vP^.*'-l / ..\^v^' VW/ V^v^* ^^ &' ^-^ ^ J^ .^^-^-^ 'bV '^_ "■• ^^° r.c,- 4O «!. « * * r s ^ ~ 8 ■ \. FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER FAMOUS LEADERS SERIES Each, one volume, illustrated $2.00 CHARLES L. JOHNSTON FAMOUS INDIAN CHIEFS FAMOUS SCOUTS FAMOUS CAVALRY LEADERS FAMOUS PRIVATEERSMEN FAMOUS FRONTIERSMEN FAMOUS DISCOVERERS AND EX- PLORERS OF AMERICA FAMOUS GENERALS OF THE GREAT WAR BY EDWIN WILDMAN FAMOUS LEADERS OF INDUSTRY First Series FAMOUS LEADERS OF INDUSTRY Second Series FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER THE PAGE COMPANY 53 Beacon Street, Boston, Mass. m.< ■ ■ -^ Courtesy of Mr. Frederick Hill Meserve WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON THE FAMOUS LEADERS' SERIES OF CHARACTER IN AMERICA FROM THE LATTER HALF OF NINETEENTH CENTURY THE LIFE STORIES OF BOYS WHO HAVE IMPRESSED THEIR PER- SONALITIES ON THE LIFE AND HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES BY EDWIN WILDMAN Former Editor of The Forum Author of "Famous Leaders of Industry, First Series,' "Famous Leaders of Industry, Second Series," "Reconstructing America — Our Next Big Job," etc. SllttctrateH BOSTON COMPANY THE PAGE MDCCCCXXII Copyright, i<)22, By The Page Company All rights reserved Made in U. S. A. First Impression, October, 1922 PRINTED BY C. H. SIMONDS COMPANY BOSTONj MASS., U. S. A. OCT 21 '22 ©C1A686438 INTRODUCTION To my boy friends : Do you know the stirring stories in the lives of Lodge and Harding, Wilson and Roosevelt; of Sumner and Garrison and Phillips ; of Cleveland ; of Hale ; of Robert E, Lee? These are men whose names stand for great minds and brave and noble characters. In this volume I have sought to bring together a group of men who, unlike the average American, have counted success, not so much in dollars and cents, as in a devotion to high ideals. Money has been to them of secondary consideration, if of any consideration at all. Although they have been constantly brought in contact with the ways and ideas of men of the world, which were abso- lutely contrary to their ideals, these men have been loyal and faithful in practice, as well as profession, to the spiritual qualities of justice, mercy, purity and honesty. They have been soldiers of the spirit, great-hearted men of action, who have won the admiration and respect of even their bitterest enemies. The need of the hour has been met by these men of moral strength. They have given out, instead of taking in. In being true to themselves, they have been true to others. Their early struggles to do right, developed in them those qualities which were, later, to benefit the world. V vi INTRODUCTION Some of these men lived a long time ago, and only the fact of their greatness has lived down to us. Their appearance, their little peculiarities, their friendships, their struggles have been forgotten in the brightness of the victories — not always material, but often moral victories — which we remember. I have dealt chiefly with the incidents of their youth. It is there that we find the great influences for good. You will find that in most cases it is the boy who finds an ambition in his boyhood, and who has the strength of character to fight for it, plug for it, whether it be an ideal of justice, of wealth, of philanthropy, or of power, who wins out to greatness. I feel that these stories will appeal to the grown man, as much as to the boy, for it is in the daily happenings of the home, the little incidents of school life, that future traits of character are discerned. These qualities are not always born in a man, but are as often gained by a continual struggle to overcome that which is unworthy. You will find the greatness of character that is in these men even more interesting than the greatness of soldiers, of Indian Chiefs, or Leaders of Industry, because these men had harder fights to fight, and often in seeming defeat their victory was bigger. Edwin Wildman. CONTENTS William Lloyd Garrison The man who paved the way for Lincoln Robert E. Lee .... Duty, above all things Abraham Lincoln The Great Emancipator Charles Sumner A Martyr to his Principles Horace Greeley America's Pioneer N ewspaper Genius Wendell Phillips The Silver-Tongued Abolitionist Edward Everett Hale Preacher, Organizer and Author Leland Stanford Great Pioneer of the West Charles William Eliot, LL.D. A Great Educational Leader Phillips Brooks Great Preacher-Philosopher Moody and Sankey Pioneer Evangelists Grover Cleveland Twice President of the United States John Burroughs America's Great Naturalist Henry Cabot Lodge . Defender of the Constitution WooDROw Wilson Educator — War President — Statesman Theodore Roosevelt . The Idol of his Country PAGE 3 17 29 43 55 71 83 99 111 123 135 153 167 179 195 209 vii viii CONTENTS PAGE BooKEE T. Washington 225 The Educational Leader of the Negro Race William Jennings Bryan 239 A Crusader of Advanced Ideals Major-General Leonard Wood .... 253 Apostle of Peace and Preparedness Charles Evans Hughes ...... 269 A Great American Statesman Warren Gamaliel Harding 285 President — Champion of Sound Americanism Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis .... 299 The Supreme Court of Baseball Benjamin Burr Lindsey 313 A Judge %cho believes all Boys are good Calvin Coolidge 327 The Man who stood for Law and Order LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE William Lloyd Garrison (see page 3) Frontispiece Robert E. Lee 17 Abraham Lincoln 29 Charles Sumner 43 Horace Greeley 55 Wendell Phillips 71 Edward Everett Hale 83 Leland Stanford 99 Charles William Eliot, LL.D Ill Phillips Brooks 123 Dwight Lyman Moody 135 Ira David Sankey 145 Grover Clevelane) 153 John Burroughs 167 Henry Cabot Lodge ....... 179 Woodrow Wilson 195 Theodore Roosevelt 209 Booker T. Washington 225 William Jennings Bryan 239 Major-General Leonard Wood .... 253 Charles Evans Hughes 269 Warren Gamaliel Harding 285 Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis . . . 299 Benjamin Burr Lindsey 313 Calvin Coolidge 327 (M ix WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON (l«orj--ih7i)) THE MAN WHO PAVED THE WAY EOR LINCOLN FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON (1805-1879) THE MAN WHO PAVED THE WAY, FOR LINCOLN TEIUMPHING over adverse fortune, poverty, and tlie endless struggles which usually confront the advanced reformer, William Lloyd Garrison grew to the stature of a permanent place in the world's history, before he died at a ripe old age. There were handicaps from the very first, for when Lloyd was scarcely three years old, his father left his family in the little frame house on School Street in Newburyport, Mass., never to return. The romantic courtship which his father had suc- cessfully conducted with his mother, Fanny Lloyd, the belle of that small pioneer colony on Deer Island, N. B., ended as swiftly as it began. Abijah Garrison, a sailor, Lloyd's father, during one of his brief rests ashore, spied Fanny Lloyd entering chapel on a Sunday morning, and followed. He had to wait till the service was over, which no doubt in- 3 4 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER spired him with inner grace, though it did not ap- pear in the brusque manner of his instantaneous court- ship. The girl, tall, dark, imperious, was dressed in blue. Not knowing her name, the sailor called her *'Blue-jacket" and requested permission to escort her home. He was promptly rebuffed, but later secured a letter of introduction and, after a brief courtship, they were married. The audacity and courage, the boldness of Lloyd Garrison's career, when facing the hostility that con- fronted him in his life work of reformation in the great National issues of temperance and abolition of slavery, probably came from his father, though he scarcely re- membered him. His only recollection of his father was the vague figure of a big man with a bald head, a reddish beard, and a noticeable scar, that was most unsightly, on his neck and face. He was only three years old when this sea-captain deserted his mother without providing means of support for her or her three children. The reformer epitomizes this act of his father's in the following comment : "There is no doubt that his love for my mother was almost romantic; and it is questionable, when he de- serted her, if he meant the separation to be final." From his mother came that deep strain of pity and forbearance which dominated his life. Probably from his mother also came much of his defiant spirit against those who declined to accept the truth as he saw it, for she had demonstrated that spirit as a young girl, and accepted the sacrifice it involved. Her firmness of character was inflexibly allied with her conscience. WILLIAM LLOYD GAREISON 5 Her parents were Episcopalians, bigoted in their in- tolerance for any other religious denomination. One day when she was a young girl, out of curiosity, with a party of young people, she attended the service of a Baptist preacher, held in a barn. At that time the Baptists were despised by the small community of Episcopalians. The Baptist preacher, by the humility of his sermon, the earnestness of his plea, completely captured the passer-by. Shortly afterwards she an- nounced to her family that she found it necessary for the peace of her heart and mind publicly to acknowl- edge the Baptist faith. Every effort and threat were used by her parents to alter her decision, but it was a matter of duty to God, as she regarded it, and though she asked her parents' forgiveness, she was publicly baptized in the Baptist faith and was banished from her home in consequence. She then went to live with an uncle until she was married. The inner fires of conscientious conviction that were so often sorely tried in the life of Lloyd Garrison came direct from that mother of whom, in later years, he wrote in a letter to his fiancee : "I had a mother once who cared for me with pas- sionate regard. Her mind was . . . clear, vigorous, creative, and lustrous, and sanctified by an ever glow- ing piety. How often did she watch over me, — weep over me — and pray over me." Spiritual quality was not lacking in those days of intense, practical struggle, for during the subsequent years of hard apprenticeship, the boy, separated from her because the family was too poor to hold together, 6 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER never forgot to "write his mother tenderly and affec- tionately. Up to his sixteenth year the boyhood of Lloyd Gar- rison was a dull period of hard work. He was first apprenticed to learn shoemaking in Lynn. He was only nine years old then, and so small that he was de- scribed as "not much bigger than a last." Of course he lacked the strength to pursue this work, but the influ- ences of his master, Gamaliel W. Oliver, with whom he lived, were no doubt impressive factors in his sub- sequent career, for Oliver was a Quaker and imbued the future reformer with his hatred of military abuses. No special indication of genius appeared in Lloyd dur- ing this period of hard, obedient apprenticeship. It seemed as though he were destined to become nothing greater than a good, serviceable shoemaker. After a brief trip to Baltimore, with his mother, where he worked for a time in a shoe-factory, he returned to his home town, Newburyport, where he was taken in by the Birketts, poor people who allowed him to do what a boy of ten or eleven years could do, to help earn his board. It was then that he obtained his final schooling at the Grammar School in the Mall. His education, his ultimate brilliancy as a writer and an orator, were the gifts of his genius. No special train- ing had been his, in fact he had far less schooling than most boys of his day. Grim necessity of life kept him, during the most fonnative years of his youth, apprenticed at some- thing. For a time he was apprenticed to Moses Short, a cabinet maker at Haverhill, Mass. But he became WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 7 homesick for Newburyport, and tying all his posses- sions in a small bundle, he slipped out of the back window of his master's home one day and started away on foot. When he was caught, he confessed his home- sickness and was released from this apprenticeship law- fully. After a brief sojourn with Deacon Bartlett, he secured an apprenticeship in the printing shop of the Newburyport Herald, owned by Ephraim W. Allen. There he spent a seven years' apprenticeship learning not only the trade, but th^' great power of that trade in public opinion and intellectual freedom. In the meantime his mother, ill but in the care of kindly friends, remained in Baltimore, having passed through an epidemic of yellow-fever there in 1818, which left her in a very weak and helpless condition. The dominant inspiration of Lloyd's career as a writer and public speaker was the religious devotion of his mother. To the end of his life, his favorite habit on Sunday mornings was to sing the old tradi- tional hymns, "Coronation," "Hebron," "Ward," "Denmark," "Lenox," "Majesty," accompanying him- self on the piano with one finger. He had sung in the boys' choir of the church, and the habit then formed never deserted him. It was during his apprenticeship as a printer that Lloyd Garrison began to read extensively, his favorite literature being poetry. Like most boys he preferred romantic fiction, especially the Waverley novels. His favorite poets were those of all the world, Byron, Moore, Pope, Campbell, and others. He became en- thusiastically attached to the poems of Mrs. Hemans, 8 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER committing tliem to memory. His first articles, un- published, were political, based largely upon the en- vironment of his home town, which was an ardent Federalist community. In this direction of thought, he read such leaders as Fisher Ames, Timothy Pick- ering, and Harrison Gray Otis. He was just past six- teen when he sent his first article to the press. Writ- ing in a disguised hand, he posted it to the editor of his own paper, the Herald. It was anonymously signed "An Old Bachelor." The title of this first effort was "Breach of the Marriage Promise," and concerned the reflections of a bachelor on reading a verdict in a breach of promise suit in Boston. Wrote this "bachelor of sixteen" in 1822: "The truth is, however, women in this country are too much idolized and flattered; therefore, they are puffed up and inflated with pride and conceit. . . . For my part, notwithstanding, I am determined to lead the ^single life' and not trouble myself about the ladies." The "Editor" accepted the anonymous contribution and handed it imknowingly to the author to set up in type. Other contributions were sent and duly pub- lished. One of them purporting to be an account of a shipwreck was palpably written by some one totally ignorant of the sea or ships. The "Editor," no more informed about marine ways than the author, pub- lished it in the Herald. His mother, upor hearing of his secret contributions to the press, wisely urged him to think well before embarking on a "pitiful" career. WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 9 "Next, your turning Author," she writes him ac- knowledging his confessions, "you have no doubt read and heard the fate of such characters, that they gen- erally starve to death in some garret or place that no one inhabits. So you may see what fortune and luck belong to you if you are of that class of people." A similar boyish article entitled "Essay on Mar- riage" closed his apprenticeship to the Herald, in 1825, in which he cynically reflects, "Of all the con- ceits that ever entered into the brains of a wise man, that of marriage is the most ridiculous." With this casual dismissal of marriage, he closed that indefinite period of his life and three months later became pub- lisher and editor of the Free Press in Newburyport. Mr. Allen, the publisher of the Herald, obligingly but secretly loaned him the money with which to begin his venture. The motto chosen by the future reform- leader of world-fame was significant; it indicated the suppressed emotions in his consciousness of National issues. The motto was, "Our Country, Our Whole Country, and Nothing But Our Country." Many editorial experiments came after this brief di- rection of the Free Press that demonstrate the influ- ences that dominated Lloyd Garrison's character. In a narrower sense than he showed it to be later, patriot- ism was its initial impulse. From this source of deep expression came others with years and experience. Once having emancipated himself from the hated ap- prenticeships to machine labor, Lloyd Garrison ad- vanced along the road to fame with great strides. Even his second editorial venture as editor of the 10 FAMOUS LEADEES OF CHARACTER Journal of the Times, whicli be took charge of at the invitation of men in Bennington, Vermont, showed this. Wearing Cicero's badge, a favorite quotation on the face of his paper, "Reason shall prevail with ns more than Public Opinion," the young editor spread his wings over the pages under such convincing head- ings as "Moral," "Education," "Temperance," "Slav- ery," "Political," etc. His outstanding promise to his subscribers was that the newspaper would remain Independent. In his declaration of faith the ardor and challenge of reform were fearlessly predicted. "When the election is over, our literary and moral departments will exhibit a fullness and excellence com- mensurate with their importance," he writes naively, regretting the election crisis, in spite of all. Slavery was a political issue of bitter character in the Presidential campaign of General Jackson, and it was this issue that seized the heart and brain of Lloyd Garrison when he was in the throes of his first editorial campaign in politics. The flame kindled by Major Lundy in Garrison's soul burned stronger, for in the earlier numbers of the Journal he proposed the for- mation of anti-slavery societies in Vermont. Lundy's faith in his friend Garrison as a leader was demon- strated when he walked from Baltimore where he was publishing Genius, a publication devoted to the cause of anti-slavery, to Bennington, Vermont, to in- duce him to put his weight behind the smaller news- paper. Garrison accepted the call to become editor of Genius with a solemnity which was almost a sacred vow to the great cause which he subsequently supported WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 11 so triumphantly. This was the turning-point in his career, from the merely material interests of journal- ism, to the definite sacrifices of a great ideal for which the entire nation has honored him. This is fore- shadowed in his last editorial printed just before his retirement as editor of the Journal in Vermont. "I trust God that I may be the humble instrument of breaking at least one chain, and restoring one cap- tive to liberty; it will amply repay a life of severe toil." The pledge was made without regard to the con- sequences. It was a solemn vow to maintain an ideal that had been the cause of bitter contention. The Northern seaboard States were loath to loose the hu- man cargoes of slaves shipped from the South for sale in the Northern slave markets. The Southern States were unwilling to abandon a profitable commerce in slaves, also. The courage and justice of the great abo- litionist's acceptance of the editorial policy of Genius gave him his place in histoiy. A few weeks intervened between the time that Gar- rison left Bennington, where he had been prosperous and happy, for Baltimore to take up his new duties as editor of an abolitionist organ, published in a slave State. His address entitled "Dangers to the Nation," delivered in Bennington, July 4th, 1824, in favor of the colonization societies, committed him to the narrow and dangerous pathway of Reform. It was an in- spired arraignment of the inhumanity of slavery, a declaration of faith in liberty and justice, in the face of National anger and blind commercial viewpoints. 12 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER The remarkable fact that Garrison was only twenty- four years old at this time must be noted, a promising indication of his unselfish devotion to what he believed was the truth. Just as his mother had sacrificed her home ties for her faith, her son put aside his personal comfort and safety for the ideal of his character. A Boston newspaper, commenting on this address, described the orator as "of quite youthful appearance, and habited in a suit of black, with his neck bare, and broad linen collar spread over that of his coat. His prefatory'- remarks were inaudible by the feebleness of his utterance, but as he advanced, his voice was raised, his confidence regained, and his earnestness became perceptible." On his arrival in Baltimore, he informed his part- ner. Major Lundy, that immediate and unconditional emancipation was the only solution. This was in August, 1829. Lundy, less radical in his views, re- plied cautiously, "Thee may put thy initials to thine articles, and I will put my initials to mine, and each will bear his own burden." Garrison accepted, adding, "I shall be able to free my soul," With the exception of their friendship with some of the more intelligent colored people, both Garrison and Lundy lived in a small circle of Quaker friends. As to money, there was none, Garrison humorously announc- ing, editorially, that he had not found it necessary to own a purse. In spite of poverty, the abolitionist strug- gled on towards his goal. Finally, he was indicted for libel on a statement that involved a cargo of slaves shipped from his home town, Newburyport, to New Or- WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 13 leans, which was in violation of Congressional order, forbidding foreign slave traffic. The slaves on the ship had been seized in Africa. The conviction by the jury, secured in fifteen minutes, carried a fine of $100, an amount in those days sufficiently large to be severe. It was probably more money than Garrison or Lundy had ever liad at one time. The alternative was imprison- ment. On April 17, 1830, Garrison entered the Balti- more jail, and Genius suspended publication. A lit- tle over a month later he was released through the gener- osity of Arthur Toppin who advanced the $100 re- quired. In the same year, without money, subscribers, or equipment, Garrison formed a partnership with Isaac Knapp, equally destitute, to publish The Libera- tor, which made its appearance January 1, 1831. The motto of this famous publication was the firebrand that set ablaze the great conflict of bitter opinion which led to the Civil War. It read : "Our Country is the World — Our Countrymen are Mankind." For some years in a dingy garret these two valiant defenders of American liberty worked, slept, and lived on meager fare. The annual expense of the editor of The Liberator was $700. They pledged themselves to print the paper so long as they "could subsist on bread and water." The Liberator became a lusty waif, sus- tained by mysterious friends, at unexpected times. In 1834, when he was thirty-five years of age, the great abolitionist married the daughter of George M. Benson of Providence, a supporter of the anti-slavery movement. 14 FAMOUS LEADEES OF CHAKACTER As the cause of anti-slavery enlarged and extended its agitation, the fire of hatred increased. George Thompson, the agent of the London Anti-Slavery So- ciety, arrived in Baltimore to help his American friend who had founded the New England Anti-Slavery So- ciety through The Liberator. Garrison himself was mobbed in the streets of Boston and had to escape from Philadelphia after the Pennsylvania Hall, in which a meeting had been held, was burned down by the mob. After endless strife, bitterness, and battle, which car- ried the determined abolitionist into the stormy period of Lincoln's administration, he abandoned the battle- ground of his ideals in 1865, at the age of sixty, and The Liberator, in its thirty-fifth volume, suspended. Without occupation or any savings account, Garrison at this advanced age contemplated writing a "History of the Anti-Slavery Movement," but he never began it. A National testimonial fund was raised by his friends, which gave him a competence, and in May, 1879, at the age of seventy-four, he died at his daughter's home in New York, where he had gone for medical treatment. The last few years of his life were agreeably spent in travel in Europe. During this peaceful period he wrote many articles, always in line with the reform spirit of his character. He lived and died in the pioneer spirit of a fear- less, vigorous, determined idealist who had no selfish or material profit from any of his work. ROBERT E. LEE (1807-1870) DUTY, ABOVE ALL THINGS l-'rom " Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee," published by Doubleday, Page S: Co. ROBERT E. LEE ROBERT E. LEE" (1807-1870) DUTY, ABOVE ALL THINGS THE supreme test of a man born to be a soldier is his obedience to duty. This is well established in past history. And the strategy of war, like the strategy of character, aims to win. Though defeat does not wholly disqualify a soldier, it does impose on him the penalty of surrender. General Robert E. Lee, Commander of the Confeder- ate Forces in the field against General Grant, though defeated, is a superb figure in history. Much has been said in the South of his aristocratic ancestors. The pride of blood in his native State, Virginia, has survived three centuries of American democracy. Still, the pre- dominant feature of Lee's character was the simple pride in doing his duty. He never took credit for his acts on the ground that he was a distinguished de- scendant of the F. F. V.'s (First Families of Virginia). There is nothing in his letters, or in his memoirs of his friends, that reveals the slightest trace of this. He looked and lived what he was born, a gentleman. In spite of his surrender to Grant, he knew disaster, but not defeat. Defeat of personal character was never his. The issues of the Civil War have been submerged in 17 yl^'^ 18 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHAEACTER the magnanimous impulse to forgive and forget that is essentially a characteristic of American manhood. It is not necessary to attach these issues to this brief reflection on Lee's place in history. He himself was among the men who frankly urged the tolerance of reconstruction sentiment after the Civil War was over. To those who read this from the shadow of their own experiences in the World War, Lee's conduct as a man is impressive. In 1807, when the leader of the Confederate Army y)» was born, Washington's personality still survived, a vig- orous, living influence, although he had been dead about V^ twenty years. General Lee's father had married a Car- ter, and in the parlor of the Lee homestead hung a por- trait of General Washington, personally presented to General Nelson, who gave it to his daughter, Mrs. Car- ter. The old Virginia families, in 1807, still talked of and emulated the spirit and character of Washington, as if he were yet to be seen on the wide veranda of his home in Mount Vernon. ISTot less prominent in Na- tional life than Washington was the Lee family. Gen- eral Lee's father, "Light Horse Harry" Lee, was a famous character of colonial quality. The Lees and the Carters had always been Governors, or ofiicials of high rank, in Virginia. As a young man, General Lee had all the appearance, reserve of manner, and gentleness of character that he had inherited from his ancestors, who, in the days of Charles II of England, had been cavaliers. But his ideal was not among these swash-buckling heroes of the English Court. He was dominated by the character of Washington. He had heard so much about him at home, ROBERT E. LEE 19 that he knew him* as well as if he had really met him. His father had been selected by Congress to deliver the memorial address on Washington's death, in which he wrote that immortal phrase in enlogy of the great Gen- eral, "First in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen." This tribute of a Lee to the mem- ory of the First President of the United States seemed to glow inwardly in the character of Robert E. Lee, the soldier. The Lee homestead, called Stratford, was built by Thomas Lee, grandson of Richard Lee who emigrated from England in 1641-2 and founded the family. When the old mansion was burned down, Queen Anne, in recognition of services rendered by the Lees in Vir- ginia, contributed liberally to the restoration of the man- sion. It is a historical landmark in America. In it, also, were born two signers of the Declaration of Inde- pendence, Richard Henry Lee and his brother, Francis Lightfoot Lee. Against the background of blooded ancestry Robert E. Lee grew up with a profound devotion to the princi- ples of George Washington, whom, it has been claimed, he resembled in character, mould, and formula of expres- sion. Traces of this influence on General Lee's life are obvious in the style of his letters and in the religious impulses that prevailed in him in the midst of war. His father died when he was eleven years old, and he was brought up by his mother. His boyhood was spent in Alexandria, alive with Washingtonia, and he attended the same church as Washington had. His choice of a military career took him to the West Point Military 20 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER Academy in 1825, wlien he was eighteen. He entered as a cadet from Virginia, having received his appoint- ment from Andrew Jackson, to whom he applied in person. Shortly after his graduation, with the minor rank of Lieutenant, he married his old playmate. Miss May Parke Custis, the granddaughter of Washington's step- son. Mrs. Lee was an heiress, the Lieutenant was poor, but her pride in him was so great that she decided to live on her husband's small income for a time. Later, when her husband, commanding the Confederates, was struggling to relieve the Southern States of their plight for food, this training of her early married life in economy came in handy. Lee was assigned to the Engineers Corps, and his training ground was in the Mexican War. His services in Mexico, distinguished for personal bravery and strategic ability, secured the opinion of General Scott that he was "the greatest living soldier in America." It was also General Scott, when the Civil War was imminent, who wrote to Lincoln in regard to his selec- tion of a commander of the Union Army, "Let it be Robert E. Lee." His appointment in 1852 as Superintendent of the Academy at West Point lasted three years. At the end of that time he was assigned to active duty on the South- ern frontier with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel of a cavalry regiment organized by Jeiferson Davis, then Secretary of War. In 1859 he was assigned to com- mand a force of marines sent to Harpers Ferry to cap- ture John Brown and his followers. ROBERT E. LEE 21 It is claimed, and sustained in some quarters, that President Lincoln actually offered the command of the L^nion forces to Robert E. Lee. Asserting that Francis Preston Blair, at the instance and request of Lincoln, made him this offer. General Lee says, in a letter of February 25, 18GS (after the war) : "After listening to his remarks, I declined the offer he made me to take command of the army that was to be brought into the field, stating as candidly and as courteously as I could that, though opposed to secession and deprecating war, I could take no part in an invasion of the Southern States." Shortly after this he resigned his commission in the United States Army, declaring he never wished to draw his sword again "save in defense of his native State." Reared from boyhood in the school of thought that believed ardently in States' Rights, that is, in preserving the privilege of any State to withdraw amicably from the Union and rejoin later if it saw fit to do so, Lee supported the secession of Virginia in principle. His father, once Governor of Virginia, had declared in open debate at the Virginia Convention, "Virginia is my country, her will I obey, howevei' lamentable the fate to which it may subject me." It is not surprising that his son, Robert E. Lee, felt the same bonds that tied him to Virginia. On April 23, 1860, he received at the hands of the President of the State Convention, the commission of Major-General of the Virginia forces. Lee's reply of acceptance, spoken extemporaneously, is characteristic of his atti- tude in the face of a crisis. 22 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER "I accept the position assigned me by your partiality. I would have much preferred that your choice had fallen on an abler man. Trusting in Almighty God, an ap- proving conscience, and the aid of my fellow citizens, I devote myself to the service of my native State, in whose behalf alone will I ever again draw my sword." Later, when he became a l^ational figure, and Virginia had been invaded, he became an officer of the armies of the Confederate States. About the military strategy of the Civil War there is nothing to add to the volumes already written. The purpose of the N"orth to bottle up the South, to isolate it from food supply and outside communication, was the broad plan of the campaign. Blockading the ports be- gan with the first shot at Fort Sumter. Lee's attitude toward war, as one of the human dis- asters of the world, was one of tolerance and strategy. He did not share the opinion of some Generals, that war is an indiscriminate assault to the death of one people against another. He prescribed and observed certain fixed modifications of conduct in war. In orders issued January 27, 1863, from his headquarters at Chambers- burg, Pa., Lee defined the restrictions, or rather the ethics, of war. "... No greater disgrace could befall the Army, and through it our whole people, than the perpetration of the barbarous outrages upon the innocent and defense- less and the wanton destruction of private property that have marked the course of the enemy in our own coun- try. ... It must be remembered that we make war only on armed men and that we cannot take vengeance ROBERT E. LEE 23 for the wrong our people have suffered without lowering ourselves in the eyes of all whose abhorrence has been excited by the atrocities of our enemy, and offending against Him to whom vengeance belongeth, without whose favor and support our efforts must prove all in vain." Lee's critics of the years immediately following the Civil War claimed that as a soldier he was not al- ways vigorous enough. He was never known to put a spy to death, and his clemency towards deserters, usually men who were distraught by letters from home full of distressing stories of hunger, was marked. He was a man who declined to mistrust his fellow-man for unfair or unjust conduct. Unquestionably tender-hearted, the General commanding the Confederate Forces was a sol- dier of the old school. He always slept in a tent, for fear of disturbing the occupants of houses he might have used for headquarters. His mind was never wholly in the rage of war; he refused to smother his human instincts toward his "enemies" ; he was keenly susceptible to the duty he owed others. He was devoted to animals, and children disarmed his formality. Standing one day with officers of his staff in the yard of a house on a hill, the enemy lo- cated them and directed a hot fire on them. Suggest- ing that the others take refuge elsewhere, he remained where he was. Watching him, they saw him pick up a young bird, carry it across the yard and put it safely on the limb of a tree. One of Lee's outstanding traits was his piety. His principle as a soldier, in this respect, is revealed in a 24 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER letter he wrote in 1856 : "We are all in the hands of a Kind God who will do for us what is best, and more than we deserve, and we have only to endeavor to deserve more, and to do our duty to Him, and to our- selves. May we all deserve His mercy, His care. His protection." The retreat from Gettysburg and the surrender of Lee's Army at Appomattox were the surrender of a man to his accepted duty. In the closing days of the Civil War, Bishop Wilmer asked him if he was sanguine of the result. "At present I am not concerned with results," re- plied Lee. "God's will ought to be our aim, and I am quite contented that His designs should be accomplished and not mine." The reckoning of his soul with the piety of his con- science was always the calm refuge of Lee in defeat. In his farewell address to his Army he said : "You will take with you the satisfaction that pro- ceeds from the consciousness of duty faithfully per- formed, and I earnestly pray that a merciful God will extend to you His blessing and protection. With an increasing admiration of your constancy and devotion to your country and a grateful remembrance of your kind and generous consideration of myself, I bid you an affectionate farew^ell." The inward agony of the hour of his defeat at Ap- pomattox has only been indicated in a despairing ges- ture, as he left the courthouse after signing the articles of capitulation, and rode silently away. Lee was si- lent in moments of strong emotion. Only a few words ROBERT E. LEE 25 were possible for bim as bis scattered, bareheaded soldiers gatbered about bim as be reached tbem. Tbey climg to bis saddle, to bis stirrups, weeping and crying. "Men, we bave fougbt tbrougb tbe war together. I have done my best for you ; my heart is too full to say more," be said, and rode away. On another occasion when be was inspecting a line of troops drawn up along tbe road, an officer at bis side said, "These are all Vir- ginians, General." Lee removed bis bat, and rode bareheaded, silent, down the line in honor of tbe men. It was more eloquent than words. In tbe aftermath of the Civil War^ General Lee was tbe storm center of all the ill-will and rancor of the period. It was inferred that ho would be indicted for treason by tbe Government. He wrote to Grant stat- ing that be thought tbe officers and men of tbe Army of !N^orthern Virginia were by the terms of their sur- render protected from molestation. Grant instantly te- plied in full agreement with General Lee and went at once to President Johnson and threatened to resign bis own command unless the indictment was quashed. Duty was General Lee's chief summons to action. After the war he urged the healing of all dissen- sions. "I have," he said, ''invariably recommended this course since tbe cessation of hostilities, and bave en- deavored to practice it myself." After declining tbe most alluring offers to adorn some brilliant commercial enterprises where his name would bave garnered the profits. General Lee finally 26 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER accepted the post of President of Washington Univer- sity in Lexington, Va., at a salary of $1500. "If my name is worth $50,000," he said to a pro- moter who desired to attach it, "do you not think I ought to he very careful about taking care of it ?" Duty was his captain, and he obeyed Duty to his last day, October 30, 1870, when he died peacefully in the Lee homestead. ABRAHAM LINCOLN (1809-1865) THE GREAT EMANCIPATOR ABRAHAM LINCOLN ABRAHAM LINCOLN (1809-1865) THE GREAT EMANCIPATOR IT is difficult to imagine in these days of steam heat, elevators, tall buildings, and trolleys what a wil- derness looks like. In the forest lands of any big mountain range, miles and miles away from any house, with no road or path to follow, perhaps one might get an idea of the surroundings in which Abraham Lin- coln, the wonderful man who abolished slavery, lived as a boy. Not that it matters much where a boy grows up, if he is the right kind of a boy ; and though many writers of Lincoln's life have dwelt upon the disadvan- tages of his lack of education and the poverty of his birth, the important fact to remember in it is, — that he was the right kind of a boy from the start. He was so poor that he did not have what we, to-day, consider the necessities of life; but he was a fortunate boy, because he had a strong body, was afraid of noth- ing, could make a joke and take one, and was always ready to see fair-play and justice for himself and others. It may be unfortunate to be born as poor as Abraham Lincoln was, but many poor boys grow up to be rich in deeds for which they are honored. 29 30 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER A log-cabin may not be a very comfortable place, but to Lincoln, as a boy, it wasn't much worse than other wooden bouses in which those Americans lived who had to do the best they could in a wild, sparsely inhab- ited country. Every one had to camp out in those days. Even though it was poverty which forced them to camp out, it was just the best kind of training for a boy who had anything in him. He had some exceptional quali- ties to be sure, qualities which gave him the strength to stand like a human rock of stone and pity against the deluge of blood and passion that sj^ent its force upon him in the Civil War. As a boy and young man he was tireless, courageous, a giant in size and physical strength, and with it all he was modest and would acknowledge a mistake as quickly as he would fight for his rights. Just a bright American boy, was Lincoln, with a kindly character and a sense of humor that grew upon him in young manhood, and lingered even in the trials that beset him in the White House. In one of Lincoln's school books of exercises, in a nice, round, neat handwriting, is his first joke, written when he was about seven years old. He wrote these fair lines of school-boy mischief: "Abraham Lincoln, His hand and pen; He will be good, but God knows when." His mother, ISTancy Hanks Lincoln, was a woman of simplicity and strength. She had married his father ABRAHAM LINCOLN 31 because she loved hinij and when Abe was born, she was living with his father in the poorest kind of a shack in the wildest part of Kentucky. But, even though she may have felt the pinch of poverty, she did her duty towards this boy, tenderly and with the affec- tion of motherhood. She taught him not only to read, but she awakened his imagination with fairy stories and legends that influenced his nature through all his life. His kindness, humor, humanity, and hatred of slavery came from his mother. This last impression was deeply rooted in the boy, inherited with the bit- ter rage his mother had for it. Nancy Hanks hated slavery and sympathized with the slaves she had often seen in bondage, during her girlhood. To Abe, she gave that rich inheritance of humanity and pity, that became his martyrdom years later. Abe used to read anything he could get, but there were five books that were the books on which his mind fastened, which nourished his soul. They were the Bible, "^sop's Fables," "Robinson Crusoe," "Pil- grim's Progress," "A History of the United States," and Weem's "Life of Washington." In themselves these books form an inspiring start in the world. When he got so that he knew these books by heart, and there was no way of getting any more, he would read the "Statutes of Indiana," and find them interesting. He had a habit of copying extracts from these books. His pen was made from the feather of a turkey-buzzard, there being no geese at hand to make quill-pens from, and the ink was made of briar-root. Paper was scarce and expensive, so the boy would scratch away with his 32 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER turkey-buzzard pen and his home-made ink on a board, copying his work on paper later. His slate often was the wooden fire shovel and his slate pencil a charred stick, sharpened. Being a real backwoodsman, at the age of seven Abe could use an ax. He helped build the second log-cabin in Pigeon Creek, Indiana, where his mother died. This was his first sorrow. ISTancy Hanks was a vic- tim of a pestilence that visited the early settlers when Abe was nine years old. He and his sister Sarah waited on their mother during her illness. Just before she died, she placed her hand on Abe's head and said, "Be good to one another." This became the deepest inspi- ration of Lincoln's life, it being his silent prayer for humanity during the trying war days in the White House. "I owe all that I am or hope to be to my sainted mother," he said when he was President. These first years in the wilderness brought out the superior strength and character of a boy, as only hard camp life in the open can. Lincoln reached manhood with this supreme advantage. He was six feet four inches tall. He could lift and carry a weight of six hundred pounds, and he had a sense of humor that made him popular among young and old. He fought his way up the ladder because he was too active to stay at the bottom. The greatest gift Lincoln had was the clearness of his arguments. It was this talent, developed when he was young, discovered in his boyhood almost, that helped him to the front in l^Tational life. It was a gift ABRAHAM LINCOLN 33 he worked hard to achieve. His ability to press home a maxim or a conclusion by some homely figure of speech, some tale that illustrated his point, was a studied art of speechmaking. It was the custom in those early days, before politics became too complicated, for boys to boast that they would some day be ''President." Lincoln, in all his reading, wanted to fit himself for a profession, but in a joking way he used to say, "I'll be President," and when they made fun of him he would answer, "Oh ! I'll study and get ready, and then the chance will come." Part of his "study" was to achieve a clearness of expression, a simple formula with which to drive home his point. He acknowledged how he had been in- fluenced to make this study. "I never went to school more than six months in my life," he said, "but I can say this: that among my earliest recollections I remember how, when a mere child, I used to get irritated when anybody talked to me in a way I couldn't understand. I don't think I ever got angry at anything else in my life, but that al- ways disturbed my temper; and has ever since. I can remember going to my little bedroom, after hearing the neighbors talk of an evening with my father, and spending no small part of the night walking up and down and trying to make out what was the exact meaning of some of their, to me, dark sayings. When I caught the idea, — I repeated it over and over, until I had put it in language plain enough, as I thought, for any boy I knew to comprehend. This was a kind of passion with me^ and has stuck by me." 34 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER By the time Lincoln was twenty-two be left his father's roof, where his stepmother, Sarah Bush Lin- coln, had taken his mother's place and done all she could for him ; and he began his own battle of life — alone. The principal means of conveyance in those days was the water-ways, and families moving from one State to another usually hired a flat-bottomed boat and poled up or floated down the rivers. Lincoln, as a young man, knew the channels, and he piloted many a flat-boat through the Illinois River. For awhile he lived at ISTew Salem, where he had the reputation of being able to beat any one in the country at running, jumping, or wrestling. Here he was taunted by a gang of bullies, led by Jack Armstrong. This resulted in a victorious fight for young Lincoln and was of great importance to his whole life, for it gave him a standing in the community which never left him years later. He had subdued a gang of toughs who had disturbed the whole neighborhood for years, and earned even their respect, for they voted him "the cleverest fellow that has ever broken into the settlement." In New Salem he clerked in a store and, having some time on his hands, mastered the English gram- mar from a textbook which was loaned to him. When he was twenty-three, encouraged by his popu- larity and the probable support of the county, he an- nounced himself as a candidate for the General As- sembly of Illinois. This was all that was necessary. A candidate was expected only to declare his senti- ments with regard to local affairs. He made his dec- ABRAHAM LINCOLN 35 laration in a circular of two thousand words, and wound up his appeal with the modesty that was char- acteristic of him. "Considering, fellow citizens, the gi'eat degree of modesty which should always attend youth, it is prob- able I have already been more presuming than be- comes me. . . . Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. Whether it is true or not, I can say for one that I have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed by my fellow-men by rendering myself worthy of their esteem. ... If the good people in their wis- dom shall see fit to keep me in the background, I have been too familiar with disappointments to be very much chagrined." He distributed these circulars himself. His ac- quaintance with his constituents was promising. They almost adored him for the qualities of character he had already demonstrated. It was these first constitu- ents of his public career who christened him "Honest Abe," a title conferred upon him by the people, which he never outgrew. He failed to get the election, al- though he made a good showing. This was the only time in his life that Abraham Lincoln was defeated by a direct vote of the people. It was by accident that he became a lawyer. He found an old copy of "Blackstone's 'Commentaries' " and devoured it. Discovered one day by his employer, sitting on a woodpile reading a book, he was asked what he was doing there. "I'm studying," replied Abe. "Studyin' what ?" he was asked. 36 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER "Law, sir," was the emphatic reply, which so aston- ished his employer that he left him alone. He was appointed postmaster in 1833, but the reve- nue was so small that he had to do odd jobs, the one he got oftenest being splitting rails. But the oppor- tunities of the postmaster to extend his acquaintance, to enlarge an intimacy in local circles, were great. Political conscience was something Abraham Lin- coln prized very highly, so much so that when John Calhoun offered him the position of deputy surveyor in the State, he went to Springfield to see him. Cal- houn was a Jackson man, Lincoln was a follower of Henry Clay. He refused to accept the appointment if it had any political obligation. When this assurance was given him, the only difficulty in the way was the fact that he knew nothing about surveying. He mas- tered the rudiments of this work in six weeks by work- ing night and day at the study of it. During his sur- veying trips he vastly increased his political advan- tages, by his personality and his fund of good stories that gave him a reputation throughout the country. He would joke with people, tell stories to girls and boys, nurse the babies, — do anything to accommodate anybody. His first stump speech illustrates the homely, sincere, humorous quality of Lincoln as a young man, which mellowed into the splendor of deep feeling in the ora- tory of his later life. It was delivered at a public sale, in a village a few miles outside of Springfield, Hlinois. "Fellow Citizens — I presume you all know who I ABRAHAM LINCOLN 37 am. I am humble Abraham Lincoln. I have been solicited by my friends to become a candidate for the Legislature. My politics are 'short and sweet,' like the old woman's dance. I am in favor of a national bank. I am in favor of the internal improvement system and a high protective tariff. These are my sentiments and political principles. If elected, I shall be thank- ful ; if not it will be all the same." Young Lincoln's ambition at twenty-five was lifted to the highest possible pitch when he fell in love with Anne Rutledge. She was a girl superior in education and inheritance, to himself, and reciprocated his feel- ing; but she died shortly afterwards. Under the in- fluence of her love, he spoke with a fire he had never used before in his campaign for election to the Legis- lature, and was triumphantly elected. After his elec- tion he realized that he could not go to the capital at Vandalia in the shabby clothes he had worn in New Sa- lem. The dilemma was a great joke to him, though, and he went to another joker with his problem. "Smoot, did you vote for me ?" Lincoln asked him. "I did that very thing." ''Well — that makes you responsible. You must lend me money to buy suitable clothing, for I want to make a decent appearance in the Legislature." "How much do you want?" "About two hundred dollars, I reckon." And he received that amount on the spot. Twenty-five years later Abraham Lincoln's fame had reached a National size, and at the Chicago Conven- tion of the Republican Party, in the spring of 18 60^ he 38 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTEB was nominated for President of the United States, in the running with Seward, Chase, and others. Lincoln's notification by the Committee, of his nom- ination, was a very modest ceremony. Perhaps a dozen people were in the street, in front of his house, when the gentlemen arrived. Lincoln's son was astride a gatepost ; his wife, who had been Mary Todd, was busy about the house. They entered the plain, two-story house, and Lincoln listened to the formal announce- ment. His reply was short. Then with great relief, as if the event had been one of much annoyance, he shook hands all round and began to tell a story. The bitterness, the dissension of feeling over the slave question, Lincoln's own positive position as the enemy of slavery, aroused the people of the jSTorthem and Southern States to intense conflict. Lincoln's elec- tion meant the signal of rebellion. Secession began im- mediately following his nomination^ led by South Caro- lina. Seven other Southern States followed. Presi- dent Buchanan, in deference to the Southern men in his Cabinet, did not oppose secession. The problem of preserving the Union was left to Lincoln. He be- gan his career in the White House with the grim spec- ter of a civil war confronting him. In his farewell to his old stepmother, whom he went to see prior to his inauguration, when she feared that he would be assas- sinated, he said: "'No, no. Mother, they will not do that. Trust in the Lord and all will be well; we shall see each other again." His inauguration literally transformed Washington ABRAHAM LINCOLN 39 into an armed camp. There was great fear that he would be killed. The carriage in which Lincoln rode to the Capitol was so closely guarded that it could not be seen by the crowd. Sharp-shooters were on the roofs along the line of mafch. A board tunnel was built, and strongly guarded, through which he could enter the Capitol. He was used to danger, he had faced it all his life. From the date of Lincoln's inauguration to the fatal night of his assassination, April 14, 1865, his life was one of martyrdom for a cause for which he was ready to lay down his life. His fine sense of justice, his forgiveness of enemies and rivals, the self-sacrifice in all the great events of his life, his consideration for others, his humility^ and his unswerving courage in face of danger, were not merely the inheritance of humble origin, but rather the supreme triumph of character sustained with a mighty will and purpose. CHARLES SUMNER (1811-1874) A MARTYR TO HIS PRINCIPLES Courtesy of Mr. Frederick Hill Meserve CHARLES SUMNER CHARLES SUMNER (1811-1874) A MARTYR TO HIS PRINCIPLES ARVARD, in 1826, when Charles Snmner en- tered it, was the same delightful center of am- bition for young aristocrats of learning that it is to-day. There were certain unwritten laws as to de- portment, manner^ and in those days, dress, which have made Harvard the cradle of American gentlemen. Young Sumner always regarded his personal ap- pearance with the utmost care. His clothes took almost as large a share of his attention as his studies, but he had a will of his own which, as a college student, determined his right to a personal liberty in what he wore. This led to a difference of opinion with the fac- ulty, when he was an undergraduate, in which Sumner obstinately stood out for his personal rights, as firmly as he stood out later in the great issues of the Nation, which he defended according to his point of view. There was a generally accepted rule at Harvard that the students should wear white waistcoats. When the tall, noticeably thin young man, Charles Sumner, ap- peared in a buff waistcoat which he prized highly, he was informed that the general regulations demanded that he wear a white waistcoat. Regarding this as an infringement of his personal rights, and having a pride 43 44 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER in this particular waistcoat, he insisted that it was not buff, but a dull white. The young man had a fine sense of color, for he usually wore this fancy waistcoat with a cloak of blue camel's hair, that would have been outraged by a glaring white waistcoat. However, he was told that a buff waistcoat could not be, and never would be, white. He claimed that it was white, ^'or nearly enough so to comply with the rule." He per- sisted in this position and finally carried his point, wearing it in spite of the regulations. He refused to distinguish buff from white. His will was adamant, even then. His will was his dictator all his life. He was a rather self-assertive young man, unbend- ing in his convictions, not interested in sports, or pretty girls, or any other privileges of his student days, except the privilege of study. The light burned at all hours of the night in his room^ where he spent most of his time alone, studying. His friend, Wendell Phil- lips, who was one class below him, remembered these traits of Sumner as a youth. Considering the out- standing place he reached in the critical affairs of the Nation, it is probable that these studious habits formed at Harvard were the source of his distinguished triumphs in the Senate as an orator. Some have com- pared it, in moments of tense National importance, to the eloquence of Daniel Webster. At the time when Charles Sumner was beginning his brilliant career as one of the aristocratic ler.ders of American liberty, two other great men were struggling against poverty, lack of education, and such handicaps as Sumner never had — Horace Greeley, at a printing CHARLES SUMNER 45 case in a little country newspaper in Vermont ; and Abraham Lincoln, a clerk in a country store in Illinois. Sumner was born the same year that Horace Greeley was born, when Lincoln in his infancy was just emerg- ing from the obscurity of the log-cabin in Kentucky. iNot that the superior advantages which the young man enjoyed at Harvard could alone have advanced him to the high position he held in American statesmanship later, for he was a man of superb genius and tremen- dous industry, but he represents a type of man in Amer- ican progress, created and nursed into action by totally different influences than those of Lincoln or Greeley. His father, Charles Pinckney Sumner, was an aus- tere, rather distant sort of man, which his appointment as High Sheriff did not soften. The social and finan- cial success of his later life enabled him to send Charles to Harvard and to surround him with an atmosphere of cultured associates which developed in him an air of leisure and charm of manner that placed him among the dilettanti of his period. He was brought up to regard himself as an aristocrat ; not an arrogant European sort, but a most affable, helpful, kindly type of man, kindly because he felt an assured superiority. Pride of birth and intense self-respect were the benefits of his New England ancestry. Although his father had a family of nine children, of whom Charles Sumner was the eld- est, he left an estate of over $50,000 in his will, which in those days was great wealth. Charles' boyhood was one of ease and comparative luxury, with an education in the superior Latin School and a training at Harvard. Always a champion of peace, it seems odd that when 46 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER he was fifteen he should have wished to enter the Mil- itary Academy at "West Point. New England, especially Boston, has been the cradle of leaders in National life, in literature, in all the de- sirable and important branches of culture. Among Charles Sumner's friends and schoolmates were men who shared public fame with him. Besides Wendell Phillips, were such men as James Freeman Clarke, Robert C. Winthrop, George S. Hilliard. His intellect- ual nursery was among the famous. Daniel Webster, the pride of Massachusetts, knew him well as a boy, and President John Quincy Adams attended his graduation at the Latin School. There was nothing amazing or inspiring in his school days or in his college life at Harvard. He did fairly well all that was expected of him. The first indica- tion that the Puritan blood in him would be the force that governed him in later years was when he was made president of a college temperance society. Socially, he took high rank everywhere in Boston, and in fact through all his life. As a youth he was tall, lean, self- conscious, and shy; as a young man he was delightfully agreeable, always anxious to help others, and indefat- igable in his search for knowledge from others. The young men of his class, nearly a century ago, were in- spired by the bearing and manner of thought of such men as Daniel Webster, whom they met on the street, whose voice they heard often in debate or address. Sum- ner was a particularly ardent admirer of Webster, who had once grasped him by the hand and promised him that "the public held a pledge for him," after listening to CHARLES SUMNER 47 a prize essay the young man had delivered when he was twenty-one. In his youth; Sumner was rather siekly. One of his classmates refers to him in a letter as among the hard students while at Harvard. "Sumner will be a vast reservoir of law, if he lives to be at the bar; which, if you take the bodings of a harsh, constant cough and most pale face, might seem doubtful." Another fellow student writes Sumner: ''Take a country tour — a long pedestrian tour. . . . Give the pallid face a little color, those lean limbs a little muscle, and the brawn of your mind a greater elasticity." And another writes him : "Be careful of your healthy my friend, and the day is not far distant when- I shall have the proud satis- faction of saying that 'Sumner was once my classmate.' " His interest in the theater was aroused by the pep formance of Charles Kemble's daughter, Frances Kem- ble, as "Juliet." She was twenty-one and he was twenty-two. He walked from Harvard Square, every night, to the Tremont Theater in Boston, to see her. But ladies' society never interested him, however, to any alarming degree. A famous beauty once made a bet she would capture him,' and maneuvered to have him take her in to dinner. On the other side of him sat a famous old scholar and Sumner soon forgot her presence in conversation with the savant. The young lady paid her bet, frankly. At the end of four years in Cambridge at the Law 48 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER School, young Sumner returned to his father's home, bursting with scholarship and memorized law, but v/ith- out any definite plans for the future. It was not nec- essary^ for him to work, and for a while he didn't. At the end of this time he became a student in a law oince in Boston, where' he browsed in the excellent law li- brary, doing no drudgery as a copyist, chiefly engaged in long conversation with his learned master. He wrote some excellent contributions to the Jurist, chiefly law essays. Those who knew Charles Sumner in his youth were divided as to whether his career would be in the paths of literature or in the law. He was admitted to the bar in Worcester, Mass., when he was twenty-three. His first visit to Washington, where he later became a dominating figure in the Senate, brought him into contact with Rufus Choate, then in the House of Rep- resentatives ; and he listened to sujch giants as Clay, Webster, Calhoun, in the Senate; and visited the Su- preme Court, when Marshall was Chief Justice. So- cially, also, he was invited everywhere and made a good impression for his evident learning and manly bearing. Sumner was conscious, in his youth, that he would not make a success as a practicing lawyer. With some vague premonition of his future, he had closely studied the tricks of oratory of the great orators in Washing- ton, as his letters indicate. A former classmate, writ- ing to him, shortly after his return from Washington, summed up Sumner's future for him, and his handi- caps. It is interesting because it may have a bearing upon young lav/ students of the present day, who feel CHARLES SUMNER 49 the same hindrances to their success as Sumner did in his youth. "You are not rough shod enough to travel in the stony and broken road of homely, harsh, everyday practice. . . . Instead of looking back with regret to the practice which you are to leave to other spirits touched less finely, and to far less fine issues . . . look forward." The influence of this generous and complimentary advice may have borne fruit, for young Sumner ac- cepted a position as instructor at the Law School, in Cambridge. During the following three years he wrote many articles for the Jurist, and he did literary collaborations with such men as Judge Story, Professor Greenleaf, and Andrew Dunlap, Attorney- General for Massachusetts. This literary drudgery finally affected his health. He had been outdistanced by young men of his period. Wendell Phillips, his schoolmate, became a prominent speaker when Sum- ner was unknown. Robert C. Winthrop and Hilliard, young men of equal education, were already in the Leg- islature when Sumner was twenty-six. These facts may have preyed on him silently, for he took a vaca- tion, and returned improved in health and spirits. Also, he brought back with him some very definite views on the slavery question. Not until he returned from his long-anticipated trip to Europe when he was thirty, did Charles Sumner reach the stride of his great career. He settled down to practice as a lawyer, going punctually to his ofiice in Boston every morning at nine, but for a year or so 50 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER he made no progress. His first articles in opposition to slavery were published in the Boston Advertiser and established his position on the issue. He con- tended that slavery was against National Right, and urged that his friend Longfellow's anti-slavery poems be read the world over. His friendship with Rev. Dr. William Ellery Channing became a great influence, at this time, but it was not until 1845, when he was thirty- four, that he began public speaking on the Lyceum cir- cuits. The first indication of his gift as a public speaker came when he delivered the oration be- fore the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard at its anniversary. It was a tribute to four eminent gradu- ates of the college who had recently died: the Scholar, John Pickering; the Jurist, Judge Story; the Artist, Washington Allston; and the Philanthropist, William E. Channing. These men had all been his personal friends, and there entered into his oration that blaze of feeling that had been too long submerged in the stu- dent of books. He spoke without notes, in a clear, dis- tinct voice, with an easy manner which enchanted his audience. Longfellow made this entry in his journal after hearing the oration : "A grand, elevated, eloquent oration from Sumner. He spoke it with great ease and elegance; and was from beginning to end triumphant." His power as an orator was established from that address, and everything he said or did publif'ly after that was received with profound respect and important attention. He was thirty-five years of age when this happened. His next lecture, "White Slavery in the CHARLES SUMNER 51 Barbary States," which was a subtle reflection on the horrors of slavery, made an impression. Mrs. Han'iet Beecher Stowe, the author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," had an illustrated edition of this lecture by Sumner published. She wrote Sumner after reading it: "It appears to me to be fitted to a high class of mind, just that class which it is exceedingly difficult to meet." Although himself a man with the most careful re- gard for caste, he was among the first to lead the army in the contest against caste feeling. He argued be- fore the Supreme Court the right for colored children to occupy the same schoolrooms with white children. The Court rendered an adverse decision, but the Legis- lature of Massachusetts, a few years later, prohibited separation of the races into different schools. Sumner's attitude as the champion of anti-slavery severed him from his popularity in Boston society. He lost many friends, but his will was supreme. He was often cut in society, and he kept more and more aloof from it. Shut out from homes where he had been welcome, he wrote Longfellow, — "I do feel the desolation of my solitude." His active interests in reform increased, however. He fought the admission of Texas as a State, the Mexican War bill, then* he entered into a controversy with Robert C. Winthrop, a Boston idol, which created further social enmity against him ; but though he felt his ostracism keenly, it did not keep him from doing his duty as he saw it on high moral issues of National importance. He was elected to the Senate when he was forty, after a stormy and bitter campaign. 52 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER Sumner's greatest oratorical effort in the Senate was delivered wlien he was in the prime of life, forty- four years of age. He spoke for two days, the title of the speech being "The Crime Against Kansas." Rage seized the opposition Senators, and the conflagra- tion of hate which Sumner's marvelous eloquence had stirred spread to the Nation. The day following the debate, at the close of the session, Sumner was seated at his desk on the floor of the Senate, writing. A stranger appeared behind him and, before Sumner could rise, made a savage attack upon him with a cane. Sumner was carried bleeding and faint to the lobby, with in- juries from which he never fully recovered. Though elected to the Senate a second term, he was obliged to visit Europe to recuperate his health. In the mean- time, when he was fifty-five, he married the brilliant, beautiful Alice Mosan Hooper. They were divorced later by mutual consent. He died of heart disease, from which he had been suffering some time, in his sixty-third year. Neglected by the Senate, and totally ignored by the Administration, he gradually faded out of the world, having left behind him the glowing em- bers of an intellectual force which brought him the honors he deserved. HORACE GREELEY (1811-1872) AMERICA'S PIONEER NEWSPAPER GENIUS HORACE GREELEY (1811-1872) AMERICA'S PIONEER NEWSPAPER GENIUS THE farmhouse where the Greeleys first lived was in New Hampshire. It was a most attractive place for the children of the neighborhood be- cause they could always go there on dark winter evenings and enjoy themselves. The only light in the big room came from the fire, because candles were too expen- sive. It was heaped high with pine knots that cracked and flared up so that any one could read by it. There by the fireside was usually to be found the smartest boy in the village, Horace Greeley, the boy to whom other children often went for help with their lessons. And round the old-fashioned hearthstone the children would gather, while Mrs. Greeley told them stories or sang the songs they knew and loved to hear. She was always ready for a romp with them and laughed as happily as they did. Horace, whose hair was flaxen and whose skin was fair as a girl's, settled himself on these evenings, as on most other evenings, in a corner close to the fire, reading a book. They might pull him out of his corner by the leg, or hide his book — as they often did — to make him play with them, but he would never get angry. He would laugh 55 56 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER quietly, shake bis head, find his book and go back to his corner where he could go on reading. Most of the older people used to wonder that he never grew tired of reading. But he never did. He got the habit very early in life. He learned his alphabet from a book when he was two years old ; at four he began to read the Bible. By the time he was seven or eight he had read the "Ara- bian Nights" and at eleven years of age he had read all of Shakespeare's works. There was an old retired sea- captain, who lived on a farm near by, who used to lend him books. He always greeted Horace with some question about what he had read. "Well, Horace, what's the capital of Turkey?" he would ask him, or, "What's the biggest river in Amer- ica ?" and Horace never made a mistake in his answers. In school he used to sit on one leg, the other dan- gling idly, indifferent, just as if the teacher's questions were too easy for him. He took pleasure in listen- ing to what the other children said at recitation, and once he was so surprised at a mistake one of them made, that he said out loud, "WTiat a fool !" and then turned crimson with shame. The children all liked him so much that they only laughed, and so did the teacher. Although his father was only a poor farmer, Horace never complained because he couldn't wear fine clothes and have plenty of spending money. If he thought about such things at all, as other children did, he showed no sign of doing so. All his life, even when he be- came a candidate for the Presidency of the United HORACE GREELEY 57 States, he never had time to think about his clothes. His mind was too occupied learn inj^ about things that were much more important ; so that when he was four- teen years old his teacher told his father that there was no use to send Horace to school any more because he knew as much as the teacher. Instead of boasting about it; he was worried to know how he was going to get new books to read at home. He f(jund a way, as he did years later, when he be- came a man and helped the Nation solve the great dif- ficulties of the Civil War and aided in the reconstruction of the States. He went limiting for bees. He used to go bee-hunting so that Ik; could find tlie tree where the bees had all the honey stored away. Tlicn he would sell tlio lioncy, and witli that inoiiey Ik; bought new books from the peddler who came around in a wagon. Little Horace was always a good customer for the book-peddler. He bought the best books he could get — books of j)oetry, romance, history. And he was very fond of newspapers. In his own quiet way, he was always hunting for knowledge and giving it out to those who didn't have it. Of course, he was an unusual boy, because he was always reading, always talking about what he read, even when h(! was chopping wood or hoeing potatoes. Horace Greeley was destined to be the great teacher he became, because he spent his childhood reading about what had happened in the world beyond the little farmhouse at Westhaven in Vermont; and he formed his own ideas of what was going to happen, from the newspapers. Twenty years later, when he became a 58 FAMOUS LEADERS OP CHARACTER great editor, he was able to tell what had happened in politics in his own country when he was a child. Aside from the difficulty his family had to drag him away from the books which he always had in his hand when there were any chores to do, he was a gentle, ami- able, affectionate boy. Every one liked him, for he never got angry. At school he was always chosen as the peacemaker for fights between other boys, and he was so far ahead of them in their studies that he was always willing to help boys older than himself with their lessons. He was a sickly boy, often confined to the house by illness, so that even the sight of rain through the win- dows would make him shiver. This delicacy was not improved by the exposure of driving the horse plow, or hoeing, or driving oxen which, as the son of a poor farmer, he had to do. He was intensely practical, and based the reasons for everything on the principle that two and two make four. The first book he ever owned was the "Columbian Orator," a selection of recitations, which he declared later added nothing to his knowledge or oratory. Be- cause of ill health he couldn't join the rough games of his schoolmates. He became an expert in checkers. In anything that exercised his mind in strategy or logic he excelled. Years later, in 1872, when he was past sixty, he paid a tribute to the little red schoolhouse, in his letter of acceptance of the nomination for President of the United States. "I have a profound regard for the people of that ISTew HORACE GREELEY 59 England wherein I was born," he wrote, "in whose com- mon schools T was taught. I rank no other people above them in intelligence^ capacity and moral worth." His mother, having lost one child, was especially tender and careful of Horace and encouraged him in his childhood love of books. So he spent a great deal of time sitting at his mother's knee while she sat 'spin- ning at her "little wheel." She would have the book open on her lap, and so he took his daily lessons. In this way he learned to read, sideways or even when the book was upside down, which added to his reputa- tion for learning in the neighborhood, though he him- self did not think it very wonderful. The first great sorrow of his life was his parting with a young man who was his school teacher. He was one of the new sort of teachers who never used a rod but governed by appealing to the better impulses of the pu- pils. When li(! left, there was a festival held in the little schoolhouse, at which the parents attended and every one "partook of cider and doughnuts." To a boy as keen and mentally alert as Horace, the period in his childhood, especially in the rural districts, was exciting. It was only thirty years after the Rev- olution, when the freedom of the people in the colo- nies was growing to the great JSTational unity of to- day. There were "crisis" and "fight" in the air, still. The prejudices and hatreds of the Revolution lingered. The matrons of the neighborhood, when they gathered around the open fire in the evening for social pleasure, used to talk and sing. Dancing was not so popular as singing. It was a period of ballads. These ballads 60 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER were the Revolutionary songs^ often love ditties such as ''Cruel Barbara Allen" or a less romantic song of over fifty verses called "American Taxation." Mrs. Greeley's favorite ballads, which she sang with much spirit to Horace, were stirring songs, such as "Boyne Water," "The Taking of Quebec," and "Wearing of the Green," which dated from 1798. These reflections of the J^ational spirit naturally turned his mind to subjects that were puzzling maturer minds, and he found himself further advanced in general information than most children. Admitting that he read a great deal as a boy, he re- gretted that he had been unable to find a book that dealt with agriculture and the natural sciences. While enduring the trials of practical farming, he would have liked to have some definite information in books or from periodicals of advice. There were none to be had in those days. "I know I had the stulf in me for an efiicient and successful farmer," he said, "but such training as I had at home would never have brought it out." His ambitions resented failure in any effort of his life. He saw, when he was thirteen, that there was no future for him in farming ; and when he became a great National figure, he confessed the secret of his entire neglect to pursue his father's career as a farmer. "The moral of my own experience," he said, "is that our fathers' sons escape from their fathers' call- ing whenever they can, because it is made a mindless, monotonous drudgery instead of an ennobling, liberal- izing, intellectual pursuit." Long afterwards it became HORACE GREELEY 61 so and Horace Greeley admitted the improvement, but in 1825 or thereabouts it was a life he wanted to escape from, and did. He had devoured newspapers in boyhood and there- fore, as he approached manhood, his natural ambition was to enter a printing office, to become a journalist, an editor, a publisher. The beginning of his actual career happened when he was thirteen years old and was apprenticed to the printing office of the Northern Spectator, a small country newspaper published in East Poultney^ Vermont. The separation from his home this involved was diffi- cult for him. Up to the last he maintained a stolid air of indifference, but the morning he stood in front of the old farmhouse to bid his parents and his broth- ers and sisters good-b}', he was tempted not to go. During the long walk to East Poultney, eleven miles, he had to force himself not to turn back. This was the boy's first great trial and he was thankful, in after 3'ears, that he kept going straigh-t ahead, once he had started. Horace Greeley never considered the books he read when a boy as the foundation of his success. His ad- vice to the young generation of his own period was this : "To the youth who asks, 'How shall I obtain an edu- cation V I would answer, T^earn a trade of a good mas- ter.' " He never favored a college course for boys. At the end of this four years' apprenticeship he went to visit his parents who had moved to a new farm which his father had bought in Erie County, Pennsylvania. 62 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER He liad come to East Poultney a youthful but confirmed politician of that period when John Quincy Adams was President ; Calhoun, Vice-President ; and Henry Clay, Secretary of State. He left it with a greater ambition for himself, a definite determination that New York was the only place where he could begin such a career. He was in his twentieth year. As a tribute of the re- spect and affection in which he was held by his associates in East Poultney, as he stood on the porch of the little house where he had boarded so long, he was presented with a cast-off brown overcoat (the first overcoat he ever owned) and a pocket Bible. In manhood Horace Greeley regretted that railroads had ''killed pedestrianism." He himself could walk all day, and found it conducive to meditation. His father could cover over fifty miles a day, and Horace himself recalled with pride that he had once walked forty miles at a stretch. Walking was a necessity ol the times when he was young. He often spoke of walk- ing as one of the "cheap and healthful luxuries of life." He never approved of camping parties but ad- vised solitary ramblings in the country. A two-or- three-hundred-mile walk in the calm, clear air of Oc- tober, alone, was one of Horace Greeley's favorite means to health. "Swing your pack and step off entirely alone," he advised. From his father's home in Erie County, Pennsyl- vania, he went straight to Kew York. He had a total capital of ten dollars, a stick, and a few clothes wrapped in a red bandanna handkerchief hanging from it. He himself estimated that he was worth, clothes and all, HORACE GREELEY 63 about eleven dollars. He knew no one, had no friends, and he wasi in New York with personal appearances much against him. His first plan, of course, was to find a place to live. He had landed at the Battery and walking uptown he saw, at the corner of Broad Street and Wall Street, a tavern. He entered the barroom and asked the price of board. "I guess we're too high for you," said the barkeeper, giving Horace a brief glance. "Well, how much a week do you charge ?" asked the odd figure in the little, whining voice peculiar to him. "Six dollars," was the reply. "Yes, that's more than I can afford," and Horace laughed meekly at the temerity of his mistake. He finally found a boarding house on the water front of the North River near Washington Market, run by an Irishman, M'Gorlick. For a week he visited the prin- ters and newspaper pWnting shops without success. On Sunday he heard from a fellow boarder of a job at West's pressroom at 85 Chatham Street. Horace was on the front steps at 5.30 Monday morning. About 6.30 he was joined on the steps by one of the workmen who, being a Vermonter, agreed to help Horace. In the printing shop, while waiting for the foreman, Horace Greeley's appearance excited much laughter and satir- ical comment, but he seemed indifferent to it all. Finally he was put to work. About an hour later, Mr. West, the boss, came in and spied the strange, grotesque figure at once. 64 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER "Did you hire that fool ?" he asked the foreman. "Yes, he's the best I could get," replied the fore- man. "Well," said the boss, "for God's sake pay him off to- night and let him go." His work was so good that at the end of the day they were glad to retain him, and for months he worked on the Testament. In this office he was nicknamed the "Ghost." However, he could talk and work at the typecase too, and the others soon found that he was better informed than they were and listened to him with respect. It was during his employment in Chat- ham Street that Horace bought his first store clothes from a secondhand shop and gave his fellow work- men a treat to see him in black broadcloth and a beaver hat, both of which faded and crmnpled in two weeks. His acquaintance with the New Yorker of the '20s was of great use to him later, for he moved into a board- ing house on the corner of Duane and Chatham Streets and there met some youths who got him into the extrav- agant habit of dining out in a restaurant on Sunday, a novelty in those days. Dining downtown was a new institution. Horace Greeley and his friends patronized a place called the "Sixpenny Dining Saloon," on Beek- man Street, a place much talked of in 1831. After attending the Universalist Church on Orchard Street, Horace and his friends dined downtown. The cost of the dinner was one shilling. So Horace Greeley began humbly his great career in New York. He never overcame a certain awkward- HORACE GREELEY 65 ness of figure, a gaunt pallor, a timidity of maimer that made most people undervalue his power. On New Year's Day, 1832, after doing odd jobs in various printing offices, he secured employment in the attic ofiice where William T. Porter printed The Spirit of the Times. On May 5 appeared the first article written by Greeley to be published in New York, under the nom de plume of "Timothy Wiggins." The outstanding characteristics of Horace Greeley as a printer were industry, fearlessness of opinion, and in- dependence of feeling. Thefee were the dominant fea- tures of the Neiv YorJc Tribune which he later founded. This was not his first editorial venture, however. In partnership with Francis Story, a printer, with a total capital of less than $150, Horace Greeley pub- lished the first cheap-priced daily newspaper in America — The Post. It was intended to be a penny paper, but sold for more. It made its appearance from the little publishing office at 54 Liberty Street on January 1st, 1833, in a snowstorm that developed into a blizzard and crippled the enthusiasm of the boys who had been trained to be the first newsboys in Ameri- can history. It was too cold to carry The Post around, and it made only a slight impression although over a hundred subscribers w^ere served. The venture proved a failure, as Greeley predicted it would be, in- sisting that the only possible price to charge for a daily newspaper was two cents. Before he was twenty-five years old, Horace Greeley issued The New Yorker which he himself described as "a large, fair, and cheap weekly folio, devoted 66 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER mainly to current literature^ but giving weekly a digest of news and political intelligence." In seven years the young editor increased the circulation from a, dozen subscribers to nine thousand. Two years after its first publication, Horace Greeley married and a year later, 1837, practically bankrupt by the commercial slump of that year, he went through a period of torment. "I would rather be a convict in a State prison, a slave in a rice-swamp, than to pass through life under the horror of debt," he wrote^ remembering this period of depression. It was in this year that Martin Van Buren was in- augurated President. Greeley's work as editor of The New Yorker had brought him into political life and he was offered a nomination in the City Assembly but declined it. By degrees, however, the name of Horace Greeley became famous as a man- of individual courage and sound views of National liberty. After fifteen years of valuable experience in making news- papers he issued the monument to his intellectual su- premacy, which -still sui*vives long after him — the New Yorh Trihune. He was proud of the association with him in the Trihune of Henry J. Raymond, who accepted his offer to hire him "at eight dollars a week," until he could do better. Greeley was a man who refused to compromise his views. He has confessed his impulsive shifting of con- victions by stating that it never interfered with the suc- cess of the newspaper. At the end of his life he summed it up in the clear. HORACE GREELEY 67 exact, fearless vision that he demonstrated even as a boy. "Fame is vapor, popularity an accident, riches take wings ; the only earthly certainty is oblivion ; . . . and yet I cherish the hope that the journal I projected yes- terday will live and flourish long after I shall have mouldered. ..." Greeley's political life was stormy. He served three months in Congress, was nominated for President, and defeated. His opposition to slavery in the brilliant editorial conduct of the Tribune was in support of President Lincoln. He was a protectionist, which, he admitted towards the end .of his life, was one of his ideals in boyhood. "From early boyhood I sat at the feet of champions of this doctrine," he said. His attitude towards the great political and Na- tional issues that confronted him in later life was dis- passionate. This analytical habit of mind was estab- lished in childhood, for he says, discussing his political convictions, "The arguments which combated (protec- tion) seemed to me far stronger than those they ad- vanced." Horace Greeley's advice to the ambitious young man becomes a suitable, if brief, lesson of his own hard experience. "The best business you can go into," he said, "you will find on your father's farm or in his workshop. If you have no family or friends to aid you, and no pros- pect open to you there. Go West^ and then build up a home and fortune. But dream not of getting sud- denly rich by speculation, rapidly by trade, or anyhow 68 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER by a profession. . . . Above all be neither afraid nor ashamed of honest industry, and if you catch yourself fancying anything more respectable than this, be ashamed of it to the last day of your life." WENDELL PHILLIPS (1811-1879) THE SILVER-TONGUED ABOLITIONIST WENDELL PHILLIPS (1811-1879) THE SILVER-TONGUED ABOLITIONIST A TALL, athletic, aristocratic youth was comfort- ably sprawled out ou a sofa, reading. It was early in October. His study- window was open but the usual noises of the street did not disturb him. To have looked at him then, no one would have sus- pected that he was contemplating a life of saeriiice, of danger, of heroic devotion in support of the negro race. Every one who counted for anything in Boston, in those remarkably brilliant days of its intellectual awakening, knew this young man. lie was extremely good looking, always dressed in the best of style, and being intelligent, well informed above the average, held a popular and leading position among the younger set "on the Hill," in Boston. His father had Ikhmi the first Mayor of Boston, and he himself had biHMi graduated from Har- vard, and was making a start as a lawy(>r. The house in which he was born, on the corner of Beacon and Walnut Streets, was one of the mansions of that period. In 1834, when Boston was not such a big city, the streets were probably less noisy than they are now, and tht> traffic, being entirely by horse-driven vehicles, may not have been as loud as the confused blare of auto- 71 72 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER mobile whistles and horns one has become accustomed to to-day. At any rate, there was nothing which dis- tracted this young man from the book he was reading. If he knew that a meeting of kind and courageous ladies was to be held that afternoon in a hired hall to pass resolutions of sympathy lamenting the abuses of slavery, it had escaped his mind. He was not pro- foundly interested in the tragic fate of the negro slaves at that time. No one suspected that he had anything but the usual impressions of his class, that slavery was an inherited condition of the times, that no gentleman of the ISTorthern or Southern States could question the right of any man to buy and sell negro slaves. The Government had indorsed this right to its citizens! There was a severe penalty in case a negro slave escaped and was assisted in doing so by any other slave-owner or by any other man at all. A few peo- ple had dared, in the face of public opinion against them, to express their views against what they consid- ered an uncivilized system but those people were not in the majority. It was a dangerous thing, in fact, to talk anti-slavery arguments anywhere in Boston, any- where in America, in 1834. If this fortunate young scion of a Beacon Street family had any such notions about the injustice of slavery as an institution, he had shown no signs of them among his friends or his college mates. In fact the whole tendency of any Harvard graduate, at that time, was to accept slavery as a fixed law of the land. Suddenly, there was an unusual noise in the street. The roar of men's angry voices, the scuffling of feet, the WENDELL PHILLIPS 73 crash of glass, and a few words spoken louder than the rest sounded as if some one in authority were trying to tell the noisy crowd to be calm. He couldn't see what was going on from the window so he hurried out to find out what all the row was about. What he saw stirred his fighting blood, of which he had a generous store. A crowd had seized a man and was pushing and mauling and beating him with sticks, kicking him, with no apparent certainty of direction. Judging by a rope they had thrown over his neck^ they intended to hang him. While the narrow street be- came more and more choked with the gathering crowd, he noticed that many of them were acquaintances and friends. It was not a mob of roughs, it was made up of men, young and old, socially well known. He gath- ered from the disjointed shouts, the names they were hurling at the unfortunate man, that he was an aboli- tionist, an anti-slavery speaker. He realized at once, too, that he must be no ordinary street agitator to at- tract this crowd of Boston gentlemen against him. He saw the Mayor himself trying with gesture to stop the progress of the crowd, but he did not hear him au- thoritatively order it to disperse. His chief impres- sion was that this disorderly conduct in the streets of Boston, whatever the cause, was an unseemly incident. There must have been a thousand men, wearing expen- sive broadcloth, in that angry mob. "What's the man's name ?" he asked. "Garrison, the dirty abolitionist ; hanging is too good for him," was the reply. He knew who William Lloyd Garrison was, had read 74 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER copies of his famous emancipation journal, The Lib- erator, knew that in the South it was denied the mails. Joining the mob, pushing his way with them towards the City Hall, his resentment at the odds against one man broke forth. With great indignation he pushed his way to the side of the Mayor, ]\Ir. Lyman, whom he saw was doing nothing to command order; and spying the Colonel of his militia regiment, the Suffolks, he said to him : "Colonel, why don't you call out the guards? Let's offer our services to the Mayor, to restore order." "Don't be a fool," said the Colonel. "Look around you. The whole regiment is here, but not in uni- form!" The young man, heretofore absorbed in Greek and Latin, in history and classics, in eulogies of brave men of heroic martyrs, suddenly realized that here was a tragedy as horrible, an injustice as flagrant, as any he had read of in his studies. The outrage against a defenseless man was upper- most in his mind, at first, and then as his keenly trained intelligence sifted the cause, penetrated the underly- ing reasons of such mob violence, he pledged himself to the great issues of anti-slavery^ as in a far loss vigor- ous way his old friend and classmate, Charles Sumner, did later in the Senate; that which the martyr of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln, finally achieved in his Emancipation Act. This incident was the begimiing in history of Wendell Phillips, who, when lie was a young man, at twenty- four years of age, could find no greater purpose in WENDELL PHILLIPS 75 life than to convert his fellow-men to his own deep, pas- sionate, unswerving acknowledgment that all men are free and equal. At college he had given indications in debate of ex- ceptional gifts in pnblic speaking, which were com- mended in him. It was expected that this talent would go far in making his success in the courts. No one ap- parently had any suspicion that deep in the character of this fashionable young man of wealth and genius there lay the elements of a reformer. His training at home had been Spartan, in the sense that every one in the household had been brought up to the Puritan gos- pel of mutual aid and divison of labor. Equality had been the ambition of the Colonials, and it had become the gospel of the Constitution. The assault on Garrison in the streets of Boston was the beginning of what was termed the "revolutionary" impulses of Wendell Phil- lips. It has been said there was a still deeper influence which came almost simultaneously into his life, the in- fluence which, inspired by romance and love, fastened him irredeemably to the career he adopted. This was his meeting with Anne Terry Oreene, the daughter of a wealthy shipping merchant of Boston, whom he married. She, too, was at heart an abolitionist, and after her marriage she became an ardent friend of all anti-slavery movements and a philanthropic aid to Lloyd Garrison in his purposes. Charles Sumner was to have gone with Phillips when he met Miss Greene for the first time, to escort her and a girl friend on a stagecoach party. Young Sumner had been invited to occupy the attention of the friend, while Phillips 7G FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER devoted his to his future wife. Sumner didn't go, be- cause of a snowstorm. "I wouldn't go for a stage ride with any woman on a day like this," he said, and went back to bed. Phillips, however, was not so easily di- verted from a plan he had made. He had been warned that she was "the cleverest, loveliest, most brilliant young woman" he could want to know, and that he must guard himself against being "talked into the ^sin of ab- olition/ before suspecting what she was about." They were married when Phillips was twenty-six, in the critical year of his life when he delivered his first public speech in Faneuil Hall in Boston. He always said after they were married, "My wife made an out- and-out abolitionist of me ; and she always preceded me in the adoption of the various courses I have ad- vocated." In fact it was a condition of her acceptance of the young man, that he should be the friend of anti- slavery. It was a risk to put such a condition to Wen- dell Phillips, or to any of the young men in his own set, but he pledged himself to the conversion, for he confessed in later years that he held up his hand and declared to her in the nature of an oath^ "My life shall attest the sincerity of my conversion." It was during his engagement that he met Garrison. They were perhaps the two foremost influences, prior to the Civil War, in urging the freedom of the slaves. Garrison had compelling attractions for Phillips. He admired the courage with which this man had fought his way up without education, money, or friends ; whereas he himself had been fortunate in possessing all these requirements of a leader. WENDELL PHILLIPS 77 "Wendell Phillips saw also, of course, that he was hazarding all these social values in his own life. His fortune and his friends, that had made life so full of promise and success to him, must he sacrificed. The strength of character which ultimately made of him one of the great emancipators of the negro was due to his faith in divine providence and his profound attachment to his wife. Por many years, from shortly after their marriage, Mrs. Phillips was an invalid, confined to her room, and during that time he grew old in sacrifices of service and attention. It is said she never grew old but retained the charm and impulses of her girlhood through trying years of illness. Having cast aside his worldly career, in the open avowal of his pledge to the cause of anti-slavery, Wen- dell Phillips found himself compelled to exert all the natural powers of eloquence and the fighting powers of courage to overcome the hatred and mob violence that menaced his life as an abolitionist. He consecrated himself to the cause much earlier in life than Sumner did, and with greater fearlessness of action. His ideal- ism was not merely a matter of fine dreams, it was the active, dangerous occupation of facing angry, vicious mobs and controlling them with the skill of oratory, the gift of voice and gesture. Wendell Phillips might have made a great actor. As a child he used to play at pre- tending he was one, dressed up in clothes found in the attic, giving performances with his playmates to the ambient air. His father once found him expounding a sermon, standing on a chair and talking to the empty chairs in front of him. 78 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER "Isn't that rather hard on you ?" his father asked him, amused. "1^0^ but it's rather hard on the chairs," said the child whimsically. His first plunge from the safety of his previous life in Boston into the turbulent current of what his friends regarded as the "dirty water of abolition" was made in a speech at a meeting of the much threatened, often abused Anti-Slavery Society held in Lynn, Mass. It was only a few months before his marriage. He was immediately recognized as a great acquisition to the cause and acclaimed as an orator. A year later he found himself standing in the crowd at Faneuil Hall, during a Nation's meeting of the aboli- tionists. Already penal legislation had been urged, with the punishment of hanging for agitators of anti- slavery. There were other great men, however, who, in the interest of maintaining a spirit of universal free- dom in the country, appeared on the platform at these meetings. Dr. Channing was one of these and spoke. The preliminary addresses were approaching resolu- tions condemning mob organizations in the streets when James T. Austin, the Attorney-General of State, jumped up and from his place in the gallery attacked the motives of the meeting and so successfully stirred the opposition in the hall that a mob outbreak was imminent. Phillips, standing with the crowd, said that some one ought to answer the Attorney-General, and he him- self was urged to do it by a man near him. "I will, if you will help me to the platform," he re- WENDELL PHILLIPS 79 plied. But he didn't reach it. He stood up on a stool and began at once to speak without introduction. An effort was made to stop him but he stood his ground, appealing to the sense of justice and fair-play. Without time to consider what he should say in reply to an unexpected attack, he completely reversed the stampede intended for that meeting and restored the better sense of the crowd. It was a great triumph of oratory and self-command, which happened frequently in the public campaign Wendell Phillips led so many years. It was the comments in the prcss^ the sensa- tional arguments this speech aroused, that notified his former friends in Boston that he had chosen a career of dangerous agitation and reform. These meetings, held in winter, were warmed only by the heated eloquence of the speakers, as the follow- ing reporter's note, published at that time, reveals: ^WHien it is considered that the reporter was taking notes in a room without fire or seats, and that the thermometer was below zero, that his paper was full, and all pencils he could borrow used up, he humbly begs to be forgiven for the remainder of the remarks," — made after the sixth speaker had been heard. In his speeches, which were always extemporaneous, Wendell Phillips had extraordinary magnetic power over the mob spirit. Once when he was facing an infu- riated mob, in New York, one of the leaders cut a cur- tain rope and shouted that they would hang him. "Oh ! wait a minute," said Phillips, smiling, "till I tell you this story." His bravery was supremely heroic. General Miles 80 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER was once asked what was the bravest thing he ever saw. The general replied that it was the speech delivered by Wendell Phillips in the Boston Music Hall, to a mob of two thousand people howling for his blood. At the end of the speech Wendell Phillips left the hall, unmo- lested, and went home. The best years of his life were given to the cause of unconditional abolition. He was a preacher, a cru- sader against a ISTational evil, a young man who dared anything to stir the torpid indifference of Americans to the monstrous features of slavery. By unrestrained speech he aroused the people, at the risk of his own life. His gift was that of an orator, his eloquence that of an inspired reformer. While he saw that his country declared for freedom, he also saw that there were in- justice, inhumanity, National inconsistencies. Wendell Phillips was the organizer of the Boston Anti-Slavery Society. He opposed the annexation of Texas; he openly deplored Kossuth's silence about slavery; he opened the public schools to colored chil- dren; he defended John Brown at Harpers Ferry; he recommended "ballots instead of bullets," in anti- slavery conflict ; he supported Lincoln — in fact, he created public opinion all his life. He declined several offers to run for Congress in later years, but contin- ued, a friendly, benevolent, and philanthropic man, to criticise National issues and famous men to the last. EDWARD EVERETT HALE (1822-1909) PREACHER, ORGANIZER, AND AUTHOR From " The Life and Letters of Edward Everett Hale, llale. Jr., published by Little, Brown & Company EDWARD EVERETT HALE Edward Everett EDWARD EVERETT HALE (1822-1909) PEEACHEB, ORGANIZER, AND AUTHOR AS Edward gone to school?" asked Mr. Nathan Hale, his father, one morning in November in the year 1827. ''Goodness, yes, — why do you ask ?" said his mother, looking very prim, and slender, and sweet in her simple Quaker gray dress. "Nothing. Only Edward seems to be growing pretty fast, haven't you noticed ?" his father said as he smiled. "Edward's a little like me, I think," said his mother. "Yes, it must be so. What the boy said to me yes- terday was certainly not like me. He'll never make a teacher." "What was it he said ?" the mother asked. "Well, when I asked him how his school was getting along, he looked up at me in that way he has, and he said, 'Well, Father, I may as well tell you first as last, that school is a bore.' I remonstrated with him; told him that was not the way to feel about an education, and he said, 'Oh ! I don't hate school so much, I just dislike it, it's a necessary nuisance.' " Edward's mother laughed a little as she went back into the kitchen, while her husband put on his hat and 83 84 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER started for the office of the Boston Daily Advertiser, which he owned. Edward was then about six years old and his ideas about education at that age may not be important, but, since he became one of the great writers and preachers of the world, it is evident that his character developed early in his life. Never, when he grew up, and years and years afterwards recalled his school days, did he alter his opinion of school. "I disliked it, as I disliked all schools," he said, "but here again I regarded the whole arrangement as one of those necessary nuisances which society imposed on the individual, and which the individual would be foolish to quarrel with when he didn't have it in his power to abolish it." Strangely enough, he never thought that those ten or twelve years he spent going to school did him much good. He acknowledged only one advantage, and that was what he learned in declamation. He hated to re- cite in class, as many boys do, and he never got a good mark for public speaking in school or college, but he ad- mitted that was the most useful thing he learned. "The exercise of declamation," he wrote in after years, "did what it was meant to do, that is, it taught us not to be afraid of an audience." He was a boy in advance of his years, for he entered Harvard at the age of thirteen. But education at school and college was not the chief value that Edward Everett Hale cherished most of all in his memory. The broad, big-hearted sympathy with every human phase of life was fastened on him by the atmosphere of his home. EDWARD EVERETT HALE 85 His father and mother had very much the same impres- sions as he had of schools and colleges, and they made every effort to allow every one in the family the utmost freedom of opinion. It was a home where every one had an equal right with the other, and this fine strength of individual liberty of thought and action made the home a natural center and refuge. It was the real center of the boy's character which later became the distinguished force it will always be in the history of I^ew England. There were many children, eight in all, and they all lived their own lives in that delightful home in Boston. They were not petted, or scolded, or argued with, but encouraged to occupy themselves just as they wished. They were especially urged to bring their friends home with them. Playthings were not put in the nursery, but Edward, having a mechanical turn of mind, when he was a boy was given materials from which he could manufacture toy locomotives. There were all sorts of materials prepared for boys at that time, with which they could build things for themselves. With his elder brother Nathan, he was fond of making experiments in chemistry, following such formulas as were given them in juvenile magazines. Best of all, however, they liked to go to their father's printing office and learn to set type. Kathan, being the older boy, was the leader. Like Robinson Crusoe, he was always in search of cur- ious adventure, and Edward was inseparable from him as Crusoe's good man, Friday. Then there were church and Sunday School on Sunday. In those days, in Bos- ton, at least, children were expected to learn a great deal about the Scriptures. It was a serious study. 86 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER "Fully one lialf of the important instruction whicii I now have with regard to the Scriptural history of man- kind was acquired in the Brattle Street Sunday School, before I was thirteen/' wrote Edward Everett Hale after he became a minister himself. Besides church and house gatherings, there was danc- ing school, which led to evening parties when the chil- dren grew old enough to stay up later than nine o'clock. And there were lectures to go to in the evening, as popular in Boston then in 1830 as the movies are now. Literary ambitions were uppermost in Edward's mind as a boy, and he did a great deal of writing then in blank-books carefully ruled so that the writing would > keep on straight lines. His father being the publisher and editor of the Daily Advertiser, the boys drifted naturally into a fancy for journalism and a knowledge of the printing business. The boys could set type in their teens. They wrote and printed books and a news- paper for themselves. They even started a library of their own books, which they called the Franklin Circu- lating Library, The books were very small, really only booklets three or four inches square. These books con- tained versions of fairy stories. Edward published in this way a poem about "Jack and the Beanstalk" writ- ten for him by his mother. One of the home news- papers, a little sheet only four by four inches, was called The Fly. He entered Harvard at thirteen because his father be- lieved in going to college as soon as possible. Both the boy's uncles having gone to Harvard when they were younger, Edward was merely fulfilling the traditions of EDWARD EVERETT HALE 87 his family. Also, his older brother, to whom he was deeply attached, had been in Harvard a year and Ed- ward missed him very much. In college, the brothers occujDied the same room. This separated him from his Ereshman classmates, because he lived with a Sopho- more. He was not happy at Harvard, however". "I am always counting the weeks to vacation," he wrote later, "the first four weeks always seemed to me interminable." His first day at college was one of "deadly homesick- ness." Still he learned his classics and modern lan- guages at Harvard, which stayed with him through his long life. He was a good cricket player and in winter was always getting up sleighing parties. He made some mark at Harvard in literature, being the class poet at his graduation, and was graduated second on the list. Of this poem he wrote in his diary, immediately after it was finished : ^'It has convinced me of what I knew perfectly well before, that I am not, nor ever was, a poet or have I ever had the least claim to the title." Still, the literary side of the man was always predominant. It came chiefly from his mother, whose brother, Alexander Everett, was editor of the North Americayi Bevieiv. After his graduation Edward began his studies for the ministry, at the request of his mother, and lived in the old home in Boston, a place frequented by the younger literary men of the time, notably James Russell Lowell, who had been graduated from Harvard a year before. Economy of time became a habit. He found that he had begun many books that he never finished, so he made 88 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER a rule never to allow himself more than five books to read at a time. He divided them into "Professional, 2 ; — Informative, 1 ; — Languages, 1 ; — Light reading, 1." He tried hard to maintain this schedule but it was often interrupted, "It seems melancholy to think how my time is an- nihilated by those abominable diversions called evening parties," he writes in his diary. He spent his evenings conscientiously reading and re- sented the interference of society. Yet his was one of the representative families, the bluest of blue blood. His uncle, his mother's brother, after being Governor of Massachusetts, was American Minister to England. Six or seven years followed the graduation from Har- vard, with no other progress towards the ministry than reading much, traveling, and ample leisure for concerts and dances. And yet, l^ew England during this time was stirred up by the new theories of Ralph Waldo Emerson, which came into being in America at the same time as the doctrines of Carlyle and Goethe. These in- tellectual events young Hale viewed without interest, and Emerson he did not like at all. He said after hearing Emerson the first time, "It was not very good but very transcendental." Later he wrote in his diary, "Mr. Em- erson's stock of startling phrases concerning soul, mind, etc., is getting exhausted, and I think his reputation will fall accordingly." In everything young Hale read, after he left college, he always kept in view certain definite impressions he had formed on religion. Though it was his purpose eventually to be a minister, these years immediately EDWARD EVERETT HALE 89 after college were spent in absorbing all kinds of liter- ature rather than in reading up for a special denom- ination of religious feeling. He kept a diary which faithfully shows the practical strain of his mind. There is less record of what he did or thought than there is of what books he read and lectures he heard. His opinions, which are criticisms, reveal that he read with a keen sight on the value of the matter rather than on the fame of the author. His interest in politics was chiefly the reflection of his father's impressions, who, being the editor of the Daily Advertiser, was naturally occupied with them. Of course, during these "reading years," he wrote articles for his father's newspaper, chiefly descriptions of trips he made. His father being President of the Boston and Worcester Railroad, travel- ing was possible on passes. Theology, however, oc- cupied most of his thoughts. When he was away from home he made it a rule to write his mother a letter every other day. "I am fond of laying down a rule of one letter every other day to the family wanderers when I am at home," he wrote his mother once. The Divinity School, of which he knew something, did not please him. He objected to what he called the "divinity drawl," a manner of delivery in preaching which did not come up to his conceptions of the ideal in preaching. On his nineteenth birthday he writes in his diary this unusual sununing up of his own character : "I am nineteen years old, and all day I have been thinking more of the future than I often do. Another 90 FAMOUS LEADEES OF CHARACTER year I shall have begun to devote myself to my profes- sion, a profession the proper preparation for which I think no one understands — I am sure I do not myself, I shall be obliged to take the responsibility of preparing myself for its solemn duties very much in my own way. . . . God made me^ I believe, to be happy, and placed me here that my powers might be developed and im- proved and so fitted for a superior state of existence. As for ambition I have less and less of the school-boy stamp of it every day that I live." The following year he preached his first sermon in a church in Newark, ]^. J. His mother, writing of the event, said: "I feel as if there were something appalling almost in one so young — twenty years — who was but the other day an infant in my arms, standing forth in such a position." Writing about his experiences himself he said, ''I am satisfied that I embarked on the profession too young, . . . for I feel younger and younger^ less and less ex- perienced every day that I preach." Gradually specific influences moulded the course of his character. After being impressed by a sermon he heard, he decided, 'Tor myself then — I must set up the study of Christ. For my action in the world I start on this; that the world can and shall be made less selfish." He kept this resolution, developing it to the highest force in his character. "One does make a mistake in working too much for the future," he said. ''Use time as holy time ; but not EDWARD EVERETT HALE 91 on the immense scale of beginning a series of operations worth less than nothing if no to-morrow or no next year comes from their completion." He became pastor of the Unitarian Church in Wor- cester, Massachusetts, when he was twenty-four, and there he developed the religious laws of his requirements as a minister. These were the direct outcome of his broad, practical, sympathetic character. When he had spent ten years in Worcester he was called to the South Congregational Church in Boston where he remained till he died. Edward Everett Hale's supreme claim to the memory of succeeding generations is the application of his char- acter to the service of others. He organized his church as a social factor, and was concerned not merely with the people of his congregation, but with every one with whom they came in contact. He was not satisfied with merely giving the members of his congregation spiritual counsel on Sundays, he had a personal guiding interest in the activities of their lives. He established a repu- tation of helpfulness outside his church as well. He was always accessible to assist strangers in Boston who had no social standing to bring to the community, whether it consisted of getting work for them so that they could live or giving them such associations as would make their lives happier. Although he was himself an individualist, he fully recognized that life was a thing we all must share in common. His industry, his syste- matic array of notebooks containing complete records of his church organizations and the people in them, in themselves representing an immense labor, were merely 92 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER the ordinary run of his duties as a minister. Besides his sermons, he was a prolific author of poetry, short stories^ essays, and magazine articles of all sorts. His charity was a ceaseless drain on his strength also. Such items as this reveal Mr. Hale's character : "George Brown comes out of prison next Monday. I have promised to meet him there and see him to his home." All his work was a personal application of his own judgment and sympathy towards people, rather than the institutional character of church work. Without knowing it he exerted an individual power, believing he was leading others to accomplish that which his own per- sonality alone achieved. His energy was nothing less than the bubbling enthusiasm in life, and people, and books, that never deserted him. After a trip to Europe when he was nearly forty, he returned to his church in Boston to find the Civil War imminent, with the election of Lincoln. He was an abolitionist, an organizer of the Emigrant Aid Society of 'Rew England which planned to colonize Kansas free lands for slaves. He plunged into the excitement and passion of this epoch with great zeal. His name as a broad-minded, humane, original-thinking minister had spread, and he was in great demand as a speaker and writer on the National issues of the war. Out of this intensity of feeling came the story that became one of the masterpieces of short fiction, "The Man Without A Country," which was as great an influence in stirring feeling against slavery, as "Uncle Tom's Cabin." This story spread the fame of the author both as a writer and EDWARD EVERETT HALE 93 as a man of deep convictions which the North supported. It was subsequently translated into many languages. Magazines, in those days, did not print the author's name on stories, so this little classic appeared under the signa- ture of Frederick Ingham. He was an all-round man, this fellow Ingham ! He wrote many economical and political articles. He could write anything a magazine wanted, on any subject. The author describes "Ing- ham's" work in a private diary : "If it were his duty to write verses, he wrote verses ; to lay telegraph, he laid telegraph ; to fight slavers, he fought slavers ; to preach sermons, he preached sermons ; and he did one of these thing with just as much alacrity as the other, the moral purpose entirely controlling such mental aptness or physical habits as he could bring to bear." On his seventy-fifth birthday, Edward Everett Hale, referring to a toast at a banquet, said of an editor, "He pleased me by squarely recognizing the truth that I considered literature in itself worthless and that my literary work has always had an object." That work was enormous. The list of his books alone is over 150, and the list of articles, essays, sermons, and other literary output has never been com- pletely made. In his writing Edward Everett Hale developed ideas and then encouraged their application to practical events in daily life. His short story, "Ten Times One is Ten," contains the principles that were the underlying motif of his religious life — the gospel pel of brotherhood. He "builded better than he knew," when he wrote this story. Its conception was in his 94 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER mind when he was thirty, though he never wrote it till he was nearly sixty. The object of the story was to show how one good life could inspire another. It led to the spreading of the organization of the "Lend a Hand" movement, societies all over the country pledged to mutual helpfulness. The religion behind these organizations was no more inspiring than the four lines which defined its purposes. These were the mot- toes of the "Lend a Hand" Clubs : "Look up and not down, Look forward and not back, Look out and not in. Lend a hand!" The first "Lend a Hand" Club was organized in New York among some street boys, to whom Miss Ella E. Russell read the story. When other societies grew all over the country they wrote to the author of the idea for further inspiration. He always advised them this : "The less fuss and feathers the better. The idea is that such a club should be made up of unselfish peo- ple, who meet, not for 'mutual improvement,' but with some definite plans for other people." This was the purpose of his life. All his lectures, his letters when a boy and a young man, his sermons, his literature, enlisted that spirit of organizing with definite plans to help other people. The "Lend a Hand" idea was the crystallization of the spiritual identity of Edward Everett Hale, the literary, philan- thropic, religious leader of the nineteenth century. It made him the pioneer in such outstanding Christian EDWARD EVERETT HALE 95 movements as the Ciiristian Endeavor Society, the Ep- worth League, Young People's Religious Union, the Girls' Friendly, King's Daughters, and many others. Towards the close of his life, he said in a short re- view: "I have written many books, but I am not an author. I am a parish minister. I don't care a snap of my finger for the difference between Balzac and Daudet. That is not important in my life. I do care about the classes of men who migrate to this country." LELAND STANFORD (1824-1893) GREAT PIONEER OF THE WEST LELAND STANFORD (1824-1893) GREAT PIONEER OF THE WEST S the years accumulate between the living man herewith remembered, who died in 1893, and the memories of his life, the chief lesson of that life becomes clear — foresight. That is the useful, practical lesson to be learned from the career of Leland Stanford, To some, he was a financier ; to others, a successful promoter; to others, that ever questionable human being, a rich man. The deeper qualities of his nature, the simplicity, modesty, sincerity and kindness which many acts of his life show, are not widely as- sociated with his name. In fact there exists no biog- raphy of him, doubtless because he himself did not en- courage the notion. His memory is reduced to a brief sketch in the encyclopedia among men who have left a mark that stretches into future generations. There are three things he accomplished, in the short seventy years of his life, that explain his right to an important place in the world's history, particularly in American history. First — He organized and built the Central Pacific Railroad, so completing a connecting thread with the Pacific and Atlantic. Second — He exerted brilliant and loyal energies as 99 100 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER Governor of California, in 1861, to sustain Lincoln and the Union. Third — He built and gave to the country the Leland Stanford Jr. University, a gift inspired by the death of his son when a boy of fifteen, mingled with a dom- inating impulse of his life to contribute something use- ful and practical to the world, for the future. He was usually building something — for to-morrow. What he had accumulated yesterday was only to improve that purpose. His impulse was — foresight. ]^ot a spectacular man, for although he became ex- tremely wealthy, and was twice elected to the United States Senate, he made no impressive speeches, adorned no heroic event. A slow-thinking, deliberate, consci- entious, plain sort of man all through, and yet with a dynamic force in him that swayed other men. His chief sport was horse racing. He owned some famous beauties of the track, of his day. A man's man in every sense of the word, — and a self-made man in the sense that he became one of the "Argonauts" of California who accumulated stupendous fortunes in the West of the gold-fever period. It was not a sudden mining speculation, as it was with so many adventurers in the West during that gold excitement, that brought him wealth. He didn't strike ore in great quantities overnight, as some others did. There were no miracles of chance that might add a touch of picturesque adventure to his life. Leland Stanford was a man of quiet, slow, careful methods, a business man. He had an imagination that foresaw many things, and he encouraged these visions of the future, but he kept LELAND STANFORD 101 them harnessed to practical, sane uses. His imagina- tive faculties were not indulgences, they were the sup- ports of his practical plans. The character of the man may be the result of boy- hood environment, or may not be. There are many who claim that the impressionable years of a boy's life fasten deep upon the impulses and habits of manhood. Leland Stanford was born on a farm in the fertile hills of Central New York, about eight miles from Albany. The small settlement, — small at that time in 1821 — was called Watervliet. He always claimed chiefly English ancestry, though there was a decided Irish mixture from his father's side of the family. His mother was of old Puritan, New England stock closely related to the direct descendants of the early "May- flower" colonists in Massachusetts. Josiah Stanford was an industrious, thrifty, intel- ligent man, whose place. Elm Farm, was on the main post-road from Albany to Schenectady. It would seem as though the farm environment did not wholly absorb Josiali Sanford, for he dabbled occasionally in the business of a contractor, when it looked like a profit- able occupation. In this way he contracted to build and did build a portion of the turnpike between Al- bany and Schenectady, and built other roads and even bridges in the vicinity. Ho, too, had the gift of fore- sight, for he was one of the prime movers in the plans, just developing at the beginning of the nineteenth cen- tury, for building the Erie Canal. This was a period of considerable enthusiasm and activity in the growth of the farm communities of Central New York, for 102 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHAEACTER in 1829 the 'New York legislature granted a charter for a railroad between Albany and Schenectady and Josiah Stanford was one of the principal contractors for this road. As a boy, Leland Stanford spent most of his spare time watching some of this construction work which was close to his father's home. From his infancy, almost, the boy was saturated with the business of railroads. Most of the men who came to his father's house discussed the railroad business. Furthermore, it was one of the most vital and inspiring subjects of that comparatively early period in railroad develop- ment in America. Transportation then was still a problem of vast conjecture and prophecy. It stimu- lated the imagination of engineers and business men so that they dreamed of the vast railroad achievements of to-day. Leland Stanford, then a boy, shared the ex- citement of these dreams, traveling in imagination with them when he heard his fatlier and his friends dis- cussing such a wild project as building a railroad as far as Oregon. His life on the farm was an active one. He was up at five every morning in winter, and four in summer, to do those early chores that the city lad escapes. He went to the public schools of his vicinity till he was twelve years old, and for three years he was taught at home. When he was fifteen he cleared off a wide sv/eep of timber land which his father had contracted for, and with his share of this work, the first money ho ever earned, he paid for his own tuition at an academy in Clinton, N". Y. The chief curiosity of his boyhood was the construction, equipment and extension of a railroad. His boyish LELAND STANFORD 103 imagination, when he was only thirteen, eagerly grasped the plans to build a railroad as far west as Oregon, regarded by many at that time as a wild project. In after years he recalled especially a long session between his father and Mr. Whitney, one of the en- gineers of construction of the Mohawk and Hudson River Railway, in which the great plan of an over- land steam road to Oregon was discussed from all points of view. His father stubbornly maintained that it could be done, in spite of obvious engineering diffi- culties, just as years later in California, Leland Stan- ford insisted that the Sierra Nevada Mountains could be conquered by railroad transportation. That night was the beginning of a dream that materialized many years later. The first years of Leland Stanford's career were not of any brilliant promise. He chose the career of a lawyer, and began his studies in the office of Wheaton, Doolittle and Hodley, in Albany. At the end of three years he was admitted to the bar. Those were the days when the slogan of youth was, "Go West, Young Man !" and the newly appointed member of the bar promptly took this advice. He selected a small town in Wis- consin, called Port Washington, where he hung out his shingle. Men were enthusiastic about the western country in those days, and Port Washington, though a community of about 1700 people, was boomed as the future great shipping point of the lake region, with expectations to rival Milwaukee or Chicago in this re- spect. Young Leland Stanford succeeded in this early 104 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER venture as a practicing lawyer, at the end of the first year Laving earned $1200, in those days a pros- perous revenue. In fact he indulged himself, on the strength of this prosperity, in a trip home to Albany in 1850, when ho was just twenty-six years of age. Without heralding the intentions of this trip, the young man no doubt had returned home with the specific plan of winning Jane Lathrop, daughter of Dyer La- throp, a merchant of Albany, one of the oldest families in that aristocratic Dutch and English settlement. At any rate, they were married and he returned with his young bride to Port Washington, Wisconsin, where they lived for two years. Wliatever the prospects of a young lawyer might have been, had Leland Stanford remained there he might never have been the man of large affairs he became. A kindly fate, in the disguise of what seemed a catastrophe, forced him into the far West. His office was burned out, with his en- tire law library and all papers, documents, and valu- able files. It was the total destruction of his first lad- der, and he received the first real bump of his young life. There was nothing left but to begin again. It was about this time that the great discovery of gold in California had been made, and the young man decided that was the place to which to go. He returned to Albany first, where his wife failed to get her father's permission to go with her husband into the unsettled portions of what was then a wild covmtry, and she remained in Albany. The young husband didn't waver in his plans, though those who saw in later yeare how devoted and single-minded he and his wife were LELAND STANFORD 105 can appreciate the courage it took to leave her for an adventure that promised hardship, danger, and a long separation. His five brothers had preceded him to California, and that no doubt partly influenced his decision. It took him thirty-eight days from Albany to San Francisco,! via steamer to Nicaragua, including twelve days crossing the Isthmus. The memory of that te- dious, uncomfortable trip no doubt stimulated Mr. Stanford's determination to shorten it by building the Central Pacific to a point where it joined the Union Pacific. He found his brothers conducting a general merchandise business in Sacramento, and soon he be- gan a mercantile career for himself at Cold Springs, Eldorado County. He did not plunge into the speculative adventure of the prospector for gold. He didn't go out and pan dirt with the gambling impulse of the gold digger. He was a cautious, far-seeing man, and instead, he opened a store at Michigan Blufi^s which was the central busi- ness point of the Placer County mining district. It was a rough, pioneer mining camp, and here the young lawyer endured some of the hardships of that frontier life in the '50s, in California. In an address delivered forty years later he referred to these experiences. "The true history of the Argonauts of the nineteenth century has to be written. No poet has yet arisen to immortalize their achievements in verse. They had no Jason to lead them, no oracles to prophesy success, nor enchantments to divert danger; but like self- 106 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER reliant Americans, thej pressed forward to the land of promise, and traversed thousands of miles where the Greeks heroes traveled hundreds. Thej went by ship and by wagon, on horseback and on foot, a mighty army, passing over mountains and deserts, enduring privations and sickness; they were the creators of a commonwealth, the builders of States." Among the gifts which Leland Stanford had in- herited or acquired was a shrewd business sense, for he invested in mining operations, prospered, and in three years bought out his brothers in Sacramento and immediately went East and returned with his wife to Sacramento. Some of his friends have always insisted that he was blessed with good luck ; at any rate, he found himself in 1855, at the age of thirty-one, firmly estab- lished in business in Sacramento on a large scale. Up to this time the young man's work had been centered on making provisions for a home which he had lost in Wisconsin. There came to him, in a very short time, a realization that the political may also be a part of a man's patriotic obligations, so he became one of the first founders of a new party in California, the Republican Party, when he was still a young man in 1856. He ran for ofiice in the State twice, and was twice defeated. In 1860 while a delegate at large to the Republican National Convention, he became a close friend of Abraham Lincoln, for whose nomination he was an influential advocate. These were the trying years of strife and civil war, and Lincoln's anxieties as to the possibility that California might secede from the Union made him value the friendship of Leland LELAND STANFORD 107 Stanford, At the invitation of Lincoln, he remained several v^^eeks in Washington after the President's in- auguration, and was consulted by him as to the loyalty of California to the Union. In 1861, after a vigorous campaign, Leland Stan- ford w^as elected Governor of California. He was only thirty-seven years of age, a youthful Governor, espec- ially at a critical period in both State and National affairs. He accomplished reforms. He organized the militia, abated the evils of squatter claims in the State, established a State Normal School and reduced the in- debtedness of the State by one half. His services as the young War Governor of California alone would en- title him to a permanent place in National history. The project for constructing the Central Pacific Railroad was chiefly an achievement of his boyhood dreams, awakened when he listened to his father's ar- gument with Mr. Whitney about building a road from Albany to Oregon. "Never mind," he said to his wife during their voyage to California on a rough sea, "a time will come when I will build a railroad for you to go home on." With what was regarded as a visionary faith in an engineer, Theodore D. Judah, who insisted that he could build a railroad over the Sierra Nevada Moun- tains, Leland Stanford induced his fellow merchants in Sacramento to subscribe enough to send this engineer to make a preliminary survey. This was the origin, the beginning of the Central Pacific. The men who started the enterprise were Leland Stanford, Collis P. Huntington, Charles Crocker, Mark Hopkins and 108 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHAKACTER James Bailej. C. P. Himtington was a hardware merchant and he was the first supporter of Leland Stanford's plans. These five men brought upon them- selves the jibes and jeers of the thoughtless multitude for their organization of the Central Pacific. The whole project was treated with ridicule and contempt bj every man of wealth in California. The five mer- chants stood alone, with their comparatively small cap- ital pooled and committed to the project. Appeals for support to the wealthy men of the State failed entirely. It probably would never have been accomplished, and the five merchants of Sacramento would have gone broke, except for Leland Stanford's success in getting an Act of Congress by which Government aid was given to the construction of the Central Pacific. It was a gigantic task managed by these men of ability and courage, which fulfilled Leland Stanford's dream as a boy, a transcontinental railroad. The junction with the Union Pacific was made in the spring of 1869, and every one of the five men who had risked every- thing against superhuman odds made a colossal fortune. Governor Stanford became the largest landowner in California. When he contemplated building the Stan- ford University he and his wife visited the president of a ISTew England College and asked what amount it would require to endow such an institution. "About $5,000,000," said the president. "Don't you think," said Leland Stanford, turning to his wife, "we had better make it ten millions ?' He died on his estate, Palo Alto, suddenly, June 20, 1893. CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT, LL. D. (1834 ) A GEEAT EDUCATIONAL LEADER From " The Happy Life." tiy permission of Thos. Y. Crowell & Co. CHARLES \\ ILLL\M ELIOT CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT, LL. D. (1834 ) A GREAT EDUCATIONAL LEADER AN American gentleman is a type that Harvard has educated for many years. Many other moral forces of character have also developed in the long stretch of its impressive influence. Dr. Charles William Eliot, President Emeritus, in an ad- jdress upon the character of a gentleman, said: "In the first place, he will be a quiet person. His speech will be gentle and his demeanor quiet. I have had many visiting college presidents and teachers say to me, 'Where are your students ? I don't hear them about the yard. It seems to me this is a very quiet campus. It is not much like ours.' Now that is a fact. The Harvard Yard is favorably known as the quietest college enclosure in the country. If you hear a fellow bawling about the yard, you can be perfectly sure that he is an outsider or a newcomer. A gentle- man is a serene person." It was in that Yard that the venerable President Emeritus, when he was eight or ten years old, passed a great deal of his time. His boyhood was familiar with the character of the Yard, for his father, Samuel Atkins Eliot, was Treasurer of Harvard College. He had been Mayor of Boston, a Representative in Con- ill 112 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER gress, before then. Therefore Dr. Eliot's career was obviously the fortunate one of an American gentleman who found occupation and habit of thought predestined for him at Harvard. He was born in 1834, heir to the best social tradi- tions, an ancestry that was irreproachable, and natural gifts of very promising proportions. As soon as he was able to adjust his alphabet into words, he spelled Har- vard. It has been the bread and salt of his intellectual interests, and more than that, he has strengthened the mould of the University graduate with a moral force peculiarly his own. Dr. Eliot was graduated from Harvard some time before the Civil War, but remained near the Yard as a tutor and assistant professor of chemistry. He was nineteen when he was graduated. When he was only thirty-five he was elected President of Harvard. His youth for a position of such importance did not enter into the discussion of his election at the time. There were criticisms of the fact that he was a layman and a scientist. He began his long service, over half a cen- tury of presiding influence in American education, with some radical and useful changes of administration. Up to this time he had apparently been so deeply im- mersed in the study of chemistry that his career as an inventor or scientist seemed assured. Dr. Eliot's first progressive move in the National program of education was to create more efficient gradu- ate schools. He was the leading "champion" of the elective system. The requirements of admission to Harvard were another progressive feature of Dr. Eliot's CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT, LL. D. 113 early duties as President of the University, wbicli led to wide criticism of his radical tendencies. He made so many permanent improvements in our educational system that he soon found himself the center of Na- tional discussion and interest. He was a professor ap- plied to the restless elements of America's growth in the seventies, when every one was talking about big things. One of the distinguished Harvard teachers always said in comment upon the future of America, "Yes, yes, we must have large things first, size first ; the rest will come." Dr. Eliot, however, never neglected the smaller details of growth. He was a man of practical purpose in all his cultural progress, he did not seek to make things "look big just for the pleasure of measuring their size." While he sought enthusiasm for Harvard standards, he also preserved the conserva- tive principles of the quiet American gentleman, "quiet for the best of reasons — namely, that effectiveness re- quires steady, close attention and that attention implies stillness and a mind intent," as he said once. He raised the standards of secondary schools and introduced an element of choice in the selection of col- lege studies. When he became chairman of that Na- tional reform body called the Committee of Ten in 1899, he urged the abandonment of indiscriminate in- formation courses. He democratized the college spirit towards work by equalizing certain studies, standardiz- ing the time necessary to be devoted to them by stu- dents. Most of the great universities accepted this standard. Then, too. Dr. Eliot discouraged the High 114 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER Schools from conducting their courses as if they were preparatory for a university training, because he thought that secondary schools conducted by public funds should not prepare their students for education in universities, which many of them were never able to attain. One other important change he brought about was the cooperation of colleges in holding common en- trance examinations throughout the country. This was made possible by the adoption of the educational standards he had suggested and fixed. It was the new education of the whole country which Dr. Eliot shouldered when he became the President of Harvard. Up to that time Harvard's President was not important in public affairs. Dr. Eliot not only made Harvard a National monument of his ovm executive genius, but he brought National attention to the important character of educational responsibility imposed on the presidents of all leading universities in America. As a personality, Dr. Eliot was of course misunder- stood by a large section of the country when he began his reforms. Especially was he exposed to crit- icism by the undergraduates of Harvard. One of Dr. Eliot's innovations was the rule that it was bad form to encourage intercourse between members of the faculty and the students. This led to an impression that the professors were harsh and that the Harvard students were boorish. The college spirit and the aca- demic camaraderie that were crushed at Harvard came to a focus in the person of a young assistant professor who was dropped from the university. The young CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT, LL. D. 115 professor represented the genial, companionable spirit of college life at Oxford, which might have been con- sidered sufficiently acceptable for Harvard, but Dr. Eliot thought differently. He did not believe that it was well for the boys to visit the tutors and professors socially. It was only a temporary decision, for it soon became apparent that too wide a breach had developed between faculty and students, and there followed a series of weekly teas at Brooks Hall, presided over by ladies from Boston, bishops when available, and talented persons who could really entertain. In this way the chasm between teacher and student at Har- vard was finally bridged, for it was a sincere move- ment, a Harvard dawn. It has made Harvard more human ever since. To restore the impression of Dr. Eliot's complete reversal of opinion, much was said to' show that he had really been secretly waiting for the time when it would be possible to stand "effulgent with social love in his heart, loving the boys, encourag- ing the professors, shedding influence," to quote an undergraduate of this period. "JS^ow as a matter of fact," continues this under- graduate's record of the new era in Harvard, which be- gan in 1880, "President Eliot was the spiritual father of the glacial era heretofore in progress, he was the figurehead of these previous dreadful times, and I have sometimes stopped to shake hands with him because I thought it was right, — and also, I confess, because I thought it would cause him' pain. Such is the silli- ness of the undergraduate mind." The trustees, the ladies, the bishops, and the society 116 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER leaders in Boston, it seems, gathered thick and close around Dr. Eliot at this time, and "thawed him out." They told him he was misunderstood, that he had a heart of gold, and he responded to the treatment. He responded so promptly to any practical event that passed before him, that he could not have done other- wise than yield to the social warmth that came hot upon him. A picture of Dr. Eliot about this time, when he had been in office at Harvard over ten years and was tolerably well equipped with a knowledge of what he wanted to do for the students, is interesting. "The Dr. Eliot who first swam into my undergradu- ate ken as the martinet who stalked across the yard, and who was traditionally regarded as an important, hostile, and sinister influence, was a very unusual per- son. His voice was remarkable — a low, vibrant, eon- trolled, melodious voice that seemed to have so much reverence in it; the voice, you would say, of a culti- vated man. ISTo ideals except ideals of conduct had reality for him. Literature, philosophy, and all that, were the names of things in bottles to him. With this was combined a truly unique pity for poverty in a student, and a pious belief in education as a means of self-advancement. A sincere, spontaneous repre- sentative of the average American attitude toward col- lege students was Dr. Eliot in the '80 s. By some accident which separated him from his own class, — for New England possessed many men with a feeling for the Humanities, — he became representative of the country at large. CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT, LL. D. 117 "There was, in Dr. Eliot, the presence of force. The voice was force, its vibrations were the vibrations of force. The modulations of it were the modulations of force, the melody was the melody of force. Behind it there was a two-handed engine of human pertinacity, ... a genius for the understanding of men." Dr. Eliot grew up, from the period just described, to a N^ational size that has made of him a man figure, adored by men who have seen that figure grow to the height and strength of venerable age, unimpaired by physical intrusions. There has always been a glamor about his personality, which the undergraduate, in his analysis, foreshadowed. It was the glamor of culture, of breeding, of knowledge, and of intense sincerity. Every one believed in his righteousness, his real hu- mility, as an expression of intense loyalty, of that classic attachment to Harvard and ISTew England that is in itself a text of character. Dr. Eliot demonstrated the chief element of strength and dependability. Most things came to him in life, but he received them with humble, respectful interest, and it gradually occurred to people that Dr. Eliot was a man destined to answer all inquiries of his time and age. Everything about him was vital — his wonderful low voice, his benignant smile, well poised, never to be forgotten. Dr. Eliot's position in the world of Boston has been one of un- dimmed glory all his life. The surprising thing about this famous educational leader is the fact that although he emerged from the eighteenth century (his father was born in 1798), still he became a leader in the nineteenth century. His 118 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER formality indicates that he never was really young. "He had the temperament of the ecclesiastic, of the Archbishop/' writes the observer of Dr. Eliot's life. The modem educational system is a reflex of Dr. Eliot's character that has influenced his generation and will extend into the next. The singular advantage of observing the effect of his own educational ideas upon many men, through the entire course of their lives, came to Dr. Eliot before his retirement as Presi- dent of Harvard. Addressing a group of new students in Harvard in 1905, three years before, he said : "I suppose I may fairly be called one of the elder brethren ; because it is fifty-six years since I came hither in the same grade many of you now occupy. So I have had a chance to watch a long stream of youth, growing up into men, and passing on to old men ; and I have had a chance to see what the durable satisfaction of their lives turned out to be. My con- temporaries are old men now, and I have seen their sons and their grandsons coming on in the over- flowing stream." "One of the indispensable satisfactions of life is health," Dr. Eliot advised young men. "We have to build on bodily wholesomeness and vitality." The next important lesson he had observed was to secure a strong mental grip, a wholesome capacity for hard work. But chief among all in the transition of any man's life. Dr. Eliot said, was "a spotless reputation." "It comes from living with honor, on honor. Some things the honorable man cannot do, never does. He never wrongs or degrades a woman. He never op- CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT, LL. D. 119 presses or cheats a person weaker or poorer than him- self. He never betrays a trust. He is honest, sin- cere, candid, and generous." These are the standards of Dr. Eliot's life that in- spire. Perhaps this great leader of education had less to overcome than many other men v^ho reached a con- spicuous place in history, and yet grief did not pass him by. In the year that he took office at Harvard, he lost his young wife, the companion of his youth and his ambition, who was Ellen Derby Peabody. A few years later he married Grace Miller Hopkinson. The affections and secret tics of his character were cen- tered in his son, Charles Eliot. The latter became a man of some fame as a landscape gardener, in fact, was in the zenith of his success, when he died. This was another blow that brought grief and sadness to Dr. Eliot's long life. This bereavement was deeply real- ized, for he erected a beautiful monument of paternal devotion, a memorial gift ^'for the dear son who died in his bright prime." The boy had inherited his love of nature, his ambition to refresh the choked and stifling cities with flowers and sky-room, from his delicate, frail, and poetic mother, Ellen Peabody Eliot. Marriage was one of the sound suggestions of Dr. Eliot's new education. He always urged early mar- riages. ''Look forward to being married," he said. "That forward look is one of the greatest safeguards of honorable living. Look forward to a blessed home of your own. I have known in my lifetime many fathers who came with great anxiety to talk about their sons' careers in the university, because they remembered that 120 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER their own careers had not been a good example for their sons, and thej knew their sons knew it." Dr. Eliot was an idealist with that high and rare gift of perfect judgment. He reduced the necessary vir- tues of a man's life to four ideals: "Beauty, honor, duty, love. Their true and sufficient ends are knowl- edge and righteousness. In measuring the character that has made Dr. Eliot a leader in America, it has been said of him that Har- vard was only a part of it, for it is not only as a col- lege president, philosopher, statesman or teacher that he is known. In 1908 he retired, to be declared by representative Americans "the greatest citizen in the United States." PHILLIPS BROOKS (1835-1893) GREAT PREACHER-PHILOSOPHER PHILLIPS BROOKS PHILLIPS BROOKS (1835-1893) GREAT PREACHER-PHILOSOPHER EEP very near to your Saviour, dear Philly, and remember the sacred vows that are upon you, and you will prosper," wrote Phillips Brooks's mother to him, when he was studying for the ministry at the Theological Seminary in Alexandria, yirginia. Over a hundred years before, in 1630, to be exact, his ancestor, the Rev. George Phillips, said the same thing, for he founded those religious principles that have dominated Puritan beliefs ever since. He was the founder of Puritan law in New England. Each of the succeeding generations of the Phillips family had included a Puritan minister. When Mary Ann Phillips married William Gray Brooks, there was united a religious ancestry that be- gan in the seventeenth century, for Thomas Brooks and Rev. George Phillips migrated from England in the same year and they were associated in the same parish at Watertown, near Boston. From his mother, Phillips Brooks inherited that form of religious belief which had only one purpose, to maintain the Puritan faith. He perpetuated the creed of his ancestors in its integrity. The family 123 124 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER lived a rare, devoted, yet isolated life, because they did not care to go out into society. The children were educated at home, the chief influence of that education being religion. The parents lived only for their chil- dren. They cared nothing for their own pleasures or advancement, their whole energies and interests being centered in the children and the home. It was, of course, an entirely religious home. Prayers were said in the house before work every morning, and every evening at nine o'clock. 7iny one calling on the Brooks family in the evening would be sure to find them all sitting around the table in the "back parlor" ; father writing, because he found leisure for his literary ambitions only then ; mother sewing; the children studying their lessons for the next day. It was a quiet, aifectionately in- timate family circle, gathered together in a silent group like this, night after night. Visitors rarely came in, because they were not encouraged. They were very happy evenings, occasionally enlivened by the reading aloud of some new book, that is, after the lessons were learned. The real thing that kept the children at home, however, was the tremendous, concentrated love that their parents bestowed upon them with such united devotion. It was a charm the children could not es- cape from. It cast a spell over Phillips Brooks that lasted in his memory all his life, an inspiring influence that kept him always a child at heart. His earliest recollections are those of the Episcopal Church, which his mother had chosen in a moment of compromise between the doctrine that urged conscious PHILLIPS BROOKS 125 relationship with God and the doctrine that expressed a faith in the word of the Scriptures and no more. Both parents went to St. Paul's on Tremont Street, Boston. His mother, so deeply attached to the religious purposes of life, was not satisfied until her husband, who had been Unitarian, should become a communi- cant of St. Paul's, not merely an attendant. At the age of twelve Phillips Brooks witnessed the ceremony in the church of his father's confirmation at the age of forty-two. His mother was greatly impressed with the importance of this act, though it aroused anxieties as to how soon her sons would do the same. There came to St. Paul's Church, about this time, a new rector, the famous Dr. Vinton. The impression which this preacher made upon Phillips Brooks was very great and lasted till ho entered the ministry him- self. In some ways Dr. Vinton resembled Phillips Brooks. He was very tall, majestic in carriage, a most impressive figure in the pulpit. He was the foremost Episcopal preacher in America in 1842. He was evangelical in his character, an inspired preacher, hav- ing left medical practice to become a minister. To Phillip Brooks, himself a man of rare idealistic per- ception, Dr. Vinton was a religious influence. His mother felt this power also, and so that she might bet- ter interpret religion to her children she attended the Bible classes that Dr. Vinton conducted, in which he explained the Scriptures. At night she would stay for a little while at the bedside of her children and tell them these Bible stories before they went to sleep. She never ceased her religious watchfulness, for when 126 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHAEACTER her sons became ministers, she guarded them still from dangerous doctrines which she feared might attack them. Every Sunday the children learned a hymn, which was recited when the family gathered in the evening. When Phillips Brooks was sixteen, he knew two hundred hymns by heart. It delighted that devoted mother when she found that Phillips Brooks, at eleven, was writing religious essays. They gave promise of the future man, for he was searching, then, for the "sunlight of truth," one of his favorite illustrations of religious purity in his sermons. He went to a small school when he was four years old, and finally was graduated from the Latin School, preparing for Harvard, third on the list, and he received the Franklin medal which meant excellence in final examinations. Still he must have found school difficult, for on a scrap of paper he wrote this solemn vow, when he was thirteen : "I, Phillips Brooks, do herebye promise, and pledge myself to study, henceforth, to the best of my ability. Phillips Brooks." He was very large and tall for his age, being within an inch of six feet, and naturally it made hira awkward. He carried his head on one side and often leaned on his brother's arm. This was the period when the in- ward development of his character was beginning. He thought about things that many people have never thought about in all their lives. He thought about the soul. It was an odd thing for a great big strong boy to be thinking about all the time — but he was only living over again the boyhood of his religious ancestors. PHILLIPS BROOKS 127 for thej, too, kad been absorbed in such thoughts when they were his age. His schoolmates noticed that after school he never stayed to play, but went straight home. There was always about Phillips Brooks, all his life, a reserve that no one ever penetrated. There was about him, as a boy, some shyness. In him were the sacred fires of a life devoted wholly to the service of religion. It was while he was still at the Latin School, then in Boston, preparing for Harvard, that he wrote many maxims of conduct and thought bearing upon religious duty. It was evident that he was destined to be a minister, for his thoughts and ambitions were all of the spirit. The need of expressing himself was imperative. He wrote these essays out in fine penmanship which his father had taught him. His mother thought less of the importance of good handwriting than of the thoughts themselves, no matter how they were written. JN^aturally, a boy with such unusual ideas for his age had few companions, the absence of which he did not miss at all, because his home was far more satisfying to him than playing in the school-yard or running about with mischievous boys. The inward development of the boy, which began when he was fourteen, continued through his college days at Harvard and to the date of his admission to a theological college. The reserve, the loneliness of these years during which the youth in him was subjugated to the inner fires of religious in- spiration were the natural result of a predestined ca- reer. They were the years of his conversion, the period in his character when he found it necessary to find a 128 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER solution of his own life that was not merely a matter of success to him, but a matter of finding out for him- self how the religious teachings of his childhood could be applied to the daily life of himself and others. He entered Harvard on his sixteenth birthday. Like his ancestors he absorbed the classics, won prizes for English literature, wrote better than any other students. Still, no one of his college mates remembers him for elo- quence, for which he was famous in the pulpit after- wards. He made no impression upon the literary so- cieties of Harvard. His reserve completely alienated him from any outward expression. That is why he kept many notebooks, in which he found an outlet for the ideas he could not talk about with the boys at col- lege, although he became a member of the Alpha Delta Phi and the Phi Beta Kappa. Phillips Brooks was a marked man at Harvard, however, for at sixteen he was six feet, three and a half inches tall. The sur- prising thing to his classmates was that he took no ac- tive part in college athletics. Sports did not appeal to him, although nature had built him to be a giant of strength. Even walking did not appeal to him. He spent his time between studies reading Carlyle, Emer- son, Johnson, Goldsmith, Dryden, Swift. Probably his most religious teacher among these authors was Emer- son. While he was at Harvard there came a period of "religious doubt," over the country, which especially af- fected the university students. Lord Tennyson's poem, *'In Memoriam," became a text to young Phillips Brooks. He kept repeating lines from it. It disturbed the rock-ribbed principles of the old Puritan laws. PHILLIPS BROOKS 129 These transitions and changes in old standards delayed him from presenting himself for confirmation. At twenty, when he was graduated from Harvard, he was still a boy in manner and feeling. He always had a deep emotional nature, so that his ideas poured from him in a torrent of words so rapidly that many people believed he had adopted that form of quick talking, of rapid delivery, to cover up a defect of speech. He left Harvard fully aware that, in the opinion of young men of his day, the Church was not looked upon as a lucrative profession, but he appeared to be under the sway of some hidden inward force. One of his class- mates described his impression of Phillips Brooks as reminding him of Wordsworth's line, ''Moving a.bout in worlds not realized." Before he reached his twentieth birthday, he took a position as a teacher at the Boston Latin School, In his mind, at that time, was a plan to become a pro- fessor, after a trip abroad. Though he was well fitted to teach, he lacked tlie gift of maintaining discipline in his classes, and failed to hold the position. He resigned. His father explained it amply when he wrote : "The class of boys were from fifteen to seventeen and he was only twenty. The task was too much for him." In a sense it was a disaster and completely ended any plans he may have had to become a teacher. To add to it, the superintendent of the school informed Phillips Brooks when he was leaving that he had never known a man who failed as a school teacher to succeed 130 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER in anything else. Then followed six months of re- tirement, of inward shame at this first failure ; so great that when Dr. Vinton sent for him, his father replied that the boj was too miserable and crushed to see any one. This was a period of great trial, during which the inner struggle was revealed in voluminous notes written in notebooks which have been preserved. He left home suddenly for a theological seminary of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Alexandria, Virginia. He consulted no one but his father and mother, and his friends, missing him from Boston, were very much surprised. Writing his father he said, "Please let all that matter drop. I said scarcely anything to any one about it but you and mother. Consider me here at the seminary without debating how I got here." Just before leaving home, at this turning-point in his career, he Wrote the following in a notebook : "As we pass from some experience to some experi- ment, from a tried to an untried scene of life, it is as when we turn to a new page in a book we have never read before, but whose author we know and love and trust to give us on every page words of counsel and purity and strengthening virtue." In his second year he came under the influence of Goethe's poetry. He seemed to accept Goethe's con- ception of life. This influence remained with him, for part of his creed in all his sermons was that the Christian life involved with spiritual culture an in- sight into the relations of art to the highest develop- ment. He sent his first sermon to his fathei', before deliver- PHILLIPS BROOKS 131 ing it. The manuscript was marked "private." Writ- ing his father, he sajs indifferently : "Tell me how it struck you ? How it wou-ld have struck you had you heard a strange young man of six foot four preach it in your own pulpit, what you would have said about it when you first got home ? Be indulgent with it, it is my first." It was his first sermon and was considered his mani- festo of faith. He became a lay reader, preaching extemporaneous sermons when assigned to fill vacant pulpits here and there. One Sunday, when he was twenty-four, while he was conducting a service for the Sharon Mission, about four miles from the seminary, in Virginia, two gentlemen called and offered him the rectorship of the Church of the Advent in Philadel- phia. After a week of extreme sensitiveness, in which he dreaded the possibility of a failure such as he had encountered in his effort to become a teacher, he ac- cepted a temporary attachment to the church in Phila- delphia as an assistant pastor for three months. The vestry could then offer him the pastorship again, or he could himself withdraw. He was appointed rector of the church. In a way his life had been an experiment up to this time, but on the day of his ordination there were some present who were confident for him ; among them, of course, his father. The Sunday after he was ordained he paid a visit to Rev. H. M. Randolph, later Bishop of Southern Virginia, who had offered the young man his pulpit for that day. Bishop Randolph's impres- sion of Phillips Brooks, the youngster of twenty-four, 132 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER is an impression of all that his whole life fulfilled as a preacher and as a teacher. "I am reminded of these characteristics of his preach- ing," the Bishop records, "which all who ever heard him will recognize, — a singular absence of self-conscious- ness, a spontaneity of beautiful thinking clothed in pure English words, a joy in his own thoughts, and a vic- torious mastering of the truth he was telling, encoun- tered with humility and reverence and love for the congregation. I have heard him often since, and thel impression was always the same." This was written as an appreciation years after Phil- lips Brooks became a leader in the closing years of the nineteenth century. Several years were spent in Philadelphia, but in 1869, when he was thirty-four years old, he received a call from Trinity Church, Boston, where he became famous as a preacher, as a personality of rare charm and spiritual force. He became Bishop of Massachu- setts in 1891, against his inclination, repeatedly expressed in his correspondence. He wrote in one of his notebooks before he was twenty, the whole inward development of his character: "Life is developing the energies of thought, while thought is working out the richness that lies hid in life." MOODY AND SANKEY (1837-1899) (1840-1909) PIONEER EVANGELISTS DWIGHT LYMAN MOODY MOODY AND SANKEY (1837-1899) (1840-1909) PTONEER EVANGELISTS BETWEEN Dwight Lyman Moody, the famous evangelist, and Ira David Sankey, who "sang the gospel," there was a close association of work, for over forty years. They were Christian workers, each of them pledged to save the souls of his fellow-men. The Moody and Sankey hymn-book, next to the Bible, had the widest circulation in the world. It is printed in all languages. Thousands upon thousands of people went to hear the great evan- gelist preach, and listen to the rare hymn-singing of Ira D. Sankey. When they were asked to explain why they had the power to attract such great crowds, each one, in his own way, said that it was because they were inspired by the Holy Ghost. Apart from this simple confession of faith, they were no different from other men, except that once inspired by a tremendous Christian force of character they were able to help men and women to live Christian lives. Of the two men, Moody, the evangelist preacher, was the more remarkable, because he overcame so many ob- stacles in his life which Sankey never had to overcome. 135 136 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER But the tie that held them together was a sort of holy partnership, the foundation of which was laid long be- fore they had ever heard of each other. They were born in different parts of the country, Moody in the hills of Massachusetts, Sankey in the valley country of Pennsylvania. Moody's parents were poor, obscure farmers. Sankey's father served in the State Legislature and was well to do all his life. They were widely separated in educational advantages, but their influence in the world came from the same source of character in them; they shared the responsibilities they felt in order to spread the gospel. Of the two men, Sankey had the quieter nature. Moody was im- pulsive, violent in his passion for religious feeling. Outwardly Moody was the strong, rugged, abrupt teacher of the Bible; Sankey, in his singing, thrilled the crowd with the gentle sweetness of his voice. The sincerity of his own conversion was something he made others feel when he sang. Moody's boyhood was a rough and tumble fight against poverty, on a small farm which his father, who died when he was four years old, left heavily mort- gaged. His mother, with nine children to support, of whom Dwight was "the sixth child, refused to appren- tice any of them. She fought to keepT them with her. She loved them all with a devotion that could not bear thought of separation from any of them. There was room to shelter them in the two-story frame farmhouse in ISTorthfield, Massachusetts, and out of the three acres of land they managed to struggle along together ; often short of food and clothes, always on the edge of being MOODY AND SANKEY 137 compelled to break up the home. His mother was very religious. She made it a* rule, before every meal, to make the children stand up and repeat, together, some text from the Bible. She explained to them that they must put their trust in God, and if they wanted anything they must pray for it. Dwight was the strongest of them all. He had mus- cles like iron, and his body was heavy and powerful. He could always get a job doing extra chores for the neighbors on the farms, in between work at home. He was somewhat of a terror to the other boys, because of his strength. He was a natural leader among them, especially in the mischief of the neighborhood, so full of life that it was impossible to control him. His sense of fun was inexhaustible. He was always inventing some trick that would make the others laugh, usually at the expense of some one else. As a boy he was not interested in religion or the Bible at all. He had a determined will of his own ; an unmanageable boy, because there was no one stronger than himself. His first convincing experience of the power of prayer came to him when he was about ten years old. He had. gone across lots, up in the hills away from the roads, and while crawling through a rail fence, one of the rails broke and the whole fence fell on top of him, pinning him to the ground. Even with all his strength he couldn't get up. Then he yelled for help, but no one heard him because he was some distance from the road. When he grew tired of shouting, and the sun went down, and it began to grow dark, he 138 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER found himself fearing that he might die there, pinned to the ground, before any one came. He began to think of his mother and for the first time he thought seriously of her teaching that God would answer any prayer. So very humbly he asked God to let him out of his diffi- culty, to lift the fence that pinned him down. The answer to his prayer came at once. One of the rails shifted, he crawled out safely. This experience made a deep impression on him. Ever afterwards, through his whole life, he never worried about the future; he always found that if he prayed earnestly, "God took care of me." This was only the first step in his religious life. He had yet to learn, that which he taught others to under- stand, that a Christian life does not mean merely to pray to save one's self, but above all to save others, too. After this experience he listened with more attention to the Bible talks which his mother used to give her children. Above all she impressed upon him the habit of charity. When some one came to the house who needed food she would say to the children, "Well, we must cut the loaf in thinner slices, so there will be enough for all." He went to the district school like other boys, but he was often whipped by the teacher, which was the custom in dealing with unruly boys in those days. Even his mother believed in that sort of punishment. She would send him out to get a stick. He would be gone a long time hunting for a small one, or, if he could find it, a dead branch. When he brought in such a stick, his mother would send him out again to get a stronger MOODY AND SANKEY 139 one. She knew that all the time he spent looking for the stick was punishment. Once he told her she didn't hurt him, but never again, for then she punished him more severely. One season, at the district school, the older people decided that thej would get a teacher who would rule without the rattan stick', so a young lady was engaged. Dwight did not believe she would succeed. One day she asked him to stay after school, and he winked at the other boys, as much as to say, "I told you so, it's the old stick again." He was surprised when the teacher told him that she was very unhappy to think that he, who was the biggest boy in school, should bo so mischievous. She told him that she wanted to rule with love, and she put him on his honor to be a good boy, and sent him home. After that he made the other boys behave, as well as himself. About the last thing he did in school that was mischievous was when he de- livered in class the oration of Marc Antony over the body of Caesar. He arranged to have a box, shaped like a coffin, brought into the school, and, just at the most serious place, he kicked the box and out jumped a cat, which made everybody laugh. His mother made home the nicest place in the world, for, even if they were so poor, she was always getting up parties in the house so as to keep the children near her. The first time he left home nearly broke his heart. His older brother had gone to work in Green- field, a few miles from home, and he got so lonely that he induced Dwight to join him. All his life Dwight hated November, because it was in that month he left 140 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER home with his brother. He cried all the way, and when he reached his destination he told his brother he wouldn't stay. His brother, anxious to keep him in Greenfield, told him there was an old gentleman who lived there, who made it a rule to give a penny to every new boy who came. Just then this man came along the street, and Dwight was so afraid he wouldn't see him that he stood right in front of him. The old gentle- man put his hand on his head, talked to him kindly, and smiling tenderly at the little boy, said, "Why, this is a new boy in town, I never saw him before." His brother said that he had just arrived. So the kind man put his hand in his pocket, drew out a bright new penny that looked like gold, and gave it to Dwight. All his life he remembered this thoughtful piece of kind- ness, and it made him do many nice things for other lonely boys and girls in the world. Of course he was born with a good heart himself, in spite of his love of mischief, otherwise he couldn't have appreciated what kindness meant. As he explained it years later, he had "a passion for men's souls." When he was seventeen, he had asked his uncle, hia mother's brother, Samuel Holton, who had a shoe store in Boston, for a job; but his uncle had not answered him. Later he left home of his own accord and went to Boston, but did not go to his uncle. He was too proud to do so. He said afterwards he always secretly be- lieved that God would provide. He had a hard time of it, looking for work and not finding it. He was lonely and hungry and slept out of doors. Gradually his pride was beaten, and he went to his uncle's shoe MOODY AND SANKEY 141 store. His uncle laid down certain rules, told him he must not boss the help in the store, that he must do his work, go to church, and not do anything that he didn't want his mother to know. "Go and think it over, and come back Monday," said his uncle. "I've thought it over, sir," said Dwight promptly, "and I'll do my best." He applied himself to busi- ness, and was one of the best shoe clerks in the store. His business ability was so apparent that he could have made a great success as a merchant. He was a first-class salesman, but while he was in Boston something happened to him that altered his career and made him a great evangelist. He went to the Sun- day School of the Mount Vernon Congregational Church, — because he had to. He was given a Bible and told to open it at the gospel of St. John. He pre- tended to look through the pages of the book, but couldn't find it. He noticed that the other boys were laughing at his ignorance. The teacher, Edward Kim- ball, quickly handed him the Bible opened at the right place, and asked him for the one he had in his hand. This gracious act made him very grateful to Mr. Kim- ball, in fact he felt under obligation to him ever after- wards. From the Sunday School teacher he learned to understand the power of religion ; at the same time he was attending to business with great success in the shoe store. He wrote his mother that he hoped to save up a hundred dollars, build a house, rent rooms, and have her live with him. The landlady where he boarded was kind and helped him to study his Bible. When 142 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER he had advanced to a point where Mr. Kimball thought the boy was ready to become a member of the church he told the minister, Mr. Kirk. One afternoon in 1856, when Dwight was nineteen, the minister called on him at the shoe store. In the back part of the store he asked Dwight Moody to acknowledge Christ, to take the Christian vows, and join the church. He found the young man earnest and will- ing, and they knelt down, where no one could see them, and prayed ; and that was Moody's hour of conversion, when he solemnly vowed to serve God. Mr. Moody explained this event of his life when he said : ^'I was born in the flesh in 1837, in the spirit in 1856." It is an odd coincidence that in that same year the man who was to be associated with him, then only a boy of sixteen living in JSTew Castle, Pennsylvania, where his father had become president of a bank, was converted at a revivalist meeting and took similar vows to devote his life to Christian work. Neither of them knew that they were destined to do such great things for Christianity and to be united in the world's history as Moody and Sankey. Dwight Moody was given membership papers in the Mount Vernon Congregational Church, and shortly af- terwards went to Chicago, in search of a better job. He was then still planning a business life, selling shoes during the day and studying his Bible at night. He didn't tell any one, not even his mother, because he was afraid they wouldn't let him go if he did. It was a MOODY AND SANKEY 143 terrible blow to his mother when she received a letter from him, so far away as Chicago. In Chicago he presented his letters of church mem- bership to the Plymouth Congregational Church and was cordially received. He wrote his mother how happy he was in his Christian vows and that '^God is the same all over the world." He got a job with a shoe firm in Chicago and lived with other clerks in rooms in the store. And he looked about to see what he could do in church work. "I have no education, but I love the Lord Jesus Christ and I want to do something for him," he said. He rented five pews in the Plymouth Congregational Church and filled them every Sunday with men and boys he picked up in the street. This was the begin- ning of his success in evangelical work, getting people to listen to the word of God. When the men he stopped in the street asked him what he was doing he replied, simply, ".I'm at work for Jesus Christ." From these men and boys he found in the street, he acquired what was known as the Mission Band, a class of ignorant street gamins. He found an old dilap- idated "shack" in what was then the lowest and poorest quarter of Chicago, the North Side, and started a Sun- day School. These boys were called his "bodyguard." He coaxed them to come in by giving them bits of maple sugar which he bought for them. All this time he was prospering in his business. Finally he was made a traveling salesman, but this threatened to keep him away on Sunday from his Sunday School. In six years he gathered here a membership of a thousand scholars. 144 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER which began with very ragged boys, whom he after- wards clothed and housed in new quarters in the N'orth Market. In any crisis of his life he always felt that God would provide. So it happened that the president of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Rail- road gave him a free pass while he was traveling salesman, so that he could get back to Chicago every Sunday for his school. The time came when he had to choose between his work as an evangelist or his business life, and he re- signed his job. He had saved a little money and he put away a thou- sand dollars to live on for a year and devoted his life to the great work that made him famous. With part of his savings he bought a pony, on which he used to ride through the side streets on Sunday getting new pupils for his Sunday School. They would climb on behind him and he would give them rides, and soon the newspapers began to talk about him. Some called him '^Crazy Moody," others "Brother Moody" ; but he kept right on "at work for Jesus Christ." When he was twenty-five with no other assets but his pay and plans for others, he married Miss Emma C. E'evell, who had helped him as a teacher in his Sunday School. She taught a class of forty middle- aged men, while his specialty was boys. Sometimes he had to subdue particularly obstinate boys, as he did on one occasion when he locked himself in a room with one. When they came out, they were both battered, but he said, "It was hard work, but I guess we've saved him." IRA DAVID SAN KEY MOODY AND SANKEY 145 From Chicago his fame spread, as a revivalist, and he was called to hold meetings in other towns. Money was always provided for his ventures, but not nntil he had exhausted his savings and found himself sleeping on the benches in a back room of a Methodist Church, where he had organized a Young Men's Christian Asso- ciation. When friends found out his condition they helped him ; and all this while he had money he col- lected for charity for his boys, and he wouldn't touch a cent of it. By the time Dwight was a man, over thirty, he had already achieved fame as an evangelist preacher. lie had no opposition from the churches, in fact they helped him for they saw that he was a strong Christian soldier. It was in Indianapolis, at an International Sunday School Conference, that he first met Ira D. Sankey who had been sent to the conference as a dele- gate from Pennsylvania. In Newcastle, Pennsylvania, where Sankey lived, he had already become prominent in church work. He was superintendent of the Meth- odist Episcopal Sunday School there. lie had en- listed in the Civil War, and served in a regiment in Maryland. It was during camp life as a soldier that Mr. Sankey discovered his gift for singing. His first hymns were sung around the camp fire. As soon as the war was over he married a young lady who sang in a church choir, so that when he went to Indianap- olis to hear Moody preach, he had a family of his own. Moody made a tremendous impression upon him. At last, he felt, here was a man who could talk about 146 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER religion so that everybody understood it. There were no big words in his talks, but some big ideas. During the services, a hymn was given out and there was no one to lead in the singing, no one at least that was very good at it. Moody realized the value of music in his evangelistic meetings, but he could not sing much him- self. So Mr. Sankey stood up and sang the hymn, and every one was spellbound. Tears rolled down the evan- gelist's face as he heard Mr. Sankey sing for the first time. Dwight Moody was not slow in making up his mind. He got an introduction to Sankey, and as soon as he met him, he asked him what he was doing. He told Mr. Moody he was employed by the Government in the Internal Revenue Department, and that he lived with his family in ISTewcastle, Pennsylvania. "Well, you'll have to give that up," said Moody in his abrupt, domineering way. "I've been looking for you eight years, and you've got to come with me." Mr. Sankey was very much surprised at this, but he said he would think it over. Moody at this time was a man of power and influence. He had raised person- ally twenty thousand dollars in subscriptions and built the Illinois Street Church in Chicago, which, although conducted under the auspices of the Congregational Church, became famous as Dwight Moody's Church. And Mr. Sankey knew what it meant to be a Christian worker, for, like Moody, he had been converted, just as he saw the great evangelist converting others, by the power of the Holy Ghost in him ; and he saw, too, that Dwight Moody was rescuing souls. The membership MOODY AND SANKEY 147 of the Illinois Street Churcli was chiefly made up of people he had rescued from degradation, Mr. Sankey was ready to make sacrifices for God, as Dwight Moody was, and that was really why they were so fond of each other. They were both pledged to be "at work for Jesus Christ." Sankey's extraordinary gift of singing hymns was not because he had a wonderful voice or because he under- stood music. His voice was a small one and his knowledge of music not very great. But, whenever he sang hymns, as he did to thousands upon thousands of people in many cities, he seemed to be inspired. He was able to inspire silence in the crowd, that came like a calm after the storm of Dwight Moody's powerful preaching. Sankey's singing went straight to the heart, it made people think of the love of God. Some of the lines in his hymns he sang so softly that they were more spoken than sung. A certain class of people attended the Moody and Sankey meetings only to hear Sankey. It was the partnership of these two men that led to the great revival meetings in London, in Liverpool, in fact in all the large cities of England, Ireland, and Scot- land. In Scotland Mr. Sankey's "Human Hymns" were condemned by some. And the small cabinet organ at which he accompanied himself was called a "Kist-o'- Whistles." When, as sometimes happened, comedians in the theater tried to make jokes at the expense of Moody and Sankey, the audience hissed them. Sankey's hymn-book was a collection of hymns he had clipped or found from all denominations. He 148 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER also wrote the music to new words for the hymns writ- ten by Horatius Bonar, "Hold the Fort, for I am Com- ing," and "I Heard the Voice of Jesus." The hymn- book which was named by Mr. Sankey, "Sacred Songs and Solos of Ira D. Sankey at the meetings of Mr. Moody in Chicago," contained only twenty-three num- bers. It became a volume of twelve hundred songs. They were called "Human Hymns," because they were different from the usual sacred songs of the day. Mr. Sankey's own favorites were "Ninety and Nine," "There is a Fountain Filled with Blood," "Jesus of Nazareth," and "Sweet Bye-and-Bye." The most fam- ous of Sankey's hymns is "Abide with Me, Fast Falls the Eventide." While Sankey "sang the gospel," Moody "preached it," and their gospel campaigns were unanimous revival meetings. In New York, at Gilmore's Garden, they required five hundred ushers to manage the crowd, and Mr. Sankey had a choir of twelve hundred voices. In 1869 the Chicago fire destroyed the North Side Tabernacle where Moody and Sankey began their per- manent partnership in the gospel. They had lived there together. With the help of John Wanamaker and George H. Stuart a new church was built later, the Chicago Avenue Church. D wight Moody's great physical energy often tired out every one about him. Once, on New Year's Day, he announced that with his deacons he would make two hundred New Year's calls on the members of his church. Most of them lived in tenements and on top floors. Moody started out in a bus. He would rush MOODY AND SANKEY 149 up several flights of stairs, knock on the door, walk in and say to the astonished members of his church, in his abrupt way: "I am Moody. Are you well? Do you all come to church ? Have you all the coal you need for the win- ter? Let us pray!" The prayer was short, and in a few minutes he was out of the door, on his way to the next visit, his dea- cons trailing after him. Dwight Moody returned to his birthplace in North- field, Massachusetts, and built two fine schools there, one for boys and another for girls. His mother lived to be ninety-one years old. She was angry with him for being a layman preacher. Herself a Puritan, she believed that no man could preach unless he was first ordained. When he held his first revival meeting in Northfield, the family hitched up the wagon to go into town to hear him. His mother had refused to go, till at the last minute she said, ^'I suppose there won't be room in the wagon for me." When Dwight saw his mother in the meeting, he was troubled. When at last he asked those who felt the power of the Spirit in them, to rise, his mother was the first to stand up with her head bowed, as if asking her son's forgiveness. He had a "passion for souls," which his mother un- derstood at last. When later some one asked her what she thought of her son, she said slyly : "I always thought Dwight would be one thing or another." I kept this incident in Moody's life to the last, be- 150 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER cause it expresses the purpose of tlie lives of both these pioneer evangelists of the world. Together they created a new religious appeal, they being the first leaders of revival meetings which since have spread all over the world. In them was the spirit of the gospel, the doc- trine of the Bible. Moody proved that scriptural language could be translated into an eloquence more modern in scope, and Sankey supplemented with the spiritual meaning of a hymn which could sing itself into the hearts of all sorts of people, religious or not. Moody and Sankey were the originators of a class of preaching and sacred singing which was the beginning of revival meetings as large and as soul-stirring as their own. GROVER CLEVELAND (1837-1908) TWICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES Courtesy of Mr. Frederick Hill Meserve GROVER CLEVELAND GROVER CLEVELAND (1837-1908) TWICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES WHERE'S Grove?" asked Deacon McVic- car, as lie stepped from behind a barrel of molr.sses in the country store in Fayet- ville, a small village near Syracuse, New York. "I see him and Howard Edwards goin' off fishin'/' said one of the men. The same thing had happened often before. "He's a good boy," said McViccar, who o^^^led the country store where Grover Cleveland was employed, "but he's the gosh-darndest fisherman I ever did hear tell of." The other men in the store laughed, and the deacon went back behind the counter, shaking his head sadly. The fact is that when Grover Cleveland was a coun- try boy he and Howard Edwards were chums. How- ard saw nothing wonderful about his pal "Grove," ex- cept that they got along well together. They were about the same age and size when they both lived in the little village near Syracuse, and they played, and often slept and ate, together. They had lots of fun too. There was one thing about Grove, you were al- ways sure to catch fish when you went fishing with 153 154 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER him, because he knew just what kind of bait to get, how to put it on the hook, and did not get discouraged if the fish didn't bite at once. Grove would rather fish than eat. He was always full of fun. The best joke he played on the village was when he tied a long string to the clapper of the village bell and kept it hidden. At night the people of the village were suddenly startled by a loud ringing of the bell, and every one rushed out of the houses to find out who rang it; but they never did. Most boys who became well known men in Amer- ican life after they grew up showed some indica- tion that they would become famous for one thing or another; but the only thing Grove excelled in, so far as any one else could see, was fishing. That in itself was not a very promising outlook. He was just a freckled, mischievous, good-natured little country boy, who worked for the country store in Fayetville. His father had been pastor of the Congregational Church of the village, and some of his brothers and sisters were born there. Still, although he himself had been born in Caldwell, l^ew Jersey, everybody in Fayetville knew him as the "parson's son." Every one liked him. He M^as an obliging, respectful sort of boy. While he seemed to be doing nothing but just grow- ing up, he was, as a matter of fact, quietly learning the most important thing in life to make a man suc- cessful ; he was studying other men. This was not be- cause he was planning to become President of the United States, but because he always had a great in- GROVER CLEVELAND 155 terest in people. There is no better place to find out just how different men and women are than a country store. The whole neighborhood for miles around had to go there to buy what they needed, and Grove was pop- ular with them because he would listen to all their troubles, without saying a word himself; and though he had given them no advice, because he was too young then to be able to do so, they went away with a feeling that he was a smart boy because he had listened so at- tentively, and discreetly said nothing. This was one of Grove's greatest gifts, which later in life secured him the friendship of men and the confidence of a ^Nation. It was not a gift Grove was conscious of. Being one of the younger members of a family of nine chil- dren, he was not thinking very much about himself. He did not expect to have the advantages of his elder brother William, and he had so many sisters to boss over him that he was glad to be working in the store, at another village than where they lived then. He wasn't one of those studious boys who was always read- ing difficult books — Grove wasn't that sort of a boy. He just went along quietly working for Deacon McVic- car, and earning fifty dollars a year which he contrib- uted to his father's large household in Clinton, 'New York. The way he went to work in the store at Fayetville was this. His father had taken a church in Clinton, New York, because Hamilton College and also pre- paratory schools were there ; and as he was him- self a college graduate, having gone to YaJe when 156 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER he was young, he wanted his children to be well edu- cated. When the family first went to Clinton, Wil- liam, the oldest brother, went at once to Hamilton College and studied for the ministry. Grove started in at one of the preparatory schools. His father soon found that the expenses of the home were too great, and as Grove was a sturdy, dependable boy he was sent to take a job in the country store kept by his father's old friend, a former deacon in his church. He remained there two years, at the end of which time he had gained some valuable things in his life. He had met so many different kinds of people that he had learned to know just how to make friends with any one at all. He did not allow his own likes and dis- likes to influence his manner towards any one. He did not judge people by the clothes they had on or the education they had. He just learned to look for the best in every one, and they liked him for it because they knew he was fair and just to them. Grove was the kind of boy who educated himself along this line, unconsciously preparing himself for the greatest possible gift of character — good judgment. He was born in a village, and out of his village life came those broader qualities of mind and heart that prepared him for the difficult work of being a leader himself. Those two years in a country store were the most valuable training of his life. At the end of two years he returned to Clinton and had just begun to take up his studies at the prepara- tory school where he had left them off, when his father died very suddenly. He was in Utica for the day with GROVER CLEVELAND 157 his sister when the news reached them. Of course he went home feeling very sad, but above all he was thoughtful. He was fifteen years old when this hap- pened to him. As a boy, Grove was always far ahead of his years. He felt the burden of responsibility which his father's sudden death brought to him. Being one of four brothers, it was his duty to share in taking care of his mother and sisters. His brother William had become an instructor at the Institution for the Blind in New York City, and he secured a place for Grove as his assistant. The family remained at the little village of Holland Patent where their father had moved in search of health and had died. Of course this was only a beginning. Grove knew very well that he had to think about a career for himself, and having no money, he had to decide first upon what he wanted to be, and second, how he was going to get there. There was one thing about Grove that made every one, young and old, always respect him very highly; he was modest about his own ability. Long after he had retired from public life, after he had twice been elected President of the United States, he never spoke of himself as President. If a question was asked him he always said, "When I was in Washington," he never said, "When I was President." This was very useful to him, this habit of being modest about himself when every one knew he was a great man, — in fact it was just what made him a great man. It had been anticipated that Grove would become a minister like his father, but his older brother Wil- 158 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER liam graduated for the ministry at Hamilton College, and Grove thought that was enough in the family. With another boy of about his own age, whose am- bitions were also just beginning to develop, Grov© talked over future plans. As a lot of other boys had done before them, they decided to start out together on a journey in search of their fortunes. Instead of going to the great cities to find them, however, Grove was in favor of trying smaller places. He had been in New York and had seen the hardships they might have to meet, alone without money, in the big city. So they decided to go west from the little village of Holland Patent. Having no money saved up, Grove, who had sent all his earnings in New York to his mother, realized that it was absolutely necessary to have some before starting away. He went to an old friend of his fa- ther's. Honorable Ingham Townsend of Fonda, New York, who had given many young men their first start in life, and asked him for twenty-five dollars. This was a lot of money for two boys to start out with to make their fortunes, but Mr. Townsend gave it willingly, tell- ing Grove that he need never return it, but that if he should ever meet a young man in need, as he himself then was, he might pay the debt to that young man if he could spare it. Many years later, when Mr. Town- send was a very old man, he received that twenty-five dollars back from Grover Cleveland, then Assistant District Attorney of Erie County. The two boys. Grove and his chum, tried to get jobs in Utica and Syracuse, without success. It was diffi- GROVER CLEVELAND 159 cult to decide where to go next. One place seemed just as good as another, so Grove suggested they start for Cleveland, Ohio. He believed that as the town bore his name it ought to bring them good luck. Cleve- land was a very long way from Syracuse, however, but that didn't matter. They had no friends, no advisers, no particular place where they were sure of work, and very little money to last them. When they reached Buffalo, which is on the way to Cleveland, Grove thought he would make a call on his aunt and uncle by marriage, Mr. and Mrs. Lewis F. Allen. They lived in a fine house in the suburb of Black Rock. While he left his friend in Buffalo to wait for his return, he walked out to his uncle's house. He told his uncle that he was on his way to Cleveland to make his fortune. "Grove, what on earth are you going to Cleveland for ?" his uncle asked him. "I think I'm going to become a lawyer, there," said the youth quietly. "The law business in Cleveland is very bad, I've heard," said his uncle slowly. "If you will stop with us, I will try to find a place in a lawyer's ofiice for you here. Is any one with you ?" "Yes, one of my friends was going west to find some- thing to do, and I was going with him. I shall have to ask him if he will excuse me if I stop here with you." His obligations of friendship were always uppermost in his character, and Grove took that long walk back to Buffalo to explain the situation to his friend. The 160 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER latter said it would make no difference in his plans if Grove stayed with his relatives, and so they sep- arated. That is how, at eighteen years old, this penniless boy began his career in Buffalo, JSTew York, to become, thirty years later. President of the United States. The home in which he now found himself was a beautiful house. Black Rock was a delightful suburb, in 1855, only two miles from the heart of the city. The Allen homestead was the only big stone house in the neighborhood. It had once been the residence of Gen- eral Peter B, Porter, who had been Secretary of War in the Cabinet of John Quincy Adams. It is quite pos- sible that Grove, with his keen, adaptable mind, felt for the first time, in these surroundings of historical gran- deur, a new spur to his ambitions. Here he found a larger library than he had ever had access to, and he became Mr. Allen's assistant in completing a book called the "American Herd Book," a work in many volumes of which his uncle was the author. For years Mr. Allen had prided himself upon the fine cattle he raised on a farm at Grand Island. In the preface of the fifth volume of the "American Herd Book," which was published six years after Grove came to live with his uncle, the author wrote : "I take pleasure in expressing my acknowledg- ment of the kindness, industry, and ability of my young friend and kinsman, Grover Cleveland, of Buffalo, a gentleman of the legal profession." Mr. Allen found Grover Cleveland during these years a young man "with quietness of intellect, a ready mind GROVER CLEVELAND 161 that was always accurate. He was unusually prompt. His chief recreation was fishing and shooting." His uncle clothed him and boarded him and paid him a return for his work on the hook. He became attached to him, and he found him a place in a law- yer's office. Grover Cleveland's first important demon- stration of that independence of character for which he was conspicuous happened at this time. "Grover, you'd better go up and see Hibbard," his uncle said to him one day, referring to a lawyer in Buffalo. He went, and came back without any com- ment. He was a high-spirited boy, and Mr, Hibbard said something he didn't like. He got up without a word and walked out of his ofiice. He began his career in the law in the office of Rogers, Bowen and Rogers, in Buffalo, with slight if any en- couragement from members of the firm. When his uncle first mentioned the young man's abilities to Mr, Rogers, the senior member, he said they didn't want any one in the office. "However, we like smart boys," he added. "Anyhow, there's a table he can start at." That table in Mr. Rogers's office was where Grover Cleveland began his climb to the seat of the Chief Magistrate of the Nation. The first morning that young Cleveland sat down at the empty table, Mr. Eogers took up a copy of Black- stone and put it on the table in front of him. "That's where they all begin," he said to the young man. Cleveland walked the two miles back and forth from his uncle's house to the office every day, arriving 162 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER punctually at nine o'clock in the morning, no matter what the weather might be. After he had been there some time, his uncle asked him about his work. ''How are you getting along at the office, Grover?" "Pretty well, sir ; only they don't tell me anything," he replied. The young man used his brains and found out everything for himself. From boyhood till he was a man Grover Cleveland worked for wages, and earned them. When he was twenty-three he had given just four years of study and preparation to pass the examination that admitted him to the bar. It was during the four years that followed, in which Grover Cleveland remained with the same firm of lawyers, that he gradually established that trait in his character which dominated his official acts in Washington, — intellectual integrity. In other words, he would never express an opinion until he knew thoroughly all the facts, then he would arrive at a conclusion for himself that no one could alter. What he was as a boy, he became as a man, unpre- tentious. It is well known that he was an able law- yer, and yet he would never make any show of his ability, as other lawyers did, to get ahead. He ac- cepted no social engagements in Buffalo that might have helped him. He couldn't do a thing that he did not sincerely believe in, and society was something he never cared for. ISTor could he ever declare himself a man eligible for any office. His first public appoint- ment was made for him by his fellow lawyers m Buf- falo, who offered him the post of Assistant District Attorney of Erie County, when he was only twenty- GROVER CLEVELAND 163 six years of age. This was in 1863, the time of the Civil War. To him came a test of character at this time which he met with characteristic self-sacrifice. His two brothers were already in the Union Army, when, just after his appointment as Assistant District Attorney, he was drafted. In weighing his duty to the Government as a prosecuting officer and his duty to take care of his mother and sisters, he decided to send a substitute in his place, which enabled him to become the main sup- port of the family. He was nominated by the Democratic State Conven- tion in 1805, after three years' service, for District At- torney of Erie County, which he accepted only on con- dition that he would not be required to do any personal canvassing. He showed no political temperament then. Because he never sought the promotions in public life which came to him so rapidly, Mr. Cleveland was al- ways regarded as a lucky man in his elections. His record is easily analyzed. It is founded upon his faith- ful administration of Buifalo when he was Mayor of that city ; upon his square, honest administration as Governor of the State ; upon the respect and affection in which he was held by troops of friends when he was President of the United States; and upon the fear in which speculators, money rings, and other enemies of good government held him. "Admit at once any one who asks to see the Gover- nor," he said as he took his seat in the Executive Cham- ber in Albany, and thereby established his position in politics as a reformer who believed in open doors and 164 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER no secrets. His record as Governor of New York be- came a National symbol of the kind of man the people wanted in the White House. At the ceremonies in Buffalo in the Executive Man- sion he was introduced to the crowd as the next Presi- dent of the United States. He was nominated and elected to the White House in 1884. Defeated for a second term, he was reelected in 1892 and found himself in the White House again in 1893. Through long per- iods of bitter personal attacks directed against him by his political enemies, Mr. Cleveland retained the confi- dence and personal esteem of loyal, strong and dis- inguished friends. The largest influence in his public career that lifted him into victory always was his understanding friend- ship. He was incapable of violating it, of betraying it, of accepting it unless he could give it whole heart- edly in return. He was drawn into many complicated political traps to entangle his honor, but he remained calm and patient through them all. His energy for work was untiring. It was his custom in the White House to keep his light burning till three in the morn- ing, and to be in his office at nine. He had not only great physical endurance, but he was unpretentious about it as also about any self-assertion except in his official capacity. He was a loyal friend, a fearless administrator and a great President, who held the admiration of his political party and the Nation, until his death in 1908, at Princeton, N. J., where he lived with his family, in retirement, after he left the White House. JOHN BURROUGHS (1837-1921) AMERICA'S GREAT NATURALIST JOHN UUKKOUGIIS JOHN BUEEOUGHS (1837-1921) AMERICA'S GREAT NATURALIST A MAN born in 1837 who traveled far into the strange environment of this twentieth centnry brought to it the wisdom and sanity of onr fore- fathers. He never really grew up, because at the more or less serious age of eighty-three he was still poking about in meadow grass to find the nest of some shy young song-sparrow or learning without much success to paddle a boat up a stream. But in his case it was a good thing that he didn't grow up, because he wrote beautiful and inspiring thoughts about birds and ani- mals and insects and flowers that will make his name, John Burroughs, a healing, soothing, sane influence for many generations to follow. There are not many youthful pictures of this open- air philosopher, so that he goes down to posterity ap- pearing to us just as he did to a little girl who insisted he must be — Santa Clans ; a slim, smallish, compact, active man with long white beard, gentle brown eyes, and a general impulse of merriment. Like Santa Claus, his disposition of dropping at our door such gifts of nature-lore as he had gathered along his outdoor path of many years has made him known all over tlie world. People like to read John Burroughs's books, 167 168 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER because he gives them not merely literary quality but something useful in their daily lives. John Burroughs became a naturalist by force of cir- cumstances. His nursery was in the woods, not the pretty fenced-in picnic woods of to-day, but the real forests where all sorts of birds and animals lived and where, like the birds and animals, white men and women made the best of it. His son, Julian Bur- roughs, a graduate of Harvard, recalls his father's account of his boyhood in Roxbury, where, the seventh son of a large family, he lived in a house literally hewn and furnished from the forest by his father. "Ah ! my boy," writes the son, quoting his father's reminiscent account of his boyhood, "you never wore cowhide boots or a homespun shirt, you don't know what discomfort is. The boots were made by the vil- lage shoemaker; stiff, heavy things that froze on our feet. Often on mornings in cold weather when we got to school we would sit around the stove and cry while our boots thawed out; and at night, when we pulled them off, the skin would come too. It always took two of us to get them on in the morning and some- times three to get them off. Hiram [his brother] would get over us small boys and take hold of the boot-straps over our shoulders and we would pull, too, and kick with might and main, and at last on would come the boot. Father used to grease them with tal- low and lampblack; that softened them a little. The homespun shirts, when new, almost took the skin off your back. They were harsh and of a yellow color at first, but with wear and many washings they grew JOHN BUEROUGHS 169 softer and of a gray white. We raised tlie flax our- selves, planting a small piece every year; we rottled, swingled, and hatcheled it ourselves and the womenfolk would spin and weave it and make it up into our clothes." Who to-day understands the process of turning flax into clothes ; what is the meaning of such obsolete words as "rottled, swingled, and hatcheled" ? And yet these were the foundations of Jolm Burroughs's education, the earthbound sources of the gentle naturalist's wis- dom. He remembers all the now forgotten factors of life in those days of pioneer simplicity. His father grew the family's own wool, washing and shearing the sheep, carding and spinning the wool. The women then took it in hand on their looms and made clothes and blankets of it. "I remember hearing the buzz of the loom as they wove the woolen cloth on long drowsy summer after- noons," says John Burroughs. "Mother made dyes and dyed the yam herself, a soft, unfading blue." Pillows and beds were stuffed with feathers taken from the geese. Mittens and socks were knit from- the wool taken from the sheep. The kitchen and living room were lighted at night by tallow dips, "which mother made." It was the only light they had, and there was always "a box full of them on the attic stairs." The author's father, like other farmers of his period, never bought anything. Everything they needed was produced on the farm. With obvious pride in his brother Hiram, John Burroughs has told how expert he was in making ax-handles, ox-yokes, rye cradles. 170 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER wood sleds. All shingles for the house or barn were home-made, as well as Avindow and door frames, boxes, chests, window sashes. Nails were sparsely used, since iron nails were also hand made and expensive because of the iron in them. The boys of John Burroughs's boyhood made their own toys and school things such as inkwells, copy books, pens, slate pencils, and even string. "We got a soft slate stone and whittled it into slate pencils," John Burroughs tells us. ''We made our inkwells by casting them from lead about a cylinder of wet, soft wood wrapped in wet paper, digging the wood out afterwards. String we made out of tow, our trout lines we painstakingly braided from horsehair." Of course they made kites, and once, saj^s John, "I tied a meadow mouse on a kite to send him aloft, thinking it would be a fine thing to let such a lowly creature see the world. He came down none the worse for his trip, blinking his beady eyes." With his grandfather, the boy went trout-fishing, and became a master-hand with the rod. "He was a great fisherman, was grandfather, he was able to tire me out when he was over ninety. He taught me to believe in spooks, and ghosts, and witches." The spirit of his boyhood, his vision of all outdoors, has ever been before his eyes. There was a transition period, between the real boyhood in the rough and ready pio- neer days in Delaware County, and the other boyhood renewed so merrily in the boy's life of his son, Julian. In him he lived his boyhood over again, frequently puzzled, amused, or disgusted with the progressive habits JOHN BURROUGHS 171 of the boys of the twentieth century. That inter- esting period was from 1863 to 1874, his maturity, spent as a Government employee in Washington in the Currency Department and subsequently as a bank ex- aminer. Of these dull incidents in his life there is nothing to write of John Burroughs, the disciple of out- doors, the author of impressions and texts taken from the sky, the trees, the mountains, the woods, the streams and all that belong to them. At the age of thirty-six he returned to the activities of youth and bought land on a farm near West Port, N. Y. The land sloped to the edge of the Hudson River, and the house was built of stone with a finish of timber. John Burroughs hunted for the stone, helped dig it out and selected the choicest trees on the mountains. But the Hudson didn't belong in his vision of that first boy- hood, and of course not at all in his second boyhood. There was no recollection of such a great arm of the sea, it didn't fit into the perspective of rugged streams and mountain waterfalls. He expected much, however, of this house because of its proximity to the gi'eat river. He bought a sail boat which created a never ending source of amusing memories to Mrs. Burroughs, who . often related how, after he was swindled in buying this boat, and it was stolen, and recovered, and borrowed, and neglected, till it became mildewed and the oars were lost and broken, she rescued a small piece of can- vas, a remnant of the sail, and used it as a foot mat to catch the crumbs under baby Julian's chair. "Oh ! yes," the author would say on the matter of the lost sail boat, "when I came here to live I thought 172 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER I would spend half my time on the river, having great fun, but very soon I lost all interest in it." In the nineties, even, John Burroughs had gone back to the boyhood of the forties. He was not aware that when the trains which he could see across the Hudson stopped, it was because a block system controlled them. He had not noticed the procession of barges which were towed at night up the river. He had so trained his senses, however, that he could hear a drumming grouse in the breathless silence of the woods while those with him could not. He could identify a new bird note from the confused concert of bird-song, the new arrival in spring, though he might not have heard it for years. Birds' nests were as obvious to his keen sight as he went through the woods, as lampposts are to the city dweller. His eyes and ears were long trained to in- terpret sounds and sights almost hidden to us. The ease with which he could find a four-leaf clover was not luck but simply a training of the eyes to see them. It was a training which had been forced upon him in those early days of pioneer struggle in the woods of Delaware County. The traits of his boyhood returned to him increased by maturity of thought. His vision had broadened with the years; he saw at a glance all that there was outdoors because he loved it all so deeply. His education had been of the elementary country school, and yet he became an author of fine literary feeling and skill. It was a constant source of delight to him, when his friends wondered how he had so quickly acquired the gift of writing, to inform them that he was brought up on a farm. JOHN BUEROUGHS 173 "Best of all, I was a farm boy," he would say, "brought up on the farm, and I had it in my blood, I guess." He was as much a part of the woods as the creatures that lived in it ; he could see as far, hear as keenly, interpret the language of the forest as well. He went to Nature for literary material because he loved to do so, and he wrote of it all because he loved it, loved to live it all over again in the telling. "In writing of a day afield," he once said, "I lived over again that day, tasting again the joys of all that I had experienced, and trying to make it possible for others to experience that joy also." The keynote of his work was his love of Nature, and out of this wholesome sympathy and knowledge came a sympathy for good literature gained by reading good books. His vision was almost as keen in browsing among books that held some useful secret for him as it was digging into the mysteries of Nature. "There is but one way to learn to write," he once said, "and that is to write — if you only want to write hard enough you will learn. For years I steeped my- self in Emerson, I had my being, I lived and thought in Emerson, until when I began to write for myself, everything that I wrote had an Emersonian flavor. . . . Emerson was my college, my textbooks." Writing was as much a study of craftsmanship to John Burroughs the author, as mowing, or planting, or plowing was to him as a farmer. No one could swing a scythe with more skill, even when he was seventy, and it was his boast that no hired man could 174 FAMOUS LEADEES OF CHARACTER mow so well or so rapidly. But bis fever for books began wben be was a boy and be asked bis fatber for raoney to buy an algebra. His fatber did not know wbetber an algebra was a book or a new toy. He re- fused at first, but wben later be offered to buy tbe book, tbe boy's blood was up and be decided to be inde- pendent and get it bimself. He raised tbe money by tapping tbe maple trees early in tbe spring for tbe first sugar sap. Tbis be boiled on tbe kitcben stove, and making some small cakes of very fine wbite sugar, be peddled tbem in tbe village. He often recalled witb pride bow one year be earned "tbree dollars, all in silver, and I bought a little double-barreled sbotgun, a crude, weak little tbing made by some country blacksmitb, but it gave me untold delight and made me envied by every boy in Roxbury. One barrel was bigger than the other and one was not straight, yet sometimes it would go off, and I killed gray squirrels, rabbits, and some partridges with it. I wish I had it now." When John Burroughs was seventeen be taught in a country school and with bis earnings bought the books that were tbe influences of his career. Often be trudged home with tbem miles over the mountains on an empty stomach, because he didn't have enough money left over to pay fares or buy supper. These books were kept by the author till he was an old man. Sometimes be would open one of these books bought in his early boyhood, and gently turn over tbe pages that inspired bis author- ship later on. Locke's essay on tbe "Human Under- standing" was one of these books purchased in bis teens. Books were tbe outstanding milestones of bis life. He JOHN BURROUGHS 175 said to bis son, one day, thinking no doubt of the rela- tion of books to bis boybood : "And once wben some one gave fatber one of my books, tbey say tbat as be took it in bis bands tears came into bis eyes." In tbe eighties, be started an industry apart from autborsbip, tbat of raising Delaware grapes. His wife, Ursula Nortb, wbom be married wben be was about twenty, was bis boon companion in tbis as in all bis ventures. His bealtb bad been failing, but it was com- pletely restored by tbe outdoors and tbe exercise of tbis undertaking. For years tbe grape farm supplied a good revenue, tben a bligbt of birds came, especially orioles, and destroyed tbe crop. Tbe author built himself a rustic, bark-covered study just beyond the bouse at ^'Riverby," on the top of the bill and there for many years be did most of his writing. In cold weather be split firewood, carrying it in himself, with tbe comment tbat it gave him double beat. Most of tbe furniture for the bouse and study was made by tbe author, made entirely by hand from the rugged native oak. Some of tbe pieces be carved and deco- rated. There were three "homes" which John Burroughs built, — the house overlooking tbe Hudson, "Riverby" ; tbe house intentionally built where the Hudson could not be seen, "Slabsides" ; and "Woodchuck" built on the site of bis boyhood home at Roxbury. Tbe list of his books is a long one. His stories of the outdoor inhabitants he studied and lived with so many years are full of philosophies and straightfor- 176 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER ward hints to the inner lives of men. While he appears to have spent a great deal of his time interviewing birds, or woodchucks or squirrels, he must have seen out of the corner of his eye many other things, complicated things in the character of men, for his writings indicate an uncanny wisdom, a keen sympathy with his fellow- man. He preferred the society of plain people who had something to say, to that of grand people who just were fine to look at. He enjoyed the friendship of the leaders among all classes of men. The late Theodore Roose- velt was one of his fellow campers. At sixty he writes his boy Julian, who is away at Harvard, a letter that shows just how deep, and kind, and humble a man John Burroughs was : November, 1897 Dear Julian — If you look westward now across New Eng- land, about seven o'clock in the evening, you will see a light again in my study window — a dim light there on the bank of the great river — dim even to the eye of faith. If your eye is sharp enough you will see me sitting there by my lamp, nib- bling at books and papers, or dozing in my chair, or wrapped in deep meditation. If you could penetrate my mind you would see that I am often thinking of you and wondering how your life is going at Harvard and what fortune has in store for you, I found my path from the study grass-grown, obliterated. It made me sad. Soon, soon, I said, all the paths I have made in this world will be overgrown, neglected. I hope you may keep some of them open. The paths I have made in literature, I hope you may keep open and make others of your own. . . ." The dominant force of John Burroughs's character was humility. HENRY CABOT LODGE (1850 ) DEFENDER OF THE CONSTITUTION Copyright by Harris & Ewing HENRY CABOT LODGE HENRY CABOT LODGE (1850 ) DEFENDER OF THE CONSTITUTION THE disadvantages of culture to a political career have been acknowledged by politicians them- selves. For some more or less obvious reasons, culture has been looked upon with suspicion by political masters, but the study of politics as a science has not been convincingly written. There is a general im- pression that it does not lend itself to scientific control. The rise of Henry Cabot Lodge from the remote obscur- ity of culture to the leadership of the Republican Party in the Senate, is therefore a singular triumph over such handicaps as literary tastes impose on political life. Senator Lodge is a human symbol of New England integrity of thought and action, as well as a dis- tinguished example of its cultured inheritance. He is an inspiring combination of Hai'vard and politics. In his slim, alert, commanding stature is reflected the historic democracy of New England at its best. He represents no one-sided traditions, his literary accom- plishments as a historian and writer are supplemented with an interest in American politics that suggests those dual traits in the Puritan ancestors which made them attend church with a loaded musket in one hand and a 179 180 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER prayer-book in the other. Of course, in those pre-Revo- lution days the musket was a defensive weapon. There were Indians who refused to live in peace with the white settlers, consequently the musket was neces- sary in a practical persuasion of objectionable policies. Mr. Lodge has not actually carried a musket in his political affairs for the iSTation, but it has been gener- ally conceded among his political enemies that he is exceptionally well armed in case of surprise. There is a gentleness about the cultured Bostonian that de- mands respect, but his culture is misleading in that he also possesses that New England faculty for rock-bound principles of opinion, political or otherwise, that he will not yield. The Cabots, of the pioneer leading families in 'New England, have been at the head of the social and cul- tured life of Boston for generations. The first his- torical work Mr. Lodge wrote was the "'L'de and Letters of George Cabot," perhaps his best book. George Cabot was one of the first Senators from Massachusetts under President Adams. This was dur- ing the stormy period of construction in 1800-1815 and the States Rights movement had just begun, when the Federalist Party was in the political field. Sena- tor Henry Cabot Lodge inherits the principles of ISTational character which his ancestors brought with them from England, an ideal of self-government which was crystallized in the Constitution. Anything that stands in the way of American independence, of equal rights, is instinctively, inherently objectionable to him. Even in boyhood he took into his own hands any issue HENRY CABOT LODGE 181 that deprived him of personal liberty, as the following anecdote implies : People passing the spacious grounds of a house that stood at the corner of Sumner and Winthrop Streets in Boston, on a certain day in 1855, would have seen a group of little boys playing tag over the grass. The lilac bushes were heavy with white fragrant blossoms, the birds were singing their loudest, and altogether it was a peaceful, joyous scene. The great trees almost hid the big stone house which stood far back from the street. It was one of the first houses in Boston, and was owned by Mr. Henry Cabot, head of one of the best families in New England. His son-in-law, Mr. John E. Lodge, and Mrs. Lodge, Cabot's daughter, lived there too. Among the boys running about the private grounds was their son, Henry Cabot Lodge, who had been born in the big house. On the side of the house, in the middle of a lawn, stood the statue of a nymph. It Avas a great deal in the way when there were many boys playing on the grounds, and besides it was rather old and dilapidated. Boys don't usually care much about statues, especially when they are in the way and no longer new. Sud- denly Cabot said to the others, "Let's push it over." No sooner said than done. They all seized the old statue and pushed it off the pedestal. It fell to the ground, and only the soft turf saved it from breaking into little pieces. They all ran out of the gate, and Cabot with them. Soon afterwards Cabot's grandfather said to him : 182 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER "Look at that big boy, five years old, and he can't read yet." The boy had been reproved for pushing down the statue and perhaps it quickened his going to school which happened the following winter. The school selected for the boy was conducted by a Mrs. Parkman. Her connections with Puritan origin had been examined and found to be of the best, so the good people of Boston sent their sons there to come un- der an important influence of their lives. She was very highly trusted for her discretion, her perception of character, and her ability to arouse the intellectual faculties of very young boys. It was a private school, an extension of the classes she held for the education of her own son. Like the average boy, he did not regard Mrs. Parkman with anything but the average annoyance that a school teacher causes most boys. Only years later, after he was married, did he renew her acquaintance and recognize her delightful gifts. The chief thing Mrs. Parkman did for Cabot was to exercise his mind, for her invariable advice to her pupils in class was this: "Use your mind. I don't care what you answer, if you only use your mind." Apparently, Cabot did this, to the disgust of some of his schoolmates, for he discovered one day, that he was known to them as "a miserable little dig," which meant that he was a hard worker at school, the kind of a boy who was al- ways "digging" instead of "playing." This was noth- ing a hasty opinion, however, for Cabot soon found that he could learn very easily and so have more time HENRY CABOT LODGE 183 for enjoyment. He never liked school, and even in the later years of his life, he did not believe in it. "That talk about one's happy school-days is a fal- lacy," he wrote, remembering them when he was a Senator, One of his classmates summed up the prin- cipal advantage of his education when he wrote him: "After all, we were pretty well educated ; we learned to swim and ride, to box and fence, and handle a boat." Still, the education of a boy in Boston was never com- plete unless he was graduated from Harvard, and that could not be done without accumulating a depth of culture that stayed with the young man all his life. Henry Cabot Lodge was fortunate as a boy in his environment. His grandfather Henry Cabot was one of the leading men of the day, an aristocrat in blood with a patriotic sympathy for the democratic future of America. His father was one of the wealthy shipping merchants of Boston, building many of his own ships in the Medford ship yards and sending them from Boston around the world. Among Mr. Lodge's earli- est recollections were these ships which he could see from the window of his father's ofBce which was at the very end of Commercial Wharf, They were the graceful, beautifully modeled clipper ships that were soon replaced by big steamers. Even their names inspired the boy's imagination with the adventure they suggested. They were called Argonaut, Kremlin, Storm King, The Cossack and two were named after a favorite book of his father, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. It was a fad among the boys of his set to collect 184 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER stamps, and they used to gather on the wharf when a ship came in from the Orient, and try to buy foreign stamps from the sailors. They were careless, however, and rarely saved their stamps. Still it was an excuse to go down and ask questions about the strange places where the sailors had been. It might have been that the boy would have grown up to be a shipping merchant like his father, for he loved the sea, though he never "went to sea" in the sense of running away on a ship as some boys did who afterwards became famous. He could stand for an hour at the window of his father's office and look out over the harbor, imagining what it must be like, far away, on the other side of the ocean. The sea always has been the most fascinating place to him. The winters in Boston were not so pleasant as the summers, because then the family moved to Nahant, the fashionable summer resort of Boston. Here, when he was a boy, Cabot Lodge shared the superstition that Captain Kidd had buried his treasure along that coast, and he discovered a cave full of mystery. There was only a crack through which he could see inside, but when he looked there, it was pitch dark. He used to tease his companions by telling them that he had found a secret entrance, and then he described the wonderful things he saw inside. Once he found an old musket and told the boys he had managed to get it out of the mysterious cave, but one of the boys told his father and his father said the musket probably belonged in some attic. After that he gave up these imaginary visits to the cave. HENRY CABOT LODGE 185 He loved the sea, swimming in it, then lying on the hot rocks in the sun till he was hrown as an Indian. He was given a sail boat when he was thirteen and un- der the direction of a boatman learned to sail it him- self. One day he and a companion managed to slip away from the wharf without the boatman, and were tacking across the bay when a big schooner yacht, The Idler, came skimming in from the ocean. The sails of the big yacht took the wind out of the small sail of his own boat, and he and the other boy found themselves suddenly losing way, unable to get out of the course of the large boat. A man on the big yacht rushed to the bow, and yelled to them: "Jump over- board !" Believing that he knew best what to do, they obeyed and jumped into the water. While Cabot was jumping down, he wondered if he would come up right under the yacht, -but he didn't. He came to the sur- face just alongside and was picked up. His little boat was pushed out of the way and was afterwards towed in shore. His friend, Frank Chadwick, was saved by jumping into the water too, because he could swim. He and Russell Sullivan, afterwards a well known author, were together a great deal, especially at the theater. They usually went to minstrel shows. The first great play Cabot saw was "Julius Caesar" to which he went because his grandfather, Henry Cabot, insisted that it was necessary he should. So he went and saw four great actors at once: E. L. Davenport, Edwin Booth, Lawerence Barrett and John McCul- lough. The play he and Russell Sullivan liked best was "Colleen Bawn," an Irish play. Cabot was so im- 186 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER pressed with it that he wrote a version of it and gave a performance in his house for some boys and the servants. The theater in those days was not considered a very good place to go. His reading at this time was the novels of Mayne Reid, the "Arabian Nights," the ''Swiss Family Robin- son/' ''Tanglewood Tales," and the stories of Charles Dickens, Washington Irving, and Captain Marryat. He was particularly fond of Homeric poetry and es- pecially of Scott's "The Lady of the Lake," and then on the sly he read Beadles' dime-novels, the first yellow- back thrillers published. They were really very harm- less and full of adventure, but atrociously written and without any art. And, of course he went to church, but he made an agreement with his mother to let him read his Bible during the sermon so that he would not fall asleep, and she agreed. He went from Mrs. Parkman's school to another school kept by Mr. Dixwell. He was about eleven years old then, and in that year his father died very suddenly. This was when the country was very much disturbed over the slave question, and he had heard his father talking against the South which wanted to keep the blacks in slavery. His father was called a black Republican as were all Republicans who wanted to have the slaves freed. That's what Abraham Lin- coln was called before he became President. The boy naturally became a black Republican too. All boys of his age were necessarily excited by the slave ques- tion, which brought about the secession of so many Southern States, and finally the Civil War. There HENRY CABOT LODGE 187 were constant excitement and restlessness in the conn- try, so that when he was eleven years old, Henry Cabot Lodge became a very solid Republican. He did not know then that he would become the leader of the Republican Party in the United States Senate; but he was decided enough then to be so, if he had been old enough. Among the most vivid memories of the boy was the great torchlight procession in Boston just before the election in 1860. The Common was filled with flash- ing lights and thousands of young men marched with torches. They were known as the "Wide-awakes," and many of them went later to the war with muskets on their shoulders. These were the pioneers of the many other political parades he saw in after life, though he once said that he hoped the time would come when people would think more and shout less over their political celebrations. He always remembered that the first blood of the Civil War was spilled by the Sixth Regiment of Massachusetts, which, while passing through Baltimore on its way to Washington, was mobbed and had to fight its way through the streets to the depot where many soldiers were killed. The influence of the Civil War excited his feeling, which was always deeply attached to the Government of the United States, and strengthened his political views that the Republican Party was the only one capable of maintaining law and order in the country. If this had not happened, he would have become a dreamer, a cultured man of letters only, instead of a political power in the country. He had an optimism 188 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER about America when a hoj, a belief that the issue of the Civil War would strengthen the United States Government, and it did. His Republican sympathies were inspired by the policies of Lincoln. He fully ex- pected to join the army, for it looked as though the Civil War would last till he was old enough. But it didn't. When he was sixteen he made his first trip to Europe in a side-wheel steamer called the Africa. He went with his mother and sister and a tutor who was engaged to teach him while they traveled. This was the son of Rear-Admiral Davis, Constant Davis, a Harvard graduate, who wielded a great influence on his character. He was an inspiring companion as well as a cultured teacher. At Harvard, which he entered when he was seven- teen, Henry Cabot Lodge found himself in a period of Harvard's reconstruction. A new era of education be- gan at that time, which changed the old college system of its President, Thomas Hill, and brought about the appointment of Dr. Eliot in that capacity. Dr. Eliot favored a modern university system, whereas Dr. Hill clung to the old traditions, Cabot Lodge was the last student to read the "mock parts," a satire on the Ex- hibitor classes. His few years at Harvard developed his inclination to be a scholar, especially a writer. The most important influence on his character was the course in English Literature with Professor -Tames Russell Lowell, and another more difficult one in med- iaeval History with Henry Adams. His amusements were sparring, single-stick exercises, and broadsword HENRY CABOT LODGE 189 practice and he was very popular in the dramatic societies. Mr. Lodge is remembered for his perform- ance of a Yorkshireman in a comedy. He became a member of the old and well-known Hasty Pudding Club of Harvard. It was then the custom among students to pay for the privilege of being "supers" in grand opera, so as to get behind the scenes. On one occasion he assisted in carrying off one of the characters who was supposed to be dead, and they lifted the poor man so strenuously that they almost- tore him apart. College "supers" were privileged, however, and they had their way of getting fun out of the "job." Immediately after his graduation, in fact the follow- ing day, he married the sister of his tutor. Miss Davis. They went to Europe on their honeymoon and saw Paris in ruins just after the Franco-German War. At twenty-two he seems to have lost his political fire in literary ambition, for on his return from Europe he was advised by Henry Adams to devote himself to his- torical books. This meant a great deal of hard re- search work. He stuck to the tiresome job, working just as hard as necessity compelled him. In addition he took a course at the Harvard Law School. He never intended to practice law, though he was admitted to the bar in Boston, and spent a year in the office of the brother of Associate Justice of Supreme Court Grey. "There is nothing better than the law for mental training," he said once. One day Henry Adams, who had become editor of the North American Review, offered him a place 190 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHAEACTER on the staff as associate editor. Cabot Lodge has said that no honor that came to him in after life was so im- portant as this one. "Come to think of it," he said in after years, "I received no pay, but I was glad to have the place, be- cause it gave me a chance to do literary work, and I was glad of the opportunity." Henry Adams became his mentor in literature, and advised him to study Swift for simplicity of style. The first article he had printed in the magazine was a review of a book and he rewrote it eight times. It was three years before he saw a long article of his printed in the North Americaii Review, — an essay on the life of Alexander Hamilton. He thought at this time that he would become a historian, almost de- ciding to make literature his career. His first book, printed when he was twenty-seven, was "Life and Let- ters of George Cabot." This was the story of his great- grandfather who was a Senator and was offered the appointment of Secretary of the Navy in the Cab- inet of John Adams, which he declined. Then followed "A Short History of the English Colonies of America." The book was made up of written lectures delivered at the Lowell Institute in Boston. In six years' time appeared four exhaustive historical works, including "The Life of Washington" in two volumes, and the "Life of Alexander Hamilton" in one volume. Such is the record of literary industry and achieve- ment which has established Henry Cabot Lodge as a historian of note. Since then, despite his active career in political life, he has written other books and many HENRY CABOT LODGE 191 magazine articles of distinction and great literary charm. From his college days Mr. Lodge was "in politics." Political life and public issues challenged his well trained mind. Though a student and a writer, he was never a book-worm. He absorbed to give out to others. Two terms he served in the Massachusetts State Legislature; was defeated for the Senate, but took up political activity against Benjamin Butler, when the "Greenbacker" ran for Governor in 1883. Mr. Lodge was sent to the Chicago Republican JSTational Convention in 1884 where he began his close political and literary friendship with Theodore Roosevelt, who was nine years after him at Harvard, and was a delegate from New York to the convention. He was elected to the House of Representatives, and soon after to the United States Senate. He has been in the United States Senate since 1893, and was placed in nomination for the Presidency by Theodore Roosevelt in 1016. Al- ways a forceful figure in the Senate, his speeches are models of elegance of diction, abounding in historic lore. The signial triumph of his career as a Senator was his long fight for the historic policy of the United States against foreign entanglement, which led to the defeat of the League of Nations in the United States Senate and the downfall of Woodrow Wilson's political life. WOODROW WILSON (1856 ) EDUCATOR — WAE PRESIDENT STATESMAN Copyright by Harris 8; Ewing WOODROW \\'ILSOX WOODROW WILSON (1856 ) EDUCATOR — WAR PRESIDENT — STATESMAN ■OODROW WILSON in 1922, with a con- temporaneous vision of his brilliant life be- fore ns, seems to have reached a place in American history that entitles him to comparison Vv^ith the great leaders of national crises that have gone be- fore. He emerges from the mists of political jealousy and private hatreds, with which his public life was em- bittered, beyond the rocks. Future generations can be relied upon to show him such honor and respect as his public service to the Nation deserves, the credit due all men who have tried to meet the issues of their time with progressive intellectuality, with personal courage. If this sketch were written a hundred years from now, one could say that what Washington did for the free- dom of the Colonies, Wilson did for the intellectual freedom of his country. But, to-day, we are still in the scorching heat of political passions that surrounded him, that will not cool long enough for non-partisan opinion. He stands to-day, however, as the man who projected a great vision of National idealism embodied in the purposes of the League of Nations; as a great orator, as an intellectual leader of new principles in- 195 196 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER volving our international obligations. The best one can do in this handicap of the present-day oblique vision on the public life of Woodrow Wilson, is to set down these intimate biographical facts, that in their smallest details will grow large in the magnifying process of posterity. There are three decades, three periodic degrees of experience, in President Wilson's life that are distinct and separate. These are the boyhood days, that might be those of any American boy; the college days, when he adopted the profession of teaching and became the foremost educator and leader at the head of a great university; and the distinguished culmination of all preceding years — the days which brought him to the highest office in the land, not once, but twice. Those who found fault with him because he indulged in sud- den inconsistencies of act and word during the up- heaval of world conditions through which he main- tained a conspicuous leadership, overlook the fact that Mr. Wilson was not a product of the colonial period, but a man riding always on the high wave of modern tides that change swiftly, suddenly. Stubbornness would have engulfed him; his struggle was not against public opinion, but with it. His expert foresight compelled him to reverse his position as a strong swimmer is watchful of new currents in deep waters. The slogan of his political enemies, "He kept us out of war," was the hope for a world-peace deep in him, but when National honor demanded, he accepted the inevitable challenge of war. He was born on the edge of the Civil War, and there WOODROW WILSON 197 was branded in his impressionable childish years a hor- ror of war. Seated on the gate-post of an old-fashioned red brick house on one of the shaded streets of a sleepy Southern town, Staunton, Virginia, where he was bom, the fu- ture War-President of the greatest war the world has ever known noticed two men, strangers in town, com- ing along the street. The men paid no attention to him, and as he sat there, his legs dangling, they stopped suddenly. One of the men, sticking his fist in the face of the other, said : "Lincoln will be elected; when he is, we'll have war." The boy, knowing what war meant and realizing from the excited, violent way in which the man spoke, that it must be something teiTible, something that he wanted to know more about, dashed into the house and went straight to his father, to ask him what the men meant. Wlienever there was anything he wanted to know, he went to his father, who was always ready to tell him anything, and always knew the answer. "Tommy," his father said to him, "Mr. Lincoln wants us in the South to free the slaves, and he will send the soldiers down here to make us do it. We shall have to defend ourselves, and that will make a civil war. Now run along, and let me work on my ser- mon." Tommy went down stairs again, sternly, thinking hard, trying to imagine what a civil war would be like. He never knew, because Augusta, where he 198 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER lived, was never invaded by the ^Northern Army. Gen- eral Sherman passed it by. Once it was said that he would come, and the doors of the red brick house were kept locked all day and the lamp in the hall remained lighted all night. In the abstract war was something useless, terrible, to the future War-President, as a child. Principles be- hind war were the important things to Woodrow Wilson, who, when he was Governor of New Jersey, at the out- set of his career, said in an address : "When I was a very young child, when I could hardly read, there fell into my hands a book, which perhaps few of the youngest members of the Senate have had occasion to see, that was entitled 'The Life of Washington,' by Weems. I recall having thought even then, child as I was, that something doubtless more than common must have been possessed by that cause for which our fathers fought." As a boy he was imaginative. Once he invented a character for himself, which for days and months he secretly lived. Ho "made believe" that he was an Admiral in the Navy, and he wrote long reports to an imaginary Navy Department. That was when he was almost fifteen years old, and he signed these reports "Admiral Wilson." One of them described how he led a successful expedition in the Southern Pacific ocean against a nest of pirates. He "made believe" that the Government had been terrorized by the seizure of the vessels at sea. "Admiral Wilson" was ordered to investigate, and he told in the reports how he finally trailed them in the vicinity of an uncharted island. WOODROW WILSON 199 captured the pirate fleet, and after some mention of his heroic leadership, reported their total destruction. He had learned about ships and navigation from books he had been reading. During the greater part of sev- eral months ''Tommy" lived in his waking hours in the character he had himself invented. When he was seventeen, he went to Davidson College in North Carolina. It was a college with strong Pres- byterian tendencies. The living quarters were primi- tive in the extreme. The boys cleaned their own rooms, filled their oil lamps (there were no electric lights then), chopped their own fire-wood and carried it to their rooms. He developed the habit of taking long walks alone in the country at this time, though he was popular with his college mates and would talk eagerly on any subject. His nickname at the college was "Monsieur Mouton.'^ It was fastened on him because he was asked by a teacher in class, "What is calves' meat when served on the table?" and he answered hastily, "Mutton." He was taken ill in college and had to return home. He spent the following year at home tutoring in Greek and kindred studies in preparation for entering Prince- ton. It had been the favorite university for the South^ but the Civil War had made it impossible for the usual number of Southern boys to go there on account of the expense. There were only twenty other Southern stu- dents when Woodrow Wilson entered Princeton when he was nineteen. But he brought no war-sentiment with him, as so many yoimg men from the South did. He had no sectional feeling that he ever expressed. 200 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER The day be arrived, he declared himself in an argu- ment on the campus, — a Democrat. He was a very positive type of a young man with, the manners and. speech of a gentleman. He was thoughtful and used good English, so that he soon had a reputation in the college for being well read and of sound judgment. He bad suddenly grown up to be a young man of prominence on the campus. Ho had come to Princeton to find out what career be should choose, and he found it on the shelves of the Chan- cellor Green Library, in a bound volume of the Gentle- man's Magazine, the famous literary publication issued in London and originally started by Dr. Samuel John- son. These magazines contained the parliamentary re- ports of debates and in the department of "Men and Manners in Parliament" Woodrow Wilson found the in- spiration of his life work — that of statesmanship. In the elm groves, along the shaded streets of Prince- ton, young Woodrow Wilson would saunter, his mind full of what he had read in the Gentleman's Magazine. To him in these days, John Bright, Disraeli, Gladstone, great leaders in the iSTational affairs of Great Britain, were giants, — just as Lloyd George, Clemenceau, Or- lando, aaid he himself were giants of statesmanship to the young men of Princeton many years later. ISToth- ing could have influenced the career of a young man so much as those clever articles he read about the English Parliament. He wasted no time or thought at Princeton upon any studies but those about government, the history of gov- ernment, the theory of it, and the lives of great politi- WOODROW WILSON 201 cal leaders. He wrote a great deal to improve his style, learned short-hand, and joined the debating societies where he could practice extemporaneous speaking. He joined the ''Whig Society" and became one of its lead- ing speakers. He realized that elocution was impor- tant, and he would go out into the woods and declaim to himself. On his vacation he spent a great deal of time in his father's church, reading aloud to himself and making speeches to the empty pews. In fact, he organized a debating society called the Liberal Debat- ing Club, which was conducted on the rules of the Brit- ish Parliament. The writers who inspired him in his study of speaking and statemanship were Chatham, Burke, Brougham. Burke was his mainstay. He did not neglect college sports either, for in '78-'79 he was president of the Athletic Committee, the coach of foot' ball, and was a -member of the Baseball Association. In his Senior year he wrote his first serious article, which was accepted by one of the best magazines. It was called "Cabinet Government in the United States" and was signed Thomas W. Wilson. He was then twenty-two years old. He went from Princeton to tlie law department of the University of Virginia. In the quiet and pleasant surroundings of Charlottesville he did a great deal of writing, besides studying law. His article on John Bright attracted such attention that he made a speech which drew the largest crowd from outside which the university had ever known. He matriculated in law, and when he was twenty-six, he opened a law office in Atlanta. He paid much more attention, however, to 202 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER writing than he did to the small practice he had. He was then writing a book, "Congressional Government, a Study in American Politics," which was published three years later. Deciding that an unknown lawyer in At- lanta had little chance of making a public career, he dissolved his partnership and went to Johns Hopkins University to spend two or three years in the study of Political Science. An essay he wrote at the time, "A Study of Adam Smith," brought the young man further fame. It was published in a magazine, and subse- quently grouped in a book called "An Old Master, and Other Political Essays," by Woodrow Wilson. After leaving Johns Hopkins University, he accepted the position of assistant professor of history at Bryn Mawr, a young ladies' college. After a short period as professor at another college, he went back to Princeton (where he was graduated), as professor of Political Science. .When Dr. Woodrow Wilson resigned his post as the President of Princeton, to accept the nomination of the Democratic Party for Governor of New Jersey, he was regarded as a victim of deluded ambition. The country did not know that he had been training for twenty years, for the work that was before him. He had written among other books interpreting National history and affairs, a book on "Constitutional Government." The intensity of his secret passion for political reform soon made him a world-figure, for he fulfilled his pre-election promises, an event which was without the rank and file of political precedent. The "bosses" felt that they could count upon him, and their misguided confidence WOODROW WILSON 203 was nidely awakened when he kept a promise he made to the people to act as their representative and not as the political tool of the bosses. Shortly after he took office as Governor of New Jersey, he served notice on the Democratic bosses that they were out, ''and they will stay out, if I have anything to say about it," he added. His sjieech of acceptance was a defiance, a declaration of political independence. It was an echo of the genius of leadership that had been in course of preparation in Mr. Wilson for thirty-three years. Politics had been his ambition. He was asked how he happened to enter political life, when he was on the threshold of his career. "Why, I suppose I was born a political animal. Al- ways, from the first recollections of my youth, I have aimed at political life,." he said. Stored-up energy of his ambition lifted him almost at once, in the minds of his countrymen, to the Presidency. He took ofiice for his first term March 4th, 1913, after one of tlie most triumphant and sweeping elections ever known. Fac- tional war in the Republican Party gave him 435 elec- toral votes to Roosevelt's 88 and Taft's 8. His plural- ity over Roosevelt was more than 2,000,000, and nearly 3,000,000 over Taft. He restored the Democratic Party to power from the wilderness where it had been banished for sixteen years. He carried with him a Democratic majority of five in the Senate and more than two-thirds of the House. At the outset of hisr career as President of the United States he demanded and seized political leadership, against political precedent. The leader of the Demo- 204 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER cratic Party when Mr. Wilson was elected was Mr. Bryan. Mr. Bryan had played the leading part in the Baltimore Convention. He had materially aided his nomination, if not actually nominating him. However, Mr. Wilson differed at once in political policy with Mr. Bryan. The difficulty of compromise between the Democratic leader and the President cropped up in the formation of the Cabinet. There entered into the selec- tion of its members a powerful V^ilson influence in the personality of Colonel House, who had taken a promi- nent though non-political part in the President's elec- tion. Mr. House remained the most important unofficial-official of the Democratic administration. Instead of accepting the routine of executive govern- ment as his predecessors had done, Mr. Wilson did not favor "deserving Democrats." He chose as his advisers leaders in thought and ideals, irrespective of political creed. Gradually he became the only final arbiter of National problems. His power and ability imbued his name with an authority never before known in the White House. He mastered political traditions, and created a progressive government which was tending always towards more power for the people, less power for the politician, but above all supreme power for the President. His first foreign problem was with Mexico, inherited from the previous administration. In the spring of 1914 American troops captured Vera Cruz. Carranza was recognized in 1915. General Pershing's punitive expedition into Mexico took place in 1916. Two years before, in August, 1914, the great European war began. WOODROW WILSON 205 The President's efforts were concentrated first on peace negotiations between the belligerents. They failed utterly, and February 3rd,, 1917, America's diplo- matic relations with Germany were severed and we de- clared war on April 6th, 1917. On December 4th, 1918, President Wilson, then in his second term, sailed for Europe with the eyes of the world upon him. He was received in England, France, Italy, as the savior of the people. His fourteen points, a declaration for a universal arrangement of world-peace, and his docu- ment of allied agreement, the League of Nations, were adopted in 1919. He came back for a brief visit to America, during which he strengthened as best he could the political battle-line, and returned to Paris. The treaty was signed in July, 1919, and Mr Wilson brought the document back with him and gave it to the Senate for ratification. In March, 1920, it was de- feated in the Senate, chiefly due to the opposition con- ducted by Senator Lodge. During a speaking tour in a last strenuous effort to arouse public sentiment in the League of Nations, Mr. Wilson broke down and has been in ill-health ever since. Contemporary sentiment since Mr. Wilson's retire- ment is almost unanimous not merely in sympathy with him, but in recognition of his genius as a great American leader in progressive ideas of world-peace. THEODORE ROOSEVELT (1858-1918) THE IDOL OF HIS COUNTRY Copyright. 1904, by Pacli T'.ros.. N. V. THEODORE ROOSEXELT THEODORE ROOSEVELT ' (1858-1918) THE IDOL OF HIS COUNTRY THE story of Theodore Roosevelt," said a writer who knew him well, "is the storv of a small boy who read about great men and decided he wanted to be like them," He not only wanted to be, but he became a great man, because he was never afraid, never idle, never weakened in a crisis, and w^as sure of himself to the last. Self- confidence was born in him ; he had that necessary ele- ment of self-confidence — fighting blood. His childhood was passed in the. house where he was born, 28 East 20th Street, New York. He was a New Yorker by birth, but a plainsman, a rancher, a hunter by inclination. From the day he was born he was physically delicate. He was a victim of asthma. His nights were sometimes spent sitting up in a chair, be- cause he couldn't breathe lying down. But the pain and discomfort of this, even when he was a child, merely strengthened his fighting spirit. This he in- herited from a long line of ancestors, who represented the combination of push, imagination, and energy which is the inheritance of a hundred million Amer- icans. The contrast of the delicate, feeble, studious child and the heroic figure Theodore Roosevelt became 209 210 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER is the most inspiring proof of just what a boy can do for himself if he's got the right stuff in him. His father was a successful merchant in ISTew York, prosperous, well placed socially, and highly thought of by the citizens of that city in the fifties. His home was spacious, he was a man of independent fortune. He was vigorous, courageous, and exceptionally gentle and unselfish. Like his son, his friends were among all classes. Theodore lived a remote, dreamy sort of life as a small boy. Animals attracted his imaginative mind first. In the back yard of his aunt's house adjoin.- ing, there were a cow, rabbits, peacocks, cats, white mice, and hens. These were his inspiration; the sources of his talent for thrilling stories which he told to his delighted sisters Carrie and Edith. Particularly exciting was the story about the man-eating monster he called the "zeal." The idea for this masterpiece of juvenile fiction came to him as a very real experience. Listening obediently to the minister in church, Theo- dore heard him say, quoting from the Psalms : "For the zeal of thine house hath eaten me up." When he was a child, his mind hungered for adven- tures, and these he got from books and from a curiosity about things he saw or heard. At the age of nine he started a diary. His summers had been spent at Bar- rington on tlie Hudson, where his father's summer home was. He was presented with a Shetland pony called General Grant. His sister always believed that the General had been christened after the pony. He was a strange, imaginative, creative child, for about this time THEODORE ROOSEVELT 211 he began an exhaustive work entitled in his own hand- writing, "Natural History on Insects, by Theodore Roosevelt, Jr." In his "preface" he wrote in the manuscript in his own hand, "All these insects are N^ative of E^orth America. Most of the insects are not in other books. I will write about ants first." At the close of this manuscript, written in a copy book, is a strictly personal note to the reader from the author: "P. S. My home is in ISTorth Amer-i-ca. All these stories are gained by observation. Age nine years. Born 27th October." When he was eleven years old, a tall, slim boy with long spindle legs, he was taken to Europe with his par- ents, and retained the attitude of any American boy towards a decadent world. He was bored with the sights, the art galleries, the cathedrals, the tombs, and enjoyed only the museums, especially those of natural science and history. This trip made no impression on him. It did not disturb his American instinct that insisted America was "God's own Country." The habits he had acquired of insect study became an em- barrassing feature to his parents, and especially to his brother, Elliott, who was usually assigned to a room with him in hotels. In Vienna, one day, Elliott said to his father : "Father, do you think it would be extravagant if I were now and then to have a room to myself in the hotels ?" "JSI^ot if you wish it. But why ?" his father asked. "Come and see our room," said Elliott. There were bottles everywhere, small bottles with 212 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER muddy water or weeds in them. In the basin were the entrails of small animals that Theodore had cleaned to prepare as stuffed specimens. He was a "grubby" boy was Theodore, wholly intent upon scientific re- searches which he refused to surrender. During this formative period, he corresponded, with some indica- tions of a romantic tendency, with a little girl of his ac- quaintance, a friend of his sisters — Edith Carow. In a letter written to her from Paris he signs himself, — "You are my most faithful correspondent — Ever yours — T. Roosevelt." Years later this little girl became his second wife, his first being Alice Lee. When he was fifteen, he made an important resolu- tion. He decided to pursue no dreams that he could not put into action. In his boyhood experiences he had encountered boys who bullied him, who wanted him to fight. Being delicate he had no strength, and only his brother Elliott protected him. Once, however, he was attacked by two boys and he attempted to retaliate. The two boys, realizing that he was weak, didn't hurt him, but just mussed him up, tossing him about gently and easily. This attitude of compassion, of pity, made him furious. He realized then and there that he must make himself physically fit to meet the emergencies of the kind of man- he wanted to be. He talked it over with his father, and was soon at work with an ex-prize fighter learning to box. When he was fourteen his family took him, with his brothers and sisters, to Egypt, hoping the climate would do him good. On this trip it looked as though Theo- dore Roosevelt would become a professor of insects. THEODORE ROOSEVELT 213 He became a naturalist, abstracted, serious, dedicated to science. He spent most of bis time collecting "speci- mens." Tbis obstinacy of character, which drove him persistently towards a goal once he had fixed his mind upon it, accounts for many of the daring and deter- mined events of his life. He spent this winter in Egypt studying field mice and especially snakes, and he spent it that way with a single-minded devotion that nothing could swerve. In the spring, with his mother and the rest of the family, his father having returned to New York, he went to Carlsbad and finally joined some cousins in Dresden. Here, at fifteen, he organ- ized the "Dresden Literary American Club." In a copy book, the members once a week wrote some liter- ary impressions which were read at the end of each week. He never forgot tlie charms of these months in Dresden, spent in the house of a German family. This slender boy, who was wearing glasses then, dreamed deeply, but he was also keenly aware of the fact that dreams were idle unless they could be put into action. This conclusion was deep-rooted in him when he was fifteen, and the will to perform the task of mak- ing himself a man of action was developing. He made up his mind never to bo afraid. On his return, the Roosevelt home had changed to 6 West 5Tth Street, and Theodore spent the winter wrestling, boxing, building himself up. For a boy he was amazingly wise in foresight ; he saw that he had to build up his strength, if he was to amount to anything. When he was sixteen his father bought the old rambling house at Oyster Bay, which was called "Tranquility." 214 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER Two years later, in a parade of Harvard Freshmen, Theodore Roosevelt carried a torch in the streets of Boston, and shouted for Hayes, the Republican candi- date for President against Samuel Tilden. He couldn't vote, but he could shout. The Democrats retaliated, and one man threw up a window of a house they were passing and yelled, "Shut up, you blooming Fresh- men!" The young man with the glasses shook his fist in anger at this man, and the other boys asked who he was, applauding his spirit. His first reform measure was put into execution just before he left Oyster Bay for Harvard. He put a price on field mice which had become a nuisance. He offered five cents apiece, twenty-five cents for a fam- ily of them. His sister was left with the important task of paying for this gruesome collection. His asthma had not left him, but he stuck at his job in college. With his college associates he maintained a reserve. Being a member of one of the oldest Knickerbocker families he was entitled to membership in many of the best societies and clubs of Harvard. He joined only three, but they did not interest him very much. He was a strenuous college student. He was an editor of the Harvard Advocate, an ofiicer in many social organi- zations ; he drove a trap, he rowed, he boxed, he wrestled, ran races, taught Sunday School. In the summers he hunted in Maine. He danced at all parties, took part in college theatricals, and stirred the whole Senior class with a sudden ambition to skip the rope. He was graduated from Harvard when he was THEODORE ROOSEVELT 215 twenty-two, a vigorous, active, determined youth. He bad gained much towards the goal he had set himself when a boy, the goal of being a man. Towards the end of his course at Harvard, he in- formed his father that he wanted to be a professor of ITatural History. His father consented, provided his son would agree to be a real scientist, not a mere dabbler in the naturalistic study. He soon found out that the job of a professor of Natural Science involved spending too much time squinting through a microscope, and he gave it up. The influence of Bill Sewall, the back- woodsman, upon the life of Theodore Roosevelt, began about this time. It was very great, because this big, bearded hunter and woodsman resembled the kind of man he had thought about in his boyhood. He typi- fied the imaginary heroes of his childhood. "Take good care of this young fellow," said the man who introduced Theodore to Bill Sewall. "He's am- bitious and he isn't very strong. He won't say when he's tired, he won't complain, but he'll just break down." The first thing that Bill did for Theodore, when he was eighteen, was to take him for a twenty-five mile walk, "a good fair walk for any common man," said Bill. Theodore tramped the whole distance, and Bill concluded he was at least no weakling. This man of the woods became Theodore's hero, and he hoped to be- come like him, as nearly as possible, in spite of the fact that his physician told him, after his graduation in 1880, that he had heart trouble and must choose a pro- fession that would not demand any violent exertion. 216 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER "Doctor, I'm going to do all the things you tell me not to do," lie said. ''If I've got to live the sort of life you describe, I don't care how short it is." This was said when he was twenty-two. He married in October of that year. The following summer he climbed mountains in Switzerland, climbing the Matter- horn because an Englishman had boasted that he was the only man who had climbed that big mountain. It was after his return from his summer in Europe that he reached a determination to go into politics. He joined the Twenty-First District Republican Associa- tion of New York. The decision was not a patriotic impulse of service, or an egotistical notion that the coun- try must be saved. He joined because he wanted to be among those who were doing something in the world. He wanted to be among the ''fighters.'' His friends de- plored his decision. They told him that politics were "low," that it was no position for "a gentleman." He was told that only saloon-keepers and horse-car conduc- tors went into politics. He accepted these statements, and said that if these were the men who conducted the government of the United States, he wanted to look into it. "I want to find out if I am really too weak to hold my own in a rough and tumble," he said. The supreme ambition of his life was to be strong. The club quarters were over a saloon, and when he first appeared there, with his side whiskers and his air of wealth and class, the men were wary of him. The club boss was Jake Hess, who treated him amiably. He looked like a "dude," to the members of the club. THEODORE ROOSEVELT 217 His first fight in the club, against "bossism," was over a non-partisan system of street-cleaning. They ap- plauded his speech, but voted as Jake Hess ordered, and Roosevelt was defeated 95 to 4. He grinned, and kept moving. The grin with which he took his punishment pleased the politicians, especially a red-headed, shrewd Irishman, Joe Murray. He was a leader of a gang, and finally got a job with Tammany Hall to bully Re- publican voters at election. The Tammany ''Boss" neglected to reward Murray one election, and the Republican leaders employed him. He liked young Roosevelt for his courage and his ideas, and the latter liked Murray for the fundamental character of courage and hard hitting that he displayed. He recognized the shrewdness which Murray had, in spite of his lack of education. On this account he felt that he could learn something from Murray. This man brought about the nomination of Theodore Roosevelt for the Assembly. It was a "silk stocking" campaign. Besides Roosevelt there was another "old New York" family name on the ballot — William Waldorf Astor. Roosevelt was elected, Astor was defeated. During his first political taste of Albany he bit hard into legislative corruptions, in spite of friendly advice to avoid friction. His jaw was stiff and square by this time. He was the youngest member of the Legis- lature and the most active. He led a resolution to impeach a Judge for using his ofiicial position to sup- port Jay Gould and his crowd. "We have a right to demand that our judiciary shall be kept beyond reproach," he said. 218 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER This activity against the '^ring" won the confidence of the people of the State of ISTew York, and he was re- elected to the Assembly, in spite of the opposition of financiers and a Democratic landslide. He gained the distinction of being called the "cyclone member." The following summer, 1883, it became evident that he must do something to restore his health, so he ran away to ranch life in the West. His adventures in the "Bad Lands" vnth Bill Sewall included hunting, Indian raids, stampedes of cattle, bronco-busting hardships in the saddle, fights in border towns ; all the things of the "wild West" were his. Early in his training as a cow- boy he learned to meet his man with moral courage. "Put up or shut up!" he said, striding up to a man, gun in hand. "Eight now, or be friends." "Make it friends," said the cowboy, who had probably been testing the strength of the Easterner with glasses. In the West he grew strong, hardy; his body responded to the spirit of fearlessness that was born in him. In 1889, when he was thirty-one, he had written many books, but he didn't expect much revenue from them. He did not feel that he had found his career yet. He also felt the necessity of leaving a distinguished name for his children. He thought of going into busi- ness. President Harrison oifered him the position of Civil Service Commissioner. He was advised not to accept. It was thought he would be politically buried. However, civil service reform was interesting to him, and he accepted. Life in Washington was agreeable to him and his family. His closest friend was Senator Lodge, whom he had known at Harvard, although Lodge THEODORE ROOSEVELT 219 was nine years his senior. He was a close friend of John Hay. During the six years he occupied this posi- tion, every autumn he took a run out West, "for a hack at the bears in the Rockies." In 1895, he became Police Commissioner of ISTew York. His friends urged him to do this. The bril- liant, aggressive, manly direction of the police depart- ment gave him National fame. "He detested cowardice, and he always stood by the man who was doing or trying to do his job," said a police captain of him. He would spend long nights prowling about the city streets to see how the police were doing their work. The people gradually realized that the man himself was a moral force that would not yield. In 1897, President McKinley appointed Roosevelt Assistant Secretary of Navy, at his own request. A year later war was declared with Spain. When the President called for volunteers, Roosevelt resigned his job in Washington, and raised the famous "Rough Riders," made up of noted cowboys from the West. Every one, even Bill Sewall, advised him not to do this. In San Antonio he assembled his regiment with the help of his friend Leonard Wood, who became his Colonel. To his sister Roosevelt sent this note in ex- planation : "I couldn't stay. That was the sum and substance of it — although I realize well — what a change for the worse it means in my after life." Yet his gallantry and bravery in Cuba with the Rough Riders was probably the most vital event in his 220 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER public life, for two weeks after the Rough Riders were disbanded he was nominated for Governor of New York. He took his war veterans with him on the stump. The election was close, and on election night he went to bed believing himself defeated. At 2 a. m., standing in a pair of scarlet pajamas, he received the news of his election. ''Is it right ?" was Roosevelt's question on all issues of State, and if it wasn't, he vetoed or neglected the orders of the political boss in Albany. By this time his fame as a "progressive" had spread. He had achieved a ISTational reputation, that could lead only to the top. The Vice-Presidency was urged upon him by his party, but he repeatedly declined. He yielded only when he discovered that his name would give strength to McKinley's second term. Roosevelt has been aptly described as a man of des- tiny. The startling news of McKinley's assassination reached Roosevelt on an island in Lake Champlain. The final news of the President's death found him thirty-five miles away from the nearest clubhouse on the mountain. Runners, not knowing where to find him, went up through the mountain firing guns at regTilar intervals to attract attention. He heard them, responded with his own gun, and received the news. That perilous ride in a buck-board c«i a pitch-dark road, in the face of a driving rain, was the time when Roosevelt faced the possibility of being President with anxiety. He reached the railroad station at dawn, where a special train was waiting for him, which took him to Buffalo. THEODORE ROOSEVELT 221 The emotion of the man, tense, struggling to face the responsibility put upon him suddenly, reached its break- ing point when the Secretary of War told him it was the wish of the Cabinet that he be sworn in at once. His eyes filled with tears. Judge Hazel administered the oath. "I do solemnly swear," said Roosevelt, one hand held high, "that I will faithfully execute the office of Presi- dent of the United States, and will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." Then he added, after a brief pause, "And thus I swear." Then began a new era. The supervision of cor- porations and the "square deal" for labor became the first duty of the new President. The supreme standards of his personal character in- fluenced the ISTational growth in the succeeding period of his term of office. To the end, Theodore Roosevelt was the strong man of America, because he had willed it in boyhood. His son's cable reply to his brother in Erance, an- nouncing his death, is the finest epic of the great man's active life. "The Lion is dead." BOOKER T. WASHINGTON (1859-1915) THE EDUCATIONAL LEADER OF THE NEGRO RACE BOOKER T. WASHINGTON I BOOKER T. WASHINGTON (1859-1915) THE EDUCATIONAL LEADER OF THE NEGRO RACE « Y WAS born a slave on a plantation in Franklin County, Virginia," wrote Booker T. Washing- ton, the founder of the famous college for the colored race, Tuskegee University, in Tuskegee, Ala- bama. It was a desolate, miserable, discouraging "home" in which he was born. His mother was the plantation cook; the food was cooked on skillets and in pots on a huge log fire. There were no windows in the cabin, no floor but the earth, and the cabin itself was loosely built so that the wind and rain, in stormy weather, swept into it in cold gusts. The door hung loosely on a piece of cord. Wretched was the beginning of this remarkable man, who by force of his own char- acter became a leader of his race. The only garment he wore as a child was a shirt made of flax, which was a torture to the flesh. He slept on a dirty rag pallet thrown in a corner of the cabin at night. From this state of human degradation he climbed to a position of honor and trust, a leader in the education of the Negro race. The ambition of his childhood was to learn to read. It was the hope deep-rooted in the colored race. None 225 226 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER of the slaves in slavery days could read or write. Oc- casionally a kindly v^hite woman would teach one of the black boys to read a spelling book, but these incidents were rare. The first gleam of hope came to the boy when the slaves of the plantation were summoned to the "big house" on the hill. On a beautiful morning they gathered on the lawn in front of their white masters. The entire family, men and women, was on the porch, face to face with these black slaves. There was a feel- ing, underneath the excitement of the occasion, of sym- pathy, of affection for the white masters from whom they knew they were about to be separated. On the porch was a strange man in uniform. He read aloud a long document he held in his hand. It was the Eman- cipation Act, giving freedom to the slaves. When he had finished, the white master announced that they were free, they could go when they liked. With mingled feelings of fear and joy the colored people went back to their wretched quarters, puzzled, frightened, wonder- ing what they would do out in the world in competition for a livelihood with their former masters. The first impulse of this new freedom was to make a holiday of it, to go away somewhere and think the whole situa- tion over. It was a great responsibility, being free. How could they be able to take charge of themselves, and their children ? The problems, which the white people had solved, confronted these people and became an oppressive burden. There were the great questions of a home, a living, education for the children, citizen- ship, and the support of themselves. The first great question was to find names for them- BOOKER T. WASHINGTON 227 selves. In slavery they had been just "John" or "Susan" belonging to some one. Usually they were known by the name of their master, such as "Smith's John," or "Jones's Susan." The appalling ignorance of this vast horde of freed slaves at the time of their emancipation made them choose names indiscrimi- nately. Most of them preferred high-sounding names, usually throe of them. The middle name rarely went further than au initial, which they described as their "entitles." The way Booker T. "Washington christened himself is typical. At the roll-call of the children for the first school class, this colored boy fell into line. He heard those ahead of him giving themselves names. He himself hadn't thought of any. His mother, for some unknown reasons, had tried to attach the name of "Taliafero" to him, but without success. In the wretched log-cabin on the plantation he had been called "Booker." But this was not enough for the dignity of his new rights in freedom. The half-scared, totally ignorant little colored boy thought quickly. As his time came to an- swer the roll-call he told the teacher his name was Booker T. Washington, and so unconsciously he en- rolled himself among the famous. His home life had been totally without any compre hension of the word "home." He never knew who his father was, but stated his impression, in after years, that he was a white man. His mother, however, claimed a husband who had been a slave on some other plantation. He had run away and, doing odd chores for the Federal soldiers, managed to settle in West Virginia, the new 228 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER State; so she joined him with her family, making the trip of five hundred miles pushing her belongings in a cart. Their parting with their former owners was a sad occasion. For years afterwards they kept up a correspondence with members of the family. The pro- vision which their step-father had made for them in West Virginia was worse than the cabin they had occu- pied on the plantation. He was employed in a salt- mine near Molden, West Virginia. The cabin they lived in was smaller, dirtier, a mere hutch in a cluster of similar cabins surrounded by filthy and unsanitary conditions. In this miserable degradation where the neighbors indulged in drinking, gambling, and quarrel- ing, the boyhood of Booker was passed. He was soon put to work in the salt-mines to earn money for this hideous "home." It was in the salt-mine that the boy learned to make his first mark. The barrels in which the salt was packed were numbered. The number allotted to his section was eighteen. Gradually he associated this sign with his work, and finally man- aged to write the number himself, not knowing what it meant. He had secretly vowed that if he did nothing else in his life, he would learn, somehow, how to read. This was his absorbing ambition. He kept begging his mother to get him a book with printed words in it. Finally she managed to get hold of a primer for him, an old copy of Webster's "blue-back" spelling book. This was the first book he ever had, and he devoured it, struggling to understand the letters. Some one told him that he must first learn the alphabet, a difficult thing to BOOKER T. WASHINGTON 229 do without a teacher. It was in these dark hours of his ambition that he endured the tragic experiences of his race, that he discovered the horror of ignorance, from which sprang the whole course of his future life to educate them. There was no one in the neighbor- hood among the colored people who could read. In a few weeks, during which his mother helped him with her sympathy and what assistance she could give, he mastered the alphabet. In her was an ambition to educate her children, that encouraged him, also. One day a colored boy who had been taught to read in slavery came to Molden, and at the close of his day's work he would read the newspaper aloud to groups of colored people. This was an additional spur to the boy's ambition, arousing envy and admiration for this young man of his own race, who could accomplish this wonderful art of reading. The inlluence of this young man's "education" upon the rest bore fruit. The first school for Negro children was acquired, the first at least in that part of Virginia. To find a teacher was the problem. The young man who could read aloud was considered, but he was too young. No free schools for colored children had been started in Virginia up to that time, so the older people agreed to contribute enough money to engage a colored teacher with the understand- ing that the teacher was to "board aroun'." The whole race was compelled to go to school, few were too young or too old. But during his boyhood he often found that the colored teacher knew little more than he did him- self. The ambition of the older colored people was to learn 230 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHAEACTER to read the Bible. Night schools for the gray-headed men started for this purpose. The mania for "going to school" spread, till there were day schools, night schools, Sunday schools of all sorts. Young Booker Washing- ton was compelled to attend the night school because his step-father insisted that he keep at work in the salt- factory. Out of this experience came his realization in later years that night schools were necessary at the Hampton Institute and at Tuskegee. When, after much wrangling and waiting, Booker was permitted to attend the day school, he was con- fronted with a problem that was hard to overcome. He saw that the other boys all wore hats. He had never owned one in his life. He complained to his mother. She told him that she couldn't afford to buy him a "store hat," but she made one by cutting two pieces of homespun cloth and sewing them together. This was his first cap. Most of his boyhood was spent in hard labor, partly in a coal mine, and he admitted in later years that he envied the white boys who had no obstacles to their chances of going to Congress, of becoming bishops or professors. The impulse of his wliole life was an in- ordinate ambition for equal opportunity for the race. It was by accident that he heard of the Hampton Institute, the famous colored university of Virginia. This fired his imagination, and seeing no future in the coal mine, he secured a position as a servant in the home of a Mrs. Ruffur. From there he set out for the Hampton Institute, knowing scarcely in what direction he should travel, and with no idea of what it would BOOKER T. WASHINGTON 231 cost him. Except for the overwhelming ambition for education, he could never have overcome the obstacles that confronted him. No one encouraged him in his plans. Even his mother, his only friend, insisted that his ambition was "a wild-goose chase." The older Negroes saw something of the spirit of the boy, how- ever, for they took up a collection in dimes and nickels to help him take the first step in his trip to the university. The distance was many hundreds of miles. He was refused shelter at all hotels, spent many nights in the open, and finally reached Eichmond, Va., penni- less, weary, and starved. This was eighty-two miles from Hampton. In Richmond, where years afterwards he was the guest of a complimentary mass meeting of over two thousand people, he slept under a board walk. The next morning he got employment unloading a ship, and so secured a few dollars with which to continue his trip to Hampton, undaunted. When he presented himself at Hampton Institute, ragged, dirty, and hungry, he made a very poor impres- sion on Miss Mary E. MacKie, the head teacher. She kept him in suspense for some time, and finally told him to sweep and dust the recitation room. He was so anxious to be enrolled that he swept the big room twice, dusted it four times, and waited anxiously for the verdict of this test of thoroughness in character to which he had been put. Her decision was in his favor. "I guess you will do to enter the Institution," she said. Hundreds of other colored youths went through the same terrible experience in their eagerness to secure an education. Booker was offered the position of jan- 232 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER itor in return for his schooling, which enabled him to work out his board. He was the youngest student at Hampton at the time ; most of them were grown men and women, some over forty years of age. They were tremendously in earnest, but many of them were too old to master the textbooks. It was a struggle not only against intel- lectual deficiencies but against intense poverty. In all these years of difficulty and trouble Booker T. Washington sensed the need of education for the Negro, saw the hopelessness of his chances in the world without it. 'No discouragement stopped him, no work was too arduous to accomplish the ideal of his character. The education which he received from the textbooks was a small part of the experience. He acknowledged, years afterwards, that it was the patience, sympathy, and example shown him by the unselfish white teachers who devoted their lives to the spiritual improvement of the Negro that inspired him to fight on. At heart an idealist, his one aim was to do something to make the world better, and to interpret the Negro character in telling about the handicaps of his race. During the reconstruction period he saw what he considered the unjust exploitation of the Negro in po- litical life. He saw colored men in the Legislature and in county offices who couldn't read or write. A few of them were worthy, but many were not. From Hamp- ton Institute he returned to Molden where he conducted a colored school for ten years, then he went to Wash- ington, D. C, to investigate the educational system of the Negroes there. He found a false standard of ideas. BOOKER T. WASHINGTON 233 At Hampton the student was taught to be self support- ing, not above any sort of work. In Washington he found many Negroes who were above work, whose tui- tion and board were paid by some philanthropic person. The effect of this was to place the Negro in a false re- lation to education, to make him lazy, extravagant, irresponsible. Book education alone, he found, only weaned them away from the economic necessities of life. He had made so good an impression at Hampton that he was engaged as a teacher, and was put in charge of a new department, the education of the Indian. He expected to find the Indian rebellious, because Indians had owned slaves before the Emancipation Act. He found, however, that consideration on both sides led to harmony, and he conducted classes for over a hun- dred Indians at Hampton. In May, 1881, a letter was received at Hampton In- stitute from some gentleman in Alabama, asking them to recommend some one to take charge of a normal school for colored people at Tuskegee. The letter re- quested a white man for the job. Booker Washington was recommended, and engaged. Tuskegee was in the "Black Belt," and when the founder of the Tuskegee Institute arrived there, he found only a lot of Negroes, eager to go to school. There was no building, no organ- ization to take care of them. Two thousand dollars had been appropriated by the Legislature to pay teachers' salaries, and that was all. He began the great work of his life in a tumble-down shanty adjoining the colored Methodist Church. Whenever it rained, one of the older students had to hold an umbrella over the teacher's 234 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER head during class. More than once his landlady held an umbrella over him while he was eating his break- fast. He went at the organization of his institution thoroughly, as he had done everything else. He made a trip through the State to examine the character of the Negroes in their cabins. He found the same ig- norance, dirt, degradation of cabin life that he himself was bom in. The mental attitude of his race was still under the shadow of slavery. He asked an old Negro of sixty to tell him something of his history. He was born in Virginia but had been sold into Alabama. "There were five of us sold," he told the teacher, "myself and brother and three mules." One of his difficulties was to overcome the white man's fear of an educated Negro, the expectation that the result would be a Negro in a high hat, imitation gold eye-glasses, a walking stick, kid gloves, and fancy boots. His first class was made up of thirty Negroes over forty years of age, and most of them wanted edu- cation because they hoped it would enable them to get work as teachers. They had a longing to read big books with big words. "While they could locate the Desert of Sahara or the capital of China on an artificial globe, I found that the girls could not locate the proper places for the knives and forks on an actual dinner table — or the plates on which the bread and meat should be placed," writes Booker Washington, showing that his purpose in edu- cation was not merely book-learning, but manners and deportment. During the nineteen years that he spent in the BOOKER T. WASHINGTON 235 foundation of the famous Tuskegee College he worked for an awakening of the moral forces in the Negro, and accomplished for them the respect of the South and the North. By constant public speaking and personal ap- peal he secured contributions for the buildings, land, and farms that the institution now owns. His first application to Collis P. Huntington, the railroad mag- nate, netted two dollars. Later Mr. Huntington con- tributed $50,000 to the cause. Andrew Carnegie do- nated $20,000 for the college library. The Alabama Legislature increased its appropriation to six thou- sand dollars. Persisting, he raised a huge total for this now famous Institute. Booker Taliafero Washington, born a slave, in total ignorance, brought up in filth and misery indescribably shameful, became a world-wide figure of supreme im- portance and dignity, because he was a humanitarian, a man who knew education was not only in books, but in moral cleanliness, honesty, and sincerity of character. WILLIAM JENNINGS BEYAN (I860 ) A CRUSADER OF ADVANCED IDEALS From Portrait by Irving R. Wiles WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN .WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN (I860 ) A CRUSADER OF ADVANCED IDEALS JUDGE BRYAN'S farm, about a mile outside of Salem, Illinois, was the show-farm of that section in 1866. It entended fopfive hundred acres, and included a garden and a private park where fine deer were kept. In this spacious environment William Jennings Bryan, born in Salem, started his career at the age of six. This disposes of some fiction about his being the son of a poor farmer. His father was, on the contrary, a cultivated man of local importance in Illinois. He was a Circuit Judge, had served in the State Senate, was a man above the average in his com- munity. He wanted his son to have a classical edu- cation; his wife favored the career of a lawyer, for him; young Bryan himself, at this time, wanted to be a minister. This selection was chiefly because of the religious influence his father exerted over the house- hold. Judge Bryan was a very religious man. He made religious devotion a strict part of his daily life. He prayed three times a day, morning, noon, and night. Often when holding court, he would look at his watch, and at noon he would suspend proceedings and kneel 239 240 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER for a few minutes in silent prayer in the courtroom. No matter where he was when noontime came, he stopped whatever he was doing for the mid-day prayer. Once he was about to mount his horse when, looking at his watch, he saw it was twelve o'clock, and he knelt beside the horse, said his silent prayer, mounted, and went on. This impressive habit influenced his son, and made him study his Bible, so that it was the model of his thoughts, his language, his reasoning. From this source can be traced that distinctive fashion of all his speeches, the form and fire of his oratory that has moved the Nation more than once. It is the form and style of Biblical literature. All his life he has been a leader — in religious movements, conducting a Sunday School, advocating prohibition, urging a cessation of war, opposing private capital in favor of Government ownership whenever expedient, pressing for direct pri- maries in Senatorial elections. His purpose has been that of a reformer, and most of his reforms, though scoffed at when first proposed, have become statutory laws or National policies since. The Middle West, when Bryan grew up in it, was a section where people lived plainly, talked frankly, and hated class distinctions. All the influences of his first years of life were democratic. He didn't go to school till he was ten years old, but learned all that he knew up to that time from his father and mother. His sur- roundings were the quiet farmhouse, his hours were the sunrise and sunset hours of the farm, and nis daily jobs were those of a boy on a farm, who attends to the chores. He could take care of the animals WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN 241 in the bam, plow, mow grass, pitch hay, hoe potatoes, plant a garden, or scrub the floors with the skill of many other boys of his age. After five years of the village school, he went to a preparatory school for the Illinois College, from which he was graduated when he was twenty-one. Then he went through the Union Law School in Chicago, and got his first job in a lawyer's office in that city. During those eight years he developed normally, si- lently, without any outward indication of special tal- ents for the law. But he had shown marked ability as a public speaker. He demonstrated this when he de- livered the valedictory address at his graduation from the college, where he took the second prize for oratory in the intercollegiate contest, with a declamation of an original oration called "Justice." The real start of his career occurred when he went to work in the law ofiiee of ex-Senator Lyman Trumbull, whose influence and guidance developed the latent talents that were in him. This fortunate opportunity he has always regarded as the explanation of his suc- cess as an orator. He always acknowledged his grati- tude to the valuable influence of his first employer. Long years afterwards, immediately after his nomi- nation by the Democratic Convention for President in 1896, he went from the convention hall to the grave of Senator Trumbull in Oakland Cemetery, and stood bare-headed in grateful memory of his teachings. His first platform, however, was the kitchen table at home on which he would stand and repeat his lessons to his mother, and this habit of declamation, of "speak- 242 FAMOUS LEADERS- OF CHARACTER ing a piece/" was his own idea. He always felt that he could answer questions much better if he stood on the table than if he stood on the floor. His ambition for public life started when he was twelve years old, in 1872, when his father was go- ing through a political campaign for Congress. He watched, and listened, and saw the methods that were employed in his father's campaign, and arrived at certain fixed ideas as to how one could reach a place in public life. He planned first, when he grew up, to win a reputation and a moderate fortune in some profession, preferably the law. Then he could think of public life. But he actually reached his ambition, in later years, by seizing an imexpected opportunity. The religious side of his life took positive form when he was only fourteen. Instead of joining the Baptist Church to which his parents belonged, he entered the First Presbyterian Church in Jacksonville, 111., and has been a member of that church ever since. The strict temperance in all things, which has con- sistently controlled the personal views of William Jen- nings Bryan, was based on a deeply religious sense of duty to the laws of the Church. In addition to this, during the years he spent at the preparatory school for college, from the age of fifteen to seventeen, he lived with a distant relative, Dr. Hiram K. Jones. The doctor was a scholarly sort of man with strict views of a temperate life, which he had taught at the Con- cord school, where he was a lecturer on Platonic Phi- losophy. In his home, Dr. Jones and his wife, who had no children themselves, gave young Bryan the care as WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN 243 of a son. He grew np in an atmosphere of intense and rigid self-discipline. In tracing the early influences of his life, besides the religious temperament of his father, the healthy and scholarly guidance of his two mentors in Chicago, Dr. Jones and Senator Trumbull, must be added the inspiration and devotion of the girl he met at the Illinois College, and whom he subsequently mar- ried. She was Miss Mary E. Baird of Perry, Illinois, who was also a student in the Annex, the department for girls. She, too, had earned distinction for her oratory in the college, and delivered the valedictory address at her graduation. As a young man, William Jennings Bryan was con- sidered one of the handsomest students in the college: tall, with black hair, a white skin, expressive eyes, and a smile that was winning, radiant, an embodiment of the equable, amiable, kindly temperament he has al- ways had. Their romance, which began on the college campus, was founded on mutual intellectual interests, an ideal approach to a permanent happiness. They were engaged at the end of their college life, which they had shared in study. He decided to be a lawyer. They viewed their romance with practical vision, for his fiancee decided that she too would study law, so as to be able to help him when they were married. She studied law, but never practiced. Mrs. Bryan has described vividly her first meeting with the orator: "My personal knowledge of Mr. Bryan dates from 244 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER September, 1879," she writes. "He was then entering his Junior year. I saw him first in the parlors of the young ladies' school which T attended in Jacksonville, 111. He entered the room with several other students, was taller than the rest, and attracted my attention at once. His face was pale and thin ; a pair of keen, dark eyes looked out from beneath heavy eyebrows ; his nose was prominent — too large to look well, I thought ; a broad, thin-lipped mouth and a square chin completed the contour of his face. He was neat though not fas- tidious in dress, and stood firmly with dignity. I noted particularly his hair and smile — the former, black in color, fine in quality, and parted distressingly straight; the latter, expansive, expressive." Mr. Bryan's smile, when he was a young man, was in fact so wide that an onlooker seeing him for the first time at a public meeting said, "That man can whisper in his own ear." The trend of Mr. Bryan's thought in any crisis usu- ally led to a refuge of some sort in the Scriptures. This was because he had been influenced as a boy to seek consolation and advice in the Bible, or in prayer. His religious instincts have always prevailed, they have col- ored all his famous speeches and lectures. He always quotes the Scriptures in them. Mrs. Bryan empha- sizes this tendency in an anecdote she recounts of her husband's interview with her father on the subject of their marriage : "The time came when it seemed proper to have a little conversation with my father," she writes, "and this was something of an ordeal, as father is a reserved WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN 245 man. In his dilemma, William sought refuge in the Scriptures and began : " 'Mr. Baird, I have been reading Proverbs a good deal lately, and find that Solomon says : "Whoso findeth a wife findeth a good thing, and obtainetli favor of tiie Lord." Tather, being something of a Bible scholar himself, replied : 'Yes, Solomon did say that ; but Paul suggests that, vehilc he that marrieth doth well, he that marrieth not, doth better.' "This was distressing, but William saw his way through, for he said, 'Solomon would be the best au- thority on this point, because Paul never married, while Solomon had many wives.' " The matter was then satisfactorily arranged, and they were married in October of 1884, when Mr. Bryan was twenty-four. During the summer of that year a small home was built, into which they moved as soon as they were married. This incident like many others in Mr. Bryan's life demonstrates the practical side of his character, which has been no small part of his success. "During the next three years," writes Mrs. Bryan, "we lived comfortably, though economically, and laid by a small amount." During this time the young "Emancipator of the West," as he was called later, was the collection clerk for Brown and Korby, a small firm of country law- yers in Jacksonville. Occasionally he delivered polit- ical speeches in the local county elections. Mr. Bryan's choice of Lincoln, Nebraska, for a per- manent home came three years after he was married. There were no political reasons for the change, for the 246 FAMOUS LEADERS OP CHARACTER city, county, and State were almost solidly Republican, whereas Mr. Bryan is a Democrat. He returned home, from a business trip to Lincoln, ISTebraska, full of en- thusiasm for the West. He had met an old school- mate, A. R. Talbot, who had a law office of his own in Lincoln, and Mr. Bryan, being offered a partnership with him, accepted. This was not an improvement in a business way, because the new partner was still a young man of stiff ideals. Mr. Talbot's business as a lawyer was largely with the railroads. Mr. Bryan, on principle as a disciple of anti-trust legislation, de- clined to do anything for any railroad, so he did not share in the profits of Talbot's business, and practically had to begin at the bottom of the ladder again. This was never any problem to Mr. Bryan. He has begun over and over again in so many vital ^National issues in which he has been opposed, that it is one of his chief characteristics to pursue his ideal at whatever per- sonal cost it involves. His is the temperament of true reform. Mr. Bryan's refusal as a lawyer to accept a fee of $10,000 to defend a railroad, because he could not sur- render his anti-trust views, indicates that he was not destined to become a successful lawyer. His opponents have claimed that he was not, but Mrs. Bryan writes, in his defense, "Consider that he entered the law at twenty-three and left it at thirty, and during that period began twice, and twice became more than self- supporting." His practice in Lincoln, l^ebraska, was small, but he was immediately recognized by the Democrats, who WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN 247 were the minority party. His talents as a public speaker found ample scope at banquets, meetings, and clubs. He was soon chosen as delegate to the State Democratic Convention and there met all the leading Democrats of Nebraska, which led to a series of speeches on political interests. In 1890, when he was just thirty, he was nominated for Congress from his district on the Democratic ticket. Mr. Bryan's great gifts as an orator elected him in this campaign with a majority unheard of for Democrats in Nebraska. He had achieved the recognition, that has been widely acknowledged since, of his intense sin- cerity of character and his simplicity of manner and feeling towards all people. His voice was soothing to hear, his presence was dignified without coldness ; his power of launching a picturesque phrase, of shy humor and terrific earnestness, was admitted after the chief address of his campaig-n. In Congress, he was favored by an appointment on the Committee of Ways and Means, an honor rarely conferred on a young member. During the next three years he studied the National issues of his time deeply. Anxious to justify his selection on an important Com- mittee, he prepared himself for the address on the tariff in 1893, which launched him into National prominence. He has always had a large following ever since he sprang into the limelight twenty-eight years ago. In a brief analysis of Mr. Bryan's phenomenal ac- tivity in politics, in religion, in the social and diplomatic affairs of the Nation, the inevitable conclusion that he is a constructive thinker of tireless energy is brought 248 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER home to us. His intellectual grasp of big issues and his fertility of expression have swung many National re- forms. Nor has he ever retreated from his ideals in the face of bitter opposition, though it has brought the ridicule of cartoons and press upon him. His defeat in his next campaign for Congress, how- ever, left him secretly shorn of ambition. He was a poor man, he had a family to support, and at this crisis he thought seriously of taking up the practice of law again. The sudden activity of the Demo- cratic Party in a great drive for National power diverted him from this course. He had shown himself to be a student and an original force in democratic gospel, and more than this, in popu- lar interpretation of issues for the people. An offer was made him on the staff of the Omaha World- Herald, which he accepted, at a salary of $1800. In addition to this he was in demand as a lecturer. His place in the political fortunes of the Democratic Party became unassailable and his speeches, made all over the country, were ammunition that scattered his opponents. Finally, at the Democratic Convention, he rose to the great opportunity of his career and captured the nomi- nation with the famous "cross of gold" speech, which urged the increased coinage of silver on a basis of 16-1 with gold. He received an ovation, the delegates carrying him on their shoulders round the Convention Hall, and he was ever after a force in National life. Because of his re- former's temperament he has been opposed ; and yet, be- cause of his temperament also, he has made a perma- WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN 2-t9 nent, deep mark upon the history of the Nation. Many of the policies he had advocated have been adopted by other political parties, who have found them expedient. He advocated Government ownership of railroads, municipal ownership of utilties, regulation of corpora- tions, tariff reforms, the Federal income tax. State Eights, publicity of campaign contributions, opposi- tion to imperialism, restriction of immigration, Federal guarantee of deposits in National banks, self-govern- ment for the Philippines, free Cuba, pure food laws, employers' liability act, one term only for President, irrigation, election of United States Senators by direct vote, opposition to militarism, opposition to child labor, Christian missions in foreign lands, semi-socialism. Prohibition has been his life's work, and at the age of sixty-one he conducts vast Sunday School meetings. He was the first American to do something for the abolition of war. As far back as 1905 he made a public declaration against war that attracted wide-spread at- tention. It was received with sneers and scoffing. At that time war was a dead issue for America. In that year the Congress of the Interparliamentary Union for the Promotion of International Arbitration, adopted an amendment written by ISlr. Bryan, favoring recourse to an International Arbitration Committee, This was the fundamental treaty idea. With the fire of his oratory, he attracted the attention of cynical diplomats. Pointing at the picture of Admiral Nelson's death he declared : "There is as much inspiration in a noble life as in a heroic death." 250 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER The keynote of this statement was what has now been accepted, a realization that permanent peace depends upon arbitration. From that time, Mr. Bryan fought continuously to annihilate war. This became para- mount in his service to the country as Secretary of State. Whenever he could, he removed international complications that might lead to war. His innumer- able peace treaties have become prophetic instances of his foresight in international affairs. His purpose was, he said, "to provide a time for passion to subside." Between 1913 and 1914 he signed twenty-six treaties of peace with foreign nations. Mr. Bryan has shown himself in many instances to be a man in advance of his time. MAJOR-GENERAL LEONARD WOOD (I860 ) APOSTLE OF PEACE AND PREPAREDNESS Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. V. MAJOR GENERAL LEONARD WOOD MAJOE-GENERAL LEONARD WOOD (I860 ) APOSTLE OF PEACE AND PREPAREDNESS THE lives of Theodore Roosevelt and Leonard Wood are intertwined. In the days of our war with Spain and afterwards, when Theodore Roosevelt was in the White House and Leonard Wood in the saddle, it was always "T. R." and "L. W." in their close friendship, — a friendship based upon mu- tual admiration and personal congeniality. It was a comradeship that was mutually stimulating, a comradeship that helped them both to success and honor. They met when William McKinley was President of the United States and Leonard Wood was physician to the President. Theodore Eoosevelt was the Assist- ant Secretary of the Navy. Their meeting at a White House reception was the beginning of a friendship that remained uninterrupted during Roosevelt's life. But long before Leonard Wood was assigned to take care of the health of Presidents, he had won his spurs in war. Born in New Hampshire October 9th, 1860, Leonard 253 254 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER Wood was the son of a physician. He inherited from his Mayflower Pilgrim forefathers the sturdy character and sound principles that have been his guiding beacons through life. From his great-grandfather, who led a regiment in the Revolutionary Army at Bunker Hill, and his father, who served as a doctor in the Civil War, Leonard Wood came naturally by his military instincts. As a boy, the spirit of adventure early possessed him. He announced to his father that he intended to go to sea — lured perhaps by the breaking waves of the ocean on the shore of Cape Cod, where his parents then lived. Receiving, however, no encouragement in that desire, he decided to join an Arctic Expedition. Parental ad- vice prevailed, for early in life Leonard Wood learned to obey orders, a characteristic that has made him a great soldier. He went to Harvard Medical School and was gradu- ated in 1884. The life of a physician in a small orbit did not satisfy his restless mind, and he applied to the army as a surgeon. The army in the '80s was a quiet berth for an adven- turesome spirit, and Leonard Wood wanted action. !Not every young doctor was ambitious to go to the "front," so Surgeon Wood's application for action re- ceived prompt response, and he was forthwith dis- patched to Arizona to join General Crook, in his cam- paign against the Apaches along the Mexican border. There he found what he dreamed of and aspired to. With that intrepid and gallant soldier, Lawton, he took to the saddle, and revealed qualities that through his career of remarkable events began to inspire recogni- MAJOR-GENERAL LEONARD WOOD 255 tion. Captain Lawton in reporting to the great Indian fighter, Gen. Nelson A. Miles, in command of our troops along the Mexican border, said, "I can only repeat what I have reported officially, and what I have said to you, that his (Wood's) services during this trying (Ger- onimo) campaign were of the highest order. I speak particularly of services other than those devolving upon him as a medical officer; services as a combatant or line officer voluntarily performed. He sought the most difficult work, and by his determination and courage rendered a successful issue of the campaign possible." Wood's character was beginning to tell. The fierce Apaches, ''tigers of the human race," were quelled and Geronimo, their leader, captured. For months, with his little command, he had followed them over the great ranges, through deep ravines, and across cactus-covered deserts. From the quiet pursuit of the medical profession Leonard Wood had emerged a leader of men and a soldier, whose Indian campaigns won him the Congres- sional Medal of Honor, the prize for personal bravery, and the Nation's gratitude. More Indian fighting followed, service at Western forts as staff surgeon — and then to Washington as President McKinley's doctor. Leonard Wood wanted action, but for a time fate and his exceptional ability as a medical man intervened. It was his friend Theodore Roosevelt who opened the door again to action. The Spanish-American War was in its earliest stages. Secretary of War Alger offered Roosevelt a Colonelcy. Mr. Roosevelt has sometimes been called an egotist. 256 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER Certainly his reply to the War Secretary exhibited no vanity. ''I will accept a position of Lieutenant-Colonel of a regiment, if my friend Leonard Wood will accept the Colonelcy," said Roosevelt. Thus the "Rough Riders" were born — the 1st Volunteer Cavalry, which won its reputation at Las Guasimas, Cuba, just about one month after its forma- tion. In the Cuban campaign. Colonel Wood displayed his marked ability for organization and as an executive — a genius that was recognized at Washington. His soldierly qualities in the Cuban campaign won him a Brigadier-Generalship, and his ability as an organizer and an executive made him a logical selection as Gover- nor-General of Cuba during the reconstruction days. He found an island impoverished, crushed, and sick with war and yellow-fever. He reorganized its admin- istration, put it on a basis of self-government, and blasted out the curse of centuries, its fever-laden breed- ing places, conquering the dread peril of the tropics themselves. Arising above the qualities of a surgeon, he developed the ability of an administrator — a states- man. It was President McKinley who made Leonard Wood the Governor-General of Cuba. Here he revealed his surprising versatility. Cuba had knowTQ Wood as the Colonel of the Rough Riders and "Teddy" Roosevelt as the Lieutenant-Colonel. Fate yanked Roosevelt into the President's chair a year later; and he did not for- get Wood. The man who at Las Guasimas had deliber- MAJOR-GENERAL LEONARD WOOD 257 ately exposed himself to a withering fire from the Spaniards so that his men would be steeled to battle pitch, turned to the pursuits of peace. Wood gave Cuba laws. His railroad law has been pronounced a model of legislation. He gave the island good roads, the citj of Santiago paved streets, and he extirpated yellow-fever. Under Wood, Americans and Europeans could visit Cuba without fearing the plague. He gave the Cubans a sense of law and order and civic pride. He was a master builder and a diplomat. In Cuba the Church was bitter at the Americans for having parted Church and State and divested the arch- bishop of his accustomed revenues. Leonard Wood be- gan to make friends among the priests. A man de- scended from New England Puritans hobnobbed with the dignitaries of a church to which all his early re- ligious teachings were opposed. Once more he effaced self for the good of America. He steered his course so diplomatically that when the new archbishop of San- tiago was appointed Leonard Wood was invited to take a prominent place in the triumphal procession and found that the place of honor at the side of the archbishop, under the canopy, was his. And while the shades of his Puritan ancestors must have squirmed. Wood marched in the church procession and laid at rest all feeling of hostility for America. After his success in Cuba, Leonard Wood was sent to the Philippines to handle a far more difficult task — the pacification of Mindanao. His was the job to wipe out the lawlessness of twenty Moro tribes, to earn their good will, and to transform a place of head-hunt- 258 FAMOUS LEADERS OP CHARACTER ing and polygamy into a clean American colony with public schools. He did it. Had he been merely a warrior he would have succeeded. He would have stamped out lawlessness, but it would have remained stamped out only as long as the natives saw sentries with fixed bayonets. But Wood pacified a province, transforming bitter enemies into loyal friends. On his journey to savage Mindanao, Wood did not mull over military things. He stopped off in India, Ceylon, Java, and the Straits Settlements and other col- onies. He was studying colonial administration, obtaining the best ideas of British and Dutch officials, inspecting their work, checking up their methods by visiting and talking with the natives. One day in Ma- nila a friend from America called on Wood. He saw bookshelves that filled three walls of Wood's office, shelves filled with statistics and reports on colonial government. "That's a fine collection," said his friend, "but when do you expect to get time to read through all that stuff?" "Read them !" replied Wood, "I've already read every line of them ; they have helped me." He made himself ready for the job, just as in recent years he has studied deeply American national life, all the forces which will make or unmake us as a nation. Leonard Wood has the gift of making men love him. When he went to the Philippines he had to pacify not only the Moros, but American officers and soldiers blindly prejudiced because of his rapid promotion. Jealous rivals had whispered that he was a White MAJOR-GENERAL LEONARD WOOD 259 House pet; a doctor, not a soldier. Here is what an officer, who was with him in the island, said : "Pretty soon that part of the army began to realize that he was a hustler; that he knew a good deal about the soldier's game; that he did things and did them right; that when he sent troops into the field, he went along with them, and when they had to eat hardtack and bacon, he did it, too ; that when there were swamps to plod through, he was right along with them; that when reveille sounded before daybreak, he was usually up and dressed before us ; that when a man was down and out, and he happened to be near, he'd get off his horse and see what the matter was and fix the fellow up if he could ; that he had a pleasant word for all hands, from the Colonel down to the teamster or packer : that when he gave an order it was a sensible one, and that he didn't change it after it went out, and that he remembered a man who did a good piece of work, and showed his appreciation at every chance." It would seem as if there was something almost fatalistic in the merging of the careers of Theodore Roosevelt and Leonard Wood. Both Roosevelt and Wood were deep thinkers upon the subject of American- ism; but Roosevelt was a vociferous spokesman, while Wood, with that self-effacement which characterized the man in the affairs of his country and of Roosevelt, kept somewhat in the background. Eloquent he is, tremendously so. He has a way of saying things in a few words which hit hard with unpleasant truth. When we were in that aloof state of mind with "business just as usual" in the spring of 1917, he said, "We have got 260 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER to bring live men to France and bring back dead men." His words stunned the Nation, drove home to people how serious the war was. Wood feared fatuous con- fidence. Leonard Wood knew the power of the German war- machine. Like Roosevelt, he had sat on a horse be- side the Kaiser in peace time and watched the mighty legions of the Hun go through the mimic attacks, which a few years later they launched at an unready world. He realized when war came to us that we were to be engaged in no child's play. He had a clear compre- hension of the task confronting us months before the Italian debacle of 1917. And of these thinos he deemed it his duty to speak. Before he took charge of Camp Funston, appalled at the way our preparations for war were hesitating, disturbed at the outlook in ordnance and the quartermaster's department, realiz- ing that ours was a race against time, that we must put a powerful anny on the battle line before the Allies were worn do\vn, he roused the country with a speech which graphically depicted "the blonde beast trampling over Europe." He feared the spirit taking root, that "America can lick the earth." He saw his soldiers of Camp Funston drilling in civilian clothes and with baseball bats. He dreaded the red tape in the machin- ery of our war preparations which was holding back uni- forms and rifles. He knew that debates were being- held on the kind of machine guns to be made instead of placing the orders for the guns. Time and again, see- ing only the future of the Nation, he caused a message of "speed" to be flashed throughout the country. This MAJOR-GENERAL LEONARD WOOD 261 was like Wood. He detested red tape and armchair- warriors. He remembered the Spanish-American war and the remark a General made to him at that time : '^Here I had a magnificent system, my office and de- partment were in good working order, and this con- founded war comes along and breaks it all np." Wood knew that similar-thinking men were in power in Washington, and he feared their inefficieucj^ when he thought of the German war-machine. The men ultimately walked the plank. It was Wood who in- curred their wrath by appearing in the Senate and tell- ing the truth about our preparations, mincing no words, and causing the American people to demand action. He knew that this would get him into trouble with tlie armchair-generals of our army, whose political power was strong. But he deemed it his duty to tell the American people the truth about tlie situation. He has always decided what was the right thing to do, and then had the courage to do it. Thirty-five years ago, when he v;as not in the army, when he had just received his diploma from the Har- vard Medical School, he revealed this trait in his char- acter. As an interne in a Boston hospital he was re- quired to send for the visiting surgeon in all cases re- quiring immediate operation, and was himself for- bidden to do the work. One day an infant was brought in in such a perilous condition that death might result from any delay. Leonard Wood decided that the right thing to do was to operate at once. He knew he would get into trouble if he did not wait for the visiting sur- geon. He operated — carefully, fearlessly, success- 262 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER fully. Five minutes later the visiting surgeon v^alked into the room and demanded an explanation and apol- ogy. Wood's reply was, "I saw that the right thing to do was to operate at once. I did it." But he would not apologize for having done right. He was first suspended and then dismissed — a reward which in one form or another has seemed to follow that thing in his character which instantly recognizes the right thing to do and courageously bids him do it. Leonard Wood believed in his own words — "a plas- ter over a man's mouth is as useful as eloquence within it." It is probable that his stoical will to sentence him- self to silence in times of stress has endeared Leonard Wood to the American people. When, without public explanation, this man, who, with Theodore Roosevelt, had roused the American people to the need of military preparedness, whom the ISTation regarded, not without reason, as the ablest organizer in our army, with the declaration of war with Germany looming but a few weeks away, was suddenly transferred to an obscure post in the South, he said nothing. Merely to reporters who asked him to make a statement, he said, ''I obey orders." When war came and Wood, the foremost man in our military establishment — our senior Major-Gen- eral, a Chief of Staff — was left to cool his heels in Charleston, S. C, while another General was placed in command of the American Expeditionary Force, he said nothing. When on the eve of sailing for France with the 89th Division, which ho had built out of raw material into the best division of the National Army, he was suddenly MAJOR-GENERAL LEONARD WOOD 263 relieved of command and ordered to a desk job in San Francisco, he said nothing. But he did go to Washing- ton to plead with President Wilson that he be allowed to lead these men whom he had trained into action. A special board of military surgeons had pronounced him "fit." President Wilson listened to Wood's plea of justice and Wood did not have to go to San Francisco, but he did not go to France. He was ordered back to Camp Funston to train troops. And all anybody could get Wood to say was, "All that I feel privileged to say regarding my talk with the President is that he was very courteous and very considerate." And so he went back to the Kansas plains, while the great army that he had long urged, commanded by officers made in a vast school of his own conception — the "Plattsburg idea" ' — went into battle and won. "I am leaving for Camp Funston to-morrow," said Wood, when his plea to be allowed to fight was turned down, "where I shall give the best that is in me to the training of the boys who will be ordered to that camp." And he did. Not a word of protest out of him. Had he wished to speak, he could have stirred the country. "I obey orders." The disappointment was heart- breaking; another man might have sulked in his tent. "I will give the best there is in me," said the man who stayed home. When the news came to the men of his division that Leonard Wood was not to lead them in France, they were bitter. When he returned from Washington, every officer in Camp Funston was waiting to greet him. Realizing their youth, sincerity, and loyalty to him. 264 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER Wood once more diplomatically effaced self. He told them not to concern themselves with his case, but to give all that was in them to the great task before them, and to think of nothing else. "There isn't anything to be said," he told them; "these orders stand, and the only thing to do is to do the best we can — all of us — to win the war." Theodore Roosevelt is credited with having said : "Others talked about building the Panama Canal. I did it." Speaking of Leonard Wood's achievement in transforming Cuba into a clean, up-to-date, law-abiding country, Theodore Roosevelt said: "He was put down there to do an absolutely new task. He did it." The resemblance betv/een the two men is amazing — little talk, much action, big results. Roosevelt the man is dead, but in Wood his spirit lives. And that spirit, that same fearlessness to do right, that same gift of looking ahead and being ready, the same tenacity and determination, that same deep Americanism, is going to bring Leonard Wood to — what ? In 1016 a man, a party leader in Republican poli- tics, sat at the end of a long-distance telephone in a committee room of the convention hall in Chicago. At the other end was Theodore Roosevelt. "If I can- not be nominated I will support Leonard Wood," Roose- velt had told that man a few days before in conference at Oyster Bay. And now it was the eleventh hour of the convention, and the fight between the Roosevelt and Hughes supporters was almost at a deadlock, with Hughes slightly in the lead. "You cannot be nomi- nated," said the man at the 'phone. MAJOR-GENERAL LEONARD WOOD 265 The voice from Oyster Bay — the voice that never yielded to defeat — answered in its shrill staccato : "I am the only man who can win the election on the Re- publican ticket — fight on," and the 'phone clicked. Hughes was nominated. Leonard Wood's name was not put before the convention. It was withdrawn at his own request. That was Wood, the friend — Wood, the man. Hughes was defeated. Many things have happened since then. Major-General Wood did not go to France in command, neither was his friend Theodore Roosevelt permitted to go. Again their lives paralleled. Wood, the father of the Plattsburg idea, the apostle of pre- paredness, the great organizer and soldier, "stood by" during the Great War. His services in the East, the South, and the West were the services of a great organ- izer and trainer of men. Then suddenly out of the air sprang a "Wood League for Presidency." It popped up in various states from Maine to California. No one sponsored it ; it was spontaneous — the tribute of the people to the great soldier and executive, a tribute to Wood's great character as an American. For days at the Chicago convention Major-General Wood's name was in the lead, for the nomination of President of the United States on the Republican ticket. But the party was divided. Wood was not a politician. He did not try to compromise. The two opponents joined their interests in favor of a "dark horse," and the man who had by large odds the greatest number of delegates stepped aside. No sooner was the campaign on than Major-Gen- 266 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER eral Wood's voice was raised in support of the "dark horse" nominee, Warren G. Harding. Quietly, after election days were over, he returned to his Chicago headquarters. Hardly had the new ad- ministration at Washington come into power, when an acute condition arose in the Philippines. At once President Harding placed Major-General Wood at the head of a commission to report and make recommenda- tions. On the heels of his report Leonard Wood was designated by the President as Governor-General of the Islands. At sixty-one years of age, he took over the governor- ship and reconstruction of affairs in our turbulent pos- sessions in the Pacific. Welcomed by the native and the white man alike, his success in the Philippines is a foregone conclusion. Leonard Wood's greatest achievement is the love and confidence of the American people. His stern sense of duty, his Spartan character and his cumulative achieve- ments as a man, a soldier and an administrator, give him a permanent place in history, resplendent with honor and glory. CHAELES EVANS HUGHES (1862 ) A GREAT AMERICAN STATESMAN Copyright by Harris & Ewing CHARLES EVANS HUGHES CHARLES EVANS HUGHES (1862 ) A GREAT AMEEICAN STATESMAN THE Secretary of State is the custodian of National honor. He represents, ofBcially, the character of the Nation. Public opinion, there- fore, is an important consideration in the Presi- dent's mind when he makes this appointment in his Cabinet, for the Secretary of State must stand before the country as something more than a political cham- pion of his party, he must pass muster for certain acknowledged qualities of statesmanship. His name must represent leadership. He must qualify not only for his abilities as executive head of one of the chief departments of government, but his name must con- vey to the people a personal force of character. No one will deny that Mr. Hughes's acceptance of the portfolio of Secretary of State offered him by President Harding impressed the people of the United States with an assurance of safety and wisdom in the conduct of this branch of the President's administration. Mr. Hughes represented those high aims of National pa- triotism and sense of honor that are embodied in the Constitution. In short, as Secretary of State, Mr. Hughes demon- strates the type of American, that, rounded out by years 269 270 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER of maturity, can become an incorruptible character of manly principles. He is an example for the generation of young men who, like himself, began life with no worldly advantages to speak of. He rose to the dis- tinguished office because he grew up under no other in- jfluences than those he created for himself as he climbed the ladder of his career. It is interesting to see how, as a boy, a young man, a lawyer, a Governor, a Judge of the highest Court of Appeals, he reached the unique reputation for states- manship he holds in public opinion. It may help to indicate that character is the supreme opportunity of success in life, for young men. Mr. Hughes was never a spectacular figure in public life. Like his father, who was a Baptist minister, he had the plain, level, straightforward vision of the plain people. As a child he cared most of all for knowledge. As a young teacher he studied ; as a young lawyer he exposed ; as a Governor he reformed public service ; as a Judge he grew young in clarifying legal tangles. His whole character has been the native dignity of a plain American who sets justice and wholesome purpose in National affairs above everything else. In him was the independence that makes leaders among men. Leadership is a gift. It was demonstrated in Mr. Hughes, in childhood, as the following recollection of his first school-days demonstrates. A delicate, serious, but determined little boy of five years of age was being dressed for his first day at school. It was in Glens Falls, New York, where he was born; and the event was very important to his father CHARLES EVANS HUGHES 271 and mother. His father, seeing how solemn the little boy was, whispered to his mother to let him off, but his mother who had herself been a school-teacher insisted that he must go. So, with his slate and his books under his arm, he was met at the gate of the house where his parents lived, by another little boy, slightly older, who took charge of him. He took hold of his hand, and as they went down the street together his father and mother watched them from the doorstep till they were out of sight. "It was with some heart-burnings that we saw him trudge down the street," his father said, recalling the incident. For the first two weeks, he seemed to enjoy the school immensely. He came home each day with a great deal to tell his parents about his lessons. Very soon, however, they noticed that he grew rather silent about them. One day he walked into his father's study and handed him a paper on which was written "Charles E. Hughes' Plan of Study." It was a list of studies and the hours and days on which each subject was to be taken up. His father asked him what it meant. "Father," said the little boy, "I don't want to go to school any more. The scholars are very slow in getting their lessons and the teacher goes over the same old thing time after time. I would like to study at home with you and mother, and I am sure I would have more time to play." One can look across the desk in the State Depart- ment in Washington at the frank, engaging presence of Mr. Hughes, and realize that his decisions or his plans 272 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER are conceived with equal independence, because he is intrinsically self-reliant. His education began at home. His mother taught him mathematics, his father Greek and Latin. When he was ten or twelve years old he had found out the value of books. Curiosity, a greed for knowledge, developed studious habits. His boy- hood was spent in a daily routine of lessons. His im- agination was in books, especially scientific works. He spent more time in study than he did at play. He was a great traveler when he was a child, in imag- ination. One of his favorite amusements, on rainy days, was to go up into the attic of his home and sit there with a big railroad map spread on his knees. In this way he would follow the black lines on the map, read the names of the towns marked down, and imagine what those towns must look like. Especially he liked to read books about travel and adventure. His father, being a Baptist minister, was often moved from one church to another, so that the boy grew up in many parts of oSTew York State and New Jersey. He went to school in Newark, N. J., for a short while. Finally his father settled in New York City, and he went to Public School 35, on Thirteenth Street, where there were a great many boys who went to school with him who became famous men aftei^wards. The intention of his parents was that their son should become a Baptist minister. He himself wanted to be one. He was always very serious, and used often to discuss the points in his father's sermon after church, to find out some things he didn't understand. Until he grew up to be a young man it was his ambition to be CHARLES EVANS HUGHES 273 a minister. Even- when he was only seven years old be wrote religious articles which he used to show his father for his approval. When he went to the public school in 'New York he was only twelve years old, but he was already so ad- vanced in the education he had received at home, that he was at once put in a class with boys much older than himself. He won several prizes for composition while he was at this school, usually choosing very serious sub- jects. His mind seemed to be far beyond his years. He wrote, at that age, on subjects that most boys don't even think about. One of his compositions was called, ''The Limitation of the Human Mind," and another "The Evils of Light Literature." Every one noticed one particular thing about Charlie Hughes in school, he did everything thoroughly. He did his work with an ambition to do it better than any one else. That was the chief thing about him. He thought more about work than he did about play and he was only thirteen when he received his certificate of graduation from Public School 35. He wanted to enter New York City College at once, but he was not old enough. So he changed his plans, and took a five years' course of private tutoring with his father. His character and the greatest part of his education he owes to his father and mother. When he went to Hamilton College, IST. Y., to take a theological course, it was still his intention to be a Baptist minister. Two years later he went to Brown University, in Providence, R. I. His first year was easy, because he already knew before he entered all 274 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER there was to learn in that grade. It was always easy for Charlie Hughes to learn. He was not a close stu- dent because he had the faculty of mastering any sub- ject so quickly. In appearance then he was a stocky, steady, amiable youth. He wore his hair in the pom- padour style of that time, and a slight mustache ap- peared on his upper lip. In college he was called "Huggie" for short, a name given him by his college chums. It is said of Mr. Hughes, the dignified, somewhat austere Secretary of State, that no man ever "slapped him on the back" ; and yet "Huggie" must have been very popular, for he became an active member of the Delta Upsilon fraternity throughout his college course. In fact he held a prominent place among its members, traveling to other colleges to enroll new ones. He seized the social advantages of college life with the same quick grasp with which he later understood how to disentangle the problems of financial affairs that he in- vestigated when he was counsel for the legislative com- mittees investigating the Insurance Companies and the Gas Trust of New York. Anything that demanded investigation interested him. During his term at Brown University he visited the courts and listened to the arguments of the lawyers. He became fascinated with what he heard, the clever way the lawyers prosecuted for or defended their clients. Often he discussed these cases with his college chums, and his arguments impressed them with their logical, quick analysis. They advised him to become a lawyer, and he went to his parents and asked them if he might CHARLES EVANS HUGHES 275 change his plans to be a minister and study law instead. Both his father and mother were disappointed. His father, remembering this important event vividly, said : "It was not until his Junior year that the trend of his mind changed, owing to the circumstances in which he was thrown. By chance, he attended the trial of several lawsuits in his college town and the love of law lying dormant in him was developed. He finally re- solved to take up the legal profession, but not before consulting his parents. We at once saw that the law had become a passion with him, and we withdrew any objections we might have had to his becoming a law- yer. He was pleased with our consent and threw him- self heart, and soul into the study of Blackstone." He decided all the important things in his life for himself. Before going to Brown University he had studied its curriculum, and liked it better than any other. It was his own wish to go there. One of his handicaps as a young man in college was his aptitude for everything he touched. His teachers noticed this, and noticed what strict attention he paid to his work, in classes and out of them. The fact was, he had de- veloped a remarkable gift of concentration, of apply- ing his whole mind to the subject he was mastering at the time. He was a calm, well poised, cheerful student. His invariable cheerfulness of manner was noticeable to his teachers. He went at his work as if he enjoyed every minute of it. And he was inquisitive about it. He was not satisfied with theories; he wanted to experi- ment for himself, to reach his own conclusions. He was intensely practical about everything. Theories had 276 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER to be pulled to pieces before he could accept them. In college he demonstrated the manners and habits of mind that showed him to be a born leader. College athletics had not been introduced into college life in those days, so that he had no opportunity to be a football expert, but he was a leader in all other college interests. He excelled in literary knowledge and com- position, and especially in the executive details of his fraternity. His judgment on matters of college enter- tainment was always sought. He soon rose to the ex- ecutive council of his fraternity, and was elected presi- dent, which put him in control of the Delta Upsilon fraternities of the entire country. Having taken the prizes for literature and for "gen- eral attainment," he was graduated, delivering the vale^ dictory address. He looked so young at this time that various attempts he made to secure a job as teacher failed. As soon as the college authorities where he applied saw him, they smiled and insisted that he was too young to manage a class of young men. He concluded finally to apply by letter. He secured an engagement as a teacher at the Delaware Academy in Delhi, N. J., where he presented himself to the presi- dent of the academy to teach Greek and mathematics. He was received with surprise. Dr. Griffin looked at him with a pained expression and said to him: ''My dear young man, there is no doubt about your ability to teach the branches for which you have been engaged, but how do you expect to rule the young gentle- men who will come under your charge ?" He did so very successfully, and having earned a CHARLES EVANS HUGHES 277 little money which he needed to help him in his plans to enter Columbia Law School, he returned to New York. At Columbia he obtained a free scholarship of $500 which helped him materially. He was gradu- ated from Columbia when he was twenty-two, and was admitted to the bar the same year. His youthful ap- pearance, he decided, would be a handicap to him in his profession, so he promptly met that issue in his usual practical way, and grew a beard. Talking with a friend, he himself told the story of how he obtained his first job in a law office. ''One of the fellows in the Law School asked me one day if I wanted to get into a fine law office," he said. "I said I didn't mind. It was a chance. Next day he introduced me to Mr. Carter, the senior member of Chamberlin, Carter and Hornblower. Mr. Carter, fortunately, was fond of young men, believed in them. He talked to me a good deal about his hobbies. One of them was German universities. The first thing he began to talk about after we were introduced was the advantage to a yoimg man at the University of Heidel- berg. I agreed with him, but as I had a living to make, the principal thing I wanted to know was whether I could get a job in his office. He seemed to like my practical style. It was not long before I was working hard on briefs." Mr. Hughes supplemented his work in this office, teaching special classes for Columbia students. His health broke down from overwork and he accepted a professorship of law at the Cornell University in Ithaca, N. Y. After two years in the open country he went 278 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER back to work in the same law office, restored to health. He became a lecturer at Columbia. During his law practice, he married Mr. Carter's daughter. This was in 1888, when he had already established himself as a strong man in her father's office. It was a strength he had carefully built up during years of patient attention to the details of character, a strict devotion to duty. His care to neglect no opportunity was noticeable from the first day he applied for a position as teacher. Thus far there is much in the early part of Mr. Hughes's career to encourage young men of modern edu- cation and ability. What follows demonstates the uni- versal theme of leadership, the evolution of strong char- acter force. As this young lawyer's practice in the courts increased, it became noised about that he was incorruptibly honest. As to his methods, there was none of the brow-beating, none of the contemptuous insult prevalent among some lawyers. There was no overwhelming oratory. Politeness was his weapon in cross-examination, persistency in place of sarcasm, and a conciseness of development that forced a witness to state facts. Because the invaluable trend of his char- acter was honesty, Mr. Hughes became a National hu- man magnet for those who wanted to get at the truth. He was selected as special counsel for investigating com- mittees. In exposing the system of "syndicate trans- actions" among directors of insurance companies, he lifted the lid of money-combinations of which directors became wealthy through opportunities which came to them in their control of the huge investments of the in- Burance companies. He punctured the vicious circle of CHARLES EVANS HUGHES 279 "mutual" corporations, and so spread a searchlight over a National evil that was growing. His brilliant ex- posure of the "Gas Trust" had brought him National recognition. He was forty-three when he became a potential leader of character. Work had become a habit. He often returned to his office after dinner and worked until midnight. Besides intrepid honesty, Mr, Hughes insisted al- ways upon personal liberty in handling his investiga- tions. "I will undertake this work," he said to the chair- man of an investigating committee, "provided I am not interfered with in any way in getting at the root of the matter." He declined the offer to run for the office of Mayor of New York, a political pillory he wisely escaped. When accepting the nomination for Governor of the State of New York, he said : "I shall accept my nomination without pledge other than to do my duty according to my conscience. If elected, it will be my effort to give the State a sane, efficient and honorable administration, free from taint of bossism, or of servitude to any private interest." Politically, as Governor, Mr. Hughes was indiffer- ent. He declined to make political appointments and he refused to hold secret conferences where political "deals" might be made. There were sharp battles be- tween the Governor and the Legislature. If the latter refused to pass a bill, he would say, "Very well, I shall appeal to the people direct," and forthwith he would call mass meetings and address them himself. The 280 FAMOUS LEADERS OP CHARACTER Legislature ridiculed these appeals, for wliat effect could they have upon the power of the Legislature to oppose a bill? Governor Hughes would not stoop to political treach- ery, nor would he hide the ideals he had in mind from the people. These special mass meetings were his safety-valve. He replied to those who criticized them, "I am attorney for the people." In the shallow water of local State politics, Mr. Hughes floundered angrily sometimes. ^'I have shown the politicians they do not control me ; now I propose showing the newspapers they cannot shape my actions." After a second term as Governor, in which Mr. Hughes said he wanted only to finish some reforms he had started the previous term, he was appointed an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court by Mr. Taft, who was then President. In 1916, the Republican Party, believing that the people would rally to the leadership of Mr. Hughes, finally coaxed him from the sacred zone of high office in the Supreme Court to accept the nomination for the Presidency. He polled a vote large enough to con- firm the opinion of the Republican Party, but was de- feated at election by Woodrow Wilson. Mr. Hughes may be regarded as a "conscript" in politics, conscripted for service to the Nation rather than for service to political entanglements. He became the Presidential nominee because the people wanted him. Mr. Harding's election, four years later, made it possible to "conscript" Mr. Hughes again in the Na- tional service of his country, as Secretary of State. CHARLES EVANS HUGHES 281 In an address whicli he delivered in Washington while he was on the bench of the United States Supreme Court, Justice Hughes epitomized his own success in states- manship and character. Speaking of the American flag he said : "It means that you cannot be saved by the valor and devotion of your ancestors; that to each generation comes its patriotic duty ; that upon your willingness to sacrifice and endure, as those before you — rests the Na- tional hope." WARREN GAMALIEL HARDING (1865 ) PRESIDENT — CHAMPION OF SOUND AMERICANISM WARREX GAMALIEL HARDING WARREN GAMALIEL HARDING (1865 ) PEESIDENT — CHAMPION OF SOUND AMERICANISM WARREN GAMALIEL HARDING twenty- ninth President of the United States, elected November 2d, 1920, is an inspiring figure to young men because he represents above and beyond all other expectations of him, a safe and sound American citizenship. Mr. Harding's service to the people had no other precedent but that, before his nomination, to recommiend him. His life had been consistently normal, healthy, intelligent, conservatively Ameri- can. When he stood before the country, after his nomination by the Republican Convention in Chicago, there vras six feet of presentable Americanism, solid and sound in character. As the people looked over the open book of his life, thev read between the lines, over and over again, the assurance that if they elected him, he would perpetuate the unselfish, high-minded record of America for Americans that had been his creed from boyhood. There were no spectacular promises, no boastings, no threats in his pre-election campaign. He made no plea for original standards in National government nor did 285 286 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER he enthrone himself with superior pomp of manner. He had made himself a distinguished public speaker during his term in the Senate, so he was able to meet the people from the platform with eloquence. If there was one thing more than another that was noticeably in his favor, it was his inborn quality of thinking and talking to them in friendly counsel about the need of restoring the principles of equal franchise, of econ- omy, of dignity in our relations, and mutual helpful- ness. Mr. Harding successfully overcame the handicap of party feeling which swept the country against the Demo- cratic party (an element in his election which accumu- lated a majority of 7,000,000 votes), by winning for himself a personal respect for his agreeable tolerance, an outstanding element of his character. He was equipped for the high office he reached by inheritance no greater than that which many thousands of young men possess to-day. He did not arrive at the White- House through superior education, or any exceptional advantages by birth or fortune. His ambition was not an over-reaching force that pushed him up the ladder of fame. He seems to have moved along the way of life with singular contentment, satisfied to conduct him- uelf towards others always with consideration. Mr. Harding inherited these traditions from his parents, especially his mother. He was born in Cor- sica, Ohio. His early life, his training and above all his inheritance of amiable, intelligent, tolerant char- acter have contributed to his present high place in the world. That place was tenderly, industriously, in his WARREN GAMALIEL HARDING 287 mother's mind for him when he was a baby. The comradeship that existed between the child and the mother was the most genuine and affectionate impulse of Mr. Harding's life. She was an ardent member of the Seventh Day Adventists, and the best versed woman in Sacred and Bible history in her community, a highly cultured, well read, progressive woman. She was Elizabeth Dickerson. An old daguerreotype of the Cival War days shows her at the age, serene and sweet, of sixteen, standing behind a solemn, serious young man, Tyron Harding (the President's father), also sixteen. This record of their romance reveals one thing, that the son takes his unusually handsome looks from his mother. After his mother's engagement, she insisted that they wait a year. After they were mar- ried, they began life in a little frame house in the small village of Blooming Grove near Caledonia, Ohio. Blooming Grove was so called because of its great va- riety of flowers in summer. Mrs. Harding, the Presi- dent's mother, had a passion for flowers all her life. Long after she had left the little house, when she had grown old, her son never forgot to see that she always had flowers in her room, till she died. They kept alive so many treasured memories of those first years in her son's life, when she dreamed a future for him that came true. As mothers are prone to expect wonderful things of their sons, Mrs. Harding had no mediocre expecta- tions for hers. When he was only a baby, she used to whisper the big secret in her he^rt to him. When he grew to the serious age of seven, when he could read, and argue 288 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER and look wise, she used to say to him just as if she was sure of it: "Warren, stay with your books and some day you will be President of the United States." The truth of her prophecy did not dawn on him then, but it has never been forgotten. It came true for many reasons. His father's explanation of it is one reason: "Call it luck, or destiny, or what you will, things come right for some people and they came right for Warren. I ascribe it to his genuine, unassuming, good- natured way of dealing with people and with problems. I never knew Warren to use hard words or get into jangles to amount to anything." His antecedents were strong men and women. The Harding name appears in the famous English Dooms- day Book of 1086. To America they came at least a century before the Revolution. Before 1650, one Harding had settled in Boston, another in Salem, Mas- sachusetts, and another in Connecticut. Dr. Harding's family are direct descendants. Probably not much significance has been attached to this ancestry in the Hardings of Ohio. They have not given it much thought, if any. The fact that the name is now immortalized in the White House is sufficient proof that there should be ancestors worth having. However, Warren Gamaliel Harding belongs to the twentieth century, a man who has in him the growth and strength of the Middle West, which spreads its in- fluence and its men and women from coast to coast in enterprise, in production, in business industry, and in WARREN GAMALIEL HARDING 289 patriotic positiveness. Among the Middle Western States, Ohio has produced many notable figures. McKinley came from the State, and Mr. Harding has been compared to his predecessor from Ohio. It is in the foreground of a new generation, of awakening world ideals, that this son, of Ohio stands in the White House to-day. Precociousness is not unusual among children in America. It is related in a recollection which Dr. Harding, the President's father, tells with unblushing pride, that his first-born learned his alphabet when he was four years old. Such incidents never lose their im- portance. "I was away from home for the day," said Dr. Hard- ing, recalling his son's triumph, ^'and our young son, now arrived at the dignity of kilts and underpants, laid his hand on his mother's knee as she was sewing before the fireplace. " 'Mother, I want to learn to read,' he said as seriously as a preacher. And so Pha?be got a long piece of cardboard, the bottom of a shoe box, I think, and drew it off in squares and marked all the capital letters with a stick of charred wood from the fire, and Warren learned his A, B, C's, all of 'em, before I got home for supper." His father justly regarded him, after this feat, as a "quick study." He could memorize long poems be- fore he was four years old, and his greatest ambition in childhood, wherever he went, was "to speak a piece." This talent was very noticeable in the boy Harding, for he took the utmost pleasure in reciting to an audience. 290 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER "Mother, will it do for me to speak my piece now ?" was the invariable question on his mind whenever they took him to see the neighbors. He was, of course, en- couraged to recite. He enjoyed the applause, and usu- ally made an elaborate bow, when he had finished. His father never recalls an occasion when he had stage- fright, or was ever embarrassed by strangers. It came natural to him to address crowds and he enjoyed it. Mother love guided the boy in all his problems of childhood and manhood. His devotion to his mother in her old age was as tender as hers had been for him in his childhood. He saw that she had fresh flowers in her room every Sunday, no matter whether he was at home or away, until she died in 1910. He usually took the flowers to her himself. Since her death her son in the White House still clings to the thought — the fresh flowers on the President's table on Sunday recall her memory and hold it sacred. He spent most of his boyhood doing what a small- town farm boy would do — chores. Up to the age of sixteen, with the exception of reciting, he was occupied with the more or less commonplace but useful task of earning extra money by odd jobs, milking, working in the fields, painting fences, driving a team. He was very large for his age, shy, awkward as big boys often are ; and very serious, with an inclination to write, with sudden outbursts of poetry. He learned to set type be- fore he was sixteen in the office of the Blooming; Grove Argus. It was an ambitious little village, for it boasted of its own brass band, in which the President played a tenor horn. It is claimed by some recorders of this WARREN GAMALIEL HARDING 291 period of the President's youth that he really played the comet, while others insist that it was a trombone, the "sliphorn" as they used to call it. Upon the event of the opening ceremonies of the Erie Railroad in Chicago, Warren Gamaliel Harding went with the band, at a cost of $2.40, in a helmet and imiform. It was the first parade the President ever saw, in a large city. He was graduated from Central Ohio College, which was formerly located in Iberia, Ohio, though to-day it no longer exists. There he earned the degree of Doctor of Laws. But, in the memory of those in Iberia who knew him, the great achievement in Mr, Harding's term at college was the splendid coat of paint he gave the door of Dr. Virtue's office. The village people for a long while referred with pride to this bit of paint- brush art, saying how well its color had lasted though painted "forty years ago by Warren Harding." During his son's college days, Mr, Harding's father had leased a small farm near Iberia from which, after his son's graduation, he moved to Marion, Ohio. The President had picked up, besides some learning, the trades of house-painting, farming, bricklaying, construc- tion work on a railroad, and printing. It was while he was working as a teamster for Mr, Payne in the construction of the Marion and Benton, Ohio, Railroad, that he was courting Mrs, Harding, He was then almost eighteen, just at the close of his college career. For a time Mr. Harding worked as a printer on a Democratic newspaper. He even wrote locals for this paper, which was the beginning of his career as an 292 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER editor. Both he and his father, however, were strong supporters of James G. Blaine, the Republican candi- date. One morning the young printer came to work in the Democratic printing office wearing a Blaine cam- paign hat. He was promptly dismissed. When he was nineteen, with Jack Warwick, another printer, he bought out the Marion Star, then a struggling news- paper. He set his own editorials, and addressed the wrappers to the subscribers. The responsibilities of an editor were explained to him by his father. "I told Warren when he bought the Star that I didn't want him to abuse people." his father said. "I don't know whether the advice was necessary or just thrown in for good measure. At any rate, that is the policy he followed . . . for the thirty odd years that he had owned the Star he did so without the vilifica- tion of anybody in any issue of it. That was what I tried to inculcate in Warren as a little boy and as a young man. If you can't say good about a person, keep silent, and after a while your silence has the same effect and burns even deeper than the abuse. In his own precinct in Ohio (when he ran for President), Warren carried it five to one, and when the count was telephoned from the Court House up to his home, I re- member, he laughed and said, 'They don't seem to like me much around here.' " It was a system in Mr. Harding's election which he carried out rigidly. He never replied to personal at- tacks made upon him by political opponents, openly or secretly. Mr. Harding's success with two country newspapers WARREN GAMALIEL HARDING 293 gradually brought him into political favor, but he didn't get his first political appointment till after he had spent fifteen years in the editorial sanctum in Marion, Ohio. By that time every man, woman and child knew and loved him. In 1900, when he was forty, he was elected to the Ohio State Legislature. He served four years, and at the end of that time became Lieutenant-Gover- nor of the State for two years. Four years later, in 1910, he was defeated in his campaign for Governor of Ohio. Five years elapsed before he was elected to the United States Senate. He went to Washington in 1915, and in 1920, was nominated for President of the United States and elected. The record is unique in the history of the White House. In his quest for information on National topics Mr. Harding visited Europe three times, studying foreign systems of government, conditions of labor, and peoples. Before taking his seat in the United States Senate he visited the Hawaiian Islands. As a speaker on ques- tions of economics, agriculture and industrial condi- tions, he gained a National reputation that paved the way to his great popularity as a candidate for the Presi- dency. In the Senate he was known as a brilliant and convincing speaker, and sponsored a bill for prepared- ness that won the endorsement of Colonel Roosevelt. His work on the Committee of Foreign Relations gained him approval of his party and the people, who recog- nized his lofty statesmanship and high sense of public duty, his far-seeing vision and intimate knowledge of foreign affairs. Shortly after he entered the Senate he 294 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER was selected Chairman of the Republican ]!^ational Con- vention. Mr. Harding's reputation for sound qualities of Americanism, his unyielding principles of justice and his infallible democracy, good will, and sound eco- nomics made him a safe and harmonious choice for his party. The nomination of the tall, impressive, eloquent per- sonage at the Republican Convention in Chicago, in 1920, was, however, a surprise. Mr. Harding had not been a seeker after office. He had resorted to no tricks of sensationa'lism to impress the American people. With the announcement of the nomination, the conven- tion was given a picture of the next President, Warren Gamaliel Harding. They saw a handsome man, who looked to be about fifty, commanding of manner — an ideal Presidential figure, though less known to the public than his rivals for the greatest honor cqnferred by the American people. Mr. Harding's overwhelming triumph at the polls confirmed the choice of the convention. In his in- augural address were revealed his dominant character- istics as a man of the highest and most admired Amer- ican type — tolerance and personal liberty. As he passed from one problem to another, he faced the issues with calm and deliberate good will. He showed the rare gift of harmonizing men's views to the broader ideals of his mind. He looks toward Europe with the dignified, sympathetic eye of an American who is striv- ing for the best international relations. He amiably in- duced a disarmament conference in Washington, to re- duce the evils of war and taxation. His pacifism was WAEREN GAMALIEL HATIDING 295 the reaction of a world weary of war — yet unblinded that the passions and conflicts of men might precipi- tate it. He is the man of peace, with power to make war, but with a oneness of purpose towards peace and prosperity, for the destiny of America in the world's new affairs, and a neighborly friendliness for nations, little and big, needing our help at the great period of reconstruction. JUDGE KENESAW MOUNTAIN LANDIS (1866 ) THE SUPREME COURT OF BASEBALL Copyright by Moffett, Chicago JUDGE KENESAW MOUNTAIN LANDIS JUDGE KENESAW MOUNTAIN LANDIS (1866 ) THE SUPREME COUET OF BASEBALL THE dignity of the Court does not depend upon the imposing presence of the Judge. He may be a small, slender, humorous little man, and still command the fear, affection, and respect of his country, as Judge Landis always did on the bench. From the time he was a small boy, till his hair became white, he was always growing up. There is in his character the sort of leadership that is not uncommon among American boys who are born in such humble circum- stances that they just have to rise. If they don't, no one ever hears of them. Of course Judge Landis was the kind of boy who wanted to get ahead in the world from the very first. He believed in fair play, but he also had his own ideas of how a boy should advance himself, which was business-like from the very begin- ning. His ambitions to be highly educated were not so strong as his ambitions to go to work for himself. He wasn't very particular about what kind of work it should be, either, so long as it offered a good busi- ness outlook. When ho wasn't ''much bigger than a grasshopper," as the boys used to say of him, just running around the hay-wagon, or driving the cattle to 299 300 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER and from the pasture on his father's farm near Logans- port, Indiana, he came to the conclusion that the proper use of mathematics was not brought out in the school- books. They said nothing about why a boj had to learn algebra, when all he needed was a knowledge of addition and subtraction, with a quick eye for the multi- plication table. He was intensely practical. He couldn't see where a knowledge of algebra could be of any use to him in getting a job. And, after all, that was his chief absorbing ambition as a school-boy, to get out and work for himself. He had an insatiable curi- osity to get out into the world, there was so much a boy had to find out in life that school told him nothing about. Another peculiarity about this little boy was that, once he reached a conclusion, he acted upon it. He was a most independent little live-wire from the day he was born in Millville, Ohio. He seemed to have come into the world with a determination to make his own way in it from the start, by going ahead on his own hook. He was the youngest son of seven children, and the other six did everything he wanted them to. There was something solid, irresistibly solid, about young Landis, even when he wasn't much higher than a small corn-stalk; as solid almost as Kenesaw Moun- tain, a name with which his father christened him for a reason. It was a good reason, take it all around; although, when the boy grew up to be a prominent figure in the world, he did not quite forgive his parents for the honor they conferred on him, because he was as much like a mountain as a mole-hill is. In stature and phy- JUDGE KENESAW M. LANDIS 301 siqiie, he was anything but mountainous. Being the youngest son, there was concentrated in this little boy all the hope and sentiment of his parents. He became one of the closing chapters in his father's biography. Before he was born, the chief thing that had happened in the life of his father occurred at Xenesaw Mountain during the Civil War. It was there that his father, a Union Army surgeon, lost a leg in a surprise attack by the Confederate troops. It was an event he wished to perpetuate in the family, and he thought there would be no better way than to have a Kenesaw Mountain Landis of his own, always about the house. It didn't worry the boy very much, his name was not anything he expected to succeed with in the world more than any other American boy he knew. It was a good- enough name, it was his, and he meant to keep it all his life. His boy mind was too busy with other things. The predominating thought, from the time he was per- haps twelve years old, was to get a job. There were no jobs in school. There w^ere a lot of lessons, too, that didn't seem to help one in getting a job. By the time young Kenesaw Mountain Landis was fourteen, he looked about as small as an ant-hill in comparison to a mountain. But he must have felt as big as one, for he confided to one of his older brothers, a reporter on a local newspaper, that he "wanted a job." So he began his career of inquisitive interest in a search of the truth that brought him to the unique position in the world of a man whom other men trusted, a confidence he never betrayed. His curiosity to know, to see, to understand the true motives of men in the 302 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER world, was born in him. He bad more tban the or- dinary curiosity of a boy. It was a trait in him so highly developed that he had contracted, in boyhood, the habit of finding out things for himself, quietly, but at great pains for the accuracy of his investiga- tions. That is why, just as the dawn was breaking, a small boy could have been seen, if any one had been up and around, with his nose flattened against the window of the local undertaker's shop, peering in to find out who was dead in the town that morning. He was scared of course, and he ran from the place as fast as he could, once he had satisfied himself that he knew positively what he wanted to know. Although his job was de- livering newspapers on a route to the regular sub- scribers, he didn't trust everything he read in them. By looking in at the undertaker'^ shop, he was sure about the accuracy of the obitviary news, at least. A dollar a week was his salary for this "job," and he managed always to save a little out of it. That was the day when a nickel was a lot of money to a boy, when a cent was a great deal. From contact with the worldli- ness which a printing-press suggests to an ambitious youngster, little Kenesaw Mountain began to have long- ings, growing pains to see something of the world him- self. Next to the printing-press thei*e was food for thought in the great steam locomotives that puffed about the railroad yards with so much noise and power. The train which went whizzing by the station at Logansport, full of grown people, decided this boy that a job on the railroad had great possibilities of adventure beyond, JUDGE KENESAW M. LANDIS 303 just round the curve of rails beyond the town where the trains disappeared. The next step in his career was a railroad job. Strictly speaking, it wasn't much; it was a long way from the job of a conductor, for instance, which he would have liked more than anything. Still, the bottom of the ladder which he wanted to climb was better than no ladder to climb up at all. He hired out as office boy in the train-dispatcher's office of the Van- dalia Eailroad, with a watchful eye out for a job as brakeman on freight trains. He'd often heard, of course, of Indianapolis, the golden gate through which all country boys in the State hoped to enter the prom- ised land of manhood and business adventure. There were many brakemen he had talked with about Indian- apolis, who went there very often on the freight trains. One morning he asked the "boss" for the job. The "boss," looking him over, saw only an eager small boy asking an impossible question, and promptly told him to "go back and sit down." It occurred to him then that his appearance was against him for the job ; no one seemed to believe that he was big enough to do danger- ous work. So he started to demonstrate that he was. He became one of the champion amateur bicycle riders of Indiana. A bicycle in those days was far from being safe sport. They were that old-fashioned kind, with one big wheel and a very small one on a rod, like an iron tail, behind. The saddle was so high above the ground tliat it was all a small boy could do to reach up to the handle bars and hop into the saddle from a little step behind. Once in 304 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER the saddle, it was like being on a big horse, high up from the ground. Finding that he had acquired some local fame as a bicycle expert, his practical mind set to work to turn this talent to account. The way he went about this determination showed that he had a keen compre- hension of sporting character. It was the custom, at that time, to include bicycle races among the sport exhibitions at the County Fairs. Substantial prizes were offered for the winners. Young Kenesaw Mountain entered one or two races, satisfied himself that he could win, and promptly surveyed the situation of bicycle-racing as an occupation. He ob- served that there was a great deal of wasteful competi- tion. Many contestants entered the races who had no other qualifications than misguided advice or unreason- able hope. It was a pity to see the long list of starters, if not sometimes discouraging to a boy who needed the prize-money. He hit upon a plan to challenge the idle vanity of over-confident contestants. He bought a num- ber of valueless but impressive medals of all sorts and kinds, which he pinned on his vest. The contestants usually registered their names in the morning for the races to be run off in the afternoon. Adorned with these spectacular trophies, that looked as though they had been conferred upon him for former prowess in bicycle events, he would stroll about the County Fair grounds where the expectant contestants could see him. The impression he made was in his favor, for many of them, believing that only a champion could have been so decorated, withdrew their names, and his competition was of course reduced. He never told any one what JUDGE KENESAW M. LANDIS 305 these medals represented, and no one asked him. His victory was one of silent reproach to the egotism of others. He won so many prizes that he accumulated what he heard men talk about as "working capital," and with this money he plunged into an independent venture, that failed. He was scarcely seventeen when he transformed a local hall into a roller-skating rink. It took all the capital he had won at the races. Just when he was about ready to open up for business, a iickle streak changed the public fancy; roller-skating went out of fashion, and Kenesaw Mountain was once more broke. These incidents, which were merely his boyish way of showing that he was in a hurry to be a man, were replaced by the ambition to be independent in thought and deed, unhampered by mere business details. He resolved that money was not the greatest incentive in the world to a young man who had ideas about how the country ought to be run. He acted at once upon this conclusion, and decided to be a lawyer. He was no doubt influenced a great deal by his father's old Commander, Judge Walter Q. Gresham, who in the Landis home was the family idol of all that was good and fine in manhood. In fact the only reason that his father had moved his family from Millville, Ohio, to Logansport, Ind., was to be near his old com- rade of the Civil War. The impression young Kenesaw Moimtain made among his college mates at the Cincinnati Law School was entirely in keeping with the prevailing character- istic of his career, a complete indifference to outward ap- 306 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER pearances, a defiance of all college traditions. He had very little money, which may have heen the reason he dressed as if he had just come off the farm. He was more or less ignored at first by the habitual college- boy type. He was especially curious about the basic justice and uses of college fraternities which he did not join. To his independent, wholly American turn of mind, there was an element of injustice in these so- cieties. He intuitively resented organization power, being by temperament and feeling pledged to the con- stitutional expedient of this Republic, a rule by major- ity vote. Without comment or criticism he deliber- ately created a power by vote to counteract the power of organization of the college fraternities, and soon found himself winning by class elections a control of the social life of the college, thereby depriving the fra- ternities of that prerogative. He always opposed pri- vate monopoly by secret organization ; he always ab- horred class differences. It was a trait with which he was bom that has perhaps been the basis of his distin- g-uished character. Once he had decided to be a lawyer, he put into practice the ideals with which he was subse- quently to reduce the organization power of one of the giant trusts of his own country. After a term at the North Western University, he secured a diploma and opened a small, obscure office in Chicago. After some months of quiet and uneventful inertia (a period which many young lawyer^ endure uncomplainingly), a stranger in Chicago stumbled into his office with a minor case. Being the first chance young Landis had to demonstrate the latent ambitions JUDGE KENESAW M. LANDIS 307 of his profession he insisted on taking the case into court, instead of settling it out of court, as another lawyer would, and attracted attention by his arguments and general conduct. During a succeeding period of inactivity, his father's old friend Judge Gresham, a Federal Judge of Illinois, was appointed Secretary of State in Cleveland's Cabinet, and invited the young lawyer to go to Washington, with him, as his private secretary. Washington, to young Landis, deep-rooted in the sub- soil of individual liberty, was in his own humorous, whimsical fashion a place of infinite rebuke. It was an experience which adjusted any restlessness he might have had before, as to the advantages of a political career. The doctrines of the United States Govern- ment were so intrinsically planted in his being, that he regarded politics in the light of emergency rather than in the light of a permanent opportunity. He found ample field in Washington for the play of sly humor which lurks always in men of big simplicity of character. For instance, he saw that the clerical staff of the Government, especially the array of secre- taries, big and little, affected in their manners and clothes a forced dignity that tickled his fancy. His own position among them, as private secretary to an important Cabinet member, compelled a degree of awe towards him that he pretended to exact. His own clothes were always shabby, loose, formless accouter- ments that gave him an easy air of slovenly protest to dress, which disturbed the routine of careful attention to sartorial details. Mr. Gresham himself leaned to- 308 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER ward this outward democracy in clothes and in man- ner, and usually kept his hat on at his desk in the State Department. Though not openly contemptuous, young Landis affected a solemn dictatorial countenance, with a serious, deep voice. He became a sublimated terror to the clerical family in Washington. He turned every- thing to some humorous opportunity in his own daring, amusing way. One of his pet victims was Mr. Thurber, Mr. Cleveland's private secretary, a rather timid, ner- vous, highly conscientious official, with an over-anxious attitude in his work. To Thurber's office young Landis would go, when he felt especially mischievous, and sol- emnly lecture him upon the evils of overwork, implor- ing him to work less, to conserve his health. Then he would stride out, leaving his victim more anxious than ever. The sly mischief with which Judge Landis so often punctured the weak points in an argument in his court was inherently a characteristic faculty of his nature all his life. He declined an offer by Mr. Cleve- land of an appointment as Minister to Venezuela. At the death of Mr. Gresham he left Washington and all its political glitter behind him and returned to Chi- cago to practice law. In Washington, however, he met Miss Winifred Reed,^ whom he married after he left there. It was President Roosevelt who appointed him, in 1908, Federal Judge in Illinois. His personal atti- tude towards this appointment has never been that of an officeholder but that of a servant of the people. This was especially obvious when, after seventeen years' service as a Federal Judge, he resigned in Febru- JUDGE KENESAW M. LANDIS 309 ary, 1922, to devote his time entirely to the dictator- ship of America's greatest sport — baseball. He did not announce his resignation publicly, in ad- vance. After his usual day in court, he merely walked into his chambers and superintended the removal of his effects. It was a disordered room, filled with an accumulation not merely of personal trophies of the in- tervening years, but of personal expressions of regard and respect from old friends and admirers, which filled the ofiice. He was particularly solicitous about two busts, one of Gresham and one of Lincoln, that had been conspicuous in his chambers. Also the propeller of an aeroplane his son Eeed had flown in during the war, some portraits of famous men, and an old family clock from the farm-homestead in Indiana were affectionately guarded. His friends were of all classes, high and low, and they stood around in the dumb anxiety of farewell greetings, that they could not put into words. Tears were plainly annoying the Judge himself, who kept brushing them off, with the back of his hand. The old bailiff came out of a sick bed, ill with pneumonia, in a raging snow storm, to say good-bye, and the Judge, bundling him up in his own muffler, sent him home at once. He took his last lunch as a Federal Judge at the same modest little lunch counter at which he had always taken it, for so many years, — and passed on to the new jurisdiction of American baseball. Among leaders of character Judge Landis is con- spicuous for the democratic ideals of the rights of the people, for the people. It was because of his incorrupt- ible spirit of fair play, and strict honesty in decisions; 310 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER because of unique direct vision of justice and honesty in human entanglements as well as legal, that he was asked to retrieve the reputation and honor of American sportsmanship which had gone temporarily astray in the baseball clubs. He had made a deep impression upon his countrymen long before, when he imposed the immense fine of $29,400,000 on the Standard Oil Cor- poration to establish the principle that the United States Government demanded allegiance in business, and registered again the principles of Washington, that equal rights must be maintained. BENJAMIN BURR LINDSEY (1869 ) A JUDGE WHO BELIEVES ALL BOYS ARE GOOD Courtesy of Mr. Frederick Ilill Meserve BENJAMIN BURR LINDSEY BENJAMIN BURR LINDSEY (1869 ) A JUDGE WHO BELIEVES ALL BOYS ARE GOOD BECAUSE he knew that a boy who "snitched" was not a real juvenile criminal, Ben Lindsey be- came known to boyhood when he was only thirty- two as "the Judge who'll give a square deal." He knew that "snitching" was a mistake, that steal- ing was, too, and that the "kids" who belonged to gangs often made mistakes that they didn't realize at the time. Judge Lindsey created a new way of treating bad boys and girls who were brought before him. In his Juvenile Court in Denver, Colorado, he discovered that most "kids" needed a little friendly advice. It was all very well to punish a "kid," but what happened after he was punished? The "kid" became sullen, re- bellious, or was kept from being "bad" through fear. Judge Lindsey argued with the boy this way : "J^o good bein' afraid; let's cut out all 'snitching' and tell the truth, and then we'll see what's the best thing to do." When Ben Lindsey was brought by his parents to the West, the Civil War was just over. They had been obliged to give up their home in Tennessee, and like a 313 314 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER great many other men and women of the South who had lost all they had, they had to go to work. His father died soon after they came North and he and his mother set out to support themselves and the rest of the family. Ben got a job as a messenger boy. He thought he was pretty lucky to get it, and of course, in a way, he was lucky, because he earned some money. But it was more important in another way, for during that time in his first job, the future Judge learned all about the bad boy. Messenger boys have to be bright enough to see everything that's going on around them, and Ben was educated in the street school, where promotion often led to jail, and jail led to a completely hardened crim- inal when the first sentence was done. He made a lot of mistakes when he was a boy him- self, which he acknowledges. They were the kind of mistakes that the law forbids, mistakes that give the "cop" the right to seize the "kid" and bring him before the Judge. As a boy, Ben was never "swiped," but he came so precious near it that he understands perfectly how a "kid" feels when he is brought into a courtroom for the first time, and knows that he is going to be put in prison. It is too late then to wish you hadn't made the mistake. The "kid" does one of two things — he either looks the Judge squarely in the eye when he hears himself sentenced to the reformatory school ; or he cries, and trembles, and can hardly stand up on his feet from sheer terror. If a lie will help, the "kid" will lie to the Judge, and that's one thing Juvenile Court won't stand for. BENJAMIN BURR LINDSEY 315 There are a great many other things it won't allow either, which proves that it was a lucky thing for the "kids" and their parents that Jndge Lindsey had once been a messenger boy, and found out all about real boys, good and bad. He had managed to study up enough law in night school to pass his law examinations, and then he got into politics in a small way. Being a politician helped him a little at first, because it secured for him a temporary job as a Judge, filling out the unex- pired time of another man. He didn't want to be a Judge. What he really wanted to be was District Attorney, but he failed and took what he could get from the political crowd he belonged to. He did his work on the bench acceptably, doing only just what the law told him to do, and paying little or no attention to the inward character of the cases that came before him. One day something sensational happened in the courtroom. He had just sentenced a young man for petit lar- ceny, and wearily had called the "next case." Sud- denly the courtroom was echoing with the wild, ago- nized shriek of a woman. Savagely, incoherently, piti- fully she staggered to the Judge and accused him of in- justice, of being an "unmerciful Judge," and she told him that her boy was a good boy, that he had just made a mistake. Something deep in the conscience of the Judge reached the heart of the man, and he realized that he had been passing sentence as if it were merely a routine job to send young men to jail. This ago- nized protest of a mother against the injustice of a law- that had not taken into account the mother's love for a 316 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHAEACTER child, or the child's love for the mother, awakened in the young man acting as Judge a sense of duty. "It was an awful cry, a terrible sight, and I was stunned," said Judge Lindsey, remembering the inci- dent, "I looked at the boy prisoner again, but with new eyes now. I called him back, and I called the old woman before me. Comforting and quieting her, I talked with the two together as mother and son, and found the boy had a home. I had been about to send that boy into the association of criminals in a prison, because the law compelled me to, and he had a home and a mother to teach him better." The Judge suspended sentence, he went to the boy's home, and he became a sort of guardian and helped the mother to bring that boy up successfully. That was the turning-point in the career of that very young Judge; he became a big brother to the small boys who were not bad, but who made mistakes. There was no difference, the Judge thought, between "swiping" something that belonged to some one else, and stealing it, but something in the recollection of his own boyhood told him that boys didn't really want to "swipe" or "snitch." Most boys had a keen, unerring sense of the square deal and hated underhand methods. The boy who "swiped something" was the first "probation case" which led to the wonderful record of the cele- brated Juvenile Court in Denver, Colorado. It was more than that, it was the discovery that Ben Lindsey knew how to talk to "kids," how to get the truth out of them, how to talk the first lie of their young lives out of their souls. BENJAMIN BURR LINDSEY 317 All the good and surprising things that Judge Lind- sey has done in the course of his development of crime prevention by stopping its growth in a juvenile state, depended entirely upon the sympathetic skill of Ben Lindsey himself. The mere change of laws which he brought about to help him in his idea of a Juvenile Court will not guarantee that success in the future. Judge Lindsey has made of his idea something for him- self. His love of children, the ease with which he can pene- trate the character of a boy brought into his court, is an amazing genius of his own. Whether a boy scowls at him, smiles at him, cries or trembles, he can place that boy's character in his own mind at once. And he loves them all. That is the pervading spirit of Judge Lind- sey's court-life. The more frightened the boy appears to be, the more quickly the Judge gets right down off the bench and sits dovm on a camp stool as an equal with him. He has found it necessary in obstinate cases, where the child is so completely entangled in the terror of his position, for the Judge to put on his hat and take a walk with the ''kid" so that they can talk it over in the open air, away from the terrible courtroom that he dreads so much. Then, if advisable, the Judge may take the prisoner home to dinner with him, just to make him feel that the Judge is his friend. His object is to re- store in the "kid" a sense of honor, to make him feel that he's just as good as the Judge, if he only "Keeps straight." There was no such thing in criminal courts before. 318 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER The law camo first in the Judge's decision, and the human element scarcely entered into the matter at all. A young fellow, only twenty, who was under sen- tence for murder was approached by Judge Lindsey for an explanation of how he could have committed any- thing so atrocious. The expTanation showed the boy's impression of a Criminal Court. "It was this way," explained the boy, telling of his first arrest when he was twelve yeaps old. "The guy on the high bench with the whiskers says, "What's the boy done, officer?" And the cop says, says he, 'He's a bad kid, your honor, and broke into a store and stole a razor!' and the guy on the high bench says, 'Ten dollars or ten days' — time, three minutes ; one round of a prize fight." In Judge Lindsey's court the "kids" see no "guy on a high bench." Instead, a rather small, clean-cut gentleman walks up to one of the boys. It's the Judge. "What's the matter, my boy?" he says, putting his hand on his shoulder. "You've been making a mistake ? Well, lots of fellers make mistakes. That's nothing. I've made mistakes myself, worse'n yours, I guess. What was it, officer ?" "Stealing isn't right, my boy, now is it ?" He turns to the other boys waiting to be brought before him and pleads with them, "Is it, fellers ? Is stealing right ? You know as well as I do it's weak to swipe things." Nothing hurts a boy as much as to tell him he's weak. Then he goes on driving into the conscience, down into the very heart of the "kid." BENJAMIN BURR LINDSEY 319 "I know how it is," he says, "it's a temptation. It's a chance to get something easy ; something you want ; or something you can sell to get something you want. Wanted to go to the show, maybe. Well, it takes a pretty strong feller to down the desire to take a chance and see the show. But it's wrong to swipe things, 'tain't fair, 'tain't brave, it's just mean and it hurts the feller that steals. Makes him steal again, and by and by he's caught and sent up — a thief. Now you ain't a thief, and you don't want to be. Do you ? But you were too weak to resist temptation so you were caught. Ought to cut it out. Not because you were caught. That isn't the reason a feller oughtn't to steal. It's be- cause it's mean and sneaky, and no fellow wants to be mean and sneaky. He wants to be on the square. What are you crying for ? Afraid of being punished ? Pshaw, a feller ought to stand up and take his medi- cine; but we don't punish boys. We just try to help 'em get strong and be square. Even when we send fellers to the Golden Institute, it isn't for punishment ; it's only to help a kid that's weak get strong enough to control himself. So we aren't going to punish you. First off, a kid ought to be strong enough and suffi- ciently on the square to tell the truth about himself. Ought to tell not only about this time, when you're caught, but all the other times too. You wait and after court we'll go back in chambers and we'll have it out, just us two." The Judge had been a boy who must have made some mistakes himself when he was young. He knew the language of boyhood delinquency, and he could talk to 320 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER them in it. He took the terror out of the courtroom, the children themselves finding that the Judge was really their friend. "The Judge gives a fellow a show," as the J expressed it among themselves. The Judge did a great deal more than that, he actually proved that boys and girls have a wisdom that sur- passes the law. They may not reason so well but they have an instinct of honor that grows weak only as they grow up. The Juvenile Court became a E^ational point of in- terest, and Ben Lindsey, the Judge, found himself talked about as a "reformer." He didn't ask for that distinction, but he did love his work. "N^ever let a child get away with a lie in his soul," says Judge Lindsey. Admitting that children are won- derful liars, the Judge can always tell when they are lying to him. "You can't fool the Judge," the boys say. Once a boy tried to. He "lied straight" and since the Judge will not "help" a boy who won't tell the truth he told the officer to take him to jail. On the way the boy changed his mind, and came back. "You're right, Judge," he said, "and you're game. I lied to you, I lied like a horse thief, and I couldn't fool you a little bit. You've beat me. Judge, and I'll tell the truth." The truth as the Judge sees it, though, is the truth as a boy understands it. No boy ever "snitches" on a friend, even though he could do so truthfully. He reasons with the boy. He agrees with him that it is all wrong to "snitch" on other fellows, but it is all right BENJAMIN BURR LINDSEY 321 to "snitch" on yourself. He drove out fear, and the old ideas of punishment in this way, substituting confi- dence and a boy's sense of honor. He was experi- menting at first with a new kind of law, and one of the earliest cases before him demonstrated that if you trust a boy he will return the trust. This in- volved charges against seven boys caught by a police- man playing rowdy tricks on street cars^ throwing stones, annoying passengers and conductors. The Judge got them together in his chambers and explained to them that while he saw it was fun for them, it wasn't exactly fun for the other people; it made life hard for them. This was something the boys hadn't thought about; they only looked upon this as "fair game," fellers who "would give you a chase if you held them up," and what's more fun than to be chased, and escape ? " 'Tain't fair, is it,, fellers ?" asked the Judge. "No, sir." "Well, what do you say to cuttin' it out?" They agreed as for themselves, but there was the gang, — the rest of them to deal with, and the Judge knew all about that side of boy life. "Will you fellers bring in the rest of the gang to- morrow?" asked the Judge. "Sure," they would. But the "gang" didn't come, though the original seven showed up. "Well, what are you going to do ?" asked the Judge, putting the problem of getting the gang into court to them. "A warrant," said the Judge. "I'll write you out a 322 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHABACTER warrant and you serve it on the gang. But what shall I write ?" "You begin it," said one Kid, "begin by saying, — '1^0 kid has "snitched," but if you'll come the Judge'll give you a square deal.' " The next day the whole gang, fifty-two kids, came into court. The Judge placed them on their honor. "I'm going to let you police your neighborhood your- selves," he began, "I've told the trolley company that I will be responsible for there being no more trouble with you. ^o\v the company said I'd be foolish, that you kids would go back on me. I said you wouldn't, and I still say so. You see, I'm depending on you fellows, and I don't think you'll throw me down. What do you say ?" "We'll stay with yer, Jedge," they shouted, and they did. They organized a Kids' Citizens' League, and played square with the Judge. Instead of "breaking up" the gang, the old system of police regulation, the Judge turned them to public use. He gave those kids a chance to show character. His success in putting boys on their honor has been phenomenal. For instance, there was a boy called "Major." He never had any home, so he had what the boys call the "move-on fever." He would roam all over the country. The Judge tried many ways to cure him of it, but failed, until one day he called on the Judge to say good-bye before starting out on an- other adventure. The Judge urged him to resist the temptation; he confessed he was too weak. Finally the "Major" agreed that perhaps he'd better go to the BENJAMIN BURR LINDSEY 323 Golden Institute, because it might help to cure him. The Judge made out his commitment papers, gave them to him, gave him money to pay his carfare, and told him to report to the Superintendent of the Institute. He did so. That was the Judge's way of showing the boys that it was not enforced punishment, it was for their good ; and they could go there or not, once they started. The success which Judge Lindsey has had in win- ning the confidence of boys is remarkable. They wil] tell him everything, even the bad things they do, and the failures they encounter in doing them. They "snitch" upon themselves, and finally look upon the reformatory as a benefit. When a "kid" tells the Judge what an easy chance he saw to steal and not get caught, the Judge says to him, "Gee, that was a good chance, wasn't it, that's certain. But, 'tain't square, kid." Judge Lindsey believes that character in all boys is really good if you watch for their mistakes. During the twenty odd years of his service in the Juvenile Court of Colorado, Judge Lindsey established a unique reputation that is world-wide. Whenever child delinquency is a problem of social welfare, the methods adopted by Judge Lindsey are discussed. No other court has ever achieved the prominence in its decisions of juvenile cases that the Juvenile Court of Colorado has received. No other Judge has ever un- derstood the psychology of the child-mind so well as Judge Lindsey. His application of the statute laws has been conspicuous because he has applied them with a special genius for their uses and abuses. Judge 324 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTEK Lindsey's keen sense of humor, which is one of the natural elements in children, has been helpful in mak- ing parents and teachers realize that juvenile crime more often springs from a source of playful mischief in children, than from actual criminal instinct. He has studied the welfare of boys and girls from a prac- tical observation with an expert sympathy that has made him a celebrated authority on this subject, the world over. CALVIN COOLIDGE (1872 ) THE MAN WHO STOOD FOR LAW AND ORDEE Copyright by Harris & Ewing CALVIN COOLIDGE CALVIN COOLIDGE (1872 ) THE MAN WHO STOOD FOR LAW AND ORDER FORTY years ago, high up among the Vermont hills in a little town named Plymouth, a ten- year-old boy lived, worked, and studied as thou- sands of American boys have done; and probably dreamed, as all boys do, of his future career. This boy was Calvin Coolidge. His father, Col. John C. Cool- idge, ran a little country store at Plymouth and also owned a typical New England hill farm. Calvin was a rather slightly built, quiet, studious boy, in no way ab- normal, though possibly a little more serious-minded than the average youngster of his age and circum- stances. Yet boys born and brought up in such remote towns as Plymouth, Vermont, easily develop such char- acteristics as silence and reflectiveness. There is a so- lemnity about the lofty hills and rugged landscape of northern New England which imprints itself often upon those nurtured in this environment. Plymouth rests quiet and beautiful in a little hollow surrounded by hills densely green and cool in the summer, a gorgeous pageantry of nature in the autumn, and in the winter bleak but for the redeeming promise of the evergreens 327 328 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER which make this portion of New England always de- lightful and always loved by those of New England blood. Calvin Coolidge, on November 2, 1920, was elected Vice-President of the United States. What was there in the boy who trudged the roads about Plymouth on his way to the little one-room dis- trict school, helped his father in the local store, and did the ordinary chores of the farm boy, which pointed him towards the Vice-Presidency of his country? What was it that took place between those days of his boyhood and the present to develop the boy's qualities into the man's successes ? The boy Coolidge was a typical New England Ameri- ican boy. His father was a typical Vermont farmer. He was not without those comforts which are necessary for a wholesome life. He had no desire for those lux- uries which are superfluous. John C. Coolidge, Cal- vin's father, was an upstanding American who worked hard and achieved a normal success. He had, and still lias, a good farm which has always been wisely and profitably cultivated. The Plymouth store was like countless similar stores, scattered through similar New England towns. In the summer time Calvin went barefooted as did and still do American youngsters who live in the country and are free from the restrictions imposed by city life. In brief, Calvin Coolidge led an entirely normal and typical life as a boy on a Vermont farm. He had presumably a better mental equipment than the average boy, but his success rests upon two things — first ; He was by nature, probably by in- CALVIN COOLIDGE 329 heritance, thoughtful ; second : He had an invincible determination to make the utmost of every opportunity for improvement. To understand the basis of his career, it is well to know a little concerning his ancestry, not because it was unusual, for it was not; but because that ancestry furnished him a foundation upon which to build, just as the ancestry of thousands of boys furnishes them a foun- dation which, if they understand it and utilize it, is a mighty incentive and aid to their progress. The Coolidge family came to America in 1630 and settled in what is now W^tertown, Mass. They were farmers by inclination and necessity, for in those far-off years tilling the ground was essential to livelihood for most settlers in this new country. They were sturdy, clean, respected people. Calvin Coolidge's great-great- grandfather left Lancaster, Mass., where the family then lived, and with his family struck out into what was almost a wilderness in Vermont. There he. established himself and family on the old military road to Ticonderoga, and later at the place which is now the little village of Plymouth, but which was called by the settlers, as it is still called by most of those who live there, the Notch. The life of those early settlers was rigorous, wholesome, and happy. They never con- sidered whether they were wealthy or otherwise. They found in the New England soil opportunities for suf- ficient prosperity, and this they obtained. New Eng- land farming in the hill towns is hard work. The soil is rich but requires persistent labor to make it produc- tive. It develops strong men. 330 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER John C. Coolidge, the Vice-President's father, is a hardy, strong-featured, erect, clear-eyed American, rep- resentative of one of the best types of our nation. He looks many years younger than he is to-day and he has the comfort of a life well spent and the satisfaction which comes from service of value to his State and Na- tion. He has served his State government and is known among Vermont leaders as a man of accurate judgment, high character and native wisdom. He was a good father for a boy in whose mind grew up the de- sire and determinatio.a to be of public usefulness. Calvin Coolidge, after the years spent in the district school and on the farm in Plymouth, went from there to Ludlow, Vt., twelve miles away, where he attended Black River Academy. This school was like many similar schools which one may find in hundreds of American towns. It had every possible facility for the development of character. For the boy who wanted seriously to study and to develop himself it provided opportunity as all such schools do provide. Young Calvin Coolidge continued at Black River Academy a thoughtful bo3^ He studied well, lived frugally, and he had time for the natural fun of any healthy Ameri- can boy. Rather slight of build, wiry and quiet, he was not boisterous and was not fitted or inclined for athletic sport. He had the usual boy's love of fun -and he took the usual boy's share of pranks and hard knocks. All the time he was strengthening his own character and was acquiring education. What he learned he re- membered ; and this quality of retentiveness, partly in- born and partly acquired by his own determination to CALVIN COOLIDGE 331 succeed, has always been characteristic of him and is one of the factors in his success in public life. While he attended school at Ludlow, he retained, of course, close contact with his home a dozen miles up the hills. Plymouth has, perhaps, half a dozen houses grouped near a cross-road, a union church, one store, a little schoolhouse, and a cheese factory. About it rise the 'New England hills. The influence of heroic nature and mighty spaces stayed with the Coolidge boy thus throughout the formative period of his life. Calvin Coolidge's birthday was July 4, 1872. His mother, Victoria J. (Moor) Coolidge, died when he was twelve years old ; five years later he lost his only sister. These were severe blows to a sensitive boy. He was for- tunate, however, in the fact that within seven years he had a mother who was devoted to him and loved him with almost the love a mother has for her own son. This affection between step-mother and step-son lasted throughout her life, which ended recently. From Black Eiver Academy Calvin Coolidge later went to the Academy of St. Johnsbury. His course there was not dissimilar to that in Ludlow, except that it was his first long step away from home at Plymouth. From St. Johnsbury he went to Amherst College in Mas- sachusetts. It is not of record that he told anybody what direction his ambition took. His efforts had been applied to building stronger and higher the foundation upon which he was to rest his future. His career at Amherst College followed lines much like those at school, although here he was even further removed from home and more under the necessity of self-discipline and self- 332 FAMOUS LEADERS OP CHARACTER dependence. His circumstances were those of thou- sands of other young men who seek education in Amer- ican schools and colleges. Here, as at school, he had not the physique nor had he the time for athletic sports. He was not frail, but he was rather too slight of build for baseball, football or other games. His health was good, and as he had worked hard out-doors on his father's farm he now worked hard over his studies. He found time for diver- sion and he made friends, although his habit of reticence remained with him. He lived inexpensively at college because it was the nature of his stock to be thrifty and because, while there was enough to carry him through college, there was not enough to waste. He was not at first conspicuous in college nor did he make any bids for wide .personal popularity. All the boys knew him and respected him. Many had a strong friendship for him and those who knew him best rated him highest. He studied sincerely and what he learned he remem- bered. In his Senior year, in competition with all American colleges, he won the first prize for the best essay on the "Principles Underlying the American Revolution." It is characteristic of him that when he received the gold medal which represented this achieve- ment he put it away in the drawer of his desk in the law office in which he then was reading law after gradu- ation, and told nobody about it. What interested him was the work and achievement of his thesis. Uor the visible decoration of winning he had no great regard. The incident is illuminating and suggestive. Through- out his career as a boy, a youth, and a man he has loved CALVIN COOLIDGE 333 work for the sake of work and he has desired success as a means for further achievement. With decorations, show, and display he has little concern. By this time he had determined upon the profession of law. He was graduated from Amherst with the A. B. degree and was the Grove Orator at the Com- mencement exercises, a place assigned to wit and humor. He stepped now from the formative process of educa- tion into the next stage of development. He entered the office of Judge Hanmaond of Northampton, a leading lawyer, and there he entered upon the study of law. He applied himself industriously and he showed that quick keenness of perception which has been one of his char- acteristics in his public career. The law was his ob- vious field. He understood it and loved it. Here was developed, also, another of those qualities which later were to mark him as an exceptional man. Men enter professions with varying degrees of earnestness and with varying measures of regard for the profession they choose. He started upon the field of law with a com- plete sincerity and with a high respect for that profes- sion. No man in public life has held public office in greater respect or has occupied it with a more complete dignity than Mr. Coolidge. This attitude he formed or developed in his first year of reading law in Judge Hammond's office. It was another stone in the foun- dation he was building for his future career. He was an apt pupil. His progress was so rapid that after twenty months in Judge Hammond's office he passed the bar examinations and was admitted to prac- tice. 334 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER At this point we find another foundation stone laid. He did not leave the small city of ^Northampton and seek large financial rewards or quick opportunity in a big city. He opened his law ofiice in the same city in which he had acquired his law education. He has gone far in public life since then. His name is familiar in every State of the Union. H^ has reached the heights. His law ofiice is where it was first established — in INorthampton. In that city, too, is his home. When he was thirty-three he married Miss Grace A. Goodhue of Burlington, Vt. They established their home in one half of a two-family house on Massasoit Street, North- ampton. That is their home to-day. It is a comfort- able house, unpretentious but attractive. There are two boys now, John and Calvin Jr. These two facts — that he has retained his original law office in ISTorthampton and that he and his family have been content to live in the same comfortable and sufficient home that was theirs before eminence came to him — attest the stability of his character and the precision of his judgment of life's associations. It shows his realization of the fact that opportunity is less a matter of location than of deter- mination and work. He early entered active political life, not as a seeker of reward, but because through these chamiels he be- lieved he could best apply his abilities and in these ways he could best satisfy his ambition to serve his town and his city and State. He became a member of the North- ampton City Council in 1899. The next year he was made City Solicitor and filled that office two years. Later he served as County Clerk of Hampshire County CALVIN COOLIDGE 335 under appointment by the State Supreme Judicial Court. In 1907 and 1908 he represented Northampton as Representative in the Massachusetts Legislature. In 1910 and 1911 he was Mayor of Northampton. The next year his district sent him to the Legislature as its Senator. He remained in the Senate four years, the last two of which he was President of that body. His address to the Senate upon taking the office of its President is one of the masterpieces of American political literature. In that speech he set forth what has often been called his motto : "Do the day's work." Upon his reelection to the Presidency of the Senate the following year he made a second speech of acceptance which attracted attention from the fact that it contained precisely forty-two words. It ended with these two : — "Be brief." In 1916 he was Lieutenant-Governor of Massachusetts; he was reelected in 1917 and 1918. These were war years and he was notably effective in preparing and executing plans for the part played by Massachusetts in the World War. In the fall of 1918 he was elected Governor of the Commonwealth by a plurality of about 17,000 votes. In 1919 he was re- elected Governor by a plurality of more than 125,000 votes. This was one of the largest votes given a Mas- sachusetts Governor. Mr. Coolidge's service to his State in both branches of the Legislature, as Lieutenant-Governor and as Gover- nor, further emphasized the stability of his character and the precision of his judgment. Accepting each of 336 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER these offices as a tnist, he sought so to perform the duties connected with them that the State should be. permar nently better equipped through his efforts and because of his occupancy of office. As Governor he was particu- larly effective in reorganizing the State departments. It is noteworthy that such re-organization was carried through with a minimum of friction and with results which have raised the standard of public service. There was no raid on the personnel of the State government. There were no sensational methods employed. He ap- plied sound principles and he exercised good judgment. The result of this process or re-organization was perma- nently to strengthen the administration of public affairs in Massachusetts, so that when he went out of State office he left his commonwealth stronger and more effi- cient through his having served it. In his choice of men for appointive positions, he again showed that under- standing of the needs of each case, which constituted some portion of his success in public life. He selected able men and encouraged them to use their authority without fear of obstruction or interfere ace. Thus his service to his State through a succession of elective offices was marked by permanent construction and by a continuous manifestation of fair-mindedness. He built upr for himself in the minds of the people of Mas- sachusetts a feeling of confidence. Before his reelection in 1919, Calvin Coolidge was known and respected by the people of his State. Be- yond Massachusetts he had only that fame which nat- urally attaches to a Governor of that State. In Sep- tember, 1919, when the campaign for his reelection was CALVIN COOLIDGE 337 going on, there occurred in Boston one of the crises of American history. The police of the city claimed and asserted the right to affiliate themselves as an organiza- tion with the American Federation of Labor. This as- sertion was opposed and denied by Edwin TJ. Curtis, the Police Commissioner of the city. Governor Cool- idge publicly declared he would support the Commis- sioner. Despite every proper effort to prevent such a catastrophe, the majority of the Boston police left their posts and the city was, given over- to disorder, anarchy and terror. The situation developed with appalling rapidity. It was of far more than local consequence. Boston suddenly presented an acute test of the authority of law and the invincibility of government. It was suddenly discovered by how thin a thread safety for the public held. Had failure of law and order been effec- tively demonstrated in Boston, there would unquestion- ably have followed in many parts of the country sim- ilar and possibly far worse disasters. The whole structure of American law-abiding democracy was sud- denly shocked and imperiled. Here was a National problem suddenly con\ientrated in the capital city of Massachusetts. Local authorities did what they could, but it was necessary that a more effective force should be applied immediately to prevent a tragedy. It was this situation which Governor Coolidge seized with a firm hand. His promptness of decision, the clarity of his presentation of the issue, the uncompro- mising insistence upon the authority of law, drew the attention of the Nation and won its immediate approval. To the assertion made in behalf of the striking police 338 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER that tliey had a right to a dual allegiance and that they had a right to leave their posts in the public service, Governor Coolidge uttered the phrase which swept from one end of the country to the other and which summed up in one of the masterpieces of condensation, an unas- sailable truth that "There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, any time." There was the issue made clear. This being in the midst of his campaign for reelec- tion, some of his associates, solicitous for his political welfare, urged him to compromise. He had restored order, State troops were in command of the situation and a new police force was being recruited. He was urged to consent to or approve of the restoration of the police who had left their posts. He would not compro- mise. It was represented to him that his attitude might array organized labor against him and defeat him for reelection. His reply to one man who put the case before him in that light was characteristic. It was this: "It does not matter whether I am reelected Governor or not." Within a few weeks he was, in fact, reelected by an avalanche of votes which attested the approval of his course. Labor did not oppose him, and in fact mem- bers of labor organizations overwhelmingly voted for him. Such was the incident which brought Calvin Coolidge into National prominence. For a few days, as Gover- nor of Massachusetts he had stood between law-abiding American democracy and the threat of anarchy and po- litical chaos. He had shown a capacity for judgment, CALVIN COOLIDGE 339 decision, action, and firmness which appealed to the mind of America. At the Republican National Convention in Chicago, in June, 1920, he was nominated for Vice-President. He had not sought the oSice. He had beea urged by many of his friends to be a candidate for nomination for the Presidency. In such a program he refused to have any part. When the pressure became insistent, he issued a public statement in which he said he was not a candidate. He would not deviate from that state- ment. At the Chicago convention his name was among those for whom ballots were cast for the Presidential nomination. When he was nominated for Vice-Presi- dent it was immediately apparent that he would be the convention's choice, and he was, in fact, nominated by an overwhelming majority on the first ballot. Thus the American boy, brought up under the simple, wholesome, invigorating, clean environment of a little town in the Vermont hills, became Vice-President of the United States. His foundation was character. His pathway was hard work directed not towards any spe- cific goal of office, but based consistently and unremit- tingly upon the motto which best characterizes his ca- reer: "Do the day's work." There is nothing magical in what he has done. He had an average American start. He had at the beginning an average American equipment. He was neither rich nor poor. He liked work and he worked hard. Once when his father was asked what sort of a worker the boy Calvin was on the farm, he replied : "It always seemed to me that Calvin could get more 340 FAMOUS LEADERS OF CHARACTER sap out of a maple tree than any other boy around here." Calvin Coolidge is in every way a representative American. lie has risen above the level of the aver- age man by making the utmost use of every capacity he had, by applying his best talents, and by keeping his judgments cold and his love for humanity wai-m. THE END ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF REFER- ENCES CONSULTED In the quest of facts in the preparation of this volume, it has been necessary to consult many books and magazine articles of the period. The author desires to give credit to all published works from which data has been secured. Some of the works consulted are out of print, and the publishers out of existence, and the authors dead. In all cases letters have been sent to every publisher notifying them of the purpose and desire of the author to give full credit. Acknowledgments have been received in most cases. In the following list the author begs to give credit to published works and their authors, although in most cases other sources of information in the preparation of the sketches have been resorted to, including the descend- ants of the deceased subjects, and the living personages themselves, in the interest of accuracy and authoritative- ness. The author holds no publisher or author or in- dividual consulted responsible for any of the facts or statements in these sketches of great Americans. He has presented from all sources of information such a com- posite as seems to reflect the subject, his character and the environment of his youth, his achievements, and his impress upon the period in which he lived or lives. Among other sources, the following books were consulted : The Bobbs-Merrill Company **OuR Common Country," by Frederick E. Sehorte- meier. The Century Co. "William Lloyd Garrison, The Story of His Life Told by His Children. ' ' 341 342 REFERENCES CONSULTED "Recollections op Grover Cleveland," by George F. Parker. ** Grover Cleveland," by Richard Wilson Gilder. Chappie Publishing Co., Ltd. "Warren G. Harding, The Man," by Joseph Mitchell Chappie. T. Y. Crowell Company "The Happy Life," by Charles W. Eliot. Dodd, Mead & Company "Charles Sumner," by Anna Laurens Dawes. Doubleday, Page & Company "Recollections and Letters of General Lee," by Captain Robert E. Lee, Jr. "WooDROw Wilson," by Wm. Bayard Hale. "John Burroughs, Boy and Man," by Clara Barrus. "Up from Slavery," by Booker T. Washington. E. P. Button & Company "Life and Letters of Phillips Brooks," by Alexan- der V. G. Allen. Field's, Osgood & Co. "The Life of Horace Greeley," by James Parton. J. B. Ford & Co. "Recollections op a Busy Life," by Horace Greeley. Harper Brothers "The War, The World — Wilson," by George Creel. "Boys' Life op Theodore Roosevelt," by Herman Hagedorn. Houghton Mifflin Company "Charles W. Eliot," by Dr. Eugene Kuehnemann. "The Training for an Effective Life," by Charles W. Eliot. REFERENCES CONSULTED 343 Hubbard Bros. "Cleveland and Hendricks," by "William Dors- heimer. Little, Brown & Company "Life and Letters op Edward Everett Hale," by Edward E. Hale, Jr. McClure's Magazine "Judge Lindsey, A Just Judge," by Lincoln Steffins. Moffat, Yard & Company "Memories and Milestones," by John Jay Chapman. J. S. Ogilvie Publishing Company "Life by Sketches of W. J. Bryan," by Hon. William Sulzer. A. D. F. Randolph & Company "DwiGHT Lyman Moody and Ira D. Sankey." Fleming H. Revell Company "The Life of Dwight L. Moody," by W. R. Moody. Roberts Bros. "Memoirs and Letters of Charles Sumner," by Edward L. Pierce. B. B. Russel "Life and Public Service of Grover Cleveland,** by Frederick E. Goodrich. Charles Scribner's Sons "Robert E. Lee, Man and Soldier," by Thomas Nelson Page. "Early Memories," by Senator Henry Cabot Lodge. The Sunday School Times Company "My Life and the Story of the Gospel Hymns," by Ira D. Sankey. The John C. Winston Co. "Dwight L. Moody," by J. W. Chapman. 344 REFERENCES CONSULTED R. H. Woodward Co. "Life and Speeches op W. J. Bryan." Julian Burroughs "JofiN Burroughs." Col. Herman Dieck "Life and Public Service of Grover Cleveland " R. L. Metcalfe "Life and Public Services of W. J. Bryan." Selections from The Page Company's Books for Young People THE BLUE BONNET SERIES Each large 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated, per volume ....... $1.75 A TEXAS BLUE BONNET By Caroline E. Jacobs. " The book's heroine, Blue Bonnet, has the very finest kind of wholesome, honest, lively girlishness." — Chicago Inter-Ocean, BLUE BONNET'S RANCH PARTY By Carolike E. Jacobs and Edyth Ellerbeck Read. " A healthy, natural atmosphere breathes from every chapter." — Boston Transcript. BLUE BONNET IN BOSTON By Caroline E. Jacobs and Lela Horn Richards. " It is bound to become popular because of its whole- someness and its many human touches." — Boston Globe. BLUE BONNET KEEPS HOUSE By Caroline E. Jacobs and Lela Horn Richards. " It cannot fail to prove fascinating to girls in their teens." — New York Sun. BLUE BONNET — DEBUTANTE By Lela Horn Richards. An interesting picture of the unfolding of life for Blue Bonnet. BLUE BONNET OF THE SEVEN STARS By Lela Horn Richards. " The author's intimate detail and charm of narratioa gives the reader an interesting story of the heroine's war activities." — Pittsburgh Leader, THE PAGE COMPACTS THE YOUNG PIONEER SERIES By Harrison Adams Eadi ISmo, doth decorative, illustrated, per volume $1.65 TEE PIONEER BOYS OF THE OfflO; Or, Clearing the Wilderness. " Such books as this are an admirable meang of stimu- lating among the young Americana of to-day interest in the story of their pioneer ancestors and the early days of the Republic." — Boston Globe. THE PIONEER BOYS ON THE GREAT LAKES ; Or, On the Trail of the Iroquois. " The recital of the daring deeds of the frontier is not only interesting but instructive as well and shows tho Bterling type of character which these days of self-reliance and trial produced." — American Tourist, Chicago. THE PIONEER BOYS OF THE MISSISSIPPI; Or, The Homestead in the Wilderness. "The story is told with spirit, and is full of adven- ture." — New York Sun. THE PIONEER BOYS OF THE MISSOURI; Or, In the Country of the Sioux. " Vivid in style, vigorous in movement, full of dramatic situations, true to historic perspective, this story is a capital one for boys." — Watchman Examiner, New York City. THE PIONEER BOYS OF THE YELLOW- STONE; Or, Lost in the Land of Won^ders. "There is plenty of lively adventure and action and the story is well told." — Duluth Herald, Duluth, Minn. THE PIONEER BOYS OF THE COLUMBIA; Or, In the Wilderness of the Great Northwest. " The story is fuS of spirited action and contains much valuable historical information." — Boston Herald. A— 2 BOOKS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE THE HADLEY HALL SERIES By Louise M. Breitenbach Each large 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated, per volume . . . . . . • $1.65 ALMA AT HADLEY HALL " The author is to be congratulated on having written such an apjiealing book for girls." — Detroit Free Press. ALMA'S SOPHOMORE YEAR *' It cannot fail to appeal to the lovers of good things in girls' books." — Boston Herald. ALMA'S JUNIOR YEAR " The diverse characters in the boarding-school are strongly drawn, the incidents are well developed and the action is never dull." — The Boston Herald. ALMA'S SENIOR YEAR " A healthy, natural atmosphere breathes from every chapter." — Boston Transcript. THE GIRLS OF FRIENDLY TERRACE SERIES By Harkiet Lummis Smith Each large l'2mo, cloth decorative, illustrated, per volume . . . . . . . $1.65 THE GIRLS OF FRIENDLY TERRACE " A book sure to please girl readers, for the author seems to understand perfectly the girl character." — Boston Olobe. PEGGY RAYMOND'S VACATION " It is a wholesome, hearty story." — Utica Observer. PEGGY RAYMOND'S SCHOOL DAYS The book is delightfully written, and contains lots of exciting incidents. THE FRIENDLY TERRACE QUARTETTE These four lively girls found their opportunities to serve their country. The story of their adventures will bring anew to every girl who reads about them the reali- zation of what she owes to her country. A — 3 THE PAGE COMPANY'S FAMOUS LEADERS SERIES By Charles H. L. Johnston Each large 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated, per volume ....... $3.00 FAMOUS CAVALRY LEADERS " More of such books should be written, books that acquaint young readers with historical personages in a pleasant, informal way." — Nexo York Sun. FAMOUS INDIAN CHIEFS " Mr. Johnston has done faithful work in this volume, and his relation of battles, sieges and struggles of these famous Indians with the whites for the possession of America is a worthy addition to United States History." — New York Marine Journal. FAMOUS SCOUTS " It is the kind of a book that will have a great fascina- tion for boys and young men." — New London Day. FAMOUS PRIVATEERSMEN AND ADVEN- TURERS OF THE SEA "The tales are more than merely interesting; they are entrancing, stirring the blood with thrilling force." — Pittsburgh Post. FAMOUS FRONTIERSMEN AND HEROES OF THE BORDER " The accounts are not only authentic, but distinctly readable, making a book of wide appeal to all who love the history of actual adventure." — Cleveland. Leader. FAMOUS DISCOVERERS AND EXPLORERS OF AMERICA " The book is an epitome of some of the wildest and bravest adventures of which the world has known." — Brooklyn Daily Eagle. FAMOUS GENERALS OF THE GREAT WAR Who I^ed the United States and Her Allies to a Glo- rious Victory. " The pages of this book have the charm of romance without its unreality. The book illuminates, with life- like portraits, the history of the World War." — Bocheg- ter Post Express. A — 4 'BOOKS FOB YOUNG PEOPLE HILDEGARDE- MARGARET SERIES By Lauba E. RicHAKDa Eleven Volumes The Hildegarde-Margaret Series, beginning with ** Queen Hildegarde " and ending with " The Merry- weathers," make one of the best and most popular series of books for girls ever written. Each large 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated, per volume ....... $1.75 The eleven volumes boxed as a set . . . $19.25 UST OF TITLES QUEEN HILDEGARDE HILDEGARDE 'S HOLIDAY HILDEGARDE'S HOME HILDEGARDE'S NEIGHBORS HILDEGARDE 'S HARVEST THREE MARGARETS MARGARET MONTFORT PEGGY RITA FERNLEY HOUSE THE MERRYWEATHERS A— 5 THb] FAOE COMPANY'S THE CAPTAIN JANUARY SERIES By Laura E. Richards Each one volume, ISmo, cloth decorative, illus- trated, per volume 90 cents CAPTAIN JANUARY A charming idyl of New England coast life, wliose success has been very remarkable. SAME. Illustrated Holiday Edition . . $1.35 MELODY: The Stort of a Child. MARIE A companion to " Melody " and "' Captain January.'* ROSIN THE BEAU A sequel to " Melody " and " Marie." SNOW-WHITE; Or, The House in the Wood. JIM OF HELLAS; Or, In Durance Vile, and a companion story, Bethesda Pool. NARCISSA And a companion story, In Verona, being two delight- ful short stories of New England life. "SOME SAY" And a companion story, Neighbors in Cyrus. NAUTILUS " ' Nautilus ' is by far the best product of the author's powers, and is certain to achieve the wide success it so richly merits." ISLA HERON This interesting story is written in the author's usual charming manner. A— 6 BOOKS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE DELIGHTFUL BOOKS FOR LITTLE FOLKS By Laura E. Richards THREE MINUTE STORIES Cloth decorative, 12mo, with eight plates in full color and many text illustrations . . . . $1.75 " Little ones will understand and delight in the stories and poems." — Indianapolis News. FIVE MINUTE STORIES Cloth decorative, square 12mo, illustrated . .$1.75 A charming collection of short stories and clever poems for children. MORE FIVE MINUTE STORIES Cloth decorative, square 12mo, illustrated . $1.75 A noteworthy collection of short stories and poems for children, which will prove as popular with mothers as with boys and girls. FIVE MICE IN A MOUSE TRAP Cloth decorative, square 12mo, illustrated . $1.75 The story of their lives and other wonderful things related by the Man in the Moon, done in the vernacular from the lunacular form by Laura E. Richards. A NEW BOOK FOR GIRLS By Laura E. Richards HONOR BRIGHT Cloth decorative, 12mo, illustrated . . . $1.75 No girl ever deserved more to have a series of stories written about her than does HONOR BRIGHT, the new- est heroine of a talented author who has created many charming girls. Born of American parents who die in the far East, Honor spends her school days at the Pension Madeline in Vevey, Switzerland, surroimded by playmates of half a dozen nationalities. As are all of Mrs. Richards' heroines, HONOR BRIGHT is the high- est type of the young girl of America, with all the in- dependence of character which is American to the core in young as in old. A — 7 THE PAGE COMPANY'S THE BOYS* STORY OF THE RAILROAD SERIES By Burton E. Stevenson Each large 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated, per volume $1.75 THE YOUNG SECTION-HAND; Or, The Ai>. VENTURES OF AlLAN WeST. " The whole range of section railroading is covered in the story." — Chicago Post. THE YOUNG TRAIN DISPATCHER " A vivacious account of the varied and often hazard- ous nature of railroad life." — Congregationalist. THE YOUNG TRAIN MASTER " It is a book that can be unreservedly commended to anyone who loves a good, wholesome, thrilling, informing yarn." — Passaic News. THE YOUNG APPRENTICE; Or, Ali.an West's Chum. " The story is intensely interesting." — Baltimore Sun. BOY SCOUT STORIES By Brewer Corcoran Published with the approval of " The Boy Scouts of Am,erica." Each, one volume, 12mo, cloth decorative, illus- trated, per volume $1.75 THE BOY SCOUTS OF KENDALLVILLE The story of a bright young factory worker who can- not enlist, but his knowledge of woodcraft and wig- wagging, gained through Scout practice, enables him to foil a German plot to blow up the munitions factory. THE BOY SCOUTS OF THE WOLF PATROL The boys of Gillficld who were not old enough to go to war found just as many thrills at home, chasing a German spy. THE BOY SCOUTS AT CAMP LOWELL " The best book for boys I have ever read ! " says our editor. Mr. Corcoran has again found enough exciting material to keep the plot humming from cover to cover. A — 8 BOOKS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE THE MARJORY-JOE SERIES By Alice E. Allen Each one volume, cloth decorative, 12mo, illustrated, per volume $1 . 50 JOE, THE CIRCUS BOY AND ROSEMARY These are two of Miss Allen's earliest and most suc- cessful stories, combined in a single volume to meet the insistent demands from young people for these two par- ticular tales. THE MARTIE TV/INS: Continuing the Ad- ventures of Joe, the Circus Boy "The chief charm of the story is that it contains so much of human nature. It is so real that it touches the heart strings." — New York Standard. MARJORY, THE CIRCUS GIRL A sequel to " Joe, the Circus Boy," and " The Martie Twins." MARJORY AT THE WILLOWS Continuing the story of Marjory, the Circus Girl. " Miss Allen does not write impossible stories, but de- lightfully pins her little folk right down to this life of ours, in which she ranges vigorously and delightfully." — Boston Ideas. MARJORY'S HOUSE PARTY: Or, What Hap- pened at Clover Patch " Miss Allen certainly knows how to please the chil- dren and tells them stories that never fail to charm." — Madison Courier. A — 9 THE PAGE COMPANY'S IDEAL BOOKS FOR GIRLS Each, one volume, cloth decorative, 12mo, . $1.10 A LITTLE CANDY BOOK FOR A LITTLE GIRL By Amy L. Waterman. " This is a peculiarly interesting little book, written in the simple, vivacious style that makes these little maimals as delightful to read as they are instructive." — Nash- ville Tennessean and American. A LITTLE COOK-BOOK FOR A LITTLE GIRL By Caroline French Benton. This book explains how to cook so simply that no one can fail to understand every word, even a complete novice. A LITTLE HOUSEKEEPING BOOK FOR A LITTLE GIRL By Caroline French Benton. A little girl, home from school on Saturday mornings, finds out how to make helpful use of her spare time, and also how to take proper pride and pleasure in good housework. A LITTLE SEWING BOOK FOR A LITTLE GIRL By Louise Frances Cornell. " It is comprehensive and practical, and yet revealingly instructive. It takes a little girl who lives alone with her mother, and shows how her mother taught her the art of sewing in its various branches. The illustrations aid materially." — Wilmington Every Evening. A LITTLE PRESERVING BOOK FOR A LITTLE GIRL By Amy L. Waterman. In simple, clear wording, Mrs. Waterman explains every step of the process of preserving or "canning" fruits and vegetables. A LITTLE GARDENING BOOK FOR A LITTLE GIRL By Peter Martin. This little volume is an excellent guide for the young gardener. In addition to truck gardening, the book gives valuable information on flowers, the planning of the garden, selection of varieties, etc. A — 10 BOOKS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE THE LITTLE COLONEL BOOKS (Trade Mark) By Annie Fellows Johnston Each large 12mo, cloth, illustrated, per volume . $1.90 THE LITTLE COLONEL STORIES (Trade Mark) Being three " Little Colonel " stories in the Cosy Comer Series, " The Little Colonel," " Two Little Knights of Kentucky," and " The Giant Scissors," in a single volume. THE LITTLE COLONEL'S HOUSE PARTY (Trade Mark) THE LITTLE COLONEL»S HOLIDAYS (Trade Mark) THE LITTLE COLONEL'S HERO (Trade Mark) THE LITTLE COLONEL AT BOARDING- (Trade Mark) SCHOOL THE LITTLE COLONEL IN ARIZONA (Trade Mark) THE LITTLE COLONEL'S CHRISTMAS (Trade Mark) VACATION THE LITTLE COLONEL, MAID OF HONOR (Trade Mark) THE LITTLE COLONEL'S KNIGHT COMES (Trade Mark) RIDING THE LITTLE COLONEL'S CHUM, MARY WARE (Trade Mark) MARY WARE IN TEXAS MARY WARE'S PROMISED LAND These twelve volumes, boxed as a set, $22.S0. A — 11 THE PAGE COMPANY'S THE ROAD OF THE LOVING HEART Cloth decorative, with special designs and illustrations $1.25 In choosing her title, Mrs. Johnston had in mind " The Road of the Loving Heart," that famous high- way, built by the natives of Hawaii, from their settle- ment to the home of Robert Louis Stevenson, as a memorial of their love and respect for the man who lived and labored among them, and whose example of a loving heart has never been forgotten. This story of a little princess and her faithful pet bear, who finally do discover " The Road of the Loving Heart," is a mas- terpiece of sympathy and understanding and beautiful thought. THE JOHNSTON JEWEL SERIES Each small 16mo, cloth decorative, with frontis- piece and decorative text borders, per volume $0.75 IN THE DESERT OF WAITING: The Legend OF Camelback Mountain. THE THREE WEAVERS: A Fairy Tale for Fathers and Mothers as Well as for Their Daughters. KEEPING TRYST: A Tale of King Arthur's Time. THE LEGEND OF THE BLEEDING HEART THE RESCUE OF PRINCESS WINSOME: A Fairy Play for Old and Young. THE JESTER'S SWORD THE LITTLE COLONEL'S GOOD TIMES BOOK Uniform in size with the Little Colonel Series . $2.50 Bound in white kid (morocco) and gold . . 5.00 Cover design and decorations by Peter Verberg. " A mighty attractive volume in which the owner may record the good times she has on decorated pages, and under the directions as it were of Annie Fellows John- ston." — Buffalo Express. A — 1« BOOKS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE THE LITTLE COLONEL DOLL BOOK — First Series Quarto, boards, printed in colors . . . $1.90 A series of " Little Colonel " dolls. Each has several changes of costume, so they can be appropriately clad for the rehearsal of any scene or incident in the series. THE LITTLE COLONEL DOLL BOOK — Sec- ond Series Quarto, boards, printed in colors . , . 31.90 An artistic series of paper dolls, including not only lovable Mary Ware, the Little Colonel's chum, but many another of the much loved characters which appear in the last three volumes of the famous " Little Colonel Series." THE STORY OF THE RED CROSS: as Told to the Little Colonel Cloth decorative, 13mo, illustrated . . . §1.25 This story originally appeared in " The Little Colonel's Hero," but the publishers decided to issue it as a separate volume. " No one could tell the story of the Red Cross with more vividness and enthusiasm than this author, and here she is at her best. No book published during the Great War is more valuable and timely than this appeal- ing story of the beginning of the Red Cross." — Neio York Tribune. " It deserves a place in every school as well as in every home where the work of the Red Cross is appre- ciated." — Evening Express, Portland, Me. " Not only VERY interesting, but has large educa- tional value." — Lookout, Cincinnati, Ohio. JOEL: A BOY OF GALILEE 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated . . . $1.90 " The book is a very clever handling of the greatest event in the history of the world." — Bocheater, N. Y., Herald. A — 13 THE PAGE COMPANY'S ONLY HENRIETTA By Lela Horn Richards. Cloth decorative, 12mo, illustrated . . . $1.90 " It is an inspiring story of the unfolding of life for a young girl — a story in which there is plenty of action to hold interest and wealth of delicate sympathy and understanding that appeals to the hearts of young and old." — Pittsburgh Leader. " A rare and gracious picture of the unfolding of life for the young girl, told with sympathy and under- standing." — Louismlle Times. "This is one of the very nicest books for sixteen- year-olds that we have seen in many months. It is gay, sweet and natural." — Lexington Herald. HENRIETTA'S INHERITANCE: A Sequel to " Only Henrietta " By Lela Horn Richards. Cloth decorative, 12mo, illustrated . . . $1.90 The leading characters in this new story are: Hen- rietta Kirby; Miss Hester Crosby, an old maiden lady; Agnes, Miss Crosby's servant girl; Bowdle, Miss Crosby's cook; Mrs. Lovell; Uncle Doctor; Stephen Summers; Dick Bentley; and several others. The host of readers ready for the sequel to " Only Henrietta " will have a treat in store for them. " One of the most noteworthy stories for girls issued this season. The life of Henrietta is made very real, and there is enough incident in the narrative to balance the delightful characterization." — Providence Journal. " The heroine deserves to have this story develop into a series of books; a wholesome, sparkling, satisfying story of American girlhood." — New Era Magazine. A— 14 W 56 ^ .-JV" .* ?i -^.A ^ 0^ .•••' '^ "^^^^ .<^^' ♦V.V/k" "e.. A^ ' ^'4 % V . . • ^(J ^ **^ ..0^ 3-'' ^. %??f^- **, ^ •^^