did. They resolved in favor of fraternity, and beheaded those who

objected to such a brotherhood. They resolved in favor of equality, and cut off the heads of those who rose above the general level. They indulged in such hideous butcheries, in the name of liberty, equality, and fraternity, as to make tyranny seem mild in comparison;—and all because they lacked common sense, as well as morality.

“Two or three years before that, we, in America, had a body of men gathered in a constitutional convention to make a constitution. They assembled under the lead of Washington, with Alexander Hamilton, Madison, and many other eminent men. They did not draw up a constitution in a week, as the brilliant Sieyés did, but just one constitution, and that one worked. That was the great point!

“It worked, primarily, because it was drawn up by practical politicians,—by practical politicians who believed in decency, as well as in common sense. If they had been a set of excellent theorists, they would have drawn up a constitution which would have commended itself to other excellent theorists, but which would not have worked. If they had been base, corrupt men, mere opportunists, men who lacked elevating ideals, dishonest, cowardly, they would have drawn up a document that would not have worked at all. On the great scale, the only practical politics is honest politics. The makers of our constitution were practical politicians, who were also sincere reformers, and as brave and upright as they were sensible.”

THE BOYHOOD OF ROOSEVELT.

Nobody thought of calling Theodore Roosevelt “Teddy,” when he was a boy. He was always known as “Tedie,”—pronounced as if written “Teedie.” But several years before he went to Harvard, when he was about fifteen years old, his mother thought that it was high time that the baby name was replaced by something more dignified, and so it was decided, in family council, that he should be addressed as Theodore.

Unfortunately, family decisions of this kind are not always respected at school or college, and, when young Roosevelt became a freshman at Harvard, he was promptly dubbed “Teddy” by his classmates. The nickname stuck; he has been “Teddy” ever since to his intimates, and to-day he is more generally known under that title by seventy-six millions of people than by any other. There is every reason to believe that he enjoys the little informality, justly regarding it as a tribute to his popularity.

When he was nine years of age, young Roosevelt was taken abroad by his parents, and he made another trip with them to Europe not long afterward, greatly enjoying a voyage up the Nile. At seventeen he entered Harvard, and promptly grew a pair of side-whiskers, of which it may reasonably be supposed that he was very proud. The side-whiskers resembled those of Pendennis, as pictured by Thackeray. It goes without saying that he soon became extremely popular at college, where he acquitted himself fairly well in his studies. Old classmates recall the fact that he had a passion for animals and that he collected many queer natural history specimens, which he kept in his room.

WHERE HE GAINED STRENUOSITY.

On the whole, it is rather surprising that Theodore Roosevelt ever lived to grow up and become the President of the United States. He was an exceedingly delicate child, suffering such tortures with asthma that on many occasions his father was obliged to harness his four-in-hand in the middle of the night, take the boy from his bed, and drive many miles, in order that he might get his breath.

To my thinking, his inherent manliness, his independence of thought and action, his firm determination to do his duty as he sees it, found early expression in the character of Theodore Roosevelt when, as a youth, in search of health and strength, he went to the great west. It is probable that, while yet a young man, he was ambitiously inspired to do something out of the ordinary, and was shrewd enough to know that, to win success in life’s undertakings, vigorous health is a prime requisite. He elected the arid plains and mountains of our western country, as a likely locality wherein he might build up a constitution sturdy and strong.

HE DASHED INTO THE VORTEX OF THE CHASE.

It was in the summer of 1883 that he entered the then “wild and woolly” town of Little Missouri, situated on the Northern Pacific Railroad, in the very heart of the “bad lands” of Dakota. Little Missouri contained at that time some of the worst “bad men” and outlaws to be found outside the borders of civilization. But it was not in the town that he expected to find the health and strength to carry him through the strenuous life he, perhaps, had already mapped out, but in the saddle, camp, and chase, by living close to nature and taking “pot luck” with the rough and rugged men who became his companions, and who understood him and whom he understood from the outset. During that summer, with one man and a pack-outfit, he hunted over the country, from Yellowstone Park to the Black Hills, from the Black Hills to the Big Horn Mountains, through the Big Horn Basin to Jackson Hole and in the majestic Rocky Mountains, back to Yellowstone Park, down Clark’s Fork to the Yellowstone, the Big and Little Horn Rivers, through the Crow Indian Reservation where General George A. Custer, the gallant and lamented soldier, went to a heroic death. Back again to the “bad lands” of the Little Missouri, went Theodore Roosevelt, having hunted buffaloes, elk, deer, antelope, mountain sheep, bear, lion and the smaller game of that country. He fished in the numerous mountain streams, and lived the rough, hardy life of a frontiersman. For five months, the heavens were his only canopy. He caught and killed game for his own use, saddled his mounts, did his own cooking, was his own scout, and performed his half of the night-work. The capacity to do for himself and meet men upon an equal basis—self-reliance and personal courage,—came to him as the fruition of this and similar experiences in the Far West. I know that this democracy still influences him.

HE SHOWED PIONEERS HOW TO WINTER CATTLE.

Having studied the conditions of the wild animal life of mountain and plain, he found that the fattest and best wild game inhabited the “bad lands” of Little Missouri. Although without food or shelter, save what they could gather from the grasses that grew there, the wild game was in splendid condition. As a result of these conditions, the young hunter made up his mind to engage in the business of raising cattle. Old frontiersmen told him that cattle could not be wintered in the “bad lands.” This he disputed, and he argued, as proof of his contention, the fact that the finest wild game was to be found there, and he could not understand why cattle would not thrive under the same conditions. The following spring, Theodore Roosevelt shipped to Little Missouri, by the Northern Pacific Railroad, several hundred head of cattle, hired _vaqueros_, purchased mess-wagons and provisions, and drove the cattle from the cars to his range in the very heart of the “bad lands.” There he took up the life of a western ranchman, and asked of his men nothing that he would not undertake himself. He faced the most violent blizzards while rounding up the cattle for safety. I remember this intrepid son of fortune, participating in the stampedes, doing his share of the night-herding, breaking his own horses, sleeping at night with his saddle for a pillow, and, perhaps, the snow for a blanket, eating the same rough, substantial fare as his employees, and evidencing the indomitable will, courage and endurance which brought to him the affection and respect of his men.

HE CIVILIZED MANY “BAD MEN” BY HIS INFLUENCE.

The country at that time was the habitat of horse thieves, stage robbers, desperadoes, and criminals in general. Surely this “tenderfoot” from the east would prove an excellent subject for imposition! Other men had been made to feel that lawlessness and depredation were united as a common lot visited upon each newcomer, the only apparent, quick redress being in the power and ability of the offended party to protect himself and chastise the marauders. Mr. Roosevelt’s salutatry to such persons came early, and was effective. His influence and example did much toward civilizing the “bad men” in his locality, who found him to be an absolutely just man, possessing nerve, and handy with gun and fists. No person ever stole a hoof of his cattle or horses but was captured and punished according to the laws then existing in that country.

Theodore Roosevelt early acquired the reputation of being abundantly able to protect himself and his interests, his aptitude along such lines being brought out in bold relief by what is remembered in the west as the Marquis De Mores incident. Marquis De Mores was a Frenchman by birth and a western ranchman through preference. He went west heralded as a duelist of great reputation, and located upon a ranch some miles distant from that of the subject of this article. Although thoroughly an honorable man, he believed in governing the country by force, and it was the popular impression that the cowboys in his employ were “killers” and ready to fight at the drop of the hat. Soon after De Mores had established his headquarters in a town called Medora, Roosevelt’s cowboys and those in De Mores’ employ became involved in a dispute over some cattle, which resulted in a pitched battle between the disputants. Victory, and a decisive one, perched upon the Roosevelt standard. De Mores’ anger and chagrin were boundless when he learned of the outcome of the affair, and he informed his men that, if they could not whip Roosevelt’s cowboys, he, personally, could whip their boss, and that some day he would go to Roosevelt’s ranch and accomplish such a task. Roosevelt heard of this threat and sent immediate word to De Mores that he need not trouble to undertake the journey to his (Roosevelt’s) ranch, but that he would meet him half way, at any designated point, when any differences could be speedily, if not peacefully, adjusted. Marquis De Mores did not choose to seriously consider our friend’s message, and the impression became prevalent and widespread in that section of the country that the Frenchman’s hand had been “called” and that he had been found bluffing.

“GAMENESS” WAS NEEDED; ROOSEVELT HAD PLENTY.

In those days, if there was one attribute of character and make-up more thoroughly acceptable than another, to the average westerner, it was the “gameness” a man possessed and displayed at an opportune time, such qualities always proving the open sesame to the regard and affections of the men of the camp. The De Mores episode gained for Roosevelt no little distinction. Contrary to predictions, his cattle industry proved to be a financial success. The cattle wintered well in the “bad lands,” and, from there, he shipped some of the finest beeves ever placed in the Chicago market. He remained in the business for about three years, when he found himself the owner of several thousand head of cattle, splendid ranch houses, and corrals, and no doubt he could have remained in the business and become one of the cattle kings of the west. But by that time he had obtained what he went west for,—vigorous health and an iron constitution, the result of his labor and life on the plains, had come to him and he was ready for greater things. He gave to the people of the west an example of splendid integrity and forceful character, early winning their esteem and loyalty, the possession of which he has never forfeited but rather increased by the continued exercise of the sturdy independence which found such early expression among a people whose pluck and perseverance in the upbuilding of a great and new country has been immortalized in song and legend.

HIS FRONTIER LIFE WAS AMPLY WORTH THE WHILE.

As a legislator, police commissioner, governor and soldier, he has proved his capacity and worth, performing his work well and conscientiously. His fellow citizens, regardless of geographical distribution, believe that he will not be found wanting in the discharge of the exacting duties of his present exalted station, and his career may well be an inspiration to American youths. To all who have ever lived the untrammeled life of plain and mountain, the sweet memory of it abideth forever. To our president the freedom of it still strongly appeals, and we find him making occasional excursions into a country where the pleasures of the camp and the chase are still to be found, and where democracy prevails. To live as he did, and accomplish what he has, meeting the conditions of a new country, gaining health, strength, and a knowledge of men, was indeed worth while.

XVI

A Brave Volunteer Fights His Way to the Head of the American Army.

GENERAL MILES has had a remarkable military career.

He was not quite twenty-two when Fort Sumter was fired upon, and was, at the time, employed in a store near Boston. He spent his money in organizing a company, of which he was elected captain, but was commissioned only as a lieutenant, on account of his age. But he rapidly rose to be captain, colonel, brigadier-general and major-general. General Hancock quickly discovered his abilities. He was in charge of that commander’s line at Chancellorsville, and held his own successfully against every attack by Lee’s veterans. The second day, he was seriously wounded, and General Hancock, in a letter to Washington urging his promotion, said: “If Colonel Miles lives, he will be one of the most distinguished of our officers.”

In February, 1865, this young man of twenty-six commanded the Second Army Corps. Never before had an American officer, at that age, had charge of so large a body of soldiers. When Lee surrendered at Appomattox, he had command of the First Division of the Second Army Corps.

SIX YEARS OF INDIAN FIGHTING.

General Miles is best known as an Indian fighter. His six years of work among the Indians covered a belt of country from the Rio Grande to Canada, and four hundred miles wide. In 1874, powerful Indian tribes roamed over this land. But Miles and his companions-in-arms, officers and soldiers, guarded the newly constructed railroads, and the towns which arose on the plains, until civilization prevailed. In 1876, he fought at Staked Plains, defeating the Cheyennes, Kiowas and Comanches. He subjugated the Sioux, and drove Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse and other braves across the Canada line. In September, he conquered the Nez Percés, with Chief Joseph; in 1878, the Bannocks. For five years,—(1880-1885),—he commanded the Columbia Department; in 1885, he was transferred to the Arizona Department, and subdued the Apaches under Geronimo and Natchez. He was made a major-general, United States Army, April 5, 1890; in 1891, he closed the war with the Sioux.

General Miles carries the honorable scars of four serious bullet-wounds. His wife was a Sherman, daughter of Judge Sherman, and niece of ex-Secretary Sherman and of General William Tecumseh Sherman. She is a “comrade” as well as a home-companion, and went with him to inspect fortifications and visit our southern camps during the late war.

HIS RECORD IN THE CIVIL WAR.

In the Civil War he was noted for his audacity and dash. He was a fighting commander. He never hesitated to obey an order to advance, and he never wanted to retreat. His courage was an inspiration to his troops, and undoubtedly prevented disaster on more than one occasion. Hancock had the utmost confidence in Miles, and put him to the front to bear the brunt of the enemy: the latter never failed his chief. When the break took place at Reams’ Station,—that unfortunate battle, the name of which is said to have been printed on the heart of Hancock like Calais in the heart of Queen Mary,—Miles and his staff pushed to the very front to stay the backward rush of the troops, and the gallant defense which he offered to the victorious enemy saved the day from becoming one of the great catastrophes of the war.

While Miles is famous for his gallantry as a commander, he is equally noted for his coolness and good judgment. He always insisted upon the proper treatment of his men by the commissary department, and his division, the Second Corps, never had any reason to complain of want of attention on the part of their general to their comforts. “Good treatment and good fighting” was his rule.

A LOYAL, DAUNTLESS LEADER.

As commander of the army, General Miles is not different from the Miles of thirty years ago. Those who knew him then say that he has changed very little in appearance, and not at all in his devotion to duty and to the army. He was always above petty jealousy, and never withheld from a subordinate the credit due to him,—and this is a prominent trait in Miles to-day. The public wondered that Miles showed no impatience when he was not sent in command of the troops to Cuba, but those who knew the General felt that he was too firm a believer in discipline to object to any lawful act of his commander-in-chief. Miles is known to have been anxious to lead the fighting in the only war likely to offer him an opportunity to prove his ability as a general in command, but he obeyed without a murmur the orders which placed in other hands the leadership of the troops in the field. He maintained a vigilant supervision of all that was going on, and was especially watchful of the supplies which had been intended for the support of the army at the front. His criticism of those supplies has caused a widespread sensation and there were earnest demands that all the facts should be known, and the responsibility fixed.

A YOUNG MAN’S CHANCES IN THE ARMY.

General Miles is not willing to see callers when he is busy with his official duties. At other times, he is readily approached. He said to me that he did not care to talk about matters pending in connection with the army. I assured him at once that I had no intention of questioning him in regard to the matters to which he alluded, but would be glad to have his opinion about the chances of a young man in the army, and the proper qualifications for one seeking to enter the service.

General Miles replied that he would not object to answering questions on that point.

I asked the general if he thought an education necessary for a good soldier.

“Certainly,” was the reply; “education is a good thing for a soldier, and he ought to be educated in more than reading, writing and arithmetic. He ought to have character, stability, energy and a willingness to obey. These qualities are largely brought out by the right kind of education. It can be set down as a rule, that a worthless civilian would be a worthless soldier. There are exceptions to the rule, of course, but the man who has the right kind of training to make him a good citizen is the best man for the army.”

CHARACTER THE FOUNDATION OF TRUE COURAGE.

“And such a man will get along best in the army?” I suggested.

“Most assuredly,” answered General Miles. “You can see that by looking over the list of heroes in the past. They have always been men of character. An officer should be a man of character, in order to command the respect of his men. Without their respect and esteem, he cannot succeed. With them, he can accomplish great things, if the opportunity offers. Look at the regard which the English soldiers had for the Duke of Wellington. It was chiefly based on his character, for he was not what might be called a lovable man. His men were ready to go anywhere that he sent them, for they knew their commander, and had confidence in him. Character is as important in a great general as in a great statesman or a great merchant. Character is just as necessary, also, in the private as in the officer. It will command recognition in time.”

“Would you say, General, that the army really holds out very great chances for advancement?”

“I think it holds out as many chances as any profession or business does; for in the army, as in business, merit wins every time, and if a soldier has real merit, it is bound to be recognized, sooner or later.”

“There is a chance, then, for every man who goes into the army as a private to become a general?”

“I don’t know that I would make the statement as strong as that, but I believe that every soldier who deserves it will be promoted.”

“Would you advise young men to select the army in preference to other professions?”

“That depends,” the general replied, “on the young man. If he is fairly educated and properly trained, if his tastes are military, and he understands the importance and duty of discipline, if he is willing to learn and to obey, he will make no mistake in entering the army. There are, of course, other circumstances, such as family claims and associations which must have their bearing upon the choice of a career, but, speaking from the standpoint of the army, I would say that it is a good place for any young American with the right qualifications.”

COURAGE NATURAL TO AMERICANS.

When asked about the conduct of our troops in the late war, General Miles answered: “Our soldiers fought bravely, but nothing else could be expected from American soldiers. They have no superiors in the field, and American history has shown that they can cope successfully with any foe. Courage is a natural virtue with all Americans, and the late war has shown that it has not been weakened any by years of peace. There is no better material in the world for an army than the young men who grow up in the cities and towns and on the farms of the United States. I have already said that a young man who enters the army should have education, and the intelligence of the average American soldier is one of his most valuable traits. He is not merely a machine; he is an intelligent machine. He is conscious of his duty and his responsibilities.

“What do you think of the future of the army, General?”

General Miles replied deliberately: “The American people will never have any occasion to be otherwise than proud of their army. It will be found equal to every call that can possibly be made upon it, and prepared to face any danger in defense of the nation.”

XVII

Making the Most of His Opportunities Wins a Coveted Embassy.

“YOU may say what you will,” said a young lawyer in a conversation wherein Joseph H. Choate and his ability were the topics of conversation; “a man cannot hope to distinguish himself without special opportunities.”

“Not even in law?” questioned one.

“There least of all,” was the answer.

“Well,” said another, “the period in which Mr. Choate began his career in New York is commonly referred to as the golden age of the metropolitan bar. James T. Brady was a conspicuous figure in the popular eye. Charles O’Connor had already made a lasting impression. Mr. Evarts was in the front rank in politics as well as in law. Mr. Hoffman was equally prominent on the Democratic side, and Mr. Stanford’s brilliancy in cross-examination had given him an enviable reputation. The legal heavens were studded with stars of such lustre as to make any newcomer feel doubtful about his ability to compete. But Choate displayed no anxiety. He hung out his shingle and began to look for clients, and they came.”

A YOUNG LAWYER’S CHANCES THEN AND NOW.

“That was before the war,” resumed the original speaker. “Do you imagine he could have attained his position as the foremost American lawyer under conditions as they exist to-day without special advantages?”

“Possibly,” I said, and added that it was probable that Mr. Choate, if approached, would kindly throw light on the subject.

In pursuance of this idea, I called one evening at the residence of Mr. Choate. Previous inquiry at the law office of Evarts, Choate and Beaman, on Wall Street, elicited the information that Mr. Choate’s days were filled to overflowing with legal affairs of great importance. Consequently it was surprising to find him so ready to see a stranger at his home.

It was into a long room on the ground floor that I was introduced, three of its walls lined with tall, dark walnut book-laden cases, lighted by a bright grate fire and by a student’s lamp on the table by night, and by two heavily-shaded windows by day. As I entered, the great lawyer was busy prodding the fire, and voiced a resonant “good-evening” without turning. In a moment or two he had evoked a blaze, and assumed a standing attitude before the fire, his hands behind him.

ARE SPECIAL ADVANTAGES NECESSARY?

“Well, sir,” he began, “what do you wish?”

“A few minutes of your time,” I answered.

“Why?” he questioned succinctly.

“I wish to discover whether you believe special advantages at the beginning of a youth’s career are necessary to success?”

“Why my opinion?”

I was rather floored for an instant, but endeavored to make plain the natural interest of the public in the subject and his opinion, but he interrupted me with the query:—

“Why don’t you ask a man who never had any advantages,” at the same time fixing upon me one of his famous “what’s in thy heart?” glances.

“Then you have had them?” I said, grasping wildly at the straw that might keep the interviewer afloat.

“A few, not many,” he replied.

“Are advantages necessary to success to-day?”

“Define advantages and success,” he said abruptly, evidently questioning whether it was worth while to talk. A distinguished looking figure he made, looking on, as I collected my defining ability. The room seemed full of his atmosphere. He is a tall man, oaken in strength, with broad, intelligent face, high forehead, alert, wide-set eyes, and firm, even lips expressive of great self-control. His fluency, his wit and humor, his sound knowledge, his strength and perfect self-possession, were all suggested by his face and expression, and by the firmness of his squarely set head and massive shoulders.

“Let us,” I said, “say money, opportunity, friends, good advice, and personal popularity for early advantages.”

“The first isn’t necessary,” said the jurist, leisurely adjusting his hands in his pockets. “Opportunity comes to everyone, but all have not a mind to see; friends you can do without for a time; good advice we take too late, and popularity usually comes too early or too tardy to be appreciated. Define success.”

WHAT SUCCESS MEANS.

“I might mention fame, position, income, as examples of what the world deems success.”

“Foolish world!” said Mr. Choate. “The most successful men sometimes have not one of all these. All I can say is that early advantages won’t bring a man a knowledge of the law, nor enable him to convince a jury. What he needs is years of close application, the ability to stick until he has mastered the necessary knowledge.”

“Where did you obtain your wide knowledge of the law?” I asked.

“Reading at home and fighting in the courts,—principally fighting in the courts.”

“And was there any good luck about obtaining your first case? Was it secured by special effort?”

THE GOOD LUCK OF BEING PREPARED.

“None, unless it was the good luck of having a sign out, large enough for people to see. The rest of it was hard work, getting the evidence and the law fixed in my mind.

“You believe, of course,” I ventured, “that advantageous opportunities do come to all?”

“Yes,” said he, drawing up a chair and resignedly seating himself. “I believe that opportunities come to all,—not the same opportunities, nor the same kind of opportunities, nor opportunities half so valuable in some cases as in others, but they do come, and if seen and grasped will work a vast improvement in the life and character of an individual. Every boy cannot be president, but my word for it, if he is industrious, he can improve his position in the world.”

TURNING OBSTACLES INTO AIDS.

“It has been said, Mr. Choate,” I went on, “that you often ascribe both your success in particular cases, and your general success at the bar, to good luck and happy accidents.”

“Just so, just so,” he answered, smiling in a manner that is at once a question and a mark of approbation. “I hope I have always made the most of good luck and happy accidents. We all should. My friend, John E. Parsons, once denounced a defendant insurance company as a ‘vampire,—one of those bloodless creatures that feed on the blood of the people.’ It was a savage address of the old-fashioned style, and convincing, until I asked the judge and jury if they knew what a vampire really is. ‘Look at the Quaker gentleman who is president of this company,’ I said, pointing him out. ‘Also look at that innocent young man, his attorney, who sits next to him with a smile on his face. You thought vampires were something out of the way when Brother Parsons described them, but these are regular, genuine vampires.’ That brought a laugh and good feeling, and I suppose you might call the whole thing an opportunity to turn a bad assault into a helpful incident.”

The great lawyer was a study as he spoke, his easy, unaffected attitude and bearing itself carrying weight. His manner of accepting the intrusion with mild acquiescence and attention, but with no intention of allowing himself to be bored, was interesting. It has become customary to say that he is a poor politician, and as the term is ordinarily employed and understood, he is, because he is ever ready to say what he really thinks. It is precisely this quality, this freedom from cowardice, this detestation of truckling to ignorance and brutality, this independence, that cause him to stand out so boldly in the legal profession.

DOES LACK OF OPPORTUNITY JUSTIFY.

“If equally valuable opportunities do not come to all,” I went on, “hasn’t an individual a right to complain and justify his failure?”

“We have passed the period when we believe that all men are equal,” said Mr. Choate. “We know they’re free, but some men are born less powerful than others. But if an individual does not admit to himself that he is deficient in strength or reasoning powers, if he claims all the rights and privileges given others because he is ‘as good as they’ then his success or failure is upon his own head. He should prove that he is what he thinks he is, and be what he aspires to be.”

“You believe, of course, that an individual may overestimate his abilities.”

“Believe it,” he answered, with a deprecatory wave of the hand, “trust the law to teach that. But if a man does overestimate himself he still owes it to himself to endeavor to prove that his estimate of himself is correct. We all need to. If he fails, he will be learning his limitations, which is better than never finding them out. No man can justify inaction.”

“What do you consider to be the genuine battle of a youth to-day?—the struggle to bear poverty while working to conquer?”

“Not at all,” came the quick answer. “Poor clothes and poor food and a poor place to dwell in are disagreeable things and must be made to give place to better, of course, but one can be partially indifferent to them. The real struggle is to hang on to every advantage, and strengthen the mind at every step. There are persons who have learned to endure poverty so well that they don’t mind it any longer. The struggle comes in maintaining a purpose through poverty to the end. It is just as difficult to maintain a purpose through riches.”

“Money is not an end, then, in your estimation.”

“Never, and need is only an incentive. Erskine made his greatest speech with his hungry children tugging at his coat-tail. That intense feeling that something has got to be done is the thing that works the doing. I never met a great man who was born rich.”

MR. CHOATE’S ANTECEDENTS.

This remark seemed rather striking in a way, because of the fact that Mr. Choate’s parents were not poor in the accepted sense. The family is rather distinguished in New England annals. His father was a cousin of the famous Rufus Choate, and the latter, at the date of Joseph’s birth, January 24, 1832, was just entering his second term in congress to distinguish himself by a great speech on the tariff. Mr. Choate was the youngest of four brothers, and, after receiving a fair school education in Salem, was sent to Harvard, where he was graduated in 1852, and later from its law school in 1854. Influence procured him a position in a Boston law office. After a year of practical study, he was admitted to the bar of Massachusetts. In October of that year he made a tour of observation in the western states, in company with his brother William, and on his return determined to settle in New York.

“Isn’t it possible, Mr. Choate,” I ventured, “that your having had little or no worry over poverty in your youth might cause you to underestimate the effect of it on another, and overestimate the importance of sticking with determination to an idea through wealth or deprivation?”

“No,” he replied, after a few moments’ delay, in which he picked up one of the volumes near by as if to consult it; “no, the end to be attained makes important the need of hanging on. I am sure it is quite often more difficult to rise with money than without.”

DOES SUCCESS BRING CONTENT AND HAPPINESS.

“You have had long years of distinction and comfort; do you find that success brings content and happiness?”

“Well,” he answered, contracting his brows with legal severity, “constant labor is happiness, and success simply means ability to do more labor,—more deeds far-reaching in their power and effect. Such success brings about as much happiness as the world provides.”

“I mean,” I explained, “the fruits of that which is conventionally accepted as success; few hours of toil, a luxuriously furnished home, hosts of friends, the applause of the people, sumptuous repasts, and content in idleness, knowing that enough has been done.”

“We never know that enough has been done,” said the lawyer. “All this sounds pleasant, but the truth is that the men whose great efforts have made such things possible for themselves are the very last to desire them. You have described what appeals to the idler, the energyless dreamer, the fashionable dawdler, and the listless voluptuary. Enjoyment of such things would sap the strength and deaden the ambition of a Lincoln. The man who has attained to the position where these things are possible is the one whose life has been a constant refutation of the need of these things. He is the one who has abstained, who has conserved his mental and physical strength by living a simple and frugal life. He has not taken more than he needed, and never, if possible, less. His enjoyment has been in working, and I guarantee that you will find successful men ever to be plain-mannered persons of simple tastes, to whom sumptuous repasts are a bore, and luxury a thing apart. They may live surrounded by these things, but personally take little interest in them, knowing them to be mere trappings, which neither add to nor detract from character.”

THE DELUSION OF LUXURY AND EASE.

“Is there no pleasure then in luxury and ease without toil?” I questioned.

“None,” said the speaker emphatically. “There is pleasure in rest after labor. It is gratifying to relax when you really need relaxation, to be weary and be able to rest. But to enjoy anything you must first feel the need of it. But no more,” he said, putting up his hand conclusively. “Surely you have enough to make clear what you wish to know.”

Mr. Choate had talked for ten minutes. His ease of manner, quickness of reply, smoothness of expression, and incisive diction, were fascinating beyond description. As I was about to leave, I inquired if he would object to my making our conversation the subject of an article, to which he smiled his willingness, waiving objection with a slight movement of the hand.

MR. CHOATE’S SHARE OF NEW YORK’S LAW BUSINESS.

In court circles it is common report that Mr. Choate’s contemporaries divide half of the business among them, and Mr. Choate has the other half to himself.

This is due to his wonderful simplicity and directness, which never falters for a moment for thought or word. He drives straight for the heart and head of client or officer, witness or counsel, judge or juryman. A distinguished barrister has said of him:

“Where other lawyers are solemn and portentous, or wild or unpleasant, he is humorous and human. He assumes no superior air; often he speaks with his hands in his pockets. He strives to stir up no dark passions. While he is always a little bit keener, a little finer and more witty than the man in the box or on the bench, yet he is always a brother man to him.”

XVIII

A Village Boy’s Gift of Oratory Earns Him Wealth and Fame.

OF the busy men of the world, there are none more so than Chauncey M. Depew, until recently president of the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad, and now president of the board which looks after all the Vanderbilt interests. One must have something worthy his attention to gain admittance to the busy man, and I need say no more for the present interview than that the distinguished orator and statesman saw fit to discuss the possibilities of young men and their future, and gave readily of his time and opinions. I stated to him the object of my interview,—that it was intended to obtain his views as to what qualities in young men best make for success, and to ask him, if possible, to point out the way, by the aid of example, to better work and greater success for them. He smiled approvingly, and, to my question, whether, in his opinion, the opportunities awaiting ambitious young men are less or more than they have been in the past, replied:—

“More, decidedly more. Our needs in every field were never greater. The country is larger, and, while the population is greater, the means to supply its increased wants require more and more talent, so that any young man may gain a foothold who makes his effort with industry and intelligence.”

“Do you mean to say that there is an excellent position awaiting everyone?”

“I mean to say that, while positions are not so numerous that any kind of a young man will do, yet they are so plentiful that you can scarcely find a young man of real energy and intelligence who does not hold a responsible position of some kind. The chief affairs are in the hands of young men.”

“Was it different in your day, when you were beginning?”

“Energy and industry told heavily in the balance then, as now, but the high places were not available for young men because the positions were not in existence. We had to make the places, in those days; and not only that, but we were obliged to call ourselves to the tasks. To-day, a man fits himself and is called. There are more things to do.”

“How was it with boys, in your day, who wanted to get an education?”

HE HAD TO EARN HIS OWN WAY.

“With most of them, it was a thing to earn. Why, the thing that I knew more about than anything else, as I grew from year to year, was the fact that I had nothing to expect, and must look out for myself. I can’t tell you how clear my parents made this point to me. It absolutely glittered, so plain was it.”

“Your parents were Americans?”

“Yes. I was born at Peekskill, in 1834.”

Although Mr. Depew modestly refrains from discussing his ancestry, he comes from the best New England stock. He descends, through remote paternal ancestors, from French Huguenots, who were among those who came to America in the early days of the country, and who founded the village of New Rochelle, in Westchester county. His mother, Martha Mitchell, was of illustrious and patriotic New England descent, being a member of the family to which belonged Roger Sherman, a signer of the Declaration of Independence; and he is a lineal descendant of the Rev. Josiah Sherman, chaplain of the Seventh Connecticut Continental infantry, and of Gabriel Ogden, of the New Jersey militia, both of whom served in the American Revolution.

“Had you any superior advantages in the way of money, books, or training?” I continued.

“If you want to call excellent training a superior advantage I had it. Training was a great point with us. We trained with the plow, the ax, and almost any other implement we could lay our hands on. I might even call the switch used at our house an early advantage, and, I might say, superior to any other in our vicinity. I had some books, but our family was not rich, even for those times. We were comfortably situated, nothing more.”

“Do you owe more to your general reading than you do to your early school training?”

“Yes, I think so. I attended the school in our village regularly, until I went to college; but I was not distinguished for scholarship, except on the ballground.”

“Do you attribute much of your success in life to physical strength?”

“It is almost indispensable.”

HE ENTERED YALE AT EIGHTEEN.

“I was always strong. The conditions tended to make strong men, in those days. I went to college in my eighteenth year. I think I acquired a broader view there, and sound ideals which have been great helps. It was not a period of toil, however, as some would have made it.”

His time at Yale was in no respect wasted. The vigorous, athletic, fun-loving boy was developing into a man with a strength and independence of character, very imperfectly understood at first by the already long list of men who liked him.

“What profession did you fix upon as the field for your life work?” I asked.

“That of the law. I always looked forward to that; and, after my graduation, in 1856, I went into a law office (that of Hon. William Nelson,) at Peekskill, and prepared for practice. That was a time of intense political excitement. There were factions in the Democratic party, and the Whig party seemed to be passing away. The Republican party, or People’s party, as it had first been called, was organized in 1856, and men were changing from side to side. Naturally, I was mixed in the argument, and joined the Republican party.

“When I was graduated at Yale College, in 1856,” he continued, “I came home to the village of Peekskill to meet my father, my grandfather, my uncles and my brothers, all old Hunker, state-rights, pro-slavery Democrats. But I had been through the fiery furnace of the Kansas-Nebraska excitement at New Haven, and had come out of it a free-soil Republican. Two days after my return, I stood, a trembling boy, upon a platform to give voice in the campaign which was then in progress, to that conversion which nearly broke my father’s heart, and almost severed me from all family ties. It seemed then as if the end of the world had come for me in the necessity for this declaration of convictions and principles, but I expressed my full belief. In this sense, I believe a young man should be strong, and that such difficult action is good for him.”

HIS BEGINNING AS AN ORATOR.

“Is that where you began your career as an orator?” I asked.

“You mean as a stump-speaker? Yes. I talked for Fremont and Dayton, our candidates, but they were defeated. We did not really expect success, though, and yet we carried eleven states. After that, I went back to my law books, and was admitted to the bar in 1858. That was another campaign year, and I spoke for the party then, as I did two years later, when I was a candidate for the state assembly, and won.”

The real glory hidden by this modest statement is that Mr. Depew’s oratory in the campaign of 1858 gained him such distinction that he was too prominent to be passed over in 1860. During that campaign, he stumped the entire state, winning rare oratorical triumphs, and aiding the party almost more than anyone else. How deep an impression the young member from Peekskill really made in the state legislature by his admirable mastery of the complex public business brought before him, may be gathered from the fact that when, two years later, he was re-elected, he was speedily made chairman of the committee on ways and means. He was also elected speaker, _pro tem._, and at the next election, when his party was practically defeated all along the line, he was returned.

After briefly referring to the active part he took in the Lincoln campaign, I asked:—

“When did you decide upon your career as a railroad official?”

“In 1866. I was retained by Commodore Vanderbilt as attorney for the New York and Harlem Road.”

“To what do you attribute your rise as an official in that field?”

“Hard work. That was a period of railroad growth. There were many small roads and plenty of warring elements. Out of these many small roads, when once united, came the great systems which now make it possible to reach California in a few days. Anyone who entered upon the work at that time had to encounter those conditions, and if he continued at it, to change them. I was merely a counselor at first.”

In 1869, Mr. Depew was made attorney for the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad, and afterward a director. This was the period of the development of the Vanderbilt system. Mr. Depew was a constant adviser of the Vanderbilts, and, by his good judgment and sagacious counsel, maintained their constant respect and friendship. In 1875, he was made general counsel for the entire system and a director in each one of the roads.

A SALARY OF $25,000 A YEAR.

It has often been urged by the sinister-minded, that it was something against him to have gained so much at the hands of the Vanderbilts. The truth is that this is his chief badge of honor. Many times he has won influence and votes for the Vanderbilt interests, but always by the use of wit, oratorical persuasion and legitimate, honorable argument,—never by the methods of the lobbyist. Commodore Vanderbilt engaged him as counsel for the New York Central Railroad, at a salary of $25,000 a year,—then equal to the salary of the president of the United States,—and he always acknowledged that Mr. Depew earned the money.

He is now the head of the entire Vanderbilt system, or the controlling spirit of thirty distinct railroads, besides being a director in the Wagner Palace Car Company, the Union Trust Company, the Western Union Telegraph Company, the Equitable Life Insurance Society, the Western Transit Company, the West Shore and International Bridge Company, the Morris Run Coal Mining Company, the Clearfield Bituminous Coal Corporation, the Hudson River Bridge Company, the Canada Southern Bridge Company, the Niagara River Bridge Company, the Niagara Grand Island Bridge Company, the Tonawanda Island Bridge Company, the American Safe Deposit Company, the Mutual Gas Light Company, and the Brooklyn Storage and Warehouse Company.

“How much of your time each day,” I asked, “have you given, upon an average, to your professional duties?”

“Only a moderate number of hours. I do not believe in overwork. The affairs of life are not important enough to require it, and the body cannot endure it. Just an ordinary day’s labor of eight or ten hours has been my standard.”

“Your official duties never drew you wholly from the political field, I believe?”

“Entirely, except special needs of the party, when I have been urged to accept one task after another. I believe that every man’s energies should be at the disposal of his country.”

“On the political side, what do you think is the essential thing for success?”

“The very things that are essential anywhere else—honesty, consistency and hard work.”

“It requires no strain of character, no vacillation?”

“For twenty-five years,” answered Mr. Depew, “I was on all occasions to the front in political battles, and I never found that political opinions or activity made it necessary to break friendships or make them.”

Mr. Depew’s political career is already so well known that it need not be reviewed here.

After three years of service as vice-president of the New York Central Railroad, he was elevated, in 1885, to the presidency. While thus given a position of great influence in the business world, his growing reputation made him eligible for greater political honors than any for which he had yet been named. In 1888 he was the presidential candidate of the Republicans of New York state, at the national convention of the party, and received the solid vote of his state delegation, but withdrew his name. President Harrison offered him the position of secretary of state, to succeed Mr. Blaine, but he declined.

OPPORTUNITIES OF TO-DAY.

“What do you think of the opportunities to-day? Has the recent war aided us?”

“It is the best thing for the young men of to-day that could have happened! The new possessions mean everything to young men, who are going to be old men by and by. We, as a nation, are going to find, by the wise utilization of the conditions forced upon us, how to add incalculably to American enterprise and opportunity by becoming masters of the sea, and entering with the surplus of our manufactures the markets of the world. The solid merchants are to undertake the extension of American trade, but the young men will be called in to do the work under their guidance. The young man who is ready is naturally the one chosen.”

“You think a tide of prosperity waits for every young American?”

“It may not exactly wait, but he can catch it easily.”

“It is said,” I went on, “that any field or profession carefully followed, will bring material success. Is that the thing to be aimed at?”

“Material success does not constitute an honorable aim. If that were true, a grasping miser would be the most honorable creature on earth, while a man like Gladstone, great without money, would have been an impossibility. The truth is that material success is usually the result of a great aim, which looks to some great public improvement. Some man plans to be an intelligent servant of some great public need, and the result of great energy in serving the public intelligently is wealth. It never has been possible to become notable in this respect in any other way.”

“It is often said that the excellent opportunities for young men are gone.”

“If you listen to ordinary comment,” said Mr. Depew, “you can come to believe that almost anything is dead—patriotism, honor, possibilities, trade—in fact, anything, and it’s all according with whom you talk. There was a belief, not long ago, that the great orators were dead, and had left no successors. Papers and magazines were said to supply this excellent tonic. Yet orators have appeared, great ones, and in the face of the beauty and grace and fire which animates some of them, you read the speeches of the older celebrities, and wonder what was in them that stirred men.”

“And this field is also open to young men?”

“Not as a profession, of course, but as a means to real distinction, certainly. The field was never before so open. I have listened to Stephen A. Douglas, with his vigorous argument, slow enunciation, and lack of magnetism; to Abraham Lincoln, with his resistless logic and quaint humor; to Tom Corwin, Salmon P. Chase, William H. Seward, Charles Sumner, and Wendell Phillips; and, as I look back and recall what they said, and the effect which they produced, and then estimate what they might do with the highly cultivated and critical audiences of to-day, I see the opportunity that awaits the young man here. Only Wendell Phillips strikes me as having possessed qualities which are not yet duplicated or surpassed.”

THERE IS MORE THAN ONE KIND OF SUCCESS.

“You recognize more than one kind of success in this world, then?”

“Yes; we can’t all be presidents of the United States. Any man is successful who does well what comes to his hand, and who works to improve himself so that he may do better. The man with the ideal, struggling to carry it out, is the successful man. Of course, there are all grades of ideals, and the man with the highest, given the proportionate energy, is the most successful. The world makes way for that kind of young man.”

“Do you consider that happiness in the successful man consists in reflecting over what he has done or what he may do?”

“I should say that it consists in both. No man who has accomplished a great deal could sit down and fold his hands. The enjoyment of life would be instantly gone if you removed the possibility of doing something. When through with his individual affairs, a man wants a wider field, and of course that can only be in public affairs. Whether the beginner believes it or not, he will find that he cannot drop interest in life at the end, whatever he may think about it in the beginning.”

“The aim of the young man of to-day should be, then—?”

“To do something worth doing, honestly. Get wealth, if it is gotten in the course of an honorable public service. I think, however, the best thing to get is the means of doing good, and then doing it.”

XIX

A Chance-Found Book the Turning Point in a United States Senator’s Career.

HE wasn’t much of a boy to look at, this Dolliver boy of ten, trudging off to school every morning in the West Virginia hamlet of Kingwood, where the mountains are so brown in winter and so green in summer. To the master of the little subscription school he was Jonathan Prentiss Dolliver; to the comrades of sport and study he was just plain “Prent,” a sturdy little chap, whose hair refused to stay combed, whose clothes showed the rough-and-tumble of play, whose love for the mountains far exceeded his love of arithmetic.

Somebody lost a copy of the “Congressional Record” about that time,—a bound volume, containing many speeches of senators and representatives. “Prent” found it. His boyish imagination was fired. Hour after hour he pored over its pages, committing to memory several of the passages in the speeches.

One day the school committee called,—an auspicious event in the little schoolhouse. Young Dolliver was asked to give a declamation. To the astonishment of all, the boy performed his task with force, vigor, clearness and almost eloquence. Where did he get it?

“O, I can talk,” he declared; “dad’s a preacher, you know.”

Thus climbed into his first forum the witty, eloquent, magnetic Dolliver, a United States senator from the state of Iowa at forty years of age.

The match of ambition having been thus applied, the young lad studied to greater advantage. A superb mother made sacrifices to aid him. How these American mothers have ever helped! He took a course at the State University at Morgantown, West Virginia. This was in 1875, and Prentiss was only seventeen when he stepped forth with his diploma in his hand.

A SCHOOL TEACHER AT EIGHTEEN.

At eighteen, he was a country school teacher himself. The scene is laid in Victor Center, Illinois, in a yellow schoolhouse; and, while it is only a stepping-stone in a career full of more exciting episodes, it is worth while to note that the youth of eighteen was able to do what his predecessors had failed to accomplish,—make an orderly, successful school out of a very turbulent lot of youngsters. On one occasion he quelled a fight by simply looking at the combatants.

The law, and the wide, free west captured the young man a few years later, the former for a profession, the latter for a home. Fort Dodge, Iowa, welcomed the little family in 1880, and there the future senator wrestled with life’s serious problems in earnest. Inevitably he was drawn into politics, that field which always has use for men of active brain and silvery tongue. Dolliver had both. James G. Blaine, for whom he delivered scores of speeches, predicted, in 1884, that this dark-haired young orator of the west would enjoy a conspicuous future. The prophecy was not long in reaching fulfilment. From 1890, when he was first elected to congress, until 1900, when he took his seat in the senate, he rose steadily in importance as a great leader and debater, until he had no superior in the great forum of the nation.

His wit is one of the most attractive of his gifts. He can tell a story with wonderful effect. His keen sense of humor would have made him a comedian, if nature had not cast his other faculties in a more serious mould. Therefore, his fun only crops out at times.

When I asked him when and where he first began to consider himself famous, he said:—

“My first term in congress gave me my first sense of exaltation. The people up in the Iowa hills had a little lake, and they named it after me. Then a new postoffice was named in my honor, and a colored woman named her baby after me. I began to think of engaging a niche in some temple of fame.

“But, in my second term, I was disillusioned. A climatic disturbance dried up the lake, free delivery wiped out the postoffice, and the child died,—and I found myself back at the very place whence I had started!”

THE STRANGE RESULT OF A LECTURE.

A few years ago Mr. Dolliver was invited to deliver a lecture in St. Paul and Minneapolis, Minnesota, before the Young Men’s Christian Association Lyceum. In each city, the hall was crowded wherein he spoke, some fifteen hundred young men attending. His topic was, “Chances for Young Men.”

“That,” said he to me, “was a favorite topic with me. I believed in young men, and liked to talk with them, knowing full well that if one can stir them up to energy and ambition, he is doing a grand work in the world.

“Well, I have not changed my opinion since the delivery of that lecture; but, when I got back to Washington to resume my congressional duties, a week later, I began to hear from those particular young men. Letters began to pour in on me. They came in bunches of twos and threes; then in dozens, and finally in basketfuls. Every St. Paul and Minneapolis young man who had heard me declare that this is the young men’s age, wrote that he fully agreed with me,—and asked me to get him a government job!”

Mr. Dolliver’s services to his party were particularly great in the controversy over the Porto Rican change of front by the administration. The president had, in his message to congress, in December 1899, favored the extending of unrestricted trade opportunities to the Porto Ricans; but, later, seeing that such a course was opposed by many influential persons, and by several strong arguments, he advised the imposition of light duties and the application of the proceeds to the island’s own use. In the conflict which at once arose in congress, Dolliver’s strong and eloquent plea alone saved the measure from defeat.

HIS IDEA OF GENUINE SUCCESS.

When I asked him what the true idea of success is, he replied, without a moment’s hesitation:

“Money-making is the cheapest kind of success. It doesn’t indicate the highest development, by any means. I will give you a simple illustration, embodied in an incident which occurred this very day. A friend of mine, a professional gentleman of high mental attainments, had been offered a salary of ten thousand dollars a year by a corporation engaged in transportation. He was strongly tempted to take it, for he is working for the government at a salary of only five thousand dollars. He admitted to me, however, that he is capable of far greater usefulness, in his present work, than he would be in the employment of the railroad. Thereupon I strongly advised him to reject the larger offer, and he has done so. My reason was simply that money does not measure one’s place in the world, one’s mental triumphs, or one’s usefulness to humanity.”

“But money is a helpful factor in life,” I urged, “and is considered indispensable, nowadays, in climbing up the ladder.”

“Well,” he replied, “if I had a son and a hundred thousand dollars, I would keep them apart.”

In the senate a new member is not supposed to take part in debates, or even discussions. The atmosphere is not only dignified, but frozen. I strongly anticipate, however, that there will be a thawing out before long. The presence of Mr. Dolliver ought to act like an old-fashioned depot stove in a cold-storage room.

XX

Varied Business Training the Foundation of a Long Political Career.

THOMAS COLLIER PLATT has succeeded in business and in politics in a phenomenal manner. The reason is, he has had the native sagacity, energy and working ability of two ordinary men, and has fairly earned his place as a senator of the United States, as one of the political leaders of the nation, and as president of the United States Express Company.

Last summer, as I sat on the porch of the Oriental Hotel at Manhattan Beach, for Mr. Platt’s return from his office, he came up the steps two at a time, with the elasticity of a man of forty. As I waited for him in the Fifth Avenue Hotel the other day, he came into the lobby looking very much jaded. He said: “I am very tired, after a week’s session of the senate at Washington. I have had a very busy day in New York. Come up to my room.”

Members of the legislature, local politicians, statesmen of national renown, sent their cards to the senator’s room before we were fairly seated. Wearied amid this great press, Mr. Platt took time to say some things about himself, and to indicate some of the elements of his success as an encouragement and inspiration to young men in the struggle of life.

“Where were you born?”

“In Owego, Tioga County, New York.

“My ancestors were Americans. They were Yankees that came from Connecticut and Massachusetts to New York state.”

“Do you believe in hereditary tendencies?”

“I do, most certainly. Blood tells. There is nothing so absolutely true as that blood tells in cattle, horses and men. My father was a devoted, consistent Presbyterian. The preachers almost counted my father’s house a home when I was a boy. My father was my ideal of a man every way. He was one of the few men I ever saw whose everyday life completely harmonized with the Christian profession.”

“In your Puritan home, you had to toe the mark, did you not?”

“Yes, my parents were strict; but very tender. They never used the rod, because we were such exceptionally good children. We did not need it. I never saw father or mother raise their hand against a child. My father was a lawyer. He afterward became interested in real estate, taking charge of extensive timber and farm lands in the northwest, owned by a gentleman in Philadelphia.”

HIS START AS A BOY.

“To what do you attribute the start you got as a boy on the road to success?”

“To the principles of truth, honor, love, and labor, which were instilled into my mind in our quiet village home.”

“Where were you educated?”

“I attended the Owego Academy. There was nothing out of the ordinary line in teacher or scholar. In the academy I prepared for Yale College, which I entered in 1849. Ill health compelled me to give up my college course at the close of my sophomore year. Our class contained some of the most distinguished men ever graduated from the college. Wayne McVeigh, Edmund Clarence Steadman, Isaac Brumley, Judge Shiras, of the Supreme Court of the United States; Andrew D. White, ambassador to the court of Berlin, were among the number. Yale has grown marvelously since my day, and the student now has increased opportunity for knowledge, but I do not think that the grade of talent to-day is any better than in our time. In 1876, Yale conferred on me the degree of master of arts.”

“Would you advise a young man, having a business life in view, to attend college?”

“I would! The intellectual discipline, the social advantages, the mental stimulus will be of profit to a young man entering business in times of great enterprises and heated competitions.”

ALWAYS FOND OF READING.

“Were you a reader of books?”

“I have always been fond of reading, and have read books to advantage, but for forty years I have been so engaged with business and politics that I have not had the time to gratify my taste for literature, which is strong. Reading is of great advantage to a young man,—that is, the reading of good books.

“I was fortunate in my early friendships. A man’s character and success are greatly effected by his friends. A man is known by the company he keeps. It used to be that a man was known by the newspaper he read. That is not so now.”

“Why?”

“Because there are so many and so cheap that a man can and does take and read more than one. I read them all,—those which agree and those which disagree with me politically.”

“You are reputed to have been a fine singer when a young man.”

“I had a voice which gave me much delight and seemed to please others. I was for many years the leader of the Owego Glee Club, which was very popular. We used to be called for as far as Elmira, Ithaca, Auburn, and Binghamton. With Washington Gladden to write the verses, our glee club to sing them, and Benjamin Tracy, a young lawyer of the town, to make the speeches, we gave considerable inspiration to the social and political gatherings of our community.”

A TASTE OF MINING LIFE

“What was your first venture in business?”

“On my return from Yale, I started a retail drug store in my native town, and continued it for fifteen years. I then branched out in the lumber business in Michigan. I became connected with several local enterprises, among them the bank, and a wagon factory.”

“You invested in a western mine, did you not?”

“Yes! I owned a third interest in a mine at Deadwood, and in the winter of 1877 I decided to go out and see it. It was my first trip west, and I was not prepared for the hardships. I had to ride sixty hours from the end of the railroad to the camp. The Indians were on the war path and had killed a passenger on the stage that preceded ours. As I started to enter the coach, the driver said: ‘Are you armed?’ ‘No,’ said I. Taking a gun from the top of the stage, he gave it to me, and said, ‘You will need it.’ I told him I was a tenderfoot and did not know how to shoot. He showed me, and I took the gun with me. Luckily I did not need it. About the first thing I saw when I reached the camp was an example of frontier justice. Men, with a rope, were hunting for those who had been guilty of holding up the stage. I found the claim in which I was interested to be one of the richest in the vicinity, according to indications. We spent $60,000 in working the claim. I was offered half a million dollars for my interest in the property, which I declined. Just as we got to paying expenses, the mine played out.”

“Did you make any of your money in speculation?”

“I never made much money any way, and I never made any in speculation, or in politics. My political experience has cost me—not brought me money.”

“How happened you to come to New York?”

“I came to New York as the general manager of the United States Express Company, and soon after, in 1879, I was elected president, which position I have held ever since.”

The United States Express Company began business in 1854, and had in New York City eight wagons and twenty men, including officers. Its mileage was less than 600 miles. It now operates 30,000 miles of railroads, which is a larger mileage than that of any other single express company in the country. It has ten thousand employees and five thousand offices. In New York City alone it has six hundred horses and two hundred and fifty wagons; and other great cities of the country are correspondingly well equipped. For a dozen years the company has had the entire responsibility of carrying all government money and securities, except in a few states and territories, and it has transported hundreds of millions of gold and silver and paper money without the loss of a penny to the government. The executive ability, tireless industry, ceaseless vigilance and courteous and honest dealing of President T. C. Platt has had much to do with the success of the company.

THE ELEMENTS OF SUCCESS.

“What do you consider essential elements for success in business?”

“Adaptability to the calling, hard work, strict attention to business and honest dealing.

“Young men should remember that it is not the amount made, but that which is saved that indicates financial success. The habit of economy is important in getting along in the world.”

“When did you turn your attention to politics?”

“Very early in my history, and I have been in its seething, boiling steam about ever since. I was first elected clerk of my county, and soon after was sent to congress, where I served two terms. I was elected to the United States senate in 1881, and again two years ago this last January.”

“It is said that the speech you made on the Treaty of Paris was your maiden speech in the senate.”

“It was.”

“Why should a man who can make such a speech as that have been silent so long?”

“I am dragged almost to death with my hard work, and I have had no time to prepare fine speeches. I have tried to do my duty in my appropriate sphere as a representative of my state in the senate.”

“To what do you attribute your political success?”

“To fidelity to the political principles professed, and especially to my loyalty to my friends.”

ADVICE TO YOUNG MEN.

“Would you advise a young man to enter the political field?”

“By no means! I should advise him to keep out of it. It is vexatious, unsatisfactory and unremunerative. I have requested my sons to keep out of politics, and they have wisely heeded the request.”

“Do you not think that it is the duty of a young man to hold office or in some way bear his share of the burdens of state?”

“Certainly I do. That is a different thing. I referred to the undesirable calling of a professional politician.”

“What would you call the essential elements of success in life?”

“Not one thing, or two things, but a number of them harmoniously blended, and crowned by a true sterling character. True success is not in making money, nor in securing power, nor in winning praise. It is in the building up of true manhood that merits and enjoys these things and employs them for the benefits and happiness of mankind.”

“I forgot to ask you about your health?”

“It has never been robust, but it has been good. I have been very careful in my habits, and have preserved what bodily energy I needed for my life plans. Bodily vigor is necessary to the highest success in any business or profession.”

MR. PLATT’S CHARACTERISTICS.

The senator spoke like the courteous gentleman that he is. His bearing is simplicity and sincerity personified. He made answer to my questions in a voice as delicate as a woman’s, giving no hint of the dynamite behind it. I understand that it is his habit to economize his strength and use no more on each occasion than is really required. Mr. Platt is a serious man and yet he has a deep vein of humor. He likes a good joke and tells one well. He has a hearty laugh. He has great patience, but makes a hard fight when provoked. He is not tyrannical in victory or vengeful in defeat. He has a knowledge of human nature, a keen insight into men’s motives, and has skill in playing upon them. He is a master in adjusting himself to events. He has a masterful will, but a remarkable faculty also for disarming instead of exciting antagonism. Altogether he seems well qualified to be a leader of men.

XXI

A Magnate, the Courage of His Convictions Make Him a Reformer.

AT the time of the Civil war Tom L. Johnson was just old enough to begin to realize the significance of events; he could remember his family’s former affluence, and this memory served as a spur to urge him to the rehabilitation of broken fortunes. At the outbreak of the conflict his father, A. W. Johnson, had joined the Confederate army as a colonel, removing his wife and children, from the Kentucky homestead near Georgetown, to the south, and finally to Staunton, Virginia, for greater safety. There the boy Tom, who was born in 1854, spent four of the most impressionable years of his life, and there he earned his first dollar.

HIS FIRST SPECULATION.

“I am glad I was old enough to remember my home before the war,” he said, in speaking of his early life. “Rightly or wrongly, I attach great importance to this fact as a constant incentive in my career. The thought of regaining the position which we had previously held was always with me.”

The five weeks immediately following Lee’s surrender were a golden time to Tom financially; in that period, he earned eighty-eight dollars, enough to carry the family (which consisted of his parents and two younger brothers), back to Kentucky. This was the way he did it: There was, of course, great thirst for news in Staunton, as all over the country, but only once a day was Staunton in railway communication with the outside world.

The boy saw his chance for a monopoly in newspapers and periodicals, and he straightway cornered the market. This he was enabled to do through the friendship of the conductor of Staunton’s unique train, who refused to furnish papers to anyone else. For five weeks he held his monopoly, selling dailies at fifteen cents and illustrated periodicals at twenty-five cents each.

When Johnson ceased to enjoy these exclusive privileges, he was already a small capitalist, besides having learned a lesson that was not without profit in after life. He had eighty-eight dollars in silver.

“I tell you, that seemed like a lot of sure ’nough money,” he said, with a smile, “to us who had been paying one hundred dollars in Confederate notes for a hat.”

AT WORK IN A ROLLING MILL.

Three years after he went to work in Louisville as clerk in an iron rolling mill, on a very small salary. In the same office with him was another lad, Arthur Moxham, who later became his business partner. For economical reasons, the managers of the mill decided that the services of one of the boys could be dispensed with, and it then came to a choice between them. Moxham was the one retained, and Johnson was turned out to commence over again. At the time, this looked like a misfortune, but it was really the best thing that could have happened. Before long, an opening with Louisville’s ramshackle, broken-down-old-mule street railway presented itself, and the discharged mill clerk started on the career which was to lead to fortune.

A FORTUNATE MISFORTUNE.

“The decision which retained Moxham in the mill and turned me adrift,” he said, “was both a wise and a fortunate one. Moxham was better suited to the position than I was, and, moreover, I was thus thrown into the work for which I was adapted.”

Quickly, the boy, who was then nearing manhood, passed from one place to another in the company’s service until, after a few years, he became superintendent. Then he set about building up the railway and putting it on a paying basis. By a wise system of improving the accommodations and reducing the expenses, he was successful in this effort, and he forthwith began to look around for fresh fields for his ambition. But, in the meantime, like most men who are conscious of their strength and ability to cope with the world, and like many who are not, he had entered upon matrimony. His bride was his cousin, Miss Margaret J. Johnson, of Louisville, Kentucky.

At the time of his marriage, Tom L. Johnson was but twenty, and was just beginning to get a secure footing in business. But he was not content with his limited scope of action. Moreover, his employers wanted to help him forward, recognizing his ability. Of his own initiative, Biderman Du Pont, one of the owners of the railway, offered to his _protégé a loan of_ $30,000, with which to try his fortune. The possibility of security was, of course, out of the question.

“Take it, Tom,” he said, “and if you live, I know you’ll pay it back; if you die, why, I’ll be out just so much. But I’m gambling on your living.”

“And later,” remarked Mr. Johnson, “I had the pleasure of associating two of Mr. Du Pont’s sons with me in business matters, and thus enjoyed the satisfaction of partially repaying his kindness.” With the generous loan, the young financier organized a triumvirate for the purchase of the street railways of Indianapolis, thus taking the first step in the course which led him in turn to absorb the lines of Cleveland, Detroit, St. Louis, Brooklyn and other cities. In Indianapolis, he pursued, with benefit to himself, the system which had been successful in Louisville,—cheap fares and good accommodations, with increased transfer privileges.

From that time on his career is an illustration of the benefits of expansion. The days of the cable and electric cars came, and the new inventions were immediately extended to the lines under his control. By that time he had become strong enough to conduct his operations independently in his own behalf, or in conjunction with Moxham,—whose retention in the mill, by the way, had been but of temporary benefit to him, owing to the failure of the concern.

Like other practical men who have risen from the bottom of the ladder, Mr. Johnson familiarized himself with every detail of his business, even to the mechanical difficulties involved. This he proved by inventing a brake for cable-cars, which came into extensive use.

“PROGRESS AND POVERTY” CHANGED HIS WHOLE LIFE.

One day, while traveling, Mr. Johnson came across a book which was destined to influence his career vitally. This book was Henry George’s “Progress and Poverty.” There, he thought, was the solution of the great social questions of the age, and from that moment he was an ardent “single-taxer.” Indeed, the desire to benefit his fellowmen by opening their eyes to what he considered the truth, had become his first consideration in life, more important even than his business. Forthwith he set about to convert his father and partner, and when, soon thereafter, the chance for action on a larger stage presented itself, he was himself irresistibly impelled to seize it, despite distrust in his own ability. Owing to his uniform plan of considering the comfort of the public in the operation of his railway lines, he had earned for himself unsought popularity in the city of Cleveland, where rival companies had practiced a reactionary system of niggardliness and indifference. The reward came not only in financial prosperity, but also in the form of an unexpected nomination to congress.

HIS VOLUNTEER GERMAN FRIEND.

News of this honor reached Mr. Johnson while fishing, and his first impulse was to decline to run. But further thought led to a change of decision. Having decided, he acted. From that time until the election, he delivered a succession of public speeches, and the man who had distrusted his ability to address an audience suddenly found that he was an orator.

At every one of his tent meetings was to be seen a stout old German, who always occupied a front seat, and who evidently felt a proprietary interest in the speaker, which he manifested by liberal and loud interjections of “Bully Boy!” On one occasion, after a meeting, the German happened to be sitting next to Miss Johnson in the trolley car on the return trip. “Do you see that stout man down there?” he said; addressing her; “well, that’s my friend, Tom Johnson. He’s a great man; I know him well. And that lady next to him, that’s his wife.”

“Indeed,” replied Miss Johnson, “and I happen to be his daughter.”

The old German was not one whit abashed. Springing to his feet, he held out his hand. “And I’m delighted to make your acquaintance, Miss Johnson!” he cried, at the top of his voice; “I’m delighted to meet any one belonging to Tom Johnson. Bully boy!”

Like his German admirer, the people stood by Mr. Johnson, and he was elected a member of the Fifty-second and Fifty-third Congresses, in which he distinguished himself by his frank criticism of the administration.

HIS FIRST SPEECH IN CONGRESS.

Mrs. Johnson’s account of her husband’s first speech in Congress is as dramatic and vivid as Baudet’s description of the trial in the “Nabob.” Like the Nabob’s mother, she was in attendance unknown to the principal actor; but, in her case, this was due to intention, not accident.

“I was alone in the stall of the gallery,” she said, “save for one other woman, who was there evidently merely from curiosity. I was choking, trembling from excitement. There was a great, inarticulate noise in the chamber, the banging of desk-lids, the calling of members to pages, the murmur of voices in conversation. Groups were scattered about the room; members were reading; no one was paying the slightest attention to the proceedings. Then Mr. Johnson arose, and I felt my heart stand still. Surely they would stop the noise, if only from common courtesy. But there was not an instant’s cessation in the hubbub; everything continued exactly as before. He began to speak, but I could hardly catch the sound of his voice. I leaned forward and gripped the rail; the confusion would distract him; he would break down. Oh, how I hated those men who had no consideration for anyone but themselves. I felt the eyes of the other woman on me, sympathetically, pitying. Suddenly, someone cried ‘S-sh!’ and there was an instant’s cessation in the noise. But only for an instant. I was bending forward over the rail, my eyes fixed on the speaker, hoping, praying for his success. Suddenly, W. C. Breckenridge, who was sitting directly in front of him, lifted his eyes and caught sight of me, and started to rise to come up into the gallery. I raised my hand and motioned him back, for I feared Mr. Johnson might look up and see me. Mr. Breckenridge sank back in his seat again, and I breathed a sigh of relief.”

TOM REED LISTENED.

“Then a wonderful thing happened. A great, massive figure arose on the Republican side of the house and came over and took a seat directly in front of the speaker. He had come over to hear what Mr. Johnson was saying, and when Tom Reed came across to listen to a Democrat, everyone else listened, you may be sure. A hush fell on the house that remained unbroken until the speaker sat down in a burst of applause. That was the happiest day of my life.”

A PEN PICTURE OF TOM JOHNSON.

Mr. Johnson is short and stout, with clear-cut, strong features. His face is that of an orator, the eye clear and direct, the forehead high and commanding. The broad nose-bridge indicates physical strength, and the firm mouth and chin, strength of character. In face, he resembles William Jennings Bryan, but a strong sense of humor belies deeper resemblance. Unlike most rich men, he knows when he has enough, and to this conclusion, it seems, he has now arrived.

“At the age of forty-five,” he said to me, in his apartments at the Waldorf-Astoria, “I am fortunate enough to be able to retire from business and to devote myself to other pursuits. Except for two small matters, I may be said to be already out of business, and I have no intention of going into anything new. From now on I shall give all my energies to spreading the single-tax theory, either here or in England, where it seems to be making rapid progress. Exactly how this will be done, I don’t know. I have always been a Democrat, and am one still, and I believe in organization; but whether or not I shall work within party lines, I am not yet prepared to say. Still, I have my own ideas, although it is rather my custom to act than to talk in advance.”

Those who know Mr. Johnson will agree with him, I think.

XXII

A Backwoods Boy Works His Way through College and Becomes University President.

AT ten years of age he was a country lad on a backwoods farm on Prince Edward’s Island.

At thirteen, he had become a clerk in a country store, at a salary of thirty dollars a year.

At eighteen, he was a college student, supporting himself by working in the evenings as a bookkeeper.

At twenty, he had won a scholarship in the University of London, in competition with all other Canadian students.

At twenty-five, he was professor of philosophy, Acadia College, Nova Scotia.

At thirty-eight he was appointed President of Cornell University.

At forty-four, he was chairman of President McKinley’s special commission to the Philippines.

In this summary is epitomized the career of Jacob Gould Schurman. It is a romance of real life such as is not unfamiliar in America. Mr. Schurman’s career differs from that of some other self-made men, however. Instead of heaping up millions upon millions, he has applied his talents to winning the intellectual prizes of life, and has made his way, unaided, to the front rank of the leaders in thought and learning in this country. His career is a source of inspiration to all poor boys who have their own way to make in the world, for he has won his present honors by his own unaided efforts.

President Schurman says of his early life:—

“It is impossible for the boy of to-day, no matter in what part of the country he is brought up, to appreciate the life of Prince Edward’s Island as it was forty years ago. At that time, it had neither railroads nor daily newspapers, nor any of the dozen other things that are the merest commonplaces nowadays, even to the boys of the country districts. I did not see a railway until late in my ’teens. I was never inside a theater until after I was twenty. The only newspaper that came to my father’s house was a little provincial weekly. The only books the house contained were a few standard works,—such as the Bible, Bunyan’s ‘Pilgrim’s Progress,’ Fox’s ‘Book of Martyrs,’ and a few others of that class. Remember, too, that this was not back at the beginning of the century, but little more than a generation ago, for I was born in the year 1854.

“My father had cleared away the land on which our house stood. He was a poor man, but no poorer than his neighbors. No amount of land, and no amount of work could yield much more than the necessaries of life in that time and place. There were eight children in our family, and there was work for all of us.

“Our parents were anxious to have their children acquire at least an elementary education; and so, summer and winter, we tramped the mile and a half that lay between our house and the district school, and the snow often fell to the depth of five or six feet on the island, and sometimes, when it was at its worst, our father would drive us all to school in a big sleigh. But no weather was bad enough to keep us away.

“That would be looked upon as a poor kind of school, nowadays, I suppose. The scholars were of all ages, and everything from A,-B,-C, to the Rule of Three, was taught by the one teacher. But whatever may have been its deficiencies, the work of the school was thorough. The teacher was an old-fashioned drillmaster, and whatever he drove into our heads he put there to stay. I went to this school summer and winter until I was thirteen, and by that time I had learned to read and write and spell and figure with considerable accuracy.

“At the age of thirteen, I left home. I hadn’t formed any definite plans as to my future. I merely wanted to get into a village and to earn some money.

“My father got me a place in the nearest town,—Summerside,—a village of about one thousand inhabitants. For my first year’s work I was to receive thirty dollars and my board. Think of that, young men of to-day! Thirty dollars a year for working from seven in the morning until ten at night! But I was glad to get the place. It was a start in the world, and the little village was like a city to my country eyes.”

HE ALWAYS SUPPORTED HIMSELF.

“From the time I began working in the store until to-day, I have always supported myself, and during all the years of my boyhood I never received a penny that I did not earn myself. At the end of my first year, I went to a larger store in the same town, where I was to receive sixty dollars a year and my board. My salary was doubled; I was getting on swimmingly.

“I kept this place for two years, and then I gave it up, against the wishes of my employer, because I had made up my mind that I wanted to get a better education. I determined to go to college.

“I did not know how I was going to do this, except that it must be of my own efforts. I had saved about eighty dollars from my storekeeping, and that was all the money I had in the world.

“When I told my employer of my plan, he tried to dissuade me from it. He pointed out the difficulties in the way of my going to college, and offered to double my pay if I would stay in the store.”

THE TURNING POINT OF HIS LIFE.

“That was the turning-point in my life. On one side was the certainty of one hundred and twenty dollars a year, and the prospect of promotion as fast as I deserved it. Remember what one hundred and twenty dollars meant in Prince Edward’s Island, and to me, a poor boy who had never possessed such a sum in his life. On the other side was my hope of obtaining an education. I knew that it involved hard work and self-denial, and there was the possibility of failure in the end. But my mind was made up. I would not turn back. I need not say that I do not regret that early decision, although I think that I would have made a successful storekeeper.

“With my eighty dollars capital, I began to attend the village high school, to get my preparation for college. I had only one year to do it in. My money would not last longer than that. I recited in Latin, Greek and algebra, all on the same day, and for the next forty weeks studied harder than I ever had before or have since. At the end of the year I entered the competitive examination for a scholarship in Prince of Wales College, at Charlotte Town, on the Island. I had small hope of winning it, my preparation had been so hasty and incomplete. But when the result was announced, I found that I had not only won the scholarship from my county, but stood first of all the competitors on the Island.

“The scholarship I had won amounted to only sixty dollars a year. It seems little enough, but I can say now, after nearly thirty years, that the winning of it was the greatest success I have ever had. I have had other rewards, which, to most persons, would seem immeasurably greater, but with this difference: that first success was essential; without it I could not have gone on. The others I could have done without, if it had been necessary.”

For two years young Schurman attended Prince of Wales College. He lived on his scholarship and what he could earn by keeping books for one of the town storekeepers, spending less than one hundred dollars during the entire college year. Afterward, he taught a country school for a year, and then went to Acadia College in Nova Scotia to complete his college course.

A SPLENDID COLLEGE RECORD.

One of Mr. Schurman’s fellow-students in Acadia says that he was remarkable chiefly for taking every prize to which he was eligible. In his senior year, he learned of a scholarship in the University of London offered for competition by the students of Canadian colleges. The scholarship paid five hundred dollars a year for three years. The young student in Acadia was ambitious to continue his studies in England, and saw in this offer his opportunity. He tried the examination and won the prize in competition with the brightest students in the larger Canadian colleges.

During the three years in the University of London, Mr. Schurman became deeply interested in the study of philosophy, and decided that he had found in it his life work. He was eager to go to Germany and study under the great leaders of philosophic thought. A way was opened for him, through the offer of the Hibbard Society in London, of a traveling fellowship with two thousand dollars a year. The honor men of the great English universities like Oxford and Cambridge were among the competitors, but the poor country boy from Prince Edward’s Island was again successful, greatly to the surprise of the others.

At the end of his course in Germany, Mr. Schurman, then a doctor of philosophy, returned to Acadia College to become a teacher there. Soon afterward, he was called to Dalhousie University, at Halifax, Nova Scotia. In 1886, when a chair of philosophy was established at Cornell, President White, who had once met the brilliant young Canadian, called him to that position. Two years later, Dr. Schurman became Dean of the Sage School of Philosophy at Cornell; and, in 1892, when the president’s chair became vacant, he was placed at the head of the great university. At that time, he was only thirty-eight years of age.

President Schurman is a man of great intellectual power, and an inspiring presence. Though one of the youngest college presidents in the country, he is one of the most successful, and under his leadership Cornell has been very prosperous. He is deeply interested in all the affairs of young men, and especially those who, as he did, must make their own way in the world. He said, the other day:—

“Though I am no longer engaged directly in teaching, I should think my work a failure if I did not feel that my influence on the young men with whom I come in contact is as direct and helpful as that of a teacher could be.”

COLLEGE-BRED MEN ARE IN DEMAND

“It is true that there is an increasing, and just now, an unusual demand for college-bred men in all walks of life. The prescribed preliminaries to legal and medical education are, step by step, approaching graduation from college, and have reached it, in some instances, while these professional courses themselves have been extended and deepened, till they are now nearly or quite on a par with the old liberal training with which they are co-ordinated in the modern university. As to engineers,—fifteen years ago, the manufacturers of machinery had to be coaxed to take those pioneers, the Cornell men, into their shops and give them a chance. But where one went, many followed. Last spring, when the class of 1900 came to graduation, every student in this branch was eagerly bid for two or three times over. One great electrical firm alone asked to be given the entire class. There is observable, too, a gradual increase in the call for college-bred teachers in the public schools, and this demand will grow by what it feeds upon.

“All this is but the sign and symbol of an increasing complexity and organization in our civilization. Rough-and-ready methods are going out, and the untrained handy-man with them. In all directions, as expanding American manufactures and commerce come into competition with those of Europe, it is daily more obvious that the higher skill and intelligence, making the closest use of its resources, will win. Nowadays, to do the work of the world as the world will have it done, and will pay for having it done, requires that a man be trained to the exactitude of scientific methods, and that he be given the wide mental outlook and the special training which he can acquire in the university, and nowhere else.”

XXIII

A “Jack of All Trades” Masters One and Becomes the Poet of the People.

JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY and I were at breakfast together, and the appearance of his cup of steaming coffee, into which he hastened to drop four full-sized blocks of sugar, threw the “Hoosier” poet into a train of reflections, for which he presently found expression. “They don’t make coffee any more,” he observed, in an almost aggrieved tone. “It is a lost art. You don’t see any more the clear, transparent beverage that mother used to make. It’s thick and murky, and, worse than all, it does no good to protest.”

It was a fortunate circumstance, however, this recalling a youthful remembrance, for it led him at once into a lively discussion of that part of his career,—his early struggles,—which possess for the average person, and often for the subject himself, far more interest and fascination than any later triumphs, no matter how complete. It is doubtful if there is in the literary world, to-day, a personage whose boyhood and young manhood can approach in romance and unusual circumstances that of the author of “The Old Swimmin’ Hole.” It was almost as if it were all a chapter from a fairy tale, to see the poet sitting there, calm and dignified, and to listen to his slow speech, in well-modulated voice, and still attempt to realize of what circumstances he had been a factor, what experience he had passed through. All tradition was against his accomplishing anything in the world. How, indeed, said the good folks of the little town of Greenfield, Indiana, could anything be expected of a boy who cared nothing for school, and deserted it at the first opportunity, to take up a wandering life.

It is a wonder of wonders that from such a beginning should spring a poet whose ideals are among the noblest in American literature. “Ike Walton’s Prayer,” it would seem, must have been spoken from the poet’s heart.

IKE WALTON’S PRAYER.

I crave, dear Lord, No boundless hoard Of gold and gear, Nor jewels fine, Nor lands, nor kine, Nor treasure-heaps of anything. Let but a little hut be mine Where at the hearthstone I may hear The cricket sing, And have the shine Of one glad woman’s eyes to make, For my poor sake, Our simple home a place divine:— Just the wee cot—the cricket’s chirr— Love, and the smiling face of her.

I pray not for Great riches, nor For vast estates, and castle halls,— Give me to hear the bare footfalls Of children o’er An oaken floor, New rinsed with sunshine, or bespread With but the tiny coverlet And pillow for the baby’s head; And pray thou, may The door stand open and the day Send ever in a gentle breeze, With fragrance from the locust trees, And drowsy moan of doves, and blur Of robins’ chirps, and drone of bees, With after hushes of the stir Of intermingling sounds, and then The good-wife and the smile of her Filling the silences again— The cricket’s call, And the wee cot, Dear Lord of all, Deny me not!

I pray not that Men tremble at My power of place And lordly sway,— I only pray for simple grace To look my neighbor in the face Full honestly from day to day— Yield me his horny palm to hold, And I’ll not pray For gold:— The tanned face, garlanded with mirth, It hath the kingliest smile on earth— The swart brow, diamonded with sweat, Hath never need of coronet. And so I reach Dear Lord to Thee, And do beseech Thou givest me The wee cot, and the cricket’s chirr, Love, and the glad sweet face of her!

THROWN ON HIS OWN RESOURCES.

The boy’s father, like almost all fathers, had aspirations. He wanted the boy to follow in his footsteps, in the legal profession, and he held out alluring hopes of the possibility of scaling even greater heights than any to which he had yet attained. Better still,—from the standpoint of the restless James,—he took the youngster with him as he made his circuit from court to court. These excursions, for they were indeed such to the boy, sowed deep in his heart the seed of a determination to become a nomad, and it was not long until he started out as a strolling sign-painter, determined upon the realization of his ideals. Oftentimes business was worse than dull, and, on one occasion, hunger drove him for recourse to his wits, and lo, he blossomed forth as a “blind sign-painter,” led from place to place by a little boy, and showered with sympathy and trade in such abundance that he could hardly bear the thought of the relinquishment of a pretense so ingenious and successful, entered on at first as a joke.

Then came another epoch. The young man fell in with a patent-medicine man, with whom he joined fortunes, and here the young Indianian, who had been scribbling more or less poetry ever since he first essayed to compose a four-line valentine upon a writing table whose writing surface was almost as high as his head, found a new use for his talent, for his duties in the partnership were to beguile the people with joke and song, while his co-worker plied the sales of his cure-all; and, forsooth, there were many times when, but for his poetic fancy, Riley might have seen his audience dwindle rapidly away. It was while thus engaged that he had the opportunities which enabled him to master thoroughly the “Hoosier” dialect. When the glamour of the patent-medicine career had faded somewhat, Riley joined a band of strolling Thespians, and, in this brief portion of his life, after the wont of players of his class, played many parts. At length he began to give a little more attention to his literary work, and, later, obtained a place on an Indianapolis paper, where he published his first poems, and be it said that they won their author almost instant success.

WHY HE LONGED TO BE A BAKER.

When I drew Riley out to talk still further of those interesting days, and the strange experiences which came to him therein, the conversation finally turned on the subject of his youthful ambitions. “I think my earliest remembered one,” he said, “was an insatiate longing to become a baker. I don’t know what prompted it, unless it was the vision of the mountains of alluring ‘goodies,’ which, as they are ranged in the windows of the pastry shops, appear doubly tempting to the youth whose mother not only counsels moderation, but enforces it.

“Next, I imagined that I would like to become a showman of some sort, and then my shifting fancy conjured up visions of how grand it would be to work as a painter, and decorate houses and fences in glowing colors, but finally, as I grew a little older, there returned my old longing to become an actor. When, however, my dreams were realized, and I became a member of a traveling theatrical company, I found that the life was full of hardships, with very little chances of rising in the world. I never had any literary ambition whatever, so far as I can remember. I wrote, primarily, simply because I desired to have something to read, and could not find selections that exactly suited me. Gradually I found a demand for my little efforts springing up, and so my brother, who could write legibly, transcribed them.”

THE SUPERSTRUCTURE DEPENDS ON THE FOUNDATION.

“Mr. Riley,” I said, “I came here to see you to-day in behalf of the thousands of people who are seeking to make progress, or gain a start in business or professional life, and I suppose that the tastes of some of them incline to the literary field. Can’t you give me your idea of the prime requisites for success in the field of letters?”

“The most essential factor is persistence,—the determination never to allow your energy or enthusiasm to be dampened by the discouragements that must inevitably come. I believe that he is richer for the battle with the world, in any vocation, who has great determination and little talent, rather than his seemingly more fortunate brother with great talent, perhaps, but little determination. As for the field of literature, I cannot but express my conviction that meteoric flights, such as have been taken, of recent years, by some young writers with whose names almost everybody is familiar, cannot fail to be detrimental, unless the man to whom success comes thus early and suddenly is an exceptionally evenly-balanced and sensible person. Many persons have spoken to me about Kipling’s work, and remarked how wonderful a thing is the fact that such achievements could have been possible for a man comparatively so young. I say, not at all. What do we find when we investigate? Simply that Kipling began working on a newspaper when he was only thirteen years of age, and he has been toiling ever since. So you see, even that case, when we get at the inner facts, confirms my theory that every man must be ‘tried in the fire,’ as it were. He may begin early or late, and in some cases the fight is longer than in others, but of one thing I feel sure, that there is no short-cut to permanent, self-satisfying success in literature, or anything else.”

A LITERARY LIFE MEANS WORK.

When he was asked for his opinion on the subject of the expansion of Indiana literature, Mr. Riley said:—

“I do not know what I should say about Indiana literature and the causes of its growth. I think, possibly, the reason it has attracted such wide attention, and expanded in so many directions, is that it drew inspiration and received impetus from having been lampooned and made fun of by every cultured ‘Tom, Dick, and Harry’ of the outside world.

“Personally, the world has always been kind to me, but I do not know that I expected kindness.

“It is glorious to be barred,—to suffer the whips and scorn of self-accredited superiors! It roused us, this superciliousness, to our real worth, and it inspired us to put forth our best efforts. That excellence in literature is found in Indiana I am thankful for, and I am glad that I have outlived the ridicule, and that others have recognized, of late, this special excellence of the work of our authors, and given credit most generously.

“I am sure that the same excellence will be found in our neighboring western states, and that we, in turn, will not withhold from them encouragement and recognition. Illinois has already developed some rare poets. Ohio, too, ranks high in western literature.

“The beginner, with his youthful imagination just ‘ramping it,’ is too sensitive to the pricks of criticism. He stands in awe of the self-constituted critic, until he cannot see anything else, and, necessarily, loses sight of the value of ideas, which count more than all else. He can never make up the loss in years. Indeed, he can never regain it. It is expecting to be a writer in six months or a year that makes him think himself a failure.

“A literary life means work. He who would write must learn that, and learn to work hard. Look at Bernhardt’s art; look at the amount of hard work she goes through every day to make it perfect. How many writers do as she does? No good thing was ever done quickly,—nothing of any value. The capacity for hard work has had much to do with the development of Indiana literature.”

A COLLEGE EDUCATION IS AN ADVANTAGE.

Answering other questions, the poet said: “A college education for the aspirant for literary success is, of course, an advantage, provided he does not let education foster a false culture that will lead him away from his true ideals and the ideals he ought to cling to. There is another thing that the young man in any artistic pursuit must have a care for, and that is, to be practical. This is a practical world, and it is always ready to take advantage of this sort of people, so that if he wishes what we might call domestic happiness, he might as well make up his mind to a dual existence, as it were, and must try to cultivate a practical business sense, as well as an artistic sense. We have only a few men like Rudyard Kipling and F. Hopkinson Smith, who seem to combine these diverse elements of character in just the right proportions, but I believe that it is unfortunate for the happiness and peace of mind of our authors and artists and musicians that we have not more of them.”

Riley’s poetry is popular because it goes right to the feelings of the people. He could not have written as he does, but for the schooling of that wandering life, which gave him an insight into the struggle for existence among the great unnumbered multitude of his fellow men. He learned in his travels and journeys, in his hard experience as a strolling sign-painter and patent-medicine peddler, the freemasonry of poverty. His poems are natural; they are those of a man who feels as he writes. As Thoreau painted nature in the woods, and streams, and lakes, so Riley depicts the incidents of everyday life, and brightens each familiar lineament with that touch that makes all the world kin. One of his noblest poems is “Old Glory.” It speaks the homely, sterling patriotism of the common people.

“The Little Coat” illustrates his wonderful power to touch the heart.

THE LITTLE COAT.

Here’s his ragged “roundabout,” Turn the pockets inside out; See: his pen-knife, lost to use, Rusted shut with apple-juice; Here, with marbles, top and string, Is his deadly “devil-sling,” With its rubber, limp at last, As the sparrows of the past! Beeswax—buckles—leather straps— Bullets, and a box of caps,— Not a thing of all, I guess, But betrays some waywardness— E’en these tickets, blue and red, For the Bible verses said— Such as this his memory kept— “Jesus wept.”

* * * * * *

Here’s the little coat—but O! Where is he we’ve censured so! Don’t you hear us calling, dear? Back! come back, and never fear. You may wander where you will, Over orchard, field and hill; You may kill the birds, or do Anything that pleases you! Ah, this empty coat of his! Every tatter worth a kiss; Every stain as pure instead As the white stars overhead; And the pockets—homes were they Of the little hands that play Now no more—but, absent, thus Beckon us.

XXIV

A Farm Boy Who Devoured Books Writes One of the Greatest Poems of the Century.

THE international discussion of “The Man with the Hoe” had hardly subsided, when popular interest was revived by the remarkable declaration of the author, Mr. Edwin Markham, that he had spent ten years in its production.

Who is this magician of the pen, this man of mystery, who carries his readers, in a single sentence, through “a storm of stars,” and, in another, kneels with them in dreamy sympathy beside “the brother to the ox,”—who mixes up the critics in a hopeless tangle of doubt, and puzzles the public by the erratic chronology of his mental processes?

The widespread interest in the personality of the poet may justify the attempt of the writer to get at the “true inwardness” of his life-story. This has not yet been told.

This handsome dreamer, whose eyes are softer than a fawn’s, and whose gray-tinged locks give an unwonted majesty to his mien, is only about fifty years old. Yet, in his span of life, he has been engaged in half a score of vocations, ranging from the exciting and strenuous to the peaceful and poetic. The discovery that he was once a village blacksmith promises to lend interest to a new phase of his distinguished career.

THE MAN WITH THE HOE.

(Written after seeing Millet’s World-Famous Painting.)

_“God made man in His own image, in the image of God made He him.”—Genesis._

Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground, The emptiness of ages in his face, And on his back the burden of the world. Who made him dead to rapture and despair, A thing that grieves not and that never hopes, Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox? Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw? Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow? Whose breath blew out the light within this brain?

Is this the Thing the Lord God made and gave To have dominion over sea and land; To trace the stars and search the heavens for power; To feel the passion of Eternity? Is this the dream He dreamed who shaped the suns And pillared the blue firmament with light? Down all the stretch of Hell to its last gulf There is no shape more terrible than this— More tongued with censure of the world’s blind greed— More filled with signs and portents for the soul— More fraught with menace to the universe. What gulfs between him and the seraphim! Slave of the wheel of labor, what to him Are Plato and the swing of Pleiades? What are the long reaches of the peaks of song, The rift of dawn, the reddening of the rose?

Through this dread shape the suffering ages look; Time’s tragedy is in that aching stoop; Through this dread shape humanity betrayed, Plundered, profaned and disinherited, Cries protest to the Judges of the World, A protest that is also prophesy.

O masters, lords and rulers in all lands, Is this the handiwork you give to God, This monstrous thing, distorted and soul-quenched? How will you ever straighten up this shape; Touch it again with immortality; Give back the upward looking and the light; Rebuild in it the music and the dream; Make right the immemorial infamies, Perfidious wrongs, immedicable woes?

O masters, lords and rulers in all lands, How will the Future reckon with this Man? How answer his brute question in that hour When whirlwinds and rebellion shake the world? How will it be with kingdoms and with kings— With those who shaped him to the thing he is— When this dumb Terror shall reply to God After the silence of the centuries?

ONE OF THE GREAT POEMS OF THE CENTURY.

No other poem published in America in many years has so stirred the emotions of the people, commanded so much attention and created so much comment as “The Man with the Hoe.” It and Kipling’s “Recessional” are regarded as the great poems of the closing years of the century. The critics have hailed “The Man with the Hoe” as a prominent piece of political literature, because of the breadth and depth and vital importance of the theme, and the fervor and noble dignity of its treatment. Yet the poem has been misinterpreted and assailed. It has been said to be an affront to manual labor. The only answer Mr. Markham has thus far made to his critics he dictated to the writer. He also spoke, for the first time for publication, of his mother, and her all-pervading influence on his early life, of his youthful days, and of his own experience with the hoe.

Mr. Markham’s poetry proves that his paramount quality is his deep sympathy with suffering. The most marked thing in his personality is his humanity, which effuses, so to speak, in a spontaneous geniality and unaffected interest in others. He laughs easily and tells a story extremely well.

HIS MOTHER WAS BOTH PRACTICAL AND POETIC.

“I am a very serious man at heart,” he remarked to me, “but, fortunately, I have a sense of humor. I will confess that the attention attracted by ‘The Man with the Hoe’ has surprised me, and the comments of some of the gentlemen who have condescended to criticise the poem are amusing. They seem to miss entirely its true spirit and meaning, and yet speak with most complacent confidence. I,— O, you want me to start at the beginning of my life and proceed in an orderly manner, do you? Well, I have said little for print about my early days, but get out your pencil and I will dictate you something.

“That most important event, my birth, occurred in Oregon City, Oregon, on April 23, 1852. My schooling began when I was about four years old, in a primitive little school in my native town.

“While he instilled in my youthful mind the principles of the alphabet and other important knowledge, it was the influence of my mother,—my father having died,—that dominated me. She was, in some respects, the most extraordinary woman I have ever known,—a woman of strong likes and dislikes, and capable of holding on to a purpose to the end. She kept a large store of general merchandise in Oregon City, and conducted the business with remarkable energy. But, despite her hard common sense and practical ability, she was known as the ‘Woman Poet of Oregon.’ It was from her, of course, that I got my own poetical bent. Her poetry was full of feeling and earnestness, and was impressed with a strong religious spirit. It was published chiefly in newspapers at the time, and I presume I am the only person in the world who now has any of it.”

HE GAINED VALUABLE DISCIPLINE ON A FARM.

“When I was still a small boy, mother moved to California. She settled in a little wild valley amid the hills in the central part of the state, on a sheep range that she had bought. I was chief herder. All day long I followed the herd over ridge and hollow, and along the hillsides into the blue distance. I absorbed woodcraft and weather-wit, and a love of nature which has been one of the predominating influences of my life.

“After a few years, we turned our place into a cattle range and farm, with myself as chief farmer. I was just entering my ‘teens’ then. I fenced and plowed the land straggling up the little valley, and learned every detail of a farmer’s work and life. The hoe, the shovel, the scythe, the cradle, the reaper, the threshing machine, the grafting knife,—these are all old friends of mine. When I began to near young manhood, I became a thresher, going from farm to farm, helping to thresh out the grain after the harvest home, and often sleeping at night in hay-mows.

BYRON’S POEMS INSPIRED HIM.

“Meanwhile, I devoured all the poetry I could find. I read Byron’s poems more than any other’s, because a complete set of his works was at hand, and as a result of his influence I wrote, when about sixteen, a very ambitious poem called, ‘A Dream of Chaos.’ This was only one of my youthful indiscretions in the poetical line. No, I don’t believe the general public will ever be asked to read them. It has been kind to me, and deserves fair treatment.”

“But, Mr. Markham, did you not find that your hard farm labor tended to crush out the poetry, and finer feelings generally?”

ANSWERING HIS CRITICS.

“Oh, you are now getting on ticklish ground, for it is here that the critics of ‘The Man with the Hoe’ congregate and jubilate. Let me say briefly, though, in answer to you and to them, that I believe in labor, that I believe in its humanizing and redeeming power. Indeed, from a religious point of view, I believe that a man’s craft furnishes the chief basis of his redemption. While one is making a house, he is making himself. While he chisels the block of marble he is invisibly shaping his own soul. And it does not matter much what a man does,—whether he builds a poem or hoes in a garden. The chief thing is the way we do our work. It must be done thoroughly, and in the spirit of loving service. Work of this order is a perpetual prayer. The doer is elevated by such work.

“But, while all this is true, it is also true that excesses are evils,—that overwork and underpaid work tend to break down instead of build up. Work is good for the child, but I can put such heavy burdens upon him as to deform his body and stunt his mind.

“‘The Man with the Hoe’ is, of course, the type of industrial oppression in all lands and in all parts of labor. He is the man who has been chained to the wheel by the fierce necessity for bread,—the man with no time for rest, no time for study, no time for thought, no time for the mighty hopes that make us men. The poem is not a protest against labor; it is a protest against the degradation of labor.”

SEED SOWN LONG AGO.

Speaking of the writing of this poem, Mr. Markham said that he sketched the outline of it fourteen years ago, upon seeing a photograph of Millet’s famous painting, “The Man with the Hoe.” When he saw the picture itself four years afterward, he further elaborated the idea, but did not write it out in complete form until Christmas week, 1900. He then spent three or four days on it, and sent it to the San Francisco Examiner, where it was published for the first time on the eighth of January 1901.

Within a few months, the volume, “The Man with the Hoe and other Poems,” was issued by Doubleday and McClure, of New York, and met with so large a sale that it was soon in its fifth edition. It has been very favorably received.

Mr. Markham paid his way through the state normal school at San Jose, and afterward through Christian college at Santa Rosa, California. He has done important educational work in that state as a superintendent and principal of schools in various places, and is now head master of the Tompkins observation school in Oakland. Inducements have been offered him to deliver a series of lectures throughout the country, and he has received many requests for literary work, with some of which he will comply.

The world is well lost when the world is wrong, No matter how men deride you; For if you are patient and firm and strong, You will find in time, though the time be long, That the world wheels round beside you.

—ELLA WHEELER WILCOX.

XXV

A Famous Authoress Tells Literary Aspirants the Story of Her Struggle for Recognition.

BORN and reared in Wisconsin, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, although a resident of New York, is still faithful to the ideals and aspirations of the young and vigorous western state in which she first saw the light. She began writing at an early age, and still has in her possession childish verses, composed when she was only eight years old.

She was, however, far from any literary center; she had no one upon whom she might rely for advice as to her methods, and she had no influential friends, for her family was not a wealthy one. The usual difficulties, so familiar to all beginners, met her at every step; discouragements were endured day after day, and year after year. After a while, she began writing for various periodicals. Her first poems appeared in the New York Mercury, the Waverly Magazine, and Leslie’s publications. It was from the publishing house of Frank Leslie she received her first check. Her income from literary work was very small and recognition came quite slowly. But courage, and patience, and fortitude, finally won the day.

HOW HER BEST POEMS WERE WRITTEN.

One of her most famous poems, beginning, “Laugh and the World Laughs with You,” was written about February, 1883, at Madison, Wisconsin. She had talked with a friend who had been bereaved by death in her household; later, while dressing for an inaugural ball, given in honor of the governor of Wisconsin, she was startled to think how soon the mind turns from stories of sorrow to scenes of gayety. Thus she formed the idea of this famous poem. It originally appeared in the New York Sun, and the author received five dollars for it. Subsequently, an attempt was made to pirate the verses as the composition of another; but the effort was, happily, a complete failure. The poem embodying the idea,—

“A question is never settled Until it is settled right,”

with which W. J. Bryan concludes his book, was written by her after hearing a gentleman make a remark in those words at the conclusion of a heated argument, on the single-tax question. The gentleman was afterward told that Lincoln had made use of this exact expression, years ago. But neither the gentleman in question, nor Mrs. Wilcox herself, had ever heard the expression before.

“The Two Glasses,” one of her brightest poems, was written at the age of eighteen. Although this was a “temperance poem,” she had never, up to that time, seen a glass of beer or wine. This poem, too, was pirated by one who pretended to be the author.

“The Birth of the Opal” was suggested by Herman Marcus, the Broadway jeweler, who advanced the idea of the opal being the child of the sunlight and moonlight.

“Wherever You Are,” originally appeared in Leslie’s Popular Monthly. A young man who had served a term in Auburn Prison read this poem, and it became the means of his reformation. Mrs. Wilcox lent him a helping hand, and he is to-day a hard-working, honest, worthy man.

She regards the poems, “High Noon,” “To An Astrologer,” and “The Creed,” as probably her best efforts. It will thus be noted that she does not prefer the more fervid poems of passion, written in her early youth.

THE CREED.

Whoever was begotten by pure love, And came desired and welcomed into life, Is of immaculate conception. He Whose heart is full of tenderness and truth, Who loves mankind more than he loves himself, And cannot find room in his heart for hate, May be another Christ. We all may be The Saviors of the world, if we believe In the Divinity which dwells in us, And worship it, and nail our grosser selves, Our tempers, greeds, and our unworthy aims Upon the cross. Who giveth love to all, Pays kindness for unkindness, smiles for frowns, And lends new courage to each fainting heart, And strengthens hope and scatters joy abroad, He, too, is a Redeemer, Son of God.

Mrs. Wilcox lives in New York City from November to May, and in her cottage at Short Beach, Connecticut, during the rest of the year. Her husband, R. M. Wilcox, is a clear-headed business man, of polished manners, kind and considerate to all whom he meets,—one who, in short, is deservedly popular with all the friends of the happy couple. The summer house at Short Beach is especially charming. It is in full view of the Long Island Sound, with a fine beach in front, and a splendid sweep of country at the rear.

SHE IS A PRONOUNCED OPTIMIST.

As to “literary methods,” Mrs. Wilcox has few suggestions to make, except to recommend hard work, conscientiously performed. She is untiring in her own efforts at rewriting, revising and polishing her productions, and cannot rest until every appearance of crudeness and carelessness is effaced. Her manuscripts are always neat, always carefully considered, and never prepared in undue haste. She believes that no writer can succeed who is a pessimist. She is, therefore, an optimist of the most pronounced type, and believes that all poems should be helpful not hurtful; full of hope, and not of despair; bright with faith, and not clouded by doubt.

“What is your view of the first duties of a young author?” she was asked, and replied:

“The first thing necessary for you to do is to find out your own motive in choosing a literary career. If you write as the young bird sings, you need no advice from me, for your thoughts will find their way out, as natural springs force their way through rocks, and nothing can hinder you. But if you have merely a well-defined literary ability and taste, you should consider carefully before undertaking the difficult task of authorship.

“An author should be able to instruct, entertain, guide or amuse his readers. Otherwise, he has no right to expect their attention, time or money. If it is merely a question of money, you would be wise to wait until you have a comfortable income, sufficient to maintain life during the first ten years of literary pursuits. Save in rare cases of remarkable genius, literature requires ten years of apprenticeship, at least, before yielding support to its followers. But be sure that you help,—not harm, humanity. To the author, of all men, belongs the motto, ‘_Noblesse oblige_.’”

DO NOT FEAR CRITICISM.

“Unless you are so absorbed in your work that you utterly forget the existence of critics or reviewers, you have no right to call yourself a genius. Talent thinks with fear and fawning of critics; genius does not remember that they exist. One bows at the shrine of existing public opinion, which is narrow with prejudice. The other bows at the shrine of art, which is as broad as the universe.”

“How do you think a young author should proceed to obtain recognition?”

“In regard to the practical method of getting one’s work before the public, I would beg that you would not send it to any well-known author, asking him or her to ‘read, criticize, correct, and find a publisher for you.’ If such a thought has entered your head, remember that it has entered the heads of five hundred other amateurs, and the poor author is crushed under an avalanche of badly-written manuscripts, not one of which he has time to read. No editor will accept what he does not want, through the advice of any author, however famous.

“Do not attempt to adopt the style of anyone else. Unless you feel that you can be yourself, do not try to be anybody. A poor original is better than a good imitation, in literature, if not in other things.

“Expect no aid from influential friends in any way. The more wholly you depend upon yourself, the sooner will you succeed.

“It is absolute nonsense to talk about ‘influence’ with editors or publishers. No one ever achieved even passing fame or success in literature through influence or ‘friends at court.’ An editor might be influenced to accept one article, but he would never give permanent patronage through any influence, however strong.

“As I receive so many hundreds of letters asking how I found my way into print, and through what influences, it may be pardonable for me to say a few words regarding my own experiences. In the first place, I never sent a manuscript to any human being in my life, to ask for an opinion or influence. I always send directly to the editors, and I am not aware that any influence was ever used in my behalf. I have often had an article refused by six editors and accepted by the seventh. An especially unfortunate manuscript of mine was once rejected by eight periodicals, and I was about to consign it to oblivion, when, at a last venture, I sent it to the ninth. A check of seventy-five dollars came to me by return mail, with an extremely complimentary letter from the editor, requesting more articles of a similar kind.”

MERIT IS NOT ALWAYS DISCOVERED QUICKLY.

“Very few authors have lived to attain any degree of fame without receiving back their cherished yet unwelcome manuscripts from the hands of one or more unappreciative editors before they met the public eye.

“It is reported of ‘David Harum’ that six publishers rejected it previous to its final publication.

“Archibald Gunter’s book, ‘Mr. Barnes of New York,’ went the rounds of the various publishing houses, only to be rejected by all. Then Mr. Gunter rose to the occasion, published it himself, and reaped a small fortune from its sales.

“Many a successful short story and poem passes through the ‘reading’ department of a half-dozen magazines and weeklies without having its merit discovered until a seventh editor accepts it.

“Poems of my own, which have later met much favor from the public, I have seen return with a dejected and dog-eared air, from eight or nine offices, whither they had gone forth, like Noah’s dove, seeking for a resting place. A charming bit of verse, written by a friend of mine, took twenty-one journeys from the maternal hand to the editor’s table before it found an appreciative purchaser.

“If the young writer will stop and consider that each editor has his own individual ideas of what he wants, both in verse and prose, and that, just as no two faces are alike, no two minds run in the same groove,—he may be hopeful for the ultimate acceptance of the darling of his brain, if he will persevere. Of course, this refers to a writer who possesses actual talent.”

EDITORS ARE ANXIOUS FOR GOOD ARTICLES.

“No more absurd idea ever existed than that of the efficacy of ‘influence’ in literature. An editor will buy what he thinks his readers will appreciate. He will not buy anything which he feels will fall dead on his audience. He may purchase one—possibly two, manuscripts,—to oblige a friend, but it will end there; and one or two manuscripts, so purchased, can never make name or fame for their author.

“It would be just as reasonable to talk about ‘influence with a dry-goods merchant,’ and to expect to make him purchase undesired goods from a manufacturer for friendship’s sake, as to think an editor can be influenced by a friend at court.

“Editors are employed by the owners of periodicals to select and publish material which will render the periodical a paying concern. The editor who does not do this may lose his position and his salary.

“He is on the watch for attractive matter—and desires to find new material. He is delighted when he discovers a new poet or author. Being mortal, and having but one mind, he can judge of the poems and stories sent to him only from an individual standpoint.

“He not infrequently lets genius slip through his hands, and accepts paste imitations. But he does it ignorantly, or carelessly, not wilfully; or he may have in his collection of accepted manuscripts something similar, which would prevent his use of a poem or sketch at that particular juncture.

“The reasons why an editor declines a good manuscript are innumerable. It is impossible for him to explain them to each applicant for his favor. Nothing indicates the crudity of an author more than a request to criticize a manuscript and point out its defects; for frequently the very first verse or the very first page of a poem or romance decides its fate, and the editor returns it without reading further. Sometimes its length prevents any possibility of its being used in that particular periodical, while it might be just what another magazine would desire.”

PERSEVERANCE COUNTS IN AUTHORSHIP.

“The young writer who decides absolutely upon a literary career, and is confident of his mental equipment for his profession, should read all the current periodicals, magazines, and weeklies, American and English, and observe what style of literature they publish. Then he should make a list of them, and send his poem or his narrative first to the magazine which he feels it is best suited for; if it returns, let him proceed to speed it forth again, after giving it another reading; and so on, until it has finished the circuit of, perhaps, fifty periodicals. This habit of perseverance will be worth something, even if he never sells that manuscript.

“If he is still confident of his powers, let him write in another vein, and proceed in the same manner. This persistency, backed by talent, must win in the long run.

“If he feels he wants criticism, let him apply to some of the literary bureaus which make a business of criticism and revision.

“Very few authors have time to give to this work, nor are they, as a rule, the best judges of the merit of another writer’s productions. After all, the secret of a writer’s success lies within him. If he is well equipped, he will win, but not otherwise.”

WILL-POWER

There is no chance, no destiny, no fate, Can circumvent, or hinder, or control The firm resolve of a determined soul. Gift counts for little; will alone is great; All things give way before it, soon or late. What obstacle can stay the mighty force Of the sea-seeking river in its course, Or cause the ascending orb of day to wait? Each well-born soul must win what it deserves, Let the fool prate of Luck! The fortunate Is he whose earnest purpose never swerves, Whose slightest action or inaction serves The one great aim. Why, even death stands still And waits, an hour, sometimes, for such a will!

XXVI

A Printer’s Boy, Self Taught, Becomes the Dean of American Letters.

“I SHOULD like, Mr. Howells,” said I, by way of opening my interview with the famous novelist, “to learn your opinion concerning what constitutes success in life. You should have the American view?”

“Not necessarily,” said the novelist, seating himself.

“Do you share the belief that everything is open to the beginner who has sufficient energy and perseverance?”

“Add brains, and I will agree,” said Mr. Howells with a smile. “A young man stands at the ‘parting of two ways,’ and can take his path this way or that. It is comparatively easy then, with good judgment. Youth is certainly the greatest advantage which life supplies.”

“You began to carve out your place in life under conditions very different from those of to-day?”

“Yes. I was born in a little southeastern Ohio village,—Martin’s Ferry,—and, of course, I had but little of what people deem advantages in the way of schools, railroads, population, and so on. I am not sure, however, that compensation was not had in other things.”

“Do you consider that you were specially talented in the direction of literary composition?”

“I should not say that. I think that I came of a reading race, which had always loved literature in a way. My inclination was to read.”

“Would you say that, with a special leaning toward a special study, and good health, a fair start, and perseverance, anyone can attain to distinction?”

EARLY IDEALS.

“That is a probability, only. You may be sure that distinction will not come without those qualities. The only way to succeed, therefore, is to have them; though having them will not necessarily guarantee distinction. I can only say that I began with a lofty ideal, without saying how closely I have held to it. My own youth was not specially marked by advantages. There were none, unless you can call a small bookcase full of books, which my home contained, an advantage. The printing office was my school from a very early date. My father thoroughly believed in it, and he had his belief as to work, which he illustrated as soon as we were old enough to learn the trade he followed. We could go to school and study, or we could go into the printing office and work, with perhaps an equal chance of learning; but we could not be idle.”

“And you chose the printing office?”

“Not wholly. As I recall it, I went to and fro between the schoolhouse and the printing office. When I tired of one, I was promptly given my choice of the other.”

“Then you began life in poverty?”

“I suppose that, as the world goes now, we were poor. My father’s income was never above twelve hundred a year, and his family was large; but nobody was rich then. We lived in the simple fashion of that time and place.”

“You found time to read?”

“My reading, somehow, went on pretty constantly. No doubt my love for it won me a chance to devote time to it.”

“Might I ask how much time you devoted each day to your literary object?”

“The length varied with varying times. Sometimes I read but little. There were years of the work, of the over-work, indeed,—which falls to the lot of many, that I should be ashamed to speak of except in accounting for the fact. My father had sold his paper in Hamilton, and had bought an interest in another at Dayton, and at that time we were all straining our utmost to help pay for it.”

“And that left you little time?”

“In that period very few hours were given to literature. My daily tasks began so early, and ended so late, that I had little time, even if I had the spirit for reading. Sometimes I had to sit up until midnight, waiting for telegraphic news, and be up again at dawn to deliver the papers, working afterward at the case; but that was only for a few years.”

“When did you find time to seriously apply yourself to literature?”

ACQUIRING A LITERARY STYLE.

“I think I did so before I really had the time. Literary aspirations were stirred in me by the great authors whom I successively discovered, and I was perpetually imitating the writings of these,—modeling some composition of my own after theirs, but never willing to own it.”

“Do you attribute your style to the composite influence of these various models?”

“No doubt they had their effect, as a whole, but individually I was freed from the last by each succeeding author, until at length I came to understand that I must be like myself, and no other.”

“Had you any conveniences for literary research, beyond the bookcase in your home?”

“If you mean a place to work, I had a narrow, little space, under the stairs at home. There was a desk pushed back against the wall, which the irregular ceiling sloped down to meet, behind it, and at my left was a window, which gave a good light on the writing leaf of my desk. This was my workshop for six or seven years,—and it was not at all a bad one. It seemed, for a while, so very simple and easy to come home in the middle of the afternoon, when my task at the printing office was done, and sit down to my books in my little study, which I did not finally leave until the family were all in bed. My father had a decided bent in the direction of literature; and, when I began to show a liking for literature, he was eager to direct my choice. This finally changed to merely recommending books, and eventually I was left to my own judgment,—a perplexed and sorrowful mistaken judgment, at times.”

“In what manner did you manage to read the works of all your favorite authors?”

“Well, my hours in the printing office began at seven and ended at six, with an hour at noon for dinner, which I used for putting down such verses as had come to me in the morning. As soon as supper was over, I got out my manuscripts, and sawed, and filed, and hammered away at my blessed poems, which were little less than imitations, until nine, when I went regularly to bed, to rise again at five. Sometimes the foreman gave me an afternoon off on Saturday, which I devoted to literature.”

“Might I ask concerning your next advance in your chosen work?”

“Certainly. As I recall it, my father had got one of those legislative clerkships, in 1858, which used to fall sometimes to deserving country editors, and together we managed and carried out a scheme for corresponding with some city papers. Going to Columbus, the state capital, we furnished a daily letter giving an account of the legislative proceedings, which I mainly wrote from the material he helped me to gather. The letters found favor, and my father withdrew from the work wholly.”

“How long were you a correspondent?”

HIS POEMS ALWAYS WERE REJECTED.

“Two years. At the end of the first winter, a Cincinnati paper offered me the city editorship, but one night’s round with the reporters at the police station satisfied me that I was not meant for that kind of work. I then returned home for the summer, and spent my time in reading, and in sending off poems, which regularly came back. I worked in my father’s printing office, of course; but, as soon as my task was done, went home to my books, and worked away at them until supper. Then a German bookbinder, with whom I was endeavoring to read Heine in the original, met me in my father’s editorial room, and with a couple of candles on the table between us, and our Heine and the dictionary before us, we read until we were both tired out.”

“Did you find it labor?”

“I fancy that reading is not merely a pastime, when it is apparently the merest pastime. It fatigues one after the manner of other work, and uses up a certain amount of mind-stuff; and I have found that, if you are using up all the mind-stuff you have, much or little, in some other way, you do not read, because you have not the mind-stuff for it. You cannot say more of any other form of work.”

“Then it might be said that you worked at separate and equally difficult tasks, constantly?”

“Perhaps not equally difficult, but, certainly, constantly.”

“Rather a severe schooling to give one’s self, don’t you think it?”

Mr. Howells smiled. “It was not without its immediate use. I learned how to choose between words, after a study of their fitness; and, though I often employed them decoratively, and with no vital sense of their qualities, still, in mere decoration, they had to be chosen intelligently, and after some thought about their structure and meaning. I would not imitate great writers without imitating their method, which was to the last degree intelligent. They knew what they were doing, and, although I did not always know what I was doing, they made me wish to know, and ashamed of not knowing. The result was beneficial.”

“It is very evident that you recovered your health, in spite of your toil?”

HIS FIRST EDITORIAL POSITION.

“Oh, yes. I got back health enough to be of use in the printing office at home, and was quietly at work there, when, to my astonishment, I was asked to come and take a place upon a Republican newspaper at the capital. I was given charge of the news department. This included the literary notices and the book reviews, and I am afraid that I at once gave my prime attention to these.”

“When did you begin to contribute to the literature of the day?”

“If you mean, when did I begin to attempt to contribute, I should need to fix an early date, for I early had experience with rejected manuscripts. One of my pieces, which fell so far short of my visions of the immense subjects I should handle as to treat of the lowly and familiar theme of spring, was the first thing I ever had in print. My father offered it to the editor of the paper I worked on in Columbus, where we were then living, and I first knew what he had done when, with mingled shame and pride, I saw it in the journal. In the tumult of my emotions, I promised myself that if ever I got through that experience safely, I would never suffer anything else of mine to be published; but it was not long before I offered the editor a poem, myself.”

“When did you publish your first story?”

“My next venture was a story in the Ik Marvel manner, which it was my misfortune to carry into print. I did not really write it, but composed it, rather, in type, at the case. It was not altogether imitated from Ik Marvel, for I drew upon the easier art of Dickens, at times, and helped myself out in places with bald parodies of’Bleak House.’ It was all very well at the beginning, but I had not reckoned with the future sufficiently to start with any clear ending in my mind; and, as I went on, I began to find myself more and more in doubt about it. My material gave out; my incidents failed me; the characters wavered, and threatened to perish in my hands. To crown my misery, there grew up an impatience with the story among its readers; and this found its way to me one day, when I overheard an old farmer, who came in for his paper, say that he ‘did not think that story amounted to much.’ I did not think so, either, but it was deadly to have it put into words; and how I escaped the mortal effect of the stroke I do not know. Somehow, I managed to bring the wretched thing to a close, and to live it slowly down.”

AN EXPERIENCE IN COLLABORATION.

“My next contribution to literature was jointly with John J. Piatt, the poet, who had worked with me as a boy in the printing office at Columbus. We met in Columbus, where I was then an editor, and we made our first literary venture together in a volume entitled, ‘Poems of Two Friends.’ The volume became instantly and lastingly unknown to fame; the west waited, as it always does, to hear what the east should say. The east said nothing, and two-thirds of the small edition of five hundred copies came back upon the publisher’s hands. This did not deter me, however, from contributing to the periodicals, which, from time to time, accepted my efforts.”

“Did you remain long, as an editor, in Columbus?”

“No; only until 1861, when I was appointed consul at Venice. I really wanted to go to Germany, that I might carry forward my studies in German literature; and I first applied for the consulate at Munich. The powers at Washington thought it quite the same thing to offer me Rome, but I found that the income of the Roman consulate would not give me a living, and I was forced to decline it. Then the president’s private secretaries, Mr. John Nicolay and Mr. John Hay, who did not know me, except as a young westerner who had written poems in the ‘Atlantic Monthly,’ asked me how I would like Venice, promising that the salary would be put up to $1,000 a year. It was really put up to $1,500, and I accepted. I had four years of nearly uninterrupted leisure at Venice.”

“Was it easier when you returned from Venice?”

“Not at all. On my return to America my literary life took such form that most of my reading was done for review. I wrote at first a good many of the lighter criticisms in ‘The Nation,’ and then I went to Boston, to become assistant editor of ‘The Atlantic Monthly,’ where I wrote the literary notices for that periodical for four or five years.”

“You were eventually editor of the ‘Atlantic,’ were you not?”

“Yes, until 1881; and I have had some sort of close relation with magazines ever since.”

“Would you say that all literary success is very difficult to achieve?” I ventured.

“All that is enduring.”

“It seems to me ours is an age when fame comes quickly.”

“Speaking of quickly made reputations,” said Mr. Howells, meditatively, “did you ever hear of Alexander Smith? He was a poet who, in the fifties, was proclaimed immortal by the critics, and ranked with Shakespeare. I myself read him with an ecstacy which, when I look over his work to-day, seems ridiculous. His poem, ‘Life-Drama,’ was heralded as an epic, and set alongside of ‘Paradise Lost.’ I cannot tell how we all came out of this craze, but the reading world is very susceptible of such lunacies. He is not the only third-rate poet who has been thus apotheosized, before and since. You might have envied his great success, as I certainly did; but it was not success, after all; and I am sure that real success is always difficult to achieve.”

“Do you believe that success comes to those who have a special bent or taste, which they cultivate by hard work?”

“I can only answer that out of my literary experience. For my own part, I believe I have never got any good from a book that I did not read merely because I wanted to read it. I think this may be applied to anything a person does. The book, I know, which you read from a sense of duty, or because for any reason you must, is apt to yield you little. This, I think, is also true of everything, and the endeavor that does one good,—and lasting good,—is the endeavor one makes with pleasure. Labor done in another spirit will serve in a way, but pleasurable labor brings, on the whole, I think, the greatest reward.”

THE REWARDS OF LITERATURE.

“You were probably strongly fascinated by the supposed rewards of a literary career?”

“Yes. A definite literary ambition grew up in me, and in the long reveries of the afternoon, when I was distributing my case in the printing office, I fashioned a future of overpowering magnificence and undying celebrity. I should be ashamed to say what literary triumphs I achieved in those preposterous deliriums. But I realize now that such dreams are nerving, and sustain one in an otherwise barren struggle.”

“Were you ever tempted and willing to abandon your object of a literary life for something else?”

“I was once. My first and only essay, aside from literature, was in the realm of law. It was arranged with a United States senator that I should study law in his office. I tried it a month, but almost from the first day, I yearned to return to my books. I had not only to go back to literature, but to the printing office, and I gladly chose to do it,—a step I never regretted.”

“You started out to attain personal distinction and happiness, did you not?”

“I did.”

WHAT TRUE HAPPINESS IS.

“You have attained the first,—but I should like to know if your view of what constitutes happiness is the same as when you began?”

“It is quite different. I have come to see life, not as the chase of a forever-impossible personal happiness, but as a field for endeavor toward the happiness of the whole human family. There is no other success.

“I know, indeed, of nothing more subtly satisfying and cheering than a knowledge of the real good will and appreciation of others. Such happiness does not come with money, nor does it flow from a fine physical state. It cannot be bought. But it is the keenest joy, after all, and the toiler’s truest and best reward.”

XXVII

A Famous Novelist Atones for Wasted School Days by Self-Culture.

IN his study, a curiously-shaped building without the accompaniment of a window, and combining in equal proportions the Byzantine, Romanesque and Doric styles of architecture, the gray-haired author of “Ben Hur,” surrounded by his pictures, books and military trophies, is spending, in serene and comfortable retirement, the evening of his life. As I sat beside him and listened to the recital of his earliest struggles and later achievements, I could not help contrasting his dignified bearing, careful expression, and gentle demeanor, with another occasion in his life, when, a vigorous, black-haired young military officer, in the spring of 1861, he appeared, with flashing eye and uplifted sword, at the head of his regiment, the gallant and historic Eleventh Indiana Volunteers.

General Wallace never repels a visitor, and his greeting is cordial and ingenuous.

“If I could say anything to stimulate or encourage the young men of to-day,” he said, when I had explained the object of my visit, “I would gladly do so, but I fear that the story of my early days would be of very little interest or value to others. So far as school education is concerned, it may be truthfully said that I had but little, if any; and if, in spite of that deficiency, I ever arrived at proficiency, I reached it, I presume, as Topsy attained her stature,—‘just growed into it.’”

HE WAS A CARELESS STUDENT.

“Were you denied early school advantages?” I asked.

“Not in the least. On the contrary, I had most abundant opportunity in that respect. My father was a lawyer, enjoying a lucrative practice in Brookville, Indiana,—a small town which bears the distinction of having given to the world more prominent men than any other place in the Hoosier state. Not long after my birth, he was elected lieutenant-governor, and, finally, governor of the state. He, himself, was an educated man, having been graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point, and having served as instructor in mathematics there. He was not only an educated man, but a man of advanced ideas generally, as shown by the fact that he failed of a re-election to congress in 1840, because, as a member of the committee on commerce, he gave the casting vote in favor of an appropriation to develop Morse’s magnetic telegraph. Of course, he believed in the value, and tried to impress upon me the necessity of a thorough school training; but, in the face of all the solicitude and encouragement which an indulgent father could waste on an unappreciative son, I remained vexatiously indifferent. I presume I was like some man in history,—it was Lincoln, I believe,—who said that his father taught him to work, but he never quite succeeded in teaching him to love it.

“My father sent me to school, and regularly paid tuition,—for in those days there were no free schools; but, much to my discredit, he failed to secure anything like regular attendance at recitations, or even a decent attempt to master my lessons at any time. In fact, much of the time that should have been given to school was spent in fishing, hunting and roaming through the woods.”

HE LOVED TO READ.

“But were you thus indifferent to all forms of education?”

“No, my case was not quite so hopeless as that. I did not desert the schools entirely, but my attendance was so provokingly irregular and my indifference so supreme, I wonder now that I was tolerated at all. But I had one mainstay; I loved to read. I was a most inordinate reader. In some lines of literature, especially history and some kinds of fiction, my appetite was insatiate, and many a day, while my companions were clustered together in the old red brick schoolhouse, struggling with their problems in fractions or percentage, I was carefully hidden in the woods near by, lying upon my elbows, munching an apple, and reveling in the beauties of Plutarch, Byron or Goldsmith.

“Did you not attend college, or the higher grade of schools?”

“Yes, for a brief period. My brother was a student in Wabash College,—here in Crawfordsville,—and hither I also was sent; but within six weeks I had tired of the routine, was satiated with discipline, and made my exit from the institution. I shall never forget what my father did when I returned home. He called me into his office, and, reaching into one of the pigeon-holes above his desk, withdrew therefrom a package of papers neatly folded and tied with the conventional red tape. He was a very systematic man, due, perhaps, to his West Point training, and these papers proved to be the receipts for my tuition, which he had carefully preserved. He called off the items, and asked me to add them together. The total, I confess, staggered me.”

A FATHER’S FRUITFUL WARNING.

“‘That sum, my son,’ he said, with a tone of regret in his voice, ‘represents what I have expended in these many years past to provide you with a good education. How successful I have been, you know better than anyone else. After mature reflection, I have come to the conclusion that I have done for you in that direction all that can reasonably be expected of any parent, and I have, therefore, called you in to tell you that you have now reached an age when you must take up the lines yourself. If you have failed to profit by the advantages with which I have tried so hard to surround you, the responsibility must be yours. I shall not upbraid you for your neglect, but rather pity you for the indifference which you have shown to the golden opportunities you have, through my indulgence, been enabled to enjoy.’”

“What effect did this admonition have on you? Did it awaken or arouse you?”

“It aroused me, most assuredly. It set me to thinking as nothing before had done. The next day, I set out with a determination to accomplish something for myself. My father’s injunction rang in my ears. New responsibilities rested on my shoulders, as I was, for the first time in my life, my own master. I felt that I must get work on my own account. After much effort, I finally obtained employment from the man with whom I had passed so many afternoons strolling up and down the little streams in the neighborhood, trying to fish. He was the county clerk, and he hired me to copy what was known as the complete record of one of the courts. I worked for months in a dingy, half-lighted room, receiving for my pay something like ten cents per hundred words. The tediousness and regularity of the work was a splendid drill for me, and taught me the virtue of persistence as one of the avenues of success. It was at this time I began to realize the deficiency in my education, especially as I had an ambition to become a lawyer. Being deficient in both mathematics and grammar, I was forced to study those branches evenings. Of course, the latter was a very exacting study, after a full day’s hard work, but I was made to realize that the time I had spent with such lavish prodigality could not be recovered, and that I must extract every possible good out of the golden moments then flying by all too fast.”

HIS FIRST LITERARY EFFORT.

“Had you a distinct literary ambition at that time?”

“Well, I had always had a sort of literary bent or inclination. I read all the literature of the day, besides the standard authors, and finally began to devote my odd moments to a book of my own,—a tale based on the days of the crusades. When completed it covered about three hundred and fifty pages, and bore the rather high-sounding title, ‘The Man-at-Arms.’ I read a good portion of it before a literary society to which I belonged; the members applauded it, and I was frequently urged to have it published. The Mexican War soon followed, however, and I took the manuscript with me when I enlisted; but before the close of my service it was lost, and my production, therefore, never reached the public eye.”

“But did not the approval which the book received from the few persons who read it encourage you to continue writing?”

“Fully fifty years have elapsed since then, and it is, therefore, rather difficult, at this late day, to recall just how such things affected me. I suppose I was encouraged thereby, for, in due course of time, another book which turned out to be ‘The Fair God,’—my first book to reach the public,—began to shape itself in my mind. The composition of this work was not, as the theatrical people would say, a continuous performance, for there were many and singular interruptions, and it would be safe to say that months, and, in one case, years, intervened between certain chapters. A few years after the war, I finished the composition, strung the chapters into a continuous narrative, leveled up the uneven places, and started East with the manuscript. A letter from Whitelaw Reid, then editor of the New York ‘Tribune,’ introduced me to the head of one of the leading publishing houses in Boston. There I was kindly received, and, delivered my manuscript, which was referred to a professional reader, to determine its literary, and also, I presume, its commercial value.

“It would be neither a new nor an interesting story to acquaint the public with the degree of anxious suspense that pervaded my mind when I withdrew to await the reader’s judgment. Every other writer has, I assume, at one time or another, undergone much the same experience. It was not long until I learned from the publisher that the reader reported in favor of my production. Publication soon followed, and for the first time, in a literary sense, I found myself before the public, and my book before the critics.”

“How long after this did ‘Ben Hur’ appear, and what led you to write it?”

THE ORIGIN OF “BEN HUR.”

“I began ‘Ben Hur’ about 1876, and it was published in 1880. The purpose, at first, was a short serial for one of the magazines, descriptive of the visit of the wise men to Jerusalem as mentioned in the first two verses of the second chapter of Matthew. It will be recognized in ‘Book First’ of the work as now published. For certain reasons, however, the serial idea was abandoned, and the narrative, instead of ending with the birth of the Savior, expanded into a more pretentious novel and only ended with the death scene on Calvary. The last ten chapters were written in the old adobe palace at Sante Fe, New Mexico, where I was serving as governor. It is difficult to answer the question, ‘what led me to write the book?’ or why I chose a piece of fiction which used Christ as its leading character. In explanation, it is proper to state that I had reached an age in life when men usually begin to study themselves with reference to their fellowmen, and reflect on the good they may have done in the world. Up to that time, never having read the Bible, I knew nothing about sacred history; and in matters of a religious nature, although I was not in every respect an infidel, I was persistently and notoriously indifferent. I did not know, and, therefore, did not care. I resolved to begin the study of the good book in earnest.

CONVERTED WHILE WRITING HIS OWN BOOK.

“I was in quest of knowledge, but I had no faith to sustain, no creed to bolster up. The result was that the whole field of religious and biblical history opened up before me, and, my vision not being clouded by previously formed opinions, I was enabled to survey it without the aid of lenses. I believe I was thorough and persistent. I know I was conscientious in my search for the truth. I weighed, I analyzed, I counted and compared. The evolution from conjecture into knowledge, through opinion and belief, was gradual but irresistible; and at length I stood firmly and defiantly on the solid rock. Upward of seven hundred thousand copies of ‘Ben Hur’ have been published, and it has been translated into all languages from French to Arabic; but, whether it has ever influenced the mind of a single reader or not, I am sure its conception and preparation, if it has done nothing more, has convinced its author of the divinity of the lowly Nazarene who walked and talked with God.”

XXVIII

A Social Leader, Having “Eyes That See,” Earns Literary Laurels.

MRS. BURTON HARRISON, the gifted American authoress, is a charming woman socially. She is unaffected in manner, and easy and graceful in conversation. When I called, I was ushered into her library and study, and was entertained in the same delightful way in which her books are written. Indeed, she told me that she writes without effort, and endeavors to do so naturally.

It was a pretty story she told me of her childhood days in Old Virginia, where she spent the greater part of her time in reading standard works, and in dreaming of an almost unformed ambition. “Even in my youngest years,” she said, “I used to make up fairy tales. Later, I put my thoughts on paper.”

“And what was your first experience in a literary way?” I asked.

“When I was about seventeen years old, I sent a love story to the ‘Atlantic Monthly.’ It was lurid and melancholy,” she said, with a smile. “It was returned in due course of time, and across its face was written, in very bright ink, ‘This is far better than the average, and ought to be read through,’ from which I inferred that only the first page had been read. But I was encouraged even by that.”

HER FIRST NOVEL.

“My next attempt was a novel, which I called ‘Skirmishing.’ It was destroyed in a fire, for which I have ever since felt grateful.”

Miss Constance Cary (her maiden name), next went abroad with her widowed mother, and spent some years in traveling and in completing her education.

“It was not until after I returned to America,” she said, “and was married to Mr. Harrison, that I was again bold enough to take up my pen. I wrote a little article, which I called ‘A Little Centennial Lady.’ It was published in ‘Scribner’s Magazine,’ and had so favorable a reception that I was encouraged to write ‘Golden Rod,’ a story of Mount Desert, which appeared later in ‘Harper’s Magazine.’”

BOOKS SHE ENJOYED.

“My books that I have enjoyed most, if a writer may enjoy her own work, have not been those dealing with New York social life, but my tales of the south. Charles A. Dana, of the New York ‘Sun,’ was unconsciously responsible for my ‘Old Dominion.’ He gave me the agreeable task of editing the ‘Monticello Letters,’ and from them I gleaned a story which outlined my ‘Old Dominion.’ But the editors cry for stories of New York social life, to gratify the popular demand.”

Mrs. Harrison’s books are so well known that it is unnecessary to dwell on their acknowledged merit, vividness, and truthfulness to life. To the general public, there is something fascinating about a New York social story, dealing with the millionaire’s club life, woman’s teas, and love’s broken lances. Besides the general desire for a good social novel, there is a morbid, unsatiated desire to pry into the doings, customs and manners of the rich. It is with agreeable expectations that one picks up one of Mrs. Harrison’s books; it is almost with the knowledge that you will be entertained.

HER CHARACTERS ARE FROM LIFE.

On a former call, she told me that her New York stories are built on her observations, and that the characters are so changed as not to antagonize her friends, for she enters the best society through her family ties and her well-earned prestige.

“It is very peculiar,” she continued, “how, in writing a story, the characters govern me, not I the characters. I may have the outline and ending of a book in my mind, but the characters take everything into their hands, and walk independently through the pages. I have always found it best to obey. The ending of ‘Anglomaniacs,’ which caused so much adverse criticism, was not as I had planned. I was helpless under the caprices of the characters. At first, I was displeased at the ending; but now, looking back upon it, I am well satisfied.”

“Then the characters to you become real, and you are entirely under their spell, merely chronicling what to you appears real?”

IN LOVE WITH HER WORK.

“Yes, if I did not believe in them, I would be unable to write; for the time being, I am living and observing a dozen lives. There is much satisfaction in doing so correctly. I am in love with my work, and am a hard worker.”

For the past few months, Mrs. Harrison has been idle, by the advice of her physicians, and has spent the season abroad, traveling over the continent.

“But all the time, I am turning little romances over in my mind, and when I can no longer keep my pen from paper, I suppose I shall sit down and write,” she said. “Last winter, I was under a pretty heavy strain, and my overworked condition compelled me to rest for a while.”

Many amusing little instances touching upon her work have come to her attention.

“One morning,” said Mrs. Harrison, “after my husband had successfully defended a client, the man grasped his hand very warmly, and, to my husband’s amazement, said, ‘Well, Mr. Harrison, I want to tell you what we think of your wife. She’s the finest writer in the English language, that’s what my daughter says. She says there are no books like hers.’

“‘Which one does she like most?’ asked my husband, immensely pleased.

“‘Well,’ he replied, ‘I can’t just answer that, but I think it’s “Your Eyre.”’

“Once I received a rather startling letter from a western ranchman. It said, ‘Your book has been going the rounds, but it always comes back, and I have threatened to put a bullet in the hide of the man who does not return it.’ I was greatly pleased with that letter.

“The most gratifying letter I ever received was from a man in a prison. He begged to be supplied with all I had written.

“Perhaps he was a man who had been in society, and there is a little story connected with his imprisonment.”

SHE IS A GENTLE, FORCEFUL WOMAN.

Mrs. Harrison has made many close friends through her books. Once she was with a party of friends in a Madrid gallery. Her name was mentioned, and a Spanish lady came forward, and introduced herself, at the same time expressing her admiration for her.

“She is now one of my dearest friends,” concluded Mrs. Harrison.

Just then, a colored man appeared in her library, bearing a tray,—for afternoon tea,—so I arose, although she asked me to have a cup of tea, fearing that I might be intruding, and expressed my wish that she would soon be at her desk again.

“I suppose I shall,” she said, “for it is irksome being idle.”

Such is Mrs. Harrison’s disposition. Indeed, it is hard to imagine her idle. Orders are pouring in upon her, which through her present weak health, she is forced to decline.

But what is my impression about her? She is a gentle, forceful woman, whose energy and painstaking have placed her in the front rank of American writers. Without the latter attributes, her talent would have fallen to the ground.

XXIX

Painstaking, the Secret of a Celebrated Painter’s Success.

UNDOUBTEDLY the best-known American artist is Edwin Austin Abbey. He has done more than any other man to spread the fame of American art in Europe. He has proceeded, step by step, from his early youth, when he earned fifteen dollars a week as a “hack-artist,” until he ranks as the greatest living decorative painter. The history of his life is an inspiration to students, as it furnishes striking evidence of what hard work and self-confidence can accomplish in the field of art. Mr. Abbey advanced gradually from water-colors and pen-sketching to oil-painting, pastel and fine decorative work. Although he is a very prolific artist, he has maintained a surprising degree of excellence. His work breathes forth his personality, and shows the character of the man; there is confidence in every line. His taste is as fine, as his art and execution are perfect, and he has an extraordinary degree of comprehension and receptivity, due to his American blood.

Mr. Abbey has scholarly ability and intense application, but they would have availed him little if they had not seconded a talent of the most unusual order, and an individuality which is so personal that it may be said of him that he resembles no other living painter. It is only natural that he should have gained success in his chosen line of work, for his heart has been in it from his boyhood days. His earnest efforts have always been appreciated both in Europe and America. Only two seasons after he went to live in England, he was elected a member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colors. In 1889, he received a first-class medal at the Paris Exposition, and, in 1896, he was honored by an associate membership in the Royal Academy. Two years later he was received into full membership, though John R. Sargent, his fellow-countryman, had to wait three years. Mr. Abbey was honored by King Edward VII with a commission to paint the coronation scene in Westminster Abbey, and by the Pennsylvania legislature with a commission to decorate the new state capitol at Harrisburg.

A MOST INTERESTING STUDIO.

During a recent trip to England, I determined to visit Mr. Abbey, and obtain from him some message for his young countrymen who are beginning where he began thirty years ago. He has a beautiful country house known as Morgan Hall, in Gloucestershire, an attractive English county. In this house is the largest private studio in the whole country, built especially for the preparation of the Boston Library decorations, which Mr. Abbey recently completed. It measures twenty-five by fourteen yards, and has a high ceiling. In this room I observed a number of great easels, for Mr. Abbey usually has several pictures in progress at one time, but they occupied only a fraction of the space. It would be hard to imagine a studio more perfectly equipped for work. Great tapestries hung from heavy frames, not for ornamentation, but for study; carved oak doors and panels were resting against the walls, and scattered everywhere were casts of curious architecture. Priceless armor was displayed on every side, and along the walls were a number of canvases which had been used for studies, or paintings which had not been completed. There were chests filled with velvets, brocades and silks of various ancient periods. All these things are accessories of Mr. Abbey’s craft and nothing more. He uses them in working out the details of his historical paintings. There were trestles full of elaborate studies and half-finished drawings standing about, and, tacked upon the walls were photographs of pictures of many interesting periods.

Mr. Abbey has also a vast collection of costumes. They are of all periods, and one might suppose himself in the stock room of some great theater. All these costumes help in depicting the dress worn at some great event which the artist desires to put upon canvas. Mr. Abbey is very accurate and careful in his work, and has never been challenged in any details of fact, of costume, of architecture, or of accessory. It must not be supposed that any of these costumes and decorations are copied in the paintings; they are merely suggestions for invention.

Mr. Abbey’s industry and energy are prodigious, so that I was quite prepared to find him at work when I visited his studio. Although the artist has lived abroad for many years, he is thoroughly American in his personality, and I might have been talking with him at a Philadelphia studio, instead of in the heart of England.

HE WAS NOT A PRECOCIOUS BOY.

“There was nothing at all extraordinary about my boyhood,” he said, in answer to a question. “I was very much like other boys, perhaps less promising than most. I remember that my parents complained because I was unable to fix my ambition upon any single profession, and they urged that I must have some definite aim in life. When I appeared unable to decide for myself, they undertook to decide for me and to formulate plans for my future. They suggested that I enter the ministry, but I had an instinct which told me that I was fitted for no such career. I told them then that art offered a greater attraction, and they were willing that I should begin studying. I entered the Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, and was delighted with my undertaking from the very beginning.

“Of course I was interested in all that pertained to art, and especially in drawing in black and white. I read all publications which printed work of this sort, and especially ‘Punch’ and ‘The Graphic,’ so that they had no inconsiderable share in my instruction in the use of a pencil. I used to observe the styles of the different artists and study the best in each.

“In 1871, my father suggested that it was time to decide whether or not I was to earn my livelihood as an artist, and I decided that it should be my life-work. I was fortunate in obtaining employment in the art department of Harper and Brothers, in New York City. I was only nineteen years old at the time, and was filled with enthusiasm over my work. I was anxious to learn as much as possible, and Harper’s was an excellent place for me. I was given a great variety of work, and received every encouragement for earnest effort. Every improvement in my drawings was appreciated. Several boys who worked with me at that time have since become famous in the art world, notably Reinhart and Alexander. Even the boys who swept out the office were gaining an excellent start, for one of them has since become one of the most famous Franco-American painters, practicing in Paris.”

HIS WORK WAS ENCOURAGED.

“My first published drawing represented the demolition of the Vendome Column in Paris by the French Commune, and I shall never forget my pleasure at seeing it in ‘Harper’s Weekly.’ It doesn’t matter how old we get, we’re sure to remember our first appearance. I received many congratulations for my effort and continued my work with enthusiasm.

“The young artists in Harper’s offices were given all sorts of subjects to do, pictorial, illustrative and reportorial, and this variety has been of the utmost value to me. There was one sort of work, however, that I preferred above all others. When only a lad I fell in love with the classic literature of England; Goldsmith was always one of my favorite authors, and whenever I had spare time I devoted it to illustrating some of the stories that I had read. I was especially fond of English history, so you can imagine my delight when it was decided that I was to illustrate the works of Herrick for ‘Harper’s Monthly,’ with a view to ultimate publication in book form.

“It was then that I first came to England. I thought it advisable to live for a time in the English country, and I settled for two years in one of the most picturesque districts of Worcestershire. I need not tell you that I enjoyed that visit, and, when I returned to America, in 1880, it was only to remain eight months and to arrange my affairs so that I could return here. Although I had lost none of my regard for the land of my birth, I felt that, if I was to draw pictures from English history, England was the place for me to live in, so here I have been ever since, save for occasional journeys to America and the Continent.”

Mr. Abbey breathed a sigh of relief as he finished the narrative of his early days. “But this doesn’t bring you up to date,” I said, “and the most interesting story is about what you’ve done since.” But the artist shook his head. “It’s simply a record of steady work,” he said; “you already know about the chief paintings I have done in late years.”

“Of course,” I said, “you are doing nothing now but painting in oils?”

“That’s all,” replied Mr. Abbey, “and my contracts will prevent me from doing any other kind of work in the near future. I didn’t begin painting in oils until I had been working many years; the ‘Mayday Morn,’ my first exhibit, was not shown until 1890. It seems quite the usual thing for artists to take up oils after they are known chiefly by black and white or water colors.”

HE ALWAYS TAKES PAINS.

“It is well known that you spend much time in preparing the subjects of your paintings,” I said, “but there aren’t many artists who worry about the technical details as you do.”

“I won’t say that I worry about them,” replied Mr. Abbey. “An artist should study for his profession just as a man should prepare for the law or medicine, and should never consider that natural ability is all that he requires for success. He should have a knowledge of architecture and sculpture as well as of the principles of drawing; in short, he should carefully learn what may be called ‘the grammar of his profession.’

“When I am to paint a subject which is mythological, I am at pains to absorb the atmosphere of the period, and to learn something of the geography in which the legendary figures moved. I visit the scene of the story, obtain every picture which will give me a knowledge of the dress of the period, and I am not satisfied until I have exhausted every possible source of information. It is well known that Sir Frederick Leighton constantly refreshed his mind and memory by visiting the classic scenes of his paintings.

“Some artists have been known to go so far as to paint a scene as an artist living in the period of the story would have painted it. I regard this as rather extreme. It is well to have the details perfect, but modern art has some advantage of technique and color which are not to be despised. I would not have you believe that technical efficiency is the greatest essential in an artist’s qualifications, only it is a valuable asset when added to natural ability and earnestness of purpose.”

PERSISTENCE AND HARD WORK COUNT.

Mr. Abbey has invariably practiced what he advises other artists to do. Before beginning the decorative paintings for the delivery room of the Boston Library, he spent many months traveling in Italy, collecting information which might aid him in the paintings of the Holy Grail. But in the end he decided that the scene should not be in Italy at all, and his effort went for nothing, as far as that particular series was concerned. He spent four years of unsurpassable toil, study and application in completing the first five of the pictures, and when they were done the public was not slow to appreciate the effort he had evidently put forth. Mr. Abbey could not have chosen a subject more worthy of his talent. He has confidence in his ideas of what is best in art, is full of mediæval feeling, and is endowed,—in spite of his sunny, hopeful temperament,—with an appreciation of the tragedy underlying so much of human life. In historical pictures, he considers no toil too great to make sure of accuracy, and his university training has been of the greatest assistance to him in his work.

“No artist can be too well educated,” he said, during my conversation with him; “every bit of information is sure to be of use to him sooner or later, in one painting or another.

“I am glad,” he said, “if I can encourage anyone to hard work, for surely that is the chief aid to success in any career. The young person who believes that an artist’s life is a bed of roses, and that he needs only to ply the brush a few hours each day, is mistaken. He must be scholarly by nature, must have a wide and minute acquaintance with art, and must never consider that he has learned it all if he hopes for lasting fame. I might add that he must also have earnest convictions regarding his work, and the courage to carry them out. Given these qualifications, combined with talent, of course, any person should succeed as well in the field of art as in any other profession, providing he is willing to give a reasonable time to study and preparation. Although the world may call him master, the true artist will never regard himself as other than a student.”

XXX

A School Girl, Not Afraid of Drudgery, Becomes America’s Foremost Woman Illustrator.

IN the heart of Philadelphia’s great business quarter, on lower Chestnut street, there stands a five-story, red brick building which is about as reserved looking as Philadelphia business structures can be, and before which, in the street below, the tide of traffic rumbles and clatters and clangs from early morning until night. It doesn’t look much like a place where a person could be free enough from noise and other distractions to exercise a fine artistic taste.

Yet it was here, I was informed, that Alice Barber Stephens had her studio, and to this I was bound. Mrs. Stephens takes rank with A. B. Frost, Howard Pyle, A. B. Wenzell, C. D. Gibson and others, and there are those who put her before several of these. I remember looking over a book of her drawings, published by some New York house, entitled “The American Woman in the Home,” and admiring exceedingly the gentle, refined appearance of the mothers, the excellent sedateness and sympathetic beauty of the young married daughters, and the quiet modesty of the girls in these pictures.

You would say, looking at these drawings, “Here is a plain, commonplace, genuine person, who illustrates.” She has swept, sewed, performed the duty that lay nearest. You can see it in the sketches. She paints because she likes to, and as well as she can. She has no thought of immortality, nor imagines that she will be hailed as a marvel, but simply believes it is well and interesting to do good work.

Considering these things, I made my way one afternoon up several flights of stairs,—artists must have the sky-light, you know,—to a door labeled A. B. Stephens, which was opened by a tall, slender, reserved-looking woman, who smiled as she admitted that she was Alice Barber Stephens. After a sentence or two of explanation, an invitation was extended to enter.

ART IGNORES NOISE.

It was as if one had dropped a stage curtain upon the rattling, excited scene without. Comfortable chairs were scattered about. Screens and tall bric-a-brac cases of oriental workmanship divided spaces and filled corners. A great square of sunshine fell from a sky-light, and in one corner a Dutch clock slowly ticked. The color of the walls was a dull brick red, and against them stood light brown shelves, holding white and blue china vases, jugs and old plates. Sketches in ink, wash and color were here and there on the wall, and in one place a large canvas showing Market street, Philadelphia, near City Hall, on a rainy day, gave a sombre yet rather pleasing touch.

Mrs. Stephens had returned to her easel, on which was a large sketch in black and white, showing a young rake, with his body bent forward, his elbows resting on his knees, his face buried in his hands,—the picture of despair. Some picture for a novel it was, the title of which might easily have been “The Fool and His Money.”

“You won’t mind my working,” said Mrs. Stephens, and I hastened to explain that I wouldn’t, and didn’t.

She put touches here and there on the picture, as we talked of women in art, and the conversation did not seem to distract her attention from the work in hand, which advanced rapidly.

GIRLS’ CHANCES AS ILLUSTRATORS.

“Don’t you believe it is easier, to-day, for a young girl to succeed in illustrating than it is for a young man?”

“Well, possibly,” she answered. “Neither girl nor boy can succeed without aptitude and the hardest kind of work, but girls are rather novel in the field, and their work may receive slightly more gentle consideration to begin with. It would not be accepted, however, without merit.”

“Hasn’t the smaller remuneration which women accept something to do with the popularity of the woman illustrator?”

“Very little, if any,” she answered. “I find that women are about as quick, perhaps more so, than men, to demand good prices for clever work, although they have less of the egotism of men artists.”

“You judge from your own case,” I suggested.

“Not at all. I never possessed cleverness. It was need and determination with me, and I can honestly say that all I have gained has been by the most earnest application. I never could do anything with a dash. It was always slow, painstaking effort; and it is yet.”

“Do you ever exhibit?” I asked.

“No,” said Mrs. Stephens, “not any more. There was a time when I had an ambition to shine as a painter, and as long as I had that ambition I neither shone as a painter nor made more than a living as an illustrator. I made up my mind, however, that I was not to be a great woman painter, and I decided to apply myself closely to the stronger, illustrative tendency which fascinated me. From that time on my success dates, and I am rather proud now that I was able to recognize my limitations.”

“Did you find that in marrying you made your work more difficult to pursue?” I ventured, for her interesting home life is a notable feature of her career.

“I cannot say that I did. There is more to do, but there is also a greater desire to do it. I love my boy, and I take time to make his home life interesting and satisfying. When he was ill, I removed my easel from the studio to a room adjoining the sick-chamber at the house, and worked there.”

HOW SHE BEGAN.

Her instinct for art seems to have been a gift direct. As a very little girl her facility with the pencil delighted her teachers, and after the regular exercises of the day she was allowed to occupy her time drawing whatever fancy or surroundings might suggest. At seven years of age her parents removed to Philadelphia, and there the young artist encountered school regulations which rather debarred her from following her beloved pastime. But her talent was so pronounced that one day in every week was allowed her in which to attend the School of Design—an arrangement that continued until she entered the grammar school.

A few years later she became a regular student at this School of Design, where she took a course of wood engraving, but did not relax her study of drawing. As an engraver she became so successful that her work soon became remunerative, and gave her means to enter the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. At the same time her progress as an engraver was so marked that her efforts were brought to the attention of the art editor of “Scribner’s Magazine,” for whom, to illustrate an article on the academy, she engraved the “Woman’s Life Class,” from her own drawing. Soon her drawings gave her a reputation, and she abandoned engraving. Her first published drawings were for school-book illustrations, from which her field widened and her work came into great demand.

In 1887 she was married and spent ten months abroad, studying for a part of the time in Paris in the school of Julien and of Carlo Rossi, devoting the remainder of her stay in travel. Upon her return she was prevailed upon to become an instructor in the Philadelphia School of Design, where she introduced life-class study, which has met with marked success.

XXXI

A Schoolboy’s Sketches Reveal the Bent of a Talented Illustrator.

FREDERIC REMINGTON’S drawings and paintings of ranch life are so full of action and so vigorously drawn that they have attracted attention all over the United States and abroad, wherever true art is honored. No living artist can equal Remington in bringing into life, as it were, on the very canvas, a bucking broncho, or the sweeping charge of a force of Uncle Sam’s cavalry. One fairly sees the dust on the scorching alkali plains, and hears the quick clatter of the horse’s hoofs as he strikes the ground, and gathers his legs again.

And yet, with all his success, Mr. Remington is most unassuming. I went to New Rochelle, where he has a cosy place on the crest of a hill. He was in his studio, which is an addition to the house; and, as I descended a few steps, he rose from before his easel to greet me. His working coat was covered with paint, and he held a brush in his left hand. He had not been warned of my mission, and seemed almost startled.

“I cannot shake hands,” he said, looking at me, “mine are soiled; I am a painter, you know.”

He sat down, hanging one arm over the back of his chair.

“Don’t write about me, but speak of my art!” said Mr. Remington.

“But you and your art are one,” I replied, looking around the studio, and to its walls hung with Indian relics. “Most of your pictures are from experiences of your own in the great far west, are they not?”

“Yes, but not all,” was the reminiscent reply.

“And those trophies?” I added, glancing at them.

“O, I bought most of them. That jacket I bought from a mounted policeman. Pretty, isn’t it? I am able to depict the western country and life, because I have been there.”

REMINGTON’S SCHOOLBOY EFFECTS.

“When did you first take up art?”

“I studied some art at the Yale Art School, and a little at the Art League. When I was a schoolboy, I was forever making sketches on the margin of my school-books, but I never really studied it much, although my dream was to be an artist. At nineteen, I caught the fever to go west, and incidentally to become rich. That was my idea; art came second. I ranched it, and got into Indian campaigns. I have always been fond of horses and out-of-door life, and I got plenty of it there, with every opportunity to study the rough life, the lay of the country, and the peculiar atmosphere.”

“Mr. Remington,” I asked, “how do you get that ‘devil-may-care’ look in the faces of your cowboys and soldiers?”

His face lighted up, and a deep twinkle came into his eyes. He glanced across the room at just such a picture as I had described. He took his pipe out of his mouth and laid it on the window sill.

REMINGTON’S ATTENTION TO DETAIL.

“Kipling says that, ‘a single man in a barrack is not a plaster saint,’ and that is about it. That cavalryman posed for me on his horse. But not all of my work is from life. I go west for three months every year, and gather a lot of sketches and then work them up. Those color sketches there,—a chief and his daughter,—are from life. You see I was able to get all the color. Yet I like to depict white men best; they are more interesting.”

My eyes rested on an unfinished picture, toward which, every now and then, Mr. Remington turned a thoughtful gaze as if trying to think of something. It was a birch-bark canoe, with a figure at either end; the water was smooth, and the shore was wooded. One person in the motionless canoe was fishing.

“Is that from memory?” I asked of the artist.

“Partly,” he said, with a smile. “I used to see a good many photographs of trout fishing in the Adirondacks; lines taut, and then hurling a trout through the air, to land it in the canoe. So once I thought I would try it myself. I went up there and fished for two weeks in the rain. I am trying to think how to make the rain appear to strike and bounce from the water. You know how water looks when it is raining,”—and there came into his face a thoughtful and studious look, showing how carefully he weighed every detail of his work.

Mr. Remington rises early, has breakfast at seven, and works until three, when he takes his customary horseback ride across the country.

“Do you work from inspiration?” I asked.

“I do not know what you mean, exactly. I must have a study in my mind, and then I work it out. Some mornings I can do but little; but I am kept exceedingly busy with constant orders to fill, besides illustrating my own articles.”

HOW HIS WAR PICTURES ARE MADE.

“That painting of the charge of the Rough Riders up San Juan hill, and your other Cuban pictures, must have been interesting work.”

“I saw Roosevelt just before but not during the charge. But when you see one, you see all. The fighting to-day is done in long, thin lines; the solid formations are no longer used. It makes too great a target. You are never out of range, for the bullets carry a mile and a half. Most of the fighting is done lying down, the front line advancing, and the others harassing the enemy. To me there was nothing enjoyable about it. A correspondent is worse off than the soldier. He has no means of transportation. Fortunately, in Cuba, I secured a horse the day before the battle. I made a great number of sketches, but lost one of my sketch books while crawling on my hands and knees through the long grass. It contained many bits of action, which I wanted. I suppose it was spoiled, or maybe someone found it. But in my younger days, I actually enjoyed being in the midst of an Indian fight. The climate is so different, and entirely to my liking, out west.”

We rose and viewed the studio.

“How do you get that peculiar alkali, yellowish air of the plains?” I asked, as we stood before an example of Mr. Remington’s art.

“Only by having lived there, and after a dint of study. That is a dust study.”

“And those blue shadows are correct?”

COLOR OF THE PLAINS.

“Yes; you cannot have a black shade out in the open, and the atmosphere there causes that particular shade. That one above, though, which is also a study, shows an almost steel gray shadow, while that other one is still darker. These are ‘color notes,’ of Indian ponies, and bronchos. There is no crest or arch to their necks. They are really degenerated horses, but they can go.”

On a pedestal was a casting of the “Broncho Buster.”

“You must have modeled in clay before you did that.”

“No, that was my first attempt. I had never put my hands to clay before. Painting and modeling are about the same. You must know anatomy in both. I never intended to have it cast, but some of my friends, on seeing it, said I should, so I had it done. ‘Bunkie,’ which means, in the army, ‘comrade,’ is my second work.”

It was only in 1885 that Mr. Remington turned his whole attention to art. On leaving Yale, where he was more devoted to football than to study, he served for a brief period as confidential clerk to Governor Cornell, at Albany. But that life was too prosaic; and, in 1880, he caught the fever, “to go west.” He went to Montana, and became a “cow-puncher.” Later, he made money on a Kansas mule ranch, and was cowboy, guide and scout in the southwest. When he had run through what he had earned, he returned to Kansas City, where the shops displayed his first work. They possessed the now well-known Remington style, but the colors were daubed on so that they looked like chromos, although the drawings had that muscular dash and action for which his work is noted.

HIS FIRST SKETCH.

“My first drawing,” said Mr. Remington, “appeared in Harper’s. It was redrawn by them, but it had in it that which they liked.”

In the meantime he had married, and he started east with his wife. They arrived in New York with just three dollars. After engaging a small room, he made a bee-line for Harper’s with a number of sketches. They were accepted on the spot, and since then there has been no more successful illustrator than Frederic Remington among the celebrated artists of America.

XXXII

Rebuffs and Disappointments Fail to Repress a Great Cartoonist’s Genius.

TO-DAY Homer C. Davenport is the “first cartoonist” of America, and yet he is but thirty-five years old. Mr. Davenport has a small place in Roseville, on the outskirts of Newark, New Jersey. He is a tall, handsome man, with large, humorous eyes, beneath heavy eyelids, that give him an expression of perpetual thought.

“I suppose you want to see my studio?” Mr. Davenport said. We went upstairs.

“This is it,” he said, with a chuckle.

It was merely a small, square room, with a few framed pictures on the papered walls, and a desk in the corner. There was no easel in the room, but I saw a drawing-board under the desk.

DAVENPORT’S UNIQUE STUDIO.

“You work on that board, when on the desk?”

“Yes.”

“You are disappointed,” said his sister, with a smile. “It is not what you expected.”

It wasn’t. I had expected to see a typical studio, with unfinished cartoons, and the usual artistic surroundings.

Mr. Davenport laid an unfinished cartoon on the desk, representing a chariot race, and laughed when he explained what it would be and mean; and this told me that he enters heartily in whatever he draws, which is requisite to success in art as well as in other things. Then we adjourned to another room and sat about a wood fire.

“Tell me of your beginning,” I said.

“Well, I was born in Oregon, thirty-five years ago, on my father’s farm. As a child, I was perpetually drawing, and to my father I owe much, for it was he who encouraged me, my mother dying when I was very young. I would lie flat on my stomach, and draw on the floor, if I had no paper. As I spent hours this way, the habit became injurious to my digestive organs, so a flat cushion was made for me. I was a hopelessly poor student, doing more drawing on my slate and on the margins of my books than studying. To sit in school for any length of time made me sick and nervous, so my father called on the schoolmaster and gave instructions that, whenever I got tired, I should be allowed to draw, or to go home.”

HE DREW CARTOONS IN SCHOOL.

“This was rather demoralizing to the school, for even then I drew cartoons. Finally, I was taken away, and my father painted a blackboard, four feet high by fifteen feet long, on the side of a room in the farm-house, where, with plenty of chalk, I drew to my heart’s content. I would draw all day.”

“And you received no instructions in drawing?”

“I never had a lesson in my life. It was my father’s ambition for me to become a cartoonist. When, in later years, I did anything that he considered particularly good, he would carry me off to Portland, and I would submit it to the Portland ‘Oregonian,’ where my attempts were always laughed at. Then, much crestfallen, I would return to the farm.

“‘Now, my boy,’ my father would say, ‘that is good enough to be printed,’ and off I would go again.

“At length, the news spread that I had a job on the Portland ‘Oregonian.’ The whole town became interested, and when the day arrived for my departure, the band of which I was a member, and many of the townspeople, escorted me with due honor to the railroad station.”

HIS FIRST DISAPPOINTMENT.

“‘Well,’ I heard some say, ‘I guess we will never see him again. He’s too big for this place.’

“I was on the Portland ‘Oregonian’ just one day.

“‘What’s the sense of this?’ I was asked. ‘You can’t draw,’ and back I went.

“I had before me the mortification of meeting the righteous disgust of my friends. On my way back to Silverton, I heard that they were short of a brakeman at the Portland end, so I beat my way back to Portland, and, walking into the office, offered myself.

“‘What!’ said the man. ‘What do you know about braking? I would like to know who sent you on such a fool’s errand?’ and he raved and stamped, and swore he would discharge everyone on the train. But on the next train, I went out as head brakeman. All the elements got together,—it rained and snowed and froze, and when I got to Silverton, almost frozen, I slipped from the train and tramped home, a much disheartened young man.

“But just to show my father I had something in me, and wanted to make my way in life, I asked to be sent to an institution of learning, where I stayed just one week. Then I got a place attending to the ink roller in the local printing office, where the town paper was published, which, to this day, I do not think can be beaten,”—and Mr. Davenport laughed in his hearty way.

AT TEN DOLLARS A WEEK.

“Finally, my star rose on the horizon. I went to San Francisco, and was taken on trial on the ‘Examiner.’ I remember the day well,—February 2, 1892. For one mortal week, I simply hung around the office. Then I was put to work at ten dollars a week. But I proved unsatisfactory. I drew the man over me aside.

“‘Look here,’ I said, ‘I can’t draw. I want you to write to my father and tell him what a failure I am, and that his belief that I am an artist is the delusive mistake of a fond parent.’ He sat down to write, and, as he was doing so, my fingers, always itching to draw, were at work with a pencil in sketching horses, on a piece of paper on the table.

“‘When did you do that?’ he asked, picking up the paper.

“‘I did it just now,’ I replied, sheepishly.

“‘What? Do it again.’

“I did so. He looked at me curiously.

“‘Wait a bit,’ he said. He took the paper into the office. ‘Come in here,’ he said, ‘the boys won’t believe it. Do some more.’

“‘Davenport,’ said the manager, ‘you are too old to strike a path for yourself. You must put yourself in my hands. Do nothing original, not one line.’ If the manager caught me doing so, he tore it up.

“I remember one time, Ned Hamilton, a star writer on the ‘Examiner,’ some others, and myself, were sent to a Sacramento convention. I drew what I considered very good likenesses, and that night, when I retired, with a fire burning brightly in the room where we all bunked, I fairly kicked my heels in delight, in anticipation of the compliments of the ‘Examiner.’ I was awakened by the tearing of a paper, that sent the cold shivers up and down my back. Ned Hamilton was grumbling, and throwing my labor into the fire.

“‘If you can’t do better than that,’ he said, ‘you ought to give up.’

“I almost wept, but it took any conceit I might have had out of me, and the next day I did some work that was up to the mark.”

HE WAS DISCHARGED IN CHICAGO.

“But my walking papers came in due time, and I went to the ‘Chronicle.’ It almost took my breath away when they offered me twenty dollars a week. Before I was discharged from there, I had risen to a higher salary. I went to Chicago, and got on the Chicago ‘Herald,’ at thirty-five dollars a week. I was there during the World’s Fair. It seemed to me the principal thing I did was to draw horses. But the greatest blow of all was when the Chicago ‘Herald’ discharged me. It seemed as if everything were slipping from beneath my feet. I went back to San Francisco and got on the ‘Chronicle’ again. It was then, and not till then,—1894,—that I was allowed any freedom. All that I had been asking an outlet for found vent, and my cartoons began to attract attention.

“William R. Hearst, of the ‘Examiner,’ asked, in one of his editorial rooms: ‘Who is that Davenport, on the ”Chronicle,“ who is doing us up all the time?’

“‘Oh, we bounced him; he’s no good,’ was the reply.

“‘Send for him!’ said Mr. Hearst.

“No attention was paid to the order. Mr. Hearst finally sent for me himself. I was engaged at forty-five dollars a week. Then a thing happened that I will never forget, for no raise before or since ever affected me to such a degree.

“I drew a cartoon of Senator ‘Steve’ White and his whiskers. The whiskers so pleased Mr. Hearst, that he called me in and said that my pay would be raised five dollars a week. I went home that night, and woke up my wife to tell her the glad news. She fairly wept for joy, and tears trickled down my own cheeks, for that increase meant appreciation that I had been starving for, and I felt almost secure,—and all on account of Senator ‘Steve’ White’s whiskers.”

Here Mrs. Davenport, who had brought us two large books, in which she had fondly pasted all of her husband’s work, said:—

“Yes, no subsequent increase, no matter how large, has ever equaled that five-dollar advance.”

IN CLOVER AT LAST.

Mr. Hearst, as soon as he bought the New York “Journal,” telegraphed to the “Examiner:” “Send Davenport.” He is now receiving a very large salary, and his work is known throughout the world.

Two years ago, Mr. Davenport went abroad and drew sketches of the members of the houses of parliament, and Mr. Phil. May, the English artist, became his fast friend.

In Washington, Senator Hanna insisted upon meeting Mr. Davenport, and shaking him by the hand. He was the first to immortalize Mr. Hanna, with that checkered suit of dollar marks.

Such is the man and artist, Homer C. Davenport, who, in 1894, had not drawn a public cartoon, and who, to-day, has a world-wide reputation, and the esteem of even those whom he has caricatured, and who cannot help enjoying their own exaggerated portraits. Davenport’s success has come rapidly, but not until he had sustained reverses that would have discouraged any man of a less resolute character.

XXXIII

Being Himself in Style and Subjects, the Secret of an Artist’s Wonderful Popularity.

NOTHING in the studio of Charles Dana Gibson suggests that it is a studio, excepting the alien circumstance that it is artistic. Such proof tends to puzzle the casual-minded, whose mind is trained to look upon any sky-lighted room furnished like a pound party, and occupied by artists, or brokers, or bachelor wholesale dealers,—as a studio.

Mr. Gibson’s studio is a real room, devoted to stern facts, and is, therefore, beautiful. It has no furniture that is not essential. Even the large rugs, woven of moss and mist and fire, hang on the walls like coverings, and not by way of decoration. The wood is heavy and dark. There are no pictures.

Mr. Gibson talks while he works. His easel stands squarely beneath the skylight, and, as he sat before it the other day, a picture grew under his hand while he talked about the making of an illustrator. Everything he said was emphasized by the slow growth of the glorious creature, who was there to show, from her pretty tilted pompadour to the hem of the undoubted creation she was wearing, that what the famous illustrator insisted may be done by skill and hard work can assuredly be accomplished.

“When anyone asks me,” said Mr. Gibson, “what to do to become a successful illustrator, I always assure him that he has thought about the matter and doubtless knows far more about it than I do, for I know of no rule to follow to become what one was born to be, and I certainly know of none to prevent one from failing at something for which he has no talent.

“If a man knows how to draw, he will draw; and all the discouragements and all the bad teachers in the world cannot turn him aside. If he has no ability, he will drift naturally into school-teaching and buying stocks, without anybody’s rules to direct him either way.

“The main thing is to have been born an artist.”

Mr. Gibson said this quite simply, as if he were advising a course in something, or five grains of medicine.

“If you were that,” he went on, “you yourself know it far better than anyone can tell you, and you know also, in your heart, that neither wrong teaching nor anything but idleness can prevent your success. If you are not a born artist, you may not know it. I think I can soon say something about the way to find your limitations, but no one can say much to help a born genius. His genius is largely, indeed, that he knows how to help himself.”

Lightly leaving the student of illustrating adequately provided with having been born a genius, Mr. Gibson went on to tell what should be his education before he begins to study art, and upon this he put on record an opinion which is a departure from current belief.

A NATURAL ARTIST WILL NEVER REQUIRE AN INSTRUCTOR.

“I do not think,” he said, “that the previous training of a student who begins studying illustrating has much to do with his career. It seems to me that his actual previous education matters very little. If he wants to learn, he will learn. If he does not, he will not. If he does not want to learn, his attempt at an education will profit him very little. His gift for illustrating, if he has it, is a thing not more dependent upon his education than upon his surroundings. While there are instances in which an education forced upon a pupil has been acknowledged by him afterward to mean much to him, there are also cases in all arts of which we say that contact with the schoolmen would not have been an advantage.”

Mr. Gibson said this quite tranquilly, as if it were not an idea at odds with all other accepted statements that the thorough education of an artist is the best foundation for anything he may undertake.

“That leaves a good deal of work for the pupil’s master,” I suggested.

“Master!” exclaimed Mr. Gibson, with almost a frown; “what is a master? Have we any masters now? It seems to me that the word has lost its old meaning, and that there is no longer such a thing as a ‘master.’ Suppose we say ‘teacher’ instead! And then let me add this: I do not believe the teacher matters in the least.”

“Don’t you think,” I demanded, “that a pupil would make better progress with you for a teacher than he would with somebody whose work had no value?”

IF YOU DO NOT SEE YOUR MISTAKES, NO ONE ELSE CAN.

“Not a bit,” he said, promptly. “To tell the truth, I think the teaching of drawing is an over-estimated profession. It doesn’t seem to me as if I could teach,—as if I would feel it would be exactly honest to teach. Why, see for yourself,—what can a teacher do?”

Mr. Gibson laid down his pencil, but he continued thus:—

“I was for a year at the Art League, and two years in Paris. In Paris we used to sit in rows at canvases, like this. We saw our teacher for half an hour, twice a day. He would come and spend less than two minutes beside the chair of each of us, and what would he do? Point out a mistake, or a defect, or, rarely, an excellence, which, if we had any talent at all, we could see perfectly well for ourselves. This last is the important point.

“If you are a born illustrator, you will know your own mistakes better than anyone can tell you about them. If you do not see your mistakes, nobody can ever help you to be anything. All the teachers in all the art schools cannot help you if you cannot see your mistakes. I said I could help a pupil to know his own limitations. Well, that is the way. If your own work looks quite finished and perfect to you, or if it looks wrong but you cannot tell exactly what is the inaccuracy or lack, you may depend upon it that you were not born to be an illustrator.

“That is true in anything. The writer, the sculptor and the musician have to stand this test. What sort of musician would a man be who could not detect a discord? You can see it easily enough with that illustration. Well, your illustrator must see a bad bit of drawing, or bad composition, just as quickly as a born piano player can tell if he has played without expression. It is just as true in art as it is in ordinary matters. The snow-shoveler must know when his sidewalk is clean, the typewriter when the words are correctly spelled, the cook when her pastry tastes right,—or they are all discharged forthwith. Well, one expects no less of an illustrator than of a cook.”

THE VALUE OF ARTISTIC INDIVIDUALITY.

Mr. Gibson returned to his board, and what he said next was wonderfully extra-illustrated by the girl—“Gibson” to her finger-tips,—who looked up at him.

“The whole value of your work is its individuality,” he said, “and for that you are obliged to depend absolutely upon yourself. Obviously nobody can show you how to be original.

“Now take the simple example of a copy book. Do you remember how the letters used to look, and the elaborate directions which accompanied every writing lesson? The ‘a’s,’ and so on, must be just of a height. The ‘t’s’ must be twice as high. The ‘l’s’ and the ‘h’s’ must be a quarter-length or so above those. Well, as a matter of fact, who writes like that? Nobody. If anyone did he would simply be laughed at, and justly so. His handwriting would mean nothing. It would have no individuality. Everybody simply keeps the letters in mind and forms them to suit himself, and after a time he has a writing which he can never change by any chance. That has become the way he writes.

“Well, it is just the same in illustrating. I might tell you all that I know about drawing; any teacher might tell you all he knows; but, gradually, by observation and the assertion of your own personality, you will modify all these forms, and will find yourself drawing one special way. That is the way you draw, and you can never change it in essence, though you may go on improving it forever.

“Now, to my mind, just so much instruction in drawing is necessary as is needed to tell the child who is learning to write which letter is which, and how to pronounce and recognize it. That once learned, the child will go its own sweet way and develop a handwriting such as no one in the world can exactly duplicate. So it is with drawing. When the first fundamental instructions are over,—which anyone who can draw can give you,—you are your own master, and will draw or not, as you were born to do.

“Remember that I am not saying that I regret the time I spent studying, either here or in Paris. I am only telling you what I regard as necessary for one who wants to learn.

“Now, just as the way to learn to write is to write, so the way to learn to draw is to draw. I think it is best to begin with objects in the room, and with figures,—any objects, any figures,—it does not matter. But draw one over and over again; draw it from all sides; draw it big, and draw it little, and draw it again. Then go to something else, and then come back to it later the same day. Put them all away till the next day, and then find the mistakes in them. Here is something to remember, and something which ought to hearten many a discouraged student quite blue because of what really should have encouraged him: Do not be discouraged at the mistakes you can find in your own work, unless you find only a small number. The more mistakes you can detect, the better able you are to draw. Do not leave a thing until you are satisfied, after going back to it every day for weeks, that you can draw it no better. Then, if you come upon it the next year, and still see no room for improvement,—well, then there is still room for discouragement about yourself.”

WHILE STUDYING ART, ONE SHOULD WORK INCESSANTLY.

“In all this work, observe one rule: Never mind about drawing a thing as you may possibly have been told to do in the course of instruction. Draw it the way it looks to you. You will see it differently as you go back to it again and again. If you do not see it differently, you cannot see your own mistakes, and that is positive proof that for you fame is waiting at some other door,—or, at any rate, that it will not come to you from art.

“How much ought one to work? All the time. Draw all the time. Look all the time for something to draw. In the beginning, never pass anything without wresting from it its blessing, so to speak. Before you pass, be sure you can draw it; and the only way to be sure of that is to draw it several times. The objects in a room are a little simpler than figures, at first, but figures are the most interesting, and you must draw whatever interests you. If you would rather draw crawfish and bootjacks than men and women, draw crawfish and bootjacks. It really doesn’t so much matter what you draw; the point is that you draw. But it is important to you that you develop a taste for drawing something special,—and of that you need have no fear if you are a born artist. If you are not, as I said, it doesn’t matter.

“I always feel that any general talk about the way to succeed, in any art one selects, is rather unnecessary. I cannot repeat too often that I believe, if the student has it in him to draw, he will not need to be told to persevere, or to work hard, or to be careful of bad influences in his work, or to avoid imitation,—he will do all these as naturally as he will hold a pencil. Holding a pencil, by the way, is another example of what I just spoke of. Do you remember that they used to tell us just how our fingers must hold the pen, and how the whole arm ought to move? ‘What will they think of you,’ they said, ‘when you get out in the world, if you hold your pencil like that?’ As a matter of fact, nobody gives the matter a thought, and hardly one of us holds a pencil that way. It is so with many of the _formulae_ of an art. But isn’t it curious that I never did get out of holding my pencil that prescribed way? I do happen to hold my pencil correctly.”

“Maybe you held some of the other _formulae_ the same way,” I suggested, “and they are influencing you.”

“Oh, well,” said Mr. Gibson, “so far as the pencil goes, I fancy, perhaps, that I draw in spite of the way I hold it rather than because of it.”

Then he made a small retraction of his remark.

“There is one class of teachers,” he said, “that I count,—pictures. Pictures are always at hand,—and good work is the best teacher in the world. A pupil in New York ought to go to the art gallery often and often, and sit there and steep himself in what he sees. Let him go to study definite pictures, too,—but just to sit and absorb,—as one sits in a garden, or before an old tower, or by the sea,—without sketching, only just looking,—that is the best instruction you can pay for on either continent.”

The picture of the girl on the board was practically complete, with its high little chin and haughty mouth and fearless eyes, and it seemed so alive that getting to be a great illustrator appeared hopeless by the side of it.

“How long,” I asked, “does it take, normally, to find out if you’re a born artist or not?”

Mr. Gibson laughed and took it the other way.

“A very long time,” he said, regretfully, “and some of us even go down blind to our graves.”

“May it not be inferred from your idea that the born illustrator has little need of a teacher, that he also has little need of a sojourn in the art atmosphere of Paris?” I asked.

“It certainly may be,” replied Mr. Gibson quickly. “A young man or woman can now learn just as much art in some of our great cities, like New York or Philadelphia, as abroad. Our art schools are as good as those of Paris. In fact, they are superior in some respects, and I am very sure that the average American art student is, in general, better off in the United States.

“There are, of course, the magnificent galleries of Europe, with which every artist should be familiar, but there need be no special hurry to study these. It is much more advisable, I think, for the young artist to become imbued with the spirit of our own art, and to acquire a distinctively American style, before subjecting himself to the influence of the painters of the Old World.

“I have little patience with the American who, in his art, becomes a foreigner. If he does, he is not accepted as representative either abroad or in this country. The time has come when a man or woman may take much pride in being a true American artist. We are no longer mere imitators. We are forging ahead into leadership, and I venture to predict that this century will see New York the art center of the world.”

* * * * *

Transcriber’s note:

Obvious punctuation errors were corrected.

Varied hyphenation was retained.

Page 53, “They” changed to “There” (There were no fine libraries)

Page 80, “Phenix” changed to “Phœnix” (Phœnix-like)

Page 168, “that” changed to “what” (I felt what Oliver Wendall)

Page 190, “catastropheis” changed to “catastrophes” (catastrophes of the war)

Page 196, “brillinacy” changed to “brilliancy” (Mr. Stanford’s brilliancy)

Page 213, repeated word “York” removed. Original read (counsel for the New York York)

Page 215, “neccessary” changed to “necessary” (made it necessary to)

Page 231, “you” changed to “your” (turn your attention to)

Page 275, “Reedemer” changed to “Redeemer” (a Redeemer, Son of God)

Page 308, “awhile” changed to “a while” (rest for a while)