the field of Astor's operations--His capital--His
+tramps into the wilderness in search of furs--Predictions as to the
+future settlement of the country--His first consignment to England--His
+marriage--A good wife--Improvement in his prospects--Buys his first
+ship--The secret of his success--Close attention to business--His
+economical habits--His indorsement disputed by a bank clerk--Statements
+of the profits on furs--He engages in the Chinese trade--How the
+Government aided the early China traders--Amount made by Astor in his
+legitimate business--His real estate operations--His foresight and
+courage--How eight thousand dollars yielded eighty thousand--His real
+estate in the City of New York--Purchases the half of Putnam County--The
+Roger and Mary Morris estate controversy--Astor wins his suit, and makes
+half a million of dollars--Astor's scheme of colonization--A grand
+enterprise--Settlement of Astoria--Betrayed by his agents, and the
+scheme brought to failure--Astor withdraws from active business--His
+boyhood's vow and its fulfillment--Builds the Astor House--His voyage to
+Europe--The return--The troubles of a millionaire--The great man
+seasick--A curious draft--The last years of his life--His fondness for
+literary men--His death and burial--His will--Opposite views of his
+character--How his refusal to buy a chronometer cost him seventy
+thousand dollars--He remembers an old friend--His gift of a lease--His
+humor--"William has a rich father."
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+ALEXANDER T. STEWART.
+
+Birth and early life--Becomes his grandfather's ward--Designed for the
+ministry--A change in his plans--Comes to America--Teaches school in New
+York--Becomes a dry goods merchant--Receives a legacy--His first
+importation--How he began business--An energetic trader--His sample lots
+and their history--Success of his enterprise--He begins by encouraging
+honesty in trade--Wins a name for reliability--The system of selling at
+one price--Inaugurates the "selling off at cost" feature--His courage in
+business--How he raised the money to meet his note--Improvement in his
+business--He enlarges his store--As an inducement to the ladies, employs
+for clerks handsome young men--The crisis of 1837--Stewart comes out of
+it a rich man--How he did so--Builds his lower store--Predictions of
+failure--The result--Compels the Government to purchase goods from
+him--His foresight and liberality--Charged with superstition--Lucky and
+unlucky persons--Story of the old apple woman--Remarks at the opening of
+the St. Nicholas Hotel--Reasons of Stewart's success--A hard worker--How
+he receives visitors--Running the gauntlet--How he gets rid of
+troublesome persons--Estimate of Mr. Stewart's real estate in New
+York--His new residence--His benevolence--Aid for Ireland, and free
+passages to America--Home for women--Political sentiments--Mr. Stewart's
+appointment as Secretary of the Treasury--Feeling of the country--The
+retail store of A.T. Stewart & Co.--A palace of glass and iron--Internal
+arrangements--The managers and salesmen--List of sales--Wages
+given--Visitors--The principal salesroom--The parcel department--The
+wagons and stables--Extravagant purchases--Mr. Stewart's supervision of
+the upper store--The system of buying--The foreign agencies--Statement
+of the duties paid each day--Personal appearance of Mr. Stewart.
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+AMOS LAWRENCE.
+
+The Lawrence family--A poor boy--Early education--Delicate
+health--Obtains a situation at Dunstable--Returns to Groton--Becomes Mr.
+Brazer's apprentice--The variety store--An amateur doctor--Importance of
+Groton in "old times"--Responsibility of young Lawrence--Is put in
+charge of the business--High character--Drunkenness the curse of New
+England--Lawrence resolves to abstain from liquors and tobacco--His
+self-command--Completes his apprenticeship--Visits Boston--An unexpected
+offer--Enters into business in Boston--Is offered a partnership, but
+declines it--His sagacity justified--Begins business for
+himself--Commercial importance of Boston--Aid from his father--A narrow
+escape--lesson for life--Amos Lawrence's method of doing business---An
+example for young men--His business habits--He leaves nothing unfinished
+over Sunday--Avoids speculation--His views upon the subject--Introduces
+double entry in book-keeping into Boston--His liberality to his
+debtors--Does not allow his business to master him--Property gained by
+some kinds of sacrifices not worth having--Forms a partnership with his
+brother Abbott--Business of the firm--They engage in manufactures--Safe
+business principles--A noble letter--Political opinions--His
+charities--Statement of his donations--Requests that no public
+acknowledgment of his gifts be made--Character as a merchant and a
+man--Advice to his son--His religious character--Loss of his health--His
+patience and resignation--The model American merchant.
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+ANDREW V. STOUT.
+
+Early struggles--Acquires an education--Undertakes the support of his
+family--The boy teacher--Hard work--Is made instructor of Latin--A
+trying position--How he conquered his difficulties--Is made principal of
+a public school--His first business ventures--Engages in the building of
+houses--His platform of integrity--His success--A great mistake--He
+indorses a note--The consequence of a false step--Liberal action of the
+bank--Mr. Stout resolves to accept no accommodation--Pays the notes, and
+loses twenty-three thousand dollars--Establishes himself as a wholesale
+boot and shoe dealer--Enters the dry goods trade--Close attention to
+business--His system and its success--Organization of the Shoe and
+Leather Bank of New York--Mr. Stout is made Vice President, and
+subsequently President--Character as a citizen--Is made City
+Chamberlain--Generosity to the police force--Interest in church
+affairs--Kindness to the poor--Encouragement which his career affords
+others.
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+JONAS CHICKERING.
+
+The largest building in the United States--The Chickering piano
+factory--Birth of Jonas Chickering--Early love of music--Is apprenticed
+to a cabinet-maker--Is employed to repair a piano--Succeeds in the
+undertaking--Consequence of this success--Becomes a piano-maker--Removes
+to Boston--Is employed as a journeyman--The labor of his life--His
+patience and skill--Is known as the best workman in the
+establishment--History of the piano--Chickering's first discovery--His
+hope of success based on intelligence--Becomes a master of the theory of
+sound--His studies and their result--Makes an improvement in the framing
+of pianos--Invents the circular scale for square pianos--Generously
+makes his invention free--A noble gift to the world--His business
+operations--Increase in the demand for his instruments--Death of Captain
+Mackay--Mr. Chickering undertakes the sole charge of his affairs--Fears
+of his friends--Magnitude of the business--The lawyer's question
+answered--The mortgages paid--Rapid success of Mr. Chickering--His
+varied duties--Sharp competition--A bogus Chickering--How a Boston bank
+lost his custom--His independence in business--His character as a
+merchant--Trains his sons to succeed him in business--The result of his
+efforts--The present house of Chickering & Sons--Destruction of the
+factory--Offers of aid--Mr. Chickering's kindness to his workmen--Sets
+to work to re-establish his business--The new factory begun--Sudden
+death of Mr. Chickering.
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+NICHOLAS LONGWORTH.
+
+The grape interest of the United States--Growing demand for American
+wines--Instrumentality of Mr. Longworth in producing this success--Early
+life of Mr. Longworth--Apprenticed to a shoemaker--Removes to South
+Carolina--Returns to Newark and studies law--Removes to
+Cincinnati--Admitted to the bar--His first case--Is paid in whisky
+stills, and trades them for lands which make his fortune--Rapid growth
+of Cincinnati--The oldest native inhabitant of Chicago--Longworth's
+investments in real estate--Immense profits realized by him--His
+experiments in wine growing--History of the Catawba grape--Longworth
+decides to cultivate it entirely--His efforts to promote the grape
+culture in the Ohio Valley--Offers a market for all the grape juice that
+can be brought to him--The result of his labors seen in the Ohio
+vineyards of to-day--His wine cellars--Amount of wine made annually by
+him--The process used--How "Sparkling Catawba" is made--Longworth's
+experiments with strawberries--His liberality--Gift of land to the
+Observatory--His challenge to a grumbler--Estimate of his character--His
+eccentricities--His generosity to his tenants--How he made money by
+helping others to grow rich--His politics--How he subscribed one hundred
+dollars to elect Clay--His hatred of vagabondage--His stone quarry--How
+he provided it with laborers--His system of helping the poor--Is charged
+with stinginess--The "devil's poor"--Personal appearance--The
+"Hard-times" overcoat--Charity to a millionaire--Death of Mr. Longworth.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+GEORGE PEABODY.
+
+Birth and parentage--Early education--His first lessons in business--An
+apprentice in a country store--Youthful ambition--A desire for
+change--The visit to Post Mills--Removal to Newburyport--Reasons for his
+attachment to that place--His first patron--Peabody goes south--A
+soldier in the War of 1812-15--A young merchant--A change of
+prospects--A partner in the house of Riggs & Peabody--Peabody's business
+capacity--An irregular banker--His reputation as a business
+man--Promising opening of a brilliant career--Retirement of Mr.
+Riggs--Growth of the business--A branch house in London--Mr. Peabody
+saves the credit of the State of Maryland--Tribute from Edward
+Everett--Success in London--A model American merchant--Establishment of
+the house of George Peabody & Co.--The Fourth of July dinner--The
+exhibition of 1851--Patriotism of Mr. Peabody--How he saved the United
+States from humiliation--Admission of the "London Times"--Mr. Peabody's
+business habits--His economy--Adventure with a conductor--Finds a
+conscientious hackman--Personal simplicity--Visits to the United
+States--His munificent donations--His last visit--Returns to London and
+dies--Honors paid to his memory--The funeral ceremonies--His burial at
+Peabody--Statement of his donations and bequests--His example
+encouraging to the young.
+
+
+II. CAPITALISTS.
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+CORNELIUS VANDERBILT.
+
+Staten Island seventy-six years ago--The establishment of the Staten
+Island ferry--Birth of Cornelius Vanderbilt--His boyhood--Defective
+education--A famous rider--His early reputation for
+firmness--Superintends the removal of a ship's cargo at the age of
+twelve--How he pawned a horse--Becomes a boatman--How he bought his
+boat--A disastrous voyage--His life as a boatman--His economy and
+industry--Earns three thousand dollars--The alarm at Fort
+Richmond--Vanderbilt's perilous voyage for aid for the forts--His
+marriage--His first contract--How he supplied the harbor
+defenses--Builds his first schooner--His winter voyages--Becomes a
+steamboat captain--His foresight--Leases the hotel at New Brunswick--The
+dangers of navigating the New York waters--The steamboat war--How
+Captain Vanderbilt eluded the sheriff--Becomes manager of the steamboat
+line--Declines an increase of salary--Only wants to carry his
+point--Refuses to buy Mr. Gibbons's interest in the steamboat company,
+and builds his own boat--Narrow escape from ruin--Final
+triumph--Systematic management of his vessels--How he ruined the
+"Collins Line"--The "North Star"--Becomes a railroad director--How he
+foiled a plan to ruin him--dishonest legislature--Vanderbilt's
+triumph--His gift to the Government--His office in New York--Vanderbilt
+in business hours--Personal characteristics--Love for horses--His
+family.
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+DANIEL DREW.
+
+Birth-place--Birth and parentage--A farmer's boy--Goes to New York to
+seek his fortune--Becomes a cattle drover--Leases the Bull's Head
+Tavern--His energy and success in his business--Brings the first western
+cattle to New York--Helps a friend to build a steamboat--The fight with
+Vanderbilt--Drew buys out his friend, and becomes a steamboat
+owner--Vanderbilt endeavors to discourage him--He perseveres--His
+success--Formation of the "People's Line" on the Hudson River--The
+floating palaces--Forms a partnership with George Law, and establishes
+the Stonington line--Opening of the Hudson River Railway--Drew's
+foresight--Room enough for the locomotive and the steamboat--Buys out
+the Champlain Company--Causes of his success as a steamboat
+manager--Becomes a banker--His success in Wall Street--Indorses the
+acceptances of the Erie Railway Company--His courage and calmness in the
+panic of 1857--He saves "Erie" from ruin--Elected a director of the Erie
+Road--Is made Treasurer--His interest in the road--His operations in
+Wall Street--His farm in Putnam County--Joins the Methodist Church--His
+liberality--Builds a church in New York--Founds the Drew Theological
+Seminary--Estimate of his wealth--His family--Personal appearance.
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+JAMES B. EADS.
+
+Birth--Childhood--Fondness for machinery--Early mechanical
+skill--Constructs a steam engine at the age of nine years--His
+work-shop--Death of his father--Works his way to St. Louis--Sells apples
+on the streets--Finds employment and a friend--Efforts to
+improve--Becomes a clerk on a Mississippi steamer--Undertakes the
+recovery of wrecked steamboats--Success of his undertaking--Offers to
+remove the obstacles to the navigation of the Mississippi--Failure of
+his health--Retires from business--Breaking out of the war--Summoned to
+Washington--His plan for the defense of the western rivers--Associated
+with Captain Rodgers in the purchase of gunboats--His first contract
+with the Government--Undertakes to build seven ironclads in sixty-five
+days--Magnitude of the undertaking--His promptness--Builds other
+gunboats during the war--The gunboat fleet at Forts Henry and Donelson
+the private property of Mr. Eads--Excellence of the vessels built by
+him--A model contractor--Residence in St. Louis.
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+CYRUS W. FIELD.
+
+Birth--Parentage--Early education--Goes to New York in search of
+employment--Obtains a clerkship in a city house, and in a few years
+becomes a partner--A rich man at thirty-four--Retires from
+business--Travels in South America--Meets Mr. Gisborne--Plan of the
+Newfoundland Telegraph Company--Mr. Field declines to embark in
+it--Conceives the idea of a telegraph across the Atlantic
+Ocean--Correspondence with Lieut. Maury and Prof. Morse--The scheme
+pronounced practicable--Mr. Field secures the co-operation of four New
+York capitalists--Organization of the New York, Newfoundland, and London
+Telegraph Company--Building of the line from New York to St. John's--A
+herculean task--The Governmental ocean surveys of the United States and
+England--Efforts to secure aid in England--Liberal action of the
+Government--Organization of the Atlantic Telegraph Company--A hard-won
+success in America--Passage of the bill by Congress--The first attempt
+to lay the cable--The expedition of 1857--The telegraph fleet--Scenes on
+board--Loss of the cable--Failure of the expedition--Difficulties
+remedied--The new "paying-out" machinery--The expedition of 1858--The
+second attempt to lay the cable--Dangerous storm--Failures--Loss of the
+cable--The third attempt--The cable laid successfully--Messages across
+the Atlantic--Celebrations in England and the United States--The signals
+cease--The cable a failure--Discouraging state of affairs--Courage of
+Mr. Field--Generous offer of the British Government--Fresh
+soundings--Investigations of the Telegraph Board--Efforts of Mr. Field
+to raise new capital--Purchase of the Great Eastern--The fourth attempt
+to lay the cable--Expedition of 1865--Voyage of the Great Eastern--Loss
+of the cable--Efforts to recover it unsuccessful--What the expedition
+demonstrated--Efforts to raise more capital--They are pronounced
+illegal--The new company--The fifth attempt to lay the cable--Voyage of
+the Great Eastern--The cable laid at last--Fishing up and splicing the
+cable of 1865--The final triumph--Credit due to Mr. Field.
+
+
+III. INVENTORS.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+ROBERT FULTON.
+
+Trinity churchyard--The Livingston vault--An interesting place--Fulton's
+tomb--Birth of Robert Fulton--Boyhood--Early mechanical skill--Robert
+astonishes his tutor--Robert's fireworks--"Nothing is
+impossible"--"Quicksilver Bob"--The fishing excursion--The first
+paddle-wheel boat--Fulton's success as an artist--His gift to his
+mother--His removal to England--Intimacy with Benjamin West--Goes to
+Devonshire--Acquaintance with the Duke of Bridgewater--His interest in
+canal navigation--His first inventions--Goes to Paris--Residence with
+Mr. Barlow--Studies in engineering--Invents the diving boat--The
+infernal machine--His patriotic reply to the British ministry--His
+marriage--Returns to America--The General Government declines to
+purchase his torpedo--Brief history of the first experiments in steam
+navigation--Fulton's connection with Livingston--The trial boat on the
+Seine--Determines to build a boat on the Hudson--Fulton and Livingston
+are given the sole right to navigate the waters of New York by
+steam--Popular ridicule--Disbelief of scientific men--Launch of the
+"Clermont"--The trial trip--The first voyage up the Hudson--Fulton's
+triumph--Scenes along the river--Efforts to sink the
+steamer--Establishment of steam navigation on the Hudson River--The
+first New York ferry-boats--The floating docks--Boats for the West--New
+York threatened by the British fleet in 1814--Fulton's plan for a steam
+frigate--The "Fulton the First"--The steamboat war--Illness of
+Fulton--His death and burial--His last will--True character of his
+invention.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+CHARLES GOODYEAR.
+
+Discovery of India-rubber--Mode of collecting it--Preparation and use by
+the natives--Its introduction into the United States--Mr. E.M. Chaffee's
+process--The India-rubber fever--Brief success of the India-rubber
+companies--Their sudden failure--Visit of Mr. Goodyear to New York--He
+invents an improvement in the life preserver--Early history of Charles
+Goodyear--His failure as a merchant--Offers his invention to the Roxbury
+Company--The agent's disclosures--Mr. Goodyear finds his mission--His
+first efforts--A failure--Discouraging state of his affairs--Renews his
+efforts--Experiments in India-rubber--Coldness of his friends--His
+courage and perseverance--Goes to New York--Accidental discovery of the
+aqua fortis process--Partial success--Ruined--Life on Staten
+Island--Removes to Boston--Delusive prosperity--The mail bag
+contract--His friends urge him to abandon his efforts--He refuses--On
+the verge of success--Discovers the usefulness of sulphur--The
+inventor's hope--The revelation--Discovers the secret of
+vulcanization--Down in the depths--Kept back by poverty--A beggar--A
+test of his honesty--Starvation at hand--The timely loan--Removal to New
+York--Difficulties in the way--Death of his youngest child--Finds
+friends in New York--His experiments in vulcanization--Final
+success--His heart in his work--Fails to secure patents in Europe--His
+losses from dishonest rivals--Declaration of the Commissioner of
+Patents--Death of Mr. Goodyear--Congress refuses to extend his
+patent--His true reward.
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+ELI WHITNEY.
+
+The home of General Greene in Georgia--The soldier's widow--An arrival
+from New England--The young schoolmaster--A mechanical genius--Early
+history of Whitney--Mrs. Greene's invitation--Visit of the
+planters--State of the cotton culture in 1792--A despondent
+planter--Mrs. Greene advises them to try Whitney--Origin of the cotton
+gin--Whitney's first efforts--His workshop--The secret labors--How he
+provided himself with materials--Finds a partner--Betrayal of his
+secret--He is robbed of his model--He recovers it and completes it--The
+first cotton gin--Statement of the revolution produced by the invention
+in the cotton culture of the South--Opinion of Judge Johnson--The story
+of an inventor's wrongs--Whitney is cheated and robbed of his
+rights--The worthlessness of a patent--A long and disheartening
+struggle--Honorable action of North Carolina--Congress refuses to extend
+the patent--Whitney abandons the cotton gin--Engages in the manufacture
+of firearms--His improvements in them--Establishes an armory in
+Connecticut, and makes a fortune--Death.
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+CHAUNCEY JEROME.
+
+The old-fashioned clocks--Their expensiveness--Condition of the clock
+trade of Connecticut sixty years ago--Early history of Chauncey
+Jerome--A hard life--Death of his father--Becomes a farmer's boy--Is
+anxious to become a clock-maker--An over-wise guardian--Hardships of an
+apprentice--How Jerome became a carpenter--Hires his winters from his
+master--Becomes a dial-maker--The clock-making expedition--Jerome's
+first savings--Takes a wife--A master carpenter--Poor pay and hard
+work--Buys a house--A dull winter--Enters Mr. Terry's factory--The
+wooden clock business--Sets up in business for himself--Industry and
+energy rewarded--His first order--Sends his clocks South--Enlarges his
+business--Improvements in his clocks--Losses on southern shipments from
+dampness--Depression of business--Jerome's anxiety--A wakeful
+night--Invention of the brass--A new era in the clock trade--Beneficial
+effects of Jerome's invention--Magnitude of the Connecticut clock trade
+at present--Growth of Jerome's business--Makes a fortune--Organization
+of the "Jerome Clock-making Company"--Practical withdrawal of Mr.
+Jerome--Difficulties of the company--Jerome a ruined man--Honest
+independence--Finds employment--Becomes the manager of the Chicago
+Company.
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+ELIAS HOWE, JR.
+
+The first sewing-machine--Birth of Elias Howe--A poor man's son--Raised
+to hard work--His first employment--The little mill-boy--Delicate
+health--Goes to Lowell to seek his fortune--Thrown out of
+employment--Removes to Cambridge--Works in a machine shop with N.P.
+Banks--Marries--A rash step--Growing troubles--A hard lot--Conceives the
+idea of a sewing-machine--His first experiments unsuccessful--Invents
+the lock stitch and perfects the sewing-machine--Hindered by his
+poverty--A hard struggle--Finds a partner--His winter's task--His attic
+work-shop--Completion of the model--Perfection of Howe's
+invention--Efforts to dispose of the invention--Disappointed
+hopes--Popular incredulity--Becomes an engine driver--Amasa Howe goes to
+England with the sewing-machine--Bargain with the London
+merchant--Elias removes to London--Loses his situation--The rigors of
+poverty--Returns to America--Death of his wife--Fate's last blow--The
+sewing-machine becomes better known--Adoption by the public--A tardy
+recognition--Elias Howe sets up in business for himself--Buys out his
+partner's interest--The sewing-machine war--Rapid growth of the
+sewing-machine interest--Earnings of the inventor--A royal
+income--Honors conferred upon him--Enlists in the United States Army--A
+liberal private--Last illness and death.
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+RICHARD M. HOE.
+
+Growth of the art of printing--Birth of Richard M. Hoe--Sketch of the
+career of Robert Hoe--He comes to America--His marriage--Founds the
+house of "Robert Hoe & Co."--The first steam printing presses--He
+retires from business--Richard M. Hoe is brought up in the business--The
+mechanical genius of the house--The new firm--Richard Hoe's first
+invention--Obtains a patent for it--Visits England--Invents the
+double-cylinder press--Demand for increased facilities for printing--Mr.
+Hoe's experiments with his press--His failures--How the "Lightning
+Press" was invented--A good night's work--Patents his invention--The
+first "Lightning Press"--Demand for it--Rapid growth of the business of
+the firm--Statement of the operations of the house--Personal
+characteristics of Richard M. Hoe--The "Lightning Press" at work.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+SAMUEL COLT.
+
+Birth and parentage--A restless boy--Dislikes school--Early fondness for
+mechanical inventions--Is sent to boarding-school--Runs away to sea--The
+story of a boy's invention, and what came of it--Origin of the
+revolver--Returns home--His chemical studies--Dr. Coult--The lecturing
+tour--His success--Completes his design for the revolver--Patents his
+invention--Visits England--Discovery at the Tower of London--Returns
+home--Formation of the "Patent Arms Company"--Objections of the
+officers of the army and navy to the revolver--The Florida War--It is
+decided by the revolver--Triumph of Col. Colt--Cessation of the demand
+for arms--Failure of the company--Beginning of the Mexican War--Action
+of General Taylor--No revolvers to be had--A strange dilemma for an
+inventor--The new model--Contracts with the Government--Success of the
+revolver in Mexico--The demand from the frontier--Emigration to
+California and Australia--Permanent establishment of Col. Colt's
+business--The improved weapon--Builds a new armory--Description of his
+works at Hartford--A liberal employer--Other inventions of Col.
+Colt--His submarine telegraph--His fortune--His marriage--Visits to
+Europe--Attentions from European dignitaries--Witnesses the coronation
+of the Emperor of Russia--His last illness and death.
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+SAMUEL F.B. MORSE.
+
+Birth--Parentage--Early education--Graduates at Yale College--Becomes an
+artist--His masters--Visits England--His first attempt--"The Dying
+Hercules"--Opinion of Benjamin West--Wins the medal of the Adelphi
+Society of Arts--Ambition as an artist--His cold reception by the
+Americans--Mr. Tuckerman's comments--Organizes the National Academy of
+Design--Visits Europe the second time--The homeward voyage in the
+"Sully"--News of the experiments at Paris with the electro-magnet--How
+the electric telegraph was invented--Morse is made a professor in the
+University of New York--Completion of his model--An imperfect
+telegraph--His first experiments--The duplicate finished--First
+exhibition of the telegraph--Morse applies for a patent--Visits Europe
+to introduce his invention--His failure--Seeks aid from Congress--A
+disheartening effort--A long struggle--Independence of Morse--Despondent
+at last--A sudden lifting of the cloud--The experimental line--The
+trial--A curious Cabinet Minister--Success of the
+telegraph--Establishment of companies in the United States--Professor
+Morse wins fame and fortune--The telegraph in Europe--Honors at home and
+abroad--A list of his rewards--Morse originates submarine telegraphy,
+and predicts the laying of an Atlantic telegraph--Personal characteristics.
+
+
+IV. PUBLISHERS.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+JAMES HARPER.
+
+The Brothers Harper--Birth and parentage of James Harper--The Long
+Island home--James Harper goes to New York--Becomes a "devil"--Winning
+his way--How he gave his card to a stranger--Arrival of "Brother
+John"---Good habits--Sets up for himself--"J. & J. Harper,
+Printers"--How they started in business--Integrity rewarded--First
+job--Their first effort at stereotyping--The Harpers become publishers
+on their own account--Their early ventures--Feeling their way to
+success--Their publications--Character of their books--How they drove
+the "yellow covers" out of the market--Their prosperity--Admission of
+new partners--The great fire--Destruction of the establishment of Harper
+& Brothers--Energy of the firm--Re-establishment of their
+business--Their new premises--Description of the buildings--Personal
+characteristics of Mr. James Harper--Religious life--Liberality of
+sentiment--His industry--Elected Mayor of New York--Kindness to his
+operatives--Physical Vigor--"The Lord knows best"--Accident to Mr.
+Harper and his daughter--His death.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+JAMES T. FIELDS.
+
+The old "Corner Book-store" in Boston and its associations--Carter &
+Bendee employ a new clerk--Birth and early life of James T. Fields--His
+literary talent--Governor Woodbury's advice--Enters mercantile
+life--Determined to rise--His studies--The result--Associated with
+Edward Everett at the age of eighteen--His business talent--Steady
+promotion--Becomes head clerk with Allen & Ticknor--Establishment of the
+firm of Ticknor & Fields--Success as a publisher--High character of his
+house--Relations toward authors--Publications of Ticknor &
+Fields--Removal--Organization of the firm of Fields, Osgood & Co.--The
+new book-store--An elegant establishment--Mr. Field's literary
+success--Statement of a friend--"Common Sense"--His contributions to the
+periodicals of the firm--Travels in Europe--Personal appearance.
+
+
+V. EDITORS.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+JAMES GORDON BENNETT.
+
+Birth--Intended for the Romish priesthood--How he was induced to come to
+America--Arrival in Halifax--Comes to the United States--What came of a
+shilling--Employment in Boston--Reaches New York--Attempts to establish
+a school--Becomes connected with the press--Success of his Washington
+letters--Services on the "Courier and Inquirer"--Leaves that
+journal--Removes to Philadelphia--Establishes "The
+Pennsylvanian"--Ingratitude of his political associates--Returns to New
+York--Establishment of "The New York Herald"--Early difficulties of that
+paper, and how Bennett surmounted them--The first "Herald" office--A
+determined effort to succeed--First numbers of "The Herald"--How one man
+carried on a newspaper--A lucky hit--The first "money article"--The
+office burned down--The great fire--Bennett's reports of the
+disaster--Success of "The Herald"--His first advertising
+contract--Increasing prosperity--The journal of to-day--How it is
+conducted--The new "Herald" office--Bennett's pride in his
+paper--Personal characteristics--His independence.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+ROBERT BONNER.
+
+Birth and parentage--Emigration to America--Becomes a printer--A
+first-class compositor--Engaged upon the "Evening Mirror"--The
+"Merchant's Ledger"--Bonner purchases the paper, and changes its name to
+the "New York Ledger"--The new literary journal--Predictions of
+failure--Bonner confident of success--Engages Fanny Fern to write for
+him--A handsome price for a story--Wonderful success of the
+"Ledger"--Skillful advertising--Popularity of the paper--How Bonner
+silenced the critics--"Edward Everett writes for the 'Ledger'"--How
+Bonner treats his contributors--"Henry Ward Beecher writes for the
+'Ledger'"--Immense circulation of the paper--The new "Ledger"
+building--Private residence of Mr. Bonner--His stable--His love for
+horses.
+
+
+VI. LAWYERS.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+JOHN MARSHALL.
+
+The model American lawyer--Birth and early life of John Marshall--A
+devoted father--Early education--The young patriot--Troubles with
+England--Marshall becomes a soldier--The "Culpepper Minute
+Men"--Marshall's popularity in the army--Finishes his law studies--His
+journey from Williamsburg to Philadelphia--Commences the practice of the
+law--Elected to the Legislature--Establishes himself in Richmond--The
+power of a powdered wig and velvet coat--Marshall's services in the
+Virginia Convention of 1798--Becomes the champion of Washington's
+Administration--Refuses public honors--Is made Minister to France
+--Public reception in New York--Elected Member of Congress--His
+memorable speech--Enters the Cabinet of President Adams as Secretary of
+State--Is made Chief Justice of the United States--His record--His "Life
+of Washington"--Personal characteristics--His generosity--William
+Wirt's pen and ink sketch of him--His courtesy and kindness--Fondness
+for manly sports--The quoit club--How he carried a proud man's turkey
+home--The supper party--The Chief Justice loses the wager--Mode of
+traveling on his circuit--The scene at Maguire's Hotel in Winchester,
+Virginia--The unknown champion of Christianity--A brilliant
+defense--Last illness and death of Judge Marshall.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+JAMES T. BRADY.
+
+Birth and early life--His "big head"--His kindliness of
+disposition--Enters his father's office to study law--Merry nature--How
+he studied law--A model for ambitious youths--His father's opinion of
+him--Admitted to the bar--His first case--The newsboy case--sudden rise
+in popularity--Practices in the Supreme Court--The India-rubber suit--A
+compliment from Daniel Webster--Brady's integrity--Professional success
+and generosity--His readiness in managing his cases--Conduct toward
+witnesses--His fearlessness--A bold declaration in Tammany Hall--His
+profound knowledge of his profession--His industry--His disinterested
+kindness--His humor--Meets his match--Political life--Personal
+appearance--A genial old bachelor--Literary tastes and labors--His
+generosity to the poor--Devotion to his relatives--Last appearance in
+public--Forebodings--Death.
+
+
+VII. ARTISTS.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+BENJAMIN WEST.
+
+A native of Pennsylvania--Circumstances attending his birth--The child
+of promise--First indications of genius--The baby's portrait--Lessons
+from the Indians--The box of colors--The truant pupil--The mother's
+discovery---West's opinion of his first picture--The little portrait
+painter--The first attempt at historical painting--"The Death of
+Socrates"--Choosing a profession--Dedicated to his work--A fighting
+Quaker--Establishes himself in New York--Visits Europe--Arrival at Rome,
+and reception there--Visit to the Apollo Belvidere--West's
+criticism--Travels and labors on the continent--Visits England--His
+reception there--Urged to stay--Decides to make England his home--Sends
+for his bride--Marriage--"Agrippina Landing with the Ashes of
+Germanicus"--Success of the picture--The king becomes his friend--The
+most famous works of Benjamin West--"The Death of Wolfe"--Reception of
+the picture by the public--West triumphs over the critics, and
+inaugurates a new era of historical painting--Death of the king--West is
+elected President of the National Academy--His resignation and
+re-election--Closing years of a great career--Personal appearance--Leigh
+Hunt's description of him--Death--Burial in St. Paul's Cathedral.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+JOHN ROGERS.
+
+Birth--Early years--Begins life as a clerk in a dry goods
+store--Artistic talent--Opposition of his parents--A change in his
+plans--Becomes an engineer--Failure of his eyes--Voyage to Spain--Return
+home--Becomes a machinist--Promoted--Learns to model in clay--Commences
+his studies in art--A hard life, and a noble perseverance--A change for
+the better--A sudden reverse--Out of work--Visits Europe to study his
+art--Returns home in despair--Enters the service of the surveyor of the
+city of Chicago--His first statuettes--Their success--A new field opened
+to him--Visits New York, and learns the new method of casting
+figures--Establishes himself in New York--His first studio--Immediate
+popularity of his works--Description of them--Removes to a new
+studio--His later works--Process by which they are made-Originality of
+the artist rewarded by the public--Personal characteristics.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+HIRAM POWERS.
+
+Birth--Juvenile mechanical skill--The life of a Vermont boy--Hard
+times--Removal of the Powers family to the West--The new
+farm--Misfortunes never come singly--Breaking up of the
+household--Hiram's first employment--The reading-room scheme--Hiram
+becomes a collector of bad debts--Reminiscences of the young
+West--Powers becomes a mechanic--Story of the brass plates--Rapid
+promotion--The silver watch--How Hiram purchased it--The Cincinnati
+Museum--The artist's first lessons in modeling--His first sitter--The
+trial of skill--The king of the Cannibal Islands--The man-eater--Hiram
+becomes interested in the museum--How he played the devil in
+Cincinnati--A dishonest employer--Mr. Longworth's offer--Powers goes to
+Washington--His success there--Visit to "Old Hickory"--The first
+critic--Kindness of Senator Preston--Powers goes to Italy--Arrival in
+Florence--His first works in Italy--Visit to Thorwaldsen--Works of
+Powers--His rapid success--His life in Italy--Views of Mr. Powers
+respecting an artist life--Personal characteristics--Popularity with
+artists.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+EMMANUEL LEUTZE.
+
+An American by adoption--Early life and education--How he learned to
+draw--Becomes an artist--His first picture--The evils of too much
+haste--His first professional engagement--Despondency--A ramble through
+the Virginia woods, and what came of it--A friend in need--Greater
+success--Friendship of Mr. Carey--Leutze goes to Europe--Studies at
+Dusseldorf-His reception there--Becomes Lessing's pupil--His first
+picture finds a purchaser--Travels and studies in Europe--Returns to
+Dusseldorf, marries, and makes his home in that place--His
+paintings--Returns to New York--Success in America--The Government
+commission--Journey to the Rocky Mountains--The great fresco in the
+Capitol--"Westward the Star of Empire takes it Way"--Revisits
+Dusseldorf--Reception by the artists--Returns to the United
+States--Further commissions from the Government--His sudden death--His
+unfinished works--Mr. Tuckerman's remarks.
+
+
+VIII. DIVINES.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+HENRY WARD BEECHER.
+
+A Connecticut boy--The minister's family--A gloomy childhood--Ma'arm
+Kilbourn's school--The loss of his curls--The dull boy--A bad voice for
+an orator--His first religious impressions--Aunt Esther--The Sunday
+catechism--Sent to boarding school--Love of nature--Enters his sister's
+school--The hopeless case--An inveterate joker and an indifferent
+scholar--Removal to Boston--Gets through the Latin school--The sea-going
+project--Dr. Beecher's ruse--Life at Mount Pleasant--Conquers
+mathematics--Embraces religion at a revival--Resolves to become a
+minister--Removal to Cincinnati--Course at the Lane Seminary--How he
+learned to preach--Marries--His first charge--Life at
+Lawrenceburg--Removal to Indianapolis--Life in the West--His
+popularity--His theory of preaching and its success--Conversion of his
+brother--Mr. Beecher accepts a call to Plymouth Church in
+Brooklyn--Political record--Literary labors--Pastoral work--A large
+audience--Government of Plymouth Church--Description of the edifice--The
+congregation--The services--Mr. Beecher as a preacher--Sympathy between
+the pastor and his hearers--His ideas of religion--How he prepares his
+sermons--His prayers unstudied--The social receptions--The Friday
+evening meeting--A characteristic scene--Labors during the war--Visit to
+Europe--An unpopular sermon in a good cause--Personal characteristics.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+PETER CARTWRIGHT.
+
+Birth--Removal to Kentucky--"Rogue's harbor"--Condition of the country
+and the people--Frontier life--Early life of a preacher--Becomes a
+Christian--His account of his conversion--Is made an exhorter in the
+Methodist Church--Removal to Lewiston County--Begins
+preaching--Qualifications of a backwoods preacher--His energy--The
+jerks--How Peter frightened a bully--A brimstone angel--Enters the
+ministry--Appointed to the Marietta Circuit--A good school--Hard
+times--Marries--Quiet heroism--How the old-time people married--His
+devotion to the Methodist Church--Troubles with other denominations--How
+he argued with a Universalist--How he met a wrathful dame--Encounter
+with a Baptist preacher--Adventure with Father Teel--Taming a
+shrew--Removal to Illinois--His reasons for taking that step--Death of
+his daughter--Arrival at his new home--Life on the frontier--A large
+district--The Methodist circuit riders of sixty years ago--Perils of
+frontier traveling--Success of Cartwright's ministry--How he was
+superannuated--His courage--How he cleared a camp of rowdies--Encounter
+on a ferry-boat--Frightens a bully--Advocates temperance--A practical
+joke--Is elected to the Legislature--His opinion of politics--How he
+raised the devil--"Another sinner down"--Missionaries from the
+East--Indignation of the backwoods preacher--The proposed mission to New
+England--Cartwright declines it--He visits Boston--His reception--How he
+preached for Father Taylor--Summing up--Sixty-seven years of a
+preacher's life.
+
+
+IX. AUTHORS.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.
+
+Birth and early life--The old house by the sea--College life--Early
+literary productions--Becomes a professor in Bowdoin College--Travels in
+Europe--Marriage--Literary labors--"Outre Mer"--Is made a professor in
+Harvard College--His second visit to Europe--Death of his wife--Goes to
+live in the Craigie House--Historical associations--Washington's
+headquarters--A congenial home--Literary labors--"Hyperion"--Great
+popularity of the book--"Voices of the Night"--"The Spanish
+Student"--Mr. Longfellow buys the Craigie House--Summary of his
+works--The "Song of Hiawatha"--Death of Mrs. Longfellow--Mr. Longfellow
+again visits Europe--His popularity with the English-speaking
+race--Cause of his popularity--"Resignation"--Scene from "The Golden
+Legend"--The poet's home.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.
+
+The Hawthornes of Salem--A sea-going race--Birth of Nathaniel
+Hawthorne--A sad home--Early life--His college days--Longfellow's
+recollection of him--Returns home--The young recluse--Literary
+efforts--"Twice-Told Tales"--"The most unknown author in
+America"--Enters the Boston Custom House--His duties--Popularity with
+the sailors--Loses his office--Becomes a member of the Brook Farm
+Community--Marries and goes to live at Concord--"The Old Manse"--Life at
+Concord--Curiosity of the village people--"Mosses from an Old
+Manse"--Hawthorne's visitors--Hawthorne and his friends--George William
+Curtis' recollections--Removes to Salem--Is made surveyor of that
+port--"The Scarlet Letter"--Removal to the Berkshire Hills--"The House
+of the Seven Gables"--Returns to Concord--"Life of Franklin Pierce"--Is
+made Consul to Liverpool---Life abroad--Depressed by the war--Moncure D.
+Conway's recollections--Juvenile works--Death of Mr. Ticknor--Effect
+upon Hawthorne--Goes traveling with Ex-President Pierce--Sudden death of
+Hawthorne--Burial at Concord.
+
+
+X. ACTORS.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+EDWIN BOOTH.
+
+The elder Booth--His success as an actor--His sons--Birth of Edwin
+Booth--Early life--Brought up on the stage--Admiration for his
+father--Travels with him--First appearance--Appears frequently with his
+father--Plays Richard III. in New York--A bold venture--Learns the
+details of his profession--Visits Australia and the Sandwich
+Islands--Re-appearance in New York in 1857--Recollections of him at that
+time--His labors in his profession--Successful tours throughout the
+country--Visits England--Appears at the Haymarket Theater in
+London--Studies on the continent--Appearance at the Winter Garden--The
+Shakespearian revivals--Destruction of the Winter Garden by fire--Loss
+of Mr. Booth's theatrical wardrobe--Popular sympathy--The new
+theater--Opening of the building--Description of Booth's Theater--A
+magnificent establishment--A splendid stage--Novel mode of setting the
+scenes--Magnificent mounting of the plays produced there--Mr. Booth's
+performances--Personal--Genius as an actor--Beneficial influence upon
+the drama.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+JOSEPH JEFFERSON.
+
+The Jefferson family--A race of actors--Jefferson the first--"Old
+Jefferson"--Jefferson the third--Birth of Joseph
+Jefferson--Childhood--Brought up on the stage--Olive Logan's
+reminiscence--First appearance in public--Early training--Career as a
+stock actor--Becomes a "star"--His success--Visits Australia, the
+player's El Dorado--Pecuniary success of Jefferson in Australia--His
+merits as an actor--Visits England--First appearance at the Adelphi
+Theater--"Our American Cousin"--Production of Rip Van Winkle--Makes the
+part his specialty--Description of his performance of Rip Van
+Winkle--Personal characteristics--Devotion to his profession--Love of
+art--A capital sportsman--Buys a panorama--A visit to John Sefton--"The
+Golden Farmer"--Private life.
+
+
+XI. PHYSICIANS.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII.
+
+BENJAMIN RUSH.
+
+Birth and early life--Adopts medicine as a profession--Studies in
+Europe--Returns home, and is made a professor in the Philadelphia
+Medical College--Political career--Elected to the Provincial Conference
+of Pennsylvania--Action with respect to the independence of the
+colonies--Elected to the Continental Congress--Signs the Declaration of
+Independence--Marriage--Is made Surgeon-General of the army--Becomes
+Physician-General--Troubles--Resigns his commission--Letters to the
+people of Pennsylvania--Services in the State conventions--Resumes his
+practice in Philadelphia--Plans the Philadelphia Dispensary--Resumes his
+professor's chair--The yellow fever in Philadelphia--A scene of
+terror--"The Hundred Days"--Dr. Rush's treatment of the
+disease--Opposition of the Faculty--Success of Rush's
+treatment--Testimony of Dr. Ramsay--Suit for damages--Dr. Rush's
+services during the fever--Reminiscences--Honors from European
+sovereigns--Is made Treasurer of the United States Mint--Literary
+labors--Zeal in behalf of Christianity--His connection with the Bible
+Society--Death.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+
+VALENTINE MOTT.
+
+Birth--Early life--Enters Columbia College--His medical
+studies--Continues his studies in Europe--Great surgical genius--His
+early success as an operator--Returns home--Is made Professor of Surgery
+in Columbia College--His career and success as a teacher--Introduces the
+system of clinical instruction--Difficulty of procuring "subjects" for
+dissection--Desperate expedients--midnight adventure--A ready
+rebuke--Success and skill as a surgeon--Tribute from Sir Astley
+Cooper--A wonderful operation--Sketch of his original operations--His
+mode of operating--Careful preparation--Success as a physician--A
+progressive mind--Professional honors--Visits Europe--Reception
+abroad--Operates upon the Sultan of Turkey--A cool
+proposition--Personal--His last illness and death--"President Lincoln
+murdered."
+
+[Illustration: GIRARD COLLEGE]
+
+
+I.
+
+MERCHANTS.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+STEPHEN GIRARD.
+
+
+One May morning, in the year 1776, the mouth of the Delaware Bay was
+shrouded in a dense fog, which cleared away toward noon, and revealed
+several vessels just off the capes. From one of these, a sloop, floated
+the flag of France and a signal of distress. An American ship ran
+alongside the stranger, in answer to her signal, and found that the
+French captain had lost his reckoning in a fog, and was in total
+ignorance of his whereabouts. His vessel, he said, was bound from New
+Orleans to a Canadian port, and he was anxious to proceed on his voyage.
+The American skipper informed him of his locality, and also apprised him
+of the fact that war had broken out between the colonies and Great
+Britain, and that the American coast was so well lined with British
+cruisers that he would never reach port but as a prize. "What shall I
+do?" cried the Frenchman, in great alarm. "Enter the bay, and make a
+push for Philadelphia," was the reply. "It is your only chance."
+
+The Frenchman protested that he did not know the way, and had no pilot.
+The American captain, pitying his distress, found him a pilot, and even
+loaned him five dollars, which the pilot demanded in advance. The sloop
+got under weigh again, and passed into the Delaware, beyond the defenses
+which had been erected for its protection, just in time to avoid capture
+by a British war vessel which now made its appearance at the mouth of
+the bay. Philadelphia was reached in due time, and, as the war bade fair
+to put an end to his voyages, the captain sold the sloop and her cargo,
+of which he was part owner, and, entering a small store in Water Street,
+began the business of a grocer and wine-bottler. His capital was small,
+his business trifling in extent, and he himself labored under the
+disadvantage of being almost unable to speak the English language. In
+person he was short and stout, with a dull, repulsive countenance, which
+his bushy eyebrows and solitary eye (being blind in the other) made
+almost hideous. He was cold and reserved in manner, and was disliked by
+his neighbors, the most of whom were afraid of him.
+
+This man was Stephen Girard, who was afterward destined to play so
+important a part in the history of the city to which the mere chances of
+war sent him a stranger.
+
+He was born at Bordeaux, in France, on the 21st of May, 1750, and was
+the eldest of the five children of Captain Pierre Girard, a mariner of
+that city. His life at home was a hard one. At the age of eight years,
+he discovered that he was blind in one eye, and the mortification and
+grief which this discovery caused him appear to have soured his entire
+life. He afterward declared that his father treated him with
+considerable neglect, and that, while his younger brothers were sent to
+college, he was made to content himself with the barest rudiments of an
+education, with merely a knowledge of reading and writing. When he was
+quite young, his mother died, and, as his father soon married again,
+the severity of a step-mother was added to his other troubles. When
+about thirteen years of age, he left home, with his father's consent,
+and began, as a cabin-boy, the life of a mariner. For nine years he
+sailed between Bordeaux and the French West Indies, rising steadily from
+his position of cabin-boy to that of mate. He improved his leisure time
+at sea, until he was not only master of the art of navigation, but
+generally well informed for a man in his station. His father possessed
+sufficient influence to procure him the command of a vessel, in spite of
+the law of France which required that no man should be made master of a
+ship unless he had sailed two cruises in the royal navy and was
+twenty-five years old. Gradually Girard was enabled to amass a small sum
+of money, which he invested in cargoes easily disposed of in the ports
+to which he sailed. Three years after he was licensed to command, he
+made his first appearance in the port of Philadelphia. He was then
+twenty-six years old.
+
+From the time of his arrival in Philadelphia he devoted himself to
+business with an energy and industry which never failed. He despised no
+labor, and was willing to undertake any honest means of increasing his
+subsistence. He bought and sold any thing, from groceries to old "junk."
+His chief profit, however, was in his wine and cider, which he bottled
+and sold readily. His business prospered, and he was regarded as a
+thriving man from the start.
+
+In July, 1777, he married Mary Lum, a servant girl of great beauty, and
+something of a virago as well. The union was an unhappy one, as the
+husband and wife were utterly unsuited to each other. Seven years after
+her marriage, Mrs. Girard showed symptoms of insanity, which became so
+decided that her husband was compelled to place her in the State Asylum
+for the Insane. He appears to have done every thing in his power to
+restore her to reason. Being pronounced cured, she returned to her
+home, but in 1790 He was compelled to place her permanently in the
+Pennsylvania Hospital, where, nine months after, she gave birth to a
+female child, which happily died. Mrs. Girard never recovered her
+reason, but died in 1815, and was buried in the hospital grounds.
+
+Girard fled from Philadelphia, with his wife, in September, 1777, at the
+approach of the British, and purchased a house at Mount Holly, near
+Burlington, New Jersey, where he carried on his bottling business. His
+claret commanded a ready sale among the British in Philadelphia, and his
+profits were large. In June, 1778, the city was evacuated by Lord Howe,
+and he was allowed to return to his former home.
+
+Though he traded with the British, Girard considered himself a true
+patriot, as indeed he was. On the 27th of October, 1778, he took the
+oath of allegiance required by the State of Pennsylvania, and renewed it
+the year following. The war almost annihilated the commerce of the
+country, which was slow in recovering its former prosperity; but, in
+spite of this discouraging circumstance, Girard worked on steadily,
+scorning no employment, however humble, that would yield a profit.
+Already he had formed the plans which led to his immense wealth, and he
+was now patiently carrying out the most trying and disheartening
+preliminaries. Whatever he undertook prospered, and though his gains
+were small, they were carefully husbanded, and at the proper time
+invested in such a manner as to produce a still greater yield. Stephen
+Girard knew the value of little things, and he knew how to take
+advantage of the most trifling circumstance. His career teaches what may
+be done with these little things, and shows how even a few dollars,
+properly managed, may be made to produce as many thousands.
+
+In 1780, Mr. Girard again entered upon the New Orleans and St. Domingo
+trade, in which he was engaged at the breaking out of the Revolution. He
+was very successful in his ventures, and was enabled in a year or two to
+greatly enlarge his operations. In 1782, he took a lease of ten years on
+a range of frame buildings in Water Street, one of which he occupied
+himself, with the privilege of a renewal for a similar period. Rents
+were very low at that time, as business was prostrated and people were
+despondent; but Girard, looking far beyond the present, saw a prosperous
+future. He was satisfied that it would require but a short time to
+restore to Philadelphia its old commercial importance, and he was
+satisfied that his leases would be the best investment he had ever made.
+The result proved the correctness of his views. His profits on these
+leases were enormous.
+
+About this time he entered into partnership with his brother, Captain
+John Girard, in the West India trade. But the brothers could not conduct
+their affairs harmoniously, and in 1790 the firm was dissolved by mutual
+consent. Stephen Girard's share of the profits at the dissolution
+amounted to thirty thousand dollars. His wealth was greatly increased by
+a terrible tragedy which happened soon afterward.
+
+At the outbreak of the great insurrection in St. Domingo, Girard had two
+vessels lying in one of the ports of that island. At the first signal of
+danger, a number of planters sent their valuables on board of these
+ships for safe-keeping, and went back to their estates for the purpose
+of securing more. They never returned, doubtless falling victims to the
+fury of the brutal negroes, and when the vessels were ready to sail
+there was no one to claim the property they contained. It was taken to
+Philadelphia, and was most liberally advertised by Mr. Girard, but as no
+owner ever appeared to demand it, it was sold, and the proceeds--about
+fifty thousand dollars--turned into the merchant's own coffers. This was
+a great assistance to him, and the next year he began the building of
+those splendid ships which enabled him to engage so actively in the
+Chinese and East India trades.
+
+His course was now onward and upward to wealth. At first his ships
+merely sailed between Philadelphia and the port to which they were
+originally destined; but at length he was enabled to do more than this.
+Loading one of his ships with grain, he would send it to Bordeaux, where
+the proceeds of her cargo would be invested in wine and fruit. These she
+would take to St. Petersburg and exchange for hemp and iron, which were
+sold at Amsterdam for coin. From Amsterdam she would proceed to China
+and India, and, purchasing a cargo of silks and teas, sail for
+Philadelphia, where the final purchase was sold by the owner for cash or
+negotiable paper. His success was uniform, and was attributed by his
+brother merchants to _luck_.
+
+Stephen Girard had no faith in luck. He never trusted any thing to
+chance. He was a thorough navigator, and was perfect master of the
+knowledge required in directing long voyages. He understood every
+department of his business so well that he was always prepared to survey
+the field of commerce from a high stand-point. He was familiar with the
+ports with which he dealt, and was always able to obtain such
+information concerning them as he desired, in advance of his
+competitors. He trusted nothing of importance to others. His
+instructions to the commanders of his ships were always full and
+precise. These documents afford the best evidence of the statements I
+have made concerning his system, as the following will show:
+
+
+     _Copy of Stephen Girard's Letter to Mr. ----, Commander and
+     Supercargo of the ship ----, bound to Batavia._
+
+     PHILADELPHIA, ----.
+
+     SIR--I confirm my letters to you of the ---- ult., and the ----
+     inst. Having recently heard of the decease of Mr. ----, merchant at
+     Batavia, also of the probable dissolution of his house, under the
+     firm of Messrs. ----, I have judged it prudent to request my
+     Liverpool correspondents to consign the ship ----, cargo, and
+     specie on board, to Mr. ----, merchant at Batavia, subject to your
+     control, and have requested said Liverpool friends to make a
+     separate invoice and bill of lading for the specie, which they will
+     ship on my account, on board of the ship ----, and similar
+     documents for the merchandise, which they will ship in the same
+     manner; therefore, I request that you will sign in conformity.
+
+     I am personally acquainted with Mr. ----, but not with Mr. ----,
+     but I am on very friendly terms with some particular friends of the
+     latter gentleman, and consequently I give him the preference. I am
+     sorry to observe, however, that he is alone in a country where a
+     partner appears to me indispensable to a commercial house, as well
+     for the safety of his own capital as for the security of the
+     interests of those who may confide to them property, and reside in
+     distant parts of the globe.
+
+     The foregoing reflections, together with the detention of my ship
+     V----, at Batavia, from June last, epoch of her arrival at that
+     port, until the 15th of September, ----, when she had on board only
+     nineteen hundred peculs of coffee, are the motives which have
+     compelled me to request of my Liverpool friends to consign the
+     specie and goods, which they will ship on my account, on board of
+     the ship ----, under your command, to said Mr. ----, subject to
+     your control.
+
+     Therefore, relying upon your activity, perseverance, correctness,
+     zeal, and attention for my interest, I proceed in pointing out to
+     you the plan of conduct which I wish you to pursue on your arrival
+     at Batavia, and during your stay at that or any port of that
+     island, until your departure for Cowes, on the Isle of Wight, to
+     await my subsequent orders.
+
+     First. On your arrival at Batavia, you are to go on shore and
+     ascertain Mr. ----'s residence, and, if you have reason to believe
+     that he is still considered at that place as a man of good credit,
+     and merits full confidence, you are to deliver to him my Liverpool
+     consignees' letters to his address, and also the goods which you
+     have on board, in such proportion as he may request, except the
+     specie, which is to continue on board, as mentioned in the next
+     article.
+
+     Second. The specie funds of the ship ----, which will consist of
+     old Carolus dollars, you are to retain on board untouched, and in
+     the said boxes or packages as they were in when shipped from
+     Liverpool, well secured, and locked up in your powder magazine, in
+     the after run of the said ship under the cabin floor.
+
+     The bulkhead and floor of said magazine, scuttle, iron bar,
+     staples, etc., must be made sufficiently strong, if not already so,
+     while you are at Liverpool, where you are to procure a strong
+     padlock and key, for the purpose of securing said specie in the
+     most complete and safest manner; and when you have the certainty
+     that it is wanted to pay for the coffee purchased on account of the
+     ship ----, then you are to receive the said coffee, and pay or
+     deliver to your consignee Spanish dollars to the amount of said
+     purchase, and no more, having due regard to the premium or advance
+     allowed at Batavia on old Spanish dollars; and in that way you are
+     to continue paying or delivering dollars as fast as you receive
+     coffee, which is not to exceed the quantity which can be
+     conveniently stowed on board said ship ----, observing to take a
+     receipt for each payment, and to see that the net proceeds of the
+     goods, which will have been shipped at Liverpool, must be invested
+     in coffee, as far as the sales will permit, and shipped on board of
+     said ship.
+
+     Should it happen that on your arrival at Batavia you should find
+     that death, absence, etc., should deprive you of the services of
+     Mr. ----, or that, owing to some causes before mentioned, it would
+     be prudent to confide my interests elsewhere, in either case you
+     are to apply to Messrs. ----, merchants of that place, to
+     communicate your instructions relative to the disposal of the
+     Liverpool cargo, on board of the ship ----, the loading of that
+     ship with good merchantable coffee, giving the preference to the
+     first quality whenever it can be purchased on reasonable terms for
+     cash, or received in payment for the sales of the said Liverpool
+     cargo, or for a part thereof, observing that I wished said coffee
+     to be purchased at Samarang, or any other out-port, if practicable;
+     and in all cases it must be attentively examined when delivered,
+     and put up in double gunny bags.
+
+     If the purchase of said cargo is made at an out-port, the ship
+     ----must proceed there to take it in.
+
+     On the subject of purchasing coffee at government sales, I have no
+     doubt that it is an easy way to obtain a cargo, but I am of opinion
+     that it is a very dear one, particularly as the fair purchaser, who
+     has no other object in view but to invest his money, does not stay
+     on the footing of competitors, who make their payments with
+     Netherland bills of exchange, or wish to raise the prices of their
+     coffee which they may have on hand for sale.
+
+     Under these impressions, I desire that all the purchases of coffee
+     on my account be made from individuals, as far as practicable, and
+     if the whole quantity necessary to load the ship can not be
+     obtained at private sale, recourse must then be had to government
+     sales.
+
+     In many instances I have experienced that whenever I had a vessel
+     at Batavia, the prices of coffee at the government sales have risen
+     from five to ten per cent., and sometimes higher.
+
+     On the subject of coffee I would remark that, owing to the increase
+     of the culture of that bean, together with the immense imports of
+     tea into the several ports of Europe, the price of that leaf has
+     been lowered to such a degree as to induce the people of those
+     countries, principally of the north, to use the latter article in
+     preference to the first.
+
+     That circumstance has, for these past three years, created a
+     gradual deduction from the consumption of coffee, which has
+     augmented the stock on hand throughout every commercial city of the
+     northern part of the globe, so as to present a future unfavorable
+     prospect to the importers of that article. Indeed, I am convinced
+     that, within a few months from this date, coffee will be ten per
+     cent. cheaper in the United States than what it has been at Batavia
+     for these two years past; nevertheless, being desirous to employ my
+     ships as advantageously as circumstances will permit, and
+     calculating also that the price at Java and other places of its
+     growth will fall considerably, I have no objection to adventure.
+
+     Therefore, you must use every means in your power to facilitate
+     the success of the voyage.
+
+     Should the invoice-cost of the entire cargo of coffee shipped at
+     Java, on board of the ship ----, together with the disbursements of
+     that ship (which must be conducted with the greatest economy), not
+     amount to the specie funds and net proceeds of her Liverpool cargo,
+     in that event you are to deliver the surplus to your consignee, who
+     will give you a receipt for the same, with a duplicate, expressing
+     that it is on my account, for the purpose of being invested on the
+     most advantageous terms, in good dry coffee, to be kept at my order
+     and disposal.
+
+     Then you will retain the original in your possession, and forward
+     to me the duplicate by first good vessel to the United States, or
+     via Europe, to care of my correspondents at Liverpool, London,
+     Antwerp, or Amsterdam, the names of whom you are familiar with.
+
+     If you should judge it imprudent, however, to leave that money at
+     Batavia, you are to bring it back in Spanish dollars, which you
+     will retain on board for that purpose.
+
+     Although I wish you to make a short voyage, and with as quick
+     dispatch at Java as practicable, yet I desire you not to leave that
+     island unless your consignee has finally closed the sales of the
+     Liverpool cargo, so that you may be the bearer of all the
+     documents, and account-current, relative to the final transactions
+     of the consignment of the ship ---- and cargo. Duplicate and
+     triplicate of said documents to be forwarded to me by your
+     consignees, by the two first safe conveyances for the ports of the
+     United States.
+
+     Being in the habit of dispatching my ships for Batavia from this
+     port, Liverpool, or Amsterdam, as circumstances render it
+     convenient, it is interesting to me to be from time to time
+     informed of the several articles of produce and manufactures from
+     each of those places which are the most in demand and quickest of
+     sale at Java. Also of the quantity of each, size of package, and
+     the probable price which they may sell for, cash, adding the
+     Batavia duty, charges for selling, etc. Please to communicate this
+     to your Batavia consignee.
+
+     The rates of commission I will allow for transacting the business
+     relative to the ship and cargo at Java are two and a half per cent,
+     for selling, and two and a half per cent, for purchasing and
+     shipping coffee and other articles.
+
+     The consignees engaging to place on board of each prow one or two
+     men of confidence, to see that the goods are safely delivered on
+     board of the ship, to prevent pilfering, which is often practiced
+     by those who conduct the lighter.
+
+     I am informed that the expenses for two men are trifling,
+     comparatively, to the plunder which has been committed on board of
+     the prows which deliver coffee on board of the ships.
+
+     No commissions whatever are to be allowed in the disbursements of
+     my ships, whenever ship and cargo belong to me, and are consigned
+     to some house.
+
+     While you remain at Batavia, I recommend you to stay on board of
+     your ship, and not to go on shore except when the business of your
+     ship and cargo may render it necessary.
+
+     Inclosed is an introductory letter to ----, which I request you to
+     deliver, after you have made the necessary arrangements with Mr.
+     ----for the consignment of the ship and cargo, or after the
+     circumstance aforementioned has compelled you to look elsewhere for
+     a consignee. Then you are to call upon said Messrs. ----, deliver
+     them the aforesaid letter and the consignment of the ship ---- and
+     cargo, after having agreed with them in writing, which they will
+     sign and deliver to you, that they engage to transact the business
+     of the ship and cargo on the terms and conditions herein stated;
+     and when that business is well understood and finally closed, you
+     are to press them in a polite manner, so that they many give you a
+     quick dispatch, without giving too great a price for the coffee,
+     particularly at this present moment, when its price is declining
+     throughout those countries where it is consumed.
+
+     Indeed, on the subject of purchasing coffee for the ship ----, the
+     greatest caution and prudence should be exercised. Therefore, I
+     request that you will follow the plan of conduct laid down for you
+     throughout. Also, to keep to yourself the intention of the voyage,
+     and the amount of specie you have on board; and in view to satisfy
+     the curious, tell them that it is probable that the ship will take
+     in molasses, rice, and sugar, if the price of that produce is very
+     low, adding that the whole will depend on the success in selling
+     the small Liverpool cargo. The consignees of said cargo should
+     follow the same line of conduct, and if properly attended to by
+     yourself and them, I am convinced that the cargo of coffee can be
+     purchased ten per cent. cheaper than it would be if it is publicly
+     known there is a quantity of Spanish dollars on board, besides a
+     valuable cargo of British goods intended to be invested in coffee
+     for Stephen Girard, of Philadelphia.
+
+     During my long commercial experience, I have noticed that no
+     advantage results from telling one's business to others, except to
+     create jealousy or competitors when we are fortunate, and to
+     gratify our enemies when otherwise.
+
+     If my remarks are correct, I have no doubt they will show you the
+     necessity of being silent, and to attend with activity,
+     perseverance, and modesty, to the interests of your employer.
+
+     As my letters of instruction embrace several interesting objects, I
+     request you to peruse them in rotation, when at sea in fine
+     climates, during your voyage to Batavia, and to take correct
+     extracts, so as to render yourself master of the most essential
+     parts. I conclude by directing your attention to your health and
+     that of your crew.
+
+     I am yours, respectfully,
+
+     STEPHEN GIRARD.
+
+
+Mr. Girard was not only rigidly precise in his instructions, but he
+permitted no departure from them. He regarded it as dangerous to allow
+discretion to any one in the execution of _his_ plans. Where a deviation
+from his instructions might cause success in one case, it would cause
+loss in ninety-nine others. It was understood among all his employés
+that a rigid obedience to orders, in even the most trifling particulars,
+was expected, and would be exacted. If loss came under such
+circumstances, the merchant assumed the entire responsibility for it.
+
+Upon one occasion one of his best captains was instructed to purchase
+his cargo of teas at a certain port. Upon reaching home he was summoned
+by the merchant to his presence.
+
+"Captain ----," said Mr. Girard, sternly, "your instructions required
+you to purchase your cargo at ----."
+
+"That is true, Mr. Girard," replied the Captain, "but upon reaching that
+port I found I could do so much better at ----, that I felt justified in
+proceeding to the latter place."
+
+"You should have obeyed your orders, sir," was the stern retort.
+
+"I was influenced by a desire to serve your interests, sir. The result
+ought to justify me in my act, since it puts many thousands more into
+your pocket than if I had bought where I was instructed."
+
+"Captain ----," said Girard, "I take care of my own interests. You
+should have obeyed your orders if you had broken me. Nothing can excuse
+your disobedience. You will hand in your accounts, sir, and consider
+yourself discharged from my service."
+
+He was as good as his word, and, though the captain's disobedience had
+vastly increased the profit of the voyage, he dismissed him, nor would
+he ever receive him into his service again.
+
+To his knowledge of his business Mr. Girard joined an unusual capacity
+for such ventures. He was, it must be said, hard and illiberal in his
+bargains, and remorseless in exacting the last cent due him. He was
+prompt and faithful in the execution of every contract, never departed
+in the slightest from his plighted word, and never engaged in any
+venture which he was not perfectly able to undertake. He was prudent and
+cautious in the fullest sense of those terms, but his ventures were
+always made with a boldness which was the sure forerunner of success.
+
+His fidelity to his word is well shown by a circumstance which had
+occurred long after he was one of the "money kings" of the land. He was
+once engaged with his cashier in a discussion as to the length of time a
+man would consume in counting a million of dollars, telling out each
+dollar separately. The dispute became animated, and the cashier declared
+that he could make a million of dots with ink in a few hours.
+
+"I'll tell you what I'll do," said Girard, who was thoroughly vexed by
+the opposition of the other, "I'll wager five hundred dollars that I can
+ride in my gig from here to my farm, spend two hours there, and return
+before you can make your million of dots with ink."
+
+The cashier, after a moment's reflection, accepted the wager, and Mr.
+Girard departed to his farm. He returned in a few hours, confident that
+he had won. The cashier met him with a smile.
+
+"Where is my money?" asked Girard, triumphantly.
+
+"The money is mine," replied the cashier. "Come and see."
+
+He led the merchant to an unused room of the bank, and there, to his
+dismay, Girard saw the walls and ceiling covered with spots of ink,
+which the cashier had dashed on them with a brush.
+
+"Do you mean to say there are a million of dots here?" he cried,
+angrily.
+
+"Count them, and see," replied his subordinate, laughing. "You know the
+wager was a million of dots with ink."
+
+"But I expected you would make them with the pen."
+
+"I did not undertake any thing of the kind."
+
+The joke was too good, and the merchant not only paid the amount of the
+wager, but the cost of cleaning the walls.
+
+In 1810 the question of renewing the charter of the old Bank of the
+United States was actively discussed. Girard was a warm friend of that
+institution, which he believed had been the cause of a very great part
+of the prosperity of the country, and was firmly convinced that Congress
+would renew the charter. In this belief he ordered the Barings, of
+London, to invest all his funds in their hands in shares of the Bank of
+the United States, which was done, during the following year, to the
+amount of half a million of dollars. When the charter expired, he was
+the principal creditor of that institution, which Congress refused to
+renew. Discovering that he could purchase the old Bank and the cashier's
+house for one hundred and twenty thousand dollars, he at once secured
+them, and on the 12th of May, 1812, opened the Girard Bank, with a
+capital of one million two hundred thousand dollars, which he increased
+the next year by one hundred thousand dollars more. He retained all the
+old officers of the Bank of the United States, especially the cashier,
+Mr. Simpson, to whose skill and experience he was greatly indebted for
+his subsequent success.
+
+Finding that the salaries which had been paid by the Government were
+higher than those paid elsewhere, he cut them down to the rate given by
+the other banks. The watchman had always received from the old Bank the
+gift of an overcoat at Christmas, but Girard put a stop to this. He gave
+no gratuities to any of his employés, but confined them to the
+compensation for which they had bargained; yet he contrived to get out
+of them service more devoted than was received by other men who paid
+higher wages and made presents. Appeals to him for aid were unanswered.
+No poor man ever came full-handed from his presence. He turned a deaf
+ear to the entreaties of failing merchants to help them on their feet
+again. He was neither generous nor charitable. When his faithful cashier
+died, after long years spent in his service, he manifested the most
+hardened indifference to the bereavement of the family of that
+gentleman, and left them to struggle along as best they could.
+
+Yet from the first he was liberal and sometimes magnificent in the
+management of his bank. He would discount none but good paper, but it
+was his policy to grant accommodations to small traders, and thus
+encourage beginners, usually giving the preference to small notes, by
+this system doing very much to avert the evils that would of necessity
+have sprung from the suspension of the old Bank of the United States.
+The Government credit was almost destroyed, and money was needed to
+carry on the war. He made repeated advances to the treasury, unsolicited
+by the authorities, and on more than one occasion kept the Government
+supplied with the sinews of war. In 1814, when our prospects, both
+military and financial, were at their lowest ebb, when the British
+forces had burned Washington and the New England States were threatening
+to withdraw from the Union, the Government asked for a loan of five
+millions of dollars, with the most liberal inducements to subscribers.
+Only twenty thousand dollars could be obtained, and the project seemed
+doomed to failure, when it was announced that Stephen Girard had
+subscribed for the whole amount. This announcement at once restored the
+public confidence, and Mr. Girard was beset with requests from persons
+anxious to take a part of the loan, even at an advanced rate. They were
+allowed to do so upon the original terms. When the Government could not,
+for want of funds, pay the interest on its debt to him, he wrote to the
+Secretary of the Treasury:
+
+"I am of opinion that those who have any claim for interest on public
+stock, etc., should patiently wait for a more favorable moment, or at
+least receive in payment treasury notes. Should you be under the
+necessity of resorting to either of these plans, as one of the public
+creditors, I shall not murmur."
+
+"A circumstance soon occurred, however, which was a source of no little
+discomfiture to the financial arrangements of his individual
+institution. This fact was the suspension of specie payments by the
+State banks, resulting from the non-intercourse act, the suspension of
+the old bank, and the combined causes tending to produce a derangement
+of the currency of the country. It was then a matter of great doubt with
+him how he should preserve the integrity of his own institution, while
+the other banks were suspending their payments; but the credit of his
+own bank was effectually secured by the suggestion of his cashier, Mr.
+Simpson, who advised the recalling of his own notes by redeeming them
+with specie, and by paying out the notes of the State banks. In this
+mode not a single note of his own was suffered to be depreciated, and he
+was thus enabled, in 1817, to contribute effectually to the restoration
+of specie payments."
+
+He was instrumental in securing the establishment of the new Bank of the
+United States, and was its largest stockholder and one of its directors.
+He even offered to unite his own institution with it upon certain
+liberal conditions, which were refused. Yet he was always a firm friend
+to it.
+
+"One of the characteristics of Mr. Girard was his public spirit. At one
+time he freely subscribed one hundred and ten thousand dollars for the
+navigation of the Schuylkill; at another time he loaned the company two
+hundred and sixty-five thousand eight hundred and fifty dollars. When
+the credit of the State of Pennsylvania was prostrated by what was
+believed to have been an injudicious system of internal improvement, and
+it was found expedient for the Governor to resort to its metropolis in
+order to replenish its coffers, he made a voluntary loan to Governor
+Shultz of one hundred thousand dollars. So far was his disposition to
+promote the fiscal prosperity of the country manifested, that, as late
+as 1831, when the country was placed in extreme embarrassment from the
+scarcity of money, he perceived the cause in the fact that the balance
+of trade was against us to a considerable extent, and he accordingly
+drew upon the house of Baring Brothers & Co. for bills of exchange to
+the amount of twelve thousand pounds sterling, which he disposed of to
+the Bank of the United States at an advance of ten per cent., which
+draft was followed up by another for ten thousand, which was disposed of
+in like manner to other institutions. This act tended to reduce the
+value of bills, and the rate of exchange suddenly fell. The same spirit
+which he manifested toward the national currency he exhibited to the
+corporation of Philadelphia, by erecting new blocks of buildings, and
+beautifying and adorning its streets; less, apparently, from a desire of
+profit than from a wish to improve the place which was his adopted home,
+and where he had reaped his fortunes. His subscription of two hundred
+thousand dollars to the Danville and Pottsville Railroad, in 1831, was
+an action in keeping with the whole tenor of his life; and his
+subscription of ten thousand dollars toward the erection of an exchange
+looked to the same result."
+
+The war of 1812, which brought financial ruin to so many others, simply
+increased Girard's wealth. He never lost a ship, and as war prices
+prevailed, his profits were in accordance with them. One of his ships
+was taken by a British cruiser at the mouth of the Delaware, in the
+spring of 1813. Fearing that his prize would be recaptured by an
+American ship of war if he attempted to send her into port, the English
+admiral dispatched a flag of truce to Mr. Girard, and proposed to him to
+ransom the vessel for one hundred and eighty thousand dollars in coin.
+Girard consented, paid the money, and the ship was allowed to come up to
+the city. Her cargo consisted of silks, nankeens, and teas, and afforded
+her owner a profit of half a million of dollars.
+
+Yet in the midst of all his wealth, which in 1828 was estimated at ten
+millions of dollars, he was a solitary old man.
+
+He lived in a dingy little house in Water Street. His wife had died in
+an insane asylum, and he was childless. He was repulsive in person. He
+was feared by his subordinates--by all who had dealings with him--and
+liked by none. He was mean and close in his personal habits, living on
+less, perhaps, than any of his clerks, and deriving little or no benefit
+from his vast wealth, so far as his individual comfort was concerned. He
+gave nothing in charity. Lazarus would have lain at his doors a
+life-time without being noticed by him. He was solitary, soured, cold,
+with a heart of stone, and fully conscious of his personal unpopularity.
+Yet he valued wealth--valued it for the power it gave him over men.
+Under that cold, hardened exterior reigned an ambition as profound as
+that which moved Napoleon. He was ambitious of regulating the financial
+operations of the land, and proud of his power in this respect, and it
+should be remembered in his favor that he did not abuse that power after
+it had passed into his hands.
+
+He had no vices, no dissipations; his whole soul was in his business. He
+was conscious that his only hope of distinction above his fellow-men was
+in his wealth, and he was resolved that nothing should make him swerve
+from his endeavor to accumulate a fortune which should make him all
+powerful in life and remembered in death. He sought no friends, and was
+reticent as to his career, saying to those who questioned him about it,
+"Wait till I am dead; my deeds will show what I was."
+
+Religion had no place in his heart. He was an avowed unbeliever, making
+a boast of his disbelief. He always worked on Sunday, in order that he
+might show his disapproval of the observance of it as a day of rest.
+Rest, he said, made a man rusty, and attendance upon the worship of God
+he denounced as worse than folly. His favorite books were the works of
+Voltaire, and he named his best ships after the most celebrated French
+infidels.
+
+Yet this man, so unloved, so undeserving of love, is said to have once
+had a warm heart. His early troubles and his domestic griefs are said to
+have soured and estranged him from mankind.
+
+"No one who has had access to his private papers can fail to be
+impressed with the belief that these early disappointments furnish the
+key to his entire character. Originally of warm and generous impulses,
+the belief in childhood that he had not been given his share of the love
+and kindness which were extended to others, changed the natural current
+of his feelings, and, acting on a warm and passionate temperament,
+alienated him from his home, his parents, and his friends. And when in
+after time there were superadded years of bitter anguish, resulting from
+his unfortunate and ill-adapted marriage, rendered even more poignant by
+the necessity of concealment, and the consequent injustice of public
+sentiment, marring all his cherished expectations, it may be readily
+understood why constant occupation became a necessity and labor a
+pleasure."
+
+This is the testimony of Mr. Henry W. Arey, the distinguished secretary
+of Girard College, in whose keeping are the papers of the subject of
+this memoir, and it must be confessed that his view of Girard's
+character is sustained by the following incidents, the narration of
+which I have passed over until now, in order that the history of his
+commercial career might not be interrupted:
+
+In the summer of 1793 the yellow fever broke out with fearful violence
+in Philadelphia. The citizens fled in dismay, leaving the plague-smitten
+city to its fate. Houses were left tenantless, and the streets were
+deserted. It was a season of horror and dread. Those who could not get
+away avoided each other, and the sufferers were left to languish and
+die. Money could not buy nurses in sufficient numbers, and often the
+victims lay unburied for days in the places where they had died. So
+terrible was the panic that it seemed that nothing could stay it.
+
+On the 10th of September the _Federal Gazette_, the only paper which had
+not suspended its publication, contained an anonymous card, stating that
+of the visitors of the poor all but three had succumbed to the disease
+or fled from the city, and begging assistance from such benevolent
+citizens as would consent to render their aid. On the 12th and 14th,
+meetings were held at the City Hall, at the last of which a volunteer
+committee was appointed to superintend the measures to be taken for
+checking the pestilence. Twenty-seven men volunteered to serve, but only
+twelve had the courage to fulfill their promise. They set to work
+promptly. The hospital at Bush Hill was reported by the physician to be
+in a deplorable state--without order, dirty and foul, and in need of
+nurses. The last, he stated, could not be had for any price. Two of the
+committee now stepped forward and nobly offered themselves as managers
+of the hospital. They were Stephen Girard and Peter Helm.
+
+Girard was now a man of wealth and influence, and with a brilliant
+commercial career opening before him. Above all, he was a foreigner, and
+unpopular in the city. Yet he did not hesitate to take the post from
+which others shrank. He and Helm were regarded as doomed men, but they
+did not falter from their self-imposed task. They went to work at once.
+Girard chose the post of honor, which was the post of danger--the
+management of the interior of the hospital. His decisive character was
+at once felt. Order began to appear, medicines and nurses were procured,
+and the very next day the committee were informed that the hospital had
+been cleaned and reorganized, and was prepared to receive patients.
+
+Girard opened his purse liberally, and spared no expense where money
+would avail. But this was not all. Besides personally superintending the
+interior of the hospital, he went about through the city seeking the
+sick and conveying them to the hospital.
+
+"In the great scarcity of help, he used frequently to receive the sick
+and dying at the gate, assist in carrying them to their beds, nurse
+them, receive their last messages, watch for their last breath, and
+then, wrapping them in the sheet on which they had died, carry them out
+to the burial ground and place them in the trench. He had a vivid
+recollection of the difficulty of finding any kind of fabric in which to
+wrap the dead, when the vast number of interments had exhausted the
+supply of sheets. 'I would put them,' he would say, 'in any old rag I
+could find.'"
+
+[Illustration: GIRARD'S HEROISM.]
+
+"If he ever left the hospital, it was to visit the infected districts,
+and assist in removing the sick from the houses in which they were dying
+without help. One scene of this kind, witnessed by a merchant who was
+hurrying past with camphored handkerchief pressed to his mouth, affords
+us a vivid glimpse of this heroic man engaged in his sublime vocation. A
+carriage, rapidly driven by a black man, broke the silence of the
+deserted and grass-grown street. It stopped before a frame house, and
+the driver, first having bound a handkerchief over his mouth, opened the
+door of the carriage, and quickly remounted to the box. A short,
+thick-set man stepped from the coach and entered the house. In a minute
+or two the observer, who stood at a safe distance watching the
+proceedings, heard a shuffling noise in the entry, and soon saw the
+stout little man supporting with extreme difficulty a tall, gaunt,
+yellow-visaged victim of the pestilence. Girard held round the waist the
+sick man, whose yellow face rested against his own; his long, damp,
+tangled hair mingled with Girard's; his feet dragging helpless upon the
+pavement. Thus he drew him to the carriage door, the driver averting his
+face from the spectacle, far from offering to assist. Partly dragging,
+partly lifting, Girard succeeded, after long and severe exertion, in
+getting him into the vehicle. He then entered it himself, closed the
+door, and the carriage drove away toward the hospital."[A]
+
+For sixty days Mr. Girard continued to discharge his duties, never
+absenting himself from his post, being nobly sustained by Peter Helm.
+
+Again, in 1797 and 1798, when the city was scourged a second and a third
+time with the fever, he volunteered his services, and more than earned
+the gratitude of his fellow-citizens. In the absence of physicians, he
+took upon himself the office of prescribing for the sick, and as his
+treatment involved careful nursing and the use of simple remedies only,
+he was very successful. In 1799 he wrote to his friend Devize, then in
+France, but who had been the physician at the Bush Hill Hospital in
+1793:
+
+"During all this frightful time I have constantly remained in the city,
+and, without neglecting any public duties, I have played a part which
+will make you smile. Would you believe it, my friend, that I have
+visited as many as fifteen sick people in a day, and what will surprise
+you still more, I have lost only one patient, an Irishman, who would
+drink a little. I do not flatter myself that I have cured one single
+person, but you will think with me that in my quality of Philadelphia
+physician I have been very moderate, and that not one of my confreres
+have killed fewer than myself."
+
+[Footnote A: James Parton.]
+
+Such acts as these should go far in his favor in estimating his
+character, for they are the very height of true heroism.
+
+Mr. Girard was never idle. Work, as has before been said, was a
+necessity with him. Nothing would draw him from his labors. His only
+recreation was to drive to his little farm, which lay a few miles out of
+the city, and engage with his own hands in the work of tilling it. He
+was very proud of the vegetables and fruits he raised himself, and took
+great interest in improving their growth. During the visit of the
+present head of the house of Baring Bros, (then a young man) to this
+country, that gentleman supposed he would give Mr. Girard pleasure by
+informing him of the safe arrival of one of his ships, the Voltaire,
+from India. Engaging a carriage, he drove to the banker's farm, and
+inquired for Mr. Girard.
+
+"He is in the hay-loft," was the answer.
+
+"Inform him that I wish to see him," said Mr. Baring; but almost before
+the words had left his lips Girard was before him.
+
+"I came to inform you," he said, addressing the banker, "that your ship,
+the Voltaire, has arrived safely."
+
+"I knew that she would reach port safely," said Girard; "my ships always
+arrive safe. She is a good ship. Mr. Baring, you must excuse me; I am
+much engaged in my hay." And so saying, he ascended to the loft again.
+
+To the last he was active. In 1830, having reached the age of eighty, he
+began to lose the sight of his eye; yet he would have no assistance. In
+attempting to cross a crowded street, he was knocked down by a passing
+wagon and injured severely. His ear was cut off, his face bruised, and
+his sight entirely destroyed. His health now declined rapidly, and on
+the 26th of December, 1831, he died, in the back room of his plain
+little house in Water Street.
+
+His immense wealth was carefully divided by his will. He gave to his
+surviving brother and eleven of his nieces sums ranging from five to
+twenty thousand dollars, and to his remaining niece, who was the mother
+of a very large family, he gave sixty thousand dollars. He gave to each
+of the captains then in his employ who had made two voyages in his
+service, and who should bring his ship safely into port, fifteen hundred
+dollars. To each of his apprentices he gave five hundred dollars. To his
+old servants he gave annuities, ranging from three to five hundred
+dollars each.
+
+He gave thirty thousand dollars to the Pennsylvania Hospital, in which
+his wife had been cared for; twenty thousand to the Deaf and Dumb
+Asylum; ten thousand to the Orphan Asylum; ten thousand to the Lancaster
+schools; ten thousand for the purpose of providing the poor in
+Philadelphia with free fuel; ten thousand to the Society for the Relief
+of Distressed Sea-Captains and their Families; twenty thousand to the
+Masonic Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania, for the relief of poor members; six
+thousand for the establishment of a free school in Passyunk, near
+Philadelphia; five hundred thousand dollars to the Corporation of
+Philadelphia for certain improvements in the city; three hundred
+thousand to the State of Pennsylvania for her canals; and a portion of
+his valuable estates in Louisiana to the Corporation of New Orleans, for
+the improvement of that city.
+
+The remainder of his property, worth then about six millions of dollars,
+he left to trustees for the erection and endowment of the noble College
+for Orphans, in Philadelphia, which bears his name.
+
+Thus it will be seen that this man, who seemed steeled to resist appeals
+for private charity in life, in death devoted all the results of his
+unusual genius in his calling to the noblest of purposes, and to
+enterprises of the most benignant character, which will gratefully hand
+his name down to the remotest ages of posterity.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+JOHN JACOB ASTOR.
+
+
+Those who imagine that the mercantile profession is incapable of
+developing the element of greatness in the mind of man, find a perfect
+refutation in the career of the subject of this memoir, who won his
+immense fortune by the same traits which would have raised him to
+eminence as a statesman. It may be thought by some that he has no claim
+to a place in the list of famous Americans, since he was not only German
+by birth, but German in character to his latest day; but it must be
+borne in mind that America was the theater of his exploits, and that he
+owed the greater part of his success to the wise and beneficent
+institutions of the "New Land," as he termed it. In his own country he
+would have had no opportunity for the display of his great abilities,
+and it was only by placing himself in the midst of institutions
+favorable to progress that he was enabled to make use of his talents. It
+is for this reason, therefore, that we may justly claim him as one of
+the most celebrated of American merchants.
+
+John Jacob Astor was born in the village of Waldorf, near Heidelberg, in
+the Grand Duchy of Baden, on the 17th of July, 1763. This year was
+famous for the conclusion of the Treaties of Paris and Hubertsburg,
+which placed all the fur-yielding regions of America, from the Gulf of
+Mexico to the Frozen Sea, in the hands of England. He was the youngest
+of four sons, and was born of Protestant parents. He was early taught to
+read Luther's Bible and the Prayer-book, and throughout his whole life
+remained a zealous Protestant. He was trained to the habit of rising
+early, and giving the first of his waking hours to reading the Bible and
+Prayer-book. This habit he continued all through life, and he often
+declared that it was to him the source of unfailing pleasure and
+comfort. His religious impressions were mainly due to his mother, who
+was a pious, thrifty, and hard-working woman, given to saving, and
+devoted to her family.
+
+His father, on the contrary, was a jolly "ne'er do well," a butcher by
+trade, and not overburdened with industry. The business of a butcher in
+so small a village as Waldorf, where meat was a luxury to the
+inhabitants, was merely a nominal calling. It knew but one season of
+real profit. It was at that time the custom in Germany for every farmer
+to set apart a calf, pig, or bullock, and fatten it against harvest
+time. As that season approached, the village butcher passed from house
+to house to slaughter the animal, cure its flesh, or make sausage meat
+of it, spending, sometimes, several days at each house. This season
+brought Jacob Astor an abundance of work, and enabled him to provide
+liberally for the simple wants of his family; but during the rest of the
+year it was with difficulty that he could make bread for them. Yet Jacob
+took his hard lot cheerfully. He was merry over his misfortunes, and
+sought to forget them in the society of companions who gathered at the
+village beer-house. His wife's remonstrances against such a course of
+life were sometimes so energetic that the house became any thing but a
+pleasant place for the children.
+
+Here John Jacob grew up to boyhood. His brothers left home to earn their
+livelihood elsewhere, as soon as they were old enough to do so, and he
+alone remained under the paternal roof. His father destined him for his
+own calling, but the boy shrank from it with disgust. To crown his
+misfortunes, his mother died, and his father married again, and this
+time a woman who looked with no favor upon the son. The newly-married
+pair quarreled continually, and the boy was glad to escape occasionally
+to the house of a schoolmate, where he passed the night in a garret or
+outhouse. By daylight he was back at his father's slaughter-house, to
+assist in carrying out the meat. He was poorly clad and badly fed, and
+his father's bad reputation wounded him so keenly that he shrank from
+playing with other boys, and led a life of comparative isolation.
+
+Fortunately for him, he had a teacher, Valentine Jeune by name, the son
+of French Protestants, who was better fitted for his position than the
+majority of the more liberally-patronized Catholic instructors. He was
+well taught by Valentine Jeune in the rudiments of a plain education,
+and the tutor and the Protestant minister of the village together
+succeeded so well in his religious instruction that at the age of
+fourteen he was confirmed. Confirmation is the decisive point in the
+career of the German youth. Until then he is only a child. Afterward he
+is regarded as on the threshold of manhood, and is given to understand
+that the time has come for him to make choice of a career in life.
+
+To the German peasant two courses only lie open, to learn a trade or go
+out to service. John Jacob was resolved not to do the latter, and he was
+in no condition to adopt the former. He was already familiar with his
+father's trade, but he shrank from it with disgust, and he could not
+hope to obtain money enough to pay for his tuition as an apprentice in
+any other calling. No workman in the village would receive him as an
+apprentice for less than fifty dollars, and fifty dollars were then
+further beyond his reach than as many millions in after years. The
+harvest was approaching, and Jacob Astor, seeing an unusual amount of
+work in store for him at that season, decided the matter for his son by
+informing him that he must prepare to settle down as his assistant. He
+obeyed, but discontentedly, and with a determination to abandon his home
+at the earliest practicable moment.
+
+His chief desire was to leave Germany and emigrate to America. The
+American Revolution had brought the "New Land" into great prominence;
+and one of the brothers, Henry Astor, had already settled in New York as
+a butcher, and his letters had the effect of increasing John Jacob's
+desire to follow him. It was impossible to do so then, for the war which
+was raging in this country made it any thing but inviting to an
+emigrant, and the boy was entirely ignorant of the English language.
+Nevertheless, he knew that the war could not last always, and he
+resolved to go as soon as peace would allow him. Meanwhile he wished to
+join his elder brother, who had removed to London, and was now engaged
+with his uncle in the manufacture of musical instruments. In London he
+thought he could acquire a knowledge of English, and save from his wages
+the amount necessary to pay his passage from England to America. He
+could reach some of the seaports of the Continent by walking. But he
+needed money to pay his passage from there to Great Britain. His
+determination thus formed, he made no secret of it, and succeeded at
+length in extorting a reluctant consent from his father, who was not
+inclined to expect very much from the future career of his son. His
+teacher, however, had more faith in him, and said to the butcher, on the
+morning of the lad's departure: "I am not afraid of John Jacob; he'll
+get through the world. He has a clear head, and every thing right behind
+the ears."
+
+He was seventeen years old when he left home; was stout and well built,
+and had a constitution of iron. He was possessed of a good plain
+education, and a remarkable degree of common sense. He had no vicious
+habits or propensities, and was resolved that he would never set foot
+again in his native town until he could do so as a rich man.
+
+Ardently as he was bent on seeking his fortune in distant lands, it cost
+him a struggle to go away, for he was a true German in his attachment to
+his home and family. This attachment he never lost. After providing
+liberally for his relatives in his will, he made a munificent donation
+to his native village for the benefit of its poor children.
+
+With his scanty wardrobe in a bundle, which he slung over his shoulder
+by a stick, and a mere pittance in his purse, he set out from Waldorf,
+on foot, for the Rhine. "Soon after I left the village," said he, in
+after-life, "I sat down beneath a tree to rest, and there I made three
+resolutions: to be honest, to be industrious, and not to gamble." He had
+but two dollars in his pocket; but this was enough for his purpose. The
+Rhine was not far distant from his native village, and this part of his
+journey he easily accomplished on foot. Upon reaching the river, he is
+said to have secured a place as oarsman on a timber raft. The timber
+which is cut in the Black Forest for shipment is made up into rafts on
+the Rhine, but instead of being suffered to float down the stream, as in
+this country, is rowed by oarsmen, each raft having from sixty to eighty
+men attached to it. As the labor is severe and attended with some risk,
+the wages are high, and the lot of the oarsmen not altogether a hard
+one, as they manage to have a great deal of sport among themselves. The
+amount paid as wages on these voyages is about ten dollars, besides the
+coarse fare furnished the men, and the time occupied is about two weeks.
+
+Upon reaching the Dutch seaport at the mouth of the Rhine, young Astor
+received his wages--the largest sum he had ever possessed--and took
+passage in a vessel for London, where he was welcomed cordially by his
+brother, and provided with employment in his manufactory.
+
+He now set to work to prepare himself for his emigration to America. His
+industry was unflagging. He worked literally from dawn till dark, and
+practiced the most rigid economy in his expenditures. His leisure time,
+which was brief, was spent in trying to master the English language, and
+in acquiring information respecting America. He had anticipated great
+difficulty in his efforts to learn English, but succeeded beyond his
+hopes. In six weeks he could make himself understood in that language,
+and some time before starting for America could speak it with ease,
+though he never could at any period of his life rid himself of his
+strong German accent. He was never able to write English correctly, but
+after being some years in this country acquired a style which was
+striking and to the point, in spite of its inaccuracy. England, however,
+was not a favorable place for acquiring information respecting America.
+The Colonies had exasperated the mother country by their heroic struggle
+for freedom, which was just drawing to its close, and the New World was
+pictured to the imagination of the young German in any thing but a
+favorable light. His most accurate information was gained from those who
+had returned from America, and these persons, as often as chance threw
+them in his way, he questioned with eagerness and precision; their
+answers were carefully stored up in his memory.
+
+In September, 1783, the news of the peace which established the
+independence of the United States was published in Europe. Young Astor
+had now been in London two years, and had saved money enough to take him
+to America. He was the possessor of a suit of good clothes, besides his
+ordinary wearing apparel, and fifteen guineas in English money, which he
+had saved from his slender earnings by the absolute denial to himself of
+every thing not essential to his existence. The way to America was now
+open, and he resolved to set out at once. For five guineas he bought a
+steerage passage in a ship bound for Baltimore, and reserving about five
+pounds sterling of the remainder of his capital in money, invested the
+rest in seven German flutes, which he bought of his brother, and
+embarked for the "New Land."
+
+The winter was memorable on land and sea for its severity, and our
+hero's first voyage was a stormy one. It is said that on one occasion,
+when the tempest was unusually violent, and the ship in imminent danger,
+he made his appearance in his Sunday clothes. In reply to those who
+asked his reason for so strange an act, he said that if he should reach
+land he would save his best clothes, and that if he was drowned it was
+immaterial what became of them.
+
+Although the ship sailed in November, it did not reach the Chesapeake
+until near the end of January, and there, when only one day distant from
+Baltimore, was caught in the ice, where it was compelled to remain until
+late in March. This delay was very vexatious to the young emigrant, but
+it proved in the end the greatest blessing that could have befallen him.
+During the voyage Astor had made the acquaintance of one of his fellow
+passengers, a German, somewhat older than himself, and, while the ship
+lay fast in the ice, the two were constantly together. As a consequence
+of the intimacy which thus sprung up between them, they exchanged
+confidences, told each other their history, and their purpose in coming
+to America. Astor learned that his friend had emigrated to the New World
+a few years before, friendless and penniless, but that, beginning in a
+little way, he had managed to become a fur trader. He bought his furs
+from the Indians, and from the boatmen plying on the Hudson River. These
+he sold at a small profit to larger dealers, until he had accumulated a
+considerable sum for one in his position. Believing that he could find a
+better market in Europe than in America, he had embarked all his capital
+in skins, which he had taken to England and sold at a heavy advance. The
+proceeds he had invested in toys and trinkets valued by the savages, and
+was now on his way back with them, intending to go into the wilderness
+himself and purchase an additional stock of furs from the Indians. He
+recommended Astor to enter upon the same business; gave him valuable
+information as to the value of peltries in America and in England; told
+him the best way of buying, packing, preserving, and shipping the skins,
+and gave him the names of the leading furriers in New York, Montreal,
+and London. Astor was deeply impressed with the views of his friend, but
+he could not see his own way clear to such a success, as he had no
+capital. His friend assured him that capital was unnecessary if he was
+willing to begin in an humble way. He could buy valuable furs on the
+wharves of New York for toys and trinkets, and even for cakes, from the
+Indians who visited the city, and these he could sell at an advance to
+the New York dealers. He advised the young man, however, not to be
+satisfied with the American market, but to work for a position which
+would enable him to send his furs to England, where they would bring
+four or five times as much as in this country. Astor carefully treasured
+up all that his friend said to him, and quietly resolved that he would
+lose no time in entering upon this business, which seemed to promise so
+much.
+
+The two friends traveled together from Baltimore to New York, where they
+were warmly received by Aster's brother, Henry, who had succeeded in
+laying the foundation of a prosperous business as a butcher, in which he
+afterward made a large fortune. Both brothers were men of business
+habits, and on the very first evening after the arrival of the new-comer
+they began to discuss plans for his future. Astor's friend stated all
+the advantages of the fur trade, and convinced Henry Astor that it was a
+fine field for the energies of his brother; and it was agreed that it
+would be best for the young man to seek employment in the service of
+some furrier in the city, in order that he might thoroughly learn the
+business, and familiarize himself with the country and its customs. To
+his great delight, young Astor learned that, so far from being compelled
+to pay his employer for learning him the business, as in Europe, he
+would be certain here to receive his board and nominal wages from the
+first. The next day the three started out, and succeeded in obtaining a
+situation for the young man in the store of Mr. Robert Bowne, a Quaker,
+and a merchant of long experience in the business, as well as a most
+estimable man. He is said to have engaged Astor at two dollars per week
+and his board.
+
+Astor was at once set to work by his employer to beat furs, this method
+of treating them being required to prevent the moths from lodging in and
+destroying them. From the first he applied himself to the task of
+learning the business. He bent all the powers of his remarkable mind to
+acquiring an intimate knowledge of furs, and of fur-bearing animals, and
+their haunts and habits. His opportunities for doing so were very good,
+as many of the skins were sold over Bowne's counters by the hunters who
+had taken them. These men he questioned with a minuteness that
+astonished them, and the result was that in a few years he was as
+thoroughly familiar with the animals, their habits, their country, and
+the mode of taking them, as many of the trappers themselves. He is said
+to have been in his prime the best judge of furs in America. He
+appreciated the fact that no man can succeed in any business or
+profession without fully understanding it, and he was too much
+determined upon success to be satisfied with a superficial knowledge. He
+was resolved that there should be no detail in the business, however
+minute, with which he was unfamiliar, and he toiled patiently to acquire
+information which most salesmen in his place would have esteemed
+trivial. Nothing was trivial with him, however, and it is remarkable
+that he never embarked in any scheme until he had mastered its most
+trifling details. Few men have ever shown a deeper and more far-reaching
+knowledge of their profession and the issues involved in it than he. He
+fully understood that his knowledge would give him a power which a man
+of less information could not obtain, and he never failed to use that
+knowledge as a power. His instructions to his subordinates were always
+drawn up with the strictest regard to details, and show not only how
+thoroughly he had mastered the subject before him, but also how much
+importance he attached to the conscientious fulfillment of a
+well-digested plan of operations. He recognized no such thing as luck.
+Every thing with him was the result of a deliberate plan based upon
+knowledge. In this respect his career affords one of the best models to
+be found in our history.
+
+[Illustration: ASTOR'S FIRST TRIP FOR FURS.]
+
+Astor's employer was not insensible to his merits, and soon promoted him
+to a better place. In a little while the latter intrusted him with the
+buying of the furs from the men who brought them to the store, and he
+gave such satisfaction to his employer that he was rewarded with a still
+more confidential post. Montreal was at that time the chief fur depot of
+the country, and it was the custom of Mr. Bowne to make an annual
+journey to that city for the purpose of replenishing his stock. The
+journey was long and fatiguing, and as soon as the old gentleman found
+that he could intrust the mission to his clerk, he sent him in his
+place. Ascending the Hudson to Albany, Astor, with a pack on his back,
+struck out across the country, which was then almost unsettled, to Lake
+George, up which he passed into Lake Champlain. Sailing to the head of
+the lake, he made his way to Montreal. Then returning in the same way,
+he employed Indians to transport his furs from Lake George to Albany,
+and dropped down the Hudson in the way he had come. Mr. Bowne was
+delighted with the success of his clerk, who proved more than a match
+for the shrewd Indians in his bargains. It was doubtless here that Mr.
+Astor obtained that facility in "driving a hard bargain" for which he
+was afterwards noted.
+
+As soon as Mr. Astor felt himself master of his business, he left the
+employ of Mr. Bowne, and began life on his own account. The field upon
+which he purposed entering was extensive, but it was one of which he had
+made a careful survey. Previous to the peace of 1763, the French and
+English divided the control of the fur-bearing regions of America. The
+British possessions, extending from Canada to the unexplored regions of
+the North, had been granted by a charter of Charles II. to Prince
+Rupert, and were, by virtue of that instrument, under the exclusive
+control of the Hudson Bay Company. Large quantities of furs were
+obtained in this region, and collected at the principal settlement, York
+Factory, from which they were shipped to England.
+
+South of this region was Canada, then possessed by the French, who
+carried on an extensive trade with the Indians, who brought their furs
+down to Montreal in their birch canoes. The French finally settled in
+the country of the savages, and married among the natives,
+thenceforward entirely devoting themselves to the life of the trapper
+and hunter. These marriages produced a race of half-breeds who were
+especially successful in securing furs. The cession of Canada to England
+was a severe blow to the French traders, as it opened the country to the
+enterprise of the English, a few of whom were quick to avail themselves
+of its advantages. The French and Indians at first regarded them with
+hostility, but gradually became reconciled to their presence.
+
+Under the French rule the savages had not been furnished with liquors,
+but the English soon sold whisky and rum in great quantities to them,
+receiving the best furs in return. As a consequence, intemperance spread
+rapidly among the savages, and threatened to put an end to their
+industry as gatherers of furs. To check the evil results of this
+irregular trading, a company was established in 1785, called the
+North-west Company. It was managed by twelve partners, some of whom
+resided at Montreal, and others at the trading posts in the interior.
+Their chief station was at Fort William, on Lake Superior. Here, at
+stated times, the agents would come up from Montreal and hold a
+consultation for the purchase of furs. These meetings always drew crowds
+of French and Indian trappers, boatmen, and others, who brought in large
+quantities of skins.
+
+A few years later a third company was organized, with its principal
+station at Michilimackinac, near Lake Huron. It was called the Mackinaw
+Company, and its field of operations was the country bordering Lake
+Superior, and that lying between the Mississippi and the Rocky
+Mountains. The company was English, but did not hesitate to operate in
+American territory, so little regard did Great Britain pay to the rights
+of the infant republic.
+
+"Although peace had been concluded, the frontier forts had not been
+given up. Oswego, Niagara, Detroit, Michilimackinac, and other posts
+were still in the hands of the English. The Indian tribes continued
+hostile, being under English influence. No company had as yet been
+formed in the United States. Several French houses at St. Louis traded
+with the Indians, but it was not until 1807 that an association of
+twelve partners, with a capital of forty thousand dollars, was formed at
+St. Louis, under the name of the Missouri Company.
+
+"The trade, it will thus be seen, was almost wholly in the hands of the
+English companies--the Hudson's Bay Company in the north, the North-west
+Company in the Canadas, the Mackinaw Company in the territories of the
+United States--and the few American traders in the field had to rely on
+their individual resources, with no aid from a Government too feeble in
+its infancy to do more than establish a few Indian agencies, and without
+constitutional power to confer charter privileges."
+
+The voyage of Captain Cook had brought to the notice of the fur dealers
+of the world the sea otter of the northern Pacific, and the announcement
+made upon the return of the expedition drew large numbers of adventurers
+to the west coast of America, in search of the valuable skins of these
+animals. In 1792, there were twenty-one vessels, principally American,
+on the coast.
+
+It was into this field, already occupied by powerful and hostile
+corporations, that the young German entered. He was perfectly aware of
+the opposition his efforts would encounter from them, but he was not
+dismayed. He began business in 1786, in a small store in Water Street,
+which he furnished with a few toys and notions suited to the tastes of
+the Indians who had skins to sell. His entire capital consisted of only
+a few hundred dollars, a portion of which was loaned him by his
+brother. He had no assistants. He did all his own work. He bought his
+skins, cured, beat, and sold them himself.
+
+Several times during the year he made journeys on foot through western
+New York, buying skins from the settlers, farmers, trappers, savages,
+wherever he could find them. He tramped over nearly the entire State in
+this way, and is said to have had a better knowledge of its geography
+and topography than any man living.
+
+"He used to boast, late in life, when the Erie Canal had called into
+being a line of thriving towns through the center of the State, that he
+had himself, in his numberless tramps, designated the sites of those
+towns, and predicted that one day they would be the centers of business
+and population. Particularly he noted the spots where Rochester and
+Buffalo now stand, one having a harbor on Lake Erie and the other upon
+Lake Ontario. He predicted that those places would one day be large and
+prosperous cities; and that prediction he made when there was scarcely a
+settlement at Buffalo, and only wigwams on the site of Rochester."
+
+During these tramps his business in the city was managed by a partner,
+with whom he was finally compelled to associate himself.
+
+As soon as he had collected a certain number of bales of skins he
+shipped them to London, and took a steerage passage in the vessel which
+conveyed them. He sold his skins in that city at a fine profit, and
+succeeded in forming business connections which enabled him afterward to
+ship his goods direct to London, and draw regularly upon the houses to
+which they were consigned. He also made an arrangement with the house of
+Astor & Broadwood, in which his brother was a partner, by which he
+became the agent in New York for the sale of their musical instruments,
+a branch of his business which became quite profitable to him. He is
+said to have been the first man in New York who kept a regular stock of
+musical instruments on hand.
+
+Slowly, and by unremitting industry, Mr. Astor succeeded in building up
+a certain business. His personal journeys made him acquainted with the
+trappers, and enabled him to win their good will. The savages sold their
+skins to him readily, and he found a steady market and a growing demand
+for his commodities in the Old World.
+
+It was about this time that he married Miss Sarah Todd, of New York. She
+was a connection of the Brevoort family, and was of better social
+position than her husband. She entered heartily into his business, doing
+much of the buying and beating of the furs herself. She was a true
+helpmate to him, and long after he was a millionaire, he used to boast
+of her skill in judging furs and conducting business operations.
+
+In 1794, Jay's treaty placed the frontier forts in the hands of the
+Americans, and thus increased the opportunities of our own traders to
+extend their business. It was of the greatest service to Mr. Astor. It
+enabled him to enlarge the field of his operations, and, at the same
+time, to send his agents on the long journeys which he formerly made,
+while he himself remained in New York to direct his business; which by
+this time had grown to considerable proportions.
+
+He was now on the road to wealth. He had scores of trappers and hunters
+working for him in the great wilderness, and his agents were kept busy
+buying and shipping the skins to New York. As soon as he was able to do
+so he purchased a ship, in which he sent his furs to London,
+occasionally making a voyage thither himself. He manifested the greatest
+interest in the markets of the Old World, especially in those of Asia,
+and informed himself so accurately concerning them that he was always
+enabled to furnish his captains with instructions covering the most
+minute detail of their transactions in those markets; and it is said
+that he was never unsuccessful in his ventures there, except when his
+instructions were disobeyed.
+
+In this again, as in the fur trade, we see him patiently acquiring
+knowledge of the eastern trade before venturing to engage in it. His
+first step was always to fully comprehend his task, to examine it from
+every possible point of view, so that he should be prepared to encounter
+any sudden reverse, or ready to take advantage of good fortune. Here lay
+the secret of his success--that he never embarked in an enterprise until
+he had learned how to use it to advantage.
+
+Under his skillful management his business grew rapidly; but he avoided
+speculation, and confined himself to legitimate commerce. He was plain
+and simple in his habits, carrying this trait to an extreme long after
+economy had ceased to be necessary to him. He worked hard, indulged in
+no pleasures except horseback exercise and the theater, of both which he
+was very fond. It was only after he had amassed a large fortune that he
+ever left his business before the close of the day. Then he would leave
+his counting-room at two in the afternoon, and, partaking of an early
+dinner, would pass the rest of the day in riding about the island. So
+plain was his style of living that, before he became generally known as
+a wealthy man, a bank clerk once superciliously informed him that his
+indorsement of a note would not be sufficient, as it was not likely he
+would be able to pay it in case the bank should be forced to call upon
+him.
+
+"Indeed," said Mr. Astor, "how much do you suppose I am worth?"
+
+The clerk named a moderate amount, at which the merchant smiled
+quietly.
+
+"Would the indorsement of Mr. ----, or Mr. ----, be sufficient?" asked
+Mr. Astor, naming several well-known merchants who lived in great style.
+
+"Entirely sufficient," was the reply. "Each one of them is known to be
+wealthy."
+
+"How much do you think each is worth?"
+
+The clerk named large sums in connection with each of the gentlemen.
+
+"Well, my friend," said the merchant, "I am worth more than any of them.
+I will not tell you how much I am worth, but it is more than any sum you
+have named."
+
+The clerk looked at him in surprise, and then said, bluntly, "Then you
+are a greater fool than I took you for, to work as hard as you do."
+
+Mr. Astor was very fond of telling this story, which he regarded as one
+of the best jokes of the day.
+
+All this time Mr. Astor had lived over his store, but in 1800, after he
+had been in business fifteen years, he moved his dwelling to 223
+Broadway, on the site of the Astor House of to-day. He lived here, with
+one removal, for upwards of twenty-five years. The house was plain and
+simple, but he was satisfied with it. He was now worth a quarter of a
+million dollars, and his business was growing rapidly. The fur trade was
+exceedingly profitable. A beaver skin could be bought from the trappers
+in western New York for one dollar and sold in London for six dollars
+and a quarter. By investing this amount in English manufactures, the six
+dollars and a quarter received for the skin could be made to produce ten
+dollars paid for the English goods in New York.
+
+The Chinese trade was also very profitable. China was an excellent
+market for furs. They brought high prices, and the proceeds could always
+be invested in teas and silks, which sold well in New York. His profit
+on a voyage would sometimes reach seventy thousand dollars, and the
+average gain on a lucky venture of this kind was thirty thousand
+dollars. The high prices produced by the war of 1812-15 were also in Mr.
+Astor's favor. His ships were all remarkably lucky in escaping capture
+by the enemy, and he was almost the only merchant who had a cargo of tea
+in the market. Tea having reached double its usual price, he was enabled
+to reap immense profits from his ventures.
+
+Mr. Francis, in his _Old Merchants of New York_, makes the following
+revelation of the manner in which Mr. Astor found it possible to carry
+on such an immense business. He says:
+
+"A house that could raise money enough, thirty years ago, to send
+$260,000 in specie, could soon have an uncommon capital; and this was
+the working of the old system. The Griswolds owned the ship Panama. They
+started her from New York in the month of May, with a cargo of perhaps
+$30,000 worth of ginseng, spelter, lead, iron, etc., and $170,000 in
+Spanish dollars. The ship goes on the voyage, reaches Whampoa in safety
+(a few miles below Canton). Her supercargo, in two months, has her
+loaded with tea, some chinaware, a great deal of cassia, or false
+cinnamon, and a few other articles. Suppose the cargo mainly tea,
+costing about thirty-seven cents (at that time) per pound on the
+average.
+
+"The duty was enormous in those days. It was twice the cost of the tea,
+at least; so that a cargo of $200,000, when it had paid duty of
+seventy-five cents per pound (which would be $400,000), amounted to
+$600,000. The profit was at least fifty per cent, on the original cost,
+or $100,000, and would make the cargo worth $700,000.
+
+"The cargo of teas would be sold almost on arrival (say eleven or
+twelve months after the ship left New York in May), to wholesale
+grocers, for their notes at four and six months--say for $700,000. In
+those years there was _credit given by the United States_ of nine,
+twelve, and eighteen months! So that the East India or Canton merchant,
+after his ship had made one voyage, had the use of Government capital to
+the extent of $400,000, on the ordinary cargo of a China ship.
+
+"No sooner had the ship Panama arrived (or any of the regular East
+Indiamen), than her cargo would be exchanged for grocers' notes for
+$700,000. These notes could be turned into specie very easily, and the
+owner had only to pay his bonds for duty at nine, twelve, and eighteen
+months, giving him time actually to send two more ships, with $200,000
+each, to Canton, and have them back again in New York before the bonds
+on the first cargo were due.
+
+"John Jacob Astor, at one period of his life, had several vessels
+operating in this way. They would go to the Pacific, and carry furs from
+thence to Canton. These would be sold at large profits. Then the cargoes
+of tea to New York would pay enormous duties, which Astor did not have
+to pay to the United States for a year and a half. His tea cargoes would
+be sold for good four and six months paper, or perhaps cash; so that,
+for eighteen or twenty years, John Jacob Astor had what was actually a
+free-of-interest loan from Government of over _five millions_ of
+dollars."
+
+It is estimated that Mr. Astor made about two millions of dollars by his
+trade in furs and teas. The bulk of his immense fortune was made by
+investments in real estate. His estate was estimated at twenty millions
+of dollars at the time of his death, and has now increased to over forty
+millions. He had a firm faith in the magnificent future of New York as
+the greatest city of the continent, and as fast as his gains from his
+business came in, they were regularly invested in real estate. A part
+was expended in leasing for a long period property which the owners
+would not sell, and the rest in buying property in fee simple. These
+leases, some of which have but recently expired, were extremely
+profitable. In his purchases of land Mr. Astor was very fortunate. He
+pursued a regular system in making them. Whenever a favorable purchase
+could be made in the heart of the city, he availed himself of the
+opportunity, but as a rule he bought his lands in what was then the
+suburb of the city, and which few besides himself expected to see built
+up during their lifetime. His sagacity and foresight have been more than
+justified by the course of events. His estate now lies principally in
+the heart of New York, and has yielded an increase greater even than he
+had ventured to hope for. Seventy hundred and twenty houses are said to
+figure on the rent roll of the Astor estate at present, and besides
+these are a number of lots not yet built upon, but which are every day
+increasing in value. "When Mr. Astor bought Richmond Hill, the estate of
+Aaron Burr, he gave one thousand dollars an acre for the hundred and
+sixty acres. Twelve years later, the land was valued at fifteen hundred
+dollars per lot."
+
+In 1810, he sold a lot near Wall Street for eight thousand dollars. The
+price was so low that a purchaser for cash was found at once, and this
+gentleman, after the sale, expressed his surprise that Mr. Astor should
+ask only eight thousand for a lot which in a few years would sell for
+twelve thousand.
+
+"That is true," said Mr. Astor, "but see what I intend doing with these
+eight thousand dollars. I shall buy eighty lots above Canal Street, and
+by the time your one lot is worth twelve thousand dollars, my eighty
+lots will be worth eighty thousand dollars."
+
+His expectations were realized.
+
+During the war of the Revolution, Roger Morris and his wife, Mary, of
+Putnam County, were obliged to flee from the country to England for
+adhering to the cause of King George, and, being attainted by the
+authorities as public enemies, their immense estate, consisting of
+fifty-one thousand one hundred and two acres, was seized by the State of
+New York, and sold in small parcels to farmers, who believed the title
+thus acquired valid. In 1809, there were upwards of seven hundred
+families residing on this land. Mr. Astor, having learned that Roger and
+Mary Morris possessed only a life interest in their property, and having
+ascertained to his satisfaction that the State could not confiscate the
+rights of the heirs, purchased their claim, which was good not only for
+the land, but for all the improvements that had been put upon it. He
+paid twenty thousand pounds sterling for it. A few years previous to the
+death of Mrs. Morris, who survived her husband some years, Mr. Astor
+presented his claim. The occupants of the land were thunderstruck, but
+the right was on his side. The State of New York had simply robbed the
+heirs of their rights. There was no weak point in the claim. Having
+given defective titles to the farmers, the State was of course
+responsible for the claim; and upon finding out their mistake, the
+authorities asked Mr. Astor to name the sum for which he would be
+willing to compromise. The lands were valued at six hundred and
+sixty-seven thousand dollars, but Mr. Astor expressed his willingness to
+sell for three hundred thousand dollars. His offer was refused. In 1819,
+a second proposition was made to Mr. Astor by the Legislature of the
+State. He replied: "In 1813 or 1814 a similar proposition was made to me
+by the commissioners then appointed by the Honorable the Legislature of
+this State when I offered to compromise for the sum of three hundred
+thousand dollars, which, considering the value of the property in
+question, was thought very reasonable, and, at the present period, when
+the life of Mrs. Morris is, according to calculation, worth little or
+nothing, she being near eighty-six years of age, and the property more
+valuable than it was in 1813. I am still willing to receive the amount
+which I then stated, with interest on the same, payable in money or
+stock, bearing an interest of -- per cent., payable quarterly. The stock
+may be made payable at such periods as the Honorable the Legislature may
+deem proper. This offer will, I trust, be considered as liberal, and as
+a proof of my willingness to compromise on terms which are reasonable,
+considering the value of the property, the price which it cost me, and
+the inconvenience of having so long _lain out_ of my money, which, if
+employed in commercial operations, would most likely have produced
+better profits."
+
+This offer was not accepted by the Legislature, and the cause was
+delayed until 1827, when it was brought before the courts. It was argued
+by such men as Daniel Webster and Martin Van Buren, on the part of the
+State, and by Thomas Addis Emmett, Ogden, and others for Astor. The
+State had no case, and the matter was decided in Astor's favor. Then the
+State consented to compromise. The famous Astor stock, which paid that
+gentleman about five hundred thousand dollars, was issued, and the
+titles of the possessors of the lands confirmed.
+
+The most important of all of Mr. Astor's undertakings was his effort at
+founding the settlement of Astoria, on the coast of Oregon. This
+enterprise has been made so familiar to the majority of readers by the
+pen of Washington Irving, that I can only refer to it here. "His
+design," says a writer of thirteen years ago, "was to organize and
+control the fur trade from the lakes to the Pacific, by establishing
+trading posts along the Missouri and Columbia to its mouth. He designed
+establishing a central depot and post at the mouth of the Columbia. He
+proposed sending regular supply-ships to the Pacific posts around the
+Horn. By these, stores were to be sent also to the Russian
+establishments. It was part of his plan, if possible, to obtain
+possession of one of the Sandwich Islands as a station, for from the
+Pacific coast he knew that the Chinese market for his peltries could be
+most conveniently reached, and thus the necessity for a long and
+circuitous voyage be avoided. Instead of bringing the furs intended for
+China to New York, they could be sent from the Pacific. By the
+supply-ships, too, the stock of goods suitable for the Indian trade
+would be kept up there, and the cargoes purchased with the proceeds of
+the furs sold in China brought back to New York. The line of posts
+across the continent would become a line of towns; emigration would
+follow, and civilization would belt the continent.
+
+"In this grand scheme, Mr. Astor was only anticipating the course of
+events which, fifty years later, we are beginning to witness. When he
+laid his plans before the Government, Mr. Jefferson, who was then
+President, 'considered as a great acquisition,' as he afterward
+expressed himself in a letter to Mr. Astor, 'the commencement of a
+settlement on the western coast of America, and looked forward with
+gratification to the time when its descendants should have spread
+themselves through the whole length of that coast, covering it with free
+and independent Americans, unconnected with us except by ties of blood
+and interest, and enjoying, like us, the rights of self-government.'
+Even Jefferson's mind, wide as it was, could not take in the idea of a
+national unity embracing both ends of the continent; but not so thought
+Astor. The merchant saw farther than the statesman. It was precisely
+this political unity which gave him hope and chance of success in his
+worldwide schemes. When the Constitution was adopted, the chief source
+of apprehension for its permanence with men like Patrick Henry, and
+other wise statesmen, was the extent of our territory. The Alleghanies,
+it was thought, had put asunder communities whom no paper constitution
+could unite. But at that early day, when Ohio was the far West, and no
+steamboat had yet gone up the Mississippi, Astor looked beyond the Ohio,
+beyond the Mississippi, and the Rocky Mountains, and saw the whole
+American territory, from ocean to ocean, the domain of one united
+nation, the seat of trade and industry. He saw lines of trading posts
+uniting the Western settlements with the Pacific; following this line of
+trading posts, he saw the columns of a peaceful emigration crossing the
+plains, crossing the mountains, descending the Columbia, and towns and
+villages taking the places of the solitary posts, and cultivated fields
+instead of the hunting-grounds of the Indian and the trapper.
+
+"No enterprise, unless it be the Atlantic telegraph, engages more deeply
+the public attention than a railroad communication with the Pacific
+coast.[A] The rapid settlement of Oregon and California, the constant
+communication by steam to the Pacific coast, render it easy now to feel
+the nearness of that region, and the oneness of the nationality which
+covers the continent. But to Astor's eye the thing was as palpable then
+as now. And yet but two or three attempts had then been made to explore
+the overland routes."
+
+It would be deeply interesting to examine the details of this fast
+scheme of colonization and trade, for it is certain that Mr. Astor was
+as anxious to do an act which, by building up the continent, should hand
+his name down to posterity as a national benefactor, as to increase his
+business; but the limits of this article forbid more than a mere glance
+at the subject.
+
+[Footnote A: The reader will bear in mind that the above extract was
+written in 1857.]
+
+A company was formed, at the head of which stood Mr. Astor, and an
+elaborate and carefully-arranged plan of operations prepared. Two
+expeditions were dispatched to the mouth of the Columbia, one by land
+and the other by sea. Many hardships were encountered, but the
+foundation of a settlement was successfully made on the Columbia. In
+spite of the war with England (1812-15), which now occurred, the
+enterprise would have been successful had Mr. Astor's positive
+instructions been obeyed. They were utterly disregarded, however, and
+his partners and agents not only betrayed him in every instance, but
+sold his property to a rival British company for a mere trifle. His
+pecuniary loss was over a million of dollars, and his disappointment
+bitter beyond expression. When the enterprise was on the point of
+failure, and while he was still chafing at the conduct of his
+treacherous subordinates, he wrote to Mr. Hunt, the most faithful of all
+his agents: "Were I on the spot, and, had the management of affairs, I
+would defy them all; but as it is, every thing depends on you and your
+friends about you. Our enterprise is grand, and deserves success, and I
+hope in God it will meet it. _If my object was merely gain of money_, I
+should say, think whether it is best to save what we can, and abandon
+the place; but the very idea is like a dagger to my heart." When the
+news of the final betrayal reached him, he wrote to the same gentleman:
+"Had our place and property been fairly captured, I should have
+preferred it; I should not feel as if I were disgraced."
+
+Mr. Astor remained in active business for fifty years. During that
+entire period he scarcely committed an error of judgment which led to a
+loss in business. He was thorough master of every thing pertaining to
+his affairs, and his strength and accuracy of judgment was remarkable.
+The particulars of his transactions were indelibly impressed upon his
+mind. His intellect was vigorous and quick, and he grasped a subject
+with a readiness which seemed like intuition. He was always careful of
+the present, but he loved to undertake enterprises which extended far
+into the future. He was a man of the utmost punctuality in all his
+habits. He rose early, and, until he was fifty-five years old, was
+always in his office before seven o'clock. His capacity for work was
+very great, so that, in spite of his heavy labors, he was always able to
+leave his office by two o'clock, while many of his associates, who
+really did less than he, were compelled to remain in their
+counting-rooms until four or five. He was noted for his unvarying
+calmness, which he doubtless owed to his German temperament. In the
+midst of disaster and loss he was cooler and more cheerful than ever. To
+those who chafed at their troubles, he would say, smilingly, "Keep
+quiet; keep cool." This was his safeguard.
+
+He was a devoted citizen of the United States, and, though he took no
+active interest in politics, was a steady supporter of the Whig party.
+Henry Clay was his personal friend, and his last donation to any
+political cause was a subscription of fifteen hundred dollars to aid the
+election of his old friend to the Presidency.
+
+About the year 1830, Mr. Astor, now the possessor of millions, began to
+withdraw from active business, confining his efforts chiefly to such
+investments as the management of his immense estate made necessary. He
+now put into execution an enterprise which he had long cherished. When a
+poor stranger in the city, he had once stopped in Broadway to notice a
+row of buildings which had just been erected, and which were considered
+the finest in the street, and had then made a vow that he would one day
+build a larger and finer house than any in Broadway. He now set to work
+to carry out the plan he had cherished ever since. He owned the entire
+block on Broadway, between Vesey and Barclay streets, with the
+exception of one house, which was the property of a Mr. Coster, a
+merchant who had amassed a large fortune and retired from business. Mr.
+Astor made him many offers for his house, but the old gentleman was
+unwilling to remove. Mr. Astor offered him the full value of his house,
+which was thirty thousand dollars, and increased the bid to forty
+thousand, but Mr. Coster was obstinate. At length Mr. Astor, in despair,
+was compelled to reveal his plan to his neighbor.
+
+"I want to build a hotel," said he. "I have got all the other lots. Now
+name your own price."
+
+Mr. Coster replied that he would sell for sixty thousand dollars if his
+wife would consent, and that Mr. Astor could see her the next morning.
+Mr. Astor was punctual to the appointment, and his offer was accepted by
+the good lady, who said to him, condescendingly, "I don't want to sell
+the house, but we are such old friends that I am willing for your sake."
+
+Mr. Astor used to remark with great glee that any one could afford to
+exhibit such condescension after receiving double the value of a piece
+of property.
+
+Having got possession of the entire block, he commenced the demolition
+of the old buildings, and on their site reared the Astor House, then the
+largest and most elegant hotel in the country. This building, when
+completed, he gave to his eldest son, William B. Astor.
+
+In 1832, Mr. Astor sailed for Europe to visit one of his daughters, who
+had married a nobleman, and remained abroad until 1835. In that year he
+was compelled to return home by the action of General Jackson with
+regard to the Bank of the United States. "He reached Havre," says Mr.
+Parton, "when the ship, on the point of sailing, had every stateroom
+engaged, but he was so anxious to get home, that the captain, who had
+commanded ships for him in former years, gave up to him his own
+stateroom. Head winds and boisterous seas kept the vessel beating about
+and tossing in the channel for many days. The great man was very sick,
+and still more alarmed. At length, being persuaded that he should not
+survive the voyage, he asked the captain to run in and set him ashore on
+the coast of England. The captain dissuaded him. The old man urged his
+request at every opportunity, and said, at last, 'I give you tousand
+dollars to put me aboard a pilot boat.' He was so vehement and
+importunate, that one day the captain, worried out of all patience,
+promised him that if he did not get out of the channel before next
+morning, he would run in and put him ashore. It happened that the wind
+changed in the afternoon and wafted the ship into the broad ocean. But
+the troubles of the sea-sick millionaire had only just begun. A heavy
+gale of some days' duration blew the vessel along the western coast of
+Ireland. Mr. Astor, now thoroughly panic-stricken, offered the captain
+ten thousand dollars if he would put him ashore anywhere on the wild and
+rocky coast of the Emerald Isle. In vain the captain remonstrated. In
+vain he reminded the old gentleman of the danger of forfeiting his
+insurance.
+
+"'Insurance!' exclaimed Astor, 'can't I insure your ship my self?'
+
+"In vain the captain mentioned the rights of the other passengers. In
+vain he described the solitary and rock-bound coast, and detailed the
+dangers and difficulties which attended its approach. Nothing would
+appease him. He said he would take all the responsibility, brave all the
+perils, endure all the consequences, only let him once more feel the
+firm ground under his feet. The gale having abated, the captain yielded
+to his entreaties, and engaged, if the other passengers would consent to
+the delay, to stand in, and put him ashore. Mr. Astor went into the
+cabin, and proceeded to write what was expected to be a draft for ten
+thousand dollars in favor of the owners of the ship on his agent in New
+York. He handed to the captain the result of his efforts. It was a paper
+covered with writing that was totally illegible.
+
+"'What is this?' asked the captain.
+
+"'A draft upon my son for ten thousand dollars,' was the reply.
+
+"'But no one can read it.'
+
+"'O yes, my son will know what it is. My hand trembles so that I can not
+write any better.'
+
+"'But,' said the captain, 'you can at least write your name. I am acting
+for the owners of the ship, and I can not risk their property for a
+piece of paper that no one can read. Let one of the gentlemen draw up a
+draft in proper form; you sign it, and I will put you ashore.'
+
+"The old gentleman would not consent to this mode of proceeding, and the
+affair was dropped."
+
+During the last twenty years of his life Mr. Astor lived in the
+retirement of his family, leaving even the greater part of the
+management of his estate to the hands of others. He was exceedingly fond
+of literary men. Irving was his friend, and Halleck his business
+manager. He died at the age of eighty-four years and eight months,
+literally from old age. He was buried in St. Thomas's Church, on
+Broadway.
+
+His immense estate was left to his children, the bulk of it being
+bequeathed to his eldest son. All of his relatives were made
+comfortable. The village of Waldorf, his native place, received a legacy
+of fifty thousand dollars for the benefit of its poor, and an amount in
+land and funds equal to four hundred thousand dollars was left to
+certain trustees to establish the Astor Library in the city of New York.
+Besides these, several charitable and benevolent associations received
+handsome donations from him.
+
+His career has been related in these pages as an example to those who
+are seeking to rise in legitimate commerce. It is the Best instance on
+record of the facility with which success may be won by patient and
+intelligent industry. In his capacity for grasping and carrying out an
+enterprise, in his prudent and economical management of his business,
+in his tact, courage, sagacity, Mr. Astor's example is one which will
+lead many to success, and none to injury.
+
+He was a thoroughly upright man, his transactions were rigidly honest;
+but as a man, candor compels the acknowledgment that he was not a safe
+or admirable model. He was utterly devoid of generosity. Liberal to an
+extreme with his own family, he was close and hard with others. He paid
+small wages to his employés and never gave more than the man bargained
+for, no matter what extra service might be rendered. He carried his
+economy to a degree of meanness painful to contemplate. At his death,
+out of his vast estate, he left to his friend and faithful manager an
+annuity of only two hundred dollars, which his son increased to fifteen
+hundred.
+
+One of his captains once succeeded in saving for him property in China
+to the amount of seven hundred thousand dollars, which had become
+jeopardized by the sudden death of the agent in charge of it. This
+service was purely voluntary, and was one which required the greatest
+skill, determination, and courage on the part of the captain, and Astor
+acknowledged it, frequently saying: "If you had not done just as you
+did, I should never have seen one dollar of my money; no, not one dollar
+of it." This was the only acknowledgment he made, however. He was worth
+ten millions of dollars, and the captain had only his pay--twelve
+hundred dollars a year--and a family. At his father's death Mr. William
+B. Astor sent a considerable sum to the old seaman in return for this
+service.
+
+"We have all heard much of the closeness, or rather the meanness, of
+this remarkable man. Truth compels us to admit that he was not generous,
+except to his own kindred. His liberality began and ended in his own
+family. Very seldom during his lifetime did he willingly do a generous
+act, outside of the little circle of his relations and descendants. To
+get all he could, and to keep nearly all that he got--those were the
+laws of his being.... He enjoyed keenly the consciousness, the feeling,
+of being rich. The roll-book of his possessions was his Bible. He
+scanned it fondly, and saw, with quiet but deep delight, the catalogue
+of his property lengthening from month to month. The love of
+accumulation grew with his years, until it ruled him like a tyrant. If
+at fifty he possessed his millions, at sixty-five his millions possessed
+him. Only to his own children and to their children was he liberal; and
+his liberality to them was all arranged with a view to keeping his
+estate in the family, and to cause it at every moment to tend toward a
+final consolidation in one enormous mass."
+
+This is the estimate of his character formed by Mr. James Parton. His
+friend Dr. Coggswell presents him in quite a different light. He says:
+
+"Mr. Astor lived to the good old age of four score and four years and
+eight months. For some years previous to his death, which happened March
+29, 1848, his manly form was bowed down by age, and his bodily strength
+greatly enfeebled, but his mind retained much of its original Vigor and
+brightness. Considering his extraordinary activity until a late period
+of his life, he submitted to the helplessness of age with uncommon
+resignation. When his impaired eye-sight no longer permitted him to
+read, his principal relief from the wearisomeness of unoccupied time was
+in the society of his friends and near relatives. All who knew him well
+were strongly attached to him, and none but those who were ignorant of
+his true character believed him unamiable and repulsive.
+
+"His smile was peculiarly benignant and expressive of genuine kindness
+of heart, and his whole manner cordial and courteous to every one
+entitled to his respect. There was something so impressive in his
+appearance, no one could stand before him without feeling that he was in
+the presence of a superior intelligence. His deep, sunken eye, beneath
+his overarched brow, denoted the prophetic--it might almost be said the
+inspired--mind within. Although he lived many years beyond the age when
+the grasshopper is a burden, and was the victim of much suffering, he
+did not murmur, nor did he become unreasonable and peevish. He was not
+wont to talk much on the subject of religion, or freely communicate his
+views in relation to the life beyond the grave; but it can not be
+doubted that such tranquility as he exhibited in his near approach to
+it must have been derived from 'that peace which the world can neither
+give nor take away,'"
+
+Perhaps a medium between Mr. Parton's bitterness and Dr. Coggswell's
+enthusiasm will be as correct an estimate of his personal character as
+can be formed. It is a singular fact that Mr. Astor managed, in spite of
+the closeness which marked his operations, in spite of the small wages
+he paid, to inspire his employés with a zeal in his service that made
+them willing to undertake any thing, to endure any amount of labor, for
+him.
+
+"He once lost seventy thousand dollars by committing a piece of petty
+injustice toward his best captain. This gallant sailor, being notified
+by an insurance office of the necessity of having a chronometer on
+board his ship, spoke to Mr. Astor on the subject, who advised the
+captain to buy one.
+
+"'But,' said the captain, 'I have no five hundred dollars to spare for
+such a purpose; the chronometer should belong to the ship.'
+
+"'Well,' said the merchant, 'you need not pay for it now; pay for it at
+your convenience,'
+
+"The captain still objecting, Astor, after a prolonged higgling,
+authorized him to buy a chronometer and charge it to the ship's account,
+which was done.
+
+"Sailing day was at hand. The ship was hauled into the stream. The
+captain, as is the custom, handed in his account. Astor, subjecting it
+to his usual close scrutiny, observed the novel item of five hundred
+dollars for the chronometer. He objected, averring that it was
+understood between them that the captain was to pay for the instrument.
+The worthy sailor recalled the conversation, and firmly held to his
+recollection of it. Astor insisting on his own view of the matter, the
+captain was so profoundly disgusted that, important as the command of
+the ship was to him, he resigned his post. Another captain was soon
+found, and the ship sailed for China.
+
+"Another house, which was then engaged in the China trade, knowing the
+worth of this 'king of captains,' as Astor himself used to style him,
+bought him a ship and dispatched him to Canton two months after the
+departure of Astor's vessel. Our captain, put upon his mettle, employed
+all his skill to accelerate the speed of his ship, and had such success
+that he reached New York, with a full cargo of tea, just seven days
+after the arrival of Mr. Astor's ship. Astor, not expecting another ship
+for months, and therefore sure of monopolizing the market, had not yet
+broken bulk, nor even taken off the hatchways. Our captain arrived on a
+Saturday. Advertisements and handbills were immediately issued, and on
+the Wednesday morning following, as the custom then was, the auction
+sale of the tea began on the wharf--two barrels of punch contributing to
+the _eclat_ and hilarity of the occasion. The cargo was sold to good
+advantage, and the market was glutted. Astor lost in consequence the
+entire profits of the voyage, not less than the sum previously named.
+Meeting the captain some time after in Broadway, he said:
+
+"'I had better have paid for that chronometer of yours,'"
+
+Yet he could do a kind act when he was in the humor. When he was poor
+and struggling for fortune, he had a friend in the city named Pell, a
+coachmaker. As he advanced in the world he lost sight of his friend. One
+day a young man called on him to ask if he would sell one of his leases
+which he (the visitor) then held. He replied promptly and decidedly that
+he would not sell.
+
+"But what is your name?" he asked.
+
+"It is Pell," was the reply.
+
+"Pell--Pell--" said the old man, hesitating a moment, "I knew a man by
+that name once; he was a dear friend of mine, but I have not seen him
+for years."
+
+"That man," said the visitor, "was my father."
+
+"Indeed," exclaimed the old man, warmly; "your father? Why, he used to
+give me rides in his coaches. How I should like to see him."
+
+Then pausing a moment, and smiling as he recalled the past to his mind,
+he said:
+
+"You shall have the lease, young man. Go home, have the papers drawn,
+come here at eleven o'clock on Thursday, and I'll sign them. But don't
+put in any consideration."
+
+The engagement was kept punctually by both parties.
+
+"Have you got the papers?" asked the merchant. "Did you put in the
+consideration? Well, let it be one hundred dollars. Have you got the
+money about you? Well, no matter, Bruce will keep the lease till you
+come and pay. I've given you two thousand dollars, young man. Don't you
+buy any more, for I sha'n't do it again. You tell your father that I
+remember him, and that I have given you two thousand dollars."
+
+Mr. Astor dearly liked a joke, and occasionally indulged in a sly bit of
+humor himself. On one occasion a committee called upon him to solicit a
+donation for some charitable object. The old man took the subscription
+list, and, after examining it, signed it and gave the committee a check
+for fifty dollars. They had expected much more, and one of them ventured
+to say:
+
+"We did hope for more, Mr. Astor. Your son gave us a hundred dollars."
+
+"Ah!" replied the old man, dryly, "William has a rich father. Mine was
+very poor."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+ALEXANDER T. STEWART.
+
+
+In the year 1818, a European vessel anchored in the harbor of New York,
+after a long and weary voyage from the Old World. She brought many
+passengers to the young metropolis, the majority of whom came with the
+intention of seeking fortunes in this land of promise.
+
+Among them was a young Irishman who had left his home in his native land
+to seek in America the means of bettering his condition. This was
+ALEXANDER T. STEWART. He was the son of Scotch-Irish parents, and was
+born in Belfast in 1802. Being only three years old when his father
+died, his grandfather took charge of him, and proved a kind and
+judicious guardian. As he was designed for the ministry by his relative,
+and as his own tastes inclined him to that profession, he was given a
+good common school education, and placed at college, where he made
+favorable progress in his class. He was particularly successful in the
+classics, and is said to retain his relish for them at the present day.
+
+During his second term his grandfather died, and he was by this event
+obliged to leave college. Abandoning the idea of entering the ministry,
+he embarked for America, determined to make a fortune in the New World.
+He came sufficiently supplied with ready money to insure him against
+immediate want, and with letters of introduction which at once secured
+him an excellent social position.
+
+After trying in vain for some time to secure employment in a business
+house, he obtained a position as assistant in a commercial school. This
+he soon resigned for a similar place in a more celebrated school. His
+salary here was $300, which was considered ample compensation in those
+days.
+
+Not wishing to continue in this career, however, he opened a small
+retail dry goods store in New York, and began business on a humble
+scale. Here he remained until the age of twenty-one, manifesting no
+extraordinary business capacity, and in no way distinguished from the
+many small dealers around him. Upon reaching his majority he returned to
+Ireland, to look after the inheritance left him by his grandfather. The
+amount which thus came to him was nearly one thousand pounds, and the
+greater part of this he invested in "insertions" and "scollop
+trimmings," which he shipped to America by the vessel in which he
+returned. He rented a little store, on his return, at 283 Broadway, and
+there displayed his stock, which met with a ready sale at a fair profit.
+
+Without mercantile experience, and possessing little advantage, save his
+own Scotch-Irish energy and courage, Mr. Stewart started boldly on what
+proved the road to fortune. No young merchant ever worked harder than
+he. From fourteen to eighteen hours each day were given to his business.
+He was his own book-keeper, salesman, and porter. He could not afford to
+employ help. Credit was hard to obtain in those days, and young
+merchants were not favorites with those who had such favors to bestow.
+Mr. Stewart was one of the least favored, inasmuch as he was almost a
+total stranger to the business community in which he lived. He kept a
+small stock of goods on hand, which he purchased for cash chiefly at
+the auction sales. He was a regular attendant at these sales, and his
+purchases were invariably "sample lots"--that is, collections of small
+quantities of various articles thrown together in confusion, and sold in
+heaps for what they would bring. He had these purchases conveyed to his
+store, and after the business of the day was over, he and his wife would
+take these "sample lots," and by carefully assorting them, bring order
+out of the confusion. Every article was patiently gone over. Gloves were
+redressed and smoothed out, laces pressed free from the creases which
+careless bidders had twisted into them, and hose made to look as fresh
+as if they had never been handled. Each article being good in itself,
+was thus restored to its original excellence. The goods were then
+arranged in their proper places on the shelves of the store, and by
+being offered at a lower price than that charged by retail dealers
+elsewhere in the city, met with a ready sale. Even at this low price the
+profit was great, since they had been purchased for a mere trifle. For
+six years Mr. Stewart continued to conduct his business in this way,
+acquiring every day a larger and more profitable trade. Here he laid
+down those principles of business and personal integrity from which he
+has never departed, and which have led-him to the honorable position he
+now holds.
+
+"His first rule was _honesty_ between seller and buyer. His career is a
+perfect exemplification of Poor Richard's maxim: 'Honesty is the best
+policy,' and of the poet's declaration: 'Nothing can need a lie,' His
+interest consorted with his inclination, his policy with his principles,
+and the business with the man, when he determined that the truth should
+be told over his counter, and that no misrepresentation of his goods
+should be made. He never asked, he never would suffer, a clerk to
+misrepresent the quality of his merchandise. Clerks who had been
+educated at other stores to cheat customers, and then to laugh off the
+transaction as 'cuteness,' or defend it as 'diamond cut diamond,' found
+no such slipshod morality at Stewart's little store, and learned
+frankness and fairness in representation at the peril of dismissal.
+Their employer asked no gain from deceit in trade. On his part, too, in
+buying, he rarely gave a seller a second opportunity to misrepresent
+goods to him.
+
+"A second innovation of the young dry goods dealer was selling at _one
+price_--a custom which has also lasted without interruption, and which
+has spread to all the great houses. He fixed his price, after careful
+consideration, at what he thought the goods could and would bring, and
+would not deviate from it for any haggling, or to suit individual cases.
+Of course, he followed the fluctuations of the market, and marked his
+goods up or down in accordance with it; but no difference in the price
+was made to different people. Perhaps those who had some art in 'beating
+down' prices were offended, but people in general were pleased.
+
+"The third principle he adopted was that of _cash on delivery_. It is
+said that his own early experience of buying on credit, and selling on
+credit, drove him to this rule.
+
+"A fourth principle with him was to conduct business as business--not as
+sentiment. His aim was honorable profit, and he had no purpose of
+confusing it by extraneous considerations."
+
+While still engaged in his first struggles in his little store, Mr.
+Stewart found himself called on to make arrangements to pay a note which
+would soon become due. It was for a considerable sum, and he had neither
+the money nor the means of borrowing it. It was a time when the
+mercantile community of New York regarded a failure to pay a note as a
+crime, and when such a failure was sure to bring ruin to any new man.
+Mr. Stewart knew this, and felt that he must act with greater resolution
+and daring than he had ever before exhibited, if he would save himself
+from dishonor. To meet the crisis he adopted a bold and skillful
+maneuver. He marked down every article in his store far below the
+wholesale price. This done, he had a number of handbills printed,
+announcing that he would sell off his entire stock of goods below cost,
+within a given time. He scattered these handbills broadcast through the
+city, and it was not long before purchasers began to flock to his store
+to secure the great bargains which his advertisements offered them. His
+terms were "cash," and he had little difficulty in selling. Purchasers
+found that they thus secured the best goods in the market at a lower
+figure than they had ever been offered before in New York, and each one
+was prompt to advise relatives and friends to avail themselves of the
+favorable opportunity. Customers were plentiful; the little Broadway
+store was thronged all day, and long before the expiration of the period
+he had fixed for the duration of his sales, Mr. Stewart found his
+shelves empty and his treasury full. He paid his note with a part of the
+money he had thus received, and with the rest laid in a fresh stock of
+goods. He was fortunate in his purchases at this time, for, as the
+market was extremely dull and ready money scarce, he, by paying cash,
+bought his goods at very low prices.
+
+The energy, industry, patience, and business tact displayed by Mr.
+Stewart during these first years of his commercial life brought him
+their sure reward, and in 1828, just six years after commencing
+business, he found his little store too small and humble for the large
+and fashionable trade which had come to him. Three new stores had just
+been erected on Broadway, between Chambers and Warren Streets, and he
+leased the smallest of these and moved into it. It was a modest
+building, only three stories high and but thirty feet deep, but it was a
+great improvement on his original place. He was enabled to fill it with
+a larger and more attractive stock of goods, and his business was
+greatly benefited by the change. He remained in this store for four
+years, and in 1832 removed to a two-story building located on Broadway,
+between Murray and Warren Streets. Soon after occupying it, he was
+compelled, by the growth of his business, to add twenty feet to the
+depth of the store and a third story to the building. A year or two
+later a fourth story was added, and in 1837 a fifth story, so rapidly
+did he prosper.
+
+His trade was now with the wealthy and fashionable class of the city. He
+had surmounted all his early difficulties, and laid the foundation of
+that splendid fortune which he has since won. The majority of his
+customers were ladies, and he now resolved upon an expedient for
+increasing their number. He had noticed that the ladies, in "shopping,"
+were given to the habit of gossiping, and even flirting with the clerks,
+and he adopted the expedient of employing as his salesmen the handsomest
+men he could procure, a practice which has since become common. The plan
+was successful from the first. Women came to his store in greater
+numbers than before, and "Stewart's nice young men" were the talk of the
+town.
+
+The great crisis of 1837 found Mr. Stewart a prosperous and rising man,
+and that terrible financial storm which wrecked so many of the best of
+the city firms did not so much as leave its mark on him. Indeed, while
+other men were failing all around him, he was coining money. It had
+always been his habit to watch the market closely, in order to profit by
+any sudden change in it, and his keen sagacity enabled him to see the
+approach of the storm long before it broke, and to prepare for it.
+
+He at once marked down all his goods as low as possible, and began to
+"sell for cost," originating the system which is now so popular. The
+prices were very low, and the goods of the best quality. Every body
+complained of the hard times, and all were glad to save money by
+availing themselves of "Stewart's bargains." In this way he carried on a
+retail cash trade of five thousand dollars per day in the midst of the
+most terrible crisis the country has ever seen. Other merchants were
+reduced to every possible expedient, and were compelled to send their
+goods to auction to be sold for what they would bring, so great was
+their need of ready money. Stewart attended all these auctions
+regularly, and purchased the goods thus offered. These he sold rapidly
+by means of his "cost system," realizing an average profit of forty per
+cent. It is said that he purchased fifty thousand dollars worth of silks
+in this way, and sold the whole lot in a few days, making a profit of
+twenty thousand dollars on the transaction. Thus he not only passed
+through the "crisis," but made a fortune in the midst of it.
+
+From that time to the present day his march to fortune has been
+uninterrupted. Nearly a quarter of a century ago he purchased the
+property which is now the site of his wholesale store, and commenced to
+erect the splendid marble warehouse which he still occupies. His friends
+were surprised at his temerity. They told him it was too far up town,
+and on the wrong side of Broadway, but he quietly informed them that a
+few years would vindicate his wisdom, and see his store the center of
+the most flourishing business neighborhood of New York. His predictions
+have been more than realized.
+
+He moved into his new store in 1846, and continued to expand and enlarge
+his business every year. Some years ago he purchased the old
+Ninth-Street Dutch Church and the lots adjacent to it, comprising the
+entire block lying between Ninth and Tenth Streets, Broadway and Fourth
+Avenue. When he found the retail trade going up town, and deserting its
+old haunts below Canal Street, he erected a fine iron building at the
+corner of Broadway and Tenth Street, to which he removed the retail
+department of his business, continuing his wholesale trade at his old
+store on Chambers Street. This new "upper store" has increased with the
+business. The building now covers the entire block upon which it is
+erected, and is the largest, most complete, and magnificent
+establishment of its kind in the world.
+
+Though he took no active part in politics, he was too much interested in
+public affairs, by reason of his immense wealth, not to watch them
+closely. He was satisfied, some time before our late troubles began,
+that war must come, and quietly made contracts with nearly all the
+manufacturers for all their productions for a considerable period of
+time. Accordingly, when the war did come, it was found that nearly all
+the articles of clothing, blankets, etc., needed for the army had been
+monopolized by him. His profits on these transactions amounted to many
+millions of dollars, though it should be remarked that his dealings with
+the Government were characterized by an unusual degree of liberality.
+The gains thus realized by him more than counterbalanced the losses he
+sustained by the sudden cessation of his Southern trade.
+
+Fifty years have now passed away since the young school-teacher landed
+in New York, and he stands to-day at the head of the mercantile
+interests of the New World. In the half-century which has elapsed since
+then, he has won a fortune which is variously estimated at from
+twenty-five to forty millions of dollars. He has gained all this wealth
+fairly, not by trickery and deceit, or even by a questionable honesty,
+but by a series of mercantile transactions the minutest of which bears
+the impress of his sterling integrity, and by a patience, energy, tact,
+and genius of which few men are possessed. Surely, then, it must be a
+proud thought to him that he has done all this _himself_, by his own
+unaided efforts, and that amid all his wonderful success there does not
+rest one single stain upon his good name as a man or a merchant.
+
+It is said that Mr. Stewart regards himself as a "lucky man," rather
+than as one who has risen by the force of his own genius. A writer in
+the New York _Herald_ relates the following incident, as illustrative of
+the superstition which this feeling of "luck" has given rise to with
+him: "When he kept his store on Broadway, between Murray and Warren
+Streets, there sat on the sidewalk before it, on an orange box, an old
+woman, whose ostensible occupation was the selling of apples. This
+business was, however, merely a pretense; the main object being beggary.
+As years rolled on, Mr. Stewart became impressed with the idea that the
+old dame was his guardian angel of good luck, and this impression took
+so firm a hold upon his mind that when he removed to Chambers Street,
+he, in person, took up the old woman's box, and removed her to the front
+of his new establishment. In further illustration of Mr. Stewart's faith
+in the Irish traditional belief in 'lucky' and 'unlucky' persons, it may
+be mentioned that, after the completion of the St. Nicholas Hotel in
+this city, an undertaking in which he was largely interested, and when
+the building was just about to be opened for the reception of guests,
+the millionaire, standing in the drawing-room, ejaculated, 'It is now
+finished; I hope its first visitors may be lucky people.'
+
+"A gentleman present, who had heard of Mr. Stewart's care for the aged
+apple vendor, remarked, 'I presume, sir, you do not in reality care
+about lucky or unlucky persons;' to which he immediately replied,
+'Indeed, I do. There are persons who are unlucky. I sometimes open a
+case of goods, and sell the first from it to some person who is unlucky,
+and lose on it to the end. I frequently see persons to whom I would not
+sell if I could avoid it.'"
+
+The first incident, if true, doubtless illustrates the quiet kindness
+with which Mr. Stewart watches over the poor that he takes under his
+care--and they are many. He has won his success too fairly to be a
+believer in mere _luck_. There is no such thing as chance in this world.
+Men are the architects of their own fortunes.
+
+One of the principal reasons of his success is the rigid system with
+which he conducts his business. He has a place for every thing, and a
+time for every duty, and requires the same regularity from his
+subordinates. His salesmen and managers are thoroughly versed in their
+duties, and the more important of them are selected with great care.
+Every thing works smoothly under the master's eye, and there is a
+penalty for each and every delinquency, which is rigidly exacted.
+
+Mr. Stewart is one of the hardest workers in his establishment. His
+partners relieve him of the details, but the general management of his
+immense business he trusts to no other hands. His eye is on every thing.
+He is familiar with every detail, though he does not take upon himself
+its direction. He goes to his business between nine and ten in the
+morning, stopping first at his upper store. He makes a brief but
+thorough inspection here, and learns the general progress of the day,
+and then repairs to his lower or wholesale store, where he remains
+during business hours, and returns home between five and six in the
+afternoon, stopping again at the upper store. He works hard, and is
+never absent from his post unless detained by sickness.
+
+His time is valuable, and he is not willing to waste it.
+
+Many persons endeavor to see him merely to gratify their impertinent
+curiosity, and others wish to intrude upon him for purposes which would
+simply consume his time. To protect himself, he has been compelled to
+resort to the following expedient: A gentleman is kept on guard near the
+main door of the store, whose duty is to inquire the business of
+visitors. If the visitor wishes to see Mr. Stewart, the "sentinel"
+informs him that he must first state his business to him. If the visitor
+urges that it is private, he is told that Mr. Stewart has no private
+business. If his errand meets the approval of the gentleman on guard, he
+is allowed to go up stairs, where he is met by the confidential agent of
+the great merchant, to whom he must repeat the object of his visit. If
+this gentleman is satisfied, or can not get rid of the visitor, he
+enters the private office of his employer and lays the case before him.
+If the business of the visitor is urgent he is admitted, otherwise, he
+is refused an interview. If admitted, the conference is brief and to the
+point. There is no time lost. Matters are dispatched with a method and
+promptitude which astonish strangers. If the visitor attempts to draw
+the merchant into a friendly conversation, or indulges in useless
+complimentary phrases, after the matter on which he came is settled, Mr.
+Stewart's manner instantly becomes cold and repelling, and troublesome
+persons are sometimes given a hint which hastens their departure. This
+is his working time, and it is precious to him. He can not afford to
+waste it upon idlers. In social life he is said to be exceedingly
+affable.
+
+The greater portion of Mr. Stewart's immense fortune is invested in real
+estate. Besides his two stores on Broadway, he owns the Metropolitan
+Hotel and the New York Theater, also on Broadway; nearly all of Bleecker
+Street from Broadway to Depauw Row, several churches, a number of
+buildings, and many valuable lots. He resides at the north-east corner
+of the Fifth Avenue and Thirty-fourth Street. Immediately opposite he is
+building one of the finest residences in the world, and the most superb
+in America. He owns more real estate than any man in America except
+William B. Astor, and is the most successful merchant in the world.
+
+Mr. Stewart is said to be extremely liberal in his donations to objects
+which meet with his sympathy. The majority of these donations are
+quietly made, as he has a repugnance to public charities. He gave
+liberally to the cause of the Union during the war. During that struggle
+he sent a cargo of provisions to Ireland, where much distress existed,
+and then invited as many emigrants as the vessel would carry to take
+passage to America in her, free of charge. One hundred and thirty-nine
+persons availed themselves of his offer, and upon reaching America were
+all provided with good situations by him. At present he is engaged in
+erecting on the Fourth Avenue a large building, in which homes will be
+provided for poor working females, at a small expense to them. It is
+said that this noble project will require an outlay of several millions
+of dollars. His friends--and he has many--speak of him as exceedingly
+kind and liberal, and seem much attached to him.
+
+As I have said before, Mr. Stewart has not cared for political
+distinction, but has rather shunned it. He was a member of the Union
+Defense Committee during the war, and in 1866 was one of the signers of
+the Saratoga address, calling on the people of the country to sustain
+the policy of President Johnson. His warm friendship for General Grant
+caused him to be one of the earliest advocates of the election of the
+latter to the Presidency. He was a candidate for Presidential Elector on
+the Republican ticket for the State of New York, but was defeated, with
+his associates, by the Democracy.
+
+His intimate relations with General Grant, together with his vast
+financial experience, induced many persons to believe that he would be
+offered a place in the Cabinet of the new President. These expectations
+were realized by his nomination to the post of Secretary of the
+Treasury, on the 5th of March, 1869, and his immediate and unanimous
+confirmation by the Senate. He was about to enter upon his new duties,
+when it was discovered that there existed an old and almost forgotten
+law forbidding any merchant from becoming the head of the Treasury
+Department. As soon as this discovery was made, Mr. Stewart expressed
+his desire to withdraw from the position, and thus relieve the President
+of all embarrassment upon the subject, but the latter, wishing, if
+possible, to retain him in the Cabinet, urged him to delay his action,
+with the hope that the difficulty might be obviated. Willing to oblige
+his friend, and anxious to serve the country, Mr. Stewart consented to
+do this, but finding that certain persons were seeking to make his
+nomination a source of trouble to the Administration, offered either to
+resign the place or to relinquish his entire interest in his business
+during the period of his Secretaryship, and to donate his immense
+profits for that time to the poor of the city of New York. This
+sacrifice, he hoped, would render him eligible; but the President was
+unwilling to accept the princely offer--the noblest ever made by any
+man--and Mr. Stewart finally withdrew from the contest.
+
+There can be no doubt that he would have been the best Secretary that
+could have been placed at the head of the Treasury. His great financial
+experience and his unquestioned ability were better qualifications than
+those possessed by any politician in the land. Perhaps the best proof of
+the satisfaction which his appointment produced in the minds of the
+thinking men of the country is the manner in which the news affected
+the money market. Gold fell as soon as the announcement was made.
+
+Few strangers ever come to New York and depart without visiting
+Stewart's famous store at the corner of Tenth Street and Broadway. The
+lower, or wholesale store, is far more important to its owner; but it
+conducts its operations exclusively with dealers, and in such a quiet
+and systematic way that it seems to attract but little attention among
+the masses. It is the upper or retail store that is the wonder of the
+great city in which it is located.
+
+It is constructed of iron, in the style of arcade upon arcade, and is
+lighted by numerous windows. It fronts two hundred feet on Broadway, and
+three hundred feet on Ninth and Tenth Streets. It covers an area of
+about two acres, is five stories and an attic in height, and has two
+cellars underneath. It is warmed by steam, and contains several
+steam-engines for hoisting goods, running the machines employed in the
+manufacturing department, and forcing water into the immense tank at the
+top of the building. Six elevators and several handsome stairways
+connect the various floors. Three of the elevators are used for
+conveying customers up and down, and the others for hoisting and
+lowering goods. The building is lighted by several thousand gas jets,
+which are all set aflame simultaneously by electricity.
+
+The various floors, with the exception of the first, are broken only by
+a rotunda, which extends to the roof, and is inclosed at each floor by a
+massive iron balustrade. Leaning over one of these balustrades, and
+looking up or down, the sight is brilliant and attractive. Thousands of
+persons are scattered about the floors making purchases. Hundreds of
+clerks, salesmen, and cash boys are busy serving them, and the buzz and
+hum of human voices under the vast roof sounds like the droning of a
+hive of bees.
+
+The service of this immense establishment is arranged as follows: There
+is one general superintendent, with nineteen assistants, each of whom is
+at the head of a department. Nine cashiers receive and pay out money;
+twenty-five book-keepers keep the record of the day; thirty ushers
+direct purchasers to the department they seek; two hundred cash boys
+receive the money and bring back the change of purchasers; four hundred
+and seventy clerks, a few of whom are females, make the sales of the
+day; fifty porters do the heavy work, and nine hundred seamstresses are
+employed in the manufacturing department. Besides these, there are
+usually about five hundred other persons employed about the
+establishment in various capacities, bringing the total strength of the
+_personelle_ of the house to twenty-two hundred.
+
+The accounts of each department are kept separate, and the sales of each
+for the day constitute a separate return. These sales will average
+something like the following figures:
+
+
+  Silks       $15,000
+  Dress goods   6,000
+  Muslins       3,000
+  Laces         2,000
+  Shawls        2,500
+  Suits         1,000
+  Calicoes      1,500
+  Velvets       2,000
+  Gloves        1,000
+  Furs          1,000
+  Hosiery         600
+  Boys' clothing  700
+  Notions         600
+  Embroideries  1,000
+  Carpets       5,500
+
+
+The total daily receipts average $60,000, and have been known to amount
+to $87,000.
+
+Salaries of subordinate clerks range from $5 to $25 per week. The cash
+boys receive $5 per week. If not fined for misconduct they receive a
+reward of $1 per month, and a further reward of $5 at the end of each
+half year. They are promoted as fast as their conduct and vacancies in
+the force of salesmen will allow. The number of employés being so large,
+the proprietor is compelled to keep them under the constant espionage of
+two experienced detectives, and each evening when they leave the store
+they are required to do so through a private door on Ninth Street, where
+the detectives are stationed to see that none of them carry away
+articles which do not belong to them.
+
+The number of visitors to the establishment in the busy season is very
+large. On special occasions, such as opening days, it is said to have
+reached fifty thousand, but the general average is placed at fifteen
+thousand, and they represent every grade in life. Rich and poor mingle
+here freely.
+
+The floors are arranged simply, and with regard to business rather than
+for show, but every thing is elegant and tasteful. The sub-cellar is
+used as a store-room for goods in cases. Here the fabrics are opened and
+sent to their departments. The cellar is the carpet sales-room. The
+first floor is the general sales-room, and is the most attractive place
+in the building. It is three hundred feet long by two hundred wide, and
+is provided with one hundred counters, each fifty feet in length. Behind
+these counters the goods are arranged, with no effort at display, on the
+shelves, which rise but a few feet above the counters. There is an
+abundance of light in all parts of the house, especially over the silk
+counters, which are just under the rotunda. The second floor is taken up
+with ladies' suits, shawls, curtain goods, etc., and the next floor is
+devoted to the same purpose. The fourth floor is used as a manufactory
+for making up the suits, etc., placed on sale or ordered by customers;
+on the fifth is the fur-room and upholstery manufactory; and the sixth
+is occupied as a laundry. The most perfect order is maintained in every
+part of the establishment, the mere direction of which requires
+administrative ability of a very high character.
+
+As fast as the sales are made, the articles, unless taken away by the
+purchaser, are sent to the parcel desk, which is located in the cellar.
+This is the busiest department in the house, and one of the most
+important. Each order is accompanied by a ticket stating the quality and
+amount of the goods, the price, and the address of the purchaser. It is
+remeasured and examined here, so that any error on the part of the
+salesman may be detected and repaired. Errors of this kind, however, are
+rare, and the burden of the labor in this department consists of making
+the goods up into secure packages and sending them to their
+destinations. The tickets delivered at the parcel desk are then sent to
+the checking desk, which is also in the basement, where they are
+compared with those delivered by the salesmen to the cashiers, and if no
+error is discovered, the goods are sent to the wagons for delivery.
+
+The wagon department constitutes a very important branch of the
+business. The vehicles and horses are accommodated in a fine stable on
+Amity Street, near Broadway. The building was formerly a Baptist church,
+and was presided over by the Rev. Dr. Williams. When the congregation
+went higher up town, they sold the old church, which found a purchaser
+in Mr. Stewart. He converted it into a stable, and has since more than
+doubled its size. The floor was taken up, a sewer built to carry off the
+waste water, and the place paved with brick and cement. It is now one of
+the best stables in the city. It contains over forty horses, and five
+grooms are on hand to attend to them. There are eight wagons employed at
+the up-town store to deliver parcels to purchasers, while thirteen
+single wagons are used by the lower store to cart single cases around
+town. In addition to these, there are ten double trucks to haul heavy
+goods. Twenty-seven drivers are employed, and thirteen hundred bushels
+of oats and fifty tons of hay are fed out during a year. The place is in
+charge of a watchman at night, and during the day is managed by a
+superintendent. At half-past eight the trucks report at the down-town
+store, and remain there all day. At the same moment one of the light
+wagons is dispatched to the retail store, and at once takes out the
+early sales. In an hour another wagon follows it, and this course is
+pursued all day until six o'clock, when the last wagon takes the last
+sales. By this system purchasers receive their parcels with dispatch,
+and the immense business of the day is entirely finished. Every week the
+superintendent of the stables makes a report of the condition of the
+horses and wagons, and this "stable report" is carefully inspected at
+head-quarters. In case of sickness or stubborn lameness, the horses are
+sent to the country to recruit.
+
+Mr. Stewart has a farm at Tuckahoe, where the invalid horses are kept,
+and where much of their provender is raised. This farm is noted for the
+valuable marble quarry which furnished the stone from which his new
+mansion on Fifth Avenue is built.
+
+The retail store contains fabrics of every description and price. The
+wife of a millionaire can gratify her fancy here to its utmost limit,
+while the poor sewing-girl can obtain her simple necessities at the same
+price which is demanded for them from the rich. In the shawl department,
+there are "wraps" worth as much as $4,500, but not more than one or two
+find a purchaser in the course of a year. Shawls at $3,000 find a sale
+of about twenty a year, and the number of purchasers increases as the
+price diminishes. The wealthy ladies of New York deal here extensively.
+One of the clerks of the establishment recently made a statement that a
+fashionable lady ran up a bill of $20,000 here in two months.
+
+Mr. Stewart, though leaving the details of the retail business in the
+hands of Mr. Tuller, the general superintendent, yet keeps himself
+thoroughly informed respecting it, and exercises over it a general
+supervision, to which its increasing success is due. He knows exactly
+what is in the house, how much is on hand, and how it is selling. He
+fixes the prices himself, and keeps them always at a popular figure. He
+is said to have an aversion to keeping goods over from one season to
+another, and would rather sacrifice them than do so. He has no dead
+stock on hand. His knowledge of the popular taste and its variations is
+intuitive, and his great experience enables him to anticipate its
+changes.
+
+"There can not be so much selling without proportionate buying, and
+Stewart is as systematic in the latter as the former. Of late he has not
+acted personally in making purchases, but has trusted to the system
+which he organized some years ago, and which he has found to admirably
+answer as his substitute. He has branch establishments exercising
+purchasing functions only in Boston and Philadelphia, in the United
+States; in Manchester, England; and in Paris and Lyons, France. But
+while these are his agencies, his buyers haunt the marts of the whole
+world. There is no center of commerce or manufacture of the wide range
+of articles in which he deals, on either of the continents, where he is
+not always present by deputy to seize upon favorable fluctuations of the
+market, or pounce upon some exceptionally excellent productions. He
+owns entire the manufactory of the celebrated Alexandre kid-glove. He
+has a body of men in Persia, organized under the inevitable
+superintendent, chasing down the Astrachan goat heavy with young, from
+which the unborn kids are taken and stripped of their skins, thus
+sacrificing two animals for every skin obtained. He rifles Lyons of its
+choicest silks, the famous productions of Bonnet and Ponson. Holland and
+Ireland yield him the first fruits of their looms. Belgium contributes
+the rarest of her laces, and the North sends down the finest of its
+Russian sables. All the looms of France, England, Belgium, and the
+United States are closely watched, and the finest fabrics in dress
+goods, muslins, carpets, and calicoes are caught up the moment the
+workmen put on the finishing touches. He buys for cash the world over,
+and is a customer every-where so recognized as desirable that he has his
+choice of industrial productions, and on more advantageous terms than
+his rivals can purchase what he leaves. He has been so long in the
+business, and has become so thoroughly versed in the productions of
+different looms in different countries, that it is now his practice to
+select certain mills noted for excellence of work, and take their entire
+supply, and thus it happens that there are many looms in the busiest
+haunts of the Old and New Worlds that toil unceasingly on his account.
+
+"By buying thus largely in foreign lands, he is, of course, the largest
+importer in the nation, and his duties average $30,000 gold per day.
+Every year his business steadily increases, and there is apparently no
+practical limit at which it will stop. As prudent in vast affairs as
+other men are in small, he insures liberally, and has policies renewed
+every third day throughout the year. But, while leaning upon the
+insurance companies, he is utterly independent of the banks; he has
+never asked one of them to 'carry' him through a crisis, and should such
+a contingency arise, there is no bank in the world competent to the
+task."
+
+Mr. Stewart is now sixty-eight years old, but looks much younger, being
+still as vigorous and active, both mentally and physically, as most men
+of forty-five. He is of the medium size, has light-brown hair and beard,
+which are closely trimmed. His features are sharp, well cut, his eye
+bright, and his general expression calm and thoughtful. His manner is
+reserved, and to all but his intimate friends cold. He dresses with
+great simplicity, but with taste, and in the style of the day. His
+habits are simple, and he avoids publicity in all things. Standing as he
+does at the head of the mercantile interests of the country, he affords
+a fine example of the calm and dignified manner in which a man of true
+merit may enjoy his legitimate success, and of the good use he may make
+of its fruits.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+AMOS LAWRENCE.
+
+
+Amos Lawrence was born at Groton, Massachusetts, on the 22d of April,
+1786. His ancestor came of a good English family, and was one of the
+company which sailed from England for the New World under Governor
+Winthrop, in 1630, and which, according to Grahame, contained "several
+wealthy and high-born persons, both men and women, who expressed their
+determination to follow truth and liberty into a desert, rather than to
+enjoy all the pleasures of the world under the dominion of superstition
+and slavery." This Lawrence settled in Watertown, and was one of the
+original proprietors of the town of Groton, which was founded in 1655.
+Samuel Lawrence, the father of the subject of this memoir, was the fifth
+in descent from the founder of the family, and was himself a gallant
+officer of the American army in the War of the Revolution, the close of
+which found him the possessor of a small farm, which yielded a modest
+support for his family.
+
+Young Amos was brought up on the farm, with none of the advantages of
+wealth, and with but a limited education, which he gained at the village
+schools, and which was seriously interfered with by his delicate health.
+He received his final training at the Groton Academy, to which, in after
+life, he became a liberal patron. "As we children came forward," he
+wrote, late in life, "we were carefully looked after, but were taught
+to use the talents intrusted to us; and every nerve was strained to
+provide for us the academy which is now doing so much there." Toward the
+close of the year 1799, when but a little over thirteen years of age, he
+took his final departure from school, and entered a store in the village
+of Dunstable, as clerk.
+
+He remained there but a few months, and then returned to Groton, where
+he obtained a place as apprentice in the store of a Mr. Brazer. This was
+the largest establishment in the place, and conducted a very important
+trade with the country for miles around. Boston was so far, and so
+difficult to reach in those days, that Groton came in for nearly all the
+business of its vicinity which the railroads have now taken to the city.
+Mr. Brazer's establishment, which was known as a "variety store," came
+in for the best part of this trade. Every thing was sold there;
+"puncheons of rum and brandy, bales of cloth, kegs of tobacco, with
+hardware and hosiery, shared attention in common with silks and threads,
+and all other articles for female use." Even medicines were sold there;
+and Dr. Wm. B. Lawrence, the son of our hero, assures us that his father
+was obliged to sell medicines, not only to customers, but to all the
+physicians within a circuit of twenty miles, who depended on this
+establishment for their supplies. "The confidence in his good judgment,"
+he adds, "was such that he was often consulted in preference to the
+physician, by those who were suffering from minor ails; and many were
+the extemporaneous doses which he administered for the weal or woe of
+the patient."
+
+The Brazer store was a prominent feature in Groton. It was a place of
+general resort, and close by was the tavern where the mail coaches
+stopped. Travelers were constantly passing through the town, bringing
+the news of those stirring days when Napoleon was rushing over Europe
+with his armies, overturning old states and building up new ones, and
+changing the destinies of the world. The domestic politics of the day
+were exciting, and it is likely that they aided, together with the
+events in the Old World, in imparting to the character of Mr. Lawrence
+the earnestness and gravity for which he was noted when a mere lad.
+
+Mr. Brazer had in his employ a number of clerks, but it was not long
+before the energy and business talent of young Lawrence made him the
+most trusted of all. Mr. Brazer did not give much personal attention to
+the store, and when he found that his young clerk was so admirable and
+reliable a manager, he left the business entirely in his hands. This was
+a post of unusual responsibility for one so young, but Amos Lawrence
+accepted it promptly, and labored to discharge its duties faithfully. He
+at once established the character for probity and fairness which
+distinguished him through life; his simple assertion was sufficient in
+any matter, being received with implicit trust by all who knew him. His
+duties kept him constantly employed, and though he lived within a mile
+of his father's house, weeks sometimes passed without giving him the
+opportunity of visiting it.
+
+Drunkenness was at that day the curse of New England. Every body drank,
+and such fiery fluids as brandy, whisky, rum, and gin were the
+favorites. Men, women, and children were addicted to the vice, and
+Groton was no exception to the rule. Mr. Brazer's store was famous for
+the good liquors served out to its customers, and his clerks were aware
+that their employer did not object to their helping themselves when they
+felt thirsty. Amos Lawrence fell into the habit to which all were given,
+and for some time went along with the rest; but at length he came to the
+conclusion that such indulgence was wantonly ruining his health, and he
+resolved to abstain entirely. "We five boys," said he, years afterward,
+"were in the habit, every forenoon, of making a drink compounded of rum,
+raisins, sugar, nutmegs, etc., with biscuit--all palatable to eat and
+drink. After being in the store four weeks, I found myself admonished by
+my appetite of the approach of the hour for indulgence. Thinking the
+habit might make trouble if allowed to grow stronger, without further
+apology to my seniors, I declined partaking with them. My first
+resolution was to abstain for a week, and, when the week was out, for a
+month, and then for a year. Finally, I resolved to abstain for the rest
+of my apprenticeship, which was for five years longer. During that whole
+period I never drank a spoonful, though I mixed gallons daily for my old
+master and his customers."
+
+At the same time, Mr. Lawrence determined that he would not use tobacco
+in any form. He was very fond of the odor of "the weed," and at one
+period of his life always kept a fine Havana in his drawer that he might
+enjoy the scent of it; but he was totally free from our disgusting
+national vice in any of its forms. In this respect, as indeed in all
+others, he offers a fine example to the rising youth of the present
+generation.
+
+On the 22d of April, 1807, Mr. Lawrence completed his twenty-first year,
+and his seven years' apprenticeship with Mr. Brazer came to an end. He
+was now of an age to enter into business for himself, and it was his
+intention to open a small store in Groton, in connection with a brother
+apprentice, but before doing so he decided to visit Boston for the
+purpose of establishing a credit. He reached the city with but twenty
+dollars in his pocket, richer, he subsequently declared, in his own
+estimation, than he ever felt before or afterward. While in the city, he
+received the offer of a clerkship from a mercantile house of good
+standing. It was entirely unsolicited, and took him by surprise, but he
+decided to accept it, and abandoned his idea of going into business for
+himself in Groton; and this act led to a career entirely different from
+that to which he had looked forward.
+
+Boston, in 1807, had a population of about thirty thousand, and the
+commercial position of the city was relatively much greater than at
+present. The foreign trade of the United States was enormous, and was
+carried on in American ships, and not, as at present, in foreign
+vessels. The total tonnage of American shipping engaged in this trade
+was seven hundred thousand tons, and of this Boston possessed a fair
+share. Her domestic trade was also important.
+
+"The merchants of Boston had then high places in the estimation of the
+world. The Perkinses, the Sargeants, the Mays, the Cabots, the
+Higginsons, and others, were known throughout the world for their
+integrity, their mercantile skill, and the extent and beneficial
+character of their operations. These were the golden days of Boston's
+commerce.... The standard of integrity was high, and though it would be
+absurd to suppose that there was not the usual amount of evil in the
+place, it may be assumed that in no part of the world was the young
+trader more likely to find severer judges of character and conduct, or
+to be better treated if he should afford unquestionable proofs of
+capacity and honesty."
+
+It was into this community that Mr. Lawrence now entered, and in which
+his life was spent. He gave such satisfaction to his employers that,
+when he had been with them a short time, they astonished him with the
+offer of a partnership. He was but partially acquainted with their
+affairs, but their manner of conducting their business did not please
+him, and he declined their offer. His sagacity was verified by the
+result. In a few months the firm failed, and the creditors appointed
+him to settle their affairs, which he did to their satisfaction.
+
+Being now out of employment, he resolved to commence business on his own
+account in Boston. He had made such a favorable impression upon the
+merchants of the city that he had no difficulty in obtaining credit. He
+rented a store in Cornhill, stocked it with dry goods, and began his
+career as a merchant. Four months after this, his father, who was keenly
+interested in his son's success, without consulting the latter,
+mortgaged his farm for one thousand dollars, and, repairing to Boston,
+placed the money in Amos Lawrence's hands. Mr. Lawrence was profoundly
+affected by this proof of his father's devotion, but he regretted it
+none the less, as he knew that his failure would bring ruin to his
+parent as well as to himself. "I told him," said he, forty years later,
+"that he did wrong to place himself in a situation to be made unhappy if
+I lost the money. He told me he _guessed I wouldn't lose it_, and I gave
+him my note." Mr. Lawrence made a prompt use of the money, and paid the
+mortgage at the proper time; but he had a narrow escape from loss, as
+the bank on which he had bills for the amount of the mortgage failed
+almost immediately after he had obtained specie for them.
+
+"This incident," he said, "shows how dangerous it is to the independence
+and comfort of families for parents to take pecuniary responsibilities
+for their sons in trade, beyond their power of meeting them without
+embarrassment. Had any Hillsborough bank-notes not been paid as they
+were, nearly the whole amount would have been lost, and myself and my
+family might have been ruined. The incident was so striking that I have
+uniformly discouraged young men who have applied to me for credit,
+offering their fathers as bondsmen; and by doing so I believe I have
+saved some respectable families from ruin. My advice, however, has
+sometimes been rejected with anger. A young man who can not get along
+without such aid will not be likely to get along with it."
+
+He began his business upon principles of prudence and economy, which he
+rigidly maintained throughout his whole life. He never allowed himself
+to anticipate his gains, and having fixed his personal expenses at a
+certain sum, he never went beyond it. His system, which is thus stated
+by himself, is offered here as a safe and admirable rule for all
+persons:
+
+"When I commenced, the embargo had just been laid, and with such
+restrictions on trade that many were induced to leave it. But I felt
+great confidence that, by industry, economy, and integrity, I could get
+a living; and the experiment showed that I was right. Most of the young
+men who commenced at that period failed by spending too much money, and
+using credit too freely.
+
+"I adopted the plan of keeping an accurate account of merchandise bought
+and sold each day, with the profit, as far as practicable. This plan was
+pursued for a number of years, and I never found my merchandise fall
+short in taking an account of stock, which I did as often at least as
+once in each year. I was thus enabled to form an opinion of my actual
+state as a business man. I adopted also the rule always to have
+property, after my second year's business, to represent forty per cent,
+at least more than I owed--that is, never to be in debt more than two
+and a half times my capital. This caution saved me from ever getting
+embarrassed. If it were more generally adopted, we should see fewer
+failures in business. Excessive credit is the rock on which so many
+business men are broken."
+
+Mr. Lawrence was very successful from the first. His profits during his
+first year were fifteen hundred dollars, and over four thousand during
+the second. In seven years he made over fifty thousand dollars. He paid
+the closest attention to his business, and nothing could draw him from
+it in working hours. After these were over he would take his pleasure.
+His aim was to keep every thing in the most complete state possible.
+During the first seven years of his business he never allowed a bill
+against him to stand unsettled over the Sabbath. If he made a purchase
+of goods on Saturday, and they were delivered to him that day, he always
+examined and settled the bill by note, or by crediting it, and leaving
+it clear, so that there should be no unfinished business to go over to
+the next week, and make trouble for his clerks in case he should not be
+at his post. "Thus," said he, "I always kept my business _before_ me,
+instead of allowing it to drive me."
+
+The first years of Mr. Lawrence's mercantile experience covered the
+darkest period of the history of the Republic. They were marked by the
+embargo, the crippling of our commerce by the hostility of England and
+France, and the second war with Great Britain, in all of which there was
+much to dis-hearten a beginner, even if he escaped positive loss.
+Nothing was certain. The events of a single hour might undo the labor of
+years, and baffle the best laid plans. Yet he persevered, and went
+steadily on to fortune. He was remarkable for his keen foresight, as
+well as for his prudence, and was always on the alert to profit by the
+fluctuations of the market. Yet he abominated speculation. He averred
+that speculation made men desperate and unfit for legitimate business,
+and that it led them, when under excitement, to the commission of acts
+against which their cooler judgment would have warned them. The fair
+profits of legitimate business were, in his opinion, sure to reward any
+honest and capable man. His aim was to elevate commerce, and not to
+degrade it. He introduced into Boston the system of double-entry in
+book-keeping, in advance of any other city merchant. He was prompt and
+faithful in the performance of every contract, and required a similar
+course toward himself from all indebted to him, as long as they were
+able to do so. When they became unfortunate, he was kind and generous,
+ready to compromise upon the most liberal terms, or to give them their
+own time for payment; and it is recorded of him that he never dealt
+harshly with a debtor who had failed in business.
+
+As long as such a course was necessary, Mr. Lawrence devoted himself
+entirely to his business, but after he had placed it on a safe footing,
+he was careful to reserve to himself time for other duties and for
+relaxation. No man, he said, had the right to allow his business to
+engross his entire life. "Property acquired at such sacrifices as I have
+been obliged to make the past year," he wrote at the commencement of
+1826, "costs more than it is worth; and the anxiety in protecting it is
+the extreme of folly." He never lost sight of the fact that man is a
+responsible, intelligent being, placed in the world for other purposes
+than the mere acquisition of wealth.
+
+In October, 1808, his brother, Abbott Lawrence, afterward famous as a
+merchant and statesman, came to him as an apprentice, and on the 1st of
+January, 1814, he was admitted to partnership, the style of the firm
+being A. & A. Lawrence. This partnership was terminated only by the
+death of the elder brother in 1852. Their business was the importation
+and sale of foreign manufactures, and the firm soon took its place at
+the head of the Boston merchants engaged in this trade. The tariffs of
+1816 and 1824 gave a new and powerful impetus to the manufacture of
+woolens and cottons in this country, and the Lawrences entered largely
+into the sale of these goods on commission. In 1830, they became
+interested in the cotton mills at Lowell; and on the establishment of
+the Suffolk, Tremont, and Lawrence Companies, as well as subsequently in
+other corporations, they became large proprietors. From this time their
+business as selling agents was on the most extensive scale, and their
+income from all sources large in proportion. They amassed large
+fortunes, and won names which are the most precious heritages of their
+children.
+
+Perhaps the best exposition of the principles upon which these brothers
+conducted their commercial operations is found in the following letter
+from the elder to the younger, written on the 11th of March, 1815, upon
+the occasion of a visit to England by the latter on business for the
+firm:
+
+
+     MY DEAR BROTHER--I have thought best, before you go abroad, to
+     suggest a few hints for your benefit in your intercourse with the
+     people among whom you are going. As a first and leading principle,
+     let every transaction be of that pure and honest character that you
+     would not be ashamed to have appear before the whole world as
+     clearly as to yourself. In addition to the advantages arising from
+     an honest course of conduct with your fellow-men, there is the
+     satisfaction of reflecting within yourself that you have endeavored
+     to do your duty; and however greatly the best may fall short of
+     doing all they ought, they will be sure not to do more than their
+     principles enjoin.
+
+     It is, therefore, of the highest consequence that you should not
+     only cultivate correct principles, but that you should place your
+     standard of action so high as to require great vigilance in living
+     up to it.
+
+     In regard to your business transactions, let every thing be so
+     registered in your books, that any person, without difficulty, can
+     understand the whole of your concerns. You may be cut off in the
+     midst of your pursuits, and it is of no small consequence that your
+     temporal affairs should always be so arranged that you may be in
+     readiness.
+
+     If it is important that you should be well prepared in this point
+     of view, how much more important is it that you should be prepared
+     in that which relates to eternity!
+
+     You are young, and the course of life seems open, and pleasant
+     prospects greet your ardent hopes; but you must remember that the
+     race is not always to the swift, and that, however flattering may
+     be our prospects, and however zealously you may seek pleasure, you
+     can never find it except by cherishing pure principles and
+     practicing right conduct. My heart is full on this subject, my dear
+     brother, and it is the only one on which I feel the least anxiety.
+
+     While here, your conduct has been such as to meet my entire
+     approbation; but the scenes of another land may be more than your
+     principles will stand against. I say _may be_, because young men of
+     as fair promise as yourself have been lost by giving a small
+     latitude (innocent in the first instance) to their propensities.
+     But I pray the Father of all mercies to have you in his keeping,
+     and preserve you amid temptations.
+
+     I can only add my wish to have you write me frequently and
+     particularly, and that you will embrace every opportunity of
+     gaining information.
+
+     Your affectionate brother, AMOS LAWRENCE.
+
+     TO ABBOTT LAWRENCE.
+
+
+In his politics, Mr. Lawrence was a Federalist, and then a Whig. He
+served for one term in the State Legislature as a Representative from
+Boston, with credit to himself, but afterward avoided any active
+participation in public events. When his nephew-by-marriage, General
+Pierce, was a candidate for the Presidency, he was very much gratified
+personally by the selection of the Democracy, but declined to vote for
+him. In a letter to a friend, written at this time, he said: "I had a
+charming ride yesterday with my nephew, Frank Pierce, and told him I
+thought he must occupy the White House the next term, but that I would
+go for Scott. Pierce is a fine, spirited fellow, and will do his duty
+wherever placed. Scott will be my choice for President of the United
+States."
+
+Regarding himself as a steward of the riches committed to him, Amos
+Lawrence was liberal in his charities. During the last twenty-four years
+of his life he kept an accurate account of the sums he thus distributed,
+but with no idea that the statement, which he intended for his own eye
+only, would ever be made public. During this period he gave away six
+hundred and thirty-nine thousand dollars. The greater part of this was
+given away in ten years, and during a period when his average income was
+sixty thousand dollars a year. He was a liberal patron of education,
+giving large sums to its extension; and it was his delight to assist
+poor clergymen, without regard to denominations. He gave away clothing,
+food, books, etc., in large quantities, as well as ready money. "Two
+rooms in his house," says his son and biographer, "and sometimes three,
+were used principally for the reception of useful articles for
+distribution. There, when stormy weather or ill-health prevented him
+from taking his usual drive, he was in the habit of passing hours in
+selecting and packing up articles which he considered suitable to the
+wants of those whom he wished to aid." He did not forget the children,
+and many of his packages contained toys, and books, and other things
+calculated to promote their enjoyment.
+
+He was beset with beggars of all kinds, many of whom he was compelled to
+refuse. In his diary, he wrote on the 11th of April, 1849, "Applications
+come in from all quarters, for all objects. The reputation of giving
+freely is a very bad reputation, so far as my personal comfort is
+concerned."
+
+It pained him to have his charities made public, and he frequently
+requested the recipients to say nothing about them. He once made a
+present of some books to the Johnson school for girls, and the gift
+being acknowledged through the columns of a newspaper, he wrote to the
+principal of the school: "I merely want to say that I hope you will not
+put me in the newspaper at present, and when my work is done here, if
+you have any thing to say about me that will not hurt my children and
+grandchildren, say on," To another party he wrote: "I must request that
+my name be not thrust forward, as though I was to be a by-word for my
+vanity. I want to do good, but am sorry to be published, as in the
+recent case."
+
+As a merchant, Mr. Lawrence was upright, prudent, far-seeing, sagacious,
+and courageous; as a citizen, he was patriotic, public-spirited, and
+devoted; and as a man, he was a sincere, earnest, Christian husband,
+father, and friend. Viewed in any light, his character affords one of
+the most perfect models to be found in our history. He was the Christian
+_gentleman_ in all things, even in the minutest detail of his business.
+His standard was very high, but he came up to it. Courteous and
+dignified in manner, with a face handsome and winning in youth, and
+gentle and benignant in age, he made scores of friends wherever he went,
+for it was a true index to his character. It is a significant and
+interesting fact that, during the hottest passages of the old
+nullification times, although his views were known to be
+uncompromisingly opposed to the attitude of the South, he never lost the
+warmest friendship of some of the most advanced of the South Carolina
+leaders. When one thinks of the friendships that were wrecked amid the
+passions of those days, this fact speaks volumes for the personal
+attributes of Mr. Lawrence.
+
+He was a true American--proud of his country's past, hopeful for her
+future, and desiring nothing better than to live and die in the land of
+his birth. He sent his children abroad that they might see the Old
+World, and profit by the lessons learned there, but he strove earnestly
+to keep them true to their country. To his son, who was traveling in
+France in 1829, he wrote:
+
+"Bring home no foreign fancies which are inapplicable to our state of
+society. It is very common for our young men to come home and appear
+quite ridiculous in attempting to introduce their foreign fashions. It
+should be always kept in mind that the state of society is widely
+different here from that in Europe; and our comfort and character
+require it should long remain so. Those who strive to introduce many of
+the European habits and fashions, by displacing our own, do a serious
+injury to the republic, and deserve censure. An idle person, with good
+powers of mind, becomes torpid and inactive after a few years of
+indulgence, and is incapable of making any high effort. Highly important
+it is, then, to avoid this enemy of mental and moral improvement. I have
+no wish that you pursue trade; I would rather see you on a farm, or
+studying any profession.
+
+"It should always be your aim so to conduct yourself that those whom you
+value most in the world would approve your conduct, if your actions were
+laid bare to their inspection; and thus you will be pretty sure that He
+who sees the motive of all our actions will accept the good designed,
+though it fall short in its accomplishment. You are young, and are
+placed in a situation of great peril, and are, perhaps, sometimes
+tempted to do things which you would not do if you knew yourself under
+the eye of your guardian. The blandishments of a beautiful city may lead
+you to forget that you are always surrounded, supported, and seen by
+that best Guardian."
+
+He was an eminently just man, and he carried this trait into the little
+details of his domestic life. His household adored him; and his friends
+were bound to him by ties unusually strong. He was firm and positive in
+his own opinions; but he was tolerant of those who differed from him. He
+was a man of quick, nervous temperament, but he possessed a powerful
+self-control. He was a sincere and earnest Christian, and while
+attaching himself to the sect of his choice, his sympathies and aid went
+out to the whole Christian Church.
+
+Denominational differences had no place in his heart. He stood on the
+broad platform of the "faith of Christ crucified."
+
+During the last years of his life, Mr. Lawrence was a constant invalid.
+To a man of his temperament this was a great trial, but he bore it
+unflinchingly, exhibiting, in the long years of feeble health which
+preceded his death, a cheerfulness and patience which plainly showed the
+aid of the Arm on which he leaned for support. For sixteen years he did
+not take a meal with his family. His food and drink, of the simplest
+kind, were regularly weighed, a pair of scales being kept in his chamber
+for that purpose. He wrote to his friend President Hopkins, of Williams
+College: "If your young folks want to know the meaning of epicureanism,
+tell them to take some bits of coarse bread (one ounce or a little
+more), soak them in three gills of coarse meal gruel, and make their
+dinner of them, and nothing else; beginning very hungry, and leaving off
+more hungry."
+
+Mr. Lawrence continued in this condition until December, 1852, when he
+was seized with a severe attack of the stomachic trouble to which he was
+a martyr. He died peacefully, on the last day of that month and year, at
+the age of sixty-six years, eight months, and eight days. He was buried
+in Mount Auburn Cemetery, and was followed to the grave by a host of
+friends who mourned him as a brother, and by strangers to whom his
+kindness in life had brought relief from many a care and suffering.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+ANDREW V. STOUT.
+
+
+There are few men in the city of New York who have won more fairly their
+proud positions in the mercantile world than he whose name stands at the
+top of this page. For more than forty years he has carried on a large
+and increasing business with an energy, skill, and probity which could
+not fail of success.
+
+ANDREW V. STOUT was born in the city of New York, at No. 6 Canal Street,
+or, as it was then called, Pump Street, about the year 1814. When he was
+scarcely more than a child he was left fatherless, and thrown upon his
+own resources for a living. He was a manly little fellow, and, young as
+he was, was fully alive to the importance of the position he was
+compelled to assume. He was resolved not only to support himself, but
+also to acquire a good education, and by studying hard while most boys
+are at play, mastered the ordinary English branches by the time he was
+twelve years old.
+
+He had a mother and sister to support, and applied himself manfully to
+the task of accomplishing this. He was well grown for his age, and was
+generally supposed to be several years older than he really was. When he
+was fourteen years old he applied for and received a position as
+assistant teacher of the English branches in one of the public schools
+of the city. The trustees of the school supposed he was at least
+eighteen or nineteen years old. Had his true age been known to them, it
+is probable he would not have received the appointment. He was not
+questioned upon the subject, and he was wise enough to keep his own
+counsel. He performed the duties of his position to the entire
+satisfaction of the school officials, and made such a good impression on
+his friends that at the age of sixteen he was made assistant principal
+in one of the most important and popular private schools of the day,
+taught by Shepherd Johnson, a name well known to the old residents of
+New York.
+
+He was very young to fill this position, and, as may be supposed, it was
+peculiarly trying to one whose learning was mainly self-acquired. He was
+determined to succeed, however, and he applied himself energetically to
+master the course he was teaching. He studied harder and more constantly
+than any of his pupils, and was always fresh on the lessons for the day.
+
+When he was sixteen years old he was so well grown and so mature that he
+passed for twenty. Having succeeded so well in the management of his
+English classes, he was offered the position of instructor of Latin,
+with an increase of his salary. The offer at first dismayed him. He was
+thoroughly ignorant of the Latin language, and utterly unprepared for
+the duties demanded of him. He was very anxious to have the place,
+however, for he needed the increase of salary offered him, and, after
+hesitating a little while, accepted it. He purchased a Latin grammar,
+and engaged a private tutor. He studied hard, and soon mastered the
+rudiments of the language. In this way he managed to keep ahead of his
+classes. If a question was asked him which he could not answer, he
+postponed his reply, looked into the matter at night, and explained it
+the next morning. By such hard study and patient efforts did this boy,
+himself a mere novice, turn out what was admitted by all to be the best
+drilled Latin class Shepherd Johnson's school had ever boasted of.
+
+When he was eighteen years old he was made principal of Public School
+No. 2 of New York. He was living at Bushwick, where he resided with his
+mother and sister in a cozy little cottage, the garden of which was his
+pride, since he tended it with his own hands. It was his custom to rise
+every morning at four o'clock, and work in his garden until seven. Then
+he rode into the city, and attended to his school duties until four
+o'clock, when he returned home.
+
+He was now in possession of a comfortable living; but he was not
+satisfied to do this and nothing more. He was anxious to win fortune, to
+enter upon a more active and stirring pursuit, and he kept himself
+always on the watch for an opening. About the time he became the head of
+the public school we have referred to, he commenced to engage in various
+ventures of a commercial nature, devoting to them his evenings, and the
+hours of the day not demanded by his school.
+
+One of his relatives was a builder, with a fair trade, and had made some
+money by erecting houses in New York. Young Stout, who had saved a
+little money, proposed to him that they should take out a contract for
+building a number of dwellings on the then fashionable thoroughfare of
+East Broadway. The elder man was pleased with the plan, and at once
+consented to it. The houses were built at a handsome profit; others
+followed them, and by attending closely to this business, as well as his
+other duties, Andrew Stout, by the time he was twenty years old, had
+saved seventeen thousand dollars--a very large sum in those steady-going
+days.
+
+He was greatly aided by the custom of doing business on time, which
+then prevailed, but he never allowed one of his notes to be protested,
+and never asked for an extension. When he began business, he did so with
+the firm resolve that he would conduct his most insignificant
+transaction as a Christian man of honor. If he could not make money
+honestly, he would remain poor. Every body saw the energy and judgment
+with which he conducted his affairs, and the strict integrity which
+marked them all, and he was not long in building up a reputation as a
+business man of which any one might have been proud. The promptness and
+apparent ease with which he met every contract, and took up every note,
+caused it to be generally believed that he was a very rich man. Further
+than this, it was known that he was a zealous and earnest Christian, one
+who carried his religion into his business, and who lived up to his
+professions. He was an active member of the Methodist Church, and the
+business man of the congregation to which he belonged. In his hands its
+finances prospered as they had never done before. Such was the
+reputation of this young man, who had not yet attained his majority.
+
+He held his position in the public school for several years after his
+appointment to it, but the requirements of his business at length
+compelled him to relinquish it.
+
+In the midst of his prosperity Mr. Stout made one mistake. A friend with
+whom he had been interested in building wished to procure some money
+from the bank, and Mr. Stout was induced, with considerable reluctance,
+to indorse his note for five thousand dollars. One false step in
+business, as in other affairs of life, leads to another, and, in order
+to save this money, Mr. Stout was forced to renew his indorsements until
+his liabilities amounted to twenty-three thousand dollars. To his dismay
+he was now informed by the builder for whose sake he had incurred this
+risk, that he (the builder) had failed, without making provision for the
+payment of the notes, and that Mr. Stout would have to account to the
+bank for them.
+
+"Several methods of relief were open to Mr. Stout. He was worth
+seventeen thousand dollars, which he had earned by nights of toil, by
+economy, and by daily and earnest attention to business. To pay the
+notes would not only sweep away every penny that he had, but would leave
+him six thousand dollars in debt. He had never realized one cent from
+the money, and his name was used simply to accommodate the builder.
+Besides, he was not of age, though nobody suspected that fact, and he
+could repudiate his debts as a minor. He took no counsel, made no
+statement of his affairs to any one, shut himself up in his own room,
+and considered thoughtfully what he should do, and then followed out the
+decision that he had reached. Having become bankrupt in money, he
+concluded he would not be so in character. He had earned seventeen
+thousand dollars, and could earn seventeen thousand dollars more. He did
+confide in one friend. He went to a relative, and asked him to lend him
+six thousand dollars, the sum necessary to take up all the notes. The
+relative was astonished at the request, and insisted upon knowing the
+facts in the case. Mr. Stout made a full and frank statement. It was met
+with the remark, 'Well, Andrew, I thought you would be a rich man, but
+if this is the way you do your business, you will never be worth any
+thing,' But Mr. Stout did not want preaching, he wanted money; and as
+the relative seemed to hesitate about loaning the money, as no security
+was offered, Mr. Stout curtly told him he could do as he pleased about
+it; he could get the money somewhere, and pay the notes. The money was
+promised, and he went on his way.
+
+"The bank watched the young financier with a great deal of interest.
+The whole matter had been discussed often in the bank, and the wonder
+was how young Stout would meet the blow. It was supposed that he would
+ask for an extension; and it was agreed to give it to him, and to make
+the time of payment convenient to his ability. Had he proposed to
+compromise the matter by paying one-half, the bank would have accepted
+it. That would have left him a capital of nearly eight thousand dollars
+for a fresh start. Had he offered his seventeen thousand dollars on
+condition that he was released from all liability, the notes would have
+been canceled with alacrity. He did neither. He proposed no compromise,
+asked no extension, and attempted to negotiate no settlement. When the
+first note became due, he paid it. He did the same with the second and
+third. After the third payment, he was called into the office of the
+president. Reference was made to the notes, and to the fact that he had
+obtained no benefit from the money. The president told him the bank was
+ready to renew the notes, and to give him any accommodation that he
+might ask. Mr. Stout simply replied that the blow was a heavy one, but
+that having assumed the obligation, he should discharge it; that he
+asked no favors, and as the notes matured he should take them up. He
+paid every dollar due, and every one was certain that his wealth must be
+very large. His manliness, pluck, and integrity, which carried him
+through that crisis, became the sure foundation-stone on which his great
+fortune was laid. He took the front rank among successful financiers,
+and his honorable course in that crisis established his fame as an
+honest man, in whom it would be safe to confide. Years of earnest and
+active business life have not changed that character, nor allowed a blot
+or stain to cloud that reputation."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: Matthew Hale Smith.]
+
+Some years later, Mr. Stout became a merchant. He established a
+wholesale boot and shoe store, and engaged actively in that business. He
+brought to his new calling the energy, prudence, and integrity which had
+distinguished him all through his life, and was successful from the
+first. He worked hard. His business hours were from seven in the morning
+until six in the evening. During his busy season, four months in the
+year, he worked until ten, and often until twelve, paying his employés
+extra wages for labor performed after the regular business hours.
+Sometimes he worked until four in the morning, but that did not deter
+him from being in the store at the usual hour for opening. He was always
+the last to go home, never leaving the store until the business of the
+day was over and the house was closed. He extended his operations into
+dry goods, meeting with equal success in this department. As his
+business expanded, he was compelled to form various partnerships, but in
+all these arrangements he reserved to himself, like Stewart, the
+exclusive management of the finances.
+
+About eighteen years ago, the shoe and leather merchants of the city
+decided to organize a bank, in which their interests should be the
+principal consideration. Mr. Stout engaged in the effort with great
+enthusiasm, and the Shoe and Leather Bank of New York was at length
+organized under the most auspicious circumstances. Mr. Stout was the
+largest stockholder in the new bank, and was elected one of its
+directors. His influence was potent in directing its first operations,
+and the next year he was elected vice-president, in which position he
+really had the control of the enterprise left to him. A year later he
+was elected president of the bank, a position which he still holds,
+being in point of service the oldest bank president in New York. Upon
+questions of banking and finance, his views are listened to with great
+respect by his associates, who have proof of their soundness in the
+splendid success of the institution over which he presides; and it may
+be truly said that there are few men in the city who enjoy so large a
+share of the public confidence as is bestowed upon him.
+
+As a citizen, he is public-spirited and liberal. Some years ago, he held
+the office of city chamberlain, and during his administration of it a
+difficulty arose in regard to paying the police force their wages.
+Knowing that the men and their families would suffer if the money were
+not promptly paid them, Mr. Stout generously advanced the necessary sum
+from his private means, looking to the city to reimburse him. In
+grateful acknowledgment of this practical sympathy for them, the force
+presented him with a handsome testimonial. His fortune is immense, and
+is used liberally in behalf of the cause of the Christian religion. His
+charities are said to be large, but one rarely hears of them, so quietly
+are they done. He is married and has a family.
+
+No man's career holds out more encouragement to young men seeking to
+rise than that of Andrew V. Stout. It shows that courage, patient
+industry, and business capacity will bring fortune to any honest worker.
+His uniform success speaks volumes in favor of a young man's striving to
+lead a Christian life in the midst of his business cares and struggles.
+God's blessing follows such an one at every step, and he will succeed in
+the end, whatever trials may beset his path at first. It is a great
+mistake to suppose that a man's success depends on his "sharpness."
+Shrewdness is a valuable quality, but it must be coupled with a plain,
+practical honesty, or it will amount to nothing in the end. A man must
+be faithful to his God if he would have his work stand.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+JONAS CHICKERING.
+
+
+On Tremont Street, in the City of Boston, near the Roxbury line, there
+stands an immense building of brick, said to be larger than any edifice
+in the United States, save the Capitol at Washington. It is built in the
+form of a hollow square, with a large court-yard in the center, and the
+building and court-yard together cover an area of five acres. It is five
+stories in height on the outer side, and six on the inner, the
+court-yard being one story lower than the street. The building is two
+hundred and sixty-two feet in length from east to west, and two hundred
+and forty-five from north to south, the shorter distance being the
+length on Tremont Street. The width of the building all around the
+court-yard is fifty feet. It contains nine hundred windows, with eleven
+thousand panes of glass, and when lighted up at night seems almost a
+solid mass of fire. From five to six hundred men are employed here in
+various capacities, and an immense steam engine of one hundred and
+twenty horse-power furnishes the motive power for the machinery.
+Altogether, it is one of the most prominent and interesting of all the
+sights of Boston, and the visitor is surprised to learn that it is due
+entirely to the energy and genius of one who, but thirty-four years
+previous to its erection, came to Boston a penniless stranger. The
+building is the famous piano-forte manufactory of Chickering & Sons, and
+its founder was Jonas Chickering, the subject of this sketch.
+
+JONAS CHICKERING was born at New Ipswich, New Hampshire, on the 5th of
+April, 1798. His father was a blacksmith by trade, and employed his
+leisure time in cultivating a small farm of which he was the owner. He
+was esteemed by his neighbors as an upright, reliable man, and prudent
+and careful in his temporal affairs. The family being poor, young Jonas
+was required to do his share toward cultivating the farm, and received
+only such education as was afforded by the district schools in the
+vicinity. He was noted at an early age for his passionate love of music.
+When a mere child, he learned to play on the fife, and was such a
+proficient performer that he was called upon with the town drummer to
+furnish music for the militia musters, which were then the pride of the
+town. These were happy days for the lad, but his pleasure was marred by
+the ridicule which the contrast between his slender figure and the
+stalwart frame of the "six-foot drummer" caused the fun-loving
+towns-people to indulge in. Soon after this he learned to play on the
+clarionet, and when only seventeen or eighteen years old, was so
+advanced in his art that he could read at sight music of the most
+difficult character.
+
+At the age of seventeen he was apprenticed to a cabinet-maker to learn
+his trade, and remained with him for three years, exerting himself to
+become thorough master of every detail of the business. Toward the close
+of his apprenticeship, an event occurred which changed the whole current
+of his life, and placed him in what proved to him the road to fame and
+fortune.
+
+One of the wealthiest citizens of New Ipswich was the fortunate owner of
+a piano, the only instrument of the kind in the place; but his treasure
+was almost useless to him, for the reason that it was out of tune and
+seriously damaged in some respects. It had lain in this condition for a
+long time, no one in or near the place being able to make the necessary
+repairs. In this extremity the owner bethought him of Jonas Chickering,
+who had acquired an enviable reputation for skill in his trade, and it
+was thought that a good cabinet-maker ought of necessity to be a clever
+piano-maker. Young Chickering, thus appealed to, consented to undertake
+the task, as much for the purpose of becoming familiar with the
+instrument as of earning the sum the owner of it proposed to pay for the
+repairs. He had not the slightest knowledge of its internal
+organization, but he believed that by patient investigation he could
+master it, and he knew that the correctness of his ear would enable him
+to tune it. He made a careful study of the instrument and of every
+separate part, spent days over the task, discovered the injury and the
+cause of it, and not only took the instrument to pieces and restored it
+to its former condition, but did his work so well that the piano was
+pronounced fully as good in every respect as when it was new. This was
+not all. He discovered defects in the instrument which even its maker
+was not able to remedy, and his fertile brain at once suggested to him a
+plan for removing them.
+
+Here was a chance for him, and he resolved to profit by it. He would
+abandon cabinet-making and learn the manufacture of pianos. Then, when
+master of his trade, he would make use of his discoveries, and earn both
+fame and fortune. When his determination to change his business was made
+known, his friends attributed it to his desire to be in the midst of
+musical instruments, and where he could gratify his love of music; but
+this was only a part of the motive which influenced him. He meant to
+rise in the world, and he was sure that he held in his hands the means
+of doing so.
+
+In 1818, when twenty years old, he removed to Boston, and obtained
+employment with a cabinet-maker. He did this in order to give him time
+to look about him, to become familiar with the city and city life, and
+to acquire such other information as would enable him to decide upon the
+best means of putting his plans into execution. He saved his wages with
+the greatest care, and at the end of his first year in Boston had
+accumulated a modest little sum, which he meant should support him while
+he was learning his new trade.
+
+On the 15th of February, 1819, without the loss of a day, he began work
+with a piano-maker.
+
+He had now entered upon what he meant should be the business of his
+life, and he was resolved that he would be master of it. From the first
+he took rank in his employer's factory as the most careful workman in
+it. He spared no pains to make his knowledge full in every detail. Time
+was of no consequence compared with knowledge, and he was never anxious
+to hurry through with his work. It soon came to be recognized by his
+employer and fellow-workmen that he was the best fitted for those
+portions of the work upon the instrument which required the greatest
+patience as well as the greatest care, and the most difficult and
+delicate work was always intrusted to him, his wages being, of course,
+in proportion. Other men had no thought but to earn a living. This man
+meant to win fame and fortune, and to enlarge the scope of that art to
+which he was so passionately devoted. He labored with his mind as well
+as his hands, familiarizing himself with every detail of the
+manufacture, and devising in silence the means for improving the
+instrument and the implements used in its construction. He could afford
+to wait, to be slower than his fellows. Every moment spent over his
+task made his workmanship the better, and opened to his mind new sources
+of improvement. He spent three years as a journeyman, and then went into
+business for himself. He associated himself with a Mr. Stewart, under
+the firm of Stewart & Chickering.
+
+Fifty years ago the piano-forte was a wretched piece of mechanism
+compared with the superb instrument of to-day. It was originally a
+progressive growth from the ancient lyre, through the harp, psaltery,
+dulcimer, clavictherium, clavichord, virginal, spinet, harpsichord, to
+the piano of Christofali in the early years of the last century. At the
+period of Mr. Chickering's entrance into business, it was still very
+imperfect, and the various manufacturers of the instrument were
+earnestly endeavoring to discover some means of remedying the defects of
+which they were all conscious. There are four divisions in the
+manufacture of a piano, each of which requires great skill and care.
+These are: First, The making of the framing and the sound-board; Second,
+The stringing; Third, The keys and action; Fourth, The case and
+ornamental work. The framing requires strength and simplicity. It is
+this portion of the instrument which sustains the tension of the
+strings, which in full to large-sized pianos is not less than from six
+to twelve tons, and it is a matter of prime necessity that the portions
+which serve as a strut or stretcher between the ends of the strings, and
+which are to resist this enormous pull, must be made correspondingly
+strong and rigid, since by any gradual yielding under the pull of the
+strings, their lengths and tensions, and hence their tone, must undergo
+proportionate change. In the old pianos, the frames were of wood, and it
+was impossible to use any but small, short strings, for the reason given
+above. Fullness and power were not to be thought of, and builders were
+obliged to confine themselves to securing truthfulness of tone. A
+multitude of causes, among which were the changes in the weather,
+combined to render it impossible to keep the old-fashioned instrument in
+tune. It was this defect which first attracted the attention of Jonas
+Chickering, and his first endeavor was to produce an instrument which
+would withstand the climatic changes which were so troublesome to the
+old ones. He was fully aware of the fact that the piano trade in this
+country was then so unimportant that it offered but little inducement to
+a man who could manufacture only the old instrument; but he believed
+that by producing an instrument of better proportions, and one fuller,
+richer, and more lasting in tone, he could create a demand for it which
+would insure the sale of all he could manufacture. His hope of success
+lay not in the old, but in an improved and nobler instrument. That he
+was correct in his belief, the magnificent instrument of to-day which
+bears his name, and the lucrative business he has left to his sons,
+amply demonstrate. Others besides himself were working for the same end,
+and he knew that he would have to bear the test of determined and
+intelligent competition. He applied himself to his purpose with
+enthusiasm. He carefully studied the theory of atmospheric vibration and
+musical combination, as well as an application of the principles of
+mechanical philosophy to the construction of the instrument. He went
+deep into the science involved in his work, into the philosophy of
+melody. Passionately devoted to music, he was ambitious of placing that
+which has been so truly called "the king of instruments" within the
+reach of all lovers of harmony, and to give them the best instrument
+that human invention could produce--an instrument which should not only
+withstand atmospheric changes, but which should yield the richest,
+fullest volume of melody, with the least exertion to the performer. His
+progress was slow, but it was sure. Beginning with an improvement in
+the action, he accomplished, in a great measure (in 1838), his plan for
+preserving the permanence and purity of the tone of the instrument by
+casting the entire iron framing with the parallel bars in one piece.
+Iron had for some time before this been in general use for framing, but
+the frame was cast in a few separate parts, which were put together by
+means of bolts and screws, a plan which is still used to a considerable
+extent in Europe. By his plan of casting the frame and its supporting
+bars in one solid piece, Mr. Chickering not only prevented the frame
+from yielding to the pull of the strings, thus securing permanence and
+purity of tone, but was enabled to use larger frames and more strings,
+which greatly increased the capacity of the instrument.
+
+Several other improvements were made by him, the most important of which
+was the invention, in 1845, of the circular scale for square pianos,
+which is now in general use in this country and in Europe. "This consists
+in giving to the row of tuning pins and wrest-planks--previously
+straight in these instruments--a curved disposition, answering nearly to
+an arc of a circle, the advantage being that the strings become less
+crowded, larger hammers, and a more direct blow can be secured, and the
+tone is both strengthened and improved." With a rare generosity, Mr.
+Chickering declined to patent this improvement, which would have enabled
+him to drive competition out of the market. He regarded it as so
+necessary to a good piano that he declared that all makers ought to have
+the use of it, as it would thus be within the power of all persons able
+to purchase a piano to avail themselves of it, whether they bought a
+"Chickering" or not. Such generosity is too rare to fail to receive the
+praise it merits.
+
+Mr. Chickering did not continue long in business with Mr. Stewart. The
+latter withdrew in a few years, and Mr. Chickering carried on the
+business alone. In 1830 he formed a partnership with Captain John
+Mackay, a retired ship-merchant. In the new firm Captain Mackay took
+charge of the finances and the office business, while Mr. Chickering
+devoted himself entirely to the mechanical department. The operations of
+the new house were very successful. The improvements made by Mr.
+Chickering from the first created a demand for their instruments which
+was sometimes so great that it was difficult to supply it. This demand
+continued to increase, until the house was perfectly easy as to money
+matters, and able to enlarge its facilities very greatly. It was Mr.
+Chickering's design that each separate instrument should be an
+improvement upon those which had preceded it, and he was careful that
+this plan should not miscarry. In a few years the firm was enabled to
+import the foreign materials needed, by the cargo, thus saving the
+profit which they had hitherto been compelled to pay the importer.
+Besides this saving, they were enabled to keep on hand a large stock of
+the woods used in the instrument, and thus it was allowed to become more
+thoroughly seasoned than that which they had been compelled to purchase,
+from time to time, in small quantities. In 1841, Captain Mackay sailed
+from Boston for South America, for the purpose of obtaining a supply of
+the woods needed by the firm; but he never returned, and as no tidings
+of him or his ship were ever received, it is supposed that the vessel
+went down at sea with all on board.
+
+Mr. Chickering now decided to continue the business without a partner.
+His friends supposed that in assuming the management of the concern, in
+addition to the direction of the mechanical department, and the constant
+mental labor to which he subjected himself in his efforts to improve the
+piano, he was undertaking more than he was capable of performing. They
+feared his health would break down under it. Besides, it was generally
+believed that, in spite of Mr. Chickering's undoubted skill in his own
+department, he was not much of a business man. He was confident of his
+own ability, however, and did not hesitate to assume the new
+responsibility.
+
+The business of which he now became the owner was very heavy and
+extensive. Soon after the beginning of his connection with Captain
+Mackay, the firm erected a large factory for the purpose of carrying on
+their business. One hundred hands were employed in it when opened, but
+in a few years it was necessary to employ more than twice that number,
+so rapidly did the business increase. The supply of materials needed was
+ample and of the very best quality, for Mr. Chickering never allowed an
+inferior article to be used. The warerooms were large and handsomely
+fitted up, and were filled with instruments ranging in price from a
+thousand dollars downward. It was generally believed that while Mr.
+Chickering's genius had created the demand for the pianos, it was
+Captain Mackay's business knowledge and experience that had placed
+affairs on their present footing, and when Mr. Chickering proposed to
+buy Captain Mackay's interest from his heirs, which was valued at
+several hundred thousand dollars, there was a very general belief, which
+found expression, that he was incurring certain ruin. The condition of
+the sale was that the purchase-money should be divided into
+installments, for each of which Mr. Chickering should give his note,
+secured by a mortgage on the premises. At Mr. Chickering's request each
+note was made payable "on or before" a given day. The lawyer who
+conducted the transaction smiled skeptically as he inserted this clause,
+and asked the purchaser if he _ever_ expected to pay the notes at all.
+
+"If I did not expect to pay them promptly, I should not give them," was
+the simple reply. He was as good as his word. The notes were met
+promptly, and although Captain Mackay's family requested that they might
+stand as an investment for them, Mr. Chickering took up the last one at
+its maturity.
+
+With the business in his own hands, Mr. Chickering continued its
+operations, displaying an ease in his mercantile transactions which
+astonished and delighted his friends. The business prospered to a
+greater degree than before, and all the while Mr. Chickering continued
+his labors for the improvement of his instruments with still greater
+success than in former years. His pianos were universally regarded as
+the best in the market, and his competitors were unable to excel him.
+Although conducting a business which required the constant exercise of
+the highest mercantile talent, he did not relax his energy in the
+mechanical department. To the end of his life, long after he had become
+a wealthy and prominent man, he had his own little working-cabinet, with
+an exquisite set of tools, with which he himself put the finishing touch
+to each of his splendid instruments, a touch he would not intrust to any
+other hands.
+
+His competitors did all in their power to equal him, but he distanced
+them all. One of them adopted a most startling expedient. He obtained
+permission from the Legislature of Massachusetts to change his name to
+_Chickering_, and at once sent out his instruments marked with his new
+name, his object of course being to deceive the public, and Jonas
+Chickering had the mortification of seeing the inferior instruments of
+another maker mistaken for his own. He promptly laid before the
+Legislature a petition for redress, setting forth the facts of the case
+and the motives of his rival. The result was that the Legislature
+reconsidered its action, and compelled the bogus Chickering to resume
+his original name.
+
+Mr. Chickering was noted for his simplicity and straight-forwardness in
+business transactions. Conscious of his own integrity, he listened to no
+proposition of a doubtful character, nor would he ever allow his credit
+as a merchant to be questioned with impunity. Upon one occasion, he
+applied through his clerk to the bank, with which he had dealt for many
+years, for an accommodation which he needed. The president of the bank
+sent for him, and told him that security would be required.
+
+"I shall give you none," he replied. "I have done my business at this
+bank for a long time, and if you do not know me, I shall apply where I
+am better known."
+
+The president was firm in his position, and Mr. Chickering applied to
+another bank, which readily granted him the desired discount, and to
+which he at once transferred his business, which was worth to the bank
+about ten thousand dollars a year. Shortly after, a director of the
+institution at which he had formerly dealt called on him, and urged him
+to restore his business to the bank, assuring him that in future it
+would readily grant him any accommodation he might desire.
+
+"No," he replied; "I will deal with no institution which, having had the
+opportunity of knowing me, suspects my responsibility."
+
+Again having need of accommodation, he sent his notes for a large sum to
+one of the city banks for discount. The president said an indorser would
+be required.
+
+"I shall indorse them myself," said Mr. Chickering.
+
+"That will never do," replied the president.
+
+"Very well," was the simple answer, and, without further words, he took
+the notes to another bank, which promptly loaned him the money on them.
+
+He tolerated no irregularity in his own business. He was true to the
+spirit as well as to the letter of a contract, and never, during the
+whole course of his long life, was he guilty of a transaction in which
+the most rigid moralist could find a taint of sharp practice. What a
+refutation of the theories of those who hold that cunning and trickery
+are unavoidable some time in the course of a long and successful
+mercantile career lies in the story of this man, who, beginning life
+penniless, filled with a burning ambition to be rich and famous, never
+swerved from the straight path of integrity, and by the exercise of only
+the highest traits of his nature more than realized his boyish dreams!
+Ponder it well, young man, and learn from it that honesty is indeed the
+best policy in any calling.
+
+Mr. Chickering had married early in life, and now had three sons just
+entering upon manhood. These were carefully educated at the public
+schools for which Boston is so justly famed, and then put into their
+father's factory to learn the mechanical part of the business. It was
+the father's ambition to be succeeded by his sons, but he was not
+willing to trust the labor of his life to ignorant or incompetent hands.
+At the age of seventeen, Thomas Chickering, the eldest son, was taken
+from school, and, under his father's eye, taught every detail of the
+mechanical branch of the business, until he understood it as well as the
+senior Chickering himself. George, the second son, in due time passed
+through the same course of training; while Francis, the youngest, was
+brought up in the warehouse. The father thoroughly imbued his sons with
+his own system and energy, and to-day we see the result. The firm of
+Chickering & Sons is still the most prominent in America. Thomas is now
+the acting head of the house, and has led it on to continued success;
+Francis is the presiding genius of the mechanical department, and has
+made many important improvements in the field in which his father won
+success; and George exercises a general supervision at the immense
+factory in Boston. The mantle of the father has fallen upon the sons,
+and his labors have found their highest reward in their success.
+
+Mr. Chickering's good fortune was not entirely uninterrupted. On the 1st
+of December, 1852, his factory was burned to the ground, with all its
+valuable patterns, stock, etc., involving a loss to him of two hundred
+thousand dollars. The interruption to his business was very serious,
+apart from the loss of his property. Expressions of sympathy poured in
+upon him from his friends, coupled with offers of pecuniary assistance
+in his efforts to reëstablish his business. His disaster seemed merely
+to inspire him with fresh energy, but the kindness of his friends
+entirely overcame him.
+
+[Illustration: "MY MEN SHALL NOT SUFFER."]
+
+He wasted no time in vain regrets, but at once went to work. He was
+fifty-four years old, but he showed an energy and determination which
+more than rivaled the fire of his young manhood. The loss of his factory
+was not only a severe blow to him, but to the three hundred workmen who
+had been employed in it, and who were dependent upon their wages for
+their support. His first care was to assure them that they should not
+suffer, but that they should continue to receive their wages as
+regularly as though nothing had happened to interrupt their labor. He
+had always been kind and generous to his employés, paying liberal wages,
+and rewarding especial merit, but this act of kindness did more to
+endear him to them than any previous benefaction. Having provided for
+his men, he set to work to prepare temporary accommodations for his
+business, and then began his arrangements for the construction of a new
+factory. He took a great degree of interest in the plans for the new
+building, the architect being almost entirely guided by his suggestions,
+and the result of his labors is the magnificent building to which
+reference was made at the opening of this chapter. He did not live to
+see it completed, however. He died at the house of a friend from the
+rupture of a blood-vessel, produced, it is believed, by severe mental
+labor, on the 8th of December, 1853. His fortune at the time of his
+death was estimated at a quarter of a million of dollars. His sons
+assumed the charge of the business, which they still conduct.
+
+The loss of Mr. Chickering was felt by all classes of his
+fellow-citizens--especially by the poor. To them he had been a kind and
+generous friend. Distress never appealed to him in vain, and he proved a
+faithful steward of the riches committed to his care. Yet he performed
+his charities with such a modesty and reticence that few beside the
+grateful recipients were aware of them. Indeed, it was his custom to
+enjoin secrecy upon those whom he assisted; but they would not remain
+quiet. His liberality is in striking contrast with the closeness of many
+who were worth more than twenty times his wealth, but who lacked his
+warm and sympathizing nature.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+NICHOLAS LONGWORTH.
+
+
+The grape culture of the United States is yet in its infancy. Although
+the annual wine product is estimated at nearly three millions of
+gallons, there can be no doubt that ere many years shall have elapsed
+America will rank as one of the most important wine countries of the
+world. California is already extending her vineyards for miles along her
+smiling valleys, where the clear sky and the balmy air, which are
+unchangeable at the season of the grape harvest, permit a degree of
+perfection in the fruit unattainable in any European country. Already
+her wines are commanding an enviable place in the markets of the world,
+with no apparent limits to the growing demand for them. The hillsides of
+the lower Ohio Valley are lined with thriving vineyards, whose rich
+clusters of Catawba and Isabella grapes delight the eye on every hand,
+and thousands of acres are now given to successful grape culture, where
+formerly only a few straggling vines were seen. More than five hundred
+thousand gallons of wine are now annually produced in the neighborhood
+of Cincinnati alone, and find a market in that city, and what was but a
+few years ago a mere experiment is now one of the chief sources of the
+wonderful prosperity of the Ohio Valley, and one of the most important
+features in the commerce of the Queen City of the West. The success
+which has attended this branch of our industry must be a matter of
+congratulation to the whole country, and the man to whose courage,
+energy, and liberality it is mainly due must be regarded as a public
+benefactor.
+
+This man, NICHOLAS LONGWORTH by name, was born at Newark, New Jersey, on
+the 16th of January, 1782. His father had been a man of large property,
+but in consequence of being a Tory during the Revolution, his
+possessions were confiscated, and he and his family impoverished. Young
+Nicholas's childhood was passed in indigence, and it is said that he was
+apprenticed to a shoemaker, when a mere lad, to learn the trade as a
+means of livelihood. However this may be, it is certain that when very
+young he went to South Carolina as a clerk for his elder brother. The
+climate of the South, however, did not suit his health, and he returned
+to Newark, and began the study of the law.
+
+He was poor, and the East was overcrowded, even at that early day, and
+offered but few inducements to a young man entirely dependent upon his
+own efforts. Ohio was then the "Far West," and emigration was setting in
+toward it rapidly. Those who had seen the country related what then
+seemed marvelous tales of its wonderful fertility and progress. Few
+professional men were seeking the distant land, and Longworth felt
+convinced that the services of such as did go would assuredly be in
+demand, and he resolved to cast his lot with the West.
+
+In 1803, at the age of twenty-one, he removed to the little village of
+Cincinnati, and, having fixed upon this place as his future home,
+entered the law office of Judge Jacob Burnet, long the ablest jurist in
+Ohio. He soon won the confidence and esteem of his instructor, and
+succeeded so well in his studies that in an unusually short time he was
+admitted to the bar.
+
+He entered upon the practice of his profession with energy, and soon
+acquired a profitable business, which increased rapidly. He was a man of
+simple habits, and lived economically. His savings were considerable,
+and were regularly invested by him in real estate in the suburbs of the
+town. Land was cheap at that time, some of his lots costing him but ten
+dollars each. Long before his death they were worth more than as many
+thousands. He had a firm conviction that Cincinnati was destined to
+become one of the largest and most flourishing cities in the Union, and
+that his real estate would increase in value at a rate which would
+render him wealthy in a very few years.
+
+His first client was a man accused of horse-stealing, in those days the
+most heinous offense known to Western law. Longworth secured his
+acquittal, but the fellow had no money to pay his counsel, and in the
+absence of funds gave Longworth two second-hand copper stills, which
+were his property. These the lawyer accepted, thinking that he could
+easily dispose of them for cash, as they were rare and valuable there in
+those days. They were in the keeping of Mr. Joel Williams, who carried
+on a tavern adjacent to the river, and who was afterward one of the
+largest property-holders in Cincinnati. Mr. Williams was building a
+distillery at the time, and, as he had confidently reckoned upon using
+the two stills in his possession, was considerably nonplussed when
+Longworth presented his order for them. In his extremity he offered to
+purchase them from the lawyer for a lot of thirty-three acres of barren
+land in the town, which was then worth little or nothing. Longworth
+hesitated, for although he had an almost prophetic belief in the future
+value of the land, he was sorely in need of ready money; but at length
+he accepted the offer. The deed for the land was made out in his name,
+and the stills became the property of Mr. Williams. The distillery was
+built, and its owner realized a fortune; but Longworth did more. His
+thirty-three acres of barren land were soon in the very heart of
+Cincinnati, and long before his death were valued at two millions of
+dollars.
+
+The foresight of Mr. Longworth was fully justified by the course of
+events. The growth of Cincinnati was almost marvelous in its rapidity.
+In 1802, it contained about 800 inhabitants; in 1810, 2,540; in 1820,
+9,060; in 1830, 24,831; in 1840, 46,338; in 1850, 118,761; and in 1860,
+just three years before Mr. Longworth's death, 171,293 inhabitants. The
+reader can easily imagine the immense profits which a half century's
+increase placed in the hands of the far-seeing lawyer. It seems almost
+like reading some old fairy tale to peruse the accounts of successful
+ventures in real estate in American cities. They have sprung up as if by
+magic, and it is impossible to say where their development will end.
+Said a gentleman of less than thirty-five years of age to the writer of
+these pages, "I am the oldest native-born citizen of Chicago. When I
+first saw the light, my native place could not boast even the dignity of
+a village; and young as I am, I have witnessed all this wonderful
+growth." The prosperity of Cincinnati was scarcely less marked, as the
+career of Mr. Longworth shows. The investment of a comparatively
+insignificant sum laid the foundation of his fortune, and the first
+counsel fee he ever earned, a sum trifling in itself, placed him in
+possession of millions.
+
+Mr. Longworth continued carefully to invest his gains in real estate.
+The prices paid by him increased, of course, with the rise in the value
+of property, but as he was persuaded that the limit had not yet been
+reached, he extended his operations without fear of loss. He sold many
+of his original purchases, but continued until the day of his death the
+largest land-owner in the city. In 1850 his taxes were over $17,000, and
+in the same year the taxes of William B. Astor amounted to $23,116. At
+the time of his death Mr. Longworth's estate was valued at fifteen
+millions of dollars, and is doubtless worth fully one-third more at the
+present day.
+
+Mr. Longworth retired from the practice of the law in 1819, to devote
+himself to the management of his property, which was already
+sufficiently important to require his undivided attention. He had always
+been an enthusiast in horticultural matters, and believing that the
+climate of the Ohio Valley was admirably adapted to the production of
+grapes, had for some time been making experiments in that direction; but
+he fell into the error of believing that only the foreign vines were
+worth cultivating, and his experiments were unsuccessful. The foreign
+grape did not mature well, and the wine produced from it was not good.
+In 1828 his friend Major Adlum sent him some specimens of the Catawba
+grape, which he had procured from the garden of a German living near
+Washington City, and be began to experiment with it in his own vineyard.
+
+The Catawba grape, now so popular and well-known throughout the country,
+was then a comparative stranger to our people, and was regarded even by
+many who were acquainted with it as unfit for vintage purposes. It was
+first discovered in a wild condition about 1801, near Asheville,
+Buncombe County, North Carolina, near the source of the Catawba River.
+General Davy, of Rocky Mount, on that river, afterward Senator from
+North Carolina, is supposed to have given the German in whose garden
+Major Adlum found the grape a few of the vines to experiment upon.
+General Davy always regarded the bringing of this grape into notice as
+the greatest act of his life. "I have done my country a greater benefit
+in introducing this grape into public notice," said he, in after years,
+"than I would have done if I had paid the national debt."
+
+Mr. Longworth's experiments with the Catawba were highly successful,
+and induced him to abandon all his efforts with foreign vines, and
+undertake only the Catawba, to which he afterward added the Isabella. He
+now entered systematically upon grape-growing. He established a large
+vineyard upon a hillside sloping down to the river, about four miles
+above the city, and employed German laborers, whose knowledge of
+vine-dressing, acquired in the Fatherland, made them the best workmen he
+could have. He caused it to be announced that all the grape juice
+produced by the small growers in the vicinity would find a cash
+purchaser in him, no matter in what quantities offered. At the same time
+he offered n reward of five hundred dollars for any improvement in the
+quality of the Catawba grape.
+
+The enthusiasm which he manifested, as well as the liberality of his
+offer, had a decidedly beneficial effect upon the small growers in the
+neighborhood. "It proved a great stimulus to the growth of the Catawba
+vine in the country around Cincinnati," to know that a man of Mr.
+Longworth's means stood ready to pay cash, at the rate of from a dollar
+to a dollar and a quarter a gallon, for all the grape-juice that might
+be brought to him, without reference to the quantity. It was in this
+way, and by urgent popular appeals through the columns of the
+newspapers, that he succeeded, after many failures, and against the
+depressing influence of much doubt and indifference, in bringing the
+enterprise up to its present high and stable position. When he took the
+matter in hand there was much to discourage any one not possessed of the
+traits of constancy of purpose and perseverance peculiar to Mr.
+Longworth. Many had tried the manufacture of wine, and had failed to
+give it any economical or commercial importance. It was not believed,
+until Mr. Longworth practically demonstrated it, that a native grape
+was the only one upon which any hope could be placed, and that the
+Catawba offered the most assured promise of success, and was the one
+upon which all vine-growers might with confidence depend. It took years
+of unremitted care, multiplied and wide-spread investigations, and the
+expenditure of large sums of money, to establish this fact, and bring
+the agricultural community to accept it and act under its guidance. The
+success attained by Mr. Longworth soon induced other gentlemen resident
+in the vicinity of Cincinnati, and favorably situated for the purpose,
+to undertake the culture of the Catawba, and several of them are now
+regularly and extensively engaged in the manufacture of wine. The
+impetus and encouragement thus given to the business soon led the German
+citizens of Hamilton County to perceive its advantages, and, under their
+thrifty management, thousands of acres, stretching up from the banks of
+the Ohio, are now covered with luxuriant and profitable vineyards,
+rivaling in profusion and beauty the vine-clad hills of Italy and
+France. The oldest vineyard in the county of Hamilton is of Mr.
+Longworth's planting.
+
+Mr. Longworth subsequently increased the size of his vineyard to two
+hundred acres, and toward the close of his life his wine houses annually
+produced one hundred and fifty thousand bottles of wine. His vaults
+usually contained a stock of three hundred thousand bottles in course of
+thorough ripening.
+
+His cellars were situated on the declivity of East Sixth Street, on the
+road to Observatory Hill. They occupied a space ninety feet by one
+hundred and twenty-five in size, and consisted of two tiers of massive
+stone vaults, the lower of which was twenty-five feet below the surface
+of the ground. The manufacture of the wine was placed under the charge
+of a celebrated chemist from Rheims, and the mode of preparation was as
+follows:
+
+After the pressing of the grape, the juice is subjected to the vinous
+fermentation, by which ten or eleven per cent, of alcohol is developed.
+In the following spring, it is mixed with a small quantity of sugar, and
+put into strong bottles, the corks of which are secured with twine and
+wire. The sugar accelerates a second fermentation, which always takes
+place about this time, and thus a strong movement is produced inside the
+glass, which generates gas enough to burst the vessels briskly, adding
+thereby considerably to the cost. This is known as the gaseous
+fermentation, and the effect of it is to render the wine more
+enlivening, more stinging to the taste, and more fruity. "This last
+effect results from this, that the flavor of the fruit mostly passes off
+with the carbonic acid gas, which is largely generated in the first or
+vinous fermentation, and in a less degree in this second or gaseous
+fermentation." It is impossible to avoid the loss of the flavor in the
+first fermentation, but the strong bottles and securely-fastened corks
+preserve it in the second. The liquid, which is muddy at first, becomes
+clear in about a year, a thick sediment having collected at the bottom
+of the bottle. The bottles are then placed in racks, with their necks
+downward, and are shaken vigorously every day for about three weeks.
+This forces the sediment to settle down in the neck against the cork.
+When it is all in the neck, the wires are cut, and the cork blown out by
+the gas, carrying the sediment with it. Fresh sugar, for sweetness, is
+now added, new corks are driven in and secured, and in a few weeks the
+wine is ready for the market.
+
+Mr. Longworth continued his wine trade with great success for about
+twenty-five years, and though for some time his expenditures were
+largely in excess of his income from this source, he at length reaped a
+steady and increasing profit from it, which more than reimbursed him for
+his former losses. He was very fond of the strawberry, and succeeded,
+by careful and expensive cultivation, in making several very important
+improvements in that delicious fruit. His experiments in the sexual
+character of the strawberry are highly interesting, but must be passed
+by here. He manifested no selfishness with respect to his fruits. He was
+anxious that their cultivation should become general, and his
+discoveries and improvements were always at the service of any and every
+one who desired to make use of them.
+
+He was thoroughly devoted to his adopted home, and anxious to secure its
+steady improvement. When it was proposed to establish an observatory,
+the Mount Adams property, then owned by him, was regarded as the most
+fitting site for it. He was asked to name the price for which he would
+sell the property. To the astonishment of the parties in charge of the
+enterprise, he made a free gift of the land--four acres in extent--to
+the trustees. A gentleman who had hoped to dispose of some of his own
+property for this purpose charged Mr. Longworth, through the press, with
+being influenced by a desire to improve his adjoining property by the
+erection of the observatory on Mount Adams. Longworth promptly replied
+that if the writer of the article in question would donate four acres of
+his own property for an observatory, he (Longworth) would put up, at his
+own expense, a building on it equal to that which had been erected on
+Mount Adams, and transfer the latter place to the city as a permanent
+pleasure ground. He quietly added that in this way his accuser might
+himself receive, for his adjacent property, all the benefits of such an
+improvement, and at the same time win for himself the lasting gratitude
+of the people of Cincinnati. This settled the matter, and no more was
+heard from the other side.
+
+"Longworth," says one who knew him, "is a problem and a riddle--a
+problem worthy of the study of those who delight in exploring that
+labyrinth of all that is hidden and mysterious, the human heart; and a
+riddle to himself and others. He is a wit and a humorist of a high
+order; of keen sagacity and shrewdness in many other respects than in
+money matters; one who can be exact to a dollar, and liberal, when he
+chooses, with thousands; of marked peculiarity and tenacity in his own
+opinions, yet of abundant tolerance to the opinions, however
+extravagant, of others--a man of great public spirit and sound general
+judgment.
+
+"In addition to all this, it would be difficult to find an individual of
+his position and standing so perfectly free from pride, in the ordinary
+sense. He has absolutely none, unless it be the pride of eccentricity.
+It is no uncommon circumstance for men to become rich by the
+concentration of time, and labor, and attention to some one object of
+profitable employment. This is the ordinary phase of money-getting, as
+closing the ear and pocket to applications for aid is that of
+money-saving. Longworth has become a rich man on a different principle.
+He appears to have started upon the calculation that if he could put any
+individual in the way of making a dollar for Longworth, and a dollar for
+himself at the same time, by aiding him with ground for a lot, or in
+building him a house on it; and if, moreover, he could multiply cases of
+the kind by hundreds, or perhaps thousands, he would promote his own
+interests just in the same measure as he was advancing those of others.
+At the same time he could not be unconscious that, while their half was
+subdivided into small possessions, owned by a thousand or more
+individuals, his half was a vast, boundless aggregate, since it was the
+property of one man alone. The event has done justice to his sagacity.
+Hundreds, if not thousands, in and adjacent to Cincinnati, now own
+houses and lots, and many have become wealthy, who would, in all
+probability, have lived and died as tenants under a different state of
+case. Had not Mr. Longworth adopted this course, he would have occupied
+that relation to society which many wealthy men now sustain, that of
+getting all they can and keeping all they get."
+
+In politics, Mr. Longworth was a Whig, and afterward a Republican.
+During the famous Clay campaign he was asked to give one hundred dollars
+to help defray the expenses of the party.
+
+"I never give something for nothing," said he. "We might fail to elect
+Clay, as we did before, and I should fling away the hundred dollars."
+
+The applicant, who was himself a man of wealth, assured him that there
+was no doubt of Clay's election.
+
+"There can be no chance of your losing," he said.
+
+"Well," replied Longworth, "I'll tell you what I will do. I will give
+you the hundred dollars, but mind, you shall be personally responsible
+to me for its return if Clay is not elected."
+
+The offer was accepted; and when the campaign resulted in the defeat of
+Clay, Longworth demanded his money from the politician, who was
+compelled to return it out of his own pocket.
+
+In his own way--and a quaint, singular way it was--Mr. Longworth was
+exceedingly charitable. Long after he was worth millions, and when every
+moment of his time was valuable, he was supernumerary township trustee.
+This was an office which required the expenditure of a considerable
+portion of his time, and brought him in constant contact with some of
+the most wretched of the lowest class of the poor. He was always in his
+office, at stated times, and with a patience and kindness worthy of all
+admiration, the millionaire listened to their sad tales, and provided
+such aid as was necessary, oftentimes giving it out of his own purse
+when the public funds failed.
+
+He was a bitter foe to vagabondage and mendicity. If people in need were
+willing to work, he would place them in the way of doing so. He was the
+owner of a stone quarry on Deer Creek, the traces of which may still be
+seen in the lines of the new Gilbert Avenue; and he kept in his office
+a supply of picks and shovels. When a stout beggar asked him for alms,
+he would inquire if he was willing to go to work. If answered
+affirmatively, he would give him a pick and shovel, and start him for
+the quarry, where the wages were promptly paid out every night. Many
+availed themselves of the opportunity, and worked for him faithfully;
+but others gave the quarry "a wide berth," and sold the pick and shovel
+for money or liquor. It was his custom to buy large quantities of bread
+tickets from the bakers, and to distribute them to those whom he
+considered worthy; and he would also keep on hand large quantities of
+shoes, dry goods, etc., which he gave away in the same manner.
+
+Mr. Frank Pentland, who was once in his employ, relates the following
+incident:
+
+"One morning, just after Mr. Longworth had gone to his office, near the
+Third-Street entrance, where he was accustomed to receive applicants for
+charity, he was accosted by a man who craved assistance. In answer to a
+question as to his needs, he replied that his main want was a pair of
+shoes, and a glance at his feet showed that he spoke truthfully. Mr.
+Longworth appeared 'to take his measure' at a glance, and impulsively
+shaking his right foot (he seldom wore his shoes tied), kicked the shoe
+over to the applicant, saying:
+
+"'Try that on, my man. How does it fit?'
+
+"'Illigant, yer honor,'
+
+"'Well, try that, now,' said he, kicking off the other. 'How will they
+do?'
+
+"Illigant, yer honor; illigant! May many a blessing'--
+
+"'Well, well, go now--that'll do,' and turning to Pentland, who was then
+a young boy in his service, ordered him to the house to get another
+pair. Frank obeyed, but was told by Mrs. Longworth that those he wore
+away from the house were all that he had. The result was that Frank was
+hurried off to William Hart's shoe store, on Fifth Street, for new ones,
+with instructions to 'Ask Mr. Hart for the kind I always buy, and don't
+pay over a dollar and a half for them.'"
+
+Yet many persons charged this man with stinginess--a charge to which
+every rich man lays himself open who does not give to all who ask him.
+Even the rich must refuse sometimes, for there is no reason why they
+should answer _all_ the calls made upon them--a course which would soon
+impoverish them. They must discriminate somewhere, and how this shall be
+done is a question which each must decide for himself. Longworth
+exercised this discrimination in an eccentric manner, eminently
+characteristic of him. He invariably refused cases that commended
+themselves to others. A gentleman once applied to him for assistance for
+a widow in destitute circumstances.
+
+"Who is she?" asked the millionaire. "Do you know her? Is she a
+deserving object?"
+
+"She is not only a woman of excellent character," answered his friend,
+"but she is doing all in her power to support a large family of
+children."
+
+"Very well, then," said Mr. Longworth, "I shan't give a cent. Such
+persons will always find a plenty to relieve them."
+
+He was firm, and turned coldly from the entreaties of his friend. Yet
+he opened his purse liberally to those whom others refused. Vagabonds,
+drunkards, fallen women, those who had gone down far into the depths of
+misery and wretchedness, and from whom respectable people shrank in
+disgust, never appealed to him in vain. "The devil's poor," he
+whimsically called them. He would listen to them patiently, moved to the
+depths of his soul by their sad stories, and would send them away
+rejoicing that they were not utterly friendless. "Decent paupers will
+always find a plenty to help them," he would say, "but no one cares for
+these poor wretches. Every body damns them, and as no one else will help
+them, I must." Yet he aided them in such a manner as to encourage them
+to rise above their wretchedness.
+
+In his personal appearance Mr. Longworth was not prepossessing. He was
+dry and caustic in his remarks, and rarely spared the object of his
+satire. He was plain and careless in his dress, looking more like a
+beggar than a millionaire. He cared nothing for dress, except, perhaps,
+that he preferred common clothes to fine ones. One of his acquaintances
+relates the following story in illustration of this phase of his
+character:
+
+"Many winters ago, it will be remembered that a style of striped goods
+was quite popular with poor people on account of its cheapness, and that
+it acquired the name of 'Hard Times.' Every body with scant purses wore
+coats or pants of it, for the reason that they could not very well buy
+any other kind. As the story goes, it appears that 'Old Nick,' as he was
+familiarly called, invested in an overcoat of this material, and took
+great pride in wearing it, much to the annoyance of the women folks. It
+happened that one cold, stormy night the faithful family coachman was at
+the house without an overcoat, and Mrs. Longworth, after very feelingly
+depicting his forlorn condition to her husband, solicited the privilege
+of giving him the aforesaid overcoat. Much to her gratification, Mr.
+Longworth assented, and the coachman wore off the 'Hard Times,' the good
+wife replacing it by an elegant broadcloth that she had quietly provided
+for the occasion. The next morning 'Old Nick' very innocently (?)
+overlooked the new coat, and went off to make his usual morning rounds
+without one; but it would be impossible to portray the annoyance of the
+household when they saw him returning to dinner wearing a duplicate of
+the veritable 'Hard Times,' and for weeks afterward it was no uncommon
+occurrence to see the 'master and man' flitting about the old homestead
+dressed in their gray stripes."
+
+The shabbiness of his dress once led to an amusing adventure, which he
+enjoyed very much. Climbing one of the hilly streets of the city one
+broiling summer day, he sat down on a pile of bricks, under the cool
+shade of a tree, to rest. Taking off his well-worn hat, he laid it on
+his knee, and closing his eyes, sat enjoying the breeze which had just
+then sprung up. He was very tired, and his whole figure expressed his
+weariness. As he sat there in his shabby dress, with his eyes closed,
+and his hat resting on his knees, he looked the very picture of a blind
+beggar soliciting charity. For such, indeed, he was mistaken by a
+working man who passed by a few minutes later, and who, pitying the
+supposed unfortunate, tossed a few pennies into his hat. The noise of
+the coppers made the old man open his eyes and look up; and to his
+amazement the workman recognized in the object of his charity Nicholas
+Longworth, the millionaire. Mr. Longworth looked at him a moment in his
+dry, quizzical way, and then, thanking him politely, put the coins in
+his pocket, and, closing his eyes, once more resumed his former
+position.
+
+Mr. Longworth had erected a magnificent mansion in the midst of his
+vineyard. He gathered there a fine library, and a collection of
+paintings, statuary, and other art treasures, which were his pride. He
+died there on the 10th of February, 1863, at the age of eighty-one. His
+loss was severely felt by the community, especially by his "devil's
+poor," for whom he had cared so tenderly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+GEORGE PEABODY.
+
+
+It is not often that men who pass their lives in the acquisition of
+money are able to retain the desire to give it to others who have had no
+share in the earning of it. In European countries, the wealthy merchant
+commonly uses his fortune for the purpose of founding a family, and
+securing sometimes a title of nobility. His wealth is entailed, that it
+may remain in his family and benefit remote generations; but few save
+those of his own blood enjoy any benefit from it, and the world is no
+better off for his life and success than if he had never been born. In
+America, instances of personal generosity and benevolence on a large
+scale are of more common occurrence than in the Old World. We have
+already borne witness to the munificence of Girard, Astor, Lawrence,
+Longworth, and Stewart, and shall yet present to the reader other
+instances of this kind in the remaining pages of this work. We have now
+to trace the career of one who far exceeded any of these in the extent
+and magnitude of his liberality, and who, while neglecting none
+connected with him by ties of blood, took the whole English-speaking
+race for his family, and by scattering his blessings far and wide on
+both sides of the Atlantic, has won a proud name
+
+    "As one who loved his fellow-men."
+
+
+[Illustration: GEORGE PEABODY.]
+
+GEORGE PEABODY came of an old English family, which traced its
+descent back to the year of our Lord 61, the days of the heroic
+Boadicea, down through the brilliant circle of the Knights of the Round
+Table, to Francis Peabody, who in 1635 went from St. Albans, in
+Hertfordshire, to the New World, and settled in Danvers, Massachusetts,
+where the subject of this memoir was born one hundred and sixty years
+later, on the 18th of February, 1795. The parents of George Peabody were
+poor, and hard work was the lot to which he was born, a lot necessary to
+develop his sterling qualities of mind and heart. He was possessed of a
+strong, vigorous constitution, and a quick, penetrating intellect. His
+education was limited, for he was taken from school at the age of
+eleven, and set to earning his living. Upon leaving school, he was
+apprenticed to a Mr. Sylvester Proctor, who kept a "country store" in
+Danvers. Here he worked hard and faithfully for four or five years,
+devoting himself, with an energy and determination surprising in one so
+young, to learn the first principles of business. His mind matured more
+rapidly than his body, and he was a man in intellect long before he was
+out of his teens. Having gained all the information it was possible to
+acquire in so small an establishment, he began to wish for a wider field
+for the exercise of his abilities. A retail grocery store was no longer
+the place for one possessed of such talents, and thoroughly conscious of
+them at such an early age, and it was natural that he should desire some
+more important and responsible position.
+
+Accordingly, he left Mr. Proctor's employment, and spent a year with his
+maternal grandfather at Post Mills village, Thetford, Vermont. "George
+Peabody's year at Post Mills," says a writer who knew him, "must have
+been a year of intense quiet, with good examples always before him, and
+good advice whenever occasion called for it; for Mr. Dodge and his wife
+were both too shrewd to bore him with it needlessly.
+
+"It was on his return from this visit that he spent a night at a tavern
+in Concord, N.H., and paid for his entertainment by sawing wood the next
+morning. That, however, must have been a piece of George's own voluntary
+economy, for Jeremiah Dodge would never have sent his grandson home to
+Danvers without the means of procuring the necessaries of life on the
+way, and still less, if possible, would Mrs. Dodge...."
+
+[Illustration: PEABODY PAYING FOR A NIGHT'S LODGING.]
+
+"The interest with which Mr. Peabody remembered this visit to Post Mills
+is shown by his second visit so late in life, and his gift of a
+library--as large a library as that place needs. Of its influence on his
+subsequent career, of course, there is no record. Perhaps it was not
+much. But, at least, it gave him a good chance for quiet thinking, at an
+age when he needed it; and the labors of the farm may have been useful
+both to mind and body."
+
+At the age of sixteen, in the year 1811, he went to Newburyport, and
+became a clerk in the store of his elder brother, David Peabody, who was
+engaged in the dry goods business at that place. He exhibited unusual
+capacity and promise in his calling, and soon drew upon himself the
+favorable attention of the merchants of the place. He was prompt,
+reliable, and energetic, and from the first established an enviable
+reputation for personal and professional integrity. It is said that he
+earned here the first money he ever made outside of his business. This
+was by writing ballots for the Federal party in Newburyport. Printed
+ballots had not then come into use.
+
+He did not stay long in Newburyport, as a great fire, which burned up a
+considerable part of the town, destroyed his brother's store, and
+obliged him to seek employment elsewhere. He always retained a warm
+attachment to the place, however, an attachment which a resident of the
+town explains as follows:
+
+"The cause of Mr. George Peabody's interest in Newburyport was not alone
+that he had lived here for a brief period, or that his relatives had
+lived here; but rather it was the warm friendship that had been shown
+him, which was, in fact, the basis of his subsequent prosperity. He left
+here in 1811, and returned in 1857. The forty-six intervening years had
+borne to the grave most of the persons with whom he had formed
+acquaintance. Among those he recognized were several who were in
+business, or clerks, on State Street in 1811,--Messrs. John Porter,
+Moses Kimball, Prescott Spaulding, and a few others. Mr. Spaulding was
+fourteen years older than Mr. Peabody, and in business when the latter
+was a clerk with his uncle, Colonel John Peabody. Mr. Peabody was here
+in 1857, on the day of the Agricultural Fair, and was walking in the
+procession with the late Mayor Davenport, when he saw Mr. Spaulding on
+the sidewalk, and at once left the procession to greet him.
+
+"Mr. Spaulding had rendered him the greatest of services. When Mr.
+Peabody left Newburyport, he was under age, and not worth a dollar. Mr.
+Spaulding gave him letters of credit in Boston, through which he
+obtained two thousand dollars' worth of merchandise of Mr. James Reed,
+who was so favorably impressed with his appearance, that he subsequently
+gave him credit for a larger amount. This was his start in life, as he
+afterward acknowledged; for at a public entertainment in Boston, when
+his credit was good for any amount, and in any part of the world, Mr.
+Peabody laid his hand on Mr. Reed's shoulder, and said to those present,
+'My friends, here is my first patron; and he is the man who sold me my
+first bill of goods.' After he was established in Georgetown, D.C., the
+first consignment made to him was by the late Francis Todd, of
+Newburyport. It was from these facts that Newburyport was always
+pleasant in his memory; and the donation he made to the Public Library
+was on his own suggestion, that he desired to do something of a public
+nature for our town."
+
+From New England, George Peabody turned his face southward, and entered
+the employment of his uncle, Mr. John Peabody, who was engaged in the
+dry goods business in Georgetown, in the District of Columbia. He
+reached that place in the spring of 1812; but, as the second war with
+England broke out about the same time, was not able to give his
+immediate attention to business. He became a member of a volunteer
+company of artillery, which was stationed at Fort Warburton, but as no
+active duty was required of the company, he soon went back to his
+uncle's store. His uncle was a poor man and a bad manager, and for two
+years the business was conducted by George Peabody, and in his own name;
+but at the end of that time, seeing the business threatened with ruin by
+his uncle's incapacity, he resigned his situation, and entered the
+service of Mr. Elisha Riggs, who had just established a wholesale dry
+goods house in Georgetown. Mr. Riggs furnished the capital for the
+concern, and Mr. Peabody was given the management of it. Soon after
+this, the latter became a partner in the house. It is said that when Mr.
+Riggs invited Mr. Peabody to become his partner, the latter informed him
+that he could not legally assume the responsibilities of the business,
+as he was only nineteen years old. This was no objection in the mind of
+the merchant, as he wanted a young and active assistant, and had
+discerned in his boy-manager the qualities which never fail to win
+success.
+
+The new business in which he was engaged consisted chiefly in the
+importation and sale of European goods, and consignments of dry goods
+from the northern cities. It extended over a wide field, and gave Mr.
+Peabody a fine opportunity for the display of his abilities. Mr. Riggs'
+friends blamed him very much for leaving his business so entirely in the
+hands of a boy of nineteen; but he had better proof than they that his
+affairs were not only in good but in the best hands, and he answered
+them all by telling them that time would justify his course. Mr. Peabody
+traveled extensively in establishing his business, often journeying into
+the wild and unsettled regions of the border States on horseback. He
+worked with energy and intelligence, and in 1815 the business was found
+to be so extensive that a removal to Baltimore became necessary. About
+this time a sort of irregular banking business was added to the
+operations of the house. This was chiefly the suggestion of Mr. Peabody,
+and proved a source of great profit.
+
+Mr. Peabody quickly took a prominent rank among the merchants of
+Baltimore. His manner was frank and engaging, and won him many friends.
+He was noted for "a judgment quick and cautious, clear and sound, a
+decided purpose, a firm will, energetic and persevering industry,
+punctuality and fidelity in every engagement, justice and honor
+controlling every transaction, and courtesy--that true courtesy which
+springs from genuine kindness--presiding over the intercourse of life."
+His business continued to increase, and in 1822 it became necessary to
+establish branches in Philadelphia and New York, over which Mr. Peabody
+exercised a careful supervision. He was thoroughly familiar with every
+detail of his business, and never suffered his vigilance to relax,
+however competent might be the subordinates in the immediate charge of
+those details. In 1827 he went to England on business for his firm, and
+during the next ten years made frequent voyages between New York and
+London.
+
+In 1829 Mr. Riggs withdrew from the firm, and Mr. Peabody become the
+actual head of the house, the style of the firm, which had previously
+been "Riggs & Peabody," being changed to "Peabody, Riggs & Co." The firm
+had for some time been the financial agents of the State of Maryland,
+and had managed the negotiations confided to them with great skill and
+success; and every year their banking department became more important
+and more profitable.
+
+In 1836 Mr. Peabody determined to extend his business, which was already
+very large, to England, and to open a branch house in London. In 1837 he
+removed to that city for the purpose of taking charge of his house
+there, and from that time London became his home.
+
+The summer of this year was marked by one of the most terrible
+commercial crises the United States has ever known. A large number of
+the banks suspended specie payment, and the majority of the mercantile
+houses were either ruined or in the greatest distress. Thousands of
+merchants, until then prosperous, were hopelessly ruined. "That great
+sympathetic nerve of the commercial world, credit," said Edward Everett,
+"as far as the United States was concerned, was for the time paralyzed.
+At that moment Mr. Peabody not only stood firm himself, but was the
+cause of firmness in others. There were not at that time, probably, half
+a dozen other men in Europe who, upon the subject of American
+securities, would have been listened to for a moment in the parlor of
+the Bank of England. But his judgment commanded respect; his integrity
+won back the reliance which men had been accustomed to place in American
+securities. The reproach in which they were all involved was gradually
+wiped away from those of a substantial character; and if, on this solid
+basis of unsuspected good faith, he reared his own prosperity, let it be
+remembered that at the same time he retrieved the credit of the State of
+Maryland, of which he was agent--performing that miracle by which the
+word of an honest man turns paper into gold."
+
+The conduct of Mr. Peabody, as well as the evidences which he gave of
+his remarkable capacity for business, in this crisis, placed him among
+the foremost merchants of London. He carried on his business upon a
+large scale from his base of operations in that city. He bought British
+manufactures in all parts of England and shipped them to the United
+States. His vessels brought back in return all kinds of American produce
+which would command a ready sale in England. Profitable as these
+ventures were, there was another branch of his business much more
+remunerative to him. The merchants and manufacturers on both sides of
+the Atlantic who consigned their goods to him frequently procured from
+him advances upon the goods long before they were sold. At other times
+they would leave large sums in his hands long after the goods were
+disposed of, knowing that they could draw whenever they needed, and that
+in the meanwhile their money was being so profitably invested that they
+were certain of a proper interest for their loans. Thus Mr. Peabody
+gradually became a banker, in which pursuit he was as successful as he
+had been as a merchant. In 1843 he withdrew from the house of Peabody,
+Riggs & Co., and established the house of "George Peabody & Company, of
+Warnford Court, City."
+
+His dealings were chiefly with America, and in American securities, and
+he was always regarded as one of the best specimens of the American
+merchant ever seen in London. He was very proud of his country; and
+though he passed so many years of his life abroad, he never forgot that
+he was an American. In speaking of the manner in which he organized his
+business establishment, he once said: "I have endeavored, in the
+constitution of its members and the character of its business, to make
+it an American house, and to give it an American atmosphere; to furnish
+it with American journals; to make it a center of American news, and an
+agreeable place for my American friends visiting London."
+
+It was his custom, from his first settlement in England, to celebrate
+the anniversary of the independence of his country by an entertainment
+at one of the public houses in the city, to which the most distinguished
+Americans in London were always invited, as were also many of the
+prominent men of Great Britain; and this dinner was only discontinued in
+deference to the general celebration of the day which was afterward
+instituted by the whole body of Americans resident in the British
+metropolis. In the year 1851, when it was thought that there would be no
+representation of the achievements of American skill and industry in the
+Great Exhibition of that year, from a lack of funds, Mr. Peabody
+generously supplied the sum of fifteen thousand dollars, which enabled
+the Commissioners to make a suitable display of the American
+contributions. Said the Hon. Edward Everett, alluding to this act:
+
+"In most, perhaps in all other countries, this exhibition had been a
+government affair. Commissioners were appointed by authority to protect
+the interests of the exhibitors; and, what was more important,
+appropriations of money had been made to defray their expenses. No
+appropriations were made by Congress. Our exhibitors arrived friendless,
+some of them penniless, in the great commercial Babel of the world. They
+found the portion of the Crystal Palace assigned to our country
+unprepared for the specimens of art and industry which they had brought
+with them; naked and unadorned by the side of the neighboring arcades
+and galleries fitted up with elegance and splendor by the richest
+governments in Europe. The English press began to launch its too ready
+sarcasms at the sorry appearance which Brother Jonathan seemed likely to
+make; and all the exhibitors from this country, as well as those who
+felt an interest in their success, were disheartened. At this critical
+moment, our friend stepped forward. He did what Congress should have
+done. By liberal advances on his part, the American department was
+fitted up; and day after day, as some new product of American ingenuity
+and taste was added to the list,--McCormick's reaper, Colt's revolver,
+Powers's Greek Slave, Hobbs's unpickable lock, Hoe's wonderful printing
+presses, and Bond's more wonderful spring governor,---it began to be
+suspected that Brother Jonathan was not quite so much of a simpleton as
+had been thought. He had contributed his full share, if not to the
+splendor, at least to the utilities of the exhibition. In fact, the
+leading journal at London, with a magnanimity which did it honor,
+admitted that England had derived more real benefit from the
+contributions of the United States than from those of any other
+country."
+
+As has been said, Mr. Peabody made the bulk of his colossal fortune in
+the banking business. He had a firm faith in American securities, and
+dealt in them largely, and with confidence. His business instinct was
+remarkable, his judgment in mercantile and financial matters almost
+infallible, and he made few mistakes. His course was now onward and
+upward, and each year marked an increase of his wealth. His business
+operations were conducted in pursuance of a rigid system which was never
+relaxed. To the very close of his life he never abandoned the exact or
+business-like manner in which he sought to make money. He gave away
+millions with a generosity never excelled, yet he could be exacting to a
+penny in the fulfillment of a contract.
+
+In his youth he contracted habits of economy, and these he retained to
+the last. Being unmarried, he did not subject himself to the expense of
+a complete domestic establishment, but lived in chambers, and
+entertained his friends at his club or at a coffee-house. His habits
+were simple in every respect, and he was often seen making his dinner on
+a mutton-chop at a table laden (at his cost) with the most sumptuous and
+tempting viands. His personal expenses for ten years did not average
+three thousand dollars per annum.
+
+The conductor on an English railway once overcharged him a shilling for
+fare. He promptly complained to the directors, and had the man
+discharged. "Not," said he, "that I could not afford to pay the
+shilling, but the man was cheating many travelers to whom the swindle
+would be offensive."
+
+Several years ago he chanced to ride in a hack in Salem, Massachusetts,
+and upon reaching his destination tendered the driver his usual fee of
+fifty cents.
+
+"Here's your change, sir," said the man, handing him back fifteen cents.
+
+"Change!" exclaimed Mr. Peabody; "why, I'm not entitled to any."
+
+"Yes, you are; I don't charge but thirty-five cents for a ride in my
+hack."
+
+"How do you live, then?"
+
+"By fair dealing, sir. I don't believe in making a man pay more than a
+thing is worth just because I have an opportunity."
+
+Mr. Peabody was so much pleased with this reply, that as long as he
+remained in Salem he sought this man out and gave him his custom.
+
+In his dress Mr. Peabody was simple and unostentatious. He was
+scrupulously neat and tasteful, but there was nothing about him to
+indicate his vast wealth. He seldom wore any jewelry, using merely a
+black band for his watch-guard. Display of all kinds he abominated.
+
+He made several visits to his native country during his last residence
+in London, and commemorated each one of them by acts of princely
+munificence. He gave large sums to the cause of education, and to
+religious and charitable objects, and made each one of his near kindred
+wealthy. None of his relatives received less than one hundred thousand
+dollars, and some were given as much as three times that sum. He gave
+immense sums to the poor of London, and became their benefactor to such
+an extent that Queen Victoria sent him her portrait, which she had
+caused to be executed for him at a cost of over forty thousand dollars,
+in token of her appreciation of his services in behalf of the poor of
+her realm.
+
+Mr. Peabody made another visit to the United States in 1866, and upon
+this occasion added large sums to many of the donations he had already
+made in this country. He remained here until May, 1867, when he returned
+to England. He came back in June, 1869, but soon sailed again for
+England. His health had become very feeble, and it was his belief that
+it would be better in the atmosphere of London, to which he had been so
+long accustomed. His hope of recovery was vain. He failed to rally upon
+reaching London, and died in that city on the 4th of November, 1869.
+
+The news of his death created a profound sadness on both sides of the
+Atlantic, for his native and his adopted country alike revered him as a
+benefactor. The Queen caused his body to be placed in a vault in
+Westminster Abbey, amidst the greatest and noblest of her kingdom, until
+all was in readiness for its transportation to the United States in a
+royal man-of-war. The Congress of the United States authorized the
+President to make such arrangements for the reception of the body as he
+should deem necessary. Sovereigns, statesmen, and warriors united to do
+homage to the mortal remains of this plain, simple man, who, beginning
+life a poor boy, and never departing from the character of an unassuming
+citizen, had made humanity his debtor by his generosity and goodness. He
+was borne across the ocean with kingly honors, two great nations acting
+as chief mourners, and then, when the pomp and the splendor of the
+occasion were ended, they laid him down in his native earth by the side
+of the mother from whom he had imbibed those principles of integrity and
+goodness which were the foundation of his fame and fortune.
+
+It is impossible to obtain an accurate statement of the donations made
+by Mr. Peabody to the objects which enlisted his sympathy. In addition
+to those mentioned in the list below, he gave away for various public
+purposes sums ranging from two hundred and fifty to one thousand
+dollars, and extending back as far as the year 1835. He divided among
+his relatives the sum of about three millions of dollars, giving them a
+portion during his last visit to this country, and leaving them the
+remainder at his death.
+
+The following is a statement of his more important donations during his
+life, including the bequests contained in his last will and testament:
+
+To the State of Maryland, for negotiating the
+   loan of $8,000,000.................................    $60,000
+To the Peabody Institute, Baltimore, Md., including
+   accrued interest...................................  1,500,000
+To the Southern Education Fund........................  3,000,000
+To Yale College.......................................    150,000
+To Harvard College....................................    150,000
+To Peabody Academy, Massachusetts.....................    140,000
+To Phillips Academy, Massachusetts....................     25,000
+To Peabody Institute, etc., at Peabody, Mass..........    250,000
+To Kenyon College, Ohio...............................     25,000
+To Memorial Church, in Georgetown, Mass...............    100,000
+To Homes for the Poor in London.......................  3,000,000
+To Libraries in Georgetown, Massachusetts,
+   and Thetford, Vermont..............................     10,000
+To Kane's Arctic Expedition...........................     10,000
+To different Sanitary Fairs...........................     10,000
+To unpaid moneys advanced to uphold the
+   credit of States...................................     40,000
+
+Total................................................. $8,470,000
+
+The life of such a man affords lessons full of hope and encouragement to
+others. In 1856, when on a visit to Danvers, now named Peabody, in honor
+of him, its most distinguished son and greatest benefactor, he said:
+
+"Though Providence has granted me an unvaried and unusual success in the
+pursuit of fortune in other lands, I am still in heart the humble boy
+who left yonder unpretending dwelling. There is not a youth within the
+sound of my voice whose early opportunities and advantages are not very
+much greater than were my own, and I have since achieved nothing that is
+impossible to the most humble boy among you."
+
+
+[Illustration: CORNELIUS VANDERBILT.]
+
+II.
+
+CAPITALISTS.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+CORNELIUS VANDERBILT.
+
+
+Staten Island lies in the beautiful bay of New York, seven miles distant
+from the great city. Its lofty heights shut in the snug anchorage of the
+inner bay, and protect it from the rude storms which howl along the
+coast. It lies full in sight of the city, and is one of the most
+beautiful and attractive of its suburbs. The commanding heights and
+embowered shores are covered with villas and cottages, and afford a
+pleasant and convenient summer resort for the people of New York. It now
+contains a large and flourishing population, and maintains a speedy and
+constant communication with the metropolis by means of steam
+ferry-boats, the total travel on which sometimes reaches as many as ten
+or twelve thousand passengers per day.
+
+Seventy-six years ago, Staten Island was a mere country settlement, and
+its communications with the city were maintained by means of a few
+sail-boats, which made one trip each way per day.
+
+One of these boats was owned and navigated by Cornelius Vanderbilt, a
+thriving farmer, who owned a small but well cultivated estate on Staten
+Island, near the present Quarantine Grounds. He was a man of exemplary
+character, great industry, and was generally regarded as one of the most
+prudent and reliable men on the island. Having a considerable amount of
+produce to sell in the city, he purchased a boat of his own for the
+purpose of transporting it thither. Frequently, residents of the island
+would secure passage in this boat to the city in the morning, and return
+with it in the evening. He realized a considerable sum of money in this
+way, and finally ran his boat regularly between the island and the city.
+This was the beginning of the New York and Staten Island Ferry. Mr.
+Vanderbilt, by close application to his farm and boat, soon acquired a
+property, which, though small, was sufficient to enable him to maintain
+his family independently. His wife was a woman of more than usual
+character, and aided him nobly in making his way in the world.
+
+This admirable couple were blessed with nine children. The oldest of
+these, CORNELIUS, the subject of this sketch, was born at the old
+farm-house on Staten Island, on the 27th of May, 1794. He was a healthy,
+active boy, fond of all manner of out-door sports, and manifesting an
+unusual repugnance to the confinement and labors of the school-room. He
+has since declared that the only books he remembers using at school were
+the New Testament and the spelling-book. The result was, that he merely
+learned to read, write, and cipher, and that imperfectly. He was
+passionately fond of the water, and was never so well pleased as when
+his father allowed him to assist in sailing his boat. He was also a
+famous horseman from his earliest childhood, and even now recalls with
+evident pride the fact that when but six years old he rode a race-horse
+at full speed. When he set himself to accomplish any thing, he was not,
+like most boys, deterred by the difficulties of his undertaking, but
+persevered until success crowned his efforts. So early did he establish
+his reputation for overcoming obstacles, that his boyish friends learned
+to regard any task which he undertook as already virtually performed.
+
+When he was only twelve years old his father contracted to remove the
+cargo from a ship which had gone ashore near Sandy Hook, and to convey
+it to New York. The lighters which were to carry the goods to the city
+could not reach the ship, and it was necessary to haul the cargo,
+transported in wagons, across the sands from the vessel to them. In
+spite of his tender age, little Cornelius was placed by his father in
+charge of the undertaking, which he accomplished promptly and
+successfully. He loaded his lighters, sent them up to New York, and then
+started for home with his wagons. Upon reaching South Amboy, where he
+was to cross over to Staten Island, he found himself, with his wagons,
+horses, and men, without any money to pay his ferriage across to the
+island. The ferriage would amount to six dollars, and how he was to
+raise this sum he was, for a time, at a loss to determine. Finally, he
+went to the keeper of the tavern, to whom he was a stranger, and asked
+for the loan of six dollars, offering to leave one of his horses as a
+pledge for the money, which he promised to return within two days. The
+tavern-keeper was so well pleased with the boy's energy, that he loaned
+him the money, and the party crossed over to Staten Island. The pawned
+horse was promptly redeemed.
+
+Young Vanderbilt was always anxious to become a sailor, and, as he
+approached his seventeenth year, he determined to begin life as a
+boatman in the harbor of New York. On the 1st of May, 1810, he informed
+his mother of his determination, and asked her to lend him one hundred
+dollars to buy a boat.
+
+The good lady had always opposed her son's wish to go to sea, and
+regarded this new scheme as equally hair-brained. As a means of
+discouraging him, she told him if he would plow, harrow, and plant with
+corn a certain ten-acre lot belonging to the farm, by the twenty-seventh
+of that month, on which day he would be seventeen years old, she would
+lend him the money. The field was the worst in the whole farm; it was
+rough, hard, and stony; but by the appointed time the work was done, and
+well done, and the boy claimed and received his money. He hurried off to
+a neighboring village, and bought his boat, in which he set out for
+home. He had not gone far, however, when the boat struck a sunken wreck,
+and filled so rapidly that the boy had barely time to get into shoal
+water before it sank.
+
+[Illustration: VANDERBILT EARNING HIS FIRST HUNDRED DOLLARS.]
+
+"Undismayed at this mishap," says Mr. Parton, from whose graphic memoir
+the leading incidents of this sketch are taken, "he began his new
+career. His success, as we have intimated, was speedy and great. He made
+a thousand dollars during each of the next three summers. Often he
+worked all night; but he was never absent from his post by day, and he
+soon had the cream of the boating business of the port.
+
+"At that day parents claimed the services and earnings of their children
+till they were twenty-one. In other words, families made common cause
+against the common enemy, Want. The arrangement between this young
+boatman and his parents was, that he should give them all his day
+earnings and half his night earnings. He fulfilled his engagement
+faithfully until his parents released him from it, and with his own half
+of his earnings by night, he bought all his clothes. He had forty
+competitors in the business, who, being all grown men, could dispose of
+their gains as they chose; but of all the forty, he alone has emerged to
+prosperity and distinction. Why was this? There were several reasons. He
+soon became the best boatman in the port. He attended to his business
+more regularly and strictly than any other. He had no vices. His
+comrades spent at night much of what they earned by day, and when the
+winter suspended their business, instead of living on their last
+summer's savings, they were obliged to lay up debts for the next
+summer's gains to discharge. In those three years of willing servitude
+to his parents, Cornelius Vanderbilt added to the family's common stock
+of wealth, and gained for himself three things--a perfect knowledge of
+his business, habits of industry and self-control, and the best boat in
+the harbor."
+
+During the War of 1812, young Vanderbilt was kept very busy. All the
+harbor defenses were fully manned, and a number of war vessels were in
+port all the time. The travel between these and the city was very great,
+and boatmen were in demand.
+
+In September, 1813, a British fleet attempted to run past Fort Richmond,
+during a heavy gale. The commanding officer was anxious to send to New
+York for reinforcements, but it was blowing so hard that none of the old
+boatmen were willing to venture upon the bay. They all declared that if
+the voyage could be made at all, Cornelius Vanderbilt was the only man
+who could make it. The commandant at once sent for the young man, who,
+upon learning the urgency of the case, expressed his belief that he
+could carry the messengers to the city. "But," said he, "I shall have to
+carry them part of the way under water." He set out with the messengers,
+and in an hour landed them safe, but drenched through, at the foot of
+Whitehall Street, which was then the landing place of all the boatmen of
+the harbor.
+
+He was now so prosperous in his calling that he determined to marry. He
+had wooed and won the heart of Sophia Johnson, the daughter of a
+neighbor, and he now asked his parents' consent to his marriage, and
+also requested them to allow him to retain his own earnings, in order
+that he might be able to support a wife. Both of his petitions received
+the approval of his parents, and in the winter of 1813 he was married.
+His wife was a woman of unusual personal beauty and strength of
+character, and proved the best of partners. He has often declared since
+that he owed his success in life as much to her counsel and assistance
+as to his own efforts.
+
+In the spring of 1814, it became known in America that the British were
+fitting out a formidable military and naval expedition for the purpose
+of attacking one of the Atlantic ports of the United States. The whole
+coast was on the lookout, and, as it was feared that the blow would be
+struck at New York, every precaution was taken to be ready. The militia
+were called into service for three months, under a heavy penalty for
+refusing to obey the call. The term of service thus marked out covered
+the most prosperous season of the boatmen, and made the call fall
+particularly hard upon them. About this time, an advertisement was
+inserted in the city journals by the Commissary-General of the army,
+calling for bids from boatmen for the purpose of conveying provisions
+from New York to the various military posts in the vicinity. The labor
+was to be performed during the three months for which the militia were
+called out, and the contractor was to be exempted from all military duty
+during that time. Bids poured in from the boatmen, who offered to do the
+work at ridiculously low figures--the chief object of each one being to
+secure the exemption.
+
+Young Vanderbilt, knowing that the work could not be done at the rates
+at which his comrades offered to perform it, at first decided not to bid
+for it, but at length--and more to please his father than because he
+expected to succeed--offered to transport the provisions at a price
+which would enable him to be sure of doing it well and thoroughly. He
+felt so little hope of success that he did not even trouble himself to
+go to the office of the Commissary on the day of the awarding of the
+contract, until he learned from his companions that all their efforts to
+secure it had been ineffectual. Then he called on the Commissary, merely
+through curiosity, to learn the name of the fortunate man, and to his
+utter astonishment was told that the contract had been awarded to
+himself. The Government was satisfied, from his sensible offer, that he
+would do the business thoroughly, and this the Commissary assured him
+was the reason why they had selected him.
+
+There were six posts to be supplied--Harlem, Hell Gate, Ward's Island,
+the Narrows, and one other in the harbor, each of which was to be
+furnished with one load per week. The young contractor made arrangements
+to have a daily load of stores ready for him each evening at six
+o'clock, and thus performed all the duties of his contract at night,
+which left him free to attend to his boating during the day. He never
+failed to make a single delivery of stores, or to be absent from his
+post on the beach at Whitehall one single day during the whole three
+months. He was often without sleep, and performed an immense amount of
+labor during this period; but his indomitable energy and powerful
+physical organization carried him safely through it all.
+
+He made a great deal of money that summer, and with his earnings built a
+splendid little schooner, which he named the "Dread." In 1815, in
+connection with his brother-in-law, Captain De Forrest, he built a fine
+schooner, called the "Charlotte," for the coasting service. She was
+celebrated for the beauty of her model and her great speed. He continued
+to ply his boat in the harbor during the summer, but in the fall and
+winter made voyages along the coast, often as far south as Charleston.
+During the three years succeeding the termination of the war he saved
+nine thousand dollars in cash, and built two or three small vessels.
+This was his condition in 1818.
+
+By this time it had become demonstrated to his satisfaction that the new
+system of steamboats was a success, and was destined to come into
+general use at no very distant day. He therefore determined to identify
+himself with it at once, and thereby secure the benefits which he felt
+sure would result from a prompt connection with it. Accordingly, in
+1818, to the surprise and dismay of his friends, he gave up his
+flourishing business, in order to accept the captaincy of a steamboat
+which was offered him by Mr. Thomas Gibbons. The salary attached to this
+position was one thousand dollars, and Captain Vanderbilt's friends
+frankly told him that he was very foolish in abandoning a lucrative
+business for so insignificant a sum. Turning a deaf ear to their
+remonstrances, however, he entered promptly upon the duties of his new
+career, and was given command of a steamboat plying between New York and
+New Brunswick.
+
+Passengers to Philadelphia, at that day, were transported by steamer
+from New York to New Brunswick, where they remained all night. The next
+morning they took the stage for Trenton, from which they were conveyed
+by steamer to Philadelphia. The hotel at New Brunswick was a miserable
+affair, and had never paid expenses. When Captain Vanderbilt took
+command of the steamer, he was offered the hotel rent free, and accepted
+the offer. He placed the house in charge of his wife, under whose
+vigorous administration it soon acquired a popularity which was of the
+greatest benefit to the line.
+
+For seven years he was harassed and hampered by the hostility of the
+State of New York, which had granted to Fulton and Livingston the sole
+right to navigate New York waters by steam. Thomas Gibbons believed this
+law to be unconstitutional, and ran his boats in defiance of it. The
+authorities of the State resented his disregard of their monopoly, and a
+long and vexatious warfare sprang up between them, which was ended only
+in 1824, by the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in
+favor of Mr. Gibbons.
+
+As a means of crippling Gibbons, the New York authorities at one time
+determined to arrest Vanderbilt and his crew; but the wary captain was
+too cunning for them. He would land his crew in Jersey City, and take
+charge of the engine himself, while a lady managed the helm. In this way
+he approached the wharf at New York, landed his passengers, and took on
+more. As soon as he had made his boat fast, he concealed himself in the
+hold until the moment of his departure. As soon as he appeared on deck,
+the Sheriff's officer (who was changed every day to avoid recognition)
+would approach him with a warrant for his arrest. His reply was an
+order to let go the line. The officer, unwilling to be carried off to
+New Jersey, where he was threatened with imprisonment in the
+penitentiary for interfering with the steamer, would at once jump
+ashore, or beg to be landed. This was kept up for two months, but the
+captain successfully baffled his enemies during the whole of that
+period. The opponents of Mr. Gibbons offered a larger and better boat
+than the one he commanded if he would enter their service, but he firmly
+declined all their offers, avowing his determination to remain with Mr.
+Gibbons until the difficulty was settled.
+
+After the decision of the Supreme Court placed Mr. Gibbons in the full
+enjoyment of his rights, Captain Vanderbilt was allowed to manage the
+line in his own way, and conducted it with so much skill and vigor that
+it paid its owner an annual profit of forty thousand dollars. Mr.
+Gibbons offered to increase his salary to five thousand dollars, but he
+refused to accept the offer.
+
+"I did it on principle," he said, afterward. "The other captains had but
+one thousand, and they were already jealous enough of me. Besides, I
+never cared for money. All I ever cared for was to carry my point."
+
+[Illustration: VANDERBILT CARRYING OFF THE SHERIFF.]
+
+In 1829 he determined to leave the service of Mr. Gibbons, with whom he
+had been connected for eleven years. He was thirty-five years old, and
+had saved thirty thousand dollars. He resolved to build a steamer of his
+own, and command her himself, and accordingly made known his intention
+to his employer. Mr. Gibbons at once declared that he could not carry on
+the line without his assistance, and told him he might make his own
+terms if he would stay with him. Captain Vanderbilt had formed his
+decision after much thought, and being satisfied that he was doing
+right, he persisted in his determination to set up for himself. Mr.
+Gibbons then offered to sell him the line on the spot, and to take his
+pay as the money should be earned. It was a splendid offer, but it was
+firmly and gratefully refused. The captain knew the men among whom he
+would be thrown, and that they could never act together harmoniously. He
+believed his own ideas to be the best, and wished to be free to carry
+them out.
+
+After leaving Mr. Gibbons he built a small steamer, called the
+"Caroline," which he commanded himself. In a few years he was the owner
+of several other small steamers plying between New York and the
+neighboring towns. He made slow progress at first, for he had strong
+opposition to overcome. The steamboat interest was in the hands of
+powerful companies, backed by immense capital, and these companies were
+not disposed to tolerate the interference of any new-comer. They met
+their match in all cases, however, for Vanderbilt inaugurated so sharp a
+business opposition that the best of them were forced to compromise with
+him. These troubles were very annoying to him, and cost him nearly every
+dollar he was worth, but he persevered, and at length "carried his
+point."
+
+From that time he made his way gradually in his business, until he rose
+to the head of the steamboat interest of the United States. He has owned
+or been interested in one hundred steam vessels, and has been
+instrumental in a greater degree than any other man in bringing down the
+tariff of steamboat fares. He never builds a vessel without giving his
+personal superintendence to every detail, so that all his various craft
+have been models of their kind. He selects his officers with the
+greatest care, pays them liberal salaries, and, as long as they do their
+duty, sustains them against all outside interference or intrigue. In
+this way he inspires them with zeal, and the result is that he has never
+lost a vessel by fire, explosion, or wreck.
+
+He built the famous steamer "North Star," and made a triumphal cruise
+in her to the Old World. It is said that he was at one time very anxious
+to divide the business of the ocean with the Collins Line of steamers.
+When the "Arctic" was lost he applied to Mr. Collins to allow his
+steamer to run in her place. He promised to make no claim for the mail
+subsidy which Collins received, and to take the vessel off as soon as
+Collins could build another to take her place. Mr. Collins was afraid to
+let Mr. Vanderbilt get any hold on the foreign trade of the country, and
+not only refused his request, but did so in a manner which roused the
+anger of the veteran, who thereupon told Mr. Collins that he would run
+his line off the ocean if it took his whole life and entire fortune to
+do it. He kept his word. He at once offered the Government to carry the
+mails more promptly and regularly than had ever been done before, and to
+do this for a term of years without asking one single cent as subsidy.
+It was well known that he was perfectly able to do what he promised, and
+he pressed the matter upon the Government so vigorously that he was
+successful. The subsidy to Collins was withdrawn, and the magnificent
+line soon fell to pieces in consequence of the bankruptcy of its owner,
+who might have averted his fate by the exercise of a little liberality.
+
+Of late years, Mr. Vanderbilt has been withdrawing his money from ships
+and steamers, and investing it in railroads and iron works. Success has
+attended him in all his ventures, and he is to-day worth over thirty
+millions of dollars. He controls the Hudson River, Harlem, and New York
+Central Roads, and is largely interested in many others. He is all
+powerful in the stock market, and can move it as he will.
+
+A few years ago he wished to consolidate the Hudson River and Harlem
+Railroads, and when the scheme was presented before the Legislature of
+New York, secured a sufficient number of votes to insure the passage of
+the bill authorizing the consolidation. Before the bill was called up on
+its final passage, however, he learned from a trustworthy source that
+the members of the Legislature who had promised to vote for the bill
+were determined to vote against it, with the hope of ruining him. The
+stock of Harlem Road was then selling very high, in consequence of the
+expected consolidation. The defeat of the bill would, of course, cause
+it to fall immediately. The unprincipled legislators at once commenced a
+shrewd game. They sold Harlem right and left, to be delivered at a
+future day, and found plenty of purchasers. They let their friends into
+the secret, and there was soon a great deal of "selling 'short'" in this
+stock.[A] Commodore Vanderbilt, although indignant at the treachery of
+which he was to be made the victim, held his peace. He went into the
+market quietly, with all the funds he could raise, purchased every
+dollar's worth of Harlem stock he could lay his hands on, and locked it
+up in his safe. When the bill came before the Legislature on its final
+passage, the members who had pledged themselves to vote for it voted
+against it, and it was rejected.
+
+
+[Footnote A: For the benefit of the uninitiated reader, we will explain
+the "game" more clearly. Harlem stock was selling at a high price, in
+consequence of the expected consolidation. Those who sold "short" at
+this time sold at the market price, which, as we have said, was high. By
+engaging to deliver at some future day, they expected to be able to buy
+the stock for little or nothing after the defeat of the bill, and then
+to demand for it the price for which they had sold it in the first
+place. Such a transaction was infamous, but would have enabled those
+engaged in it to realize immense sums by the difference in the price of
+the stock.]
+
+The speculators were jubilant. They were sure that the defeat of the
+bill would bring down "Harlem" with a rush. To their astonishment,
+however, "Harlem" did not fall. It remained stationary the first day,
+and then, to their dismay, began to rise steadily. Those to whom they
+had sold demanded the delivery of the stock, but the speculators found
+it impossible to buy it. There was none in the market at any price.
+Being unable to deliver stock, they were forced to pay its equivalent in
+money, and the result was, that all who were engaged in the infamous
+scheme were ruined. One of the shrewdest operators in New York lost over
+two hundred thousand dollars. He refused to pay, but his name was at
+once stricken from the list of stock-brokers. This brought him to terms,
+and he made good his contracts. Vanderbilt made enough money out of this
+effort to crush him to pay for all the stock he owned in the Harlem
+Road.
+
+During the rebellion, Commodore Vanderbilt was one of the stanchest
+supporters of the Government. Early in the struggle he equipped his
+splendid steamer, the "Vanderbilt," as a man-of-war, and offered her to
+the Navy Department at a fair price. He found that, in order to sell the
+vessel, he would have to pay a percentage of the price received for her
+to certain parties who stood between the Government and the purchase,
+and levied black mail upon every ship the Government bought. Indignant
+and disgusted, he withdrew his ship, and declared she was not for sale.
+Then, satisfying himself that she was in perfect condition, he presented
+her to the Navy Department _as a free gift to the nation_.
+
+Says a recent writer, whose fondness for courtly similes the reader must
+pardon, for the sake of the information he imparts: "No man is felt in
+Wall Street more than Commodore Vanderbilt, yet he is seldom seen there.
+All of his business is done in his office in Fourth Street. Here his
+brokers meet him, receive their orders, and give reports. Here the plans
+are laid that shake the street, and Wall Street trembles at the foot of
+an invisible autocrat. If the reader would care to visit the court of
+that great railroad king, whose name has become the terror of Wall
+Street, he may accompany us to a plain brick residence in Fourth Street,
+near Broadway, and distant from Wall Street nearly two miles. No sign
+indicates its imperial occupant, except that the upper story being
+occupied as a millinery establishment bears a legend of that character.
+However, as we enter the hall, we notice the word 'office,' and open the
+door thus inscribed. Here we see a table, a few chairs, and a desk, at
+which a solitary clerk of middle age is standing at work.
+
+"The walls are bare, with the exception of a few pictures of those
+steamships which originated the title of 'Commodore,' This is the
+ante-chamber, and a pair of folding doors screen the king from vulgar
+gaze. He is closeted with his marshals, and this privy council will last
+an hour or so. One after the other they depart, and before three o'clock
+the effect of this council will not only be felt in Wall Street, but
+will be flashed over the Union. At length you are permitted to enter.
+The folding door is opened, and you behold an office as plain in
+appearance as the one just described. It contains a few arm-chairs and a
+long business-table, thrown flush before you, on the opposite side of
+which sits a large man, with his face fronting you. He is writing, and
+his eyes are fixed on the paper, so that you have a moment to note the
+dignity of frame and the vast development of brain. In a few minutes the
+countenance raises, and you meet its expansive and penetrating glance.
+
+"You face the king. He smiles in a pleasant and whole-souled manner, and
+in a moment puts you at ease. No stiffness nor formality here. His
+kingship is in himself, not in etiquette. He is ready for a pleasantry,
+and will initiate one if it comes in the line of conversation. You note
+those wonderful eyes, bright and piercing, and so large and rich that
+one is fascinated, and does not know how to stop gazing into them. Such
+is the appearance of the railway king, and you take your leave,
+conscious that some men, as Shakespeare says, 'are born great.' Indeed,
+we know a man who would rather give five dollars to sit and look at
+Commodore Vanderbilt for an hour than to see any other sight in this
+city. Next door to the office is a building of brown stone, with
+spacious doors and a roadway. This is the Commodore's stable, where are
+some of the finest horses in the country.
+
+"Every afternoon he is wont to take an airing, and after tea a game of
+whist affords an evening amusement. The Commodore is simple in his
+manners and habits. He is a representative of a former age, when men
+lived less artificially than at the present time, and when there was
+more happiness and less show. As for business, it is his nature. He can
+not help being king. He is but developing himself, and any other mode of
+life would be painful. He has in the Central afforded a third wonder,
+the Harlem and the Hudson River being the first and second, and if he
+gets the Erie he will soon show the world another wonder. On Sundays the
+Commodore attends Dr. Hutton's church on Washington Square, and here his
+tall and dignified form may be seen, head and shoulders above the rest
+of the congregation. He is a friend of the pastor, who takes a deep
+interest in his welfare, and we hope will meet him in a better world. He
+stood by the Commodore's side when his wife was laid in the tomb, and
+cheered him in that dark and trying hour. Among his more recent works is
+the completing of a tomb in the old Moravian burial-ground in Staten
+Island. The subterranean chamber is about thirty feet square, and is
+surmounted by a lofty shaft, and a statue of grief adds a peculiar
+finish to the spot. The cemetery is on an eminence, from which one gets
+a fine view of the ocean, dotted with ships."
+
+Commodore Vanderbilt's early passion for horses still survives, and his
+stable contains some of the finest in the world. Nothing pleases him so
+well as to sit behind a fast team, with the reins in his hands, and fly
+along the road with almost the speed of the wind.
+
+He is extremely generous to his friends, and gives liberally to
+charitable objects. He never puts his name to a subscription paper, but
+his donations are none the less liberal for that. His old
+acquaintances--especially those of his boyhood--find him a tender
+friend, and many of them owe to his bounty the comforts which surround
+their age.[A]
+
+He is the father of thirteen children--nine daughters and four
+sons--nearly all of whom are still living. A few years ago, at the
+celebration of his golden wedding, over one hundred and forty of his
+descendants and relatives assembled to congratulate him. He lost a
+promising son during the war, and his wife died two years ago. Not long
+since he married a second time. He is still one of the handsomest and
+most imposing men in New York, and will doubtless live to see his
+children's grandchildren.
+
+[Footnote A: In July, 1870, Mr. Vanderbilt chanced to hear that the Rev.
+Dr. Deems, of New York, was in want of a church. Admiring the energy
+with which the reverend gentleman had built up his congregation in the
+short space of three years, Mr. Vanderbilt quietly made up his mind that
+he should not want in vain. Accordingly he bought the Mercer Street
+Presbyterian Church, and made the Doctor a present of it, keeping him in
+ignorance of his intention until he placed the title deeds in his hand.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+DANIEL DREW.
+
+
+The name of DANIEL DREW has so long been familiar in the financial
+circles of the country, that it is surprising that the history of his
+life is not more generally known.
+
+He was born at Carmel, in Putnam County, New York, on the 29th of July,
+1797. His father was a small farmer, with limited means, and had to work
+hard to provide his family with food and clothing. Young Daniel was
+brought up to work on the farm, and at such times as he could be spared
+from this work, was sent to the country school in the neighborhood,
+where he acquired but a meager stock of learning. When he was fifteen
+years old, his father died, leaving his family in an almost helpless
+condition. Young Daniel remained on the farm three years longer, and in
+1815, being then eighteen years old, stared out to try and earn a living
+for himself.
+
+He came to New York in search of employment, but the country, just then,
+was in too depressed a condition to afford him a chance in any regular
+business. After looking around for awhile, he at length became a cattle
+drover. He spent five years in driving cattle from Putnam County to New
+York for sale, but failed to make any money at the business.
+
+In 1820, he removed to New York, and established his headquarters at
+the famous Bull's Head Tavern, in the Bowery, which was the great resort
+of the butchers and drovers doing business in the city. He kept this
+tavern a part of the time, and found it quite a profitable investment.
+He soon formed a partnership with two other drovers, and commenced
+buying cattle in the adjoining counties and bringing them to New York
+for sale.
+
+[Illustration: FOUNDING A GREAT FORTUNE]
+
+These ventures were so successful that the operations of the firm were
+extended into Pennsylvania, and finally into Ohio and the other States
+of the great West. Mr. Drew and his partners brought over the mountains
+the first drove of cattle that ever came from the West into New York
+city. The cattle, two thousand in number, were collected into droves of
+one hundred each, and were driven by experienced and careful men. The
+journey occupied two months, and the total cost of the purchase and trip
+was twenty-four dollars per head. The profit on the venture was very
+large.
+
+Mr. Drew continued in this business for fourteen years, slowly and
+carefully laying the foundations of that immense fortune which has made
+him so conspicuous, an example to others who have entered upon the
+life-struggle since then.
+
+In 1834, an event occurred which changed the whole tenor of his career.
+In that year, the steamer "General Jackson," owned by Jacob Vanderbilt
+(a brother of the famous Commodore), and plying between New York and
+Peekskill, blew up at Grassy Point. A friend of Mr. Drew at once put a
+boat called the "Water Witch" in her place, and Mr. Drew, to oblige his
+friend, advanced one thousand dollars toward the enterprise. Commodore
+Vanderbilt was not willing that any rival should contest the river trade
+with him, and built a steamer called the "Cinderella," with which he ran
+a sharp opposition to Mr. Drew. The contest was so sharp that fares and
+freights were lowered to a ridiculous figure, and both parties lost
+heavily. At the end of the season, the owner of the "Water Witch" found
+himself ten thousand dollars in debt, and sold his boat to Drew, Kelly &
+Richards for twenty thousand dollars.
+
+Finding that Mr. Drew was not frightened off by his opposition,
+Commodore Vanderbilt urged him to withdraw from his attempt, telling him
+he knew nothing of the management of steamboats. Mr. Drew refused to be
+intimidated; however, and continued his efforts. Since then, there have
+been fifty attempts to run him off the river, but all alike have failed
+of success.
+
+In 1836, the "Water Witch" was replaced by a fine steamer called the
+"Westchester," which was subsequently run as a day boat to Hartford,
+Connecticut. The "Westchester" was run against the Hudson River Line,
+from New York to Albany. The Hudson River Line at that time owned the
+"De Witt Clinton," the "North America," and others--the finest
+steamboats then afloat--and it seemed at first foolhardiness for any
+one to attempt to oppose so popular a company. Mr. Drew and his
+partners bought the "Bright Emerald," for which they gave twenty-six
+thousand dollars, and ran her as a night boat between New York and
+Albany, reducing the fare from three dollars to one dollar. During the
+season, they bought the "Rochester" for fifty thousand dollars, and also
+bought out the Hudson River Line, after which they restored the fare to
+three dollars.
+
+Several years later, Isaac Newton, who was largely interested in the
+towing business of the Hudson, built two splendid passenger steamers
+called the "North America" and the "South America." In 1840, Mr. Drew
+formed a partnership with Mr. Newton, and the celebrated "People's Line"
+was organized, which purchased all the passenger steamers owned by Drew
+and Newton. Mr. Drew was the largest stockholder in this company, which,
+to-day, after a lapse of nearly thirty years, still owns the most
+magnificent and popular steamers in the world. Soon after its
+organization, the company built the "Isaac Newton," the first of those
+floating palaces for which the Hudson is famed. Since then, it has built
+the "New World," the "St. John," the "Dean Richmond," and the "Drew,"
+the last two of which cost over seven' hundred thousand dollars each.
+Repeated efforts have been made to drive this line from the river, but
+it has been conducted so judiciously and energetically, that, for nearly
+thirty years, it has held the first place in the public favor.
+
+In 1847, George Law and Daniel Drew formed a partnership, and
+established a line of steamers between New York and Stonington, for the
+purpose of connecting with the railroad from the latter place to Boston.
+The "Oregon" and the "Knickerbocker" were placed on the route, and the
+enterprise proved a success. Mr. Drew and Commodore Vanderbilt secured a
+sufficient amount of stock in the railroad to give them a controlling
+interest in it, and by the year 1850 the Stonington Steamboat Line was
+firmly established.
+
+When the Hudson River Railroad was opened, in 1852, it was confidently
+expected that the steamboat trade on the river would be destroyed, and
+the friends and enemies of Mr. Drew alike declared that he might as well
+lay up his boats, as he would find it impossible to compete with the
+faster time of the railroad. He was not dismayed, however, for he was
+satisfied that the land route could not afford to carry freight and
+passengers as cheap as they could be transported by water. He knew that
+it would only be necessary to reduce his passenger and freight rates
+below those of the railroad, to continue in the enjoyment of his immense
+business, and his faith in the steady expansion of the trade of the city
+induced him to believe that the time was close at hand when railroad and
+steamers would all have as much as they could do to accommodate it. His
+views were well founded, and his hopes have been more than realized. The
+river trade has steadily increased, while the Hudson River Railroad is
+taxed to its utmost capacity to accommodate its immense traffic.
+
+In 1849, Mr. Drew, in connection with other parties, bought out the
+Champlain Transportation Company. This corporation had a capital of one
+hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and ran a line of five steamers from
+White Hall to the Canada end of the lake. The new proprietors ran the
+line seven years, and in 1856 sold out to the Saratoga and White Hall
+Railroad Company.
+
+As a steamboat manager, Daniel Drew has few equals and no superiors. His
+ventures on the water have all been crowned with success, a result due
+entirely to his judicious and liberal management His employés are chosen
+with the greatest care, and generally remain with him during their
+lives. He is very liberal in his dealings with those who serve him
+faithfully, but will not tolerate a single careless or incompetent man,
+however unimportant may be his position. The steamers owned by him are
+almost entirely free from accidents, and such misfortunes as have
+befallen them have been those against which no skill or foresight could
+guard. He refuses to insure his boats, holding that care and prudence
+are the best safeguards against accidents, and thus saves half a million
+dollars. When the "Dean Richmond" was run down by the "Vanderbilt," a
+year or two ago, he lost nearly three hundred thousand dollars. He paid
+every claim presented by shippers and passengers, as soon as made,
+without submitting one of them to the adjudication of the courts.
+
+In 1836, Mr. Drew entered the banking business in Wall Street, and in
+1840 established the widely-known firm of Drew, Robinson & Co. This
+house engaged largely in the financial operations of the day, and became
+known as one of the most uniformly successful in its dealings of any in
+the city. Mr. Drew remained at the head of it for thirteen years, but in
+1855 withdrew to make room for his son-in-law, Mr. Kelley. This
+gentleman died soon after his connection with the firm, and Mr. Drew
+resumed his old place.
+
+Having succeeded so well in all his ventures, Mr. Drew now determined to
+enter another field. Railroad stocks were very profitable, and might be
+made to yield him an immense return for his investments, and he decided
+to invest a considerable part of his fortune in them. In 1855, he
+endorsed the acceptances of the Erie Railroad Company for five hundred
+thousand dollars. This was the first decided evidence the public had
+received of his immense wealth, and in 1857 another was given by his
+endorsement of a fresh lot of Erie acceptances amounting to a million
+and a half of dollars. This last indorsement was made in the midst of
+the great financial panic of 1857, and occasioned no little comment. Men
+could admire, though they could not understand, the sublime confidence
+which enabled Mr. Drew to risk a million and a half of dollars in the
+midst of such a terrible crisis. Some one asked him if he could sleep
+quietly at night with such large interests at stake. "Sir," he replied,
+calmly, "I have never lost a night's rest on account of business in my
+life."
+
+In 1857, Mr. Drew was elected a director of the Erie Railroad Company, a
+position he held until recently. He was subsequently elected treasurer
+of the company, and is one of the principal holders of Erie stock. He is
+also one of the principal creditors of the company. The recent
+proceedings in the New York courts to prevent the Erie Road from issuing
+the new stock necessary to complete its broad-gauge connections with the
+West, are too fresh in the mind of the reader to need a recital of them
+here. It was proposed to issue ten millions of dollars worth of new
+stock, and Mr. Drew was to guarantee the bonds. After a tedious and
+costly suit, in which the New York Central Road endeavored to prevent
+the issue of the stock, in the hope of keeping the Erie Road from
+forming through connections with the West, the New York Legislature
+legalized the new issue, and a compromise was effected between Mr. Drew,
+in behalf of the Erie Road, and Commodore Vanderbilt, who represented
+the New York Central.
+
+Mr. Drew still continues his operations in Wall Street, where he is
+known as one of the boldest and most extensive, as well as one of the
+most successful, of all the operators in railroad stocks. Though losing
+heavily at times, he has nevertheless been one of fortune's favorites.
+His efforts have not been confined to the Erie Road. He owns stock in
+other roads, and, together with Commodore Vanderbilt, took up the
+floating debt of over half a million of dollars which weighed down the
+Harlem Road, and placed it in its present prosperous condition.
+
+He owns a fine grazing farm on the Harlem Railroad, about fifty miles
+from New York. It is situated in Carmel, in Putnam County; is nearly one
+thousand acres in extent, and includes the old farm on which he was
+born. He has made it one of the finest and most profitable in the State,
+and, it is said, values it above all his other possessions. He has
+improved and beautified it upon an extensive scale, and near the old
+grave-yard, where his parents lie sleeping, he has built one of the most
+beautiful churches in the land.
+
+In 1811, Mr. Drew became a member of the Methodist Church, but for
+twenty-five years this connection was merely nominal. During all the
+years of his drover's life he kept himself free from the sins of
+intemperance and swearing. Once while riding out in a buggy with a
+friend, to look at some cattle, a thunder-storm came on, and his horse
+was killed in the shafts by lightning. This narrow escape from death
+made a deep impression on his mind, and in 1841 he united with the
+Mulberry Street Methodist Church, of which he became an active member
+and a trustee. The elegant marble structure now standing at the corner
+of Fourth Avenue and Twenty-second Street attests his liberality to this
+congregation. He is a trustee in the Wesleyan University, and has
+largely endowed that institution; and within the past few years has
+contributed several hundred thousand dollars for the endowment of the
+Drew Theological Seminary, which has been established at Madison, New
+Jersey, for the education of candidates for the Methodist ministry. He
+gives largely in aid of missionary work, and is one of the most liberal
+men in his denomination. It is said that he gives away at least one
+hundred thousand dollars annually in private charities, besides the
+large donations with which the public are familiar. He selects his own
+charities, and refuses promptly to aid those which do not commend
+themselves to him.
+
+His property is estimated at twenty millions of dollars, and he is said
+to earn at least half a million of dollars every year. He has two
+children, a son and a daughter, the latter of whom is the wife of a
+clergyman of the Baptist Church.
+
+Mr. Drew is about five feet ten inches high, and slenderly made. He is
+very active and vigorous for his age, and looks a much younger man than
+he is. His expression is firm, but withal pleasant. His features are
+regular, but dark and deeply marked, while his black hair is still
+unstreaked with gray. He is courteous and friendly in his intercourse,
+and is very much liked by his acquaintances.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+JAMES B. EADS.
+
+
+James B. Eads was born in Lawrenceburg, Indiana, in the year 1820. His
+father was a man of moderate means, and was able to give him a fair
+English education. From his earliest childhood he evinced a remarkable
+fondness for all sorts of machinery and mechanical arrangements. This
+fondness became at length a passion, and excited the surprise of his
+friends, who could not imagine why a mere child should be so much
+interested in such things. His greatest delight was to go to the machine
+shops in his neighborhood, in which he had many friends, and watch the
+workings of the various inventions employed therein.
+
+When he was nine years old his father removed to Louisville, Kentucky.
+During the voyage down the Ohio, young Eads passed the most of his time
+in watching the engines of the steamer. The engineer was so much pleased
+to see his interest in the machinery that he explained the whole system
+of the steam-engine to him. The boy listened eagerly, and every word
+remained fixed in his mind. Two years later, with no further instruction
+on the subject, he constructed a miniature engine, which was worked by
+steam. This, for a boy of eleven years, was no insignificant triumph of
+genius. His father, anxious to encourage such unmistakable talent, now
+fitted up a small workshop for him, in which he constructed models of
+saw mills, fire engines, steamboats, and electrotyping machines. When he
+was only twelve years old he was able to take to pieces and reset the
+family clock and a patent lever watch, using no tool for this purpose
+but his pocket-knife.
+
+At the age of thirteen his pleasant employment was brought to a sudden
+end. His father lost all his property by the failure of some commercial
+transactions, and the family was brought to the verge of ruin. It now
+became necessary for young Eads to labor for his own support, and for
+that of his mother and sisters. Boy as he was, he faced the crisis
+bravely. Having in vain sought employment in Louisville, he resolved to
+go to St. Louis. He worked his passage there on a river steamer, and
+landed in that city so poor that he had neither shoes to his feet nor a
+coat to his back. He found it as difficult to procure work here as it
+had been in Louisville, and was at length compelled to resort to
+peddling apples on the street in order to secure a living. He did this
+for some time, never relaxing his efforts to obtain more desirable
+employment.
+
+After many attempts he succeeded in getting a situation in a mercantile
+house, at a fair salary. One of his employers was a man of wealth and
+culture, and was possessed of one of the finest private libraries in the
+West. Learning the extraordinary mechanical talent possessed by his
+young clerk, this gentleman placed his library at his disposal. The
+offer was promptly and gratefully accepted, and young Eads devoted
+almost all his leisure time to the study of mechanics, machinery, and
+civil engineering. He remained with this house for several years, and
+then obtained a clerkship on one of the Mississippi River steamers,
+where he passed several years more. During this time he became
+intimately acquainted with the great river and its tributaries, and
+acquired an extensive knowledge of all subjects appertaining to western
+navigation, which proved of great service to him in his after life.
+
+In 1842, being then twenty-two years old, and having saved a moderate
+sum of money, he formed a copartnership with Messrs. Case & Nelson, boat
+builders, of St. Louis, for the purpose of recovering steamboats and
+their cargoes which had been sunk or wrecked in the Mississippi.
+Accidents of this kind were then very common in those waters, and the
+business bade fair to be very profitable. The enterprise succeeded
+better than had been expected, and the operations of the wrecking
+company extended from Galena, Illinois, to the Balize, and into many of
+the tributaries of the great river. The parties interested in the scheme
+realized a handsome profit on their investments. Mr. Eads was the
+practical man of the concern, and worked hard to establish it upon a
+successful footing. In 1845 he sold out his interest in the company, and
+established a glass manufactory in St. Louis. This was the first
+enterprise of the kind ever attempted west of the Mississippi. Two years
+later, in 1847, he organized a new company for the purpose of recovering
+boats and cargoes lost in the Mississippi and its tributaries. This
+company started with a capital of fifteen hundred dollars. It was slow
+work at first, but a steady improvement was made every year, and in
+1857, just ten years from the date of their organization, the property
+of the firm was valued at more than half a million of dollars. During
+the winter of 1856-'57, Mr. Eads laid before Congress a formal
+proposition to remove the obstructions from the western rivers and keep
+them open for a term of years, upon payment of a reasonable sum by the
+General Government. Had this proposition been accepted, the benefits
+thereby secured to all who were engaged in the navigation of those
+rivers would have been very great. A bill was reported in Congress
+authorizing the acceptance of Mr. Eads' offer, but was defeated through
+the influence of the Senators from Mississippi (Jefferson Davis) and
+Louisiana (J.P. Benjamin).
+
+In 1857, Mr. Eads was compelled, on account of ill-health, to retire
+from business. He had earned a handsome fortune by his industry and
+enterprise, and could well afford to rest for a short time, preparatory,
+as it afterward proved, to the most important part of his whole career.
+
+When the secession troubles began to agitate the country, toward the
+close of the year 1860, Mr. Eads cast the weight of his private and
+public influence on the side of the Union. He felt that the war, if it
+should come, would be a very serious affair for the West, as the
+prosperity of that section depends largely upon the absolute freedom of
+the navigation of the Mississippi. The Confederates well understood
+this, and prepared from the first to close the great river until their
+independence should be acknowledged by the General Government. Dr.
+Boynton, in his "History of the United States Navy During the
+Rebellion," thus describes the condition of affairs in the West, a
+proper understanding of which will show the reader the importance of the
+services subsequently rendered by Mr. Eads:
+
+
+     The main features of the rebel plan of war in the West were to
+     seize and hold Missouri, and, as a consequence, Kansas and
+     Nebraska, and thus threaten or invade the free States of the
+     North-west from that point; to hold Kentucky and Tennessee, and, if
+     possible, to cross the Ohio, and make the Northern States the
+     theater of the war; or, in case they should be unable to invade the
+     North, to maintain their battle line unbroken along the Ohio and
+     through Missouri; to keep the great rivers closed, and thus holding
+     back the North, and being secure within their own territory, at
+     length compel the recognition of their independence. They certainly
+     presented to the North a most formidable front, a line of defenses
+     which was indeed impregnable to any means of assault which the
+     Government at first possessed. No army could be moved into
+     Tennessee by land alone, because the line of communication with a
+     Northern base could not be held secure, and a defeat far from the
+     Ohio would be the destruction of an army, and open the road for an
+     invasion of Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, and the destruction of
+     their cities.
+
+     It was quite evident that no impression could be made upon the
+     power of the rebellion in the West, until a firm foothold could be
+     gained in Kentucky and Tennessee, and until the Mississippi could
+     be wrested from the conspirators' control. It was clear that the
+     whole seaboard might be regained, even to Florida, and yet the
+     rebellion remain as dangerous as ever, if the rebels could hold the
+     Mississippi River and the valley up to or near the Ohio.
+
+     France was looking with eager eyes toward Texas, in the hope of
+     securing and extending her Mexican usurpation. England was ready to
+     give all the assistance in her power to any step which would weaken
+     the North; and had the rebels been pressed back from the seaports
+     and the Northern Atlantic slope, they would have had it in their
+     power, if still holding the Mississippi, the South-west, including
+     Tennessee, and the great natural fortresses of the mountains, to
+     have so connected themselves with Mexico and France as to have
+     caused the most serious embarrassment. It became absolutely
+     necessary to the success of the Government that the rebels'
+     northern line of defenses should be broken through, and that the
+     Mississippi should be opened to its mouth.
+
+     At first, and before the nature of the work was fully understood,
+     the whole was placed under the direction of the War Department, as
+     it was thought the few armed transports which would be needed would
+     be a mere appendage of the army. The idea of a formidable river
+     navy of a hundred powerful steamers did not in the beginning enter
+     into the minds of any.
+
+     It was soon seen, however, that an entirely new description of
+     craft was needed for this work. It was clear that the river boats,
+     which had been built for the common purposes of freight and
+     passage, were not capable of resisting the fire of heavy artillery,
+     and that the batteries of the rebels could not be captured nor even
+     passed by them. They could not even be safely employed alone in the
+     transportation of troops, for they could be sunk or crippled by the
+     field batteries that could be moved from point to point. The
+     question of iron-clads was proposed, but with only the ocean
+     iron-clads as a guide, who should conceive the proper form of an
+     armored boat which could navigate our rivers and compete
+     successfully with the heavy guns, rifled as well as smooth-bore, of
+     the fortifications. It was by no means easy to solve this problem,
+     but it was absolutely necessary that the attempt should be made....
+     These forts could only be reduced by the aid of gunboats, and
+     these were almost literally to be created.
+
+
+There was in the Cabinet of President Lincoln at this time a western
+man, intimately acquainted with the steamboat interest of the
+Mississippi. This was Edward Bates, the Attorney-General of the United
+States. He was an old friend of Mr. Eads, and felt assured that in case
+of war the services of that gentleman would be of the greatest value to
+the country. When it was found that hostilities could not be avoided, he
+mentioned the name of Mr. Eads to the Cabinet, and strongly urged that
+his services should be secured at the earliest possible moment. On the
+17th of April, 1861, three days after Fort Sumter had fallen, he wrote
+to Mr. Eads, who was living in comfortable retirement, at St. Louis: "Be
+not surprised if you are called here suddenly by telegram. If called,
+come instantly. In a certain contingency it will be necessary to have
+the aid of the most thorough knowledge of our western rivers, and the
+use of steam on them, and in that event I have advised that you should
+be consulted."
+
+A few days later Mr. Eads was summoned to Washington. Mr. Bates there
+explained to him in full a plan he had conceived for occupying Cairo,
+and endeavoring to hold the Mississippi by means of gunboats. Mr. Eads
+warmly indorsed the plan, and was introduced by Mr. Bates to the
+President and members of the Cabinet. When the plan was proposed to the
+Cabinet, the Secretary of War pronounced it unnecessary and
+impracticable, but the Secretary of the Navy was much impressed with
+it, and requested Mr. Eads to submit his views in writing, which was
+done. The paper embodied Judge Bates's general plan in addition to Mr.
+Eads's own views, and contained suggestions as to the kind of boats best
+fitted for service on the western rivers, and also in regard to the best
+points on those streams for the erection of land batteries. This paper
+was submitted to the Navy Department on the 29th of April, 1861, and was
+referred by the Secretary to Commodore Paulding, who reported in favor
+of its adoption.
+
+The Secretary of the Navy now detailed Captain John Rodgers to accompany
+Mr. Eads to the West, and purchase and fit out such steamers as should
+be found necessary for the service. Up to this time the Secretary of War
+had manifested the most supreme indifference in regard to the whole
+subject, but he now claimed entire jurisdiction in the matter, and this
+interference caused considerable vexation and delay. At length he issued
+an order to Mr. Eads and Captain Rodgers to proceed with their
+purchases. These gentlemen obtained the approval of General McClellan,
+in whose department the purchases were to be made, and began their
+operations.
+
+Upon arriving at Cairo, they found one of the old snag-boat fleet,
+called the "Benton." Mr. Eads knew the boat well, as he had formerly
+owned her, and proposed to purchase and arm her, but Captain Rodgers did
+not approve the plan for converting her into a gunboat. Mr. Eads then
+proposed to purchase and arm several of the strong, swift boats used for
+the navigation of the Missouri River, and equip them at St. Louis, from
+which point there would always be water enough to get them below Cairo.
+Captain Rodgers disapproved this plan also, and went to Cincinnati,
+where he purchased and equipped the "Conestoga," "Tyler," and
+"Lexington," and started them down the river. They were not iron-clad,
+but were merely protected around the boilers with coal bunkers, and
+provided with bullet-proof oaken bulwarks. Mr. Eads had warned Captain
+Rodgers that he could not depend upon the Ohio to get his boats down to
+Cairo, and his predictions were realized. The boats were started from
+Cincinnati some time in July; they were detained on the bars of the Ohio
+for six or seven weeks, and did not reach Cairo until about the first of
+September; then the bottom of the "Tyler" was found to be so badly
+damaged by sand-bars that she had to be put on the marine railway for
+repairs.
+
+In July, 1861, the War Department advertised for proposals to construct
+a number of iron-clad gunboats for service on the Mississippi River. On
+the 5th of August, when the bids were opened, it was found that Mr. Eads
+proposed to build these boats in a shorter time and upon more favorable
+terms than any one else. His offer was accepted, and on the 7th of
+August he signed a contract with Quartermaster-General Meigs to have
+ready for their crews and armaments, _in sixty-five days_, seven
+vessels, of about six hundred tons each, each to draw six feet of water,
+to carry thirteen heavy guns, to be plated with iron two and a half
+inches thick, and to steam nine miles per hour. "They were one hundred
+and seventy-five feet long, and fifty-one and a half feet wide; the
+hulls of wood; their sides placed out from the bottom of the boat to the
+water line at an angle of about thirty-five degrees, and from the water
+line the sides fell back at about the same angle, to form a slanting
+casemate, the gun-deck being but a foot above water. This slanting
+casemate extended across the hull, near the bow and stern, forming a
+quadrilateral gun-deck. Three nine or ten-inch guns were placed in the
+bow, four similar ones on each side, and two smaller ones astern. The
+casemate inclosed the wheel, which was placed in a recess at the stern
+of the vessel. The plating was two and a half inches thick, thirteen
+inches wide, and was rabbeted on the edges to make a more perfect
+joint."
+
+In undertaking to complete these vessels in sixty-five days, Mr. Eads
+had assumed a heavy responsibility. The manufacturing interests of the
+West were sadly crippled by the sudden commencement of hostilities, and
+doubt and distrust prevailed every-where. The worst feature of all was,
+that skilled workmen were either enlisting in the army or seeking
+employment in States more remote from the scene of war. Every thing
+needed for the gunboats was to be made. Even the timber for their hulls
+was still standing in the forest, and the huge machinery which was to
+roll out and harden their iron plates had yet to be constructed. No
+single city, no two cities, however great in resources, could possibly
+supply every thing needed within the stipulated time, and it was
+necessary to employ help wherever it could be obtained.
+
+The very day the contract was signed, the telegraph was kept busy
+sending instructions all over the West for the commencement of the
+various parts of the work. The saw-mills in Kentucky, Tennessee,
+Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Minnesota, and Missouri were set to getting out
+the timber, which was hurried to St. Louis by railroad and steamboat as
+fast as it was ready. There were twenty-one steam engines and
+thirty-five boilers to be made, and the machine-shops in St. Louis,
+Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh were put to work upon them. The huge
+rolling-mills of Cincinnati and Portsmouth, Ohio, Newport, Kentucky, and
+St. Louis were engaged in making the iron plates, and employed for this
+purpose no less than four thousand men. Night and day, Sundays included,
+the work went on with an almost superhuman swiftness. Mr. Eads paid the
+workmen on the hulls large sums from his own pocket, in addition to
+their wages, to induce them to continue steadily at their work.
+
+On the 12th of October, 1861, just forty-five days from the time of
+laying her keel, the first iron-clad, belonging to the United States,
+was launched, with her engines and boilers on board. Rear Admiral Foote
+(then a flag officer), appointed to command the Mississippi squadron,
+named her the "St. Louis," but upon being transferred to the Navy
+Department her name was changed to the "Baron de Kalb." She was followed
+by the other vessels in rapid succession, all being completed within the
+stipulated time.
+
+In September, 1861, General Fremont ordered the purchase of the snag
+boat "Benton," which had been proposed by Mr. Eads and rejected by
+Captain Rodgers, and sent her to Mr. Eads to be armored and equipped as
+a gunboat. Work was at once begun on her, and pushed forward with the
+same energy that had been displayed in the construction of the other
+iron-clads. Her performances during the war fully sustained the high
+esteem in which she was held by the officers of the navy. Admirals Foote
+and Davis pronounced her the "best iron-clad in the world."
+
+By dint of such skill and energy as we have described, Mr. Eads, in the
+brief period of one hundred days, built and had ready for service a
+powerful iron-clad fleet of eight steamers, carrying one hundred and
+seven heavy guns, and having an aggregate capacity of five thousand
+tons. Such a work was one of the greatest in magnitude ever performed,
+and, as may be supposed, required a heavy capital to carry it to
+perfection. Mr. Eads soon exhausted his own means, and but for the
+assistance of friends, whose confidence in his integrity and capacity
+induced them to advance him large sums, would have been compelled to
+abandon the undertaking; for the Government, upon various pretexts,
+delayed for months the stipulated payments, and by its criminal
+negligence came near bringing the iron-clad fleet, so necessary to its
+success, to an untimely end. It was prompt enough, however, to
+commission the vessels as soon as they were ready. At the time they
+rendered such good service in the conquest of Forts Henry and Donelson,
+and compelled the fall of Island No. 10, they were still unpaid for, and
+the private property of Mr. Eads.
+
+In the spring of 1862, Mr. Eads, in accordance with the desire of the
+Navy Department, submitted plans for light-draught armored vessels for
+service on the western rivers. He proposed an ingenious revolving turret
+to be used on these vessels, the performance of which he agreed to
+guarantee to the satisfaction of the Department; but the Government
+decided to use the Ericsson turret, which the recent encounter between
+the Monitor and Merrimac had proved to be a success. Mr. Eads was
+allowed, however, to modify the Ericsson turret considerably, in order
+to avoid making the draft of his steamers greater than was desired. He
+built the "Osage" and "Neosho," and when these vessels were launched,
+with all their weight on board, it was found that they were really
+lighter than the contract called for, a circumstance which permitted the
+thickness of their armor to be afterward increased half an inch without
+injuring their draught or speed.
+
+In May, 1862, at the request of the Navy Department, Mr. Eads submitted
+plans for four iron-clads, iron hull propellers, to carry two turrets
+each of eight inches thickness, four eleven inch guns, and
+three-quarters inch deck armor, to steam nine nautical miles per hour,
+to carry three days' coal, and not to exceed a draught of six feet of
+water. His plans were accepted, and he constructed the "Winnebago,"
+"Kickapoo," "Milwaukee," and "Chickasaw." Like the "Osage" and "Neosho,"
+these vessels were found to be of lighter draught than had been agreed
+upon, and the Department ordered all four to have an extra plating of
+three-quarters inch armor, which was done. Three of the vessels were
+also reported, by the officers of the navy sent to examine them, to
+exceed the speed required by the contract, while the fourth was fully up
+to the standard.
+
+Of how many "Government Contractors" during the war can it be said that
+their work was much better than they had agreed to furnish? Verily, we
+think Mr. Eads stands almost alone in this respect, his proud position
+made still more honorable by its comparative isolation.
+
+Mr. Eads built, during the war, fourteen heavily armored gunboats, four
+heavy mortar boats, and converted seven transports into musket-proof
+gunboats, or "tin-clads," as they were called on the river. He had a
+share in other enterprises of a similar nature during the war, and
+besides rendering good service to the Union, was enabled to retire at
+the close of the struggle with a handsome fortune, won by his own
+patriotic skill and energy.
+
+Whatever may be the distinction awarded to others, to him belongs the
+credit of having been the first to provide the Government with the means
+of securing that firm hold upon the great river of the West which, once
+gained, was never relaxed.
+
+Mr. Eads resides in St. Louis. He is still in the prime of life, is
+admired and honored by his fellow-citizens, and affords a splendid
+example of what genius and industry can do for a poor, friendless boy in
+that glorious western country which is one day to be the seat of empire
+in the New World.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+CYRUS W. FIELD.
+
+
+Cyrus far we have been considering the struggles of men who have risen
+from obscure positions in life, by the aid of their own genius,
+industry, and courage, to the front rank of their respective callings.
+We shall now relate the story of one who having already won fortune,
+periled it all upon an enterprise in which his own genius had recognized
+the path to fame and to still greater success, but which the almost
+united voice of the people of his country condemned as visionary, and
+from which they coldly held aloof until its brilliant success compelled
+them to acknowledge the wisdom and foresight of its projector.
+
+Fifteen years ago very few persons had heard of Cyrus W. Field. Ten
+years ago he had achieved considerable notoriety as a visionary who was
+bent on sinking his handsome fortune in the sea. To-day, the world is
+full of his fame, as the man to whom, above all others, it is indebted
+for the successful completion of the Atlantic Telegraph; and those who
+were formerly loudest in ridiculing him are now foremost in his praise.
+"Nothing succeeds like success," and what was once in their eyes mere
+folly, and worthy only of ridicule, they now hail as the evidences of
+his courage, foresight, and profound wisdom, and wonder that they never
+could see them in their true light before.
+
+Cyrus West Field was born at Stockbridge, Massachusetts, on the 30th day
+of November, 1819, and is the son of the Rev. David Dudley Field, a
+distinguished clergyman of that State. He was carefully educated in the
+primary and grammar schools of his native county, and at the age of
+fifteen went to New York to seek his fortune. He had no difficulty in
+obtaining a clerkship in an enterprising mercantile house in that city,
+and, from the first, gave evidence of unusual business capacity. His
+employers, pleased with his promise, advanced him rapidly, and in a few
+years he became a partner in the house. His success as a merchant was
+uniform and marked--so marked, indeed, that in 1853, when only
+thirty-four years old, he was able to partially retire from business
+with a large fortune as the substantial reward of his mercantile career.
+
+Mr. Field had devoted himself so closely to his business that, at his
+retirement, he resolved to seek recreation and change of scene in
+foreign travel, and accordingly he left New York, and passed the next
+six months in journeying through the mountains of South America. Upon
+his return home, at the close of the year 1853, he declared his
+intention to withdraw entirely from active participation in business,
+and to engage in no new schemes.
+
+He had scarcely returned home, however, when his brother, Mr. Matthew D.
+Field, a successful and well-known civil engineer, informed him that he
+had just become acquainted with a Mr. Frederick N. Gisborne, of
+Newfoundland, who had come to New York for the purpose of interesting
+some American capitalists in a company which had been organized in
+Newfoundland for the purpose of procuring news in America and Europe,
+and transmitting it between the two continents with greater dispatch
+than was possible in the then existing mode of communication between the
+two countries. The scheme of Mr. Gisborne had commended itself to Mr.
+Matthew Field, and he urged his brother to meet that gentleman and hear
+his statements. Mr. Cyrus Field at once declined to undertake any share
+in the enterprise, and said that it would be useless for him to meet Mr.
+Gisborne; but his brother was so urgent that he at last consented to
+grant Mr. Gisborne an interview, and at least hear what he had to say.
+At the appointed time, Mr. Field received Mr. Gisborne at his house, and
+was there made acquainted with the proposed plan of operations of the
+"Electric Telegraph Company of Newfoundland." This company had gone into
+bankruptcy a short time previous, but Mr. Gisborne hoped to be able to
+revive it by the aid of American capital. The scheme which he laid
+before Mr. Field, can not be better stated than by quoting the following
+extract from the charter which the Legislature of Newfoundland had
+granted the bankruptcy company:
+
+"The telegraph line of this company is designed to be strictly an
+'Inter-Continental Telegraph,' Its termini will be New York, in the
+United States, and London, in the Kingdom of Great Britain; these points
+are to be connected by a line of electric telegraph from New York to St.
+John's, Newfoundland, partly on poles, partly laid in the ground, and
+partly through the water, and a line of the swiftest steamships ever
+built, from that point to Ireland. The trips of these steamships, it is
+expected, will not exceed five days, and as very little time will be
+occupied in transmitting messages between St. John's and New York, the
+communication between the latter city and London or Liverpool, will be
+effected in _six days,_ or less. The company will have likewise
+stationed at St. John's a steam yacht, for the purpose of intercepting
+the European and American steamships, so that no opportunity may be
+lost in forwarding intelligence in advance of the ordinary channels of
+communication."
+
+Mr. Field listened attentively to his visitor, but declined to commit
+himself to more than an expression of sympathy with the enterprise.
+After the departure of his guest, he took the globe which stood in his
+library, and turning it over, began to examine the proposed route of the
+telegraph line and the distance to be traversed by the steamers. While
+engaged in this examination, the idea flashed across his mind that
+instead of undertaking such a complicated scheme, it would be better to
+attempt to stretch a telegraph wire entirely across the ocean, from the
+shores of Newfoundland to the coast of Ireland. The vastness of this
+scheme pleased him, and its usefulness to the entire world, if it could
+be carried out, was clear to his mind from the first.
+
+He at once set to work to ascertain if such an undertaking as an
+Atlantic telegraph was practicable. He wrote to Lieutenant Maury, then
+the Chief of the National Observatory at Washington, and asked if the
+laying of such a wire was possible; and to Professor Morse, the inventor
+of the telegraph, to know if such a wire would be available for sending
+messages if it could be laid. Lieutenant Maury promptly replied,
+inclosing a copy of a report he had just made to the Secretary of the
+Navy on the subject, from which Mr. Field learned that the idea of
+laying a telegraph across the ocean was not original with himself. In
+this report Lieutenant Maury demonstrated the entire practicability of
+such an enterprise, and sustained his conclusions by a statement of the
+recent discoveries concerning the bed of the ocean, made by Lieutenant
+Berryman. Professor Morse came in person to visit Mr. Field, and assured
+him of his entire faith in the possibility of sending telegraphic
+messages across the ocean with rapidity and success.
+
+The two highest authorities in the world thus having assured him of the
+entire practicability of the undertaking, Mr. Field declared his
+readiness, if he could procure the assistance of a sufficient number of
+capitalists in the United States, to undertake the laying of a telegraph
+across the Atlantic between Europe and America. Further deliberation
+only made him better satisfied with the undertaking, and he set to work
+to find ten capitalists, each of whom he proposed should contribute one
+hundred thousand dollars, making the capital of the proposed company one
+million of dollars. Mr. Field was convinced that the undertaking would
+be expensive, but he had then but a faint conception of its magnitude,
+and was very far from supposing that "he might yet be drawn on to stake
+upon its success the whole fortune he had accumulated; that he was to
+sacrifice for it all the peace and quiet he had hoped to enjoy, and that
+for twelve years he was to be almost without a home, crossing and
+recrossing the sea, urging his enterprise in Europe and America."
+
+The scientific questions involved in the undertaking were so little
+understood at the time by the public, and the popular judgment regarded
+the attempt to stretch a cable across the deep, mysterious ocean with so
+much incredulity, that Mr. Field had considerable trouble in finding
+gentlemen willing or prepared to share his faith in the enterprise. His
+first effort was to induce Mr. Peter Cooper, of New York, his next door
+neighbor, to join him, and he succeeded so well that Mr. Cooper
+consented to do so if several others would unite with them. Encouraged
+by his success with Mr. Cooper, whose name was a tower of strength to
+his cause, Mr. Field renewed his efforts, and succeeded in winning over
+the following gentlemen, and in the order named: Moses Taylor, Marshall
+O. Roberts, and Chandler White. These gentlemen were very slow to accept
+the views of Mr. Field, but, once having done so, they never lost faith
+in the ultimate success of the undertaking. The more thoroughly they
+became acquainted with its magnitude and costliness, the stronger grew
+their confidence in it, for this increase of knowledge not only showed
+them more plainly its difficulties and dangers, but developed new
+grounds on which to base their hopes.
+
+Mr. Field was about to continue his efforts to procure additional names,
+when Mr. Cooper proposed that the five gentlemen already pledged to the
+scheme should undertake its entire cost without waiting for the other
+four. The proposition was agreed to, and it was decided to take the
+necessary steps to procure a charter for their company from the
+Legislature of Newfoundland. Mr. Field consented to undertake this, and
+at once set off for St. John's, accompanied by his brother, Mr. David
+Dudley Field, who was made the legal adviser of the company. At St.
+John's they were greatly aided by Mr. Archibald, then the
+Attorney-General of the Colony, and afterward the British Consul at New
+York, and by the Governor of Newfoundland. They succeeded in obtaining a
+charter from the Legislature under the name of the "New York,
+Newfoundland, and London Telegraph Company," with liberal grants in land
+and money. This accomplished, they assumed and paid the liabilities of
+the old Telegraph Company which had been brought to Mr. Field's notice
+by Mr. Gisborne, and thus removed the last difficulty in their way. This
+much accomplished, Mr. Field hastened back to New York, and on the 6th
+of May, 1854, the Company was formally organized at the residence of Mr.
+David Dudley Field. Messrs. Cooper, Taylor, Field, Roberts, and White
+were the first directors. Mr. Cooper, was made President of the
+Company, Mr. White, Vice-President, and Mr. Taylor Secretary. A capital
+of one million and a half of dollars was subscribed on the spot, Mr.
+Field contributing about two hundred thousand dollars in cash.
+
+Work was at once begun on the section between New York and St. John's.
+There was no road across the island of Newfoundland, and the Company had
+not only to build their telegraph line, but to construct a road by the
+side of it through an almost unbroken wilderness. It was a work which
+required the highest executive ability, and the services of an army of
+men. The distance across the island was four hundred miles, and there
+were numerous rocky gorges, morasses, and rivers in the way. The country
+was a desolation, and it was found that supplies would have to be
+transported from St. John's. The execution of the work was committed to
+Mr. White, the Vice-President, who went to St. John's to act as the
+general agent of the Company, and to Mr. Matthew D. Field, who was
+appointed constructing engineer. These gentlemen displayed such skill
+and energy in their respective positions that in two years the Company
+had not only built a telegraph line and a road of four hundred miles
+across the island, but had constructed another line of one hundred and
+forty miles in the island of Cape Breton, and had stretched a submarine
+cable across the Gulf of St. Lawrence.[A] The line was now in working
+order from New York to St. John's, Newfoundland, a distance of one
+thousand miles, and it had required about a million of dollars for its
+construction. It now remained to complete the great work by laying the
+cable between Newfoundland and Ireland.
+
+
+[Footnote A: The first effort to lay a cable in the Gulf of St. Lawrence
+was made by this Company, in August, 1855. It was a failure, and the
+cable was lost. The second attempt was made in the summer of 1856, and
+was entirely successful.]
+
+It being desirable to examine still further the bed of the ocean over
+which the cable was to be laid, Mr. Field requested the Government of
+the United States to send out an expedition over the route for the
+purpose of taking deep sea soundings. His request was promptly granted,
+and an expedition under Lieut. Berryman was dispatched, which proceeded
+to examine the ocean bed, with the most satisfactory results. This was
+accomplished in the summer of 1856, and the next year the same route was
+surveyed by Commander Daymon, with the British war steamer Cyclops--this
+survey being ordered by the Lords of the Admiralty, at Mr. Field's
+request. These surveys made it plain beyond question that a cable could
+lie safely on the bed of the sea, at a depth sufficient to protect it
+from vessels' anchors, from icebergs, and from submarine currents, and
+that it would receive sufficient support from that bed to free it from
+all undue tension. There was no doubt of the ultimate success of the
+enterprise in the minds of the directors, but it was necessary to
+convince the public in both Europe and America that it was not an
+impossibility, and also to enlist the sympathies of the Governments of
+Great Britain and the United States, and secure their assistance.
+
+Mr. Field, who had made several voyages to England and to Newfoundland
+in behalf of the company, was elected Vice-President after the death of
+Mr. White, in 1856, and was charged with the duty of proceeding to
+England to obtain the assistance of the British Government, and to
+organize the company in London. Thus far the directors had borne the
+entire cost of the undertaking, and it was but fair that they should
+seek the means for completing their work in the country which was to be
+so much benefited by it. Mr. Field sailed for England in the summer of
+1856, and upon reaching that country proceeded to consult some of its
+most eminent engineers and electricians. The English people were slow to
+believe that so long a cable could be successfully worked, even if laid
+intact, and to remove their doubts, the opinions of Professor Morse and
+Lieutenant Maury were published in their newspapers; and this
+publication brought out communications from many scientific men on the
+subject, a number of them advocating the undertaking. Thus, the
+attention of the English public was gained. Experiments were made by
+Professor Morse, Mr. Bright, and Dr. Whitehouse, which proved beyond all
+doubt the ease with which a continuous line of more than two thousand
+miles of wire could be worked; and Professor Morse was able, from these
+experiments, to declare his conviction that an electric current could
+pass between London and New York, on such a wire, in the space of one
+second.
+
+Science had now done its utmost, and had in every thing sustained the
+great plan. It was now necessary to ask the aid of Her Majesty's
+Government. This effort was intrusted to Mr. Field, who carried it
+through successfully. The English Government agreed to furnish the ships
+necessary for making soundings and surveys, and to furnish vessels to
+assist in laying the cable. It also agreed to pay to the company an
+annual subsidy of fourteen thousand pounds for the transmission of the
+government messages until the net profits of the company were equal to a
+dividend of six pounds per cent., when the payment was to be reduced to
+ten thousand pounds per annum, for a period of twenty-five years.
+Provision was made for extra payment, in case the government messages
+exceeded a certain amount; and it was provided that the messages of the
+Governments of Great Britain and the United States should be placed upon
+an equal footing, and should have priority in the order in which they
+arrived at the stations. This last provision exhibited a decided
+liberality on the part of the English Government, since both ends of the
+proposed cable would be in British territory. Indeed, throughout the
+whole negotiation, Great Britain cheerfully accorded to the United
+States every privilege which she claimed for herself.
+
+Having secured the aid of the Queen's Government on such liberal terms,
+Mr. Field now undertook the organization of the company, in addition to
+the task of raising a capital of three hundred and fifty thousand
+pounds. In both efforts he was effectively assisted by Mr. John W.
+Brett, who had laid the first cable across the English Channel, and by
+Mr. Charles T. Bright and Dr. Edward O.W. Whitehouse. The efforts of
+these gentlemen were successful. In a few weeks the whole capital was
+subscribed. It had been divided into three hundred and fifty shares of a
+thousand pounds each. One hundred and one of these were taken up in
+London, eighty-six in Liverpool, thirty-seven in Glasgow, twenty-eight
+in Manchester, and a few in other parts of England. Mr. Field, at the
+final division of shares, took eighty-eight. He did not design making
+this investment on his own account, but thinking it but fair that at
+least one-fourth of the stock should be held in America, he made this
+subscription with the intention of disposing of his shares after his
+return home. Owing to his continued absence from New York, and the
+straitened condition of the money market, it was nearly a year before he
+could succeed in selling as much as twenty-seven shares. The company was
+organized in December, 1856, a Board of Directors elected, and a
+contract made for the cable, half of which was to be made in London and
+the other half in Liverpool.
+
+The day after the organization of the company, Mr. Field sailed for New
+York, from which place he at once made a voyage to Newfoundland, to look
+after some matters which required his presence. Returning home, he
+hurried to Washington, to secure the aid of the General Government. He
+met with more opposition here than he had encountered in England. A
+powerful lobby opposed him, and a spirit of hostility to his bill
+exhibited itself in Congress, and to such a degree that the measure
+passed the Senate by a majority of only one vote. It came very near
+failing in the House, but at length got through, and received the
+President's signature on the 3d of March, 1857.
+
+In the summer of 1857, Mr. Field having returned to England, the cable
+was declared to be in readiness for laying. The United States Government
+now placed at the disposal of the Telegraph Company the magnificent new
+steam frigate "Niagara," as the most suitable vessel for laying the
+cable, and ordered the "Susquehanna," the largest side-wheel frigate in
+the service, to accompany her in the expedition. The British Government
+provided the steam frigate "Agamemnon," a splendid vessel, which had
+been the flagship of the English fleet at the bombardment of Sebastopol,
+and ordered the "Leopard" to accompany her as an escort. The "Niagara"
+was commanded by Captain W.L. Hudson, of the United States Navy, and the
+"Agamemnon" by Captain Noddal, of the Royal Navy. The "Niagara" took on
+her share of the cable at Liverpool, and the "Agamemnon" received hers
+at London. It was agreed that the "Niagara" should begin the laying of
+the cable, and continue it until her portion of it should be exhausted
+in mid-ocean, when her end of it should be united with the cable on
+board the "Agamemnon," which ship should continue laying the line until
+the shores of Newfoundland were reached. After taking on the cable, the
+ships were ordered to Queenstown.
+
+The vessels left England in the midst of general rejoicings, and arrived
+at the rendezvous at the proper time. Thence they sailed for the harbor
+of Valentia, which was to be the eastern terminus of the line and the
+starting point of the expedition. They were greeted every-where with
+enthusiasm, and the greatest confidence in the success of the
+enterprise was manifested by those on board. Mr. Field, Professor Morse,
+and several other officers of the company were on board the "Niagara,"
+as that ship was to conduct the first part of the sinking of the cable.
+
+At length all was in readiness. The shore end of the cable was landed
+and made fast on Wednesday afternoon, the 5th of August, and the next
+morning the fleet stood out to sea. "Before they had gone five miles the
+heavy shore end of the cable caught in the machinery and parted. The
+'Niagara' put back, and the cable was 'underrun' the whole distance. At
+length the end was lifted out of the water and spliced to the gigantic
+coil, and as it dropped safely to the bottom of the sea, the mighty ship
+began to stir. At first she moved very slowly, not more than two miles
+an hour, to avoid the danger of accident; but the feeling that they are
+at last away is itself a relief. The ships are all in sight, and so near
+that they can hear each other's bells. The 'Niagara,' as if knowing that
+she is bound for the land out of whose forests she came, bends her head
+to the waves, as her prow is turned toward her native shores.
+
+"Slowly passed the hours of that day. But all went well, and the ships
+were moving out into the broad Atlantic. At length the sun went down in
+the west, and stars came out on the face of the deep. But no man slept.
+A thousand eyes were watching a great experiment, as those who have a
+personal interest in the issue. All through that night, and through the
+anxious days and nights that followed, there was a feeling in every soul
+on board as if a friend in the cabin were at the turning-point of life
+or death, and they were watching beside him. There was a strange,
+unnatural silence in the ship. Men paced the deck with soft and muffled
+tread, speaking only in whispers, as if a loud voice or a heavy footfall
+might snap the vital cord. So much had they grown to feel for the
+enterprise, that the cable seemed to them like a human creature, on
+whose fate they hung, as if it were to decide their own destiny.
+
+"There are some who will never forget that first night at sea. Perhaps
+the reaction from the excitement on shore made the impression the
+deeper. What strange thoughts came to them as they stood on the deck and
+watched that mysterious cord disappearing in the darkness, and gliding
+to its ocean bed! There are certain moments in life when every thing
+comes back upon us--when the events of years seem crowded into an hour.
+What memories came up in those long night hours! How many on board that
+ship thought of homes beyond the sea, of absent ones, of the distant and
+the dead! Such thoughts, mingling with those suggested by the scene
+around, added to the solemnity of the hour, had left an impression which
+can never be forgotten.
+
+"But with the work in hand all is going on well. There are vigilant eyes
+on deck. Mr. Bright, the engineer of the company, is there, and Mr.
+Everett, Mr. De Sauty, the electrician, and Professor Morse. The
+paying-out machinery does its work, and though it makes a constant
+rumble in the ship, that dull, heavy sound is music to their ears, as it
+tells them that all is well. If one should drop to sleep, and wake up at
+night, he has only to hear the sound of 'the old coffee-mill,' and his
+fears are relieved, and he goes to sleep again."
+
+Saturday and Sunday passed away without accident, but on Monday, when
+two hundred miles at sea, in deep water, and safely beyond the great
+submarine mountain, the electrical continuity was suddenly lost. This
+interruption amazed and perplexed all on board, but no one was able to
+remedy it, or to account for it satisfactorily. It lasted for two hours,
+and then, just as the order was about to be given to cut the cable and
+endeavor to wind it in, it came back as suddenly and mysteriously as it
+had disappeared. The greatest delight was now manifested by all on
+board. "You could see," says the correspondent of the London _Times_,
+"the tears of joy standing in the eyes of some as they almost cried for
+joy, and told their mess-mates that it was all right."
+
+That night, however, the expedition came to grief. The cable was running
+out freely at the rate of six miles per hour, while the ship was making
+only four. This was supposed to be owing to a powerful undercurrent. To
+check this waste of the cable the engineer applied the brakes firmly,
+which at once stopped the machine. The effect was to bring a heavy
+strain on the cable that was in the water. The stern of the ship was
+down in the trough of the sea, and as it rose upward on the swell, the
+pressure was too great, and the cable parted. The alarm was at once
+given, and the greatest consternation and grief prevailed on board. "It
+made all hands of us through the day," says Captain Hudson, "like a
+household or family which had lost their dearest friend, for officers
+and men had been deeply interested in the success of the enterprise."
+
+The fleet immediately put about and returned to England, where Mr. Field
+at once informed the directors of the extent of the disaster. The
+remaining portions of the cable were landed and stored safely away, and
+the vessels were returned to their respective Governments. Orders were
+given for the manufacture of seven hundred miles of cable to replace the
+portion which had been lost, and to allow for waste in paying it out,
+and the most energetic preparations were made for another attempt.
+
+Being satisfied that the machine used for paying out the cable was
+defective, Mr. Field went to Washington and procured from the Navy
+Department the services of Mr. Wm. E. Everett, the chief engineer of the
+"Niagara," stating to that gentleman the necessity for a new machine,
+and urging him to invent it. This Mr. Everett succeeded in doing during
+the winter. His machine was regarded as a great improvement on that
+which had been used on the "Niagara." "It was much smaller and lighter.
+It would take up only about one third as much room on the deck, and had
+only one fourth the weight of the old machine. Its construction was much
+more simple. Instead of four heavy wheels, it had but two, and these
+were made to revolve with ease, and without danger of sudden check, by
+the application of what were known as self-releasing brakes. These were
+the invention of Mr. Appold, of London, a gentleman of fortune, but with
+a strong taste for mechanics, which led him to spend his time and wealth
+in exercising his mechanical ingenuity. These brakes were so adjusted as
+to bear only a certain strain, when they released themselves. This
+ingenious contrivance was applied by Mr. Everett to the paying-out
+machinery. The strength of the cable was such that it would not break
+except under a pressure of a little over three tons. The machinery was
+so adjusted that not more than half that strain could possibly come upon
+the cable, when the brakes would relax their grasp, the wheels revolve
+easily, and the cable run out into the sea 'at its own sweet will.' The
+paying-out machine, therefore, we are far from claiming as wholly an
+American invention. This part of the mechanism was English. The merit of
+Mr. Everett lay in the skill with which he adapted it to the laying of
+the Atlantic cable, and in his great improvements of other parts of the
+machinery. The whole construction, as it afterward stood upon the decks
+of the 'Niagara' and the 'Agamemnon,' was the combined product of
+English and American invention."
+
+In January, 1858, the Board of Directors offered Mr. Field the sum of
+five thousand dollars per annum if he would assume the post of general
+manager of the company. He at once undertook the duties of the
+position, but declined all compensation.
+
+Every thing being in readiness for the second attempt at laying the
+cable, the "Niagara" sailed from New York in March, 1858, to take on her
+portion of the cable at Plymouth. The "Agamemnon" was again ordered to
+assist in the undertaking, and the "Gorgon" was made her consort Mr.
+Field had hoped that the "Susquehanna" would again be the consort of the
+"Niagara," but a few days before the sailing of the fleet he was
+officially informed that he could not have the ship, as she was then in
+the West Indies, with the greater part of her crew down with the yellow
+fever. This was a keen disappointment, as every arrangement had been
+made with the expectation of having the assistance of the "Susquehanna."
+It was too late to ask the Government at Washington for another ship,
+and it was by no means certain that the request would be granted if
+made. In this dilemma Mr. Field frankly stated his disappointment to the
+Lords of the Admiralty of England, and asked for a ship to accompany the
+"Niagara." He was informed that the English Government was at that
+moment chartering vessels to convey troops to Malta, as it had not ships
+enough of its own, and that it was doubtful whether it could contribute
+a third ship to the expedition. Still, so greatly did the government
+desire the success of the enterprise, that a little later on the same
+day the "Valorous" was ordered to take the place of the "Susquehanna" in
+the telegraph fleet. This generous assistance was all the more
+praiseworthy, as it was given at a time when the need of England for
+ships was very urgent.
+
+After shipping the cable, the squadron sailed from Plymouth on the 29th
+of May, 1868, for the Bay of Biscay, where the cable was subjected to
+numerous and thorough tests, which demonstrated its strength and its
+sensitiveness to the electric current. This accomplished, the vessels
+returned to Plymouth.
+
+"Among the matters of _personal_ solicitude and anxiety at this time,
+next to the success of the expedition, was Mr. Field himself. He was
+working with an activity which was unnatural--which could only be kept
+up by great excitement, and which involved the most serious danger. The
+strain on the man was more than the strain on the cable, and we were in
+fear that both would break together. Often he had no sleep, except such
+as he caught flying on the railway. Indeed, when we remonstrated, he
+said he could rest better there than anywhere else, for then he was not
+tormented with the thought of any thing undone. For the time being he
+could do no more; and then, putting his head in the cushioned corner of
+the carriage, he got an hour or two of broken sleep.
+
+"Of this activity we had an instance while in Plymouth. The ships were
+then lying in the Sound, only waiting orders from the Admiralty to go to
+sea; but some business required one of the directors to go to Paris,
+and, as usual, it fell upon him. He left on Sunday night, and went to
+Bristol, and thence, by the first morning train, to London. Monday he
+was busy all day, and that night went to Paris. Tuesday, another busy
+day, and that night back to London. Wednesday, occupied every minute
+till the departure of the Great Western train. That night back to
+Plymouth. Thursday morning on board the 'Niagara,' and immediately the
+squadron sailed."
+
+The plan of operations this time was for the vessels to proceed to a
+given point in mid-ocean, and there unite the two ends of the cable,
+after which the "Niagara" should proceed toward Newfoundland and the
+"Agamemnon" toward Ireland, and it was supposed that each vessel would
+make land about the same time. This was believed to be a better plan
+than the one pursued in the first expedition.
+
+The squadron sailed from Plymouth on the 10th of June. The weather was
+favorable for the first two or three clays of the voyage, but on the
+13th a severe gale set in, which lasted for over a week, and came near
+causing the "Agamemnon" to founder beneath her immense load, a portion
+of which broke loose in her hold. All the vessels succeeded in
+weathering the storm, however, and on the 25th reached the rendezvous in
+mid-ocean. The next day the splice was made, and the ships set out for
+their respective destinations. Before they had gone three miles the
+machinery of the "Niagara" caught the cable and broke it. A second
+splice was made, but when each ship had paid out about forty miles, the
+electric current suddenly ceased. The cable was cut promptly, and the
+two vessels at once returned to the rendezvous, where they rejoined each
+other on the 28th. A comparison of the logs of the two ships "showed the
+painful and mysterious fact that at the same second of time each vessel
+discovered that a total fracture had taken place, at a distance of
+certainly not less than ten miles from each ship, in fact, as well as can
+be judged, at the bottom of the ocean." A third splice was made without
+delay, and the two ships again set out for the opposite shores of the
+Atlantic. This time about two hundred miles of the cable were
+successfully laid, when it parted about twenty feet from the stern of
+the "Agamemnon." The "Niagara," being unable to communicate with the
+English frigate, bore away for Queenstown, where she was joined a few
+days later by the "Agamemnon."
+
+This second failure greatly disheartened the directors, and it required
+all Mr. Field's persuasiveness to induce them to sanction another
+attempt. Yet he prevailed, and, hastening from London to Queenstown,
+sailed with the telegraph fleet on the third attempt to lay the cable,
+leaving Queenstown on the 17th of July. The rendezvous was reached on
+the 28th, and on the 29th the splice was made; and the "Niagara" and
+"Agamemnon" parted company. This time the undertaking was successful.
+The cable was laid across the Atlantic, the "Niagara" reaching Trinity
+Bay, Newfoundland, on the 5th of August, and the "Agamemnon" arriving
+at Valentia, Ireland, a few hours later on the same day. Signals were
+sent across the entire length of the line, from shore to shore, with
+ease and rapidity, and nothing occurred to mar the success of the mighty
+undertaking.
+
+The successful laying of the cable was hailed with the liveliest joy on
+both sides of the Atlantic, and those who had participated in it were
+regarded as heroes. But great as was the achievement, it was not
+destined to be a lasting success. After working for four weeks, the
+electric current suddenly ceased on the 1st of September. It never
+worked _perfectly_ at any period of its existence, but it did transmit a
+number of messages with intelligibleness, and thus put an end to all
+doubt in the minds of the scientific men of the expedition of the
+feasibility of laying a successful line across the ocean.
+
+The public generally and the directors of the company were greatly
+disappointed, and many of-the latter and nearly all of the former
+declared that all such attempts must of necessity fail. Some persons
+even went so far as to avow their belief that the statements as to the
+successful transmission of signals over the wire were false; but the
+proofs that the wire did work properly for awhile are too strong to
+allow us to accord the slightest weight to this disbelief. But whether
+signals had passed over the wire or not, there could be no doubt that
+the cable had ceased to respond to the efforts of the electricians, and
+was a total failure, and the discouragement of nearly every one
+connected with it was most profound.
+
+Mr. Field and one or two others were the only persons who retained the
+slightest confidence in the enterprise, and it was clear to them that
+any further effort to secure the aid of private capital would be useless
+just then. An appeal was made to the British Government. It was urged
+that the work was too great to be undertaken by private capital alone,
+and that, since it was to be more of a public than a private nature, it
+was but just that the Government should undertake it. The company asked
+the Government to guarantee the interest on a certain amount of stock,
+even if the second attempt should not prove a complete success. The
+failure of the Red Sea cable, to which the British Government had given
+an unconditional guarantee, had just occurred, and had caused a
+considerable loss to the treasury, and the Government was not willing to
+assume another such risk. Anxious, however, for the success of the
+Atlantic telegraph, it increased its subsidy from fourteen thousand to
+twenty thousand pounds, and agreed to guarantee eight per cent, on six
+hundred thousand pounds of new capital for twenty-five years, upon the
+single condition that the cable should be made to work successfully.
+
+This was not all, however. The Government caused further soundings to be
+made off the coast of Ireland, which effectually dispelled all the fears
+which had been entertained of a submarine mountain which would prove an
+impassable barrier in the path of an ocean telegraph. In addition to
+this, it caused the organization of a board of distinguished scientific
+men for the purpose of determining all the difficult problems of
+submarine telegraphy. This board met in 1859, and sat two years. The
+result of its experiments and investigations was a declaration, signed
+by the members, that a cable properly made, "and paid into the ocean
+with the most improved machinery, possesses every prospect of not only
+being successfully laid in the first instance, but may reasonably be
+relied upon to continue many years in an efficient-state for the
+transmission of signals."
+
+Meanwhile, Mr. Field labored energetically to revive the company. The
+war which had broken out in the United States brought home to our
+Government the urgent need of telegraphic communication with Europe, and
+Mr. Field had no difficulty in obtaining from the President an assurance
+that this Government would be most happy to join with Great Britain in
+promoting this great international work. He addressed meetings of
+merchants in various American cities, and displayed the greatest energy
+in his efforts to enlist the aid of American capital. Very little was
+accomplished, however, until 1863. By this time the success of the lines
+in the Mediterranean and in the Persian Gulf had demonstrated the
+practicability of long submarine telegraphs, and the public confidence
+in the attempt had been revived to such an extent that the directors
+ventured to call for proposals for the manufacture of a cable. Seventeen
+offers were made, from which that of Messrs. Glass, Elliott & Co., of
+London, was selected. Mr. Field now renewed his indomitable efforts, and
+in a few months the new capital of six hundred thousand pounds was
+subscribed, Messrs. Glass, Elliott &, Co. taking three hundred and
+fifteen thousand pounds, besides one hundred thousand pounds in bonds.
+This was accomplished in 1864, and work on the cable was immediately
+begun. The cable now adopted was very different from, and much more
+sensitive than, those which had been used before. It was heavier, and
+less liable to be injured by the water.
+
+The "Great Eastern" steamship, the greatest wonder of naval
+architecture, was at this time advertised for sale, and it occurred to
+several of the gentlemen interested in the telegraph company that she
+was the best vessel for laying the cable that could be found. They at
+once organized themselves into a company, purchased the ship, and fitted
+her up for that service. They were fortunate in securing the services of
+Captain James Anderson, and placing him in charge of her, sent her to
+Sheerness, where the cable was sent down to her in lighters from the
+factory at Greenwich. When the cable was on board, and all the other
+arrangements had been completed, the big ship left the Thames and sailed
+for Valentia harbor.
+
+The point of landing had been changed from Valentia harbor, five or six
+miles, to Foilhommerum Bay. On the 23d of July, 1865, the shore end was
+connected with the cable on board the ship, and the voyage was begun. It
+would be interesting to follow the huge steamer on this remarkable
+voyage, and to relate to the reader the almost marvelous manner in which
+faults were detected in the line hundreds of miles from the shore, and
+how the cable was successfully hauled in and the damage repaired. All
+went well until twelve hundred miles of cable had been paid out, and the
+ship was but six hundred miles from the shores of Newfoundland, when the
+cable broke again and plunged into the sea.
+
+Mr. Canning, the engineer in charge, was dismayed, but not disheartened.
+For nine days the ship hung around the spot grappling for the cable, in
+the hope of raising it, and sinking its grapnels for this purpose to a
+depth of two miles. The cable was caught several times, but the rope
+which held the grapnel broke each time, and the precious coil fell back
+again into the deep. At length, having marked the place where the cable
+was lost with buoys, the ship put back for England, and the enterprise
+was abandoned for that year.
+
+Though unsuccessful in carrying the cable across the ocean, this
+expedition was by no means a failure. Its results are thus summed up by
+the officers in charge of it:
+
+
+     1. It was proved by the expedition of 1858 that a submarine
+     telegraph cable could be laid between Ireland and Newfoundland, and
+     messages transmitted through the same.
+
+     By the expedition of 1865 it has been fully demonstrated:
+
+     2. That the insulation of a cable improves very much after its
+     submersion in the cold deep water of the Atlantic, and that its
+     conducting power is considerably increased thereby.
+
+     3. That the steamship "Great Eastern," from her size and constant
+     steadiness, and from the control over her afforded by the joint use
+     of paddles and screw, renders it safe to lay an Atlantic cable in
+     any weather.
+
+     4. That in a depth of over two miles four attempts were made to
+     grapple the cable. In three of them the cable was caught by the
+     grapnel, and in the other the grapnel was fouled by the chain
+     attached to it.
+
+     5. That the paying-out machinery used on board the Great Eastern
+     worked perfectly, and can be confidently relied on for laying
+     cables across the Atlantic.
+
+     6. That with the improved telegraphic instruments for long
+     submarine lines, a speed of more than eight words per minute can be
+     obtained through such a cable as the present Atlantic one between
+     Ireland and Newfoundland, as the amount of slack actually paid out
+     did not exceed fourteen per cent., which would have made the total
+     cable laid between Valentia and Heart's Content nineteen hundred
+     miles.
+
+     7. That the present Atlantic cable, though capable of bearing a
+     strain of seven tons, did not experience more than fourteen
+     hundred-weight in being paid out into the deepest water of the
+     Atlantic between Ireland and Newfoundland.
+
+     8. That there is no difficulty in mooring buoys in the deep water
+     of the Atlantic between Ireland and Newfoundland, and that two
+     buoys even when moored by a piece of the Atlantic cable itself,
+     which had been previously lifted from the bottom, have ridden out a
+     gale.
+
+     9. That more than four nautical miles of the Atlantic cable have
+     been recovered from a depth of over two miles, and that the
+     insulation of the gutta-percha covered wire was in no way whatever
+     impaired by the depth of water or the strains to which it had been
+     subjected by lifting and passing through the hauling-in apparatus.
+
+     10. That the cable of 1865, owing to the improvements introduced
+     into the manufacture of the gutta-percha core, was more than one
+     hundred times better insulated than cables made in 1858, then
+     considered perfect and still working.
+
+     11. That the electrical testing can be conducted with such unerring
+     accuracy as to enable the electricians to discover the existence of
+     a fault immediately after its production or development, and very
+     quickly to ascertain its position in the cable.
+
+     12. That with a steam-engine attached to the paying-out machinery,
+     should a fault be discovered on board whilst laying the cable, it
+     is possible that it might be recovered before it had reached the
+     bottom of the Atlantic, and repaired at once.
+
+
+It was now placed beyond the possibility of a doubt that the cable would
+be laid within the next year. More than this, it was determined not only
+to lay a new cable between the two continents, but to fish up the cable
+of 1865, splice it and continue it to Newfoundland, thus giving the
+company two working lines.
+
+It was necessary, however, to raise more capital, and in this effort Mr.
+Field again put forth his restless and indomitable energies. As the
+public confidence in the scheme had been effectually restored, it was
+resolved to raise six hundred thousand pounds of new capital by the
+issue of one hundred and twenty thousand shares of five pounds each,
+which should be preferential shares, entitled to a dividend of twelve
+per cent, before the eight per cent, dividend to be paid on the former
+preference shares, and the four per cent, on the ordinary stock. They at
+once proceeded to issue these bonds, when they were informed by the
+Attorney-General that the proceeding was contrary to law.
+
+In this dilemma work on the new cable was at once stopped, and the money
+which had been paid in returned to the subscribers. As Parliament was
+not in session, and a new issue of stock could not be made by the
+company without its authorization, and as to wait for this would be to
+postpone the laying of the cable for another year, Mr. Field was now
+advised by Mr. Daniel Gooch, M.P., that the only way out of the
+difficulty was to organize a new company at once, which should assume
+the work, issue its own shares, and raise its own capital. Eminent legal
+gentlemen sustained Mr. Gooch in this opinion, and Mr. Field again set
+to work to organize a new company, under the name of the "Anglo-American
+Telegraph Company." The capital was fixed at six hundred thousand
+pounds, Mr. Field taking ten thousand pounds. The whole amount was
+raised in a short time, and the company "contracted with the Atlantic
+Cable Company to manufacture and lay down a cable in the summer of 1866,
+for doing which it is to be entitled to what virtually amounts to a
+preference dividend of twenty-five per cent., as a first claim is
+secured to them by the Atlantic Telegraph Company upon the revenue of
+the cable or cables (after the working expenses have been provided for)
+to the extent of one hundred and twenty-five thousand pounds per annum,
+and the New York, Newfoundland, and London Telegraph Company undertake
+to contribute from their revenue a further annual sum of twenty-five
+thousand pounds, on condition that a cable shall be working during
+1866."
+
+Once more the furnaces glowed and the hammers rang in the manufacture of
+the cable. Great improvements were made in the cable itself and in the
+machinery for laying it, and the "Great Eastern" was thoroughly
+overhauled. The cable was completed and put on board in June, and the
+big ship left the Medway on the last of the month and proceeded to
+Berehaven, in Ireland, where she took on her final stores of coal. This
+done, she proceeded to Valentia, where she arrived on the seventh of
+July.
+
+The shore end was successfully laid and made fast to the cable on board
+the "Great Eastern," and on Friday morning, the 13th of July, 1866, the
+huge ship set sail for Newfoundland, accompanied by her consorts of the
+telegraph fleet. The voyage occupied fourteen days, the ship making an
+average run of about one hundred and eighteen miles per day, and paying
+out about one hundred and thirty-one miles of cable in the same period
+of time. The weather was fair during the whole voyage, but the anxiety
+of the officers in charge was none the less on that account. There were
+accidents to be dreaded more than unfavorable weather. The ship was run
+at moderate speed all the way, as it was thought she had once or twice
+run too fast on the last voyage, and exposed the cable to danger. "The
+total slack of the cable was less than twelve per cent., showing that
+the cable was laid almost in a straight line, allowing for the swells
+and hollows in the bottom of the sea.
+
+"As the next week drew toward its close, it was evident that they were
+approaching the end of their voyage. By Thursday they had passed the
+great depths of the Atlantic, and were off soundings. Besides, their
+daily observations, there were many signs well known to mariners that
+they were near the coast. There were the sea-birds, and even the smell
+of the land, such as once greeted the sharp senses of Columbus, and made
+him sure that he was floating to some undiscovered shore. Captain
+Anderson had timed his departure so that he should approach the American
+coast at the full moon; and so, for the last two or three nights, as
+they drew near the Western shore, the round orb rose behind them,
+casting its soft light over sea and sky; and these happy men seemed like
+heavenly voyagers, floating gently on to a haven of rest.
+
+"In England the progress of the expedition was known from day to day,
+but on this side of the ocean all was uncertainty. Some had gone to
+Heart's Content, hoping to witness the arrival of the fleet, but not so
+many as the last year, for the memory of their disappointment was too
+fresh, and they feared the same result again. But still a faithful few
+were there, who kept their daily watch. Two weeks have passed. It is
+Friday morning, the 27th of July. They are up early, and looking
+eastward to see the day break, when a ship is seen in the offing. She is
+far down on the horizon. Spy-glasses are turned toward her. She comes
+nearer; and look, there is another, and another! And now the hull of the
+'Great Eastern' looms up all glorious in that morning sky. They are
+coming! Instantly all is wild excitement on shore. Boats put off to row
+toward the fleet. The 'Albany' is the first to round the point and enter
+the bay. The 'Terrible' is close behind; the 'Medway' stops an hour or
+two to join on the heavy shore end, while the 'Great Eastern,' gliding
+calmly in as if she had done nothing remarkable, drops her anchor in
+front of the telegraph house, having trailed behind her a chain of two
+thousand miles, to bind the old world to the new.
+
+"Although the expedition reached Newfoundland on Friday, the 27th, yet,
+as the cable across the Gulf of St. Lawrence was broken, the news was
+not received in New York till the 29th. It was early Sunday morning,
+before the Sabbath bells had rung their call to prayer, that the tidings
+came. The first announcement was brief: 'Heart's Content, July 27th. We
+arrived here at nine o'clock this morning. All well. Thank God, the
+cable is laid, and is in perfect working order. Cyrus W. Field.'"
+
+There was no failure in the communication this time. The electric
+current has continued to flow strongly and uninterruptedly from that day
+until the present, and experience has demonstrated for the wonderful
+wire a capacity far beyond the hopes of its projectors.
+
+Having laid the cable, the "Great Eastern" proceeded with surprising
+accuracy to where the line had been lost the year before, and succeeded
+in grappling and raising it to the surface. It was tested, and found to
+be in perfect order, messages being sent with ease from the ship to
+Valentia, and from that point back again. A splice was then made, and
+the line was continued to Newfoundland. Both cables are still working,
+and bid fair to be serviceable for many years to come.
+
+Many persons had contributed to this great success, but to Cyrus W.
+Field must be assigned the chief praise. His energy and perseverance
+kept the subject constantly before the public. His courage inspired
+others, and his faith in its ultimate success alone kept its best
+friends from abandoning it in its darkest hours. In its behalf he spent
+twelve years of constant toil, and made over fifty voyages, more than
+thirty of which were across the Atlantic. He devoted his entire fortune
+to the undertaking, of which he was the projector and cheerfully
+incurred the risk of poverty rather than abandon it. Therefore, it is
+but just that he, who was the chief instrument in obtaining for the
+world this great benefit, should receive the chief measure of the praise
+which it has brought to all connected with it.
+
+[Illustration: ROBERT FULTON.]
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+INVENTORS
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+ROBERT FULTON.
+
+
+One of the pleasantest as well as one of the most prominent places in
+the city of New York is the grave-yard of old Trinity Church. A handsome
+iron railing separates it from Broadway, and the thick rows of
+grave-stones, all crumbling and stained with age, present a strange
+contrast to the bustle, vitality, and splendor with which they are
+surrounded. They stare solemnly down into Wall Street, and offer a
+bitter commentary upon the struggles and anxiety of the money kings of
+the great city. Work, toil, plan, combine as you may, they seem to say,
+and yet it must all come to this.
+
+Not far from the south door of the church, and shaded by a venerable
+tree, is a plain brown stone slab, bearing this inscription: "The vault
+of Walter and Robert C. Livingston, sons of Robert Livingston, of the
+manor of Livingston." A stranger would pass it by without a second
+glance; yet it is one of the Meccas of the world of science, for the
+mortal part of Robert Fulton sleeps in the vault below, without monument
+or legendary stone to his memory, but in sight of the mighty steam
+fleets which his genius called forth. Very few visitors ever see this
+part of the churchyard, and the grave of Fulton is unknown to nine out
+of ten of his countrymen. Yet this man, sleeping so obscurely in his
+grave without a name, did far more for the world than either Napoleon or
+Wellington. He revolutionized commerce and manufactures, changed the
+entire system of navigation, triumphed over the winds and the waves, and
+compelled the adoption of a new system of modern warfare. Now he lies in
+a grave not his own, with no monument or statue erected to his memory in
+all this broad land.
+
+ROBERT FULTON was born in the township of Little Britain (now called
+Fulton), in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in 1765. He was of Irish
+descent, and his father was a farmer in moderate circumstances. He was
+the eldest son and third child of a family of five children. The farm
+upon which he was born was conveyed by his father in 1766 to Joseph
+Swift, in whose family it still remains. It contains three hundred and
+sixty-four acres, and is one of the handsomest farms in Lancaster
+County.
+
+After disposing of his farm, Mr. Fulton, senior, removed to the town of
+Lancaster, where he died in 1768, and there young Robert grew up under
+the care of his mother. He learned to read and write quickly, but did
+not manifest much fondness for his books after mastering his elementary
+studies. He early exhibited an unusual talent for drawing, however,
+greatly preferring the employment of his pencil to the more serious
+duties of the school. His instructors and companions considered him a
+dull boy, though all admitted that he showed no disposition to be idle.
+All his leisure time was spent either in drawing, or in visiting the
+shops of the mechanics in the place and eagerly watching their
+operations. He displayed a remarkable talent for mechanism, which was
+greatly assisted by his skill in drawing, and his visits to the machine
+shops were always welcomed by both the apprentices and their employers,
+who recognized the unusual genius of the boy, and predicted great things
+for him in the future. But to his teacher, who seems to have been rather
+more belligerent than is usual with Quakers, Robert's neglect of his
+studies and visits to the machine shops were so many indications of
+growing worthlessness. The indignant pedagogue once took occasion to
+remonstrate with him upon his course, and, failing to convince him by
+argument, rapped him sharply over the knuckles with a ruler, telling him
+he would make him do something. Robert at once placed his arms akimbo,
+and, looking his tutor sternly in the face, replied: "Sir, I came here
+to have something beat into my brains, not into my knuckles."
+
+Some time after this Mrs. Fulton, in conversation with the teacher,
+expressed her solicitude lest her son should "turn out nothing," since
+he neglected his books so entirely. The teacher frankly confessed that
+he had done all in his power for the boy, but that he was discouraged,
+and added: "Only yesterday, madam, Robert pertinaciously declared to me
+that his head was so full of original notions that there was no vacant
+chamber to store away the contents of any dusty books." The lad was only
+ten years of age at the time, and, as may be supposed, the good Quaker
+who directed his education was not a little dismayed by such a remark.
+
+The boyhood of Fulton was passed during the stormy period of the
+Revolution, and in a section so close to the theater of war that he was
+in the midst of all the excitement engendered by the conflict. He was an
+ardent patriot from the first, and used his pencil freely to caricature
+all who showed the slightest leaning to the cause of the enemy.
+
+In 1778 the supply of candles was so low in Lancaster that the town
+authorities advised the people to refrain from illuminating their houses
+on the 4th of July of that year, in order to save their candles. Robert,
+at this time but thirteen years old, was determined not to forego a
+patriotic display of some sort. He had prepared a quantity of candles
+for the occasion, and after the proclamation of the Town Council was
+issued, he took them to a Mr. John Fisher, who kept a store in the
+place, and sold powder and shot. Mr. Fisher was somewhat astonished at
+Robert's desire to part with the candles, which were at that time scarce
+articles, and asked his reason for so doing. The boy replied: "Our
+rulers have requested the citizens to refrain from illuminating their
+windows and streets; as good citizens we should comply with their
+request, and I prefer illuminating the heavens with sky-rockets." Having
+procured the powder, he left Mr. Fisher's, and entered a small variety
+store kept by a Mr. Cossart, where he purchased several sheets of
+large-sized pasteboard. As Mr. Cossart was about to roll them, the boy
+stopped him, saying he wished to carry them open. Mr. Cossart, knowing
+Robert's mechanical genius, asked him what he was about to invent.
+
+"Why," said the boy, "we are prohibited from illuminating our windows
+with candles, and I'm going to shoot my candles through the air."
+
+"Tut, tut, tut," said Mr. Cossart, laughingly; "that's an
+impossibility."
+
+"No, sir," said Robert, "there is nothing impossible."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: He proved that this was not impossible, for he had his
+display, making his rockets himself, and after his own model.]
+
+"Robert was known," says one of his biographers, "to purchase small
+quantities of quicksilver from Dr. Adam Simon Kuhn, druggist, residing
+opposite the market-house. He was trying some experiments that he did
+not wish to make public, and which the workmen in Mr. Fenno's and Mr.
+Christian Isch's shops were anxious to find out, but could not. He was
+in the habit almost daily of visiting those shops, and was a favorite
+among the workmen, who took advantage of his talent for drawing by
+getting him to make ornamental designs for guns, and sketches of the
+size and shape of guns, and then giving the calculations of the force,
+size of the bore and balls, and the distances they would fire; and he
+would accompany them to the open commons near by potter's field, to
+prove his calculations by shooting at a mark. On account of his
+expertness in his calculations, and of their ineffectual efforts to
+discover the use he was making of quicksilver, the shop-hands nicknamed
+him 'quicksilver Bob.'
+
+"Mr. Messersmith and Mr. Christian Isch were employed by the Government
+to make and repair the arms for the troops; and on several occasions
+guards were stationed at their shops to watch and see that the workmen
+were constantly employed during whole nights and on Sunday, to prevent
+any delay. The workmen had so much reliance and confidence in
+'quicksilver Bob's' judgment and mechanical skill, that every suggestion
+he would make as to the alteration of a gun, or any additional ornament
+that he would design, was invariably adopted by common consent.
+
+"In the summer of 1779, Robert Fulton evinced an extraordinary fondness
+for inventions. He was a frequent visitor at Mr. Messersmith's and Mr.
+Fenno's gunsmith shops, almost daily, and endeavored to manufacture a
+small air-gun."
+
+Among the acquaintances of Robert Fulton at this time was a young man,
+about eighteen years of age, named Christopher Gumpf, who used
+frequently to accompany his father in his fishing excursions on the
+Conestoga. Mr. Gumpf, Sen., being an experienced angler, readily
+consented to allow Robert to join himself and his son in these
+expeditions, and made the two boys earn their pleasure by pushing the
+boat about the stream, as he desired to move from point to point. As the
+means of propulsion was simply a pole, the labor was very severe, and
+Robert soon became tired of it. Not wishing, however, to give up his
+pleasant fishing trips, he determined to devise some means of lightening
+the labor.
+
+"He absented himself a week, having gone to Little Britain township to
+spend a few days at his aunt's; and while there he planned and completed
+a small working model of a fishing boat, with paddle-wheels. On leaving
+his aunt's, he placed the model in the garret, with a request that it
+should not be destroyed. Many years afterward, that simple model was the
+attraction of friends, and became, instead of lumber in the garret, an
+ornament in the aunt's parlor, who prized it highly. That model was the
+result of Robert's fishing excursions with Christopher Gumpf; and when
+he returned from his aunt's he told Christopher that he must make a set
+of paddles to work at the sides of the boat, to be operated by a double
+crank, and then they could propel the old gentleman's fishing-boat with
+greater ease. Two arms or pieces of timber were then fastened together
+at right angles, with a paddle at each end, and the crank was attached
+to the boat across it near the stern, with a paddle operating on a pivot
+as a rudder; and Fulton's first invention was tried on the Conestoga
+River, opposite Rockford, in the presence of Peter and Christopher
+Gumpf. The boys were so pleased with the experiment, that they hid the
+paddles in the bushes on the shore, lest others might use and break
+them, and attached them to the boat whenever they chose; and thus did
+they enjoy very many fishing excursions."
+
+This was the first experiment in the science of navigation attempted by
+the man who afterward became the author of a new system.
+
+Having chosen the profession of an artist and portrait painter, young
+Fulton removed to Philadelphia at the age of seventeen, and remained
+there, pursuing his vocation, until the completion of his twenty-first
+year. He formed there the acquaintance of Benjamin Franklin, by whom he
+was much noticed. His success was rapid, and upon attaining his majority
+he was enabled to purchase and stock a farm of eighty-four acres in
+Washington County, Pennsylvania, which he gave to his mother for a home
+as long as she should live. Having thus insured her comfort, he went to
+England for the purpose of completing his studies in his profession. He
+took with him letters to Benjamin West, then at the height of his fame,
+and living in London. He was cordially received by Mr. West, who was
+also a native of Pennsylvania, and remained an inmate of his family for
+several years. West was then the President of the Royal Academy of Great
+Britain, and was thus enabled to extend to Fulton, to whom he became
+deeply attached, many advantages, both social and professional, of which
+the young artist was prompt to avail himself.
+
+Upon leaving the family of Mr. West, Fulton commenced a tour for the
+purpose of examining the treasures of art contained in the residences of
+the English nobility, and remained for two years in Devonshire. There he
+became acquainted with the Duke of Bridgewater, to whom England is
+indebted for the introduction of the canal system within her limits; and
+it is said that he was induced by this nobleman to abandon the
+profession of an artist, and enter upon that of a civil engineer. This
+nobleman being devoted to mechanical investigations, proved a very
+congenial acquaintance to Fulton. He was engaged at the time on a scheme
+of steam navigation by a propeller, modeled after the foot of a water
+fowl. His plan did not commend itself to Fulton's judgment, and he
+addressed him a letter, setting forth its defects, and advancing some of
+the views upon which he acted himself in after life. Here he also met
+with Watt, who had just produced the steam-engine, which Fulton studied
+enthusiastically. His own inventive genius was not idle, and while
+living in Devonshire, he produced an improved mill for sawing marble,
+which won him the thanks and medal of the British Society for the
+Promotion of the Arts and Commerce; a machine for spinning flax and
+making ropes; and an excavator for scooping out the channels of canals
+and aqueducts, all of which were patented. He published a number of
+communications on the subject of canals in one of the leading London
+journals, and a treatise upon the same subject. Having obtained a patent
+in England for canal improvements, he went to France in 1797, with the
+design of introducing them in that country.
+
+Upon reaching Paris, he took up his residence with Mr. Joel Barlow, and
+thus was laid the foundation of a friendship between these two gentlemen
+which lasted during their lives. He remained in Paris seven years,
+residing during that time with Mr. Barlow, and devoting himself to the
+study of modern languages, and engineering and its kindred sciences.
+
+His work was continuous and severe in Paris. He invented and painted the
+first panorama ever exhibited in that city, which he sold for the
+purpose of raising money for his experiments in steam navigation; he
+also designed a series of splendid colored illustrations for _The
+Columbiad_, the famous poem of his friend Mr. Barlow. Besides these, he
+invented a number of improvements in canals, aqueducts, inclined planes,
+boats, and guns, which yielded him considerable credit, but very little
+profit.
+
+In 1801, he invented a submarine boat which he called the "Nautilus,"
+which is thus described by M. de St. Aubin, a member of the Tribunate:
+
+"The diving-boat, in the construction of which he is now employed, will
+be capacious enough to contain eight men and provision for twenty days,
+and will be of sufficient strength and power to enable him to plunge one
+hundred feet under water, if necessary. He has contrived a reservoir of
+air, which will enable eight men to remain under water eight hours. When
+the boat is above water, it has two sails, and looks just like a common
+boat; when it is to dive, the mast and sails are struck.
+
+"In making his experiments, Mr. Fulton not only remained a whole hour
+under water, with three of his companions, but had the boat parallel to
+the horizon at any given distance. He proved that the compass points as
+correctly under water as on the surface, and that while under water the
+boat made way at the rate of half a league an hour, by means contrived
+for that purpose.
+
+"It is not twenty years since all Europe was astonished at the first
+ascension of men in balloons: perhaps in a few years they will not be
+less surprised to see a flotilla of diving-boats, which, on a given
+signal, shall, to avoid the pursuit of an enemy, plunge under water, and
+rise again several leagues from the place where they descended!
+
+"But if we have not succeeded in steering the balloon, and even were it
+impossible to attain that object, the case is different with the
+diving-boat, which can be conducted under water in the same manner as
+upon the surface. It has the advantage of sailing like the common boat,
+and also of diving when it is pursued. With these qualities, it is fit
+for carrying secret orders, to succor a blockaded fort, and to examine
+the force and position of an enemy in their harbors."
+
+In connection with this boat, Fulton invented a torpedo, or infernal
+machine, for the purpose of destroying vessels of war by approaching
+them under water and breaking up their hulls by the explosion. He
+offered his invention several times to the French Government, and once
+to the Ambassador of Holland at Paris, without being able to induce them
+to consider it. Somewhat later, he visited London, at the request of the
+British Ministry, and explained his invention to them. Although he
+succeeded in blowing up a vessel of two hundred tons with one hundred
+and seventy pounds of powder, and in extorting from Mr. Pitt the
+acknowledgment that, if introduced into practice, the torpedo would
+annihilate all navies, his invention was rejected, through the influence
+of Lord Melville, who feared that its adoption might injure England more
+than it would benefit her. At the first, when it was thought that
+England would purchase Fulton's invention, it was intimated to him that
+he would be required to pledge himself not to dispose of it to any other
+power. He replied promptly:
+
+"Whatever may be your award, I never will consent to let these
+inventions lie dormant should my country at any time have need of them.
+Were you to grant me an annuity of twenty thousand pounds, I would
+sacrifice all to the safety and independence of my country."
+
+In 1806, Mr. Fulton returned to New York, and in the same year he
+married Miss Harriet Livingston, a niece of Chancellor Livingston, by
+whom he had four children. He offered his torpedo to the General
+Government, but the trial to which it was subjected by the Navy
+Department was unsuccessful for him, and the Government declined to
+purchase the invention.
+
+But it was not as the inventor of engines of destruction that Robert
+Fulton was to achieve fame. A still nobler triumph was reserved for
+him--one which was to bring joy instead of sorrow to the world. From the
+time that Fulton had designed the paddle-wheels for his fishing-boat, he
+had never ceased to give his attention to the subject of propelling
+vessels by machinery, and after his acquaintance with Watt, he was more
+than ever convinced that the steam-engine could, under proper
+circumstances, be made to furnish the motive power.
+
+Several eminent and ingenious men, previous to this, had proposed to
+propel vessels by steam power, among whom were Dr. Papin, of France,
+Savery, the Marquis of Worcester, and Dr. John Allen, of London, in
+1726. In 1786, Oliver Evans, of Philadelphia, and about the same time
+Dr. Franklin, proposed to accomplish this result by forcing a quantity
+of water, by means of steam power, through an opening made for that
+purpose in the stern of the hull of the boat.
+
+In 1737, Jonathan Hulls issued a pamphlet proposing to construct a boat
+to be moved by steam power, for the purpose of towing vessels out of
+harbors against tide and winds. In his plan the paddle-wheel was used,
+and was secured to a frame placed far out over the stern of the boat. It
+was given this position by the inventor because water fowls propelled
+themselves by pushing their feet behind them.
+
+In 1787, Mr. James Rumsey, of Shepherdstown, Virginia, constructed and
+navigated the first steamboat in actual use. His boat was eighty feet in
+length, and was propelled by means of a vertical pump in the middle of
+the vessel, by which the water was drawn in at the bow and expelled at
+the stern through a horizontal trough in her hull. The engine weighed
+about one third of a ton, and the boat had a capacity of about three
+tons burthen. When thus laden, a speed of about four miles an hour could
+be attained. The boiler held only five gallons of water, and needed but
+a pint at a time. Rumsey went to England to exhibit his plan on the
+Thames, and died there in 1793.
+
+About the same time the Marquis de Joffrey launched a steamer one
+hundred feet long on the Loire, at Lyons, using paddles revolving on an
+endless chain, but only to find his experiment a failure.
+
+In December, 1786, John Fitch published the following account of a
+steamer with which he had made several experiments on the Delaware, at
+Philadelphia, and which came nearer to success than any thing that had
+at that time been invented:
+
+"The cylinder is to be horizontal, and the steam to work with equal
+force at each end. The mode by which we obtain what I term a vacuum is,
+it is believed, entirely new, as is also the method of letting the water
+into it, and throwing it off against the atmosphere without any
+friction. It is expected that the cylinder, which is of twelve inches
+diameter, will move a clear force of eleven or twelve cwt. after the
+frictions are deducted: this force is to be directed against a wheel of
+eighteen inches diameter. The piston moves about three feet, and each
+vibration of it gives the axis about forty revolutions. Each revolution
+of the axis moves twelve oars or paddles five and a half feet: they work
+perpendicularly, and are represented by the strokes of a paddle of a
+canoe. As six of the paddles are raised from the water, six more are
+entered, and the two sets of paddles make their strokes of about eleven
+feet in each revolution. The crank of the axis acts upon the paddles
+about one-third of their length from their lower ends, on which part of
+the oar the whole force of the axis is applied. The engine is placed in
+the bottom of the boat, about one-third from the stern, and both the
+action and reaction turn the wheel the same way."
+
+Fitch was unfortunate in his affairs, and became so disheartened that
+he ceased to attempt to improve his invention, and finally committed
+suicide by drowning himself in the Alleghany River at Pittsburgh.
+
+In 1787, Mr. Patrick Miller, of Dalwinston, Scotland, designed a double
+vessel, propelled by a wheel placed in the stern between the two keels.
+This boat is said to have been very successful, but it was very small,
+the cylinder being only four inches in diameter. In 1789, Mr. Miller
+produced a larger vessel on the same plan, which made seven miles per
+hour in the still water of the Forth and Clyde Canal, but it proved too
+weak for its machinery, which had to be taken out.
+
+It was in the face of these failures that Fulton applied himself to the
+task of designing a successful steamboat. During his residence in Paris
+he had made the acquaintance of Mr. Robert R. Livingston, then the
+American minister in France, who had previously been connected with some
+unsuccessful steamboat experiments at home. Mr. Livingston was delighted
+to find a man of Fulton's mechanical genius so well satisfied of the
+practicability of steam navigation, and joined heartily with him in his
+efforts to prove his theories by experiments. Several small working
+models made by Fulton convinced Mr. Livingston that the former had
+discovered and had overcome the cause of the failure of the experiments
+of other inventors, and it was finally agreed between them to build a
+large boat for trial on the Seine. This experimental steamer was
+furnished with paddle wheels, and was completed and launched early in
+the spring of 1803. On the very morning appointed for the trial, Fulton
+was aroused from his sleep by a messenger from the boat, who rushed into
+his chamber, pale and breathless, exclaiming, "Oh, sir, the boat has
+broken in pieces and gone to the bottom!" Hastily dressing and hurrying
+to the spot, he found that the weight of the machinery had broken the
+boat in half and carried the whole structure to the bottom of the river.
+He at once set to work to raise the machinery, devoting twenty-four
+hours, without resting or eating, to the undertaking, and succeeded in
+doing so, but inflicted upon his constitution a strain from which he
+never entirely recovered. The machinery was very slightly damaged, but
+it was necessary to rebuild the boat entirely. This was accomplished by
+July of the same year, and the boat was tried in August with triumphant
+success, in the presence of the French National Institute and a vast
+crowd of the citizens of Paris.
+
+This steamer was very defective, but still so great an improvement upon
+all that had preceded it, that Messrs. Fulton and Livingston determined
+to build one on a larger scale in the waters of New York, the right of
+navigating which by steam vessels had been secured by the latter as far
+back as 1798. The law which granted this right had been continued from
+time to time through Mr. Livingston's influence, and was finally amended
+so as to include Fulton within its provisions. Having resolved to return
+home, Fulton set out as soon as possible, stopping in England on his
+return, to order an engine for his boat from Watt and Boulton. He gave
+an exact description of the engine, which was built in strict accordance
+with his plan, but declined to state the use to which he intended
+putting it.
+
+Very soon after his arrival in New York, he commenced building his first
+American boat, and finding that her cost would greatly exceed his
+estimate, he offered for sale a third interest in the monopoly of the
+navigation of the waters of New York, held by Livingston and himself, in
+order to raise money to build the boat, and thus lighten the burdens of
+himself and his partner, but he could find no one willing to risk money
+in such a scheme. Indeed, steam navigation was universally regarded in
+America as a mere chimera, and Fulton and Livingston were ridiculed for
+their faith in it. The bill granting the monopoly held by Livingston was
+regarded as so utterly absurd by the Legislature of New York, that that
+wise body could with difficulty be induced to consider it seriously.
+Even among scientific men the project was considered impracticable. A
+society in Rotterdam had, several years before Fulton's return home,
+applied to the American Philosophical Society to be informed whether any
+and what improvements had been made in the construction of steam-engines
+in America. A reply to this inquiry was prepared, at the request of the
+Society, by Mr. Benjamin H. Latrobe, a distinguished engineer. The
+following extracts from this paper will show the reader how Fulton's
+scheme was regarded by one who was confessedly one of the most brilliant
+engineers of his day, and who has since accomplished so much for the
+improvement of steam travel:
+
+
+     During the general lassitude of mechanical exertion which succeeded
+     the American Revolution, We utility of steam-engines appears to
+     have been forgotten; but the subject afterward started into very
+     general notice in a form in which it could not possibly be attended
+     with success. A sort of mania began to prevail, which, indeed, has
+     not yet entirely subsided, for impelling boats by steam-engines.
+     Dr. Franklin proposed to force forward the boat by the immediate
+     application of the steam upon the water. Many attempts to simplify
+     the working of the engine, and more to employ a means of dispensing
+     with the beam in converting the _libratory_ into a rotatory motion,
+     were made. For a short time, a passage-boat, rowed by a
+     steam-engine, was established between Borden-town and Philadelphia,
+     but it was soon laid aside. The best and most powerful steam-engine
+     which has been employed for this purpose--excepting, perhaps, one
+     constructed by Dr. Kinsey, with the performance of which I am not
+     sufficiently acquainted--belonged to a gentleman of New York. It
+     was made to act, by way of experiment, upon oars, upon paddles, and
+     upon flutter-wheels. Nothing in the success of any of these
+     experiments appeared to be sufficient compensation for the expense
+     and the extreme inconvenience of the steam-engine in the vessel.
+
+     There are, indeed, general objections to the use of the
+     steam-engine for impelling boats, from which no particular mode of
+     application can be free. These are:
+
+     First. The weight of the engine and of the fuel.
+
+     Second. The large space it occupies.
+
+     Third. The tendency of its action to rack the vessel, and render it
+     leaky.
+
+     Fourth. The expense of maintenance.
+
+     Fifth. The irregularity of its motion, and the motion of the water
+     in the boiler and cistern, and of the fuel-vessel in rough water.
+
+     Sixth. The difficulty arising from the liability of the paddles and
+     oars to break, if light, and from the weight, if made strong.
+
+     Nor have I ever heard of an instance, verified by other testimony
+     than that of the inventor, of a speedy and agreeable voyage having
+     been performed in a steamboat of any construction.
+
+     I am well aware that there are still many very respectable and
+     ingenious men who consider the application of the steam-engine to
+     the purpose of navigation as highly important, and as very
+     practicable, especially on the rapid waters of the Mississippi, and
+     who would feel themselves almost offended at the expression of an
+     opposite opinion. And, perhaps, some of the objections against it
+     may be avoided. That founded on the expense and weight of the fuel
+     may not, for some years, exist on the Mississippi, where there is a
+     redundance of wood on the banks; but the cutting and loading will
+     be almost as great an evil.
+
+
+Scientific men and amateurs all agreed in pronouncing Fulton's scheme
+impracticable; but he went on with his work, his boat attracting no less
+attention and exciting no less ridicule than the ark had received from
+the scoffers in the days of Noah. The steam-engine ordered from Boulton
+and Watt was received in the latter part of 1806; and in the following
+spring the boat was launched from the ship-yard of Charles Brown, on the
+East River. Fulton named her the "Clermont," after the country-seat of
+his friend and partner, Chancellor Livingston. She was one hundred and
+sixty tons burthen, one hundred and thirty feet long, eighteen feet
+wide, and seven feet deep. Her engine was made with a single cylinder,
+two feet in diameter, and of four feet stroke; and her boiler was twenty
+feet long, seven feet deep, and eight feet broad. The diameter of the
+paddle-wheels was fifteen feet, the boards four feet long, and dipping
+two feet in the water. The boat was completed about the last of August,
+and she was moved by her machinery from the East River into the Hudson,
+and over to the Jersey shore. This trial, brief as it was, satisfied
+Fulton of its success, and he announced that in a few days the steamer
+would sail from New York for Albany. A few friends, including several
+scientific men and mechanics, were invited to take passage in the boat,
+to witness her performance; and they accepted the invitation with a
+general conviction that they were to do but little more than witness
+another failure.
+
+Monday, September 10, 1807, came at length, and a vast crowd assembled
+along the shore of the North River to witness the starting. As the hour
+for sailing drew near, the crowd increased, and jokes were passed on all
+sides at the expense of the inventor, who paid little attention to them,
+however, but busied himself in making a final and close inspection of
+the machinery. Says Fulton, "The morning I left New York, there were
+not, perhaps, thirty persons in the city who believed that the boat
+would ever move one mile per hour, or be of the least utility; and while
+we were putting off from the wharf, which was crowded with spectators, I
+heard a number of sarcastic remarks."
+
+One o'clock, the hour for sailing, came, and expectation was at its
+highest. The friends of the inventor were in a state of feverish anxiety
+lest the enterprise should come to grief, and the scoffers on the wharf
+were all ready to give vent to their shouts of derision. Precisely as
+the hour struck, the moorings were thrown off, and the "Clermont" moved
+slowly out into the stream. Volumes of smoke and sparks from her
+furnaces, which were fed with pine wood, rushed forth from her chimney,
+and her wheels, which were uncovered, scattered the spray far behind
+her. The spectacle she presented as she moved out gradually from her
+dock was certainly novel to the people of those days, and the crowd on
+the wharf broke into shouts of ridicule. Soon, however, the jeers grew
+silent, for it was seen that the steamer was by degrees increasing her
+speed. In a little while she was fairly under weigh, and making a steady
+progress up the stream at the rate of five miles per hour. The
+incredulity of the spectators had been succeeded by astonishment, and
+now this feeling gave way to undisguised delight, and cheer after cheer
+went up from the vast throng. Many people followed the boat for some
+distance up the river shore. In a little while, however, the boat was
+observed to stop, and the enthusiasm of the people on the shore at once
+subsided. The scoffers were again in their glory, and unhesitatingly
+pronounced the boat a failure. Their chagrin may be imagined when, after
+a short delay, the steamer once more proceeded on her way, and this time
+even more rapidly than before. Fulton had discovered that the paddles
+were too long, and took too deep a hold on the water, and had stopped
+the boat for the purpose of shortening them.
+
+Having remedied this defect, the "Clermont" continued her voyage during
+the rest of the day and all night, without stopping, and at one o'clock
+the next day ran alongside the landing at Clermont, the seat of
+Chancellor Livingston. She lay there until nine the next morning, when
+she continued her voyage toward Albany, reaching that city at five in
+the afternoon, having made the entire distance between New York and
+Albany (one hundred and fifty miles) in thirty-two hours of actual
+running time, an average speed of nearly five miles per hour. On her
+return trip, she reached New York in thirty hours running time--exactly
+five miles per hour. Fulton states that during both trips he encountered
+a head wind.
+
+The river was at this time navigated entirely with sailing vessels, and
+large numbers of these were encountered by the "Clermont" during her up
+and down trips. The surprise and dismay excited among the crews of these
+vessels by the appearance of the steamer was extreme. These simple
+people, the majority of whom had heard nothing of Fulton's experiments,
+beheld what they supposed to be a huge monster, vomiting fire and smoke
+from its throat, lashing the water with its fins, and shaking the river
+with its roar, approaching rapidly in the very face of both wind and
+tide. Some threw themselves flat on the deck of their vessels, where
+they remained in an agony of terror until the monster had passed, while
+others took to their boats and made for the shore in dismay, leaving
+their vessels to drift helplessly down the stream. Nor was this terror
+confined to the sailors. The people dwelling along the shore crowded the
+banks to gaze upon the steamer as she passed by. A former resident of
+the neighborhood of Poughkeepsie thus describes the scene at that place,
+which will serve as a specimen of the conduct of the people along the
+entire river below Albany:
+
+"It was in the early autumn of the year 1807 that a knot of villagers
+was gathered on a high bluff just opposite Poughkeepsie, on the west
+bank of the Hudson, attracted by the appearance of a strange,
+dark-looking craft, which was slowly making its way up the river. Some
+imagined it to be a sea-monster, while others did not hesitate to
+express their belief that it was a sign of the approaching judgment
+What seemed strange in the vessel was the substitution of lofty and
+straight black smoke-pipes, rising from the deck, instead of the
+gracefully tapered masts that commonly stood on the vessels navigating
+the stream, and, in place of the spars and rigging, the curious play of
+the working-beam and pistons, and the slow turning and splashing of the
+huge and naked paddle-wheels, met the astonished gaze. The dense clouds
+of smoke, as they rose wave upon wave, added still more to the
+wonderment of the rustics.
+
+"This strange-looking craft was the 'Clermont,' on her trial trip to
+Albany; and of the little knot of villagers mentioned above, the writer,
+then a boy in his eighth year, with his parents, formed a part. I well
+remember the scene, one so well fitted to impress a lasting picture upon
+the mind of a child accustomed to watch the vessels that passed up and
+down the river.
+
+"The forms of four persons were distinctly visible on the deck as she
+passed the bluff--one of whom, doubtless, was Robert Fulton, who had on
+board with him all the cherished hopes of years, the most precious cargo
+the wonderful boat could carry.
+
+"On her return trip, the curiosity she excited was scarcely less
+intense. The whole country talked of nothing but the sea-monster,
+belching forth fire and smoke. The fishermen became terrified, and rowed
+homewards, and they saw nothing but destruction devastating their
+fishing-grounds; while the wreaths of black vapor, and rushing noise of
+the paddle-wheels, foaming with the stirred-up waters, produced great
+excitement among the boatmen, which continued without abatement, until
+the character of that curious boat, and the nature of the enterprise
+which she was pioneering, had been understood."
+
+The alarm of the sailors and dwellers on the river shore disappeared as
+the character of the steamer became better known; but when it was found
+that the "Clermont" was to run regularly between New York and Albany, as
+a packet-boat, she became the object of the most intense hatred on the
+part of the boatmen on the river, who feared that she would entirely
+destroy their business. In many quarters Fulton and his invention were
+denounced as baneful to society, and frequent attempts were made by
+captains of sailing vessels to sink the "Clermont" by running into her.
+She was several times damaged in this way, and the hostility of the
+boatmen became so great that it was necessary for the Legislature of New
+York to pass a law declaring combinations to destroy her, or willful
+attempts to injure her, public offenses punishable by fine and
+imprisonment.
+
+It had been supposed that Fulton's object was to produce a steamer
+capable of navigating the Mississippi River, and much surprise was
+occasioned by the announcement that the "Clermont" was to be permanently
+employed upon the Hudson. She continued to ply regularly between New
+York and Albany until the close of navigation for that season, always
+carrying a full complement of passengers, and more or less freight.
+During the winter she was overhauled and enlarged, and her speed
+improved. In the spring of 1808 she resumed her regular trips, and since
+then steam navigation on the Hudson has not ceased for a single day,
+except during the closing of the river by ice.
+
+In 1811 and 1812, Fulton built two steam ferry-boats for the North
+River, and soon after added a third for the East River. These boats were
+the beginning of the magnificent steam ferry system which is to-day one
+of the chief wonders of New York. They were what are called twin-boats,
+each of them consisting of two complete hulls, united by a deck or
+bridge. They were sharp at both ends, and moved equally well with
+either end foremost, so that they could cross and re-cross without being
+turned around. These boats were given engines of sufficient power to
+enable them to overcome the force of strong ebb tides; and in order to
+facilitate their landing, Fulton contrived a species of floating dock,
+and a means of decreasing the shock caused by the striking of the boat
+against the dock. These boats could accommodate eight four-wheel
+carriages, twenty-nine horses, and four hundred passengers. Their
+average time across the North River, a mile and a half wide, was twenty
+minutes.
+
+The introduction of the steamboat gave a powerful impetus to the
+internal commerce of the Union. It opened to navigation many important
+rivers (whose swift currents had closed them to sailing craft), and made
+rapid and easy communication between the most distant parts of the
+country practicable. The public soon began to appreciate this, and
+orders came in rapidly for steamboats for various parts of the country.
+Fulton executed these as fast as possible, and among the number several
+for boats for the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers.
+
+Early in 1814, the city of New York was seriously menaced with an attack
+from the British fleet, and Fulton was called on by a committee of
+citizens to furnish a plan for a means of defending the harbor. He
+exhibited to the committee his plans for a vessel of war to be propelled
+by steam, capable of carrying a strong battery, with furnaces for
+red-hot shot, and which, he represented, would move at the rate of four
+miles an hour. These plans were also submitted to a number of naval
+officials, among whom were Commodore Decatur, Captain Jones, Captain
+Evans, Captain Biddle, Commodore Perry, Captain Warrington, and Captain
+Lewis, all of whom warmly united in urging the Government to undertake
+the construction of the proposed steamer. The citizens of New York
+offered, if the Government would employ and pay for her after she was
+built, to advance the sum ($320,000) necessary for her construction. The
+subject was vigorously pressed, and in March, 1814, Congress authorized
+the building of one or more floating batteries after the plan presented
+by Fulton. Her keel was laid on the 20th of June, 1814, and on the 31st
+of October, of the same year, she was launched, amid great rejoicings,
+from the ship-yard of Adam and Noah Brown. In May, 1815, her engines
+were put on board, and on the 4th of July of that year she made a trial
+trip to Sandy Hook and back, accomplishing the round trip--a distance of
+fifty-three miles--in eight hours and twenty minutes, under steam alone.
+Before this, however, peace had been proclaimed, and Fulton had gone to
+rest from his labors.
+
+The ship was a complete success, and was the first steam vessel of war
+ever built. She was called the "Fulton the First," and was for many
+years used as the receiving ship at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. She was an
+awkward and unwieldy mass, but was regarded as the most formidable
+vessel afloat; and as the pioneer of the splendid war steamers of to-day
+is still an object of great interest. The English regarded her with
+especial uneasiness, and put in circulation the most marvelous stories
+concerning her. One of these I take from a treatise on steam navigation
+published in Scotland at this period, the author of which assures his
+readers that he has taken the utmost pains to obtain full and accurate
+information respecting the American war steamer. His description is as
+follows:
+
+"Length on deck three hundred feet, breadth two hundred feet, thickness
+of her sides, thirteen feet, of alternate oak plank and corkwood;
+carries forty-four guns, four of which are 100-pounders, quarter-deck
+and forcastle guns, 44-pounders; and further, to annoy an enemy
+attempting to board, can discharge one hundred gallons of boiling water
+in a minute, and by mechanism brandishes three hundred cutlasses, with
+the utmost regularity, over her gunwales; works also an equal number of
+heavy iron pikes of great length, darting them from her sides with
+prodigious force, and withdrawing them every quarter of a minute!"
+
+Fulton followed up the "Clermont," in 1807, with a larger boat, called
+the "Car of Neptune," which was placed on the Albany route as soon as
+completed. The Legislature of New York had enacted a law, immediately
+upon his first success, giving to Livingston and himself the exclusive
+right to navigate the waters of the State by steam, for five years for
+every additional boat they should build in the State, provided the whole
+term should not exceed thirty years. "In the following year the
+Legislature passed another act, confirmatory of the prior grants, and
+giving new remedies to the grantees for any invasion of them, and
+subjecting to forfeiture any vessel propelled by steam which should
+enter the waters of the State without their license. In 1809 Fulton
+obtained his first patent from the United States; and in 1811 he took
+out a second patent for some improvement in his boats and machinery. His
+patents were limited to the simple means of adapting paddle wheels to
+the axle of the crank of Watt's engine.
+
+"Meanwhile the power of the Legislature to grant the steamboat monopoly
+was denied, and a company was formed at Albany to establish another line
+of steam passage boats on the Hudson, between that city and New York.
+The State grantees filed a bill in equity, and prayed for an injunction,
+which was refused by Chancellor Lansing, on the ground that the act of
+the State Legislature was repugnant to the Constitution of the United
+States, and against common right. This decree was unanimously reversed
+by the Court of Errors, and a compromise was effected with the Albany
+company by an assignment to them of the right to employ steam on the
+waters of Lake Champlain.
+
+"Legislative aid was again invoked, and an act was passed directing
+peremptorily the allowance of an injunction on the prayer of the State
+grantees, and the seizure of any hostile boat at the commencement of the
+suit. Litigation was thus effectually arrested in New York, though by an
+arbitrary and unconstitutional enactment, and the waters of the State
+remained in the exclusive possession of Fulton and his partner during
+the lifetime of the former. A similar controversy with Colonel Aaron
+Ogden, of New Jersey, was compromised by advantageous concessions, which
+converted the opponent of the monopoly into its firmest friend, and left
+him many years afterward the defeated party in the famous suit of
+Gibbons and Ogden, in the Supreme Court of the United States."
+
+In January, 1815, Fulton was summoned to Trenton, New Jersey, as a
+witness in one of the numerous suits which grew out of the efforts to
+break down his monopoly. During his examination he was very much
+exposed, as the hall of the Legislature was uncommonly cold. In
+returning home, he crossed the Hudson in an open boat, and was detained
+on the river several hours. This severe exposure brought on an attack of
+sickness, which for a short time confined him to his bed. The steam
+frigate, then almost ready for her engines, occasioned him great anxiety
+at the time, and before he had fairly recovered his strength he went to
+the ship-yard to give some directions to the workmen employed on her,
+and thus exposed himself again to the inclemency of the weather. In a
+few days his indisposition prostrated him again, and, growing rapidly
+worse, he died on the 24th of February, 1815, at the age of fifty
+years. His death was universally regarded as a national calamity, and
+appropriate honors were paid to his memory by the General Government and
+by many of the State and municipal governments of the Union. He was
+buried from his residence, No. 1 State Street, on the 25th of February,
+and his body was placed in the vault of the Livingston family, in
+Trinity church-yard.
+
+He left a widow and four children. By the terms of his will he
+bequeathed to his wife an income of nine thousand dollars a year, and
+five hundred dollars to each of his children until they were twelve
+years old, after which they were each to receive one thousand dollars a
+year until they should attain the age of twenty-one years.
+
+In person, Fulton was tall and handsome. His manner was polished,
+cordial, and winning. He made friends rapidly, and never failed in his
+efforts to enlist capital and influence in support of his schemes. He
+was manly, fearless, and independent in character, and joined to a
+perfect integrity a patience and indomitable resolution which enabled
+him to bear up under every disappointment, and which won him in the end
+a glorious success. His name and fame will always be dear to his
+countrymen, for while we can not claim that he was (nor did he ever
+assume to be) the inventor of steam navigation, or even the inventor of
+the means of such navigation, we do claim for him the honor of being the
+first man to cross the gulf which lies between experiment and
+achievement, the man whose skill and perseverance first conquered the
+difficulties which had baffled so many others, and made steam navigation
+both practicable and profitable. The Committee of the London Exhibition
+of 1851 gave utterance in their report to a declaration which places his
+fame beyond assault, as follows:
+
+"Many persons, in various countries, claim the honor of having first
+invented small boats propelled by steam, but it is to the undaunted
+perseverance and exertions of the American Fulton that is due the
+everlasting honor of having produced this revolution, both in naval
+architecture and navigation."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+CHARLES GOODYEAR.
+
+
+In the year 1735, a party of astronomers, sent by the French Government
+to Peru for purposes of scientific investigation, discovered a curious
+tree growing in that country, the like of which no European had ever
+seen before. It grew to a considerable size, and yielded a peculiar sap
+or gum. It was the custom of the natives to make several incisions in
+each tree with an ax, in the morning, and to place under each incision a
+cup or jar made of soft clay. Late in the afternoon, the fluid thus
+obtained was collected in a large clay vessel, each incision yielding
+about a gill of sap per day. This process was repeated for several days
+in succession, until the tree had been thoroughly drained. This sap was
+simply a species of liquid gum, which, though clear and colorless in its
+native state, had the property of becoming hard and tough when exposed
+to the sun or artificial heat. It was used by the natives for the
+manufacture of a few rude and simple articles, by a process similar to
+that by which the old-fashioned "tallow-dip" candles were made. It was
+poured over a pattern of clay or a wooden mold or last covered with
+clay, and successive coatings were applied as fast as the former ones
+dried, until the article had attained the desired thickness, the whole
+taking the shape of the mold over which the gum was poured. As the
+layers were applied, their drying was hastened by exposure to the heat
+and smoke of a fire, the latter giving to the gum a dark-black hue.
+Dried without exposure to the smoke, or by the sun alone, the gum became
+white within and yellowish-brown without. The drying process required
+several days, and during its progress the gum was ornamented with
+characters or lines made with a stick. When it was completed, the clay
+mold was broken to pieces and shaken out of the opening. The natives in
+this manner made a species of rough, clumsy shoe, and an equally rough
+bottle. In some parts of South America, the natives make it a rule to
+present their guests with one of these bottles, furnished with a hollow
+stern, which serves as a syringe for squirting water into the mouth in
+order to cleanse it after eating. The articles thus made were liable to
+become stiff and unmanageable in cold weather, and soft and sticky in
+warm. The French astronomers, upon their return to their own country,
+were quick to call attention to this remarkable gum, which was afterward
+discovered in Cayenne by Trismau, in 1751. At present it is found in
+large quantities in various parts of South America, but the chief
+supplies used in commerce are produced in the province of Para, which
+lies south of the equator, in Brazil. It is also grown largely in the
+East Indies, vast and inexhaustible forests of the trees which yield it
+being found in Assam, beyond the Ganges, although the quality can not
+compare with that of the South American article.
+
+This substance, variously known as cachuchu, caoutchouc, gum elastic,
+and India-rubber, was first introduced into Europe in 1730, where it was
+regarded merely as a curiosity, useful for erasing pencil marks, but
+valueless for any practical use. Ships from South America brought it
+over as ballast, but it was not until ninety years after its first
+appearance in Europe that any effort was made to utilize it. About the
+year 1820 it began to be used in France in the manufacture of suspenders
+and garters, India-rubber threads being mixed with the materials used in
+weaving those articles. It was also used in blacking and varnish, and
+some years later, Mackintosh brought it into prominent notice by using
+it in his famous water-proof coats, which were made by spreading a layer
+of the gum between two pieces of cloth. The gum was thus protected from
+the air, and preserved from injury.
+
+Up to this time, it was almost an unknown article in the United States,
+but in 1820 a pair of India-rubber shoes were exhibited in Boston. Even
+then they were regarded as merely a curiosity, and were covered with
+gilt foil to hide their natural ugliness. In 1823, a merchant, engaged
+in the South American trade, imported five hundred pairs from the Para
+district. He had no difficulty in disposing of them; and so great was
+the favor with which they were received, that in a few years the annual
+importation of India-rubber shoes amounted to five hundred thousand
+pairs. It had become a matter of fashion to wear these shoes, and no
+person's toilet was complete in wet weather unless the feet were incased
+in them; yet they were terribly rough and clumsy. They had scarcely any
+shape to them, and were not to be depended on in winter or summer. In
+the cold season they froze so hard that they could be used only after
+being thawed by the fire, and in summer they could be preserved only by
+keeping them on ice; and if, during the thawing process, they were
+placed too near the fire, there was danger that they would melt into a
+shapeless and useless mass. They cost from three to five dollars per
+pair, which was very high for an article so perishable in its nature.
+
+The great popularity of India-rubber induced Mr. E.M. Chaflee, of
+Boston, the foreman of a patent leather factory in that city, to attempt
+to apply the new substance to some of the uses to which patent leather
+was then put. His hope was that, by spreading the liquid gum upon cloth,
+he could produce an article which, while possessing the durability and
+flexibility of patent leather, would also be water-proof. His
+experiments extended over a period of several months, during which time
+he kept his plan a secret. He dissolved a pound of the gum in three
+quarts of spirits of turpentine, and added to the mixture enough
+lamp-black to produce a bright black color, and was so well satisfied
+with his compound, that he felt sure that the only thing necessary to
+his entire success was a machine for spreading it properly on the cloth.
+Like a true son of New England, he soon overcame this difficulty by
+inventing the desired machine. His compound was spread on the cloth, and
+dried in the sun, producing a hard, smooth surface, and one sufficiently
+flexible to be twisted into any shape without cracking. Mr. Chaffee was
+now sure that he had mastered the difficulty. Taking a few capitalists
+into his confidence, he succeeded so well in convincing them of the
+excellence of his invention, that in February, 1833, a company, called
+the "Roxbury India-rubber Company," was organized, with a capital of
+thirty thousand dollars. In three years this sum was increased to four
+hundred thousand dollars. The new company manufactured India-rubber
+cloth according to Mr. Chaffee's process, and from it made wagon-covers,
+piano-covers, caps, coats, and a few other articles, and, in a little
+while, added to their list of products shoes without fiber. They had no
+difficulty in disposing of their stock. Every body had taken the
+"India-rubber fever," as the excitement caused by Mr. Chaffee's
+discovery was called; and so high were the hopes of the public raised by
+it, that buyers were found in abundance whenever the bonds of the
+numerous India-rubber companies were offered for sale. The extraordinary
+success of the Roxbury Company led to the establishment of similar
+enterprises at Boston, Framingham, Salem, Lynn, Chelsea, Troy, and
+Staten Island. The Roxbury Company could not supply the demand for its
+articles, and the others appeared to have as much business as they could
+attend to. Apparently, they were all on the high road to wealth.
+
+Their prosperity was only fictitious, however, and a day of fearful
+disaster was pending over them. The bulk of the goods produced in 1833
+and 1834 had been manufactured in the cold weather, and the greater part
+of them had succumbed to the heat of the ensuing summer. The shoes had
+melted to a soft mass, and the caps, wagon-covers, and coats had become
+sticky and useless in summer, and rigid in the cold of winter. In some
+cases the articles had borne the test of one year's use, but the second
+summer had ruined them. To make the matter worse, they emitted an odor
+so offensive that it was necessary to bury them in the ground to get rid
+of the smell. Twenty thousand dollars' worth were thrown back on the
+hands of the Roxbury Company alone, and the directors were appalled by
+the ruin which threatened them. It was useless for them to go on
+manufacturing goods which might prove worthless at any moment; and, as
+their capital was already taxed to its utmost, it was plain that unless
+a better process should be speedily discovered, they must become
+involved in irretrievable disaster. Their efforts were unavailing,
+however. No better process was found, and the disgust of the public with
+their goods was soon general and unmitigable. India-rubber stock fell
+rapidly, and by the end of the year 1836 there was not a solvent company
+in the Union. The loss of the stockholders was complete, and amounted in
+the aggregate to two millions of dollars. People came to detest the
+very name of India-rubber, since it reminded them only of blighted hopes
+and heavy losses.
+
+Before the final disaster, however, it chanced that a bankrupt merchant
+of Philadelphia, being one day in New York on business, was led by
+curiosity to visit the salesroom of the agency of the Roxbury Company in
+that city. His visit resulted in the purchase of a life-preserver, which
+he took home with him for the purpose of examining it. Subjecting it to
+a careful investigation, he discovered a defect in the valve used for
+inflating it, and promptly devised a simpler and better apparatus.
+
+This man, afterward so famous in the history of India-rubber
+manufacture, was CHARLES GOODYEAR. He was born at New Haven,
+Connecticut, on the 29th of December, 1800. He attended a public school
+during his boyhood, thus acquiring a limited education. When quite a
+youth, he removed with his family to Philadelphia, where his father
+entered into the hardware business. Upon coming of age, he was admitted
+to partnership with his father and one of his brothers, the style of the
+firm being A. Goodyear & Sons. The house was extensively engaged in the
+manufacture of hardware, and among the other articles which they
+introduced was a light hay-fork, made of spring steel, which gradually
+took the place of the heavy wrought iron implement formerly in general
+use among the farmers. It required a large outlay and a great deal of
+time to introduce this fork, but, once in use, it rapidly drove the old
+one out of the market, and proved a source of considerable profit to its
+inventor. The prosperity of the house, however, soon began to wane, and
+it was brought to bankruptcy by the crisis of 1836.
+
+Mr. Goodyear's attention had for some time been attracted to the
+wonderful apparent success of the India-rubber companies of the country,
+and he was hopeful that his improvement in the inflating apparatus of
+the life-preserver would bring him the means of partially extricating
+himself from his difficulties. Repairing to New York, he called on the
+agent of the Roxbury Company, and explaining his invention to him,
+offered to sell it to the company. The agent was struck with the skill
+displayed in the improvement of Mr. Goodyear, but, instead of offering
+to buy it, astounded the inventor by informing him of the real state of
+the India-rubber trade of the country. He urged Mr. Goodyear to exert
+his inventive skill to discover some means of imparting durability to
+India-rubber goods, and assured him that if he could discover a process
+which would secure that end, the various companies of the United States
+would eagerly buy it at his own price. He explained to him the process
+then in use, and pointed out its imperfections. Mr. Goodyear listened
+carefully to his statements, forgot all about his disappointment in
+failing to sell his improved inflating apparatus, and went home firmly
+convinced that he had found his true mission in life. In after years,
+when success had crowned his labors, he modestly referred to this period
+of his career in language the substance of which is thus recorded:
+
+"From the time that his attention was first given to the subject, a
+strong and abiding impression was made upon his mind that an object so
+desirable and important, and so necessary to man's comfort, as the
+making of gum elastic available to his use was most certainly placed
+within his reach. Having this presentiment, of which he could not divest
+himself under the most trying adversity, he was stimulated with the
+hope, of ultimately attaining this object. Beyond this, he would refer
+the whole to the great Creator, who directs the operations of the mind
+to the development of properties of matter, in his own way, at the time
+when they are specially needed, influencing some mind for every work or
+calling."
+
+There was something sublime in the attitude of this one man, now feeble
+in health, the only dependence of a young family, a bankrupt in
+business, starting out to seek success in a field in which so many had
+found only ruin. He was convinced in his own mind that he would master
+the secret, while his friends were equally sure that he would but
+increase his difficulties. The firm of which he had been a member had
+surrendered all their property to their creditors; but they still owed
+thirty thousand dollars, and immediately upon his return from New York,
+after his visit to the agent of the Roxbury Company, he was arrested for
+debt, and though not actually thrown in jail, was compelled to take up
+his residence within prison limits.
+
+Strong in the conviction before named, that he was the man of all others
+to discover the secret of controlling India-rubber, he at once began his
+experiments. This was in the winter of 1834-35. The gum had fallen in
+price to five cents per pound, and, poor as he was, he had no difficulty
+in procuring a sufficient quantity to begin with. By melting and working
+the gum thoroughly, and by rolling it upon a stone table with a
+rolling-pin, he succeeded in producing sheets of India-rubber which
+seemed to him to possess the properties which those of Mr. Chaffee had
+lacked. He explained his process to a friend, who, becoming interested
+in it, loaned him the money to manufacture a number of shoes, which at
+first seemed all that could be desired. Fearful, however, of meeting the
+fate which had befallen the Roxbury Company, Mr. Goodyear put his shoes
+away until the next summer, to ascertain whether they would bear the
+heat. His doubts were more than realized. The warm weather completely
+ruined them, reducing them to a mass of so offensive an odor that he was
+glad to throw them away.
+
+The friend of the inventor was thoroughly disheartened by this failure,
+and refused to have any thing more to do with Goodyear's schemes; but
+the latter, though much disappointed, did not despair. He set to work to
+discover the cause of his failure, and traced it, as he supposed, to the
+mixing of the gum with the turpentine and lamp-black. Having procured
+some barrels of the gum in its native liquid state, he spread it on
+cloth without smoking it or mixing it with any thing else. He succeeded
+in producing a very handsome white rubber cloth, but it was one that
+became soft and sticky as quickly as the other had done.
+
+It now occurred to him that there must be some mineral substance which,
+mixed with the gum, would render it durable, and he began to experiment
+with almost every substance that he could lay his hands on. All these
+proved total failures, with the exception of magnesia. By mixing half a
+pound of magnesia with a pound of the gum, he produced a compound much
+whiter than the pure gum, and one which was at first as firm and
+flexible as leather. He made book-covers and piano-covers out of it, and
+for a time it seemed that he had discovered the longed-for secret; but
+in a month his pretty product was ruined. The heat caused it to soften;
+then fermentation set in, and, finally, it became as hard and brittle as
+thin glass.
+
+His friends, who had aided him at first, now turned from him coldly,
+regarding him as a dreamer; and his own stock of money was exhausted. In
+his extremity he was forced to pawn all his own valuables, and even some
+of the trinkets of his wife. In spite of this, he felt sure that he was
+on the road to success, and that he would very soon be enabled to rise
+above his present difficulties, and win both fame and fortune. He was
+obliged for the time, however, to remove his family to the country,
+depositing with his landlord, as security for the payment of the first
+quarter's rent, some linen which had been spun by his wife, and which he
+was never able to redeem. Having settled his family in the country, he
+set out for New York, where he hoped to find some one willing to aid him
+in extending his researches still further.
+
+Arrived in the great city, he found two old acquaintances, to whom he
+stated his plans and his hopes. One of them offered him the use of a
+room in Gold Street, as a laboratory, and the other, who was a druggist,
+agreed to let him have such chemicals as he needed on credit. He now
+proceeded to boil the gum, mixed with magnesia, in quicklime and water,
+and, as the result, obtained sheets of his compound whose firmness and
+smoothness of surface won them a medal at the fair of the American
+Institute in 1835. He seemed now on the point of success, and readily
+disposed of all the sheets he could manufacture. The newspapers spoke
+highly of his invention, for which he obtained a patent; and he was
+about to endeavor to enlist some persons of means in its manufacture on
+a large scale, when, to his dismay, he discovered that a single drop of
+the weakest acid, such as the juice of an apple, or diluted vinegar,
+would utterly destroy the influence of the lime in the compound, and
+reduce it to the old sticky substance that had baffled him so often.
+
+His next step was to mix quicklime with the gum. In order to work the
+compound thoroughly, he used to carry the vessel containing it, on his
+shoulder, to a place three miles distant from his laboratory, where he
+had the use of horse power. The lime, however, utterly destroyed the
+gum, and nothing came of this experiment.
+
+The discovery which followed was the result of accident, and brought him
+on the very threshold of success, yet did not entirely conquer his
+difficulties. He was an ardent lover of the beautiful, and it was a
+constant effort with him to render his productions as attractive to the
+eye as possible. Upon one occasion, while bronzing a piece of rubber
+cloth, he applied aqua fortis to it for the purpose of removing the
+bronze from a certain part. It took away the bronze as he had designed,
+but it also discolored the cloth to such a degree that he supposed it
+ruined, and threw it away. A day or two later, he chanced to remember
+that he had not examined very closely into the effect of the aqua fortis
+upon the rubber, and thereupon instituted a search for it. He was
+fortunate enough to find it, and was overjoyed to discover that the
+rubber had undergone a remarkable change, and that the effect of the
+acid was to harden it to such an extent that it would now stand a degree
+of heat which would have melted it before. When the reader remembers
+that aqua fortis is a compound two-fifths of which is sulphuric acid, he
+will understand that Mr. Goodyear had almost mastered the secret of
+vulcanizing rubber. He does not appear, however, to have known the true
+nature of aqua fortis, and called his process the "curing" of
+India-rubber by the use of that acid.
+
+The "cured" India-rubber was subjected to many tests, and passed through
+them successfully, thus demonstrating its adaptability to many important
+uses. Mr. Goodyear readily obtained a patent for his process, and a
+partner with a large capital was found ready to aid him. He hired the
+old India-rubber works on Staten Island, and opened a salesroom in
+Broadway. He was thrown back for six weeks at this important time by an
+accident, which happened to him while experimenting with his fabrics,
+and which came near causing his death. Just as he was recovering and
+preparing to commence the manufacture of his goods on a large scale, the
+terrible commercial crisis of 1836 swept over the country, and, by
+destroying his partner's fortune at one blow, reduced Goodyear to
+absolute beggary. His family had joined him in New York, and he was
+entirely without the means of supporting them. As the only resource at
+hand, he decided to pawn an article of value, one of the few which he
+possessed, in order to raise money enough to procure one day's supply of
+provisions. At the very door of the pawnbroker's shop he met one of his
+creditors, who kindly asked if he could be of any further assistance to
+him. Weak with hunger, and overcome by the generosity of his friend, the
+poor man burst into tears, and replied that, as his family was on the
+point of starvation, a loan of fifteen dollars would greatly oblige him.
+The money was given him on the spot, and the necessity for visiting the
+pawnbroker averted for several days longer. Still he was a frequent
+visitor to that individual during the year; and thus, one by one, the
+relics of his better days disappeared. Another friend loaned him one
+hundred dollars, which enabled him to remove his family to Staten
+Island, in the neighborhood of the abandoned rubber works, which the
+owners gave him permission to use as far as he could. He contrived in
+this way to manufacture enough of his "cured" cloth, which sold readily,
+to enable him to keep his family from starvation. He made repeated
+efforts to induce capitalists to come to the factory and see his samples
+and the process by which they were made, but no one would venture near
+him. There had been money enough lost in such experiments, they said,
+and they were determined to risk no more.
+
+Indeed, in all the broad land there was but one man who had the
+slightest hope of accomplishing any thing with India-rubber, and that
+one was Charles Goodyear. His friends regarded him as a monomaniac. He
+not only manufactured his cloth, but even dressed in clothes made of it,
+wearing it for the purpose of testing its durability, as well as of
+advertising it. He was certainly an odd figure, and in his appearance
+justified the remark of one of his friends, who, upon being asked how
+Mr. Goodyear could be recognized, replied: "If you see a man with an
+India-rubber coat on, India-rubber shoes, an India-rubber cap, and in
+his pocket an India-rubber purse, with not a cent in it, that is
+Goodyear."
+
+In September, 1836, a new gleam of hope lit up his pathway. A friend
+having loaned him a small sum of money, he went to Roxbury, taking with
+him some of his best specimens. Although the Roxbury Company had gone
+down with such a fearful crash, Mr. Chaffee, the inventor of the process
+in this country, was still firm in his faith that India-rubber would at
+some future time justify the expectations of its earliest friends. He
+welcomed Mr. Goodyear cordially, and allowed him to use the abandoned
+works of the company for his experiments. The result was that Goodyear
+succeeded in making slides and cloths of India-rubber of a quality so
+much better than any that had yet been seen in America, that the hopes
+of the friends of India-rubber were raised to a high point. Offers to
+purchase rights for certain portions of the country came in rapidly, and
+by the sale of them Goodyear realized between four and five thousand
+dollars. He was now able to bring his family to Roxbury, and for the
+time fortune seemed to smile upon him.
+
+His success was but temporary, however. He obtained an order from the
+General Government for one hundred and fifty India-rubber mail-bags,
+which he succeeded in producing, and as they came out smooth, highly
+polished, hard, well shaped, and entirely impervious to moisture, he was
+delighted, and summoned his friends to inspect and admire them. All who
+saw them pronounced them a perfect success; but, alas! in a single month
+they began to soften and ferment, and finally became useless. Poor
+Goodyear's hopes were dashed to the ground. It was found that the aqua
+fortis merely "cured" the surface of the material, and that only very
+thin cloth made in this way was durable. His other goods began to prove
+worthless, and his promising business came to a sudden and disastrous
+end. All his possessions were seized and sold for debt, and once more he
+was reduced to poverty. His position was even worse than before, for his
+family had increased in size, and his aged father also had become
+dependent upon him for support.
+
+Friends, relatives, and even his wife, all demanded that he should
+abandon his empty dreams, and turn his attention to something that would
+yield a support to his family. Four years of constant failure, added to
+the unfortunate experience of those who had preceded him, ought to
+convince him, they said, that he was hoping against hope. Hitherto his
+conduct, they said, had been absurd, though they admitted that he was to
+some extent excused for it by his partial success; but to persist in it
+would now be criminal. The inventor was driven to despair, and being a
+man of tender feelings and ardently devoted to his family, might have
+yielded to them had he not felt that lie was nearer than ever to the
+discovery of the secret that had eluded him so long.
+
+Just before the failure of his mail-bags had brought ruin upon him, he
+had taken into his employ a man named Nathaniel Hayward, who had been
+the foreman of the old Roxbury works, and who was still in charge of
+them when Goodyear came to Roxbury, making a few rubber articles on his
+own account. He hardened his compound by mixing a little powdered
+sulphur with the gum, or by sprinkling sulphur on the rubber cloth, and
+drying it in the sun. He declared that the process had been revealed to
+him in a dream, but could give no further account of it. Goodyear was
+astonished to find that the sulphur cured the India-rubber as thoroughly
+as the aqua fortis, the principal objection being that the sulphurous
+odor of the goods was frightful in hot weather. Hayward's process was
+really the same as that employed by Goodyear, the "curing" of the
+India-rubber being due in each case to the agency of sulphur, the
+principal difference between them being that Hayward's goods were dried
+by the sun, and Goodyear's with nitric acid. Hay ward set so small a
+value upon his discovery that he had readily sold it to his new
+employer.
+
+[Illustration: AN AMAZING REVELATION.]
+
+Goodyear felt that he had now all but conquered his difficulties. It was
+plain that sulphur was the great controller of India-rubber, for he had
+proved that when applied to thin cloth it would render it available for
+most purposes. The problem that now remained was how to mix sulphur and
+the gum in a mass, so that every part of the rubber should be subjected
+to the agency of the sulphur. He experimented for weeks and months with
+the most intense eagerness, but the mystery completely baffled him. His
+friends urged him to go to work to do something for his family, but he
+could not turn back. The goal was almost in sight, and he felt that he
+would be false to his mission were he to abandon his labors now. To the
+world he seemed a crack-brained dreamer, and some there were who, seeing
+the distress of his family, did not hesitate to apply still harsher
+names to him; but to the Great Eye that reads all hearts, how different
+did this man appear! It saw the anguish that wrung the heart of Charles
+Goodyear, and knew the more than heroic firmness with which, in the
+midst of his poverty and suffering, he agonized for the great discovery.
+Had it been merely wealth that he was working for, doubtless he would
+have turned back and sought some other means of obtaining it; but he
+sought more. He was striving for the good of his fellow-men, and
+ambitious of becoming a benefactor of the race. He felt that he had a
+mission to fulfill, and no one else could perform it.
+
+He was right. A still greater success was about to crown his labors, but
+in a manner far different from his expectations. His experiments had
+developed nothing; chance was to make the revelation. It was in the
+spring of 1839 that this revelation came to him, and in the following
+manner: Standing before a stove in a store at Woburn, Massachusetts, he
+was explaining to some acquaintances the properties of a piece of
+sulphur-cured India-rubber which he held in his hand. They listened to
+him good-naturedly, but with evident incredulity, when suddenly he
+dropped the rubber on the stove, which was red hot. His old cloths would
+have melted instantly from contact with such heat; but, to his surprise,
+this piece underwent no such change. In amazement, he examined it, and
+found that while it had charred or shriveled, like leather, it had not
+softened at all. The bystanders attached no importance to this
+phenomenon, but to him it was a revelation. He renewed his experiments
+with enthusiasm, and in a little while established the facts that
+India-rubber, when mixed with sulphur and exposed to a certain degree of
+heat for a certain time, would not melt or even soften at any degree of
+heat, that it would only char at two hundred and eighty degrees, and
+that it would not stiffen from exposure to any degree of cold. The
+difficulty now consisted in finding out the exact degree of heat
+necessary for the perfection of the rubber, and the exact length of time
+required for the heating.
+
+He made this discovery in his darkest days; when, in fact, he was in
+constant danger of arrest for debt, having already been a frequent
+inmate of the debtor's prison. He was in the depths of bitter poverty,
+and in such feeble health that he was constantly haunted by the fear of
+dying before he had perfected his discovery--before he had fulfilled his
+mission. His poverty was a greater drawback to him than ever before. He
+needed an apparatus for producing a high and uniform heat for his
+experiments, and he was unable to obtain it. He used to bake his
+compound in his wife's bread oven, and steam it over the spout of her
+tea-kettle, and to press the kitchen fire into his service as far as it
+would go. When this failed, he would go to the shops in the vicinity of
+Woburn, and beg to be allowed to use the ovens and boilers after working
+hours were over. The workmen regarded him as a lunatic, but were too
+good-natured to deny him the request. Finally, he induced a bricklayer
+to make him an oven, and paid him in mason's aprons of India-rubber. The
+oven was a failure. Sometimes it would turn out pieces of perfectly
+vulcanized cloth, and again the goods would be charred and ruined.
+Goodyear was in despair.
+
+All this time he lived on the charity of his friends. His neighbors
+pretended to lend him money, but in reality gave him the means of
+keeping his family from starvation. He has declared that all the while
+he felt sure he would, before long, be able to pay them back, but they
+declared with equal emphasis that, at that time, they never expected to
+witness his success. He was yellow and shriveled in face, with a gaunt,
+lean figure, and his habit of wearing an India-rubber coat, which was
+charred and blackened from his frequent experiments with it, gave him a
+wild and singular appearance. People shook their heads solemnly when
+they saw him, and said that the mad-house was the proper place for him.
+
+The winter of 1839-40 was long and severe. At the opening of the season,
+Mr. Goodyear received a letter from a house in Paris, making him a
+handsome offer for the use of his process of curing India-rubber with
+aqua fortis. Here was a chance for him to rise out of his misery. A year
+before he would have closed with the offer, but since then he had
+discovered the effects of sulphur and heat on his compound, and had
+passed far beyond the aqua fortis stage. Disappointment and want had not
+warped his honesty, and he at once declined to enter into any
+arrangements with the French house, informing them that although the
+process they desired to purchase was a valuable one, it was about to be
+entirely replaced by another which he was then on the point of
+perfecting, and which he would gladly sell them as soon as he had
+completed it. His friends declared that he was mad to refuse such an
+offer; but he replied that nothing would induce him to sell a process
+which he knew was about to be rendered worthless by still greater
+discoveries.
+
+A few weeks later, a terrible snow-storm passed over the land, one of
+the worst that New England has ever known, and in the midst of it
+Goodyear made the appalling discovery that he had not a particle of fuel
+or a mouthful of food in the house. He was ill enough to be in bed
+himself, and his purse was entirely empty. It was a terrible position,
+made worse, too, by the fact that his friends who had formerly aided him
+had turned from him, vexed with his pertinacity, and abandoned him to
+his fate. In his despair, he bethought him of a mere acquaintance who
+lived several miles from his cottage, and who but a few days before had
+spoken to him with more of kindness than he had received of late. This
+gentleman, he thought, would aid him in his distress, if he could but
+reach his house, but in such a snow the journey seemed hopeless to a man
+in his feeble health. Still the effort must be made. Nerved by despair,
+he set out, and pushed his way resolutely through the heavy drifts. The
+way was long, and it seemed to him that he would never accomplish it.
+Often he fell prostrate on the snow, almost fainting with fatigue and
+hunger, and again he would sit down wearily in the road, feeling that he
+would gladly die if his discovery were but completed. At length,
+however, he reached the end of his journey, and fortunately found his
+acquaintance at home. To this gentleman he told the story of his
+discovery, his hopes, his struggles, and his present sufferings, and
+implored him to aid him. Mr. Coolidge[A]--for such was the gentleman's
+name--listened to him kindly, and after expressing the warmest sympathy
+for him, loaned him money enough to support his family during the severe
+weather, and to enable him to continue his experiments.
+
+[Footnote A: O.B. Coolidge, of Woburn.]
+
+"Seeing no prospect of success in Massachusetts, he now resolved to make
+a desperate effort to get to New York, feeling confident that the
+specimens he could take with him would convince some one of the
+superiority of his new method. He was beginning to understand the causes
+of his many failures, but he saw clearly that his compound could not be
+worked with certainty without expensive apparatus. It was a very
+delicate operation, requiring exactness and promptitude. The conditions
+upon which success depended were numerous, and the failure of one
+spoiled all.... It cost him thousands of failures to learn that a little
+acid in his sulphur caused the blistering; that his compound must be
+heated almost immediately after being mixed, or it would never
+vulcanize; that a portion of white lead in the compound greatly
+facilitated the operation and improved the result; and when he had
+learned these facts, it still required costly and laborious experiments
+to devise the best methods of compounding his ingredients, the best
+proportions, the best mode of heating, the proper duration of the
+heating, and the various useful effects that could be produced by
+varying the proportions and the degree of heat. He tells us that many
+times when, by exhausting every resource, he had prepared a quantity of
+his compound for heating, it was spoiled because he could not, with his
+inadequate apparatus, apply the heat soon enough.
+
+"To New York, then, he directed his thoughts. Merely to get there cost
+him a severer and a longer effort than men in general are capable of
+making. First he walked to Boston, ten miles distant, where he hoped to
+borrow from an old acquaintance fifty dollars, with which to provide for
+his family and pay his fare to New York. He not only failed in this, but
+he was arrested for debt and thrown into prison. Even in prison, while
+his father was negotiating to procure his release, he labored to
+interest men of capital in his discovery, and made proposals for
+founding a factory in Boston. Having obtained his liberty, he went to a
+hotel, and spent a week in vain efforts to effect a small loan. Saturday
+night came, and with it his hotel bill, which he had no means of
+discharging. In an agony of shame and anxiety, he went to a friend and
+entreated the sum of five dollars to enable him to return home. He was
+met with a point blank refusal. In the deepest dejection, he walked the
+streets till late in the night, and strayed at length, almost beside
+himself, to Cambridge, where he ventured to call upon a friend and ask
+shelter for the night. He was hospitably entertained, and the next
+morning walked wearily home, penniless and despairing. At the door of
+his house a member of his family met him with the news that his youngest
+child, two years old, whom he had left in perfect health, was dying. In
+a few hours he had in his house a dead child, but not the means of
+burying it, and five living dependents without a morsel of food to give
+them. A storekeeper near by had promised to supply the family, but,
+discouraged by the unforeseen length of the father's absence, he had
+that day refused to trust them further. In these terrible circumstances,
+he applied to a friend upon whose generosity he knew he could rely, one
+who never failed him. He received in reply a letter of severe and
+cutting reproach, inclosing seven dollars, which his friend explained
+was given only out of pity for his innocent and suffering family. A
+stranger who chanced to be present when this letter arrived sent them a
+barrel of flour--a timely and blessed relief. The next day the family
+followed on foot the remains of the little child to the grave."
+
+He had now reached the lowest ebb of his misery, and a brighter day was
+in store for him. Obtaining fifty dollars from a relative, he went to
+New York, where he succeeded in interesting in his discovery two
+brothers, William and Emory Rider. They agreed to advance him a certain
+sum to support his family and continue his experiments. By means of this
+aid he was enabled to keep his family from want in the future, and from
+that time his experiments never flagged. Before entire success crowned
+his efforts, the brothers Rider failed; but he had advanced his
+experiments so greatly that his brother-in-law, William De Forrest, a
+rich woolen manufacturer, came to his support, and supplied him with the
+means to go on with his labors. Mr. De Forrest's total advances amounted
+to forty-six thousand dollars, from which fact the reader may gain some
+idea of the obstacles overcome by Goodyear in this last stage of his
+invention.
+
+The prize for which he had labored so long and so heroically was secured
+at last, and in 1844, ten years after the commencement of his
+experiments, he was able to produce perfectly vulcanized India-rubber
+with expedition and economy, and, above all, with certainty. He had won
+a success which added a new material to art and commerce, and one which
+could be applied in a thousand different ways, and all of them useful to
+man. But great as his success was, he was not satisfied with it. To the
+end of his life his constant effort was to improve his invention, and
+apply it to new uses. He had an unlimited faith in its adaptability,
+believing that there was scarcely any article of general use that could
+not be made of it. Upon one occasion he read in a newspaper that twenty
+persons perished every hour by drowning. The statement impressed him
+deeply, and his wife noticed that for several nights he scarcely slept
+at all. "Try to compose yourself, and sleep," she said to him. "Sleep!"
+he exclaimed, "how can I sleep when twenty human beings are drowning
+every hour, and I am the man that can save them?" And at this time it
+was his constant endeavor to invent some article of India-rubber which
+could be easily carried by travelers, and which would render it
+impossible for them to sink in water.
+
+Having brought his process to a successful completion in this country,
+and obtained patents for it, he went to Europe to secure similar
+protections in the principal countries of the Old World. "The French
+laws require that the patentee shall put and keep his invention in
+public use in France within two years from its date. Goodyear had, at
+great inconvenience and expense, endeavored to comply with this and with
+all other requirements of the French laws, and thought he had
+effectually done so; but the courts of France decided that he had not in
+every particular complied with the strict requisitions of the law, and
+that, therefore, his patent in France had become void. In England he was
+still more unfortunate. Having sent specimens of vulcanized fabrics to
+Charles Mackintosh & Co., in 1842, and having opened with them a
+negotiation for the sale of the secret of the invention or discovery,
+one of the partners of that firm, named Thomas Hancock, availing
+himself, as he admits, of the hints and opportunities thus presented to
+him, rediscovered, as he affirms, the process of vulcanization, and
+described it in a patent for England, which was enrolled on May 21,
+1844, _about five weeks after_ the specification and publication of the
+discovery to the world by Goodyear's patent for vulcanization in France.
+And the patent of Hancock, held good according to a peculiarity of
+English law, thus superseded Goodyear's English patent for
+vulcanization, which bore date a few days later. Goodyear, however,
+obtained the great council medal of the exhibition of all nations at
+London, the grand medal of the world's exhibition at Paris, and the
+ribbon of the Legion of Honor, presented by Napoleon III."
+
+In his own country, Mr. Goodyear was scarcely less unfortunate. His
+patents were infringed and violated by others, even after the decision
+of the courts seemed to place his rights beyond question. He was too
+thoroughly the inventor and too little the man of business to protect
+himself from the robberies of the wretches who plundered him of the
+profits of his invention. It is said that his inability to manage sharp
+transactions made him the victim of many who held nominally fair
+business relations with him. The United States Commissioner of Patents,
+in 1858, thus spoke of his losses:
+
+"No inventor, probably, has ever been so harassed, so trampled upon, so
+plundered by that sordid and licentious class of infringers known in the
+parlance of the world, with no exaggeration of phrase, as 'pirates.' The
+spoliation of their incessant guerrilla warfare upon his defenseless
+rights have, unquestionably, amounted to millions."
+
+Failing to accomplish any thing in Europe, Mr. Goodyear returned to this
+country, and continued his labors. His health, never strong, gave way
+under the continued strain, and he died in New York in July, 1860, in
+the sixtieth year of his age, completely worn out. Notwithstanding his
+great invention--an invention which has made millions for those engaged
+in its manufacture--he died insolvent, and left his family heavily in
+debt. A few years after his death an effort was made to procure from
+Congress a further seven years' extension of his patent for
+vulcanization, for the benefit of his family and his creditors. The men
+who had trampled his rights under foot while living were resolved,
+however, that he should not have justice done him in death; and, through
+their influence, that august body, in strange contrast with its usual
+lavish generosity in the matter of land grants and the like, coldly
+declined to do any thing for the family of the man to whom civilization
+owes so much, and the effort proved abortive.
+
+But, though unfortunate in a pecuniary sense, though he died without
+freeing himself from the embarrassments which haunted him through life,
+there can be no question that Charles Goodyear richly merits the place
+which we have given him in this gallery of "Our Self-made Men;" not only
+on account of the great merit and usefulness of his discovery or
+invention, but because that invention has been the source of many a
+"great fortune" to others, as it might, indeed, have been to him, had
+his rights been respected, or properly protected when infringed. It is
+sad to reflect that he died poor who has given wealth to so many, and
+accomplished results so beneficent to mankind. Yet he did not fail
+entirely of his reward in life; he lived to see his invention give rise
+to large factories in the United States, and in England, France, and
+Germany, which employ sixty thousand operatives, and produce over five
+hundred different kinds of articles, to the amount of eight millions of
+dollars annually. He lived to see boots and shoes, clothing, caps, hats,
+articles of commerce and of pleasure, mechanical, scientific, and
+surgical instruments, toys, belting for machinery, packing for the
+steam-engine, and many other articles now in common use, made of the
+material, the discovery and perfection of which cost him long and
+sorrowful years of toil. He lived to hear his name mentioned by millions
+as one of their greatest benefactors; to know that he had conferred upon
+the world benefits of which those who had robbed him could not deprive
+his fellow-men; and to feel that he had at length accomplished his
+mission--a mission which has been productive of good alone.
+
+[Illustration: "THE MADHOUSE IS THE PROPER PLACE FOR HIM."]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+ELI WHITNEY.
+
+
+At the close of the Revolution the States of South Carolina and Georgia
+presented large tracts of land to the gallant General Nathaniel Greene,
+to whose genius they were indebted for their relief from British
+tyranny. Soon after this grant was made, General Greene removed his
+family to Mulberry Grove, a fine plantation on the Georgia side of the
+Savannah River. Here he died in 1786, from sunstroke, but his family
+continued to reside on the place. The mansion of Mrs. Greene was noted
+for its hospitality, and was frequently filled with guests who came to
+pay their respects to the widow of the most brilliant and best trusted
+subordinate of the immortal Washington.
+
+To this mansion there came one day, in the year 1792, ELI WHITNEY, then
+a young man recently from New England. He was a native of Westborough,
+Massachusetts, where he was born on the 8th of December, 1765. Of his
+youth but little is known, save that he was gifted with unusual
+mechanical genius, the employment of which enabled him to overcome some
+of the difficulties incident to his poverty, and to acquire the means of
+obtaining a good common school education. Adding to this the labors of a
+teacher, he earned a sum sufficient to carry him through Yale College,
+where he was graduated in the summer of 1702, a few months before his
+arrival in Georgia. He had come South to accept the offer of a situation
+as teacher, but the place had been filled before his arrival, and, being
+without friends in that section, he sought employment from Mrs. Greene.
+Though pleased with his modesty and intelligence, that lady could not
+avail herself of his services as a tutor, but invited him to make her
+house his home as long as he should desire to remain in Georgia. He was
+sick in body and disheartened by his first failure, and gladly accepted
+her invitation. While her guest he made her a tambour frame of an
+improved pattern, and a number of ingenious toys for her children, which
+so delighted the good lady that she enthusiastically declared him
+capable of doing any thing.
+
+Not long after Mr. Whitney's arrival at the plantation, Mrs. Greene was
+entertaining a number of visitors from the surrounding country, several
+planters of considerable wealth being among the number, when one of the
+guests turned the conversation upon the subject of cotton-raising, by
+declaring that he had met with such poor success that he was ready to
+abandon the undertaking. His trouble was not, he said, that cotton would
+not grow in his land, for it yielded an abundant return, but that the
+labor of clearing it from the seed was so enormous that he could not do
+more than pay expenses after selling it.
+
+His case was simply one among a thousand. The far Southern States were
+admitted by every one to be admirably adapted to the cultivation of
+cotton, but, after it was grown and picked, the expense of cleaning it
+destroyed nearly all the profits of the transaction. The cleaning
+process was performed by hand, and it was as much as an able-bodied
+negro could do to clean one pound per day in this manner. Disheartened
+by this difficulty, which no one had yet been able to remove, the
+planters of the South were seriously contemplating the entire
+abandonment of this portion of their industry, since it only involved
+them in debt. Their lands were heavily mortgaged, and general ruin
+seemed to threaten them. All felt that the invention of a machine for
+cleaning or ginning the cotton would not only remove their difficulties,
+but enable them to plant the green cotton-seed, from the use of which
+they were then almost entirely debarred, because, although more
+productive and of a better quality than the black, and adapted by nature
+to a much greater variety of climate, it was much more difficult to
+clean, and therefore less profitable to cultivate.
+
+These facts were discussed in the conversation at Mrs. Greene's table,
+and it was suggested by one of the company that perhaps the very urgency
+of the case would induce some ingenious man to invent a machine which
+should solve the problem, and remove all the difficulties in the way.
+
+"Is it a machine you want?" said Mrs. Greene, eagerly. "Then, gentlemen,
+you should apply to my young friend, Mr. Whitney; _he_ can make any
+thing."
+
+She at once sent for Whitney, and introduced him to her guests, who
+repeated to him the substance of their conversation, and urged him to
+undertake the invention of what was so much needed. The young man
+protested that he had never seen either a pod of cotton or a cotton-seed
+in his life, and was utterly incompetent for the task they proposed. In
+spite of this, however, his new acquaintances urged him to attempt it,
+and assured him that if successful his invention would make his fortune.
+Whitney would promise nothing more than to think of the matter, and the
+planters departed in the belief that nothing would come of their
+entreaties, and that the culture of cotton would languish until it
+should finally die out.
+
+Whitney _did_ think of the matter, and the result was that he decided
+to attempt the production of a machine which should clean cotton both
+expeditiously and cheaply. It was late in the season, and unginned
+cotton, or cotton from which the seeds had not been removed, was hard to
+procure. With considerable difficulty he succeeded in finding a few
+pounds on the wharf at Savannah, and at once securing his prize, he
+carried it home in his hands.
+
+[Illustration: WHITNEY WATCHING THE FIRST COTTON-GIN]
+
+Mrs. Greene being confidentially informed of his plans, provided him
+with a room in the cellar of her house, where he could carry on his work
+in secret. All that winter he worked at it, with a patience and energy
+which could not fail of success. Many difficulties confronted him. To
+carry on his work successfully, he needed tools of a certain
+description, which were not to be had in Savannah, or even in
+Charleston, upon any terms. But when was the genius of a Yankee ever
+baffled by difficulties? Whitney's mechanical skill came to his aid, and
+he conquered this obstacle by manufacturing all the implements he
+needed. He wanted wire, but none was to be found, and he was compelled
+to make all that he used. A score or more of drawbacks presented
+themselves, and were overcome in this way, and all through the winter
+the young inventor applied himself with diligence to his task. The
+children and servants regarded him with the greatest curiosity. They
+heard him hammering and sawing in his room, the doors of which were
+always kept locked, and into which they were never allowed to enter.
+Mrs. Greene was kept fully informed of his progress. When sure of
+success, Whitney revealed the secret to a Mr. Miller, a gentleman of
+means, who consented to enter into a copartnership with him for the
+manufacture of the machines, after the completion of the model should
+have enabled Whitney to secure a patent for his invention.
+
+Whitney had hoped to keep his work secret from all others, but this
+proved to be impossible. It became rumored about the country that the
+young man from New England, who was living at Mrs. Greene's, was engaged
+in inventing a machine which would clean cotton with the rapidity of
+thought, and the most intense eagerness was manifested to see the
+wonderful production, which every one felt would entirely revolutionize
+cotton culture in the South. Whitney endeavored to guard his invention
+from the public curiosity, but without success. Before he had completed
+his model, some scoundrels broke into the place containing it, and
+carried it off by night. He succeeded in recovering it, but the
+principle upon which it depended was made public, and before the model
+was completed and a patent secured, a number of machines based on his
+invention had been surreptitiously made, and were in operation.
+
+In spite of this discouraging circumstance, Whitney brought his
+invention to perfection, and in the spring of 1793 set up his first
+cotton gin, under a shed on Mrs. Greene's plantation, and invited a
+number of the neighboring planters to witness its operation.
+
+His machine was very simple, but none the less ingenious on that
+account. The cotton was placed in a trough, the bottom of which
+consisted of parallel rows of wire, placed like the bars in a grating,
+but so close together that the seed could not pass through them.
+Underneath this trough revolved an iron roller, armed with teeth formed
+of strong wires projecting from the roller, which passed between the
+wire bars, and, seizing the cotton, drew it through the bars and passed
+it behind the roller, where it was brushed off the wire teeth by means
+of a cylindrical brush. The seed, unable to pass through the bars, were
+left behind, and, completely stripped of the fiber, ran out in a stream
+through a spout at one end of the trough. It was found that the cotton
+thus ginned was cleaned thoroughly,[A] and far better than it could be
+done by hand, and that a single man, by this process, could clean as
+much as three hundred pounds in a day.
+
+[Footnote A: The cotton for which Whitney's machine accomplished so
+much, was the short staple, which is the principal product of the South.
+The Sea Island cotton could not be cleaned by it, on account of the
+length and delicacy of its fiber; and this species, for the want of some
+cheap and expeditious method of preparing it, has seldom been grown to a
+greater quantity than fifty thousand bags of three hundred pounds each.
+Consequently, it has always commanded a high price.]
+
+The spectators were delighted with Whitney's machine, and urged him to
+lose no time in putting it in the market. They predicted an unlimited
+success for it, and assured the inventor that it would not only make his
+own fortune, but also render cotton culture the source of wealth to the
+South. They did not exaggerate. As soon as it was made known to the
+public, Whitney's machine came into general use. Planters had no longer
+any thing to fear from the labor and expense of preparing their great
+staple for market. Whitney's genius had swept away all their
+difficulties, and they reaped a golden harvest from it. They were
+enabled to send their cotton promptly and cheaply to market, where it
+brought good prices. With the money thus obtained they paid their debts,
+and increased their capacity for cultivation. Every year the area
+devoted to cotton-growing became more extended, and the prosperity of
+the South became greater and more durable. In 1793, the total export of
+cotton from the United States was ten thousand bales; in 1860, it was
+over four millions of bales. Hundreds of millions of dollars were
+brought into the South by this invention--so that it is no exaggeration
+to say that the remarkable prosperity enjoyed by the South at the
+commencement of our late civil war was due entirely to the genius of Eli
+Whitney. This opinion is fortified by the following remarks of Judge
+Johnson, uttered in a charge to the jury in a suit brought by Whitney,
+in Savannah, in 1807, to sustain the validity of his patent:
+
+"With regard to the utility of this discovery ... the whole interior of
+the Southern States was languishing, and its inhabitants emigrating for
+want of some object to engage their attention and employ their industry,
+when the invention of this machine at once opened views to them which
+set the whole country in active motion. From childhood to age it has
+presented to us a lucrative employment. Individuals who were depressed
+with poverty, and sunk in idleness, have suddenly risen to wealth and
+respectability. Our debts have been paid off, our capitals have
+increased, and our lands have trebled themselves in value. We can not
+express the weight of the obligation which the country owes to this
+invention. The extent of it can not now be seen."
+
+Surely, the reader will exclaim, if such was the profit of this
+invention to the country at large, what a vast fortune must it have
+been to its inventor! Let us see. In May, 1793, Whitney and Miller went
+to Connecticut and established a factory for the construction of cotton
+gins. They were in possession of a patent which was supposed to pledge
+to them the protection of the United States. The demand for the machine
+was increasing every day, and it seemed that they would reap a golden
+harvest from it. They were disappointed. The machine was so simple that
+any competent mechanic could easily manufacture one after examining the
+model, and this temptation to dishonesty proved too strong for the
+morality of the cotton-growing community. In a short time there were
+hundreds of fraudulent machines at work in the South, made and sold in
+direct and open violation of Whitney's rights. In vain the inventor
+brought suit against those who infringed his patent. It was rare that a
+jury in a cotton State gave a verdict in his favor. In Georgia it was
+boldly asserted that Whitney was not the inventor of the cotton gin, but
+that some persons in Switzerland had invented something similar to it,
+and the substitution of teeth, cut in an iron plate, instead of wire,
+was claimed as superseding his invention. The Legislature of South
+Carolina granted him the beggarly sum of $50,000 for the use of his
+invention by the planters of that State; but it was only by going to
+law, and after several tedious and vexatious suits, that he was able to
+secure this sum. Tennessee agreed to allow him a percentage for the use
+of each saw for a certain period, but afterward repudiated her contract.
+The action of North Carolina forms the only bright page in this history
+of fraud and wrong. That State allowed him a percentage for the use of
+each saw for the term of five years, and promptly collected the money
+and paid it over to the patentee. For fourteen years Whitney continued
+to manufacture his machines, reaping absolutely no profit from his
+investments, and earning merely a bare support. During all this time his
+rights were systematically violated, suits were wrongfully decided
+against him by various Southern courts, and he was harassed and
+plundered on every side. America never presented a more shameful
+spectacle than was exhibited when the courts of the cotton-growing
+regions united with the piratical infringers of Whitney's rights in
+robbing their greatest benefactor. In 1807, Whitney's partner died, and
+his factory was destroyed by fire. In the same year his patent expired,
+and he sought its renewal from Congress. Here again he was met with the
+ingratitude of the cotton States. The Southern members, then all
+powerful in the Government, united in opposing the extension of his
+patent, and his petition was rejected. At the same time a report was
+industriously circulated that his machine injured the fiber of the
+cotton; but it is a significant fact that, although the planters
+insisted vehemently upon this assertion while Whitney was seeking an
+extension of his patent, not one of them discontinued the use of his
+machine, or sought to remedy the alleged defect.
+
+Whitney, thoroughly disheartened, now abandoned the manufacture of
+cotton gins in disgust, wound up his affairs, and found himself a poor
+man. In spite of the far-reaching benefits of his invention, he had not
+realized one dollar above his expenses. He had given millions upon
+millions of dollars to the cotton-growing States, he had opened the way
+for the establishment of the vast cotton-spinning interests of his own
+country and Europe, and yet, after fourteen years of hard labor, he was
+a poor man, the victim of a wealthy, powerful, and, in his case, a
+dishonest class, who had robbed him of his rights and of the fortune he
+had so fairly earned. Truly, "wisdom is better than strength, but the
+poor man's wisdom is despised."
+
+Whitney, however, was not the man to waste his time in repining. He
+abandoned his efforts to protect his cotton gin because of his
+conviction that there was not honesty enough in the country to sustain
+him in his rights, but he did not abandon with it the idea of winning
+fortune. He promptly turned his genius in another direction, and this
+time with success.
+
+The fire-arms then in use were heavy, clumsy weapons, and effective only
+at very short range. He examined the system closely, and quickly
+designed several important improvements in them, especially in the
+old-fashioned musket. Although his improved arms were not to be compared
+with the terribly effective weapons of to-day, they were admitted to be
+the best then in use. By examining the Springfield musket, which is due
+almost entirely to his genius, the reader can form an accurate estimate
+of the service he rendered in this respect. He has the honor of being
+the inaugurator of the system of progressive improvement in fire-arms,
+which has gone on steadily and without flagging for now fully sixty
+years past.
+
+Some time before abandoning the manufacture of the cotton gin, Mr.
+Whitney established an arms factory in New Haven, and obtained a
+contract from the Government for ten thousand stand of arms, to be
+delivered in two years. At this time he not only had to manufacture the
+machinery needed by him for this purpose, but had to invent the greater
+part of it. This delayed the execution of his contract for eight years,
+but at the expiration of that time he had so far perfected his
+establishment, which had been removed to Whitneyville, Conn., that he at
+once entered into contracts for thirty thousand more arms, which he
+delivered promptly at the appointed time. His factory was the most
+complete in the country, and was fitted up in a great measure with the
+machinery which he had invented, and without which the improved weapons
+could not be fabricated. He introduced a new system into the
+manufacture of fire-arms, and one which greatly increased the rapidity
+of construction. "He was the first manufacturer of fire-arms who carried
+the division of labor to the extent of leaking it the duty of each
+workman to perform by machinery but one or two operations on a single
+portion of the gun, and thus rendered all the parts adapted to any one
+of the thousands of arms in process of manufacture at the same time."
+
+His success was now marked and rapid. His factory was taxed to its
+fullest capacity to supply the demand for arms. His genius was rewarded
+at last, and he acquired a fortune which enabled him not only to pass
+the evening of his days in comfort, but also to leave a handsome estate
+to his family. He married a daughter of Judge Pierpont Edwards, a lady
+of fine accomplishments and high character. He died at New Haven on the
+8th of January, 1825, in his sixtieth year.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+CHAUNCEY JEROME.
+
+
+Any readers of these pages doubtless remember the huge old-fashioned
+clocks, tower-like in shape, that in the days of their childhood
+ornamented the remote corner of the hall, or stood solemnly near the
+chimney in the sitting-room of the old homestead,--such a clock as that
+which greeted little Paul Dombey, when he commenced to be a man, with
+its "How, is, my, lit, tle, friend?--how, is, my, lit, tle, friend?"
+Very different from the bright, pretty timepieces of to-day, which go
+ticking away, as if running a race with time, was the clock of the olden
+days, as it stood, solemn and dark, in its accustomed corner, from which
+the strength of two men was necessary to move it, sending the sound of
+its slow, steady strokes into all parts of the house. And in the night,
+when all within was still, how its deep beats throbbed in the dark hall
+louder and sterner even than in the day. There was something eminently
+respectable about an old clock of this kind, and it would have been
+audacity unheard of for any member of the family to doubt its
+reliability. Set once a year, it was expected to retain its steady-going
+habits for the rest of the twelvemonth. You dared not charge it with
+being slow; and as for being too fast, why, the very idea was absurd.
+There was sure to be some white-capped, silver-haired old lady, whose
+long years had been counted by the venerable pendulum with unerring
+precision, ready to defend the cause of the clock, to vouch for its
+accuracy, and to plead its cause so well and so skillfully, that you
+were ready to hide your face in shame at the thought of having even
+suspected the veracity of so venerable and so honored an institution.
+
+Truth to say, however, these old clocks, to the masses of the people of
+this country, were objects of admiration, and nothing more; for their
+exceeding high price placed them beyond the reach of all save the
+wealthier classes. A good clock cost from seventy-five to one hundred
+and fifty dollars, and the most indifferent article in the market could
+not be obtained for less than twenty-five dollars. At the opening of the
+present century, the demand for them was so small that but three hundred
+and fifty clocks were made in the State of Connecticut, which was then,
+as at present, the one most largely engaged in this branch of American
+industry. To-day the annual manufacture of Connecticut is about six
+hundred thousand clocks of all kinds, which command a wholesale price of
+from fifty cents upward, the greater number bringing the maker less than
+five dollars. Thus the reader will see that, while the business of the
+clock-maker has prospered so extraordinarily, valuable timepieces have
+been brought within the reach of even the poorest.
+
+The man to whom the country is indebted for this wonderful and
+beneficial increase is CHAUNCEY JEROME, who was born at Canaan,
+Connecticut, in 1793. His father was a blacksmith and nail-maker, to
+which trade he added the cultivation of the little farm on which he
+lived; and being poor, it was necessary for him to labor hard in all his
+callings in order to provide his family with a plain subsistence. Young
+Chauncey had little or no time given him for acquiring an education.
+
+He learned to read and write, but went no further; for, when he was but
+a little more than seven years old, and barely able to do the lightest
+kind of labor, he was put to work on the farm to help his father, who
+kept him at this until he was nine, when he took him into his shop. All
+the nails then in use were made by hand, for there were no huge iron
+works in the country to send them out by the ton; and such articles were
+scarce and high. The boy was set to work to make nails, and for two
+years pursued his vocation steadily. He was a manly little fellow, and
+worked at his hammer and anvil with a will, resolved that he would
+become thorough master of his trade; but when he had reached the age of
+eleven, the sudden death of his father made an entire change in his
+career, and threw him upon the world a helpless and penniless orphan.
+
+In order to earn his bread, he hired himself to a farmer, receiving for
+his labor nothing but his "victuals and clothes," the latter being of
+the plainest and scantiest kind. He worked very hard; but his employer
+was cold and indifferent to him at all times, and occasionally used him
+very badly. The boy was naturally of a cheerful disposition, and it did
+him good service now in helping to sustain him in his hard lot. Four
+years were passed in this way, and when he was fifteen years old his
+guardian informed him that he had now reached an age when he must begin
+his apprenticeship to some regular trade.
+
+The boy was very anxious to learn clock-making, and begged his guardian
+to apprentice him to that trade; but the wise individual who controlled
+his affairs replied, sagely, that clock-making was a business in which
+he would starve, as it was already overdone in Connecticut. There was
+one man, he said, engaged in that trade who had been silly enough to
+make two hundred clocks in one year, and he added that it would take the
+foolish man a life-time to sell them, or if they went off quickly, the
+market would be so glutted that no dealer would have need to increase
+his stock for years to come. Clock-making, he informed the boy, had
+already reached the limit of its expansion in Connecticut, and offered
+no opportunities at all. The carpenter's trade, on the other hand, was
+never crowded with good workmen, and always offered the prospect of
+success to any enterprising and competent man. It was the custom then to
+regard boys as little animals, possessed of a capacity for hard work,
+but without any reasoning powers of their own. To the adage that
+"children should be seen and not heard," the good people of that day
+added another clause, in effect, "and should never pretend to think for
+themselves." It was this profound conviction that induced parents and
+guardians, in so many instances, to disregard the wishes of the children
+committed to their care, and to condemn so many to lives for which they
+were utterly unfitted. So it was with the guardian of Chauncey Jerome.
+He listened to the boy's expression of a preference, it is true, but
+paid no attention to it, and ended by apprenticing his ward to a
+carpenter.
+
+The life of an apprentice is always hard, and in those days it was
+especially so. No negro slave ever worked harder, and but few fared
+worse, so far as their bodily comfort was concerned, than the New
+England apprentices of the olden time. Masters seemed almost to regard
+the lads indentured to them as their property, and in return for the
+support they gave them exacted from them the maximum amount of work they
+were capable of performing. They granted them no privileges, allowed
+them no holidays, except those required by the law, and never permitted
+the slightest approach to laziness. Chauncey Jerome's master proved no
+exception to the rule, and when the boy exhibited an unusual proficiency
+and quickness in his trade, the only notice his employer took of it was
+to require more work of him. When only a little over sixteen years old,
+this boy was able to do the work of a full-grown man, and a man's work
+was rigorously exacted of him. When sent to work at a distance from his
+employer's home, he invariably had to make the entire journey on foot,
+with his tools on his back, sometimes being required to go as far as
+thirty miles in one day in this way. His mother was living at some
+distance from the place where his master resided, and whenever he
+visited her, he had to walk all night in order to avoid using his
+master's time, not one hour of which was allowed him.
+
+In 1811, he informed his master that he was willing to undertake to
+clothe himself if he could have the five months of the cold season to
+himself. As this part of the year was always a dull period, and
+apprentices were little more than an expense to their masters, young
+Jerome's employer promptly consented to the proposed arrangement.
+Jerome, now eighteen years old, had never relinquished his old desire to
+become a clock-maker. He had watched the market closely, and questioned
+the persons engaged in the business, and he found that, so far from the
+market being over-stocked, there was a ready sale for every clock made.
+Greatly encouraged by this, he resolved to devote the five months of his
+freedom to learning the business, and to apply himself entirely to it at
+the expiration of his apprenticeship. As soon as he had concluded his
+bargain with his master, he set out for Waterbury on foot, and upon
+arriving there, sought and obtained work from a man who made clock-dials
+for the manufacturers of clocks.
+
+He worked with his new employer awhile, and then formed an arrangement
+with two journeymen clock-makers. Having perfected their plans, the
+three set out for New Jersey in a lumber wagon, carrying their
+provisions with them. The two clock-makers were to make and set up the
+works, and Jerome was to make the cases whenever they should succeed in
+selling a clock on their journey. Clock-making was then considered
+almost perfect. It had been reduced to a regular system, and the cost of
+construction had been very greatly lessened. A good clock, with a case
+seven feet high, could now be made for forty dollars, at which price it
+yielded a fair profit to the maker. The three young men were tolerably
+successful in their venture. Jerome worked fifteen hours a day at
+case-making, and by living economically, managed to carry some money
+with him when he went back to his master's shop in the spring. For the
+remaining three years of his apprenticeship he employed his winters in
+learning the various branches of clock-making, and not only earned
+enough money to clothe himself, but laid by a modest sum besides.
+
+In 1814, being twenty-one years of age and his own master, he set up a
+carpenter shop of his own, being not yet sufficiently master of
+clock-making to undertake that on his own account. In 1815, he married.
+Times were hard. The war with England had just ended, and labor was
+poorly compensated. He is said at this time to have "finished the whole
+interior of a three-story house, including twenty-seven doors and an oak
+floor, nothing being found for him but the timber," for the beggarly sum
+of eighty-seven dollars--a task which no builder would undertake to-day
+for less than a thousand dollars. Still, he declared that, in spite of
+this poor rate of compensation, he was enabled to save enough to make a
+partial payment on a small dwelling for himself. It required a constant
+struggle, however, to live at this rate, and in the winter of 1816,
+being out of work, and having a payment on his house to meet in the
+spring, he determined to go to Baltimore to seek work during the winter.
+He was on the eve of starting, when he learned that Mr. Eli Terry, the
+inventor of the wooden clocks which were so popular fifty years ago, was
+about to open a large factory for them in an adjoining town. He walked
+to the town, and made his application to Mr. Terry, who at once engaged
+him at liberal wages. Mr. Terry's factory was then the largest in the
+country, and, as he used wooden instead of metal works, he was able to
+manufacture his best clocks at fifteen dollars, and other grades in
+proportion. This reduction in price largely increased the sale of his
+clocks, and in a comparatively short time after opening his factory, Mr.
+Terry made and sold about six thousand clocks a year.
+
+Jerome was determined that he would spare no pains to make himself
+master of every detail of clock-making, and applied himself to the
+business with so much intelligence and energy, that by the spring of
+1817 he felt himself competent to undertake their manufacture on his own
+account. He began his operations very cautiously, at first buying the
+works already made, putting them together, and making the cases himself.
+When he had finished two or three, he would carry them about for sale,
+and as his work was well done, he rarely had any difficulty in disposing
+of them. Gradually he increased his business, and in a year or two was
+able to sell every clock he could make, which kept him constantly busy.
+A Southern dealer having seen one of his clocks, was so well pleased
+with it that he gave the maker an order for twelve exactly like it,
+which the latter agreed to furnish at twelve dollars each. It was an
+enormous order to Jerome, and seemed to him almost too good to be real.
+He completed the clocks at the stipulated time, and conveyed them in a
+farmer's wagon to the place where the purchaser had agreed to receive
+them. The money was paid to him in silver, and as the broad pieces were
+counted into his hand, he was almost ready to weep for joy. One hundred
+and forty-four dollars was the largest sum he had ever possessed at one
+time, and it seemed almost a fortune to him. His clocks were taken to
+Charleston, South Carolina, and sold. They gave entire satisfaction; and
+when, some years later, he commenced to ship regular consignments to the
+Southern cities, he found no difficulty in disposing of his wares.
+
+Mr. Jerome's success was now more decided. He was enabled to pay for his
+house in a short time, and having, soon afterward, an opportunity to
+dispose of it at a fair profit, he did so, and took clock-works in
+payment. He bought land and timber, and paid for them in clocks, and his
+affairs prospered so well that, before long, he began to employ workmen
+to assist him, and to dispose of his clocks to peddlers and merchants,
+instead of carrying them around for sale himself. As his business
+increased, he invented and patented labor-saving machinery for the
+manufacture of the various parts of the clock, and thus greatly
+decreased the cost of construction. He designed new and ornamental
+cases, and exerted himself to render the exterior of his clocks as
+tasteful and attractive as possible. His business now increased rapidly,
+and he was soon compelled to take in a partner. He began to ship his
+clocks to the Southern States, sending them by sea. They met with a
+ready sale, but all his ventures of this kind were subject to serious
+risks. The works, being of wood, would frequently become damp and
+swollen on the voyage, thus rendering them unfit for use. Mr. Jerome
+endeavored in various ways to remedy this defect, but was finally
+compelled to admit that, until he could change the nature of the wood,
+he could not prevent it from being influenced by moisture.
+
+He passed many sleepless nights while engaged in seeking this remedy,
+for he plainly foresaw that unless the defect could be removed, the days
+of the wooden clock business were numbered.
+
+In the midst of his depression, the idea occurred to him, one night
+while lying awake, that the works of a clock could be manufactured as
+cheaply of brass as of wood. The thought came to him with the force of a
+revelation. He sprang out of bed, lit his candle, and passed the rest of
+the night in making calculations which proved to him that he could not
+only make brass works as cheaply as wooden ones, but, by the employment
+of certain labor-saving machinery, at a cost decidedly less. There was
+one important obstacle in his way, however. The machinery requisite for
+cutting brass works cheaply was not in existence. Before making known
+his plans, Mr. Jerome set to work to invent the clock-making machinery
+which has made him famous among American inventors. When he had
+completed it, he commenced to make brass clocks, which he sold at such a
+low price that wooden clocks were speedily driven out of the market.
+Little by little, he brought his machinery to perfection, applying it to
+the manufacture of all parts of the clock; and to-day, thanks to his
+patience and genius, clock-making in the United States has become a very
+simple affair. By the aid of Jerome's machinery, one man and one boy can
+saw veneers enough for three hundred clock cases in a single day. By the
+aid of this same machinery, six men can manufacture the works of one
+thousand clocks in a day; and a factory employing twenty-five workmen
+can turn out two thousand clocks per week. By the aid of this same
+machinery, the total cost of producing a good clock of small size has
+been brought down to forty cents.
+
+As the reader will suppose, Jerome made a large fortune--a princely
+fortune--for himself, and entirely revolutionized the clock-making trade
+of the Union. Thanks to him, scores of fortunes have been made by other
+manufacturers also, and American clocks have become famous all over the
+world for their excellence and cheapness. "Go where you will, in
+Europe, Asia, Africa, or America, you will be sure to come upon Yankee
+clocks. To England they go by the shipload. Germany, France, Russia,
+Spain, Italy, all take large quantities. Many have been sent to China
+and to the East Indies. At Jerusalem, Connecticut clocks tick on many a
+shelf, and travelers have found them far up the Nile, in Guinea, at the
+Cape of Good Hope, and in all the accessible places of South America."
+
+After conducting his business for some years, Mr. Jerome organized the
+Jerome Clock-Making Company, of New Haven. It began its operations with
+a large capital, and conducted them upon an extensive scale. In a few
+years Mr. Jerome retired from the active management of its affairs, but
+continued nominally at its head as its president. He built for himself
+an elegant mansion in New Haven, where he gathered about him his family
+and the friends which his sterling qualities and upright character had
+drawn to him, and here he hoped to pass the remainder of his days.
+
+He was doomed to a bitter disappointment. Although nominally at the head
+of the Clock Company, he left its control entirely to his partners, who,
+by injudicious management, brought it at length to the verge of
+bankruptcy. They made energetic efforts to ward off the final
+catastrophe, but without success, and in 1860, almost before Mr. Jerome
+was aware of the full extent of the trouble, the Company was ruined. Its
+liabilities were heavy, and every dollar's worth of Jerome's property
+was taken to meet them. Honest to the core, he gave up every thing. His
+elegant mansion was sold, and he was forced to remove to an humble
+cottage, a poorer man than when he had first set up for himself as a
+carpenter.
+
+He was not the man to repine, however, and he at once began to look
+about him for employment. He was sixty-seven years old, and it was hard
+to go out into the world to earn his bread again, but he bore his
+misfortunes bravely, and soon succeeded in obtaining the employment he
+desired. The great Clock Company of Chicago engaged him at a liberal
+salary to superintend their manufactory in that city, which position he
+still holds. The Company manufacture his own clocks, and are fortunate
+in having the benefit of his genius and experience. Were he a younger
+man, there can be no doubt that he would win a second fortune equal to
+that which was swept from him so cruelly, through no fault of his own.
+As it is, we can only venture to hope that his sturdy independence and
+indomitable energy will provide him with the means of passing the
+closing years of his life in comfort. Few men have done the world better
+service, or been more worthy of its rewards.
+
+[Illustration: ELIAS HOWE, JR.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+ELIAS HOWE, JR.
+
+
+One of the busiest parts of the busy thoroughfare of Broadway, in the
+city of New York, is the point of its intersection with Fourth Street.
+Thousands and tens of thousands of people pass and repass there daily,
+but few ever pause to look at the curious machine which stands in the
+window of the shop at the north-west corner of these two streets. This
+machine, clumsy and odd-looking as it is, nevertheless has a history
+which makes it one of the most interesting of all the sights of the
+great city. It is the first sewing-machine that was ever made.
+
+ELIAS HOWE, its maker, was born in the town of Spencer, Massachusetts,
+in 1819. He was one of eight children, and it was no small undertaking
+on the part of his father to provide a maintenance for such a household.
+Mr. Howe, Sen., was a farmer and miller, and, as was the custom at that
+time in the country towns of New England, carried on in his family some
+of those minor branches of industry suited to the capacity of children,
+with which New England abounds. When Elias was six years old, he was
+set, with his brothers and sisters, to sticking wire teeth through the
+leather straps used for making cotton cards. When he became old enough
+he assisted his father in his saw-mill and grist-mill, and during the
+winter months picked up a meager education at the district school. He
+has said that it was the rude and imperfect mills of his father that
+first turned his attention to machinery. He was not fitted for hard
+work, however, as he was frail in constitution and incapable of bearing
+much fatigue. Moreover, he inherited a species of lameness which proved
+a great obstacle to any undertaking on his part, and gave him no little
+trouble all through life. At the age of eleven he went to live out on
+the farm of a neighbor, but the labor proving too severe for him, he
+returned home and resumed his place in his father's mills, where he
+remained until he was sixteen years old.
+
+When at this age, he conceived an ardent desire to go to Lowell to seek
+his fortune. One of his friends had just returned from that place, and
+had given him such a wonderful description of the city and its huge
+mills, that he was eager to go there and see the marvel for himself.
+Obtaining his father's consent, he went to Lowell, and found employment
+as a learner in one of the large cotton-mills of the city. He remained
+there two years, when the great financial disaster of 1837 threw him out
+of employment and compelled him to look for work elsewhere. He obtained
+a place at Cambridge, in a machine-shop, and was put to work upon the
+new hemp-carding machinery of Professor Treadwell. His cousin, Nathaniel
+P. Banks, afterward governor of Massachusetts, member of Congress, and
+major-general, worked in the same shop with him, and boarded at the same
+house. Howe remained in Cambridge only a few months, however, and was
+then given a place in the machine-shop of Ari Davis, of Boston.
+
+At the age of twenty-one he married. This was a rash step for him, as
+his health was very delicate, and his earnings were but nine dollars per
+week. Three children were born to him in quick succession, and he found
+it no easy task to provide food, shelter, and clothing for his little
+family. The light-heartedness for which he had formerly been noted
+entirely deserted him, and he became sad and melancholy. His health did
+not improve, and it was with difficulty that he could perform his daily
+task. His strength was so slight that he would frequently return home
+from his day's work too much exhausted to eat. He could only go to bed,
+and in his agony he wished "to lie in bed forever and ever." Still he
+worked faithfully and conscientiously, for his wife and children were
+very dear to him; but he did so with a hopelessness which only those who
+have tasted the depths of poverty can understand.
+
+[Illustration: HOWE'S FIRST IDEA OF THE SEWING-MACHINE.]
+
+About this time he heard it said that the great necessity of the age was
+a machine for doing sewing. The immense amount of fatigue incurred and
+the delay in hand-sewing were obvious, and it was conceded by all who
+thought of the matter at all that the man who could invent a machine
+which would remove these difficulties would make a fortune. Howe's
+poverty inclined him to listen to these remarks with great interest. No
+man needed money more than he, and he was confident that his mechanical
+skill was of an order which made him as competent as any one else to
+achieve the task proposed. He set to work to accomplish it, and, as he
+knew well the dangers which surround an inventor, kept his own counsel.
+At his daily labor, in all his waking hours, and even in his dreams, he
+brooded over this invention. He spent many a wakeful night in these
+meditations, and his health was far from being benefited by this severe
+mental application. Success is not easily won in any great undertaking,
+and Elias Howe found that he had entered upon a task which required the
+greatest patience, perseverance, energy, and hopefulness. He watched his
+wife as she sewed, and his first effort was to devise a machine which
+should do what she was doing. He made a needle pointed at both ends,
+with the eye in the middle, that should work up and down through the
+cloth, and carry the thread through at each thrust; but his elaboration
+of this conception would not work satisfactorily. It was not until 1844,
+fully a year after he began the attempt to invent the machine, that he
+came to the conclusion that the movement of a machine need not of
+necessity be an imitation of the performance of the hand. It was plain
+to him that there must be another stitch, and that if he could discover
+it his difficulties would all be ended. A little later he conceived the
+idea of using two threads, and forming a stitch by the aid of a shuttle
+and a curved needle with the eye near the point. This was the triumph of
+his skill. He had now invented a perfect sewing-machine, and had
+discovered the essential principles of every subsequent modification of
+his conception. Satisfied that he had at length solved the problem, he
+constructed a rough model of his machine of wood and wire, in October,
+1844, and operated it to his perfect satisfaction. His invention is
+thus described:
+
+"He used a needle and a shuttle of novel construction, and combined them
+with holding surfaces, feed mechanism and other devices, as they had
+never before been brought together, in one machine One of the principal
+features of Mr. Howe's invention is the combination of a grooved needle,
+having an eye near its point, and vibrating in the direction of its
+length, with a side-pointed shuttle for effecting a locked stitch, and
+forming, with the threads, one on each side of the cloth, a firm and
+lasting seam not easily ripped. The main action of the machine consists
+in the interlocking of the loop, made by the thread carried in the point
+of the needle through the cloth, with another thread passed through this
+loop by means of a shuttle entering and leaving it at every stitch. The
+thread attached to this shuttle remains in the loop and secures the
+stitch as the needle is withdrawn to be ready to make the next one. At
+the same time the cloth, held by little projecting pins to the baster
+plate, is carried along with this by what is called the 'feed motion'
+just the length of a stitch, the distance being readily adjusted for
+finer or coarser work. .... The cloth is held in a vertical position in
+the machine, and the part to be sewed is pressed against the side of the
+shuttle-race by a presser plate hinged on its upper edge, and capable of
+exerting any required pressure on the cloth, according as the adjusting
+screw that regulates it is turned. A slot, or perforation through the
+plate, also extended through the side of the shuttle-race near the
+bottom, admits the passage of the needle; and when this is pushed in the
+shuttle can still pass freely over it. The shuttle is pushed one way and
+then the other through its race or trough by picker staves. The thread
+for the needle is supplied by a bobbin, the movement of which is
+checked by a friction band, this securing the proper tension, and the
+slack of the thread is duly taken up by a suitable contrivance for the
+purpose. Thus, all the essential features of the most approved
+sewing-machine were first found in that of Mr. Howe; and the machines of
+later date are, in fact, but modifications of it."
+
+At this time, he had abandoned his work as a journeyman mechanic, and
+had removed to his father's house. Mr. Howe, Sen., had established in
+Cambridge a machine-shop for the cutting of strips of palm-leaf used in
+the manufacture of hats. Elias and his family lived under his father's
+roof, and in the garret of the house the half-sick inventor put up a
+lathe, where he did a little work on his own account, and labored on his
+sewing-machine. He was miserably poor, and could scarcely earn enough to
+provide food for his family; and, to make matters worse, his father, who
+was disposed to help him, lost his shop and its contents by fire. Poor
+Elias was in a most deplorable condition. He had his model in his head,
+and was fully satisfied of its excellence, but he had not the money to
+buy the materials needed in making a perfect machine, which would have
+to be constructed of steel and iron, and without which he could not hope
+to convince others of its value. His great invention was useless to him
+without the five hundred dollars which he needed in the construction of
+a working model.
+
+In this dilemma, he applied to a friend, Mr. George Fisher, a coal and
+wood merchant of Cambridge, who was a man of some means. He explained
+his invention to him, and succeeded in forming a partnership with him.
+Fisher agreed to take Howe and his family to board with him while the
+latter was making the machine, to allow his garret to be used as a
+workshop, and to advance the five hundred dollars necessary for the
+purchase of tools and the construction of a model. In return for this he
+was to receive one-half of the patent, if Howe succeeded in patenting
+his machine. About the first of December, 1844, Howe and his family
+accordingly moved into Fisher's house, and the little workshop was set
+up in the garret. All that winter he worked on his model. There was
+little to delay him in its construction, as the conception was perfectly
+clear in his mind. He worked all day, and sometimes nearly all night,
+and in April, 1845, had his machine so far advanced that he sewed a seam
+with it. By the middle of May the machine was completed, and in July he
+sewed with it the seams of two woolen suits, one for himself and the
+other for Mr. Fisher. The sewing was so well done that it outlasted the
+cloth.
+
+It has been stated by Professor Renwick and other scientific men that
+Elias Howe "carried the invention of the sewing-machine further on
+toward its complete and final utility than any other inventor has ever
+brought a first-rate invention at the first trial." Those who doubt this
+assertion should examine the curious machine at the corner of Broadway
+and Fourth Street, and their doubts will be dispelled; for they will
+find in it all the essentials of the best sewing-machine of to-day.
+
+Having patented his machine, Howe endeavored to bring it into use. He
+was full of hope, and had no doubt that it would be adopted at once by
+those who were so much interested in the saving of labor. He first
+offered it to the tailors of Boston; but they, while admitting its
+usefulness, told him it would never be adopted by their trade, as it
+would ruin them. Considering the number of machines now used by the
+tailoring interest throughout the world, this assertion seems
+ridiculous. Other efforts were equally unsuccessful. Every one admitted
+and praised the ingenuity of the machine but no one would invest a
+dollar in it. Fisher became disgusted, and withdrew from his
+partnership, and Howe and his family moved back to his father's house.
+Thoroughly disheartened, he abandoned his machine. He then obtained a
+place as engineer on a railroad, and drove a locomotive until his health
+entirely broke down.
+
+With the loss of his health his hopes revived, and he determined to seek
+in England the victory which he had failed to win here. Unable to go
+himself, he sent his machine by his brother Amasa, in October, 1846.
+Upon reaching London, Amasa sought out Mr. William Thomas, of Cheapside,
+and explained to him his brother's invention. He found Mr. Thomas
+willing to use the machine in his business, but upon terms more
+favorable to himself than to the inventor. He offered the sum of twelve
+hundred and fifty dollars for the machine which Amasa Howe had brought
+with him, and agreed to pay Elias fifteen dollars per week if he would
+enter his service, and adapt the machine to his business of umbrella and
+corset making. As this was his only hope of earning a livelihood, Elias
+accepted the offer, and, upon his brother's return to the United States,
+sailed for England. He remained in Mr. Thomas's employ for about eight
+months, and at the end of that time left him, having found him hard,
+exacting, and unreasonable.
+
+Meanwhile his sick wife and three children had joined him in London, and
+he had found it hard to provide for them on the wages given him by Mr.
+Thomas; but after being thrown out of employment his condition was
+desperate indeed. He was in a strange country, without friends or money,
+and often he and his little family went whole days without food. Their
+sufferings were very great, but at length Howe was able (probably by
+assistance from home) to send his family back to his father's house. He
+himself remained in London, still hoping to bring his machine into use.
+It was in vain, however, and so, collecting what few household goods he
+had acquired in England, he shipped them to America, and followed them
+thither himself in another vessel, pawning his model and patent papers
+to pay his passage. When he landed in New York he had half a crown in
+his pocket, and there came to him on the same day a letter telling him
+that his wife was dying with consumption in Cambridge. He could not go
+to her at once, as he had no money, and was too feeble to undertake the
+distance on foot. He was compelled to wait several days until he could
+obtain the money for his fare to Cambridge, but at length succeeded in
+reaching that place just in time to see his wife die. In the midst of
+his grief he received the announcement that the vessel containing the
+few household goods which he had shipped from England had been lost at
+sea. It seemed to him that Fate was bent upon destroying him, so rapid
+and stunning were the blows she dealt him.
+
+But a great success was now in store for him, and he was to rise out of
+his troubles to the realization of his brightest hopes. Soon after his
+return home he obtained profitable employment, and, better still,
+discovered that his machine had become famous during his absence.
+Facsimiles of it had been constructed by unscrupulous mechanics, who
+paid no attention to the patents of the^inventor, and these copies had
+been exhibited in many places as "wonders," and had even been adopted in
+many important branches of manufacture. Howe at once set to work to
+defend his rights. He found friends to aid him, and in August, 1850,
+began those famous suits which continued for four years, and were at
+length decided in his favor. His adversaries made a bold resistance, but
+the decision of Judge Sprague, in 1854, settled the matter, and
+triumphantly established the rights of the inventor.
+
+In 1850, Howe removed to New York, and began in a small way to
+manufacture machines to order. He was in partnership with a Mr. Bliss,
+but for several years the business was so unimportant that upon the
+death of his partner, in 1855, he was enabled to buy out that
+gentleman's interest, and thus become the sole proprietor of his patent.
+Soon after this his business began to increase, and continued until his
+own proper profits and the royalty which the courts compelled other
+manufacturers to pay him for the use of his invention grew from $300 to
+$200,000 per annum. In 1867, when the extension of his patent expired,
+it is stated that he had earned a total of two millions of dollars by
+it. It cost him large sums to defend his rights, however, and he was
+very far from being as wealthy as was commonly supposed, although a very
+rich man.
+
+In the Paris Exposition of 1867, he exhibited his machines, and received
+the gold medal of the Exposition, and the Cross of the Legion of Honor,
+in addition, as a compliment to him as a manufacturer and inventor.
+
+He contributed money liberally to the aid of the Union in the late war,
+and enlisted as a private soldier in the Seventeenth Regiment of
+Connecticut Volunteers, with which command he went to the field,
+performing all the duties of his position until failing health compelled
+him to leave the service. Upon one occasion the Government was so much
+embarrassed that it could not pay the regiment of which he was a member.
+Mr. Howe promptly advanced the money, and his comrades were saved from
+the annoyances which would have attended the delay in paying them. He
+died at Brooklyn, Long Island, on the 3d of October, 1867.
+
+Mr. Howe will always rank among the most distinguished of American
+inventors; not only because of the unusual degree of completeness shown
+in his first conception of the sewing-machine, but because of the great
+benefits which have sprung from it. It has revolutionized the industry
+of the world, opened new sources of wealth to enterprise, and lightened
+the labor of hundreds of thousands of working people. Many a pale-faced,
+hollow-eyed woman, who formerly sat sewing her life away for a mere
+pittance, blesses the name of Elias Howe, and there is scarcely a
+community in the civilized world but contains the evidence of his
+genius, and honors him as the benefactor of the human race.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+RICHARD M. HOE.
+
+
+To write the complete history of the printing press would require years
+of patient labor and research, and a much larger space than the limits
+of the present work will permit. There are few subjects more attractive
+or more worthy of consideration than the history of this wonderful
+invention, which seems more like a romance than a narration of facts.
+The historian who should essay the task would be required to carry his
+reader back to the darkest ages of the world, and, beginning with the
+stamps used for affixing hieroglyphical characters to the now crumbling
+ruins of Egypt and Nineveh, trace the gradual development of the
+beneficent conception from the signets of the Israelites, and the stamps
+used by the Romans for marking certain kinds of merchandise, through the
+rude process of the Chinese, Japanese, and Tartars, to the invention of
+Johannes Guttenberg, and, finally, to the wonderful lightning
+steam-presses of to-day.
+
+In these pages it is not proposed to offer to the reader any such
+narrative. On the contrary, the story of the printing press will be
+taken up just as it was on the point of reaching its greatest
+perfection, since our subject concerns only the man who brought it to
+that state.
+
+This man, RICHARD MARCH HOE by name, was born in the city of New York,
+on the 12th of September, 1812. His father, Robert Hoe, was a native of
+the village of Hose, Leicester, England, and the son of a wealthy
+farmer. Disliking his father's pursuit, he apprenticed himself to a
+carpenter. When only sixteen years old, the elder Hoe purchased his
+indentures from his master and sailed for the United States. He was
+almost penniless when he reached New York, and in this condition entered
+the store of Mr. Grant Thorburn one day in search of employment. Mr.
+Thorburn manifested a sudden and strong liking to the youth, took him to
+his own house, and when he was prostrated with the yellow fever, during
+the epidemic of 1804, nursed him tenderly throughout. Setting to work
+immediately upon his arrival in New York, he made friends rapidly, and
+prospered in his trade so well that when but twenty years old he was
+able to marry. His bride was a daughter of Matthew Smith, of
+Westchester, and a sister of Peter Smith, the inventor of the hand
+printing press, which bears his name. With this gentleman and Matthew
+Smith, jr., his brother, Robert Hoe entered into partnership. Their
+business was that of carpentering and printers' joinery; but after Peter
+Smith had completed the invention of his hand press, it gradually grew
+into the manufacture of presses and printers' materials. Both of the
+brothers died in 1823, and Robert Hoe succeeded to the entire business.
+
+The manufactory of "Robert Hoe & Co." was originally located in the
+centre of the old block between Pearl and William Streets, and Pine
+Street and Maiden Lane. Soon after their establishment there, the city
+authorities ran Cedar Street right through their building, and they
+removed to Gold Street, near John. They have been twice burned out here,
+but still occupy these premises with their counting-room and lower shop.
+
+Printing by steam had long attracted the attention of persons engaged
+in the art, and many essays had been made in this direction by different
+inventors, both in this country and in Europe. The most successful
+results were the Adams press, the invention of Mr. Isaac Adams, of
+Boston, Mass., and the Napier press, that of a British artisan. It was
+the latter which was the means of identifying Mr. Hoe with the steam
+press.
+
+The Napier press was introduced into this country in 1830, by the
+proprietors of the _National Intelligencer_, but when it arrived, these
+gentlemen were not able to release it from the Custom-house. Major Noah,
+himself the proprietor of a newspaper, was at that time Collector of the
+port of New York, and he, being anxious to see the press in operation,
+requested Mr. Hoe to put it together. Mr. Hoe performed this task
+successfully, although the press was a novelty to him, and was permitted
+to take models of its various parts before it was reshipped to England.
+It was found to be a better press than any that had ever been seen in
+this country, and the _Commercial Advertiser,_ of New York, and the
+_Chronicle_, of Philadelphia, at once ordered duplicates of it from
+England.
+
+Mr. Hoe was very much pleased with this press, but believed that he
+could construct a much better one. "To this end he despatched his new
+partner, Mr. Sereno Newton, to England to examine all the improvements
+in machinery there, and bring home samples of such as he thought might
+be advantageously adopted in this country. Mr. Newton, besides being an
+ingenious mechanic, was well-read in books, and was considered one of
+the first mathematicians in New York. Returning from his mission, he
+constructed a new two-cylinder press, which soon superseded all others
+then in use." Mr. Hoe's health failed, compelling him, in 1832, to
+retire from the business.
+
+Young Richard M. Hoe had been brought up in his father's business,
+after receiving a fair education. He inherited his father's inventive
+genius, combined with a rare business capacity, and from the first was
+regarded as the future hope of the establishment. Upon the withdrawal of
+his father, a partnership was established between himself, his brother
+Robert, Mr. Newton, and his cousin Matthew Smith, but the style of the
+firm remained unchanged.
+
+Richard Hoe's first invention was conceived in 1837, and consisted of a
+valuable improvement in the manufacture of grinding saws. Having
+obtained a patent for it in the United States, he visited England in
+that year for the same purpose. By his process circular saws may be
+ground with accuracy to any desired thickness. He readily obtained a
+patent in England, as the excellence of his invention commended it to
+every one. While there he gave especial attention to the improvements
+which had been made in the printing press, in the manufacture of which
+his firm was still largely engaged. Returning to New York, he devoted
+himself entirely to this branch of his business, and soon produced the
+machine known as "Hoe's Double-Cylinder Press," which was capable of
+making about six thousand impressions per hour. The first press of this
+kind ever made was ordered by the New York _Sun_, and was the admiration
+of all the printers of the city. This style of press is now used
+extensively for printing country newspapers.
+
+As long as the newspaper interest of the country stood still, "Hoe's
+Double-Cylinder Press" was amply sufficient for its wants, but as the
+circulation of the journals of the large cities began to increase, the
+"double-cylinder" was often taxed far beyond its powers. A printing
+press capable of striking off papers with much greater rapidity was felt
+to be an imperative and still-increasing need. It was often necessary
+to hold the forms back until nearly daylight for the purpose of issuing
+the latest news, and in the hurry which ensued to get out the morning
+edition, the press very frequently met with accidents.
+
+Mr. Hoe was fully alive to the importance of improving his press, and,
+in 1842, he began to experiment with it for the purpose of obtaining
+greater speed. It was a serious undertaking, however, and at every step
+fresh difficulties arose. He spent four years in experimenting, and at
+the end of that time was almost ready to confess that the obstacles were
+too great to be overcome. One night, in. 1846, while in this mood, he
+resumed his experiments. The more he pondered over the subject the more
+difficult it seemed. In despair, he was about to relinquish the effort
+for the night, when suddenly there flashed across his mind a plan for
+securing the type on a horizontal cylinder. This had been his great
+difficulty, and he now felt that he had mastered it. He sat up all
+night, working out his design, and making a note of every idea that
+occurred to him, in order that nothing should escape him. By morning the
+problem which had baffled him so long had been solved, and the
+magnificent "Lightning Press" already had a being in the inventor's
+fertile brain.
+
+He carried his model rapidly to perfection, and, proceeding with it to
+Washington, obtained a patent. On his return home he met Mr. Swain, the
+proprietor of the Baltimore _Sun_ and Philadelphia _Ledger_, and
+explained his invention to him. Mr. Swain was so much pleased with it
+that he at once ordered a four-cylinder press, which was completed and
+ready for use on the 31st of December, 1848. This press was capable of
+making ten thousand impressions per hour, and did its work with entire
+satisfaction in every respect.
+
+This was a success absolutely unprecedented--so marked, in fact, that
+some persons were inclined to doubt it. The news flew rapidly from city
+to city, and across the ocean to foreign lands, and soon wherever a
+newspaper was printed men were talking of Hoe's wonderful invention.
+Orders came pouring in upon the inventor with such rapidity that he soon
+had as many on hand as he could fill in several years. In a
+comparatively brief period the _Herald_, _Tribune_, and _Sun_, of New
+York, were boasting of their "Lightning Presses," and soon the
+_Traveller_ and _Daily Journal_, in Boston, followed their example. Mr.
+Hoe was now not only a famous man, but possessed of an assured business
+for the future, which was certain to result in a large fortune. By the
+year 1860, besides supplying the principal cities of the Union (fifteen
+lightning presses being used in the city of New York alone), he had
+shipped eighteen presses to Great Britain, four to France, and one to
+Australia. Two of the presses sent to England were ordered for the
+London _Times_.
+
+Mr. Hoe continued to improve his invention, adding additional cylinders
+as increased, speed was desired, and at length brought it to the degree
+of perfection exhibited in the splendid ten-cylinder press now in use in
+the offices of our leading journals, which strikes off twenty-five
+thousand sheets per hour. Whether more will be accomplished with this
+wonderful machine the future alone can determine, but the inventor is
+said to be still laboring to improve it.
+
+In 1858, Mr. Hoe purchased the patent rights and manufactory of Isaac
+Adams, in Boston, and since then has carried on the manufacture of the
+Adams press from that place. He has also established a manufactory in
+England, where he conducts a profitable business in both the Adams and
+the Hoe press. Over a million and a half of dollars are invested in
+these establishments in New York, Boston, and London, in land,
+buildings, and stock. The firm manufacture presses of all kinds, and
+all materials used by printers except type and ink. They also
+manufacture circular saws, made according to Mr. Hoe's process.
+
+Mr. Hoe, now fifty-eight years of age, is still as vigorous and active
+as many a younger man. Besides being one of the most prominent and
+distinguished inventors and manufacturers in the country, he is justly
+esteemed for his many virtues and his commanding business talents. He is
+still the active head of the house which he has carried to such a
+brilliant success, and is the possessor of an ample fortune, which his
+genius and industry have secured to him. He is courteous and obliging to
+all, and very liberal to those whose needs commend them to his
+benevolence.
+
+The ten-cylinder press costs fifty thousand dollars, and is regarded as
+cheap at that immense sum. It is one of the most interesting inventions
+ever made. Those who have seen it working in the subterranean
+press-rooms of the journals of the great metropolis will not soon forget
+the wonderful sight. The ear is deafened with the incessant clashing of
+the machinery; the printed sheets issue from the sides of the huge
+engine in an unceasing stream; the eye is bewildered with the mass of
+lines and bands; and it seems hard to realize that one single mind could
+ever have adjusted all the various parts to work harmoniously.
+
+The following is a description of the ten-cylinder steam printing-press
+now used in the office of the New York _World_. It is one of the best
+specimens of its kind to be seen in the great city:
+
+The dimensions of the press are as follows: Entire length, 40 feet;
+width, 15 feet; height, 16 feet. The large horizontal cylinder in the
+center is about 4-1/2 feet in diameter, and on it are placed the "forms" of
+type for the four pages of one side of the paper. Each of these
+constitutes a segment of a circle, and the whole four occupy a segment
+of only about one-fourth of the surface of the cylinder, the other
+three-fourths being used as an ink-distributing surface. Around this
+main cylinder, and parallel with it, are ten smaller impression
+cylinders, according to the number of which a press is termed a four,
+six, or ten-cylinder press. The large cylinder being set in revolution,
+the form of types is carried successively to all the impression
+cylinders, at each of which a sheet is introduced and receives the
+impression of the types as the form passes. Thus as many sheets are
+printed at each revolution of the main cylinder as there are impression
+cylinders around it. One person is required at each impression cylinder
+to supply the sheets of paper, which are taken at the proper moment by
+fingers or grippers, and after being printed are conveyed out by tapes
+and laid in heaps by means of self-acting flyers, thereby dispensing
+with the hands required in ordinary machines to receive and pile the
+sheets. The grippers hold the sheet securely, so that the thinnest
+newspaper can be printed without waste.
+
+The ink is contained in a fountain placed beneath the main cylinder, and
+is conveyed by means of distributing rollers to the distributing surface
+on the main cylinder. This surface being lower or less in diameter than
+the form of types, passes by the impression cylinders without touching
+them. For each impression there are two inking rollers, which receive
+their supply of ink from the distributing surface of the main cylinder,
+and raise and ink the form as it passes under them, after which they
+again fall to the distributing surface.
+
+Each page of the paper is locked up on a detached segment of the large
+cylinder, called by the compositors a "turtle," and this constitutes its
+bed and chase. The column-rules run parallel with the shaft of the
+cylinder, and are consequently straight, while the head, advertising,
+and dash-rules are in the form of segments of a circle. The column-rules
+are in the form of a wedge, with the thin part directed toward the axis
+of the cylinder, so as to bind the type securely, and at the same time
+to keep the ink from collecting between the types and the rules. They
+are held down to the bed by tongues projecting at intervals along their
+length, which slide into rebated grooves, cut crosswise in the face of
+the bed. The spaces in the grooves between the column-rules are
+accurately fitted with sliding blocks of metal even with the surface of
+the bed, the ends of the blocks being cut away underneath to receive a
+projection on the sides of the tongues of the column-rules. The form of
+type is locked up in the bed by means of screws at the foot and sides,
+by which the type is held as securely as in the ordinary manner upon a
+flat bed, if not even more so. The speed of the machine is limited only
+by the ability of the feeders to supply the sheets. Twenty-five hundred
+is about as many as a man can supply in an hour, and multiplying this by
+ten--one man being at each cylinder--we have 25,000 sheets an hour as
+the capacity of the press.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+SAMUEL COLT.
+
+
+Samuel Colt was born at Hartford, Connecticut, on the 19th of July,
+1814. He was descended from one of the original settlers of that city,
+and his father, who possessed some means, was a man of great energy,
+intelligence, and enterprise. The senior Colt began life as a merchant,
+and afterward became a manufacturer of woolen, cotton, and silk goods.
+The mother of our hero was the daughter of Major John Caldwell, a
+prominent banker of Hartford, and is said to have been a woman of
+superior character and fine mental attainments.
+
+It was within the power of the parents of Samuel Colt to give him a
+thorough education, and this they were anxious to do; but he was always
+so full of restless energy that he greatly preferred working in the
+factory to going to school. He loved to be where he could hear the busy
+looms at work, and see the play of the intricate machinery in the great
+building. In order to gratify him, his father placed him in his factory
+at the age of ten years, and there he remained for about three years,
+leaving it only at rare intervals and for short periods of time, which
+he passed in attendance upon school and working on a farm. When he was
+thirteen his father declared that he would not permit him to grow up
+without an education, and sent him to a boarding-school at Amherst,
+Massachusetts. He did not remain there long, for the spirit of adventure
+came over him with such force that he could not resist it. He ran away
+from school and shipped as a boy before the mast on a vessel bound for
+the East Indies. The ship was called the Coroo, and was commanded by
+Captain Spaulding.
+
+[Illustration: THE BOY COLT INVENTING THE REVOLVER.]
+
+The voyage was long, and the lad was subjected to great hardships, which
+soon convinced him that running away to sea was not as romantic in real
+life as in the books he had read, but his experience, though
+uncomfortable enough, failed to conquer his restless spirit. While at
+sea in the Coroo he had an abundance of leisure time for reflection, but
+instead of devoting it to meditating upon the folly of his course, he
+spent it in inventing a revolving pistol, a rough model of which he cut
+in wood with his jack-knife. This was the germ of the invention which
+afterward gave him such fame, and it is not a little singular that the
+conception of such a weapon should have come to a boy of fourteen.
+
+Returning home, he became an apprentice in his father's factory at
+Ware, Massachusetts. He was put into the dyeing and bleaching
+department, and was thoroughly trained in it by Mr. William T. Smith, a
+scientific man, and one of the best practical chemists in New England.
+Young Holt manifested a remarkable aptitude for chemistry, and when but
+a mere boy was known as one of the most successful and dexterous
+manipulators in New England.
+
+When he had reached his eighteenth year, the old spirit of restlessness
+came over him again, and he embarked in an unusually bold undertaking
+for one so young, in which, however, he was much favored by the
+circumstance that he was very much older in appearance than in reality,
+commonly passing for a full-grown man. Assuming the name of Dr. Coult,
+he traveled throughout the Union and British America, visiting nearly
+every town of two thousand inhabitants and over, lecturing upon
+chemistry, and illustrating his lectures with a series of skillful and
+highly popular experiments. His tour was entirely successful, and he
+realized in the two years over which it extended quite a handsome sum.
+The use which he made of the money thus acquired was characteristic of
+the man.
+
+He had never abandoned the design of a revolving pistol which he had
+conceived on board the Coroo, and he now set to work to perfect it,
+using the proceeds of his lectures to enable him to take out patents in
+this country and in Europe. He spent two years in working on his model,
+making improvements in it at every step, and by 1835 had brought it to
+such a state of excellence that he was enabled to apply for a patent in
+the United States. His application was successful. Before it was
+decided, however, he visited England and France, and patented his
+invention in those countries. Though now only twenty-one years old, he
+had given seven years of study and labor to his "revolver," and had
+brought it to a state of perfection which was far in advance of his
+early hopes.
+
+"At this time, and, indeed, for several years after, he was not aware
+that any person before himself had ever conceived the idea of a fire-arm
+with a rotating chambered breech. On a subsequent visit to Europe, while
+exploring the collection of fire-arms in the Tower of London and other
+repositories of weapons of war in England and on the continent, he found
+several guns having the chambered breech, but all were so constructed as
+to be of little practical value, being far more liable to explode
+prematurely and destroy the man who should use them than the objects at
+which they might be aimed. Unwilling, however, to seem to claim that
+which had been previously invented, he read before the Institution of
+Civil Engineers in England (of which he was the only American
+associate), in 1851, an elaborate paper on the subject, in which he
+described and illustrated, with appropriate drawings, the various early
+inventions of revolving fire-arms, and demonstrated the principles on
+which his were constructed."
+
+Having secured patents in the United States and in the principal
+countries of Europe, Mr. Colt exerted himself to organize a company for
+the manufacture of his revolver. He met with considerable opposition,
+for it was commonly asserted that his pistol would never be of any
+practical value. The wise ones said it was too complicated for general
+use, and that its adoption would be attended by the killing or maiming
+of the majority of those who used it. The inventor disregarded these
+birds of ill omen, however, and, persevering in his efforts, finally
+succeeded in securing the aid of some capitalists in New York. A company
+was formed in 1835, called the "Patent Arms Company," with a capital of
+$300,000, and an armory was established at Paterson, New Jersey. Mr.
+Colt then endeavored to induce the Government of the United States to
+adopt the arm in the military and naval service. Strange as it now
+seems, however, the officers of the army and navy were not disposed to
+regard the revolver with favor. They declared that the percussion cap
+was entirely unreliable, and that no weapon requiring it could be
+depended on with certainty; that there was great danger that two or more
+of the charges would explode at the same time; and that the arm was
+liable to get out of order very easily. They further protested that it
+was much more difficult to repair than the arms then in use, and that
+this alone rendered it unfit for adoption by the Government.
+Notwithstanding these objections were fully met by Mr. Colt, who
+explained carefully the principles of his weapon, it was two years
+before the Government consented to give the revolver a trial.
+
+In 1837, the Florida war raged with great violence, and the Seminoles,
+secure in their fastnesses in the Everglades, were enabled to bid
+defiance to all the efforts of the army of the United States. Their
+superior skill in the use of the rifle gave them an advantage which the
+bravery and determination of our troops could not overcome. In this
+emergency, the Government consented to make a trial of Colt's revolver.
+A regiment under Lieutenant-Colonel Harvey was armed with this weapon,
+and its success was so marked from the first that the Government
+promptly gave an order for more, and ended by making it the principal
+arm of the troops in Florida. The savages were astounded and
+disheartened at seeing the troops fire six or eight times without
+reloading; and when the war was brought to a close, as it soon was, it
+was plain to all that the revolver had played a decisive part in the
+struggle. It was a great triumph for Colonel Colt, but in the end proved
+a source of misfortune. The speedy termination of the war put an end to
+the demand for his weapon, and his business fell off so greatly that in
+1842 the Patent Arms Company was compelled to close its establishment
+and wind up its affairs.
+
+For five years none of the revolvers were manufactured, and, meanwhile,
+the stock which had been put in the market was entirely exhausted by the
+demand which had set in from Texas and the Indian frontier. In 1847 the
+war with Mexico began, and General Taylor, who had witnessed the
+performance of the revolver in Florida, was anxious to arm the Texan
+Rangers with that weapon. He sent Captain Walker, the commander of the
+Rangers, to Colonel Colt to purchase a supply. Walker was unsuccessful.
+Colt had parted with the last one that he possessed, and had not even a
+model to serve as a guide in making others. The Government now gave him
+an order for one thousand, which he agreed to make for $28,000; but
+there was still the difficulty caused by having no model to work by. In
+this dilemma, he advertised extensively for one of his old pistols, to
+serve as a model, but failing to procure one, was compelled to make a
+new model. This was really a fortunate circumstance, as he made several
+improvements in the weapon, which officers who had used it suggested to
+him, so that his weapons were very much better than the old ones. Having
+no factory of his own, Colonel Colt hired an armory at Whitneyville,
+near New Haven, where he produced the first thousand pistols ordered by
+the Government. These gave entire satisfaction, and further orders from
+the War Department came in rapidly. Colonel Colt now hired and fitted up
+larger and more complete workshops in Hartford, and began business on
+his own account, supplying promptly every order that was given him. The
+weapon proved most effective during the Mexican War, and the orders of
+the Government were sufficiently large to allow the inventor to reap a
+handsome profit from them, and lay the foundations of his subsequent
+business success.
+
+At the close of the war, Colonel Colt was apprehensive that the demand
+for his weapon would again drop off, as it had done after the Florida
+campaign; but he was agreeably disappointed. The success of the revolver
+in Mexico had made it generally and favorably known throughout the
+country, and there was now a steady and even a growing demand for it.
+The discovery of gold in California, which so quickly followed the
+cessation of hostilities, greatly stimulated this demand, for the most
+essential part of the gold seeker's outfit was a revolver; and the
+extraordinary emigration to Australia, which set in somewhat later,
+still further extended the market for his weapon. Convinced by this time
+that there would be no considerable falling off in his orders, Colonel
+Colt began to take steps to assure the permanency of his business.
+
+The experience of the American officers during the Mexican War enabled
+them to point out many improvements to the inventor, who promptly
+adopted them. This made his pistol almost a new weapon, and the most
+formidable small arm then in use. He obtained a new patent for it, as
+thus improved, and it was adopted by the Government as the regular arm
+of the army and navy, different sizes being made for each service. The
+Crimean and Indian wars, which followed soon after, brought the inventor
+large orders from the British Government, and during the next few years
+his weapon was formally introduced into the armies of the leading States
+of Europe.
+
+His success was so rapid that, as early as 1851, it became necessary to
+provide still more ample accommodations for his manufactory. The next
+year he began the execution of a plan, the magnitude of which caused
+many of his friends to tremble for his future prosperity. He resolved to
+build the largest and most perfect armory in the world, one which should
+enable him to manufacture his weapons with greater rapidity and nicety
+than had ever yet been possible.
+
+Just to the south of the Little or Mill River there was a piece of
+meadow land, about two hundred and fifty acres in extent, generally
+regarded as useless, in consequence of its being submerged every spring
+by the freshets in the river. Colonel Colt bought this meadow for a
+nominal sum, and, to the astonishment of the good people of Hartford,
+proceeded to surround it with a strong dike, or embankment. This
+embankment was two miles in length, one hundred and fifty feet wide at
+the base, from thirty to sixty feet wide at the top, and from ten to
+twenty-five feet high. Its strength was further increased by planting
+willows along the sides; and it was thoroughly tested just after its
+completion by a freshet of unusual severity. Having drained the meadow,
+Colonel Colt began the erection of his armory upon the land inclosed by
+the embankment. It was constructed of Portland stone, and consisted of
+three buildings--two long edifices, with a third connecting them in the
+center, the whole being in the form of the letter H. The front parallel
+was five hundred by sixty feet, the rear parallel five hundred by forty
+feet, and the central building two hundred and fifty by fifty feet--the
+front parallel and central building being three stories in height.
+Connected with these buildings were other smaller edifices for offices,
+warerooms, watchmen's houses, etc.
+
+In 1861, the demand for the arms had become so enormous that the armory
+was doubled in size, the new buildings being similar in style to the
+old. "In this establishment there is ample accommodation for the
+manufacture of one thousand fire-arms per day," which is more than the
+arsenals at Harper's Ferry and Springfield combined could turn out in
+the same time previous to the war. In 1861, Colt's armory turned out
+about one hundred and twenty thousand stand of arms, and in 1860, the
+two armories before mentioned made about thirty-five thousand between
+them. A portion of the armory at Hartford is devoted to the fabrication
+of the machinery invented by Colonel Colt for the manufacture of his
+pistols. This machinery is usually sold to all parties purchasing the
+right to manufacture the revolver. Colonel Colt supplied in this way a
+large part of the machinery used in the Government manufactory at
+Enfield, in England, and all of that used in the Imperial armory at
+Tulin, in Russia. Near the armory, and in the area inclosed by the dike,
+Colonel Colt erected a number of tasteful cottages for his workmen, and
+warehouses for other kinds of business. His entire expenditure upon his
+land and buildings here amounted to more than two million five hundred
+thousand dollars.
+
+"Among his other cares, the intellectual and social welfare of his
+numerous employés were not forgotten. Few mechanics are favored with as
+convenient residences as those he has erected for them; and a public
+hall, a library, courses of lectures, concerts, the organization of a
+fine band of music, formed entirely from his own workmen, to whom he
+presented a superb set of musical instruments, and of a military company
+of his operatives, provided by him with a tasteful uniform, and
+otherwise treated by him with great liberality, were among the methods
+by which he demonstrated his sympathy with the sons of toil."
+
+The Hartford armory is the largest and most complete in the world, in
+extent and perfection of machinery. All the articles needed with the
+revolver, such as the powder flask, balls, lubricator, bullet molds,
+cartridges, etc., are made here on a large scale. The establishment is a
+noble monument to the inventive genius and business capacity of its
+founder.
+
+In addition to his inventions of fire-arms, Colonel Colt invented a
+submarine battery, which was thoroughly tested by the officers of the
+United States Navy, and is said to be one of the most formidable engines
+for harbor defense ever known. He also invented a submarine telegraph
+cable, which he laid and operated with perfect success, in 1843, from
+Coney Island and Fire Island to the city of New York, and from the
+Merchants Exchange to the mouth of the harbor. His insulating material
+consisted of a combination of cotton yarn with asphaltum and beeswax;
+the whole was inclosed in a lead pipe. This was one of the most
+successful experiments of the early days of submarine telegraphy, and
+entitles Colonel Colt to a conspicuous place in the list of those who
+brought that science to perfection.
+
+After the permanent establishment of his business, in 1847 and 1848,
+Colonel Colt's success was rapid. He acquired a large fortune, and built
+an elegant and tasteful mansion in Hartford, where he resided,
+surrounded with all the luxuries of wealth and taste. In 1855, he
+married Miss Elizabeth Jarvis, daughter of the Rev. Dr. Jarvis, of
+Portland, Connecticut, a lady of great beauty and superior character and
+accomplishments. She still survives him.
+
+He repeatedly visited Europe after his settlement at Hartford, and as
+the excellence of his weapons had made his name famous the world over,
+he was the recipient of many attentions from the most distinguished
+soldiers of Europe, and even from some of the monarchs of the Old World.
+In 1856, being on a visit to Russia, with his family, he was invited
+with them to be present at the coronation of the Emperor Alexander II.
+He was decorated by nearly all the Governments of Europe, and by some of
+the Asiatic sovereigns, with orders of merit, diplomas, medals, and
+rings, in acknowledgment of the great services he had rendered to the
+world by his invention.
+
+He died, at his residence in Hartford, on the 10th of January, 1862, in
+the forty-eighth year of his age. The community of which he was a member
+lost in him one of its most enterprising and public-spirited citizens,
+and the country one of the best representatives of the American
+character it has ever produced.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+SAMUEL F.B. MORSE.
+
+
+Samuel Finley Breese Morse is the eldest son of the late Jedediah Morse,
+one of the most distinguished Presbyterian clergymen of New England. He
+was born at Charlestown, Massachusetts, on the 27th of April, 1791, was
+carefully educated in the common schools of his native town, and at an
+early age entered Yale College, where he graduated in 1810. He exhibited
+an early fondness for art as well as studies of a scientific character,
+and while a student at Yale displayed an especial aptness for chemistry
+and natural philosophy. Upon leaving college he decided to adopt the
+profession of an artist, and was sent abroad to study under the tuition
+of West and Copley and Allston.
+
+[Illustration: SAMUEL F.B. MORSE.]
+
+"When Allston was painting his 'Dead Man Restored to Life,' in London,"
+says Mr. Tuckerman, in his _Book of the Artists_, "he first modeled his
+figure in clay, and explained to Morse, who was then his pupil, the
+advantages resulting from a plan so frequently adopted by the old
+masters. His young countryman was at this time meditating his first
+composition--a dying Hercules--and proceeded at once to act upon this
+suggestion. Having prepared a model that exhibited the upper part of the
+body--which alone would be visible in the picture--he submitted it to
+Allston, who recognized so much truth in the anatomy and expression that
+he urgently advised its completion. After six weeks of careful labor,
+the statue was finished and sent to West for inspection. That venerable
+artist, upon entering the room, put on his spectacles, and as he walked
+around the model, carefully examining its details and general effect, a
+look of genuine satisfaction beamed from his face. He rang for an
+attendant and bade him call his son. 'Look here, Raphael,' he exclaimed,
+as the latter appeared; 'did I not always tell you that every painter
+could be a sculptor?' We may imagine the delight of the student at such
+commendation. The same day one of his fellow pupils called his attention
+to a notice issued by the Adelphi Society of Arts, offering a prize for
+the best single figure, to be modeled and sent to the rooms of the
+association within a certain period. The time fixed would expire in
+three days. Morse profited by the occasion, and placed his 'Dying
+Hercules' with the thirteen other specimens already entered. He was
+consequently invited to the meeting of the society on the evening when
+the decision was to be announced, and received from the hands of the
+Duke of Norfolk, the presiding officer, and in the presence of the
+foreign ambassadors, the gold medal. Perhaps no American ever started in
+the career of an artist under more flattering auspices; and we can not
+wonder that a beginning so successful encouraged the young painter to
+devote himself assiduously to study, with a view of returning to his own
+country fully prepared to illustrate the historical department of the
+art."
+
+Morse spent four years in Europe in close study, and was then obliged to
+return to America by lack of means to carry on his education in the Old
+World. He had not indeed reached the high degree of proficiency which he
+had hoped to obtain before returning home, but he was possessed of
+natural talents and acquired skill, which fairly entitled him to
+recognition as one of our leading artists. This recognition never came
+to him, however, and his artist life in this country was a series of
+sorrowful disappointments. He found no opportunity of devoting himself
+to the higher branches of his art, and was obliged to confine himself
+entirely to portrait painting as a means of livelihood. His artist
+career is thus referred to by Mr. Tuckerman:
+
+
+     "Morse went abroad under the care of Allston, and was the pupil of
+     West and Copley. Hence he is naturally regarded by a later
+     generation as the connecting bond that unites the present and the
+     past in the brief annals of our artist history. But his claim to
+     such recognition does not lie altogether in the fact that he was a
+     pioneer; it has been worthily evidenced by his constant devotion to
+     the great cause itself. Younger artists speak of him with affection
+     and respect, because he has ever been zealous in the promotion of a
+     taste for, and a study of, the fine arts. Having entered the field
+     at too early a period to realize the promise of his youth, and
+     driven by circumstances from the high aims he cherished,
+     misanthropy was never suffered to grow out of personal
+     disappointment. He gazed reverently upon the goal it was not
+     permitted him to reach, and ardently encouraged the spirit which he
+     felt was only to be developed when wealth and leisure had given his
+     countrymen opportunities to cultivate those tastes upon the
+     prevalence of which the advancement of his favorite pursuit
+     depends. When, after the failure of one of his elaborate projects,
+     he resolved to establish himself in New York, he was grieved to
+     find that many petty dissensions kept the artists from each other.
+     He made it his business to heal these wounds and reconcile the
+     animosities that thus retarded the progress of their common object.
+     He sought out and won the confidence of his isolated brothers, and
+     one evening invited them all to his room ostensibly to eat
+     strawberries and cream, but really to beguile them into something
+     like agreeable intercourse. He had experienced the good effect of a
+     drawing club at Charleston, where many of the members were
+     amateurs; and on the occasion referred to covered his table with
+     prints, and scattered inviting casts around the apartment. A very
+     pleasant evening was the result, a mutual understanding was
+     established, and weekly meetings unanimously agreed upon. This
+     auspicious gathering was the germ of the National Academy of
+     Design, of which Morse became the first president, and before which
+     he delivered the first course of lectures on the fine arts ever
+     given in this country."
+
+
+In 1829 Mr. Morse went abroad for the purpose of completing his art
+studies. He remained in Europe for more than three years, residing in
+the principal cities of the Continent. During his absence he was elected
+"Professor of the Literature of the Fine" in the University of the City
+of New York. He set out on his return home to accept this professorship
+in the autumn of 1832, sailing from Havre on board the packet-ship
+"Sully."
+
+As has been stated, he had manifested a decided fondness for Chemistry
+and Natural Philosophy while at Yale College, where he was a pupil of
+Professor Silliman in the former science, and of Professor Day in the
+latter, and after his departure from college he had devoted all his
+leisure time to the pursuit of these studies. So great was his fondness
+for them that some of his friends declared their belief that he ought to
+abandon art and devote himself to science. In 1826-27 he had delivered,
+at the Athenæum in New York, the course of fine-art lectures to which
+reference has been made, and on alternate nights of the same season
+Professor J. Freeman Dana had lectured upon electro-magnetism,
+illustrating his remarks with the first electro-magnet (on Sturgeon's
+principle) ever seen in this country. Morse and Dana had been intimate
+friends, and had often held long conversations upon the subject of
+magnetism, and the magnet referred to had at length been given to the
+former by Professor Torrey. The interest which he had thus conceived in
+this instrument had never diminished, and his investigations and studies
+had never ceased, so that at the time of his departure from France in
+the "Sully," in 1832, he was one of the best informed men upon the
+subject to be found in any country.
+
+Among his fellow-passengers were a number of persons of intelligence and
+cultivation, one of whom had but recently witnessed in Paris some highly
+interesting experiments with the electro-magnet, the object of which was
+to prove how readily the electric spark could be obtained from the
+magnet, and the rapidity with which it could be disseminated. To most of
+the passengers this relation was deeply interesting, but to all save one
+it was merely the recital of a curious experiment. That one exception
+was Mr. Morse. To him the development of this newly-discovered property
+of electricity was more than interesting. It showed him his true mission
+in life, the way to his true destiny. Art was not his proper field now,
+for however great his abilities as an artist, he was possessed of genius
+of a higher, more useful type, and it was henceforth his duty to employ
+it. He thought long and earnestly upon the subject which the words of
+his fellow-passenger had so freshly called up, pacing the deck under the
+silent stars, and rocked in his wakeful berth by the ocean whose terrors
+his genius was to tame, and whose vast depths his great invention was to
+set at naught. He had long been convinced that electricity was to
+furnish the means of rapid communication between distant points, of
+which the world was so much in need; and the experiments which his new
+acquaintance had witnessed in Paris removed from his mind the last doubt
+of the feasibility of the scheme. Being of an eminently practical
+character, he at once set to work to discover how this could be done,
+and succeeded so well that before the "Sully" reached New York he had
+conceived "not merely the idea of an electric telegraph, but of an
+electro-magnetic and chemical recording telegraph, substantially and
+essentially as it now exists," and had invented an alphabet of signs,
+the same in all important respects as that now in use. "The testimony to
+the paternity of the idea in Morse's mind, and to his acts and drawings
+on board the ship, is ample. His own testimony is corroborated by all
+the passengers (with a single exception), who testified with him before
+the courts, and was considered conclusive by the judges; and the date of
+1832 is therefore fixed by this evidence as the date of Morse's
+conception, and realization also--so far as the drawings could embody
+the conception--of the telegraph system which now bears his name."
+
+But though invented in 1832, it was not until 1835 (during which time he
+was engaged in the discharge of the duties of his professorship in the
+University of the City of New York) that he was enabled to complete his
+first recording instrument. This was but a poor, rude instrument, at the
+best, and was very far from being equal to his perfected invention. It
+embodied his idea, however, and was a good basis for subsequent
+improvements. By its aid he was able to send signals from a given point
+to the end of a wire half a mile in length, but as yet there was no
+means of receiving them back again from the other extremity. He
+continued to experiment on his invention, and made several improvements
+in it. It was plain from the first that he needed a duplicate of his
+instrument at the other end of his wire, but he was unable for a long
+time to have one made. At length he acquired the necessary funds, and
+in July, 1837, had a duplicate instrument constructed, and thus
+perfected his plan. His telegraph now worked to his entire satisfaction,
+and he could easily send his signals to the remote end of his line and
+receive replies in return, and answer signals sent from that terminus.
+Having brought it to a successful completion, he exhibited it to large
+audiences at the University of New York, in September, 1837. In October,
+1837, Professor Morse filed a caveat to secure his invention, but his
+patent was not obtained until 1840.
+
+He now entered upon that period of the inventor's life which has proved
+so disastrous to many, and so wearying and disheartening to all--the
+effort to bring his invention into general use. It was commonly believed
+that, although the invention was successful when used for such short
+distances as had been tried in the City of New York, it would fail when
+tested by longer lines. Morse was confident, however, that this was not
+the case, and in December, 1837, he went to Washington to solicit from
+the Government an appropriation for the construction of an experimental
+line from Washington City to Baltimore--a distance of forty miles. This
+line he declared would thoroughly test the practicability and utility of
+the telegraph. His petition was laid before Congress, and a committee
+appointed to consider it. He stated his plan to this body, and proved
+its practicability by actual experiments with his instruments.
+Considerable interest in the subject was thus aroused in Congress and
+throughout the country, but he derived no benefit from it. If men spoke
+of his telegraph, it was only to ridicule it, or to express their doubts
+of its success. This was especially the case in Congress, and it was
+very uncertain whether that body would sustain the report from the
+committee in favor of the invention. The session wore away in this
+manner, and at length ended without any action being taken in the
+matter.
+
+Having failed to secure the assistance of Congress, Professor Morse went
+to Europe in the spring of 1838, for the purpose of enlisting the aid of
+the governments there in bringing his invention into use. He was
+unsuccessful. In England a patent was refused him, and in France he
+merely obtained a worthless _brevet d'invention._ He tried several other
+countries, but was equally unsuccessful in all, and he returned home
+almost disheartened, but not entirely cast down. For four years he had
+to struggle hard for a living. He was very poor, and, as one of his
+friends has since declared, had literally "to coin his mind for bread."
+His sturdy independence of character would not allow him to accept
+assistance from any one, although there were friends ready and even
+anxious to help him in his troubles. Alone and manfully he fought his
+way through these dark days, still hopeful of success for his invention,
+and patiently seeking to improve it wherever opportunity presented
+itself. At length, in 1840, he received his long-delayed patent from the
+General Government, and, encouraged by this, determined to make another
+effort to bring his telegraph into use.
+
+He was not able to do so until the session of Congress of 1842-43, when
+he presented a second petition to that body, asking its aid in the
+construction of an experimental line between Baltimore and Washington.
+He had to encounter a great degree of skepticism and ridicule, with many
+other obstacles, not the least of which was the difficulty of meeting
+the expense of remaining in Washington and urging his invention upon the
+Government. Still he persevered, although it seemed to be hoping against
+hope, as the session drew near its close, and his scanty stock of money
+grew daily smaller. On the evening of the 3d of March, 1843, he
+returned from the Capitol to his lodgings utterly disheartened. It was
+the last night of the session, and nothing had been done in the matter
+of his petition. He sat up late into the night arranging his affairs so
+as to take his departure for home on the following day. It was useless
+to remain in Washington any longer. Congress would adjourn the next day,
+and his last hope of success had been shattered.
+
+On the morning of the 4th of March he came down to the breakfast-table
+gloomy and despondent. Taking up the morning journal, he ran over it
+listlessly. Suddenly his eye rested upon a paragraph which caused him to
+spring to his feet in complete amazement. It was an announcement that,
+at the very last hour of the session of the previous night, a bill had
+been passed by Congress appropriating the sum of thirty thousand dollars
+for the purpose of enabling Professor Morse to construct an experimental
+line of telegraph between Baltimore and Washington. He could scarcely
+believe it real, and, as soon as possible, hastened to the Capitol to
+seek authentic information. The statement was confirmed by the proper
+authorities, and Morse's dearest wish was realized. The hour of his
+triumph was at hand, and his long and patient waiting was rewarded at
+last.
+
+Work on the telegraph line was immediately begun, and carried on
+actively. At first, an insulated wire was buried under ground in a lead
+pipe, but this failing to give satisfaction, the wire was elevated upon
+poles. On the 27th of May, 1844, the line was completed, and the first
+trial of it made in the presence of the Government officials and many
+other distinguished men. Professor Morse was confident of success; but
+this occasion was a period of the most intense anxiety to him, for he
+knew that his entire future was staked upon the result of this hour.
+Among the company present to witness the trial was the Secretary of the
+Treasury, John C. Spencer. Although very much interested in the
+undertaking, he was entirely ignorant of the principles involved in it,
+and, therefore, very apprehensive of its failure. It was upon this
+occasion that he asked one of Professor Morse's assistants how large a
+bundle could be sent over the wires, and if the United States mail could
+not be sent in the same way.
+
+When all was in readiness, Professor Morse seated himself at the
+instrument, and sent his first message to Baltimore. An answer was
+promptly returned, and messages were sent and replies received with a
+rapidity and accuracy which placed the triumph of the invention beyond
+the possibility of doubt. Congratulations were showered upon the
+inventor, who received them as calmly as he had previously borne the
+scoffs of many of these same men. Yet his heart throbbed all the while
+with a brilliant triumph. Fame and fortune both rose proudly before him.
+He had won a great victory, and conferred a lasting benefit upon his
+race.
+
+The success of the experimental line brought Professor Morse numerous
+offers for the use of his invention. Telegraph companies were organized
+all over the country, and the stock issued by them was taken up as fast
+as offered. At the present day, not only the United States, but the
+whole world, is covered with telegraph lines. In July, 1862, just
+eighteen years after the completion of Morse's experimental line, it was
+estimated that the lines then in operation throughout the world amounted
+to an aggregate length of 150,000 miles. The Morse system is adopted on
+the principal lines of the United States, on all the lines of the
+Eastern continent, and exclusively on all the continental lines of
+Europe, "from the extreme Russian north to the Italian and Spanish
+south, eastward through the Turkish empire, south into Egypt and
+northern Africa, and through India, Australia, and parts of China."
+
+The rapid growth of the telegraph interest of the United States placed
+Professor Morse in the possession of a large fortune, which was greatly
+increased by the adoption of his invention in Europe. The countries
+which had refused him patents at first now did honor to his genius. Nor
+was he the only gainer by this. In France, especially, the benefits of
+his invention were great. The old system of semaphore telegraphs had
+been an annual expense to the government of that country of 1,100,000
+francs, but Morse's telegraph yielded to the French Government, in the
+first three years after its introduction, a total revenue of 6,000,000
+francs.
+
+Fortune was not Morse's only reward. Honors were showered upon him from
+all parts of the world. In 1848, his _alma mater_, Yale College,
+conferred on him the complimentary degree of LL.D., and since then he
+has been made a member of nearly all the American scientific and art
+academies. From European Governments and scientific and art associations
+he has received more honors than have ever fallen to the share of any
+other American. In 1848, he received from the Sultan of Turkey the
+decoration of the _Nishaun Iftiohar_ in diamonds, and subsequently gold
+medals of scientific merit were awarded him by the King of Prussia, the
+King of Würtemburg, and the Emperor of Austria. The gift of the King of
+Prussia was set in a massive gold snuff-box. In 1856, the Emperor
+Napoleon III gave him the Cross of Chevalier of the Legion of Honor; in
+1857, he received from the King of Denmark the Cross of Knight of the
+Danebrog; and in 1858, the Queen of Spain sent him the Cross of Knight
+Commander of the order of Isabella the Catholic. In 1859, a convention
+of the representatives of the various European powers met in Paris, at
+the instance of the Emperor Napoleon III, for the purpose of
+determining upon the best means of giving Professor Morse a collective
+testimonial. France, Russia, Sweden, Belgium, Holland, Austria,
+Sardinia, Tuscany, Turkey, and the Holy See were represented, and their
+deliberations resulted in the presentation to Professor Morse, in the
+name of their united governments, of the sum of 400,000 francs, as an
+honorary and personal reward for his labors. In 1856, the telegraph
+companies of Great Britain gave him a banquet in London, at which Mr.
+William Fothergill Corke, himself the distinguished inventor of a system
+of telegraphy, presided.
+
+Professor Morse is also the inventor of submarine telegraphy. In 1842,
+he laid the first submarine telegraph line ever put down, across the
+harbor of New York, and for this achievement received the gold medal of
+the American Institute. On the 10th of August, 1843, he addressed a
+communication to the Secretary of the Treasury, in which he avowed his
+belief that a telegraphic cable could and would be laid across the
+Atlantic ocean, for the purpose of connecting Europe and America. His
+words upon this occasion clearly prove that the idea of the Atlantic
+telegraph originated with him. They were as follows: "The practical
+inference from this law is, that a telegraphic communication on the
+electro-magnetic plan may with certainty be established across the
+Atlantic ocean. Startling as this may now seem, I am confident the time
+will come when this project will be realized."
+
+In February, 1854, Mr. Cyrus W. Field, of New York, ignorant of
+Professor Morse's views upon this subject, wrote to him to ask if he
+considered the working of a cable across the Atlantic practicable. The
+Professor at once sought an interview with Mr. Field, and assured him of
+his entire confidence in the undertaking. He entered heartily into Mr.
+Field's scheme, and rendered great aid in the noble enterprise which
+has been described elsewhere in these pages. He was present at each
+attempt to lay the cable, and participated in the final triumph by which
+his prediction, made twenty-three years previous, was verified.
+
+Professor Morse is now in his eightieth year. He resides during the
+winter in the city of New York, and passes his summers at his beautiful
+country seat near Poughkeepsie, on the Hudson. He bears his great honors
+with the same modesty which marked his early struggles, and is the
+center of a host of friends whom he has attached to himself by the
+tenderest ties. "Courage and patience have been his watchwords, and
+although the snows of time have bleached his hair, the same intelligence
+and enterprising spirit, the same urbane disposition that endeared him
+to the friends of his youth, still cause all who know him to rejoice in
+the honorable independence which his great invention has secured to his
+age."
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+PUBLISHERS.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+JAMES HARPER.
+
+
+Some years ago a gentleman having business with the great house of
+Harper & Brothers asked one of the employés of that establishment,
+"Which one is Harper, and which are the brothers?" He was answered,
+"Either one is Harper, and all the rest are the brothers." This reply
+fully sets forth the difficulty which must be experienced by any one
+attempting to write the story of the life of either member of this
+house. In such an undertaking it is very difficult to select "Harper,"
+and impossible to pass by the "Brothers." The interests of each were so
+thoroughly in harmony with those of all the others, and there was such
+perfect unanimity of sentiment existing between them with regard to
+their private as well as their public affairs, that it is hardly
+possible to separate them. Since, however, it is not consistent with the
+design of this work to relate the history of the "house," it is the
+purpose of the writer to select the eldest of the brothers as the
+representative of the group, and to offer him to the reader as a type of
+the American publisher.
+
+The grandfather of JAMES HARPER came to this country from England about
+the year 1740, and was one of the first of the American Methodists. His
+son Joseph was born in 1766. He married Elizabeth Kollyer, and settled
+at Newtown, on Long Island, as a farmer. It was here that James, their
+eldest child, was born, on the 13th of April, 1795. He grew up with a
+vigorous constitution, and the pure influences of his home, together
+with the sound religious training which he received from his parents,
+laid the foundation of those simple and steady habits for which he was
+noted through life. In the winter he attended the district school, and
+in the summer he worked on his father's farm. Thus his life passed away
+quietly and healthfully until he had completed his fifteenth year.
+
+It now became necessary for him to make some choice of a profession in
+life, and when the matter was presented to him he promptly decided to
+become a printer. His father cheerfully seconded his wishes, and he was
+accordingly apprenticed to a printer in New York. On the morning of his
+departure from home, when the family assembled for "prayers," his
+mother, who was a woman of superior character, took the father's place
+and led the worship. With trembling tones she commended her boy to the
+love and protection of the Saviour, and when the moment of leave-taking
+came she sent him forth into the world with the tender warning never to
+forget his home or his religious duties, or "that he had good blood in
+him."
+
+The change from his happy home to the place of "devil" in the printing
+office was one which tried the lad's fortitude to the utmost. His
+position was but little better than that of a menial, and not only was
+all the drudgery and disagreeable work put upon him, but he was made the
+sport of the workmen, some of whom used him even roughly. He bore it all
+good-naturedly, however, devoting himself to his trade with the
+determination to master it.
+
+The printing office in which he was employed was located near Franklin
+Square, then occupied by the best people of the city. Often, as young
+Harper passed across the square to and from his work, his rough "country
+clothes" drew upon him the ridicule of the children of these "goodly
+citizens." They teazed and insulted him, and sometimes carried their
+cruelty to the extremity of offering him bodily violence. He bore it
+patiently for a time, but at length determined to put a stop to it. He
+was physically the superior of any of his tormentors, and had put up
+with their conduct merely from his sincere desire to avoid a "street
+fight." In accordance with his new resolution, however, when one of them
+approached him one day and asked for his card, he set down a bucket
+which he was carrying, and, seizing the fellow, kicked him across the
+square, saying to him: "That's my card, take good care of it. When I am
+out of my time, and set up for myself, and you need employment, as you
+will, come to me, bring the card, and I will give you work." "Forty-one
+years after," says the writer upon whose authority this incident is
+related, "when Mr. Harper's establishment was known throughout all the
+land, after he had borne the highest municipal honors of the city, and
+had become one of our wealthiest men, the person who had received the
+card came to Mr. James Harper's establishment and asked employment,
+claiming it on the ground that he had kept the card given him forty-one
+years before."
+
+In a little while James was joined by his brother John, who was
+apprenticed to another printer in the city, and the two lads spent with
+each other much of their leisure time. Both worked hard. James soon
+became noted as the best pressman in the city, his great personal
+strength enabling him to work the old-fashioned hand-press with ease. It
+is said that if he disliked a fellow pressman and wished to be rid of
+him, he merely put forth his immense strength and outworked him. The
+man being unable to keep up with him, was obliged to retire.
+
+"The habits of his rural home followed him to the city. In an age when
+every body drank ardent spirits freely, he was strictly temperate, and
+the cold water disciple justified his faith by his works. With the
+cheerful constancy of the fathers of his church he quietly resisted the
+temptations of the city. He opened a prayer-meeting in the house of an
+old colored woman in Ann Street, and joined the John Street Methodist
+Church. Meanwhile, to their simple and thrifty method of life, James and
+his brother added work out of hours, so that when their apprenticeship
+was ended they had a little money saved."
+
+James' excellent habits and great skill as a workman had given entire
+satisfaction to his master during the whole period of his
+apprenticeship, and he informed the young man at the expiration of his
+indentures that he was willing to employ him again at fair wages. The
+young workman surprised him by telling him that he intended to set up
+for himself, and that all he wanted from him now was a certificate that
+he was fit to be trusted with a book. This was given, and James and his
+brother John took their little capital, which was increased by a loan of
+a few hundred dollars from their father, and renting a small room in
+Dover Street, set up an office on their own account, and began business
+under the firm name of J. & J. Harper. Their capital was small--less
+than the annual wages of some of their workmen to-day--but they were
+sustained by industry, determination, and high moral principle. When
+they began business, it was with a tacit agreement that each would
+endeavor to deserve the confidence of the other, and of their
+fellow-men. There was to be no evasion of principle, no sharp practice,
+in their house. They were resolved to make money, but to make it
+honestly. They would engage in no transaction which should cause a
+doubt of their integrity in the breast of the good mother who had sent
+them forth with her blessing.
+
+More than fifty years have passed away since then, and the Harpers have
+prospered steadily, and so greatly, too, that for many years their house
+has stood at the head of the publishing interest of America. Their
+career is an instructive one, giving an emphatic denial to the assertion
+we hear so often repeated, that an "over-honest" man can not make money
+in New York. Shut your ears to the calumny, young man, just staring out
+in life. "Honesty _is_ the best policy;" and it is only by scrupulous
+honesty that enduring success can be obtained. Trickery and sharp
+practice may earn wealth rapidly, but depend upon it they have their
+reward; for it is a curious fact in the history of man that wealth
+acquired by knavery rarely stays with its possessors for more than a
+generation, if so long.
+
+In starting out, the young Harpers printed books to order, attempting
+nothing at their own risk. They did a part of the composition and
+press-work with their own hands, and were, perhaps, the hardest workers
+in their establishment. Their first job was two thousand copies of
+Seneca's Morals, and was intrusted to them by Evert Duyckinck, a famous
+publisher of that day. The books were delivered in August, 1817, and
+gave entire satisfaction.
+
+Immediately after this, they undertook to stereotype an edition of the
+"Book of Common Prayer" for the Protestant Episcopal Church of New York,
+supposing that they would be able to make a fair profit at the rate at
+which they had agreed to do the work. It was their original intention to
+do the composition themselves, and have the stereotyping done at one of
+the large establishments of the city; but upon a closer investigation
+they found that this would cost them more than they had agreed to do the
+work for. In this dilemma, they resolved to learn the art of
+stereotyping themselves, and perform that portion of their contract on
+their own premises. It was a tedious undertaking; but they went through
+with it determinedly, and at the proper time delivered the books to the
+officials of the Episcopal Church. Their profit was not very large, but
+they had become stereotypers as well as printers, and had added a
+valuable department to their business. Further than this, their Prayer
+Book was pronounced the best piece of stereotyping that had ever been
+seen in the city, and won the young men congratulations on all sides.
+They next undertook twenty-five hundred copies of Mair's "Introduction
+to Latin," which they delivered in December, 1817.
+
+In April, 1818, they put forth their first venture on their own account.
+This consisted of five hundred copies of Locke's "Essay upon the Human
+Understanding." These were readily disposed of, and their success
+encouraged them to further efforts. They proceeded very cautiously, and
+it was for a long time their custom, when contemplating the publication
+of a book, and especially in the case of a reprint, to send to the
+leading booksellers in the large cities of the Union, and ascertain how
+many copies each one would take. Thus they pushed their way forward,
+seizing upon every favorable opportunity for the publication of original
+and foreign works. They rarely made an unsuccessful venture, and as each
+worked hard, and had constantly in view, above all other subjects, the
+success of the house, they gradually extended their business until they
+secured the foremost place among the publishers of the United States.
+
+Beginning with works of a dry, philosophic nature, the Harpers have
+extended their operations into every department of literature. Their
+catalogue of publications, issued in 1869, lies on the writer's table.
+It is a duodecimo volume of two hundred and ninety-six closely-printed
+pages, and embraces a list of several thousand volumes. In this list are
+histories, biographies, travels, adventures, novels, poems, educational
+works, works on science, art, philosophy, metaphysics--in short, books
+on every topic familiar to man. In the department of fiction, the
+success of this house has been remarkable. They have published between
+four and five hundred novels, in cloth and paper bindings, and the
+demand for their early publications of this kind is still sufficiently
+active to compel them to keep a stock always on hand. When they began to
+issue their Library of Select Novels, they did so with a distinct
+purpose in view. Novel-reading has always been a passion with Americans,
+but at the period referred to the best novels were published at such
+high prices that but few could afford to buy them. The masses were
+compelled to put up with the cheap, flashy stories which were so well
+known some years ago as "yellow covers." This style of fiction, now
+confined to the lowest class of readers, at that time found its way into
+almost every house, and the popular taste was at a very low ebb. The
+Harpers felt sure that by issuing the best, and only the best, English
+novels at a low price, they would not only meet a real want on the part
+of the public, but in great measure supersede the "yellow covers," with
+all their pernicious influences. The sequel proved the correctness of
+these views, and resulted in large profits to them.
+
+Soon after commencing business, James and John Harper received their
+younger brothers, Joseph Wesley and Fletcher, into their establishment
+as apprentices. These young men were taught the business thoroughly, and
+when they had completed their apprenticeship were admitted into the firm
+as partners, the former entering the firm in 1823, and the latter in
+1826. In 1825 the style of the firm was changed to Harper & Brothers,
+and the business was removed to 81 and 82 Cliff Street, on a portion of
+the site of the present establishment. It was then the largest
+printing-house in New York, employing fifty workmen and ten hand
+presses.
+
+In 1850; the Harpers decided to commence the publication of a monthly
+periodical, and, accordingly, in the summer of that year they issued the
+first number of "Harper's New Monthly Magazine," which, in point of
+popularity, stands today, after a career of twenty years, at the head of
+American magazines, and boasts of a circulation of 180,000 copies. The
+recognition of another want of the public led, in 1857, to the
+establishment of an illustrated newspaper, "Harper's Weekly," which has
+at present a circulation of 100,000 copies. In 1869 they began the
+publication of a new weekly fashion paper, called "the Bazaar," which
+has reached a circulation of 75,000 copies.
+
+From the first, the Harpers made their house a popular establishment.
+They sought public favor by legitimate means, and generally managed to
+retain it in the same way. From an early period in their history, their
+imprint on a book has been sufficient to secure its sale; and they have
+managed to identify themselves so thoroughly with American progress that
+the whole country feels an interest in their success. By studying the
+popular taste closely, they were enabled to publish in rapid succession
+works suited to it; and by fair and liberal dealings with authors they
+soon drew around them a corps of the best writers in the Union.
+
+Their success was rapid, and by the year 1853 their establishment had
+increased in size so much that it occupied "nine large contiguous
+buildings, full of costly machinery of every kind, with stores of plates
+and books." On the 10th of December of that year, a workman in one of
+the upper rooms carelessly threw a piece of lighted paper into what he
+supposed to be a pail of water, but which proved to be camphene. In a
+few minutes the building was in flames; all efforts to save it were in
+vain. The fire spread rapidly, and in a few hours the entire
+establishment was in ruins. The loss was one million of dollars, of
+which sum only about one-fourth was covered by insurance.
+
+It was a terrible blow, but James Harper and his brothers wasted no time
+in repining. Before the embers had ceased smoking they were taking
+active measures to reëstablish their business. From the wreck of their
+establishment they saved a part of the stereotype plates, which had been
+stored in the vaults, out of the way of the fire. They immediately
+rented Sheffield's paper warehouse, at the corner of Beckman and Gold
+Streets, and went to work with greater energy than ever. "Presses were
+employed in New York, Philadelphia, and Boston. Nothing was forgotten.
+The next monthly issue of the _Magazine_ had been made ready, and it was
+reproduced at the earliest moment. One regular contributor, then in
+Chicago, received the first news of the fire by a brief telegram: 'Copy
+destroyed. Send fresh copy immediately.' Before the ruins were cleared
+away the plans of the new buildings were ready, and the buildings
+themselves were rapidly finished."
+
+The new establishment of Harper & Brothers is one of the wonders of the
+great city in which it is located. The buildings are of iron and brick,
+and cover half an acre of ground. The establishment really consists of
+two buildings. The front building faces Franklin Square, and is a
+magnificent iron structure, painted white. Behind this is the second
+building, which fronts on Cliff Street. A court-yard intervenes between
+them, spanned by several bridges, connecting them. Each building is
+seven stories in height, and completely fire-proof.
+
+There are no openings in the floors for communication, but the various
+floors are connected by circular stairways of iron, placed outside the
+building. The front building, or that which faces Franklin Square, is
+used for storerooms, salesrooms, and the editorial and business offices
+of the establishment. In the rear building the various branches of the
+book manufacture are carried on. The author's manuscript is received
+here and sent back to him a complete book. Every portion of the work is
+done under the same roof, and it is well done. The building is filled
+with the most costly and complete machinery for saving time and labor.
+Besides the machinery used in other departments, it contains in its
+press-room forty-three Adams presses for book work, and five cylinder
+presses for printing the "Weekly" and the "Bazaar." About 600 persons,
+250 of whom are females, are employed in the establishment; and it is to
+the credit of both employers and employés that but few changes occur in
+this force. Many of the employés have been with the firm since its first
+entrance into business. The old man in charge of the vaults--a curiosity
+in his way--has been in the service of the house for fifty years, and to
+leave it now would, doubtless, break his heart; for none of the Harpers
+are as proud of their reputation as he is. The most perfect system
+reigns throughout every department, and every thing goes on promptly and
+in its proper place.
+
+"Of course," says a writer who many years has witnessed the operations
+of the house, "the development and organization of such a business were
+due not to one brother alone, but to the cooperation of all.... The
+business was to James, as to the others, the great central interest, but
+prosperity could not relax his steady character. He did not forget his
+early faith, nor the counsels and the habits of his Long Island home. He
+remained strictly a 'temperance man,' and his marvelous physical vigor
+was claimed by the temperance advocates as that of a cold-water mans He
+was long an official member of John-Street Church, and when he left his
+house in Rose Street, and went to live in the upper part of the city, he
+joined the congregation of St. Paul's Church, in the Fourth Avenue. But
+with all his fidelity to his ancestral faith, he cherished the largest
+charity, and by much experience of the world had learned to agree with
+his favorite apostle, James, that pure religion and undefiled, is to
+visit the fatherless and widows, and keep himself unspotted from the
+world. Thus, with all his conviction and devotion, there was nothing
+hard or fanatical in his feeling or conduct, and he held pleasant
+personal relations with men of every faith. Few men indulged in so
+little harsh criticism of others, and he expressed censure or
+disapprobation by humorous indirection rather than by open accusation.
+'We must not be too hard,' he was fond of saying, 'it is so difficult to
+know all the circumstances. If you should insist, for instance, that the
+use of tobacco is a sin, dear me! dear me!'
+
+"Mr. Harper was a Whig during the days of that party, and a natural
+conservative. But in politics he showed the same moderation and
+toleration. 'Don't try to drive men too roughly, my dear sir; it is much
+easier to draw than to push.' He took no conspicuous or active part in
+politics, except in 1844, when he was elected Mayor of the city. He was
+constantly asked to serve in Congress and in other public stations, but
+he steadily declined, saying, with a sly smile, that he preferred to
+stick to the business that he understood.
+
+"To that business his heart and life were given. Of late years its
+active cares had naturally fallen into the hands of his younger
+associates; but he never relaxed his interest and devotion. 'While I was
+dressing,' said a much younger neighbor, 'I used to see Mayor Harper
+coming out of his house to go down town, and felt ashamed of myself.
+Early at the office, he opened and looked over the mail, and during the
+hours of the morning he passed from one room to another, his shrewd eye
+seeing every thing, and measuring men and work, chatting and jesting as
+he went. But out of those shrewd eyes looked a kind and gentle heart. He
+knew by name the men and women and children employed in the various
+parts of the great buildings, interested himself in their family
+stories, and often won a confidence that was never betrayed. His
+charities, which were ample, were thus intelligent and effective, and
+poor men as well as women bent to kiss his calm, unchanged face as he
+lay in his coffin."
+
+To the very last, James Harper retained his physical and mental vigor,
+and was looked up to by all the members of the house as its brightest
+ornament. To the last, he was one of the best known and most honored
+citizens of the great metropolis. His great wealth had not ruffled the
+serenity of his spirit, or caused the slightest variation in his
+conduct. To the last he was the Christian merchant, citizen, and father,
+offering to his children in himself a noble model by which to shape
+their lives.
+
+It had been his custom at family prayers to ask of God protection from
+sudden death, but for some time before his death he ceased to do so. His
+family noticed this, and one of them asked his reason for the omission.
+He answered quietly, "The Lord knows best."
+
+On the 25th of March, 1869, he was at his usual post in his office, and
+after business hours, as was his habit, set out with his daughter for a
+drive in the Central Park, As he neared the Park the pole of his
+carriage broke suddenly, and the horses, becoming frightened, dashed off
+furiously, dragging the carriage after them. Mr. Harper and his
+daughter were both thrown violently upon the pavement. The latter was
+but slightly injured, but Mr. Harper was taken up insensible, and
+conveyed to St. Luke's Hospital, which was close at hand. He never
+regained consciousness, but lingered until fifteen minutes after seven
+on the evening of the 27th, when he expired, surrounded by all his
+family, excepting his wife, who had long been an invalid. His death was
+regarded as a calamity to the city, and all classes of the community
+united to do honor to his memory.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+JAMES T. FIELDS.
+
+
+The old "corner book-store" at the intersection of Washington and School
+Streets, in the city of Boston, is one of the most notable places in the
+New England metropolis. The memory of the oldest inhabitant can not
+recall a time when this corner was not devoted to its present uses; and
+around it, in the long years that have passed since the first book
+merchant first displayed his wares here, there have gathered a host of
+the most interesting, as well as the most brilliant, souvenirs of our
+literary history. Here were sold, in "the days that tried men's souls,"
+those stirring pamphlets that sounded the death-knell of British tyranny
+in the New World; and it was from this old corner that the tender songs
+of Longfellow, the weird conceptions of Hawthorne, the philosophic
+utterances of Emerson, first found their way to the hearts of the
+people.
+
+In 1884, the corner book-store was kept by Carter & Bendee, and was then
+the leading book-house in Boston. One morning in that year there entered
+the office of the proprietors a young lad from New Hampshire, who stated
+that he came to seek employment in their service. His bright,
+intelligent appearance was in his favor, scarcely less than the
+testimonials which he brought, vouching for his integrity and industry.
+His application was successful, and he entered the service of Messrs.
+Carter & Bendee, being given the lowest clerkship in the establishment
+and a salary barely sufficient to support him.
+
+This lad was JAMES T. FIELDS. He was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire,
+on the 30th of December, 1820. His father was a captain in the merchant
+service, and died when the boy was only four years old, leaving him to
+the care and guidance of one of the best of mothers. He was educated at
+the common schools of the city, and was thence transferred to the high
+school. He exhibited a remarkable fondness for study, and at the early
+age of thirteen graduated at the high school, taking the first honors of
+his class. He was regarded as one of the best classical scholars in the
+institution, and during his course took several prizes in Latin and
+Greek composition. Unusual abilities as a poet were also manifested very
+early, and when but twelve years old he wrote a poem in blank verse,
+which attracted the attention of the late Chief Justice Woodbury, then
+Governor of New Hampshire, who was so much surprised and gratified to
+find such talent in so young a boy, that he earnestly advised him to
+endeavor to complete his studies at Harvard University. This, indeed,
+was the chief desire of the boy, but a collegiate education required
+means which he could not command, and he was forced to go out into the
+world to seek his fortune. Having secured a good elementary education,
+however, he was resolved that he would not abandon his efforts to
+acquire knowledge. All his leisure time, after going to Boston to live,
+was devoted to reading and study. While neglecting no duty in his
+business, he gave the hours which most boys devote to amusement to
+severe mental labor. Young as he was, he was ambitious.
+
+He knew that knowledge was power, especially in the community in which
+he lived, and he was resolved that this power should be his. The result
+is plainly seen in his subsequent career. Although deprived of the
+advantages of a collegiate course, Mr. Fields has more than made up that
+deficiency by his faithful labors, and there are few men in New England
+to-day possessed of more varied and extensive mental accomplishments
+than he. Upon going to Boston he promptly identified himself with the
+Mercantile Library Association of that place, availing himself of its
+advantages, and exerting all the influence of which he was possessed to
+insure its success. When but eighteen years old, he was chosen to
+deliver an anniversary poem before the association. The value of the
+compliment will be better appreciated by the reader when it is stated
+that the oration upon that occasion was pronounced by Edward Everett.
+His industry in his business duties was great. He entered the house of
+Carter & Bendee with the determination to rise in it. He worked
+faithfully, and was the first at his post in the morning, and the last
+to leave it at night. When the style of the firm was changed to Allen &
+Ticknor, he was promoted to a more important place. He proved himself
+from the first one of the most valuable and trustworthy assistants in
+the house, and his merits were promptly recognized. From the lowest
+place in the house, he worked his way up steadily until he became the
+manager of the establishment. Each promotion brought with it an increase
+of salary. Knowing well that "a penny saved at present is a pound gained
+in future" to a young man striving to rise in the world, he practiced
+the most conscientious economy. He made himself thoroughly acquainted
+with every detail of the publishing trade; and although, of late years,
+he has had the supervision more especially of the literary department of
+his large business, there are few publishers in this country more
+intimate with the business and mechanical branches of their trade.
+
+In 1846, just twelve years after his entrance into the house, his
+clerkship came to an end, and he became a partner in the establishment,
+the style of the firm being Ticknor & Fields. He took an active share in
+the business; and while full credit must be given to Mr. Ticknor for the
+extraordinary success which the firm enjoyed, it can not be denied that
+Mr. Fields' share in this work was very great, and fully equal to that
+of his partner. His acknowledged literary abilities won him friends
+among the most gifted writers of the country, and these naturally sought
+his assistance in presenting their works to the world. Their friendship
+induced an intelligent confidence in his literary taste and mercantile
+integrity, and it was a decided gain for them to secure one so generally
+esteemed and trusted as their publisher. Young writers, still struggling
+for fame, felt that in submitting their works to his inspection they
+would receive the patient examination of not only a conscientious
+reader, but of one whose own literary abilities rendered him unusually
+competent for the task. The public generally learned to share this
+confidence in his literary judgment. And so it came to pass that the
+imprint of Ticknor & Fields was universally accepted as a sufficient
+guarantee of the excellence of any book, and rarely failed to insure its
+success. Naturally, the house was proud of this confidence, and it is
+pleasant to record that they have never abused it. There is, perhaps, no
+other publishing firm in the Union whose catalogue is so free from
+objectionable or worthless publications as that issued by this house.
+
+Gradually Messrs. Ticknor & Fields became the recognized publishers of a
+large number of the leading writers of this country and of Great
+Britain. In their catalogue we find the names of Longfellow, Bryant,
+Whittier, Holmes, Aldrich, Agassiz, Beecher, Alice Gary, Cummins, Dana,
+Emerson, Hawthorne, Gail Hamilton, Lowell, Parton, Saxe, Sprague, Stowe,
+Bayard Taylor, Thoreau, and Tuckerman, in American literature; and in
+English literature, the names of Browning, Dickens, George Eliot, Mrs.
+Jameson, Kingsley, Owen Meredith, Charles Reade, and Tennyson. With
+their English authors they maintain the pleasantest relations,
+recognizing their moral right to their works, and paying them a fair
+royalty upon the sales of their books. Of their relations with their
+American authors, a popular periodical says:
+
+"There are no business men more honorable or generous than the
+publishers of the United States, and especially honorable and
+considerate toward authors. The relation usually existing between author
+and publisher in the United States is that of a warm and lasting
+friendship, such as now animates and dignifies the intercourse between
+the literary men of New England and Messrs. Ticknor & Fields.... The
+relation, too, is one of a singular mutual trustfulness. The author
+receives his semi-annual account from the publisher with as ablute a
+faith in its correctness as though he had himself counted the volumes
+sold."
+
+In 1865, the firm removed from the old corner stand to a new and elegant
+establishment on Tremont Street, near the Common, and in the same year
+Mr. Howard Ticknor, who had succeeded his father in the business,
+withdrew from it. New partners were admitted, and the style of the firm
+became Fields, Osgood & Co., Mr. Fields still remaining at the head of
+the house.
+
+The new book store is one of the handsomest and most attractive in the
+country. The store proper is eighty feet deep by fifty feet wide, and is
+fitted up handsomely in hard wood.
+
+There is no paint about it, every piece of wood in use presenting its
+natural appearance. On the right in entering are the book shelves and
+counters, and on the opposite side the desks devoted to the magazine
+department. At the rear are the counting rooms and the private office of
+Mr. J.R. Osgood, the active business man of the concern. The second
+story is elegantly and tastefully fitted up. It contains the luxurious
+private office of Mr. Fields, in which are to be seen excellent
+likenesses of his two dearest friends, Longfellow and Dickens; and the
+parlor of the establishment, which is known as the Author's Room. This
+is a spacious and handsomely-appointed room, whose windows, overlooking
+the Common, command one of the prettiest views in New England. It is
+supplied with the leading periodicals of the day, and choice volumes of
+current literature. Here one may always find one or more of the "gifted
+few," whose names are familiar to the reader; and frequent reunions of
+the book-making fraternity are designed to be held here, under the
+genial auspices of the literary partner of the house.
+
+It is not often that men win success in both literature and mercantile
+life. Good authors have usually made very poor business managers, and
+_vice versa_; but the subject of this memoir, besides winning a great
+success as a merchant, and that in one of the most hazardous branches of
+mercantile life, has also won an enviable reputation as a man of
+letters. His poems have made him well known, both in this country and in
+England. Besides the poems recited before various literary associations,
+he has published two volumes of fugitive pieces. The first appeared in
+1843, while he was still a clerk, and the second in 1858. His poems
+abound in humor, pathos, and a delicate, beautiful fancy. One of his
+friends has said of him:
+
+"Little of the sad travail of the historic poet has Mr. Fields known.
+Of the emaciated face, the seedy garment, the collapsed purse, the
+dog-eared and often rejected manuscript, he has never known, save from
+well-authenticated tradition. His muse was born in sunshine, and has
+only been sprinkled with the tears of affection. Every effort has been
+cheered to the echo, and it is impossible for so genial a fellow to fail
+of an ample and approving audience for whatever may fall from his lip or
+pen."
+
+The following lines, from his second volume, will serve as a specimen of
+the "homely beauty" of Mr. Fields' muse, though it hardly sets forth all
+his powers:
+
+
+     She came among the gathering crowd
+       A maiden fair, without pretense,
+     And when they asked her humble name,
+       She whispered mildly, "Common Sense."
+
+     Her modest garb drew every eye,
+       Her ample cloak, her shoes of leather;
+     And when they sneered, she simply said,
+       "I dress according to the weather."
+
+     They argued long and reasoned loud,
+       In dubious Hindoo phrase mysterious;
+     While she, poor child, could not divine
+       Why girls so young should be so serious.
+
+     They knew the length of Plato's beard,
+       And how the scholars wrote in Laturn;
+     She studied authors not so deep,
+       And took the Bible for her pattern.
+
+     And so she said, "Excuse me, friends,
+       I feel all have their proper places,
+     And _Common Sense_ should stay at home
+       With cheerful hearts and smiling faces."
+
+
+Mr. Fields has been a frequent contributor to his own periodicals, his
+latest effort being a paper devoted to personal recollections of Charles
+Dickens, which was published in the "Atlantic Monthly" soon after the
+death of the great master.
+
+He has made several extended tours throughout Europe, where he has
+enjoyed social advantages rarely opened to travelers. One of his friends
+says that, in his first visit to the Old World, "he passed several
+months in England, Scotland, France, and Germany, visiting the principal
+places of interest, and forming most delightful and profitable
+intimacies with the most distinguished _literateurs_ of the day. He was
+a frequent guest at the well-known breakfasts of the great banker-poet
+of 'The Pleasures of Memory' and of 'Italy,' and listened or added his
+own contributions to the exuberant riches of the hour, when such
+visitors as Talfourd, Dickens, Moore, and Landor were the talkers." He
+also formed a warm friendship with Wordsworth, and, during his stay in
+Edinburgh, with Professor Wilson and De Quincey. The writings of the
+last-named author were published by Ticknor and Fields, in eighteen
+volumes, and were edited by Mr. Fields, at the author's own request.
+
+Mr. Fields is now in his fiftieth year, but shows no sign of age, save
+the whitening of his heavy, curling beard. He is still young and active
+in mind and body. He is of medium height, and well proportioned, with an
+erect carriage. Polished and courteous in manner, he is easily
+accessible to all. To young writers he is especially kind, and it is a
+matter of the truest pleasure to him to seek out and bring to notice
+genuine literary merit. He has a host of friends, and is widely popular
+with all classes.
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+EDITORS.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+JAMES GORDON BENNETT.
+
+
+James Gordon Bennett was born at New Mill, Keith, in Banffshire, on the
+north-eastern coast of Scotland, about the year 1800. His relatives were
+Roman Catholics, and he was brought up in a Catholic family of French
+origin. In his fourteenth year, having passed through the primary
+schools of his native place, he entered the Roman Catholic Seminary at
+Aberdeen, for the purpose of studying for the priesthood of that Church.
+During the two or three years which he passed here he was a close
+student, and acquired the basis of an excellent education.
+
+In 1817 he came into possession of a copy of Benjamin Franklin's
+autobiography, which had been recently published in Scotland. The
+perusal of this little book changed the course of his whole life. It
+induced him to abandon all thoughts of the priesthood, and to try his
+fortune in the New World, in which the great philosopher had succeeded
+so well before him. A little more than a year later he left Glasgow, and
+in May, 1819, being now about twenty years old, landed at Halifax, Nova
+Scotia. He had less than twenty-five dollars in his purse, knew no
+vocation save that of a book-keeper, and had not a friend on this side
+of the ocean.
+
+He secured a few pupils in Halifax, and gave lessons in book-keeping,
+but his profits were so small that he determined to reach the United
+States as soon as possible. Accordingly he made his way along the coast
+to Portland, Maine, where he took passage for Boston in a small
+schooner. He found great difficulty in procuring employment, for Boston
+then, as now, offered but few inducements to new-comers. He parted with
+his last penny, and was reduced to the most pressing want. For two whole
+days he went without food, and a third day would doubtless have been
+added to his fast had he not been fortunate enough to find a shilling on
+the Common, with which he procured the means of relieving his hunger. He
+now obtained a salesman's place in the bookstore of Messrs. Wells &
+Lilly, who, upon discovering his fitness for the place, transferred him
+to their printing-office as proof-reader; but his employers failed about
+two years after his connection with them began, and he was again thrown
+out of employment.
+
+From Boston he went, in 1822, to New York, where he obtained a situation
+on a newspaper. Soon after his arrival in the metropolis he was offered,
+by Mr. Wellington, the proprietor of the "Charleston (S.C.) Courier,"
+the position of translator from the Spanish, and general assistant. He
+accepted the offer, and at once repaired to Charleston. He remained
+there only a few months, however, and then returned to New York.
+
+He now proposed to open a "Permanent Commercial School," at 148 Fulton
+Street, and advertised to teach the usual branches "in the inductive
+method." His advertisement set forth that his pupils would be taught
+"reading, elocution, penmanship, and arithmetic; algebra; astronomy,
+history, and geography; moral philosophy, commercial law, and political
+economy; English grammar and composition, and, also, if required, the
+French and Spanish languages by natives of those countries." This
+elaborate scheme was never put into execution, as Mr. Bennett did not
+receive a sufficient number of applications to warrant him in opening
+the school. He next attempted a course of lectures on political economy
+at the old Dutch Church in Ann Street, but this enterprise was also a
+pecuniary failure. In 1825 he purchased the "New York Courier," a Sunday
+paper, but did not succeed with it. He continued to write for the press,
+principally for one or two papers, selling his articles where he could,
+and in 1826 formed a regular connection with the "National Advocate," a
+Democratic journal. To his duties in this position he applied himself
+with an energy and industry never surpassed, and rarely equaled, in his
+profession. He took an active part in politics, and wrote regularly and
+constantly for his paper, acquiring considerable reputation by his
+articles against the tariff and on banks and banking. He now embarked in
+journalism as the business of his life, and with the determination to
+succeed. In order to win success, he knew he must first learn to master
+himself. He neither smoked, drank, nor gambled. He indulged in no
+species of dissipation, but was temperate and prudent in all things. A
+few years later he said of himself, "I eat and drink to live, not live
+to eat and drink. Social glasses of wine are my aversion; public dinners
+are my abomination; all species of gormandizing my utter scorn and
+contempt. When I am hungry, I eat; when thirsty, drink. Wine or viands
+taken for society, or to stimulate conversation, tend only to
+dissipation, indolence, poverty, contempt, and death."
+
+In 1827 the "National Advocate" changed hands, and, under its new
+proprietors, supported John Quincy Adams for President. Mr. Bennett,
+being a supporter of Martin Van Buren, then a United States Senator,
+resigned his position on the paper, and soon after, in connection with
+the late M.M. Noah, established "The Enquirer," which warmly espoused
+the cause of Andrew Jackson in the Presidential canvass of 1828. About
+this time he became a recognized member of the Tammany Society.
+
+In the spring of 1828 he went to Washington, where he resided for some
+time as the correspondent of "The Enquirer." In looking through the
+library of Congress one day, he found an edition of Horace Walpole's
+letters, which he read with a keen relish. These suggested the idea of a
+series of similar letters to his own paper, and he at once put his plan
+into execution. His letters were written and published. They were
+"spicy," pleasant in style, full of gossip about the distinguished
+personages who thronged the capital every winter, and, withal, free from
+any offensive personality. They were read with eagerness, and widely
+copied by the press throughout the country. Yet he was poorly paid for
+them, and at a time when he had made a "real hit" was forced to labor
+hard for a bare subsistence. He did all kinds of literary work. He wrote
+editorials, letters, sketches, poetry, stories, police reports, in
+short, every thing that a newspaper had use for, and yet his earnings
+were barely more than sufficient to afford him a decent support.
+
+In 1829, the "Courier and Enquirer" were united under one management,
+and Mr. Bennett was made assistant editor, with James Watson Webb as his
+chief. In the autumn of that year he became associate editor. Says Mr.
+James Parton (by no means an ardent admirer of Mr. Bennett):
+
+"During the great days of the 'Courier and Enquirer,' from 1829 to 1832,
+when It was incomparably the best newspaper on the continent, James
+Gordon Bennett was its most efficient hand. It lost him in 1832, when
+the paper abandoned General Jackson and took up Nicholas Biddle, and in
+losing him lost its chance of retaining the supremacy among American
+newspapers to this day. We can truly say that at that time journalism,
+as a thing by itself and for itself, had no existence in the United
+States. Newspapers were mere appendages of party, and the darling object
+of each journal was to be recognized as the organ of the party it
+supported. As to the public, the great public, hungry for interesting
+news, no one thought of it. Forty years ago, in the city of New York, a
+copy of a newspaper could not be bought for money. If any one wished to
+see a newspaper, he had either to go to the office and subscribe, or
+repair to a bar-room and buy a glass of something to drink, or bribe a
+carrier to rob one of his customers. The circulation of the 'Courier and
+Enquirer' was considered something marvelous when it printed thirty-five
+hundred copies a day, and its business was thought immense when its
+daily advertising averaged fifty-five dollars. It is not very unusual
+for a newspaper now to receive for advertising, in one day, six hundred
+times that sum. Bennett, in the course of time, had a chance been given
+to him, would have made the 'Courier and Enquirer' powerful enough to
+cast off all party ties, and this he would have done merely by improving
+it as a vehicle of news. But he was kept down upon one of those
+ridiculous, tantalizing, corrupting salaries, which are a little more
+than a single man needs, but not enough for him to marry upon. This
+salary was increased by the proprietors giving him a small share in the
+small profits of the printing-office; so that, after fourteen years of
+hard labor and Scotch economy, he found himself, on leaving the great
+paper, a capitalist to the extent of a few hundred dollars. The chief
+editor of the paper which he now abandoned sometimes lost as much in a
+single evening at the card-table. It probably never occurred to him
+that this poor, ill-favored Scotchman was destined to destroy his paper
+and all the class of papers to which it belonged. Any one who examines a
+file of the 'Courier and Enquirer' of that time, and knows its interior
+circumstances, will see plainly enough that the possession of this man
+was the vital element in its prosperity. He alone knew the rudiments of
+his trade. He alone had the physical stamina, the indefatigable
+industry, the sleepless vigilance, the dexterity, tact, and audacity
+needful for keeping up a daily newspaper in the face of keen
+competition."
+
+Mr. Bennett left the "Courier and Enquirer" in 1832, the cause of his
+action being the desertion of General Jackson by that journal. He at
+once started a cheap partisan paper, called "The Globe," devoted to the
+interests of Jackson and Van Buren. It failed to receive the support of
+the Democratic party, however, and went down after a precarious
+existence of thirty days.
+
+Undismayed by this failure, Mr. Bennett removed to Philadelphia, and
+invested the remainder of his capital in a daily Democratic journal,
+called "The Pennsylvanian," of which he was the principal editor,
+laboring hard to win for it the assistance and support of the party. He
+had rendered good and admitted service to the Democracy, but was to
+experience the ingratitude for which political organizations are
+proverbial. He applied to Martin Van Buren and other prominent leaders
+of the party to aid him in securing a loan of twenty-five hundred
+dollars for two years, which sum would have enabled him to establish his
+paper on a paying basis, but the politicians turned deaf ears to his
+appeals, and his paper failed, after a brief and desperate struggle.
+
+He came back to New York about the beginning of 1835, a little sore
+from his unsuccessful battle with fate, but far from being dismayed or
+cast down. His failures to establish party organs had convinced him that
+success in journalism does not depend upon political favor, and he
+determined to make one more effort to build up a paper of his own, and
+this time one which should aim to please no party but the public. That
+there was need of an independent journal of this kind he felt sure, and
+he knew the people of the country well enough to be confident that if
+such a journal could be properly placed before them, it would succeed.
+The problem with him was how to get it properly before them. He had
+little or no money, and it required considerable capital to carry
+through the most insignificant effort of the kind. He made several
+efforts to inspire other persons with his confidence before he
+succeeded. One of these efforts Mr. Parton thus describes, in his _Life
+of Horace Greeley:_ "An incident connected with the job-office of
+Greeley & Co. is perhaps worth mentioning here. One James Gordon
+Bennett, a person then well known as a smart writer for the press, came
+to Horace Greeley, and, exhibiting a fifty-dollar bill and some other
+notes of smaller denominations as his cash capital, wanted him to join
+in setting up a new daily paper, 'The New York Herald.' Our hero
+declined the offer, but recommended James Gordon to apply to another
+printer, naming one, who he thought would like to share in such an
+enterprise. To him the editor of 'The Herald' did apply, and with
+success."
+
+The parties to whom Mr. Greeley referred Mr. Bennett were two young
+printers, whom he persuaded, after much painstaking, to print his paper
+and share with him its success or failure. He had about enough cash in
+hand to sustain the paper for ten days, after which it must make its own
+way. He proposed to make it cheap--to sell it at one penny per copy,
+and to make it meet the current wants of the day. The "Sun," a penny
+paper, was already in existence, and was paying well, and this
+encouraged Mr. Bennett to hope for success in his own enterprise.
+
+He rented a cellar in Wall Street, in which he established his office,
+and on the 6th of May, 1835, issued the first number of "The Morning
+Herald." His cellar was bare and poverty-stricken in appearance. It
+contained nothing but a desk made of boards laid upon flour barrels. On
+one end of this desk lay a pile of "Heralds" ready for purchasers, and
+at the other sat the proprietor writing his articles for his journal and
+managing his business. Says Mr. William Gowans, the famous Nassau-Street
+bookseller: "I remember to have entered the subterranean office of its
+editor early in its career, and purchased a single copy of the paper,
+for which I paid the sum of one cent United States currency. On this
+occasion the proprietor, editor, and vendor was seated at his desk,
+busily engaged in writing, and appeared to pay little or no attention to
+me as I entered. On making known my object in coming in, he requested me
+to put my money down on the counter and help myself to a paper, all this
+time he continuing his writing operations. The office was a single
+oblong underground room; its furniture consisted of a counter, which
+also served as a desk, constructed from two flour barrels, perhaps
+empty, standing apart from each other about four feet, with a single
+plank covering both; a chair, placed in the center, upon which sat the
+editor busy at his vocation, with an inkstand by his right hand; on the
+end nearest the door were placed the papers for sale."
+
+[Illustration: HOW THE "NEW YORK HERALD" BEGAN.]
+
+Standing on Broadway now, and looking at the marble palace from which
+the greatest and wealthiest newspaper in the Union sends forth its huge
+editions, one finds it hard to realize that just thirty-four years
+ago this great journal was born in a cellar, an obscure little penny
+sheet, with a poor man for its proprietor. Yet such was the beginning of
+"The New York Herald."
+
+The prospect was not a pleasant one to contemplate, but Mr. Bennett did
+not shrink from it. He knew that it was in him to succeed, and he meant
+to do it, no matter through what trials or vicissitudes his path to
+fortune lay. Those who heard his expressions of confidence shook their
+heads sagely, and said the young man's air-castles would soon fade away
+before the blighting breath of experience. Indeed, it did seem a
+hopeless struggle, the effort of this one poor man to raise his little
+penny sheet from its cellar to the position of "a power in the land." He
+was almost unknown. He could bring no support or patronage to his
+journal by the influence of his name, or by his large acquaintance. The
+old newspaper system, with its clogs and dead-weights, was still in
+force, and as for newsboys to hawk the new journal over the great city,
+they were a race not then in existence. He had to fight his battle with
+poverty alone and without friends, and he did fight it bravely. He was
+his own clerk, reporter, editor, and errand boy. He wrote all the
+articles that appeared in "The Herald," and many of the advertisements,
+and did all the work that was to be performed about his humble office.
+
+"The Herald" was a small sheet of four pages of four columns each.
+Nearly every line of it was fresh news. Quotations from other papers
+were scarce. Originality was then, as now, the motto of the
+establishment. Small as it was, the paper was attractive. The story that
+its first numbers were scurrilous and indecent is not true, as a
+reference to the old files of the journal will prove. They were of a
+character similar to that of "The Herald" of to-day, and were marked by
+the same industry, tact, and freshness, which make the paper to-day the
+most salable in the land.
+
+Says Mr. Parton: "The first numbers were filled with nonsense and gossip
+about the city of New York, to which his poverty confined him. He had no
+boat with which to board arriving ships, no share in the pony express
+from Washington, and no correspondents in other cities. All he could do
+was to catch the floating gossip, scandal, and folly of the town, and
+present as much of them every day as one man could get upon paper by
+sixteen hours' labor. He laughed at every thing and every body,--not
+excepting himself and his squint eye,--and though his jokes were not
+always good, they were generally good enough. People laughed, and were
+willing to expend a cent the next day to see what new folly the man
+would commit or relate. We all like to read about our own neighborhood;
+this paper gratified the propensity.
+
+"The man, we repeat, had really a vein of poetry in him, and the first
+numbers of 'The Herald' show it. He had occasion one day to mention that
+Broadway was about to be paved with wooden blocks. This was not a very
+promising subject for a poetical comment, but he added: 'When this is
+done, every vehicle will have to wear sleigh-bells, as in sleighing
+times, and Broadway will be so quiet that you can pay a compliment to a
+lady, in passing, and she will hear you.' This was nothing in itself;
+but here was a man wrestling with fate in a cellar, who could turn you
+out two hundred such paragraphs a week, the year round. Men can growl in
+a cellar; this man could laugh, and keep laughing, and make the floating
+population of a city laugh with him. It must be owned, too, that he had
+a little real insight into the nature of things around him--a little
+Scotch sense, as well as an inexhaustible fund of French vivacity.
+Alluding, once, to the 'hard money' cry by which the lying politicians
+of the day carried elections, he exploded that nonsense in two lines:
+'If a man gets the wearable or the eatable he wants, what cares he if he
+has gold or paper money?' He devoted two sentences to the Old School and
+New School Presbyterian controversy: 'Great trouble among the
+Presbyterians just now. The question is whether or not a man can do any
+thing toward saving his own soul.' He had also an article upon the
+Methodists, in which he said that the two religions nearest akin were
+the Methodist and the Roman Catholic. We should add to these trifling
+specimens the fact that he uniformly maintained, from 1835 to the crash
+of 1837, that the prosperity of the country was unreal, and would end in
+disaster."
+
+These things served the end for which they were intended. They brought
+"The Herald" conspicuously before the public. While engaged in them,
+the proprietor was anxiously planning the means of making his paper a
+great _newspaper_. He worked sixteen or seventeen hours each day. He
+rose before five o'clock in the morning, and gave three hours to writing
+his editorials and the witty paragraphs to which allusion has been made.
+At eight o'clock he went to his cellar, or "office," and was at his post
+there during the morning, selling his papers, receiving advertisements,
+and often writing them for those who were not able to prepare them,
+doing such other work as was necessary, and finishing his editorial
+labors. At one o'clock he went into Wall Street, gathering up financial
+news and interesting items of the street. He returned to his office at
+four o'clock, and remained there until six, when the business of the day
+was over. In the evening he went to the theater, a ball, concert, or
+some public gathering, to pick up fresh items for his paper.
+
+All this while, however, he was losing money. He had a heavy load to
+carry, and though he bore it unflinchingly and determinedly, the
+enterprise seemed doomed to failure for lack of funds. At this juncture,
+he resolved to make the financial news of the day a special feature of
+"The Herald." The monetary affairs of the country were in great
+confusion--a confusion which was but the prelude to the crash of 1837;
+and Wall Street was the vortex of the financial whirlpool whose eddies
+were troubling the whole land. Every body was anxious to get the first
+news from the street, and to get it as full and reliable as possible. At
+this time, too, our relations with France were exceedingly critical--a
+circumstance which served to increase the trouble in financial matters.
+Appreciating the anxiety which was generally felt on this subject, Mr.
+Bennett resolved to create a demand for "The Herald" among the business
+men of the country. On the 13th of June, 1835, just five weeks after the
+establishment of the paper, he printed his first money article--the
+first that ever appeared in an American newspaper. It was as follows:
+
+
+     COMMERCIAL.
+
+     Stocks yesterday maintained their prices during the session of the
+     Board, several going up. Utica went up 2 per cent.; the others
+     stationary. Large quantities were sold. After the Board adjourned
+     and the news from France was talked over, the fancy stocks
+     generally went down 1 to 1-1/2 per cent.; the other stocks quite
+     firm. A rally was made by the bulls in the evening under the trees,
+     but it did not succeed. There will be a great fight in the Board
+     to-day. The good people up town are anxious to know what the
+     brokers think of Mr. Livingston. We shall find out, and let them
+     know.
+
+     The cotton and flour markets rallied a little. The rise of cotton
+     in Liverpool drove it up here a cent or so. The last shippers will
+     make 2-1/2 per cent. Many are endeavoring to produce the impression
+     that there will be a war. If the impression prevails, naval stores
+     will go up a good deal. Every eye is outstretched for the
+     "Constitution." Hudson, of the Merchants News Room, says he will
+     hoist out the first flag. Gilpin, of the Exchange News Room, says
+     he will have her name down in his room one hour before his
+     competitor. The latter claims having beat Hudson yesterday by an
+     hour and ten minutes in chronicling the "England."
+
+
+The money article was a success, and appeared regularly in "The Herald"
+after this. It created a demand for the paper among the merchants, and
+increased its circulation so decidedly that at the end of the third
+month the daily receipts and expenditures balanced each other. Mr.
+Bennett now ventured to engage a cheap police reporter, which gave him
+more time to attend to other duties.
+
+The paper now seemed on the point of becoming a success, when it
+received a severe and unlooked-for blow. The printing-office was burned
+down, and the gentlemen who had printed "The Herald" were so much
+discouraged that they refused to renew their connection with it. Mr.
+Bennett knew that he was too near to success to abandon the enterprise,
+and courageously put his wits to work to devise means to carry on the
+paper. By the greatest and most indomitable exertions he managed to
+secure the means of going on with it, and bravely resumed its
+publication alone.
+
+A few months after this the "great fire" swept over New York, and laid
+nearly the whole business portion of the city in ashes. This was Mr.
+Bennett's opportunity. The other journals of the city devoted a brief
+portion of their space to general and ponderous descriptions of the
+catastrophe, but Mr. Bennett went among the ruins, note-book and pencil
+in hand, and gathered up the most minute particulars of the fire. He
+spent one-half of each day in this way, and the other half in writing
+out reports of what he thus learned. These reports he published in "The
+Herald." They were free, graphic, off-hand sketches of the fire and its
+consequences, and were so full and complete that they left little or
+nothing connected with the incidents they described to be added. Mr.
+Bennett also went to the expense of publishing a picture of the burning
+of the Merchants Exchange, and a map of the burnt district--a heavy
+expense for his little journal. The result proved the sagacity of his
+views. "The Herald" reports of the fire created a heavy demand for the
+paper, and its circulation increased rapidly. Yet its success was not
+assured.
+
+When his first year closed, Mr. Bennett found his paper still struggling
+for existence, but with a fair prospect of success, if it could follow
+up the "hit" it had made with its reports of the fire. About this time
+he received an offer from Dr. Benjamin Brandreth to advertise his pills
+in "The Herald," and a contract was at once concluded between them. The
+money thus paid to the paper was a considerable sum, and proved of the
+greatest assistance to it. All the money received was conscientiously
+expended in the purchase of news. The circulation grew larger as its
+news facilities increased, and for some years its proprietor expended
+all his profits in making the paper more attractive.
+
+At the close of the fifteenth month of its career Mr. Bennett increased
+the size of "The Herald," and raised the price of it to two cents per
+copy. His success was now assured, and continued to increase, as, under
+his able and far-seeing management, his paper expanded and enlarged its
+facilities for securing and making public the promptest and most
+reliable news of the day. Since that time his success has been
+unvarying. He has made "The Herald" the leading newspaper of the world,
+for no other journal upon the globe can compare with it in liberality
+and energy in the collection of news or in promptness and completeness
+of detail in laying it before the public. Its growth has been slow, but
+sure. Every step has been won by hard and conscientious labor, as well
+as by the force of real genius. Other journals have been compelled to
+follow the example of "The Herald," but none have surpassed it. It still
+stands at the head of the newspaper press of the world, and we are
+justified in believing that it will continue to stand there as long as
+its founder's hand controls it.
+
+Instead of the little penny sheet of thirty-four years ago, "The New
+York Herald" of to-day is an immense journal, generally of twelve, and
+often of sixteen pages of six columns each, making a total of from
+seventy-two to ninety-six closely printed columns of matter. From four
+to nine pages are filled with advertisements, classified with the utmost
+exactness. No reader has to search the paper over for the article or
+advertisement he wishes to see; each subject has its separate place,
+which can be discovered at a glance. Its advertisements have reference
+to every trade, profession, or calling known to civilized man, and are a
+faithful mirror of the busy age in which we live. Its news reports are
+the freshest, most complete, and most graphic of any American journal,
+and are collected at an expenditure of more time, care, and money than
+any other journal sees fit to lay out. It has its correspondents in all
+parts of the world, and when news is worth sending, these are instructed
+to spare no pains or expense in transmitting it at once. During the late
+war it had a small army of attachés in the field, and its reports were
+the most eagerly sought of all by the public. During the Abyssinian war
+its reporters and correspondents furnished the London press with
+reliable news _in advance of their own correspondents_. Any price is
+paid for news, for it is the chief wish of Mr. Bennett that "The Herald"
+shall be the first to chronicle the events of the day.
+
+"The Herald" office is now located at the corner of Broadway and Ann
+Street. The building, of white marble, is five stories in height, and
+is one of the handsomest in the country. It is the most complete
+newspaper establishment in existence. It has two cellars, in which are
+placed the two steam-engines that drive the huge presses which strike
+off the various editions of "The Herald." Every thing is in perfect
+order, and the machinery shines like polished gold and silver. The
+proprietor's eye is upon the whole establishment, and he is quick to
+notice and reprimand a fault. The street floor contains the business
+office of the journal, a magnificent room, gorgeous with marble,
+plate-glass, black walnut, and frescoes. The editorial rooms are above,
+and near them are the reporters' rooms. The top floor constitutes the
+finest composing room in the world, from which speaking-tubes and
+vertical railways communicate with all the other parts of the building.
+Every department of the paper has a responsible head, and the most rigid
+discipline prevails throughout the office. There are twelve editors,
+thirty-five reporters, and four hundred and fifty-three other employés,
+making a total force of five hundred men engaged upon "The Herald." The
+circulation of the various editions of the paper amounts to tens of
+thousands. It is to be found in every town of importance in the land,
+and its daily receipts from advertisements alone are counted by tens of
+thousands of dollars.
+
+Mr. Bennett rarely writes for the paper now. He assembles his editors in
+his council at noon every day, hears their suggestions, decides what
+topics shall be treated in the next day's issue, and assigns to each man
+the subject upon which he is to write. In his absence his place at the
+council-board is filled by his son, or by the managing editor. Mr.
+Bennett in this way exercises a close supervision over all the articles
+that appear in "The Herald," and imparts to them a considerable share of
+his personality.
+
+Mr. Bennett is married, and has two children, a son, James Gordon
+Bennett, jr., who will succeed his father in the ownership of "The
+Herald," and a daughter. He lives on Fifth Avenue at present, his
+favorite residence, at Washington Heights, having been recently
+destroyed by fire. He is said to be a courtly and agreeable host, and
+one who rarely fails to send away his visitors with a pleasant
+impression of himself.
+
+In person he is tall and firmly built, and walks with a dignified
+carriage. His head is large, and his features are prominent and
+irregular. He has a thoroughly Scotch face, and is cross-eyed. His
+forehead is broad and high, betokening great capacity and force of
+character. His expression is firm and somewhat cold--that of a man who
+has had a hard fight with fortune, and has conquered it. He is reserved
+in his manner to strangers, but always courteous and approachable. To
+his friends he is genial and unreserved. He is finely educated, and is
+said to be a man of excellent taste. His favorite studies are history
+and biography, and he still pursues them with a keen relish. His home is
+one of the most elegant in the city. He is proud of his success, as he
+may well be, and very proud of the fact that he owes it to himself
+alone. While he was building the new "Herald" office, he was waited on
+by the president of one of the national banks of the city, who said to
+him:
+
+"Mr. Bennett, we know that you are at great expense in erecting this
+building, besides carrying on your immense business. If you want any
+accommodation, you can have it at our bank."
+
+"Mr. ----," replied Mr. Bennett, "before I purchased the land, or began
+to build, I had on deposit two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in the
+Chemical Bank. There is not a dollar due on 'The Herald' building that
+I can not pay. I would pay off the mortgage to-morrow, if the owner
+would allow me to do so. When the building is opened, I shall not owe
+one dollar to any man, if I am allowed to pay. I owe nothing that I can
+not discharge in an hour. I have not touched one dollar of the money on
+deposit in the bank, and while that remains I need no accommodation."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+ROBERT BONNER.
+
+
+Robert Bonner was born in the north of Ireland, near the town of
+Londonderry, about the year 1824. He came to this country when a mere
+child, and was brought up in the State of Connecticut, where he received
+a good common-school education.
+
+Manifesting a decided liking for the printer's trade, he was placed at
+an early age in the office of the "Hartford Courant," where he took his
+first lessons in the art of setting type. He entered upon the business
+with the determination to learn it thoroughly, and when he had mastered
+his trade soon acquired the reputation of being the best workman in
+Hartford. As a compositor, he was not only neat and thorough, but was
+remarkably rapid as well. On one occasion, when the "Courant" was
+endeavoring to publish the "President's Message" in advance of all its
+competitors, Mr. Bonner is said to have worked at the rate of seventeen
+hundred ems an hour--a feat absolutely unparalleled.
+
+In 1844, he removed to New York and engaged in the office of a new
+journal, called the "American Republican," then lately established as
+the organ of the American party in that city, upon which he worked
+steadily during its brief career. His wages were small, and it was only
+by practicing the most rigid economy that he could live upon them.
+
+When the "Republican" suspended publication, Mr. Bonner was employed in
+the office of the "Evening Mirror," published by Morris, Willis &
+Fuller. Here he made himself so useful, that the business of getting up
+or displaying advertisements attractively was soon left entirely to him.
+His taste in this department was almost faultless, and the
+advertisements of the "Mirror" soon became noted for their neat and
+handsome appearance.
+
+At this time there was published in New York a small, struggling paper,
+exclusively mercantile in its character, called the "Merchants' Ledger."
+This paper was almost entirely dependent upon its advertising patronage,
+and the attention of its proprietor was called to Mr. Bonner's skill, as
+exhibited in the "Mirror," in displaying advertisements to the greatest
+advantage. The result was that Mr. Bonner received an offer, which he
+accepted, to take charge of this paper. This was the origin of his
+connection with the journal which he has since rendered famous.
+
+Being fond of composition, he made frequent contributions to the
+editorial columns of the paper, which were well received by the general
+public, but which seem to have aroused the petty jealousy of the
+proprietor of the "Ledger."
+
+Soon after forming his connection with the "Ledger," Mr. Bonner
+purchased it. From his boyhood up, it had been his ambition to become
+the proprietor of a journal which should be carried out upon his own
+ideas, and he believed that the "Ledger" offered him the best means of
+doing this. It was generally doubted at that time that a literary paper
+could flourish in New York--Boston and Philadelphia having apparently
+monopolized such enterprises. Mr. Bonner, however, had a clearer view
+of the matter, and was convinced from the first that the great center of
+American industry was the very best place for such an undertaking. He
+proceeded very cautiously at first, however, changing the character of
+his paper very gradually, from a commercial to a literary journal.
+
+At this time Fanny Fern was the great literary sensation of the day. She
+had just published her "Ruth Hall," which had attracted universal
+attention, and had given rise to a sharp discussion in the public press
+as to whether she was the sister of N.P. Willis or not. Mr. Bonner
+resolved to profit by her sudden notoriety, and requested her to write a
+story for the "Ledger," for which he offered to pay her twenty-five
+dollars per column. She declined the proposition. He then offered her
+fifty dollars a column, and, upon a second refusal, increased his offer
+to seventy-five dollars a column. She was pleased with the energy
+exhibited by Mr. Bonner, and flattered by his eagerness to secure her
+services, but declared that she would write no more for the newspapers.
+A little later Mr. Bonner was offered a story from her, about ten
+columns long. He at once accepted her proposition, and upon the receipt
+of the manuscript sent her a check for one thousand dollars.
+
+With this story began that wonderful career of the "Ledger" which seems
+more like a dream than hard reality. The story was double-leaded, and
+made to fill twenty columns of the paper. The "Ledger" itself was
+changed from its old style to its present form, and made a purely
+literary journal. The price paid for the story was unparalleled in the
+history of American journalism, and Mr. Bonner spread the announcement
+far and wide that he was publishing a serial for which he had given one
+hundred dollars a column. His advertisements were to be seen in almost
+every newspaper of respectable circulation throughout the Union. In form
+they were different from any that had preceded them. "Fanny Fern
+writes for the 'Ledger.'" "Buy the 'New York Ledger,'" etc., appeared,
+dozens of times repeated, until men were absolutely tired of seeing the
+announcement. Nothing had ever been brought to the public notice so
+prominently before. For awhile people were astonished at the audacious
+boldness of "the 'Ledger' man." Then they began to buy the paper. Since
+then the demand for it has steadily increased.
+
+The venture was successful. Fanny Fern's reputation and Mr. Bonner's
+energy and boldness made a demand for the "Ledger," at once, and out of
+the profits of the story for which he had paid such an unheard-of price
+Mr. Bonner purchased a handsome residence in New York City.
+
+There was as much originality as boldness in the peculiar style in which
+Mr. Bonner advertised his paper. As before stated, nothing of the kind
+had ever been seen before, and the novelty of the announcements at once
+attracted attention. It was seen that they were expensive also, and
+people naturally felt some curiosity to see for themselves the paper for
+which a man was willing to assume such risk and expense. These
+announcements sometimes covered a whole page of a daily paper; sometimes
+the page would be almost entirely blank, with only a few lines in each
+column containing the announcement. Again the advertisement would be the
+opening chapters of a story, which would be sure to excite the curiosity
+of the reader, and induce him to purchase the remaining chapters in the
+"Ledger" itself. It is to the credit of the "Ledger" that it rarely
+loses a subscriber. It has become a family paper.
+
+A recent writer thus refers to Mr. Bonner's early experience
+advertising:--
+
+
+"His mode of advertising was new, and it excited both astonishment and
+ridicule. His ruin was predicted over and over again. But as he paid as
+he went along, he alone would be the sufferer. He was assailed in
+various ways. Men sneered at his writers, as well as at the method in
+which he made them known. He had no competition. Just then it was
+announced that the Harpers were to put a first-class weekly into the
+field. The announcement was hailed with delight by many classes. Men who
+had been predicting Bonner's ruin from the start were anxious to see it
+accomplished. He had agents in all the leading cities in the land. These
+held a monopoly of the 'Ledger.' The book men and newspaper men, who
+were left out, were quite willing to have the 'Ledger' go under. The
+respectability and wealth of the house, its enterprise, with the class
+of writers it could secure, made the new paper a dangerous rival. Mr.
+Bonner concluded to make the first issue serviceable to himself. His
+paragraph advertising was considered sensational, and smacking of the
+charlatan. He resolved to make it respectable. He wrote half a column in
+sensational style: 'Buy Harper's Weekly!'--'Buy Harper's Weekly!'--'Buy
+Harper's Weekly!'--'Buy Harper's Weekly!'--and so on through the half
+column. Through his advertising agent he sent this advertisement to the
+'Herald,' 'Tribune,' and 'Times,' and paid for its insertion. Among the
+astonished readers of this 'Ledger' style of advertising were the quiet
+gentlemen who do business on Franklin Square. The community were
+astonished. 'The Harpers are waking up!' 'This is the Bonner style!'
+'This is the way the Ledger man does it!' were heard on all sides. The
+young Harpers were congratulated by the book men every-where on the
+enterprise with which they were pushing the new publication. They said
+nothing, and took the joke in good part. But it settled the
+respectability of the 'Ledger' style of advertising. It is now imitated
+by the leading publishers, insurance men, and most eminent dry goods
+men in the country. The sums spent by Mr. Bonner in advertising are
+perfectly marvelous. He never advertises unless he has something new to
+present to the public. He pays from five to twenty-five thousand dollars
+a week when he advertises."
+
+Mr. Bonner well knew that all his advertising would be worth nothing in
+the end unless he made the "Ledger" worthy of the public patronage, and
+he exerted himself from the first to secure the services of a corps of
+able and popular writers. In his arrangements with his contributors, he
+inaugurated a system of liberality and _justness_ which might well put
+his rivals to shame.
+
+When Mr. Everett was engaged in his noble effort to assist the ladies of
+the Mount Vernon Association in purchasing the home and tomb of
+Washington, Mr. Bonner proposed to him to write a series of papers for
+the "Ledger," for which he offered him ten thousand dollars, the money
+to be appropriated to the purchase of Mount Vernon. Mr. Everett accepted
+the offer, and the celebrated Mount Vernon Papers were the result. This
+was a far-sighted move on the part of Robert Bonner. Under ordinary
+circumstances Mr. Everett would probably have declined to "write for the
+'Ledger;'" but in a cause so worthy he could not refuse. The association
+of his name with the journal was of incalculable service to it, and the
+Mount Vernon Papers were to its proprietor his very best advertisement.
+(We are viewing the matter commercially.) The sale of the paper was
+wonderfully increased, and a golden harvest was reaped.
+
+This connection of Mr. Everett with the "Ledger" led to a warm personal
+friendship between himself and its proprietor, which was broken only by
+the statesman's death--a circumstance which speaks volumes for the
+private worth of the younger man. Mr. Everett continued to write for
+the paper after his Mount Vernon articles were finished, and is said to
+have earned over fifty thousand dollars by his able contributions to it.
+
+Soon after the completion of the Mount Vernon Papers, Mr. Bonner secured
+the services of George Bancroft, the historian, who contributed a series
+of admirable articles. Mr. Everett's connection with the "Ledger" had
+settled the question that it was not beneath the dignity of the most
+eminent literateur in the land to write for it. Fanny Fern's husband,
+Mr. James Parton, Alice and Phoebe Carey, Mrs. Southworth, and a host of
+others have helped, and still help, to fill its columns.
+
+But perhaps its most profitable contributor, next to Mr. Everett, is
+Henry Ward Beecher. That wonderful gift of the great preacher which
+enables him to touch so constantly upon subjects nearest to the hearts
+of most men, would make him invaluable to any paper. Mr. Bonner was
+struck with this after hearing him preach several times, and resolved to
+secure his services for the "Ledger." He proposed, to the parson's utter
+astonishment, that Mr. Beecher should write a story for the paper, and
+coupled it with the offer of a sum which many persons would consider a
+fortune. The field was utterly new to Mr. Beecher. Novel-writing was
+something he had never even thought of; but after some hesitation he
+accepted the offer. Soon after this, the publication of "Norwood" was
+begun in the columns of the "Ledger." The story was longer than was at
+first agreed upon, and Mr. Bonner paid its author a handsome sum in
+addition to the amount originally offered. The reward was princely, but
+not out of proportion to the service rendered by Mr. Beecher, who has
+won thousands of readers for the paper. Mr. Beecher still writes for the
+"Ledger," and there is no present prospect of his genial and useful
+contributions coming to a close.
+
+Mr. Bonner has made his paper useful to young people as well as those of
+maturer years. Each number contains articles, briefly and pointedly
+written, upon some popular and useful topic, so that thousands find not
+only amusement, but valuable hints and profitable instruction in the
+"Ledger."
+
+It was for a long time the custom of the newspaper press to indulge in
+sneers at the "Ledger," and, at the least, to treat it with a species of
+mild contempt. In order to stop this, its proprietor secured and
+published a series of articles from James Gordon Bennett of "The
+Herald," Henry J. Raymond of "The Times," and Horace Greeley of "The
+Tribune." By thus identifying the leading journalists of the country
+with his enterprise, he effectually silenced the scoffers, and with them
+the "lesser lights" of the press.
+
+It was said by some over-careful persons that the "Ledger" was not a
+proper paper for young persons to read. Mr. Bonner at once secured the
+services of the Presidents of the twelve principal colleges of the
+Union, and articles from each of these gentlemen appeared in his paper.
+After this it was not to be presumed that a journal which had among its
+contributors twelve such distinguished guides of youth could be unfit
+for any one to read.
+
+In order to make still less room for doubt on this subject, a series of
+articles by twelve distinguished clergymen soon after appeared in the
+"Ledger."
+
+Indeed, the greatest care is exercised to exclude from the columns of
+the paper any thing savoring in the least of impurity. It is the
+proprietor's aim to make it a help as well as an amusement to its
+readers, and his object is to elevate, not to degrade them.
+
+The "Ledger" now circulates over three hundred thousand copies per
+week, and is growing in the public favor. From the profits of his
+business Mr. Bonner has built a splendid marble publishing-house at the
+corner of William and Spruce Streets, in New York, from which the
+"Ledger" is now issued. It is one of the most complete establishments in
+the world, and is fitted up with every convenience necessary to the
+performance of the work upon the paper in the most perfect and
+expeditious manner. Mr. Bonner has created all this by his own energy
+and business talent, and richly deserves the success he enjoys. He
+resides in an elegant mansion in New York, and has also a handsome
+country seat at Morrisania, in Westchester County. He is married, and
+has a family.
+
+Mr. Bonner's great wealth has enabled him to achieve a distinction of
+another kind. He is famous as the owner of the finest horses in America.
+His stables are located in Twenty-seventh Street, and are the most
+perfect of their kind in this country. They contain every thing needed
+for the comfort and care of the horses, and the men employed in them are
+thoroughly skilled in their business. The horses are seven in number.
+First on the list is "Dexter," who has made his mile in the
+unprecedented time of 2:17-1/4 in harness, and 2:18 under the saddle. He
+is the fastest horse in the world. "Lantern," a splendid bay, fifteen
+and a half hands high, has made his mile in 2:20. "Pocahontas," the most
+perfectly formed horse in existence, has made her mile in 2:23; while
+"Peerless," a fine gray mare, has followed close on to her in 2:23-1/4.
+"Lady Palmer" has made two miles with a three hundred and fifty pound
+wagon and driver in 4:59, while her companion, "Flatbush Mare," has made
+a two-mile heat to a road wagon in 5:01-1/4. The "Auburn Horse," a large
+sorrel, sixteen and a half hands high, with four white feet and a white
+face, was declared by Hiram Woodruff to be the fastest horse he ever
+drove. These horses cost their owner over two hundred thousand dollars,
+and he would not part with them for double that sum. He does not race
+them for money, but drives them for his own use, and holds the reins
+himself.
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+LAWYERS.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+JOHN MARSHALL.
+
+
+To the writer's mind the most perfect specimen of the American lawyer
+known to our history was JOHN MARSHALL, of Virginia, Chief Justice of
+the United States. Profoundly learned in the law, irresistible in
+argument, and possessed of an eloquence which drew men in throngs to
+listen to him, he was also the soul of honor. Neither in his private nor
+professional life could the most malicious find an action open to
+reproach. Simple and earnest as a child, he was yet a tower of strength
+to the cause of justice. Occupying the highest place in our judiciary
+system, he was never unduly elated by his honors, and while gaining and
+awarding fortunes in the discharge of his professional duties, he was
+himself so true a man that the most brazen suitor would not have dared
+to offer him a bribe. He was in all things the simple, honest gentleman,
+the fearless advocate, the just judge, and the meek and earnest follower
+of his Saviour. Although belonging to a past generation, his story is
+presented here because I wish to offer to those who seek to follow him
+in his noble calling the purest and highest model our history affords.
+
+John Marshall was born in Fauquier County, Virginia, on the 24th of
+September, 1755. He was the oldest of a family of fifteen children, and
+was the son of Colonel Thomas Marshall, a planter of moderate fortune.
+During the Revolution, Colonel Marshall commanded a regiment of Virginia
+troops, and won considerable distinction at the battles of the Great
+Bridge, Germantown, Brandywine, and Monmouth. At the Brandywine the
+regiment bore the brunt of the attack of the British army, led by
+Cornwallis in person.
+
+John Marshall was born in a region so thinly settled as to be almost cut
+off from civilization. The people were plain and even rough in their
+habits, and the mode of life which prevailed in his native county
+doubtless did much to lay the foundation of those habits of simplicity
+for which he was noted in after life. Schools were almost unknown in
+this region, and such as were in operation were so rude in character
+that Colonel Marshall, who was a man of education and culture, decided
+not to attempt to train his children in them. Being unable to raise the
+means of sending them to better schools in other parts of the Colony, he
+determined to become their teacher himself, and applied himself to his
+task with a devotion which was signally rewarded by the brilliant career
+of his eldest son. He laid especial weight upon their acquiring a
+thorough knowledge of the English language and of history, and sought to
+cultivate in them a love for the poetry of their native tongue.
+Referring in after life to his father's devoted labors, Judge Marshall
+once said, with great feeling, "To him I owe the solid foundation of all
+my success in life." John Marshall did ample justice to his father's
+labors, and when only fourteen years old was thoroughly familiar with
+the writings of Shakespeare, Dryden, Milton, and Pope, and could repeat
+by heart nearly the whole of the "Essay on Man." These poets were always
+his favorites, and in mature life he would quote them with readiness and
+the keenest relish.
+
+He showed such marked talent that his father determined to make an
+effort to secure him a better education than his private labors could
+impart to him, and accordingly sent him for a year to the school of the
+Rev. Mr. Campbell, in Westmoreland County, where he received a good
+drilling in English and Latin. At this school began his acquaintance
+with James Monroe, who was then one of Mr. Campbell's pupils. Returning
+home at the end of the year, he continued his studies under the Rev. Mr.
+Thompson.
+
+He studied hard and was an industrious reader. Poetry and romance were
+his favorites, but he read history with the deepest interest. He was
+quiet and thoughtful in manner, and full of a dreamy, poetic enthusiasm.
+He loved to wander in the thick woods, and would pass many of his
+leisure hours in gazing at the beauties of nature. His constitution was
+a sound and vigorous one, and he was not only fond of manly and athletic
+sports, but excelled in them. He had no inclination toward dissipation,
+and the simple, healthful life of his home was calculated to develop his
+physical powers to the utmost. Colonel Marshall did not neglect the
+moral training of his children, but always impressed upon them the
+importance of Christianity as the basis of their characters, rearing
+them in that simple code of true gentility which was so dear to our
+fathers, but of which we of to-day are fast losing sight.
+
+Being destined for the bar, young Marshall began his legal studies at
+the age of eighteen, but in two years they were interrupted by the
+troubles with Great Britain, which terminated in open hostilities. A
+volunteer company was raised in the neighborhood, and John Marshall
+promptly attached himself to it. He took a prominent part in the
+questions of the day, and expressed himself boldly in favor of
+resistance. In 1775 Patrick Henry made his memorable appeal for
+volunteers to drive the Loyalist Governor, Lord Dunmore, out of
+Virginia. Three companies were immediately organized in Marshall's
+neighborhood. Among these were the famous "Culpepper Minute Men."
+Marshall's father was elected major of the regiment, and he himself was
+chosen a lieutenant in the Minute Men. The force at once hastened to the
+lower counties, and bore a conspicuous part in the battle of Great
+Bridge. In July, 1776, Marshall's company was assigned to the Eleventh
+Virginia Regiment of the Continental Army, and sent North. In May, 1777,
+he was made captain of his company. He participated in the fight at Iron
+Hill, and in the battles of Germantown, Brandywine, and Monmouth, and
+shared the sufferings of the army at the memorable encampment of Valley
+Forge. Until the close of 1779 he was constantly in active service. He
+was always patient, cheerful, and hopeful. In the severest hardships to
+which the army was exposed his spirits never sank. One of his comrades
+said that he did more than any other man to keep alive the hopes of the
+army during the terrible winter at Valley Forge, and another has
+declared that "the officers of the Virginia line appeared to idolize
+him." His conduct attracted the attention of Washington, who conceived a
+warm friendship for him, and Marshall, on his part, returned the
+friendship of his chief with a feeling almost of worship. Washington
+frequently appointed him deputy judge advocate during the winter.
+
+At the close of 1779 he went to Virginia to take command of a new corps
+which the Legislature was about to raise. The project remaining under
+discussion for some months, he passed the time in attendance upon a
+course of lectures on law, delivered by George Wythe, and a course of
+lectures on natural philosophy, delivered by the Rev. Dr. Madison,
+afterward Bishop of Virginia, at William and Mary College, in
+Williamsburg. The next summer he received his license to practice law.
+Meanwhile, the project for raising troops had taken the shape of a
+definite failure, and he now set out to rejoin the army. Too poor to pay
+his passage to the North, he walked the entire distance from
+Williamsburg, Virginia, to Philadelphia, upon reaching which city he was
+so travel-worn and shabby in appearance, that the landlord of the hotel
+at which he wished to stop refused him admittance. He joined the army in
+due time, and remained with it until the spring of 1781, when he
+resigned his commission, a few months before the close of the war.
+
+With the return of peace the courts were again thrown open, and Marshall
+began that brilliant legal career which has made him one of the most
+famous men in our history. His success was marked from the first, as his
+professional talents were such as to make themselves felt anywhere, and
+his personal popularity aided him greatly in overcoming the difficulties
+which lie in the path of a young aspirant to legal honors. In 1782, the
+people of Fauquier elected him to the House of Delegates in the General
+Assembly of the Commonwealth, and in the fall of that year he was
+appointed one of the Council of State. In January, 1783, he was married
+to Miss Mary Willis Ambler, with whom he lived in the most perfect
+happiness for over fifty years. His bride was a woman of great personal
+beauty, and in every respect a fitting helpmate for such a man--than
+which no higher tribute could be paid her. About this time, Mr. Marshall
+decided not to return to Fauquier, but to locate himself permanently in
+Richmond, where he could enjoy many more professional advantages. In
+spite of this, however, his old friends in Fauquier re-elected him to
+the Legislature, and in 1787 he sat in that body as representative from
+the county of Henrico.
+
+He was very plain and even careless in his personal attire, and this
+often led to amusing occurrences. Soon after he began the practice of
+his profession in Richmond, he was strolling through the streets one
+morning, dressed in a plain linen suit and a straw hat. The hat was held
+under his arm, and was filled with cherries, of which he ate as he
+walked. In passing the Eagle Hotel, he stopped to exchange salutations
+with the landlord, and then continued his walk. Sitting near the
+landlord, on the hotel porch, was a Mr. P----, an elderly gentleman from
+the country, who had come to the city to engage counsel in an important
+case which was to be tried in a day or two. The landlord referred him to
+Marshall as the best lawyer in the city; but the old gentleman was so
+much prejudiced against the young advocate, by his careless appearance,
+that he refused to engage him. On entering court, Mr. P---- was a second
+time referred to Marshall by the clerk of the court, and a second time
+he refused to employ him. At this moment entered Mr. V----, a
+venerable-looking legal gentleman, in a powdered wig and black coat,
+whose dignified appearance produced such an impression on Mr. P---- that
+he engaged him at once. In the first case which came on, Marshall and
+Mr. V---- each addressed the court. "The vast inferiority of his
+advocate was so apparent that at the close of the case Mr. P----
+introduced himself to young Marshall, frankly stated the prejudice which
+had caused him, in opposition to advice, to employ Mr. V----; that he
+extremely regretted the error, but knew not how to remedy it. He had
+come to the city with one hundred dollars as his lawyer's fee, which he
+had paid, and had but five left, which, if Marshall chose, he would
+cheerfully give him for assisting in the case. Marshall, pleased with
+the incident, accepted the offer, not, however, without passing a sly
+joke at the _omnipotence_ of a powdered wig and black coat."
+
+In 1788, Mr. Marshall was elected to the Virginia Convention which met
+in June of that year for the purpose of considering the question of the
+adoption or rejection of the Federal Constitution. The debates in this
+body were among the most brilliant in history. Marshall took a decided
+stand in favor of the Constitution, and is believed to have done more
+than any other man, save Mr. Madison, to secure its adoption. He added
+greatly to his reputation by his labors in this body, and the close of
+the session found his practice very much enlarged. He was anxious to
+devote himself entirely to his professional duties; but he was urged so
+vehemently to accept a seat in the Legislature from the city of
+Richmond, that he was forced to consent. He sat in that body from 1789
+to 1791, and in those sessions which were marked by the brilliant
+contests between the Federalists and Republicans took a decided stand
+with the former, and sustained his position by an array of arguments
+against which his opponents were powerless. The struggle was one of
+great bitterness, but Marshall, although victorious in it, made no
+enemies among his antagonists.
+
+For the next three years he devoted himself industriously to his
+profession, appearing in public only to defend with masterly eloquence
+the course of President Washington with reference to the insolent
+conduct of Citizen Genet, the French Agent. In 1795, he was again
+elected to the Legislature, "not only without his approbation, but
+against his known wishes;" but yielding to the desires of his friends he
+took his seat in that body. The great question of the day was the
+adoption of "Jay's Treaty" with Great Britain. In Virginia, a bitter
+opposition assailed the treaty, and the entire State rang with
+denunciations of it. Even the influence of Washington was powerless to
+stay the tide of popular passion excited against the treaty and those
+who upheld it. Meetings were held in Richmond, and the treaty was
+fiercely denounced. Marshall now came to the rescue, and before a
+meeting of the citizens of that place made such an unanswerable argument
+in favor of the treaty, that the men who had been foremost in assailing
+it now united in the adoption of resolutions indorsing the policy of the
+Administration. In the Legislature his efforts were equally successful,
+and the opponents of the Administration were forced to abandon their
+constitutional objections to the treaty, and to content themselves with
+a simple denial of the expediency of the measure at that time. President
+Washington attached so much importance to these services that he offered
+to his old friend and comrade the position of Attorney-General of the
+United States, but Marshall declined the offer, as he wished to devote
+himself to his practice, which had now become very lucrative. He
+continued to sit in the Legislature, which did not interfere with his
+private business, and remained the constant and vigilant friend of
+Washington's Administration. In 1796, he was offered the post of
+Minister to France, as Mr. Monroe's successor, but he declined it for
+the same reason which had made him refuse the Attorney-Generalship. In
+1797, when the offer was repeated, this time by President Adams,
+Marshall yielded to the entreaties of Washington, and went to France
+with Pinckney and Gerry, as Envoy Extraordinary. The object of the
+mission was to remove the obstructions placed by France in the way of
+American commerce. The Envoys were unsuccessful, but a correspondence
+took place between Marshall and Talleyrand, which was a source of great
+satisfaction to American publicists, and raised Marshall still higher
+in their esteem and confidence. Upon his return home in 1798, he was
+given a public reception in New York by the citizens, and a public
+dinner by the two Houses of Congress, "as an evidence of affection for
+his person, and of their grateful approbation of the patriotic firmness
+with which he had sustained the dignity of his country during his
+important mission." He subsequently took a prominent part in support of
+the measures of retaliation directed against France by the
+Administration, which were sharply assailed by the opposition. He
+resumed his practice in Richmond, but was again drawn from it by a
+message from Washington, who requested him to visit him at Mt. Vernon.
+He did so, and the result was that he yielded to the solicitations of
+his old chieftain, and consented to accept a seat in Congress. He was
+elected to the Lower House of that body in 1799. During the canvass,
+President Adams offered him a seat in the Supreme Court of the United
+States, but he declined it.
+
+His career in Congress was brief, but brilliant. The Federalist party
+was hard pressed by the Republicans, and he promptly arrayed himself on
+the side of the former, as the champion of the Administration of John
+Adams. The excitement over the "Alien and Sedition Laws" was intense,
+but he boldly and triumphantly defended the course of the
+Administration. Mr. Binney says of him that, in the debates on the great
+constitutional questions, "he was confessedly the first man in the
+House. When he discussed them, he exhausted them; nothing more remained
+to be said; and the impression of his argument effaced that of every one
+else."
+
+His great triumph was his speech in the Jonathan Robbins affair. Robbins
+had committed a murder on board an English ship-of-war, and had sought
+refuge from punishment in the United States. In accordance with one of
+the provisions of Jay's Treaty, his surrender had been demanded by the
+British Minister, on the ground that he was a British subject, and he
+had been surrendered by President Adams. The opposition in Congress made
+this act a pretext for a famous assault upon the Administration, and a
+resolution was introduced into the House of Representatives by Mr.
+Livingston, censuring the President for his course in the matter. This
+resolution produced an extended debate in the House, in the course of
+which Marshall defended the President in a speech of great force and
+eloquence. Judge Story has said of this speech, that "it was _rêponse
+sans réplique_--an answer so irresistible that it admitted of no reply.
+It silenced opposition, and settled then and forever the points of
+national law upon which the controversy hinged."
+
+In May, 1800, Mr. Adams offered Marshall a seat in his Cabinet as
+Secretary of War, but before he could enter upon the duties of that
+office he was made Secretary of State, in which capacity he acted for a
+short while, conducting several important negotiations during that time,
+and leaving behind him several of the most magnificent state papers to
+be found in our archives. During his occupancy of this position, it
+became necessary to appoint a Chief Justice of the United States, and
+Marshall took advantage of the occasion to urge upon the President the
+propriety of tendering the place to a distinguished gentleman who had
+been a faithful friend to the Administration; but Mr. Adams quietly
+informed him that he had made up his mind to confer the honor upon the
+man best suited to it, and that he had sent to the Senate the name of
+John Marshall, of Virginia. This appointment, which came to him entirely
+unsolicited, was made on the 31st of January, 1801, and was unanimously
+confirmed by the Senate.
+
+He held the position of Chief Justice for more than thirty-four years,
+and this period is justly regarded as the most brilliant portion of the
+history of our highest court, a court of which a famous judge has said:
+
+"The decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States have raised the
+renown of the country not less than they have confirmed the
+Constitution. In all parts of the world its judgments are spoken of with
+respect. Its adjudications of prize law are a code for all future time.
+Upon commercial law it has brought us nearly to one system, befitting
+the probity of a great commercial nation. Over its whole path, learning
+and intelligence and integrity have shed their combined luster."
+
+Although holding so high a post in the General Government, he continued
+to take a warm interest in the affairs of his native State, and in 1828
+was a delegate to the Charlottesville Convention, which met for the
+purpose of recommending to the Legislature a system of internal
+improvements best suited to the needs of the State. In 1829, he was a
+member of the Convention which met in Richmond for the purpose of
+revising the Constitution of the State. Though now quite old and feeble,
+he took an active part in the debates of the Convention, and was mainly
+instrumental in effecting the settlement of the disputes between the
+eastern and western sections of the State.
+
+In 1805, Judge Marshall published, in five volumes, his "Life of
+Washington." The first volume was devoted to the history of the
+Colonies, from their settlement to the commencement of the Revolution.
+This work has always held the first position in our Revolutionary
+annals, and won for its author a place in the front rank of American
+writers. It is, all in all, the best biography of Washington in
+existence.
+
+Sterling honesty was exemplified in Judge Marshall's whole career. His
+word was indeed as good as his bond. He would never argue in behalf of a
+cause which he had reason to think unjust, and he scorned to take a
+legal advantage at the expense of moral honesty. He once indorsed a
+bond to the amount of several thousand dollars. The drawer failed, and
+Marshall paid it, although he knew he could avoid it, as the holder had
+forfeited his claim in law by requiring more than legal interest.
+
+He was generous to a fault. Once, as he passed through Culpepper County,
+he met with Captain S----, one of his old comrades in the Revolution. In
+the course of the conversation which ensued, S---- told him that his
+estate was burdened with a mortgage for $3,000, which was about to fall
+due, and that, as he was unable to pay it, he saw nothing but ruin in
+store for him. At his departure, Marshall handed a note to the servant
+who brought his horse to the door, and told him to give it to his
+master. This was done as Marshall was riding away, and upon opening the
+note Mr. S--- found that it contained a check for the amount of the
+mortgage. Mounting his horse, he soon overtook Marshall, and, though he
+thanked him warmly for his generosity, refused to accept it. Marshall
+strenuously urged its acceptance, but the other persistently refused.
+Finally, the former suggested a compromise. Marshall took up the
+mortgage, and thus satisfied the first claim, but as his friend was
+never prosperous, he never asked for the payment of the debt.
+
+William Wirt has left us the following description of his personal
+appearance: "He is tall, meager, emaciated; his muscles relaxed, and his
+joints so loosely connected as not only to disqualify him apparently for
+any vigorous exertion of body, but to destroy every thing like harmony
+in his air or movements. Indeed, in his whole appearance and
+demeanor,--dress, attitudes, gesture, sitting, standing, or walking,--he
+is as far removed from the idolized graces of Lord Chesterfield as any
+other gentleman on earth."
+
+"In spite, however, of this ungainly person," says a writer, "no one
+was a greater social favorite than the Chief Justice. The people of
+Richmond regarded his eccentric figure with strong personal affection as
+well as respect. The black eyes, under their bushy gray brows, beamed
+with good nature, and the lips were habitually smiling. The courtesy of
+the Judge was one of his most beautiful traits. It was the spontaneous
+exhibition of the simple and kindly emotions of his heart. Pure
+benevolence and philanthropy displayed itself in every word which he
+uttered. He gave his hand to the plain yeoman clad in homespun as
+courteously and sincerely as to the greatest personage in the country.
+He had the same simple smile and good-humored jest for both, and seemed
+to recognize no difference between them. It was instructive to estimate
+in the good Chief Justice the basis and character of true politeness.
+John Randolph, one of the most fastidious and aristocratic of men, left
+his opinion that Marshall's manner was perfect good breeding. In dress
+and bearing, it would be difficult to imagine any one more simple than
+Judge Marshall. He presented the appearance of a plain countryman,
+rather than a Chief Justice of the United States. He had a farm in
+Fauquier County, and another near Richmond, and he would often return
+from the latter to take his seat on the bench with burrs sticking to his
+clothes. His great passion was the game of quoits, and he was a member
+of the club which met, as it still meets, at Buchanan's Spring, near the
+city, to play at this game. Here the Governor of Virginia, the Chief
+Justice, and the most eminent lawyers of the Court of Appeals, were
+found by a French gentleman, Baron Quinet, with their coats off, gayly
+pitching quoits, with the ardor of a party of urchins. In these simple
+amusements passed the hours of leisure which Judge Marshall could steal
+from his exhausting judicial toil. At such times he seemed to become a
+boy again, and to forget the ermine. His fondness for other social
+enjoyments was great. He was the center of a brilliant circle of men,
+many of whom were famous, and the tradition of their dinner parties, and
+the jests which they circulated, is still preserved."
+
+It was his custom always to provide for his table himself when at home,
+and he might be seen every morning at the Shockoe Hill Market, with his
+basket on his arm, engaged in making his purchases. Upon one of these
+occasions he noticed a fashionably-dressed young man, swearing violently
+because he could not find any one willing to carry home for him a turkey
+which he had just purchased, and which his foolish pride would not
+permit him to carry himself. Approaching him quietly, the Judge asked
+where he lived, and upon being told, said, "I am going that way, and
+will carry it for you." Taking the turkey, he set out and soon reached
+the young man's door. Upon receiving his turkey, the young man thanked
+him for his trouble, and asked, "How much shall I pay you?" "Oh,
+nothing," replied the Judge, smiling, "you are welcome. It was on my
+way, and no trouble." So saying, the Judge departed, and the young man,
+with a faint suspicion of the truth, turned to a bystander, and asked,
+in some confusion, "Who is that polite old gentleman who brought home my
+turkey for me?" "That is John Marshall, the Chief Justice of the United
+States," was the reply. "Why, then, did _he_ bring home my turkey?"
+stammered the fop. "To give you a deserved rebuke," said the gentleman,
+"and to teach you to conquer your silly pride."
+
+Reference has been made to his carelessness in regard to his personal
+appearance. A wager was once laid among his friends in Richmond that he
+could not dress himself without leaving about his clothing some mark of
+his carelessness. The Judge good-humoredly accepted the wager. A supper
+was to be given to him upon these conditions. If his dress was found
+faultless upon that occasion, the other parties were to pay for the
+entertainment; but if any carelessness could be detected about his dress
+or in his appearance, the expense was to fall upon him. Upon the
+appointed evening the gentlemen and the Judge met at the place agreed
+upon, and to the surprise of all, the Judge's dress seemed faultless. He
+appeared the very perfection of neatness and taste. The supper followed,
+the Judge being in high glee over his victory. Near the close of the
+repast, however, one of the guests, who sat next to Judge Marshall,
+chanced to drop his napkin, and stooping down to pick it up, discovered
+that the Judge had put on one of his stockings with the wrong side out.
+Of course the condition of affairs was immediately reversed, and, amid
+roars of laughter, the Chief Justice acknowledged his defeat.
+
+The means of locomotion in the Southern States being limited in the days
+of Judge Marshall, it was his custom to travel about the country, when
+holding his circuit courts, in an old-fashioned and very much
+dilapidated gig. His plain and even rusty appearance often led him into
+ludicrous adventures, which he related to his friends with keen
+enjoyment. At other times people to whom he was personally unknown were
+astonished to find that this shabbily-dressed old man was the famous
+Chief-Justice Marshall. One of his adventures is thus related by an
+eye-witness:
+
+"It is not long since a gentleman was traveling in one of the counties
+of Virginia, and about the close of the day stopped at a public-house to
+obtain refreshment and spend the night. He had been there but a short
+time when an old man alighted from his gig, with the apparent intention
+of becoming his fellow-guest at the same house. As the old man drove up,
+he observed that both the shafts of his gig were broken, and that they
+were held together by withes formed from the bark of a hickory sapling.
+Our traveler observed, further, that he was plainly clad, that his
+knee-buckles were loosened, and that something like negligence pervaded
+his dress. Conceiving him to be one of the honest yeomanry of our land,
+the courtesies of strangers passed between them, and they entered the
+tavern. It was about the same time that an addition of three or four
+young gentlemen was made to their number--most of them, if not all, of
+the legal profession. As soon as they became conveniently accommodated,
+the conversation was turned by the latter upon an eloquent harangue
+which had that day been delivered at the bar. The other replied that he
+had witnessed the same day a degree of eloquence no doubt equal, but
+that it was from the pulpit. Something like a sarcastic rejoinder was
+made to the eloquence of the pulpit, and a warm and able altercation
+ensued, in which the merits of the Christian religion became the subject
+of discussion. From six o'clock until eleven the young champions wielded
+the sword of argument, adducing with ingenuity and ability every thing
+that could be said pro and con. During this protracted period, the old
+gentleman listened with all the meekness and modesty of a child, as if
+he was adding new information to the stores of his own mind; or perhaps
+he was observing, with philosophic eye, the faculties of the youthful
+mind, and how new energies are evolved by repeated action; or, perhaps,
+with patriotic emotion, he was reflecting upon the future destinies of
+his country, and on the rising generation upon whom these future
+destinies must devolve; or, most probably, with a sentiment of moral and
+religious feeling, he was collecting an argument which--characteristic
+of himself--no art would be 'able to elude and no force resist.' Our
+traveler remained a spectator, and took no part in what was said."
+
+[Illustration: MARSHALL'S DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY]
+
+"At last one of the young men, remarking that it was impossible to
+combat with long-established prejudices, wheeled around, and, with some
+familiarity, exclaimed, 'Well, my old gentleman, what think you of these
+things?' If, said the traveler, a streak of vivid lightning had at that
+moment crossed the room, their amazement could not have been greater
+than it was with what followed. The most eloquent and unanswerable
+appeal was made, for nearly an hour, by the old gentleman, that he ever
+heard or read. So perfect was his recollection, that every argument used
+against the Christian religion was met in the order in which it was
+advanced. Hume's sophistry on the subject of miracles was, if possible,
+more perfectly answered than it had already been done by Campbell. And
+in the whole lecture there was so much simplicity and energy, pathos and
+sublimity, that not another word was uttered. An attempt to describe it,
+said the traveler, would be an attempt to paint the sunbeams. It was now
+a matter of curiosity and inquiry who the old gentleman was. The
+traveler concluded it was the preacher from whom the pulpit eloquence
+was heard; but no--it was the Chief Justice of the United States."
+
+Judge Marshall was a simple and earnest Christian, and held in the
+deepest abhorrence the fashionable skepticism of his day. His conduct
+was consistent with his profession, and to the last this good and great
+man repeated night and morning the simple prayer he had learned at his
+mother's knee.
+
+For many years he suffered from an affection of the bladder, and was at
+length compelled to resort to a surgical operation for relief. This had
+the desired effect, but he was soon after taken with an attack of "liver
+complaint." He repaired to Philadelphia for medical treatment, but
+failed to derive any benefit from it, and died in that city on the 6th
+of July, 1835.
+
+His body was conveyed to Richmond for interment, and he now sleeps by
+the side of his wife in the Shockoe Hill Cemetery in that city. The spot
+is marked by a plain slab of marble, over which the weeds and the rank
+grass are growing, and on which may be read the following inscription,
+dictated (saving the last date) by himself:
+
+"John Marshall, son of Thomas and Mary Marshall, was born 24th of
+September, 1755; intermarried with Mary Willis Ambler, the 3d of
+January, 1783; departed this life the 6th day of July, 1835."
+
+
+
+[Illustration: JAMES T. BRADY.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+JAMES T. BRADY.
+
+
+The father of James T. Brady was born in Ireland, and came to this
+country during the second war with England, and just after his marriage.
+Mr. Brady opened a school for boys, in New York, soon after his arrival,
+and it was in that city, on the 9th of April, 1815, that his eldest son,
+JAMES TOPHAM BRADY, was born. Other children followed, there being seven
+in all, two boys (James T., and Judge John R. Brady) and five girls. Mr.
+Brady, senior, was a man of rare abilities, and his wife was a woman of
+great personal beauty and high character, "one of those mothers," says a
+distinguished gentleman, who knew her, "whose quiet virtues shed their
+blessed influence over families, and are felt so long in their durable
+effect upon children."
+
+James T. Brady grew up with a sound, vigorous constitution, and at an
+early age was put at his studies in his father's school. He was only
+seven years old when he began, and though so young, he worked hard,
+storing his "big head"--which seemed too big for the little feet below
+it--with knowledge. He endeared himself very greatly to his
+school-fellows, and formed with several of them friendships which
+continued through life. "He was so noted," says one of his former
+school-fellows, "for his loving kindliness as a boy, that it almost
+obliterates every other recollection." His amiable traits developed with
+his years. He always delighted in acts of kindness, and could never bear
+to give pain, even to the most insignificant animal or insect. He
+detested hunting and fishing, which he regarded as a needless sacrifice
+of life. Yet while so tender and gentle in his disposition, he was brave
+and fearless, unusually independent, and, above all, as mirthful and
+fond of a jest at fifty as at sixteen.
+
+Before he had completed his education, his father abandoned the
+profession of teaching for that of a lawyer, and young Brady entered his
+office as office-boy and student, it being his desire to become an
+advocate. He was bright, quick-witted, and remarkably apt in his
+studies. His buoyant spirits and ready repartee often led him into
+encounters with his elders, who were generally forced to confess that
+his tongue was too much for them. His father encouraged him to form his
+own opinions, and to hold them tenaciously until convinced of his error.
+He made rapid progress in his legal studies, and soon acquired such
+proficiency in the management of the details of the office business that
+every thing which did not absolutely need his father's personal
+attention was left to him.
+
+Although fond of social enjoyment, and full of the fire and joyfulness
+of youth, he knew how to seclude himself from the pleasures he relished
+so much. He was a hard and faithful student, allowing nothing to draw
+him from his books when he meant to devote himself to them. He read not
+only law, but history, poetry, biography, romance, in short, every thing
+that could store his mind with useful knowledge or add to its natural
+graces. He slept at the office, and often sat up the entire night
+engaged in study. Abbott speaks as follows of the early studies of
+Napoleon II., and it requires no straining of language or ideas to
+apply his remarks to this portion of the life of James T. Brady: "So
+great was his ardor for intellectual improvement that he considered
+every day as lost in which he had not made perceptible progress in
+knowledge. By this rigid mental discipline he acquired that wonderful
+power of concentration by which he was ever enabled to simplify subjects
+the most difficult and complicated." Mr. Brady, senior, was very proud
+of the energy and talent displayed by his son, and when the latter was
+nineteen years old the father said to a friend who had been speaking to
+him of the promise of the boy: "Yes, sir; he is a boy of great promise,
+a boy of splendid intellect and noble character. Young as he is, I
+regard him as a walking encyclopoedia; his mind seems to gild every
+subject it touches."
+
+In the year 1835, when but twenty years old, Mr. Brady was admitted to
+the bar. "There were giants in those days" at the New York bar, and the
+young man was now entering an arena in which his powers were to be
+tested to the utmost. His native eloquence was well known to his
+friends, and naturally he was not ignorant of it; but he did not, like
+so many young men in his calling, trust entirely to his powers of
+pleading. He had long since recognized the truth of Lord Erskine's
+declaration that "no man can be a great advocate who is no lawyer," and
+had stored his mind with a knowledge of the theories of his profession
+which few men in coming to the bar have ever equaled.
+
+In his first important case he was opposed to Charles O'Conor, and was
+unsuccessful. He was engaged in a suit to recover a certain sum of money
+from an insurance company, which his client claimed was due him for
+certain goods which had been destroyed by fire. As Brady himself saw, he
+had a very weak case, and Mr. O'Conor had no trouble in demolishing it;
+yet the young counsel conducted it with a skill and an eloquence which
+made him from that hour a marked man in his profession. Yet he had to
+contend against that obstacle which meets most public men at the outset
+of their careers--the feeling which actors call "stage fright." He said
+that on this occasion every thing around him grew suddenly black, and he
+could not even see the jury. By steadying himself against his table, and
+keeping his eyes in the direction of the jury, he continued to speak
+until he had recovered his self-control.
+
+The case which brought him most prominently before the public, and which
+may be said to have established his fame as a lawyer, was a peculiar
+one. Some newsboys had been arrested for selling the "Sunday Morning
+News" on the morning of the Sabbath day. It was claimed that the selling
+of the paper on the streets on Sunday was contrary to law, and that the
+boys disturbed the congregations in the churches by their cries. One of
+these boys had been arrested at the instance of Mr. Gerard, and this
+brought on a suit to determine the rights of the lads, in which Mr.
+Brady appeared for the newsboys. Considerable feeling was manifested on
+the subject, and when the trial came on the court-room was crowded. The
+verdict of the jury was against him, but Mr. Brady won a remarkable
+triumph by his management of the case, and the whole city rang with his
+eloquence. So great was the effect of his speech upon the audience, that
+many of them who were total strangers to him crowded around him as he
+left the court-house to congratulate him. Though defeated in the verdict
+of the jury, this case was a great triumph for Mr. Brady. It established
+his fame as an advocate, and advanced him at once to a foremost place at
+the bar. Business flowed in upon him more rapidly than he could attend
+to it, and from this time to the close of his labors he was always in
+the possession of a large and lucrative practice.
+
+Mr. McKeon has said of him: "We may refer to the period of his
+introduction to the bar of this city as an epoch in its history. In
+looking back at the past, we see rising before us George Wood, treading
+with no uncertain step through the labyrinth of the law of real
+property; Daniel Lord, following, with his legal eye, commerce over the
+long and dreary waste of waters; David Graham, the younger, and Ogden
+Hoffman, standing in full panoply of intellectual power before our
+criminal tribunals. Into the lists where stood these proud knights young
+Brady sprang, ready to contend with the mightiest of them. How well he
+contended many of you well remember, and the honors paid to his memory
+are justified by the triumphs he has won."
+
+He grew rapidly in popularity, and in the esteem and confidence of his
+fellow-citizens, and was intrusted with numerous cases of a class which
+had rarely until then been seen in the hands of a young lawyer. His
+practice soon extended into the Supreme Court of the State, which at
+that time met quarterly, at New York, Albany, Utica, and Rochester. The
+practice of this court was entirely in the hands of men of high standing
+in their profession,--the great lawyers of the State,--and it was no
+slight honor to our young lawyer to hold a place, and a proud place,
+too, among them.
+
+He won additional honors in the famous India-rubber suits, which have
+been mentioned elsewhere in this volume, acting as one of the counsel of
+Charles Goodyear, and being associated with Daniel Webster. Brady
+applied himself with intense energy to master the case, and when the
+trial came off at Trenton, in the United States Circuit Court, before
+Justices Grier and Dickerson, he opened the case in a speech which
+lasted two days, and which Daniel Webster said in the beginning of his
+remarks had so exhausted it as to leave him nothing to say.
+
+Turning to Mr. Brady, Mr. Webster said, "You have cut a highway through
+this case, and if it is won, it will be because of the manner in which
+you have brought it before the court." The suit was won by Goodyear.
+
+"In connection with the India-rubber cases is a fact which testifies to
+his character. A salary of twenty-live thousand dollars a year for life
+was offered to be settled on him by the rubber company, if he would
+advise a certain course; but not deeming it right, he rejected the
+offer. When in France, in 1851, the rubber cases coming in controversy
+there, Mr. Brady substantially gave in French, to Etienne Blanc, the
+French advocate, the materials for his brief."
+
+Mr. Brady practiced law for thirty-four years, and during the major part
+of that time there was scarcely a case of great importance, in either
+the civil or criminal courts, in which he did not figure. He was
+compelled to refuse case after case from lack of time to give to it; and
+yet he frequently found time to respond to the appeals of the courts to
+defend men indicted for capital offenses who were unable to procure
+counsel. In some of these cases he had scarcely any chance of
+preparation, but he always managed to secure the acquittal of his
+client, in spite of this drawback. The spirit of kindliness which had so
+endeared him to his boyhood's friends pervaded every action of his
+maturer life, and he never displayed more energy, more unceasing
+vigilance, more irresistible eloquence, than when pleading the cause of
+some poor wretch who could only reward him with his thanks.
+
+His readiness in mastering a case was remarkable, and was greatly
+assisted by his profound knowledge of the law. As a rule, in the
+ordinary run of cases, it was merely necessary for him to comprehend the
+particular case under consideration, since he was already familiar with
+the law bearing upon it.
+
+This readiness is admirably illustrated in the following reminiscence
+related of him by the Hon. Luther R. Marsh. Mr. Marsh was engaged in a
+case of great importance, in which he desired Mr. Brady's assistance in
+the trial. Marsh had thoroughly and patiently studied the case, but
+Brady was totally ignorant of it. Nevertheless, he told Mr. Marsh he
+would do his best, and that he (Marsh) must open the case as fully and
+exhaustively as he could, without reference to him. Mr. Marsh did so,
+and says that when he sat down he thought he had _exhausted_ the case,
+and was wondering what Brady could find to say in addition to it. To his
+astonishment and delight, Brady rose, and in his argument presented
+seven new and telling points.
+
+In the examination of a witness, he could be severe and decisive when he
+had occasion to suspect that the person was trying to evade the truth;
+but in general his manner was kind and considerate, and he succeeded in
+eliciting evidence by his forbearance which others could not have
+extorted by bullying. Upon one occasion, he was convinced that a witness
+was about to relate a "made-up" story, and he at once fixed upon the man
+a look so piercing that the fellow was overwhelmed with confusion and
+could not go on with his evidence. Brady promptly changed his tactics,
+sent for a glass of water for the witness, and soothed him so
+effectually that the heart of the man was won, and, abandoning his false
+tale, he made a simple statement of the truth.
+
+The independence of character exhibited by Mr. Brady has already been
+adverted to. Having once traced out the line of duty, nothing could make
+him swerve from it, and he was as bold in the defense of the rights of
+his clients as of his own. Mr. Edwards Clarke, from whose excellent
+memoir is gleaned much of the information upon which this sketch is
+based, relates the following incidents in illustration of this quality
+of the man:
+
+"The trial of Baker for the murder of Poole furnished a notable instance
+of Mr. Brady's intrepidity in behalf of a client. It was at the height
+of the 'Know-Nothing' excitement, and Poole, after receiving the fatal
+bullet, having exclaimed, 'I die an American,' succeeded in causing
+himself to be regarded as a martyr to the cause. Lingering for days
+with--as the _post-mortem_ proved--a bullet deeply imbedded in his
+heart, the interest and excitement became intense; and on the day of his
+funeral twenty thousand men walked in solemn procession behind the
+coffin of the martyred 'rough.' In such a state of public feeling, Baker
+was put on trial for his life. At the opening of the charge by the
+judge, aroused by its tenor, Mr. Brady seized a pen and commenced
+writing rapidly, indignation showing itself in his set lips and frowning
+brow. The moment the judge ceased he was on his feet, and began: 'You
+have charged the jury thus and thus. I protest against your so stating
+it.' The judge said he would listen to the objections after the jury had
+retired. 'No!' exclaimed the indignant orator, 'I choose that the jury
+should hear those objections;' and, defying interference, he poured
+forth impetuously forty-five separate and formal objections, couching
+them all emphatically in words of personal protest to the judge. The
+force of the judge's charge on that jury was pretty effectually broken.
+The indignation of the advocate at this time was real, not simulated;
+and he, at least, of the New York bar dared to defy and to denounce
+injustice, even when clad in ermine.
+
+"Another instance of his intrepidity before a judge was in the Busteed
+case. The judge had threatened to convict him for contempt. Busteed had
+apologized, and Brady also, with his matchless grace and courtesy, had
+tendered Busteed's apology; but the judge still said that he should
+send him to prison. 'You will, will you?' said Brady; 'I say you will
+not.' And, citing authority after authority against his power to do so,
+he dared him to thus stretch his prerogative. The judge thought best to
+excuse Mr. Busteed."
+
+Perhaps one of the best instances of his moral courage to be found was
+his conduct with reference to the late Edwin M. Stanton. He was
+associated with Mr. Stan ton in the Sickles trial, and conceived a warm
+personal attachment to him. Mr. Brady remained a Democrat to the last,
+and was an active member of Tammany Hall. Upon one occasion, during a
+meeting of the Tammany Committee, when the name of Stanton was received
+with hisses and yells of objurgation, Brady rose, and facing the crowd
+told them "that he knew they hated Edwin M. Stanton, but he, a Democrat,
+knew him, and held him in his heart of hearts." It was a bold
+declaration, considering the time and place, even for one so highly
+esteemed as James T. Brady.
+
+As before remarked, Mr. Brady never relied upon his eloquence alone for
+success at the bar. He had a profound respect for his profession, and
+scorned its trickeries. He worked faithfully over the cases intrusted to
+him, studied them carefully, and never brought them to trial till he was
+thorough master of the law bearing upon them. This enabled him
+frequently to present issues which a less learned man would not have
+dreamed of. When he was retained as counsel for Huntington the forger,
+he conceived the idea that the man was morally unaccountable for his
+deed, and his theory of moral insanity, as developed by him in this
+case, is one of the most powerful arguments upon the subject to be found
+in any language. He read every thing he could find on the subject of
+insanity, and when he went into court there was not a physician in the
+land better informed with respect to it than he. The cases in which he
+was frequently engaged required an unusual acquaintance with medical
+jurisprudence, and he was regarded as one of the best authorities on the
+subject in the country.
+
+His power over a jury was remarkable. He never lost sight of the "twelve
+peers," and by his dexterous management soon had them so thoroughly
+under the influence of his magnetic mind that they hung upon his words,
+followed his every act, laughed or cried as he willed, and seemed
+capable of thinking only as he permitted them. He defended fifty-one men
+for their lives in the course of his practice, and brought them all off
+in safety.
+
+[Illustration: "THEY ARE GOING TO HANG MY BROTHER, AND YOU CAN SAVE
+HIM!"]
+
+Mr. Clarke, from whose memoir I have already quoted, relates the
+following incidents in his career:
+
+"The case of a young man charged with murder, in what was claimed to be
+an accidental fracas, attracted a good deal of interest. He was a Mason,
+and that society applied to Mr. Brady to defend him, tendering
+twenty-five hundred dollars as a fee; but for some cause he declined the
+case. Not long after, one afternoon, a neatly-dressed, modest young girl
+came to the office and asked for Mr. Brady. Told to walk into his
+private office, she timidly approached his desk, and saying, 'Mr. Brady,
+they are going to hang my brother, and you can save him. I've brought
+you this money; please don't let my brother die,' she burst into tears.
+It was a roll of two hundred and fifty dollars, which the poor girl had
+begged in sums of five and ten dollars. The kind-hearted man heard her
+story. 'They shall not hang your brother, my child,' said he, and
+putting the roll of bills in an envelope, told her to take it to her
+mother, and he would ask for it when he wanted it. The boy was cleared.
+In Mr. Brady's parlor hangs an exquisite picture, by Durand, with a
+letter on the back asking him to accept it as a mark of appreciation for
+his generous kindness in defending this poor boy. Mr. Brady prized
+_that_ picture....
+
+"Once when, in the height of his appeal to the jury, a dog began barking
+vigorously, he whirled around, shook his finger at the dog and said,
+gravely, with the quickness of thought, 'I am Sir Oracle, and when I ope
+my lips let no dog bark!'
+
+"An Irishman once came to his office: 'And are yez Misther Brady?' 'I
+am; come in, Patrick. What is it you wish?' 'I ax yer pardon; I oughtn't
+to intrude upon yez,' 'But what is it, Patrick?' 'Well, yer honor, it
+isn't for the likes o' me to be comin' troublin' yer honor.' 'But tell
+me what you want, Pat.' 'Well, yer honor, I came to see ye about a
+friend of mine as met wid an accident.' 'An accident?' said Mr. Brady;
+'then why don't you go for a doctor?' 'Arrah, sure, you're the docther
+for my friend; he had an accident which wants yer honor.' 'Well, what
+_was_ it?' 'Well, yer honor, he was arristed for a thrifle of a
+burglary, shure.' Quick as Mr. Brady was, with the readiness of his
+race, for repartee, he sometimes met his match among his own countrymen.
+He was once examining an unwilling witness who persistently called him
+Mr. O'Brady. At length, even his proverbial good nature being a little
+ruffled, he said to the witness: 'You need not call me Mr. O'Brady. I've
+mended my name since I came here and dropped the O.' 'Have ye, now? 'Pon
+my sowl it's a pity ye didn't mend yer manners at the same time.'"
+
+In politics Mr. Brady was a Democrat of the States-Rights school, yet he
+always maintained that it was the duty of the citizen to render the
+promptest obedience to the General Government. At the outset of the late
+war he gave his support to the Government in its war measures, though he
+did not separate himself from the Democratic party. He was frequently
+solicited by his friends to accept political honors, but he steadily
+refused, saying that he wanted no honors outside of his profession.
+
+In person Mr. Brady was slender and delicate in appearance. What
+attracted the gazer at once was his massive head--a head which measured
+in its circumference twenty-four and three-eighths inches. Age seemed to
+have no effect upon his face. Severe mental labor in the course of years
+took away some of the rosy hues of youth, but otherwise it continued as
+fresh and as winning as when a boy.
+
+Mr. Brady never married, but no one was more widely removed from the
+typical old bachelor than he. If he had no family of his own, he was the
+head of a family of devoted relatives, who gave him ample scope for the
+exercise of the domestic affections which were so strong in him. Very
+soon after entering upon the practice of his profession his parents
+died, leaving his brother and five sisters, all much younger than
+himself, helpless. The young lawyer at once declared that the care of
+these dear ones should be his first thought, and he devoted himself to
+his practice with redoubled energy, in order to provide for them. He
+brought his personal expenses down to a low figure, and resolutely kept
+them there, yet all the while he was lavish in his generosity to those
+whom he loved. He once said to a friend who asked him why he had never
+married: "When my father died he left five daughters, who looked to me
+for support. All the affection which I could have had for a wife went
+out to those sisters, and I have never desired to recall it." He
+transferred a share of this affection to the children of those sisters
+and of his brother, and was never so happy as when in their company. In
+his will he mentions one of his nieces as his "dearly beloved Toot."
+
+He was very fond of literature, especially of poetry, and devoted a
+considerable portion of his time to literary efforts of his own. His
+great fame as a lawyer so overshadowed the success he won in literature
+that few besides himself knew how much pleasure the popularity of his
+writings gave him.
+
+In the exercise of his profession Mr. Brady won a large fortune. His
+income was princely during the greater part of his life, but he saved
+comparatively little. He delighted in giving to others. His relatives
+were the constant recipients of substantial evidences of his affection
+for them, and his charities to the poor were in keeping with his
+generous nature. He could not look upon suffering unmoved, and "never
+turned his face from any poor man."
+
+His last appearance in public was at the Gerard dinner, where he was as
+brilliant and genial as ever. He seemed to have a foreboding of his
+approaching end, however, for the next day he said to one of his family:
+"I feel that it is the last time I shall ever appear on a like public
+occasion." His fears were prophetic. He was seized with an attack of
+paralysis on the morning of the 9th of February, 1869, and breathed his
+last at five o'clock in the afternoon of the same day. He died in the
+communion of the Catholic Church, and was buried from St. Patrick's
+Cathedral, in the city of New York. His death drew forth expressions of
+sympathy and respect from all parts of the Union and from men of all
+shades of opinion. All felt that a good and useful man, a great
+advocate, and an incorruptible citizen had been taken away.
+
+His was a happy fate. He died in the fullness of his fame, before age
+had weakened his faculties or chilled his heart, and dying thus, it may
+be said of him, as he once said of another, that he was "a man who had
+no guile in his nature, and who died leaving no living creature to
+rejoice at his death."
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+ARTISTS.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+BENJAMIN WEST.
+
+
+At a time when America was regarded in Europe as a savage region, and
+when Americans were looked upon as little better than barbarians by the
+people of the mother country, it was no slight achievement for an
+American artist to rise by the force of his genius to the proud position
+of President of the Royal Academy of Great Britain.
+
+The man who won this triumph was BENJAMIN WEST. He was born in
+Springfield, Pennsylvania, on the 10th of October, 1738. His parents
+were Quakers, plain, simple people, who feared God, lived a just life,
+and desired above all other things that their children should become
+pious and useful men and women. The old mansion-house where the future
+artist was born was situated in Chester County, and is still standing.
+It is not far from Philadelphia, and the place is now called Westdale.
+His father's family emigrated from England to America with William Penn,
+at his second visit, in 1699. John West married the daughter of Thomas
+Pearson, by whom he had ten children. Of these, Benjamin was the
+youngest son. His mother was a woman of great piety, and, being once in
+attendance upon a memorable religious revival, at which she was terribly
+agitated by the preaching of one Edward Peckover, an itinerant Quaker
+minister, was taken with premature labor, of which Benjamin West was
+born.
+
+It was predicted that a child who had been brought into the world under
+such circumstances would be a man of more than ordinary fame, and the
+good mother treasured these prophecies in her heart, and watched the
+career of her boy with the keenest interest.
+
+When he was but seven years old, he was left one day to watch beside the
+cradle of the infant child of his eldest sister, who, though married,
+was still living at home. Being unusually silent for a long time, his
+mother concluded that she would go and see what he was doing. Upon
+entering the room where he had been left with his charge, she saw him
+kneeling by a chair which he had placed close up to the cradle, gazing
+at the infant, and making what she supposed to be marks on a paper which
+lay on the chair. Stealing up behind him softly, she saw to her
+astonishment that this boy, only seven years old, had executed, with
+black and red ink and a pen, an accurate though rude likeness of the
+sleeping babe. This was the first evidence he had ever given of his
+predilection for art, and was indeed a most surprising performance for
+so young a child.
+
+[Illustration: THE TRUANT'S SECRET DISCOVERED.]
+
+The next summer a party of Indians came to Springfield to pay their
+annual visit, and to please them little Benjamin showed them some
+sketches of birds and flowers which he had executed with pen and ink.
+The savages were delighted with them, and presented him with the red and
+yellow pigments with which they colored their ornaments. In addition to
+this gift, they taught him how to prepare these colors, to which he
+added another, namely, indigo, which his mother gave him from her
+laundry. His colors were rude enough, but his pencils were ruder. They
+were made of the hairs which he had pulled from a cat's back and
+fastened in the end of a goose-quill. Soon after this, a relative from
+Philadelphia, chancing to visit the old homestead, was struck with the
+talent of the little fellow, and upon his return to the city sent him a
+box of colors, with pencils and canvas and a few prints. He was only
+nine years old, but he was a born artist. He had never seen any painting
+of merit, and the few prints which his relative gave him were the most
+finished productions he had ever seen. The box of colors was his most
+precious possession, and it opened to him new fields of enjoyment. The
+day of its arrival he gave himself up entirely to the pleasure of
+examining it. "Even after going to sleep," says his biographer, "he
+awoke more than once during the night, and anxiously put out his hand to
+the box, which he had placed by his bedside, half afraid that he might
+find his riches only a dream. Next morning he rose at break of day, and,
+carrying his colors and canvas to the garret, proceeded to work. Every
+thing else was now unheeded; even his attendance at school was given up.
+As soon as he got out of the sight of his father and mother, he stole to
+his garret, and there passed the hours in a world of his own. At last,
+after he had been absent from school some days, the master called at his
+father's house to inquire what had become of him. This led to the
+discovery of his secret occupation. His mother, proceeding to the
+garret, found the truant; but so much was she astonished and delighted
+by the creation of his pencil, which also met her view when she entered
+the apartment, that, instead of rebuking him, she could only take him in
+her arms and kiss him with transports of affection. He made a new
+composition of his own out of two of the engravings, which he had
+colored from his own feeling of the proper tints; and so perfect did
+the appearance already appear to his mother, that, although half the
+canvas yet remained uncovered, she would not suffer him to add another
+touch to what he had done. Mr. Gait, West's biographer, saw the picture
+in the state in which it had thus been left sixty-seven years afterward;
+and the artist himself used to acknowledge that in none of his
+subsequent efforts had he been able to excel some of the touches of
+invention in this his first essay."
+
+His next effort was a landscape, which comprehended a view of a river,
+with vessels in the stream and cattle browsing on the banks. He could
+not have been much over ten years of age at this time, and the picture,
+though insignificant in itself, is remarkable as the work of a child. He
+subsequently presented it to his friend, Mr. William Henry, of
+Lancaster, whose family still retain possession of it. He visited
+Philadelphia soon after, and received a few simple instructions in the
+practical portion of his art, after which he went about through the
+towns of the vicinity of his home, painting portraits of his friends. At
+length he was sent for by Mrs. Ross, of Lancaster, a lady famed for her
+great beauty, to paint the portraits of herself and her family--a great
+honor for a lad of twelve.
+
+It was in Lancaster, in the year 1750, that he made the acquaintance of
+Mr. William Henry. That gentleman became deeply interested in the
+precocious boy, and frequently came to watch him at his
+portrait-painting. One day he said to Benjamin, that if he (Henry) could
+paint equally well he would not waste his time upon portraits, but would
+devote himself to historical subjects. In the course of the conversation
+to which this remark gave rise, Mr. Henry proposed to him to make an
+attempt in this direction, and suggested to him "The Death of Socrates"
+as his first subject. The little artist frankly avowed that he had
+never heard of the great philosopher, and Mr. Henry at once went to his
+library and brought out a volume of Plutarch, from which he read to the
+boy the beautiful story of the wise man's death. West listened with the
+deepest interest, and expressed his perfect readiness to undertake the
+task, but feared he would have difficulty in painting the figure of the
+slave who presented the poison, and which he thought ought to be naked,
+since he had hitherto painted only men with their clothes on. Mr. Henry
+had in his employ a young man of fine appearance, and upon hearing
+West's objection at once sent for him. As the workman entered the room
+Henry pointed to him, and said to West, "There's your model." West took
+the hint, painted the picture, which was purchased by Mr. Henry, and
+thenceforth determined that in his art he would look only into nature
+for his models.
+
+At the age of sixteen he returned to Springfield. He was anxious to
+continue his career as an artist, and as his parents were satisfied that
+he was now old enough to enter upon some permanent occupation, they
+agreed that his wishes should be submitted to a public meeting of the
+Society of Friends. The meeting was called, and the matter was laid
+before them, the boy himself being present. His relatives and friends
+were all very proud of his talents, but as the profession of an artist
+was so entirely at variance with all Quaker habits and ideas, they felt
+that the subject was one which ought not to be rashly decided. Silence
+prevailed for a long time after the opening of the meeting, but at
+length John Williamson, moved by the Spirit, rose and addressed the
+assemblage, declaring his belief that as the youth had not derived his
+fondness for art from any of his associations or surroundings, and since
+it was so manifestly a special gift from the Creator, it was their plain
+duty to bid him go forward in the path that had been marked out for
+him, and to wish him God-speed in his efforts. At the close of his
+remarks silence again fell upon the assembly. Then the women rose, and
+approaching the lad, one by one, kissed him on the cheek, and the men,
+laying their hands on his head, prayed that the Lord might verify in his
+life the value of the gift which had induced them, in spite of their
+religious tenets on the subject, to allow him to enter upon the
+permanent exercises of the profession so dear to his heart.
+
+Thus was he dedicated to his art, and at the same time separated to a
+certain degree from his Quaker brethren. Not long after this he violated
+every principle of the Quaker dispensation by volunteering under Major
+Sir Peter Halket to go in search of the remains of Braddock's army.
+
+In 1756, at the age of eighteen, he established himself in Philadelphia
+as a portrait painter, and soon after removed to New York, where he
+painted portraits at five guineas a head, occasionally attempting an
+historical piece. When he was twenty years old he made a visit to
+Europe--a visit which decided his destiny. A famine in the south of
+Europe induced a Philadelphia merchant to dispatch a vessel laden with
+flour to Leghorn, and his son, who was to take passage in the ship,
+proposed to West to accompany him, and thus secure an opportunity of
+seeing the art-treasures of the Old World. West promptly accepted the
+invitation, and some of his friends in New York provided him with an
+outfit for the voyage. Upon arriving at Gibraltar, the vessel was
+boarded by a British officer, who proved to be a kinsman of the son of
+the owner of the ship, and he not only passed them without molestation,
+but enabled them to secure unusual facilities in the voyage up the
+Mediterranean. West arrived in Rome in July, 1759, and was kindly
+received by the English Lord Grantham, to whom he bore letters of
+introduction.
+
+"Among the distinguished persons whom Mr. West found in Rome, was the
+celebrated Cardinal Albani. At an evening party, the Cardinal became
+curious to witness the effect which the works of art in the Belvidere
+and Vatican would produce on the young artist. The whole company, which
+consisted of the principal Roman nobility and strangers of distinction
+then in Rome, were interested in the event, and it was arranged, in the
+course of the evening, that, on the following morning, they should
+accompany West to the palaces. At the hour appointed, the company
+assembled, and a procession consisting of upwards of thirty of the most
+magnificent equipages in the capital of Christendom, and filled with
+some of the most erudite characters in Europe, conducted the young
+Quaker to view the masterpieces of art. It was agreed that the 'Apollo'
+should be first submitted to his view, because it was the most perfect
+work among all the ornaments of Rome, and, consequently, the best
+calculated to produce that effect which the company were anxious to
+witness. The statue then stood in a case, inclosed with doors, which
+could be so opened as to disclose it at once to full view. West was
+placed in the situation where it was seen to the most advantage, and the
+spectators arranged themselves on each side. When the keeper threw open
+the doors, the artist felt himself surprised with a sudden recollection
+altogether different from the gratification which he had expected, and
+without being aware of the force of what he said, exclaimed, 'My God!
+how like it is to a young Mohawk warrior.' The Italians, observing his
+surprise and hearing the exclamation, were excessively mortified to find
+that the god of their idolatry was compared to a savage. They mentioned
+their chagrin, and asked West to give some more distinct explanation, by
+informing them what sort of people the Mohawk Indians were. He described
+to them their education, their dexterity with the bow and arrow, the
+admirable elasticity of their limbs, and how much their active life
+expands the chest, while the quick breathing of their speed in the chase
+dilates the nostrils with that apparent consciousness of vigor which is
+so nobly depicted in the 'Apollo.' 'I have seen them often,' added he,
+'standing in that very attitude, and pursuing with an intense eye the
+arrow which they had just discharged from the bow,' The Italians were
+delighted with this descriptive explanation, and allowed that a better
+criticism had never been pronounced on the merits of the statue."
+
+Soon after his arrival in Rome, West painted a portrait of Lord
+Grantham, which won him considerable reputation. It was at first
+attributed to Raphael Meugs, but when the true artist was announced, and
+the circumstances of his history became known, West found himself
+suddenly famous, with orders enough to place him at once in comfortable
+circumstances. Cardinal Albani and Lord Grantham were very kind to him
+during his stay in Rome, and Raphael Meugs advised him to make a careful
+tour of study through the Italian art capitals. While in Rome he painted
+two pictures, "Cimon and Iphigenia," and "Angelica and Medora," which
+were well received, and during this period he was elected a member by
+the Academies of Florence, Bologna, and Parma. He made the tour advised
+by Meugs, remaining in Italy several years. Thence he proceeded to
+France, where he passed a short time in studying the French masters,
+after which he went to England, intending to sail from that country for
+America, where he had left his heart behind him in the keeping of a
+young Quakeress of Philadelphia.
+
+He reached London in 1763, and while continuing his studies here,
+whither his reputation had preceded him from Italy, undertook some
+commissions for Archbishop Drummond and several other church
+dignitaries. These attracted general admiration, and his countrymen
+residing in London were prompt to recognize and proclaim his genius. He
+had relatives living in England, so that he was not an entire stranger
+there. His success was marked from the first, and his friends urged him
+to profit by so favorable a beginning, give up his idea of returning to
+America, and make his permanent home in England. This he at length
+decided to do, and devoted himself with increased ardor to his labors.
+In two years he considered himself sufficiently well established to send
+to Philadelphia for his betrothed. This lady, Miss Elizabeth Shewell,
+came out to England under the care of his father, and in the same year,
+1765, West was married to her in London. She was a lady of great
+amiability of character, and by the English was often spoken of as the
+Philadelphia beauty.
+
+Soon after his arrival in England he produced a large painting on a
+subject from Tacitus, "Agrippina Landing with the Ashes of Germanicus."
+It was a decided success. George the Third was deeply impressed with it,
+and congratulated West warmly upon its merits. At the same time the king
+gave him a commission for a painting,--the subject to be "The Death of
+Regulus,"--and thus began the friendship between the monarch and the
+artist, which lasted for nearly forty years. He was a hard worker, and
+during his long life his pictures followed each other in rapid
+succession. They are estimated by a writer in Blackwood's Magazine at
+three thousand in number. Mr. Dunlap says that they would cover a wall
+ten feet high and a quarter of a mile long if arranged side by side on a
+flat surface. The most famous are his "Death of Wolfe;" "Regulus, a
+Prisoner to the Carthaginians;" "The Battle of La Hogue;" "The Death of
+Bayard;" "Hamilcar Swearing the Infant Hannibal at the Altar;" "The
+Departure of Regulus;" "Agrippina Landing with the Ashes of
+Germanicus;" "Christ Healing the Sick;" "Death on the Pale Horse;" "The
+Descent of the Holy Ghost on the Saviour in the Jordan;" "The
+Crucifixion;" and "Christ Rejected."
+
+The picture which brought him most prominently before the public, and
+which placed his popularity beyond dispute, was "The Death of Wolfe at
+Quebec." It was fashionable at this time to treat nothing but subjects
+from ancient history, and when West announced his intention of painting
+a picture of contemporary history his friends warned him that he was
+incurring a serious risk. Nevertheless he finished his "Death of Wolfe,"
+and it was exhibited in the National Gallery. The public "acknowledged
+its excellence at once, but the lovers of old art--called
+classical--complained of the barbarism of boots, buttons, and
+blunderbusses, and cried out for naked warriors, with bows, bucklers,
+and battering rams." Lord Grosvenor was much pleased with the picture,
+and finally purchased it, though he did so with hesitation, daunted to
+some extent by the fierce storm of opposition with which the critics
+received it. Sir Joshua Reynolds, then the President of the Royal
+Academy, and the Archbishop of York, called on West and protested
+against his barbarous innovation, but he declared to them that "the
+event to be commemorated happened in the year 1759, in a region of the
+world unknown to Greeks and Romans, and at a period of the world when no
+warrior who wore classic costume existed. The same rule which gives law
+to the historian should rule the painter." When the king saw the picture
+he was delighted both with it and West's originality, and declared that
+he was sorry Lord Grosvenor had been before him in purchasing it. This
+was the inauguration of a new era in British art, and Sir Joshua
+Reynolds was obliged to declare, "West has conquered. I foresee that
+this picture will not only become one of the most popular, but will
+occasion a revolution in art." This frank avowal was as honorable to Sir
+Joshua as to West.
+
+West painted for George the Third a number of subjects taken from the
+early history of England, and received from the same monarch a
+commission for a series of paintings illustrating the progress of
+revealed religion, with which the king designed to ornament the chapel
+at Windsor Castle. Of these twenty-eight were finished when the Prince
+of Wales, afterward George the Fourth, came into power as Prince Regent,
+and the commission was withdrawn. The artist then began a series of
+grand religious subjects, upon which he was still engaged when death
+called him to rest from all his labors. Of those which were completed,
+"Death on the Pale Horse" and "Christ Healing the Sick" are the best
+known in this country.
+
+In 1792, upon the death of Sir Joshua Reynolds, West was made President
+of the Royal Academy. The king wished to confer upon him the honor of
+knighthood, but he declined it, alleging that he was not wealthy enough
+to support the dignity of the position. In consequence of dissensions in
+the Academy, West resigned his presidency in 1802. The post was filled
+for a year by James Wyatt, the architect, and at the close of that time
+West was re-elected by every ballot but one--that of Fuseli, who voted
+for Mrs. Lloyd, a member of the Academy, declaring that he considered
+"one old woman as good as another." West continued in this office until
+his death.
+
+The close of his life was blessed with ample means, and, as he was in
+the full possession of all his faculties and covered with art's
+supremest honors, it may be regarded as the happiest portion of his
+career. His house was always open to Americans visiting England, and few
+things pleased him more than to listen to news from his native village.
+He was a kind and judicious friend to young artists, especially to those
+of his own country studying in England, and took a lively pleasure in
+their success. Leigh Hunt, whose mother was a relative of West, has left
+us the following description of him:
+
+"The appearance of West was so gentlemanly that the moment he changed
+his gown for a coat he seemed to be full dressed. The simplicity and
+self-possession of the young Quaker, not having time enough to grow
+stiff--for he went early to Rome--took up, I suppose, with more ease
+than most would have done, the urbanities of his new position. Yet this
+man, so well bred, and so indisputably clever in his art, whatever might
+be the amount of his genius, had received a homely or careless
+education, and pronounced some of his words with a puritanical
+barbarism; he would talk of his art all day. There were strong
+suspicions of his leaning to his native side in politics, and he could
+not restrain his enthusiasm for Bonaparte. How he managed these matters
+with the higher powers in England I can not say."
+
+Possessed originally of a sound and vigorous constitution, which he had
+not weakened by any species of dissipation, West lived to a good old
+age, and died in London on the 11th of March, 1820, in his eighty-second
+year. He was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral, by the side of Sir Joshua
+Reynolds, and under the same great dome which covers the tombs of Nelson
+and Wellington.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+JOHN ROGERS.
+
+
+There is scarcely a family of means and taste in the country but is the
+possessor of one or more of Rogers's groups in plaster. You see them in
+every art or book-store window, and they are constantly finding new
+admirers, and rendering the name of the talented sculptor more and more
+a household word.
+
+JOHN ROGERS, to whom the world is indebted for this new branch of art,
+was born at Salem, Massachusetts, on the 30th of October, 1829. His
+ancestors were among the original settlers of the colony, and have
+resided in Salem for generations. His father, a merchant of moderate
+means and good reputation, was anxious to train his son to some regular
+and profitable business. As the basis of this, he gave the boy a good
+education in the common schools of the town, and in 1845, when he was
+sixteen years old, placed him in a dry-goods store in Boston to learn
+the business. He remained there for two years.
+
+He gave early evidence of his artistic genius, and when a mere child had
+shown a taste and talent for drawing which increased with his years, and
+made him eager to become an artist. His parents, however, were desirous
+of seeing him rich rather than famous, and did all in their power to
+discourage him from making choice of a vocation which they considered
+but little better than vagabondage. They magnified the difficulties and
+trials of an artist's career, and so far succeeded in their efforts that
+he entirely abandoned his wish to make art a means of livelihood. He was
+not willing to forsake it altogether, however--he was too true an artist
+at heart for that--but contented himself for the time with continuing
+his efforts, merely as a means of personal enjoyment.
+
+In 1847, feeling satisfied that he was not suited to a mercantile life,
+Mr. Rogers gave up his clerkship in Boston, and obtained a place in the
+corps of engineers engaged in the construction of the Cochituate Water
+Works. Here he had a fine opportunity for cultivating his talent for
+drawing, but the constant labor which he underwent so injured his eyes
+that he was compelled to give up his position. His physician advised him
+to make an ocean voyage for the purpose of re-establishing his health.
+Acting upon this advice, he made a short visit to Spain, and returned
+home very much improved by the voyage and the rest his eyes had enjoyed.
+
+In 1848, soon after his return to this country, he entered a machine
+shop in Manchester, New Hampshire, to learn the trade of a machinist. He
+worked at this trade for a period of seven years, applying himself to it
+with great diligence and determination, and acquiring much mechanical
+skill and a thorough knowledge of the trade. He rose steadily through
+the various grades of his new calling--from the bench of the apprentice
+to the post of draughtsman in the designing department.
+
+During this period he devoted himself enthusiastically to his art. Soon
+after his return from Spain, he had observed a young man modeling a
+figure in clay, and by closely observing him had learned the process,
+which until then was unknown to him. The labor of the youth pleased him
+very much, and the more because he saw in it a new means of artistic
+expression. He at once procured some clay, and, taking it to his room,
+commenced to practice upon the lesson which he had just received. From
+this time forward he continued his art labors, giving to them all the
+leisure time he could spare from his duties in the shop, where he was
+compelled to work from five A.M. until seven P.M. He would go to his
+room after supper, and by the light of a tallow candle work late into
+the night, modeling figures in clay, and bringing new fancies into
+shape. He says that frequently, although exhausted by his severe labor
+at the shop, he would be unable to sleep until he had molded into clay
+the idea which possessed his mind. These night studies, superadded to
+his daily duties, proved very trying to him. Yet he persevered,
+encouraged by his success with his figures. He endeavored to persuade
+some of his relatives to aid him in securing a better education as an
+artist, such as would have enabled him to abandon the machine shop; but
+they turned a deaf ear to him, and he was thus compelled to continue his
+daily task, which, under these circumstances, naturally grew more and
+more irksome.
+
+In 1856, he was enabled to better his condition for a short time. He was
+offered the place of manager of a railroad machine-shop at Hannibal,
+Missouri, and promptly accepted it. In six months, however, he was out
+of employment, the panic of 1857 having caused the machine-shop to
+suspend operations. Having a little money in hand, which he had saved
+from his wages, he resolved to visit Europe, and study the works of the
+great masters in his art, and, if he could, to take lessons in sculpture
+from some competent teacher in the Old World. He went to Paris and Rome,
+remaining in those cities for a period of eight months, and endeavoring
+to share the enthusiasm for the great works around him which the artist
+world manifested. At the end of that time he came home convinced that
+classic art had no attractions for him, and was almost ready to declare
+that he had none of the true inspiration of an artist.
+
+He did not stop long in the East upon his return. Going West at once, he
+obtained a situation in the office of the Surveyor of the city of
+Chicago. In this position he worked hard and faithfully, and his
+employers soon found that in him they had obtained a prize.
+
+Meantime, although so much disheartened by his failure to accomplish any
+thing in Europe, he did not abandon his art studies, but continued to
+model figures in clay, and shortly after his arrival in Chicago, gave
+one of his groups to some ladies of that city, to be sold at a fair in
+behalf of some benevolent purpose. This was the "Checker Players," and
+was the first of his efforts ever submitted to the public. Its success
+was immediate. It proved one of the most attractive features of the
+fair, and the newspapers pronounced it one of the most satisfactory
+evidences of native genius ever seen in Chicago. Mr. Rogers was much
+pleased with its success, and soon followed it with "The Town Pump," one
+of his most popular compositions.
+
+The popularity which these efforts attained, opened John Rogers's eyes
+to a correct perception of his true mission in life. He was not capable
+of accomplishing any thing in classic art, but here was a field in which
+a renown, unique and brilliant, might be won, and in which he might
+endear himself to thousands of hearts in the great world in which he
+lived. Both fame and wealth seemed opening up before him. He did not
+hesitate long, but resolved to follow the leadings of his genius. Having
+heard that a new process of flexible molds had been invented, by which
+the most intricate designs could be cast with ease, he came to New York
+in 1859, bringing with him his "Checker Players" and "Town Pump," and
+the model of a new group on which he was then engaged. Seeking an
+Italian familiar with the new process, he engaged him to cast his
+figures in plaster by means of it, and from him he learned how to
+practice the new method himself.
+
+He now put forth his "Slave Auction," which he had modeled in Chicago
+and brought to New York with him. The antislavery excitement was then at
+its height, and this effort aroused the sympathy and won Mr. Rogers the
+support of the greater part of the people of the Northern States. There
+was a large demand for the group, and Mr. Rogers soon found himself
+obliged to employ assistance to fill the orders which kept crowding in
+upon him. By selecting a subject which was of the deepest interest to
+the people of the country, he had thus attracted attention to his
+merits, and he felt sure that by keeping the people supplied with works
+illustrative of the topics of the day, he would win the success to which
+he aspired.
+
+He now ventured to establish himself permanently in New York, and,
+renting the garret of a Broadway building, set up his studio in it, and
+issued this modest card: "John Rogers, Artist, Designs and Executes
+Groups of Figures in Composition at his Studio, 599 Broadway." The
+success of his works had been so marked as to induce him to believe that
+he would have no difficulty in establishing a permanent business, and he
+set to work with enthusiasm. In quick succession he produced his
+"Fairy's Whisper" and "Air Castles," the latter of which is the only
+commission he has ever executed. The war began soon after, and supplied
+him with an abundance of popular subjects. These war subjects attracted
+universal attention, and sold as rapidly as he could supply them. A New
+York journal thus describes the "sensation" which they created in that
+city:
+
+"All day, and every day, week in and week out, there is an
+ever-changing crowd of men, women, and children standing stationary amid
+the ever-surging tides of Broadway, before the windows of Williams &
+Stevens, gazing with eager interest upon the statuettes and groups of
+John Rogers, the sculptor. These works appeal to a deep popular
+sentiment. They are not pretentious displays of gods, goddesses, ideal
+characters, or stupendous, world-compelling heroes. They are
+illustrations of American domestic and especially of American military
+life--not of our great generals or our bold admirals, or the men whose
+praises fill all the newspapers, but of the common soldier of the Union;
+not of the common soldier, either, in what might be called his high
+heroic moods and moments, when, with waving sword and flaming eye, he
+dashes upon the enemy's works, but of the soldier in the ordinary
+moments and usual occupations of every-day camp life. For the last year
+or more Mr. Rogers has been at work mainly on groups of this latter
+class and character. Thus he has given us 'The Returned Volunteer, or
+How the Fort was Taken,' being a group of three gathered in a
+blacksmith's shop, the characters consisting of the blacksmith himself,
+standing with his right foot on the anvil block, and his big hammer in
+his hands, listening eagerly, with his little girl, to a soldier who
+sits close by on his haunches, narrating 'how the fort was taken,' We
+have also another group of three, 'The Picket Guard,' spiritedly
+sketched, as in eager, close, and nervous search for the enemy; the
+'Sharpshooters,' another group of three, or rather of two men and a
+scarecrow, illustrating a curious practice in our army of deceiving the
+enemy; the 'Town Pump,' a scene in which a soldier, uniformed and
+accoutered, is slaking his thirst and holding blessed converse beside
+the pump with a pretty girl who has come for a pail of water; the 'Union
+Refugees,' a pathetic and noble group, consisting of a stalwart and
+sad-faced East Tennesseean or Virginian, who accompanied by his wife,
+who leans her head upon his bosom, and by his little boy, who looks up
+eagerly into his face, has started off from home with only his gun upon
+his shoulder and his powder-horn by his side, to escape the tyranny of
+the rebels; 'The Camp Fire, or Making Friends with the Cook,' in which a
+hungry soldier, seated upon an inverted basket, is reading a newspaper
+to an 'intelligent contraband,' who is stirring the contents of a huge
+and ebullient pot hung over the fire; 'Wounded to the Rear, or One More
+Shot,' in which a soldier is represented as dressing his wounded leg,
+while his companion, with his left arm in a sling, is trying to load his
+gun to take another shot at the enemy, at whom he looks defiantly; 'Mail
+Day,' which tells its own story of a speculative soldier, seated on a
+stone and racking his poor brains to find some ideas to transcribe upon
+the paper which he holds upon his knee, to be sent perchance to her he
+loves; 'The Country Postmaster, or News from the Army,' which, though a
+scene from civil life, tells of the anxiety of the soldier's wife or
+sweetheart to get tidings from the brave volunteer who is periling his
+life on the battle-field; 'The Wounded Scout, or a Friend in the Swamp,'
+representing a soldier, torn, and bleeding, and far gone, rescued and
+raised up by a faithful and kind-hearted negro--which we think is one of
+the best, if not the very best, of Mr. Rogers's works; and lastly, a
+group called 'The Home Guard, or Midnight on the Border,' in which a
+heroic woman, accompanied by a little girl, is represented as stepping
+out, pistol in hand, to confront the assailants of her humble home."
+
+In 1862 Mr. Rogers removed his studio to the corner of Fifth Avenue and
+Twenty-sixth Street, where he still remains. He has followed up the
+earlier productions named above with "The Bushwhacker," a scene
+representing a Tennessee loyalist dogging the footsteps of the Southern
+army; "Taking the Oath and Drawing Rations," the best and certainly the
+most popular of his works,--a group of four, representing a Southern
+lady with her little boy, compelled to take the oath of allegiance in
+order to obtain rations for her family. A negro boy, bearing a basket
+for his mistress, leans on the barrel watching the proceeding with the
+most intense interest. The woman's face is wonderful, and it expresses
+eloquently the struggle in her breast between her devotion to the South
+and her love for the boy before her, and the officer tendering the oath
+almost speaks the sympathy which her suffering has awakened in him. The
+other works of our artist are "Uncle Ned's School," "The Charity
+Patient," "The School Examination," "The Council of War," "The Courtship
+in Sleepy Hollow," "The Fugitive's Story," "Challenging the Union Vote,"
+and "Rip Van Winkle."
+
+The process by which these exquisite groups are produced is exceedingly
+simple, but is one requiring considerable skill and delicacy of
+manipulation, and although the casting could readily be done by
+competent assistants, Mr. Rogers conscientiously gives his personal
+attention to every detail of the process. The artist takes a mass of wet
+clay of the desired consistency and size, and fashions it roughly with
+his hands to something like the proper shape. "It is sometimes necessary
+to make a little frame of wire upon which to lay the clay, to hold it in
+its proper place, the wire being easily made to take any form. The rough
+figure is then finished with the molding stick, which is simply a stick
+of pine with a little spoon of box-wood attached to each end, one spoon
+being more delicate than the other. With this instrument the artist
+works upon the clay with surprising ease. The way in which the works are
+reproduced is as follows: When the clay model is complete, a single
+plaster cast is taken for a pattern, and is finished with the most
+scrupulous care by Mr. Rogers himself. This cast is used as a pattern
+for making whatever number of molds may be needed to supply the demand
+for any particular group or statue. The molds are made of glue softened
+with water, so as to be about as limber as India-rubber. This is poured
+over the pattern while in a warm and liquid condition; it is, therefore,
+necessary to surround the pattern with a stiff case to hold the glue in
+place. This case is made of plaster, and is built up by hand around the
+pattern. When the glue has become sufficiently hard, it is cut by a thin
+sharp knife and pulled off the pattern. The parts are put together and
+bound by cord, making a perfect glue mold. The plaster of Paris is then
+poured into the mold inverted. A number of crooked pieces of wire are
+also placed in the mold to strengthen the figure. In about twenty
+minutes the plaster sets so as to allow the case to be opened, and the
+glue mold to be pulled off. To his proficiency in the mechanical part of
+his art Mr. Rogers attributes a considerable measure of his success, as
+it enables him to execute with facility every suggestion of his
+imagination, and to secure the perfect reproduction of his works by
+those to whom he intrusts that labor."
+
+By placing his works at popular prices, ranging from $10 to $25 each,
+Mr. Rogers has insured the largest sale and greatest popularity for
+them, and has thus become a national benefactor. It is now within the
+power of every person of moderate means to possess one or more of his
+exquisite groups, and in this way the artist has not only secured to
+himself a sure means of wealth, but has done much to encourage and
+foster a popular love for, and appreciation of, the art of which he is
+so bright an ornament.
+
+It was a bold venture to depart so entirely from all the precedents of
+art, but the result has vindicated both the artist's genius and his
+quick appreciation of the intelligence of his countrymen. "We can not
+enter into the feelings of ancient Greece," says a popular journal, in
+summing up his efforts, "and our artists who spend their time in
+attempting to reproduce that ancient art are only imitators. Their works
+interest only a small class of connoisseurs, and that interest is an
+antiquarian interest. It is not a vital, living interest, such as a
+Greek felt in his own work. It is not the natural, healthful, artistic
+feeling, the feeling for the beauty of realities, except in so far as it
+represents the feeling for the eternal attributes of beautiful form. It
+is an effort on the part of our artists to impose the forms and features
+of another age upon this one,--a task as impossible in art as in
+society, religion, and national politics."
+
+Mr. Rogers is now in his forty-first year, and of all our American
+artists is, perhaps, the one best known to the masses, and the most
+popular. He is of medium height, carries himself erectly, and is quick
+and energetic in his movements. His face is frank, manly, and open, and
+the expression, though firm and resolute,--as that of a man who has
+fought so hard for success must be,--is winning and genial. He is a
+gentleman of great cultivation of mind, and is said by his friends to be
+one of the most entertaining of companions. In 1865 he married a
+daughter of Mr. C.S. Francis, of New York, and his fondness for domestic
+life leads him to pass his leisure hours chiefly by his own fireside.
+
+
+[Illustration: HIRAM POWERS.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+HIRAM POWERS.
+
+
+Hiram Powers was born in Woodstock, Vermont, on the 29th of July, 1805.
+He was the eighth in a family of nine children, and was the son of a
+farmer who found it hard to provide his little household with the
+necessaries of life. He grew up as most New England boys do, sound and
+vigorous in health, passing the winters in attendance upon the district
+schools, and the summers in working on the farm. "The only distinctive
+trait exhibited by the child was mechanical ingenuity; he excelled in
+caricature, was an adept in constructiveness, having made countless
+wagons, windmills, and weapons for his comrades, attaining the height of
+juvenile reputation as the inventor of what he called a 'patent fuse.'"
+
+The Powers family lived just over the river, opposite the village, and
+all joined heartily in the effort to keep the wolf from the doors. Mr.
+Powers, Sen., was induced to become security for one of his friends,
+and, as frequently happens, lost all he had in consequence. Following
+close upon this disaster came a dreadful famine in the State, caused by
+an almost total failure of the crops. "I recollect," says Mr. Powers,
+"we cut down the trees, and fed our few cows on the browse. We lived so
+long wholly on milk and potatoes, that we got almost to loathe them.
+There were seven of us children, five at home, and it was hard work to
+feed us."
+
+One of the sons had managed to secure an education at Dartmouth College,
+and had removed to Cincinnati, where he was at this time editing a
+newspaper. Thither his father, discouraged by the famine, determined to
+follow him. Accordingly, placing his household goods and his family in
+three wagons, and being joined by another family, he set out on the long
+journey to the West. This was in 1819, when young Hiram was fourteen
+years old. It cost him a sharp struggle to leave his old home, and as
+they climbed the hills beyond Woodstock he lingered behind with his
+mother to take a last view of the place. They crossed the State, and
+passing through western New York came to the vicinity of Niagara Falls.
+They were near enough to the great cataract to hear its solemn roar
+sounding high above the silent woods. The boy was eager to visit it, but
+the distance was too great to the falls, and he was forced to relinquish
+this pleasure. Continuing their journey westward, they reached the Ohio
+River, down which stream they floated on a flatboat until they came to
+Cincinnati, then a city of fourteen thousand inhabitants.
+
+Through the assistance of his eldest son, the editor, Mr. Powers was
+enabled to secure a farm not far from Cincinnati, and removing his
+family to it, began the task of clearing and cultivating it.
+Unfortunately for the new-comers, the farm was located on the edge of a
+pestilential marsh, the poisonous exhalations of which soon brought the
+whole family down with the ague. Mr. Powers the elder died from this
+disease, and Hiram was ill and disabled from it for a whole year. The
+family was broken up and scattered, and our hero, incapable of
+performing hard work so soon after his sickness, obtained a place in a
+produce store in Cincinnati, his duty being to watch the principal road
+by which the farmers' wagons, laden with grain and corn whisky, came
+into the city, and to inform the men in charge of them that they could
+obtain better prices for their produce from his employers than from any
+other merchants in the city. It was also a part of his duty to help to
+roll the barrels from the wagons to the store. He made a very good
+"drummer," and gave satisfaction to his employers, but as the concern
+soon broke up, he was again without employment.
+
+His brother, the editor, now came to his assistance, and made a bargain
+with the landlord of a hotel in the city to establish a reading-room at
+his hotel. The landlord was to provide the room and obtain a few paying
+subscribers; the editor was to stock it with his exchange newspapers,
+and Hiram was to be put in charge of it and receive what could be made
+by it. The reading-room was established, but as the landlord failed to
+comply with his agreement, Powers was forced to abandon the undertaking.
+
+[Illustration: POWERS' DISTRUST OF THE HUNTERS.]
+
+"About that time," said he, in relating his early life to the Rev. Dr.
+Bellows, some years ago, "looking around anxiously for the means of
+living, I fell in with a worthy man, a clock-maker and organ-builder,
+who was willing to employ me to collect bad debts in the country. He put
+me on an old horse which had one very bad fault. He was afflicted with
+what the Western people called the 'swaleys,' and could not go downhill.
+I frequently had to dismount and back him down, as the only way of
+getting along. The road often lay through forests and clearings, in
+mire, and among the roots of the beeches, with which my poor beast was
+constantly struggling. I would sometimes emerge from a dark wood, five
+miles through, perhaps, and find myself near a clearing where the
+farmer's house I was seeking lay, half a mile off the road. Picking up
+a stout club to defend myself against the inevitable dog, which, in the
+absence of men-folks, guarded every log-house, I plodded across the
+plowed field, soon to be met by the ferocious beast, who, not seeing a
+stranger more than once a month, was always furious and dangerous. Out
+would come, at length, the poor woman, too curious to see who it was
+that broke up her monotonous solitude, to call off the dog, who
+generally grew fiercer as he felt his backer near him, and it was
+commonly with a feeling as of a bare escape of my life that I finally
+got into the house. It was sad enough, too, often to find sickness and
+death in those fever-stricken abodes--a wan mother nursing one dying
+child, with perhaps another dead in the house. My business, too, was not
+the most welcome. I came to dun a delinquent debtor, who had perhaps
+been inveigled by some peddler of our goods into an imprudent purchase,
+for a payment which it was inconvenient or impossible to make. There, in
+the corner, hung the wooden clock, the payment for which I was after,
+ticking off the last minutes of the sick child--the only ornament of the
+poor cabin. It was very painful to urge my business under such
+circumstances. However, I succeeded, by kindness, in getting more money
+than I expected from our debtors, who would always pay when they could.
+I recollect, one night, almost bewailing my success. I had reached the
+entrance of a forest, at least nine miles through, and finding a little
+tavern there, concluded it was prudent to put up and wait till morning.
+There were two rough-looking fellows around, hunters, with rifles in
+their hands, whose appearance did not please me, and I fancied they
+looked at each other significantly when the landlord took off my
+saddle-bags and weighted them, feeling the hundred dollars of silver I
+had collected. I was put into the attic, reached by a ladder, and,
+barricading the trap-door as well as I could, went to sleep with one
+eye open. Nothing, however, occurred, and in the morning I found my
+wild-looking men up as early as I, and was not a little disturbed when
+they proposed to keep me company across the forest. Afraid to show any
+suspicion, I consented, and then went and looked at the little
+flint-pistol I carried, formidable only to sparrows, but which was my
+only defense.
+
+"About two miles into the wood, my fierce-looking friends, after some
+exchange of understanding as to their respective ways and meeting-point,
+started off on different sides of the road in search of game, as they
+said, but, as I feared, with the purpose of robbing and perhaps
+murdering me at some darker spot in the forest. I had gone perhaps two
+miles farther, when I heard the breaking of a twig, and, looking on one
+side, saw a hand signaling me to stop. Presently an eye came out behind
+the tree, and then an arm, and I verily thought my hour had come. But,
+keeping straight on, I perceived, almost instantly, to my great relief,
+two fine deer, who appeared not at all disturbed by a man on horseback,
+though ready enough to fly from a gun, and began to suspect that the
+robber I was dreading was, after all, only a hunter in the honest
+pursuit of his living. The crack of the rifle soon proved that the deer,
+and not my saddle-bags, were the game aimed at, and I found my
+imagination had for twelve hours been converting very harmless huntsmen
+into highwaymen of a most malicious aspect."
+
+His employer was so well pleased with the success of his young collector
+that he offered to give him a place in the factory, saying there would
+always be plenty of rough work at which an inexperienced hand could
+employ himself. "I could refuse no proposition that promised me bread
+and clothes," said he, "for I was often walking the streets hungry, with
+my arms pressed close to my sides to conceal the holes in my coat
+sleeves." His first task was to thin down with a file some brass plates
+which were to be used as parts of the stops of an organ. Powers was
+expected to do merely the rough work, after which the plates were to
+pass into the hands of the regular finisher. His employer, knowing that
+the task was one which would require time, told him he would look in in
+a few days, and see how he had succeeded. The young man's mechanical
+talent, on which he had prided himself when a boy in Vermont, now did
+him good service, and he applied himself to his task with skill and
+determination. When his employer asked for the plates, he was astonished
+to find that Powers had not only done the rough work, but had finished
+them much better than the regular finisher had ever done, and this
+merely by his greater nicety of eye and his undaunted energy. He had
+blistered his hands terribly, but had done his work well. His employer
+was delighted, and, finding him so valuable an assistant, soon gave him
+the superintendence of all his machinery, and took him to live in his
+own family.
+
+As has been stated, his employer's business was the manufacture of
+organs and clocks. Powers displayed great skill in the management of the
+mechanical department of the business, and this, added to the favor
+shown him by the "boss," drew upon him the jealousy of the other
+workmen. There hung in the shop at this time an old silver bull's-eye
+watch, a good time-piece, but very clumsy and ungainly in appearance.
+Powers was anxious to become its owner. Being too poor to buy it, he hit
+upon the following expedient for obtaining it. He had carefully studied
+the machine used in the shop for cutting out wooden clock wheels, and
+had suggested to his employer several improvements in it. The workmen,
+however, had ridiculed his suggestions, and had denounced as the most
+barefaced presumption his belief that he could improve a machine which
+had come all the way from Connecticut, where, they said, people were
+supposed to know something about clocks. Nevertheless, he maintained his
+opinions, and told his employer that if he would give him the silver
+watch, he would invent a much better machine. His offer was accepted,
+and in ten days he produced a machine, not only much simpler than the
+old one, but capable of performing twice as much and better work. The
+workmen promptly acknowledged his success, and his employer gave him the
+watch. "The old watch," said he, a few years ago, "has ticked all my
+children into existence, and three of them out of this world. It still
+hangs at the head of my bed."
+
+About this time, in a chance visit to the Museum in Cincinnati, he saw a
+plaster cast of Houdon's "Washington." It was the first bust he had ever
+seen, and he says it moved him strangely. He had an intense desire to
+know how it was done, and a vague consciousness that he could do work of
+the same kind if he could find an instructor. The instructor he soon
+found in a German living in the city, who made plaster casts and busts,
+and from him he learned the secret of the art. He proved an apt pupil,
+and surprised his teacher by his proficiency. His first effort at
+modeling from life was the bust of a little daughter of Mr. John P.
+Foote. She sat to him during the hours he could spare from his regular
+work. His model was made of beeswax, as he was afraid that clay would
+freeze or stiffen. His success encouraged him very greatly. "I found I
+had a correct eye," said he, "and a hand which steadily improved in its
+obedience to my eye. I saw the likeness, and knew it depended on the
+features, and that, if I could copy the features exactly, the likeness
+would follow just as surely as the blood follows the knife. I found
+early that all the talk about catching the expression was mere twaddle;
+the expression would take care of itself if I copied the features
+exactly."
+
+The true principles of his art seemed to come to him naturally, and
+having the genius to comprehend them so readily, he had the courage to
+hold on to them often in the face of adverse criticism. While conscious
+of having a perfectly correct eye, however, he did not scorn the humbler
+method of obtaining exactness by mathematical measurement. The following
+incident, which he related to Dr. Bellows, illustrates this:
+
+"One of the first busts I ever made was of an artist, a Frenchman, who
+came over with Mrs. Trollope. He proposed to paint my picture, while I
+was to make his bust. He was older, and considered himself much my
+superior, and, indeed, undertook to be my instructor. I was to begin.
+His first _canon_ was that I was to use no measurements, and he quoted
+Michael Angelo's saying--'A sculptor should carry his compasses in his
+eyes, not in his fingers,' I humbly submitted to his authority, and
+finished the bust without a single measurement. He was very triumphant
+at what he called the success of his method. I begged permission of him,
+now that the bust was completed, to verify my work by the dividers. He
+graciously consented, and I was pleased to find how nearly I had hit the
+mark. A few imperfections, however, appeared, and these, in spite of his
+objections, I corrected without his knowledge, for I was determined to
+have the bust as near right as I could make it. It had taken me,
+however, at least five times as long to measure the distances with my
+eyes as it would have done to measure them with the calipers, and I saw
+no advantage in the longer and more painful effort. The measurements are
+mere preparations for the artist's true work, and are, like the
+surveyor's lines, preparatory to the architect's labor. When my subject,
+in his turn, undertook my portrait, he was true to his own principles,
+and finished it without measurements. I then, though with some horror at
+my temerity, asked permission to verify his work with the dividers, and
+found at the first stroke a difference of at least half an inch in the
+distance between the eyes. He looked very much mortified, but said that
+it was done to 'give the effect.' I have had no misgivings since about
+the economy and wisdom of using the calipers freely. To be useful, they
+must be applied with the greatest precision--so small are the
+differences upon which all the infinite variety in human countenances
+depends. With the aid of my careful measurements, I do in one day what
+it would cost me a week or two's work to accomplish without, and I am
+then able to give my exclusive attention to the modeling."
+
+He did not regularly devote himself to his art, however, but remained in
+the employment of the organ and clock maker for some time longer, giving
+his leisure hours to constant practice. When he was about twenty-three
+years old, a Frenchman named Herview opened in Cincinnati a museum of
+natural history and wax figures. The latter had been very much broken
+and disfigured in transportation, and their owner, in despair, begged
+Powers to undertake the task of restoring them. The figures were
+representations of distinguished men and women, and as Powers readily
+saw that it would be impossible to repair them without having proper
+likenesses as his guides, he proposed to the Frenchman to make an
+entirely new composition of the old materials, and one which should
+attract attention by its oddity. This was agreed to, and the result was
+a hideous and ungainly figure, which Powers proposed should be called
+the "King of the Cannibal Islands," but to his amazement the Frenchman
+advertised it as the embalmed body of a South Sea man-eater, "secured at
+immense expense." Powers declared to his employer that the audience
+would discover the cheat and tear down the museum; but the "man-eater"
+drew immense crowds, and was regarded as the most wonderful natural
+curiosity ever seen in the West. The Frenchman was so well pleased with
+it that he employed the artist permanently as inventor, wax-figure
+maker, and general mechanical contriver in the museum.
+
+Powers remained in the Frenchman's employ for seven years, hoping all
+the while to earn money enough to devote himself entirely to art, which
+had now become his great ambition. His experience was not a pleasant
+one. Some of it was so singular, not to say ludicrous, that he shall
+relate one portion of it in his own language:
+
+"One of the first things I undertook, in company with Herview, was a
+representation of the infernal regions after Dante's description. Behind
+a grating I made certain dark grottoes, full of stalactites and
+stalagmites, with shadowy ghosts and pitchforked figures, all calculated
+to work on the easily-excited imaginations of a Western audience, as the
+West then was. I found it very popular and attractive, but occasionally
+some countryman would suggest to his fellow spectator that a little
+motion in the figures would add much to the reality of the show. After
+much reflection I concluded to go in among the figures dressed like the
+Evil One, in a dark robe, with a death's-head and cross-bones wrought
+upon it, and with a lobster's claw for a nose. I had bought and fixed up
+an old electrical machine, and connected it with a wire, so that, from a
+wand in my hand, I could discharge quite a serious shock upon any body
+venturing too near the grating. The plan worked admirably, and excited
+great interest; but I found acting the part of wax-figure two hours
+every evening in the cold no sinecure, and was put to my wits to devise
+a figure that could be moved by strings, and which would fill my place.
+I succeeded so well that it ended in my inventing a whole series of
+automata, for which the old wax-figures furnished the materials, in
+part, and which became so popular and so rewarding, that I was kept
+seven years at the business, my employer promising me, from time to
+time, an interest in the business, which he quite forgot to fulfill.
+When, at last, I found out the vanity of my expectations, I left him. He
+knew I kept no accounts, but he did not know that I reported all the
+money he gave me to my wife, who did keep our accounts. He tried to
+cheat me, but I was able to baffle him through her prudence and method.
+For I had married in this interval, and had a wife and children to
+support."
+
+Powers was now thirty years old, and had acquired considerable
+reputation in Cincinnati as an artist. His abilities coming to the
+notice of Mr. Nicholas Longworth, of that city, that good genius of
+young men of talent called on him and offered to buy out the museum and
+establish him in the business. The offer was declined with thanks. Mr.
+Longworth then proposed to send him to Italy to study his profession,
+but this, too, being declined, Mr. Longworth urged him to go to
+Washington and try his fortune with the public men of the country. To
+this Powers consented, and, aided by his generous friend, he repaired to
+the national capital in 1835, and spent two years there. During this
+period he modeled busts of Andrew Jackson, J.Q. Adams, Calhoun, Chief
+Justice Marshall, Woodbury, Van Buren, and others. Being unable to
+secure a model of Webster in Washington, the statesman invited him to go
+with him to Marshfield for that purpose. Powers accepted the invitation,
+and declares that he looks back upon his sojourn there as one of the
+most delightful portions of his life.
+
+General Jackson was very kind to him, and won his lasting esteem and
+gratitude. Upon being asked if he would sit for his bust, the old hero
+hesitated, and, looking at the artist nervously, asked: "Do you daub any
+thing over the face? Because," he added, "I recollect poor Mr. Jefferson
+got nearly smothered when they tried to take his bust. The plaster
+hardened before they got ready to release him, and they pounded it with
+mallets till they nearly stunned him, and then almost tore off a piece
+of his ear in their haste to pull off a sticking fragment of the mold. I
+should not like that." Powers assured him that such a terrible process
+would not be necessary, but that he only wished to look at him for an
+hour a day, sitting in his chair. The General brightened up at once, and
+cordially told him it would give him pleasure to sit for him. He at once
+installed the artist in a room in the White House, and gave him a
+sitting of an hour every morning until the model was done.
+
+Mr. Powers regards the bust of Jackson as one of his best efforts, and
+the President himself was very much pleased with it. After he had
+completed his model, Mr. Edward Everett brought Baron Krudener, the
+Prussian Minister to Washington, to see it. The Baron was a famous art
+critic, and poor Powers was terribly nervous as he showed him the bust.
+The Baron examined it closely, and then said to the artist, "You have
+got the General completely: his head, his face, his courage, his
+firmness, his identical self; and yet it will not do! You have also got
+all his wrinkles, all his age and decay. You forget that he is President
+of the United States and the idol of the people. You should have given
+him a dignity and elegance he does not possess. You should have employed
+your _art_, sir, and not merely your _nature_." The artist listened in
+silence, and Mr. Everett stood by without saying a word, "conscious," as
+he afterward confessed, "of a very poor right to speak on such a
+subject," after listening to so famous a critic. "_I_ did not dare,"
+says Powers, "in my humility and reverence for these two great men, to
+say what I wanted to in reply; to tell the Baron that my 'art' consisted
+in concealing art, and that my 'nature' was the highest art I knew or
+could conceive of. I was content that the 'truth' of my work had been so
+fully acknowledged, and the Baron only confirmed my resolution to make
+truth my only model and guide in all my future undertakings."
+
+One of his sitters in Washington was Senator Preston, of South Carolina,
+who conceived such an interest in him that he wrote to his brother,
+General Preston, of Columbia, South Carolina, a gentleman of great
+wealth, urging him to come to the artist's assistance, and send him to
+Italy. General Preston at once responded to this appeal, of which Powers
+was ignorant, and wrote to the artist to draw on him for a thousand
+dollars, and go to Italy at once, and to draw on him annually for a
+similar sum for several years. Powers was profoundly touched by this
+noble offer, and accepted it as frankly as it had been made. He sent his
+models to Italy, and took his departure for the Old World in 1837.
+Speaking of Mr. Preston's generosity, he said, two years ago: "I have
+endeavored to requite his kindness by sending him works of mine, equal
+in money value to his gifts; but I can never extinguish my great
+obligations. I fear he don't like me since the war,--for I could not
+suppress my strong national feelings for any man's friendship,--but I
+like and honor him; I would do any thing in my power to show him my
+inextinguishable gratitude."
+
+He reached Florence in advance of his models, and while waiting for them
+made two busts, one of a professor in Harvard College, and the other of
+an American lady. A severe domestic affliction, however, which came upon
+him soon after his arrival in Italy, affected him so greatly that he was
+not able to return to his work for a long time. Then he applied himself
+to his busts, which were warmly praised by the artists in Florence and
+by his countrymen traveling abroad. Thorwaldsen visited him in his
+studio, and pronounced his bust of Webster the best work of its kind in
+modern times, and praises from other distinguished artists were equally
+as warm. Orders came in rapidly from English and Italians, and from
+Americans in Europe, and the sculptor soon had as much business as he
+could attend to. He gave his leisure time to work on an ideal figure,
+which, when completed, was purchased by an English gentleman of wealth.
+This was "The Greek Slave," the most popular of all his works.
+Duplicates of it were exhibited in America and at the Crystal Palace in
+England, and won him praise from all quarters. This single work
+established his fame as an artist, and brought him orders from all parts
+of the civilized world. His statue of "Eve," which had preceded "The
+Greek Slave" by a year, had been pronounced by Thorwaldsen fit to be any
+man's master-piece, but it had not created such a furore as "The Greek
+Slave." Subsequently he made an exquisite bust of the Grand Duchess of
+Tuscany, with which the Grand Duke was so pleased that he called on
+Powers, and asked him as a favor to himself to apply to him whenever he
+could do him a service. Powers asked permission to take a cast of the
+Venus, and this much-coveted boon, which had been denied to other
+artists for years, was at once granted to him.
+
+Since then his works have been numerous. Among these are "The Fisher
+Boy," of which three duplicates in marble have been made;
+"Il Penseroso;" "Proserpine," a bust; "California;" "America," modeled
+for the Crystal Palace at Sydenham, England; "Washington" and "Calhoun,"
+portrait statues, the former for the State of Louisiana, and the latter
+for the State of South Carolina; and "Benjamin Franklin" and "Thomas
+Jefferson," in the Capitol at Washington. His works are all marked by
+beauty and vigor of conception as well as by exquisite finish. Beautiful
+as his ideal figures are, he yet excels in his busts and statues of the
+great men of his native land. His "Jefferson" and "Franklin" are
+wonderful works, and his "Calhoun" is said to be almost life-like. This
+last was wrecked on the coast of Long Island on its voyage to America,
+and remained in the sea for some time, but being well packed was found,
+when raised, to be only slightly damaged by the water.
+
+Mr. Powers has now resided in Italy for thirty-three years. Motives of
+economy have controlled his action, for he would gladly return to his
+own land did he feel justified in doing so. He has thus stated the
+reasons which have influenced his long residence abroad:
+
+
+     Sculpture is universal. The human form is of no country, and may be
+     studied with equal advantage at home and abroad. The opportunities
+     of studying it abroad are so immeasurably greater than at home,
+     that I do not see how it is possible, without great loss, to
+     neglect them.
+
+     1. It is impossible to model successfully without living models;
+     and in America, in my time, it was almost at the peril of
+     reputation, both for model and sculptor, that an artist employed
+     the living model, even if he could procure it. Now, I understand, a
+     few models may be obtained in New York; but they are so rare and so
+     expensive, that it is almost ruinous to employ them. It costs two
+     or three dollars there to secure a model which here may be had for
+     half a day for forty cents. There is no want of models here; but
+     their history is a sad one, and makes one often seriously lament
+     the necessity for employing them. Young women, especially, are
+     driven to this employment by the want of bread. I have numerous
+     offers of their services made by parents who are in great distress.
+     I make it a point to discourage all who come to me from entering
+     the business, and am only conquered when I feel sure that, if I
+     decline, they will be driven to other studios. I prefer only
+     professional models, already thoroughly committed to the calling,
+     as I shrink from the responsibility of leading any into so perilous
+     a vocation. They are usually accompanied by their mothers, and I
+     strive to treat them in a way to save their self-respect and
+     delicacy--a very hard task, which too often breaks down in less
+     scrupulous hands.
+
+     2. The opportunities of anatomical studies are here nearly perfect,
+     and free from all expense. The medical schools not only illustrate
+     anatomy by surgery on the cadaver, but standing by the side of the
+     dead body is a living one, in which the action of the muscles
+     dissected before the student may be studied in life. These colleges
+     are open to all artists, and furnish the best possible schooling in
+     anatomy, a thorough acquaintance with which is indispensable to the
+     sculptor, and can only be obtained in America at great cost.
+
+     3. Marble is no cheaper here than in New York, the long
+     sea-carriage costing no more to America than the short
+     land-carriage does from the quarries to Florence or Rome. But good
+     workmen, who can not be dispensed with, are so abundant and so
+     cheap here, so rare and so dear at home, that that alone is a
+     decisive reason for coming abroad. Even here it is a heavy expense
+     to procure sufficient and competent workmen; at home it is almost
+     at ruinous cost and with nearly insuperable difficulty. I have two
+     workmen--as good, certainly, as the best in America--to the finest
+     of whom I pay only four dollars a day. He could make twice that
+     cutting weeping-willows on American tomb-stones. What could he not
+     justly demand in wages from a New York sculptor? I employ a dozen
+     workmen in my studios; the poorest, at work on pedestals and rough
+     work, earn about half a dollar a day; the moderately skilled, a
+     little over a dollar. The whole cost me about fifteen dollars per
+     day, which is wonderfully low. Then, my rent--which could not, for
+     my extensive accommodations, be less than two thousand five hundred
+     dollars a year in any eligible position which the public would
+     visit--reaches only about four hundred and fifty dollars, annually.
+
+     But, 4. The general expenses of maintaining a family are so much
+     less here than at home, that a man without capital, possessing a
+     profession so slow in reaching its pecuniary returns as an
+     artist's, finds an immense inducement to live abroad. It is true
+     that, music and accomplishment in languages apart, the
+     opportunities of a substantial education for one's children are not
+     as good here as at home. There are, however, less temptations to
+     vice, and less exposures to the American habit of hard drinking
+     among young men; but, no doubt, the general influences here, in
+     the way of developing a manly, energetic, and self-relying
+     character, are less favorable than at home. There is a softness, a
+     disposition to take life easy, and a want of moral earnestness in
+     Italy, which are not favorable to youthful ambition and
+     independence. On the other hand, the money-getting propensities and
+     social rivalries of America tend to harden human character, and to
+     bring out a severe selfishness which is offensive. On the whole,
+     the balance is on our side, and, other things apart, American youth
+     are better brought up in America. But the artist must make this
+     sacrifice to his art.
+
+
+Mr. Powers is sixty-five years old, but is in full possession of his
+mental and physical strength. He is a genuine American, notwithstanding
+his long residence abroad, and has always a warm welcome for his
+countrymen visiting his studio. He is a favorite with the younger
+artists, who find in him a kind and judicious friend. Scorning servile
+imitation, he still exhibits in his works the freshness of his youth and
+the genuine originality which was the basis of his fame.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+EMMANUEL LEUTZE.
+
+
+Emmanuel Leutze, by adoption an American, was born in the village of
+Emingen, near the city of Reutlingen, in Wurtemberg, on the 24th of May,
+1816. His father emigrated to America during the infancy of his son, and
+the future artist spent his youth in the city of Philadelphia and the
+town of Fredericksburg, Virginia. He received a good common school
+education, and passed his time in comparative seclusion from society,
+reading and studying, but showing no especial fondness for art. At
+length, during his father's last illness, in which he nursed him with
+great devotion, he took up drawing to beguile the weary hours of the
+sick-room, and succeeded so well in his attempts that after his father's
+death he continued his efforts under the instruction of a competent
+drawing master. He improved rapidly, and was so well satisfied with his
+success that he determined to adopt the profession of an artist as the
+one best suited to his talents and inclination.
+
+[Illustration: FILIAL DEVOTION SHAPES A GREAT CAREER]
+
+Having acquired considerable skill in drawing, he attempted rude
+portraits of men and beasts, and at length undertook to copy from memory
+a colored print after Westall. He completed it, and resolved to show it
+to some of his friends. In his impatience for the colors to dry, he
+placed the painting before the fire and went to summon his friends,
+but found, to his dismay, upon returning with them, that the heat had
+blistered the canvas so that the picture was hardly recognizable. Yet,
+in spite of this, his critics saw such evidences of genius in the
+painting that they urged the young artist to continue his labors, and
+predicted a great success for him.
+
+Leutze, however, was not willing to venture upon another composition,
+either partly or wholly original, but applied himself with zeal to learn
+the rudiments of his art, and with such success that when his portraits
+appeared at the Artist's Fund Exhibition, a year or two later, they
+received high praise, both from critics and the public. An enterprising
+publisher, attracted by these portraits, engaged him to go to Washington
+and paint the portraits of the leading statesmen of the country, to be
+engraved for a "national work." Leutze at once proceeded to the capital,
+full of hope and enthusiasm, but soon found that the schemes of the
+politicians whose faces he was to transmit to canvas engrossed them so
+much that they would not give him the sittings he desired. After waiting
+impatiently for a considerable time he threw up the engagement in
+disgust, and went into the woods of Virginia to console himself by
+communing with nature. For some time he wandered about, making desultory
+sketches, and abandoning himself to a melancholy which was closely akin
+to despair. When this feeling was at its height, a friend, before
+unknown, came to his aid.
+
+"A gentleman, whose rich domain he chanced to approach in his wayward
+rovings, perceived his abilities, understood his unhappiness, and
+aroused him from inaction by a call upon his professional skill. The
+artist obeyed, but he could not subdue the mood which possessed him. No
+brilliant scene arose to his fancy, no humorous incident took form and
+color from his pencil, and the fair landscape around appeared to mock
+rather than cheer his destiny. He could not bring himself into relation
+with subjects thus breathing of hope and gayety, but found inspiration
+only in the records of human sorrow. As the royal mourner bade her
+companions sit upon the ground and 'tell sad stories of the death of
+kings,' the pensive artist found something analogous to his own fate in
+the story of Hagar and Ishmael. He painted them as having followed up a
+spent water-course, in hopes of finding wherewith to quench their
+thirst, and sinking under the disappointment. He neither saw nor painted
+the angel of God who showed the fountain in the wilderness, and yet the
+angel was there, for now the sufferer acknowledges that early
+vicissitudes nerved him for high endeavor, rendered his vision piercing,
+his patience strong, and his confidence firm, and that this incidental
+effort to triumph over difficulties was the first of a series which
+inspired his subsequent career."
+
+In 1840 he produced a painting which he called "An Indian Contemplating
+the Setting Sun." It was exhibited in Philadelphia, and won general
+praise for the artist. Better than this, it secured him the friendship
+of the late Edward L. Carey, of that city, who, recognizing his genius,
+determined to help him on in his labors. Mr. Carey was successful in
+inducing his friends to give Leutze a number of commissions, and these
+enabled him to carry out his wish to visit Europe and complete his
+studies. Instead of going to Italy, as was then the almost universal
+practice, he determined to study in Germany, and accordingly sailed for
+that country. He went by way of Holland, and after a long and trying
+voyage reached Amsterdam in January, 1841. Pausing here for awhile to
+familiarize himself with the master-pieces of the Dutch school, he
+repaired to Dusseldorf, where he became a pupil of the celebrated
+painter Lessing, under whom he made marked progress. His reception by
+the artists of Dusseldorf was at once hearty and encouraging, and won
+for that school and its members his enthusiastic devotion. He became
+Lessing's pupil at the personal request of the master, and these two
+gifted men were soon bound to each other by the ties of an undying
+friendship.
+
+Leutze devoted himself to historical subjects from the first, and soon
+after his arrival in Dusseldorf began his picture of "Columbus Before
+the Council of Salamanca." When it was finished, it was visited by
+Director V. Schadow, who praised it warmly, and requested the artist to
+offer it to the Art Union of Dusseldorf, which at once purchased it.
+This high compliment to a beginner and a stranger proved an additional
+stimulus to Leutze, and he soon after produced a companion picture to
+his first, "Columbus in Chains," which procured him the gold medal of
+the Brussels Art Exhibition, and was subsequently purchased by the Art
+Union of New York.
+
+Remaining two years in Dusseldorf, Leutze went to Munich to study the
+works of Cornelius and Kaulbach, and while there painted another scene
+in the life of the Great Discoverer, "Columbus before the Queen." Upon
+completing this picture he went to Venice, Rome, and the other Italian
+cities, making careful studies of the masters of that school. He gave
+two years to his travels, visiting the Tyrol, and reveling in the
+magnificent scenery through which he journeyed. He went into
+Switzerland, sketching the glorious beauties of its Alps, and reached
+the Rhine at Strasbourg. Then, sailing down that beautiful river, he set
+foot once more in Dusseldorf, glad, as he declared, to end his
+wanderings in the midst of his friends. Here he determined to locate
+himself permanently, and soon after his return he married.
+
+He lived in Dusseldorf for fourteen years, devoting himself assiduously
+to his art. His labors were incessant. Historic subjects make up the
+vast bulk of his productions during this period, and in his treatment of
+them he adhered closely to the style of the Dusseldorf school. The best
+known of his works during this portion of his career are "The Landing of
+the Norsemen in America;" "Cromwell and his Daughter;" "The Court of
+Queen Elizabeth;" "Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyn;" "The Iconoclast," and
+his famous and brilliant series of pictures illustrative of the events
+of the American War of Independence. The most prominent of these were,
+"Washington Crossing the Delaware;" "Washington at Monmouth;"
+"Washington at the Battle of Monongahela;" "News from Lexington;"
+"Sergeant Jasper," and "Washington at Princeton." These are fine
+paintings, possessing striking characteristics, and are all more or less
+popular. "Washington Crossing the Delaware" is perhaps the best known,
+since it has been engraved, and sold in all parts of the country in that
+form.
+
+During his absence in Germany, Leutze did not forget the country of his
+choice, as his devotion to American subjects amply testifies. When he
+had won a proud name in his art by his labors in Dusseldorf, and had
+laid by money enough to justify him in returning to a land where art was
+in its infancy, and not over-remunerative, he came back to the United
+States, after an absence of eighteen years, and opened a studio in New
+York. He found a vast improvement in the public taste and in the demand
+for works of art since his departure for the Old World, and, better
+still, found that his peculiar field, the historic, was the one most
+suited to the tastes of the American public.
+
+It was his intention, in coming back to this country, to devote the time
+during which he supposed he would be compelled to wait for orders, to
+looking around him and familiarizing himself with the changes that had
+taken place in the Union during his absence; but he was never able to
+carry out this design, as he had no leisure time. His European
+reputation had preceded him hither, and he had scarcely opened his doors
+in New York before he was obliged to refuse orders, for lack of time to
+execute them. His hands were full from the first, and he at once took
+rank as the most thoroughly popular and accomplished artist in the
+country.
+
+Early in 1860 he received from the Government of the United States a
+commission to decorate one of the marble stairways in the Capitol at
+Washington with a mural painting. The painting was to be executed in
+fresco, and he chose as his subject, "Westward the Star of Empire Takes
+its Way." He entered upon the undertaking with the keenest delight, and
+in order to make himself thoroughly acquainted with the true character
+of frontier scenery and life, performed what was then the long and
+difficult journey to the Rocky Mountains, where he made numerous
+sketches. Returning to the States, he sailed for Europe, and went to
+Munich to learn from Kaulbach the new stereochromatic process which has
+now superseded the fresco-painting of the middle ages. Returning to
+Washington, he applied himself to his task, and in a couple of years
+completed it.
+
+The picture is the largest and finest mural painting in America, and
+adorns the magnificent stairway at the north end of the west corridor of
+the House of Representatives. It is lighted from a sky-light in the
+roof, and is seen to the best advantage from the upper corridor. The
+coloring is softer and more life-like than is often seen in such
+paintings. The surface of the wall is rough, but the work has been done
+by such a master hand that one seems to be gazing upon real life. It is
+a wonderful picture--one that will repay weeks of study.
+
+The scene represents a train of emigrants crossing the Rocky Mountains.
+They have reached the summit of the range, from which a glorious view
+stretches out before them to the westward. The adventurers consist of
+the usual class of emigrants, men, women, and children. There are
+several wagons and a number of horses in the train. The faces of the
+emigrants express the various emotions which fill their hearts as they
+gaze upon the glorious scene before them. Some are full of life and
+vigor, and hope beams in every feature, while others are struggling with
+sickness and despair. The advance of the train has been momentarily
+checked by a huge tree which has fallen across the trail, and two stout
+men, under the direction of the leader of the party, who is sitting on
+his horse, are engaged in hewing it away with axes. Two others have
+climbed to the summit of the neighboring rocky crag, on which they have
+planted the banner of the Republic, which is seen flapping proudly from
+its lofty perch. In the foreground stands a manly youth, clasping his
+father's long rifle firmly, and gazing toward the promised land with a
+countenance glowing with hope and energy. His sister, as hopeful as
+himself, is seated by her mother's side, on a buffalo-robe which has
+been thrown over a rock. The mother's face is sad, but patient. She
+knows well the privations, toils, and hardships which await them in the
+new home-land, but she tries to share the enthusiasm and hope of her
+children. She clasps her nursing infant to her breast, and listens to
+her husband, who stands by and points her to the new country where they
+will have a home of their own. Her face is inexpressibly beautiful. The
+rich, warm light of the rising sun streams brightly over the whole
+scene, and gives to it a magical glow. The legend, "Westward the Star of
+Empire Takes its Way," is inscribed over the painting, in letters of
+gold.
+
+An elaborate illuminated border, illustrative of the advance of
+civilization in the West, surrounds the painting, and is in itself one
+of the most perfect works of art in the Capitol.
+
+Leutze received the sum of $20,000 for this painting. After completing
+it, some matters connected with his family required him to make a visit
+to Dusseldorf, and upon reaching that place he was warmly welcomed by
+the artists, on the 10th of June, 1863, at their club. "About one
+hundred and fifty lords of art," says a letter from Dusseldorf,
+"assembled at the 'Mahlkasten,' just outside of the Hof-Garten. This is
+the club-house of the painters, and, with its gardens, is their
+property. Leutze was received with music, and when he came within reach
+of the assembled company, there was a general rush to shake his hands,
+kiss his cheeks, and hug him. The old fellows were much affected at the
+scene, and were heartily glad to see their old companion once more. The
+guest made a short and feeling address, whereupon all went in to supper.
+Here two of the artists had arrayed themselves, one as a negro, the
+other as an Indian; and these brought in the first dishes and handed
+them to Leutze. Andreas Achenbach sat at Leutze's right, and his old
+friend Tryst at his left. After dinner, the calumet cf peace was passed
+around; there was speaking and drinking of healths, with songs afterward
+in the illuminated garden. The occasion appears to have been a very
+pleasant and right merry one, and is said to have been the happiest
+festival ever given by the Society of Artists."
+
+Returning to the United States a few months later, Leutze repaired to
+Washington, where he had permanently settled. He was given several
+commissions by the Government, and at once began to design his subjects.
+They were only in the cartoon, however, at the time of his death. One of
+these, "Civilization," was to have been placed in the Senate Chamber,
+and was partly finished. It is said to have given promise of being his
+finest production. He also left a sketch of an immense picture, "The
+Emancipation." He was always a hard worker, and this doubtless
+contributed to bring about his death, which took place on the 18th of
+July, 1868. The immediate cause was apoplexy, superinduced by the
+intense heat.
+
+"Mr. Leutze," says a writer in the Annual Cyclopedia, "was altogether
+the best educated artist in America, possessed of vast technical
+learning, of great genius, and fine powers of conception. His weakest
+point was in his coloring, but even here he was superior to most
+others."
+
+"Leutze," says Mr. Tuckerman, "delights in representing adventure. He
+ardently sympathizes with chivalric action and spirit-stirring events:
+not the abstractly beautiful or the simply true, but the heroic, the
+progressive, the individual, and earnest phases of life, warm his fancy
+and attract his pencil. His forte is the dramatic.... If Leutze were not
+a painter, he would certainly join some expedition to the Rocky
+Mountains, thrust himself into a fiery political controversy, or seek to
+wrest a new truth from the arcana of science.... We remember hearing a
+brother artist describe him in his studio at Home, engaged for hours
+upon a picture, deftly shifting palette, cigar, and maul-stick from hand
+to hand, as occasion required; absorbed, rapid, intent, and then
+suddenly breaking from his quiet task to vent his constrained spirits in
+a jovial song, or a romp with his great dog, whose vociferous barking he
+thoroughly enjoyed; and often abandoning his quiet studies for some
+wild, elaborate frolic, as if a row was essential to his happiness. His
+very jokes partook of this bold heartiness of disposition. He scorned
+all ultra refinement, and found his impulse to art not so much in
+delicate perception as in vivid sensation. There was ever a reaction
+from the meditative. His temperament is Teutonic--hardy, cordial, and
+brave. Such men hold the conventional in little reverence, and their
+natures gush like mountain streams, with wild freedom and unchastened
+enthusiasm."
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+DIVINES.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+HENRY WARD BEECHER.
+
+
+Henry Ward Beecher was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, on the 24th of
+June, 1813, and was the eighth child of Dr. Lyman Beecher, the famous
+Presbyterian divine of New England. Dr. Beecher was regarded as one of
+the most powerful champions of orthodox Christianity in the land of the
+pilgrims, and had the good fortune to be the father of a family whose
+members have become celebrated for their intellectual gifts.
+
+The most of these gave early promise of their future distinction, but
+the subject of this memoir was regarded as the dunce of the family. He
+grew up as the children of most New England clergymen of that day
+climbed the road to manhood. His father's family was large, and the
+salary paid by the congregation never exceeded eight hundred dollars,
+and was not always promptly paid at that. The good people of the land of
+steady habits well knew how to drive hard bargains with the Lord's
+messengers, and were adepts in the art of securing the "best talent" at
+the lowest price. The stern, hard struggle for a livelihood in which
+the father was engaged prevented him from giving much personal attention
+to his children, and the mother of young Henry dying when he was but
+three years old, the boy was left very much to himself. Like most
+ministers' children, he was obliged to "set an example to the village,"
+and this boy was dosed with Catechism and his father's stern and gloomy
+theological tenets until he was sick of them.
+
+"In those days," says Mrs. Stowe, "none of the attentions were paid to
+children that are now usual. The community did not recognize them..
+There was no child's literature; there were no children's books. The
+Sunday-school was yet an experiment in a fluctuating, uncertain state of
+trial. There were no children's days of presents and _fetes_, no
+Christmas or New Year's festivals. The annual thanksgiving was only
+associated with one day's unlimited range of pies of every sort--too
+much for one day--and too soon things of the past. The childhood of
+Henry Ward was unmarked by the possession of a single child's toy as a
+gift from any older person, or a single _fete_. Very early, too, strict
+duties devolved upon him. A daily portion of the work of the
+establishment, the care of the domestic animals, the cutting and piling
+of wood, or tasks in the garden, strengthened his muscles and gave vigor
+and tone to his nerves. From his father and mother he inherited a
+perfectly solid, healthy organization of brain, muscle, and nerves, and
+the uncaressing, let-alone system under which he was brought up gave him
+early habits of vigor and self-reliance."
+
+When but three or four years old he was sent to the Widow Kilbourn's
+school, where he said his letters twice a day, and passed the rest of
+his time in hemming a brown towel or a checked apron. It was not
+expected that he would learn very much from Marm Kilbourn, but the
+school kept him out of the way of the "home folks" for the greater part
+of the day.
+
+He was a winning, sweet-faced child, with long golden curls, of which
+he was very proud. Some of his female playfellows at school, thinking it
+a shame that a boy should look so much like a girl, cut off one or two
+of his curls with a pair of shears made of scraps of tin, and when the
+little fellow complained of his loss at home it was decided that the
+best way to protect him from such attacks in future was to cut his hair
+close to his head, which was done at once. Little Henry was commonly
+thought a dull child. His memory was lamentably deficient, and his
+utterance was thick and indistinct, so much so that he could scarcely be
+understood in reading or speaking. This was caused partly by an
+enlargement of the tonsils of his throat, and partly by timidity. The
+policy of repression worked badly in his case, and had there not been so
+much real good at the basis of his character it might have led this
+gentle, yearning boy far from the useful channel along which his life
+has flown.
+
+His stepmother was a lady of fine mental culture, of elegant breeding
+and high character, but she was an invalid, and withal thoroughly imbued
+with the gloomy sternness of her husband's faith. One day little Henry,
+who was barely able to manage the steady-going old family horse, was
+driving her in the chaise. They passed a church on their way, and the
+bell was tolling for a death. "Henry," said Mrs. Beecher, solemnly,
+"what do you think of when you hear a bell tolling like that?" The boy
+colored and hung his head in silence, and the good lady went on. "_I_
+think, was that soul prepared? It has gone into _eternity_." The little
+fellow shuddered, in spite of himself, and thought, no doubt, what a
+dreadful thing it was to be a Christian.
+
+So it was with the religion that was crammed into him. There was no
+effort made to draw him to religion by its beauty and tenderness. He
+rarely heard of the Saviour as the loving one who took little children
+in His arms and blessed them, but was taught to regard Him as a stern
+and merciless judge, as one who, instead of being "touched with the
+feeling of our infirmities," makes those infirmities the means of
+wringing fresh sufferings from us. Sunday was a day of terror to him,
+for on that day the Catechism was administered to him until he was more
+than sick of it. "I think," said he to his congregation, not long since,
+referring to this part of his life, "that to force childhood to
+associate religion with such dry morsels is to violate the spirit, not
+only of the New Testament, but of common sense as well. I know one
+thing, that if I am 'lax and latitudinarian,' the Sunday Catechism is to
+blame for a part of it. The dinners that I have lost because I could not
+go through 'sanctification,' and 'justification,' and 'adoption,' and
+all such questions, lie heavily on my memory! I do not know that they
+have brought forth any blossoms. I have a kind of grudge against many of
+those truths that I was taught in my childhood, and I am not conscious
+that they have waked up a particle of faith in me. My good old aunt in
+heaven--I wonder what she is doing. I take it that she now sits
+beauteous, clothed in white, that round about her sit chanting cherub
+children, and that she is opening to them from her larger range sweet
+stories, every one fraught with thought, and taste, and feeling, and
+lifting them up to a higher plane. One Sunday afternoon with my aunt
+Esther did me more good than forty Sundays in church with my father. He
+thundered over my head, and she sweetly instructed me down in my heart.
+The promise that she would read Joseph's history to me on Sunday was
+enough to draw a silver thread of obedience through the entire week; and
+if I was tempted to break my promise, I said, 'No; Aunt Esther is going
+to read on Sunday;' and I would do, or I would not do, all through the
+week, for the sake of getting that sweet instruction on Sunday.
+
+"And to parents I say, Truth is graded. Some parts of God's truth are
+for childhood, some parts are for the nascent intellectual period, and
+some parts are for later spiritual developments. Do not take the last
+things first. Do not take the latest processes of philosophy and bring
+them prematurely to the understanding. In teaching truth to your
+children, you are to avoid tiring them."
+
+"The greatest trial of those days," says Mrs. Stowe, "was the Catechism.
+Sunday lessons were considered by the mother-in-law as inflexible duty,
+and the Catechism as the _sine qua non_. The other children memorized
+readily, and were brilliant reciters, but Henry, blushing, stammering,
+confused, and hopelessly miserable, stuck fast on some sand-bank of what
+is required or forbidden by this or that commandment, his mouth choking
+up with the long words which he hopelessly miscalled, was sure to be
+accused of idleness or inattention, and to be solemnly talked to, which
+made him look more stolid and miserable than ever, but appeared to have
+no effect in quickening his dormant faculties."
+
+At the age of ten he was a well-grown, stout, stocky boy, strong and
+hearty, trained to hard work, and to patient obedience of his elders. He
+was tolerably well drilled in Calvinism, and had his head pretty well
+filled with snatches of doctrine which he caught from his father's
+constant discussions; but he was very backward in his education. He was
+placed at the school of the Rev. Mr. Langdon, at Bethlehem, Connecticut,
+and it was hoped that the labors of this excellent tutor would result in
+making something of him. He spent a winter at this school, and boarded
+at a neighboring farm-house, whose kind-hearted mistress soon became so
+much attached to him that she indulged him to an extent which he had
+never known at home. With his gun on his shoulder, he passed the greater
+part of his hours out of school in tramping over the pretty Connecticut
+hills, in search of game, or, lying down on the soft grass, would pass
+hours in gazing on the beautiful landscape, listening to the dull whirr
+of the partridges in the stubble-field or the dropping of the ripe
+apples in the orchard. The love of nature was strong in the boy, and his
+wonderful mistress taught him many of the profoundest lessons of his
+life. He made poor progress at the school, however, and his father was
+almost in despair. The whole family shook their heads in solemn
+forebodings over the failure of this child of ten to become a mental
+prodigy.
+
+Miss Catharine Beecher, his eldest sister, was then teaching a young
+ladies' school in Hartford, and she proposed to take the boy and see
+what could be done with him. There were thirty or forty girls in the
+school, and but this one boy, and the reader may imagine the amount of
+studying he did. The girls were full of spirits, and in their society
+the fun-loving feature of his disposition burst out and grew with
+amazing rapidity. He was always in mischief of some kind, to the great
+delight of the girls, with whom he was extremely popular, and to the
+despair of his sister, who began to fear that he was hopelessly stupid.
+
+The school was divided into two divisions in grammar recitations, each
+of which had its leader. The leaders chose their "sides" with great
+care, as these contests in grammar were esteemed the most important part
+of the daily exercises. Henry's name was generally called last, for no
+one chose him except as a matter of necessity. He was sure to be a dead
+weight to his leader.
+
+"The fair leader of one of these divisions took the boy aside to a
+private apartment, to put into him with female tact and insinuation
+those definitions and distinctions on which the honor of the class
+depended.
+
+"'Now, Henry, A is the indefinite article, you see, and must be used
+only with the singular noun. You can say _a man_, but you can't say _a
+men_, can you?' 'Yes, I can say _Amen_, too,' was the ready rejoinder.
+'Father says it always at the end of his prayers.'
+
+"'Come, Henry, now don't be joking. Now, decline He.' 'Nominative he,
+possessive his, objective him.' 'You see, his is possessive. Now, you
+can say his book, but you can't say him book.' 'Yes, I do say hymn book,
+too,' said the impracticable scholar, with a quizzical twinkle. Each one
+of these sallies made his young teacher laugh, which was the victory he
+wanted.
+
+"'But now, Henry, seriously, just attend to the active and passive
+voice. Now, _I strike_, is active, you see, because if you strike you do
+something. But, _I am struck_, is passive, because if you are struck you
+don't do any thing, do you?'
+
+"'Yes, I do; I strike back again.'
+
+"Sometimes his views of philosophical subjects were offered
+gratuitously. Being held rather of a frisky nature, his sister appointed
+his seat at her elbow when she heard her classes. A class in natural
+philosophy, not very well prepared, was stumbling through the theory of
+the tides. 'I can explain that,' said Henry. 'Well, you see, the sun, he
+catches hold of the moon and pulls her, and she catches hold of the sea
+and pulls that, and this makes the spring tides.'
+
+"'But what makes the neap tides?'
+
+"'Oh, that's when the sun stops to spit on his hands.'"
+
+It will hardly surprise the reader to be told that Master Henry
+remained with his sister only six months, and was returned at the end of
+that time to his father as an indifferent scholar and a most inveterate
+joker.
+
+A change now occurred in his life. When he was twelve years old his
+father removed to Boston to assume the charge of the Hanover-Street
+Church. Here the boy had a chance to see something more than nature, and
+to employ his powers of observation in receiving impressions from the
+daily life and aspect of a large and crowded city. His father entered
+him at the Boston Latin School, and appealed to him not to disgrace his
+name any longer by his stupidity. The appeal roused the little fellow's
+pride, and he set to work to show to his family that he was not the
+dunce they had thought him. He went at his studies manfully, mastering
+the tedious puzzle of the Latin verbs and nouns, and acquiring a
+respectable acquaintance with the grammar of that language. It was a
+terrible task to him, for he had no liking for the language, and did his
+work merely to please his father and escape disgrace. His success cost
+him a share of his health, and his vigorous constitution began to show
+the effects of such intense application. His father noticed this, and as
+a diversion to his mind advised him to enter upon a course of
+biographical reading. He read the lives of Captain Cook, Nelson, and the
+great naval commanders of the world, and at once became possessed of the
+desire to go to sea. This feeling made him restless and discontented,
+and he resolved to leave home and ship on board some vessel sailing from
+the harbor. He hovered about the wharves, conversing with the sailors
+and captains, and sometimes carrying his little bundle with him. But the
+thoughts of home were too strong for him, and he could never quite
+summon up resolution enough to run away. In a fit of desperation he
+wrote a letter to his brother, telling him of his wish to go to sea, and
+informing him that he should first ask his father's permission, and if
+that were not granted he should go without it. This letter he dropped
+where his father would be sure to find it. The old gentleman soon
+discovered it, and, reading it, put it into his pocket without comment.
+The next day he asked the boy if he had ever thought of any definite
+avocation for his future life.
+
+"Yes," said Henry, "I want to go to sea. I want to enter the navy, be a
+midshipman, and rise to be a commander."
+
+"Oh, I see," said the Doctor, cheerfully; "but in order to prepare for
+that you must study mathematics and navigation."
+
+"I am ready, sir."
+
+"Very well. I'll send you up to Amherst next week, to Mount Pleasant,
+and then you'll begin your preparatory studies at once. As soon as you
+are well prepared, I presume I can make interest to get you an
+appointment."
+
+The boy was delighted, and the next week started for Amherst. The Doctor
+felt sure that the sailor scheme would never come to any thing, and
+exclaimed, exultantly, as he bade his son good-by, "I shall have that
+boy in the ministry yet."
+
+At the Mount Pleasant Institute he roomed with his teacher in
+mathematics, a young man named Fitzgerald, and a warm friendship sprung
+up between them. Fitzgerald saw that his pupil had no natural talent or
+taste for mathematics; but instead of despairing in consequence of this
+discovery, he redoubled his efforts. Appealing to his pupil's pride and
+ambition, he kept him well to his task, and succeeded in implanting in
+him a fair knowledge of the science. Young Beecher also took lessons in
+elocution from Professor John E. Lovell. Under the instructions of this
+able teacher, he learned to manage his voice, and to overcome the
+thickness and indistinctness of utterance which previous to this had
+troubled him so much. He continued at this school for three years,
+devoting himself to study with determination and success, and taking
+rank as one of the most promising pupils of the school.
+
+During his first year at Mount Pleasant, he became deeply impressed with
+a sense of his religious responsibility at a famous revival which was
+held in the place, and from that time resolved to devote himself
+entirely to preparing for his entrance into the ministry when he should
+attain the proper age. Henceforth he applied himself with characteristic
+energy to his studies and to his religious duties, and rose steadily in
+the esteem of his teachers and friends. He entered Amherst College upon
+the completion of his preparatory course, and graduated from that
+institution in 1834.
+
+In 1832, Dr. Beecher removed from Boston to Cincinnati, to enter upon
+the Presidency of Lane Seminary, to which he had been elected. Henry
+followed him to the West after his graduation at Amherst, and completed
+his theological studies at the seminary, under the tuition of his father
+and Professor Stowe, the latter of whom married Henry's sister Harriet,
+in 1836. Having finished his course, he was ordained.
+
+"As the time drew near in which Mr. Beecher was to assume the work of
+the ministry," says Mrs. Stowe, "he was oppressed by a deep melancholy.
+He had the most exalted ideas of what ought to be done by a Christian
+minister. He had transferred to that profession all those ideals of
+courage, enterprise, zeal, and knightly daring which were the dreams of
+his boyhood, and which he first hoped to realize in the naval
+profession. He felt that the holy calling stood high above all others;
+that to enter it from any unholy motive, or to enter and not do a worthy
+work in it, was a treason to all honor.
+
+"His view of the great object of the ministry was sincerely and heartily
+the same with that of his father, to secure the regeneration of the
+individual heart by the Divine Spirit, and thereby to effect the
+regeneration of human society. The problem that oppressed him was, how
+to do this. His father had used certain moral and intellectual weapons,
+and used them strongly and effectively, because employing them with
+undoubting faith. So many other considerations had come into his mind to
+qualify and limit that faith, so many new modes of thought and inquiry,
+that were partially inconsistent with the received statements of his
+party, that he felt he could never grasp and wield them with the force
+which could make them efficient. It was no comfort to him that he could
+wield the weapons of his theological party so as to dazzle and confound
+objectors, while all the time conscious in his own soul of objections
+more profound and perplexities more bewildering. Like the shepherd boy
+of old, he saw the giant of sin stalking through the world, defying the
+armies of the living God, and longed to attack him, but the armor in
+which he had been equipped for the battle was no help, but only an
+incumbrance!
+
+"His brother, who studied with him, had already become an unbeliever and
+thrown up the design of preaching, and he could not bear to think of
+adding to his father's trials by deserting the standard. Yet his
+distress and perplexity were so great that at times he seriously
+contemplated going into some other profession....
+
+"In his last theological term he took a Bible class in the city of
+Cincinnati, and began studying and teaching the Evangelists. With the
+course of this study and teaching came a period of spiritual
+clairvoyance. His mental perplexities were relieved, and the great
+question of 'what to preach' was solved. The shepherd boy laid aside his
+cumbrous armor, and found in a clear brook a simple stone that smote
+down the giant; and so, from the clear waters of the Gospel narrative
+Mr. Beecher drew forth that 'white stone with a new name,' which was to
+be the talisman of his ministry. To present Jesus Christ personally as
+the Friend and Helper of humanity, Christ as God impersonate, eternally
+and by a necessity of His nature helpful, and remedial, and restorative;
+the Friend of each individual soul, and thus the Friend of all
+society,--this was the one thing which his soul rested on as a worthy
+object in entering the ministry. He afterward said, in speaking of his
+feelings at this time,'I was like the man in the story to whom a fairy
+gave a purse with a single piece of money in it, which he found always
+came again as soon as he had spent it. I thought I knew at least one
+thing to preach. I found it included every thing.'"
+
+Upon being ordained, Mr. Beecher married, and accepted a call to
+Lawrenceburg, Indiana, a little town on the Ohio River, about twenty
+miles below Cincinnati. His salary was small and the work was hard. He
+was not only pastor, but sexton as well, and in this capacity he swept
+out the church, made the fires, filled and trimmed the lamps, and rang
+the bell. Says he, "I did all but come to hear myself preach--that they
+had to do."
+
+He did not remain here long, however, but soon accepted a call to
+Indianapolis, the capital of the State, where he lived for eight years.
+He occupied a tasteful cottage on the outskirts of the town, and
+gathered about him his household treasures, which consisted of his
+family, his library, his horse, cow, pigs, and chickens. He was an
+enthusiast in matters of agriculture and horticulture, and besides
+importing from the East the best varieties of fruit-trees, roses, etc.,
+he edited a horticultural paper, which had a fair circulation.
+
+The eight years of his ministry in Indianapolis make up a period of hard
+and useful work. He held two services on Sunday, and five meetings
+during the week in various parts of the city, and with the consent of
+his people gave three months of each year to missionary work in other
+parts of the State. While engaged in this latter duty he traveled about
+the State on horseback and preached daily.
+
+His experience in the ministry, as well as his study of the lives of the
+apostles, convinced him that success in his profession--by which I mean
+the successful winning of souls to God--was not to be won by preaching
+controversial or dry doctrinal sermons. He must seize upon some vital
+truth, admitted by all parties, and bring that home to men's minds. He
+must preach to them of their daily, hourly trials and temptations, joys
+and comforts, and he resolved that this should be the character of his
+preaching. Then came the question, how shall one man know that which is
+uppermost in the thoughts of the many? He went into the places of public
+resort, where men were accustomed to lounge and to gather to hear the
+news, and made it his practice to listen to their conversations. In this
+way he began to know the people to whom he preached as few pastors know
+their flocks, and he was enabled by this knowledge to apply his
+teachings to their daily lives, and to send them forth to their duties
+warned by his reproofs or cheered by his intelligent counsel and
+sympathy. This practice, modified at times as circumstances have
+required, he has steadfastly continued, and in it lies the secret of his
+success as a preacher. Said a gentleman, not long since, himself a
+member of a different denomination, "Beecher's sermons do me more good
+than any I hear elsewhere. They never fail to touch upon some topic of
+importance that has engaged my thoughts during the week. Dropping all
+doctrinal technicalities, and steering clear of the vexed questions of
+theology, he talks to me in such a way that I am able to carry Christ
+into the most trifling of my daily affairs, and to carry Him there as my
+Sympathizer and Helper, as well as my Judge." He soon became the most
+popular preacher in the city, and, thanks to the genuineness of his
+gifts and the earnestness of his zeal, he was enabled to add many to the
+kingdom of Christ who had been drawn to hear him merely by their
+curiosity. Among these was his brother Charles, whose skepticism has
+been spoken of elsewhere in this chapter. Becoming deeply impressed at a
+revival in Indianapolis, Charles Beecher, by his brother's advice, took
+a Bible class, and began to teach the story of Christ. The plan worked
+most happily. Charles solved all the questions which had perplexed his
+mind, reentered upon his religious life with increased fervor, and soon
+afterward entered the ministry.
+
+In August, 1847, Mr. Beecher received a call to Plymouth Church,
+Brooklyn, which had just been founded. He promptly accepted it. Breaking
+up his home in Indiana, he removed to Brooklyn, and was publicly
+installed pastor of Plymouth Church on the 11th of November, 1847. He at
+once "announced in Plymouth pulpit the same principles that he had in
+Indianapolis, namely, his determination to preach Christ among them not
+as an absolute system of doctrines, not as a bygone historical
+personage, but as the living Lord and God, and to bring all the ways and
+usages of society to the test of His standards. He announced to all whom
+it might concern, that he considered temperance and antislavery as a
+part of the Gospel of Christ, and should preach them to the people
+accordingly."
+
+It is no part of my purpose to consider Mr. Beecher as a politician. I
+deal with him here not as the partisan of a political organization, but
+as a minister of the Gospel. In politics he has always been a Republican
+of the Radical type, but has generally inclined to a conservative
+construction of that creed. Many of his warmest friends take issue with
+him in his political views, and he has not always been able to lead his
+congregation with him in this respect.
+
+Soon after assuming the charge of Plymouth Church Mr. Beecher became a
+regular contributor to "The Independent," a paper which he had helped to
+establish. His articles were marked with an asterisk, and were widely
+read. They dealt with every topic of interest, principally with slavery,
+and were vigorous and full of thought. A number of them were afterward
+collected and published in book form as the "Star Papers." Since then he
+has acted as editor of "The Independent," and is at present the editor
+of "The Christian Union." He has written a novel of New England life,
+called "Norwood," for "The New York Ledger," and still writes a weekly
+paper for that journal. He is at present engaged upon a "Life of
+Christ," which is to be the crowning labor of his life. Besides these
+labors, he has been until recently almost constantly in the lecture
+field, and has spoken frequently before popular assemblies on the
+political questions of the day.
+
+These labors have filled up the leisure time left him after discharging
+his duties as pastor of his church, which have never been neglected upon
+any occasion. In this field his work has been faithful and constant. He
+has labored in it for nearly twenty-three years, and his work has not
+been without its reward. Such sermons as his could not fail of doing
+good even if spoken to half a dozen people. How great, then, must be
+their effect when addressed to the vast audiences to which he speaks!
+His congregation averages over twenty-five hundred at every service,
+being the largest regular congregation in existence. His sermons are
+reported by a stenographer, and are printed each week in pamphlet form,
+and in this manner find their way into thousands of hands. The "Plymouth
+Pulpit," in which they are published, has a regular weekly circulation
+of six thousand copies, and it is estimated that each copy is read by
+at least five persons, which gives the preacher, in addition to his own
+congregation, an audience of more than thirty thousand persons per week.
+
+When Plymouth Church was organized, the wise heads predicted a failure
+for it; but it has grown and prospered, until it is now the most compact
+and the best organized congregation in America. It is dependent upon no
+synod or other religious body, but manages its affairs entirely as
+it pleases. The control is vested in a board of trustees, of which Mr.
+Beecher is _ex-officio_ a member. He has no superiority in this board
+unless called by its members to preside over its meetings. His influence
+is of course all-powerful; but as the trustees are shrewd business men,
+they sometimes carry out their own views in preference to his. The
+church is supported by the sale of its pews. This yields it an annual
+income of between forty and fifty thousand dollars. The pastor receives
+a handsome salary--said to be the largest in the United States--and the
+rest goes into the treasury of the church. As the period of the annual
+sale of pews approaches, Mr. Beecher makes it his practice to preach a
+sermon in which he reviews the questions of the day, and as far as
+possible marks out his course with regard to them during the ensuing
+year. This he does in order that every one purchasing a seat in Plymouth
+Church may know just what is in store for him from the pulpit. The
+surplus revenue, after the pastor's salary and the current expenses are
+paid, has until recently been devoted to extinguishing the debt upon the
+church. That burden now being off the shoulders of the congregation, the
+money is applied to missionary work in Brooklyn. "Two missions have been
+largely supported by the funds derived from Plymouth Church, and the
+time and personal labor of its members. A mechanics' reading-room is
+connected with one of these. No church in the country furnishes a
+larger body of lay teachers, exhorters, and missionaries in every
+department of human and Christian labor."
+
+Plymouth Church is located in Orange Street, between Hicks and Henry
+Streets, in Brooklyn, and not far from the Fulton Ferry. Many strangers,
+whose expectations are based upon the fame of the pastor, are
+disappointed in the plain and simple exterior of red brick, as they come
+prepared to see a magnificent Gothic temple. The interior, however,
+rarely fails to please all comers. It is plain and simple, but elegant
+and comfortable. It is a vast hall, around the four sides of which
+sweeps an immense gallery. The interior is painted white, with a tinge
+of pink, and the carpets and cushions of the seats are of a rich, warm
+red. The rows of seats in the body of the church are semicircular, and
+those in the gallery rise as in an amphitheater, from the front to the
+wall. At the far end of the church is a raised platform containing
+merely a chair and a table. The table is a pretty ornament, and is the
+"Plymouth Pulpit." It is made of wood brought from the Garden of
+Gethsemane. In the gallery behind the pulpit is the great organ--one of
+the largest and finest in the Union. The church will seat over
+twenty-five hundred people, but in order to do this, chairs are placed
+in the aisles. These chairs are sold as well as the pews.
+
+Every Sunday morning the streets are filled with persons on their way to
+attend the services at Plymouth Church. They come not only from
+Brooklyn, but from New York, and even from Jersey City and Hoboken. The
+yard and street in front of the church are quickly filled with the
+throng, but the doors are guarded by policemen, and none but pew-holders
+are permitted to enter the church until ten minutes before the hour for
+service. Without this precaution the regular congregation would be
+crowded out of their seats every Sunday by strangers.
+
+At ten minutes before the hour for service the doors are thrown open,
+and very soon there is not even standing room in the vast interior, and
+generally the vestibules are full.
+
+Near the pulpit is placed a basket of exquisite flowers, and sometimes
+the entire platform is decorated in the same way. Most commonly some
+little child perches itself up among the flowers, and this pretty sight
+never fails to bring a smile of pleasure to the pastor's face as he
+enters the church. He comes in through a little door under the gallery,
+behind the pulpit. He is dressed in a plain suit of black, with a Byron
+collar and a black stock. His movements are quiet and graceful, although
+quick and energetic. His manner in opening the services is quiet and
+earnest, and at once impresses his hearers with the solemnity of the
+occasion. He reads the Bible in an easy, unconstrained manner, as if he
+enjoyed the task, and in his prayers, which are extempore, he carries
+the hearts of all his hearers with him to the Throne of Grace. He joins
+heartily in the singing, which is congregational. It was feared that the
+organ would prove a great temptation to do away with this style of
+singing, but this has not been the case. The magnificent instrument is
+used only to accompany the congregation, and there swells up such a
+volume of harmony from this vast throng as is never listened to outside
+of Plymouth Church. The singing is wonderful.
+
+The gem of the whole service, however, is the sermon; and these sermons
+are characteristic of the man. They come warm and fresh from his heart,
+and they go home to the hearer, giving him food for thought for days
+afterward. To attempt to describe his manner would be to paint the
+sunbeam. Eloquence can be felt, but it can not be described. He enchains
+the attention of his auditors from the first, and they hang upon his
+utterances with rapt eagerness until the close of the sermon.
+
+He knows human nature thoroughly, and he talks to his people of what
+they have been thinking of during the week, of trials that have
+perplexed them, and of joys which have blessed them. He takes the clerk
+and the merchant to task for their conduct in the walks of business, and
+warns them of the snares and pitfalls which lie along their paths. He
+strips the thin guise of honesty from the questionable transactions of
+Wall Street, and holds them up to public scorn. He startles many a one
+by his sudden penetration and denunciation of what that one supposes to
+be the secrets of his heart. His dramatic power is extraordinary. He can
+hardly be responsible for it, since it breaks forth almost without his
+will. It is simply unavoidable with him. He moves his audience to tears,
+or brings a mirthful smile to their lips, with a power that is
+irresistible. His illustrations and figures are drawn chiefly from
+nature, and are fresh and striking. They please the subtlest philosopher
+who hears him, and illuminate the mind of the average listener with a
+flood of light. He can startle his people with the terrors of the law,
+but he prefers to preach the Gospel of Love. "God's love for those who
+are scattered and lost," he says, "is intenser and deeper than the love
+even of a mother.... God longs to bring you home more than you long to
+get there. He has been calling, calling, calling, and listening for your
+answer. And when you are found, and you lay your head on the bosom of
+Jesus, and you are at rest, you will not be so glad as He will be who
+declared that, like a shepherd, he had joy over one sinner that repented
+more than over ninety and nine just persons that needed no repentance."
+
+Religion is to him an abiding joy; it is perfect love, and casteth out
+fear. It has no gloom, no terror in it, and he says to his people: "If
+God gave you gayety and cheer of spirits, lift up the careworn by it.
+Wherever you go, shine and sing. In every household there is drudgery;
+in every household there is sorrow; in every household there is
+low-thoughted evil. If you come as a prince, with a cheerful, buoyant
+nature, in the name of God, do not lay aside those royal robes of yours.
+Let humor bedew duty; let it flash across care. Let gayety take charge
+of dullness. So employ these qualities that they shall be to life what
+carbonic acid is to wine, making it foam and sparkle."
+
+The sum and substance, the burden of all his preaching is Christ:
+"'Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world!' I
+present Jesus to you as the atoning Saviour; as God's sacrifice for sin;
+as that new and living way by which alone a sinful creature can ascend
+and meet a pure and just God. I bring this question home to you as a
+sinner. O man! full of transgressions, habitual in iniquities, tainted
+and tarnished, utterly undone before God, what will you do with this
+Jesus that comes as God's appointed sacrifice for sin, your only hope
+and your only Saviour? Will you accept him? Will you, by personal and
+living faith, accept him as your Saviour from sin? I ask not that you
+should go with me into a discourse upon the relations of Christ's life,
+of his sufferings, of his death; to the law of God, or to the government
+of God. Whatever may be the philosophy of those relations, the matter in
+hand is one of faith rather than of philosophy; and the question is,
+Will you take Christ to be your soul's Saviour?"
+
+Having selected his theme, and formed a general plan of treatment, Mr.
+Beecher trusts a great deal to the inspiration of the moment for his
+language and illustrations. Some time ago, in reply to a friend who
+asked how he prepared his sermons, he said he generally has an idea
+during the week as to what he will preach about on Sunday, but does not
+attempt any thing like systematic preparation until an hour or two
+before going into the pulpit. Sometimes it is easy to block out a
+sermon; but again it is hard work, and he does not fairly get into it
+until the first bell rings. He writes out the headings of his subject,
+and marks the proper places for illustration. He does not confine
+himself to this written outline, however, but, once in the pulpit,
+changes it according to the impulse of the moment. He never preaches the
+same sermon twice, though he may use the same text several times,
+treating it in a different way each time. He endeavors to preach his
+best sermons on stormy days, in order that the desire to hear his best
+efforts may keep his congregation from degenerating into "fair-weather
+Christians." "Once," he said, laughing, "it snowed or rained every
+Sabbath in a certain winter, and the effort I had to make to remain
+faithful to this rule came near killing me." When asked if he studied
+his prayers, he answered promptly: "Never. I carry a feeling with me
+such as a mother would have for her children were they lost in a great
+forest. I feel that on every side my people are in danger, and that many
+of them are like babes, weak and helpless. My heart goes out in sorrow
+and in anxiety toward them, and at times I seem to carry all their
+burdens. I find that when one's heart is wrapped and twined around the
+hearts of others, it is not difficult to pray."
+
+The church is provided with a large lecture-room, a study for the
+pastor, and an elegant parlor. Mr. Beecher does not pay pastoral visits
+to his people, unless he is sent for to visit the sick and dying, or
+persons seeking help in their religious struggles. His parishioners are
+scattered over so wide a territory that a systematic course of visiting
+would consume all his time. In place of these visits, he meets his
+congregation at stated times in social gatherings in the church parlor,
+and these evenings are looked forward to with eagerness by both pastor
+and people.
+
+The most characteristic meeting of this congregation, however, even more
+so than the Sunday services, is the Friday evening meeting, which is
+held in the lecture-room. This room is plain and simple. It is provided
+with comfortable seats and a grand piano. There is no pulpit in it, but
+a small table and a chair are placed for the pastor on a low platform
+covered with green baize. The object is to banish every thing like
+formalism, and to make the meeting as free and unconstrained as a social
+gathering. As at the Sunday services, the house is full, but now the
+persons present are almost entirely members of the church. Strangers
+rarely come to these meetings, and in staying away from them miss the
+chance of seeing the true inner life of Plymouth Church. A gentleman who
+was present at one of them, a few years ago, wrote the following account
+of it for the "Atlantic Monthly:"
+
+
+     Mr. Beecher took his seat on the platform, and, after a short
+     pause, began the exercises by saying, in a low tone, these words:
+     "Six twenty-two."
+
+     A rustling of the leaves of hymn-books interpreted the meaning of
+     this mystical utterance, which otherwise might have been taken as
+     announcing a discourse upon the prophetic numbers. The piano
+     confirmed the interpretation; and then the company burst into one
+     of those joyous and unanimous singings which are so enchanting a
+     feature of the services of this church. Loud rose the beautiful
+     harmony of voices, constraining every one to join in the song, even
+     those most unused to sing. When it was ended, the pastor, in the
+     same low tone, pronounced a name, upon which one of the brethren
+     rose to his feet, and the rest slightly inclined v their heads....
+     The prayers were all brief, perfectly quiet and simple, and free
+     from the routine or regulation expressions. There were but two or
+     three of them, alternating with singing; and when that part of the
+     exercises was concluded, Mr. Beecher had scarcely spoken. The
+     meeting ran alone, in the most spontaneous and pleasant manner....
+     There was a pause after the last hymn died away, and then Mr.
+     Beecher, still seated, began, in the tone of conversation, to speak
+     somewhat after this manner:
+
+     "When," said he, "I first began to walk as a Christian, in my
+     youthful zeal I made many resolutions that were well meant, but
+     indiscreet. Among others, I remember I resolved to pray, at least
+     once, in some way, every hour that I was awake. I tried faithfully
+     to keep this resolution, but never having succeeded a single day, I
+     suffered the pangs of self-reproach, until reflection satisfied me
+     that the only wisdom possible, with regard to such a resolve, was
+     to break it. I remember, too, that I made a resolution to speak
+     upon religion to every person with whom I conversed,--on
+     steamboats, in the streets, anywhere. In this, also, I failed, as I
+     ought; and I soon learned that, in the sowing of such seed, as in
+     other sowings, times, and seasons, and methods must be considered
+     and selected, or a man may defeat his own object, and make religion
+     loathsome."
+
+     In language like this he introduced the topic of the evening's
+     conversation, which was, How far, and on what occasions, and in
+     what manner, one person may invade, so to speak, the personality of
+     another, and speak to him upon his moral condition. The pastor
+     expressed his own opinion, always in the conversational tone, in a
+     talk of ten minutes' duration, in the course of which he applauded,
+     not censured, the delicacy which causes most people to shrink from
+     doing it. He said that a man's personality was not a macadamized
+     road for every vehicle to drive upon at will, but rather a sacred
+     inclosure, to be entered, if at all, with the consent of the owner,
+     and with deference to his feelings and tastes. He maintained,
+     however, that there _were_ times and modes in which this might
+     properly be done, and that every one _had_ a duty to perform of
+     this nature. When he had finished his observations, he said the
+     subject was open to the remarks of others; whereupon a brother
+     instantly rose and made a very honest confession.
+
+     He said that he had never attempted to perform the duty in question
+     without having a palpitation of the heart, and a complete turning
+     over of his inner man. He had often reflected upon this curious
+     fact, but was not able to account for it. He had not allowed this
+     repugnance to prevent his doing the duty; but he always had to rush
+     at it and perform it by a sort of _coup de main_, for if he allowed
+     himself to think about the matter, he could not do it at all. He
+     concluded by saying that he should be very much obliged to any one
+     if he could explain this mystery.
+
+     The pastor said: "May it not be the natural delicacy we feel, and
+     ought to feel, in approaching the interior consciousness of another
+     person?"
+
+     Another brother rose. There was no hanging back at this meeting;
+     there were no awkward pauses; every one seemed full of matter. The
+     new speaker was not inclined to admit the explanation suggested by
+     the pastor. "Suppose," said he, "we were to see a man in imminent
+     danger of immediate destruction, and there was one way of escape,
+     and but one, which _we_ saw, and he did not, should we feel any
+     delicacy in running up to him and urging him to fly for his life?
+     Is it not a want of faith on our part that causes the reluctance
+     and hesitation we all feel in urging others to avoid a peril so
+     much more momentous?"
+
+     Mr. Beecher said the cases were not parallel. Irreligious persons,
+     he remarked, were not in imminent danger of immediate death; they
+     might die to-morrow; but in all probability they would not, and an
+     ill-timed or injudicious admonition might forever repel them. We
+     must accept the doctrine of probabilities, and act in accordance
+     with it in this particular, as in all others.
+
+     Another brother had a puzzle to present for solution. He said that
+     he too had experienced the repugnance to which allusion had been
+     made; but what surprised him most was, that the more he loved a
+     person, and the nearer he was related to him, the more difficult he
+     found it to converse with him upon his spiritual state. Why is
+     this? "I should like to have this question answered," said he, "if
+     there _is_ an answer to it."
+
+     Mr. Beecher observed that this was the universal experience, and he
+     was conscious himself of a peculiar reluctance and embarrassment in
+     approaching one of his own household on the subject in question. He
+     thought it was due to the fact that we respect more the personal
+     rights of those near to us than we do those of others, and it was
+     more difficult to break in upon the routine of our ordinary
+     familiarity with them. We are accustomed to a certain tone which it
+     is highly embarrassing to jar upon.
+
+     Captain Duncan related two amusing anecdotes to illustrate the
+     right way and the wrong way of introducing religious conversation.
+     In his office there was sitting one day a sort of lay preacher, who
+     was noted for lugging in his favorite topic in the most forbidding
+     and abrupt manner. A sea captain came in, who was introduced to
+     this individual.
+
+     "Captain Porter," said he, with awful solemnity, "are you a captain
+     in Israel?"
+
+     The honest sailor was so abashed and confounded at this novel
+     salutation, that he could only stammer out an incoherent reply; and
+     he was evidently disposed to give the tactless zealot a piece of
+     his mind, expressed in the language of the quarter-deck. When the
+     solemn man took his leave, the disgusted captain said, "If ever I
+     should be coming to your office again, and that man should be here,
+     I wish you would send me word, and I'll stay away."
+
+     A few days after another clergyman chanced to be in the office, no
+     other than Mr. Beecher himself, and another captain came in, a
+     roistering, swearing, good-hearted fellow. The conversation fell
+     upon sea-sickness, a malady to which Mr. Beecher is peculiarly
+     liable. The captain also was one of the few sailors who are always
+     sea-sick in going to sea, and gave a moving account of his
+     sufferings from that cause. Mr. Beecher, after listening
+     attentively to his tale, said, "Captain Duncan, if I was a preacher
+     to such sailors as your friend here, I should represent hell as an
+     eternal voyage, with every man on board in the agonies of
+     sea-sickness, the crisis always imminent, but never coming."
+
+     This ludicrous and most unprofessional picture amused the old salt
+     exceedingly, and won his entire good will toward the author of it;
+     so that after Mr. Beecher left, he said, "That's a good fellow,
+     Captain Duncan. I like _him_, and I'd like to hear him talk more."
+
+     Captain Duncan contended that this free and easy way of address was
+     just the thing for such characters. Mr. Beecher had shown him, to
+     his great surprise, that a man could be a decent and comfortable
+     human being although he was a minister, and had so gained his
+     confidence and good will that he could say _any thing_ to him at
+     their next interview. Captain Duncan finished his remarks by a
+     decided expression of his disapproval of the canting regulation
+     phrases so frequently employed by religious people, which are
+     perfectly nauseous to men of the world.
+
+     This interesting conversation lasted about three-quarters of an
+     hour, and ended, not because the theme seemed exhausted, but
+     because the time was up. We have only given enough of it to convey
+     some little idea of its spirit. The company again broke into one
+     of their cheerful hymns, and the meeting was dismissed in the usual
+     manner.
+
+
+During the late war, Mr. Beecher took an active and energetic part in
+support of the cause of the Union. His labors were so severe that his
+health was considerably impaired, and his voice began to fail him. His
+physicians ordered him to seek rest and recreation in a tour through
+Europe, and he reluctantly obeyed them. He was much benefited by his
+visit to the Continent, but on his return to England, on his way home,
+being solicited to speak in that country in behalf of the Union, he
+delivered a series of powerful appeals, which exhausted the greater part
+of the strength he had gained on the Continent, and caused him to return
+home almost as ill as when he went abroad.
+
+Soon after his return the war closed, and he went to Charleston to
+deliver the address at Fort Sumter upon the occasion of the rehoisting
+of the flag of the United States over that work. The news of the
+assassination of Mr. Lincoln met him upon his return to Brooklyn, and
+drew from him one of his most memorable sermons. At the close of
+hostilities, he preached a sermon to his congregation, urging
+forgiveness and conciliation toward the South as the policy of the hour,
+saying truly that that crisis was a rare opportunity which would never
+come again, if spurned. The sermon was unpopular, and caused him some
+trouble even in his own congregation.
+
+Mr. Beecher is now fifty-seven years old, but is still in the flush of
+his intellectual vigor. His eye is as bright, his step as firm and
+elastic, and his voice as clear and ringing as when he preached his
+first sermon. His powers have grown with his work, and every year he
+seems to rise higher in his intellectual supremacy. As a pulpit orator,
+he has no superior, and certainly there is no man in all this round
+earth whose eloquence has been productive of greater good to the cause
+he serves. He is a stout, stocky man in appearance, with a large square
+face and heavy features. It is the face of a great orator and a genial,
+warm-hearted man. He is careful and temperate in all his habits--except
+that he will work too hard--and enjoys robust health. He lives plainly
+and dresses simply. He impresses one at once with his immense energy,
+and you would recognize him immediately as a man of unusual power in his
+community. Said a friend not long since, "I was standing by Beecher in a
+book-store to-day. He was perfectly still, as he was waiting for a
+parcel to be done up, but he reminded me of a big locomotive full of
+steam and fire, and ready to display its immense force at any moment."
+
+Mr. Beecher is not only a preacher, but a capital farmer. He has a model
+farm at Peekskill, on the Hudson, and is brimful of agricultural and
+horticultural theories, which he carries into practice successfully. His
+love for flowers is a perfect passion, and dates from his boyhood. He is
+an excellent mechanic, and makes the repairs on his own premises, as far
+as he can, with a keen relish, which he has doubtless inherited from his
+father. He is thoroughly read in history, and as an art critic has no
+superior. His house is filled with art gems, which are his pride. He has
+not lost the love of reverie which marked his boyhood, but he is
+eminently a practical man, and prefers the practical questions of
+theology to those merely theoretical. He is as little like the typical
+parson as one can imagine, and yet he is one whose place will be hard to
+fill when he is gone, and whose works will live in the grateful memory
+of those whom his counsel has saved from sin, and his sympathy
+encouraged to continue in the path of duty.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+PETER CARTWRIGHT.
+
+
+One of the most remarkable men in the American ministry is PETER
+CARTWRIGHT, the "Backwoods Preacher." Sixty-seven years of ministerial
+labors have passed over his head, and yet he still continues in the
+field in which he has done such good service, and retains all the
+popularity and much of the fire of his younger days.
+
+He was born in Amherst County, Virginia, on the 1st of September, 1785.
+His father had been a soldier in the Revolutionary War, and his mother
+was an orphan. Shortly after the close of the war, the Cartwrights
+removed from Virginia to Kentucky, which was then an almost unbroken
+wilderness. The journey was accompanied with considerable danger, as the
+Indians were not yet driven west of the Ohio, but the family reached
+their destination in safety. For two years they lived on a rented farm
+in Lincoln County, Kentucky, and at the end of that time removed to what
+was called the Green River Country, and settled in Logan County, nine
+miles south of Russellville, the county seat, and within one mile of the
+State line of Tennessee.
+
+The portion of Logan County in which young Cartwright's childhood and
+youth were passed was the very last place one Would have cared to bring
+up a candidate for the ministry. It was called "Rogue's Harbor," and was
+thickly settled with fugitives from justice from all parts of the Union.
+They actually constituted a majority of the inhabitants of the district,
+and when the respectable citizens sought to bring them to justice they
+readily "swore each other clear," and thus set the law at defiance. They
+carried on such a course of outrage and violence that the respectable
+citizens were at length compelled to combine for defence against them by
+means of an organization known as the Regulators. Several fierce
+encounters took place between the desperadoes and the Regulators, in
+which many lives were lost, before the supremacy of the law was
+established.
+
+"When my lather settled in Logan County," says Mr. Cartwright, "there
+was not a newspaper printed South of Green River, no mill short of forty
+miles, and no schools worth the name. Sunday was a day set apart for
+hunting, fishing, horse-racing, card-playing, balls, dances, and all
+kinds of jollity and mirth. We killed our meat out in the woods, wild,
+and beat our meal and hominy with a pestle and mortar. We stretched a
+deer-skin over a hoop, burned holes in it with the prongs of a fork,
+sifted our meal, baked our bread, eat it, and it was first-rate eating,
+too. We raised, or gathered out of the woods, our own tea. We had sage,
+bohea, cross-vine, spice, and sassafras teas in abundance. As for
+coffee, I am not sure that I ever smelled it for ten years. We made our
+sugar out of the water of the maple-tree, and our molasses, too. These
+were great luxuries in those days. We raised our own cotton and flax. We
+water-rotted our flax, broke it by hand, scutched it, picked the seed
+out of the cotton with our fingers; our mothers and sisters carded,
+spun, and wove it into cloth, and they cut and made our garments and
+bed-clothes, etc. And when we got on a new suit thus manufactured, and
+sallied out into company, we thought ourselves as _big as any body_."
+
+Young Peter grew up in this rough country with a constitution of iron,
+and a fair share of Western courage, independence, and energy. He was
+sent by his father to a neighboring school, but the teacher was an
+indifferent one, and he learned merely to read and write and cipher
+imperfectly.
+
+He was a "wild, wicked boy," he tells us, and grew up to delight in
+horse-racing, card-playing, and dancing. His father seems to have
+enjoyed having so dashing a son, but his mother, who was a pious woman,
+took his course seriously to heart, and wept and prayed over her boy as
+only a Christian mother can. She often talked to him, and moved him so
+deeply that he frequently vowed to lead a better life; but his pleasures
+were too tempting, and he fell back again into his old habits. His
+father presented him with a race-horse and a pack of cards, and he
+became known among his youthful companions as one of the most fearless
+riders and the luckiest fellow at cards in the county. The good mother
+wept and prayed all the more, and the boy hid his cards from her to keep
+her from burning them.
+
+In 1801, when he was sixteen years old, a change came over him. He had
+been out with his father and brother to attend a wedding in the
+neighborhood. The affair was conducted with all the uproarious merriment
+incident to those days, and when Peter returned home and began to think
+over it, he felt condemned at having passed his time in such a manner.
+"My mother was in bed," says he. "It seemed to me, all of a sudden, my
+blood rushed to my head, my heart palpitated, in a few minutes I turned
+blind, an awful impression rested on my mind that death had come to me
+and I was unprepared to die. I fell on my knees and began to ask God to
+have mercy on me. My mother sprang from her bed, and was soon on her
+knees by my side, praying for me, and exhorting me to look to Christ for
+mercy, and then and there I promised the Lord if he would spare me I
+would seek and serve Him, and I never fully broke that promise. My
+mother prayed for me a long time. At length we lay down, but there was
+little sleep for me. Next morning I rose, feeling wretched beyond
+expression. I tried to read in the Testament, and retired many times to
+secret prayer through the day, but found no relief. I gave up my
+race-horse to my father and requested him to sell him. I went and
+brought my pack of cards and gave them to mother, who threw them into
+the fire, and they were consumed. I fasted, watched, and prayed, and
+engaged in regular reading of the Testament. I was so distressed and
+miserable that I was incapable of any regular business."
+
+Several months passed away, during which time Peter had seasons of
+comfort and hopes of forgiveness, but during the greater portion he was
+wretched and miserable, filled with such a fear of the devil that he was
+almost convinced that Satan was really present with him to keep him from
+God. A camp-meeting, held in the vicinity of his father's house, in the
+spring of 1801, completed his conversion and gave him peace.
+
+"To this meeting," says he, "I repaired a guilty, wretched sinner. On
+the Saturday evening of said meeting I went, with weeping multitudes,
+and bowed before the stand, and earnestly prayed for mercy. In the midst
+of a solemn struggle of soul, an impression was made on my mind as
+though a voice said to me: 'Thy sins are all forgiven thee,' Divine
+light flashed all around me, unspeakable joy sprang up in my soul. I
+rose to my feet, opened my eyes, and it really seemed to me as if I was
+in heaven; the trees, the leaves on them, and every thing seemed, and I
+really thought were, praising God. My mother raised the shout, my
+Christian friends crowded around me and joined me in praising God.... I
+have never doubted that the Lord did, then and there, forgive my sins
+and give me religion." He went on his way rejoicing, and in June, 1801,
+was formally received into the Methodist Episcopal Church. In May, 1802,
+he was appointed an exhorter. He shrank from accepting the position, as
+he distrusted his own abilities, but finally yielded to his presiding
+elder's wishes and entered upon his work. In the fall of that year his
+parents removed to Lewiston County, toward the mouth of the Cumberland
+River.
+
+Although he was but eighteen years old, his presiding elder had detected
+in him signs of unusual promise, and had resolved to bring him into
+active labor for the Church at once, and accordingly, upon his departure
+for his new home, Peter was given authority to lay out and organize a
+new circuit, the plan of which he was to submit to the presiding elder
+for approval. The boy hesitated, frightened by the magnitude of the
+task, but being encouraged by his superiors, accepted the trust, and
+thus began his labors as a preacher of the Word. Upon reaching his new
+home, he attended a tolerably good school in the vicinity, hoping to
+acquire a better education, but the pupils and teacher persecuted him so
+sorely that he was obliged to withdraw. Determining to lose no time in
+waiting for an education, he at once began the work of preaching. Being
+possessed of strong natural sense, a ready wit, and being thoroughly
+imbued with the spirit of frontier life, he was just the man to carry
+the Gospel home to the hearts of the rude pioneers of the great West.
+His manner was that of a backwoodsman, and he had no city airs and
+graces to offend the plain, rough people to whom he preached. He was
+emphatically one of them. He offered them the plain Gospel, and gave
+theological theories a wide berth.
+
+His plan of operations was adapted to the rudest intellect. It was to
+thunder the terrors of the law into the ears of his converts, or, in his
+own words, to "shake them over hell until they smelt brimstone right
+strong," and make them see the fearful condition in which they lay by
+reason of their sin. Man was to him a wretched, degraded creature, and
+the only way to bring him to God was to drive him there by the terrors
+of the law. Our preacher had very little faith in the quieter, more
+persuasive means of grace. His first effort was to give the souls of his
+hearers a good shaking up, bring them face to face with hell and its
+torments, and then, having forced them to flee from the wrath to come,
+to trust to their future Christian experience for the means of acquiring
+a knowledge of the tender mercies of the Saviour. It must be confessed
+that this was the only plan open to him in the field in which he
+labored. The people to whom he preached were a rude, rough set, mainly
+ignorant and superstitious, and many of them sunk in the depths of
+drunkenness and viciousness. The Western country was almost a
+wilderness. Vast forests and boundless prairies lay on every hand, with
+but here and there a clearing with a solitary log cabin in it, or but
+two or three at the most. The people lived in the most perfect solitude,
+rarely seeing any but the members of their own households. Solitude and
+danger made them superstitious, and the absence of schools kept them in
+ignorance. They drank to keep off the blues, and when they came together
+for amusement they made the most of their opportunities, and plunged
+into the most violent sports, which were not always kept within the
+bounds of propriety. Churches were as scarce as schools, and until the
+Methodist circuit riders made their appearance in the West, the people
+were little better than heathen. The law had scarcely any hold upon
+these frontiersmen. They were wild and untamed, and personal freedom was
+kept in restraint mainly by the law of personal accountability. They
+were generous and improvident, frank, fearless, easy-going, and filled
+with an intense scorn for every thing that smacked of Eastern refinement
+or city life. They were proud of their buckskin and linsey-woolsey
+clothes, their squirrel caps, and their horny hands and rough faces.
+They would have been miserable in a city mansion, but they were lords
+and kings in their log-cabins. To have sent a preacher bred in the
+learned schools of New England to such a people would have been folly.
+The smooth cadences, the polished gestures, and, above all, the
+manuscript sermon of a Boston divine, would have disgusted the men and
+women of the frontier. What cared they for predestination or free-will,
+or for any of the dogmas of the schools? They wanted to hear the simple,
+fundamental truths of the Gospel, and they wanted to hear them from a
+man of their own stamp. They wanted a "fire and brimstone" preacher, one
+whose fiery eloquence could stir the very depths of their souls, and set
+their simple imaginations all ablaze; one who could shout and sing with
+true Western abandon; who could preach in his shirt-sleeves, sleep with
+them on the bare ground, brave all the dangers of a frontier life, and,
+if necessary, thrash any one who dared to insult him. Such was the man
+for these sturdy, simple Western folk, and such a man they found in
+Peter Cartwright.
+
+Peter went at the task before him with a will. The country being
+sparsely settled, people had to travel a long way to get to church, and
+it became a matter of expediency for the clergy to hold religious
+gatherings at stated points, and to continue them for several days, so
+that those who desired to attend might be able to avoid the necessity of
+going home every evening and coming back next day. Church edifices being
+scarce, these meetings were held in the woods, and a large encampment
+was formed by the people in attendance. This was the origin of the
+camp-meeting system, which for many years was the only effective way of
+spreading the Gospel in the West. It was at a camp-meeting that Peter
+obtained religion, and he has ever since been a zealous advocate of, and
+a hard worker at, them. From the first he was successful. The fame of
+the "boy preacher" went abroad into all the land, and people came in to
+the camp from a hundred miles around to hear him. He had little
+education, but he knew his Bible thoroughly, and was a ready speaker,
+and, above all, he knew how to deal with the people to whom he preached.
+He made many converts, and from the first took rank as the most popular
+preacher in the West.
+
+Peter not only believed in the overruling power of God, but he was
+firmly convinced of the active and personal agency of the devil in human
+affairs. Many of the follies and faults of the people around him took
+place, he averred, because they were possessed of devils. Each
+camp-meeting was to him a campaign against Satan, and in his opinion
+Satan never failed to make a good fight for his kingdom. Certainly some
+very singular things did occur at the meetings at which he was present,
+and, naturally, perhaps, some persons began to believe that Peter
+Cartwright possessed supernatural powers. The following incident,
+related by him, not only explains some of the phenomena to which I
+allude, but also the manner in which he was regarded by some of the
+unconverted:
+
+"A new exercise broke out among us, called the 'jerks,' which was
+overwhelming in its effects upon the bodies and minds of the people. No
+matter whether they were saints or sinners, they would be taken under a
+warm song or sermon, and seized with a convulsive jerking all over,
+which they could not by any possibility avoid, and the more they
+resisted, the more they jerked. If they would not strive against it,
+and pray in good earnest, the jerking would usually abate. I have seen
+more than five hundred persons jerking at one time in my large
+congregations. Most usually persons taken with the jerks, to obtain
+relief, as they said, would rise up and dance. Some would run, but could
+not get away. Some would resist; on such the jerks were very severe.
+
+"To see those proud young gentlemen and young ladies, dressed in their
+silks, jewelry, and prunella, from top to toe, take the jerks, would
+often excite my risibilities. The first jerk or so you would see their
+fine bonnets, caps, and combs fly, and so sudden would be the jerking of
+the head that their long, loose hair would crack almost as loud as a
+wagoner's whip.
+
+"At one of my appointments, in 1804, there was a very large congregation
+turned out to hear the 'Kentucky boy,' as they called me. Among the rest
+there were two very finely dressed, fashionable young ladies, attended
+by two brothers with loaded horsewhips. Although the house was large, it
+was crowded. The two young ladies, coming in late, took their seats near
+where I stood, and their two brothers stood in the door. I was a little
+unwell, and I had a phial of peppermint in my pocket. Before I commenced
+preaching I took out my phial and swallowed a little of the peppermint.
+While I was preaching the congregation was melted into tears. The two
+young gentlemen moved off to the yard fence, and both the young ladies
+took the jerks, and they were greatly mortified about it....
+
+"As I dismissed the assembly, a man stepped up to me and warned me to be
+on my guard, for he had heard the two brothers swear they would
+horsewhip me when meeting was out for giving their sisters the jerks.
+'Well,' said I, 'I'll see to that.'
+
+"I went out and said to the young men that I understood they intended
+to horsewhip me for giving their sisters the jerks. One replied that he
+did. I undertook to expostulate with him on the absurdity of the charge
+against me, but he swore I need not deny it, for he had seen me take out
+a phial in which I carried some truck that gave his sisters the jerks.
+As quick as thought came into my mind how I would get clear of my
+whipping, and, jerking out the peppermint phial, said I, 'Yes; if I gave
+your sisters the jerks I'll give them to you,' In a moment I saw he was
+scared. I moved toward him, he backed, I advanced, and he wheeled and
+ran, warning me not to come near him or he would kill me. It raised the
+laugh on him, and I escaped my whipping....
+
+"I always looked upon the jerks as a judgment sent from God, first, to
+bring sinners to repentance, and, secondly, that God could work with or
+without means, and that he could work over and above means and do
+whatsoever seemeth him good to the glory of his grace and the salvation
+of the world. There is no doubt in my mind that, with weak-minded,
+ignorant, and superstitious persons, there was a great deal of
+sympathetic feeling with many that claimed to be under the influence of
+this jerking exercise, and yet with many it was perfectly involuntary.
+It was on all occasions my practice to recommend fervent prayer as a
+remedy, and it almost universally proved an effectual antidote."
+
+The excitement of the religious revivals plunged many of the people into
+excesses. They prophesied, dreamed dreams, and saw visions, and troubled
+the young preacher exceedingly, but he set his face sternly against all
+such disorders, and pronounced their visions and messages to be from the
+devil. One of these dreamers came to him one day and told him he had a
+message from heaven for him.
+
+"Well," said Cartwright, "what is it?"
+
+"It has been revealed to me," said the fellow, "that you are never to
+die, but are to live forever."
+
+"Who revealed that to you?"
+
+"An angel."
+
+"Did you see him?" asked Cartwright, dryly.
+
+"O, yes; he was a beautiful, white, shining being."
+
+"Did you smell him?" asked Peter, bluntly.
+
+The man looked at him in amazement, and the preacher continued, sternly,
+"Well, did the angel you saw smell of brimstone? He must have smelled of
+brimstone, for he was from a region that burns with fire and brimstone,
+and consequently from hell, for he revealed a great lie to you if he
+told you I was to live forever."
+
+The dreamer turned off abruptly, and disappeared amidst the jeers of the
+crowd that had listened to the conversation.
+
+On the 16th of September, 1806, Mr. Cartwright was ordained a deacon in
+the Methodist Episcopal Church by Bishop Asbury, and on the 4th of
+October, 1808, Bishop McKendree ordained him an elder. Upon receiving
+deacon's orders he was assigned to the Marietta Circuit. His appointment
+dismayed him. Says he: "It was a poor, hard circuit at that time.
+Marietta and the country round were settled at an early day by a colony
+of Yankees. At the time of my appointment I had never seen a Yankee, and
+I had heard dismal stories about them. It was said they lived almost
+entirely on pumpkins, molasses, fat meat, and bohea tea; moreover, that
+they could not bear loud and zealous sermons, and they had brought on
+their learned preachers with them, and they read their sermons and were
+always criticising us poor backwoods preachers. When my appointment was
+read out it distressed me greatly. I went to Bishop Asbury and begged
+him to supply my place and let me go home. The old father took me in
+his arms and said: 'O, no, my son; go in the name of the Lord. It will
+make a man of you.'
+
+"Ah, thought I, if this is the way to make men, I do not want to be a
+man. I cried over it bitterly, and prayed, too. But on I started,
+cheered by my presiding elder, Brother J. Sale. If I ever saw hard
+times, surely it was this year; yet many of the people were kind and
+treated me friendly. I had hard work to keep soul and body together. The
+first Methodist house I came to the brother was a Universalist. I
+crossed over the Muskingum River to Marietta. The first Methodist family
+I stopped with there, the lady was a member of the Methodist Episcopal
+Church, but a thorough Universalist. She was a thin-faced, Roman-nosed,
+loquacious Yankee, glib on the tongue, and you may depend upon it I had
+a hard race to keep up with her, though I found it a good school, for it
+set me to reading my Bible. And here permit me to say, of all the isms I
+ever heard of, they were here. These descendants of the Puritans were
+generally educated, but their ancestors were rigid predestinarians, and
+as they were sometimes favored with a little light on their moral
+powers, and could just 'see men as trees walking,' they jumped into
+Deism, Universalism, Unitarianism, etc., etc. I verily believe it was
+the best school I ever entered. They waked me up on all sides; Methodism
+was feeble, and I had to battle or run, and I resolved on the former."
+
+Just before he was made an elder, Mr. Cartwright left his circuit, and
+went home on a visit to recruit. He had made a good fight with poverty
+during his labors, and at the time of his departure for home he was in a
+condition sufficiently hard to test any man's fortitude. "I had been
+from my father's house for three years," says he; "was five hundred
+miles from home, my horse had gone blind, my saddle was worn out, my
+bridle reins had been eaten up and replaced (after a sort) at least a
+dozen times, and my clothes had been patched till it was difficult to
+detect the original. I had concluded to make my way home and get another
+outfit. I was in Marietta, and had just seventy-five cents in my pocket.
+How I would get home and pay my way I could not tell."
+
+He did reach home, however, after many characteristic adventures, and
+obtained another outfit, and while there he took an important step--he
+married. "After a mature deliberation and prayer," he says, "I thought
+it was my duty to marry, and was joined in marriage to Frances Gaines,
+on the 18th of August, 1808, which was her nineteenth birthday." Peter
+and his bride knew that a hard life was in store for them, but they felt
+strong in the love they bore each other. They were simple backwoods
+folk, and their wants were few. "When I started as a traveling
+preacher," he said fifty-three years afterward, "a single preacher was
+allowed to receive eighty dollars per annum if his circuit would give it
+to him; but single preachers in those days seldom received over thirty
+or forty dollars, and often much less; and had it not been for a few
+presents made us by the benevolent friends of the church, and a few
+dollars we made as marriage fees, we must have suffered much more than
+we did. But the Lord provided, and, strange as it may appear to the
+present generation, we got along without starving or going naked." There
+is something awe-inspiring in the simple trust in God which this good
+man displayed in every stage of his life. Once satisfied that he was in
+the path of duty, he never allowed the future to trouble him. He
+provided for it as far as he could, and left the rest to the Master
+whose work he was doing. Poverty and hardship had no terrors for this
+brave young couple, and it was very far from their thoughts to wait
+until a better day to marry. They would go out hand in hand into the
+world and meet their trials together. Children would come, they knew,
+and those little mouths would have to be fed, but they would be
+industrious, saving, and patient, and "God would provide."
+
+Peter Cartwright's mission was to plant the Methodist Episcopal Church
+in the West as well as to preach the Gospel. For that end he worked and
+prayed. The Methodist Episcopal Church was his haven of safety. Without,
+all was storm and darkness; within its fold all was peace and light. He
+believed his church to be the best door to heaven, if indeed it was not
+in his estimation the only one. He was a fanatic, pure and simple, as
+regarded his own denomination, but a fanatic full of high and noble
+purposes, and one whose zeal was productive only of good. This
+fanaticism was necessary to the success of his labors. It was his
+perfect belief that his was the only church in which sinners could find
+perfect peace that carried him through the difficulties which
+encompassed him. Men were dying all around him, and they must come into
+his church. They had other denominations close at hand, but they, in his
+estimation, would not do. The Methodist Episcopal Church was a necessity
+for sinners, therefore it must be planted in all parts of the land. No
+sacrifice was too great for the accomplishment of this object. He has
+lived to see those sacrifices rewarded, to see his church one of the
+most numerous and powerful religious bodies in the country.
+
+Being so zealous in behalf of his own church, it is not strange that he
+should have clashed frequently with other denominations. He got along
+very well with the majority, but with the Baptists and Universalists he
+was always on the war path. The latter especially excited his
+uncompromising hostility, and he never failed to attack their doctrines
+with all his forces wherever he encountered them. "I have thought,"
+says he, "and do still think, if I were to set out to form a plan to
+contravene the laws of God, to encourage wickedness of all kinds, to
+corrupt the morals and encourage vice, and crowd hell with the lost and
+the wailings of the damned, the Universalist plan should be the plan,
+the very plan that I would adopt....
+
+"A few years ago," he continues, "I had a neighbor who professed to be a
+confirmed Universalist. He contended with me that there was no devil but
+the evil disposition in man, and that there was no hell but the bad
+feelings that men had when they did wrong: that this was all the
+punishment any body would suffer. When this neighbor's father lay on his
+dying bed (a confirmed Universalist, professedly) there was a faithful
+minister of Christ who believed it his duty to visit this old
+Universalist, warn him of his danger, and try to awaken his conscience,
+if not seared, to a just view of his real situation. The minister,
+however, failed in his faithful attempt and well-meant endeavors, for
+the old man, then on his dying pillow, was greatly offended at the
+preacher, and told him that he did not thank him for trying to shake his
+faith in his dying moments. This neighbor of mine, and son of this old,
+hardened sinner, was greatly enraged at the preacher, and cursed and
+abused him in a violent manner. A few days after the demise of the old
+man, he, in a furious rage, began to abuse and curse the preacher in my
+presence, and said:
+
+"D---- him; I wish he was in hell and the devil had him.'
+
+"I stopped him short by saying, 'Pooh, pooh, man, what are you talking
+about? There is no hell but the bad feelings that a man has when he does
+wrong, and no devil but the evil disposition that is in man.' Thus
+answering a fool according to his folly.
+
+"'Well,' said he, 'if there is no hell there ought to be, to put such
+preachers in.'
+
+"'Now, sir,' said I, 'you see the utter untenableness of your creed, for
+a man even in trying to do good honestly draws down your wrath, and, in
+a moment, you want a hell to put him into and a devil to torment him for
+giving you an offense, and for doing what no good man ought to be
+offended about. But God must be insulted, his name blasphemed, his laws
+trampled under foot, yet he must have no hell to put such a wretch in,
+no devil to torment him. Now I would be ashamed of myself if I were in
+your place, and let the seal of truth close my lips forever hereafter.'
+
+"Although he was confounded, he still clave to his God-dishonoring
+doctrine, waxing worse and worse, till it was generally believed he was
+guilty of a most heinous crime."
+
+Argumentative battles were not the only troubles Cartwright had to
+encounter from Universalists. They came to his revivals, he says, to
+hoot and create disturbance. At one of these meetings two sisters,
+Universalists in belief, were present. They came to "make fun," but one
+of them was overcome by Cartwright's preaching, and went up to the
+mourner's bench to be prayed for. When her sister heard of it, she
+commenced to make her way to the altar, with the angry determination to
+force the penitent from it. "I rose and met her in the crowded aisle,"
+says Mr. Cartwright, "and told her to be calm and desist. She made
+neither better nor worse of it than to draw back her arm and give me a
+severe slap in the face with her open hand. I confess this rather took
+me by surprise, and, as the common saying is, made the fire fly out of
+my eyes in tremendous sparkling brilliancy, but, collecting my best
+judgment, I caught her by the arms near her shoulders and wheeled her to
+the right about, moved her forward to the door, and said, 'Gentlemen,
+please open the door; the devil in this Universalist lady has got
+fighting hot, and I want to set her outside to cool.' The door was
+opened, and I landed her out."
+
+Concerning his tilts with the Baptists, he has given a mass of curious
+reminiscences, from which we take the following:
+
+"We preached in new settlements, and the Lord poured out his Spirit, and
+we had many convictions and many conversions. It was the order of the
+day, (though I am sorry to say it,) that we were constantly followed by
+a certain set of proselyting Baptist preachers. These new and wicked
+settlements were seldom visited by these Baptist preachers until the
+Methodist preachers entered them; then, when a revival was gotten up, or
+the work of the Lord revived, these Baptist preachers came rushing in,
+and they generally sung their sermons; and when they struck the _long
+roll_, or their sing-song mode of preaching, in substance it was:
+'Water! water! You must follow your blessed Lord down into the water!' I
+had preached several times in a large, populous, and wicked settlement,
+and there was serious attention, deep convictions, and a good many
+conversions; but, between my occasional appointments these preachers
+would rush in and try to take off our converts into the water; and
+indeed they made so much ado about baptism by immersion that the
+uninformed would suppose that heaven was an island, and there was no way
+to get there _but by diving or swimming_."
+
+He once preached a sermon on the true nature of baptism, at which were
+present the daughters of a Baptist minister, one of whom was converted.
+That night it rained violently, and all the neighboring streams
+overflowed their banks. Riding along the next day, he met the Baptist
+minister on the road.
+
+"We've had a tremendous rain," said Cartwright.
+
+"Yes, sir," said the Baptist brother, "the Lord sent this rain to
+convince you of your error."
+
+"Ah! what error?"
+
+"Why, about baptism. The Lord sent this flood to convince you that much
+water was necessary."
+
+"Very good, sir," said Cartwright, "and in like manner he sent this
+flood to convince you of your error."
+
+"What error?" asked the Baptist brother.
+
+"Why," replied Cartwright, triumphantly, "to show you that water comes
+by pouring, and not by immersion."
+
+Free and easy as he was in his manner, our preacher had a deep sense of
+the dignity of his mission, and he was resolved that others should share
+the feeling, and accord him, in his ministerial capacity, the respect
+and deference that were his due. His manner of accomplishing this was
+characteristic, as the following incident will show: Traveling on his
+circuit in 1805, he put up on one occasion at the house of an old man
+known as Father Teel, a whimsical old fellow, and supposed to be
+Cartwright's match in oddity. He had been warned that the old man,
+though a good Methodist, showed little deference to preachers. It was
+his custom to rise early, and, as soon as dressed, to give out his hymn,
+sing it himself, and then go to prayers, without waiting for his family
+to get up. He served preachers in the same way. Cartwright resolved to
+beat him at his own game, but the old man was too wary for him.
+
+"Just as day broke," says Cartwright, "I awoke, rose up, and began to
+dress, but had not nigh accomplished it when I heard Teel give out his
+hymn and commence singing, and about the time I had got dressed, I heard
+him commence praying. He gave thanks to God that they had been spared
+during the night, and were all permitted to see the light of a new day,
+while at the same time I suppose every one of his family was fast
+asleep. I deliberately opened the door and walked out to the well,
+washed myself, and then walked back to my cabin. Just as I got to the
+door, the old brother opened his door, and, seeing me, said, 'Good
+morning, sir. Why, I didn't know you were up.'
+
+"'Yes, said I, 'I have been up some time.'
+
+"'Well, brother,' said he, 'why did you not come in to prayers?'
+
+"'Because,' said I, 'it is wrong to pray of a morning in the family
+before we wash.'
+
+"The old brother passed on, and no more was said at that time. That
+evening, just before we were about to retire to rest, the old brother
+set out the book and said to me: 'Brother, hold prayers with us.'
+
+"'No, sir,' said I.
+
+"Said he, 'Come, brother, take the book and pray with us.'
+
+"'No, sir,' said I; 'you love to pray so well, you may do it yourself.'
+
+"He insisted, but I persistently refused, saying: 'You are so fond of
+praying yourself, that you even thanked God this morning that he had
+spared you all to see the light of a new day, when your family had not
+yet opened their eyes, but were all fast asleep. And you have such an
+absurd way of holding prayers in your family, that I do not wish to have
+any thing to do with it.'
+
+"He then took the book, read, and said prayers, but you may rely on it,
+the next morning things were much changed. He waited for me, and had all
+his family up in order. He acknowledged his error, and told me it was
+one of the best reproofs he ever got. I then prayed with the family, and
+after that all went well."
+
+Among his clerical brethren was a poor hen-pecked husband, whose wife
+was possessed of a temper that made her the terror of the neighborhood.
+Cartwright had often been invited by the poor man to go home with him;
+"but," he says, "I frankly confess I was afraid to trust myself" but at
+length, yielding to his importunities, he went home with his oppressed
+brother, intending to spend the night with him. His visit roused the
+fury of the wife, and "I saw in a minute," says our preacher, "that the
+devil was in her as big as an alligator, and I determined on my course."
+The woman held her tongue until after supper, when her husband asked her
+kindly to join them in prayers. She flew into a rage, and swore there
+should be no praying in her house that night. Cartwright tried to reason
+with her, but she cursed him roundly. Then, facing her sternly, he said,
+"Madam, if you were my wife, I would break you of your bad ways, or I
+would break your neck."
+
+"The devil you would," said she. "Yes, you are a pretty Christian, ain't
+you?"
+
+She continued cursing him, but Cartwright sternly bade her hold her
+peace, and let them pray. She declared she would not.
+
+"Now," said he to her, "if you do not be still, and behave yourself,
+I'll put you out of doors."
+
+"At this," says he, "she clenched her fist and swore she was one-half
+alligator and the other half snapping-turtle, and that it would take a
+better man than I was to put her out. It was a small cabin we were in,
+and we were not far from the door, which was then standing open. I
+caught her by the arm, and swinging her round in a circle, brought her
+right up to the door, and shoved her out. She jumped up, tore her hair,
+foamed, and such swearing as she uttered was seldom equaled, and never
+surpassed. The door, or shutter of the door, was very strongly made, to
+keep out hostile Indians; I shut it tight, barred it, and went to
+prayer, and I prayed as best I could; but I have no language at my
+command to describe my feelings. At the same time, I was determined to
+conquer, or die in the attempt. While she was raging and foaming in the
+yard and around the cabin, I started a spiritual song, and sung loud, to
+drawn her voice as much as possible. The five or six little children ran
+and squatted about and crawled under the beds. Poor things, they were
+scared almost to death.
+
+"I sang on, and she roared and thundered on outside, till she became
+perfectly exhausted, and panted for breath. At length, when she had
+spent her force, she became perfectly calm and still, and then knocked
+at the door, saying, 'Mr. Cartwright, please let me in.'
+
+"'Will you behave yourself if I let you in?' said I.
+
+"'O yes,' said she, 'I will;' and throwing myself on my guard, and
+perfectly self-possessed, I opened the door, took her by the hand, led
+her in, and seated her near the fire-place. She had roared and foamed
+until she was in a high perspiration, and looked pale as death. After
+she took her seat, 'O,' said she, 'what a fool I am,'
+
+"'Yes,' said I, 'about one of the biggest fools I ever saw in all my
+life.'... Brother C. and I kneeled down, and both prayed. She was as
+quiet as a lamb."
+
+Six months later, our preacher tells us, this woman was converted, and
+became "as bold in the cause of God as she had been in the cause of the
+wicked one."
+
+In 1823, Mr. Cartwright resolved to move across the Ohio, and selected
+Illinois as his new home. The reasons which influenced his actions are
+thus stated by him:
+
+"I had seen with painful emotions the increase of a disposition to
+justify slavery.... and the legislatures in the slave States made the
+laws more and more stringent, with a design to prevent emancipation.
+Moreover, rabid abolitionism spread and dreadfully excited the South. I
+had a young and growing family of children, two sons and four daughters;
+was poor, owned a little farm of about one hundred and fifty acres;
+lands around me were high and rising in value. My daughters would soon
+be grown up. I did not see any probable means by which I could settle
+them around or near us. Moreover, I had no right to expect our children
+to marry into wealthy families, and I did not desire it, if it could be
+so; and by chance they might marry into slave families. This I did not
+desire. Besides, I saw there was a marked distinction made among the
+people generally between young people raised without work and those that
+had to work for their living.... I thought I saw clear indications of
+Providence that I should leave my comfortable little home, and move into
+a free State or territory, for the following reasons: First, I would get
+entirely clear of the evil of slavery. Second, I could raise my children
+to work where work was not considered a degradation. Third, I believed I
+could better my temporal circumstances, and procure lands for my
+children as they grew up. And fourth, I could carry the Gospel to
+destitute souls that had, by removal into some new country, been
+deprived of the means of grace."
+
+It was the last reason, no doubt, that decided our preacher. Men of his
+stamp were needed west of the Ohio. Kentucky was becoming too old a
+State for him, and he felt that his true field of labor was still on the
+frontier, and thither he turned his steps. Setting out first on
+horseback to seek an eligible location, he reached Sangamon County,
+Illinois, where he bought a claim on Richland Creek. He then returned to
+Kentucky and wound up his affairs there, obtained a regular transfer
+from the Kentucky Conference to the Indiana Conference, which then
+controlled Illinois, and in October, 1824, set out for his new home in
+Sangamon County. A great affliction overtook him on the way, in the
+death of his third daughter, who was killed by the falling of a tree
+upon their camp. The affliction was made more grievous by the heartless
+refusal of the people in the vicinity to render them any aid. "We were
+in great distress," he says, "and no one even to pity our condition....
+I discovered that the tree had sprung up, and did not press the child;
+and we drew her out from under it, and carefully laid her in our feed
+trough, and moved on about twenty miles to an acquaintance's in Hamilton
+County, Illinois, where we buried her."
+
+Leaving that lonely little grave behind them, they hurried on to their
+new home. Springfield, the capital of the State, was but a small
+collection of shanties and log huts, and Sangamon County was the extreme
+frontier. It was the most northern county of Illinois, and just beyond
+it lay the unbroken Indian country. Numbers of Indians roamed through
+the Sangamon River bottom, and spent their winters there. It was as wild
+and unsettled a region as our preacher could have desired, and one which
+gave him a fine field for the exercise of his peculiar abilities. Mr.
+Cartwright was promptly received into the Indiana Conference, and he
+lost no time in looking about him. He at once established his family in
+their new home, and then set about his work. The work was hard, and
+money was scarce. The first year he traveled the Sangamon Circuit he
+received forty dollars, and the next year sixty dollars, which he says
+was a great improvement in his financial affairs. He was successful from
+the first, and in the two years referred to added one hundred and sixty
+persons to the Methodist Church in this thinly settled district. For
+forty-six years he has labored in this region, adding many souls to the
+kingdom of God.
+
+Arduous as his labors had been in the Kentucky Conference, they now
+increased very greatly. He had a larger amount of territory to travel
+over, people were more scattered, and the dangers to be encountered were
+greater. In 1827, he was made presiding elder, and given the Illinois
+District, then a very extensive region, and in 1828 Galena charge was
+added to this district. The district thus enlarged extended from the
+mouth of the Ohio River to Galena, the entire length of the present
+State of Illinois, and over this immense distance our preacher was
+obliged to travel four times in the year. The journeys were made either
+on horseback or in an old-fashioned sulky or one-seat gig. There were
+miles of lonely prairie and many rapid streams to cross, and roads,
+bridges, or ferry-boats were almost unknown. Yet Peter Cartwright was
+not the man to be deterred by obstacles. When he set out on his official
+journeys, he allowed nothing that it was possible to overcome to prevent
+him from keeping his appointments. In crossing the prairies, he would
+guide himself by the points of timber, for there were no roads over
+these vast plains. Oftentimes the streams to be crossed were swollen,
+and then he would swim his horse across them, or ride along the shore
+until he found a tree fallen over the current. Stripping himself, he
+would carry his clothes and riding equipments to the opposite bank, and
+then, returning, mount his horse and swim him across the river. Dressing
+again, he would continue his journey, and perhaps repeat the proceeding
+several times during the day. When overtaken by night, he would seek a
+place in some grove, and, lighting a fire with his tinder-box and steel,
+tie up his horse, and, throwing himself on the ground, sleep as
+peacefully as on a bed of down. Sometimes night would come on before he
+had crossed the prairie or made his way to the timber point he was
+aiming for, and then he would sit down on the ground, in the darkness
+and alone, and, holding his horse by the bridle, await the return of
+light to enable him to see his landmark. Sometimes he would find a
+little log-hut with a settler's family in it, and he says it was "a
+great treat" to come upon one of these lonely cabins and enjoy the
+privilege of a night's lodging. If the family were Methodists, there was
+sure to be preaching that night; and if they were strangers to that
+church, our preacher set to work at once to convert them. He labored
+faithfully, faring hard, and braving dangers from which his city
+brethren would have shrunk appalled. He carried the Gospel and the
+Methodist Episcopal Church into all parts of the great State of
+Illinois, and even into Iowa and the Indian country.
+
+In 1832, the first Illinois Conference met in the town of Jacksonville,
+and Mr. Cartwright attended it. He had now been a traveling preacher for
+twenty-eight years, and, as he felt himself sorely in need of rest, he
+asked and obtained a superannuated relation for one year. On the same
+day, Bishop Soule, who presided at the Conference, came to him to ask
+his advice with reference to the Quincy District. It was very important,
+but the bishop could not find a presiding elder willing to take charge
+of it, as it was an almost unbroken wilderness. The bishop was in sore
+distress, as he feared that he would be obliged to merge it into another
+district. The spirit of the backwoods preacher at once took fire, and,
+declaring that so important a field ought not to be neglected, he
+expressed his willingness to relinquish his superannuated relation and
+accept the charge. The bishop took him at his word and appointed him to
+the district, which he served faithfully. His adventures in traveling
+from place to place to fill his appointments are intensely interesting,
+and I would gladly reproduce them here did the limits of this chapter
+permit.
+
+It required no small amount of courage to perform the various duties of
+a backwoods preacher, and in this quality our preacher was not
+deficient. He was frequently called upon to exercise it in his camp
+meetings. These assemblies never failed to gather large crowds from all
+parts of the surrounding country, and among others came numerous
+rowdies, whose delight it was to annoy the preachers and worshipers in
+every conceivable way. Cartwright put up with the annoyance as long as
+he could, and then determined to put a stop to it. He believed in
+fighting the devil with fire, and put down many a disturbance. The
+following is the way he went about it:
+
+"Our last quarterly meeting was a camp meeting. We had a great many
+tents and a large turnout for a new country, and, perhaps, there never
+was a greater collection of rabble and rowdies. They came drunk and
+armed with dirks, clubs, knives, and horsewhips, and swore they would
+break up the meeting. After interrupting us very much on Saturday night,
+they collected on Sunday morning, determined on a general riot. At eight
+o'clock I was appointed to preach. About the time I was half through my
+discourse, two very fine-dressed young men marched into the congregation
+with loaded horsewhips, and hats on, and rose up and stood in the midst
+of the ladies, and began to laugh and talk. They were near the stand,
+and I requested them to desist and get off the seats; but they cursed me
+and told me to mind my own business, and said they would not get down. I
+stopped trying to preach, and called for a magistrate. There were two at
+hand, but I saw they were both afraid. I ordered them to take these two
+men into custody, but they said they could not do it. I told them as I
+left the stand to command me to take them, and I would do it at the risk
+of my life. I advanced toward them. They ordered me to stand off, but I
+advanced. One of them made a pass at my head, but I closed in with him
+and jerked him off the seat. A regular scuffle ensued. The congregation
+by this time were all in commotion. I heard the magistrates giving
+general orders, commanding all friends of order to aid in suppressing
+the riot. In the scuffle I threw my prisoner down, and held him fast;
+he tried his best to get loose. I told him to be quiet, or I would
+pound his chest well. The mob rose and rushed to the rescue of the two
+prisoners, for they had taken the other young man also. An old, drunken
+magistrate came up to me, and ordered me to let my prisoner go. I told
+him I should not. He swore if I did not he would knock me down. I told
+him to crack away. Then one of my friends, at my request, took hold of
+my prisoner, and the drunken justice made a pass at me; but I parried
+the stroke, and, seizing him by the collar and the hair of the head, and
+fetching him a sudden jerk forward, brought him to the ground and jumped
+on him. I told him to be quiet, or I would pound him well. The mob then
+rushed to the scene; they knocked down seven magistrates, several
+preachers, and others. I gave up my drunken prisoner to another, and
+threw myself in front of the friends of order. Just at this moment, the
+ringleader of the mob and I met; he made three passes at me, intending
+to knock me down. The last time he struck at me, by the force of his own
+effort he threw the side of his face toward me. It seemed at that moment
+I had not power to resist temptation, and I struck a sudden blow in the
+burr of the ear and dropped him to the earth. Just at this moment, the
+friends of order rushed by hundreds on the mob, knocking them down in
+every direction."
+
+Once, while crossing a river on a ferry-boat, he overheard a man cursing
+Peter Cartwright and threatening dire vengeance against him, and
+boasting that he could "whip any preacher the Lord ever made." This
+roused our preacher's ire, and accosting the man, he told him he was
+Peter Cartwright, and that if he wanted to whip him he must do so then.
+The fellow became confused, and said he did not believe him.
+
+"I tell you," said Cartwright, sternly, "I am the man. Now, sir, you
+have to whip me, as you threatened, or quit cursing me, or I will put
+you in the river and baptize you in the name of the devil, for you
+surely belong to him." "This," says Cartwright, "settled him."
+
+Once, having gone into the woods with a young man who had sworn he would
+whip him, he sprained his foot slightly in getting over a fence, and
+involuntarily placed his hand to his side. "My redoubtable antagonist,"
+says he, "had got on the fence, and, looking down at me, said, 'D----
+you, you are feeling for a dirk, are you?'
+
+"As quick as thought it occurred to me how to get clear of a whipping.
+
+"'Yes,' said I, 'and I will give you the benefit of all the dirks I
+have,' and advanced rapidly toward him.
+
+"He sprang back on the other side of the fence from me; I jumped over
+after him, and a regular foot race followed."
+
+"It may be asked," says the old man, naively, "what I would have done if
+this fellow had gone with me to the woods. This is hard to answer, for
+it was a part of my creed to love every body, but to fear no one, and I
+did not permit myself to believe that any man could whip me until it was
+tried, and I did not permit myself to premeditate expedients in such
+cases. I should no doubt have proposed to him to have prayer first, and
+then followed the openings of Providence."
+
+Mr. Cartwright was from the beginning of his ministry an ardent advocate
+of temperance, and, long before the first temperance society was
+organized in the country, he waged a fierce war against dram-drinking.
+This fearless advocate of temperance came very near getting drunk once.
+He had stopped with a fellow preacher at a tavern kept by an Otterbein
+Methodist, who, thinking to play them a trick, put whisky into the new
+cider which he offered them. Cartwright drank sparingly of the beverage,
+though he considered it harmless, but, "with all my forbearance," he
+says, "presently I began to feel light-headed. I instantly ordered our
+horses, fearing we were snapped for once.... When we had rode about a
+mile, being in the rear, I saw Brother Walker was nodding at a mighty
+rate. I suddenly rode up to Brother Walker and cried out, 'Wake up! wake
+up!' He roused up, his eyes watering freely. 'I believe,' said I, 'we
+are both drunk. Let us turn out of the road and lie down and take a nap
+till we get sober,' But we rode on without stopping. We were not drunk,
+but we both evidently felt it flying to our heads."
+
+In 1826 Mr. Cartwright was elected to the Legislature of the State, and
+at the expiration of his first term was reflected from Sangamon County.
+He was induced to accept this position because of his desire to aid in
+preventing the introduction of slavery into the State. He had no liking
+for political strife, however, and was disgusted with the dishonesty
+which he saw around him. "I say," he declares, "without any desire to
+speak evil of the rulers of the people, I found a great deal of
+corruption in our Legislature, and I found that almost every measure had
+to be carried by a corrupt bargain and sale which should cause every
+honest man to blush for his country."
+
+He was full of a quaint humor, which seemed to burst out from every line
+of his features, and twinkle merrily in his bright eyes. Often in the
+midst of his most exciting revivals he could not resist the desire to
+fasten his dry jokes upon one of his converts. No man loved a joke
+better, or was quicker to make a good use of it. He was traveling one
+day on his circuit, and stopped for the night at a cabin in which he
+found a man and woman. Suspecting that all was not right, he questioned
+the woman, and drew from her the confession that the man was her lover.
+Her husband, she said, was away, and would not return for two days, and
+she had received this man in his absence.
+
+
+
+[Illustration: CARTWRIGHT CALLING UP THE DEVIL.]
+
+Cartwright then began to remonstrate with the guilty pair upon their
+conduct, and while he was speaking to them the husband's voice was heard
+in the yard. In an agony of terror the woman implored Cartwright to
+assist her in getting her lover out of the way, and our preacher, upon
+receiving from each a solemn promise of reformation, agreed to do so.
+There was standing by the chimney a large barrel of raw cotton, and as
+there was no time to get the man out of the house, Cartwright put him
+into the barrel and piled the cotton over him.
+
+The husband entered, and Cartwright soon engaged him in conversation.
+The man said he had often heard of Peter Cartwright, and that it was the
+common opinion in that part of the country that among his other
+wonderful gifts our preacher had the power to call up the devil.
+
+"That's the easiest thing in the world to do," said Cartwright. "Would
+you like to see it?"
+
+The man hesitated for awhile, and then expressed his readiness to
+witness the performance.
+
+"Very well," said Cartwright; "take your stand by your wife, and don't
+move or speak. I'll let the door open to give him a chance to get out,
+or he may carry the roof away."
+
+So saying, he opened the door, and, taking a handful of cotton, held it
+in the fire and lighted it. Then plunging it into the barrel of raw
+cotton, he shouted lustily, "Devil, rise!" In an instant the barrel was
+wrapped in flames, and the lover, in utter dismay, leaped out and rushed
+from the house. The husband was greatly terrified, and ever afterward
+avowed himself a believer in Cartwright's intimacy with "Old Scratch,"
+for had he not had ocular proof of it?
+
+Riding out of Springfield one day, he saw a wagon some distance ahead of
+him containing a young lady and two young men. As he came near them they
+recognized him, though he was totally unacquainted with them, and began
+to sing camp-meeting hymns with great animation. In a little while the
+young lady began to shout, and said, "Glory to God! Glory to God!" and
+the driver cried out, "Amen! Glory to God!"
+
+"My first impressions," says Mr. Cartwright, "were, that they had been
+across the Sangamon River to a camp meeting that I knew was in progress
+there, and had obtained religion, and were happy. As I drew a little
+nearer, the young lady began to sing and shout again. The young man who
+was not driving fell down, and cried aloud for mercy; the other two,
+shouting at the top of their voices, cried out, 'Glory to God! another
+sinner down.' Then they fell to exhorting the young man that was down,
+saying, 'Pray on, brother; pray on, brother; you'll soon get religion.'
+Presently up jumped the young man that was down, and shouted aloud,
+saying, 'God has blessed my soul. Halleluiah! halleluiah! Glory to
+God!'"
+
+Thinking that these were genuine penitents, Cartwright rode rapidly
+toward them, intending to join in their rejoicings; but as he drew near
+them, he detected certain unmistakable evidences that they were shamming
+religious fervor merely for the purpose of annoying him. He then
+endeavored to get rid of them, but as they were all going the same
+direction, the party in the wagon managed to remain near him by driving
+fast when he tried to pass them, and falling back when he drew up to let
+them go ahead. "I thought," says our preacher, "I would ride up and
+horsewhip both of these young men; and if the woman had not been in
+company, I think I should have done so; but I forebore."
+
+In a little while the road plunged into a troublesome morass. Around the
+worst part of this swamp wound a bridle path, by which Mr. Cartwright
+determined to escape his tormentors, who would be compelled to take the
+road straight through the swamp. The party in the wagon saw his object,
+and forgetting prudence in their eagerness to keep up with him, whipped
+their horses violently. The horses bounded off at full speed, and the
+wagon was whirled through the swamp at a furious rate. When nearly
+across, one of the wheels struck a large stump, and over went the wagon.
+"Fearing it would turn entirely over and catch them under," says Mr.
+Cartwright, "the two young men took a leap into the mud, and when they
+lighted they sunk up to the middle. The young lady was dressed in white,
+and as the wagon went over, she sprang as far as she could, and lighted
+on all fours; her hands sunk into the mud up to her arm-pits, her mouth
+and the whole of her face immersed in the muddy water, and she certainly
+would have strangled if the young men had not relieved her. As they
+helped her up and out, I had wheeled my horse to see the fun. I rode up
+to the edge of the mud, stopped my horse, reared in my stirrups, and
+shouted, at the top of my voice, 'Glory to God! Glory to God!
+Halleluiah! another sinner down! Glory to God! Halleluiah! Glory!
+Halleluiah!'
+
+"If ever mortals felt mean, these youngsters did; and well they might,
+for they had carried on all this sport to make light of religion, and to
+insult a minister, a total stranger to them. When I became tired of
+shouting over them, I said to them:
+
+"'Now, you poor, dirty, mean sinners, take this as a just judgment of
+God upon you for your meanness, and repent of your dreadful wickedness;
+and let this be the last time that you attempt to insult a preacher; for
+if you repeat your abominable sport and persecutions, the next time God
+will serve you worse, and the devil will get you.'
+
+"They felt so badly that they never uttered one word of reply."
+
+Our preacher was determined that his work should be recognized, and as
+he and his fellow traveling ministers had done a good work on the
+frontier, he was in no humor to relish the accounts of the religious
+condition of the West, which the missionaries from the East spread
+through the older States in their letters home. "They would come," says
+he, "with a tolerable education, and a smattering knowledge of the old
+Calvinistic system of theology. They were generally tolerably well
+furnished with old manuscript sermons, that had been preached, or
+written, perhaps a hundred years before. Some of these sermons they had
+memorized, but in general they read them to the people. This way of
+reading sermons was out of fashion altogether in this Western world, and
+of course they produced no effect among the people. The great mass of
+our Western people wanted a preacher that could mount a stump or a
+block, or stand in the bed of a wagon, and, without note or manuscript,
+quote, expound, and apply the word of God to the hearts and consciences
+of the people. The result of the efforts of these Eastern missionaries
+was not very flattering; and although the Methodist preachers were in
+reality the pioneer heralds of the cross through the entire West, and
+although they had raised up numerous societies every five miles, and
+notwithstanding we had hundreds of traveling and local preachers,
+accredited and useful ministers of the Lord Jesus Christ, yet these
+newly-fledged missionaries would write back to the old States hardly any
+thing else but wailings and lamentations over the moral wastes and
+destitute condition of the West."
+
+The indignation of our preacher was fully shared by the people of the
+West, who considered themselves as good Christians; as their New England
+brethren, and the people of Quincy called a meeting, irrespective of
+denomination, and pledged themselves to give Peter Cartwright one
+thousand dollars per annum, and pay his traveling expenses, if he would
+"go as a missionary to the New England States, and enlighten them on
+this and other subjects, of which they were profoundly ignorant."
+Circumstances beyond his control prevented his acceptance of this offer.
+"How gladly and willingly would I have undertaken this labor of love,"
+says he, "and gloried in enlightening them down East, that they might
+keep their home-manufactured clergy at home, or give them some honorable
+employ, better suited to their genius than that of reading old musty and
+worm-eaten sermons."
+
+Our preacher did visit New England in 1852, not as a missionary,
+however, but as a delegate to the General Conference which met that year
+in Boston. His fame had preceded him, and he was one of the marked men
+of that body. Every one had heard some quaint story of his devotion to
+his cause, his fearlessness, or his eccentricities, and crowds came out
+to hear him preach. But our backwoods preacher was ill at ease. The
+magnificence of the city, and the prim decorum of the Boston churches,
+subdued him, and he could not preach with the fire and freedom of the
+frontier log chapel. The crowds that came to hear him were disappointed,
+and more than once they told him so.
+
+"Is this Peter Cartwright, from Illinois, the old Western pioneer?" they
+asked him once.
+
+He answered them, "I am the very man."
+
+"Well," said several of them, "brother, we are much disappointed; you
+have fallen very much under our expectations, we expected to hear a much
+greater sermon than that you preached to-day."
+
+It was a regular Bostonian greeting, and it not only mortified and
+disheartened the old pioneer, but it irritated him. "I tell you," says
+he, "they roused me, and provoked what little religious patience I
+had.... I left them abruptly, and in very gloomy mood retreated to my
+lodgings, but took very little rest in sleep that night. I constantly
+asked myself this question: Is it so, that I can not preach? or what is
+the matter? I underwent a tremendous crucifixion in feeling."
+
+The result was that he came to the conclusion that he _could_ preach,
+and that the people of Boston had not "sense enough to know a good
+sermon when they heard it." A little later old Father Taylor, that good
+genius of the Boston Bethel, a man after Cartwright's own heart, came to
+him and asked him to preach for him, and this, after hesitating, our
+preacher agreed to do, upon the condition that he should be allowed to
+conduct the services in regular Western style.
+
+"In the meantime," says he, "I had learned from different sources that
+the grand reason of my falling under the expectations of the
+congregations I had addressed was substantially this: almost all those
+curious incidents that had gained currency throughout the country
+concerning Methodist preachers had been located on me, and that when the
+congregations came to hear me, they expected little else but a bundle of
+eccentricities and singularities, and when they did not realize
+according to their anticipations, they were disappointed, and that this
+was the reason they were disappointed. So on the Sabbath, when I came to
+the Bethel, we had a good congregation, and after telling them that
+Brother Taylor had given me the liberty to preach to them after the
+Western fashion, I took my text, and after a few common-place remarks, I
+commenced giving them some Western anecdotes, which had a thrilling
+effect on the congregation, and excited them immoderately--I can not say
+religiously; but I thought if ever I saw animal excitement, it was then
+and there. This broke the charm. During my stay, after this, I could
+pass anywhere for Peter Cartwright, the old pioneer of the West. I am
+not sure that after this I fell under the expectations of my
+congregations among them."
+
+Sixty-seven years have passed away since the old pioneer began his
+preaching, and still he labors in the cause of his Master. Age has not
+subdued his zeal or dimmed his eye. His labors make up the history of
+the West. Where he first reared his humble log-hut, smiling farms and
+tasteful mansions cover the fertile prairies of the West; cities and
+towns mark the spot where his backwoods camp-meetings drew thousands
+into the kingdom of God; the iron horse dashes with the speed of the
+wind over the boundless prairies which he first crossed with only the
+points of timber for his guides; the floating palaces of the West plow
+the streams over which he swam his horse or was ferried in a bark canoe;
+and stately churches stand where the little log chapels of the infant
+West were built by him. It is a long and a noble life upon which he
+looks back, the only survivor of the heroic band who started with him to
+carry Christ into the Western wilds. He has outlived all his father's
+family, every member of the class he joined in 1800, every member of the
+Western Conference of 1804, save perhaps one or two, every member of the
+General Conference of 1816, the first to which he was elected, all his
+early bishops, every presiding elder under whom he ever ministered, and
+thousands of those whom he brought into the Church. "I have lived too
+long," he said, in a recent lecture; but we take issue with him. He has
+not lived too long whose declining age is cheered by the glorious
+fruition of the seed sown in his youth and prime. Few, indeed, are given
+so great a privilege; and few, having lived so long and worked so hard,
+can say with him, that during such a long and exposed career, "I have
+never been overtaken in any scandalous sin, though my shortcomings and
+imperfections have been without number." A man who can boast such a
+record, though he be as poor in purse as this simple-hearted backwoods
+preacher, has earned a Great Fortune indeed, for his treasure is one
+that can not be taken from him, since it is laid up in Heaven, "where
+neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break
+through nor steal."
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+AUTHORS.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.
+
+
+Wherever the English language is spoken, the name of HENRY WADSWORTH
+LONGFELLOW has become a household word, and there is scarcely a library,
+however humble, but can boast a well-worn volume of his tender
+songs,--songs that
+
+     "Have power to quiet
+       The restless pulse of care,
+     And come like the benediction
+       That follows after prayer."
+
+He was born in the city of Portland, Maine, on the 27th of February,
+1807, and was the son of the Hon. Stephen Longfellow, a distinguished
+lawyer of that city. The house in which he was born was a square wooden
+structure, built many years before, and large and roomy. It stood upon
+the outskirts of the town, on the edge of the sea, and was separated
+from the water only by a wide street. From its windows the dreamy boy,
+who grew up within its walls, could look out upon the dark, mysterious
+ocean, and, lying awake in his little bed in the long winter nights, he
+could listen to its sorrowful roar as it broke heavily upon the shore.
+That he was keenly alive to the fascination of such close intimacy with
+the ocean, we have abundant proof in his writings.
+
+He was carefully educated in the best schools of the city, and at the
+age of fourteen entered Bowdoin College, at Brunswick, where he
+graduated in his nineteenth year. He was an industrious student, and
+stood high in his classes. He gave brilliant promise of his future
+eminence as a poet in several productions written during his college
+days, which were published in a Boston journal called the "United States
+Literary Gazette." Among these were the "Hymn of the Moravian Nuns,"
+"The Spirit of Poetry," "Woods in Winter," and "Sunrise on the Hills."
+
+Upon leaving college he entered his father's office, in Portland, with
+the half-formed design of studying law, which he never carried into
+execution, as more congenial employment soon presented itself to him. In
+1826 he was appointed Professor of Modern Languages and Literature at
+Bowdoin College, with the privilege of passing several years abroad for
+observation and study. He accepted the appointment with unaffected
+delight, and promptly went abroad. He passed his first year in France,
+studying the language and literature of that country, and the next in
+Spain, engaged in similar pursuits. Italy claimed his third year, and
+Germany his fourth. He traveled extensively, and made many pleasant
+acquaintances among the most gifted men and women of the Old World.
+Returning home toward the close of 1829, he entered upon the active
+duties of his professorship, and for five years held this position,
+winning considerable distinction by his academic labors.
+
+During his professorship our poet married, and the years that followed
+were very happy and very quiet. The life he led at Bowdoin was peaceful,
+and in a measure retired, giving him ample opportunity for study and for
+laying the sure foundation of his future fame. During this period of his
+life he contributed articles to the "North American Review," and
+extended his acquaintance gradually among the literary men of New
+England. He was fond of recalling the experiences of his life abroad,
+and being unwilling that they should be lost from his memory, determined
+to transmit them to paper before they faded quite away. These sketches
+he finally concluded to give to the public, under the title of "Outre
+Mer; or, Sketches from Beyond Sea." They appeared originally in numbers,
+and were published by Samuel Colman, of Portland. They were well
+received, and brought Professor Longfellow into notice in New England.
+Soon afterward he published a translation of the ode upon "Coplas de
+Manrique," by his son, Don Jose Manrique, which won him additional
+credit. His fugitive poems had become very popular, and had made his
+name familiar to his countrymen, but as yet he had not collected them in
+book form.
+
+In 1835, on the resignation of Mr. George Ticknor, he was appointed
+Professor of Modern Languages and Belles Lettres in Harvard College, and
+accepted the position. Before entering upon his duties, however, he
+resolved to devote two years more to foreign travel and improvement, and
+accordingly sailed for Europe the second time. Before leaving America,
+however, he committed the publication of "Outre Mer" to the Harpers, of
+New York, who issued it complete in two volumes in 1835. Its popularity
+was very decided. Soon after reaching Europe, Mr. Longfellow was visited
+with a sad bereavement in the loss of his wife, who died at Rotterdam.
+He devoted this European visit to the northern part of the continent,
+Denmark, Sweden, Germany, and Holland, and to England, and spent some
+time in Paris. Returning in the autumn of 1836, he entered upon his
+duties at Harvard, and made his home in Cambridge. He continued his
+contributions to the "North American Review," and a number of fugitive
+pieces flowed from his pen into print.
+
+In the summer of 1837 he went to live in the house which has ever since
+been his home. This is the old Craigie House, in Cambridge, famous in
+our history as having been the headquarters of Washington during the
+siege of Boston. It had been built by Colonel John Vassal about the
+middle of the last century, and had finally passed into the hands of
+Andrew Craigie, "Apothecary General to the Northern Provincial Army" of
+the infant Republic. Craigie had ruined himself by his lavish
+hospitality, and his widow, a stately old lady, and worthy in every
+respect of a better fate, had been reduced to the necessity of letting
+rooms and parting with the greater portion of the lands which had
+belonged to the mansion. Mr. Longfellow had been attracted to the house
+not only by its winning and home-like appearance, but by its historical
+associations. Mrs. Craigie had decided at the time to let no more rooms,
+but the young professor's gentle, winning manner conquered her
+determination, and she not only received him into the old mansion, but
+installed him in the south-east corner room in the second story, which
+had been used by Washington as his bed-chamber.
+
+It was just the home for our poet. Its windows looked out upon one of
+the loveliest landscapes in New England, with the bright river winding
+through the broad meadow beyond the house, and the blue Milton Hills
+dotting the distant background. The bright verdure of New England
+sparkled on every side, and the stately old elms that stood guard by the
+house screened it from the prying eyes of the passers on the public
+road. The whole place was hallowed to its new inmate by the memories of
+the brave soldiers, wise statesmen, and brilliant ladies who had graced
+its heroic age, and of which the stately hostess was the last and worthy
+representative. The old house was as serene and still as the dearest
+lover of quiet could wish. The mistress lived quite apart from her
+lodger, and left him to follow the bent of his own fancies; and rare
+fancies they were, for it was of them that some of his best works were
+born in this upper chamber. Here he wrote "Hyperion," in 1838 and 1839.
+Its publication, which was undertaken by John Owen, the University
+publisher in Cambridge, marked an era in American literature. Every body
+read the book, and every body talked of it. It was a poem in prose, and
+none the less the work of a poet because professedly "a romance of
+travel." The young read it with enthusiasm, and it sent hundreds to
+follow Paul Flemming's footsteps in the distant Fatherland, where the
+"romance of travel" became their guidebook. The merchant and the lawyer,
+the journalist and the mechanic, reading its pages, found that the stern
+realities of life had not withered up all the romance of their natures,
+and under its fascinations they became boys again. Even Horace Greeley,
+that most practical and unimaginative of men, became rapturous over it.
+It was a great success, and established the poet's fame beyond all
+question, and since then its popularity has never waned.
+
+In 1840, he published the "Voices of the Night," which he had heard
+sounding to him in his haunted chamber. This was his first volume, and
+its popularity was even greater than that of "Hyperion," although some
+of the poems had appeared before, in the "Knickerbocker Magazine." In
+1841, he published his volume of "Ballads, and Other Poems," which but
+added to his fame, and the next year bade the old house under the elms
+a temporary adieu, and sailed for Europe, where he passed the summer on
+the Rhine. On the voyage home, he composed his "Poems on Slavery," and
+soon after his return wrote "The Spanish Student," a drama, "which
+smells of the utmost South, and was a strange blossoming for the garden
+of Thomas Tracy."
+
+In 1843 the stately mistress of the old house died, and Professor
+Longfellow bought the homestead of Andrew Craigie, with eight acres of
+land, including the meadow, which sloped down to the pretty river. There
+have been very few prouder or happier moments in his life than that in
+which he first felt that the old house under the elms was his. Yet he
+must have missed the stately old lady who first had admitted him to a
+place in it, and whom he had grown to love as a dear friend. She seemed
+so thoroughly a part and parcel of the place, that he must have missed
+the rustle of her heavy silks along the wide and echoing halls, and have
+listened some time for the sound of her old-fashioned spinet in the huge
+drawing-room below, and, entering the room where she was wont to receive
+her guests, he must have missed her from the old window where she was
+accustomed to sit, with the open book in her lap, and her eyes fixed on
+the far-off sky, thinking, no doubt, of the days when in her royal
+beauty, she moved a queen through the brilliant home of Andrew Craigie. A
+part of the veneration which he felt for the old house had settled upon
+its ancient mistress, and the poet doubtless felt that the completeness
+of the quaint old establishment was broken up when she passed away.
+
+In 1846, Mr. Longfellow published "The Belfry of Bruges, and Other
+Poems;" in 1847, "Evangeline" (by many considered his greatest work); in
+1850, "Seaside and Fireside;" in 1851, "The Golden Legend;" in 1855,
+"The Song of Hiawatha;" in 1858, "The Courtship of Miles Standish;" in
+1863, "The Wayside Inn;" in 1866, "The Flower de Luce;" in 1867, his
+translation of the "Divina Commedia," in three volumes; and in 1868,
+"The New England Tragedies." Besides these, he published, in 1845, a
+work on the "Poets and Poetry of Europe," and in 1849, "Kavanagh," a
+novel.
+
+Mr. Longfellow continued to discharge his duties in the University for
+seventeen years, winning fresh laurels every year, and in 1854 resigned
+his position, and was succeeded in it by Mr. James Russell Lowell. He
+now devoted himself exclusively to his profession, the income from his
+writings affording him a handsome maintenance. In 1855. "The Song of
+Hiawatha" was given to the public, and its appearance may be styled an
+event in the literary history of the world. It was not only original in
+the story it told, and in the method of treatment, but the rhythm was
+new. It was emphatically an American poem, and was received by the
+people with delight. It met with an immense sale, and greatly increased
+its author's popularity with his countrymen.
+
+In 1861 a terrible affliction befell the poet in his family. He had
+married, some years after the death of his first wife, a lady whose many
+virtues had endeared her to all who knew her. She was standing by the
+open fire in the sitting-room, one day in the winter of 1861, when her
+clothing took fire, and before her husband, summoned by her cries, could
+extinguish the flames, she was terribly burned. Her injuries were
+internal, and she soon afterwards died.
+
+In 1868, Mr. Longfellow again visited Europe, and remained abroad more
+than a year. His reception by all classes of the people of the Old World
+was eminently gratifying to his countrymen. This welcome, so genuine and
+heartfelt, was due, however, to the genius of the man, and not to his
+nationality.
+
+He had overstepped the bounds of country, and had made himself the poet
+of the English-speaking race. A man of vast learning and varied
+acquirements, thoroughly versed in the ways of the world, he is still as
+simple and unaffected in thought and ways as when he listened to and
+wondered at the dashing of the wild waves on the shore in his boyhood's
+home. A most gifted and accomplished artist, he has been faithful to
+nature in all things. Earnest and aspiring himself, he has given to his
+poems the ring of a true manhood. There is nothing bitter, nothing
+sarcastic in his writings. He views all things with a loving eye, and it
+is the exquisite tenderness of his sympathy with his fellow-men that has
+enabled him to find his way so readily to their hearts. Without seeking
+to represent the intensity of passion, he deals with the fresh, simple
+emotions of the human soul, and in his simplicity lies his power. He
+touches a chord that finds an echo in every heart, and his poems have a
+humanity in them that is irresistible. We admire the "grand old
+masters," but shrink abashed from their sublime measures. Longfellow is
+so human, he understands us so well, that we turn instinctively to his
+simple, tender songs for comfort in sorrow, or for the greater
+perfection of our happiness.
+
+Perhaps I can not better illustrate the power of his simplicity than by
+the following quotations:
+
+     There is no flock, however watched and tended,
+         But one dead lamb is there!
+     There is no fireside, howsoe'er defended,
+         But has one vacant chair!
+
+     The air is full of farewell to the dying,
+         And mournings for the dead;
+     The heart of Rachel, for her children crying,
+         Will not be comforted.
+
+     Let us be patient! These severe afflictions
+         Not from the ground arise,
+     But oftentimes celestial benedictions
+         Assume this dark disguise.
+
+     We see but dimly through the mists and vapors,
+         Amid these earthly damps;
+     What seem to us but sad funereal tapers,
+         May be heaven's distant lamps.
+
+     There is no death! What seems so is transition;
+         This life of mortal breath
+     Is but a suburb of the life elysian,
+         Whose portal we call Death.
+
+     She is not dead--the child of our affection--
+         But gone unto that school
+     Where she no longer needs our poor protection,
+         And Christ himself doth rule.
+
+     In that great cloister's stillness and seclusion,
+         By guardian angels led,
+     Safe from temptation, safe from sin's pollution,
+         She lives, whom we call dead.
+
+     Day after day we think what she is doing
+         In those bright realms of air;
+     Year after year, her tender steps pursuing,
+         Behold her grow more fair.
+
+     Thus do we walk with her, and keep unbroken
+         The bond which nature gives,
+     Thinking that our remembrance, though unspoken,
+         May reach her where she lives.
+
+     Not as a child shall we again behold her;
+         For when with raptures wild
+     In our embraces we again enfold her,
+         She will not be a child--
+
+     But a fair maiden, in her Father's mansion,
+         Clothed with celestial grace,
+     And beautiful with all the soul's expansion
+         Shall we behold her face.
+
+     And though at times impetuous with emotion,
+         And anguish long suppressed,
+     The swelling heart heaves, moaning like the ocean,
+         That can not be at rest--
+
+     We will be patient, and assuage the feeling
+         We can not wholly stay;
+     By silence sanctifying, not concealing,
+         The grief that must have way.
+
+
+
+FROM THE GOLDEN LEGEND.
+
+SCENE.--_The Chamber of_ GOTTLIEB _and_ URSULA.--_Midnight_.--ELSIE
+_standing by their bedside weeping_.
+
+
+GOTTLIEB. The wind is roaring; the rushing rain
+Is loud upon the roof and window-pane,
+As if the wild Huntsman of Rodenstein,
+Boding evil to me and mine,
+Were abroad to-night with his ghostly train!
+In the brief lulls of the tempest wild,
+The dogs howl in the yard; and hark!
+Some one is sobbing in the dark,
+Here in the chamber.
+
+ELSIE.              It is I.
+
+URSULA.  Elsie! What ails thee, my poor child?
+
+ELSIE.  I am disturbed and much distressed,
+In thinking our dear Prince must die;
+I can not close my eyes, nor rest.
+
+GOTTLIEB. What wouldst thou? In the Power Divine
+His healing lies, not in our own;
+It is in the hand of God alone.
+
+ELSIE.  Nay, He has put it into mine,
+And into my heart.
+
+GOTTLIEB.          Thy words are wild.
+
+URSULA.  What dost thou mean? my child! my child!
+
+ELSIE.  That for our dear Prince Henry's sake
+I will myself the offering make,
+And give my life to purchase his.
+
+URSULA.  Am I still dreaming, or awake?
+Thou speakest carelessly of death,
+And yet thou knowest not what it is.
+
+ELSIE.  'Tis the cessation of our breath.
+Silent and motionless we lie;
+And no one knoweth more than this.
+I saw our little Gertrude die;
+She left off breathing, and no more
+I smoothed the pillow beneath her head.
+She was more beautiful than before.
+Like violets faded were her eyes;
+By this we knew that she was dead.
+Through the open window looked the skies
+Into the chamber where she lay,
+And the wind was like the sound of wings,
+As if angels came to bear her away.
+Ah! when I saw and felt these things,
+I found it difficult to stay;
+I longed to die, as she had died,
+And go forth with her, side by side.
+The saints are dead, the martyrs dead,
+And Mary, and our Lord; and I
+Would follow in humility
+The way by them illumined.
+
+URSULA.  My child I my child! thou must not die.
+
+ELSIE.  Why should I live? Do I not know
+The life of woman is full of woe?
+Toiling on, and on, and on,
+With breaking heart, and tearful eyes,
+And silent lips, and in the soul
+The secret longings that arise,
+Which this world never satisfies!
+Some more, some less, but of the whole
+Not one quite happy; no, not one!
+
+URSULA.  It is the malediction of Eve!
+
+ELSIE.  In place of it, let me receive
+The benediction of Mary, then.
+
+GOTTLIEB. Ah, woe is me! Ah, woe is me!
+Most wretched am I among men.
+
+URSULA.  Alas! that I should live to see
+Thy death, beloved, and to stand
+Above thy grave! Ah, woe the day!
+
+ELSIE.  Thou wilt not see it. I shall lie
+Beneath the flowers of another land;
+For at Salerno, far away
+Over the mountains, over the sea,
+It is appointed me to die!
+And it will seem no more to thee
+Than if at the village on market day
+I should a little longer stay
+Than I am used.
+
+URSULA.         Even as thou sayest!
+And how my heart beats when thou stayest!
+I can not rest until my sight
+Is satisfied with seeing thee.
+What, then, if thou wert dead?
+
+GOTTLIEB.                      Ah me,
+Of our old eyes thou art the light!
+The joy of our old hearts art thou!
+And wilt thou die?
+
+URSULA.            Not now! not now!
+
+ELSIE.  Christ died for me, and shall not I
+Be willing for my Prince to die?
+You both are silent; you can not speak.
+This said I, at our Saviour's feast,
+After confession, to the priest,
+And even he made no reply.
+Does he not warn us all to seek
+The happier, better land on high,
+Where flowers immortal never wither;
+And could he forbid me to go thither?
+
+GOTTLIEB. In God's own time, my heart's delight!
+When He shall call thee, not before!
+
+ELSIE.  I heard Him call. When Christ ascended
+Triumphantly, from star to star,
+He left the gates of heaven ajar.
+I had a vision in the night,
+And saw Him standing at the door
+Of His Father's mansion, vast and splendid,
+And beckoning to me from afar.
+I can not stay!
+
+GOTTLIEB.       She speaks almost
+As if it were the Holy Ghost
+Spake through her lips and in her stead!
+What if this were of God?
+
+URSULA.                   Ah, then
+Gainsay it dare we not.
+
+GOTTLIEB.               Amen!
+
+
+The old house under the elms is still the poet's home, and dear, as
+such, to every lover of poetry. It is a stately building, of the style
+of more than one hundred years ago, and is a very home-like place in its
+general appearance. Entering by the main door-way, which is in the
+center of the house, the visitor finds himself in a wide, old-fashioned
+hall, with doors opening upon it on either hand.
+
+"The library of the poet is the long north-eastern room upon the lower
+floor," said a writer seventeen years ago. "It opens upon the garden,
+which retains still the quaint devices of an antique design, harmonious
+with the house. The room is surrounded with handsome book-cases, and one
+stands also between two Corinthian columns at one end, which imparts
+dignity and richness to the apartment. A little table by the northern
+window, looking upon the garden, is the usual seat of the poet. A bust
+or two, the rich carvings of the cases, the spaciousness of the room, a
+leopard-skin lying upon the floor, and a few shelves of strictly
+literary curiosities, reveal not only the haunt of the elegant scholar
+and poet, but the favorite resort of the family circle. But the northern
+gloom of a New England winter is intolerant of this serene delight, this
+beautiful domesticity, and urges the inmates to the smaller room in
+front of the house, communicating with the library, and the study of
+General Washington. This is still distinctively 'the study,' as the rear
+room is 'the library,' Books are here, and all the graceful detail of an
+elegant household, and upon the walls hang crayon portraits of Emerson,
+Sumner, and Hawthorne.
+
+"Emerging into the hall, the eyes of the enamored visitor fall upon the
+massive old staircase, with the clock upon the landing. Directly he
+hears a singing in his mind:
+
+
+      'Somewhat back from the village street,
+       Stands the old-fashioned country-seat;
+       Across its antique portico
+       Tall poplar trees their shadows throw,
+       And from its station in the hall
+       An ancient time-piece says to all,
+           "Forever--never!
+           Never--forever!"'
+
+
+"But he does not see the particular clock of the poem, which stood upon
+another staircase, in another quaint old mansion,--although the verse
+belongs truly to all old clocks in all old country-seats, just as the
+'Village Blacksmith' and his smithy are not alone the stalwart man and
+dingy shop under the 'spreading chestnut-tree' which the Professor daily
+passes on his way to his college duties, but belong wherever a smithy
+stands. Through the meadows in front flows the placid Charles."
+
+So calmly flows the poet's life. The old house has other charms for him
+now besides those with which his fancy invested it when he first set
+foot within its walls, for here have come to him the joys and sorrows of
+his maturer life, and here, "when the evening lamps are lighted," come
+to him the memories of the loved and lost, who but wait for him in the
+better land. Here, too, cluster the memories of those noble achievements
+in his glorious career which have made him now and for all times the
+people's poet. Others, as the years go by, will woo us with their lays,
+but none so winningly and tenderly as this our greatest master. There
+was but one David in Israel, and when he passed away no other filled his
+place.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.
+
+
+There came to the old town of Salem, in the Province of Massachusetts,
+in the early part of the seventeenth century, an English family named
+Hawthorne--Puritans, like all the other inhabitants of that growing
+town. They proved their fidelity to Puritan principles by entering
+readily into all the superstitions of the day, and became noted for the
+zeal with which they persecuted the Quakers and hung the witches. The
+head of the family was a sea captain, and for many generations the men
+of the family followed the same avocation, "a gray-haired shipmaster, in
+each generation, retiring from the quarter-deck to the homestead, while
+a boy of fourteen took the hereditary place before the mast, confronting
+the salt spray and the gale, which had blustered against his sire and
+grandsire."
+
+[Illustration: NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.]
+
+Of such a race came NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, who was born at Salem, on the
+4th, of July, 1804. His father was a sea captain, and died of the yellow
+fever at Havana, in 1810. His mother was a woman of great beauty and
+extreme sensibility, and it was from her that Nathaniel derived the
+peculiarities of character which distinguished him through life. The
+death of her husband filled her with the profoundest grief, and though
+the violence of her sorrow subsided with time, she passed the
+remainder of her life in strict seclusion, constantly grieving in her
+quiet way for her departed lord. Her son grew up to the age of ten in
+this sad and lonely house, passing four of the most susceptible years of
+his life in the society of his sorrowful mother. He became a shy boy,
+and avoided the company of other children. His health began to suffer
+from the effects of such an unnatural state of affairs, and at the age
+of ten he was sent to live on a farm belonging to the family, on the
+shore of Sebago Lake, in Maine. The active out-door life which he led
+here entirely restored his health, which was naturally strong and
+vigorous; here, also, he acquired that fondness for boating which was
+his chief amusement in after years. Returning to Salem, he completed his
+studies in the preparatory schools, after which he entered Bowdoin
+College, where he graduated in 1825, at the age of twenty-one. He was a
+classmate of Longfellow and George B. Cheever, with whom he was only
+slightly acquainted; and he formed a warm and lasting friendship with
+Franklin Pierce, who was in the class next before him. Longfellow has
+preserved a recollection of him in his student days as "a shy youth in a
+bright-buttoned coat, flitting across the college grounds."
+
+After graduating, he went back to his home in Salem, where he resided
+for many years, leading a life of seclusion, which he passed in
+meditation and study. His strong literary inclination now vented itself
+in efforts which were in every way characteristic of the man. He wrote
+numerous wild tales, the most of which he burned, but a few of which
+found their way into the newspapers and magazines of the country. They
+were full of a wild gloominess, and were told with a power which proved
+that their author was no ordinary man. Few, however, dreamed that they
+were the work of the pale recluse of Salem, for he led a life of such
+strict seclusion that not even the members of his own family could tell
+with certainty what he did. His days were passed in his chamber, and at
+night he took long walks alone on the sea-shore or into the woods. He
+shunned all society, and seemed to find companionship only in nature,
+and in the creations of his fancy. Yet he was not a morose or unhappy
+man. On the contrary, he seems to have been a very happy one, full of
+generous and kindly feelings, and finding only a strange pleasure where
+others would have found bitterness and cynicism. Like the melancholy
+Jacques, he might have said of his pensive shyness, "It is a melancholy
+of mine own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many
+objects; ... which, by often rumination, wraps me in a most humorous
+sadness."
+
+In 1837 he collected his published tales, which, while they had charmed
+a few cultivated readers, had scarcely been noticed by the masses, and
+published them in a volume to which he gave the name of "Twice-Told
+Tales." The book was well received by the public, but its circulation
+was limited, although Mr. Longfellow warmly welcomed it in the "North
+American Review," and pronounced it the "work of a man of genius and a
+true poet." Still it was neglected by the masses, and Hawthorne says
+himself that he was at that time "the most unknown author in America."
+There was more truth in this assertion than lies on its face, for the
+people who read the book supposed that the name of Nathaniel Hawthorne
+was merely a pseudonyme, and declared that as Nathaniel was evidently
+selected by the author because of the fondness of the old-time Puritans
+for Scripture names, so Hawthorne was chosen by him as expressive of one
+of the most beautiful features of the New England landscape. The merits
+of the book were too genuine, however, for it to lack admirers, and the
+small class which greeted its first appearance with delight gradually
+increased, and finally the demand for the book became so great that in
+1842 Hawthorne ventured to issue a second series of "Twice-Told Tales,"
+the most of which had appeared in the "Democratic Review," then edited
+by his friend O'Sullivan. Of these volumes, Mr. George William Curtis
+says: "They are full of glancing wit, of tender satire, of exquisite
+natural description, of subtle and strange analysis of human life,
+darkly passionate and weird."
+
+In 1838 George Bancroft was Collector of the Port of Boston, and, having
+been deeply impressed with the genius displayed in the first volume of
+"Twice-Told Tales," sought out Hawthorne and offered him a place in the
+Boston Custom-House as weigher and gauger. Hawthorne accepted the
+position, and at once entered upon his duties. Leaving his solitude and
+the weird phantoms that had been his companions for so long, he passed
+immediately into the busy bustle of the great New England port. It was a
+new world to him, and one which interested him keenly. His duties kept
+him constantly on the wharf, and threw him daily into contact with
+captains and sailors from all parts of the world. He became a great
+favorite with these, and they told him many a strange story of their
+adventures and of the sights they had seen in distant lands, and these,
+as they were listened to by him, took each a distinctive form in his
+imagination. Not less interesting to him were the men among whom his
+duties threw him. They were more to him than the ordinary beings that
+thronged the streets of the great city, for they had been victorious in
+many a battle with the mighty deep, and they had looked on the wondrous
+sights of the far-off lands of the Old World. Queer people they were,
+too, each a Captain Cuttle or a Dirk Hatteraick in himself, and many an
+hour did the dreamy writer spend with them, apparently listening to
+their rude stories, but really making keen studies of the men
+themselves.
+
+He discharged his duties faithfully in the Boston Custom-House,
+performing each with an exactness thoroughly characteristic of him,
+until 1841, when the accession of President Harrison to power obliged
+him to withdraw to make way for a Whig.
+
+From the Custom-house he went to live at Brook Farm as one of that
+singular community of dreamers and enthusiasts which was to inaugurate a
+new era of men and things in the world, but which came at last to a most
+inglorious termination. He was thrown into intimate association here
+with many who have since become prominent in our literary history, and
+for some of them conceived a warm attachment. He took his share of the
+farm labors, to which he was very partial, but remained at the community
+less than a year, and then returned to Boston. In his "Blithedale
+Romance" he has given us a picture of the life at Brook Farm, though he
+denies having sketched his characters from his old associates at that
+place.
+
+In 1843 he married Miss Peabody, a member of a family distinguished for
+their various achievements in the world of letters. Besides being an
+artist of no mean pretensions, she was herself a writer of considerable
+promise, though her writings had no other critics than her family and
+most intimate friends. "Her husband shrank from seeing her name in the
+reviews, and in this, as in all other things, his feelings were sacredly
+respected by her." She was a lady of rare strength of character and
+great beauty, and was in every respect a fitting wife for such a man.
+The twenty-one years of their wedded life make up a period of unbroken
+happiness to both. Hawthorne was very proud of his wife, and in his
+quiet way never failed to show it. Their friends often remarked that
+the wedded life of this happy pair seemed like one long courtship.
+
+Hawthorne took his bride on his wedding-day to a new home. He had rented
+the old parsonage adjoining the battle-field of Concord, from whose
+windows the pastor of those heroic days had watched his congregation
+fight the British in his yard. It was a gloomy and partially dilapidated
+"Old Manse," and doubtless Hawthorne had chosen it because of its quaint
+aspect. He has himself drawn the picture of it, and given us an
+exquisite collection of "Mosses" from it. It lay back from the main
+road, and was approached by an avenue of ancient black-ash trees, whose
+deep shade added much to the quiet appearance of "the gray front of the
+old parsonage." It was just the home for him, and here passed three of
+the happiest years of his life. Here he wrote his "Mosses from an Old
+Manse," and here his first child was born.
+
+The life he led at Concord was very secluded. He avoided the society of
+the village people, who sought in vain to penetrate his retirement and
+satisfy their curiosity concerning him. But they were disappointed. He
+lived on in his deep seclusion, happy in having his wife and child with
+him, but caring for no other society. During the day he remained in his
+study, which overlooked the old battle-field, or, passing down the lawn
+at the back of the house to the river, spent the afternoon in rowing on
+the pretty stream. At night he would take long walks, or row up the
+river to the bridge by which the British crossed the stream, and enjoy
+his favorite luxury--a bath. The village people were full of curiosity
+to know something about him, for he was absolutely unknown to them; and
+any one who understands what the curiosity of a New England villager is
+can readily imagine the feelings with which the people of Concord
+regarded their mysterious neighbor. They were never satisfied, however,
+for Hawthorne shrank from prying eyes with indescribable horror. He kept
+his ways, and compelled them to let him alone. He could easily avoid the
+town in his walks or his rides upon the river, and he was rarely seen
+passing through the streets unless compelled to do so by matters which
+needed his attention in Concord.
+
+Yet the "Old Manse" was not without its guests. Hawthorne was a man of
+many friends, and these came often to see him. They were men after his
+own heart, and among them were Emerson, Ellery, Channing, Thoreau,
+Whittier, Longfellow, and George William Curtis. The last-named has left
+us this pleasant picture of our author in the midst of his friends:
+
+"During Hawthorne's first year's residence in Concord, I had driven up
+with some friends to an esthetic tea at Mr. Emerson's. It was in the
+winter, and a great wood-fire blazed upon the hospitable hearth. There
+were various men and women of note assembled, and I, who listened
+attentively to all the fine things that were said, was for some time
+scarcely aware of a man who sat upon the edge of the circle, a little
+withdrawn, his head slightly thrown forward upon his breast, and his
+bright eyes clearly burning under his black brow. As I drifted down the
+stream of talk, this person who sat silent as a shadow looked to me as
+Webster might have looked had he been a poet--a kind of poetic Webster.
+He rose and walked to the window, and stood quietly there for a long
+time, watching the dead white landscape. No appeal was made to him,
+nobody looked after him, the conversation flowed as steadily on as if
+every one understood that his silence was to be respected. It was the
+same thing at table. In vain the silent man imbibed esthetic tea.
+Whatever fancies it inspired did not flower at his lips. But there was a
+light in his eye which assured me that nothing was lost. So supreme was
+his silence, that it presently engrossed me to the exclusion of every
+thing else. There was brilliant discourse, but this silence was much
+more poetic and fascinating. Fine things were said by the philosophers,
+but much finer things were implied by the dumbness of this gentleman
+with heavy brows and black hair. When presently he rose and went,
+Emerson, with the 'slow, wise smile' that breaks over his face, like day
+over the sky, said: 'Hawthorne rides well his horse of the night.'"
+Later on, after he knew him better, Curtis added to this picture, "His
+own sympathy was so broad and sure, that, although nothing had been said
+for hours, his companion knew that not a thing had escaped his eye, nor
+had a single pulse of beauty in the day, or scene, or society failed to
+thrill his heart. In this way his silence was most social. Every thing
+seemed to have been said."
+
+At the close of the third year of his residence at Concord, Hawthorne
+was obliged to give up the "Old Manse," as the owner was coming back to
+occupy it. The Democrats had now come into power again under Mr. Polk,
+and Mr. Bancroft was in the Cabinet. The Secretary, mindful of his
+friend, procured him the post of Surveyor of the Port of Salem, and
+Hawthorne went with his little family to live in his native town. The
+Salem Custom-house was a sleepy sort of a place, and his duties were
+merely nominal. He had an abundance of leisure time, and from that
+leisure was born his masterpiece, "The Scarlet Letter"--the most
+powerful romance which ever flowed from an American author's pen. It was
+published in 1850, and in the preface to it the reader will find an
+excellent description of the author's life in Salem. He held his
+position in that place for three years, and then the election of General
+Taylor obliged him to retire.
+
+He withdrew to the Berkshire Hills, and took a house in the town of
+Lenox. It was a little red cottage, and was situated on the shore of a
+diminutive lake called the Stockbridge Bowl. He was now the most famous
+novelist in America, and had thousands of admirers in the Old World. His
+"Scarlet Letter" had won him fame, and had brought his earlier works
+more prominently before the public than ever.
+
+During his residence at Lenox, he wrote "The House of the Seven Gables,"
+which was published in Boston in 1851. It was not less successful than
+the "Scarlet Letter," though it was not so finished a piece of
+workmanship.
+
+Yet, though so famous, he was not freed from the trials incident to the
+first years of an author's life. Mr. Tuckerman says of him at this time:
+"He had the fortitude and pride, as well as the sensitiveness and
+delicacy, of true and high genius. Not even his nearest country
+neighbors knew aught of his meager larder or brave economies. He never
+complained, even when editors were dilatory in their remuneration and
+friends forgetful of their promises. When the poor author had the money,
+he would buy a beefsteak for dinner; when he had not, he would make a
+meal of chestnuts and potatoes. He had the self-control and the probity
+to fulfill that essential condition of self-respect, alike for those who
+subsist by brain work and those who inherit fortunes--he always lived
+within his income; and it was only by a kind of pious fraud that a trio
+of his oldest friends occasionally managed to pay his rent." His friend
+and publisher, Mr. Ticknor, "received and invested the surplus earnings
+of the absentee author when American Consul at Liverpool, and had
+obtained from Hawthorne a promise on the eve of his departure for his
+post, ... that he would send him all he could spare from his official
+income, to be carefully nursed into a competence for his family. Never
+was better advice given or wiser service performed by publisher to
+author. The investments thus made became the means of comfort to the
+returned writer in the maturity of his years and his fame."
+
+In 1852 he returned to Concord and purchased a small house which had
+once been the residence of the philosopher Alcott. Here he made his
+permanent home and gathered about him his household treasures. In the
+Presidential campaign of 1852, his friend Franklin Pierce was the
+candidate of the Democracy, and Hawthorne wrote a short biography of him
+which was used by the Democrats as a campaign document. It was a labor
+of love, for the friendship that had been begun between these two men in
+their college days had never been broken, and though naturally averse to
+every thing that savored of politics, our author made this contribution
+to the cause of his friend with all the heartiness of his nature. Pierce
+was profoundly touched by this unexpected aid, for he knew how utterly
+Hawthorne detested political strife, and when seated in the Presidential
+chair he showed his appreciation of it by offering his friend the
+consulship to Liverpool--one of the most lucrative offices within the
+gift of the executive. Hawthorne broke up his home in Concord and sailed
+for Liverpool in 1853, and remained there until 1857, when he resigned
+his consulship and traveled on the continent with his family, residing
+for some time in Italy for the benefit of his health. His European
+residence had the effect of drawing him out of his shyness and reserve
+to a certain extent, and during the closing years of his life he was
+more social with the persons about him than he had ever been. After his
+return he went back to Concord, where he enlarged and beautified his old
+home, intending to remain there for the balance of his life. He wrote
+the "Marble Faun" and "Our Old Home" just after his return from Europe.
+The former was suggested by his residence in Italy, and the latter was
+a collection of English sketches and reminiscences.
+
+The war between the two sections of the country affected him very
+deeply. It seemed to him a terrible tragedy, to which there could be no
+end but utter ruin for the country. He sympathized strongly with the
+cause of the Union, but at the same time his heart bled at the
+sufferings of the people of the south. It was one long agony to him, and
+only those who knew him intimately can understand how much he suffered
+during this unhappy period.
+
+Mr. Moncure D. Conway gives the following reminiscence of him about this
+time: "I passed a night under the same roof with him at the house of Mr.
+Fields, his publisher. He seemed much dejected. Mr. Fields had invited a
+little company, but, after the first arrivals, Hawthorne made his escape
+to his room, from which he did not emerge until the next morning at
+breakfast time. He then came in with the amusing look of a naughty
+child, and pleaded that he had become lost the night before in Defoe's
+ghost stories until it was too late to make his appearance in the
+company. He must, I should think, have been contemplating some
+phantasmal production at that time, for I remember his asking me many
+questions about the ghost-beliefs of the negroes, among whom I had
+passed my early life."
+
+Besides the works already mentioned, Hawthorne was the author of "True
+Stories from History and Biography" and "The Wonder Book for Boys and
+Girls," both published in 1851; "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told
+Tales," published in 1852; and "Tanglewood Tales," published in 1853,
+all juveniles. At the time of his death he was engaged upon a novel
+which was to have been published in the "Atlantic Monthly," but it was
+left incomplete.
+
+In the spring of 1864 his friend and publisher, Mr. W.D. Ticknor, of
+Boston, seeing how feeble Hawthorne had become, asked him to accompany
+him on an excursion, hoping that a rapid change of scene and cheerful
+company would benefit him. They set out in April, and went direct to
+Philadelphia. Upon arriving at the hotel, Mr. Ticknor was suddenly taken
+very ill, and died on the 10th of April in his friend's arms. Hawthorne
+was profoundly shocked by this melancholy occurrence, and it is said
+that he never fully recovered from its effects upon him. His melancholy
+seemed to deepen, and though his friends exerted themselves to cheer
+him, he seemed to feel that his end was near. Ex-President Pierce,
+hoping to rouse him from his sad thoughts, induced him to accompany him
+on an excursion to the White Mountains. Upon reaching Plymouth, which
+they took on their route, they stopped at the Pemigewasset House for the
+night. Mr. Pierce was so full of anxiety concerning his friend, who had
+been quieter and sadder than usual that day, that he went softly into
+his room in the middle of the night to look after him. Hawthorne was
+lying very still, and seemed to be sleeping sweetly. Mr. Pierce stole
+softly away, fearing to disturb him. In the morning he went back to
+rouse his friend, and found him lying lifeless in the position he had
+noticed in the night. He had been dead some hours.
+
+The announcement of Hawthorne's death caused a feeling of deep sadness
+in all parts of the Union. His body was taken to Concord for burial, and
+was accompanied to the grave by the best and most gifted of the land, to
+each of whom he had endeared himself in life.
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+ACTORS.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+EDWIN BOOTH.
+
+
+There are many persons who remember the elder Booth, the "Great Booth,"
+as he was called, in his palmy days, when the bare announcement of his
+name was sufficient to cram our old-fashioned theaters from pit to dome.
+He was sublime in the stormy passions which he delineated, and never
+failed to draw down from the gods of the gallery the uproarious yells
+with which they testify their approval; even the more dignified
+occupants of the boxes found themselves breaking into outbursts of
+applause which they were powerless to restrain. He was a favorite with
+all classes, and a deserved one, and the lovers of the drama looked
+forward with genuine regret to the period when he should be no longer
+with them. They felt that the glories of the stage would pass away with
+him. It was in vain that they were told that he had sons destined to the
+same profession. They shook their heads, and said it was impossible that
+the mantle of the great tragedian should rest upon any of his sons, for
+it was then, as now, a popular belief that great men never have great
+children. How very much these good people were mistaken we will see in
+the progress of this chapter.
+
+One of these sons was destined in the course of time to eclipse the fame
+won by his father, and to endear himself to the American people as a
+more finished, if less stormy, actor. This was EDWIN BOOTH. He was born
+on his father's farm near Baltimore, Maryland, In 1833, and after
+receiving a good common-school education, began his training for the
+stage. The elder Booth was quick to see that his boy had inherited his
+genius, and he took great pains to develop the growing powers of the
+lad, and to incline them toward those paths which his experience had
+taught him were the surest roads to success. He took him with him on his
+starring engagements, and kept him about him so constantly that the boy
+may be said to have grown up on the stage from his infancy. He was
+enthusiastically devoted to his father, and it was his delight to stand
+at the wings and watch the great tragedian in his personations, and the
+thunders of applause which proclaimed some fresh triumph were sweeter to
+the boy, perhaps, than to the man.
+
+In 1849, at the age of sixteen, he made his first appearance on the
+stage as Tyrrell, in "Richard III.," and gave great satisfaction by his
+rendition of the character. From this time he continued to appear at
+various places with his father, and in 1851 won his first great success
+in the city of New York. His father was playing an engagement at the
+Chatham Theater at the time, and was announced for Richard III., which
+was his masterpiece. When the hour for performance came, he was too ill
+to appear. The manager was in despair, for the house was filled with a
+large audience, who were impatient for the appearance of the humpbacked
+king. In this emergency Edwin Booth offered to take his father's place,
+and the manager, pleased with the novelty of the proposal, accepted it.
+Young Booth was but eighteen years old, and had not even studied the
+part, and it was a perilous thing to venture before an audience in a
+role in which one of his name had won such great fame. But he was
+confident of his own powers, and he had so often hung with delight upon
+his father's rendition of the part, that he needed but a hasty reference
+to the book to perfect him in the text. He won a decided triumph, and
+the public promptly acknowledged that he gave promise of being an
+unusually fine actor.
+
+In 1852 Mr. Booth went to California, and engaged for the "utility
+business." He spent two years in careful and patient study in the
+humbler walks of his profession, learning its details, and doing much of
+the drudgery essential to a thorough knowledge of his art. In 1854, he
+went to Australia, and played a successful engagement there, stopping on
+his way at several of the Pacific islands. On his return, he played an
+engagement, with marked success, at the Sandwich Islands, and then went
+back to California.
+
+In 1857 he returned to New York, and, on the 4th of May, appeared at
+Burton's Theater, in the character of Richard III. A writer who
+witnessed his performance on that occasion thus speaks of him: "The
+company was not strong in tragedy; the young actor came without
+reputation; the season was late. But he conquered his place. His Richard
+was intellectual, brilliant, rapid, handsome, picturesque, villainous.
+But the villainy was servant to the ambition--not master of it, as a
+coarse player makes it. The action was original; the dress was
+perfect--the smirched gauntlets and flung-on mantle of the scheming,
+busy duke, the splendid vestments of the anointed king, the glittering
+armor of the monarch in the field. His clear beauty, his wonderful
+voice--which he had not learned to use--his grace, his fine artistic
+sense, made all triumphs seem possible to this young man. Evidently
+there was great power in the new actor--power untrained, vigor ill
+directed. But what was plainest to be seen, was the nervous, impulsive
+temperament, which would leave him no rest save in achievement. He might
+come back to us a robustious, periwig-pated fellow, the delight and
+wonder of the galleries. He might come back the thorough artist, great
+in repose as in action. But it was clear enough that what he was then in
+Richard, in Richelieu, in Sir Edward Mortimer, he would never be again."
+
+He followed this appearance by a general tour through the country, and
+returned to New York in 1858, where he won fresh laurels. In 1860 he
+reappeared at Burton's Theater, then called the Winter Garden, and added
+Hamlet to his role. He had improved greatly during the time that had
+elapsed since his last appearance at this theater, and had gained very
+much in power and artistic finish. The most critical audiences in the
+country received him with delight, crowded his houses, and hailed his
+efforts with thunders of applause. This season silenced all the critics,
+and placed him among the great actors of the American stage. He bore his
+honors modestly, and though he was proud of the triumphs he had won,
+they did not satisfy him. There were still greater successes to be
+achieved before the highest honors of his profession could be his, and
+it was upon these that his eye was fixed from the first. The applause
+which greeted him in every city in which he appeared only served to
+stimulate him to fresh exertions.
+
+In the summer of 1861, he visited England, and played an engagement at
+the Haymarket Theater in London, where he was favorably received by the
+British playgoers. At the close of this engagement, he spent a year on
+the continent, in travel and in the study of his profession. He also
+made careful studies of the scenes of the great historic dramas of the
+English stage, both in England and on the continent, and of the dresses
+and other appointments needed for them. By thoroughly familiarizing
+himself with these details, he has been able to produce his plays with
+entire fidelity to history.
+
+Returning once more to New York, he appeared at the Winter Garden, in
+the winter of 1863-64, in a series of Shakespearean revivals. He played
+Hamlet for over one hundred nights, and followed it during that season
+and the next with "Merchant of Venice" and "Othello" (in the latter
+playing the parts of Othello and Iago on alternate nights). During the
+same seasons he appeared also in "Richelieu," "Ruy Blas," "The Fool's
+Revenge," and "Don Cæsar de Bazan." These performances were extended
+into the season of 1866-67, when they were suddenly cut short by the
+total destruction of the Winter Garden Theater by fire on the night of
+the 23d of March, 1867. In this fire Mr. Booth lost his entire wardrobe,
+including many relics of his father, Kemble, and Mrs. Siddons.
+
+The destruction of a theater has seldom drawn forth a more universal
+expression of regret than that which poured in upon Mr. Booth from all
+parts of the country. It was feared that the loss of his valuable
+wardrobe would be irremediable, as indeed it was in a certain sense. All
+over the Union a general wish was expressed that the great actor should
+have a new theater in some of our large cities, and one which should be
+worthy of his genius. Mr. Booth had chosen the city of New York for his
+permanent home, and after the destruction of the Winter Garden Theater
+began to arrange his plans for the erection of a new building of his
+own, which he was resolved should be the most magnificent and the best
+appointed theater in the world. The site chosen was the south-eastern
+corner of the Sixth Avenue and Twenty-third Street in New York, and in
+the summer of 1867 the work of clearing away the old buildings and
+digging the foundations of the new theater was begun. It was carried
+forward steadily, and the building was completed and opened to the
+public in January, 1869.
+
+It is in the Rennaissance style of architecture, and stands seventy feet
+high from the sidewalk to the main cornice, crowning which is a Mansard
+roof of twenty-four feet. "The theater proper fronts one hundred and
+forty-nine feet on Twenty-third Street, and is divided into three parts,
+so combined as to form an almost perfect whole, with arched entrances at
+either extremity on the side, for the admission of the public, and on
+the other for another entrance, and the use of the actors and those
+employed in the house. On either side of these main entrances are broad
+and lofty windows; and above them, forming a part of the second story,
+are niches for statues, surrounded by coupled columns resting on finely
+sculptured pedestals. The central or main niche is flanked on either
+side by quaintly contrived blank windows; and between the columns, at
+the depth of the recesses, are simple pilasters sustaining the elliptic
+arches, which serve to top and span the niches, the latter to be
+occupied by statues of the great creators and interpreters of the drama
+in every age and country. The finest Concord granite, from the best
+quarries in New Hampshire, is the material used in the entire façade, as
+well as in the Sixth Avenue side.... The glittering granite mass,
+exquisitely poised, adorned with rich and appropriate carving, statuary,
+columns, pilasters, and arches, and capped by the springing French roof,
+fringed with its shapely balustrades, offers an imposing and majestic
+aspect, and forms one of the architectural jewels of the city."
+
+In its internal arrangements the theater is in keeping with its external
+magnificence. Entering through a sumptuous vestibule, the visitor passes
+into the magnificent auditorium, which is in itself a rare piece of
+decorative art. The seats are admirably arranged, each one commanding a
+view of the stage. The floor is richly carpeted, and the seats are
+luxuriously upholstered. Three elegant light galleries rise above the
+parquet. The walls and ceiling are exquisitely frescoed, and ornamented
+with bas reliefs in plaster. The proscenium is beautifully frescoed and
+carved, and is adorned with busts of the elder Booth and the proprietor
+of the theater; and in the sides before the curtain are arranged six
+sumptuous private boxes. The curtain is a beautiful landscape. The
+decoration of the house is not done in the rough scenic style so common
+in the most of the theaters of the country, but is the perfection of
+frescoe painting, and is capable of bearing the closest examination. The
+stage is very large, and slopes gradually from the rear to the
+footlights. The orchestra pen is sunk below the level of the stage, so
+that the heads of the musicians do not cut off the view of the audience.
+The dressing of the stage is novel. The side scenes or wings, instead of
+being placed at right angles to the spectator as in most theaters, are
+so arranged that the scene appears to extend to the right and left as
+well as to the rear. In this way the spectator is saved the annoyance of
+often looking through the wings, a defect which in most theaters
+completely dispels the illusion of the play. The scenery here is not set
+by hand, but is moved by machinery, and with such regularity and
+precision that these changes have very much the effect of "dissolving
+views." The scenes themselves are the works of highly educated artists,
+and never degenerate into the rough daubs with which most playgoers are
+familiar. The building is fire-proof, and is warmed and ventilated in a
+peculiar manner. The great central chandelier and the lights around the
+cornice of the auditorium are lighted by electricity.
+
+The plays presented here are superbly put on the stage. The scenery is
+strictly accurate when meant to represent some historic locality, and
+is the finest to be found in America. Perhaps the grandest stage picture
+ever given to an audience was the grave-yard scene in "Hamlet," which
+"held the boards" for over one hundred nights last winter. The dresses,
+equipments, and general "make up" of the actors are in keeping with the
+scenery. Even the minutest detail is carefully attended to. Nothing is
+so unimportant as to be overlooked in this establishment.
+
+It is Mr. Booth's custom to open the season with engagements of other
+distinguished actors, and to follow them himself about the beginning of
+the winter, and to continue his performances until the approach of
+spring, when he again gives way to others. When he is performing, it is
+impossible to procure a seat after the rising of the curtain. Every
+available place is filled, and thousands come from all parts of the
+country to see him. Sometimes it is necessary to secure seats a week in
+advance.
+
+Mr. Booth is still a young man, being now thirty-seven years old. In
+person he is over the medium height, and is well built. His hair is
+black and is worn long, and his dark eyes are large and dreamy. His face
+is that of a poet, strikingly handsome, with an expression of mingled
+sweetness and sadness playing over it. He wears neither beard nor
+moustache. He dresses simply and without ornament, and is grave and
+retiring in his demeanor. He is exceedingly amiable in disposition, and
+is the center of a large circle of devoted friends. He has been married
+twice, and has one child, a daughter, by his first wife. He is a man of
+irreproachable life, and in every thing a high-toned gentleman, and it
+is the high character he bears not less than his genius that has enabled
+him to do such honor to his profession. He is very wealthy, and is in a
+fair way to become a millionaire.
+
+As an actor Mr. Booth is without an equal. His impersonations are
+marked by rare genius and by the most careful study. His Hamlet is
+perhaps his most finished part, as his Richelieu is the most popular
+with the masses. It has been said that his Hamlet is not Shakespeare's
+Hamlet, and this may be true: but it is so exquisite, so perfect, that
+whether it be the conception of Shakespeare or Edwin Booth, it is the
+most powerful, the most life-like counterfeit of "the melancholy Dane"
+ever seen on any stage, and leaves nothing to be desired. His
+personation of the grim old cardinal, whose decrepit body is alone
+sustained by his indomitable will, is masterly, and we see before us,
+not Edwin Booth, the actor of to-day, but the crafty, unscrupulous,
+witty, determined prime minister of France, who bends kings and princes
+to his will. It is absolutely life-like, and to those who have seen the
+portraits of the old cardinal in the museums of France, the accuracy
+with which Booth has counterfeited the personal appearance of Richelieu
+is positively startling. The plays are so superbly set upon the stage
+that we lose sight of the little space they occupy, and seem to be
+gazing upon a real world. His Richard has such a strong humanity in it,
+that it more than half vindicates the humpbacked tyrant's memory, and
+the death scene of this play, as given by Booth, is simply appalling.
+
+It is in vain, however, that we select special characters or attempt
+descriptions of them. No one can truly understand Edwin Booth's acting
+without seeing it. He has studied his heroes so profoundly, analyzed
+their characters so subtly, and entered so heartily into sympathy with
+them, that he has, become able, by the aid of his wonderful genius, to
+entirely discard his own personality, and assume theirs at will.
+
+Mr. Booth has steadily risen in power and finish as an actor, for his
+labors have been unceasing. Great as his triumphs have been, he does
+not regard himself as freed from the necessity of study. His studies
+have become more intelligent than in former years, but not the less
+faithful. He has the true artist's aspiration after the rarest
+perfection in his art, though to those of us without the charmed circle
+it is difficult to see how he can excel his present excellence. Yet that
+he does so we have undoubted proof, for we see him rising higher in the
+admiration and esteem of the world every year, and each year we gather
+fresh laurels to twine around his brows.
+
+He has steadily educated his audiences, and has elevated the standard of
+his art among his countrymen. He has shown them what fine acting really
+is, and has taught them to enjoy it. He has kept them true to the
+legitimate drama, and has done more than any other man to rescue the
+American stage from the insignificance with which it was threatened. It
+speaks volumes for him as an actor and a manager, that when New York
+seemed wholly given up to ballet, burlesque, and opera bouffe, he was
+able to make the almost forgotten masterpieces of Shakespeare the most
+popular and most profitable dramatic ventures of the year.
+
+
+
+[Illustration: JEFFERSON, AS RIP VAN WINKLE.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+JOSEPH JEFFERSON.
+
+
+The subject of this sketch is one of a race of actors. His
+great-grandfather was a contemporary of some of the brightest ornaments
+of the English stage, and was himself a famous actor and the intimate
+friend of Garrick, Sam Foote, and Barr. He was a man of amiable and
+winning disposition, and was strikingly handsome in person. He occupies
+a prominent place in the history of the English stage, and is said to
+have been, socially, one of the most brilliant men of his day. He died
+in 1807. In 1795 his son came to America. Of him, Dunlap, in his
+"History of the American Stage," says, referring to him, in February,
+1797: "He was then a youth, but even then an artist. Of a small and
+light figure, well formed, with a singular physiognomy, a nose perfectly
+Grecian, and blue eyes full of laughter, he had the faculty of exciting
+mirth to as great a degree by power of feature, although handsome, as
+any ugly-featured low comedian ever seen." F.C. Wemyss has said of him
+at a later day: "Mr. Joseph Jefferson was an actor formed in Nature's
+merriest mood--a genuine son of Momus. There was a vein of rich humor
+running through all he did, which forced you to laugh despite of
+yourself. He discarded grimace as unworthy of him, although no actor
+ever possessed a greater command over the muscles of his own face, or
+the faces of his audience, compelling you to laugh or cry at his
+pleasure. His excellent personation of old men acquired for him, before
+he had reached the meridian of life, the title of 'Old Jefferson.' The
+astonishment of strangers at seeing a good-looking young man pointed out
+on the street as Old Jefferson, whom they had seen the night previous at
+the theater tottering apparently on the verge of existence, was the
+greatest compliment that could be paid to the talent of the actor. His
+versatility was astonishing--light comedy, old men, pantomime, low
+comedy, and occasionally juvenile tragedy. Educated in the very best
+school for acquiring knowledge in his profession, ... Jefferson was an
+adept in all the trickery of the stage, which, when it suited his
+purpose, he could turn to excellent account.... In his social relations,
+he was what a gentleman should be--a kind husband, an affectionate
+father, a warm friend, and a truly honest man." The second Jefferson
+enjoyed a brilliant career of thirty-six years in this country, and died
+in 1832, during an engagement at the theater at Harrisburg, which was
+then managed by his son. This son, named Joseph, after his father, was
+born in Philadelphia in 1804, and died at the age of thirty-eight. He
+was not so famous as an actor as his father or grandfather, but like
+them passed his life on the stage. He had a decided talent for painting,
+and was partially educated as an artist, but he never accomplished any
+thing with his pencil. He was a man of most amiable disposition, and was
+possessed of scores of warm and devoted friends; but he was a poor
+business manager, and was always more or less involved in pecuniary
+troubles. He married Mrs. Burke, the famous vocalist, and mother of
+Burke, the comedian.
+
+To this couple, in the city of Philadelphia, was born the JOSEPH
+JEFFERSON of to-day, on the 20th of February, 1829.
+
+This boy was literally brought up on the stage, as he made his first
+appearance upon the boards in a combat scene at the Park Theater in New
+York, when he was but three years old. He soon after went with his
+parents to the West. Olive Logan says of him, at this period of his
+life, "While they were both still children, he and my sister Eliza used
+to sing little comic duets together on the stage of various western
+towns."
+
+He received as good a common-school education as the rapid manner in
+which he was moved about from place to place would permit, and was
+carefully trained in the profession of an actor, to which he was
+destined by his parents, and to which he was drawn by the bent of his
+genius. He appeared in public frequently during his boyhood, but his
+first appearance as a man was at Chanfrau's National Theater, in 1849.
+He met with fair success, and from that time devoted himself entirely
+and carefully to his profession. He began at the bottom of the ladder of
+fame, and gradually worked his way up to his present high position.
+Playing engagements in various minor theaters of the United States, he
+at length secured a position as low comedian at Niblo's Garden in New
+York, where he won golden opinions from the critical audiences of the
+metropolis. In 1857, he closed a most successful engagement as low
+comedian at the theater in Richmond, Virginia, and with that engagement
+ended his career as a stock actor. He had by careful and patient study
+rendered himself capable of assuming the highest place in his
+profession, and these studies, joined to his native genius, had made him
+famous throughout the country as the best low comedian of the day.
+
+Feeling that he had now a right to the honors of a "star" in his
+profession, and urged by the public to assume the position to which his
+genius entitled him, he began a series of engagements throughout the
+Union, in which he more than fulfilled the expectations of his friends.
+He was received with delight wherever he went, and at once became the
+most popular of American comedians.
+
+About a year or two later, he left the United States and made a voyage
+to Australia, through which country he traveled, playing at the
+principal towns. He was extremely successful. His genial, sunny
+character won him hosts of friends among the people of that far-off
+land, and his great genius as an actor made him as famous there as he
+had been in his own country. Australia was then a sort of theatrical El
+Dorado. The prices paid for admission to the theaters were very high,
+and the sums offered to distinguished stars in order to attract them
+thither were immense. Mr. Jefferson reaped a fair share of this golden
+harvest, and at the close of his Australian engagements found himself
+the possessor of a handsome sum. It was this which formed the basis of
+his large fortune; for, unlike his father, he is a man of excellent
+business capacity, and understands how to care for the rewards of his
+labors, so that they shall be a certain protection to him in his old
+age, and an assistance to those whom he shall leave behind him.
+
+Returning to the United States, Mr. Jefferson appeared with increased
+success in the leading cities of the Northern and Western States. His
+principal success at this time was won in the character of Asa
+Trenchard, in the play of "Our American Cousin." His personation of the
+rough, eccentric, but true-hearted Yankee was regarded as one of the
+finest pieces of acting ever witnessed on the American stage, and drew
+crowded houses wherever he went. His range of characters included the
+most refined comedy and the broadest farce, but each delineation bore
+evidence of close and careful study, and was marked by great originality
+and delicacy. There was in his performances a freshness, a
+distinctiveness, and, above all, an entire freedom from any thing
+coarse or offensive, which charmed his audiences from the first. One of
+his critics has well said of him: "As Caleb Plummer he unites in another
+way the full appreciation of mingled humor and pathos--the greatest
+delicacy and affection with rags and homely speech. As Old Phil
+Stapleton he is the patriarch of the village and the incarnation of
+content. As Asa Trenchard he is the diamond in the rough, combining
+shrewdness with simplicity, and elevating instead of degrading the
+Yankee character. As Dr. Ollapod, and Dr. Pangloss, and Tobias Shortcut,
+he has won laurels that would make him a comedian of the first rank. His
+Bob Acres is a picture. There is almost as much to look at as in his Rip
+Van Winkle. There is nearly the same amount of genius, art, experience,
+and intelligence in its personation. Hazlitt says that the author has
+overdone the part, and adds that 'it calls for a great effort of animal
+spirits and a peculiar aptitude of genius to go through with it;' Mr.
+Jefferson has so much of the latter that he can--and to a great extent
+does--dispense with the former requisite. His quiet undercurrent of
+humor subserves the same purpose in the _role_ of Bob Acres that it does
+in other characters. It is full of points, so judiciously chosen, so
+thoroughly apt, so naturally made and so characteristically preserved,
+that the part with Jefferson is a great one. The man of the 'oath
+referential, or sentimental swearing,' makes the entire scope of the
+part an 'echo to the sense.' Even in so poor a farce as that of 'A
+Regular Fix,' Mr. Jefferson makes the eccentricities of Hugh de Brass
+immensely funny. The same style is preserved in every character, but
+with an application that gives to each a separate being."
+
+After a season of great success in this country Mr. Jefferson decided to
+visit England. He appeared at the Adelphi Theater, in London, and at
+once became as popular as he had been at home. His Asa Trenchard, in
+"Our American Cousin," was received by the English with delight; but his
+greatest triumphs were won in Boucicault's version of "Rip Van Winkle,"
+which he has since immortalized. This play was first produced at the
+Adelphi, where it enjoyed an uninterrupted run of nearly two hundred
+nights.
+
+Returning to the United States in the autumn of 1867, Mr. Jefferson
+appeared at the Olympic Theater, in New York, in the play of "Rip Van
+Winkle." Since then he has traveled extensively throughout the United
+States, and has devoted himself exclusively to the character of Rip Van
+Winkle; so exclusively, indeed, that many persons are ignorant of his
+great merits in other roles. By adopting this as his specialty, he has
+rendered himself so perfect in it that he has almost made the
+improvident, light-hearted Rip a living creature. A writer in a popular
+periodical draws the following graphic sketch of his performance of this
+character:
+
+
+     If there is something especially charming in the ideal of Rip Van
+     Winkle that Irving has drawn, there is something even more human,
+     sympathetic and attractive in the character reproduced by
+     Jefferson. A smile that reflects the generous impulses of the man;
+     a face that is the mirror of character; great, luminous eyes that
+     are rich wells of expression; a grace that is statuesque without
+     being studied; an inherent laziness which commands the respect of
+     no one, but a gentle nature that wins the affections of all; poor
+     as he is honest, jolly as he is poor, unfortunate as he is jolly,
+     yet possessed of a spontaneity of nature that springs up and flows
+     along like a rivulet after a rain; the man who can not forget the
+     faults of the character which Jefferson pictures, nor feel like
+     taking good-natured young Rip Van Winkle by the hand and offering a
+     support to tottering old Rip Van Winkle, must have become hardened
+     to all natural as well as artistic influences. It is scarcely
+     necessary to enter into the details of Mr. Jefferson's acting of
+     the Dutch Tam O'Shanter. Notwithstanding the fact that the
+     performance is made up of admirable points that might he enumerated
+     and described, the picture is complete as a whole and in its
+     connections. Always before the public; preserving the interest
+     during two acts of the play after a telling climax; sustaining the
+     realities of his character in a scene of old superstition, and in
+     which no one speaks but himself,--the impersonation requires a
+     greater evenness of merit and dramatic effect than any other that
+     could have been chosen. Rip Van Winkle is imbued with the most
+     marked individuality, and the identity is so conscientiously
+     preserved that nothing is overlooked or neglected. Mr. Jefferson's
+     analysis penetrates even into the minutiæ of the part, but there is
+     a perfect unity in the conception and its embodiment. Strong and
+     irresistible in its emotion, and sly and insinuating in its humor,
+     Mr. Jefferson's Rip Van Winkle is marked by great vigor, as well as
+     by an almost pre-Raphaelite finish.
+
+     The bibulous Rip is always present by the ever-recurring and
+     favorite toast of "Here's your goot healt' and your family's, and
+     may dey live long and prosper." The meditative and philosophic Rip
+     is signaled by the abstract "Ja," which sometimes means _yes_, and
+     sometimes means _no_. The shrewd and clear-sighted Rip is marked by
+     the interview with Derrick Van Beekman. The thoughtful and
+     kind-hearted Rip makes his appearance in that sad consciousness of
+     his uselessness and the little influence he exerts when he says to
+     the children, talking of their future marriage: "I thought maybe
+     you might want to ask me about it," which had never occurred to the
+     children. The improvident Rip is discovered when Dame Van Winkle
+     throws open the inn window-shutter, which contains the enormous
+     score against her husband, and when Rip drinks from the bottle over
+     the dame's shoulder as he promises to reform. The most popular and
+     the most thriftless man in the village; the most intelligent and
+     the least ambitious; the best-hearted and the most careless;--the
+     numerous contrasts which the _role_ presents demand versatility in
+     design and delicacy in execution. They are worked out with a
+     moderation and a suggestiveness that are much more natural than if
+     they were presented more decidedly. The sympathy of Mr. Jefferson's
+     creation is the greatest secret of its popularity. In spite of
+     glaring faults, and almost a cruel disregard of the family's
+     welfare, Rip Van Winkle has the audience with him from the very
+     beginning. His ineffably sad but quiet realization of his desolate
+     condition when his wife turns him out into the storm, leaves
+     scarcely a dry eye in the theatre. His living in others and not in
+     himself makes him feel the changes of his absence all the more
+     keenly. His return after his twenty years' sleep is painful to
+     witness; and when he asks, with such heart-rending yet subdued
+     despair, "Are we so soon forgot when we are gone?" it is no wonder
+     that sobs are heard throughout the house. His pleading with his
+     child Meenie is not less affecting, and nothing could be more
+     genuine in feeling. Yet all this emotion is attained in the most
+     quiet and unobtrusive manner. Jefferson's sly humor crops out at
+     all times, and sparkles through the veil of sadness that overhangs
+     the later life of Rip Van Winkle. His wonder that his wife's
+     "clapper" could ever be stopped is expressed in the same breath
+     with his real sorrow at hearing of her death. "Then who the devil
+     am I?" he asks with infinite wit just before he pulls away at the
+     heartstrings of the audience in refusing the proffered assistance
+     to his tottering steps. He has the rare faculty of bringing a smile
+     to the lips and a tear to the eye at the same time. From the first
+     picture, which presents young Rip Van Winkle leaning carelessly and
+     easily upon the table as he drinks his schnapps, to the last
+     picture of the decrepit but happy old man, surrounded by his family
+     and dismissing the audience with his favorite toast, the character,
+     in Mr. Jefferson's hands, endears itself to all, and adds another
+     to the few real friendships which one may enjoy in this life.
+
+
+Mr. Jefferson is a thoroughly American actor. Abandoning all sensational
+shams, he devotes himself to pure art. His highest triumphs have been
+won in the legitimate branches of his profession, and won by the force
+of his genius, aided only by the most careful study and an intelligent
+analysis of the parts assumed by him. He has the happy faculty of
+entering into perfect sympathy with his characters, and for the time
+being he is less the actor than the individual he personates. It is this
+that gives the sparkle to his eye, the ring to his laughter, and the
+exquisite feeling to his pathos; and feeling thus, he is quick to
+establish a sympathy between himself and his audience, so that he moves
+them at will, convulsing them with laughter at the sallies of the
+light-hearted Rip, or dissolving them in tears at the desolations of the
+lonely old man, so soon forgot after he has gone.
+
+Mr. Jefferson has inherited from his father the genial, sunny
+disposition for which the latter was famous. He is an essentially
+cheerful man, and trouble glances lightly off from him. He is generous
+to a fault, and carries his purse in his hand. Misfortune never appeals
+to him in vain, and many are the good works he has done in the humbler
+walks of his own calling. He is enthusiastically devoted to his
+profession, and enjoys his acting quite as much as his auditors. In
+putting his pieces on the stage, he is lavish of expense, and whenever
+he can control this part of the performance, it leaves nothing to be
+desired. Some years ago he brought out "A Midsummer Night's Dream" at a
+Philadelphia theater, in a style of magnificence rarely witnessed on any
+stage. The scenery was exquisite, and was a collection of artistic gems.
+The success of the piece was very decided in Philadelphia, but when it
+was reproduced, with the same scenery and appointments, in a Western
+city, the public would scarcely go to see it, and the theater incurred a
+heavy loss in consequence. Jefferson's remark to the manager, when the
+failure became apparent, was characteristic: "It is all right," said he.
+"We have done our duty, and have made an artistic success of the piece.
+If the people will not come to see it, it is more their misfortune than
+ours."
+
+He has inherited also from his father considerable talent as an artist,
+and sketches with decided merit, though he makes no pretensions to
+artistic skill. In his vacations, which he passes in the country, his
+sketch-book is his constant companion. He is a famous sportsman and
+fisherman, and in the summer is rarely to be found without his gun and
+rod. It is his delight to tramp over miles of country in search of
+game, or to sit quietly in some cozy nook, and, dropping his line into
+the water, pass the hours in reveries broken only by the exertion
+necessary to secure a finny prize.
+
+Not long since his love of art led him to buy a panorama merely because
+he admired it. He put it in charge of an agent in whom he knew he could
+confide, and started it on a tour throughout the country. In a month or
+two he received a gloomy letter from the agent, telling him that the
+exhibition had failed to draw spectators, and that he despaired of its
+ever paying expenses. "Never mind," wrote Jefferson in reply, "it will
+be a gratification for those who do go to see it, and you may draw on me
+for what money you need." The losses on the panorama, however, were so
+great that Jefferson was compelled to abandon it.
+
+Several years before the death of John Sefton, Jefferson paid him a
+visit at his home in Paradise Valley, during one of his summer rambles.
+Upon reaching Sefton's farm, he found the owner "with his breeches and
+coat sleeves both rolled up, and standing in the middle of a clear and
+shallow stream, where one could scarcely step without spoiling the
+sports of the brook trout, which sparkled through the crystal waters.
+Sefton stood in a crouching attitude, watching, with mingled
+disappointment and good humor, a little pig which the stream was
+carrying down its current, and which, pig-like, had slipped from the
+hands of its owner in its natural aversion to being washed. Jefferson,
+with the true instinct of an artist, dropped his fishing tackle and took
+his sketch-book to transfer the ludicrous scene to paper. Sefton
+appreciated the humor of the situation, and only objected when Jefferson
+began to fill in the background with a dilapidated old barn, at which
+the old gentleman demurred on account of its wretched appearance. The
+artist insisted that it was picturesque, however, and proceeded to put
+it down. Sefton had to submit; but he had his revenge, by writing back
+to New York that 'Jefferson is here, drawing the worst "houses" I ever
+saw.'"
+
+In private life, Mr. Jefferson is a cultivated gentleman, and is
+possessed of numbers of warm and devoted friends. He has been married
+twice. The first Mrs. Jefferson was a Miss Lockyer, of New York, and by
+her he had two children, a son and a daughter. The former is about
+eighteen years of age, and is destined to his father's profession, in
+which he has already shown unusual promise. The present Mrs. Jefferson
+was a Miss Warren, and is a niece of the veteran actor, William Warren,
+of Boston. She was married to her husband early in 1868, and has never
+been an actress.
+
+Mr. Jefferson is the possessor of a large fortune, acquired in the
+exercise of his profession, and being thus comfortably situated, is
+enabled to enjoy more rest from his labors than falls to the lot of most
+American actors. He resides in Orange County, New Jersey, about an
+hour's ride from New York, where he has a handsome country seat, which
+he has adorned with all the attractions that wealth and taste can
+command.
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+PHYSICIANS.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII.
+
+BENJAMIN RUSH.
+
+
+It is not often that a man, however gifted, is capable of rising to
+eminence in two distinct branches of public life, especially in two so
+widely separated from each other as medicine and politics. The subject
+of this sketch was one of the few who have achieved such distinction.
+
+BENJAMIN RUSH was born on Poquestion Creek, near Philadelphia, on the
+24th of December, 1745. He was carefully educated at the best common
+schools of his native county, and then entered Princeton College, where
+he graduated in 1760, at the age of fifteen. He decided, upon leaving
+Princeton, to adopt medicine as his vocation, and began his studies in
+Philadelphia. He gave nine years to preparing himself for his
+profession, and after completing his course in Philadelphia, sailed for
+Europe, where he continued his studies in Edinburgh, London, and Paris.
+He returned home in 1769, and began the practice of medicine in
+Philadelphia, and was at once elected Professor of Chemistry in the
+medical college of that city. He was successful in rapidly acquiring a
+large and lucrative practice, and experienced very few of the
+difficulties and trials which lie in the way of a young physician.
+
+In 1770 he began his career as an author, and for many years his
+writings were numerous. He devoted himself chiefly to medical subjects,
+but history, philosophy, and politics, and even romance, frequently
+claimed his attention. He adopted the patriot cause at the outset of his
+career, and with his pen and voice constantly advocated resistance to
+the injustice of Great Britain. This drew upon him the attention of his
+fellow-citizens, and he was chosen to a seat in the Provincial
+Conference of Pennsylvania. In that body he introduced a resolution
+setting forth the necessity of a declaration of independence of the
+mother country. His resolution was referred to a committee, of which he
+was made the chairman, and this committee having reported affirmatively,
+the resolution was unanimously adopted by the Conference, and was
+communicated to the Continental Congress, then in session in
+Philadelphia, about the last of June, 1776. When it became evident that
+the Congress would declare the independence of the colonies, five
+members of the Pennsylvania delegation withdrew from that body. Their
+places were at once supplied by Rush and four others, and when the
+Declaration was finally adopted Benjamin Rush affixed his signature to
+it as a delegate from Pennsylvania.
+
+In 1776 Dr. Rush was married to Miss Julia Stockton, daughter of Richard
+Stockton, of New Jersey, also a signer of the Declaration. In April,
+1777, he was made Surgeon-General of the Continental army for the Middle
+Department, and in July, 1777, was made Physician-General. He devoted
+himself to his duties with energy and intelligence, and succeeded in
+placing the affairs of his department in as satisfactory a condition as
+the means at the command of the Congress would permit. He was not able,
+however, to arrange every thing as his judgment assured him was best,
+and was subjected to many annoyances and great inconvenience by the
+incompetence and mismanagement of other officials, whom he could not
+control. The management of the hospital supplies of the army was
+especially defective, and was the cause of much suffering to the troops.
+He made repeated efforts to effect a reform in this particular, but
+failing to accomplish any thing, and indignant at the wrongs inflicted
+upon the soldiers, he resigned his commission and retired to private
+life.
+
+During his connection with the army, he had watched the course of
+affairs in his native State with the keenest interest, and in a series
+of four letters to the people of Pennsylvania, called their attention to
+the serious defects of their Constitution of 1776, the chief of which he
+declared to be the giving of the legislative power to one house only.
+His appeals had the effect of bringing about an entire change in the
+form of State government, which was subsequently accomplished by a
+general convention of the people. After the close of the war Dr. Rush
+was elected a member of the State Convention which ratified the
+Constitution of the United States, and distinguished himself in that
+body by his earnest and brilliant advocacy of that instrument. He was
+also a member of the convention which adopted a new State Constitution,
+embodying the reforms he had advised in the letters referred to, and
+labored hard to have incorporated in it his views respecting a penal
+code and a public school system, both of which features he ably
+advocated through the public press.
+
+With this closed his public career, which, though brief, was brilliant,
+and raised him to a proud place among the fathers of the Republic.
+
+Returning to Philadelphia after resigning his position in the army, he
+resumed the practice of medicine, and with increased success. His
+personal popularity and his great skill as a physician brought him all
+the employment he could desire, and he soon took his place at the head
+of the medical faculty of the country.
+
+In 1785 he planned the Philadelphia Dispensary, the first institution of
+the kind in the United States, and to the close of his life remained its
+warm and energetic supporter. In 1789 he was made Professor of the
+Theory and Practice of Medicine in the Philadelphia Medical College, and
+when that institution was merged in the University, in 1791, he was
+elected to the chair of the Institute and Clinical Medicine. In 1797 he
+took the professorship of Clinical Practice also, as it was vacant, and
+was formally elected to it in 1805. These three professorships he held
+until the day of his death, discharging the duties of each with
+characteristic brilliancy and fidelity.
+
+The great professional triumph of his life occurred in the year 1793. In
+that year the yellow fever broke out with great malignancy in
+Philadelphia, and raged violently for about one hundred days, from about
+the last of July until the first of November. Nothing seemed capable of
+checking it. The people fled in dismay from their homes, and the city
+seemed given over to desolation. In the terrible "hundred days," during
+which the fever prevailed, four thousand persons died, and the deaths
+occurred so rapidly that it was frequently impossible to bury the bodies
+for several days. The physicians of the city, though they remained
+heroically at their posts, and labored indefatigably in their exertions
+to stay the plague, were powerless against it, and several of them were
+taken sick and died. Few had any hope of checking the fever, and every
+one looked forward with eagerness to the approach of the season of
+frosts, as the only means of saving those that remained in the stricken
+city.
+
+At the outset of the disease, Dr. Rush had treated it in the same manner
+as that adopted by the medical faculty of the city; but the ill success
+which attended this course soon satisfied him that the treatment was
+wrong. He therefore undertook to subdue it by purging and bleeding the
+patient, and succeeded. The new practice met with the fiercest
+opposition from the other physicians, but Rush could triumphantly point
+to the fact that while their patients were dying his were getting well;
+and he continued to carry out his treatment with firmness and success.
+Dr. Ramsey, of South Carolina, estimates that Rush, by this treatment,
+saved not less than six thousand of his patients from death in the
+"hundred days." Nevertheless, the medical war went on with great
+bitterness, and the opposition to Rush became furious when he boldly
+declared that the fever was not an importation from abroad, as was
+popularly believed, but had been generated by the filthy condition of
+the city during the early part of the summer. Some time after the fever
+had subsided, a paper called "Peter Porcupine's Gazette," edited by
+William Cobbett, made a series of outrageous attacks upon Dr. Rush and
+his treatment of the fever. This exhausted the forbearance of the
+doctor, and he instituted a suit against Cobbett, in which he was
+successful, and secured a verdict of $5,000 damages against his defamer.
+
+During the prevalence of the fever, Dr. Rush's labors were unceasing. He
+was constantly going his rounds, visiting the sick, attending sometimes
+over one hundred patients in a single day. He was called on at all hours
+of the day and night, and it may be said that he scarcely slept or
+enjoyed two hours, uninterrupted rest during the "hundred days."
+
+[Illustration: PRESCRIBING AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.]
+
+For weeks he never sat down to his meals without being surrounded by
+dozens of patients, whose complaints he listened to and prescribed for
+as he ate. These were chiefly the poor, and at such times his house was
+literally thronged with them. He was a kind friend to them; rendering
+his services promptly and heartily, without the slightest wish to
+receive pay in return for them; and during all this terrible summer he
+was to be seen ministering to these poor creatures in the foulest, most
+plague-stricken quarters of the city, shrinking from no danger, and
+deterred from his work of mercy by no thought of his own safety. He has
+left us the following picture of the city during this terrible summer:
+
+
+
+     The disease appeared in many parts of the town remote from the spot
+     where it originated; although in every instance it was easily
+     traced to it. This set the city in motion. The streets and roads
+     leading from the city were crowded with families flying in every
+     direction for safety, to the country. Business began to languish.
+     Water Street, between Market and Race Streets, became a desert.
+     The poor were the first victims of the fever. From the sudden
+     interruption of business, they suffered for a while from poverty as
+     well as disease. A large and airy house at Bush-hill, about a mile
+     from the city, was opened for their reception. This house, after it
+     became the charge of a committee appointed by the citizens on the
+     14th of September, was regulated and governed with the order and
+     cleanliness of an old and established hospital. An American and
+     French physician had the exclusive medical care of it after the 22d
+     of September.
+
+     The contagion, after the second week in September, spared no rank
+     of citizens. Whole families were confined by it. There was a
+     deficiency of nurses for the sick, and many of those who were
+     employed were unqualified for their business. There was likewise a
+     great deficiency of physicians, from the desertion of some and the
+     sickness and death of others. At one time there were only three
+     physicians able to do business out of their houses, and at this
+     time there were probably not less than six thousand persons ill
+     with the fever.
+
+     During the first three or four weeks of the prevalence of the
+     disorder, I seldom went into a house the first time without meeting
+     the parents or children of the sick in tears. Many wept aloud in my
+     entry or parlor, who came to ask advice for their relations. Grief
+     after a while descended below weeping, and I was much struck in
+     observing that many persons submitted to the loss of relations and
+     friends without shedding a tear, or manifesting any other of the
+     common signs of grief.
+
+     A cheerful countenance was scarcely to be seen in the city for six
+     weeks. I recollect once, on entering the house of a poor man, to
+     have met a child of two years old that smiled in my face. I was
+     strangely affected with this sight (so discordant to my feelings
+     and the state of the city), before I recollected the age and
+     ignorance of the child. I was confined the next day by an attack of
+     the fever, and was sorry to hear, upon my recovery, that the father
+     and mother of this little creature died a few days after my last
+     visit to them.
+
+     The streets every-where discovered marks of the distress that
+     pervaded the city. More than one-half the houses were shut up,
+     although not more than one-third of the inhabitants had fled into
+     the country. In walking, for many hundred yards, few persons were
+     met, except such as were in quest of a physician, a nurse, a
+     bleeder, or the men who buried the dead. The hearse alone kept up
+     the remembrance of the noise of carriages or carts in the streets.
+     Funeral processions were laid aside. A black man leading or driving
+     a horse, with a corpse on a pair of chair-wheels, with now and then
+     half a dozen relations or friends following at a distance from it,
+     met the eye in most of the streets of the city, at every hour of
+     the day, while the noise of the same wheels passing slowly over the
+     pavements, kept alive anguish and fear in the sick and well, every
+     hour of the night.
+
+
+The population of Philadelphia at this time was but sixty thousand, and
+the reader will see that a loss of four thousand was a heavy percentage
+for so short a period.
+
+Dr. Rush's skill and heroic conduct in his efforts to stay the ravages
+of the plague made him famous, not only in his own country, but
+throughout Europe, and during the latter part of his life he received
+most gratifying evidences of this fact. In 1805 the King of Prussia sent
+him a coronation medal, and the King of Spain tendered him his thanks
+for his replies to certain questions addressed to him concerning the
+causes and proper treatment of yellow fever. In 1807 the Queen of
+Etruria presented him with a gold medal as a mark of respect; and in
+1811 the Emperor of Russia sent him a testimonial of his admiration of
+his medical character.
+
+In 1799 he was made treasurer of the United States Mint, which position
+he held until his death.
+
+Dr. Rush's writings were voluminous, and embraced a variety of subjects.
+His medical productions occupy a high place in the literature of the
+profession, and his political essays were one of the features of his
+day. He was a man of profound learning, and it is astonishing that one
+so constantly occupied with the duties of an engrossing profession
+should have found the time for such close and thorough general reading.
+
+He was a sincere and earnest Christian, and held the Bible in the
+highest veneration. He wrote an able defense of the use of it as a
+school-book, and for many years was vice-president of the Philadelphia
+Bible Society, which he helped to establish, and the constitution of
+which he drafted. He held skepticism and atheism in the deepest
+abhorrence, and in his own life affords a powerful refutation of the
+assertion one hears so often, that profound medical knowledge is apt to
+make men infidels.
+
+He died in Philadelphia on the 19th of April, 1813, at the good old age
+of sixty-eight, leaving a son who was destined to render additional
+luster to his name by achieving the highest distinction as a statesman.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+
+VALENTINE MOTT.
+
+
+Valentine Mott was born at Glen Cove, on Long Island, on the 20th of
+August, 1785. His father, Dr. Henry Mott, was an eminent practitioner in
+the city of New York, where he died in 1840, at the age of eighty-three.
+Valentine Mott was carefully educated by private tutors until he reached
+the age of nineteen, when he entered Columbia College, New York, as a
+medical student, and at the same time became a private medical pupil of
+his kinsman, Dr. Valentine Seaman. At the age of twenty-one he graduated
+with the degree of M.D.; but feeling that he had not acquired as good a
+medical education as the schools of the Old World could afford, he
+sailed for Europe in 1806, within a few weeks after his graduation at
+Columbia College. Proceeding to London, he was for more than a year a
+regular attendant upon St. Thomas', Bartholomew's, and Guy's hospitals,
+where he conducted his clinical studies under the direction of
+Abernethy, Sir Charles Bell, and Sir Astley Cooper. He chose Sir Astley
+Cooper as his private instructor, and became one of his favorite pupils;
+and also attended the lectures of Currie and Haighton. From London he
+went to Edinburgh, where he attended the lectures of Hope, Playfair, and
+Gregory, as well as the prelections of Dugald Stewart. From Edinburgh
+he went to Paris, and completed his studies in the great hospitals of
+that city.
+
+He gave evidence at an early day of his great surgical abilities. He was
+indeed a born surgeon, possessing in a remarkable degree that peculiar
+adaptation to this branch of his profession, without which no amount of
+study can make a great operator. While a student in the Old World, he
+performed leading operations with a skill and natural readiness which
+astonished his instructors as much as they delighted them. He was
+possessed of a firmness and dexterity of hand, a calm, cool brain, a
+quick, unfailing eye, a calmness of nerve, a strength of will, and a
+physical endurance which were Nature's gifts to him, and which rendered
+him a great surgeon even before he had received his diploma. He did not
+trust to these natural gifts alone, however, but applied himself to the
+theory of his profession with a determination and eagerness which
+nothing could daunt. He was an enthusiast in his studies, and soon
+became known as the most profoundly-learned _young_ physician of his
+day. As he advanced in life, he maintained his reputation, keeping up
+his studies to the last. The great men under whom he studied abroad were
+delighted with him, and Sir Astley Cooper was loud in his praise. He
+exhibited so much skill as an operator that he was often called upon to
+perform operations which the professors would never have dreamed of
+intrusting to any one else, and he went through each trial of this kind
+with a readiness and precision which few even of his instructors
+excelled.
+
+His reputation was unusually flattering to one who had not yet entered
+upon the practice of his profession, and upon his return to the United
+States, in 1809, he was met with an offer of the chair of surgery in
+Columbia College, his _alma mater_. He promptly accepted the position,
+and held it until 1813, when the medical department of Columbia College
+was merged in the College of Physicians and Surgeons. He was at once
+called to the same chair in the new college, and occupied it until 1826.
+In that year he resigned his place in the faculty, in consequence of a
+misunderstanding between the professors and the trustees of the college
+on the principles of college government. Withdrawing entirely from the
+school, he united with Drs. Hosack, Mitchell, Francis, and several
+others, in founding the Rutgers Medical College. This college, after a
+short career of four years, was compelled by the Legislature to
+discontinue its operations, in consequence of an alleged invalidity in
+its charter.
+
+In 1830, Dr. Mott returned to the College of Physicians and Surgeons as
+Professor of Surgery, and in 1840 he became President of the Faculty and
+Professor of Surgery and Relative Anatomy in the new University Medical
+School. The science of Relative Anatomy is of the highest importance to
+the surgeon, and of this science Dr. Mott is generally regarded as the
+author. He held his position in the University for twenty years, and in
+1860, after a period of fifty years spent in the active duties of his
+professorship, retired from the immediate discharge of them, and was
+made Professor Emeritus, in which capacity he occasionally lectured to
+the classes during each of the remaining years of his life.
+
+As a professor and teacher of surgical science Dr. Mott won a brilliant
+reputation, and was considered one of the most thoroughly successful
+instructors in the Union. He had the power of winning the attention of
+his pupils at the opening of his lectures and of retaining it until the
+close. He made even the most difficult operations so clear and simple in
+his lectures that the dullest intellects could comprehend them; and his
+system of practical demonstration of his subjects was vastly superior
+to any thing that had ever been seen in America. He was the first to
+introduce into this country the system of delivering clinical lectures,
+or lectures at the bedside of the patient, whose ailments were operated
+upon during the course of his remarks. This system is naturally the most
+repugnant to the patient, but its advantages to the student are so great
+that they outweigh all other considerations. Other professors had shrunk
+from subjecting their patients to such an ordeal, but Dr. Mott had seen
+enough, during his attendance upon such lectures abroad, to satisfy him
+that it was the only method by which a thorough knowledge of the
+profession of surgery could be imparted, and immediately upon
+establishing himself in this country he introduced it. He met with
+opposition at first, but he gradually overcame it, and made the
+advantages of his system so apparent to all that at length the
+opposition entirely ceased.
+
+The greatest difficulty to which American medical schools have always
+been subject has been the almost utter impossibility of procuring dead
+bodies for dissection. It was this want that compelled Dr. Mott, as it
+has compelled so many others, to seek a practical education in Europe;
+and when he came back to the college as professor, he was met by the
+same drawback to thorough instruction. The law forbade the taking of
+dead bodies for dissection, under severe penalties. If a student was
+ever found in possession of a limb, he was liable to fine and
+imprisonment; and popular sentiment was so strong against the practice
+of dissection that those who engaged in it ran serious risk of incurring
+violence at the hands of the mob. Dr. Mott was often driven to desperate
+expedients in the procuring of subjects. He was fond of relating one of
+his adventures of this kind, which will show the reader how he was
+enabled to carry on his lectures.
+
+It was in the winter of 1815, and it had been found impossible to
+procure a supply of subjects for the season. They could not be obtained
+at any price, and it was evident that if any were to be had, the doctor
+and his pupils would have to take the matter in their own hands. There
+was a grave-yard just outside the city, in which a number of interments
+had recently been made, and the doctor resolved upon securing these
+bodies for his dissecting-room. It was a dangerous undertaking, as
+discovery would subject all engaged in it to the direst penalties of the
+law, if, indeed, they should be lucky enough to escape being lynched by
+the people. In spite of the dangers, however, the students volunteered
+to assist the doctor in the attempt, and at an appointed time proceeded
+to the cemetery, properly disguised, and began the removal of the bodies
+from the graves. The night was intensely dark, and the wind was high,
+both of which circumstances favored their undertaking, but every sound,
+every snapping of a twig or rustling of a leaf caused them to start with
+alarm and gaze anxiously into the darkness. It was near midnight when
+they had finished their task, and, this done, they waited in anxious
+silence for the arrival of the means of removing their prey. Their
+movements had been accurately timed, and they had scarcely completed
+their labors when a cart, driven by a man dressed in the rough clothing
+of a laborer, approached the cemetery at a rapid pace. Signals were
+exchanged between the driver and the students, and the latter fell to
+work to place the bodies, eleven in number, in the cart. Having
+accomplished this, they covered them over in such a manner as to make it
+appear that the cart was loaded with country produce, bound for the city
+markets. When every thing was properly arranged, the students
+disappeared in the darkness, each seeking the means by which he had come
+out from the city, and the driver, turning his cart about, drove off
+rapidly in the direction of New York. It was a long ride, and to an
+imaginative man, carrying eleven dead bodies that had been torn from
+their quiet graves through the darkness of that winter night would have
+been a terrible undertaking. But this man was not imaginative, and,
+besides this, he was keenly alive to the tremendous consequences of
+discovery. He knew that he was carrying his life in his hand, and that
+he needed all the coolness and decision of which he was master. Reaching
+the city long after midnight, he drove rapidly down Broadway and turned
+into Barclay Street. The lights of the college shone out brightly, and
+they had never seemed so welcome as then. The cart was driven rapidly to
+the college entrance, where the students were in readiness to receive
+it. In a few moments the bodies were removed from the cart and conveyed
+to the dissecting-room, and the cart turned over to its owner. The
+driver accompanied the students to the dissecting-room, and, throwing
+off his disguise, revealed the handsome but excited and eager
+countenance of Dr. Mott. He had shared the dangers to which his pupils
+had subjected themselves, and had even borne the part in the enterprise
+attended with the greatest risk. The affair had succeeded admirably, a
+winter's supply of "subjects" had been obtained, and after this the
+lectures went on without interruption.
+
+"A story is told of his readiness in the lecture-room. A mother brought
+into the amphitheater, one morning, an extremely dirty, sickly,
+miserable-looking child, for the purpose of having a tumor removed. He
+exhibited the tumor to the class, but informed the mother that he could
+not operate upon the child without the consent of her husband. One of
+the students, in his eagerness to examine the tumor, jumped over into
+the little inclosure designed for the operator and his patients. Dr.
+Mott, observing this intrusion, turned to the student and asked him,
+with the most innocent expression of countenance: 'Are you the father of
+this child?' Thunders of applause and laughter greeted this ingenious
+rebuke, during which the intruder returned to his place crestfallen."
+
+He was equally as successful in his private practice as in his labors in
+the medical school. His brilliant reputation preceded him in his return
+to his native country, and immediately upon opening his office in New
+York he entered upon a large and lucrative practice. His skill as a
+surgeon was in constant demand, and it is said that during his long
+career he tied the common carotid artery forty-six times, cut for stone
+one hundred and sixty-five times, and amputated nearly one thousand
+limbs. His old preceptor, Sir Astley Cooper, proud of the distinction
+won by his favorite pupil, said of him exultingly: "He has performed
+more of the great operations than any man living, or that ever did
+live."
+
+When he was but thirty-three years old (in 1818) he placed a ligature
+around the bracheo-cephalic trunk or arteria innominata, within two
+inches of the heart, for aneurism of the right subclavian artery. This
+was the first time this wonderful operation had ever been performed, and
+the skill and success with which he accomplished it stamped him as one
+of the brightest lights of his profession. "The patient survived the
+operation twenty-eight days, and thus demonstrated the feasibility of
+this hazardous and thus far unparalleled undertaking. He discovered in
+this case that, though all supply of blood to the blood-vessels of the
+right arm was apparently cut off, the circulation was kept up by the
+interosculating blood-vessels, the pulsation at the wrist maintained,
+and no evidence of loss of vitality or warmth manifested in the limb.
+The patient finally died from secondary hemorrhage."
+
+In 1828 he performed successfully the most difficult and dangerous
+operation known to surgery. A clergyman called upon him to remove an
+enormous tumor in the neck, in which were imbedded and twisted many of
+the great arteries. In this operation it became necessary to take out
+entire the right clavicle or collar bone, to lay bare the membrane which
+surrounds the lungs, to search for and dissect around the arteries which
+ran through the tumor, to make forty ligatures, and to remove an immense
+mass of diseased matter. This terrible operation had never been
+attempted before, and was performed by Dr. Mott without the aid of
+chloroform; yet it was done so skillfully that the patient survived it,
+and in 1865 was still living and discharging his ministerial duties. It
+was thirty years before it was attempted again in any part of the world.
+It was a great triumph of the genius of the operator, and won him
+praises from men of science in all countries.
+
+In 1821 "he performed the first operation for osteo-sarcoma of the lower
+jaw. In 1822 he introduced his original operation for immobility of the
+lower jaw. He was the first surgeon who removed the lower jaw for
+necrosis, and the first to tie successfully the primitive iliac artery
+for aneurism. Other of his original operations were cutting out two
+inches of the deep jugular vein, inseparably imbedded in a tumor, and
+tying both ends of the vein, and closing, with a fine ligature, wounds
+of large veins of a longitudinal or transverse kind, even where an
+olive-sliced piece had been cut out."
+
+It was invariably his practice before attempting an operation on a
+living subject to perform it on a dead body, and by the most minute and
+patient examination to render himself absolute master of the anatomy of
+the parts to be operated upon. He was a thoroughly conscientious man in
+the exercise of his profession, and was always on his guard to resist
+that greatest danger of the skillful surgeon--the temptation to use the
+knife needlessly. It was his practice to investigate his cases
+thoroughly, and never to use the knife unless his judgment was satisfied
+that an operation was necessary. "That he decided in favor of operating
+when some of his associates hesitated, was due rather to his large
+experience than to an overweening fondness for the use of the knife." In
+his operations he was firm and decided. Gifted with an unusual
+steadiness of nerve and strength of muscle, he never allowed his
+sympathy for the patient to cause him to hesitate or inflict one pang
+less than the case required. He was prompt and ready in the event of
+unforeseen complications, and never permitted any thing to take him by
+surprise. His manner toward his patients was tender and sympathizing to
+a remarkable degree, and his brother surgeons used to say of him, that
+he seemed to have the power of cutting with less pain to the patient
+than was possessed by most operators. During forty years of his practice
+anæsthetics were unknown, and he had to operate with the full
+consciousness that his patient was suffering the keenest agony. Besides
+attaining such an exalted position as a surgeon, Dr. Mott won an
+enviable reputation as a physician. His practice was confined almost
+entirely to the best class of the people of New York, and he was for
+many years the favorite accoucheur in a large circle of families in that
+city.
+
+He was an eminently progressive man. He fully recognized the advance of
+science with the growth of the world, and was always prompt to welcome
+any valuable discovery in medicine or surgery. He was among the first to
+adopt and advocate the use of anæsthetics, for no man had had more cause
+to understand the necessity of such assistants. He was himself the
+inventor of many valuable surgical instruments, but he gladly welcomed
+the introduction of others, even though they superseded his own in use.
+To the close of his life he was a diligent student, and watched the
+progress of his science with a keen and intelligent eye. He was the
+author of several works of merit, including a volume of travels, and the
+translator of "Velpau's Operative Surgery," to which he made extensive
+and valuable additions and annotations. He received numerous literary
+and scientific honors from colleges, universities, and learned bodies in
+the United States and Europe.
+
+In 1835 he visited Europe for the purpose of resting from his arduous
+labors, and spent several years in traveling extensively in England, on
+the continent, and in the East. His great achievements had made him as
+famous in the Old World as at home, and he was received wherever he went
+with great distinction. He was cordially welcomed by the most eminent
+surgeons of Paris, and Louis Philippe conceived a warm friendship for
+him. During his visit to Constantinople, he was called upon to attend
+professionally the reigning Sultan Abdul Medjid, who was suffering from
+a tumor in the head. Dr. Mott successfully removed this tumor, and was
+afterwards invested by the Sultan with the order of Knight of
+Medjidechi, of Constantinople.
+
+During his visit to Paris, a circumstance occurred which he related upon
+his return home, and which will serve to show the extremes to which
+professional skill and vanity will sometimes carry men. One of the most
+eminent surgeons in Paris asked him if he would like to see him perform
+his original operation. Dr. Mott replied that nothing would give him
+more pleasure. "Then you shall see it to-morrow," said the Frenchman.
+"But stay," he added, "now I think of it, there is no patient in the
+hospital who has that malady. No matter, my dear friend, there is a poor
+devil in ward No. ---- who is of no use to himself or any body else, and
+if you'll come to-morrow, I'll operate beautifully on him." Dr. Mott at
+once declined to attend the operation or to countenance in any way so
+horrible an outrage.
+
+In person Dr. Mott was a thorough gentleman of the old school. He was an
+exceedingly handsome man, and was possessed of an erect and
+well-developed figure. His hair was as white as snow, and his dress,
+which consisted of a simple suit of spotless black, with linen of
+matchless purity, was in the most perfect taste. He was grave and
+dignified in his deportment, and polished and courteous in every action.
+Even in his most difficult and trying operations the services of the
+assistants were always promptly acknowledged with scrupulous politeness.
+He was possessed of many friends, and was regarded with pride and
+veneration by his profession throughout the world.
+
+During the last winter of his life he had lectured once or twice at the
+Medical School, and had performed several operations of importance in
+his private practice. Although nearly eighty, he was still erect and
+vigorous, and was far from considering himself too old for his work.
+
+On the morning of the 15th of April, 1865, he sent for his barber, as
+was his custom, and submitted himself to the hands of the man who had
+been his attendant in this capacity for years. He was sitting in his
+dressing-room, and, being in fine spirits, began conversing with the
+barber, who, during the conversation, asked him if he had heard the
+terrible news of the day.
+
+"What is the news?" asked the doctor.
+
+"President Lincoln was killed last night at the theater in Washington,"
+was the reply.
+
+The doctor turned as pale as death, and, trembling violently, motioned
+the barber aside, and tottered into the chamber adjoining, in which his
+wife was dressing.
+
+"My dear," he gasped, scarcely able to speak, "I have received such a
+shock. President Lincoln has been murdered."
+
+[Illustration: "PRESIDENT LINCOLN HAS BEEN MURDERED!"]
+
+His agitation had now become so great that he could say no more. He sank
+down into a chair, pale and trembling, and so feeble that he could
+scarcely sit up. He was seized in a short time with acute pains in the
+back, and at the same time his vigor seemed to desert him entirely, and
+he became a weak and broken old man. He was obliged to seek his bed,
+from which he never rose. He grew feebler every day, and died on the
+26th of April, 1865.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GREAT FORTUNES, AND HOW THEY WERE
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diff --git a/old/15161.txt b/old/15161.txt
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+++ b/old/15161.txt
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made, by
+James D. McCabe, Jr., Illustrated by G. F. and E. B. Bensell
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made
+
+Author: James D. McCabe, Jr.
+
+Release Date: February 24, 2005  [eBook #15161]
+
+Language: english
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GREAT FORTUNES, AND HOW THEY WERE
+MADE***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Dave Macfarlane, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 15161-h.htm or 15161-h.zip:
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/5/1/6/15161/15161-h/15161-h.htm)
+      or
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/5/1/6/15161/15161-h.zip)
+
+
+
+
+
+GREAT FORTUNES, AND HOW THEY WERE MADE
+
+Or, The Struggles and Triumphs of Our Self-Made Men
+
+by
+
+JAMES D. MCCABE, JR.,
+
+Author of _Planting the Wilderness_, etc., etc.
+
+Numerous Illustrations from Original Designs by G. F. & E. B. Bensell
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: CONSTERNATION AT THE SIGHT OF FULTON'S MONSTER.]
+
+
+
+
+"MAN, it is not thy works, which are mortal, infinitely little, and the
+greatest no greater than the least, but only the _spirit thou workest
+in_, that can have worth or continuance."--CARLYLE.
+
+
+
+
+George Maclean,
+Philadelphia, New York and Boston
+Electrotyped at the Franklin Type Foundry, Cincinnati
+
+1871
+
+
+
+
+"The physical industries of this world have two relations in them: one
+to the actor, and one to the public. Honest business is more really a
+contribution to the public than it is to the manager of the business
+himself. Although it seems to the man, and generally to the community,
+that the active business man is a self-seeker, and although his motive
+may be self-aggrandizement, yet, in point of fact, no man ever manages a
+legitimate business in this life, that he is not doing a thousand-fold
+more for other men than he is trying to do even for himself. For, in the
+economy of God's providence, every right and well organized business is
+a beneficence and not a selfishness. And not less is it so because the
+merchant, the mechanic, the publisher, the artist, think merely of their
+profit. They are in fact working more for others than they are for
+themselves."
+
+HENRY WARD BEECHER.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+The chief glory of America is, that it is the country in which genius
+and industry find their speediest and surest reward. Fame and fortune
+are here open to all who are willing to work for them. Neither class
+distinctions nor social prejudices, neither differences of birth,
+religion, nor ideas, can prevent the man of true merit from winning the
+just reward of his labors in this favored land. We are emphatically a
+nation of self-made men, and it is to the labors of this worthy class
+that our marvelous national prosperity is due.
+
+This being the case, it is but natural that there should be manifested
+by our people a very decided desire to know the history of those who
+have risen to the front rank of their respective callings. Men are
+naturally cheered and encouraged by the success of others, and those who
+are worthy of a similar reward will not fail to learn valuable lessons
+from the examples of the men who have preceded them.
+
+With the hope of gratifying this laudable desire for information, and
+encouraging those who are still struggling in the lists of fame and
+fortune, I offer this book to the reader. I have sought to tell simply
+and truthfully the story of the trials and triumphs of our self-made
+men, to show how they overcame where others failed, and to offer the
+record of their lives as models worthy of the imitation of the young men
+of our country. No one can hope to succeed in life merely by the force
+of his own genius, any more than he can hope to live without exerting
+some degree of influence for good or evil upon the community in which
+his lot is cast. Success in life is not the effect of accident or of
+chance: it is the result of the intelligent application of certain fixed
+principles to the affairs of every day. Each man must make this
+application according to the circumstances by which he is surrounded,
+and he can derive no greater assistance or encouragement in this
+undertaking than by informing himself how other men of acknowledged
+merit have succeeded in the same departments of the world's industry.
+That this is true is shown by the fact that many of the most eminent men
+attribute their great achievements to the encouragement with which the
+perusal of the biographies of others inspired them at critical periods
+of their careers. It is believed that the narrations embraced in these
+pages afford ample instruction and entertainment to the young, as well
+as food for earnest reflection on the part of those who are safely
+advanced upon their pathway to success, and that they will prove
+interesting to all classes of intelligent readers.
+
+Some explanation is due to the reader respecting the title that has been
+chosen for the work. The term "Great Fortunes" is not used here to
+designate pecuniary success exclusively. A few of the men whose lives
+are herein recorded never amassed great wealth. Yet they achieved the
+highest success in their vocations, and their lives are so full of
+interest and instruction that this work must have been incomplete and
+unsatisfactory had they been passed over in silence. The aim of the
+writer has been to present the histories of those who have won the
+highest fame and achieved the greatest good in their respective
+callings, whether that success has brought them riches or not, and above
+all, of those whose labors have not only opened the way to fortune for
+themselves, but also for others, and have thus conferred lasting
+benefits upon their country.
+
+In short, I have sought to make this work the story of the _Genius of
+America_, believing as I do that he whose achievements have contributed
+to the increase of the national wealth, the development of the national
+resources, and the elevation of the national character, though he
+himself be poor in purse, has indeed won a great fortune, of which no
+reverse can ever deprive him.
+
+J.D. McC., JR.
+
+NEW YORK, _24th October, 1870_.
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+CONSTERNATION AT SIGHT OF FULTON'S MONSTER (Frontispiece)
+GIRARD COLLEGE
+GIRARD'S HEROISM
+ASTOR'S FIRST TRIP FOR FURS
+"MY MEN SHALL NOT SUFFER"
+PORTRAIT OF GEORGE PEABODY
+PEABODY PAYING FOR A NIGHT'S LODGING
+PORTRAIT OF CORNELIUS VANDERBILT
+VANDERBILT EARNING HIS FIRST HUNDRED DOLLARS
+VANDERBILT CARRYING OFF THE SHERIFF
+FOUNDING A GREAT FORTUNE
+PORTRAIT OF ROBERT FULTON
+AN AMAZING REVELATION
+"THE MADHOUSE IS THE PROPER PLACE FOR HIM"
+WHITNEY WATCHING THE FIRST COTTON-GIN
+PORTRAIT OF ELIAS HOWE, JR.
+HOWE'S FIRST IDEA OF THE SEWING-MACHINE
+THE BOY COLT INVENTING THE REVOLVER
+PORTRAIT OF SAMUEL F.B. MORSE
+HOW THE NEW YORK HERALD BEGAN
+MARSHALL'S DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY
+PORTRAIT OF JAMES T. BRADY
+"THEY ARE GOING TO HANG MY BROTHER; YOU CAN SAVE HIM!"
+THE TRUANT'S SECRET DISCOVERED
+PORTRAIT OF HIRAM POWERS
+POWERS' DISTRUST OF THE HUNTERS
+FILIAL DEVOTION SHAPES A GREAT CAREER
+CARTWRIGHT CALLING UP THE DEVIL
+PORTRAIT OF NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
+JEFFERSON, AS RIP VAN WINKLE
+PRESCRIBING AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE
+"PRESIDENT LINCOLN HAS BEEN MURDERED!"
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+I. MERCHANTS.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+STEPHEN GIRARD.
+
+The fog in the Delaware--News of the war--Alarm of the French skipper--A
+narrow escape from capture--Arrival of Girard in Philadelphia--Early
+history of Stephen Girard--An unhappy childhood--Goes to sea--Is
+licensed to command--Becomes a trader in Philadelphia--Marries Mary
+Lum--Unfortunate issue of the marriage--Capture of Philadelphia by the
+British--Early commercial life of Stephen Girard--How he earned his
+first money, and the use he made of it--Aid from St. Domingo--His rigid
+attention to business--Thoroughness of his knowledge--One of his letters
+of instructions--His subordinates required to obey orders though they
+ruin him--Anecdote of Girard and one of his captains--His promptness and
+fidelity in business--He never breaks his word--How he lost five hundred
+dollars--Buys the old Bank of the United States and becomes a
+banker--Cuts down the salaries of his clerks--Refuses his watchman an
+overcoat--Indifference to his employes--Contrast between his personal
+and business habits--His liberality in financial operations--He
+subscribes for the entire Government loan in 1814, and enables the
+United States to carry on the war--His generosity toward the
+Government--The suspension of specie payments--Financial troubles--How
+Girard saved his own notes--His public spirit--How he made half a
+million of dollars on a captured ship--Personal characteristics--Why he
+valued money--His ambition--His infidelity--Causes of the defects of his
+character--A favorable view--Heroic conduct of Stephen Girard during
+the prevalence of the yellow fever in Philadelphia--The Good
+Samaritan--He practices medicine, and congratulates himself that he has
+killed none of his patients--His industry--Visit of Mr. Baring to Mr.
+Girard--A curious reception--Failing health and death of Stephen
+Girard--His will--His noble bequests--Establishment of Girard College.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+JOHN JACOB ASTOR.
+
+Legitimate business the field of success--Reasons for claiming Astor as
+an American--Birth and early life--Religious training--The village of
+Waldorf--Poverty--The jolly butcher--Young Astor's repugnance to his
+father's trade--Unhappy at home--Loses his mother--His desire to
+emigrate to the "New Land"--Leaves home--His voyage down the
+Rhine--Reaches London and enters the service of his brother--His efforts
+to prepare for emigration--Learns to speak English--Peace between the
+United States and Great Britain--The road to the "New Land" open--Astor
+sets out for America--His first ventures in commerce--The voyage--How he
+proposed to save his Sunday clothes--Arrival in the Chesapeake--The
+ice-blockade--Astor makes a friend--The fur trader's story--Astor sees
+the way to fortune--Reaches New York--His first situation--Learning the
+business--His method of proceeding--An example to young men--His capacity
+for business operations--He is promoted--His journeys to Canada, and
+their results--Sets up in business for himself--The fur trade of North
+America--A survey of the field of Astor's operations--His capital--His
+tramps into the wilderness in search of furs--Predictions as to the
+future settlement of the country--His first consignment to England--His
+marriage--A good wife--Improvement in his prospects--Buys his first
+ship--The secret of his success--Close attention to business--His
+economical habits--His indorsement disputed by a bank clerk--Statements
+of the profits on furs--He engages in the Chinese trade--How the
+Government aided the early China traders--Amount made by Astor in his
+legitimate business--His real estate operations--His foresight and
+courage--How eight thousand dollars yielded eighty thousand--His real
+estate in the City of New York--Purchases the half of Putnam County--The
+Roger and Mary Morris estate controversy--Astor wins his suit, and makes
+half a million of dollars--Astor's scheme of colonization--A grand
+enterprise--Settlement of Astoria--Betrayed by his agents, and the
+scheme brought to failure--Astor withdraws from active business--His
+boyhood's vow and its fulfillment--Builds the Astor House--His voyage to
+Europe--The return--The troubles of a millionaire--The great man
+seasick--A curious draft--The last years of his life--His fondness for
+literary men--His death and burial--His will--Opposite views of his
+character--How his refusal to buy a chronometer cost him seventy
+thousand dollars--He remembers an old friend--His gift of a lease--His
+humor--"William has a rich father."
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+ALEXANDER T. STEWART.
+
+Birth and early life--Becomes his grandfather's ward--Designed for the
+ministry--A change in his plans--Comes to America--Teaches school in New
+York--Becomes a dry goods merchant--Receives a legacy--His first
+importation--How he began business--An energetic trader--His sample lots
+and their history--Success of his enterprise--He begins by encouraging
+honesty in trade--Wins a name for reliability--The system of selling at
+one price--Inaugurates the "selling off at cost" feature--His courage in
+business--How he raised the money to meet his note--Improvement in his
+business--He enlarges his store--As an inducement to the ladies, employs
+for clerks handsome young men--The crisis of 1837--Stewart comes out of
+it a rich man--How he did so--Builds his lower store--Predictions of
+failure--The result--Compels the Government to purchase goods from
+him--His foresight and liberality--Charged with superstition--Lucky and
+unlucky persons--Story of the old apple woman--Remarks at the opening of
+the St. Nicholas Hotel--Reasons of Stewart's success--A hard worker--How
+he receives visitors--Running the gauntlet--How he gets rid of
+troublesome persons--Estimate of Mr. Stewart's real estate in New
+York--His new residence--His benevolence--Aid for Ireland, and free
+passages to America--Home for women--Political sentiments--Mr. Stewart's
+appointment as Secretary of the Treasury--Feeling of the country--The
+retail store of A.T. Stewart & Co.--A palace of glass and iron--Internal
+arrangements--The managers and salesmen--List of sales--Wages
+given--Visitors--The principal salesroom--The parcel department--The
+wagons and stables--Extravagant purchases--Mr. Stewart's supervision of
+the upper store--The system of buying--The foreign agencies--Statement
+of the duties paid each day--Personal appearance of Mr. Stewart.
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+AMOS LAWRENCE.
+
+The Lawrence family--A poor boy--Early education--Delicate
+health--Obtains a situation at Dunstable--Returns to Groton--Becomes Mr.
+Brazer's apprentice--The variety store--An amateur doctor--Importance of
+Groton in "old times"--Responsibility of young Lawrence--Is put in
+charge of the business--High character--Drunkenness the curse of New
+England--Lawrence resolves to abstain from liquors and tobacco--His
+self-command--Completes his apprenticeship--Visits Boston--An unexpected
+offer--Enters into business in Boston--Is offered a partnership, but
+declines it--His sagacity justified--Begins business for
+himself--Commercial importance of Boston--Aid from his father--A narrow
+escape--lesson for life--Amos Lawrence's method of doing business---An
+example for young men--His business habits--He leaves nothing unfinished
+over Sunday--Avoids speculation--His views upon the subject--Introduces
+double entry in book-keeping into Boston--His liberality to his
+debtors--Does not allow his business to master him--Property gained by
+some kinds of sacrifices not worth having--Forms a partnership with his
+brother Abbott--Business of the firm--They engage in manufactures--Safe
+business principles--A noble letter--Political opinions--His
+charities--Statement of his donations--Requests that no public
+acknowledgment of his gifts be made--Character as a merchant and a
+man--Advice to his son--His religious character--Loss of his health--His
+patience and resignation--The model American merchant.
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+ANDREW V. STOUT.
+
+Early struggles--Acquires an education--Undertakes the support of his
+family--The boy teacher--Hard work--Is made instructor of Latin--A
+trying position--How he conquered his difficulties--Is made principal of
+a public school--His first business ventures--Engages in the building of
+houses--His platform of integrity--His success--A great mistake--He
+indorses a note--The consequence of a false step--Liberal action of the
+bank--Mr. Stout resolves to accept no accommodation--Pays the notes, and
+loses twenty-three thousand dollars--Establishes himself as a wholesale
+boot and shoe dealer--Enters the dry goods trade--Close attention to
+business--His system and its success--Organization of the Shoe and
+Leather Bank of New York--Mr. Stout is made Vice President, and
+subsequently President--Character as a citizen--Is made City
+Chamberlain--Generosity to the police force--Interest in church
+affairs--Kindness to the poor--Encouragement which his career affords
+others.
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+JONAS CHICKERING.
+
+The largest building in the United States--The Chickering piano
+factory--Birth of Jonas Chickering--Early love of music--Is apprenticed
+to a cabinet-maker--Is employed to repair a piano--Succeeds in the
+undertaking--Consequence of this success--Becomes a piano-maker--Removes
+to Boston--Is employed as a journeyman--The labor of his life--His
+patience and skill--Is known as the best workman in the
+establishment--History of the piano--Chickering's first discovery--His
+hope of success based on intelligence--Becomes a master of the theory of
+sound--His studies and their result--Makes an improvement in the framing
+of pianos--Invents the circular scale for square pianos--Generously
+makes his invention free--A noble gift to the world--His business
+operations--Increase in the demand for his instruments--Death of Captain
+Mackay--Mr. Chickering undertakes the sole charge of his affairs--Fears
+of his friends--Magnitude of the business--The lawyer's question
+answered--The mortgages paid--Rapid success of Mr. Chickering--His
+varied duties--Sharp competition--A bogus Chickering--How a Boston bank
+lost his custom--His independence in business--His character as a
+merchant--Trains his sons to succeed him in business--The result of his
+efforts--The present house of Chickering & Sons--Destruction of the
+factory--Offers of aid--Mr. Chickering's kindness to his workmen--Sets
+to work to re-establish his business--The new factory begun--Sudden
+death of Mr. Chickering.
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+NICHOLAS LONGWORTH.
+
+The grape interest of the United States--Growing demand for American
+wines--Instrumentality of Mr. Longworth in producing this success--Early
+life of Mr. Longworth--Apprenticed to a shoemaker--Removes to South
+Carolina--Returns to Newark and studies law--Removes to
+Cincinnati--Admitted to the bar--His first case--Is paid in whisky
+stills, and trades them for lands which make his fortune--Rapid growth
+of Cincinnati--The oldest native inhabitant of Chicago--Longworth's
+investments in real estate--Immense profits realized by him--His
+experiments in wine growing--History of the Catawba grape--Longworth
+decides to cultivate it entirely--His efforts to promote the grape
+culture in the Ohio Valley--Offers a market for all the grape juice that
+can be brought to him--The result of his labors seen in the Ohio
+vineyards of to-day--His wine cellars--Amount of wine made annually by
+him--The process used--How "Sparkling Catawba" is made--Longworth's
+experiments with strawberries--His liberality--Gift of land to the
+Observatory--His challenge to a grumbler--Estimate of his character--His
+eccentricities--His generosity to his tenants--How he made money by
+helping others to grow rich--His politics--How he subscribed one hundred
+dollars to elect Clay--His hatred of vagabondage--His stone quarry--How
+he provided it with laborers--His system of helping the poor--Is charged
+with stinginess--The "devil's poor"--Personal appearance--The
+"Hard-times" overcoat--Charity to a millionaire--Death of Mr. Longworth.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+GEORGE PEABODY.
+
+Birth and parentage--Early education--His first lessons in business--An
+apprentice in a country store--Youthful ambition--A desire for
+change--The visit to Post Mills--Removal to Newburyport--Reasons for his
+attachment to that place--His first patron--Peabody goes south--A
+soldier in the War of 1812-15--A young merchant--A change of
+prospects--A partner in the house of Riggs & Peabody--Peabody's business
+capacity--An irregular banker--His reputation as a business
+man--Promising opening of a brilliant career--Retirement of Mr.
+Riggs--Growth of the business--A branch house in London--Mr. Peabody
+saves the credit of the State of Maryland--Tribute from Edward
+Everett--Success in London--A model American merchant--Establishment of
+the house of George Peabody & Co.--The Fourth of July dinner--The
+exhibition of 1851--Patriotism of Mr. Peabody--How he saved the United
+States from humiliation--Admission of the "London Times"--Mr. Peabody's
+business habits--His economy--Adventure with a conductor--Finds a
+conscientious hackman--Personal simplicity--Visits to the United
+States--His munificent donations--His last visit--Returns to London and
+dies--Honors paid to his memory--The funeral ceremonies--His burial at
+Peabody--Statement of his donations and bequests--His example
+encouraging to the young.
+
+
+II. CAPITALISTS.
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+CORNELIUS VANDERBILT.
+
+Staten Island seventy-six years ago--The establishment of the Staten
+Island ferry--Birth of Cornelius Vanderbilt--His boyhood--Defective
+education--A famous rider--His early reputation for
+firmness--Superintends the removal of a ship's cargo at the age of
+twelve--How he pawned a horse--Becomes a boatman--How he bought his
+boat--A disastrous voyage--His life as a boatman--His economy and
+industry--Earns three thousand dollars--The alarm at Fort
+Richmond--Vanderbilt's perilous voyage for aid for the forts--His
+marriage--His first contract--How he supplied the harbor
+defenses--Builds his first schooner--His winter voyages--Becomes a
+steamboat captain--His foresight--Leases the hotel at New Brunswick--The
+dangers of navigating the New York waters--The steamboat war--How
+Captain Vanderbilt eluded the sheriff--Becomes manager of the steamboat
+line--Declines an increase of salary--Only wants to carry his
+point--Refuses to buy Mr. Gibbons's interest in the steamboat company,
+and builds his own boat--Narrow escape from ruin--Final
+triumph--Systematic management of his vessels--How he ruined the
+"Collins Line"--The "North Star"--Becomes a railroad director--How he
+foiled a plan to ruin him--dishonest legislature--Vanderbilt's
+triumph--His gift to the Government--His office in New York--Vanderbilt
+in business hours--Personal characteristics--Love for horses--His
+family.
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+DANIEL DREW.
+
+Birth-place--Birth and parentage--A farmer's boy--Goes to New York to
+seek his fortune--Becomes a cattle drover--Leases the Bull's Head
+Tavern--His energy and success in his business--Brings the first western
+cattle to New York--Helps a friend to build a steamboat--The fight with
+Vanderbilt--Drew buys out his friend, and becomes a steamboat
+owner--Vanderbilt endeavors to discourage him--He perseveres--His
+success--Formation of the "People's Line" on the Hudson River--The
+floating palaces--Forms a partnership with George Law, and establishes
+the Stonington line--Opening of the Hudson River Railway--Drew's
+foresight--Room enough for the locomotive and the steamboat--Buys out
+the Champlain Company--Causes of his success as a steamboat
+manager--Becomes a banker--His success in Wall Street--Indorses the
+acceptances of the Erie Railway Company--His courage and calmness in the
+panic of 1857--He saves "Erie" from ruin--Elected a director of the Erie
+Road--Is made Treasurer--His interest in the road--His operations in
+Wall Street--His farm in Putnam County--Joins the Methodist Church--His
+liberality--Builds a church in New York--Founds the Drew Theological
+Seminary--Estimate of his wealth--His family--Personal appearance.
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+JAMES B. EADS.
+
+Birth--Childhood--Fondness for machinery--Early mechanical
+skill--Constructs a steam engine at the age of nine years--His
+work-shop--Death of his father--Works his way to St. Louis--Sells apples
+on the streets--Finds employment and a friend--Efforts to
+improve--Becomes a clerk on a Mississippi steamer--Undertakes the
+recovery of wrecked steamboats--Success of his undertaking--Offers to
+remove the obstacles to the navigation of the Mississippi--Failure of
+his health--Retires from business--Breaking out of the war--Summoned to
+Washington--His plan for the defense of the western rivers--Associated
+with Captain Rodgers in the purchase of gunboats--His first contract
+with the Government--Undertakes to build seven ironclads in sixty-five
+days--Magnitude of the undertaking--His promptness--Builds other
+gunboats during the war--The gunboat fleet at Forts Henry and Donelson
+the private property of Mr. Eads--Excellence of the vessels built by
+him--A model contractor--Residence in St. Louis.
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+CYRUS W. FIELD.
+
+Birth--Parentage--Early education--Goes to New York in search of
+employment--Obtains a clerkship in a city house, and in a few years
+becomes a partner--A rich man at thirty-four--Retires from
+business--Travels in South America--Meets Mr. Gisborne--Plan of the
+Newfoundland Telegraph Company--Mr. Field declines to embark in
+it--Conceives the idea of a telegraph across the Atlantic
+Ocean--Correspondence with Lieut. Maury and Prof. Morse--The scheme
+pronounced practicable--Mr. Field secures the co-operation of four New
+York capitalists--Organization of the New York, Newfoundland, and London
+Telegraph Company--Building of the line from New York to St. John's--A
+herculean task--The Governmental ocean surveys of the United States and
+England--Efforts to secure aid in England--Liberal action of the
+Government--Organization of the Atlantic Telegraph Company--A hard-won
+success in America--Passage of the bill by Congress--The first attempt
+to lay the cable--The expedition of 1857--The telegraph fleet--Scenes on
+board--Loss of the cable--Failure of the expedition--Difficulties
+remedied--The new "paying-out" machinery--The expedition of 1858--The
+second attempt to lay the cable--Dangerous storm--Failures--Loss of the
+cable--The third attempt--The cable laid successfully--Messages across
+the Atlantic--Celebrations in England and the United States--The signals
+cease--The cable a failure--Discouraging state of affairs--Courage of
+Mr. Field--Generous offer of the British Government--Fresh
+soundings--Investigations of the Telegraph Board--Efforts of Mr. Field
+to raise new capital--Purchase of the Great Eastern--The fourth attempt
+to lay the cable--Expedition of 1865--Voyage of the Great Eastern--Loss
+of the cable--Efforts to recover it unsuccessful--What the expedition
+demonstrated--Efforts to raise more capital--They are pronounced
+illegal--The new company--The fifth attempt to lay the cable--Voyage of
+the Great Eastern--The cable laid at last--Fishing up and splicing the
+cable of 1865--The final triumph--Credit due to Mr. Field.
+
+
+III. INVENTORS.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+ROBERT FULTON.
+
+Trinity churchyard--The Livingston vault--An interesting place--Fulton's
+tomb--Birth of Robert Fulton--Boyhood--Early mechanical skill--Robert
+astonishes his tutor--Robert's fireworks--"Nothing is
+impossible"--"Quicksilver Bob"--The fishing excursion--The first
+paddle-wheel boat--Fulton's success as an artist--His gift to his
+mother--His removal to England--Intimacy with Benjamin West--Goes to
+Devonshire--Acquaintance with the Duke of Bridgewater--His interest in
+canal navigation--His first inventions--Goes to Paris--Residence with
+Mr. Barlow--Studies in engineering--Invents the diving boat--The
+infernal machine--His patriotic reply to the British ministry--His
+marriage--Returns to America--The General Government declines to
+purchase his torpedo--Brief history of the first experiments in steam
+navigation--Fulton's connection with Livingston--The trial boat on the
+Seine--Determines to build a boat on the Hudson--Fulton and Livingston
+are given the sole right to navigate the waters of New York by
+steam--Popular ridicule--Disbelief of scientific men--Launch of the
+"Clermont"--The trial trip--The first voyage up the Hudson--Fulton's
+triumph--Scenes along the river--Efforts to sink the
+steamer--Establishment of steam navigation on the Hudson River--The
+first New York ferry-boats--The floating docks--Boats for the West--New
+York threatened by the British fleet in 1814--Fulton's plan for a steam
+frigate--The "Fulton the First"--The steamboat war--Illness of
+Fulton--His death and burial--His last will--True character of his
+invention.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+CHARLES GOODYEAR.
+
+Discovery of India-rubber--Mode of collecting it--Preparation and use by
+the natives--Its introduction into the United States--Mr. E.M. Chaffee's
+process--The India-rubber fever--Brief success of the India-rubber
+companies--Their sudden failure--Visit of Mr. Goodyear to New York--He
+invents an improvement in the life preserver--Early history of Charles
+Goodyear--His failure as a merchant--Offers his invention to the Roxbury
+Company--The agent's disclosures--Mr. Goodyear finds his mission--His
+first efforts--A failure--Discouraging state of his affairs--Renews his
+efforts--Experiments in India-rubber--Coldness of his friends--His
+courage and perseverance--Goes to New York--Accidental discovery of the
+aqua fortis process--Partial success--Ruined--Life on Staten
+Island--Removes to Boston--Delusive prosperity--The mail bag
+contract--His friends urge him to abandon his efforts--He refuses--On
+the verge of success--Discovers the usefulness of sulphur--The
+inventor's hope--The revelation--Discovers the secret of
+vulcanization--Down in the depths--Kept back by poverty--A beggar--A
+test of his honesty--Starvation at hand--The timely loan--Removal to New
+York--Difficulties in the way--Death of his youngest child--Finds
+friends in New York--His experiments in vulcanization--Final
+success--His heart in his work--Fails to secure patents in Europe--His
+losses from dishonest rivals--Declaration of the Commissioner of
+Patents--Death of Mr. Goodyear--Congress refuses to extend his
+patent--His true reward.
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+ELI WHITNEY.
+
+The home of General Greene in Georgia--The soldier's widow--An arrival
+from New England--The young schoolmaster--A mechanical genius--Early
+history of Whitney--Mrs. Greene's invitation--Visit of the
+planters--State of the cotton culture in 1792--A despondent
+planter--Mrs. Greene advises them to try Whitney--Origin of the cotton
+gin--Whitney's first efforts--His workshop--The secret labors--How he
+provided himself with materials--Finds a partner--Betrayal of his
+secret--He is robbed of his model--He recovers it and completes it--The
+first cotton gin--Statement of the revolution produced by the invention
+in the cotton culture of the South--Opinion of Judge Johnson--The story
+of an inventor's wrongs--Whitney is cheated and robbed of his
+rights--The worthlessness of a patent--A long and disheartening
+struggle--Honorable action of North Carolina--Congress refuses to extend
+the patent--Whitney abandons the cotton gin--Engages in the manufacture
+of firearms--His improvements in them--Establishes an armory in
+Connecticut, and makes a fortune--Death.
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+CHAUNCEY JEROME.
+
+The old-fashioned clocks--Their expensiveness--Condition of the clock
+trade of Connecticut sixty years ago--Early history of Chauncey
+Jerome--A hard life--Death of his father--Becomes a farmer's boy--Is
+anxious to become a clock-maker--An over-wise guardian--Hardships of an
+apprentice--How Jerome became a carpenter--Hires his winters from his
+master--Becomes a dial-maker--The clock-making expedition--Jerome's
+first savings--Takes a wife--A master carpenter--Poor pay and hard
+work--Buys a house--A dull winter--Enters Mr. Terry's factory--The
+wooden clock business--Sets up in business for himself--Industry and
+energy rewarded--His first order--Sends his clocks South--Enlarges his
+business--Improvements in his clocks--Losses on southern shipments from
+dampness--Depression of business--Jerome's anxiety--A wakeful
+night--Invention of the brass--A new era in the clock trade--Beneficial
+effects of Jerome's invention--Magnitude of the Connecticut clock trade
+at present--Growth of Jerome's business--Makes a fortune--Organization
+of the "Jerome Clock-making Company"--Practical withdrawal of Mr.
+Jerome--Difficulties of the company--Jerome a ruined man--Honest
+independence--Finds employment--Becomes the manager of the Chicago
+Company.
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+ELIAS HOWE, JR.
+
+The first sewing-machine--Birth of Elias Howe--A poor man's son--Raised
+to hard work--His first employment--The little mill-boy--Delicate
+health--Goes to Lowell to seek his fortune--Thrown out of
+employment--Removes to Cambridge--Works in a machine shop with N.P.
+Banks--Marries--A rash step--Growing troubles--A hard lot--Conceives the
+idea of a sewing-machine--His first experiments unsuccessful--Invents
+the lock stitch and perfects the sewing-machine--Hindered by his
+poverty--A hard struggle--Finds a partner--His winter's task--His attic
+work-shop--Completion of the model--Perfection of Howe's
+invention--Efforts to dispose of the invention--Disappointed
+hopes--Popular incredulity--Becomes an engine driver--Amasa Howe goes to
+England with the sewing-machine--Bargain with the London
+merchant--Elias removes to London--Loses his situation--The rigors of
+poverty--Returns to America--Death of his wife--Fate's last blow--The
+sewing-machine becomes better known--Adoption by the public--A tardy
+recognition--Elias Howe sets up in business for himself--Buys out his
+partner's interest--The sewing-machine war--Rapid growth of the
+sewing-machine interest--Earnings of the inventor--A royal
+income--Honors conferred upon him--Enlists in the United States Army--A
+liberal private--Last illness and death.
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+RICHARD M. HOE.
+
+Growth of the art of printing--Birth of Richard M. Hoe--Sketch of the
+career of Robert Hoe--He comes to America--His marriage--Founds the
+house of "Robert Hoe & Co."--The first steam printing presses--He
+retires from business--Richard M. Hoe is brought up in the business--The
+mechanical genius of the house--The new firm--Richard Hoe's first
+invention--Obtains a patent for it--Visits England--Invents the
+double-cylinder press--Demand for increased facilities for printing--Mr.
+Hoe's experiments with his press--His failures--How the "Lightning
+Press" was invented--A good night's work--Patents his invention--The
+first "Lightning Press"--Demand for it--Rapid growth of the business of
+the firm--Statement of the operations of the house--Personal
+characteristics of Richard M. Hoe--The "Lightning Press" at work.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+SAMUEL COLT.
+
+Birth and parentage--A restless boy--Dislikes school--Early fondness for
+mechanical inventions--Is sent to boarding-school--Runs away to sea--The
+story of a boy's invention, and what came of it--Origin of the
+revolver--Returns home--His chemical studies--Dr. Coult--The lecturing
+tour--His success--Completes his design for the revolver--Patents his
+invention--Visits England--Discovery at the Tower of London--Returns
+home--Formation of the "Patent Arms Company"--Objections of the
+officers of the army and navy to the revolver--The Florida War--It is
+decided by the revolver--Triumph of Col. Colt--Cessation of the demand
+for arms--Failure of the company--Beginning of the Mexican War--Action
+of General Taylor--No revolvers to be had--A strange dilemma for an
+inventor--The new model--Contracts with the Government--Success of the
+revolver in Mexico--The demand from the frontier--Emigration to
+California and Australia--Permanent establishment of Col. Colt's
+business--The improved weapon--Builds a new armory--Description of his
+works at Hartford--A liberal employer--Other inventions of Col.
+Colt--His submarine telegraph--His fortune--His marriage--Visits to
+Europe--Attentions from European dignitaries--Witnesses the coronation
+of the Emperor of Russia--His last illness and death.
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+SAMUEL F.B. MORSE.
+
+Birth--Parentage--Early education--Graduates at Yale College--Becomes an
+artist--His masters--Visits England--His first attempt--"The Dying
+Hercules"--Opinion of Benjamin West--Wins the medal of the Adelphi
+Society of Arts--Ambition as an artist--His cold reception by the
+Americans--Mr. Tuckerman's comments--Organizes the National Academy of
+Design--Visits Europe the second time--The homeward voyage in the
+"Sully"--News of the experiments at Paris with the electro-magnet--How
+the electric telegraph was invented--Morse is made a professor in the
+University of New York--Completion of his model--An imperfect
+telegraph--His first experiments--The duplicate finished--First
+exhibition of the telegraph--Morse applies for a patent--Visits Europe
+to introduce his invention--His failure--Seeks aid from Congress--A
+disheartening effort--A long struggle--Independence of Morse--Despondent
+at last--A sudden lifting of the cloud--The experimental line--The
+trial--A curious Cabinet Minister--Success of the
+telegraph--Establishment of companies in the United States--Professor
+Morse wins fame and fortune--The telegraph in Europe--Honors at home and
+abroad--A list of his rewards--Morse originates submarine telegraphy,
+and predicts the laying of an Atlantic telegraph--Personal characteristics.
+
+
+IV. PUBLISHERS.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+JAMES HARPER.
+
+The Brothers Harper--Birth and parentage of James Harper--The Long
+Island home--James Harper goes to New York--Becomes a "devil"--Winning
+his way--How he gave his card to a stranger--Arrival of "Brother
+John"---Good habits--Sets up for himself--"J. & J. Harper,
+Printers"--How they started in business--Integrity rewarded--First
+job--Their first effort at stereotyping--The Harpers become publishers
+on their own account--Their early ventures--Feeling their way to
+success--Their publications--Character of their books--How they drove
+the "yellow covers" out of the market--Their prosperity--Admission of
+new partners--The great fire--Destruction of the establishment of Harper
+& Brothers--Energy of the firm--Re-establishment of their
+business--Their new premises--Description of the buildings--Personal
+characteristics of Mr. James Harper--Religious life--Liberality of
+sentiment--His industry--Elected Mayor of New York--Kindness to his
+operatives--Physical Vigor--"The Lord knows best"--Accident to Mr.
+Harper and his daughter--His death.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+JAMES T. FIELDS.
+
+The old "Corner Book-store" in Boston and its associations--Carter &
+Bendee employ a new clerk--Birth and early life of James T. Fields--His
+literary talent--Governor Woodbury's advice--Enters mercantile
+life--Determined to rise--His studies--The result--Associated with
+Edward Everett at the age of eighteen--His business talent--Steady
+promotion--Becomes head clerk with Allen & Ticknor--Establishment of the
+firm of Ticknor & Fields--Success as a publisher--High character of his
+house--Relations toward authors--Publications of Ticknor &
+Fields--Removal--Organization of the firm of Fields, Osgood & Co.--The
+new book-store--An elegant establishment--Mr. Field's literary
+success--Statement of a friend--"Common Sense"--His contributions to the
+periodicals of the firm--Travels in Europe--Personal appearance.
+
+
+V. EDITORS.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+JAMES GORDON BENNETT.
+
+Birth--Intended for the Romish priesthood--How he was induced to come to
+America--Arrival in Halifax--Comes to the United States--What came of a
+shilling--Employment in Boston--Reaches New York--Attempts to establish
+a school--Becomes connected with the press--Success of his Washington
+letters--Services on the "Courier and Inquirer"--Leaves that
+journal--Removes to Philadelphia--Establishes "The
+Pennsylvanian"--Ingratitude of his political associates--Returns to New
+York--Establishment of "The New York Herald"--Early difficulties of that
+paper, and how Bennett surmounted them--The first "Herald" office--A
+determined effort to succeed--First numbers of "The Herald"--How one man
+carried on a newspaper--A lucky hit--The first "money article"--The
+office burned down--The great fire--Bennett's reports of the
+disaster--Success of "The Herald"--His first advertising
+contract--Increasing prosperity--The journal of to-day--How it is
+conducted--The new "Herald" office--Bennett's pride in his
+paper--Personal characteristics--His independence.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+ROBERT BONNER.
+
+Birth and parentage--Emigration to America--Becomes a printer--A
+first-class compositor--Engaged upon the "Evening Mirror"--The
+"Merchant's Ledger"--Bonner purchases the paper, and changes its name to
+the "New York Ledger"--The new literary journal--Predictions of
+failure--Bonner confident of success--Engages Fanny Fern to write for
+him--A handsome price for a story--Wonderful success of the
+"Ledger"--Skillful advertising--Popularity of the paper--How Bonner
+silenced the critics--"Edward Everett writes for the 'Ledger'"--How
+Bonner treats his contributors--"Henry Ward Beecher writes for the
+'Ledger'"--Immense circulation of the paper--The new "Ledger"
+building--Private residence of Mr. Bonner--His stable--His love for
+horses.
+
+
+VI. LAWYERS.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+JOHN MARSHALL.
+
+The model American lawyer--Birth and early life of John Marshall--A
+devoted father--Early education--The young patriot--Troubles with
+England--Marshall becomes a soldier--The "Culpepper Minute
+Men"--Marshall's popularity in the army--Finishes his law studies--His
+journey from Williamsburg to Philadelphia--Commences the practice of the
+law--Elected to the Legislature--Establishes himself in Richmond--The
+power of a powdered wig and velvet coat--Marshall's services in the
+Virginia Convention of 1798--Becomes the champion of Washington's
+Administration--Refuses public honors--Is made Minister to France
+--Public reception in New York--Elected Member of Congress--His
+memorable speech--Enters the Cabinet of President Adams as Secretary of
+State--Is made Chief Justice of the United States--His record--His "Life
+of Washington"--Personal characteristics--His generosity--William
+Wirt's pen and ink sketch of him--His courtesy and kindness--Fondness
+for manly sports--The quoit club--How he carried a proud man's turkey
+home--The supper party--The Chief Justice loses the wager--Mode of
+traveling on his circuit--The scene at Maguire's Hotel in Winchester,
+Virginia--The unknown champion of Christianity--A brilliant
+defense--Last illness and death of Judge Marshall.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+JAMES T. BRADY.
+
+Birth and early life--His "big head"--His kindliness of
+disposition--Enters his father's office to study law--Merry nature--How
+he studied law--A model for ambitious youths--His father's opinion of
+him--Admitted to the bar--His first case--The newsboy case--sudden rise
+in popularity--Practices in the Supreme Court--The India-rubber suit--A
+compliment from Daniel Webster--Brady's integrity--Professional success
+and generosity--His readiness in managing his cases--Conduct toward
+witnesses--His fearlessness--A bold declaration in Tammany Hall--His
+profound knowledge of his profession--His industry--His disinterested
+kindness--His humor--Meets his match--Political life--Personal
+appearance--A genial old bachelor--Literary tastes and labors--His
+generosity to the poor--Devotion to his relatives--Last appearance in
+public--Forebodings--Death.
+
+
+VII. ARTISTS.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+BENJAMIN WEST.
+
+A native of Pennsylvania--Circumstances attending his birth--The child
+of promise--First indications of genius--The baby's portrait--Lessons
+from the Indians--The box of colors--The truant pupil--The mother's
+discovery---West's opinion of his first picture--The little portrait
+painter--The first attempt at historical painting--"The Death of
+Socrates"--Choosing a profession--Dedicated to his work--A fighting
+Quaker--Establishes himself in New York--Visits Europe--Arrival at Rome,
+and reception there--Visit to the Apollo Belvidere--West's
+criticism--Travels and labors on the continent--Visits England--His
+reception there--Urged to stay--Decides to make England his home--Sends
+for his bride--Marriage--"Agrippina Landing with the Ashes of
+Germanicus"--Success of the picture--The king becomes his friend--The
+most famous works of Benjamin West--"The Death of Wolfe"--Reception of
+the picture by the public--West triumphs over the critics, and
+inaugurates a new era of historical painting--Death of the king--West is
+elected President of the National Academy--His resignation and
+re-election--Closing years of a great career--Personal appearance--Leigh
+Hunt's description of him--Death--Burial in St. Paul's Cathedral.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+JOHN ROGERS.
+
+Birth--Early years--Begins life as a clerk in a dry goods
+store--Artistic talent--Opposition of his parents--A change in his
+plans--Becomes an engineer--Failure of his eyes--Voyage to Spain--Return
+home--Becomes a machinist--Promoted--Learns to model in clay--Commences
+his studies in art--A hard life, and a noble perseverance--A change for
+the better--A sudden reverse--Out of work--Visits Europe to study his
+art--Returns home in despair--Enters the service of the surveyor of the
+city of Chicago--His first statuettes--Their success--A new field opened
+to him--Visits New York, and learns the new method of casting
+figures--Establishes himself in New York--His first studio--Immediate
+popularity of his works--Description of them--Removes to a new
+studio--His later works--Process by which they are made-Originality of
+the artist rewarded by the public--Personal characteristics.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+HIRAM POWERS.
+
+Birth--Juvenile mechanical skill--The life of a Vermont boy--Hard
+times--Removal of the Powers family to the West--The new
+farm--Misfortunes never come singly--Breaking up of the
+household--Hiram's first employment--The reading-room scheme--Hiram
+becomes a collector of bad debts--Reminiscences of the young
+West--Powers becomes a mechanic--Story of the brass plates--Rapid
+promotion--The silver watch--How Hiram purchased it--The Cincinnati
+Museum--The artist's first lessons in modeling--His first sitter--The
+trial of skill--The king of the Cannibal Islands--The man-eater--Hiram
+becomes interested in the museum--How he played the devil in
+Cincinnati--A dishonest employer--Mr. Longworth's offer--Powers goes to
+Washington--His success there--Visit to "Old Hickory"--The first
+critic--Kindness of Senator Preston--Powers goes to Italy--Arrival in
+Florence--His first works in Italy--Visit to Thorwaldsen--Works of
+Powers--His rapid success--His life in Italy--Views of Mr. Powers
+respecting an artist life--Personal characteristics--Popularity with
+artists.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+EMMANUEL LEUTZE.
+
+An American by adoption--Early life and education--How he learned to
+draw--Becomes an artist--His first picture--The evils of too much
+haste--His first professional engagement--Despondency--A ramble through
+the Virginia woods, and what came of it--A friend in need--Greater
+success--Friendship of Mr. Carey--Leutze goes to Europe--Studies at
+Dusseldorf-His reception there--Becomes Lessing's pupil--His first
+picture finds a purchaser--Travels and studies in Europe--Returns to
+Dusseldorf, marries, and makes his home in that place--His
+paintings--Returns to New York--Success in America--The Government
+commission--Journey to the Rocky Mountains--The great fresco in the
+Capitol--"Westward the Star of Empire takes it Way"--Revisits
+Dusseldorf--Reception by the artists--Returns to the United
+States--Further commissions from the Government--His sudden death--His
+unfinished works--Mr. Tuckerman's remarks.
+
+
+VIII. DIVINES.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+HENRY WARD BEECHER.
+
+A Connecticut boy--The minister's family--A gloomy childhood--Ma'arm
+Kilbourn's school--The loss of his curls--The dull boy--A bad voice for
+an orator--His first religious impressions--Aunt Esther--The Sunday
+catechism--Sent to boarding school--Love of nature--Enters his sister's
+school--The hopeless case--An inveterate joker and an indifferent
+scholar--Removal to Boston--Gets through the Latin school--The sea-going
+project--Dr. Beecher's ruse--Life at Mount Pleasant--Conquers
+mathematics--Embraces religion at a revival--Resolves to become a
+minister--Removal to Cincinnati--Course at the Lane Seminary--How he
+learned to preach--Marries--His first charge--Life at
+Lawrenceburg--Removal to Indianapolis--Life in the West--His
+popularity--His theory of preaching and its success--Conversion of his
+brother--Mr. Beecher accepts a call to Plymouth Church in
+Brooklyn--Political record--Literary labors--Pastoral work--A large
+audience--Government of Plymouth Church--Description of the edifice--The
+congregation--The services--Mr. Beecher as a preacher--Sympathy between
+the pastor and his hearers--His ideas of religion--How he prepares his
+sermons--His prayers unstudied--The social receptions--The Friday
+evening meeting--A characteristic scene--Labors during the war--Visit to
+Europe--An unpopular sermon in a good cause--Personal characteristics.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+PETER CARTWRIGHT.
+
+Birth--Removal to Kentucky--"Rogue's harbor"--Condition of the country
+and the people--Frontier life--Early life of a preacher--Becomes a
+Christian--His account of his conversion--Is made an exhorter in the
+Methodist Church--Removal to Lewiston County--Begins
+preaching--Qualifications of a backwoods preacher--His energy--The
+jerks--How Peter frightened a bully--A brimstone angel--Enters the
+ministry--Appointed to the Marietta Circuit--A good school--Hard
+times--Marries--Quiet heroism--How the old-time people married--His
+devotion to the Methodist Church--Troubles with other denominations--How
+he argued with a Universalist--How he met a wrathful dame--Encounter
+with a Baptist preacher--Adventure with Father Teel--Taming a
+shrew--Removal to Illinois--His reasons for taking that step--Death of
+his daughter--Arrival at his new home--Life on the frontier--A large
+district--The Methodist circuit riders of sixty years ago--Perils of
+frontier traveling--Success of Cartwright's ministry--How he was
+superannuated--His courage--How he cleared a camp of rowdies--Encounter
+on a ferry-boat--Frightens a bully--Advocates temperance--A practical
+joke--Is elected to the Legislature--His opinion of politics--How he
+raised the devil--"Another sinner down"--Missionaries from the
+East--Indignation of the backwoods preacher--The proposed mission to New
+England--Cartwright declines it--He visits Boston--His reception--How he
+preached for Father Taylor--Summing up--Sixty-seven years of a
+preacher's life.
+
+
+IX. AUTHORS.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.
+
+Birth and early life--The old house by the sea--College life--Early
+literary productions--Becomes a professor in Bowdoin College--Travels in
+Europe--Marriage--Literary labors--"Outre Mer"--Is made a professor in
+Harvard College--His second visit to Europe--Death of his wife--Goes to
+live in the Craigie House--Historical associations--Washington's
+headquarters--A congenial home--Literary labors--"Hyperion"--Great
+popularity of the book--"Voices of the Night"--"The Spanish
+Student"--Mr. Longfellow buys the Craigie House--Summary of his
+works--The "Song of Hiawatha"--Death of Mrs. Longfellow--Mr. Longfellow
+again visits Europe--His popularity with the English-speaking
+race--Cause of his popularity--"Resignation"--Scene from "The Golden
+Legend"--The poet's home.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.
+
+The Hawthornes of Salem--A sea-going race--Birth of Nathaniel
+Hawthorne--A sad home--Early life--His college days--Longfellow's
+recollection of him--Returns home--The young recluse--Literary
+efforts--"Twice-Told Tales"--"The most unknown author in
+America"--Enters the Boston Custom House--His duties--Popularity with
+the sailors--Loses his office--Becomes a member of the Brook Farm
+Community--Marries and goes to live at Concord--"The Old Manse"--Life at
+Concord--Curiosity of the village people--"Mosses from an Old
+Manse"--Hawthorne's visitors--Hawthorne and his friends--George William
+Curtis' recollections--Removes to Salem--Is made surveyor of that
+port--"The Scarlet Letter"--Removal to the Berkshire Hills--"The House
+of the Seven Gables"--Returns to Concord--"Life of Franklin Pierce"--Is
+made Consul to Liverpool---Life abroad--Depressed by the war--Moncure D.
+Conway's recollections--Juvenile works--Death of Mr. Ticknor--Effect
+upon Hawthorne--Goes traveling with Ex-President Pierce--Sudden death of
+Hawthorne--Burial at Concord.
+
+
+X. ACTORS.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+EDWIN BOOTH.
+
+The elder Booth--His success as an actor--His sons--Birth of Edwin
+Booth--Early life--Brought up on the stage--Admiration for his
+father--Travels with him--First appearance--Appears frequently with his
+father--Plays Richard III. in New York--A bold venture--Learns the
+details of his profession--Visits Australia and the Sandwich
+Islands--Re-appearance in New York in 1857--Recollections of him at that
+time--His labors in his profession--Successful tours throughout the
+country--Visits England--Appears at the Haymarket Theater in
+London--Studies on the continent--Appearance at the Winter Garden--The
+Shakespearian revivals--Destruction of the Winter Garden by fire--Loss
+of Mr. Booth's theatrical wardrobe--Popular sympathy--The new
+theater--Opening of the building--Description of Booth's Theater--A
+magnificent establishment--A splendid stage--Novel mode of setting the
+scenes--Magnificent mounting of the plays produced there--Mr. Booth's
+performances--Personal--Genius as an actor--Beneficial influence upon
+the drama.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+JOSEPH JEFFERSON.
+
+The Jefferson family--A race of actors--Jefferson the first--"Old
+Jefferson"--Jefferson the third--Birth of Joseph
+Jefferson--Childhood--Brought up on the stage--Olive Logan's
+reminiscence--First appearance in public--Early training--Career as a
+stock actor--Becomes a "star"--His success--Visits Australia, the
+player's El Dorado--Pecuniary success of Jefferson in Australia--His
+merits as an actor--Visits England--First appearance at the Adelphi
+Theater--"Our American Cousin"--Production of Rip Van Winkle--Makes the
+part his specialty--Description of his performance of Rip Van
+Winkle--Personal characteristics--Devotion to his profession--Love of
+art--A capital sportsman--Buys a panorama--A visit to John Sefton--"The
+Golden Farmer"--Private life.
+
+
+XI. PHYSICIANS.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII.
+
+BENJAMIN RUSH.
+
+Birth and early life--Adopts medicine as a profession--Studies in
+Europe--Returns home, and is made a professor in the Philadelphia
+Medical College--Political career--Elected to the Provincial Conference
+of Pennsylvania--Action with respect to the independence of the
+colonies--Elected to the Continental Congress--Signs the Declaration of
+Independence--Marriage--Is made Surgeon-General of the army--Becomes
+Physician-General--Troubles--Resigns his commission--Letters to the
+people of Pennsylvania--Services in the State conventions--Resumes his
+practice in Philadelphia--Plans the Philadelphia Dispensary--Resumes his
+professor's chair--The yellow fever in Philadelphia--A scene of
+terror--"The Hundred Days"--Dr. Rush's treatment of the
+disease--Opposition of the Faculty--Success of Rush's
+treatment--Testimony of Dr. Ramsay--Suit for damages--Dr. Rush's
+services during the fever--Reminiscences--Honors from European
+sovereigns--Is made Treasurer of the United States Mint--Literary
+labors--Zeal in behalf of Christianity--His connection with the Bible
+Society--Death.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+
+VALENTINE MOTT.
+
+Birth--Early life--Enters Columbia College--His medical
+studies--Continues his studies in Europe--Great surgical genius--His
+early success as an operator--Returns home--Is made Professor of Surgery
+in Columbia College--His career and success as a teacher--Introduces the
+system of clinical instruction--Difficulty of procuring "subjects" for
+dissection--Desperate expedients--midnight adventure--A ready
+rebuke--Success and skill as a surgeon--Tribute from Sir Astley
+Cooper--A wonderful operation--Sketch of his original operations--His
+mode of operating--Careful preparation--Success as a physician--A
+progressive mind--Professional honors--Visits Europe--Reception
+abroad--Operates upon the Sultan of Turkey--A cool
+proposition--Personal--His last illness and death--"President Lincoln
+murdered."
+
+[Illustration: GIRARD COLLEGE]
+
+
+I.
+
+MERCHANTS.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+STEPHEN GIRARD.
+
+
+One May morning, in the year 1776, the mouth of the Delaware Bay was
+shrouded in a dense fog, which cleared away toward noon, and revealed
+several vessels just off the capes. From one of these, a sloop, floated
+the flag of France and a signal of distress. An American ship ran
+alongside the stranger, in answer to her signal, and found that the
+French captain had lost his reckoning in a fog, and was in total
+ignorance of his whereabouts. His vessel, he said, was bound from New
+Orleans to a Canadian port, and he was anxious to proceed on his voyage.
+The American skipper informed him of his locality, and also apprised him
+of the fact that war had broken out between the colonies and Great
+Britain, and that the American coast was so well lined with British
+cruisers that he would never reach port but as a prize. "What shall I
+do?" cried the Frenchman, in great alarm. "Enter the bay, and make a
+push for Philadelphia," was the reply. "It is your only chance."
+
+The Frenchman protested that he did not know the way, and had no pilot.
+The American captain, pitying his distress, found him a pilot, and even
+loaned him five dollars, which the pilot demanded in advance. The sloop
+got under weigh again, and passed into the Delaware, beyond the defenses
+which had been erected for its protection, just in time to avoid capture
+by a British war vessel which now made its appearance at the mouth of
+the bay. Philadelphia was reached in due time, and, as the war bade fair
+to put an end to his voyages, the captain sold the sloop and her cargo,
+of which he was part owner, and, entering a small store in Water Street,
+began the business of a grocer and wine-bottler. His capital was small,
+his business trifling in extent, and he himself labored under the
+disadvantage of being almost unable to speak the English language. In
+person he was short and stout, with a dull, repulsive countenance, which
+his bushy eyebrows and solitary eye (being blind in the other) made
+almost hideous. He was cold and reserved in manner, and was disliked by
+his neighbors, the most of whom were afraid of him.
+
+This man was Stephen Girard, who was afterward destined to play so
+important a part in the history of the city to which the mere chances of
+war sent him a stranger.
+
+He was born at Bordeaux, in France, on the 21st of May, 1750, and was
+the eldest of the five children of Captain Pierre Girard, a mariner of
+that city. His life at home was a hard one. At the age of eight years,
+he discovered that he was blind in one eye, and the mortification and
+grief which this discovery caused him appear to have soured his entire
+life. He afterward declared that his father treated him with
+considerable neglect, and that, while his younger brothers were sent to
+college, he was made to content himself with the barest rudiments of an
+education, with merely a knowledge of reading and writing. When he was
+quite young, his mother died, and, as his father soon married again,
+the severity of a step-mother was added to his other troubles. When
+about thirteen years of age, he left home, with his father's consent,
+and began, as a cabin-boy, the life of a mariner. For nine years he
+sailed between Bordeaux and the French West Indies, rising steadily from
+his position of cabin-boy to that of mate. He improved his leisure time
+at sea, until he was not only master of the art of navigation, but
+generally well informed for a man in his station. His father possessed
+sufficient influence to procure him the command of a vessel, in spite of
+the law of France which required that no man should be made master of a
+ship unless he had sailed two cruises in the royal navy and was
+twenty-five years old. Gradually Girard was enabled to amass a small sum
+of money, which he invested in cargoes easily disposed of in the ports
+to which he sailed. Three years after he was licensed to command, he
+made his first appearance in the port of Philadelphia. He was then
+twenty-six years old.
+
+From the time of his arrival in Philadelphia he devoted himself to
+business with an energy and industry which never failed. He despised no
+labor, and was willing to undertake any honest means of increasing his
+subsistence. He bought and sold any thing, from groceries to old "junk."
+His chief profit, however, was in his wine and cider, which he bottled
+and sold readily. His business prospered, and he was regarded as a
+thriving man from the start.
+
+In July, 1777, he married Mary Lum, a servant girl of great beauty, and
+something of a virago as well. The union was an unhappy one, as the
+husband and wife were utterly unsuited to each other. Seven years after
+her marriage, Mrs. Girard showed symptoms of insanity, which became so
+decided that her husband was compelled to place her in the State Asylum
+for the Insane. He appears to have done every thing in his power to
+restore her to reason. Being pronounced cured, she returned to her
+home, but in 1790 He was compelled to place her permanently in the
+Pennsylvania Hospital, where, nine months after, she gave birth to a
+female child, which happily died. Mrs. Girard never recovered her
+reason, but died in 1815, and was buried in the hospital grounds.
+
+Girard fled from Philadelphia, with his wife, in September, 1777, at the
+approach of the British, and purchased a house at Mount Holly, near
+Burlington, New Jersey, where he carried on his bottling business. His
+claret commanded a ready sale among the British in Philadelphia, and his
+profits were large. In June, 1778, the city was evacuated by Lord Howe,
+and he was allowed to return to his former home.
+
+Though he traded with the British, Girard considered himself a true
+patriot, as indeed he was. On the 27th of October, 1778, he took the
+oath of allegiance required by the State of Pennsylvania, and renewed it
+the year following. The war almost annihilated the commerce of the
+country, which was slow in recovering its former prosperity; but, in
+spite of this discouraging circumstance, Girard worked on steadily,
+scorning no employment, however humble, that would yield a profit.
+Already he had formed the plans which led to his immense wealth, and he
+was now patiently carrying out the most trying and disheartening
+preliminaries. Whatever he undertook prospered, and though his gains
+were small, they were carefully husbanded, and at the proper time
+invested in such a manner as to produce a still greater yield. Stephen
+Girard knew the value of little things, and he knew how to take
+advantage of the most trifling circumstance. His career teaches what may
+be done with these little things, and shows how even a few dollars,
+properly managed, may be made to produce as many thousands.
+
+In 1780, Mr. Girard again entered upon the New Orleans and St. Domingo
+trade, in which he was engaged at the breaking out of the Revolution. He
+was very successful in his ventures, and was enabled in a year or two to
+greatly enlarge his operations. In 1782, he took a lease of ten years on
+a range of frame buildings in Water Street, one of which he occupied
+himself, with the privilege of a renewal for a similar period. Rents
+were very low at that time, as business was prostrated and people were
+despondent; but Girard, looking far beyond the present, saw a prosperous
+future. He was satisfied that it would require but a short time to
+restore to Philadelphia its old commercial importance, and he was
+satisfied that his leases would be the best investment he had ever made.
+The result proved the correctness of his views. His profits on these
+leases were enormous.
+
+About this time he entered into partnership with his brother, Captain
+John Girard, in the West India trade. But the brothers could not conduct
+their affairs harmoniously, and in 1790 the firm was dissolved by mutual
+consent. Stephen Girard's share of the profits at the dissolution
+amounted to thirty thousand dollars. His wealth was greatly increased by
+a terrible tragedy which happened soon afterward.
+
+At the outbreak of the great insurrection in St. Domingo, Girard had two
+vessels lying in one of the ports of that island. At the first signal of
+danger, a number of planters sent their valuables on board of these
+ships for safe-keeping, and went back to their estates for the purpose
+of securing more. They never returned, doubtless falling victims to the
+fury of the brutal negroes, and when the vessels were ready to sail
+there was no one to claim the property they contained. It was taken to
+Philadelphia, and was most liberally advertised by Mr. Girard, but as no
+owner ever appeared to demand it, it was sold, and the proceeds--about
+fifty thousand dollars--turned into the merchant's own coffers. This was
+a great assistance to him, and the next year he began the building of
+those splendid ships which enabled him to engage so actively in the
+Chinese and East India trades.
+
+His course was now onward and upward to wealth. At first his ships
+merely sailed between Philadelphia and the port to which they were
+originally destined; but at length he was enabled to do more than this.
+Loading one of his ships with grain, he would send it to Bordeaux, where
+the proceeds of her cargo would be invested in wine and fruit. These she
+would take to St. Petersburg and exchange for hemp and iron, which were
+sold at Amsterdam for coin. From Amsterdam she would proceed to China
+and India, and, purchasing a cargo of silks and teas, sail for
+Philadelphia, where the final purchase was sold by the owner for cash or
+negotiable paper. His success was uniform, and was attributed by his
+brother merchants to _luck_.
+
+Stephen Girard had no faith in luck. He never trusted any thing to
+chance. He was a thorough navigator, and was perfect master of the
+knowledge required in directing long voyages. He understood every
+department of his business so well that he was always prepared to survey
+the field of commerce from a high stand-point. He was familiar with the
+ports with which he dealt, and was always able to obtain such
+information concerning them as he desired, in advance of his
+competitors. He trusted nothing of importance to others. His
+instructions to the commanders of his ships were always full and
+precise. These documents afford the best evidence of the statements I
+have made concerning his system, as the following will show:
+
+
+     _Copy of Stephen Girard's Letter to Mr. ----, Commander and
+     Supercargo of the ship ----, bound to Batavia._
+
+     PHILADELPHIA, ----.
+
+     SIR--I confirm my letters to you of the ---- ult., and the ----
+     inst. Having recently heard of the decease of Mr. ----, merchant at
+     Batavia, also of the probable dissolution of his house, under the
+     firm of Messrs. ----, I have judged it prudent to request my
+     Liverpool correspondents to consign the ship ----, cargo, and
+     specie on board, to Mr. ----, merchant at Batavia, subject to your
+     control, and have requested said Liverpool friends to make a
+     separate invoice and bill of lading for the specie, which they will
+     ship on my account, on board of the ship ----, and similar
+     documents for the merchandise, which they will ship in the same
+     manner; therefore, I request that you will sign in conformity.
+
+     I am personally acquainted with Mr. ----, but not with Mr. ----,
+     but I am on very friendly terms with some particular friends of the
+     latter gentleman, and consequently I give him the preference. I am
+     sorry to observe, however, that he is alone in a country where a
+     partner appears to me indispensable to a commercial house, as well
+     for the safety of his own capital as for the security of the
+     interests of those who may confide to them property, and reside in
+     distant parts of the globe.
+
+     The foregoing reflections, together with the detention of my ship
+     V----, at Batavia, from June last, epoch of her arrival at that
+     port, until the 15th of September, ----, when she had on board only
+     nineteen hundred peculs of coffee, are the motives which have
+     compelled me to request of my Liverpool friends to consign the
+     specie and goods, which they will ship on my account, on board of
+     the ship ----, under your command, to said Mr. ----, subject to
+     your control.
+
+     Therefore, relying upon your activity, perseverance, correctness,
+     zeal, and attention for my interest, I proceed in pointing out to
+     you the plan of conduct which I wish you to pursue on your arrival
+     at Batavia, and during your stay at that or any port of that
+     island, until your departure for Cowes, on the Isle of Wight, to
+     await my subsequent orders.
+
+     First. On your arrival at Batavia, you are to go on shore and
+     ascertain Mr. ----'s residence, and, if you have reason to believe
+     that he is still considered at that place as a man of good credit,
+     and merits full confidence, you are to deliver to him my Liverpool
+     consignees' letters to his address, and also the goods which you
+     have on board, in such proportion as he may request, except the
+     specie, which is to continue on board, as mentioned in the next
+     article.
+
+     Second. The specie funds of the ship ----, which will consist of
+     old Carolus dollars, you are to retain on board untouched, and in
+     the said boxes or packages as they were in when shipped from
+     Liverpool, well secured, and locked up in your powder magazine, in
+     the after run of the said ship under the cabin floor.
+
+     The bulkhead and floor of said magazine, scuttle, iron bar,
+     staples, etc., must be made sufficiently strong, if not already so,
+     while you are at Liverpool, where you are to procure a strong
+     padlock and key, for the purpose of securing said specie in the
+     most complete and safest manner; and when you have the certainty
+     that it is wanted to pay for the coffee purchased on account of the
+     ship ----, then you are to receive the said coffee, and pay or
+     deliver to your consignee Spanish dollars to the amount of said
+     purchase, and no more, having due regard to the premium or advance
+     allowed at Batavia on old Spanish dollars; and in that way you are
+     to continue paying or delivering dollars as fast as you receive
+     coffee, which is not to exceed the quantity which can be
+     conveniently stowed on board said ship ----, observing to take a
+     receipt for each payment, and to see that the net proceeds of the
+     goods, which will have been shipped at Liverpool, must be invested
+     in coffee, as far as the sales will permit, and shipped on board of
+     said ship.
+
+     Should it happen that on your arrival at Batavia you should find
+     that death, absence, etc., should deprive you of the services of
+     Mr. ----, or that, owing to some causes before mentioned, it would
+     be prudent to confide my interests elsewhere, in either case you
+     are to apply to Messrs. ----, merchants of that place, to
+     communicate your instructions relative to the disposal of the
+     Liverpool cargo, on board of the ship ----, the loading of that
+     ship with good merchantable coffee, giving the preference to the
+     first quality whenever it can be purchased on reasonable terms for
+     cash, or received in payment for the sales of the said Liverpool
+     cargo, or for a part thereof, observing that I wished said coffee
+     to be purchased at Samarang, or any other out-port, if practicable;
+     and in all cases it must be attentively examined when delivered,
+     and put up in double gunny bags.
+
+     If the purchase of said cargo is made at an out-port, the ship
+     ----must proceed there to take it in.
+
+     On the subject of purchasing coffee at government sales, I have no
+     doubt that it is an easy way to obtain a cargo, but I am of opinion
+     that it is a very dear one, particularly as the fair purchaser, who
+     has no other object in view but to invest his money, does not stay
+     on the footing of competitors, who make their payments with
+     Netherland bills of exchange, or wish to raise the prices of their
+     coffee which they may have on hand for sale.
+
+     Under these impressions, I desire that all the purchases of coffee
+     on my account be made from individuals, as far as practicable, and
+     if the whole quantity necessary to load the ship can not be
+     obtained at private sale, recourse must then be had to government
+     sales.
+
+     In many instances I have experienced that whenever I had a vessel
+     at Batavia, the prices of coffee at the government sales have risen
+     from five to ten per cent., and sometimes higher.
+
+     On the subject of coffee I would remark that, owing to the increase
+     of the culture of that bean, together with the immense imports of
+     tea into the several ports of Europe, the price of that leaf has
+     been lowered to such a degree as to induce the people of those
+     countries, principally of the north, to use the latter article in
+     preference to the first.
+
+     That circumstance has, for these past three years, created a
+     gradual deduction from the consumption of coffee, which has
+     augmented the stock on hand throughout every commercial city of the
+     northern part of the globe, so as to present a future unfavorable
+     prospect to the importers of that article. Indeed, I am convinced
+     that, within a few months from this date, coffee will be ten per
+     cent. cheaper in the United States than what it has been at Batavia
+     for these two years past; nevertheless, being desirous to employ my
+     ships as advantageously as circumstances will permit, and
+     calculating also that the price at Java and other places of its
+     growth will fall considerably, I have no objection to adventure.
+
+     Therefore, you must use every means in your power to facilitate
+     the success of the voyage.
+
+     Should the invoice-cost of the entire cargo of coffee shipped at
+     Java, on board of the ship ----, together with the disbursements of
+     that ship (which must be conducted with the greatest economy), not
+     amount to the specie funds and net proceeds of her Liverpool cargo,
+     in that event you are to deliver the surplus to your consignee, who
+     will give you a receipt for the same, with a duplicate, expressing
+     that it is on my account, for the purpose of being invested on the
+     most advantageous terms, in good dry coffee, to be kept at my order
+     and disposal.
+
+     Then you will retain the original in your possession, and forward
+     to me the duplicate by first good vessel to the United States, or
+     via Europe, to care of my correspondents at Liverpool, London,
+     Antwerp, or Amsterdam, the names of whom you are familiar with.
+
+     If you should judge it imprudent, however, to leave that money at
+     Batavia, you are to bring it back in Spanish dollars, which you
+     will retain on board for that purpose.
+
+     Although I wish you to make a short voyage, and with as quick
+     dispatch at Java as practicable, yet I desire you not to leave that
+     island unless your consignee has finally closed the sales of the
+     Liverpool cargo, so that you may be the bearer of all the
+     documents, and account-current, relative to the final transactions
+     of the consignment of the ship ---- and cargo. Duplicate and
+     triplicate of said documents to be forwarded to me by your
+     consignees, by the two first safe conveyances for the ports of the
+     United States.
+
+     Being in the habit of dispatching my ships for Batavia from this
+     port, Liverpool, or Amsterdam, as circumstances render it
+     convenient, it is interesting to me to be from time to time
+     informed of the several articles of produce and manufactures from
+     each of those places which are the most in demand and quickest of
+     sale at Java. Also of the quantity of each, size of package, and
+     the probable price which they may sell for, cash, adding the
+     Batavia duty, charges for selling, etc. Please to communicate this
+     to your Batavia consignee.
+
+     The rates of commission I will allow for transacting the business
+     relative to the ship and cargo at Java are two and a half per cent,
+     for selling, and two and a half per cent, for purchasing and
+     shipping coffee and other articles.
+
+     The consignees engaging to place on board of each prow one or two
+     men of confidence, to see that the goods are safely delivered on
+     board of the ship, to prevent pilfering, which is often practiced
+     by those who conduct the lighter.
+
+     I am informed that the expenses for two men are trifling,
+     comparatively, to the plunder which has been committed on board of
+     the prows which deliver coffee on board of the ships.
+
+     No commissions whatever are to be allowed in the disbursements of
+     my ships, whenever ship and cargo belong to me, and are consigned
+     to some house.
+
+     While you remain at Batavia, I recommend you to stay on board of
+     your ship, and not to go on shore except when the business of your
+     ship and cargo may render it necessary.
+
+     Inclosed is an introductory letter to ----, which I request you to
+     deliver, after you have made the necessary arrangements with Mr.
+     ----for the consignment of the ship and cargo, or after the
+     circumstance aforementioned has compelled you to look elsewhere for
+     a consignee. Then you are to call upon said Messrs. ----, deliver
+     them the aforesaid letter and the consignment of the ship ---- and
+     cargo, after having agreed with them in writing, which they will
+     sign and deliver to you, that they engage to transact the business
+     of the ship and cargo on the terms and conditions herein stated;
+     and when that business is well understood and finally closed, you
+     are to press them in a polite manner, so that they many give you a
+     quick dispatch, without giving too great a price for the coffee,
+     particularly at this present moment, when its price is declining
+     throughout those countries where it is consumed.
+
+     Indeed, on the subject of purchasing coffee for the ship ----, the
+     greatest caution and prudence should be exercised. Therefore, I
+     request that you will follow the plan of conduct laid down for you
+     throughout. Also, to keep to yourself the intention of the voyage,
+     and the amount of specie you have on board; and in view to satisfy
+     the curious, tell them that it is probable that the ship will take
+     in molasses, rice, and sugar, if the price of that produce is very
+     low, adding that the whole will depend on the success in selling
+     the small Liverpool cargo. The consignees of said cargo should
+     follow the same line of conduct, and if properly attended to by
+     yourself and them, I am convinced that the cargo of coffee can be
+     purchased ten per cent. cheaper than it would be if it is publicly
+     known there is a quantity of Spanish dollars on board, besides a
+     valuable cargo of British goods intended to be invested in coffee
+     for Stephen Girard, of Philadelphia.
+
+     During my long commercial experience, I have noticed that no
+     advantage results from telling one's business to others, except to
+     create jealousy or competitors when we are fortunate, and to
+     gratify our enemies when otherwise.
+
+     If my remarks are correct, I have no doubt they will show you the
+     necessity of being silent, and to attend with activity,
+     perseverance, and modesty, to the interests of your employer.
+
+     As my letters of instruction embrace several interesting objects, I
+     request you to peruse them in rotation, when at sea in fine
+     climates, during your voyage to Batavia, and to take correct
+     extracts, so as to render yourself master of the most essential
+     parts. I conclude by directing your attention to your health and
+     that of your crew.
+
+     I am yours, respectfully,
+
+     STEPHEN GIRARD.
+
+
+Mr. Girard was not only rigidly precise in his instructions, but he
+permitted no departure from them. He regarded it as dangerous to allow
+discretion to any one in the execution of _his_ plans. Where a deviation
+from his instructions might cause success in one case, it would cause
+loss in ninety-nine others. It was understood among all his employes
+that a rigid obedience to orders, in even the most trifling particulars,
+was expected, and would be exacted. If loss came under such
+circumstances, the merchant assumed the entire responsibility for it.
+
+Upon one occasion one of his best captains was instructed to purchase
+his cargo of teas at a certain port. Upon reaching home he was summoned
+by the merchant to his presence.
+
+"Captain ----," said Mr. Girard, sternly, "your instructions required
+you to purchase your cargo at ----."
+
+"That is true, Mr. Girard," replied the Captain, "but upon reaching that
+port I found I could do so much better at ----, that I felt justified in
+proceeding to the latter place."
+
+"You should have obeyed your orders, sir," was the stern retort.
+
+"I was influenced by a desire to serve your interests, sir. The result
+ought to justify me in my act, since it puts many thousands more into
+your pocket than if I had bought where I was instructed."
+
+"Captain ----," said Girard, "I take care of my own interests. You
+should have obeyed your orders if you had broken me. Nothing can excuse
+your disobedience. You will hand in your accounts, sir, and consider
+yourself discharged from my service."
+
+He was as good as his word, and, though the captain's disobedience had
+vastly increased the profit of the voyage, he dismissed him, nor would
+he ever receive him into his service again.
+
+To his knowledge of his business Mr. Girard joined an unusual capacity
+for such ventures. He was, it must be said, hard and illiberal in his
+bargains, and remorseless in exacting the last cent due him. He was
+prompt and faithful in the execution of every contract, never departed
+in the slightest from his plighted word, and never engaged in any
+venture which he was not perfectly able to undertake. He was prudent and
+cautious in the fullest sense of those terms, but his ventures were
+always made with a boldness which was the sure forerunner of success.
+
+His fidelity to his word is well shown by a circumstance which had
+occurred long after he was one of the "money kings" of the land. He was
+once engaged with his cashier in a discussion as to the length of time a
+man would consume in counting a million of dollars, telling out each
+dollar separately. The dispute became animated, and the cashier declared
+that he could make a million of dots with ink in a few hours.
+
+"I'll tell you what I'll do," said Girard, who was thoroughly vexed by
+the opposition of the other, "I'll wager five hundred dollars that I can
+ride in my gig from here to my farm, spend two hours there, and return
+before you can make your million of dots with ink."
+
+The cashier, after a moment's reflection, accepted the wager, and Mr.
+Girard departed to his farm. He returned in a few hours, confident that
+he had won. The cashier met him with a smile.
+
+"Where is my money?" asked Girard, triumphantly.
+
+"The money is mine," replied the cashier. "Come and see."
+
+He led the merchant to an unused room of the bank, and there, to his
+dismay, Girard saw the walls and ceiling covered with spots of ink,
+which the cashier had dashed on them with a brush.
+
+"Do you mean to say there are a million of dots here?" he cried,
+angrily.
+
+"Count them, and see," replied his subordinate, laughing. "You know the
+wager was a million of dots with ink."
+
+"But I expected you would make them with the pen."
+
+"I did not undertake any thing of the kind."
+
+The joke was too good, and the merchant not only paid the amount of the
+wager, but the cost of cleaning the walls.
+
+In 1810 the question of renewing the charter of the old Bank of the
+United States was actively discussed. Girard was a warm friend of that
+institution, which he believed had been the cause of a very great part
+of the prosperity of the country, and was firmly convinced that Congress
+would renew the charter. In this belief he ordered the Barings, of
+London, to invest all his funds in their hands in shares of the Bank of
+the United States, which was done, during the following year, to the
+amount of half a million of dollars. When the charter expired, he was
+the principal creditor of that institution, which Congress refused to
+renew. Discovering that he could purchase the old Bank and the cashier's
+house for one hundred and twenty thousand dollars, he at once secured
+them, and on the 12th of May, 1812, opened the Girard Bank, with a
+capital of one million two hundred thousand dollars, which he increased
+the next year by one hundred thousand dollars more. He retained all the
+old officers of the Bank of the United States, especially the cashier,
+Mr. Simpson, to whose skill and experience he was greatly indebted for
+his subsequent success.
+
+Finding that the salaries which had been paid by the Government were
+higher than those paid elsewhere, he cut them down to the rate given by
+the other banks. The watchman had always received from the old Bank the
+gift of an overcoat at Christmas, but Girard put a stop to this. He gave
+no gratuities to any of his employes, but confined them to the
+compensation for which they had bargained; yet he contrived to get out
+of them service more devoted than was received by other men who paid
+higher wages and made presents. Appeals to him for aid were unanswered.
+No poor man ever came full-handed from his presence. He turned a deaf
+ear to the entreaties of failing merchants to help them on their feet
+again. He was neither generous nor charitable. When his faithful cashier
+died, after long years spent in his service, he manifested the most
+hardened indifference to the bereavement of the family of that
+gentleman, and left them to struggle along as best they could.
+
+Yet from the first he was liberal and sometimes magnificent in the
+management of his bank. He would discount none but good paper, but it
+was his policy to grant accommodations to small traders, and thus
+encourage beginners, usually giving the preference to small notes, by
+this system doing very much to avert the evils that would of necessity
+have sprung from the suspension of the old Bank of the United States.
+The Government credit was almost destroyed, and money was needed to
+carry on the war. He made repeated advances to the treasury, unsolicited
+by the authorities, and on more than one occasion kept the Government
+supplied with the sinews of war. In 1814, when our prospects, both
+military and financial, were at their lowest ebb, when the British
+forces had burned Washington and the New England States were threatening
+to withdraw from the Union, the Government asked for a loan of five
+millions of dollars, with the most liberal inducements to subscribers.
+Only twenty thousand dollars could be obtained, and the project seemed
+doomed to failure, when it was announced that Stephen Girard had
+subscribed for the whole amount. This announcement at once restored the
+public confidence, and Mr. Girard was beset with requests from persons
+anxious to take a part of the loan, even at an advanced rate. They were
+allowed to do so upon the original terms. When the Government could not,
+for want of funds, pay the interest on its debt to him, he wrote to the
+Secretary of the Treasury:
+
+"I am of opinion that those who have any claim for interest on public
+stock, etc., should patiently wait for a more favorable moment, or at
+least receive in payment treasury notes. Should you be under the
+necessity of resorting to either of these plans, as one of the public
+creditors, I shall not murmur."
+
+"A circumstance soon occurred, however, which was a source of no little
+discomfiture to the financial arrangements of his individual
+institution. This fact was the suspension of specie payments by the
+State banks, resulting from the non-intercourse act, the suspension of
+the old bank, and the combined causes tending to produce a derangement
+of the currency of the country. It was then a matter of great doubt with
+him how he should preserve the integrity of his own institution, while
+the other banks were suspending their payments; but the credit of his
+own bank was effectually secured by the suggestion of his cashier, Mr.
+Simpson, who advised the recalling of his own notes by redeeming them
+with specie, and by paying out the notes of the State banks. In this
+mode not a single note of his own was suffered to be depreciated, and he
+was thus enabled, in 1817, to contribute effectually to the restoration
+of specie payments."
+
+He was instrumental in securing the establishment of the new Bank of the
+United States, and was its largest stockholder and one of its directors.
+He even offered to unite his own institution with it upon certain
+liberal conditions, which were refused. Yet he was always a firm friend
+to it.
+
+"One of the characteristics of Mr. Girard was his public spirit. At one
+time he freely subscribed one hundred and ten thousand dollars for the
+navigation of the Schuylkill; at another time he loaned the company two
+hundred and sixty-five thousand eight hundred and fifty dollars. When
+the credit of the State of Pennsylvania was prostrated by what was
+believed to have been an injudicious system of internal improvement, and
+it was found expedient for the Governor to resort to its metropolis in
+order to replenish its coffers, he made a voluntary loan to Governor
+Shultz of one hundred thousand dollars. So far was his disposition to
+promote the fiscal prosperity of the country manifested, that, as late
+as 1831, when the country was placed in extreme embarrassment from the
+scarcity of money, he perceived the cause in the fact that the balance
+of trade was against us to a considerable extent, and he accordingly
+drew upon the house of Baring Brothers & Co. for bills of exchange to
+the amount of twelve thousand pounds sterling, which he disposed of to
+the Bank of the United States at an advance of ten per cent., which
+draft was followed up by another for ten thousand, which was disposed of
+in like manner to other institutions. This act tended to reduce the
+value of bills, and the rate of exchange suddenly fell. The same spirit
+which he manifested toward the national currency he exhibited to the
+corporation of Philadelphia, by erecting new blocks of buildings, and
+beautifying and adorning its streets; less, apparently, from a desire of
+profit than from a wish to improve the place which was his adopted home,
+and where he had reaped his fortunes. His subscription of two hundred
+thousand dollars to the Danville and Pottsville Railroad, in 1831, was
+an action in keeping with the whole tenor of his life; and his
+subscription of ten thousand dollars toward the erection of an exchange
+looked to the same result."
+
+The war of 1812, which brought financial ruin to so many others, simply
+increased Girard's wealth. He never lost a ship, and as war prices
+prevailed, his profits were in accordance with them. One of his ships
+was taken by a British cruiser at the mouth of the Delaware, in the
+spring of 1813. Fearing that his prize would be recaptured by an
+American ship of war if he attempted to send her into port, the English
+admiral dispatched a flag of truce to Mr. Girard, and proposed to him to
+ransom the vessel for one hundred and eighty thousand dollars in coin.
+Girard consented, paid the money, and the ship was allowed to come up to
+the city. Her cargo consisted of silks, nankeens, and teas, and afforded
+her owner a profit of half a million of dollars.
+
+Yet in the midst of all his wealth, which in 1828 was estimated at ten
+millions of dollars, he was a solitary old man.
+
+He lived in a dingy little house in Water Street. His wife had died in
+an insane asylum, and he was childless. He was repulsive in person. He
+was feared by his subordinates--by all who had dealings with him--and
+liked by none. He was mean and close in his personal habits, living on
+less, perhaps, than any of his clerks, and deriving little or no benefit
+from his vast wealth, so far as his individual comfort was concerned. He
+gave nothing in charity. Lazarus would have lain at his doors a
+life-time without being noticed by him. He was solitary, soured, cold,
+with a heart of stone, and fully conscious of his personal unpopularity.
+Yet he valued wealth--valued it for the power it gave him over men.
+Under that cold, hardened exterior reigned an ambition as profound as
+that which moved Napoleon. He was ambitious of regulating the financial
+operations of the land, and proud of his power in this respect, and it
+should be remembered in his favor that he did not abuse that power after
+it had passed into his hands.
+
+He had no vices, no dissipations; his whole soul was in his business. He
+was conscious that his only hope of distinction above his fellow-men was
+in his wealth, and he was resolved that nothing should make him swerve
+from his endeavor to accumulate a fortune which should make him all
+powerful in life and remembered in death. He sought no friends, and was
+reticent as to his career, saying to those who questioned him about it,
+"Wait till I am dead; my deeds will show what I was."
+
+Religion had no place in his heart. He was an avowed unbeliever, making
+a boast of his disbelief. He always worked on Sunday, in order that he
+might show his disapproval of the observance of it as a day of rest.
+Rest, he said, made a man rusty, and attendance upon the worship of God
+he denounced as worse than folly. His favorite books were the works of
+Voltaire, and he named his best ships after the most celebrated French
+infidels.
+
+Yet this man, so unloved, so undeserving of love, is said to have once
+had a warm heart. His early troubles and his domestic griefs are said to
+have soured and estranged him from mankind.
+
+"No one who has had access to his private papers can fail to be
+impressed with the belief that these early disappointments furnish the
+key to his entire character. Originally of warm and generous impulses,
+the belief in childhood that he had not been given his share of the love
+and kindness which were extended to others, changed the natural current
+of his feelings, and, acting on a warm and passionate temperament,
+alienated him from his home, his parents, and his friends. And when in
+after time there were superadded years of bitter anguish, resulting from
+his unfortunate and ill-adapted marriage, rendered even more poignant by
+the necessity of concealment, and the consequent injustice of public
+sentiment, marring all his cherished expectations, it may be readily
+understood why constant occupation became a necessity and labor a
+pleasure."
+
+This is the testimony of Mr. Henry W. Arey, the distinguished secretary
+of Girard College, in whose keeping are the papers of the subject of
+this memoir, and it must be confessed that his view of Girard's
+character is sustained by the following incidents, the narration of
+which I have passed over until now, in order that the history of his
+commercial career might not be interrupted:
+
+In the summer of 1793 the yellow fever broke out with fearful violence
+in Philadelphia. The citizens fled in dismay, leaving the plague-smitten
+city to its fate. Houses were left tenantless, and the streets were
+deserted. It was a season of horror and dread. Those who could not get
+away avoided each other, and the sufferers were left to languish and
+die. Money could not buy nurses in sufficient numbers, and often the
+victims lay unburied for days in the places where they had died. So
+terrible was the panic that it seemed that nothing could stay it.
+
+On the 10th of September the _Federal Gazette_, the only paper which had
+not suspended its publication, contained an anonymous card, stating that
+of the visitors of the poor all but three had succumbed to the disease
+or fled from the city, and begging assistance from such benevolent
+citizens as would consent to render their aid. On the 12th and 14th,
+meetings were held at the City Hall, at the last of which a volunteer
+committee was appointed to superintend the measures to be taken for
+checking the pestilence. Twenty-seven men volunteered to serve, but only
+twelve had the courage to fulfill their promise. They set to work
+promptly. The hospital at Bush Hill was reported by the physician to be
+in a deplorable state--without order, dirty and foul, and in need of
+nurses. The last, he stated, could not be had for any price. Two of the
+committee now stepped forward and nobly offered themselves as managers
+of the hospital. They were Stephen Girard and Peter Helm.
+
+Girard was now a man of wealth and influence, and with a brilliant
+commercial career opening before him. Above all, he was a foreigner, and
+unpopular in the city. Yet he did not hesitate to take the post from
+which others shrank. He and Helm were regarded as doomed men, but they
+did not falter from their self-imposed task. They went to work at once.
+Girard chose the post of honor, which was the post of danger--the
+management of the interior of the hospital. His decisive character was
+at once felt. Order began to appear, medicines and nurses were procured,
+and the very next day the committee were informed that the hospital had
+been cleaned and reorganized, and was prepared to receive patients.
+
+Girard opened his purse liberally, and spared no expense where money
+would avail. But this was not all. Besides personally superintending the
+interior of the hospital, he went about through the city seeking the
+sick and conveying them to the hospital.
+
+"In the great scarcity of help, he used frequently to receive the sick
+and dying at the gate, assist in carrying them to their beds, nurse
+them, receive their last messages, watch for their last breath, and
+then, wrapping them in the sheet on which they had died, carry them out
+to the burial ground and place them in the trench. He had a vivid
+recollection of the difficulty of finding any kind of fabric in which to
+wrap the dead, when the vast number of interments had exhausted the
+supply of sheets. 'I would put them,' he would say, 'in any old rag I
+could find.'"
+
+[Illustration: GIRARD'S HEROISM.]
+
+"If he ever left the hospital, it was to visit the infected districts,
+and assist in removing the sick from the houses in which they were dying
+without help. One scene of this kind, witnessed by a merchant who was
+hurrying past with camphored handkerchief pressed to his mouth, affords
+us a vivid glimpse of this heroic man engaged in his sublime vocation. A
+carriage, rapidly driven by a black man, broke the silence of the
+deserted and grass-grown street. It stopped before a frame house, and
+the driver, first having bound a handkerchief over his mouth, opened the
+door of the carriage, and quickly remounted to the box. A short,
+thick-set man stepped from the coach and entered the house. In a minute
+or two the observer, who stood at a safe distance watching the
+proceedings, heard a shuffling noise in the entry, and soon saw the
+stout little man supporting with extreme difficulty a tall, gaunt,
+yellow-visaged victim of the pestilence. Girard held round the waist the
+sick man, whose yellow face rested against his own; his long, damp,
+tangled hair mingled with Girard's; his feet dragging helpless upon the
+pavement. Thus he drew him to the carriage door, the driver averting his
+face from the spectacle, far from offering to assist. Partly dragging,
+partly lifting, Girard succeeded, after long and severe exertion, in
+getting him into the vehicle. He then entered it himself, closed the
+door, and the carriage drove away toward the hospital."[A]
+
+For sixty days Mr. Girard continued to discharge his duties, never
+absenting himself from his post, being nobly sustained by Peter Helm.
+
+Again, in 1797 and 1798, when the city was scourged a second and a third
+time with the fever, he volunteered his services, and more than earned
+the gratitude of his fellow-citizens. In the absence of physicians, he
+took upon himself the office of prescribing for the sick, and as his
+treatment involved careful nursing and the use of simple remedies only,
+he was very successful. In 1799 he wrote to his friend Devize, then in
+France, but who had been the physician at the Bush Hill Hospital in
+1793:
+
+"During all this frightful time I have constantly remained in the city,
+and, without neglecting any public duties, I have played a part which
+will make you smile. Would you believe it, my friend, that I have
+visited as many as fifteen sick people in a day, and what will surprise
+you still more, I have lost only one patient, an Irishman, who would
+drink a little. I do not flatter myself that I have cured one single
+person, but you will think with me that in my quality of Philadelphia
+physician I have been very moderate, and that not one of my confreres
+have killed fewer than myself."
+
+[Footnote A: James Parton.]
+
+Such acts as these should go far in his favor in estimating his
+character, for they are the very height of true heroism.
+
+Mr. Girard was never idle. Work, as has before been said, was a
+necessity with him. Nothing would draw him from his labors. His only
+recreation was to drive to his little farm, which lay a few miles out of
+the city, and engage with his own hands in the work of tilling it. He
+was very proud of the vegetables and fruits he raised himself, and took
+great interest in improving their growth. During the visit of the
+present head of the house of Baring Bros, (then a young man) to this
+country, that gentleman supposed he would give Mr. Girard pleasure by
+informing him of the safe arrival of one of his ships, the Voltaire,
+from India. Engaging a carriage, he drove to the banker's farm, and
+inquired for Mr. Girard.
+
+"He is in the hay-loft," was the answer.
+
+"Inform him that I wish to see him," said Mr. Baring; but almost before
+the words had left his lips Girard was before him.
+
+"I came to inform you," he said, addressing the banker, "that your ship,
+the Voltaire, has arrived safely."
+
+"I knew that she would reach port safely," said Girard; "my ships always
+arrive safe. She is a good ship. Mr. Baring, you must excuse me; I am
+much engaged in my hay." And so saying, he ascended to the loft again.
+
+To the last he was active. In 1830, having reached the age of eighty, he
+began to lose the sight of his eye; yet he would have no assistance. In
+attempting to cross a crowded street, he was knocked down by a passing
+wagon and injured severely. His ear was cut off, his face bruised, and
+his sight entirely destroyed. His health now declined rapidly, and on
+the 26th of December, 1831, he died, in the back room of his plain
+little house in Water Street.
+
+His immense wealth was carefully divided by his will. He gave to his
+surviving brother and eleven of his nieces sums ranging from five to
+twenty thousand dollars, and to his remaining niece, who was the mother
+of a very large family, he gave sixty thousand dollars. He gave to each
+of the captains then in his employ who had made two voyages in his
+service, and who should bring his ship safely into port, fifteen hundred
+dollars. To each of his apprentices he gave five hundred dollars. To his
+old servants he gave annuities, ranging from three to five hundred
+dollars each.
+
+He gave thirty thousand dollars to the Pennsylvania Hospital, in which
+his wife had been cared for; twenty thousand to the Deaf and Dumb
+Asylum; ten thousand to the Orphan Asylum; ten thousand to the Lancaster
+schools; ten thousand for the purpose of providing the poor in
+Philadelphia with free fuel; ten thousand to the Society for the Relief
+of Distressed Sea-Captains and their Families; twenty thousand to the
+Masonic Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania, for the relief of poor members; six
+thousand for the establishment of a free school in Passyunk, near
+Philadelphia; five hundred thousand dollars to the Corporation of
+Philadelphia for certain improvements in the city; three hundred
+thousand to the State of Pennsylvania for her canals; and a portion of
+his valuable estates in Louisiana to the Corporation of New Orleans, for
+the improvement of that city.
+
+The remainder of his property, worth then about six millions of dollars,
+he left to trustees for the erection and endowment of the noble College
+for Orphans, in Philadelphia, which bears his name.
+
+Thus it will be seen that this man, who seemed steeled to resist appeals
+for private charity in life, in death devoted all the results of his
+unusual genius in his calling to the noblest of purposes, and to
+enterprises of the most benignant character, which will gratefully hand
+his name down to the remotest ages of posterity.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+JOHN JACOB ASTOR.
+
+
+Those who imagine that the mercantile profession is incapable of
+developing the element of greatness in the mind of man, find a perfect
+refutation in the career of the subject of this memoir, who won his
+immense fortune by the same traits which would have raised him to
+eminence as a statesman. It may be thought by some that he has no claim
+to a place in the list of famous Americans, since he was not only German
+by birth, but German in character to his latest day; but it must be
+borne in mind that America was the theater of his exploits, and that he
+owed the greater part of his success to the wise and beneficent
+institutions of the "New Land," as he termed it. In his own country he
+would have had no opportunity for the display of his great abilities,
+and it was only by placing himself in the midst of institutions
+favorable to progress that he was enabled to make use of his talents. It
+is for this reason, therefore, that we may justly claim him as one of
+the most celebrated of American merchants.
+
+John Jacob Astor was born in the village of Waldorf, near Heidelberg, in
+the Grand Duchy of Baden, on the 17th of July, 1763. This year was
+famous for the conclusion of the Treaties of Paris and Hubertsburg,
+which placed all the fur-yielding regions of America, from the Gulf of
+Mexico to the Frozen Sea, in the hands of England. He was the youngest
+of four sons, and was born of Protestant parents. He was early taught to
+read Luther's Bible and the Prayer-book, and throughout his whole life
+remained a zealous Protestant. He was trained to the habit of rising
+early, and giving the first of his waking hours to reading the Bible and
+Prayer-book. This habit he continued all through life, and he often
+declared that it was to him the source of unfailing pleasure and
+comfort. His religious impressions were mainly due to his mother, who
+was a pious, thrifty, and hard-working woman, given to saving, and
+devoted to her family.
+
+His father, on the contrary, was a jolly "ne'er do well," a butcher by
+trade, and not overburdened with industry. The business of a butcher in
+so small a village as Waldorf, where meat was a luxury to the
+inhabitants, was merely a nominal calling. It knew but one season of
+real profit. It was at that time the custom in Germany for every farmer
+to set apart a calf, pig, or bullock, and fatten it against harvest
+time. As that season approached, the village butcher passed from house
+to house to slaughter the animal, cure its flesh, or make sausage meat
+of it, spending, sometimes, several days at each house. This season
+brought Jacob Astor an abundance of work, and enabled him to provide
+liberally for the simple wants of his family; but during the rest of the
+year it was with difficulty that he could make bread for them. Yet Jacob
+took his hard lot cheerfully. He was merry over his misfortunes, and
+sought to forget them in the society of companions who gathered at the
+village beer-house. His wife's remonstrances against such a course of
+life were sometimes so energetic that the house became any thing but a
+pleasant place for the children.
+
+Here John Jacob grew up to boyhood. His brothers left home to earn their
+livelihood elsewhere, as soon as they were old enough to do so, and he
+alone remained under the paternal roof. His father destined him for his
+own calling, but the boy shrank from it with disgust. To crown his
+misfortunes, his mother died, and his father married again, and this
+time a woman who looked with no favor upon the son. The newly-married
+pair quarreled continually, and the boy was glad to escape occasionally
+to the house of a schoolmate, where he passed the night in a garret or
+outhouse. By daylight he was back at his father's slaughter-house, to
+assist in carrying out the meat. He was poorly clad and badly fed, and
+his father's bad reputation wounded him so keenly that he shrank from
+playing with other boys, and led a life of comparative isolation.
+
+Fortunately for him, he had a teacher, Valentine Jeune by name, the son
+of French Protestants, who was better fitted for his position than the
+majority of the more liberally-patronized Catholic instructors. He was
+well taught by Valentine Jeune in the rudiments of a plain education,
+and the tutor and the Protestant minister of the village together
+succeeded so well in his religious instruction that at the age of
+fourteen he was confirmed. Confirmation is the decisive point in the
+career of the German youth. Until then he is only a child. Afterward he
+is regarded as on the threshold of manhood, and is given to understand
+that the time has come for him to make choice of a career in life.
+
+To the German peasant two courses only lie open, to learn a trade or go
+out to service. John Jacob was resolved not to do the latter, and he was
+in no condition to adopt the former. He was already familiar with his
+father's trade, but he shrank from it with disgust, and he could not
+hope to obtain money enough to pay for his tuition as an apprentice in
+any other calling. No workman in the village would receive him as an
+apprentice for less than fifty dollars, and fifty dollars were then
+further beyond his reach than as many millions in after years. The
+harvest was approaching, and Jacob Astor, seeing an unusual amount of
+work in store for him at that season, decided the matter for his son by
+informing him that he must prepare to settle down as his assistant. He
+obeyed, but discontentedly, and with a determination to abandon his home
+at the earliest practicable moment.
+
+His chief desire was to leave Germany and emigrate to America. The
+American Revolution had brought the "New Land" into great prominence;
+and one of the brothers, Henry Astor, had already settled in New York as
+a butcher, and his letters had the effect of increasing John Jacob's
+desire to follow him. It was impossible to do so then, for the war which
+was raging in this country made it any thing but inviting to an
+emigrant, and the boy was entirely ignorant of the English language.
+Nevertheless, he knew that the war could not last always, and he
+resolved to go as soon as peace would allow him. Meanwhile he wished to
+join his elder brother, who had removed to London, and was now engaged
+with his uncle in the manufacture of musical instruments. In London he
+thought he could acquire a knowledge of English, and save from his wages
+the amount necessary to pay his passage from England to America. He
+could reach some of the seaports of the Continent by walking. But he
+needed money to pay his passage from there to Great Britain. His
+determination thus formed, he made no secret of it, and succeeded at
+length in extorting a reluctant consent from his father, who was not
+inclined to expect very much from the future career of his son. His
+teacher, however, had more faith in him, and said to the butcher, on the
+morning of the lad's departure: "I am not afraid of John Jacob; he'll
+get through the world. He has a clear head, and every thing right behind
+the ears."
+
+He was seventeen years old when he left home; was stout and well built,
+and had a constitution of iron. He was possessed of a good plain
+education, and a remarkable degree of common sense. He had no vicious
+habits or propensities, and was resolved that he would never set foot
+again in his native town until he could do so as a rich man.
+
+Ardently as he was bent on seeking his fortune in distant lands, it cost
+him a struggle to go away, for he was a true German in his attachment to
+his home and family. This attachment he never lost. After providing
+liberally for his relatives in his will, he made a munificent donation
+to his native village for the benefit of its poor children.
+
+With his scanty wardrobe in a bundle, which he slung over his shoulder
+by a stick, and a mere pittance in his purse, he set out from Waldorf,
+on foot, for the Rhine. "Soon after I left the village," said he, in
+after-life, "I sat down beneath a tree to rest, and there I made three
+resolutions: to be honest, to be industrious, and not to gamble." He had
+but two dollars in his pocket; but this was enough for his purpose. The
+Rhine was not far distant from his native village, and this part of his
+journey he easily accomplished on foot. Upon reaching the river, he is
+said to have secured a place as oarsman on a timber raft. The timber
+which is cut in the Black Forest for shipment is made up into rafts on
+the Rhine, but instead of being suffered to float down the stream, as in
+this country, is rowed by oarsmen, each raft having from sixty to eighty
+men attached to it. As the labor is severe and attended with some risk,
+the wages are high, and the lot of the oarsmen not altogether a hard
+one, as they manage to have a great deal of sport among themselves. The
+amount paid as wages on these voyages is about ten dollars, besides the
+coarse fare furnished the men, and the time occupied is about two weeks.
+
+Upon reaching the Dutch seaport at the mouth of the Rhine, young Astor
+received his wages--the largest sum he had ever possessed--and took
+passage in a vessel for London, where he was welcomed cordially by his
+brother, and provided with employment in his manufactory.
+
+He now set to work to prepare himself for his emigration to America. His
+industry was unflagging. He worked literally from dawn till dark, and
+practiced the most rigid economy in his expenditures. His leisure time,
+which was brief, was spent in trying to master the English language, and
+in acquiring information respecting America. He had anticipated great
+difficulty in his efforts to learn English, but succeeded beyond his
+hopes. In six weeks he could make himself understood in that language,
+and some time before starting for America could speak it with ease,
+though he never could at any period of his life rid himself of his
+strong German accent. He was never able to write English correctly, but
+after being some years in this country acquired a style which was
+striking and to the point, in spite of its inaccuracy. England, however,
+was not a favorable place for acquiring information respecting America.
+The Colonies had exasperated the mother country by their heroic struggle
+for freedom, which was just drawing to its close, and the New World was
+pictured to the imagination of the young German in any thing but a
+favorable light. His most accurate information was gained from those who
+had returned from America, and these persons, as often as chance threw
+them in his way, he questioned with eagerness and precision; their
+answers were carefully stored up in his memory.
+
+In September, 1783, the news of the peace which established the
+independence of the United States was published in Europe. Young Astor
+had now been in London two years, and had saved money enough to take him
+to America. He was the possessor of a suit of good clothes, besides his
+ordinary wearing apparel, and fifteen guineas in English money, which he
+had saved from his slender earnings by the absolute denial to himself of
+every thing not essential to his existence. The way to America was now
+open, and he resolved to set out at once. For five guineas he bought a
+steerage passage in a ship bound for Baltimore, and reserving about five
+pounds sterling of the remainder of his capital in money, invested the
+rest in seven German flutes, which he bought of his brother, and
+embarked for the "New Land."
+
+The winter was memorable on land and sea for its severity, and our
+hero's first voyage was a stormy one. It is said that on one occasion,
+when the tempest was unusually violent, and the ship in imminent danger,
+he made his appearance in his Sunday clothes. In reply to those who
+asked his reason for so strange an act, he said that if he should reach
+land he would save his best clothes, and that if he was drowned it was
+immaterial what became of them.
+
+Although the ship sailed in November, it did not reach the Chesapeake
+until near the end of January, and there, when only one day distant from
+Baltimore, was caught in the ice, where it was compelled to remain until
+late in March. This delay was very vexatious to the young emigrant, but
+it proved in the end the greatest blessing that could have befallen him.
+During the voyage Astor had made the acquaintance of one of his fellow
+passengers, a German, somewhat older than himself, and, while the ship
+lay fast in the ice, the two were constantly together. As a consequence
+of the intimacy which thus sprung up between them, they exchanged
+confidences, told each other their history, and their purpose in coming
+to America. Astor learned that his friend had emigrated to the New World
+a few years before, friendless and penniless, but that, beginning in a
+little way, he had managed to become a fur trader. He bought his furs
+from the Indians, and from the boatmen plying on the Hudson River. These
+he sold at a small profit to larger dealers, until he had accumulated a
+considerable sum for one in his position. Believing that he could find a
+better market in Europe than in America, he had embarked all his capital
+in skins, which he had taken to England and sold at a heavy advance. The
+proceeds he had invested in toys and trinkets valued by the savages, and
+was now on his way back with them, intending to go into the wilderness
+himself and purchase an additional stock of furs from the Indians. He
+recommended Astor to enter upon the same business; gave him valuable
+information as to the value of peltries in America and in England; told
+him the best way of buying, packing, preserving, and shipping the skins,
+and gave him the names of the leading furriers in New York, Montreal,
+and London. Astor was deeply impressed with the views of his friend, but
+he could not see his own way clear to such a success, as he had no
+capital. His friend assured him that capital was unnecessary if he was
+willing to begin in an humble way. He could buy valuable furs on the
+wharves of New York for toys and trinkets, and even for cakes, from the
+Indians who visited the city, and these he could sell at an advance to
+the New York dealers. He advised the young man, however, not to be
+satisfied with the American market, but to work for a position which
+would enable him to send his furs to England, where they would bring
+four or five times as much as in this country. Astor carefully treasured
+up all that his friend said to him, and quietly resolved that he would
+lose no time in entering upon this business, which seemed to promise so
+much.
+
+The two friends traveled together from Baltimore to New York, where they
+were warmly received by Aster's brother, Henry, who had succeeded in
+laying the foundation of a prosperous business as a butcher, in which he
+afterward made a large fortune. Both brothers were men of business
+habits, and on the very first evening after the arrival of the new-comer
+they began to discuss plans for his future. Astor's friend stated all
+the advantages of the fur trade, and convinced Henry Astor that it was a
+fine field for the energies of his brother; and it was agreed that it
+would be best for the young man to seek employment in the service of
+some furrier in the city, in order that he might thoroughly learn the
+business, and familiarize himself with the country and its customs. To
+his great delight, young Astor learned that, so far from being compelled
+to pay his employer for learning him the business, as in Europe, he
+would be certain here to receive his board and nominal wages from the
+first. The next day the three started out, and succeeded in obtaining a
+situation for the young man in the store of Mr. Robert Bowne, a Quaker,
+and a merchant of long experience in the business, as well as a most
+estimable man. He is said to have engaged Astor at two dollars per week
+and his board.
+
+Astor was at once set to work by his employer to beat furs, this method
+of treating them being required to prevent the moths from lodging in and
+destroying them. From the first he applied himself to the task of
+learning the business. He bent all the powers of his remarkable mind to
+acquiring an intimate knowledge of furs, and of fur-bearing animals, and
+their haunts and habits. His opportunities for doing so were very good,
+as many of the skins were sold over Bowne's counters by the hunters who
+had taken them. These men he questioned with a minuteness that
+astonished them, and the result was that in a few years he was as
+thoroughly familiar with the animals, their habits, their country, and
+the mode of taking them, as many of the trappers themselves. He is said
+to have been in his prime the best judge of furs in America. He
+appreciated the fact that no man can succeed in any business or
+profession without fully understanding it, and he was too much
+determined upon success to be satisfied with a superficial knowledge. He
+was resolved that there should be no detail in the business, however
+minute, with which he was unfamiliar, and he toiled patiently to acquire
+information which most salesmen in his place would have esteemed
+trivial. Nothing was trivial with him, however, and it is remarkable
+that he never embarked in any scheme until he had mastered its most
+trifling details. Few men have ever shown a deeper and more far-reaching
+knowledge of their profession and the issues involved in it than he. He
+fully understood that his knowledge would give him a power which a man
+of less information could not obtain, and he never failed to use that
+knowledge as a power. His instructions to his subordinates were always
+drawn up with the strictest regard to details, and show not only how
+thoroughly he had mastered the subject before him, but also how much
+importance he attached to the conscientious fulfillment of a
+well-digested plan of operations. He recognized no such thing as luck.
+Every thing with him was the result of a deliberate plan based upon
+knowledge. In this respect his career affords one of the best models to
+be found in our history.
+
+[Illustration: ASTOR'S FIRST TRIP FOR FURS.]
+
+Astor's employer was not insensible to his merits, and soon promoted him
+to a better place. In a little while the latter intrusted him with the
+buying of the furs from the men who brought them to the store, and he
+gave such satisfaction to his employer that he was rewarded with a still
+more confidential post. Montreal was at that time the chief fur depot of
+the country, and it was the custom of Mr. Bowne to make an annual
+journey to that city for the purpose of replenishing his stock. The
+journey was long and fatiguing, and as soon as the old gentleman found
+that he could intrust the mission to his clerk, he sent him in his
+place. Ascending the Hudson to Albany, Astor, with a pack on his back,
+struck out across the country, which was then almost unsettled, to Lake
+George, up which he passed into Lake Champlain. Sailing to the head of
+the lake, he made his way to Montreal. Then returning in the same way,
+he employed Indians to transport his furs from Lake George to Albany,
+and dropped down the Hudson in the way he had come. Mr. Bowne was
+delighted with the success of his clerk, who proved more than a match
+for the shrewd Indians in his bargains. It was doubtless here that Mr.
+Astor obtained that facility in "driving a hard bargain" for which he
+was afterwards noted.
+
+As soon as Mr. Astor felt himself master of his business, he left the
+employ of Mr. Bowne, and began life on his own account. The field upon
+which he purposed entering was extensive, but it was one of which he had
+made a careful survey. Previous to the peace of 1763, the French and
+English divided the control of the fur-bearing regions of America. The
+British possessions, extending from Canada to the unexplored regions of
+the North, had been granted by a charter of Charles II. to Prince
+Rupert, and were, by virtue of that instrument, under the exclusive
+control of the Hudson Bay Company. Large quantities of furs were
+obtained in this region, and collected at the principal settlement, York
+Factory, from which they were shipped to England.
+
+South of this region was Canada, then possessed by the French, who
+carried on an extensive trade with the Indians, who brought their furs
+down to Montreal in their birch canoes. The French finally settled in
+the country of the savages, and married among the natives,
+thenceforward entirely devoting themselves to the life of the trapper
+and hunter. These marriages produced a race of half-breeds who were
+especially successful in securing furs. The cession of Canada to England
+was a severe blow to the French traders, as it opened the country to the
+enterprise of the English, a few of whom were quick to avail themselves
+of its advantages. The French and Indians at first regarded them with
+hostility, but gradually became reconciled to their presence.
+
+Under the French rule the savages had not been furnished with liquors,
+but the English soon sold whisky and rum in great quantities to them,
+receiving the best furs in return. As a consequence, intemperance spread
+rapidly among the savages, and threatened to put an end to their
+industry as gatherers of furs. To check the evil results of this
+irregular trading, a company was established in 1785, called the
+North-west Company. It was managed by twelve partners, some of whom
+resided at Montreal, and others at the trading posts in the interior.
+Their chief station was at Fort William, on Lake Superior. Here, at
+stated times, the agents would come up from Montreal and hold a
+consultation for the purchase of furs. These meetings always drew crowds
+of French and Indian trappers, boatmen, and others, who brought in large
+quantities of skins.
+
+A few years later a third company was organized, with its principal
+station at Michilimackinac, near Lake Huron. It was called the Mackinaw
+Company, and its field of operations was the country bordering Lake
+Superior, and that lying between the Mississippi and the Rocky
+Mountains. The company was English, but did not hesitate to operate in
+American territory, so little regard did Great Britain pay to the rights
+of the infant republic.
+
+"Although peace had been concluded, the frontier forts had not been
+given up. Oswego, Niagara, Detroit, Michilimackinac, and other posts
+were still in the hands of the English. The Indian tribes continued
+hostile, being under English influence. No company had as yet been
+formed in the United States. Several French houses at St. Louis traded
+with the Indians, but it was not until 1807 that an association of
+twelve partners, with a capital of forty thousand dollars, was formed at
+St. Louis, under the name of the Missouri Company.
+
+"The trade, it will thus be seen, was almost wholly in the hands of the
+English companies--the Hudson's Bay Company in the north, the North-west
+Company in the Canadas, the Mackinaw Company in the territories of the
+United States--and the few American traders in the field had to rely on
+their individual resources, with no aid from a Government too feeble in
+its infancy to do more than establish a few Indian agencies, and without
+constitutional power to confer charter privileges."
+
+The voyage of Captain Cook had brought to the notice of the fur dealers
+of the world the sea otter of the northern Pacific, and the announcement
+made upon the return of the expedition drew large numbers of adventurers
+to the west coast of America, in search of the valuable skins of these
+animals. In 1792, there were twenty-one vessels, principally American,
+on the coast.
+
+It was into this field, already occupied by powerful and hostile
+corporations, that the young German entered. He was perfectly aware of
+the opposition his efforts would encounter from them, but he was not
+dismayed. He began business in 1786, in a small store in Water Street,
+which he furnished with a few toys and notions suited to the tastes of
+the Indians who had skins to sell. His entire capital consisted of only
+a few hundred dollars, a portion of which was loaned him by his
+brother. He had no assistants. He did all his own work. He bought his
+skins, cured, beat, and sold them himself.
+
+Several times during the year he made journeys on foot through western
+New York, buying skins from the settlers, farmers, trappers, savages,
+wherever he could find them. He tramped over nearly the entire State in
+this way, and is said to have had a better knowledge of its geography
+and topography than any man living.
+
+"He used to boast, late in life, when the Erie Canal had called into
+being a line of thriving towns through the center of the State, that he
+had himself, in his numberless tramps, designated the sites of those
+towns, and predicted that one day they would be the centers of business
+and population. Particularly he noted the spots where Rochester and
+Buffalo now stand, one having a harbor on Lake Erie and the other upon
+Lake Ontario. He predicted that those places would one day be large and
+prosperous cities; and that prediction he made when there was scarcely a
+settlement at Buffalo, and only wigwams on the site of Rochester."
+
+During these tramps his business in the city was managed by a partner,
+with whom he was finally compelled to associate himself.
+
+As soon as he had collected a certain number of bales of skins he
+shipped them to London, and took a steerage passage in the vessel which
+conveyed them. He sold his skins in that city at a fine profit, and
+succeeded in forming business connections which enabled him afterward to
+ship his goods direct to London, and draw regularly upon the houses to
+which they were consigned. He also made an arrangement with the house of
+Astor & Broadwood, in which his brother was a partner, by which he
+became the agent in New York for the sale of their musical instruments,
+a branch of his business which became quite profitable to him. He is
+said to have been the first man in New York who kept a regular stock of
+musical instruments on hand.
+
+Slowly, and by unremitting industry, Mr. Astor succeeded in building up
+a certain business. His personal journeys made him acquainted with the
+trappers, and enabled him to win their good will. The savages sold their
+skins to him readily, and he found a steady market and a growing demand
+for his commodities in the Old World.
+
+It was about this time that he married Miss Sarah Todd, of New York. She
+was a connection of the Brevoort family, and was of better social
+position than her husband. She entered heartily into his business, doing
+much of the buying and beating of the furs herself. She was a true
+helpmate to him, and long after he was a millionaire, he used to boast
+of her skill in judging furs and conducting business operations.
+
+In 1794, Jay's treaty placed the frontier forts in the hands of the
+Americans, and thus increased the opportunities of our own traders to
+extend their business. It was of the greatest service to Mr. Astor. It
+enabled him to enlarge the field of his operations, and, at the same
+time, to send his agents on the long journeys which he formerly made,
+while he himself remained in New York to direct his business; which by
+this time had grown to considerable proportions.
+
+He was now on the road to wealth. He had scores of trappers and hunters
+working for him in the great wilderness, and his agents were kept busy
+buying and shipping the skins to New York. As soon as he was able to do
+so he purchased a ship, in which he sent his furs to London,
+occasionally making a voyage thither himself. He manifested the greatest
+interest in the markets of the Old World, especially in those of Asia,
+and informed himself so accurately concerning them that he was always
+enabled to furnish his captains with instructions covering the most
+minute detail of their transactions in those markets; and it is said
+that he was never unsuccessful in his ventures there, except when his
+instructions were disobeyed.
+
+In this again, as in the fur trade, we see him patiently acquiring
+knowledge of the eastern trade before venturing to engage in it. His
+first step was always to fully comprehend his task, to examine it from
+every possible point of view, so that he should be prepared to encounter
+any sudden reverse, or ready to take advantage of good fortune. Here lay
+the secret of his success--that he never embarked in an enterprise until
+he had learned how to use it to advantage.
+
+Under his skillful management his business grew rapidly; but he avoided
+speculation, and confined himself to legitimate commerce. He was plain
+and simple in his habits, carrying this trait to an extreme long after
+economy had ceased to be necessary to him. He worked hard, indulged in
+no pleasures except horseback exercise and the theater, of both which he
+was very fond. It was only after he had amassed a large fortune that he
+ever left his business before the close of the day. Then he would leave
+his counting-room at two in the afternoon, and, partaking of an early
+dinner, would pass the rest of the day in riding about the island. So
+plain was his style of living that, before he became generally known as
+a wealthy man, a bank clerk once superciliously informed him that his
+indorsement of a note would not be sufficient, as it was not likely he
+would be able to pay it in case the bank should be forced to call upon
+him.
+
+"Indeed," said Mr. Astor, "how much do you suppose I am worth?"
+
+The clerk named a moderate amount, at which the merchant smiled
+quietly.
+
+"Would the indorsement of Mr. ----, or Mr. ----, be sufficient?" asked
+Mr. Astor, naming several well-known merchants who lived in great style.
+
+"Entirely sufficient," was the reply. "Each one of them is known to be
+wealthy."
+
+"How much do you think each is worth?"
+
+The clerk named large sums in connection with each of the gentlemen.
+
+"Well, my friend," said the merchant, "I am worth more than any of them.
+I will not tell you how much I am worth, but it is more than any sum you
+have named."
+
+The clerk looked at him in surprise, and then said, bluntly, "Then you
+are a greater fool than I took you for, to work as hard as you do."
+
+Mr. Astor was very fond of telling this story, which he regarded as one
+of the best jokes of the day.
+
+All this time Mr. Astor had lived over his store, but in 1800, after he
+had been in business fifteen years, he moved his dwelling to 223
+Broadway, on the site of the Astor House of to-day. He lived here, with
+one removal, for upwards of twenty-five years. The house was plain and
+simple, but he was satisfied with it. He was now worth a quarter of a
+million dollars, and his business was growing rapidly. The fur trade was
+exceedingly profitable. A beaver skin could be bought from the trappers
+in western New York for one dollar and sold in London for six dollars
+and a quarter. By investing this amount in English manufactures, the six
+dollars and a quarter received for the skin could be made to produce ten
+dollars paid for the English goods in New York.
+
+The Chinese trade was also very profitable. China was an excellent
+market for furs. They brought high prices, and the proceeds could always
+be invested in teas and silks, which sold well in New York. His profit
+on a voyage would sometimes reach seventy thousand dollars, and the
+average gain on a lucky venture of this kind was thirty thousand
+dollars. The high prices produced by the war of 1812-15 were also in Mr.
+Astor's favor. His ships were all remarkably lucky in escaping capture
+by the enemy, and he was almost the only merchant who had a cargo of tea
+in the market. Tea having reached double its usual price, he was enabled
+to reap immense profits from his ventures.
+
+Mr. Francis, in his _Old Merchants of New York_, makes the following
+revelation of the manner in which Mr. Astor found it possible to carry
+on such an immense business. He says:
+
+"A house that could raise money enough, thirty years ago, to send
+$260,000 in specie, could soon have an uncommon capital; and this was
+the working of the old system. The Griswolds owned the ship Panama. They
+started her from New York in the month of May, with a cargo of perhaps
+$30,000 worth of ginseng, spelter, lead, iron, etc., and $170,000 in
+Spanish dollars. The ship goes on the voyage, reaches Whampoa in safety
+(a few miles below Canton). Her supercargo, in two months, has her
+loaded with tea, some chinaware, a great deal of cassia, or false
+cinnamon, and a few other articles. Suppose the cargo mainly tea,
+costing about thirty-seven cents (at that time) per pound on the
+average.
+
+"The duty was enormous in those days. It was twice the cost of the tea,
+at least; so that a cargo of $200,000, when it had paid duty of
+seventy-five cents per pound (which would be $400,000), amounted to
+$600,000. The profit was at least fifty per cent, on the original cost,
+or $100,000, and would make the cargo worth $700,000.
+
+"The cargo of teas would be sold almost on arrival (say eleven or
+twelve months after the ship left New York in May), to wholesale
+grocers, for their notes at four and six months--say for $700,000. In
+those years there was _credit given by the United States_ of nine,
+twelve, and eighteen months! So that the East India or Canton merchant,
+after his ship had made one voyage, had the use of Government capital to
+the extent of $400,000, on the ordinary cargo of a China ship.
+
+"No sooner had the ship Panama arrived (or any of the regular East
+Indiamen), than her cargo would be exchanged for grocers' notes for
+$700,000. These notes could be turned into specie very easily, and the
+owner had only to pay his bonds for duty at nine, twelve, and eighteen
+months, giving him time actually to send two more ships, with $200,000
+each, to Canton, and have them back again in New York before the bonds
+on the first cargo were due.
+
+"John Jacob Astor, at one period of his life, had several vessels
+operating in this way. They would go to the Pacific, and carry furs from
+thence to Canton. These would be sold at large profits. Then the cargoes
+of tea to New York would pay enormous duties, which Astor did not have
+to pay to the United States for a year and a half. His tea cargoes would
+be sold for good four and six months paper, or perhaps cash; so that,
+for eighteen or twenty years, John Jacob Astor had what was actually a
+free-of-interest loan from Government of over _five millions_ of
+dollars."
+
+It is estimated that Mr. Astor made about two millions of dollars by his
+trade in furs and teas. The bulk of his immense fortune was made by
+investments in real estate. His estate was estimated at twenty millions
+of dollars at the time of his death, and has now increased to over forty
+millions. He had a firm faith in the magnificent future of New York as
+the greatest city of the continent, and as fast as his gains from his
+business came in, they were regularly invested in real estate. A part
+was expended in leasing for a long period property which the owners
+would not sell, and the rest in buying property in fee simple. These
+leases, some of which have but recently expired, were extremely
+profitable. In his purchases of land Mr. Astor was very fortunate. He
+pursued a regular system in making them. Whenever a favorable purchase
+could be made in the heart of the city, he availed himself of the
+opportunity, but as a rule he bought his lands in what was then the
+suburb of the city, and which few besides himself expected to see built
+up during their lifetime. His sagacity and foresight have been more than
+justified by the course of events. His estate now lies principally in
+the heart of New York, and has yielded an increase greater even than he
+had ventured to hope for. Seventy hundred and twenty houses are said to
+figure on the rent roll of the Astor estate at present, and besides
+these are a number of lots not yet built upon, but which are every day
+increasing in value. "When Mr. Astor bought Richmond Hill, the estate of
+Aaron Burr, he gave one thousand dollars an acre for the hundred and
+sixty acres. Twelve years later, the land was valued at fifteen hundred
+dollars per lot."
+
+In 1810, he sold a lot near Wall Street for eight thousand dollars. The
+price was so low that a purchaser for cash was found at once, and this
+gentleman, after the sale, expressed his surprise that Mr. Astor should
+ask only eight thousand for a lot which in a few years would sell for
+twelve thousand.
+
+"That is true," said Mr. Astor, "but see what I intend doing with these
+eight thousand dollars. I shall buy eighty lots above Canal Street, and
+by the time your one lot is worth twelve thousand dollars, my eighty
+lots will be worth eighty thousand dollars."
+
+His expectations were realized.
+
+During the war of the Revolution, Roger Morris and his wife, Mary, of
+Putnam County, were obliged to flee from the country to England for
+adhering to the cause of King George, and, being attainted by the
+authorities as public enemies, their immense estate, consisting of
+fifty-one thousand one hundred and two acres, was seized by the State of
+New York, and sold in small parcels to farmers, who believed the title
+thus acquired valid. In 1809, there were upwards of seven hundred
+families residing on this land. Mr. Astor, having learned that Roger and
+Mary Morris possessed only a life interest in their property, and having
+ascertained to his satisfaction that the State could not confiscate the
+rights of the heirs, purchased their claim, which was good not only for
+the land, but for all the improvements that had been put upon it. He
+paid twenty thousand pounds sterling for it. A few years previous to the
+death of Mrs. Morris, who survived her husband some years, Mr. Astor
+presented his claim. The occupants of the land were thunderstruck, but
+the right was on his side. The State of New York had simply robbed the
+heirs of their rights. There was no weak point in the claim. Having
+given defective titles to the farmers, the State was of course
+responsible for the claim; and upon finding out their mistake, the
+authorities asked Mr. Astor to name the sum for which he would be
+willing to compromise. The lands were valued at six hundred and
+sixty-seven thousand dollars, but Mr. Astor expressed his willingness to
+sell for three hundred thousand dollars. His offer was refused. In 1819,
+a second proposition was made to Mr. Astor by the Legislature of the
+State. He replied: "In 1813 or 1814 a similar proposition was made to me
+by the commissioners then appointed by the Honorable the Legislature of
+this State when I offered to compromise for the sum of three hundred
+thousand dollars, which, considering the value of the property in
+question, was thought very reasonable, and, at the present period, when
+the life of Mrs. Morris is, according to calculation, worth little or
+nothing, she being near eighty-six years of age, and the property more
+valuable than it was in 1813. I am still willing to receive the amount
+which I then stated, with interest on the same, payable in money or
+stock, bearing an interest of -- per cent., payable quarterly. The stock
+may be made payable at such periods as the Honorable the Legislature may
+deem proper. This offer will, I trust, be considered as liberal, and as
+a proof of my willingness to compromise on terms which are reasonable,
+considering the value of the property, the price which it cost me, and
+the inconvenience of having so long _lain out_ of my money, which, if
+employed in commercial operations, would most likely have produced
+better profits."
+
+This offer was not accepted by the Legislature, and the cause was
+delayed until 1827, when it was brought before the courts. It was argued
+by such men as Daniel Webster and Martin Van Buren, on the part of the
+State, and by Thomas Addis Emmett, Ogden, and others for Astor. The
+State had no case, and the matter was decided in Astor's favor. Then the
+State consented to compromise. The famous Astor stock, which paid that
+gentleman about five hundred thousand dollars, was issued, and the
+titles of the possessors of the lands confirmed.
+
+The most important of all of Mr. Astor's undertakings was his effort at
+founding the settlement of Astoria, on the coast of Oregon. This
+enterprise has been made so familiar to the majority of readers by the
+pen of Washington Irving, that I can only refer to it here. "His
+design," says a writer of thirteen years ago, "was to organize and
+control the fur trade from the lakes to the Pacific, by establishing
+trading posts along the Missouri and Columbia to its mouth. He designed
+establishing a central depot and post at the mouth of the Columbia. He
+proposed sending regular supply-ships to the Pacific posts around the
+Horn. By these, stores were to be sent also to the Russian
+establishments. It was part of his plan, if possible, to obtain
+possession of one of the Sandwich Islands as a station, for from the
+Pacific coast he knew that the Chinese market for his peltries could be
+most conveniently reached, and thus the necessity for a long and
+circuitous voyage be avoided. Instead of bringing the furs intended for
+China to New York, they could be sent from the Pacific. By the
+supply-ships, too, the stock of goods suitable for the Indian trade
+would be kept up there, and the cargoes purchased with the proceeds of
+the furs sold in China brought back to New York. The line of posts
+across the continent would become a line of towns; emigration would
+follow, and civilization would belt the continent.
+
+"In this grand scheme, Mr. Astor was only anticipating the course of
+events which, fifty years later, we are beginning to witness. When he
+laid his plans before the Government, Mr. Jefferson, who was then
+President, 'considered as a great acquisition,' as he afterward
+expressed himself in a letter to Mr. Astor, 'the commencement of a
+settlement on the western coast of America, and looked forward with
+gratification to the time when its descendants should have spread
+themselves through the whole length of that coast, covering it with free
+and independent Americans, unconnected with us except by ties of blood
+and interest, and enjoying, like us, the rights of self-government.'
+Even Jefferson's mind, wide as it was, could not take in the idea of a
+national unity embracing both ends of the continent; but not so thought
+Astor. The merchant saw farther than the statesman. It was precisely
+this political unity which gave him hope and chance of success in his
+worldwide schemes. When the Constitution was adopted, the chief source
+of apprehension for its permanence with men like Patrick Henry, and
+other wise statesmen, was the extent of our territory. The Alleghanies,
+it was thought, had put asunder communities whom no paper constitution
+could unite. But at that early day, when Ohio was the far West, and no
+steamboat had yet gone up the Mississippi, Astor looked beyond the Ohio,
+beyond the Mississippi, and the Rocky Mountains, and saw the whole
+American territory, from ocean to ocean, the domain of one united
+nation, the seat of trade and industry. He saw lines of trading posts
+uniting the Western settlements with the Pacific; following this line of
+trading posts, he saw the columns of a peaceful emigration crossing the
+plains, crossing the mountains, descending the Columbia, and towns and
+villages taking the places of the solitary posts, and cultivated fields
+instead of the hunting-grounds of the Indian and the trapper.
+
+"No enterprise, unless it be the Atlantic telegraph, engages more deeply
+the public attention than a railroad communication with the Pacific
+coast.[A] The rapid settlement of Oregon and California, the constant
+communication by steam to the Pacific coast, render it easy now to feel
+the nearness of that region, and the oneness of the nationality which
+covers the continent. But to Astor's eye the thing was as palpable then
+as now. And yet but two or three attempts had then been made to explore
+the overland routes."
+
+It would be deeply interesting to examine the details of this fast
+scheme of colonization and trade, for it is certain that Mr. Astor was
+as anxious to do an act which, by building up the continent, should hand
+his name down to posterity as a national benefactor, as to increase his
+business; but the limits of this article forbid more than a mere glance
+at the subject.
+
+[Footnote A: The reader will bear in mind that the above extract was
+written in 1857.]
+
+A company was formed, at the head of which stood Mr. Astor, and an
+elaborate and carefully-arranged plan of operations prepared. Two
+expeditions were dispatched to the mouth of the Columbia, one by land
+and the other by sea. Many hardships were encountered, but the
+foundation of a settlement was successfully made on the Columbia. In
+spite of the war with England (1812-15), which now occurred, the
+enterprise would have been successful had Mr. Astor's positive
+instructions been obeyed. They were utterly disregarded, however, and
+his partners and agents not only betrayed him in every instance, but
+sold his property to a rival British company for a mere trifle. His
+pecuniary loss was over a million of dollars, and his disappointment
+bitter beyond expression. When the enterprise was on the point of
+failure, and while he was still chafing at the conduct of his
+treacherous subordinates, he wrote to Mr. Hunt, the most faithful of all
+his agents: "Were I on the spot, and, had the management of affairs, I
+would defy them all; but as it is, every thing depends on you and your
+friends about you. Our enterprise is grand, and deserves success, and I
+hope in God it will meet it. _If my object was merely gain of money_, I
+should say, think whether it is best to save what we can, and abandon
+the place; but the very idea is like a dagger to my heart." When the
+news of the final betrayal reached him, he wrote to the same gentleman:
+"Had our place and property been fairly captured, I should have
+preferred it; I should not feel as if I were disgraced."
+
+Mr. Astor remained in active business for fifty years. During that
+entire period he scarcely committed an error of judgment which led to a
+loss in business. He was thorough master of every thing pertaining to
+his affairs, and his strength and accuracy of judgment was remarkable.
+The particulars of his transactions were indelibly impressed upon his
+mind. His intellect was vigorous and quick, and he grasped a subject
+with a readiness which seemed like intuition. He was always careful of
+the present, but he loved to undertake enterprises which extended far
+into the future. He was a man of the utmost punctuality in all his
+habits. He rose early, and, until he was fifty-five years old, was
+always in his office before seven o'clock. His capacity for work was
+very great, so that, in spite of his heavy labors, he was always able to
+leave his office by two o'clock, while many of his associates, who
+really did less than he, were compelled to remain in their
+counting-rooms until four or five. He was noted for his unvarying
+calmness, which he doubtless owed to his German temperament. In the
+midst of disaster and loss he was cooler and more cheerful than ever. To
+those who chafed at their troubles, he would say, smilingly, "Keep
+quiet; keep cool." This was his safeguard.
+
+He was a devoted citizen of the United States, and, though he took no
+active interest in politics, was a steady supporter of the Whig party.
+Henry Clay was his personal friend, and his last donation to any
+political cause was a subscription of fifteen hundred dollars to aid the
+election of his old friend to the Presidency.
+
+About the year 1830, Mr. Astor, now the possessor of millions, began to
+withdraw from active business, confining his efforts chiefly to such
+investments as the management of his immense estate made necessary. He
+now put into execution an enterprise which he had long cherished. When a
+poor stranger in the city, he had once stopped in Broadway to notice a
+row of buildings which had just been erected, and which were considered
+the finest in the street, and had then made a vow that he would one day
+build a larger and finer house than any in Broadway. He now set to work
+to carry out the plan he had cherished ever since. He owned the entire
+block on Broadway, between Vesey and Barclay streets, with the
+exception of one house, which was the property of a Mr. Coster, a
+merchant who had amassed a large fortune and retired from business. Mr.
+Astor made him many offers for his house, but the old gentleman was
+unwilling to remove. Mr. Astor offered him the full value of his house,
+which was thirty thousand dollars, and increased the bid to forty
+thousand, but Mr. Coster was obstinate. At length Mr. Astor, in despair,
+was compelled to reveal his plan to his neighbor.
+
+"I want to build a hotel," said he. "I have got all the other lots. Now
+name your own price."
+
+Mr. Coster replied that he would sell for sixty thousand dollars if his
+wife would consent, and that Mr. Astor could see her the next morning.
+Mr. Astor was punctual to the appointment, and his offer was accepted by
+the good lady, who said to him, condescendingly, "I don't want to sell
+the house, but we are such old friends that I am willing for your sake."
+
+Mr. Astor used to remark with great glee that any one could afford to
+exhibit such condescension after receiving double the value of a piece
+of property.
+
+Having got possession of the entire block, he commenced the demolition
+of the old buildings, and on their site reared the Astor House, then the
+largest and most elegant hotel in the country. This building, when
+completed, he gave to his eldest son, William B. Astor.
+
+In 1832, Mr. Astor sailed for Europe to visit one of his daughters, who
+had married a nobleman, and remained abroad until 1835. In that year he
+was compelled to return home by the action of General Jackson with
+regard to the Bank of the United States. "He reached Havre," says Mr.
+Parton, "when the ship, on the point of sailing, had every stateroom
+engaged, but he was so anxious to get home, that the captain, who had
+commanded ships for him in former years, gave up to him his own
+stateroom. Head winds and boisterous seas kept the vessel beating about
+and tossing in the channel for many days. The great man was very sick,
+and still more alarmed. At length, being persuaded that he should not
+survive the voyage, he asked the captain to run in and set him ashore on
+the coast of England. The captain dissuaded him. The old man urged his
+request at every opportunity, and said, at last, 'I give you tousand
+dollars to put me aboard a pilot boat.' He was so vehement and
+importunate, that one day the captain, worried out of all patience,
+promised him that if he did not get out of the channel before next
+morning, he would run in and put him ashore. It happened that the wind
+changed in the afternoon and wafted the ship into the broad ocean. But
+the troubles of the sea-sick millionaire had only just begun. A heavy
+gale of some days' duration blew the vessel along the western coast of
+Ireland. Mr. Astor, now thoroughly panic-stricken, offered the captain
+ten thousand dollars if he would put him ashore anywhere on the wild and
+rocky coast of the Emerald Isle. In vain the captain remonstrated. In
+vain he reminded the old gentleman of the danger of forfeiting his
+insurance.
+
+"'Insurance!' exclaimed Astor, 'can't I insure your ship my self?'
+
+"In vain the captain mentioned the rights of the other passengers. In
+vain he described the solitary and rock-bound coast, and detailed the
+dangers and difficulties which attended its approach. Nothing would
+appease him. He said he would take all the responsibility, brave all the
+perils, endure all the consequences, only let him once more feel the
+firm ground under his feet. The gale having abated, the captain yielded
+to his entreaties, and engaged, if the other passengers would consent to
+the delay, to stand in, and put him ashore. Mr. Astor went into the
+cabin, and proceeded to write what was expected to be a draft for ten
+thousand dollars in favor of the owners of the ship on his agent in New
+York. He handed to the captain the result of his efforts. It was a paper
+covered with writing that was totally illegible.
+
+"'What is this?' asked the captain.
+
+"'A draft upon my son for ten thousand dollars,' was the reply.
+
+"'But no one can read it.'
+
+"'O yes, my son will know what it is. My hand trembles so that I can not
+write any better.'
+
+"'But,' said the captain, 'you can at least write your name. I am acting
+for the owners of the ship, and I can not risk their property for a
+piece of paper that no one can read. Let one of the gentlemen draw up a
+draft in proper form; you sign it, and I will put you ashore.'
+
+"The old gentleman would not consent to this mode of proceeding, and the
+affair was dropped."
+
+During the last twenty years of his life Mr. Astor lived in the
+retirement of his family, leaving even the greater part of the
+management of his estate to the hands of others. He was exceedingly fond
+of literary men. Irving was his friend, and Halleck his business
+manager. He died at the age of eighty-four years and eight months,
+literally from old age. He was buried in St. Thomas's Church, on
+Broadway.
+
+His immense estate was left to his children, the bulk of it being
+bequeathed to his eldest son. All of his relatives were made
+comfortable. The village of Waldorf, his native place, received a legacy
+of fifty thousand dollars for the benefit of its poor, and an amount in
+land and funds equal to four hundred thousand dollars was left to
+certain trustees to establish the Astor Library in the city of New York.
+Besides these, several charitable and benevolent associations received
+handsome donations from him.
+
+His career has been related in these pages as an example to those who
+are seeking to rise in legitimate commerce. It is the Best instance on
+record of the facility with which success may be won by patient and
+intelligent industry. In his capacity for grasping and carrying out an
+enterprise, in his prudent and economical management of his business,
+in his tact, courage, sagacity, Mr. Astor's example is one which will
+lead many to success, and none to injury.
+
+He was a thoroughly upright man, his transactions were rigidly honest;
+but as a man, candor compels the acknowledgment that he was not a safe
+or admirable model. He was utterly devoid of generosity. Liberal to an
+extreme with his own family, he was close and hard with others. He paid
+small wages to his employes and never gave more than the man bargained
+for, no matter what extra service might be rendered. He carried his
+economy to a degree of meanness painful to contemplate. At his death,
+out of his vast estate, he left to his friend and faithful manager an
+annuity of only two hundred dollars, which his son increased to fifteen
+hundred.
+
+One of his captains once succeeded in saving for him property in China
+to the amount of seven hundred thousand dollars, which had become
+jeopardized by the sudden death of the agent in charge of it. This
+service was purely voluntary, and was one which required the greatest
+skill, determination, and courage on the part of the captain, and Astor
+acknowledged it, frequently saying: "If you had not done just as you
+did, I should never have seen one dollar of my money; no, not one dollar
+of it." This was the only acknowledgment he made, however. He was worth
+ten millions of dollars, and the captain had only his pay--twelve
+hundred dollars a year--and a family. At his father's death Mr. William
+B. Astor sent a considerable sum to the old seaman in return for this
+service.
+
+"We have all heard much of the closeness, or rather the meanness, of
+this remarkable man. Truth compels us to admit that he was not generous,
+except to his own kindred. His liberality began and ended in his own
+family. Very seldom during his lifetime did he willingly do a generous
+act, outside of the little circle of his relations and descendants. To
+get all he could, and to keep nearly all that he got--those were the
+laws of his being.... He enjoyed keenly the consciousness, the feeling,
+of being rich. The roll-book of his possessions was his Bible. He
+scanned it fondly, and saw, with quiet but deep delight, the catalogue
+of his property lengthening from month to month. The love of
+accumulation grew with his years, until it ruled him like a tyrant. If
+at fifty he possessed his millions, at sixty-five his millions possessed
+him. Only to his own children and to their children was he liberal; and
+his liberality to them was all arranged with a view to keeping his
+estate in the family, and to cause it at every moment to tend toward a
+final consolidation in one enormous mass."
+
+This is the estimate of his character formed by Mr. James Parton. His
+friend Dr. Coggswell presents him in quite a different light. He says:
+
+"Mr. Astor lived to the good old age of four score and four years and
+eight months. For some years previous to his death, which happened March
+29, 1848, his manly form was bowed down by age, and his bodily strength
+greatly enfeebled, but his mind retained much of its original Vigor and
+brightness. Considering his extraordinary activity until a late period
+of his life, he submitted to the helplessness of age with uncommon
+resignation. When his impaired eye-sight no longer permitted him to
+read, his principal relief from the wearisomeness of unoccupied time was
+in the society of his friends and near relatives. All who knew him well
+were strongly attached to him, and none but those who were ignorant of
+his true character believed him unamiable and repulsive.
+
+"His smile was peculiarly benignant and expressive of genuine kindness
+of heart, and his whole manner cordial and courteous to every one
+entitled to his respect. There was something so impressive in his
+appearance, no one could stand before him without feeling that he was in
+the presence of a superior intelligence. His deep, sunken eye, beneath
+his overarched brow, denoted the prophetic--it might almost be said the
+inspired--mind within. Although he lived many years beyond the age when
+the grasshopper is a burden, and was the victim of much suffering, he
+did not murmur, nor did he become unreasonable and peevish. He was not
+wont to talk much on the subject of religion, or freely communicate his
+views in relation to the life beyond the grave; but it can not be
+doubted that such tranquility as he exhibited in his near approach to
+it must have been derived from 'that peace which the world can neither
+give nor take away,'"
+
+Perhaps a medium between Mr. Parton's bitterness and Dr. Coggswell's
+enthusiasm will be as correct an estimate of his personal character as
+can be formed. It is a singular fact that Mr. Astor managed, in spite of
+the closeness which marked his operations, in spite of the small wages
+he paid, to inspire his employes with a zeal in his service that made
+them willing to undertake any thing, to endure any amount of labor, for
+him.
+
+"He once lost seventy thousand dollars by committing a piece of petty
+injustice toward his best captain. This gallant sailor, being notified
+by an insurance office of the necessity of having a chronometer on
+board his ship, spoke to Mr. Astor on the subject, who advised the
+captain to buy one.
+
+"'But,' said the captain, 'I have no five hundred dollars to spare for
+such a purpose; the chronometer should belong to the ship.'
+
+"'Well,' said the merchant, 'you need not pay for it now; pay for it at
+your convenience,'
+
+"The captain still objecting, Astor, after a prolonged higgling,
+authorized him to buy a chronometer and charge it to the ship's account,
+which was done.
+
+"Sailing day was at hand. The ship was hauled into the stream. The
+captain, as is the custom, handed in his account. Astor, subjecting it
+to his usual close scrutiny, observed the novel item of five hundred
+dollars for the chronometer. He objected, averring that it was
+understood between them that the captain was to pay for the instrument.
+The worthy sailor recalled the conversation, and firmly held to his
+recollection of it. Astor insisting on his own view of the matter, the
+captain was so profoundly disgusted that, important as the command of
+the ship was to him, he resigned his post. Another captain was soon
+found, and the ship sailed for China.
+
+"Another house, which was then engaged in the China trade, knowing the
+worth of this 'king of captains,' as Astor himself used to style him,
+bought him a ship and dispatched him to Canton two months after the
+departure of Astor's vessel. Our captain, put upon his mettle, employed
+all his skill to accelerate the speed of his ship, and had such success
+that he reached New York, with a full cargo of tea, just seven days
+after the arrival of Mr. Astor's ship. Astor, not expecting another ship
+for months, and therefore sure of monopolizing the market, had not yet
+broken bulk, nor even taken off the hatchways. Our captain arrived on a
+Saturday. Advertisements and handbills were immediately issued, and on
+the Wednesday morning following, as the custom then was, the auction
+sale of the tea began on the wharf--two barrels of punch contributing to
+the _eclat_ and hilarity of the occasion. The cargo was sold to good
+advantage, and the market was glutted. Astor lost in consequence the
+entire profits of the voyage, not less than the sum previously named.
+Meeting the captain some time after in Broadway, he said:
+
+"'I had better have paid for that chronometer of yours,'"
+
+Yet he could do a kind act when he was in the humor. When he was poor
+and struggling for fortune, he had a friend in the city named Pell, a
+coachmaker. As he advanced in the world he lost sight of his friend. One
+day a young man called on him to ask if he would sell one of his leases
+which he (the visitor) then held. He replied promptly and decidedly that
+he would not sell.
+
+"But what is your name?" he asked.
+
+"It is Pell," was the reply.
+
+"Pell--Pell--" said the old man, hesitating a moment, "I knew a man by
+that name once; he was a dear friend of mine, but I have not seen him
+for years."
+
+"That man," said the visitor, "was my father."
+
+"Indeed," exclaimed the old man, warmly; "your father? Why, he used to
+give me rides in his coaches. How I should like to see him."
+
+Then pausing a moment, and smiling as he recalled the past to his mind,
+he said:
+
+"You shall have the lease, young man. Go home, have the papers drawn,
+come here at eleven o'clock on Thursday, and I'll sign them. But don't
+put in any consideration."
+
+The engagement was kept punctually by both parties.
+
+"Have you got the papers?" asked the merchant. "Did you put in the
+consideration? Well, let it be one hundred dollars. Have you got the
+money about you? Well, no matter, Bruce will keep the lease till you
+come and pay. I've given you two thousand dollars, young man. Don't you
+buy any more, for I sha'n't do it again. You tell your father that I
+remember him, and that I have given you two thousand dollars."
+
+Mr. Astor dearly liked a joke, and occasionally indulged in a sly bit of
+humor himself. On one occasion a committee called upon him to solicit a
+donation for some charitable object. The old man took the subscription
+list, and, after examining it, signed it and gave the committee a check
+for fifty dollars. They had expected much more, and one of them ventured
+to say:
+
+"We did hope for more, Mr. Astor. Your son gave us a hundred dollars."
+
+"Ah!" replied the old man, dryly, "William has a rich father. Mine was
+very poor."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+ALEXANDER T. STEWART.
+
+
+In the year 1818, a European vessel anchored in the harbor of New York,
+after a long and weary voyage from the Old World. She brought many
+passengers to the young metropolis, the majority of whom came with the
+intention of seeking fortunes in this land of promise.
+
+Among them was a young Irishman who had left his home in his native land
+to seek in America the means of bettering his condition. This was
+ALEXANDER T. STEWART. He was the son of Scotch-Irish parents, and was
+born in Belfast in 1802. Being only three years old when his father
+died, his grandfather took charge of him, and proved a kind and
+judicious guardian. As he was designed for the ministry by his relative,
+and as his own tastes inclined him to that profession, he was given a
+good common school education, and placed at college, where he made
+favorable progress in his class. He was particularly successful in the
+classics, and is said to retain his relish for them at the present day.
+
+During his second term his grandfather died, and he was by this event
+obliged to leave college. Abandoning the idea of entering the ministry,
+he embarked for America, determined to make a fortune in the New World.
+He came sufficiently supplied with ready money to insure him against
+immediate want, and with letters of introduction which at once secured
+him an excellent social position.
+
+After trying in vain for some time to secure employment in a business
+house, he obtained a position as assistant in a commercial school. This
+he soon resigned for a similar place in a more celebrated school. His
+salary here was $300, which was considered ample compensation in those
+days.
+
+Not wishing to continue in this career, however, he opened a small
+retail dry goods store in New York, and began business on a humble
+scale. Here he remained until the age of twenty-one, manifesting no
+extraordinary business capacity, and in no way distinguished from the
+many small dealers around him. Upon reaching his majority he returned to
+Ireland, to look after the inheritance left him by his grandfather. The
+amount which thus came to him was nearly one thousand pounds, and the
+greater part of this he invested in "insertions" and "scollop
+trimmings," which he shipped to America by the vessel in which he
+returned. He rented a little store, on his return, at 283 Broadway, and
+there displayed his stock, which met with a ready sale at a fair profit.
+
+Without mercantile experience, and possessing little advantage, save his
+own Scotch-Irish energy and courage, Mr. Stewart started boldly on what
+proved the road to fortune. No young merchant ever worked harder than
+he. From fourteen to eighteen hours each day were given to his business.
+He was his own book-keeper, salesman, and porter. He could not afford to
+employ help. Credit was hard to obtain in those days, and young
+merchants were not favorites with those who had such favors to bestow.
+Mr. Stewart was one of the least favored, inasmuch as he was almost a
+total stranger to the business community in which he lived. He kept a
+small stock of goods on hand, which he purchased for cash chiefly at
+the auction sales. He was a regular attendant at these sales, and his
+purchases were invariably "sample lots"--that is, collections of small
+quantities of various articles thrown together in confusion, and sold in
+heaps for what they would bring. He had these purchases conveyed to his
+store, and after the business of the day was over, he and his wife would
+take these "sample lots," and by carefully assorting them, bring order
+out of the confusion. Every article was patiently gone over. Gloves were
+redressed and smoothed out, laces pressed free from the creases which
+careless bidders had twisted into them, and hose made to look as fresh
+as if they had never been handled. Each article being good in itself,
+was thus restored to its original excellence. The goods were then
+arranged in their proper places on the shelves of the store, and by
+being offered at a lower price than that charged by retail dealers
+elsewhere in the city, met with a ready sale. Even at this low price the
+profit was great, since they had been purchased for a mere trifle. For
+six years Mr. Stewart continued to conduct his business in this way,
+acquiring every day a larger and more profitable trade. Here he laid
+down those principles of business and personal integrity from which he
+has never departed, and which have led-him to the honorable position he
+now holds.
+
+"His first rule was _honesty_ between seller and buyer. His career is a
+perfect exemplification of Poor Richard's maxim: 'Honesty is the best
+policy,' and of the poet's declaration: 'Nothing can need a lie,' His
+interest consorted with his inclination, his policy with his principles,
+and the business with the man, when he determined that the truth should
+be told over his counter, and that no misrepresentation of his goods
+should be made. He never asked, he never would suffer, a clerk to
+misrepresent the quality of his merchandise. Clerks who had been
+educated at other stores to cheat customers, and then to laugh off the
+transaction as 'cuteness,' or defend it as 'diamond cut diamond,' found
+no such slipshod morality at Stewart's little store, and learned
+frankness and fairness in representation at the peril of dismissal.
+Their employer asked no gain from deceit in trade. On his part, too, in
+buying, he rarely gave a seller a second opportunity to misrepresent
+goods to him.
+
+"A second innovation of the young dry goods dealer was selling at _one
+price_--a custom which has also lasted without interruption, and which
+has spread to all the great houses. He fixed his price, after careful
+consideration, at what he thought the goods could and would bring, and
+would not deviate from it for any haggling, or to suit individual cases.
+Of course, he followed the fluctuations of the market, and marked his
+goods up or down in accordance with it; but no difference in the price
+was made to different people. Perhaps those who had some art in 'beating
+down' prices were offended, but people in general were pleased.
+
+"The third principle he adopted was that of _cash on delivery_. It is
+said that his own early experience of buying on credit, and selling on
+credit, drove him to this rule.
+
+"A fourth principle with him was to conduct business as business--not as
+sentiment. His aim was honorable profit, and he had no purpose of
+confusing it by extraneous considerations."
+
+While still engaged in his first struggles in his little store, Mr.
+Stewart found himself called on to make arrangements to pay a note which
+would soon become due. It was for a considerable sum, and he had neither
+the money nor the means of borrowing it. It was a time when the
+mercantile community of New York regarded a failure to pay a note as a
+crime, and when such a failure was sure to bring ruin to any new man.
+Mr. Stewart knew this, and felt that he must act with greater resolution
+and daring than he had ever before exhibited, if he would save himself
+from dishonor. To meet the crisis he adopted a bold and skillful
+maneuver. He marked down every article in his store far below the
+wholesale price. This done, he had a number of handbills printed,
+announcing that he would sell off his entire stock of goods below cost,
+within a given time. He scattered these handbills broadcast through the
+city, and it was not long before purchasers began to flock to his store
+to secure the great bargains which his advertisements offered them. His
+terms were "cash," and he had little difficulty in selling. Purchasers
+found that they thus secured the best goods in the market at a lower
+figure than they had ever been offered before in New York, and each one
+was prompt to advise relatives and friends to avail themselves of the
+favorable opportunity. Customers were plentiful; the little Broadway
+store was thronged all day, and long before the expiration of the period
+he had fixed for the duration of his sales, Mr. Stewart found his
+shelves empty and his treasury full. He paid his note with a part of the
+money he had thus received, and with the rest laid in a fresh stock of
+goods. He was fortunate in his purchases at this time, for, as the
+market was extremely dull and ready money scarce, he, by paying cash,
+bought his goods at very low prices.
+
+The energy, industry, patience, and business tact displayed by Mr.
+Stewart during these first years of his commercial life brought him
+their sure reward, and in 1828, just six years after commencing
+business, he found his little store too small and humble for the large
+and fashionable trade which had come to him. Three new stores had just
+been erected on Broadway, between Chambers and Warren Streets, and he
+leased the smallest of these and moved into it. It was a modest
+building, only three stories high and but thirty feet deep, but it was a
+great improvement on his original place. He was enabled to fill it with
+a larger and more attractive stock of goods, and his business was
+greatly benefited by the change. He remained in this store for four
+years, and in 1832 removed to a two-story building located on Broadway,
+between Murray and Warren Streets. Soon after occupying it, he was
+compelled, by the growth of his business, to add twenty feet to the
+depth of the store and a third story to the building. A year or two
+later a fourth story was added, and in 1837 a fifth story, so rapidly
+did he prosper.
+
+His trade was now with the wealthy and fashionable class of the city. He
+had surmounted all his early difficulties, and laid the foundation of
+that splendid fortune which he has since won. The majority of his
+customers were ladies, and he now resolved upon an expedient for
+increasing their number. He had noticed that the ladies, in "shopping,"
+were given to the habit of gossiping, and even flirting with the clerks,
+and he adopted the expedient of employing as his salesmen the handsomest
+men he could procure, a practice which has since become common. The plan
+was successful from the first. Women came to his store in greater
+numbers than before, and "Stewart's nice young men" were the talk of the
+town.
+
+The great crisis of 1837 found Mr. Stewart a prosperous and rising man,
+and that terrible financial storm which wrecked so many of the best of
+the city firms did not so much as leave its mark on him. Indeed, while
+other men were failing all around him, he was coining money. It had
+always been his habit to watch the market closely, in order to profit by
+any sudden change in it, and his keen sagacity enabled him to see the
+approach of the storm long before it broke, and to prepare for it.
+
+He at once marked down all his goods as low as possible, and began to
+"sell for cost," originating the system which is now so popular. The
+prices were very low, and the goods of the best quality. Every body
+complained of the hard times, and all were glad to save money by
+availing themselves of "Stewart's bargains." In this way he carried on a
+retail cash trade of five thousand dollars per day in the midst of the
+most terrible crisis the country has ever seen. Other merchants were
+reduced to every possible expedient, and were compelled to send their
+goods to auction to be sold for what they would bring, so great was
+their need of ready money. Stewart attended all these auctions
+regularly, and purchased the goods thus offered. These he sold rapidly
+by means of his "cost system," realizing an average profit of forty per
+cent. It is said that he purchased fifty thousand dollars worth of silks
+in this way, and sold the whole lot in a few days, making a profit of
+twenty thousand dollars on the transaction. Thus he not only passed
+through the "crisis," but made a fortune in the midst of it.
+
+From that time to the present day his march to fortune has been
+uninterrupted. Nearly a quarter of a century ago he purchased the
+property which is now the site of his wholesale store, and commenced to
+erect the splendid marble warehouse which he still occupies. His friends
+were surprised at his temerity. They told him it was too far up town,
+and on the wrong side of Broadway, but he quietly informed them that a
+few years would vindicate his wisdom, and see his store the center of
+the most flourishing business neighborhood of New York. His predictions
+have been more than realized.
+
+He moved into his new store in 1846, and continued to expand and enlarge
+his business every year. Some years ago he purchased the old
+Ninth-Street Dutch Church and the lots adjacent to it, comprising the
+entire block lying between Ninth and Tenth Streets, Broadway and Fourth
+Avenue. When he found the retail trade going up town, and deserting its
+old haunts below Canal Street, he erected a fine iron building at the
+corner of Broadway and Tenth Street, to which he removed the retail
+department of his business, continuing his wholesale trade at his old
+store on Chambers Street. This new "upper store" has increased with the
+business. The building now covers the entire block upon which it is
+erected, and is the largest, most complete, and magnificent
+establishment of its kind in the world.
+
+Though he took no active part in politics, he was too much interested in
+public affairs, by reason of his immense wealth, not to watch them
+closely. He was satisfied, some time before our late troubles began,
+that war must come, and quietly made contracts with nearly all the
+manufacturers for all their productions for a considerable period of
+time. Accordingly, when the war did come, it was found that nearly all
+the articles of clothing, blankets, etc., needed for the army had been
+monopolized by him. His profits on these transactions amounted to many
+millions of dollars, though it should be remarked that his dealings with
+the Government were characterized by an unusual degree of liberality.
+The gains thus realized by him more than counterbalanced the losses he
+sustained by the sudden cessation of his Southern trade.
+
+Fifty years have now passed away since the young school-teacher landed
+in New York, and he stands to-day at the head of the mercantile
+interests of the New World. In the half-century which has elapsed since
+then, he has won a fortune which is variously estimated at from
+twenty-five to forty millions of dollars. He has gained all this wealth
+fairly, not by trickery and deceit, or even by a questionable honesty,
+but by a series of mercantile transactions the minutest of which bears
+the impress of his sterling integrity, and by a patience, energy, tact,
+and genius of which few men are possessed. Surely, then, it must be a
+proud thought to him that he has done all this _himself_, by his own
+unaided efforts, and that amid all his wonderful success there does not
+rest one single stain upon his good name as a man or a merchant.
+
+It is said that Mr. Stewart regards himself as a "lucky man," rather
+than as one who has risen by the force of his own genius. A writer in
+the New York _Herald_ relates the following incident, as illustrative of
+the superstition which this feeling of "luck" has given rise to with
+him: "When he kept his store on Broadway, between Murray and Warren
+Streets, there sat on the sidewalk before it, on an orange box, an old
+woman, whose ostensible occupation was the selling of apples. This
+business was, however, merely a pretense; the main object being beggary.
+As years rolled on, Mr. Stewart became impressed with the idea that the
+old dame was his guardian angel of good luck, and this impression took
+so firm a hold upon his mind that when he removed to Chambers Street,
+he, in person, took up the old woman's box, and removed her to the front
+of his new establishment. In further illustration of Mr. Stewart's faith
+in the Irish traditional belief in 'lucky' and 'unlucky' persons, it may
+be mentioned that, after the completion of the St. Nicholas Hotel in
+this city, an undertaking in which he was largely interested, and when
+the building was just about to be opened for the reception of guests,
+the millionaire, standing in the drawing-room, ejaculated, 'It is now
+finished; I hope its first visitors may be lucky people.'
+
+"A gentleman present, who had heard of Mr. Stewart's care for the aged
+apple vendor, remarked, 'I presume, sir, you do not in reality care
+about lucky or unlucky persons;' to which he immediately replied,
+'Indeed, I do. There are persons who are unlucky. I sometimes open a
+case of goods, and sell the first from it to some person who is unlucky,
+and lose on it to the end. I frequently see persons to whom I would not
+sell if I could avoid it.'"
+
+The first incident, if true, doubtless illustrates the quiet kindness
+with which Mr. Stewart watches over the poor that he takes under his
+care--and they are many. He has won his success too fairly to be a
+believer in mere _luck_. There is no such thing as chance in this world.
+Men are the architects of their own fortunes.
+
+One of the principal reasons of his success is the rigid system with
+which he conducts his business. He has a place for every thing, and a
+time for every duty, and requires the same regularity from his
+subordinates. His salesmen and managers are thoroughly versed in their
+duties, and the more important of them are selected with great care.
+Every thing works smoothly under the master's eye, and there is a
+penalty for each and every delinquency, which is rigidly exacted.
+
+Mr. Stewart is one of the hardest workers in his establishment. His
+partners relieve him of the details, but the general management of his
+immense business he trusts to no other hands. His eye is on every thing.
+He is familiar with every detail, though he does not take upon himself
+its direction. He goes to his business between nine and ten in the
+morning, stopping first at his upper store. He makes a brief but
+thorough inspection here, and learns the general progress of the day,
+and then repairs to his lower or wholesale store, where he remains
+during business hours, and returns home between five and six in the
+afternoon, stopping again at the upper store. He works hard, and is
+never absent from his post unless detained by sickness.
+
+His time is valuable, and he is not willing to waste it.
+
+Many persons endeavor to see him merely to gratify their impertinent
+curiosity, and others wish to intrude upon him for purposes which would
+simply consume his time. To protect himself, he has been compelled to
+resort to the following expedient: A gentleman is kept on guard near the
+main door of the store, whose duty is to inquire the business of
+visitors. If the visitor wishes to see Mr. Stewart, the "sentinel"
+informs him that he must first state his business to him. If the visitor
+urges that it is private, he is told that Mr. Stewart has no private
+business. If his errand meets the approval of the gentleman on guard, he
+is allowed to go up stairs, where he is met by the confidential agent of
+the great merchant, to whom he must repeat the object of his visit. If
+this gentleman is satisfied, or can not get rid of the visitor, he
+enters the private office of his employer and lays the case before him.
+If the business of the visitor is urgent he is admitted, otherwise, he
+is refused an interview. If admitted, the conference is brief and to the
+point. There is no time lost. Matters are dispatched with a method and
+promptitude which astonish strangers. If the visitor attempts to draw
+the merchant into a friendly conversation, or indulges in useless
+complimentary phrases, after the matter on which he came is settled, Mr.
+Stewart's manner instantly becomes cold and repelling, and troublesome
+persons are sometimes given a hint which hastens their departure. This
+is his working time, and it is precious to him. He can not afford to
+waste it upon idlers. In social life he is said to be exceedingly
+affable.
+
+The greater portion of Mr. Stewart's immense fortune is invested in real
+estate. Besides his two stores on Broadway, he owns the Metropolitan
+Hotel and the New York Theater, also on Broadway; nearly all of Bleecker
+Street from Broadway to Depauw Row, several churches, a number of
+buildings, and many valuable lots. He resides at the north-east corner
+of the Fifth Avenue and Thirty-fourth Street. Immediately opposite he is
+building one of the finest residences in the world, and the most superb
+in America. He owns more real estate than any man in America except
+William B. Astor, and is the most successful merchant in the world.
+
+Mr. Stewart is said to be extremely liberal in his donations to objects
+which meet with his sympathy. The majority of these donations are
+quietly made, as he has a repugnance to public charities. He gave
+liberally to the cause of the Union during the war. During that struggle
+he sent a cargo of provisions to Ireland, where much distress existed,
+and then invited as many emigrants as the vessel would carry to take
+passage to America in her, free of charge. One hundred and thirty-nine
+persons availed themselves of his offer, and upon reaching America were
+all provided with good situations by him. At present he is engaged in
+erecting on the Fourth Avenue a large building, in which homes will be
+provided for poor working females, at a small expense to them. It is
+said that this noble project will require an outlay of several millions
+of dollars. His friends--and he has many--speak of him as exceedingly
+kind and liberal, and seem much attached to him.
+
+As I have said before, Mr. Stewart has not cared for political
+distinction, but has rather shunned it. He was a member of the Union
+Defense Committee during the war, and in 1866 was one of the signers of
+the Saratoga address, calling on the people of the country to sustain
+the policy of President Johnson. His warm friendship for General Grant
+caused him to be one of the earliest advocates of the election of the
+latter to the Presidency. He was a candidate for Presidential Elector on
+the Republican ticket for the State of New York, but was defeated, with
+his associates, by the Democracy.
+
+His intimate relations with General Grant, together with his vast
+financial experience, induced many persons to believe that he would be
+offered a place in the Cabinet of the new President. These expectations
+were realized by his nomination to the post of Secretary of the
+Treasury, on the 5th of March, 1869, and his immediate and unanimous
+confirmation by the Senate. He was about to enter upon his new duties,
+when it was discovered that there existed an old and almost forgotten
+law forbidding any merchant from becoming the head of the Treasury
+Department. As soon as this discovery was made, Mr. Stewart expressed
+his desire to withdraw from the position, and thus relieve the President
+of all embarrassment upon the subject, but the latter, wishing, if
+possible, to retain him in the Cabinet, urged him to delay his action,
+with the hope that the difficulty might be obviated. Willing to oblige
+his friend, and anxious to serve the country, Mr. Stewart consented to
+do this, but finding that certain persons were seeking to make his
+nomination a source of trouble to the Administration, offered either to
+resign the place or to relinquish his entire interest in his business
+during the period of his Secretaryship, and to donate his immense
+profits for that time to the poor of the city of New York. This
+sacrifice, he hoped, would render him eligible; but the President was
+unwilling to accept the princely offer--the noblest ever made by any
+man--and Mr. Stewart finally withdrew from the contest.
+
+There can be no doubt that he would have been the best Secretary that
+could have been placed at the head of the Treasury. His great financial
+experience and his unquestioned ability were better qualifications than
+those possessed by any politician in the land. Perhaps the best proof of
+the satisfaction which his appointment produced in the minds of the
+thinking men of the country is the manner in which the news affected
+the money market. Gold fell as soon as the announcement was made.
+
+Few strangers ever come to New York and depart without visiting
+Stewart's famous store at the corner of Tenth Street and Broadway. The
+lower, or wholesale store, is far more important to its owner; but it
+conducts its operations exclusively with dealers, and in such a quiet
+and systematic way that it seems to attract but little attention among
+the masses. It is the upper or retail store that is the wonder of the
+great city in which it is located.
+
+It is constructed of iron, in the style of arcade upon arcade, and is
+lighted by numerous windows. It fronts two hundred feet on Broadway, and
+three hundred feet on Ninth and Tenth Streets. It covers an area of
+about two acres, is five stories and an attic in height, and has two
+cellars underneath. It is warmed by steam, and contains several
+steam-engines for hoisting goods, running the machines employed in the
+manufacturing department, and forcing water into the immense tank at the
+top of the building. Six elevators and several handsome stairways
+connect the various floors. Three of the elevators are used for
+conveying customers up and down, and the others for hoisting and
+lowering goods. The building is lighted by several thousand gas jets,
+which are all set aflame simultaneously by electricity.
+
+The various floors, with the exception of the first, are broken only by
+a rotunda, which extends to the roof, and is inclosed at each floor by a
+massive iron balustrade. Leaning over one of these balustrades, and
+looking up or down, the sight is brilliant and attractive. Thousands of
+persons are scattered about the floors making purchases. Hundreds of
+clerks, salesmen, and cash boys are busy serving them, and the buzz and
+hum of human voices under the vast roof sounds like the droning of a
+hive of bees.
+
+The service of this immense establishment is arranged as follows: There
+is one general superintendent, with nineteen assistants, each of whom is
+at the head of a department. Nine cashiers receive and pay out money;
+twenty-five book-keepers keep the record of the day; thirty ushers
+direct purchasers to the department they seek; two hundred cash boys
+receive the money and bring back the change of purchasers; four hundred
+and seventy clerks, a few of whom are females, make the sales of the
+day; fifty porters do the heavy work, and nine hundred seamstresses are
+employed in the manufacturing department. Besides these, there are
+usually about five hundred other persons employed about the
+establishment in various capacities, bringing the total strength of the
+_personelle_ of the house to twenty-two hundred.
+
+The accounts of each department are kept separate, and the sales of each
+for the day constitute a separate return. These sales will average
+something like the following figures:
+
+
+  Silks       $15,000
+  Dress goods   6,000
+  Muslins       3,000
+  Laces         2,000
+  Shawls        2,500
+  Suits         1,000
+  Calicoes      1,500
+  Velvets       2,000
+  Gloves        1,000
+  Furs          1,000
+  Hosiery         600
+  Boys' clothing  700
+  Notions         600
+  Embroideries  1,000
+  Carpets       5,500
+
+
+The total daily receipts average $60,000, and have been known to amount
+to $87,000.
+
+Salaries of subordinate clerks range from $5 to $25 per week. The cash
+boys receive $5 per week. If not fined for misconduct they receive a
+reward of $1 per month, and a further reward of $5 at the end of each
+half year. They are promoted as fast as their conduct and vacancies in
+the force of salesmen will allow. The number of employes being so large,
+the proprietor is compelled to keep them under the constant espionage of
+two experienced detectives, and each evening when they leave the store
+they are required to do so through a private door on Ninth Street, where
+the detectives are stationed to see that none of them carry away
+articles which do not belong to them.
+
+The number of visitors to the establishment in the busy season is very
+large. On special occasions, such as opening days, it is said to have
+reached fifty thousand, but the general average is placed at fifteen
+thousand, and they represent every grade in life. Rich and poor mingle
+here freely.
+
+The floors are arranged simply, and with regard to business rather than
+for show, but every thing is elegant and tasteful. The sub-cellar is
+used as a store-room for goods in cases. Here the fabrics are opened and
+sent to their departments. The cellar is the carpet sales-room. The
+first floor is the general sales-room, and is the most attractive place
+in the building. It is three hundred feet long by two hundred wide, and
+is provided with one hundred counters, each fifty feet in length. Behind
+these counters the goods are arranged, with no effort at display, on the
+shelves, which rise but a few feet above the counters. There is an
+abundance of light in all parts of the house, especially over the silk
+counters, which are just under the rotunda. The second floor is taken up
+with ladies' suits, shawls, curtain goods, etc., and the next floor is
+devoted to the same purpose. The fourth floor is used as a manufactory
+for making up the suits, etc., placed on sale or ordered by customers;
+on the fifth is the fur-room and upholstery manufactory; and the sixth
+is occupied as a laundry. The most perfect order is maintained in every
+part of the establishment, the mere direction of which requires
+administrative ability of a very high character.
+
+As fast as the sales are made, the articles, unless taken away by the
+purchaser, are sent to the parcel desk, which is located in the cellar.
+This is the busiest department in the house, and one of the most
+important. Each order is accompanied by a ticket stating the quality and
+amount of the goods, the price, and the address of the purchaser. It is
+remeasured and examined here, so that any error on the part of the
+salesman may be detected and repaired. Errors of this kind, however, are
+rare, and the burden of the labor in this department consists of making
+the goods up into secure packages and sending them to their
+destinations. The tickets delivered at the parcel desk are then sent to
+the checking desk, which is also in the basement, where they are
+compared with those delivered by the salesmen to the cashiers, and if no
+error is discovered, the goods are sent to the wagons for delivery.
+
+The wagon department constitutes a very important branch of the
+business. The vehicles and horses are accommodated in a fine stable on
+Amity Street, near Broadway. The building was formerly a Baptist church,
+and was presided over by the Rev. Dr. Williams. When the congregation
+went higher up town, they sold the old church, which found a purchaser
+in Mr. Stewart. He converted it into a stable, and has since more than
+doubled its size. The floor was taken up, a sewer built to carry off the
+waste water, and the place paved with brick and cement. It is now one of
+the best stables in the city. It contains over forty horses, and five
+grooms are on hand to attend to them. There are eight wagons employed at
+the up-town store to deliver parcels to purchasers, while thirteen
+single wagons are used by the lower store to cart single cases around
+town. In addition to these, there are ten double trucks to haul heavy
+goods. Twenty-seven drivers are employed, and thirteen hundred bushels
+of oats and fifty tons of hay are fed out during a year. The place is in
+charge of a watchman at night, and during the day is managed by a
+superintendent. At half-past eight the trucks report at the down-town
+store, and remain there all day. At the same moment one of the light
+wagons is dispatched to the retail store, and at once takes out the
+early sales. In an hour another wagon follows it, and this course is
+pursued all day until six o'clock, when the last wagon takes the last
+sales. By this system purchasers receive their parcels with dispatch,
+and the immense business of the day is entirely finished. Every week the
+superintendent of the stables makes a report of the condition of the
+horses and wagons, and this "stable report" is carefully inspected at
+head-quarters. In case of sickness or stubborn lameness, the horses are
+sent to the country to recruit.
+
+Mr. Stewart has a farm at Tuckahoe, where the invalid horses are kept,
+and where much of their provender is raised. This farm is noted for the
+valuable marble quarry which furnished the stone from which his new
+mansion on Fifth Avenue is built.
+
+The retail store contains fabrics of every description and price. The
+wife of a millionaire can gratify her fancy here to its utmost limit,
+while the poor sewing-girl can obtain her simple necessities at the same
+price which is demanded for them from the rich. In the shawl department,
+there are "wraps" worth as much as $4,500, but not more than one or two
+find a purchaser in the course of a year. Shawls at $3,000 find a sale
+of about twenty a year, and the number of purchasers increases as the
+price diminishes. The wealthy ladies of New York deal here extensively.
+One of the clerks of the establishment recently made a statement that a
+fashionable lady ran up a bill of $20,000 here in two months.
+
+Mr. Stewart, though leaving the details of the retail business in the
+hands of Mr. Tuller, the general superintendent, yet keeps himself
+thoroughly informed respecting it, and exercises over it a general
+supervision, to which its increasing success is due. He knows exactly
+what is in the house, how much is on hand, and how it is selling. He
+fixes the prices himself, and keeps them always at a popular figure. He
+is said to have an aversion to keeping goods over from one season to
+another, and would rather sacrifice them than do so. He has no dead
+stock on hand. His knowledge of the popular taste and its variations is
+intuitive, and his great experience enables him to anticipate its
+changes.
+
+"There can not be so much selling without proportionate buying, and
+Stewart is as systematic in the latter as the former. Of late he has not
+acted personally in making purchases, but has trusted to the system
+which he organized some years ago, and which he has found to admirably
+answer as his substitute. He has branch establishments exercising
+purchasing functions only in Boston and Philadelphia, in the United
+States; in Manchester, England; and in Paris and Lyons, France. But
+while these are his agencies, his buyers haunt the marts of the whole
+world. There is no center of commerce or manufacture of the wide range
+of articles in which he deals, on either of the continents, where he is
+not always present by deputy to seize upon favorable fluctuations of the
+market, or pounce upon some exceptionally excellent productions. He
+owns entire the manufactory of the celebrated Alexandre kid-glove. He
+has a body of men in Persia, organized under the inevitable
+superintendent, chasing down the Astrachan goat heavy with young, from
+which the unborn kids are taken and stripped of their skins, thus
+sacrificing two animals for every skin obtained. He rifles Lyons of its
+choicest silks, the famous productions of Bonnet and Ponson. Holland and
+Ireland yield him the first fruits of their looms. Belgium contributes
+the rarest of her laces, and the North sends down the finest of its
+Russian sables. All the looms of France, England, Belgium, and the
+United States are closely watched, and the finest fabrics in dress
+goods, muslins, carpets, and calicoes are caught up the moment the
+workmen put on the finishing touches. He buys for cash the world over,
+and is a customer every-where so recognized as desirable that he has his
+choice of industrial productions, and on more advantageous terms than
+his rivals can purchase what he leaves. He has been so long in the
+business, and has become so thoroughly versed in the productions of
+different looms in different countries, that it is now his practice to
+select certain mills noted for excellence of work, and take their entire
+supply, and thus it happens that there are many looms in the busiest
+haunts of the Old and New Worlds that toil unceasingly on his account.
+
+"By buying thus largely in foreign lands, he is, of course, the largest
+importer in the nation, and his duties average $30,000 gold per day.
+Every year his business steadily increases, and there is apparently no
+practical limit at which it will stop. As prudent in vast affairs as
+other men are in small, he insures liberally, and has policies renewed
+every third day throughout the year. But, while leaning upon the
+insurance companies, he is utterly independent of the banks; he has
+never asked one of them to 'carry' him through a crisis, and should such
+a contingency arise, there is no bank in the world competent to the
+task."
+
+Mr. Stewart is now sixty-eight years old, but looks much younger, being
+still as vigorous and active, both mentally and physically, as most men
+of forty-five. He is of the medium size, has light-brown hair and beard,
+which are closely trimmed. His features are sharp, well cut, his eye
+bright, and his general expression calm and thoughtful. His manner is
+reserved, and to all but his intimate friends cold. He dresses with
+great simplicity, but with taste, and in the style of the day. His
+habits are simple, and he avoids publicity in all things. Standing as he
+does at the head of the mercantile interests of the country, he affords
+a fine example of the calm and dignified manner in which a man of true
+merit may enjoy his legitimate success, and of the good use he may make
+of its fruits.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+AMOS LAWRENCE.
+
+
+Amos Lawrence was born at Groton, Massachusetts, on the 22d of April,
+1786. His ancestor came of a good English family, and was one of the
+company which sailed from England for the New World under Governor
+Winthrop, in 1630, and which, according to Grahame, contained "several
+wealthy and high-born persons, both men and women, who expressed their
+determination to follow truth and liberty into a desert, rather than to
+enjoy all the pleasures of the world under the dominion of superstition
+and slavery." This Lawrence settled in Watertown, and was one of the
+original proprietors of the town of Groton, which was founded in 1655.
+Samuel Lawrence, the father of the subject of this memoir, was the fifth
+in descent from the founder of the family, and was himself a gallant
+officer of the American army in the War of the Revolution, the close of
+which found him the possessor of a small farm, which yielded a modest
+support for his family.
+
+Young Amos was brought up on the farm, with none of the advantages of
+wealth, and with but a limited education, which he gained at the village
+schools, and which was seriously interfered with by his delicate health.
+He received his final training at the Groton Academy, to which, in after
+life, he became a liberal patron. "As we children came forward," he
+wrote, late in life, "we were carefully looked after, but were taught
+to use the talents intrusted to us; and every nerve was strained to
+provide for us the academy which is now doing so much there." Toward the
+close of the year 1799, when but a little over thirteen years of age, he
+took his final departure from school, and entered a store in the village
+of Dunstable, as clerk.
+
+He remained there but a few months, and then returned to Groton, where
+he obtained a place as apprentice in the store of a Mr. Brazer. This was
+the largest establishment in the place, and conducted a very important
+trade with the country for miles around. Boston was so far, and so
+difficult to reach in those days, that Groton came in for nearly all the
+business of its vicinity which the railroads have now taken to the city.
+Mr. Brazer's establishment, which was known as a "variety store," came
+in for the best part of this trade. Every thing was sold there;
+"puncheons of rum and brandy, bales of cloth, kegs of tobacco, with
+hardware and hosiery, shared attention in common with silks and threads,
+and all other articles for female use." Even medicines were sold there;
+and Dr. Wm. B. Lawrence, the son of our hero, assures us that his father
+was obliged to sell medicines, not only to customers, but to all the
+physicians within a circuit of twenty miles, who depended on this
+establishment for their supplies. "The confidence in his good judgment,"
+he adds, "was such that he was often consulted in preference to the
+physician, by those who were suffering from minor ails; and many were
+the extemporaneous doses which he administered for the weal or woe of
+the patient."
+
+The Brazer store was a prominent feature in Groton. It was a place of
+general resort, and close by was the tavern where the mail coaches
+stopped. Travelers were constantly passing through the town, bringing
+the news of those stirring days when Napoleon was rushing over Europe
+with his armies, overturning old states and building up new ones, and
+changing the destinies of the world. The domestic politics of the day
+were exciting, and it is likely that they aided, together with the
+events in the Old World, in imparting to the character of Mr. Lawrence
+the earnestness and gravity for which he was noted when a mere lad.
+
+Mr. Brazer had in his employ a number of clerks, but it was not long
+before the energy and business talent of young Lawrence made him the
+most trusted of all. Mr. Brazer did not give much personal attention to
+the store, and when he found that his young clerk was so admirable and
+reliable a manager, he left the business entirely in his hands. This was
+a post of unusual responsibility for one so young, but Amos Lawrence
+accepted it promptly, and labored to discharge its duties faithfully. He
+at once established the character for probity and fairness which
+distinguished him through life; his simple assertion was sufficient in
+any matter, being received with implicit trust by all who knew him. His
+duties kept him constantly employed, and though he lived within a mile
+of his father's house, weeks sometimes passed without giving him the
+opportunity of visiting it.
+
+Drunkenness was at that day the curse of New England. Every body drank,
+and such fiery fluids as brandy, whisky, rum, and gin were the
+favorites. Men, women, and children were addicted to the vice, and
+Groton was no exception to the rule. Mr. Brazer's store was famous for
+the good liquors served out to its customers, and his clerks were aware
+that their employer did not object to their helping themselves when they
+felt thirsty. Amos Lawrence fell into the habit to which all were given,
+and for some time went along with the rest; but at length he came to the
+conclusion that such indulgence was wantonly ruining his health, and he
+resolved to abstain entirely. "We five boys," said he, years afterward,
+"were in the habit, every forenoon, of making a drink compounded of rum,
+raisins, sugar, nutmegs, etc., with biscuit--all palatable to eat and
+drink. After being in the store four weeks, I found myself admonished by
+my appetite of the approach of the hour for indulgence. Thinking the
+habit might make trouble if allowed to grow stronger, without further
+apology to my seniors, I declined partaking with them. My first
+resolution was to abstain for a week, and, when the week was out, for a
+month, and then for a year. Finally, I resolved to abstain for the rest
+of my apprenticeship, which was for five years longer. During that whole
+period I never drank a spoonful, though I mixed gallons daily for my old
+master and his customers."
+
+At the same time, Mr. Lawrence determined that he would not use tobacco
+in any form. He was very fond of the odor of "the weed," and at one
+period of his life always kept a fine Havana in his drawer that he might
+enjoy the scent of it; but he was totally free from our disgusting
+national vice in any of its forms. In this respect, as indeed in all
+others, he offers a fine example to the rising youth of the present
+generation.
+
+On the 22d of April, 1807, Mr. Lawrence completed his twenty-first year,
+and his seven years' apprenticeship with Mr. Brazer came to an end. He
+was now of an age to enter into business for himself, and it was his
+intention to open a small store in Groton, in connection with a brother
+apprentice, but before doing so he decided to visit Boston for the
+purpose of establishing a credit. He reached the city with but twenty
+dollars in his pocket, richer, he subsequently declared, in his own
+estimation, than he ever felt before or afterward. While in the city, he
+received the offer of a clerkship from a mercantile house of good
+standing. It was entirely unsolicited, and took him by surprise, but he
+decided to accept it, and abandoned his idea of going into business for
+himself in Groton; and this act led to a career entirely different from
+that to which he had looked forward.
+
+Boston, in 1807, had a population of about thirty thousand, and the
+commercial position of the city was relatively much greater than at
+present. The foreign trade of the United States was enormous, and was
+carried on in American ships, and not, as at present, in foreign
+vessels. The total tonnage of American shipping engaged in this trade
+was seven hundred thousand tons, and of this Boston possessed a fair
+share. Her domestic trade was also important.
+
+"The merchants of Boston had then high places in the estimation of the
+world. The Perkinses, the Sargeants, the Mays, the Cabots, the
+Higginsons, and others, were known throughout the world for their
+integrity, their mercantile skill, and the extent and beneficial
+character of their operations. These were the golden days of Boston's
+commerce.... The standard of integrity was high, and though it would be
+absurd to suppose that there was not the usual amount of evil in the
+place, it may be assumed that in no part of the world was the young
+trader more likely to find severer judges of character and conduct, or
+to be better treated if he should afford unquestionable proofs of
+capacity and honesty."
+
+It was into this community that Mr. Lawrence now entered, and in which
+his life was spent. He gave such satisfaction to his employers that,
+when he had been with them a short time, they astonished him with the
+offer of a partnership. He was but partially acquainted with their
+affairs, but their manner of conducting their business did not please
+him, and he declined their offer. His sagacity was verified by the
+result. In a few months the firm failed, and the creditors appointed
+him to settle their affairs, which he did to their satisfaction.
+
+Being now out of employment, he resolved to commence business on his own
+account in Boston. He had made such a favorable impression upon the
+merchants of the city that he had no difficulty in obtaining credit. He
+rented a store in Cornhill, stocked it with dry goods, and began his
+career as a merchant. Four months after this, his father, who was keenly
+interested in his son's success, without consulting the latter,
+mortgaged his farm for one thousand dollars, and, repairing to Boston,
+placed the money in Amos Lawrence's hands. Mr. Lawrence was profoundly
+affected by this proof of his father's devotion, but he regretted it
+none the less, as he knew that his failure would bring ruin to his
+parent as well as to himself. "I told him," said he, forty years later,
+"that he did wrong to place himself in a situation to be made unhappy if
+I lost the money. He told me he _guessed I wouldn't lose it_, and I gave
+him my note." Mr. Lawrence made a prompt use of the money, and paid the
+mortgage at the proper time; but he had a narrow escape from loss, as
+the bank on which he had bills for the amount of the mortgage failed
+almost immediately after he had obtained specie for them.
+
+"This incident," he said, "shows how dangerous it is to the independence
+and comfort of families for parents to take pecuniary responsibilities
+for their sons in trade, beyond their power of meeting them without
+embarrassment. Had any Hillsborough bank-notes not been paid as they
+were, nearly the whole amount would have been lost, and myself and my
+family might have been ruined. The incident was so striking that I have
+uniformly discouraged young men who have applied to me for credit,
+offering their fathers as bondsmen; and by doing so I believe I have
+saved some respectable families from ruin. My advice, however, has
+sometimes been rejected with anger. A young man who can not get along
+without such aid will not be likely to get along with it."
+
+He began his business upon principles of prudence and economy, which he
+rigidly maintained throughout his whole life. He never allowed himself
+to anticipate his gains, and having fixed his personal expenses at a
+certain sum, he never went beyond it. His system, which is thus stated
+by himself, is offered here as a safe and admirable rule for all
+persons:
+
+"When I commenced, the embargo had just been laid, and with such
+restrictions on trade that many were induced to leave it. But I felt
+great confidence that, by industry, economy, and integrity, I could get
+a living; and the experiment showed that I was right. Most of the young
+men who commenced at that period failed by spending too much money, and
+using credit too freely.
+
+"I adopted the plan of keeping an accurate account of merchandise bought
+and sold each day, with the profit, as far as practicable. This plan was
+pursued for a number of years, and I never found my merchandise fall
+short in taking an account of stock, which I did as often at least as
+once in each year. I was thus enabled to form an opinion of my actual
+state as a business man. I adopted also the rule always to have
+property, after my second year's business, to represent forty per cent,
+at least more than I owed--that is, never to be in debt more than two
+and a half times my capital. This caution saved me from ever getting
+embarrassed. If it were more generally adopted, we should see fewer
+failures in business. Excessive credit is the rock on which so many
+business men are broken."
+
+Mr. Lawrence was very successful from the first. His profits during his
+first year were fifteen hundred dollars, and over four thousand during
+the second. In seven years he made over fifty thousand dollars. He paid
+the closest attention to his business, and nothing could draw him from
+it in working hours. After these were over he would take his pleasure.
+His aim was to keep every thing in the most complete state possible.
+During the first seven years of his business he never allowed a bill
+against him to stand unsettled over the Sabbath. If he made a purchase
+of goods on Saturday, and they were delivered to him that day, he always
+examined and settled the bill by note, or by crediting it, and leaving
+it clear, so that there should be no unfinished business to go over to
+the next week, and make trouble for his clerks in case he should not be
+at his post. "Thus," said he, "I always kept my business _before_ me,
+instead of allowing it to drive me."
+
+The first years of Mr. Lawrence's mercantile experience covered the
+darkest period of the history of the Republic. They were marked by the
+embargo, the crippling of our commerce by the hostility of England and
+France, and the second war with Great Britain, in all of which there was
+much to dis-hearten a beginner, even if he escaped positive loss.
+Nothing was certain. The events of a single hour might undo the labor of
+years, and baffle the best laid plans. Yet he persevered, and went
+steadily on to fortune. He was remarkable for his keen foresight, as
+well as for his prudence, and was always on the alert to profit by the
+fluctuations of the market. Yet he abominated speculation. He averred
+that speculation made men desperate and unfit for legitimate business,
+and that it led them, when under excitement, to the commission of acts
+against which their cooler judgment would have warned them. The fair
+profits of legitimate business were, in his opinion, sure to reward any
+honest and capable man. His aim was to elevate commerce, and not to
+degrade it. He introduced into Boston the system of double-entry in
+book-keeping, in advance of any other city merchant. He was prompt and
+faithful in the performance of every contract, and required a similar
+course toward himself from all indebted to him, as long as they were
+able to do so. When they became unfortunate, he was kind and generous,
+ready to compromise upon the most liberal terms, or to give them their
+own time for payment; and it is recorded of him that he never dealt
+harshly with a debtor who had failed in business.
+
+As long as such a course was necessary, Mr. Lawrence devoted himself
+entirely to his business, but after he had placed it on a safe footing,
+he was careful to reserve to himself time for other duties and for
+relaxation. No man, he said, had the right to allow his business to
+engross his entire life. "Property acquired at such sacrifices as I have
+been obliged to make the past year," he wrote at the commencement of
+1826, "costs more than it is worth; and the anxiety in protecting it is
+the extreme of folly." He never lost sight of the fact that man is a
+responsible, intelligent being, placed in the world for other purposes
+than the mere acquisition of wealth.
+
+In October, 1808, his brother, Abbott Lawrence, afterward famous as a
+merchant and statesman, came to him as an apprentice, and on the 1st of
+January, 1814, he was admitted to partnership, the style of the firm
+being A. & A. Lawrence. This partnership was terminated only by the
+death of the elder brother in 1852. Their business was the importation
+and sale of foreign manufactures, and the firm soon took its place at
+the head of the Boston merchants engaged in this trade. The tariffs of
+1816 and 1824 gave a new and powerful impetus to the manufacture of
+woolens and cottons in this country, and the Lawrences entered largely
+into the sale of these goods on commission. In 1830, they became
+interested in the cotton mills at Lowell; and on the establishment of
+the Suffolk, Tremont, and Lawrence Companies, as well as subsequently in
+other corporations, they became large proprietors. From this time their
+business as selling agents was on the most extensive scale, and their
+income from all sources large in proportion. They amassed large
+fortunes, and won names which are the most precious heritages of their
+children.
+
+Perhaps the best exposition of the principles upon which these brothers
+conducted their commercial operations is found in the following letter
+from the elder to the younger, written on the 11th of March, 1815, upon
+the occasion of a visit to England by the latter on business for the
+firm:
+
+
+     MY DEAR BROTHER--I have thought best, before you go abroad, to
+     suggest a few hints for your benefit in your intercourse with the
+     people among whom you are going. As a first and leading principle,
+     let every transaction be of that pure and honest character that you
+     would not be ashamed to have appear before the whole world as
+     clearly as to yourself. In addition to the advantages arising from
+     an honest course of conduct with your fellow-men, there is the
+     satisfaction of reflecting within yourself that you have endeavored
+     to do your duty; and however greatly the best may fall short of
+     doing all they ought, they will be sure not to do more than their
+     principles enjoin.
+
+     It is, therefore, of the highest consequence that you should not
+     only cultivate correct principles, but that you should place your
+     standard of action so high as to require great vigilance in living
+     up to it.
+
+     In regard to your business transactions, let every thing be so
+     registered in your books, that any person, without difficulty, can
+     understand the whole of your concerns. You may be cut off in the
+     midst of your pursuits, and it is of no small consequence that your
+     temporal affairs should always be so arranged that you may be in
+     readiness.
+
+     If it is important that you should be well prepared in this point
+     of view, how much more important is it that you should be prepared
+     in that which relates to eternity!
+
+     You are young, and the course of life seems open, and pleasant
+     prospects greet your ardent hopes; but you must remember that the
+     race is not always to the swift, and that, however flattering may
+     be our prospects, and however zealously you may seek pleasure, you
+     can never find it except by cherishing pure principles and
+     practicing right conduct. My heart is full on this subject, my dear
+     brother, and it is the only one on which I feel the least anxiety.
+
+     While here, your conduct has been such as to meet my entire
+     approbation; but the scenes of another land may be more than your
+     principles will stand against. I say _may be_, because young men of
+     as fair promise as yourself have been lost by giving a small
+     latitude (innocent in the first instance) to their propensities.
+     But I pray the Father of all mercies to have you in his keeping,
+     and preserve you amid temptations.
+
+     I can only add my wish to have you write me frequently and
+     particularly, and that you will embrace every opportunity of
+     gaining information.
+
+     Your affectionate brother, AMOS LAWRENCE.
+
+     TO ABBOTT LAWRENCE.
+
+
+In his politics, Mr. Lawrence was a Federalist, and then a Whig. He
+served for one term in the State Legislature as a Representative from
+Boston, with credit to himself, but afterward avoided any active
+participation in public events. When his nephew-by-marriage, General
+Pierce, was a candidate for the Presidency, he was very much gratified
+personally by the selection of the Democracy, but declined to vote for
+him. In a letter to a friend, written at this time, he said: "I had a
+charming ride yesterday with my nephew, Frank Pierce, and told him I
+thought he must occupy the White House the next term, but that I would
+go for Scott. Pierce is a fine, spirited fellow, and will do his duty
+wherever placed. Scott will be my choice for President of the United
+States."
+
+Regarding himself as a steward of the riches committed to him, Amos
+Lawrence was liberal in his charities. During the last twenty-four years
+of his life he kept an accurate account of the sums he thus distributed,
+but with no idea that the statement, which he intended for his own eye
+only, would ever be made public. During this period he gave away six
+hundred and thirty-nine thousand dollars. The greater part of this was
+given away in ten years, and during a period when his average income was
+sixty thousand dollars a year. He was a liberal patron of education,
+giving large sums to its extension; and it was his delight to assist
+poor clergymen, without regard to denominations. He gave away clothing,
+food, books, etc., in large quantities, as well as ready money. "Two
+rooms in his house," says his son and biographer, "and sometimes three,
+were used principally for the reception of useful articles for
+distribution. There, when stormy weather or ill-health prevented him
+from taking his usual drive, he was in the habit of passing hours in
+selecting and packing up articles which he considered suitable to the
+wants of those whom he wished to aid." He did not forget the children,
+and many of his packages contained toys, and books, and other things
+calculated to promote their enjoyment.
+
+He was beset with beggars of all kinds, many of whom he was compelled to
+refuse. In his diary, he wrote on the 11th of April, 1849, "Applications
+come in from all quarters, for all objects. The reputation of giving
+freely is a very bad reputation, so far as my personal comfort is
+concerned."
+
+It pained him to have his charities made public, and he frequently
+requested the recipients to say nothing about them. He once made a
+present of some books to the Johnson school for girls, and the gift
+being acknowledged through the columns of a newspaper, he wrote to the
+principal of the school: "I merely want to say that I hope you will not
+put me in the newspaper at present, and when my work is done here, if
+you have any thing to say about me that will not hurt my children and
+grandchildren, say on," To another party he wrote: "I must request that
+my name be not thrust forward, as though I was to be a by-word for my
+vanity. I want to do good, but am sorry to be published, as in the
+recent case."
+
+As a merchant, Mr. Lawrence was upright, prudent, far-seeing, sagacious,
+and courageous; as a citizen, he was patriotic, public-spirited, and
+devoted; and as a man, he was a sincere, earnest, Christian husband,
+father, and friend. Viewed in any light, his character affords one of
+the most perfect models to be found in our history. He was the Christian
+_gentleman_ in all things, even in the minutest detail of his business.
+His standard was very high, but he came up to it. Courteous and
+dignified in manner, with a face handsome and winning in youth, and
+gentle and benignant in age, he made scores of friends wherever he went,
+for it was a true index to his character. It is a significant and
+interesting fact that, during the hottest passages of the old
+nullification times, although his views were known to be
+uncompromisingly opposed to the attitude of the South, he never lost the
+warmest friendship of some of the most advanced of the South Carolina
+leaders. When one thinks of the friendships that were wrecked amid the
+passions of those days, this fact speaks volumes for the personal
+attributes of Mr. Lawrence.
+
+He was a true American--proud of his country's past, hopeful for her
+future, and desiring nothing better than to live and die in the land of
+his birth. He sent his children abroad that they might see the Old
+World, and profit by the lessons learned there, but he strove earnestly
+to keep them true to their country. To his son, who was traveling in
+France in 1829, he wrote:
+
+"Bring home no foreign fancies which are inapplicable to our state of
+society. It is very common for our young men to come home and appear
+quite ridiculous in attempting to introduce their foreign fashions. It
+should be always kept in mind that the state of society is widely
+different here from that in Europe; and our comfort and character
+require it should long remain so. Those who strive to introduce many of
+the European habits and fashions, by displacing our own, do a serious
+injury to the republic, and deserve censure. An idle person, with good
+powers of mind, becomes torpid and inactive after a few years of
+indulgence, and is incapable of making any high effort. Highly important
+it is, then, to avoid this enemy of mental and moral improvement. I have
+no wish that you pursue trade; I would rather see you on a farm, or
+studying any profession.
+
+"It should always be your aim so to conduct yourself that those whom you
+value most in the world would approve your conduct, if your actions were
+laid bare to their inspection; and thus you will be pretty sure that He
+who sees the motive of all our actions will accept the good designed,
+though it fall short in its accomplishment. You are young, and are
+placed in a situation of great peril, and are, perhaps, sometimes
+tempted to do things which you would not do if you knew yourself under
+the eye of your guardian. The blandishments of a beautiful city may lead
+you to forget that you are always surrounded, supported, and seen by
+that best Guardian."
+
+He was an eminently just man, and he carried this trait into the little
+details of his domestic life. His household adored him; and his friends
+were bound to him by ties unusually strong. He was firm and positive in
+his own opinions; but he was tolerant of those who differed from him. He
+was a man of quick, nervous temperament, but he possessed a powerful
+self-control. He was a sincere and earnest Christian, and while
+attaching himself to the sect of his choice, his sympathies and aid went
+out to the whole Christian Church.
+
+Denominational differences had no place in his heart. He stood on the
+broad platform of the "faith of Christ crucified."
+
+During the last years of his life, Mr. Lawrence was a constant invalid.
+To a man of his temperament this was a great trial, but he bore it
+unflinchingly, exhibiting, in the long years of feeble health which
+preceded his death, a cheerfulness and patience which plainly showed the
+aid of the Arm on which he leaned for support. For sixteen years he did
+not take a meal with his family. His food and drink, of the simplest
+kind, were regularly weighed, a pair of scales being kept in his chamber
+for that purpose. He wrote to his friend President Hopkins, of Williams
+College: "If your young folks want to know the meaning of epicureanism,
+tell them to take some bits of coarse bread (one ounce or a little
+more), soak them in three gills of coarse meal gruel, and make their
+dinner of them, and nothing else; beginning very hungry, and leaving off
+more hungry."
+
+Mr. Lawrence continued in this condition until December, 1852, when he
+was seized with a severe attack of the stomachic trouble to which he was
+a martyr. He died peacefully, on the last day of that month and year, at
+the age of sixty-six years, eight months, and eight days. He was buried
+in Mount Auburn Cemetery, and was followed to the grave by a host of
+friends who mourned him as a brother, and by strangers to whom his
+kindness in life had brought relief from many a care and suffering.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+ANDREW V. STOUT.
+
+
+There are few men in the city of New York who have won more fairly their
+proud positions in the mercantile world than he whose name stands at the
+top of this page. For more than forty years he has carried on a large
+and increasing business with an energy, skill, and probity which could
+not fail of success.
+
+ANDREW V. STOUT was born in the city of New York, at No. 6 Canal Street,
+or, as it was then called, Pump Street, about the year 1814. When he was
+scarcely more than a child he was left fatherless, and thrown upon his
+own resources for a living. He was a manly little fellow, and, young as
+he was, was fully alive to the importance of the position he was
+compelled to assume. He was resolved not only to support himself, but
+also to acquire a good education, and by studying hard while most boys
+are at play, mastered the ordinary English branches by the time he was
+twelve years old.
+
+He had a mother and sister to support, and applied himself manfully to
+the task of accomplishing this. He was well grown for his age, and was
+generally supposed to be several years older than he really was. When he
+was fourteen years old he applied for and received a position as
+assistant teacher of the English branches in one of the public schools
+of the city. The trustees of the school supposed he was at least
+eighteen or nineteen years old. Had his true age been known to them, it
+is probable he would not have received the appointment. He was not
+questioned upon the subject, and he was wise enough to keep his own
+counsel. He performed the duties of his position to the entire
+satisfaction of the school officials, and made such a good impression on
+his friends that at the age of sixteen he was made assistant principal
+in one of the most important and popular private schools of the day,
+taught by Shepherd Johnson, a name well known to the old residents of
+New York.
+
+He was very young to fill this position, and, as may be supposed, it was
+peculiarly trying to one whose learning was mainly self-acquired. He was
+determined to succeed, however, and he applied himself energetically to
+master the course he was teaching. He studied harder and more constantly
+than any of his pupils, and was always fresh on the lessons for the day.
+
+When he was sixteen years old he was so well grown and so mature that he
+passed for twenty. Having succeeded so well in the management of his
+English classes, he was offered the position of instructor of Latin,
+with an increase of his salary. The offer at first dismayed him. He was
+thoroughly ignorant of the Latin language, and utterly unprepared for
+the duties demanded of him. He was very anxious to have the place,
+however, for he needed the increase of salary offered him, and, after
+hesitating a little while, accepted it. He purchased a Latin grammar,
+and engaged a private tutor. He studied hard, and soon mastered the
+rudiments of the language. In this way he managed to keep ahead of his
+classes. If a question was asked him which he could not answer, he
+postponed his reply, looked into the matter at night, and explained it
+the next morning. By such hard study and patient efforts did this boy,
+himself a mere novice, turn out what was admitted by all to be the best
+drilled Latin class Shepherd Johnson's school had ever boasted of.
+
+When he was eighteen years old he was made principal of Public School
+No. 2 of New York. He was living at Bushwick, where he resided with his
+mother and sister in a cozy little cottage, the garden of which was his
+pride, since he tended it with his own hands. It was his custom to rise
+every morning at four o'clock, and work in his garden until seven. Then
+he rode into the city, and attended to his school duties until four
+o'clock, when he returned home.
+
+He was now in possession of a comfortable living; but he was not
+satisfied to do this and nothing more. He was anxious to win fortune, to
+enter upon a more active and stirring pursuit, and he kept himself
+always on the watch for an opening. About the time he became the head of
+the public school we have referred to, he commenced to engage in various
+ventures of a commercial nature, devoting to them his evenings, and the
+hours of the day not demanded by his school.
+
+One of his relatives was a builder, with a fair trade, and had made some
+money by erecting houses in New York. Young Stout, who had saved a
+little money, proposed to him that they should take out a contract for
+building a number of dwellings on the then fashionable thoroughfare of
+East Broadway. The elder man was pleased with the plan, and at once
+consented to it. The houses were built at a handsome profit; others
+followed them, and by attending closely to this business, as well as his
+other duties, Andrew Stout, by the time he was twenty years old, had
+saved seventeen thousand dollars--a very large sum in those steady-going
+days.
+
+He was greatly aided by the custom of doing business on time, which
+then prevailed, but he never allowed one of his notes to be protested,
+and never asked for an extension. When he began business, he did so with
+the firm resolve that he would conduct his most insignificant
+transaction as a Christian man of honor. If he could not make money
+honestly, he would remain poor. Every body saw the energy and judgment
+with which he conducted his affairs, and the strict integrity which
+marked them all, and he was not long in building up a reputation as a
+business man of which any one might have been proud. The promptness and
+apparent ease with which he met every contract, and took up every note,
+caused it to be generally believed that he was a very rich man. Further
+than this, it was known that he was a zealous and earnest Christian, one
+who carried his religion into his business, and who lived up to his
+professions. He was an active member of the Methodist Church, and the
+business man of the congregation to which he belonged. In his hands its
+finances prospered as they had never done before. Such was the
+reputation of this young man, who had not yet attained his majority.
+
+He held his position in the public school for several years after his
+appointment to it, but the requirements of his business at length
+compelled him to relinquish it.
+
+In the midst of his prosperity Mr. Stout made one mistake. A friend with
+whom he had been interested in building wished to procure some money
+from the bank, and Mr. Stout was induced, with considerable reluctance,
+to indorse his note for five thousand dollars. One false step in
+business, as in other affairs of life, leads to another, and, in order
+to save this money, Mr. Stout was forced to renew his indorsements until
+his liabilities amounted to twenty-three thousand dollars. To his dismay
+he was now informed by the builder for whose sake he had incurred this
+risk, that he (the builder) had failed, without making provision for the
+payment of the notes, and that Mr. Stout would have to account to the
+bank for them.
+
+"Several methods of relief were open to Mr. Stout. He was worth
+seventeen thousand dollars, which he had earned by nights of toil, by
+economy, and by daily and earnest attention to business. To pay the
+notes would not only sweep away every penny that he had, but would leave
+him six thousand dollars in debt. He had never realized one cent from
+the money, and his name was used simply to accommodate the builder.
+Besides, he was not of age, though nobody suspected that fact, and he
+could repudiate his debts as a minor. He took no counsel, made no
+statement of his affairs to any one, shut himself up in his own room,
+and considered thoughtfully what he should do, and then followed out the
+decision that he had reached. Having become bankrupt in money, he
+concluded he would not be so in character. He had earned seventeen
+thousand dollars, and could earn seventeen thousand dollars more. He did
+confide in one friend. He went to a relative, and asked him to lend him
+six thousand dollars, the sum necessary to take up all the notes. The
+relative was astonished at the request, and insisted upon knowing the
+facts in the case. Mr. Stout made a full and frank statement. It was met
+with the remark, 'Well, Andrew, I thought you would be a rich man, but
+if this is the way you do your business, you will never be worth any
+thing,' But Mr. Stout did not want preaching, he wanted money; and as
+the relative seemed to hesitate about loaning the money, as no security
+was offered, Mr. Stout curtly told him he could do as he pleased about
+it; he could get the money somewhere, and pay the notes. The money was
+promised, and he went on his way.
+
+"The bank watched the young financier with a great deal of interest.
+The whole matter had been discussed often in the bank, and the wonder
+was how young Stout would meet the blow. It was supposed that he would
+ask for an extension; and it was agreed to give it to him, and to make
+the time of payment convenient to his ability. Had he proposed to
+compromise the matter by paying one-half, the bank would have accepted
+it. That would have left him a capital of nearly eight thousand dollars
+for a fresh start. Had he offered his seventeen thousand dollars on
+condition that he was released from all liability, the notes would have
+been canceled with alacrity. He did neither. He proposed no compromise,
+asked no extension, and attempted to negotiate no settlement. When the
+first note became due, he paid it. He did the same with the second and
+third. After the third payment, he was called into the office of the
+president. Reference was made to the notes, and to the fact that he had
+obtained no benefit from the money. The president told him the bank was
+ready to renew the notes, and to give him any accommodation that he
+might ask. Mr. Stout simply replied that the blow was a heavy one, but
+that having assumed the obligation, he should discharge it; that he
+asked no favors, and as the notes matured he should take them up. He
+paid every dollar due, and every one was certain that his wealth must be
+very large. His manliness, pluck, and integrity, which carried him
+through that crisis, became the sure foundation-stone on which his great
+fortune was laid. He took the front rank among successful financiers,
+and his honorable course in that crisis established his fame as an
+honest man, in whom it would be safe to confide. Years of earnest and
+active business life have not changed that character, nor allowed a blot
+or stain to cloud that reputation."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: Matthew Hale Smith.]
+
+Some years later, Mr. Stout became a merchant. He established a
+wholesale boot and shoe store, and engaged actively in that business. He
+brought to his new calling the energy, prudence, and integrity which had
+distinguished him all through his life, and was successful from the
+first. He worked hard. His business hours were from seven in the morning
+until six in the evening. During his busy season, four months in the
+year, he worked until ten, and often until twelve, paying his employes
+extra wages for labor performed after the regular business hours.
+Sometimes he worked until four in the morning, but that did not deter
+him from being in the store at the usual hour for opening. He was always
+the last to go home, never leaving the store until the business of the
+day was over and the house was closed. He extended his operations into
+dry goods, meeting with equal success in this department. As his
+business expanded, he was compelled to form various partnerships, but in
+all these arrangements he reserved to himself, like Stewart, the
+exclusive management of the finances.
+
+About eighteen years ago, the shoe and leather merchants of the city
+decided to organize a bank, in which their interests should be the
+principal consideration. Mr. Stout engaged in the effort with great
+enthusiasm, and the Shoe and Leather Bank of New York was at length
+organized under the most auspicious circumstances. Mr. Stout was the
+largest stockholder in the new bank, and was elected one of its
+directors. His influence was potent in directing its first operations,
+and the next year he was elected vice-president, in which position he
+really had the control of the enterprise left to him. A year later he
+was elected president of the bank, a position which he still holds,
+being in point of service the oldest bank president in New York. Upon
+questions of banking and finance, his views are listened to with great
+respect by his associates, who have proof of their soundness in the
+splendid success of the institution over which he presides; and it may
+be truly said that there are few men in the city who enjoy so large a
+share of the public confidence as is bestowed upon him.
+
+As a citizen, he is public-spirited and liberal. Some years ago, he held
+the office of city chamberlain, and during his administration of it a
+difficulty arose in regard to paying the police force their wages.
+Knowing that the men and their families would suffer if the money were
+not promptly paid them, Mr. Stout generously advanced the necessary sum
+from his private means, looking to the city to reimburse him. In
+grateful acknowledgment of this practical sympathy for them, the force
+presented him with a handsome testimonial. His fortune is immense, and
+is used liberally in behalf of the cause of the Christian religion. His
+charities are said to be large, but one rarely hears of them, so quietly
+are they done. He is married and has a family.
+
+No man's career holds out more encouragement to young men seeking to
+rise than that of Andrew V. Stout. It shows that courage, patient
+industry, and business capacity will bring fortune to any honest worker.
+His uniform success speaks volumes in favor of a young man's striving to
+lead a Christian life in the midst of his business cares and struggles.
+God's blessing follows such an one at every step, and he will succeed in
+the end, whatever trials may beset his path at first. It is a great
+mistake to suppose that a man's success depends on his "sharpness."
+Shrewdness is a valuable quality, but it must be coupled with a plain,
+practical honesty, or it will amount to nothing in the end. A man must
+be faithful to his God if he would have his work stand.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+JONAS CHICKERING.
+
+
+On Tremont Street, in the City of Boston, near the Roxbury line, there
+stands an immense building of brick, said to be larger than any edifice
+in the United States, save the Capitol at Washington. It is built in the
+form of a hollow square, with a large court-yard in the center, and the
+building and court-yard together cover an area of five acres. It is five
+stories in height on the outer side, and six on the inner, the
+court-yard being one story lower than the street. The building is two
+hundred and sixty-two feet in length from east to west, and two hundred
+and forty-five from north to south, the shorter distance being the
+length on Tremont Street. The width of the building all around the
+court-yard is fifty feet. It contains nine hundred windows, with eleven
+thousand panes of glass, and when lighted up at night seems almost a
+solid mass of fire. From five to six hundred men are employed here in
+various capacities, and an immense steam engine of one hundred and
+twenty horse-power furnishes the motive power for the machinery.
+Altogether, it is one of the most prominent and interesting of all the
+sights of Boston, and the visitor is surprised to learn that it is due
+entirely to the energy and genius of one who, but thirty-four years
+previous to its erection, came to Boston a penniless stranger. The
+building is the famous piano-forte manufactory of Chickering & Sons, and
+its founder was Jonas Chickering, the subject of this sketch.
+
+JONAS CHICKERING was born at New Ipswich, New Hampshire, on the 5th of
+April, 1798. His father was a blacksmith by trade, and employed his
+leisure time in cultivating a small farm of which he was the owner. He
+was esteemed by his neighbors as an upright, reliable man, and prudent
+and careful in his temporal affairs. The family being poor, young Jonas
+was required to do his share toward cultivating the farm, and received
+only such education as was afforded by the district schools in the
+vicinity. He was noted at an early age for his passionate love of music.
+When a mere child, he learned to play on the fife, and was such a
+proficient performer that he was called upon with the town drummer to
+furnish music for the militia musters, which were then the pride of the
+town. These were happy days for the lad, but his pleasure was marred by
+the ridicule which the contrast between his slender figure and the
+stalwart frame of the "six-foot drummer" caused the fun-loving
+towns-people to indulge in. Soon after this he learned to play on the
+clarionet, and when only seventeen or eighteen years old, was so
+advanced in his art that he could read at sight music of the most
+difficult character.
+
+At the age of seventeen he was apprenticed to a cabinet-maker to learn
+his trade, and remained with him for three years, exerting himself to
+become thorough master of every detail of the business. Toward the close
+of his apprenticeship, an event occurred which changed the whole current
+of his life, and placed him in what proved to him the road to fame and
+fortune.
+
+One of the wealthiest citizens of New Ipswich was the fortunate owner of
+a piano, the only instrument of the kind in the place; but his treasure
+was almost useless to him, for the reason that it was out of tune and
+seriously damaged in some respects. It had lain in this condition for a
+long time, no one in or near the place being able to make the necessary
+repairs. In this extremity the owner bethought him of Jonas Chickering,
+who had acquired an enviable reputation for skill in his trade, and it
+was thought that a good cabinet-maker ought of necessity to be a clever
+piano-maker. Young Chickering, thus appealed to, consented to undertake
+the task, as much for the purpose of becoming familiar with the
+instrument as of earning the sum the owner of it proposed to pay for the
+repairs. He had not the slightest knowledge of its internal
+organization, but he believed that by patient investigation he could
+master it, and he knew that the correctness of his ear would enable him
+to tune it. He made a careful study of the instrument and of every
+separate part, spent days over the task, discovered the injury and the
+cause of it, and not only took the instrument to pieces and restored it
+to its former condition, but did his work so well that the piano was
+pronounced fully as good in every respect as when it was new. This was
+not all. He discovered defects in the instrument which even its maker
+was not able to remedy, and his fertile brain at once suggested to him a
+plan for removing them.
+
+Here was a chance for him, and he resolved to profit by it. He would
+abandon cabinet-making and learn the manufacture of pianos. Then, when
+master of his trade, he would make use of his discoveries, and earn both
+fame and fortune. When his determination to change his business was made
+known, his friends attributed it to his desire to be in the midst of
+musical instruments, and where he could gratify his love of music; but
+this was only a part of the motive which influenced him. He meant to
+rise in the world, and he was sure that he held in his hands the means
+of doing so.
+
+In 1818, when twenty years old, he removed to Boston, and obtained
+employment with a cabinet-maker. He did this in order to give him time
+to look about him, to become familiar with the city and city life, and
+to acquire such other information as would enable him to decide upon the
+best means of putting his plans into execution. He saved his wages with
+the greatest care, and at the end of his first year in Boston had
+accumulated a modest little sum, which he meant should support him while
+he was learning his new trade.
+
+On the 15th of February, 1819, without the loss of a day, he began work
+with a piano-maker.
+
+He had now entered upon what he meant should be the business of his
+life, and he was resolved that he would be master of it. From the first
+he took rank in his employer's factory as the most careful workman in
+it. He spared no pains to make his knowledge full in every detail. Time
+was of no consequence compared with knowledge, and he was never anxious
+to hurry through with his work. It soon came to be recognized by his
+employer and fellow-workmen that he was the best fitted for those
+portions of the work upon the instrument which required the greatest
+patience as well as the greatest care, and the most difficult and
+delicate work was always intrusted to him, his wages being, of course,
+in proportion. Other men had no thought but to earn a living. This man
+meant to win fame and fortune, and to enlarge the scope of that art to
+which he was so passionately devoted. He labored with his mind as well
+as his hands, familiarizing himself with every detail of the
+manufacture, and devising in silence the means for improving the
+instrument and the implements used in its construction. He could afford
+to wait, to be slower than his fellows. Every moment spent over his
+task made his workmanship the better, and opened to his mind new sources
+of improvement. He spent three years as a journeyman, and then went into
+business for himself. He associated himself with a Mr. Stewart, under
+the firm of Stewart & Chickering.
+
+Fifty years ago the piano-forte was a wretched piece of mechanism
+compared with the superb instrument of to-day. It was originally a
+progressive growth from the ancient lyre, through the harp, psaltery,
+dulcimer, clavictherium, clavichord, virginal, spinet, harpsichord, to
+the piano of Christofali in the early years of the last century. At the
+period of Mr. Chickering's entrance into business, it was still very
+imperfect, and the various manufacturers of the instrument were
+earnestly endeavoring to discover some means of remedying the defects of
+which they were all conscious. There are four divisions in the
+manufacture of a piano, each of which requires great skill and care.
+These are: First, The making of the framing and the sound-board; Second,
+The stringing; Third, The keys and action; Fourth, The case and
+ornamental work. The framing requires strength and simplicity. It is
+this portion of the instrument which sustains the tension of the
+strings, which in full to large-sized pianos is not less than from six
+to twelve tons, and it is a matter of prime necessity that the portions
+which serve as a strut or stretcher between the ends of the strings, and
+which are to resist this enormous pull, must be made correspondingly
+strong and rigid, since by any gradual yielding under the pull of the
+strings, their lengths and tensions, and hence their tone, must undergo
+proportionate change. In the old pianos, the frames were of wood, and it
+was impossible to use any but small, short strings, for the reason given
+above. Fullness and power were not to be thought of, and builders were
+obliged to confine themselves to securing truthfulness of tone. A
+multitude of causes, among which were the changes in the weather,
+combined to render it impossible to keep the old-fashioned instrument in
+tune. It was this defect which first attracted the attention of Jonas
+Chickering, and his first endeavor was to produce an instrument which
+would withstand the climatic changes which were so troublesome to the
+old ones. He was fully aware of the fact that the piano trade in this
+country was then so unimportant that it offered but little inducement to
+a man who could manufacture only the old instrument; but he believed
+that by producing an instrument of better proportions, and one fuller,
+richer, and more lasting in tone, he could create a demand for it which
+would insure the sale of all he could manufacture. His hope of success
+lay not in the old, but in an improved and nobler instrument. That he
+was correct in his belief, the magnificent instrument of to-day which
+bears his name, and the lucrative business he has left to his sons,
+amply demonstrate. Others besides himself were working for the same end,
+and he knew that he would have to bear the test of determined and
+intelligent competition. He applied himself to his purpose with
+enthusiasm. He carefully studied the theory of atmospheric vibration and
+musical combination, as well as an application of the principles of
+mechanical philosophy to the construction of the instrument. He went
+deep into the science involved in his work, into the philosophy of
+melody. Passionately devoted to music, he was ambitious of placing that
+which has been so truly called "the king of instruments" within the
+reach of all lovers of harmony, and to give them the best instrument
+that human invention could produce--an instrument which should not only
+withstand atmospheric changes, but which should yield the richest,
+fullest volume of melody, with the least exertion to the performer. His
+progress was slow, but it was sure. Beginning with an improvement in
+the action, he accomplished, in a great measure (in 1838), his plan for
+preserving the permanence and purity of the tone of the instrument by
+casting the entire iron framing with the parallel bars in one piece.
+Iron had for some time before this been in general use for framing, but
+the frame was cast in a few separate parts, which were put together by
+means of bolts and screws, a plan which is still used to a considerable
+extent in Europe. By his plan of casting the frame and its supporting
+bars in one solid piece, Mr. Chickering not only prevented the frame
+from yielding to the pull of the strings, thus securing permanence and
+purity of tone, but was enabled to use larger frames and more strings,
+which greatly increased the capacity of the instrument.
+
+Several other improvements were made by him, the most important of which
+was the invention, in 1845, of the circular scale for square pianos,
+which is now in general use in this country and in Europe. "This consists
+in giving to the row of tuning pins and wrest-planks--previously
+straight in these instruments--a curved disposition, answering nearly to
+an arc of a circle, the advantage being that the strings become less
+crowded, larger hammers, and a more direct blow can be secured, and the
+tone is both strengthened and improved." With a rare generosity, Mr.
+Chickering declined to patent this improvement, which would have enabled
+him to drive competition out of the market. He regarded it as so
+necessary to a good piano that he declared that all makers ought to have
+the use of it, as it would thus be within the power of all persons able
+to purchase a piano to avail themselves of it, whether they bought a
+"Chickering" or not. Such generosity is too rare to fail to receive the
+praise it merits.
+
+Mr. Chickering did not continue long in business with Mr. Stewart. The
+latter withdrew in a few years, and Mr. Chickering carried on the
+business alone. In 1830 he formed a partnership with Captain John
+Mackay, a retired ship-merchant. In the new firm Captain Mackay took
+charge of the finances and the office business, while Mr. Chickering
+devoted himself entirely to the mechanical department. The operations of
+the new house were very successful. The improvements made by Mr.
+Chickering from the first created a demand for their instruments which
+was sometimes so great that it was difficult to supply it. This demand
+continued to increase, until the house was perfectly easy as to money
+matters, and able to enlarge its facilities very greatly. It was Mr.
+Chickering's design that each separate instrument should be an
+improvement upon those which had preceded it, and he was careful that
+this plan should not miscarry. In a few years the firm was enabled to
+import the foreign materials needed, by the cargo, thus saving the
+profit which they had hitherto been compelled to pay the importer.
+Besides this saving, they were enabled to keep on hand a large stock of
+the woods used in the instrument, and thus it was allowed to become more
+thoroughly seasoned than that which they had been compelled to purchase,
+from time to time, in small quantities. In 1841, Captain Mackay sailed
+from Boston for South America, for the purpose of obtaining a supply of
+the woods needed by the firm; but he never returned, and as no tidings
+of him or his ship were ever received, it is supposed that the vessel
+went down at sea with all on board.
+
+Mr. Chickering now decided to continue the business without a partner.
+His friends supposed that in assuming the management of the concern, in
+addition to the direction of the mechanical department, and the constant
+mental labor to which he subjected himself in his efforts to improve the
+piano, he was undertaking more than he was capable of performing. They
+feared his health would break down under it. Besides, it was generally
+believed that, in spite of Mr. Chickering's undoubted skill in his own
+department, he was not much of a business man. He was confident of his
+own ability, however, and did not hesitate to assume the new
+responsibility.
+
+The business of which he now became the owner was very heavy and
+extensive. Soon after the beginning of his connection with Captain
+Mackay, the firm erected a large factory for the purpose of carrying on
+their business. One hundred hands were employed in it when opened, but
+in a few years it was necessary to employ more than twice that number,
+so rapidly did the business increase. The supply of materials needed was
+ample and of the very best quality, for Mr. Chickering never allowed an
+inferior article to be used. The warerooms were large and handsomely
+fitted up, and were filled with instruments ranging in price from a
+thousand dollars downward. It was generally believed that while Mr.
+Chickering's genius had created the demand for the pianos, it was
+Captain Mackay's business knowledge and experience that had placed
+affairs on their present footing, and when Mr. Chickering proposed to
+buy Captain Mackay's interest from his heirs, which was valued at
+several hundred thousand dollars, there was a very general belief, which
+found expression, that he was incurring certain ruin. The condition of
+the sale was that the purchase-money should be divided into
+installments, for each of which Mr. Chickering should give his note,
+secured by a mortgage on the premises. At Mr. Chickering's request each
+note was made payable "on or before" a given day. The lawyer who
+conducted the transaction smiled skeptically as he inserted this clause,
+and asked the purchaser if he _ever_ expected to pay the notes at all.
+
+"If I did not expect to pay them promptly, I should not give them," was
+the simple reply. He was as good as his word. The notes were met
+promptly, and although Captain Mackay's family requested that they might
+stand as an investment for them, Mr. Chickering took up the last one at
+its maturity.
+
+With the business in his own hands, Mr. Chickering continued its
+operations, displaying an ease in his mercantile transactions which
+astonished and delighted his friends. The business prospered to a
+greater degree than before, and all the while Mr. Chickering continued
+his labors for the improvement of his instruments with still greater
+success than in former years. His pianos were universally regarded as
+the best in the market, and his competitors were unable to excel him.
+Although conducting a business which required the constant exercise of
+the highest mercantile talent, he did not relax his energy in the
+mechanical department. To the end of his life, long after he had become
+a wealthy and prominent man, he had his own little working-cabinet, with
+an exquisite set of tools, with which he himself put the finishing touch
+to each of his splendid instruments, a touch he would not intrust to any
+other hands.
+
+His competitors did all in their power to equal him, but he distanced
+them all. One of them adopted a most startling expedient. He obtained
+permission from the Legislature of Massachusetts to change his name to
+_Chickering_, and at once sent out his instruments marked with his new
+name, his object of course being to deceive the public, and Jonas
+Chickering had the mortification of seeing the inferior instruments of
+another maker mistaken for his own. He promptly laid before the
+Legislature a petition for redress, setting forth the facts of the case
+and the motives of his rival. The result was that the Legislature
+reconsidered its action, and compelled the bogus Chickering to resume
+his original name.
+
+Mr. Chickering was noted for his simplicity and straight-forwardness in
+business transactions. Conscious of his own integrity, he listened to no
+proposition of a doubtful character, nor would he ever allow his credit
+as a merchant to be questioned with impunity. Upon one occasion, he
+applied through his clerk to the bank, with which he had dealt for many
+years, for an accommodation which he needed. The president of the bank
+sent for him, and told him that security would be required.
+
+"I shall give you none," he replied. "I have done my business at this
+bank for a long time, and if you do not know me, I shall apply where I
+am better known."
+
+The president was firm in his position, and Mr. Chickering applied to
+another bank, which readily granted him the desired discount, and to
+which he at once transferred his business, which was worth to the bank
+about ten thousand dollars a year. Shortly after, a director of the
+institution at which he had formerly dealt called on him, and urged him
+to restore his business to the bank, assuring him that in future it
+would readily grant him any accommodation he might desire.
+
+"No," he replied; "I will deal with no institution which, having had the
+opportunity of knowing me, suspects my responsibility."
+
+Again having need of accommodation, he sent his notes for a large sum to
+one of the city banks for discount. The president said an indorser would
+be required.
+
+"I shall indorse them myself," said Mr. Chickering.
+
+"That will never do," replied the president.
+
+"Very well," was the simple answer, and, without further words, he took
+the notes to another bank, which promptly loaned him the money on them.
+
+He tolerated no irregularity in his own business. He was true to the
+spirit as well as to the letter of a contract, and never, during the
+whole course of his long life, was he guilty of a transaction in which
+the most rigid moralist could find a taint of sharp practice. What a
+refutation of the theories of those who hold that cunning and trickery
+are unavoidable some time in the course of a long and successful
+mercantile career lies in the story of this man, who, beginning life
+penniless, filled with a burning ambition to be rich and famous, never
+swerved from the straight path of integrity, and by the exercise of only
+the highest traits of his nature more than realized his boyish dreams!
+Ponder it well, young man, and learn from it that honesty is indeed the
+best policy in any calling.
+
+Mr. Chickering had married early in life, and now had three sons just
+entering upon manhood. These were carefully educated at the public
+schools for which Boston is so justly famed, and then put into their
+father's factory to learn the mechanical part of the business. It was
+the father's ambition to be succeeded by his sons, but he was not
+willing to trust the labor of his life to ignorant or incompetent hands.
+At the age of seventeen, Thomas Chickering, the eldest son, was taken
+from school, and, under his father's eye, taught every detail of the
+mechanical branch of the business, until he understood it as well as the
+senior Chickering himself. George, the second son, in due time passed
+through the same course of training; while Francis, the youngest, was
+brought up in the warehouse. The father thoroughly imbued his sons with
+his own system and energy, and to-day we see the result. The firm of
+Chickering & Sons is still the most prominent in America. Thomas is now
+the acting head of the house, and has led it on to continued success;
+Francis is the presiding genius of the mechanical department, and has
+made many important improvements in the field in which his father won
+success; and George exercises a general supervision at the immense
+factory in Boston. The mantle of the father has fallen upon the sons,
+and his labors have found their highest reward in their success.
+
+Mr. Chickering's good fortune was not entirely uninterrupted. On the 1st
+of December, 1852, his factory was burned to the ground, with all its
+valuable patterns, stock, etc., involving a loss to him of two hundred
+thousand dollars. The interruption to his business was very serious,
+apart from the loss of his property. Expressions of sympathy poured in
+upon him from his friends, coupled with offers of pecuniary assistance
+in his efforts to reestablish his business. His disaster seemed merely
+to inspire him with fresh energy, but the kindness of his friends
+entirely overcame him.
+
+[Illustration: "MY MEN SHALL NOT SUFFER."]
+
+He wasted no time in vain regrets, but at once went to work. He was
+fifty-four years old, but he showed an energy and determination which
+more than rivaled the fire of his young manhood. The loss of his factory
+was not only a severe blow to him, but to the three hundred workmen who
+had been employed in it, and who were dependent upon their wages for
+their support. His first care was to assure them that they should not
+suffer, but that they should continue to receive their wages as
+regularly as though nothing had happened to interrupt their labor. He
+had always been kind and generous to his employes, paying liberal wages,
+and rewarding especial merit, but this act of kindness did more to
+endear him to them than any previous benefaction. Having provided for
+his men, he set to work to prepare temporary accommodations for his
+business, and then began his arrangements for the construction of a new
+factory. He took a great degree of interest in the plans for the new
+building, the architect being almost entirely guided by his suggestions,
+and the result of his labors is the magnificent building to which
+reference was made at the opening of this chapter. He did not live to
+see it completed, however. He died at the house of a friend from the
+rupture of a blood-vessel, produced, it is believed, by severe mental
+labor, on the 8th of December, 1853. His fortune at the time of his
+death was estimated at a quarter of a million of dollars. His sons
+assumed the charge of the business, which they still conduct.
+
+The loss of Mr. Chickering was felt by all classes of his
+fellow-citizens--especially by the poor. To them he had been a kind and
+generous friend. Distress never appealed to him in vain, and he proved a
+faithful steward of the riches committed to his care. Yet he performed
+his charities with such a modesty and reticence that few beside the
+grateful recipients were aware of them. Indeed, it was his custom to
+enjoin secrecy upon those whom he assisted; but they would not remain
+quiet. His liberality is in striking contrast with the closeness of many
+who were worth more than twenty times his wealth, but who lacked his
+warm and sympathizing nature.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+NICHOLAS LONGWORTH.
+
+
+The grape culture of the United States is yet in its infancy. Although
+the annual wine product is estimated at nearly three millions of
+gallons, there can be no doubt that ere many years shall have elapsed
+America will rank as one of the most important wine countries of the
+world. California is already extending her vineyards for miles along her
+smiling valleys, where the clear sky and the balmy air, which are
+unchangeable at the season of the grape harvest, permit a degree of
+perfection in the fruit unattainable in any European country. Already
+her wines are commanding an enviable place in the markets of the world,
+with no apparent limits to the growing demand for them. The hillsides of
+the lower Ohio Valley are lined with thriving vineyards, whose rich
+clusters of Catawba and Isabella grapes delight the eye on every hand,
+and thousands of acres are now given to successful grape culture, where
+formerly only a few straggling vines were seen. More than five hundred
+thousand gallons of wine are now annually produced in the neighborhood
+of Cincinnati alone, and find a market in that city, and what was but a
+few years ago a mere experiment is now one of the chief sources of the
+wonderful prosperity of the Ohio Valley, and one of the most important
+features in the commerce of the Queen City of the West. The success
+which has attended this branch of our industry must be a matter of
+congratulation to the whole country, and the man to whose courage,
+energy, and liberality it is mainly due must be regarded as a public
+benefactor.
+
+This man, NICHOLAS LONGWORTH by name, was born at Newark, New Jersey, on
+the 16th of January, 1782. His father had been a man of large property,
+but in consequence of being a Tory during the Revolution, his
+possessions were confiscated, and he and his family impoverished. Young
+Nicholas's childhood was passed in indigence, and it is said that he was
+apprenticed to a shoemaker, when a mere lad, to learn the trade as a
+means of livelihood. However this may be, it is certain that when very
+young he went to South Carolina as a clerk for his elder brother. The
+climate of the South, however, did not suit his health, and he returned
+to Newark, and began the study of the law.
+
+He was poor, and the East was overcrowded, even at that early day, and
+offered but few inducements to a young man entirely dependent upon his
+own efforts. Ohio was then the "Far West," and emigration was setting in
+toward it rapidly. Those who had seen the country related what then
+seemed marvelous tales of its wonderful fertility and progress. Few
+professional men were seeking the distant land, and Longworth felt
+convinced that the services of such as did go would assuredly be in
+demand, and he resolved to cast his lot with the West.
+
+In 1803, at the age of twenty-one, he removed to the little village of
+Cincinnati, and, having fixed upon this place as his future home,
+entered the law office of Judge Jacob Burnet, long the ablest jurist in
+Ohio. He soon won the confidence and esteem of his instructor, and
+succeeded so well in his studies that in an unusually short time he was
+admitted to the bar.
+
+He entered upon the practice of his profession with energy, and soon
+acquired a profitable business, which increased rapidly. He was a man of
+simple habits, and lived economically. His savings were considerable,
+and were regularly invested by him in real estate in the suburbs of the
+town. Land was cheap at that time, some of his lots costing him but ten
+dollars each. Long before his death they were worth more than as many
+thousands. He had a firm conviction that Cincinnati was destined to
+become one of the largest and most flourishing cities in the Union, and
+that his real estate would increase in value at a rate which would
+render him wealthy in a very few years.
+
+His first client was a man accused of horse-stealing, in those days the
+most heinous offense known to Western law. Longworth secured his
+acquittal, but the fellow had no money to pay his counsel, and in the
+absence of funds gave Longworth two second-hand copper stills, which
+were his property. These the lawyer accepted, thinking that he could
+easily dispose of them for cash, as they were rare and valuable there in
+those days. They were in the keeping of Mr. Joel Williams, who carried
+on a tavern adjacent to the river, and who was afterward one of the
+largest property-holders in Cincinnati. Mr. Williams was building a
+distillery at the time, and, as he had confidently reckoned upon using
+the two stills in his possession, was considerably nonplussed when
+Longworth presented his order for them. In his extremity he offered to
+purchase them from the lawyer for a lot of thirty-three acres of barren
+land in the town, which was then worth little or nothing. Longworth
+hesitated, for although he had an almost prophetic belief in the future
+value of the land, he was sorely in need of ready money; but at length
+he accepted the offer. The deed for the land was made out in his name,
+and the stills became the property of Mr. Williams. The distillery was
+built, and its owner realized a fortune; but Longworth did more. His
+thirty-three acres of barren land were soon in the very heart of
+Cincinnati, and long before his death were valued at two millions of
+dollars.
+
+The foresight of Mr. Longworth was fully justified by the course of
+events. The growth of Cincinnati was almost marvelous in its rapidity.
+In 1802, it contained about 800 inhabitants; in 1810, 2,540; in 1820,
+9,060; in 1830, 24,831; in 1840, 46,338; in 1850, 118,761; and in 1860,
+just three years before Mr. Longworth's death, 171,293 inhabitants. The
+reader can easily imagine the immense profits which a half century's
+increase placed in the hands of the far-seeing lawyer. It seems almost
+like reading some old fairy tale to peruse the accounts of successful
+ventures in real estate in American cities. They have sprung up as if by
+magic, and it is impossible to say where their development will end.
+Said a gentleman of less than thirty-five years of age to the writer of
+these pages, "I am the oldest native-born citizen of Chicago. When I
+first saw the light, my native place could not boast even the dignity of
+a village; and young as I am, I have witnessed all this wonderful
+growth." The prosperity of Cincinnati was scarcely less marked, as the
+career of Mr. Longworth shows. The investment of a comparatively
+insignificant sum laid the foundation of his fortune, and the first
+counsel fee he ever earned, a sum trifling in itself, placed him in
+possession of millions.
+
+Mr. Longworth continued carefully to invest his gains in real estate.
+The prices paid by him increased, of course, with the rise in the value
+of property, but as he was persuaded that the limit had not yet been
+reached, he extended his operations without fear of loss. He sold many
+of his original purchases, but continued until the day of his death the
+largest land-owner in the city. In 1850 his taxes were over $17,000, and
+in the same year the taxes of William B. Astor amounted to $23,116. At
+the time of his death Mr. Longworth's estate was valued at fifteen
+millions of dollars, and is doubtless worth fully one-third more at the
+present day.
+
+Mr. Longworth retired from the practice of the law in 1819, to devote
+himself to the management of his property, which was already
+sufficiently important to require his undivided attention. He had always
+been an enthusiast in horticultural matters, and believing that the
+climate of the Ohio Valley was admirably adapted to the production of
+grapes, had for some time been making experiments in that direction; but
+he fell into the error of believing that only the foreign vines were
+worth cultivating, and his experiments were unsuccessful. The foreign
+grape did not mature well, and the wine produced from it was not good.
+In 1828 his friend Major Adlum sent him some specimens of the Catawba
+grape, which he had procured from the garden of a German living near
+Washington City, and be began to experiment with it in his own vineyard.
+
+The Catawba grape, now so popular and well-known throughout the country,
+was then a comparative stranger to our people, and was regarded even by
+many who were acquainted with it as unfit for vintage purposes. It was
+first discovered in a wild condition about 1801, near Asheville,
+Buncombe County, North Carolina, near the source of the Catawba River.
+General Davy, of Rocky Mount, on that river, afterward Senator from
+North Carolina, is supposed to have given the German in whose garden
+Major Adlum found the grape a few of the vines to experiment upon.
+General Davy always regarded the bringing of this grape into notice as
+the greatest act of his life. "I have done my country a greater benefit
+in introducing this grape into public notice," said he, in after years,
+"than I would have done if I had paid the national debt."
+
+Mr. Longworth's experiments with the Catawba were highly successful,
+and induced him to abandon all his efforts with foreign vines, and
+undertake only the Catawba, to which he afterward added the Isabella. He
+now entered systematically upon grape-growing. He established a large
+vineyard upon a hillside sloping down to the river, about four miles
+above the city, and employed German laborers, whose knowledge of
+vine-dressing, acquired in the Fatherland, made them the best workmen he
+could have. He caused it to be announced that all the grape juice
+produced by the small growers in the vicinity would find a cash
+purchaser in him, no matter in what quantities offered. At the same time
+he offered n reward of five hundred dollars for any improvement in the
+quality of the Catawba grape.
+
+The enthusiasm which he manifested, as well as the liberality of his
+offer, had a decidedly beneficial effect upon the small growers in the
+neighborhood. "It proved a great stimulus to the growth of the Catawba
+vine in the country around Cincinnati," to know that a man of Mr.
+Longworth's means stood ready to pay cash, at the rate of from a dollar
+to a dollar and a quarter a gallon, for all the grape-juice that might
+be brought to him, without reference to the quantity. It was in this
+way, and by urgent popular appeals through the columns of the
+newspapers, that he succeeded, after many failures, and against the
+depressing influence of much doubt and indifference, in bringing the
+enterprise up to its present high and stable position. When he took the
+matter in hand there was much to discourage any one not possessed of the
+traits of constancy of purpose and perseverance peculiar to Mr.
+Longworth. Many had tried the manufacture of wine, and had failed to
+give it any economical or commercial importance. It was not believed,
+until Mr. Longworth practically demonstrated it, that a native grape
+was the only one upon which any hope could be placed, and that the
+Catawba offered the most assured promise of success, and was the one
+upon which all vine-growers might with confidence depend. It took years
+of unremitted care, multiplied and wide-spread investigations, and the
+expenditure of large sums of money, to establish this fact, and bring
+the agricultural community to accept it and act under its guidance. The
+success attained by Mr. Longworth soon induced other gentlemen resident
+in the vicinity of Cincinnati, and favorably situated for the purpose,
+to undertake the culture of the Catawba, and several of them are now
+regularly and extensively engaged in the manufacture of wine. The
+impetus and encouragement thus given to the business soon led the German
+citizens of Hamilton County to perceive its advantages, and, under their
+thrifty management, thousands of acres, stretching up from the banks of
+the Ohio, are now covered with luxuriant and profitable vineyards,
+rivaling in profusion and beauty the vine-clad hills of Italy and
+France. The oldest vineyard in the county of Hamilton is of Mr.
+Longworth's planting.
+
+Mr. Longworth subsequently increased the size of his vineyard to two
+hundred acres, and toward the close of his life his wine houses annually
+produced one hundred and fifty thousand bottles of wine. His vaults
+usually contained a stock of three hundred thousand bottles in course of
+thorough ripening.
+
+His cellars were situated on the declivity of East Sixth Street, on the
+road to Observatory Hill. They occupied a space ninety feet by one
+hundred and twenty-five in size, and consisted of two tiers of massive
+stone vaults, the lower of which was twenty-five feet below the surface
+of the ground. The manufacture of the wine was placed under the charge
+of a celebrated chemist from Rheims, and the mode of preparation was as
+follows:
+
+After the pressing of the grape, the juice is subjected to the vinous
+fermentation, by which ten or eleven per cent, of alcohol is developed.
+In the following spring, it is mixed with a small quantity of sugar, and
+put into strong bottles, the corks of which are secured with twine and
+wire. The sugar accelerates a second fermentation, which always takes
+place about this time, and thus a strong movement is produced inside the
+glass, which generates gas enough to burst the vessels briskly, adding
+thereby considerably to the cost. This is known as the gaseous
+fermentation, and the effect of it is to render the wine more
+enlivening, more stinging to the taste, and more fruity. "This last
+effect results from this, that the flavor of the fruit mostly passes off
+with the carbonic acid gas, which is largely generated in the first or
+vinous fermentation, and in a less degree in this second or gaseous
+fermentation." It is impossible to avoid the loss of the flavor in the
+first fermentation, but the strong bottles and securely-fastened corks
+preserve it in the second. The liquid, which is muddy at first, becomes
+clear in about a year, a thick sediment having collected at the bottom
+of the bottle. The bottles are then placed in racks, with their necks
+downward, and are shaken vigorously every day for about three weeks.
+This forces the sediment to settle down in the neck against the cork.
+When it is all in the neck, the wires are cut, and the cork blown out by
+the gas, carrying the sediment with it. Fresh sugar, for sweetness, is
+now added, new corks are driven in and secured, and in a few weeks the
+wine is ready for the market.
+
+Mr. Longworth continued his wine trade with great success for about
+twenty-five years, and though for some time his expenditures were
+largely in excess of his income from this source, he at length reaped a
+steady and increasing profit from it, which more than reimbursed him for
+his former losses. He was very fond of the strawberry, and succeeded,
+by careful and expensive cultivation, in making several very important
+improvements in that delicious fruit. His experiments in the sexual
+character of the strawberry are highly interesting, but must be passed
+by here. He manifested no selfishness with respect to his fruits. He was
+anxious that their cultivation should become general, and his
+discoveries and improvements were always at the service of any and every
+one who desired to make use of them.
+
+He was thoroughly devoted to his adopted home, and anxious to secure its
+steady improvement. When it was proposed to establish an observatory,
+the Mount Adams property, then owned by him, was regarded as the most
+fitting site for it. He was asked to name the price for which he would
+sell the property. To the astonishment of the parties in charge of the
+enterprise, he made a free gift of the land--four acres in extent--to
+the trustees. A gentleman who had hoped to dispose of some of his own
+property for this purpose charged Mr. Longworth, through the press, with
+being influenced by a desire to improve his adjoining property by the
+erection of the observatory on Mount Adams. Longworth promptly replied
+that if the writer of the article in question would donate four acres of
+his own property for an observatory, he (Longworth) would put up, at his
+own expense, a building on it equal to that which had been erected on
+Mount Adams, and transfer the latter place to the city as a permanent
+pleasure ground. He quietly added that in this way his accuser might
+himself receive, for his adjacent property, all the benefits of such an
+improvement, and at the same time win for himself the lasting gratitude
+of the people of Cincinnati. This settled the matter, and no more was
+heard from the other side.
+
+"Longworth," says one who knew him, "is a problem and a riddle--a
+problem worthy of the study of those who delight in exploring that
+labyrinth of all that is hidden and mysterious, the human heart; and a
+riddle to himself and others. He is a wit and a humorist of a high
+order; of keen sagacity and shrewdness in many other respects than in
+money matters; one who can be exact to a dollar, and liberal, when he
+chooses, with thousands; of marked peculiarity and tenacity in his own
+opinions, yet of abundant tolerance to the opinions, however
+extravagant, of others--a man of great public spirit and sound general
+judgment.
+
+"In addition to all this, it would be difficult to find an individual of
+his position and standing so perfectly free from pride, in the ordinary
+sense. He has absolutely none, unless it be the pride of eccentricity.
+It is no uncommon circumstance for men to become rich by the
+concentration of time, and labor, and attention to some one object of
+profitable employment. This is the ordinary phase of money-getting, as
+closing the ear and pocket to applications for aid is that of
+money-saving. Longworth has become a rich man on a different principle.
+He appears to have started upon the calculation that if he could put any
+individual in the way of making a dollar for Longworth, and a dollar for
+himself at the same time, by aiding him with ground for a lot, or in
+building him a house on it; and if, moreover, he could multiply cases of
+the kind by hundreds, or perhaps thousands, he would promote his own
+interests just in the same measure as he was advancing those of others.
+At the same time he could not be unconscious that, while their half was
+subdivided into small possessions, owned by a thousand or more
+individuals, his half was a vast, boundless aggregate, since it was the
+property of one man alone. The event has done justice to his sagacity.
+Hundreds, if not thousands, in and adjacent to Cincinnati, now own
+houses and lots, and many have become wealthy, who would, in all
+probability, have lived and died as tenants under a different state of
+case. Had not Mr. Longworth adopted this course, he would have occupied
+that relation to society which many wealthy men now sustain, that of
+getting all they can and keeping all they get."
+
+In politics, Mr. Longworth was a Whig, and afterward a Republican.
+During the famous Clay campaign he was asked to give one hundred dollars
+to help defray the expenses of the party.
+
+"I never give something for nothing," said he. "We might fail to elect
+Clay, as we did before, and I should fling away the hundred dollars."
+
+The applicant, who was himself a man of wealth, assured him that there
+was no doubt of Clay's election.
+
+"There can be no chance of your losing," he said.
+
+"Well," replied Longworth, "I'll tell you what I will do. I will give
+you the hundred dollars, but mind, you shall be personally responsible
+to me for its return if Clay is not elected."
+
+The offer was accepted; and when the campaign resulted in the defeat of
+Clay, Longworth demanded his money from the politician, who was
+compelled to return it out of his own pocket.
+
+In his own way--and a quaint, singular way it was--Mr. Longworth was
+exceedingly charitable. Long after he was worth millions, and when every
+moment of his time was valuable, he was supernumerary township trustee.
+This was an office which required the expenditure of a considerable
+portion of his time, and brought him in constant contact with some of
+the most wretched of the lowest class of the poor. He was always in his
+office, at stated times, and with a patience and kindness worthy of all
+admiration, the millionaire listened to their sad tales, and provided
+such aid as was necessary, oftentimes giving it out of his own purse
+when the public funds failed.
+
+He was a bitter foe to vagabondage and mendicity. If people in need were
+willing to work, he would place them in the way of doing so. He was the
+owner of a stone quarry on Deer Creek, the traces of which may still be
+seen in the lines of the new Gilbert Avenue; and he kept in his office
+a supply of picks and shovels. When a stout beggar asked him for alms,
+he would inquire if he was willing to go to work. If answered
+affirmatively, he would give him a pick and shovel, and start him for
+the quarry, where the wages were promptly paid out every night. Many
+availed themselves of the opportunity, and worked for him faithfully;
+but others gave the quarry "a wide berth," and sold the pick and shovel
+for money or liquor. It was his custom to buy large quantities of bread
+tickets from the bakers, and to distribute them to those whom he
+considered worthy; and he would also keep on hand large quantities of
+shoes, dry goods, etc., which he gave away in the same manner.
+
+Mr. Frank Pentland, who was once in his employ, relates the following
+incident:
+
+"One morning, just after Mr. Longworth had gone to his office, near the
+Third-Street entrance, where he was accustomed to receive applicants for
+charity, he was accosted by a man who craved assistance. In answer to a
+question as to his needs, he replied that his main want was a pair of
+shoes, and a glance at his feet showed that he spoke truthfully. Mr.
+Longworth appeared 'to take his measure' at a glance, and impulsively
+shaking his right foot (he seldom wore his shoes tied), kicked the shoe
+over to the applicant, saying:
+
+"'Try that on, my man. How does it fit?'
+
+"'Illigant, yer honor,'
+
+"'Well, try that, now,' said he, kicking off the other. 'How will they
+do?'
+
+"Illigant, yer honor; illigant! May many a blessing'--
+
+"'Well, well, go now--that'll do,' and turning to Pentland, who was then
+a young boy in his service, ordered him to the house to get another
+pair. Frank obeyed, but was told by Mrs. Longworth that those he wore
+away from the house were all that he had. The result was that Frank was
+hurried off to William Hart's shoe store, on Fifth Street, for new ones,
+with instructions to 'Ask Mr. Hart for the kind I always buy, and don't
+pay over a dollar and a half for them.'"
+
+Yet many persons charged this man with stinginess--a charge to which
+every rich man lays himself open who does not give to all who ask him.
+Even the rich must refuse sometimes, for there is no reason why they
+should answer _all_ the calls made upon them--a course which would soon
+impoverish them. They must discriminate somewhere, and how this shall be
+done is a question which each must decide for himself. Longworth
+exercised this discrimination in an eccentric manner, eminently
+characteristic of him. He invariably refused cases that commended
+themselves to others. A gentleman once applied to him for assistance for
+a widow in destitute circumstances.
+
+"Who is she?" asked the millionaire. "Do you know her? Is she a
+deserving object?"
+
+"She is not only a woman of excellent character," answered his friend,
+"but she is doing all in her power to support a large family of
+children."
+
+"Very well, then," said Mr. Longworth, "I shan't give a cent. Such
+persons will always find a plenty to relieve them."
+
+He was firm, and turned coldly from the entreaties of his friend. Yet
+he opened his purse liberally to those whom others refused. Vagabonds,
+drunkards, fallen women, those who had gone down far into the depths of
+misery and wretchedness, and from whom respectable people shrank in
+disgust, never appealed to him in vain. "The devil's poor," he
+whimsically called them. He would listen to them patiently, moved to the
+depths of his soul by their sad stories, and would send them away
+rejoicing that they were not utterly friendless. "Decent paupers will
+always find a plenty to help them," he would say, "but no one cares for
+these poor wretches. Every body damns them, and as no one else will help
+them, I must." Yet he aided them in such a manner as to encourage them
+to rise above their wretchedness.
+
+In his personal appearance Mr. Longworth was not prepossessing. He was
+dry and caustic in his remarks, and rarely spared the object of his
+satire. He was plain and careless in his dress, looking more like a
+beggar than a millionaire. He cared nothing for dress, except, perhaps,
+that he preferred common clothes to fine ones. One of his acquaintances
+relates the following story in illustration of this phase of his
+character:
+
+"Many winters ago, it will be remembered that a style of striped goods
+was quite popular with poor people on account of its cheapness, and that
+it acquired the name of 'Hard Times.' Every body with scant purses wore
+coats or pants of it, for the reason that they could not very well buy
+any other kind. As the story goes, it appears that 'Old Nick,' as he was
+familiarly called, invested in an overcoat of this material, and took
+great pride in wearing it, much to the annoyance of the women folks. It
+happened that one cold, stormy night the faithful family coachman was at
+the house without an overcoat, and Mrs. Longworth, after very feelingly
+depicting his forlorn condition to her husband, solicited the privilege
+of giving him the aforesaid overcoat. Much to her gratification, Mr.
+Longworth assented, and the coachman wore off the 'Hard Times,' the good
+wife replacing it by an elegant broadcloth that she had quietly provided
+for the occasion. The next morning 'Old Nick' very innocently (?)
+overlooked the new coat, and went off to make his usual morning rounds
+without one; but it would be impossible to portray the annoyance of the
+household when they saw him returning to dinner wearing a duplicate of
+the veritable 'Hard Times,' and for weeks afterward it was no uncommon
+occurrence to see the 'master and man' flitting about the old homestead
+dressed in their gray stripes."
+
+The shabbiness of his dress once led to an amusing adventure, which he
+enjoyed very much. Climbing one of the hilly streets of the city one
+broiling summer day, he sat down on a pile of bricks, under the cool
+shade of a tree, to rest. Taking off his well-worn hat, he laid it on
+his knee, and closing his eyes, sat enjoying the breeze which had just
+then sprung up. He was very tired, and his whole figure expressed his
+weariness. As he sat there in his shabby dress, with his eyes closed,
+and his hat resting on his knees, he looked the very picture of a blind
+beggar soliciting charity. For such, indeed, he was mistaken by a
+working man who passed by a few minutes later, and who, pitying the
+supposed unfortunate, tossed a few pennies into his hat. The noise of
+the coppers made the old man open his eyes and look up; and to his
+amazement the workman recognized in the object of his charity Nicholas
+Longworth, the millionaire. Mr. Longworth looked at him a moment in his
+dry, quizzical way, and then, thanking him politely, put the coins in
+his pocket, and, closing his eyes, once more resumed his former
+position.
+
+Mr. Longworth had erected a magnificent mansion in the midst of his
+vineyard. He gathered there a fine library, and a collection of
+paintings, statuary, and other art treasures, which were his pride. He
+died there on the 10th of February, 1863, at the age of eighty-one. His
+loss was severely felt by the community, especially by his "devil's
+poor," for whom he had cared so tenderly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+GEORGE PEABODY.
+
+
+It is not often that men who pass their lives in the acquisition of
+money are able to retain the desire to give it to others who have had no
+share in the earning of it. In European countries, the wealthy merchant
+commonly uses his fortune for the purpose of founding a family, and
+securing sometimes a title of nobility. His wealth is entailed, that it
+may remain in his family and benefit remote generations; but few save
+those of his own blood enjoy any benefit from it, and the world is no
+better off for his life and success than if he had never been born. In
+America, instances of personal generosity and benevolence on a large
+scale are of more common occurrence than in the Old World. We have
+already borne witness to the munificence of Girard, Astor, Lawrence,
+Longworth, and Stewart, and shall yet present to the reader other
+instances of this kind in the remaining pages of this work. We have now
+to trace the career of one who far exceeded any of these in the extent
+and magnitude of his liberality, and who, while neglecting none
+connected with him by ties of blood, took the whole English-speaking
+race for his family, and by scattering his blessings far and wide on
+both sides of the Atlantic, has won a proud name
+
+    "As one who loved his fellow-men."
+
+
+[Illustration: GEORGE PEABODY.]
+
+GEORGE PEABODY came of an old English family, which traced its
+descent back to the year of our Lord 61, the days of the heroic
+Boadicea, down through the brilliant circle of the Knights of the Round
+Table, to Francis Peabody, who in 1635 went from St. Albans, in
+Hertfordshire, to the New World, and settled in Danvers, Massachusetts,
+where the subject of this memoir was born one hundred and sixty years
+later, on the 18th of February, 1795. The parents of George Peabody were
+poor, and hard work was the lot to which he was born, a lot necessary to
+develop his sterling qualities of mind and heart. He was possessed of a
+strong, vigorous constitution, and a quick, penetrating intellect. His
+education was limited, for he was taken from school at the age of
+eleven, and set to earning his living. Upon leaving school, he was
+apprenticed to a Mr. Sylvester Proctor, who kept a "country store" in
+Danvers. Here he worked hard and faithfully for four or five years,
+devoting himself, with an energy and determination surprising in one so
+young, to learn the first principles of business. His mind matured more
+rapidly than his body, and he was a man in intellect long before he was
+out of his teens. Having gained all the information it was possible to
+acquire in so small an establishment, he began to wish for a wider field
+for the exercise of his abilities. A retail grocery store was no longer
+the place for one possessed of such talents, and thoroughly conscious of
+them at such an early age, and it was natural that he should desire some
+more important and responsible position.
+
+Accordingly, he left Mr. Proctor's employment, and spent a year with his
+maternal grandfather at Post Mills village, Thetford, Vermont. "George
+Peabody's year at Post Mills," says a writer who knew him, "must have
+been a year of intense quiet, with good examples always before him, and
+good advice whenever occasion called for it; for Mr. Dodge and his wife
+were both too shrewd to bore him with it needlessly.
+
+"It was on his return from this visit that he spent a night at a tavern
+in Concord, N.H., and paid for his entertainment by sawing wood the next
+morning. That, however, must have been a piece of George's own voluntary
+economy, for Jeremiah Dodge would never have sent his grandson home to
+Danvers without the means of procuring the necessaries of life on the
+way, and still less, if possible, would Mrs. Dodge...."
+
+[Illustration: PEABODY PAYING FOR A NIGHT'S LODGING.]
+
+"The interest with which Mr. Peabody remembered this visit to Post Mills
+is shown by his second visit so late in life, and his gift of a
+library--as large a library as that place needs. Of its influence on his
+subsequent career, of course, there is no record. Perhaps it was not
+much. But, at least, it gave him a good chance for quiet thinking, at an
+age when he needed it; and the labors of the farm may have been useful
+both to mind and body."
+
+At the age of sixteen, in the year 1811, he went to Newburyport, and
+became a clerk in the store of his elder brother, David Peabody, who was
+engaged in the dry goods business at that place. He exhibited unusual
+capacity and promise in his calling, and soon drew upon himself the
+favorable attention of the merchants of the place. He was prompt,
+reliable, and energetic, and from the first established an enviable
+reputation for personal and professional integrity. It is said that he
+earned here the first money he ever made outside of his business. This
+was by writing ballots for the Federal party in Newburyport. Printed
+ballots had not then come into use.
+
+He did not stay long in Newburyport, as a great fire, which burned up a
+considerable part of the town, destroyed his brother's store, and
+obliged him to seek employment elsewhere. He always retained a warm
+attachment to the place, however, an attachment which a resident of the
+town explains as follows:
+
+"The cause of Mr. George Peabody's interest in Newburyport was not alone
+that he had lived here for a brief period, or that his relatives had
+lived here; but rather it was the warm friendship that had been shown
+him, which was, in fact, the basis of his subsequent prosperity. He left
+here in 1811, and returned in 1857. The forty-six intervening years had
+borne to the grave most of the persons with whom he had formed
+acquaintance. Among those he recognized were several who were in
+business, or clerks, on State Street in 1811,--Messrs. John Porter,
+Moses Kimball, Prescott Spaulding, and a few others. Mr. Spaulding was
+fourteen years older than Mr. Peabody, and in business when the latter
+was a clerk with his uncle, Colonel John Peabody. Mr. Peabody was here
+in 1857, on the day of the Agricultural Fair, and was walking in the
+procession with the late Mayor Davenport, when he saw Mr. Spaulding on
+the sidewalk, and at once left the procession to greet him.
+
+"Mr. Spaulding had rendered him the greatest of services. When Mr.
+Peabody left Newburyport, he was under age, and not worth a dollar. Mr.
+Spaulding gave him letters of credit in Boston, through which he
+obtained two thousand dollars' worth of merchandise of Mr. James Reed,
+who was so favorably impressed with his appearance, that he subsequently
+gave him credit for a larger amount. This was his start in life, as he
+afterward acknowledged; for at a public entertainment in Boston, when
+his credit was good for any amount, and in any part of the world, Mr.
+Peabody laid his hand on Mr. Reed's shoulder, and said to those present,
+'My friends, here is my first patron; and he is the man who sold me my
+first bill of goods.' After he was established in Georgetown, D.C., the
+first consignment made to him was by the late Francis Todd, of
+Newburyport. It was from these facts that Newburyport was always
+pleasant in his memory; and the donation he made to the Public Library
+was on his own suggestion, that he desired to do something of a public
+nature for our town."
+
+From New England, George Peabody turned his face southward, and entered
+the employment of his uncle, Mr. John Peabody, who was engaged in the
+dry goods business in Georgetown, in the District of Columbia. He
+reached that place in the spring of 1812; but, as the second war with
+England broke out about the same time, was not able to give his
+immediate attention to business. He became a member of a volunteer
+company of artillery, which was stationed at Fort Warburton, but as no
+active duty was required of the company, he soon went back to his
+uncle's store. His uncle was a poor man and a bad manager, and for two
+years the business was conducted by George Peabody, and in his own name;
+but at the end of that time, seeing the business threatened with ruin by
+his uncle's incapacity, he resigned his situation, and entered the
+service of Mr. Elisha Riggs, who had just established a wholesale dry
+goods house in Georgetown. Mr. Riggs furnished the capital for the
+concern, and Mr. Peabody was given the management of it. Soon after
+this, the latter became a partner in the house. It is said that when Mr.
+Riggs invited Mr. Peabody to become his partner, the latter informed him
+that he could not legally assume the responsibilities of the business,
+as he was only nineteen years old. This was no objection in the mind of
+the merchant, as he wanted a young and active assistant, and had
+discerned in his boy-manager the qualities which never fail to win
+success.
+
+The new business in which he was engaged consisted chiefly in the
+importation and sale of European goods, and consignments of dry goods
+from the northern cities. It extended over a wide field, and gave Mr.
+Peabody a fine opportunity for the display of his abilities. Mr. Riggs'
+friends blamed him very much for leaving his business so entirely in the
+hands of a boy of nineteen; but he had better proof than they that his
+affairs were not only in good but in the best hands, and he answered
+them all by telling them that time would justify his course. Mr. Peabody
+traveled extensively in establishing his business, often journeying into
+the wild and unsettled regions of the border States on horseback. He
+worked with energy and intelligence, and in 1815 the business was found
+to be so extensive that a removal to Baltimore became necessary. About
+this time a sort of irregular banking business was added to the
+operations of the house. This was chiefly the suggestion of Mr. Peabody,
+and proved a source of great profit.
+
+Mr. Peabody quickly took a prominent rank among the merchants of
+Baltimore. His manner was frank and engaging, and won him many friends.
+He was noted for "a judgment quick and cautious, clear and sound, a
+decided purpose, a firm will, energetic and persevering industry,
+punctuality and fidelity in every engagement, justice and honor
+controlling every transaction, and courtesy--that true courtesy which
+springs from genuine kindness--presiding over the intercourse of life."
+His business continued to increase, and in 1822 it became necessary to
+establish branches in Philadelphia and New York, over which Mr. Peabody
+exercised a careful supervision. He was thoroughly familiar with every
+detail of his business, and never suffered his vigilance to relax,
+however competent might be the subordinates in the immediate charge of
+those details. In 1827 he went to England on business for his firm, and
+during the next ten years made frequent voyages between New York and
+London.
+
+In 1829 Mr. Riggs withdrew from the firm, and Mr. Peabody become the
+actual head of the house, the style of the firm, which had previously
+been "Riggs & Peabody," being changed to "Peabody, Riggs & Co." The firm
+had for some time been the financial agents of the State of Maryland,
+and had managed the negotiations confided to them with great skill and
+success; and every year their banking department became more important
+and more profitable.
+
+In 1836 Mr. Peabody determined to extend his business, which was already
+very large, to England, and to open a branch house in London. In 1837 he
+removed to that city for the purpose of taking charge of his house
+there, and from that time London became his home.
+
+The summer of this year was marked by one of the most terrible
+commercial crises the United States has ever known. A large number of
+the banks suspended specie payment, and the majority of the mercantile
+houses were either ruined or in the greatest distress. Thousands of
+merchants, until then prosperous, were hopelessly ruined. "That great
+sympathetic nerve of the commercial world, credit," said Edward Everett,
+"as far as the United States was concerned, was for the time paralyzed.
+At that moment Mr. Peabody not only stood firm himself, but was the
+cause of firmness in others. There were not at that time, probably, half
+a dozen other men in Europe who, upon the subject of American
+securities, would have been listened to for a moment in the parlor of
+the Bank of England. But his judgment commanded respect; his integrity
+won back the reliance which men had been accustomed to place in American
+securities. The reproach in which they were all involved was gradually
+wiped away from those of a substantial character; and if, on this solid
+basis of unsuspected good faith, he reared his own prosperity, let it be
+remembered that at the same time he retrieved the credit of the State of
+Maryland, of which he was agent--performing that miracle by which the
+word of an honest man turns paper into gold."
+
+The conduct of Mr. Peabody, as well as the evidences which he gave of
+his remarkable capacity for business, in this crisis, placed him among
+the foremost merchants of London. He carried on his business upon a
+large scale from his base of operations in that city. He bought British
+manufactures in all parts of England and shipped them to the United
+States. His vessels brought back in return all kinds of American produce
+which would command a ready sale in England. Profitable as these
+ventures were, there was another branch of his business much more
+remunerative to him. The merchants and manufacturers on both sides of
+the Atlantic who consigned their goods to him frequently procured from
+him advances upon the goods long before they were sold. At other times
+they would leave large sums in his hands long after the goods were
+disposed of, knowing that they could draw whenever they needed, and that
+in the meanwhile their money was being so profitably invested that they
+were certain of a proper interest for their loans. Thus Mr. Peabody
+gradually became a banker, in which pursuit he was as successful as he
+had been as a merchant. In 1843 he withdrew from the house of Peabody,
+Riggs & Co., and established the house of "George Peabody & Company, of
+Warnford Court, City."
+
+His dealings were chiefly with America, and in American securities, and
+he was always regarded as one of the best specimens of the American
+merchant ever seen in London. He was very proud of his country; and
+though he passed so many years of his life abroad, he never forgot that
+he was an American. In speaking of the manner in which he organized his
+business establishment, he once said: "I have endeavored, in the
+constitution of its members and the character of its business, to make
+it an American house, and to give it an American atmosphere; to furnish
+it with American journals; to make it a center of American news, and an
+agreeable place for my American friends visiting London."
+
+It was his custom, from his first settlement in England, to celebrate
+the anniversary of the independence of his country by an entertainment
+at one of the public houses in the city, to which the most distinguished
+Americans in London were always invited, as were also many of the
+prominent men of Great Britain; and this dinner was only discontinued in
+deference to the general celebration of the day which was afterward
+instituted by the whole body of Americans resident in the British
+metropolis. In the year 1851, when it was thought that there would be no
+representation of the achievements of American skill and industry in the
+Great Exhibition of that year, from a lack of funds, Mr. Peabody
+generously supplied the sum of fifteen thousand dollars, which enabled
+the Commissioners to make a suitable display of the American
+contributions. Said the Hon. Edward Everett, alluding to this act:
+
+"In most, perhaps in all other countries, this exhibition had been a
+government affair. Commissioners were appointed by authority to protect
+the interests of the exhibitors; and, what was more important,
+appropriations of money had been made to defray their expenses. No
+appropriations were made by Congress. Our exhibitors arrived friendless,
+some of them penniless, in the great commercial Babel of the world. They
+found the portion of the Crystal Palace assigned to our country
+unprepared for the specimens of art and industry which they had brought
+with them; naked and unadorned by the side of the neighboring arcades
+and galleries fitted up with elegance and splendor by the richest
+governments in Europe. The English press began to launch its too ready
+sarcasms at the sorry appearance which Brother Jonathan seemed likely to
+make; and all the exhibitors from this country, as well as those who
+felt an interest in their success, were disheartened. At this critical
+moment, our friend stepped forward. He did what Congress should have
+done. By liberal advances on his part, the American department was
+fitted up; and day after day, as some new product of American ingenuity
+and taste was added to the list,--McCormick's reaper, Colt's revolver,
+Powers's Greek Slave, Hobbs's unpickable lock, Hoe's wonderful printing
+presses, and Bond's more wonderful spring governor,---it began to be
+suspected that Brother Jonathan was not quite so much of a simpleton as
+had been thought. He had contributed his full share, if not to the
+splendor, at least to the utilities of the exhibition. In fact, the
+leading journal at London, with a magnanimity which did it honor,
+admitted that England had derived more real benefit from the
+contributions of the United States than from those of any other
+country."
+
+As has been said, Mr. Peabody made the bulk of his colossal fortune in
+the banking business. He had a firm faith in American securities, and
+dealt in them largely, and with confidence. His business instinct was
+remarkable, his judgment in mercantile and financial matters almost
+infallible, and he made few mistakes. His course was now onward and
+upward, and each year marked an increase of his wealth. His business
+operations were conducted in pursuance of a rigid system which was never
+relaxed. To the very close of his life he never abandoned the exact or
+business-like manner in which he sought to make money. He gave away
+millions with a generosity never excelled, yet he could be exacting to a
+penny in the fulfillment of a contract.
+
+In his youth he contracted habits of economy, and these he retained to
+the last. Being unmarried, he did not subject himself to the expense of
+a complete domestic establishment, but lived in chambers, and
+entertained his friends at his club or at a coffee-house. His habits
+were simple in every respect, and he was often seen making his dinner on
+a mutton-chop at a table laden (at his cost) with the most sumptuous and
+tempting viands. His personal expenses for ten years did not average
+three thousand dollars per annum.
+
+The conductor on an English railway once overcharged him a shilling for
+fare. He promptly complained to the directors, and had the man
+discharged. "Not," said he, "that I could not afford to pay the
+shilling, but the man was cheating many travelers to whom the swindle
+would be offensive."
+
+Several years ago he chanced to ride in a hack in Salem, Massachusetts,
+and upon reaching his destination tendered the driver his usual fee of
+fifty cents.
+
+"Here's your change, sir," said the man, handing him back fifteen cents.
+
+"Change!" exclaimed Mr. Peabody; "why, I'm not entitled to any."
+
+"Yes, you are; I don't charge but thirty-five cents for a ride in my
+hack."
+
+"How do you live, then?"
+
+"By fair dealing, sir. I don't believe in making a man pay more than a
+thing is worth just because I have an opportunity."
+
+Mr. Peabody was so much pleased with this reply, that as long as he
+remained in Salem he sought this man out and gave him his custom.
+
+In his dress Mr. Peabody was simple and unostentatious. He was
+scrupulously neat and tasteful, but there was nothing about him to
+indicate his vast wealth. He seldom wore any jewelry, using merely a
+black band for his watch-guard. Display of all kinds he abominated.
+
+He made several visits to his native country during his last residence
+in London, and commemorated each one of them by acts of princely
+munificence. He gave large sums to the cause of education, and to
+religious and charitable objects, and made each one of his near kindred
+wealthy. None of his relatives received less than one hundred thousand
+dollars, and some were given as much as three times that sum. He gave
+immense sums to the poor of London, and became their benefactor to such
+an extent that Queen Victoria sent him her portrait, which she had
+caused to be executed for him at a cost of over forty thousand dollars,
+in token of her appreciation of his services in behalf of the poor of
+her realm.
+
+Mr. Peabody made another visit to the United States in 1866, and upon
+this occasion added large sums to many of the donations he had already
+made in this country. He remained here until May, 1867, when he returned
+to England. He came back in June, 1869, but soon sailed again for
+England. His health had become very feeble, and it was his belief that
+it would be better in the atmosphere of London, to which he had been so
+long accustomed. His hope of recovery was vain. He failed to rally upon
+reaching London, and died in that city on the 4th of November, 1869.
+
+The news of his death created a profound sadness on both sides of the
+Atlantic, for his native and his adopted country alike revered him as a
+benefactor. The Queen caused his body to be placed in a vault in
+Westminster Abbey, amidst the greatest and noblest of her kingdom, until
+all was in readiness for its transportation to the United States in a
+royal man-of-war. The Congress of the United States authorized the
+President to make such arrangements for the reception of the body as he
+should deem necessary. Sovereigns, statesmen, and warriors united to do
+homage to the mortal remains of this plain, simple man, who, beginning
+life a poor boy, and never departing from the character of an unassuming
+citizen, had made humanity his debtor by his generosity and goodness. He
+was borne across the ocean with kingly honors, two great nations acting
+as chief mourners, and then, when the pomp and the splendor of the
+occasion were ended, they laid him down in his native earth by the side
+of the mother from whom he had imbibed those principles of integrity and
+goodness which were the foundation of his fame and fortune.
+
+It is impossible to obtain an accurate statement of the donations made
+by Mr. Peabody to the objects which enlisted his sympathy. In addition
+to those mentioned in the list below, he gave away for various public
+purposes sums ranging from two hundred and fifty to one thousand
+dollars, and extending back as far as the year 1835. He divided among
+his relatives the sum of about three millions of dollars, giving them a
+portion during his last visit to this country, and leaving them the
+remainder at his death.
+
+The following is a statement of his more important donations during his
+life, including the bequests contained in his last will and testament:
+
+To the State of Maryland, for negotiating the
+   loan of $8,000,000.................................    $60,000
+To the Peabody Institute, Baltimore, Md., including
+   accrued interest...................................  1,500,000
+To the Southern Education Fund........................  3,000,000
+To Yale College.......................................    150,000
+To Harvard College....................................    150,000
+To Peabody Academy, Massachusetts.....................    140,000
+To Phillips Academy, Massachusetts....................     25,000
+To Peabody Institute, etc., at Peabody, Mass..........    250,000
+To Kenyon College, Ohio...............................     25,000
+To Memorial Church, in Georgetown, Mass...............    100,000
+To Homes for the Poor in London.......................  3,000,000
+To Libraries in Georgetown, Massachusetts,
+   and Thetford, Vermont..............................     10,000
+To Kane's Arctic Expedition...........................     10,000
+To different Sanitary Fairs...........................     10,000
+To unpaid moneys advanced to uphold the
+   credit of States...................................     40,000
+
+Total................................................. $8,470,000
+
+The life of such a man affords lessons full of hope and encouragement to
+others. In 1856, when on a visit to Danvers, now named Peabody, in honor
+of him, its most distinguished son and greatest benefactor, he said:
+
+"Though Providence has granted me an unvaried and unusual success in the
+pursuit of fortune in other lands, I am still in heart the humble boy
+who left yonder unpretending dwelling. There is not a youth within the
+sound of my voice whose early opportunities and advantages are not very
+much greater than were my own, and I have since achieved nothing that is
+impossible to the most humble boy among you."
+
+
+[Illustration: CORNELIUS VANDERBILT.]
+
+II.
+
+CAPITALISTS.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+CORNELIUS VANDERBILT.
+
+
+Staten Island lies in the beautiful bay of New York, seven miles distant
+from the great city. Its lofty heights shut in the snug anchorage of the
+inner bay, and protect it from the rude storms which howl along the
+coast. It lies full in sight of the city, and is one of the most
+beautiful and attractive of its suburbs. The commanding heights and
+embowered shores are covered with villas and cottages, and afford a
+pleasant and convenient summer resort for the people of New York. It now
+contains a large and flourishing population, and maintains a speedy and
+constant communication with the metropolis by means of steam
+ferry-boats, the total travel on which sometimes reaches as many as ten
+or twelve thousand passengers per day.
+
+Seventy-six years ago, Staten Island was a mere country settlement, and
+its communications with the city were maintained by means of a few
+sail-boats, which made one trip each way per day.
+
+One of these boats was owned and navigated by Cornelius Vanderbilt, a
+thriving farmer, who owned a small but well cultivated estate on Staten
+Island, near the present Quarantine Grounds. He was a man of exemplary
+character, great industry, and was generally regarded as one of the most
+prudent and reliable men on the island. Having a considerable amount of
+produce to sell in the city, he purchased a boat of his own for the
+purpose of transporting it thither. Frequently, residents of the island
+would secure passage in this boat to the city in the morning, and return
+with it in the evening. He realized a considerable sum of money in this
+way, and finally ran his boat regularly between the island and the city.
+This was the beginning of the New York and Staten Island Ferry. Mr.
+Vanderbilt, by close application to his farm and boat, soon acquired a
+property, which, though small, was sufficient to enable him to maintain
+his family independently. His wife was a woman of more than usual
+character, and aided him nobly in making his way in the world.
+
+This admirable couple were blessed with nine children. The oldest of
+these, CORNELIUS, the subject of this sketch, was born at the old
+farm-house on Staten Island, on the 27th of May, 1794. He was a healthy,
+active boy, fond of all manner of out-door sports, and manifesting an
+unusual repugnance to the confinement and labors of the school-room. He
+has since declared that the only books he remembers using at school were
+the New Testament and the spelling-book. The result was, that he merely
+learned to read, write, and cipher, and that imperfectly. He was
+passionately fond of the water, and was never so well pleased as when
+his father allowed him to assist in sailing his boat. He was also a
+famous horseman from his earliest childhood, and even now recalls with
+evident pride the fact that when but six years old he rode a race-horse
+at full speed. When he set himself to accomplish any thing, he was not,
+like most boys, deterred by the difficulties of his undertaking, but
+persevered until success crowned his efforts. So early did he establish
+his reputation for overcoming obstacles, that his boyish friends learned
+to regard any task which he undertook as already virtually performed.
+
+When he was only twelve years old his father contracted to remove the
+cargo from a ship which had gone ashore near Sandy Hook, and to convey
+it to New York. The lighters which were to carry the goods to the city
+could not reach the ship, and it was necessary to haul the cargo,
+transported in wagons, across the sands from the vessel to them. In
+spite of his tender age, little Cornelius was placed by his father in
+charge of the undertaking, which he accomplished promptly and
+successfully. He loaded his lighters, sent them up to New York, and then
+started for home with his wagons. Upon reaching South Amboy, where he
+was to cross over to Staten Island, he found himself, with his wagons,
+horses, and men, without any money to pay his ferriage across to the
+island. The ferriage would amount to six dollars, and how he was to
+raise this sum he was, for a time, at a loss to determine. Finally, he
+went to the keeper of the tavern, to whom he was a stranger, and asked
+for the loan of six dollars, offering to leave one of his horses as a
+pledge for the money, which he promised to return within two days. The
+tavern-keeper was so well pleased with the boy's energy, that he loaned
+him the money, and the party crossed over to Staten Island. The pawned
+horse was promptly redeemed.
+
+Young Vanderbilt was always anxious to become a sailor, and, as he
+approached his seventeenth year, he determined to begin life as a
+boatman in the harbor of New York. On the 1st of May, 1810, he informed
+his mother of his determination, and asked her to lend him one hundred
+dollars to buy a boat.
+
+The good lady had always opposed her son's wish to go to sea, and
+regarded this new scheme as equally hair-brained. As a means of
+discouraging him, she told him if he would plow, harrow, and plant with
+corn a certain ten-acre lot belonging to the farm, by the twenty-seventh
+of that month, on which day he would be seventeen years old, she would
+lend him the money. The field was the worst in the whole farm; it was
+rough, hard, and stony; but by the appointed time the work was done, and
+well done, and the boy claimed and received his money. He hurried off to
+a neighboring village, and bought his boat, in which he set out for
+home. He had not gone far, however, when the boat struck a sunken wreck,
+and filled so rapidly that the boy had barely time to get into shoal
+water before it sank.
+
+[Illustration: VANDERBILT EARNING HIS FIRST HUNDRED DOLLARS.]
+
+"Undismayed at this mishap," says Mr. Parton, from whose graphic memoir
+the leading incidents of this sketch are taken, "he began his new
+career. His success, as we have intimated, was speedy and great. He made
+a thousand dollars during each of the next three summers. Often he
+worked all night; but he was never absent from his post by day, and he
+soon had the cream of the boating business of the port.
+
+"At that day parents claimed the services and earnings of their children
+till they were twenty-one. In other words, families made common cause
+against the common enemy, Want. The arrangement between this young
+boatman and his parents was, that he should give them all his day
+earnings and half his night earnings. He fulfilled his engagement
+faithfully until his parents released him from it, and with his own half
+of his earnings by night, he bought all his clothes. He had forty
+competitors in the business, who, being all grown men, could dispose of
+their gains as they chose; but of all the forty, he alone has emerged to
+prosperity and distinction. Why was this? There were several reasons. He
+soon became the best boatman in the port. He attended to his business
+more regularly and strictly than any other. He had no vices. His
+comrades spent at night much of what they earned by day, and when the
+winter suspended their business, instead of living on their last
+summer's savings, they were obliged to lay up debts for the next
+summer's gains to discharge. In those three years of willing servitude
+to his parents, Cornelius Vanderbilt added to the family's common stock
+of wealth, and gained for himself three things--a perfect knowledge of
+his business, habits of industry and self-control, and the best boat in
+the harbor."
+
+During the War of 1812, young Vanderbilt was kept very busy. All the
+harbor defenses were fully manned, and a number of war vessels were in
+port all the time. The travel between these and the city was very great,
+and boatmen were in demand.
+
+In September, 1813, a British fleet attempted to run past Fort Richmond,
+during a heavy gale. The commanding officer was anxious to send to New
+York for reinforcements, but it was blowing so hard that none of the old
+boatmen were willing to venture upon the bay. They all declared that if
+the voyage could be made at all, Cornelius Vanderbilt was the only man
+who could make it. The commandant at once sent for the young man, who,
+upon learning the urgency of the case, expressed his belief that he
+could carry the messengers to the city. "But," said he, "I shall have to
+carry them part of the way under water." He set out with the messengers,
+and in an hour landed them safe, but drenched through, at the foot of
+Whitehall Street, which was then the landing place of all the boatmen of
+the harbor.
+
+He was now so prosperous in his calling that he determined to marry. He
+had wooed and won the heart of Sophia Johnson, the daughter of a
+neighbor, and he now asked his parents' consent to his marriage, and
+also requested them to allow him to retain his own earnings, in order
+that he might be able to support a wife. Both of his petitions received
+the approval of his parents, and in the winter of 1813 he was married.
+His wife was a woman of unusual personal beauty and strength of
+character, and proved the best of partners. He has often declared since
+that he owed his success in life as much to her counsel and assistance
+as to his own efforts.
+
+In the spring of 1814, it became known in America that the British were
+fitting out a formidable military and naval expedition for the purpose
+of attacking one of the Atlantic ports of the United States. The whole
+coast was on the lookout, and, as it was feared that the blow would be
+struck at New York, every precaution was taken to be ready. The militia
+were called into service for three months, under a heavy penalty for
+refusing to obey the call. The term of service thus marked out covered
+the most prosperous season of the boatmen, and made the call fall
+particularly hard upon them. About this time, an advertisement was
+inserted in the city journals by the Commissary-General of the army,
+calling for bids from boatmen for the purpose of conveying provisions
+from New York to the various military posts in the vicinity. The labor
+was to be performed during the three months for which the militia were
+called out, and the contractor was to be exempted from all military duty
+during that time. Bids poured in from the boatmen, who offered to do the
+work at ridiculously low figures--the chief object of each one being to
+secure the exemption.
+
+Young Vanderbilt, knowing that the work could not be done at the rates
+at which his comrades offered to perform it, at first decided not to bid
+for it, but at length--and more to please his father than because he
+expected to succeed--offered to transport the provisions at a price
+which would enable him to be sure of doing it well and thoroughly. He
+felt so little hope of success that he did not even trouble himself to
+go to the office of the Commissary on the day of the awarding of the
+contract, until he learned from his companions that all their efforts to
+secure it had been ineffectual. Then he called on the Commissary, merely
+through curiosity, to learn the name of the fortunate man, and to his
+utter astonishment was told that the contract had been awarded to
+himself. The Government was satisfied, from his sensible offer, that he
+would do the business thoroughly, and this the Commissary assured him
+was the reason why they had selected him.
+
+There were six posts to be supplied--Harlem, Hell Gate, Ward's Island,
+the Narrows, and one other in the harbor, each of which was to be
+furnished with one load per week. The young contractor made arrangements
+to have a daily load of stores ready for him each evening at six
+o'clock, and thus performed all the duties of his contract at night,
+which left him free to attend to his boating during the day. He never
+failed to make a single delivery of stores, or to be absent from his
+post on the beach at Whitehall one single day during the whole three
+months. He was often without sleep, and performed an immense amount of
+labor during this period; but his indomitable energy and powerful
+physical organization carried him safely through it all.
+
+He made a great deal of money that summer, and with his earnings built a
+splendid little schooner, which he named the "Dread." In 1815, in
+connection with his brother-in-law, Captain De Forrest, he built a fine
+schooner, called the "Charlotte," for the coasting service. She was
+celebrated for the beauty of her model and her great speed. He continued
+to ply his boat in the harbor during the summer, but in the fall and
+winter made voyages along the coast, often as far south as Charleston.
+During the three years succeeding the termination of the war he saved
+nine thousand dollars in cash, and built two or three small vessels.
+This was his condition in 1818.
+
+By this time it had become demonstrated to his satisfaction that the new
+system of steamboats was a success, and was destined to come into
+general use at no very distant day. He therefore determined to identify
+himself with it at once, and thereby secure the benefits which he felt
+sure would result from a prompt connection with it. Accordingly, in
+1818, to the surprise and dismay of his friends, he gave up his
+flourishing business, in order to accept the captaincy of a steamboat
+which was offered him by Mr. Thomas Gibbons. The salary attached to this
+position was one thousand dollars, and Captain Vanderbilt's friends
+frankly told him that he was very foolish in abandoning a lucrative
+business for so insignificant a sum. Turning a deaf ear to their
+remonstrances, however, he entered promptly upon the duties of his new
+career, and was given command of a steamboat plying between New York and
+New Brunswick.
+
+Passengers to Philadelphia, at that day, were transported by steamer
+from New York to New Brunswick, where they remained all night. The next
+morning they took the stage for Trenton, from which they were conveyed
+by steamer to Philadelphia. The hotel at New Brunswick was a miserable
+affair, and had never paid expenses. When Captain Vanderbilt took
+command of the steamer, he was offered the hotel rent free, and accepted
+the offer. He placed the house in charge of his wife, under whose
+vigorous administration it soon acquired a popularity which was of the
+greatest benefit to the line.
+
+For seven years he was harassed and hampered by the hostility of the
+State of New York, which had granted to Fulton and Livingston the sole
+right to navigate New York waters by steam. Thomas Gibbons believed this
+law to be unconstitutional, and ran his boats in defiance of it. The
+authorities of the State resented his disregard of their monopoly, and a
+long and vexatious warfare sprang up between them, which was ended only
+in 1824, by the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in
+favor of Mr. Gibbons.
+
+As a means of crippling Gibbons, the New York authorities at one time
+determined to arrest Vanderbilt and his crew; but the wary captain was
+too cunning for them. He would land his crew in Jersey City, and take
+charge of the engine himself, while a lady managed the helm. In this way
+he approached the wharf at New York, landed his passengers, and took on
+more. As soon as he had made his boat fast, he concealed himself in the
+hold until the moment of his departure. As soon as he appeared on deck,
+the Sheriff's officer (who was changed every day to avoid recognition)
+would approach him with a warrant for his arrest. His reply was an
+order to let go the line. The officer, unwilling to be carried off to
+New Jersey, where he was threatened with imprisonment in the
+penitentiary for interfering with the steamer, would at once jump
+ashore, or beg to be landed. This was kept up for two months, but the
+captain successfully baffled his enemies during the whole of that
+period. The opponents of Mr. Gibbons offered a larger and better boat
+than the one he commanded if he would enter their service, but he firmly
+declined all their offers, avowing his determination to remain with Mr.
+Gibbons until the difficulty was settled.
+
+After the decision of the Supreme Court placed Mr. Gibbons in the full
+enjoyment of his rights, Captain Vanderbilt was allowed to manage the
+line in his own way, and conducted it with so much skill and vigor that
+it paid its owner an annual profit of forty thousand dollars. Mr.
+Gibbons offered to increase his salary to five thousand dollars, but he
+refused to accept the offer.
+
+"I did it on principle," he said, afterward. "The other captains had but
+one thousand, and they were already jealous enough of me. Besides, I
+never cared for money. All I ever cared for was to carry my point."
+
+[Illustration: VANDERBILT CARRYING OFF THE SHERIFF.]
+
+In 1829 he determined to leave the service of Mr. Gibbons, with whom he
+had been connected for eleven years. He was thirty-five years old, and
+had saved thirty thousand dollars. He resolved to build a steamer of his
+own, and command her himself, and accordingly made known his intention
+to his employer. Mr. Gibbons at once declared that he could not carry on
+the line without his assistance, and told him he might make his own
+terms if he would stay with him. Captain Vanderbilt had formed his
+decision after much thought, and being satisfied that he was doing
+right, he persisted in his determination to set up for himself. Mr.
+Gibbons then offered to sell him the line on the spot, and to take his
+pay as the money should be earned. It was a splendid offer, but it was
+firmly and gratefully refused. The captain knew the men among whom he
+would be thrown, and that they could never act together harmoniously. He
+believed his own ideas to be the best, and wished to be free to carry
+them out.
+
+After leaving Mr. Gibbons he built a small steamer, called the
+"Caroline," which he commanded himself. In a few years he was the owner
+of several other small steamers plying between New York and the
+neighboring towns. He made slow progress at first, for he had strong
+opposition to overcome. The steamboat interest was in the hands of
+powerful companies, backed by immense capital, and these companies were
+not disposed to tolerate the interference of any new-comer. They met
+their match in all cases, however, for Vanderbilt inaugurated so sharp a
+business opposition that the best of them were forced to compromise with
+him. These troubles were very annoying to him, and cost him nearly every
+dollar he was worth, but he persevered, and at length "carried his
+point."
+
+From that time he made his way gradually in his business, until he rose
+to the head of the steamboat interest of the United States. He has owned
+or been interested in one hundred steam vessels, and has been
+instrumental in a greater degree than any other man in bringing down the
+tariff of steamboat fares. He never builds a vessel without giving his
+personal superintendence to every detail, so that all his various craft
+have been models of their kind. He selects his officers with the
+greatest care, pays them liberal salaries, and, as long as they do their
+duty, sustains them against all outside interference or intrigue. In
+this way he inspires them with zeal, and the result is that he has never
+lost a vessel by fire, explosion, or wreck.
+
+He built the famous steamer "North Star," and made a triumphal cruise
+in her to the Old World. It is said that he was at one time very anxious
+to divide the business of the ocean with the Collins Line of steamers.
+When the "Arctic" was lost he applied to Mr. Collins to allow his
+steamer to run in her place. He promised to make no claim for the mail
+subsidy which Collins received, and to take the vessel off as soon as
+Collins could build another to take her place. Mr. Collins was afraid to
+let Mr. Vanderbilt get any hold on the foreign trade of the country, and
+not only refused his request, but did so in a manner which roused the
+anger of the veteran, who thereupon told Mr. Collins that he would run
+his line off the ocean if it took his whole life and entire fortune to
+do it. He kept his word. He at once offered the Government to carry the
+mails more promptly and regularly than had ever been done before, and to
+do this for a term of years without asking one single cent as subsidy.
+It was well known that he was perfectly able to do what he promised, and
+he pressed the matter upon the Government so vigorously that he was
+successful. The subsidy to Collins was withdrawn, and the magnificent
+line soon fell to pieces in consequence of the bankruptcy of its owner,
+who might have averted his fate by the exercise of a little liberality.
+
+Of late years, Mr. Vanderbilt has been withdrawing his money from ships
+and steamers, and investing it in railroads and iron works. Success has
+attended him in all his ventures, and he is to-day worth over thirty
+millions of dollars. He controls the Hudson River, Harlem, and New York
+Central Roads, and is largely interested in many others. He is all
+powerful in the stock market, and can move it as he will.
+
+A few years ago he wished to consolidate the Hudson River and Harlem
+Railroads, and when the scheme was presented before the Legislature of
+New York, secured a sufficient number of votes to insure the passage of
+the bill authorizing the consolidation. Before the bill was called up on
+its final passage, however, he learned from a trustworthy source that
+the members of the Legislature who had promised to vote for the bill
+were determined to vote against it, with the hope of ruining him. The
+stock of Harlem Road was then selling very high, in consequence of the
+expected consolidation. The defeat of the bill would, of course, cause
+it to fall immediately. The unprincipled legislators at once commenced a
+shrewd game. They sold Harlem right and left, to be delivered at a
+future day, and found plenty of purchasers. They let their friends into
+the secret, and there was soon a great deal of "selling 'short'" in this
+stock.[A] Commodore Vanderbilt, although indignant at the treachery of
+which he was to be made the victim, held his peace. He went into the
+market quietly, with all the funds he could raise, purchased every
+dollar's worth of Harlem stock he could lay his hands on, and locked it
+up in his safe. When the bill came before the Legislature on its final
+passage, the members who had pledged themselves to vote for it voted
+against it, and it was rejected.
+
+
+[Footnote A: For the benefit of the uninitiated reader, we will explain
+the "game" more clearly. Harlem stock was selling at a high price, in
+consequence of the expected consolidation. Those who sold "short" at
+this time sold at the market price, which, as we have said, was high. By
+engaging to deliver at some future day, they expected to be able to buy
+the stock for little or nothing after the defeat of the bill, and then
+to demand for it the price for which they had sold it in the first
+place. Such a transaction was infamous, but would have enabled those
+engaged in it to realize immense sums by the difference in the price of
+the stock.]
+
+The speculators were jubilant. They were sure that the defeat of the
+bill would bring down "Harlem" with a rush. To their astonishment,
+however, "Harlem" did not fall. It remained stationary the first day,
+and then, to their dismay, began to rise steadily. Those to whom they
+had sold demanded the delivery of the stock, but the speculators found
+it impossible to buy it. There was none in the market at any price.
+Being unable to deliver stock, they were forced to pay its equivalent in
+money, and the result was, that all who were engaged in the infamous
+scheme were ruined. One of the shrewdest operators in New York lost over
+two hundred thousand dollars. He refused to pay, but his name was at
+once stricken from the list of stock-brokers. This brought him to terms,
+and he made good his contracts. Vanderbilt made enough money out of this
+effort to crush him to pay for all the stock he owned in the Harlem
+Road.
+
+During the rebellion, Commodore Vanderbilt was one of the stanchest
+supporters of the Government. Early in the struggle he equipped his
+splendid steamer, the "Vanderbilt," as a man-of-war, and offered her to
+the Navy Department at a fair price. He found that, in order to sell the
+vessel, he would have to pay a percentage of the price received for her
+to certain parties who stood between the Government and the purchase,
+and levied black mail upon every ship the Government bought. Indignant
+and disgusted, he withdrew his ship, and declared she was not for sale.
+Then, satisfying himself that she was in perfect condition, he presented
+her to the Navy Department _as a free gift to the nation_.
+
+Says a recent writer, whose fondness for courtly similes the reader must
+pardon, for the sake of the information he imparts: "No man is felt in
+Wall Street more than Commodore Vanderbilt, yet he is seldom seen there.
+All of his business is done in his office in Fourth Street. Here his
+brokers meet him, receive their orders, and give reports. Here the plans
+are laid that shake the street, and Wall Street trembles at the foot of
+an invisible autocrat. If the reader would care to visit the court of
+that great railroad king, whose name has become the terror of Wall
+Street, he may accompany us to a plain brick residence in Fourth Street,
+near Broadway, and distant from Wall Street nearly two miles. No sign
+indicates its imperial occupant, except that the upper story being
+occupied as a millinery establishment bears a legend of that character.
+However, as we enter the hall, we notice the word 'office,' and open the
+door thus inscribed. Here we see a table, a few chairs, and a desk, at
+which a solitary clerk of middle age is standing at work.
+
+"The walls are bare, with the exception of a few pictures of those
+steamships which originated the title of 'Commodore,' This is the
+ante-chamber, and a pair of folding doors screen the king from vulgar
+gaze. He is closeted with his marshals, and this privy council will last
+an hour or so. One after the other they depart, and before three o'clock
+the effect of this council will not only be felt in Wall Street, but
+will be flashed over the Union. At length you are permitted to enter.
+The folding door is opened, and you behold an office as plain in
+appearance as the one just described. It contains a few arm-chairs and a
+long business-table, thrown flush before you, on the opposite side of
+which sits a large man, with his face fronting you. He is writing, and
+his eyes are fixed on the paper, so that you have a moment to note the
+dignity of frame and the vast development of brain. In a few minutes the
+countenance raises, and you meet its expansive and penetrating glance.
+
+"You face the king. He smiles in a pleasant and whole-souled manner, and
+in a moment puts you at ease. No stiffness nor formality here. His
+kingship is in himself, not in etiquette. He is ready for a pleasantry,
+and will initiate one if it comes in the line of conversation. You note
+those wonderful eyes, bright and piercing, and so large and rich that
+one is fascinated, and does not know how to stop gazing into them. Such
+is the appearance of the railway king, and you take your leave,
+conscious that some men, as Shakespeare says, 'are born great.' Indeed,
+we know a man who would rather give five dollars to sit and look at
+Commodore Vanderbilt for an hour than to see any other sight in this
+city. Next door to the office is a building of brown stone, with
+spacious doors and a roadway. This is the Commodore's stable, where are
+some of the finest horses in the country.
+
+"Every afternoon he is wont to take an airing, and after tea a game of
+whist affords an evening amusement. The Commodore is simple in his
+manners and habits. He is a representative of a former age, when men
+lived less artificially than at the present time, and when there was
+more happiness and less show. As for business, it is his nature. He can
+not help being king. He is but developing himself, and any other mode of
+life would be painful. He has in the Central afforded a third wonder,
+the Harlem and the Hudson River being the first and second, and if he
+gets the Erie he will soon show the world another wonder. On Sundays the
+Commodore attends Dr. Hutton's church on Washington Square, and here his
+tall and dignified form may be seen, head and shoulders above the rest
+of the congregation. He is a friend of the pastor, who takes a deep
+interest in his welfare, and we hope will meet him in a better world. He
+stood by the Commodore's side when his wife was laid in the tomb, and
+cheered him in that dark and trying hour. Among his more recent works is
+the completing of a tomb in the old Moravian burial-ground in Staten
+Island. The subterranean chamber is about thirty feet square, and is
+surmounted by a lofty shaft, and a statue of grief adds a peculiar
+finish to the spot. The cemetery is on an eminence, from which one gets
+a fine view of the ocean, dotted with ships."
+
+Commodore Vanderbilt's early passion for horses still survives, and his
+stable contains some of the finest in the world. Nothing pleases him so
+well as to sit behind a fast team, with the reins in his hands, and fly
+along the road with almost the speed of the wind.
+
+He is extremely generous to his friends, and gives liberally to
+charitable objects. He never puts his name to a subscription paper, but
+his donations are none the less liberal for that. His old
+acquaintances--especially those of his boyhood--find him a tender
+friend, and many of them owe to his bounty the comforts which surround
+their age.[A]
+
+He is the father of thirteen children--nine daughters and four
+sons--nearly all of whom are still living. A few years ago, at the
+celebration of his golden wedding, over one hundred and forty of his
+descendants and relatives assembled to congratulate him. He lost a
+promising son during the war, and his wife died two years ago. Not long
+since he married a second time. He is still one of the handsomest and
+most imposing men in New York, and will doubtless live to see his
+children's grandchildren.
+
+[Footnote A: In July, 1870, Mr. Vanderbilt chanced to hear that the Rev.
+Dr. Deems, of New York, was in want of a church. Admiring the energy
+with which the reverend gentleman had built up his congregation in the
+short space of three years, Mr. Vanderbilt quietly made up his mind that
+he should not want in vain. Accordingly he bought the Mercer Street
+Presbyterian Church, and made the Doctor a present of it, keeping him in
+ignorance of his intention until he placed the title deeds in his hand.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+DANIEL DREW.
+
+
+The name of DANIEL DREW has so long been familiar in the financial
+circles of the country, that it is surprising that the history of his
+life is not more generally known.
+
+He was born at Carmel, in Putnam County, New York, on the 29th of July,
+1797. His father was a small farmer, with limited means, and had to work
+hard to provide his family with food and clothing. Young Daniel was
+brought up to work on the farm, and at such times as he could be spared
+from this work, was sent to the country school in the neighborhood,
+where he acquired but a meager stock of learning. When he was fifteen
+years old, his father died, leaving his family in an almost helpless
+condition. Young Daniel remained on the farm three years longer, and in
+1815, being then eighteen years old, stared out to try and earn a living
+for himself.
+
+He came to New York in search of employment, but the country, just then,
+was in too depressed a condition to afford him a chance in any regular
+business. After looking around for awhile, he at length became a cattle
+drover. He spent five years in driving cattle from Putnam County to New
+York for sale, but failed to make any money at the business.
+
+In 1820, he removed to New York, and established his headquarters at
+the famous Bull's Head Tavern, in the Bowery, which was the great resort
+of the butchers and drovers doing business in the city. He kept this
+tavern a part of the time, and found it quite a profitable investment.
+He soon formed a partnership with two other drovers, and commenced
+buying cattle in the adjoining counties and bringing them to New York
+for sale.
+
+[Illustration: FOUNDING A GREAT FORTUNE]
+
+These ventures were so successful that the operations of the firm were
+extended into Pennsylvania, and finally into Ohio and the other States
+of the great West. Mr. Drew and his partners brought over the mountains
+the first drove of cattle that ever came from the West into New York
+city. The cattle, two thousand in number, were collected into droves of
+one hundred each, and were driven by experienced and careful men. The
+journey occupied two months, and the total cost of the purchase and trip
+was twenty-four dollars per head. The profit on the venture was very
+large.
+
+Mr. Drew continued in this business for fourteen years, slowly and
+carefully laying the foundations of that immense fortune which has made
+him so conspicuous, an example to others who have entered upon the
+life-struggle since then.
+
+In 1834, an event occurred which changed the whole tenor of his career.
+In that year, the steamer "General Jackson," owned by Jacob Vanderbilt
+(a brother of the famous Commodore), and plying between New York and
+Peekskill, blew up at Grassy Point. A friend of Mr. Drew at once put a
+boat called the "Water Witch" in her place, and Mr. Drew, to oblige his
+friend, advanced one thousand dollars toward the enterprise. Commodore
+Vanderbilt was not willing that any rival should contest the river trade
+with him, and built a steamer called the "Cinderella," with which he ran
+a sharp opposition to Mr. Drew. The contest was so sharp that fares and
+freights were lowered to a ridiculous figure, and both parties lost
+heavily. At the end of the season, the owner of the "Water Witch" found
+himself ten thousand dollars in debt, and sold his boat to Drew, Kelly &
+Richards for twenty thousand dollars.
+
+Finding that Mr. Drew was not frightened off by his opposition,
+Commodore Vanderbilt urged him to withdraw from his attempt, telling him
+he knew nothing of the management of steamboats. Mr. Drew refused to be
+intimidated; however, and continued his efforts. Since then, there have
+been fifty attempts to run him off the river, but all alike have failed
+of success.
+
+In 1836, the "Water Witch" was replaced by a fine steamer called the
+"Westchester," which was subsequently run as a day boat to Hartford,
+Connecticut. The "Westchester" was run against the Hudson River Line,
+from New York to Albany. The Hudson River Line at that time owned the
+"De Witt Clinton," the "North America," and others--the finest
+steamboats then afloat--and it seemed at first foolhardiness for any
+one to attempt to oppose so popular a company. Mr. Drew and his
+partners bought the "Bright Emerald," for which they gave twenty-six
+thousand dollars, and ran her as a night boat between New York and
+Albany, reducing the fare from three dollars to one dollar. During the
+season, they bought the "Rochester" for fifty thousand dollars, and also
+bought out the Hudson River Line, after which they restored the fare to
+three dollars.
+
+Several years later, Isaac Newton, who was largely interested in the
+towing business of the Hudson, built two splendid passenger steamers
+called the "North America" and the "South America." In 1840, Mr. Drew
+formed a partnership with Mr. Newton, and the celebrated "People's Line"
+was organized, which purchased all the passenger steamers owned by Drew
+and Newton. Mr. Drew was the largest stockholder in this company, which,
+to-day, after a lapse of nearly thirty years, still owns the most
+magnificent and popular steamers in the world. Soon after its
+organization, the company built the "Isaac Newton," the first of those
+floating palaces for which the Hudson is famed. Since then, it has built
+the "New World," the "St. John," the "Dean Richmond," and the "Drew,"
+the last two of which cost over seven' hundred thousand dollars each.
+Repeated efforts have been made to drive this line from the river, but
+it has been conducted so judiciously and energetically, that, for nearly
+thirty years, it has held the first place in the public favor.
+
+In 1847, George Law and Daniel Drew formed a partnership, and
+established a line of steamers between New York and Stonington, for the
+purpose of connecting with the railroad from the latter place to Boston.
+The "Oregon" and the "Knickerbocker" were placed on the route, and the
+enterprise proved a success. Mr. Drew and Commodore Vanderbilt secured a
+sufficient amount of stock in the railroad to give them a controlling
+interest in it, and by the year 1850 the Stonington Steamboat Line was
+firmly established.
+
+When the Hudson River Railroad was opened, in 1852, it was confidently
+expected that the steamboat trade on the river would be destroyed, and
+the friends and enemies of Mr. Drew alike declared that he might as well
+lay up his boats, as he would find it impossible to compete with the
+faster time of the railroad. He was not dismayed, however, for he was
+satisfied that the land route could not afford to carry freight and
+passengers as cheap as they could be transported by water. He knew that
+it would only be necessary to reduce his passenger and freight rates
+below those of the railroad, to continue in the enjoyment of his immense
+business, and his faith in the steady expansion of the trade of the city
+induced him to believe that the time was close at hand when railroad and
+steamers would all have as much as they could do to accommodate it. His
+views were well founded, and his hopes have been more than realized. The
+river trade has steadily increased, while the Hudson River Railroad is
+taxed to its utmost capacity to accommodate its immense traffic.
+
+In 1849, Mr. Drew, in connection with other parties, bought out the
+Champlain Transportation Company. This corporation had a capital of one
+hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and ran a line of five steamers from
+White Hall to the Canada end of the lake. The new proprietors ran the
+line seven years, and in 1856 sold out to the Saratoga and White Hall
+Railroad Company.
+
+As a steamboat manager, Daniel Drew has few equals and no superiors. His
+ventures on the water have all been crowned with success, a result due
+entirely to his judicious and liberal management His employes are chosen
+with the greatest care, and generally remain with him during their
+lives. He is very liberal in his dealings with those who serve him
+faithfully, but will not tolerate a single careless or incompetent man,
+however unimportant may be his position. The steamers owned by him are
+almost entirely free from accidents, and such misfortunes as have
+befallen them have been those against which no skill or foresight could
+guard. He refuses to insure his boats, holding that care and prudence
+are the best safeguards against accidents, and thus saves half a million
+dollars. When the "Dean Richmond" was run down by the "Vanderbilt," a
+year or two ago, he lost nearly three hundred thousand dollars. He paid
+every claim presented by shippers and passengers, as soon as made,
+without submitting one of them to the adjudication of the courts.
+
+In 1836, Mr. Drew entered the banking business in Wall Street, and in
+1840 established the widely-known firm of Drew, Robinson & Co. This
+house engaged largely in the financial operations of the day, and became
+known as one of the most uniformly successful in its dealings of any in
+the city. Mr. Drew remained at the head of it for thirteen years, but in
+1855 withdrew to make room for his son-in-law, Mr. Kelley. This
+gentleman died soon after his connection with the firm, and Mr. Drew
+resumed his old place.
+
+Having succeeded so well in all his ventures, Mr. Drew now determined to
+enter another field. Railroad stocks were very profitable, and might be
+made to yield him an immense return for his investments, and he decided
+to invest a considerable part of his fortune in them. In 1855, he
+endorsed the acceptances of the Erie Railroad Company for five hundred
+thousand dollars. This was the first decided evidence the public had
+received of his immense wealth, and in 1857 another was given by his
+endorsement of a fresh lot of Erie acceptances amounting to a million
+and a half of dollars. This last indorsement was made in the midst of
+the great financial panic of 1857, and occasioned no little comment. Men
+could admire, though they could not understand, the sublime confidence
+which enabled Mr. Drew to risk a million and a half of dollars in the
+midst of such a terrible crisis. Some one asked him if he could sleep
+quietly at night with such large interests at stake. "Sir," he replied,
+calmly, "I have never lost a night's rest on account of business in my
+life."
+
+In 1857, Mr. Drew was elected a director of the Erie Railroad Company, a
+position he held until recently. He was subsequently elected treasurer
+of the company, and is one of the principal holders of Erie stock. He is
+also one of the principal creditors of the company. The recent
+proceedings in the New York courts to prevent the Erie Road from issuing
+the new stock necessary to complete its broad-gauge connections with the
+West, are too fresh in the mind of the reader to need a recital of them
+here. It was proposed to issue ten millions of dollars worth of new
+stock, and Mr. Drew was to guarantee the bonds. After a tedious and
+costly suit, in which the New York Central Road endeavored to prevent
+the issue of the stock, in the hope of keeping the Erie Road from
+forming through connections with the West, the New York Legislature
+legalized the new issue, and a compromise was effected between Mr. Drew,
+in behalf of the Erie Road, and Commodore Vanderbilt, who represented
+the New York Central.
+
+Mr. Drew still continues his operations in Wall Street, where he is
+known as one of the boldest and most extensive, as well as one of the
+most successful, of all the operators in railroad stocks. Though losing
+heavily at times, he has nevertheless been one of fortune's favorites.
+His efforts have not been confined to the Erie Road. He owns stock in
+other roads, and, together with Commodore Vanderbilt, took up the
+floating debt of over half a million of dollars which weighed down the
+Harlem Road, and placed it in its present prosperous condition.
+
+He owns a fine grazing farm on the Harlem Railroad, about fifty miles
+from New York. It is situated in Carmel, in Putnam County; is nearly one
+thousand acres in extent, and includes the old farm on which he was
+born. He has made it one of the finest and most profitable in the State,
+and, it is said, values it above all his other possessions. He has
+improved and beautified it upon an extensive scale, and near the old
+grave-yard, where his parents lie sleeping, he has built one of the most
+beautiful churches in the land.
+
+In 1811, Mr. Drew became a member of the Methodist Church, but for
+twenty-five years this connection was merely nominal. During all the
+years of his drover's life he kept himself free from the sins of
+intemperance and swearing. Once while riding out in a buggy with a
+friend, to look at some cattle, a thunder-storm came on, and his horse
+was killed in the shafts by lightning. This narrow escape from death
+made a deep impression on his mind, and in 1841 he united with the
+Mulberry Street Methodist Church, of which he became an active member
+and a trustee. The elegant marble structure now standing at the corner
+of Fourth Avenue and Twenty-second Street attests his liberality to this
+congregation. He is a trustee in the Wesleyan University, and has
+largely endowed that institution; and within the past few years has
+contributed several hundred thousand dollars for the endowment of the
+Drew Theological Seminary, which has been established at Madison, New
+Jersey, for the education of candidates for the Methodist ministry. He
+gives largely in aid of missionary work, and is one of the most liberal
+men in his denomination. It is said that he gives away at least one
+hundred thousand dollars annually in private charities, besides the
+large donations with which the public are familiar. He selects his own
+charities, and refuses promptly to aid those which do not commend
+themselves to him.
+
+His property is estimated at twenty millions of dollars, and he is said
+to earn at least half a million of dollars every year. He has two
+children, a son and a daughter, the latter of whom is the wife of a
+clergyman of the Baptist Church.
+
+Mr. Drew is about five feet ten inches high, and slenderly made. He is
+very active and vigorous for his age, and looks a much younger man than
+he is. His expression is firm, but withal pleasant. His features are
+regular, but dark and deeply marked, while his black hair is still
+unstreaked with gray. He is courteous and friendly in his intercourse,
+and is very much liked by his acquaintances.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+JAMES B. EADS.
+
+
+James B. Eads was born in Lawrenceburg, Indiana, in the year 1820. His
+father was a man of moderate means, and was able to give him a fair
+English education. From his earliest childhood he evinced a remarkable
+fondness for all sorts of machinery and mechanical arrangements. This
+fondness became at length a passion, and excited the surprise of his
+friends, who could not imagine why a mere child should be so much
+interested in such things. His greatest delight was to go to the machine
+shops in his neighborhood, in which he had many friends, and watch the
+workings of the various inventions employed therein.
+
+When he was nine years old his father removed to Louisville, Kentucky.
+During the voyage down the Ohio, young Eads passed the most of his time
+in watching the engines of the steamer. The engineer was so much pleased
+to see his interest in the machinery that he explained the whole system
+of the steam-engine to him. The boy listened eagerly, and every word
+remained fixed in his mind. Two years later, with no further instruction
+on the subject, he constructed a miniature engine, which was worked by
+steam. This, for a boy of eleven years, was no insignificant triumph of
+genius. His father, anxious to encourage such unmistakable talent, now
+fitted up a small workshop for him, in which he constructed models of
+saw mills, fire engines, steamboats, and electrotyping machines. When he
+was only twelve years old he was able to take to pieces and reset the
+family clock and a patent lever watch, using no tool for this purpose
+but his pocket-knife.
+
+At the age of thirteen his pleasant employment was brought to a sudden
+end. His father lost all his property by the failure of some commercial
+transactions, and the family was brought to the verge of ruin. It now
+became necessary for young Eads to labor for his own support, and for
+that of his mother and sisters. Boy as he was, he faced the crisis
+bravely. Having in vain sought employment in Louisville, he resolved to
+go to St. Louis. He worked his passage there on a river steamer, and
+landed in that city so poor that he had neither shoes to his feet nor a
+coat to his back. He found it as difficult to procure work here as it
+had been in Louisville, and was at length compelled to resort to
+peddling apples on the street in order to secure a living. He did this
+for some time, never relaxing his efforts to obtain more desirable
+employment.
+
+After many attempts he succeeded in getting a situation in a mercantile
+house, at a fair salary. One of his employers was a man of wealth and
+culture, and was possessed of one of the finest private libraries in the
+West. Learning the extraordinary mechanical talent possessed by his
+young clerk, this gentleman placed his library at his disposal. The
+offer was promptly and gratefully accepted, and young Eads devoted
+almost all his leisure time to the study of mechanics, machinery, and
+civil engineering. He remained with this house for several years, and
+then obtained a clerkship on one of the Mississippi River steamers,
+where he passed several years more. During this time he became
+intimately acquainted with the great river and its tributaries, and
+acquired an extensive knowledge of all subjects appertaining to western
+navigation, which proved of great service to him in his after life.
+
+In 1842, being then twenty-two years old, and having saved a moderate
+sum of money, he formed a copartnership with Messrs. Case & Nelson, boat
+builders, of St. Louis, for the purpose of recovering steamboats and
+their cargoes which had been sunk or wrecked in the Mississippi.
+Accidents of this kind were then very common in those waters, and the
+business bade fair to be very profitable. The enterprise succeeded
+better than had been expected, and the operations of the wrecking
+company extended from Galena, Illinois, to the Balize, and into many of
+the tributaries of the great river. The parties interested in the scheme
+realized a handsome profit on their investments. Mr. Eads was the
+practical man of the concern, and worked hard to establish it upon a
+successful footing. In 1845 he sold out his interest in the company, and
+established a glass manufactory in St. Louis. This was the first
+enterprise of the kind ever attempted west of the Mississippi. Two years
+later, in 1847, he organized a new company for the purpose of recovering
+boats and cargoes lost in the Mississippi and its tributaries. This
+company started with a capital of fifteen hundred dollars. It was slow
+work at first, but a steady improvement was made every year, and in
+1857, just ten years from the date of their organization, the property
+of the firm was valued at more than half a million of dollars. During
+the winter of 1856-'57, Mr. Eads laid before Congress a formal
+proposition to remove the obstructions from the western rivers and keep
+them open for a term of years, upon payment of a reasonable sum by the
+General Government. Had this proposition been accepted, the benefits
+thereby secured to all who were engaged in the navigation of those
+rivers would have been very great. A bill was reported in Congress
+authorizing the acceptance of Mr. Eads' offer, but was defeated through
+the influence of the Senators from Mississippi (Jefferson Davis) and
+Louisiana (J.P. Benjamin).
+
+In 1857, Mr. Eads was compelled, on account of ill-health, to retire
+from business. He had earned a handsome fortune by his industry and
+enterprise, and could well afford to rest for a short time, preparatory,
+as it afterward proved, to the most important part of his whole career.
+
+When the secession troubles began to agitate the country, toward the
+close of the year 1860, Mr. Eads cast the weight of his private and
+public influence on the side of the Union. He felt that the war, if it
+should come, would be a very serious affair for the West, as the
+prosperity of that section depends largely upon the absolute freedom of
+the navigation of the Mississippi. The Confederates well understood
+this, and prepared from the first to close the great river until their
+independence should be acknowledged by the General Government. Dr.
+Boynton, in his "History of the United States Navy During the
+Rebellion," thus describes the condition of affairs in the West, a
+proper understanding of which will show the reader the importance of the
+services subsequently rendered by Mr. Eads:
+
+
+     The main features of the rebel plan of war in the West were to
+     seize and hold Missouri, and, as a consequence, Kansas and
+     Nebraska, and thus threaten or invade the free States of the
+     North-west from that point; to hold Kentucky and Tennessee, and, if
+     possible, to cross the Ohio, and make the Northern States the
+     theater of the war; or, in case they should be unable to invade the
+     North, to maintain their battle line unbroken along the Ohio and
+     through Missouri; to keep the great rivers closed, and thus holding
+     back the North, and being secure within their own territory, at
+     length compel the recognition of their independence. They certainly
+     presented to the North a most formidable front, a line of defenses
+     which was indeed impregnable to any means of assault which the
+     Government at first possessed. No army could be moved into
+     Tennessee by land alone, because the line of communication with a
+     Northern base could not be held secure, and a defeat far from the
+     Ohio would be the destruction of an army, and open the road for an
+     invasion of Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, and the destruction of
+     their cities.
+
+     It was quite evident that no impression could be made upon the
+     power of the rebellion in the West, until a firm foothold could be
+     gained in Kentucky and Tennessee, and until the Mississippi could
+     be wrested from the conspirators' control. It was clear that the
+     whole seaboard might be regained, even to Florida, and yet the
+     rebellion remain as dangerous as ever, if the rebels could hold the
+     Mississippi River and the valley up to or near the Ohio.
+
+     France was looking with eager eyes toward Texas, in the hope of
+     securing and extending her Mexican usurpation. England was ready to
+     give all the assistance in her power to any step which would weaken
+     the North; and had the rebels been pressed back from the seaports
+     and the Northern Atlantic slope, they would have had it in their
+     power, if still holding the Mississippi, the South-west, including
+     Tennessee, and the great natural fortresses of the mountains, to
+     have so connected themselves with Mexico and France as to have
+     caused the most serious embarrassment. It became absolutely
+     necessary to the success of the Government that the rebels'
+     northern line of defenses should be broken through, and that the
+     Mississippi should be opened to its mouth.
+
+     At first, and before the nature of the work was fully understood,
+     the whole was placed under the direction of the War Department, as
+     it was thought the few armed transports which would be needed would
+     be a mere appendage of the army. The idea of a formidable river
+     navy of a hundred powerful steamers did not in the beginning enter
+     into the minds of any.
+
+     It was soon seen, however, that an entirely new description of
+     craft was needed for this work. It was clear that the river boats,
+     which had been built for the common purposes of freight and
+     passage, were not capable of resisting the fire of heavy artillery,
+     and that the batteries of the rebels could not be captured nor even
+     passed by them. They could not even be safely employed alone in the
+     transportation of troops, for they could be sunk or crippled by the
+     field batteries that could be moved from point to point. The
+     question of iron-clads was proposed, but with only the ocean
+     iron-clads as a guide, who should conceive the proper form of an
+     armored boat which could navigate our rivers and compete
+     successfully with the heavy guns, rifled as well as smooth-bore, of
+     the fortifications. It was by no means easy to solve this problem,
+     but it was absolutely necessary that the attempt should be made....
+     These forts could only be reduced by the aid of gunboats, and
+     these were almost literally to be created.
+
+
+There was in the Cabinet of President Lincoln at this time a western
+man, intimately acquainted with the steamboat interest of the
+Mississippi. This was Edward Bates, the Attorney-General of the United
+States. He was an old friend of Mr. Eads, and felt assured that in case
+of war the services of that gentleman would be of the greatest value to
+the country. When it was found that hostilities could not be avoided, he
+mentioned the name of Mr. Eads to the Cabinet, and strongly urged that
+his services should be secured at the earliest possible moment. On the
+17th of April, 1861, three days after Fort Sumter had fallen, he wrote
+to Mr. Eads, who was living in comfortable retirement, at St. Louis: "Be
+not surprised if you are called here suddenly by telegram. If called,
+come instantly. In a certain contingency it will be necessary to have
+the aid of the most thorough knowledge of our western rivers, and the
+use of steam on them, and in that event I have advised that you should
+be consulted."
+
+A few days later Mr. Eads was summoned to Washington. Mr. Bates there
+explained to him in full a plan he had conceived for occupying Cairo,
+and endeavoring to hold the Mississippi by means of gunboats. Mr. Eads
+warmly indorsed the plan, and was introduced by Mr. Bates to the
+President and members of the Cabinet. When the plan was proposed to the
+Cabinet, the Secretary of War pronounced it unnecessary and
+impracticable, but the Secretary of the Navy was much impressed with
+it, and requested Mr. Eads to submit his views in writing, which was
+done. The paper embodied Judge Bates's general plan in addition to Mr.
+Eads's own views, and contained suggestions as to the kind of boats best
+fitted for service on the western rivers, and also in regard to the best
+points on those streams for the erection of land batteries. This paper
+was submitted to the Navy Department on the 29th of April, 1861, and was
+referred by the Secretary to Commodore Paulding, who reported in favor
+of its adoption.
+
+The Secretary of the Navy now detailed Captain John Rodgers to accompany
+Mr. Eads to the West, and purchase and fit out such steamers as should
+be found necessary for the service. Up to this time the Secretary of War
+had manifested the most supreme indifference in regard to the whole
+subject, but he now claimed entire jurisdiction in the matter, and this
+interference caused considerable vexation and delay. At length he issued
+an order to Mr. Eads and Captain Rodgers to proceed with their
+purchases. These gentlemen obtained the approval of General McClellan,
+in whose department the purchases were to be made, and began their
+operations.
+
+Upon arriving at Cairo, they found one of the old snag-boat fleet,
+called the "Benton." Mr. Eads knew the boat well, as he had formerly
+owned her, and proposed to purchase and arm her, but Captain Rodgers did
+not approve the plan for converting her into a gunboat. Mr. Eads then
+proposed to purchase and arm several of the strong, swift boats used for
+the navigation of the Missouri River, and equip them at St. Louis, from
+which point there would always be water enough to get them below Cairo.
+Captain Rodgers disapproved this plan also, and went to Cincinnati,
+where he purchased and equipped the "Conestoga," "Tyler," and
+"Lexington," and started them down the river. They were not iron-clad,
+but were merely protected around the boilers with coal bunkers, and
+provided with bullet-proof oaken bulwarks. Mr. Eads had warned Captain
+Rodgers that he could not depend upon the Ohio to get his boats down to
+Cairo, and his predictions were realized. The boats were started from
+Cincinnati some time in July; they were detained on the bars of the Ohio
+for six or seven weeks, and did not reach Cairo until about the first of
+September; then the bottom of the "Tyler" was found to be so badly
+damaged by sand-bars that she had to be put on the marine railway for
+repairs.
+
+In July, 1861, the War Department advertised for proposals to construct
+a number of iron-clad gunboats for service on the Mississippi River. On
+the 5th of August, when the bids were opened, it was found that Mr. Eads
+proposed to build these boats in a shorter time and upon more favorable
+terms than any one else. His offer was accepted, and on the 7th of
+August he signed a contract with Quartermaster-General Meigs to have
+ready for their crews and armaments, _in sixty-five days_, seven
+vessels, of about six hundred tons each, each to draw six feet of water,
+to carry thirteen heavy guns, to be plated with iron two and a half
+inches thick, and to steam nine miles per hour. "They were one hundred
+and seventy-five feet long, and fifty-one and a half feet wide; the
+hulls of wood; their sides placed out from the bottom of the boat to the
+water line at an angle of about thirty-five degrees, and from the water
+line the sides fell back at about the same angle, to form a slanting
+casemate, the gun-deck being but a foot above water. This slanting
+casemate extended across the hull, near the bow and stern, forming a
+quadrilateral gun-deck. Three nine or ten-inch guns were placed in the
+bow, four similar ones on each side, and two smaller ones astern. The
+casemate inclosed the wheel, which was placed in a recess at the stern
+of the vessel. The plating was two and a half inches thick, thirteen
+inches wide, and was rabbeted on the edges to make a more perfect
+joint."
+
+In undertaking to complete these vessels in sixty-five days, Mr. Eads
+had assumed a heavy responsibility. The manufacturing interests of the
+West were sadly crippled by the sudden commencement of hostilities, and
+doubt and distrust prevailed every-where. The worst feature of all was,
+that skilled workmen were either enlisting in the army or seeking
+employment in States more remote from the scene of war. Every thing
+needed for the gunboats was to be made. Even the timber for their hulls
+was still standing in the forest, and the huge machinery which was to
+roll out and harden their iron plates had yet to be constructed. No
+single city, no two cities, however great in resources, could possibly
+supply every thing needed within the stipulated time, and it was
+necessary to employ help wherever it could be obtained.
+
+The very day the contract was signed, the telegraph was kept busy
+sending instructions all over the West for the commencement of the
+various parts of the work. The saw-mills in Kentucky, Tennessee,
+Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Minnesota, and Missouri were set to getting out
+the timber, which was hurried to St. Louis by railroad and steamboat as
+fast as it was ready. There were twenty-one steam engines and
+thirty-five boilers to be made, and the machine-shops in St. Louis,
+Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh were put to work upon them. The huge
+rolling-mills of Cincinnati and Portsmouth, Ohio, Newport, Kentucky, and
+St. Louis were engaged in making the iron plates, and employed for this
+purpose no less than four thousand men. Night and day, Sundays included,
+the work went on with an almost superhuman swiftness. Mr. Eads paid the
+workmen on the hulls large sums from his own pocket, in addition to
+their wages, to induce them to continue steadily at their work.
+
+On the 12th of October, 1861, just forty-five days from the time of
+laying her keel, the first iron-clad, belonging to the United States,
+was launched, with her engines and boilers on board. Rear Admiral Foote
+(then a flag officer), appointed to command the Mississippi squadron,
+named her the "St. Louis," but upon being transferred to the Navy
+Department her name was changed to the "Baron de Kalb." She was followed
+by the other vessels in rapid succession, all being completed within the
+stipulated time.
+
+In September, 1861, General Fremont ordered the purchase of the snag
+boat "Benton," which had been proposed by Mr. Eads and rejected by
+Captain Rodgers, and sent her to Mr. Eads to be armored and equipped as
+a gunboat. Work was at once begun on her, and pushed forward with the
+same energy that had been displayed in the construction of the other
+iron-clads. Her performances during the war fully sustained the high
+esteem in which she was held by the officers of the navy. Admirals Foote
+and Davis pronounced her the "best iron-clad in the world."
+
+By dint of such skill and energy as we have described, Mr. Eads, in the
+brief period of one hundred days, built and had ready for service a
+powerful iron-clad fleet of eight steamers, carrying one hundred and
+seven heavy guns, and having an aggregate capacity of five thousand
+tons. Such a work was one of the greatest in magnitude ever performed,
+and, as may be supposed, required a heavy capital to carry it to
+perfection. Mr. Eads soon exhausted his own means, and but for the
+assistance of friends, whose confidence in his integrity and capacity
+induced them to advance him large sums, would have been compelled to
+abandon the undertaking; for the Government, upon various pretexts,
+delayed for months the stipulated payments, and by its criminal
+negligence came near bringing the iron-clad fleet, so necessary to its
+success, to an untimely end. It was prompt enough, however, to
+commission the vessels as soon as they were ready. At the time they
+rendered such good service in the conquest of Forts Henry and Donelson,
+and compelled the fall of Island No. 10, they were still unpaid for, and
+the private property of Mr. Eads.
+
+In the spring of 1862, Mr. Eads, in accordance with the desire of the
+Navy Department, submitted plans for light-draught armored vessels for
+service on the western rivers. He proposed an ingenious revolving turret
+to be used on these vessels, the performance of which he agreed to
+guarantee to the satisfaction of the Department; but the Government
+decided to use the Ericsson turret, which the recent encounter between
+the Monitor and Merrimac had proved to be a success. Mr. Eads was
+allowed, however, to modify the Ericsson turret considerably, in order
+to avoid making the draft of his steamers greater than was desired. He
+built the "Osage" and "Neosho," and when these vessels were launched,
+with all their weight on board, it was found that they were really
+lighter than the contract called for, a circumstance which permitted the
+thickness of their armor to be afterward increased half an inch without
+injuring their draught or speed.
+
+In May, 1862, at the request of the Navy Department, Mr. Eads submitted
+plans for four iron-clads, iron hull propellers, to carry two turrets
+each of eight inches thickness, four eleven inch guns, and
+three-quarters inch deck armor, to steam nine nautical miles per hour,
+to carry three days' coal, and not to exceed a draught of six feet of
+water. His plans were accepted, and he constructed the "Winnebago,"
+"Kickapoo," "Milwaukee," and "Chickasaw." Like the "Osage" and "Neosho,"
+these vessels were found to be of lighter draught than had been agreed
+upon, and the Department ordered all four to have an extra plating of
+three-quarters inch armor, which was done. Three of the vessels were
+also reported, by the officers of the navy sent to examine them, to
+exceed the speed required by the contract, while the fourth was fully up
+to the standard.
+
+Of how many "Government Contractors" during the war can it be said that
+their work was much better than they had agreed to furnish? Verily, we
+think Mr. Eads stands almost alone in this respect, his proud position
+made still more honorable by its comparative isolation.
+
+Mr. Eads built, during the war, fourteen heavily armored gunboats, four
+heavy mortar boats, and converted seven transports into musket-proof
+gunboats, or "tin-clads," as they were called on the river. He had a
+share in other enterprises of a similar nature during the war, and
+besides rendering good service to the Union, was enabled to retire at
+the close of the struggle with a handsome fortune, won by his own
+patriotic skill and energy.
+
+Whatever may be the distinction awarded to others, to him belongs the
+credit of having been the first to provide the Government with the means
+of securing that firm hold upon the great river of the West which, once
+gained, was never relaxed.
+
+Mr. Eads resides in St. Louis. He is still in the prime of life, is
+admired and honored by his fellow-citizens, and affords a splendid
+example of what genius and industry can do for a poor, friendless boy in
+that glorious western country which is one day to be the seat of empire
+in the New World.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+CYRUS W. FIELD.
+
+
+Cyrus far we have been considering the struggles of men who have risen
+from obscure positions in life, by the aid of their own genius,
+industry, and courage, to the front rank of their respective callings.
+We shall now relate the story of one who having already won fortune,
+periled it all upon an enterprise in which his own genius had recognized
+the path to fame and to still greater success, but which the almost
+united voice of the people of his country condemned as visionary, and
+from which they coldly held aloof until its brilliant success compelled
+them to acknowledge the wisdom and foresight of its projector.
+
+Fifteen years ago very few persons had heard of Cyrus W. Field. Ten
+years ago he had achieved considerable notoriety as a visionary who was
+bent on sinking his handsome fortune in the sea. To-day, the world is
+full of his fame, as the man to whom, above all others, it is indebted
+for the successful completion of the Atlantic Telegraph; and those who
+were formerly loudest in ridiculing him are now foremost in his praise.
+"Nothing succeeds like success," and what was once in their eyes mere
+folly, and worthy only of ridicule, they now hail as the evidences of
+his courage, foresight, and profound wisdom, and wonder that they never
+could see them in their true light before.
+
+Cyrus West Field was born at Stockbridge, Massachusetts, on the 30th day
+of November, 1819, and is the son of the Rev. David Dudley Field, a
+distinguished clergyman of that State. He was carefully educated in the
+primary and grammar schools of his native county, and at the age of
+fifteen went to New York to seek his fortune. He had no difficulty in
+obtaining a clerkship in an enterprising mercantile house in that city,
+and, from the first, gave evidence of unusual business capacity. His
+employers, pleased with his promise, advanced him rapidly, and in a few
+years he became a partner in the house. His success as a merchant was
+uniform and marked--so marked, indeed, that in 1853, when only
+thirty-four years old, he was able to partially retire from business
+with a large fortune as the substantial reward of his mercantile career.
+
+Mr. Field had devoted himself so closely to his business that, at his
+retirement, he resolved to seek recreation and change of scene in
+foreign travel, and accordingly he left New York, and passed the next
+six months in journeying through the mountains of South America. Upon
+his return home, at the close of the year 1853, he declared his
+intention to withdraw entirely from active participation in business,
+and to engage in no new schemes.
+
+He had scarcely returned home, however, when his brother, Mr. Matthew D.
+Field, a successful and well-known civil engineer, informed him that he
+had just become acquainted with a Mr. Frederick N. Gisborne, of
+Newfoundland, who had come to New York for the purpose of interesting
+some American capitalists in a company which had been organized in
+Newfoundland for the purpose of procuring news in America and Europe,
+and transmitting it between the two continents with greater dispatch
+than was possible in the then existing mode of communication between the
+two countries. The scheme of Mr. Gisborne had commended itself to Mr.
+Matthew Field, and he urged his brother to meet that gentleman and hear
+his statements. Mr. Cyrus Field at once declined to undertake any share
+in the enterprise, and said that it would be useless for him to meet Mr.
+Gisborne; but his brother was so urgent that he at last consented to
+grant Mr. Gisborne an interview, and at least hear what he had to say.
+At the appointed time, Mr. Field received Mr. Gisborne at his house, and
+was there made acquainted with the proposed plan of operations of the
+"Electric Telegraph Company of Newfoundland." This company had gone into
+bankruptcy a short time previous, but Mr. Gisborne hoped to be able to
+revive it by the aid of American capital. The scheme which he laid
+before Mr. Field, can not be better stated than by quoting the following
+extract from the charter which the Legislature of Newfoundland had
+granted the bankruptcy company:
+
+"The telegraph line of this company is designed to be strictly an
+'Inter-Continental Telegraph,' Its termini will be New York, in the
+United States, and London, in the Kingdom of Great Britain; these points
+are to be connected by a line of electric telegraph from New York to St.
+John's, Newfoundland, partly on poles, partly laid in the ground, and
+partly through the water, and a line of the swiftest steamships ever
+built, from that point to Ireland. The trips of these steamships, it is
+expected, will not exceed five days, and as very little time will be
+occupied in transmitting messages between St. John's and New York, the
+communication between the latter city and London or Liverpool, will be
+effected in _six days,_ or less. The company will have likewise
+stationed at St. John's a steam yacht, for the purpose of intercepting
+the European and American steamships, so that no opportunity may be
+lost in forwarding intelligence in advance of the ordinary channels of
+communication."
+
+Mr. Field listened attentively to his visitor, but declined to commit
+himself to more than an expression of sympathy with the enterprise.
+After the departure of his guest, he took the globe which stood in his
+library, and turning it over, began to examine the proposed route of the
+telegraph line and the distance to be traversed by the steamers. While
+engaged in this examination, the idea flashed across his mind that
+instead of undertaking such a complicated scheme, it would be better to
+attempt to stretch a telegraph wire entirely across the ocean, from the
+shores of Newfoundland to the coast of Ireland. The vastness of this
+scheme pleased him, and its usefulness to the entire world, if it could
+be carried out, was clear to his mind from the first.
+
+He at once set to work to ascertain if such an undertaking as an
+Atlantic telegraph was practicable. He wrote to Lieutenant Maury, then
+the Chief of the National Observatory at Washington, and asked if the
+laying of such a wire was possible; and to Professor Morse, the inventor
+of the telegraph, to know if such a wire would be available for sending
+messages if it could be laid. Lieutenant Maury promptly replied,
+inclosing a copy of a report he had just made to the Secretary of the
+Navy on the subject, from which Mr. Field learned that the idea of
+laying a telegraph across the ocean was not original with himself. In
+this report Lieutenant Maury demonstrated the entire practicability of
+such an enterprise, and sustained his conclusions by a statement of the
+recent discoveries concerning the bed of the ocean, made by Lieutenant
+Berryman. Professor Morse came in person to visit Mr. Field, and assured
+him of his entire faith in the possibility of sending telegraphic
+messages across the ocean with rapidity and success.
+
+The two highest authorities in the world thus having assured him of the
+entire practicability of the undertaking, Mr. Field declared his
+readiness, if he could procure the assistance of a sufficient number of
+capitalists in the United States, to undertake the laying of a telegraph
+across the Atlantic between Europe and America. Further deliberation
+only made him better satisfied with the undertaking, and he set to work
+to find ten capitalists, each of whom he proposed should contribute one
+hundred thousand dollars, making the capital of the proposed company one
+million of dollars. Mr. Field was convinced that the undertaking would
+be expensive, but he had then but a faint conception of its magnitude,
+and was very far from supposing that "he might yet be drawn on to stake
+upon its success the whole fortune he had accumulated; that he was to
+sacrifice for it all the peace and quiet he had hoped to enjoy, and that
+for twelve years he was to be almost without a home, crossing and
+recrossing the sea, urging his enterprise in Europe and America."
+
+The scientific questions involved in the undertaking were so little
+understood at the time by the public, and the popular judgment regarded
+the attempt to stretch a cable across the deep, mysterious ocean with so
+much incredulity, that Mr. Field had considerable trouble in finding
+gentlemen willing or prepared to share his faith in the enterprise. His
+first effort was to induce Mr. Peter Cooper, of New York, his next door
+neighbor, to join him, and he succeeded so well that Mr. Cooper
+consented to do so if several others would unite with them. Encouraged
+by his success with Mr. Cooper, whose name was a tower of strength to
+his cause, Mr. Field renewed his efforts, and succeeded in winning over
+the following gentlemen, and in the order named: Moses Taylor, Marshall
+O. Roberts, and Chandler White. These gentlemen were very slow to accept
+the views of Mr. Field, but, once having done so, they never lost faith
+in the ultimate success of the undertaking. The more thoroughly they
+became acquainted with its magnitude and costliness, the stronger grew
+their confidence in it, for this increase of knowledge not only showed
+them more plainly its difficulties and dangers, but developed new
+grounds on which to base their hopes.
+
+Mr. Field was about to continue his efforts to procure additional names,
+when Mr. Cooper proposed that the five gentlemen already pledged to the
+scheme should undertake its entire cost without waiting for the other
+four. The proposition was agreed to, and it was decided to take the
+necessary steps to procure a charter for their company from the
+Legislature of Newfoundland. Mr. Field consented to undertake this, and
+at once set off for St. John's, accompanied by his brother, Mr. David
+Dudley Field, who was made the legal adviser of the company. At St.
+John's they were greatly aided by Mr. Archibald, then the
+Attorney-General of the Colony, and afterward the British Consul at New
+York, and by the Governor of Newfoundland. They succeeded in obtaining a
+charter from the Legislature under the name of the "New York,
+Newfoundland, and London Telegraph Company," with liberal grants in land
+and money. This accomplished, they assumed and paid the liabilities of
+the old Telegraph Company which had been brought to Mr. Field's notice
+by Mr. Gisborne, and thus removed the last difficulty in their way. This
+much accomplished, Mr. Field hastened back to New York, and on the 6th
+of May, 1854, the Company was formally organized at the residence of Mr.
+David Dudley Field. Messrs. Cooper, Taylor, Field, Roberts, and White
+were the first directors. Mr. Cooper, was made President of the
+Company, Mr. White, Vice-President, and Mr. Taylor Secretary. A capital
+of one million and a half of dollars was subscribed on the spot, Mr.
+Field contributing about two hundred thousand dollars in cash.
+
+Work was at once begun on the section between New York and St. John's.
+There was no road across the island of Newfoundland, and the Company had
+not only to build their telegraph line, but to construct a road by the
+side of it through an almost unbroken wilderness. It was a work which
+required the highest executive ability, and the services of an army of
+men. The distance across the island was four hundred miles, and there
+were numerous rocky gorges, morasses, and rivers in the way. The country
+was a desolation, and it was found that supplies would have to be
+transported from St. John's. The execution of the work was committed to
+Mr. White, the Vice-President, who went to St. John's to act as the
+general agent of the Company, and to Mr. Matthew D. Field, who was
+appointed constructing engineer. These gentlemen displayed such skill
+and energy in their respective positions that in two years the Company
+had not only built a telegraph line and a road of four hundred miles
+across the island, but had constructed another line of one hundred and
+forty miles in the island of Cape Breton, and had stretched a submarine
+cable across the Gulf of St. Lawrence.[A] The line was now in working
+order from New York to St. John's, Newfoundland, a distance of one
+thousand miles, and it had required about a million of dollars for its
+construction. It now remained to complete the great work by laying the
+cable between Newfoundland and Ireland.
+
+
+[Footnote A: The first effort to lay a cable in the Gulf of St. Lawrence
+was made by this Company, in August, 1855. It was a failure, and the
+cable was lost. The second attempt was made in the summer of 1856, and
+was entirely successful.]
+
+It being desirable to examine still further the bed of the ocean over
+which the cable was to be laid, Mr. Field requested the Government of
+the United States to send out an expedition over the route for the
+purpose of taking deep sea soundings. His request was promptly granted,
+and an expedition under Lieut. Berryman was dispatched, which proceeded
+to examine the ocean bed, with the most satisfactory results. This was
+accomplished in the summer of 1856, and the next year the same route was
+surveyed by Commander Daymon, with the British war steamer Cyclops--this
+survey being ordered by the Lords of the Admiralty, at Mr. Field's
+request. These surveys made it plain beyond question that a cable could
+lie safely on the bed of the sea, at a depth sufficient to protect it
+from vessels' anchors, from icebergs, and from submarine currents, and
+that it would receive sufficient support from that bed to free it from
+all undue tension. There was no doubt of the ultimate success of the
+enterprise in the minds of the directors, but it was necessary to
+convince the public in both Europe and America that it was not an
+impossibility, and also to enlist the sympathies of the Governments of
+Great Britain and the United States, and secure their assistance.
+
+Mr. Field, who had made several voyages to England and to Newfoundland
+in behalf of the company, was elected Vice-President after the death of
+Mr. White, in 1856, and was charged with the duty of proceeding to
+England to obtain the assistance of the British Government, and to
+organize the company in London. Thus far the directors had borne the
+entire cost of the undertaking, and it was but fair that they should
+seek the means for completing their work in the country which was to be
+so much benefited by it. Mr. Field sailed for England in the summer of
+1856, and upon reaching that country proceeded to consult some of its
+most eminent engineers and electricians. The English people were slow to
+believe that so long a cable could be successfully worked, even if laid
+intact, and to remove their doubts, the opinions of Professor Morse and
+Lieutenant Maury were published in their newspapers; and this
+publication brought out communications from many scientific men on the
+subject, a number of them advocating the undertaking. Thus, the
+attention of the English public was gained. Experiments were made by
+Professor Morse, Mr. Bright, and Dr. Whitehouse, which proved beyond all
+doubt the ease with which a continuous line of more than two thousand
+miles of wire could be worked; and Professor Morse was able, from these
+experiments, to declare his conviction that an electric current could
+pass between London and New York, on such a wire, in the space of one
+second.
+
+Science had now done its utmost, and had in every thing sustained the
+great plan. It was now necessary to ask the aid of Her Majesty's
+Government. This effort was intrusted to Mr. Field, who carried it
+through successfully. The English Government agreed to furnish the ships
+necessary for making soundings and surveys, and to furnish vessels to
+assist in laying the cable. It also agreed to pay to the company an
+annual subsidy of fourteen thousand pounds for the transmission of the
+government messages until the net profits of the company were equal to a
+dividend of six pounds per cent., when the payment was to be reduced to
+ten thousand pounds per annum, for a period of twenty-five years.
+Provision was made for extra payment, in case the government messages
+exceeded a certain amount; and it was provided that the messages of the
+Governments of Great Britain and the United States should be placed upon
+an equal footing, and should have priority in the order in which they
+arrived at the stations. This last provision exhibited a decided
+liberality on the part of the English Government, since both ends of the
+proposed cable would be in British territory. Indeed, throughout the
+whole negotiation, Great Britain cheerfully accorded to the United
+States every privilege which she claimed for herself.
+
+Having secured the aid of the Queen's Government on such liberal terms,
+Mr. Field now undertook the organization of the company, in addition to
+the task of raising a capital of three hundred and fifty thousand
+pounds. In both efforts he was effectively assisted by Mr. John W.
+Brett, who had laid the first cable across the English Channel, and by
+Mr. Charles T. Bright and Dr. Edward O.W. Whitehouse. The efforts of
+these gentlemen were successful. In a few weeks the whole capital was
+subscribed. It had been divided into three hundred and fifty shares of a
+thousand pounds each. One hundred and one of these were taken up in
+London, eighty-six in Liverpool, thirty-seven in Glasgow, twenty-eight
+in Manchester, and a few in other parts of England. Mr. Field, at the
+final division of shares, took eighty-eight. He did not design making
+this investment on his own account, but thinking it but fair that at
+least one-fourth of the stock should be held in America, he made this
+subscription with the intention of disposing of his shares after his
+return home. Owing to his continued absence from New York, and the
+straitened condition of the money market, it was nearly a year before he
+could succeed in selling as much as twenty-seven shares. The company was
+organized in December, 1856, a Board of Directors elected, and a
+contract made for the cable, half of which was to be made in London and
+the other half in Liverpool.
+
+The day after the organization of the company, Mr. Field sailed for New
+York, from which place he at once made a voyage to Newfoundland, to look
+after some matters which required his presence. Returning home, he
+hurried to Washington, to secure the aid of the General Government. He
+met with more opposition here than he had encountered in England. A
+powerful lobby opposed him, and a spirit of hostility to his bill
+exhibited itself in Congress, and to such a degree that the measure
+passed the Senate by a majority of only one vote. It came very near
+failing in the House, but at length got through, and received the
+President's signature on the 3d of March, 1857.
+
+In the summer of 1857, Mr. Field having returned to England, the cable
+was declared to be in readiness for laying. The United States Government
+now placed at the disposal of the Telegraph Company the magnificent new
+steam frigate "Niagara," as the most suitable vessel for laying the
+cable, and ordered the "Susquehanna," the largest side-wheel frigate in
+the service, to accompany her in the expedition. The British Government
+provided the steam frigate "Agamemnon," a splendid vessel, which had
+been the flagship of the English fleet at the bombardment of Sebastopol,
+and ordered the "Leopard" to accompany her as an escort. The "Niagara"
+was commanded by Captain W.L. Hudson, of the United States Navy, and the
+"Agamemnon" by Captain Noddal, of the Royal Navy. The "Niagara" took on
+her share of the cable at Liverpool, and the "Agamemnon" received hers
+at London. It was agreed that the "Niagara" should begin the laying of
+the cable, and continue it until her portion of it should be exhausted
+in mid-ocean, when her end of it should be united with the cable on
+board the "Agamemnon," which ship should continue laying the line until
+the shores of Newfoundland were reached. After taking on the cable, the
+ships were ordered to Queenstown.
+
+The vessels left England in the midst of general rejoicings, and arrived
+at the rendezvous at the proper time. Thence they sailed for the harbor
+of Valentia, which was to be the eastern terminus of the line and the
+starting point of the expedition. They were greeted every-where with
+enthusiasm, and the greatest confidence in the success of the
+enterprise was manifested by those on board. Mr. Field, Professor Morse,
+and several other officers of the company were on board the "Niagara,"
+as that ship was to conduct the first part of the sinking of the cable.
+
+At length all was in readiness. The shore end of the cable was landed
+and made fast on Wednesday afternoon, the 5th of August, and the next
+morning the fleet stood out to sea. "Before they had gone five miles the
+heavy shore end of the cable caught in the machinery and parted. The
+'Niagara' put back, and the cable was 'underrun' the whole distance. At
+length the end was lifted out of the water and spliced to the gigantic
+coil, and as it dropped safely to the bottom of the sea, the mighty ship
+began to stir. At first she moved very slowly, not more than two miles
+an hour, to avoid the danger of accident; but the feeling that they are
+at last away is itself a relief. The ships are all in sight, and so near
+that they can hear each other's bells. The 'Niagara,' as if knowing that
+she is bound for the land out of whose forests she came, bends her head
+to the waves, as her prow is turned toward her native shores.
+
+"Slowly passed the hours of that day. But all went well, and the ships
+were moving out into the broad Atlantic. At length the sun went down in
+the west, and stars came out on the face of the deep. But no man slept.
+A thousand eyes were watching a great experiment, as those who have a
+personal interest in the issue. All through that night, and through the
+anxious days and nights that followed, there was a feeling in every soul
+on board as if a friend in the cabin were at the turning-point of life
+or death, and they were watching beside him. There was a strange,
+unnatural silence in the ship. Men paced the deck with soft and muffled
+tread, speaking only in whispers, as if a loud voice or a heavy footfall
+might snap the vital cord. So much had they grown to feel for the
+enterprise, that the cable seemed to them like a human creature, on
+whose fate they hung, as if it were to decide their own destiny.
+
+"There are some who will never forget that first night at sea. Perhaps
+the reaction from the excitement on shore made the impression the
+deeper. What strange thoughts came to them as they stood on the deck and
+watched that mysterious cord disappearing in the darkness, and gliding
+to its ocean bed! There are certain moments in life when every thing
+comes back upon us--when the events of years seem crowded into an hour.
+What memories came up in those long night hours! How many on board that
+ship thought of homes beyond the sea, of absent ones, of the distant and
+the dead! Such thoughts, mingling with those suggested by the scene
+around, added to the solemnity of the hour, had left an impression which
+can never be forgotten.
+
+"But with the work in hand all is going on well. There are vigilant eyes
+on deck. Mr. Bright, the engineer of the company, is there, and Mr.
+Everett, Mr. De Sauty, the electrician, and Professor Morse. The
+paying-out machinery does its work, and though it makes a constant
+rumble in the ship, that dull, heavy sound is music to their ears, as it
+tells them that all is well. If one should drop to sleep, and wake up at
+night, he has only to hear the sound of 'the old coffee-mill,' and his
+fears are relieved, and he goes to sleep again."
+
+Saturday and Sunday passed away without accident, but on Monday, when
+two hundred miles at sea, in deep water, and safely beyond the great
+submarine mountain, the electrical continuity was suddenly lost. This
+interruption amazed and perplexed all on board, but no one was able to
+remedy it, or to account for it satisfactorily. It lasted for two hours,
+and then, just as the order was about to be given to cut the cable and
+endeavor to wind it in, it came back as suddenly and mysteriously as it
+had disappeared. The greatest delight was now manifested by all on
+board. "You could see," says the correspondent of the London _Times_,
+"the tears of joy standing in the eyes of some as they almost cried for
+joy, and told their mess-mates that it was all right."
+
+That night, however, the expedition came to grief. The cable was running
+out freely at the rate of six miles per hour, while the ship was making
+only four. This was supposed to be owing to a powerful undercurrent. To
+check this waste of the cable the engineer applied the brakes firmly,
+which at once stopped the machine. The effect was to bring a heavy
+strain on the cable that was in the water. The stern of the ship was
+down in the trough of the sea, and as it rose upward on the swell, the
+pressure was too great, and the cable parted. The alarm was at once
+given, and the greatest consternation and grief prevailed on board. "It
+made all hands of us through the day," says Captain Hudson, "like a
+household or family which had lost their dearest friend, for officers
+and men had been deeply interested in the success of the enterprise."
+
+The fleet immediately put about and returned to England, where Mr. Field
+at once informed the directors of the extent of the disaster. The
+remaining portions of the cable were landed and stored safely away, and
+the vessels were returned to their respective Governments. Orders were
+given for the manufacture of seven hundred miles of cable to replace the
+portion which had been lost, and to allow for waste in paying it out,
+and the most energetic preparations were made for another attempt.
+
+Being satisfied that the machine used for paying out the cable was
+defective, Mr. Field went to Washington and procured from the Navy
+Department the services of Mr. Wm. E. Everett, the chief engineer of the
+"Niagara," stating to that gentleman the necessity for a new machine,
+and urging him to invent it. This Mr. Everett succeeded in doing during
+the winter. His machine was regarded as a great improvement on that
+which had been used on the "Niagara." "It was much smaller and lighter.
+It would take up only about one third as much room on the deck, and had
+only one fourth the weight of the old machine. Its construction was much
+more simple. Instead of four heavy wheels, it had but two, and these
+were made to revolve with ease, and without danger of sudden check, by
+the application of what were known as self-releasing brakes. These were
+the invention of Mr. Appold, of London, a gentleman of fortune, but with
+a strong taste for mechanics, which led him to spend his time and wealth
+in exercising his mechanical ingenuity. These brakes were so adjusted as
+to bear only a certain strain, when they released themselves. This
+ingenious contrivance was applied by Mr. Everett to the paying-out
+machinery. The strength of the cable was such that it would not break
+except under a pressure of a little over three tons. The machinery was
+so adjusted that not more than half that strain could possibly come upon
+the cable, when the brakes would relax their grasp, the wheels revolve
+easily, and the cable run out into the sea 'at its own sweet will.' The
+paying-out machine, therefore, we are far from claiming as wholly an
+American invention. This part of the mechanism was English. The merit of
+Mr. Everett lay in the skill with which he adapted it to the laying of
+the Atlantic cable, and in his great improvements of other parts of the
+machinery. The whole construction, as it afterward stood upon the decks
+of the 'Niagara' and the 'Agamemnon,' was the combined product of
+English and American invention."
+
+In January, 1858, the Board of Directors offered Mr. Field the sum of
+five thousand dollars per annum if he would assume the post of general
+manager of the company. He at once undertook the duties of the
+position, but declined all compensation.
+
+Every thing being in readiness for the second attempt at laying the
+cable, the "Niagara" sailed from New York in March, 1858, to take on her
+portion of the cable at Plymouth. The "Agamemnon" was again ordered to
+assist in the undertaking, and the "Gorgon" was made her consort Mr.
+Field had hoped that the "Susquehanna" would again be the consort of the
+"Niagara," but a few days before the sailing of the fleet he was
+officially informed that he could not have the ship, as she was then in
+the West Indies, with the greater part of her crew down with the yellow
+fever. This was a keen disappointment, as every arrangement had been
+made with the expectation of having the assistance of the "Susquehanna."
+It was too late to ask the Government at Washington for another ship,
+and it was by no means certain that the request would be granted if
+made. In this dilemma Mr. Field frankly stated his disappointment to the
+Lords of the Admiralty of England, and asked for a ship to accompany the
+"Niagara." He was informed that the English Government was at that
+moment chartering vessels to convey troops to Malta, as it had not ships
+enough of its own, and that it was doubtful whether it could contribute
+a third ship to the expedition. Still, so greatly did the government
+desire the success of the enterprise, that a little later on the same
+day the "Valorous" was ordered to take the place of the "Susquehanna" in
+the telegraph fleet. This generous assistance was all the more
+praiseworthy, as it was given at a time when the need of England for
+ships was very urgent.
+
+After shipping the cable, the squadron sailed from Plymouth on the 29th
+of May, 1868, for the Bay of Biscay, where the cable was subjected to
+numerous and thorough tests, which demonstrated its strength and its
+sensitiveness to the electric current. This accomplished, the vessels
+returned to Plymouth.
+
+"Among the matters of _personal_ solicitude and anxiety at this time,
+next to the success of the expedition, was Mr. Field himself. He was
+working with an activity which was unnatural--which could only be kept
+up by great excitement, and which involved the most serious danger. The
+strain on the man was more than the strain on the cable, and we were in
+fear that both would break together. Often he had no sleep, except such
+as he caught flying on the railway. Indeed, when we remonstrated, he
+said he could rest better there than anywhere else, for then he was not
+tormented with the thought of any thing undone. For the time being he
+could do no more; and then, putting his head in the cushioned corner of
+the carriage, he got an hour or two of broken sleep.
+
+"Of this activity we had an instance while in Plymouth. The ships were
+then lying in the Sound, only waiting orders from the Admiralty to go to
+sea; but some business required one of the directors to go to Paris,
+and, as usual, it fell upon him. He left on Sunday night, and went to
+Bristol, and thence, by the first morning train, to London. Monday he
+was busy all day, and that night went to Paris. Tuesday, another busy
+day, and that night back to London. Wednesday, occupied every minute
+till the departure of the Great Western train. That night back to
+Plymouth. Thursday morning on board the 'Niagara,' and immediately the
+squadron sailed."
+
+The plan of operations this time was for the vessels to proceed to a
+given point in mid-ocean, and there unite the two ends of the cable,
+after which the "Niagara" should proceed toward Newfoundland and the
+"Agamemnon" toward Ireland, and it was supposed that each vessel would
+make land about the same time. This was believed to be a better plan
+than the one pursued in the first expedition.
+
+The squadron sailed from Plymouth on the 10th of June. The weather was
+favorable for the first two or three clays of the voyage, but on the
+13th a severe gale set in, which lasted for over a week, and came near
+causing the "Agamemnon" to founder beneath her immense load, a portion
+of which broke loose in her hold. All the vessels succeeded in
+weathering the storm, however, and on the 25th reached the rendezvous in
+mid-ocean. The next day the splice was made, and the ships set out for
+their respective destinations. Before they had gone three miles the
+machinery of the "Niagara" caught the cable and broke it. A second
+splice was made, but when each ship had paid out about forty miles, the
+electric current suddenly ceased. The cable was cut promptly, and the
+two vessels at once returned to the rendezvous, where they rejoined each
+other on the 28th. A comparison of the logs of the two ships "showed the
+painful and mysterious fact that at the same second of time each vessel
+discovered that a total fracture had taken place, at a distance of
+certainly not less than ten miles from each ship, in fact, as well as can
+be judged, at the bottom of the ocean." A third splice was made without
+delay, and the two ships again set out for the opposite shores of the
+Atlantic. This time about two hundred miles of the cable were
+successfully laid, when it parted about twenty feet from the stern of
+the "Agamemnon." The "Niagara," being unable to communicate with the
+English frigate, bore away for Queenstown, where she was joined a few
+days later by the "Agamemnon."
+
+This second failure greatly disheartened the directors, and it required
+all Mr. Field's persuasiveness to induce them to sanction another
+attempt. Yet he prevailed, and, hastening from London to Queenstown,
+sailed with the telegraph fleet on the third attempt to lay the cable,
+leaving Queenstown on the 17th of July. The rendezvous was reached on
+the 28th, and on the 29th the splice was made; and the "Niagara" and
+"Agamemnon" parted company. This time the undertaking was successful.
+The cable was laid across the Atlantic, the "Niagara" reaching Trinity
+Bay, Newfoundland, on the 5th of August, and the "Agamemnon" arriving
+at Valentia, Ireland, a few hours later on the same day. Signals were
+sent across the entire length of the line, from shore to shore, with
+ease and rapidity, and nothing occurred to mar the success of the mighty
+undertaking.
+
+The successful laying of the cable was hailed with the liveliest joy on
+both sides of the Atlantic, and those who had participated in it were
+regarded as heroes. But great as was the achievement, it was not
+destined to be a lasting success. After working for four weeks, the
+electric current suddenly ceased on the 1st of September. It never
+worked _perfectly_ at any period of its existence, but it did transmit a
+number of messages with intelligibleness, and thus put an end to all
+doubt in the minds of the scientific men of the expedition of the
+feasibility of laying a successful line across the ocean.
+
+The public generally and the directors of the company were greatly
+disappointed, and many of-the latter and nearly all of the former
+declared that all such attempts must of necessity fail. Some persons
+even went so far as to avow their belief that the statements as to the
+successful transmission of signals over the wire were false; but the
+proofs that the wire did work properly for awhile are too strong to
+allow us to accord the slightest weight to this disbelief. But whether
+signals had passed over the wire or not, there could be no doubt that
+the cable had ceased to respond to the efforts of the electricians, and
+was a total failure, and the discouragement of nearly every one
+connected with it was most profound.
+
+Mr. Field and one or two others were the only persons who retained the
+slightest confidence in the enterprise, and it was clear to them that
+any further effort to secure the aid of private capital would be useless
+just then. An appeal was made to the British Government. It was urged
+that the work was too great to be undertaken by private capital alone,
+and that, since it was to be more of a public than a private nature, it
+was but just that the Government should undertake it. The company asked
+the Government to guarantee the interest on a certain amount of stock,
+even if the second attempt should not prove a complete success. The
+failure of the Red Sea cable, to which the British Government had given
+an unconditional guarantee, had just occurred, and had caused a
+considerable loss to the treasury, and the Government was not willing to
+assume another such risk. Anxious, however, for the success of the
+Atlantic telegraph, it increased its subsidy from fourteen thousand to
+twenty thousand pounds, and agreed to guarantee eight per cent, on six
+hundred thousand pounds of new capital for twenty-five years, upon the
+single condition that the cable should be made to work successfully.
+
+This was not all, however. The Government caused further soundings to be
+made off the coast of Ireland, which effectually dispelled all the fears
+which had been entertained of a submarine mountain which would prove an
+impassable barrier in the path of an ocean telegraph. In addition to
+this, it caused the organization of a board of distinguished scientific
+men for the purpose of determining all the difficult problems of
+submarine telegraphy. This board met in 1859, and sat two years. The
+result of its experiments and investigations was a declaration, signed
+by the members, that a cable properly made, "and paid into the ocean
+with the most improved machinery, possesses every prospect of not only
+being successfully laid in the first instance, but may reasonably be
+relied upon to continue many years in an efficient-state for the
+transmission of signals."
+
+Meanwhile, Mr. Field labored energetically to revive the company. The
+war which had broken out in the United States brought home to our
+Government the urgent need of telegraphic communication with Europe, and
+Mr. Field had no difficulty in obtaining from the President an assurance
+that this Government would be most happy to join with Great Britain in
+promoting this great international work. He addressed meetings of
+merchants in various American cities, and displayed the greatest energy
+in his efforts to enlist the aid of American capital. Very little was
+accomplished, however, until 1863. By this time the success of the lines
+in the Mediterranean and in the Persian Gulf had demonstrated the
+practicability of long submarine telegraphs, and the public confidence
+in the attempt had been revived to such an extent that the directors
+ventured to call for proposals for the manufacture of a cable. Seventeen
+offers were made, from which that of Messrs. Glass, Elliott & Co., of
+London, was selected. Mr. Field now renewed his indomitable efforts, and
+in a few months the new capital of six hundred thousand pounds was
+subscribed, Messrs. Glass, Elliott &, Co. taking three hundred and
+fifteen thousand pounds, besides one hundred thousand pounds in bonds.
+This was accomplished in 1864, and work on the cable was immediately
+begun. The cable now adopted was very different from, and much more
+sensitive than, those which had been used before. It was heavier, and
+less liable to be injured by the water.
+
+The "Great Eastern" steamship, the greatest wonder of naval
+architecture, was at this time advertised for sale, and it occurred to
+several of the gentlemen interested in the telegraph company that she
+was the best vessel for laying the cable that could be found. They at
+once organized themselves into a company, purchased the ship, and fitted
+her up for that service. They were fortunate in securing the services of
+Captain James Anderson, and placing him in charge of her, sent her to
+Sheerness, where the cable was sent down to her in lighters from the
+factory at Greenwich. When the cable was on board, and all the other
+arrangements had been completed, the big ship left the Thames and sailed
+for Valentia harbor.
+
+The point of landing had been changed from Valentia harbor, five or six
+miles, to Foilhommerum Bay. On the 23d of July, 1865, the shore end was
+connected with the cable on board the ship, and the voyage was begun. It
+would be interesting to follow the huge steamer on this remarkable
+voyage, and to relate to the reader the almost marvelous manner in which
+faults were detected in the line hundreds of miles from the shore, and
+how the cable was successfully hauled in and the damage repaired. All
+went well until twelve hundred miles of cable had been paid out, and the
+ship was but six hundred miles from the shores of Newfoundland, when the
+cable broke again and plunged into the sea.
+
+Mr. Canning, the engineer in charge, was dismayed, but not disheartened.
+For nine days the ship hung around the spot grappling for the cable, in
+the hope of raising it, and sinking its grapnels for this purpose to a
+depth of two miles. The cable was caught several times, but the rope
+which held the grapnel broke each time, and the precious coil fell back
+again into the deep. At length, having marked the place where the cable
+was lost with buoys, the ship put back for England, and the enterprise
+was abandoned for that year.
+
+Though unsuccessful in carrying the cable across the ocean, this
+expedition was by no means a failure. Its results are thus summed up by
+the officers in charge of it:
+
+
+     1. It was proved by the expedition of 1858 that a submarine
+     telegraph cable could be laid between Ireland and Newfoundland, and
+     messages transmitted through the same.
+
+     By the expedition of 1865 it has been fully demonstrated:
+
+     2. That the insulation of a cable improves very much after its
+     submersion in the cold deep water of the Atlantic, and that its
+     conducting power is considerably increased thereby.
+
+     3. That the steamship "Great Eastern," from her size and constant
+     steadiness, and from the control over her afforded by the joint use
+     of paddles and screw, renders it safe to lay an Atlantic cable in
+     any weather.
+
+     4. That in a depth of over two miles four attempts were made to
+     grapple the cable. In three of them the cable was caught by the
+     grapnel, and in the other the grapnel was fouled by the chain
+     attached to it.
+
+     5. That the paying-out machinery used on board the Great Eastern
+     worked perfectly, and can be confidently relied on for laying
+     cables across the Atlantic.
+
+     6. That with the improved telegraphic instruments for long
+     submarine lines, a speed of more than eight words per minute can be
+     obtained through such a cable as the present Atlantic one between
+     Ireland and Newfoundland, as the amount of slack actually paid out
+     did not exceed fourteen per cent., which would have made the total
+     cable laid between Valentia and Heart's Content nineteen hundred
+     miles.
+
+     7. That the present Atlantic cable, though capable of bearing a
+     strain of seven tons, did not experience more than fourteen
+     hundred-weight in being paid out into the deepest water of the
+     Atlantic between Ireland and Newfoundland.
+
+     8. That there is no difficulty in mooring buoys in the deep water
+     of the Atlantic between Ireland and Newfoundland, and that two
+     buoys even when moored by a piece of the Atlantic cable itself,
+     which had been previously lifted from the bottom, have ridden out a
+     gale.
+
+     9. That more than four nautical miles of the Atlantic cable have
+     been recovered from a depth of over two miles, and that the
+     insulation of the gutta-percha covered wire was in no way whatever
+     impaired by the depth of water or the strains to which it had been
+     subjected by lifting and passing through the hauling-in apparatus.
+
+     10. That the cable of 1865, owing to the improvements introduced
+     into the manufacture of the gutta-percha core, was more than one
+     hundred times better insulated than cables made in 1858, then
+     considered perfect and still working.
+
+     11. That the electrical testing can be conducted with such unerring
+     accuracy as to enable the electricians to discover the existence of
+     a fault immediately after its production or development, and very
+     quickly to ascertain its position in the cable.
+
+     12. That with a steam-engine attached to the paying-out machinery,
+     should a fault be discovered on board whilst laying the cable, it
+     is possible that it might be recovered before it had reached the
+     bottom of the Atlantic, and repaired at once.
+
+
+It was now placed beyond the possibility of a doubt that the cable would
+be laid within the next year. More than this, it was determined not only
+to lay a new cable between the two continents, but to fish up the cable
+of 1865, splice it and continue it to Newfoundland, thus giving the
+company two working lines.
+
+It was necessary, however, to raise more capital, and in this effort Mr.
+Field again put forth his restless and indomitable energies. As the
+public confidence in the scheme had been effectually restored, it was
+resolved to raise six hundred thousand pounds of new capital by the
+issue of one hundred and twenty thousand shares of five pounds each,
+which should be preferential shares, entitled to a dividend of twelve
+per cent, before the eight per cent, dividend to be paid on the former
+preference shares, and the four per cent, on the ordinary stock. They at
+once proceeded to issue these bonds, when they were informed by the
+Attorney-General that the proceeding was contrary to law.
+
+In this dilemma work on the new cable was at once stopped, and the money
+which had been paid in returned to the subscribers. As Parliament was
+not in session, and a new issue of stock could not be made by the
+company without its authorization, and as to wait for this would be to
+postpone the laying of the cable for another year, Mr. Field was now
+advised by Mr. Daniel Gooch, M.P., that the only way out of the
+difficulty was to organize a new company at once, which should assume
+the work, issue its own shares, and raise its own capital. Eminent legal
+gentlemen sustained Mr. Gooch in this opinion, and Mr. Field again set
+to work to organize a new company, under the name of the "Anglo-American
+Telegraph Company." The capital was fixed at six hundred thousand
+pounds, Mr. Field taking ten thousand pounds. The whole amount was
+raised in a short time, and the company "contracted with the Atlantic
+Cable Company to manufacture and lay down a cable in the summer of 1866,
+for doing which it is to be entitled to what virtually amounts to a
+preference dividend of twenty-five per cent., as a first claim is
+secured to them by the Atlantic Telegraph Company upon the revenue of
+the cable or cables (after the working expenses have been provided for)
+to the extent of one hundred and twenty-five thousand pounds per annum,
+and the New York, Newfoundland, and London Telegraph Company undertake
+to contribute from their revenue a further annual sum of twenty-five
+thousand pounds, on condition that a cable shall be working during
+1866."
+
+Once more the furnaces glowed and the hammers rang in the manufacture of
+the cable. Great improvements were made in the cable itself and in the
+machinery for laying it, and the "Great Eastern" was thoroughly
+overhauled. The cable was completed and put on board in June, and the
+big ship left the Medway on the last of the month and proceeded to
+Berehaven, in Ireland, where she took on her final stores of coal. This
+done, she proceeded to Valentia, where she arrived on the seventh of
+July.
+
+The shore end was successfully laid and made fast to the cable on board
+the "Great Eastern," and on Friday morning, the 13th of July, 1866, the
+huge ship set sail for Newfoundland, accompanied by her consorts of the
+telegraph fleet. The voyage occupied fourteen days, the ship making an
+average run of about one hundred and eighteen miles per day, and paying
+out about one hundred and thirty-one miles of cable in the same period
+of time. The weather was fair during the whole voyage, but the anxiety
+of the officers in charge was none the less on that account. There were
+accidents to be dreaded more than unfavorable weather. The ship was run
+at moderate speed all the way, as it was thought she had once or twice
+run too fast on the last voyage, and exposed the cable to danger. "The
+total slack of the cable was less than twelve per cent., showing that
+the cable was laid almost in a straight line, allowing for the swells
+and hollows in the bottom of the sea.
+
+"As the next week drew toward its close, it was evident that they were
+approaching the end of their voyage. By Thursday they had passed the
+great depths of the Atlantic, and were off soundings. Besides, their
+daily observations, there were many signs well known to mariners that
+they were near the coast. There were the sea-birds, and even the smell
+of the land, such as once greeted the sharp senses of Columbus, and made
+him sure that he was floating to some undiscovered shore. Captain
+Anderson had timed his departure so that he should approach the American
+coast at the full moon; and so, for the last two or three nights, as
+they drew near the Western shore, the round orb rose behind them,
+casting its soft light over sea and sky; and these happy men seemed like
+heavenly voyagers, floating gently on to a haven of rest.
+
+"In England the progress of the expedition was known from day to day,
+but on this side of the ocean all was uncertainty. Some had gone to
+Heart's Content, hoping to witness the arrival of the fleet, but not so
+many as the last year, for the memory of their disappointment was too
+fresh, and they feared the same result again. But still a faithful few
+were there, who kept their daily watch. Two weeks have passed. It is
+Friday morning, the 27th of July. They are up early, and looking
+eastward to see the day break, when a ship is seen in the offing. She is
+far down on the horizon. Spy-glasses are turned toward her. She comes
+nearer; and look, there is another, and another! And now the hull of the
+'Great Eastern' looms up all glorious in that morning sky. They are
+coming! Instantly all is wild excitement on shore. Boats put off to row
+toward the fleet. The 'Albany' is the first to round the point and enter
+the bay. The 'Terrible' is close behind; the 'Medway' stops an hour or
+two to join on the heavy shore end, while the 'Great Eastern,' gliding
+calmly in as if she had done nothing remarkable, drops her anchor in
+front of the telegraph house, having trailed behind her a chain of two
+thousand miles, to bind the old world to the new.
+
+"Although the expedition reached Newfoundland on Friday, the 27th, yet,
+as the cable across the Gulf of St. Lawrence was broken, the news was
+not received in New York till the 29th. It was early Sunday morning,
+before the Sabbath bells had rung their call to prayer, that the tidings
+came. The first announcement was brief: 'Heart's Content, July 27th. We
+arrived here at nine o'clock this morning. All well. Thank God, the
+cable is laid, and is in perfect working order. Cyrus W. Field.'"
+
+There was no failure in the communication this time. The electric
+current has continued to flow strongly and uninterruptedly from that day
+until the present, and experience has demonstrated for the wonderful
+wire a capacity far beyond the hopes of its projectors.
+
+Having laid the cable, the "Great Eastern" proceeded with surprising
+accuracy to where the line had been lost the year before, and succeeded
+in grappling and raising it to the surface. It was tested, and found to
+be in perfect order, messages being sent with ease from the ship to
+Valentia, and from that point back again. A splice was then made, and
+the line was continued to Newfoundland. Both cables are still working,
+and bid fair to be serviceable for many years to come.
+
+Many persons had contributed to this great success, but to Cyrus W.
+Field must be assigned the chief praise. His energy and perseverance
+kept the subject constantly before the public. His courage inspired
+others, and his faith in its ultimate success alone kept its best
+friends from abandoning it in its darkest hours. In its behalf he spent
+twelve years of constant toil, and made over fifty voyages, more than
+thirty of which were across the Atlantic. He devoted his entire fortune
+to the undertaking, of which he was the projector and cheerfully
+incurred the risk of poverty rather than abandon it. Therefore, it is
+but just that he, who was the chief instrument in obtaining for the
+world this great benefit, should receive the chief measure of the praise
+which it has brought to all connected with it.
+
+[Illustration: ROBERT FULTON.]
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+INVENTORS
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+ROBERT FULTON.
+
+
+One of the pleasantest as well as one of the most prominent places in
+the city of New York is the grave-yard of old Trinity Church. A handsome
+iron railing separates it from Broadway, and the thick rows of
+grave-stones, all crumbling and stained with age, present a strange
+contrast to the bustle, vitality, and splendor with which they are
+surrounded. They stare solemnly down into Wall Street, and offer a
+bitter commentary upon the struggles and anxiety of the money kings of
+the great city. Work, toil, plan, combine as you may, they seem to say,
+and yet it must all come to this.
+
+Not far from the south door of the church, and shaded by a venerable
+tree, is a plain brown stone slab, bearing this inscription: "The vault
+of Walter and Robert C. Livingston, sons of Robert Livingston, of the
+manor of Livingston." A stranger would pass it by without a second
+glance; yet it is one of the Meccas of the world of science, for the
+mortal part of Robert Fulton sleeps in the vault below, without monument
+or legendary stone to his memory, but in sight of the mighty steam
+fleets which his genius called forth. Very few visitors ever see this
+part of the churchyard, and the grave of Fulton is unknown to nine out
+of ten of his countrymen. Yet this man, sleeping so obscurely in his
+grave without a name, did far more for the world than either Napoleon or
+Wellington. He revolutionized commerce and manufactures, changed the
+entire system of navigation, triumphed over the winds and the waves, and
+compelled the adoption of a new system of modern warfare. Now he lies in
+a grave not his own, with no monument or statue erected to his memory in
+all this broad land.
+
+ROBERT FULTON was born in the township of Little Britain (now called
+Fulton), in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in 1765. He was of Irish
+descent, and his father was a farmer in moderate circumstances. He was
+the eldest son and third child of a family of five children. The farm
+upon which he was born was conveyed by his father in 1766 to Joseph
+Swift, in whose family it still remains. It contains three hundred and
+sixty-four acres, and is one of the handsomest farms in Lancaster
+County.
+
+After disposing of his farm, Mr. Fulton, senior, removed to the town of
+Lancaster, where he died in 1768, and there young Robert grew up under
+the care of his mother. He learned to read and write quickly, but did
+not manifest much fondness for his books after mastering his elementary
+studies. He early exhibited an unusual talent for drawing, however,
+greatly preferring the employment of his pencil to the more serious
+duties of the school. His instructors and companions considered him a
+dull boy, though all admitted that he showed no disposition to be idle.
+All his leisure time was spent either in drawing, or in visiting the
+shops of the mechanics in the place and eagerly watching their
+operations. He displayed a remarkable talent for mechanism, which was
+greatly assisted by his skill in drawing, and his visits to the machine
+shops were always welcomed by both the apprentices and their employers,
+who recognized the unusual genius of the boy, and predicted great things
+for him in the future. But to his teacher, who seems to have been rather
+more belligerent than is usual with Quakers, Robert's neglect of his
+studies and visits to the machine shops were so many indications of
+growing worthlessness. The indignant pedagogue once took occasion to
+remonstrate with him upon his course, and, failing to convince him by
+argument, rapped him sharply over the knuckles with a ruler, telling him
+he would make him do something. Robert at once placed his arms akimbo,
+and, looking his tutor sternly in the face, replied: "Sir, I came here
+to have something beat into my brains, not into my knuckles."
+
+Some time after this Mrs. Fulton, in conversation with the teacher,
+expressed her solicitude lest her son should "turn out nothing," since
+he neglected his books so entirely. The teacher frankly confessed that
+he had done all in his power for the boy, but that he was discouraged,
+and added: "Only yesterday, madam, Robert pertinaciously declared to me
+that his head was so full of original notions that there was no vacant
+chamber to store away the contents of any dusty books." The lad was only
+ten years of age at the time, and, as may be supposed, the good Quaker
+who directed his education was not a little dismayed by such a remark.
+
+The boyhood of Fulton was passed during the stormy period of the
+Revolution, and in a section so close to the theater of war that he was
+in the midst of all the excitement engendered by the conflict. He was an
+ardent patriot from the first, and used his pencil freely to caricature
+all who showed the slightest leaning to the cause of the enemy.
+
+In 1778 the supply of candles was so low in Lancaster that the town
+authorities advised the people to refrain from illuminating their houses
+on the 4th of July of that year, in order to save their candles. Robert,
+at this time but thirteen years old, was determined not to forego a
+patriotic display of some sort. He had prepared a quantity of candles
+for the occasion, and after the proclamation of the Town Council was
+issued, he took them to a Mr. John Fisher, who kept a store in the
+place, and sold powder and shot. Mr. Fisher was somewhat astonished at
+Robert's desire to part with the candles, which were at that time scarce
+articles, and asked his reason for so doing. The boy replied: "Our
+rulers have requested the citizens to refrain from illuminating their
+windows and streets; as good citizens we should comply with their
+request, and I prefer illuminating the heavens with sky-rockets." Having
+procured the powder, he left Mr. Fisher's, and entered a small variety
+store kept by a Mr. Cossart, where he purchased several sheets of
+large-sized pasteboard. As Mr. Cossart was about to roll them, the boy
+stopped him, saying he wished to carry them open. Mr. Cossart, knowing
+Robert's mechanical genius, asked him what he was about to invent.
+
+"Why," said the boy, "we are prohibited from illuminating our windows
+with candles, and I'm going to shoot my candles through the air."
+
+"Tut, tut, tut," said Mr. Cossart, laughingly; "that's an
+impossibility."
+
+"No, sir," said Robert, "there is nothing impossible."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: He proved that this was not impossible, for he had his
+display, making his rockets himself, and after his own model.]
+
+"Robert was known," says one of his biographers, "to purchase small
+quantities of quicksilver from Dr. Adam Simon Kuhn, druggist, residing
+opposite the market-house. He was trying some experiments that he did
+not wish to make public, and which the workmen in Mr. Fenno's and Mr.
+Christian Isch's shops were anxious to find out, but could not. He was
+in the habit almost daily of visiting those shops, and was a favorite
+among the workmen, who took advantage of his talent for drawing by
+getting him to make ornamental designs for guns, and sketches of the
+size and shape of guns, and then giving the calculations of the force,
+size of the bore and balls, and the distances they would fire; and he
+would accompany them to the open commons near by potter's field, to
+prove his calculations by shooting at a mark. On account of his
+expertness in his calculations, and of their ineffectual efforts to
+discover the use he was making of quicksilver, the shop-hands nicknamed
+him 'quicksilver Bob.'
+
+"Mr. Messersmith and Mr. Christian Isch were employed by the Government
+to make and repair the arms for the troops; and on several occasions
+guards were stationed at their shops to watch and see that the workmen
+were constantly employed during whole nights and on Sunday, to prevent
+any delay. The workmen had so much reliance and confidence in
+'quicksilver Bob's' judgment and mechanical skill, that every suggestion
+he would make as to the alteration of a gun, or any additional ornament
+that he would design, was invariably adopted by common consent.
+
+"In the summer of 1779, Robert Fulton evinced an extraordinary fondness
+for inventions. He was a frequent visitor at Mr. Messersmith's and Mr.
+Fenno's gunsmith shops, almost daily, and endeavored to manufacture a
+small air-gun."
+
+Among the acquaintances of Robert Fulton at this time was a young man,
+about eighteen years of age, named Christopher Gumpf, who used
+frequently to accompany his father in his fishing excursions on the
+Conestoga. Mr. Gumpf, Sen., being an experienced angler, readily
+consented to allow Robert to join himself and his son in these
+expeditions, and made the two boys earn their pleasure by pushing the
+boat about the stream, as he desired to move from point to point. As the
+means of propulsion was simply a pole, the labor was very severe, and
+Robert soon became tired of it. Not wishing, however, to give up his
+pleasant fishing trips, he determined to devise some means of lightening
+the labor.
+
+"He absented himself a week, having gone to Little Britain township to
+spend a few days at his aunt's; and while there he planned and completed
+a small working model of a fishing boat, with paddle-wheels. On leaving
+his aunt's, he placed the model in the garret, with a request that it
+should not be destroyed. Many years afterward, that simple model was the
+attraction of friends, and became, instead of lumber in the garret, an
+ornament in the aunt's parlor, who prized it highly. That model was the
+result of Robert's fishing excursions with Christopher Gumpf; and when
+he returned from his aunt's he told Christopher that he must make a set
+of paddles to work at the sides of the boat, to be operated by a double
+crank, and then they could propel the old gentleman's fishing-boat with
+greater ease. Two arms or pieces of timber were then fastened together
+at right angles, with a paddle at each end, and the crank was attached
+to the boat across it near the stern, with a paddle operating on a pivot
+as a rudder; and Fulton's first invention was tried on the Conestoga
+River, opposite Rockford, in the presence of Peter and Christopher
+Gumpf. The boys were so pleased with the experiment, that they hid the
+paddles in the bushes on the shore, lest others might use and break
+them, and attached them to the boat whenever they chose; and thus did
+they enjoy very many fishing excursions."
+
+This was the first experiment in the science of navigation attempted by
+the man who afterward became the author of a new system.
+
+Having chosen the profession of an artist and portrait painter, young
+Fulton removed to Philadelphia at the age of seventeen, and remained
+there, pursuing his vocation, until the completion of his twenty-first
+year. He formed there the acquaintance of Benjamin Franklin, by whom he
+was much noticed. His success was rapid, and upon attaining his majority
+he was enabled to purchase and stock a farm of eighty-four acres in
+Washington County, Pennsylvania, which he gave to his mother for a home
+as long as she should live. Having thus insured her comfort, he went to
+England for the purpose of completing his studies in his profession. He
+took with him letters to Benjamin West, then at the height of his fame,
+and living in London. He was cordially received by Mr. West, who was
+also a native of Pennsylvania, and remained an inmate of his family for
+several years. West was then the President of the Royal Academy of Great
+Britain, and was thus enabled to extend to Fulton, to whom he became
+deeply attached, many advantages, both social and professional, of which
+the young artist was prompt to avail himself.
+
+Upon leaving the family of Mr. West, Fulton commenced a tour for the
+purpose of examining the treasures of art contained in the residences of
+the English nobility, and remained for two years in Devonshire. There he
+became acquainted with the Duke of Bridgewater, to whom England is
+indebted for the introduction of the canal system within her limits; and
+it is said that he was induced by this nobleman to abandon the
+profession of an artist, and enter upon that of a civil engineer. This
+nobleman being devoted to mechanical investigations, proved a very
+congenial acquaintance to Fulton. He was engaged at the time on a scheme
+of steam navigation by a propeller, modeled after the foot of a water
+fowl. His plan did not commend itself to Fulton's judgment, and he
+addressed him a letter, setting forth its defects, and advancing some of
+the views upon which he acted himself in after life. Here he also met
+with Watt, who had just produced the steam-engine, which Fulton studied
+enthusiastically. His own inventive genius was not idle, and while
+living in Devonshire, he produced an improved mill for sawing marble,
+which won him the thanks and medal of the British Society for the
+Promotion of the Arts and Commerce; a machine for spinning flax and
+making ropes; and an excavator for scooping out the channels of canals
+and aqueducts, all of which were patented. He published a number of
+communications on the subject of canals in one of the leading London
+journals, and a treatise upon the same subject. Having obtained a patent
+in England for canal improvements, he went to France in 1797, with the
+design of introducing them in that country.
+
+Upon reaching Paris, he took up his residence with Mr. Joel Barlow, and
+thus was laid the foundation of a friendship between these two gentlemen
+which lasted during their lives. He remained in Paris seven years,
+residing during that time with Mr. Barlow, and devoting himself to the
+study of modern languages, and engineering and its kindred sciences.
+
+His work was continuous and severe in Paris. He invented and painted the
+first panorama ever exhibited in that city, which he sold for the
+purpose of raising money for his experiments in steam navigation; he
+also designed a series of splendid colored illustrations for _The
+Columbiad_, the famous poem of his friend Mr. Barlow. Besides these, he
+invented a number of improvements in canals, aqueducts, inclined planes,
+boats, and guns, which yielded him considerable credit, but very little
+profit.
+
+In 1801, he invented a submarine boat which he called the "Nautilus,"
+which is thus described by M. de St. Aubin, a member of the Tribunate:
+
+"The diving-boat, in the construction of which he is now employed, will
+be capacious enough to contain eight men and provision for twenty days,
+and will be of sufficient strength and power to enable him to plunge one
+hundred feet under water, if necessary. He has contrived a reservoir of
+air, which will enable eight men to remain under water eight hours. When
+the boat is above water, it has two sails, and looks just like a common
+boat; when it is to dive, the mast and sails are struck.
+
+"In making his experiments, Mr. Fulton not only remained a whole hour
+under water, with three of his companions, but had the boat parallel to
+the horizon at any given distance. He proved that the compass points as
+correctly under water as on the surface, and that while under water the
+boat made way at the rate of half a league an hour, by means contrived
+for that purpose.
+
+"It is not twenty years since all Europe was astonished at the first
+ascension of men in balloons: perhaps in a few years they will not be
+less surprised to see a flotilla of diving-boats, which, on a given
+signal, shall, to avoid the pursuit of an enemy, plunge under water, and
+rise again several leagues from the place where they descended!
+
+"But if we have not succeeded in steering the balloon, and even were it
+impossible to attain that object, the case is different with the
+diving-boat, which can be conducted under water in the same manner as
+upon the surface. It has the advantage of sailing like the common boat,
+and also of diving when it is pursued. With these qualities, it is fit
+for carrying secret orders, to succor a blockaded fort, and to examine
+the force and position of an enemy in their harbors."
+
+In connection with this boat, Fulton invented a torpedo, or infernal
+machine, for the purpose of destroying vessels of war by approaching
+them under water and breaking up their hulls by the explosion. He
+offered his invention several times to the French Government, and once
+to the Ambassador of Holland at Paris, without being able to induce them
+to consider it. Somewhat later, he visited London, at the request of the
+British Ministry, and explained his invention to them. Although he
+succeeded in blowing up a vessel of two hundred tons with one hundred
+and seventy pounds of powder, and in extorting from Mr. Pitt the
+acknowledgment that, if introduced into practice, the torpedo would
+annihilate all navies, his invention was rejected, through the influence
+of Lord Melville, who feared that its adoption might injure England more
+than it would benefit her. At the first, when it was thought that
+England would purchase Fulton's invention, it was intimated to him that
+he would be required to pledge himself not to dispose of it to any other
+power. He replied promptly:
+
+"Whatever may be your award, I never will consent to let these
+inventions lie dormant should my country at any time have need of them.
+Were you to grant me an annuity of twenty thousand pounds, I would
+sacrifice all to the safety and independence of my country."
+
+In 1806, Mr. Fulton returned to New York, and in the same year he
+married Miss Harriet Livingston, a niece of Chancellor Livingston, by
+whom he had four children. He offered his torpedo to the General
+Government, but the trial to which it was subjected by the Navy
+Department was unsuccessful for him, and the Government declined to
+purchase the invention.
+
+But it was not as the inventor of engines of destruction that Robert
+Fulton was to achieve fame. A still nobler triumph was reserved for
+him--one which was to bring joy instead of sorrow to the world. From the
+time that Fulton had designed the paddle-wheels for his fishing-boat, he
+had never ceased to give his attention to the subject of propelling
+vessels by machinery, and after his acquaintance with Watt, he was more
+than ever convinced that the steam-engine could, under proper
+circumstances, be made to furnish the motive power.
+
+Several eminent and ingenious men, previous to this, had proposed to
+propel vessels by steam power, among whom were Dr. Papin, of France,
+Savery, the Marquis of Worcester, and Dr. John Allen, of London, in
+1726. In 1786, Oliver Evans, of Philadelphia, and about the same time
+Dr. Franklin, proposed to accomplish this result by forcing a quantity
+of water, by means of steam power, through an opening made for that
+purpose in the stern of the hull of the boat.
+
+In 1737, Jonathan Hulls issued a pamphlet proposing to construct a boat
+to be moved by steam power, for the purpose of towing vessels out of
+harbors against tide and winds. In his plan the paddle-wheel was used,
+and was secured to a frame placed far out over the stern of the boat. It
+was given this position by the inventor because water fowls propelled
+themselves by pushing their feet behind them.
+
+In 1787, Mr. James Rumsey, of Shepherdstown, Virginia, constructed and
+navigated the first steamboat in actual use. His boat was eighty feet in
+length, and was propelled by means of a vertical pump in the middle of
+the vessel, by which the water was drawn in at the bow and expelled at
+the stern through a horizontal trough in her hull. The engine weighed
+about one third of a ton, and the boat had a capacity of about three
+tons burthen. When thus laden, a speed of about four miles an hour could
+be attained. The boiler held only five gallons of water, and needed but
+a pint at a time. Rumsey went to England to exhibit his plan on the
+Thames, and died there in 1793.
+
+About the same time the Marquis de Joffrey launched a steamer one
+hundred feet long on the Loire, at Lyons, using paddles revolving on an
+endless chain, but only to find his experiment a failure.
+
+In December, 1786, John Fitch published the following account of a
+steamer with which he had made several experiments on the Delaware, at
+Philadelphia, and which came nearer to success than any thing that had
+at that time been invented:
+
+"The cylinder is to be horizontal, and the steam to work with equal
+force at each end. The mode by which we obtain what I term a vacuum is,
+it is believed, entirely new, as is also the method of letting the water
+into it, and throwing it off against the atmosphere without any
+friction. It is expected that the cylinder, which is of twelve inches
+diameter, will move a clear force of eleven or twelve cwt. after the
+frictions are deducted: this force is to be directed against a wheel of
+eighteen inches diameter. The piston moves about three feet, and each
+vibration of it gives the axis about forty revolutions. Each revolution
+of the axis moves twelve oars or paddles five and a half feet: they work
+perpendicularly, and are represented by the strokes of a paddle of a
+canoe. As six of the paddles are raised from the water, six more are
+entered, and the two sets of paddles make their strokes of about eleven
+feet in each revolution. The crank of the axis acts upon the paddles
+about one-third of their length from their lower ends, on which part of
+the oar the whole force of the axis is applied. The engine is placed in
+the bottom of the boat, about one-third from the stern, and both the
+action and reaction turn the wheel the same way."
+
+Fitch was unfortunate in his affairs, and became so disheartened that
+he ceased to attempt to improve his invention, and finally committed
+suicide by drowning himself in the Alleghany River at Pittsburgh.
+
+In 1787, Mr. Patrick Miller, of Dalwinston, Scotland, designed a double
+vessel, propelled by a wheel placed in the stern between the two keels.
+This boat is said to have been very successful, but it was very small,
+the cylinder being only four inches in diameter. In 1789, Mr. Miller
+produced a larger vessel on the same plan, which made seven miles per
+hour in the still water of the Forth and Clyde Canal, but it proved too
+weak for its machinery, which had to be taken out.
+
+It was in the face of these failures that Fulton applied himself to the
+task of designing a successful steamboat. During his residence in Paris
+he had made the acquaintance of Mr. Robert R. Livingston, then the
+American minister in France, who had previously been connected with some
+unsuccessful steamboat experiments at home. Mr. Livingston was delighted
+to find a man of Fulton's mechanical genius so well satisfied of the
+practicability of steam navigation, and joined heartily with him in his
+efforts to prove his theories by experiments. Several small working
+models made by Fulton convinced Mr. Livingston that the former had
+discovered and had overcome the cause of the failure of the experiments
+of other inventors, and it was finally agreed between them to build a
+large boat for trial on the Seine. This experimental steamer was
+furnished with paddle wheels, and was completed and launched early in
+the spring of 1803. On the very morning appointed for the trial, Fulton
+was aroused from his sleep by a messenger from the boat, who rushed into
+his chamber, pale and breathless, exclaiming, "Oh, sir, the boat has
+broken in pieces and gone to the bottom!" Hastily dressing and hurrying
+to the spot, he found that the weight of the machinery had broken the
+boat in half and carried the whole structure to the bottom of the river.
+He at once set to work to raise the machinery, devoting twenty-four
+hours, without resting or eating, to the undertaking, and succeeded in
+doing so, but inflicted upon his constitution a strain from which he
+never entirely recovered. The machinery was very slightly damaged, but
+it was necessary to rebuild the boat entirely. This was accomplished by
+July of the same year, and the boat was tried in August with triumphant
+success, in the presence of the French National Institute and a vast
+crowd of the citizens of Paris.
+
+This steamer was very defective, but still so great an improvement upon
+all that had preceded it, that Messrs. Fulton and Livingston determined
+to build one on a larger scale in the waters of New York, the right of
+navigating which by steam vessels had been secured by the latter as far
+back as 1798. The law which granted this right had been continued from
+time to time through Mr. Livingston's influence, and was finally amended
+so as to include Fulton within its provisions. Having resolved to return
+home, Fulton set out as soon as possible, stopping in England on his
+return, to order an engine for his boat from Watt and Boulton. He gave
+an exact description of the engine, which was built in strict accordance
+with his plan, but declined to state the use to which he intended
+putting it.
+
+Very soon after his arrival in New York, he commenced building his first
+American boat, and finding that her cost would greatly exceed his
+estimate, he offered for sale a third interest in the monopoly of the
+navigation of the waters of New York, held by Livingston and himself, in
+order to raise money to build the boat, and thus lighten the burdens of
+himself and his partner, but he could find no one willing to risk money
+in such a scheme. Indeed, steam navigation was universally regarded in
+America as a mere chimera, and Fulton and Livingston were ridiculed for
+their faith in it. The bill granting the monopoly held by Livingston was
+regarded as so utterly absurd by the Legislature of New York, that that
+wise body could with difficulty be induced to consider it seriously.
+Even among scientific men the project was considered impracticable. A
+society in Rotterdam had, several years before Fulton's return home,
+applied to the American Philosophical Society to be informed whether any
+and what improvements had been made in the construction of steam-engines
+in America. A reply to this inquiry was prepared, at the request of the
+Society, by Mr. Benjamin H. Latrobe, a distinguished engineer. The
+following extracts from this paper will show the reader how Fulton's
+scheme was regarded by one who was confessedly one of the most brilliant
+engineers of his day, and who has since accomplished so much for the
+improvement of steam travel:
+
+
+     During the general lassitude of mechanical exertion which succeeded
+     the American Revolution, We utility of steam-engines appears to
+     have been forgotten; but the subject afterward started into very
+     general notice in a form in which it could not possibly be attended
+     with success. A sort of mania began to prevail, which, indeed, has
+     not yet entirely subsided, for impelling boats by steam-engines.
+     Dr. Franklin proposed to force forward the boat by the immediate
+     application of the steam upon the water. Many attempts to simplify
+     the working of the engine, and more to employ a means of dispensing
+     with the beam in converting the _libratory_ into a rotatory motion,
+     were made. For a short time, a passage-boat, rowed by a
+     steam-engine, was established between Borden-town and Philadelphia,
+     but it was soon laid aside. The best and most powerful steam-engine
+     which has been employed for this purpose--excepting, perhaps, one
+     constructed by Dr. Kinsey, with the performance of which I am not
+     sufficiently acquainted--belonged to a gentleman of New York. It
+     was made to act, by way of experiment, upon oars, upon paddles, and
+     upon flutter-wheels. Nothing in the success of any of these
+     experiments appeared to be sufficient compensation for the expense
+     and the extreme inconvenience of the steam-engine in the vessel.
+
+     There are, indeed, general objections to the use of the
+     steam-engine for impelling boats, from which no particular mode of
+     application can be free. These are:
+
+     First. The weight of the engine and of the fuel.
+
+     Second. The large space it occupies.
+
+     Third. The tendency of its action to rack the vessel, and render it
+     leaky.
+
+     Fourth. The expense of maintenance.
+
+     Fifth. The irregularity of its motion, and the motion of the water
+     in the boiler and cistern, and of the fuel-vessel in rough water.
+
+     Sixth. The difficulty arising from the liability of the paddles and
+     oars to break, if light, and from the weight, if made strong.
+
+     Nor have I ever heard of an instance, verified by other testimony
+     than that of the inventor, of a speedy and agreeable voyage having
+     been performed in a steamboat of any construction.
+
+     I am well aware that there are still many very respectable and
+     ingenious men who consider the application of the steam-engine to
+     the purpose of navigation as highly important, and as very
+     practicable, especially on the rapid waters of the Mississippi, and
+     who would feel themselves almost offended at the expression of an
+     opposite opinion. And, perhaps, some of the objections against it
+     may be avoided. That founded on the expense and weight of the fuel
+     may not, for some years, exist on the Mississippi, where there is a
+     redundance of wood on the banks; but the cutting and loading will
+     be almost as great an evil.
+
+
+Scientific men and amateurs all agreed in pronouncing Fulton's scheme
+impracticable; but he went on with his work, his boat attracting no less
+attention and exciting no less ridicule than the ark had received from
+the scoffers in the days of Noah. The steam-engine ordered from Boulton
+and Watt was received in the latter part of 1806; and in the following
+spring the boat was launched from the ship-yard of Charles Brown, on the
+East River. Fulton named her the "Clermont," after the country-seat of
+his friend and partner, Chancellor Livingston. She was one hundred and
+sixty tons burthen, one hundred and thirty feet long, eighteen feet
+wide, and seven feet deep. Her engine was made with a single cylinder,
+two feet in diameter, and of four feet stroke; and her boiler was twenty
+feet long, seven feet deep, and eight feet broad. The diameter of the
+paddle-wheels was fifteen feet, the boards four feet long, and dipping
+two feet in the water. The boat was completed about the last of August,
+and she was moved by her machinery from the East River into the Hudson,
+and over to the Jersey shore. This trial, brief as it was, satisfied
+Fulton of its success, and he announced that in a few days the steamer
+would sail from New York for Albany. A few friends, including several
+scientific men and mechanics, were invited to take passage in the boat,
+to witness her performance; and they accepted the invitation with a
+general conviction that they were to do but little more than witness
+another failure.
+
+Monday, September 10, 1807, came at length, and a vast crowd assembled
+along the shore of the North River to witness the starting. As the hour
+for sailing drew near, the crowd increased, and jokes were passed on all
+sides at the expense of the inventor, who paid little attention to them,
+however, but busied himself in making a final and close inspection of
+the machinery. Says Fulton, "The morning I left New York, there were
+not, perhaps, thirty persons in the city who believed that the boat
+would ever move one mile per hour, or be of the least utility; and while
+we were putting off from the wharf, which was crowded with spectators, I
+heard a number of sarcastic remarks."
+
+One o'clock, the hour for sailing, came, and expectation was at its
+highest. The friends of the inventor were in a state of feverish anxiety
+lest the enterprise should come to grief, and the scoffers on the wharf
+were all ready to give vent to their shouts of derision. Precisely as
+the hour struck, the moorings were thrown off, and the "Clermont" moved
+slowly out into the stream. Volumes of smoke and sparks from her
+furnaces, which were fed with pine wood, rushed forth from her chimney,
+and her wheels, which were uncovered, scattered the spray far behind
+her. The spectacle she presented as she moved out gradually from her
+dock was certainly novel to the people of those days, and the crowd on
+the wharf broke into shouts of ridicule. Soon, however, the jeers grew
+silent, for it was seen that the steamer was by degrees increasing her
+speed. In a little while she was fairly under weigh, and making a steady
+progress up the stream at the rate of five miles per hour. The
+incredulity of the spectators had been succeeded by astonishment, and
+now this feeling gave way to undisguised delight, and cheer after cheer
+went up from the vast throng. Many people followed the boat for some
+distance up the river shore. In a little while, however, the boat was
+observed to stop, and the enthusiasm of the people on the shore at once
+subsided. The scoffers were again in their glory, and unhesitatingly
+pronounced the boat a failure. Their chagrin may be imagined when, after
+a short delay, the steamer once more proceeded on her way, and this time
+even more rapidly than before. Fulton had discovered that the paddles
+were too long, and took too deep a hold on the water, and had stopped
+the boat for the purpose of shortening them.
+
+Having remedied this defect, the "Clermont" continued her voyage during
+the rest of the day and all night, without stopping, and at one o'clock
+the next day ran alongside the landing at Clermont, the seat of
+Chancellor Livingston. She lay there until nine the next morning, when
+she continued her voyage toward Albany, reaching that city at five in
+the afternoon, having made the entire distance between New York and
+Albany (one hundred and fifty miles) in thirty-two hours of actual
+running time, an average speed of nearly five miles per hour. On her
+return trip, she reached New York in thirty hours running time--exactly
+five miles per hour. Fulton states that during both trips he encountered
+a head wind.
+
+The river was at this time navigated entirely with sailing vessels, and
+large numbers of these were encountered by the "Clermont" during her up
+and down trips. The surprise and dismay excited among the crews of these
+vessels by the appearance of the steamer was extreme. These simple
+people, the majority of whom had heard nothing of Fulton's experiments,
+beheld what they supposed to be a huge monster, vomiting fire and smoke
+from its throat, lashing the water with its fins, and shaking the river
+with its roar, approaching rapidly in the very face of both wind and
+tide. Some threw themselves flat on the deck of their vessels, where
+they remained in an agony of terror until the monster had passed, while
+others took to their boats and made for the shore in dismay, leaving
+their vessels to drift helplessly down the stream. Nor was this terror
+confined to the sailors. The people dwelling along the shore crowded the
+banks to gaze upon the steamer as she passed by. A former resident of
+the neighborhood of Poughkeepsie thus describes the scene at that place,
+which will serve as a specimen of the conduct of the people along the
+entire river below Albany:
+
+"It was in the early autumn of the year 1807 that a knot of villagers
+was gathered on a high bluff just opposite Poughkeepsie, on the west
+bank of the Hudson, attracted by the appearance of a strange,
+dark-looking craft, which was slowly making its way up the river. Some
+imagined it to be a sea-monster, while others did not hesitate to
+express their belief that it was a sign of the approaching judgment
+What seemed strange in the vessel was the substitution of lofty and
+straight black smoke-pipes, rising from the deck, instead of the
+gracefully tapered masts that commonly stood on the vessels navigating
+the stream, and, in place of the spars and rigging, the curious play of
+the working-beam and pistons, and the slow turning and splashing of the
+huge and naked paddle-wheels, met the astonished gaze. The dense clouds
+of smoke, as they rose wave upon wave, added still more to the
+wonderment of the rustics.
+
+"This strange-looking craft was the 'Clermont,' on her trial trip to
+Albany; and of the little knot of villagers mentioned above, the writer,
+then a boy in his eighth year, with his parents, formed a part. I well
+remember the scene, one so well fitted to impress a lasting picture upon
+the mind of a child accustomed to watch the vessels that passed up and
+down the river.
+
+"The forms of four persons were distinctly visible on the deck as she
+passed the bluff--one of whom, doubtless, was Robert Fulton, who had on
+board with him all the cherished hopes of years, the most precious cargo
+the wonderful boat could carry.
+
+"On her return trip, the curiosity she excited was scarcely less
+intense. The whole country talked of nothing but the sea-monster,
+belching forth fire and smoke. The fishermen became terrified, and rowed
+homewards, and they saw nothing but destruction devastating their
+fishing-grounds; while the wreaths of black vapor, and rushing noise of
+the paddle-wheels, foaming with the stirred-up waters, produced great
+excitement among the boatmen, which continued without abatement, until
+the character of that curious boat, and the nature of the enterprise
+which she was pioneering, had been understood."
+
+The alarm of the sailors and dwellers on the river shore disappeared as
+the character of the steamer became better known; but when it was found
+that the "Clermont" was to run regularly between New York and Albany, as
+a packet-boat, she became the object of the most intense hatred on the
+part of the boatmen on the river, who feared that she would entirely
+destroy their business. In many quarters Fulton and his invention were
+denounced as baneful to society, and frequent attempts were made by
+captains of sailing vessels to sink the "Clermont" by running into her.
+She was several times damaged in this way, and the hostility of the
+boatmen became so great that it was necessary for the Legislature of New
+York to pass a law declaring combinations to destroy her, or willful
+attempts to injure her, public offenses punishable by fine and
+imprisonment.
+
+It had been supposed that Fulton's object was to produce a steamer
+capable of navigating the Mississippi River, and much surprise was
+occasioned by the announcement that the "Clermont" was to be permanently
+employed upon the Hudson. She continued to ply regularly between New
+York and Albany until the close of navigation for that season, always
+carrying a full complement of passengers, and more or less freight.
+During the winter she was overhauled and enlarged, and her speed
+improved. In the spring of 1808 she resumed her regular trips, and since
+then steam navigation on the Hudson has not ceased for a single day,
+except during the closing of the river by ice.
+
+In 1811 and 1812, Fulton built two steam ferry-boats for the North
+River, and soon after added a third for the East River. These boats were
+the beginning of the magnificent steam ferry system which is to-day one
+of the chief wonders of New York. They were what are called twin-boats,
+each of them consisting of two complete hulls, united by a deck or
+bridge. They were sharp at both ends, and moved equally well with
+either end foremost, so that they could cross and re-cross without being
+turned around. These boats were given engines of sufficient power to
+enable them to overcome the force of strong ebb tides; and in order to
+facilitate their landing, Fulton contrived a species of floating dock,
+and a means of decreasing the shock caused by the striking of the boat
+against the dock. These boats could accommodate eight four-wheel
+carriages, twenty-nine horses, and four hundred passengers. Their
+average time across the North River, a mile and a half wide, was twenty
+minutes.
+
+The introduction of the steamboat gave a powerful impetus to the
+internal commerce of the Union. It opened to navigation many important
+rivers (whose swift currents had closed them to sailing craft), and made
+rapid and easy communication between the most distant parts of the
+country practicable. The public soon began to appreciate this, and
+orders came in rapidly for steamboats for various parts of the country.
+Fulton executed these as fast as possible, and among the number several
+for boats for the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers.
+
+Early in 1814, the city of New York was seriously menaced with an attack
+from the British fleet, and Fulton was called on by a committee of
+citizens to furnish a plan for a means of defending the harbor. He
+exhibited to the committee his plans for a vessel of war to be propelled
+by steam, capable of carrying a strong battery, with furnaces for
+red-hot shot, and which, he represented, would move at the rate of four
+miles an hour. These plans were also submitted to a number of naval
+officials, among whom were Commodore Decatur, Captain Jones, Captain
+Evans, Captain Biddle, Commodore Perry, Captain Warrington, and Captain
+Lewis, all of whom warmly united in urging the Government to undertake
+the construction of the proposed steamer. The citizens of New York
+offered, if the Government would employ and pay for her after she was
+built, to advance the sum ($320,000) necessary for her construction. The
+subject was vigorously pressed, and in March, 1814, Congress authorized
+the building of one or more floating batteries after the plan presented
+by Fulton. Her keel was laid on the 20th of June, 1814, and on the 31st
+of October, of the same year, she was launched, amid great rejoicings,
+from the ship-yard of Adam and Noah Brown. In May, 1815, her engines
+were put on board, and on the 4th of July of that year she made a trial
+trip to Sandy Hook and back, accomplishing the round trip--a distance of
+fifty-three miles--in eight hours and twenty minutes, under steam alone.
+Before this, however, peace had been proclaimed, and Fulton had gone to
+rest from his labors.
+
+The ship was a complete success, and was the first steam vessel of war
+ever built. She was called the "Fulton the First," and was for many
+years used as the receiving ship at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. She was an
+awkward and unwieldy mass, but was regarded as the most formidable
+vessel afloat; and as the pioneer of the splendid war steamers of to-day
+is still an object of great interest. The English regarded her with
+especial uneasiness, and put in circulation the most marvelous stories
+concerning her. One of these I take from a treatise on steam navigation
+published in Scotland at this period, the author of which assures his
+readers that he has taken the utmost pains to obtain full and accurate
+information respecting the American war steamer. His description is as
+follows:
+
+"Length on deck three hundred feet, breadth two hundred feet, thickness
+of her sides, thirteen feet, of alternate oak plank and corkwood;
+carries forty-four guns, four of which are 100-pounders, quarter-deck
+and forcastle guns, 44-pounders; and further, to annoy an enemy
+attempting to board, can discharge one hundred gallons of boiling water
+in a minute, and by mechanism brandishes three hundred cutlasses, with
+the utmost regularity, over her gunwales; works also an equal number of
+heavy iron pikes of great length, darting them from her sides with
+prodigious force, and withdrawing them every quarter of a minute!"
+
+Fulton followed up the "Clermont," in 1807, with a larger boat, called
+the "Car of Neptune," which was placed on the Albany route as soon as
+completed. The Legislature of New York had enacted a law, immediately
+upon his first success, giving to Livingston and himself the exclusive
+right to navigate the waters of the State by steam, for five years for
+every additional boat they should build in the State, provided the whole
+term should not exceed thirty years. "In the following year the
+Legislature passed another act, confirmatory of the prior grants, and
+giving new remedies to the grantees for any invasion of them, and
+subjecting to forfeiture any vessel propelled by steam which should
+enter the waters of the State without their license. In 1809 Fulton
+obtained his first patent from the United States; and in 1811 he took
+out a second patent for some improvement in his boats and machinery. His
+patents were limited to the simple means of adapting paddle wheels to
+the axle of the crank of Watt's engine.
+
+"Meanwhile the power of the Legislature to grant the steamboat monopoly
+was denied, and a company was formed at Albany to establish another line
+of steam passage boats on the Hudson, between that city and New York.
+The State grantees filed a bill in equity, and prayed for an injunction,
+which was refused by Chancellor Lansing, on the ground that the act of
+the State Legislature was repugnant to the Constitution of the United
+States, and against common right. This decree was unanimously reversed
+by the Court of Errors, and a compromise was effected with the Albany
+company by an assignment to them of the right to employ steam on the
+waters of Lake Champlain.
+
+"Legislative aid was again invoked, and an act was passed directing
+peremptorily the allowance of an injunction on the prayer of the State
+grantees, and the seizure of any hostile boat at the commencement of the
+suit. Litigation was thus effectually arrested in New York, though by an
+arbitrary and unconstitutional enactment, and the waters of the State
+remained in the exclusive possession of Fulton and his partner during
+the lifetime of the former. A similar controversy with Colonel Aaron
+Ogden, of New Jersey, was compromised by advantageous concessions, which
+converted the opponent of the monopoly into its firmest friend, and left
+him many years afterward the defeated party in the famous suit of
+Gibbons and Ogden, in the Supreme Court of the United States."
+
+In January, 1815, Fulton was summoned to Trenton, New Jersey, as a
+witness in one of the numerous suits which grew out of the efforts to
+break down his monopoly. During his examination he was very much
+exposed, as the hall of the Legislature was uncommonly cold. In
+returning home, he crossed the Hudson in an open boat, and was detained
+on the river several hours. This severe exposure brought on an attack of
+sickness, which for a short time confined him to his bed. The steam
+frigate, then almost ready for her engines, occasioned him great anxiety
+at the time, and before he had fairly recovered his strength he went to
+the ship-yard to give some directions to the workmen employed on her,
+and thus exposed himself again to the inclemency of the weather. In a
+few days his indisposition prostrated him again, and, growing rapidly
+worse, he died on the 24th of February, 1815, at the age of fifty
+years. His death was universally regarded as a national calamity, and
+appropriate honors were paid to his memory by the General Government and
+by many of the State and municipal governments of the Union. He was
+buried from his residence, No. 1 State Street, on the 25th of February,
+and his body was placed in the vault of the Livingston family, in
+Trinity church-yard.
+
+He left a widow and four children. By the terms of his will he
+bequeathed to his wife an income of nine thousand dollars a year, and
+five hundred dollars to each of his children until they were twelve
+years old, after which they were each to receive one thousand dollars a
+year until they should attain the age of twenty-one years.
+
+In person, Fulton was tall and handsome. His manner was polished,
+cordial, and winning. He made friends rapidly, and never failed in his
+efforts to enlist capital and influence in support of his schemes. He
+was manly, fearless, and independent in character, and joined to a
+perfect integrity a patience and indomitable resolution which enabled
+him to bear up under every disappointment, and which won him in the end
+a glorious success. His name and fame will always be dear to his
+countrymen, for while we can not claim that he was (nor did he ever
+assume to be) the inventor of steam navigation, or even the inventor of
+the means of such navigation, we do claim for him the honor of being the
+first man to cross the gulf which lies between experiment and
+achievement, the man whose skill and perseverance first conquered the
+difficulties which had baffled so many others, and made steam navigation
+both practicable and profitable. The Committee of the London Exhibition
+of 1851 gave utterance in their report to a declaration which places his
+fame beyond assault, as follows:
+
+"Many persons, in various countries, claim the honor of having first
+invented small boats propelled by steam, but it is to the undaunted
+perseverance and exertions of the American Fulton that is due the
+everlasting honor of having produced this revolution, both in naval
+architecture and navigation."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+CHARLES GOODYEAR.
+
+
+In the year 1735, a party of astronomers, sent by the French Government
+to Peru for purposes of scientific investigation, discovered a curious
+tree growing in that country, the like of which no European had ever
+seen before. It grew to a considerable size, and yielded a peculiar sap
+or gum. It was the custom of the natives to make several incisions in
+each tree with an ax, in the morning, and to place under each incision a
+cup or jar made of soft clay. Late in the afternoon, the fluid thus
+obtained was collected in a large clay vessel, each incision yielding
+about a gill of sap per day. This process was repeated for several days
+in succession, until the tree had been thoroughly drained. This sap was
+simply a species of liquid gum, which, though clear and colorless in its
+native state, had the property of becoming hard and tough when exposed
+to the sun or artificial heat. It was used by the natives for the
+manufacture of a few rude and simple articles, by a process similar to
+that by which the old-fashioned "tallow-dip" candles were made. It was
+poured over a pattern of clay or a wooden mold or last covered with
+clay, and successive coatings were applied as fast as the former ones
+dried, until the article had attained the desired thickness, the whole
+taking the shape of the mold over which the gum was poured. As the
+layers were applied, their drying was hastened by exposure to the heat
+and smoke of a fire, the latter giving to the gum a dark-black hue.
+Dried without exposure to the smoke, or by the sun alone, the gum became
+white within and yellowish-brown without. The drying process required
+several days, and during its progress the gum was ornamented with
+characters or lines made with a stick. When it was completed, the clay
+mold was broken to pieces and shaken out of the opening. The natives in
+this manner made a species of rough, clumsy shoe, and an equally rough
+bottle. In some parts of South America, the natives make it a rule to
+present their guests with one of these bottles, furnished with a hollow
+stern, which serves as a syringe for squirting water into the mouth in
+order to cleanse it after eating. The articles thus made were liable to
+become stiff and unmanageable in cold weather, and soft and sticky in
+warm. The French astronomers, upon their return to their own country,
+were quick to call attention to this remarkable gum, which was afterward
+discovered in Cayenne by Trismau, in 1751. At present it is found in
+large quantities in various parts of South America, but the chief
+supplies used in commerce are produced in the province of Para, which
+lies south of the equator, in Brazil. It is also grown largely in the
+East Indies, vast and inexhaustible forests of the trees which yield it
+being found in Assam, beyond the Ganges, although the quality can not
+compare with that of the South American article.
+
+This substance, variously known as cachuchu, caoutchouc, gum elastic,
+and India-rubber, was first introduced into Europe in 1730, where it was
+regarded merely as a curiosity, useful for erasing pencil marks, but
+valueless for any practical use. Ships from South America brought it
+over as ballast, but it was not until ninety years after its first
+appearance in Europe that any effort was made to utilize it. About the
+year 1820 it began to be used in France in the manufacture of suspenders
+and garters, India-rubber threads being mixed with the materials used in
+weaving those articles. It was also used in blacking and varnish, and
+some years later, Mackintosh brought it into prominent notice by using
+it in his famous water-proof coats, which were made by spreading a layer
+of the gum between two pieces of cloth. The gum was thus protected from
+the air, and preserved from injury.
+
+Up to this time, it was almost an unknown article in the United States,
+but in 1820 a pair of India-rubber shoes were exhibited in Boston. Even
+then they were regarded as merely a curiosity, and were covered with
+gilt foil to hide their natural ugliness. In 1823, a merchant, engaged
+in the South American trade, imported five hundred pairs from the Para
+district. He had no difficulty in disposing of them; and so great was
+the favor with which they were received, that in a few years the annual
+importation of India-rubber shoes amounted to five hundred thousand
+pairs. It had become a matter of fashion to wear these shoes, and no
+person's toilet was complete in wet weather unless the feet were incased
+in them; yet they were terribly rough and clumsy. They had scarcely any
+shape to them, and were not to be depended on in winter or summer. In
+the cold season they froze so hard that they could be used only after
+being thawed by the fire, and in summer they could be preserved only by
+keeping them on ice; and if, during the thawing process, they were
+placed too near the fire, there was danger that they would melt into a
+shapeless and useless mass. They cost from three to five dollars per
+pair, which was very high for an article so perishable in its nature.
+
+The great popularity of India-rubber induced Mr. E.M. Chaflee, of
+Boston, the foreman of a patent leather factory in that city, to attempt
+to apply the new substance to some of the uses to which patent leather
+was then put. His hope was that, by spreading the liquid gum upon cloth,
+he could produce an article which, while possessing the durability and
+flexibility of patent leather, would also be water-proof. His
+experiments extended over a period of several months, during which time
+he kept his plan a secret. He dissolved a pound of the gum in three
+quarts of spirits of turpentine, and added to the mixture enough
+lamp-black to produce a bright black color, and was so well satisfied
+with his compound, that he felt sure that the only thing necessary to
+his entire success was a machine for spreading it properly on the cloth.
+Like a true son of New England, he soon overcame this difficulty by
+inventing the desired machine. His compound was spread on the cloth, and
+dried in the sun, producing a hard, smooth surface, and one sufficiently
+flexible to be twisted into any shape without cracking. Mr. Chaffee was
+now sure that he had mastered the difficulty. Taking a few capitalists
+into his confidence, he succeeded so well in convincing them of the
+excellence of his invention, that in February, 1833, a company, called
+the "Roxbury India-rubber Company," was organized, with a capital of
+thirty thousand dollars. In three years this sum was increased to four
+hundred thousand dollars. The new company manufactured India-rubber
+cloth according to Mr. Chaffee's process, and from it made wagon-covers,
+piano-covers, caps, coats, and a few other articles, and, in a little
+while, added to their list of products shoes without fiber. They had no
+difficulty in disposing of their stock. Every body had taken the
+"India-rubber fever," as the excitement caused by Mr. Chaffee's
+discovery was called; and so high were the hopes of the public raised by
+it, that buyers were found in abundance whenever the bonds of the
+numerous India-rubber companies were offered for sale. The extraordinary
+success of the Roxbury Company led to the establishment of similar
+enterprises at Boston, Framingham, Salem, Lynn, Chelsea, Troy, and
+Staten Island. The Roxbury Company could not supply the demand for its
+articles, and the others appeared to have as much business as they could
+attend to. Apparently, they were all on the high road to wealth.
+
+Their prosperity was only fictitious, however, and a day of fearful
+disaster was pending over them. The bulk of the goods produced in 1833
+and 1834 had been manufactured in the cold weather, and the greater part
+of them had succumbed to the heat of the ensuing summer. The shoes had
+melted to a soft mass, and the caps, wagon-covers, and coats had become
+sticky and useless in summer, and rigid in the cold of winter. In some
+cases the articles had borne the test of one year's use, but the second
+summer had ruined them. To make the matter worse, they emitted an odor
+so offensive that it was necessary to bury them in the ground to get rid
+of the smell. Twenty thousand dollars' worth were thrown back on the
+hands of the Roxbury Company alone, and the directors were appalled by
+the ruin which threatened them. It was useless for them to go on
+manufacturing goods which might prove worthless at any moment; and, as
+their capital was already taxed to its utmost, it was plain that unless
+a better process should be speedily discovered, they must become
+involved in irretrievable disaster. Their efforts were unavailing,
+however. No better process was found, and the disgust of the public with
+their goods was soon general and unmitigable. India-rubber stock fell
+rapidly, and by the end of the year 1836 there was not a solvent company
+in the Union. The loss of the stockholders was complete, and amounted in
+the aggregate to two millions of dollars. People came to detest the
+very name of India-rubber, since it reminded them only of blighted hopes
+and heavy losses.
+
+Before the final disaster, however, it chanced that a bankrupt merchant
+of Philadelphia, being one day in New York on business, was led by
+curiosity to visit the salesroom of the agency of the Roxbury Company in
+that city. His visit resulted in the purchase of a life-preserver, which
+he took home with him for the purpose of examining it. Subjecting it to
+a careful investigation, he discovered a defect in the valve used for
+inflating it, and promptly devised a simpler and better apparatus.
+
+This man, afterward so famous in the history of India-rubber
+manufacture, was CHARLES GOODYEAR. He was born at New Haven,
+Connecticut, on the 29th of December, 1800. He attended a public school
+during his boyhood, thus acquiring a limited education. When quite a
+youth, he removed with his family to Philadelphia, where his father
+entered into the hardware business. Upon coming of age, he was admitted
+to partnership with his father and one of his brothers, the style of the
+firm being A. Goodyear & Sons. The house was extensively engaged in the
+manufacture of hardware, and among the other articles which they
+introduced was a light hay-fork, made of spring steel, which gradually
+took the place of the heavy wrought iron implement formerly in general
+use among the farmers. It required a large outlay and a great deal of
+time to introduce this fork, but, once in use, it rapidly drove the old
+one out of the market, and proved a source of considerable profit to its
+inventor. The prosperity of the house, however, soon began to wane, and
+it was brought to bankruptcy by the crisis of 1836.
+
+Mr. Goodyear's attention had for some time been attracted to the
+wonderful apparent success of the India-rubber companies of the country,
+and he was hopeful that his improvement in the inflating apparatus of
+the life-preserver would bring him the means of partially extricating
+himself from his difficulties. Repairing to New York, he called on the
+agent of the Roxbury Company, and explaining his invention to him,
+offered to sell it to the company. The agent was struck with the skill
+displayed in the improvement of Mr. Goodyear, but, instead of offering
+to buy it, astounded the inventor by informing him of the real state of
+the India-rubber trade of the country. He urged Mr. Goodyear to exert
+his inventive skill to discover some means of imparting durability to
+India-rubber goods, and assured him that if he could discover a process
+which would secure that end, the various companies of the United States
+would eagerly buy it at his own price. He explained to him the process
+then in use, and pointed out its imperfections. Mr. Goodyear listened
+carefully to his statements, forgot all about his disappointment in
+failing to sell his improved inflating apparatus, and went home firmly
+convinced that he had found his true mission in life. In after years,
+when success had crowned his labors, he modestly referred to this period
+of his career in language the substance of which is thus recorded:
+
+"From the time that his attention was first given to the subject, a
+strong and abiding impression was made upon his mind that an object so
+desirable and important, and so necessary to man's comfort, as the
+making of gum elastic available to his use was most certainly placed
+within his reach. Having this presentiment, of which he could not divest
+himself under the most trying adversity, he was stimulated with the
+hope, of ultimately attaining this object. Beyond this, he would refer
+the whole to the great Creator, who directs the operations of the mind
+to the development of properties of matter, in his own way, at the time
+when they are specially needed, influencing some mind for every work or
+calling."
+
+There was something sublime in the attitude of this one man, now feeble
+in health, the only dependence of a young family, a bankrupt in
+business, starting out to seek success in a field in which so many had
+found only ruin. He was convinced in his own mind that he would master
+the secret, while his friends were equally sure that he would but
+increase his difficulties. The firm of which he had been a member had
+surrendered all their property to their creditors; but they still owed
+thirty thousand dollars, and immediately upon his return from New York,
+after his visit to the agent of the Roxbury Company, he was arrested for
+debt, and though not actually thrown in jail, was compelled to take up
+his residence within prison limits.
+
+Strong in the conviction before named, that he was the man of all others
+to discover the secret of controlling India-rubber, he at once began his
+experiments. This was in the winter of 1834-35. The gum had fallen in
+price to five cents per pound, and, poor as he was, he had no difficulty
+in procuring a sufficient quantity to begin with. By melting and working
+the gum thoroughly, and by rolling it upon a stone table with a
+rolling-pin, he succeeded in producing sheets of India-rubber which
+seemed to him to possess the properties which those of Mr. Chaffee had
+lacked. He explained his process to a friend, who, becoming interested
+in it, loaned him the money to manufacture a number of shoes, which at
+first seemed all that could be desired. Fearful, however, of meeting the
+fate which had befallen the Roxbury Company, Mr. Goodyear put his shoes
+away until the next summer, to ascertain whether they would bear the
+heat. His doubts were more than realized. The warm weather completely
+ruined them, reducing them to a mass of so offensive an odor that he was
+glad to throw them away.
+
+The friend of the inventor was thoroughly disheartened by this failure,
+and refused to have any thing more to do with Goodyear's schemes; but
+the latter, though much disappointed, did not despair. He set to work to
+discover the cause of his failure, and traced it, as he supposed, to the
+mixing of the gum with the turpentine and lamp-black. Having procured
+some barrels of the gum in its native liquid state, he spread it on
+cloth without smoking it or mixing it with any thing else. He succeeded
+in producing a very handsome white rubber cloth, but it was one that
+became soft and sticky as quickly as the other had done.
+
+It now occurred to him that there must be some mineral substance which,
+mixed with the gum, would render it durable, and he began to experiment
+with almost every substance that he could lay his hands on. All these
+proved total failures, with the exception of magnesia. By mixing half a
+pound of magnesia with a pound of the gum, he produced a compound much
+whiter than the pure gum, and one which was at first as firm and
+flexible as leather. He made book-covers and piano-covers out of it, and
+for a time it seemed that he had discovered the longed-for secret; but
+in a month his pretty product was ruined. The heat caused it to soften;
+then fermentation set in, and, finally, it became as hard and brittle as
+thin glass.
+
+His friends, who had aided him at first, now turned from him coldly,
+regarding him as a dreamer; and his own stock of money was exhausted. In
+his extremity he was forced to pawn all his own valuables, and even some
+of the trinkets of his wife. In spite of this, he felt sure that he was
+on the road to success, and that he would very soon be enabled to rise
+above his present difficulties, and win both fame and fortune. He was
+obliged for the time, however, to remove his family to the country,
+depositing with his landlord, as security for the payment of the first
+quarter's rent, some linen which had been spun by his wife, and which he
+was never able to redeem. Having settled his family in the country, he
+set out for New York, where he hoped to find some one willing to aid him
+in extending his researches still further.
+
+Arrived in the great city, he found two old acquaintances, to whom he
+stated his plans and his hopes. One of them offered him the use of a
+room in Gold Street, as a laboratory, and the other, who was a druggist,
+agreed to let him have such chemicals as he needed on credit. He now
+proceeded to boil the gum, mixed with magnesia, in quicklime and water,
+and, as the result, obtained sheets of his compound whose firmness and
+smoothness of surface won them a medal at the fair of the American
+Institute in 1835. He seemed now on the point of success, and readily
+disposed of all the sheets he could manufacture. The newspapers spoke
+highly of his invention, for which he obtained a patent; and he was
+about to endeavor to enlist some persons of means in its manufacture on
+a large scale, when, to his dismay, he discovered that a single drop of
+the weakest acid, such as the juice of an apple, or diluted vinegar,
+would utterly destroy the influence of the lime in the compound, and
+reduce it to the old sticky substance that had baffled him so often.
+
+His next step was to mix quicklime with the gum. In order to work the
+compound thoroughly, he used to carry the vessel containing it, on his
+shoulder, to a place three miles distant from his laboratory, where he
+had the use of horse power. The lime, however, utterly destroyed the
+gum, and nothing came of this experiment.
+
+The discovery which followed was the result of accident, and brought him
+on the very threshold of success, yet did not entirely conquer his
+difficulties. He was an ardent lover of the beautiful, and it was a
+constant effort with him to render his productions as attractive to the
+eye as possible. Upon one occasion, while bronzing a piece of rubber
+cloth, he applied aqua fortis to it for the purpose of removing the
+bronze from a certain part. It took away the bronze as he had designed,
+but it also discolored the cloth to such a degree that he supposed it
+ruined, and threw it away. A day or two later, he chanced to remember
+that he had not examined very closely into the effect of the aqua fortis
+upon the rubber, and thereupon instituted a search for it. He was
+fortunate enough to find it, and was overjoyed to discover that the
+rubber had undergone a remarkable change, and that the effect of the
+acid was to harden it to such an extent that it would now stand a degree
+of heat which would have melted it before. When the reader remembers
+that aqua fortis is a compound two-fifths of which is sulphuric acid, he
+will understand that Mr. Goodyear had almost mastered the secret of
+vulcanizing rubber. He does not appear, however, to have known the true
+nature of aqua fortis, and called his process the "curing" of
+India-rubber by the use of that acid.
+
+The "cured" India-rubber was subjected to many tests, and passed through
+them successfully, thus demonstrating its adaptability to many important
+uses. Mr. Goodyear readily obtained a patent for his process, and a
+partner with a large capital was found ready to aid him. He hired the
+old India-rubber works on Staten Island, and opened a salesroom in
+Broadway. He was thrown back for six weeks at this important time by an
+accident, which happened to him while experimenting with his fabrics,
+and which came near causing his death. Just as he was recovering and
+preparing to commence the manufacture of his goods on a large scale, the
+terrible commercial crisis of 1836 swept over the country, and, by
+destroying his partner's fortune at one blow, reduced Goodyear to
+absolute beggary. His family had joined him in New York, and he was
+entirely without the means of supporting them. As the only resource at
+hand, he decided to pawn an article of value, one of the few which he
+possessed, in order to raise money enough to procure one day's supply of
+provisions. At the very door of the pawnbroker's shop he met one of his
+creditors, who kindly asked if he could be of any further assistance to
+him. Weak with hunger, and overcome by the generosity of his friend, the
+poor man burst into tears, and replied that, as his family was on the
+point of starvation, a loan of fifteen dollars would greatly oblige him.
+The money was given him on the spot, and the necessity for visiting the
+pawnbroker averted for several days longer. Still he was a frequent
+visitor to that individual during the year; and thus, one by one, the
+relics of his better days disappeared. Another friend loaned him one
+hundred dollars, which enabled him to remove his family to Staten
+Island, in the neighborhood of the abandoned rubber works, which the
+owners gave him permission to use as far as he could. He contrived in
+this way to manufacture enough of his "cured" cloth, which sold readily,
+to enable him to keep his family from starvation. He made repeated
+efforts to induce capitalists to come to the factory and see his samples
+and the process by which they were made, but no one would venture near
+him. There had been money enough lost in such experiments, they said,
+and they were determined to risk no more.
+
+Indeed, in all the broad land there was but one man who had the
+slightest hope of accomplishing any thing with India-rubber, and that
+one was Charles Goodyear. His friends regarded him as a monomaniac. He
+not only manufactured his cloth, but even dressed in clothes made of it,
+wearing it for the purpose of testing its durability, as well as of
+advertising it. He was certainly an odd figure, and in his appearance
+justified the remark of one of his friends, who, upon being asked how
+Mr. Goodyear could be recognized, replied: "If you see a man with an
+India-rubber coat on, India-rubber shoes, an India-rubber cap, and in
+his pocket an India-rubber purse, with not a cent in it, that is
+Goodyear."
+
+In September, 1836, a new gleam of hope lit up his pathway. A friend
+having loaned him a small sum of money, he went to Roxbury, taking with
+him some of his best specimens. Although the Roxbury Company had gone
+down with such a fearful crash, Mr. Chaffee, the inventor of the process
+in this country, was still firm in his faith that India-rubber would at
+some future time justify the expectations of its earliest friends. He
+welcomed Mr. Goodyear cordially, and allowed him to use the abandoned
+works of the company for his experiments. The result was that Goodyear
+succeeded in making slides and cloths of India-rubber of a quality so
+much better than any that had yet been seen in America, that the hopes
+of the friends of India-rubber were raised to a high point. Offers to
+purchase rights for certain portions of the country came in rapidly, and
+by the sale of them Goodyear realized between four and five thousand
+dollars. He was now able to bring his family to Roxbury, and for the
+time fortune seemed to smile upon him.
+
+His success was but temporary, however. He obtained an order from the
+General Government for one hundred and fifty India-rubber mail-bags,
+which he succeeded in producing, and as they came out smooth, highly
+polished, hard, well shaped, and entirely impervious to moisture, he was
+delighted, and summoned his friends to inspect and admire them. All who
+saw them pronounced them a perfect success; but, alas! in a single month
+they began to soften and ferment, and finally became useless. Poor
+Goodyear's hopes were dashed to the ground. It was found that the aqua
+fortis merely "cured" the surface of the material, and that only very
+thin cloth made in this way was durable. His other goods began to prove
+worthless, and his promising business came to a sudden and disastrous
+end. All his possessions were seized and sold for debt, and once more he
+was reduced to poverty. His position was even worse than before, for his
+family had increased in size, and his aged father also had become
+dependent upon him for support.
+
+Friends, relatives, and even his wife, all demanded that he should
+abandon his empty dreams, and turn his attention to something that would
+yield a support to his family. Four years of constant failure, added to
+the unfortunate experience of those who had preceded him, ought to
+convince him, they said, that he was hoping against hope. Hitherto his
+conduct, they said, had been absurd, though they admitted that he was to
+some extent excused for it by his partial success; but to persist in it
+would now be criminal. The inventor was driven to despair, and being a
+man of tender feelings and ardently devoted to his family, might have
+yielded to them had he not felt that lie was nearer than ever to the
+discovery of the secret that had eluded him so long.
+
+Just before the failure of his mail-bags had brought ruin upon him, he
+had taken into his employ a man named Nathaniel Hayward, who had been
+the foreman of the old Roxbury works, and who was still in charge of
+them when Goodyear came to Roxbury, making a few rubber articles on his
+own account. He hardened his compound by mixing a little powdered
+sulphur with the gum, or by sprinkling sulphur on the rubber cloth, and
+drying it in the sun. He declared that the process had been revealed to
+him in a dream, but could give no further account of it. Goodyear was
+astonished to find that the sulphur cured the India-rubber as thoroughly
+as the aqua fortis, the principal objection being that the sulphurous
+odor of the goods was frightful in hot weather. Hayward's process was
+really the same as that employed by Goodyear, the "curing" of the
+India-rubber being due in each case to the agency of sulphur, the
+principal difference between them being that Hayward's goods were dried
+by the sun, and Goodyear's with nitric acid. Hay ward set so small a
+value upon his discovery that he had readily sold it to his new
+employer.
+
+[Illustration: AN AMAZING REVELATION.]
+
+Goodyear felt that he had now all but conquered his difficulties. It was
+plain that sulphur was the great controller of India-rubber, for he had
+proved that when applied to thin cloth it would render it available for
+most purposes. The problem that now remained was how to mix sulphur and
+the gum in a mass, so that every part of the rubber should be subjected
+to the agency of the sulphur. He experimented for weeks and months with
+the most intense eagerness, but the mystery completely baffled him. His
+friends urged him to go to work to do something for his family, but he
+could not turn back. The goal was almost in sight, and he felt that he
+would be false to his mission were he to abandon his labors now. To the
+world he seemed a crack-brained dreamer, and some there were who, seeing
+the distress of his family, did not hesitate to apply still harsher
+names to him; but to the Great Eye that reads all hearts, how different
+did this man appear! It saw the anguish that wrung the heart of Charles
+Goodyear, and knew the more than heroic firmness with which, in the
+midst of his poverty and suffering, he agonized for the great discovery.
+Had it been merely wealth that he was working for, doubtless he would
+have turned back and sought some other means of obtaining it; but he
+sought more. He was striving for the good of his fellow-men, and
+ambitious of becoming a benefactor of the race. He felt that he had a
+mission to fulfill, and no one else could perform it.
+
+He was right. A still greater success was about to crown his labors, but
+in a manner far different from his expectations. His experiments had
+developed nothing; chance was to make the revelation. It was in the
+spring of 1839 that this revelation came to him, and in the following
+manner: Standing before a stove in a store at Woburn, Massachusetts, he
+was explaining to some acquaintances the properties of a piece of
+sulphur-cured India-rubber which he held in his hand. They listened to
+him good-naturedly, but with evident incredulity, when suddenly he
+dropped the rubber on the stove, which was red hot. His old cloths would
+have melted instantly from contact with such heat; but, to his surprise,
+this piece underwent no such change. In amazement, he examined it, and
+found that while it had charred or shriveled, like leather, it had not
+softened at all. The bystanders attached no importance to this
+phenomenon, but to him it was a revelation. He renewed his experiments
+with enthusiasm, and in a little while established the facts that
+India-rubber, when mixed with sulphur and exposed to a certain degree of
+heat for a certain time, would not melt or even soften at any degree of
+heat, that it would only char at two hundred and eighty degrees, and
+that it would not stiffen from exposure to any degree of cold. The
+difficulty now consisted in finding out the exact degree of heat
+necessary for the perfection of the rubber, and the exact length of time
+required for the heating.
+
+He made this discovery in his darkest days; when, in fact, he was in
+constant danger of arrest for debt, having already been a frequent
+inmate of the debtor's prison. He was in the depths of bitter poverty,
+and in such feeble health that he was constantly haunted by the fear of
+dying before he had perfected his discovery--before he had fulfilled his
+mission. His poverty was a greater drawback to him than ever before. He
+needed an apparatus for producing a high and uniform heat for his
+experiments, and he was unable to obtain it. He used to bake his
+compound in his wife's bread oven, and steam it over the spout of her
+tea-kettle, and to press the kitchen fire into his service as far as it
+would go. When this failed, he would go to the shops in the vicinity of
+Woburn, and beg to be allowed to use the ovens and boilers after working
+hours were over. The workmen regarded him as a lunatic, but were too
+good-natured to deny him the request. Finally, he induced a bricklayer
+to make him an oven, and paid him in mason's aprons of India-rubber. The
+oven was a failure. Sometimes it would turn out pieces of perfectly
+vulcanized cloth, and again the goods would be charred and ruined.
+Goodyear was in despair.
+
+All this time he lived on the charity of his friends. His neighbors
+pretended to lend him money, but in reality gave him the means of
+keeping his family from starvation. He has declared that all the while
+he felt sure he would, before long, be able to pay them back, but they
+declared with equal emphasis that, at that time, they never expected to
+witness his success. He was yellow and shriveled in face, with a gaunt,
+lean figure, and his habit of wearing an India-rubber coat, which was
+charred and blackened from his frequent experiments with it, gave him a
+wild and singular appearance. People shook their heads solemnly when
+they saw him, and said that the mad-house was the proper place for him.
+
+The winter of 1839-40 was long and severe. At the opening of the season,
+Mr. Goodyear received a letter from a house in Paris, making him a
+handsome offer for the use of his process of curing India-rubber with
+aqua fortis. Here was a chance for him to rise out of his misery. A year
+before he would have closed with the offer, but since then he had
+discovered the effects of sulphur and heat on his compound, and had
+passed far beyond the aqua fortis stage. Disappointment and want had not
+warped his honesty, and he at once declined to enter into any
+arrangements with the French house, informing them that although the
+process they desired to purchase was a valuable one, it was about to be
+entirely replaced by another which he was then on the point of
+perfecting, and which he would gladly sell them as soon as he had
+completed it. His friends declared that he was mad to refuse such an
+offer; but he replied that nothing would induce him to sell a process
+which he knew was about to be rendered worthless by still greater
+discoveries.
+
+A few weeks later, a terrible snow-storm passed over the land, one of
+the worst that New England has ever known, and in the midst of it
+Goodyear made the appalling discovery that he had not a particle of fuel
+or a mouthful of food in the house. He was ill enough to be in bed
+himself, and his purse was entirely empty. It was a terrible position,
+made worse, too, by the fact that his friends who had formerly aided him
+had turned from him, vexed with his pertinacity, and abandoned him to
+his fate. In his despair, he bethought him of a mere acquaintance who
+lived several miles from his cottage, and who but a few days before had
+spoken to him with more of kindness than he had received of late. This
+gentleman, he thought, would aid him in his distress, if he could but
+reach his house, but in such a snow the journey seemed hopeless to a man
+in his feeble health. Still the effort must be made. Nerved by despair,
+he set out, and pushed his way resolutely through the heavy drifts. The
+way was long, and it seemed to him that he would never accomplish it.
+Often he fell prostrate on the snow, almost fainting with fatigue and
+hunger, and again he would sit down wearily in the road, feeling that he
+would gladly die if his discovery were but completed. At length,
+however, he reached the end of his journey, and fortunately found his
+acquaintance at home. To this gentleman he told the story of his
+discovery, his hopes, his struggles, and his present sufferings, and
+implored him to aid him. Mr. Coolidge[A]--for such was the gentleman's
+name--listened to him kindly, and after expressing the warmest sympathy
+for him, loaned him money enough to support his family during the severe
+weather, and to enable him to continue his experiments.
+
+[Footnote A: O.B. Coolidge, of Woburn.]
+
+"Seeing no prospect of success in Massachusetts, he now resolved to make
+a desperate effort to get to New York, feeling confident that the
+specimens he could take with him would convince some one of the
+superiority of his new method. He was beginning to understand the causes
+of his many failures, but he saw clearly that his compound could not be
+worked with certainty without expensive apparatus. It was a very
+delicate operation, requiring exactness and promptitude. The conditions
+upon which success depended were numerous, and the failure of one
+spoiled all.... It cost him thousands of failures to learn that a little
+acid in his sulphur caused the blistering; that his compound must be
+heated almost immediately after being mixed, or it would never
+vulcanize; that a portion of white lead in the compound greatly
+facilitated the operation and improved the result; and when he had
+learned these facts, it still required costly and laborious experiments
+to devise the best methods of compounding his ingredients, the best
+proportions, the best mode of heating, the proper duration of the
+heating, and the various useful effects that could be produced by
+varying the proportions and the degree of heat. He tells us that many
+times when, by exhausting every resource, he had prepared a quantity of
+his compound for heating, it was spoiled because he could not, with his
+inadequate apparatus, apply the heat soon enough.
+
+"To New York, then, he directed his thoughts. Merely to get there cost
+him a severer and a longer effort than men in general are capable of
+making. First he walked to Boston, ten miles distant, where he hoped to
+borrow from an old acquaintance fifty dollars, with which to provide for
+his family and pay his fare to New York. He not only failed in this, but
+he was arrested for debt and thrown into prison. Even in prison, while
+his father was negotiating to procure his release, he labored to
+interest men of capital in his discovery, and made proposals for
+founding a factory in Boston. Having obtained his liberty, he went to a
+hotel, and spent a week in vain efforts to effect a small loan. Saturday
+night came, and with it his hotel bill, which he had no means of
+discharging. In an agony of shame and anxiety, he went to a friend and
+entreated the sum of five dollars to enable him to return home. He was
+met with a point blank refusal. In the deepest dejection, he walked the
+streets till late in the night, and strayed at length, almost beside
+himself, to Cambridge, where he ventured to call upon a friend and ask
+shelter for the night. He was hospitably entertained, and the next
+morning walked wearily home, penniless and despairing. At the door of
+his house a member of his family met him with the news that his youngest
+child, two years old, whom he had left in perfect health, was dying. In
+a few hours he had in his house a dead child, but not the means of
+burying it, and five living dependents without a morsel of food to give
+them. A storekeeper near by had promised to supply the family, but,
+discouraged by the unforeseen length of the father's absence, he had
+that day refused to trust them further. In these terrible circumstances,
+he applied to a friend upon whose generosity he knew he could rely, one
+who never failed him. He received in reply a letter of severe and
+cutting reproach, inclosing seven dollars, which his friend explained
+was given only out of pity for his innocent and suffering family. A
+stranger who chanced to be present when this letter arrived sent them a
+barrel of flour--a timely and blessed relief. The next day the family
+followed on foot the remains of the little child to the grave."
+
+He had now reached the lowest ebb of his misery, and a brighter day was
+in store for him. Obtaining fifty dollars from a relative, he went to
+New York, where he succeeded in interesting in his discovery two
+brothers, William and Emory Rider. They agreed to advance him a certain
+sum to support his family and continue his experiments. By means of this
+aid he was enabled to keep his family from want in the future, and from
+that time his experiments never flagged. Before entire success crowned
+his efforts, the brothers Rider failed; but he had advanced his
+experiments so greatly that his brother-in-law, William De Forrest, a
+rich woolen manufacturer, came to his support, and supplied him with the
+means to go on with his labors. Mr. De Forrest's total advances amounted
+to forty-six thousand dollars, from which fact the reader may gain some
+idea of the obstacles overcome by Goodyear in this last stage of his
+invention.
+
+The prize for which he had labored so long and so heroically was secured
+at last, and in 1844, ten years after the commencement of his
+experiments, he was able to produce perfectly vulcanized India-rubber
+with expedition and economy, and, above all, with certainty. He had won
+a success which added a new material to art and commerce, and one which
+could be applied in a thousand different ways, and all of them useful to
+man. But great as his success was, he was not satisfied with it. To the
+end of his life his constant effort was to improve his invention, and
+apply it to new uses. He had an unlimited faith in its adaptability,
+believing that there was scarcely any article of general use that could
+not be made of it. Upon one occasion he read in a newspaper that twenty
+persons perished every hour by drowning. The statement impressed him
+deeply, and his wife noticed that for several nights he scarcely slept
+at all. "Try to compose yourself, and sleep," she said to him. "Sleep!"
+he exclaimed, "how can I sleep when twenty human beings are drowning
+every hour, and I am the man that can save them?" And at this time it
+was his constant endeavor to invent some article of India-rubber which
+could be easily carried by travelers, and which would render it
+impossible for them to sink in water.
+
+Having brought his process to a successful completion in this country,
+and obtained patents for it, he went to Europe to secure similar
+protections in the principal countries of the Old World. "The French
+laws require that the patentee shall put and keep his invention in
+public use in France within two years from its date. Goodyear had, at
+great inconvenience and expense, endeavored to comply with this and with
+all other requirements of the French laws, and thought he had
+effectually done so; but the courts of France decided that he had not in
+every particular complied with the strict requisitions of the law, and
+that, therefore, his patent in France had become void. In England he was
+still more unfortunate. Having sent specimens of vulcanized fabrics to
+Charles Mackintosh & Co., in 1842, and having opened with them a
+negotiation for the sale of the secret of the invention or discovery,
+one of the partners of that firm, named Thomas Hancock, availing
+himself, as he admits, of the hints and opportunities thus presented to
+him, rediscovered, as he affirms, the process of vulcanization, and
+described it in a patent for England, which was enrolled on May 21,
+1844, _about five weeks after_ the specification and publication of the
+discovery to the world by Goodyear's patent for vulcanization in France.
+And the patent of Hancock, held good according to a peculiarity of
+English law, thus superseded Goodyear's English patent for
+vulcanization, which bore date a few days later. Goodyear, however,
+obtained the great council medal of the exhibition of all nations at
+London, the grand medal of the world's exhibition at Paris, and the
+ribbon of the Legion of Honor, presented by Napoleon III."
+
+In his own country, Mr. Goodyear was scarcely less unfortunate. His
+patents were infringed and violated by others, even after the decision
+of the courts seemed to place his rights beyond question. He was too
+thoroughly the inventor and too little the man of business to protect
+himself from the robberies of the wretches who plundered him of the
+profits of his invention. It is said that his inability to manage sharp
+transactions made him the victim of many who held nominally fair
+business relations with him. The United States Commissioner of Patents,
+in 1858, thus spoke of his losses:
+
+"No inventor, probably, has ever been so harassed, so trampled upon, so
+plundered by that sordid and licentious class of infringers known in the
+parlance of the world, with no exaggeration of phrase, as 'pirates.' The
+spoliation of their incessant guerrilla warfare upon his defenseless
+rights have, unquestionably, amounted to millions."
+
+Failing to accomplish any thing in Europe, Mr. Goodyear returned to this
+country, and continued his labors. His health, never strong, gave way
+under the continued strain, and he died in New York in July, 1860, in
+the sixtieth year of his age, completely worn out. Notwithstanding his
+great invention--an invention which has made millions for those engaged
+in its manufacture--he died insolvent, and left his family heavily in
+debt. A few years after his death an effort was made to procure from
+Congress a further seven years' extension of his patent for
+vulcanization, for the benefit of his family and his creditors. The men
+who had trampled his rights under foot while living were resolved,
+however, that he should not have justice done him in death; and, through
+their influence, that august body, in strange contrast with its usual
+lavish generosity in the matter of land grants and the like, coldly
+declined to do any thing for the family of the man to whom civilization
+owes so much, and the effort proved abortive.
+
+But, though unfortunate in a pecuniary sense, though he died without
+freeing himself from the embarrassments which haunted him through life,
+there can be no question that Charles Goodyear richly merits the place
+which we have given him in this gallery of "Our Self-made Men;" not only
+on account of the great merit and usefulness of his discovery or
+invention, but because that invention has been the source of many a
+"great fortune" to others, as it might, indeed, have been to him, had
+his rights been respected, or properly protected when infringed. It is
+sad to reflect that he died poor who has given wealth to so many, and
+accomplished results so beneficent to mankind. Yet he did not fail
+entirely of his reward in life; he lived to see his invention give rise
+to large factories in the United States, and in England, France, and
+Germany, which employ sixty thousand operatives, and produce over five
+hundred different kinds of articles, to the amount of eight millions of
+dollars annually. He lived to see boots and shoes, clothing, caps, hats,
+articles of commerce and of pleasure, mechanical, scientific, and
+surgical instruments, toys, belting for machinery, packing for the
+steam-engine, and many other articles now in common use, made of the
+material, the discovery and perfection of which cost him long and
+sorrowful years of toil. He lived to hear his name mentioned by millions
+as one of their greatest benefactors; to know that he had conferred upon
+the world benefits of which those who had robbed him could not deprive
+his fellow-men; and to feel that he had at length accomplished his
+mission--a mission which has been productive of good alone.
+
+[Illustration: "THE MADHOUSE IS THE PROPER PLACE FOR HIM."]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+ELI WHITNEY.
+
+
+At the close of the Revolution the States of South Carolina and Georgia
+presented large tracts of land to the gallant General Nathaniel Greene,
+to whose genius they were indebted for their relief from British
+tyranny. Soon after this grant was made, General Greene removed his
+family to Mulberry Grove, a fine plantation on the Georgia side of the
+Savannah River. Here he died in 1786, from sunstroke, but his family
+continued to reside on the place. The mansion of Mrs. Greene was noted
+for its hospitality, and was frequently filled with guests who came to
+pay their respects to the widow of the most brilliant and best trusted
+subordinate of the immortal Washington.
+
+To this mansion there came one day, in the year 1792, ELI WHITNEY, then
+a young man recently from New England. He was a native of Westborough,
+Massachusetts, where he was born on the 8th of December, 1765. Of his
+youth but little is known, save that he was gifted with unusual
+mechanical genius, the employment of which enabled him to overcome some
+of the difficulties incident to his poverty, and to acquire the means of
+obtaining a good common school education. Adding to this the labors of a
+teacher, he earned a sum sufficient to carry him through Yale College,
+where he was graduated in the summer of 1702, a few months before his
+arrival in Georgia. He had come South to accept the offer of a situation
+as teacher, but the place had been filled before his arrival, and, being
+without friends in that section, he sought employment from Mrs. Greene.
+Though pleased with his modesty and intelligence, that lady could not
+avail herself of his services as a tutor, but invited him to make her
+house his home as long as he should desire to remain in Georgia. He was
+sick in body and disheartened by his first failure, and gladly accepted
+her invitation. While her guest he made her a tambour frame of an
+improved pattern, and a number of ingenious toys for her children, which
+so delighted the good lady that she enthusiastically declared him
+capable of doing any thing.
+
+Not long after Mr. Whitney's arrival at the plantation, Mrs. Greene was
+entertaining a number of visitors from the surrounding country, several
+planters of considerable wealth being among the number, when one of the
+guests turned the conversation upon the subject of cotton-raising, by
+declaring that he had met with such poor success that he was ready to
+abandon the undertaking. His trouble was not, he said, that cotton would
+not grow in his land, for it yielded an abundant return, but that the
+labor of clearing it from the seed was so enormous that he could not do
+more than pay expenses after selling it.
+
+His case was simply one among a thousand. The far Southern States were
+admitted by every one to be admirably adapted to the cultivation of
+cotton, but, after it was grown and picked, the expense of cleaning it
+destroyed nearly all the profits of the transaction. The cleaning
+process was performed by hand, and it was as much as an able-bodied
+negro could do to clean one pound per day in this manner. Disheartened
+by this difficulty, which no one had yet been able to remove, the
+planters of the South were seriously contemplating the entire
+abandonment of this portion of their industry, since it only involved
+them in debt. Their lands were heavily mortgaged, and general ruin
+seemed to threaten them. All felt that the invention of a machine for
+cleaning or ginning the cotton would not only remove their difficulties,
+but enable them to plant the green cotton-seed, from the use of which
+they were then almost entirely debarred, because, although more
+productive and of a better quality than the black, and adapted by nature
+to a much greater variety of climate, it was much more difficult to
+clean, and therefore less profitable to cultivate.
+
+These facts were discussed in the conversation at Mrs. Greene's table,
+and it was suggested by one of the company that perhaps the very urgency
+of the case would induce some ingenious man to invent a machine which
+should solve the problem, and remove all the difficulties in the way.
+
+"Is it a machine you want?" said Mrs. Greene, eagerly. "Then, gentlemen,
+you should apply to my young friend, Mr. Whitney; _he_ can make any
+thing."
+
+She at once sent for Whitney, and introduced him to her guests, who
+repeated to him the substance of their conversation, and urged him to
+undertake the invention of what was so much needed. The young man
+protested that he had never seen either a pod of cotton or a cotton-seed
+in his life, and was utterly incompetent for the task they proposed. In
+spite of this, however, his new acquaintances urged him to attempt it,
+and assured him that if successful his invention would make his fortune.
+Whitney would promise nothing more than to think of the matter, and the
+planters departed in the belief that nothing would come of their
+entreaties, and that the culture of cotton would languish until it
+should finally die out.
+
+Whitney _did_ think of the matter, and the result was that he decided
+to attempt the production of a machine which should clean cotton both
+expeditiously and cheaply. It was late in the season, and unginned
+cotton, or cotton from which the seeds had not been removed, was hard to
+procure. With considerable difficulty he succeeded in finding a few
+pounds on the wharf at Savannah, and at once securing his prize, he
+carried it home in his hands.
+
+[Illustration: WHITNEY WATCHING THE FIRST COTTON-GIN]
+
+Mrs. Greene being confidentially informed of his plans, provided him
+with a room in the cellar of her house, where he could carry on his work
+in secret. All that winter he worked at it, with a patience and energy
+which could not fail of success. Many difficulties confronted him. To
+carry on his work successfully, he needed tools of a certain
+description, which were not to be had in Savannah, or even in
+Charleston, upon any terms. But when was the genius of a Yankee ever
+baffled by difficulties? Whitney's mechanical skill came to his aid, and
+he conquered this obstacle by manufacturing all the implements he
+needed. He wanted wire, but none was to be found, and he was compelled
+to make all that he used. A score or more of drawbacks presented
+themselves, and were overcome in this way, and all through the winter
+the young inventor applied himself with diligence to his task. The
+children and servants regarded him with the greatest curiosity. They
+heard him hammering and sawing in his room, the doors of which were
+always kept locked, and into which they were never allowed to enter.
+Mrs. Greene was kept fully informed of his progress. When sure of
+success, Whitney revealed the secret to a Mr. Miller, a gentleman of
+means, who consented to enter into a copartnership with him for the
+manufacture of the machines, after the completion of the model should
+have enabled Whitney to secure a patent for his invention.
+
+Whitney had hoped to keep his work secret from all others, but this
+proved to be impossible. It became rumored about the country that the
+young man from New England, who was living at Mrs. Greene's, was engaged
+in inventing a machine which would clean cotton with the rapidity of
+thought, and the most intense eagerness was manifested to see the
+wonderful production, which every one felt would entirely revolutionize
+cotton culture in the South. Whitney endeavored to guard his invention
+from the public curiosity, but without success. Before he had completed
+his model, some scoundrels broke into the place containing it, and
+carried it off by night. He succeeded in recovering it, but the
+principle upon which it depended was made public, and before the model
+was completed and a patent secured, a number of machines based on his
+invention had been surreptitiously made, and were in operation.
+
+In spite of this discouraging circumstance, Whitney brought his
+invention to perfection, and in the spring of 1793 set up his first
+cotton gin, under a shed on Mrs. Greene's plantation, and invited a
+number of the neighboring planters to witness its operation.
+
+His machine was very simple, but none the less ingenious on that
+account. The cotton was placed in a trough, the bottom of which
+consisted of parallel rows of wire, placed like the bars in a grating,
+but so close together that the seed could not pass through them.
+Underneath this trough revolved an iron roller, armed with teeth formed
+of strong wires projecting from the roller, which passed between the
+wire bars, and, seizing the cotton, drew it through the bars and passed
+it behind the roller, where it was brushed off the wire teeth by means
+of a cylindrical brush. The seed, unable to pass through the bars, were
+left behind, and, completely stripped of the fiber, ran out in a stream
+through a spout at one end of the trough. It was found that the cotton
+thus ginned was cleaned thoroughly,[A] and far better than it could be
+done by hand, and that a single man, by this process, could clean as
+much as three hundred pounds in a day.
+
+[Footnote A: The cotton for which Whitney's machine accomplished so
+much, was the short staple, which is the principal product of the South.
+The Sea Island cotton could not be cleaned by it, on account of the
+length and delicacy of its fiber; and this species, for the want of some
+cheap and expeditious method of preparing it, has seldom been grown to a
+greater quantity than fifty thousand bags of three hundred pounds each.
+Consequently, it has always commanded a high price.]
+
+The spectators were delighted with Whitney's machine, and urged him to
+lose no time in putting it in the market. They predicted an unlimited
+success for it, and assured the inventor that it would not only make his
+own fortune, but also render cotton culture the source of wealth to the
+South. They did not exaggerate. As soon as it was made known to the
+public, Whitney's machine came into general use. Planters had no longer
+any thing to fear from the labor and expense of preparing their great
+staple for market. Whitney's genius had swept away all their
+difficulties, and they reaped a golden harvest from it. They were
+enabled to send their cotton promptly and cheaply to market, where it
+brought good prices. With the money thus obtained they paid their debts,
+and increased their capacity for cultivation. Every year the area
+devoted to cotton-growing became more extended, and the prosperity of
+the South became greater and more durable. In 1793, the total export of
+cotton from the United States was ten thousand bales; in 1860, it was
+over four millions of bales. Hundreds of millions of dollars were
+brought into the South by this invention--so that it is no exaggeration
+to say that the remarkable prosperity enjoyed by the South at the
+commencement of our late civil war was due entirely to the genius of Eli
+Whitney. This opinion is fortified by the following remarks of Judge
+Johnson, uttered in a charge to the jury in a suit brought by Whitney,
+in Savannah, in 1807, to sustain the validity of his patent:
+
+"With regard to the utility of this discovery ... the whole interior of
+the Southern States was languishing, and its inhabitants emigrating for
+want of some object to engage their attention and employ their industry,
+when the invention of this machine at once opened views to them which
+set the whole country in active motion. From childhood to age it has
+presented to us a lucrative employment. Individuals who were depressed
+with poverty, and sunk in idleness, have suddenly risen to wealth and
+respectability. Our debts have been paid off, our capitals have
+increased, and our lands have trebled themselves in value. We can not
+express the weight of the obligation which the country owes to this
+invention. The extent of it can not now be seen."
+
+Surely, the reader will exclaim, if such was the profit of this
+invention to the country at large, what a vast fortune must it have
+been to its inventor! Let us see. In May, 1793, Whitney and Miller went
+to Connecticut and established a factory for the construction of cotton
+gins. They were in possession of a patent which was supposed to pledge
+to them the protection of the United States. The demand for the machine
+was increasing every day, and it seemed that they would reap a golden
+harvest from it. They were disappointed. The machine was so simple that
+any competent mechanic could easily manufacture one after examining the
+model, and this temptation to dishonesty proved too strong for the
+morality of the cotton-growing community. In a short time there were
+hundreds of fraudulent machines at work in the South, made and sold in
+direct and open violation of Whitney's rights. In vain the inventor
+brought suit against those who infringed his patent. It was rare that a
+jury in a cotton State gave a verdict in his favor. In Georgia it was
+boldly asserted that Whitney was not the inventor of the cotton gin, but
+that some persons in Switzerland had invented something similar to it,
+and the substitution of teeth, cut in an iron plate, instead of wire,
+was claimed as superseding his invention. The Legislature of South
+Carolina granted him the beggarly sum of $50,000 for the use of his
+invention by the planters of that State; but it was only by going to
+law, and after several tedious and vexatious suits, that he was able to
+secure this sum. Tennessee agreed to allow him a percentage for the use
+of each saw for a certain period, but afterward repudiated her contract.
+The action of North Carolina forms the only bright page in this history
+of fraud and wrong. That State allowed him a percentage for the use of
+each saw for the term of five years, and promptly collected the money
+and paid it over to the patentee. For fourteen years Whitney continued
+to manufacture his machines, reaping absolutely no profit from his
+investments, and earning merely a bare support. During all this time his
+rights were systematically violated, suits were wrongfully decided
+against him by various Southern courts, and he was harassed and
+plundered on every side. America never presented a more shameful
+spectacle than was exhibited when the courts of the cotton-growing
+regions united with the piratical infringers of Whitney's rights in
+robbing their greatest benefactor. In 1807, Whitney's partner died, and
+his factory was destroyed by fire. In the same year his patent expired,
+and he sought its renewal from Congress. Here again he was met with the
+ingratitude of the cotton States. The Southern members, then all
+powerful in the Government, united in opposing the extension of his
+patent, and his petition was rejected. At the same time a report was
+industriously circulated that his machine injured the fiber of the
+cotton; but it is a significant fact that, although the planters
+insisted vehemently upon this assertion while Whitney was seeking an
+extension of his patent, not one of them discontinued the use of his
+machine, or sought to remedy the alleged defect.
+
+Whitney, thoroughly disheartened, now abandoned the manufacture of
+cotton gins in disgust, wound up his affairs, and found himself a poor
+man. In spite of the far-reaching benefits of his invention, he had not
+realized one dollar above his expenses. He had given millions upon
+millions of dollars to the cotton-growing States, he had opened the way
+for the establishment of the vast cotton-spinning interests of his own
+country and Europe, and yet, after fourteen years of hard labor, he was
+a poor man, the victim of a wealthy, powerful, and, in his case, a
+dishonest class, who had robbed him of his rights and of the fortune he
+had so fairly earned. Truly, "wisdom is better than strength, but the
+poor man's wisdom is despised."
+
+Whitney, however, was not the man to waste his time in repining. He
+abandoned his efforts to protect his cotton gin because of his
+conviction that there was not honesty enough in the country to sustain
+him in his rights, but he did not abandon with it the idea of winning
+fortune. He promptly turned his genius in another direction, and this
+time with success.
+
+The fire-arms then in use were heavy, clumsy weapons, and effective only
+at very short range. He examined the system closely, and quickly
+designed several important improvements in them, especially in the
+old-fashioned musket. Although his improved arms were not to be compared
+with the terribly effective weapons of to-day, they were admitted to be
+the best then in use. By examining the Springfield musket, which is due
+almost entirely to his genius, the reader can form an accurate estimate
+of the service he rendered in this respect. He has the honor of being
+the inaugurator of the system of progressive improvement in fire-arms,
+which has gone on steadily and without flagging for now fully sixty
+years past.
+
+Some time before abandoning the manufacture of the cotton gin, Mr.
+Whitney established an arms factory in New Haven, and obtained a
+contract from the Government for ten thousand stand of arms, to be
+delivered in two years. At this time he not only had to manufacture the
+machinery needed by him for this purpose, but had to invent the greater
+part of it. This delayed the execution of his contract for eight years,
+but at the expiration of that time he had so far perfected his
+establishment, which had been removed to Whitneyville, Conn., that he at
+once entered into contracts for thirty thousand more arms, which he
+delivered promptly at the appointed time. His factory was the most
+complete in the country, and was fitted up in a great measure with the
+machinery which he had invented, and without which the improved weapons
+could not be fabricated. He introduced a new system into the
+manufacture of fire-arms, and one which greatly increased the rapidity
+of construction. "He was the first manufacturer of fire-arms who carried
+the division of labor to the extent of leaking it the duty of each
+workman to perform by machinery but one or two operations on a single
+portion of the gun, and thus rendered all the parts adapted to any one
+of the thousands of arms in process of manufacture at the same time."
+
+His success was now marked and rapid. His factory was taxed to its
+fullest capacity to supply the demand for arms. His genius was rewarded
+at last, and he acquired a fortune which enabled him not only to pass
+the evening of his days in comfort, but also to leave a handsome estate
+to his family. He married a daughter of Judge Pierpont Edwards, a lady
+of fine accomplishments and high character. He died at New Haven on the
+8th of January, 1825, in his sixtieth year.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+CHAUNCEY JEROME.
+
+
+Any readers of these pages doubtless remember the huge old-fashioned
+clocks, tower-like in shape, that in the days of their childhood
+ornamented the remote corner of the hall, or stood solemnly near the
+chimney in the sitting-room of the old homestead,--such a clock as that
+which greeted little Paul Dombey, when he commenced to be a man, with
+its "How, is, my, lit, tle, friend?--how, is, my, lit, tle, friend?"
+Very different from the bright, pretty timepieces of to-day, which go
+ticking away, as if running a race with time, was the clock of the olden
+days, as it stood, solemn and dark, in its accustomed corner, from which
+the strength of two men was necessary to move it, sending the sound of
+its slow, steady strokes into all parts of the house. And in the night,
+when all within was still, how its deep beats throbbed in the dark hall
+louder and sterner even than in the day. There was something eminently
+respectable about an old clock of this kind, and it would have been
+audacity unheard of for any member of the family to doubt its
+reliability. Set once a year, it was expected to retain its steady-going
+habits for the rest of the twelvemonth. You dared not charge it with
+being slow; and as for being too fast, why, the very idea was absurd.
+There was sure to be some white-capped, silver-haired old lady, whose
+long years had been counted by the venerable pendulum with unerring
+precision, ready to defend the cause of the clock, to vouch for its
+accuracy, and to plead its cause so well and so skillfully, that you
+were ready to hide your face in shame at the thought of having even
+suspected the veracity of so venerable and so honored an institution.
+
+Truth to say, however, these old clocks, to the masses of the people of
+this country, were objects of admiration, and nothing more; for their
+exceeding high price placed them beyond the reach of all save the
+wealthier classes. A good clock cost from seventy-five to one hundred
+and fifty dollars, and the most indifferent article in the market could
+not be obtained for less than twenty-five dollars. At the opening of the
+present century, the demand for them was so small that but three hundred
+and fifty clocks were made in the State of Connecticut, which was then,
+as at present, the one most largely engaged in this branch of American
+industry. To-day the annual manufacture of Connecticut is about six
+hundred thousand clocks of all kinds, which command a wholesale price of
+from fifty cents upward, the greater number bringing the maker less than
+five dollars. Thus the reader will see that, while the business of the
+clock-maker has prospered so extraordinarily, valuable timepieces have
+been brought within the reach of even the poorest.
+
+The man to whom the country is indebted for this wonderful and
+beneficial increase is CHAUNCEY JEROME, who was born at Canaan,
+Connecticut, in 1793. His father was a blacksmith and nail-maker, to
+which trade he added the cultivation of the little farm on which he
+lived; and being poor, it was necessary for him to labor hard in all his
+callings in order to provide his family with a plain subsistence. Young
+Chauncey had little or no time given him for acquiring an education.
+
+He learned to read and write, but went no further; for, when he was but
+a little more than seven years old, and barely able to do the lightest
+kind of labor, he was put to work on the farm to help his father, who
+kept him at this until he was nine, when he took him into his shop. All
+the nails then in use were made by hand, for there were no huge iron
+works in the country to send them out by the ton; and such articles were
+scarce and high. The boy was set to work to make nails, and for two
+years pursued his vocation steadily. He was a manly little fellow, and
+worked at his hammer and anvil with a will, resolved that he would
+become thorough master of his trade; but when he had reached the age of
+eleven, the sudden death of his father made an entire change in his
+career, and threw him upon the world a helpless and penniless orphan.
+
+In order to earn his bread, he hired himself to a farmer, receiving for
+his labor nothing but his "victuals and clothes," the latter being of
+the plainest and scantiest kind. He worked very hard; but his employer
+was cold and indifferent to him at all times, and occasionally used him
+very badly. The boy was naturally of a cheerful disposition, and it did
+him good service now in helping to sustain him in his hard lot. Four
+years were passed in this way, and when he was fifteen years old his
+guardian informed him that he had now reached an age when he must begin
+his apprenticeship to some regular trade.
+
+The boy was very anxious to learn clock-making, and begged his guardian
+to apprentice him to that trade; but the wise individual who controlled
+his affairs replied, sagely, that clock-making was a business in which
+he would starve, as it was already overdone in Connecticut. There was
+one man, he said, engaged in that trade who had been silly enough to
+make two hundred clocks in one year, and he added that it would take the
+foolish man a life-time to sell them, or if they went off quickly, the
+market would be so glutted that no dealer would have need to increase
+his stock for years to come. Clock-making, he informed the boy, had
+already reached the limit of its expansion in Connecticut, and offered
+no opportunities at all. The carpenter's trade, on the other hand, was
+never crowded with good workmen, and always offered the prospect of
+success to any enterprising and competent man. It was the custom then to
+regard boys as little animals, possessed of a capacity for hard work,
+but without any reasoning powers of their own. To the adage that
+"children should be seen and not heard," the good people of that day
+added another clause, in effect, "and should never pretend to think for
+themselves." It was this profound conviction that induced parents and
+guardians, in so many instances, to disregard the wishes of the children
+committed to their care, and to condemn so many to lives for which they
+were utterly unfitted. So it was with the guardian of Chauncey Jerome.
+He listened to the boy's expression of a preference, it is true, but
+paid no attention to it, and ended by apprenticing his ward to a
+carpenter.
+
+The life of an apprentice is always hard, and in those days it was
+especially so. No negro slave ever worked harder, and but few fared
+worse, so far as their bodily comfort was concerned, than the New
+England apprentices of the olden time. Masters seemed almost to regard
+the lads indentured to them as their property, and in return for the
+support they gave them exacted from them the maximum amount of work they
+were capable of performing. They granted them no privileges, allowed
+them no holidays, except those required by the law, and never permitted
+the slightest approach to laziness. Chauncey Jerome's master proved no
+exception to the rule, and when the boy exhibited an unusual proficiency
+and quickness in his trade, the only notice his employer took of it was
+to require more work of him. When only a little over sixteen years old,
+this boy was able to do the work of a full-grown man, and a man's work
+was rigorously exacted of him. When sent to work at a distance from his
+employer's home, he invariably had to make the entire journey on foot,
+with his tools on his back, sometimes being required to go as far as
+thirty miles in one day in this way. His mother was living at some
+distance from the place where his master resided, and whenever he
+visited her, he had to walk all night in order to avoid using his
+master's time, not one hour of which was allowed him.
+
+In 1811, he informed his master that he was willing to undertake to
+clothe himself if he could have the five months of the cold season to
+himself. As this part of the year was always a dull period, and
+apprentices were little more than an expense to their masters, young
+Jerome's employer promptly consented to the proposed arrangement.
+Jerome, now eighteen years old, had never relinquished his old desire to
+become a clock-maker. He had watched the market closely, and questioned
+the persons engaged in the business, and he found that, so far from the
+market being over-stocked, there was a ready sale for every clock made.
+Greatly encouraged by this, he resolved to devote the five months of his
+freedom to learning the business, and to apply himself entirely to it at
+the expiration of his apprenticeship. As soon as he had concluded his
+bargain with his master, he set out for Waterbury on foot, and upon
+arriving there, sought and obtained work from a man who made clock-dials
+for the manufacturers of clocks.
+
+He worked with his new employer awhile, and then formed an arrangement
+with two journeymen clock-makers. Having perfected their plans, the
+three set out for New Jersey in a lumber wagon, carrying their
+provisions with them. The two clock-makers were to make and set up the
+works, and Jerome was to make the cases whenever they should succeed in
+selling a clock on their journey. Clock-making was then considered
+almost perfect. It had been reduced to a regular system, and the cost of
+construction had been very greatly lessened. A good clock, with a case
+seven feet high, could now be made for forty dollars, at which price it
+yielded a fair profit to the maker. The three young men were tolerably
+successful in their venture. Jerome worked fifteen hours a day at
+case-making, and by living economically, managed to carry some money
+with him when he went back to his master's shop in the spring. For the
+remaining three years of his apprenticeship he employed his winters in
+learning the various branches of clock-making, and not only earned
+enough money to clothe himself, but laid by a modest sum besides.
+
+In 1814, being twenty-one years of age and his own master, he set up a
+carpenter shop of his own, being not yet sufficiently master of
+clock-making to undertake that on his own account. In 1815, he married.
+Times were hard. The war with England had just ended, and labor was
+poorly compensated. He is said at this time to have "finished the whole
+interior of a three-story house, including twenty-seven doors and an oak
+floor, nothing being found for him but the timber," for the beggarly sum
+of eighty-seven dollars--a task which no builder would undertake to-day
+for less than a thousand dollars. Still, he declared that, in spite of
+this poor rate of compensation, he was enabled to save enough to make a
+partial payment on a small dwelling for himself. It required a constant
+struggle, however, to live at this rate, and in the winter of 1816,
+being out of work, and having a payment on his house to meet in the
+spring, he determined to go to Baltimore to seek work during the winter.
+He was on the eve of starting, when he learned that Mr. Eli Terry, the
+inventor of the wooden clocks which were so popular fifty years ago, was
+about to open a large factory for them in an adjoining town. He walked
+to the town, and made his application to Mr. Terry, who at once engaged
+him at liberal wages. Mr. Terry's factory was then the largest in the
+country, and, as he used wooden instead of metal works, he was able to
+manufacture his best clocks at fifteen dollars, and other grades in
+proportion. This reduction in price largely increased the sale of his
+clocks, and in a comparatively short time after opening his factory, Mr.
+Terry made and sold about six thousand clocks a year.
+
+Jerome was determined that he would spare no pains to make himself
+master of every detail of clock-making, and applied himself to the
+business with so much intelligence and energy, that by the spring of
+1817 he felt himself competent to undertake their manufacture on his own
+account. He began his operations very cautiously, at first buying the
+works already made, putting them together, and making the cases himself.
+When he had finished two or three, he would carry them about for sale,
+and as his work was well done, he rarely had any difficulty in disposing
+of them. Gradually he increased his business, and in a year or two was
+able to sell every clock he could make, which kept him constantly busy.
+A Southern dealer having seen one of his clocks, was so well pleased
+with it that he gave the maker an order for twelve exactly like it,
+which the latter agreed to furnish at twelve dollars each. It was an
+enormous order to Jerome, and seemed to him almost too good to be real.
+He completed the clocks at the stipulated time, and conveyed them in a
+farmer's wagon to the place where the purchaser had agreed to receive
+them. The money was paid to him in silver, and as the broad pieces were
+counted into his hand, he was almost ready to weep for joy. One hundred
+and forty-four dollars was the largest sum he had ever possessed at one
+time, and it seemed almost a fortune to him. His clocks were taken to
+Charleston, South Carolina, and sold. They gave entire satisfaction; and
+when, some years later, he commenced to ship regular consignments to the
+Southern cities, he found no difficulty in disposing of his wares.
+
+Mr. Jerome's success was now more decided. He was enabled to pay for his
+house in a short time, and having, soon afterward, an opportunity to
+dispose of it at a fair profit, he did so, and took clock-works in
+payment. He bought land and timber, and paid for them in clocks, and his
+affairs prospered so well that, before long, he began to employ workmen
+to assist him, and to dispose of his clocks to peddlers and merchants,
+instead of carrying them around for sale himself. As his business
+increased, he invented and patented labor-saving machinery for the
+manufacture of the various parts of the clock, and thus greatly
+decreased the cost of construction. He designed new and ornamental
+cases, and exerted himself to render the exterior of his clocks as
+tasteful and attractive as possible. His business now increased rapidly,
+and he was soon compelled to take in a partner. He began to ship his
+clocks to the Southern States, sending them by sea. They met with a
+ready sale, but all his ventures of this kind were subject to serious
+risks. The works, being of wood, would frequently become damp and
+swollen on the voyage, thus rendering them unfit for use. Mr. Jerome
+endeavored in various ways to remedy this defect, but was finally
+compelled to admit that, until he could change the nature of the wood,
+he could not prevent it from being influenced by moisture.
+
+He passed many sleepless nights while engaged in seeking this remedy,
+for he plainly foresaw that unless the defect could be removed, the days
+of the wooden clock business were numbered.
+
+In the midst of his depression, the idea occurred to him, one night
+while lying awake, that the works of a clock could be manufactured as
+cheaply of brass as of wood. The thought came to him with the force of a
+revelation. He sprang out of bed, lit his candle, and passed the rest of
+the night in making calculations which proved to him that he could not
+only make brass works as cheaply as wooden ones, but, by the employment
+of certain labor-saving machinery, at a cost decidedly less. There was
+one important obstacle in his way, however. The machinery requisite for
+cutting brass works cheaply was not in existence. Before making known
+his plans, Mr. Jerome set to work to invent the clock-making machinery
+which has made him famous among American inventors. When he had
+completed it, he commenced to make brass clocks, which he sold at such a
+low price that wooden clocks were speedily driven out of the market.
+Little by little, he brought his machinery to perfection, applying it to
+the manufacture of all parts of the clock; and to-day, thanks to his
+patience and genius, clock-making in the United States has become a very
+simple affair. By the aid of Jerome's machinery, one man and one boy can
+saw veneers enough for three hundred clock cases in a single day. By the
+aid of this same machinery, six men can manufacture the works of one
+thousand clocks in a day; and a factory employing twenty-five workmen
+can turn out two thousand clocks per week. By the aid of this same
+machinery, the total cost of producing a good clock of small size has
+been brought down to forty cents.
+
+As the reader will suppose, Jerome made a large fortune--a princely
+fortune--for himself, and entirely revolutionized the clock-making trade
+of the Union. Thanks to him, scores of fortunes have been made by other
+manufacturers also, and American clocks have become famous all over the
+world for their excellence and cheapness. "Go where you will, in
+Europe, Asia, Africa, or America, you will be sure to come upon Yankee
+clocks. To England they go by the shipload. Germany, France, Russia,
+Spain, Italy, all take large quantities. Many have been sent to China
+and to the East Indies. At Jerusalem, Connecticut clocks tick on many a
+shelf, and travelers have found them far up the Nile, in Guinea, at the
+Cape of Good Hope, and in all the accessible places of South America."
+
+After conducting his business for some years, Mr. Jerome organized the
+Jerome Clock-Making Company, of New Haven. It began its operations with
+a large capital, and conducted them upon an extensive scale. In a few
+years Mr. Jerome retired from the active management of its affairs, but
+continued nominally at its head as its president. He built for himself
+an elegant mansion in New Haven, where he gathered about him his family
+and the friends which his sterling qualities and upright character had
+drawn to him, and here he hoped to pass the remainder of his days.
+
+He was doomed to a bitter disappointment. Although nominally at the head
+of the Clock Company, he left its control entirely to his partners, who,
+by injudicious management, brought it at length to the verge of
+bankruptcy. They made energetic efforts to ward off the final
+catastrophe, but without success, and in 1860, almost before Mr. Jerome
+was aware of the full extent of the trouble, the Company was ruined. Its
+liabilities were heavy, and every dollar's worth of Jerome's property
+was taken to meet them. Honest to the core, he gave up every thing. His
+elegant mansion was sold, and he was forced to remove to an humble
+cottage, a poorer man than when he had first set up for himself as a
+carpenter.
+
+He was not the man to repine, however, and he at once began to look
+about him for employment. He was sixty-seven years old, and it was hard
+to go out into the world to earn his bread again, but he bore his
+misfortunes bravely, and soon succeeded in obtaining the employment he
+desired. The great Clock Company of Chicago engaged him at a liberal
+salary to superintend their manufactory in that city, which position he
+still holds. The Company manufacture his own clocks, and are fortunate
+in having the benefit of his genius and experience. Were he a younger
+man, there can be no doubt that he would win a second fortune equal to
+that which was swept from him so cruelly, through no fault of his own.
+As it is, we can only venture to hope that his sturdy independence and
+indomitable energy will provide him with the means of passing the
+closing years of his life in comfort. Few men have done the world better
+service, or been more worthy of its rewards.
+
+[Illustration: ELIAS HOWE, JR.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+ELIAS HOWE, JR.
+
+
+One of the busiest parts of the busy thoroughfare of Broadway, in the
+city of New York, is the point of its intersection with Fourth Street.
+Thousands and tens of thousands of people pass and repass there daily,
+but few ever pause to look at the curious machine which stands in the
+window of the shop at the north-west corner of these two streets. This
+machine, clumsy and odd-looking as it is, nevertheless has a history
+which makes it one of the most interesting of all the sights of the
+great city. It is the first sewing-machine that was ever made.
+
+ELIAS HOWE, its maker, was born in the town of Spencer, Massachusetts,
+in 1819. He was one of eight children, and it was no small undertaking
+on the part of his father to provide a maintenance for such a household.
+Mr. Howe, Sen., was a farmer and miller, and, as was the custom at that
+time in the country towns of New England, carried on in his family some
+of those minor branches of industry suited to the capacity of children,
+with which New England abounds. When Elias was six years old, he was
+set, with his brothers and sisters, to sticking wire teeth through the
+leather straps used for making cotton cards. When he became old enough
+he assisted his father in his saw-mill and grist-mill, and during the
+winter months picked up a meager education at the district school. He
+has said that it was the rude and imperfect mills of his father that
+first turned his attention to machinery. He was not fitted for hard
+work, however, as he was frail in constitution and incapable of bearing
+much fatigue. Moreover, he inherited a species of lameness which proved
+a great obstacle to any undertaking on his part, and gave him no little
+trouble all through life. At the age of eleven he went to live out on
+the farm of a neighbor, but the labor proving too severe for him, he
+returned home and resumed his place in his father's mills, where he
+remained until he was sixteen years old.
+
+When at this age, he conceived an ardent desire to go to Lowell to seek
+his fortune. One of his friends had just returned from that place, and
+had given him such a wonderful description of the city and its huge
+mills, that he was eager to go there and see the marvel for himself.
+Obtaining his father's consent, he went to Lowell, and found employment
+as a learner in one of the large cotton-mills of the city. He remained
+there two years, when the great financial disaster of 1837 threw him out
+of employment and compelled him to look for work elsewhere. He obtained
+a place at Cambridge, in a machine-shop, and was put to work upon the
+new hemp-carding machinery of Professor Treadwell. His cousin, Nathaniel
+P. Banks, afterward governor of Massachusetts, member of Congress, and
+major-general, worked in the same shop with him, and boarded at the same
+house. Howe remained in Cambridge only a few months, however, and was
+then given a place in the machine-shop of Ari Davis, of Boston.
+
+At the age of twenty-one he married. This was a rash step for him, as
+his health was very delicate, and his earnings were but nine dollars per
+week. Three children were born to him in quick succession, and he found
+it no easy task to provide food, shelter, and clothing for his little
+family. The light-heartedness for which he had formerly been noted
+entirely deserted him, and he became sad and melancholy. His health did
+not improve, and it was with difficulty that he could perform his daily
+task. His strength was so slight that he would frequently return home
+from his day's work too much exhausted to eat. He could only go to bed,
+and in his agony he wished "to lie in bed forever and ever." Still he
+worked faithfully and conscientiously, for his wife and children were
+very dear to him; but he did so with a hopelessness which only those who
+have tasted the depths of poverty can understand.
+
+[Illustration: HOWE'S FIRST IDEA OF THE SEWING-MACHINE.]
+
+About this time he heard it said that the great necessity of the age was
+a machine for doing sewing. The immense amount of fatigue incurred and
+the delay in hand-sewing were obvious, and it was conceded by all who
+thought of the matter at all that the man who could invent a machine
+which would remove these difficulties would make a fortune. Howe's
+poverty inclined him to listen to these remarks with great interest. No
+man needed money more than he, and he was confident that his mechanical
+skill was of an order which made him as competent as any one else to
+achieve the task proposed. He set to work to accomplish it, and, as he
+knew well the dangers which surround an inventor, kept his own counsel.
+At his daily labor, in all his waking hours, and even in his dreams, he
+brooded over this invention. He spent many a wakeful night in these
+meditations, and his health was far from being benefited by this severe
+mental application. Success is not easily won in any great undertaking,
+and Elias Howe found that he had entered upon a task which required the
+greatest patience, perseverance, energy, and hopefulness. He watched his
+wife as she sewed, and his first effort was to devise a machine which
+should do what she was doing. He made a needle pointed at both ends,
+with the eye in the middle, that should work up and down through the
+cloth, and carry the thread through at each thrust; but his elaboration
+of this conception would not work satisfactorily. It was not until 1844,
+fully a year after he began the attempt to invent the machine, that he
+came to the conclusion that the movement of a machine need not of
+necessity be an imitation of the performance of the hand. It was plain
+to him that there must be another stitch, and that if he could discover
+it his difficulties would all be ended. A little later he conceived the
+idea of using two threads, and forming a stitch by the aid of a shuttle
+and a curved needle with the eye near the point. This was the triumph of
+his skill. He had now invented a perfect sewing-machine, and had
+discovered the essential principles of every subsequent modification of
+his conception. Satisfied that he had at length solved the problem, he
+constructed a rough model of his machine of wood and wire, in October,
+1844, and operated it to his perfect satisfaction. His invention is
+thus described:
+
+"He used a needle and a shuttle of novel construction, and combined them
+with holding surfaces, feed mechanism and other devices, as they had
+never before been brought together, in one machine One of the principal
+features of Mr. Howe's invention is the combination of a grooved needle,
+having an eye near its point, and vibrating in the direction of its
+length, with a side-pointed shuttle for effecting a locked stitch, and
+forming, with the threads, one on each side of the cloth, a firm and
+lasting seam not easily ripped. The main action of the machine consists
+in the interlocking of the loop, made by the thread carried in the point
+of the needle through the cloth, with another thread passed through this
+loop by means of a shuttle entering and leaving it at every stitch. The
+thread attached to this shuttle remains in the loop and secures the
+stitch as the needle is withdrawn to be ready to make the next one. At
+the same time the cloth, held by little projecting pins to the baster
+plate, is carried along with this by what is called the 'feed motion'
+just the length of a stitch, the distance being readily adjusted for
+finer or coarser work. .... The cloth is held in a vertical position in
+the machine, and the part to be sewed is pressed against the side of the
+shuttle-race by a presser plate hinged on its upper edge, and capable of
+exerting any required pressure on the cloth, according as the adjusting
+screw that regulates it is turned. A slot, or perforation through the
+plate, also extended through the side of the shuttle-race near the
+bottom, admits the passage of the needle; and when this is pushed in the
+shuttle can still pass freely over it. The shuttle is pushed one way and
+then the other through its race or trough by picker staves. The thread
+for the needle is supplied by a bobbin, the movement of which is
+checked by a friction band, this securing the proper tension, and the
+slack of the thread is duly taken up by a suitable contrivance for the
+purpose. Thus, all the essential features of the most approved
+sewing-machine were first found in that of Mr. Howe; and the machines of
+later date are, in fact, but modifications of it."
+
+At this time, he had abandoned his work as a journeyman mechanic, and
+had removed to his father's house. Mr. Howe, Sen., had established in
+Cambridge a machine-shop for the cutting of strips of palm-leaf used in
+the manufacture of hats. Elias and his family lived under his father's
+roof, and in the garret of the house the half-sick inventor put up a
+lathe, where he did a little work on his own account, and labored on his
+sewing-machine. He was miserably poor, and could scarcely earn enough to
+provide food for his family; and, to make matters worse, his father, who
+was disposed to help him, lost his shop and its contents by fire. Poor
+Elias was in a most deplorable condition. He had his model in his head,
+and was fully satisfied of its excellence, but he had not the money to
+buy the materials needed in making a perfect machine, which would have
+to be constructed of steel and iron, and without which he could not hope
+to convince others of its value. His great invention was useless to him
+without the five hundred dollars which he needed in the construction of
+a working model.
+
+In this dilemma, he applied to a friend, Mr. George Fisher, a coal and
+wood merchant of Cambridge, who was a man of some means. He explained
+his invention to him, and succeeded in forming a partnership with him.
+Fisher agreed to take Howe and his family to board with him while the
+latter was making the machine, to allow his garret to be used as a
+workshop, and to advance the five hundred dollars necessary for the
+purchase of tools and the construction of a model. In return for this he
+was to receive one-half of the patent, if Howe succeeded in patenting
+his machine. About the first of December, 1844, Howe and his family
+accordingly moved into Fisher's house, and the little workshop was set
+up in the garret. All that winter he worked on his model. There was
+little to delay him in its construction, as the conception was perfectly
+clear in his mind. He worked all day, and sometimes nearly all night,
+and in April, 1845, had his machine so far advanced that he sewed a seam
+with it. By the middle of May the machine was completed, and in July he
+sewed with it the seams of two woolen suits, one for himself and the
+other for Mr. Fisher. The sewing was so well done that it outlasted the
+cloth.
+
+It has been stated by Professor Renwick and other scientific men that
+Elias Howe "carried the invention of the sewing-machine further on
+toward its complete and final utility than any other inventor has ever
+brought a first-rate invention at the first trial." Those who doubt this
+assertion should examine the curious machine at the corner of Broadway
+and Fourth Street, and their doubts will be dispelled; for they will
+find in it all the essentials of the best sewing-machine of to-day.
+
+Having patented his machine, Howe endeavored to bring it into use. He
+was full of hope, and had no doubt that it would be adopted at once by
+those who were so much interested in the saving of labor. He first
+offered it to the tailors of Boston; but they, while admitting its
+usefulness, told him it would never be adopted by their trade, as it
+would ruin them. Considering the number of machines now used by the
+tailoring interest throughout the world, this assertion seems
+ridiculous. Other efforts were equally unsuccessful. Every one admitted
+and praised the ingenuity of the machine but no one would invest a
+dollar in it. Fisher became disgusted, and withdrew from his
+partnership, and Howe and his family moved back to his father's house.
+Thoroughly disheartened, he abandoned his machine. He then obtained a
+place as engineer on a railroad, and drove a locomotive until his health
+entirely broke down.
+
+With the loss of his health his hopes revived, and he determined to seek
+in England the victory which he had failed to win here. Unable to go
+himself, he sent his machine by his brother Amasa, in October, 1846.
+Upon reaching London, Amasa sought out Mr. William Thomas, of Cheapside,
+and explained to him his brother's invention. He found Mr. Thomas
+willing to use the machine in his business, but upon terms more
+favorable to himself than to the inventor. He offered the sum of twelve
+hundred and fifty dollars for the machine which Amasa Howe had brought
+with him, and agreed to pay Elias fifteen dollars per week if he would
+enter his service, and adapt the machine to his business of umbrella and
+corset making. As this was his only hope of earning a livelihood, Elias
+accepted the offer, and, upon his brother's return to the United States,
+sailed for England. He remained in Mr. Thomas's employ for about eight
+months, and at the end of that time left him, having found him hard,
+exacting, and unreasonable.
+
+Meanwhile his sick wife and three children had joined him in London, and
+he had found it hard to provide for them on the wages given him by Mr.
+Thomas; but after being thrown out of employment his condition was
+desperate indeed. He was in a strange country, without friends or money,
+and often he and his little family went whole days without food. Their
+sufferings were very great, but at length Howe was able (probably by
+assistance from home) to send his family back to his father's house. He
+himself remained in London, still hoping to bring his machine into use.
+It was in vain, however, and so, collecting what few household goods he
+had acquired in England, he shipped them to America, and followed them
+thither himself in another vessel, pawning his model and patent papers
+to pay his passage. When he landed in New York he had half a crown in
+his pocket, and there came to him on the same day a letter telling him
+that his wife was dying with consumption in Cambridge. He could not go
+to her at once, as he had no money, and was too feeble to undertake the
+distance on foot. He was compelled to wait several days until he could
+obtain the money for his fare to Cambridge, but at length succeeded in
+reaching that place just in time to see his wife die. In the midst of
+his grief he received the announcement that the vessel containing the
+few household goods which he had shipped from England had been lost at
+sea. It seemed to him that Fate was bent upon destroying him, so rapid
+and stunning were the blows she dealt him.
+
+But a great success was now in store for him, and he was to rise out of
+his troubles to the realization of his brightest hopes. Soon after his
+return home he obtained profitable employment, and, better still,
+discovered that his machine had become famous during his absence.
+Facsimiles of it had been constructed by unscrupulous mechanics, who
+paid no attention to the patents of the^inventor, and these copies had
+been exhibited in many places as "wonders," and had even been adopted in
+many important branches of manufacture. Howe at once set to work to
+defend his rights. He found friends to aid him, and in August, 1850,
+began those famous suits which continued for four years, and were at
+length decided in his favor. His adversaries made a bold resistance, but
+the decision of Judge Sprague, in 1854, settled the matter, and
+triumphantly established the rights of the inventor.
+
+In 1850, Howe removed to New York, and began in a small way to
+manufacture machines to order. He was in partnership with a Mr. Bliss,
+but for several years the business was so unimportant that upon the
+death of his partner, in 1855, he was enabled to buy out that
+gentleman's interest, and thus become the sole proprietor of his patent.
+Soon after this his business began to increase, and continued until his
+own proper profits and the royalty which the courts compelled other
+manufacturers to pay him for the use of his invention grew from $300 to
+$200,000 per annum. In 1867, when the extension of his patent expired,
+it is stated that he had earned a total of two millions of dollars by
+it. It cost him large sums to defend his rights, however, and he was
+very far from being as wealthy as was commonly supposed, although a very
+rich man.
+
+In the Paris Exposition of 1867, he exhibited his machines, and received
+the gold medal of the Exposition, and the Cross of the Legion of Honor,
+in addition, as a compliment to him as a manufacturer and inventor.
+
+He contributed money liberally to the aid of the Union in the late war,
+and enlisted as a private soldier in the Seventeenth Regiment of
+Connecticut Volunteers, with which command he went to the field,
+performing all the duties of his position until failing health compelled
+him to leave the service. Upon one occasion the Government was so much
+embarrassed that it could not pay the regiment of which he was a member.
+Mr. Howe promptly advanced the money, and his comrades were saved from
+the annoyances which would have attended the delay in paying them. He
+died at Brooklyn, Long Island, on the 3d of October, 1867.
+
+Mr. Howe will always rank among the most distinguished of American
+inventors; not only because of the unusual degree of completeness shown
+in his first conception of the sewing-machine, but because of the great
+benefits which have sprung from it. It has revolutionized the industry
+of the world, opened new sources of wealth to enterprise, and lightened
+the labor of hundreds of thousands of working people. Many a pale-faced,
+hollow-eyed woman, who formerly sat sewing her life away for a mere
+pittance, blesses the name of Elias Howe, and there is scarcely a
+community in the civilized world but contains the evidence of his
+genius, and honors him as the benefactor of the human race.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+RICHARD M. HOE.
+
+
+To write the complete history of the printing press would require years
+of patient labor and research, and a much larger space than the limits
+of the present work will permit. There are few subjects more attractive
+or more worthy of consideration than the history of this wonderful
+invention, which seems more like a romance than a narration of facts.
+The historian who should essay the task would be required to carry his
+reader back to the darkest ages of the world, and, beginning with the
+stamps used for affixing hieroglyphical characters to the now crumbling
+ruins of Egypt and Nineveh, trace the gradual development of the
+beneficent conception from the signets of the Israelites, and the stamps
+used by the Romans for marking certain kinds of merchandise, through the
+rude process of the Chinese, Japanese, and Tartars, to the invention of
+Johannes Guttenberg, and, finally, to the wonderful lightning
+steam-presses of to-day.
+
+In these pages it is not proposed to offer to the reader any such
+narrative. On the contrary, the story of the printing press will be
+taken up just as it was on the point of reaching its greatest
+perfection, since our subject concerns only the man who brought it to
+that state.
+
+This man, RICHARD MARCH HOE by name, was born in the city of New York,
+on the 12th of September, 1812. His father, Robert Hoe, was a native of
+the village of Hose, Leicester, England, and the son of a wealthy
+farmer. Disliking his father's pursuit, he apprenticed himself to a
+carpenter. When only sixteen years old, the elder Hoe purchased his
+indentures from his master and sailed for the United States. He was
+almost penniless when he reached New York, and in this condition entered
+the store of Mr. Grant Thorburn one day in search of employment. Mr.
+Thorburn manifested a sudden and strong liking to the youth, took him to
+his own house, and when he was prostrated with the yellow fever, during
+the epidemic of 1804, nursed him tenderly throughout. Setting to work
+immediately upon his arrival in New York, he made friends rapidly, and
+prospered in his trade so well that when but twenty years old he was
+able to marry. His bride was a daughter of Matthew Smith, of
+Westchester, and a sister of Peter Smith, the inventor of the hand
+printing press, which bears his name. With this gentleman and Matthew
+Smith, jr., his brother, Robert Hoe entered into partnership. Their
+business was that of carpentering and printers' joinery; but after Peter
+Smith had completed the invention of his hand press, it gradually grew
+into the manufacture of presses and printers' materials. Both of the
+brothers died in 1823, and Robert Hoe succeeded to the entire business.
+
+The manufactory of "Robert Hoe & Co." was originally located in the
+centre of the old block between Pearl and William Streets, and Pine
+Street and Maiden Lane. Soon after their establishment there, the city
+authorities ran Cedar Street right through their building, and they
+removed to Gold Street, near John. They have been twice burned out here,
+but still occupy these premises with their counting-room and lower shop.
+
+Printing by steam had long attracted the attention of persons engaged
+in the art, and many essays had been made in this direction by different
+inventors, both in this country and in Europe. The most successful
+results were the Adams press, the invention of Mr. Isaac Adams, of
+Boston, Mass., and the Napier press, that of a British artisan. It was
+the latter which was the means of identifying Mr. Hoe with the steam
+press.
+
+The Napier press was introduced into this country in 1830, by the
+proprietors of the _National Intelligencer_, but when it arrived, these
+gentlemen were not able to release it from the Custom-house. Major Noah,
+himself the proprietor of a newspaper, was at that time Collector of the
+port of New York, and he, being anxious to see the press in operation,
+requested Mr. Hoe to put it together. Mr. Hoe performed this task
+successfully, although the press was a novelty to him, and was permitted
+to take models of its various parts before it was reshipped to England.
+It was found to be a better press than any that had ever been seen in
+this country, and the _Commercial Advertiser,_ of New York, and the
+_Chronicle_, of Philadelphia, at once ordered duplicates of it from
+England.
+
+Mr. Hoe was very much pleased with this press, but believed that he
+could construct a much better one. "To this end he despatched his new
+partner, Mr. Sereno Newton, to England to examine all the improvements
+in machinery there, and bring home samples of such as he thought might
+be advantageously adopted in this country. Mr. Newton, besides being an
+ingenious mechanic, was well-read in books, and was considered one of
+the first mathematicians in New York. Returning from his mission, he
+constructed a new two-cylinder press, which soon superseded all others
+then in use." Mr. Hoe's health failed, compelling him, in 1832, to
+retire from the business.
+
+Young Richard M. Hoe had been brought up in his father's business,
+after receiving a fair education. He inherited his father's inventive
+genius, combined with a rare business capacity, and from the first was
+regarded as the future hope of the establishment. Upon the withdrawal of
+his father, a partnership was established between himself, his brother
+Robert, Mr. Newton, and his cousin Matthew Smith, but the style of the
+firm remained unchanged.
+
+Richard Hoe's first invention was conceived in 1837, and consisted of a
+valuable improvement in the manufacture of grinding saws. Having
+obtained a patent for it in the United States, he visited England in
+that year for the same purpose. By his process circular saws may be
+ground with accuracy to any desired thickness. He readily obtained a
+patent in England, as the excellence of his invention commended it to
+every one. While there he gave especial attention to the improvements
+which had been made in the printing press, in the manufacture of which
+his firm was still largely engaged. Returning to New York, he devoted
+himself entirely to this branch of his business, and soon produced the
+machine known as "Hoe's Double-Cylinder Press," which was capable of
+making about six thousand impressions per hour. The first press of this
+kind ever made was ordered by the New York _Sun_, and was the admiration
+of all the printers of the city. This style of press is now used
+extensively for printing country newspapers.
+
+As long as the newspaper interest of the country stood still, "Hoe's
+Double-Cylinder Press" was amply sufficient for its wants, but as the
+circulation of the journals of the large cities began to increase, the
+"double-cylinder" was often taxed far beyond its powers. A printing
+press capable of striking off papers with much greater rapidity was felt
+to be an imperative and still-increasing need. It was often necessary
+to hold the forms back until nearly daylight for the purpose of issuing
+the latest news, and in the hurry which ensued to get out the morning
+edition, the press very frequently met with accidents.
+
+Mr. Hoe was fully alive to the importance of improving his press, and,
+in 1842, he began to experiment with it for the purpose of obtaining
+greater speed. It was a serious undertaking, however, and at every step
+fresh difficulties arose. He spent four years in experimenting, and at
+the end of that time was almost ready to confess that the obstacles were
+too great to be overcome. One night, in. 1846, while in this mood, he
+resumed his experiments. The more he pondered over the subject the more
+difficult it seemed. In despair, he was about to relinquish the effort
+for the night, when suddenly there flashed across his mind a plan for
+securing the type on a horizontal cylinder. This had been his great
+difficulty, and he now felt that he had mastered it. He sat up all
+night, working out his design, and making a note of every idea that
+occurred to him, in order that nothing should escape him. By morning the
+problem which had baffled him so long had been solved, and the
+magnificent "Lightning Press" already had a being in the inventor's
+fertile brain.
+
+He carried his model rapidly to perfection, and, proceeding with it to
+Washington, obtained a patent. On his return home he met Mr. Swain, the
+proprietor of the Baltimore _Sun_ and Philadelphia _Ledger_, and
+explained his invention to him. Mr. Swain was so much pleased with it
+that he at once ordered a four-cylinder press, which was completed and
+ready for use on the 31st of December, 1848. This press was capable of
+making ten thousand impressions per hour, and did its work with entire
+satisfaction in every respect.
+
+This was a success absolutely unprecedented--so marked, in fact, that
+some persons were inclined to doubt it. The news flew rapidly from city
+to city, and across the ocean to foreign lands, and soon wherever a
+newspaper was printed men were talking of Hoe's wonderful invention.
+Orders came pouring in upon the inventor with such rapidity that he soon
+had as many on hand as he could fill in several years. In a
+comparatively brief period the _Herald_, _Tribune_, and _Sun_, of New
+York, were boasting of their "Lightning Presses," and soon the
+_Traveller_ and _Daily Journal_, in Boston, followed their example. Mr.
+Hoe was now not only a famous man, but possessed of an assured business
+for the future, which was certain to result in a large fortune. By the
+year 1860, besides supplying the principal cities of the Union (fifteen
+lightning presses being used in the city of New York alone), he had
+shipped eighteen presses to Great Britain, four to France, and one to
+Australia. Two of the presses sent to England were ordered for the
+London _Times_.
+
+Mr. Hoe continued to improve his invention, adding additional cylinders
+as increased, speed was desired, and at length brought it to the degree
+of perfection exhibited in the splendid ten-cylinder press now in use in
+the offices of our leading journals, which strikes off twenty-five
+thousand sheets per hour. Whether more will be accomplished with this
+wonderful machine the future alone can determine, but the inventor is
+said to be still laboring to improve it.
+
+In 1858, Mr. Hoe purchased the patent rights and manufactory of Isaac
+Adams, in Boston, and since then has carried on the manufacture of the
+Adams press from that place. He has also established a manufactory in
+England, where he conducts a profitable business in both the Adams and
+the Hoe press. Over a million and a half of dollars are invested in
+these establishments in New York, Boston, and London, in land,
+buildings, and stock. The firm manufacture presses of all kinds, and
+all materials used by printers except type and ink. They also
+manufacture circular saws, made according to Mr. Hoe's process.
+
+Mr. Hoe, now fifty-eight years of age, is still as vigorous and active
+as many a younger man. Besides being one of the most prominent and
+distinguished inventors and manufacturers in the country, he is justly
+esteemed for his many virtues and his commanding business talents. He is
+still the active head of the house which he has carried to such a
+brilliant success, and is the possessor of an ample fortune, which his
+genius and industry have secured to him. He is courteous and obliging to
+all, and very liberal to those whose needs commend them to his
+benevolence.
+
+The ten-cylinder press costs fifty thousand dollars, and is regarded as
+cheap at that immense sum. It is one of the most interesting inventions
+ever made. Those who have seen it working in the subterranean
+press-rooms of the journals of the great metropolis will not soon forget
+the wonderful sight. The ear is deafened with the incessant clashing of
+the machinery; the printed sheets issue from the sides of the huge
+engine in an unceasing stream; the eye is bewildered with the mass of
+lines and bands; and it seems hard to realize that one single mind could
+ever have adjusted all the various parts to work harmoniously.
+
+The following is a description of the ten-cylinder steam printing-press
+now used in the office of the New York _World_. It is one of the best
+specimens of its kind to be seen in the great city:
+
+The dimensions of the press are as follows: Entire length, 40 feet;
+width, 15 feet; height, 16 feet. The large horizontal cylinder in the
+center is about 4-1/2 feet in diameter, and on it are placed the "forms" of
+type for the four pages of one side of the paper. Each of these
+constitutes a segment of a circle, and the whole four occupy a segment
+of only about one-fourth of the surface of the cylinder, the other
+three-fourths being used as an ink-distributing surface. Around this
+main cylinder, and parallel with it, are ten smaller impression
+cylinders, according to the number of which a press is termed a four,
+six, or ten-cylinder press. The large cylinder being set in revolution,
+the form of types is carried successively to all the impression
+cylinders, at each of which a sheet is introduced and receives the
+impression of the types as the form passes. Thus as many sheets are
+printed at each revolution of the main cylinder as there are impression
+cylinders around it. One person is required at each impression cylinder
+to supply the sheets of paper, which are taken at the proper moment by
+fingers or grippers, and after being printed are conveyed out by tapes
+and laid in heaps by means of self-acting flyers, thereby dispensing
+with the hands required in ordinary machines to receive and pile the
+sheets. The grippers hold the sheet securely, so that the thinnest
+newspaper can be printed without waste.
+
+The ink is contained in a fountain placed beneath the main cylinder, and
+is conveyed by means of distributing rollers to the distributing surface
+on the main cylinder. This surface being lower or less in diameter than
+the form of types, passes by the impression cylinders without touching
+them. For each impression there are two inking rollers, which receive
+their supply of ink from the distributing surface of the main cylinder,
+and raise and ink the form as it passes under them, after which they
+again fall to the distributing surface.
+
+Each page of the paper is locked up on a detached segment of the large
+cylinder, called by the compositors a "turtle," and this constitutes its
+bed and chase. The column-rules run parallel with the shaft of the
+cylinder, and are consequently straight, while the head, advertising,
+and dash-rules are in the form of segments of a circle. The column-rules
+are in the form of a wedge, with the thin part directed toward the axis
+of the cylinder, so as to bind the type securely, and at the same time
+to keep the ink from collecting between the types and the rules. They
+are held down to the bed by tongues projecting at intervals along their
+length, which slide into rebated grooves, cut crosswise in the face of
+the bed. The spaces in the grooves between the column-rules are
+accurately fitted with sliding blocks of metal even with the surface of
+the bed, the ends of the blocks being cut away underneath to receive a
+projection on the sides of the tongues of the column-rules. The form of
+type is locked up in the bed by means of screws at the foot and sides,
+by which the type is held as securely as in the ordinary manner upon a
+flat bed, if not even more so. The speed of the machine is limited only
+by the ability of the feeders to supply the sheets. Twenty-five hundred
+is about as many as a man can supply in an hour, and multiplying this by
+ten--one man being at each cylinder--we have 25,000 sheets an hour as
+the capacity of the press.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+SAMUEL COLT.
+
+
+Samuel Colt was born at Hartford, Connecticut, on the 19th of July,
+1814. He was descended from one of the original settlers of that city,
+and his father, who possessed some means, was a man of great energy,
+intelligence, and enterprise. The senior Colt began life as a merchant,
+and afterward became a manufacturer of woolen, cotton, and silk goods.
+The mother of our hero was the daughter of Major John Caldwell, a
+prominent banker of Hartford, and is said to have been a woman of
+superior character and fine mental attainments.
+
+It was within the power of the parents of Samuel Colt to give him a
+thorough education, and this they were anxious to do; but he was always
+so full of restless energy that he greatly preferred working in the
+factory to going to school. He loved to be where he could hear the busy
+looms at work, and see the play of the intricate machinery in the great
+building. In order to gratify him, his father placed him in his factory
+at the age of ten years, and there he remained for about three years,
+leaving it only at rare intervals and for short periods of time, which
+he passed in attendance upon school and working on a farm. When he was
+thirteen his father declared that he would not permit him to grow up
+without an education, and sent him to a boarding-school at Amherst,
+Massachusetts. He did not remain there long, for the spirit of adventure
+came over him with such force that he could not resist it. He ran away
+from school and shipped as a boy before the mast on a vessel bound for
+the East Indies. The ship was called the Coroo, and was commanded by
+Captain Spaulding.
+
+[Illustration: THE BOY COLT INVENTING THE REVOLVER.]
+
+The voyage was long, and the lad was subjected to great hardships, which
+soon convinced him that running away to sea was not as romantic in real
+life as in the books he had read, but his experience, though
+uncomfortable enough, failed to conquer his restless spirit. While at
+sea in the Coroo he had an abundance of leisure time for reflection, but
+instead of devoting it to meditating upon the folly of his course, he
+spent it in inventing a revolving pistol, a rough model of which he cut
+in wood with his jack-knife. This was the germ of the invention which
+afterward gave him such fame, and it is not a little singular that the
+conception of such a weapon should have come to a boy of fourteen.
+
+Returning home, he became an apprentice in his father's factory at
+Ware, Massachusetts. He was put into the dyeing and bleaching
+department, and was thoroughly trained in it by Mr. William T. Smith, a
+scientific man, and one of the best practical chemists in New England.
+Young Holt manifested a remarkable aptitude for chemistry, and when but
+a mere boy was known as one of the most successful and dexterous
+manipulators in New England.
+
+When he had reached his eighteenth year, the old spirit of restlessness
+came over him again, and he embarked in an unusually bold undertaking
+for one so young, in which, however, he was much favored by the
+circumstance that he was very much older in appearance than in reality,
+commonly passing for a full-grown man. Assuming the name of Dr. Coult,
+he traveled throughout the Union and British America, visiting nearly
+every town of two thousand inhabitants and over, lecturing upon
+chemistry, and illustrating his lectures with a series of skillful and
+highly popular experiments. His tour was entirely successful, and he
+realized in the two years over which it extended quite a handsome sum.
+The use which he made of the money thus acquired was characteristic of
+the man.
+
+He had never abandoned the design of a revolving pistol which he had
+conceived on board the Coroo, and he now set to work to perfect it,
+using the proceeds of his lectures to enable him to take out patents in
+this country and in Europe. He spent two years in working on his model,
+making improvements in it at every step, and by 1835 had brought it to
+such a state of excellence that he was enabled to apply for a patent in
+the United States. His application was successful. Before it was
+decided, however, he visited England and France, and patented his
+invention in those countries. Though now only twenty-one years old, he
+had given seven years of study and labor to his "revolver," and had
+brought it to a state of perfection which was far in advance of his
+early hopes.
+
+"At this time, and, indeed, for several years after, he was not aware
+that any person before himself had ever conceived the idea of a fire-arm
+with a rotating chambered breech. On a subsequent visit to Europe, while
+exploring the collection of fire-arms in the Tower of London and other
+repositories of weapons of war in England and on the continent, he found
+several guns having the chambered breech, but all were so constructed as
+to be of little practical value, being far more liable to explode
+prematurely and destroy the man who should use them than the objects at
+which they might be aimed. Unwilling, however, to seem to claim that
+which had been previously invented, he read before the Institution of
+Civil Engineers in England (of which he was the only American
+associate), in 1851, an elaborate paper on the subject, in which he
+described and illustrated, with appropriate drawings, the various early
+inventions of revolving fire-arms, and demonstrated the principles on
+which his were constructed."
+
+Having secured patents in the United States and in the principal
+countries of Europe, Mr. Colt exerted himself to organize a company for
+the manufacture of his revolver. He met with considerable opposition,
+for it was commonly asserted that his pistol would never be of any
+practical value. The wise ones said it was too complicated for general
+use, and that its adoption would be attended by the killing or maiming
+of the majority of those who used it. The inventor disregarded these
+birds of ill omen, however, and, persevering in his efforts, finally
+succeeded in securing the aid of some capitalists in New York. A company
+was formed in 1835, called the "Patent Arms Company," with a capital of
+$300,000, and an armory was established at Paterson, New Jersey. Mr.
+Colt then endeavored to induce the Government of the United States to
+adopt the arm in the military and naval service. Strange as it now
+seems, however, the officers of the army and navy were not disposed to
+regard the revolver with favor. They declared that the percussion cap
+was entirely unreliable, and that no weapon requiring it could be
+depended on with certainty; that there was great danger that two or more
+of the charges would explode at the same time; and that the arm was
+liable to get out of order very easily. They further protested that it
+was much more difficult to repair than the arms then in use, and that
+this alone rendered it unfit for adoption by the Government.
+Notwithstanding these objections were fully met by Mr. Colt, who
+explained carefully the principles of his weapon, it was two years
+before the Government consented to give the revolver a trial.
+
+In 1837, the Florida war raged with great violence, and the Seminoles,
+secure in their fastnesses in the Everglades, were enabled to bid
+defiance to all the efforts of the army of the United States. Their
+superior skill in the use of the rifle gave them an advantage which the
+bravery and determination of our troops could not overcome. In this
+emergency, the Government consented to make a trial of Colt's revolver.
+A regiment under Lieutenant-Colonel Harvey was armed with this weapon,
+and its success was so marked from the first that the Government
+promptly gave an order for more, and ended by making it the principal
+arm of the troops in Florida. The savages were astounded and
+disheartened at seeing the troops fire six or eight times without
+reloading; and when the war was brought to a close, as it soon was, it
+was plain to all that the revolver had played a decisive part in the
+struggle. It was a great triumph for Colonel Colt, but in the end proved
+a source of misfortune. The speedy termination of the war put an end to
+the demand for his weapon, and his business fell off so greatly that in
+1842 the Patent Arms Company was compelled to close its establishment
+and wind up its affairs.
+
+For five years none of the revolvers were manufactured, and, meanwhile,
+the stock which had been put in the market was entirely exhausted by the
+demand which had set in from Texas and the Indian frontier. In 1847 the
+war with Mexico began, and General Taylor, who had witnessed the
+performance of the revolver in Florida, was anxious to arm the Texan
+Rangers with that weapon. He sent Captain Walker, the commander of the
+Rangers, to Colonel Colt to purchase a supply. Walker was unsuccessful.
+Colt had parted with the last one that he possessed, and had not even a
+model to serve as a guide in making others. The Government now gave him
+an order for one thousand, which he agreed to make for $28,000; but
+there was still the difficulty caused by having no model to work by. In
+this dilemma, he advertised extensively for one of his old pistols, to
+serve as a model, but failing to procure one, was compelled to make a
+new model. This was really a fortunate circumstance, as he made several
+improvements in the weapon, which officers who had used it suggested to
+him, so that his weapons were very much better than the old ones. Having
+no factory of his own, Colonel Colt hired an armory at Whitneyville,
+near New Haven, where he produced the first thousand pistols ordered by
+the Government. These gave entire satisfaction, and further orders from
+the War Department came in rapidly. Colonel Colt now hired and fitted up
+larger and more complete workshops in Hartford, and began business on
+his own account, supplying promptly every order that was given him. The
+weapon proved most effective during the Mexican War, and the orders of
+the Government were sufficiently large to allow the inventor to reap a
+handsome profit from them, and lay the foundations of his subsequent
+business success.
+
+At the close of the war, Colonel Colt was apprehensive that the demand
+for his weapon would again drop off, as it had done after the Florida
+campaign; but he was agreeably disappointed. The success of the revolver
+in Mexico had made it generally and favorably known throughout the
+country, and there was now a steady and even a growing demand for it.
+The discovery of gold in California, which so quickly followed the
+cessation of hostilities, greatly stimulated this demand, for the most
+essential part of the gold seeker's outfit was a revolver; and the
+extraordinary emigration to Australia, which set in somewhat later,
+still further extended the market for his weapon. Convinced by this time
+that there would be no considerable falling off in his orders, Colonel
+Colt began to take steps to assure the permanency of his business.
+
+The experience of the American officers during the Mexican War enabled
+them to point out many improvements to the inventor, who promptly
+adopted them. This made his pistol almost a new weapon, and the most
+formidable small arm then in use. He obtained a new patent for it, as
+thus improved, and it was adopted by the Government as the regular arm
+of the army and navy, different sizes being made for each service. The
+Crimean and Indian wars, which followed soon after, brought the inventor
+large orders from the British Government, and during the next few years
+his weapon was formally introduced into the armies of the leading States
+of Europe.
+
+His success was so rapid that, as early as 1851, it became necessary to
+provide still more ample accommodations for his manufactory. The next
+year he began the execution of a plan, the magnitude of which caused
+many of his friends to tremble for his future prosperity. He resolved to
+build the largest and most perfect armory in the world, one which should
+enable him to manufacture his weapons with greater rapidity and nicety
+than had ever yet been possible.
+
+Just to the south of the Little or Mill River there was a piece of
+meadow land, about two hundred and fifty acres in extent, generally
+regarded as useless, in consequence of its being submerged every spring
+by the freshets in the river. Colonel Colt bought this meadow for a
+nominal sum, and, to the astonishment of the good people of Hartford,
+proceeded to surround it with a strong dike, or embankment. This
+embankment was two miles in length, one hundred and fifty feet wide at
+the base, from thirty to sixty feet wide at the top, and from ten to
+twenty-five feet high. Its strength was further increased by planting
+willows along the sides; and it was thoroughly tested just after its
+completion by a freshet of unusual severity. Having drained the meadow,
+Colonel Colt began the erection of his armory upon the land inclosed by
+the embankment. It was constructed of Portland stone, and consisted of
+three buildings--two long edifices, with a third connecting them in the
+center, the whole being in the form of the letter H. The front parallel
+was five hundred by sixty feet, the rear parallel five hundred by forty
+feet, and the central building two hundred and fifty by fifty feet--the
+front parallel and central building being three stories in height.
+Connected with these buildings were other smaller edifices for offices,
+warerooms, watchmen's houses, etc.
+
+In 1861, the demand for the arms had become so enormous that the armory
+was doubled in size, the new buildings being similar in style to the
+old. "In this establishment there is ample accommodation for the
+manufacture of one thousand fire-arms per day," which is more than the
+arsenals at Harper's Ferry and Springfield combined could turn out in
+the same time previous to the war. In 1861, Colt's armory turned out
+about one hundred and twenty thousand stand of arms, and in 1860, the
+two armories before mentioned made about thirty-five thousand between
+them. A portion of the armory at Hartford is devoted to the fabrication
+of the machinery invented by Colonel Colt for the manufacture of his
+pistols. This machinery is usually sold to all parties purchasing the
+right to manufacture the revolver. Colonel Colt supplied in this way a
+large part of the machinery used in the Government manufactory at
+Enfield, in England, and all of that used in the Imperial armory at
+Tulin, in Russia. Near the armory, and in the area inclosed by the dike,
+Colonel Colt erected a number of tasteful cottages for his workmen, and
+warehouses for other kinds of business. His entire expenditure upon his
+land and buildings here amounted to more than two million five hundred
+thousand dollars.
+
+"Among his other cares, the intellectual and social welfare of his
+numerous employes were not forgotten. Few mechanics are favored with as
+convenient residences as those he has erected for them; and a public
+hall, a library, courses of lectures, concerts, the organization of a
+fine band of music, formed entirely from his own workmen, to whom he
+presented a superb set of musical instruments, and of a military company
+of his operatives, provided by him with a tasteful uniform, and
+otherwise treated by him with great liberality, were among the methods
+by which he demonstrated his sympathy with the sons of toil."
+
+The Hartford armory is the largest and most complete in the world, in
+extent and perfection of machinery. All the articles needed with the
+revolver, such as the powder flask, balls, lubricator, bullet molds,
+cartridges, etc., are made here on a large scale. The establishment is a
+noble monument to the inventive genius and business capacity of its
+founder.
+
+In addition to his inventions of fire-arms, Colonel Colt invented a
+submarine battery, which was thoroughly tested by the officers of the
+United States Navy, and is said to be one of the most formidable engines
+for harbor defense ever known. He also invented a submarine telegraph
+cable, which he laid and operated with perfect success, in 1843, from
+Coney Island and Fire Island to the city of New York, and from the
+Merchants Exchange to the mouth of the harbor. His insulating material
+consisted of a combination of cotton yarn with asphaltum and beeswax;
+the whole was inclosed in a lead pipe. This was one of the most
+successful experiments of the early days of submarine telegraphy, and
+entitles Colonel Colt to a conspicuous place in the list of those who
+brought that science to perfection.
+
+After the permanent establishment of his business, in 1847 and 1848,
+Colonel Colt's success was rapid. He acquired a large fortune, and built
+an elegant and tasteful mansion in Hartford, where he resided,
+surrounded with all the luxuries of wealth and taste. In 1855, he
+married Miss Elizabeth Jarvis, daughter of the Rev. Dr. Jarvis, of
+Portland, Connecticut, a lady of great beauty and superior character and
+accomplishments. She still survives him.
+
+He repeatedly visited Europe after his settlement at Hartford, and as
+the excellence of his weapons had made his name famous the world over,
+he was the recipient of many attentions from the most distinguished
+soldiers of Europe, and even from some of the monarchs of the Old World.
+In 1856, being on a visit to Russia, with his family, he was invited
+with them to be present at the coronation of the Emperor Alexander II.
+He was decorated by nearly all the Governments of Europe, and by some of
+the Asiatic sovereigns, with orders of merit, diplomas, medals, and
+rings, in acknowledgment of the great services he had rendered to the
+world by his invention.
+
+He died, at his residence in Hartford, on the 10th of January, 1862, in
+the forty-eighth year of his age. The community of which he was a member
+lost in him one of its most enterprising and public-spirited citizens,
+and the country one of the best representatives of the American
+character it has ever produced.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+SAMUEL F.B. MORSE.
+
+
+Samuel Finley Breese Morse is the eldest son of the late Jedediah Morse,
+one of the most distinguished Presbyterian clergymen of New England. He
+was born at Charlestown, Massachusetts, on the 27th of April, 1791, was
+carefully educated in the common schools of his native town, and at an
+early age entered Yale College, where he graduated in 1810. He exhibited
+an early fondness for art as well as studies of a scientific character,
+and while a student at Yale displayed an especial aptness for chemistry
+and natural philosophy. Upon leaving college he decided to adopt the
+profession of an artist, and was sent abroad to study under the tuition
+of West and Copley and Allston.
+
+[Illustration: SAMUEL F.B. MORSE.]
+
+"When Allston was painting his 'Dead Man Restored to Life,' in London,"
+says Mr. Tuckerman, in his _Book of the Artists_, "he first modeled his
+figure in clay, and explained to Morse, who was then his pupil, the
+advantages resulting from a plan so frequently adopted by the old
+masters. His young countryman was at this time meditating his first
+composition--a dying Hercules--and proceeded at once to act upon this
+suggestion. Having prepared a model that exhibited the upper part of the
+body--which alone would be visible in the picture--he submitted it to
+Allston, who recognized so much truth in the anatomy and expression that
+he urgently advised its completion. After six weeks of careful labor,
+the statue was finished and sent to West for inspection. That venerable
+artist, upon entering the room, put on his spectacles, and as he walked
+around the model, carefully examining its details and general effect, a
+look of genuine satisfaction beamed from his face. He rang for an
+attendant and bade him call his son. 'Look here, Raphael,' he exclaimed,
+as the latter appeared; 'did I not always tell you that every painter
+could be a sculptor?' We may imagine the delight of the student at such
+commendation. The same day one of his fellow pupils called his attention
+to a notice issued by the Adelphi Society of Arts, offering a prize for
+the best single figure, to be modeled and sent to the rooms of the
+association within a certain period. The time fixed would expire in
+three days. Morse profited by the occasion, and placed his 'Dying
+Hercules' with the thirteen other specimens already entered. He was
+consequently invited to the meeting of the society on the evening when
+the decision was to be announced, and received from the hands of the
+Duke of Norfolk, the presiding officer, and in the presence of the
+foreign ambassadors, the gold medal. Perhaps no American ever started in
+the career of an artist under more flattering auspices; and we can not
+wonder that a beginning so successful encouraged the young painter to
+devote himself assiduously to study, with a view of returning to his own
+country fully prepared to illustrate the historical department of the
+art."
+
+Morse spent four years in Europe in close study, and was then obliged to
+return to America by lack of means to carry on his education in the Old
+World. He had not indeed reached the high degree of proficiency which he
+had hoped to obtain before returning home, but he was possessed of
+natural talents and acquired skill, which fairly entitled him to
+recognition as one of our leading artists. This recognition never came
+to him, however, and his artist life in this country was a series of
+sorrowful disappointments. He found no opportunity of devoting himself
+to the higher branches of his art, and was obliged to confine himself
+entirely to portrait painting as a means of livelihood. His artist
+career is thus referred to by Mr. Tuckerman:
+
+
+     "Morse went abroad under the care of Allston, and was the pupil of
+     West and Copley. Hence he is naturally regarded by a later
+     generation as the connecting bond that unites the present and the
+     past in the brief annals of our artist history. But his claim to
+     such recognition does not lie altogether in the fact that he was a
+     pioneer; it has been worthily evidenced by his constant devotion to
+     the great cause itself. Younger artists speak of him with affection
+     and respect, because he has ever been zealous in the promotion of a
+     taste for, and a study of, the fine arts. Having entered the field
+     at too early a period to realize the promise of his youth, and
+     driven by circumstances from the high aims he cherished,
+     misanthropy was never suffered to grow out of personal
+     disappointment. He gazed reverently upon the goal it was not
+     permitted him to reach, and ardently encouraged the spirit which he
+     felt was only to be developed when wealth and leisure had given his
+     countrymen opportunities to cultivate those tastes upon the
+     prevalence of which the advancement of his favorite pursuit
+     depends. When, after the failure of one of his elaborate projects,
+     he resolved to establish himself in New York, he was grieved to
+     find that many petty dissensions kept the artists from each other.
+     He made it his business to heal these wounds and reconcile the
+     animosities that thus retarded the progress of their common object.
+     He sought out and won the confidence of his isolated brothers, and
+     one evening invited them all to his room ostensibly to eat
+     strawberries and cream, but really to beguile them into something
+     like agreeable intercourse. He had experienced the good effect of a
+     drawing club at Charleston, where many of the members were
+     amateurs; and on the occasion referred to covered his table with
+     prints, and scattered inviting casts around the apartment. A very
+     pleasant evening was the result, a mutual understanding was
+     established, and weekly meetings unanimously agreed upon. This
+     auspicious gathering was the germ of the National Academy of
+     Design, of which Morse became the first president, and before which
+     he delivered the first course of lectures on the fine arts ever
+     given in this country."
+
+
+In 1829 Mr. Morse went abroad for the purpose of completing his art
+studies. He remained in Europe for more than three years, residing in
+the principal cities of the Continent. During his absence he was elected
+"Professor of the Literature of the Fine" in the University of the City
+of New York. He set out on his return home to accept this professorship
+in the autumn of 1832, sailing from Havre on board the packet-ship
+"Sully."
+
+As has been stated, he had manifested a decided fondness for Chemistry
+and Natural Philosophy while at Yale College, where he was a pupil of
+Professor Silliman in the former science, and of Professor Day in the
+latter, and after his departure from college he had devoted all his
+leisure time to the pursuit of these studies. So great was his fondness
+for them that some of his friends declared their belief that he ought to
+abandon art and devote himself to science. In 1826-27 he had delivered,
+at the Athenaeum in New York, the course of fine-art lectures to which
+reference has been made, and on alternate nights of the same season
+Professor J. Freeman Dana had lectured upon electro-magnetism,
+illustrating his remarks with the first electro-magnet (on Sturgeon's
+principle) ever seen in this country. Morse and Dana had been intimate
+friends, and had often held long conversations upon the subject of
+magnetism, and the magnet referred to had at length been given to the
+former by Professor Torrey. The interest which he had thus conceived in
+this instrument had never diminished, and his investigations and studies
+had never ceased, so that at the time of his departure from France in
+the "Sully," in 1832, he was one of the best informed men upon the
+subject to be found in any country.
+
+Among his fellow-passengers were a number of persons of intelligence and
+cultivation, one of whom had but recently witnessed in Paris some highly
+interesting experiments with the electro-magnet, the object of which was
+to prove how readily the electric spark could be obtained from the
+magnet, and the rapidity with which it could be disseminated. To most of
+the passengers this relation was deeply interesting, but to all save one
+it was merely the recital of a curious experiment. That one exception
+was Mr. Morse. To him the development of this newly-discovered property
+of electricity was more than interesting. It showed him his true mission
+in life, the way to his true destiny. Art was not his proper field now,
+for however great his abilities as an artist, he was possessed of genius
+of a higher, more useful type, and it was henceforth his duty to employ
+it. He thought long and earnestly upon the subject which the words of
+his fellow-passenger had so freshly called up, pacing the deck under the
+silent stars, and rocked in his wakeful berth by the ocean whose terrors
+his genius was to tame, and whose vast depths his great invention was to
+set at naught. He had long been convinced that electricity was to
+furnish the means of rapid communication between distant points, of
+which the world was so much in need; and the experiments which his new
+acquaintance had witnessed in Paris removed from his mind the last doubt
+of the feasibility of the scheme. Being of an eminently practical
+character, he at once set to work to discover how this could be done,
+and succeeded so well that before the "Sully" reached New York he had
+conceived "not merely the idea of an electric telegraph, but of an
+electro-magnetic and chemical recording telegraph, substantially and
+essentially as it now exists," and had invented an alphabet of signs,
+the same in all important respects as that now in use. "The testimony to
+the paternity of the idea in Morse's mind, and to his acts and drawings
+on board the ship, is ample. His own testimony is corroborated by all
+the passengers (with a single exception), who testified with him before
+the courts, and was considered conclusive by the judges; and the date of
+1832 is therefore fixed by this evidence as the date of Morse's
+conception, and realization also--so far as the drawings could embody
+the conception--of the telegraph system which now bears his name."
+
+But though invented in 1832, it was not until 1835 (during which time he
+was engaged in the discharge of the duties of his professorship in the
+University of the City of New York) that he was enabled to complete his
+first recording instrument. This was but a poor, rude instrument, at the
+best, and was very far from being equal to his perfected invention. It
+embodied his idea, however, and was a good basis for subsequent
+improvements. By its aid he was able to send signals from a given point
+to the end of a wire half a mile in length, but as yet there was no
+means of receiving them back again from the other extremity. He
+continued to experiment on his invention, and made several improvements
+in it. It was plain from the first that he needed a duplicate of his
+instrument at the other end of his wire, but he was unable for a long
+time to have one made. At length he acquired the necessary funds, and
+in July, 1837, had a duplicate instrument constructed, and thus
+perfected his plan. His telegraph now worked to his entire satisfaction,
+and he could easily send his signals to the remote end of his line and
+receive replies in return, and answer signals sent from that terminus.
+Having brought it to a successful completion, he exhibited it to large
+audiences at the University of New York, in September, 1837. In October,
+1837, Professor Morse filed a caveat to secure his invention, but his
+patent was not obtained until 1840.
+
+He now entered upon that period of the inventor's life which has proved
+so disastrous to many, and so wearying and disheartening to all--the
+effort to bring his invention into general use. It was commonly believed
+that, although the invention was successful when used for such short
+distances as had been tried in the City of New York, it would fail when
+tested by longer lines. Morse was confident, however, that this was not
+the case, and in December, 1837, he went to Washington to solicit from
+the Government an appropriation for the construction of an experimental
+line from Washington City to Baltimore--a distance of forty miles. This
+line he declared would thoroughly test the practicability and utility of
+the telegraph. His petition was laid before Congress, and a committee
+appointed to consider it. He stated his plan to this body, and proved
+its practicability by actual experiments with his instruments.
+Considerable interest in the subject was thus aroused in Congress and
+throughout the country, but he derived no benefit from it. If men spoke
+of his telegraph, it was only to ridicule it, or to express their doubts
+of its success. This was especially the case in Congress, and it was
+very uncertain whether that body would sustain the report from the
+committee in favor of the invention. The session wore away in this
+manner, and at length ended without any action being taken in the
+matter.
+
+Having failed to secure the assistance of Congress, Professor Morse went
+to Europe in the spring of 1838, for the purpose of enlisting the aid of
+the governments there in bringing his invention into use. He was
+unsuccessful. In England a patent was refused him, and in France he
+merely obtained a worthless _brevet d'invention._ He tried several other
+countries, but was equally unsuccessful in all, and he returned home
+almost disheartened, but not entirely cast down. For four years he had
+to struggle hard for a living. He was very poor, and, as one of his
+friends has since declared, had literally "to coin his mind for bread."
+His sturdy independence of character would not allow him to accept
+assistance from any one, although there were friends ready and even
+anxious to help him in his troubles. Alone and manfully he fought his
+way through these dark days, still hopeful of success for his invention,
+and patiently seeking to improve it wherever opportunity presented
+itself. At length, in 1840, he received his long-delayed patent from the
+General Government, and, encouraged by this, determined to make another
+effort to bring his telegraph into use.
+
+He was not able to do so until the session of Congress of 1842-43, when
+he presented a second petition to that body, asking its aid in the
+construction of an experimental line between Baltimore and Washington.
+He had to encounter a great degree of skepticism and ridicule, with many
+other obstacles, not the least of which was the difficulty of meeting
+the expense of remaining in Washington and urging his invention upon the
+Government. Still he persevered, although it seemed to be hoping against
+hope, as the session drew near its close, and his scanty stock of money
+grew daily smaller. On the evening of the 3d of March, 1843, he
+returned from the Capitol to his lodgings utterly disheartened. It was
+the last night of the session, and nothing had been done in the matter
+of his petition. He sat up late into the night arranging his affairs so
+as to take his departure for home on the following day. It was useless
+to remain in Washington any longer. Congress would adjourn the next day,
+and his last hope of success had been shattered.
+
+On the morning of the 4th of March he came down to the breakfast-table
+gloomy and despondent. Taking up the morning journal, he ran over it
+listlessly. Suddenly his eye rested upon a paragraph which caused him to
+spring to his feet in complete amazement. It was an announcement that,
+at the very last hour of the session of the previous night, a bill had
+been passed by Congress appropriating the sum of thirty thousand dollars
+for the purpose of enabling Professor Morse to construct an experimental
+line of telegraph between Baltimore and Washington. He could scarcely
+believe it real, and, as soon as possible, hastened to the Capitol to
+seek authentic information. The statement was confirmed by the proper
+authorities, and Morse's dearest wish was realized. The hour of his
+triumph was at hand, and his long and patient waiting was rewarded at
+last.
+
+Work on the telegraph line was immediately begun, and carried on
+actively. At first, an insulated wire was buried under ground in a lead
+pipe, but this failing to give satisfaction, the wire was elevated upon
+poles. On the 27th of May, 1844, the line was completed, and the first
+trial of it made in the presence of the Government officials and many
+other distinguished men. Professor Morse was confident of success; but
+this occasion was a period of the most intense anxiety to him, for he
+knew that his entire future was staked upon the result of this hour.
+Among the company present to witness the trial was the Secretary of the
+Treasury, John C. Spencer. Although very much interested in the
+undertaking, he was entirely ignorant of the principles involved in it,
+and, therefore, very apprehensive of its failure. It was upon this
+occasion that he asked one of Professor Morse's assistants how large a
+bundle could be sent over the wires, and if the United States mail could
+not be sent in the same way.
+
+When all was in readiness, Professor Morse seated himself at the
+instrument, and sent his first message to Baltimore. An answer was
+promptly returned, and messages were sent and replies received with a
+rapidity and accuracy which placed the triumph of the invention beyond
+the possibility of doubt. Congratulations were showered upon the
+inventor, who received them as calmly as he had previously borne the
+scoffs of many of these same men. Yet his heart throbbed all the while
+with a brilliant triumph. Fame and fortune both rose proudly before him.
+He had won a great victory, and conferred a lasting benefit upon his
+race.
+
+The success of the experimental line brought Professor Morse numerous
+offers for the use of his invention. Telegraph companies were organized
+all over the country, and the stock issued by them was taken up as fast
+as offered. At the present day, not only the United States, but the
+whole world, is covered with telegraph lines. In July, 1862, just
+eighteen years after the completion of Morse's experimental line, it was
+estimated that the lines then in operation throughout the world amounted
+to an aggregate length of 150,000 miles. The Morse system is adopted on
+the principal lines of the United States, on all the lines of the
+Eastern continent, and exclusively on all the continental lines of
+Europe, "from the extreme Russian north to the Italian and Spanish
+south, eastward through the Turkish empire, south into Egypt and
+northern Africa, and through India, Australia, and parts of China."
+
+The rapid growth of the telegraph interest of the United States placed
+Professor Morse in the possession of a large fortune, which was greatly
+increased by the adoption of his invention in Europe. The countries
+which had refused him patents at first now did honor to his genius. Nor
+was he the only gainer by this. In France, especially, the benefits of
+his invention were great. The old system of semaphore telegraphs had
+been an annual expense to the government of that country of 1,100,000
+francs, but Morse's telegraph yielded to the French Government, in the
+first three years after its introduction, a total revenue of 6,000,000
+francs.
+
+Fortune was not Morse's only reward. Honors were showered upon him from
+all parts of the world. In 1848, his _alma mater_, Yale College,
+conferred on him the complimentary degree of LL.D., and since then he
+has been made a member of nearly all the American scientific and art
+academies. From European Governments and scientific and art associations
+he has received more honors than have ever fallen to the share of any
+other American. In 1848, he received from the Sultan of Turkey the
+decoration of the _Nishaun Iftiohar_ in diamonds, and subsequently gold
+medals of scientific merit were awarded him by the King of Prussia, the
+King of Wuertemburg, and the Emperor of Austria. The gift of the King of
+Prussia was set in a massive gold snuff-box. In 1856, the Emperor
+Napoleon III gave him the Cross of Chevalier of the Legion of Honor; in
+1857, he received from the King of Denmark the Cross of Knight of the
+Danebrog; and in 1858, the Queen of Spain sent him the Cross of Knight
+Commander of the order of Isabella the Catholic. In 1859, a convention
+of the representatives of the various European powers met in Paris, at
+the instance of the Emperor Napoleon III, for the purpose of
+determining upon the best means of giving Professor Morse a collective
+testimonial. France, Russia, Sweden, Belgium, Holland, Austria,
+Sardinia, Tuscany, Turkey, and the Holy See were represented, and their
+deliberations resulted in the presentation to Professor Morse, in the
+name of their united governments, of the sum of 400,000 francs, as an
+honorary and personal reward for his labors. In 1856, the telegraph
+companies of Great Britain gave him a banquet in London, at which Mr.
+William Fothergill Corke, himself the distinguished inventor of a system
+of telegraphy, presided.
+
+Professor Morse is also the inventor of submarine telegraphy. In 1842,
+he laid the first submarine telegraph line ever put down, across the
+harbor of New York, and for this achievement received the gold medal of
+the American Institute. On the 10th of August, 1843, he addressed a
+communication to the Secretary of the Treasury, in which he avowed his
+belief that a telegraphic cable could and would be laid across the
+Atlantic ocean, for the purpose of connecting Europe and America. His
+words upon this occasion clearly prove that the idea of the Atlantic
+telegraph originated with him. They were as follows: "The practical
+inference from this law is, that a telegraphic communication on the
+electro-magnetic plan may with certainty be established across the
+Atlantic ocean. Startling as this may now seem, I am confident the time
+will come when this project will be realized."
+
+In February, 1854, Mr. Cyrus W. Field, of New York, ignorant of
+Professor Morse's views upon this subject, wrote to him to ask if he
+considered the working of a cable across the Atlantic practicable. The
+Professor at once sought an interview with Mr. Field, and assured him of
+his entire confidence in the undertaking. He entered heartily into Mr.
+Field's scheme, and rendered great aid in the noble enterprise which
+has been described elsewhere in these pages. He was present at each
+attempt to lay the cable, and participated in the final triumph by which
+his prediction, made twenty-three years previous, was verified.
+
+Professor Morse is now in his eightieth year. He resides during the
+winter in the city of New York, and passes his summers at his beautiful
+country seat near Poughkeepsie, on the Hudson. He bears his great honors
+with the same modesty which marked his early struggles, and is the
+center of a host of friends whom he has attached to himself by the
+tenderest ties. "Courage and patience have been his watchwords, and
+although the snows of time have bleached his hair, the same intelligence
+and enterprising spirit, the same urbane disposition that endeared him
+to the friends of his youth, still cause all who know him to rejoice in
+the honorable independence which his great invention has secured to his
+age."
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+PUBLISHERS.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+JAMES HARPER.
+
+
+Some years ago a gentleman having business with the great house of
+Harper & Brothers asked one of the employes of that establishment,
+"Which one is Harper, and which are the brothers?" He was answered,
+"Either one is Harper, and all the rest are the brothers." This reply
+fully sets forth the difficulty which must be experienced by any one
+attempting to write the story of the life of either member of this
+house. In such an undertaking it is very difficult to select "Harper,"
+and impossible to pass by the "Brothers." The interests of each were so
+thoroughly in harmony with those of all the others, and there was such
+perfect unanimity of sentiment existing between them with regard to
+their private as well as their public affairs, that it is hardly
+possible to separate them. Since, however, it is not consistent with the
+design of this work to relate the history of the "house," it is the
+purpose of the writer to select the eldest of the brothers as the
+representative of the group, and to offer him to the reader as a type of
+the American publisher.
+
+The grandfather of JAMES HARPER came to this country from England about
+the year 1740, and was one of the first of the American Methodists. His
+son Joseph was born in 1766. He married Elizabeth Kollyer, and settled
+at Newtown, on Long Island, as a farmer. It was here that James, their
+eldest child, was born, on the 13th of April, 1795. He grew up with a
+vigorous constitution, and the pure influences of his home, together
+with the sound religious training which he received from his parents,
+laid the foundation of those simple and steady habits for which he was
+noted through life. In the winter he attended the district school, and
+in the summer he worked on his father's farm. Thus his life passed away
+quietly and healthfully until he had completed his fifteenth year.
+
+It now became necessary for him to make some choice of a profession in
+life, and when the matter was presented to him he promptly decided to
+become a printer. His father cheerfully seconded his wishes, and he was
+accordingly apprenticed to a printer in New York. On the morning of his
+departure from home, when the family assembled for "prayers," his
+mother, who was a woman of superior character, took the father's place
+and led the worship. With trembling tones she commended her boy to the
+love and protection of the Saviour, and when the moment of leave-taking
+came she sent him forth into the world with the tender warning never to
+forget his home or his religious duties, or "that he had good blood in
+him."
+
+The change from his happy home to the place of "devil" in the printing
+office was one which tried the lad's fortitude to the utmost. His
+position was but little better than that of a menial, and not only was
+all the drudgery and disagreeable work put upon him, but he was made the
+sport of the workmen, some of whom used him even roughly. He bore it all
+good-naturedly, however, devoting himself to his trade with the
+determination to master it.
+
+The printing office in which he was employed was located near Franklin
+Square, then occupied by the best people of the city. Often, as young
+Harper passed across the square to and from his work, his rough "country
+clothes" drew upon him the ridicule of the children of these "goodly
+citizens." They teazed and insulted him, and sometimes carried their
+cruelty to the extremity of offering him bodily violence. He bore it
+patiently for a time, but at length determined to put a stop to it. He
+was physically the superior of any of his tormentors, and had put up
+with their conduct merely from his sincere desire to avoid a "street
+fight." In accordance with his new resolution, however, when one of them
+approached him one day and asked for his card, he set down a bucket
+which he was carrying, and, seizing the fellow, kicked him across the
+square, saying to him: "That's my card, take good care of it. When I am
+out of my time, and set up for myself, and you need employment, as you
+will, come to me, bring the card, and I will give you work." "Forty-one
+years after," says the writer upon whose authority this incident is
+related, "when Mr. Harper's establishment was known throughout all the
+land, after he had borne the highest municipal honors of the city, and
+had become one of our wealthiest men, the person who had received the
+card came to Mr. James Harper's establishment and asked employment,
+claiming it on the ground that he had kept the card given him forty-one
+years before."
+
+In a little while James was joined by his brother John, who was
+apprenticed to another printer in the city, and the two lads spent with
+each other much of their leisure time. Both worked hard. James soon
+became noted as the best pressman in the city, his great personal
+strength enabling him to work the old-fashioned hand-press with ease. It
+is said that if he disliked a fellow pressman and wished to be rid of
+him, he merely put forth his immense strength and outworked him. The
+man being unable to keep up with him, was obliged to retire.
+
+"The habits of his rural home followed him to the city. In an age when
+every body drank ardent spirits freely, he was strictly temperate, and
+the cold water disciple justified his faith by his works. With the
+cheerful constancy of the fathers of his church he quietly resisted the
+temptations of the city. He opened a prayer-meeting in the house of an
+old colored woman in Ann Street, and joined the John Street Methodist
+Church. Meanwhile, to their simple and thrifty method of life, James and
+his brother added work out of hours, so that when their apprenticeship
+was ended they had a little money saved."
+
+James' excellent habits and great skill as a workman had given entire
+satisfaction to his master during the whole period of his
+apprenticeship, and he informed the young man at the expiration of his
+indentures that he was willing to employ him again at fair wages. The
+young workman surprised him by telling him that he intended to set up
+for himself, and that all he wanted from him now was a certificate that
+he was fit to be trusted with a book. This was given, and James and his
+brother John took their little capital, which was increased by a loan of
+a few hundred dollars from their father, and renting a small room in
+Dover Street, set up an office on their own account, and began business
+under the firm name of J. & J. Harper. Their capital was small--less
+than the annual wages of some of their workmen to-day--but they were
+sustained by industry, determination, and high moral principle. When
+they began business, it was with a tacit agreement that each would
+endeavor to deserve the confidence of the other, and of their
+fellow-men. There was to be no evasion of principle, no sharp practice,
+in their house. They were resolved to make money, but to make it
+honestly. They would engage in no transaction which should cause a
+doubt of their integrity in the breast of the good mother who had sent
+them forth with her blessing.
+
+More than fifty years have passed away since then, and the Harpers have
+prospered steadily, and so greatly, too, that for many years their house
+has stood at the head of the publishing interest of America. Their
+career is an instructive one, giving an emphatic denial to the assertion
+we hear so often repeated, that an "over-honest" man can not make money
+in New York. Shut your ears to the calumny, young man, just staring out
+in life. "Honesty _is_ the best policy;" and it is only by scrupulous
+honesty that enduring success can be obtained. Trickery and sharp
+practice may earn wealth rapidly, but depend upon it they have their
+reward; for it is a curious fact in the history of man that wealth
+acquired by knavery rarely stays with its possessors for more than a
+generation, if so long.
+
+In starting out, the young Harpers printed books to order, attempting
+nothing at their own risk. They did a part of the composition and
+press-work with their own hands, and were, perhaps, the hardest workers
+in their establishment. Their first job was two thousand copies of
+Seneca's Morals, and was intrusted to them by Evert Duyckinck, a famous
+publisher of that day. The books were delivered in August, 1817, and
+gave entire satisfaction.
+
+Immediately after this, they undertook to stereotype an edition of the
+"Book of Common Prayer" for the Protestant Episcopal Church of New York,
+supposing that they would be able to make a fair profit at the rate at
+which they had agreed to do the work. It was their original intention to
+do the composition themselves, and have the stereotyping done at one of
+the large establishments of the city; but upon a closer investigation
+they found that this would cost them more than they had agreed to do the
+work for. In this dilemma, they resolved to learn the art of
+stereotyping themselves, and perform that portion of their contract on
+their own premises. It was a tedious undertaking; but they went through
+with it determinedly, and at the proper time delivered the books to the
+officials of the Episcopal Church. Their profit was not very large, but
+they had become stereotypers as well as printers, and had added a
+valuable department to their business. Further than this, their Prayer
+Book was pronounced the best piece of stereotyping that had ever been
+seen in the city, and won the young men congratulations on all sides.
+They next undertook twenty-five hundred copies of Mair's "Introduction
+to Latin," which they delivered in December, 1817.
+
+In April, 1818, they put forth their first venture on their own account.
+This consisted of five hundred copies of Locke's "Essay upon the Human
+Understanding." These were readily disposed of, and their success
+encouraged them to further efforts. They proceeded very cautiously, and
+it was for a long time their custom, when contemplating the publication
+of a book, and especially in the case of a reprint, to send to the
+leading booksellers in the large cities of the Union, and ascertain how
+many copies each one would take. Thus they pushed their way forward,
+seizing upon every favorable opportunity for the publication of original
+and foreign works. They rarely made an unsuccessful venture, and as each
+worked hard, and had constantly in view, above all other subjects, the
+success of the house, they gradually extended their business until they
+secured the foremost place among the publishers of the United States.
+
+Beginning with works of a dry, philosophic nature, the Harpers have
+extended their operations into every department of literature. Their
+catalogue of publications, issued in 1869, lies on the writer's table.
+It is a duodecimo volume of two hundred and ninety-six closely-printed
+pages, and embraces a list of several thousand volumes. In this list are
+histories, biographies, travels, adventures, novels, poems, educational
+works, works on science, art, philosophy, metaphysics--in short, books
+on every topic familiar to man. In the department of fiction, the
+success of this house has been remarkable. They have published between
+four and five hundred novels, in cloth and paper bindings, and the
+demand for their early publications of this kind is still sufficiently
+active to compel them to keep a stock always on hand. When they began to
+issue their Library of Select Novels, they did so with a distinct
+purpose in view. Novel-reading has always been a passion with Americans,
+but at the period referred to the best novels were published at such
+high prices that but few could afford to buy them. The masses were
+compelled to put up with the cheap, flashy stories which were so well
+known some years ago as "yellow covers." This style of fiction, now
+confined to the lowest class of readers, at that time found its way into
+almost every house, and the popular taste was at a very low ebb. The
+Harpers felt sure that by issuing the best, and only the best, English
+novels at a low price, they would not only meet a real want on the part
+of the public, but in great measure supersede the "yellow covers," with
+all their pernicious influences. The sequel proved the correctness of
+these views, and resulted in large profits to them.
+
+Soon after commencing business, James and John Harper received their
+younger brothers, Joseph Wesley and Fletcher, into their establishment
+as apprentices. These young men were taught the business thoroughly, and
+when they had completed their apprenticeship were admitted into the firm
+as partners, the former entering the firm in 1823, and the latter in
+1826. In 1825 the style of the firm was changed to Harper & Brothers,
+and the business was removed to 81 and 82 Cliff Street, on a portion of
+the site of the present establishment. It was then the largest
+printing-house in New York, employing fifty workmen and ten hand
+presses.
+
+In 1850; the Harpers decided to commence the publication of a monthly
+periodical, and, accordingly, in the summer of that year they issued the
+first number of "Harper's New Monthly Magazine," which, in point of
+popularity, stands today, after a career of twenty years, at the head of
+American magazines, and boasts of a circulation of 180,000 copies. The
+recognition of another want of the public led, in 1857, to the
+establishment of an illustrated newspaper, "Harper's Weekly," which has
+at present a circulation of 100,000 copies. In 1869 they began the
+publication of a new weekly fashion paper, called "the Bazaar," which
+has reached a circulation of 75,000 copies.
+
+From the first, the Harpers made their house a popular establishment.
+They sought public favor by legitimate means, and generally managed to
+retain it in the same way. From an early period in their history, their
+imprint on a book has been sufficient to secure its sale; and they have
+managed to identify themselves so thoroughly with American progress that
+the whole country feels an interest in their success. By studying the
+popular taste closely, they were enabled to publish in rapid succession
+works suited to it; and by fair and liberal dealings with authors they
+soon drew around them a corps of the best writers in the Union.
+
+Their success was rapid, and by the year 1853 their establishment had
+increased in size so much that it occupied "nine large contiguous
+buildings, full of costly machinery of every kind, with stores of plates
+and books." On the 10th of December of that year, a workman in one of
+the upper rooms carelessly threw a piece of lighted paper into what he
+supposed to be a pail of water, but which proved to be camphene. In a
+few minutes the building was in flames; all efforts to save it were in
+vain. The fire spread rapidly, and in a few hours the entire
+establishment was in ruins. The loss was one million of dollars, of
+which sum only about one-fourth was covered by insurance.
+
+It was a terrible blow, but James Harper and his brothers wasted no time
+in repining. Before the embers had ceased smoking they were taking
+active measures to reestablish their business. From the wreck of their
+establishment they saved a part of the stereotype plates, which had been
+stored in the vaults, out of the way of the fire. They immediately
+rented Sheffield's paper warehouse, at the corner of Beckman and Gold
+Streets, and went to work with greater energy than ever. "Presses were
+employed in New York, Philadelphia, and Boston. Nothing was forgotten.
+The next monthly issue of the _Magazine_ had been made ready, and it was
+reproduced at the earliest moment. One regular contributor, then in
+Chicago, received the first news of the fire by a brief telegram: 'Copy
+destroyed. Send fresh copy immediately.' Before the ruins were cleared
+away the plans of the new buildings were ready, and the buildings
+themselves were rapidly finished."
+
+The new establishment of Harper & Brothers is one of the wonders of the
+great city in which it is located. The buildings are of iron and brick,
+and cover half an acre of ground. The establishment really consists of
+two buildings. The front building faces Franklin Square, and is a
+magnificent iron structure, painted white. Behind this is the second
+building, which fronts on Cliff Street. A court-yard intervenes between
+them, spanned by several bridges, connecting them. Each building is
+seven stories in height, and completely fire-proof.
+
+There are no openings in the floors for communication, but the various
+floors are connected by circular stairways of iron, placed outside the
+building. The front building, or that which faces Franklin Square, is
+used for storerooms, salesrooms, and the editorial and business offices
+of the establishment. In the rear building the various branches of the
+book manufacture are carried on. The author's manuscript is received
+here and sent back to him a complete book. Every portion of the work is
+done under the same roof, and it is well done. The building is filled
+with the most costly and complete machinery for saving time and labor.
+Besides the machinery used in other departments, it contains in its
+press-room forty-three Adams presses for book work, and five cylinder
+presses for printing the "Weekly" and the "Bazaar." About 600 persons,
+250 of whom are females, are employed in the establishment; and it is to
+the credit of both employers and employes that but few changes occur in
+this force. Many of the employes have been with the firm since its first
+entrance into business. The old man in charge of the vaults--a curiosity
+in his way--has been in the service of the house for fifty years, and to
+leave it now would, doubtless, break his heart; for none of the Harpers
+are as proud of their reputation as he is. The most perfect system
+reigns throughout every department, and every thing goes on promptly and
+in its proper place.
+
+"Of course," says a writer who many years has witnessed the operations
+of the house, "the development and organization of such a business were
+due not to one brother alone, but to the cooperation of all.... The
+business was to James, as to the others, the great central interest, but
+prosperity could not relax his steady character. He did not forget his
+early faith, nor the counsels and the habits of his Long Island home. He
+remained strictly a 'temperance man,' and his marvelous physical vigor
+was claimed by the temperance advocates as that of a cold-water mans He
+was long an official member of John-Street Church, and when he left his
+house in Rose Street, and went to live in the upper part of the city, he
+joined the congregation of St. Paul's Church, in the Fourth Avenue. But
+with all his fidelity to his ancestral faith, he cherished the largest
+charity, and by much experience of the world had learned to agree with
+his favorite apostle, James, that pure religion and undefiled, is to
+visit the fatherless and widows, and keep himself unspotted from the
+world. Thus, with all his conviction and devotion, there was nothing
+hard or fanatical in his feeling or conduct, and he held pleasant
+personal relations with men of every faith. Few men indulged in so
+little harsh criticism of others, and he expressed censure or
+disapprobation by humorous indirection rather than by open accusation.
+'We must not be too hard,' he was fond of saying, 'it is so difficult to
+know all the circumstances. If you should insist, for instance, that the
+use of tobacco is a sin, dear me! dear me!'
+
+"Mr. Harper was a Whig during the days of that party, and a natural
+conservative. But in politics he showed the same moderation and
+toleration. 'Don't try to drive men too roughly, my dear sir; it is much
+easier to draw than to push.' He took no conspicuous or active part in
+politics, except in 1844, when he was elected Mayor of the city. He was
+constantly asked to serve in Congress and in other public stations, but
+he steadily declined, saying, with a sly smile, that he preferred to
+stick to the business that he understood.
+
+"To that business his heart and life were given. Of late years its
+active cares had naturally fallen into the hands of his younger
+associates; but he never relaxed his interest and devotion. 'While I was
+dressing,' said a much younger neighbor, 'I used to see Mayor Harper
+coming out of his house to go down town, and felt ashamed of myself.
+Early at the office, he opened and looked over the mail, and during the
+hours of the morning he passed from one room to another, his shrewd eye
+seeing every thing, and measuring men and work, chatting and jesting as
+he went. But out of those shrewd eyes looked a kind and gentle heart. He
+knew by name the men and women and children employed in the various
+parts of the great buildings, interested himself in their family
+stories, and often won a confidence that was never betrayed. His
+charities, which were ample, were thus intelligent and effective, and
+poor men as well as women bent to kiss his calm, unchanged face as he
+lay in his coffin."
+
+To the very last, James Harper retained his physical and mental vigor,
+and was looked up to by all the members of the house as its brightest
+ornament. To the last, he was one of the best known and most honored
+citizens of the great metropolis. His great wealth had not ruffled the
+serenity of his spirit, or caused the slightest variation in his
+conduct. To the last he was the Christian merchant, citizen, and father,
+offering to his children in himself a noble model by which to shape
+their lives.
+
+It had been his custom at family prayers to ask of God protection from
+sudden death, but for some time before his death he ceased to do so. His
+family noticed this, and one of them asked his reason for the omission.
+He answered quietly, "The Lord knows best."
+
+On the 25th of March, 1869, he was at his usual post in his office, and
+after business hours, as was his habit, set out with his daughter for a
+drive in the Central Park, As he neared the Park the pole of his
+carriage broke suddenly, and the horses, becoming frightened, dashed off
+furiously, dragging the carriage after them. Mr. Harper and his
+daughter were both thrown violently upon the pavement. The latter was
+but slightly injured, but Mr. Harper was taken up insensible, and
+conveyed to St. Luke's Hospital, which was close at hand. He never
+regained consciousness, but lingered until fifteen minutes after seven
+on the evening of the 27th, when he expired, surrounded by all his
+family, excepting his wife, who had long been an invalid. His death was
+regarded as a calamity to the city, and all classes of the community
+united to do honor to his memory.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+JAMES T. FIELDS.
+
+
+The old "corner book-store" at the intersection of Washington and School
+Streets, in the city of Boston, is one of the most notable places in the
+New England metropolis. The memory of the oldest inhabitant can not
+recall a time when this corner was not devoted to its present uses; and
+around it, in the long years that have passed since the first book
+merchant first displayed his wares here, there have gathered a host of
+the most interesting, as well as the most brilliant, souvenirs of our
+literary history. Here were sold, in "the days that tried men's souls,"
+those stirring pamphlets that sounded the death-knell of British tyranny
+in the New World; and it was from this old corner that the tender songs
+of Longfellow, the weird conceptions of Hawthorne, the philosophic
+utterances of Emerson, first found their way to the hearts of the
+people.
+
+In 1884, the corner book-store was kept by Carter & Bendee, and was then
+the leading book-house in Boston. One morning in that year there entered
+the office of the proprietors a young lad from New Hampshire, who stated
+that he came to seek employment in their service. His bright,
+intelligent appearance was in his favor, scarcely less than the
+testimonials which he brought, vouching for his integrity and industry.
+His application was successful, and he entered the service of Messrs.
+Carter & Bendee, being given the lowest clerkship in the establishment
+and a salary barely sufficient to support him.
+
+This lad was JAMES T. FIELDS. He was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire,
+on the 30th of December, 1820. His father was a captain in the merchant
+service, and died when the boy was only four years old, leaving him to
+the care and guidance of one of the best of mothers. He was educated at
+the common schools of the city, and was thence transferred to the high
+school. He exhibited a remarkable fondness for study, and at the early
+age of thirteen graduated at the high school, taking the first honors of
+his class. He was regarded as one of the best classical scholars in the
+institution, and during his course took several prizes in Latin and
+Greek composition. Unusual abilities as a poet were also manifested very
+early, and when but twelve years old he wrote a poem in blank verse,
+which attracted the attention of the late Chief Justice Woodbury, then
+Governor of New Hampshire, who was so much surprised and gratified to
+find such talent in so young a boy, that he earnestly advised him to
+endeavor to complete his studies at Harvard University. This, indeed,
+was the chief desire of the boy, but a collegiate education required
+means which he could not command, and he was forced to go out into the
+world to seek his fortune. Having secured a good elementary education,
+however, he was resolved that he would not abandon his efforts to
+acquire knowledge. All his leisure time, after going to Boston to live,
+was devoted to reading and study. While neglecting no duty in his
+business, he gave the hours which most boys devote to amusement to
+severe mental labor. Young as he was, he was ambitious.
+
+He knew that knowledge was power, especially in the community in which
+he lived, and he was resolved that this power should be his. The result
+is plainly seen in his subsequent career. Although deprived of the
+advantages of a collegiate course, Mr. Fields has more than made up that
+deficiency by his faithful labors, and there are few men in New England
+to-day possessed of more varied and extensive mental accomplishments
+than he. Upon going to Boston he promptly identified himself with the
+Mercantile Library Association of that place, availing himself of its
+advantages, and exerting all the influence of which he was possessed to
+insure its success. When but eighteen years old, he was chosen to
+deliver an anniversary poem before the association. The value of the
+compliment will be better appreciated by the reader when it is stated
+that the oration upon that occasion was pronounced by Edward Everett.
+His industry in his business duties was great. He entered the house of
+Carter & Bendee with the determination to rise in it. He worked
+faithfully, and was the first at his post in the morning, and the last
+to leave it at night. When the style of the firm was changed to Allen &
+Ticknor, he was promoted to a more important place. He proved himself
+from the first one of the most valuable and trustworthy assistants in
+the house, and his merits were promptly recognized. From the lowest
+place in the house, he worked his way up steadily until he became the
+manager of the establishment. Each promotion brought with it an increase
+of salary. Knowing well that "a penny saved at present is a pound gained
+in future" to a young man striving to rise in the world, he practiced
+the most conscientious economy. He made himself thoroughly acquainted
+with every detail of the publishing trade; and although, of late years,
+he has had the supervision more especially of the literary department of
+his large business, there are few publishers in this country more
+intimate with the business and mechanical branches of their trade.
+
+In 1846, just twelve years after his entrance into the house, his
+clerkship came to an end, and he became a partner in the establishment,
+the style of the firm being Ticknor & Fields. He took an active share in
+the business; and while full credit must be given to Mr. Ticknor for the
+extraordinary success which the firm enjoyed, it can not be denied that
+Mr. Fields' share in this work was very great, and fully equal to that
+of his partner. His acknowledged literary abilities won him friends
+among the most gifted writers of the country, and these naturally sought
+his assistance in presenting their works to the world. Their friendship
+induced an intelligent confidence in his literary taste and mercantile
+integrity, and it was a decided gain for them to secure one so generally
+esteemed and trusted as their publisher. Young writers, still struggling
+for fame, felt that in submitting their works to his inspection they
+would receive the patient examination of not only a conscientious
+reader, but of one whose own literary abilities rendered him unusually
+competent for the task. The public generally learned to share this
+confidence in his literary judgment. And so it came to pass that the
+imprint of Ticknor & Fields was universally accepted as a sufficient
+guarantee of the excellence of any book, and rarely failed to insure its
+success. Naturally, the house was proud of this confidence, and it is
+pleasant to record that they have never abused it. There is, perhaps, no
+other publishing firm in the Union whose catalogue is so free from
+objectionable or worthless publications as that issued by this house.
+
+Gradually Messrs. Ticknor & Fields became the recognized publishers of a
+large number of the leading writers of this country and of Great
+Britain. In their catalogue we find the names of Longfellow, Bryant,
+Whittier, Holmes, Aldrich, Agassiz, Beecher, Alice Gary, Cummins, Dana,
+Emerson, Hawthorne, Gail Hamilton, Lowell, Parton, Saxe, Sprague, Stowe,
+Bayard Taylor, Thoreau, and Tuckerman, in American literature; and in
+English literature, the names of Browning, Dickens, George Eliot, Mrs.
+Jameson, Kingsley, Owen Meredith, Charles Reade, and Tennyson. With
+their English authors they maintain the pleasantest relations,
+recognizing their moral right to their works, and paying them a fair
+royalty upon the sales of their books. Of their relations with their
+American authors, a popular periodical says:
+
+"There are no business men more honorable or generous than the
+publishers of the United States, and especially honorable and
+considerate toward authors. The relation usually existing between author
+and publisher in the United States is that of a warm and lasting
+friendship, such as now animates and dignifies the intercourse between
+the literary men of New England and Messrs. Ticknor & Fields.... The
+relation, too, is one of a singular mutual trustfulness. The author
+receives his semi-annual account from the publisher with as ablute a
+faith in its correctness as though he had himself counted the volumes
+sold."
+
+In 1865, the firm removed from the old corner stand to a new and elegant
+establishment on Tremont Street, near the Common, and in the same year
+Mr. Howard Ticknor, who had succeeded his father in the business,
+withdrew from it. New partners were admitted, and the style of the firm
+became Fields, Osgood & Co., Mr. Fields still remaining at the head of
+the house.
+
+The new book store is one of the handsomest and most attractive in the
+country. The store proper is eighty feet deep by fifty feet wide, and is
+fitted up handsomely in hard wood.
+
+There is no paint about it, every piece of wood in use presenting its
+natural appearance. On the right in entering are the book shelves and
+counters, and on the opposite side the desks devoted to the magazine
+department. At the rear are the counting rooms and the private office of
+Mr. J.R. Osgood, the active business man of the concern. The second
+story is elegantly and tastefully fitted up. It contains the luxurious
+private office of Mr. Fields, in which are to be seen excellent
+likenesses of his two dearest friends, Longfellow and Dickens; and the
+parlor of the establishment, which is known as the Author's Room. This
+is a spacious and handsomely-appointed room, whose windows, overlooking
+the Common, command one of the prettiest views in New England. It is
+supplied with the leading periodicals of the day, and choice volumes of
+current literature. Here one may always find one or more of the "gifted
+few," whose names are familiar to the reader; and frequent reunions of
+the book-making fraternity are designed to be held here, under the
+genial auspices of the literary partner of the house.
+
+It is not often that men win success in both literature and mercantile
+life. Good authors have usually made very poor business managers, and
+_vice versa_; but the subject of this memoir, besides winning a great
+success as a merchant, and that in one of the most hazardous branches of
+mercantile life, has also won an enviable reputation as a man of
+letters. His poems have made him well known, both in this country and in
+England. Besides the poems recited before various literary associations,
+he has published two volumes of fugitive pieces. The first appeared in
+1843, while he was still a clerk, and the second in 1858. His poems
+abound in humor, pathos, and a delicate, beautiful fancy. One of his
+friends has said of him:
+
+"Little of the sad travail of the historic poet has Mr. Fields known.
+Of the emaciated face, the seedy garment, the collapsed purse, the
+dog-eared and often rejected manuscript, he has never known, save from
+well-authenticated tradition. His muse was born in sunshine, and has
+only been sprinkled with the tears of affection. Every effort has been
+cheered to the echo, and it is impossible for so genial a fellow to fail
+of an ample and approving audience for whatever may fall from his lip or
+pen."
+
+The following lines, from his second volume, will serve as a specimen of
+the "homely beauty" of Mr. Fields' muse, though it hardly sets forth all
+his powers:
+
+
+     She came among the gathering crowd
+       A maiden fair, without pretense,
+     And when they asked her humble name,
+       She whispered mildly, "Common Sense."
+
+     Her modest garb drew every eye,
+       Her ample cloak, her shoes of leather;
+     And when they sneered, she simply said,
+       "I dress according to the weather."
+
+     They argued long and reasoned loud,
+       In dubious Hindoo phrase mysterious;
+     While she, poor child, could not divine
+       Why girls so young should be so serious.
+
+     They knew the length of Plato's beard,
+       And how the scholars wrote in Laturn;
+     She studied authors not so deep,
+       And took the Bible for her pattern.
+
+     And so she said, "Excuse me, friends,
+       I feel all have their proper places,
+     And _Common Sense_ should stay at home
+       With cheerful hearts and smiling faces."
+
+
+Mr. Fields has been a frequent contributor to his own periodicals, his
+latest effort being a paper devoted to personal recollections of Charles
+Dickens, which was published in the "Atlantic Monthly" soon after the
+death of the great master.
+
+He has made several extended tours throughout Europe, where he has
+enjoyed social advantages rarely opened to travelers. One of his friends
+says that, in his first visit to the Old World, "he passed several
+months in England, Scotland, France, and Germany, visiting the principal
+places of interest, and forming most delightful and profitable
+intimacies with the most distinguished _literateurs_ of the day. He was
+a frequent guest at the well-known breakfasts of the great banker-poet
+of 'The Pleasures of Memory' and of 'Italy,' and listened or added his
+own contributions to the exuberant riches of the hour, when such
+visitors as Talfourd, Dickens, Moore, and Landor were the talkers." He
+also formed a warm friendship with Wordsworth, and, during his stay in
+Edinburgh, with Professor Wilson and De Quincey. The writings of the
+last-named author were published by Ticknor and Fields, in eighteen
+volumes, and were edited by Mr. Fields, at the author's own request.
+
+Mr. Fields is now in his fiftieth year, but shows no sign of age, save
+the whitening of his heavy, curling beard. He is still young and active
+in mind and body. He is of medium height, and well proportioned, with an
+erect carriage. Polished and courteous in manner, he is easily
+accessible to all. To young writers he is especially kind, and it is a
+matter of the truest pleasure to him to seek out and bring to notice
+genuine literary merit. He has a host of friends, and is widely popular
+with all classes.
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+EDITORS.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+JAMES GORDON BENNETT.
+
+
+James Gordon Bennett was born at New Mill, Keith, in Banffshire, on the
+north-eastern coast of Scotland, about the year 1800. His relatives were
+Roman Catholics, and he was brought up in a Catholic family of French
+origin. In his fourteenth year, having passed through the primary
+schools of his native place, he entered the Roman Catholic Seminary at
+Aberdeen, for the purpose of studying for the priesthood of that Church.
+During the two or three years which he passed here he was a close
+student, and acquired the basis of an excellent education.
+
+In 1817 he came into possession of a copy of Benjamin Franklin's
+autobiography, which had been recently published in Scotland. The
+perusal of this little book changed the course of his whole life. It
+induced him to abandon all thoughts of the priesthood, and to try his
+fortune in the New World, in which the great philosopher had succeeded
+so well before him. A little more than a year later he left Glasgow, and
+in May, 1819, being now about twenty years old, landed at Halifax, Nova
+Scotia. He had less than twenty-five dollars in his purse, knew no
+vocation save that of a book-keeper, and had not a friend on this side
+of the ocean.
+
+He secured a few pupils in Halifax, and gave lessons in book-keeping,
+but his profits were so small that he determined to reach the United
+States as soon as possible. Accordingly he made his way along the coast
+to Portland, Maine, where he took passage for Boston in a small
+schooner. He found great difficulty in procuring employment, for Boston
+then, as now, offered but few inducements to new-comers. He parted with
+his last penny, and was reduced to the most pressing want. For two whole
+days he went without food, and a third day would doubtless have been
+added to his fast had he not been fortunate enough to find a shilling on
+the Common, with which he procured the means of relieving his hunger. He
+now obtained a salesman's place in the bookstore of Messrs. Wells &
+Lilly, who, upon discovering his fitness for the place, transferred him
+to their printing-office as proof-reader; but his employers failed about
+two years after his connection with them began, and he was again thrown
+out of employment.
+
+From Boston he went, in 1822, to New York, where he obtained a situation
+on a newspaper. Soon after his arrival in the metropolis he was offered,
+by Mr. Wellington, the proprietor of the "Charleston (S.C.) Courier,"
+the position of translator from the Spanish, and general assistant. He
+accepted the offer, and at once repaired to Charleston. He remained
+there only a few months, however, and then returned to New York.
+
+He now proposed to open a "Permanent Commercial School," at 148 Fulton
+Street, and advertised to teach the usual branches "in the inductive
+method." His advertisement set forth that his pupils would be taught
+"reading, elocution, penmanship, and arithmetic; algebra; astronomy,
+history, and geography; moral philosophy, commercial law, and political
+economy; English grammar and composition, and, also, if required, the
+French and Spanish languages by natives of those countries." This
+elaborate scheme was never put into execution, as Mr. Bennett did not
+receive a sufficient number of applications to warrant him in opening
+the school. He next attempted a course of lectures on political economy
+at the old Dutch Church in Ann Street, but this enterprise was also a
+pecuniary failure. In 1825 he purchased the "New York Courier," a Sunday
+paper, but did not succeed with it. He continued to write for the press,
+principally for one or two papers, selling his articles where he could,
+and in 1826 formed a regular connection with the "National Advocate," a
+Democratic journal. To his duties in this position he applied himself
+with an energy and industry never surpassed, and rarely equaled, in his
+profession. He took an active part in politics, and wrote regularly and
+constantly for his paper, acquiring considerable reputation by his
+articles against the tariff and on banks and banking. He now embarked in
+journalism as the business of his life, and with the determination to
+succeed. In order to win success, he knew he must first learn to master
+himself. He neither smoked, drank, nor gambled. He indulged in no
+species of dissipation, but was temperate and prudent in all things. A
+few years later he said of himself, "I eat and drink to live, not live
+to eat and drink. Social glasses of wine are my aversion; public dinners
+are my abomination; all species of gormandizing my utter scorn and
+contempt. When I am hungry, I eat; when thirsty, drink. Wine or viands
+taken for society, or to stimulate conversation, tend only to
+dissipation, indolence, poverty, contempt, and death."
+
+In 1827 the "National Advocate" changed hands, and, under its new
+proprietors, supported John Quincy Adams for President. Mr. Bennett,
+being a supporter of Martin Van Buren, then a United States Senator,
+resigned his position on the paper, and soon after, in connection with
+the late M.M. Noah, established "The Enquirer," which warmly espoused
+the cause of Andrew Jackson in the Presidential canvass of 1828. About
+this time he became a recognized member of the Tammany Society.
+
+In the spring of 1828 he went to Washington, where he resided for some
+time as the correspondent of "The Enquirer." In looking through the
+library of Congress one day, he found an edition of Horace Walpole's
+letters, which he read with a keen relish. These suggested the idea of a
+series of similar letters to his own paper, and he at once put his plan
+into execution. His letters were written and published. They were
+"spicy," pleasant in style, full of gossip about the distinguished
+personages who thronged the capital every winter, and, withal, free from
+any offensive personality. They were read with eagerness, and widely
+copied by the press throughout the country. Yet he was poorly paid for
+them, and at a time when he had made a "real hit" was forced to labor
+hard for a bare subsistence. He did all kinds of literary work. He wrote
+editorials, letters, sketches, poetry, stories, police reports, in
+short, every thing that a newspaper had use for, and yet his earnings
+were barely more than sufficient to afford him a decent support.
+
+In 1829, the "Courier and Enquirer" were united under one management,
+and Mr. Bennett was made assistant editor, with James Watson Webb as his
+chief. In the autumn of that year he became associate editor. Says Mr.
+James Parton (by no means an ardent admirer of Mr. Bennett):
+
+"During the great days of the 'Courier and Enquirer,' from 1829 to 1832,
+when It was incomparably the best newspaper on the continent, James
+Gordon Bennett was its most efficient hand. It lost him in 1832, when
+the paper abandoned General Jackson and took up Nicholas Biddle, and in
+losing him lost its chance of retaining the supremacy among American
+newspapers to this day. We can truly say that at that time journalism,
+as a thing by itself and for itself, had no existence in the United
+States. Newspapers were mere appendages of party, and the darling object
+of each journal was to be recognized as the organ of the party it
+supported. As to the public, the great public, hungry for interesting
+news, no one thought of it. Forty years ago, in the city of New York, a
+copy of a newspaper could not be bought for money. If any one wished to
+see a newspaper, he had either to go to the office and subscribe, or
+repair to a bar-room and buy a glass of something to drink, or bribe a
+carrier to rob one of his customers. The circulation of the 'Courier and
+Enquirer' was considered something marvelous when it printed thirty-five
+hundred copies a day, and its business was thought immense when its
+daily advertising averaged fifty-five dollars. It is not very unusual
+for a newspaper now to receive for advertising, in one day, six hundred
+times that sum. Bennett, in the course of time, had a chance been given
+to him, would have made the 'Courier and Enquirer' powerful enough to
+cast off all party ties, and this he would have done merely by improving
+it as a vehicle of news. But he was kept down upon one of those
+ridiculous, tantalizing, corrupting salaries, which are a little more
+than a single man needs, but not enough for him to marry upon. This
+salary was increased by the proprietors giving him a small share in the
+small profits of the printing-office; so that, after fourteen years of
+hard labor and Scotch economy, he found himself, on leaving the great
+paper, a capitalist to the extent of a few hundred dollars. The chief
+editor of the paper which he now abandoned sometimes lost as much in a
+single evening at the card-table. It probably never occurred to him
+that this poor, ill-favored Scotchman was destined to destroy his paper
+and all the class of papers to which it belonged. Any one who examines a
+file of the 'Courier and Enquirer' of that time, and knows its interior
+circumstances, will see plainly enough that the possession of this man
+was the vital element in its prosperity. He alone knew the rudiments of
+his trade. He alone had the physical stamina, the indefatigable
+industry, the sleepless vigilance, the dexterity, tact, and audacity
+needful for keeping up a daily newspaper in the face of keen
+competition."
+
+Mr. Bennett left the "Courier and Enquirer" in 1832, the cause of his
+action being the desertion of General Jackson by that journal. He at
+once started a cheap partisan paper, called "The Globe," devoted to the
+interests of Jackson and Van Buren. It failed to receive the support of
+the Democratic party, however, and went down after a precarious
+existence of thirty days.
+
+Undismayed by this failure, Mr. Bennett removed to Philadelphia, and
+invested the remainder of his capital in a daily Democratic journal,
+called "The Pennsylvanian," of which he was the principal editor,
+laboring hard to win for it the assistance and support of the party. He
+had rendered good and admitted service to the Democracy, but was to
+experience the ingratitude for which political organizations are
+proverbial. He applied to Martin Van Buren and other prominent leaders
+of the party to aid him in securing a loan of twenty-five hundred
+dollars for two years, which sum would have enabled him to establish his
+paper on a paying basis, but the politicians turned deaf ears to his
+appeals, and his paper failed, after a brief and desperate struggle.
+
+He came back to New York about the beginning of 1835, a little sore
+from his unsuccessful battle with fate, but far from being dismayed or
+cast down. His failures to establish party organs had convinced him that
+success in journalism does not depend upon political favor, and he
+determined to make one more effort to build up a paper of his own, and
+this time one which should aim to please no party but the public. That
+there was need of an independent journal of this kind he felt sure, and
+he knew the people of the country well enough to be confident that if
+such a journal could be properly placed before them, it would succeed.
+The problem with him was how to get it properly before them. He had
+little or no money, and it required considerable capital to carry
+through the most insignificant effort of the kind. He made several
+efforts to inspire other persons with his confidence before he
+succeeded. One of these efforts Mr. Parton thus describes, in his _Life
+of Horace Greeley:_ "An incident connected with the job-office of
+Greeley & Co. is perhaps worth mentioning here. One James Gordon
+Bennett, a person then well known as a smart writer for the press, came
+to Horace Greeley, and, exhibiting a fifty-dollar bill and some other
+notes of smaller denominations as his cash capital, wanted him to join
+in setting up a new daily paper, 'The New York Herald.' Our hero
+declined the offer, but recommended James Gordon to apply to another
+printer, naming one, who he thought would like to share in such an
+enterprise. To him the editor of 'The Herald' did apply, and with
+success."
+
+The parties to whom Mr. Greeley referred Mr. Bennett were two young
+printers, whom he persuaded, after much painstaking, to print his paper
+and share with him its success or failure. He had about enough cash in
+hand to sustain the paper for ten days, after which it must make its own
+way. He proposed to make it cheap--to sell it at one penny per copy,
+and to make it meet the current wants of the day. The "Sun," a penny
+paper, was already in existence, and was paying well, and this
+encouraged Mr. Bennett to hope for success in his own enterprise.
+
+He rented a cellar in Wall Street, in which he established his office,
+and on the 6th of May, 1835, issued the first number of "The Morning
+Herald." His cellar was bare and poverty-stricken in appearance. It
+contained nothing but a desk made of boards laid upon flour barrels. On
+one end of this desk lay a pile of "Heralds" ready for purchasers, and
+at the other sat the proprietor writing his articles for his journal and
+managing his business. Says Mr. William Gowans, the famous Nassau-Street
+bookseller: "I remember to have entered the subterranean office of its
+editor early in its career, and purchased a single copy of the paper,
+for which I paid the sum of one cent United States currency. On this
+occasion the proprietor, editor, and vendor was seated at his desk,
+busily engaged in writing, and appeared to pay little or no attention to
+me as I entered. On making known my object in coming in, he requested me
+to put my money down on the counter and help myself to a paper, all this
+time he continuing his writing operations. The office was a single
+oblong underground room; its furniture consisted of a counter, which
+also served as a desk, constructed from two flour barrels, perhaps
+empty, standing apart from each other about four feet, with a single
+plank covering both; a chair, placed in the center, upon which sat the
+editor busy at his vocation, with an inkstand by his right hand; on the
+end nearest the door were placed the papers for sale."
+
+[Illustration: HOW THE "NEW YORK HERALD" BEGAN.]
+
+Standing on Broadway now, and looking at the marble palace from which
+the greatest and wealthiest newspaper in the Union sends forth its huge
+editions, one finds it hard to realize that just thirty-four years
+ago this great journal was born in a cellar, an obscure little penny
+sheet, with a poor man for its proprietor. Yet such was the beginning of
+"The New York Herald."
+
+The prospect was not a pleasant one to contemplate, but Mr. Bennett did
+not shrink from it. He knew that it was in him to succeed, and he meant
+to do it, no matter through what trials or vicissitudes his path to
+fortune lay. Those who heard his expressions of confidence shook their
+heads sagely, and said the young man's air-castles would soon fade away
+before the blighting breath of experience. Indeed, it did seem a
+hopeless struggle, the effort of this one poor man to raise his little
+penny sheet from its cellar to the position of "a power in the land." He
+was almost unknown. He could bring no support or patronage to his
+journal by the influence of his name, or by his large acquaintance. The
+old newspaper system, with its clogs and dead-weights, was still in
+force, and as for newsboys to hawk the new journal over the great city,
+they were a race not then in existence. He had to fight his battle with
+poverty alone and without friends, and he did fight it bravely. He was
+his own clerk, reporter, editor, and errand boy. He wrote all the
+articles that appeared in "The Herald," and many of the advertisements,
+and did all the work that was to be performed about his humble office.
+
+"The Herald" was a small sheet of four pages of four columns each.
+Nearly every line of it was fresh news. Quotations from other papers
+were scarce. Originality was then, as now, the motto of the
+establishment. Small as it was, the paper was attractive. The story that
+its first numbers were scurrilous and indecent is not true, as a
+reference to the old files of the journal will prove. They were of a
+character similar to that of "The Herald" of to-day, and were marked by
+the same industry, tact, and freshness, which make the paper to-day the
+most salable in the land.
+
+Says Mr. Parton: "The first numbers were filled with nonsense and gossip
+about the city of New York, to which his poverty confined him. He had no
+boat with which to board arriving ships, no share in the pony express
+from Washington, and no correspondents in other cities. All he could do
+was to catch the floating gossip, scandal, and folly of the town, and
+present as much of them every day as one man could get upon paper by
+sixteen hours' labor. He laughed at every thing and every body,--not
+excepting himself and his squint eye,--and though his jokes were not
+always good, they were generally good enough. People laughed, and were
+willing to expend a cent the next day to see what new folly the man
+would commit or relate. We all like to read about our own neighborhood;
+this paper gratified the propensity.
+
+"The man, we repeat, had really a vein of poetry in him, and the first
+numbers of 'The Herald' show it. He had occasion one day to mention that
+Broadway was about to be paved with wooden blocks. This was not a very
+promising subject for a poetical comment, but he added: 'When this is
+done, every vehicle will have to wear sleigh-bells, as in sleighing
+times, and Broadway will be so quiet that you can pay a compliment to a
+lady, in passing, and she will hear you.' This was nothing in itself;
+but here was a man wrestling with fate in a cellar, who could turn you
+out two hundred such paragraphs a week, the year round. Men can growl in
+a cellar; this man could laugh, and keep laughing, and make the floating
+population of a city laugh with him. It must be owned, too, that he had
+a little real insight into the nature of things around him--a little
+Scotch sense, as well as an inexhaustible fund of French vivacity.
+Alluding, once, to the 'hard money' cry by which the lying politicians
+of the day carried elections, he exploded that nonsense in two lines:
+'If a man gets the wearable or the eatable he wants, what cares he if he
+has gold or paper money?' He devoted two sentences to the Old School and
+New School Presbyterian controversy: 'Great trouble among the
+Presbyterians just now. The question is whether or not a man can do any
+thing toward saving his own soul.' He had also an article upon the
+Methodists, in which he said that the two religions nearest akin were
+the Methodist and the Roman Catholic. We should add to these trifling
+specimens the fact that he uniformly maintained, from 1835 to the crash
+of 1837, that the prosperity of the country was unreal, and would end in
+disaster."
+
+These things served the end for which they were intended. They brought
+"The Herald" conspicuously before the public. While engaged in them,
+the proprietor was anxiously planning the means of making his paper a
+great _newspaper_. He worked sixteen or seventeen hours each day. He
+rose before five o'clock in the morning, and gave three hours to writing
+his editorials and the witty paragraphs to which allusion has been made.
+At eight o'clock he went to his cellar, or "office," and was at his post
+there during the morning, selling his papers, receiving advertisements,
+and often writing them for those who were not able to prepare them,
+doing such other work as was necessary, and finishing his editorial
+labors. At one o'clock he went into Wall Street, gathering up financial
+news and interesting items of the street. He returned to his office at
+four o'clock, and remained there until six, when the business of the day
+was over. In the evening he went to the theater, a ball, concert, or
+some public gathering, to pick up fresh items for his paper.
+
+All this while, however, he was losing money. He had a heavy load to
+carry, and though he bore it unflinchingly and determinedly, the
+enterprise seemed doomed to failure for lack of funds. At this juncture,
+he resolved to make the financial news of the day a special feature of
+"The Herald." The monetary affairs of the country were in great
+confusion--a confusion which was but the prelude to the crash of 1837;
+and Wall Street was the vortex of the financial whirlpool whose eddies
+were troubling the whole land. Every body was anxious to get the first
+news from the street, and to get it as full and reliable as possible. At
+this time, too, our relations with France were exceedingly critical--a
+circumstance which served to increase the trouble in financial matters.
+Appreciating the anxiety which was generally felt on this subject, Mr.
+Bennett resolved to create a demand for "The Herald" among the business
+men of the country. On the 13th of June, 1835, just five weeks after the
+establishment of the paper, he printed his first money article--the
+first that ever appeared in an American newspaper. It was as follows:
+
+
+     COMMERCIAL.
+
+     Stocks yesterday maintained their prices during the session of the
+     Board, several going up. Utica went up 2 per cent.; the others
+     stationary. Large quantities were sold. After the Board adjourned
+     and the news from France was talked over, the fancy stocks
+     generally went down 1 to 1-1/2 per cent.; the other stocks quite
+     firm. A rally was made by the bulls in the evening under the trees,
+     but it did not succeed. There will be a great fight in the Board
+     to-day. The good people up town are anxious to know what the
+     brokers think of Mr. Livingston. We shall find out, and let them
+     know.
+
+     The cotton and flour markets rallied a little. The rise of cotton
+     in Liverpool drove it up here a cent or so. The last shippers will
+     make 2-1/2 per cent. Many are endeavoring to produce the impression
+     that there will be a war. If the impression prevails, naval stores
+     will go up a good deal. Every eye is outstretched for the
+     "Constitution." Hudson, of the Merchants News Room, says he will
+     hoist out the first flag. Gilpin, of the Exchange News Room, says
+     he will have her name down in his room one hour before his
+     competitor. The latter claims having beat Hudson yesterday by an
+     hour and ten minutes in chronicling the "England."
+
+
+The money article was a success, and appeared regularly in "The Herald"
+after this. It created a demand for the paper among the merchants, and
+increased its circulation so decidedly that at the end of the third
+month the daily receipts and expenditures balanced each other. Mr.
+Bennett now ventured to engage a cheap police reporter, which gave him
+more time to attend to other duties.
+
+The paper now seemed on the point of becoming a success, when it
+received a severe and unlooked-for blow. The printing-office was burned
+down, and the gentlemen who had printed "The Herald" were so much
+discouraged that they refused to renew their connection with it. Mr.
+Bennett knew that he was too near to success to abandon the enterprise,
+and courageously put his wits to work to devise means to carry on the
+paper. By the greatest and most indomitable exertions he managed to
+secure the means of going on with it, and bravely resumed its
+publication alone.
+
+A few months after this the "great fire" swept over New York, and laid
+nearly the whole business portion of the city in ashes. This was Mr.
+Bennett's opportunity. The other journals of the city devoted a brief
+portion of their space to general and ponderous descriptions of the
+catastrophe, but Mr. Bennett went among the ruins, note-book and pencil
+in hand, and gathered up the most minute particulars of the fire. He
+spent one-half of each day in this way, and the other half in writing
+out reports of what he thus learned. These reports he published in "The
+Herald." They were free, graphic, off-hand sketches of the fire and its
+consequences, and were so full and complete that they left little or
+nothing connected with the incidents they described to be added. Mr.
+Bennett also went to the expense of publishing a picture of the burning
+of the Merchants Exchange, and a map of the burnt district--a heavy
+expense for his little journal. The result proved the sagacity of his
+views. "The Herald" reports of the fire created a heavy demand for the
+paper, and its circulation increased rapidly. Yet its success was not
+assured.
+
+When his first year closed, Mr. Bennett found his paper still struggling
+for existence, but with a fair prospect of success, if it could follow
+up the "hit" it had made with its reports of the fire. About this time
+he received an offer from Dr. Benjamin Brandreth to advertise his pills
+in "The Herald," and a contract was at once concluded between them. The
+money thus paid to the paper was a considerable sum, and proved of the
+greatest assistance to it. All the money received was conscientiously
+expended in the purchase of news. The circulation grew larger as its
+news facilities increased, and for some years its proprietor expended
+all his profits in making the paper more attractive.
+
+At the close of the fifteenth month of its career Mr. Bennett increased
+the size of "The Herald," and raised the price of it to two cents per
+copy. His success was now assured, and continued to increase, as, under
+his able and far-seeing management, his paper expanded and enlarged its
+facilities for securing and making public the promptest and most
+reliable news of the day. Since that time his success has been
+unvarying. He has made "The Herald" the leading newspaper of the world,
+for no other journal upon the globe can compare with it in liberality
+and energy in the collection of news or in promptness and completeness
+of detail in laying it before the public. Its growth has been slow, but
+sure. Every step has been won by hard and conscientious labor, as well
+as by the force of real genius. Other journals have been compelled to
+follow the example of "The Herald," but none have surpassed it. It still
+stands at the head of the newspaper press of the world, and we are
+justified in believing that it will continue to stand there as long as
+its founder's hand controls it.
+
+Instead of the little penny sheet of thirty-four years ago, "The New
+York Herald" of to-day is an immense journal, generally of twelve, and
+often of sixteen pages of six columns each, making a total of from
+seventy-two to ninety-six closely printed columns of matter. From four
+to nine pages are filled with advertisements, classified with the utmost
+exactness. No reader has to search the paper over for the article or
+advertisement he wishes to see; each subject has its separate place,
+which can be discovered at a glance. Its advertisements have reference
+to every trade, profession, or calling known to civilized man, and are a
+faithful mirror of the busy age in which we live. Its news reports are
+the freshest, most complete, and most graphic of any American journal,
+and are collected at an expenditure of more time, care, and money than
+any other journal sees fit to lay out. It has its correspondents in all
+parts of the world, and when news is worth sending, these are instructed
+to spare no pains or expense in transmitting it at once. During the late
+war it had a small army of attaches in the field, and its reports were
+the most eagerly sought of all by the public. During the Abyssinian war
+its reporters and correspondents furnished the London press with
+reliable news _in advance of their own correspondents_. Any price is
+paid for news, for it is the chief wish of Mr. Bennett that "The Herald"
+shall be the first to chronicle the events of the day.
+
+"The Herald" office is now located at the corner of Broadway and Ann
+Street. The building, of white marble, is five stories in height, and
+is one of the handsomest in the country. It is the most complete
+newspaper establishment in existence. It has two cellars, in which are
+placed the two steam-engines that drive the huge presses which strike
+off the various editions of "The Herald." Every thing is in perfect
+order, and the machinery shines like polished gold and silver. The
+proprietor's eye is upon the whole establishment, and he is quick to
+notice and reprimand a fault. The street floor contains the business
+office of the journal, a magnificent room, gorgeous with marble,
+plate-glass, black walnut, and frescoes. The editorial rooms are above,
+and near them are the reporters' rooms. The top floor constitutes the
+finest composing room in the world, from which speaking-tubes and
+vertical railways communicate with all the other parts of the building.
+Every department of the paper has a responsible head, and the most rigid
+discipline prevails throughout the office. There are twelve editors,
+thirty-five reporters, and four hundred and fifty-three other employes,
+making a total force of five hundred men engaged upon "The Herald." The
+circulation of the various editions of the paper amounts to tens of
+thousands. It is to be found in every town of importance in the land,
+and its daily receipts from advertisements alone are counted by tens of
+thousands of dollars.
+
+Mr. Bennett rarely writes for the paper now. He assembles his editors in
+his council at noon every day, hears their suggestions, decides what
+topics shall be treated in the next day's issue, and assigns to each man
+the subject upon which he is to write. In his absence his place at the
+council-board is filled by his son, or by the managing editor. Mr.
+Bennett in this way exercises a close supervision over all the articles
+that appear in "The Herald," and imparts to them a considerable share of
+his personality.
+
+Mr. Bennett is married, and has two children, a son, James Gordon
+Bennett, jr., who will succeed his father in the ownership of "The
+Herald," and a daughter. He lives on Fifth Avenue at present, his
+favorite residence, at Washington Heights, having been recently
+destroyed by fire. He is said to be a courtly and agreeable host, and
+one who rarely fails to send away his visitors with a pleasant
+impression of himself.
+
+In person he is tall and firmly built, and walks with a dignified
+carriage. His head is large, and his features are prominent and
+irregular. He has a thoroughly Scotch face, and is cross-eyed. His
+forehead is broad and high, betokening great capacity and force of
+character. His expression is firm and somewhat cold--that of a man who
+has had a hard fight with fortune, and has conquered it. He is reserved
+in his manner to strangers, but always courteous and approachable. To
+his friends he is genial and unreserved. He is finely educated, and is
+said to be a man of excellent taste. His favorite studies are history
+and biography, and he still pursues them with a keen relish. His home is
+one of the most elegant in the city. He is proud of his success, as he
+may well be, and very proud of the fact that he owes it to himself
+alone. While he was building the new "Herald" office, he was waited on
+by the president of one of the national banks of the city, who said to
+him:
+
+"Mr. Bennett, we know that you are at great expense in erecting this
+building, besides carrying on your immense business. If you want any
+accommodation, you can have it at our bank."
+
+"Mr. ----," replied Mr. Bennett, "before I purchased the land, or began
+to build, I had on deposit two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in the
+Chemical Bank. There is not a dollar due on 'The Herald' building that
+I can not pay. I would pay off the mortgage to-morrow, if the owner
+would allow me to do so. When the building is opened, I shall not owe
+one dollar to any man, if I am allowed to pay. I owe nothing that I can
+not discharge in an hour. I have not touched one dollar of the money on
+deposit in the bank, and while that remains I need no accommodation."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+ROBERT BONNER.
+
+
+Robert Bonner was born in the north of Ireland, near the town of
+Londonderry, about the year 1824. He came to this country when a mere
+child, and was brought up in the State of Connecticut, where he received
+a good common-school education.
+
+Manifesting a decided liking for the printer's trade, he was placed at
+an early age in the office of the "Hartford Courant," where he took his
+first lessons in the art of setting type. He entered upon the business
+with the determination to learn it thoroughly, and when he had mastered
+his trade soon acquired the reputation of being the best workman in
+Hartford. As a compositor, he was not only neat and thorough, but was
+remarkably rapid as well. On one occasion, when the "Courant" was
+endeavoring to publish the "President's Message" in advance of all its
+competitors, Mr. Bonner is said to have worked at the rate of seventeen
+hundred ems an hour--a feat absolutely unparalleled.
+
+In 1844, he removed to New York and engaged in the office of a new
+journal, called the "American Republican," then lately established as
+the organ of the American party in that city, upon which he worked
+steadily during its brief career. His wages were small, and it was only
+by practicing the most rigid economy that he could live upon them.
+
+When the "Republican" suspended publication, Mr. Bonner was employed in
+the office of the "Evening Mirror," published by Morris, Willis &
+Fuller. Here he made himself so useful, that the business of getting up
+or displaying advertisements attractively was soon left entirely to him.
+His taste in this department was almost faultless, and the
+advertisements of the "Mirror" soon became noted for their neat and
+handsome appearance.
+
+At this time there was published in New York a small, struggling paper,
+exclusively mercantile in its character, called the "Merchants' Ledger."
+This paper was almost entirely dependent upon its advertising patronage,
+and the attention of its proprietor was called to Mr. Bonner's skill, as
+exhibited in the "Mirror," in displaying advertisements to the greatest
+advantage. The result was that Mr. Bonner received an offer, which he
+accepted, to take charge of this paper. This was the origin of his
+connection with the journal which he has since rendered famous.
+
+Being fond of composition, he made frequent contributions to the
+editorial columns of the paper, which were well received by the general
+public, but which seem to have aroused the petty jealousy of the
+proprietor of the "Ledger."
+
+Soon after forming his connection with the "Ledger," Mr. Bonner
+purchased it. From his boyhood up, it had been his ambition to become
+the proprietor of a journal which should be carried out upon his own
+ideas, and he believed that the "Ledger" offered him the best means of
+doing this. It was generally doubted at that time that a literary paper
+could flourish in New York--Boston and Philadelphia having apparently
+monopolized such enterprises. Mr. Bonner, however, had a clearer view
+of the matter, and was convinced from the first that the great center of
+American industry was the very best place for such an undertaking. He
+proceeded very cautiously at first, however, changing the character of
+his paper very gradually, from a commercial to a literary journal.
+
+At this time Fanny Fern was the great literary sensation of the day. She
+had just published her "Ruth Hall," which had attracted universal
+attention, and had given rise to a sharp discussion in the public press
+as to whether she was the sister of N.P. Willis or not. Mr. Bonner
+resolved to profit by her sudden notoriety, and requested her to write a
+story for the "Ledger," for which he offered to pay her twenty-five
+dollars per column. She declined the proposition. He then offered her
+fifty dollars a column, and, upon a second refusal, increased his offer
+to seventy-five dollars a column. She was pleased with the energy
+exhibited by Mr. Bonner, and flattered by his eagerness to secure her
+services, but declared that she would write no more for the newspapers.
+A little later Mr. Bonner was offered a story from her, about ten
+columns long. He at once accepted her proposition, and upon the receipt
+of the manuscript sent her a check for one thousand dollars.
+
+With this story began that wonderful career of the "Ledger" which seems
+more like a dream than hard reality. The story was double-leaded, and
+made to fill twenty columns of the paper. The "Ledger" itself was
+changed from its old style to its present form, and made a purely
+literary journal. The price paid for the story was unparalleled in the
+history of American journalism, and Mr. Bonner spread the announcement
+far and wide that he was publishing a serial for which he had given one
+hundred dollars a column. His advertisements were to be seen in almost
+every newspaper of respectable circulation throughout the Union. In form
+they were different from any that had preceded them. "Fanny Fern
+writes for the 'Ledger.'" "Buy the 'New York Ledger,'" etc., appeared,
+dozens of times repeated, until men were absolutely tired of seeing the
+announcement. Nothing had ever been brought to the public notice so
+prominently before. For awhile people were astonished at the audacious
+boldness of "the 'Ledger' man." Then they began to buy the paper. Since
+then the demand for it has steadily increased.
+
+The venture was successful. Fanny Fern's reputation and Mr. Bonner's
+energy and boldness made a demand for the "Ledger," at once, and out of
+the profits of the story for which he had paid such an unheard-of price
+Mr. Bonner purchased a handsome residence in New York City.
+
+There was as much originality as boldness in the peculiar style in which
+Mr. Bonner advertised his paper. As before stated, nothing of the kind
+had ever been seen before, and the novelty of the announcements at once
+attracted attention. It was seen that they were expensive also, and
+people naturally felt some curiosity to see for themselves the paper for
+which a man was willing to assume such risk and expense. These
+announcements sometimes covered a whole page of a daily paper; sometimes
+the page would be almost entirely blank, with only a few lines in each
+column containing the announcement. Again the advertisement would be the
+opening chapters of a story, which would be sure to excite the curiosity
+of the reader, and induce him to purchase the remaining chapters in the
+"Ledger" itself. It is to the credit of the "Ledger" that it rarely
+loses a subscriber. It has become a family paper.
+
+A recent writer thus refers to Mr. Bonner's early experience
+advertising:--
+
+
+"His mode of advertising was new, and it excited both astonishment and
+ridicule. His ruin was predicted over and over again. But as he paid as
+he went along, he alone would be the sufferer. He was assailed in
+various ways. Men sneered at his writers, as well as at the method in
+which he made them known. He had no competition. Just then it was
+announced that the Harpers were to put a first-class weekly into the
+field. The announcement was hailed with delight by many classes. Men who
+had been predicting Bonner's ruin from the start were anxious to see it
+accomplished. He had agents in all the leading cities in the land. These
+held a monopoly of the 'Ledger.' The book men and newspaper men, who
+were left out, were quite willing to have the 'Ledger' go under. The
+respectability and wealth of the house, its enterprise, with the class
+of writers it could secure, made the new paper a dangerous rival. Mr.
+Bonner concluded to make the first issue serviceable to himself. His
+paragraph advertising was considered sensational, and smacking of the
+charlatan. He resolved to make it respectable. He wrote half a column in
+sensational style: 'Buy Harper's Weekly!'--'Buy Harper's Weekly!'--'Buy
+Harper's Weekly!'--'Buy Harper's Weekly!'--and so on through the half
+column. Through his advertising agent he sent this advertisement to the
+'Herald,' 'Tribune,' and 'Times,' and paid for its insertion. Among the
+astonished readers of this 'Ledger' style of advertising were the quiet
+gentlemen who do business on Franklin Square. The community were
+astonished. 'The Harpers are waking up!' 'This is the Bonner style!'
+'This is the way the Ledger man does it!' were heard on all sides. The
+young Harpers were congratulated by the book men every-where on the
+enterprise with which they were pushing the new publication. They said
+nothing, and took the joke in good part. But it settled the
+respectability of the 'Ledger' style of advertising. It is now imitated
+by the leading publishers, insurance men, and most eminent dry goods
+men in the country. The sums spent by Mr. Bonner in advertising are
+perfectly marvelous. He never advertises unless he has something new to
+present to the public. He pays from five to twenty-five thousand dollars
+a week when he advertises."
+
+Mr. Bonner well knew that all his advertising would be worth nothing in
+the end unless he made the "Ledger" worthy of the public patronage, and
+he exerted himself from the first to secure the services of a corps of
+able and popular writers. In his arrangements with his contributors, he
+inaugurated a system of liberality and _justness_ which might well put
+his rivals to shame.
+
+When Mr. Everett was engaged in his noble effort to assist the ladies of
+the Mount Vernon Association in purchasing the home and tomb of
+Washington, Mr. Bonner proposed to him to write a series of papers for
+the "Ledger," for which he offered him ten thousand dollars, the money
+to be appropriated to the purchase of Mount Vernon. Mr. Everett accepted
+the offer, and the celebrated Mount Vernon Papers were the result. This
+was a far-sighted move on the part of Robert Bonner. Under ordinary
+circumstances Mr. Everett would probably have declined to "write for the
+'Ledger;'" but in a cause so worthy he could not refuse. The association
+of his name with the journal was of incalculable service to it, and the
+Mount Vernon Papers were to its proprietor his very best advertisement.
+(We are viewing the matter commercially.) The sale of the paper was
+wonderfully increased, and a golden harvest was reaped.
+
+This connection of Mr. Everett with the "Ledger" led to a warm personal
+friendship between himself and its proprietor, which was broken only by
+the statesman's death--a circumstance which speaks volumes for the
+private worth of the younger man. Mr. Everett continued to write for
+the paper after his Mount Vernon articles were finished, and is said to
+have earned over fifty thousand dollars by his able contributions to it.
+
+Soon after the completion of the Mount Vernon Papers, Mr. Bonner secured
+the services of George Bancroft, the historian, who contributed a series
+of admirable articles. Mr. Everett's connection with the "Ledger" had
+settled the question that it was not beneath the dignity of the most
+eminent literateur in the land to write for it. Fanny Fern's husband,
+Mr. James Parton, Alice and Phoebe Carey, Mrs. Southworth, and a host of
+others have helped, and still help, to fill its columns.
+
+But perhaps its most profitable contributor, next to Mr. Everett, is
+Henry Ward Beecher. That wonderful gift of the great preacher which
+enables him to touch so constantly upon subjects nearest to the hearts
+of most men, would make him invaluable to any paper. Mr. Bonner was
+struck with this after hearing him preach several times, and resolved to
+secure his services for the "Ledger." He proposed, to the parson's utter
+astonishment, that Mr. Beecher should write a story for the paper, and
+coupled it with the offer of a sum which many persons would consider a
+fortune. The field was utterly new to Mr. Beecher. Novel-writing was
+something he had never even thought of; but after some hesitation he
+accepted the offer. Soon after this, the publication of "Norwood" was
+begun in the columns of the "Ledger." The story was longer than was at
+first agreed upon, and Mr. Bonner paid its author a handsome sum in
+addition to the amount originally offered. The reward was princely, but
+not out of proportion to the service rendered by Mr. Beecher, who has
+won thousands of readers for the paper. Mr. Beecher still writes for the
+"Ledger," and there is no present prospect of his genial and useful
+contributions coming to a close.
+
+Mr. Bonner has made his paper useful to young people as well as those of
+maturer years. Each number contains articles, briefly and pointedly
+written, upon some popular and useful topic, so that thousands find not
+only amusement, but valuable hints and profitable instruction in the
+"Ledger."
+
+It was for a long time the custom of the newspaper press to indulge in
+sneers at the "Ledger," and, at the least, to treat it with a species of
+mild contempt. In order to stop this, its proprietor secured and
+published a series of articles from James Gordon Bennett of "The
+Herald," Henry J. Raymond of "The Times," and Horace Greeley of "The
+Tribune." By thus identifying the leading journalists of the country
+with his enterprise, he effectually silenced the scoffers, and with them
+the "lesser lights" of the press.
+
+It was said by some over-careful persons that the "Ledger" was not a
+proper paper for young persons to read. Mr. Bonner at once secured the
+services of the Presidents of the twelve principal colleges of the
+Union, and articles from each of these gentlemen appeared in his paper.
+After this it was not to be presumed that a journal which had among its
+contributors twelve such distinguished guides of youth could be unfit
+for any one to read.
+
+In order to make still less room for doubt on this subject, a series of
+articles by twelve distinguished clergymen soon after appeared in the
+"Ledger."
+
+Indeed, the greatest care is exercised to exclude from the columns of
+the paper any thing savoring in the least of impurity. It is the
+proprietor's aim to make it a help as well as an amusement to its
+readers, and his object is to elevate, not to degrade them.
+
+The "Ledger" now circulates over three hundred thousand copies per
+week, and is growing in the public favor. From the profits of his
+business Mr. Bonner has built a splendid marble publishing-house at the
+corner of William and Spruce Streets, in New York, from which the
+"Ledger" is now issued. It is one of the most complete establishments in
+the world, and is fitted up with every convenience necessary to the
+performance of the work upon the paper in the most perfect and
+expeditious manner. Mr. Bonner has created all this by his own energy
+and business talent, and richly deserves the success he enjoys. He
+resides in an elegant mansion in New York, and has also a handsome
+country seat at Morrisania, in Westchester County. He is married, and
+has a family.
+
+Mr. Bonner's great wealth has enabled him to achieve a distinction of
+another kind. He is famous as the owner of the finest horses in America.
+His stables are located in Twenty-seventh Street, and are the most
+perfect of their kind in this country. They contain every thing needed
+for the comfort and care of the horses, and the men employed in them are
+thoroughly skilled in their business. The horses are seven in number.
+First on the list is "Dexter," who has made his mile in the
+unprecedented time of 2:17-1/4 in harness, and 2:18 under the saddle. He
+is the fastest horse in the world. "Lantern," a splendid bay, fifteen
+and a half hands high, has made his mile in 2:20. "Pocahontas," the most
+perfectly formed horse in existence, has made her mile in 2:23; while
+"Peerless," a fine gray mare, has followed close on to her in 2:23-1/4.
+"Lady Palmer" has made two miles with a three hundred and fifty pound
+wagon and driver in 4:59, while her companion, "Flatbush Mare," has made
+a two-mile heat to a road wagon in 5:01-1/4. The "Auburn Horse," a large
+sorrel, sixteen and a half hands high, with four white feet and a white
+face, was declared by Hiram Woodruff to be the fastest horse he ever
+drove. These horses cost their owner over two hundred thousand dollars,
+and he would not part with them for double that sum. He does not race
+them for money, but drives them for his own use, and holds the reins
+himself.
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+LAWYERS.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+JOHN MARSHALL.
+
+
+To the writer's mind the most perfect specimen of the American lawyer
+known to our history was JOHN MARSHALL, of Virginia, Chief Justice of
+the United States. Profoundly learned in the law, irresistible in
+argument, and possessed of an eloquence which drew men in throngs to
+listen to him, he was also the soul of honor. Neither in his private nor
+professional life could the most malicious find an action open to
+reproach. Simple and earnest as a child, he was yet a tower of strength
+to the cause of justice. Occupying the highest place in our judiciary
+system, he was never unduly elated by his honors, and while gaining and
+awarding fortunes in the discharge of his professional duties, he was
+himself so true a man that the most brazen suitor would not have dared
+to offer him a bribe. He was in all things the simple, honest gentleman,
+the fearless advocate, the just judge, and the meek and earnest follower
+of his Saviour. Although belonging to a past generation, his story is
+presented here because I wish to offer to those who seek to follow him
+in his noble calling the purest and highest model our history affords.
+
+John Marshall was born in Fauquier County, Virginia, on the 24th of
+September, 1755. He was the oldest of a family of fifteen children, and
+was the son of Colonel Thomas Marshall, a planter of moderate fortune.
+During the Revolution, Colonel Marshall commanded a regiment of Virginia
+troops, and won considerable distinction at the battles of the Great
+Bridge, Germantown, Brandywine, and Monmouth. At the Brandywine the
+regiment bore the brunt of the attack of the British army, led by
+Cornwallis in person.
+
+John Marshall was born in a region so thinly settled as to be almost cut
+off from civilization. The people were plain and even rough in their
+habits, and the mode of life which prevailed in his native county
+doubtless did much to lay the foundation of those habits of simplicity
+for which he was noted in after life. Schools were almost unknown in
+this region, and such as were in operation were so rude in character
+that Colonel Marshall, who was a man of education and culture, decided
+not to attempt to train his children in them. Being unable to raise the
+means of sending them to better schools in other parts of the Colony, he
+determined to become their teacher himself, and applied himself to his
+task with a devotion which was signally rewarded by the brilliant career
+of his eldest son. He laid especial weight upon their acquiring a
+thorough knowledge of the English language and of history, and sought to
+cultivate in them a love for the poetry of their native tongue.
+Referring in after life to his father's devoted labors, Judge Marshall
+once said, with great feeling, "To him I owe the solid foundation of all
+my success in life." John Marshall did ample justice to his father's
+labors, and when only fourteen years old was thoroughly familiar with
+the writings of Shakespeare, Dryden, Milton, and Pope, and could repeat
+by heart nearly the whole of the "Essay on Man." These poets were always
+his favorites, and in mature life he would quote them with readiness and
+the keenest relish.
+
+He showed such marked talent that his father determined to make an
+effort to secure him a better education than his private labors could
+impart to him, and accordingly sent him for a year to the school of the
+Rev. Mr. Campbell, in Westmoreland County, where he received a good
+drilling in English and Latin. At this school began his acquaintance
+with James Monroe, who was then one of Mr. Campbell's pupils. Returning
+home at the end of the year, he continued his studies under the Rev. Mr.
+Thompson.
+
+He studied hard and was an industrious reader. Poetry and romance were
+his favorites, but he read history with the deepest interest. He was
+quiet and thoughtful in manner, and full of a dreamy, poetic enthusiasm.
+He loved to wander in the thick woods, and would pass many of his
+leisure hours in gazing at the beauties of nature. His constitution was
+a sound and vigorous one, and he was not only fond of manly and athletic
+sports, but excelled in them. He had no inclination toward dissipation,
+and the simple, healthful life of his home was calculated to develop his
+physical powers to the utmost. Colonel Marshall did not neglect the
+moral training of his children, but always impressed upon them the
+importance of Christianity as the basis of their characters, rearing
+them in that simple code of true gentility which was so dear to our
+fathers, but of which we of to-day are fast losing sight.
+
+Being destined for the bar, young Marshall began his legal studies at
+the age of eighteen, but in two years they were interrupted by the
+troubles with Great Britain, which terminated in open hostilities. A
+volunteer company was raised in the neighborhood, and John Marshall
+promptly attached himself to it. He took a prominent part in the
+questions of the day, and expressed himself boldly in favor of
+resistance. In 1775 Patrick Henry made his memorable appeal for
+volunteers to drive the Loyalist Governor, Lord Dunmore, out of
+Virginia. Three companies were immediately organized in Marshall's
+neighborhood. Among these were the famous "Culpepper Minute Men."
+Marshall's father was elected major of the regiment, and he himself was
+chosen a lieutenant in the Minute Men. The force at once hastened to the
+lower counties, and bore a conspicuous part in the battle of Great
+Bridge. In July, 1776, Marshall's company was assigned to the Eleventh
+Virginia Regiment of the Continental Army, and sent North. In May, 1777,
+he was made captain of his company. He participated in the fight at Iron
+Hill, and in the battles of Germantown, Brandywine, and Monmouth, and
+shared the sufferings of the army at the memorable encampment of Valley
+Forge. Until the close of 1779 he was constantly in active service. He
+was always patient, cheerful, and hopeful. In the severest hardships to
+which the army was exposed his spirits never sank. One of his comrades
+said that he did more than any other man to keep alive the hopes of the
+army during the terrible winter at Valley Forge, and another has
+declared that "the officers of the Virginia line appeared to idolize
+him." His conduct attracted the attention of Washington, who conceived a
+warm friendship for him, and Marshall, on his part, returned the
+friendship of his chief with a feeling almost of worship. Washington
+frequently appointed him deputy judge advocate during the winter.
+
+At the close of 1779 he went to Virginia to take command of a new corps
+which the Legislature was about to raise. The project remaining under
+discussion for some months, he passed the time in attendance upon a
+course of lectures on law, delivered by George Wythe, and a course of
+lectures on natural philosophy, delivered by the Rev. Dr. Madison,
+afterward Bishop of Virginia, at William and Mary College, in
+Williamsburg. The next summer he received his license to practice law.
+Meanwhile, the project for raising troops had taken the shape of a
+definite failure, and he now set out to rejoin the army. Too poor to pay
+his passage to the North, he walked the entire distance from
+Williamsburg, Virginia, to Philadelphia, upon reaching which city he was
+so travel-worn and shabby in appearance, that the landlord of the hotel
+at which he wished to stop refused him admittance. He joined the army in
+due time, and remained with it until the spring of 1781, when he
+resigned his commission, a few months before the close of the war.
+
+With the return of peace the courts were again thrown open, and Marshall
+began that brilliant legal career which has made him one of the most
+famous men in our history. His success was marked from the first, as his
+professional talents were such as to make themselves felt anywhere, and
+his personal popularity aided him greatly in overcoming the difficulties
+which lie in the path of a young aspirant to legal honors. In 1782, the
+people of Fauquier elected him to the House of Delegates in the General
+Assembly of the Commonwealth, and in the fall of that year he was
+appointed one of the Council of State. In January, 1783, he was married
+to Miss Mary Willis Ambler, with whom he lived in the most perfect
+happiness for over fifty years. His bride was a woman of great personal
+beauty, and in every respect a fitting helpmate for such a man--than
+which no higher tribute could be paid her. About this time, Mr. Marshall
+decided not to return to Fauquier, but to locate himself permanently in
+Richmond, where he could enjoy many more professional advantages. In
+spite of this, however, his old friends in Fauquier re-elected him to
+the Legislature, and in 1787 he sat in that body as representative from
+the county of Henrico.
+
+He was very plain and even careless in his personal attire, and this
+often led to amusing occurrences. Soon after he began the practice of
+his profession in Richmond, he was strolling through the streets one
+morning, dressed in a plain linen suit and a straw hat. The hat was held
+under his arm, and was filled with cherries, of which he ate as he
+walked. In passing the Eagle Hotel, he stopped to exchange salutations
+with the landlord, and then continued his walk. Sitting near the
+landlord, on the hotel porch, was a Mr. P----, an elderly gentleman from
+the country, who had come to the city to engage counsel in an important
+case which was to be tried in a day or two. The landlord referred him to
+Marshall as the best lawyer in the city; but the old gentleman was so
+much prejudiced against the young advocate, by his careless appearance,
+that he refused to engage him. On entering court, Mr. P---- was a second
+time referred to Marshall by the clerk of the court, and a second time
+he refused to employ him. At this moment entered Mr. V----, a
+venerable-looking legal gentleman, in a powdered wig and black coat,
+whose dignified appearance produced such an impression on Mr. P---- that
+he engaged him at once. In the first case which came on, Marshall and
+Mr. V---- each addressed the court. "The vast inferiority of his
+advocate was so apparent that at the close of the case Mr. P----
+introduced himself to young Marshall, frankly stated the prejudice which
+had caused him, in opposition to advice, to employ Mr. V----; that he
+extremely regretted the error, but knew not how to remedy it. He had
+come to the city with one hundred dollars as his lawyer's fee, which he
+had paid, and had but five left, which, if Marshall chose, he would
+cheerfully give him for assisting in the case. Marshall, pleased with
+the incident, accepted the offer, not, however, without passing a sly
+joke at the _omnipotence_ of a powdered wig and black coat."
+
+In 1788, Mr. Marshall was elected to the Virginia Convention which met
+in June of that year for the purpose of considering the question of the
+adoption or rejection of the Federal Constitution. The debates in this
+body were among the most brilliant in history. Marshall took a decided
+stand in favor of the Constitution, and is believed to have done more
+than any other man, save Mr. Madison, to secure its adoption. He added
+greatly to his reputation by his labors in this body, and the close of
+the session found his practice very much enlarged. He was anxious to
+devote himself entirely to his professional duties; but he was urged so
+vehemently to accept a seat in the Legislature from the city of
+Richmond, that he was forced to consent. He sat in that body from 1789
+to 1791, and in those sessions which were marked by the brilliant
+contests between the Federalists and Republicans took a decided stand
+with the former, and sustained his position by an array of arguments
+against which his opponents were powerless. The struggle was one of
+great bitterness, but Marshall, although victorious in it, made no
+enemies among his antagonists.
+
+For the next three years he devoted himself industriously to his
+profession, appearing in public only to defend with masterly eloquence
+the course of President Washington with reference to the insolent
+conduct of Citizen Genet, the French Agent. In 1795, he was again
+elected to the Legislature, "not only without his approbation, but
+against his known wishes;" but yielding to the desires of his friends he
+took his seat in that body. The great question of the day was the
+adoption of "Jay's Treaty" with Great Britain. In Virginia, a bitter
+opposition assailed the treaty, and the entire State rang with
+denunciations of it. Even the influence of Washington was powerless to
+stay the tide of popular passion excited against the treaty and those
+who upheld it. Meetings were held in Richmond, and the treaty was
+fiercely denounced. Marshall now came to the rescue, and before a
+meeting of the citizens of that place made such an unanswerable argument
+in favor of the treaty, that the men who had been foremost in assailing
+it now united in the adoption of resolutions indorsing the policy of the
+Administration. In the Legislature his efforts were equally successful,
+and the opponents of the Administration were forced to abandon their
+constitutional objections to the treaty, and to content themselves with
+a simple denial of the expediency of the measure at that time. President
+Washington attached so much importance to these services that he offered
+to his old friend and comrade the position of Attorney-General of the
+United States, but Marshall declined the offer, as he wished to devote
+himself to his practice, which had now become very lucrative. He
+continued to sit in the Legislature, which did not interfere with his
+private business, and remained the constant and vigilant friend of
+Washington's Administration. In 1796, he was offered the post of
+Minister to France, as Mr. Monroe's successor, but he declined it for
+the same reason which had made him refuse the Attorney-Generalship. In
+1797, when the offer was repeated, this time by President Adams,
+Marshall yielded to the entreaties of Washington, and went to France
+with Pinckney and Gerry, as Envoy Extraordinary. The object of the
+mission was to remove the obstructions placed by France in the way of
+American commerce. The Envoys were unsuccessful, but a correspondence
+took place between Marshall and Talleyrand, which was a source of great
+satisfaction to American publicists, and raised Marshall still higher
+in their esteem and confidence. Upon his return home in 1798, he was
+given a public reception in New York by the citizens, and a public
+dinner by the two Houses of Congress, "as an evidence of affection for
+his person, and of their grateful approbation of the patriotic firmness
+with which he had sustained the dignity of his country during his
+important mission." He subsequently took a prominent part in support of
+the measures of retaliation directed against France by the
+Administration, which were sharply assailed by the opposition. He
+resumed his practice in Richmond, but was again drawn from it by a
+message from Washington, who requested him to visit him at Mt. Vernon.
+He did so, and the result was that he yielded to the solicitations of
+his old chieftain, and consented to accept a seat in Congress. He was
+elected to the Lower House of that body in 1799. During the canvass,
+President Adams offered him a seat in the Supreme Court of the United
+States, but he declined it.
+
+His career in Congress was brief, but brilliant. The Federalist party
+was hard pressed by the Republicans, and he promptly arrayed himself on
+the side of the former, as the champion of the Administration of John
+Adams. The excitement over the "Alien and Sedition Laws" was intense,
+but he boldly and triumphantly defended the course of the
+Administration. Mr. Binney says of him that, in the debates on the great
+constitutional questions, "he was confessedly the first man in the
+House. When he discussed them, he exhausted them; nothing more remained
+to be said; and the impression of his argument effaced that of every one
+else."
+
+His great triumph was his speech in the Jonathan Robbins affair. Robbins
+had committed a murder on board an English ship-of-war, and had sought
+refuge from punishment in the United States. In accordance with one of
+the provisions of Jay's Treaty, his surrender had been demanded by the
+British Minister, on the ground that he was a British subject, and he
+had been surrendered by President Adams. The opposition in Congress made
+this act a pretext for a famous assault upon the Administration, and a
+resolution was introduced into the House of Representatives by Mr.
+Livingston, censuring the President for his course in the matter. This
+resolution produced an extended debate in the House, in the course of
+which Marshall defended the President in a speech of great force and
+eloquence. Judge Story has said of this speech, that "it was _reponse
+sans replique_--an answer so irresistible that it admitted of no reply.
+It silenced opposition, and settled then and forever the points of
+national law upon which the controversy hinged."
+
+In May, 1800, Mr. Adams offered Marshall a seat in his Cabinet as
+Secretary of War, but before he could enter upon the duties of that
+office he was made Secretary of State, in which capacity he acted for a
+short while, conducting several important negotiations during that time,
+and leaving behind him several of the most magnificent state papers to
+be found in our archives. During his occupancy of this position, it
+became necessary to appoint a Chief Justice of the United States, and
+Marshall took advantage of the occasion to urge upon the President the
+propriety of tendering the place to a distinguished gentleman who had
+been a faithful friend to the Administration; but Mr. Adams quietly
+informed him that he had made up his mind to confer the honor upon the
+man best suited to it, and that he had sent to the Senate the name of
+John Marshall, of Virginia. This appointment, which came to him entirely
+unsolicited, was made on the 31st of January, 1801, and was unanimously
+confirmed by the Senate.
+
+He held the position of Chief Justice for more than thirty-four years,
+and this period is justly regarded as the most brilliant portion of the
+history of our highest court, a court of which a famous judge has said:
+
+"The decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States have raised the
+renown of the country not less than they have confirmed the
+Constitution. In all parts of the world its judgments are spoken of with
+respect. Its adjudications of prize law are a code for all future time.
+Upon commercial law it has brought us nearly to one system, befitting
+the probity of a great commercial nation. Over its whole path, learning
+and intelligence and integrity have shed their combined luster."
+
+Although holding so high a post in the General Government, he continued
+to take a warm interest in the affairs of his native State, and in 1828
+was a delegate to the Charlottesville Convention, which met for the
+purpose of recommending to the Legislature a system of internal
+improvements best suited to the needs of the State. In 1829, he was a
+member of the Convention which met in Richmond for the purpose of
+revising the Constitution of the State. Though now quite old and feeble,
+he took an active part in the debates of the Convention, and was mainly
+instrumental in effecting the settlement of the disputes between the
+eastern and western sections of the State.
+
+In 1805, Judge Marshall published, in five volumes, his "Life of
+Washington." The first volume was devoted to the history of the
+Colonies, from their settlement to the commencement of the Revolution.
+This work has always held the first position in our Revolutionary
+annals, and won for its author a place in the front rank of American
+writers. It is, all in all, the best biography of Washington in
+existence.
+
+Sterling honesty was exemplified in Judge Marshall's whole career. His
+word was indeed as good as his bond. He would never argue in behalf of a
+cause which he had reason to think unjust, and he scorned to take a
+legal advantage at the expense of moral honesty. He once indorsed a
+bond to the amount of several thousand dollars. The drawer failed, and
+Marshall paid it, although he knew he could avoid it, as the holder had
+forfeited his claim in law by requiring more than legal interest.
+
+He was generous to a fault. Once, as he passed through Culpepper County,
+he met with Captain S----, one of his old comrades in the Revolution. In
+the course of the conversation which ensued, S---- told him that his
+estate was burdened with a mortgage for $3,000, which was about to fall
+due, and that, as he was unable to pay it, he saw nothing but ruin in
+store for him. At his departure, Marshall handed a note to the servant
+who brought his horse to the door, and told him to give it to his
+master. This was done as Marshall was riding away, and upon opening the
+note Mr. S--- found that it contained a check for the amount of the
+mortgage. Mounting his horse, he soon overtook Marshall, and, though he
+thanked him warmly for his generosity, refused to accept it. Marshall
+strenuously urged its acceptance, but the other persistently refused.
+Finally, the former suggested a compromise. Marshall took up the
+mortgage, and thus satisfied the first claim, but as his friend was
+never prosperous, he never asked for the payment of the debt.
+
+William Wirt has left us the following description of his personal
+appearance: "He is tall, meager, emaciated; his muscles relaxed, and his
+joints so loosely connected as not only to disqualify him apparently for
+any vigorous exertion of body, but to destroy every thing like harmony
+in his air or movements. Indeed, in his whole appearance and
+demeanor,--dress, attitudes, gesture, sitting, standing, or walking,--he
+is as far removed from the idolized graces of Lord Chesterfield as any
+other gentleman on earth."
+
+"In spite, however, of this ungainly person," says a writer, "no one
+was a greater social favorite than the Chief Justice. The people of
+Richmond regarded his eccentric figure with strong personal affection as
+well as respect. The black eyes, under their bushy gray brows, beamed
+with good nature, and the lips were habitually smiling. The courtesy of
+the Judge was one of his most beautiful traits. It was the spontaneous
+exhibition of the simple and kindly emotions of his heart. Pure
+benevolence and philanthropy displayed itself in every word which he
+uttered. He gave his hand to the plain yeoman clad in homespun as
+courteously and sincerely as to the greatest personage in the country.
+He had the same simple smile and good-humored jest for both, and seemed
+to recognize no difference between them. It was instructive to estimate
+in the good Chief Justice the basis and character of true politeness.
+John Randolph, one of the most fastidious and aristocratic of men, left
+his opinion that Marshall's manner was perfect good breeding. In dress
+and bearing, it would be difficult to imagine any one more simple than
+Judge Marshall. He presented the appearance of a plain countryman,
+rather than a Chief Justice of the United States. He had a farm in
+Fauquier County, and another near Richmond, and he would often return
+from the latter to take his seat on the bench with burrs sticking to his
+clothes. His great passion was the game of quoits, and he was a member
+of the club which met, as it still meets, at Buchanan's Spring, near the
+city, to play at this game. Here the Governor of Virginia, the Chief
+Justice, and the most eminent lawyers of the Court of Appeals, were
+found by a French gentleman, Baron Quinet, with their coats off, gayly
+pitching quoits, with the ardor of a party of urchins. In these simple
+amusements passed the hours of leisure which Judge Marshall could steal
+from his exhausting judicial toil. At such times he seemed to become a
+boy again, and to forget the ermine. His fondness for other social
+enjoyments was great. He was the center of a brilliant circle of men,
+many of whom were famous, and the tradition of their dinner parties, and
+the jests which they circulated, is still preserved."
+
+It was his custom always to provide for his table himself when at home,
+and he might be seen every morning at the Shockoe Hill Market, with his
+basket on his arm, engaged in making his purchases. Upon one of these
+occasions he noticed a fashionably-dressed young man, swearing violently
+because he could not find any one willing to carry home for him a turkey
+which he had just purchased, and which his foolish pride would not
+permit him to carry himself. Approaching him quietly, the Judge asked
+where he lived, and upon being told, said, "I am going that way, and
+will carry it for you." Taking the turkey, he set out and soon reached
+the young man's door. Upon receiving his turkey, the young man thanked
+him for his trouble, and asked, "How much shall I pay you?" "Oh,
+nothing," replied the Judge, smiling, "you are welcome. It was on my
+way, and no trouble." So saying, the Judge departed, and the young man,
+with a faint suspicion of the truth, turned to a bystander, and asked,
+in some confusion, "Who is that polite old gentleman who brought home my
+turkey for me?" "That is John Marshall, the Chief Justice of the United
+States," was the reply. "Why, then, did _he_ bring home my turkey?"
+stammered the fop. "To give you a deserved rebuke," said the gentleman,
+"and to teach you to conquer your silly pride."
+
+Reference has been made to his carelessness in regard to his personal
+appearance. A wager was once laid among his friends in Richmond that he
+could not dress himself without leaving about his clothing some mark of
+his carelessness. The Judge good-humoredly accepted the wager. A supper
+was to be given to him upon these conditions. If his dress was found
+faultless upon that occasion, the other parties were to pay for the
+entertainment; but if any carelessness could be detected about his dress
+or in his appearance, the expense was to fall upon him. Upon the
+appointed evening the gentlemen and the Judge met at the place agreed
+upon, and to the surprise of all, the Judge's dress seemed faultless. He
+appeared the very perfection of neatness and taste. The supper followed,
+the Judge being in high glee over his victory. Near the close of the
+repast, however, one of the guests, who sat next to Judge Marshall,
+chanced to drop his napkin, and stooping down to pick it up, discovered
+that the Judge had put on one of his stockings with the wrong side out.
+Of course the condition of affairs was immediately reversed, and, amid
+roars of laughter, the Chief Justice acknowledged his defeat.
+
+The means of locomotion in the Southern States being limited in the days
+of Judge Marshall, it was his custom to travel about the country, when
+holding his circuit courts, in an old-fashioned and very much
+dilapidated gig. His plain and even rusty appearance often led him into
+ludicrous adventures, which he related to his friends with keen
+enjoyment. At other times people to whom he was personally unknown were
+astonished to find that this shabbily-dressed old man was the famous
+Chief-Justice Marshall. One of his adventures is thus related by an
+eye-witness:
+
+"It is not long since a gentleman was traveling in one of the counties
+of Virginia, and about the close of the day stopped at a public-house to
+obtain refreshment and spend the night. He had been there but a short
+time when an old man alighted from his gig, with the apparent intention
+of becoming his fellow-guest at the same house. As the old man drove up,
+he observed that both the shafts of his gig were broken, and that they
+were held together by withes formed from the bark of a hickory sapling.
+Our traveler observed, further, that he was plainly clad, that his
+knee-buckles were loosened, and that something like negligence pervaded
+his dress. Conceiving him to be one of the honest yeomanry of our land,
+the courtesies of strangers passed between them, and they entered the
+tavern. It was about the same time that an addition of three or four
+young gentlemen was made to their number--most of them, if not all, of
+the legal profession. As soon as they became conveniently accommodated,
+the conversation was turned by the latter upon an eloquent harangue
+which had that day been delivered at the bar. The other replied that he
+had witnessed the same day a degree of eloquence no doubt equal, but
+that it was from the pulpit. Something like a sarcastic rejoinder was
+made to the eloquence of the pulpit, and a warm and able altercation
+ensued, in which the merits of the Christian religion became the subject
+of discussion. From six o'clock until eleven the young champions wielded
+the sword of argument, adducing with ingenuity and ability every thing
+that could be said pro and con. During this protracted period, the old
+gentleman listened with all the meekness and modesty of a child, as if
+he was adding new information to the stores of his own mind; or perhaps
+he was observing, with philosophic eye, the faculties of the youthful
+mind, and how new energies are evolved by repeated action; or, perhaps,
+with patriotic emotion, he was reflecting upon the future destinies of
+his country, and on the rising generation upon whom these future
+destinies must devolve; or, most probably, with a sentiment of moral and
+religious feeling, he was collecting an argument which--characteristic
+of himself--no art would be 'able to elude and no force resist.' Our
+traveler remained a spectator, and took no part in what was said."
+
+[Illustration: MARSHALL'S DEFENCE OF CHRISTIANITY]
+
+"At last one of the young men, remarking that it was impossible to
+combat with long-established prejudices, wheeled around, and, with some
+familiarity, exclaimed, 'Well, my old gentleman, what think you of these
+things?' If, said the traveler, a streak of vivid lightning had at that
+moment crossed the room, their amazement could not have been greater
+than it was with what followed. The most eloquent and unanswerable
+appeal was made, for nearly an hour, by the old gentleman, that he ever
+heard or read. So perfect was his recollection, that every argument used
+against the Christian religion was met in the order in which it was
+advanced. Hume's sophistry on the subject of miracles was, if possible,
+more perfectly answered than it had already been done by Campbell. And
+in the whole lecture there was so much simplicity and energy, pathos and
+sublimity, that not another word was uttered. An attempt to describe it,
+said the traveler, would be an attempt to paint the sunbeams. It was now
+a matter of curiosity and inquiry who the old gentleman was. The
+traveler concluded it was the preacher from whom the pulpit eloquence
+was heard; but no--it was the Chief Justice of the United States."
+
+Judge Marshall was a simple and earnest Christian, and held in the
+deepest abhorrence the fashionable skepticism of his day. His conduct
+was consistent with his profession, and to the last this good and great
+man repeated night and morning the simple prayer he had learned at his
+mother's knee.
+
+For many years he suffered from an affection of the bladder, and was at
+length compelled to resort to a surgical operation for relief. This had
+the desired effect, but he was soon after taken with an attack of "liver
+complaint." He repaired to Philadelphia for medical treatment, but
+failed to derive any benefit from it, and died in that city on the 6th
+of July, 1835.
+
+His body was conveyed to Richmond for interment, and he now sleeps by
+the side of his wife in the Shockoe Hill Cemetery in that city. The spot
+is marked by a plain slab of marble, over which the weeds and the rank
+grass are growing, and on which may be read the following inscription,
+dictated (saving the last date) by himself:
+
+"John Marshall, son of Thomas and Mary Marshall, was born 24th of
+September, 1755; intermarried with Mary Willis Ambler, the 3d of
+January, 1783; departed this life the 6th day of July, 1835."
+
+
+
+[Illustration: JAMES T. BRADY.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+JAMES T. BRADY.
+
+
+The father of James T. Brady was born in Ireland, and came to this
+country during the second war with England, and just after his marriage.
+Mr. Brady opened a school for boys, in New York, soon after his arrival,
+and it was in that city, on the 9th of April, 1815, that his eldest son,
+JAMES TOPHAM BRADY, was born. Other children followed, there being seven
+in all, two boys (James T., and Judge John R. Brady) and five girls. Mr.
+Brady, senior, was a man of rare abilities, and his wife was a woman of
+great personal beauty and high character, "one of those mothers," says a
+distinguished gentleman, who knew her, "whose quiet virtues shed their
+blessed influence over families, and are felt so long in their durable
+effect upon children."
+
+James T. Brady grew up with a sound, vigorous constitution, and at an
+early age was put at his studies in his father's school. He was only
+seven years old when he began, and though so young, he worked hard,
+storing his "big head"--which seemed too big for the little feet below
+it--with knowledge. He endeared himself very greatly to his
+school-fellows, and formed with several of them friendships which
+continued through life. "He was so noted," says one of his former
+school-fellows, "for his loving kindliness as a boy, that it almost
+obliterates every other recollection." His amiable traits developed with
+his years. He always delighted in acts of kindness, and could never bear
+to give pain, even to the most insignificant animal or insect. He
+detested hunting and fishing, which he regarded as a needless sacrifice
+of life. Yet while so tender and gentle in his disposition, he was brave
+and fearless, unusually independent, and, above all, as mirthful and
+fond of a jest at fifty as at sixteen.
+
+Before he had completed his education, his father abandoned the
+profession of teaching for that of a lawyer, and young Brady entered his
+office as office-boy and student, it being his desire to become an
+advocate. He was bright, quick-witted, and remarkably apt in his
+studies. His buoyant spirits and ready repartee often led him into
+encounters with his elders, who were generally forced to confess that
+his tongue was too much for them. His father encouraged him to form his
+own opinions, and to hold them tenaciously until convinced of his error.
+He made rapid progress in his legal studies, and soon acquired such
+proficiency in the management of the details of the office business that
+every thing which did not absolutely need his father's personal
+attention was left to him.
+
+Although fond of social enjoyment, and full of the fire and joyfulness
+of youth, he knew how to seclude himself from the pleasures he relished
+so much. He was a hard and faithful student, allowing nothing to draw
+him from his books when he meant to devote himself to them. He read not
+only law, but history, poetry, biography, romance, in short, every thing
+that could store his mind with useful knowledge or add to its natural
+graces. He slept at the office, and often sat up the entire night
+engaged in study. Abbott speaks as follows of the early studies of
+Napoleon II., and it requires no straining of language or ideas to
+apply his remarks to this portion of the life of James T. Brady: "So
+great was his ardor for intellectual improvement that he considered
+every day as lost in which he had not made perceptible progress in
+knowledge. By this rigid mental discipline he acquired that wonderful
+power of concentration by which he was ever enabled to simplify subjects
+the most difficult and complicated." Mr. Brady, senior, was very proud
+of the energy and talent displayed by his son, and when the latter was
+nineteen years old the father said to a friend who had been speaking to
+him of the promise of the boy: "Yes, sir; he is a boy of great promise,
+a boy of splendid intellect and noble character. Young as he is, I
+regard him as a walking encyclopoedia; his mind seems to gild every
+subject it touches."
+
+In the year 1835, when but twenty years old, Mr. Brady was admitted to
+the bar. "There were giants in those days" at the New York bar, and the
+young man was now entering an arena in which his powers were to be
+tested to the utmost. His native eloquence was well known to his
+friends, and naturally he was not ignorant of it; but he did not, like
+so many young men in his calling, trust entirely to his powers of
+pleading. He had long since recognized the truth of Lord Erskine's
+declaration that "no man can be a great advocate who is no lawyer," and
+had stored his mind with a knowledge of the theories of his profession
+which few men in coming to the bar have ever equaled.
+
+In his first important case he was opposed to Charles O'Conor, and was
+unsuccessful. He was engaged in a suit to recover a certain sum of money
+from an insurance company, which his client claimed was due him for
+certain goods which had been destroyed by fire. As Brady himself saw, he
+had a very weak case, and Mr. O'Conor had no trouble in demolishing it;
+yet the young counsel conducted it with a skill and an eloquence which
+made him from that hour a marked man in his profession. Yet he had to
+contend against that obstacle which meets most public men at the outset
+of their careers--the feeling which actors call "stage fright." He said
+that on this occasion every thing around him grew suddenly black, and he
+could not even see the jury. By steadying himself against his table, and
+keeping his eyes in the direction of the jury, he continued to speak
+until he had recovered his self-control.
+
+The case which brought him most prominently before the public, and which
+may be said to have established his fame as a lawyer, was a peculiar
+one. Some newsboys had been arrested for selling the "Sunday Morning
+News" on the morning of the Sabbath day. It was claimed that the selling
+of the paper on the streets on Sunday was contrary to law, and that the
+boys disturbed the congregations in the churches by their cries. One of
+these boys had been arrested at the instance of Mr. Gerard, and this
+brought on a suit to determine the rights of the lads, in which Mr.
+Brady appeared for the newsboys. Considerable feeling was manifested on
+the subject, and when the trial came on the court-room was crowded. The
+verdict of the jury was against him, but Mr. Brady won a remarkable
+triumph by his management of the case, and the whole city rang with his
+eloquence. So great was the effect of his speech upon the audience, that
+many of them who were total strangers to him crowded around him as he
+left the court-house to congratulate him. Though defeated in the verdict
+of the jury, this case was a great triumph for Mr. Brady. It established
+his fame as an advocate, and advanced him at once to a foremost place at
+the bar. Business flowed in upon him more rapidly than he could attend
+to it, and from this time to the close of his labors he was always in
+the possession of a large and lucrative practice.
+
+Mr. McKeon has said of him: "We may refer to the period of his
+introduction to the bar of this city as an epoch in its history. In
+looking back at the past, we see rising before us George Wood, treading
+with no uncertain step through the labyrinth of the law of real
+property; Daniel Lord, following, with his legal eye, commerce over the
+long and dreary waste of waters; David Graham, the younger, and Ogden
+Hoffman, standing in full panoply of intellectual power before our
+criminal tribunals. Into the lists where stood these proud knights young
+Brady sprang, ready to contend with the mightiest of them. How well he
+contended many of you well remember, and the honors paid to his memory
+are justified by the triumphs he has won."
+
+He grew rapidly in popularity, and in the esteem and confidence of his
+fellow-citizens, and was intrusted with numerous cases of a class which
+had rarely until then been seen in the hands of a young lawyer. His
+practice soon extended into the Supreme Court of the State, which at
+that time met quarterly, at New York, Albany, Utica, and Rochester. The
+practice of this court was entirely in the hands of men of high standing
+in their profession,--the great lawyers of the State,--and it was no
+slight honor to our young lawyer to hold a place, and a proud place,
+too, among them.
+
+He won additional honors in the famous India-rubber suits, which have
+been mentioned elsewhere in this volume, acting as one of the counsel of
+Charles Goodyear, and being associated with Daniel Webster. Brady
+applied himself with intense energy to master the case, and when the
+trial came off at Trenton, in the United States Circuit Court, before
+Justices Grier and Dickerson, he opened the case in a speech which
+lasted two days, and which Daniel Webster said in the beginning of his
+remarks had so exhausted it as to leave him nothing to say.
+
+Turning to Mr. Brady, Mr. Webster said, "You have cut a highway through
+this case, and if it is won, it will be because of the manner in which
+you have brought it before the court." The suit was won by Goodyear.
+
+"In connection with the India-rubber cases is a fact which testifies to
+his character. A salary of twenty-live thousand dollars a year for life
+was offered to be settled on him by the rubber company, if he would
+advise a certain course; but not deeming it right, he rejected the
+offer. When in France, in 1851, the rubber cases coming in controversy
+there, Mr. Brady substantially gave in French, to Etienne Blanc, the
+French advocate, the materials for his brief."
+
+Mr. Brady practiced law for thirty-four years, and during the major part
+of that time there was scarcely a case of great importance, in either
+the civil or criminal courts, in which he did not figure. He was
+compelled to refuse case after case from lack of time to give to it; and
+yet he frequently found time to respond to the appeals of the courts to
+defend men indicted for capital offenses who were unable to procure
+counsel. In some of these cases he had scarcely any chance of
+preparation, but he always managed to secure the acquittal of his
+client, in spite of this drawback. The spirit of kindliness which had so
+endeared him to his boyhood's friends pervaded every action of his
+maturer life, and he never displayed more energy, more unceasing
+vigilance, more irresistible eloquence, than when pleading the cause of
+some poor wretch who could only reward him with his thanks.
+
+His readiness in mastering a case was remarkable, and was greatly
+assisted by his profound knowledge of the law. As a rule, in the
+ordinary run of cases, it was merely necessary for him to comprehend the
+particular case under consideration, since he was already familiar with
+the law bearing upon it.
+
+This readiness is admirably illustrated in the following reminiscence
+related of him by the Hon. Luther R. Marsh. Mr. Marsh was engaged in a
+case of great importance, in which he desired Mr. Brady's assistance in
+the trial. Marsh had thoroughly and patiently studied the case, but
+Brady was totally ignorant of it. Nevertheless, he told Mr. Marsh he
+would do his best, and that he (Marsh) must open the case as fully and
+exhaustively as he could, without reference to him. Mr. Marsh did so,
+and says that when he sat down he thought he had _exhausted_ the case,
+and was wondering what Brady could find to say in addition to it. To his
+astonishment and delight, Brady rose, and in his argument presented
+seven new and telling points.
+
+In the examination of a witness, he could be severe and decisive when he
+had occasion to suspect that the person was trying to evade the truth;
+but in general his manner was kind and considerate, and he succeeded in
+eliciting evidence by his forbearance which others could not have
+extorted by bullying. Upon one occasion, he was convinced that a witness
+was about to relate a "made-up" story, and he at once fixed upon the man
+a look so piercing that the fellow was overwhelmed with confusion and
+could not go on with his evidence. Brady promptly changed his tactics,
+sent for a glass of water for the witness, and soothed him so
+effectually that the heart of the man was won, and, abandoning his false
+tale, he made a simple statement of the truth.
+
+The independence of character exhibited by Mr. Brady has already been
+adverted to. Having once traced out the line of duty, nothing could make
+him swerve from it, and he was as bold in the defense of the rights of
+his clients as of his own. Mr. Edwards Clarke, from whose excellent
+memoir is gleaned much of the information upon which this sketch is
+based, relates the following incidents in illustration of this quality
+of the man:
+
+"The trial of Baker for the murder of Poole furnished a notable instance
+of Mr. Brady's intrepidity in behalf of a client. It was at the height
+of the 'Know-Nothing' excitement, and Poole, after receiving the fatal
+bullet, having exclaimed, 'I die an American,' succeeded in causing
+himself to be regarded as a martyr to the cause. Lingering for days
+with--as the _post-mortem_ proved--a bullet deeply imbedded in his
+heart, the interest and excitement became intense; and on the day of his
+funeral twenty thousand men walked in solemn procession behind the
+coffin of the martyred 'rough.' In such a state of public feeling, Baker
+was put on trial for his life. At the opening of the charge by the
+judge, aroused by its tenor, Mr. Brady seized a pen and commenced
+writing rapidly, indignation showing itself in his set lips and frowning
+brow. The moment the judge ceased he was on his feet, and began: 'You
+have charged the jury thus and thus. I protest against your so stating
+it.' The judge said he would listen to the objections after the jury had
+retired. 'No!' exclaimed the indignant orator, 'I choose that the jury
+should hear those objections;' and, defying interference, he poured
+forth impetuously forty-five separate and formal objections, couching
+them all emphatically in words of personal protest to the judge. The
+force of the judge's charge on that jury was pretty effectually broken.
+The indignation of the advocate at this time was real, not simulated;
+and he, at least, of the New York bar dared to defy and to denounce
+injustice, even when clad in ermine.
+
+"Another instance of his intrepidity before a judge was in the Busteed
+case. The judge had threatened to convict him for contempt. Busteed had
+apologized, and Brady also, with his matchless grace and courtesy, had
+tendered Busteed's apology; but the judge still said that he should
+send him to prison. 'You will, will you?' said Brady; 'I say you will
+not.' And, citing authority after authority against his power to do so,
+he dared him to thus stretch his prerogative. The judge thought best to
+excuse Mr. Busteed."
+
+Perhaps one of the best instances of his moral courage to be found was
+his conduct with reference to the late Edwin M. Stanton. He was
+associated with Mr. Stan ton in the Sickles trial, and conceived a warm
+personal attachment to him. Mr. Brady remained a Democrat to the last,
+and was an active member of Tammany Hall. Upon one occasion, during a
+meeting of the Tammany Committee, when the name of Stanton was received
+with hisses and yells of objurgation, Brady rose, and facing the crowd
+told them "that he knew they hated Edwin M. Stanton, but he, a Democrat,
+knew him, and held him in his heart of hearts." It was a bold
+declaration, considering the time and place, even for one so highly
+esteemed as James T. Brady.
+
+As before remarked, Mr. Brady never relied upon his eloquence alone for
+success at the bar. He had a profound respect for his profession, and
+scorned its trickeries. He worked faithfully over the cases intrusted to
+him, studied them carefully, and never brought them to trial till he was
+thorough master of the law bearing upon them. This enabled him
+frequently to present issues which a less learned man would not have
+dreamed of. When he was retained as counsel for Huntington the forger,
+he conceived the idea that the man was morally unaccountable for his
+deed, and his theory of moral insanity, as developed by him in this
+case, is one of the most powerful arguments upon the subject to be found
+in any language. He read every thing he could find on the subject of
+insanity, and when he went into court there was not a physician in the
+land better informed with respect to it than he. The cases in which he
+was frequently engaged required an unusual acquaintance with medical
+jurisprudence, and he was regarded as one of the best authorities on the
+subject in the country.
+
+His power over a jury was remarkable. He never lost sight of the "twelve
+peers," and by his dexterous management soon had them so thoroughly
+under the influence of his magnetic mind that they hung upon his words,
+followed his every act, laughed or cried as he willed, and seemed
+capable of thinking only as he permitted them. He defended fifty-one men
+for their lives in the course of his practice, and brought them all off
+in safety.
+
+[Illustration: "THEY ARE GOING TO HANG MY BROTHER, AND YOU CAN SAVE
+HIM!"]
+
+Mr. Clarke, from whose memoir I have already quoted, relates the
+following incidents in his career:
+
+"The case of a young man charged with murder, in what was claimed to be
+an accidental fracas, attracted a good deal of interest. He was a Mason,
+and that society applied to Mr. Brady to defend him, tendering
+twenty-five hundred dollars as a fee; but for some cause he declined the
+case. Not long after, one afternoon, a neatly-dressed, modest young girl
+came to the office and asked for Mr. Brady. Told to walk into his
+private office, she timidly approached his desk, and saying, 'Mr. Brady,
+they are going to hang my brother, and you can save him. I've brought
+you this money; please don't let my brother die,' she burst into tears.
+It was a roll of two hundred and fifty dollars, which the poor girl had
+begged in sums of five and ten dollars. The kind-hearted man heard her
+story. 'They shall not hang your brother, my child,' said he, and
+putting the roll of bills in an envelope, told her to take it to her
+mother, and he would ask for it when he wanted it. The boy was cleared.
+In Mr. Brady's parlor hangs an exquisite picture, by Durand, with a
+letter on the back asking him to accept it as a mark of appreciation for
+his generous kindness in defending this poor boy. Mr. Brady prized
+_that_ picture....
+
+"Once when, in the height of his appeal to the jury, a dog began barking
+vigorously, he whirled around, shook his finger at the dog and said,
+gravely, with the quickness of thought, 'I am Sir Oracle, and when I ope
+my lips let no dog bark!'
+
+"An Irishman once came to his office: 'And are yez Misther Brady?' 'I
+am; come in, Patrick. What is it you wish?' 'I ax yer pardon; I oughtn't
+to intrude upon yez,' 'But what is it, Patrick?' 'Well, yer honor, it
+isn't for the likes o' me to be comin' troublin' yer honor.' 'But tell
+me what you want, Pat.' 'Well, yer honor, I came to see ye about a
+friend of mine as met wid an accident.' 'An accident?' said Mr. Brady;
+'then why don't you go for a doctor?' 'Arrah, sure, you're the docther
+for my friend; he had an accident which wants yer honor.' 'Well, what
+_was_ it?' 'Well, yer honor, he was arristed for a thrifle of a
+burglary, shure.' Quick as Mr. Brady was, with the readiness of his
+race, for repartee, he sometimes met his match among his own countrymen.
+He was once examining an unwilling witness who persistently called him
+Mr. O'Brady. At length, even his proverbial good nature being a little
+ruffled, he said to the witness: 'You need not call me Mr. O'Brady. I've
+mended my name since I came here and dropped the O.' 'Have ye, now? 'Pon
+my sowl it's a pity ye didn't mend yer manners at the same time.'"
+
+In politics Mr. Brady was a Democrat of the States-Rights school, yet he
+always maintained that it was the duty of the citizen to render the
+promptest obedience to the General Government. At the outset of the late
+war he gave his support to the Government in its war measures, though he
+did not separate himself from the Democratic party. He was frequently
+solicited by his friends to accept political honors, but he steadily
+refused, saying that he wanted no honors outside of his profession.
+
+In person Mr. Brady was slender and delicate in appearance. What
+attracted the gazer at once was his massive head--a head which measured
+in its circumference twenty-four and three-eighths inches. Age seemed to
+have no effect upon his face. Severe mental labor in the course of years
+took away some of the rosy hues of youth, but otherwise it continued as
+fresh and as winning as when a boy.
+
+Mr. Brady never married, but no one was more widely removed from the
+typical old bachelor than he. If he had no family of his own, he was the
+head of a family of devoted relatives, who gave him ample scope for the
+exercise of the domestic affections which were so strong in him. Very
+soon after entering upon the practice of his profession his parents
+died, leaving his brother and five sisters, all much younger than
+himself, helpless. The young lawyer at once declared that the care of
+these dear ones should be his first thought, and he devoted himself to
+his practice with redoubled energy, in order to provide for them. He
+brought his personal expenses down to a low figure, and resolutely kept
+them there, yet all the while he was lavish in his generosity to those
+whom he loved. He once said to a friend who asked him why he had never
+married: "When my father died he left five daughters, who looked to me
+for support. All the affection which I could have had for a wife went
+out to those sisters, and I have never desired to recall it." He
+transferred a share of this affection to the children of those sisters
+and of his brother, and was never so happy as when in their company. In
+his will he mentions one of his nieces as his "dearly beloved Toot."
+
+He was very fond of literature, especially of poetry, and devoted a
+considerable portion of his time to literary efforts of his own. His
+great fame as a lawyer so overshadowed the success he won in literature
+that few besides himself knew how much pleasure the popularity of his
+writings gave him.
+
+In the exercise of his profession Mr. Brady won a large fortune. His
+income was princely during the greater part of his life, but he saved
+comparatively little. He delighted in giving to others. His relatives
+were the constant recipients of substantial evidences of his affection
+for them, and his charities to the poor were in keeping with his
+generous nature. He could not look upon suffering unmoved, and "never
+turned his face from any poor man."
+
+His last appearance in public was at the Gerard dinner, where he was as
+brilliant and genial as ever. He seemed to have a foreboding of his
+approaching end, however, for the next day he said to one of his family:
+"I feel that it is the last time I shall ever appear on a like public
+occasion." His fears were prophetic. He was seized with an attack of
+paralysis on the morning of the 9th of February, 1869, and breathed his
+last at five o'clock in the afternoon of the same day. He died in the
+communion of the Catholic Church, and was buried from St. Patrick's
+Cathedral, in the city of New York. His death drew forth expressions of
+sympathy and respect from all parts of the Union and from men of all
+shades of opinion. All felt that a good and useful man, a great
+advocate, and an incorruptible citizen had been taken away.
+
+His was a happy fate. He died in the fullness of his fame, before age
+had weakened his faculties or chilled his heart, and dying thus, it may
+be said of him, as he once said of another, that he was "a man who had
+no guile in his nature, and who died leaving no living creature to
+rejoice at his death."
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+ARTISTS.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+BENJAMIN WEST.
+
+
+At a time when America was regarded in Europe as a savage region, and
+when Americans were looked upon as little better than barbarians by the
+people of the mother country, it was no slight achievement for an
+American artist to rise by the force of his genius to the proud position
+of President of the Royal Academy of Great Britain.
+
+The man who won this triumph was BENJAMIN WEST. He was born in
+Springfield, Pennsylvania, on the 10th of October, 1738. His parents
+were Quakers, plain, simple people, who feared God, lived a just life,
+and desired above all other things that their children should become
+pious and useful men and women. The old mansion-house where the future
+artist was born was situated in Chester County, and is still standing.
+It is not far from Philadelphia, and the place is now called Westdale.
+His father's family emigrated from England to America with William Penn,
+at his second visit, in 1699. John West married the daughter of Thomas
+Pearson, by whom he had ten children. Of these, Benjamin was the
+youngest son. His mother was a woman of great piety, and, being once in
+attendance upon a memorable religious revival, at which she was terribly
+agitated by the preaching of one Edward Peckover, an itinerant Quaker
+minister, was taken with premature labor, of which Benjamin West was
+born.
+
+It was predicted that a child who had been brought into the world under
+such circumstances would be a man of more than ordinary fame, and the
+good mother treasured these prophecies in her heart, and watched the
+career of her boy with the keenest interest.
+
+When he was but seven years old, he was left one day to watch beside the
+cradle of the infant child of his eldest sister, who, though married,
+was still living at home. Being unusually silent for a long time, his
+mother concluded that she would go and see what he was doing. Upon
+entering the room where he had been left with his charge, she saw him
+kneeling by a chair which he had placed close up to the cradle, gazing
+at the infant, and making what she supposed to be marks on a paper which
+lay on the chair. Stealing up behind him softly, she saw to her
+astonishment that this boy, only seven years old, had executed, with
+black and red ink and a pen, an accurate though rude likeness of the
+sleeping babe. This was the first evidence he had ever given of his
+predilection for art, and was indeed a most surprising performance for
+so young a child.
+
+[Illustration: THE TRUANT'S SECRET DISCOVERED.]
+
+The next summer a party of Indians came to Springfield to pay their
+annual visit, and to please them little Benjamin showed them some
+sketches of birds and flowers which he had executed with pen and ink.
+The savages were delighted with them, and presented him with the red and
+yellow pigments with which they colored their ornaments. In addition to
+this gift, they taught him how to prepare these colors, to which he
+added another, namely, indigo, which his mother gave him from her
+laundry. His colors were rude enough, but his pencils were ruder. They
+were made of the hairs which he had pulled from a cat's back and
+fastened in the end of a goose-quill. Soon after this, a relative from
+Philadelphia, chancing to visit the old homestead, was struck with the
+talent of the little fellow, and upon his return to the city sent him a
+box of colors, with pencils and canvas and a few prints. He was only
+nine years old, but he was a born artist. He had never seen any painting
+of merit, and the few prints which his relative gave him were the most
+finished productions he had ever seen. The box of colors was his most
+precious possession, and it opened to him new fields of enjoyment. The
+day of its arrival he gave himself up entirely to the pleasure of
+examining it. "Even after going to sleep," says his biographer, "he
+awoke more than once during the night, and anxiously put out his hand to
+the box, which he had placed by his bedside, half afraid that he might
+find his riches only a dream. Next morning he rose at break of day, and,
+carrying his colors and canvas to the garret, proceeded to work. Every
+thing else was now unheeded; even his attendance at school was given up.
+As soon as he got out of the sight of his father and mother, he stole to
+his garret, and there passed the hours in a world of his own. At last,
+after he had been absent from school some days, the master called at his
+father's house to inquire what had become of him. This led to the
+discovery of his secret occupation. His mother, proceeding to the
+garret, found the truant; but so much was she astonished and delighted
+by the creation of his pencil, which also met her view when she entered
+the apartment, that, instead of rebuking him, she could only take him in
+her arms and kiss him with transports of affection. He made a new
+composition of his own out of two of the engravings, which he had
+colored from his own feeling of the proper tints; and so perfect did
+the appearance already appear to his mother, that, although half the
+canvas yet remained uncovered, she would not suffer him to add another
+touch to what he had done. Mr. Gait, West's biographer, saw the picture
+in the state in which it had thus been left sixty-seven years afterward;
+and the artist himself used to acknowledge that in none of his
+subsequent efforts had he been able to excel some of the touches of
+invention in this his first essay."
+
+His next effort was a landscape, which comprehended a view of a river,
+with vessels in the stream and cattle browsing on the banks. He could
+not have been much over ten years of age at this time, and the picture,
+though insignificant in itself, is remarkable as the work of a child. He
+subsequently presented it to his friend, Mr. William Henry, of
+Lancaster, whose family still retain possession of it. He visited
+Philadelphia soon after, and received a few simple instructions in the
+practical portion of his art, after which he went about through the
+towns of the vicinity of his home, painting portraits of his friends. At
+length he was sent for by Mrs. Ross, of Lancaster, a lady famed for her
+great beauty, to paint the portraits of herself and her family--a great
+honor for a lad of twelve.
+
+It was in Lancaster, in the year 1750, that he made the acquaintance of
+Mr. William Henry. That gentleman became deeply interested in the
+precocious boy, and frequently came to watch him at his
+portrait-painting. One day he said to Benjamin, that if he (Henry) could
+paint equally well he would not waste his time upon portraits, but would
+devote himself to historical subjects. In the course of the conversation
+to which this remark gave rise, Mr. Henry proposed to him to make an
+attempt in this direction, and suggested to him "The Death of Socrates"
+as his first subject. The little artist frankly avowed that he had
+never heard of the great philosopher, and Mr. Henry at once went to his
+library and brought out a volume of Plutarch, from which he read to the
+boy the beautiful story of the wise man's death. West listened with the
+deepest interest, and expressed his perfect readiness to undertake the
+task, but feared he would have difficulty in painting the figure of the
+slave who presented the poison, and which he thought ought to be naked,
+since he had hitherto painted only men with their clothes on. Mr. Henry
+had in his employ a young man of fine appearance, and upon hearing
+West's objection at once sent for him. As the workman entered the room
+Henry pointed to him, and said to West, "There's your model." West took
+the hint, painted the picture, which was purchased by Mr. Henry, and
+thenceforth determined that in his art he would look only into nature
+for his models.
+
+At the age of sixteen he returned to Springfield. He was anxious to
+continue his career as an artist, and as his parents were satisfied that
+he was now old enough to enter upon some permanent occupation, they
+agreed that his wishes should be submitted to a public meeting of the
+Society of Friends. The meeting was called, and the matter was laid
+before them, the boy himself being present. His relatives and friends
+were all very proud of his talents, but as the profession of an artist
+was so entirely at variance with all Quaker habits and ideas, they felt
+that the subject was one which ought not to be rashly decided. Silence
+prevailed for a long time after the opening of the meeting, but at
+length John Williamson, moved by the Spirit, rose and addressed the
+assemblage, declaring his belief that as the youth had not derived his
+fondness for art from any of his associations or surroundings, and since
+it was so manifestly a special gift from the Creator, it was their plain
+duty to bid him go forward in the path that had been marked out for
+him, and to wish him God-speed in his efforts. At the close of his
+remarks silence again fell upon the assembly. Then the women rose, and
+approaching the lad, one by one, kissed him on the cheek, and the men,
+laying their hands on his head, prayed that the Lord might verify in his
+life the value of the gift which had induced them, in spite of their
+religious tenets on the subject, to allow him to enter upon the
+permanent exercises of the profession so dear to his heart.
+
+Thus was he dedicated to his art, and at the same time separated to a
+certain degree from his Quaker brethren. Not long after this he violated
+every principle of the Quaker dispensation by volunteering under Major
+Sir Peter Halket to go in search of the remains of Braddock's army.
+
+In 1756, at the age of eighteen, he established himself in Philadelphia
+as a portrait painter, and soon after removed to New York, where he
+painted portraits at five guineas a head, occasionally attempting an
+historical piece. When he was twenty years old he made a visit to
+Europe--a visit which decided his destiny. A famine in the south of
+Europe induced a Philadelphia merchant to dispatch a vessel laden with
+flour to Leghorn, and his son, who was to take passage in the ship,
+proposed to West to accompany him, and thus secure an opportunity of
+seeing the art-treasures of the Old World. West promptly accepted the
+invitation, and some of his friends in New York provided him with an
+outfit for the voyage. Upon arriving at Gibraltar, the vessel was
+boarded by a British officer, who proved to be a kinsman of the son of
+the owner of the ship, and he not only passed them without molestation,
+but enabled them to secure unusual facilities in the voyage up the
+Mediterranean. West arrived in Rome in July, 1759, and was kindly
+received by the English Lord Grantham, to whom he bore letters of
+introduction.
+
+"Among the distinguished persons whom Mr. West found in Rome, was the
+celebrated Cardinal Albani. At an evening party, the Cardinal became
+curious to witness the effect which the works of art in the Belvidere
+and Vatican would produce on the young artist. The whole company, which
+consisted of the principal Roman nobility and strangers of distinction
+then in Rome, were interested in the event, and it was arranged, in the
+course of the evening, that, on the following morning, they should
+accompany West to the palaces. At the hour appointed, the company
+assembled, and a procession consisting of upwards of thirty of the most
+magnificent equipages in the capital of Christendom, and filled with
+some of the most erudite characters in Europe, conducted the young
+Quaker to view the masterpieces of art. It was agreed that the 'Apollo'
+should be first submitted to his view, because it was the most perfect
+work among all the ornaments of Rome, and, consequently, the best
+calculated to produce that effect which the company were anxious to
+witness. The statue then stood in a case, inclosed with doors, which
+could be so opened as to disclose it at once to full view. West was
+placed in the situation where it was seen to the most advantage, and the
+spectators arranged themselves on each side. When the keeper threw open
+the doors, the artist felt himself surprised with a sudden recollection
+altogether different from the gratification which he had expected, and
+without being aware of the force of what he said, exclaimed, 'My God!
+how like it is to a young Mohawk warrior.' The Italians, observing his
+surprise and hearing the exclamation, were excessively mortified to find
+that the god of their idolatry was compared to a savage. They mentioned
+their chagrin, and asked West to give some more distinct explanation, by
+informing them what sort of people the Mohawk Indians were. He described
+to them their education, their dexterity with the bow and arrow, the
+admirable elasticity of their limbs, and how much their active life
+expands the chest, while the quick breathing of their speed in the chase
+dilates the nostrils with that apparent consciousness of vigor which is
+so nobly depicted in the 'Apollo.' 'I have seen them often,' added he,
+'standing in that very attitude, and pursuing with an intense eye the
+arrow which they had just discharged from the bow,' The Italians were
+delighted with this descriptive explanation, and allowed that a better
+criticism had never been pronounced on the merits of the statue."
+
+Soon after his arrival in Rome, West painted a portrait of Lord
+Grantham, which won him considerable reputation. It was at first
+attributed to Raphael Meugs, but when the true artist was announced, and
+the circumstances of his history became known, West found himself
+suddenly famous, with orders enough to place him at once in comfortable
+circumstances. Cardinal Albani and Lord Grantham were very kind to him
+during his stay in Rome, and Raphael Meugs advised him to make a careful
+tour of study through the Italian art capitals. While in Rome he painted
+two pictures, "Cimon and Iphigenia," and "Angelica and Medora," which
+were well received, and during this period he was elected a member by
+the Academies of Florence, Bologna, and Parma. He made the tour advised
+by Meugs, remaining in Italy several years. Thence he proceeded to
+France, where he passed a short time in studying the French masters,
+after which he went to England, intending to sail from that country for
+America, where he had left his heart behind him in the keeping of a
+young Quakeress of Philadelphia.
+
+He reached London in 1763, and while continuing his studies here,
+whither his reputation had preceded him from Italy, undertook some
+commissions for Archbishop Drummond and several other church
+dignitaries. These attracted general admiration, and his countrymen
+residing in London were prompt to recognize and proclaim his genius. He
+had relatives living in England, so that he was not an entire stranger
+there. His success was marked from the first, and his friends urged him
+to profit by so favorable a beginning, give up his idea of returning to
+America, and make his permanent home in England. This he at length
+decided to do, and devoted himself with increased ardor to his labors.
+In two years he considered himself sufficiently well established to send
+to Philadelphia for his betrothed. This lady, Miss Elizabeth Shewell,
+came out to England under the care of his father, and in the same year,
+1765, West was married to her in London. She was a lady of great
+amiability of character, and by the English was often spoken of as the
+Philadelphia beauty.
+
+Soon after his arrival in England he produced a large painting on a
+subject from Tacitus, "Agrippina Landing with the Ashes of Germanicus."
+It was a decided success. George the Third was deeply impressed with it,
+and congratulated West warmly upon its merits. At the same time the king
+gave him a commission for a painting,--the subject to be "The Death of
+Regulus,"--and thus began the friendship between the monarch and the
+artist, which lasted for nearly forty years. He was a hard worker, and
+during his long life his pictures followed each other in rapid
+succession. They are estimated by a writer in Blackwood's Magazine at
+three thousand in number. Mr. Dunlap says that they would cover a wall
+ten feet high and a quarter of a mile long if arranged side by side on a
+flat surface. The most famous are his "Death of Wolfe;" "Regulus, a
+Prisoner to the Carthaginians;" "The Battle of La Hogue;" "The Death of
+Bayard;" "Hamilcar Swearing the Infant Hannibal at the Altar;" "The
+Departure of Regulus;" "Agrippina Landing with the Ashes of
+Germanicus;" "Christ Healing the Sick;" "Death on the Pale Horse;" "The
+Descent of the Holy Ghost on the Saviour in the Jordan;" "The
+Crucifixion;" and "Christ Rejected."
+
+The picture which brought him most prominently before the public, and
+which placed his popularity beyond dispute, was "The Death of Wolfe at
+Quebec." It was fashionable at this time to treat nothing but subjects
+from ancient history, and when West announced his intention of painting
+a picture of contemporary history his friends warned him that he was
+incurring a serious risk. Nevertheless he finished his "Death of Wolfe,"
+and it was exhibited in the National Gallery. The public "acknowledged
+its excellence at once, but the lovers of old art--called
+classical--complained of the barbarism of boots, buttons, and
+blunderbusses, and cried out for naked warriors, with bows, bucklers,
+and battering rams." Lord Grosvenor was much pleased with the picture,
+and finally purchased it, though he did so with hesitation, daunted to
+some extent by the fierce storm of opposition with which the critics
+received it. Sir Joshua Reynolds, then the President of the Royal
+Academy, and the Archbishop of York, called on West and protested
+against his barbarous innovation, but he declared to them that "the
+event to be commemorated happened in the year 1759, in a region of the
+world unknown to Greeks and Romans, and at a period of the world when no
+warrior who wore classic costume existed. The same rule which gives law
+to the historian should rule the painter." When the king saw the picture
+he was delighted both with it and West's originality, and declared that
+he was sorry Lord Grosvenor had been before him in purchasing it. This
+was the inauguration of a new era in British art, and Sir Joshua
+Reynolds was obliged to declare, "West has conquered. I foresee that
+this picture will not only become one of the most popular, but will
+occasion a revolution in art." This frank avowal was as honorable to Sir
+Joshua as to West.
+
+West painted for George the Third a number of subjects taken from the
+early history of England, and received from the same monarch a
+commission for a series of paintings illustrating the progress of
+revealed religion, with which the king designed to ornament the chapel
+at Windsor Castle. Of these twenty-eight were finished when the Prince
+of Wales, afterward George the Fourth, came into power as Prince Regent,
+and the commission was withdrawn. The artist then began a series of
+grand religious subjects, upon which he was still engaged when death
+called him to rest from all his labors. Of those which were completed,
+"Death on the Pale Horse" and "Christ Healing the Sick" are the best
+known in this country.
+
+In 1792, upon the death of Sir Joshua Reynolds, West was made President
+of the Royal Academy. The king wished to confer upon him the honor of
+knighthood, but he declined it, alleging that he was not wealthy enough
+to support the dignity of the position. In consequence of dissensions in
+the Academy, West resigned his presidency in 1802. The post was filled
+for a year by James Wyatt, the architect, and at the close of that time
+West was re-elected by every ballot but one--that of Fuseli, who voted
+for Mrs. Lloyd, a member of the Academy, declaring that he considered
+"one old woman as good as another." West continued in this office until
+his death.
+
+The close of his life was blessed with ample means, and, as he was in
+the full possession of all his faculties and covered with art's
+supremest honors, it may be regarded as the happiest portion of his
+career. His house was always open to Americans visiting England, and few
+things pleased him more than to listen to news from his native village.
+He was a kind and judicious friend to young artists, especially to those
+of his own country studying in England, and took a lively pleasure in
+their success. Leigh Hunt, whose mother was a relative of West, has left
+us the following description of him:
+
+"The appearance of West was so gentlemanly that the moment he changed
+his gown for a coat he seemed to be full dressed. The simplicity and
+self-possession of the young Quaker, not having time enough to grow
+stiff--for he went early to Rome--took up, I suppose, with more ease
+than most would have done, the urbanities of his new position. Yet this
+man, so well bred, and so indisputably clever in his art, whatever might
+be the amount of his genius, had received a homely or careless
+education, and pronounced some of his words with a puritanical
+barbarism; he would talk of his art all day. There were strong
+suspicions of his leaning to his native side in politics, and he could
+not restrain his enthusiasm for Bonaparte. How he managed these matters
+with the higher powers in England I can not say."
+
+Possessed originally of a sound and vigorous constitution, which he had
+not weakened by any species of dissipation, West lived to a good old
+age, and died in London on the 11th of March, 1820, in his eighty-second
+year. He was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral, by the side of Sir Joshua
+Reynolds, and under the same great dome which covers the tombs of Nelson
+and Wellington.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+JOHN ROGERS.
+
+
+There is scarcely a family of means and taste in the country but is the
+possessor of one or more of Rogers's groups in plaster. You see them in
+every art or book-store window, and they are constantly finding new
+admirers, and rendering the name of the talented sculptor more and more
+a household word.
+
+JOHN ROGERS, to whom the world is indebted for this new branch of art,
+was born at Salem, Massachusetts, on the 30th of October, 1829. His
+ancestors were among the original settlers of the colony, and have
+resided in Salem for generations. His father, a merchant of moderate
+means and good reputation, was anxious to train his son to some regular
+and profitable business. As the basis of this, he gave the boy a good
+education in the common schools of the town, and in 1845, when he was
+sixteen years old, placed him in a dry-goods store in Boston to learn
+the business. He remained there for two years.
+
+He gave early evidence of his artistic genius, and when a mere child had
+shown a taste and talent for drawing which increased with his years, and
+made him eager to become an artist. His parents, however, were desirous
+of seeing him rich rather than famous, and did all in their power to
+discourage him from making choice of a vocation which they considered
+but little better than vagabondage. They magnified the difficulties and
+trials of an artist's career, and so far succeeded in their efforts that
+he entirely abandoned his wish to make art a means of livelihood. He was
+not willing to forsake it altogether, however--he was too true an artist
+at heart for that--but contented himself for the time with continuing
+his efforts, merely as a means of personal enjoyment.
+
+In 1847, feeling satisfied that he was not suited to a mercantile life,
+Mr. Rogers gave up his clerkship in Boston, and obtained a place in the
+corps of engineers engaged in the construction of the Cochituate Water
+Works. Here he had a fine opportunity for cultivating his talent for
+drawing, but the constant labor which he underwent so injured his eyes
+that he was compelled to give up his position. His physician advised him
+to make an ocean voyage for the purpose of re-establishing his health.
+Acting upon this advice, he made a short visit to Spain, and returned
+home very much improved by the voyage and the rest his eyes had enjoyed.
+
+In 1848, soon after his return to this country, he entered a machine
+shop in Manchester, New Hampshire, to learn the trade of a machinist. He
+worked at this trade for a period of seven years, applying himself to it
+with great diligence and determination, and acquiring much mechanical
+skill and a thorough knowledge of the trade. He rose steadily through
+the various grades of his new calling--from the bench of the apprentice
+to the post of draughtsman in the designing department.
+
+During this period he devoted himself enthusiastically to his art. Soon
+after his return from Spain, he had observed a young man modeling a
+figure in clay, and by closely observing him had learned the process,
+which until then was unknown to him. The labor of the youth pleased him
+very much, and the more because he saw in it a new means of artistic
+expression. He at once procured some clay, and, taking it to his room,
+commenced to practice upon the lesson which he had just received. From
+this time forward he continued his art labors, giving to them all the
+leisure time he could spare from his duties in the shop, where he was
+compelled to work from five A.M. until seven P.M. He would go to his
+room after supper, and by the light of a tallow candle work late into
+the night, modeling figures in clay, and bringing new fancies into
+shape. He says that frequently, although exhausted by his severe labor
+at the shop, he would be unable to sleep until he had molded into clay
+the idea which possessed his mind. These night studies, superadded to
+his daily duties, proved very trying to him. Yet he persevered,
+encouraged by his success with his figures. He endeavored to persuade
+some of his relatives to aid him in securing a better education as an
+artist, such as would have enabled him to abandon the machine shop; but
+they turned a deaf ear to him, and he was thus compelled to continue his
+daily task, which, under these circumstances, naturally grew more and
+more irksome.
+
+In 1856, he was enabled to better his condition for a short time. He was
+offered the place of manager of a railroad machine-shop at Hannibal,
+Missouri, and promptly accepted it. In six months, however, he was out
+of employment, the panic of 1857 having caused the machine-shop to
+suspend operations. Having a little money in hand, which he had saved
+from his wages, he resolved to visit Europe, and study the works of the
+great masters in his art, and, if he could, to take lessons in sculpture
+from some competent teacher in the Old World. He went to Paris and Rome,
+remaining in those cities for a period of eight months, and endeavoring
+to share the enthusiasm for the great works around him which the artist
+world manifested. At the end of that time he came home convinced that
+classic art had no attractions for him, and was almost ready to declare
+that he had none of the true inspiration of an artist.
+
+He did not stop long in the East upon his return. Going West at once, he
+obtained a situation in the office of the Surveyor of the city of
+Chicago. In this position he worked hard and faithfully, and his
+employers soon found that in him they had obtained a prize.
+
+Meantime, although so much disheartened by his failure to accomplish any
+thing in Europe, he did not abandon his art studies, but continued to
+model figures in clay, and shortly after his arrival in Chicago, gave
+one of his groups to some ladies of that city, to be sold at a fair in
+behalf of some benevolent purpose. This was the "Checker Players," and
+was the first of his efforts ever submitted to the public. Its success
+was immediate. It proved one of the most attractive features of the
+fair, and the newspapers pronounced it one of the most satisfactory
+evidences of native genius ever seen in Chicago. Mr. Rogers was much
+pleased with its success, and soon followed it with "The Town Pump," one
+of his most popular compositions.
+
+The popularity which these efforts attained, opened John Rogers's eyes
+to a correct perception of his true mission in life. He was not capable
+of accomplishing any thing in classic art, but here was a field in which
+a renown, unique and brilliant, might be won, and in which he might
+endear himself to thousands of hearts in the great world in which he
+lived. Both fame and wealth seemed opening up before him. He did not
+hesitate long, but resolved to follow the leadings of his genius. Having
+heard that a new process of flexible molds had been invented, by which
+the most intricate designs could be cast with ease, he came to New York
+in 1859, bringing with him his "Checker Players" and "Town Pump," and
+the model of a new group on which he was then engaged. Seeking an
+Italian familiar with the new process, he engaged him to cast his
+figures in plaster by means of it, and from him he learned how to
+practice the new method himself.
+
+He now put forth his "Slave Auction," which he had modeled in Chicago
+and brought to New York with him. The antislavery excitement was then at
+its height, and this effort aroused the sympathy and won Mr. Rogers the
+support of the greater part of the people of the Northern States. There
+was a large demand for the group, and Mr. Rogers soon found himself
+obliged to employ assistance to fill the orders which kept crowding in
+upon him. By selecting a subject which was of the deepest interest to
+the people of the country, he had thus attracted attention to his
+merits, and he felt sure that by keeping the people supplied with works
+illustrative of the topics of the day, he would win the success to which
+he aspired.
+
+He now ventured to establish himself permanently in New York, and,
+renting the garret of a Broadway building, set up his studio in it, and
+issued this modest card: "John Rogers, Artist, Designs and Executes
+Groups of Figures in Composition at his Studio, 599 Broadway." The
+success of his works had been so marked as to induce him to believe that
+he would have no difficulty in establishing a permanent business, and he
+set to work with enthusiasm. In quick succession he produced his
+"Fairy's Whisper" and "Air Castles," the latter of which is the only
+commission he has ever executed. The war began soon after, and supplied
+him with an abundance of popular subjects. These war subjects attracted
+universal attention, and sold as rapidly as he could supply them. A New
+York journal thus describes the "sensation" which they created in that
+city:
+
+"All day, and every day, week in and week out, there is an
+ever-changing crowd of men, women, and children standing stationary amid
+the ever-surging tides of Broadway, before the windows of Williams &
+Stevens, gazing with eager interest upon the statuettes and groups of
+John Rogers, the sculptor. These works appeal to a deep popular
+sentiment. They are not pretentious displays of gods, goddesses, ideal
+characters, or stupendous, world-compelling heroes. They are
+illustrations of American domestic and especially of American military
+life--not of our great generals or our bold admirals, or the men whose
+praises fill all the newspapers, but of the common soldier of the Union;
+not of the common soldier, either, in what might be called his high
+heroic moods and moments, when, with waving sword and flaming eye, he
+dashes upon the enemy's works, but of the soldier in the ordinary
+moments and usual occupations of every-day camp life. For the last year
+or more Mr. Rogers has been at work mainly on groups of this latter
+class and character. Thus he has given us 'The Returned Volunteer, or
+How the Fort was Taken,' being a group of three gathered in a
+blacksmith's shop, the characters consisting of the blacksmith himself,
+standing with his right foot on the anvil block, and his big hammer in
+his hands, listening eagerly, with his little girl, to a soldier who
+sits close by on his haunches, narrating 'how the fort was taken,' We
+have also another group of three, 'The Picket Guard,' spiritedly
+sketched, as in eager, close, and nervous search for the enemy; the
+'Sharpshooters,' another group of three, or rather of two men and a
+scarecrow, illustrating a curious practice in our army of deceiving the
+enemy; the 'Town Pump,' a scene in which a soldier, uniformed and
+accoutered, is slaking his thirst and holding blessed converse beside
+the pump with a pretty girl who has come for a pail of water; the 'Union
+Refugees,' a pathetic and noble group, consisting of a stalwart and
+sad-faced East Tennesseean or Virginian, who accompanied by his wife,
+who leans her head upon his bosom, and by his little boy, who looks up
+eagerly into his face, has started off from home with only his gun upon
+his shoulder and his powder-horn by his side, to escape the tyranny of
+the rebels; 'The Camp Fire, or Making Friends with the Cook,' in which a
+hungry soldier, seated upon an inverted basket, is reading a newspaper
+to an 'intelligent contraband,' who is stirring the contents of a huge
+and ebullient pot hung over the fire; 'Wounded to the Rear, or One More
+Shot,' in which a soldier is represented as dressing his wounded leg,
+while his companion, with his left arm in a sling, is trying to load his
+gun to take another shot at the enemy, at whom he looks defiantly; 'Mail
+Day,' which tells its own story of a speculative soldier, seated on a
+stone and racking his poor brains to find some ideas to transcribe upon
+the paper which he holds upon his knee, to be sent perchance to her he
+loves; 'The Country Postmaster, or News from the Army,' which, though a
+scene from civil life, tells of the anxiety of the soldier's wife or
+sweetheart to get tidings from the brave volunteer who is periling his
+life on the battle-field; 'The Wounded Scout, or a Friend in the Swamp,'
+representing a soldier, torn, and bleeding, and far gone, rescued and
+raised up by a faithful and kind-hearted negro--which we think is one of
+the best, if not the very best, of Mr. Rogers's works; and lastly, a
+group called 'The Home Guard, or Midnight on the Border,' in which a
+heroic woman, accompanied by a little girl, is represented as stepping
+out, pistol in hand, to confront the assailants of her humble home."
+
+In 1862 Mr. Rogers removed his studio to the corner of Fifth Avenue and
+Twenty-sixth Street, where he still remains. He has followed up the
+earlier productions named above with "The Bushwhacker," a scene
+representing a Tennessee loyalist dogging the footsteps of the Southern
+army; "Taking the Oath and Drawing Rations," the best and certainly the
+most popular of his works,--a group of four, representing a Southern
+lady with her little boy, compelled to take the oath of allegiance in
+order to obtain rations for her family. A negro boy, bearing a basket
+for his mistress, leans on the barrel watching the proceeding with the
+most intense interest. The woman's face is wonderful, and it expresses
+eloquently the struggle in her breast between her devotion to the South
+and her love for the boy before her, and the officer tendering the oath
+almost speaks the sympathy which her suffering has awakened in him. The
+other works of our artist are "Uncle Ned's School," "The Charity
+Patient," "The School Examination," "The Council of War," "The Courtship
+in Sleepy Hollow," "The Fugitive's Story," "Challenging the Union Vote,"
+and "Rip Van Winkle."
+
+The process by which these exquisite groups are produced is exceedingly
+simple, but is one requiring considerable skill and delicacy of
+manipulation, and although the casting could readily be done by
+competent assistants, Mr. Rogers conscientiously gives his personal
+attention to every detail of the process. The artist takes a mass of wet
+clay of the desired consistency and size, and fashions it roughly with
+his hands to something like the proper shape. "It is sometimes necessary
+to make a little frame of wire upon which to lay the clay, to hold it in
+its proper place, the wire being easily made to take any form. The rough
+figure is then finished with the molding stick, which is simply a stick
+of pine with a little spoon of box-wood attached to each end, one spoon
+being more delicate than the other. With this instrument the artist
+works upon the clay with surprising ease. The way in which the works are
+reproduced is as follows: When the clay model is complete, a single
+plaster cast is taken for a pattern, and is finished with the most
+scrupulous care by Mr. Rogers himself. This cast is used as a pattern
+for making whatever number of molds may be needed to supply the demand
+for any particular group or statue. The molds are made of glue softened
+with water, so as to be about as limber as India-rubber. This is poured
+over the pattern while in a warm and liquid condition; it is, therefore,
+necessary to surround the pattern with a stiff case to hold the glue in
+place. This case is made of plaster, and is built up by hand around the
+pattern. When the glue has become sufficiently hard, it is cut by a thin
+sharp knife and pulled off the pattern. The parts are put together and
+bound by cord, making a perfect glue mold. The plaster of Paris is then
+poured into the mold inverted. A number of crooked pieces of wire are
+also placed in the mold to strengthen the figure. In about twenty
+minutes the plaster sets so as to allow the case to be opened, and the
+glue mold to be pulled off. To his proficiency in the mechanical part of
+his art Mr. Rogers attributes a considerable measure of his success, as
+it enables him to execute with facility every suggestion of his
+imagination, and to secure the perfect reproduction of his works by
+those to whom he intrusts that labor."
+
+By placing his works at popular prices, ranging from $10 to $25 each,
+Mr. Rogers has insured the largest sale and greatest popularity for
+them, and has thus become a national benefactor. It is now within the
+power of every person of moderate means to possess one or more of his
+exquisite groups, and in this way the artist has not only secured to
+himself a sure means of wealth, but has done much to encourage and
+foster a popular love for, and appreciation of, the art of which he is
+so bright an ornament.
+
+It was a bold venture to depart so entirely from all the precedents of
+art, but the result has vindicated both the artist's genius and his
+quick appreciation of the intelligence of his countrymen. "We can not
+enter into the feelings of ancient Greece," says a popular journal, in
+summing up his efforts, "and our artists who spend their time in
+attempting to reproduce that ancient art are only imitators. Their works
+interest only a small class of connoisseurs, and that interest is an
+antiquarian interest. It is not a vital, living interest, such as a
+Greek felt in his own work. It is not the natural, healthful, artistic
+feeling, the feeling for the beauty of realities, except in so far as it
+represents the feeling for the eternal attributes of beautiful form. It
+is an effort on the part of our artists to impose the forms and features
+of another age upon this one,--a task as impossible in art as in
+society, religion, and national politics."
+
+Mr. Rogers is now in his forty-first year, and of all our American
+artists is, perhaps, the one best known to the masses, and the most
+popular. He is of medium height, carries himself erectly, and is quick
+and energetic in his movements. His face is frank, manly, and open, and
+the expression, though firm and resolute,--as that of a man who has
+fought so hard for success must be,--is winning and genial. He is a
+gentleman of great cultivation of mind, and is said by his friends to be
+one of the most entertaining of companions. In 1865 he married a
+daughter of Mr. C.S. Francis, of New York, and his fondness for domestic
+life leads him to pass his leisure hours chiefly by his own fireside.
+
+
+[Illustration: HIRAM POWERS.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+HIRAM POWERS.
+
+
+Hiram Powers was born in Woodstock, Vermont, on the 29th of July, 1805.
+He was the eighth in a family of nine children, and was the son of a
+farmer who found it hard to provide his little household with the
+necessaries of life. He grew up as most New England boys do, sound and
+vigorous in health, passing the winters in attendance upon the district
+schools, and the summers in working on the farm. "The only distinctive
+trait exhibited by the child was mechanical ingenuity; he excelled in
+caricature, was an adept in constructiveness, having made countless
+wagons, windmills, and weapons for his comrades, attaining the height of
+juvenile reputation as the inventor of what he called a 'patent fuse.'"
+
+The Powers family lived just over the river, opposite the village, and
+all joined heartily in the effort to keep the wolf from the doors. Mr.
+Powers, Sen., was induced to become security for one of his friends,
+and, as frequently happens, lost all he had in consequence. Following
+close upon this disaster came a dreadful famine in the State, caused by
+an almost total failure of the crops. "I recollect," says Mr. Powers,
+"we cut down the trees, and fed our few cows on the browse. We lived so
+long wholly on milk and potatoes, that we got almost to loathe them.
+There were seven of us children, five at home, and it was hard work to
+feed us."
+
+One of the sons had managed to secure an education at Dartmouth College,
+and had removed to Cincinnati, where he was at this time editing a
+newspaper. Thither his father, discouraged by the famine, determined to
+follow him. Accordingly, placing his household goods and his family in
+three wagons, and being joined by another family, he set out on the long
+journey to the West. This was in 1819, when young Hiram was fourteen
+years old. It cost him a sharp struggle to leave his old home, and as
+they climbed the hills beyond Woodstock he lingered behind with his
+mother to take a last view of the place. They crossed the State, and
+passing through western New York came to the vicinity of Niagara Falls.
+They were near enough to the great cataract to hear its solemn roar
+sounding high above the silent woods. The boy was eager to visit it, but
+the distance was too great to the falls, and he was forced to relinquish
+this pleasure. Continuing their journey westward, they reached the Ohio
+River, down which stream they floated on a flatboat until they came to
+Cincinnati, then a city of fourteen thousand inhabitants.
+
+Through the assistance of his eldest son, the editor, Mr. Powers was
+enabled to secure a farm not far from Cincinnati, and removing his
+family to it, began the task of clearing and cultivating it.
+Unfortunately for the new-comers, the farm was located on the edge of a
+pestilential marsh, the poisonous exhalations of which soon brought the
+whole family down with the ague. Mr. Powers the elder died from this
+disease, and Hiram was ill and disabled from it for a whole year. The
+family was broken up and scattered, and our hero, incapable of
+performing hard work so soon after his sickness, obtained a place in a
+produce store in Cincinnati, his duty being to watch the principal road
+by which the farmers' wagons, laden with grain and corn whisky, came
+into the city, and to inform the men in charge of them that they could
+obtain better prices for their produce from his employers than from any
+other merchants in the city. It was also a part of his duty to help to
+roll the barrels from the wagons to the store. He made a very good
+"drummer," and gave satisfaction to his employers, but as the concern
+soon broke up, he was again without employment.
+
+His brother, the editor, now came to his assistance, and made a bargain
+with the landlord of a hotel in the city to establish a reading-room at
+his hotel. The landlord was to provide the room and obtain a few paying
+subscribers; the editor was to stock it with his exchange newspapers,
+and Hiram was to be put in charge of it and receive what could be made
+by it. The reading-room was established, but as the landlord failed to
+comply with his agreement, Powers was forced to abandon the undertaking.
+
+[Illustration: POWERS' DISTRUST OF THE HUNTERS.]
+
+"About that time," said he, in relating his early life to the Rev. Dr.
+Bellows, some years ago, "looking around anxiously for the means of
+living, I fell in with a worthy man, a clock-maker and organ-builder,
+who was willing to employ me to collect bad debts in the country. He put
+me on an old horse which had one very bad fault. He was afflicted with
+what the Western people called the 'swaleys,' and could not go downhill.
+I frequently had to dismount and back him down, as the only way of
+getting along. The road often lay through forests and clearings, in
+mire, and among the roots of the beeches, with which my poor beast was
+constantly struggling. I would sometimes emerge from a dark wood, five
+miles through, perhaps, and find myself near a clearing where the
+farmer's house I was seeking lay, half a mile off the road. Picking up
+a stout club to defend myself against the inevitable dog, which, in the
+absence of men-folks, guarded every log-house, I plodded across the
+plowed field, soon to be met by the ferocious beast, who, not seeing a
+stranger more than once a month, was always furious and dangerous. Out
+would come, at length, the poor woman, too curious to see who it was
+that broke up her monotonous solitude, to call off the dog, who
+generally grew fiercer as he felt his backer near him, and it was
+commonly with a feeling as of a bare escape of my life that I finally
+got into the house. It was sad enough, too, often to find sickness and
+death in those fever-stricken abodes--a wan mother nursing one dying
+child, with perhaps another dead in the house. My business, too, was not
+the most welcome. I came to dun a delinquent debtor, who had perhaps
+been inveigled by some peddler of our goods into an imprudent purchase,
+for a payment which it was inconvenient or impossible to make. There, in
+the corner, hung the wooden clock, the payment for which I was after,
+ticking off the last minutes of the sick child--the only ornament of the
+poor cabin. It was very painful to urge my business under such
+circumstances. However, I succeeded, by kindness, in getting more money
+than I expected from our debtors, who would always pay when they could.
+I recollect, one night, almost bewailing my success. I had reached the
+entrance of a forest, at least nine miles through, and finding a little
+tavern there, concluded it was prudent to put up and wait till morning.
+There were two rough-looking fellows around, hunters, with rifles in
+their hands, whose appearance did not please me, and I fancied they
+looked at each other significantly when the landlord took off my
+saddle-bags and weighted them, feeling the hundred dollars of silver I
+had collected. I was put into the attic, reached by a ladder, and,
+barricading the trap-door as well as I could, went to sleep with one
+eye open. Nothing, however, occurred, and in the morning I found my
+wild-looking men up as early as I, and was not a little disturbed when
+they proposed to keep me company across the forest. Afraid to show any
+suspicion, I consented, and then went and looked at the little
+flint-pistol I carried, formidable only to sparrows, but which was my
+only defense.
+
+"About two miles into the wood, my fierce-looking friends, after some
+exchange of understanding as to their respective ways and meeting-point,
+started off on different sides of the road in search of game, as they
+said, but, as I feared, with the purpose of robbing and perhaps
+murdering me at some darker spot in the forest. I had gone perhaps two
+miles farther, when I heard the breaking of a twig, and, looking on one
+side, saw a hand signaling me to stop. Presently an eye came out behind
+the tree, and then an arm, and I verily thought my hour had come. But,
+keeping straight on, I perceived, almost instantly, to my great relief,
+two fine deer, who appeared not at all disturbed by a man on horseback,
+though ready enough to fly from a gun, and began to suspect that the
+robber I was dreading was, after all, only a hunter in the honest
+pursuit of his living. The crack of the rifle soon proved that the deer,
+and not my saddle-bags, were the game aimed at, and I found my
+imagination had for twelve hours been converting very harmless huntsmen
+into highwaymen of a most malicious aspect."
+
+His employer was so well pleased with the success of his young collector
+that he offered to give him a place in the factory, saying there would
+always be plenty of rough work at which an inexperienced hand could
+employ himself. "I could refuse no proposition that promised me bread
+and clothes," said he, "for I was often walking the streets hungry, with
+my arms pressed close to my sides to conceal the holes in my coat
+sleeves." His first task was to thin down with a file some brass plates
+which were to be used as parts of the stops of an organ. Powers was
+expected to do merely the rough work, after which the plates were to
+pass into the hands of the regular finisher. His employer, knowing that
+the task was one which would require time, told him he would look in in
+a few days, and see how he had succeeded. The young man's mechanical
+talent, on which he had prided himself when a boy in Vermont, now did
+him good service, and he applied himself to his task with skill and
+determination. When his employer asked for the plates, he was astonished
+to find that Powers had not only done the rough work, but had finished
+them much better than the regular finisher had ever done, and this
+merely by his greater nicety of eye and his undaunted energy. He had
+blistered his hands terribly, but had done his work well. His employer
+was delighted, and, finding him so valuable an assistant, soon gave him
+the superintendence of all his machinery, and took him to live in his
+own family.
+
+As has been stated, his employer's business was the manufacture of
+organs and clocks. Powers displayed great skill in the management of the
+mechanical department of the business, and this, added to the favor
+shown him by the "boss," drew upon him the jealousy of the other
+workmen. There hung in the shop at this time an old silver bull's-eye
+watch, a good time-piece, but very clumsy and ungainly in appearance.
+Powers was anxious to become its owner. Being too poor to buy it, he hit
+upon the following expedient for obtaining it. He had carefully studied
+the machine used in the shop for cutting out wooden clock wheels, and
+had suggested to his employer several improvements in it. The workmen,
+however, had ridiculed his suggestions, and had denounced as the most
+barefaced presumption his belief that he could improve a machine which
+had come all the way from Connecticut, where, they said, people were
+supposed to know something about clocks. Nevertheless, he maintained his
+opinions, and told his employer that if he would give him the silver
+watch, he would invent a much better machine. His offer was accepted,
+and in ten days he produced a machine, not only much simpler than the
+old one, but capable of performing twice as much and better work. The
+workmen promptly acknowledged his success, and his employer gave him the
+watch. "The old watch," said he, a few years ago, "has ticked all my
+children into existence, and three of them out of this world. It still
+hangs at the head of my bed."
+
+About this time, in a chance visit to the Museum in Cincinnati, he saw a
+plaster cast of Houdon's "Washington." It was the first bust he had ever
+seen, and he says it moved him strangely. He had an intense desire to
+know how it was done, and a vague consciousness that he could do work of
+the same kind if he could find an instructor. The instructor he soon
+found in a German living in the city, who made plaster casts and busts,
+and from him he learned the secret of the art. He proved an apt pupil,
+and surprised his teacher by his proficiency. His first effort at
+modeling from life was the bust of a little daughter of Mr. John P.
+Foote. She sat to him during the hours he could spare from his regular
+work. His model was made of beeswax, as he was afraid that clay would
+freeze or stiffen. His success encouraged him very greatly. "I found I
+had a correct eye," said he, "and a hand which steadily improved in its
+obedience to my eye. I saw the likeness, and knew it depended on the
+features, and that, if I could copy the features exactly, the likeness
+would follow just as surely as the blood follows the knife. I found
+early that all the talk about catching the expression was mere twaddle;
+the expression would take care of itself if I copied the features
+exactly."
+
+The true principles of his art seemed to come to him naturally, and
+having the genius to comprehend them so readily, he had the courage to
+hold on to them often in the face of adverse criticism. While conscious
+of having a perfectly correct eye, however, he did not scorn the humbler
+method of obtaining exactness by mathematical measurement. The following
+incident, which he related to Dr. Bellows, illustrates this:
+
+"One of the first busts I ever made was of an artist, a Frenchman, who
+came over with Mrs. Trollope. He proposed to paint my picture, while I
+was to make his bust. He was older, and considered himself much my
+superior, and, indeed, undertook to be my instructor. I was to begin.
+His first _canon_ was that I was to use no measurements, and he quoted
+Michael Angelo's saying--'A sculptor should carry his compasses in his
+eyes, not in his fingers,' I humbly submitted to his authority, and
+finished the bust without a single measurement. He was very triumphant
+at what he called the success of his method. I begged permission of him,
+now that the bust was completed, to verify my work by the dividers. He
+graciously consented, and I was pleased to find how nearly I had hit the
+mark. A few imperfections, however, appeared, and these, in spite of his
+objections, I corrected without his knowledge, for I was determined to
+have the bust as near right as I could make it. It had taken me,
+however, at least five times as long to measure the distances with my
+eyes as it would have done to measure them with the calipers, and I saw
+no advantage in the longer and more painful effort. The measurements are
+mere preparations for the artist's true work, and are, like the
+surveyor's lines, preparatory to the architect's labor. When my subject,
+in his turn, undertook my portrait, he was true to his own principles,
+and finished it without measurements. I then, though with some horror at
+my temerity, asked permission to verify his work with the dividers, and
+found at the first stroke a difference of at least half an inch in the
+distance between the eyes. He looked very much mortified, but said that
+it was done to 'give the effect.' I have had no misgivings since about
+the economy and wisdom of using the calipers freely. To be useful, they
+must be applied with the greatest precision--so small are the
+differences upon which all the infinite variety in human countenances
+depends. With the aid of my careful measurements, I do in one day what
+it would cost me a week or two's work to accomplish without, and I am
+then able to give my exclusive attention to the modeling."
+
+He did not regularly devote himself to his art, however, but remained in
+the employment of the organ and clock maker for some time longer, giving
+his leisure hours to constant practice. When he was about twenty-three
+years old, a Frenchman named Herview opened in Cincinnati a museum of
+natural history and wax figures. The latter had been very much broken
+and disfigured in transportation, and their owner, in despair, begged
+Powers to undertake the task of restoring them. The figures were
+representations of distinguished men and women, and as Powers readily
+saw that it would be impossible to repair them without having proper
+likenesses as his guides, he proposed to the Frenchman to make an
+entirely new composition of the old materials, and one which should
+attract attention by its oddity. This was agreed to, and the result was
+a hideous and ungainly figure, which Powers proposed should be called
+the "King of the Cannibal Islands," but to his amazement the Frenchman
+advertised it as the embalmed body of a South Sea man-eater, "secured at
+immense expense." Powers declared to his employer that the audience
+would discover the cheat and tear down the museum; but the "man-eater"
+drew immense crowds, and was regarded as the most wonderful natural
+curiosity ever seen in the West. The Frenchman was so well pleased with
+it that he employed the artist permanently as inventor, wax-figure
+maker, and general mechanical contriver in the museum.
+
+Powers remained in the Frenchman's employ for seven years, hoping all
+the while to earn money enough to devote himself entirely to art, which
+had now become his great ambition. His experience was not a pleasant
+one. Some of it was so singular, not to say ludicrous, that he shall
+relate one portion of it in his own language:
+
+"One of the first things I undertook, in company with Herview, was a
+representation of the infernal regions after Dante's description. Behind
+a grating I made certain dark grottoes, full of stalactites and
+stalagmites, with shadowy ghosts and pitchforked figures, all calculated
+to work on the easily-excited imaginations of a Western audience, as the
+West then was. I found it very popular and attractive, but occasionally
+some countryman would suggest to his fellow spectator that a little
+motion in the figures would add much to the reality of the show. After
+much reflection I concluded to go in among the figures dressed like the
+Evil One, in a dark robe, with a death's-head and cross-bones wrought
+upon it, and with a lobster's claw for a nose. I had bought and fixed up
+an old electrical machine, and connected it with a wire, so that, from a
+wand in my hand, I could discharge quite a serious shock upon any body
+venturing too near the grating. The plan worked admirably, and excited
+great interest; but I found acting the part of wax-figure two hours
+every evening in the cold no sinecure, and was put to my wits to devise
+a figure that could be moved by strings, and which would fill my place.
+I succeeded so well that it ended in my inventing a whole series of
+automata, for which the old wax-figures furnished the materials, in
+part, and which became so popular and so rewarding, that I was kept
+seven years at the business, my employer promising me, from time to
+time, an interest in the business, which he quite forgot to fulfill.
+When, at last, I found out the vanity of my expectations, I left him. He
+knew I kept no accounts, but he did not know that I reported all the
+money he gave me to my wife, who did keep our accounts. He tried to
+cheat me, but I was able to baffle him through her prudence and method.
+For I had married in this interval, and had a wife and children to
+support."
+
+Powers was now thirty years old, and had acquired considerable
+reputation in Cincinnati as an artist. His abilities coming to the
+notice of Mr. Nicholas Longworth, of that city, that good genius of
+young men of talent called on him and offered to buy out the museum and
+establish him in the business. The offer was declined with thanks. Mr.
+Longworth then proposed to send him to Italy to study his profession,
+but this, too, being declined, Mr. Longworth urged him to go to
+Washington and try his fortune with the public men of the country. To
+this Powers consented, and, aided by his generous friend, he repaired to
+the national capital in 1835, and spent two years there. During this
+period he modeled busts of Andrew Jackson, J.Q. Adams, Calhoun, Chief
+Justice Marshall, Woodbury, Van Buren, and others. Being unable to
+secure a model of Webster in Washington, the statesman invited him to go
+with him to Marshfield for that purpose. Powers accepted the invitation,
+and declares that he looks back upon his sojourn there as one of the
+most delightful portions of his life.
+
+General Jackson was very kind to him, and won his lasting esteem and
+gratitude. Upon being asked if he would sit for his bust, the old hero
+hesitated, and, looking at the artist nervously, asked: "Do you daub any
+thing over the face? Because," he added, "I recollect poor Mr. Jefferson
+got nearly smothered when they tried to take his bust. The plaster
+hardened before they got ready to release him, and they pounded it with
+mallets till they nearly stunned him, and then almost tore off a piece
+of his ear in their haste to pull off a sticking fragment of the mold. I
+should not like that." Powers assured him that such a terrible process
+would not be necessary, but that he only wished to look at him for an
+hour a day, sitting in his chair. The General brightened up at once, and
+cordially told him it would give him pleasure to sit for him. He at once
+installed the artist in a room in the White House, and gave him a
+sitting of an hour every morning until the model was done.
+
+Mr. Powers regards the bust of Jackson as one of his best efforts, and
+the President himself was very much pleased with it. After he had
+completed his model, Mr. Edward Everett brought Baron Krudener, the
+Prussian Minister to Washington, to see it. The Baron was a famous art
+critic, and poor Powers was terribly nervous as he showed him the bust.
+The Baron examined it closely, and then said to the artist, "You have
+got the General completely: his head, his face, his courage, his
+firmness, his identical self; and yet it will not do! You have also got
+all his wrinkles, all his age and decay. You forget that he is President
+of the United States and the idol of the people. You should have given
+him a dignity and elegance he does not possess. You should have employed
+your _art_, sir, and not merely your _nature_." The artist listened in
+silence, and Mr. Everett stood by without saying a word, "conscious," as
+he afterward confessed, "of a very poor right to speak on such a
+subject," after listening to so famous a critic. "_I_ did not dare,"
+says Powers, "in my humility and reverence for these two great men, to
+say what I wanted to in reply; to tell the Baron that my 'art' consisted
+in concealing art, and that my 'nature' was the highest art I knew or
+could conceive of. I was content that the 'truth' of my work had been so
+fully acknowledged, and the Baron only confirmed my resolution to make
+truth my only model and guide in all my future undertakings."
+
+One of his sitters in Washington was Senator Preston, of South Carolina,
+who conceived such an interest in him that he wrote to his brother,
+General Preston, of Columbia, South Carolina, a gentleman of great
+wealth, urging him to come to the artist's assistance, and send him to
+Italy. General Preston at once responded to this appeal, of which Powers
+was ignorant, and wrote to the artist to draw on him for a thousand
+dollars, and go to Italy at once, and to draw on him annually for a
+similar sum for several years. Powers was profoundly touched by this
+noble offer, and accepted it as frankly as it had been made. He sent his
+models to Italy, and took his departure for the Old World in 1837.
+Speaking of Mr. Preston's generosity, he said, two years ago: "I have
+endeavored to requite his kindness by sending him works of mine, equal
+in money value to his gifts; but I can never extinguish my great
+obligations. I fear he don't like me since the war,--for I could not
+suppress my strong national feelings for any man's friendship,--but I
+like and honor him; I would do any thing in my power to show him my
+inextinguishable gratitude."
+
+He reached Florence in advance of his models, and while waiting for them
+made two busts, one of a professor in Harvard College, and the other of
+an American lady. A severe domestic affliction, however, which came upon
+him soon after his arrival in Italy, affected him so greatly that he was
+not able to return to his work for a long time. Then he applied himself
+to his busts, which were warmly praised by the artists in Florence and
+by his countrymen traveling abroad. Thorwaldsen visited him in his
+studio, and pronounced his bust of Webster the best work of its kind in
+modern times, and praises from other distinguished artists were equally
+as warm. Orders came in rapidly from English and Italians, and from
+Americans in Europe, and the sculptor soon had as much business as he
+could attend to. He gave his leisure time to work on an ideal figure,
+which, when completed, was purchased by an English gentleman of wealth.
+This was "The Greek Slave," the most popular of all his works.
+Duplicates of it were exhibited in America and at the Crystal Palace in
+England, and won him praise from all quarters. This single work
+established his fame as an artist, and brought him orders from all parts
+of the civilized world. His statue of "Eve," which had preceded "The
+Greek Slave" by a year, had been pronounced by Thorwaldsen fit to be any
+man's master-piece, but it had not created such a furore as "The Greek
+Slave." Subsequently he made an exquisite bust of the Grand Duchess of
+Tuscany, with which the Grand Duke was so pleased that he called on
+Powers, and asked him as a favor to himself to apply to him whenever he
+could do him a service. Powers asked permission to take a cast of the
+Venus, and this much-coveted boon, which had been denied to other
+artists for years, was at once granted to him.
+
+Since then his works have been numerous. Among these are "The Fisher
+Boy," of which three duplicates in marble have been made;
+"Il Penseroso;" "Proserpine," a bust; "California;" "America," modeled
+for the Crystal Palace at Sydenham, England; "Washington" and "Calhoun,"
+portrait statues, the former for the State of Louisiana, and the latter
+for the State of South Carolina; and "Benjamin Franklin" and "Thomas
+Jefferson," in the Capitol at Washington. His works are all marked by
+beauty and vigor of conception as well as by exquisite finish. Beautiful
+as his ideal figures are, he yet excels in his busts and statues of the
+great men of his native land. His "Jefferson" and "Franklin" are
+wonderful works, and his "Calhoun" is said to be almost life-like. This
+last was wrecked on the coast of Long Island on its voyage to America,
+and remained in the sea for some time, but being well packed was found,
+when raised, to be only slightly damaged by the water.
+
+Mr. Powers has now resided in Italy for thirty-three years. Motives of
+economy have controlled his action, for he would gladly return to his
+own land did he feel justified in doing so. He has thus stated the
+reasons which have influenced his long residence abroad:
+
+
+     Sculpture is universal. The human form is of no country, and may be
+     studied with equal advantage at home and abroad. The opportunities
+     of studying it abroad are so immeasurably greater than at home,
+     that I do not see how it is possible, without great loss, to
+     neglect them.
+
+     1. It is impossible to model successfully without living models;
+     and in America, in my time, it was almost at the peril of
+     reputation, both for model and sculptor, that an artist employed
+     the living model, even if he could procure it. Now, I understand, a
+     few models may be obtained in New York; but they are so rare and so
+     expensive, that it is almost ruinous to employ them. It costs two
+     or three dollars there to secure a model which here may be had for
+     half a day for forty cents. There is no want of models here; but
+     their history is a sad one, and makes one often seriously lament
+     the necessity for employing them. Young women, especially, are
+     driven to this employment by the want of bread. I have numerous
+     offers of their services made by parents who are in great distress.
+     I make it a point to discourage all who come to me from entering
+     the business, and am only conquered when I feel sure that, if I
+     decline, they will be driven to other studios. I prefer only
+     professional models, already thoroughly committed to the calling,
+     as I shrink from the responsibility of leading any into so perilous
+     a vocation. They are usually accompanied by their mothers, and I
+     strive to treat them in a way to save their self-respect and
+     delicacy--a very hard task, which too often breaks down in less
+     scrupulous hands.
+
+     2. The opportunities of anatomical studies are here nearly perfect,
+     and free from all expense. The medical schools not only illustrate
+     anatomy by surgery on the cadaver, but standing by the side of the
+     dead body is a living one, in which the action of the muscles
+     dissected before the student may be studied in life. These colleges
+     are open to all artists, and furnish the best possible schooling in
+     anatomy, a thorough acquaintance with which is indispensable to the
+     sculptor, and can only be obtained in America at great cost.
+
+     3. Marble is no cheaper here than in New York, the long
+     sea-carriage costing no more to America than the short
+     land-carriage does from the quarries to Florence or Rome. But good
+     workmen, who can not be dispensed with, are so abundant and so
+     cheap here, so rare and so dear at home, that that alone is a
+     decisive reason for coming abroad. Even here it is a heavy expense
+     to procure sufficient and competent workmen; at home it is almost
+     at ruinous cost and with nearly insuperable difficulty. I have two
+     workmen--as good, certainly, as the best in America--to the finest
+     of whom I pay only four dollars a day. He could make twice that
+     cutting weeping-willows on American tomb-stones. What could he not
+     justly demand in wages from a New York sculptor? I employ a dozen
+     workmen in my studios; the poorest, at work on pedestals and rough
+     work, earn about half a dollar a day; the moderately skilled, a
+     little over a dollar. The whole cost me about fifteen dollars per
+     day, which is wonderfully low. Then, my rent--which could not, for
+     my extensive accommodations, be less than two thousand five hundred
+     dollars a year in any eligible position which the public would
+     visit--reaches only about four hundred and fifty dollars, annually.
+
+     But, 4. The general expenses of maintaining a family are so much
+     less here than at home, that a man without capital, possessing a
+     profession so slow in reaching its pecuniary returns as an
+     artist's, finds an immense inducement to live abroad. It is true
+     that, music and accomplishment in languages apart, the
+     opportunities of a substantial education for one's children are not
+     as good here as at home. There are, however, less temptations to
+     vice, and less exposures to the American habit of hard drinking
+     among young men; but, no doubt, the general influences here, in
+     the way of developing a manly, energetic, and self-relying
+     character, are less favorable than at home. There is a softness, a
+     disposition to take life easy, and a want of moral earnestness in
+     Italy, which are not favorable to youthful ambition and
+     independence. On the other hand, the money-getting propensities and
+     social rivalries of America tend to harden human character, and to
+     bring out a severe selfishness which is offensive. On the whole,
+     the balance is on our side, and, other things apart, American youth
+     are better brought up in America. But the artist must make this
+     sacrifice to his art.
+
+
+Mr. Powers is sixty-five years old, but is in full possession of his
+mental and physical strength. He is a genuine American, notwithstanding
+his long residence abroad, and has always a warm welcome for his
+countrymen visiting his studio. He is a favorite with the younger
+artists, who find in him a kind and judicious friend. Scorning servile
+imitation, he still exhibits in his works the freshness of his youth and
+the genuine originality which was the basis of his fame.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+EMMANUEL LEUTZE.
+
+
+Emmanuel Leutze, by adoption an American, was born in the village of
+Emingen, near the city of Reutlingen, in Wurtemberg, on the 24th of May,
+1816. His father emigrated to America during the infancy of his son, and
+the future artist spent his youth in the city of Philadelphia and the
+town of Fredericksburg, Virginia. He received a good common school
+education, and passed his time in comparative seclusion from society,
+reading and studying, but showing no especial fondness for art. At
+length, during his father's last illness, in which he nursed him with
+great devotion, he took up drawing to beguile the weary hours of the
+sick-room, and succeeded so well in his attempts that after his father's
+death he continued his efforts under the instruction of a competent
+drawing master. He improved rapidly, and was so well satisfied with his
+success that he determined to adopt the profession of an artist as the
+one best suited to his talents and inclination.
+
+[Illustration: FILIAL DEVOTION SHAPES A GREAT CAREER]
+
+Having acquired considerable skill in drawing, he attempted rude
+portraits of men and beasts, and at length undertook to copy from memory
+a colored print after Westall. He completed it, and resolved to show it
+to some of his friends. In his impatience for the colors to dry, he
+placed the painting before the fire and went to summon his friends,
+but found, to his dismay, upon returning with them, that the heat had
+blistered the canvas so that the picture was hardly recognizable. Yet,
+in spite of this, his critics saw such evidences of genius in the
+painting that they urged the young artist to continue his labors, and
+predicted a great success for him.
+
+Leutze, however, was not willing to venture upon another composition,
+either partly or wholly original, but applied himself with zeal to learn
+the rudiments of his art, and with such success that when his portraits
+appeared at the Artist's Fund Exhibition, a year or two later, they
+received high praise, both from critics and the public. An enterprising
+publisher, attracted by these portraits, engaged him to go to Washington
+and paint the portraits of the leading statesmen of the country, to be
+engraved for a "national work." Leutze at once proceeded to the capital,
+full of hope and enthusiasm, but soon found that the schemes of the
+politicians whose faces he was to transmit to canvas engrossed them so
+much that they would not give him the sittings he desired. After waiting
+impatiently for a considerable time he threw up the engagement in
+disgust, and went into the woods of Virginia to console himself by
+communing with nature. For some time he wandered about, making desultory
+sketches, and abandoning himself to a melancholy which was closely akin
+to despair. When this feeling was at its height, a friend, before
+unknown, came to his aid.
+
+"A gentleman, whose rich domain he chanced to approach in his wayward
+rovings, perceived his abilities, understood his unhappiness, and
+aroused him from inaction by a call upon his professional skill. The
+artist obeyed, but he could not subdue the mood which possessed him. No
+brilliant scene arose to his fancy, no humorous incident took form and
+color from his pencil, and the fair landscape around appeared to mock
+rather than cheer his destiny. He could not bring himself into relation
+with subjects thus breathing of hope and gayety, but found inspiration
+only in the records of human sorrow. As the royal mourner bade her
+companions sit upon the ground and 'tell sad stories of the death of
+kings,' the pensive artist found something analogous to his own fate in
+the story of Hagar and Ishmael. He painted them as having followed up a
+spent water-course, in hopes of finding wherewith to quench their
+thirst, and sinking under the disappointment. He neither saw nor painted
+the angel of God who showed the fountain in the wilderness, and yet the
+angel was there, for now the sufferer acknowledges that early
+vicissitudes nerved him for high endeavor, rendered his vision piercing,
+his patience strong, and his confidence firm, and that this incidental
+effort to triumph over difficulties was the first of a series which
+inspired his subsequent career."
+
+In 1840 he produced a painting which he called "An Indian Contemplating
+the Setting Sun." It was exhibited in Philadelphia, and won general
+praise for the artist. Better than this, it secured him the friendship
+of the late Edward L. Carey, of that city, who, recognizing his genius,
+determined to help him on in his labors. Mr. Carey was successful in
+inducing his friends to give Leutze a number of commissions, and these
+enabled him to carry out his wish to visit Europe and complete his
+studies. Instead of going to Italy, as was then the almost universal
+practice, he determined to study in Germany, and accordingly sailed for
+that country. He went by way of Holland, and after a long and trying
+voyage reached Amsterdam in January, 1841. Pausing here for awhile to
+familiarize himself with the master-pieces of the Dutch school, he
+repaired to Dusseldorf, where he became a pupil of the celebrated
+painter Lessing, under whom he made marked progress. His reception by
+the artists of Dusseldorf was at once hearty and encouraging, and won
+for that school and its members his enthusiastic devotion. He became
+Lessing's pupil at the personal request of the master, and these two
+gifted men were soon bound to each other by the ties of an undying
+friendship.
+
+Leutze devoted himself to historical subjects from the first, and soon
+after his arrival in Dusseldorf began his picture of "Columbus Before
+the Council of Salamanca." When it was finished, it was visited by
+Director V. Schadow, who praised it warmly, and requested the artist to
+offer it to the Art Union of Dusseldorf, which at once purchased it.
+This high compliment to a beginner and a stranger proved an additional
+stimulus to Leutze, and he soon after produced a companion picture to
+his first, "Columbus in Chains," which procured him the gold medal of
+the Brussels Art Exhibition, and was subsequently purchased by the Art
+Union of New York.
+
+Remaining two years in Dusseldorf, Leutze went to Munich to study the
+works of Cornelius and Kaulbach, and while there painted another scene
+in the life of the Great Discoverer, "Columbus before the Queen." Upon
+completing this picture he went to Venice, Rome, and the other Italian
+cities, making careful studies of the masters of that school. He gave
+two years to his travels, visiting the Tyrol, and reveling in the
+magnificent scenery through which he journeyed. He went into
+Switzerland, sketching the glorious beauties of its Alps, and reached
+the Rhine at Strasbourg. Then, sailing down that beautiful river, he set
+foot once more in Dusseldorf, glad, as he declared, to end his
+wanderings in the midst of his friends. Here he determined to locate
+himself permanently, and soon after his return he married.
+
+He lived in Dusseldorf for fourteen years, devoting himself assiduously
+to his art. His labors were incessant. Historic subjects make up the
+vast bulk of his productions during this period, and in his treatment of
+them he adhered closely to the style of the Dusseldorf school. The best
+known of his works during this portion of his career are "The Landing of
+the Norsemen in America;" "Cromwell and his Daughter;" "The Court of
+Queen Elizabeth;" "Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyn;" "The Iconoclast," and
+his famous and brilliant series of pictures illustrative of the events
+of the American War of Independence. The most prominent of these were,
+"Washington Crossing the Delaware;" "Washington at Monmouth;"
+"Washington at the Battle of Monongahela;" "News from Lexington;"
+"Sergeant Jasper," and "Washington at Princeton." These are fine
+paintings, possessing striking characteristics, and are all more or less
+popular. "Washington Crossing the Delaware" is perhaps the best known,
+since it has been engraved, and sold in all parts of the country in that
+form.
+
+During his absence in Germany, Leutze did not forget the country of his
+choice, as his devotion to American subjects amply testifies. When he
+had won a proud name in his art by his labors in Dusseldorf, and had
+laid by money enough to justify him in returning to a land where art was
+in its infancy, and not over-remunerative, he came back to the United
+States, after an absence of eighteen years, and opened a studio in New
+York. He found a vast improvement in the public taste and in the demand
+for works of art since his departure for the Old World, and, better
+still, found that his peculiar field, the historic, was the one most
+suited to the tastes of the American public.
+
+It was his intention, in coming back to this country, to devote the time
+during which he supposed he would be compelled to wait for orders, to
+looking around him and familiarizing himself with the changes that had
+taken place in the Union during his absence; but he was never able to
+carry out this design, as he had no leisure time. His European
+reputation had preceded him hither, and he had scarcely opened his doors
+in New York before he was obliged to refuse orders, for lack of time to
+execute them. His hands were full from the first, and he at once took
+rank as the most thoroughly popular and accomplished artist in the
+country.
+
+Early in 1860 he received from the Government of the United States a
+commission to decorate one of the marble stairways in the Capitol at
+Washington with a mural painting. The painting was to be executed in
+fresco, and he chose as his subject, "Westward the Star of Empire Takes
+its Way." He entered upon the undertaking with the keenest delight, and
+in order to make himself thoroughly acquainted with the true character
+of frontier scenery and life, performed what was then the long and
+difficult journey to the Rocky Mountains, where he made numerous
+sketches. Returning to the States, he sailed for Europe, and went to
+Munich to learn from Kaulbach the new stereochromatic process which has
+now superseded the fresco-painting of the middle ages. Returning to
+Washington, he applied himself to his task, and in a couple of years
+completed it.
+
+The picture is the largest and finest mural painting in America, and
+adorns the magnificent stairway at the north end of the west corridor of
+the House of Representatives. It is lighted from a sky-light in the
+roof, and is seen to the best advantage from the upper corridor. The
+coloring is softer and more life-like than is often seen in such
+paintings. The surface of the wall is rough, but the work has been done
+by such a master hand that one seems to be gazing upon real life. It is
+a wonderful picture--one that will repay weeks of study.
+
+The scene represents a train of emigrants crossing the Rocky Mountains.
+They have reached the summit of the range, from which a glorious view
+stretches out before them to the westward. The adventurers consist of
+the usual class of emigrants, men, women, and children. There are
+several wagons and a number of horses in the train. The faces of the
+emigrants express the various emotions which fill their hearts as they
+gaze upon the glorious scene before them. Some are full of life and
+vigor, and hope beams in every feature, while others are struggling with
+sickness and despair. The advance of the train has been momentarily
+checked by a huge tree which has fallen across the trail, and two stout
+men, under the direction of the leader of the party, who is sitting on
+his horse, are engaged in hewing it away with axes. Two others have
+climbed to the summit of the neighboring rocky crag, on which they have
+planted the banner of the Republic, which is seen flapping proudly from
+its lofty perch. In the foreground stands a manly youth, clasping his
+father's long rifle firmly, and gazing toward the promised land with a
+countenance glowing with hope and energy. His sister, as hopeful as
+himself, is seated by her mother's side, on a buffalo-robe which has
+been thrown over a rock. The mother's face is sad, but patient. She
+knows well the privations, toils, and hardships which await them in the
+new home-land, but she tries to share the enthusiasm and hope of her
+children. She clasps her nursing infant to her breast, and listens to
+her husband, who stands by and points her to the new country where they
+will have a home of their own. Her face is inexpressibly beautiful. The
+rich, warm light of the rising sun streams brightly over the whole
+scene, and gives to it a magical glow. The legend, "Westward the Star of
+Empire Takes its Way," is inscribed over the painting, in letters of
+gold.
+
+An elaborate illuminated border, illustrative of the advance of
+civilization in the West, surrounds the painting, and is in itself one
+of the most perfect works of art in the Capitol.
+
+Leutze received the sum of $20,000 for this painting. After completing
+it, some matters connected with his family required him to make a visit
+to Dusseldorf, and upon reaching that place he was warmly welcomed by
+the artists, on the 10th of June, 1863, at their club. "About one
+hundred and fifty lords of art," says a letter from Dusseldorf,
+"assembled at the 'Mahlkasten,' just outside of the Hof-Garten. This is
+the club-house of the painters, and, with its gardens, is their
+property. Leutze was received with music, and when he came within reach
+of the assembled company, there was a general rush to shake his hands,
+kiss his cheeks, and hug him. The old fellows were much affected at the
+scene, and were heartily glad to see their old companion once more. The
+guest made a short and feeling address, whereupon all went in to supper.
+Here two of the artists had arrayed themselves, one as a negro, the
+other as an Indian; and these brought in the first dishes and handed
+them to Leutze. Andreas Achenbach sat at Leutze's right, and his old
+friend Tryst at his left. After dinner, the calumet cf peace was passed
+around; there was speaking and drinking of healths, with songs afterward
+in the illuminated garden. The occasion appears to have been a very
+pleasant and right merry one, and is said to have been the happiest
+festival ever given by the Society of Artists."
+
+Returning to the United States a few months later, Leutze repaired to
+Washington, where he had permanently settled. He was given several
+commissions by the Government, and at once began to design his subjects.
+They were only in the cartoon, however, at the time of his death. One of
+these, "Civilization," was to have been placed in the Senate Chamber,
+and was partly finished. It is said to have given promise of being his
+finest production. He also left a sketch of an immense picture, "The
+Emancipation." He was always a hard worker, and this doubtless
+contributed to bring about his death, which took place on the 18th of
+July, 1868. The immediate cause was apoplexy, superinduced by the
+intense heat.
+
+"Mr. Leutze," says a writer in the Annual Cyclopedia, "was altogether
+the best educated artist in America, possessed of vast technical
+learning, of great genius, and fine powers of conception. His weakest
+point was in his coloring, but even here he was superior to most
+others."
+
+"Leutze," says Mr. Tuckerman, "delights in representing adventure. He
+ardently sympathizes with chivalric action and spirit-stirring events:
+not the abstractly beautiful or the simply true, but the heroic, the
+progressive, the individual, and earnest phases of life, warm his fancy
+and attract his pencil. His forte is the dramatic.... If Leutze were not
+a painter, he would certainly join some expedition to the Rocky
+Mountains, thrust himself into a fiery political controversy, or seek to
+wrest a new truth from the arcana of science.... We remember hearing a
+brother artist describe him in his studio at Home, engaged for hours
+upon a picture, deftly shifting palette, cigar, and maul-stick from hand
+to hand, as occasion required; absorbed, rapid, intent, and then
+suddenly breaking from his quiet task to vent his constrained spirits in
+a jovial song, or a romp with his great dog, whose vociferous barking he
+thoroughly enjoyed; and often abandoning his quiet studies for some
+wild, elaborate frolic, as if a row was essential to his happiness. His
+very jokes partook of this bold heartiness of disposition. He scorned
+all ultra refinement, and found his impulse to art not so much in
+delicate perception as in vivid sensation. There was ever a reaction
+from the meditative. His temperament is Teutonic--hardy, cordial, and
+brave. Such men hold the conventional in little reverence, and their
+natures gush like mountain streams, with wild freedom and unchastened
+enthusiasm."
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+DIVINES.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+HENRY WARD BEECHER.
+
+
+Henry Ward Beecher was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, on the 24th of
+June, 1813, and was the eighth child of Dr. Lyman Beecher, the famous
+Presbyterian divine of New England. Dr. Beecher was regarded as one of
+the most powerful champions of orthodox Christianity in the land of the
+pilgrims, and had the good fortune to be the father of a family whose
+members have become celebrated for their intellectual gifts.
+
+The most of these gave early promise of their future distinction, but
+the subject of this memoir was regarded as the dunce of the family. He
+grew up as the children of most New England clergymen of that day
+climbed the road to manhood. His father's family was large, and the
+salary paid by the congregation never exceeded eight hundred dollars,
+and was not always promptly paid at that. The good people of the land of
+steady habits well knew how to drive hard bargains with the Lord's
+messengers, and were adepts in the art of securing the "best talent" at
+the lowest price. The stern, hard struggle for a livelihood in which
+the father was engaged prevented him from giving much personal attention
+to his children, and the mother of young Henry dying when he was but
+three years old, the boy was left very much to himself. Like most
+ministers' children, he was obliged to "set an example to the village,"
+and this boy was dosed with Catechism and his father's stern and gloomy
+theological tenets until he was sick of them.
+
+"In those days," says Mrs. Stowe, "none of the attentions were paid to
+children that are now usual. The community did not recognize them..
+There was no child's literature; there were no children's books. The
+Sunday-school was yet an experiment in a fluctuating, uncertain state of
+trial. There were no children's days of presents and _fetes_, no
+Christmas or New Year's festivals. The annual thanksgiving was only
+associated with one day's unlimited range of pies of every sort--too
+much for one day--and too soon things of the past. The childhood of
+Henry Ward was unmarked by the possession of a single child's toy as a
+gift from any older person, or a single _fete_. Very early, too, strict
+duties devolved upon him. A daily portion of the work of the
+establishment, the care of the domestic animals, the cutting and piling
+of wood, or tasks in the garden, strengthened his muscles and gave vigor
+and tone to his nerves. From his father and mother he inherited a
+perfectly solid, healthy organization of brain, muscle, and nerves, and
+the uncaressing, let-alone system under which he was brought up gave him
+early habits of vigor and self-reliance."
+
+When but three or four years old he was sent to the Widow Kilbourn's
+school, where he said his letters twice a day, and passed the rest of
+his time in hemming a brown towel or a checked apron. It was not
+expected that he would learn very much from Marm Kilbourn, but the
+school kept him out of the way of the "home folks" for the greater part
+of the day.
+
+He was a winning, sweet-faced child, with long golden curls, of which
+he was very proud. Some of his female playfellows at school, thinking it
+a shame that a boy should look so much like a girl, cut off one or two
+of his curls with a pair of shears made of scraps of tin, and when the
+little fellow complained of his loss at home it was decided that the
+best way to protect him from such attacks in future was to cut his hair
+close to his head, which was done at once. Little Henry was commonly
+thought a dull child. His memory was lamentably deficient, and his
+utterance was thick and indistinct, so much so that he could scarcely be
+understood in reading or speaking. This was caused partly by an
+enlargement of the tonsils of his throat, and partly by timidity. The
+policy of repression worked badly in his case, and had there not been so
+much real good at the basis of his character it might have led this
+gentle, yearning boy far from the useful channel along which his life
+has flown.
+
+His stepmother was a lady of fine mental culture, of elegant breeding
+and high character, but she was an invalid, and withal thoroughly imbued
+with the gloomy sternness of her husband's faith. One day little Henry,
+who was barely able to manage the steady-going old family horse, was
+driving her in the chaise. They passed a church on their way, and the
+bell was tolling for a death. "Henry," said Mrs. Beecher, solemnly,
+"what do you think of when you hear a bell tolling like that?" The boy
+colored and hung his head in silence, and the good lady went on. "_I_
+think, was that soul prepared? It has gone into _eternity_." The little
+fellow shuddered, in spite of himself, and thought, no doubt, what a
+dreadful thing it was to be a Christian.
+
+So it was with the religion that was crammed into him. There was no
+effort made to draw him to religion by its beauty and tenderness. He
+rarely heard of the Saviour as the loving one who took little children
+in His arms and blessed them, but was taught to regard Him as a stern
+and merciless judge, as one who, instead of being "touched with the
+feeling of our infirmities," makes those infirmities the means of
+wringing fresh sufferings from us. Sunday was a day of terror to him,
+for on that day the Catechism was administered to him until he was more
+than sick of it. "I think," said he to his congregation, not long since,
+referring to this part of his life, "that to force childhood to
+associate religion with such dry morsels is to violate the spirit, not
+only of the New Testament, but of common sense as well. I know one
+thing, that if I am 'lax and latitudinarian,' the Sunday Catechism is to
+blame for a part of it. The dinners that I have lost because I could not
+go through 'sanctification,' and 'justification,' and 'adoption,' and
+all such questions, lie heavily on my memory! I do not know that they
+have brought forth any blossoms. I have a kind of grudge against many of
+those truths that I was taught in my childhood, and I am not conscious
+that they have waked up a particle of faith in me. My good old aunt in
+heaven--I wonder what she is doing. I take it that she now sits
+beauteous, clothed in white, that round about her sit chanting cherub
+children, and that she is opening to them from her larger range sweet
+stories, every one fraught with thought, and taste, and feeling, and
+lifting them up to a higher plane. One Sunday afternoon with my aunt
+Esther did me more good than forty Sundays in church with my father. He
+thundered over my head, and she sweetly instructed me down in my heart.
+The promise that she would read Joseph's history to me on Sunday was
+enough to draw a silver thread of obedience through the entire week; and
+if I was tempted to break my promise, I said, 'No; Aunt Esther is going
+to read on Sunday;' and I would do, or I would not do, all through the
+week, for the sake of getting that sweet instruction on Sunday.
+
+"And to parents I say, Truth is graded. Some parts of God's truth are
+for childhood, some parts are for the nascent intellectual period, and
+some parts are for later spiritual developments. Do not take the last
+things first. Do not take the latest processes of philosophy and bring
+them prematurely to the understanding. In teaching truth to your
+children, you are to avoid tiring them."
+
+"The greatest trial of those days," says Mrs. Stowe, "was the Catechism.
+Sunday lessons were considered by the mother-in-law as inflexible duty,
+and the Catechism as the _sine qua non_. The other children memorized
+readily, and were brilliant reciters, but Henry, blushing, stammering,
+confused, and hopelessly miserable, stuck fast on some sand-bank of what
+is required or forbidden by this or that commandment, his mouth choking
+up with the long words which he hopelessly miscalled, was sure to be
+accused of idleness or inattention, and to be solemnly talked to, which
+made him look more stolid and miserable than ever, but appeared to have
+no effect in quickening his dormant faculties."
+
+At the age of ten he was a well-grown, stout, stocky boy, strong and
+hearty, trained to hard work, and to patient obedience of his elders. He
+was tolerably well drilled in Calvinism, and had his head pretty well
+filled with snatches of doctrine which he caught from his father's
+constant discussions; but he was very backward in his education. He was
+placed at the school of the Rev. Mr. Langdon, at Bethlehem, Connecticut,
+and it was hoped that the labors of this excellent tutor would result in
+making something of him. He spent a winter at this school, and boarded
+at a neighboring farm-house, whose kind-hearted mistress soon became so
+much attached to him that she indulged him to an extent which he had
+never known at home. With his gun on his shoulder, he passed the greater
+part of his hours out of school in tramping over the pretty Connecticut
+hills, in search of game, or, lying down on the soft grass, would pass
+hours in gazing on the beautiful landscape, listening to the dull whirr
+of the partridges in the stubble-field or the dropping of the ripe
+apples in the orchard. The love of nature was strong in the boy, and his
+wonderful mistress taught him many of the profoundest lessons of his
+life. He made poor progress at the school, however, and his father was
+almost in despair. The whole family shook their heads in solemn
+forebodings over the failure of this child of ten to become a mental
+prodigy.
+
+Miss Catharine Beecher, his eldest sister, was then teaching a young
+ladies' school in Hartford, and she proposed to take the boy and see
+what could be done with him. There were thirty or forty girls in the
+school, and but this one boy, and the reader may imagine the amount of
+studying he did. The girls were full of spirits, and in their society
+the fun-loving feature of his disposition burst out and grew with
+amazing rapidity. He was always in mischief of some kind, to the great
+delight of the girls, with whom he was extremely popular, and to the
+despair of his sister, who began to fear that he was hopelessly stupid.
+
+The school was divided into two divisions in grammar recitations, each
+of which had its leader. The leaders chose their "sides" with great
+care, as these contests in grammar were esteemed the most important part
+of the daily exercises. Henry's name was generally called last, for no
+one chose him except as a matter of necessity. He was sure to be a dead
+weight to his leader.
+
+"The fair leader of one of these divisions took the boy aside to a
+private apartment, to put into him with female tact and insinuation
+those definitions and distinctions on which the honor of the class
+depended.
+
+"'Now, Henry, A is the indefinite article, you see, and must be used
+only with the singular noun. You can say _a man_, but you can't say _a
+men_, can you?' 'Yes, I can say _Amen_, too,' was the ready rejoinder.
+'Father says it always at the end of his prayers.'
+
+"'Come, Henry, now don't be joking. Now, decline He.' 'Nominative he,
+possessive his, objective him.' 'You see, his is possessive. Now, you
+can say his book, but you can't say him book.' 'Yes, I do say hymn book,
+too,' said the impracticable scholar, with a quizzical twinkle. Each one
+of these sallies made his young teacher laugh, which was the victory he
+wanted.
+
+"'But now, Henry, seriously, just attend to the active and passive
+voice. Now, _I strike_, is active, you see, because if you strike you do
+something. But, _I am struck_, is passive, because if you are struck you
+don't do any thing, do you?'
+
+"'Yes, I do; I strike back again.'
+
+"Sometimes his views of philosophical subjects were offered
+gratuitously. Being held rather of a frisky nature, his sister appointed
+his seat at her elbow when she heard her classes. A class in natural
+philosophy, not very well prepared, was stumbling through the theory of
+the tides. 'I can explain that,' said Henry. 'Well, you see, the sun, he
+catches hold of the moon and pulls her, and she catches hold of the sea
+and pulls that, and this makes the spring tides.'
+
+"'But what makes the neap tides?'
+
+"'Oh, that's when the sun stops to spit on his hands.'"
+
+It will hardly surprise the reader to be told that Master Henry
+remained with his sister only six months, and was returned at the end of
+that time to his father as an indifferent scholar and a most inveterate
+joker.
+
+A change now occurred in his life. When he was twelve years old his
+father removed to Boston to assume the charge of the Hanover-Street
+Church. Here the boy had a chance to see something more than nature, and
+to employ his powers of observation in receiving impressions from the
+daily life and aspect of a large and crowded city. His father entered
+him at the Boston Latin School, and appealed to him not to disgrace his
+name any longer by his stupidity. The appeal roused the little fellow's
+pride, and he set to work to show to his family that he was not the
+dunce they had thought him. He went at his studies manfully, mastering
+the tedious puzzle of the Latin verbs and nouns, and acquiring a
+respectable acquaintance with the grammar of that language. It was a
+terrible task to him, for he had no liking for the language, and did his
+work merely to please his father and escape disgrace. His success cost
+him a share of his health, and his vigorous constitution began to show
+the effects of such intense application. His father noticed this, and as
+a diversion to his mind advised him to enter upon a course of
+biographical reading. He read the lives of Captain Cook, Nelson, and the
+great naval commanders of the world, and at once became possessed of the
+desire to go to sea. This feeling made him restless and discontented,
+and he resolved to leave home and ship on board some vessel sailing from
+the harbor. He hovered about the wharves, conversing with the sailors
+and captains, and sometimes carrying his little bundle with him. But the
+thoughts of home were too strong for him, and he could never quite
+summon up resolution enough to run away. In a fit of desperation he
+wrote a letter to his brother, telling him of his wish to go to sea, and
+informing him that he should first ask his father's permission, and if
+that were not granted he should go without it. This letter he dropped
+where his father would be sure to find it. The old gentleman soon
+discovered it, and, reading it, put it into his pocket without comment.
+The next day he asked the boy if he had ever thought of any definite
+avocation for his future life.
+
+"Yes," said Henry, "I want to go to sea. I want to enter the navy, be a
+midshipman, and rise to be a commander."
+
+"Oh, I see," said the Doctor, cheerfully; "but in order to prepare for
+that you must study mathematics and navigation."
+
+"I am ready, sir."
+
+"Very well. I'll send you up to Amherst next week, to Mount Pleasant,
+and then you'll begin your preparatory studies at once. As soon as you
+are well prepared, I presume I can make interest to get you an
+appointment."
+
+The boy was delighted, and the next week started for Amherst. The Doctor
+felt sure that the sailor scheme would never come to any thing, and
+exclaimed, exultantly, as he bade his son good-by, "I shall have that
+boy in the ministry yet."
+
+At the Mount Pleasant Institute he roomed with his teacher in
+mathematics, a young man named Fitzgerald, and a warm friendship sprung
+up between them. Fitzgerald saw that his pupil had no natural talent or
+taste for mathematics; but instead of despairing in consequence of this
+discovery, he redoubled his efforts. Appealing to his pupil's pride and
+ambition, he kept him well to his task, and succeeded in implanting in
+him a fair knowledge of the science. Young Beecher also took lessons in
+elocution from Professor John E. Lovell. Under the instructions of this
+able teacher, he learned to manage his voice, and to overcome the
+thickness and indistinctness of utterance which previous to this had
+troubled him so much. He continued at this school for three years,
+devoting himself to study with determination and success, and taking
+rank as one of the most promising pupils of the school.
+
+During his first year at Mount Pleasant, he became deeply impressed with
+a sense of his religious responsibility at a famous revival which was
+held in the place, and from that time resolved to devote himself
+entirely to preparing for his entrance into the ministry when he should
+attain the proper age. Henceforth he applied himself with characteristic
+energy to his studies and to his religious duties, and rose steadily in
+the esteem of his teachers and friends. He entered Amherst College upon
+the completion of his preparatory course, and graduated from that
+institution in 1834.
+
+In 1832, Dr. Beecher removed from Boston to Cincinnati, to enter upon
+the Presidency of Lane Seminary, to which he had been elected. Henry
+followed him to the West after his graduation at Amherst, and completed
+his theological studies at the seminary, under the tuition of his father
+and Professor Stowe, the latter of whom married Henry's sister Harriet,
+in 1836. Having finished his course, he was ordained.
+
+"As the time drew near in which Mr. Beecher was to assume the work of
+the ministry," says Mrs. Stowe, "he was oppressed by a deep melancholy.
+He had the most exalted ideas of what ought to be done by a Christian
+minister. He had transferred to that profession all those ideals of
+courage, enterprise, zeal, and knightly daring which were the dreams of
+his boyhood, and which he first hoped to realize in the naval
+profession. He felt that the holy calling stood high above all others;
+that to enter it from any unholy motive, or to enter and not do a worthy
+work in it, was a treason to all honor.
+
+"His view of the great object of the ministry was sincerely and heartily
+the same with that of his father, to secure the regeneration of the
+individual heart by the Divine Spirit, and thereby to effect the
+regeneration of human society. The problem that oppressed him was, how
+to do this. His father had used certain moral and intellectual weapons,
+and used them strongly and effectively, because employing them with
+undoubting faith. So many other considerations had come into his mind to
+qualify and limit that faith, so many new modes of thought and inquiry,
+that were partially inconsistent with the received statements of his
+party, that he felt he could never grasp and wield them with the force
+which could make them efficient. It was no comfort to him that he could
+wield the weapons of his theological party so as to dazzle and confound
+objectors, while all the time conscious in his own soul of objections
+more profound and perplexities more bewildering. Like the shepherd boy
+of old, he saw the giant of sin stalking through the world, defying the
+armies of the living God, and longed to attack him, but the armor in
+which he had been equipped for the battle was no help, but only an
+incumbrance!
+
+"His brother, who studied with him, had already become an unbeliever and
+thrown up the design of preaching, and he could not bear to think of
+adding to his father's trials by deserting the standard. Yet his
+distress and perplexity were so great that at times he seriously
+contemplated going into some other profession....
+
+"In his last theological term he took a Bible class in the city of
+Cincinnati, and began studying and teaching the Evangelists. With the
+course of this study and teaching came a period of spiritual
+clairvoyance. His mental perplexities were relieved, and the great
+question of 'what to preach' was solved. The shepherd boy laid aside his
+cumbrous armor, and found in a clear brook a simple stone that smote
+down the giant; and so, from the clear waters of the Gospel narrative
+Mr. Beecher drew forth that 'white stone with a new name,' which was to
+be the talisman of his ministry. To present Jesus Christ personally as
+the Friend and Helper of humanity, Christ as God impersonate, eternally
+and by a necessity of His nature helpful, and remedial, and restorative;
+the Friend of each individual soul, and thus the Friend of all
+society,--this was the one thing which his soul rested on as a worthy
+object in entering the ministry. He afterward said, in speaking of his
+feelings at this time,'I was like the man in the story to whom a fairy
+gave a purse with a single piece of money in it, which he found always
+came again as soon as he had spent it. I thought I knew at least one
+thing to preach. I found it included every thing.'"
+
+Upon being ordained, Mr. Beecher married, and accepted a call to
+Lawrenceburg, Indiana, a little town on the Ohio River, about twenty
+miles below Cincinnati. His salary was small and the work was hard. He
+was not only pastor, but sexton as well, and in this capacity he swept
+out the church, made the fires, filled and trimmed the lamps, and rang
+the bell. Says he, "I did all but come to hear myself preach--that they
+had to do."
+
+He did not remain here long, however, but soon accepted a call to
+Indianapolis, the capital of the State, where he lived for eight years.
+He occupied a tasteful cottage on the outskirts of the town, and
+gathered about him his household treasures, which consisted of his
+family, his library, his horse, cow, pigs, and chickens. He was an
+enthusiast in matters of agriculture and horticulture, and besides
+importing from the East the best varieties of fruit-trees, roses, etc.,
+he edited a horticultural paper, which had a fair circulation.
+
+The eight years of his ministry in Indianapolis make up a period of hard
+and useful work. He held two services on Sunday, and five meetings
+during the week in various parts of the city, and with the consent of
+his people gave three months of each year to missionary work in other
+parts of the State. While engaged in this latter duty he traveled about
+the State on horseback and preached daily.
+
+His experience in the ministry, as well as his study of the lives of the
+apostles, convinced him that success in his profession--by which I mean
+the successful winning of souls to God--was not to be won by preaching
+controversial or dry doctrinal sermons. He must seize upon some vital
+truth, admitted by all parties, and bring that home to men's minds. He
+must preach to them of their daily, hourly trials and temptations, joys
+and comforts, and he resolved that this should be the character of his
+preaching. Then came the question, how shall one man know that which is
+uppermost in the thoughts of the many? He went into the places of public
+resort, where men were accustomed to lounge and to gather to hear the
+news, and made it his practice to listen to their conversations. In this
+way he began to know the people to whom he preached as few pastors know
+their flocks, and he was enabled by this knowledge to apply his
+teachings to their daily lives, and to send them forth to their duties
+warned by his reproofs or cheered by his intelligent counsel and
+sympathy. This practice, modified at times as circumstances have
+required, he has steadfastly continued, and in it lies the secret of his
+success as a preacher. Said a gentleman, not long since, himself a
+member of a different denomination, "Beecher's sermons do me more good
+than any I hear elsewhere. They never fail to touch upon some topic of
+importance that has engaged my thoughts during the week. Dropping all
+doctrinal technicalities, and steering clear of the vexed questions of
+theology, he talks to me in such a way that I am able to carry Christ
+into the most trifling of my daily affairs, and to carry Him there as my
+Sympathizer and Helper, as well as my Judge." He soon became the most
+popular preacher in the city, and, thanks to the genuineness of his
+gifts and the earnestness of his zeal, he was enabled to add many to the
+kingdom of Christ who had been drawn to hear him merely by their
+curiosity. Among these was his brother Charles, whose skepticism has
+been spoken of elsewhere in this chapter. Becoming deeply impressed at a
+revival in Indianapolis, Charles Beecher, by his brother's advice, took
+a Bible class, and began to teach the story of Christ. The plan worked
+most happily. Charles solved all the questions which had perplexed his
+mind, reentered upon his religious life with increased fervor, and soon
+afterward entered the ministry.
+
+In August, 1847, Mr. Beecher received a call to Plymouth Church,
+Brooklyn, which had just been founded. He promptly accepted it. Breaking
+up his home in Indiana, he removed to Brooklyn, and was publicly
+installed pastor of Plymouth Church on the 11th of November, 1847. He at
+once "announced in Plymouth pulpit the same principles that he had in
+Indianapolis, namely, his determination to preach Christ among them not
+as an absolute system of doctrines, not as a bygone historical
+personage, but as the living Lord and God, and to bring all the ways and
+usages of society to the test of His standards. He announced to all whom
+it might concern, that he considered temperance and antislavery as a
+part of the Gospel of Christ, and should preach them to the people
+accordingly."
+
+It is no part of my purpose to consider Mr. Beecher as a politician. I
+deal with him here not as the partisan of a political organization, but
+as a minister of the Gospel. In politics he has always been a Republican
+of the Radical type, but has generally inclined to a conservative
+construction of that creed. Many of his warmest friends take issue with
+him in his political views, and he has not always been able to lead his
+congregation with him in this respect.
+
+Soon after assuming the charge of Plymouth Church Mr. Beecher became a
+regular contributor to "The Independent," a paper which he had helped to
+establish. His articles were marked with an asterisk, and were widely
+read. They dealt with every topic of interest, principally with slavery,
+and were vigorous and full of thought. A number of them were afterward
+collected and published in book form as the "Star Papers." Since then he
+has acted as editor of "The Independent," and is at present the editor
+of "The Christian Union." He has written a novel of New England life,
+called "Norwood," for "The New York Ledger," and still writes a weekly
+paper for that journal. He is at present engaged upon a "Life of
+Christ," which is to be the crowning labor of his life. Besides these
+labors, he has been until recently almost constantly in the lecture
+field, and has spoken frequently before popular assemblies on the
+political questions of the day.
+
+These labors have filled up the leisure time left him after discharging
+his duties as pastor of his church, which have never been neglected upon
+any occasion. In this field his work has been faithful and constant. He
+has labored in it for nearly twenty-three years, and his work has not
+been without its reward. Such sermons as his could not fail of doing
+good even if spoken to half a dozen people. How great, then, must be
+their effect when addressed to the vast audiences to which he speaks!
+His congregation averages over twenty-five hundred at every service,
+being the largest regular congregation in existence. His sermons are
+reported by a stenographer, and are printed each week in pamphlet form,
+and in this manner find their way into thousands of hands. The "Plymouth
+Pulpit," in which they are published, has a regular weekly circulation
+of six thousand copies, and it is estimated that each copy is read by
+at least five persons, which gives the preacher, in addition to his own
+congregation, an audience of more than thirty thousand persons per week.
+
+When Plymouth Church was organized, the wise heads predicted a failure
+for it; but it has grown and prospered, until it is now the most compact
+and the best organized congregation in America. It is dependent upon no
+synod or other religious body, but manages its affairs entirely as
+it pleases. The control is vested in a board of trustees, of which Mr.
+Beecher is _ex-officio_ a member. He has no superiority in this board
+unless called by its members to preside over its meetings. His influence
+is of course all-powerful; but as the trustees are shrewd business men,
+they sometimes carry out their own views in preference to his. The
+church is supported by the sale of its pews. This yields it an annual
+income of between forty and fifty thousand dollars. The pastor receives
+a handsome salary--said to be the largest in the United States--and the
+rest goes into the treasury of the church. As the period of the annual
+sale of pews approaches, Mr. Beecher makes it his practice to preach a
+sermon in which he reviews the questions of the day, and as far as
+possible marks out his course with regard to them during the ensuing
+year. This he does in order that every one purchasing a seat in Plymouth
+Church may know just what is in store for him from the pulpit. The
+surplus revenue, after the pastor's salary and the current expenses are
+paid, has until recently been devoted to extinguishing the debt upon the
+church. That burden now being off the shoulders of the congregation, the
+money is applied to missionary work in Brooklyn. "Two missions have been
+largely supported by the funds derived from Plymouth Church, and the
+time and personal labor of its members. A mechanics' reading-room is
+connected with one of these. No church in the country furnishes a
+larger body of lay teachers, exhorters, and missionaries in every
+department of human and Christian labor."
+
+Plymouth Church is located in Orange Street, between Hicks and Henry
+Streets, in Brooklyn, and not far from the Fulton Ferry. Many strangers,
+whose expectations are based upon the fame of the pastor, are
+disappointed in the plain and simple exterior of red brick, as they come
+prepared to see a magnificent Gothic temple. The interior, however,
+rarely fails to please all comers. It is plain and simple, but elegant
+and comfortable. It is a vast hall, around the four sides of which
+sweeps an immense gallery. The interior is painted white, with a tinge
+of pink, and the carpets and cushions of the seats are of a rich, warm
+red. The rows of seats in the body of the church are semicircular, and
+those in the gallery rise as in an amphitheater, from the front to the
+wall. At the far end of the church is a raised platform containing
+merely a chair and a table. The table is a pretty ornament, and is the
+"Plymouth Pulpit." It is made of wood brought from the Garden of
+Gethsemane. In the gallery behind the pulpit is the great organ--one of
+the largest and finest in the Union. The church will seat over
+twenty-five hundred people, but in order to do this, chairs are placed
+in the aisles. These chairs are sold as well as the pews.
+
+Every Sunday morning the streets are filled with persons on their way to
+attend the services at Plymouth Church. They come not only from
+Brooklyn, but from New York, and even from Jersey City and Hoboken. The
+yard and street in front of the church are quickly filled with the
+throng, but the doors are guarded by policemen, and none but pew-holders
+are permitted to enter the church until ten minutes before the hour for
+service. Without this precaution the regular congregation would be
+crowded out of their seats every Sunday by strangers.
+
+At ten minutes before the hour for service the doors are thrown open,
+and very soon there is not even standing room in the vast interior, and
+generally the vestibules are full.
+
+Near the pulpit is placed a basket of exquisite flowers, and sometimes
+the entire platform is decorated in the same way. Most commonly some
+little child perches itself up among the flowers, and this pretty sight
+never fails to bring a smile of pleasure to the pastor's face as he
+enters the church. He comes in through a little door under the gallery,
+behind the pulpit. He is dressed in a plain suit of black, with a Byron
+collar and a black stock. His movements are quiet and graceful, although
+quick and energetic. His manner in opening the services is quiet and
+earnest, and at once impresses his hearers with the solemnity of the
+occasion. He reads the Bible in an easy, unconstrained manner, as if he
+enjoyed the task, and in his prayers, which are extempore, he carries
+the hearts of all his hearers with him to the Throne of Grace. He joins
+heartily in the singing, which is congregational. It was feared that the
+organ would prove a great temptation to do away with this style of
+singing, but this has not been the case. The magnificent instrument is
+used only to accompany the congregation, and there swells up such a
+volume of harmony from this vast throng as is never listened to outside
+of Plymouth Church. The singing is wonderful.
+
+The gem of the whole service, however, is the sermon; and these sermons
+are characteristic of the man. They come warm and fresh from his heart,
+and they go home to the hearer, giving him food for thought for days
+afterward. To attempt to describe his manner would be to paint the
+sunbeam. Eloquence can be felt, but it can not be described. He enchains
+the attention of his auditors from the first, and they hang upon his
+utterances with rapt eagerness until the close of the sermon.
+
+He knows human nature thoroughly, and he talks to his people of what
+they have been thinking of during the week, of trials that have
+perplexed them, and of joys which have blessed them. He takes the clerk
+and the merchant to task for their conduct in the walks of business, and
+warns them of the snares and pitfalls which lie along their paths. He
+strips the thin guise of honesty from the questionable transactions of
+Wall Street, and holds them up to public scorn. He startles many a one
+by his sudden penetration and denunciation of what that one supposes to
+be the secrets of his heart. His dramatic power is extraordinary. He can
+hardly be responsible for it, since it breaks forth almost without his
+will. It is simply unavoidable with him. He moves his audience to tears,
+or brings a mirthful smile to their lips, with a power that is
+irresistible. His illustrations and figures are drawn chiefly from
+nature, and are fresh and striking. They please the subtlest philosopher
+who hears him, and illuminate the mind of the average listener with a
+flood of light. He can startle his people with the terrors of the law,
+but he prefers to preach the Gospel of Love. "God's love for those who
+are scattered and lost," he says, "is intenser and deeper than the love
+even of a mother.... God longs to bring you home more than you long to
+get there. He has been calling, calling, calling, and listening for your
+answer. And when you are found, and you lay your head on the bosom of
+Jesus, and you are at rest, you will not be so glad as He will be who
+declared that, like a shepherd, he had joy over one sinner that repented
+more than over ninety and nine just persons that needed no repentance."
+
+Religion is to him an abiding joy; it is perfect love, and casteth out
+fear. It has no gloom, no terror in it, and he says to his people: "If
+God gave you gayety and cheer of spirits, lift up the careworn by it.
+Wherever you go, shine and sing. In every household there is drudgery;
+in every household there is sorrow; in every household there is
+low-thoughted evil. If you come as a prince, with a cheerful, buoyant
+nature, in the name of God, do not lay aside those royal robes of yours.
+Let humor bedew duty; let it flash across care. Let gayety take charge
+of dullness. So employ these qualities that they shall be to life what
+carbonic acid is to wine, making it foam and sparkle."
+
+The sum and substance, the burden of all his preaching is Christ:
+"'Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world!' I
+present Jesus to you as the atoning Saviour; as God's sacrifice for sin;
+as that new and living way by which alone a sinful creature can ascend
+and meet a pure and just God. I bring this question home to you as a
+sinner. O man! full of transgressions, habitual in iniquities, tainted
+and tarnished, utterly undone before God, what will you do with this
+Jesus that comes as God's appointed sacrifice for sin, your only hope
+and your only Saviour? Will you accept him? Will you, by personal and
+living faith, accept him as your Saviour from sin? I ask not that you
+should go with me into a discourse upon the relations of Christ's life,
+of his sufferings, of his death; to the law of God, or to the government
+of God. Whatever may be the philosophy of those relations, the matter in
+hand is one of faith rather than of philosophy; and the question is,
+Will you take Christ to be your soul's Saviour?"
+
+Having selected his theme, and formed a general plan of treatment, Mr.
+Beecher trusts a great deal to the inspiration of the moment for his
+language and illustrations. Some time ago, in reply to a friend who
+asked how he prepared his sermons, he said he generally has an idea
+during the week as to what he will preach about on Sunday, but does not
+attempt any thing like systematic preparation until an hour or two
+before going into the pulpit. Sometimes it is easy to block out a
+sermon; but again it is hard work, and he does not fairly get into it
+until the first bell rings. He writes out the headings of his subject,
+and marks the proper places for illustration. He does not confine
+himself to this written outline, however, but, once in the pulpit,
+changes it according to the impulse of the moment. He never preaches the
+same sermon twice, though he may use the same text several times,
+treating it in a different way each time. He endeavors to preach his
+best sermons on stormy days, in order that the desire to hear his best
+efforts may keep his congregation from degenerating into "fair-weather
+Christians." "Once," he said, laughing, "it snowed or rained every
+Sabbath in a certain winter, and the effort I had to make to remain
+faithful to this rule came near killing me." When asked if he studied
+his prayers, he answered promptly: "Never. I carry a feeling with me
+such as a mother would have for her children were they lost in a great
+forest. I feel that on every side my people are in danger, and that many
+of them are like babes, weak and helpless. My heart goes out in sorrow
+and in anxiety toward them, and at times I seem to carry all their
+burdens. I find that when one's heart is wrapped and twined around the
+hearts of others, it is not difficult to pray."
+
+The church is provided with a large lecture-room, a study for the
+pastor, and an elegant parlor. Mr. Beecher does not pay pastoral visits
+to his people, unless he is sent for to visit the sick and dying, or
+persons seeking help in their religious struggles. His parishioners are
+scattered over so wide a territory that a systematic course of visiting
+would consume all his time. In place of these visits, he meets his
+congregation at stated times in social gatherings in the church parlor,
+and these evenings are looked forward to with eagerness by both pastor
+and people.
+
+The most characteristic meeting of this congregation, however, even more
+so than the Sunday services, is the Friday evening meeting, which is
+held in the lecture-room. This room is plain and simple. It is provided
+with comfortable seats and a grand piano. There is no pulpit in it, but
+a small table and a chair are placed for the pastor on a low platform
+covered with green baize. The object is to banish every thing like
+formalism, and to make the meeting as free and unconstrained as a social
+gathering. As at the Sunday services, the house is full, but now the
+persons present are almost entirely members of the church. Strangers
+rarely come to these meetings, and in staying away from them miss the
+chance of seeing the true inner life of Plymouth Church. A gentleman who
+was present at one of them, a few years ago, wrote the following account
+of it for the "Atlantic Monthly:"
+
+
+     Mr. Beecher took his seat on the platform, and, after a short
+     pause, began the exercises by saying, in a low tone, these words:
+     "Six twenty-two."
+
+     A rustling of the leaves of hymn-books interpreted the meaning of
+     this mystical utterance, which otherwise might have been taken as
+     announcing a discourse upon the prophetic numbers. The piano
+     confirmed the interpretation; and then the company burst into one
+     of those joyous and unanimous singings which are so enchanting a
+     feature of the services of this church. Loud rose the beautiful
+     harmony of voices, constraining every one to join in the song, even
+     those most unused to sing. When it was ended, the pastor, in the
+     same low tone, pronounced a name, upon which one of the brethren
+     rose to his feet, and the rest slightly inclined v their heads....
+     The prayers were all brief, perfectly quiet and simple, and free
+     from the routine or regulation expressions. There were but two or
+     three of them, alternating with singing; and when that part of the
+     exercises was concluded, Mr. Beecher had scarcely spoken. The
+     meeting ran alone, in the most spontaneous and pleasant manner....
+     There was a pause after the last hymn died away, and then Mr.
+     Beecher, still seated, began, in the tone of conversation, to speak
+     somewhat after this manner:
+
+     "When," said he, "I first began to walk as a Christian, in my
+     youthful zeal I made many resolutions that were well meant, but
+     indiscreet. Among others, I remember I resolved to pray, at least
+     once, in some way, every hour that I was awake. I tried faithfully
+     to keep this resolution, but never having succeeded a single day, I
+     suffered the pangs of self-reproach, until reflection satisfied me
+     that the only wisdom possible, with regard to such a resolve, was
+     to break it. I remember, too, that I made a resolution to speak
+     upon religion to every person with whom I conversed,--on
+     steamboats, in the streets, anywhere. In this, also, I failed, as I
+     ought; and I soon learned that, in the sowing of such seed, as in
+     other sowings, times, and seasons, and methods must be considered
+     and selected, or a man may defeat his own object, and make religion
+     loathsome."
+
+     In language like this he introduced the topic of the evening's
+     conversation, which was, How far, and on what occasions, and in
+     what manner, one person may invade, so to speak, the personality of
+     another, and speak to him upon his moral condition. The pastor
+     expressed his own opinion, always in the conversational tone, in a
+     talk of ten minutes' duration, in the course of which he applauded,
+     not censured, the delicacy which causes most people to shrink from
+     doing it. He said that a man's personality was not a macadamized
+     road for every vehicle to drive upon at will, but rather a sacred
+     inclosure, to be entered, if at all, with the consent of the owner,
+     and with deference to his feelings and tastes. He maintained,
+     however, that there _were_ times and modes in which this might
+     properly be done, and that every one _had_ a duty to perform of
+     this nature. When he had finished his observations, he said the
+     subject was open to the remarks of others; whereupon a brother
+     instantly rose and made a very honest confession.
+
+     He said that he had never attempted to perform the duty in question
+     without having a palpitation of the heart, and a complete turning
+     over of his inner man. He had often reflected upon this curious
+     fact, but was not able to account for it. He had not allowed this
+     repugnance to prevent his doing the duty; but he always had to rush
+     at it and perform it by a sort of _coup de main_, for if he allowed
+     himself to think about the matter, he could not do it at all. He
+     concluded by saying that he should be very much obliged to any one
+     if he could explain this mystery.
+
+     The pastor said: "May it not be the natural delicacy we feel, and
+     ought to feel, in approaching the interior consciousness of another
+     person?"
+
+     Another brother rose. There was no hanging back at this meeting;
+     there were no awkward pauses; every one seemed full of matter. The
+     new speaker was not inclined to admit the explanation suggested by
+     the pastor. "Suppose," said he, "we were to see a man in imminent
+     danger of immediate destruction, and there was one way of escape,
+     and but one, which _we_ saw, and he did not, should we feel any
+     delicacy in running up to him and urging him to fly for his life?
+     Is it not a want of faith on our part that causes the reluctance
+     and hesitation we all feel in urging others to avoid a peril so
+     much more momentous?"
+
+     Mr. Beecher said the cases were not parallel. Irreligious persons,
+     he remarked, were not in imminent danger of immediate death; they
+     might die to-morrow; but in all probability they would not, and an
+     ill-timed or injudicious admonition might forever repel them. We
+     must accept the doctrine of probabilities, and act in accordance
+     with it in this particular, as in all others.
+
+     Another brother had a puzzle to present for solution. He said that
+     he too had experienced the repugnance to which allusion had been
+     made; but what surprised him most was, that the more he loved a
+     person, and the nearer he was related to him, the more difficult he
+     found it to converse with him upon his spiritual state. Why is
+     this? "I should like to have this question answered," said he, "if
+     there _is_ an answer to it."
+
+     Mr. Beecher observed that this was the universal experience, and he
+     was conscious himself of a peculiar reluctance and embarrassment in
+     approaching one of his own household on the subject in question. He
+     thought it was due to the fact that we respect more the personal
+     rights of those near to us than we do those of others, and it was
+     more difficult to break in upon the routine of our ordinary
+     familiarity with them. We are accustomed to a certain tone which it
+     is highly embarrassing to jar upon.
+
+     Captain Duncan related two amusing anecdotes to illustrate the
+     right way and the wrong way of introducing religious conversation.
+     In his office there was sitting one day a sort of lay preacher, who
+     was noted for lugging in his favorite topic in the most forbidding
+     and abrupt manner. A sea captain came in, who was introduced to
+     this individual.
+
+     "Captain Porter," said he, with awful solemnity, "are you a captain
+     in Israel?"
+
+     The honest sailor was so abashed and confounded at this novel
+     salutation, that he could only stammer out an incoherent reply; and
+     he was evidently disposed to give the tactless zealot a piece of
+     his mind, expressed in the language of the quarter-deck. When the
+     solemn man took his leave, the disgusted captain said, "If ever I
+     should be coming to your office again, and that man should be here,
+     I wish you would send me word, and I'll stay away."
+
+     A few days after another clergyman chanced to be in the office, no
+     other than Mr. Beecher himself, and another captain came in, a
+     roistering, swearing, good-hearted fellow. The conversation fell
+     upon sea-sickness, a malady to which Mr. Beecher is peculiarly
+     liable. The captain also was one of the few sailors who are always
+     sea-sick in going to sea, and gave a moving account of his
+     sufferings from that cause. Mr. Beecher, after listening
+     attentively to his tale, said, "Captain Duncan, if I was a preacher
+     to such sailors as your friend here, I should represent hell as an
+     eternal voyage, with every man on board in the agonies of
+     sea-sickness, the crisis always imminent, but never coming."
+
+     This ludicrous and most unprofessional picture amused the old salt
+     exceedingly, and won his entire good will toward the author of it;
+     so that after Mr. Beecher left, he said, "That's a good fellow,
+     Captain Duncan. I like _him_, and I'd like to hear him talk more."
+
+     Captain Duncan contended that this free and easy way of address was
+     just the thing for such characters. Mr. Beecher had shown him, to
+     his great surprise, that a man could be a decent and comfortable
+     human being although he was a minister, and had so gained his
+     confidence and good will that he could say _any thing_ to him at
+     their next interview. Captain Duncan finished his remarks by a
+     decided expression of his disapproval of the canting regulation
+     phrases so frequently employed by religious people, which are
+     perfectly nauseous to men of the world.
+
+     This interesting conversation lasted about three-quarters of an
+     hour, and ended, not because the theme seemed exhausted, but
+     because the time was up. We have only given enough of it to convey
+     some little idea of its spirit. The company again broke into one
+     of their cheerful hymns, and the meeting was dismissed in the usual
+     manner.
+
+
+During the late war, Mr. Beecher took an active and energetic part in
+support of the cause of the Union. His labors were so severe that his
+health was considerably impaired, and his voice began to fail him. His
+physicians ordered him to seek rest and recreation in a tour through
+Europe, and he reluctantly obeyed them. He was much benefited by his
+visit to the Continent, but on his return to England, on his way home,
+being solicited to speak in that country in behalf of the Union, he
+delivered a series of powerful appeals, which exhausted the greater part
+of the strength he had gained on the Continent, and caused him to return
+home almost as ill as when he went abroad.
+
+Soon after his return the war closed, and he went to Charleston to
+deliver the address at Fort Sumter upon the occasion of the rehoisting
+of the flag of the United States over that work. The news of the
+assassination of Mr. Lincoln met him upon his return to Brooklyn, and
+drew from him one of his most memorable sermons. At the close of
+hostilities, he preached a sermon to his congregation, urging
+forgiveness and conciliation toward the South as the policy of the hour,
+saying truly that that crisis was a rare opportunity which would never
+come again, if spurned. The sermon was unpopular, and caused him some
+trouble even in his own congregation.
+
+Mr. Beecher is now fifty-seven years old, but is still in the flush of
+his intellectual vigor. His eye is as bright, his step as firm and
+elastic, and his voice as clear and ringing as when he preached his
+first sermon. His powers have grown with his work, and every year he
+seems to rise higher in his intellectual supremacy. As a pulpit orator,
+he has no superior, and certainly there is no man in all this round
+earth whose eloquence has been productive of greater good to the cause
+he serves. He is a stout, stocky man in appearance, with a large square
+face and heavy features. It is the face of a great orator and a genial,
+warm-hearted man. He is careful and temperate in all his habits--except
+that he will work too hard--and enjoys robust health. He lives plainly
+and dresses simply. He impresses one at once with his immense energy,
+and you would recognize him immediately as a man of unusual power in his
+community. Said a friend not long since, "I was standing by Beecher in a
+book-store to-day. He was perfectly still, as he was waiting for a
+parcel to be done up, but he reminded me of a big locomotive full of
+steam and fire, and ready to display its immense force at any moment."
+
+Mr. Beecher is not only a preacher, but a capital farmer. He has a model
+farm at Peekskill, on the Hudson, and is brimful of agricultural and
+horticultural theories, which he carries into practice successfully. His
+love for flowers is a perfect passion, and dates from his boyhood. He is
+an excellent mechanic, and makes the repairs on his own premises, as far
+as he can, with a keen relish, which he has doubtless inherited from his
+father. He is thoroughly read in history, and as an art critic has no
+superior. His house is filled with art gems, which are his pride. He has
+not lost the love of reverie which marked his boyhood, but he is
+eminently a practical man, and prefers the practical questions of
+theology to those merely theoretical. He is as little like the typical
+parson as one can imagine, and yet he is one whose place will be hard to
+fill when he is gone, and whose works will live in the grateful memory
+of those whom his counsel has saved from sin, and his sympathy
+encouraged to continue in the path of duty.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+PETER CARTWRIGHT.
+
+
+One of the most remarkable men in the American ministry is PETER
+CARTWRIGHT, the "Backwoods Preacher." Sixty-seven years of ministerial
+labors have passed over his head, and yet he still continues in the
+field in which he has done such good service, and retains all the
+popularity and much of the fire of his younger days.
+
+He was born in Amherst County, Virginia, on the 1st of September, 1785.
+His father had been a soldier in the Revolutionary War, and his mother
+was an orphan. Shortly after the close of the war, the Cartwrights
+removed from Virginia to Kentucky, which was then an almost unbroken
+wilderness. The journey was accompanied with considerable danger, as the
+Indians were not yet driven west of the Ohio, but the family reached
+their destination in safety. For two years they lived on a rented farm
+in Lincoln County, Kentucky, and at the end of that time removed to what
+was called the Green River Country, and settled in Logan County, nine
+miles south of Russellville, the county seat, and within one mile of the
+State line of Tennessee.
+
+The portion of Logan County in which young Cartwright's childhood and
+youth were passed was the very last place one Would have cared to bring
+up a candidate for the ministry. It was called "Rogue's Harbor," and was
+thickly settled with fugitives from justice from all parts of the Union.
+They actually constituted a majority of the inhabitants of the district,
+and when the respectable citizens sought to bring them to justice they
+readily "swore each other clear," and thus set the law at defiance. They
+carried on such a course of outrage and violence that the respectable
+citizens were at length compelled to combine for defence against them by
+means of an organization known as the Regulators. Several fierce
+encounters took place between the desperadoes and the Regulators, in
+which many lives were lost, before the supremacy of the law was
+established.
+
+"When my lather settled in Logan County," says Mr. Cartwright, "there
+was not a newspaper printed South of Green River, no mill short of forty
+miles, and no schools worth the name. Sunday was a day set apart for
+hunting, fishing, horse-racing, card-playing, balls, dances, and all
+kinds of jollity and mirth. We killed our meat out in the woods, wild,
+and beat our meal and hominy with a pestle and mortar. We stretched a
+deer-skin over a hoop, burned holes in it with the prongs of a fork,
+sifted our meal, baked our bread, eat it, and it was first-rate eating,
+too. We raised, or gathered out of the woods, our own tea. We had sage,
+bohea, cross-vine, spice, and sassafras teas in abundance. As for
+coffee, I am not sure that I ever smelled it for ten years. We made our
+sugar out of the water of the maple-tree, and our molasses, too. These
+were great luxuries in those days. We raised our own cotton and flax. We
+water-rotted our flax, broke it by hand, scutched it, picked the seed
+out of the cotton with our fingers; our mothers and sisters carded,
+spun, and wove it into cloth, and they cut and made our garments and
+bed-clothes, etc. And when we got on a new suit thus manufactured, and
+sallied out into company, we thought ourselves as _big as any body_."
+
+Young Peter grew up in this rough country with a constitution of iron,
+and a fair share of Western courage, independence, and energy. He was
+sent by his father to a neighboring school, but the teacher was an
+indifferent one, and he learned merely to read and write and cipher
+imperfectly.
+
+He was a "wild, wicked boy," he tells us, and grew up to delight in
+horse-racing, card-playing, and dancing. His father seems to have
+enjoyed having so dashing a son, but his mother, who was a pious woman,
+took his course seriously to heart, and wept and prayed over her boy as
+only a Christian mother can. She often talked to him, and moved him so
+deeply that he frequently vowed to lead a better life; but his pleasures
+were too tempting, and he fell back again into his old habits. His
+father presented him with a race-horse and a pack of cards, and he
+became known among his youthful companions as one of the most fearless
+riders and the luckiest fellow at cards in the county. The good mother
+wept and prayed all the more, and the boy hid his cards from her to keep
+her from burning them.
+
+In 1801, when he was sixteen years old, a change came over him. He had
+been out with his father and brother to attend a wedding in the
+neighborhood. The affair was conducted with all the uproarious merriment
+incident to those days, and when Peter returned home and began to think
+over it, he felt condemned at having passed his time in such a manner.
+"My mother was in bed," says he. "It seemed to me, all of a sudden, my
+blood rushed to my head, my heart palpitated, in a few minutes I turned
+blind, an awful impression rested on my mind that death had come to me
+and I was unprepared to die. I fell on my knees and began to ask God to
+have mercy on me. My mother sprang from her bed, and was soon on her
+knees by my side, praying for me, and exhorting me to look to Christ for
+mercy, and then and there I promised the Lord if he would spare me I
+would seek and serve Him, and I never fully broke that promise. My
+mother prayed for me a long time. At length we lay down, but there was
+little sleep for me. Next morning I rose, feeling wretched beyond
+expression. I tried to read in the Testament, and retired many times to
+secret prayer through the day, but found no relief. I gave up my
+race-horse to my father and requested him to sell him. I went and
+brought my pack of cards and gave them to mother, who threw them into
+the fire, and they were consumed. I fasted, watched, and prayed, and
+engaged in regular reading of the Testament. I was so distressed and
+miserable that I was incapable of any regular business."
+
+Several months passed away, during which time Peter had seasons of
+comfort and hopes of forgiveness, but during the greater portion he was
+wretched and miserable, filled with such a fear of the devil that he was
+almost convinced that Satan was really present with him to keep him from
+God. A camp-meeting, held in the vicinity of his father's house, in the
+spring of 1801, completed his conversion and gave him peace.
+
+"To this meeting," says he, "I repaired a guilty, wretched sinner. On
+the Saturday evening of said meeting I went, with weeping multitudes,
+and bowed before the stand, and earnestly prayed for mercy. In the midst
+of a solemn struggle of soul, an impression was made on my mind as
+though a voice said to me: 'Thy sins are all forgiven thee,' Divine
+light flashed all around me, unspeakable joy sprang up in my soul. I
+rose to my feet, opened my eyes, and it really seemed to me as if I was
+in heaven; the trees, the leaves on them, and every thing seemed, and I
+really thought were, praising God. My mother raised the shout, my
+Christian friends crowded around me and joined me in praising God.... I
+have never doubted that the Lord did, then and there, forgive my sins
+and give me religion." He went on his way rejoicing, and in June, 1801,
+was formally received into the Methodist Episcopal Church. In May, 1802,
+he was appointed an exhorter. He shrank from accepting the position, as
+he distrusted his own abilities, but finally yielded to his presiding
+elder's wishes and entered upon his work. In the fall of that year his
+parents removed to Lewiston County, toward the mouth of the Cumberland
+River.
+
+Although he was but eighteen years old, his presiding elder had detected
+in him signs of unusual promise, and had resolved to bring him into
+active labor for the Church at once, and accordingly, upon his departure
+for his new home, Peter was given authority to lay out and organize a
+new circuit, the plan of which he was to submit to the presiding elder
+for approval. The boy hesitated, frightened by the magnitude of the
+task, but being encouraged by his superiors, accepted the trust, and
+thus began his labors as a preacher of the Word. Upon reaching his new
+home, he attended a tolerably good school in the vicinity, hoping to
+acquire a better education, but the pupils and teacher persecuted him so
+sorely that he was obliged to withdraw. Determining to lose no time in
+waiting for an education, he at once began the work of preaching. Being
+possessed of strong natural sense, a ready wit, and being thoroughly
+imbued with the spirit of frontier life, he was just the man to carry
+the Gospel home to the hearts of the rude pioneers of the great West.
+His manner was that of a backwoodsman, and he had no city airs and
+graces to offend the plain, rough people to whom he preached. He was
+emphatically one of them. He offered them the plain Gospel, and gave
+theological theories a wide berth.
+
+His plan of operations was adapted to the rudest intellect. It was to
+thunder the terrors of the law into the ears of his converts, or, in his
+own words, to "shake them over hell until they smelt brimstone right
+strong," and make them see the fearful condition in which they lay by
+reason of their sin. Man was to him a wretched, degraded creature, and
+the only way to bring him to God was to drive him there by the terrors
+of the law. Our preacher had very little faith in the quieter, more
+persuasive means of grace. His first effort was to give the souls of his
+hearers a good shaking up, bring them face to face with hell and its
+torments, and then, having forced them to flee from the wrath to come,
+to trust to their future Christian experience for the means of acquiring
+a knowledge of the tender mercies of the Saviour. It must be confessed
+that this was the only plan open to him in the field in which he
+labored. The people to whom he preached were a rude, rough set, mainly
+ignorant and superstitious, and many of them sunk in the depths of
+drunkenness and viciousness. The Western country was almost a
+wilderness. Vast forests and boundless prairies lay on every hand, with
+but here and there a clearing with a solitary log cabin in it, or but
+two or three at the most. The people lived in the most perfect solitude,
+rarely seeing any but the members of their own households. Solitude and
+danger made them superstitious, and the absence of schools kept them in
+ignorance. They drank to keep off the blues, and when they came together
+for amusement they made the most of their opportunities, and plunged
+into the most violent sports, which were not always kept within the
+bounds of propriety. Churches were as scarce as schools, and until the
+Methodist circuit riders made their appearance in the West, the people
+were little better than heathen. The law had scarcely any hold upon
+these frontiersmen. They were wild and untamed, and personal freedom was
+kept in restraint mainly by the law of personal accountability. They
+were generous and improvident, frank, fearless, easy-going, and filled
+with an intense scorn for every thing that smacked of Eastern refinement
+or city life. They were proud of their buckskin and linsey-woolsey
+clothes, their squirrel caps, and their horny hands and rough faces.
+They would have been miserable in a city mansion, but they were lords
+and kings in their log-cabins. To have sent a preacher bred in the
+learned schools of New England to such a people would have been folly.
+The smooth cadences, the polished gestures, and, above all, the
+manuscript sermon of a Boston divine, would have disgusted the men and
+women of the frontier. What cared they for predestination or free-will,
+or for any of the dogmas of the schools? They wanted to hear the simple,
+fundamental truths of the Gospel, and they wanted to hear them from a
+man of their own stamp. They wanted a "fire and brimstone" preacher, one
+whose fiery eloquence could stir the very depths of their souls, and set
+their simple imaginations all ablaze; one who could shout and sing with
+true Western abandon; who could preach in his shirt-sleeves, sleep with
+them on the bare ground, brave all the dangers of a frontier life, and,
+if necessary, thrash any one who dared to insult him. Such was the man
+for these sturdy, simple Western folk, and such a man they found in
+Peter Cartwright.
+
+Peter went at the task before him with a will. The country being
+sparsely settled, people had to travel a long way to get to church, and
+it became a matter of expediency for the clergy to hold religious
+gatherings at stated points, and to continue them for several days, so
+that those who desired to attend might be able to avoid the necessity of
+going home every evening and coming back next day. Church edifices being
+scarce, these meetings were held in the woods, and a large encampment
+was formed by the people in attendance. This was the origin of the
+camp-meeting system, which for many years was the only effective way of
+spreading the Gospel in the West. It was at a camp-meeting that Peter
+obtained religion, and he has ever since been a zealous advocate of, and
+a hard worker at, them. From the first he was successful. The fame of
+the "boy preacher" went abroad into all the land, and people came in to
+the camp from a hundred miles around to hear him. He had little
+education, but he knew his Bible thoroughly, and was a ready speaker,
+and, above all, he knew how to deal with the people to whom he preached.
+He made many converts, and from the first took rank as the most popular
+preacher in the West.
+
+Peter not only believed in the overruling power of God, but he was
+firmly convinced of the active and personal agency of the devil in human
+affairs. Many of the follies and faults of the people around him took
+place, he averred, because they were possessed of devils. Each
+camp-meeting was to him a campaign against Satan, and in his opinion
+Satan never failed to make a good fight for his kingdom. Certainly some
+very singular things did occur at the meetings at which he was present,
+and, naturally, perhaps, some persons began to believe that Peter
+Cartwright possessed supernatural powers. The following incident,
+related by him, not only explains some of the phenomena to which I
+allude, but also the manner in which he was regarded by some of the
+unconverted:
+
+"A new exercise broke out among us, called the 'jerks,' which was
+overwhelming in its effects upon the bodies and minds of the people. No
+matter whether they were saints or sinners, they would be taken under a
+warm song or sermon, and seized with a convulsive jerking all over,
+which they could not by any possibility avoid, and the more they
+resisted, the more they jerked. If they would not strive against it,
+and pray in good earnest, the jerking would usually abate. I have seen
+more than five hundred persons jerking at one time in my large
+congregations. Most usually persons taken with the jerks, to obtain
+relief, as they said, would rise up and dance. Some would run, but could
+not get away. Some would resist; on such the jerks were very severe.
+
+"To see those proud young gentlemen and young ladies, dressed in their
+silks, jewelry, and prunella, from top to toe, take the jerks, would
+often excite my risibilities. The first jerk or so you would see their
+fine bonnets, caps, and combs fly, and so sudden would be the jerking of
+the head that their long, loose hair would crack almost as loud as a
+wagoner's whip.
+
+"At one of my appointments, in 1804, there was a very large congregation
+turned out to hear the 'Kentucky boy,' as they called me. Among the rest
+there were two very finely dressed, fashionable young ladies, attended
+by two brothers with loaded horsewhips. Although the house was large, it
+was crowded. The two young ladies, coming in late, took their seats near
+where I stood, and their two brothers stood in the door. I was a little
+unwell, and I had a phial of peppermint in my pocket. Before I commenced
+preaching I took out my phial and swallowed a little of the peppermint.
+While I was preaching the congregation was melted into tears. The two
+young gentlemen moved off to the yard fence, and both the young ladies
+took the jerks, and they were greatly mortified about it....
+
+"As I dismissed the assembly, a man stepped up to me and warned me to be
+on my guard, for he had heard the two brothers swear they would
+horsewhip me when meeting was out for giving their sisters the jerks.
+'Well,' said I, 'I'll see to that.'
+
+"I went out and said to the young men that I understood they intended
+to horsewhip me for giving their sisters the jerks. One replied that he
+did. I undertook to expostulate with him on the absurdity of the charge
+against me, but he swore I need not deny it, for he had seen me take out
+a phial in which I carried some truck that gave his sisters the jerks.
+As quick as thought came into my mind how I would get clear of my
+whipping, and, jerking out the peppermint phial, said I, 'Yes; if I gave
+your sisters the jerks I'll give them to you,' In a moment I saw he was
+scared. I moved toward him, he backed, I advanced, and he wheeled and
+ran, warning me not to come near him or he would kill me. It raised the
+laugh on him, and I escaped my whipping....
+
+"I always looked upon the jerks as a judgment sent from God, first, to
+bring sinners to repentance, and, secondly, that God could work with or
+without means, and that he could work over and above means and do
+whatsoever seemeth him good to the glory of his grace and the salvation
+of the world. There is no doubt in my mind that, with weak-minded,
+ignorant, and superstitious persons, there was a great deal of
+sympathetic feeling with many that claimed to be under the influence of
+this jerking exercise, and yet with many it was perfectly involuntary.
+It was on all occasions my practice to recommend fervent prayer as a
+remedy, and it almost universally proved an effectual antidote."
+
+The excitement of the religious revivals plunged many of the people into
+excesses. They prophesied, dreamed dreams, and saw visions, and troubled
+the young preacher exceedingly, but he set his face sternly against all
+such disorders, and pronounced their visions and messages to be from the
+devil. One of these dreamers came to him one day and told him he had a
+message from heaven for him.
+
+"Well," said Cartwright, "what is it?"
+
+"It has been revealed to me," said the fellow, "that you are never to
+die, but are to live forever."
+
+"Who revealed that to you?"
+
+"An angel."
+
+"Did you see him?" asked Cartwright, dryly.
+
+"O, yes; he was a beautiful, white, shining being."
+
+"Did you smell him?" asked Peter, bluntly.
+
+The man looked at him in amazement, and the preacher continued, sternly,
+"Well, did the angel you saw smell of brimstone? He must have smelled of
+brimstone, for he was from a region that burns with fire and brimstone,
+and consequently from hell, for he revealed a great lie to you if he
+told you I was to live forever."
+
+The dreamer turned off abruptly, and disappeared amidst the jeers of the
+crowd that had listened to the conversation.
+
+On the 16th of September, 1806, Mr. Cartwright was ordained a deacon in
+the Methodist Episcopal Church by Bishop Asbury, and on the 4th of
+October, 1808, Bishop McKendree ordained him an elder. Upon receiving
+deacon's orders he was assigned to the Marietta Circuit. His appointment
+dismayed him. Says he: "It was a poor, hard circuit at that time.
+Marietta and the country round were settled at an early day by a colony
+of Yankees. At the time of my appointment I had never seen a Yankee, and
+I had heard dismal stories about them. It was said they lived almost
+entirely on pumpkins, molasses, fat meat, and bohea tea; moreover, that
+they could not bear loud and zealous sermons, and they had brought on
+their learned preachers with them, and they read their sermons and were
+always criticising us poor backwoods preachers. When my appointment was
+read out it distressed me greatly. I went to Bishop Asbury and begged
+him to supply my place and let me go home. The old father took me in
+his arms and said: 'O, no, my son; go in the name of the Lord. It will
+make a man of you.'
+
+"Ah, thought I, if this is the way to make men, I do not want to be a
+man. I cried over it bitterly, and prayed, too. But on I started,
+cheered by my presiding elder, Brother J. Sale. If I ever saw hard
+times, surely it was this year; yet many of the people were kind and
+treated me friendly. I had hard work to keep soul and body together. The
+first Methodist house I came to the brother was a Universalist. I
+crossed over the Muskingum River to Marietta. The first Methodist family
+I stopped with there, the lady was a member of the Methodist Episcopal
+Church, but a thorough Universalist. She was a thin-faced, Roman-nosed,
+loquacious Yankee, glib on the tongue, and you may depend upon it I had
+a hard race to keep up with her, though I found it a good school, for it
+set me to reading my Bible. And here permit me to say, of all the isms I
+ever heard of, they were here. These descendants of the Puritans were
+generally educated, but their ancestors were rigid predestinarians, and
+as they were sometimes favored with a little light on their moral
+powers, and could just 'see men as trees walking,' they jumped into
+Deism, Universalism, Unitarianism, etc., etc. I verily believe it was
+the best school I ever entered. They waked me up on all sides; Methodism
+was feeble, and I had to battle or run, and I resolved on the former."
+
+Just before he was made an elder, Mr. Cartwright left his circuit, and
+went home on a visit to recruit. He had made a good fight with poverty
+during his labors, and at the time of his departure for home he was in a
+condition sufficiently hard to test any man's fortitude. "I had been
+from my father's house for three years," says he; "was five hundred
+miles from home, my horse had gone blind, my saddle was worn out, my
+bridle reins had been eaten up and replaced (after a sort) at least a
+dozen times, and my clothes had been patched till it was difficult to
+detect the original. I had concluded to make my way home and get another
+outfit. I was in Marietta, and had just seventy-five cents in my pocket.
+How I would get home and pay my way I could not tell."
+
+He did reach home, however, after many characteristic adventures, and
+obtained another outfit, and while there he took an important step--he
+married. "After a mature deliberation and prayer," he says, "I thought
+it was my duty to marry, and was joined in marriage to Frances Gaines,
+on the 18th of August, 1808, which was her nineteenth birthday." Peter
+and his bride knew that a hard life was in store for them, but they felt
+strong in the love they bore each other. They were simple backwoods
+folk, and their wants were few. "When I started as a traveling
+preacher," he said fifty-three years afterward, "a single preacher was
+allowed to receive eighty dollars per annum if his circuit would give it
+to him; but single preachers in those days seldom received over thirty
+or forty dollars, and often much less; and had it not been for a few
+presents made us by the benevolent friends of the church, and a few
+dollars we made as marriage fees, we must have suffered much more than
+we did. But the Lord provided, and, strange as it may appear to the
+present generation, we got along without starving or going naked." There
+is something awe-inspiring in the simple trust in God which this good
+man displayed in every stage of his life. Once satisfied that he was in
+the path of duty, he never allowed the future to trouble him. He
+provided for it as far as he could, and left the rest to the Master
+whose work he was doing. Poverty and hardship had no terrors for this
+brave young couple, and it was very far from their thoughts to wait
+until a better day to marry. They would go out hand in hand into the
+world and meet their trials together. Children would come, they knew,
+and those little mouths would have to be fed, but they would be
+industrious, saving, and patient, and "God would provide."
+
+Peter Cartwright's mission was to plant the Methodist Episcopal Church
+in the West as well as to preach the Gospel. For that end he worked and
+prayed. The Methodist Episcopal Church was his haven of safety. Without,
+all was storm and darkness; within its fold all was peace and light. He
+believed his church to be the best door to heaven, if indeed it was not
+in his estimation the only one. He was a fanatic, pure and simple, as
+regarded his own denomination, but a fanatic full of high and noble
+purposes, and one whose zeal was productive only of good. This
+fanaticism was necessary to the success of his labors. It was his
+perfect belief that his was the only church in which sinners could find
+perfect peace that carried him through the difficulties which
+encompassed him. Men were dying all around him, and they must come into
+his church. They had other denominations close at hand, but they, in his
+estimation, would not do. The Methodist Episcopal Church was a necessity
+for sinners, therefore it must be planted in all parts of the land. No
+sacrifice was too great for the accomplishment of this object. He has
+lived to see those sacrifices rewarded, to see his church one of the
+most numerous and powerful religious bodies in the country.
+
+Being so zealous in behalf of his own church, it is not strange that he
+should have clashed frequently with other denominations. He got along
+very well with the majority, but with the Baptists and Universalists he
+was always on the war path. The latter especially excited his
+uncompromising hostility, and he never failed to attack their doctrines
+with all his forces wherever he encountered them. "I have thought,"
+says he, "and do still think, if I were to set out to form a plan to
+contravene the laws of God, to encourage wickedness of all kinds, to
+corrupt the morals and encourage vice, and crowd hell with the lost and
+the wailings of the damned, the Universalist plan should be the plan,
+the very plan that I would adopt....
+
+"A few years ago," he continues, "I had a neighbor who professed to be a
+confirmed Universalist. He contended with me that there was no devil but
+the evil disposition in man, and that there was no hell but the bad
+feelings that men had when they did wrong: that this was all the
+punishment any body would suffer. When this neighbor's father lay on his
+dying bed (a confirmed Universalist, professedly) there was a faithful
+minister of Christ who believed it his duty to visit this old
+Universalist, warn him of his danger, and try to awaken his conscience,
+if not seared, to a just view of his real situation. The minister,
+however, failed in his faithful attempt and well-meant endeavors, for
+the old man, then on his dying pillow, was greatly offended at the
+preacher, and told him that he did not thank him for trying to shake his
+faith in his dying moments. This neighbor of mine, and son of this old,
+hardened sinner, was greatly enraged at the preacher, and cursed and
+abused him in a violent manner. A few days after the demise of the old
+man, he, in a furious rage, began to abuse and curse the preacher in my
+presence, and said:
+
+"D---- him; I wish he was in hell and the devil had him.'
+
+"I stopped him short by saying, 'Pooh, pooh, man, what are you talking
+about? There is no hell but the bad feelings that a man has when he does
+wrong, and no devil but the evil disposition that is in man.' Thus
+answering a fool according to his folly.
+
+"'Well,' said he, 'if there is no hell there ought to be, to put such
+preachers in.'
+
+"'Now, sir,' said I, 'you see the utter untenableness of your creed, for
+a man even in trying to do good honestly draws down your wrath, and, in
+a moment, you want a hell to put him into and a devil to torment him for
+giving you an offense, and for doing what no good man ought to be
+offended about. But God must be insulted, his name blasphemed, his laws
+trampled under foot, yet he must have no hell to put such a wretch in,
+no devil to torment him. Now I would be ashamed of myself if I were in
+your place, and let the seal of truth close my lips forever hereafter.'
+
+"Although he was confounded, he still clave to his God-dishonoring
+doctrine, waxing worse and worse, till it was generally believed he was
+guilty of a most heinous crime."
+
+Argumentative battles were not the only troubles Cartwright had to
+encounter from Universalists. They came to his revivals, he says, to
+hoot and create disturbance. At one of these meetings two sisters,
+Universalists in belief, were present. They came to "make fun," but one
+of them was overcome by Cartwright's preaching, and went up to the
+mourner's bench to be prayed for. When her sister heard of it, she
+commenced to make her way to the altar, with the angry determination to
+force the penitent from it. "I rose and met her in the crowded aisle,"
+says Mr. Cartwright, "and told her to be calm and desist. She made
+neither better nor worse of it than to draw back her arm and give me a
+severe slap in the face with her open hand. I confess this rather took
+me by surprise, and, as the common saying is, made the fire fly out of
+my eyes in tremendous sparkling brilliancy, but, collecting my best
+judgment, I caught her by the arms near her shoulders and wheeled her to
+the right about, moved her forward to the door, and said, 'Gentlemen,
+please open the door; the devil in this Universalist lady has got
+fighting hot, and I want to set her outside to cool.' The door was
+opened, and I landed her out."
+
+Concerning his tilts with the Baptists, he has given a mass of curious
+reminiscences, from which we take the following:
+
+"We preached in new settlements, and the Lord poured out his Spirit, and
+we had many convictions and many conversions. It was the order of the
+day, (though I am sorry to say it,) that we were constantly followed by
+a certain set of proselyting Baptist preachers. These new and wicked
+settlements were seldom visited by these Baptist preachers until the
+Methodist preachers entered them; then, when a revival was gotten up, or
+the work of the Lord revived, these Baptist preachers came rushing in,
+and they generally sung their sermons; and when they struck the _long
+roll_, or their sing-song mode of preaching, in substance it was:
+'Water! water! You must follow your blessed Lord down into the water!' I
+had preached several times in a large, populous, and wicked settlement,
+and there was serious attention, deep convictions, and a good many
+conversions; but, between my occasional appointments these preachers
+would rush in and try to take off our converts into the water; and
+indeed they made so much ado about baptism by immersion that the
+uninformed would suppose that heaven was an island, and there was no way
+to get there _but by diving or swimming_."
+
+He once preached a sermon on the true nature of baptism, at which were
+present the daughters of a Baptist minister, one of whom was converted.
+That night it rained violently, and all the neighboring streams
+overflowed their banks. Riding along the next day, he met the Baptist
+minister on the road.
+
+"We've had a tremendous rain," said Cartwright.
+
+"Yes, sir," said the Baptist brother, "the Lord sent this rain to
+convince you of your error."
+
+"Ah! what error?"
+
+"Why, about baptism. The Lord sent this flood to convince you that much
+water was necessary."
+
+"Very good, sir," said Cartwright, "and in like manner he sent this
+flood to convince you of your error."
+
+"What error?" asked the Baptist brother.
+
+"Why," replied Cartwright, triumphantly, "to show you that water comes
+by pouring, and not by immersion."
+
+Free and easy as he was in his manner, our preacher had a deep sense of
+the dignity of his mission, and he was resolved that others should share
+the feeling, and accord him, in his ministerial capacity, the respect
+and deference that were his due. His manner of accomplishing this was
+characteristic, as the following incident will show: Traveling on his
+circuit in 1805, he put up on one occasion at the house of an old man
+known as Father Teel, a whimsical old fellow, and supposed to be
+Cartwright's match in oddity. He had been warned that the old man,
+though a good Methodist, showed little deference to preachers. It was
+his custom to rise early, and, as soon as dressed, to give out his hymn,
+sing it himself, and then go to prayers, without waiting for his family
+to get up. He served preachers in the same way. Cartwright resolved to
+beat him at his own game, but the old man was too wary for him.
+
+"Just as day broke," says Cartwright, "I awoke, rose up, and began to
+dress, but had not nigh accomplished it when I heard Teel give out his
+hymn and commence singing, and about the time I had got dressed, I heard
+him commence praying. He gave thanks to God that they had been spared
+during the night, and were all permitted to see the light of a new day,
+while at the same time I suppose every one of his family was fast
+asleep. I deliberately opened the door and walked out to the well,
+washed myself, and then walked back to my cabin. Just as I got to the
+door, the old brother opened his door, and, seeing me, said, 'Good
+morning, sir. Why, I didn't know you were up.'
+
+"'Yes, said I, 'I have been up some time.'
+
+"'Well, brother,' said he, 'why did you not come in to prayers?'
+
+"'Because,' said I, 'it is wrong to pray of a morning in the family
+before we wash.'
+
+"The old brother passed on, and no more was said at that time. That
+evening, just before we were about to retire to rest, the old brother
+set out the book and said to me: 'Brother, hold prayers with us.'
+
+"'No, sir,' said I.
+
+"Said he, 'Come, brother, take the book and pray with us.'
+
+"'No, sir,' said I; 'you love to pray so well, you may do it yourself.'
+
+"He insisted, but I persistently refused, saying: 'You are so fond of
+praying yourself, that you even thanked God this morning that he had
+spared you all to see the light of a new day, when your family had not
+yet opened their eyes, but were all fast asleep. And you have such an
+absurd way of holding prayers in your family, that I do not wish to have
+any thing to do with it.'
+
+"He then took the book, read, and said prayers, but you may rely on it,
+the next morning things were much changed. He waited for me, and had all
+his family up in order. He acknowledged his error, and told me it was
+one of the best reproofs he ever got. I then prayed with the family, and
+after that all went well."
+
+Among his clerical brethren was a poor hen-pecked husband, whose wife
+was possessed of a temper that made her the terror of the neighborhood.
+Cartwright had often been invited by the poor man to go home with him;
+"but," he says, "I frankly confess I was afraid to trust myself" but at
+length, yielding to his importunities, he went home with his oppressed
+brother, intending to spend the night with him. His visit roused the
+fury of the wife, and "I saw in a minute," says our preacher, "that the
+devil was in her as big as an alligator, and I determined on my course."
+The woman held her tongue until after supper, when her husband asked her
+kindly to join them in prayers. She flew into a rage, and swore there
+should be no praying in her house that night. Cartwright tried to reason
+with her, but she cursed him roundly. Then, facing her sternly, he said,
+"Madam, if you were my wife, I would break you of your bad ways, or I
+would break your neck."
+
+"The devil you would," said she. "Yes, you are a pretty Christian, ain't
+you?"
+
+She continued cursing him, but Cartwright sternly bade her hold her
+peace, and let them pray. She declared she would not.
+
+"Now," said he to her, "if you do not be still, and behave yourself,
+I'll put you out of doors."
+
+"At this," says he, "she clenched her fist and swore she was one-half
+alligator and the other half snapping-turtle, and that it would take a
+better man than I was to put her out. It was a small cabin we were in,
+and we were not far from the door, which was then standing open. I
+caught her by the arm, and swinging her round in a circle, brought her
+right up to the door, and shoved her out. She jumped up, tore her hair,
+foamed, and such swearing as she uttered was seldom equaled, and never
+surpassed. The door, or shutter of the door, was very strongly made, to
+keep out hostile Indians; I shut it tight, barred it, and went to
+prayer, and I prayed as best I could; but I have no language at my
+command to describe my feelings. At the same time, I was determined to
+conquer, or die in the attempt. While she was raging and foaming in the
+yard and around the cabin, I started a spiritual song, and sung loud, to
+drawn her voice as much as possible. The five or six little children ran
+and squatted about and crawled under the beds. Poor things, they were
+scared almost to death.
+
+"I sang on, and she roared and thundered on outside, till she became
+perfectly exhausted, and panted for breath. At length, when she had
+spent her force, she became perfectly calm and still, and then knocked
+at the door, saying, 'Mr. Cartwright, please let me in.'
+
+"'Will you behave yourself if I let you in?' said I.
+
+"'O yes,' said she, 'I will;' and throwing myself on my guard, and
+perfectly self-possessed, I opened the door, took her by the hand, led
+her in, and seated her near the fire-place. She had roared and foamed
+until she was in a high perspiration, and looked pale as death. After
+she took her seat, 'O,' said she, 'what a fool I am,'
+
+"'Yes,' said I, 'about one of the biggest fools I ever saw in all my
+life.'... Brother C. and I kneeled down, and both prayed. She was as
+quiet as a lamb."
+
+Six months later, our preacher tells us, this woman was converted, and
+became "as bold in the cause of God as she had been in the cause of the
+wicked one."
+
+In 1823, Mr. Cartwright resolved to move across the Ohio, and selected
+Illinois as his new home. The reasons which influenced his actions are
+thus stated by him:
+
+"I had seen with painful emotions the increase of a disposition to
+justify slavery.... and the legislatures in the slave States made the
+laws more and more stringent, with a design to prevent emancipation.
+Moreover, rabid abolitionism spread and dreadfully excited the South. I
+had a young and growing family of children, two sons and four daughters;
+was poor, owned a little farm of about one hundred and fifty acres;
+lands around me were high and rising in value. My daughters would soon
+be grown up. I did not see any probable means by which I could settle
+them around or near us. Moreover, I had no right to expect our children
+to marry into wealthy families, and I did not desire it, if it could be
+so; and by chance they might marry into slave families. This I did not
+desire. Besides, I saw there was a marked distinction made among the
+people generally between young people raised without work and those that
+had to work for their living.... I thought I saw clear indications of
+Providence that I should leave my comfortable little home, and move into
+a free State or territory, for the following reasons: First, I would get
+entirely clear of the evil of slavery. Second, I could raise my children
+to work where work was not considered a degradation. Third, I believed I
+could better my temporal circumstances, and procure lands for my
+children as they grew up. And fourth, I could carry the Gospel to
+destitute souls that had, by removal into some new country, been
+deprived of the means of grace."
+
+It was the last reason, no doubt, that decided our preacher. Men of his
+stamp were needed west of the Ohio. Kentucky was becoming too old a
+State for him, and he felt that his true field of labor was still on the
+frontier, and thither he turned his steps. Setting out first on
+horseback to seek an eligible location, he reached Sangamon County,
+Illinois, where he bought a claim on Richland Creek. He then returned to
+Kentucky and wound up his affairs there, obtained a regular transfer
+from the Kentucky Conference to the Indiana Conference, which then
+controlled Illinois, and in October, 1824, set out for his new home in
+Sangamon County. A great affliction overtook him on the way, in the
+death of his third daughter, who was killed by the falling of a tree
+upon their camp. The affliction was made more grievous by the heartless
+refusal of the people in the vicinity to render them any aid. "We were
+in great distress," he says, "and no one even to pity our condition....
+I discovered that the tree had sprung up, and did not press the child;
+and we drew her out from under it, and carefully laid her in our feed
+trough, and moved on about twenty miles to an acquaintance's in Hamilton
+County, Illinois, where we buried her."
+
+Leaving that lonely little grave behind them, they hurried on to their
+new home. Springfield, the capital of the State, was but a small
+collection of shanties and log huts, and Sangamon County was the extreme
+frontier. It was the most northern county of Illinois, and just beyond
+it lay the unbroken Indian country. Numbers of Indians roamed through
+the Sangamon River bottom, and spent their winters there. It was as wild
+and unsettled a region as our preacher could have desired, and one which
+gave him a fine field for the exercise of his peculiar abilities. Mr.
+Cartwright was promptly received into the Indiana Conference, and he
+lost no time in looking about him. He at once established his family in
+their new home, and then set about his work. The work was hard, and
+money was scarce. The first year he traveled the Sangamon Circuit he
+received forty dollars, and the next year sixty dollars, which he says
+was a great improvement in his financial affairs. He was successful from
+the first, and in the two years referred to added one hundred and sixty
+persons to the Methodist Church in this thinly settled district. For
+forty-six years he has labored in this region, adding many souls to the
+kingdom of God.
+
+Arduous as his labors had been in the Kentucky Conference, they now
+increased very greatly. He had a larger amount of territory to travel
+over, people were more scattered, and the dangers to be encountered were
+greater. In 1827, he was made presiding elder, and given the Illinois
+District, then a very extensive region, and in 1828 Galena charge was
+added to this district. The district thus enlarged extended from the
+mouth of the Ohio River to Galena, the entire length of the present
+State of Illinois, and over this immense distance our preacher was
+obliged to travel four times in the year. The journeys were made either
+on horseback or in an old-fashioned sulky or one-seat gig. There were
+miles of lonely prairie and many rapid streams to cross, and roads,
+bridges, or ferry-boats were almost unknown. Yet Peter Cartwright was
+not the man to be deterred by obstacles. When he set out on his official
+journeys, he allowed nothing that it was possible to overcome to prevent
+him from keeping his appointments. In crossing the prairies, he would
+guide himself by the points of timber, for there were no roads over
+these vast plains. Oftentimes the streams to be crossed were swollen,
+and then he would swim his horse across them, or ride along the shore
+until he found a tree fallen over the current. Stripping himself, he
+would carry his clothes and riding equipments to the opposite bank, and
+then, returning, mount his horse and swim him across the river. Dressing
+again, he would continue his journey, and perhaps repeat the proceeding
+several times during the day. When overtaken by night, he would seek a
+place in some grove, and, lighting a fire with his tinder-box and steel,
+tie up his horse, and, throwing himself on the ground, sleep as
+peacefully as on a bed of down. Sometimes night would come on before he
+had crossed the prairie or made his way to the timber point he was
+aiming for, and then he would sit down on the ground, in the darkness
+and alone, and, holding his horse by the bridle, await the return of
+light to enable him to see his landmark. Sometimes he would find a
+little log-hut with a settler's family in it, and he says it was "a
+great treat" to come upon one of these lonely cabins and enjoy the
+privilege of a night's lodging. If the family were Methodists, there was
+sure to be preaching that night; and if they were strangers to that
+church, our preacher set to work at once to convert them. He labored
+faithfully, faring hard, and braving dangers from which his city
+brethren would have shrunk appalled. He carried the Gospel and the
+Methodist Episcopal Church into all parts of the great State of
+Illinois, and even into Iowa and the Indian country.
+
+In 1832, the first Illinois Conference met in the town of Jacksonville,
+and Mr. Cartwright attended it. He had now been a traveling preacher for
+twenty-eight years, and, as he felt himself sorely in need of rest, he
+asked and obtained a superannuated relation for one year. On the same
+day, Bishop Soule, who presided at the Conference, came to him to ask
+his advice with reference to the Quincy District. It was very important,
+but the bishop could not find a presiding elder willing to take charge
+of it, as it was an almost unbroken wilderness. The bishop was in sore
+distress, as he feared that he would be obliged to merge it into another
+district. The spirit of the backwoods preacher at once took fire, and,
+declaring that so important a field ought not to be neglected, he
+expressed his willingness to relinquish his superannuated relation and
+accept the charge. The bishop took him at his word and appointed him to
+the district, which he served faithfully. His adventures in traveling
+from place to place to fill his appointments are intensely interesting,
+and I would gladly reproduce them here did the limits of this chapter
+permit.
+
+It required no small amount of courage to perform the various duties of
+a backwoods preacher, and in this quality our preacher was not
+deficient. He was frequently called upon to exercise it in his camp
+meetings. These assemblies never failed to gather large crowds from all
+parts of the surrounding country, and among others came numerous
+rowdies, whose delight it was to annoy the preachers and worshipers in
+every conceivable way. Cartwright put up with the annoyance as long as
+he could, and then determined to put a stop to it. He believed in
+fighting the devil with fire, and put down many a disturbance. The
+following is the way he went about it:
+
+"Our last quarterly meeting was a camp meeting. We had a great many
+tents and a large turnout for a new country, and, perhaps, there never
+was a greater collection of rabble and rowdies. They came drunk and
+armed with dirks, clubs, knives, and horsewhips, and swore they would
+break up the meeting. After interrupting us very much on Saturday night,
+they collected on Sunday morning, determined on a general riot. At eight
+o'clock I was appointed to preach. About the time I was half through my
+discourse, two very fine-dressed young men marched into the congregation
+with loaded horsewhips, and hats on, and rose up and stood in the midst
+of the ladies, and began to laugh and talk. They were near the stand,
+and I requested them to desist and get off the seats; but they cursed me
+and told me to mind my own business, and said they would not get down. I
+stopped trying to preach, and called for a magistrate. There were two at
+hand, but I saw they were both afraid. I ordered them to take these two
+men into custody, but they said they could not do it. I told them as I
+left the stand to command me to take them, and I would do it at the risk
+of my life. I advanced toward them. They ordered me to stand off, but I
+advanced. One of them made a pass at my head, but I closed in with him
+and jerked him off the seat. A regular scuffle ensued. The congregation
+by this time were all in commotion. I heard the magistrates giving
+general orders, commanding all friends of order to aid in suppressing
+the riot. In the scuffle I threw my prisoner down, and held him fast;
+he tried his best to get loose. I told him to be quiet, or I would
+pound his chest well. The mob rose and rushed to the rescue of the two
+prisoners, for they had taken the other young man also. An old, drunken
+magistrate came up to me, and ordered me to let my prisoner go. I told
+him I should not. He swore if I did not he would knock me down. I told
+him to crack away. Then one of my friends, at my request, took hold of
+my prisoner, and the drunken justice made a pass at me; but I parried
+the stroke, and, seizing him by the collar and the hair of the head, and
+fetching him a sudden jerk forward, brought him to the ground and jumped
+on him. I told him to be quiet, or I would pound him well. The mob then
+rushed to the scene; they knocked down seven magistrates, several
+preachers, and others. I gave up my drunken prisoner to another, and
+threw myself in front of the friends of order. Just at this moment, the
+ringleader of the mob and I met; he made three passes at me, intending
+to knock me down. The last time he struck at me, by the force of his own
+effort he threw the side of his face toward me. It seemed at that moment
+I had not power to resist temptation, and I struck a sudden blow in the
+burr of the ear and dropped him to the earth. Just at this moment, the
+friends of order rushed by hundreds on the mob, knocking them down in
+every direction."
+
+Once, while crossing a river on a ferry-boat, he overheard a man cursing
+Peter Cartwright and threatening dire vengeance against him, and
+boasting that he could "whip any preacher the Lord ever made." This
+roused our preacher's ire, and accosting the man, he told him he was
+Peter Cartwright, and that if he wanted to whip him he must do so then.
+The fellow became confused, and said he did not believe him.
+
+"I tell you," said Cartwright, sternly, "I am the man. Now, sir, you
+have to whip me, as you threatened, or quit cursing me, or I will put
+you in the river and baptize you in the name of the devil, for you
+surely belong to him." "This," says Cartwright, "settled him."
+
+Once, having gone into the woods with a young man who had sworn he would
+whip him, he sprained his foot slightly in getting over a fence, and
+involuntarily placed his hand to his side. "My redoubtable antagonist,"
+says he, "had got on the fence, and, looking down at me, said, 'D----
+you, you are feeling for a dirk, are you?'
+
+"As quick as thought it occurred to me how to get clear of a whipping.
+
+"'Yes,' said I, 'and I will give you the benefit of all the dirks I
+have,' and advanced rapidly toward him.
+
+"He sprang back on the other side of the fence from me; I jumped over
+after him, and a regular foot race followed."
+
+"It may be asked," says the old man, naively, "what I would have done if
+this fellow had gone with me to the woods. This is hard to answer, for
+it was a part of my creed to love every body, but to fear no one, and I
+did not permit myself to believe that any man could whip me until it was
+tried, and I did not permit myself to premeditate expedients in such
+cases. I should no doubt have proposed to him to have prayer first, and
+then followed the openings of Providence."
+
+Mr. Cartwright was from the beginning of his ministry an ardent advocate
+of temperance, and, long before the first temperance society was
+organized in the country, he waged a fierce war against dram-drinking.
+This fearless advocate of temperance came very near getting drunk once.
+He had stopped with a fellow preacher at a tavern kept by an Otterbein
+Methodist, who, thinking to play them a trick, put whisky into the new
+cider which he offered them. Cartwright drank sparingly of the beverage,
+though he considered it harmless, but, "with all my forbearance," he
+says, "presently I began to feel light-headed. I instantly ordered our
+horses, fearing we were snapped for once.... When we had rode about a
+mile, being in the rear, I saw Brother Walker was nodding at a mighty
+rate. I suddenly rode up to Brother Walker and cried out, 'Wake up! wake
+up!' He roused up, his eyes watering freely. 'I believe,' said I, 'we
+are both drunk. Let us turn out of the road and lie down and take a nap
+till we get sober,' But we rode on without stopping. We were not drunk,
+but we both evidently felt it flying to our heads."
+
+In 1826 Mr. Cartwright was elected to the Legislature of the State, and
+at the expiration of his first term was reflected from Sangamon County.
+He was induced to accept this position because of his desire to aid in
+preventing the introduction of slavery into the State. He had no liking
+for political strife, however, and was disgusted with the dishonesty
+which he saw around him. "I say," he declares, "without any desire to
+speak evil of the rulers of the people, I found a great deal of
+corruption in our Legislature, and I found that almost every measure had
+to be carried by a corrupt bargain and sale which should cause every
+honest man to blush for his country."
+
+He was full of a quaint humor, which seemed to burst out from every line
+of his features, and twinkle merrily in his bright eyes. Often in the
+midst of his most exciting revivals he could not resist the desire to
+fasten his dry jokes upon one of his converts. No man loved a joke
+better, or was quicker to make a good use of it. He was traveling one
+day on his circuit, and stopped for the night at a cabin in which he
+found a man and woman. Suspecting that all was not right, he questioned
+the woman, and drew from her the confession that the man was her lover.
+Her husband, she said, was away, and would not return for two days, and
+she had received this man in his absence.
+
+
+
+[Illustration: CARTWRIGHT CALLING UP THE DEVIL.]
+
+Cartwright then began to remonstrate with the guilty pair upon their
+conduct, and while he was speaking to them the husband's voice was heard
+in the yard. In an agony of terror the woman implored Cartwright to
+assist her in getting her lover out of the way, and our preacher, upon
+receiving from each a solemn promise of reformation, agreed to do so.
+There was standing by the chimney a large barrel of raw cotton, and as
+there was no time to get the man out of the house, Cartwright put him
+into the barrel and piled the cotton over him.
+
+The husband entered, and Cartwright soon engaged him in conversation.
+The man said he had often heard of Peter Cartwright, and that it was the
+common opinion in that part of the country that among his other
+wonderful gifts our preacher had the power to call up the devil.
+
+"That's the easiest thing in the world to do," said Cartwright. "Would
+you like to see it?"
+
+The man hesitated for awhile, and then expressed his readiness to
+witness the performance.
+
+"Very well," said Cartwright; "take your stand by your wife, and don't
+move or speak. I'll let the door open to give him a chance to get out,
+or he may carry the roof away."
+
+So saying, he opened the door, and, taking a handful of cotton, held it
+in the fire and lighted it. Then plunging it into the barrel of raw
+cotton, he shouted lustily, "Devil, rise!" In an instant the barrel was
+wrapped in flames, and the lover, in utter dismay, leaped out and rushed
+from the house. The husband was greatly terrified, and ever afterward
+avowed himself a believer in Cartwright's intimacy with "Old Scratch,"
+for had he not had ocular proof of it?
+
+Riding out of Springfield one day, he saw a wagon some distance ahead of
+him containing a young lady and two young men. As he came near them they
+recognized him, though he was totally unacquainted with them, and began
+to sing camp-meeting hymns with great animation. In a little while the
+young lady began to shout, and said, "Glory to God! Glory to God!" and
+the driver cried out, "Amen! Glory to God!"
+
+"My first impressions," says Mr. Cartwright, "were, that they had been
+across the Sangamon River to a camp meeting that I knew was in progress
+there, and had obtained religion, and were happy. As I drew a little
+nearer, the young lady began to sing and shout again. The young man who
+was not driving fell down, and cried aloud for mercy; the other two,
+shouting at the top of their voices, cried out, 'Glory to God! another
+sinner down.' Then they fell to exhorting the young man that was down,
+saying, 'Pray on, brother; pray on, brother; you'll soon get religion.'
+Presently up jumped the young man that was down, and shouted aloud,
+saying, 'God has blessed my soul. Halleluiah! halleluiah! Glory to
+God!'"
+
+Thinking that these were genuine penitents, Cartwright rode rapidly
+toward them, intending to join in their rejoicings; but as he drew near
+them, he detected certain unmistakable evidences that they were shamming
+religious fervor merely for the purpose of annoying him. He then
+endeavored to get rid of them, but as they were all going the same
+direction, the party in the wagon managed to remain near him by driving
+fast when he tried to pass them, and falling back when he drew up to let
+them go ahead. "I thought," says our preacher, "I would ride up and
+horsewhip both of these young men; and if the woman had not been in
+company, I think I should have done so; but I forebore."
+
+In a little while the road plunged into a troublesome morass. Around the
+worst part of this swamp wound a bridle path, by which Mr. Cartwright
+determined to escape his tormentors, who would be compelled to take the
+road straight through the swamp. The party in the wagon saw his object,
+and forgetting prudence in their eagerness to keep up with him, whipped
+their horses violently. The horses bounded off at full speed, and the
+wagon was whirled through the swamp at a furious rate. When nearly
+across, one of the wheels struck a large stump, and over went the wagon.
+"Fearing it would turn entirely over and catch them under," says Mr.
+Cartwright, "the two young men took a leap into the mud, and when they
+lighted they sunk up to the middle. The young lady was dressed in white,
+and as the wagon went over, she sprang as far as she could, and lighted
+on all fours; her hands sunk into the mud up to her arm-pits, her mouth
+and the whole of her face immersed in the muddy water, and she certainly
+would have strangled if the young men had not relieved her. As they
+helped her up and out, I had wheeled my horse to see the fun. I rode up
+to the edge of the mud, stopped my horse, reared in my stirrups, and
+shouted, at the top of my voice, 'Glory to God! Glory to God!
+Halleluiah! another sinner down! Glory to God! Halleluiah! Glory!
+Halleluiah!'
+
+"If ever mortals felt mean, these youngsters did; and well they might,
+for they had carried on all this sport to make light of religion, and to
+insult a minister, a total stranger to them. When I became tired of
+shouting over them, I said to them:
+
+"'Now, you poor, dirty, mean sinners, take this as a just judgment of
+God upon you for your meanness, and repent of your dreadful wickedness;
+and let this be the last time that you attempt to insult a preacher; for
+if you repeat your abominable sport and persecutions, the next time God
+will serve you worse, and the devil will get you.'
+
+"They felt so badly that they never uttered one word of reply."
+
+Our preacher was determined that his work should be recognized, and as
+he and his fellow traveling ministers had done a good work on the
+frontier, he was in no humor to relish the accounts of the religious
+condition of the West, which the missionaries from the East spread
+through the older States in their letters home. "They would come," says
+he, "with a tolerable education, and a smattering knowledge of the old
+Calvinistic system of theology. They were generally tolerably well
+furnished with old manuscript sermons, that had been preached, or
+written, perhaps a hundred years before. Some of these sermons they had
+memorized, but in general they read them to the people. This way of
+reading sermons was out of fashion altogether in this Western world, and
+of course they produced no effect among the people. The great mass of
+our Western people wanted a preacher that could mount a stump or a
+block, or stand in the bed of a wagon, and, without note or manuscript,
+quote, expound, and apply the word of God to the hearts and consciences
+of the people. The result of the efforts of these Eastern missionaries
+was not very flattering; and although the Methodist preachers were in
+reality the pioneer heralds of the cross through the entire West, and
+although they had raised up numerous societies every five miles, and
+notwithstanding we had hundreds of traveling and local preachers,
+accredited and useful ministers of the Lord Jesus Christ, yet these
+newly-fledged missionaries would write back to the old States hardly any
+thing else but wailings and lamentations over the moral wastes and
+destitute condition of the West."
+
+The indignation of our preacher was fully shared by the people of the
+West, who considered themselves as good Christians; as their New England
+brethren, and the people of Quincy called a meeting, irrespective of
+denomination, and pledged themselves to give Peter Cartwright one
+thousand dollars per annum, and pay his traveling expenses, if he would
+"go as a missionary to the New England States, and enlighten them on
+this and other subjects, of which they were profoundly ignorant."
+Circumstances beyond his control prevented his acceptance of this offer.
+"How gladly and willingly would I have undertaken this labor of love,"
+says he, "and gloried in enlightening them down East, that they might
+keep their home-manufactured clergy at home, or give them some honorable
+employ, better suited to their genius than that of reading old musty and
+worm-eaten sermons."
+
+Our preacher did visit New England in 1852, not as a missionary,
+however, but as a delegate to the General Conference which met that year
+in Boston. His fame had preceded him, and he was one of the marked men
+of that body. Every one had heard some quaint story of his devotion to
+his cause, his fearlessness, or his eccentricities, and crowds came out
+to hear him preach. But our backwoods preacher was ill at ease. The
+magnificence of the city, and the prim decorum of the Boston churches,
+subdued him, and he could not preach with the fire and freedom of the
+frontier log chapel. The crowds that came to hear him were disappointed,
+and more than once they told him so.
+
+"Is this Peter Cartwright, from Illinois, the old Western pioneer?" they
+asked him once.
+
+He answered them, "I am the very man."
+
+"Well," said several of them, "brother, we are much disappointed; you
+have fallen very much under our expectations, we expected to hear a much
+greater sermon than that you preached to-day."
+
+It was a regular Bostonian greeting, and it not only mortified and
+disheartened the old pioneer, but it irritated him. "I tell you," says
+he, "they roused me, and provoked what little religious patience I
+had.... I left them abruptly, and in very gloomy mood retreated to my
+lodgings, but took very little rest in sleep that night. I constantly
+asked myself this question: Is it so, that I can not preach? or what is
+the matter? I underwent a tremendous crucifixion in feeling."
+
+The result was that he came to the conclusion that he _could_ preach,
+and that the people of Boston had not "sense enough to know a good
+sermon when they heard it." A little later old Father Taylor, that good
+genius of the Boston Bethel, a man after Cartwright's own heart, came to
+him and asked him to preach for him, and this, after hesitating, our
+preacher agreed to do, upon the condition that he should be allowed to
+conduct the services in regular Western style.
+
+"In the meantime," says he, "I had learned from different sources that
+the grand reason of my falling under the expectations of the
+congregations I had addressed was substantially this: almost all those
+curious incidents that had gained currency throughout the country
+concerning Methodist preachers had been located on me, and that when the
+congregations came to hear me, they expected little else but a bundle of
+eccentricities and singularities, and when they did not realize
+according to their anticipations, they were disappointed, and that this
+was the reason they were disappointed. So on the Sabbath, when I came to
+the Bethel, we had a good congregation, and after telling them that
+Brother Taylor had given me the liberty to preach to them after the
+Western fashion, I took my text, and after a few common-place remarks, I
+commenced giving them some Western anecdotes, which had a thrilling
+effect on the congregation, and excited them immoderately--I can not say
+religiously; but I thought if ever I saw animal excitement, it was then
+and there. This broke the charm. During my stay, after this, I could
+pass anywhere for Peter Cartwright, the old pioneer of the West. I am
+not sure that after this I fell under the expectations of my
+congregations among them."
+
+Sixty-seven years have passed away since the old pioneer began his
+preaching, and still he labors in the cause of his Master. Age has not
+subdued his zeal or dimmed his eye. His labors make up the history of
+the West. Where he first reared his humble log-hut, smiling farms and
+tasteful mansions cover the fertile prairies of the West; cities and
+towns mark the spot where his backwoods camp-meetings drew thousands
+into the kingdom of God; the iron horse dashes with the speed of the
+wind over the boundless prairies which he first crossed with only the
+points of timber for his guides; the floating palaces of the West plow
+the streams over which he swam his horse or was ferried in a bark canoe;
+and stately churches stand where the little log chapels of the infant
+West were built by him. It is a long and a noble life upon which he
+looks back, the only survivor of the heroic band who started with him to
+carry Christ into the Western wilds. He has outlived all his father's
+family, every member of the class he joined in 1800, every member of the
+Western Conference of 1804, save perhaps one or two, every member of the
+General Conference of 1816, the first to which he was elected, all his
+early bishops, every presiding elder under whom he ever ministered, and
+thousands of those whom he brought into the Church. "I have lived too
+long," he said, in a recent lecture; but we take issue with him. He has
+not lived too long whose declining age is cheered by the glorious
+fruition of the seed sown in his youth and prime. Few, indeed, are given
+so great a privilege; and few, having lived so long and worked so hard,
+can say with him, that during such a long and exposed career, "I have
+never been overtaken in any scandalous sin, though my shortcomings and
+imperfections have been without number." A man who can boast such a
+record, though he be as poor in purse as this simple-hearted backwoods
+preacher, has earned a Great Fortune indeed, for his treasure is one
+that can not be taken from him, since it is laid up in Heaven, "where
+neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break
+through nor steal."
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+AUTHORS.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.
+
+
+Wherever the English language is spoken, the name of HENRY WADSWORTH
+LONGFELLOW has become a household word, and there is scarcely a library,
+however humble, but can boast a well-worn volume of his tender
+songs,--songs that
+
+     "Have power to quiet
+       The restless pulse of care,
+     And come like the benediction
+       That follows after prayer."
+
+He was born in the city of Portland, Maine, on the 27th of February,
+1807, and was the son of the Hon. Stephen Longfellow, a distinguished
+lawyer of that city. The house in which he was born was a square wooden
+structure, built many years before, and large and roomy. It stood upon
+the outskirts of the town, on the edge of the sea, and was separated
+from the water only by a wide street. From its windows the dreamy boy,
+who grew up within its walls, could look out upon the dark, mysterious
+ocean, and, lying awake in his little bed in the long winter nights, he
+could listen to its sorrowful roar as it broke heavily upon the shore.
+That he was keenly alive to the fascination of such close intimacy with
+the ocean, we have abundant proof in his writings.
+
+He was carefully educated in the best schools of the city, and at the
+age of fourteen entered Bowdoin College, at Brunswick, where he
+graduated in his nineteenth year. He was an industrious student, and
+stood high in his classes. He gave brilliant promise of his future
+eminence as a poet in several productions written during his college
+days, which were published in a Boston journal called the "United States
+Literary Gazette." Among these were the "Hymn of the Moravian Nuns,"
+"The Spirit of Poetry," "Woods in Winter," and "Sunrise on the Hills."
+
+Upon leaving college he entered his father's office, in Portland, with
+the half-formed design of studying law, which he never carried into
+execution, as more congenial employment soon presented itself to him. In
+1826 he was appointed Professor of Modern Languages and Literature at
+Bowdoin College, with the privilege of passing several years abroad for
+observation and study. He accepted the appointment with unaffected
+delight, and promptly went abroad. He passed his first year in France,
+studying the language and literature of that country, and the next in
+Spain, engaged in similar pursuits. Italy claimed his third year, and
+Germany his fourth. He traveled extensively, and made many pleasant
+acquaintances among the most gifted men and women of the Old World.
+Returning home toward the close of 1829, he entered upon the active
+duties of his professorship, and for five years held this position,
+winning considerable distinction by his academic labors.
+
+During his professorship our poet married, and the years that followed
+were very happy and very quiet. The life he led at Bowdoin was peaceful,
+and in a measure retired, giving him ample opportunity for study and for
+laying the sure foundation of his future fame. During this period of his
+life he contributed articles to the "North American Review," and
+extended his acquaintance gradually among the literary men of New
+England. He was fond of recalling the experiences of his life abroad,
+and being unwilling that they should be lost from his memory, determined
+to transmit them to paper before they faded quite away. These sketches
+he finally concluded to give to the public, under the title of "Outre
+Mer; or, Sketches from Beyond Sea." They appeared originally in numbers,
+and were published by Samuel Colman, of Portland. They were well
+received, and brought Professor Longfellow into notice in New England.
+Soon afterward he published a translation of the ode upon "Coplas de
+Manrique," by his son, Don Jose Manrique, which won him additional
+credit. His fugitive poems had become very popular, and had made his
+name familiar to his countrymen, but as yet he had not collected them in
+book form.
+
+In 1835, on the resignation of Mr. George Ticknor, he was appointed
+Professor of Modern Languages and Belles Lettres in Harvard College, and
+accepted the position. Before entering upon his duties, however, he
+resolved to devote two years more to foreign travel and improvement, and
+accordingly sailed for Europe the second time. Before leaving America,
+however, he committed the publication of "Outre Mer" to the Harpers, of
+New York, who issued it complete in two volumes in 1835. Its popularity
+was very decided. Soon after reaching Europe, Mr. Longfellow was visited
+with a sad bereavement in the loss of his wife, who died at Rotterdam.
+He devoted this European visit to the northern part of the continent,
+Denmark, Sweden, Germany, and Holland, and to England, and spent some
+time in Paris. Returning in the autumn of 1836, he entered upon his
+duties at Harvard, and made his home in Cambridge. He continued his
+contributions to the "North American Review," and a number of fugitive
+pieces flowed from his pen into print.
+
+In the summer of 1837 he went to live in the house which has ever since
+been his home. This is the old Craigie House, in Cambridge, famous in
+our history as having been the headquarters of Washington during the
+siege of Boston. It had been built by Colonel John Vassal about the
+middle of the last century, and had finally passed into the hands of
+Andrew Craigie, "Apothecary General to the Northern Provincial Army" of
+the infant Republic. Craigie had ruined himself by his lavish
+hospitality, and his widow, a stately old lady, and worthy in every
+respect of a better fate, had been reduced to the necessity of letting
+rooms and parting with the greater portion of the lands which had
+belonged to the mansion. Mr. Longfellow had been attracted to the house
+not only by its winning and home-like appearance, but by its historical
+associations. Mrs. Craigie had decided at the time to let no more rooms,
+but the young professor's gentle, winning manner conquered her
+determination, and she not only received him into the old mansion, but
+installed him in the south-east corner room in the second story, which
+had been used by Washington as his bed-chamber.
+
+It was just the home for our poet. Its windows looked out upon one of
+the loveliest landscapes in New England, with the bright river winding
+through the broad meadow beyond the house, and the blue Milton Hills
+dotting the distant background. The bright verdure of New England
+sparkled on every side, and the stately old elms that stood guard by the
+house screened it from the prying eyes of the passers on the public
+road. The whole place was hallowed to its new inmate by the memories of
+the brave soldiers, wise statesmen, and brilliant ladies who had graced
+its heroic age, and of which the stately hostess was the last and worthy
+representative. The old house was as serene and still as the dearest
+lover of quiet could wish. The mistress lived quite apart from her
+lodger, and left him to follow the bent of his own fancies; and rare
+fancies they were, for it was of them that some of his best works were
+born in this upper chamber. Here he wrote "Hyperion," in 1838 and 1839.
+Its publication, which was undertaken by John Owen, the University
+publisher in Cambridge, marked an era in American literature. Every body
+read the book, and every body talked of it. It was a poem in prose, and
+none the less the work of a poet because professedly "a romance of
+travel." The young read it with enthusiasm, and it sent hundreds to
+follow Paul Flemming's footsteps in the distant Fatherland, where the
+"romance of travel" became their guidebook. The merchant and the lawyer,
+the journalist and the mechanic, reading its pages, found that the stern
+realities of life had not withered up all the romance of their natures,
+and under its fascinations they became boys again. Even Horace Greeley,
+that most practical and unimaginative of men, became rapturous over it.
+It was a great success, and established the poet's fame beyond all
+question, and since then its popularity has never waned.
+
+In 1840, he published the "Voices of the Night," which he had heard
+sounding to him in his haunted chamber. This was his first volume, and
+its popularity was even greater than that of "Hyperion," although some
+of the poems had appeared before, in the "Knickerbocker Magazine." In
+1841, he published his volume of "Ballads, and Other Poems," which but
+added to his fame, and the next year bade the old house under the elms
+a temporary adieu, and sailed for Europe, where he passed the summer on
+the Rhine. On the voyage home, he composed his "Poems on Slavery," and
+soon after his return wrote "The Spanish Student," a drama, "which
+smells of the utmost South, and was a strange blossoming for the garden
+of Thomas Tracy."
+
+In 1843 the stately mistress of the old house died, and Professor
+Longfellow bought the homestead of Andrew Craigie, with eight acres of
+land, including the meadow, which sloped down to the pretty river. There
+have been very few prouder or happier moments in his life than that in
+which he first felt that the old house under the elms was his. Yet he
+must have missed the stately old lady who first had admitted him to a
+place in it, and whom he had grown to love as a dear friend. She seemed
+so thoroughly a part and parcel of the place, that he must have missed
+the rustle of her heavy silks along the wide and echoing halls, and have
+listened some time for the sound of her old-fashioned spinet in the huge
+drawing-room below, and, entering the room where she was wont to receive
+her guests, he must have missed her from the old window where she was
+accustomed to sit, with the open book in her lap, and her eyes fixed on
+the far-off sky, thinking, no doubt, of the days when in her royal
+beauty, she moved a queen through the brilliant home of Andrew Craigie. A
+part of the veneration which he felt for the old house had settled upon
+its ancient mistress, and the poet doubtless felt that the completeness
+of the quaint old establishment was broken up when she passed away.
+
+In 1846, Mr. Longfellow published "The Belfry of Bruges, and Other
+Poems;" in 1847, "Evangeline" (by many considered his greatest work); in
+1850, "Seaside and Fireside;" in 1851, "The Golden Legend;" in 1855,
+"The Song of Hiawatha;" in 1858, "The Courtship of Miles Standish;" in
+1863, "The Wayside Inn;" in 1866, "The Flower de Luce;" in 1867, his
+translation of the "Divina Commedia," in three volumes; and in 1868,
+"The New England Tragedies." Besides these, he published, in 1845, a
+work on the "Poets and Poetry of Europe," and in 1849, "Kavanagh," a
+novel.
+
+Mr. Longfellow continued to discharge his duties in the University for
+seventeen years, winning fresh laurels every year, and in 1854 resigned
+his position, and was succeeded in it by Mr. James Russell Lowell. He
+now devoted himself exclusively to his profession, the income from his
+writings affording him a handsome maintenance. In 1855. "The Song of
+Hiawatha" was given to the public, and its appearance may be styled an
+event in the literary history of the world. It was not only original in
+the story it told, and in the method of treatment, but the rhythm was
+new. It was emphatically an American poem, and was received by the
+people with delight. It met with an immense sale, and greatly increased
+its author's popularity with his countrymen.
+
+In 1861 a terrible affliction befell the poet in his family. He had
+married, some years after the death of his first wife, a lady whose many
+virtues had endeared her to all who knew her. She was standing by the
+open fire in the sitting-room, one day in the winter of 1861, when her
+clothing took fire, and before her husband, summoned by her cries, could
+extinguish the flames, she was terribly burned. Her injuries were
+internal, and she soon afterwards died.
+
+In 1868, Mr. Longfellow again visited Europe, and remained abroad more
+than a year. His reception by all classes of the people of the Old World
+was eminently gratifying to his countrymen. This welcome, so genuine and
+heartfelt, was due, however, to the genius of the man, and not to his
+nationality.
+
+He had overstepped the bounds of country, and had made himself the poet
+of the English-speaking race. A man of vast learning and varied
+acquirements, thoroughly versed in the ways of the world, he is still as
+simple and unaffected in thought and ways as when he listened to and
+wondered at the dashing of the wild waves on the shore in his boyhood's
+home. A most gifted and accomplished artist, he has been faithful to
+nature in all things. Earnest and aspiring himself, he has given to his
+poems the ring of a true manhood. There is nothing bitter, nothing
+sarcastic in his writings. He views all things with a loving eye, and it
+is the exquisite tenderness of his sympathy with his fellow-men that has
+enabled him to find his way so readily to their hearts. Without seeking
+to represent the intensity of passion, he deals with the fresh, simple
+emotions of the human soul, and in his simplicity lies his power. He
+touches a chord that finds an echo in every heart, and his poems have a
+humanity in them that is irresistible. We admire the "grand old
+masters," but shrink abashed from their sublime measures. Longfellow is
+so human, he understands us so well, that we turn instinctively to his
+simple, tender songs for comfort in sorrow, or for the greater
+perfection of our happiness.
+
+Perhaps I can not better illustrate the power of his simplicity than by
+the following quotations:
+
+     There is no flock, however watched and tended,
+         But one dead lamb is there!
+     There is no fireside, howsoe'er defended,
+         But has one vacant chair!
+
+     The air is full of farewell to the dying,
+         And mournings for the dead;
+     The heart of Rachel, for her children crying,
+         Will not be comforted.
+
+     Let us be patient! These severe afflictions
+         Not from the ground arise,
+     But oftentimes celestial benedictions
+         Assume this dark disguise.
+
+     We see but dimly through the mists and vapors,
+         Amid these earthly damps;
+     What seem to us but sad funereal tapers,
+         May be heaven's distant lamps.
+
+     There is no death! What seems so is transition;
+         This life of mortal breath
+     Is but a suburb of the life elysian,
+         Whose portal we call Death.
+
+     She is not dead--the child of our affection--
+         But gone unto that school
+     Where she no longer needs our poor protection,
+         And Christ himself doth rule.
+
+     In that great cloister's stillness and seclusion,
+         By guardian angels led,
+     Safe from temptation, safe from sin's pollution,
+         She lives, whom we call dead.
+
+     Day after day we think what she is doing
+         In those bright realms of air;
+     Year after year, her tender steps pursuing,
+         Behold her grow more fair.
+
+     Thus do we walk with her, and keep unbroken
+         The bond which nature gives,
+     Thinking that our remembrance, though unspoken,
+         May reach her where she lives.
+
+     Not as a child shall we again behold her;
+         For when with raptures wild
+     In our embraces we again enfold her,
+         She will not be a child--
+
+     But a fair maiden, in her Father's mansion,
+         Clothed with celestial grace,
+     And beautiful with all the soul's expansion
+         Shall we behold her face.
+
+     And though at times impetuous with emotion,
+         And anguish long suppressed,
+     The swelling heart heaves, moaning like the ocean,
+         That can not be at rest--
+
+     We will be patient, and assuage the feeling
+         We can not wholly stay;
+     By silence sanctifying, not concealing,
+         The grief that must have way.
+
+
+
+FROM THE GOLDEN LEGEND.
+
+SCENE.--_The Chamber of_ GOTTLIEB _and_ URSULA.--_Midnight_.--ELSIE
+_standing by their bedside weeping_.
+
+
+GOTTLIEB. The wind is roaring; the rushing rain
+Is loud upon the roof and window-pane,
+As if the wild Huntsman of Rodenstein,
+Boding evil to me and mine,
+Were abroad to-night with his ghostly train!
+In the brief lulls of the tempest wild,
+The dogs howl in the yard; and hark!
+Some one is sobbing in the dark,
+Here in the chamber.
+
+ELSIE.              It is I.
+
+URSULA.  Elsie! What ails thee, my poor child?
+
+ELSIE.  I am disturbed and much distressed,
+In thinking our dear Prince must die;
+I can not close my eyes, nor rest.
+
+GOTTLIEB. What wouldst thou? In the Power Divine
+His healing lies, not in our own;
+It is in the hand of God alone.
+
+ELSIE.  Nay, He has put it into mine,
+And into my heart.
+
+GOTTLIEB.          Thy words are wild.
+
+URSULA.  What dost thou mean? my child! my child!
+
+ELSIE.  That for our dear Prince Henry's sake
+I will myself the offering make,
+And give my life to purchase his.
+
+URSULA.  Am I still dreaming, or awake?
+Thou speakest carelessly of death,
+And yet thou knowest not what it is.
+
+ELSIE.  'Tis the cessation of our breath.
+Silent and motionless we lie;
+And no one knoweth more than this.
+I saw our little Gertrude die;
+She left off breathing, and no more
+I smoothed the pillow beneath her head.
+She was more beautiful than before.
+Like violets faded were her eyes;
+By this we knew that she was dead.
+Through the open window looked the skies
+Into the chamber where she lay,
+And the wind was like the sound of wings,
+As if angels came to bear her away.
+Ah! when I saw and felt these things,
+I found it difficult to stay;
+I longed to die, as she had died,
+And go forth with her, side by side.
+The saints are dead, the martyrs dead,
+And Mary, and our Lord; and I
+Would follow in humility
+The way by them illumined.
+
+URSULA.  My child I my child! thou must not die.
+
+ELSIE.  Why should I live? Do I not know
+The life of woman is full of woe?
+Toiling on, and on, and on,
+With breaking heart, and tearful eyes,
+And silent lips, and in the soul
+The secret longings that arise,
+Which this world never satisfies!
+Some more, some less, but of the whole
+Not one quite happy; no, not one!
+
+URSULA.  It is the malediction of Eve!
+
+ELSIE.  In place of it, let me receive
+The benediction of Mary, then.
+
+GOTTLIEB. Ah, woe is me! Ah, woe is me!
+Most wretched am I among men.
+
+URSULA.  Alas! that I should live to see
+Thy death, beloved, and to stand
+Above thy grave! Ah, woe the day!
+
+ELSIE.  Thou wilt not see it. I shall lie
+Beneath the flowers of another land;
+For at Salerno, far away
+Over the mountains, over the sea,
+It is appointed me to die!
+And it will seem no more to thee
+Than if at the village on market day
+I should a little longer stay
+Than I am used.
+
+URSULA.         Even as thou sayest!
+And how my heart beats when thou stayest!
+I can not rest until my sight
+Is satisfied with seeing thee.
+What, then, if thou wert dead?
+
+GOTTLIEB.                      Ah me,
+Of our old eyes thou art the light!
+The joy of our old hearts art thou!
+And wilt thou die?
+
+URSULA.            Not now! not now!
+
+ELSIE.  Christ died for me, and shall not I
+Be willing for my Prince to die?
+You both are silent; you can not speak.
+This said I, at our Saviour's feast,
+After confession, to the priest,
+And even he made no reply.
+Does he not warn us all to seek
+The happier, better land on high,
+Where flowers immortal never wither;
+And could he forbid me to go thither?
+
+GOTTLIEB. In God's own time, my heart's delight!
+When He shall call thee, not before!
+
+ELSIE.  I heard Him call. When Christ ascended
+Triumphantly, from star to star,
+He left the gates of heaven ajar.
+I had a vision in the night,
+And saw Him standing at the door
+Of His Father's mansion, vast and splendid,
+And beckoning to me from afar.
+I can not stay!
+
+GOTTLIEB.       She speaks almost
+As if it were the Holy Ghost
+Spake through her lips and in her stead!
+What if this were of God?
+
+URSULA.                   Ah, then
+Gainsay it dare we not.
+
+GOTTLIEB.               Amen!
+
+
+The old house under the elms is still the poet's home, and dear, as
+such, to every lover of poetry. It is a stately building, of the style
+of more than one hundred years ago, and is a very home-like place in its
+general appearance. Entering by the main door-way, which is in the
+center of the house, the visitor finds himself in a wide, old-fashioned
+hall, with doors opening upon it on either hand.
+
+"The library of the poet is the long north-eastern room upon the lower
+floor," said a writer seventeen years ago. "It opens upon the garden,
+which retains still the quaint devices of an antique design, harmonious
+with the house. The room is surrounded with handsome book-cases, and one
+stands also between two Corinthian columns at one end, which imparts
+dignity and richness to the apartment. A little table by the northern
+window, looking upon the garden, is the usual seat of the poet. A bust
+or two, the rich carvings of the cases, the spaciousness of the room, a
+leopard-skin lying upon the floor, and a few shelves of strictly
+literary curiosities, reveal not only the haunt of the elegant scholar
+and poet, but the favorite resort of the family circle. But the northern
+gloom of a New England winter is intolerant of this serene delight, this
+beautiful domesticity, and urges the inmates to the smaller room in
+front of the house, communicating with the library, and the study of
+General Washington. This is still distinctively 'the study,' as the rear
+room is 'the library,' Books are here, and all the graceful detail of an
+elegant household, and upon the walls hang crayon portraits of Emerson,
+Sumner, and Hawthorne.
+
+"Emerging into the hall, the eyes of the enamored visitor fall upon the
+massive old staircase, with the clock upon the landing. Directly he
+hears a singing in his mind:
+
+
+      'Somewhat back from the village street,
+       Stands the old-fashioned country-seat;
+       Across its antique portico
+       Tall poplar trees their shadows throw,
+       And from its station in the hall
+       An ancient time-piece says to all,
+           "Forever--never!
+           Never--forever!"'
+
+
+"But he does not see the particular clock of the poem, which stood upon
+another staircase, in another quaint old mansion,--although the verse
+belongs truly to all old clocks in all old country-seats, just as the
+'Village Blacksmith' and his smithy are not alone the stalwart man and
+dingy shop under the 'spreading chestnut-tree' which the Professor daily
+passes on his way to his college duties, but belong wherever a smithy
+stands. Through the meadows in front flows the placid Charles."
+
+So calmly flows the poet's life. The old house has other charms for him
+now besides those with which his fancy invested it when he first set
+foot within its walls, for here have come to him the joys and sorrows of
+his maturer life, and here, "when the evening lamps are lighted," come
+to him the memories of the loved and lost, who but wait for him in the
+better land. Here, too, cluster the memories of those noble achievements
+in his glorious career which have made him now and for all times the
+people's poet. Others, as the years go by, will woo us with their lays,
+but none so winningly and tenderly as this our greatest master. There
+was but one David in Israel, and when he passed away no other filled his
+place.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.
+
+
+There came to the old town of Salem, in the Province of Massachusetts,
+in the early part of the seventeenth century, an English family named
+Hawthorne--Puritans, like all the other inhabitants of that growing
+town. They proved their fidelity to Puritan principles by entering
+readily into all the superstitions of the day, and became noted for the
+zeal with which they persecuted the Quakers and hung the witches. The
+head of the family was a sea captain, and for many generations the men
+of the family followed the same avocation, "a gray-haired shipmaster, in
+each generation, retiring from the quarter-deck to the homestead, while
+a boy of fourteen took the hereditary place before the mast, confronting
+the salt spray and the gale, which had blustered against his sire and
+grandsire."
+
+[Illustration: NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.]
+
+Of such a race came NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, who was born at Salem, on the
+4th, of July, 1804. His father was a sea captain, and died of the yellow
+fever at Havana, in 1810. His mother was a woman of great beauty and
+extreme sensibility, and it was from her that Nathaniel derived the
+peculiarities of character which distinguished him through life. The
+death of her husband filled her with the profoundest grief, and though
+the violence of her sorrow subsided with time, she passed the
+remainder of her life in strict seclusion, constantly grieving in her
+quiet way for her departed lord. Her son grew up to the age of ten in
+this sad and lonely house, passing four of the most susceptible years of
+his life in the society of his sorrowful mother. He became a shy boy,
+and avoided the company of other children. His health began to suffer
+from the effects of such an unnatural state of affairs, and at the age
+of ten he was sent to live on a farm belonging to the family, on the
+shore of Sebago Lake, in Maine. The active out-door life which he led
+here entirely restored his health, which was naturally strong and
+vigorous; here, also, he acquired that fondness for boating which was
+his chief amusement in after years. Returning to Salem, he completed his
+studies in the preparatory schools, after which he entered Bowdoin
+College, where he graduated in 1825, at the age of twenty-one. He was a
+classmate of Longfellow and George B. Cheever, with whom he was only
+slightly acquainted; and he formed a warm and lasting friendship with
+Franklin Pierce, who was in the class next before him. Longfellow has
+preserved a recollection of him in his student days as "a shy youth in a
+bright-buttoned coat, flitting across the college grounds."
+
+After graduating, he went back to his home in Salem, where he resided
+for many years, leading a life of seclusion, which he passed in
+meditation and study. His strong literary inclination now vented itself
+in efforts which were in every way characteristic of the man. He wrote
+numerous wild tales, the most of which he burned, but a few of which
+found their way into the newspapers and magazines of the country. They
+were full of a wild gloominess, and were told with a power which proved
+that their author was no ordinary man. Few, however, dreamed that they
+were the work of the pale recluse of Salem, for he led a life of such
+strict seclusion that not even the members of his own family could tell
+with certainty what he did. His days were passed in his chamber, and at
+night he took long walks alone on the sea-shore or into the woods. He
+shunned all society, and seemed to find companionship only in nature,
+and in the creations of his fancy. Yet he was not a morose or unhappy
+man. On the contrary, he seems to have been a very happy one, full of
+generous and kindly feelings, and finding only a strange pleasure where
+others would have found bitterness and cynicism. Like the melancholy
+Jacques, he might have said of his pensive shyness, "It is a melancholy
+of mine own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many
+objects; ... which, by often rumination, wraps me in a most humorous
+sadness."
+
+In 1837 he collected his published tales, which, while they had charmed
+a few cultivated readers, had scarcely been noticed by the masses, and
+published them in a volume to which he gave the name of "Twice-Told
+Tales." The book was well received by the public, but its circulation
+was limited, although Mr. Longfellow warmly welcomed it in the "North
+American Review," and pronounced it the "work of a man of genius and a
+true poet." Still it was neglected by the masses, and Hawthorne says
+himself that he was at that time "the most unknown author in America."
+There was more truth in this assertion than lies on its face, for the
+people who read the book supposed that the name of Nathaniel Hawthorne
+was merely a pseudonyme, and declared that as Nathaniel was evidently
+selected by the author because of the fondness of the old-time Puritans
+for Scripture names, so Hawthorne was chosen by him as expressive of one
+of the most beautiful features of the New England landscape. The merits
+of the book were too genuine, however, for it to lack admirers, and the
+small class which greeted its first appearance with delight gradually
+increased, and finally the demand for the book became so great that in
+1842 Hawthorne ventured to issue a second series of "Twice-Told Tales,"
+the most of which had appeared in the "Democratic Review," then edited
+by his friend O'Sullivan. Of these volumes, Mr. George William Curtis
+says: "They are full of glancing wit, of tender satire, of exquisite
+natural description, of subtle and strange analysis of human life,
+darkly passionate and weird."
+
+In 1838 George Bancroft was Collector of the Port of Boston, and, having
+been deeply impressed with the genius displayed in the first volume of
+"Twice-Told Tales," sought out Hawthorne and offered him a place in the
+Boston Custom-House as weigher and gauger. Hawthorne accepted the
+position, and at once entered upon his duties. Leaving his solitude and
+the weird phantoms that had been his companions for so long, he passed
+immediately into the busy bustle of the great New England port. It was a
+new world to him, and one which interested him keenly. His duties kept
+him constantly on the wharf, and threw him daily into contact with
+captains and sailors from all parts of the world. He became a great
+favorite with these, and they told him many a strange story of their
+adventures and of the sights they had seen in distant lands, and these,
+as they were listened to by him, took each a distinctive form in his
+imagination. Not less interesting to him were the men among whom his
+duties threw him. They were more to him than the ordinary beings that
+thronged the streets of the great city, for they had been victorious in
+many a battle with the mighty deep, and they had looked on the wondrous
+sights of the far-off lands of the Old World. Queer people they were,
+too, each a Captain Cuttle or a Dirk Hatteraick in himself, and many an
+hour did the dreamy writer spend with them, apparently listening to
+their rude stories, but really making keen studies of the men
+themselves.
+
+He discharged his duties faithfully in the Boston Custom-House,
+performing each with an exactness thoroughly characteristic of him,
+until 1841, when the accession of President Harrison to power obliged
+him to withdraw to make way for a Whig.
+
+From the Custom-house he went to live at Brook Farm as one of that
+singular community of dreamers and enthusiasts which was to inaugurate a
+new era of men and things in the world, but which came at last to a most
+inglorious termination. He was thrown into intimate association here
+with many who have since become prominent in our literary history, and
+for some of them conceived a warm attachment. He took his share of the
+farm labors, to which he was very partial, but remained at the community
+less than a year, and then returned to Boston. In his "Blithedale
+Romance" he has given us a picture of the life at Brook Farm, though he
+denies having sketched his characters from his old associates at that
+place.
+
+In 1843 he married Miss Peabody, a member of a family distinguished for
+their various achievements in the world of letters. Besides being an
+artist of no mean pretensions, she was herself a writer of considerable
+promise, though her writings had no other critics than her family and
+most intimate friends. "Her husband shrank from seeing her name in the
+reviews, and in this, as in all other things, his feelings were sacredly
+respected by her." She was a lady of rare strength of character and
+great beauty, and was in every respect a fitting wife for such a man.
+The twenty-one years of their wedded life make up a period of unbroken
+happiness to both. Hawthorne was very proud of his wife, and in his
+quiet way never failed to show it. Their friends often remarked that
+the wedded life of this happy pair seemed like one long courtship.
+
+Hawthorne took his bride on his wedding-day to a new home. He had rented
+the old parsonage adjoining the battle-field of Concord, from whose
+windows the pastor of those heroic days had watched his congregation
+fight the British in his yard. It was a gloomy and partially dilapidated
+"Old Manse," and doubtless Hawthorne had chosen it because of its quaint
+aspect. He has himself drawn the picture of it, and given us an
+exquisite collection of "Mosses" from it. It lay back from the main
+road, and was approached by an avenue of ancient black-ash trees, whose
+deep shade added much to the quiet appearance of "the gray front of the
+old parsonage." It was just the home for him, and here passed three of
+the happiest years of his life. Here he wrote his "Mosses from an Old
+Manse," and here his first child was born.
+
+The life he led at Concord was very secluded. He avoided the society of
+the village people, who sought in vain to penetrate his retirement and
+satisfy their curiosity concerning him. But they were disappointed. He
+lived on in his deep seclusion, happy in having his wife and child with
+him, but caring for no other society. During the day he remained in his
+study, which overlooked the old battle-field, or, passing down the lawn
+at the back of the house to the river, spent the afternoon in rowing on
+the pretty stream. At night he would take long walks, or row up the
+river to the bridge by which the British crossed the stream, and enjoy
+his favorite luxury--a bath. The village people were full of curiosity
+to know something about him, for he was absolutely unknown to them; and
+any one who understands what the curiosity of a New England villager is
+can readily imagine the feelings with which the people of Concord
+regarded their mysterious neighbor. They were never satisfied, however,
+for Hawthorne shrank from prying eyes with indescribable horror. He kept
+his ways, and compelled them to let him alone. He could easily avoid the
+town in his walks or his rides upon the river, and he was rarely seen
+passing through the streets unless compelled to do so by matters which
+needed his attention in Concord.
+
+Yet the "Old Manse" was not without its guests. Hawthorne was a man of
+many friends, and these came often to see him. They were men after his
+own heart, and among them were Emerson, Ellery, Channing, Thoreau,
+Whittier, Longfellow, and George William Curtis. The last-named has left
+us this pleasant picture of our author in the midst of his friends:
+
+"During Hawthorne's first year's residence in Concord, I had driven up
+with some friends to an esthetic tea at Mr. Emerson's. It was in the
+winter, and a great wood-fire blazed upon the hospitable hearth. There
+were various men and women of note assembled, and I, who listened
+attentively to all the fine things that were said, was for some time
+scarcely aware of a man who sat upon the edge of the circle, a little
+withdrawn, his head slightly thrown forward upon his breast, and his
+bright eyes clearly burning under his black brow. As I drifted down the
+stream of talk, this person who sat silent as a shadow looked to me as
+Webster might have looked had he been a poet--a kind of poetic Webster.
+He rose and walked to the window, and stood quietly there for a long
+time, watching the dead white landscape. No appeal was made to him,
+nobody looked after him, the conversation flowed as steadily on as if
+every one understood that his silence was to be respected. It was the
+same thing at table. In vain the silent man imbibed esthetic tea.
+Whatever fancies it inspired did not flower at his lips. But there was a
+light in his eye which assured me that nothing was lost. So supreme was
+his silence, that it presently engrossed me to the exclusion of every
+thing else. There was brilliant discourse, but this silence was much
+more poetic and fascinating. Fine things were said by the philosophers,
+but much finer things were implied by the dumbness of this gentleman
+with heavy brows and black hair. When presently he rose and went,
+Emerson, with the 'slow, wise smile' that breaks over his face, like day
+over the sky, said: 'Hawthorne rides well his horse of the night.'"
+Later on, after he knew him better, Curtis added to this picture, "His
+own sympathy was so broad and sure, that, although nothing had been said
+for hours, his companion knew that not a thing had escaped his eye, nor
+had a single pulse of beauty in the day, or scene, or society failed to
+thrill his heart. In this way his silence was most social. Every thing
+seemed to have been said."
+
+At the close of the third year of his residence at Concord, Hawthorne
+was obliged to give up the "Old Manse," as the owner was coming back to
+occupy it. The Democrats had now come into power again under Mr. Polk,
+and Mr. Bancroft was in the Cabinet. The Secretary, mindful of his
+friend, procured him the post of Surveyor of the Port of Salem, and
+Hawthorne went with his little family to live in his native town. The
+Salem Custom-house was a sleepy sort of a place, and his duties were
+merely nominal. He had an abundance of leisure time, and from that
+leisure was born his masterpiece, "The Scarlet Letter"--the most
+powerful romance which ever flowed from an American author's pen. It was
+published in 1850, and in the preface to it the reader will find an
+excellent description of the author's life in Salem. He held his
+position in that place for three years, and then the election of General
+Taylor obliged him to retire.
+
+He withdrew to the Berkshire Hills, and took a house in the town of
+Lenox. It was a little red cottage, and was situated on the shore of a
+diminutive lake called the Stockbridge Bowl. He was now the most famous
+novelist in America, and had thousands of admirers in the Old World. His
+"Scarlet Letter" had won him fame, and had brought his earlier works
+more prominently before the public than ever.
+
+During his residence at Lenox, he wrote "The House of the Seven Gables,"
+which was published in Boston in 1851. It was not less successful than
+the "Scarlet Letter," though it was not so finished a piece of
+workmanship.
+
+Yet, though so famous, he was not freed from the trials incident to the
+first years of an author's life. Mr. Tuckerman says of him at this time:
+"He had the fortitude and pride, as well as the sensitiveness and
+delicacy, of true and high genius. Not even his nearest country
+neighbors knew aught of his meager larder or brave economies. He never
+complained, even when editors were dilatory in their remuneration and
+friends forgetful of their promises. When the poor author had the money,
+he would buy a beefsteak for dinner; when he had not, he would make a
+meal of chestnuts and potatoes. He had the self-control and the probity
+to fulfill that essential condition of self-respect, alike for those who
+subsist by brain work and those who inherit fortunes--he always lived
+within his income; and it was only by a kind of pious fraud that a trio
+of his oldest friends occasionally managed to pay his rent." His friend
+and publisher, Mr. Ticknor, "received and invested the surplus earnings
+of the absentee author when American Consul at Liverpool, and had
+obtained from Hawthorne a promise on the eve of his departure for his
+post, ... that he would send him all he could spare from his official
+income, to be carefully nursed into a competence for his family. Never
+was better advice given or wiser service performed by publisher to
+author. The investments thus made became the means of comfort to the
+returned writer in the maturity of his years and his fame."
+
+In 1852 he returned to Concord and purchased a small house which had
+once been the residence of the philosopher Alcott. Here he made his
+permanent home and gathered about him his household treasures. In the
+Presidential campaign of 1852, his friend Franklin Pierce was the
+candidate of the Democracy, and Hawthorne wrote a short biography of him
+which was used by the Democrats as a campaign document. It was a labor
+of love, for the friendship that had been begun between these two men in
+their college days had never been broken, and though naturally averse to
+every thing that savored of politics, our author made this contribution
+to the cause of his friend with all the heartiness of his nature. Pierce
+was profoundly touched by this unexpected aid, for he knew how utterly
+Hawthorne detested political strife, and when seated in the Presidential
+chair he showed his appreciation of it by offering his friend the
+consulship to Liverpool--one of the most lucrative offices within the
+gift of the executive. Hawthorne broke up his home in Concord and sailed
+for Liverpool in 1853, and remained there until 1857, when he resigned
+his consulship and traveled on the continent with his family, residing
+for some time in Italy for the benefit of his health. His European
+residence had the effect of drawing him out of his shyness and reserve
+to a certain extent, and during the closing years of his life he was
+more social with the persons about him than he had ever been. After his
+return he went back to Concord, where he enlarged and beautified his old
+home, intending to remain there for the balance of his life. He wrote
+the "Marble Faun" and "Our Old Home" just after his return from Europe.
+The former was suggested by his residence in Italy, and the latter was
+a collection of English sketches and reminiscences.
+
+The war between the two sections of the country affected him very
+deeply. It seemed to him a terrible tragedy, to which there could be no
+end but utter ruin for the country. He sympathized strongly with the
+cause of the Union, but at the same time his heart bled at the
+sufferings of the people of the south. It was one long agony to him, and
+only those who knew him intimately can understand how much he suffered
+during this unhappy period.
+
+Mr. Moncure D. Conway gives the following reminiscence of him about this
+time: "I passed a night under the same roof with him at the house of Mr.
+Fields, his publisher. He seemed much dejected. Mr. Fields had invited a
+little company, but, after the first arrivals, Hawthorne made his escape
+to his room, from which he did not emerge until the next morning at
+breakfast time. He then came in with the amusing look of a naughty
+child, and pleaded that he had become lost the night before in Defoe's
+ghost stories until it was too late to make his appearance in the
+company. He must, I should think, have been contemplating some
+phantasmal production at that time, for I remember his asking me many
+questions about the ghost-beliefs of the negroes, among whom I had
+passed my early life."
+
+Besides the works already mentioned, Hawthorne was the author of "True
+Stories from History and Biography" and "The Wonder Book for Boys and
+Girls," both published in 1851; "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told
+Tales," published in 1852; and "Tanglewood Tales," published in 1853,
+all juveniles. At the time of his death he was engaged upon a novel
+which was to have been published in the "Atlantic Monthly," but it was
+left incomplete.
+
+In the spring of 1864 his friend and publisher, Mr. W.D. Ticknor, of
+Boston, seeing how feeble Hawthorne had become, asked him to accompany
+him on an excursion, hoping that a rapid change of scene and cheerful
+company would benefit him. They set out in April, and went direct to
+Philadelphia. Upon arriving at the hotel, Mr. Ticknor was suddenly taken
+very ill, and died on the 10th of April in his friend's arms. Hawthorne
+was profoundly shocked by this melancholy occurrence, and it is said
+that he never fully recovered from its effects upon him. His melancholy
+seemed to deepen, and though his friends exerted themselves to cheer
+him, he seemed to feel that his end was near. Ex-President Pierce,
+hoping to rouse him from his sad thoughts, induced him to accompany him
+on an excursion to the White Mountains. Upon reaching Plymouth, which
+they took on their route, they stopped at the Pemigewasset House for the
+night. Mr. Pierce was so full of anxiety concerning his friend, who had
+been quieter and sadder than usual that day, that he went softly into
+his room in the middle of the night to look after him. Hawthorne was
+lying very still, and seemed to be sleeping sweetly. Mr. Pierce stole
+softly away, fearing to disturb him. In the morning he went back to
+rouse his friend, and found him lying lifeless in the position he had
+noticed in the night. He had been dead some hours.
+
+The announcement of Hawthorne's death caused a feeling of deep sadness
+in all parts of the Union. His body was taken to Concord for burial, and
+was accompanied to the grave by the best and most gifted of the land, to
+each of whom he had endeared himself in life.
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+ACTORS.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+EDWIN BOOTH.
+
+
+There are many persons who remember the elder Booth, the "Great Booth,"
+as he was called, in his palmy days, when the bare announcement of his
+name was sufficient to cram our old-fashioned theaters from pit to dome.
+He was sublime in the stormy passions which he delineated, and never
+failed to draw down from the gods of the gallery the uproarious yells
+with which they testify their approval; even the more dignified
+occupants of the boxes found themselves breaking into outbursts of
+applause which they were powerless to restrain. He was a favorite with
+all classes, and a deserved one, and the lovers of the drama looked
+forward with genuine regret to the period when he should be no longer
+with them. They felt that the glories of the stage would pass away with
+him. It was in vain that they were told that he had sons destined to the
+same profession. They shook their heads, and said it was impossible that
+the mantle of the great tragedian should rest upon any of his sons, for
+it was then, as now, a popular belief that great men never have great
+children. How very much these good people were mistaken we will see in
+the progress of this chapter.
+
+One of these sons was destined in the course of time to eclipse the fame
+won by his father, and to endear himself to the American people as a
+more finished, if less stormy, actor. This was EDWIN BOOTH. He was born
+on his father's farm near Baltimore, Maryland, In 1833, and after
+receiving a good common-school education, began his training for the
+stage. The elder Booth was quick to see that his boy had inherited his
+genius, and he took great pains to develop the growing powers of the
+lad, and to incline them toward those paths which his experience had
+taught him were the surest roads to success. He took him with him on his
+starring engagements, and kept him about him so constantly that the boy
+may be said to have grown up on the stage from his infancy. He was
+enthusiastically devoted to his father, and it was his delight to stand
+at the wings and watch the great tragedian in his personations, and the
+thunders of applause which proclaimed some fresh triumph were sweeter to
+the boy, perhaps, than to the man.
+
+In 1849, at the age of sixteen, he made his first appearance on the
+stage as Tyrrell, in "Richard III.," and gave great satisfaction by his
+rendition of the character. From this time he continued to appear at
+various places with his father, and in 1851 won his first great success
+in the city of New York. His father was playing an engagement at the
+Chatham Theater at the time, and was announced for Richard III., which
+was his masterpiece. When the hour for performance came, he was too ill
+to appear. The manager was in despair, for the house was filled with a
+large audience, who were impatient for the appearance of the humpbacked
+king. In this emergency Edwin Booth offered to take his father's place,
+and the manager, pleased with the novelty of the proposal, accepted it.
+Young Booth was but eighteen years old, and had not even studied the
+part, and it was a perilous thing to venture before an audience in a
+role in which one of his name had won such great fame. But he was
+confident of his own powers, and he had so often hung with delight upon
+his father's rendition of the part, that he needed but a hasty reference
+to the book to perfect him in the text. He won a decided triumph, and
+the public promptly acknowledged that he gave promise of being an
+unusually fine actor.
+
+In 1852 Mr. Booth went to California, and engaged for the "utility
+business." He spent two years in careful and patient study in the
+humbler walks of his profession, learning its details, and doing much of
+the drudgery essential to a thorough knowledge of his art. In 1854, he
+went to Australia, and played a successful engagement there, stopping on
+his way at several of the Pacific islands. On his return, he played an
+engagement, with marked success, at the Sandwich Islands, and then went
+back to California.
+
+In 1857 he returned to New York, and, on the 4th of May, appeared at
+Burton's Theater, in the character of Richard III. A writer who
+witnessed his performance on that occasion thus speaks of him: "The
+company was not strong in tragedy; the young actor came without
+reputation; the season was late. But he conquered his place. His Richard
+was intellectual, brilliant, rapid, handsome, picturesque, villainous.
+But the villainy was servant to the ambition--not master of it, as a
+coarse player makes it. The action was original; the dress was
+perfect--the smirched gauntlets and flung-on mantle of the scheming,
+busy duke, the splendid vestments of the anointed king, the glittering
+armor of the monarch in the field. His clear beauty, his wonderful
+voice--which he had not learned to use--his grace, his fine artistic
+sense, made all triumphs seem possible to this young man. Evidently
+there was great power in the new actor--power untrained, vigor ill
+directed. But what was plainest to be seen, was the nervous, impulsive
+temperament, which would leave him no rest save in achievement. He might
+come back to us a robustious, periwig-pated fellow, the delight and
+wonder of the galleries. He might come back the thorough artist, great
+in repose as in action. But it was clear enough that what he was then in
+Richard, in Richelieu, in Sir Edward Mortimer, he would never be again."
+
+He followed this appearance by a general tour through the country, and
+returned to New York in 1858, where he won fresh laurels. In 1860 he
+reappeared at Burton's Theater, then called the Winter Garden, and added
+Hamlet to his role. He had improved greatly during the time that had
+elapsed since his last appearance at this theater, and had gained very
+much in power and artistic finish. The most critical audiences in the
+country received him with delight, crowded his houses, and hailed his
+efforts with thunders of applause. This season silenced all the critics,
+and placed him among the great actors of the American stage. He bore his
+honors modestly, and though he was proud of the triumphs he had won,
+they did not satisfy him. There were still greater successes to be
+achieved before the highest honors of his profession could be his, and
+it was upon these that his eye was fixed from the first. The applause
+which greeted him in every city in which he appeared only served to
+stimulate him to fresh exertions.
+
+In the summer of 1861, he visited England, and played an engagement at
+the Haymarket Theater in London, where he was favorably received by the
+British playgoers. At the close of this engagement, he spent a year on
+the continent, in travel and in the study of his profession. He also
+made careful studies of the scenes of the great historic dramas of the
+English stage, both in England and on the continent, and of the dresses
+and other appointments needed for them. By thoroughly familiarizing
+himself with these details, he has been able to produce his plays with
+entire fidelity to history.
+
+Returning once more to New York, he appeared at the Winter Garden, in
+the winter of 1863-64, in a series of Shakespearean revivals. He played
+Hamlet for over one hundred nights, and followed it during that season
+and the next with "Merchant of Venice" and "Othello" (in the latter
+playing the parts of Othello and Iago on alternate nights). During the
+same seasons he appeared also in "Richelieu," "Ruy Blas," "The Fool's
+Revenge," and "Don Caesar de Bazan." These performances were extended
+into the season of 1866-67, when they were suddenly cut short by the
+total destruction of the Winter Garden Theater by fire on the night of
+the 23d of March, 1867. In this fire Mr. Booth lost his entire wardrobe,
+including many relics of his father, Kemble, and Mrs. Siddons.
+
+The destruction of a theater has seldom drawn forth a more universal
+expression of regret than that which poured in upon Mr. Booth from all
+parts of the country. It was feared that the loss of his valuable
+wardrobe would be irremediable, as indeed it was in a certain sense. All
+over the Union a general wish was expressed that the great actor should
+have a new theater in some of our large cities, and one which should be
+worthy of his genius. Mr. Booth had chosen the city of New York for his
+permanent home, and after the destruction of the Winter Garden Theater
+began to arrange his plans for the erection of a new building of his
+own, which he was resolved should be the most magnificent and the best
+appointed theater in the world. The site chosen was the south-eastern
+corner of the Sixth Avenue and Twenty-third Street in New York, and in
+the summer of 1867 the work of clearing away the old buildings and
+digging the foundations of the new theater was begun. It was carried
+forward steadily, and the building was completed and opened to the
+public in January, 1869.
+
+It is in the Rennaissance style of architecture, and stands seventy feet
+high from the sidewalk to the main cornice, crowning which is a Mansard
+roof of twenty-four feet. "The theater proper fronts one hundred and
+forty-nine feet on Twenty-third Street, and is divided into three parts,
+so combined as to form an almost perfect whole, with arched entrances at
+either extremity on the side, for the admission of the public, and on
+the other for another entrance, and the use of the actors and those
+employed in the house. On either side of these main entrances are broad
+and lofty windows; and above them, forming a part of the second story,
+are niches for statues, surrounded by coupled columns resting on finely
+sculptured pedestals. The central or main niche is flanked on either
+side by quaintly contrived blank windows; and between the columns, at
+the depth of the recesses, are simple pilasters sustaining the elliptic
+arches, which serve to top and span the niches, the latter to be
+occupied by statues of the great creators and interpreters of the drama
+in every age and country. The finest Concord granite, from the best
+quarries in New Hampshire, is the material used in the entire facade, as
+well as in the Sixth Avenue side.... The glittering granite mass,
+exquisitely poised, adorned with rich and appropriate carving, statuary,
+columns, pilasters, and arches, and capped by the springing French roof,
+fringed with its shapely balustrades, offers an imposing and majestic
+aspect, and forms one of the architectural jewels of the city."
+
+In its internal arrangements the theater is in keeping with its external
+magnificence. Entering through a sumptuous vestibule, the visitor passes
+into the magnificent auditorium, which is in itself a rare piece of
+decorative art. The seats are admirably arranged, each one commanding a
+view of the stage. The floor is richly carpeted, and the seats are
+luxuriously upholstered. Three elegant light galleries rise above the
+parquet. The walls and ceiling are exquisitely frescoed, and ornamented
+with bas reliefs in plaster. The proscenium is beautifully frescoed and
+carved, and is adorned with busts of the elder Booth and the proprietor
+of the theater; and in the sides before the curtain are arranged six
+sumptuous private boxes. The curtain is a beautiful landscape. The
+decoration of the house is not done in the rough scenic style so common
+in the most of the theaters of the country, but is the perfection of
+frescoe painting, and is capable of bearing the closest examination. The
+stage is very large, and slopes gradually from the rear to the
+footlights. The orchestra pen is sunk below the level of the stage, so
+that the heads of the musicians do not cut off the view of the audience.
+The dressing of the stage is novel. The side scenes or wings, instead of
+being placed at right angles to the spectator as in most theaters, are
+so arranged that the scene appears to extend to the right and left as
+well as to the rear. In this way the spectator is saved the annoyance of
+often looking through the wings, a defect which in most theaters
+completely dispels the illusion of the play. The scenery here is not set
+by hand, but is moved by machinery, and with such regularity and
+precision that these changes have very much the effect of "dissolving
+views." The scenes themselves are the works of highly educated artists,
+and never degenerate into the rough daubs with which most playgoers are
+familiar. The building is fire-proof, and is warmed and ventilated in a
+peculiar manner. The great central chandelier and the lights around the
+cornice of the auditorium are lighted by electricity.
+
+The plays presented here are superbly put on the stage. The scenery is
+strictly accurate when meant to represent some historic locality, and
+is the finest to be found in America. Perhaps the grandest stage picture
+ever given to an audience was the grave-yard scene in "Hamlet," which
+"held the boards" for over one hundred nights last winter. The dresses,
+equipments, and general "make up" of the actors are in keeping with the
+scenery. Even the minutest detail is carefully attended to. Nothing is
+so unimportant as to be overlooked in this establishment.
+
+It is Mr. Booth's custom to open the season with engagements of other
+distinguished actors, and to follow them himself about the beginning of
+the winter, and to continue his performances until the approach of
+spring, when he again gives way to others. When he is performing, it is
+impossible to procure a seat after the rising of the curtain. Every
+available place is filled, and thousands come from all parts of the
+country to see him. Sometimes it is necessary to secure seats a week in
+advance.
+
+Mr. Booth is still a young man, being now thirty-seven years old. In
+person he is over the medium height, and is well built. His hair is
+black and is worn long, and his dark eyes are large and dreamy. His face
+is that of a poet, strikingly handsome, with an expression of mingled
+sweetness and sadness playing over it. He wears neither beard nor
+moustache. He dresses simply and without ornament, and is grave and
+retiring in his demeanor. He is exceedingly amiable in disposition, and
+is the center of a large circle of devoted friends. He has been married
+twice, and has one child, a daughter, by his first wife. He is a man of
+irreproachable life, and in every thing a high-toned gentleman, and it
+is the high character he bears not less than his genius that has enabled
+him to do such honor to his profession. He is very wealthy, and is in a
+fair way to become a millionaire.
+
+As an actor Mr. Booth is without an equal. His impersonations are
+marked by rare genius and by the most careful study. His Hamlet is
+perhaps his most finished part, as his Richelieu is the most popular
+with the masses. It has been said that his Hamlet is not Shakespeare's
+Hamlet, and this may be true: but it is so exquisite, so perfect, that
+whether it be the conception of Shakespeare or Edwin Booth, it is the
+most powerful, the most life-like counterfeit of "the melancholy Dane"
+ever seen on any stage, and leaves nothing to be desired. His
+personation of the grim old cardinal, whose decrepit body is alone
+sustained by his indomitable will, is masterly, and we see before us,
+not Edwin Booth, the actor of to-day, but the crafty, unscrupulous,
+witty, determined prime minister of France, who bends kings and princes
+to his will. It is absolutely life-like, and to those who have seen the
+portraits of the old cardinal in the museums of France, the accuracy
+with which Booth has counterfeited the personal appearance of Richelieu
+is positively startling. The plays are so superbly set upon the stage
+that we lose sight of the little space they occupy, and seem to be
+gazing upon a real world. His Richard has such a strong humanity in it,
+that it more than half vindicates the humpbacked tyrant's memory, and
+the death scene of this play, as given by Booth, is simply appalling.
+
+It is in vain, however, that we select special characters or attempt
+descriptions of them. No one can truly understand Edwin Booth's acting
+without seeing it. He has studied his heroes so profoundly, analyzed
+their characters so subtly, and entered so heartily into sympathy with
+them, that he has, become able, by the aid of his wonderful genius, to
+entirely discard his own personality, and assume theirs at will.
+
+Mr. Booth has steadily risen in power and finish as an actor, for his
+labors have been unceasing. Great as his triumphs have been, he does
+not regard himself as freed from the necessity of study. His studies
+have become more intelligent than in former years, but not the less
+faithful. He has the true artist's aspiration after the rarest
+perfection in his art, though to those of us without the charmed circle
+it is difficult to see how he can excel his present excellence. Yet that
+he does so we have undoubted proof, for we see him rising higher in the
+admiration and esteem of the world every year, and each year we gather
+fresh laurels to twine around his brows.
+
+He has steadily educated his audiences, and has elevated the standard of
+his art among his countrymen. He has shown them what fine acting really
+is, and has taught them to enjoy it. He has kept them true to the
+legitimate drama, and has done more than any other man to rescue the
+American stage from the insignificance with which it was threatened. It
+speaks volumes for him as an actor and a manager, that when New York
+seemed wholly given up to ballet, burlesque, and opera bouffe, he was
+able to make the almost forgotten masterpieces of Shakespeare the most
+popular and most profitable dramatic ventures of the year.
+
+
+
+[Illustration: JEFFERSON, AS RIP VAN WINKLE.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+JOSEPH JEFFERSON.
+
+
+The subject of this sketch is one of a race of actors. His
+great-grandfather was a contemporary of some of the brightest ornaments
+of the English stage, and was himself a famous actor and the intimate
+friend of Garrick, Sam Foote, and Barr. He was a man of amiable and
+winning disposition, and was strikingly handsome in person. He occupies
+a prominent place in the history of the English stage, and is said to
+have been, socially, one of the most brilliant men of his day. He died
+in 1807. In 1795 his son came to America. Of him, Dunlap, in his
+"History of the American Stage," says, referring to him, in February,
+1797: "He was then a youth, but even then an artist. Of a small and
+light figure, well formed, with a singular physiognomy, a nose perfectly
+Grecian, and blue eyes full of laughter, he had the faculty of exciting
+mirth to as great a degree by power of feature, although handsome, as
+any ugly-featured low comedian ever seen." F.C. Wemyss has said of him
+at a later day: "Mr. Joseph Jefferson was an actor formed in Nature's
+merriest mood--a genuine son of Momus. There was a vein of rich humor
+running through all he did, which forced you to laugh despite of
+yourself. He discarded grimace as unworthy of him, although no actor
+ever possessed a greater command over the muscles of his own face, or
+the faces of his audience, compelling you to laugh or cry at his
+pleasure. His excellent personation of old men acquired for him, before
+he had reached the meridian of life, the title of 'Old Jefferson.' The
+astonishment of strangers at seeing a good-looking young man pointed out
+on the street as Old Jefferson, whom they had seen the night previous at
+the theater tottering apparently on the verge of existence, was the
+greatest compliment that could be paid to the talent of the actor. His
+versatility was astonishing--light comedy, old men, pantomime, low
+comedy, and occasionally juvenile tragedy. Educated in the very best
+school for acquiring knowledge in his profession, ... Jefferson was an
+adept in all the trickery of the stage, which, when it suited his
+purpose, he could turn to excellent account.... In his social relations,
+he was what a gentleman should be--a kind husband, an affectionate
+father, a warm friend, and a truly honest man." The second Jefferson
+enjoyed a brilliant career of thirty-six years in this country, and died
+in 1832, during an engagement at the theater at Harrisburg, which was
+then managed by his son. This son, named Joseph, after his father, was
+born in Philadelphia in 1804, and died at the age of thirty-eight. He
+was not so famous as an actor as his father or grandfather, but like
+them passed his life on the stage. He had a decided talent for painting,
+and was partially educated as an artist, but he never accomplished any
+thing with his pencil. He was a man of most amiable disposition, and was
+possessed of scores of warm and devoted friends; but he was a poor
+business manager, and was always more or less involved in pecuniary
+troubles. He married Mrs. Burke, the famous vocalist, and mother of
+Burke, the comedian.
+
+To this couple, in the city of Philadelphia, was born the JOSEPH
+JEFFERSON of to-day, on the 20th of February, 1829.
+
+This boy was literally brought up on the stage, as he made his first
+appearance upon the boards in a combat scene at the Park Theater in New
+York, when he was but three years old. He soon after went with his
+parents to the West. Olive Logan says of him, at this period of his
+life, "While they were both still children, he and my sister Eliza used
+to sing little comic duets together on the stage of various western
+towns."
+
+He received as good a common-school education as the rapid manner in
+which he was moved about from place to place would permit, and was
+carefully trained in the profession of an actor, to which he was
+destined by his parents, and to which he was drawn by the bent of his
+genius. He appeared in public frequently during his boyhood, but his
+first appearance as a man was at Chanfrau's National Theater, in 1849.
+He met with fair success, and from that time devoted himself entirely
+and carefully to his profession. He began at the bottom of the ladder of
+fame, and gradually worked his way up to his present high position.
+Playing engagements in various minor theaters of the United States, he
+at length secured a position as low comedian at Niblo's Garden in New
+York, where he won golden opinions from the critical audiences of the
+metropolis. In 1857, he closed a most successful engagement as low
+comedian at the theater in Richmond, Virginia, and with that engagement
+ended his career as a stock actor. He had by careful and patient study
+rendered himself capable of assuming the highest place in his
+profession, and these studies, joined to his native genius, had made him
+famous throughout the country as the best low comedian of the day.
+
+Feeling that he had now a right to the honors of a "star" in his
+profession, and urged by the public to assume the position to which his
+genius entitled him, he began a series of engagements throughout the
+Union, in which he more than fulfilled the expectations of his friends.
+He was received with delight wherever he went, and at once became the
+most popular of American comedians.
+
+About a year or two later, he left the United States and made a voyage
+to Australia, through which country he traveled, playing at the
+principal towns. He was extremely successful. His genial, sunny
+character won him hosts of friends among the people of that far-off
+land, and his great genius as an actor made him as famous there as he
+had been in his own country. Australia was then a sort of theatrical El
+Dorado. The prices paid for admission to the theaters were very high,
+and the sums offered to distinguished stars in order to attract them
+thither were immense. Mr. Jefferson reaped a fair share of this golden
+harvest, and at the close of his Australian engagements found himself
+the possessor of a handsome sum. It was this which formed the basis of
+his large fortune; for, unlike his father, he is a man of excellent
+business capacity, and understands how to care for the rewards of his
+labors, so that they shall be a certain protection to him in his old
+age, and an assistance to those whom he shall leave behind him.
+
+Returning to the United States, Mr. Jefferson appeared with increased
+success in the leading cities of the Northern and Western States. His
+principal success at this time was won in the character of Asa
+Trenchard, in the play of "Our American Cousin." His personation of the
+rough, eccentric, but true-hearted Yankee was regarded as one of the
+finest pieces of acting ever witnessed on the American stage, and drew
+crowded houses wherever he went. His range of characters included the
+most refined comedy and the broadest farce, but each delineation bore
+evidence of close and careful study, and was marked by great originality
+and delicacy. There was in his performances a freshness, a
+distinctiveness, and, above all, an entire freedom from any thing
+coarse or offensive, which charmed his audiences from the first. One of
+his critics has well said of him: "As Caleb Plummer he unites in another
+way the full appreciation of mingled humor and pathos--the greatest
+delicacy and affection with rags and homely speech. As Old Phil
+Stapleton he is the patriarch of the village and the incarnation of
+content. As Asa Trenchard he is the diamond in the rough, combining
+shrewdness with simplicity, and elevating instead of degrading the
+Yankee character. As Dr. Ollapod, and Dr. Pangloss, and Tobias Shortcut,
+he has won laurels that would make him a comedian of the first rank. His
+Bob Acres is a picture. There is almost as much to look at as in his Rip
+Van Winkle. There is nearly the same amount of genius, art, experience,
+and intelligence in its personation. Hazlitt says that the author has
+overdone the part, and adds that 'it calls for a great effort of animal
+spirits and a peculiar aptitude of genius to go through with it;' Mr.
+Jefferson has so much of the latter that he can--and to a great extent
+does--dispense with the former requisite. His quiet undercurrent of
+humor subserves the same purpose in the _role_ of Bob Acres that it does
+in other characters. It is full of points, so judiciously chosen, so
+thoroughly apt, so naturally made and so characteristically preserved,
+that the part with Jefferson is a great one. The man of the 'oath
+referential, or sentimental swearing,' makes the entire scope of the
+part an 'echo to the sense.' Even in so poor a farce as that of 'A
+Regular Fix,' Mr. Jefferson makes the eccentricities of Hugh de Brass
+immensely funny. The same style is preserved in every character, but
+with an application that gives to each a separate being."
+
+After a season of great success in this country Mr. Jefferson decided to
+visit England. He appeared at the Adelphi Theater, in London, and at
+once became as popular as he had been at home. His Asa Trenchard, in
+"Our American Cousin," was received by the English with delight; but his
+greatest triumphs were won in Boucicault's version of "Rip Van Winkle,"
+which he has since immortalized. This play was first produced at the
+Adelphi, where it enjoyed an uninterrupted run of nearly two hundred
+nights.
+
+Returning to the United States in the autumn of 1867, Mr. Jefferson
+appeared at the Olympic Theater, in New York, in the play of "Rip Van
+Winkle." Since then he has traveled extensively throughout the United
+States, and has devoted himself exclusively to the character of Rip Van
+Winkle; so exclusively, indeed, that many persons are ignorant of his
+great merits in other roles. By adopting this as his specialty, he has
+rendered himself so perfect in it that he has almost made the
+improvident, light-hearted Rip a living creature. A writer in a popular
+periodical draws the following graphic sketch of his performance of this
+character:
+
+
+     If there is something especially charming in the ideal of Rip Van
+     Winkle that Irving has drawn, there is something even more human,
+     sympathetic and attractive in the character reproduced by
+     Jefferson. A smile that reflects the generous impulses of the man;
+     a face that is the mirror of character; great, luminous eyes that
+     are rich wells of expression; a grace that is statuesque without
+     being studied; an inherent laziness which commands the respect of
+     no one, but a gentle nature that wins the affections of all; poor
+     as he is honest, jolly as he is poor, unfortunate as he is jolly,
+     yet possessed of a spontaneity of nature that springs up and flows
+     along like a rivulet after a rain; the man who can not forget the
+     faults of the character which Jefferson pictures, nor feel like
+     taking good-natured young Rip Van Winkle by the hand and offering a
+     support to tottering old Rip Van Winkle, must have become hardened
+     to all natural as well as artistic influences. It is scarcely
+     necessary to enter into the details of Mr. Jefferson's acting of
+     the Dutch Tam O'Shanter. Notwithstanding the fact that the
+     performance is made up of admirable points that might he enumerated
+     and described, the picture is complete as a whole and in its
+     connections. Always before the public; preserving the interest
+     during two acts of the play after a telling climax; sustaining the
+     realities of his character in a scene of old superstition, and in
+     which no one speaks but himself,--the impersonation requires a
+     greater evenness of merit and dramatic effect than any other that
+     could have been chosen. Rip Van Winkle is imbued with the most
+     marked individuality, and the identity is so conscientiously
+     preserved that nothing is overlooked or neglected. Mr. Jefferson's
+     analysis penetrates even into the minutiae of the part, but there is
+     a perfect unity in the conception and its embodiment. Strong and
+     irresistible in its emotion, and sly and insinuating in its humor,
+     Mr. Jefferson's Rip Van Winkle is marked by great vigor, as well as
+     by an almost pre-Raphaelite finish.
+
+     The bibulous Rip is always present by the ever-recurring and
+     favorite toast of "Here's your goot healt' and your family's, and
+     may dey live long and prosper." The meditative and philosophic Rip
+     is signaled by the abstract "Ja," which sometimes means _yes_, and
+     sometimes means _no_. The shrewd and clear-sighted Rip is marked by
+     the interview with Derrick Van Beekman. The thoughtful and
+     kind-hearted Rip makes his appearance in that sad consciousness of
+     his uselessness and the little influence he exerts when he says to
+     the children, talking of their future marriage: "I thought maybe
+     you might want to ask me about it," which had never occurred to the
+     children. The improvident Rip is discovered when Dame Van Winkle
+     throws open the inn window-shutter, which contains the enormous
+     score against her husband, and when Rip drinks from the bottle over
+     the dame's shoulder as he promises to reform. The most popular and
+     the most thriftless man in the village; the most intelligent and
+     the least ambitious; the best-hearted and the most careless;--the
+     numerous contrasts which the _role_ presents demand versatility in
+     design and delicacy in execution. They are worked out with a
+     moderation and a suggestiveness that are much more natural than if
+     they were presented more decidedly. The sympathy of Mr. Jefferson's
+     creation is the greatest secret of its popularity. In spite of
+     glaring faults, and almost a cruel disregard of the family's
+     welfare, Rip Van Winkle has the audience with him from the very
+     beginning. His ineffably sad but quiet realization of his desolate
+     condition when his wife turns him out into the storm, leaves
+     scarcely a dry eye in the theatre. His living in others and not in
+     himself makes him feel the changes of his absence all the more
+     keenly. His return after his twenty years' sleep is painful to
+     witness; and when he asks, with such heart-rending yet subdued
+     despair, "Are we so soon forgot when we are gone?" it is no wonder
+     that sobs are heard throughout the house. His pleading with his
+     child Meenie is not less affecting, and nothing could be more
+     genuine in feeling. Yet all this emotion is attained in the most
+     quiet and unobtrusive manner. Jefferson's sly humor crops out at
+     all times, and sparkles through the veil of sadness that overhangs
+     the later life of Rip Van Winkle. His wonder that his wife's
+     "clapper" could ever be stopped is expressed in the same breath
+     with his real sorrow at hearing of her death. "Then who the devil
+     am I?" he asks with infinite wit just before he pulls away at the
+     heartstrings of the audience in refusing the proffered assistance
+     to his tottering steps. He has the rare faculty of bringing a smile
+     to the lips and a tear to the eye at the same time. From the first
+     picture, which presents young Rip Van Winkle leaning carelessly and
+     easily upon the table as he drinks his schnapps, to the last
+     picture of the decrepit but happy old man, surrounded by his family
+     and dismissing the audience with his favorite toast, the character,
+     in Mr. Jefferson's hands, endears itself to all, and adds another
+     to the few real friendships which one may enjoy in this life.
+
+
+Mr. Jefferson is a thoroughly American actor. Abandoning all sensational
+shams, he devotes himself to pure art. His highest triumphs have been
+won in the legitimate branches of his profession, and won by the force
+of his genius, aided only by the most careful study and an intelligent
+analysis of the parts assumed by him. He has the happy faculty of
+entering into perfect sympathy with his characters, and for the time
+being he is less the actor than the individual he personates. It is this
+that gives the sparkle to his eye, the ring to his laughter, and the
+exquisite feeling to his pathos; and feeling thus, he is quick to
+establish a sympathy between himself and his audience, so that he moves
+them at will, convulsing them with laughter at the sallies of the
+light-hearted Rip, or dissolving them in tears at the desolations of the
+lonely old man, so soon forgot after he has gone.
+
+Mr. Jefferson has inherited from his father the genial, sunny
+disposition for which the latter was famous. He is an essentially
+cheerful man, and trouble glances lightly off from him. He is generous
+to a fault, and carries his purse in his hand. Misfortune never appeals
+to him in vain, and many are the good works he has done in the humbler
+walks of his own calling. He is enthusiastically devoted to his
+profession, and enjoys his acting quite as much as his auditors. In
+putting his pieces on the stage, he is lavish of expense, and whenever
+he can control this part of the performance, it leaves nothing to be
+desired. Some years ago he brought out "A Midsummer Night's Dream" at a
+Philadelphia theater, in a style of magnificence rarely witnessed on any
+stage. The scenery was exquisite, and was a collection of artistic gems.
+The success of the piece was very decided in Philadelphia, but when it
+was reproduced, with the same scenery and appointments, in a Western
+city, the public would scarcely go to see it, and the theater incurred a
+heavy loss in consequence. Jefferson's remark to the manager, when the
+failure became apparent, was characteristic: "It is all right," said he.
+"We have done our duty, and have made an artistic success of the piece.
+If the people will not come to see it, it is more their misfortune than
+ours."
+
+He has inherited also from his father considerable talent as an artist,
+and sketches with decided merit, though he makes no pretensions to
+artistic skill. In his vacations, which he passes in the country, his
+sketch-book is his constant companion. He is a famous sportsman and
+fisherman, and in the summer is rarely to be found without his gun and
+rod. It is his delight to tramp over miles of country in search of
+game, or to sit quietly in some cozy nook, and, dropping his line into
+the water, pass the hours in reveries broken only by the exertion
+necessary to secure a finny prize.
+
+Not long since his love of art led him to buy a panorama merely because
+he admired it. He put it in charge of an agent in whom he knew he could
+confide, and started it on a tour throughout the country. In a month or
+two he received a gloomy letter from the agent, telling him that the
+exhibition had failed to draw spectators, and that he despaired of its
+ever paying expenses. "Never mind," wrote Jefferson in reply, "it will
+be a gratification for those who do go to see it, and you may draw on me
+for what money you need." The losses on the panorama, however, were so
+great that Jefferson was compelled to abandon it.
+
+Several years before the death of John Sefton, Jefferson paid him a
+visit at his home in Paradise Valley, during one of his summer rambles.
+Upon reaching Sefton's farm, he found the owner "with his breeches and
+coat sleeves both rolled up, and standing in the middle of a clear and
+shallow stream, where one could scarcely step without spoiling the
+sports of the brook trout, which sparkled through the crystal waters.
+Sefton stood in a crouching attitude, watching, with mingled
+disappointment and good humor, a little pig which the stream was
+carrying down its current, and which, pig-like, had slipped from the
+hands of its owner in its natural aversion to being washed. Jefferson,
+with the true instinct of an artist, dropped his fishing tackle and took
+his sketch-book to transfer the ludicrous scene to paper. Sefton
+appreciated the humor of the situation, and only objected when Jefferson
+began to fill in the background with a dilapidated old barn, at which
+the old gentleman demurred on account of its wretched appearance. The
+artist insisted that it was picturesque, however, and proceeded to put
+it down. Sefton had to submit; but he had his revenge, by writing back
+to New York that 'Jefferson is here, drawing the worst "houses" I ever
+saw.'"
+
+In private life, Mr. Jefferson is a cultivated gentleman, and is
+possessed of numbers of warm and devoted friends. He has been married
+twice. The first Mrs. Jefferson was a Miss Lockyer, of New York, and by
+her he had two children, a son and a daughter. The former is about
+eighteen years of age, and is destined to his father's profession, in
+which he has already shown unusual promise. The present Mrs. Jefferson
+was a Miss Warren, and is a niece of the veteran actor, William Warren,
+of Boston. She was married to her husband early in 1868, and has never
+been an actress.
+
+Mr. Jefferson is the possessor of a large fortune, acquired in the
+exercise of his profession, and being thus comfortably situated, is
+enabled to enjoy more rest from his labors than falls to the lot of most
+American actors. He resides in Orange County, New Jersey, about an
+hour's ride from New York, where he has a handsome country seat, which
+he has adorned with all the attractions that wealth and taste can
+command.
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+PHYSICIANS.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII.
+
+BENJAMIN RUSH.
+
+
+It is not often that a man, however gifted, is capable of rising to
+eminence in two distinct branches of public life, especially in two so
+widely separated from each other as medicine and politics. The subject
+of this sketch was one of the few who have achieved such distinction.
+
+BENJAMIN RUSH was born on Poquestion Creek, near Philadelphia, on the
+24th of December, 1745. He was carefully educated at the best common
+schools of his native county, and then entered Princeton College, where
+he graduated in 1760, at the age of fifteen. He decided, upon leaving
+Princeton, to adopt medicine as his vocation, and began his studies in
+Philadelphia. He gave nine years to preparing himself for his
+profession, and after completing his course in Philadelphia, sailed for
+Europe, where he continued his studies in Edinburgh, London, and Paris.
+He returned home in 1769, and began the practice of medicine in
+Philadelphia, and was at once elected Professor of Chemistry in the
+medical college of that city. He was successful in rapidly acquiring a
+large and lucrative practice, and experienced very few of the
+difficulties and trials which lie in the way of a young physician.
+
+In 1770 he began his career as an author, and for many years his
+writings were numerous. He devoted himself chiefly to medical subjects,
+but history, philosophy, and politics, and even romance, frequently
+claimed his attention. He adopted the patriot cause at the outset of his
+career, and with his pen and voice constantly advocated resistance to
+the injustice of Great Britain. This drew upon him the attention of his
+fellow-citizens, and he was chosen to a seat in the Provincial
+Conference of Pennsylvania. In that body he introduced a resolution
+setting forth the necessity of a declaration of independence of the
+mother country. His resolution was referred to a committee, of which he
+was made the chairman, and this committee having reported affirmatively,
+the resolution was unanimously adopted by the Conference, and was
+communicated to the Continental Congress, then in session in
+Philadelphia, about the last of June, 1776. When it became evident that
+the Congress would declare the independence of the colonies, five
+members of the Pennsylvania delegation withdrew from that body. Their
+places were at once supplied by Rush and four others, and when the
+Declaration was finally adopted Benjamin Rush affixed his signature to
+it as a delegate from Pennsylvania.
+
+In 1776 Dr. Rush was married to Miss Julia Stockton, daughter of Richard
+Stockton, of New Jersey, also a signer of the Declaration. In April,
+1777, he was made Surgeon-General of the Continental army for the Middle
+Department, and in July, 1777, was made Physician-General. He devoted
+himself to his duties with energy and intelligence, and succeeded in
+placing the affairs of his department in as satisfactory a condition as
+the means at the command of the Congress would permit. He was not able,
+however, to arrange every thing as his judgment assured him was best,
+and was subjected to many annoyances and great inconvenience by the
+incompetence and mismanagement of other officials, whom he could not
+control. The management of the hospital supplies of the army was
+especially defective, and was the cause of much suffering to the troops.
+He made repeated efforts to effect a reform in this particular, but
+failing to accomplish any thing, and indignant at the wrongs inflicted
+upon the soldiers, he resigned his commission and retired to private
+life.
+
+During his connection with the army, he had watched the course of
+affairs in his native State with the keenest interest, and in a series
+of four letters to the people of Pennsylvania, called their attention to
+the serious defects of their Constitution of 1776, the chief of which he
+declared to be the giving of the legislative power to one house only.
+His appeals had the effect of bringing about an entire change in the
+form of State government, which was subsequently accomplished by a
+general convention of the people. After the close of the war Dr. Rush
+was elected a member of the State Convention which ratified the
+Constitution of the United States, and distinguished himself in that
+body by his earnest and brilliant advocacy of that instrument. He was
+also a member of the convention which adopted a new State Constitution,
+embodying the reforms he had advised in the letters referred to, and
+labored hard to have incorporated in it his views respecting a penal
+code and a public school system, both of which features he ably
+advocated through the public press.
+
+With this closed his public career, which, though brief, was brilliant,
+and raised him to a proud place among the fathers of the Republic.
+
+Returning to Philadelphia after resigning his position in the army, he
+resumed the practice of medicine, and with increased success. His
+personal popularity and his great skill as a physician brought him all
+the employment he could desire, and he soon took his place at the head
+of the medical faculty of the country.
+
+In 1785 he planned the Philadelphia Dispensary, the first institution of
+the kind in the United States, and to the close of his life remained its
+warm and energetic supporter. In 1789 he was made Professor of the
+Theory and Practice of Medicine in the Philadelphia Medical College, and
+when that institution was merged in the University, in 1791, he was
+elected to the chair of the Institute and Clinical Medicine. In 1797 he
+took the professorship of Clinical Practice also, as it was vacant, and
+was formally elected to it in 1805. These three professorships he held
+until the day of his death, discharging the duties of each with
+characteristic brilliancy and fidelity.
+
+The great professional triumph of his life occurred in the year 1793. In
+that year the yellow fever broke out with great malignancy in
+Philadelphia, and raged violently for about one hundred days, from about
+the last of July until the first of November. Nothing seemed capable of
+checking it. The people fled in dismay from their homes, and the city
+seemed given over to desolation. In the terrible "hundred days," during
+which the fever prevailed, four thousand persons died, and the deaths
+occurred so rapidly that it was frequently impossible to bury the bodies
+for several days. The physicians of the city, though they remained
+heroically at their posts, and labored indefatigably in their exertions
+to stay the plague, were powerless against it, and several of them were
+taken sick and died. Few had any hope of checking the fever, and every
+one looked forward with eagerness to the approach of the season of
+frosts, as the only means of saving those that remained in the stricken
+city.
+
+At the outset of the disease, Dr. Rush had treated it in the same manner
+as that adopted by the medical faculty of the city; but the ill success
+which attended this course soon satisfied him that the treatment was
+wrong. He therefore undertook to subdue it by purging and bleeding the
+patient, and succeeded. The new practice met with the fiercest
+opposition from the other physicians, but Rush could triumphantly point
+to the fact that while their patients were dying his were getting well;
+and he continued to carry out his treatment with firmness and success.
+Dr. Ramsey, of South Carolina, estimates that Rush, by this treatment,
+saved not less than six thousand of his patients from death in the
+"hundred days." Nevertheless, the medical war went on with great
+bitterness, and the opposition to Rush became furious when he boldly
+declared that the fever was not an importation from abroad, as was
+popularly believed, but had been generated by the filthy condition of
+the city during the early part of the summer. Some time after the fever
+had subsided, a paper called "Peter Porcupine's Gazette," edited by
+William Cobbett, made a series of outrageous attacks upon Dr. Rush and
+his treatment of the fever. This exhausted the forbearance of the
+doctor, and he instituted a suit against Cobbett, in which he was
+successful, and secured a verdict of $5,000 damages against his defamer.
+
+During the prevalence of the fever, Dr. Rush's labors were unceasing. He
+was constantly going his rounds, visiting the sick, attending sometimes
+over one hundred patients in a single day. He was called on at all hours
+of the day and night, and it may be said that he scarcely slept or
+enjoyed two hours, uninterrupted rest during the "hundred days."
+
+[Illustration: PRESCRIBING AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.]
+
+For weeks he never sat down to his meals without being surrounded by
+dozens of patients, whose complaints he listened to and prescribed for
+as he ate. These were chiefly the poor, and at such times his house was
+literally thronged with them. He was a kind friend to them; rendering
+his services promptly and heartily, without the slightest wish to
+receive pay in return for them; and during all this terrible summer he
+was to be seen ministering to these poor creatures in the foulest, most
+plague-stricken quarters of the city, shrinking from no danger, and
+deterred from his work of mercy by no thought of his own safety. He has
+left us the following picture of the city during this terrible summer:
+
+
+
+     The disease appeared in many parts of the town remote from the spot
+     where it originated; although in every instance it was easily
+     traced to it. This set the city in motion. The streets and roads
+     leading from the city were crowded with families flying in every
+     direction for safety, to the country. Business began to languish.
+     Water Street, between Market and Race Streets, became a desert.
+     The poor were the first victims of the fever. From the sudden
+     interruption of business, they suffered for a while from poverty as
+     well as disease. A large and airy house at Bush-hill, about a mile
+     from the city, was opened for their reception. This house, after it
+     became the charge of a committee appointed by the citizens on the
+     14th of September, was regulated and governed with the order and
+     cleanliness of an old and established hospital. An American and
+     French physician had the exclusive medical care of it after the 22d
+     of September.
+
+     The contagion, after the second week in September, spared no rank
+     of citizens. Whole families were confined by it. There was a
+     deficiency of nurses for the sick, and many of those who were
+     employed were unqualified for their business. There was likewise a
+     great deficiency of physicians, from the desertion of some and the
+     sickness and death of others. At one time there were only three
+     physicians able to do business out of their houses, and at this
+     time there were probably not less than six thousand persons ill
+     with the fever.
+
+     During the first three or four weeks of the prevalence of the
+     disorder, I seldom went into a house the first time without meeting
+     the parents or children of the sick in tears. Many wept aloud in my
+     entry or parlor, who came to ask advice for their relations. Grief
+     after a while descended below weeping, and I was much struck in
+     observing that many persons submitted to the loss of relations and
+     friends without shedding a tear, or manifesting any other of the
+     common signs of grief.
+
+     A cheerful countenance was scarcely to be seen in the city for six
+     weeks. I recollect once, on entering the house of a poor man, to
+     have met a child of two years old that smiled in my face. I was
+     strangely affected with this sight (so discordant to my feelings
+     and the state of the city), before I recollected the age and
+     ignorance of the child. I was confined the next day by an attack of
+     the fever, and was sorry to hear, upon my recovery, that the father
+     and mother of this little creature died a few days after my last
+     visit to them.
+
+     The streets every-where discovered marks of the distress that
+     pervaded the city. More than one-half the houses were shut up,
+     although not more than one-third of the inhabitants had fled into
+     the country. In walking, for many hundred yards, few persons were
+     met, except such as were in quest of a physician, a nurse, a
+     bleeder, or the men who buried the dead. The hearse alone kept up
+     the remembrance of the noise of carriages or carts in the streets.
+     Funeral processions were laid aside. A black man leading or driving
+     a horse, with a corpse on a pair of chair-wheels, with now and then
+     half a dozen relations or friends following at a distance from it,
+     met the eye in most of the streets of the city, at every hour of
+     the day, while the noise of the same wheels passing slowly over the
+     pavements, kept alive anguish and fear in the sick and well, every
+     hour of the night.
+
+
+The population of Philadelphia at this time was but sixty thousand, and
+the reader will see that a loss of four thousand was a heavy percentage
+for so short a period.
+
+Dr. Rush's skill and heroic conduct in his efforts to stay the ravages
+of the plague made him famous, not only in his own country, but
+throughout Europe, and during the latter part of his life he received
+most gratifying evidences of this fact. In 1805 the King of Prussia sent
+him a coronation medal, and the King of Spain tendered him his thanks
+for his replies to certain questions addressed to him concerning the
+causes and proper treatment of yellow fever. In 1807 the Queen of
+Etruria presented him with a gold medal as a mark of respect; and in
+1811 the Emperor of Russia sent him a testimonial of his admiration of
+his medical character.
+
+In 1799 he was made treasurer of the United States Mint, which position
+he held until his death.
+
+Dr. Rush's writings were voluminous, and embraced a variety of subjects.
+His medical productions occupy a high place in the literature of the
+profession, and his political essays were one of the features of his
+day. He was a man of profound learning, and it is astonishing that one
+so constantly occupied with the duties of an engrossing profession
+should have found the time for such close and thorough general reading.
+
+He was a sincere and earnest Christian, and held the Bible in the
+highest veneration. He wrote an able defense of the use of it as a
+school-book, and for many years was vice-president of the Philadelphia
+Bible Society, which he helped to establish, and the constitution of
+which he drafted. He held skepticism and atheism in the deepest
+abhorrence, and in his own life affords a powerful refutation of the
+assertion one hears so often, that profound medical knowledge is apt to
+make men infidels.
+
+He died in Philadelphia on the 19th of April, 1813, at the good old age
+of sixty-eight, leaving a son who was destined to render additional
+luster to his name by achieving the highest distinction as a statesman.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+
+VALENTINE MOTT.
+
+
+Valentine Mott was born at Glen Cove, on Long Island, on the 20th of
+August, 1785. His father, Dr. Henry Mott, was an eminent practitioner in
+the city of New York, where he died in 1840, at the age of eighty-three.
+Valentine Mott was carefully educated by private tutors until he reached
+the age of nineteen, when he entered Columbia College, New York, as a
+medical student, and at the same time became a private medical pupil of
+his kinsman, Dr. Valentine Seaman. At the age of twenty-one he graduated
+with the degree of M.D.; but feeling that he had not acquired as good a
+medical education as the schools of the Old World could afford, he
+sailed for Europe in 1806, within a few weeks after his graduation at
+Columbia College. Proceeding to London, he was for more than a year a
+regular attendant upon St. Thomas', Bartholomew's, and Guy's hospitals,
+where he conducted his clinical studies under the direction of
+Abernethy, Sir Charles Bell, and Sir Astley Cooper. He chose Sir Astley
+Cooper as his private instructor, and became one of his favorite pupils;
+and also attended the lectures of Currie and Haighton. From London he
+went to Edinburgh, where he attended the lectures of Hope, Playfair, and
+Gregory, as well as the prelections of Dugald Stewart. From Edinburgh
+he went to Paris, and completed his studies in the great hospitals of
+that city.
+
+He gave evidence at an early day of his great surgical abilities. He was
+indeed a born surgeon, possessing in a remarkable degree that peculiar
+adaptation to this branch of his profession, without which no amount of
+study can make a great operator. While a student in the Old World, he
+performed leading operations with a skill and natural readiness which
+astonished his instructors as much as they delighted them. He was
+possessed of a firmness and dexterity of hand, a calm, cool brain, a
+quick, unfailing eye, a calmness of nerve, a strength of will, and a
+physical endurance which were Nature's gifts to him, and which rendered
+him a great surgeon even before he had received his diploma. He did not
+trust to these natural gifts alone, however, but applied himself to the
+theory of his profession with a determination and eagerness which
+nothing could daunt. He was an enthusiast in his studies, and soon
+became known as the most profoundly-learned _young_ physician of his
+day. As he advanced in life, he maintained his reputation, keeping up
+his studies to the last. The great men under whom he studied abroad were
+delighted with him, and Sir Astley Cooper was loud in his praise. He
+exhibited so much skill as an operator that he was often called upon to
+perform operations which the professors would never have dreamed of
+intrusting to any one else, and he went through each trial of this kind
+with a readiness and precision which few even of his instructors
+excelled.
+
+His reputation was unusually flattering to one who had not yet entered
+upon the practice of his profession, and upon his return to the United
+States, in 1809, he was met with an offer of the chair of surgery in
+Columbia College, his _alma mater_. He promptly accepted the position,
+and held it until 1813, when the medical department of Columbia College
+was merged in the College of Physicians and Surgeons. He was at once
+called to the same chair in the new college, and occupied it until 1826.
+In that year he resigned his place in the faculty, in consequence of a
+misunderstanding between the professors and the trustees of the college
+on the principles of college government. Withdrawing entirely from the
+school, he united with Drs. Hosack, Mitchell, Francis, and several
+others, in founding the Rutgers Medical College. This college, after a
+short career of four years, was compelled by the Legislature to
+discontinue its operations, in consequence of an alleged invalidity in
+its charter.
+
+In 1830, Dr. Mott returned to the College of Physicians and Surgeons as
+Professor of Surgery, and in 1840 he became President of the Faculty and
+Professor of Surgery and Relative Anatomy in the new University Medical
+School. The science of Relative Anatomy is of the highest importance to
+the surgeon, and of this science Dr. Mott is generally regarded as the
+author. He held his position in the University for twenty years, and in
+1860, after a period of fifty years spent in the active duties of his
+professorship, retired from the immediate discharge of them, and was
+made Professor Emeritus, in which capacity he occasionally lectured to
+the classes during each of the remaining years of his life.
+
+As a professor and teacher of surgical science Dr. Mott won a brilliant
+reputation, and was considered one of the most thoroughly successful
+instructors in the Union. He had the power of winning the attention of
+his pupils at the opening of his lectures and of retaining it until the
+close. He made even the most difficult operations so clear and simple in
+his lectures that the dullest intellects could comprehend them; and his
+system of practical demonstration of his subjects was vastly superior
+to any thing that had ever been seen in America. He was the first to
+introduce into this country the system of delivering clinical lectures,
+or lectures at the bedside of the patient, whose ailments were operated
+upon during the course of his remarks. This system is naturally the most
+repugnant to the patient, but its advantages to the student are so great
+that they outweigh all other considerations. Other professors had shrunk
+from subjecting their patients to such an ordeal, but Dr. Mott had seen
+enough, during his attendance upon such lectures abroad, to satisfy him
+that it was the only method by which a thorough knowledge of the
+profession of surgery could be imparted, and immediately upon
+establishing himself in this country he introduced it. He met with
+opposition at first, but he gradually overcame it, and made the
+advantages of his system so apparent to all that at length the
+opposition entirely ceased.
+
+The greatest difficulty to which American medical schools have always
+been subject has been the almost utter impossibility of procuring dead
+bodies for dissection. It was this want that compelled Dr. Mott, as it
+has compelled so many others, to seek a practical education in Europe;
+and when he came back to the college as professor, he was met by the
+same drawback to thorough instruction. The law forbade the taking of
+dead bodies for dissection, under severe penalties. If a student was
+ever found in possession of a limb, he was liable to fine and
+imprisonment; and popular sentiment was so strong against the practice
+of dissection that those who engaged in it ran serious risk of incurring
+violence at the hands of the mob. Dr. Mott was often driven to desperate
+expedients in the procuring of subjects. He was fond of relating one of
+his adventures of this kind, which will show the reader how he was
+enabled to carry on his lectures.
+
+It was in the winter of 1815, and it had been found impossible to
+procure a supply of subjects for the season. They could not be obtained
+at any price, and it was evident that if any were to be had, the doctor
+and his pupils would have to take the matter in their own hands. There
+was a grave-yard just outside the city, in which a number of interments
+had recently been made, and the doctor resolved upon securing these
+bodies for his dissecting-room. It was a dangerous undertaking, as
+discovery would subject all engaged in it to the direst penalties of the
+law, if, indeed, they should be lucky enough to escape being lynched by
+the people. In spite of the dangers, however, the students volunteered
+to assist the doctor in the attempt, and at an appointed time proceeded
+to the cemetery, properly disguised, and began the removal of the bodies
+from the graves. The night was intensely dark, and the wind was high,
+both of which circumstances favored their undertaking, but every sound,
+every snapping of a twig or rustling of a leaf caused them to start with
+alarm and gaze anxiously into the darkness. It was near midnight when
+they had finished their task, and, this done, they waited in anxious
+silence for the arrival of the means of removing their prey. Their
+movements had been accurately timed, and they had scarcely completed
+their labors when a cart, driven by a man dressed in the rough clothing
+of a laborer, approached the cemetery at a rapid pace. Signals were
+exchanged between the driver and the students, and the latter fell to
+work to place the bodies, eleven in number, in the cart. Having
+accomplished this, they covered them over in such a manner as to make it
+appear that the cart was loaded with country produce, bound for the city
+markets. When every thing was properly arranged, the students
+disappeared in the darkness, each seeking the means by which he had come
+out from the city, and the driver, turning his cart about, drove off
+rapidly in the direction of New York. It was a long ride, and to an
+imaginative man, carrying eleven dead bodies that had been torn from
+their quiet graves through the darkness of that winter night would have
+been a terrible undertaking. But this man was not imaginative, and,
+besides this, he was keenly alive to the tremendous consequences of
+discovery. He knew that he was carrying his life in his hand, and that
+he needed all the coolness and decision of which he was master. Reaching
+the city long after midnight, he drove rapidly down Broadway and turned
+into Barclay Street. The lights of the college shone out brightly, and
+they had never seemed so welcome as then. The cart was driven rapidly to
+the college entrance, where the students were in readiness to receive
+it. In a few moments the bodies were removed from the cart and conveyed
+to the dissecting-room, and the cart turned over to its owner. The
+driver accompanied the students to the dissecting-room, and, throwing
+off his disguise, revealed the handsome but excited and eager
+countenance of Dr. Mott. He had shared the dangers to which his pupils
+had subjected themselves, and had even borne the part in the enterprise
+attended with the greatest risk. The affair had succeeded admirably, a
+winter's supply of "subjects" had been obtained, and after this the
+lectures went on without interruption.
+
+"A story is told of his readiness in the lecture-room. A mother brought
+into the amphitheater, one morning, an extremely dirty, sickly,
+miserable-looking child, for the purpose of having a tumor removed. He
+exhibited the tumor to the class, but informed the mother that he could
+not operate upon the child without the consent of her husband. One of
+the students, in his eagerness to examine the tumor, jumped over into
+the little inclosure designed for the operator and his patients. Dr.
+Mott, observing this intrusion, turned to the student and asked him,
+with the most innocent expression of countenance: 'Are you the father of
+this child?' Thunders of applause and laughter greeted this ingenious
+rebuke, during which the intruder returned to his place crestfallen."
+
+He was equally as successful in his private practice as in his labors in
+the medical school. His brilliant reputation preceded him in his return
+to his native country, and immediately upon opening his office in New
+York he entered upon a large and lucrative practice. His skill as a
+surgeon was in constant demand, and it is said that during his long
+career he tied the common carotid artery forty-six times, cut for stone
+one hundred and sixty-five times, and amputated nearly one thousand
+limbs. His old preceptor, Sir Astley Cooper, proud of the distinction
+won by his favorite pupil, said of him exultingly: "He has performed
+more of the great operations than any man living, or that ever did
+live."
+
+When he was but thirty-three years old (in 1818) he placed a ligature
+around the bracheo-cephalic trunk or arteria innominata, within two
+inches of the heart, for aneurism of the right subclavian artery. This
+was the first time this wonderful operation had ever been performed, and
+the skill and success with which he accomplished it stamped him as one
+of the brightest lights of his profession. "The patient survived the
+operation twenty-eight days, and thus demonstrated the feasibility of
+this hazardous and thus far unparalleled undertaking. He discovered in
+this case that, though all supply of blood to the blood-vessels of the
+right arm was apparently cut off, the circulation was kept up by the
+interosculating blood-vessels, the pulsation at the wrist maintained,
+and no evidence of loss of vitality or warmth manifested in the limb.
+The patient finally died from secondary hemorrhage."
+
+In 1828 he performed successfully the most difficult and dangerous
+operation known to surgery. A clergyman called upon him to remove an
+enormous tumor in the neck, in which were imbedded and twisted many of
+the great arteries. In this operation it became necessary to take out
+entire the right clavicle or collar bone, to lay bare the membrane which
+surrounds the lungs, to search for and dissect around the arteries which
+ran through the tumor, to make forty ligatures, and to remove an immense
+mass of diseased matter. This terrible operation had never been
+attempted before, and was performed by Dr. Mott without the aid of
+chloroform; yet it was done so skillfully that the patient survived it,
+and in 1865 was still living and discharging his ministerial duties. It
+was thirty years before it was attempted again in any part of the world.
+It was a great triumph of the genius of the operator, and won him
+praises from men of science in all countries.
+
+In 1821 "he performed the first operation for osteo-sarcoma of the lower
+jaw. In 1822 he introduced his original operation for immobility of the
+lower jaw. He was the first surgeon who removed the lower jaw for
+necrosis, and the first to tie successfully the primitive iliac artery
+for aneurism. Other of his original operations were cutting out two
+inches of the deep jugular vein, inseparably imbedded in a tumor, and
+tying both ends of the vein, and closing, with a fine ligature, wounds
+of large veins of a longitudinal or transverse kind, even where an
+olive-sliced piece had been cut out."
+
+It was invariably his practice before attempting an operation on a
+living subject to perform it on a dead body, and by the most minute and
+patient examination to render himself absolute master of the anatomy of
+the parts to be operated upon. He was a thoroughly conscientious man in
+the exercise of his profession, and was always on his guard to resist
+that greatest danger of the skillful surgeon--the temptation to use the
+knife needlessly. It was his practice to investigate his cases
+thoroughly, and never to use the knife unless his judgment was satisfied
+that an operation was necessary. "That he decided in favor of operating
+when some of his associates hesitated, was due rather to his large
+experience than to an overweening fondness for the use of the knife." In
+his operations he was firm and decided. Gifted with an unusual
+steadiness of nerve and strength of muscle, he never allowed his
+sympathy for the patient to cause him to hesitate or inflict one pang
+less than the case required. He was prompt and ready in the event of
+unforeseen complications, and never permitted any thing to take him by
+surprise. His manner toward his patients was tender and sympathizing to
+a remarkable degree, and his brother surgeons used to say of him, that
+he seemed to have the power of cutting with less pain to the patient
+than was possessed by most operators. During forty years of his practice
+anaesthetics were unknown, and he had to operate with the full
+consciousness that his patient was suffering the keenest agony. Besides
+attaining such an exalted position as a surgeon, Dr. Mott won an
+enviable reputation as a physician. His practice was confined almost
+entirely to the best class of the people of New York, and he was for
+many years the favorite accoucheur in a large circle of families in that
+city.
+
+He was an eminently progressive man. He fully recognized the advance of
+science with the growth of the world, and was always prompt to welcome
+any valuable discovery in medicine or surgery. He was among the first to
+adopt and advocate the use of anaesthetics, for no man had had more cause
+to understand the necessity of such assistants. He was himself the
+inventor of many valuable surgical instruments, but he gladly welcomed
+the introduction of others, even though they superseded his own in use.
+To the close of his life he was a diligent student, and watched the
+progress of his science with a keen and intelligent eye. He was the
+author of several works of merit, including a volume of travels, and the
+translator of "Velpau's Operative Surgery," to which he made extensive
+and valuable additions and annotations. He received numerous literary
+and scientific honors from colleges, universities, and learned bodies in
+the United States and Europe.
+
+In 1835 he visited Europe for the purpose of resting from his arduous
+labors, and spent several years in traveling extensively in England, on
+the continent, and in the East. His great achievements had made him as
+famous in the Old World as at home, and he was received wherever he went
+with great distinction. He was cordially welcomed by the most eminent
+surgeons of Paris, and Louis Philippe conceived a warm friendship for
+him. During his visit to Constantinople, he was called upon to attend
+professionally the reigning Sultan Abdul Medjid, who was suffering from
+a tumor in the head. Dr. Mott successfully removed this tumor, and was
+afterwards invested by the Sultan with the order of Knight of
+Medjidechi, of Constantinople.
+
+During his visit to Paris, a circumstance occurred which he related upon
+his return home, and which will serve to show the extremes to which
+professional skill and vanity will sometimes carry men. One of the most
+eminent surgeons in Paris asked him if he would like to see him perform
+his original operation. Dr. Mott replied that nothing would give him
+more pleasure. "Then you shall see it to-morrow," said the Frenchman.
+"But stay," he added, "now I think of it, there is no patient in the
+hospital who has that malady. No matter, my dear friend, there is a poor
+devil in ward No. ---- who is of no use to himself or any body else, and
+if you'll come to-morrow, I'll operate beautifully on him." Dr. Mott at
+once declined to attend the operation or to countenance in any way so
+horrible an outrage.
+
+In person Dr. Mott was a thorough gentleman of the old school. He was an
+exceedingly handsome man, and was possessed of an erect and
+well-developed figure. His hair was as white as snow, and his dress,
+which consisted of a simple suit of spotless black, with linen of
+matchless purity, was in the most perfect taste. He was grave and
+dignified in his deportment, and polished and courteous in every action.
+Even in his most difficult and trying operations the services of the
+assistants were always promptly acknowledged with scrupulous politeness.
+He was possessed of many friends, and was regarded with pride and
+veneration by his profession throughout the world.
+
+During the last winter of his life he had lectured once or twice at the
+Medical School, and had performed several operations of importance in
+his private practice. Although nearly eighty, he was still erect and
+vigorous, and was far from considering himself too old for his work.
+
+On the morning of the 15th of April, 1865, he sent for his barber, as
+was his custom, and submitted himself to the hands of the man who had
+been his attendant in this capacity for years. He was sitting in his
+dressing-room, and, being in fine spirits, began conversing with the
+barber, who, during the conversation, asked him if he had heard the
+terrible news of the day.
+
+"What is the news?" asked the doctor.
+
+"President Lincoln was killed last night at the theater in Washington,"
+was the reply.
+
+The doctor turned as pale as death, and, trembling violently, motioned
+the barber aside, and tottered into the chamber adjoining, in which his
+wife was dressing.
+
+"My dear," he gasped, scarcely able to speak, "I have received such a
+shock. President Lincoln has been murdered."
+
+[Illustration: "PRESIDENT LINCOLN HAS BEEN MURDERED!"]
+
+His agitation had now become so great that he could say no more. He sank
+down into a chair, pale and trembling, and so feeble that he could
+scarcely sit up. He was seized in a short time with acute pains in the
+back, and at the same time his vigor seemed to desert him entirely, and
+he became a weak and broken old man. He was obliged to seek his bed,
+from which he never rose. He grew feebler every day, and died on the
+26th of April, 1865.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GREAT FORTUNES, AND HOW THEY WERE
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