Part 3

However, he was persuaded, and duly elected, made chairman of a finance committee, and soon succeeded to the presidency, which he held until his death. Within a few days he had raised thirteen thousand dollars and rented a vacant house at Fullerton and Racine Avenues. This first Home ran along with some difficulty until 1887, when under the will of Mrs. Clarissa C. Peck, an eastern woman, it fell heir to over six hundred thousand dollars. Mr. Higinbotham became president of the nine trustees under this will, and at once property was purchased and buildings erected at Ellis Avenue and Fifty-sixth Street, the present location. The property has been increased by numerous bequests—notably six hundred thousand dollars from Otto Young and a quarter of a million each from Albert Keep and Daniel B. Shipman—until its value is now nearly two million dollars.

A little while before Mr. Higinbotham’s death he said: “Since the Chicago Home for Incurables was opened in 1890, it has had but one superintendent, Mr. Frank D. Mitchell; one matron, Miss Hattie I. Miller; one physician, Dr. W. P. Goodsmith; and one president. And they are all still on duty.”

Miss Eleanor Quin, secretary to Mr. Higinbotham for the past ten years, is still assisting; without these people, whose love and devotion has been unfailing, the work could not have been carried on successfully.

It is difficult to follow without emotion the story of Mr. Higinbotham’s devotion to the Home. From the time of his retirement from business in 1902, it became, after his family, the chief interest of his mind and heart, with which nothing was allowed to interfere. When in town he made daily visits, always becoming personally acquainted with—indeed, the friend of—each inmate, and cheering them all on with unfailing sympathy and humor. The coldness of many institutional “charities” was never allowed to enter here, and the love which rewarded him in life, and mourned his death, was pathetic in its fervor.

When the death of other early benefactors had made him the sole survivor, he presented to the Home, as a memorial to those who had been associated with him in its establishment, a bronze tablet bearing the following inscription:

A. D. 1909

“This tablet is placed in loving memory of those good and faithful women and men who gave unselfishly of themselves, and generously of their means, for the establishment of this Home. Their names are not recorded here. Yonder in the Infinite they are written on pages more glorious and far more enduring. This tablet is the gift and the tribute of one who knew them well and loved them fondly.

“May patience and peace and plenty ever abide within its walls.

“May those who suffer and those who serve, those who sing and those who pray, as well as those who, unable to do more, stand by and cheer, be equally blessed.

“May this great city, and all the agencies here employed to heal the sick, alleviate suffering and advance the interest of humanity, be prospered always.”

Among the many incidents which portray the tenderness of his nature was one relating to a poor woman in the Cook County Hospital, who, when told that Mr. Higinbotham had come to see her, said: “Is this really Mr. Higinbotham!” Bursting into tears, she drew from beneath her pillow his picture, cut from a newspaper which she had carried many years, as a help to make her patient in suffering, as an inspiration to be gentle and kind. Many other stories of his kindness to those in sickness and distress might be told; particularly details of his daily visits to the Home for Incurables.

A few other incidents may be mentioned to illustrate further Mr. Higinbotham’s keen sympathies and his untiring activity in obeying their commands. The case of Leo Frank, whose conviction he felt to be unjust, interested him so deeply that, unsolicited, he went to Atlanta to intercede with the Governor and the Commission for his life. His efforts were successful, as the sentence was commuted and Frank was removed to another city; but the lynching of the prisoner soon after prevented further action in his favor.

Many men now prominent in affairs tell with what kindly sympathy and affection Mr. Higinbotham aided them in youth. Among these, one who early entered the credit department of Marshall Field & Co. says: “I never knew a man so sympathetic with boys; he never tired of helping young men to get a start in life, and no one could show more tact, perseverance and energy in their service.”

A friend tells a story of one of the walking-trips which were Mr. Higinbotham’s favorite athletic diversion; for three times—in 1862, 1886 and 1897—he tramped over the mountains of West Virginia, a distance of one hundred and sixty-five miles, either alone or in company; this besides many shorter mountain tramps. The story illustrates not only his love of boys, but his determination to overcome all obstacles.

“Two young employes at Field’s planned to take a walking-trip, and asked for the necessary vacation. Mr. Higinbotham was enthusiastic, and said that if they wouldn’t mind his company he would make it possible for them to take quite a long tramp through the mountains of West Virginia. They were delighted—no one could have been a more agreeable companion. This was the second or third tramp he had made through this region, whose wild scenic beauty he had learned to love while he was stationed at Clarksburg, West Virginia, during the Civil War, when he was obliged to explore the region on horseback.

“He took the phrase ‘walking-trip’ very seriously, and would not accept any invitation to ride an inch. At one place, for example, where we had to cross an unfordable stream, he refused to ferry over, and ordered a local carpenter to make a pair of stilts on which he stumbled and splashed, and fell down and got up, and tumbled again, finally arriving, drenched but triumphant, on the opposite bank.”

An incident of another walking-trip began at the grave of General Pettigrew, who had been fatally wounded while in command of the rear guard of Lee’s army on its retreat from Gettysburg. It was in 1897, in North Carolina, that Mr. Higinbotham found a moss-green grave-stone, which told how General Pettigrew had died at the house of a man named Boyd, near Martinsburg, West Virginia. As it was in Martinsburg that Mr. Higinbotham, while a young Union officer, had been stationed during 1864, and as he had there “received many courtesies from the people of the South both during and after the war,” he was much interested. But it was not until 1918 that he could learn anything about the General’s family. A few letters then passed between him and Miss Mary Johnstone Pettigrew of Tryon, North Carolina, in one of which he says:

“You mention the mysterious way in which peoples’ lives cross or touch, and inform me that the General’s great-great-grandmother was Rachel Higinbotham. You will, I am sure, feel that truth is stranger than fiction when I tell you that my wife’s name was also Rachel Higinbotham.”

And he tells of a quite recent trip on the James River, during which he had met, at Hampton, a cousin of Robert E. Lee who had known the Boyd family, in whose house General Pettigrew died.

He always emphasized the necessity of human sympathy and service, and we have plenty of testimony showing the quick response of his big heart to appeals public and private. A poet once wrote to him, after he had held out his hand at a crisis:

“Who cares for the burden, the night and the rain, And the long steep lonesome road, When at last through the darkness a light shines plain, When a voice calls hail, and a friend draws rein With an arm for the heavy load!

“For life is the chance of a friend or two This side the journey’s goal. Though the world be a desert the long night through, Yet the gay flowers bloom and the sky grows blue When a soul salutes a soul.”

In religious matters he was extremely liberal, feeling that “It is what we do, yesterday, today, and tomorrow, more than what we believe, that will be important in the final round-up.” In June, 1893, he said, in his address of welcome at the opening of the World’s First Parliament of Religions:

“The meeting of so many illustrious and learned men under such circumstances evidences the kindly spirit and feeling that exists throughout the world. To me this is the proudest work of our Exposition. Whatever may be the differences in the religions you represent, there is a sense in which we are all alike. There is a common plane on which we are all brothers. We owe our being to conditions that are exactly the same. Our journey through this world is by the same route. We have in common the same senses, hopes, ambitions, joys and sorrows; and these to my mind argue strongly and almost conclusively a common destiny.

“To me there is much satisfaction and pleasure in the fact that we are brought face to face with men who come to us bearing the ripest wisdom of the ages. They come in the friendliest spirit, which, I trust, will be augmented by their intercourse with us and with each other. I am hoping, Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, that your Parliament will prove to be a golden milestone on the highway of civilization—a golden stairway leading up to the tableland of a higher, grander and more perfect condition, where peace will reign and the enginery of war be known no more forever.”

This hope of a better era is referred to again in the address to the Japanese commissioners quoted above. On that occasion—in 1909—he said:

“I am hoping that future expositions will leave out the machinery of war. I know that we had a warship and the Krupp gun at our own, but I am older now, and I have a higher appreciation of the implements of peace, and an intense dislike, amounting to hatred, of war and all its trappings.

“Let us all hope that this twentieth century will witness the dawn of a new era, that it will go down in history as the age of peace, the age when a common desire seemed to take possession of humanity everywhere to share with all others the blessings they enjoyed. Thus would be augmented the great sum of human happiness.

“The nations of the earth should unite in a movement to maintain a universal court whose duty it will be to determine and adjust all national differences. I would have, representing this court on the high seas, one navy and only one, whose duty it would be to police the seas, prevent possible piracy or improper or illegal commerce, and assist the merchant marine in time of disaster or distress. The money thus saved would go far towards the care of the sick and unfortunate the world over, and would add to the peace and prosperity of the people everywhere, far beyond the power of the human mind to conceive or calculate.”

To such feeling as this, developed and cherished through a long life, the world catastrophe of 1914 was a cruel strain; and for over two years Mr. Higinbotham hoped that his own country might keep out of the struggle. Nevertheless, both before and after the United States declared war, he did what he could to alleviate distress in the suffering nations and to encourage heroic spirit in our own.

The Armistice brought to him, as to all the world, deep relief after the long and bitter strain. It was good that he lived to see the collapse of the anachronistic military autocracy which had caused the war, and to return, in spite of this cataclysm, to his firm belief that the days of war are numbered.

The fatal accident of April eighteenth, 1919, in New York, closed his life while he was still scarcely conscious of old age, and in full possession of vigor of body, mind, and spirit. To the last he was thinking of others—he was on his way to greet returning soldiers of Illinois when he was stricken down by a government ambulance.

One is tempted to apply to him a few sentences he once wrote for a friend who had died:

“He discovered to me a nature rich in every higher attribute, and his communication was so charming in diction, and so sweetly simple in its mood, that I was deeply moved by his conversation. I was impressed by his love for humanity, his patriotism, and the pride he felt in his profession. He was a pure type of the old-school gentlemen. His was the habit and mien of the scholar. His character has stamped itself upon many people, and his example will influence the generations; as his perfect life has blessed the community in which he lived, and benefited those who knew him.

“It is well with our friend. He sleeps the slumber of peace. The night wrapped his body in death, but his soul saw the dawn of life.”

APPENDIX

APPENDIX A. LINCOLN IN 1864

_The following article, suggested by the controversy over Mr. Barnard’s statue of Lincoln, was written for the New York Sun, and published in that paper during the summer of 1917_:

I am impelled by your full-page illustrated article on Lincoln, and the artist’s representation of him to be given to a nation that believed in and sympathized with him and that desires to honor him and perpetuate his memory, to give you and the public my views:

I was born in Illinois in 1838 and have always been a resident of that State. I knew Lincoln, not intimately, but well. I saw, and heard him speak frequently during the years next preceding the Civil War. I knew him before he was a candidate for the presidency, and best during the contest between him and Douglas for the senatorship. It is, I think, well understood that the contest between these two great men was the stepping-stone to the presidency for Lincoln, and gave him to the nation and the world as one of its foremost noble and heroic characters. I knew him later as president, and I am the only person living who was present on the occasion of the first meeting between Lincoln and General U. S. Grant. This meeting took place in the White House on the evening of the eighth of March, 1864, when General Grant came to Washington, escorted by Congressman E. B. Washburn, to receive his commission as Lieutenant-General of the Army. Those present on that occasion, all from Illinois, were Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln, General Grant, Hon. E. B. Washburne, Mr. and Mrs. B. F. James, and myself.

In Harper’s Weekly published at that time is a full-page illustration of the presentation of the commission by President Lincoln, in the presence of the members of the cabinet, on the day following the first meeting. The presentation took place at the Capitol. It may not be generally known, but General Grant was the first to enjoy the full rank of Lieutenant-General after Washington; General Winfield Scott having received it by brevet. I was engaged in the Quartermaster’s Department at this time and was on duty in Knoxville, Tenn., and had been sent to Washington to confer with the Quartermaster General, M. C. Meigs. This visit gave me opportunity to see Lincoln under conditions vastly different from those when I had seen him in Illinois. He was, however, the same Lincoln that I had known. If there was a change, it was that he seemed shrunken in stature. He was, however, both in manner and dress, quite in keeping with his exalted station. He was at ease and well poised; nothing in his manner, dress or speech even suggested awkwardness. He had indelibly stamped on his features more than a suggestion of nobility. There were clearly outlined and defined those characteristics that made him famous; that made him the Saviour of his Country and the liberator of a race from bondage. It seems to me, that any representation of Lincoln should, at least, aim to show him as teeming with and, in fact, overflowing with those qualities and characteristics that he was known to possess. On the contrary, the artist has gone far back to his early life, and has sought to represent him even worse than he could have been under the most adverse circumstances. The statue is what the artist seemingly intended it to be—a splendid, a magnificent misrepresentation of Abraham Lincoln as he was _in the later years of his life_, for it reverts to what he conceived him to have been back in Kentucky before he had found himself. As evidence of this, it is stated that the sculptor went to Kentucky and found a man who was, and always had been, a rail-splitter and nothing else; and he gives it as Lincoln. Those of us who knew him cannot accept such a substitute.

H. N. HIGINBOTHAM.

APPENDIX B THE POWER OF PERSONALITY

_At the Commencement exercises of Lombard College, June fifth, 1901, Mr. Higinbotham delivered a eulogy in memory of the Rev. Dr. Otis A. Skinner, whom he called “my exemplar,” “my ideal of a grand and noble manhood,” “the most splendid and attractive man I have ever beheld.”_

_As this address expresses intimately its author’s philosophy of life and death, we append the following extracts_:

We have been told by a world-famous student and philosopher that self-sacrifice is the surest means of securing happiness and repose, that life is only of value through devotion to what is true and good. But in turning aside at this hour from other claims upon my time and attention to consider briefly the power of personality in life, as exemplified in the career of a good man, it is not so much the spirit of self-sacrifice as it is the feeling of inadequacy that enters into my task. It is friendship that interrogates me; it is frankness that will respond. It is a pleasure to lay a wreath, however simple, upon the grave of one to whose noble example and beneficent influence I am largely indebted for any humane endeavor or philanthropic spirit that has found expression in my life....

On Sunday afternoons it was his custom to go into the country to preach, and on many of these occasions it was my privilege to accompany him. He talked and thought a great deal about the happiness of others. He always seemed to be looking for a soul that he could cheer by loving and thoughtful words. He knew that no man could live unto God except by living at the same time unto his fellows.... So this man’s good works follow him and will be reflected and multiplied in the lives of others to the end of time....

It is wonderful how indestructibly the good grows and propagates itself, even among weedy entanglements. Evil things perish, but the good goes on forever. Music heard from afar is all harmony; the discordant notes perish by the way and never reach the ear of the listener....

If men are changed by events and environment, they are changed much more, either for good or ill, by their fellow-men. This is the alchemy of influence. We, all of us, are apt to minimize our power or influence, arguing to ourselves that what we may say or do is not noticed or observed, and is therefore of little moment or consequence. There was never a greater error.

For every good deed of ours the world will be better always. And perhaps on no day does a man walk the street cheerfully without meeting some other person who is brightened by his face, and who unconsciously to himself catches from that look an ineffable something—an inspiration that gives him new courage and saves him from a wrong action. Usefulness, after all, is nobler than fame—so noble, indeed, that man should not demand a higher reward for his labors under the sun than the consciousness of having done his neighbor some form of service.

Every person who has lived in the past, who lives in the present or may hereafter come into being, either has exerted or will exert some influence for the good or ill of his fellows. Even in inanimate nature this seems to be the law of existence. The glacier, that had its beginning when the earth was new, carries in its icy grasp objects which today tell the story of its course as plainly as if by written or spoken word. The tree standing by the wayside, barren of either flower or fruit and seemingly useless, may have a beneficent office. Some tired and lonely traveler, discouraged and disheartened, resting beneath its shade, may be lured back to a life of usefulness and happiness by the song of a bird in its branches. And so it is too in the animal kingdom. The beasts of the field and the fowls of the air in divers ways make their impress upon nature and upon all life.

“When our souls shall leave this dwelling, The glory of one fair and virtuous action Is above all the ’scutcheons of our tomb.”

APPENDIX C THE MAN WHO DID ME A GOOD TURN

_Written by Dr. Frank Crane_

Is there any feeling quite like that with which you pick up the Morning Paper?

You yourself, child of mystery, have just come from a brief visit with Death, in the house of Sleep, and are upon the stoop of another Day, and when you look at the Paper, it is as if your hand lay upon the latch that opens the Door of another Room in that great House of Adventure—Life.

What will you see? Kings fallen? New wonders of strange lands? Another crime? What new shifting in the kaleidoscope of Fate?

The other day I read that Harlow N. Higinbotham, sometime President of the World’s Columbian Exposition, man of affairs, wealth, business, and philanthropy, had died. At eighty-two years of age, still active and vigorous, he had fallen beneath an automobile in the street.

This is not the story of his life. Others will write his biography. They will tell of his plans, achievements, honors.

But certain men, to you, are types. They are symbols. Whatever may be their order in the usual chronicle of the world, to you they stand for a point of sentiment, a mark of an idea.

Harlow N. Higinbotham will always be to me the concrete representative and ikon of

“The Man Who Did Me a Good Turn.”

It matters not what it was all about, but once he, wealthy and busy, stopped his work, left his office and walked with me, little and unknown, down the street, to do me a favor, for no reason except that he took a fancy to me.

That was more than twenty years ago. So he is gone now! I wish I might drop a tear upon his folded hands; perhaps the Recording Angel, checking up his account, might see it, and think it was a pearl, and put it to his credit. So only can I pay my debt.

Reading of his death has set me thinking. How many persons there are who have done me a Good Turn! Just casual people, I mean. All kinds. Let me recall. Alas, that my memory for kindness is so poor!

I cannot understand those who say they owe no man anything. My days are crowded with undeserved Good Turns. I shall never pay my debts, if I live a thousand years.

There’s the man who gave me a match, the girl who gave me a smile, the farmer who gave me a ride, a cobbler in Munich once mended my shoe and would take no money, a man made way for me in a crowd to see the parade, a baby once smiled at me and held out her arms—I would not forget these small things, little sparkles in the life-stream.

And men have given me a chance, and some have stopped to praise me, and I have seen the little flame in women’s eyes as they looked on me, and years ago George Armstrong and Jo Holmes lent me money when I am sure they did not know they would ever get it back.

There are others, appearing out of the stranger throng, that have stood by me, defended my name, spoken out boldly and called themselves my friends.

Of all these Harlow N. Higinbotham is the type, because my acquaintance with him was but casual, because he had no reason for his kindness except the human spark, because he emerged from the multitude, did me his Good Turn, and receded again into the mist.

Always his strong face, shrewd and understanding, will stand out from among the sea of human faces in my memory, and rebuke my dark moods, saying unto me that this world of men and women is a good place, full of unexpected impulse, not a vale of tears, but a place of Heart and Humanity.