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Digital file copyright by Cornell University
Library 1994.FRANK M. HOLLISTER
BY CHARLES P. NORTONFRANK M. HOLLISTER
By Charles P. Norton.1
One day in the year 1871 or 1872, Carleton Sprague and
I, then hoys of thirteen or fourteen years of age, and great
chums, walked into the Young Men’s Association Library.
Those of you who remember the Y. M. A. Library standing
on the present site of the Iroquois Hotel, remember the
round,eooped-in librarian’s desk with the little case by its
side containing the stock of the Library’s magazines.
Standing at this case and running rather discontentedly
over the magazines, stood a young man whom I can de-
scribe by no other word than beautiful. He was neither
of slight nor heavy build, and of a body well proportioned,
athletic, and vigorous. His features were masculine, and
delicately and clearly cut. His head suggested to me the
marble head of the Young Augustus, and he carried it with
a poise of much grace and dignity. Though I did not come
to know him well until nearly fifteen years afterward, I at
once gave this beautiful young man the quick born adora-
tion of boyhood, and I whispered to Carleton Sprague,
“Who is this man?” and he replied, “Prank Hollister, who
has come back to Buffalo to live, and has gone on the
Express. Isn’t he good looking! ’’
I do not think this composed young man of thirty even
noticed those two lads who were whispering about him and
staring at him with such hearty admiration. I do not think
he ever gave a thought to the fact, even if he knew it, that
his face was a passport to the good will of strangers. I
came to know it well in later years, and to know that one
of the many reasons that made Mr. Hollister attractive to
men was that his face was an open book, where all men
might read the qualities they best love to find—strength,,
1. Paper read before the Saturn Club of Buffalo.
299300
FBANK M. HOLLISTEB.
honesty, intelligence, and genial, cordial companion-
ableness. It was a thoughtful face in repose; in conversa-
tion it lighted up with fun, or with earnestness. It was at
all times intellectual and keen. It reflected his extra-
ordinary placidity and evenness of temper. I have been
on a fishing excursion with Mr. Hollister and his son Evan
on Lake Ontario, when the thermometer stood at 100 in
the shade; the mosquitoes 1,000; the eggs we had brought
along to eat were fit company only for a setting hen; the
chickens long past the time when even a storage warehouse
man would have sold them; and finally Mr. Hollister had
managed to get a fish bone in his throat from the one de-
mented black bass we had succeeded in catching. Yet he
never for a moment lost his temper, nor did his face express
even annoyance. I remember that at stated intervals Evan
Hollister kept pouring pails of water over me to keep me
cool, and I wanted Sir Isaac Walton’s works burned by the
common hangman.
I did not come to know Mr. Hollister well until sometime
in 1887 or 1888, and he was in middle life. He was bom
in Buffalo November 28, 1843, and in his boyhood lived ip.
what most of us knew as President Fillmore’s house on
Niagara Square, now the Castle Inn. His own recollections
of his early life are stated with the quiet humor than ran
throughout his writings and conversation.	4 4 Historic
times, ’ ’ he says in his paper on 4 4 Early Buffalo Charac-
ters,” 4 4 really dawned on my own personal consciousness
with the narrow escape I had from being killed by an
enraged sow on Delaware Avenue near Mohawk Street. In
those days swine and cattle were allowed to roam for forage
in the streets of this as of other American cities, greatly
to the disgust of Mrs. Trollope, Charles Dickens, and other
fastidious travelers. Misconstruing my attempt to pet one
of her progeny, the animal charged with fury, bowled me
over, and I have always understood that I was saved fromFEANK M. HOLLISTEB.
301
the ignominious fate of being reduced to sausage meat then
and there by the timely interposition of a chance passerby.
Strangely enough, this gruesome incident, vividly stamped
on my memory, has never impaired in the slightest degree
my lifelong fondness for pigs, more especially I should say
in the sublimated form of spare-ribs, bacon, and sausages.”
As a boy he first went to the Buffalo public schools, but
prepared for Harvard College at the Sanborn School at
Concord, Massachusetts.
In a paper delivered by him before the Thursday Club
in 1913, and entitled “Concord and Concord People,7’ he
gave intimations of his delightful life there. The paper in
the main is devoted to describing with a loving and sympa-
thetic pen the characteristics of Concord itself and the
worthies whom he had seen at Concord—Emerson, Haw-
thorne, Thoreau, Ellery Channing, Bronson Alcott, and the
brothers Hoar. But he gives a glimpse of his own life, too.
May I be pardoned [he says], for dwelling a moment on this happy
experience. It has been said there never was and there never will
be such a genial Concord, for young people at least, as that which
existed from 1859 to 1865.	.	.	. Among the pupils at that school
(meaning the one he attended) were Edward and Edith Emerson,
Sam Hoar, and Hose Hawthorne. All that I recall of Mr. Emerson
was his beautiful smile as he came in to see the young people when
we were invited to small parties at his house. It was either at the
Emerson house, or at Mrs. Cheney’s that a number of pupils per-
formed a wonderful representation of the “Babes in the Wood,”
Mr. Sanborn, six feet six inches tall, being 1 i Eirst Robin. ’ ’ Perhaps
the most vivid of my recollections of those school days at Concord is
the grim round head figure of John Brown on the platform of the
Town Hall, telling the story of his fights with the border ruffians and
the death of his son. I don’t remember what the collection amounted
to on that occasion, but the old hero got all the money and nearly
all the jewelry there was in the hall.
And Mr. Hollister closes this paper with the character-
istic comment on Mr. Sanborn, his old teacher, who was a
red-hot abolitionist and supporter of John Brown: “As I
met him at Harvard Commencement last June, I presume
he still lives and thrives in his natural element which may302	FRANK M. HOLLISTER.
be not unfairly described as hot water, tempered with
tobasco sauce. ’ ’
Mr. Hollister entered Harvard College in 1861, and
graduated in 1865. There the impetus of his Concord life
was carried on. He was an omnivorous reader of the best
literature, was Eritanous of the Hasty Pudding Club, and
gave a foretaste of the literary ability which was verified
in his later life. After his graduation he entered the
employ of Sawyer, Mansfield & Co., wholesale drygoods
merchants in Boston, but in 1870 came back to Buffalo,
and engaged for a time in the coal business with his brother,
Mr. E. P. Hollister. In the spring of 1872 he became one
of the staff of the Express; its associate editor in 1875, and
its manager in 1876. In 1877 he left the Express and
became an associate editor of the Buffalo Commercial, and
held this place until he retired from business after a service
on the paper of over thirty years. During much or all of
this time he had charge of 44Table Talk,” and while he
wrote many editorials, it is nevertheless through “Table
Talk” that we best knew Mr. Hollister. I have sought at
many sources to find some scrap-book or collection of what
Mr. Hollister wrote when on the Buffalo Commercial, so
that I might show more clearly the force, the insight, the
humor, and the wide vision and culture embodied in “Table
Talk” and his editorials. I have been unable to find any
such record. I even started to trace his individuality by
reading the old newspaper files, but twelve or fifteen feet
of solid newspaper, and even more the impossibility of
identifying his authorship, made me abandon this course.
For once in getting up a printed menu for a banquet of
jovial elderly Buffalo gentlemen, I added a warning
advisory verse I had found in the memorabilia of the
Saturn Club, and which as I remember it, ran:
“When foolish mortals stoop to folly
And find too late that wines betray,
The best thing they can take is Polly,
And spend their time in bed next day.”FRANK M. HOLLISTER.
303
And some humorous reporter ascribed this “lyric” to a
man by name who never was guilty of writing a verse in
his life, I had a very bad quarter of an hour with the
alleged author, and a very wrathful letter from the real
one. The fact is that‘ ‘ Table Talk, ’ ’ while it was Mr. Hol-
lister’s work, was also the work of the whole Commercial
staff. When anyone saw or thought of anything good, he
would file it under “Table Talk” and then it would be
nulled out and printed in the column. It reflected Mr.
Hollister personally, not only in the humor of his own
writings, but in the refined humor of its editing. The
critics and humorists, from Aristotle, Dryden, Montaigne,
and Locke, down through Addison, Pope, Charles Lamb,
and Sydney Smith, even to that great humorist and Epi-
curian critic, Tammas Haggart, have expended reams of
paper and ink in dissecting wit and humor, and explaining
what they were, for the benefit of a world that wanted to
laugh, until the merrymakers turned mourners over the
scattered, bleaching remains of what in its happier days,
before the professional wits got hold of it, had once been
-a joke. Their theses had one satisfactory result, however.
They demonstrated one thing very clearly, which was that
none of them knew really what humor was, except that it
was something at which a great many people united in
laughing, without causticity, and in the spirit of genial,
friendly, cordial kindness. How many hundreds, yes, thou-
sands, have so laughed at “Taible Talk.” It rested you
when you were tired. It brightened dull evenings.
The world has been too much accustomed to regard as
wit and humor something that makes its butt ridiculous or
uncomfortable. In “Table Talk” there was nothing of
this. It was always kindly. Moreover, it had the essential
quality of the best humor in that it gave with light touch
the humorous side of the current topics and thoughts of
contemporaneous life. What a revelation it must have304
FRANK M. HOLLISTER.
been to the world when the Tattler, the Spectator, and the
Guardian began to gossip about the political and literary
disputes, the fine gentlemen and ladies, the characters of
men, the humors of society, the new book and the new
play, of the days of Queen Anne. The austerities of
Bacon’s essays were replaced with the fine and tender
humor of Addison and Steele, that was never bitter. Oh
that the devotees of Doucet of 1917 would read the gentle
satire of Paper No. 100 of the Guardian on the tucker, and
the consequent papers on the short skirt! And there are
other papers, too. It is one of the many literary crimes
of that dictator of the Georges, the great Dr. Samuel John-
son, that the ponderous style of the Rambler and Idler set
a standard of literary taste which deprived the approved
style of his day of all the lightness and grace of the Tattler,
Spectator, Guardian, and the Freeholder. The good Doctor
had, no doubt, the best intentions. He certainly had a
hearty belief in the grandeur of his own literary style, but
nevertheless he does remind one of one of the fables of G.
Washington Aesop, which were famous in the ’70 ’s, and
which I saw quoted in “Table Talk” a great many years
ago:
“A kind-hearted she elephant, while walking through
the jungle where the spicy breezes blew soft o’er Ceylon’s
Isle, haplessly set foot upon a partridge, which she crushed
to death within a few inches of the nest containing its
callow brood. ‘The poor little thing!’ said the generous
mammoth. ‘I have been a mother myself, and my affection
shall atone for the fatal consequences of my neglect,’ So
saying, she sat down upon the orphan birds.” G. Washing-
ton Aesop then continues, perhaps irrelevantly, I admit:
“The above teaches us what home is without a mother;
also, that it is not every person who should be entrusted
with the care of an orphan asylum.”FBANK M. HOLLISTFB.
305
But whether or not the moral of G. Washington Aesop is
irrelevant, the fact is that the elephantine Dr. Johnson,
with his Rasselasian style did smash flat the charming
grace of Addison and Steele, so that when the wonderful
44Essays of Elia” appeared, Charles Lamb had difficulty
in obtaining recognition as anything other than a flippant,
light-minded" person. The literary world was too much
like Miss Deborah Jenkins in 44Cranford,” who adored Dr.
Johnson, and despised the 44Pickwick Papers.”
Mr. Hollister’s work in 44Table Talk” was a modernized
newspaperized, condensed, impersonal Spectator, of laconic,
pithy comment, funny stories, charming verses—and it was
so pleasant! It is a great regret that I have been unable
to weave extracts from it into this part of this paper, bear-
ing upon Mr. Hollister’s literary side. The most of Mr.
Hollister’s identified writings are Thursday Club papers,
and these cover a wide variety of subjects. He wrote of
Anthony Trollope, Samuel Pepys, Napoleon III, Charles
James Fox, Napoleon Bonaparte, Francis Jeffrey, and Cecil
John Rhodes. He wrote of the effect of socialism on family
relationship, and of the dangers of the aggregation of
wealth. He wrote of the anti-Semetic mania, and how we
should govern our colonies. Some of these papers I have
heard, some I have read, and so far as my acquaintance
with them goes, I have been struck with how much his
newspaper training aided in making effective his treat-
ment of the subject he had in hand. Whatever else may
be said of newspapers as literature, one thing must be
admitted, and that is, they never sidetrack the attention or
interest of the reader with words. Newspaper men from
the cub reporter to the chief, are trained to get the marrow
of the matter before their readers, and they do it. This
to me is a salient characteristic of the papers of Mr. Hol-
lister which I have read.306
FBANK M. HOLLISTEB.
Another is his evident culture. He was like Charles
Lamb in some things. He loved 'books. They really edu-
cated him. He had the same gentle humor. And in these
Thursday Club papers you find the newspaper man's
capacity for setting forth in a plain convincing way, all
there was worth having on the subject chosen, with the
most highly developed, cultured taste, and illuminated,
with the most subtle, charming, refined humor that never
blunted its force or debased its elevated thought. I have
often thought that had he gone into literature profession-
ally he would have stood side by side with Tarkington,
Martin, Crothers, Ade, Dunne, Field, Howells, and the
glorious company of the immortals of this generation that
have made American humor famous.
I am sorry that the time allotted to this paper does not
give scope for mention of other sides of his character which
we all knew. None knew better than I of his work in the
University of Buffalo—his fearlessness, his fair-minded-
ness, and his faithfulness in the performance of whatever
work or duty his hand found to do, and all his work inter-
woven with the same gentle humor. I remember once, wear-
ing a necktie as red as any British uniform, and going out
with Mr. Hollister one seventeenth of March with him to
beg for subscriptions for the University. We tramped,
tramped, tramped all day, and never got a cent. When
sitting down despondent, I moaned: “What can be the
reason for such luck ? ’9 He was very tired, but he looked
up with the same old cheery smile, and said: “It is St.
Patrick working against your cravat." I am sorry there
is not time to tell you of that part of his life which was
devoted to the service of the public. He took an active
part in the affairs of the Historical Society, of the Educa-
tional Union, of the Buffalo Library, of the Fine Arts
Academy, of the Saturn Club, of the Thursday Club, of the
University Club, of the Unitarian Church, of the HarvardFRANK M. HOLLISTER.
307
Club, and so on. In all of these he was conspicuous for good
counsel.
But I do want, in closing, to recall to you a picture of
his home life which so many of us knew, and which he and
we loved so well. I love best to think of it in winter, when
we all sat in a circle in the back parlor, and the snow and
the cold and the wind were outside. Ah! those were nodes
ambrosianae. How the talk ranged! Books, men, events,
anecdotes, politics, sport—honest, hearty, kindly laughter,
talk from which all evil thinking slunk, and where was only
charity and gentleness. And always someone would say,
“Let's read something," and that he loved above all else.
I can shut my eyes and see it now. He would go to the
easy leather chair by the round table on the side of the
room, and putting on his glasses, begin with that rich,
cordial voice of his (I am going to read you what he read to
me fifteen years ago, at the time of the Clarence Howard
silver wedding):
‘‘Phwat’s the distoorbance about at the Howards7, this night?77
said Mr. Hennessey, laying down the evening paper.
‘‘The Clarence O 7Howards7 ?7 7 Mr. Dooley inquired.
“The same,77 said Mr. Hennessey.
“Well, now, 7tis queer about that,77 said Mr. Dooley. “Did ye
iver hear of the Woman 7s Exchange, Hinnissey? No? Well, 7tis
strange. Ye musht hear somet7ing—and it7s as common as candidates
in manny places. In New York, Chicago, and South Dakoty, the
most lucrative department of the legal profession, Hinnissey, is the
Woman’s Exchange. 7Tis a favorite, I7m towld, wid the great
lawyers and judges. And this is the way it works:	Whin a
gintleman tires of his wife—as he naturally does in a few years, for
she soon fades while he grows wiser and better and handsomer all
the time—he just goes to the Woman’s Exchange, pays the lawyer
and the judge the regular price, and gets another wan. 7Tis a grand
systom, Hinnissey.7 7
“It looks aisy,77 said Mr. Hennessey. “But do they give a man
much of a ch’ice?77
‘ ‘ They 7se always a fine assortment on hand, 17m towld,7 7 said Mr.
Dooley. “Luk around and suit yer fancy,7 says the custogian, or
counsel for the offinse, politely. ‘Av ye don’t see pwhat ye want,7
he says, 1 ask for it,7 says he. ‘ These is all first-class, bon-ton, matri-
monial misfits,7 he says; ‘but 7tis hard lines if they don’t fit anny-
body,7 says he. ‘ Cheer up,7 he says, ‘ the worst is yet to come. Change
partners; he calls off—like the coon at the San Saucy Sociable, d’ye308
FRANK M. HOLLISTER.
mind, Hinnissey?—and, be j aggers, they do change, while ye wait,,
as ye may say.’ "
“Isn't it agin the law?" asked Mr. Hennessey.
“It is—agin some kinds of law," said Mr. Dooley. “Says Father
Kelley to me, only last week, ‘Behowld,' he says, ‘pwhat's the howly
state of matrimony coming to?' he says. ‘Oh trumpery! Oh Morris!r
he says. But in Buffalo, Hinnissey, 'tis different. In Buffalo they're
so far behind the metropolitan styles, in spite of their asphalt and
their Pan-American Exposition, that Woman's Exchange is not known
there. They have nothing, I'm towld, Hinnissey, nearer to ut than
Dr. Linn's Anatomical Museum, and that's wax, and not the real
t'ing. Haw, sor, the min in Buffalo are that hopeless and old-
fashioned, Hinnissey, that whin one of thim is caught and married,,
that's the ind of him. They's no exchange and no discharge fur him
in this wourrld. He just lies down, Hinnissey, I'm towld, and hugs his
chains. He t'inks he's livin' in Paradise Bow, mind ye, and ye can't
pry the crool delusion out of his thick head with a crow-bar. He's '
that domesticated, Hinnissey, 'tis a shstudy for his wife to get him
away from the premises while they're clanin' house."
“Haven’t they anny clubs in Buffalo?" asked Mr. Hennessey.
“Clubs?" said Mr. Dooley. “Ye can’t club the min to the clubs
in Buffalo. They's a Woman's Club that does a good business, but:
frequenting a min's club, Hinnissey, is next dure to solitary confine-
ment. It is so. Ah! the married women in Buffalo have much to an-
swer fur in the matter of breaking up happy club-life in that town, so
they tell me. A few of the ould settlers do gather at their club of a
Saturday night, now and thin, drawn be the magnet of a free lunch,
but 'tis a sad sight, Hinnissey, to see thim pretinding to be gay and
so divilish tough. It is so."
“And so," continued Mr. Dooley, “the poor fellys go on, year
after year, living contintedly—wud ye belave it, Hinnissey? wid
wan wife, ad infinitum and ad nauseam, as Casey's girl wud say.
And whin this praypostherous billin' and eooin' has lasted twenty-five
years, all the fri'nds and neighboors are invited in to help celebrate
the event—as if 'twas something to be proud and happy about. Like
winning a fight agin odds for mimber of the Legislature. Shure a.
hin wid wan chicken, Hinnissey, is a picture av humility and dis-
couragement be the side av a Buffalo man wid wan wife—and her
the same wan."
“But pwhat's all this to do wid the trouble at the Howards' to-
night," asked Mr. Hennessey, recalling the text.
“Why, man, 'tis wan of these exhibitions of middle-aged turtle-
doves that the O'Howards is givin' this evening, wid the aid an' con-
nivance of their fri'ns. The tiehnical name fur it is the ‘Silver Wed-
ding.' Kape clear of ut, Hinnissey. ‘Tis a sickening sight fur self-
respectin' bachelors like us."
“Fur me own part," said Mr. Hennessey, somewhat puzzled, and
scanning Mr. Dooley's stern countenance with suspicion, “I 'tink ye
like the Buffalo style, yerself, better nor the New York and Chicago—
the ‘Silver Wedding' a good deal better nor the Woman's Exchange,
fur all yer palaverin.’ "
“Hinnissey," said Mr. Dooley, slowly closing one eye—“ye're a
wizzard!"FRANK M. HOLLISTER.
309
So, with his old sayings and half-forgotten things, I have
tried to evoke our friend from the past. It has been a
pleasant task. As I look back, there come the echoes of dead
laughter along the paths of memory; the thoughts of many
a chat in the soft warm darkness of summer nights; of
many a winter evening passed by his fireside; of idle hours
spent in travel and in vacation. He used to call me “that
middle-aged young bachelor, ’9 and these kinetoscopic figures
of the drama of the past days move past with the vigor and
the ardor, and the joy of living, of the morning and the
springtime. It is as though men and women could never
become old and tired; as though Charles Lamb never could
have sung his song:
“I have had friends, I have had companions,
In my days of childhood, in my joyful school days.
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.; ’
Gone before, perhaps, but not gone; for nothing can kill
the sweetness and the joy of old and pleasant memories
while human beings can remember. There may be a tinge
of sadness in our sincerest laughter, but it is none the less
sweet for all that.
I hope this half hour has brought back to you also such
pleasant recollections of some of the many sides of Mr.
Hollister’s nature. His character touched those of so many
different kinds of men and women. “ The great wits I have
•conversed with,” said Mr. Addison, “are men eminent for
their humanity.9 9 And humanity is as good a word as any
other for the different qualities we all saw and loved in
him. His humanity manifested itself in sympathy, in un-
derstanding, in responsiveness, in making bountiful return
to the affection brought by others to him. It manifested
itself, too, in the humanity that Addison referred to. “Mr.
Hollister, ’9 said Mr. Louis L. Babcock in his remarks made
in the Council of the University of Buffalo at the time of
Mr. Hollister’s death, “was one of that line of men such as310
FRANK M. HOLLISTER.
Orsanms H. Marshall, E. Oarleton Sprague, and James 0.
Putnam, who have kept alive the true spirit of culture
here. ’ ’ Hie was indeed trap culture—not the Pharisaic
ostentation of the cult of books, but that culture which is
true education, and which draws forth manhood by contact
with the best minds, until it has broadened to something
of the breadth of humanity.
What his friends saw of this was that he was a strong
and faithful friend; a simple, unaffected, courteous, charm-
ing gentleman; a clear-headed thinker; an inspiring talker
upon the more serious subjects of thought. And while he
and you and I have laughed together at the things we used
to laugh at in the good old days, perhaps you have thought
pleasantly of these other phases of his personality which I
have not dwelt upon, of these wholesome, ennobling charac-
teristics of a wise, good, strong man.