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 Bmerican Statesmen 
 
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 Elbert IbubbarD 
 
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 (5. ip. putnam'6 Song
 
 Copyright, 1898 
 
 BY 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 
 Set up and electrotyped, Sept., 1898. Reprinted, 
 Dec, 1898 ; July, 1899 ; Oct., 1899 ; Dec, 1899 ; 
 April, 1900, (twice) ; June, 1900. 
 
 Ube ftnickerboclier fiveee, Dew ll?ocft
 
 Annex 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 
 1 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 
 
 PAGE 
 1 
 
 2 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 
 
 
 
 41 
 
 3 ALEXANDER HAMILTON 
 
 
 
 71 
 
 4 SAMUEL ADAMS . . 
 
 
 
 117 
 
 5 JOHN HANCOCK . . 
 
 
 
 145 
 
 6 JOHN QUINCY ADAMS 
 
 
 
 187 
 
 7 THOMAS JEFFERSON . 
 
 
 
 223 
 
 8 DANIEL WEBSTER . 
 
 
 
 259 
 
 9 HENRY CLAY . . . 
 
 
 
 295 
 
 10 JOHN JAY ... 
 
 
 
 327 
 
 11 WILLIAM H. SEWARD 
 
 
 
 363 
 
 12 ABRAHAA1 LINCOLN . 
 
 
 
 395
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 ALEXANDER HAMILTON . Frontispiece 
 From a painting by John Trumbull. 
 
 GEORGE WASHINGTON . . . • ^ 
 
 After a painting by Gilbert Stuart. 
 
 EARLY HOME OF WASHINGTON 
 FAMILY '° 
 
 Redrawn from an old print. 
 
 FIELD SPORTS - WASHINGTON AND 
 FAIRFAX " 
 
 From a design by F. O. Darley. 
 
 HOUSE AT KINGSTON, NEW YORK, IN 
 WHICH THE CONSTITUTION OF 
 THE STATE WAS DRAWN UP . . ^8 
 
 Redrawn from Barber's " Historical Collec- 
 tion." 
 
 WASHINGTON'S SIGNATURES ... 34 
 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN ..... 4^ 
 
 After the print reproduced from the drawing 
 of Cochin.
 
 iruuetrations 
 
 PAGE 
 
 FRANKLIN'S PUZZLE-HOW TO MAKE 
 MONEY 52 
 
 Reproduced from a copper-plate print by 
 courtesy of Mrs. Frances H. Hoyt. 
 
 FRANKLIN'S ELECTRICAL MACHINE. 64 
 
 Owned by the Franklin Institute. 
 
 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN .... 
 
 From a painting by Charles Willson Peale 
 owned by the Historical Society of Penii' 
 sylvania. 
 
 HOME OF ALEXANDER HAMILTON 
 WASHINGTON HEIGHTS, NEW 
 YORK 
 
 MONUMENT TO HAMILTON, TRINITY 
 CHURCHYARD, NEW YORK . 
 
 SAMUEL ADAMS .... 
 
 From a steel engraving. 
 
 SAMUEL ADAMS 
 
 After the painting by Chappel. 
 
 JOHN HANCOCK . 
 
 From a steel engraving. 
 
 HANCOCK'S HOMESTEAD, BOSTON 
 
 JOHN QUINCY ADAMS . . . 
 From a steel engraving. 
 
 94 
 118 
 
 146 
 
 164
 
 fllliistrattoiis 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE COTTAGE OF JOHN AND ABIGAIL 
 ADAMS '96 
 
 SLEEPING CHAMBER OF JOHN 
 
 QUINCY ADAMS '^^ 
 
 THE OLD KITCHEN, IN THE ADAMS 
 COTTAGE "8 
 
 THOMAS JEFFERSON "4 
 
 From a steel engraving. 
 
 FAC-SIMILE OF LETTER FROM JEF- 
 FERSON TO MONROE . . . .234 
 
 THOMAS JEFFERSON 244 
 
 After a painting by Chappel. 
 
 THOMAS JEFFERSON ^5° 
 
 From the original bust from a life mask 
 taken at Monticello, October 15, 1825, by 
 J. H. L Browere. By permission of Mc- 
 Clure's Magazine. 
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER 26° 
 
 From a steel engraving. 
 
 STATUE OF WEBSTER, CENTRAL 
 PARK, NEW YORK ^78 
 
 HENRY CLAY *96 
 
 From a steel engraving. 
 
 BIRTHPLACE OF HENRY CLAY . . 3°^ 
 
 vii
 
 miustrations 
 
 PAGE 
 
 ASHLAND, HOME OF HENRY CLAY . 3>4 
 JOHN JAY 328 
 
 From a steel engraving. 
 
 HOME OF JOHN JAY, KATONAH, N. Y. 348 
 WILLIAM H. SEWARD ... .364 
 
 From a steel engraving. 
 
 STATUE OF SEWARD, MADISON 
 SQUARE, NEW YORK . . . .380 
 
 FIRST READING OF THE EMANCIPA- 
 TION PROCLAMATION. . . .39° 
 
 From a painting by F. B. Carpenter. 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN .... 39^ 
 
 From a wood-cut by Grosch. 
 
 LINCOLN'S EARLY HOME . . .402 
 
 LINCOLN'S WRESTLE WITH ARM- 
 STRONG 410 
 
 From a drawing by Alfred Frederick. 
 
 FAC-SIMILE OF LINCOLN'S GETTYS- 
 BURG ADDRESS 426
 
 GEORGE WASHINGTON
 
 He left as fair a reputation as ever belonged to 
 a human character. . . . Midst all the sorrow- 
 ings that are mingled on this melancholy occa- 
 sion I venture to assert that none could have felt 
 his death with more regret than I, because no one 
 had higher opinions of his worth. . . . There 
 is this consolation, though, to be drawn, that 
 while living no man could be more esteemed, and 
 since dead none is more lamented. 
 
 Washington on the death of Tilghman.
 
 GEORGE WASHINGTON. 
 
 DEAN STANLEY has said that all 
 the gods of ancient mythology 
 were once men, and he traces for 
 us the evolution of a man into a hero, the 
 hero into a demi-god, and the demi-god 
 into a divinity. By a slow process the 
 natural man is divested of all our common 
 faults and frailties ; he is clothed with 
 superhuman attributes and declared a 
 being separate and apart, and is lost to us 
 in the clouds. 
 
 When Greenough carved that statue of 
 Washington that sits facing the Capitol, 
 he unwittingly showed how a man may 
 be transformed into a Jove. 
 3
 
 Oeorge Timaebington 
 
 But the world has reached a point when 
 to be human is no longer a cause for 
 apology ; we recognize that the human, 
 in degree, comprehends the divine. 
 
 Jove inspires fear, but to Washington 
 we pay the tribute of affection. Beings 
 hopelessly separated from us are not ours : 
 a god we cannot love, a man we may. 
 We know Washington as well as it is pos- 
 sible to know any man. We know him 
 better, far better, than the people who 
 lived in the very household with him. 
 We have his diary showing "how and 
 where I spent my time"; we have his 
 journal, his account-books (and no man 
 was ever a more painstaking accountant) ; 
 we have hundreds of his letters, and his 
 own copies and first drafts of hundreds of 
 others, the originals of which have been 
 lost or destroyed. 
 
 From these, with contemporary history, 
 we are able to make up a close estimate 
 of the man ; and we find him human — 
 splendidly human. By his books of 
 accounts we find that he was often imposed 
 4
 
 ©corge Masbington 
 
 upon — that he loaned thousands of dollars 
 to people who had no expectation of pay- 
 ing ; and in his last will, written with his 
 own hand, we find him cancelling these 
 debts, and making bequests to scores of 
 relatives ; giving freedom to his slaves, 
 and acknowledging his obligation to ser- 
 vants and various obscure persons. He 
 was a man in very sooth. He was a man 
 in that he had in him the appetites, the 
 ambitions, the desires of a man. Stewart, 
 the artist, has said, "All of his features 
 were indications of the strongest and 
 most ungovernable passions, and had he 
 been born in the forest, he would have 
 been the fiercest man among savage 
 tribes." 
 
 But over the sleeping volcano of his 
 temper he kept watch and ward, until his 
 habit became one of gentleness, gener- 
 osity, and shining, simple truth ; and 
 behind all we behold his unswerving 
 purpose and steadfast strength. 
 
 And so the object of this sketch will 
 be, not to show the superhuman Wash- 
 5
 
 ©corge Masbington 
 
 ington, the Washington set apart, but to 
 give a glimpse of the man Washington 
 who aspired, feared, hoped, loved, and 
 bravely died.
 
 II. 
 
 THE first biographer of George Wash- 
 ington was the Rev. Mason L. 
 Weenis. If you have a copy of 
 Weems's Life of Washington you had 
 better wrap it in chamois and place it away 
 for your heirs, for some time it will com- 
 mand a price. Fifty editions of Weems's 
 book were printed, and in its day no other 
 volume approached it in point of popular- 
 ity. In American literature Weems stood 
 first. To Weems are we indebted for the 
 hatchet tale, the story of the colt that was 
 broken and killed in the process, and all 
 those other fine romances of Washington's 
 youth . Weems' s literary style reveals th e 
 very acme of that vicious quality of un- 
 truth to be found in the old-time Sunday- 
 school books. Weems mustered all the 
 "Little Willie" stories he could find,
 
 ©corge TKHasbington 
 
 and attached to them Washington's name, 
 claiming to write for " the Betterment of 
 the Young," as if in dealing with the 
 young we should carefully conceal the 
 truth. Possibly Washington could not 
 tell a lie, but Weems was not thus 
 handicapped. 
 
 Under a mass of silly moralizing he 
 nearly buried the real Washington ; giv- 
 ing us instead a priggish, punk youth, and 
 a Madame Tussaud full-dress general, 
 with a wax-works manner and wooden 
 dignity. 
 
 Happily we have now come to a time 
 when such authors as Mason L. Weems 
 and John S. C. Abbott are no longer 
 accepted as final authorities. We do not 
 discard them, but, like Samuel Pepys, 
 they are retained that they may contribute 
 to the gayety of nations. 
 
 Various violent efforts have been made 
 in days agone to show that Washington 
 was of " a noble line"— as if the natural 
 nobility of the man needed a reason — 
 forgetful that we are all sons of God, and 
 8
 
 ©corge TlClasbington 
 
 it doth not yet appear what we shall be. 
 But Burke's Peerage lends no light, and 
 the careful, unprejudiced, patient search 
 of recent years finds only the blue blood 
 of the common people. 
 
 Washington himself said that in his 
 opinion the history of his ancestors " was 
 of small moment and a subject to which, 
 I confess, I have paid little attention." 
 
 He had a book-plate and he had also a 
 coat of arms on his carriage door. Mr. 
 Weems has described Washington's book- 
 plate thus: "Argent, two bars gules in 
 chief, three nmllets of the second. Crest, 
 a raven with wings, indorsed proper, issu- 
 ing out of a ducal coronet, or."
 
 III. 
 
 MARY BALIv was the second wife 
 of Augustine Washington. In 
 his will the good man describes 
 this marriage, evidently with a wink, as 
 "my second Venture." And it is sad to 
 remember that he did not live to know 
 that his "Venture" made America his 
 debtor. The success of the union seems 
 pretty good argument in favor of widow- 
 ers marrying. There were four children 
 in the family, the oldest nearly full 
 grown, when Mary Ball came to take 
 charge of the household. She was twenty- 
 seven, her husband ten years older. They 
 were married March 6, 1731, and on 
 February 22d of the following year was 
 born a man-child and they named him 
 George. 
 
 The Washingtons were plain, hard- 
 10

 
 ©eorqe "GQasbington 
 
 working people— land poor. They lived 
 in a small bouse that had three rooms 
 down-stairs and an attic, where the chil- 
 dren slept and bumped their heads 
 against the rafters if they sat up quickly 
 in bed. 
 
 Washington got his sterling qualities 
 from the Ball family and not from the 
 tribe of Washington. George was en- 
 dowed by his mother with her own splen- 
 did health and all the sturdy Spartan 
 virtues of her mind. In features and 
 mental characteristics he resembled her 
 very closely. There were six children 
 born to her in all, but the five have been 
 nearly lost sight of in the splendid success 
 of the first-born . 
 
 I have used the word " Spartan " ad- 
 visedly. Upon her children the mother 
 of Washington lavished no soft senti- 
 mentality. A woman who cooked, 
 weaved, spun, washed, made the clothes, 
 and looked after a big family in pioneer 
 times had her work cut out for her. 
 The children of Mary Washington obeyed
 
 ©eorgc TKHasbington 
 
 her, and when told to do a thing never 
 stopped to ask why — and the same fact 
 may be said of the father. 
 
 The girls wore linsey-woolsey dresses, 
 and the boys tow suits that consisted of 
 two pieces, which in winter were further 
 added to by hat and boots. If the weather 
 was very cold the suits were simply dupli- 
 cated — a boy wearing two or three pairs 
 of trousers instead of one. 
 
 The mother was the first one up in the 
 morning, the last one to go to rest at 
 night. If a youngster kicked off the 
 covers in his sleep and had a coughing 
 spell she arose and looked after him. 
 Were any sick she not only ministered to 
 them, but often watched away the long 
 dragging hours of night. 
 
 And I have noticed that these sturdy 
 mothers in Israel who so willingly give 
 their lives that others may live often find 
 vent for over-wrought feelings by scold- 
 ing ; and I, for one, cheerfully grant them 
 the privilege. Washington's mother 
 scolded and grumbled to the day of her 
 
 12
 
 ©eoi-ge THHasbington 
 
 death. She also sought solace by smok- 
 ing a pipe. And this reminds me that a 
 noted specialist in neurotics has recently 
 said that if women would use the weed 
 moderately, tired nerves would find re- 
 pose and nervous prostration would be a 
 luxury unknown. Not being much of 
 a smoker myself, and knowing nothing 
 about the subject, 1 give the item for 
 what it is worth. 
 
 All the sterling, classic virtues of indus- 
 try, frugality, and truth-telling were in- 
 culcated by this excellent mother, and 
 her strong common sense made its indel- 
 ible impress upon the mind of her son. 
 
 Mary Washington always regarded 
 George's judgment with a little sus- 
 picion ; she never came to think of him as 
 a full-grown man ; to her he was only a big 
 boy. Hence she would chide him and 
 criticise his actions in a way that often 
 made him very uncomfortable. During 
 the Revolutionary War she followed his 
 record closely ; when he succeeded she 
 only smiled, said something that sounded 
 13
 
 ©eorcje TlGlasbtnaton 
 
 like " I told you so," and calmly filled her 
 pipe ; when he was repulsed she was 
 never cast down. She foresaw that he 
 would be made President, and thought 
 "he would do as well as anybody." 
 
 Once she complained to him of her 
 house in Fredericksburg ; he wrote in an- 
 swer, gently but plainly, that her habits 
 of life were not such as would be ac- 
 ceptable at Mount Vernon. And to this 
 she replied that she had never expected 
 or intended to go to Mount Vernon, 
 and moreover would not, no matter how 
 much urged — a declination without an 
 invitation that must have caused the son 
 a grim smile. In her nature was a goodly 
 trace of savage stoicism that took a satis- 
 faction in concealing the joy she felt in 
 her son's achievement : for that her life 
 was all bound up in his we have good 
 evidence. Washington looked after her 
 wants and supplied her with everything 
 she needed, and as these things often 
 came through third parties, it is pretty 
 certain she did not know the source ; at 
 14
 
 (Seorge Tldasbington 
 
 any rate she accepted everything quite 
 as her due, and shows a half-comic ingrat- 
 itude that is very fine. 
 
 When Washington started for New 
 York to be inaugurated President he 
 stopped to see her. She donned a new 
 white cap and a clean apron in honor 
 of the visit, remarking to a neighbor 
 woman who dropped in that she sup- 
 posed " these great folks expected some- 
 thing a little extra." It was the last 
 meeting of mother and son. She was 
 eighty -three at that time and " her boy " 
 fifty-five. She died not long after. 
 
 Samuel Washington, the brother two 
 years younger than George, has been 
 described as "small, sandy- whiskered, 
 shrewd and glib." Samuel was married 
 five times. Some of the wives he de- 
 serted and others deserted him and two 
 of them died, thus leaving him twice a 
 sad, lorn widower, from which condition 
 he quickly extricated himself. He was 
 always in financial straits and often ap- 
 pealed to his brother George for loans. 
 15
 
 In 1781, we find George Washington 
 writing to his brother John, " In God's 
 name ! how has Samuel managed to get 
 himself so enormously in debt?" The 
 remark sounds a little like that of Sam- 
 uel Johnson, who on hearing that Gold- 
 smith was owing four hundred pounds 
 exclaimed, "Was ever poet so trusted 
 before ? " 
 
 Washington's ledger shows that he 
 advanced his brother Samuel two thou- 
 sand dollars, " to be paid back without in- 
 terest." But Samuel's ship never came 
 in, and in Washington's will we find the 
 debt graciously and gracefully discharged. 
 
 Thornton Washington, a son of Samuel, 
 was given a place in the English army at 
 George Washington's request ; and two 
 other sons of Samuel were sent to school 
 at his expense. One of the boys once 
 ran away and was followed by his uncle 
 George, who carried a goodly birch with 
 intent to " give him what he deserved " ; 
 but after catching the lad the uncle's 
 heart melted, and he took the runaway 
 16
 
 (Beorge TKHasbincjton 
 
 back into favor. An entry in Washing- 
 ton's journal shows that the children of 
 his brother Samuel cost him full five 
 thousand dollars. 
 
 Harriot, one of the daughters of Sam- 
 uel, lived in the household at Mount 
 Vernon and evidently was a great cross, 
 for we find Washington pleading as an 
 excuse for her frivolity that " she was not 
 brung up right, she has no disposition, 
 and takes no care of her clothes, which are 
 dabbed about in every corner and the best 
 are always in use. She costs me enough ! " 
 And this was about as near a complaint 
 as the Father of his Country and the 
 father of all his poor relations ever made. 
 In his ledger we find this item : " By Miss 
 Harriot Washington, gave her to buy 
 wedding clothes |ioo.oo." It supplied the 
 great man joy to write that line, for it 
 was the last of Harriot. He furnished a 
 fine wedding for her and all of the ser- 
 vants had a holiday, and Harriot and her 
 unknown lover were happy ever after- 
 wards — so far as we know. 
 17
 
 ©eorgc iKIlasbington 
 
 From 1750 to 1759 Washington was a 
 soldier on the frontier, leaving Mount Ver- 
 non and all of his business in charge of his 
 brother John . Between these two there 
 was a genuine bond of affection. To 
 George this brother was always, " Dear 
 Jack," and when John married, George 
 sends "respectful greetings to your 
 Lady," and afterwards " love to the 
 little ones from their Uncle." And in 
 one of the dark hours of the Revolution 
 George writes from New Jersey to this 
 brother: "God grant you health and 
 happiness. Nothing in this world would 
 add so to mine as to be near you." 
 John died in 1787 and the President of the 
 United States writes in simple undis- 
 guised grief of " the death of my beloved 
 brother." 
 
 John's eldest son, Bushrod, was Wash- 
 ington's favorite nephew. He took a 
 lively interest in the boy's career and 
 taking him to Philadelphia placed him 
 in the law office of Judge James Wilson. 
 He supplied Bushrod with funds, and
 
 (George IKIlasbingtoh 
 
 wrote him many affectionate letters of 
 advice, and several times made him a 
 companion on journeys. The boy proved 
 worthy of it all and developed into a 
 strong and manly man — quite the best 
 of all Washington's kinsfolk. In later 
 years we find Washington asking bis 
 advice in legal matters and excusing 
 himself for being such a "troublesome, 
 non-paying client." In his will the 
 " Hon. Bushrod Washington " is named 
 as one of the executors, and to him Wash- 
 ington left his library, all of his private 
 papers, besides a share in the estate. 
 Such confidence was a fitting good-bye 
 from the great and loving heart of a father 
 to a son full worthy of the highest trust. 
 Of Washington's relations with his 
 brother Charles we know but little. 
 Charles was a plain, simple man who 
 worked hard and raised a big family. In 
 his will Washington remembers them all, 
 and one of the sons of Charles we know 
 was appointed to a position upon Lafay- 
 ette's staflF on Washington's request. 
 19
 
 (Beorgc TKHasF3ington 
 
 The only one of Washington's family 
 that resembled him closely was his sister 
 Betty. The contour of her face was 
 almost identical with his, and she was 
 so proud of it that she often wore her 
 hair in a cue and donned his hat and 
 sword for the amusement of visitors. 
 Betty married Fielding Lewis, and two 
 of her sons acted as private secretaries to 
 Washington while he was President. 
 One of these sons — Lawrence Lewis- 
 married Nellie Custis, the adopted 
 daughter of Washington and grand- 
 daughter of Mrs. Washington, and the 
 couple, by Washington's will, became 
 part owners of Mount Veinon. The man 
 who can figure out the exact relationship 
 of Nellie Custis's children to Washington 
 deserves a medal. 
 
 We "do not know much of Washington's 
 father : if he exerted any special influence 
 on his children we do not know it. He 
 died when George was eleven years old, 
 and the boy then went to live at the 
 "Hunting Creek Place" with his half- 
 20
 
 ©eorge IKflaebtngton 
 
 brother Lawrence, that he might attend 
 school. L,awrence had served in the En- 
 glish army under Admiral Vernon, and 
 in honor of his chief, changed the name 
 of his home and called it Mount Vernon. 
 Mount Vernon then consisted of twenty- 
 five hundred acres, mostly a tangle of for- 
 est, with a small house and log stables. 
 The tract had descended to Lawrence from 
 his father, with provision that it should 
 fall to George if Lawrence died without 
 issue. Lawrence married, and when he 
 died, aged thirty-two, he left a daughter, 
 Mildred, who died two years later. 
 Mount Vernon then passed to George 
 Washington, aged twenty-one, but not 
 without a protest from the widow of Law- 
 rence, who evidently was paid a certain 
 sum not to take the matter into the courts. 
 Washington owned Mount Vernon for 
 forty-six years, just one half of which 
 time was given to the service of his coun- 
 try. It was the only place he ever called 
 " home," and there he sleeps.
 
 IV. 
 
 WHEN Washiugton was fourteen, 
 his school-days were over. Of 
 his youth we know but little. 
 He was not precocious, although physi- 
 cally he developed early ; but there was 
 no reason why the neighbors should keep 
 tab ou him and record anecdotes. They 
 had boys of their own just as promising. 
 He was tall and slender, long-armed, with 
 large, bony hands and feet, very strong, 
 a daring horseman, a good wrestler, and 
 living on the banks of a river, he be- 
 came, as all healthy boys must, a good 
 swimmer. 
 
 His mission among the Indians in his 
 twenty-first year was largely successful 
 through the personal admiration he ex- 
 cited among the savages. In poise, he 
 was equal to their best, and ever being a 
 bit proud, even if not vain, he dressed for 
 
 22
 
 (BcovQC "Masbimtow 
 
 the occasion in full Indian regalia, minus 
 only the war-paint. The Indians at once 
 recognized his nobility, and named him 
 " Conotancarius" — Plunderer of Villages 
 — and suggested that he take to wife an 
 Indian maiden, and remain with them 
 as chief. 
 
 When he returned home, he wrote to 
 the Indian agent, announcing his safe ar- 
 rival, and sending greetings to the In- 
 dians. "Tell them," he says, "how 
 happy it would make Conotauc.rius to 
 see them, and take them by the hand." 
 
 His wish was gratified, for the Indians 
 took him at his word, and fifty of them 
 came to him, saying, "Since j'ou could 
 not come and live with us, we have come 
 to live with you." They camped on the 
 green in front of the residence, and pro- 
 ceeded to inspect every room in the 
 house, tested all the whiskey they could 
 find, appropriated eatables, and were 
 only induced to depart after all the bed- 
 clothes had been dyed red, and a blanket 
 or a quilt presented to each. 
 23
 
 ©eorge "Cmasbitiflton 
 
 Throughout his life Washington had a 
 very tender spot in his heart for women. 
 At sixteen he writes with all a youth's 
 solemnity of " a hurt of the heart uncura- 
 ble." And from that time forward there 
 is ever some " Faire Mayde "to be seen 
 in the shadow. In fact Washington got 
 along with women much better than with 
 men ; with men he was often diffident 
 and awkward, illy concealing his uneasi- 
 ness behind a forced dignity ; but he knew 
 that women admired him and with them 
 he was at ease. When he made that first 
 Western trip, carrying a message to the 
 French, he turns aside to call on the In- 
 dian princess, Aliguippa. In his journal 
 he says, "presented her a Blanket and a 
 Bottle of Rum, which latter was thought 
 the much best Present of the 2." 
 
 In his expense account we find items 
 like these: "Treating the ladys two 
 shillings." " Present for Polly 5 shil- 
 lings." "My share for Music at the 
 Dance 3 shillings." "Lost at Loo 5 
 shillings." In fact, like most Episcopa- 
 24
 
 ©eorgc TlUlat>blnciton 
 
 lians, Washington danced and played 
 cards. His favorite game seems to have 
 been " Loo " ; and he generally played 
 for small stakes, and when playing with 
 "thel^adys" usually lost, whether pur- 
 posely or because otherwise absorbed, we 
 know not. 
 
 In 1756, he made a horseback journey 
 on military business to Boston, stopping 
 a week going and on the way back at New 
 York. He spent the time at the house of a 
 former Virginian, Beverly Robinson, who 
 had married Susannah Philipse, daughter 
 of Frederick Philipse, one of the rich 
 men of Manhattan. In the household 
 was a young woman, Mary Philipse, sis- 
 ter of the hostess. She was older than 
 Washington, educated, and had seen 
 much more of polite life than he. The 
 tall young Virginian, fresh from the 
 frontier, where he had had horses shot 
 under him, excited the interest of Mary 
 Philipse, and Washington, innocent but 
 ardent, mistook this natural curiosity for 
 a softer sentiment and proposed on the 
 25
 
 6eorge Tlinasbington 
 
 spot. As soon as the lady got her breath 
 he was let down very gently. 
 
 Two years afterwards Mary Philipse 
 married Col. Roger Morris, in the king's 
 service, and cards were duly sent to 
 Mount Vernon. But the whirligig of 
 time equalizes all things, and, in 1776, 
 General Washington, Commander of the 
 Continental Army, occupied the mansion 
 of Colonel Morris, the Colonel and his 
 iady being fugitive Tories. In his diary, 
 Washington records this significant item: 
 "Dined at the house lately Col. Roger 
 Morris confiscated and the occupation 
 of a common Farmer." 
 
 Washington always attributed his de- 
 feat at the hands of Mary Philipse to 
 being too precipitate and " not waiting 
 until ye ladye was in ye mood." But 
 two years later we find him being even 
 more hasty and this time with success, 
 which proves that all signs fail in dry 
 weather and some things are possible as 
 well as others. He was on his way to 
 Williamsburg to consult physicians and 
 26
 
 ©corge "CClaebington 
 
 stopped at the residence of Mrs. Daniel 
 Parke Custis to make a short call— was 
 pressed to remain to tea, did so, proposed 
 marriage, and was graciously accepted. 
 We have a beautiful steel engraving that 
 immortalizes this visit, showing Wash- 
 ington's horse impatiently waiting at the 
 door. 
 
 Mrs. Custis was a widow with two 
 children. She was twenty-six, and the 
 same age as Washington within three 
 months. Her husband had died seven 
 months before. In Washington's cash 
 account for May, 1758, is an item, "one 
 Engagement Ring ^2,16.0." 
 
 The happy couple were married eight 
 mouths later, and we find Mrs. Washing- 
 ton explaining to a friend that her reason 
 for the somewhat hasty union was that 
 her estate was getting in a bad way and 
 a man was needed to look after it. Our 
 actions are usually right, but the reasons 
 we give seldom are ; but in this case no 
 doubt "a man was needed," for the 
 widow had much property, and we can- 
 27
 
 (Seorge Masbington 
 
 not but cougratulate Martha Custis on 
 her choice of " a man." She owned fifteen 
 thousand acres of land, many lots in the 
 city of Williamsburg, two hundred ne- 
 groes, and some money on bond ; all the 
 property being worth over one hundred 
 thousand dollars — a very large amount 
 for those days. 
 
 Directly after the wedding the couple 
 moved to Mount Vernon, taking a good 
 many of the slaves with them. Shortly 
 after, arrangements were under way to 
 rebuild the house and the plans that 
 finally developed into the present man- 
 sion were begun. 
 
 Washington's letters and diary contain 
 very few references to his wife, and none 
 of the many visitors to Mount Vernon 
 took pains to testify to either her wit or 
 intellect. We know that the housekeep- 
 ing at Mount Vernon proved too much 
 for her ability and that a woman was 
 hired to oversee the household. And 
 in this reference a complaint is found 
 from the General that " housekeeper 
 28
 
 z 
 
 o 
 o 
 
 a 
 
 as 
 O
 
 (5corc;c XHHasbimiton 
 
 has done gone and left things in con- 
 fusion." He had his troubles. 
 
 Martha's education was not equal to 
 writing a presentable letter, for we find 
 that her husband wrote the first draft of all 
 important missives that it was necessary 
 for her to send, and she copied them even 
 to his mistakes in spelling. Very patient 
 was he about this, and even when he 
 was President and harried constantly we 
 find him stopping to acknowledge for 
 her "an invitation to take some Tea," 
 and at the bottom of the sheet adding a 
 pious bit of finesse, thus : " The President 
 ^requests me to send his compliments and 
 only regrets that the pressure of affairs 
 compels him to forego the Pleasure of 
 seeing you." 
 
 Immediately after Washington's death, 
 his wife destroyed all the letters he had 
 written her — many hundred in number — 
 an offense that the world is not yet quite 
 willing to forget, even though it has for- 
 given. 
 
 29
 
 V. 
 
 AIvTHOUGH we have been told that 
 when Washington was six years 
 old he could not tell a lie, yet he 
 afterwards partially overcame the disa- 
 bility. On one occasion he writes to a 
 friend that the mosquitoes of New Jersey 
 "can bite through the thickest boot," 
 and though a contemporary clergyman, 
 greatly flurried, explains that he meant 
 "stocking" we insist that the statement 
 shall stand as the Father of his Country 
 expressed it, Washington also records 
 without a blush, "I announced I would 
 leave at 8 and then immediately gave 
 private Orders to go at 5, so to avoid the 
 Throng." Another time when he dis- 
 charged an overseer for incompetency 
 he lessened the pain of parting by writing 
 for the fellow " a Character." 
 30
 
 ©eorgc TRUasbington 
 
 When he went to Boston and was 
 named as Commander of the Army, his 
 chief concern seemed to be how he would 
 make peace with Martha. Ho ! ye 
 married men ! do you understand the 
 situation ? He was to be away for a year, 
 two, or possibly three, and his wife did 
 not have an inkling of it. Now he must 
 break the news to her. 
 
 As plainly shown by Cabot Lodge and 
 other historians, there was much rivalry 
 for the oflBce, and it was ouly allotted to 
 the South as a political deal after much 
 bickering. Washington had been a pas- 
 sive but very willing candidate, and after 
 a struggle his friends secured him the 
 prize— and now what to do with Martha ! 
 Writing to her, among other things, he 
 says, "You may believe me, my dear 
 Patsy, when I assure you in the most 
 solemn manner that so far from seeking 
 the appointment I have done all in my 
 power to avoid it." The man who will 
 not fabricate a bit in order to keep peace 
 with the wife of his bosom is not much 
 31
 
 ©eorge THllasblngton 
 
 of a man. But "Patsy's" objections 
 were overcome, and beyond a few chid- 
 ings and sundry complainings, she did 
 nothing to block the great game of war. 
 
 At Princeton, Washington ordered 
 camp-fires to be built along the brow of a 
 hill for a mile, and when the fires were 
 well lighted, he withdrew his army, 
 marched around to the other side, and 
 surprised the enemy at daylight. At 
 Brooklyn he used masked batteries, and 
 presented a fierce row of round black 
 spots painted on canvas that, from the 
 city, looked like the mouths of cannon 
 at which men seek the bauble reputation. 
 It is said he also sent a note threatening 
 to fire these sham cannon, on receiving 
 which the enemy hastily moved be- 
 yond range. Perceiving afterwards that 
 they had been imposed upon, the brave 
 English sent word " to shoot and be 
 damned." Evidently Washington con- 
 sidered that all things are fair in love and 
 war. 
 
 Washington talked but little, and his 
 32
 
 (5eorge tClasbfngtort 
 
 usual air was one of melancholy that 
 stopped just short of sadness. All this, 
 with the firmness of his features and the 
 dignity of his carriage, gave the impres- 
 sion of sternness and severity. And these 
 things gave rise to the popular concep- 
 tion that he had small sense of humor ; 
 yet he surely was fond of a quiet smile. 
 
 At one time Congress insisted that a 
 standing army of five thousand men was 
 too large ; Washington replied that if 
 England would agree never to invade this 
 country with more than three thousand 
 men, he would be perfectly willing that 
 our army should be reduced to four 
 thousand. 
 
 When the King of Spain, knowing he 
 was a farmer, thoughtfully sent him a 
 present of a jackass, Washington pro- 
 posed naming the animal in honor of the 
 donor ; and in writing to friends about 
 the present, draws invidious comparisons 
 between the gift and giver. Evidently 
 the joke pleased him, for he repeats it 
 iu different letters ; thus showing how, 
 33
 
 ©corgc "QClaebinQton 
 
 when he sat down to clear his desk of 
 correspondence, he economized energy 
 by following a form. So we now find 
 letters that are almost identical, even to 
 jokes, sent to persons in South Carolina 
 and Massachusetts. Doubtless the good 
 man thought they would never be com- 
 pared, for how could he foresee that an 
 autograph-dealer in New York would 
 eventually catalogue them at twenty-two 
 dollars, fifty cents each, or that a very 
 proper but half-affectionate missive of his 
 to a Faire Ladye would be sold by her 
 great granddaughter for fifty dollars ? 
 
 In 1793 there were on the Mount Ver- 
 non plantation three hundred and seventy . 
 head of cattle, and Washington appends 
 to the report a sad regret that with all 
 this number of horned beasts, he yet has 
 to buy butter. There is also a fine, grim 
 humor shown iu the incident of a flag of 
 truce coming in at New York, bearing a 
 message from General Howe, addressed 
 to " Mr. Washington." The General took 
 the letter from the hand of the red-coat, 
 34
 
 a.tcyr. \2j^'Vi^lA 
 
 cyO 
 
 ZiC^ ^\4f/iina/c 
 
 1 in oca rip 
 
 ^deam/?vmY< 
 
 'a^ tir^/7>^ym^^^ f7AO 
 
 AiT. n 
 
 'a*^n(/rufAm^ 
 
 
 ^ ^ i^^ Z-^^^-^^^^^, 
 
 yET.4-i- 
 
 yh^ 3^^ 2<f ^c^^C^^>^/?^^ 
 
 C-^^^l'Z-t^S^^'^ 
 
 e^rL>!Ku^-x. 
 
 
 roURDA-rS BCroRE HIS DCATH /^zO'^ 
 
 WASHINGTON'S SIGNATURES.
 
 QcoiQc Masbiiigton 
 
 glanced at the superscription, and said, 
 "Why, this letter is not for me! It is 
 directed to a planter in Virginia — I '11 
 keep it and give it to him at the end of 
 the war." Then, cramming the letter 
 into his pocket, he ordered the flag of 
 truce out of the lines and directed the 
 gunners to stand by. In an hour another 
 letter came back addressed to "His Ex- 
 cellenc}', General Washington." 
 
 It was not long after this that a soldier 
 brought to W^ashingtou a dog that had 
 been found wearing a collar with the 
 name of General Howe engraved on it. 
 Washington returned the dog by a special 
 messenger with a note reading, " General 
 Washington sends his compliments to 
 General Howe, and begs to return one 
 dog that evidently belongs to him." In 
 this instance I am inclined to think that 
 Washington acted in sober good faith, but 
 was the victim of a practical joke on the 
 part of one of his aides. 
 
 Another remark that sounds like a joke, 
 but perhaps was not one, was when, on 
 35
 
 ©eorge Wa»bington 
 
 taking command of the army at Boston, 
 the General writes to his life-long friend, 
 Dr. Craik, asking what he can do for him 
 and addiug a sentiment still in the air — 
 "But these Massachusetts people suffer 
 nothing to go by them that they can lay 
 their hands ou." In another letter he 
 pays his compliments to Connecticut 
 thus : " Their impecunious meanness sur- 
 passes belief." 
 
 When Cornwallis surrendered at York- 
 town, Washington refused to humiliate 
 him and his officers by accepting their 
 swords. He treated Cornwallis as his 
 guest and even "gave a dinner in his 
 honor." At this dinner Rochambeau 
 being asked for a toast gave "The 
 United States." Washington proposed 
 "The King of France." Cornwallis 
 merely gave "The King," and Washing- 
 ton, putting the toast, expressed it as 
 Cornwallis intended, "The King of Eng- 
 land," and added a sentiment of his own 
 that made even Cornwallis laugh — "may 
 he stay there." Washington's treatment 
 36
 
 ©eorgc Masbingtou 
 
 of Cornwallis made him a life-long friend. 
 Many years after, when Cornwallis was 
 Governor-General of India, he sent a 
 message to his old antagonist, wishing 
 him "prosperity and enjoyment," and 
 adding, "As for myself, I am yet in 
 troubled waters." 
 
 •37
 
 VI. 
 
 ONCE in a century, possibly, a be- 
 ing is born who possesses a tran- 
 scendent insight, and him we 
 call a "genius." Shakespeare, for in- 
 stance, to whom all knowledge la}' open ; 
 Joan of Arc ; the artist Turner ; Sweden- 
 borg, the mystic — these are the men who 
 know a royal road to geometry ; but we 
 may safely leave them out of account 
 when we deal with the builders of a 
 State, for among statesmen there are no 
 geniuses. 
 
 Nobody knows just what a genius 
 is or what he may do next ; he boils 
 at an unknown temperature and often 
 explodes at a touch. He is uncertain and 
 therefore unsafe. His best results are 
 conjured forth, but no man has yet con- 
 jured forth a Nation — it is all slow, 
 38
 
 ©eorge Masbington 
 
 patient, painstaking work along mathe- 
 matical lines. Washington was a math- 
 ematician and therefore not a genius. 
 We call him a great man, but his great- 
 ness was of a sort in which we all can 
 share ; his virtues were of a kind that, in 
 degree, we too may possess. Any man 
 who succeeds in a legitimate business 
 works with the same tools that Washing- 
 ton used. Washington was human. We 
 know the man ; we understand him ; we 
 comprehend how he succeeded, for with 
 him there were no tricks, no legerdemain 
 — no secrets. He is very near to us. 
 
 Washington is indeed first in the hearts 
 of his countrymen. Washington has no 
 detractors. There may come a time when 
 another will take first place in the affec- 
 tions of the people, but that time is not 
 yet ripe. Lincoln stood between men 
 who now live and the prizes they coveted ; 
 thousands still tread the earth whom he 
 benefited, and neither class can forgive, 
 for they are of clay. But all those who 
 lived when Washington lived are gone; 
 39
 
 (3eorgc TKHasbington 
 
 not one survives ; even the last body-ser- 
 vant, who confused memory with hear- 
 say, has departed babbling to his rest. 
 
 We know all of Washington we will 
 ever know ; there are no more documents 
 to present, no partisan witnesses to ex- 
 amine, no prejudices to remove. His 
 purity of purpose stands unimpeached ; 
 his steadfast earnestness and sterling 
 honesty are our priceless examples. 
 
 We love the man. 
 
 We call him Father. 
 
 40
 
 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 
 
 41
 
 I will speak ill of no man, not even in matter 
 of truth ; but rather excuse the faults I hear 
 charged upon others, and upon proper occasion 
 speak all the good I know of ever\'body. 
 
 Franklin' s Journal. 
 
 42
 
 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 
 
 BENJAMIN FRANKIvIN was twelve 
 years old. He was large and 
 strong aud fat aud good-natured 
 and had a full-moon face and red cheeks 
 that made him look like a country bump- 
 kin. He was born in Boston within 
 twenty yards of the church called " Old 
 South," but the Franklins now lived at 
 the corner of Congress and Hanover 
 Streets, where to this day there swings in 
 the breeze a gilded ball, and on it the 
 legend, "Josiah Franklin, Soap Boiler." 
 Benjamin was the fifteenth child in the 
 family ; and several having grown to 
 maturity and flown, there were thirteen 
 at the table when little Ben first sat iu the 
 43
 
 JBenjamtn ^Franklin 
 
 high chair. But the Franklins were not 
 superstitious, and if little Ben ever prayed 
 that another would be born, just for luck, 
 we know nothing of it. His mother 
 loved him very much and indulged him 
 in many ways for he was always her 
 baby boy, but the father thought that be- 
 cause he was good-natured he was also 
 lazy and should be disciplined. 
 
 Once upon a time the father was pack- 
 ing a barrel of beef in the cellar, and 
 Ben was helping him, and as the father 
 always said grace at table, the boy sug- 
 gested he ask a blessing, once for all, on 
 the barrel of beef and thus economize 
 breath. But economics along that line 
 did not appeal to Josiah Franklin, for this 
 was early in 1718, and Josiah was a Pres- 
 byterian and lived in Boston. 
 
 The boy was not religious for he never 
 " went forward," and only went to church 
 because he had to, and read Plutarch's 
 Lives with much more relish than he did 
 Saint's Rest. But he had great curiosity 
 and asked questions until his mother 
 44
 
 JBcnjamiii ffrankltn 
 
 would say, " Goodness gracious, go and 
 play ! " 
 
 And as the boy was n't very religious 
 or very fond of work, his father and 
 mother decided that there were only two 
 careers open for him : the mother pro- 
 posed that he be made a preacher, but his 
 father said, send him to sea. To go to 
 sea under a good strict captain would dis- 
 cipline him, and to send him off and 
 put him under the care of Rev. Doctor 
 Thirdly would answer the same purpose, 
 — which course should be pursued? But 
 Pallas Athene, who was to watch over 
 this lad's destinies all through life, pre- 
 served him from either. 
 
 His parents' aspirations extended even 
 to his becoming captain of a schooner or 
 pastor of the First Church at Roxbury. 
 And no doubt he could have sailed the 
 schooner around the globe in safety, or 
 filled the pulpit with a degree of power 
 that would have caused consternation to 
 reign in the heart of every other preacher 
 in town ; but fate saved him that he 
 45
 
 asenjamin jfranhltn 
 
 might take the Ship of State, when she 
 threatened to strand on the rocks of 
 adversity, and pilot her into peaceful 
 waters, and to preach such sermons to 
 America that their eloquence still moves 
 us to better things. 
 
 Parents think that what they say about 
 their children goes, and once in an aw- 
 fully long time it does, but the men who 
 become great and learned usually do so 
 in spite of their parents — which remark 
 was Srst made by Martin Luther but 
 need not be discredited on that account. 
 
 Ben's oldest brother was James. Now 
 James was nearly forty ; he was tall and 
 slender, stooped a little, and had sandy 
 whiskers, and a nervous cough, and posi- 
 tive ideas on many subjects — one of which 
 was that he was a printer. His appren- 
 tice, or "devil," had left him, because 
 the devil did not like to be cuffed when- 
 ever the compositor shuffled his fonts. 
 James needed another apprentice, and 
 proposed to take his younger brother and 
 make a man of him if the old folks were 
 46
 
 :i8enjamiii jfranhUn 
 
 willing. The old folks were willing and 
 Ben was duly bound by law to his brother, 
 agreeing to serve him faithfully as Jacob 
 served Laban for seven years and two 
 years more. 
 
 Science has explained many things, but 
 it has not yet told why it sometimes 
 happens that when seventeen eggs are 
 hatched, the brood will consist of sixteen 
 barnyard fowls and one eagle. 
 
 James Franklin was a man of small 
 capacity, whimsical, jealous, and arbi- 
 trary. But if he cuffed his apprentice 
 Benjamin, when the compositor blun- 
 dered, and when he did n't, it was his legal 
 right ; and the master who did not occa- 
 sionally kick his apprentices was con- 
 sidered derelict to duty. The boy ran 
 errands, cleaned the presses, swept the 
 shop, tied up bundles, did the tasks that 
 no one else would do ; and incidentally 
 " learned the case." Then he set type, 
 and after a while ran a press. And in 
 those days a printer ranked above a 
 common mechanic. A man who was a 
 47
 
 :fl3eujamin jfranhUn 
 
 printer was a literary man, as were the 
 master printers of London and Venice. A 
 printer was a man of taste. All editors 
 were printers, and usually composed the 
 matter as they set it up in type. Thus 
 we now have a room called a " compos- 
 ing room," a "composing stick," etc. 
 People once addressed "Mr. Printer," 
 not Mr. Editor, and when they met " Mr. 
 Printer " on the street removed their 
 hats — but not in Philadelphia. 
 
 Young Franklin felt a proper degree of 
 pride in his work, if not vanity. In 
 fact, he himself has said that vanity is a 
 good thing, and whenever he saw it come 
 flaunting down the street, always made 
 way, knowing that there was virtue some- 
 where back of it — out of sight perhaps 
 but still there. James, being a brother, 
 had no confidence in Ben's intellect, so 
 when Ben wrote short articles on this and 
 that, he tucked them under the door so 
 that James would find them in the morn- 
 ing. James showed these articles to his 
 friends, and they all voted them very fine 
 48
 
 JScnjamin jfranftUn 
 
 and concluded they must have been 
 written by Doctor So-aud-So, Ph.D., who, 
 like Lord Bacon, was a very modest man 
 and did not care to see his name in print. 
 
 Yet by and by it came out who it was 
 that wrote the anonymous "hot stuflf," 
 and then James did not think it was quite 
 so good as he at first thought, and, more- 
 over, declared he knew whose it was all 
 the time. Ben was eighteen and had 
 read Montaigne, and Collins, and Shaftes- 
 bury, and Hume. "When he wrote he 
 expressed thoughts that then were con- 
 sidered very dreadful, but that can now 
 be heard proclaimed even in good ortho- 
 dox churches. But Ben had wit and to 
 spare, and he levelled it at government 
 officials and preachers, and these gentle- 
 men did not relish the jokes, — people sel- 
 dom relish jokes at their own expense, — 
 and they sought to suppress the newspaper 
 that the Franklin brothers published. 
 
 The blame for all the trouble James 
 heaped upon Benjamin, and all the credit 
 for success he took to himself. James de- 
 49
 
 JSenjamin jfranklin 
 
 clared that Ben had the big head — and he 
 probably was right ; but he forgot that 
 the big head, Hke mumps and measles, 
 and everything in life, is self-limiting and 
 good in its way. So to teach Ben his 
 proper place, James reminded him that 
 he was only an apprentice, with three 
 years yet to serve, and that he should be 
 seen seldom and not heard all the time, 
 and that if he ran away he would send a 
 constable after him and fetch him back. 
 
 Ben evidently had a mind open to 
 suggestive influences, for the remark 
 about running away prompted him to do 
 so. He sold some of his books and got 
 himself secreted on board a ship about 
 to sail for New York . 
 
 Arriving at New York, in three days he 
 found the broad-beamed Dutch had small 
 use for printers and no special admira- 
 tion for the art preservative ; and he 
 started for Philadelphia. 
 
 Every one knows how he landed in a 
 small boat at the foot of Market Street 
 with only a few coppers in his pocket, 
 50
 
 Benjamin jfranhlln 
 
 and made his way to a bake-shop and 
 asked for a three-penny loaf of bread, and 
 being told they had no three-penny loaves, 
 then asked for three-penny's worth of 
 any kind of bread, and was given three 
 loaves. Where is the man, who in a 
 strange land has not suffered rather than 
 reveal his ignorance before a shopkeeper? 
 When I was first in England and could 
 not compute readily in shillings and 
 pence I would toss out a gold piece when 
 I made a purchase and assume a 'igh 
 and 'aughty mien. And that Philadelphia 
 baker probably died in blissful ignorance 
 of the fact that the youth who was to be 
 America's pride bought from him three 
 loaves of bread when he wanted only one. 
 The runaway Ben had a downy beard all 
 over his face, and as he took his three 
 loaves and walked up Market Street, with 
 a loaf under each arm, munching on the 
 third, was smiled upon in merry mirth 
 by the buxom Deborah Read, as she stood 
 in the doorway of her father's house. 
 Yet Franklin got even with her, for some 
 51
 
 :t6enjamin ffranklin 
 
 months after, he went back that way and 
 courted her, and she grew to love hira, 
 and they ' ' exchanged promises, ' ' he says. 
 After some months of work and love- 
 making, Franklin sailed away to England 
 on a wild-goose chase. He promised 
 to return soon and make Deborah his 
 wife. But he wrote only one solitary 
 letter to the broken-hearted girl and did 
 not come back for nearly two years. 
 
 52
 
 

 
 II. 
 
 TIME is the great avenger as well as 
 educator ; only the education is 
 usually deferred until it no longer 
 avails in this incarnation, and is valuable 
 only for advice — and nobody wants ad- 
 vice. Death-bed repentances may be 
 legal-tender for salvation in another 
 world, but for this they are below par, 
 and regeneration that is postponed until 
 the man has no further capacity to sin is 
 little better. For sin is only perverted 
 power, and the man without capacity to 
 sin neither has ability to do good — is n't 
 that so ? His soul is a Dead Sea that sup- 
 ports neither amoeba nor fish, neither 
 noxious bacilli, nor useful life. Happy is 
 the man who conserves his God-given 
 power until wisdom and not passion shall 
 direct it. So the younger in life a man 
 53
 
 JBenjamin ffranklin 
 
 makes the resolve to tiiru and live, the 
 better for that man and the better for the 
 world. 
 
 Once upon a time Carlyle took Mil- 
 burn, the blind preacher, out on to Chel- 
 sea embankment and showed the sight- 
 less man where Franklin plunged into 
 the Thames and swam to Blackfriars 
 Bridge. " He might have stayed here" 
 said Thomas Carlyle, "and become a 
 swimming teacher, but God had other 
 work for him ! " Franklin had many 
 opportunities to stop and become a victim 
 of arrested development, but he never 
 embraced tbe occasion. He could have 
 stayed in Boston and been a hum-drum 
 preacher, or a thrifty sea-captain, or an or- 
 dinary printer ; or he could have remained 
 in London, and been like his friend 
 Ralph, a clever writer of doggerel and a 
 supporter of the political party that 
 would pay most. 
 
 Benjamin Franklin was twenty years 
 old when he returned from England. 
 The ship was beaten back by headwinds 
 54
 
 :JScnjamin jfranhlin 
 
 and blown out of her course by bliz- 
 zards, and becalmed at times, so it took 
 eighty-two days to make the voyage. 
 A worthy old clergyman tells me this 
 was so ordained and ordered that Ben- 
 jamin might have time to meditate on 
 the follies of youth and shape his course 
 for the future, and I do not argue the 
 case for I am quite willing to admit 
 that my friend the clergyman has the 
 facts. 
 
 Yes, we must be "converted," "born 
 again," "regenerated," or whatever you 
 may be pleased to call it. Sometimes — 
 very often — it is love that reforms a man ; 
 sometimes sickness, sometimes sore be- 
 reavement. Dr. Talmage says that with 
 St. Paul it was a sunstroke, and this 
 may be so, for surely Saul of Tarsus 
 on his way to Damascus to persecute 
 Christians was not in love. Love for- 
 gives to seventy times seven and per- 
 secutes nobody. 
 
 We do not know just what it was that 
 turned Franklin ; he had tried folly— we 
 55
 
 ^Benjamin jpranf^lln 
 
 know that— and he just seems to have 
 anticipated Browning and concluded : 
 
 It 's wiser being good than bad ; 
 It 's safer being meek than fierce ; 
 It 's better being sane than mad. 
 
 On this vo3-age the young printer was 
 thrust down into the depths and made to 
 wrestle with the powers of darkness ; and 
 in the remorse of soul that came over 
 him, he made a liturgy to be repeated 
 night and morning, and at mid-day. 
 There were many items in this ritual— all 
 of which were corrected and amended 
 from titne to time in after years. Here 
 are a few paragraphs that represent the 
 longings and trend of the lad's heart. His 
 prayer was : " That I may hax^e tenderness 
 for the meek ; that I may be kind to my 
 neighbors, good-natured to my compan- 
 ions and hospitable to strangers. Help 
 me, O God ! 
 
 " That I may be averse to craft and over- 
 reaching, abhor extortion, and every kind 
 of weakness and wickedness. Help me, 
 OGod! 
 
 56
 
 JSenjamtn ffraiihlin 
 
 "That I may have constant regard to 
 honor aud probity ; that I may possess 
 an innocent and good conscience, and at 
 length become truly virtuous aud mag- 
 nanimous. Help me, O God ! 
 
 " That I may refrain from calumny and 
 detraction ; that I may abhor deceit, and 
 avoid lying, envy, and fraud, flattery, ha- 
 tred, malice, aud ingratitude. Help me, 
 O God ! " 
 
 Then in addition he formed rules of 
 conduct aud wrote them out aud com- 
 mitted them to memory. The maxims 
 he adopted are old as thought, yet can 
 never become antiquated, for in morals 
 there is nothing either new or old, neither 
 can there be. 
 
 On that return voyage from England, 
 he inwardly vowed that his first act on 
 getting ashore would be to find Deborah 
 Read and make peace with her and his 
 conscience. And true to his vow he 
 found her, but she was the wife of another. 
 Her mother believed that Franklin had 
 run away simply to get rid of her, and 
 57
 
 Senjamin jfrajiftlin 
 
 the poor girl, dazed and forlorn, be 
 reft of will, had been induced to marry 
 a man b}' the name of Rogers who 
 was a potter and also a potterer, but 
 who Franklin says was "a very good 
 potter." 
 
 After some months, Deborah left the 
 potter, because she did not like to be 
 reproved with a strap, and went home to 
 her mother. 
 
 Franklin was now well in the way of 
 prosperitj', aged twenty-four, with a little 
 printing business ; plans plus, and ambi- 
 tions to spare. He had bad his little fling 
 in life, and had done various things of 
 which he was ashamed ; and the foolish 
 things that Deborah had done were no 
 worse than those of which he had been 
 guiltv. So he called on her, and they 
 talked it over and made honest confes- 
 sions that are good for the soul. The 
 potter disappeared — no one knew where 
 —some said he was dead, but Benjamin 
 and Deborah did not wear mourning. 
 They took rumor's word for it, and 
 58
 
 JBcnjamin jfranklin 
 
 thanked God, and went to a church and 
 were married. 
 
 Deborah brought to the firm a very 
 small dowrj' ; and Benjamin contributed a 
 bright baby boy, aged two years, captured 
 no one knows just where. This boy was 
 "William Franklin, who grew up into a 
 very excellent man, and the worst that 
 can be said of him is, that he became 
 Governor of New Jersey. He loved and 
 respected his father, and called Deborah 
 mother, and loved her very much. And 
 she was worthy of all love and ever treated 
 him with tenderness and gentlest con- 
 siderate care. Possibly a blot on the 
 'scutcheon may in the working of God's 
 providence, not always be a dire mis- 
 fortune, for it sometimes has the effect of 
 binding broken hearts as nothing else 
 can, as a cicatrice toughens the fibre. 
 
 Deborah had not much education, but 
 she had good, sturdy common sense, 
 which is better if you are forced to make 
 choice. She set herself to help her hus- 
 band in every way possible and so far as I 
 59
 
 JScnjnmln J^ranl;ltn 
 
 know, never sighed for one of those things 
 you call " a career." She even worked in 
 the printing-office, folding, stitching, and 
 doing up bundles. 
 
 Long 3'ears afterward, when Franklin 
 was Ambassador of the American Colo- 
 nies in France, he told with pride that 
 the clothes he wore were spun, woven, 
 cut out, and made into garments all by his 
 wife's own bauds. Franklin's love for 
 Deborah was very steadfast. Together 
 they became rich and respected, won 
 world-wide fame, and honors came that 
 way such as no American before or since 
 has ever received. 
 
 And when I say " God bless all good 
 women who help men to do their work," 
 I simply repeat the words once used by 
 Benjamin Franklin when lie had Deborah 
 in mind. 
 
 60
 
 Ill 
 
 WHEN Frauklin was forty-two 
 be had accumulated a fortune 
 of seventy-five thousand dol- 
 lars. It gave him an income of about 
 four thousand dollars a year, which he 
 said was all be wanted ; so he sold out his 
 business intending to devote his entire 
 energies to the study of science and lan- 
 guages. He bad lived iust one half his 
 daj's ; and bad he then passed out, his 
 life could have been summed up as one 
 of the most useful that ever has been 
 lived. He had founded and been the life 
 of the Junto Club ; the most sensible, and 
 beneficent club of which I ever heard. 
 
 The series of questions asked at every 
 meeting of the Junto, so mirror the life 
 and habit of thought of Franklin, that we 
 had better glance at a few of them : 
 6i
 
 JSenjamtn jFranfiltn 
 
 1. Have you read over these queries 
 this morning, in order to consider what 
 you might have to offer the Junto, touch- 
 ing any one of them ? 
 
 2. Have you met with anything in the 
 author you last read, remarkable, or suit- 
 able to be communicated to the Junto ; 
 particularly in history, morality, poetry, 
 physics, travels, mechanical arts, or other 
 parts of knowledge ? 
 
 3. Do you know of a fellow-citizen, who 
 has lately done a worthy action, deserv- 
 ing praise and imitation ; or who has 
 lately committed an error, proper for us 
 to be warned against and avoid ? 
 
 4. What unhappy effects of intemper- 
 ance have you latel}' observed or heard ; 
 of imprudence, of passion, orof any other 
 vice or folly ? 
 
 5. What happy effects of temperance, 
 of prudence, of moderation, or of any 
 other virtue ? 
 
 6. Do you think of anything at present 
 in which the members of the Junto may 
 be serviceable to mankind, to their 
 
 62
 
 :ffieninniiii jPrankUn 
 
 country, to their friends, or to them- 
 selves? 
 
 7. Hath any deserving stranger arrived 
 iu town since last meeting that you have 
 heard of? And what have you heard or 
 observed of his character or merits ? And 
 whether, think you, it lies in the power 
 of the Junto to oblige him, or encourage 
 him as he deserves ? 
 
 8. Do you know of any deserving 
 young beginner latelj' set up, whom it 
 lies in the power of the Junto in any way 
 to encourage ? 
 
 9. Have you lately observed any defect 
 in the laws of your country, of which it 
 would be proper to move the legislature 
 for an amendment ? Or do you know of 
 any beneficial law that is wanting ? 
 
 10. Have you lately observed any en- 
 croachment on the iust liberties of the 
 people ? 
 
 11. In what manner can the Junto, or 
 any of its members, assist you in any of 
 your honorable designs ? 
 
 12. Have you any weighty aflPair on 
 
 63
 
 :Benjamin jfranhliu 
 
 hand in which 3-ou think the advice of 
 the Junto may be of service ? 
 
 13. What benefits have you lately re- 
 ceived from any man not present ? 
 
 14. Is there any difficulty in matters of 
 opinion, of justice and injustice, which 
 you would gladly have discussed at this 
 time ? 
 
 The Junto led to the establishment, by 
 Franklin, of the Philadelphia Public Li- 
 brary, that became the parent of all 
 public libraries in America. He also or- 
 ganized and equipped a fire company ; 
 paved and lighted the streets of Philadel- 
 phia ; established a high school and an 
 academy for the study of English 
 branches ; founded the Philadelphia Pub- 
 lic Hospital ; invented the sprocket-joint 
 printing-press ; the Franklin stove, and 
 various other useful mechanical devices. 
 
 After his retirement from business, 
 Franklin enjoyed seven years of what he 
 called leisure, but they were years of 
 study and application ; years of happiness 
 and sweet content, but years of aspiration 
 64
 
 FRANKLIN'S ELECTRICAL MACHINE.
 
 JSenjatnln ffrankliii 
 
 and au earnest looking into the future. 
 His experiments with kite and key had 
 made his name known in all the scientific 
 circles of Europe, and his suggestive writ- 
 ings on the subject of electricity had 
 caused Goethe to lay down his pen and 
 go to rubbing amber for the edification 
 of all Weimar. Franklin was in corre- 
 spondence with the greatest minds of 
 Europe, and what his Poor Richard Al- 
 manac had done for the plain people of 
 America, his pamphlets were now doing 
 for the philosophers of the Old World. 
 
 In 1754, he wrote a treatise showing the 
 Colonies that they must be united, and 
 this was the first public word that was to 
 grow and crystallize and become the 
 United States of America. Before that 
 the Colonies were simply single, inde- 
 pendent, jealous, and bickering over- 
 grown clans. Franklin showed for the 
 first time that they must unite in mutual 
 aims. 
 
 In 1757, matters were getting a little 
 strained between the province of Penn- 
 65
 
 aSenjamin jfranftlin 
 
 sylvania and England. " The law-mak- 
 ers of England do not understand us — 
 some one should go there as an author- 
 ized agent to plead our cause," and 
 Franklin was at once chosen as the man 
 of strongest personality and soundest 
 sense. So Franklin went to England 
 and remained there for five years as agent 
 for the Colonies. 
 
 He then returned home, but after two 
 years the Stamp Act had stirred up the 
 public temper to a degree that made revo- 
 lution imminent, and Franklin again 
 went to England to plead for justice. 
 The record of the ten years he now 
 spent in London is told by Bancroft in 
 a hundred pages. Bancroft is very good, 
 and I have no desire to rival him, so, 
 suffice it to say that Franklin did all that 
 any man could have done to avert the 
 coming War of Revolution. Burke has 
 said that, when he appeared before Par- 
 liament to be examined as to the condi- 
 tion of things in America, it was like a lot 
 of schoolboys interrogating the master. 
 66
 
 36enjamln jfranftKn 
 
 With the voice and tongue of a prophet, 
 Franklin foretold the English people 
 what the outcome of their treatment of 
 America would be. Pitt and a few others 
 knew the greatness of Franklin, and saw 
 that he was right, but the rest smiled in 
 derision. 
 
 He sailed for home in 1775, and urged 
 the Continental Congress to issue the 
 Declaration of Independence, of which he 
 became a signer. Then the war came, 
 and had not Franklin gone to Paris and 
 made an ally of France, and borrowed 
 money, the Continental Army could not 
 have been maintained in the field. He 
 remained in France for nine years, and 
 was the pride and pet of the people. His 
 sound sense, his good humor, his distin- 
 guished personality, gave him the free- 
 dom of society everywhere. He had the 
 ability to adapt himself to conditions, and 
 was everywhere at home. 
 
 Once he attended a memorable ban- 
 quet in Paris shortly after the close of 
 the Revolutionary War. Among the 
 67
 
 3Benjamin jfcanl^lin 
 
 speakers was the English Ambassador, 
 who responded to the toast, " Great 
 Britain." The Ambassador dwelt at 
 length on England's greatness and lik- 
 ened her to the sun that sheds its benefi- 
 cent rays on all. The next toast was 
 "America," and Franklin was called 
 upon to respond. He began very mod- 
 estly by saying: "The Republic is too 
 young to be spoken of in terms of 
 praise ; her career is yet to come, and 
 so, instead of America, I will name you a 
 man, George Washington — the Joshua 
 who successfully commanded the sun to 
 stand still." The Frenchmen at the 
 board forgot the courtesy due their Eng- 
 lish guest, and laughed needlessly lo^id. 
 
 Franklin was regarded in Paris as the 
 man who had both planned the War of 
 the Revolution, and fought it. They 
 said, "he despoiled the thunder-bolt of 
 its danger, and snatched sovereignty out 
 of the hand of King George of Eng- 
 land." No doubt but that his ovation 
 was largely owing to the fact that he was 
 68
 
 BENrAMIN FRANKLIN.
 
 :ffienjamln jfranhlin 
 
 supposed to have plucked whole hand- 
 fuls of feathers from England's glory, 
 and surely they were pretty nearly right. 
 In point of all-round development, 
 Franklin must stand as the foremost 
 American. The one intent of his mind 
 was to purify his own spirit, to develop 
 his intellect on every side, and make his 
 body the servant of his soul. His pas- 
 sion was to acquire knowledge, and the 
 desire of his heart was to communicate it. 
 We know of no man who ever lived 
 a fuller life, a happier life, a life more 
 useful to other men, than Benjamin 
 Franklin. For forty-two years he gave 
 the constant efforts of his life to his 
 country, and during all that time no 
 taint of a selfish action can be laid to his 
 charge. Almost his last public act was 
 to petition Congress to pass an act for 
 the abolition of slavery. He died in 
 1790, and as you walk up Arch Street, 
 Philadelphia, only a few squares from 
 the spot where stood his printing-shop, 
 you can see the place where he sleeps. 
 69
 
 JSenjamin jfranhlin 
 
 The following epitaph, written by him- 
 self, however, does not appear on the 
 simple monument that marks his grave : 
 
 The Body 
 
 OF 
 
 Benjamin Franklin, Printer, 
 
 (Like the cover of an old book, 
 
 Its contents torn out. 
 
 And stripped of its lettering and gilding,) 
 
 Lies here food for worms. 
 
 Yet the work itself shall not be lost, 
 
 For it will (as he believes) appear once 
 
 MORE 
 
 In a new 
 
 And MORE BEAUTIFUL EDITION 
 
 Corrected and Amended 
 
 By 
 
 The Author. 
 
 70
 
 ALEXANDER HAMILTON
 
 The objects to be attained are : 
 
 To justify and preserve the confidence of the 
 most enlightened friends of good government ; 
 to promote the increasing respectability of the 
 American name ; to answer the calls of justice ; 
 to restore landed property to its due value ; to 
 furnish new sources both to agriculture and com- 
 merce ; to cement more closely the union of the 
 States ; to add to their security against foreign 
 attack ; to establish public order on the basis of 
 an upright and liberal policy ;— these are the 
 great and invaluable ends to be secured by a 
 proper and adequate provision, at the present 
 period, for the support of public credit. 
 
 Report to Congress. 
 
 72
 
 
 HOME Of ALEXANDER HAMILTON, Washington Heights, New York..
 
 ALEXANDER HAMILTON. 
 
 WB do not know the name of the 
 mother of Alexander Hamil- 
 ton : we do not know the 
 given name of his father. But fro:n let- 
 ters, a diary, and pieced-out reports, 
 allowing fancy to bridge from fact to fact, 
 we get a patchwork history of the events 
 preceding the birth of this wonderful 
 man. 
 
 Every strong man has had a splendid 
 mother. Hamilton's mother was a wo- 
 man of wit, beauty, and education. 
 While very young, through the machina- 
 tions of her elders, she had been married 
 to a man nmch older than herself, — rich, 
 73
 
 XllejanDer IF^amilton 
 
 wilful, and dissipated. The man's name 
 was Lavine, but his first name we do not 
 know, so hidden were the times in a 
 maze of obscurity. The young wife very 
 soon discovered the depravity of this man 
 whom she had vowed to love and obey ; 
 divorce was impossible ; and rather than 
 endure a life-long existence of legalized 
 shame, she packed up her scanty effects 
 and sought to hide herself from societj' 
 and kinsmen by going to the West Indies. 
 There she hoped to find employment 
 as a governess in the family of one of the 
 rich planters ; or if this plan were not 
 successful she would start a school on 
 her own account and thus benefit her 
 kind and make for herself an honorable 
 living. Arriving at the island of Nevis, 
 she found that the natives did not es- 
 pecially desire education, certainly not 
 enough to pay for it, and there was no 
 family requiring a governess. But a cer- 
 tain Scotch planter by the name of Ham- 
 ilton, who was consulted, thought in 
 time that a school could be built up, and 
 74
 
 BIcjanDer Ibamilton 
 
 he offered to meet the expense of it until 
 such a time as it could be put on a pay- 
 ing basis. Unmarried women who ac- 
 cept friendly loans from men stand in 
 dangerous places. V/ith all good women, 
 heart-whole gratitude and a friendship 
 that seems unselfish easily ripen into 
 love. They did so here. Perhaps, in 
 a warm, ardent temperament, sore grief 
 and biting disappointment and crouching 
 want obscure the judgment and give a 
 show of reason to actions that a colder 
 intellect would disapprove. 
 
 On the frontiers of civilization man is 
 greater than law — all ceremonies are 
 looked upon lightly. In a few mouths 
 Mrs. Lavine was called b)'the little world 
 of Nevis, Mrs. Hamilton, and Mr. and 
 Mrs. Hamilton regarded themselves as 
 man and wife. 
 
 The planter Hamilton was a hard- 
 headed, busy individual, who was quite 
 unable to sympathize with his wife's finer 
 aspirations. Her first husband had been 
 clever and dissipated ; this one was wor- 
 75
 
 Blejan&er Ibaniilton 
 
 thy and dull. And thus deprived of con- 
 genial friendships, without books or art 
 and that social home life that goes to make 
 up a woman's world, and longing for the 
 safety of close sympathy and tender love, 
 with no one on whom her intellect could 
 strike a spark, she keenly felt the bitter- 
 ness of exile. 
 
 In a city where society ebbs and flows, 
 an intellectual woman married to a com- 
 merce-grubbing man is not especially to 
 be pitied. She can find intellectual affin- 
 ities that will ease the irksomeness of 
 her situation. But to be cast on a desert 
 isle with a being, no matter how good, 
 who is incapable of feeling with you the 
 eternal mystery of the encircling tides ; 
 who can only stare when j-ou speak of the 
 moaning lullaby of the restless sea ; who 
 knows not the glory of the sunrise and feels 
 no thrill when the breakers dash them- 
 selves into foam, or the moonlight dances 
 on the phosphorescent waves — ah ! that 
 is indeed exile. Loneliness is not in being 
 alone, for then ministering spirits come 
 76
 
 BlejanDer Ibamllton 
 
 to soothe and bless — loneliness is to en- 
 dure the presence of one who does not 
 understand. 
 
 And so this finely organized, receptive, 
 aspiring woman, through the exercise of a 
 will that seemed masculine in its strength, 
 found her feet mired in quicksand. She 
 struggled to free herself and every effort 
 only sank her deeper. The relentless 
 environment only held her with firmer 
 clutch. 
 
 She thirsted for knowledge, for sweet 
 music, for beauty, for sympathy, for at- 
 tainment. She had a heart-hunger that 
 none about her understood. She strove 
 for better things. She prayed to God, 
 but the heavens were as brass ; she cried 
 aloud and the only answer was the throb- 
 bing of her restless heart. 
 
 In this condition a son was born to her. 
 They called his name Alexander Hamil- 
 ton. This child was heir to all of his 
 mother's splendid ambitions. Her lack 
 of opportunity was his blessing ; for the 
 stifled aspirations of her soul charged his 
 77
 
 Bleran&cr Ibamllton 
 
 being witli a strong man's desires, and all 
 of the mother's silken, unswerving will 
 was woven through his nature. He was 
 to surmount obstacles that she could not 
 overcome, and to tread under his feet 
 difficulties that to her were invincible. 
 
 The prayer of her heart was answered, 
 but not in the way she expected. God 
 listened to her after all ; for every earnest 
 prayer has its answer, and not a sincere 
 desire of the heart but somewhere will 
 find its gratification. 
 
 But earth's buffets were too severe for 
 the brave young woman ; the forces in 
 league against her were more than she 
 could withstand, and before her boy was 
 out of baby dresses she gave up the 
 struggle, and went to her long rest, 
 soothed only by the thought, that al- 
 though she had sorely blundered, she yet 
 had done her work as best she could. 
 
 78
 
 II. 
 
 AT his mother's death we find Alex- 
 ander Hamilton taken in charge 
 by certain mystical kinsmen. 
 Evidently he was well cared for, as he 
 grew into a handsome, strong lad, — 
 small, to be sure, but finely formed. 
 Where he learned to read, write, and 
 cipher we know not ; he seems to have 
 had one of those active, alert minds that 
 can acquire knowledge on a barren island. 
 
 When nine years old he signed his 
 name as witness to a deed. The signa- 
 ture is needlessly large and bold, and 
 written with careful schoolboy pains, but 
 the writing shows the same characteris- 
 tics that mark the thousand and one 
 dispatches which we have, signed at bot- 
 tom, " G. Washington." 
 
 At twelve years of age he was clerk in 
 79
 
 Blejan&cr Ibamilton 
 
 a general store ; one of those country 
 stores where everything is kept, from rib- 
 bon to whiskey. There were other help- 
 ers iu the store, full grown ; but when the 
 proprietor went away for a few days into 
 the interior, the dark, slim youngster took 
 charge of the bookkeeping and cash ; 
 and made such shrewd exchanges of mer- 
 chandise for produce that when the " Old 
 Man " returned, the lad was rewarded by 
 two pats on the head and a raise in sal- 
 ary of one shilling a week. 
 
 About this time the boy was also show- 
 ing signs of literary skill by writing sun- 
 dry poems and " compositions," and one 
 of his efforts iu this line describing a 
 tropical hurricane was published in a 
 London paper. This opened the eyes of 
 the mvstical kinsmen to the fact that they 
 had a genius among them, and the elder 
 Hamilton was importuned for money to 
 send the boy to Boston that he might re- 
 ceive a proper education and come back 
 and own the store and be a magistrate 
 and great man. No doubt the lad pressed
 
 aiejaiiDer Ibamilton 
 
 the issue, too, for his ambition had al- 
 ready begun to ferment, as we find him 
 writing to a friend : " I '11 risk my life, 
 though not my character, to exalt my 
 station." 
 
 Most great things in America have to 
 take their rise in Boston ; so it seems 
 meet that Alexander Hamilton, aged fif- 
 teen, a British subject, should first set 
 foot on American soil at Long Wharf, 
 Boston. He took a ferry over to Cam- 
 bridgeport and walked through the woods 
 three miles to Harvard College. Possibly 
 he did not remain because his training in 
 a bookish way had not been sufficient for 
 him to enter, and possibly he did not like 
 the Puritanic visage of the old professor 
 who greeted him on the threshold of 
 Massachusetts Hall ; at any rate he soon 
 made his way to New Haven. Yale suited 
 him no better, and he took a boat for 
 New York. 
 
 He had letters to several good clergy- 
 men at New York and they proved wise 
 and good counsellors. The boy was ad- 
 8i
 
 BlejanDec iDamUton 
 
 vised to take a course at the Grammar 
 School at Elizabethtown, New Jersey. 
 
 There he remained a year applying 
 himself most vigoroiisly, and the next 
 fall he knocked at the gate of King's 
 College. It is called Columbia now be- 
 cause kings in America went out of fash- 
 ion, and all honors formerly paid to the 
 king were turned over to Miss Colum- 
 bia, Goddess of Freedom. 
 
 King's College swung wide its doors for 
 the swarth}- little West Indian. He was 
 allowed to choose his own course and 
 every advantage of the university was 
 oflFered him. In a university you get just 
 all j'ou are able to hold ; it depends upon 
 yourself, and at the last all men who are 
 made at all are self-made. 
 
 Hamilton improved each passing mo- 
 ment as it flew ; with the help of a tutor 
 he threw himself into his work, gathering 
 up knowledge with the quick perception 
 and eager alertness of one from whom the 
 good things of earth have been withheld. 
 
 Yet he lived well and spent his money 
 82
 
 BlcranOei 1[3amiltoii 
 
 as if there were plenty more where it 
 came from ; but he was never dissipated 
 nor wasteful. 
 
 This was in the j'ear 1774, and the Col- 
 onies were in a state of political excite- 
 ment. Young Hamilton's sympathies 
 were all with the mother country. He 
 looked upon the Americans, for the most 
 part, as a rude, crude, and barbaric peo- 
 ple, who should be very grateful for the 
 protection of such an all-powerful coun- 
 try as England. At his boarding-house 
 and at schoil he argued the question 
 hotly, defending England's right to tax 
 her dependencies. 
 
 One fine day one of his schoolmates 
 put the question to him flatly : " lu case 
 of war on which side will you fight ? ' ' 
 Hamilton answered : " On the side of 
 England." 
 
 But by the next day he had reasoned it 
 out that if England succeeded in sup- 
 pressing the rising insurrection she would 
 take all credit to herself; and if the Col- 
 onies succeeded there would be honors 
 83
 
 BlejanDer Ibamilton 
 
 for those who did the work. Suddenly 
 it came over him that there was such a 
 thing as "the divine right of insurrec- 
 tion," and that there was no reason why 
 men living in America should be taxed 
 to support a government across the sea. 
 The wealth produced in America should 
 be used to develop America. 
 
 He was young, and burning with a 
 lofty ambition. He knew, and had known 
 all along, that he would some day be 
 great and famous and powerful — here was 
 the opportunity. 
 
 And so next day he annouuced at the 
 boarding-house that the eloquence and 
 logic of his messmates were too powerful 
 to resist — he believed the Colonies and 
 the messmates were in the right. Then 
 several bottles were brought in, and 
 success was drunk to all men who strove 
 for liberty. 
 
 Patriotic sentiment is at the last self- 
 interest ; in fact Herbert Spencer de- 
 clares that there is no sane thought or 
 rational act but has its root in egoism. 
 84
 
 BlejanDcr Ibamilton 
 
 Shortly after the youug man's con- 
 version there was a mass-meeting held 
 in " The Fields," which meant the wilds 
 of what is now the region of Twenty- 
 third Street. Young Hamilton stood in 
 the crowd and heard the various speakers 
 plead the cause of the Colonies, and vu-ge 
 that New York should stand firm with 
 Massachusetts against the further en- 
 croachments and persecutions of Eng- 
 land. There were many Tories in the 
 crowd, for New York was with King 
 George as against Massachusetts, and 
 these Tories asked the speakers embar- 
 rassing questions that the speakers failed 
 to answer. And all the time young 
 Hamilton found himself nearer and 
 nearer the platform. Finally he under- 
 took to reply to a talkative Tory and 
 some one shouted, " Give him the plat- 
 form — the platform ! " and in a moment 
 this seventeen-year-old boy found himself 
 facing two thousand people. There was 
 hesitation and embarrassment, but the 
 shouts of one of his college chums, " Give 
 85
 
 BlejaiiOer ibanvnton 
 
 it to 'em ! Give it to 'em ! " filled in an 
 awkward instant, and he began to speak. 
 There was logic and lucidity of expres- 
 sion, and as he talked the air became 
 charged with reasons, and all he had to 
 do was to reach up and seize them. 
 
 His strong and passionate nature gave 
 gravity to his sentences and every quib- 
 bling objector found himself answered, 
 and more than answered, and the speak- 
 ers who were to present the case found 
 this stripling doing the work so much 
 better than they could, that they urged 
 him on with applause and loud cries of 
 "Bravo ! Bravo ! " 
 
 Immediately at the close of Hamilton's 
 speech the chairman had the good sense 
 to declare the meeting adjourned — thus 
 shutting off all reply, as well as closing 
 the mouths of the minnow orators who 
 usually pop up to neutralize the impres- 
 sion that the strong man has made. 
 
 Hamilton's speech was the talk of the 
 town. The leading Whigs sought him out 
 and begged that he would write down 
 86
 
 aieian&er Ibamiltott 
 
 his address so that they could print it 
 as a pamphlet iu reply to the Tory pam- 
 phleteers who were vigorously circulat- 
 ing their wares. The pens of ready 
 writers were scarce in those days : men 
 could argue, but to present a forcible 
 written brief was another thing. So 
 young Hamilton put his reasons on paper 
 and their success surprised the boys at 
 the boarding-house, and the college 
 chums and the professors, and probably 
 himself as well. His name was on the 
 lips of all Whigdom, and the Tories sent 
 messengers to buy him off. 
 
 But Congress was willing to pay its 
 defenders, and money came from some- 
 where ; not much, but all the young man 
 needed. College was dropped ; the polit- 
 ical pot boiled ; and the study of history, 
 economics, and statecraft filled the day- 
 light hours to the brim and often ran 
 over into the night. 
 
 The winter of 1775 passed away ; the 
 plot thickened. New York had reluc- 
 tantly consented to be represented in 
 87
 
 aiejanOer Ibamiltoii 
 
 Congress and agreed grumpily to join 
 hands with the Colonies. The redcoats 
 had marched out to Concord — and back ; 
 and the embattled farmers had stood and 
 fired the shot " heard 'round the world." 
 
 Hamilton was working hard to bring 
 New York over to an understanding that 
 she must stand firm against English rule. 
 He organized meetings, gave addresses, 
 wrote letters, newspaper articles, and 
 pamphlets. Then he joined a military 
 £ompan\^ and was perfecting himself in 
 the science of war. 
 
 There were frequent outbreaks be- 
 tween Torj- mobs and Whigs, and the 
 breaking up of your opponents' meeting 
 was looked upon as a pleasant pastime. 
 
 Then came the British ship Asia and 
 opened fire on the town. This no doubt 
 made Whigs of a good many Tories. 
 Whig sentiment was on the increase ; 
 gangs of men marched through the 
 streets and the king's stores were broken 
 into, and prominent Royalists found their 
 houses being threatened.
 
 BlejanOcr Ibamilton 
 
 Dr. Cooper, President of King's 
 College, had been very pronounced in his 
 rebukes to Congress and the Colonies, 
 and a mob made its way to his house. 
 Arriving there, Hamilton and his chum 
 Troup were found on the steps, deter- 
 mined to protect the place. Hamilton 
 stepped forward, and in a strong speech 
 urged that Dr. Cooper had merely ex- 
 pressed his own private views, which he 
 had a right to do, and the house must 
 not on any account be molested. While 
 the parley was in progress, old Dr. 
 Cooper himself appeared at one of the 
 upper windows and excitedly cautioned 
 the crowd not to listen to that blatant 
 young rapscallion Hamilton, as he was a 
 rogue and a varlet and a vagrom. The 
 good Doctor then slammed the window 
 and escaped by the back way. 
 
 His remarks raised a laugh in which 
 even young Hamilton joined, but his 
 mistake was very natural in view of the 
 fact that he only knew that Hamilton 
 bad deserted the college and espoused
 
 BlejanDer Ibamilton 
 
 tlie devil's cause ; and not having heard 
 his remarks, but seeing him standing on 
 his steps harangiiing a crowd, thought 
 surely he was endeavoring to work up 
 mischief against his old preceptor, who 
 had once plucked him in Greek. 
 
 It seems to have been the intention of 
 his guardians that the limit of young 
 Hamilton's stay in America was to be 
 two years, and by that time his education 
 would be "complete," and he would re- 
 turn to the West Indies and surprise the 
 natives. 
 
 But his father, who supplied the money, 
 and the mystical kinsmen who sup- 
 plied advice, and the kind friends who 
 had given him letters to the Presby- 
 terian clergymen at New York and 
 Princeton had figured without their host. 
 Young Hamilton knew all that Nevis 
 had in store for him : he knew its little- 
 ness, its contumely and disgrace, and in 
 the secret recesses of his own strong heart 
 he had slipped the cable that held him to 
 the past. No more remittances from 
 90
 
 BlejanOer Ibamtlton 
 
 home ; no more solicitous advice ; no 
 more kindly, loving letters — the past was 
 dead. For England he once had had an 
 idolatrous regard ; to him she had once 
 been the protector of his native laud, 
 the empress of the sea, the enlightener 
 of mankind ; but henceforth he was an 
 American. 
 
 He was to fight America's battles, to 
 share in her victory, to help make of her 
 a Nation, and to weave his name into the 
 web of her history so that so long as the 
 United States of America shall be remem- 
 bered, shall be remembered also the 
 name of Alexander Hamiltou. 
 
 91
 
 ni. 
 
 WHAT General Washington called 
 his " family " usually consisted 
 of sixteen men. These were 
 his aides, and more than that, his coun- 
 sellors and friends. In Washington's 
 frequent use of that expression, " m^- 
 family," there is a touch of affection that 
 we do not expect to find in the tents of 
 war. In rank the staff ran the gamut 
 from captain to general. Each man had 
 his appointed work and made a daily re- 
 port to his chief. When not in actual 
 action, the family dined together daily, 
 and the affair was conducted with consid- 
 erable ceremony. Washington sat at the 
 head of the table, large, handsome, and 
 dignified. At his right hand was seated 
 the guest of honor and there were usually 
 several invited friends. At his left sat 
 92
 
 HlejaiiDer Ibamilton 
 
 Alexander Hamilton, ready with quick 
 pen to record the orders of his chief. 
 
 And niethinks it would have been quite 
 worth while to have had a place at that 
 board, and looked down the table at " the 
 strong fine face, tinged with melancholy," 
 of Washington ; and the cheerj^ youthful 
 faces of Lawrence, Tilghman, Lee, Aaron 
 Burr, Alexander Hamilton, and the others 
 of that brave and handsome company. 
 Well might they have called Washington 
 father, for this he was in spirit to them 
 all — grave, gentle, courteous, and mag- 
 nanimous, yet exacting strict and instant 
 obedience from all ; and well, too, may 
 we imagine that this obedience was freely 
 and cheerfully given. 
 
 Hamilton became one of Washington's 
 family on March i, 1777, with the rank 
 of lieutenant-colonel. He was barely 
 twenty years of age ; Washington was 
 forty-seven, and the average age of the 
 family, omitting its head, was twenty- 
 five. All had been selected on account 
 of superior intelligence and a record of 
 93
 
 Blejander IbanUlton 
 
 dashing courage. When Hamilton took 
 his place at the board, he was the young- 
 est member, save one. In point of liter- 
 ary talent, he stood among the very 
 foremost in the country, for then there 
 was no literature in America save the 
 literature of politics ; and as an officer, 
 he had shown rare skill and bravery. 
 
 And yet, such was Hamilton's ambition 
 and confidence in himself, that he hesi- 
 tated to accept the position, and con- 
 sidered it an act of sacrifice to do so. But 
 having once accepted, he threw himself 
 into the work and became Washington's 
 most intimate and valued assistant. 
 Washington's correspondence with his 
 generals, with Congress, and the written 
 decisions demanded daily on hundreds 
 of minor questions, mostly devolved on 
 Hamilton, for work gravitates to him 
 who can do it best. A simple "Yes," 
 "No," or "Perhaps" from the chief 
 must be elaborated into a diplomatic let- 
 ter, conveying just the right shade of 
 meaning, all with its proper emphasis and 
 94
 
 
 
 MONUMENT TO HAMILTON, Trinity Churchyard, Nesv York.
 
 BlejanOer Ibamilton 
 
 show of dignity aud respect. Thousands 
 of these dispatches can now be seen at 
 the Capitol ; and the ease, grace, direct- 
 ness, and insight shown in them are re- 
 markable. There is no muddy rhetoric 
 or befuddled clauses. They were written 
 by one with a clear understanding, who 
 was intent that the person addressed 
 should understand, too. Many of these 
 dispatches and proclamations were merely 
 signed by Washington, but a few reveal 
 interlined sentences and an occasional 
 word changed in Washington's hand, 
 thus showing that all was closely scruti- 
 nized aud digested. 
 
 As a member of Washington's stafiF, 
 Hamilton did not have the independent 
 command that he so much desired ; but 
 he endured that heroic winter at Valley 
 Forge, was present at all the important 
 battles, took an active part in most of 
 them, and always gained honor aud dis- 
 tinction. 
 
 As an aide to Washington, Hamilton's 
 most important mission was when he was 
 95
 
 Blejan&er Ibamtlton 
 
 sent to General Gates to secure reinforce- 
 ments for the Southern army. Gates had 
 defeated Burgoyne and won a full dozen 
 stern victories in the North. In the 
 meantime Washington had done nothing 
 but make a few brave retreats. Gates's 
 army was made up of hardy and seasoned 
 soldiers, who had met the enemy and de- 
 feated him over and over again. The 
 flush of success was on their banners ; 
 and Washington knew that if a few thou- 
 sand of those rugged veterans could be 
 secured to reinforce his own well-nigh 
 discouraged troops, victory would also 
 perch upon the banners of the South. 
 
 As a superior oiEcer he had the right to 
 demand these troops ; but to reduce the 
 force of a general who is making an ex- 
 cellent success is not the common rule of 
 war. The country looked upon Gates as 
 its savior, and Gates was feeling a little 
 that way himself. Gates had but to de- 
 mand it, and the position of Commander- 
 in-Chief would go to him. Washington 
 thoroughly realized this, and therefore 
 96
 
 Blejan&er Ibamflton 
 
 hesitated about issuing an order request- 
 ing a part of Gates's force. To secure 
 these troops as if the suggestion came 
 from Gates was a most delicate commis- 
 sion. Alexander Hamilton was dispatched 
 to Gates's headquarters, armed, as a last 
 resort, with a curt military order to the 
 effect that he should turn over a portion 
 of his army to Washington. Hamilton's 
 orders were : "Bring the troops, but do 
 not deliver this order unless you are 
 obliged to." 
 
 Hamilton brought the troops, and re- 
 turned the order with seal intact. 
 
 The act of his sudden breaking with 
 Washington has been much exaggerated. 
 In fact, it was not a sudden act at all, for 
 it had been premeditated for some months. 
 There was a woman in the case. Hamil- 
 ton had done more than conquer General 
 Gage on that Northern trip : at Albany 
 he had met Elizabeth, daughter of Gen- 
 eral Schuyler, and won her after what has 
 been spoken of as "a short and sharp 
 skirmish." Both Alexander and Eliza- 
 97
 
 aiejauDcr Ibamtlton 
 
 beth regarded " a clerkship " as quite too 
 limited a career for cue so gifted ; they 
 felt tbat nothing less than commander of 
 a division would answer. How to break 
 loose? That was the question. 
 
 And when Washington met him at the 
 head of the stairs of the New Windsor 
 Hotel and sharply chided him for being 
 late, the young man embraced the oppor- 
 tunity and said, " Sir, since you think I 
 have been remiss, we part." 
 
 It was the act of a boy ; and the figure 
 of this boy, five feet five inches high, 
 weight one hundred and twenty, aged 
 twenty-four, talking back to his chief, 
 six feet three, weight two hundred, aged 
 fifty, has its comic side. Military rule 
 demands that every one shall be on time, 
 and Washington's rebuke was proper and 
 right. Further than this, one feels that if 
 he had followed up his rebuke by boxing 
 the young man's ears for " sassing back " 
 he would still not have been outside the 
 lines of duty. 
 
 But an hour afterwards we find Wash-
 
 BlejaiiDec Ibamilton 
 
 ington sending for the j'oiith and endeav- 
 oring to nieud the break. And although 
 Hamilton proudly repelled his advances, 
 Washington forgave all and generously 
 did all he could to advance the young 
 man's interests. Washington's magnan- 
 imity was absolutely without flaw, but 
 his attitude towards Hamilton has a more 
 suggestive meaning when we consider 
 that it was a testimonial of the high esti- 
 mate he placed on Hamilton's ability. 
 
 At York town, Washiugton gave Ham- 
 ilton the perilous privilege of leading 
 the assault. Hamilton did his work well, 
 rushing with fiery impetuosity upon the 
 fort — carried all before him, and in ten 
 minutes had planted the Stars and Stripes 
 on the ramparts of the enemy. 
 
 It was a fine and fitting close to his 
 military career. 
 
 99
 
 IV. 
 
 WHEN Washington became Presi- 
 dent, the most important office 
 to be filled was that of man- 
 ager of the exchequer. In fact, all there 
 was of it was the office — there was no 
 treasury, no mint, no fixed revenue, no 
 credit ; but there were debts — foreign and 
 domestic — and clamoring creditors by the 
 thousand. The debts consisted of what 
 was then the vast sum of eighty million 
 dollars. The treasury was empty. Wash- 
 ington had many advisers, who argued 
 that the Nation could never live under 
 such a weight of debt— the only way was 
 flatly and frankly to repudiate — wipe the 
 slate clean — and begin afresh. 
 
 This was what the country expected 
 would be done ; and so low was the hope 
 of payment, that creditors could be found
 
 BlcranDcr HDamilton 
 
 who were willing to compromise their 
 claims for ten cents ou the dollar. Robert 
 Morris, who had managed the finances 
 during the period of the Confederation, 
 utterly refused to attempt the task again, 
 but he named a man who, he said, could 
 bring order out of chaos, if any living man 
 could. That man was Alexander Hamil- 
 ton. Washington appealed to Hamilton, 
 offering him the position of Secretary of 
 the Treasury. Hamilton, aged thirty-two, 
 gave up his law practice, which was yield- 
 ing him ten thousand a year, to accept 
 this oflSce that paid three thousand five 
 hundred. Before the British cannon 
 Washington did not lose heart, but to face 
 the angry mob of creditors waving white- 
 paper claims made him quake ; but with 
 Hamilton's presence his courage came 
 back. 
 
 The first thing that Hamilton decided 
 upon was that there should be no repudi- 
 ation — no offer of compromise would be 
 considered — every man should be paid in 
 full. And further than this, the general 
 
 lOI
 
 BlejanDer Ibamilton 
 
 government would assume the entire war 
 debt of each individual State. Washing- 
 ton concurred with Hamilton on these 
 points, but he could make neither oral 
 nor written argument in a way that would 
 convince others ; so this task was left to 
 Hamilton. Hamilton appeared before 
 Congress and explained his plans— ex- 
 plained them so lucidly and with such 
 force and precision that he made an in- 
 delible impression. There were grum- 
 blers and complainers, but these did not 
 and could not reply to Hamilton, for 
 he saw all over and around the subject 
 and they saw it only at an angle. Hamil- 
 ton had studied the history of finance 
 and knew the financial schemes of every 
 country. No question of statecraft could 
 be asked him for which he did not have 
 a reply ready. He knew the science of 
 government as no other man in America 
 then did, and recognizing this, Congress 
 asked him to prepare reports on the col- 
 lection of revenue, the coasting trade, 
 the effects of a tariff, ship-building, post-
 
 aiejanDer Ibamiltoii 
 
 ofl&ce extension, and also a scheme for a 
 judicial system. When in doubt they 
 asked Hamilton. 
 
 And all the time Hamilton was working 
 at this bewildering maze of detail he was 
 evolving that financial policy, broad, com- 
 prehensive, and minute, which endures 
 even to this day, even to the various 
 forms of accounts that are now kept 
 at the Treasury Department at Washing- 
 ton. 
 
 His insistence that to preserve the 
 credit of a nation every debt must be paid 
 is an idea that no statesman now dare 
 question. The entire aim and intent of 
 his policy was high, open, and frank 
 honesty. The people should be made to 
 feel an absolute security in their govern- 
 ment, and this being so, all forms of in- 
 dustry would prosper, " and the prosperity 
 of the people is the prosperity of the 
 Nation." To such a degree of confidence 
 did Hamilton raise the public credit that 
 in a very short time the government 
 found no trouble in borrowing all the 
 103
 
 BlejauDer Ibamiltou 
 
 money it needed at four per cent ; and 
 yet this was done in face of the fact that 
 its debt had increased. 
 
 Just here was where his policy invited 
 its strongest and most bitter attack. For 
 there are men to-day who cannot com- 
 prehend that a public debt is a public 
 blessing, and that all liabilities have a 
 strict and undivorceable relationship to 
 assets. Alexander Hamilton was a leader 
 of men. He could do the thinking of his 
 time and map out a policy, "arranging 
 every detail for a kingdom." He has 
 been likened to Napoleon in his ability 
 to plan and execute with rapid and mar- 
 vellous precision, and surely the similarity 
 is striking. 
 
 But he was not an adept in the difficult 
 and delicate art of diplomacy — he could 
 not wait. He demanded instant obedi- 
 ence, and lacked all of that large, patient, 
 calm magnanimity so splendidly shown 
 forth since by Abraham Lincoln. Unlike 
 Jefferson, his great rival, he could not 
 calmly and silently bide his time. But I 
 104
 
 BlejaiiDcc Ibaniilton 
 
 will not quarrel with a man because he is 
 not some one else. 
 
 He saw things clearly at a glance ; 
 he knew because he knew ; and if others 
 would not follow, he had the audacity to 
 push on alone. This recklessness to the 
 opinion of the slow and plodding, this 
 indifference to the dull, gradually drew 
 upon him the hatred of a class. 
 
 They said he was a monarchist at heart 
 and "such men are dangerous." The 
 country became divided into those who 
 were with Hamilton and those who were 
 against him. The very transcendent 
 quality of his genius wove the net that 
 was to catch his feet and work his ruin. 
 
 105
 
 V. 
 
 IT has been the usual practice for nearly 
 a hundred years to refer to Aaron 
 Burr as a roue, a rogue, and a thor- 
 ough villain, who took the life of a gentle 
 and innocent man. 
 
 I have no apologies to make for Colonel 
 Burr ; the record of his life lies open in 
 many books, and I would neither conceal 
 nor explain away. 
 
 If I should attempt to describe the man 
 and liken him to another, that man would 
 be Alexander Hamilton. 
 
 They were the same age within ten 
 months ; they were the same height 
 within an inch ; their weight was the 
 same within five pounds, and in tempera- 
 ment and disposition they resembled each 
 other as brothers seldom do. Each was 
 passionate, ambitious, proud. 
 io6
 
 Ble£ani)er H^amilton 
 
 lu the drawing-room where one of these 
 men chanced to be there was room for no 
 one else — such was the vivacity, the wit, 
 and the generous, glowing good-nature 
 shown. With women the manner of these 
 men was most gentle and courtly ; and 
 the low, alluring voice of each was music's 
 honeyed flattery set to words. 
 
 Both were much under the average 
 height, yet the carriage of each was so 
 proud and imposing that everywhere they 
 went men made way, and women turned 
 and stared. 
 
 Both were public speakers and lawyers 
 of such eminence that they took their 
 pick of clients and charged all the fee 
 that policy would allow. In debate there 
 was a wilful aggressiveness, a fiery sure- 
 ness, a lofty certainty, that moved judges 
 and juries to do their bidding. Mr. Henry 
 Cabot I/odge says, that so great was Ham- 
 ilton's renown as a lawyer that clients 
 flocked to him because the belief was 
 abroad that no judge dare decide against 
 him. With Burr it was the same. 
 107
 
 BlejanDcr Ibamilton 
 
 Both made large sums, but spent them 
 all as fast as made. 
 
 In point of classic education Burr had 
 the advantage. He was the grandson of 
 the Rev. Jonathan Edwards. In his 
 strong personal magnetism, and keen, 
 many-sided intellect, Aaron Burr strongly 
 resembled the gifted Presbyterian divine 
 who wrote Siiifirrs in the Hands of an 
 Angry God. His father was the Rev. 
 Aaron Burr, President of Princeton Col- 
 lege. He was a graduate of Princeton, 
 and like Hamilton always had the ability 
 to focus his mind on the subject in hand, 
 and wring from it its very core. Burr's 
 reputation as to his susceptibility to wom- 
 en's charms is the world's common — very 
 common— property. He was unhappily 
 married ; his wife died before he was 
 thirty ; he was a man of ardent nature and 
 stalked through the world a conquering 
 Don Juan. A historian, however, records 
 that " his alliances were only with wom- 
 en who were deemed by society to be 
 respectable. Married women, unhappily 
 io8
 
 HlcjaiiDer Ibamilton 
 
 mated, knowing bis reputation, very 
 often placed themselves in liis way, going 
 to him for advice, as moths court the 
 flame. Young, tender, and innocent girls 
 had no charm for him." 
 
 Hamilton was happily married to a 
 woman of aristocratic family ; rich, edu- 
 cated, intellectual, gentle, and worthy of 
 him at his best. They had a family of 
 eight children. Hamilton was a favorite 
 of women everywhere, and was mixed up 
 in various scandalous intrigues. He was 
 an easy mark for a designing woman. In 
 one instance the affair was seized upon 
 by his political foes, and made capital 
 of to his sore disadvantage. Hamilton 
 met the issue by writing a pamphlet, lay- 
 ing bare the entire shameless affair, to 
 the horror of his family and friends. 
 Copies of this pamphlet maj' be seen in 
 the rooms of the American Historical So- 
 ciety at New York. 
 
 Burr had been Attorney-General of 
 New York State, and also United States 
 Senator. Each man had served on Wash- 
 109
 
 BlejanCter Ibamilton 
 
 ington's staff; each had a brilliant mili- 
 tary record ; each had acted as second in 
 a duel ; each recognized the honor of the 
 code. 
 
 Stern political differences arose, not so 
 much through matters of opinion and 
 conscience, as through ambitious rivalry. 
 Neither was willing the other should rise, 
 yet both thirsted for place and power. 
 Burr ran for the Presidency and was 
 sternly, strongly, bitterly opposed as " a 
 dangerous man " by Hamilton. 
 
 At the election one more electoral vote 
 would have given the highest office of the 
 people to Aaron Burr ; as it was he tied 
 with Jefferson. The matter was thrown 
 into the House of Representatives, and 
 Jefferson was given the office, with Burr 
 as Vice-President. Burr considered, and 
 perhaps rightly, that were it not for Ham- 
 ilton's assertive influence he would have 
 been President of the United States. 
 
 While still Vice-President, Burr sought 
 to become Governor of New York, think- 
 ing this the surest road to receiving the 
 no
 
 BlejanDcr Ifjamilton 
 
 nomination for the Presidency at the 
 next election. 
 
 Hamilton openly and bitterly opposed 
 him, and the office went to another. 
 
 Burr considered, and rightly, that were 
 it not for Hamilton's influence he would 
 have been Governor of New York. 
 
 Burr, smarting under the sting of this 
 continual opposition by a man who him- 
 self was shelved politically through his 
 own too fiery ambition sent a note by 
 his friend Van Ness to Hamilton, 
 asking whether the language he had 
 used concerning him ("a dangerous 
 man") referred to him politically or 
 personally. 
 
 Hamilton replied evasively, saying he 
 could not recall all that he might have 
 said during fifteen years of public life. 
 " Especially," he said in his letter, "it 
 cannot be reasonably expected that I 
 shall enter into any explanation upon a 
 basis so vague as you have adopted. I 
 trust on more reflection you will see the 
 matter in the same light. If not, how- 
 III
 
 BlejanDcr Ibamilton 
 
 ever, I only regret tlie circumstances, and 
 must abide the consequences." 
 
 When fighting men use fighting lan- 
 guage they invite a challenge. Hamil- 
 ton's excessively polite regret that "he 
 must abide the consequences " simply 
 meant fight, as his language had for a 
 space of five years. 
 
 A challenge was sent by the hand of 
 Pendleton. Hamilton accepted. Being 
 the challenged man (for duellists are al- 
 vpays polite) he was given the choice of 
 weapons. He chose pistols at ten paces. 
 
 At seven o'clock on the morning of 
 July II, 1804, the participants met on the 
 heights of Weehawken, overlooking New 
 York Bay. On a toss Hamilton won the 
 choice of position and his second also 
 won the right of giving the word to fire. 
 
 Each man removed his coat and cravat ; 
 the pistols were loaded in their presence. 
 As Pendleton handed his pistol to Ham- 
 ilton he asked, "Shall I set the hair 
 trigger ? " " Not this time," replied Ham- 
 ilton. With pistols primed and cocked, 
 112
 
 BlejaiiDer Ibamilton 
 
 the men were stationed facing each other, 
 
 thirty feet apart. 
 
 Both were pale but free from any visi- 
 ble nervousness or excitement. Neither 
 had partaken of stimulants. Each was 
 asked if he had anything to say, or if he 
 knew of any way by which the aflFair 
 could be terminated there and then. 
 
 Each answered quietly in the negative. 
 Pendleton, standing fifteen feet to the 
 right of his principal, said : " One — two — 
 three — present!" and as the last final 
 sounding of the letter "t" escaped his 
 teeth. Burr fired, followed almost instantly 
 by the other. 
 
 Hamilton arose convulsively on his 
 toes, reeled, and Burr, dropping his smok- 
 ing pistol, sprang towards him to support 
 him, a look of regret on his face. 
 
 Van Ness raised an umbrella over the 
 fallen man, and motioned Burr to be- 
 gone. 
 
 The ball passed through Hamilton's 
 body, breaking a rib, and lodging in the 
 second lumbar vertebra. 
 "3
 
 BlcjanDei IF^amtlton 
 
 The bullet from Hamilton's pistol cut 
 a twig four feet above Burr's head. 
 
 While he was lying on the ground 
 Hamilton saw his pistol near and said : 
 " Look out for that pistol, it is loaded — 
 Pendleton knows I did not intend to fire 
 at him ! " 
 
 Hamilton died the following day, first 
 declaring that he bore Colonel Burr no 
 ill-will. 
 
 Colonel Burr said he very much regret- 
 ted the whole afifair, but the language and 
 attitude of Hamilton forced him to send a 
 challenge or remain quiet and be branded 
 as a coward. He fully realized before 
 the meeting that if he killed Hamilton 
 it was a political death for him, too. 
 
 At the time of the deed Burr had no 
 family ; Hamilton had a wife and seven 
 children, his oldest son having fallen in 
 a duel fought three years before on the 
 identical spot where he, too, fell. 
 
 Burr fled the country. 
 
 Three years afterwards he was arrested 
 for treason in trying to found an inde- 
 114
 
 BlejaiiDer Ibamiltoit 
 
 pendent state within the borders of the 
 United States. He was tried and found 
 not guilty. 
 
 After some years spent abroad he re- 
 turned and took up the practice of law 
 in New York. He was fairly successful, 
 lived a modest, quiet life, and died Sep- 
 tember 14, 1836, aged eighty years. 
 
 Hamilton's widow survived him just 
 one half a century, dying in her ninety- 
 eighth year. 
 
 So passeth away the glory of the world. 
 
 "5
 
 SAMUEL ADAMS 
 
 117
 
 The body of the people are now in council. 
 Their opposition grows into a system. They 
 are united and resolute. And if the British ad- 
 ministration and Government do not return to 
 the principles of moderation and equity, the evil, 
 which they profess to aim at preventing by their 
 rigorous measures, will the sooner be biought to 
 pass, viz., the entire separation and indepen- 
 dence of the colonies. 
 
 Letter to Arthur Lee. 
 
 Il8
 
 ^^^'^^^^^^^.t;^ c^^^t 
 
 /Uy:^^^i^
 
 SAMUEL ADAMS. 
 
 SAMUEIv and John Adams were 
 second cousins, having the same 
 great-grandfather. Between them 
 in many ways there was a marked con- 
 trast, but true to their New England in- 
 stincts both were theologians. 
 
 John was a conservative in politics, and 
 at first had little sympathy with "those 
 small-minded men who refused to pay a 
 trivial tax on their tea ; and who would 
 plunge the country into war and ruin all 
 for a matter of stamps." John was born 
 and lived at the village of Braintree. He 
 did not really centre his mind on politics 
 until the British had closed all law courts 
 in Boston, thus making his profession 
 119
 
 Samuel BDams 
 
 obsolete. He was scholarly, shrewd, dip- 
 lomatic, cautious, good-natured, fat, and 
 took his religion with a wink. He was 
 blessed with a wife who was worthy of 
 being the mother of kings (or presidents) ; 
 he lived comfortably, acquired property, 
 and died aged ninety-two. He had been 
 President and seen his son President of the 
 United States, and that is an experience 
 that has never come and probably never 
 will come to another living man, for there 
 seems to be an unwritten law that no man 
 under fifty shall occupy the office of 
 Chief Magistrate. 
 
 Samuel was stern, serious, and deeply 
 in earnest. He seldom smiled and never 
 laughed. He was uncompromisingly re- 
 ligious, conscientious, and morally un- 
 bending. In his life there was no soft 
 sentiment. The fact that he ran a brew- 
 ery can be excused when we remember 
 that the best spirit of the times saw noth- 
 ing inconsistent in the occupation ; and 
 further than this we might explain in ex- 
 tenuation that he gave the business in- 
 
 I20
 
 Samuel BOams 
 
 diflFerent attention and the quality of his 
 brew was said to be very bad. 
 
 lu religion he swerved not nor wavered. 
 He was a Calvinist and clung to the five 
 points with a tenacity at times seeminglj' 
 quite unnecessary. 
 
 When in that first Congress, Samuel 
 Adams publicly consented to the opening 
 of the meeting with religious service 
 conducted by the Rev. Mr. Duche, an 
 Episcopal clergyman, he gave a violent 
 wrench to his conscience and an awful 
 shock to his friends. But Mr. Duch^ 
 met the issue in the true spirit, and leav- 
 ing his detested "popery robe" and 
 prayer-book at home uttered an extem- 
 poraneous invocation, without a trace of 
 intoning, that pleased the Puritans and 
 caused one of them to remark, "He is 
 surely coming over to the Lord's side ! " 
 
 But in politics, Samuel Adams was a 
 liberal of the liberals. In statecraft the 
 heresy of change had no terrors for him, 
 and with Hamlet, he might have said, 
 "Oh, reform it altogether." 
 
 121
 
 Samuel BDams 
 
 The limitations set in every character 
 seem to prevent a man from being gen- 
 erous in more than one direction , the 
 bigot in religion is often a liberal 
 in politics, and vice versa. For in- 
 stance, physicians are almost invaria- 
 bly liberal in religious matters, but are 
 prone to call a man " Mister" who does 
 not belong to their school ; while ortho- 
 dox clergymen, I have noticed, usually 
 employ a horaoeopathist. 
 
 In that most valuable and interesting 
 work, The Diary of John Adams, the au- 
 thor refers repeatedly to Samuel Adams 
 as "Adams" ! This simple way of using 
 the word " Adams " shows a world of ap- 
 preciation for the man who blazed the 
 path that others of this illustrious name 
 might follow. And so with the high prec- 
 edent in mind, I, too, will drop prefix and 
 call my subject simply " Adams." 
 
 On the authority of King George, Gen- 
 eral Gage made an offer of pardon to all 
 save two who had figured in the Boston 
 uprising. 
 
 122
 
 Samuel BOams 
 
 The two men thus honored were John 
 Hancock (whose signature the King 
 could read without spectacles), and the 
 other was "one, S. Adams." 
 
 Adams, however, was the real offender, 
 and the plea might have been made for 
 John Hancock that if it had not been 
 for accident and Adams Hancock would 
 probably have remained loyal to the 
 mother country. 
 
 Hancock was aristocratic, cultured, and 
 complacent. He was the richest man in 
 New England. His personal interests 
 were on the side of peace and the estab- 
 lished order. But circumstances and the 
 combined tact and zeal of Adams threw 
 him off his guard, and in a moment of 
 dalliance the seeds of sedition found lodg- 
 ment in his brain. And the more he 
 thought about it the nearer he came to 
 the conclusion that Adams was right. 
 But let the fact further be stated, if truth 
 demands, that both John Hancock and 
 Samuel Adams, the first men who clearly 
 and boldly expressed the idea of American 
 
 123
 
 Samuel BOams 
 
 Independence, were moved in the begin- 
 ning by personal grievances. 
 
 A single motion made before the British 
 Parliament by we know not whom, and 
 put to a vote by the Speaker, bankrupted 
 the father of Samuel Adams and robbed 
 the youth of his patrimony. 
 
 The boy was then seventeen ; old 
 enough to know that from plenty his 
 father was reduced to penury, and 
 this because England, three thousand 
 miles away, had interfered with the 
 business arrangements of the Colony, 
 and made unlawful a private banking 
 scheme. 
 
 Then did the boy ask the question, 
 What moral right has England to govern 
 us, anyway ? 
 
 From thinking it over he began to for- 
 mulate reasons. He discussed the subject 
 at odd times and thought of it continually, 
 and, in 1743, when he prepared his grad- 
 uation thesis at Harvard College he chose 
 for his subject, "The Doctrine of the 
 Lawfulness of Resistance to the Supreme 
 124
 
 Samuel BDams 
 
 Magistrate if the Commonwealth cannot 
 Otherwise be Preserved." 
 
 When Massachusetts admitted that she 
 was under subjection to the King, yet ar- 
 gued for the right to nulHfy the Acts of 
 the English Parliament, she took exactly 
 the same ground that South Carolina did 
 a hundred years later. The logic of 
 Samuel Adams and Hayne was one and 
 the same. Yet we are glad that Adams 
 carried his point ; and we rejoice exceed- 
 ingly that Hayne failed, so curious are 
 these things we call " reasons." 
 
 The royalists, who heard of this youth 
 with a logical mind, denounced him with- 
 out stint. A few newspapers upheld him 
 and spoke of the right of free speech and 
 all that, reprinting the thesis in full. 
 And in the controversy that followed, 
 young Adams was always a prominent 
 figure. He was not an orator in the pop- 
 ular sense, but he held the pen of a ready 
 writer, and through the Boston papers 
 kept up a constant fusillade. 
 
 The tricks of journalism are no new 
 125
 
 Samuel aj>ams 
 
 thing belonging to the fag end of this 
 century. Young Adams wrote letters 
 over the nom de plume of Probono Pub- 
 lico, and then replied to them over the 
 signature of Rex Americus. He did not 
 adopt as his motto "Let not thy left hand 
 know what thy right hand doeth," for he 
 wrote with both hands and each hand 
 was in the secret. 
 
 During the year that followed his grad- 
 uation from college he was a business 
 man and a poor one, for a man w'ho looks 
 after public affairs much cannot attend 
 to his own. But he managed to make 
 shift ; and when too closely pressed by 
 creditors, a loan from Hancock, or John 
 Adams, Hancock's attorney, relieved the 
 pressure. In fact when he went to Phil- 
 adelphia ' ' on that very important er- 
 rand " he rode a horse borrowed from 
 John Adams and his Sunday coat was the 
 gift of a thoughtful friend. 
 
 In 1763, it became known that the 
 British Government had on foot a scheme 
 to demand a tribute from the colonies. 
 126
 
 Samuel BOams 
 
 On invitation of a committee, possibly 
 appointed by Adams, Adams was re- 
 quested to draw up instructions to the 
 representatives in the Colonial Legisla- 
 ture. Adams did so and the document is 
 now in the archives of the old State 
 House at Boston, in the plain and elegant 
 penmanship that is so easily recognized. 
 This document calls itself " The First 
 Public Denial of the Right of the British 
 Parliament to tax the Colonies without 
 their Consent, and the first Public Sug- 
 gestion of a Union on the part of the 
 Colonies to Protect themselves against 
 British Aggression." 
 
 The style of the paper is Incid, firm 
 and logical ; it combines in itself the 
 suggestion of all there was to be said or 
 could be said on the matter. Adams saw 
 all over and around his topic — no un- 
 pleasant surprise could be sprung on him 
 — twenty-five years had he studied this 
 one theme. He had made himself famil- 
 iar with the political history of every 
 nation so far as such history could be 
 127
 
 Samuel BDams 
 
 gathered ; lie was past master of his 
 subject. 
 
 However, when he was forty years of 
 age his followers were few and mostly men 
 of small influence. The Caulker's Club 
 was the home of the sedition and many 
 of the members were day -laborers. But 
 the idea of independence gradually grew, 
 and, in 1765, Adams vvas elected a mem- 
 ber of the Massachusetts Colonial Legisla- 
 ture. In honor of his writing ability he 
 was chosen clerk of the Assembly, for in 
 all public gatherings orators are chosen 
 as presidents and newspaper men for 
 secretaries. Thus are honors distributed, 
 and thus, too, does the public show which 
 talent it values most. 
 
 On November 2, 1772, on motion of 
 Adams a committtee of several hun- 
 dred citizens was appointed " to state 
 the Rights of the Colonies and to com- 
 municate and publish them to the 
 World as the sense of the Town, with the 
 infringements and violations thereof that 
 have been or may be made from time to 
 128
 
 Samuel Zl&ams 
 
 time ; also requesting from each Town a 
 free communication of their sentiments 
 on this Subject." 
 
 This was the Committee of Correspond- 
 ence from which grew the union of the 
 Colonies and the Congress of the United 
 States. It is a pretty well attested fact 
 that the first suggestion of the Philadel- 
 phia Congress came from Samuel Adams, 
 and the chief work of bringing it about 
 was also his. 
 
 It was well known to the British Gov- 
 ernment who the chief agitator was, and 
 when General Gage arrived in Boston in 
 May, 1774, his first work was an attempt 
 to buy off Samuel Adams. With Adams 
 out of the way, England might have 
 adopted a policy of conciliation and kept 
 America for her very own — yes, to the 
 point of moving the home government 
 here and saving the snug little island 
 as a colony, for both in wealth and 
 population America has now far sur- 
 passed England. 
 
 But Adams was not for sale. His 
 I2y
 
 Samuel B&ams 
 
 reply to Gage sounds like a scrap from 
 Cromwell: "I trust I have long since 
 made my peace with the King of Kings. 
 No personal consideration shall induce 
 me to abandon the Righteous Cause of 
 my Country. . . ." 
 
 Gage having refused to recognize the 
 thirteen Counsellors appointed by the 
 people, the General Court of Massachu- 
 setts, in secret session, appointed five 
 delegates to attend the Congress of Colo- 
 nies at Philadelphia. Of course Samuel 
 Adams was one of these delegates ; and 
 to John Adams, another delegate, are we 
 indebted for a minute description of that 
 most momentous meeting. 
 
 A room in the State House had been 
 offered the delegates, but with commend- 
 able modesty they accepted the offer of 
 the Carpenters' Company to use their 
 hall. 
 
 And so there they convened on the 
 
 fifth day of September, 1774, having met 
 
 by appointment and walked over from the 
 
 City Tavern in a body. Forty-four men 
 
 130
 
 SAMUEL ADAMS.
 
 Samuel aoams 
 
 were present, not a large gathering — but 
 they had come hundreds of miles, and 
 several of them had been months on the 
 journey. 
 
 They were a sturdy lot ; and madam ! I 
 think it would have been worth while to 
 have looked in upon them. There were 
 several coon-skin caps in evidence ; also 
 lace and frills and velvet brought from 
 England — but plainness to severity was 
 the rule. Few of these men had ever 
 been away from their own colonies be- 
 fore, few had ever met any members of 
 the Congress save their own colleagues. 
 They represented civilizations of very dif- 
 ferent degrees. Each stood a bit in awe 
 of all the rest. Several of the colonies 
 had been in conflict with others. 
 
 Meeting new men in those days, when 
 even the stage-coach was a passing show 
 worth going miles to see, was an event. 
 There was awkwardness and nervous- 
 ness on the swarthy faces ; firm mouths 
 twitched and big, bony hands sought for 
 places of concealment. 
 131
 
 Samuel BDamiJ 
 
 The meeting had been called for Sep- 
 tember 1st, but was postponed for five 
 days awaiting the arrival of belated dele- 
 gates who had been detained by floods. 
 Even then delegates from North Carolina 
 had not arrived, and Georgia not having 
 thought it worth while to send any, eleven 
 colonies only were represented. Each 
 delegation naturally kept together, as 
 men will who have a fighting history and 
 pioneer ancestry. 
 
 It was a serious, solemn business and 
 these men were not given to levity in any 
 event. When they were seated there was 
 a moment of silence so dense it could be 
 heard. Every chance movement of a 
 foot on the uncarpeted floor sent an echo 
 through the room. 
 
 The stillness was first broken by Mr. 
 Lynch, of South Carolina, who arose and 
 in a low, clear voice said, "There is a 
 gentleman present who has presided with 
 great dignity over a very respectable body 
 and greatly to the advantage of America. 
 Gentleman, I move that the Honorable 
 132
 
 Samuel BDams 
 
 Peyton Randolph, one of the delegates 
 from Virginia, be appointed to preside 
 over this meeting. I doubt not it will be 
 unanimous." 
 
 It was so, and a large man in powdered 
 wig and scarlet coat arose, and, carrying 
 his gold-headed cane before him like a 
 mace, walked to the platform without 
 apology. 
 
 The New Englanders in homespun 
 looked at each other with trepidation on 
 their features. The red coat was not as- 
 suring, but they kept their peace and 
 breathed hard, praying that the enemy 
 had not captured the convention through 
 strategy. Mr. Randolph's first suggestion 
 was not revolutionary ; it was that a 
 secretary be appointed. 
 
 Again Mr. L,ynch arose and named 
 Charles Thomson, " a gentleman of fam- 
 ily, fortune, and character." This testi- 
 monial of family and fortune was not 
 assuring to the plain Massachusetts men, 
 but they said nothing and awaited devel- 
 opments. 
 
 133
 
 Samuel BDanis 
 
 All were cautious as woodsmen, and 
 the motion that the Council be held be- 
 hind closed doors was adopted. Every 
 member then held up his right hand and 
 made a solemn promise to divulge no 
 part of the transactions ; and Galloway, 
 of Pennsylvania, promised with the rest, 
 and straightway each night informed the 
 enemy of every move. 
 
 Little was done that first day but get 
 acquainted by talking very cautiously and 
 very politely. The next day a notable 
 member had arrived, and in a front seat 
 sat Richard Henry L,ee, a man you would 
 turn and look at in any company . Slender 
 and dark, with a brilliant eye and a profile 
 — and only one man in ten thousand has 
 a profile — Lee was a gracious presence. 
 His voice was gentle and flexible and lur- 
 ing, and there was a dignity and poise in 
 his manner that made him easily the 
 foremost orator of his time. 
 
 Near him sat William Livingston, of 
 New Jersey, and John Jay, his son-in-law, 
 the youngest man in the Congress, with 
 134
 
 Samuel BDams 
 
 a nose that denoted character, and all ot 
 his fame in the future. 
 
 The Pennsylvanians were all together, 
 grouped on one side. Duaue, of New 
 York, sat near them, " shy and squint- 
 eyed, very sensible and very artful," 
 wrote John Adams that night in his diary. 
 
 Then over there sat Christopher Gads- 
 den, of South Carolina, who had preached 
 independence for full ten years before 
 this, and who, when he heard that the 
 British soldiers had taken Boston, pro- 
 posed to raise a troop at once and fight 
 red-coats wherever found. 
 
 " But the British will burn your seaport 
 towns if we antagonize them," some timid 
 soul explained. 
 
 "Our towns are built of brick and 
 wood ; if they are burned we can rebuild 
 them ; but liberty once gone is gone for- 
 ever," he retorted. And the saying 
 sounds well even if it will not stand 
 analysis. 
 
 Back near the wall was a man who, 
 when the assembly stood at morning 
 135
 
 Samuel BDams 
 
 prayers, showed a half-head above his 
 neighbors. His face was broad and he, 
 too, had a profile. His mouth was 
 tightly closed and during the first four- 
 teen days of that Congress he never 
 opened it to utter a word, and after his 
 long quiet he broke the silence by 
 saying, " Mr. President, I second the 
 motion." Once in a passionate speech 
 Lynch turned to him and pointing his 
 finger said : " There is a man who has 
 not spoken here, but in the Virginia 
 Assembly he made the most eloquent 
 speech I ever heard. He said, ' I will 
 raise a thousand men, and arm and sub- 
 sist them at my expense and march them 
 to the relief of Boston.' " And then did 
 the tall man, whose name was George 
 Washington, blush like a school-girl. 
 
 But in all that company the men most 
 noticed were the five members from Mas- 
 sachusetts. They were Bowdoin, Samuel 
 Adams, John Adams, Gushing, and Robert 
 Treat Paine. Massachusetts had thus far 
 taken the lead in the struggle with Eng- 
 136
 
 Samuel BDanis 
 
 laud. A British army was encamped upon 
 her soil, her chief city besieged — the 
 port closed. Her sufferings had called 
 this Congress into being, and to her 
 delegates the members had come to listen. 
 All recognized Samuel Adams as the 
 chief man of the Convention. His hand 
 wrote the invitations and earnest re- 
 quests to come. Galloway, writing to 
 his frieuds, the enemy, said, "Samuel 
 Adams eats little, drinks little, sleeps 
 little and thinks much. He is most 
 decisive and indefatigable in the pursuit 
 of his object. He is the man who, by 
 his superior application, manages at once 
 the faction in Philadelphia and the fac- 
 tions of New England." 
 
 Yet Samuel Adams talked little at the 
 Convention. He allowed John Adams to 
 state the case but sat next to him supply- 
 ing memoranda, occasionally arising to 
 make remarks or explanations in a purely 
 conversational tone. But so earnest and 
 impressive was his manner, so ably did 
 he answer every argument and reply to 
 137
 
 Samuel BDams 
 
 every objection, that be thorougbly con- 
 vinced a tall, angular, bomely man by the 
 name of Patrick Henry of the righteous- 
 ness of his cause. Patrick Henry was 
 pretty thoroughly convinced before, but 
 the recital of Boston's case fired the Vir- 
 ginian and he made the first and only 
 real speech of the Congress. In burning 
 words he pictured all the colonies had 
 suffered and endured, and by his match- 
 less eloquence told in prophetic words 
 of the glories yet to be. In his speech 
 he paid just tribute to the genius of 
 Samuel Adams, declaring that the good 
 that was to come from this " first of an 
 unending succession of Congresses" was 
 owing to the work of Adams. And in after 
 years Adams repaid the compliment by 
 saying that if it had not been for the 
 cementing power of Patrick Henry's 
 eloquence that first Congress probably 
 would have ended in futile wrangle. 
 
 The South regarded, in great degree, 
 the fight in Boston as Massachusetts' 
 own. To make the entire thirteen col- 
 138
 
 Samuel BOaius 
 
 ouies adopt the quarrel and back the 
 Colouial army in the vicinity of Boston 
 \Yas the only way to make the issue a 
 success, and to unite the factions by 
 choosing for a leader a Virginian aristo- 
 crat was a crowning stroke of diplomacy. 
 
 John Haucock had succeeded Ran- 
 dolph as president of the second Con- 
 gress and Virginia was inclined to be 
 lukewarm, when John Adams in an im- 
 passioned speech nominated Colonel 
 George Washington as Commander-in- 
 Chief of the Continental army. The 
 nomination was seconded very quietly 
 by Samuel Adams. It was a vote, and 
 the South was committed to the cause of 
 backing up Washington, and, incident- 
 ally, New England. The entire plan 
 was probably the work of Samuel Adams, 
 yet he gave the credit to John, while the 
 credit of stoutly opposing it goes to John 
 Hancock, who, being presiding officer, 
 worked at a disadvantage. 
 
 But Adams had a way of reducing oppo- 
 sition to the minimum. He kept out of 
 139
 
 Samuel BDams 
 
 sight and furthered his ends by pushing 
 this man or that to the front at the right 
 time to make the plea. He was a master 
 in that fine art of managing men and 
 never letting them know they are man- 
 aged. By keeping behind the arras he 
 accomplished purposes that a leader 
 never can who allows his personality to 
 be in continual evidence, for personality 
 repels as well as attracts, and the man 
 too much before the public is sure to be 
 undone eventually. Adams knew that 
 the power of Pericles lay largely in the 
 fact that he was never seen upon but a 
 single street of Athens, and that but 
 once a year. 
 
 The complete writings of Adams have 
 recently been collected and published. 
 One marvels that such valuable material 
 has not before been printed and given 
 to the public, for the literary style and 
 perspicuity shown are most inspiring, and 
 the value of the data cannot be gainsaid. 
 
 No one ever accused Adams of being a 
 muddy thinker ; you grant his premises 
 140
 
 Samuel BOains 
 
 and you are bound to accept his conclu. 
 sions. He leaves no loopholes for escape. 
 
 The following words, used by Chatham, 
 refer to documents of which Adams took 
 a prominent part in preparing : " When 
 your Lordships look at the papers trans- 
 mitted us from America, when you con- 
 sider their decency, firmness, and wisdom, 
 you cannot but respect their cause and 
 wish to make it your own. For myself, 
 I must avow that, in all my reading — and 
 I have read Thucydides and have studied 
 and admired the master statesmen of the 
 world — for solidity of reason, force of 
 sagacity, and wisdom of conclusion under 
 a complication of difficult circumstances, 
 no body of men can stand in preference 
 to the general Congress of Philadelphia. 
 The histories of Greece and Rome give us 
 nothing like it and all attempts to impress 
 servitude on such a mighty continental 
 people must be in vain. . . ." 
 
 In the life of Adams there was no soft 
 sentiment nor romantic vagaries. "He 
 is a Puritan in all the word implies, and 
 141
 
 Samuel BDams 
 
 the unbending fanatic of independence," 
 wrote Gage, and the description fits. 
 
 He was twice married. Our knowledge 
 of his first wife is very slight, but his 
 second wife, Elizabeth Wells, daughter 
 of an English merchant, was a capable 
 woman of brave, good sense. She adopted 
 her husband's political views and with 
 true womanly devotion let her old kins- 
 men slide ; and during the dark hours of 
 the war bore deprivation without repin- 
 ing. 
 
 Adams' home life was simple to the 
 verge of hardship. All through life he 
 was on the ragged edge financially, and 
 in his latter years he was for the first time 
 relieved from pressing obligations by an 
 afiiicting event— the death of his only 
 son, who was a surgeon in Washington's 
 army. The money paid to the sou by the 
 Government for his services gave the 
 father the only financial competency he 
 ever knew. Two daughters survived him, 
 but with him died the name. 
 
 John Adams survived Samuel for 
 142
 
 Samuel a^ams 
 
 twenty-three years. He lived to see 
 " the great American experiment," as 
 Mr. Ruskin has been pleased to call our 
 country, on a firm basis, constantly grow- 
 ing stronger and stronger. He lived to 
 realize that the sanguine prophecies made 
 by Samuel were working themselves out 
 in very truth. 
 
 The grave of Samuel Adams is viewed 
 by more people than that of any other 
 American patriot. In the old Granary 
 Burying Ground, in the very centre of 
 Boston, on Tremont Street, there where 
 travel congests, and two living streams 
 meet all day long, you look through the 
 iron fence, so slender that it scarce im- 
 pedes the view, and not twenty feet from 
 the curb is a simple metal disc set on an 
 iron rod driven into the ground and on it 
 this inscription : " This marks the grave 
 of Samuel Adams." 
 
 For many years the grave was un- 
 marked, and the disc that now denotes it 
 was only recently placed in position by 
 the Sons of the Revolution. But the 
 143
 
 Samuel BDams 
 
 place of Samuel Adams on the pages of 
 history is secure. Upon the times in 
 which he lived he exercised a profound 
 influence. And he who influences the 
 times in which he lives has influenced all 
 the times that come after ; he has left his 
 impress on eternity. 
 
 144
 
 JOHN HANCOCK 
 
 145
 
 Boston, Sept. 30, 1765. 
 Gent: 
 
 Since my last I have receiv'd your favour by 
 Capt Hulme who is arriv'd here vyith the most 
 disagreeable Commodity (say Stamps) that were 
 imported into this Country & what if carry'd 
 into Execution will entirely Stagnate Trade here, 
 for it is universally determined here never to 
 Submitt to it and the principal merchts here 
 will by no means carry on Business under a 
 Stamp, we are in the utmost Confusion here and 
 shall be more so after the first of November & 
 nothing but the repeal of the act will righten, 
 the Consequence of its taking place here will be 
 bad, & attended with many troubles, & I believe 
 may say more fatal to you than us. I dread the 
 'By^nt.— Extract from Hancock's Letter-Book. 
 
 146
 
 ^^^^^.^s^.
 
 JOHN HANCOCK. 
 
 I. 
 
 LONG years ago when society was 
 young, learning was centred in 
 one man itl each community, and 
 that man was the priest. It was the 
 priest who was sent for in every emer- 
 gency of life. He taught the young, 
 prescribed for the sick, advised those 
 who were in trouble, aud when human 
 help was vain and man had done his all, 
 this priest knelt at the bedside of the 
 dying and invoked a Power with whom it 
 was believed he had influence. 
 
 The so-called learned professions are 
 
 only another example of the Division of 
 
 Labor. We usually say there are three 
 
 learned professions : Theology, Medi- 
 
 147
 
 5obn Ibancocft 
 
 cine, and Law. As to which is the 
 greater is a much-mooted question and 
 has caused too many family feuds for me 
 to attempt to decide it. And so I evade 
 the issue and say there is a fourth pro- 
 fession, that is only allowed to be called 
 so by grace, but which in my mind is 
 greater than them all — the profession of 
 Teacher. I can conceive of a condition 
 of society so high and excellent that it 
 has no use for either doctor, lawyer, or 
 preacher, but the teacher would still be 
 needed. Ignorance and sin supply the 
 three " learned professions " their excuse 
 for being, but the teacher's work is to 
 develop the germ of wisdom that is in 
 every soul. 
 
 And now each of these professions has 
 divided up, like monads, into manj- heads. 
 In medicine we have as many specialists 
 as there are organs of the body. The 
 lawyer who advises you in a copyright or 
 patent cause knows nothing about ad- 
 miralty ; and as they tell us a man who 
 pleads his own case has a fool for a client, 
 148
 
 5obn Ibancocl^ 
 
 so does the insurance lawyer who is 
 retained to foreclose a mortgage. In all 
 prosperous city churches the preacher 
 who attracts the crowd in the morning 
 allows a 'prentice to preach to the young 
 folks in the evening ; he does not make 
 pastoral calls ; and the curate who reads 
 the service at funerals is never called 
 upon to perform a marriage ceremony 
 except in a case of charity. Likewise the 
 teacher's profession has its specialists : 
 the man who teaches Greek well cannot 
 write good English, and the man who 
 teaches composition is baffled and per- 
 plexed by long division ; and the teacher 
 who delights in trigonometry, pooh- 
 poohs a kindergartner. 
 
 Just where this evolutionary dividing 
 and subdividing ofsocial cells will land the 
 race no man can say ; but that a specialist 
 is a dangerous man, is sure. He is a buzz- 
 saw with which wise men never monkey. 
 A surgeon who has operated for appendi- 
 citis five times successfully is above all 
 to be avoided. I once knew a man with 
 149
 
 Jobn Ibancocf? 
 
 lung trouble who inadvertently strayed 
 into an oculist's, and was looked over 
 and sent away witli an order on an opti- 
 cian. And should you through error 
 stray into the oflBce of a nose aud throat 
 specialist, aud ask him to treat you for 
 varicose veins, he would probably do so 
 by nasal douche. 
 
 Even now a specialist iu theology will 
 lead us, if he cau, a merry ignis fatiius 
 chase and laud us iu a morass. The only 
 thiug that saved the priest in days agone 
 was the fact that he had so mauy duties to 
 perform that he exercised all of his 
 mental muscles, aud thus attained a 
 degree -of all-roundness which is not 
 possible to the specialist. Eveu then 
 there were not lacking men who found 
 time to devote to specialties : Bishop 
 Georgius Ambrosius, for instance, who in 
 the Fifteenth Century produced a learned 
 work proving that women have no souls. 
 And a like book was written at Nashville, 
 Tennessee, in 1S59, ])y Rev. Hubert Par- 
 sons of the Methodist Episcopal Church 
 150
 
 Jobn "Ibancoch 
 
 (South), showing that negroes were in a 
 like predicament. But a more uotalile 
 instance of the danger of a specialty is 
 Rev. Cotton Mather, who investigated the 
 subject of witchcraft and issued a modest 
 brochure incorporating his views on the 
 subject. He succeeded in convincing at 
 least one man of its verity, and that man 
 was himself, and thus immortality was 
 given to the town of Salem, which, 
 otherwise, would have no claim on us 
 for remembrance, save that Hawthorne 
 was once a clerk in its custom-house. 
 
 A very slight study of Colonial history 
 will show any student that, for two cen- 
 turies, the ministers in New England oc- 
 cupied very much the same position in 
 society that the priest did during the 
 Middle Ages. As the monks kept learn- 
 ing from dying oif the face of earth, so 
 did the ministers of the New World pre- 
 serve culture from passing into forgetful- 
 ness. "Very seldom, indeed, were books 
 to be found in a community except at the 
 minister's. And during the Seventeenth 
 151
 
 ^obn Ibancocft 
 
 Century, and well into the Eighteenth, he 
 combined in himself the offices of doctor, 
 lawyer, preacher, and teacher. Mr. Low- 
 ell has said, " I cannot remember when 
 there was not one or more students in my 
 father's household, and others still who 
 came at regular intervals to recite. And 
 this was the usual custom. It was the 
 minister who fitted boys for college, and 
 no youth was ever sent away to school 
 until he had been well drilled by the 
 local clergyman." 
 
 And it must further be noted, that 
 genealogical tables show that ver}'- nearly 
 all of the eminent men of New England 
 were .sons of ministers, or of an ancestry 
 where ministers' names are seen at fre- 
 quent intervals. 
 
 As an intellectual and moral force the 
 minister has now but a rtuliment of the 
 power he once exercised. The tendency 
 to specialize all art and all knowledge 
 has to a degree shorn him of his strength. 
 And to such an extent is this true, that 
 within forty years it has passed into a 
 152
 
 Jobn Ibancock 
 
 common proverb that the sons of cler- 
 gymen are rascals, whereas in Colonial 
 days the highest recommendation a yonth 
 could carry was that he was the son of a 
 minister. 
 
 The Rev. John Hancock, grandfather 
 of John Hancock, the patriot, was for 
 more than half a century the minister of 
 Lexington, Massachusetts. I say "the 
 minister," because there was only one : 
 the keen competition of sect that estab- 
 lishes half a dozen preachers in a small 
 community is a very modern innovation. 
 
 John Hancock, " Bishop of Lexington," 
 was a man of pronounced personality, as is 
 plainly seen in his portrait in the Boston 
 Museum of Fine Arts. They say he ruled 
 the town with a rod of iron ; and when the 
 young men, who adorned the front steps 
 of the meeting-house during service, grew 
 disorderly, he stopped in his prayer, and 
 going outside soundly cuffed the ears of 
 the first delinquent he could lay hands 
 upon. In his clay there was a dash of 
 facetiousness that saved him from excess, 
 153
 
 5obn Ibancoch 
 
 supplying a useful check to his zeal — for 
 zeal uncurbed is very bad. He was a -wise 
 and beneficent dictator ; and government 
 under such a one cannot be improved 
 upon. His manner was gracious, frank, 
 and open, and such was the specific grav- 
 ity of his nature, that his words carried 
 weight, and his wish was sufiicient. 
 
 The house where this fine old autocrat 
 lived and reigned is standing in Lexing- 
 ton now. When you walk out through 
 Cambridge and Arlington on your way 
 to Concord, following the road the Brit- 
 ish took on their way out to Concord, 
 you will pass by it. It is a good place to 
 stop and rest. You will know the place 
 bv the tablet in front, on which is the 
 legend : "Here John Hancock and Sam- 
 uel Adams were sleeping on the night of 
 the iSth of April, 1775, when aroused by 
 Paul Revere." 
 
 The Rev. Jonas Clark owned the house 
 
 after the Rev. John Hancock, and the 
 
 ministries of those two men, and their 
 
 occupancy of the house, cover one hun- 
 
 154
 
 3obn Ibancock 
 
 dred years and five years more. Here 
 the thirteen children of Jonas Clark were 
 born, and all lived to be old men and 
 women. When you call there I hope 
 you will be treated with the same gentle 
 courtesy that I met. If you delay not your 
 visit too long you will see a fine moth- 
 erly woman, with white "sausage curls " 
 and a high back-comb, wearing a check 
 dress and felt slippers, and she will tell 
 you that she is over eighty, and that when 
 her mother was a little girl she once sat 
 on Governor Hancock's knee and he 
 showed her the works in his watch. 
 
 And then as you go away you will 
 think again of what the old lady has just 
 told you, and as you look back for a part- 
 ing glance at the house, standing firm 
 and solemn in its rusty-gray dignity, you 
 will doff your hat to it, and mayhap 
 murmur : The days of man on earth — 
 they are but as a passing shadow ! 
 
 " Here John Hancock and Samuel 
 Adims were sleeping when aroused by 
 Paul Revere " ! Merchant-prince and agi- 
 155
 
 5obn Ibancocft 
 
 tator, horse and rider — where are you 
 now? And is your sleep disturbed by 
 dreams of British red-coats, or hissing 
 flint-locks? Phantom British warships 
 may lie at their moorings, swinging wide 
 on the unforgetting tide, lanterns may 
 hang high in the belfry of the Old North 
 Church tower, hurried knocks and calls 
 of defiance and hoof-beats of fast- gallop- 
 ing steed may echo, borne on the night- 
 wind of the Past, but you heed them not ! 
 
 156
 
 II. 
 
 THE Rev. John Hancock of Lexing- 
 ton had two sons. John Hancock 
 number two became pastor of the 
 church at the North Precinct of the town 
 of Braintree, which afterwards was to be 
 the town of Quincy. 
 
 The nearest neighbor to the village 
 preacher was John Adams, shoemaker 
 and farmer. Each Sunday in the amen 
 corner of the Rev. John Hancock's meet- 
 ing-house, was mustered the well-washed 
 and combed brood of Mr. and Mrs. 
 Adams. Now this John Adams bad a son 
 whom Rev. John Hancock baptized, also 
 named John, two years older than John 
 the son of the preacher. And young 
 John Adams and John Hancock number 
 three used to fish and swim together, 
 and go nutting, and set traps for squirrels, 
 157
 
 Jobn Ibancock 
 
 and help each other in fractions. And 
 then they would climb trees, and wrestle, 
 and sometimes fight. lu the fights, they 
 say, John Hancock used to get the better 
 of his antagonist, but as an exploiter of 
 fractions John Adams was more than his 
 equal. 
 
 The parents of John Adams were in- 
 dustrious and savin'— the little farm pros- 
 pered, for Boston supplied a goodly 
 market, and weekly trips were made there 
 in a one-horse cart, often piloted by young 
 John with the minister's boy for ballast. 
 The Adams family had ambitions for 
 their son John — he was to go to Harvard 
 and be educated, and be a minister and 
 preach at Braintree, or Weymouth, or 
 perhaps even Boston ! 
 
 In the meantime the Rev. John Han- 
 cock had died, and the widowed mother 
 was not able to give her boy a college 
 education — times were hard. 
 
 But the lad's uncle, Thomas Hancock, 
 a prosperous merchant of Boston, took 
 quite an interest in young John. And 
 15S
 
 Jobn Ibancock 
 
 it occvirred to him to adopt the fatherless 
 boy, legally, as his own. The mother 
 demurred, but after some months decided 
 that it was best so, for when twenty-one 
 he would be her boy just as much and as 
 truly as if his uncle had not adopted him. 
 And so the rich uncle took him, and 
 rigged him out with a deal finer clothing 
 than he had ever before worn, and sent 
 him to the Latin School and afterward 
 over to Cambridge, with silver jingling in 
 his pocket. 
 
 Prosperity is a severe handicap to 
 youth ; not very many grown men can 
 stand it ; but beyond a needless display 
 of velvet coats and frilled shirts, the 
 young man stood the test, and got through 
 Harvard. In point of scholarship he did 
 not stand so high as John Adams ; and 
 between the lads there grew a small but 
 well-defined gulf, as is but natural between 
 homespun and broadcloth. Still the 
 gulf was not impassable, for over it 
 friendly favors were occasionally passed. 
 
 John Hancock's mother wanted him to 
 159
 
 Jobn "DDancoch 
 
 be a preacher, but Uncle Thotaas would 
 not listen to it — the youth must be taught 
 to be a merchant, so he could be the 
 ready helper and then the successor of 
 his foster-father. 
 
 Graduating at the early age of seven- 
 teen, John Hancock at once went to 
 work in his uncle's counting-house in 
 Boston. He was a fine, tall fellow with 
 dash and spirit, and seemed to show 
 considerable aptitude for the work. The 
 business prospered, and Uncle Thomas 
 was very proud of his handsome ward who 
 was qiiite in demand at parties and balls 
 and in a general social way, while the 
 uncle could not dance a minuet to save 
 him. 
 
 Not needing the young man very badly 
 around the store, the uncle sent him to 
 Europe to complete his education by 
 travel. He went with the retiring Gover- 
 nor Pownal, whose taste for social enjoy- 
 ment was very much in accord with his 
 own. In England he attended the funeral 
 of George II., and saw the coronation 
 1 60
 
 ^obn Ibancock 
 
 of George III., little thinking the while 
 that he would some day make violent 
 eflForts to snatch from that crown its 
 brightest jewel. 
 
 When young Hancock was twenty- 
 seven the uncle died, and left to him his 
 entire fortune of three hundred and fifty 
 thousand dollars. It made him one of 
 the very richest men in the colony — 
 for at that time there was not a man in 
 Massachusetts worth half a million 
 dollars. 
 
 The jingling silver in his pocket when 
 sent to Harvard had severely tested his 
 moral fibre, but this great fortune came 
 near smothering all his native common- 
 sense. If a man makes his money him- 
 self he stands a certain chance of growing 
 as the pile grows. There is a little doubt 
 as to the soundness of Emerson's epi- 
 gram, that what you put into his chest 
 you take out of the man. More than 
 this, when a man gradually accumulates 
 wealth, it attracts little attention, so the 
 mob that follows the newly rich never 
 i6i
 
 ^obti Ibancock 
 
 really get onto the sceut. And besides 
 that the man who makes his own fortune 
 always stands ready to repel boarders. 
 
 There may be young men of twenty- 
 seven who are men grown, and no doubt 
 every man of twenty-seven is very sure 
 that he is one of these ; but the thought 
 that man is mortal never occurs to either 
 men or women until they are past thirty. 
 The blood is warm, conquest lies before, 
 and to seize the world by the tail and 
 snap its head off seems both easy and 
 desirable. 
 
 The promoters, the flatterers, and 
 friends until then unknown, flocked to 
 Hancock and condoled with him on the 
 death of his uncle. Some wanted small 
 loans to tide over temporary emergencies, 
 others had business ventures in hand 
 whereby John Hancock could double his 
 wealth very shortly. Still others spoke 
 of wealth being a trust, and to use money 
 to help your fellow-men, and thus secure 
 the gratitude of many, was the proper 
 thing. 
 
 162
 
 Jobn Ibancocft 
 
 The unselfishness of the latter sugges- 
 tion appealed to Hancock. To be the 
 friend of humanity, to assist others — this 
 is the highest ambition to which a man 
 can aspire ! And, of course, if one is 
 pointed out on the street as the good 
 Mr, Hancock it cannot be helped. It 
 is the penalty of well-doing. 
 
 So in order to give work to many and 
 promote the interests of Boston, a thriv- 
 ing city of fifteen thousand inhabitants, 
 for all good men wish to build up the 
 place in which they live, John Hancock 
 was induced to embark in ship-building. 
 He also owned several ships of his own 
 which traded with London and the West 
 Indies, and was part owner of others. 
 But he publicly explained that he did not 
 care to make money for himself — his de- 
 sire was to give employment to the worthy 
 poor and enhance the good of Boston. 
 
 The aristocratic company of militia, 
 
 known as the Governor's Guard, had 
 
 been fitted out with new uniforms and 
 
 arms by the generous Hancock, and he 
 
 163
 
 3obn Ibancoch 
 
 had been chosen commanding ofiBcer, 
 with rank of Colonel. He drilled with 
 the crack company and studied the man- 
 ual much more diligently than he ever 
 had his Bible. 
 
 Hancock lived in the mansion, in- 
 herited from his uncle, on Beacon Street, 
 facing the Common. There was a chariot 
 and six horses for state occasions, much 
 fine furniture from over the sea, elegant 
 clothes that the Puritans call "gaudy 
 apparel" ; and at the dinners, the wine 
 flowed freely, and cards, dancing, and 
 music filled many a night. 
 
 The Puritan neighbors were shocked, 
 and held up their hands in horror to 
 think that the son of a minister should 
 so affront the staid and sober customs of 
 his ancestors. Others still said, "Why, 
 that 's what a rich man should do, — spend 
 his money, of course ; Hancock is the 
 benefactor of his kind ; just see how 
 man}' people he employs !" 
 
 The town was all agog, and Hancock 
 was easily Boston's first citizen, but in 
 164
 
 s «
 
 ^obn Ibancocfi 
 
 his time of prosperity he did not forget 
 his old friends. He sent for them to 
 come and make merry with him ; and 
 among the first in his good offices was 
 John Adams, the rising young lawyer of 
 Braintree. 
 
 John Adams had found clients scarce, 
 and those he had, poor pay, but when he 
 became the trusted legal adviser of John 
 Hancock, things took a turn and pros- 
 perity came that way. The wine and 
 cards and dinners had n't much attraction 
 for him, but still there were no conscien- 
 tious scruples in the way. He patted John 
 Hancock on the back, assured him that 
 lie was the people, looked after his inter- 
 ests loyally, and extracted goodly fees for 
 services performed. 
 
 At the home of Adams at Braintree, 
 Hancock had met a quiet, taciturn indi- 
 vidual by the name of Samuel Adams. 
 This man he had long known in a casual 
 way, but had never been able really to 
 make his acquaintance. He was fifteen 
 years older than Hancock, and by his 
 165
 
 5obn Ibancoc?; 
 
 quiet digtnity and self-possession made 
 quite an impressiou on the young man. 
 
 So, now that prosperitj' had smiled, 
 Hancock invited him to his house, but 
 the quiet mau was an ascetic and neither 
 played cards, drank wine, nor danced, 
 and so declined with thanks. 
 
 But not long after, he requested a small 
 loan from the merchant-prince, and asked 
 it as though it were his right, and so he 
 got it. His manner was in such opposi- 
 tion to the flatterers and those who 
 crawled, and whined, and begged, that 
 Hancock was pleased with the man. 
 Samuel Adams had declined Hancock's 
 social favors, and yet, in asking for a loan, 
 showed his friendliness. 
 
 Samuel Adams was a politician, and 
 had long taken an active part in the town- 
 meetings. In fact, to get a measure 
 through it was well to have Samuel Ad- 
 ams at 5'our side. He was clear-headed, 
 astute, and knew the human heart. Yet 
 he talked but little, and the convivial 
 ways of the small politician were far from 
 i66
 
 5obn Ibancock 
 
 him ; but in the fine art that can manage 
 men and never let them know they are 
 managed he was a past-master. Tucked 
 in his sleeve, no doubt, was a degree of 
 pride in his power, but the stoic quality 
 in his nature never allowed him to break 
 into laughter when he considered how he 
 led men by the nose. 
 
 In Boston and its vicinity Samuel Ad- 
 ams was not highly regarded, and outside 
 of Boston, at forty years of age, he was 
 positively unknown. The neighbors re- 
 garded him as a harmless fanatic, saue on 
 most subjects, but possessed of a buzzing 
 bee in his bonnet to the effect that the 
 Colonies should be separated from their 
 protector, England. Samuel Adams neg- 
 lected his business and kept up a fusillade 
 of articles in the newspapers, on vari- 
 ous political subjects, and men who do 
 this are regarded everywhere as " queer." 
 A professional newspaper-writer never 
 takes his calling seriously — it is business. 
 He writes to please his employer, or if he 
 owns the paper himself, he still writes to 
 167
 
 Jobii Dancock 
 
 please his employer, that is to say, the 
 public. Journalism, thy name is pander ! 
 
 The man who comes up the stairway 
 furtively, with a MvS. he wants printed, 
 is in dead earnest ; and he has excited the 
 ridicule, wrath, or pity of editors for 
 three hundred years. Such a one was 
 Samuel Adams. His wife did her own 
 work, and the grocer with bills in his 
 hand often grew red in the face and 
 knocked in vain. 
 
 And yet the keen intellect of Samuel 
 Adams was not a thing to smile at. Any 
 one who stood before him, face to face, 
 felt the power of the man, and acknowl- 
 edged it then and there as we always do 
 when we stand in the presence of a 
 strong individuality. And this inward 
 acknowledgment of worth was instinct- 
 ively made by John Hancock, the biggest 
 man in all Boston town. 
 
 John Hancock through his genial, glow- 
 ing personality, and his lavish spending 
 of money was very popular. He was 
 being fed on flattery, and the more a man 
 i68
 
 Jobn Ibancocft 
 
 gets of flattery, once the taste is acquired, 
 the more he craves. It is like the mad 
 thirst for liquor, or the romeike habit. 
 
 John Hancock was getting attention, 
 and he wanted more. He had been 
 chosen selectman to fill the place his 
 uncle had occupied, and when Samuel 
 Adams incidentally dropped a remark 
 that good men were needed in the Gen- 
 eral Court, John Hancock agreed with 
 him. 
 
 He was named for the office and with 
 Samuel Adams' help was easily elected. 
 
 Not long after this the sloop Liberty 
 was seized by the government officials for 
 violation of the revenue laws. The craft 
 was owned by John Hancock and had 
 surreptitiously landed a cargo of wine 
 without paying duty. 
 
 When the ship of Boston's chief citizen 
 was seized by the bumptious, gilt-braided 
 British officials, there was a merry uproar. 
 All the men in the ship-yards quit work, 
 and the Caulkers' Club, of which Samuel 
 Adams was secretary, passed hot resolu- 
 169
 
 3obn Ibancocft 
 
 tions and revolutionary preambles, and 
 eulogies of John Hancock, who was doing 
 so much for Boston. 
 
 In fact there was a riot, and three 
 regiments of British troops were ordered 
 to Boston. 
 
 And this was the very first step on the 
 part of England to enforce her authoritj', 
 by arms, in America. 
 
 The troops were in the town to preserve 
 order, but the mob would not dis- 
 perse. Upon the soldiers they heaped 
 every indignity and insult. They dared 
 them to shoot, and with clubs and stones 
 drove the soldiers before them . At last 
 the troops made a stand and in order 
 to save themselves from absolute rout 
 fired a volley. Five men fell dead — and 
 the mob dispersed. 
 
 This was the so-called Boston massacre. 
 
 Pinkerton guards would blush at bag- 
 ging so small a game with a volley. 
 They have done better again and again 
 at Pittsburg, Pottsville, and Chicago. 
 
 The riot was quelled, and out of the 
 170
 
 ^obii 1l3aiicock 
 
 scrimmage various suits were instigated 
 by the Crown against John Hancock, in 
 the Court of Admiralty. The claims 
 against him amounted to over three 
 hundred thousand dollars, and the charge 
 was that he had long been evading the 
 revenue laws. John Adams was his 
 attorney, with Samuel Adams as counsel, 
 and vigorous efforts for prosecution and 
 defence were being made. 
 
 If the Crown were successful the suits 
 would confiscate the entire Hancock 
 estate — matters were getting in a serious 
 way. Witnesses were summoned, but 
 the trial was staved off from time to 
 time. 
 
 Hancock had refused to follow Samuel 
 Adams' lead in the controversy with Gov- 
 ernor Hutchinson as to the right to con- 
 vene the General Court. The report 
 was that John Hancock was growing 
 lukewarm and siding with the Tories. 
 A year had passed since the massacre 
 had occurred, and the agitators proposed 
 to commemorate the day. 
 171
 
 Jobn IbancocI? 
 
 Colonel Hancock had appeared in many 
 prominent parts but never as an orator. 
 
 "Why not show the town what you 
 can do ! " some one said. 
 
 So John Hancock was invited to deliver 
 the oration. He did so to an immense 
 concourse. The address was read from 
 the written page. It overflowed with 
 wisdom and patriotism ; and the earnest- 
 ness and eloquence of the well-rounded 
 periods was the talk of the town. 
 
 The knowing ones went arouud corners 
 and roared with laughter, but Samuel 
 Adams said not a word. The charge was 
 everywhere made by the captious and 
 bickering that the speech was written 
 by another, and that, moreover, John 
 Hancock had not a very firm hold even 
 on its import. It was the one speech of 
 his life. Anyway, it angered General 
 Gage so that he removed Colonel Han- 
 cock from his command of the cadets. 
 
 An order was out for Hancock's arrest 
 and he and Samuel Adams were in hid- 
 ing. 
 
 172
 
 5obn Ibancocft 
 
 The British troops marched out to 
 Lexington to capture them, but Paul 
 Revere was two hours ahead, and when 
 the red-coats arrived the birds had flown. 
 
 Then came the expulsion of the British 
 and the closing of all courts, the Ad- 
 miralty Court included. The merchant- 
 prince breathed easier and that was the 
 last of the Crown vs. John Hancock. 
 
 173
 
 ni. 
 
 DURING the months that had gone 
 before, when the Hancock man- 
 sion was gay with floral decora- 
 tions, and servants in livery stood at the 
 door with silver trays, and the dancing- 
 hall was bright with mirth and music, 
 Sanmel Adams had quietly been working 
 his Bureau of Correspondence to the end 
 tliat the thirteen Colonies of America 
 should come together in convention. 
 Chief mover of the plan, and the one 
 man in Massachusetts who was giving 
 all of his time to it, he dictated whom 
 Massachusetts should send as delegates. 
 This delegation, as we know, included 
 John Hancock, John Adams, and Samuel 
 Adams himself. 
 
 From the danger of Lexington, Han- 
 174
 
 Jobn Ibancocft 
 
 cock and Adams made their way to Phila- 
 delphia to attend the Second Congress. 
 
 At that time the rich men of New Eng- 
 land were hurriedly making their way 
 into the English fold . Some thought that 
 the mother-country had been harsh, but, 
 still, England had only acted within her 
 right, and she was well able to back up 
 this authority. She had regiment upon 
 regiment of trained fighting men, war- 
 ships, and money to build more. The 
 Colonies had no army, no ships, no 
 capital. 
 
 Only those who have nothing to lose 
 can afford to resist lawful authority — 
 back into the fold they went, penitent 
 and under their breath cursing the bull- 
 headed men who insisted on plunging 
 the country into red war. 
 
 Out in the cold world stood John Han- 
 cock, alone save for Bowdoin, among the 
 aristocrats of New England. The British 
 would confiscate his property, his splen- 
 did house — all would be gone ! 
 
 " It will all be gone, anyway," calmly 
 175
 
 5obn "Ibancocft 
 
 suggested Samuel Adams. " You know 
 those suits against you in the Admiralty 
 Court ? " 
 
 " Yes, yes ! " 
 
 " And if we can unite these thirteen 
 Colonies an army can be raised, and 
 we can separate ourselves entire, in 
 which case there will be glory for some- 
 body." 
 
 John Hancock, the rich, the ambitious, 
 the pleasure-loving, had burned his 
 bridges. He was in the hands of Samuel 
 Adams, and his infamy was one with this 
 man who was a professional agitator, and 
 who had nothing to lose. 
 
 General Gage had made an offer of par- 
 don to all — all, save two men — Samuel 
 Adams and John Hancock. Back into 
 the fold tumbled the Tories, but against 
 John Hancock the gates were barred. 
 John Adams, attorney of the Hancock 
 estate, rubbed his chin, and decided to 
 stand by the ship — sink or swim, survive 
 or perish. 
 
 Down in his heart Samuel Adams 
 176
 
 3obn Ibancocfe 
 
 grimly smiled, but on his cold, pale face 
 there was no sign. 
 
 The British held Boston secure, and in 
 the splendid mansion of Hancock lived 
 the rebel, Lord Percy, England's pet. 
 The furniture, plate, and keeping of the 
 place were quite to his liking. 
 
 Hancock's ambitions grew as the days 
 went by. The fight was on. His prop- 
 erty was in the hands of the British, and 
 a price was upon his head. He, too, 
 now had nothing to lose. If England 
 could be whipped he would get his prop- 
 erty back, and the honors of victory 
 would be his, beside. 
 
 Ambition grew apace ; he studied the 
 Manual of Arms as never before, and 
 made himself familiar with the lives of 
 Csesar and Alexander. At Harvard he 
 had read the Anabasis on compulsion, 
 but now he read it with zest. 
 
 The Second Congress was a congress 
 
 of action ; the first had been one merely 
 
 of conference. A presiding ofl&cer was 
 
 required, and Samuel Adams quietly 
 
 177
 
 Jobn Ibancock 
 
 pushed his man to the front. He let it 
 be known that Hancock was the richest 
 man in New England, perhaps in 
 America, and a power in every emer- 
 gency. 
 
 John Hancock was given the ofi&ce of 
 presiding oflBcer, the place of honor. 
 
 The thought never occurred to him that 
 the man on the floor is the man who 
 acts, and the individual in the chair is 
 only a referee : an onlooker of the con- 
 test. When a man is chosen to preside 
 he is safely out of the way, and no one 
 knew this better than that clear-headed 
 man, wise as a serpent, Samuel Adams. 
 
 Hancock was intent on being chosen 
 Commander of the Continental army. 
 The war was in Massachusetts, her prin- 
 cipal port closed, all business at a stand- 
 still. Hancock was a soldier, and the 
 chief citizen of Massachusetts — the com- 
 mand should go to him. 
 
 Samuel Adams knew this could never 
 be. 
 
 To hold the Southern Colonies and 
 17S
 
 5obn Ibancocft 
 
 give the cause a show of reason before 
 the world, an aristocrat with something 
 to lose, and without a personal grievance, 
 must be chosen, and the man must be 
 from the South. To get Hancock in a 
 position where his mouth would be 
 stopped, he was placed in the chair. It 
 was a master move. 
 
 Colonel George Washington was al- 
 ready a hero ; he had fought valiantly 
 for England. His hands were clean ; 
 while Hancock was openly called a 
 smuggler. Washington was nominated 
 by John Adams. The motion was sec- 
 onded by Samuel Adams. Hancock 
 turned first red and then deathly pale. 
 He grasped the arms of his chair with 
 both hands, and — put the question. 
 
 It was unanimous. 
 
 Hancock's fame seems to rest on the 
 fact that he was presiding officer of the 
 Congress that passed the Declaration 
 of Independence, and therefore its first 
 signer, and, without consideration for 
 cost of ink and paper, wrote his name in 
 179
 
 3ob\\ Ibancocft 
 
 poster letters. When you look upon the 
 Declaration the first thing you see is 
 the signature of John Hancock, and you 
 recall his remark, " I guess King George 
 can read that without spectacles." The 
 whole action was melodramatic, and al- 
 though a bold signature has ever been 
 said to betoken a bold heart, it has yet 
 to be demonstrated that boys who whis- 
 tle going through the woods are indiffer- 
 ent to danger. " Conscious weakness 
 takes strong attitudes," says Delsarte. 
 The strength of Hancock's signature was 
 an affectation quite in keeping with his 
 habit of riding about Boston in a coach- 
 and-six, with outriders in uniform, and 
 servants in livery. 
 
 When Hancock wrote to Washington 
 asking for an appointment in the army, 
 the wise and far-seeing chief replied with 
 gentle words of praise concerning Colonel 
 Hancock's record, and wound up by say- 
 ing that he regretted there was no place 
 at his disposal worthy of Colonel Han- 
 cock's qualifications. Well did he know 
 I So
 
 5obn If^ancock 
 
 that Hancock was not quite patriot 
 enough to fill a lowly rank. 
 
 The part that Hancock played in the 
 eight years of war was inconspicuous. 
 However, there was little spirit of re- 
 venge in his character : he sometimes 
 scolded but he did not hate. He never 
 allowed personal animosities to make 
 him waver in his loyalty to independence. 
 In fact, with a price upon his head but 
 one course was open for him. 
 
 Just before Washington was inaugu- 
 rated President, he visited Boston, and a 
 curious struggle took place between him 
 and Hancock, who was Governor. It 
 was all a question of etiquette — which 
 should make the first call. Each side 
 played a waiting game, and at last Han- 
 cock's gout came in as an excellent ex- 
 cuse and the country was saved. 
 
 In one of his letters, Hancock says : 
 " The entire Genteel portion of the town 
 was invited to my House, while on the 
 sidewalk I had a cask of Madeira for the 
 Common People." His repeated re-elec- 
 i8i
 
 5obn Ibancocft 
 
 tion as Governor proves his popularity. 
 Through lavish expenditure his fortune 
 was much reduced, and for many years 
 he was sorely pressed for funds, his means 
 being tied up in unproductive ways. 
 
 His last triumph, as Governor, was to 
 send a special message to the Legislature, 
 informing that body that "a company 
 of Aliens and Foreigners have entered 
 the State, and the Metropolis of Govern- 
 ment, and under advertisements insult- 
 ing to all Good Men and Ladies have been 
 pleased to invite them to attend certain 
 Stage-plays, Interludes, and Theatrical 
 Entertainments under the Style and Ap- 
 pellation of Moral Lectures. . . . 
 All of which must be put a stop to to 
 once and the Rogues and Varlots pun- 
 ished," 
 
 A few days after this " the Aliens and 
 Foreigners " gave a presentation of Sher- 
 idan's School for Scandal. In the midst 
 of the performance the sheriff and a 
 posse made a rush upon the stage and 
 bagged all the offenders. 
 182
 
 Jobn Ibancocfi 
 
 When their trial came on the next day, 
 the " varlots and vagroms " had secured 
 high legal talent to defend them, one of 
 which counsel was Harrison Gray Otis. 
 The actors were discharged on the slim 
 technicality that the warrants of arrest 
 had not been properly verified. 
 
 However, the theatre was closed, but the 
 "Common People" made such an un- 
 seemly howl about " rights " and all 
 that, that the Legislature made haste to 
 repeal the law which provided that play- 
 actors should be flogged. 
 
 Hancock defaulted in his stewardship 
 as Treasurer of Harvard College, and 
 only escaped arrest for embezzlement 
 through the fact that he was Governor of 
 the State, and no process could be served 
 upon him. After his death his estate 
 paid nine years' simple interest on his 
 deficit, and ten years thereafter the prin- 
 cipal was paid. 
 
 His widow married Captain Scott, who 
 was long in Hancock's employ as master 
 of a brig ; and we find the worthy cap- 
 183
 
 5obn IbancocF: 
 
 tain proudly exclaiming, " I have em- 
 barked ou the sea of matrimony, and am 
 now at the helm of the Hancock man- 
 sion ! ' ' 
 
 No biography of Governor Hancock 
 has ever been written. The record of 
 his life flutters only in newspaper para- 
 graphs, letters, and chance mention in 
 various diaries. 
 
 Hancock did not live to see John Ad- 
 ams President. Worn by worry, and 
 grown old before his time, he died at the 
 early age of fifty-six, of a combination of 
 gout and that unplebeian complaint we 
 now term Bright's disease. 
 
 Thirty-five years after, hale old John 
 Adams down at Quiucy spoke of him as 
 "a clever fellow, a bit spoiled by a 
 legacy, whom I used to know in my 
 younger days." He left no descendants, 
 and his heirs were too intent on being in 
 at the death to care for his memory. 
 They neither preserved the data of his 
 life, nor over his grave placed a head- 
 stone. The monument that now marks 
 184
 
 5ol3ii 1[3ancocft 
 
 tis resting-place was recently erected by 
 the State of Massachu?setts. He was 
 buried in the Old Granary Burying- 
 Ground, on Tremont Street, and onh' 
 a step from his grave sleeps Samuel 
 Adams. 
 
 185
 
 JOHN QUINCY ADAMS 
 
 187
 
 To the guidance of the legislative councils ; to 
 the assistance of the executive and subordinate 
 departments ; to the friendly co-operation of the 
 respective State Governmeuts ; to the candid and 
 liberal support of the people, so far as it may be 
 deserved by honest industry and zeal, I shall 
 look for whatever success may attend my public 
 service ; and knowing that " except the Lord 
 keep the city, the watchman waketh in vain," 
 with fervent supplications for His favor, to His 
 overruling providence I commit, with humble 
 but fearless confidence my own fate, and the 
 future destinies of my country. 
 
 Inaugural Address. 
 
 i88
 
 3. oL. u^clccO'VV^
 
 JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 
 
 I. 
 
 NINE miles south of Boston, just a 
 little back from the escalloped 
 shores of Old Ocean, lies the vil- 
 lage of Braintree. It is on the Plymouth 
 post-road, being one of that string of set- 
 tlements, built a few miles apart for bet- 
 ter protection, that lined the sea. Boston 
 being crowded, and Plymouth full to 
 overflowing, the home-seekers spread out 
 north and south. In 1620, when the first 
 cabin was built at Braintree, land that 
 was not in sight of the coast had actually 
 no value. Back a mile, all was a howling 
 wilderness, with trails made by wild 
 beasts or savage men as wild. These 
 189
 
 Jobn QuincB BOams 
 
 paths led through tangles of fallen trees 
 and tumbled rocks, beneath dark over- 
 hanging pines where winter's snows 
 melted not till midsummer, and the sun's 
 rays were strange and alien. Men who 
 sought to traverse these wa}'S, had to 
 crouch, and crawl, or climb. Through 
 them no horse, or ox, or beast of burden 
 had carried its load. 
 
 But up from the sea the ground rose 
 gradually for a mile, and along this slope 
 that faced the tide, wind and storm had 
 partially cleared the ground, and on the 
 hillsides our forefathers made their 
 homes. The houses were built either 
 facing the east or south. This persist- 
 ence to face either the sun or sea 
 shows a last, strange rudiment of pagan- 
 ism, that makes queer angles now that 
 surveyors have come with Gunter's chain 
 and transit, laying out streets and doing 
 their work. 
 
 A mile out north of Braintree, on the 
 Boston road, came, in 1625, one Captain 
 WoUastou, a merry wight, and thirty 
 190
 
 3obn (SiuincB BOams 
 
 boon companious, all of whom probably 
 left England for England's good. Tbey 
 were in search of gold and pelf, and all 
 were agreed on one point : they were 
 quite too good to do any hard work. 
 Their camp was called Mount Wollaston, 
 or the Merry Mount. Our gallant gen- 
 tlemen cultivated the friendship of the 
 Indians, in the hope that they would re- 
 veal the caves and caverns where the 
 gold grew lush, and nuggets cumbered 
 the way ; and the Indians, liking the 
 drink they offered, brought them meal, 
 and corn, and furs. 
 
 And so the thirty set up a May-pole, 
 adorned with buck's horns, and drank 
 and feasted, and danced like fairies or 
 furies, the live-long day or night. So 
 scandalously did these exiled lords be- 
 have, that good folks made a wide circuit 
 'round to avoid their camp. 
 
 Preaching had been in vain, and pray- 
 ers for the conversion of the wretches re- 
 mained unanswered. So the neighbors 
 held a convention, and decided to send 
 igi
 
 Jobn (SluincB BOams 
 
 Captain Miles Standisli with a posse to 
 teach the merry meu manners. 
 
 Standish appeared among the baccha- 
 nalians one morning, perfectly sober, and 
 they were not. He arrested the captain, 
 and bade the others begone. The leader 
 was shipped back to England, with com- 
 pliments and regrets, and the thirty scat- 
 tered. This was the first move in that 
 quarter in favor of local option. 
 
 Six years later, the land thereabouts 
 was granted and apportioned out to Rev. 
 John Wilson, William Coddington, Ed- 
 ward Quinsey, James Penniman, Moses 
 Payne, and Francis Eliot. 
 
 And these men and their families built 
 houses and founded "the North Precinct 
 of the Town of Braintree." 
 
 Between the North Precinct and the 
 South Precinct there was continual ri- 
 valry. Boys who were caught over the 
 dead-line, which was marked by Deacon 
 Penniman's house, had to fight. Thus 
 things continued until 1792, when one 
 John Adams was Vice-President of the
 
 Jobn (Siuincs aDams 
 
 United States. Now this John Adams, 
 lawj-er, was the son of John Adams, hon- 
 est farmer and cordwainer, who had 
 bought the Penniman homestead, and 
 whose progenitor, Henry Adams, had 
 moved there in 1636. John Adams, Vice- 
 President, afterwards President, was born 
 there in the Penniman house, and was 
 regarded as a neutral, although he had 
 been thrashed by boys both from the 
 North and South Precinct. But at the 
 last there is no such thing as neutrality 
 — John Adams sided with the boys from 
 the North Precinct, and now that he was 
 in power it occurred to him, haviug had 
 a little experience in the revolutionary 
 line, that for the North Precinct to secede 
 from the great town of Braintree, would 
 be but proper and right. 
 
 The North Precinct had six stores that 
 sold W. I. goods, and a tavern that sold 
 W. E. T. goods, and it should have a 
 post-office of its own. 
 
 So John Adams suggested the matter 
 to Richard Cranch, who was his brother- 
 193
 
 5obn (Sluincg BDams 
 
 in-law and near neighbor. Cranch agi- 
 tated the matter, and the new town, 
 which was the old, was incorporated. 
 They called it Quincy, probably because 
 Abigail, John's wife, insisted on it. She 
 had named her eldest boy Quincy, in 
 honor of her grandfather, whose father's 
 name was Quinsey, and who had relatives 
 who spelled it De Quincey, one of which 
 tribe was an opium eater. 
 
 Now, when Abigail made a suggestion, 
 John usually heeded it. For Abigail was 
 as wise as she was good, and John well 
 knew that his success in life had come 
 largely from the help, counsel, and in- 
 spiration vouchsafed to him by this splen- 
 did woman. And the man who will not 
 let a woman have her way in all such 
 small matters as naming of babies or 
 towns is not much of a man. 
 
 So the town was named Quincy, and 
 brother-in-law Cranch was appointed its 
 first postmaster. Shortly after, the Bos- 
 ton Centinel contained a sarcastic article 
 over the signature, "Old Subscriber," 
 194
 
 5obn (SiuincB BDama 
 
 concerning the distribution of official pa- 
 tronage among kinsmen, and the Eliots 
 and Everetts gossiped over back fences. 
 
 At this time Abigail lived in the cottage 
 there on the Plymouth road, half-way be- 
 tween Braintree and Quincy, but she got 
 her mail at Quincy. 
 
 The Adams cottage is there now, and 
 the next time you are in Boston you had 
 better go out and see it, just as June and 
 I did one bright October day. 
 
 June has lived within an hour's ride of 
 the Adams's home all of her blessed thirty- 
 two sunshiny summers ; she also boasts a 
 Mayflower ancestry, with, however, a 
 slight infusion of Castle Garden, like my- 
 self, to give firmness of fibre, and yet she 
 had never been to Quincy. 
 
 The John and Abigail cottage was built 
 in 1 716, so says a truthful brick found in 
 the quaint old chimney. Deacon Penni- 
 mau built this house for his son, and it 
 faces the sea, although the older Penni- 
 man house faces the south. John Adams 
 was born in the older house ; but when he 
 195
 
 5obn Quince BOams 
 
 used to go to Weymoutli every Wednes- 
 day and Saturday evening to see Abi- 
 gail Smith, the minister's daughter, his 
 father, the worthy shoemaker, told him 
 that when he got married he could have 
 the other house for himself. 
 
 John was a bright young lawyer then, 
 a graduate of Harvard, where he had 
 been sent in hopes that he would become 
 a minister, for one half of the students 
 then at Harvard were embryo preachers. 
 But John did not take to theology. 
 
 He had witnessed ecclesiastical tennis 
 and theological pitch and toss in Brain- 
 tree that had nearly split the town, and 
 he decided on the law. One thing sure, 
 he could not work — he was not strong 
 enough for that — everybody said so. 
 And right here seems a good place to 
 call attention to the fact that weak men, 
 like those who are threatened, live long. 
 John Adams's letters to his wife reveal 
 a very frequent reference to liver com- 
 plaint, lung trouble, and that tired feel- 
 ing, yet he lived to l)e ninety-two. 
 iqb
 
 John (Sluincg B&ams 
 
 The Rev. Mr. Smith did not at first 
 favor the idea of his daughter Abigail 
 marrying John Adams. The Adams fam- 
 ily were only farmers (and shoemakers 
 when it rained), while the Smiths had 
 aristocracy on their side. He said law- 
 yers were men who got bad folks out of 
 trouble and good folks in. But Abigail 
 said that this lawyer was different ; and 
 as Mr. Smith saw it was a love-match, 
 and such things being difficult to combat 
 successfully, he decided he would do the 
 next best thing — give the young couple 
 his blessing. Yet the neighbors were 
 quite scandalized to think that their pas- 
 tor's daughter should hold converse over 
 the gate with a lawyer, and they let the 
 clergyman know it as neighbors then did, 
 and sometimes do now. Then did the 
 Rev. Mr. Smith announce that he would 
 preach a sermon on the sin of meddling 
 with other folk's business. As his text he 
 took the passage from Luke vii., 33 : " For 
 John came neither eating bread nor drink- 
 ing wine, and ye say, he hath a devil." 
 197
 
 Jobn Quincs BDams 
 
 The neighbors saw the point, for a short 
 time before, when the eldest daughter, 
 Mary, had married Richard Cranch (the 
 man who was to achieve a post-office), 
 the communit}^ had entered a protest, 
 and the Rev. Mr. Smith had preached 
 from Luke x., 42: "For Mary hath 
 chosen the better part which shall not 
 be taken away from her." So there, 
 now ! 
 
 And John and Abigail were married one 
 evening in the church at early candle- 
 light, at Weymouth. The good father 
 performed the ceremony, and nearly 
 broke down during it, they say, and then 
 he kissed both bride and groom. 
 
 The neighbors had repaired to the par- 
 sonage and were eating and drinking and 
 making merry when John and Abigail 
 slipped out by the back gate, and made 
 their way, hand in hand, in the starlight, 
 down the road that ran through the 
 ■woods to Braintree. When near the vil- 
 lage they cut across the pasture lot and 
 reached their cottage, which for several 
 iq8
 
 Jobn (Sluincg BDams 
 
 ■weeks they had been putting in order. 
 John unlocked the front door, and they 
 entered over the big flat stone at the en- 
 try, and over which you may enter now, 
 all sunken and worn by generations of 
 men gone. Some whose feet have pressed 
 that doorstep we count as the salt of the 
 earth, for their names are written large 
 on history's page. Washington rode out 
 there on horseback, and while his aide 
 held his horse, he visited and drank 
 mulled cider and ate doughnuts within ; 
 Hancock came often, and Otis, Samuel 
 Adams, and Loring used to enter without 
 plying the knocker. 
 
 Through the earnest work of Mr. Wil- 
 liam G. Spear, the cottage has now been 
 restored and fully furnished as nearly like 
 it was then as knowledge, fancy, and 
 imagination can devise. 
 
 When we reached Quincy we saw a 
 benevolent-looking old Puritan, and June 
 said, " Ask him." 
 
 "Can you tell me where we can find 
 Mr. Spear, the antiquarian? " I inquired. 
 199
 
 5obn (Sluincs BDams 
 
 "The which ? " said the son of Priscilla 
 Mullins. 
 
 " Mr. Spear, the antiquarian," I re- 
 peated. 
 
 " It's not Bill Spear who keeps a sec- 
 ond-hand shop, you want, mebbe ? " 
 
 " Yes, I think that is the man." 
 
 And so we were directed to the ' ' second- 
 hand shop," which proved to be the rooms 
 of the Quincy Historical Society. And 
 there we saw such a collection of second- 
 hand stuff, that, as we looked and looked, 
 and Mr. Spear explained, and gave large 
 slices of colonial history, June, who is a 
 Daughter of the Revolution, gushed a 
 trifle more than was meet. 
 
 Nothing short of a hundred years will 
 set the seal of value on an article for Mr. 
 Spear, and one hundred and fifty is 
 more like it. On his walls are hats, 
 caps, spurs, boots, and accoutrements 
 used in the Revolutionary War. Then 
 there are candlesticks, snuffers, spec- 
 tacles, butter-moulds, bonnets, dresses, 
 shoes, baby-stockings, cradles, rattles.
 
 3obn (Siutncg BDams 
 
 aprons, butter-tubs made out of a solid 
 piece, shovels to match, andirons, pokers, 
 skillets, and blue china galore. 
 
 "Bill Spear" himself is quite a curi- 
 osity. He traces a lineage to the 
 well-known Lieutenant Seth Spear, of 
 Revolutionary fame, and back of that to 
 John Alden who spoke for himself. The 
 bark on the antiquarian is rather rough ; 
 and I regret to say that he makes use of a 
 few words I cannot find in the Century 
 Dictionary, but as June was not shocked 
 I managed to stand it. On further ac- 
 quaintance I concluded that Mr. Spear's 
 brusqueness is assumed, and that beneath 
 the tough husk there beats a very tender 
 heart. He is one of those queer fellows 
 who do good by stealth and abuse you 
 roundly if accused of it. 
 
 For twenty-five years Mr. Spear has 
 been doing little else but study colonial 
 history, and make love to old ladies who 
 own clocks and skillets given them by 
 their great-grandmammas. There is no 
 doubt but that Spear has dictated clauses 
 
 20I
 
 5obn (SiuincB BDams 
 
 in a hundred wills devising that Wm. G. 
 Spear, Custodian of the Quincy Histori- 
 cal Society, shall have snuffers and bis- 
 cuit-moulds. 
 
 At first, Mr. Spear collected for his own 
 amusement and benefit, but the trouble 
 grew upon him until it became chronic, 
 and one fine day he realized that he was 
 not immortal and when he should die, 
 all of his collectiou, that had taken years 
 to accumulate, would be scattered. And 
 so he founded the Quincy Historical So- 
 ciety, incorporated by a perpetual charter, 
 with Charles Francis Adams, grandson of 
 John Quincy Adams, as first president. 
 
 Then the next thing was to secure the 
 cottage where John and Abigail Adams 
 began housekeeping, and where John 
 Quincy was born. This house has been 
 in the Adams family all these years and 
 been rented to the firm of Tom, Dick, and 
 Harry, and any of their tribe who would 
 agree to pay ten dollars a month for its 
 use and abuse. Just across the road from 
 the cottage lives a fine old soul by the 
 202
 
 5obn Quincg BDams 
 
 name of John Crane. Mr. Crane is some- 
 where between seventy and a hundred 
 years old, but he has a young heart, a 
 face like Gladstone and a memory like a 
 copy-book. Mr. Crane was on very good 
 terms with John Quincy Adams, knew him 
 well and had often seen him come here to 
 collect rent. He told me that during his 
 recollection the Adams place had been 
 occupied by full forty families. But now, 
 thanks to "Bill Spear," it is no longer 
 for rent. 
 
 The house has been raised from the 
 ground, new sills placed under it, and 
 while every part— scantling, rafter, joist, 
 cross-beam, lath, and weather-board — of 
 the original house has been retained, it 
 has been put in such order that it is no 
 longer going to ruin. 
 
 From the ample stores of his various 
 antiquarian depositories Mr. Spear has 
 refurnished it ; and with a ripe knowledge 
 and rare good taste, and restraining im- 
 agination, the cottage is now shown to 
 us as a colonial farmhouse of the year 
 203
 
 Jobn (SluincB BDams 
 
 1750. The wonder to me is that Mr. 
 Spear, being human, did not move his 
 " second-hand shop " down here and 
 make of the place a curiosity shop. But 
 he has done better. 
 
 As you step across the door-sill and 
 pass from the little entry into the "living 
 room " you pause and murmur, " Excuse 
 me." For there is a fire on the hearth, 
 the teapot sings softly, and on the back 
 of a chair hangs a suubonnet. And over 
 there on the table is an open Bible, and 
 on the open page is a pair of spectacles 
 and a red crumpled handkerchief. Yes, 
 the folks are at home — they have just 
 stepped into the next room — perhaps are 
 eating dinner. And so you sit down in 
 an old hickory chair, or the high settle 
 that stands against the wall by the fire- 
 place, and wait, expecting every moment 
 that the kitchen door will creak on its 
 wooden hinges, and Abigail, smiling and 
 gentle, will enter to greet you. Mr. 
 Spear understands, and, disappearing, 
 leaves you to your thoughts — and June's. 
 204
 
 3o\m Quincg a&ams 
 
 John and Abigail were lovers their life- 
 time through. Their published letters 
 show a oneness of thought and senti- 
 ment that, viewed across the years, moves 
 us to tears to think that such as they 
 should at last feebly totter, and then turn 
 to dust. But here they came in the jo}-- 
 ous springtime of their lives ; upon this 
 floor you tread the ways their feet have 
 trod ; these walls have echoed to their 
 singing voices, listened to their counsels, 
 and seen love's caress. 
 
 There is no sxirplus furniture, nor dis- 
 play, nor setting forth of useless things. 
 Bvery article you see has its use. The 
 little shelf of books, well thumbed, dis- 
 plays no Trilby nor Quest of the Golden 
 Girl — not an anachronism anywhere. 
 Curtains, chairs, tables, and the one or 
 two pictures — all ring true. In the 
 kitchen are washtubs and butter ladles 
 and bowls, and the lantern hanging by 
 the chimney, with a dipped candle in- 
 side, has a carefully scraped horn face. 
 It is a lant-horn. In the cupboard across 
 205
 
 5obii Qufncg BDams 
 
 the corner are blue china and pewter 
 spoons and steel knives, with just a little 
 polished brass stuff sent from England. 
 Down in the cellar, with its dirt walls, 
 are apples, yellow pumpkins and pota- 
 toes — each in its proper place, for Abi- 
 gail was a rare good housekeeper. Then 
 there is a barrel of cider, with a hickory 
 spigot and inviting gourd. All tells of 
 economy, thrift, industry, and the cun- 
 ning of woman's hands. 
 
 In the kitchen is a funny cradle, 
 hooded, and cut out of a great pine log. 
 The little mattress and the coverlet seem 
 disturbed, and you would declare the 
 baby had just been lifted out, and you 
 listen for its cry. The rocker is worn by 
 the feet of mothers whose hands were 
 busy with needles or wheel as they 
 rocked and sang. And from the fact 
 that it is in the kitchen you know that 
 the servant-girl problem then had no 
 terrors. 
 
 Overhead hang ears oi corn, bunches 
 of dried catnip, pennyroyal, and bone- 
 206
 
 5obn (SliiincB BDams 
 
 set, and festooned across the corner, are 
 strings of dried apples. 
 
 Then you go upstairs, with conscience 
 pricking a bit for thus visiting the house 
 of honest folks when thej- are away, for 
 you know how all good housewives dis- 
 like to have people prying about, espe- 
 cially in the upper chambers — at least 
 June said so ! 
 
 The room to the right was Abigail's 
 own. You would know it was a woman's 
 room. There is a faint odor of lavender 
 and thyme about it, and the white and 
 blue draperies around the little mirror, 
 and the little feminine nothings on the 
 dresser, reveal the lady who would ap- 
 pear well before the man she loves. 
 
 The bed is a high, draped four-poster, 
 plain and solid, evidently made by a 
 ship-carpenter who had ambitions. The 
 coverlet is light blue, and matches the 
 draperies of windows, dresser, and mir- 
 ror. On the pillow is a nightcap, in 
 which even a homely woman would be 
 beautiful. There is a clothes-press in the 
 207
 
 5obn (Sliiincs BDams 
 
 corner, into which Mr. Spear says we 
 may look. On the door is a slippery-elm 
 button, aud within, hanging on wooden 
 pegs, are dainty dresses ; stiff, curiously 
 embroidered gowns they are, that came 
 from across the sea, sent, perhaps, by 
 John Adams when he went to France, 
 and left Abigail here to farm and sew 
 and weave and teach the children. 
 
 June examined the dresses carefully, 
 and said the embroidery was hand-made, 
 and must have taken months and months 
 to complete. On a high shelf of the 
 closet are band-boxes, in which are 
 bonnets, astonishing bonnets, with pro- 
 digious flaring fronts. Mr. Spear in- 
 sisted that June should try one on, 
 and when she did we stood off and de- 
 clared the effect was a vision of love- 
 liness. Outside the clothes-press, on a 
 peg, hangs a linsey-woolsey every-day 
 gown that shows marks of wear. The 
 waist came just under June's arms, and 
 the bottom of the dress to her shoe-tops. 
 We asked Mr. Spear the price of it, but 
 208
 
 ^obn (Siuinc^ SOams 
 
 the custodian is not commercial. In a 
 corner of the room is a cedar chest con- 
 taining hand-woven linen. 
 
 By the front window is a little, low 
 desk, with a leaf that opens out for a 
 writing-shelf. And here yoii see quill 
 pens, fresh nibbed, and ink in a curious 
 well made from horn. Here it was that 
 Abigail wrote those letters to her lover- 
 husband when he attended those first 
 and second Congresses in Philadelphia ; 
 and then when he was in France and 
 England — those letters in which we see 
 affection, loyalty, tales of babies with 
 colic, brave political good sense, and all 
 those foolish trifles that go to fill up love- 
 letters, and, at the last, are their divine 
 essence and charm. 
 
 Here she wrote the letter telling of 
 going with their seven-year-old boy, John 
 Quincy, to Peun's Hill to watch the burn- 
 ing of Charlestown ; and saw the flashing 
 of cannons and rising smoke that marked 
 the battle of Bunker Hill. Here she wrote 
 to her husband when he was minister to 
 209
 
 5obn QumcB SDams 
 
 England, "This little cottage has more 
 comfort and satisfaction for you than the 
 courts of royalty." 
 
 But of all the letters written by that 
 brave woman none reveal her true nobil- 
 ity better than the one written to her hus- 
 band the day he became President of the 
 United States. Here it is entire : 
 
 QuiNCY, 8 February, 1797. 
 
 " The sun is dressed in brightest beams. 
 To give thy honors to the day." 
 
 And may it prove an auspicious pre- 
 lude to each ensuing season. You have this 
 day to declare yourself head of a Nation. 
 And now, O Lord, my God, Thou hast 
 made thy servant ruler over the people. 
 Give unto him an understanding heart, 
 that he may know how to go out and 
 come in before this great people ; that he 
 may discern between good and bad. For 
 ■who is able to judge this thy so great a 
 people?, were the words of a royal Sover- 
 eign ; and not less applicable to him who 
 is invested with the Chief Magistracy of 
 a nation, though he wear not a crown, 
 nor the robes of royalt)'. 
 
 My thoughts and my meditations are 
 with you, though personally absent ; and 
 mv petitions to Heaven are that the 
 things which make for peace may not be 
 hidden from yotir eyes. My feelings are
 
 ^obn Q.mnc'Q BDams 
 
 not those of pride or ostentation upon 
 the occasion. They are solemnized by a 
 sense of the obHgations, the important 
 trusts, and numerous duties connected 
 with it. That you may be enabled to 
 discharge them with honor to yourself, 
 with justice and impartiality to your 
 country, and with satisfaction to this 
 great people, shall be the daily prayer 
 of your 
 
 A. A. 
 
 It was in this room that Abigail waited 
 while British soldiers ransacked the rooms 
 below and made bullets of the best pew- 
 ter spoons. Here her son who was to be 
 President was born. 
 
 John Quiucy Adams was six years old 
 when his father kissed him good-bye and 
 rode away for Philadelphia with John 
 Hancock and Samuel Adams (who rode a 
 horse loaned him by John Adams). Abi- 
 gail stood in the doorway holding the 
 baby and watched them disappear in the 
 curve of the road. This was in August, 
 1774. Most of the rest of that year Abi- 
 gail was alone with her babies on the 
 little farm. It was the same next year, 
 and in 1776, too, when John Adams wrote 
 211
 
 Jobn Quince B^ams 
 
 home that he had made the formal move 
 for Independency and also nominated 
 George Washington as Commander-in- 
 Chief of the army ; and he hoped things 
 would soon be better. 
 
 Those were troublous times to live in 
 the vicinity of Boston. There were strag- 
 gling troops passing up and down the 
 Plymouth road every day. Sometimes 
 they were red-coats and sometimes buff 
 and blue, but all seemed to be very hungry 
 and extremely thirsty, and the Adams 
 household received a deal more attention 
 that it courted. The master of the house 
 was away, but all seemed to know who 
 lived there, and the callers were not 
 always courteous. 
 
 In such a feverish atmosphere of unrest, 
 children evolve quickly into men and 
 women, and their faces take on the look 
 of thought where should be only careless, 
 happy, dimpled smiles. Yes, responsi- 
 bility matures, and that is the way John 
 Quincy Adams got cheated out of his 
 childhood. 
 
 212
 
 3obii (Sluincs BDams 
 
 when eight years of age his mothei 
 
 called him the little man of the house. 
 The next year he was a post-rider, mak- 
 ing a daily trip to Boston with letter-bags 
 across his saddle-bows. 
 
 When eleven years of age his father 
 came home to say that some one had to 
 go to France to serve with Jay and Frank- 
 lin in making a treaty. 
 
 "Go," said Abigail, "and God be with 
 you ! " But when it was suggested 
 that John Quiucy go too, the parting 
 did not seem so easy. But it was a fine 
 opportunity for the boy to see the world 
 of men, and the mother's head appreci- 
 ated it even if her heart did not. And 
 yet she had the heroism that is willing to 
 remain behind. 
 
 So father and son sailed away ; and 
 little John Quincy added postscripts to 
 his father's letters and said, " I send my 
 loxdng duty to my mamma." 
 
 The boy took kindly to foreign ways 
 as boys will, and the French language 
 had no such terrors for him as it had for 
 
 213
 
 Jobn (Siuincs BDams 
 
 his father. The first stay in Europe was 
 only three months, and back they came 
 on a leaky ship. 
 
 But the home-stay was even shorter 
 than the stay abroad, and John Adams 
 had again to cross the water on his coun- 
 try's business. Again the boy went with 
 him. 
 
 It was five years before the mother saw 
 him. And then he had gone on alone 
 from Paris to London to meet her. She 
 did not know him, for he was nearly eigh- 
 teen and a man grown. He had visited 
 every country in Europe and been the 
 helper and companion of statesmen and 
 courtiers, and seen society in its various 
 phases. He spoke several languages and 
 in point of polish and manly dignity was 
 the peer of many of his elders. Mrs. 
 Adams looked at him and then began to 
 cry, whether for joy or sorrow she did not 
 know. Her boy had gone, escaped her, 
 gone forever, but, instead, here was a tall 
 young diplomat calling her " mother." 
 
 There was a career ahead for John 
 214
 
 Jobn (funics S&ams 
 
 Quincy Adams — his father knew it, his 
 mother was sure of it, and John Quincy 
 himself was not in doubt. He could then 
 have gone right on, but his father was a 
 Harvard man, and the New England 
 superstition was strong in the Adams 
 heart, that success could only be achieved 
 based on a Harvard parchment. 
 
 So back to Massachusetts sailed John 
 Quincy ; and a two-years course at Har- 
 vard secured the much desired diploma. 
 
 From the very time he crawled over 
 this kitchen floor and pushed a chair, 
 learning to walk, or tumbled down the 
 stairs and then made his way bravely up 
 again alone, he knew that he would ar- 
 rive. Precocious, proud, firm, and with 
 a coldness in his nature that was not a 
 heritage from either his father or mother, 
 he made his way. 
 
 It was a zigzag course, and the way was 
 strewn with the flotsam and jetsam of 
 wrecked parties and blighted hopes, but 
 out of the wreckage John Quincy Adams 
 always appeared, calm, poised, and se- 
 215
 
 5obn QuincB BDams 
 
 rene. When be opposed the purchase of 
 Louisiana it looks as if he allowed his 
 animosity for Jefferson to put his judg- 
 ment in chancery. He made mistakes, 
 but this was the only blunder of his 
 career. The record of that life expressed 
 in bold stands thus : 
 
 1767 — Bom May iitb. 
 
 1776 — Post-rider between Boston and 
 Quincy. 
 
 1778 — At school in Paris. 
 
 1780 — At school in Leyden. 
 
 1781 — Private Secretary to Minister to 
 Russia. 
 
 1787 — Graduated at Harvard. 
 
 1794 — Minister at The Hague. 
 
 1797 — Married Louise Catherine John- 
 sou, of Maryland. 
 
 1797 — Minister at Berlin. 
 
 1802 — Member of Massachusetts State 
 Senate. 
 
 1803— United States Senator. 
 
 1806 — Professor of Rhetoric and Ora- 
 tory at Harvard. 
 
 1809 — Minister to Russia. 
 216
 
 3obn Qutncs SDams 
 
 1811 — Nomiiialed and confirmed by 
 Senate as judge of Supreme Court of 
 the U. S. ; declined. 
 
 1814— Commissioner at Ghent to treat 
 for peace with Great Britain. 
 
 1815— Minister to Great Britain. 
 
 1817 — Secretary of State. 
 
 1825— Elected President of the United 
 States. 
 
 1S30 — Elected a Member of Congress, 
 and represented the district for seven- 
 teen years. 
 
 1848 — Stricken with paralysis Feb. 21st 
 in the Capitol, and died the second day 
 after. 
 
 "Aren't we staying in this room a 
 good while?" said June ; "you have sat 
 there staring out of that window looking 
 at nothing for just ten minutes, and not 
 a word have you spoken ! " 
 
 Mr. Spear had disappeared into space, 
 
 and so we made our way across the little 
 
 hall to the room that belonged to Mr. 
 
 Adams. It was in the disorder that men's 
 
 217
 
 5obn (SluincB BOams 
 
 rooms are apt to be. On the table were 
 quill pens and curious old papers with 
 seals on them, and on one I saw the date, 
 June i6, 176S, — the whole documeut writ- 
 ten out in the hand of John Adams, 
 beginning very prim and careful, then 
 moving off into a hurried scrawl as spirit 
 mastered the letter. There is a little 
 hair-covered trunk in the corner, studded 
 with brass nails, and boots and leggings 
 and canes and a jack-knife and a boot- 
 jack, and, on the window-sill, a friendly 
 snuff-box. In the clothes-press were buff 
 trousers and an embroidered coat and 
 shoes with silver buckles, and several 
 suits of every-day clothes, showing wear 
 and patches. 
 
 On up to the garret we groped, and 
 bumped our heads against the rafters. 
 The light was dim, but we could make 
 out more apples on strings, and roots and 
 herbs in bunches hung from the peak. 
 Here was a three-legged chair and a 
 broken spinning-wheel, and the junk 
 that is too valuable to throw away, yet 
 218
 
 5obn (Siuincg BDams 
 
 not good enough to keep, but "some 
 day may be needed." 
 
 Down the narrow stairway we went, 
 and in the little kitchen Sammy, the art- 
 ist, and Mr. Spear, the custodian, were 
 busy at the fireplace preparing dinner. 
 There is no stove in the house, and none 
 is needed. The crane and brick oven 
 and long-handled skillets suffice. Sammy 
 is au expert camp-cook, and swears there 
 is death in the chafing-dish, and grows 
 profane if you mention one. His skill 
 in turning flap-jacks by a " simple ma- 
 nipulation of the long-handled griddle 
 means more to his true ego than the finest 
 canvas. 
 
 June offered to set the table, but Sammy 
 said she could never do it alone, so to- 
 gether they brought out the blue china 
 dishes and pewter plates. Then they 
 drew water at the stone-curbed well with 
 the great sweep, carrying the leather- 
 baled wooden bucket between them. 
 
 I was feeling quite useless and asked, 
 " Can't I do something to help ? " 
 219
 
 3obn (auincs BDams 
 
 " There is the lye-leach ! — you might 
 bring out some ashes and make some 
 soft soap," said June pointing to the 
 ancient leach and soap kettle in the 
 yard, the joys of Mr. Spear's heart. 
 
 Sammy stood at the back door and 
 pounded on the dish pan with a wooden 
 spoon to announce that dinner was ready. 
 It was quite a sumptuous meal : potatoes 
 baked in the ashes, beans baked in the 
 brick oven, coffee made on the hearth, 
 fish cooked in the skillet and pan-cakes 
 made on a griddle with a handle three 
 feet long. 
 
 Mr. Spear had aspirations toward an 
 apple pie and had made violent eflForts in 
 that direction, but the product being dough 
 on top and charcoal on the bottom we 
 declined the nomination with thanks. 
 
 June suggested that pies should be 
 baked in an oven and not cooked on a 
 pan-cake griddle. The custodian thought 
 there might be something in it — a sug- 
 gestion he would have scorned and 
 scouted had it come from me. 
 220
 
 5obn (Sluinci? BDams 
 
 To change the rather painful subject, 
 Mr. Spear began to talk about John and 
 Abigail Adams, and to quote from their 
 Letters, a volume he seems to have by 
 heart. 
 
 " Do you know why their love was so 
 very steadfast, and why they stimulated 
 the menial and spiritual natures of each 
 other so ? " asked June. 
 
 " No, why was it ! " 
 
 "Well, I'll tell you, it was because they 
 spent one third of their married life 
 apart." 
 
 " Indeed ! " 
 
 " Yes, and in this way they lived in an 
 ideal world. In all their letters you see 
 they are always counting the days ere 
 they will meet. Now people that are 
 together all the time never write that way 
 because they do not feel that way — I'll 
 leave it to Mr. Spear ! " 
 
 But Mr. Spear, being a bachelor, did 
 not know. Then the case was referred to 
 Sammy, and Sammy lied and said he had 
 never considered the subject. 
 
 221
 
 5obn (autncg BDams 
 
 "And would you advise then that 
 married couples live apart one third of 
 the time, in the interests of domestic 
 peace ? " I asked. 
 
 " Certainly ! " said June, with her 
 Burne-Jones chin in the air. " Certainly, 
 but I fear you are the man who does not 
 understand ; and anyway I am sure it will 
 be much more profitable for us to cultivate 
 the receptive spirit and listen to Mr. 
 Spear — such opportunities do not come 
 very often. I did not mean to interrupt 
 you, Mr. Spear ; go on please ! " 
 
 And Mr. Spear filled a clay pipe with 
 natural leaf that he crumbled in his 
 hand, and deftly picking a coal from the 
 fireplace with a shovel one hundred and 
 fifty years old, puflFed five times silently, 
 and began to talk. 
 
 222
 
 THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 223
 
 If I could not go to Heaven but with a Party I 
 would not go there at all.— LeiU-r to Madison. 
 
 224
 
 THOMAS JEFFERSON. 
 
 WIIvLIAM and Mary College was 
 founded by the persons whose 
 names it bears, in 1692. The 
 founders bestowed on it an endowment 
 that would have been generous had there 
 not been attached to it sundry strings 
 in way of conditions. The intent was to 
 make Indians Episcopalians, and white 
 students clergymen ; and the assumption 
 being that between the whites and abo- 
 rigines there was little difference, the 
 curriculum was an ecclesiastic medley. 
 
 All the teachers were appointed by the 
 Bishop of Ivondon, and the places were 
 usually given to clergymen who were 
 not needed in England. 
 225
 
 ^bonias Jefferson 
 
 To this college, in 1760, came Thomas 
 Jeflferson, a tall, red-haired youth, aged 
 seventeen. He had a sharp nose and a 
 sharp chin ; and a youth having these 
 has a sharp intellect — mark it well. 
 
 This boy had not been " sent " to col- 
 lege. He came of his own accord from 
 his home at Shadwell, five days' horse- 
 back journey through the woods. His 
 father was dead and his mother, a rare 
 gentle soul, an invalid. 
 
 Death is not a calamiiy per se ; nor is 
 physical weakness necessarily a curse, for 
 out of these seeming unkind conditions, 
 nature often distils her finest products. 
 The dying injunction of a father may 
 impress itself upon a son as no example 
 of right-living ever can, and the physical 
 disability of a mother may be the means 
 that work for excellence and strength. 
 The last expressed wish of Peter Jefferson 
 was that his son should be well educated, 
 and attain to a degree of useful manliness 
 that the father had never reached. And 
 into the keeping of this fourteen-year- 
 226
 
 Cbomas Jefferson 
 
 old youtb the dying man, with the last 
 flicker of his intellect, gave the mother, 
 sisters, and baby brother. 
 
 We often hear of persons who became 
 aged in a single night, their hair turning 
 from dark to white, but I have seen death 
 thrust responsibility upon a lad and make 
 of him a man between the rising of the 
 sun and its setting. When we talk of 
 "right environment" and the "proper 
 conditions" that should surround grow- 
 ing youth we fan the air with words, — 
 there is no such thing as a universal 
 right environment. 
 
 An appreciative chapter might here be 
 inserted concerning those beings who 
 move about only in rolling chairs, who 
 never see the winter landscape but 
 through windows, and exert their gentle 
 sway from an invalid's couch, to which 
 the entire household or neighborhood 
 come to confession or counsel. And yet 
 I have small sympathy for the people 
 who professionally enjoy poor health, 
 and no man more than I reverences the 
 227
 
 Cbomas Jefferson 
 
 Greek passion for physical perfection. 
 But a close study of Jefferson's early life 
 reveals the truth, that the death of his 
 father and the physical weakness of his 
 mother and sisters were factors that 
 developed in him a gentle sense of 
 chivalry, a silken strength of will, and 
 a habit of independent thoughtand action 
 that served him in good stead throughout 
 a long life. 
 
 Williamsburg was then the capital of 
 Virginia. It contained only about a 
 thousand inuabitants, but when the 
 legislature was in session was very 
 
 gay. 
 
 At one end of a wide avenue was the 
 Capitol, and at the other the Gover- 
 nor's "palace"; and when the city of 
 Washington was laid out, Williamsburg 
 served as a model. On Saturdays, there 
 were horse races on the "Avenue"; 
 everybody gambled ; cock-fights and 
 dog-fights were regarded as manly diver- 
 sions ; there was much carousing at 
 taverns, and often at private houses there 
 228
 
 Cbomas Jefferson 
 
 were all-night dances where the rising 
 sun found everybody but the servants 
 plain drunk. 
 
 At the college, both teachers and 
 scholars were obliged to subscribe to 
 the Thirty-nine Articles and to recite 
 the Catechism. The atmosphere was 
 charged with theology. 
 
 Young Jefferson had never before even 
 seen a village of a dozen houses, and he 
 looked upon this as a type of all cities. 
 He thought about it, talked about it, 
 wrote about it, and we now know that at 
 this time his ideas concerning city ver- 
 sus country crystallized. 
 
 Fifty years after, when he had come to 
 know London and Paris, and had seen the 
 chief cities of Christendom, he repeated 
 the words he had written in youth, " The 
 hope of a nation lies in its tillers of the 
 soil ! " 
 
 On his mother's side he was related to 
 
 the "first families," but aristocracy and 
 
 caste had no fascination for him, and he 
 
 then began forming those ideas of util- 
 
 229
 
 Sboma^ Jcffciison 
 
 ity, simplicity, and equality that time 
 only strengthened. 
 
 His tutors and professors served chiefly 
 as "horrible examples," with the shining 
 exception of Doctor Small. The friend- 
 ship that ripened between this man and 
 young Jefferson is an ideal example of 
 what can be done through the personal 
 touch. Men are only great as they excel 
 in sympathy ; and the difference between 
 sympathy and imagination has not yet 
 been shown us. 
 
 Doctor Small encouraged the young 
 farmer from the hills to think and express 
 himself. He did not endeavor to set him 
 straight or explain everything for him, 
 or correct all of his vagaries, or demand 
 that he should memorize rules. He gave 
 his aff"ectionate sympathy to the boy who, 
 with a sort of feminine tenderness, clung 
 to the only person who understood him. 
 
 To Doctor Small, pedigree and history 
 
 unknown, let us give the credit of being 
 
 first in the list of friends that gave bent 
 
 to the mind of Jefferson. John Burk, in 
 
 230
 
 Cbomas Jefferson 
 
 his History of Virginia, refers to Profes- 
 sor Small thus: "He was not any too 
 orthodox in his opinions." And here we 
 catch a glimpse of a formative influence 
 in the life of Jefferson that caused him to 
 turn from the letter of the law and cleave 
 to the spirit that maketh alive. After 
 school hours the tutor and student walked 
 and talked, and on Saturdays and Sun- 
 days went on excursions through the 
 woods , and to the youth there was given 
 an impulse for a scientific knowledge of 
 birds and flowers and the host of life that 
 thronged the forest. And when the pair 
 had strayed so far beyond the town that 
 darkness gathered and stars came out, 
 they conversed of the wonders of the 
 sky. 
 
 The true scientist has no passion for 
 killing things. He says with Thoreau, 
 " to shoot a bird is to lose it." Professor 
 Small had the gentle instinct that re- 
 spects life, and he refused to take that 
 which he could not give. To his youth- 
 ful companion he imparted, in a degree, 
 231
 
 ^bonias 3^cfferson 
 
 the secret of enjoying things without the 
 passion for possession and the lust of 
 ownership. 
 
 There is a myth abroad that college 
 towns are intellectual centres ; but the 
 number of people in a college town (or 
 any other) who really think, is very few. 
 
 Williamsburg was gay, and, this much 
 said, it is needless to add it was not in- 
 tellectual. But Professor Small was a 
 thinker, and so was Governor Fauquier ; 
 and these two were firm friends, although 
 very unlike in many ways. And to " the 
 palace" of the courtly Fauquier, Small 
 took his young friend Jefferson. Fau- 
 quier was often a master of the revels, but 
 after his seasons of dissipation he turned 
 to Small for absolution and comfort. At 
 these times he seemed to Jefferson a par- 
 agon of excellence. To the grace of the 
 French he added the earnestness of the 
 English. He quoted Pope, and talked 
 of vSwift, Addison, and Thompson. Fau- 
 quier and Jefferson became friends, al- 
 though more than a score of years and a 
 232
 
 G:boma0 Jetferson 
 
 world of experience separated tbem. Jef- 
 fersou caught a little of Fauquier's grace, 
 love of books, and delight in architec- 
 ture. But Fauquier helped him most by 
 gambling away all of his ready money 
 and getting drunk and smoking strong 
 pipes with his feet on the table. And 
 Jefferson then vowed he would never 
 handle a card, nor use tobacco, nor drink 
 intoxicating liquors. And in conversa- 
 tion with Small he anticipated Buckle by 
 saying, "To gain leisure, wealth must 
 first be secured ; but once leisure is 
 gained, more people use it in the pursuit 
 of pleasure than employ it in acquiring 
 knowledge." 
 
 233
 
 II. 
 
 HAD Jefferson lived in a great city 
 be would have been an architect. 
 His practical nature, his mastery 
 of mathematics, his love of proportion, 
 and his passion for music are the basic 
 elements that make a Christopher Wren. 
 But Virginia, in 1765, offered no tempta- 
 tion to ambitions along that line ; log- 
 houses with a goodly "crack" were 
 quite good enough, and if the domicile 
 proved too small the plan of the first was 
 simply duplicated. Yet a career of some 
 kind young Jefferson knew awaited 
 him. 
 
 About this time the rollicking Patrick 
 Henry came along. Patrick played the 
 violin and so did Thomas. These two 
 young men had first met on a musical 
 basis. Some otherwise sensible people 
 234
 
 CM 
 
 4
 
 Cbomas Seflereon 
 
 hold that musicians are shallow and im- 
 practical ; and I know one man who 
 declares that truth and honesty and 
 uprightness never dwelt in a professional 
 musician's heart ; and further, that the 
 tribe is totally incapable of comprehend- 
 ing the difference between meuni and 
 tuunt. But then this same man claims 
 that actors are rascals who have lost 
 their own characters in the business of 
 playing they are somebody else. And 
 yet I '11 explain for the benefit of the 
 captious that although Thomas Jefferson 
 and Patrick Henry both fiddled, they 
 never did and never would fiddle while 
 Rome burned. Music was with them a 
 pastime, not a profession. 
 
 As soon as Patrick Henry arrived at 
 Williamsburg he sought out his old friend 
 Thomas Jefferson, because he liked him — 
 and to save tavern bill. And Patrick 
 announced that he had come to Williams- 
 burg to be admitted to the bar. 
 
 " How long have you studied law?" 
 asked Jefferson, 
 
 235
 
 G^bomas Jefferson 
 
 "Oh, for six weeks last Tuesday," was 
 the answer. 
 
 Tradition has it that Jefferson advised 
 Patrick to go home and study at least 
 a fortuight more before making his 
 application. But Patrick declared that 
 the way to learn law is to practise it, 
 and he surely was right. Most young 
 lawyers are really never • aware of how 
 little law they know until they begin 
 to practise. 
 
 But Patrick Henry was duly admitted, 
 although George Wythe protested. Then 
 Patrick went back home to tend bar (the 
 other kind) for Laban, his father-in-law, 
 for full four years. He studied hard and 
 practised a little betimes — and his is the 
 only instauce that history records of a 
 bar-keeper acquiring wisdom while fol- 
 lowing his calliug ; but for the encour- 
 agement of budding youth I write it 
 down. 
 
 236
 
 III. 
 
 No doubt it was the example of Pat- 
 rick Henry that caused Jefferson 
 to adopt his profession. But it 
 was the literary side of law that first 
 attracted him — not the practice of it. As 
 a speaker he was singularly deficient, a 
 slight physical malformation of the 
 throat giving him a very poor and 
 uncertain voice. But he studied law, 
 and after all, it does not make much 
 difference what a man studies — all knowl- 
 edge is related, and the man who studies 
 anything if he keeps at it will become 
 learned. 
 
 So Jefferson studied in the office of 
 George Wythe, and absorbed all that 
 Fauquier had to offer, and grew wise in 
 the companionship of Doctor Small. 
 From a red-headed, lean, lank, awkward 
 237
 
 Cbomas ^etfcison 
 
 mountaineer, he developed into a gra- 
 cious and graceful young man who has 
 been described as " auburn -haired." 
 And the evolution from being red-headed 
 to having red hair, and from that to 
 being auburn-haired proves he was the 
 genuine article. Still he was not hand- 
 some — that word cannot be used to 
 describe him until he was sixty— for he 
 was freckled, one shoulder was higher 
 than the other and his legs were so thin 
 that they could not do justice to small- 
 clothes. 
 
 Yet it will not do to assume that thin 
 men are weak, any more than to take 
 it for granted that fat men are strong. 
 Jefferson was as muscular as a panther 
 and could walk or ride or run six days 
 and nights together. He could lift from 
 the floor a thousand pounds. 
 
 When twenty-four, he hung out his 
 lawyer's sign under that of George 
 Wythe at Williamsburg. And clients 
 came that way with retainers, and rich 
 planters sent him business and wealthy 
 23S
 
 ^bomas ^cflcveon 
 
 widows advised with him — and still he 
 could not make a speech without stutter- 
 ing. Many men can harangue a jury, 
 and every village has its orator ; but 
 where is the wise and silent man who 
 will advise you in a way that will keep 
 you out of difficulty, protect your threat- 
 ened interests, and conduct the affairs 
 you may leave in his hands so as to 
 return your ten talents with other tal- 
 ents added ! And I hazard the state- 
 ment, without heat or prejudice, that if 
 the experiment should be made with a 
 thousand lawyers in any one of our larger 
 cities, four fifths of them would be found, 
 so deficient either mentally, morally, or 
 both, that if ten talents were placed in 
 their hands, they would not at the close 
 of a year be able to account for the 
 principal, to say nothing of the interest. 
 And the bar of to-day is made up of a 
 better class than it was in Jefferson's 
 time, even if it has not the intellectual 
 fibre that it had forty years ago. 
 But at the early age of twenty-five, 
 239
 
 tCbomas Setterson 
 
 JeflFerson was a wise and skilful man 
 in the world's aflfairs (and a man who 
 is wise is also honest) and men of this 
 stamp do not remain hidden in obscu- 
 rity. The world needs just such indi- 
 viduals and needs them badly. JeflFerson 
 had the quiet, methodical industry 
 that works without undue expenditure 
 of nervous force ; that intuitive talent 
 which enables the possessor to read a 
 whole page at a glance and drop at once 
 upon the vital point ; and then he had 
 the ability to get his whole case on 
 paper, marshaling his facts in a brief 
 pointed way that served to convince 
 better than eloquence. These are the 
 characteristics that make for success in 
 practice before our Courts of Appeal ; 
 and JeflFerson's success shows that they 
 serve better than bluster even with a 
 back-woods bench composed of fox- 
 hunting farmers. 
 
 In 1768, when Jeiferson was twenty- 
 five, he went down to Shadwell and ran 
 for member of the Virginia Legislature. 
 240
 
 (Tbomas Jefferson 
 
 It was the proper thing to do, for he 
 was the richest man in the county, 
 being heir to his father's forty thousand 
 acres, and it was expected that he would 
 represent his district. He called on 
 ever)' voter in the parish, shook hands 
 with everybody, complimented the ladies, 
 caressed the babies, treated crowds at 
 every tavern and kept a large punch 
 bowl and open house at home. 
 
 He was elected. 
 
 On the nth of May, 1769, the Legisla- 
 ture convened, with nearly a hundred 
 members present. Colonel George Wash- 
 ington being one of the number. It took 
 two days for the assembly to elect a 
 speaker and get ready for business. 
 On the third day, four resolutions were 
 introduced — pushed to the front largely 
 through the influence of our new mem- 
 ber. These resolutions were : 
 
 I. No taxation without representation. 
 
 II. The Colonies may concur and unite 
 in seeking redress for grievances. 
 
 III. Sending accused persons away 
 
 241
 
 Cbomas Jetferson 
 
 from their own country for trial is an 
 inexcusable wrong. 
 
 IV. We will send an address on these 
 things to the King beseeching his royal 
 interposition. 
 
 The resolutions were passed ; they did 
 not mean much any way, the opposition 
 said. And then another resolution was 
 passed to the effect, "We will send a 
 copy of these resolutions to every legisla- 
 tive body on the continent." That was a 
 little stronger but did not mean much 
 either. 
 It was voted upon and passed. 
 Then the assembly adjourned, having 
 dispatched a copy of the resolutions to 
 Lord Boutetoiirt, the newly appointed 
 Governor who had just arrived from 
 London. 
 
 Next day, the Governor's secretary 
 appeared when the assembly convened 
 and repeated the following formula : 
 " The Governor commands the House to 
 attend His Excellency in the Council 
 Chamber." The members marched to 
 242
 
 ^bomas Jefferson 
 
 the Council Chamber and stood around 
 the throne waiting the pleasure of His 
 Lordship. He made a speech which I 
 will quote entire. " Mr. Speaker and 
 Gentlemen of the House of Burgesses : 
 I have heard your resolves, and augur ill 
 of their effect. You have made it my 
 duty to dissolve you, and you are dis- 
 solved accordingly." 
 
 And that was the end of Jefferson's 
 first term in office, — the reward for all 
 the hand-shaking, all the caressing, all 
 the treating ! 
 
 The members looked at each other but 
 no one said anything because there was 
 nothing to say. The secretary made an 
 impatient gesture with his hand to the 
 effect that they should disperse, and they 
 did. 
 
 Just how those legally elected represen- 
 tatives and now legally common citizens 
 took their rebuff we do not know. 
 
 Did Washington forget his usual poise 
 and break out into one of those swearing 
 fits where everybody wisely made way ? 
 243
 
 ^bomae Jcftcreon 
 
 And how did Richard Henry Lee like it, 
 and George Wythe, and the Randolphs ! 
 Did Patrick Henry wax eloquent that 
 afternoon in a barroom and did Jefferson 
 do more than smile grimly, biding his 
 time ? 
 
 Massachusetts kept a complete history 
 of her political heresies, but Virginia 
 chased foxes and left the refinements of 
 literature to dillettantes. But this much 
 we know : Those country gentlemen did 
 not go off peaceably and quietly to race 
 horses or play cards. The slap in the face 
 from the gloved hand of Lord Boutetourt 
 awoke everj' boozy sense of security and 
 gave vitality to all those fanatical mes- 
 sages sent by Samuel Adams. Washing- 
 ton, we are told, spoke of it as a bit of 
 upstart authority on the part of the new 
 Governor ; but Jefferson with prophetic 
 vision saw the end. 
 
 244
 
 THOMAS lEFFERSON.
 
 IV. 
 
 ONE of the leading lawyers at Wil- 
 liamsburg, against wliom Jeffer- 
 son was often pitted was John 
 Wayles. I need not explain that lawyers 
 hotly opposed to each other in a trial are 
 not necessarily enemies. The way in 
 which Jefferson conducted his cases 
 pleased the veteran Wayles and he in- 
 vited Jefferson to visit him at his fine 
 estate, called " The Forest," a few miles 
 out from Williamsburg. Now in the 
 family of Mr. Wayles dwelt his widowed 
 daughter, the beautiful Martha Skelton, 
 gracious and rich as Jefferson in worldly 
 goods. She played the spinet with great 
 feeling, and the spinet and the violin go 
 very well together. So together Thomas 
 and Martha played and sometimes a bit 
 of discord crept in, for Thomas was absent- 
 245
 
 ITbomas Jefferson 
 
 minded and in the business of watching 
 the widow's fingers touch the keys, 
 played flat. 
 
 Long years before he had liked and ad- 
 mired Becca, gazed fondly at Sukey, and 
 finally loved Belinda. He did not tell 
 her so, but he told John Page, and vowed 
 that if he did not wed Belinda he would 
 go through life solitary and alone. 
 
 In a few months Belinda married that 
 detested being — another. Then it was he 
 again swore to his friend Page he would 
 be true to her memory even though she 
 had dissembled. But now he saw that 
 the widow Skelton had intellect, while 
 Belinda had been but clever ; the widow 
 had soul, while Belinda had nothing but 
 form. JefiFerson's experience seems to 
 settle that mooted question, " Can a man 
 love two women at the same time ? " Un- 
 like Martha Custis, this Martha was only 
 won after a protracted wooing, with many 
 skirmishes and occasional misunderstand- 
 ings and explanations, and sweet mak- 
 ings-up that were surely worth a quarrel. 
 246
 
 Q^bomas Jefferson 
 
 Theu they were married at "The For- 
 est," and rode away through the woods 
 to Monticello. JeflFerson was twenty- 
 seven, and although it may not be proper 
 to question closely as to the age of a 
 widow, yet the bride, we have reason to 
 believe, was about the age of her hus- 
 band. 
 
 It was a most happy mating — all of 
 their quarrelling had been done before 
 marriage. The fine intellect and high 
 spirit of Jefferson found their mate. She 
 was his comrade and helpmeet as well as 
 his wife. He could read his favorite Os- 
 sian aloud to her, and when he tired she 
 would read to him ; and all of his plans 
 and ambitions and hopes were hers. In 
 laying out the grounds and beautifying 
 that home on Monticello mountain she 
 took much more than a passive interest. 
 It was " Our Home," and to make it a 
 home in very sooth for her beloved hus- 
 band was her highest ambition. She 
 knew the greatness of her mate, and all 
 the dreams she had for his advancement 
 247
 
 ^bomas 3eftcrson 
 
 were to come true. With lier, ideality 
 was to become reality. But slie was to 
 see it only iu part. 
 
 Yet she had seen her husband re-elected 
 to the Virginia I^egislature ; sent as a 
 member to the Colonial Congress at Phil- 
 adelphia, there to write the best known 
 of all American literary productions; 
 from their mountain home she had seen 
 British troops march into Charlottesville, 
 four miles away, and then, with house- 
 hold treasure, had fled, knowing that 
 beautiful Monticcllo would be devastated 
 by the enemy's ruthless tread. She had 
 known Washington, and had visited his 
 lonely wife there at Mount Vernon when 
 victory hung in the balance, when defeat 
 meant that Thomas Jefferson and George 
 Washington would be the first victims 
 of a vengeful foe. She saw her husband 
 War-Governor of Virginia in its most 
 perilous hour ; she lived to know that 
 Washington had won ; that Cornwallis 
 was his "guest," and that no man, save 
 Washington alone, was more honored in 
 248
 
 ^bomas Jefferson 
 
 proud Virginia than her beloved lord 
 and husband. She saw a messenger on 
 horseback approach bearing a packet 
 from the Congress at Philadelphia to the 
 effect that "His Excellency, the Honor- 
 able Thomas Jefferson," had been ap- 
 pointed as one of an embassy to France 
 in the interests of the United States, with 
 Benjamin Franklin and Silas Deane as 
 colleagues, and knowing her husband's 
 love for Franklin, and his respect for 
 France, she leaned over his chair and 
 with misty eyes saw him write his sim- 
 ple " No," and knew that the only rea- 
 son he declined was because he would 
 not leave his wife at a time when she 
 might most need his tenderness and sym- 
 pathy. 
 
 And then they retired to beloved Mou- 
 ticello to enjoy the rest that comes only 
 after work well done — to spend the 
 long vacation of their lives in simple 
 home-keeping work and studious leis- 
 ure, her husband yet in manhood's 
 prime, scarce thirty-seven, as men count 
 249
 
 Cbcmas Jefferson 
 
 time, and rich, passing rich, in goods 
 and lands. 
 
 And then she died. 
 
 And Thomas Jefiferson, the strong, the 
 self-poised, the self-reliant, fell in a help- 
 less swoon, and was laid on a pallet and 
 carried out, as though he, too, were dead. 
 For three weeks his dazed senses prayed 
 for death. He could endure the presence 
 of no one save his eldest daughter, a slim, 
 slender girl of scarce ten j-ears, grown a 
 woman in a day. By her loving touch and 
 tenderness he was liured back from death 
 and reason's night into the world of life 
 and light. With tottering steps, led by the 
 child who had to think for both, he was 
 taken out on the veranda of beautiful 
 Monticello. He looked out on stretch- 
 ing miles of dark-blue hills and waving 
 woods and winding river. He gazed, and 
 as he looked it came slowly to him that 
 the earth was still as when he last saw it, 
 and realized that this would be so even if 
 he were gone. Then, turning to the child, 
 who stood by, stroking his locks, it came 
 250
 
 THOMAS JEFFEKSON. 
 From the original bust from a life-mask by J. H. I. Bro.vere.
 
 ITbomas Jefferson 
 
 to him that even in grief there may be 
 selfishness, and for the first time he re- 
 sponded to the tender caress, and said : 
 "Yes, we will live, daughter — live in 
 memory of her ! " 
 
 251
 
 V. 
 
 WHEN two men of equal intelli- 
 gence and sincerity quarrel, 
 both are probably right. 
 Hamilton and Jefferson were opposed to 
 each other by temperament and dispo- 
 sition, in a way that caused either to 
 look with distrust on any proposition 
 made by the other. And yet, when 
 Washington pressed upon Jefferson the 
 position of Secretary of State, I cannot 
 but think he did it as an antidote to the 
 growing power and vaunting ambition of 
 Hamilton. Washington won his victo- 
 ries, as great men ever do, by wisely 
 choosing his aides. Hamilton had done 
 yeoman's service in every branch of the 
 government, and while the chief sincerely 
 admired his genius, he guessed his limi- 
 tations. Power grows until it topples, 
 252
 
 a;bonms Jeffereoii 
 
 and when it topples, innocent people are 
 crushed. Washington was wise as a ser- 
 pent, and rather than risk open ruction 
 with Hamilton by personally setting 
 bounds, he invited Jefferson into his 
 cabinet, and the acid was neutralized to a 
 degree where it could be safely handled. 
 Jefferson had just returned from Paris 
 with his beloved daughter, Martha. He 
 was intending soon to return to France 
 and study social science at close range. 
 Already he had seen that uiob of women 
 march out to Versailles and fetch the 
 King to Paris, and had seen barricade 
 after barricade erected with the stones 
 from the levelled Bastile ; he was on inti- 
 mate and affectionate terms with Lafay- 
 ette and the Republican leaders, and here 
 was a pivotal point in his life. Had not 
 Washington persuaded him to remain 
 "just for the present" in America, he 
 might have played a part in Carlyle's best 
 book, that book which is not history, but 
 more — an epic. So, among the many ob- 
 ligations that America owes Washington, 
 253
 
 G:bomas S^efferson 
 
 must be named this one ot pushing 
 Thomas Jeflferson, the scholar and man 
 of peace, into the political embroglio and 
 shutting the door. Then it was that 
 Hamilton's taunting temper awoke a de- 
 gree of power in Jefferson that before he 
 wist not of ; then it was that he first fully 
 realized that the "United States" with 
 England as a sole pattern was not 
 enough. 
 
 A pivotal point ! Yes, a pivotal point 
 for Jeflferson, America, and the world ; 
 for Jefferson gave the rudder of the ship 
 of state such a turn to starboard that 
 there was never again danger of her 
 drifting on to aristocratic shoals, an easy 
 victim to the rapacity of Great Britain. 
 Hamilton's distrust of the people found 
 no echo in Jeflfersou's mind. 
 
 He agreed with Hamilton that a 
 "strong government" administered by 
 a few, provided the few are wise and 
 honorable, is the best possible govern- 
 ment. Nay, he went further and de- 
 clared that an absolute monarchy in 
 254
 
 JTbomaa 3cffci'60n 
 
 which the monarch was all-wise and all- 
 powerful, could not be improved upon by 
 the imagination of man. 
 
 In his composition there was a sav- 
 ing touch of humor that both Hamil- 
 ton and Washington seemed to lack. 
 He could smile at himself; but none 
 ever dared turn a joke on Hamilton, 
 much less on Washington. And so when 
 Hamilton explained that a strong 
 government administered by Washing- 
 ton, President ; Jefferson, Secretary of 
 State ; Hamilton, Secretary of the Treas- 
 ury ; Knox, Secretary of War ; and Ran- 
 dolph, Attorney-General, was pretty 
 nearly ideal, no one smiled. But Jeffer- 
 son's plain inference was that power is 
 dangerous and man is fallible ; that a 
 man so good as Washington dies to- 
 morrow and another man steps in, and 
 that those who have the government in 
 their present keeping should curb ambi- 
 tions, limit their own power, and thus fix 
 a precedent for those who are to follow. 
 
 The wisdom that Jefferson as a states- 
 255
 
 ^bomae 5cflci'5on 
 
 man showed in working for a future 
 good, and the willingness to forego the 
 pomp of personal power, to sacrifice self 
 if need be, that the day he should not see 
 might be secure, ranks him as first among 
 statesmen. For a statesman is one who 
 Vmilds a state and not a politician who is 
 dead, as some have said. 
 
 Others, since, have followed Jefferson's 
 example, but in the world's history, I do 
 not recall a man before him who, while 
 still having power in his grasp, was will- 
 ing to trust the people. 
 
 The one mistake of Washington that 
 borders on blunder, was in refusing to 
 take wages for his work. In doing this 
 he visited untold misery on others, who 
 not having married rich widows, tried to 
 follow his example and floundered into 
 woeful debt and disgrace ; and thereby 
 were lost to useful society and the world. 
 
 And there are yet many public offices 
 
 where small men rattle about because 
 
 men who can fill the place cannot afford 
 
 it. Bryce declares that no able and hon- 
 
 256
 
 dbomas Jeffersojt 
 
 est man of moderate means can aflford to 
 take an active part in municipal affairs in 
 America— and Bryce is right. 
 
 When Jefferson became President, in 
 his message to Congress again and again 
 he advised the fixing of sufficient salaries 
 to secure the best men for every branch 
 of the service ; and suggested the folly 
 of expecting anything for nothing, or 
 the hope of officials not " fixing things " 
 if not properly paid. 
 
 Men from the soil who gain power are 
 usually intoxicated by it ; beginning as 
 democrats they evolve into aristocrats, 
 then into tyrants, if kindly fate does not 
 interpose, and are dethroned by the 
 people who made them. And it is not 
 surprising that this man, born into a 
 plenty that bordered on affluence, and 
 who never knew from experience the 
 necessity of economy, (until in old age 
 tobacco and slavery had wrecked Virginia 
 and Monticello alike,) should set an al- 
 most ideal example of simplicity, mod- 
 eration, and brotherly kindness. 
 257
 
 ^bomas Jefferson 
 
 Among the chief glories that belong to 
 him are these : 
 
 I. Writing the Declaration of Indepen- 
 dence. 
 
 II. Suggesting and carrying out the 
 present decimal monetary system. 
 
 III. Inducing Virginia to deed to the 
 States as their common property, the 
 North-West Territory. 
 
 IV. Purchasing from France for the 
 comparatively trifling sum of fifteen 
 million dollars Louisiana and the terri- 
 tory running from the Gulf of Mexico to 
 Puget's Sound, being at the rate of a 
 fraction of a cent per acre, and giving 
 the United States full control of the Mis- 
 sissippi River. 
 
 But over and beyond these is the spirit 
 of patriotism that makes each true 
 American feel he is parcel and part of 
 the very fabric of the state, and in his 
 deepest heart believe that "a govern- 
 ment of the people, by the people, and 
 for the people shall not perish from the 
 earth," 
 
 258
 
 DANIEL WEBSTEE 
 
 559
 
 Not many days ago I saw at breakfast the 
 notablestof all your notabilities, Daniel Webster. 
 He is a magnificent specimen. You might say 
 to all the world, "This is our Yankee-English- 
 man; such links we make in Yankee land!" 
 As a logic fencer, advocate, or parliamentary 
 Hercules, one would incline to back him at first 
 sight against all the extant world. The tanned 
 complexion ; the amorphous crag-like face ; the 
 dull black eyes under the precipice of brows, 
 like dull anthracite furnaces needing only to be 
 blown; the mastiff mouth, accurately closed; 
 I have not traced so much of silent Berserker 
 rage that I remember of, in any other man. " I 
 guess I should not like to be your nigger ! " 
 
 Carlyle to Emerson. 
 
 260
 
 ^^:z±) ^:^^:^^-S^-^-^z^-^^^^^^:^
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER. 
 
 THOSE were spleudid days, tinged 
 with no trace of blue, when I 
 attended the district-school, wear- 
 ing trousers buttoned to a calico waist. 
 I had ambitions then— I was sure that 
 some day I could spell down the school, 
 propound a problem in fractions that 
 would puzzle the teacher, and play 
 checkers in a way that would cause my 
 name to be known throughout the eutire 
 township. 
 
 In the midst of these pleasant emotions 
 a cloud appeared upon the horizon of my 
 happiness. What was it? A Friday 
 Afternoon, that 's all. 
 261
 
 Daniel TUaebstcr 
 
 A new teacher had been engaged — a 
 woman, actually a young woman. It 
 was prophesied that she could not keep 
 order a single day, for the term before, 
 the big boys had once arisen and put the 
 man who taught out of the building. 
 Then there was a boy who occasionally 
 brought a dog to school, and when the 
 bell rang the dog followed the boy into 
 the room and lay under the desk pound- 
 ing his tail on the floor ; and everybody 
 tittered and giggled until the boy had 
 been coaxed into taking the dog home, 
 for if merely left in the entry he howled 
 and whined in a way that made study im- 
 possible. But one day the boy was not 
 to be coaxed, and the teacher grabbed the 
 dog by the scruff" of the neck, and flung 
 him through a window so forcibly that 
 he never came back. 
 
 And now a woman was to teach the 
 school : she was only a little woman and 
 yet the boys obeyed her, and I had come 
 to think that a woman could teach school 
 nearly as well as a man, when the awful 
 262
 
 2>aniel "WHcbster 
 
 announcement was made that thereafter 
 every week we were to have a Friday 
 Afternoon. There were to be no lessons ; 
 everybody was to speak a piece, and 
 then there was to be a spelling match, 
 and that was all. But heavens ! it was 
 enough. 
 
 Monday began very blue and gloomy 
 and the density increased as the week 
 passed. My mother had drilled me well 
 in my lines, and my big sister was lavish 
 in her praise, but the awful ordeal of 
 standing up before the whole school was 
 yet to come. 
 
 Thursday night I slept but little and 
 all Friday morning I was in a burning 
 fever. At noon I could not eat my 
 lunch, but I tried to, manfully, and as 
 I munched on the tasteless morsels, salt 
 tears rained on the Johnny-cake I held 
 in my hand. And even when the girls 
 brought in big bunches of wild flowers 
 and corn-stalks, and began to decorate 
 the platform, things appeared no brighter. 
 
 Finally, the teacher went to the door 
 263
 
 H)aniel imebster 
 
 and raug the bell : nobody seemed to 
 play, and as the scholars took their seats 
 some, very pale, tried to smile, and others 
 whispered " Have you got your piece ? " 
 Still others kept their lips working, re- 
 peating lines that struggled hard to flee. 
 
 Names were called but I did not see 
 who went up, neither did I hear what 
 was said. At last my name was called : 
 it came like a clap of thunder — as a great 
 surprise, a shock. I clutched the desk, 
 struggled to my feet, passed down the 
 aisle, the sound of my shoes echoing 
 through the silence like the strokes of 
 a mawl. The blood seemed ready to 
 burst from mj" eyes, ears, and nose. 
 
 I reached the platform, missed my 
 footing, stumbled, and nearly fell. I 
 heard the giggling that followed, and 
 knew that a red-haired boy, who had 
 just spoken, and was therefore unneces- 
 sarily jubilant, had laughed aloud. 
 
 I was angry. I shut my fists so that the 
 nails cut my flesh, and glaring straight at 
 his red bead shot my bolt. " I know not 
 264
 
 Daniel Mebster 
 
 how others may feel, but sink or swim, 
 live or die, survive or perish, I give my 
 heart and my hand to this vote. It is my 
 living sentiment and by the blessing of 
 God it shall be my dying sentiment. In- 
 dependence now, and independence for- 
 ever." 
 
 That was all of the piece — I gave the 
 whole thing in a mouthful, and started 
 for my seat, got half-way there and re- 
 membered I had forgotten to bow, turned, 
 went back to the platform, bowed with a 
 jerk, started again for my seat, and hear- 
 ing someone laugh, ran. 
 
 Reaching the seat I burst into tears. 
 
 The teacher came over, patted my head, 
 kissed my cheek, and told me I had done 
 first-rate, and after hearing several others 
 speak I calmed down and quite agreed 
 with her. 
 
 265
 
 n. 
 
 IT was Daniel Webster that caused the 
 Friday Afternoon to become an in- 
 stitution in the schools of America. 
 His early struggles were dwelt upon and 
 rehearsed by parents and pedagogues until 
 every boy was looked upon as a possible 
 Demosthenes holding senates in thrall. 
 
 If physical imperfections were notice- 
 able, the fond mother would explain that 
 Demosthenes was a sickly, ill-formed 
 youth, who only overcame a lisp by orat- 
 ing to the sea with his mouth full of 
 pebbles ; and everyone knew that Web- 
 ster was educated only because he was 
 too weak to work. Oratory was in the 
 air ; elocution was rampant ; and to de- 
 claim in orotund, and gesticulate in 
 curves was regarded as the chief end of 
 man. One tenth of the time in all pub- 
 lic schools was given over to speaking, 
 266
 
 Daniel "Wllcbster 
 
 and' on Saturday evenings, the school- 
 house was sacred to the Debating Society. 
 
 Then came the Lyceum, and the orators 
 of the land made pilgrimages, stopping 
 one day in a place, putting themselves on 
 exhibition, and giving the people a taste 
 of their quality at fifty cents per head. 
 Recently there has been a relapse of 
 this oratorical fever. Every city from 
 Leadville to Boston has its College of 
 Oratory, or School of Expression, wherein 
 a newly discovered " Natural Method " is 
 divulged for a consideration. Some of 
 these " Colleges " have done much good ; 
 one in particular I know, that fosters a 
 fine spirit of sympathy, and a trace of 
 mysticism that is well iu these hurrying, 
 scurrying days. 
 
 But all combined have never produced 
 an orator; no, dearie, they never have, 
 and never can. You might as well have 
 a school for poets, or a college for saints, 
 or give medals for proficiency in the gen- 
 tle art of wooing, as to expect to make 
 an orator by telling how. 
 267
 
 Banicl "Wacbster 
 
 Once upon a day, Sir Walter Besant 
 was to give a lecture upon " The Art of 
 the Novelist." He had just adjusted his 
 necktie for the last time, slipped a loz- 
 enge into his mouth, and was about to 
 appear upon the platform, when he felt a 
 tug at the tail of his dress-coat. On look- 
 ing around, he saw the anxious face of 
 his friend, James Payn. " For God's 
 sake, Walter," whispered Payn, " )-ou 
 are not going to explain to 'em how }-ou 
 do it, are you?" But Walter did not 
 explain how to write fiction, because he 
 could not, and Payn's quizzing question 
 happily relieved the lecture of the bump- 
 tiousness that it might otherwise have 
 contained. 
 
 The first culture for which a people 
 reach out is oratory. The Indian is an 
 orator with "the natural method"; he 
 takes the stump on small provocation, 
 and under the spell of the faces that 
 look up to him, is often moved to strange 
 eloquence. I have heard negro preach- 
 ers who could neither read nor write 
 268
 
 ©aiucl "MeljBter 
 
 move vast congregations to profoundest 
 emotion by the magic of their words and 
 presence. And further, they proved to 
 me that ability to read and write are 
 cheap accomplishments, and that a man 
 can be a very strong character, and not 
 know how to do either. 
 
 For the most part, people who live in 
 cities are not moved by oratory ; they are 
 unsocial, unimaginative, unemotional. 
 They see so much and hear so much that 
 they cease to be impressed. When they 
 come together in assemblages they are so 
 apathetic that they fail to generate mag- 
 netism, — there is no common soul to 
 •which the speaker can address himself. 
 They are so cold that the orator never 
 welds them into a mass. He may amuse 
 them, but in a single hour to change the 
 opinions of a lifetime is no longer possi- 
 ble in America. There are so many peo- 
 ple, and so much business to transact, 
 that emotional life plays only upon the 
 surface — in it there is no depth. To pos- 
 sess depth you must commune with the 
 269
 
 Daniel TllJlebster 
 
 Silences. No more do you find men and 
 women coming for fifty miles, in wagons, 
 to hear speakers discuss political issues ; 
 no more do you find camp-meetings 
 where the preacher strikes conviction 
 home until thousands are on their knees 
 crying to God for mercy. 
 
 Intelligence has increased ; spirituality 
 has declined, and as a people the warm 
 emotions of our hearts are gone forever. 
 
 Oratory is a rustic product. The great 
 orators have always been country-bred, 
 and their appeal has been made to rural 
 people. Those who live in a big place 
 think they are bigger on that account. 
 They acquire glibness of speech and pol- 
 ish of manner ; but they purchase these 
 things at a price. They lack the power 
 to weigh mighty questions, the courage to 
 formulate them, and the sturdy vitality 
 to stand up and declare them in the face 
 of opposition. Revolutions are fought 
 by farmers and rail-splitters ; these are 
 the embattled men who fire the shots 
 heard 'round the world. 
 270
 
 Daniel Timebster 
 
 When Daniel Webster's father took up 
 his residence in New Hampshire, his log 
 cabin was the most northern one of the 
 colonies. Between him and Montreal lay 
 an unbroken forest inhabited only by 
 prowling Indians. Ebenezer Webster's 
 long rifle had sent cold lead into many a 
 red-skin ; and the same rifle had done 
 good service in fighting the British. 
 Once, its owner stood guard before Wash- 
 ington's Headquarters at Newburgh, and 
 Washington came out and said : " Captain 
 Webster, I can trust you ! " 
 
 Ebenezer Webster would leave his 
 home to carry a bag of corn on his back 
 through the woods to the mill ten miles 
 away to have it ground into meal, and his 
 wife would be left alone with the children. 
 On such occasions, Indians who never 
 saw settlers' cabins without having an 
 itch to burn them, used sometimes to call, 
 and the housewife would have to parley 
 with these savages, "impressing them 
 concerning the rights of property." 
 
 So here was born Daniel Webster in 
 271
 
 Daniel "Mcbetct 
 
 1782, the second child of his mother. 
 His father was then forty-three ; and had 
 already raised one brood, but his mother 
 was only in her twenties. It seems that 
 biting poverty and sore deprivation are 
 about as good pre-natal influences as a 
 soul can well ask, provided there abides 
 with the mother a noble discontent and 
 a brave unrest. However, it came near 
 being overdone in Daniel Webster's case, 
 for the Mrs. Gamp who presided at his 
 birth declared he could not live, and if 
 he did, would "alius be a no 'count." 
 
 But he made a brave fight for breath, 
 and his crossness and peevishness through 
 the first few years of his life were proof 
 of vitality. He must have been a queer 
 toddler when he wore dresses, with his 
 immense head and deep-set black eyes 
 and serious ways. 
 
 Being sickly, he was allowed to rule, 
 and the big girls, his half-sisters, hu- 
 mored him and his mother did the same. 
 They taught him his letters when he was 
 only a baby, and he himself said that he
 
 2)aniel TIQlcbstct 
 
 could not remember a time when he could 
 not read the Bible. 
 
 When he grew older he did not have to 
 bring in wood and do the chores — he was 
 not strong enough, they said. Little Dan 
 was of a like belief, and encouraged the 
 idea on every occasion. He roamed the 
 woods, fished, hunted, and read every 
 scrap of print that came his way. 
 
 Being able to read any kind of print, 
 and not being strong enough to work, it 
 very early was decided that he should 
 have an education. It is rather a hum- 
 bling confession to make, but our worthy 
 forefathers chiefly prized an education for 
 the fact that it caused the fortunate pos- 
 sessor to be exempt from manual labor. 
 
 When Daniel was fourteen, a member 
 of Congress came to see Ebenezer Web- 
 ster, to secure his influence at election. 
 As the great man rode away Ebenezer 
 said to his son : " Daniel, look there ! he 
 is educated and gets six dollars a day in 
 Congress for doing nothing ; while I toil 
 on this rocky hillside and hardly see six 
 273
 
 Daniel TSUebstcc 
 
 dollars in a year. Daniel get an educa- 
 tion ! " 
 
 "I'll do it," said Daniel, and throw- 
 ing his arms around his father's neck, 
 burst into tears. 
 
 The village of Salisbury, where Web- 
 ster was born, is fifteen miles north of 
 Concord. You leave the train at Bosco- 
 wan, and there is a rickety old stage, 
 with a loquacious driver, that will take 
 you to Salisbury, five miles, for twenty- 
 five cents. The country is one vast out- 
 crop of granite ; and one cannot but be 
 filled with admiration, mingled with pity, 
 for the dwellers thereabouts who call 
 these piles of rock "farms." 
 
 As we wound slowly around the hills, 
 the church-spire of the village came in 
 sight ; and soon we entered the one street 
 of this sleepy, forgotten place. I shook 
 hands with the old stage-driver as he let 
 me down in front of the tavern ; and as I 
 went in search of the landlord, I thought 
 of the remark of the Chicago woman who, 
 in riding from Warwick over to Stratford, 
 274
 
 Baniel Webster 
 
 said : " Goodness me ! why should a man 
 like Shakespeare ever take it in his head 
 to live so far off! " 
 
 Salisbury has four hundred people. You 
 can rent a house there for $50 a year, or 
 should you prefer not to keep house, but 
 board, you can be accommodated at the 
 tavern for $3 a week. There are various 
 abandoned farms roundabout, and they 
 are so thorougly abandoned that even 
 Kate Sanborn would not have the courage 
 to their adoption try. 
 
 The landlord of the hotel told me that 
 were it not for the " Harvest Dance," the 
 dance on the Fourth of July, and the party 
 at Christmas, he could not keep the house 
 open at all. 
 
 Of course all the inhabitants know that 
 Webster was born at Salisbury, but there 
 is not so much local pride in the matter 
 as there is at East Aurora over the fact 
 that one of her former citizens is a per- 
 former in Barnum & Bailey's Circus. 
 
 The number of old men in one of these 
 New England villages impresses folks
 
 2)aniel "Mebster 
 
 from the West as being curious. There 
 are a full dozen men at Salisbury between 
 seventy-five and ninety, and all have 
 positive ideas as to just why Daniel Web- 
 ster missed the presidency. I found opin- 
 ions curiously divided as to Webster's 
 ability ; but all seemed to argue that 
 when he left New Hampshire and became 
 a citizen of Massachusetts, he made a 
 fatal mistake. 
 
 276
 
 III. 
 
 THE sacrifices that the mother and 
 father of Daniel Webster made, in 
 order that he might go to school, 
 were very great. Everyone in the family 
 had to do without things, that this one 
 might thrive. The boy accepted it all, 
 quite as a matter of course, for from baby- 
 hood he had been protected and petted. 
 At the last we must admit that the man 
 who towers above his fellows is the one 
 who has the power to make others work 
 for him ; a great success is not possible 
 in any other way. 
 
 Throughout his life Webster utilized 
 the labor of others, and took it in a high 
 and imperious manner, as though it were 
 his due. No doubt the way in which his 
 family lavished their gifts upon him, 
 fixed in his mind thai, immoral slant of 
 277
 
 Daiitel Mcbster 
 
 disregard for his financial obligations 
 which clung to him all through life. 
 
 There is a story told of his going to 
 a county fair with his brother Ezekiel, 
 which shows the characters of these 
 brothers better than a chapter. The 
 father had given each lad a dollar to 
 spend. When the boys got home Dan- 
 iel was in gay spirits and Ezekiel was 
 depressed. " Well, Dan," said the father, 
 " did you spend your money ? " 
 
 " Of course I did," replied Daniel. 
 
 " And, Zeke, what did you do with 
 your dollar ? " 
 
 " Loaned it to Dan," replied Ezekiel. 
 
 But there was a fine bond of affection 
 between these two. Ezekiel was two 
 years older and, unfortunately for him- 
 self, was strong and well. He was very 
 early set to work, and I cannot find that 
 the thought of giving him an education 
 ever occurred to his parents, until after 
 Daniel had graduated at Dartmouth, and 
 Dan and Zeke themselves then forced the 
 issue. 
 
 278
 
 STATUE OF WEBSTER, Central Park, New York.
 
 Daniel TKIlebstct 
 
 In stature they were the same size: 
 both were tall, finely formed, and in 
 youth slender. As they grew older they 
 grew stouter, and the personal presence 
 of each was very imposing. Ezekiel was 
 of light complexion and ruddy ; Daniel 
 was very dark and sallow. I have met 
 several men who knew them both, and 
 the best opinion is that Ezekiel was 
 the stronger of the two, mentally and 
 morally. 
 
 Daniel was not a student ; Ezekiel was ; 
 and as a counsellor Ezekiel was the safer 
 man. Up to the very week of Ezekiel's 
 death Daniel advised with him on all of 
 his important aflfairs. When Ezekiel fell 
 dead in the court-room at Concord and 
 the news was carried to his brother, it 
 was a blow that aflfected him more than 
 the loss of wife or child. His friend 
 and counsellor, the one man in life upon 
 whom he leaned, was gone, and over his 
 own great crag-like face came that look 
 of sorrow which death only removed. 
 But care and grief became this giant, as 
 279
 
 2)aniel Mebster 
 
 they do all who are great enough to bear 
 them. 
 
 It was two years after his brother's 
 death that he made the speech which is 
 his masterpiece. And while the applause 
 was ringing in his ears he turned to 
 Judge Story and said : " Oh, if Zeke 
 were only here ! " Who is there that 
 cannot sympathize with that groan ? We 
 work for others, and to win the applause 
 of senates or nations, and not be able to 
 know that Someone is glad, takes all the 
 sweetness out of victory. 
 
 " When I sing well I want you to meet 
 me in the wings of the stage, and taking 
 me in your arms, kiss my cheek, and 
 whisper it was all right." When Patti 
 wrote this to her lover she voiced the 
 universal need of a someone who under- 
 stands to share the triumph of good work 
 well done. The nostalgia of life never 
 seems so bitter as after moments of suc- 
 cess ; then comes creeping in the thought 
 that he who would have gloried in this — 
 knowing all the years of struggle and 
 280
 
 2)aniel IWcbster 
 
 deprivations that made it possible — is 
 sleeping bis long sleep. 
 
 In tbat speecb of January 26, 1830, 
 Webster reached high-water mark. On 
 that performance more than any other 
 rests his fame. He was forty-eight 3'ears 
 old then. All the years of his career he 
 had been getting ready for that address. 
 It was on the one theme that he loved ; 
 on the theme he had studied most ; on the 
 only theme upon which he ever spoke 
 well — the greatness, the grandeur, and 
 the possibilities of America. He spoke 
 for four hours, and in his works the 
 speech occupies seventy close pages. He 
 was at the zenith of his physical and in- 
 tellectual power, and that is as good a 
 place as any to stop and view the man. 
 
 On account of his proud carriage, and 
 the fine poise of his massive head, he gave 
 the impression of being a very large man; 
 but he was just five feet ten, and weighed 
 a little less than two hundred. His man- 
 ner was grave, deliberate, and dignified ; 
 and his sturdy face, furrowed with lines of 
 28x
 
 2>antcl Mebster 
 
 sorrow, made a profound impression upon 
 all before he had spoken a word. He had 
 arrived at an age when the hot desire to 
 succeed had passed. For no man can at- 
 tain the highest success until he has 
 reached a point where he does not care 
 for it. In oratory the personal desire for 
 victory must be obliterated or the hearer 
 will never award the palm. 
 
 Hayne was a very bright and able 
 speaker. He had argued the right of a 
 State to dissent from, or nullify a law 
 passed by the House of Representatives 
 and Senate, making such law inoperative 
 within its borders. His claim was that the 
 framers of the Constitution did not expect, 
 or intend that a law could be passed that 
 was binding on a State when the people of 
 that State did not wish it so. Mr. Hayne 
 had the best end of the argument, and 
 the opinion is now general among jurists 
 that his logic was right and just, and that 
 those who thought otherwise were wrong. 
 New England had practically nullified 
 United States law in 1812 : the Hartford 
 282
 
 Daniel TKIlebetcr 
 
 Convention of 1814 had declared the 
 right ; Josiah Quincy had advocated the 
 privilege of any State to nullify an ob- 
 noxious law, quite as a matter of course. 
 The framers of the Constitution had 
 merely said we better hang together, not 
 we must. But with the years had come 
 a feeling that the Nation's life was unsafe 
 if any State should pull away. 
 
 Once, on the plains of Colorado, I was 
 with a party when there was danger of 
 an attack from Indians. Two of the 
 party wished to go back ; but the leader 
 drew his revolver and threatened to shoot 
 the first man who tried to seek safety. 
 "We must hang together or hang sep- 
 arately." Logically, each man had the 
 right to secede, and go off on his own ac- 
 count, but expediency made a law and 
 we declared that any man who tried to 
 leave did so at his peril. 
 
 To Webster was given the task of put- 
 ting a new construction on the Constitu- 
 tion, and to make of the Constitution a 
 Law instead of a mere compact. Web- 
 283
 
 S)aniel limcbster 
 
 ster's speech was not an argument ; it 
 was a plea. And so mightily did he point 
 out the dangers of separation ; review 
 the splendid past ; and prophesy the 
 greatness of the future — a future that 
 could only be ours through absolute 
 union and loyalty to the good of the 
 whole — that he won his cause. 
 
 After that speech, if Calhoun had al- 
 lowed South Carolina to nullify a United 
 States law, President Jackson would have 
 made good his threat and hanged both 
 him and Hayne on one tree, and the peo- 
 ple would have approved the act. 
 
 But Webster did not get the case 
 quashed, he got only a postponement. 
 In i860, South Carolina moved the case 
 again ; she opened the argument in an- 
 other way this time, and a million lives 
 were required, and millions upon millions 
 in treasure expended to put a construc- 
 tion on the Constitution that the framers 
 did not intend ; but which was necessary 
 in order that the Nation might exist. 
 
 In the battle of Bull Run, almost the 
 284
 
 Daniel TKUcbster 
 
 first battle of the war, fell Colonel 
 Fletcher Webster, the only surviving son 
 of Daniel Webster, and with him died 
 the name and race. 
 
 iii
 
 IV. 
 
 THE cunning of Webster's intellect 
 was not creative. In his argu- 
 ment there is little ingenuity ; 
 but he had the power of taking an old 
 truth and presenting it in a way that 
 moved men to tears. When aroused, all 
 he knew was within his reach ; he had the 
 faculty of getting all of his goods in the 
 front window. And he himself confessed 
 that he often pushed out a masked bat- 
 tery, when behind there was not a single 
 gun. 
 
 Under the spell of the orator an audi- 
 ence becomes of one mind : the dullest 
 intellect is more alert than usual and the 
 most discerning a little less so. Cheap 
 wit will then often pass for brilliancy, and 
 platitude for wisdom. We roar over the 
 jokes we have known since childhood 
 286
 
 Daniel Timebster 
 
 and cry "Hear, hear!" when the great 
 man with upraised hands and fire in his 
 glance declares that twice two are four. 
 
 Oratory is hypnotism practised on a 
 large scale. Through oratory ideas are 
 acquired by induction. 
 
 Webster was a lawyer; and he was not 
 above resorting to any trick or device that 
 could move the emotions or passions of 
 judge and jury to a prejudice favorable 
 to his side. This was very clearly brought 
 out when he undertook to break the will 
 of Stephen Girard. Girard was a free- 
 thinker, and in leaving money to found 
 a college, devised that no preacher or 
 priest should have anything to do with 
 its management. The question at issue 
 was, " Is a bequest for founding a college 
 a charitable bequest?" If so then the 
 will must stand. But if the bequest was 
 merely a scheme to deprive the legal heirs 
 of their rights — diverting the funds from 
 them for whimsical and personal reasons 
 —then the will should be broken. Mr. 
 Webster made the plea that there was 
 287
 
 Daniel Wicbetex 
 
 only one kind of charity, namely : Chris- 
 tian charity. Girard was not a Christian, 
 for he had publicly affronted the Christian 
 religion by providing that no minister 
 should teach in his school. Mr. Webster 
 spoke for three hours with many fine 
 bursts of tearful eloquence in support 
 of the Christian faith, reviewing its tri- 
 umphs and denouncing its foes. The 
 argument was carried outside of the 
 realm of law into the domain of passion 
 and prejudice. 
 
 The court took time for the tumult to 
 subside, and then very quietly decided 
 against Webster, sustaining the will. 
 The college building was erected and 
 stands to-day, the finest specimen of 
 purely Greek architecture in America : 
 and the good that Girard College has 
 done and is now doing is the priceless 
 heritage of our entire country. 
 
 One of Webster's first greatest speeches 
 
 was before the United States Supreme 
 
 Court in the Dartmouth College case. 
 
 Here he defended the cause of education 
 
 288
 
 S)aniel THUebster 
 
 with that grave and wonderful weight of 
 argument of which he was master. In 
 the Girard College case, eighteen years 
 after, he reversed his logic, and touched 
 with rare skill on the dangers of a too- 
 liberal education. 
 
 No man now is quite so daring as to 
 claim that Webster was a Christian. 
 Neither was he a free-thinker. He in- 
 herited his religious views from his par- 
 ents, and never considered them enough 
 to change. He simply viewed religion 
 as a part of the fabric of government : 
 giving sturdiness and safety to estab- 
 lished order. His own spiritual acreage 
 was left absolutely untilled. His services 
 were for sale ; and so plastic were his 
 convictions that once having espoused a 
 cause he was sure it was right. Doubt- 
 less it is self-interest, as Herbert Spencer 
 says, that makes the world go 'round. 
 And thus does sincerity of belief resolve 
 itself into which side will pay most. 
 This question being settled, reasons are 
 as plentiful as blackberries, and are sup- 
 289
 
 Daniel "QClebster 
 
 plied in quantities proportional in size to 
 the retainer. 
 
 John Randolph once touched the quick 
 by saying : " If Daniel Webster was em- 
 ployed on a case and he had partially 
 lost faith in it, his belief in his client's 
 rights could always be refreshed and his 
 zeal renewed by a cheque." 
 
 Webster had every possible qualifica- 
 tion that is required to make the great 
 orator. All those who heard him speak, 
 when telling of it, begin by relating how 
 he looked. He worked the dignity and 
 impressiveness of his Jove-like presence 
 to its farthest limit, and when once thor- 
 oughly awake was in possession of his 
 entire armament. 
 
 No other American has been able to 
 speak with a like degree of effectiveness ; 
 and his name deserves to rank, and will 
 rank, with the names of Burke, Chatham, 
 Sheridan, and Pitt. The case has been 
 tried, the verdict is in and recorded on 
 the pages of history. There can be no re- 
 trial, for Webster is dead, and his power 
 290
 
 Daniel TlOlebstcr 
 
 died thirty years before his form was laid 
 to rest at Marshfield by the side of his 
 children and the wife of his youth. 
 
 Oratory is the lowest of the sublime 
 arts. The extent of its influence will 
 ever be a vexed question. Its result de- 
 pends on the mood and temperament of 
 the hearer. But there are men who are 
 not ripe for treason and conspiracy, to 
 whom even music makes small appeal. 
 Yet music can be recorded, entrusted to 
 an interpreter yet unborn and lodge its 
 appeal with posterity. Literature never 
 dies : it dedicates itself to Time. For the 
 printed page is reproduced ten thousand 
 times ten thousand times and besides, 
 lives as did the Homeric poems, passed 
 on from generation to generation by word 
 of mouth. Were every book containing 
 Shakespeare's plays burned this night, 
 to-morrow they could be rewritten by 
 those who know their every word. 
 
 With the passing years the painter's 
 colors fade ; time rots his canvas ; the 
 marble is dragged from its pedestal and 
 291
 
 Daniel Tlillebstcr 
 
 exists in fragments from which we resur- 
 rect a nation's life, but oratory dies on the 
 air and exists only as a memory in the 
 minds of those who cannot translate, and 
 then as hearsay. So much for the art 
 itself ; but the influence of that art is an- 
 other thing. He who influences the be- 
 liefs and opinions of men, influences all 
 other men that live after. For influence 
 like matter cannot be destroyed. 
 
 In many ways Webster lacked the 
 inward steadfastness that his face and 
 frame betokened ; but on one theme he 
 was sound to the inmost core. He be- 
 lieved in America's greatness, and the 
 grandeur of America's mission. Into the 
 minds of countless men he infused his 
 own splendid patriotism. From his first 
 speech at Hanover when eighteen years 
 old, to his last when nearly seventy, he 
 fired the hearts of men with the love of 
 native-knd. And how much the growing 
 greatness of our country is due to the 
 magic of his words and the eloquence of 
 his inspired presence no man can compute. 
 292
 
 Daniel Mebster 
 
 The passion of Webster's life is well 
 mirrored in that burning passage, " When 
 my eyes shall be turned to behold for 
 the last time the sun in heaven, may I 
 not see him shining on the broken and 
 dishonored fragments of a once glorious 
 Union : on States dissevered, discordant, 
 belligerent : on a land rent with civil 
 feuds, or drenched, it may be in fraternal 
 blood. Let their last feeble and linger- 
 ing glance rather behold the gorgeous 
 ensign of the Republic, now known and 
 honored thoughout the earth, still full 
 high advanced, its arms and trophies 
 streaming in their original lustre, not a 
 stripe erased or polluted, or a single star 
 obscured, bearing for its motto no such 
 miserable interrogatory as ' What is all 
 this worth ? ' nor those other words of 
 delusion and folly, ' Liberty first and 
 Union afterwards ' ; but everywhere, 
 spread all over in characters of living 
 light, blazing on all its ample folds, as 
 they float over the sea and over the land, 
 and in every wind under the whole 
 293
 
 Daniel "QQlebstcr 
 
 heavens, that other sentiment, dear to 
 every true American heart, ' Liberty and 
 Union, now and forever, one and in- 
 separable.' " 
 
 294
 
 HENRY CLAY 
 
 295
 
 If there be any description of rights, which, 
 more than any other, should unite all parties in 
 all quarters cf the Union, it is unquestionably the 
 rights of the person. No matter what his voca- 
 tion, whether he seeks subsistence amid the 
 dangers of the sea, or draws it from the bowels of 
 the earth, or from the humblest occupations of 
 mechanical life— wherever the sacred rights of an 
 American freeman are assailed, all hearts ought 
 to unite and every arm be braced to vindicate his 
 cause. 
 
 Speech in Congress. 
 
 296
 
 HENRY CLAY. 
 
 THERE is a story told of an Irishman 
 aud an Englishman who were 
 emigrants aboard of a ship that 
 was coming up New York Harbor. It 
 chanced to be the fourth day of July, and 
 as a consequence there was a needless 
 waste of gunpowder going on, and many 
 of the ships were decorated with bunting 
 that in color was red, white, and blue. 
 
 "What can all this fuss be about . J" " 
 asked the Englishman. 
 
 "What's it about?" answered Pat. 
 
 " Why, this is the day we run you out ! " 
 
 And the moral of the story is that as 
 
 soon as an Irishman reaches the Narrows 
 
 297
 
 he says "we Americans," while an Eng- 
 lishman will sometimes continue to say 
 "you Americans" for five years and a 
 day. More than this, an Irish-American 
 citizen regards an English-American citi- 
 zen with suspicion and refers to him as a 
 foreigner, even unto the third and fourth 
 generation. 
 
 No man ever hated England more cor- 
 dially than Henr>' Clay. 
 
 The genealogists have put forth heroic 
 efforts to secure for Clay a noble English 
 ancestry, but with a degree of success 
 that only makes the unthinking laugh 
 and the judicious grieve. Had these zeal- 
 ous pedigree hunters studied the parish 
 registers of County Derry, Ireland, as 
 lovingly as they have Burke's Peerage, 
 they might have traced the Clays of 
 America back to the Cleighs, honest 
 farmers (indifferent honest) of London- 
 derry, 
 
 The character of Henry Clay had in it 
 various traits that were peculiarly Irish. 
 The Irishman knows because he knows, 
 298
 
 Ibenrg Clae 
 
 and that 's all there is about it. He is 
 dramatic, emotional, impulsive, humor- 
 ous without suspecting it, and will fight 
 friend or foe on small provocation. Then 
 he is much given to dealing in that pe- 
 culiar article known as palaver. The 
 farewell address of Henry Clay to the 
 Senate, and his return thereto a few years 
 later, comprise one of the most Irish-like 
 proceedings to be found in history. 
 
 There is no finer man on earth than 
 your "thrue Irish gintleman," and Henry 
 Clay had not only all of the highest and 
 most excellent traits of the " gintleman " 
 but a few of his worst. Clay made friends 
 as no other American statesman ever did. 
 "To come within reach of the snare of 
 his speech was to love him," wrote one 
 man. People loved him because he was 
 aflFectionate, for love only goes out to love. 
 And the Irish heart is a heart of love. 
 Henry Clay called himself a Christian, 
 and yet at times he was picturesquely 
 profane. We have this on the authority 
 of the Diary of John Quincy Adams, 
 299
 
 which of course we must believe, for even 
 that other fighting Irishman, Andrew 
 Jackson, said, " Adams' Diary is probably 
 correct — damn it ! " 
 
 Clay was convivial in all the word im- 
 plies ; his losses at cards often put him 
 in severe financial straits ; he stood ready 
 to back his opinion concerning a Presi- 
 dential election, a horse race, or a dog 
 fight, and with it all he held himself ' ' per- 
 sonally responsible" — having fought two 
 duels and engaged in various minor "mis- 
 understandings." 
 
 And yet he was a great statesman — one 
 of the greatest this country has produced, 
 and as a patriot no man was ever more 
 loyal. It was America with him first and 
 always. His reputation, his fortune, his 
 life, his all belonged to America. 
 
 300
 
 II. 
 
 THE city of Lexington contains about 
 twenty-five thousand inhabitants. 
 In Lexington two distinct forms 
 of civilization meet. 
 
 One is the civilization of the F. F. V., 
 converted into that peculiar form of no- 
 blesse known the round world over as the 
 Blue-Grass Aristocracy. Blue-Grass So- 
 ciety represents leisure and luxury and the 
 generous hospitality of friendships gen- 
 erations old ; it means broad acres, noble 
 mansions reached by roadways that stray 
 under wide-spreading oaks and elms where 
 squirrels chatter and mild-eyed cows 
 look at you curiously ; it means apple 
 orchards, gardens lined with box-wood, 
 capacious stables and long lines of white- 
 washed cottages, around which swarm a 
 dark cloud of dependents who dance and 
 301
 
 Ibenrg Clag 
 
 sing and laugh— and work when they 
 have to. 
 
 Over against these there are to be seen 
 trolley-cars, electric lights, smart rows of 
 new brick houses on lots thirty by one 
 hundred, negro policemen in uniforms 
 patterned after those worn by the Broad- 
 way Squad, streets torn up by sewers and 
 conduits, steam-rollers with an unsavory 
 smell of tar and asphalt, push-buttons, 
 and a Hello-Exchange. 
 
 As to which form of civilization is the 
 more desirable is a question that is usu- 
 ally answered by taste and temperament. 
 One thing is sure, and that is, that a pride 
 which swings to t'other side and becomes 
 vanity is often an element in both. Each 
 could learn something of the other. I^ots 
 that you can jump across, rented to fami- 
 lies of ten, with land a mile away that 
 can be bought for fifty dollars an acre, is 
 not an ideal condition. 
 
 On the other hand, inside the city lim- 
 its of Lexington are mansions surrounded 
 by an even hundred acres. But at some 
 302
 
 •foenrB Clag 
 
 of these, gates are off their hinges, pick- 
 ets have been borrowed for kindling, 
 creeping vines and long grass o'ertop the 
 ■walls of empty stables, and a forest of 
 weeds insolently invades the spot where 
 once nestled milady's flower garden. 
 
 Slowly but surely the Blue-Grass Aris- 
 tocracy is giving way to purslane or as- 
 phalt, moving into flats, and allowing 
 the boomer to plat its fair acres — running 
 excursion trains to attend auction sales 
 where all the lots are corner lots and are 
 to be bought on the instalment plan, 
 which plan is said by a cynic to give the 
 bicycle face. 
 
 Just across from Ashland is a beautiful 
 estate, recently sold at a sacrifice to a 
 man from Massachusetts, by the name of 
 Douglas, who I am told is bald through 
 lack of hair and makes three-dollar shoes. 
 The stately old mansion mourns its former 
 masters — all are gone — and a thrifty Ger- 
 man is ploughing up the lawn, that the 
 cows of the Douglas (tender and true) may 
 eat early clover. 
 
 303
 
 But Ashland is there to-day in all the 
 beauty and loveliness that Henry Clay 
 knew when he wrote to Benton, "I love 
 old Ashland, and all these acres with their 
 trees and flowers and growing grain lure 
 me in a way that ambition never can. No, 
 I remain at Ashland." 
 
 The rambling old house is embowered 
 in climbing vines and clambering rose- 
 bushes, and is set thick about with cedars, 
 so that you can scarcely see the chimney 
 tops above the mass of green. A lane 
 running through locust trees planted by 
 Henry Clay's own hands, leads you to the 
 hospitable, wide-open door, where a col- 
 ored man, whose black face is set in a 
 frame of white wool, smiles a welcome. 
 He relieves you of your baggage and leads 
 the way to your room. 
 
 The summer breeze blows lazily in 
 through the open window, and the only 
 sound of life and activity about seems to 
 center in two noisy robins which are mak- 
 ing a nest in the eves, right within reach 
 of your hand. The colored man apolo- 
 304
 
 "Ibenrg Clai? 
 
 gizes for them, anathematizes them 
 mildly, and proposes to drive them away, 
 but you restrain him. After the man has 
 gone you bethink you that the sugges- 
 tion of driving the birds away was only 
 the white lie of society (for even black 
 folks tell white lies), and the old man 
 probably had no more intent of driving 
 the birds away than of going himself. 
 
 On the dresser is a pitcher of freshly 
 clipped roses, the morning dew still upon 
 them, and you only cease to admire as 
 you espy your mail that lies there await- 
 ing your hand. News from home and 
 loved ones greets you before these new- 
 found friends do ! You have not seen the 
 good folks who live here, only the old 
 colored man who pretended that he was 
 going to kill cock-robin, and did n't. 
 The hospitality is not gushing or eflfusive 
 — the place is yours, that 's all, and you 
 lean out of the window and look down at 
 the flower beds, and wonder at the silence 
 and the quiet and peace, and feel sorry 
 for the folks who live in Cincinnati and 
 305
 
 Ibenrg dla^ 
 
 Chicago. The soughing of the wind 
 through the pines comes to you like the 
 murmur of the sea, and breaking in on 
 the stillness you hear the sharp sound of 
 an ax^some Gladstone chopping, miles 
 and miles away. 
 
 Your dreams are broken by a gentle 
 tap at the door and your host has come to 
 call on you. You know him at once, 
 even though you have never before met, 
 for men who think alike and feel alike 
 do not have to " get acquainted." Heart 
 speaks to heart. 
 
 He only wishes to say that your coming 
 is a pleasure to all the family at Ashland, 
 the library is yours as well as the whole 
 place, lunch is at one o'clock, and George 
 will get you anything you wish. And 
 back in the shadow of the hallway you 
 catch sight of the old colored man and 
 see him bow low when his name is men- 
 tioned. 
 
 Ashland is probably in better condition 
 to-day than when Henry Clay worked and 
 planned, and superintended its fair acres. 
 306
 
 tjcnt^ ClaB 
 
 The place has seen vicissitudes since the 
 body of the man who gave it immortality 
 lay in state here in July, 1852. But Major 
 McDowell's wife is the granddaughter of 
 Henry Clay, and it seems meet that the 
 descendants of the great man should pos- 
 sess Ashland. Major McDowell has means 
 and taste and the fine pride that would 
 preserve all the traditions of the former 
 master. The six hundred acres are in a 
 high state of cultivation, and the cattle 
 and horses are of the kinds that would 
 have gladdened the heart of Clay. 
 
 In the library, halls, and dining-room 
 are various portraits of the great man, and 
 at the turn of the stairs is a fine heroic 
 bust, in bronze, of that lean face and form. 
 Hundreds of his books are to be seen on 
 the shelves, all marked and dog-eared, 
 and scribbled on, thus disproving much 
 of that old cry that " Clay was not a stu- 
 dent." Some men are students only in 
 youth, but Clay's best reading was done 
 when he was past fifty. The book habit 
 grew upon him with the years. 
 307
 
 IbenrB Clag 
 
 Here are his pistols, spurs, saddle, and 
 memorandum books. Here are letters, 
 faded and yellow, dusted with black 
 powder on ink that has been dry a hun- 
 dred years, asking for office, or words of 
 gracious thanks in token of benefits not 
 forgot. 
 
 Off to the south stretches away a great 
 forest of walnut, oak, and chestnut trees 
 — reminders of the vast forest that Daniel 
 Boone knew. Many of these trees were 
 here then, and here let them remain, 
 said Henry Clay. And so to-day at Ash- 
 land, as at Hawarden, no tree is felled 
 until it has been duly tried by the entire 
 family and all has been said for and 
 against the sentence of death. I heard 
 Miss McDowell make an eloquent plea 
 for an old oak that had been rather 
 recklessly harboring mistletoe and many 
 squirrels, until it was thought probable 
 that, like our first parents, it might have 
 a fall. It was a plea more eloquent than 
 "O Woodman, spare that tree." A re- 
 prieve for a year was granted ; and I 
 308
 
 thouglit, as I cast my vote on the side of 
 mercy, that the jury that could not be 
 won by such a young woman as that was 
 hopelessly dead at the top and more hol- 
 low at the heart than the old oak under 
 whose boughs we sat. 
 
 309
 
 ni. 
 
 ASHLAND is just a mile south of 
 the court-house. When Henry 
 Clay used to ride horseback be- 
 tween the town and his farm there was 
 scarce a dozen houses to pass on the way, 
 but now the street is all built up, and is 
 smartly paved, and the trolley line booms 
 a noisy car to the sacred gates every ten 
 minutes. 
 
 Lexington was laid out in the year 
 1774, and the intention was to name it in 
 honor of Colonel Patterson, the founder, 
 or of Daniel Boone. But while the sur- 
 vej'ors were doing their work, word came 
 of the battle of some British and certain 
 embattled farmers, and the spirit of free- 
 dom promptly decreed that the town 
 should be called Lexington. 
 Three years after the laying-out of 
 310
 
 Ibenrg Clag 
 
 Lexington, Henry Clay was boni. He 
 was the son of a poor and obscure Baptist 
 preacher who lived at " The Slashes," in 
 Virginia. The boy never had any vivid 
 recollection of his father, who passed 
 away when Henry was a mere child. 
 
 The mother had a hard time of it with 
 her family of seven children, and if kind 
 neighbors had not aided there would 
 have been actual want. And surely one 
 cannot blame the widow for "marrying 
 for a home " when opportunity offered. 
 Only one out of that first family ever 
 achieved eminence, and the second brood 
 is actually lost to us in oblivion, 
 
 Henry Clay was a graduate of the Uni- 
 versity of Hard Knocks ; he also took 
 several post-graduate courses at the same 
 institution. Very early in life we see 
 that he possessed the fine, eager, receptive 
 spirit that absorbs knowledge through 
 the finger-tips ; and the ability to think 
 and to absorb is all that even college can 
 ever do for a man. I doubt whether 
 college would have helped Clay, and it 
 3'i
 
 might have dimmed the diamond lustre 
 of his mind, and diluted that fine auda- 
 city which carried him on his waj\ In 
 this capacity to comprehend in the mass, 
 Clay's character was essentially feminine. 
 We have Thoreau for authority that the 
 intuition and sympathy found always in 
 the saviors of the world are pureh- fem- 
 inine attributes — the legacy bequeathed 
 from a mother who thirsted for better 
 things. 
 
 From a clerk in a country store to a 
 bookkeeper, then a copyist for a lawyer, 
 a writer of letters for the neighborhood, 
 a reader of law, and next a lawyer, were 
 easy and natural steps for this ambitious 
 boy. 
 
 Virginia with its older settlements of- 
 fered small opportunities, and so we find 
 young Clay going west, and lauding at 
 Lexington when twenty years old. He 
 requested a license to practise law, but 
 the Bar Association, which consisted of 
 about a dozen members, decided that no 
 more lawyers were needed at Lexington. 
 312
 
 Tbenrg Clag 
 
 Clay demanded that he should be exam- 
 ined as to fitness, and the blackberry- 
 bush Blackstones sat upon him, as a 
 coroner would say, with intent to give 
 him so stiff an examination that he would 
 be glad to get work as a farm-hand. 
 
 A dozen questions had been asked, and 
 an attempt had been made to confuse and 
 browbeat the youth, when the Nestor of 
 the Lexington Bar expectorated at a fly 
 ten feet away, and remarked, "Oh, the 
 devil ! there is no need of tryin' to keep 
 a boy like this down — he 's as fit as we, 
 or fitter ! " 
 
 And so he was admitted. 
 
 From the very firsl he was a success ; 
 he toned up the mental qualities of the 
 Fayette County Bar and made the older, 
 easy-going members feel to see whether 
 their laurel wreaths were in place. 
 
 When he was thirty years of age he was 
 chosen by the legislature of Kentucky 
 as United States Senator. When his term 
 expired he chose to go to Congress, prob- 
 ably because it afforded better opportu- 
 313
 
 Ibenrs Clas 
 
 nity for oratory and leadership. As 
 soon as he appeared upon the floor he 
 was chosen Speaker by acclamation. So 
 thoroughly American was he, that one 
 of his very first suggestions was to the 
 effect that every member should clothe 
 himself wholly in fabrics made in the 
 United States. Humphrey Marshall ridi- 
 culed the proposition and called Clay 
 a demagogue, for which he got himself 
 straightway challenged. Clay shot a 
 bullet through his English-made broad- 
 cloth coat, and then they shook hands. 
 
 When his term as Congressman expired 
 he again went to the Senate, and served 
 two years. Then he went back to the 
 House, and through his influence, and his 
 alone, did we challenge Great Britain, 
 just as he had challenged Marshall. 
 
 England accepted the challenge, and 
 we call it the War of 1812. 
 
 Very often, indeed, do we hear the 
 rural statesmen at Fourth of July celebra- 
 tions exclaim, " We have whipped Eng- 
 land twice, and we can do it again ! " 
 314
 
 Ibenrs dlag 
 
 We whipped England once and it is 
 possible we could do it again, but she 
 quite got the best of us in the War of 
 1812. Henry Clay plunged the country 
 into war to redress certain grievances, 
 and as apeace commissioner he backed out 
 of that war without having a single one of 
 those grievances indemnified or redressed. 
 
 After the treaty of peace had been de- 
 clared and "the war was over," that fight- 
 ing Irishman, Andrew Jackson, Irish-like, 
 gave the British a black eye at New 
 Orleans, just for luck, and this is the 
 only thing in that whole misunderstand- 
 ing of which we should not as a nation 
 be ashamed. 
 
 If England had not had Napoleon on 
 her hands at that particular time, Wel- 
 lington would probably have made a 
 visit to America, and might have brought 
 along for us a Waterloo. And these 
 things are fully explained in the text- 
 books on history used in the schools of 
 Great Britain, on whose possessions the 
 sun never sets. 
 
 315
 
 But as Henry Clay had gotten us into 
 war, his diplomacy helped to get us out, 
 and as it was a peace without dishonor. 
 Clay's reputation did not materially suf- 
 fer. In fact, the terms of peace were 
 so ambiguous that Congress gave out to 
 the world that it was a victory, and the 
 exact facts were quite lost in the smoke 
 of Jackson's muskets that hovered over 
 the cotton bales. 
 
 L,ater, when Clay ran against Jackson 
 for the presidency he found that a peace- 
 hero has no such place in the hearts of 
 men as a war-hero. Jackson had not a 
 tithe of Clay's ability, and yet Clay's 
 defeat was overwhelming. " Peace hath 
 her victories" — yes, but the average 
 voter does not know it. The only men 
 who have received overwhelming major- 
 ities for president have been war-heroes. 
 Obscure men have crept in several times, 
 but popular diplomats — never. The fate 
 of such popular men as Clay, Seward, 
 and Blaine is one. And when one con- 
 siders how strong is this tendency to 
 316
 
 Ibenrs Clas 
 
 glorify the hero of action, and ignore the 
 hero of thought, he wonders how it really 
 happened that Paul Revere was not made 
 the second President of the United States 
 instead of John Adatns. 
 
 Clay was a most eloquent pleader. 
 The grace of his manner, the beauty of 
 his speech, and the intense earnestness of 
 his nature often convinced men against 
 their wills. 
 
 There was sometimes, however, a sus- 
 picion in the air that his best quotations 
 were inspirations, and that the statistics 
 to which he appealed were evolved from 
 his inner consciousness. But the man 
 had power and personality plus. He was 
 a natural leader, and, unlike other states- 
 men we might name, he always carried his 
 town and district by overwhelming ma- 
 jorities. And it is well to remember that 
 the first breath of popular disfavor directed 
 against Henry Clay was because he pro- 
 posed the abolition of slavery. 
 
 Those who knew him best loved him 
 most, and this was true from the time he 
 317
 
 Ibcnre Glag 
 
 began to practise law in Lexington, when 
 scarcely twenty-one years old, to his 
 seventy-fifth year, when his worn-out 
 body was brought home to rest. 
 
 On that occasion all business in Lex- 
 ington, and in most of Kentucky, ceased. 
 Even the farmers quit work, and very 
 many private residences were draped in 
 mourning. Memorial services were held 
 in hundreds of churches, the day was 
 given over to mourning, and everywhere 
 men said, "We shall never look upon his 
 like again." 
 
 318
 
 IV. 
 
 BEFORE I visited Lexington, my 
 cousin, Little Emily, duly wrote 
 me that on no account, when I 
 was in Kentucky, must I offer any criti- 
 cisms on the character of Henry Clay ; 
 for if I grew reckless and compared him 
 with another to his slightest disadvan- 
 tage I should have to fight. 
 
 That he was absolutely the greatest 
 statesman America has produced is, to 
 all Kentuckians, a fact so sure that they 
 doubt the honesty or the sanity of any 
 one who hints otherwise. He is their 
 ideal, the perfect man, the model for 
 all youths to imitate, and the standard 
 by which all other statesmen are gauged. 
 Clay to Kentucky scores one hundred. 
 And as he was at the last defeated for 
 the highest office, which they say was his 
 319
 
 Ibenri? Clais 
 
 God-given right, there is a flavor of 
 martyrdom in his history that is the 
 needed crown for every hero. 
 
 Complete success alienates man from 
 his fellows, but suffering makes kinsmen 
 of us all. So the South loves Henry 
 Clay. 
 
 He is so well loved that he is apotheo- 
 sized, and thus the real man to many is 
 lost in the clouds. With his name, song 
 and legend have worked their miracles, 
 and to very many Southern people he is 
 a being separate and apart, like Hector 
 or Achilles. 
 
 With my cousin, Little Emily, I am 
 always very frank — and you can be honest 
 and frank with so few in this world of 
 expediency, you know ! We are so frank 
 in expression that we usually quarrel 
 very shortly. And so I explained to 
 Emily just what I have written here, 
 as to the real Henry Clay being lost. 
 
 She contradicted me flatly and said, 
 "To love a person is not to lose him — 
 you never lose except through indiflfer- 
 320
 
 ence or hate ! " I started to explain and 
 had gotten as far as, "It is just like 
 this," when the conversation was inter- 
 rupted by the arrival of General Bellicose, 
 who had come to take us riding behind 
 a spanking pair of geldings, that I was 
 assured were standard bred. 
 
 In lyexington you never use the general 
 term "horse." You speak of a mare, 
 a gelding, a horse, a four-year-old, a 
 weanling, or a sucker. To refer to a 
 trotter as a thoroughbred is to suffer 
 social ostracism, and to obfuscate a side- 
 wheeler with a single-footer is proof of 
 degeneracy. This applies equally to the 
 ethics of the ball-room or the livery- 
 stable. In Kentucky they read Rich- 
 ard's famous lines thus: "A saddler! a 
 saddler! my kingdom for a saddler!" 
 So when I complimented General Belli- 
 cose on his geldings and noted that they 
 went square without boots or weights, 
 and that he used no blinders, it thawed 
 the social ice, and we were as brothers. 
 Then I led the way cautiously to Henry 
 321
 
 1benr^ Claig 
 
 Clay, and the General assured me that 
 in his opinion the Henry Clays were 
 even better than the George Wilkes'. 
 To be sure, Wilkes had more in the 
 ' thirty list, but the Clays had brains, 
 and were cheerful ; they neither lugged 
 nor hung back, whereas you always had 
 to lay whip to a Wilkes in order to get 
 along a little bit, or else use a gag and 
 over-check. 
 
 I pressed Little Emily's hand under 
 the lap robe and asked her if all Ken- 
 tuckians were believers in metempsycho- 
 sis. "Colonel Littlejourneys is making 
 fun of you. General," said Little Emily ; 
 " the Colonel is talking about the man 
 and you are discussing trotters ! " 
 
 And then I apologized, but the General 
 said it was he who should make the 
 apology, and raising the carriage seat 
 brought out a box of genuine Henry 
 Clay Havanas, in proof of amity. 
 
 It 's a very foolish thing to smile at 
 a man who rides a hobby. Once there 
 was a man who rode a hobby all his life, 
 322
 
 Ibenrg Clas 
 
 to the great amusement of his enemies 
 and the mortification of his wife ; and 
 when the man was dead they found it 
 was a real live horse and had carried the 
 man many long miles. 
 
 General Bellicose loves a horse ; so 
 does Little Emily and so do I. But 
 Little Emily and the General know 
 history and have sounded politics in a 
 way that puts me in the kindergarten ; 
 and I found before the day was over 
 that what one did not know about the 
 political history of America the other 
 did. And mixed up in it all we dis- 
 cussed the merits of the fox-trot vs. 
 the single-foot. 
 
 We saw the famous Clay monument, 
 built by the State at a cost of nearly a 
 hundred thousand dollars, and with un- 
 covered heads gazed through the gratings 
 into the crypt where lies the dust of the 
 great man. Then we saw the statue of 
 John C. Breckinridge in the public 
 square, and visited various old ebb-tide 
 mansions where the " quarters " had 
 323
 
 Ibenrg Clag 
 
 fallen into decay, and the erstwhile in- 
 habitants had moved to the long row of 
 tenements down by the cotton-mill. 
 
 My train whistled and we were half 
 a mile from the station, but the General 
 said we would get there in time— and 
 we did. I bade my friends good-bye and 
 quite forgot to thank them for all their 
 kindness, although down in my heart 
 I fell that it had been a time rare as a 
 day in June. I believe they felt my 
 gratitude, too, for where there is such 
 a feast of wit and flow of soul ; such 
 kindness, such generosity, the spirit 
 understands. 
 
 When I arrived home I found a box 
 awaiting me, bearing the express mark 
 of Lexington, Kentucky. On opening 
 the case I found six quart bottles 
 of " Henry Clay — 1881 " ; and a card 
 with the compliments of Little Emily 
 and General Bellicose. On the outside 
 of the case was neatly stenciled the 
 legend, "Thackeray, Full sett, 14 vol., 
 half Levant." I do not know why the 
 324
 
 Ibcnre dlag 
 
 box was so marked, but I suppose it was 
 in honor of my literary proclivities. I 
 went out and blew four merry blasts on a 
 ram's horn, and the Philistines assem- 
 bled. 
 
 325
 
 JOHN JAY 
 
 327
 
 Calm repose and the sweets of undisturbed 
 retirement, appear more distant than a peace 
 with Britain. It gives me pleasure, however, to 
 reflect that the period is approaching when we 
 shall be citizens of a better ordered state, and 
 the spending of a few troublesome years of our 
 eternity in doing good to this and future genera- 
 tions is not to be avoided nor regrretted. Things 
 will come right, and these States will yet be great 
 and flourishing. 
 
 Letter to Washington. 
 
 328
 
 M^/z^ J^^
 
 JOHN JAY. 
 
 I. 
 
 AMERICA should feel especially 
 charitable towards Louis the 
 Great, called by Carlyle, Louis 
 the Little, for banishing the Huguenots 
 from France. What France lost America 
 gained. Tyranny and intolerance always 
 drive from their homes the best : those 
 who have ability to think, courage to act, 
 and a pride that cannot be coerced. 
 
 The merits possessed by the Huguenots 
 are exactly those that every man and 
 nation needs. And these are simple vir- 
 tues, too, whose cultivation stands within 
 the reach of us all. They are the virtues 
 of the farmers and peasants, and plain 
 people who do the work of the world, 
 329
 
 5obn Jag 
 
 and give good government its bone and 
 sinew. To a great degree, so-called so- 
 ciety is made up of parasites who fasten 
 and feed upon the industrious and meth- 
 odical. 
 
 If you have read history you know that 
 the men who go quietly about their busi- 
 ness have been cajoled, threatened, 
 driven ; and often, when they have been 
 guilty of doing a little independent 
 thinking on their own account, banished. 
 And further than this, when you read 
 the story of nations dead and gone you 
 will see that their decline began when 
 the parasites got too numerous and flaunt- 
 ingly asserted their supposed power. 
 That contempt for the farmer, and indif- 
 ference to the rights of the man with tin 
 pail and overalls, which one often sees in 
 America, are portents that mark disinte- 
 grating social bacilli. If the Republic of 
 the United States ever becomes but a 
 memory, like Carthage, Athens, and 
 Rome — drifting oflF into senile decay like 
 Italy and Spain, or France, where a man 
 330
 
 5obh Jag 
 
 may yet be tried and sentenced without 
 the right of counsel or defense, it will be 
 because we forgot — we forgot ! 
 
 In moral fibre and general character- 
 istics the Huguenots and Puritans were 
 one. The Huguenots had, however, the 
 added virtue of a dash of the French- 
 man's love of beauty. B}^ their excellent 
 habits and loyalt}' to truth, as they saw 
 it, they added a vast share to the pros- 
 perity and culture of the United States. 
 
 Of seven men who acted as presiding 
 officer over the deliberations of Congress 
 during the Revolutionary period, three 
 were of Huguenot parentage ; Laurens, 
 Boudinot, and Jay. John Jay was a typi- 
 cal Huguenot, just as Samuel Adams was 
 a typical Puritan. In his life there was 
 no glamor of romance. Stern, studious, 
 and inflexibly honest, he made his way 
 straight to the highest positions of trust 
 and honor. Good men who are capable 
 are always needed. The world wants 
 them now more than ever. We have 
 an overplus of clever individuals ; but for 
 331
 
 5obn 5ai5 
 
 the faithful men who are loyal to a trust 
 there is a crying demand. 
 
 The life of Jay quite disproves the oft- 
 found myth, that a dash of Mephisto in a 
 young man is a valuable adjunct. John 
 Jay was neither precocious nor bad. It 
 is further a refreshing fact to find that he 
 was no prig — simply a good, healthy 
 youngster who took to his books kindly 
 and gained ground — made head upon the 
 whole by grubbing. 
 
 His father was a hard-headed, prosper- 
 ous merchant, who did business in New 
 York, and moved his big family up to the 
 little village of Rye because life in the 
 country was simple and cheap. Thus 
 did Peter Jay prove his common sense. 
 
 Peter Jay copied every letter he wrote, 
 and we now have these copy-books, re- 
 vealing what sort of man he was. Relig- 
 ious, he was, and scrupulously exact in 
 all things. We see that he ordered Bibles 
 from England, "and also six groce of 
 Church Wardens," which I am told is a 
 long clay pipe, " that hath a goodly 
 332
 
 Sobn Jag 
 
 flavor and doth not bite the tongue." 
 He also at one time ordered a chest of 
 tea, and then countermanded the order, 
 having taken the resolve to " use no tea 
 in my family while that rascally Tax is 
 on — having a spring of good, pure water 
 near my house." Which shows that a 
 man can be very much in earnest and 
 still joke. 
 
 John was the baby, scarcely a year old, 
 when the Jay family moved up to Rye. 
 He was the eighth child, and as he grew 
 up he was taught by the older ones. He 
 took part in all the fun and hardships of 
 farm life — going to school in winter, 
 working in summer ; and on Sundays 
 hearing long sermons at church. 
 
 We find by Peter Jay's letter-book that 
 "Johnny is about our brightest child. 
 We have great hopes of him, and believe 
 it will be wise to educate him for a 
 preacher." ... In order to educate 
 boys then, they were sent to live in the 
 family of some man of learning. And so 
 we find "Johnny" at twelve years of age 
 333
 
 5obn 5a\> 
 
 iustalled in the parsonage at New Ro- 
 chelle, the Huguenot settlement. The 
 pastor was a Huguenot, and as only 
 French was spoken in the household, the 
 boy acquired the language, which after- 
 wards stood him in good stead. 
 
 The pastor reported favorably, and, 
 when fifteen, young Jay was sent to 
 King's College, which is now Columbia 
 University, kings not being popular in 
 America. 
 
 Dr. Samuel Johnson, who nowise re- 
 sembled Ursa Major, was the president 
 of the College at that time. He was also 
 the faculty, for there were just thirty stu- 
 dents and he did all the teaching himself. 
 Dr. Johnson, true to his name, dearly 
 loved a good book, and when teaching 
 mathematics would often forget the topic 
 and recite Ossian by the page, instead. 
 Jay caught it, for the book craze is con- 
 tagious and not sporadic. We take it by 
 being exposed. 
 
 And thus it was while under the tutelage 
 of Dr. Johnson that Jay began to acquire 
 334
 
 Jobii 5ag 
 
 that ability to turn a terse sentence ; and 
 this gained him admittance into the 
 world of New York letters, whose special 
 guardians were Dickinson aud William 
 Livingston. 
 
 Livingston invited the boy to his house, 
 and soon we find the youug man calling 
 without special invitation, for Livingston 
 had a beautiful daughter about John's 
 age, who was fond of Ossian, too, or said 
 she was. 
 
 And as this is not a serial love-story 
 there is no need of keeping the gentle 
 reader in suspense, so I will explain that 
 some years later John married the girl, 
 and the mating was a very happy one. 
 
 After John had been to King's College 
 two years we find in the faded and yellow 
 old letter-book an item written by the 
 father to the effect that, " Our Johnny is 
 doing well at College. He seems sedate 
 and intent on gaining knowledge ; but 
 rather inclines to Law instead of the 
 Ministry." 
 
 Dr. Johnson was succeeded by Dr. 
 335
 
 5obn 5aB 
 
 Myles Cooper, a Fellow of Oxford, who 
 used to wear his mortar-board hat and 
 scholar's gown up Broadway. In young 
 Jay's veins there was not a drop of British 
 blood. Of his eight great-grandparents 
 five were French and three Dutch, a fact 
 he once intimated in the Oxonian's pres- 
 ence. And then it was explained to the 
 youth that if such were the truth it would 
 be as well to conceal it. 
 
 Alexander Hamilton got along very 
 well with Dr. Cooper, but John Jay found 
 himself rusticated shortly before gradua- 
 tion. Some years later this Dr. Cooper 
 hastily climbed the back fence, leaving a 
 sample of his gown on a picket, while 
 Alexander Hamilton held the Whig mob 
 at bay at the front door. 
 
 Cooper sailed very soon for England, 
 anathematizing "the blarsted country" 
 in classic Latin as the ship passed out of 
 the Narrows. 
 
 " England is a good place for him," 
 said the laconic John Jay. 
 
 So John Jay was to be a lawyer. And 
 336
 
 Jobn Jag 
 
 the only way to be a lawyer in those 
 days was to work in a lawyer's office. A 
 goodly source of income to all established 
 lawyers was the sums they derived for 
 taking embryo Blackstones into their 
 keeping. The greater a man's reputation 
 as a lawyer, the higher he placed his fee 
 for taking a boy in. 
 
 In those days there were no printed 
 blanks, and a simple lease w-as often a 
 day's work to write out ; so it was not diffi- 
 cult to keep the bo3-s bus)'. Besides that, 
 they took care of the great man's horse, 
 blacked his boots, swept the office, and 
 ran errands. During the third year of ap- 
 prenticeship, if all went well, the young 
 man was duly admitted to the Bar. A 
 stiff examination kept out the rank out- 
 siders, but the nomination by a reputable 
 attorney was equivalent to admittance, 
 for all members knew that if you opposed 
 an attorney to-day, to-morrow he might 
 oppose you. 
 
 To such an extent was this system of tak- 
 ing students carried, that, in 1768, we find 
 337
 
 5obn 3aB 
 
 New York lawyers alarmed " by the awful 
 influx of young Barristers upon this Pro- 
 vince." So steps were taken to make all 
 attorneys agree not to have more than 
 two apprentices in their ofiBce at one 
 time. About the same time the Boston 
 newspaper, called the Centinel, shows 
 there was a similar state of over-produc- 
 tion in Boston. Only the trouble there 
 was principally with the doctors, for doc- 
 tors were then turned loose in the same 
 way, carrying a diploma from the old 
 physician with whom they had matricu- 
 lated and duly graduated. 
 
 Law schools and medical colleges, be it 
 known, are comparatively modern institu- 
 tions, not quite so new however as busi- 
 ness colleges, but pretty nearly so. And 
 now in Chicago there is a " Barbers' Uni- 
 versity" that issues diplomas to men who 
 can manipulate a razor and shears, where- 
 as, until yesterday, boys learned to be 
 barbers by working in a barber's shop. 
 The good old way was to pass a profession 
 along from man to man. 
 338
 
 5obn Ja^ 
 
 And it is so yet in a degree, for no man 
 is allowed to practise either medicine or 
 law until he has spent some time in the 
 office of a practitioner in good standing. 
 
 In the Catholic Church, and also in the 
 Episcopal, the novitiate is expected to 
 serve for a time under an older clergy- 
 man ; but all of the other denominations 
 have broken away, and now spring the 
 fledgling on the world straight from the 
 factory. 
 
 Several other of his children having 
 sorely disappointed him, Peter Jay 
 seemed to center his ambitions on his boy 
 John. So we find him paying Benjamin 
 Kissam, the eminent lawyer, two hundred 
 pounds in good coin of the Colony to take 
 John Jay as a 'prentice for five years. 
 
 John went at it and began copying 
 those endless, wordy documents in which 
 the old-time attorney used to delight. 
 John sat at one end of a table, and at the 
 other was seated one Lindley Murray, at 
 the mention of whose name terror used 
 to seize my soul. 
 
 339
 
 3obn ^ag 
 
 Murray has written some good, present- 
 able English to the effect that young Jay, 
 even at that time, had the inclination and 
 ability to focus his mind upon the subject 
 in hand. " He used to work just as stead- 
 ily when his employer was away as when 
 he was in the oflSce," a fact which the 
 grammarian seemed to regard as rather 
 strange. 
 
 In a year we find that when Mr. Kissam 
 went away he left the keys of the safe in 
 John Jay's hands, with orders what to do 
 in case of emergencies. Thus does re- 
 sponsibility gravitate to him who can 
 shoulder it, and trust to the man who de- 
 serves it. 
 
 It was in Kissam's office that Jay ac- 
 quired that habit of reticence and serene 
 poise, which, becoming fixed in character, 
 made his words carry such weight in later 
 years. He never gave snap-shot opinions, 
 or talked at random, or voiced any senti- 
 ment for which he could not give a reason. 
 
 His companions were usually men 
 much older than he. At the " Moot 
 340
 
 5obn ^ag 
 
 Club" he took part with James Duane, 
 who was to be New York's first Continen- 
 tal mayor ; Gouverneur Morris, who had 
 not at that time acquired the wooden leg 
 which he once snatched oft and bran- 
 dished with happy effect before a Paris 
 mob ; and Samuel Jones, who was to take 
 as 'prentice and drill that strong man, 
 DeWitt Clinton. 
 
 Before his five years of apprenticeship 
 were over, John Jay, the quiet, the modest, 
 the reticent, was known as a safe and com- 
 petent lawyer — Kissani having pushed 
 him forward as associate-counsel in vari- 
 ous difficult cases. 
 
 Meantime, certain chests of tea had 
 been dumped into Boston Harbor, and 
 the example had been followed by the 
 " Mohawks " in New York. British op- 
 pression had made many Tories luke- 
 warm, and then English rapacity had 
 transformed these Tories into Whigs. 
 Jay was one of these ; and in newspapers 
 and pamphlets, and from the platform, he 
 had pleaded the cause of the Colonies. 
 341
 
 Jobn Jag 
 
 Opposition crystallized his reasons, and 
 threats only served to make him reaffirm 
 the truths that he had stated. 
 
 So prominent had his utterances made 
 his name, that one fine day he was nomi- 
 nated to attend the first Congress of the 
 Colonies to be held in Philadelphia. 
 
 In August, 1774, we find him leaving 
 his office in New York in charge of a 
 clerk, and riding horseback over to the 
 town of Elizabeth, there joining his 
 father-in-law, and the two starting for 
 Philadelphia. 
 
 On the road they fell in with John 
 Adams, who kept a diary. That night at 
 the tavern where they stopped, the sharp- 
 eyed Yankee recorded the fact of meet- 
 ing these new friends and added : " Mr. 
 Jay is a young gentleman of the law . . . 
 and Mr. Scott says a hard student and a 
 very good speaker." 
 
 And so they journeyed on across the 
 vState to Trenton and down the Delaware 
 River to Philadelphia, visiting, and cau- 
 tiously discussing great issues as they 
 342
 
 5obn 5;is 
 
 went. Samuel Adams, too, was in the 
 party, as reticent as Jay. Jay was twenty- 
 nine and Samuel Adams fifty-two years 
 old, but the\' became good friends, and 
 vSamuel once quietly said to John Adams, 
 " That man Jay is young in years but he 
 has au old head." 
 
 Jay was the youngest man of the Con- 
 vention, save one. 
 
 When the Second Congress met, Jay 
 was again a delegate. He served on sev- 
 eral important committees, and drew up 
 a statement that was addressed to the 
 people of England ; but he was recalled 
 to New York before the supreme issue 
 was reached, and thus, through accident, 
 the Declaration of Independence does not 
 contain the signature of John Jay. 
 
 343
 
 II. 
 
 IN 1778, Jay was chosen president of 
 the Continental Congress to succeed 
 that other patriotic Huguenot, Laur- 
 ens. The following year he was selected 
 as the man to go to Spain, to secure from 
 that country certain friendly favors. 
 
 His reception there was exceedingly 
 frosty, and the mention of his two years 
 on the ragged edge of coiirt life at Ma- 
 drid, in later years brought to his face a 
 grim smile. 
 
 Spain's diplomatic policy was smooth 
 hypocrisy and rank untruth, and all of 
 her promises, it seems, were made but to 
 be broken. Jay's negotiations were only 
 partially successful, but he came to know 
 the language, the country, and the peo- 
 ple in a way that made this knowledge 
 very valuable to America. 
 344
 
 5obn Ja^ 
 
 By 1781, England had begun to see that 
 to compel the absolute submission of the 
 Colonies was more of a job than she had 
 anticipated. News of victories was duly 
 sent to the " mother country " at regular 
 intervals, but with these glad tidings were 
 requests for more troops, and requisitions 
 for ships and arms. 
 
 The American army was a very hard 
 thing to find. It would fight one day, to 
 retreat the next, and had a way of making 
 midnight attacks and flank movements, 
 that were verj- confusing. Then it would 
 separate, to come together — Lord knows 
 where ! This made Lord Cornwallis once 
 write to the Home Secretary: "I could 
 easily defeat the enemy, if I could find 
 him and engage him in a fair fight." He 
 seemed to think it was " no fair," forget- 
 ting the old proverb which has something 
 to say about love and war. 
 
 Finally, Cornwallis got the thing his 
 
 soul desired — a fair fight. He was then 
 
 acting on the defensive. The fight was 
 
 short and sharp ; and Colonel Alexander 
 
 345
 
 3obn 5a^ 
 
 Hamilton, who led the charge, in ten 
 minutes planted the Stars and Stripes on 
 his ramparts. 
 
 That night Cornwallis was the " guest" 
 of Washington, and the next daj- a din- 
 ner was given in his honor. 
 
 He was then obliged to write to the 
 Home Secretary, " We have met the 
 enemy, and we are theirs," — but of 
 course he did not express it just exactly 
 that way. Then it was that King George, 
 for the first time, showed a disposition to 
 negotiate for peace. 
 
 As peace commissioners, America 
 named Franklin, John Adams, Laurens, 
 Jay, and JeflFerson. 
 
 Jefferson refused to leave his wife, who 
 was in delicate health. Adams was at 
 The Hague, just closing up a very neces- 
 sary loan. Laurens had been sent to 
 Holland on a diplomatic mission, and 
 his ship having been overhauled by a 
 British man-of-war, he was safely in that 
 historic spot, the Tower of Loudon. 
 
 So Jay and Franklin alone met the 
 
 346
 
 3obM Jag 
 
 English commissioners, and Jay stated 
 to them the conditions of peace. 
 
 In a few weeks Adams arrived, still 
 keeping a diary. In that diary is found 
 this item: "The French call me ' L,e 
 Washington de la Negociation ' : a very 
 flattering compliment indeed, to which I 
 have no right, but sincerely think it be- 
 longs to Mr. Jay." 
 
 Jay quitted Paris in May, 1784, having 
 been gone from his native land eight 
 years. 
 
 When he reached New York there was 
 a great demonstration in his honor. Tri- 
 umphal arches were erected across Broad- 
 way, houses and stores were decorated 
 with bunting, cannons boomed, and bells 
 rang. The freedom of the city was pre- 
 sented to him in a gold box, with an 
 exceedingly complimentary address, en- 
 grossed on parchment, and signed by one 
 hundred of the leading citizens. 
 
 Jay spent just one day in New York, 
 and then rode on horseback up to the old 
 farm at Rye, Westchester County, to see 
 347
 
 5obn ^ag 
 
 his father. That evening there was a ser- 
 vice of thanksgiving at the village church, 
 after which the citizens repaired to the 
 Jay mansion, one story high and eighty 
 feet long, where a barrel of cider was 
 tapped, and " a groce of Church War- 
 dens" passed around, with free tobacco 
 for all. 
 
 John Jay stood on the front porch and 
 made a modest speech just five minutes 
 long, among other things saying he had 
 come home to be a neighbor to them, 
 having quit public life for good. But he 
 refused to talk about his own experiences 
 in Europe. His reticence, however, was 
 made up for by good old Peter Jay, who 
 assured the people that John Jay was 
 America's foremost citizen ; and in this 
 statement he was backed up by the vil- 
 lage preacher, with not a dissenting voice 
 from the assembled citizens. 
 
 It is rather curious (or it is n't, I'm not 
 
 sure which) how most statesmen have 
 
 quit public life several times during their 
 
 careers, like the prima donnas who make 
 
 348
 
 ir-- 
 
 ^^^ 
 
 
 '-r 
 
 ,^» >. 
 
 HOME OF JOHN JAY, Katonah, N. Y,
 
 5obn 5ai? 
 
 farewell tours. The ingratitude of re- 
 publics is proverbial, but to limit in- 
 gratitude to republics shows a lack of 
 experieuce. The progeny of the men 
 who tired of hearing Aristides called The 
 Just are very numerous. Of course it is 
 easy to say that he who expects gratitude 
 does not deserve it ; but the fact remains 
 that the men who know it are yet stung 
 by calumny when it comes their way. 
 
 That fine demonstration in Jay's honor 
 was in great part to overwhelm and stamp 
 out the undertone of growl and snarl 
 that filled the air. Many said that peace 
 had been gained at awful cost, that Jay 
 had deferred to royalty and trifled with 
 the wishes of the people in making terms. 
 
 And now Jay had got home, back to 
 his family and farm, back to quiet and 
 rest. The long, hard fight had been won 
 and America was free. For eight years 
 had he toiled and striven and planned : 
 much had been accomplished — not all he 
 hoped, but much. 
 
 He had done his best for his country, 
 349
 
 5obn 3nt 
 
 his own affairs were in bad shape, Con- 
 gress had paid him meagrely, and now 
 he would turn public work over to others 
 and live his own life. 
 
 All through life men reach these places 
 where they say, " Here will we build three 
 tabernacles " ; but out of the silence 
 comes the imperative Voice : "Arise, and 
 get thee hence, for this is not thy rest." 
 
 And now the war was over, peace was 
 concluded ; but war leaves a country in 
 chaos. The long, slow work of recon- 
 struction, and of binding up a nation's 
 wounds must follow. America was inde- 
 pendent, but she had yet to win from the 
 civilized world the recognition that she 
 must have in order to endure. 
 
 Jay was importuned by Washington to 
 take the position of Secretary of Foreign 
 Affairs, one of the very most important 
 offices to be filled. 
 
 He accepted, and discharged the exact- 
 ing duties of the place for five years. 
 
 Then came the adoption of the Federal 
 Constitution, and the election of Wash- 
 350
 
 3obn Jae 
 
 ington as President of the United States. 
 
 Washington wrote to Jay : " There 
 must be a Court, perpetual and Supreme, 
 to which all questions of internal dispute 
 between states or people be referred. 
 This Court must be greater than the 
 Executive, greater than any individual 
 State, separated and apart from any polit- 
 ical party. You must be the first official 
 head of this Court, just as I am now head 
 of the Executive." 
 
 And Jay, as every schoolboy knows, 
 was the first Chief-Justice of the Supreme 
 Court of the United States. By his sagac- 
 ity, his dignity, and knowledge of men, 
 and love of order and uprightness, he 
 gave it that high place which it yet holds, 
 and which it must hold ; for when the 
 decisions of the Supreme Court are ques- 
 tioned by a state or people, the fabric of 
 our government is but a spider's web 
 through which anarchy and unreason 
 will stalk. 
 
 In 1794, came serious complications 
 with Great Britain, growing out of the 
 351
 
 5obn ^ag 
 
 construction of terms of peace made in 
 Paris eleven years before. 
 
 Some one must go to Great Britain and 
 make a new treaty in order to preserve 
 our honor and save us from another war. 
 
 Franklin was dead ; Adams as Vice- 
 President could not be spared ; Hamil- 
 ton's fiery temper was dangerous, — no 
 one could accomplish the delicate mis- 
 sion so well as Jay. 
 
 Jay, self-centered and calm, said little; 
 but in compliance with Washington's 
 wish resigned his office, and set sail with 
 full powers to use his own judgment in 
 everything, and the assurance that any 
 treaty he made would be ratified. 
 
 Arriving in England, he at once opened 
 negotiations with Lord Grenville, and in 
 five months the new treaty was signed. 
 
 It provided for the payment to Ameri- 
 can citizens for losses of private shipping 
 during the war; and over ten million dol- 
 lars were paid to citizens of the United 
 States under this agreement. It fixed the 
 boundary line between the State of Maine 
 352
 
 jobn 5a^ 
 
 and Canada ; provided for the surrender 
 of British posts in the far West ; that 
 neither nation was to allow enlistments 
 within its territory by a third nation at 
 war with another ; arranged for the sur- 
 render of fugitives charged with murder 
 or forgery ; and made definite terms as 
 to various minor, but none the less im- 
 portant, questions. 
 
 A storm of opposition greeted the treaty 
 when its terms were made known in 
 America. Jay was accused of bartering 
 away the rights of America, and indig- 
 nation meetings were held, because Jay 
 had not insisted on apologies, and set 
 sums of indemnity on this, that, and the 
 other. 
 
 Nevertheless, Washington ratified the 
 treaty ; and when Jay arrived in America 
 there was a greeting fully as cordial and 
 generous as that on the occasion of his 
 other home-coming. 
 
 In fact, while he was absent, his friends 
 had put him in a nomination as Governor 
 of New York. His election to that office 
 353
 
 5obn 5as 
 
 occurred just two days before he arrived, 
 aud when he landed his senses were mys- 
 tified by hearing loud hurrahs for " Gov- 
 ernor Jay." 
 
 When his term of office expired he was 
 re-elected, so he served as Governor, in 
 all, six years. The most important meas- 
 ure carried out during that time was the 
 abolition of slavery in the State of New 
 York, an act he had strenuously insisted 
 on for twenty years, but which was not 
 made possible until he had the power of 
 Governor, and crowded the measure upon 
 the Legislature. 
 
 Over a quarter of a century had passed 
 since John Adams and John Jay had met 
 on horseback out there on the New Jersey 
 turnpike. Their intimacy had been con- 
 tinuous and their labors as important as 
 ever engrossed the minds of men, but in 
 it all there was neither jealousy nor bick- 
 ering. They were friends. 
 
 At the close of Jay's gubernatorial term, 
 President Adams nominated him for the 
 oflBce of Chief-Justice, made vacant by 
 .354
 
 the resignation of Oliver Ellsworth. The 
 Senate unanimously confirmed the nomi- 
 nation, but Jay refused to accept the 
 place. 
 
 For twenty-eight years he had served 
 his country, — served it in its most try- 
 ing hours. He was not an old man in 
 years, but the severitj- and anxiety of his 
 labors had told on his health, and the 
 elasticity of youth had gone from his 
 brain forever. He knew this, and feared 
 the danger of continued exertion. " My 
 best work is done," he said ; " if I con- 
 tinue I may undo the good I have accom- 
 plished. I have earned a rest." 
 
 He retired to the ancestral farm at Bed- 
 ford, Westchester County, to enjoy his 
 vacation. In a year his wife died, and 
 the shock told on his already shattered 
 nerves. 
 
 "The habit of reticence grew upon 
 him," says one writer, "until he could 
 not be tricked into giving an opinion 
 even about the weather." 
 
 And so he lived out his days as a partial 
 355
 
 John 5ai2 
 
 recluse, deep in problems of "raising 
 watermelons, and sheep that would not 
 jump fences." He worked with his 
 hands, wore blue jeans, voted at every 
 town election, but to a great degree, 
 lived only in the past. The problems of 
 church and village politics and farm life 
 filled his declining days. 
 
 To a great degree his physical health 
 came back, but the problems of statecraft 
 be left to other heads and hands. 
 
 His religious nature manifested itself 
 in various philanthropic schemes, and 
 the Bible Society he founded endures 
 even unto this day. These things afforded 
 a healthful exercise for that tireless brain 
 which refused to run down. 
 
 His daughters made his home ideal, 
 their love and gentleness soothing his 
 declining years. 
 
 Death to him was kindly, gathering 
 him as Autumn, the messenger of Winter, 
 reaps the leaves. 
 
 356
 
 ni. 
 
 No one has ever made the claim 
 that Jay possessed genius. He 
 had something which is better, 
 though, for most of the affairs of life, and 
 that is common sense. In his intellect 
 there was not the flash of Hamilton, nor 
 the creative quality possessed byjeflfer- 
 son, nor the large all-roundness of 
 Franklin. 
 
 He was the average man who has 
 trained and educated and made the best 
 use of every faculty and every op- 
 portunity. He was genuine ; he was 
 honest ; and if he never surprised his 
 friends by his brilliancy, he surely 
 never disappointed them through duplic- 
 ity. He made no promises that he 
 could not keep ; he held out no vain 
 hopes. 
 
 357
 
 3obn Jag 
 
 As a diplomat he seems nearly the 
 ideal. We have been taught that the 
 line of demarcation between diplomacy 
 and untruth is very shadowy. But truth is 
 very good policy and in the main answers 
 the purpose much better than the other 
 thing. I am quite willing to leave the 
 matter to those who have tried both. 
 
 We cannot say that Jay was " magnet- 
 ic," for magnetic men win the rabble ; 
 but Jay did better : he won the confidence 
 and admiration of the strong and discern- 
 ing. His manner was gentle and pleas- 
 ing ; his patience untiring ; his words 
 few, and as a listener he set a pace that 
 all novitiates in the school of diplomacy 
 would do well to follow. 
 
 To talk well is a talent, but to listen is 
 a fine art. If I really wished to win the 
 love of a man I 'd practise the art of 
 listening. Even dull people often talk 
 well when there is some one near who 
 cultivates the receptive mood ; and to 
 please a man you must give him an op- 
 portunity to be both wise and witty. 
 358
 
 5obn 3as 
 
 Men are pleased with their friends when 
 they are pleased with themselves, and no 
 man is ever so pleased with himself as 
 when he has expressed himself well. 
 I,ife is expression. 
 
 The sympathetic listener at a lecture or 
 sermon is the only one who gets his 
 money's worth. If you would get good, 
 lend your sympathy to a speaker, and if, 
 accidentally, you imbibe heresy, you can 
 easily throw it overboard when you get 
 home. 
 
 John Jay was quiet and undemonstra- 
 tive in speech, cultivating a fine reserve. 
 In debate he never fired all of his guns, 
 and his best battles were won with the 
 powder that was never exploded. " You 
 had always better keep a small balance to 
 your credit," he once advised a young 
 attorney. 
 
 When the first Congress met, Jay was 
 not in favor of complete independence 
 from England. He asked only for simple 
 justice, and said, "The middle course is 
 best." He listened to John Adams and 
 359
 
 5obn Jag 
 
 Patrick Henry and quietly discussed the 
 matter with Samuel Adams ; but it was 
 some time before he saw that the density 
 of King George was hopeless, and that 
 the work of complete separation was 
 being forced upon the colonies by the 
 blindness and stupidity of the British 
 Parliament. 
 
 He then accepted the issue. 
 During those first days of the Revolu- 
 tion New York did not stand firm, as did 
 Boston, for the cause of independence. 
 " The foes at home are the only ones I 
 really fear," once wrote Hamilton. 
 
 First to pacify and placate, then to win 
 and hold those worse than neutrals was 
 the work of John Jay. While Washing- 
 ton was in the field. Jay, with tireless 
 pen, upheld the cause, and by his speech 
 and presence kept anarchy at bay. 
 
 As president of the Committee of Safety 
 he showed he could do something more 
 than talk and write. When Tories re- 
 fused to take the oath of allegiance he 
 quietly wrote the order to imprison or 
 360
 
 Jobn 5ai5 
 
 bamsh ; and with friend, foe, or kinsman 
 there was neither dalliance nor turning 
 aside. 
 
 His heart was in the cause — his prop- 
 erty, his life. The time for argument 
 had passed. 
 
 In the gloom that followed the defeat 
 of Washington at Brooklyn, Jay issued 
 an address to the people that is a classic 
 in its fine, stern spirit of hope and 
 strength. Congress had the address re- 
 printed and sent broadcast, and also 
 translated and printed in German. 
 
 His work divides itself by a strange 
 coincidence into three equal parts. 
 Twenty-eight years were passed in youth 
 and education ; twenty-eight years in 
 continuous public work ; and twenty- 
 eight years in retirement and rest. 
 
 As one of that immortal ten, mentioned 
 by a great English statesman, who gave 
 order, dignity, stability, and direction to 
 the cause of American Independence, the 
 name of John Jay is secure. 
 
 361
 
 WILLIAM H. SEWARD 
 
 363
 
 I avow my adherence to the Union with my 
 friends, with my party, with my State ; or with- 
 out either, as they may determine ; in every 
 event of peace or war, with every consequence of 
 honor or dishonor, of life or death. 
 
 Speech in the U. S. Senate, i860. 
 
 364
 
 i^M^^
 
 WILLIAM H. SEWARD. 
 
 I. 
 
 WHEN I was a freshman at the Lit- 
 tle Red Schoolhouse, the last 
 exercise iu the afternoon was 
 spelling. The larger pupils stood in aline 
 that ran down one aisle and curled clear 
 around the stove. Well do I remember one 
 winter when the biggest boy in the school 
 stood at the tail end of the class most of 
 the time, while at the head of the line, or 
 always very near it, was a freckled, check- 
 aproned girl, who, once at a spellin' bee 
 had defeated even the teacher. This girl 
 was ten years older than myself, and I 
 was then too small to spell with this first 
 grade, but I watched the daily fight of 
 365
 
 mHilliam lb. SewarD 
 
 wrestling with such big words as " un-in- 
 ten-tion-al-lj' " and " mis-un-der-stand- 
 ing," and longed for a day when I, too, 
 should take part and possibly stand next 
 to this fine, smart girl, who often smiled 
 at me approvingly. And I planned how 
 I would hold her hand as we would 
 stand there in line and mentally dare 
 the master to come on with his diction- 
 ary. We two would be the smartest 
 scholars of the school and always help 
 each other in our "sums." 
 
 Yet when time had pushed me into the 
 line, she of the check apron was not 
 there, and even if she had been I should 
 not have dared to hold her hand. 
 
 But I must not digress— the particular 
 thing I wish to explain is that one day at 
 recess the best scholar was iu tears, and I 
 went to her and asked what was the mat- 
 ter, and she told me that some of the big 
 girls had openly declared that she — my 
 fine, freckled girl, the check-aproned, the 
 invincible— held her place at the head of 
 the school only through favoritism. 
 366
 
 Milliam 1b. ScwaiD 
 
 I burned with rage aad resentment and 
 proposed fight ; then I burst out crying 
 and together we mingled our tears. 
 
 All this was long ago. Since then I 
 have been in many climes, and met many 
 men, and read history a bit, I hope not 
 without profit. And this I have learned : 
 that the person who stands at the head of 
 his class (be he country lad or presiden- 
 tial candidate) is always the target for 
 calumny and the unkindness of contem- 
 poraries who can neither appreciate nor 
 understand. 
 
 Not long ago I spent several days at 
 Auburn, New York, so named by some 
 pioneer who, when the Nineteenth Cen- 
 tury was very young, journeyed thither- 
 ward with a copy of Goldsmith's Deserted 
 Village in his pack. 
 
 Auburn is a flourishing city of thirty 
 thousand inhabitants. It has beautiful 
 wide streets, lined with elms that in 
 places form an archway. There are 
 churches to spare and schools galore and 
 handsome residences. Then there are 
 367
 
 Milltam 1b. SevvarD 
 
 electric cars and electric lights and dyna- 
 mos, with which men electrocute other 
 men in the wink of an eye. I saw the 
 fin de siMe guillotine and sat in the chair, 
 and the jubilant patentee told me that it 
 was the quickest scheme for extinguishing 
 life ever invented— patented Anno Christi 
 1895. Verily we live in the age of the 
 Push Button ! And as I sat there I heard 
 a laugh that was a quaver, and the sound 
 of a stout cane emphasizing a jest, struck 
 against the stone floor. 
 
 " We did n't have such things when I 
 was a boy ! " came the tremulous voice. 
 
 And then the newcomer explained to 
 me that he was eighty-seven years old 
 last May, and that he well remembered a 
 time when a plain oaken gallows and a 
 strong rope were good enough for Au- 
 burn— " Provided Bill Seward did n't get 
 the fellow free," added my new-found 
 friend. 
 
 Then the old man explained that he 
 used to be a guard on the walls, and now 
 he had a grandson who occupied the same 
 368
 
 Mdliam lb. SewarD 
 
 oflSce, and in answer to my question said 
 he knew Seward as though he were a 
 brother. " Bill, he was the luckiest man 
 ever in Auburn — he married rich and 
 tumbled over bags of money if he just 
 walked on the street. He believed in 
 neither God nor devil and had a pompous 
 way o' niakiu' folks think he knew all 
 about everything. To make folks think 
 you know is just as well as to know, I 
 s'pose ! " and the old man laughed and 
 struck his cane on the echoing floor of 
 the cell. 
 
 The sound and the place and the com- 
 pany gave me a creepy feeling, and I ex- 
 cused myself and made my way out past 
 armed guards, through doorways where 
 iron bars clicked and snapped, and steel 
 bolts that held a thousand men in shot 
 back to let me out, out into a freer air 
 and better atmosphere. And as I passed 
 through the last overhanging arch where 
 a one-armed guard wearing a G. A. R. 
 badge turned a needlessly big key, there 
 came unbeckoned across my inward sight 
 369
 
 TRIlilllam lb. SevvaiD 
 
 a vision of a check-aproned girl in tears, 
 sobbing with head on desk. And I said 
 to myself: "Yes, yes! country girl or 
 statesman, you shall drink the bitter po- 
 tion that is the penalty of success,— drink 
 it to the very dregs. If you \^ould escape 
 moral and physical assassination, do 
 nothing, say nothing, be nothing— court 
 obscurity, for only in oblivion does safety 
 he." 
 
 All mud sticks, but no mud is immortal, 
 and that senile fling at the name of Sew- 
 ard is the last flickering, dying word of 
 detraction that can be heard in the town 
 that was his home for full half a century, 
 or in the land he served so well. And 
 yet it was in Auburn that mob spirit once 
 found a voice, and when Seward was Lin- 
 coln's most helpful adviser, and his sons 
 were at the front serving the country's 
 cause, cries of ' ' Burn his house ! Burn his 
 house ! " came to the distracted ears of 
 wife and daughter. 
 
 But all that has gone now. In fact, 
 denial that calumny was ever offered to 
 370
 
 IWilliam lb. SewarD 
 
 the name of Seward springs quickly to 
 the lips of Auburn men, as they point 
 with pride to that beautiful old home 
 where he lived, and where now his son 
 resides ; and then they lead you, with a 
 reverence that nearly uncovers, to the 
 stately bronze standing on the spot that 
 was once his garden — now a park belong- 
 ing to the people. 
 
 Time marks wondrous changes ; and 
 the city where William Lloyd Garrison 
 lived in "a rat hole," as reported by 
 Boston's Mayor, now honors Common- 
 wealth Avenue by his statue. And so 
 the sons of Seward's enemies have de- 
 voted willing dollars to preserving " that 
 classic face and spindling form " in death- 
 less bronze. 
 
 And they do well, for Seward's name 
 and fame are Auburn's glory. 
 
 371
 
 n. 
 
 I MAY be mistaken, but it seems to me 
 that all the worry of the world is 
 quite useless. And on no subject 
 affecting mortals is there so much worry 
 as that of (no, not love ! ) parents' ambi- 
 tions for their children. When the 
 dimpled darling toddles and lisps and 
 chatters, the satisfaction he gives is un- 
 alloyed ; for he is so small and insignifi- 
 cant, and his demands so imperious, that 
 the entire household dance attendance 
 on .the wee tyrant, and count it joy. 
 But by and by the things at which we 
 used to laugh become presumptuous, 
 and that which was once funny is now 
 perverse. And the more practical a 
 man is, the larger his stock of Con- 
 necticut common-sense, the greater his 
 disillusioument as his children grow to 
 3/2
 
 •WfliUiam 1[3. SewarD 
 
 manhood. When he beholds dawdling 
 inanity and dowdy vanity growing lush 
 as jimson, where yesterday, with strained 
 prophetic vision, he saw budding ex- 
 cellence and worth, his soul is wrung 
 by a worry that knows no peace. The 
 matter is so poignantly personal that he 
 dare not share it with another in confes- 
 sional, and so he hugs his grief to his 
 heart, and tries to hide it even from him- 
 self. 
 
 And thus does man}' a mother scrub 
 the kitchen floor on her knees, rather than 
 face the irony of maternity and ask the 
 assistance of the seventeen-year-old pert 
 chit with bangs, who strums a mandolin 
 in the little front parlor, gay with its 
 paper flowers, six plush-covered chairs, 
 and a " company " sofa. 
 
 The late Commodore Vanderbilt is re- 
 ported to have said : " I have over a dozen 
 sons, and not one is worth a damn." I 
 fear me that every father with sons grown 
 to manhood has at some time voiced the 
 same sentiment, curtailed, possibly, only 
 373
 
 Timilliam lb. SewarO 
 
 as to numbers, and softened by another 
 expletive which does not mitigate the 
 anguish of his cry, as he sees the dreams 
 he had for his baby boys fade away into a 
 mist of agonizing tears. 
 
 And is all this worry the penalty that 
 nature exacts for dreaming dreams that 
 cannot in their very nature come true ? 
 Jean Jacques Rousseau, who wrote so 
 beautifully on child-study, avoided the 
 risk of failure by putting his children 
 into an asylum; several "Communi- 
 ties" since, have set apart certain women 
 to be mothers to all, and bring up and 
 care for the young, and strangel}', with 
 no apparent loss to the children ; and 
 Bellamy prophesies a day when the 
 worries of parenthood will all be trans- 
 ferred to a "committee." 
 
 But the worry is futile and senseless, 
 being born often of a blindness that will 
 not wait. Man has not only "Seven 
 Ages," but many more, and he must pass 
 through this one before the next arrives. 
 The Commodore certainly possessed what 
 374
 
 XlClllliam IF). ScwarD 
 
 is called horse-sense, and if his concep- 
 tions of character had been clearer, he 
 might have realized that in more waj'S 
 than one the abilities of his sons were 
 going to be greater than his own. His 
 eldest son was, nevertheless, banished to 
 a Ivong Island farm on a pension, "be- 
 cause he could not be trusted to do busi- 
 ness." The same son once modestly 
 asked the Commodore if he would allow 
 him to have the compost that had been 
 for a year accumulating outside the Fifth 
 Avenue barns. "Just one load, and no 
 more," said pater. William thereupon 
 took twenty teams and as many men, 
 and transferred the entire pile to a barge 
 moored in the river. It was a barge-load. 
 And when pater saw what had been done, 
 he said, " The boy is not so big a fool as 
 I thought." The boy was forty-five ere 
 death put him in possession of the gold 
 that the father no longer had use for, 
 there being no pockets in a shroud, and 
 he then showed that as a financier he 
 could have given his father points, for in 
 375
 
 MUliam lb. Gewaro 
 
 a few years he doubled the millions and 
 drove horses faster without a break than 
 his father had ever ridden. 
 
 Seward's father was a doctor, justice of 
 the peace, merchant, and the general first 
 citizen of the village of Florida, Orange 
 County, New York. And he had no more 
 confidence in his boy William than Van- 
 derbilt had in his. He educated him only 
 because the lad was not strong enough to 
 work, and it seems to have been the firm 
 belief that the boy would come to no good 
 end. In order to discipline him, the fa- 
 ther put the youngster in college on such 
 a scanty allowance that the lad was 
 obliged to run away and go to teaching 
 school in order to be free from financial 
 humiliation. Here was the best possible 
 proof that the young man had the germs 
 of excellence in him ; but the father took 
 it as a proof of depravity, and sent warn- 
 ing letters to the young school-teacher's 
 friends threatening them " not to harbor 
 the scapegrace." 
 
 The years went by and the parental dis- 
 376
 
 muitam lb. ScvvarD 
 
 trust slackened very little. The boy was 
 slim and slender and his hair was tow- 
 colored and his head too big for his body. 
 He had gotten a goodly smattering of ed- 
 ucation some way and was intent on be- 
 ing a lawyer. He seemed to know that 
 if he was to succeed he must get well 
 away from the parent nest, and out of 
 the reach of daily advice. 
 
 His desire was to go " Out West," and 
 the particular objective point was Auburn, 
 New York. 
 
 The father gave him fifty dollars as a 
 starter, with the final word, " I expect 
 you '11 be back all too soon." 
 
 And so young vSeward started away, 
 with high hopes and a firm determina- 
 tion that he would agreeably disappoint 
 his parents by not going back. 
 
 He reached Albany by steamboat, and 
 embarked on a sumptuous canal packet 
 that bore a waving banner on which were 
 the words woven in gold, " Westward 
 Ho ! " 
 
 And he has slyly told us how, as he 
 377
 
 MilUam lb. Seward 
 
 stepped aboard that " inland palace," he 
 bethought him of having written a thesis, 
 three years before, proving that DeWitt 
 Clinton's chimera of joining the Hudson 
 and Lake Erie was an idea both fictile 
 and fibrous. But the inland palace car- 
 ried him safely and surely. He reached 
 Auburn, and instead of writing home for 
 more money, returned that which he had 
 borrowed. The father, who was a pretty 
 good man in every way, quite beyond the 
 average in intellect, lived to see his son 
 in the United States Senate. 
 
 And the moral for parents is : Don't 
 worry about your children. You were 
 young once, even if you have forgotten 
 the fact. Boys will be boys and girls will 
 be girls — but not forever. Have patience, 
 and remember that this present brood is 
 not the first generation that has been 
 brought forth. There have been others, 
 and each has been very much like the 
 one that passed before. The sentiment 
 of Pippa Passes holds : " God 's in His 
 Heaven, all's right with the world." 
 
 378
 
 in. 
 
 IN 1834, Seward was the Whig candidate 
 for Governor of New York. He was 
 defeated by W. Iv. Marcy. Four years 
 later he was again a candidate against 
 Marcy and defeated him by ten thousand 
 majority. He was then thirty-six years 
 of age, and was counted one of the very 
 first among the lawyers of the State, and 
 in accepting the office of governor he 
 made decided financial sacrifices. 
 
 Seward was a man of positive ideas, 
 and, although not arbitrary in manner, 
 yet had a silken strength of will that 
 made great rents in the mesh of other 
 men's desires. Before a court, his quiet 
 but firm persistence along a certain line 
 often dictated the verdict. The faculty 
 of grasping a point firmly and securely 
 was his in marked measure. And any 
 379
 
 Milliam lb. SewarD 
 
 man who can quietly override the wishes 
 and ambitions of other men is first well 
 feared, and then thoroughly hated. 
 
 One of Seward's first efforts on becom- 
 ing governor was to insure a common- 
 school education among the children of 
 every class, and especially among the 
 foreign population of large cities. To 
 this end he advocated a distribution of 
 public funds among all schools estab- 
 lished with that object ; and if he were 
 alive to-day it is quite needless to say 
 he would not belong to the A. P. A. nor 
 to any secret society. He knew too much 
 of all religious to have complete faith in 
 any, yet his appreciation of the fact that 
 the Catholics minister to the needs of a 
 class that no other denomination reaches 
 or can control was outspoken and plain. 
 This, with his connection with the Anti- 
 Masonic Party, brought upon his name a 
 stigma that was at last to defeat him for 
 the presidency. 
 
 Seward's clear insight into practical 
 things, backed by the quiet working en- 
 360
 
 SIATUE OF SEWARD, Madison Square, New York.
 
 ■WHllliam lb. SewarJ) 
 
 ergy of his nature, brought about many 
 changes, and the changes he effected and 
 the reforms he inaugurated must ever 
 rank his name high among statesmen. 
 
 By his influence the law's delay in the 
 courts of chancery was curtailed, and this 
 prepared the way for radical changes in 
 the constitution. He inaugurated the 
 geological survey that led to making 
 "Potsdam outcrop" classic, and "Me- 
 dina sandstone " a product that is so 
 known wherever a man goes forth in 
 the iields of earth carrying a geologist's 
 hammer. 
 
 Largely through his efforts, a safe and 
 general banking system was brought 
 about ; and the establishment of a lunatic 
 asylum was one of the best items to his 
 credit during that first term as governor. 
 But there was one philological change 
 that proved too great even for his gen- 
 eralship. The word "lunacy," as we 
 know, comes from " luna," the belief be- 
 ing in the good old days that the moon 
 exercised a profound influence on the 
 381
 
 xnatlliam 1b. SevvarD 
 
 wits of sundry people. I 'm told that the 
 idea still holds good in certain quarters, 
 and that if the wind is east and the moon 
 shows a horn on which you can hang a 
 flat-iron, certain persons are looked upon 
 askance and the children cautioned to 
 avoid them. 
 
 Seward said that insane people were 
 simply those who were mentally ill, and 
 that "Hospital " was the proper term. 
 But the classicists said, " Nay, na}', Wil- 
 liam Henry, you have had your way 
 in many things and here we will now 
 have ours." It has taken us full half 
 a century officially to make the change, 
 and the plain folks from the hills still 
 refuse to ratify it, and will for many a 
 lustrum. 
 
 It was during Seward's administration 
 that the "debtors' prison " was done away 
 with, and it was, too, through his earnest 
 recommendation that the last trace of 
 law for slaveholding was wiped from the 
 statute-hooks of the State of New York. 
 
 The question of slavery was taken up 
 3S2
 
 milliaiii If?, toewaro 
 
 most exhaustively in what was known as 
 the '■ Virginia Controversy." This in- 
 teresting correspondence can be seen in a 
 stout volume in most public libraries. It 
 is a series of letters that passed between 
 Governor Seward of New York and the 
 Governor of Virginia, as to the requisition 
 of two persons in New York charged by 
 the Governor of Virginia with abducting 
 slaves. Seward made the patent point, 
 and backed it up with a forest of reasons 
 in politest English, that the accused per- 
 sons being charged with abducting slaves, 
 and there being no such things as slaves 
 known in New York, no person in New 
 York could be apprehended for stealing 
 slaves — for slaves were things that had 
 no existence. 
 
 Then did the Governor of Virginia 
 admit that slaves could not be abducted 
 in New York ; but he proceeded to ex- 
 plain in lusty tomes that slavery legally 
 existed in Virginia, and that if slaves 
 were abducted in Virginia, the criminal 
 nature of the act could not be shaken off 
 383
 
 "Wnilliam lb. SewarD 
 
 because the accused changed his geo- 
 graphical base. Seward was a prince of 
 logicians : the subtleties of reasoning and 
 the smoke of rhetoric were to his fancy, 
 and although there is not a visible smile 
 in the whole "Virginia Controversy," I 
 cannot but think that his sleeves were 
 puffed with laughter as he searched the 
 universe for reasons to satisfy the haughty 
 First Families of Virginia. And all the 
 while, please note that he held the al- 
 leged abductors safe and secure 'gainst 
 harm's way. 
 
 In this correspondence he placed him- 
 self on record as an Abolitionist of the 
 Abolitionists ; and the name of Seward 
 became listed then and there for ven- 
 geance — or immortality. The subject had 
 been forced upon him, and he then ex- 
 pressed the sentiment that he continued 
 to voice until 1865, that America could 
 not exist half-free and half-slave. It must 
 be a land of slaveholders and slaves, or 
 a land of freemen — he was fully and ir- 
 revocably committed to the cause. 
 384
 
 •wnuiiam lb. SewarD 
 
 In 1840, he was re-elected governor. 
 The second administration was marked, 
 as was the first, by a vigorous policy of 
 pushing forward public improvements. 
 
 At the close of his second term Seward 
 found his personal affairs in rather an 
 unsettled condition, the expenses of of- 
 ficial position having exceeded his in- 
 come. He had had a goodly taste of the 
 ingratitude of republics, and philosopher 
 though he was, he was yet too young to 
 know that his experience iu well-doing 
 was not unique, a fact he came to com- 
 prehend full well, in later years. And so 
 he did that very human thing — declared 
 his intention of retiring permanently 
 from public life. 
 
 Once back at Auburn, clients flocked 
 to him, and he took his pick of business. 
 And yet we find that public affairs were 
 in his mind. Vexed questions of State 
 policy were brought to him to decide, 
 and journeys were made to Ohio and 
 Michigan in the interests of men charged 
 with slave-stealing. There was little 
 385
 
 luatUiam lb. SewacD 
 
 money in such practice and small honors, 
 but his heart was in the work. 
 
 In 1844, Seward entered with much 
 zest into the canvass in behalf of Henry 
 Clay for President, as he thought Clay's 
 election would surely lead the way to 
 general emancipation. 
 
 In 1848, he supported General Taylor 
 with equal energy. When Taylor was 
 elected there proved to be much opposi- 
 tion to him among the members from the 
 South, in both the Senate and House of 
 Representatives. The administration felt 
 the need of being backed by strong men 
 in the Senate — men who could think on 
 their feet, and carry a point when neces- 
 sary against the opposition that sought to 
 confuse and embarrass the friends of the 
 administration with tireless wind-mill 
 elocution. From Washington came the 
 urgent request that Seward should be 
 sent to the United States Senate. In 
 1849, he was chosen senator and from 
 the first became the trusted leader of the 
 administration party. 
 386
 
 Ticmiiam 1b. SewarD 
 
 The year after Seward's election to the 
 Senate, President Taylor died and Vice- 
 President Fillmore (who had the happi- 
 ness to live at the village of East Aurora, 
 New York) acceded to the office, but 
 Seward still remained leader of the Anti- 
 Slavery Party. 
 
 Seward's second term as United States 
 Senator closed in 1861. In 1855, when 
 his first term expired, there was a very 
 strenuous effort made against his re- 
 election. His strong and continued anti- 
 slavery position had caused him to be 
 thoroughly hated both North and South. 
 He was spoken of as "a seditious agita- 
 tor and dangerous man." 
 
 But in spite of opposition he was again 
 sent back to Washington. Small, slim, 
 gentle, modest, and low-voiced, he was 
 pointed out in Pennsylvania Avenue as 
 " One who reads much and sees quite 
 through the deeds of men." 
 
 Men who are well traduced and hotly 
 denounced are usually pretty good quality. 
 No better encomium is needed ihau the 
 387
 
 Mllliam 1b. SewacD 
 
 detraction of some people. And men 
 who are well bated also have friends 
 who love them well. Thus does the law 
 of compensation ever live. 
 
 In 1856, there was a goodly little de- 
 monstration in favor of Seward for Presi- 
 dent, but the idea of running such a 
 radical for the chief office of the people 
 was quickly downed ; and Seward him- 
 self knew the temper of the times too 
 well to take the matter very seriously. 
 
 But the years between 1856 and i860 
 were years of agitation and earnest 
 thought, and the idea that slavery was 
 merely a local question was getting both 
 depolarized and dehorned. The non-slave- 
 holding North was rubbing its sleepy 
 eyes, and asking, Who is this man Sew- 
 ard, anyway ? The belief was growing 
 that Seward, Garrison, Sumner, and Phil- 
 lips were something more than self-seek- 
 ing agitators, and many declared them 
 true patriots. 
 
 In every town and city, in every North- 
 ern State, political clubs sprang into 
 388
 
 TKHllliam lb. ScwarD 
 
 being and their battle-cry was "Sew- 
 ard ! " It seemed to be a foregone con- 
 clusion that Seward would be the next 
 President. When the convention met, 
 the first ballot showed 173 votes for 
 Seward and 102 for Lincoln, the rest, 
 scattering. But Seward's friends had 
 marshaled their entire strength— all the 
 rest was opposition — while Lincoln was 
 an unknown quantity. 
 
 When the news went forth that Lincoln 
 was nominated, Seward received the tid- 
 ings in his library at Auburn ; and the 
 myth-makers have told us that he cried 
 aloud, and that the carved lions on his 
 gate-posts shed salty tears. But Seward 
 knew the opposition to his name and was 
 of too stern a moral fibre to fix his heart 
 upon the result of a wire-pulling conven- 
 tion. The motto of his life had been, Be 
 prepared for the unexpected. It may 
 be that the lions on the gate-posts shed 
 tears ; and it is possible there was weep- 
 ing in the Seward household — but not 
 by Seward. 
 
 389
 
 Milliam lb. SewacD 
 
 He entered upon a hearty and vigorous 
 campaign in support of Lincoln — mak- 
 ing a tour through the West and being 
 greeted everywhere with an enthusiasm 
 that rivaled that showu for the candidate. 
 
 When Lincoln was elected, his wisdom 
 was at once manifest in securing Seward 
 as his Secretary of State. The record of 
 those troublous times and the masterly 
 way in which Seward served his country 
 are too vivid in the minds of men to 
 need reviewing here, but the regard of 
 Lincoln for this man, who so well com- 
 plemented his own needs, is worthy of 
 our remembrance. Seward was the only 
 member of Lincoln's first Cabinet who 
 stood by him straight through and 
 entered the second. 
 
 Early in April, 1865, Seward met with 
 a serious accident by being thrown from 
 his carriage and dashed against the curb- 
 stone. One arm and both jaws were 
 fractured, besides being badly bruised 
 in other parts of his body. 
 
 On April 13th, Lincoln returned from 
 390
 
 "Watlliam t). ScwarD 
 
 his trip to Richmond, where he had had 
 an interview with Grant. That evening 
 he walked over from the White House 
 to Seward's residence. The stricken man 
 was totally unable to converse, but Lin- 
 coln, sitting on the edge of the bed and 
 holding the old man's thin hands, told 
 in solemn, serious monotone of the end- 
 ing of the war ; of what he had seen and 
 heard ; of the plans he had made for 
 sending soldiers home and providing 
 for an army whipped and vanquished, 
 and of what was best to do to bind up 
 a nation's wounds. 
 
 Five years before, these two men had 
 stood before the world as rivals. Then 
 they joined hands as friends, and during 
 the four years of strife and blood had 
 met each day and advised and counseled 
 concerning every great detail. Their 
 opinions often diflfered widely, but there 
 was always frank expression and, in the 
 main, their fears and doubts and hopes 
 had all been one. 
 
 But now at last the smoke had cleared 
 391
 
 muiiam lb. SewarO 
 
 away, and they had won. The victory 
 had been too dearly bought for proud 
 boast or vain exultation, but victory still 
 it was. 
 
 And as the strong and homely Lin- 
 coln told the tale the stricken man could 
 answer back only by pressure of a hand. 
 
 At last the presence of the nurse told 
 Lincoln it was time to go ; in grave 
 jest he half apologized for his long stay, 
 and told of a man in Sangamon County 
 who used to say there is no medicine 
 like good news. And rumor has it that 
 he then stooped and kissed the sick 
 man's cheek. 
 
 And then he went his way. 
 
 The next night at the same hour a 
 man entered the Seward home, saying 
 that he had been sent with messages 
 by the doctor. Being refused admittance 
 to the sick-chamber, he drew a pistol 
 and endeavored to shoot Seward's son 
 who guarded the door ; but being foiled 
 in this he crushed the young man's skull 
 with the heavy weapon, and springing 
 392
 
 Milliam lb. SewarO 
 
 over his body dashed at the emaciated 
 figure of Seward with uplifted dagger. 
 A dozen times he struck at the face and 
 throat and breast of the almost dying 
 man, and then thinking he had done 
 his work made rapidly away. 
 
 At the same time, linked by fate in a 
 sort of poetic justice, with the thought 
 that if one deserved death so did the 
 other, hate had with surer aim sent an 
 assassin's bullet home, — and Ivincoln 
 died. 
 
 Weeks passed and the strong vitality 
 that had served Seward in such good 
 stead did not forsake him. Men of his 
 stamp are hard to kill. 
 
 On a beautiful May-day, Seward, so 
 reduced that a woman carried him, was 
 taken out on the veranda of his house 
 and watched that sohd mass of glittering 
 steel and faded blue that moved through 
 Pennsylvania Avenue in triumphal 
 march. Sherman with head uncovered 
 rode down to Seward's home, saluted, 
 and then back to join his goodly com- 
 393
 
 imilliam IFd. SewarO 
 
 pany, and manj' others of lesser note 
 did the same. 
 
 Health and strength came slowly back, 
 and happy was the day when he was 
 carried to the office of Secretary of State 
 and, propped in his chair, again began 
 his work. Another President had come, 
 but meet it was that the Secretary of 
 State should still hold his place. 
 
 Seward lived full eleven years after that, 
 seemingly dragging with unquenched 
 spirit that slashed and broken form. 
 But the glint did not fade from his eye, 
 nor did the proud head lose its poise. 
 
 He died in his office among his books 
 and papers, saue and sensible up to the 
 very moment when his spirit took its 
 flight. 
 
 394
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 395
 
 The world will little note, nor long remember, 
 what we say here, but it can never forget what 
 they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be 
 dedicated here to the unfinished work which 
 they who fought here have thus far so nobly ad- 
 vanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated 
 to the great task remaining before us, that from 
 these honored dead we take increased devotion 
 to the cause for which they gave the last full 
 measure of devotion ; that we here highly resolve 
 that these dead shall not have died in vain ; that 
 this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of 
 freedom, and the government of the people, by 
 the people, and for the people, shall not perish 
 from the earth. 
 
 Speech at Gettysburg. 
 
 396
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 No, dearie, I do not think my child- 
 hood differed much from that 
 of other good healthy country 
 youngsters. I 've heard folks say that 
 childhood has its sorrows and all that, 
 but the sorrows of country children do 
 not last long. The young rustic goes 
 out and tells his troubles to the birds and 
 flowers, and the flowers nod in recogni- 
 tion, and the robin that sings from the 
 top of a tall poplar tree when the sun 
 goes down, says plainly it has sorrows of 
 its own — and understands. 
 
 I feel a pity for all those folks who 
 were born in a big city, and thus got 
 cheated out of their childhood. Zealous 
 397
 
 Bbrabam Xincoln 
 
 ash-box inspectors in gilt braid, prying 
 policemen with clubs, and signs reading, 
 "Keep ofT the Grass," are woful things 
 to greet the gaze of little souls fresh from 
 God. 
 
 Last summer six "Fresh Airs" were 
 sent out to my farm, from the Eighth 
 Ward. Half an hour after their arrival, 
 one of them, a little girl five years old, 
 who had constituted herself mother of 
 the party, came rushing into the house 
 exclaiming, "Say, Mister, Jimmy Dris- 
 coll he 's walkin' on de grass ! " 
 
 I well remember the first Keep-off-the- 
 Grass sign I ever saw. It was in a printed 
 book ; it was n't exactly a sign, only a pict- 
 ure of a sign, and the single excuse I could 
 think of for such a notice was that the field 
 was full of bumble-bee nests, and the 
 owner, being a good man and kind, did not 
 want barefoot boys to add bee-stings to 
 stone-bruises. And I never now see one 
 of those signs but that I glance at my 
 feet to make sure that I have shoes on. 
 
 Given the liberty of the country, the 
 398
 
 Bbrabam Xlncolii 
 
 child is very near to Nature's heart ; he 
 is brother to the tree and calls all the 
 dumb, growing things by name. He is 
 sublimely superstitious. His imagination, 
 as yet untouched by disillusion, makes 
 good all that earth lacks, and habited in 
 a healthy body the soul siugs and soars. 
 
 In childhood, magic and mystery lie 
 close around us. The world in which we 
 live is a panorama of constantly unfold- 
 ing delights, our faith in the Unknown is 
 limitless, and the words of Job, uttered in 
 mankind's morning, fit our wondering 
 mood : " He stretcheth out the north over 
 the empty place ; and hangeth the earth 
 upon nothing." 
 
 I am old, dearie, very old. In my 
 childhood much of the State of Illinois 
 was a prairie, where wild grass waved 
 and bowed before the breeze, like the 
 tide of a summer sea. I remember when 
 "relatives" rode miles and miles in 
 springless farm-wagons to visit cousins, 
 taking the whole family and staying two 
 nights and a day ; when books were 
 399
 
 Bbrabam Xincoln 
 
 things to be read ; when the beaver and 
 buffalo were not extinct ; when wild 
 pigeons came in clouds that shadowed 
 the sun ; when steamboats ran ou the San- 
 gamon ; when Bishop Simpson preached ; 
 when hell was a place, not a theory, and 
 heaven a locality whose fortunate inhab- 
 itants had no work to do ; when Chicago 
 newspapers were ten cents each ; when 
 cotton cloth was fifty cents a yard, and 
 my shirt was made from a flour sack, 
 with the legend, "Extra XXX " across my 
 proud bosom, and just below the words 
 in flaming red, " Warranted Fifty 
 Pounds ! ' ' 
 
 The mornings usually opened with 
 smothered protests against getting up, 
 for country folks then were extremists 
 in the matter of early-to-bed, early-to- 
 rise, makes-a-man-healthy-wealthy-and 
 wise. We had n't much wealth, nor 
 were we very wise, but we had health to 
 burn. But aside from the unpleasantness 
 of early morning, the day was full of pos- 
 sibilities ot curious things to be found in 
 400
 
 abrabam Eiiicoln 
 
 the barn and under spreading gooseberry 
 bushes, or if it rained, the garret was an 
 Alsatia unexplored. 
 
 The evolution of the individual mirrors 
 the evolution of the race. In the morn- 
 ing of the world man was innocent and 
 free ; but when self-consciousness crept 
 in and he possessed himself of that dis- 
 turbing motto, "Know Thyself," he 
 took a fall. 
 
 Yet knowledge usually comes to us 
 with a shock, just as the mixture crystal- 
 izes when the chemist gives the jar a tap. 
 We grow by throes. 
 
 I well remember the day when I was 
 put out of my Eden. 
 
 My father and mother had gone away 
 in the one-horse wagon, taking the baby 
 with them, leaving me in care of my 
 elder sister. It was a stormy day and the 
 air was full of fog and mist. It did not 
 rain very nmch, only in gusts, but great 
 leaden clouds chased each other angrily 
 across the sky. It was very quiet there 
 in the little house on the prairie, except- 
 401
 
 Bbrabam ILlncoln 
 
 iag when the wiud came and shook the 
 windows and rattled at the doors. The 
 morning seemed to drag and would n't 
 pass just out of contrariness ; and I 
 wanted it to go fast because in the after- 
 noon my sister was to take me some- 
 where, but where I did not know, but 
 that we should go somewhere was 
 promised again and again. 
 
 As the day wore on we went up into 
 the little garret and strained our eyes 
 across the stretching prairie to see if 
 someone was coming. There had been 
 much rain, for on the prairie there was 
 always too much rain or else too little. 
 It was either drouth or flood. Dark 
 swarms of wild ducks were in all the 
 ponds ; V-shaped flocks of geese and 
 brants screamed overhead, and down in 
 the slough cranes danced a solemn 
 minuet. 
 
 Again and again we looked for the 
 coming something, and I began to cry, 
 fearing we had been left there, forgotten 
 of fate. 
 
 402
 
 ■■-*;?-j^'^' 
 
 ■-3»»«*C5^ ' ■ /"■* ■ ■' .''1 
 
 
 -w
 
 abrabam Xtncotn 
 
 At last we went out by the barn and, 
 with much boosting, I climbed to the top 
 of the haystack and my sister followed. 
 And still we watched. 
 
 "There they come!" exclaimed my 
 sister. 
 
 "There they come!" I echoed, and 
 clapped two red, chapped hands for joy. 
 
 Away across the prairie, miles and 
 miles away, was a winding string of 
 wagons, a dozen perhaps, one right be- 
 hind another. We watched until we 
 could make out our own white horse, 
 Bob, and then we slid down the hickory- 
 pole that leaned against the stack, and 
 made our way across the spongy sod to 
 the burying-ground that stood on a knoll 
 half a mile away. 
 
 We got there before the procession, 
 and saw a great hole, with square corners, 
 dug in the ground. It was half full of 
 water, and a man in Vjare feet, with trous- 
 ers rolled to his knees, was working in- 
 dustriously to bale it out. 
 
 The wagons drove up and stopped. 
 403
 
 Bbrabam Xincoln 
 
 And out of one of them four men lifted 
 a long box and set it down beside the 
 hole where the man still baled and 
 dipped. The box was opened and in it 
 was Si Johnson. Si lay very still, and his 
 face was verj- blue, and his clothes were 
 very black, save for his shirt, which was 
 very white, and his hands were folded 
 across his breast, just so, and held awk- 
 wardh- in the stiff fingers was a little 
 New Testament. We all looked at the 
 blue face, and the women cried softly. 
 The men took off their hats while the 
 preacher prayed ; and then we sang, 
 " There '11 be no more parting there." 
 
 The lid of the box was nailed down, 
 lines were taken from the harness of one 
 of the teams standing by, and were placed 
 around the long box, and it was lowered 
 with a splash into the hole. Then sev- 
 eral men seized spades and the clods fell 
 with clatter and echo. The men shoveled 
 verj- hard, filling up the hole, and when 
 it was full and heaped up, they patted it 
 all over with the back of their spades. 
 404
 
 Bbrabam Xtncolu 
 
 Everybody remained uutil this was 
 done, and then we got into the wagons 
 and drove away. 
 
 Nearly a dozen ol the folks came over 
 to our house for dinner, including the 
 preacher, and they all talked of the man 
 who was dead and how he came to die. 
 
 Only two days before, this man, Si 
 Johnson, stood in the doorway of his 
 house and looked out at the falling rain. 
 It had rained for three days, so that they 
 could not plough, and Si was angry. Be- 
 sides this, his two brothers had enlisted 
 and gone away to the war and left him all 
 the work to do. He did not go to the 
 war because he was a " Copperhead " ; 
 and as he stood there in the doorway 
 looking at the rain, he took a chew of 
 tobacco, and then he swore a terrible 
 oath. 
 
 And ere the swear words had escaped 
 from his lips, there came a blinding flash 
 of lightning, and the man fell all in a 
 heap like a sack of oats. 
 
 And he was dead. 
 
 405
 
 Bbrabam Xincoln 
 
 Whether he died because he was a 
 Copperhead, or because he took a chew 
 of tobacco, or because he swore, I could 
 not exactly understand. I waited for a 
 convenient lull in the conversation and 
 asked the preacher why the man died, and 
 he patted me on the head and told me it 
 was " the vengeance of God," and that he 
 hoped I would grow up and be a good 
 man and never chew tobacco nor swear. 
 
 The preacher is alive now. He is an 
 old, old man with long, white whiskers, 
 and I never see him but that I am tempted 
 to ask for the exact truth as to why Si 
 Johnson was struck by lightning. 
 
 Yet I suppose it was because he was a 
 Copperhead : all Copperheads chewed 
 tobacco and swore, and that his fate was 
 merited no one but the living Copper- 
 heads in that community doubted. 
 
 That was an eventful day to me. Like 
 men whose hair turns from black to gray 
 in a night, 1 had left babyhood behind at 
 a bound, and the problems of the world 
 were upon me, clamoring for solution. 
 406
 
 II. 
 
 THERE was war in the land. When 
 it began I did not know, but that 
 it was something terrible I could 
 guess. I thought of it all the rest of the 
 day and dreamed of it at night. Many 
 men had gone away ; and every day men 
 in blue straggled by, all going south, for- 
 ever south. 
 
 And all the men straggling along that 
 road stopped to get a drink at our well, 
 drawing the water with the sweep and 
 drinking out of the bucket, and squirting 
 a mouthful of water over each other. 
 They looked at my father's creaking doc- 
 tor's sign, and sang, " Old Mother Hub- 
 bard, she went to the cupboard." 
 
 They all sang that. They were very 
 
 jolly, just as though they were going to a 
 
 picnic. Some of them came back that 
 
 way a few years later and they were not 
 
 407
 
 Bbiabam Xlticoln 
 
 so jolly. And some there were who never 
 came back at all. 
 
 Freight trains passed southward, blue 
 with men in the cars and on top of the 
 cars, and on the cow-catcher, and in the 
 caboose, always going south and never 
 north. For "Down South" were manj* 
 Rebels, and all along the way south were 
 Copperheads, and they all wanted to come 
 north and kill us, so soldiers had to go 
 down there and fight them. 
 
 And I marveled much that if God hated 
 Copperheads, as our preacher said He did, 
 why He did n't send lightning and kill 
 them, just in a second, as He had Si 
 Johnson. And then all that would have 
 to be done would be to send for a doctor 
 to see that they were surely dead, and a 
 preacher to pray, and the neighbors 
 would dress them in their best Sunday 
 suits of black, folding their hands very 
 carefully across their breasts, then we 
 would bury them deep, filling in the dirt 
 and heaping it up, patting it all down 
 very carefully with the back of a spade, 
 408
 
 abrabam TLincoln 
 
 and then go away and leave them until 
 Judgment Day. 
 
 Copperheads were simply men who 
 hated Lincoln. The name came from 
 copperhead snakes, that are worse than 
 rattlers, for rattlers rattle and give warn- 
 ing. A rattler is an open enemy, but you 
 never know that a copperhead is aroimd 
 until he strikes. He lies low in the swale 
 and watches his chance. "He is the 
 worstest snake that am." 
 
 It was Abe Lincoln of Springfield who 
 was fighting the Rebels that were trying 
 to wreck the country and spread red ruin. 
 The Copperheads were wicked folks at the 
 north who sided with the Rebels. So- 
 ciety was divided into two classes : those 
 who favored Abe Lincoln, and those who 
 told lies about him. All the people I 
 knew and loved, loved Abe Lincoln. 
 
 I was born at Bloomington, Illinois, 
 through no choosing of my own, and 
 Bloomington is further famous for being 
 the birthplace of the Republican party. 
 When a year old I persuaded my parents 
 409
 
 abrabam ILlncoln 
 
 to move seven miles north to the village 
 of Hudson, that then had five houses, a 
 church, a store, and a blacksmith shop. 
 Many of the people I knew, knew Lin- 
 coln, for he used to come to Bloomington 
 several times a year " on the circuit " to 
 try cases, and at various times made 
 speeches there. When he came he would 
 tell stories at the Ashley House, and when 
 he was gone these stories would be re- 
 peated by everybody. Some of these 
 stories must have been peculiar, for I 
 once heard mj' mother caution my father 
 not to tell any more " Ivincolu stories " at 
 the dinner-table when we had company. 
 
 And once Lincoln gave a lecture at the 
 Presbyterian church on the " Progress 
 of Man," when no one was there but the 
 preacher, my Aunt Hannah, and the 
 sexton. 
 
 My Uncle Elihu and Aunt Hannah 
 knew Abe Lincoln well. So did Jesse 
 Fell, James C. Conklin, Judge Davis, 
 General Orme, Leonard Swett, Dick 
 Yates, and lots of others I knew. They 
 410
 
 
 
 
 -. o
 
 Bbrabam OLincoln 
 
 never called him "Mister Lincoln," but 
 it was always Abe, or Old Abe, or just 
 plain Abe Ivincoln. In that newly settled 
 country you always called folks by their 
 first names, especially when you liked 
 them. And when they spoke the name, 
 " Abe Lincoln," there was something in 
 the voice that told of confidence, respect, 
 and affection. 
 
 Once when I was at my Aunt Hannah's, 
 Judge Davis was there and I sat on his 
 lap. The only thing about the interview 
 I remember was that he really did n't 
 have any lap to speak of. 
 
 After Judge Davis had gone Aunt Han- 
 nah said : "You must always remember 
 Judge Davis, for he is the man who made 
 Abe Lincoln ! " 
 
 And when I said, "Why, I thought 
 God made Lincoln," they all laughed. 
 
 After a little pause my inquiring mind 
 caused me to ask, " Who made Judge 
 Davis?" And Uncle Elihu answered, 
 " Abe Lincoln." 
 
 Then they all laughed more than ever. 
 4n
 
 III. 
 
 VOLUNTEERS were being called 
 for. Neighbors and neighbors' 
 boys were enlisting — going to 
 the support of Abe Lincoln. 
 
 Then one day my father went away, 
 too. Many of the neighbors went with 
 us to the station when he took the four- 
 o'clock train, and we all cried, except 
 Mother — she did n't cry until she got 
 home. My father had gone to Springfield 
 to enlist as a surgeon. In three days he 
 came back and told us he had enlisted, 
 and was to be assigned his regiment in a 
 week, and go at once to the front. He 
 was always a kind man, but during that 
 week when he was waiting to be told 
 where to go he was very gentle and more 
 kind than ever. He told me I must be 
 the man of :':e ''.ouse while he was away, 
 412
 
 Bbrabam Xliicoln 
 
 and take care of my mother and sisters, 
 and not forget to feed the chickens every 
 morning ; and I promised. 
 
 At the end of the week a big envelope 
 came from Springfield marked in the cor- 
 ner " Official." 
 
 My mother would not open it, and so it 
 lay on the table until the doctor's return. 
 We all looked at it curiously, and my 
 eldest sister gazed on it long with lack- 
 lustre eye and then rushed from the room 
 with her check apron over her head. 
 
 When my father rode up ou horseback 
 I ran to tell him that the envelope had 
 come. 
 
 We all stood breathless and watched 
 him break the seals. 
 
 He took out the letter and read it si- 
 lently and passed it to my mother. 
 
 I have the letter before me now, and it 
 says: "The Department is still of the 
 opinion that it does not care to accept 
 men having varicose veins, which make 
 the wearing of bandages necessary. Your 
 name, however, has been filed and 
 413
 
 Bbrabam Xlncoln 
 
 should we be able to use your services, 
 will advise." 
 
 Then we were all very glad about the 
 varicose veins, and I am afraid I went 
 out and boasted to my play-fellows about 
 our family possessions. 
 
 It was not so very long after that there 
 was a Big Meeting in the " timber." 
 People came from all over the county 
 to attend it. The chief speaker was a 
 man by the name of Ingersoll, a colonel 
 in the army, who was back home for 
 just a day or two on furlough. People 
 said he was the greatest orator in Peoria 
 County. 
 
 Early in the morning the wagons began 
 to go by our house, and all along the four 
 roads that led to the grove we could see 
 great clouds of dust that stretched away 
 for miles and miles and told that the 
 people were gathering by the thousand. 
 They came in wagons and on horseback? 
 and on foot and with ox teams. Women 
 rode on horseback carrying babies ; two 
 boys on one horse were common sights ; 
 414
 
 Bbrabam OLincolii 
 
 and there were various four-horse teams 
 with wagons filled with girls all dressed 
 in white, carrying flags. 
 
 All of our folks went. My mother fas- 
 tened the back door of our house with a 
 bolt on the inside, and then locked the 
 front door with a key, and hid the key 
 under the door-mat. 
 
 At the grove there was nmch hand- 
 shaking and visiting and asking after 
 the folks and for the news. Several sol- 
 diers were present ; among them a man 
 who lived near us, called "Little Ram- 
 sey." Three one-armed men were there, 
 and a man named Al Sweetser, who had 
 only one leg. These men wore blue, and 
 were seated on the big platform that was 
 all draped with flags. Plank seats were 
 arranged, and every plank held its quota. 
 Just outside the seats hundreds of men 
 stood, and beyond these were wagons 
 filled with people. Every tree in the 
 woods seemed to have a horse tied to it, 
 and the trees over the speakers' platform 
 were black with men and boys. I never 
 4T5
 
 Bbrabam Xtncoln 
 
 knew before that there were so many 
 horses and people in the world. 
 
 When the speaking began the people 
 cheered, and then they became very quiet, 
 and only the occasional squealing and 
 stamping of the horses could be heard. 
 Our preacher spoke first, and then the 
 lawyer from Bloomington, and then came 
 the great man from Peoria. The people 
 cheered more than ever when he stood 
 up, and kept hurrahing so long I thought 
 they were not going to let him speak 
 at all. 
 
 At last they quieted down, and the 
 speaker began. His first sentence con- 
 tained a reference to Abe Lincoln. The 
 people applauded, and someone proposed 
 three cheers for " Honest Old Abe." 
 Everybody stood up and cheered, 
 and I, perched on my father's shoulder, 
 cheered too. And beneath the legend, 
 " Warranted Fifty Pounds," my heart 
 beat proudly. 
 
 Silence came at last — a silence filled 
 only by the neighing and stamping of 
 416
 
 Bbiabam Ulncoln 
 
 liorses and the rapping of a woodpecker 
 in a tall tree. Every ear was strained to 
 catch the orator's first words. 
 
 The speaker was just about to begin. 
 He raised one hand, but ere his lips 
 moved, a hoarse, guttural shout echoed 
 through the woods : " Hurrah'h'h for 
 Jeff Davis ! ! ! " 
 
 " Kill that man ! " rang a sharp, clear 
 voice in instant answer. 
 
 A rumble like an awful groan came 
 from the vast crowd. 
 
 My father was standing on a seat, and 
 I had climbed to his shoulder. The 
 crowd surged like a monster animal to- 
 ward a tall man standing alone in a 
 wagon. He swung a black-snake whip 
 around him, and the lash fell savagely 
 on two gray horses. At a lunge, the 
 horses, the wagon, and the tall man had 
 cleared the crowd, knocking down sev- 
 eral people in their flight. One man 
 clung to the tail-board. The whip wound 
 with a hiss and a crack across his face, 
 and he fell stunned in the roadway. 
 417
 
 Sbrabam Xincoln 
 
 A clear space of fully three hundred 
 feet now separated the man in the wagon 
 from the great throng, that with ten thou- 
 sand hands seemed ready to tear him limb 
 from limb. Revolver shots rang out, 
 women screamed, and trampled children 
 cried for help. Above it all was the roar 
 of the mob. The orator, in vain panto- 
 mime, implored order. 
 
 I saw Little Ramsey drop off the limb 
 of a tree astride of a horse that was 
 tied beneath, then lean over, and with 
 one stroke of a knife sever the halter. 
 
 At the same time fifty other men seemed 
 to have done the same thing, for flying 
 horses shot out from different parts of 
 the woods, all on the instant. The man 
 in the wagon was half a mile away now, 
 still standing erect. The gray horses 
 were running low, with noses and tails 
 outstretched. 
 
 The spread-out riders closed in a mass 
 
 and followed at terrific speed. The crowd 
 
 behind seemed to grow silent. We heard 
 
 the patter-patter of barefoot horses as- 
 
 418
 
 Bbiabani ILiiicoln 
 
 cending the long, low hill. One rider on 
 a sorrel horse fell behind. He drew his 
 horse to one side, and sitting over with 
 one foot in the long stirrup, plied the 
 sorrel across the flank with a big, white 
 felt hat. The horse responded, and crept 
 around to the front of the flying mass. 
 
 The wagon had disappeared over a 
 gentle rise of ground, and then we lost 
 the horsemen, too. Still we watched, 
 and two miles across the prairie we got a 
 glimpse of running horses in a cloud of 
 dust, and into another valley they set- 
 tled, and then we lost them for good. 
 
 The speaking began again and went on 
 amid applause and tears, with laughter 
 set between. 
 
 I do not remember what was said, but, 
 after the speaking, as we made our way 
 homeward, we met Little Ramsey and 
 the young man who rode the sorrel horse. 
 They told us that they caught the Copper- 
 head after a ten-mile chase, and that he 
 was badly hurt, for the wagon had upset 
 and the fellow was beneath it. Ramsey 
 419
 
 Bbrabam ^Lincoln 
 
 asked my father to go at once to see 
 what could be done for him. 
 
 The man was quite dead when my 
 father reached him. There was a purple 
 mark around his neck ; and the opinion 
 seetned to be that he had got tangled up 
 in the harness or something. 
 
 420
 
 IV. 
 
 THE war-time months went dragging 
 by, and the burden of gloom in 
 the air seemed to lift ; for when 
 the Chicago Tribune was read each even- 
 ing in the post-office it told of victories 
 on land and sea. Yet it was a joy not 
 untinged with black ; for in the church 
 across from our house, funerals had been 
 held for farmer boys who had died in 
 prison pens and been buried in Georgia 
 trenches. 
 
 One youth there was, I remember, who 
 had stopped to get a drink at our pump, 
 and squirted a mouthful of water over 
 me because I was handy. 
 
 One night the postmaster was reading 
 aloud the names of the killed at Gettys- 
 burg, and he ran right on to the name of 
 this boy. The boy's father sat there on a 
 421
 
 Bbrabam Xfncoln 
 
 nail-keg, chewing a straw. The post- 
 master tried to shuffle over the name 
 and on to the next. 
 
 " Hi ! Wha — what 's that you said? " 
 
 "Killed in honorable battle — Snyder, 
 Hiram," said the postmaster with a 
 forced calmness, determined to face the 
 issue. 
 
 The boy's father stood up with a jerk. 
 Then he sat down. Then he stood up 
 again and staggered his way to the door 
 and fumbled for the latch like a blind 
 man. 
 
 " God help him ! he 's gone to tell the 
 old woman," said the postmaster as he 
 blew his nose on a red handkerchief. 
 
 The preacher preached a funeral ser- 
 mon for the boy, and on the little 
 pyramid that marked the family lot in 
 the burying-ground they carved the in- 
 scription : "Killed in honorable battle, 
 Hiram Snyder, aged nineteen." 
 
 Not long after, strange, yellow, bearded 
 men iu faded blue began to arrive. 
 Great welcomes were given them ; and at 
 422
 
 Bbrabam Xincoln 
 
 the regular Wednesday eveniug prayer- 
 meeting thanksgivings were poured out 
 for their safe return, with names of com- 
 pany and regiment duly mentioned for 
 the Lord's better identification. Bees 
 were held for some of these returned 
 farmers, where twenty teams and fifty 
 men, old and young, did a season's farm 
 work in a day, and split enough wood for 
 a year. At such times the women would 
 bring big baskets of provisions and long 
 tables would be set, and there were very 
 jolly times, with cracking of many jokes 
 that were veterans, and the day would 
 end with pitching horse-shoes, and at 
 last with singing " Auld Lang Syne." 
 
 It was at one such gathering that a 
 ghost appeared — a lank, saffron ghost, 
 ragged as a scarecrow — wearing a foolish 
 smile and the cape of a cavalryman's 
 overcoat with no coat beneath it. The 
 apparition was a youth of about twenty, 
 with a downy beard all over his face, and 
 countenance well mellowed with coal 
 soot, as though he had ridden several 
 423
 
 Bbrabam Xincoln 
 
 days on top of a freight-car that was near 
 the engine. 
 
 This ghost was Hiram Snyder. 
 
 All forgave him the shock of surprise 
 he caused us — all except the minister who 
 had preached his funeral sermon. Years 
 after I heard this minister remark in a 
 solemn, grieved tone : " Hiram Snyder is 
 a man who cannot be relied on." 
 
 4^4
 
 V. 
 
 As the years pass, the miracle of the 
 seasons means less to us. But 
 what country boy can forget the 
 turning of the leaves from green to gold, 
 and the watchings and waitings for the 
 first hard frost that ushers in the nutting 
 season ! And then the first fall of snow, 
 with its promise of skates and sleds and 
 tracks of rabbits, and mayhap bears, and 
 strange animals that only come out at 
 night, and that no human eye has ever 
 seen ! 
 
 Beautiful are the seasons ; and glad I 
 am that I have not yet quite lost my love 
 for each. But now they parade past with 
 a curious swiftness ! They look at me out 
 of wistful eyes, and sometimes one calls 
 to me as she goes by and asks, " Why 
 have you done so little since I saw you 
 425
 
 abrabam Xincoiti 
 
 last ? " And I can only answer, "I was 
 thinking of you." 
 
 I do not need another incarnation tolive 
 my life over again. I can do that now, 
 and the resurrection of the past, through 
 memory, that sees through closed eyes, is 
 just as satisfactory as the thing itself. 
 
 Were we talking of the seasons ? Very 
 well, dearie, the seasons it shall be. They 
 are all charming, but if I were to wed any 
 it would be spring. How well I remem- 
 ber the gentle perfume of her comings, 
 and her warm, languid breath ! 
 
 There was a time when I would go out 
 of the house some morning, and the snow 
 would be melting, and spring would kiss 
 my cheek, and then I would be all aglow 
 with joy and would burst into the house, 
 and cry: "Spring is here! spring is 
 here!" For you know we always have 
 to divide our joy with someone. One 
 can bear grief, but it takes two to be glad. 
 
 And then my mother would smile 
 and say, "Yes, my son, but do not wake 
 the baby ! " 
 
 426
 
 u 
 
 A<ryCZi^ <^-;t/wCC .^Ajt-Cou^ iSU #v j4-ii^»-^/tA««W 
 
 FACSIMILE OF LINCOLN'S GETTVSBURG ADDKLSS, 
 
 <^ii..^.Cr»*— /:^<y Ot.r^^-^'-'O, #JW/^J-«-«-o a^^^A-f^c^ 
 fh^vt^ -^Tiff^ I'^'^iCtr -p^ty »Ola<J -#w-iJ3, JxTM-^^i 
 
 
 t,j~tj ^Ki^j^ -^jijf^^ /u-ur^i^ Jb^^- ^::^tj^ oi'iA.iy fi-^-eO 
 
 .Uyt.,„U^ ■^^tf'^i /-^rufe/ /K»-if^ o^ (Ir^M- .^tvZ^ 
 
 £y P^ kjLr^^Ju, ^-f:^ hjur^fjio /-^Mjejit (h^^Aa^ 
 
 O
 
 Bbrabam Xincoln 
 
 Then I would go out and watch the 
 snow turn to water, and run down the 
 road iu little rivulets to the creek, that 
 would swell until it became a regular Mis- 
 sissippi, so that when we waded the horse 
 across, the water would come to the 
 saddle-girth. 
 
 Then once, I remember, the bridge was 
 washed away, and all the teams had to go 
 around and through the water, and some 
 used to get stuck in the mud on the other 
 bank. It was great fun ! 
 
 The first "spring beauties" bloomed 
 very early that year ; violets came out on 
 the south side of rotting logs, and cow- 
 slips blossomed in the slough as they 
 never had done before. Over on the 
 knoll, prairie chickens strutted pom- 
 pously and proudly drummed. 
 
 The war was over ! Lincoln had won, 
 and the country was safe ! 
 
 The jubilee was infectious, and the 
 neighbors who used to come and visit us 
 would tell of the men and boys who would 
 soon be back. 
 
 427
 
 Bbrabam Lincoln 
 
 The war was over ! 
 
 My father and mother talked of it 
 across the table, and the men talked of it 
 at the store, and earth, sky, and water 
 called to each other in glad relief, " The 
 war is over ! " 
 
 But there came a morning when my 
 father walked up from the railroad-sta- 
 tion very fast, and looking very serious. 
 He pushed right past me as I sat in 
 the doorway. I followed him into the 
 kitchen where my mother was washing 
 dishes, and heard him say, "They have 
 killed Lincoln !" and then he burst into 
 tears. 
 
 I had never before seen my father shed 
 tears — in fact I had never seen a man cry. 
 There is something terrible in the grief 
 of a man. 
 
 Soon the church-bell across the road 
 began to toll. It tolled all that day. 
 Three men — I can give you their names — 
 rang the bell all day long, tolling, slowly 
 tolling, tolling until night came and the 
 stars came out. I thought it a little curi- 
 428
 
 Bbrabam Xincoln 
 
 ons tbat the stars should come out, for 
 Ivincoln was dead; but they did, for I saw 
 them as I trotted by my father's side 
 down to the post-office. 
 
 There was a great crowd of men there. 
 At the long line of peeled hickory hitch- 
 ing poles were dozens of saddle-horses. 
 The farmers had come for miles to get 
 details of the news. 
 
 On the long counters that ran down 
 each side of the store men were seated, 
 swinging their feet, and listening intently 
 to someone who was reading aloud from 
 a newspaper. We worked our way past 
 the men who were standing about, and 
 with several of these my father shook 
 hands solemnly. 
 
 Leaning against the wall near the win- 
 dow was a big, red-faced man, whom I 
 knew as a Copperhead. He had been 
 drinking, evidently, for he was making 
 boozy efforts to stand very straight. 
 There were only heard a subdued buzz of 
 whispers and the monotonous voice of 
 the reader, as he stood there in the cen- 
 429
 
 Bbrnbam Hincoln 
 
 tre, his newspaper in one hand and a 
 lighted candle in the other. 
 
 The red-faced man lurched two steps 
 forward, and in a loud voice said : " L — 
 L — Lincoln is dead, — an' I 'm damn glad 
 ofit!" 
 
 Across the room I saw two men strug- 
 gling with Little Ramsey. Why they 
 should struggle with him I could not im- 
 agine, but ere I could thiuk the matter 
 out, I saw him shake himself loose from 
 the strong hands that sought to hold him. 
 He sprang upon the counter, and in one 
 hand I saw he held a scale-weight. Just 
 an instant he stood there, and then the 
 weight shot straight at the red-faced man. 
 The missile glanced on his shoulder and 
 shot through the window. In another 
 second the red-faced man plunged 
 through the window, taking the entire 
 sash with him. 
 
 " You '11 have to pay for that window," 
 called the alarmed postmaster out into 
 the night. 
 
 The store was quickly emptied, and on 
 430
 
 Bbrabam ILincolii 
 
 following outside no trace of the red man 
 could be found. The earth had swal- 
 lowed both the man and the five-pound 
 scale-weight. 
 
 After some minutes had passed in a 
 vain search for the weight and the Cop- 
 perhead, we went back into the store and 
 the reading was continued. 
 
 But the interruption had relieved the 
 tension, and for the first time that day 
 men in that post-ofiice joked and laughed. 
 It even lifted from my heart the gloom 
 that threatened to smother me, and I 
 went home and told the story to my 
 mother and sisters, and they too smiled, 
 so closely akin are tears and smiles. 
 
 431
 
 IV 
 
 THE story of Lincoln's life had been 
 ingrained into uie long before I 
 ever read a book. For the peo- 
 ple who knew Lincoln, and the peo- 
 ple who knew the people that Lincoln 
 knew, were the only people I knew. I 
 visited at their houses and heard them 
 tell what Lincoln had said when he sat 
 at table where I then sat. I listened long 
 to Lincoln stories, "and that reminds 
 me " was often on the lips of those I 
 loved. All the tales told by the faithful 
 Herndon and the needlessly loyal Nicolay 
 and Hay were current coin, and the re- 
 hearsal of the Lincoln-Douglas debate 
 was commonplace. 
 
 When our own poverty was mentioned, 
 we compared it with the poverty that 
 Lincoln had endured, and felt rich. I 
 432
 
 2lStabam aitncoln 
 
 slept in a garret where the winter's snow 
 used to sift merrily through the slab 
 shingles, but then I was covered with 
 warm buffalo robes, and a loving mother 
 tucked me in and on my forehead im- 
 printed a good-night kiss. But Lincoln at 
 the same age had no mother and lived in a 
 hut that had neither windows, doors, nor 
 floor, and a pile of leaves and straw in the 
 corner was his bed. Our house had two 
 rooms, but one winter the Lincoln home 
 was only a shed enclosed on three sides. 
 I knew of his being a clerk iu a country 
 store at the age of twenty, and that up 
 to that time he had read but four books ; 
 of his running a flat-boat, splitting rails, 
 and poring at night over a dog-eared law- 
 book ; of his asking to sleep in the law 
 office of Joshua Speed, and of Speed's 
 giving him permission to move in. And 
 of his going away after his " worldly 
 goods " and coming back in ten minutes 
 carrying an old pair of saddle-bags which 
 he threw into a corner saying, "Speed, 
 I 've moved ! " 
 
 433
 
 atjrabam Xtncoln 
 
 I knew of his twenty years of country 
 law-practice, when he was considered 
 just about as good and no better than a 
 dozen others on that circuit, and of his 
 making a bare living during the time. 
 Then I knew of his gradually awakening 
 to the wrong of slavery, of the expansion 
 of his mind, so that he began to incur 
 the jealousy of rivals and the hatred of 
 enemies, and of the prophetic feeling in 
 that slow- but sure-moving mind that " A 
 house divided against itself cannot stand. 
 I believe this Government cannot endure 
 permanently half slave and half free." 
 
 I knew of the debates with Douglas 
 and the national attention they attracted, 
 and of Judge Davis's remark, " Lincoln 
 has more common-sense than any man 
 in America" ; and then, chiefly through 
 Judge Davis's influence, of his being nom- 
 inated for President at the Chicago Con- 
 vention. I knew of his election, and 
 the coming of the war, and the long, 
 hard fight, when friends and foes beset 
 and none but he had the patience and 
 434
 
 Bbiabam Xlncoln 
 
 the courage that could wait. And then I 
 knew of his death, that death which then 
 seemed a calamity — terrible in its awful 
 blackness. 
 
 But now the years have passed, and I 
 comprehend somewhat of the paradox of 
 things, and I know that this death was 
 just what he might have prayed for. It 
 was a fitting close for a life that had 
 done a supreme and mighty work. 
 
 His face foretold the end. 
 
 Lincoln had no home ties. In that 
 plain, frame house, without embellished 
 yard or ornament, where I have been so 
 often, there was no love that held him 
 fast. In that house there was no library, 
 but in the parlor, where six haircloth 
 chairs and a slippery sofa to match stood 
 guard, was a marble table on which were 
 various gift-books in blue and gilt. He 
 only turned to that home when there was 
 no other place to go. Politics, with its 
 attendant travel and excitement, allowed 
 him to forget the what-might-have-beens. 
 Foolish bickering, silly pride, and stupid 
 435
 
 abrabam Xincoln 
 
 misunderstanding pushed him out upon 
 the streets and he sought to lose himself 
 among the people. And to the people 
 at length he gave his time, his talents, 
 his love, his life. Fate look from him 
 his home that the country' might call him 
 savior. Dire tragedy was a fitting end ; 
 for only the souls who have suffered are 
 well loved. 
 
 Jealousy, disparagement, calumny, 
 have all made way and North and South 
 alike revere his name. 
 
 The memory of his gentleness, his 
 patience, his firm faith, and his great and 
 loving heart are the priceless heritage of 
 a united land. He had charity for all 
 and malice toward none ; he gave affec- 
 tion, and affection is his reward. 
 
 Honor and love are his. 
 
 436
 
 By MARION HARLAND 
 
 Some Colonial Homesteads 
 
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