HEROES 
 
 PRO 
 
 i 5 
 
GIFT OF 
 
HEROES OF PROGRESS 
 
 STORIES OF SUCCESSFUL AMERICANS 
 BY EVA MARCH TAPPAN, Ph.D. 
 
 Author of 
 
 " THE FARMER AND HIS FRIENDS," " DIGGERS IN THE EARTH " 
 
 "MAKERS OF MANY THINGS," " TRAVELERS AND TRAVELING" 
 
 "OUR EUROPEAN ANCESTORS," "AMERICAN HERO STORIES " 
 
 "AN ELEMENTARY HISTORY OF OUR COUNTRY," ETC. 
 
 
 13) 
 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 
 BOSTON . NEW YORK CHICAGO SAN FRANCISCO 
 ifttoetsibf press Cambri&gc 
 
COPYRIGHT, Uy2l, UN KVA MARCH TAl l AN 
 ALL KIGIITS KKSEKVKL) 
 
 vTtjr lAitmsibr >i r ss 
 
 CAMBRIDGE MASSACHUSETTS 
 I RINTKD IN THR U. S. A. 
 
fi 
 A. 
 c 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 THIS book is planned to give as general a view of 
 recent American achievement as possible without 
 becoming of unwieldy size. Invention, discovery 
 and exploration, art, music, philanthropy, kindness 
 to animals, industrial success, aviation, pure and 
 applied science, are all represented. To select the 
 names of the men and women of achievement has 
 not been easy. Some thirty have been carefully 
 chosen with the aim of introducing those whose 
 work reached its consummation within the last 
 half-century; but in a few instances men have 
 been included whose inventions have been greatly 
 developed in recent years, even though by other 
 hands. 
 
 In making the selection a number of "children s 
 librarians" have been consulted, with the wish to 
 include as many as possible of the people about 
 whom children come to them for information. 
 There is seldom difficulty in finding biographies 
 of authors, soldiers, or statesmen. For this reason 
 such names have been omitted from this book. 
 
 The qualities which led these men and women to 
 success have been brought well to the front; and 
 while financial rewards have often been mentioned, 
 success is reckoned in value to the world, rather 
 than in money acquired by the individual. 
 
 As far as feasible these biographies have been 
 
 460859 
 
iv PREFACE 
 
 submitted to some member of the family of each 
 person introduced. For the kindness and helpful 
 ness of these critics 1 am glad to take this oppor 
 tunity to express my deep sense of obligation. 
 
 In writing these sketches it was necessary, of 
 course, to depend for facts chiefly upon volumes of 
 biography or of letters. To the authors of such 
 volumes and to the editors of the many autobi 
 ographies and reminiscences which I have used, 
 I am also sincerely grateful. 
 
 EVA MARCH TAPPAN 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 JOHN JAMES AUDUEON, Lover and Student of Birds i 
 
 MARK HOPKINS, President of Williams College , . . .11 
 CYRUS H. McCoRMiCK, Inventor of the Reaper . . . 20 
 
 CHARLES GOODYEAR, a Man who Persevered . . . 30 
 
 WILLIAM T. G.MORTON, Master of Pain 39 
 
 ELIAS HOWE, Inventor of the Sewing-Machine . . . .47 
 
 MARIA MITCHELL, Astronomer and Teacher 54 
 
 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON, Printer and Publisher . . .61 
 CYRUS W. FIELD, the Manwho Laid the Atlantic Cable . . .71 
 
 ,. JEAN Louis RODOLPHE AGASSIZ, Beloved Teacher of Science . 70 
 JULIA WARD HOWE, Author of the "Battle Hymn of the Repub 
 lic" . . or 
 
 GEORGE THORXDIKE ANGELL, Knight of Kindness to Animals 97 
 
 -LUTHER BURBANK, Plant-Breeder 106 
 
 ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL, Inventor of the Telephone . .115 
 JOHN WANAMAKER, Founder of the Department Store . . .122 
 FRANCES E. WILLARD, Temperance Reformer 132 
 
 CLARA BARTON, Founder of the American Red Cross . . .140 
 
 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON, Founder of Tuskegee Institute . . 147 
 
 AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS, Greatest American Sculptor . .157 
 
 JAMES JEROME HILL, Builder of Railroads 168 
 
 JOHN MUIR, the Man who Loved Trees and Mountains . .170 
 THEODORE THOMAS, the Man who Taught us to Love Music . 189 
 
 THOMAS ALVA EDISON, Inventor 199 
 
 EDWIN AUSTIN ABBEY, Illustrator and Painter .... 208 
 SAMUEL PIERPONT LANGLEY, Inventor of the First Heavier-than- 
 
 Air Flying Machine 217 
 
 ANDREW CARNEGIE, the Man who Would not Die Rich . .228 
 WILLIAM CRAWFORD GORGAS, who Made the Canal Zone 
 
 Safe 237 
 
 ROBERT E. PEARY, Discoverer of the North Pole .... 245 
 
 GEORGE WASHINGTON GOETHALS, Builder of the Panama Canal 254 
 
HEROES OF PROGRESS 
 
 JOHN JAMES AUDUBON 
 
 LOVER AND STUDENT OF BIRDS 
 1780-1851 
 
 1827-1830, published the Birds of America 
 EARLY in the seventeen-seventies, Commodore 
 Audubon, of the French navy, came to Louisiana 
 on business. He married, then returned to France, 
 where his son John James Audubon was born. 
 Commodore Audubon had bought a plantation on 
 St. Domingo, which soon needed his attention; so 
 the little family sailed for the island. In a slave 
 insurrection the mother perished, but the baby was 
 saved. Father and son went back to France. 
 
 The father married a second time, then came to 
 America to join Lafayette and help the colonists to 
 win the Revolutionary War. The child was left in 
 the care of his stepmother, who idolized him. She 
 filled his pockets with money, she bought him the 
 finest clothes, she gave him full permission to buy 
 whatever he chose in all the candy stores of the 
 place, and she often told him that he was the hand 
 somest child in France. As for school, he went 
 when he liked, but when he did not like, he wandered 
 off into the fields and woods. 
 
 When the father returned, he found his son s 
 
a; J OHN JAMES AUDUBON 
 
 room full of odd stones, birds nests, curious licherib, 
 and pressed flowers, and he was pleased; but when 
 he learned that the boy had done nothing but make 
 collections, he marched him off to the place where 
 he himself was stationed, and saw to it that he did 
 some real studying. Nevertheless, the boy loved 
 nature, and especially birds, as much as ever, and 
 somehow he found time to make drawings of some 
 two hundred of the birds of France. "All bad 
 enough," he said afterwards, "yet I felt pleased 
 with them." 
 
 While Commodore Audubon was in America, he 
 had bought an estate near Philadelphia; and before 
 many years had passed, he sent his son across the 
 ocean to manage it. The young man had a de 
 lightful time with hunting, fishing, drawing, and 
 music. He was strong and handsome and grace 
 ful, always dressed with the utmost care, and with 
 such winning, friendly manners that his neighbors 
 were all devoted to him. His rooms were museums 
 of eggs, and paintings, chiefly of birds, for they still 
 held the first place in his interest. He must have 
 been rather a queer manager of an estate, for he 
 was so little of a business man that he once put 
 eight thousand dollars into an envelope and mailed 
 it without remembering to put on a wafer. 
 
 It was hardly a wise move for such a man to open 
 a store; but he and his bride of one day and a friend 
 who was to be his partner went through the woods 
 and down the Ohio River to Louisville, Kentucky. 
 There and elsewhere they "kept store"; that is, the 
 
LOVER AND STUDENT OF BIRDS 3 
 
 partner managed the store, while Audubon had a 
 glorious time roaming through the forests, collect 
 ing and painting birds. 
 
 This rather peculiar fashion of carrying on a 
 mercantile life lasted for some ten years. He and 
 his wife s brother attempted trade in Henderson, 
 Kentucky; they built a sawmill; and they bought 
 a steamer. Nothing succeeded, the money left to 
 Audubon by his father soon vanished, and he 
 ceased to be a business man. As he said, " I parted 
 with every particle of property I had to my cred 
 itors, keeping only the clothes I wore on that day, 
 my original drawings, and my gun, and without a 
 dollar in my pocket walked to Louisville alone." 
 
 He was so sad that, as he went through the 
 woods, even his precious birds looked to him like 
 enemies. But his wife and children he loved with 
 his whole heart, and for their sake he set bravely to 
 work drawing crayon portraits. He took a position 
 in a museum in Cincinnati, but his salary was not 
 paid. He was longing to publish his bird draw 
 ings, but first he must add more of the Southern 
 and Western birds. So he went South, paying his 
 way by drawing portraits and teaching drawing. 
 He paid for a pair of shoes by sketching the shoe 
 maker, and for his passage on a boat by painting 
 the walls of the cabin. 
 
 His wife believed firmly in her husband s genius, 
 and she was as eager as he to have his work pub 
 lished. Moreover, she had the business ability which 
 he lacked. She had earned a goodly sum teaching, 
 
4 JOHN JAMES AUDUBON 
 
 he added to it by giving dancing lessons, and in 
 1826 the way was clear for him to* go to England. 
 
 England was entirely new to him, and he was 
 rather aghast at spending five hours at dinner. He 
 was never awkward, but he was sensitive, and so 
 modest that he was always grateful to people who 
 made him feel at home. The object of his journey 
 was to gain subscribers to his proposed Birds of 
 America. His drawings were put on exhibition ; and 
 now came a hard time for the artist. A word of 
 appreciation made him blush with joy, but when he 
 overheard some one in a crowd say, "I have seen 
 them; save your shilling for better use," he dared 
 not raise his head, but wished himself back in the 
 American forests with his birds. Once when he 
 was standing just outside the cloor of his exhibition, 
 a stranger asked him if those pictures were worth 
 seeing. The artist said "No" most emphatically, 
 and the man turned aside. He asked the same 
 question of some one else, and this second man 
 must have said "Yes," for he came back and went 
 in. 
 
 After a time in England, Audubon went to Scot 
 land, and there he was as eager to see Sir Walter 
 Scott as to make friends for his books, and one 
 night he went to sleep with his favorite of Scott s 
 novels under his pillow, hoping for a dream of its 
 author. At last the happy time arrived for an 
 interview. A friend came into his painting room 
 and said, "Put on your coat and hat and come 
 with me to Sir Walter Scott ; he wishes to see you 
 
LOVER AND STUDENT OF BIRDS 5 
 
 " "I really believe my coat and hat came to 
 me instead of my going to them," Audubon wrote 
 in his journal. Sir Walter was very cordial, and 
 the naturalist went away from the call as sincere 
 a worshiper of the novelist as in the days of his 
 early manhood. 
 
 Occasionally Audubon had a disagreeable inter 
 view. One man of high rank, not a subscriber, 
 
 STORMY PETREL 
 
 Drawn from natur? by J. J. Audubon and printed in color? in Birds of 
 America. The original illustration is 165 x 12\ inches. 
 
 actually sent for him to call, and then told him 
 scornfully that his birds were all alike, and the 
 work was a swindle. Audubon made no reply, but 
 bowed and left the house. He wrote quietly in his 
 journal, " It is not the custom to send for a gentle 
 man to abuse him in one s own home." He was 
 elected a member of various scientific societies, and 
 met manv men of great learning. He met one 
 
6 JOHN JAMES AUDUBON 
 
 banker, who was most courteous, but who declared 
 that he knew nothing of ornithology except that 
 large feathers were called quills, and were useful in 
 posting ledgers. All this he noted down in a 
 journal, which is really one long homesick letter to 
 his wife in America. He tells her of every dis 
 couragement that he meets, and he writes just as 
 frankly, "Now, my Lucy, ... I may feel proud of 
 two things, that I am considered the first ornitho 
 logical painter and the first practical naturalist of 
 America; may God grant me life to accomplish my 
 serious and gigantic work." 
 
 Audubon now went to France in the hope of in 
 creasing the number of names on his list of sub 
 scribers. He had the pleasure of meeting Cuvier 
 often, and the great scientist declared to the 
 Academy of Sciences that the Birds of America was 
 the most magnificent monument which had yet 
 been erected to ornithology. Nevertheless, there 
 were fewer in France than in England who could 
 afford to spend a thousand dollars on a set of books, 
 and not many new subscribers were gained. 
 
 The months in Europe were by no means a time 
 of idleness. It was Audubon s business to meet as 
 many people possible subscribers as he could; 
 to secure engravers, and also painters who could 
 color his engravings properly; and to attend to the 
 whole business of publishing his plates. Business 
 was always troublesome to him, and he wrote to his 
 wife, "It is difficult for a man like me to see that I 
 am neither cheating nor being cheated." Then, 
 
LOVER AXD STUDENT OF BIRDS 7 
 
 too, he had many orders for pictures, and he often 
 painted twenty hours out of the twenty-four. It is 
 no wonder that he was happy when at last he had 
 arranged his business affairs and was free to sail for 
 home in the packet-ship which he chose because of 
 her name, Columbia. 
 
 A year later Audubon and his wife went to Edin 
 burgh. Here Audubon set to work to write his 
 Ornithological Biography, which is really charming 
 accounts of the lives and habits of his birds, and 
 where he had found them. "Your father is up and 
 at work before dawn, and writes without ceasing all 
 day," Mrs. Audubon wrote to the sons. 
 
 To bring out the Birds took not only hard work, 
 but a vast amount of perseverance and courage. It 
 was planned to be issued in eighty-seven parts of 
 five plates each, giving 1065 figures of birds. The 
 text came out separately, in five large octavo vol 
 umes. Only a few numbers were to be brought 
 out each year, and the publication was to extend 
 over a number of years. It is not strange that even 
 after subscribing, some fifty persons withdrew their 
 names. 
 
 The Audubons returned to America, and then 
 they literally followed the real living birds. The 
 whole family journeyed together in most delightful 
 fashion. Where there were birds that the naturalist 
 wished to draw, they stopped; where there were 
 none, they went on. His charming manner made 
 friends for them everywhere. 
 
 Audubon had long wished to make a trip to 
 
JOHN JAMES AUDUBON 
 
 Labrador to study the Northern birds, and in 1833 
 he, his youngest son, "Johnny," and four other 
 young men, chartered a schooner and set sail. One 
 
 ^ them wrote 
 of their leader, 
 "You had only 
 to meet him to 
 love him, and 
 when you had 
 conversed with 
 him for a mo 
 ment, you looked 
 upon him as an 
 old friend, rather 
 than a stranger." 
 In 1840 the 
 family made 
 their home in 
 Auclubon Park, 
 as it is now 
 called, within the 
 present limits of 
 New York City. 
 The sons had married, and here eleven of the four 
 teen grandchildren were born. Audubon must have 
 been a most lovable grandfather, for he never 
 objected to as many of the children as might 
 choose making use of his painting house as a play 
 room. 
 
 A smaller-sized edition of the Birds was to be 
 prepared, and Audubon had also planned Quadru- 
 
 REPUBLICAN CLIFF SWALLOW 
 
 Drawn from nature by J. J. Audubon and printed 
 in colors in Birds of A merica. The original illustration 
 is 16% x 12^4 inches. 
 
LOVER AND STUDENT OF BIRDS 9 
 
 peds of North America. Feather and sons worked 
 together on what they called "our book." The 
 father sketched, one son, using the camera obscura, 
 reduced the drawings to the required size, and the 
 other son attended to printing and publishing. 
 Audubon was very happy in his youngest son s suc 
 cess in painting. "Ah, Johnny," he would say, 
 "no need for the old man to paint any more when 
 you can do work like that." 
 
 To the last day of his life he was the same gentle, 
 lovable person that he had always been. He loved 
 to wander along the banks of the Hudson River. 
 "The love of animals develops the better side of all 
 natures," he said, and he loved all animals, but 
 especially birds. Birds have been hunted for their 
 flesh, their plumage, and even for the amusement 
 of trying to hit them. There is a story which pic 
 tures a man throwing open his blinds in the morning 
 and exclaiming, "Beautiful day! Let s go and kill 
 some birds!" To prevent this destruction of bird 
 life the Audubon Society has been formed, rightly 
 named for the man who did more than any other 
 person to interest people in birds and their ways. 
 President Roosevelt was deeply interested in saving 
 the birds, and set apart fifty-three different areas 
 of land as "bird reservations." These reservations 
 are located in many parts of the United States, 
 along the ocean coast, in Nebraska and South 
 Dakota, in Oregon, California, and on the Hawaiian 
 Islands. No one is allowed to enter them who will 
 harm or disturb the birds, and to some of them all 
 
lo JOHN JAMES AUDUBON 
 
 entrance is forbidden. Birds are quick-witted, and 
 they soon understand where they are safe. It is a 
 pity they cannot understand that their safety is due 
 to Audubon, friend of their fathers. 
 
MARK HOPKINS 
 
 PRESIDENT OF WILLIAMS COLLEGE 
 
 1802-1887 
 1836, became President of Williams College 
 
 IF Mark Hopkins s family had known that he was 
 to become a famous college president, they would 
 surely have taken notes of his sayings and doings. 
 As it is, only two stories have come down to us 
 of his early days. In one tale he entered school 
 at the age of four, book in hand. "And where 
 can you read?" the teacher asked; and the little 
 fellow gravely replied, "Just where you please, sir," 
 which proved to be correct. The other event oc 
 curred when he himself was teaching, not so many 
 years later. One of his pupils treated some young 
 birds cruelly, whereupon the president-to-be boxed 
 his ears soundly. 
 
 Teaching and studying by turns, he entered 
 Williams College as a sophomore. The follow 
 ing year he wrote a prize oration on the rather 
 tremendous subject, "Modern Chemistry Reve 
 lation Confirmed by its Discoveries." His vale 
 dictory, a year later, was on the even more over 
 powering theme for an inexperienced youth of 
 twenty-two, "The Formation of a Practical rather 
 than a Speculative Character by Literary Men." 
 
 Only one college prank is recorded of him, and 
 that was somewhat scholarly. He presented an 
 
12 MARK HOPKINS 
 
 essay, half of which was original and the other half 
 copied from a distinguished Scotch author. He 
 mischievously put his own half in quotations/ but 
 gave none to the other author. Either the student s 
 work was remarkably good, or else the young pro 
 fessor was not very well up in the subject, for he 
 praised the original part and was savagely critical 
 of the writings of the learned Scotchman. Mark 
 Hopkins was very gentle with the professor, for he 
 told the secret to only one friend, and for half a 
 century the friend kept his promise not to reveal it. 
 Three years later Hopkins himself became a tutor 
 in the college; but there is no record that he was 
 ever caught in the same or any other way. 
 
 After taking his master s degree, he studied med 
 icine, and was on the point of going to New York 
 to practice, when, unexpectedly to himself, he was 
 asked to become Professor of Mental and Moral 
 Philosophy and Rhetoric at Williams. In these 
 days no one would be invited to teach a subject 
 unless he had made special preparation in that line ; 
 but at that time, if an educated man had shown 
 that he could teach one subject, he was expected to 
 be able to teach another as a matter of course. 
 Then, too, this young physician had shown sincere 
 interest in the branches which he was asked to 
 teach. One point of preparation, however, could 
 not be passed over; there was a general feeling that 
 one who was to instruct young men ought to have a 
 theological education; therefore the professor- to-be 
 packed up his medical books and for three years he 
 
PRESIDENT OF WILLIAMS COLLEGE 13 
 
 studied theology and kindred subjects. He was 
 now licensed to preach, he married, and he took his 
 place as a member of the college faculty. 
 
 Three years later, in 1836, the president resigned. 
 The trustees spoke of Professor Hopkins as his suc 
 cessor, but decided that he was too young. Just 
 at the critical moment and probably after care 
 ful planning a letter was presented to the Board 
 from the class graduating that year. It thanked 
 the trustees most suggestively for the great privi 
 lege of having had Professor Hopkins as their in 
 structor. This turned the scale. "If the boys 
 want him," declared one of the trustees, Met them 
 have him"; and they had him. 
 
 In 1836 the president of a college was expected to 
 have a much closer connection with the students 
 than would be required u to bow in one company 
 and bow out another." He must act as parent and 
 guardian to every boy, and be to each one a personal 
 friend and adviser. He must represent the dignity 
 of the college, be equal to all emergencies and all 
 difficulties. Besides this, he was expected to do an 
 amount of teaching that would whiten the hair of a 
 twentieth-century professor. 
 
 One of the prevailing notions of the time was that 
 a man of intellect should be quite superior to the 
 whims of the body, and that it was indeed hardly in 
 good taste for a scholar to pay much attention to 
 his food or his health. But President Hopkins was 
 also Doctor Hopkins, and his first teaching to the 
 seniors consisted of lessons in anatomy, and physi- 
 
14 MARK HOPKINS 
 
 ology, and from these he developed the study of the 
 mind. 
 
 To teach physiology he needed a manikin, but 
 one would cost six hundred dollars, and he did not 
 feel that the college could afford to spend that 
 amount. So he mortgaged his own salary for six 
 months and gave his note for the "little man." To 
 pay for his pasteboard treasure he gave lectures on 
 physiology in Stockbridge and elsewhere. 
 
 The lectures were a great success. "There never 
 was anything that took so well," one friend wrote 
 him. Another said: "Dr. Hopkins has given a 
 fine blow to our vanity. \Yhenever I see a fine 
 countenance and a graceful person, I shall only 
 think the possessor has a particularly well-disposed 
 set of muscles under his command." Some months 
 later the trustees took over the manikin and can 
 celed the note. 
 
 To the entering freshmen of each year President 
 Hopkins taught the laws of health. He advised 
 them to saw their own wood, to learn to enjoy fine 
 prospects, and to tramp over the hills in quest of 
 minerals and flowers. He also taught metaphysics 
 and ethics and rhetoric. He corrected composi 
 tions and criticized declamations. He was pastor 
 of the college church and preached almost every 
 Sunday. Saturday forenoons he taught the senior 
 class the Assembly s "Shorter Catechism" for half 
 an hour; and he made it so unbelievably interesting 
 that more than one class asked to have the time 
 lengthened to an hour and a half. 
 
w < 
 
 > I 
 < I 
 
16 MARK HOPKINS 
 
 Besides all this teaching he was writing, deliver 
 ing important addresses and baccalaureate sermons. 
 He not only taught the students how to grow 
 mentally, but he himself was growing, and they 
 saw it. They respected and reverenced him. In 
 his classes there was absolute freedom of discussion. 
 As long as a boy was in earnest and was trying to 
 express a real thought, the President would listen 
 attentively; but if he was only talking to hear his 
 own voice, the President would turn the laugh on 
 him effectively, but so good-naturedly that his feel 
 ings did not suffer any serious damage. In the cate 
 chism class he was once talking of the Fifth Com 
 mandment, and he said that a school, being in the 
 place of a parent, was entitled to the same obedience. 
 One bright but rather restive boy objected to this 
 at some length. When just the right moment 
 came, President Hopkins raised a storm of applause 
 by saying in a matter-of-fact tone, "Hence we see 
 that a father who has an unruly son whom he 
 knows not what else to do with is sure to send him 
 to Williams College." 
 
 Dr. Hopkins was equally wise in what is still 
 spoken of as the "rebellion of 1868." It seemed 
 that some few students were frequently absent 
 from their classes, and this interfered with the work. 
 Now Dr. Hopkins did not believe in strict rules and 
 penalties or in treating all students alike. "vSome 
 one must be at the foot of the class," he often said; 
 and he thought that patience and kindness and the 
 college influence would do more to make boys 
 
PRESIDENT OF WILLIAMS COLLEGE 17 
 
 manly than any rigid laws and penalties. Most of 
 the faculty took the opposite position. They be 
 lieved that the only way to lessen these absences 
 was to treat offenders with severity. 
 
 At the faculty meeting it was decreed that every 
 absence should be marked zero, but if attendance 
 had been impossible, a professor might, if he chose, 
 allow the work to be made up. The wording of this 
 rule was made unnecessarily annoying, and the 
 students were indignant. Then, too, they felt that 
 " impossible" was a rather strong word, and that 
 the new rule put it into the hands of any profes 
 sor with a grudge to lower a student s standing 
 seriously. They requested almost demanded - 
 that this new rule be annulled. When this was 
 refused, they left the college. The faculty, perhaps 
 a little too promptly, sent out circulars to the 
 parents and the newspapers explaining the condition 
 of things. Dr. Hopkins was in Ohio. It would 
 have been much wiser not to make any new rules 
 during his absence; but the rule had been made, 
 and the burden of making peace rested upon him. 
 What would he do? 
 
 He reached home Saturday night, and preached 
 in the chapel as usual. On Monday, President, 
 faculty, and students met. He made it clear that 
 all students were still under college rule, and that if 
 any wished to withdraw from college, they must 
 return to their work and then ask for letters of 
 dismissal, which would be granted. The faculty 
 wish the best government possible, he declared, and 
 
i8 MARK HOPKINS 
 
 if the rule in hand is not the best rule possible, it 
 can be changed. When the four o clock classes 
 met that afternoon, the students returned, though 
 many answered the roll-call as "Present, under 
 protest." "No student is in this college under 
 protest, " declared the President emphatically, and 
 at the next roll-call there was no more under 
 protest ; the tact of the President had brought the 
 rebellion to an end. After the storm had blown 
 over, the wording of the rule was changed. 
 
 President Hopkins was the author of several 
 books. The most famous of these is The Law of 
 Love and Lo r ce as a Law. Another eminent scholar 
 wrote a review of it, and with a touch of what the 
 students at Williams wrathfully looked upon as 
 something like self-conceit, declared that Dr. Hop- 
 kins s reading seemed to have been limited to rather 
 commonplace works. Dr. Hopkins quietly and 
 courteously turned the tables by saying: "While I 
 acknowledge fully the want of reading referred to - 
 and regret it - - I may be permitted to say that on 
 this subject he has presented no point that I had 
 not seen, and has raised no objection that I had not 
 considered." 
 
 President Hopkins had many invitations to be 
 come pastor of prominent churches and professor 
 in different theological seminaries; but he always 
 declined, saying, " I dwell among mine own people." 
 And the young men whom he taught were literally 
 his "own people." In his classes there was always 
 the frankest discussion, and he never attempted to 
 
PRESIDENT OF WILLIAMS COLLEGE 19 
 
 force his own views upon the students; but never 
 theless the stamp of his mind was upon them. "All 
 Williams men have a family resemblance," was de 
 clared many a time ; and one graduate after another 
 has ended his praises of the great teacher with, 
 "Best of all, he taught me to think." 
 
CYRUS H. McCORMIGK 
 
 INVENTOR OF THE REAPER 
 1809-1884 
 
 1840, the first practical reaper was offered for sale 
 
 THE workshop on the McCormick farm in Virginia 
 was a log house of one big room. Here were two 
 forges, an anvil, a work-bench, and the various 
 tools used in repairing or making the implements 
 used on the farm. These were rude, slow-working 
 implements, for the sod was turned with a plough 
 share of cast iron; grass was mowed with a scythe; 
 grain was cut with a cradle and threshed with a 
 flail. 
 
 In this workshop the little Cyrus McCormick 
 played and watched his father do all sorts of inter 
 esting things, working in wood and iron. One of 
 the most wearisome parts of the year s work was 
 harvesting the grain; and it is no wonder that the 
 thoughts of the elder McCormick, a man of inven 
 tive ability, turned upon the possibility of making 
 a machine to harvest it for him. 
 
 He produced one in 1816. It would not work, 
 and the neighbors laughed at it. Perhaps even the 
 horses were amused, for they found themselves 
 expected not to pull it, but to push. After fifteen 
 years more of work, he succeeded in making it reap 
 fairly well, but it left the grain in as bad a tangle 
 as if the witches had been at work on it. Several 
 
INVENTOR OF THE REAPER 21 
 
 other inventors had made machines that would do 
 as well as this. He could not see how to improve 
 upon them, and at length he gave up trying. 
 
 While the father was working and thinking and 
 the neighbors were joking about his reaper, the boy 
 Cyrus was growing up. He became a tall, strong, 
 rather dignified young man, who led the singing in 
 the church. He had studied surveying and had 
 intended to be a surveyor, but he could not make 
 up his mind to give up the reaper. 
 
 Now when grain was straight and firm, his 
 father s machine would answer the purpose very 
 well ; so what the son had to do first was to invent a 
 way to cut the stalks when they were tangled. His 
 plan seems simple enough now, but it took brains 
 to think it out. He merely put at the end of the 
 knife a curved arm to separate the grain to be cut 
 from the grain to be left standing. The knife he 
 made to move backward and forward, so as not to 
 miss any of the grain. 
 
 This was not all by any means, for some way 
 must be contrived so that after the curved arm had 
 separated the stalks, they would stand up until 
 they were cut. This he managed by putting a row 
 of fingers at the edge of the blade. To lift up the 
 grain that had fallen on the ground, he made a 
 revolving reel. To catch the grain as it fell, he 
 made a platform; and instead of amazing the 
 horses by making them push the machine, he ar 
 ranged it so it could be pulled. Finally, he built 
 the whole machine upon a big driving wheel; that 
 
22 CYRUS H. McCORMICK 
 
 is, a wheel which receives the power and communi 
 cates it to the other wheels of the machinery. 
 
 The affair was clumsy. Would it reap? Cyrus 
 and his father and mother and brothers and sisters 
 all went to the wheat-field and stood watching in 
 the wildest excitement. They were sure that " Cy s 
 machine" would reap and yet, would it? It 
 creaked and grumbled, then started and set to 
 work. It cut the straight wheat and it cut the 
 tangled wheat. There was a family rejoicing, and 
 Cyrus arranged to give a public exhibition to the 
 neighbors who had laughed at his father s efforts. 
 
 Not far away was a six-acre field of oats. To 
 reap it would have taken six men with scythes a 
 whole afternoon. Cyrus and two horses and the 
 reaper did the work in the same time. A year later 
 one hundred or more people came together to see 
 the machine perform. It performed, but not quite 
 as the inventor had expected, for it slipped and slid 
 and stumbled and jolted and behaved as badly as 
 if imps of mischief were in every wheel. The field 
 was rough and hilly, and no reasonable being could 
 expect the machine to do its work well in such a 
 place. 
 
 It was a rather crestfallen inventor who stood 
 beside his horses that summer day; but a moment 
 later a voice said: "Pull down the fence, young 
 man, and cross over into my field of wheat. I ll 
 give you a fair chance." This field was level, the 
 machine worked well, and before sunset six acres 
 had been reaped. A young girl who watched the 
 
INVENTOR OF THE REAPER 23 
 
 machine being drawn up the road said many years 
 later, "I thought it was a right smart curious sort 
 of a thing, but that it would n t come to much." 
 The people who had laughed at the inventor had to 
 
 Courtesy International Harvester Company of America 
 
 McCORMICK S FIRST SUCCESSFUL REAPER 
 
 This was invented in 1831 and patented in 1834. The machine embodied the 
 following essential principles of the modern reaper vibrating sickle-edged blade, 
 fingers to hold the grain, reel, divider and platform to receive the grain. 
 
 admit now that he had succeeded. But of all the 
 praises that were given to him, there was not one 
 that pleased him so much as his father s quiet, "I 
 am proud to have a son do what I could not." 
 
 In these days we are used to new inventions, and 
 we get a little out of patience if some one does not 
 produce machines for doing everything quickly 
 and easily. In the boyhood of Cyrus AlcCormick, 
 most work, especially farm work, was done by hand 
 
24 CYRUS H. McCORMICK 
 
 with an accompaniment of backache. And as for 
 the implements why, many people were still us 
 ing wooden ploughs and thinking that iron ones 
 were a very doubtful innovation. How was a 
 young man to persuade the farmers to buy, not a 
 simple thing like an iron plough, but an expensive 
 machine that might fail them after a season s use? 
 He had read enough about inventors to know that, 
 because they were not good business men, they 
 often failed to get their proper rewards. He made 
 up his mind to work and wait, but to hold on to 
 that reaper until he had won appreciation and 
 purchasers. 
 
 He had no money for advertising, and he set to 
 work to make it by farming. For nine years he 
 struggled. He gave an exhibition of the reaper at 
 work, but the effect was much like that of the 
 famous sermon to the fishes, 
 
 "Much delighted were they, 
 But preferred the old way." 
 
 Who knew how long the machine would keep in 
 order? Money was scarce and labor was cheap. 
 The farmers cheered when they saw it cut two 
 acres of wheat in an hour, but they did not purchase. 
 Nine years was a long time to wait for a customer, 
 but in 1840 a man came forward with fifty dollars 
 and said that he wanted to buy a reaper. A few 
 weeks later another and then a third came for the 
 same purpose. One machine was sold; then the 
 honest inventor said frankly that he had an idea 
 
INVENTOR OF THE REAPER 25 
 
 for improving his reaper, and he refused to sell any 
 more until he had given it a trial. His heart was in 
 that machine, and he would rather wait than sell 
 one that was not as perfect as he could make it. 
 There was one fault, which he was sure he could 
 overcome, namely, when grain was damp the reaper 
 cut unevenly and sometimes would not cut at all. 
 He thought and experimented, and then simply 
 made the edge of the cutting blade more sharply 
 saw- toothed, and it worked. 
 
 Three machines were now at work in the Virginia 
 grain-fields. The sales increased slowly, but so 
 surely that McCormick set up a manufactory on 
 the home farm. Everything might have been ex 
 pected to go on smoothly now that there was a 
 factory to make reapers, and customers to buy 
 them; but there was another great difficulty to be 
 overcome, namely, how were these reapers to be 
 delivered? Railroads were few, and if a farmer in 
 Illinois or Wisconsin, for instance, sent an order for 
 a reaper, the machine had to be " carried in a wagon 
 to Scottsville, then by canal to Richmond, re- 
 shipped down the James River to the Atlantic 
 Ocean and around Florida to New Orleans, trans 
 ferred here to a river boat that went up the Miss 
 issippi and Ohio Rivers to Cincinnati, and from 
 Cincinnati in various directions to the expectant 
 farmer." This method of delivery was so slow and 
 uncertain that more than once a reaper reached its 
 purchaser long after his grain had all been harvested 
 by hand. 
 
26 CYRUS H. McCORMICK 
 
 Something must be done. McCormick set out 
 into the world for the first time and went West. 
 He saw prairies, flat, limitless, and of rich soil. He 
 saw wide fields of grain without any one to gather 
 it in. Here was the place for the reaper. Virginia 
 as the home of grain began to look smalt to him. 
 His reaper would be most at ease on these wide 
 prairies, but how could prairies and reapers be 
 brought together? There is an old proverb, "If 
 the mountain will not come to Mahomet, then 
 Mahomet must go to the mountain." The prairies 
 would not come to the reapers, so the inventor set 
 out to find a way to carry the reapers to the prairies. 
 The best way was not to carry them at all, but to 
 manufacture them at some central point as near as 
 possible. Where should that point be? Wise man 
 that he was, he decided upon a muddy little city 
 named Chicago. It was a cheerless little place, 
 without gas or sewers or pavements; but more grain 
 passed through it than through any other city in the 
 United States. Here McCormick built his factory 
 in 1847. 
 
 His inventive ability and his perseverance had 
 brought him thus far, and he acted on the principle 
 of all good salesmen; that is, he looked at things 
 from the buyer s point of view. He gave with 
 every machine a written guarantee, that if it did 
 not prove capable of reaping one and a half acres of 
 grain an hour, he would refund the money paid. 
 He trusted farmers and new settlers freely, and 
 rarely lost by them. He advertised much by having 
 
INVENTOR OF THE REAPER 27 
 
 public trials, free to everybody, between his reaper 
 and any others that had been invented, for there 
 were scores of them now. 
 
 But a patent lasted for only fourteen years, and 
 the time was up. He had spent a large part of 
 this time not in making money from the reaper, 
 but in improving it, an especially difficult thing to 
 do, because he had only the short harvest season 
 
 Courtesy International Harvester Company of America 
 
 MODERN GRAIN HARVESTING MACHINES, COMBINING A BINDER AND 
 A REAPER 
 
 They are drawn by a gasoline tractor. 
 
 for testing any new arrangement. Many factories 
 were making and selling his reaper and paying him 
 no royalty. Would Congress extend his patent, as 
 had been done in several other cases? Of course 
 the manufacturers united against him, and Con- 
 
28 CYRUS H. McCORMICK 
 
 gress refused. Then McCormick set to work to 
 take care of himself. He made his reaper into a 
 " reaper and binder," and he swept through Europe 
 with his field tests and his victories. 
 
 He fought many lawsuits, for he would never give 
 up when he was sure that he was in the right. One, 
 which was not connected with the reaper, he fought 
 for twenty-three years. Through the fault of a 
 railroad the trunks of his family and himself were 
 destroyed, and he sued the road for damages. From 
 court to court the case went, and at last to the 
 Supreme Court of the United States. The verdict 
 was that the road must pay the value of the trunks 
 and also the interest on the money for twenty-three 
 years. "What makes you fight so hard over a 
 small matter?" asked a friend. "My conscience," 
 replied McCormick. "Some one must stand up 
 for fair dealing." 
 
 He was always a hard worker. "Work that is 
 what life is for," he said. When he had a problem 
 to solve he worked on it until it was solved, quite 
 as if there were no such things as ordinary business 
 hours in the world. Everything that he had to do 
 must be done thoroughly and accurately. "Don t 
 misspell words," he said to a younger brother. 
 "Carry a dictionary as I do." 
 
 He was just as decided in his politics and his re 
 ligious faith. "I am in politics," he said, "because 
 I have to be in order to defend the principles that I 
 stand by." He liked New York because it had 
 "regular and good Presbyterian preaching," He 
 
INVENTOR OF THE REAPER 29 
 
 liked the flowers that used to grow in his mother s 
 garden in Virginia; and his devotion to her and to 
 his father never faltered. When his father died he 
 wrote to his brother, "Many a sore cry have I had 
 as I have gone around this place and found no 
 father." His wife was his trusted business adviser. 
 When Chicago burned, in 1871, and his factory was 
 destroyed, he asked her counsel whether to rebuild 
 or retire. She thought of saving the business for 
 their sons and said "Rebuild"; and while the ashes 
 were still warm, he gave orders to put up a larger 
 factory than the old one had been. 
 
 Before long there was more wheat coming in than 
 the old-style mills could grind. Steel rollers began 
 to take the place of stones. Great mills were built 
 for making flour; one in Minneapolis is so large 
 that it can turn out fifteen thousand barrels of 
 flour every twenty-four hours. This is what the 
 McCormick reaper has made possible in helping to 
 feed a hungry world. 
 
CHARLES GOODYEAR 
 
 A MAN WHO PERSEVERED 
 1800-1860 
 
 1844, first patented the vulcanization of rubber 
 
 IN the early part of the nineteenth century rubber 
 was used in this country for little else than erasing 
 pencil marks. People were beginning to be inter 
 ested in it, however, because it had such remarkable 
 qualities. It was elastic and it was waterproof; it 
 could be baked, soaked in lye or oil or turpentine 
 without injury; neither mouse nor moth would 
 touch it. The natives of the lands where it was 
 produced made rough clay lasts, dipped them into 
 the rubber juice many times, smoking them after 
 each dipping, then broke up the lasts, and they had 
 waterproof shoes. Why could not this be done in 
 the United States? 
 
 People went wild over the possibilities of rubber. 
 It cost only five cents a pound, and a pair of rub 
 bers gums, or galoshes, they were called would 
 sell for two or three dollars. Here was a chance 
 to make a fortune, if a man was only wide-awake 
 enough to seize the opportunity and invest. In 
 1833 six or eight factories were opened, and the 
 manufacture of overshoes and wagon-covers, over 
 coats, caps, and life-preservers flourished. 
 
 These articles were sold as fast as they could be 
 made; but when warm weather came, "they were 
 
A MAN WHO PERSEVERED 31 
 
 returned as fast as their purchasers could bring 
 them back. This rubber had one great fault; it 
 proved to be hard as a rock in the winter and soft as 
 chewing gum in the summer; and the overshoes 
 made in the factories were not nearly so good as 
 the clumsy ones made by the natives of the rubber 
 countries. A pair of rubbers left by the fire would 
 quietly melt away with a very, very bad odor. 
 The only way to use such articles seemed to be to 
 make one s home where there was neither heat nor 
 cold. 
 
 Now in Connecticut there lived a man who was 
 trying to solve the problem. God would not have 
 put into the world a substance of such value unless 
 he had meant men to find out how to use it; so this 
 Mr. Goodyear reasoned; and he was convinced 
 that the deep interest which he felt in rubber was a 
 proof that he was meant to be the one to find out 
 how to make the substance of use. He was a poor\ 
 man, he had failed in business, and he had a wife/ 
 and seven children. He knew little of chemistry, 
 and had not so very much more than the average 
 Yankee s talent for " fixing things" and improving 
 them, but he began to experiment on rubber. He 
 borrowed money and made hundreds of pairs of 
 overshoes, very good-looking ones. But "Hand 
 some is as handsome does," says the old proverb; 
 and when warm weather came, the shoes settled 
 down into soft dough. 
 
 Rubber was usually dissolved in turpentine, and 
 turpentine is sticky. Perhaps the trouble was here, 
 
32 CHARLES GOODYEAR 
 
 he thought; and at length he succeeded in getting 
 some rubber sap which had been kept liquid by 
 alcohol. He was called away, and while he was 
 gone his man Jerry had an idea. He plastered his 
 overalls with the nice white liquid, and was soon 
 wearing a fine pair of handsome white waterproof 
 overalls. But alas, Jerry sat down too near the 
 fire, and when the inventor returned his man had 
 to be carefully cut out of his new garment. Evi 
 dently the stickiness was not in the turpentine, but 
 in the rubber itself. Was there any way of getting 
 rid of this one bad quality? 
 
 Goodyear had no thought of giving up. He tried 
 mixing rubber with all sorts of substances, with 
 magnesium, with quicklime and water, and with 
 nitric acid. In trying to clean a piece of rubber 
 cloth he had used nitric acid, and had found that 
 the surface of the rubber lost all stickiness wherever 
 the acid had touched it. He now made thin sheets 
 of rubber and worked them into piano-covers, car 
 riage-tops, even overshoes; and all these were far 
 better than anything of the kind that had been 
 made before. He sold licenses to use his process; he 
 began to have a good income; and he brought his 
 scattered family around him again. 
 
 A friend who had worked in one of the defunct 
 rubber factories had tried combining sulphur with 
 rubber and exposing this to sunshine. He told 
 Goodyear of his experiments and showed him how 
 this process took away the stickiness from the sur 
 face of the rubber. Goodyear had borrowed of 
 
A MAN WHO PERSEVERED 33 
 
 every friend who would lend to him, because he was 
 firmly convinced that he would be able to pay his 
 debts, but he never dreamed of making any unfair 
 use of this confidence. "You must patent your 
 process," he said, and this was done. Later, he 
 bought the patent. 
 
 Success had come at last; that could not be 
 doubted, for the Government had ordered one 
 hundred and fifty mail-bags of him. Now people 
 could see for themselves. He manufactured the 
 bags and hung them where every one would have a 
 view. This was in the early spring of 1838. He 
 was away for a month, and when he returned there 
 hung the handles of the bags, but the bags them 
 selves were melting and dropping on the floor. In 
 stead of a public success he had made a public 
 failure. He could harden the surface of the rubber, 
 but under this surface the gum was in warm weather 
 as sticky as ever. 
 
 Rubber was certainly a most exasperating sub 
 stance. To be able to cure the outside perfectly, 
 but not to be able to affect it below the surface 
 would have tried the patience of Job. It did try 
 the patience of Mr. Goodyear, but he kept on. 
 Sometimes he was cold, sometimes he was hungry. 
 His friends, and at last even his wife, urged him to 
 give up the quest. He loved his family and his 
 friends, but he never ceased to believe that he must 
 keep on, that he was the one man chosen to discover 
 the secret that would benefit the whole world. 
 When one process failed, he tried another, and he 
 
34 CHARLES GOODYEAR 
 
 was never sufficiently discouraged to think for a 
 moment of giving up. He had always believed that 
 some things cannot be found out by scientific re 
 search, but can be discovered by accident, and that 
 the man who is most persevering will be the dis 
 coverer. 
 
 He was right in this case, for the discovery came 
 when he was far from expecting it. He stood before 
 a hot stove one day in 1839 with a piece of gum and 
 sulphur in his hand, talking away on his usual 
 subject. His audience, consisting of his brother 
 and some friends, was bored, and more than half 
 indignant with him for keeping on in this foolish 
 chase. In one of his earnest gestures he touched 
 the hot stove with the rubber. Instead of melting, 
 it charred like leather, but around the charred por 
 tion there was a flexible border which was not 
 charred, and was perfectly cured. Then how he 
 did talk, and how out of patience his hearers be 
 came! They had seen things burned before, and 
 there was generally a line about the edge of the 
 burned part of anything that was not charred; 
 charring had to stop somewhere. They did not see 
 anything in this to make a man so excited ; he must 
 be half crazy. Perhaps he was, half crazy with joy. 
 He nailed the rubber outside the door. It was a 
 very cold night, but in the morning the ring about 
 the charred spot was as flexible as before. 
 
 Now he experimented in good earnest. He found 
 that this rim would neither soften with heat nor 
 stiffen with cold. Rubber certainly was a myste- 
 
A MAN WHO PERSEVERED 
 
 35 
 
 Conrtety Goodyar Tire and Rubber Company 
 
 GOODYEAR S DISCOVERY OF THE VULCANIZATION OF RUBBER 
 
 rious substance. When combined with sulphur, a 
 little heat would melt it, and much would harden 
 or " vulcanize" it. The great discovery had been 
 made, but only a man who had been trying for 
 
36 CHARLES GOODYEAR 
 
 years to find it would have known that he had it 
 at last. 
 
 Still, even this was only a beginning. He must 
 find out just how much sulphur to use, what degree 
 of heat was best, when and for how long the heat 
 must be applied, and by what means. A process 
 that failed one time in ten would be of no use com 
 mercially. He went at his experiments without 
 a thought of anything else. He boiled the rubber 
 and steamed it and roasted it. He baked it in 
 heaps of sand in the fields, making his fires of sticks 
 which he picked up. People were kind to him. 
 The shops and factories allowed him to use their 
 ovens after working hours, though his sticky mix 
 tures were a great bother. The workmen grumbled 
 and laughed at the messes, but they did not refuse 
 what he wanted. His neighbors sent in food for the 
 family and sometimes paid a bill or two for him. 
 One man who was almost a stranger gave him 
 money to continue his experiments; another sent 
 him a barrel of flour. At one strenuous time he 
 could find nothing in the house to pawn but his chil 
 dren s schoolbooks, and he pawned these. In the 
 midst of his troubles he received a generous offer from 
 a firm in Paris for the use of his nitric-acid process; 
 but, starving as he was, he was too honest to accept 
 it. The process is valuable, he replied, but it will 
 soon be superseded by a new and better method. 
 
 So it was that the invention of vulcanized rub 
 ber came, like so many other inventions, from the 
 anxious struggles and privations of the inventor and 
 
A MAN WHO PERSEVERED 37 
 
 his family. The result of Goodyear s efforts has 
 been well summed up as follows: 
 
 "His process had more than the elasticity of 
 India rubber, while it was divested of all those 
 properties which had lessened its utility. It was 
 still India rubber, but its surfaces would not adhere, 
 nor would it harden at any degree of cold, nor 
 soften at any degree of heat. It was a cloth im 
 pervious to water. It was paper that would not 
 tear. It was parchment that would not crease. It 
 was leather w r hich neither rain nor sun would in 
 jure. It was ebony that could be run into a mould. 
 It was ivory that could be worked like wax. It 
 was wood that never cracked, shrunk, nor decayed. 
 It was metal that could be wound round the finger 
 or tied into a knot, and which preserved its elasticity 
 almost like steel. Trifling variations in the ingredi 
 ents, in the proportions, and in the heating, made 
 it either as pliable as kid, tougher than ox-hide, as 
 elastic as whalebone, or as rigid as flint." 
 
 For this invention Goodyear received little re 
 ward save the consciousness that the world would 
 be better off because he had lived in it. Some of 
 his later troubles were due to his neglecting to take 
 out his patents promptly. Indeed, he delayed five 
 years before taking out, in 1844, a patent for vul 
 canized rubber, and so left a loophole for theclaims 
 of other inventors. He once said that a patent 
 amounts chiefly to a permission from the Govern 
 ment to fight one s own battles; and he had plenty 
 of them to fight. 
 
38 CHARLES GOODYEAR 
 
 In 1852 came his great test case for infringement 
 of his patent in the United States. Daniel Webster 
 was his lawyer. It must have brought down the 
 house when Webster pictured rubber as it was 
 before Mr. Goodyear succeeded in vulcanizing it. 
 "I had some experience in this matter myself," he 
 said. "A friend in New York sent me a very fine 
 cloak of India rubber, and a hat of the same ma 
 terial. I did not succeed very well with them. I 
 took the cloak one day and set it out in the cold. 
 It stood very well by itself. I surmounted it with 
 the hat, and many persons passing by supposed 
 they saw standing by the porch the Farmer of 
 Marshfield." 
 
 Mr. Webster won the case for his client. 
 
WILLIAM T. G. MORTON 
 
 MASTER OF PAIN 
 1819-1868 
 
 1846, ether first used in a surgical operation 
 
 IN the Medical Library which stands in the Fen 
 way, Boston, there is a famous painting. It repre 
 sents a young man leaning back in an operating- 
 chair and apparently unconscious. Beside him 
 stands an older man who is evidently performing 
 some operation on his jaw. Around these two are 
 grouped a number of other men, watching intently, 
 not the operator, but the face of the patient. A 
 little to one side stands a man with features as 
 clean-cut as those of a cameo. His hands are 
 clasped on his breast as if he was under some severe 
 mental strain. Back of this group and vanishing 
 into the shadow are rising seats occupied by young 
 men, some serious, some smiling a little mockingly, 
 but ail watching the face of the young man in the 
 chair. This is the picture, and back of it is a story. 
 The man with his hands clasped on his breast is 
 Dr. William T. G. Morton. He was born in the 
 little hill town of Charlton, Massachusetts, and, so 
 says the family tradition, he wanted to study med 
 icine, but decided to become a dentist. Dentistry 
 as a real profession was something new, and, in the 
 country at any rate, it was hardly more of a science 
 than shoveling snow. It consisted chiefly in ex- 
 
40 WILLIAM T. G. MORTON 
 
 tracting a tooth when its victim could not bear the 
 pain of toothache any longer. And such extract 
 ing! Sometimes it was done by the family doctor, 
 but it was perfectly lawful for the barber or the 
 blacksmith or any wandering quack to pull a tooth 
 and charge a fee for so doing. What their instru 
 ments were and their skill in using them may be 
 imagined. In Baltimore the American Association 
 of Dental Surgery provided for an eighteen-months 
 course in real dental study, and thither Morton 
 went. At the close of his course he opened an 
 office in Boston, and was so successful that as early 
 as 1844 his practice amounted to many thousands 
 of dollars a year. But Morton was not the kind of 
 man to be satisfied with what he had already learned. 
 He must keep on learning, and, busy man as he 
 was, he spent much time experimenting in a labora 
 tory and then in studying in a medical school. 
 
 The most advanced dental work of the time was 
 the making of artificial teeth; but the approved 
 method would seem crude enough to-day. They 
 were fastened with a soft solder to a gold plate. 
 After a little the solder changed color, and around 
 the top of every tooth a black line was formed. 
 The use of artificial teeth always made a bad taste 
 in the mouth, for the roots of the natural teeth 
 were not extracted. Dr. Morton worked till he 
 succeeded in making a hard solder, but it could not 
 be used unless old roots were removed, a process to 
 which people would not submit; and even when the 
 dentist agreed to make no charge unless the work 
 
MASTER OF PAIN 41 
 
 was a success, they refused to undergo the pain. 
 This can hardly be wondered at, for the use of 
 ether was unknown. 
 
 The sufferings of people in those days of no 
 anaesthetics were terrible. If the hip was out of 
 joint, for instance, the muscles soon contracted, and 
 to replace it one rope was fastened to the leg and 
 another to the body of the sufferer. Each rope was 
 drawn over a pulley, and then strong men pulled 
 and pulled till the bone could be pushed back into 
 its socket. The agonies of an operation with the 
 knife can be imagined from the fact that men of 
 muscle had to be at hand to hold the patient while 
 it took place. 
 
 Dr. Morton s mind was on the problem of pain. 
 In dental work brandy and opium and laudanum 
 had been tried and had deadened suffering to some 
 degree. Nitrous oxide, or " laughing gas," would 
 sometimes serve, but its use was not fully under 
 stood, its effects were very short, and they were al 
 ways doubtful, for sometimes it quieted the patient, 
 and sometimes it excited him so that the work 
 could not be done. In any case, they were not 
 lasting enough for it to be of value in severe oper 
 ations. Many a physician had pondered over this 
 question of pain; and after experimenting had con 
 cluded that people might as well hope to fly as to 
 escape suffering. Dr. Morton would not give up 
 the quest. "I will yet banish pain," he declared. 
 But how? 
 
 Of course in his dentistry he had tried everything 
 
42 WILLIAM T. G. MORTON 
 
 that seemed promising. In filling a sensitive tooth 
 one day, he used ether, rubbing it on the outside of 
 the jaw. It succeeded, and now he began to think 
 about ether. This was not unknown by any means. 
 Indeed, it was so well known that people sometimes 
 breathed in a little to amuse themselves by expe 
 riencing the queer, half-conscious feeling that it 
 caused. They were very careful, however, not to 
 use too much, for there was a general belief that 
 this would cause death. Ether mixed with air was 
 sometimes given to children with whooping-cough 
 to relieve the spasms. There might be hope in 
 ether. Dr. Morton was aiming at saving the world 
 from pain, and he forgot all about his own advan 
 tage. He put his business into the hands of an 
 assistant, and set to work. 
 
 Now when people took ether for an amusement, 
 they became sleepy and not fully conscious of what 
 was going on. Would a larger dose make them 
 unconscious? And would a still larger one result 
 in death? It is no wonder that people did not come 
 in crowds to Dr. Morton s office to try the experi 
 ment. He offered bribes, liberal sums of money, 
 but no one cared to risk his life to carry out the 
 whim of an experimenter. At length one of Dr. 
 Morton s assistants agreed to try it. He became 
 unconscious, then suddenly he was in a mad fury 
 and ready to fight everybody around. It was 
 found out afterwards that the ether was not pure; 
 but there is no record that the assistant ever offered 
 to try again. 
 
MASTER OF PAIN 43 
 
 There was only one person whom Dr. Morton 
 could depend upon to become a possible victim, 
 and that was himself. This was much more danger 
 ous for him than for any one else, because there was 
 a possibility of his taking too much and becoming 
 so nearly unconscious as not to realize when the 
 danger point was reached. It is no wonder that 
 his wife objected; but he was determined to make 
 the trial. He shut himself up in a room and began 
 to inhale the ether. He felt numb; he could not 
 manage his fingers; he pinched himself, but felt 
 little pain; he tried to rise, but could not. Then he 
 became unconscious, and so he remained for seven 
 or eight minutes. 
 
 The experiment was a success. He had proved 
 that a man could take ether enough to make him 
 unconscious and not be harmed by it. But how 
 would it be in severe pain? He soon found out. 
 A man came to have a tooth extracted. Dr. 
 Morton wet his handkerchief in ether and the man 
 quietly breathed it in. A minute or two later 
 Dr. Morton asked, "Are you ready?" "Yes, I am 
 ready," the man replied. "Well, the tooth is 
 out," said the Doctor; and it is no wonder that the 
 man shouted, "Glory, hallelujah!" -for he had 
 known nothing of the operation. The Doctor s pa 
 tients began to be less fearful. One boy had so 
 delightful a dream when under ether that he in 
 sisted upon having another tooth out on the spot. 
 
 Dr. Morton invited scientists to his office to see 
 the effect of the anaesthetic. In 1846, he went to 
 
44 WILLIAM T. G. MORTON 
 
 Dr. Warren, senior surgeon of the Massachusetts 
 General Hospital, and asked if he would give it a 
 public trial. Dr. Warren promised that he would. 
 A young man with a tumor on his jaw was to be 
 given the ether and the tumor was to be removed. 
 He had taken ether once before for some dental 
 operation, and he had not the least nervousness. 
 This could hardly be said of Dr. Morton. He 
 knew that if there should be any fault in the ap 
 paratus for mixing air with the ether and carrying 
 off the carbonic acid gas exhaled by the patient, 
 he might be held responsible for a death. Mrs. 
 Morton knew this, too, and begged him to give up 
 the test. He would not yield, and they worked to 
 gether on the apparatus through the night. 
 
 The operation was to take place at ten o clock in 
 the morning. Surgeons and medical students had 
 assembled, but the Doctor did not appear. The 
 students smiled scornfully and made idle jokes 
 about the man with the ridiculous claim that an 
 operation could be performed without any suffering. 
 At a quarter-past ten, Dr. Warren rose. "As 
 Dr. Morton has not arrived," he said, "I presume 
 he is otherwise engaged." He was engaged in 
 waiting for the instrument-maker had delayed 
 him. Dr. Warren took up his knife; but the door 
 opened, and the young dentist walked in. The 
 ether was given and the operation was begun. 
 This is the moment of the painting in the Boston 
 Medical Library 
 
 A little later, the operation over, Dr. Warren 
 
MASTER OF PAIN 
 
 45 
 
 turned to the students and said, "Gentlemen, this 
 is no humbug." 
 
 "How much pain did you feel?" the patient was 
 asked, and he replied, "I felt none." 
 
 There was no lack now of appreciation of the dis 
 covery. One of the London papers described it, 
 
 THE ROOM WHERE THE FIRST PUBLIC TRIAL OF ETHER TOOK PLACE 
 
 This shows the present appearance "of the room in the Massachusetts Genera! 
 Hospital where Dr. Warren performed the operation described on page 4^; In 
 the foreground are seen a part of the semicircular rising seats which were occupied 
 by the students. The glass cases against the wall contain various surgical instru 
 ments, and at the ends two Egyptian mummies. The inscription below the window 
 commemorates Dr Morton s discovery, and concludes with these words: "Know 
 ledge of this discovery spread from this room throughout the civilized world, and 
 a new era for surgery began. 
 
 under the heading, "Good news from America," as 
 a gift "not for one nation, but for all nations, from 
 generation to generation, as long as the world shall 
 
46 WILLIAM T. G. MORTON 
 
 last." Four or five European countries awarded 
 prizes or medals to the discoverer But, as often 
 happens, others began to lay claim to the glory. 
 His patent was broken by any one who chose, even 
 the Government itself. Dr. Morton had given 
 one hundred and eighty-seven thousand dollars to 
 his discovery, and he was now a poor man. The 
 Massachusetts General Hospital presented him with 
 a silver casket containing one thousand dollars. On 
 the casket was inscribed, "He has become poor in a 
 cause which has made the world his debtor." The 
 world is not always a good paymaster. Again and 
 again Dr. Morton tried to get recompense from the 
 Government, but to no avail. It would be pleasant 
 to write that his last years were spent in comfort, 
 but, as his son declared, "The discovery, while a 
 boon to the world, was a tragedy to its author and 
 his family." 
 
ELIAS HOWE 
 
 INVENTOR OF THE SEWING-MACHINE 
 1819-1867 
 
 1846, patented the first successful sewing-machine 
 
 IN the good old New England fashion the whole 
 Howe family worked. The father was farmer and 
 miller, and the boys helped him. The mother and 
 the girls kept the house. In country homes it was 
 then the custom to help fill the family purse by do 
 ing various kinds of "sale work." The Howes and 
 most of their neighbors spent their spare time stick 
 ing bits of wire into strips of leather, and so making 
 the cards for carding cotton which not many years 
 later a machine made so much faster. 
 
 At sixteen the boy Elias went out into the world 
 to seek his fortune, quite in the fashion of the old 
 fairy tales. He made his way into the enchanted 
 castle, which was a great factory in Lowell, Massa 
 chusetts, where machines for spinning and weaving 
 cotton were made. Two years later the bad fairy, 
 in the shape of hard times, made her appearance, 
 and closed every mill in the city. 
 
 But Boston is not far from Lowell, and there the 
 young man went in search of a job. After a little 
 he found it, on Cornhill, in the shop of a rather 
 erratic genius named Ari Davis, who manufactured 
 and repaired chronometers and surveyors instru 
 ments. Now in the lives of all inventors something 
 
48 ELIAS HOWE 
 
 always "happened one day" to set their minds to 
 work. What "happened" to young Howe was the 
 call of a man who was dreaming of inventing a 
 knitting-machine. Maybe the shopkeeper was a 
 little tired of his caller s talk. At any rate, he 
 burst into it with - 
 
 "Why do you bother about a knitting-machine? 
 Why don t you make a sewing-machine?" 
 
 "It can t be done," said the would-be inventor. 
 
 "Yes, it can," declared Davis. "I could do it 
 myself." 
 
 "Do it, then," retorted the caller, "and you will 
 have an independent fortune." 
 
 Davis did not "do it," and no one paid any 
 attention to the young fellow who was working 
 quietly at his bench a few steps away and listening 
 to every word. The idea of inventing was not new 
 in the Howe family. One uncle had invented a 
 spring bed. Another, seeking for glory rather than 
 ease, had invented a valuable truss for roofs and 
 bridges. 
 
 Of course the proper thing for a moneyless youth 
 who had the bee of invention in his bonnet would 
 have "been to devote every minute and every penny 
 to bringing it out. Instead of that, young Howe 
 proceeded to get married, and when he was twenty- 
 four he had a wife and children; and they were all 
 trying to live on his wages of nine dollars a week. 
 
 When Howe came home after his day s work - 
 and in those times a day s work lasted from sunrise 
 to sunset he always found his wife stitching, 
 
INVENTOR OF THE SEWING-MACHINE 49 
 
 stitching, trying to earn a little with her needle. It 
 is no wonder that he thought of sewing-machines or 
 that his first idea was to make one that would work 
 with just the same motions as those taken by his 
 wife s fingers, and would make a stitch just like 
 hers. At length he began to wonder if some other 
 kind of stitch 
 would not be just 
 as good ; and now 
 he was on the 
 right track. 
 
 He was not the 
 first man who 
 had tried to in 
 vent a sewing- 
 machine, and 
 some of them 
 had met with a 
 degree of suc 
 cess. Queerly 
 enough, most of 
 these people had 
 aimed at making 
 a machine that 
 would embroid 
 er, and appar 
 ently had little 
 
 thought of trying to make one that would sew up a 
 seam. One used a needle with a hook like that of a 
 crochet needle, and made a chain on one side of the 
 cloth. Another used a common sewing-needle. 
 
 Courtesy Singer Manufacturing Company 
 
 THE FIRST SEWING-MACHINE MADE BY 
 HOWE 
 
50 ELIAS HOWE 
 
 Pincers under the cloth pulled it down, and other 
 pincers above the cloth pulled it up again. One had 
 a horizontal needle which stood still while the cloth 
 was pressed upon it. A very crude machine was 
 made for sewing shoes. An awl made the hole in 
 the leather; a spindle laid the thread over the hole; 
 and a needle with no eye, but with a notch at the 
 end, pushed it through. A loop was left under 
 neath which was caught by a hook and held till a 
 second stitch was made through it. 
 
 Howe had seen machines that would make a 
 chain stitch; but this used up too much thread, left 
 a ridge on one side of the cloth, and could be easily 
 raveled. He had in mind some kind of stitch that 
 would be firm and strong and would not leave a 
 ridge. The idea of a needle with an eye near the 
 point was not new, but the idea of using two threads, 
 one passing through the needle s eye, and the other 
 held in a shuttle underneath which should lock the 
 stitch, was his own. He made a crude machine, 
 and it sewed well enough to show that an excellent 
 seam could be made if only the machine was perfect 
 in all its parts. Models cost money; so does the 
 support of a man and wife and their children; and 
 there was no money. Mr. Howe s father had 
 lost heavily by a fire and could give him no help. 
 What could be done? 
 
 If Howe had not always been a kindly, good- 
 natured person, it is hard to say what would have 
 become of his invention; but he always won friends, 
 and now an old schoolmate, one George Fisher, 
 
INVENTOR OF THE SEWING-MACHINE 51 
 
 came to the rescue. He agreed to give the Howes 
 a home and provide five hundred dollars for buying 
 tools and materials. If the machine succeeded, he 
 was to have half the profits. 
 
 All that winter of 1844-45 Howe worked on his 
 model, while the neighbors gossiped over the folly 
 of George Fisher in throwing away on such a wild- 
 goose chase the money which he had just inherited; 
 but when July came he appeared among them, 
 wearing a suit of clothes sewed on the new machine. 
 
 One would suppose that all the tailors in the land 
 would have been eager for a machine, but they 
 would not even try it. They declared that its 
 seams could not possibly be as even and strong as 
 those made by hand. "I will show what it can 
 do," said Howe; and he carried the machine to a 
 clothing factory. "Give me ten seams of five yards 
 each," he said, "and I will sew them before five of 
 your swiftest seamstresses can do the same amount." 
 He did it, and all had to admit that his seams were 
 much better than theirs. 
 
 Still no one would buy the machines. They were 
 expensive, to be sure, costing three hundred dollars 
 each, but a stronger reason was the fear that they 
 would throw men out of employment. The in 
 ventor did not lose courage. He worked for three 
 months on a second model of his machine, for he 
 could not patent it without having one to deposit 
 at the Patent Office. Then he and Fisher went to 
 Washington and secured a patent; but still no one 
 ordered a machine. 
 
52 ELIAS HOWE 
 
 Fisher had now put two thousand dollars into the 
 invention, and he could do no more. Perhaps 
 there would be a chance in the great factories of 
 England, and Howe s brother Amasa took the 
 precious little box containing the model and went 
 by steerage to England. A manufacturer bought 
 the machine, paid for it, and secured from Amasa 
 Howe the right to patent it in England. He agreed 
 to pay the inventor 3 for every machine sold in 
 that country; and he contrived so to impress Amasa 
 with his honesty and trustworthiness that the in 
 experienced American did not even have the agree 
 ment put in writing. 
 
 The manufacturer sent for the inventor and his 
 family to come to London to adapt one of the 
 machines to the making of corsets. Howe went 
 gladly and was successful; but just as soon as the 
 machine was done the manufacturer had no further 
 use for him; and although he himself became a 
 millionaire from the patent, Howe never received 
 a shilling of the royalty that had been promised. 
 
 Troubles were heaped upon him. His wife had to 
 return to America or starve; and soon he himself 
 followed her, paying his passage by cooking for 
 the emigrants on the boat. He reached New York 
 with only sixty cents in his pocket, and he had 
 hardly secured work before he heard that his wife 
 was dying. Then came news that his model had 
 been lost in a shipwreck. Again friends came to his 
 rescue. They offered to care for his children, and 
 he went to work as a machinist. It was not long 
 
INVENTOR OF THE SEWING-MACHINE 53 
 
 before he discovered that his machine had come 
 into use, but not under his name. It had been 
 altered so that no one but the inventor would 
 have easily recognized it. Then Howe was aroused. 
 Again a friend lent him money, and he fought for 
 his rights in court after court, winning every suit. 
 
 After all his struggles he became in a day a rich 
 man. He enjoyed his money and was ready to 
 admit the fact; but he enjoyed it more for what it 
 would buy for others than for the luxuries that it 
 would provide 
 for himself. 
 When the Civil 
 War broke out 
 he organized a 
 regiment and 
 presented each 
 man w r ith a 
 horse. He was 
 
 Courtesy Singer Manufacturing Company 
 
 elected colonel THE SEWING-MACHINE OF 1921 
 
 of the regiment, The latest model of this sewing-machine can be run 
 by an electric motor. Compare this highly perfected 
 
 but he declined piece of mechanism with the crude device invented 
 , .. A . by Howe. 
 
 and enlisted as 
 
 a private, and served in the ranks until his health 
 gave out. Then he became regimental postmaster, 
 determined to help in one way if not in another. 
 Perhaps he never realized fully how much he did 
 help, for it is hard to see how the uniforms and 
 tents and sails and shoes for the soldiers and sailors 
 could possibly have been made without the machine 
 that he had invented. 
 
MARIA MITCHELL 
 
 ASTRONOMER AND TEACHER 
 
 1818-1889 
 
 1848, elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; 
 the first woman on its roll 
 
 A MAN on the roof of a house, peering through a 
 telescope, and his little daughter beside him, "count 
 ing seconds" by a chronometer this is our first 
 view of Maria Mitchell and her father. 
 
 The home of the Mitchells was on the windy 
 island of Nantucket. They were Quakers and 
 lived in Quaker simplicity; but Nantucket had a 
 good library, and the Mitchell home was always 
 well supplied with books. The father taught the 
 grammar school, then became cashier of the island 
 bank. He held several public positions of honor; 
 he was a State Senator and for many years one of 
 the overseers of Harvard College. He was quite as 
 well known, however, by his articles in scientific 
 magazines. He loved astronomy, and he owned a 
 little observatory, which enabled him to add to his 
 income by doing astronomical work for the United 
 States Coast Survey, and also brought to his home 
 some of the best-known scientific men of the day. 
 
 Before long his daughter Maria became known as 
 a skillful astronomer. One night in 1847, when she 
 had, as usual on clear evenings, taken her lantern 
 and gone to the roof to "sweep the heavens," she 
 
ASTRONOMER AND TEACHER 55 
 
 called her father and told him she believed she had 
 seen a comet. The father eagerly wrote to the 
 Cambridge Observatory of the discovery, stating 
 the position of the comet and when it had appeared. 
 Now it chanced that Edward Everett, who was 
 then President of Harvard, had learned that about 
 the time when the little girl of twelve was counting 
 seconds for her father, the King of Denmark had 
 offered a gold medal to the first discoverer of a 
 telescopic comet. The king was dead, his son cared 
 little for astronomy. Moreover, the announcement 
 of the discovery had been delayed two days by the 
 lack of mails from the island, and had not been re 
 ported to the proper authorities. " Miss Mitchell s 
 comet" became the subject of considerable corres 
 pondence between Cambridge and Copenhagen; but 
 at length the gold medal appeared, and the happy 
 young astronomer was straightway made a member 
 of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the 
 only woman ever admitted to membership. She 
 was a little amused at the amount of lionizing that 
 she received. "It is only a sort of theatrical per 
 formance," she said; and she returned quietly to 
 her island. She worked on the Nautical Almanac, 
 she "swept" -both the skies and the floors; she 
 sewed, she cared for her mother, she knit long 
 stockings for her father, she made tatting between 
 times, she took a lesson or two in whist and learned 
 - so she said to understand what her partner 
 meant when she winked at her. In short, she did 
 riot behave at all as some folk might have ex- 
 
56 MARIA MITCHELL 
 
 pected of a young woman who had suddenly become 
 famous. 
 
 For a number of years she had been librarian of 
 the Nantucket Library, and out of her small salary 
 she had each year saved a part for a trip to Europe. 
 Now it was made. She saw the things she most 
 wanted to see observatories, of course and she 
 met the people she most wanted to meet as 
 tronomers, of course Humboldt, Mrs. Somer- 
 ville, Leverrier, Sir George Airy, and the Herschels 
 - and she came back to Nantucket rested and 
 happy. 
 
 Soon after she returned from Europe a great 
 pleasure came to her, the gift of a fine equatorial 
 telescope from a number of American women. An 
 other gift which found her about the same time, and 
 which she valued very highly, was a medal from the 
 tiny Republic of San Marino, perched far up on the 
 Apennines and "entirely surrounded by Italy." 
 
 On a second trip to Europe she paid a visit to the 
 observatory at Pulkova, near St. Petersburg [Pet- 
 rograd], Russia, over which the eminent astronomer 
 Struve presided. 
 
 In 1860 Mrs. Mitchell died. It was desirable for 
 the daughter to be nearer Boston, and the father 
 was attracted to Lynn because of the number of 
 Quakers who lived there. The Mitchells left the 
 island and for five years they made their home in 
 Lynn. Then came a great change. Vassar College 
 was about to be opened, and Miss Mitchell was ap 
 pointed Professor of Astronomy and Director of the 
 
ASTRONOMER AND TEACHER 
 
 57 
 
 Observatory. Should she accept the appointment? 
 Her father said yes, and in 1865 father and daughter 
 took possession of the Vassar Observatory. 
 
 Mr. Mitchell had snow-white hair, a kindly, 
 
 AN OLD VIEW OF VASSAR COLLEGE 
 
 This shows the main building; also at the left the Observatory in which Miss 
 Mitchell did her work, and at the right the Museum building. The view is taken 
 from a print in an early catalogue of the college. 
 
 courteous manner, and a delightful fashion of talk 
 ing a little with any students whom he met as he 
 walked about the college grounds. Everything was 
 so new and experimental that the presence of this 
 serene, benignant, old-school gentleman during the 
 four years that he lived after coming to Vassar was 
 like the quiet after a storm. 
 
 Miss Mitchell had a strong, handsome face, 
 framed by short iron-gray curls. Her eyes were 
 dark and piercing, but with an expression of friend 
 liness that won the confidence of every one who met 
 her. Whether she praised or blamed, she was 
 
58 MARIA MITCHELL 
 
 equally frank. To a class-day speaker she said, 
 "I came out as soon as you were through, for I 
 knew that I had heard the creme de la creme of the 
 occasion." A man of wide reputation once insisted 
 upon imposing his somewhat condescending criti 
 cisms upon her, and ended by telling her that she was 
 wasting her time in going over to the college dining- 
 hall for her meals. " You could easily make yourself 
 a cup of coffee and boil an egg in the morning," he 
 declared. She demanded with an air that must have 
 made him feel like an impertinent small boy, "And 
 is my time worth no more than to boil eggs?" 
 
 In her classes Professor Mitchell was an inspi 
 ration, and the students responded to her appeal. 
 "I think the Vassar girls, in the main, are magnifi 
 cent, they are so all-alive," she wrote in her jour 
 nal, never seeming to suspect that no one could be 
 dull and stupid under her influence, "the bright, 
 unwavering star," as the president of the college 
 called her. In her famous "dome parties," given 
 each year to the students in her classes, the girls 
 sang to the tune of "John Brown": 
 
 "\\Vre singing for the glory of Maria Mitchell s name, 
 She lives at Vassar College, and you all do know the same. 
 She once did spy a comet, and she thus was known to fame, 
 Good woman that she was. 
 
 "Though as strong as Rocky Mountains, she is gentle as a 
 
 lamb, 
 
 And in her way and manners she is peaceable and calm, 
 And our mental perturbations she sobtheth like a balm, 
 Good woman that she am." 
 
ASTRONOMER AND TEACHER 59 
 
 At the first singing of this she replied, "I m not a 
 wise woman, but I am glad you think 1 am a good 
 
 woman." 
 
 Many a college textbook is scribbled over with 
 
 her choice words 
 of wit and wis 
 dom, such as 
 these : 
 
 "Every for 
 mula which ex 
 presses a law of 
 nature is a hymn 
 of praise to 
 God." "I do 
 think, as a gen 
 eral rule, that 
 teachers talk too 
 much. A book 
 is a very good 
 institution." 
 
 "We wait and 
 ask for prece 
 dent. If the 
 earth had waited 
 for a precedent, 
 it never would 
 have turned on 
 its axis." 
 
 "iNiingle the 
 starlight with your lives, and you won t be fretted 
 by trifles." 
 
 Courtesy Vasaar College 
 
 MARIA MITCHELL AND HER ASSOCIATE; 
 
 This picture shows the interior of the dome of the, 
 observatory at Vassar College. Miss Mitchell is seated 
 beside the twelve-inch equatorial telescope which 
 she used in her work. 
 
60 MARIA MITCHELL 
 
 "Medals are small things in the light of the stars. 
 There s only one thing in the world of any real im 
 portance, and that is goodness." 
 
 "Be content to get on slowly if you only get on 
 thoroughly/ 
 
 Professor Mitchell received honorary degrees 
 from Dartmouth and from Columbia ; she was made 
 a member of numerous scientific societies; she was 
 president of the American Association for the Ad 
 vancement of Women: her scientific papers were 
 regarded as of great value and highly praised; but 
 she never developed any more self-consciousness 
 than when she was a little girl on Nantucket. 
 
 In 1888 she resigned her position. The trustees 
 made her Professor Emeritus and offered her a 
 home at the observatory, but she preferred to spend 
 her last years with her family in Lynn. 
 
HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 
 
 PRINTER AND PUBLISHER 
 
 1823-1895 
 1852, founded The Riverside Press 
 
 IT is a good thing to be born, as Henry Oscar 
 Houghton was, into a family of ten children of all 
 ages from twenty-one years down. By and by a 
 little sister arrived, and then the round dozen was 
 complete. Their home was in the little "maple- 
 sugar town" of Sutton, in the northeast corner of 
 Vermont. Sutton was a pleasant place to live in, 
 with its woods and fields and pastures and hills and 
 yet more hills, with a mountain or two on one side 
 and Willoughby Gap on the other; but in 1833 the 
 family left it and moved to Bradford. 
 
 As the wagon of household goods creaked along 
 the family cows followed it in sedate procession. 
 By this time the older children had scattered. A 
 boy of ten years, however, could be quite a helpful 
 person, and the little Oscar, as he was called in the 
 old New England fashion of making a middle name 
 do its fair share of the work, saw to it that the 
 humble followers did not turn aside from the way 
 in which they should walk. When he was tired he 
 mounted the load of goods and rode in lofty state. 
 The family spent the night at a tavern, a new ex 
 perience for the little country boy. He was a bit 
 shy, and all his life he remembered appreciatively 
 
62 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 
 
 the kindly touch of the hand of the landlady s 
 daughter on his head as she gave him his bedroom 
 candle and said a friendly good-night. 
 
 In Bradford there was an academy, and he went 
 to school for three years. He was a man then, he 
 thought, quite grown up, thirteen years old, and he 
 began to consider what he should do to support 
 himself. The result of his meditations was that 
 one dark morning late in the autumn he climbed 
 into the big lumbering mail-coach and in a heavy 
 snowstorm made his first little journey out into the 
 world. He did not regard it as a " little" journey, 
 however, but as an event of vast moment; for he 
 had the honor of eating dinner in the capital of the 
 State just as if he was one of those awe-inspiring 
 men who had laid aside their farmers frocks, and in 
 blue coats and brass buttons had become members 
 of the legislature and lawmakers for the whole 
 State. 
 
 In the middle of the night he reached Burlington, 
 his journey s end, for here he was to spend the next 
 six years as apprentice in a printing office, learning 
 the mysteries of typesetting. All sorts of people 
 come into a printing-office, and one day a tall, 
 slender man came to the case where the boy was 
 at work and said, "My lad, when you use these 
 words, will you please spell them according to this 
 list?" and he gave him a list of such words as 
 theater; center, and the like. This was one of the 
 great men of the day, Noah Webster. He had al 
 ready published his dictionary, but he realized that 
 
PRINTER AND PUBLISHER 63 
 
 people in general would spell not according to some 
 scholarly theory, but according to forms that they 
 saw every day in print, and he was very wisely be 
 ginning his work at the printing-offices. 
 
 The boy was on his way to college. He had 
 saved up eighty dollars from his earnings, and felt 
 
 A FEW OF THE CYLINDER PRESSES AT THE RIVERSIDE PRESS 
 
 Presses like these are used in printing large editions of books in great demand. 
 There is a saw-tooth roof and large windows so that the Press Room receives the 
 maximum of daylight. The presses are set on a concrete foundation so that all 
 possible vibration is avoided. 
 
 quite a man of wealth ; but at the last moment his 
 employer failed, and at the age of nineteen he 
 opened the college doors with just three York shill 
 ings in his pocket. It took two of these to settle 
 him in his room, and there remained twelve and 
 one-half cents to pay his expenses for four years. 
 He was hardly better fitted intellectually than 
 
64 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 
 
 financially, for most of his studying had been done 
 without much guidance and after a long day s work 
 at the composing-case. "But I m going to try it," 
 he said pluckily to a friend, "and see if I can t 
 catch up and keep up and make my living too." 
 
 He had some help from his family in making his 
 living, but the catching up and keeping up depended 
 upon his own grit, and that never failed. One of 
 the hardest things for him to do was to speak in the 
 debating society, but he was determined not to 
 give in. He tried his very best to speak. He al 
 ways had some real thought to bring forward, but 
 he never could bring it. He stammered and hesi 
 tated, then sat down. The boys laughed, and he 
 laughed too and the next meeting he tried again. 
 This was in the freshman year and at the sopho 
 more exhibition, the boy who had been so awkward 
 and stumbling was the one chosen for the place of 
 honor, to make the closing speech of the afternoon. 
 
 In the eighteen-forties it was expected that a boy 
 who went through college was aiming at being a 
 doctor, lawyer, or minister. It was quite proper 
 for him to begin work in any one of these lines by 
 teaching, and this young graduate went to Wor 
 cester, Massachusetts, expecting to find a position to 
 teach near that city. But the mails had been de 
 layed, and the position was filled. Not at all dis 
 couraged, he went straight to Boston, and there he 
 became a reporter and proof-reader on the Daily 
 Traveler. He found friends, he climbed Bunker 
 Hill Monument, he visited the library of Harvard 
 
PRINTER AND PUBLISHER 65 
 
 University, and was not at all sorry that he had 
 come. 
 
 It must have been apparent that he could do some 
 thing more than set type, for before long he had an 
 opportunity to go into partnership with a well-es 
 tablished firm of printers. They were willing to 
 put their twenty years experience on a par with 
 young Houghton s college education, and now the 
 only thing lacking was the money. 
 
 The day came when he must give his answer, and 
 his pocket was empty as ever. But quite in the 
 story-book fashion there was a knock at the door. 
 " Is this Oscar Hough ton?" asked the friendly voice 
 of a well-to-do New England farmer. He proved 
 to be the husband of a relative, who had told him 
 to be sure to call on " Cousin Oscar. This visitor 
 became interested in a talk about the business, and 
 at length offered to lend the necessary money to 
 enter the new partnership. This was the beginning 
 of The Riverside Press. The business soon fell 
 entirely into the hands of Mr. Houghton. 
 
 Strictly speaking, the business of a printing- 
 house is to print according to the wishes of the 
 publishers who employ it; but to make a man a 
 publisher does not necessarily make him a man of 
 good taste ; and many books of the earlier and middle 
 part of the nineteenth century were volumes of ir 
 regular size and shape, with pages too long or too 
 short, with poorly proportioned margins, and with 
 foolish little scrolls and ornaments. The paper 
 was generally poor, and the ink was often darker on 
 
66 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 
 
 one page than another. Spaces between the words 
 were irregular; spaces betAveen the lines were often 
 too narrow for easy reading; and the books were 
 frequently so poorly bound that even with the ut 
 most care they would not open without cracking. 
 
 Mr. Houghton had an instinctive good taste which 
 led him to make pages of the proper proportions, to 
 omit the silly little scrolls, and to use clear, dignified 
 type that would not call the reader s attention to 
 the letters, but would leave his mind free for the 
 thought. He spread the ink and arranged the spac 
 ing properly, and he bound the volumes so that 
 they would bear long use. Even the people who 
 did not know how to plan books could not help re 
 alizing that these Houghton volumes were of un 
 usually good appearance, and they did not often 
 need much urging to allow Mr. Houghton to carry 
 out his own ideas. Other printers began to follow 
 his example, and the printing of to-day owes much 
 of its general excellence to the reforms of the printer 
 of Riverside. 
 
 The books printed at Riverside were almost al 
 ways books of permanent value. When Noah Web 
 ster asked the young typesetter to use his spelling, 
 he never guessed that the young man at the case 
 would become the printer of his dictionary; but this 
 came to pass, for Mr. Houghton now made an en 
 gagement with the publishers of Webster s Un 
 abridged to print the dictionary, tons and tons of it, 
 every year. 
 
 But the thoughts of this printer were gradually 
 
PRINTER AND PUBLISHER 67 
 
 turning toward publishing, and soon a new firm, 
 Hurd & Houghton, was formed. The printing- 
 house was not neglected by any means, but received 
 
 THE COVER-STAMPING ROOM AT THE RIVERSIDE PRESS 
 
 The cloth covers of books are made on machines which automatically glue the cloth 
 and fold it around the sides of the cardboards. In the room shown in the picture 
 the design and lettering are printed upon the cloth; and in another room the books 
 themselves are pasted securely into the covers. 
 
 even more care and attention. Better work was 
 then done in Europe than in America, and Mr. 
 Houghton went to England to secure the best work 
 men and the best type and binding that could be 
 found. "Tout bien on rien," Everything well or 
 nothing, did not appear on the title-page of his books 
 until later, but it was his motto from the first. 
 
 The new firm began with standard literature for 
 adults; but the children were not forgotten. Chil 
 dren s books and magazines came chiefly from 
 
68 HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 
 
 England. Their ideas and teachings were English. 
 People did not talk about "Americanization" in 
 those days, more s the pity, but Mr. Houghton be 
 lieved that American children should have Ameri 
 can teachings, and he decided not only to bring out 
 books for children, but also to publish a magazine for 
 them. This was the origin of the Riverside Maga 
 zine. For many years the Atlantic Monthly was 
 printed at The Riverside Press. 
 
 The firm name was changed from Kurd & Hough- 
 ton to Houghton, Osgood & Company; afterward to 
 Houghton Mifflin Company. The offices are now 
 in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco as well 
 as in Boston. The Boston office is in one of the 
 old mansions, whose big fireplaces and homelike 
 rooms give a hint of the friendly relations existing 
 between the publishers and the authors on their lists. 
 
 How did it come about that the great publishing 
 house with which authors are proud to be connected 
 was brought into existence by the boy who entered 
 college on a capital of three shillings? In the first 
 place, Mr. Houghton did not leave anything to be 
 managed at haphazard ; he had certain definite prin 
 ciples of business. He said, " I put all my eggs into 
 one basket, and then I carry the basket." He 
 "carried the basket" by paying close attention to 
 little things as well as big ones. When he gave an 
 order, he saw to it that the order was obeyed. "If 
 I tell a boy to hang up my overcoat," he said, "I 
 expect him to come back and tell me he has done it." 
 For many years not one letter or one bill was sent 
 
PRINTER AND PUBLISHER 69 
 
 away which he had not read ; and when the business 
 became too large for this, little yellow paper memo 
 randa were always brought him of each day s cor 
 respondence. He looked upon his business not only 
 as a business, but as a charge entrusted to him for 
 which he was in duty bound to do his best; and it 
 was his great pride to make sure that the name 
 "Riverside" should be a mark of quality. As one 
 of his friends said, "He thought of it [his business] 
 as an artist thinks of the picture he paints." 
 
 He came before working hours, and he often paid 
 the office a call late in the evening. He required 
 accurate, thorough work: but there was little to com 
 plain of when he demanded more of himself than of 
 his men. In a time of panic he was advised to dis 
 charge some of his workmen ; but he had never for 
 gotten what it meant to need work, and he replied 
 emphatically, "Shorten my pay-roll? Turn people 
 out of work? Never!" In any disagreement he 
 could always see the other side. "I try to think 
 how I should feel if 1 were in - - s place," he once 
 said. 
 
 This same consideration was carried into his re 
 lations with the authors \vhose names were on his 
 list. In the most carefully made agreements there 
 will sometimes be a loophole for misunderstanding; 
 and this man, who could not be forced to yield a 
 penny to any one, said, "If there is ever any ques 
 tion in regard to what is due to an author, always 
 give the author the benefit of the doubt." In one 
 instance in which the arrangement was that the 
 
HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON 
 
 author should pay the cost of publication, the book 
 failed to sell, and although Mr. Houghton had ad 
 vised against publishing it, he assumed the expense. 
 "We are better able to afford the loss than the 
 writer is," he declared. It is no wonder that one of 
 his" authors said, "If I were in any trouble, I 
 should want to go and tell Mr. Houghton." 
 
 Such was the man who succeeded, the man who 
 deserved to succeed. 
 
 On this page are printed three " colophons " used at various times 
 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Emblematic devices of this sort 
 have been used by printers in all ages since the invention of their 
 art; at first, on the last page of their books, but in recent times on 
 the title-pages. The motto, "Tout bien ou rien," means "Do it 
 well or not at all," and had long been followed by Mr. Houghton in 
 his work before it was used in the colophon. The first design was 
 made by Elihu Vedder, the artist who illustrated The Rubdiydt of 
 Omar Khayyam. The other two designs are adapted from Mr. 
 Vedder s suggestion by other artists, and it is interesting to see how 
 the same general theme has been kept. Another form of colophon 
 is shown on the title-page of this book. 
 
CYRUS W. FIELD 
 
 THE MAN WHO LAID THE ATLANTIC CABLE 
 1819-1892 
 
 1858, the Atlantic Cable successfully laid 
 
 THE Field boys were sons of a dignified minister 
 of the old school, but at their early homes in Had- 
 dam, Connecticut, and Stockbridge, Massachusetts, 
 stories of their pranks are still told. One boy, in 
 the midst of his father s sermon, walked gravely up 
 the aisle of the church with a rat-trap in his hand 
 and a look of innocence on his face. The trap had 
 been mislaid, and his father had said, "Whenever 
 you find that trap, bring it to me at once." The 
 boy had obeyed. 
 
 Cyrus was the sixth of the seven boys. At fifteen 
 he was in New York, in the famous old store of A. T. 
 Stewart, and before he was twenty-one he was a 
 partner in another New York firm. The firm failed, 
 and the junior partner took upon himself the burden 
 of debt. He gave up to the creditors every dollar 
 that he had, and was released from all claims. Then 
 he went into business for himself. 
 
 He was so successful that in 1853, before he was 
 thirty-four years of age, he retired with a fortune of 
 $250,000, equal to fully $1,000,000 to-day. Then 
 he turned back to his old account-books, opened his 
 check-book, and sent to every one of the debtors of 
 ten years before a check for the difference between 
 what had been paid him and his full claim, including 
 
72 CYRUS W. FIELD 
 
 also seven per cent interest for the ten years. He 
 did even more than this, for he forgave the debts 
 of several men who owed him money. Then he re 
 tired from business and made ready to travel, rest, 
 and enjoy a quiet, happy home life. 
 
 One of Cyrus Field s brothers said of him, "I 
 never saw Cyrus so uneasy as when he was trying to 
 keep still." Certainly, in this case, "Cyrus" had 
 hardly given up work before he began to be more 
 active than ever before which is saying a good 
 deal. Possibly it was this same brother who set 
 him to work by introducing an electrical engineer 
 named Gisborne. Mr. Gisborne had formed a com 
 pany to connect St. John s with New Brunswick 
 and the United States partly by land telegraph and 
 partly by submarine cable. A short cable had al 
 ready been laid between Prince Edward Island and 
 New Brunswick, and thirty or forty miles of tele 
 graph erected when the money gave out. He had 
 now come to New York to try to interest capitalists 
 in the undertaking. 
 
 Mr. Field soon became convinced that the scheme 
 was practicable, and one night, after Mr. Gisborne 
 had returned to his hotel, he stood in his library 
 thinking and studying the large globe that stood 
 there. He was looking at the eastern coast of the 
 United States, at Newfoundland, and at Ireland. 
 Distances seemed short on the globe, and he began 
 to wonder why, if it was possible to connect New 
 foundland and the United States, it was not possible 
 to connect Newfoundland and Ireland. 
 
LAYER OF THE ATLANTIC CABLE 73 
 
 Mr. Field did not jump at conclusions, but he 
 did his thinking rapidly. The result of his thinking 
 that evening was that in the morning s mail he sent 
 one letter to Professor Maury, the geographer, and 
 another to Professor Morse, inventor of the tele 
 graph. He also talked with his lawyer brother and 
 with Mr. Peter Cooper. A small but wealthy com 
 pany was formed; but people in general had little 
 confidence in the scheme. "If you lose your cable, 
 and it goes to the bottom, what shall you do?" 
 some one asked Mr. Field " Charge it to profit and 
 loss and lay another," he answered cheerfully. 
 
 The cable was made in England. It consisted of 
 seven copper wires covered with gutta-percha and 
 wound with tarred hemp. The plan was for an 
 American vessel, the Niagara, to start from Valen- 
 tia, Ireland, and lay the cable halfway to New 
 foundland. There she was to meet an English ves 
 sel, the Agamemnon. The cable was to be spliced 
 in mid-ocean and laid by the Agamemnon to Trinity 
 Bay in Newfoundland. 
 
 The ship came to anchor off Valentia Bay. 
 Crowds had waited all day long for the sight. "It s 
 the cable that will be bringing us nearer to the 
 country that sent us food in the famine, bless her!" 
 one man cried; and when the end of the cable was 
 brought to land, the crowd swarmed about it to 
 help pull, and the man who could show a tarry hand 
 was a hero to all his neighbors. 
 
 The cable was fastened firmly to the shore. The 
 rector of the parish made a prayer, the people 
 
74 CYRUS W. FIELD 
 
 cheered for the United States, for " Yankee Doodle," 
 for the Queen, and the President, and the American 
 Navy, and the officers and men who were to lay the 
 cable, and for Cyrus Field. He replied, "If ever 
 on the other side of the water, one of you present 
 yourself at my door and say you had a hand in this, 
 I promise you an American welcome." 
 
 The ship sailed, and for four days all went well; 
 then the cable broke. This meant a loss of $500,000 
 and a year s time. New capital was raised, and the 
 following year (1858) the same two vessels started 
 in mid-ocean, one toward Ireland and the other 
 toward America, laying the cable as they sailed. 
 Again it broke, but the third attempt succeeded. 
 
 The whole United States celebrated. Even in 
 little Stockbridge " Bells were rung, guns fired; and 
 the children, let out of school, shouted, The cable 
 is laid ! The cable is laid ! Queen Victoria cabled 
 a message to President Buchanan,, and President 
 Buchanan cabled a reply to Queen Victoria. New 
 York was wild with delight. There were illumina 
 tions and processions and dinners. There were re 
 ceptions and fireworks and torchlight parades. One 
 of the transparencies carried among many others in 
 the torchlight parades is shown on page 75. 
 
 John G. Saxe wrote his poem, How Cyrus Laid the 
 Cable. Telegrams of congratulation came to Mr. 
 Field by the hundred and then the cable stopped 
 working. 
 
LAYER OF THE ATLANTIC CABLE 75 
 
 Lightning 
 caught and tamed by 
 
 FRANKLIN, 
 taught to read and write and go on errands by 
 
 MORSE, 
 
 started in foreign trade by 
 FIELD, COOPER & CO., 
 
 with 
 JOHNNY BULL 
 
 and 
 BROTHER JONATHAN 
 
 as 
 special partners 
 
 Mr. Field s wonderful perseverance and his sense 
 of honor were equally strong. When he retired 
 from business he had agreed at the request of his 
 partner to leave nearly half his money in the firm. 
 On returning from England after the loss of the first 
 cable, the first news to meet him was that in the 
 panic of 1857 his firm had suspended. As before, he 
 took the debts upon himself, and two years later 
 he paid every penny. In 1860, just before the 
 breaking-out of the Civil War, he was again obliged 
 to suspend. He gave up everything that belonged 
 to him, even the pew which he owned in church and 
 the portraits of his father and mother, and went to 
 work bravely to pay the full amount. As to the 
 cable, he was as courageous as ever. He wrote, "I 
 never had more confidence in the ultimate success of 
 
76 CYRUS W. FIELD 
 
 the Atlantic Telegraph Company than I have to 
 day." 
 
 Even if he did have confidence, others did not, 
 and raising money for a new cable was no easy mat 
 ter. On the other hand, there was a better chance of 
 success than ever before. Much had been learned 
 about under- water telegraphing; better steel wire 
 was made; and the Great Eastern, the largest steamer 
 that had ever sailed, was ready to become the cable 
 ship. The trial was made, but this time some of 
 the ship s machinery broke down. This was the 
 fourth failure. 
 
 The stockholders met, and they decided to send 
 out another cable the following summer, 1866, and 
 also to try to pick up the lost cable. Mr. Field re 
 turned from England. When the passengers on the 
 steamer heard that he was on board, they made 
 ready to sympathize with him in his disappoint 
 ments; but they had no chance, for he was "the 
 most cheerful one on board." They tried to con 
 dole, but he replied serenely, "We have learned a 
 great deal, and next summer we shall lay the cable 
 without doubt." 
 
 They did. In five months after the new company 
 was formed, the cable had been laid by the Great 
 Eastern and was carrying messages across the ocean. 
 The cable lost in 1865 had also been recovered. 
 "Both O.K.," the operator telegraphed. Of that 
 moment Mr. Field says, "I went to my cabin, I 
 locked the door; I could no longer restrain my tears 
 crying like a child, and full of gratitude to God." 
 
LAYER OF THE ATLANTIC CABLE 
 
 LANDING THE ATLANTIC CABLE ON NEWFOUNDLAND 
 
 The steamship is th2 Great Eastern. This ship, launched in 1858, was the larg 
 est of her time, displacing 32,000 tons. Her best record across the Atlantic was 
 eleven days. The largest ships of the present time (55,000 tons) make the passage in 
 about five days. 
 
 On both sides of the ocean were ardent hopes that 
 the Atlantic cable would bring the world together 
 and prevent all future wars. Whittier wrote in his 
 Cable Hymn: 
 
 "And one in heart, as one in blood, 
 
 Shall all her peoples be; 
 The hands of human brotherhood 
 Are clasped beneath the sea." 
 
 Congress presented Mr. Field with a gold medal and 
 the thanks of the nation. John Bright, the English 
 statesman, declared that he had "moored the New 
 
78 CYRUS W. FIELD 
 
 World alongside of the Old," which some disrespect 
 ful American translated, "He has hitched the British 
 Isles to America." 
 
 And what did Mr. Field himself do while all the 
 world was rejoicing and singing his praises? He 
 went back to America and paid, with seven per cent 
 interest, every dollar due to his creditors of 1860. 
 
JEAN LOUIS RODOLPHE AGASSIZ 
 
 BELOVED TEACHER OF SCIENCE 
 1807-1873 
 
 1860, Agassiz Museum at Harvard dedicated 
 
 THE King of Bavaria once sent some scientists to 
 Brazil to collect specimens of plants, shells, insects, 
 and fishes. Before the books describing these could 
 be prepared, the naturalist died who was to have 
 prepared the volume on fishes, and of all the learned 
 men in the land the one who was asked to write the 
 Latin descriptions of the fishes and edit the volume 
 was a young student of twenty-one years who was 
 working for his degree as doctor of medicine. It is 
 no wonder that he was radiantly happy, especially 
 as he knew that he could do the work well. 
 
 This young man was Louis Agassiz, and he was 
 the son of the pastor of a village church in Switzer 
 land. His parents had insisted that he should take 
 a medical degree, so that he could be sure of a living ; 
 but his heart was in natural history. Before he was 
 seventeen he knew every beast, bird, and fish in the 
 vicinity. He had not been able to buy many books, 
 and so he had done the wisest thing in the world, 
 namely, he had spent his time studying the animals 
 themselves; and he knew them, especially the fishes, 
 so thoroughly that when at last he had free access to 
 books, he was surprised to find so little that was new 
 to him. 
 
 A strenuous time the next two years must have 
 
8o JEAN LOUIS RODOLPHE AGASSI Z 
 
 been. The young student prepared the Brazilian 
 Fishes, and joyfully sent a copy to the little Swiss 
 village. "Will it not seem strange," he wrote home, 
 "when the largest and finest book in papa s library 
 is one written by his Louis? Will it not be as good 
 as to see his prescription at the apothecary s?" 
 Nevertheless he took his doctor s degree, and with 
 high honors. He also took the degree of doctor of 
 philosophy. Two years later he became a Professor 
 of Natural History at Neuchatel. It was while he 
 was at Neuchatel that his great work on fossil fishes 
 came out. This was in five large volumes with a big 
 atlas of four hundred plates. 
 
 Agassiz was interested in everything in nature, 
 and he was quite capable of leaving a chapter on 
 fishes for a while to study the structure of a moun 
 tain or the work of a glacier. He had a friend, who 
 was also a naturalist, Jean de Charpentier, and this 
 friend had a theory. Scattered over Switzerland are 
 great boulders, and Charpentier believed they had 
 been carried on glaciers and left in their present 
 places when the ice melted. Agassiz said no, and 
 went to visit his friend to prove that this was a mis 
 take. On the contrary, he himself became con 
 vinced that Charpentier was right, and that in some 
 remote age ice had swept over a large part of the 
 surface of the earth, even over regions that have now 
 a warm climate. Most scientists laughed at this 
 theory. One declared that the glacial scratches on 
 the rocks about Neuchatel had been made by boys 
 sliding downhill! 
 
BELOVED TEACHER OF SCIENCE 81 
 
 A MOUNTAIN PASTURE IN SWITZERLAND 
 
 Glaciers are shown among the mountain tops in the foreground. This pic 
 ture gives a clue to the character of the country in which Agassiz did his 
 early work. 
 
 Agassiz did not give up the theory, but studied 
 more and more the work of ice. In 1840 he built a 
 little cabin on the glacier of the Aar, and here he and 
 other students spent six summers. The snow and 
 rain came into the hut; once it blew over. They 
 were cold and uncomfortable, but blissful. They 
 
82 JEAN LOUIS RODOLPHE AGASSIZ 
 
 climbed the Jungfrau and stood one by one on its 
 two-foot summit. They studied glaciers to their 
 hearts content, and Agassiz had himself let down 
 by ropes into the very heart of the Aar glacier; and 
 also into a well of ice water, for he had been so ab 
 sorbed in studying the ice that he had forgotten all 
 about the water below it. After this careful study 
 of glaciers no scientist could doubt his theory of the 
 "ice age." What caused it is another matter; and 
 that question has not yet been answered. 
 
 But even a hut on a glacier costs something. To 
 pay artists to sketch his fossil fishes one of these 
 artists, on a regular salary, spent seven years in 
 England sketching from the collections of fossil fishes 
 in that country; to bring out illustrated books, and 
 present them to every student who needed them, 
 but could not afford to buy them ; to pay or even to 
 board his assistants and to care for his wife and 
 children, was expensive. His friends helped, and 
 sometimes a scientific society or a science-loving 
 sovereign helped ; but Agassiz was always in need of 
 money, and he was always in debt. To pay these 
 debts, "serve science, and at the same time Jive in 
 the world," as he put it, he must earn more money. 
 Would it be possible to do this in America? 
 
 Agassiz had been considering this question, and 
 so had his friend Humboldt. The older scientist 
 did not perhaps realize Agassiz s ability to carry on 
 interest in several lines at the same time. He was 
 afraid that this study of glaciers was taking his at 
 tention away from the study of animals, where his 
 
BELOVED TEACHER OF SCIENCE 83 
 
 work was so especially valuable, and he induced the 
 King of Prussia to offer Agassiz an appointment 
 to go to America to compare the animal life of the 
 temperate zones of that country and Europe. His 
 salary as professor was to be continued and a gener 
 ous sum was added to it for his mission. In 1846 he 
 set sail for Boston. 
 
 His name was well known on this side of the ocean, 
 and even before sailing he was engaged to give a 
 course of lectures at the Lowell Institute, in Boston. 
 These lectures and those that followed, in city after 
 city, were a delight to his audiences. Agassiz did 
 not speak English very well, but he was so inter 
 ested in his subject that when he could not think of 
 a word, he was not embarrassed, but waited till it 
 came, so happy in finding it that his hearers were 
 happy with him and never out of patience. If the 
 word positively refused to come, he could express 
 his ideas with a bit of chalk and a blackboard. 
 
 In 1848 an invitation came to Agassiz from Har 
 vard University to become Professor of Zoology and 
 Geology in its new scientific school. There was as 
 yet no museum, and he set to work to make one. 
 He wanted something quite different from a mere 
 collection, no matter how full; he wanted a museum 
 of comparative zoology, a collection that would 
 show the relations of the animals to one another and 
 of those now living to those of past ages. Every 
 body wanted to help. The fishermen delighted in 
 bringing him everything at all unusual that came to 
 their nets. Captains of whalers and coasting ves- 
 
84 JEAN LOUIS RODOLPHE AGASSIZ 
 
 sels carried cans of alcohol to preserve specimens for 
 him. Every one was glad to do him a favor, for 
 every one loved him. Lowell wrote, 
 
 "Where er 
 He met a stranger, there he left a friend." 
 
 Learned men did not send him their "respects" or 
 their "best regards"; they sent their "love." He 
 was always in high spirits, always charming, ready 
 to talk with scholarly scientists about geological the 
 ories, or to play games with little children. Those 
 were wonderful days in Cambridge. Think of the 
 famous Saturday Club, at whose dinners sat Longfel 
 low, Holmes, Lowell, Hawthorne, Emerson, Felton, 
 Whittier, Agassiz! Every one knows the charming 
 poem which Longfellow read on Agassiz s fiftieth 
 birthday, beginning, 
 
 "It was fifty years ago, 
 
 In the pleasant month of May, 
 In the beautiful Pays de Vaud 
 A child in its cradle lay. 
 
 "And Nature, the old nurse, took 
 
 The child upon her knee, 
 Saying, Here is a story-book 
 
 Thy Father has written for thee." 
 
 When Longfellow came to the last verse, 
 
 "And the mother at home says, Hark! 
 
 For his voice I listen and yearn; 
 It is growing cold and dark, 
 And my boy does not return ! " 
 
 Agassiz broke down completely. Two years later he 
 
BELOVED TEACHER OF SCIENCE 85 
 
 spent the summer in Europe, nearly all of it with his 
 mother. 
 
 Honors came to him thick and fast, the noblest 
 being an invitation from the French Government to 
 take the highest scientific position in the land; but 
 Agassiz loved the United States and his work on this 
 side of the ocean, and he declined. 
 
 The United States appreciated him. Wealthy 
 men arranged scientific trips for him to different 
 parts of America, to Lake Superior, Florida, Brazil, 
 the Rocky Mountains, the Straits of Magellan; and 
 everywhere he found new treasures and new de 
 lights. When he started for Brazil, Holmes wrote, 
 
 "It thrills the spinal column 
 Of fossil fishes solemn, 
 And glaciers crawl the faster 
 To the feet of their old master!" 
 
 and ended, 
 
 "God bless the great professor, 
 And the land his proud possessor." 
 
 In 1859, the year that he went to Europe, the 
 corner-stone of the Museum of Comparative Zo 
 ology was laid, and he was a happy man. His 
 children had come to him from Europe. A second 
 marriage his first wife had died some years 
 earlier had given him a home again. The wise 
 and gracious woman who had become his wife had 
 taken the question of finances into her own hands, 
 and had opened a school for young ladies. Of 
 course students flocked to her doors. \Vho would 
 not when Agassiz himself was teacher of science? 
 
86 JEAN LOUIS RODOLPHE AGASSI Z 
 
 Agassiz loved to teach. Far above all his aca 
 demic titles he prized the name of teacher. He 
 was a busy man. "How can any one wish to kill 
 time?" he once exclaimed. "Please give me the 
 hours which you say are a bore to you, and I will 
 receive them as the most precious of presents." He 
 never had an extra dollar in his pocket, but he "had 
 not the time to make money," he said when an 
 opportunity was offered to him. 
 
 Agassiz s teaching always began with making 
 sure that his students knew how to use their eyes. 
 One of them says that on his arrival at the labora 
 tory, the Professor took out a fish from some bad- 
 smelling alcohol and laid it before him, telling him 
 to study it. He studied ten minutes, one hour, two 
 hours, all the afternoon; but when the Professor 
 came and heard what the student had to report, he 
 looked disappointed and said, "But you have not 
 looked very carefully. Look again, look again." 
 In the morning the Professor heard what the stu 
 dent had seen, and this time he said, " That is good "; 
 but when the rather elated young man asked, "And 
 what shall I do next?" he received the reply, "Just 
 study your fish." Three days more of study of 
 that wretched fish, and he had learned to look. 
 
 Agassiz was always in need of money for his plans, 
 but he could get appropriations from the Massa 
 chusetts Legislature when every one else failed. 
 When he asked for money for the Museum, two 
 farmer members were overheard discussing the 
 matter. "I don t know much," said one, "about 
 
BELOVED TEACHER OF SCIENCE 87 
 
 the value of this Museum as a means of education, 
 but of one thing I am certain that if we give 
 Agassiz the money, he will not make a dollar by it." 
 When a summer school by the ocean was proposed, 
 he went straight to the Legislature. His appeal 
 
 Courtesy Museum of Comparative Zoology, Cambridge 
 
 ONE OF THE ILLUSTRATIONS FROM AGASSIZ s " FOSSIL FISHES" 
 
 This represents the fish of which the scientific name is Semiphorus velifer. At one 
 time this fish was supposed to be related to the Horse Mackerels, but the best 
 authorities to-day consider it the type of an extinct family. The locality around 
 Verona, Italy, is famous for these fossils; they date from the Eocene period, which 
 was millions of years ago. In this picture the fish is reduced to about one eighth 
 its size. 
 
 was published, and John Anderson, a wealthy mer 
 chant of New York, offered him the little island 
 Penikese, in Buzzard s Bay, and a gift of $50,000 
 for fitting out the school. The buildings already on 
 the island were a house and a barn ; and in the barn 
 as a lecture-room the teacher and his students 
 gathered together. Long before this Agassiz had 
 
88 JEAN LOUIS RODOLPHE AGASSIZ 
 
 said, "I never make the preparations for penetrat 
 ing into some small province of Nature, hitherto 
 undiscovered, without breathing a prayer to the 
 Being who hides His secrets from me only to allure 
 me graciously on to the unfolding of them." As he 
 now stood before his students in the great barn, 
 with swallows flying about overhead, little waves 
 lapping on the shore, and sea-gulls sweeping down 
 to their nests among the pebbles along the beach, 
 then, as Whittier words it in his poem, 
 
 "Said the Master to the youth, 
 We have come in search of truth, 
 Trying with uncertain key 
 Door by door of mystery. 
 
 On the threshold of our task 
 Let us light and guidance ask, 
 Let us pause in silent prayer! " 
 
 Agassiz had already shown signs of serious 
 nervous breakdown, and not many months after the 
 summer at Penikese the end came. He lies buried 
 in beautiful Mount Auburn. At the head of his 
 grave stands a boulder brought from the glacier of 
 the Aar, near where his hut once stood. It is shaded 
 by pine-trees which came from his beloved home in 
 Switzerland. 
 
 Another memorial is the great Museum of Com 
 parative Zoology, in Cambridge. When Agassiz 
 first entered upon his professorship at Harvard 
 University, the specimens which he was so rapidly 
 collecting were kept in a tumbledown shanty resting 
 
BELOVED TEACHER OF SCIENCE 89 
 
 on four piles in the Charles River. The roof leaked, 
 and the walls threatened to drop to pieces; but here 
 the collection grew. Before long it was stored in an 
 old building on the college grounds, and the college 
 appropriated a small sum each year for its care. 
 This was not nearly enough, and Agassiz was happy 
 when a legacy of $50,000 was left for the establish 
 ment of such a museum as he wished. Other gifts 
 were made by private parties, by the University, 
 and by the State. In 1860 the Museum was dedi 
 cated. To Agassiz s son had been given the posi 
 tion of "Agent," or business manager of the Mu 
 seum with special care of the Radiates. Specimens 
 came in from all parts of the world. They must be 
 cared for and arranged, and exchanges with other 
 museums must be attended to. When Agassiz 
 died, in 1873, he could feel that already the Museum 
 was in some departments the first in the world. 
 
 Alexander, his son, was determined that his 
 father s hopes should be realized, that a museum 
 should be built up which "would above all things 
 furnish facilities for original investigation and ad 
 vanced work." His own contributions amounted 
 to more than $1,500,000, to say nothing of the 
 greater part of his time for many years, badly as 
 this interfered with his own scientific studies and 
 business affairs. 
 
 The Museum building has developed from a single 
 edifice to a structure covering three sides of a square 
 and with a frontage of nearly four hundred feet. 
 Of the collection itself, Wallace, the famous Eng- 
 
90 JEAN LOUIS RODOLPHE AGASSIZ 
 
 lish naturalist, declared some years ago that "as an 
 educational institution for the public, for students, 
 and for the special investigator," the "Agassiz 
 Museum," as people rightfully insist upon calling 
 it, was superior to the British Museum. 
 
 But neither the great Museum in Cambridge nor 
 Agassiz s long list of invaluable works, published in 
 English, French, and Latin, has been of such service 
 to our country as the influence of the man himself. 
 He was the ideal teacher, and he taught not only 
 those who gathered in his laboratory or listened to 
 his lectures, but the nation as a whole. From New 
 England to California he aroused a taste for scien 
 tific study, and he showed how that taste might be 
 nobly gratified. He taught how to study Nature, 
 how to love her intelligently, how to reverence every 
 created object as an expression of the thought of the 
 Creator. However far our students may progress 
 in science, they will never find that the methods 
 learned from Agassiz are obsolete or outworn, for 
 they are founded upon truth itself. 
 
JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 AUTHOR OF THE " BATTLE HYMN OF THE 
 REPUBLIC " 
 
 1819-1910 
 
 1 86 1, wrote the "Battle Hymn of the Republic " 
 
 IF ever a child was brought up with strict regard to 
 proper behavior and training and instruction, it 
 was the little Julia Ward, of New York, or "Miss 
 Ward," as she was called almost from her babyhood. 
 
 She must have been a most obedient little lady, 
 according to a story which she herself tells. "We 
 are going to call on an Indian chief this afternoon," 
 said her mother, "and you must remember to be 
 very polite to him." They drove to the Indian 
 encampment, the little four-year-old Miss Ward 
 keeping fast hold of a big twist of tobacco tied with 
 a blue ribbon, which she was to present to the 
 chief. She was bent upon doing everything she 
 could to please him, and when the tall, dignified 
 Red Jacket came to the carriage, she threw her 
 arms around his neck. She was deeply grieved 
 afterwards when she was told that this was not 
 quite according to Indian customs. What Red 
 Jacket thought of her greeting has never been 
 known. 
 
 Little Miss Ward s father educated his children 
 with the utmost care. They were first taught at 
 home by governesses and masters; but when the 
 
92 JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 child was nine years old her dolls were taken away 
 from her, for "Miss Ward is now too old for dolls," 
 she was told, and she was sent to school. School in 
 those days was in great degree a place for memo 
 rizing various books. The little girl had a good 
 memory, and therefore she was put into a class 
 using or rather learning to recite verbatim Pa- 
 ley s Moral Philosophy! It is no wonder that in 
 contrast the study of languages seemed to her a 
 delightful occupation. 
 
 The best of music-teachers were engaged by 
 Mr. Ward, and, expressly in view of the benefit to 
 his children, he bought a number of the best paint 
 ings that could be found in New York. He was so 
 afraid of the effects of fashionable society on young 
 people that the Ward children s only outings were 
 the festivities at the home of their grandfather. A 
 dancing-teacher came to the house, but they were 
 never allowed to attend dancing-school with other 
 children. 
 
 The home of the Wards was a meeting-place for 
 literary folk. It was charming with good music, 
 brilliant conversation, and delightful people; but 
 the daughter saw little of general society until two 
 years after her father s death. Then came a season 
 of social life, and after that a visit to Boston, a 
 momentous visit, for here she met Dr. Howe, whom 
 she afterwards married. She had been carefully 
 shielded from scenes of suffering, and had lived in 
 a little world of books and study and music and 
 interesting people; but Dr. Howe was intensely 
 
*~LS4- 
 
 PORTRAIT AND AUTOGRAPH OF JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 With a facsimile of several lines from "The Battle Hymn of the Republic. 
 The reproduction of the handwriting is slightly smaller than the original 
 
94 JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 eager to be of service to all who were in need, and 
 she soon began to realize the many calls for help 
 and sympathy. 
 
 During the first year of the Civil War Dr. and 
 Mrs. Howe made a journey to Washington. That 
 was the time when the Confederate forces were so 
 near that the Army of the Potomac was kept en 
 camped between them and the capital. The air 
 was full of war. Soldiers were guarding the rail 
 roads; four-horse ambulances were rushing through 
 the streets; officers and orderlies were galloping at 
 full speed from point to point. Thousands of men 
 had offered their lives to help save the Union, and 
 she was doing nothing. What could she do? She 
 could not leave her little children to go to the hos 
 pitals, even if she had had skill in nursing. She 
 knew well that many a woman with only half her 
 intellectual ability could accomplish far more than 
 she in the practical work of making ready and pack 
 ing the sanitary stores so greatly needed. She said 
 to herself sadly, "You would gladly help, but there 
 is nothing that you can do." 
 
 With such thoughts as these she went one day to 
 see a review of United States troops. Suddenly, a 
 command was given, and the review was broken off. 
 The Confederates had made an unexpected move, 
 and the regiments were ordered to return to their 
 cantonments. The roads were full of marching 
 troops, and the carriage of the Howes and their 
 friends had to go at a snail s pace. It was a slow 
 and wearisome drive, and to make it seem shorter 
 
BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC 95 
 
 they sang one after another of the war songs of the 
 day. The soldiers were appreciative. "Good for 
 you! Good for you!" they shouted. Last of all, 
 the air rang with 
 
 "John Brown s body lies a-mouldering in the grave, 
 His soul is marching on." 
 
 " That s a stirring tune," said one of the party to 
 Mrs. Howe. "Why don t you write some good 
 words for it?" 
 
 " I have often wished to do so," she replied. 
 
 Henry Ward Beecher used to say that he did his 
 work while he was asleep, and this is what Mrs. 
 Howe must have done; for that night, in the early 
 gray of the morning, she woke and, as she said, 
 "The long lines of the desired poem began to twine 
 themselves in my mind." She scrawled them in the 
 twilight, hardly looking at the paper. As she went 
 back to her bed, she said to herself, "I like this 
 better than most things that I have written" 
 which was mild praise for the glorious Battle Hymn 
 of the Republic. 
 
 The "Hymn" was published in the Atlantic 
 Monthly, and soon it was sung in the camps and 
 even in Libby Prison. It is a stern and rousing call 
 to battle, to warfare in the cause of freedom and 
 justice and the everlasting right. No army sent 
 out to strive for lands or wealth or military glory 
 could ever march forth singing that song. 
 
 One of the author s friends said, "She ought to 
 die now, for she has done the best she will ever do." 
 
96 JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 Nevertheless, Mrs. Howe did not die, but lived half 
 a century longer, interested wherever she thought 
 reform was needed in woman suffrage, prison 
 management, and the peace of the world. She 
 wrote, lectured, preached, presided over important 
 meetings. She was a power for good wherever she 
 went. Her other work will never lack appreciation, 
 but it is the Battle Hymn of the Republic which has 
 touched most deeply the hearts of the whole Ameri 
 can people. 
 
GEORGE THORNDIKE ANGELL 
 
 KNIGHT OF KINDNESS TO ANIMALS 
 1820-1909 
 
 1868, organized the Massachusetts S.P.C.A. 
 
 IN 1846 a young man in Vermont said good-bye to 
 his mother "No man ever had a better mother/* 
 he wrote of her in later years and climbed into 
 the night stage on his way to Boston. He had been 
 left fatherless when a boy, but his mother was bent 
 upon his going to college, and by the efforts of both 
 he had just graduated from Dartmouth. He had 
 tried in vain to find employment. No one seemed 
 to need him, and now he was setting out for Boston 
 to see what he could do there. 
 
 He wanted to study law and to support himseli 
 while he was about it. A good uncle offered him a 
 home and a place in his law office; a cousin helped 
 him to get a position to teach, and offered him the 
 use of his law library. The way was now open, 
 nothing but hard work was needed, and this he was 
 more than willing to supply. For three years he 
 taught days and studied nights and vacations. He 
 must have managed his finances as economically as 
 his time, for during those three years he paid with 
 interest the two or three hundred dollars that he had 
 borrowed while in college, helped support his mother 
 and saved about twelve hundred dollars. He was 
 a capitalist now, and could give all his time to 
 
98 GEORGE THORNDIKE ANGELL 
 
 studying law! Two years later he was admitted to 
 the bar. For twenty-three years he devoted him 
 self to law. He was able to provide his mother with 
 everything that she desired and to lay up a comfort 
 able amount of money. 
 
 Mr. Angell had unusual ability to secure the rights 
 of his clients and at the same time to win the friend 
 ship of their adversaries. A certain famous musi 
 cian was always in debt, and often when he ap 
 peared in Boston Mr. Angell was engaged to collect 
 claims against him. When the last claim had been 
 paid, the musician presented him with tickets for 
 the whole opera season, shook hands in friendly 
 fashion, and said, "Now, Mr. Angell, if you ever 
 have another claim against me, I wish you would 
 tell me, so that I can run away." 
 
 Some of Mr. Angell s legal methods were as orig 
 inal as they were effective. A Chicago lawyer had 
 collected a large sum of money belonging to an 
 estate which the Boston lawyer was settling, and ap 
 parently the Chicago man had no idea of forwarding 
 the money. Mr. Angell wrote that he would wait 
 a certain number of days. If the money had not 
 then come to hand, he should write to every member 
 of the Chicago bar, asking if they could give him 
 any advice about how to collect it. The money 
 came. He could fight, and fight hard, if he had to; 
 but he always preferred settling difficulties peace 
 ably if he could. 
 
 This busy lawyer was doing his best to secure 
 justice for people; but he was realizing more and 
 
KNIGHT OF KINDNESS TO ANIMALS 99 
 
 nore that some of these same people were often 
 treating animals with injustice and cruelty. He 
 had always been very fond of animals dogs, 
 horses, cats, cattle, sheep, birds. One of the earliest 
 remembrances of his boyhood was of being reproved 
 for stopping on his way to church to pat a stray dog. 
 Now when people went to meeting in the eighteen- 
 twenties, they were expected to put on their best 
 clothes and proceed to the church with soberness 
 and decorum; they were not expected to stop and 
 pat dogs. "Come, George. What will people 
 think of you?" asked the small boy s mother, and 
 he obeyed, but rather unwillingly, it is to be sup 
 posed. 
 
 Whenever Mr. Angell had seen any one being 
 cruel to an animal he had always interfered ; but he 
 had heard of many cases of cruelty when it was too 
 late to interfere; what could he do? 
 
 First of all, he made his will. He believed that 
 the way to have the world full of kind people was 
 to teach the boys and girls to be kind; so he willed 
 that a large share of his property should go to dis 
 tribute in schools and Sunday Schools books and 
 pamphlets about the rights of animals, how to treat 
 them properly, and how to make friends of them. 
 
 This was good as far as it went, but he became 
 more and more unwilling to sit by and do nothing 
 while animals were suffering so terribly. Young 
 calves were carted through the streets of Boston 
 "piled on each other like sticks of wood." Sheep 
 that had been sheared waited, half frozen, in the 
 
ioo GEORGE THORN DIKE ANGELL 
 
 slaughter-yards, sometimes for a number of days, 
 before they were killed. " A man in my town," said 
 Mr. Angell, "who had mortgaged his stock of cattle 
 to another, quarreled with him, locked the stable 
 doors, and starved them all to death in their stalls 
 to prevent his getting his pay." Every one knows 
 what would be done with such a man to-day. The 
 matter would be reported to the S.P.C.A. and he 
 would be promptly prosecuted and punished. But 
 at that time there was no S.P.C.A. in the State. 
 What then could be done? Just nothing at all. A 
 man could be as cruel as he chose, and there was no 
 law in Massachusetts to punish him. 
 
 There was a man in Massachusetts, however, who 
 knew what laws there ought to be, and before long 
 something happened which made him too indignant 
 to remain quiet any longer. This "something" was 
 a race between two of the best horses in the State. 
 They were driven from Brighton to Worcester, 
 forty miles, over rough roads, each drawing two 
 men; and both horses were driven to death. When 
 Mr. Angell read the account of this in the paper, he 
 said to himself, "Somebody ought to take hold of 
 this business," and added, "and I might as well as 
 anybody." 
 
 He wrote, over his own name, a letter to the daily 
 paper in which the account of the race had appeared, 
 saying that it was high time to stop such cruelty to 
 animals. He knew that in New York two years 
 earlier Mr. Henry Bergh had founded a "Society 
 for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals," and had 
 
KNIGHT OF KINDNESS TO 
 
 succeeded in having it incorporated. People had 
 opposed him and laughed at him and sworn at him, 
 had ruined his clothes and thrown filth in his face, 
 but he had persisted, and this Boston friend of the 
 helpless intended to persist. "I, for one," he said 
 in his letter, "am ready to contribute both time and 
 money." He declared also that he would be glad to 
 unite with any others who were interested in the 
 matter. This came out in the morning paper, and 
 before noon six prominent people of Boston had 
 called upon him and letters had come from three 
 others. A few weeks later, in March, 1868, the 
 Massachusetts S.P.C.A. was organized. 
 
 No one who is not a bully and a coward will hurt 
 an animal that is in his power; but since there are 
 bullies and cowards in the world, strong laws to 
 protect animals are necessary. The first things to 
 be done were to get such laws passed, increase the 
 membership of the Society, and secure funds to 
 work with. Some bright man suggested that there 
 were excellent men on the police force who could 
 perhaps be spared for a while to canvass the city. 
 The mayor and the chief of police were approached, 
 and they permitted seventeen officers, all in their 
 best uniforms, to go from house to house, telling 
 people about the new Society and asking for con 
 tributions and members. This was a fine stroke of 
 business, for many listened to men in the city s uni 
 form who would have turned away from any one 
 else. The result was twelve hundred new members 
 and thirteen hundred dollars added to the treasurv. 
 
.,$03.; GEORGE THORNDIKE ANGELL 
 
 The Society was now six weeks of age, old enough 
 to publish a paper, its founder thought, and two 
 weeks later the first number of Our Dumb Animals 
 came out, and two hundred thousand copies were 
 distributed throughout Massachusetts. In 1921 
 its circulation was nearly fifty thousand a month, 
 and it had subscribers in practically every country 
 in the world. 
 
 After a year of busy work Mr. Angell went to 
 Europe, partly for rest and partly to visit the soci 
 eties for the protection of animals and to do what 
 he could to help them. Maybe the animals them 
 selves recognized their friend. At any rate, he 
 wrote home with great pleasure that while visiting 
 the picture galleries of Versailles, he went for dinner 
 into a little restaurant outside the palace grounds. 
 His table had places for four, and pretty soon a big 
 dog took the place on his right, another stood op 
 posite him, and a handsome cat quietly seated her 
 self in the chair at his left. "They accepted my 
 hospitality," he said, "and we four dined pleasantly 
 together." 
 
 Mr. Angell gave up his large law practice and went 
 from place to place, founding new societies and 
 telling of the work to whoever would listen. Some 
 people listened because they loved animals and ap 
 preciated them. Others approved of his efforts 
 from a sense of justice. Others could be moved by 
 nothing except their own selfish good. They cared 
 nothing for the sufferings of animals, but they did 
 care if they themselves were in danger of sickness 
 
Courtesy of Our Dumb Animals 
 
 WORK HORSES ON VACATION 
 
 Mr. Angell s work for the humane treatment of animals led to the establishmer.t 
 of the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. In addition 
 to the hospital where horses, dogs, cats and other animals can be sent for treatment: 
 the Society maintains at Methuen, Massachusetts, a Vacation Farm where work 
 horses can be turned out to pasture. They seem to enjoy their vacation quite as 
 much as people do. 
 
GEORGE THORNDIKE ANGELL 
 
 from eating the flesh of an animal that had suf 
 fered. Still others looked upon the whole business 
 as sentimentality, and a fine subject for their silly 
 jesting. 
 
 In 1873 he asked permission to address the Con 
 vention of Massachusetts Teachers to meet in Wor 
 cester. The president replied cordially, but when 
 Mr. Angell reached the hall he was kept waiting 
 until 9 P.M. Then, when the people were putting 
 on their wraps to leave, it was announced that u a 
 gentleman wishes to address the convention on 
 cruelty to animals." The audience had been listen 
 ing to lectures and addresses all day long, and now 
 they were invited to stay another hour and listen to 
 some unknown man about cruelty to animals! They 
 shouted with laughter from one end of the hall to 
 the other. 
 
 Mr. Angell was thoroughly aroused. He told 
 them that Agassiz, greatest of their profession, 
 firmly believed in the immortality of animals. He 
 told them of the dangers they themselves were run 
 ning of eating diseased meat. Then he showed that 
 the cruel child is likely to become the criminal man, 
 and told them that it was their work, as teachers in 
 the public schools, to save the boys and girls in their 
 care from such a fate. Perhaps he spoke all the 
 better for his indignation. At any rate, people lis 
 tened till the very last word. 
 
 Every case of cruelty that is reported to the 
 M.S.P.C.A. is investigated immediately. Animals 
 too feeble to work are humanely destroyed. Men 
 
KNIGHT OF KINDNESS TO ANIMALS 105 
 
 who are persistently cruel are prosecuted ; and prose 
 cution by the M.S.P.C.A. is pretty sure to be fol 
 lowed by conviction and punishment. A recent 
 report of "the Society" for a single month reads, 
 "Prosecutions for cruelty, 33; convictions, 31." 
 
 Mr. Angell established Bands of Mercy among 
 children. The motto of these Bands is, "I will try 
 to be kind to all living creatures and try to protect 
 them from cruel usage." Already, 128,444 have 
 been formed. 
 
 Mr. Angell s work was not limited to care for 
 animals. He fought for kindness to children, for 
 pure food, for cooking utensils whose enamel was 
 not made of poisonous materials, and for many 
 other good causes. He was always ready wherever 
 a helping hand was needed. He lived until he was 
 eighty-six years old, and he was as enthusiastic in 
 his last days as when he began his work. Often in 
 the night he thought of so many things that ought 
 to be said or done that he would sit up in bed and 
 make notes by the dim glow of the night lamp cf 
 what must be done on the following day or said in 
 his next address. 
 
 One of his dreams was of a hospital where suf 
 fering animals could be wisely and kindly cared for; 
 and after his death the Angell Memorial Hospital 
 was built in Boston, a hospital which is just as com 
 plete in its arrangements as any hospital for people. 
 It was opened in 1915, and in the first five years of 
 its existence nearly forty thousand animals were 
 treated, half of this number in the free dispensary. 
 
LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 PLANT- BREEDER 
 1849- 
 
 1875, perfected the "Burbank Potato" 
 
 LUTHER BURBANK when a young man spent some 
 little time in his uncle s machine shop in Worcester, 
 Massachusetts. He did not like it so well as out 
 door life, but he did his best; and his "best" was to 
 invent a machine that enabled him, doing piece 
 work, to make from ten to sixteen dollars a day in 
 stead of the half-dollar that he had been receiving. 
 Now came the struggle. He loved flowers and 
 plants, and he felt sure that the life-work of his 
 choice would be among them. His friends, how 
 ever, were equally sure that he could become a rich 
 inventor. Which should it be? He decided in 
 favor of plants. He left the factory and set to work 
 on a bit of ground belonging to his family, raising 
 vegetables for market; but he did much more than 
 to plant and cultivate and sell, for he studied the 
 plants and thought about them and about what he 
 believed they could be led to do. 
 
 Among his vegetables he raised some Early Rose 
 potatoes. This had been an excellent potato, but 
 it seemed to have run out. Indeed, potatoes in gen 
 eral were becoming so poor that some people thought 
 there would be a potato famine before many years 
 had passed. The Early Rose had never been 
 
PLANT-BREEDER 107 
 
 known to bear seed-balls, but one day the gardener 
 found on a plant a single ball. Now, if the eye of a 
 potato is planted, the same variety will be raised; 
 but if the seed is planted, the result is quite different. 
 There was a chance that he might get a much better 
 potato than the Early Rose. 
 
 He did; he got the famous "Burbank potato." 
 A great deal of money was made out of it, but not 
 by Burbank himself, for he, like Agassiz, "had not 
 time to make money." He gave his product freely 
 to the world. The humble potato was a princely 
 gift, for, according to a member of the Department 
 of Agriculture, the income of American farmers is 
 $17,000,000 a year greater because of this plant. He 
 sold his discovery to a seedsman, and with the hun 
 dred and fifty dollars that he received, he went to 
 California. 
 
 Before long his money was gone. He was sick 
 and lonely, and the young man who, as time would 
 prove, had given millions to the world was almost 
 starving. A kind woman, richer than he in that she 
 owned a cow, offered him a pint of milk a day, all 
 that she could spare from her children. He refused 
 for fear he would never be able to pay her. She in 
 sisted, and perhaps saved his life. 
 
 For a year he did any kind of work that would 
 give him food and a place to sleep, but after a while 
 he was able to get a bit of land to work on and carry 
 out his idea. It was a very definite idea, namely, 
 to make the food of the world better and more plen 
 tiful. 
 
io8 LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 He was not aiming at making money. " No man 
 ever did a great work for hire," he declared in later 
 years; but he needed money in order to carry on his 
 work. Before long his opportunity came. A man 
 wanted to set out a prune orchard of twenty thou 
 sand trees, and he wanted them in nine months. To 
 grow a prune-tree large enough to plant had always 
 taken two or three years. Much to the surprise of 
 the planter, the young man took the contract. He 
 knew what he could do, and he knew what Nature 
 would do if she were given a chance. The almond 
 was the fastest-growing tree that would answer his 
 purpose, so he engaged every man and boy that 
 could be found to plant almonds. Just as soon as 
 the young trees were large enough, he budded them 
 with twenty thousand prune-buds. At the end of 
 the nine months the prune-trees were ready; and the 
 orchard is still bearing generously. 
 
 At length the nursery began to pay, and in 1893 
 he could count upon an income of ten thousand 
 dollars a year. Most " level-headed" men would 
 have advised him, as did his friends, to appreciate a 
 good thing when he had it, and develop the business. 
 Again he had to choose between money and work, 
 and again he chose work, real work, for fourteen 
 hours a day is his average working time. 
 
 Just what is he doing? In the first place he is im 
 proving many of the grasses, trees, vegetables, and 
 flowers that we already have; and in the second 
 place, he is developing new ones. He does this by 
 breeding; that is, by uniting plants of different 
 
PLANT-BREEDER 
 
 109 
 
 AN EXPERIMENTAL FARM AND ORCHARD 
 
 Mr Burbank s pioneer work in originating new varieties of plants and the im 
 provement of old ones, has led to more scientific farming on the part of individuals, 
 and the establishment of agricultural experiment stations at various state 
 and universities, and elsewhere. 
 
 species and producing new ones which are unlike 
 them, and better. The stamens of a flower produce 
 pollen, and the wind carries it to the pistil of some 
 other flower, where it grows and forms seeds. Bees 
 
r io LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 gathering pollen for honey get it on their wings, and 
 when they go to the next flower, it rubs off on the 
 pistil, and seeds are formed. Mr. Burbank gets up 
 as early as the bees and does this work before them, 
 to combine the best qualities of various superior 
 plants which he has selected for the purpose. The 
 seeds are planted, and from hundreds or thousands 
 of the little plants, he selects a few, sometimes only 
 one or two. 
 
 This breeding and selecting does not sound like a 
 particularly difficult thing to do, and it is not for 
 Mr. Burbank. He seems to have a natural under 
 standing of plants that is lacking in other people. 
 He will pass by five hundred with scarcely a glance, 
 and fix upon one ; and that one will be the only one 
 for his purpose. He never works blindly, leaving it 
 to chance to bring forth something worth while; he 
 always has a definite aim. He decides how a plant 
 can be improved, and then goes to work to bring 
 the improvement to pass. The well-known Shasta 
 daisy is a good illustration of his method, and of his 
 kindly feeling for what we call " weeds." "There 
 is not a weed alive," he says, "but what will sooner 
 or later respond to good cultivation and persistent 
 selection." The white field daisy of his Massachu 
 setts home, hated by farmers because it does not suit 
 the taste of horses and cattle, seems to have been 
 one of his favorites. At any rate, he meant to see 
 what could be done to give it a long, slender stem, 
 much larger blossoms, and rays of the purest white. 
 The Massachusetts daisy was a vagabond; it was 
 
PLANT-BREEDER in 
 
 not easy to kill it out, as the farmers knew, and it 
 was small. In Japan there was one that also was 
 small, but it had snow-white rays. In England 
 there was a much larger daisy with an especially 
 strong stem. 
 
 These three he combined; then patiently, year 
 after year, he watched and worked, choosing each 
 season the flowers that came nearest to his ideal. 
 At length he was satisfied; the magnificent Shasta 
 daisy was a success. But the work was just begun. 
 He would not sell a new plant until he had made it 
 as far as possible climate-proof and "fool-proof." 
 It must be taught to flourish in heat and cold, and 
 with only the indifferent care that most persons 
 would give it. This was accomplished, and then 
 the new Shasta daisy was ready to enter the polite 
 world. 
 
 But many people who know the Shasta daisy, the 
 sweet-scented verbena and calla lily, and the dahlia 
 with the fragrance of the magnolia, have heard less 
 about Mr. Burbank s more practical work. He 
 never forgets his aim to make food better and 
 cheaper, and, as in the case of the daisy, he sends all 
 over the world, if necessary, for plants that possess 
 the qualities needed. The results are marvels. 
 From the hardy little beach-plum, bitter and worth 
 less unless cooked, he has produced a large, sweet, rich 
 plum without bitterness, and as ready as the beach- 
 plum to grow in any soil, no matter how poor. 
 He has grown plums without stones; the canning 
 cherry which thoughtfully leaves its stone on the 
 
ii2 LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 tree; the quince with the flavor of a pineapple, and 
 mellow enough to be eaten raw; corn which bears 
 many ears instead of one or two. He has increased 
 the size and improved the quality of several kinds 
 of nuts and almonds. He has shown plants how to 
 do their work better and faster and how to do more 
 of it. Cherries can now be raised several weeks 
 earlier than formerly. His cross between an Eng 
 lish walnut and a California walnut has resulted in 
 a tree that produces about twelve times as much 
 timber, valuable hard wood, as either of its an 
 cestors could have done in the same time, to say 
 nothing of the great yield of nuts. He has per 
 suaded the chestnut-tree to bear nuts when only a 
 year and a half old. 
 
 Mr. Burbank has removed briars and prickles, 
 and he has made even the thorny cactus an agree 
 able member of society. It was juicy, an excellent 
 food, and it was happy growing in the hot, rainless 
 desert; but it was covered with thorns; and no one 
 who has ever had the experience will forget how it 
 feels to take hold of a cactus by mistake. Mr. Bur- 
 bank chose a species which had thorns without 
 number and leaves containing so much woody fiber 
 that they were not very digestible. On the other 
 hand, it would grow in the heat of the desert, and 
 would also endure quite severe frosts. With this 
 he crossed a cactus of fewer thorns, another of less 
 woody fiber, and so on. He bred and selected until 
 he had a thornless cactus which is a rich food for 
 cattle. Its fruit is of a delicious flavor and may be 
 
PLANT-BREEDER 113 
 
 eaten fresh or preserved. Moreover, it will grow 
 freely upon what are now desert lands. 
 
 Mr. Burbank was recently asked what he consid 
 ered his most important accomplishment. He replied 
 thoughtfully: 
 
 1 The Burbank potato was the first thing which 
 I introduced, but not by any means whatever the 
 most important, although there have already been 
 enough of these raised to load a freight train to 
 reach fourteen thousand miles. Yet the forty new 
 kinds of plums which I have introduced and which 
 are shipped by the million boxes East each season, 
 and my new commercial grasses, grains, vegetables, 
 trees, berries, and hundreds of other things are of 
 infinitely greater importance than the potato. But 
 among such a multitude it is impossible to tell which 
 is the most important. In fact, it may take fifty years 
 yet to decide, but I can tell you, very plainly and 
 very briefly, just what my most important work has 
 been. It is simply this: that I have educated the 
 world to the fact that plants are pliable and amen 
 able to the will of man and can be improved be 
 yond the dreams of any of the older growers, thus 
 making it possible for millions to inhabit the earth 
 where only thousands could before." 
 
 If Mr. Burbank had handled his creations solely 
 to make money, he would long ago have been a 
 multi-millionaire, but he would not have been what 
 he would call a successful man; that is, a man who 
 aims to do, as the old saying puts it, "all the good 
 you can to all the people you can." 
 
H4 LUTHER BURBANK 
 
 Of course every one who goes to California would 
 like to see Mr. Burbank s grounds, and even more 
 to see him. Many of them he would be glad to 
 meet, but, like Edison, he feels that special talents 
 have been given to him, and his time must be de 
 voted to his work. His cards of refusal, however, 
 explain so courteously and regretfully why he can 
 not admit visitors or grant requests for interviews 
 that they can never leave a sting. 
 
ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL 
 
 INVENTOR OF THE TELEPHONE 
 1847- 
 
 1876, first successful operation of the telephone 
 
 THE father of Alexander Graham Bell was deeply 
 interested in phonetics; that is, the representation 
 of sounds by symbols. All their short lives the Bell 
 boys had heard a great deal about throat and 
 lungs and vocal cords, and they were not at all sur 
 prised when their father said one day, "Boys, why 
 don t you try to make a talking machine?" 
 
 They set to work, and with the help of a skull, a 
 pair of bellows for lungs, and a tongue of rubber 
 stuffed with cotton, they actually did manufacture 
 a device that would say " Mamma" plainly enough 
 to induce the neighbors to come in and ask to see 
 the baby. 
 
 This occurred in Scotland, where Bell was born; 
 but before many years had passed he was in London, 
 studying and experimenting on sound. On account 
 of weak lungs he went to Canada. He improved in 
 health, and in 1872 he became Professor of Vocal 
 Physiology at Boston University, teaching the deaf 
 his father s method of "visible speech." He was 
 fortunate in his pupils, for Mr. Sanders, the father 
 of one of them, offered him a salary, a home in 
 Salem, and a cellar to experiment in. He was still 
 more fortunate in another pupil, Miss Mabel Hub- 
 
ii6 ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL 
 
 bard, a charming girl of fifteen, for she afterwards 
 became his wife. 
 
 Bell was interested in what was spoken of as the 
 "harmonic telegraph." Starting with the fact that 
 if a note is sung close to the strings of a piano, the 
 string corresponding to that note will begin to vi 
 brate, more than one inventor believed that one 
 might if anybody could find out how to do it - 
 send over a wire as many messages simultaneously 
 as there are notes on a piano. Both Mr. Sanders 
 and Mr. Hubbard, father of Miss Mabel Hubbard, 
 believed that this was possible, and were ready to 
 help the inventor financially to some extent. Be 
 fore long, although he had not yet invented the har 
 monic telegraph, he had done some work worth 
 patenting. From the beginning, Mr. Bell kept a 
 firm grasp on his patents, for he had no notion of 
 allowing any of them to be stolen from him. To see 
 his attorney he had to go to Washington. While 
 there, Joseph Henry, a well-known scientist half a 
 century older than Bell, became interested in his 
 work. 
 
 "You have the germ of a great invention," said 
 Henry. " Keep at it till you have made a success of 
 it." 
 
 11 But I have not knowledge enough of electricity," 
 said the young inventor with some discouragement. 
 
 "Get it, then," retorted the older man, and Bell 
 returned to Boston to "get it." He had rented on 
 Court Street a top floor over what is now a theater, 
 and here he worked night and day 
 
INVENTOR OF THE TELEPHONE 117 
 
 Inventors have to get models made, and Bell 
 went to a shop which was haunted by people of new 
 ideas who needed such work. Here he met a skilled 
 machinist named 
 Thomas Watson. 
 "One day when 
 I was hard at 
 work, "said Wat 
 son, "a tall, slen 
 der, quick-mo 
 tioned man with 
 pale face, black 
 sidewhiskers, 
 and drooping 
 mustache, big 
 nose, and high 
 sloping forehead 
 crowned with 
 bushy jet-black 
 
 This is a picture of the first instrument through 
 which speech sounds were transmitted electrically. 
 
 Courtesy of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company 
 
 PROFESSOR BELL S EXPERIMENTAL 
 TELEPHONE, 1875 
 
 hair, came rush 
 ing out of the 
 office to my work-bench." It was Alexander Gra 
 ham Bell, and this was the beginning of a close con 
 nection between the two men, as Watson worked 
 out in iron and steel the ideas of the inventor. 
 
 They were struggling with the harmonic tele 
 graph, but one evening Bell said: "I want to tell 
 you of another idea I have which I think will sur 
 prise you. If I could make a current of electricity 
 vary in intensity precisely as the air varies in den 
 sity during the production of a sound, I should be 
 able to transmit speech telegraphically." 
 
n8 ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL 
 
 This was the soul of the invention of the tele 
 phone, but to give it a body was no easy task. For 
 months the two men struggled. Bell planned and 
 Watson handled the tools. One hot June afternoon 
 in 1875, they were in rooms some sixty feet apart, 
 experimenting on the latest attempt. Suddenly 
 Bell rushed into Watson s room, crying, "What did 
 you do then? Don t change anything! Let me 
 see!" Few people would have noticed that one of 
 the group of instruments in use was yielding a 
 slightly different sound from that given out by the 
 others; but this slight difference and the trained ear 
 that recognized it was the beginning of success. 
 
 It was nine months longer before the telephone 
 would carry a complete sentence. Unluckily, the 
 two men were not planning a dramatic scene for 
 future narrators, and that first sentence was the 
 very prosaic "Mr. Watson, please come here; I 
 want you." Matters began to move rapidly, says 
 Mr. Watson, but it was well into 1876 before 
 the telephone could be depended upon in a con 
 versation, and even then the sentences must be 
 simple, and they often had to be repeated several 
 times. 
 
 Having invented something and patented it, the 
 next step is to get it before the public and induce 
 people to invest their money in it. This was the 
 summer of the Centennial, the best possible time, 
 but it was not easy to get room at the Exposition 
 to display the unknown telephone, a thing which 
 many of those who had seen it pronounced to be a 
 
INVENTOR OF THE TELEPHONE 119 
 
 mere toy. At length a bit of space between a stair 
 way and the wall was given to Bell. 
 
 He had reached Philadelphia on the very day 
 when the judges 
 were making 
 their official vis 
 its of inspection ; 
 but it was so late 
 before they came 
 anywhere near 
 
 the 
 
 staircase 
 
 TELEPHONY. 
 
 AUDIBLE SPEECH CONVEYED TWO 
 MILES BY TELEGRAPH. 
 
 PROFESSOR A. GRAHAM BELL S DISCOV 
 ERY SUCCESSFUL AXD INTERESTING 
 EXPERIMENTS THE RECORD OF A CON 
 VERSATION CARRIED ON BETWEEN BOS 
 TON AND CAMBRIDGEPORT. 
 
 The following account of an experiment made on 
 the evening of October 9 by Alexander Graham Bell 
 and Thomas A. Watson is interesting, as being the 
 record of the first conversation ever carried on by 
 word of mouth over a telegraph wire. Telephones 
 were placed at either end of a telegraph line owned 
 by the Walworth Manufacturing Company, extend 
 ing from their office in Boston to their factory in 
 Cambridgeport, a distance of about two miles. (The 
 company s battery, consisting of nine Daniels cells, 
 was removed from the circuit and another of ten 
 carbon elements substituted). Articulate conversa 
 tion then took place through the wire. The sounds, 
 at first faint and indistinct, became suddenly quite 
 loud and intelligible. Mr. Bell in Boston and Mr. 
 Watson in Cambridge then took notes of what was 
 said and heard, and the comparison of the two rec 
 ords is most interesting, as showing the accuracy 
 of the electrical transmission : 
 
 that some of 
 them had al 
 ready declared 
 they were going 
 home. Then 
 something dra 
 matic occurred, 
 for the very wide 
 awake Emperor 
 of Brazil, Dom 
 Pedro, rushed up 
 to the little table 
 with the uninter 
 esting looking 
 
 box and greeted the inventor most heartily. He had, 
 it seemed, once seen at Boston University Bell s work 
 in teaching the deaf to speak. It does not take any 
 unusual amount of imagination to realize the inven 
 tor s joy in having at last found a listener who was 
 worthy of the invention. The Emperor wanted to 
 
 BOSTON RECORD. 
 Mr. Bell What do you think 
 as the matter with the instru- 
 
 CAMBRIDGEPORT RECORD. 
 
 Mr. Bell - What do you think 
 
 is the matter with the instru- 
 
 A CLIPPING FROM THE BOSTON ADVERTISER 
 
 October 19, 1876 
 
120 ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL 
 
 know every detail. Then he went to the farther end 
 of the room and listened at the receiver. "My 
 God," he exclaimed, "it talks!" Then came Joseph 
 Henry and the other judges, not quite so tired as 
 they had been. Most of the evening they talked 
 and listened, and in the morning the little corner 
 between the stairway and the wall was vacant, for 
 the telephone had been carried away to the place of 
 honor. 
 
 Even then no one realized the enormous practical 
 value of the invention, and few people had much 
 confidence in it. Still, money must be had. Luck 
 ily, everybody is curious to see a new thing, and 
 from city after city came invitations to the inventor 
 to lecture on the marvel. From one place to an 
 other he went, explaining what the handbills called 
 the "wonderful and miraculous discovery," then il 
 lustrating its marvels by speech and songs given by 
 Mr. Watson, twenty or thirty miles away, the sound 
 being carried over telegraph wires leased for the oc 
 casion. When the lecture was to be given in New 
 York City, they hired a colored man with a beautiful 
 baritone voice to manage the musical end. Alas, 
 the negro had no idea of crowding his lips and his 
 voice into that little mouthpiece, and Watson had to 
 take his place. Now Watson could be heard, but he 
 was not a musical genius, and when he stopped sing 
 ing, the negro asked, "Is that what you wanted?" 
 "Yes." "Well, I couldn t do that 11 and he 
 walked away, his head high in the air and an expres 
 sion of utter scorn on his face. 
 
INVENTOR OF THE TELEPHONE 121 
 
 People began to call for telephones. They wanted 
 to buy them, but Mr. Hubbard, as business mana 
 ger, refused to sell; all telephones must be leased. 
 This piece of wisdom and foresight has made it pos 
 sible to keep the system uniform and efficient. 
 
 It is not at all 
 uncommon for a 
 valuable inven 
 tion to be so 
 poorly managed 
 from a business 
 point of view 
 that the inven 
 tor gains little 
 by his work ; but 
 the interests of 
 Mr. Bell have 
 been so well 
 guarded by his 
 
 own carefulness 
 in securing pat 
 ents and by 
 the skill and 
 watchfulness of 
 the manage- 
 
 Courtesji of the American Telephone awl Telegraph Company 
 
 A TELEPHONE OF 1882 
 
 Contrast this illustration with the simple telephone 
 apparatus with which we are familiar. It will be 
 seen that the telephone of early days comprised a 
 separate ringing apparatus and transmitter. In order 
 to call "Central" it was necessary to turn a switch, 
 press a button, and revolve a small crank, whereas 
 to-day all that we have to do is remove the ear-piece 
 from the hook. 
 
 ment that he 
 
 has become a very wealthy man, with one home in 
 Washington, another in Baddeck, Cape Breton, and 
 the ability to have as many more as he may choose. 
 
JOHN WANAMAKER 
 
 FOUNDER OF THE DEPARTMENT STORE 
 
 1838- 
 1876, opened the first department store in America 
 
 HE was a very small boy, but he was big enough to 
 "turn up bricks" in his father s brickyard so they 
 would dry in the sun ; and this was the way he earned 
 his first money. The boy s name was John Wana- 
 maker, and before many years had passed, he had 
 become quite accustomed to turning over other 
 things than bricks and to handling a good deal of 
 money; but no sum ever looked quite so big to him 
 as the pennies that his father paid him for his work 
 in the brickyard. 
 
 When he was fourteen he asked a Philadelphia 
 publisher for a place as errand boy, and won it, 
 with $1.25 a week for wages. Then he took a 
 place in a men s clothing store at twenty-five cents 
 a week advance. He did his work just as well as 
 he could, and was quite an ideal errand boy; but 
 his brain was busy building air-castles. The pro 
 prietor of the store took a great fancy to him and 
 used to invite him out to lunch for the amusement 
 of hearing him talk about what he meant to do 
 when he was a man. "I m going to be a great 
 merchant," he used to say earnestly; and then he 
 would chatter away about his plans. 
 
 Next, John was made a salesman. Most of the 
 
DEPARTMENT STORE FOUNDER 123 
 
 salesmen of that time were satisfied if they could 
 induce customers to buy; but this salesman aimed 
 at something better; he wanted them to be pleased 
 with their purchases after they had reached home. 
 The result was that people began to ask for him 
 when they came to the store, and before long he 
 had a large circle of customer friends. 
 
 Besides his duties in the store, John Wanamaker 
 was deeply interested in Sunday-School work and 
 in a society that had been formed only a few years 
 earlier by some young men in London. This was 
 the Y.M.C.A., and soon the earnest worker became 
 secretary of the Association in America. He was a 
 good patriot, and when the war broke out, in 1861, 
 he tried to enlist, but was refused because of weak 
 lungs. He meant to do something for his country, 
 however, lungs or no lungs, and he helped with all 
 his might ia organizing the Christian Commission. 
 
 Meanwhile he had been saving as much of his 
 salary as he could. Half a century later, he said: 
 "The difference between the clerk who spends all 
 his salary and the clerk who saves part of it, is the 
 difference in ten years between the owner of a 
 business and a man out of a job." 
 
 This certainly held good in his case, for before 
 many years had passed he had two thousand dollars. 
 His wife s brother had about the same amount, and 
 the two young men set up in business for them 
 selves. 
 
 The first thing they did was to agree to pay one 
 third of their capital as annual salary to a salesman. 
 
I2 4 JOHN WANAMAKER 
 
 Most merchants would have said they were crazy 
 to do such a thing, but the partners were in the 
 right. The salesman was the best to be had, and 
 he was well known in the city. The fact that they 
 had engaged him looked as if they had started on a 
 good foundation, and the wholesale houses were 
 willing to let them have goods on credit. It was 
 the best advertisement they could have had, and 
 from the first Wanamaker believed firmly in 
 advertising. 
 
 His advertising, however, was quite unlike the 
 plain, old-fashioned way of merely stating that one 
 had something to sell and people would be per 
 mitted to buy it; his notion of advertising was not 
 only to tell what was for sale, but to set people to 
 talking about it. And talk the good people of 
 Philadelphia did! The Quaker City was aroused 
 by flights of balloons and the published promise 
 that whoever brought one back to Wanamaker & 
 Brown would receive a suit of clothes free. Posters 
 were once put up in the night, so that in the morn 
 ing the whole city was ablaze with " W. & B." and 
 people were questioning what it meant. Billboards 
 were set up in prominent places. Wanamaker was 
 original in whatever he did, and people soon began 
 to talk about him, to wonder what he would do 
 
 The Philadelphia Public Ledger in describing the arrangement of 
 this "new kind of store" said, "In the centre of the building is a 
 circular counter ninety feet in circumference, which is devoted to the 
 sale of silks. . . . Radiating from this are aisles 196 feet in length. 
 These are intersected by other aisles running between the concentric 
 circles of counters, on which are exhibited all sorts of articles that go 
 to make up a large and complete stock of dry goods." 
 
126 JOHN WANAMAKER 
 
 to-morrow and also to visit his store and buy. 
 Such methods are common now; but Wanamaker 
 invented them and scores of others like them. 
 
 Before many years had passed he opened the first 
 department store in the world. This does not mean 
 merely that he had a variety of goods to sell; it 
 means that the store consisted of a number of 
 separate departments with a buyer at the head of 
 each. The buyer was as independent as if he were 
 in a store of his own. He bought what he thought 
 best and fixed the selling price. Costs for advertis 
 ing and general store expenses were divided among 
 the different departments. Of course a careful 
 record was kept, showing at a glance just what each 
 one was doing. If any department failed to do 
 well, there was a careful investigation to find out 
 what the trouble was and how to improve matters. 
 
 Wanamaker had some very definite ideas of how 
 a store should be run, and he laid down his principles 
 and lived up to them. First of all, his store must 
 be honest. Cloth, for instance, was often marked 
 by " trade width"; that is, an inch or two more 
 than it really measured. In the Wanamaker store 
 "54-inch cloth" might turn out to measure 55 
 inches, but it would never measure 53. If goods 
 was part cotton and a clerk in the hope of making 
 a sale stated that it was all wool, that clerk was 
 promptly discharged. 
 
 Second, all customers were to be treated with 
 equal courtesy. If a little girl was sent to buy a 
 spool of silk, just as much care must be given to 
 
DEPARTMENT STORE FOUNDER 127 
 
 matching her sample as to an order for furnishing a 
 house. 
 
 Third, the price of everything was to be the same 
 to all, and it was to be marked in plain figures. It 
 was quite the custom for clerks to charge a customer 
 as much as they thought he could be induced to 
 pay; and in many stores the surest way to win pro 
 motion was to succeed in transferring money from the 
 pocket of the customer to the till of the merchant, 
 regardless of fairness and justice. Of course having 
 the price in plain figures would interfere with any 
 such fashion of making sales, so cost and selling 
 price were marked in cipher. To-day a few stores 
 still keep up the old method of marking in cipher, 
 but nearly all have learned that a large amount 
 of trade comes from people who buy what attracts 
 their attention in passing, and that they are much 
 more likely to stop, look, and purchase if the price 
 is in sight. 
 
 Fourth, any customer who was not satisfied with 
 what he had bought might exchange it for other 
 goods or have his money back if he preferred. He 
 was not asked why he wished to return the goods; 
 it was enough that he did wish it. Of course there 
 were people who abused the privilege, as there al 
 ways will be people who will abuse every privilege, 
 but on the whole it paid, and paid well. 
 
 Fifth, whatever promise w^as made by the store 
 must be strictly fulfilled. If an article was to be 
 finished at a certain time, it must be finished at 
 that time, and not half an hour later. In short, the 
 
128 JOHN WANAMAKER 
 
 whole tone of the store was honesty and regard for 
 the rights and preferences of the customers. The 
 store has always been conducted on these principles. 
 Its envelopes for goods bear to-day the legend: 
 
 "Trustworthy goods only 
 Straightforward one price 
 Exactness of all statements. 
 
 Wanamaker s advertisements made interesting 
 reading. They did not sound as if they came from 
 a store, but rather like notes of friendly advice. An 
 advertisement of blankets, for instance, described 
 their quality and texture, and then said: "These 
 blankets are extra large. The part of a blanket 
 that hangs over the edge of the bed, the part that 
 you don t see any use in and don t want to pay for 
 
 that is what keeps you warm." 
 
 Wanamaker has made a great deal of money, and 
 he has given money away generously wherever it 
 seemed to him to be most needed. Churches, hos 
 pitals, schools, missions, clubs, have all known his 
 helping hand. More than that, he has given freely 
 of his time and thought. With so immense a busi 
 ness on his mind the value of an hour of his busy 
 day can hardly be estimated; but over and over 
 again he has laid aside his business interests and 
 given his whole attention to some puzzling detail of 
 a school or a library. What he has done for the 
 comfort and pleasure and education of his em 
 ployees is "another story," and quite too long a 
 story for a short article. 
 
DEPARTMENT STORE FOUNDER 129 
 
 Wanamaker never lost his interest in his early 
 friend, the Y.M.C.A., and besides his gifts to that 
 organization in this country, he erected buildings 
 for Association use in China, Japan, Korea, and 
 India. 
 
 Another early 
 friend of his 
 was a little 
 Sunday School 
 which he or 
 ganized in 1858, 
 when he was 
 twenty- one. 
 years old. It 
 consisted of 
 two teachers 
 and twenty- 
 seven pupils, 
 and they met 
 in a cobbler s 
 shop. This 
 
 small beginning 
 
 . , , i Courtesy John Wanamaker, Philadelphia 
 
 grew into the _ 
 
 ^ A STAIRWAY IN THE WANAMAKER STORE, 
 
 famous Beth- PHILADELPHIA, 1911 
 
 any Sunday 
 
 School of more than three thousand members and 
 two large churches, one of which was given by Mr. 
 Wanamaker. He also built Bethany Temple, in 
 West Philadelphia; and the three churches work 
 together. They carry on a Penny Savings Bank, a 
 Brotherhood House, a library, and numerous other 
 
130 JOHN WANAMAKER 
 
 helpful institutions. In all the rush of business life 
 Mr. Wanamaker never gave up his Sunday-School 
 class, and when he was Postmaster-General he re 
 turned to Philadelphia from Washington every Sat 
 urday afternoon that he might not be absent from 
 it. His interest extended over the whole work of 
 church and Sunday-School, and he frequently made 
 ten or eleven informal addresses in the different de 
 partments in a single day. 
 
 Besides being a generous giver Wanamaker has 
 always been a good citizen. He did his best to 
 clean up political corruption. It was due in great 
 degree to his efforts that Philadelphia has a good 
 water supply; and when his city was about to sell 
 the gas plant for much less than it was worth, 
 Wanamaker quietly crushed the tricky schemes by 
 offering to buy the plant at a far higher price. He 
 never sought for office. There is little doubt that 
 he might have had the nomination to the vice- 
 presidency in 1912, but he showed no desire for it, 
 although, when there was need for a business man 
 to become Postmaster-General, he had accepted the 
 position and turned the light of his business experi 
 ence and ability upon postal methods. The result 
 was, among other improvements, the establishment 
 of the free rural delivery service, the sea post- 
 offices, by which mail is distributed on the ocean 
 steamers and much time is saved in delivery. He 
 did his best to arouse the country to the need of the 
 parcel post, the postal telegraph, and the postal 
 savings banks. 
 
DEPARTMENT STORE FOUNDER 131 
 
 "How did you do it, Mr. Wanamaker?" it is 
 said that the merchant was asked. "You began 
 with nothing, and now you have three great stores, 
 in Philadelphia, in New York, and in Paris. How 
 did you do it?" And the man who had succeeded 
 replied, "By thinking, toiling, trying, and trusting 
 in God." 
 
 " But was it not easier for a young man to succeed 
 in the days when you began?" 
 
 " I think not," said Mr. Wanamaker thoughtfully. 
 "The opportunities are much greater now and 
 there are twice as many of them." 
 
FRANCES E. WILLARD 
 
 TEMPERANCE REFORMER 
 
 1839-1898 
 1879, became President of the National W.C.T.U. 
 
 WHEN Frances Willard was a little girl, she lived 
 on a Wisconsin prairie, in a rambling cottage cov 
 ered with roses and Virginia creeper. She and her 
 brother and sister manufactured their own play 
 things, played " Indians," flew kites, formed an 
 "Artists Club," and also a " Rustic Club" with a 
 lengthy list of complicated signals. They made 
 believe that they lived in a city, and organized a 
 government for its management. Horseback riding 
 was forbidden to the girls until they were fifteen, 
 but " Frank" trained a cow to draw her sled and at 
 length to act as saddle-horse when no one was 
 looking. 
 
 Occasionally there was a prairie fire by way of 
 excitement. These fires were generally harmless, 
 but one Sunday, when the Willards came home from 
 the little church four miles a\vay, they found a 
 neighbor s house in danger. The whole family ran 
 with pails, and the house was saved. 
 
 This was thrilling entertainment, all the more 
 delightful because it came on Sunday, and Sunday 
 was rather a difficult day for children in the Willard 
 home, for it was "kept" most strictly. One year 
 when New Year s came on the first day of the week, 
 
TEMPERANCE REFORMER 133 
 
 the presents were distributed Saturday evening, 
 because it was not thought right to bring them out 
 on Sunday. Among the gifts was a religious book 
 for the brother and an illustrated Pilgrim s Progress 
 for the little sister; and these, of course, they were 
 allowed to read Sunday. But alas for Frank! Her 
 present had been the desire of her heart, a big new 
 slate, and she was not permitted to use such a 
 week-day article until Monday. She endured the 
 condition of affairs as long as she could, and then 
 besought her mother, "Mayn t I have my new 
 slate if I ll promise not to draw anything but 
 meeting-houses?" She had the slate. 
 
 The children had books in plenty, an educated 
 father and mother, an excellent piano, and music- 
 lessons at the Wisconsin Institute for the Blind - 
 which they called the "blind Institute," a mile 
 away from their home. The mother insisted upon 
 their having "nice, considerate ways," and both 
 she and their father were the best of companions. 
 The children were always happier to have them 
 near. One day when the tired mother had gone to 
 her room for a restful hour, small Frank followed 
 with some children s papers. " I came, my dear, to 
 be alone," the mother said gently; and the small 
 child sturdily retorted, "It is natural that I should 
 want to be with my mother, and I mean to be." 
 She was not sent away. 
 
 The time came when the brother went to Beloit 
 to prepare for college, and the girls called after him, 
 "We ve got a Yale graduate to teach us, and 
 
134 FRANCES E. WlLLARD 
 
 Beloit can t beat that"; for they were going to a 
 tiny schoolhouse that had just been built. They 
 were so excited that they got up long before light, 
 packed and repacked their lunch, sat waiting for a 
 long time on the bobsled drawn by two big oxen, 
 and were the first arrivals at the school. It was a 
 happy, healthful life for the children,- but they were 
 growing up fast, and on Frank s eighteenth birth 
 day her mother told her that she must not run wild 
 any longer, but must "do up" her hair and wear a 
 long dress. The girl yielded, but to her diary she 
 wailed, "I can never jump over a fence again, so 
 long as I live." 
 
 But she soon forgot the sorrows of long skirts 
 and hairpins, for she and her sister were to go to the 
 Northwestern Female College at Evanston. "My! 
 can t she recite! That new girl beats us all!" the 
 students said of Frances. She soon became editor 
 of the college paper, and a leader not only in scholar 
 ship, but in every kind of clean fun. During the 
 last year of her course she became a member of the 
 Methodist Church in Evanston, Illinois, and her 
 determination to do something worth while in the 
 world was greatly strengthened. 
 
 In the middle of the last century an educated 
 girl who wanted to earn money was expected to 
 teach, as a matter of course, and Frances taught. 
 Her first school was ten miles from Chicago. When 
 she opened the door she found herself in a scene of 
 warfare, for the big boys had spent their time of 
 waiting for the new teacher in fighting and breaking 
 
TEMPERANCE REFORMER 135 
 
 windows. They quieted down at her reading from 
 the Bible, and their young instructor could hardly 
 keep back a smile when she saw them a few minutes 
 later singing with gusto, "I want to be an angel." 
 
 The home on the prairie was sold, and the family 
 moved to Evanston. Mother and daughter lived 
 together in "Rest Cottage"; alone, for father and 
 sister had died and the brother had married. 
 Frances continued her teaching. The invitation to 
 become president of the Evanston Ladies College 
 came to her in 1871, while she was nailing down a 
 stair-carpet. " Frank, I am amazed at you," said 
 her trustee caller. "Let some one else tack down 
 carpets, and do you take charge of the new college." 
 "Very well," replied Miss Willard, "I shall be glad 
 to do so. I was only waiting to be asked." 
 
 She was well fitted for the position. She had, on 
 the invitation of a dear friend, just spent two years 
 in European travel. She had done considerable 
 literary work, and was becoming known as a con 
 tributor to magazines and papers. She was de 
 lighted with the opportunity to be a "big sister" to 
 so many young girls. As to rules, when she herself 
 went away to school a list of seventy had been laid 
 before her. In the Evanston Ladies College she 
 announced at the beginning of each term that such 
 rules as might be found necessary would be given 
 one by one; but that until the need of a rule was 
 shown, none would be given. She sympathized 
 heartily with the wish of her girls to join the literary 
 societies of Northwestern University. Imagine her 
 
136 FRANCES E. WILLARD 
 
 amazement and amusement when she found 
 that objection to this was made on the grounds that 
 it would be improper for young women to carry on 
 debates with young men; that a girl might chance 
 to be elected president of the society, a highly im 
 proper position for a girl to hold; and, worst of all, 
 that every time a girl might speak it would deprive 
 some young man of the opportunity for practice! 
 
 In 1874 came the Women s Temperance Crusade 
 in Ohio. Miss Willard was deeply interested in this 
 work, and made speeches in its favor so successfully 
 that she was in great demand at temperance meet 
 ings. Before long she had a difficult choice to make. 
 On the same day two letters came to her. One 
 offered her a teaching position at twenty-four hun 
 dred dollars a year, equal to three or four times that 
 amount to-day. The other was from one of the 
 temperance workers in Chicago. "We are a little 
 band without money or experience, but with strong 
 faith," it said; and then asked if she would become 
 their president. 
 
 In this position she would have no salary at all 
 except her living expenses; but she promptly ac 
 cepted. She had found her life-work, namely, to 
 speak for temperance. Her "stint" was, as she 
 said, to speak for the white ribbon throughout the 
 United States, in every town and city of ten thou 
 sand inhabitants or more. Before the end of 1883 
 she had accomplished the task. She had also 
 founded the Woman s Christian Temperance Union, 
 and had become its president, as well as president 
 
TEMPERANCE REFORMER 137 
 
 of the National Christian Temperance Union. On 
 her lists were the names of fifteen thousand places 
 from which invitations to speak had come to her, and 
 which she had had to refuse for lack of time. In her 
 early work for the Woman s Christian Temperance 
 Union, her friends urged her to be "managed" by a 
 lecture bureau. She yielded, for three weeks, but 
 she must have almost driven her manager to de 
 spair, for she kept her price at twenty-five dollars, 
 and over and over refused to accept more. "A 
 philanthropist can t afford to make money," she 
 declared. 
 
 She became strongly interested in the agitation 
 for woman suffrage, because she believed that 
 women voters would put an end to the liquor sa 
 loon. About the time of her being "managed," the 
 white-ribboners of Illinois prepared a petition for 
 the right to vote and presented it to the State Legis 
 lature. The list of names was a quarter of a mile 
 long, and the members of the Rest Cottage house 
 hold took turns in trying to iron it smooth. The 
 petition was not granted, so was sealed and put 
 away, not to reappear until the day should come of 
 women s voting in Illinois. 
 
 The days were full of engagements and requests 
 for every conceivable kind of help. People seemed 
 to think that because she could make speeches, she 
 could do everything else. One woman asked her to 
 secure a patent for her on a new kind of rolling-pin. 
 Another offered twenty-five dollars for her hus 
 band s appointment as postmaster. A young man 
 
138 
 
 FRANCES E. WILLARD 
 
 asked her to write his part in a debate on prohibi 
 tion. A woman besought her to select a maid for 
 
 her; and a young 
 minister went a step 
 farther, and begged 
 her to choose a wife 
 for him. 
 
 On the platform 
 she was perfectly at 
 ease, and had a 
 charming fashion of 
 treating an audience 
 like a personal friend. 
 If something had 
 pleased her she was 
 sure to speak of it in 
 her next "sermon." 
 It was the same in 
 trouble. When news 
 of her brother s sud 
 den death came to 
 her she was on the 
 point of taking the 
 train to conduct a 
 temperance prayer- 
 meeting. "He would 
 have wished me to 
 do this," she said to 
 herself. "And so I went, and told the people all 
 about it, while we cried together, praying and talk 
 ing of a better life, which is an heavenly." 
 
 THE WILLARD FOUNTAIN IN CHICAGO 
 
 This fountain was presented to the city of Chi 
 cago in 1895. The cost was in the neighborhood 
 of $2000, and this amount was raised by the 
 Loyal Temperance Legion, the children s or 
 ganization of the W.C.T.U., in contributions of 
 nickels and dimes from children in all parts of 
 the country. 
 
TEMPERANCE REFORM 139 
 
 She had the gift of eloquence, but even more win 
 ning than that was her confidence in the sympathy 
 of her audience. She never said a word that would 
 leave a sting; she always had "nice, considerate 
 ways." In argument, even with those who opposed 
 her most strongly, she was never bitter; for she al 
 ways took it for granted that others were as honest 
 in their belief as she was in hers. "All loved her," 
 said a friend, "because she loved all. All trusted 
 her because she trusted all." "Only the Golden 
 Rule of Christ can bring the Golden Age of Man," 
 was her motto. 
 
 So the days went on to the end of her life with the 
 noble woman who had become such a power for good 
 in the world. She was never jealous of the gains of 
 others, never selfish, always eager to do her best. 
 She said that "lying on the prairie grass and lifting 
 my hands toward the sweet sky, I used to say in my 
 inmost spirit, What is it what is it that I am to 
 be, O God?" "I fully purposed to be one whom 
 multitudes would love, lean on, and bless" -and 
 she attained her noble wish. 
 
 In the Capitol at Washington is the National 
 Statuary Hall. To this each State was invited to 
 send statues in marble or bronze of two of its dis 
 tinguished citizens. For one of her two representa 
 tives, Illinois sent a statue of Frances Willard. 
 
CLARA BARTON 
 
 FOUNDER OF THE AMERICAN RED CROSS 
 1821-1912 
 
 1 88 1, organized the American Red Cross 
 
 NOT many miles from Worcester, Massachusetts, is 
 North Oxford, and here, in a story-and-a-half cot 
 tage, which is still standing, there once lived a very 
 timid little girl. On an Indian gravestone in a Phil 
 adelphia cemetery is the inscription "Annie Afraid- 
 of-Bear," but this sensitive little Oxford girl was 
 more timid than "Annie," for she was afraid of 
 everything. By chance she saw the blow that killed 
 an ox, and she dropped to the ground in a fainting 
 fit. Horses alarmed her especially, for she was sure 
 that some terrible accident would happen wherever 
 they were. 
 
 This little Clara was the youngest of the family, 
 and the special pet of the older ones. They could 
 not understand her timidity, however, and occa 
 sionally they felt it their duty to give her a lesson. 
 For instance, one day her brother David caught her 
 up and tossed her upon the back of an unbroken 
 colt. He jumped on another and galloped away, 
 followed by the little sister s colt. She clung to the 
 mane and did n t fall off. It was a severe lesson, 
 but a successful one, for she was no longer afraid 
 of horses. 
 
 Clara had pet cats and pet dogs; she fed the chick- 
 
FOUNDER OF AMERICAN RED CROSS 141 
 
 ens and the ducks; she milked the cows; she helped 
 in every way that a child could. She had a free, 
 healthy home life, but when she was eleven years 
 old her freedom came to an end, for David had a 
 severe fall and for two years was a bedridden invalid. 
 Little by little the charge of the sick brother fell 
 upon her, and she was a proud little girl when she 
 found that he would rather have her care than that 
 of any one else. 
 
 Four years later she put up her hair and let down 
 her skirts, for she was going to Hightstown, New 
 Jersey, to teach, and she must look as old as possi 
 ble. Ten miles from Hightstown was Bordentown, 
 and some of the people in Bordentown had a notion 
 that public schools were "free schools for paupers," 
 and would not allow their children to attend them. 
 The result was that two thirds of the boys and girls 
 of the place spent much of their time in the streets. 
 Whenever an attempt was made to open a public 
 school they had a fine time breaking it up. 
 
 Here was a chance for work, and whenever work 
 was needed the young teacher was always ready. 
 " Allow me to open a public school," she said to the 
 people of Bordentown, "and I will teach for three 
 months without salary." Her offer was accepted. 
 She began her school in a tiny brick house with six 
 pupils. In five weeks six hundred children wanted 
 to get into the little building. Bordentown put up 
 a new schoolhouse with eight rooms, and there was 
 no more trouble about having public schools. The 
 teachers and pupils of New Jersey have now bought 
 
142 CLARA BARTON 
 
 the little brick building, and plan to restore the in 
 terior so it will look as it did when Clara Barton 
 taught within its walls, and preserve it as a me 
 morial to her. 
 
 Miss Barton taught one school after another, and 
 she learned bookkeeping in her brother s factory, 
 and then she went to Washington and was appointed 
 to a position in the Patent Office. She was the first 
 woman to have such an appointment, and although 
 the superintendent declared that she was the best 
 clerk he had ever had, the other clerks were not 
 pleased. To make things uncomfortable for her 
 they used every morning to range themselves along 
 the two walls of the corridor through which she 
 must walk, and when she appeared they would be 
 gin to whistle and stare and make boors of them 
 selves generally. She paid no attention to them, 
 and then they tried slander. The superintendent 
 heard of this, and before long a line of discharged 
 young men marched sullenly down the steps of the 
 Patent Office. 
 
 When the Civil War broke out, in 1861, and the 
 first troops, the famous Sixth Massachusetts Mili 
 tia, reached Washington, her only " Government 
 appointment" was that she saw the need of help; 
 but she went straight to the Capitol, where they 
 were quartered, taking with her five stout colored 
 men with baskets of food. This was the beginning 
 of her war work. There was then no Sanitary Com 
 mission, no organized relief, and she begged to go 
 beyond the lines. "That s no place for a woman," 
 
144 CLARA BARTON 
 
 growled the officials, but she won over the Assistant 
 Quartermaster-General, and she went. 
 
 The timid little girl who had been afraid of her 
 shadow had no fear of men or of cannon or of the 
 sight of blood. u Do you think I will leave here 
 now?" she demanded in the midst of a bombard 
 ment. Once when there were hundreds of wounded 
 and no ambulances, she contrived somehow to get a 
 tug, went to Washington, called up the Chairman of 
 the Senate Military Committee in the middle of the 
 night, and in two hours help was on the way. It is 
 no wonder that the Surgeon-General gave her per 
 mission to do what she chose but this gentle, 
 quiet, low-voiced woman would have done it any 
 way if she had seen the need. She outranked every 
 body when there was work to be done. It was not 
 until the last year of the war that she had any defi 
 nite position ; what she did was done by one- woman 
 power. 
 
 After the close of the war thousands of letters 
 came to her begging for her aid to find what had 
 become of brothers and sons and husbands. She 
 answered, as she always answered every appeal, "I 
 will help," and for four years she carried on the 
 search. President Lincoln s sympathetic heart re 
 joiced, and to help her in the work he gave her an 
 official appointment. Two months later he was as 
 sassinated, but she would not stop. She organized 
 a "Bureau of Records of Missing Men" at her own 
 expense. "What is money to me if I have no coun 
 try?" she had demanded when her friends had tried 
 
FOUNDER OF AMERICAN RED CROSS 145 
 
 to induce her to save for her own needs. As a result 
 of her efforts, the graves of twelve thousand Union 
 soldiers were named and marked in the National 
 Cemetery in Andersonville, and the names of 
 twenty thousand dead soldiers were given a place of 
 honor on the Government records. 
 
 At length she went to Europe to rest; but her 
 "rest" consisted of helping in another struggle, for 
 France and Germany were at war. In Switzerland 
 she learned about the Red Cross. "My country 
 must have a Red Cross Society," she said, and as 
 soon as she was able to get home and plead for it, 
 the good work began. Perhaps she hoped that wars 
 would soon be at an end, for she saw to it that the 
 Society should aim at lessening suffering not only in 
 war, but wherever else it existed. 
 
 She was made president of the organization, of 
 course, and the story of the rest of her life is a record 
 of service wherever service was needed. Whether it 
 was flood, fire, famine, pestilence, earthquake, or 
 war, the Red Cross was ready with workers and 
 supplies, with system and experience and the helping 
 hand. Cold, heat, danger were nothing to Clara 
 Barton when there was work to be done for others. 
 She had forgotten all about the fears of her child 
 hood. More than once she had to fly for life or lib 
 erty on a strange horse in a trooper s saddle; but 
 what she called her "baby-lessons" in riding the 
 wild colt served her well, for, as she said, her seat on 
 the back of a horse was "as secure as in a rocking- 
 chair, and far more pleasurable." 
 
146 CLARA BARTON 
 
 In 1892 Clara Barton was called to respond to the 
 toast, "The women who went to the field." The 
 following is a part of her response: 
 
 "And what did they know about war, anyway? 
 What could they do? Of what use could they be? 
 They would scream at the sight of a gun, don t you see? 
 Just fancy them round where the bugle-notes play, 
 And the long roll is bidding us on to the fray! 
 Imagine their skirts mong artillery wheels, 
 And watch for their flutter as they flee cross the fields. 
 When the charge is rammed home and the fire belches hot; 
 They never will wait for the answering shot. 
 They would faint at the first drop of blood in their sight." 
 
 This is what was expected of women when Clara 
 Barton first led the way to the front. What is ex 
 pected of them now is shown by the records of the 
 World War of 1914. 
 
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON 
 
 FOUNDER OF TUSKEGEE INSTITUTE 
 1859-1915 
 
 1 88 1, chosen first Principal of Tuskegee Institute. 
 
 HALF a century ago, when the Civil War was going 
 on, a little black boy who lived on a Southern plan 
 tation was awakened early one morning by hear 
 ing his mother praying that some day she and her 
 children might be free. Before many months had 
 passed, all the slaves on the plantation were bidden 
 to come to the "big house," where the master lived. 
 They felt certain that something was going to hap 
 pen, but no one could tell what it was; and all that 
 night the black folk whispered together and won 
 dered and guessed what might be coming. 
 
 In the morning the little boy Booker went with his 
 mother and brother and sister to the "big house." 
 On the veranda were the master and his family. 
 There was also a tall man in a blue coat with brass 
 buttons, who stepped forward and made a little 
 speech and then read a long paper. The boy 
 learned afterwards that it was the Emancipation 
 Proclamation; but all he knew then was that his 
 mother bent over her children and kissed them, 
 with tears of joy rolling down her cheeks, and told 
 them that they were free. Before long the boy s 
 stepfather sent for them to come to West Virginia. 
 
 This little black boy had several times had a 
 
148 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON 
 
 glimpse through an open door into a schoolroom, 
 where boys and girls sat studying, and there was 
 nothing in all the world that he wanted so much as 
 to go to school and learn to read. His mother con 
 trived to get him an old spelling book, and somehow 
 he learned most of the alphabet. After a while a 
 school was opened, but the boy was sadly disap 
 pointed, for his stepfather said he must work and 
 help support the family. Work he did, but in the 
 evenings, after a long day of labor, he studied, and 
 at length he was permitted to go to school for a 
 while, provided he would get up early and work till 
 nine, and also work two hours in the afternoon. 
 When he was no longer allowed to go to school by 
 day, he recited at night, sometimes walking several 
 miles to his teacher s home. 
 
 One day he heard two men talking about a won 
 derful school in Hampton, Virginia, where a colored 
 boy might be taught and also learn a trade; and just 
 as soon as he could he set off for Hampton, five 
 hundred miles away, and arrived with fifty cents in 
 his pocket to pay for his education. He must have 
 been a shabby-looking boy, for on the way he had 
 slept under a sidewalk in Richmond, and he had 
 spent several days earning money by unloading pig 
 iron from a vessel. It was a question whether he 
 would be permitted to enter the school, for so many 
 applied that only the most promising could be 
 taken. But the head teacher was watching him, 
 and suddenly she said, "That recitation room needs 
 sweeping. Take the broom and sweep it." Some- 
 
FOUNDER OF TUSKEGEE INSTITUTE 149 
 
 how the boy felt that this was his entrance exami 
 nation, and he rejoiced that he had once worked 
 for a lady who had insisted upon the best possible 
 sweeping and cleaning. He swept that room three 
 times and dusted it four times. When it was 
 done the teacher rubbed her handkerchief over the 
 tables and woodwork about the walls, looked at the 
 handkerchief and then looked at the boy, as he stood 
 anxiously waiting. "I guess you will do to enter 
 this institution," she said kindly. Moreover, she 
 made him janitor, and so gave him the chance to 
 work his way. It was not easy, for he had to be up 
 at four every morning, but he was a happy boy, for 
 now he was getting the education that he had longed 
 for. 
 
 He was being educated not only in books, but in 
 ways that he had never dreamed of. When the 
 time came for making the building ready for the 
 opening of school in the autumn, he was amazed to 
 find that the head teacher, whom he looked upon 
 as a superior being, was not only taking charge of 
 the work, but was actually working beside him. 
 This was a new idea; he had found out that work 
 with the hands was not a disgrace, but that if it 
 was well done it was something to be proud of. 
 
 After he graduated he went straight home to 
 West Virginia and began to help his own people in 
 his own village. He taught the boys and girls in 
 the daytime and the older people in the evening. 
 He established a small reading room and a debating 
 society. He taught in two Sunday Schools in- 
 
150 
 
 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON 
 
 deed, he helped in every way that he could, without 
 any regard to whether he was paid or not. 
 
 Next came a call to return to Hampton as a 
 teacher; then in 1881, General Armstrong was 
 
 PICKING COTTON BY HAND ON A SOUTHERN PLANTATION 
 
 asked to recommend some one as principal of a 
 normal school for colored people to be established 
 in the little town of Tuskegee, Alabama. He 
 recommended Booker Washington, and a few days 
 later a telegram came which said, "Send him at 
 once." 
 
 He had expected that, of course, there would be 
 buildings and money to work with; but the money 
 consisted of a grant of two thousand dollars a year 
 from the State Legislature, which could be used for 
 nothing except teachers salaries, and the buildings 
 
FOUNDER OF TUSKEGEE INSTITUTE 151 
 
 consisted of a shanty so tumble-down and full of 
 holes that, when it rained, the teacher had to hear 
 recitations from under an umbrella. As an as 
 sembly-room he was permitted to use a church. 
 Not far away there was an old plantation for sale 
 at five hundred dollars. He borrowed two hundred 
 and fifty dollars, with many fears lest he should not 
 be able to repay the loan, and made a first payment. 
 On this plantation there was a kitchen, a stable, a 
 cabin, and an old henhouse. These all had to be 
 cleaned out, and the pupils took possession. 
 
 The people of Tuskegee, white as well as colored, 
 were deeply interested in the school, and chiefly by 
 their aid the land was paid for within five months. 
 People of both races were equally pleased when it 
 was decided somewhat later that a new building 
 must be put up. It would cost six thousand dollars, 
 and there was not a penny in the treasury; but the 
 school had grown so much that without such a 
 building it could no longer do its best work. Again 
 white people and black people were ready to help. 
 A white man who ran a sawmill near Tuskegee in 
 sisted upon providing the lumber. "Pay me when 
 you can," he said. A colored man who had once 
 been a slave brought a big hog as his contribution. 
 "Any nigger that s got any love for his race, or 
 any respect for himself, will bring a hog to the next 
 meeting," he declared. 
 
 The building was put up, and as the school 
 increased more buildings were needed and more 
 money. The whole burden of raising this money 
 
152 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON 
 
 fell upon Mr. Washington ; and it is no small thing 
 to be responsible for a large school and not know 
 where the money for bills is coming from. It was 
 doubly anxious work in this case, because, if it had 
 failed, many people would have insisted that it was 
 because the school had been under Negro manage 
 ment, and if ever asked again to help an institution 
 of the kind, they would have refused. 
 
 Mr. Washington was very wise in his begging. 
 He never annoyed people by teasing; he asked only 
 the privilege of telling them what Tuskegee and its 
 graduates were doing, and then left it to them to 
 decide whether they wished to help in the good 
 work or not. Sometimes they refused, but often he 
 received more than he had hoped for. One wealthy 
 man listened to his story, but gave him nothing. 
 Two years later, however, this man sent him Tus- 
 kegee s first large gift, a check for ten thousand 
 dollars. " I had placed this sum in my will for your 
 school," the donor wrote, "but deem it wise to give 
 it to you while I live. I recall with pleasure your 
 visit to me two years ago." 
 
 It was 1 88 1 when the school was opened. Four 
 teen years later there was held at Atlanta, Georgia, 
 the Atlanta Cotton States and International Ex 
 position. A special building was set apart to show 
 what the Negroes had accomplished since they had 
 become free; and Booker Washington was asked to 
 make one of the addresses at the opening of the 
 exposition. 
 
 On the appointed day he started for Atlanta. 
 
FOUNDER OF TUSKEGEE INSTITUTE 153 
 
 "I felt," he said, "a good deal as I suppose a man 
 feels when he is on his way to the gallows." And 
 certainly it was no easy task to address Northern 
 whites, Southern whites, and Negroes all together. 
 "I am afraid that you have got yourself into a 
 tight place," said a farmer friend to him. He 
 thought so too. 
 
 Governor Bullock introduced him to the audi 
 ence as "a representative of Negro enterprise and 
 Negro civilization." Mr. Washington made an 
 eloquent address, and at its close the Governor 
 grasped his hand, and both there and on the streets 
 afterwards, he was surrounded by crowds who were 
 eager to shake hands with him. Now came offers 
 from lecture bureaus and editors of magazines; but 
 Mr. Washington replied simply that his life-work 
 was to be at Tuskegee, and whenever he spoke in 
 public it must be in the interest of the school. 
 
 This speech at Atlanta was the beginning of his 
 public work. Long before his death, which oc 
 curred in 1915, his eloquence was recognized in 
 America and in Europe. When he spoke, he never 
 failed to "carry" his audience. Never did he show 
 a trace of the self-seeking that would have weakened 
 his influence. He was proudly entertained both in 
 shanties and in the noblest palaces of Europe. 
 Every one respected him and admired him. He 
 had no enemies, for he was an enemy to no one. 
 "No man shall narrow and degrade me by making 
 me hate him," was the expression of his character. 
 
 The plan of his school was somewhat different 
 
154 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON 
 
 from that of ordinary schools. Mr. Washington s 
 idea was that both black boys and white boys ought 
 to get as much education of the brain as they could 
 afford; but that the majority of the educated col 
 ored people could help themselves and their race 
 more by entering business or industrial life. " There 
 is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a 
 poem," he said to them. That is why, although 
 
 A PNEUMATIC MACHINE FOR PICKING COTTON 
 
 the course in "book learning" is as thorough as in 
 any other school, a great deal of emphasis is laid 
 upon industrial work. The students are required 
 to work six days in each month, and no one is 
 allowed to graduate who is not prepared to make in 
 some way a living for himself and others. 
 
 Tuskegee teaches some forty different kinds of 
 
FOUNDER OF TUSKEGEE INSTITUTE 155 
 
 industrial work. The girls are taught gardening, 
 fruit-growing, dairying, bee-culture, sewing, etc. 
 Learn to make your services indispensable," said 
 the wise founder. This teaching is most thorough, 
 and the course in horseshoeing, for instance, is just 
 as carefully graded as that in arithmetic. It begins: 
 "The condition of a shoeing floor. How to make a 
 shoer s fire. The name and use of shoeing tools. 
 What a mould is and how to make it; also how to 
 strike on a shoe," etc. The hoofs and lower joints 
 of the legs of a dead horse are carefully dissected 
 before the class, and they see for themselves how 
 much harm a single nail improperly driven can do. 
 
 Not many students can afford to pay for tuition. 
 That is why Tuskegee asks its friends for help. As 
 for board, students can work that out, in part at 
 least, for they are all paid for what they do on the 
 school farm. Students have done the greater part 
 of the work on the school buildings, even to making 
 the bricks. 
 
 Mr. Washington did not forget the time when he 
 could not have even one hour a day for school, and 
 he opened an evening school for those who had no 
 money for any part of their board. They work ten 
 hours a day for their expenses, and study two hours 
 in the evening. 
 
 Mr. Washington believed that graduating essays 
 should be about things that the students had really 
 done and really understood. One boy, for instance, 
 brought as his "essay" a live pig up on the plat 
 form, and told the audience what he had learned 
 
156 BOOKER T. WASHINGTON 
 
 about the care of pigs. Another stood beside a pile 
 of cabbages and told how he had prepared the soil 
 and harvested the crop. Never before was a cab 
 bage applauded so heartily as the big one that he 
 held up for his audience to see. How to hatch 
 chickens with an incubator, how to make cheese, 
 how to give " first aid to the injured," have all 
 been discussed on the commencement platform at 
 Tuskegee. 
 
 Many of the audience were Negro farmers. From 
 these " essays" they learned the latest and best 
 methods of work. This knowledge they carried 
 home and made use of on their own farms. Their 
 neighbors copied from them; and like the circle 
 formed when a stone is thrown into the water, the 
 knowledge of all sorts of practical things continues 
 to spread. Then, too, ev^ery graduate is the center 
 of a circle of information and help for those of his 
 race who have not had his opportunities. This is 
 what one man has done for his country, one little 
 black boy who slept under a Richmond sidewalk, 
 and began his education on a capital of fifty cents 
 and a determination to do his level best. 
 
AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS 
 
 GREATEST AMERICAN SCULPTOR 
 
 1848-1907 
 
 1887, Lincoln s statue unveiled in Chicago 
 
 ONE September day in 1848 there landed in Boston 
 town a young Frenchman, his pretty Irish wife, and 
 their baby son. The man was a maker of fine shoes. 
 He had served his apprenticeship in the slow, old- 
 fashioned way, and now he was ready to show the 
 New Yorkers that their lasts were entirely wrong, 
 and that whether the shoes which he made for them 
 were comfortable and fashionable or not, they were 
 correct, and this was all that could be asked. 
 
 His son said years afterwards that the only time 
 when shoes were properly made in that shop was 
 once when the proprietor was away for some weeks. 
 Nevertheless, it somehow came to pass that the 
 wealthiest and best-known people in New York were 
 customers. Maybe they cared less for the shoes 
 than for the pleasure of arguing with the positive 
 little shoemaker, who talked with a wonderfully 
 complex mixture of fierce French accent and Irish 
 brogue," and was ready to leave his work for an 
 argument at any moment. One of these customers 
 noticed in a little pause between arguments a small 
 boy in a corner making pen-and-ink sketches of the 
 shoemakers as they worked, and pleaded that the boy 
 should be allowed to become an artist, as he wished. 
 
158 AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS 
 
 This small boy said in later years that he was a 
 boy of streets and sidewalks; and certainly he was 
 more like a street Arab than an ideal genius. He 
 helped stretch cords across the sidewalk to knock 
 off men s hats in the dark. He lowered his mother s 
 basket of sweet potatoes without her consent and 
 cooked them in a cobblestone furnace in the street; 
 and his "gang" fought with other gangs whenever 
 they came together. He says that in school about 
 fifteen of these boys were lined up every afternoon 
 to receive their daily whipping. They formed a dire 
 and dreadful plot to murder the teacher; but some 
 how he escaped the consequences of his misdeeds. 
 
 When Augustus Saint-Gaudens was thirteen, his 
 father said one day: "My boy, you must go to work. 
 What should you like to do?" 
 
 "I don t care," the boy replied, "if if is only 
 something that will help me to be an artist." 
 
 Early in the nineteenth century a few American 
 painters were successful enough to be known in 
 Europe, but there were hardly any sculptors, and 
 they made their homes in Italy as soon as the fates 
 permitted. They could not easily do otherwise. 
 There were neither teachers nor good statues in 
 America. There were no bronze foundries and no 
 good statuary marble. In 1853 there was just one 
 equestrian statue in the United States. As the 
 years passed a deeper interest was taken in sculp 
 ture. Artists began to return to America after 
 studying abroad. Even then, however, although 
 there were sculptors of ability in the land, they vvere 
 
GREATEST AMERICAN SCULPTOR 159 
 
 absorbed in their own work and did not care or were 
 not prepared to teach. Cutting cameos was a step 
 in the right direction, perhaps as long a step as 
 could be taken on this side of the Atlantic; and to a 
 cutter of stone cameos the boy was apprenticed. 
 But the cutter had a bad temper, and after three 
 years he discharged the boy. To be sure, he came 
 half an hour later with an offer of more wages, but 
 the apprentice refused to return. He never forgot 
 his father s proud little smile as he listened to the 
 son s speech of refusal. 
 
 To make cameos of stone was far more aristo 
 cratic employment than to make them of shell; and 
 the young Augustus felt a little humiliated when 
 he made an engagement to work for a cutter of the 
 latter. Fortunately, the new master owned a lathe 
 for cutting stone cameos which he was glad to have 
 used; and so dignity was saved. Even better than 
 this, he was interested in his apprentice s talent, and 
 gave him extra time every day for modeling. Then, 
 too, the young man studied at Cooper Institute, 
 working every evening long after the class was over. 
 "Some day I shall be a famous sculptor," he used to 
 say to himself; and he was ready to work night and 
 day to bring his dream to pass. 
 
 When he was nineteen his father bought him a 
 steerage ticket to France and gave him a hundred 
 dollars, saved from the son s wages; and before 
 many days had passed the cameo-cutter was study 
 ing modeling in Paris with all his might. He was 
 supporting himself by cutting cameos, but the mod- 
 
1 6o AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS 
 
 eling was so much more interesting than the cutting 
 that he gave the latter only time enough to keep 
 himself from starving. Every little while he took 
 a cheaper room, moving after dark so that no one 
 should see how little he had to move. 
 
 When he first came he had applied promptly to 
 the American Minister to make a formal application 
 to the Beaux Arts for his entrance. After nine 
 months of waiting and working a big envelope 
 with the seal of the United States was handed to 
 him. It contained his certificate of admission. 
 This was more than a permission to enter an art 
 school; it was a declaration of belief in his talent, 
 and he worked with more enthusiasm than ever. 
 
 Then came the Franco-Prussian War. One regi 
 ment after another left Paris for the front. He 
 could hardly help joining them; but letters from his 
 parents came continually, begging him not to en 
 list, and he yielded to their entreaties. To a friend 
 he wrote : "They are getting old, and love me. They 
 have worked hard all their lives, are poor, and are 
 still working. What would happen if they should 
 lose me now? You can imagine what a miserable 
 state of mind I am in." 
 
 But a happy day was coming. Saint-Gaudens 
 had made a clay model for a statue of Hiawatha, 
 "pondering, musing in the forest, on the welfare of 
 his people." It was nearly done, but he shut the 
 door of his studio and walked away gloomily. Here 
 was a piece of work that he believed would bring 
 him fame, and he had not the money to have it cast 
 
GREATEST AMERICAN SCULPTOR 161 
 
 in plaster. But the fairy godmother or rather, 
 godfather appeared in the shape of a wealthy 
 American. The 
 Hiawatha was 
 cast in plaster, 
 cut in marble, 
 and sold in 
 America. "I 
 suppose I 
 
 danced with 
 glee," wrote 
 Saint- Gaudens. 
 He returned to 
 America for a 
 while. "I am 
 traveling in the 
 steerage," he 
 said, " but some 
 day I ll be cross 
 ing the ocean 
 in the cabin as 
 a well-known 
 
 This monument, in memory of one of the founders 
 of Springfield, Massachusetts, is one of Saint-Gau- 
 dens s most picturesque works. It is not intended as 
 a portrait but as an ideal embodiment of the prin 
 ciples of the stalwart old Puritans of New England. 
 
 DEACON SAMUEL CHAPIN 
 artist." 
 
 Ini875Saint- 
 Gaudens was in 
 America, with a 
 dismal little studio and such longing for Rome that, 
 until the engineer of the building objected, he used 
 to let water trickle into his bowl to imitate the 
 sound of a favorite Roman fountain. There was 
 another reason for his gloom. The father of a cer- 
 
162 AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS 
 
 tain young lady now on her way to America had re 
 fused to consent to her marriage with the sculptor 
 until he had at least one important commission; and 
 no commission had come. 
 
 A statue of Admiral Farragut was to be erected in 
 New York, but there was not much chance for a lit 
 tle known sculptor to be chosen as its maker. Saint- 
 Gaudens did his best to get the commission. He 
 made two models, a large drawing, and a bust ; and 
 he won the prize. After two years the statue, in 
 plaster, was exhibited in Paris. One year later it 
 was formally unveiled in New York City, and now 
 stands in Madison Square. 
 
 There was no question that the maker of this 
 statue was a great sculptor. The Admiral stands 
 on deck, his feet wide apart, as they have to be to 
 keep one s balance on shipboard. He is very much 
 alive and very human. At the first glance you feel 
 that it is a real person, not a figure which the sculp 
 tor has imagined as an ideal admiral. Before it was 
 cast in bronze Saint-Gaudens wrote, "At times I 
 think it s good, then indifferent, then bad"; but no 
 one else doubted that it was good. Even the 
 crowds about the statue, most of them people who 
 knew nothing about art, felt its power and its mean 
 ing. "You have preached a small sermon on truth, 
 honor, courage, and loyalty," wrote one of the best 
 critics of the day to the artist. One midnight, soon 
 after the unveiling, Saint-Gaudens, his wife, and a 
 friend passed near the statue. There stood an old 
 man with his hat off. "Why, that s father!" the 
 
GREATEST AMERICAN SCULPTOR 163 
 
 artist exclaimed. "Father, what are you doing 
 here at this hour?" "Oh, you go about your busi 
 ness!" his father replied. "Have n t I a right to be 
 here?" Everybody had praised the statue, but I 
 fancy that this bit of appreciation pleased Saint- 
 Gaudens more than all the rest. A few years after 
 this the father died. He had always been very dear 
 to his talented son ; and that night the artist walked 
 sobbing back and forth in his dimly lighted studio, 
 telling his own little son all that his father had 
 meant to him. 
 
 Saint-Gaudens was remarkably successful in his 
 low-relief portrait medallions, a graceful, delicate, 
 fascinating species of art. It is not easy, for while 
 a statue is in the shape of nature, a low relief is 
 not, and yet must appear to be. Saint-Gaudens did 
 such fine work in this line that some people who had 
 not seen his statues wondered whether he would be 
 able to make them as strong as the medallions were 
 exquisite. 
 
 Besides the Farragut, Saint-Gaudens s most fa 
 miliar works are the statue of Sherman, the bas-re 
 lief memorial of Robert Gould Shaw, the statue of 
 Lincoln, and the statue in the Rock Creek Cemetery 
 in Washington. 
 
 In the Sherman statue Sherman is on horseback, 
 pressing forward, while Victory, in the form of a 
 young girl, is leading the way. It is so full of motion 
 that one can hardly realize that it is not actually 
 sweeping onward. 
 
 In the bronze medallion on Boston Common in 
 
i6 4 AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS 
 
 memory of Robert Shaw, who took command of a 
 Negro regiment in the Civil War, the commander is 
 on horseback, and with him are the marching Ne 
 groes, uniformed alike, carrying muskets all point 
 ing the same way. It was not an easy problem to 
 keep this from being stiff, to give no two prominent 
 muskets exactly the same slant, and to keep the 
 lower part of the bronze from being a mere wilder 
 ness of legs of horses and men; but the artist suc 
 ceeded. This, too, is full of motion, but it is a si 
 lent, sturdy, determined motion, quite unlike the 
 irresistible swiftness of the Sherman figure. 
 
 Entirely different from these is the statue in the 
 Rock Creek Cemetery, which John Hay and many 
 others have called Saint-Gaudens s masterpiece. It 
 is a bronze figure of a woman with heavy drapery 
 falling about her in loose folds. She sits on a block 
 of granite against a granite wall. Her head rests 
 upon her hand. The marvel of the statue is the face 
 and its expression. The sculptor said, "My own 
 name for it is The Peace of God." A few years 
 later, when asked by a friend what he called the 
 figure, he hesitated and then said, "I call it The 
 Mystery of the Hereafter." "Then it is not hap 
 piness?" asked his friend. "No," he replied; "it is 
 beyond pain and beyond joy." 
 
 Saint-Gaudens s statue of Lincoln appeals to 
 everybody. The great statesman stands in front of 
 his chair. One hand is behind him, the other grasps 
 the lapel of his coat. His head is slightly bowed, 
 and there is a solemn dignity and thoughtfulness in 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Of this statue by Saint- Gaudens, Royal Cortissoz writes: "The Lincoln has al 
 ways seemed to me one of the salient statues of the world, a portrait and a work of 
 art of truly heroic mould. Simplicity is its predominating characteristic. Precisely 
 in this attitude does one prefer to see Lincoln portrayed, with no hint of dramatic 
 movement, with nothing of the orator, but with everything of the quiet, self- 
 contained genius that was the same under all circumstances, in all crises. ... It is 
 as if Saint-Gaudens had divined Lincoln s very soul and had imaged him forth as 
 men saw him under the stress of the war, and as he lives in the imagination of mil 
 lions. " 
 
1 66 AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUD ENS 
 
 the attitude and in every line of the face. A/lore 
 than one sculptor has noted the lack of symmetry in 
 Lincoln s measurements and has persisted in chisel 
 ing him as ill-proportioned and awkward. Saint- 
 Gaudens realized that a man with a great thought 
 cannot be awkward, whatever his measurements 
 may be, and he has given us the real Lincoln. 
 
 Saint-Gaudens looked upon his pupils almost as 
 his own children. He criticized their work so gently 
 that one complained she could not tell whether he 
 really meant it or not. When his son sent a drawing 
 of himself for criticism, the father returned a playful 
 note, saying: "I ve forgotten how your ear is con 
 structed, but if it s made like that, you have the 
 only ear so placed in the world. You have tipped 
 the top forward, instead of backward, as it exists 
 with everybody but freaks. If your ear is so con 
 structed, you need n t worry about studying to earn 
 your living. You can earn that in a museum." 
 
 He was always conscientious in his praises, but 
 generous. One day he came across a piece of work 
 by a young sculptor which pleased him much. He 
 called a cab on the instant, took the long ride to the 
 door of the artist, and said, "I am Mr. Saint-Gau 
 dens, and I ve come to tell you what I think of the 
 beautiful work you have done." There was no 
 jealousy in him. When any one of his artist friends 
 made a success, he was as proud of it as if it had been 
 his own. He was too great to be jealous. 
 
 He liked people of all sorts, and they liked him. 
 In the words of Weir Mitchell, "I think a sweeter 
 
GREATEST AMERICAN SCULPTOR 167 
 
 gentleman I never knew, nor one so magnanimous 
 about his fellow-artists, nor any so capable of 
 putting the high poetry of his imagination into 
 marble." 
 
JAMES JEROME HILL 
 
 BUILDER OF RAILROADS 
 
 1838-1916 
 
 1890, consolidation of the St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Manitoba 
 Railroad with the Great Northern 
 
 JAMES JEROME HILL was famous as a builder of 
 roads, but the first one that he built brought him 
 neither fame nor fortune. His father said, " If you 
 will make a road from the farm to the village, I will 
 give you a two-year-old colt." With the help of the 
 other boys the hardy little fellow made the road. 
 It was a mile long, and wherever there was a swamp 
 he had to lay down logs, and then put smaller logs 
 across them to form a " corduroy" road. When the 
 work was done the colt was two and a half years old. 
 The boy did not fare so well as he deserved, for his 
 father had a creditor and the creditor wanted a colt, 
 and poor little "Jim" was left crying in the vacant 
 stall. 
 
 The Hill family removed to Rockwood, Ontario, 
 and the boy was sent to the Rockwood Academy. 
 He had attended a good district school from the 
 time that he was five years old, and now for four 
 years he was under .the influence of the strong, wise, 
 and inspiring man who was principal of the Acad 
 emy. On the death of Mr. Hill the family made 
 their home in Guelph. School had to be given up, 
 but not study, and this was carefully guided by his 
 
BUILDER OF RAILROADS 169 
 
 teacher and friend. The grateful boy never forgot 
 this kindness, and in writing to this teacher thirty 
 years later, he began the letter, "My dear old Mas 
 ter." 
 
 On leaving school he had found work in a store, 
 and he felt rich, indeed, when he handed his first 
 month s wages to his mother. He was faithful, 
 and after one year his salary was trebled. He was 
 not exactly a millionaire even then, for he had re 
 ceived at first only one dollar a week; but with 
 sewing and washing and gardening, and three dol 
 lars a week as a steady income, the little family 
 counted themselves well-to-do. 
 
 As the months passed, the boy became restless. 
 He was probably not planning, even in his dreams, 
 to build railroads, but he did feel that he might be 
 doing something better than selling nails and cali 
 coes in a village store. His mother believed in her 
 boy and thought he ought to have a better chance 
 in life; and so, quite in the story-book fashion, he 
 started off one morning with twenty dollars in his 
 pocket and a bundle swung over his shoulder on a 
 stick. 
 
 Before many days had passed he was in Buffalo, 
 with a dollar-a-day job. He had doubled his vil 
 lage salary, and he sent the twenty dollars back to 
 his mother. Everybody was going to California in 
 those days, and he went too as far as Davenport, 
 Iowa; thence to St. Paul, Minnesota. At the office 
 of the steamboat company he asked for work. In 
 less than two minutes he was hired. "If you 
 
170 JAMES JEROME HILL 
 
 have n t sense enough to use figures, you are surely 
 strong enough to hustle," said the man at the desk, 
 looking at his sturdy figure. 
 
 In 1856 Minnesota built her first railroad. It 
 was ten miles long; it had one engine and about a 
 dozen open freight-cars. These were not especially 
 well filled, because it was quite as easy to float logs 
 down the river as to carry them to the railroad and 
 load them into freight-cars; and the route did not 
 pay. A new company bought it out, gave it the 
 ambitious name of "St. Paul and Pacific," and ex 
 tended it to connect with a line of steamers running 
 north down the Red River to Winnipeg. James 
 Hill was also a connecting link between road and 
 river, for he had for some time been interested in 
 the steamship line, and he now became the St. Paul 
 agent of the railroad. 
 
 This was not a very magnificent position, for the 
 road was not a success, and it owed a large amount 
 of money; more than it could ever pay, said the 
 wise folk who took the trouble to give it a thought. 
 There was one man, however, who believed in the 
 shabby little railway, and that was James Hill. He- 
 had been over the country between St. Paul and 
 Winnipeg in both summer and winter, and he knew 
 it thoroughly. He knew that it was fertile land 
 and that it would raise wheat. But there must be 
 settlers to plant the wheat, and there must be a 
 railroad to carry the crop to market. 
 
 He succeeded in persuading several men of means 
 and enterprise that the road was worth saving, pro- 
 
BUILDER OF RAILROADS 171 
 
 vided the bondholders, chiefly Dutchmen, would 
 sell out at a low price. The Dutchmen sent repre 
 sentatives over from Holland, and when they had 
 learned the condition of the property, they agreed 
 to sell the bonds at less than half their face value. 
 The four men formed a company, and Hill became 
 general manager which meant that he had the 
 responsibility of making the road pay. 
 
 He had some very definite ideas of how this 
 should be done. If he could fill the country with 
 prosperous, contented settlers and the railroad 
 served them well, its fortune would be made. He 
 set to work to improve the miles of the decrepit old 
 road, and to extend them; and this one man was 
 the inspiration of the whole work. The summers 
 were hot and the winters were cold; but somehow, 
 either by dog-sled, on horseback, or on foot, he 
 managed to be here, there, and everywhere, espe 
 cially where he was not expected. It was said 
 that he knew every spike that went into the road. 
 At an average rate of three and one fourth miles for 
 every \vorking day, the railroad was pushed on to 
 the westward, through Minnesota, Dakota, Mon 
 tana, Idaho, Washington, to Puget Sound. Never 
 had a railroad been built so rapidly before. 
 
 To drive on the building of six thousand miles of 
 railroad would generally be enough to occupy one 
 man, but Mr. Hill was at the same time attending 
 to the other side of the business, he was filling the 
 country with people. To genuine settlers he made 
 prices of land low and terms of payment easy. 
 
172 JAMES JEROME HILL 
 
 Moreover, he did not leave them to struggle on 
 alone after they had bought the land, for he im 
 ported farm horses and cattle to make sure that 
 they had the best stock. Seeds and farm imple 
 ments were provided at much less than market 
 prices. Hundreds of thousands of comfortable 
 homes were established in the "Jim Hill country." 
 Mr. Hill himself set up a model farm near St. Paul, 
 and there he ran an "experimental station," giv 
 ing the farmers the benefit of his experiments. 
 
 There was no question that hundreds of millions 
 of bushels of grain could be raised in Minnesota 
 alone; but it would be of small value to either the 
 settlers or the world unless it could be carried away 
 from the grain fields and distributed where it was 
 needed. Moreover, it must be carried cheaply; and 
 here was one of the problems that Mr. Hill had been 
 solving. This general manager "hated like poison 
 an empty box-car on one of his trains." Hauling 
 an "empty" was the same thing as carrying freight 
 for nothing, and was a loss to the railroad. The 
 people on the Pacific Coast were glad to get the 
 grain of the East, but they were comparatively few 
 in number, and had not much to return. The re 
 sult was that freight-cars from Minnesota to the 
 Pacific Northwest were loaded ; but from the North 
 west back to Minnesota they were often empty; 
 and every empty car made freight more expensive. 
 
 Mr. Hill had not built the Great Northern with 
 out foreseeing that this would happen, and rinding a 
 remedy. In the Northwest was the best lumber in 
 
174 JAMES JEROME HILL 
 
 the world. There was no market for it because the 
 other railroads had charged ninety cents to carry 
 one hundred pounds East. He called together the 
 principal lumbermen and asked, "How much can 
 you afford to pay for freight on lumber?" 
 
 "Sixty- five cents a hundred," they replied. 
 
 "No," objected this original manager; "you 
 could send a little at that rate, but you could not 
 move any large amount if you paid more than fifty 
 cents a hundred." This was something new, and 
 the lumbermen began to open their eyes. Mr. Hill 
 continued, "I will give you a rate of forty cents on 
 fir and fifty cents on cedar." 
 
 The result of this was that there were long lines 
 of cars loaded with lumber, so many, indeed, that 
 trade actually began to swing the other way, and 
 soon the "empties" were not going east, but west; 
 that is, they would have been if the general mana 
 ger had not been looking out for this very state 
 of things and providing a remedy before it came 
 to pass. He had been sending men to Japan and 
 China and India, and he planned a great business 
 in carrying wheat to Asia and bringing back Asi 
 atic products. He had built two huge ships to ply 
 between our Pacific Coast and the Orient; but laws 
 forbidding railroads to make competitive rates or 
 to own steamship lines made it impossible to carry 
 out his schemes for building up this foreign trade. 
 
 Mr. Hill maintained strict discipline, but he 
 never tried to put himself on a pedestal away from 
 his men. King Albert of Belgium was his friend, 
 
BUILDER OF RAILROADS 175 
 
 and as his guest had been over the Great Northern 
 Railway. In later years, when some one spoke of 
 the King s friendliness with his subjects, he said he 
 had learned that from Mr. Hill s manner toward his 
 men. 
 
 On Mr. Hill s seventy-fifth birthday, the Veteran 
 Employees Association held a celebration; and the 
 older ones among the employees swapped jokes and 
 stories with him as freely as if they were boys on a 
 fishing trip. In response to an address he said, "It 
 has not been the easiest thing in the world to play 
 first violin in the Great Northern band . . . but 
 somebody must lead the band, or there won t be 
 harmony." Three months after his death this same 
 Association wrote of him, "While we respected 
 and admired him, first and before all, and every year 
 more and more, we loved him." 
 
 And yet this man never curried favor with his 
 employees or any one else; but he was never in 
 tentionally unjust, and when he was sure that he 
 was in the right, no power could move him. A 
 conductor on the railroad was once discharged for 
 breaking rules. He had a strong political "pull," 
 and soon one United States Senator and two judges 
 asked that he be put back into his position. Mr. 
 Hill replied: "We are charged with the responsi 
 bility for lives and property committed to our care. 
 The responsibility is a heavy one, and we cannot 
 discharge it by retaining undesirable trainmen in 
 our employ. I am surprised that these judges 
 should so far lower themselves as to make their 
 
176 JAMES JEROME HILL 
 
 request. They certainly should know better. . . . 
 We have difficulty enough in securing good men, 
 and this difficulty would be greatly increased if we 
 paid any attention to such requests, even from the 
 Bench." 
 
 As the world s greatest expert in transportation 
 Mr. Hill spoke in 1912 on that subject, and put his 
 finger on the weak spot in the transportation sys 
 tems. When traffic is blocked, he said, and the 
 railroad yards are filled with cars that cannot be 
 moved, the railroad is losing money, business men 
 are losing trade, and the workers are losing employ 
 ment. Transportation must move freely and 
 easily; but how? People talk of a car shortage, 
 when they mean slowness of movement at the 
 terminals; that is, time lost in getting into or out 
 of or through terminal points because there is not 
 room enough to handle the cars. More cars would 
 only make matters worse. "If you increase the 
 size of a bottle without enlarging its neck, more 
 time and work are required to fill and empty it, 
 said this keen-eyed man. "What is needed is not 
 more cars, but larger terminals." 
 
 Among the many subjects in which Mr. Hill was 
 interested was one of the questions that are press 
 ing upon us to-day. He saw, as students had seen 
 before him, that the number of inhabitants in the 
 world was increasing much more rapidly than the 
 amount of food. These students had dolefully 
 predicted that the time would surely come when 
 vast numbers of people must die of starvation. 
 
BUILDER OF RAILROADS 177 
 
 Mr. Hill regarded the matter quite as seriously as 
 they; but he had a remedy, and this remedy was 
 conservation ; which every one talks about now, but 
 which few even thought about then. The ground 
 is all that we have to depend upon, he said, and 
 therefore we must plough deeply, fertilize, practice 
 rotation of crops; in short, the quantity of food 
 which an acre produces must be made to increase 
 as fast as the population. Then, too, we must take 
 care of the iron, coal, oil, etc., of the earth, for there 
 is no more to come. We must use lumber wisely 
 and carefully, because it takes many years for a 
 tree to grow. 
 
 This address went everywhere. President Roose 
 velt called the governors of the States to meet at 
 the White House to consider how the natural re 
 sources of the land could best be conserved and to 
 listen to Mr. Hill. This was the beginning of the 
 National Conservation Commission. In his later 
 speeches Mr. Hill carried his ideas farther. He 
 showed that during the nine years before that time, 
 State expenses had increased 201 per cent, while 
 State wealth had increased by only 65 per cent. 
 "You cannot eat your cake and have it too," he 
 said. Public money spent carelessly and uselessly 
 throws a heavy burden upon labor and prevents a 
 real national progress. 
 
 In giving up the presidency of the Great Northern 
 he had said, "Most men who have really lived have 
 had, in some shape, their great adventure. This 
 railway is mine." But his name became as closely 
 
JAMES JEROME HILL 
 
 associated with conservation as with railroads. He 
 was asked to contribute a limerick in aid of some 
 charity, and this is what he sent: 
 
 "There was a young farm in the West, 
 So much overworked and hard-pressed 
 That it wearily said: 
 I 11 just take to my bed 
 And drop through to China to rest. 
 
 " But alas! when the roots of the trees 
 Caught the eye of the frugal Chinese, 
 They proceeded to pounce, 
 And to plant every ounce 
 Of that Farm to Potatoes and Peas." 
 
JOHN MUIR 
 
 THE MAN WHO LOVED TREES AND MOUNTAINS 
 
 1838-1914 
 
 1890, instrumental in establishment of Yosemite National Park 
 
 "BAIRNS," said a Scotch father to his two boys, 
 "you needna learn your lessons the nicht, for we re 
 gan to America the morn!" 
 
 These boys, John Muir and his brother David, 
 went to school in the old-fashioned way. Every 
 day they had to learn three lessons in Latin, three in 
 French, and three in English, besides spelling, his 
 tory, arithmetic, and geography; and for every mis 
 take the taws, or leather strap, was promptly ap 
 plied. If they had dared to say they did not under 
 stand the lesson or that it was not interesting, the 
 teacher would have whipped them harder than ever 
 to bring them to their senses. It was to be learned, 
 and that was all there was to the matter. 
 
 But now they were going to live in the wilderness 
 far from schoolhouses, in the land where gold was 
 found in the earth and sugar in the trees. It is no 
 wonder that they were delighted. Little they cared 
 how the old scow of a sailing vessel tumbled about 
 on the six- weeks voyage ; they were too happy to be 
 seasick. 
 
 Then came years of hard work on the unbroken 
 soil of Wisconsin. The twelve-year-old boy had to 
 hold the plough and was required to make as straight 
 
i8o JOHN MUIR 
 
 furrows as a man. He soon had to split rails, make 
 hay, and dig wells. From four in the morning until 
 nine at night the work went on. Even when he 
 dropped in the field from sickness, he was not al- 
 Iowed 4 to stop. No one was pampered in that fam 
 ily; for instance, wood was a burden in this country 
 of forests, but to cut it took time, and in the whole 
 house only one tiny stove was allowed. The stern 
 discipline of Scotland was kept up, and for every 
 act of disobedience or forgetfulness a thrashing was 
 waiting. 
 
 In spite of the hardships the boys managed to find 
 a good deal of pleasure. They were allowed only 
 two holidays in the whole year, the Fourth of July 
 and New Year s Day ; but they loved the woods, the 
 birds, and the flowers; they petted the oxen and 
 horses and cat and dog; they learned that the ani 
 mals loved and feared and suffered just as people do, 
 that they were true to their friends, and were well 
 worthy of faithful affection in return; they learned 
 to swim and dive and climb, and they grew strong 
 and hearty. John felt very proud of the fact that 
 he could keep ahead of the hired men in most of the 
 farm work. 
 
 When John Muir was fifteen or sixteen he began 
 to be hungry for books. His father was willing that 
 he should study, provided he did the same amount 
 of work as usual, and when the boy begged for an 
 advanced arithmetic one was bought for him. In 
 the half-hour at noon he contrived to finish the book 
 in one summer. Then he took up algebra, geom- 
 
LOVER OF TREES AND MOUNTAINS 181 
 
 etry, and trigonometry. He borrowed books of the 
 neighbors; but the household rule was to go to bed 
 immediately after evening prayers, and the book- 
 hungry boy could rarely snatch ten minutes for 
 reading. "If you will read," said his father impa 
 tiently, "get up in the morning and read. You may 
 get up in the morning as early as you like." He 
 never dreamed that his son would be up at one 
 o clock, reading or working on some machine of his 
 own invention; but he had given his word and he 
 would not break it. And what did the boy not in 
 vent? There were water-wheels, a clock that would 
 tell the day of the week and the month, would start 
 fires and light lamps, besides connecting with his bed 
 in such a way as to set him on his feet at any desired 
 time. There was a thermometer, a barometer, a 
 contrivance that would feed the horses at any hour, 
 etc. 
 
 He thought that if he could get into a shop he 
 might learn how to become an inventor, and make 
 money enough to go to school. "Take your ma 
 chines to the State Fair," advised an admiring 
 neighbor, "and every shop in the country will be 
 open to you." 
 
 So it was that John Muir made his start in the 
 world. His capital was about fifteen dollars arid his 
 clocks, and a thermometer made of an old wagon 
 rod. He had feared that perhaps no one would care 
 to look at things made of wood, and he was genu 
 inely surprised when at the fair he was respectfully 
 told to choose whatever place in the Fine Arts Hall 
 
182 JOHN MUIR 
 
 suited him best, and a carpenter should make him a 
 shelf. He won a prize of fifteen dollars and a di 
 ploma. 
 
 For a while he worked in a shop, but it did not giv^e 
 him the help that he had hoped for. He longed for 
 the university and often wandered about its grounds, 
 thinking that the students must be the happiest 
 young fellows in the world, and wishing earnestly 
 that he might join them. At length he screwed up 
 his courage and went to the president. "I want to 
 enter college," he said timidly, "but I have been to 
 school only two months since I was eleven years old." 
 
 The president admitted him to the preparatory 
 department, and a few weeks later he entered the 
 freshman class. Four years he spent in study, 
 working summers at farming to earn the money for 
 tuition and food. The tuition he paid in full, but 
 his food he sometimes cut down to fifty cents a 
 week. One winter he taught a district school. It 
 was part of his work to start the schoolhouse fire at 
 eight every morning. This was easy enough for 
 one who knew how. He put a little powdered 
 chlorate of potash and sugar on the stove-hearth 
 near some shavings, then he made a little addition to 
 his wooden clock, so that at precisely eight it let a 
 drop of sulphuric acid fall upon the mixture. Not 
 one morning did it fail him, and in the coldest days 
 the schoolhouse was warm before the children ar 
 rived. " You won t do for a teacher," declared the 
 farmer with whom he was boarding, "you are in 
 league with the devil." 
 
LOVER OF TREES AND MOUNTAINS 183 
 
 He kept up his inventing while he was at college, 
 and many years after he had left, the janitor used to 
 show people his room -and tell long stories of the 
 wonders that had been produced therein. He did 
 not take any regular course, but selected what he 
 thought would be of most use to him; chemistry, 
 physics, mathematics, botany, geology, and a little 
 Latin and Greek. Then, as he said, he " wandered 
 away on a glorious botanical and geological excur 
 sion . . . leaving the Wisconsin University for the 
 University of the Wilderness." 
 
 Whether this wilderness was north or south made 
 no difference to him. He roamed about the Great 
 Lakes, then turned toward Florida. He went on 
 foot, a journey of a thousand miles. Even if there 
 had been railroads going his way, they would have 
 been of little use to him; he wanted to see things, 
 not to be whizzed past them. Just where he was 
 going, he knew not, and he cared little, for was not 
 the whole wide earth his playground and his study? 
 "I always know where I am, and that I am safe," 
 he wrote later. When he was sleepy he lay down 
 wherever he happened to be. If he happened to be 
 in the right place this method of sleeping was a de 
 light ; but when he tried sleeping on swampy ground 
 in Florida the result was a tropical fever. This 
 prevented him from going to South America and 
 turned his steps toward California. 
 
 Now he was indeed in bliss. He explored moun 
 tains and canons ; he studied the Sequoia gigantea, or 
 " Big Trees"; he traced the paths of ancient glaciers 
 
184 JOHN MUIR 
 
 and found their courses clearer than those of the 
 city streets. "Tracing the ways of glaciers ... is 
 glorious work," he declared. He rejoiced in every 
 thing, "the blessed storms and calms," the sunshine 
 and the flowers, the frosty mornings, the stars and 
 also the starless nights, the clouds, the solemn 
 gazing moon," the singing of the birds, the music of 
 trees and waterfalls and avalanches. 
 
 Once he took a ride on an avalanche. When it 
 started and caught him three thousand feet up on 
 the mountain-side, he threw himself on his back and 
 stretched out his arms. This kept him from sinking 
 in, and he rode down in fine shape, covering in one 
 minute the distance that it had taken him a whole 
 day to climb. He crept to the top of a pine-tree in a 
 tempest to see how a tree feels when it is swayed 
 back and forth by a storm wind. An earthquake 
 was to him only "kind Mother Earth trotting us on 
 her knee"; and although the Indians grunted "No 
 good! No good!" and even the birds fled in alarm 
 from the shaking trees, he ran out of his cabin cry 
 ing, "A noble earthquake! A noble earthquake!" 
 Once he slipped behind the Yosemite Fall to see the 
 moon through the water, and was in fairyland until 
 the wind swayed the fall toward the cliff and the 
 masses of water fell upon him like cobblestones. In 
 a forest of the Sierras he found himself on one side 
 of a log with a cinnamon bear on the other side. 
 They stood gazing straight into each other s eyes. 
 At last the bear s eyes fell, and he shambled away. 
 "That was the time you should have had a gun, 
 
SEQUOIAS IN MARIPOSA GROVE, SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA 
 
 John Muir says, "A diameter of twenty feet and a height of 275 is perhaps about 
 the average for anything like mature and favorably situated trees. Specimens 
 twenty-five feet in diameter are not rare, and a good many approach a height of 
 three hundred feet. Occasionally one meets a specimen thirty feet in diameter, and 
 rarely one that is larger." 
 
186 JOHN MUIR 
 
 John," remarked a friend to whom he told the story. 
 "What for?" asked Muir quietly. "The carrying 
 of a gun means a heart for slaughter. I don t kill 
 things." 
 
 Muir describes objects in nature as if each one 
 was his special friend. To him waterfalls differ as 
 much as persons. One fall is a " staid, orderly, 
 graceful, easy-going fall, proper and exact in every 
 movement and gesture"; another " plunges over the 
 brink of the precipice as if glad to escape into the 
 open air." Trees are as individual as cataracts; the 
 sugar-pine is "a remarkably proper tree in youth - 
 a strict follower of coniferous fashions." The red 
 wood branches " become excited" if any accident 
 happens to the crown of the tree, and try their best 
 to repair the damage. 
 
 Muir took three trips to Alaska, and here he 
 tramped up mountains and over glaciers to his 
 heart s content. He sat up nights to listen to the 
 roaring of the crunching ice ; he studied the flowers, 
 talking to them softly in the broad Scotch of his 
 childhood: u Ah, my blue-eyed darlin ! Little did I 
 think to see you here : How did you stray away from 
 Shasta?" He talked with the Indians about stars 
 and eclipses and glaciers. They eagerly adopted 
 him as a member of their tribe, gave him an Indian 
 name, and promised him as many wives as he chose 
 if he would only stay with them as their chief. 
 From those three visits he gave to his countrymen 
 not only a revelation of the marvels of Alaska, but 
 one of the best dog stories in the world, the tale of 
 
LOVER OF TREES AND MOUNTAINS 187 
 
 "Stickeen," the devoted little dog who adopted 
 Muir as his master and shared with him the worst 
 perils of the glaciers. 
 
 John Burroughs, too, went on one of the Arctic 
 expeditions. Early one morning he called to his 
 friend, w T ho was sleeping between decks: 
 
 "John Muir, you should have been up here 
 twenty minutes ago, enjoying this wonderful sun 
 rise." 
 
 "John Burroughs," Muir called back, "you 
 should have been up here twenty years ago instead 
 of being asleep down there in your cabin by the 
 Hudson." 
 
 Muir wandered where did he not wander? 
 The wonderful petrified forests of Arizona were his 
 discovery. He went to Africa, India, Siberia, Aus 
 tralia, South America, New Zealand. "Going to 
 the mountains is going home," he said, and with a 
 pocket-knife, a bag of bread, and a little tea he 
 would set out for a stay of many weeks among them. 
 " I love to be up among the glaciers and mountains," 
 he declared joyfully, "up where God is making the 
 world." 
 
 Muir was not a mere nature-loving tramp; he was 
 a valuable citizen, constantly adding to the knowl 
 edge of his countrymen about their own land. He 
 worked hard with pen and voice to save the Yosem- 
 ite and create a system of National Parks. " Every 
 body needs beauty as well as bread," he wrote. He 
 aroused people to save what remained of the Big 
 Trees. "Through all the eventful centuries since 
 
i88 JOHN MUIR 
 
 Christ s time, and long before that," he pleaded, 
 "God has cared for these trees, saved them from 
 drought, disease, avalanches, and leveling tempests 
 and floods; but He cannot save them from foolish 
 men." 
 
 He pleaded for the Hetch-Hetchy Valley as if for 
 the life of his own child, but he pleaded in vain. 
 Colleges gave him their degrees and begged him to 
 accept professorships; but to save the Hetch- 
 Hetchy would have been more to him than all their 
 honors. The Muir Woods near San Francisco and 
 the Muir Glacier in Alaska, and, more than these, 
 the love of nature which he awoke in the hearts of 
 thousands, will preserve his name. 
 
THEODORE THOMAS 
 
 THE MAN WHO TAUGHT US TO LOVE MUSIC 
 1835-1905 
 
 1890, Chicago Symphony Orchestra organized 
 
 WHEN a boy of two years asks for a violin he is 
 quite likely to want to "ride a cock-horse" with it 
 or to break it open to see what is inside ; but when the 
 two-year-old Theodore Thomas begged his father 
 for a violin it was because in his baby mind he real 
 ized that from this came the music ivhich even then 
 he loved. He meant to bring out that music, and 
 when his father gave him an old violin he seated 
 himself on the front steps and scraped away on the 
 instrument with all his might, trying to "make it 
 sing" as his father had done. 
 
 It was not long before he could make it sing, for 
 his father soon began to give him lessons in earnest. 
 When he was seven he could play any music that 
 was put before him; and if he could help it he would 
 not do anything but play. School was an interrup 
 tion, and whenever he dared he sat writing music 
 instead of studying his lessons. 
 
 "If Theodore continues as he has begun he will 
 be a great musician one of these days," said his 
 father; and it seems never to have occurred to 
 either father or mother that the child ought to be 
 taught anything but music. Of course he was 
 displayed as a prodigy. Indeed, he said long after- 
 
THEODORE THOMAS 
 
 wards that he could not remember when he was not 
 playing in public and earning money to help sup 
 port the family. 
 
 When he was ten years old the Thomas family 
 came to America. Then followed fifteen years of 
 the queerest kind of musical education that a boy 
 ever had. He played for dancing at parties; once 
 he played in a saloon and passed round his hat 
 afterwards; he was a member of a small orchestra; 
 he played the horn in a marine band on shipboard 
 for a year. He was left to do much as he liked, 
 and he was full of pranks. One story is told of his 
 being treed " by an indignant policeman ; but while 
 the policeman scolded there came from the top of 
 the tree such a merry tune that he stopped his lec 
 ture to listen. "It s only that Thomas boy," he 
 said, and went away grinning. Once the musician 
 started off with his violin, some tickets and posters, 
 a horse, and a big pistol for the robbers for whose 
 attacks he was boyishly hoping, and made a South 
 ern tour. He would ride on till he came to some 
 place that pleased him; then, when his money was 
 spent, he would give a concert to pay his bills. 
 
 It certainly was a queer musical education, but 
 it was an education, for with all his pranks he was 
 always in earnest with his music. Even when he 
 played for dancing he used to imagine that he was 
 practicing, and he played every note as carefully as 
 if he was performing before the most critical audi 
 ence. He kept his thoughts clean and spotless. 
 "I avoid vulgar talk and the reading of trashy 
 
HE TAUGHT US TO LOVE MUSIC 191 
 
 books," he once said. "Otherwise, when I come 
 before the public and interpret master-works, and 
 my soul should be inspired with noble and impress 
 ive emotions, these evil thoughts run around in my 
 head like squirrels and spoil it all. A musician 
 must keep his heart pure and his mind clean." Of 
 course he improved, and of course he succeeded. 
 When he was twenty- four he was called " America s 
 most accomplished violinist." 
 
 When a man is fully prepared for an opportunity 
 the opportunity is almost sure to come. Theodore 
 Thomas s opportunity came one evening in 1860 
 when he had just settled himself into an easy-chair 
 fora rest. The doorbell rang. "Our conductor is 
 ill," said a messenger from the opera house two 
 blocks away, "and the audience is waiting. Will 
 you come and conduct the opera?" He had never 
 conducted an opera and he was not familiar with 
 the one listed for that evening, but he replied, "I 
 will." He got himself into his dress suit, hurried to 
 the Academy of Music, and succeeded. This was 
 the beginning of his conducting. Dwight s Journal 
 of Music said of him, "He directs the performances 
 of venerable, spectacled, bald-headed cellists and 
 trombonists old enough to be his grandfathers." 
 
 But Theodore Thomas was not merely "stand 
 ing around" waiting to take whatever musical po 
 sition might be offered him ; he meant to devote his 
 life to one thing, and that was to interest the 
 American people in really good music. He lived in 
 New York, and he hoped that he could teach the 
 
192 THEODORE THOMAS 
 
 people of that city to enjoy and appreciate music so 
 sincerely that men and women of wealth would 
 endow a permanent orchestra. He would be its 
 conductor, and would make its work as perfect as 
 any in the world. 
 
 He never forgot that his audience must be edu 
 cated into enjoyment, and in 1866 he began by 
 "Summer-Night Concerts." These were given in 
 cool, airy halls, where potted palms and evergreens 
 and perhaps a fountain made the place seem almost 
 like a garden. The programs were not mere hap 
 hazard collections of musical pieces; they were 
 chosen with much thought and were carefully ar 
 ranged. The first part consisted of short, light 
 numbers that would interest people and amuse 
 them, but not serious enough for the wrath of the 
 really musical part of the audience to be aroused 
 by the inevitable coming in of the tardy folk. After 
 an intermission came the second part, never heavy, 
 but of deeper and more classic character. After 
 a second intermission there were marches, waltzes, 
 and a richly colored overture that would arouse 
 the audience and send them away with strains of 
 melody haunting their memories. He would never 
 play trash, but he realized that the people in gen 
 eral were not educated in music and that they 
 were rather afraid of the words "symphony" and 
 "classical." His method was to make his pro 
 grams just a little in advance of the general 
 taste, but not to weigh them down and so alarm 
 his audience. Whatever was to be played, whether 
 
KE TAUGHT US TO LOVE MUSIC 193 
 
 symphony or waltz, he always studied before re 
 hearsal as if he had never seen it before. 
 
 This was all most excellent for the people, and 
 the conductor had the great pleasure of seeing each 
 year that his audiences liked better music than they 
 had cared for before; but still his life was hard and 
 wearing. He was the one person responsible not 
 only for the quality of the music, but for the 
 salaries of the musicians. If concerts failed, there 
 was no guarantee fund to fall back upon. Theodore 
 Thomas must pay the men of his orchestra or they 
 must go unpaid. He did his best to pay by doing 
 what he called " going on the Highway," that is, 
 by making every year a concert round of some 
 thirty of the principal American cities; but he could 
 not altogether avoid debt. 
 
 In the fall of 1871 Thomas and his orchestra were 
 drawing near to Chicago when word reached them 
 that the city was on fire. The opera house was 
 already gone, and there was not even a place where 
 they could spend the night. According to his con 
 tract Thomas was not obliged to pay salaries if fire 
 or flood prevented giving concerts; but instead of 
 taking advantage of this, he assumed the whole 
 debt for salaries and expenses. In the Centennial 
 year of 1876 he was asked to direct the music of 
 the opening ceremonies at the Exposition and also 
 to produce a series of summer-night concerts. These 
 concerts would pay the debts, he believed ; but it 
 proved that visitors to the Exposition were too tired 
 to go out in the evening. The concerts failed, and 
 
194 THEODORE THOMAS 
 
 the sheriff seized the conductor s only property, his 
 valuable musical library. A good friend, however, 
 bought it, left it in his care, and later presented it 
 to Mrs. Thomas, begging her, if she should lend her 
 husband any one of the books, to make sure that 
 he took good care of it. There seemed so little hope 
 of Thomas s ever being able to pay the debts which 
 he had assumed that he was urged to become a bank 
 rupt; but he refused, and in time they were all paid. 
 
 Thomas was one of the most kindly of men, but 
 when reproof was deserved, he could be exceedingly 
 severe. For several years he was at the head of the 
 Cincinnati College of Music. One day some of the 
 sopranos were inattentive, and he reproved them 
 rather curtly. "He treats us as if we were mem 
 bers of his orchestra! " one singer exclaimed in wrath. 
 Thomas said nothing then, but as he passed her in 
 going out he said, "Madame, you will have to sing 
 a great deal better than you do now before I shall 
 treat you as I treat the members of my orchestra." 
 
 In circumstances that would have embarrassed 
 most leaders he was never at a loss what to do. 
 Once, when he was to play in Chicago on the eve of 
 a presidential election, he was asked to end the 
 concert with the " Star-Spangled Banner." The 
 program had already been printed. It ended with 
 quiet, gentle music; and how could he keep the 
 people in their seats and make a transition from 
 this to a patriotic song? His wife has described 
 how he managed it: "As the last strains of the 
 Massenet Suite were still vibrating on the strings, 
 
HE TAUGHT US TO LOVE MUSIC 195 
 
 the drums began a double roll so softly that it was 
 barely audible. Louder, louder, and still louder it 
 rose, till every heart began to beat wildly with ex 
 citement, wondering what was coming next. At 
 last the moment of climax was reached, and then 
 Thomas turned toward the audience, motioned to 
 them to rise and 
 sing, and with the 
 full power of the 
 orchestra, the great 
 organ, the chorus, 
 and the five thou 
 sand people of the 
 audience, all joining 
 together in one stu 
 pendous maelstrom 
 of sound, the Star- 
 Spangled Banner 
 was given such a 
 performance as is not 
 often heard. Many 
 people were in tears 
 before it was over, 
 and when Thomas 
 held aloft both hands 
 
 to sustain through the full measure its final glorious 
 chord, the singing was merged in a great shout 
 cheer on cheer echoing through the hall." 
 
 Throughout the years the great wish of the con 
 ductor had been to have a permanent orchestra, 
 and without his knowledge a plan was being quietly 
 
 A SNAPSHOT PORTRAIT OF MR. THOMAS 
 
 This was taken by a schoolboy at the Cincin 
 nati Festival of 1894, and has become one of 
 the most widely known pictures of the cele 
 brated conductor. 
 
196 
 
 THEODORE THOMAS 
 
 formed to bring this to pass in Chicago. In 1890 
 fifty of that city s prominent citizens had agreed 
 to form a guarantee fund for an orchestra if Thomas 
 would become its director. The contract required 
 the director to be responsible for "the highest 
 standard of artistic excellence in all performances," 
 and Thomas was delighted. "All my life I have 
 been told that my standard was too high. . . . But 
 now I am not only to be given every facility to 
 
 PERISTYLE AT THE WORLD S COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION, CHICAGO, 1893 
 
 Symphony Hall is shown at the left. Mr. Thomas as musical director at the Ex 
 position conducted a series of 125 concerts, whose programs demonstrated to the 
 world the musical progress of America, and also gave Americans an opportunity of 
 hearing all the best works of the most famous European composers. 
 
 create the highest standard, but am even told that 
 I shall be held responsible for keeping it so! I have 
 to shake myself to realize it." 
 
HE TAUGHT US TO LOVE MUSIC 197 
 
 At the end of the year there was a deficit, as 
 might have been expected in a new undertaking, 
 and Thomas was delighted to find that this was 
 taken as a matter of course. But as year after 
 year passed, there was still a deficit. The director 
 believed that no orchestra could be permanent 
 and successful without a building of its own. He 
 felt sure that the people of Chicago would provide 
 that building if the matter was brought before them 
 forcibly; and therefore he announced that he should 
 resign and go elsewhere if a building fund was not 
 raised within six months. The trustees explained to 
 the public the advantages and necessity of a smaller 
 hall. Then a subscription was taken. Theodore 
 Thomas s work of teaching people to love music 
 had been well done, for on the list were the names 
 of millionaires, clerks, and scrubwomen, the educated 
 and the uneducated, but all lovers of music. 
 
 The hall was built, following just as far as possible 
 the ideas of the director, and was as nearly perfect 
 as a hall could be. There was a superb opening 
 concert, ending with Handel s glorious "Hallelujah 
 Chorus," and after this there was a happy meeting 
 of old friends at the Thomas home, come to con 
 gratulate the Master. And congratulations were 
 due to him. When hardly more than a boy he had 
 chosen a lofty work, that of revealing to hundreds 
 of thousands of busy Americans the pleasure and 
 restfulness and inspiration of music. He had re 
 fused to lower his standards. Without thought of 
 himself or his own gain he had given to the world 
 
198 THEODORE THOMAS 
 
 his noblest and his best. As George William 
 Curtis says of him: "He has made the conductor s 
 baton an imperial scepter, with which he rules not 
 only an orchestra, but an ever-widening realm of 
 musical taste and cultivation. In his hand it has 
 been an enchanted wand, which has transformed 
 our musical ignorance and crudity into ample 
 knowledge and generous appreciation," 
 
THOMAS ALVA EDISON 1 
 
 INVENTOR 
 1847- 
 
 1893, the incandescent light first used on a large scale (at the 
 World s Columbian Exposition) 
 
 ONCE upon a time there was a small boy who al 
 ways stood at ,the foot of his class. One day he 
 heard his teacher say that his brain was " addled," 
 and there was no use in his coming to school. The 
 little fellow was not too dull to know what that 
 meant. He burst into tears and went home to tell 
 his mother. 
 
 The mother was a very indignant woman, and 
 she stood firmly by her little son. She declared 
 that he had plenty of brains and she should teach 
 him herself. She succeeded, and when he was only 
 nine he had read or she had read to him such books 
 as Hume s History of England and Gibbon s Decline 
 and Fall of the Roman Empire, both works in many 
 volumes and not especially easy reading, even for 
 grown-ups. 
 
 He also read books on science, and he set up a 
 chemical laboratory in the cellar. But both books 
 and chemicals cost money, and he appealed to his 
 mother to let him become a train-boy. He could 
 have a run from Port Huron to Detroit, earn plenty 
 of money for his experiments, read as many papers 
 
 1 The material in this chapter is, by permission, based upon 
 William H. Meadowcroft s Boy s Life of Edison. 
 
200, THOMAS ALVA EDISON 
 
 and magazines as he chose, and have several hours 
 every day in Detroit. He must have shown that 
 he could be trusted or his mother would never have 
 agreed to let a boy of twelve spend seven or eight 
 hours a day alone in a city. As a matter of fact, 
 however, he was in the best of company, for he 
 spent most of the time in the public library reading. 
 
 There is a picture of " Al," as he was then called, 
 at fourteen, with a bright, cheery face and the 
 most delightful grin, as if he had just heard the 
 funniest story in the world. He was a wide-awake 
 business man as well as a merry boy, and when the 
 war broke out he picked up an old printing-press, 
 bought some type, and proceeded to publish a 
 weekly paper. It was really of value, because the 
 young editor could get the latest news by the rail 
 road telegraph, and before long it had a circulation 
 of four hundred. 
 
 By and by came the battle of Shiloh. Perhaps 
 the boy did not know much about Shiloh, but he 
 did know that if there were crowds before the bul 
 letin boards in Detroit, there would be at least one 
 thousand people on his route who would want the 
 news. He bribed the telegraph operator at the 
 station to telegraph the news ahead. Then he told 
 the editor of the Detroit Free Press what he had 
 done to make sure of trade and asked for credit. 
 "I can pay for three hundred papers," he said, 
 "but I want a thousand. Will you trust me?" 
 He was trusted, and he sold every paper. Indeed, 
 there were not nearly enough to go around. 
 
INVENTOR 201 
 
 One day "Al" saved a little child from being run 
 over by a train, and the grateful father said, "I 
 cannot reward you in money, but I can teach you 
 to telegraph and get you a situation." "Al" 
 engaged a friend to take part of the run; but even 
 then, with his telegraphy, chemistry, and train 
 work, he was a very busy boy. It was through 
 chemistry that misfortune befell him, for a stick of 
 phosphorus among his chemicals on the train took 
 fire and set the car ablaze. The conductor put out 
 the fire, and then he himself was ablaze with 
 wrath. He boxed the boy s ears, thereby making 
 him deaf for life, and then dumped boy and chemi 
 cals and printing-press off at the next station. 
 There was no more room for him on that train. 
 
 He decided to become a telegrapher. This boy 
 of sixteen was never satisfied until he could do 
 his work in the best and quickest way. He gave 
 eighteen hours a day to practice, and he worked 
 on penmanship until he was convinced that he had 
 found the fastest style of writing. There are 
 stories without end of his life as an operator. One 
 is that when an ice-jam had broken the cable be 
 tween Port Huron and Sarnia, he borrowed the 
 steam whistle of a locomotive and made the long 
 and short signals of the Morse code. After a while 
 an operator on the Sarnia shore caught the idea, 
 and communication was restored. Later, the man 
 ager of his office was put into a military prison - 
 no one knew why and Edison "telegraphed" to 
 him by stretching his arm out of the window and 
 
202 THOMAS ALVA EDISON 
 
 making long and short motions. Wherever he 
 went and whatever he was given to do, he always 
 invented some way to improve upon the usual 
 methods. 
 
 In the course of his wanderings as an operator he 
 asked for a position in Boston. He was engaged, 
 but the other operators set him down as a green 
 horn, and wickedly arranged to have him take a 
 report from the fastest operator in New York. 
 Edison went on serenely without the least trouble, 
 writing out the matter in his clear handwriting, 
 while the others gazed over his shoulder in amaze 
 ment. When he thought the joke had gone far 
 enough he opened the key and remarked to the man 
 in New York, Say, young man, change off and 
 send with your other foot." 
 
 All this time he was experimenting in chemistry 
 and electricity, and of course he sometimes met 
 with accidents. One day he splashed himself with 
 nitric acid, and could not appear on the streets for 
 two weeks. He tipped over a carboy of sulphuric 
 acid, which went through the floor to the room 
 below and ate up the manager s carpet and desk. 
 The next morning he was told that he might get 
 his pay and leave; the company wanted operators, 
 not experimenters. 
 
 When Edison was twenty-two he concluded to go 
 to New York. He was always out of money be 
 cause he spent it on experiments as fast as he got 
 it, and he found himself in the city with only one 
 dollar, and that a borrowed one. He got permission 
 
INVENTOR 203 
 
 to sleep in the battery room of the Gold Indicator 
 Company. This was after the Civil War. It was 
 not certain that the Government would be able to 
 pay its debts, and therefore a gold dollar was worth 
 more than a greenback. The price of greenbacks 
 went up and down. People speculated in them, 
 and this Gold Indicator Company had put indi 
 cators into the offices of three hundred brokers. 
 
 Edison was studying the various instruments 
 when there was one big crash, and everything 
 stopped, not only in this office, but also in every 
 one of the three hundred. The manager was half 
 wild, and when Edison said that he could fix the 
 indicator, he cried, "Fix it! Fix it! and be quick!" 
 In two hours it was in order. Then came an 
 official interview. "I shall put you in charge of 
 the whole plant," the manager said. "Your salary 
 will be three hundred dollars a month." Edison 
 was almost dazed, but he said to himself, "I will 
 try and live up to that salary, if twenty hours a 
 day of hard work will do it." 
 
 Edison soon invented a stock ticker that was a 
 great improvement on anything then in use. The 
 Gold and Stock Telegraph Company wished to buy 
 it, and the president asked how much he thought 
 he ought to have for it. The inventor really 
 thought he had earned five thousand dollars, but he 
 had not the audacity to say so, and he replied, 
 "Suppose you make me an offer." "How would 
 forty thousand dollars strike you?" the president 
 asked. It struck him so by surprise that he almost 
 
204 THOMAS ALVA EDISON 
 
 fainted. He carried to the bank the check for 
 forty thousand dollars, the first check that he had 
 ever received, and endorsed it after it had been 
 made clear to him that this was the proper thing to 
 do. He knew so little of banking that when the 
 teller gravely and mischievously proceeded to hand 
 him package after package of small bills, he put 
 them into his various pockets and walked away. 
 He had a use for that money, and he sat up all 
 night watching it for fear it should be stolen from 
 him. 
 
 He was not yet twenty-three, and he had forty 
 thousand dollars which he had earned by the honest 
 work of his own "addled" brain. He spent much 
 of the money in opening shops to manufacture 
 tickers. That brain was now at work on his old 
 friend, the telegraph. Sending messages was even 
 then so slow that a first-class operator who wrote 
 rapidly could write them out as they were received. 
 Edison s inventions made it possible to send four 
 messages over the same wire, three thousand words 
 a minute, and also printed them as fast as they 
 came in. 
 
 The carbon telephone transmitter, the quadru- 
 plex, the electric light, the moving-picture camera, 
 the electric storage battery, the phonograph, the 
 waxed paper in which candies are wrapped these 
 are only a few of his most generally known inven 
 tions. "Won t you please name your chief in 
 ventions?" a visitor asked; and Edison named 
 seven or eight, ending with, "Oh, I don t know, a 
 
INVENTOR 
 
 205 
 
 Copyright Thomas A. Edison Inc. 
 
 EDISON IN HIS LABORATORY 
 
 whole lot of other things." He does not invent for 
 the sake of inventing, but because he sees the need 
 of something that will add to the comfort, con 
 venience, safety, or pleasure of the people. It is 
 no wonder that he has been called the most useful 
 citizen of the world. 
 
206 THOMAS ALVA EDISON 
 
 Edison s laboratory is at Orange, New Jersey. It 
 contains a machine-shop, rooms for experimenters, 
 a library of many thousand volumes, cabinets of 
 minerals from all over the world, a stock-room in 
 which are, as far as can be managed, specimens of 
 every known substance that can be kept without 
 spoiling. This means not only chemicals, but also 
 fur, feathers, bones, shells, woods, roots, gums, 
 cotton, silk, wax, cork, pitch, all kinds of metals 
 there is no end to the variety, for Edison aims at 
 having within reach of his hand every substance 
 that he may chance to want. 
 
 But a million men might have all this collection 
 and not produce one invention in a century; how 
 does Edison do it? What is there in him that is not 
 in the men who invent nothing, and see nothing to 
 invent, but plod along in the same old way? 
 
 In the first place he has a strong imagination. 
 He sees in his mind just what results he wants to 
 reach. In the second place, it never occurs to him 
 that he can give up a quest, and he is never dis 
 couraged. The story is told that once, after sev 
 eral thousand experiments had failed to accomplish 
 what was wanted, an assistant remarked that it 
 was a shame to have worked all those weeks with 
 no results. "No results!" Edison exclaimed. 
 "Why, man, I have a lot of results! I know several 
 thousand things that won t work. * 
 
 Edison himself says that his methods are the 
 same as those of Luther Burbank. Out of thou 
 sands of plants Burbank picks out perhaps only one 
 
INVENTOR 207 
 
 that shows promise of what he is after. The seeds 
 of this one he uses to develop the variety of which 
 he is in search. So Edison, having a definite result 
 in mind, chooses from thousands of experiments the 
 one that promises the result that he wants. "But, 
 after all, Mr. Edison," he was asked, "is n t your 
 success due to genius?" "Genius," said Edison, 
 "is one per cent inspiration and ninety-nine per 
 cent perspiration." 
 
 Edison has never blundered along vaguely in the 
 hope that some time he would happen to put the 
 right things together; he has worked intelligently 
 and thoughtfully and how he has worked ! To 
 experiment sixty hours on a stretch is not unusual 
 with him. He knows how to turn sharp corners, 
 and rests by going from one invention to another, 
 or from hard work to a bit of fun or a good story. 
 He can take a table for a bed, a book or two for a 
 pillow, fall asleep in half a minute, and in a quarter 
 of an hour be ready for work again. 
 
 As to his working hours, he has none. He does 
 not carry a watch and knows little about time; his 
 day s labor is done when he gets his results, and not 
 before. Of course many people have asked him to 
 what he ascribed his success. His answer always 
 is, "To never looking at the clock." 
 
EDWIN AUSTIN ABBEY 
 
 ILLUSTRATOR AND PAINTER 
 1852-1911 
 
 1895-1902, painted "The Quest of the Holy Grail, " a frieze in the 
 Boston Public Library 
 
 EDWIN ABBEY S father and mother had the life of 
 their son nicely arranged in their own minds. 
 They would give him a good education, he would 
 become a doctor or minister or lawyer, he would 
 continue to live in Philadelphia, and would become 
 one of her most respected and honored citizens. 
 
 This was what they planned, but somehow the 
 boy did not seem inclined to follow the plan. He 
 went to school, of course. He did not stand at the 
 foot of the class; but, alas, he was nowhere near the 
 head. He read everything that came to hand, and 
 he did not object to being educated, but he took no 
 special interest in the process. There was just one 
 thing in which he did take interest, and that was 
 drawing. He would have liked to take lessons in 
 drawing, but his father did not approve. If the 
 son would not become a member of one of the three 
 learned professions, he should at least become a 
 substantial, self-supporting citizen, not a mere 
 picture-making man. There was the printing 
 trade. Often it led to something higher; his son 
 should learn printing. 
 
 So it was that the boy was put into the printing 
 
ILLUSTRATOR AND PAINTER 209 
 
 office of the Public Ledger, of Philadelphia. Per 
 haps there was a bargain between him and his 
 father, for, although he learned to set type, he was 
 allowed to have lessons in drawing for an hour 
 three times a week, at the Pennsylvania Academy 
 of Fine Arts. 
 
 The owner of the Ledger was George William 
 Childs. He was a man who could see what was 
 going on around him, and he soon noticed that the 
 young man was not especially interested in type 
 setting. After a little talk he found out that the 
 ambition of his apprentice was not to become an 
 editor, but to draw pictures, and he examined some 
 of young Abbey s sketches. They seemed to Mr. 
 Childs full of promise, and a kindly note from him 
 to the editor of Harper s Weekly sent a happy young 
 man with a portfolio over to New York to the Art 
 Department of the Weekly. He was engaged at a 
 salary of seven dollars a week; not a very enormous 
 sum, but many an artist of nineteen would have 
 been glad to pay much more for the chance of being 
 on this paper. 
 
 Abbey put his best work into whatever he under 
 took; but before long it was clear that his special 
 delight was in picturing scenes of a century earlier, 
 clumsy stage-coaches rolling up to change horses at 
 quaint old taverns; ladies with bandboxes and 
 many flounces; drivers with bell-crowned hats. 
 The people of his pictures were often amusing, for 
 he did like a touch of the humorous, but they were 
 also lovable. It was all done with accuracy and 
 
210 EDWIN AUSTIN ABBEY 
 
 daintiness, and was altogether delightful. It is no 
 wonder that his drawings soon began to appear in 
 Harper s Monthly as well as in the Weekly. 
 
 This was a step forward ; but it was a still longer 
 one when the Harpers decided to bring out a de luxe 
 edition of the poems of Herrick, and asked Abbey 
 to illustrate them. To do this he was to spend six 
 months in England and see for himself the stately 
 castles, mossy sundials, fields of primroses, thatched 
 cottages, shady lanes, and charming little villages. 
 
 Abbey and an artist friend took up their home in 
 the Shakespeare country, in a rambling house some 
 three hundred years old, and he set to work hap 
 pily. He drew and drew; cavaliers in plumed hats 
 and sweeping cloaks; tall and graceful maidens in 
 high puffed sleeves, playing on the guitar or curtsy 
 ing to some young gallant with wide ruff about 
 his neck and buckles on his shoes. He drew cow 
 herds playing for a prize on oaten pipes before the 
 rustic maiden "Lalage." They are tremendously 
 in earnest, and they have not the least idea that 
 even the cows in the background are looking at them. 
 The people of Abbey s pictures have no self-con 
 sciousness; they do not know that they are sitting 
 for their portraits. They are always alive, and 
 even if they are not doing anything the artist man 
 ages to make it clear that they are thinking of 
 something in which we too are interested. The 
 edition of Herrick came out in 1882, and was the 
 first of Abbey s illustrated books. 
 
 Abbey spent in England, not six months, but two 
 
ILLUSTRATOR AND PAINTER 211 
 
 years. He loved the old houses and the country 
 lanes, the winding streets of the little villages, the 
 distant glimpses of castles and cathedrals. America 
 was dear to him, but England was the country of 
 his dreams, the place where he could best do the 
 work that he loved. He returned to America for a 
 few months, then made his home in England. 
 
 He had great talent and he loved his work. Some 
 one said of him that what he loved was not " draw 
 ing the money, but doing the drawing." Into 
 everything that he did he put his best efforts. 
 Many artists of his experience and ability would 
 have drawn the less important illustrations from 
 fancy; but Abbey was never satisfied unless he 
 drew his figures from life and even his backgrounds 
 directly from nature. After finishing one painting 
 he discovered that the coat of arms on a lady s 
 dress was not quite accurate. Probably there were 
 not ten persons in the world who would have no 
 ticed this, but he painted the whole skirt over again. 
 He took quite a long journey to see for himself 
 some peculiar columns that he wanted to bring into 
 a scene. He never undertook a picture without 
 studying the period as carefully as any historian 
 could have done. He made himself perfectly at 
 home in the olden times, and what he meant to 
 draw became so clear to his own mind that he could 
 express it in a few lines. The result was that his 
 pictures are never foggy, and they are alw r ays con 
 vincing. When we look at one we feel sure that 
 the people of that day did dress and bow and stand 
 
212 EDWIN AUSTIN ABBEY 
 
 and smile exactly as he has made them do. He 
 not o nly paints them, but he seems to feel and think 
 with them. We forget that we are looking at a 
 picture, and think of it rather as a glimpse into the 
 life of bygone days. 
 
 Before 1885 Abbey was recognized as one of the 
 foremost illustrators of the day in black and white. 
 He was also using with great success both water- 
 colors and pastel, and he had done some excellent 
 work in oils. Possibly he would have been content 
 to spend his time chiefly in illustrating, but the 
 American girl whom he had married believed that 
 he had even more ability than he had as yet shown, 
 and she urged him to devote himself to oils. She 
 was a wise woman, for in 1890 an oil painting of his 
 was accepted by the Royal Academy and was hung 
 "on the line." 
 
 That same year he was asked to decorate the 
 frieze of one of the rooms in the Boston Public 
 Library. He had bought a beautiful old country 
 place, and now he built an addition to the house, a 
 "royal studio," planned expressly for the Boston 
 paintings. It was seventy-five feet long by forty 
 wide, and twenty feet in height space enough for 
 a dozen painters. Here he kept chests of the old 
 costumes in which he delighted, china, furniture, an 
 cient armor, swords and spears, exquisite carvings, 
 tapestries, anything and everything that he might 
 wish to use in his paintings; and now he set to 
 work to make his pictures. 
 
 The subject was left to him. He wanted some- 
 
Copyright 1901 by E. A. Abbey : from a Copley Print, copyright 1902 by Cvrti* r Cameron, Boston 
 
 GALAHAD THE DELIVERER 
 
 From the freeze " The Quest of the Holy Grail. " This is the twelfth panel in the 
 series of fifteen. It represents Galahad, surrounded by folk thankful for services 
 already rendered by him, about to ride away upon his last great adventure in his 
 quest for the Holy Grail. " The career of this knight, " says one critic, "may be said 
 to symbolize the experiences of mankind in the pursuit of the noblest ideals, the 
 difficulties that beset the seeker, the temptations which he encounters, the results 
 that he achieves. " 
 
214 EDWIN AUSTIN ABBEY 
 
 thing with dignity and significance, something old 
 and legendary; and in order to suit the lengths of 
 paneling it must be not one scene, but a continued 
 story. At length he settled upon the legend of the 
 Holy Grail, the cup from which Jesus was said to 
 have drunk at the Last Supper. According to the 
 legend it was long treasured, but finally, as the 
 world grew evil, it vanished from the eyes of men. 
 To find it was a favorite quest of the heroes of 
 romance; and at last Sir Galahad was successful. 
 
 No two versions of the story are just alike, and 
 Abbey was free to take from all what would best 
 suit his purpose, and to lay his scenes in almost any 
 of the earlier centuries. He chose the twelfth cen 
 tury, and now began study in earnest. He read 
 with the utmost care English, Norwegian, French, 
 and German versions of the legend. He pored over 
 accounts and pictures of ancient temples and pal 
 aces. He studied details of twelfth-century cos 
 tumes. He went to France to sketch in the old 
 churches. He went to Italy to draw landscapes 
 and twelfth-century architecture. Long before he 
 began to paint his mind was saturated with the 
 story and its surroundings. 
 
 For his hero he takes the pure Galahad, who, 
 after the death of his mother, is brought up by the 
 nuns, far from the temptations of the court. In 
 the first scene the infant Galahad, held by a holy 
 maiden, stretches out his baby arms to the Grail, 
 which he alone can see. In the second, Galahad, 
 clothed in red, is kneeling before the altar in all- 
 
ILLUSTRATOR AND PAINTER 215 
 
 night vigil before his search for the Grail begins. 
 The next scene is in the great hall of King Arthur. 
 Joseph of Arimathea leads Sir Galahad to the Round 
 Table, to the seat in which no one impure in life or 
 thought can sit and live, and declares that he only 
 will achieve the adventure of the Grail. The other 
 knights, forgetful that he who wins must be sinless, 
 take a vow to go on the quest. Kneeling in the 
 cathedral with Sir Galahad in their midst they 
 receive the benediction of the bishop on their search. 
 So the pictured story goes on to the time when 
 Sir Galahad s soul is "too great in knowledge and 
 power to abide crippled in his earthly body," and 
 he is taken into heaven. A hand, coming down 
 from above, withdraws the Grail from mankind, 
 never again to be seen on earth. 
 
 This is one of the noblest if not the noblest speci 
 men of mural decoration in America, and its artist 
 had good right to be proud of it. Instead of that 
 he looked upon it only as a step to something bet 
 ter; and when a friend congratulated him on his 
 success, he replied simply, "Give me a little time, 
 and I will do something worth while." For this 
 work Abbey received fifteen thousand dollars, and 
 he spent every dollar of that sum in costumes and 
 models and research. 
 
 When the time came for the coronation of 
 Edward VII, in 1901, Abbey was chosen to paint 
 the scene. Then his troubles began. To be asked 
 was a great honor, of course, but it was not a time 
 of bliss for the painter. More than one hundred 
 
216 EDWIN AUSTIN ABBEY 
 
 distinguished persons must appear in paint, and 
 every one must have sittings with him. The king 
 and queen gave him no trouble, they were prompt 
 ness itself and were not difficult to please; but as to 
 the peers and peeresses Abbey must have wished 
 many a time that they were all knights of the 
 Round Table and could be painted straight from 
 the visions in his brain. These troublesome people 
 paid not the least regard to their appointments; 
 every man and woman of them expected to have a 
 full-face portrait; and the ladies were wrathful if 
 their long trains and jewels were not brought well 
 to the front. It was a struggle, but Abbey was 
 successful, and the painting was accepted as the 
 official pictorial record of the great event, as "the 
 most artistic, dignified, and accurate reproduction 
 of the ceremony of investiture." 
 
 Abbey was always kind-hearted, lovable, and 
 generous. Of course young artists often asked him 
 to criticize their work, and no matter how dis 
 couraging it was he always contrived to find some 
 thing pleasant to say about it. He was engaged to 
 decorate the State Capitol at Harrisburg with 
 scenes from early Pennsylvania history. He found 
 that the space was too small, and he asked for room 
 enough to enlarge his figures; thus planning to 
 present to the State thirty thousand dollars worth 
 of his work. He gave generously of both money 
 and talent and kindness, and he received gener 
 ously in the admiration of the world of art and the 
 love of all who knew him. 
 
SAMUEL PIERPONT LANGLEY 
 
 INVENTOR OF THE FIRST HEAVIER-THAN-AIR 
 FLYING MACHINE 
 
 1834-1906 
 
 1896, first flight of a heavier-than-air machine 
 
 IT is not always easy for a boy to decide what he 
 will do when he becomes a man, and it was no easier 
 for Samuel Langley than for other boys. Maybe 
 it was a little more difficult because he was inter 
 ested in everything. His father made telescopes, 
 and he had often watched through one of them the 
 workmen laying the stones of Bunker Hill Monu 
 ment. He had already made a small telescope for 
 himself, perhaps he would like to make larger ones 
 and study the stars. Then, too, .he had talent for 
 drawing, not enough to make him a great artist, 
 but enough to serve him well if he cared to study 
 architecture. There was civil engineering also; he 
 thought he might like that. 
 
 Besides all this there were so many things that he 
 wondered about, so many questions that he wanted 
 to answer. He wondered how birds managed to 
 fly, inasmuch as they were heavier than air. He 
 wondered why white flowers were sweeter than 
 scarlet ones, why insects on trees were green while 
 those on the ground were brown. He wondered 
 why plants grew faster in a hotbed. The answers 
 to some of these questions he thought out for him 
 self; others he found out later. 
 
218 SAMUEL PIERPONT LANGLEY 
 
 By the time that he had graduated from the 
 high school he was sure that he wanted to know 
 more of science. He decided to become an archi 
 tect, for he believed that he could do good work in 
 this line and also that it would give him oppor 
 tunities for further scientific study. So an architect 
 he became. He worked faithfully for seven years, 
 and successfully. He made a good income which 
 showed signs of increasing. 
 
 It is quite probable that his friends heartily dis 
 approved of his next move, for he suddenly gave 
 up architecture and began to make telescopes. He 
 was only thirty years of age, but telescope-making 
 had improved since his boyhood, and he was 
 delighted to find that he could make much more 
 powerful instruments than his father. He not only 
 made them, but used them, and before long he was 
 invited to become assistant in the Harvard Ob 
 servatory. 
 
 He must have made a good amount of progress, 
 for he was soon offered a position in the Naval 
 Academy at Annapolis as Professor of Mathematics 
 and Director of the Observatory. In 1867, when 
 he was thirty-three years of age, he became Pro 
 fessor of Astronomy in the Western University of 
 Pennsylvania, in Pittsburgh. It was a double 
 appointment, for he also had charge of the observa 
 tory in Allegheny City. 
 
 This observatory had begun well, for it had an 
 excellent telescope; but a telescope is by no means 
 the only thing that an observatory needs. To do 
 
INVENTOR 219 
 
 any work with it there must be various instruments, 
 and there was not even a suitable clock. Worse 
 than this there was no money to buy one. Then 
 Professor Langley began to think. His seven years 
 of business experience were not lost, and he thought 
 quite as much like a business man as like a scientist. 
 He concluded that he had a valuable article to sell. 
 The only question was who would become its pur 
 chaser. That article was correct time, delivered 
 regularly at the door. He made up his mind that 
 railroads would be more interested in this than 
 any one else. In those days there was no " stand 
 ard time," and the custom of the railroads was to 
 run on the local time of their terminal city until 
 the train came within the "sphere of influence" of 
 the next large city, then change to the local time of 
 that city. It was a troublesome and unsafe sys 
 tem or rather lack of system for both railroads 
 and travelers. Professor Langley did not find it 
 difficult to persuade the Pennsylvania Railroad 
 that to have standard time, given by signal from 
 his observatory, would be an excellent thing for it. 
 The railroad provided the equipment, and at a 
 given moment each day the time was flashed from 
 the observatory to every one of its stations. 
 
 A wide-awake scientist always has, besides the 
 work in hand, problems in his mind which he is 
 longing to solve. One of Langley s problems was 
 how to measure the heat and light of the sun and 
 how to learn their effect upon the earth. No in 
 strument yet made was accurate enough for him, 
 
220 SAMUEL PIERPONT LANGLEY 
 
 and he invented one, which he called the bolometer. 
 This measured heat within one millionth of a degree, 
 and by it he proved that even a sun-spot makes our 
 temperature a little cooler. He proved, too, that 
 our devices for giving light that is, candles, 
 kerosene, gas, etc. really use up much more 
 than nine tenths of their power in making not light 
 but heat. Nature can give light without heat, he 
 declared, for she has made the firefly; and it is our 
 business to find out how she does it. 
 
 Without any working for fame Professor Langley 
 had become a famous man. He was one of the 
 foremost authorities on the sun. He lectured be 
 fore learned societies in this country and in Europe, 
 and received medals and college degrees in generous 
 numbers. He was happy in Pittsburgh, but he felt 
 it a great loss not to be in close association with 
 other scientists, and when an offer came from the 
 Smithsonian Institution, in Washington, he ac 
 cepted at once. One year later, in 1887, ne became 
 its Secretary. 
 
 This Institution was founded by the gift of an 
 Englishman named James Smithson. He never 
 saw America, and no one knows what suggested 
 leaving his money to this country to found "an 
 establishment for the increase and diffusion of 
 knowlege among men," as he said in his will. 
 
 Professor, or rather Dr. Langley was now in his 
 element. The Institution sends out parties to 
 explore unknown parts of the world. It publishes 
 accounts of these explorations and many valuable 
 
INVENTOR 221 
 
 scientific works. It offers rewards for original re 
 search, and exchanges reports and writings with 
 other learned societies throughout the world. 
 
 The new Secretary was intensely interested in 
 every branch of this work; but he was too thorough 
 a scientist to be willing to give up his own special 
 line of study. He continued his researches into the 
 power of the sunlight; he made careful drawings of 
 the surface of the sun; he studied its spots and its 
 heat and its influence upon the earth. An astro- 
 physical laboratory was founded, and here he had 
 every advantage for research. "But what is the 
 practical value of this work?" thoughtless people 
 would question him; and he would reply, U A11 
 truth works for man if you give it time." 
 
 Another problem of this "all truth" that he was 
 eager to solve was the old question of his boyhood, 
 how birds, that were heavier than air, could fly 
 through it. The books declared that the more 
 rapidly anything moved, the more force was re 
 quired. He was soon convinced that this could not 
 be true in flying, for the fastest birds are not the 
 strongest. He watched the buzzards. They float 
 through the air without any flapping and with only 
 an occasional slight tilt or change in the slant of 
 their wings. He decided that a body can be sus 
 tained in the air by the pressure of moving air 
 against extended surfaces; that is, the air presses 
 against the under side of the birds wings. The 
 problem of flying was chiefly, then, to find out what 
 kind of mechanism to use. 
 
222 SAMUEL PIERPONT LANGLEY 
 
 He. made a table sixty feet in diameter whose top 
 was whirled about rapidly by a small steam engine. 
 To this table he fastened metal planes, set at vary 
 ing angles, and sometimes a stuffed albatross or a 
 frigate bird or a California condor, with extended 
 wings, and calculated what power would be needed 
 to hold up a certain weight when the plane of the 
 bird was moving swiftly through the air. He dis 
 covered that instead of rapid horizontal motion 
 through the air requiring more force than slow 
 motion, the truth was that the more rapid the 
 motion, the less force was needed for the same 
 distance. 
 
 For nine years he experimented. He made 
 model after model, forty or more in all. On May 6, 
 1896, his " aerodrome," or air-traveler, was sent off 
 from a houseboat on the Potomac River. This was 
 only a model. It had a little engine and gasoline 
 tank, and weighed about twenty-four pounds. For 
 one minute and twenty seconds it flew upward. 
 Then, the steam being exhausted, it settled down 
 slowly upon the water. It had made a flight and 
 had kept its equilibrium perfectly. Alexander 
 Graham Bell, who was present, declared that for 
 the first time a heavier-than-air flying machine had 
 by its own power maintained itself in the air for 
 more than a few seconds. No one can doubt now 
 that flying is possible, he said. 
 
 Langley had succeeded. He had discovered and 
 revealed the law that made flying possible. He 
 had proved its truth by his model. He had done 
 
INVENTOR 223 
 
 the work of a scientist, and he did not care to go 
 any further. Two years later, however, he took a 
 different view of the matter. This was in 1898, and 
 it seemed probable that there would be war with 
 Spain. Flying machines might, either then or in 
 later wars, be of great service to his country. The 
 officers of the army and the navy were interested, 
 and the United States Government made an ap 
 propriation of fifty thousand dollars, to be used in 
 developing a machine that could carry a man and 
 serve as an engine of war. 
 
 Then Langley set to work again. No gasoline 
 engines suited to his purpose were manufactured, 
 so he made one for himself that was both light and 
 powerful. When the summer of 1903 had come, he 
 had two machines ready. One was a model; the 
 other was large enough to carry an engineer. In 
 August the little model was tested. A bit of care 
 lessness on the part of the workmen prevented it 
 from doing its best, but it flew and it maintained its 
 equilibrium; and that was what was wanted. 
 
 The larger aerodrome was to be tested in October 
 of the same year. By this time everybody knew 
 that the great scientist, Secretary of the Smith 
 sonian Institution, was trying to fly. The crowds 
 thought that only a man whose brain was a bit 
 touched would attempt such an impossibility. 
 They laughed and joked about him, and when they 
 found where the test was to be made, they swarmed 
 about the place, making fun of the preparations, of 
 the machine, and of its inventor. 
 
224 SAMUEL PIERPONT LANGLEY 
 
 Some one has said that if Dr. Langley had taken 
 a hint .from some fat hen flying over a fence, and 
 had noticed how easily she rose straight from the 
 ground, he would have realized that his machine 
 could be made to rise from a level. Unluckily, he 
 made the mistake of supposing that it must "get a 
 start" from some power besides that of its own 
 engine. He had therefore built a large houseboat 
 on whose top were launching ways. The machine 
 rested on a car, which was held back by heavy 
 springs. At the releasing of these springs the car 
 was to run forward on the ways bearing the aero 
 drome. The ways were then to drop, and the 
 aerodrome was thus to be started for flight. 
 
 When the signal was given the springs were re 
 leased and the car ran forward on the ways. The 
 aerodrome rose a little; there was a whirring noise, 
 then a roar; then straight into the Potomac River 
 plunged " Langley s Folly." A guy post had caught 
 in the launching car. How the crowd jeered ! They 
 did not know the difference between a success and 
 a failure. The engineers and scientists present 
 knew that what had failed was not the flying 
 machine, but merely the launching ways, a very 
 small matter. The machine itself had had no trial, 
 but the headings of the newspapers proclaimed that 
 it had failed. Two months later Langley tried once 
 more; but this time too the launching apparatus did 
 not work properly, and the rear end of the aero 
 drome was wrecked before it left the ways. 
 
 These failures of the arrangements for launching 
 
INVENTOR 
 
 225 
 
 THE FIRST SUCCESSFUL HEAVIER-THAN-AIR FLYING MACHINE 
 
 A photograph taken at the moment of launching Langley s aerodrome, May 6, 
 1896. The success of present-day aviation is due to Langley s pioneer work. 
 
 would to-day be looked upon as a trifle; but even 
 experiments in ways take money, and there was no 
 money forthcoming. Dr. Bell and Nikola Tesla 
 and other scientific men declared that Langley had 
 proved by his earlier models that if the launching 
 
226 SAMUEL PIERPONT LANGLEY 
 
 arrangements were properly controlled, the machine 
 would be a success; but Congress had forgotten all 
 about the earlier models, and would not make any 
 further appropriations. People who thought them 
 selves witty wrote silly rhymes and made stinging 
 jests about "Langley s Folly." 
 
 The inventor was deeply wounded, but he knew 
 that he had solved the problem of flight and he 
 never doubted that his work would some day re 
 ceive the honor that it deserved. "The world 
 must realize," he said, "that the great universal 
 highway overhead is soon to be opened." 
 
 Three years after the failure of the ways the in 
 ventor died. Aviation had progressed, and even 
 then Langley s work was beginning to win apprecia 
 tion. The Wright brothers had the advantage of a 
 motor already developed which was light and easily 
 controlled. They used Langley s calculations and 
 declared frankly that his work was the inspiration 
 of their early studies. 
 
 "Langley s Folly" was raised from the bed of the 
 Potomac and hung for more than ten years in the 
 National Museum as a curiosity. In 1914 Mr. 
 Glenn Curtiss, with the permission of the Govern 
 ment, carried to Keuka Lake the old machine to 
 which Langley had devoted so much of his best 
 thought, gave it fresh canvas, new wires, and a new 
 motor; then, with a crowd this time a crowd of 
 admirers eagerly watching, he flew smoothly and 
 safely, while the crowd cheered wildly. 
 
 The Smithsonian Institution put up a bronze 
 
INVENTOR 227 
 
 tablet in honor of the inventor of the first heavier- 
 than-air flying machine that the world ever saw. 
 Every one was ready now to give him praise and 
 applause ; but a little sympathy and encouragement 
 when he was alive would have been better. 
 
ANDREW CARNEGIE 
 
 THE MAN WHO WOULD NOT DIE RICH 
 1835-1919 
 
 1899, consolidation of Carnegie s steel interests into the Carnegie 
 Steel Company 
 
 IN Dunfermline, Scotland, there was once a weaver. 
 He had a wife and two boys, he had four damask 
 looms, he took apprentices, and he was looked 
 upon as a well-to-do man. In the middle of the 
 nineteenth century weaving was done on hand 
 looms in men s own houses, but when the steam 
 loom was invented it became harder and harder to 
 get work, and one day the father returned from de 
 livering some cloth and said sadly, " I have no more 
 work." 
 
 Even "Andy," the boy of ten years, understood 
 what that meant, and he went to bed a troubled 
 and anxious little boy. The father and mother had 
 a long talk. They could perhaps get on in some 
 way, but what of their two sons? There seemed 
 nothing in Scotland for them to look forward to; 
 and they began to talk of America. Some relatives 
 had gone to Pittsburgh, and had done well. They 
 decided that for the sake of their boys they would 
 leave the place that they loved and cross the ocean. 
 
 In Pittsburgh the father found work as a cotton 
 weaver. "Andy," too, found work as a bobbin- 
 boy. A proud boy he was, for his $1.20 a week was 
 
WHO WOULD NOT DIE RICH 229 
 
 a great help in supporting the family. The factory 
 ran from sunrise till dark with forty minutes for 
 dinner, pretty long hours for a child of his age, but 
 he made no complaint. He must have shown that 
 he could be trusted, for he soon ceased to be a 
 bobbin-boy and was made engineer. The power for 
 the factory came from a steam engine, and this small 
 white-headed boy of thirteen was put in charge of 
 it. It is no wonder that he dreamed of that engine, 
 for even if it was not very large, it was quite capable 
 of blowing up the factory if the boy manager 
 aroused its wrath by neglecting it. 
 
 After he had spent a year in a dark cellar with 
 only an engine for a companion, there was a dis 
 cussion in the little Carnegie home. The boy s 
 uncle had suggested that he try to get a position as 
 telegraph messenger. To the end of his life he 
 remembered putting on his little blue jacket and 
 going to the telegraph office with his father. He 
 was engaged. He was to receive $2.50 a week, and 
 he was filled with pride and radiantly happy. Long 
 years afterw r ards he wrote: 
 
 " Imagine what it is to be taken from a dark cellar, 
 where I fired the boiler from morning until night, 
 and dropped into an office, where light shone from all 
 sides, with books, papers, and pencils in profusion 
 around me; and oh, the tick of those mysterious 
 instruments on the desk, annihilating space and 
 conveying intelligence to the world. This was my 
 first glimpse of paradise, and I walked on air." 
 
 To lose these joys of being a messenger boy would 
 
230 ANDREW CARNEGIE 
 
 be terrible, and he knew that in one respect he was 
 not equal to the position; he did not know the 
 business parts of the city. He knew how to learn 
 them, however; and he set to work. Before long 
 he could shut his eyes and say the names of the 
 firms on both sides of the principal streets, and 
 picture to himself the fronts of the buildings. Then 
 there was no drawback to his happiness. 
 
 This young Andrew had the habit of doing 
 everything as well as he could and of keeping his 
 eyes open to see if there was something to be learned. 
 There certainly was in this office, and before he 
 had been there a month he went straight to the su 
 perintendent and asked if he would teach him to 
 telegraph. The superintendent had taken a liking 
 to the wide-awake boy and began to teach him. It 
 was not long before he could telegraph as well as his 
 instructor. Moreover, he could read by ear, which 
 was not the custom in those days. 
 
 In this office any messenger boy who chose was 
 allowed to practice on the instruments before office 
 hours. One morning Andrew was hard at work when 
 an important message was signaled. He was sure 
 that he could manage it, and when the operator 
 made his appearance there was the message care 
 fully written out, waiting for him. It proved to be 
 accurate, and the result was that the messenger boy 
 became a telegraph operator with a salary of three 
 hundred dollars a year. The increase was needed, 
 for his father had died, and the young man must sup 
 port the little home. 
 
WHO WOULD NOT DIE RICH 231 
 
 Courtesy Lackawana Steel Company, Buffalo, Few York 
 
 IN A STEEL FOUNDRY 
 
 A boy who does his work well is always noticed. 
 Mr. Thomas A. Scott, superintendent of the Pitts 
 burgh Division of the Pennsylvania Railroad, was 
 often in. the telegraph office, and had seen the good 
 work of young Carnegie. He offered him a position 
 as operator for the railroad with ten dollars a month 
 more salary. 
 
232 ANDREW CARNEGIE 
 
 There is a certain bit of wisdom with a whole gold 
 mine of value in it: "Those who never do any more 
 than they get paid for, never get paid for any more 
 than they do." Young Carnegie always aimed at 
 doing more than he was paid for. It was easy to find 
 work here, for the Pennsylvania Railroad system lay 
 open before him. He studied it and thought about it. 
 The time came for him to use his knowledge and his 
 thought. One morning before Mr. Scott had come 
 to the office, a telegram reported the wreck of a fast 
 express. This express had the right of way, and on 
 the sidings all along the line were freight trains wait 
 ing for it to go by and leave the track clear. Car 
 negie telegraphed to the express that the freights 
 would have the right of way for three hours and forty 
 minutes. He knew where each freight train was, and 
 he telegraphed to each to go ahead. When the super 
 intendent came in everything was moving on. Be 
 fore long Mr. Scott had a new private secretary, and 
 his name was Carnegie. This was the beginning 
 of running trains by telegraph, and the system was 
 promptly adopted by all the single-track roads. 
 
 Before long Mr. Scott was moved up higher in the 
 railroad service, and Carnegie took his place. The 
 railroad management was thinking about bridges. 
 Wooden ones sometimes broke down and some 
 times caught fire, and an iron bridge was being tried. 
 This succeeded, and Carnegie was convinced that a 
 firm to manufacture the parts for iron bridges would 
 be a success. With Mr. Scott s help and his own bus 
 iness ability he had invested his savings most ad- 
 
WHO WOULD NOT DIE RICH 233 
 
 vantageously, and he was ready to put what money 
 he had into this new venture. Others joined with 
 him. This was the beginning of the great United 
 States Steel Company, which now owns not only an 
 immense manufacturing plant, but coal lands, iron 
 lands, gas lands, a fleet of lake steamers, a private 
 telegraph system, and a private railroad. 
 
 Mr. Carnegie never forgot his own boyhood, and 
 he was always on the lookout for young men to ad 
 vance. He watched them closely, and gave them 
 more and more responsibility. If they proved equal 
 to it they were promoted and became partners. If 
 they did not stand the test there was no hope for 
 them in that establishment, not even for his own 
 nephew. In the old stories of Robin Hood, Robin 
 would have no man as a follower who could not beat 
 him in a fair fight; and much after the fashion of 
 Robin was Mr. Carnegie s attitude toward his young 
 men. He had a genuine admiration for those who 
 had proved worthy, and he said of them : 
 
 " I do not believe any one man can make a success 
 of a business nowadays. I am sure I never could 
 have done so without my partners, of whom I had 
 thirty-two, the brightest and cleverest young fellows 
 in the world. All were equal to each other, as the 
 members of the Cabinet are equal. The chief must 
 only be first among equals. I know that every one 
 of my partners would have smiled at the idea of my 
 being his superior, although the principal stock 
 holder. The way they differed from me and beat me 
 many a time was delightful to behold. I never en- 
 
234 ANDREW CARNEGIE 
 
 joyed anything more than to get a sound thrashing 
 in an argument at the hands of these young geniuses. 
 No man will make a great business who wants to do 
 it all himself or to get all the credit for doing it." 
 
 When Mr. Carnegie was sixty-four he retired from 
 business with an enormous fortune. He had often 
 said that it was the duty of a rich man to live simply, 
 to provide first for those who were dependent upon 
 him, and to look upon the rest of his property as a 
 trust, not to be held fast till the last minute of his 
 life and then willed away merely because he could 
 not hold it any longer, but given away while he lived. 
 That sounded well, but would he live up to his 
 theories, and could he? For his interest in the steel 
 works he had received $250,000,000, and that is a 
 big sum. His income from this was $34,000 a day. 
 What should you do if a check for $34,000 was 
 handed to you every morning with strict orders not 
 to have a penny left at night? 
 
 What to do with part of it he had decided when 
 he was a boy in Pittsburgh, receiving $2.50 a week. 
 A kind-hearted gentleman in that city invited him 
 and some other boys to come to his house every 
 Saturday afternoon and select a book from his li 
 brary to read through the week. "If I am ever a 
 rich man I will found free libraries so that poor boys 
 can have good books to read," he had said to him 
 self at the time, and he had never changed his mind. 
 He now set to work to give libraries. 
 
 He was as wise in his giving of money as he had 
 been in making it. If a town asked for one of these 
 
WHO WOULD NOT DIE RICH 235 
 
 libraries, it must prove that it really wanted it by 
 agreeing to devote a certain amount of money each 
 year to its support. He spent at least $70,000,000 
 on these gifts, but he made no stipulations except 
 what were necessary to secure the continuance of 
 the libraries and the best use of the money. People 
 speak of " Carnegie Libraries," but Mr. Carnegie 
 himself never suggested or even hinted that they 
 should be named for him. 
 
 About $30,000,000 he set apart for pensions or in 
 surance for college professors. He established a 
 benefit fund for the employees of the Carnegie Steel 
 Company. He founded a Hero Fund in this country 
 and in many of the countries of Europe to reward 
 persons Who had risked their lives to save others. Of 
 war he had a profound horror, and he gave $10,000,- 
 ooo as a fund the income from which is to be spent 
 in any way that the directors think wise in order to 
 bring about good-will among nations. He added 
 to this gift $1,500,000 to build a "Peace Palace" at 
 The Hague. To Scotch universities and to his na 
 tive Dunfermline he gave liberally. 
 
 He felt that Pittsburgh had a special claim upon 
 his interest, because it was there that he had made 
 his fortune, and he wished to aid the city by trans 
 muting this money into things that would give spirit 
 ual and intellectual gain. To Pittsburgh he gave the 
 Carnegie Institute, consisting of library, concert hall, 
 picture gallery, and museum. Later he added the 
 Technical School, that the boys of Pittsburgh might 
 receive their education in their home city. 
 
236 ANDREW CARNEGIE 
 
 The Carnegie Institution in Washington, which 
 Mr. Carnegie gave and endowed with a gift of $22,- 
 000,000, has for its object investigation in all depart 
 ments of science, literature, and art, for the improve 
 ment of mankind. The work of this Institution is 
 much varied. One department is perhaps making 
 original researches in astronomy, another in zoology, 
 another is sending a ship of bronze over the seas. 
 Corrections of the charts of the magnetic currents 
 are made on these trips, corrections which will save 
 many a brave vessel from being dashed on the rocks 
 and wrecked. 
 
 In 1911, eight years before his death, Mr. Carne 
 gie founded the Carnegie Corporation of New York, 
 and put into the hands of the Corporation $125,- 
 000,000. In doing this he was planning that long 
 after his own death his fortune should continue to 
 serve the world. The trustees are left free to assist, 
 if necessary, the institutes, Hero Fund, etc., which 
 he had already founded, and also to promote the 
 advancement and diffusion of knowledge in what 
 ever ways may be found desirable. In his will he 
 left to this Corporation all property not otherwise 
 disposed of. 
 
 Andrew Carnegie gave away at least nineteen 
 twentieths of his fortune, a larger sum than any one 
 else in the world has ever given. Best of all, he gave 
 himself, his thought and his careful planning for 
 what would be of most value to the peace and prog 
 ress of the whole world. 
 
WILLIAM CRAWFORD GORGAS 
 
 WHO MADE THE CANAL ZONE SAFE 
 1854-1920 
 
 1904, appointed Chief Sanitation Officer of the Panama Canal 
 
 IN some of our Southern States yellow fever used to 
 break out every few years. Towns had to be qua 
 rantined, all business with them was completely 
 stopped, and many persons died. This fever came 
 from Cuba, and was caused, many people thought, 
 by the filth of her cities. As long as Spain held the 
 island nothing could be done; but when, at the close 
 of the Spanish-American War in 1898, Cuba came 
 under the care of the United States, our army set to 
 work to clean house. 
 
 This business was put into the hands of Surgeon- 
 Major Gorgas. He was born in Alabama, son of a 
 West Point graduate, and had seen active service 
 in Florida, Dakota, in what used to be Indian Terri 
 tory, and on the Mexican Border of Texas. He was 
 a gentle, courteous man of "old school manners," a 
 man who never went away from a place without 
 leaving many friends behind him. He now began to 
 clean up Havana; and it -was cleaned. It fairly shone 
 with cleanliness. Apparently the enemy had been 
 conquered. But the next thing was an epidemic of 
 fever in the spotless city, and the most discouraging 
 fact was that the very worst of the epidemic was in 
 that part of the city which had been put into the 
 best condition! What was to be done? 
 
238 WILLIAM CRAWFORD GORGAS 
 
 As early as 1881 Dr. Carlos Finlay, of Havana, 
 suspected that mosquitoes had something to do with 
 the spread of yellow fever, and the medical board of 
 the army thought it was quite worth while to try 
 some careful experiments and find out whether this 
 was true. They found that it was; that fever was not 
 given directly by one person to another, but through 
 the bite of a mosquito that had previously bitten a suf 
 ferer. The thing to do, then, was to get rid of these 
 mosquitoes, and Dr. Gorgas went to work. The re 
 sult was that after a few months there was only one 
 case of fever in Havana. 
 
 When a man has made a success of one piece of 
 work he is usually honored by having a harder piece 
 put into his hands, and Dr. Gorgas, promoted to be 
 Colonel and Assistant Surgeon-General Gorgas, was 
 now sent to Panama. 
 
 Panama was hot and wet. The Chagres River 
 was, as some one said of the Concord River, "too 
 lazy to keep itself clean," and moved so slowly that 
 one could hardly tell which way it was flowing. 
 There were swamps and morasses, steaming up 
 hotly; there were quagmires and stagnant pools 
 everywhere. In the towns of Colon and Panama 
 matters were quite as bad as in the country. There 
 was no "city water," and it was the custom to keep 
 an uncovered rain-barrel just outside the door. In 
 front of the door was usually an open and very bad- 
 smelling ditch to carry off the foul water. 
 
 The Isthmus was a perfect paradise of mosquitoes, 
 both those that spread yellow fever and those that 
 
WHO MADE THE CANAL ZONE SAFE 239 
 
 spread malaria. They had things all their own way 
 out of doors, and as nobody used screens they flew 
 into the houses as they liked. Of course all sorts of 
 fever flourished, and occasionally there was an epi 
 demic of yellow fever. The only marvel is that any 
 one could live there. Indeed, very few persons did 
 live there in any condition of health. Even if they 
 escaped yellow fever they suffered from malaria. 
 Both kinds of mosquitoes were ready to have a fine 
 time infecting newcomers. 
 
 This was the place into which it was proposed to 
 turn thousands of men, not only men from hot coun 
 tries and negroes, who rarely take yellow fever, but 
 men and their families from cool, clean homes in the 
 North, just the people to be struck down by the 
 disease. 
 
 They came. Malaria spread and yellow fever 
 increased. People began to laugh at the mosquito 
 theory, scoffed at the sanitary commission, and 
 asked that Gorgas be sent away and some one else 
 appointed in his place. There was a general fright 
 and a rush for the returning steamers. The whole 
 trouble was that Colonel Gorgas could not get the 
 supplies that he needed, and that it had not been 
 fully decided what our legal rights were in the cities 
 of Colon and Panama. Before long the supplies 
 came, the legal tangle was straightened out, and san 
 itation began in earnest. 
 
 It was a big job. Here were many thousand men 
 brought to work on the great canal. Well men were 
 needed, not sick men. Sick men were useless and 
 
2 4 o WILLIAM CRAWFORD GORGAS 
 
 expensive. When a man is sick not only must he 
 be cared for, but a well man must take his place. 
 Then, too, many men brought their families. It 
 was Colonel Gorgas s business to see that, as far as 
 possible, neither the men nor their families became 
 ill. He must look out for the general health as well 
 as for special diseases. 
 
 Good water was especially necessary, and he 
 brought it in through great mains. This was not 
 the work of a day, and while the system was being 
 installed he established stations where pure drink 
 ing-water was supplied. The streets of the towns 
 were paved and cleaned. The open ditches for foul 
 water were filled up and sewage systems w r ere in 
 stalled. Before this the only collectors of garbage 
 had been the vultures that swooped down for any 
 thing that they found eatable; but Dr. Gorgas in 
 sisted upon the use of covered garbage-cans, quite a 
 new idea in Panama. Houses were examined, one 
 by one, and the inmates were taught how to keep 
 them sanitarily clean. Doors and windows were 
 screened. Swinging shelves were put up, hung by 
 oiled twine, so that food might be kept from ants and 
 roaches. Bubonic plague is brought in by rats, ci 
 rather by the fleas that live on rats, and therefore, 
 when it appeared on the Pacific Coast, Colonel Gor 
 gas put himself at the head of a thriving business, 
 paying ten cents for every rat tail brought him. 
 
 To prevent yellow fever just one thing was neces 
 sary, and that was to do away with the fever mos 
 quito. It breeds in stagnant water, and therefore 
 
Courtesy Isthmian Canal Cbmmiwum 
 
 BEFORE AND AFTER THE ADVENT OF THE AMERICANS 
 
 Of these photographs, the upper one illustrates the neglected condition of the 
 streets of Colon when the Americans began to dig the canal. As a first step in san 
 itation all the streets were cleaned up and paved. The lower photograph shows the 
 same locality with a macadam street in process of construction. 
 
242 WILLIAM CRAWFORD GORGAS 
 
 uncovered rain-barrels were no longer allowed to 
 stand beside the doors. Swamps and pools were 
 drained, and any morass that could not be drained 
 was covered with a film of oil. Mosquito wrigglers 
 come to the surface for air every few minutes, and 
 if the surface is covered with oil they cannot push 
 their breathing tubes through, and so they drown 
 by the thousand. 
 
 Malaria is spread by the bite of another species of 
 mosquito. This species never makes long flights, so 
 General Gorgas had the brush cut away for one hun 
 dred yards around the houses. With no brush to 
 shelter the insect the people were safe in their homes. 
 Windows and doors were, of course, protected 
 against both kinds of mosquitoes by well-made 
 screens. 
 
 How was this done so thoroughly? In the first 
 place, Colonel Gorgas was an excellent organizer, 
 and he promptly divided the Canal Zone of about 
 five hundred square miles into seventeen districts. 
 Each district had an inspector, one assistant who 
 knew mosquitoes as well as his a, b, c; another who 
 understood all about making drains and ditches and 
 oiling swamps; and a third who was able to take 
 general charge of the workmen needed. The sani 
 tary inspector reported at headquarters every day 
 the number of malaria cases in his district. If in 
 any one week this increased above one and one half 
 per cent, there was a prompt investigation. 
 
 Second, a number of camps were established, 
 where men needing an immediate operation or suf- 
 
WHO MADE THE CANAL ZONE SAFE 243 
 
 fering from an accident could be cared for without 
 even the small delay of carrying them to the large 
 hospitals at Colon or Panama. Every case of yel 
 low fever was taken at once to the hospital, and 
 there was so carefully screened that not one mos 
 quito could get near him to spread the disease. 
 
 On paper all this seems smooth sailing, but in 
 reality it was not an easy matter. Gorgas s chief 
 difficulty was with the people who did not believe in 
 mosquito infection because they could not see it. A 
 large number of the workmen were ignorant Ne 
 groes from the West Indies. They themselves were 
 immune from fever, and it was hard to persuade 
 them that piles of dirt, stagnant water, and windows 
 without screens would make trouble for other peo 
 ple. Colonel Gorgas found that the only way to 
 manage them was to treat them like children. Just 
 when the workman was not expecting a visit a Gov 
 ernment inspector would appear at his door to in 
 spect his house. If the rules had not been obeyed 
 there was a fine to pay; and great pains were taken 
 to make sure that the workman understood just 
 what he had done that was wrong. If he was ill he 
 was carried to a hospital ; and before he was set free 
 he was told simply and clearly what had caused his 
 illness, and how he could take better care of himself. 
 Before long one thing was perfectly clear in his 
 mind, namely, that the only way to escape fines and 
 penalties and hospital life was to obey rules and 
 keep clean. In short, he now wanted to keep 
 clean, because he had found out that if he did not 
 
244 WILLIAM CRAWFORD GORGAS 
 
 life was not comfortable, and he did like to be com 
 fortable. 
 
 The second of Colonel Gorgas s troubles was the 
 difficulty in getting Congress to understand that he 
 was doing a big work and needed "big money" to 
 carry it on. He had not torn down mountains or 
 built locks. He had, to be sure, made the building 
 of the canal possible by keeping many thousand 
 people alive and well; but he could hardly march 
 them before Congress and demand larger appropria 
 tions. He did his best to persuade Congress to give, 
 then did his best with what Congress had given ; and 
 after a while his work found the appreciation that all 
 good work does find sooner or later. 
 
 It was owing to Colonel Gorgas that the Canal 
 Zone became a more healthful place to live in than 
 the City of New York. While the French were at 
 work on the Isthmus little was known of sanitation. 
 They had an average force of 10,000 men; and lost 
 in all 22,000. The Americans had an average force 
 of 33,000, and lost 4000. It was proved by Colonel, 
 or rather Brigadier-General Gorgas that the tropics 
 could be made a safe place for even white men from 
 the North, and throngs of the best workmen in the 
 world, men who were as eager to give good work as 
 to get good wages, came to Panama. Gorgas had 
 attempted "the greatest task of sanitation that has 
 ever been undertaken," and he had succeeded. 
 Without his work the building of the Panama Canal 
 would have been impossible. 
 
ROBERT E. PEARY 
 
 DISCOVERER OF THE NORTH POLE 
 
 1856-1920 
 
 1909, reached the North Pole 
 
 WHEN Robert E. Peary was three years old his wid 
 owed mother brought her boy back from Pennsyl 
 vania to her old home in Portland, Maine. Port 
 land was a good place for a boy to grow up in. There 
 were woods and fields and hills for Saturday rambles, 
 there were bulwarks and forts, and best of all, there 
 was beautiful Casco Bay, full of islands, the most 
 fascinating spots in the world for a boy with a dory. 
 Stretching far beyond the bay, far beyond the hori 
 zon line, was the real ocean, and the boy knew that 
 if the dory had a sail and only went far enough to 
 the eastward, it would carry him straight to Spain. 
 Ships from Spain and France and even more dis 
 tant countries often lay at the wharves. Long 
 fellow, too, was a Portland boy, and he wrote of his 
 beloved town: 
 
 "I remember the black wharves and the slips, 
 
 And the sea-tides tossing free; 
 And Spanish sailors with bearded lips, 
 And the beauty and mystery of the ships, 
 And the magic of the sea. 
 
 And the voice of that wayward song 
 Is singing and saying still: 
 A boy s will is the wind s will, 
 And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts. " 
 
246 ROBERT E. PEARY 
 
 Whatever this boy s thoughts turned to, the chief 
 thing that people seem to have remembered about 
 him is that he was unusually thorough in anything 
 that he undertook. He graduated at Bowdoin Col 
 lege second in a class of fifty-one and became a sur 
 veyor. Apparently he felt some attraction toward 
 the navy, for he took a naval examination for ad 
 mission as a civil engineer. Now he became a lieu 
 tenant, and before long he helped make the survey 
 for the proposed canal across Nicaragua. 
 
 His connection with the navy led him to Wash 
 ington, and while browsing one day in an old book 
 store in that city he came upon a paper on the ice 
 cap covering the interior of Greenland. It was in 
 teresting and led him to read more and more about 
 the unknown country. He wanted to see Green 
 land, wanted it so much that in 1886 he applied for 
 leave of absence and paid his first visit to the frozen 
 North. He had only a short leave and a shallow 
 purse, for he spent only his own savings; but he suc 
 ceeded in getting into Greenland farther than any 
 other explorer had done. The charm of the " great 
 white North" was upon him, and he wanted to go 
 again. The Philadelphia Academy of Natural 
 Sciences thought he was well worth sending, and 
 supplied part of the money. 
 
 Five years after his first trip he made a second, 
 but not alone. Between the two trips he had mar 
 ried, and his wife had said: "I am young and well 
 and strong, and I can live in Greenland as well as 
 any Danish woman. Why should I not go with 
 
DISCOVERER OF THE NORTH POLE 247 
 
 you? " She went, and proved herself a most helpful 
 companion. On this trip Peary began to make his 
 mark on the map of the world, for he gave a northern 
 coast-line to Greenland and proved that it was an 
 island. He went as far north as 81 37 . 
 
 Almost as soon as he and Mrs. Peary reached 
 home they began to prepare for another trip. Part 
 of the preparations consisted in Peary s giving 168 
 lectures to help raise funds. Mrs. Peary was ready 
 to go again, this time to remain more than two 
 years. The expedition came back enriched by a 
 baby girl, for in the ice and snow of the North the 
 little daughter of Lieutenant and Mrs. Peary was 
 born. 
 
 The natives told Peary that once upon a time, 
 many years ago, evil spirits had hurled down upon 
 their country great masses of ironstone. Of course 
 he guessed that these were meteorites, and he went 
 to Cape York to see them. There were three, "the 
 Tent," "the Woman," and " the Dog," as the Eski 
 mos called them. The two smaller ones he brought 
 home with him, and on a later voyage, he brought 
 also "the Tent," which is thought to be the largest 
 aerolite in the world. It is in the Museum of Natu 
 ral History in New York. 
 
 But Peary s thoughts were on the Pole. One ex 
 pedition after another had been made by gallant 
 explorers, but all had failed to reach the Pole. Was 
 there any hope that he could succeed? He knew 
 just what the difficulties were, and he believed that 
 he knew how to get the better of them. Instead of 
 
248 ROBERT E. PEARY 
 
 trying to strike out in a "white man s way," he de 
 termined to follow the example of the Eskimos, to 
 wear the same kind of clothing, to live in snow 
 houses, and above all to "live on the country," for 
 on much of the way north animals of various kinds 
 can be found. 
 
 Again and again he tried. On his first polar ex 
 pedition he remained in the North four years, trying 
 every summer to get to the Pole, and every summer 
 finding the way blocked by enormous ice packs, by 
 dense fogs, and by terrible storms. He wrote in his 
 journal: "My dream of sixteen years is ended. I 
 cannot accomplish the impossible." But he could 
 no more stop seeking for the Pole than he could stop 
 breathing, and as soon as he reached home he began 
 to make ready to "accomplish the impossible." 
 
 A vessel named the Roosevelt was provided, much 
 stronger than any that he had used before. Every 
 thing went well to the very shores of the polar sea, 
 and he marched farther north than any explorer had 
 ever gone before. It is no wonder that he lay awake 
 nights, wishing that the dogs had had their rest so 
 they could start. Then came furious winds which 
 broke up the ice fields. Peary and the parties that 
 he had left on the way were separated, and they had 
 the food for his return. To go on would mean dying 
 of starvation, and he turned back with the Pole 
 less than three degrees away. 
 
 But could he go back? The savage winds were 
 still raging. Almost under the feet of the explorers 
 a "lead," or long opening in the ice, was formed. It 
 
DISCOVERER OF THE NORTH POLE 249 
 
 grew wider, until two miles of black water lay be 
 tween them and their return. Day after day they 
 waited; but when they had almost given up hope 
 the black water showed 
 a thin coating of ice. 
 Even with their snow- 
 shoes on, it bent under 
 their feet. They gained 
 the other side, but not 
 a moment too soon, for 
 the changing wind tore 
 open a crack just be 
 hind them. 
 
 Other explorers had 
 been proud of reaching 
 farthest North," but 
 with this explorer it was 
 the Pole or nothing; 
 and he was no sooner 
 at home than he be 
 gan to make ready for 
 his eighth expedition. 
 Arctic travel demands 
 men who are strong and young. Peary was now 
 fifty-two. This was his last chance. 
 
 Many of the men had been with him on some or 
 all of the other expeditions. Everything was pro 
 vided for safety and comfort that twenty-two years 
 experience of the North could suggest. Cranks 
 without number urged him to try their amazing 
 schemes. One thought a lengthy hose through 
 
 Photograph by Broivn Brothers 
 
 EXPLORER PEARY ON THE BRIDGE 
 OF THE STEAMSHIP " ROOSEVELT " 
 
250 ROBERT E. PEARY 
 
 which soup could be sent to advance parties would 
 be a valuable article. Another was more ambitious 
 and recommended a machine of his own invention 
 for shooting Peary himself straight to the Pole. 
 
 When the Roosevelt left New York, in 1908, the 
 thousands of people on the piers cheered, the tugs 
 and ferryboats tooted, the factories blew their whis 
 tles, President Roosevelt s Mayflower saluted with 
 her one little gun, and the boat was off. 
 
 On they went, taking on coal at one place and 
 Eskimos at another. The Roosevelt was caught in 
 the ice and "kicked about by the floes as if she had 
 been a football," but at last she was at Cape Sheri 
 dan, and in the " great dark" for the five months of 
 winter. With the first light of spring they started 
 for the Pole. It was four hundred and fifty miles 
 away. No party could drag enough food and liquid 
 fuel to last them there and back ; and Peary had di 
 vided his force into a main party, and supporting 
 parties who were to break the trail for the first three 
 hundred miles in order to save the strength of the 
 main party for the last dash. As fast as the food 
 brought by a supporting party was used up, that 
 party returned. This was perfectly planned, but 
 they all knew that a twenty-four-hour gale or an 
 open lead that refused to close would spoil every 
 thing and send them back in bitter disappointment. 
 
 The storm did not appear, but the leads did. 
 These were crossed as best they could be. Peary 
 said of one that it was like trying to cross a river 
 on gigantic shingles, two or three deep. Another 
 
DISCOVERER OF THE NORTH POLE 251 
 
 opened among their snow huts, separating them 
 from one another. There was nothing to do but 
 wait for the ice to close if it would. The wind 
 changed, and they rushed across at full speed. 
 
 At length all the supporting parties had returned. 
 Peary, his four Eskimos, and a Negro who had been 
 with him on nearly all his expeditions set out on the 
 last dash to the Pole. When they reached it, April 
 
 Photograph by Brown Brot/i, 
 
 THE STEAMSHIP "ROOSEVELT" FROZEN INTO THE ICE 
 
 Waiting for Peary s return from the North Pole. 
 
 6, 1909, he was too tired to realize anything except 
 that he could not keep awake. Hour after hour he 
 slept, and when he woke, he wrote in his journal: 
 "The Pole at last! The prize of three centuries. 
 My dream and goal for twenty years. Mine at 
 last! I cannot bring myself to realize it. It all 
 seems so simple and commonplace." 
 
 And yet he stood where no man had ever stood 
 
252 ROBERT E. PEARY 
 
 before. North, east, and west had vanished, and 
 there was only south. Time, too, had disappeared, 
 for time is marked by the sun s crossing the meridi 
 ans of longitude, and here all meridians were one. 
 The Stars and Stripes was hoisted on ice lances in 
 the brilliant sunlight. The World Flag of Liberty 
 and Peace, the Navy League Flag, the Red Cross 
 Flag, and the flag of Peary s college fraternity, the 
 Delta Kappa Epsilon, were flung to the Arctic 
 breeze. Observations were taken, and after thirty 
 hours at the Pole the explorers gave one last look and 
 set about the return. 
 
 At the next full moon the ice would be full of leads, 
 and, as Peary told his men, the journey must be 
 "big travel, small sleep, and hustle every minute." 
 So it was, but all went well, so well that one of the 
 Eskimos said in his own language, "The Devil is 
 asleep or having trouble with his w r ife, or we should 
 never have come back so easily." 
 
 In the early days of autumn, 1909, the Roosevelt 
 reached the wireless station at Indian Harbor, in 
 Labrador, and soon Mrs. Peary was reading a mes 
 sage: "Have made good at last. I have the Pole. 
 Am well. Love." To the Associated Press went 
 the words, "Stars and Stripes nailed to the North 
 Pole." 
 
 As the sturdy little vessel drew near to Cape 
 Breton Island a dainty white yacht steamed out to 
 meet it. On board were Mrs. Peary and the two 
 children. The whole bay was full of boats in their 
 gayest bunting, and from them came cheer after 
 
DISCOVERER OF THE NORTH POLE 253 
 
 cheer for the man who had succeeded. The Roose 
 velt steamed away to New York, but Peary and his 
 family went to their summer home on Eagle Island, 
 in the waters of beautiful Casco Bay. 
 
 Congress made Peary a rear admiral and passed a 
 formal act of thanks for his achievements. France 
 gave him her highest honors, and as for medals and 
 honorary degrees, colleges and learned societies in 
 different countries showered them upon him like 
 hailstones. 
 
 "What wilt thou have?" says Emerson. "Pay 
 for it and take it." Peary had aimed at the Pole. 
 He had paid for it well, for he had given twenty- 
 three years of his life to the quest; but he had won. 
 
GEORGE WASHINGTON GOETHALS 
 
 BUILDER OF THE PANAMA CANAL 
 
 1858- 
 1916, the Panama Canal opened to commerce 
 
 I WONDER how many children, when they first 
 looked at the map of the Western Hemisphere, have 
 said to themselves, "How easy it would be to cut 
 those two continents apart!" Many a man has 
 wished that this had been done, especially after 
 gold was discovered in California, and thousands of 
 " forty-niners" from all over the world set out in a 
 mad search for the treasure. Those who crossed 
 Panama escaped the long voyage of nearly eight 
 thousand nautical miles around South America; but 
 they had to paddle up the Chagres River, ride on 
 muleback or in chairs carried by Negroes or Indians 
 the rest of the way, spend four days in going forty 
 miles, and then wait on the Pacific side until it 
 pleased some vessel to come along and carry them to 
 the land of their dreams. How easy it would have 
 been if only a canal had been dug across the Isthmus 
 and they could have sailed directly through ! 
 
 In more than one country people began to take 
 down their atlases and look up Panama; and as the 
 years passed the French did this more than others 
 because a Frenchman, Ferdinand de Lesseps, had 
 just made a success of digging a canal across the 
 Isthmus of Suez. They were very proud of his 
 
BUILDER OF THE PANAMA CANAL 255 
 
 achievements, and when he proposed digging a sec 
 ond canal, across Panama, they were so sure of an 
 other success that they could hardly bring out their 
 savings fast enough. 
 
 In 1 88 1 the canal was begun by a company whose 
 head was De Lesseps. In so new an undertaking 
 mistakes were of course made. Digging a canal at 
 Panama was a very different matter from digging 
 one at Suez, where there were no rocks and the 
 soil was only sand and clay. No one knew that 
 mosquitoes spread yellow fever. Indeed, in 1881, 
 people thought little of preventing disease; it was 
 enough if an attempt was made to cure it. There 
 was utter recklessness of expense, and vast quanti 
 ties of costly machinery were ordered that could 
 not be used. Enormous salaries were paid. De Les 
 seps was an honest man, but unfortunately the 
 chief interest of many of his associates lay in filling 
 their own pockets. Then, too, every question of 
 legality had to be brought before the somewhat un 
 friendly courts of Colombia, which was a frequent 
 cause of delay. 
 
 In spite of all these drawbacks the French did a 
 great deal of excellent work, but it cost enormously. 
 In 1887 only two fifths of the work was done, and 
 far more money had been spent than the original 
 estimate for the whole had called for. A year later 
 the company had to go into the hands of a receiver. 
 
 In 1904 the United States paid the French $40,- 
 000,000 for their maps and surveys, for the digging 
 that they had done, for their stock in the railroad 
 
256 GEORGE WASHINGTON GOETHALS 
 
 that had been built across the Isthmus, and for 
 their machinery, their buildings, materials, passen 
 ger and freight cars, locomotives, tools, etc., much 
 of it in first-rate order. Then work began. It was 
 not quite the kind of work that was expected, for 
 while we were clamoring for the digging to go on, 
 medical men under General Gorgas were doing some 
 thing far more important; they were putting the 
 place into such condition that a man could go there 
 and dig without dying of yellow fever or malaria. 
 
 When the United States cleaned up Cuba it was 
 found out that a certain kind of mosquito carries the 
 fever from sick persons to well ones; and at Panama 
 a fierce battle was going on against that mosquito. 
 Swamps in which it bred were filled up or petroleum 
 was poured upon the water; sewers were made; 
 streets were paved and kept clean; houses and cis 
 terns were screened; and just as soon as possible 
 pure water was brought into Panama and Colon. 
 The mosquito that brings malaria is more difficult 
 to get rid of, but this too was in great degree de 
 stroyed. 
 
 In 1907 it was decided to put the work of building 
 the canal into the hands of an army engineer. The 
 one chosen was George Washington Goethals. He 
 had begun life as an errand boy in New York, had 
 succeeded in getting into West Point, had graduated 
 as second in a class of fifty-four, and by this rank 
 had won a place in the Corps of Engineers. Then 
 he was set to work. He developed irrigation ditches 
 in the West; he constructed bridges; he built dikes 
 
BUILDER OF THE PANAMA CANAL 257 
 
 to keep the Ohio River from mischief in time of 
 flood ; he built locks and dams on the Tennessee 
 River, and coast fortifications at Narragansett Bay; 
 he taught military engineering at West Point. He 
 was deeply interested in every phase of this service, 
 but he did sometimes regret that he was never al 
 lowed to complete any piece of work. Just as soon 
 as it was in such condition that some one else could 
 manage it, Goethals was sent off to another job. 
 This was complimentary, but it is no wonder that he 
 sometimes tried to fancy how it would seem to finish 
 anything. 
 
 He had a job now that he was not only allowed, 
 but commanded, to finish. He went to Panama, 
 but he was not at all welcome. The men invited 
 him to a smoker, but even there it w r as made plain to 
 him that they did not wish to be under army rule. 
 " If you see the men suddenly dropping their work," 
 said the toastmaster, "standing erect with heels 
 together and little fingers at the seams of their 
 trousers, don t infer that they are crazy; they are 
 only practicing the military salute." Then Colonel 
 Goethals made a speech. "The army is not in 
 charge of this business," he said, "and there is to be 
 no saluting, no militarism. My only command is the 
 Army of Panama. We are fighting Nature to dig a 
 canal; and when the canal is done that will be our 
 victory." 
 
 The work went on. Machine drills, rumbles and 
 roars like thunder-storms and earthquakes, explo 
 sions, half a mountain flung one side, hailstones 
 
258 GEORGE WASHINGTON GOETHALS 
 
 of rock, showers of mud, dirt trains, steam shovels, 
 men running to escape rocks from a blast, hurly- 
 burly and confusion everywhere this was what a 
 first sight of Panama revealed. And then, as you 
 looked longer, you saw that there was nothing but 
 the most perfect order, everything in its place, every 
 man knowing his work and doing it, and every act 
 part of the great warfare of the Army of Panama in 
 its struggle with Nature. Here and there the flash 
 of a yellow car was seen. This belonged to the com 
 mander of the Army. The men called it the "Yel 
 low Peril," and perilous its coming often was if a 
 man was failing in his work. "The Colonel sleeps 
 from ten to five," said one of the men; "the rest of 
 the time he is working." 
 
 It was soon clear that Goethals s orders meant 
 something. He was friendly with the men, and 
 there was no "saluting," but when he gave an order 
 it had to be obeyed, and no excuses would be ac 
 cepted. He once sent to an official some unwelcome 
 instructions, and the official began a complaint with, 
 " I got that letter of yours, Colonel- " " I beg your 
 pardon," said the Colonel pleasantly, "but you 
 mean that you received my orders. As you have 
 the orders that matter is settled. Was there any 
 thing else you wished to talk about?" There was 
 not. 
 
 Besides engineering the digging of the mammoth 
 canal Goethals had 65,000 men, women, and chil 
 dren under his government, and part of his work 
 was to see that they were treated justly and were 
 
BUILDER OF THE PANAMA CANAL 259 
 
 made contented and happy. He told the men in his 
 first speech at the smoker that if they wished to com 
 plain of anything or to make any suggestions, they 
 were free to come to him at any time or to detain 
 him as he went about the works. This was the be 
 ginning of his " Sunday court." 
 
 To this" "court" came people of many national 
 ities and with all sorts of grievances. Sometimes 
 grave questions were presented, such as discord 
 between husband and wife. In the United States 
 these cases would often have been dragged through a 
 divorce court, but on the Isthmus they were almost 
 invariably settled in accordance with the advice of 
 the commander-in-chief. Many of the questions 
 were less important. One man thought he ought to 
 have more pay. Another, who was on night work, 
 complained that the noise made by his neighbor s 
 visitors prevented him from sleeping by day. The 
 greatest trouble, Goethals declared, came from the 
 housing question, for some houses were larger than 
 others. After a while it was decided to assign quar 
 ters strictly according to the salaries paid. But 
 furniture was also provided by the Government, and 
 if one woman found that there was an extra rocking- 
 chair in the house of a man with the same salary as 
 her husband, then there was trouble. If a neigh 
 bor s children were annoying or a debt could not be 
 collected, there was trouble. If the meat furnished 
 to one house was tender and that furnished to an 
 other house was tough, there was trouble. Most 
 engineers with the Panama Canal on their hands 
 
2<5o GEORGE WASHINGTON GOETHALS 
 
 would have thought such matters too petty to be 
 given the least attention ; but Colonel Goethals was 
 big enough to understand how things seemed to 
 other people. He knew that these annoyances, 
 small as they might appear to others, were really of 
 importance to the daily comfort of those who com 
 plained, and he knew that people who were not 
 comfortable would not remain on the Isthmus. It 
 is no wonder that the men used to sing a little song 
 whose chorus was : 
 
 "See Colonel Goethals, tell Colonel Goethals, 
 It s the only right and proper thing to do. 
 Just write a letter, or even better, 
 Arrange a little Sunday interview." 
 
 President Roosevelt was deeply interested in the 
 canal. He knew that 65,000 men, many of them 
 away from their families, were in absolute need of 
 good clean amusements; therefore he had club 
 houses built and put into the charge of the Y.M.C.A. 
 Here were libraries, pianos, reading-rooms, and 
 games. The women had clubs of their own, but 
 they were also admitted to these, and at certain 
 hours children had the use of the rooms. Even the 
 "movies" came to Panama. Out-of-door games 
 were encouraged. Tennis, baseball, and basket 
 ball flourished, and there was as keen rivalry be 
 tween clubs in Panama as between colleges in the 
 United States. 
 
 Colonel Goethals carried this same friendly rivalry 
 into the digging. He divided the canal into three 
 parts, Atlantic, Central, and Pacific. Then began 
 
Courtesy Isthmian Canal Commission 
 
 THE OPENING OF THE PANAMA CANAL, AUGUST 15, 1914 
 
 Upper: Steamship " Ancon " in the West Chamber, Gatun Middle Locks. Lower: 
 Steamship " Ancon " on Gatun Lake. These two pictures give a little idea of the 
 trolley system used in towing vessels through the locks and the narrower parts of 
 the Canal. Ships proceed under their own power only where they have ample 
 sea-room. 
 
262 GEORGE WASHINGTON GOETHALS 
 
 most zealous team-work, for each division -wanted 
 the best record. This engineer certainly under 
 stood how to manage men. He realized that no 
 man could be expected to feel much enthusiasm 
 about the work when he knew nothing of it except 
 the special part in which he himself was engaged ; so 
 a weekly paper was published. Then the men knew 
 what was going on. They knew which steam shovel 
 and which dredge was doing the best work, and they 
 began to feel a professional pride in "our dredge," 
 and " our concrete mixer." Then, too, they and our 
 whole country had a chance to know week by week 
 just what the canal was costing. We could see 
 what the millions spent at Panama were doing. We 
 could see that nothing was being hidden from 
 us; and like the workmen, we began to feel more 
 strongly than ever that it was "our" undertaking. 
 
 There was no graft, because Goethals would per 
 mit none. Of course it was tried more than once. 
 Materials not quite up to the contract were some 
 times sent, the guilty firm supposing that "the 
 Government would never find it out." Unluckily 
 for their pockets the man who represented the Gov 
 ernment did find it out, and he refused to accept 
 anything not of the best quality. Food had to be 
 brought from the United States, and once, when 
 some arrived that was not entirely above suspicion, 
 Goethals promptly sent the whole cargo back. In 
 deed, the building of the canal was "the biggest, 
 cleanest job the world has ever seen." 
 
 Early in 1914 the Isthmian Canal Commission 
 
BUILDER OF THE PANAMA CANAL 263 
 
 came to an end, and Colonel Goethals was appointed 
 "Governor of the Panama Canal." Six months 
 later the first ocean-going ship went through the 
 canal. The Colonel was not on board entertaining 
 the invited guests, but "on the job," for he was in 
 the "Yellow Peril" on shore, keeping close watch of 
 the vessel s progress. Early in 1915 he was made 
 major-general. 
 
 Long before this Goethals had given warning that 
 earth slides were to be expected, and would occur 
 until the soil had had time to settle into a perma 
 nent position. Toward the end of 1915 there were 
 two slides, from hills which stood opposite each 
 other, with only the canal between. The channel 
 was filled up, and there was nothing to do but to 
 keep the dredges at work and delay the opening of 
 the canal to commerce until April, 1916. 
 
 General Goethals took no credit to himself for his 
 admirable work. He was a soldier, he had been 
 ordered to build the canal, and he had obeyed; that 
 was all. He had been commander-in-chief, he ad 
 mitted, but every man who worked on the canal had 
 shared in the labor and the glory. One of the finest 
 traits of his character is this readiness to give credit 
 to others and not try to keep it all for himself, and 
 when the National Geographic Society gave him a 
 medal, he said, "I accept it in the name of every 
 member of the canal army." 
 
Books on Patriotic Subjects 
 
 I AM AN AMERICAN 
 
 By SARA CONE BRYANT (Mrs. Theodore P. Borst), 
 
 " Americanism," says Mrs. Borst, " needs to be taught as definitely 
 as do geography and arithmetic. The grade teachers are doing 
 splendid work for patriotism, with songs and recitations, story 
 telling, and talks on civic virtues. I have tried to give them some 
 thing more definite and coordinated, something that will serve as a 
 real textbook on ; Being an American. " 
 
 STORIES OF PATRIOTISM. 
 
 Edited by NORMA H. DEMING, and KATHARINE I. BEMIS. 
 
 A series of stirring tales of patriotic deeds by Americans from the 
 time of the colonists to the present. There are also stories about 
 famous heroes of our Allies in the Great War. 
 
 THE PATRIOTIC READER. 
 
 Edited by KATHARINE I. BEMIS, MATHILDE E. HOLTZ, and HEN** 
 
 L. SMITH. 
 
 The selections cover the history of our country from Colonial 
 times. A distinguishing feature is the freshness of material and the 
 admirable arrangement. The book gives one a familiarity with 
 literature that presents the highest ideals of freedom, justice, and 
 liberty. 
 
 THE LITTLE BOOK OF THE FLAG. 
 
 By EVA MARCH TAPPAN. 
 
 In her own entertaining style, Miss Tappan has written the stony 
 of Our Flag. She tells children how to behave toward the flag, in& 
 fashion that makes such behavior a sacred duty. There are seleo 
 tions for Reading and Memorizing. 
 
 A COURSE IN CITIZENSHIP AND PATRIOTISM. 
 
 Edited by E. L. CABOT, F. F. ANDREWS, F. E. COB, M. HILL, and ft, 
 
 MCSKIMMON. 
 
 Good citizenship grows out of love of country and in turn pro 
 motes the spirit of internationalism. This book teaches how to de 
 velop these qualities most effectually. 
 
 AMERICANIZATION AND CITIZENSHIP. 
 
 By HANSON HART WEBSTER. 
 
 " Well calculated to inculcate love for America, especially among 
 the foreign born. This is to be desired at this time more than evetf 
 before." His Eminence, James Cardinal Gibbons. 
 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 
 1932 
 
THE INDUSTRIAL READERS 
 
 By EVA MARCH TAPPAN 
 
 The Farmer and his Friends 
 Diggers in the Earth 
 Makers of Many Things 
 Travelers and Traveling 
 
 These books meet the general school demand for reading 
 #hich gives the child an elementary knowledge of the origin 
 of common things. 
 
 The Industrial Readers show the basic value of farming 
 and mining, the ways in which the products of the earth are 
 made usable, and the importance of means of transportation. 
 Through this discussion of "everyday" labor the pupil 
 comes to see the interdependence and value of all forms of 
 the world s work, and gains valuable knowledge that no other 
 jet of readers on the market can supply an understanding 
 of the economic and industrial background of his life. 
 
 HOW TO MAKE THE 
 GARDEN PAY 
 
 A Manual for the Intensive Cultivation of Small 
 Vegetable Gardens 
 
 By EDWARD MORRISON AND 
 CHARLES THOMAS BRUES 
 
 This book is written in simple, clear English that children 
 to the grammar grades may read easily. The authors have had 
 long experience with intensive home gardening and here pre 
 sent the essential information that will enable those unfamiliar 
 with gardening to plan for a garden that will utilize the avail 
 able space to the greatest possible advantage, to raise vegeta 
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 make the garden increasingly valuable, year after year. 
 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 BERKELEY 
 
 Return to desk from which borrowed. 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
 1950 
 
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 UNIV. OF CALIF, BERK. 
 
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 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY