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 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 IP
 
 A MEMORY OF 
 
 ROSWELL SMITH 
 
 BORN MARCH 30, 1829 
 DIED APRIL 19, 1892 
 
 PRIVATELY PRINTED
 
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 2) tp'^i L^ ^ 
 
 THIS TRIBUTE HAS BEEN PREPARED 
 
 AT THE SUGGESTION OF THE WIFE AND DAUGHTER 
 
 OF ROSWELL SMITH BY HIS FRIEND 
 
 GEORGE W. CABLE 
 
 125?^ :1:^
 
 A MEMORY OF ROSWELL SMITH 
 
 -^^g^^^HEN those we love die, even after 
 5^\V/"^ we may have attained to resignation 
 i Vt rf) and risen to meet again the duties 
 "■"^SS^^^ and endearments that remain to us 
 
 
 in our visible world, there linger within our hearts 
 a craving and an unrepose until our eulogies 
 have supplied — so far as mere words can — full 
 definition and appraisement of our loss, and justi- 
 fied our love and sorrow. 
 
 Those whose values have been large in civil 
 affairs have sometimes been finest, best, in rela- 
 tions of which the civic world can say but little. 
 Not any one voice or semichorus from any one 
 direction can or should satisfy the ear of those 
 who mourn them most. The total dues of their 
 praise can issue only from the full chords of all 
 relationships. Such was he to whose memory
 
 Roswell Smith 
 
 are offered these pages gathered from the tributes 
 of many friends and lovers. 
 
 Roswell Smith was born on the thirtieth of 
 March, 1829. His birthplace, the small town 
 of Lebanon, in southeastern Connecticut, is situ- 
 ated in a thickly settled region of great natural 
 beauty. The clear, rocky streams of the Yantic, 
 the Thames, and lesser waters, hurrying among 
 its green, stone-walled hills, slender woods and 
 fence-rows and flowery meadows, yield abundant 
 mill-power to a strong-armed, strong-minded 
 population habituated from long-gone genera- 
 tions to give their best energies, in material as 
 well as in intangible things, to the development 
 of their secondary and higher values. North- 
 ward and southward from it, an easy hour's drive 
 either way, shine by summer day and winter 
 night the countless factory windows of Willi- 
 mantic and Norwich. 
 
 In Lebanon, among other venerated homes, 
 stands the house of that Trumbull family so 
 notedly related — with Washington's "Brother 
 Jonathan" at its head — to so much that was 
 good and best in the State's and the nation's 
 Revolutionary and later politics and art; and in 
 this home, his father having acquired it, Roswell
 
 Roswell Smith 
 
 Smith passed his boyhood. His father was a 
 man of strong integrity, his mother quietly faith- 
 ful to every virtue of her sphere. They held by 
 long inheritance, and even with something of 
 their ancestors' rigid scrupulosity and literal faith, 
 the Puritan habit of mind. Industry of hand 
 and of mind ; fidelity ; rigorous justice in all re- 
 lations ; prudence of purse and of word — with, 
 possibly, an implied mistrust of poetic impulses 
 and an approbation of emotional reticence; moral 
 courage and indignation ; a reverence for the 
 Bible as the only and perfect word of God ; the 
 common-school education of the day : these they 
 sought to bestow upon their son as the true and 
 sufficient equipment with which to take his place 
 in the world of human affairs. 
 
 Such was the mold on its various sides — na- 
 ture, society, household, and moral training — in 
 which his life took its early form and features. 
 Those whose first acquaintance with him began 
 after he had entered manhood have to confess it 
 equally difficult to think of him either as a bois- 
 terous, prankish boy or as a sad or soft-mannered 
 lad given to books and reverie. Cheerful, dig- 
 nified, and sententious he undoubtedly was, and 
 that incessant diligence of mind and purpose so
 
 Roswell Smith 
 
 prominent in his strong, kind, adult life must 
 have shown itself early, and made mere play the 
 slender, handsome youth's least interesting and 
 most difficult work. Certainly such was the la- 
 ment of his nearest friends concerning him when 
 in later years a stronger capability for pure diver- 
 sion might have prolonged his days and his use- 
 fulness. Whether it came by birth, environment, 
 training, or all, to plan work was his true play. 
 He began each day with plans as spontaneously 
 and unlaboriously as birds begin it with songs. 
 He was not incapable of momentary desponden- 
 cies, but they were never narrowed to mere self- 
 concern ; he seemed scarcely to know at all the 
 cares of this world. But that divine thing, the 
 care of this world, was ever on his ardent heart; 
 and this care, with the redundant fertility of the 
 plans that were forever springing from it, gave, 
 or gives now, certainly, fine and ample inter- 
 pretation to what, in his youth, seemed to his 
 solicitous father first a premature restlessness, and 
 then a tardy vacillation, in the son's choice of a 
 calling. 
 
 It is but just to say that his going into com- 
 mercial employment when scant fourteen, serv- 
 ing "a brief apprenticeship with the publishers ot
 
 Ro swell Smith 
 
 the school-books of his uncle Roswell C. Smith, 
 in New York," was no choice of his. This was 
 the only time in his life that he was ever an 
 employee. It was against his nature so to be. 
 Many a day of his early manhood this lack — 
 this noble deficiency, if we may so call it — cost 
 him dear, yet served him well ; and he who knew 
 so well how to be generously just and wisely 
 kind to employees of every rank, professional, 
 commercial, industrial, domestic, could fairly 
 boast through all his life with the amplest range 
 of significance, standing in the world's market- 
 place, " No man hath hired me." He was a 
 maste'' workman born, and seems to have felt 
 it when, at seventeen, he pleaded for a better 
 education, and turned back again by eager pref- 
 erence to studies and school, "taking up and 
 finishing the English course in Brown Univer- 
 sity." Here was no uncertainty of will, but a 
 swift widening of his young grasp upon life and 
 the world's affairs. 
 
 With a ruling impulse not only to conceive 
 and to carry out large designs, but to view and to 
 do all things largely, Roswell Smith had also 
 in strong degree the knowledge of how to wait 
 and the courage to change his course. His 
 
 5
 
 Roswell Smith 
 
 waiting was observant, purposeful, diligent, 
 never supine ; and his turning aside from a 
 mistaken path was invariably prompt and with- 
 out a note of chagrin. His changes of direction 
 were not changes of purpose. From the uni- 
 versity in Providence he went to Hartford and 
 studied law. Here and thus early he began to 
 show the deep interest and to take the active 
 practical part in distinctly religious work and af- 
 fairs which were ever afterward a part of his life. 
 Here lived his uncle Roswell C. Smith, within 
 whose social and household circles he came 
 into range of some especially refining and in- 
 spiring influences, chief among them the com- 
 panionship ot his uncle's daughter, his beloved 
 " sister-cousin," as he always regarded her. In 
 the company of his uncle he was brought for 
 the second time into close contact with the idea 
 of making and publishing books, and seems to 
 have consciously caught somewhat of its in- 
 fluence. 
 
 In Hartford lived also some of the distin 
 guished Ellsworth family, and among them, also, 
 he made acquaintances and one or two positive 
 friendships, which presently were to have a con- 
 trolling effect upon the current of his life. Ex- 
 
 6
 
 Roswell Smith 
 
 Governor Ellsworth and his household were here, 
 and his brother Henry L. Ellsworth, the first 
 United States Commissioner of Patents, had 
 gone into the West, entered large tracts of 
 Government land in Illinois, and in Lafayette, 
 Indiana, had set up, after the fashion of the 
 times, a law- and land-office. Here his business 
 soon developed the need of an assistant, and 
 through the medium of one or two ot the kin- 
 dred still resident in Hartford the place was 
 offered to Roswell Smith. 
 
 The young law-student promptly accepted 
 it. To him it is altogether likely this was no 
 departure from an appointed course. With 
 all his planning he never overplanned — never 
 planned too elaborately nor too fast. He be- 
 lieved in the coming greatness of our country ; 
 he felt the movings of his own still unperfected 
 powers; and he was full of that strong common 
 sense which seizes unforeseen occasion as it 
 hurries by, and distinguishes between the false 
 and the real opportunity under all their dis- 
 guises. He could act as quickly as he could 
 wait patiently. 
 
 His purposes, never hard and fixed, always 
 had a greatness which spanned the waves ot
 
 Roswell Smith 
 
 impatience with an even keel. His designs, 
 even his yearnings, — and his yearnings were not 
 tew, — took ever calmly into account the whole 
 wide current of universal interests ; the world, 
 to him, was never less than round, and yet never 
 had an unseen side. He "waited God's leisure," 
 and matched it with his own alacrity. To be out 
 of partnership with God in time seemed to him 
 as idle and as evil as to be so in purpose. Time- 
 liness — the divine moment — was as much 
 to his mind as the divine direction. He will 
 always be remembered as a man of enterprise ; 
 and yet the only "when" of his profoundest 
 choice concerning any most cherished project 
 or undesired happening, was Thomas Jefferson's 
 solemn " When in the course of human events 
 it becomes necessary." Looking back on sixty 
 years of life, he was able, one birthday night, to 
 say, " I never ran away from a duty, and I 
 never ran after one." 
 
 If it were the purpose of these pages to lay 
 main stress on what Roswell Smith did or what 
 befell him, we might not so early begin thus to 
 linger by the way while the narrative waits; 
 but to those for whom this is written, what he 
 was must ever be most of all. He " never 
 
 8
 
 Roswell Smith 
 
 ran after a duty." And so, with all his strength 
 of will, his energy of purpose, and his fertil- 
 ity of suggestion in every direction, he never 
 showed the shadow of a fanatical or oppressive 
 tendency. He loved to direct and govern; he 
 probably never got near enough to anyone, how- 
 ever high or low of station, to call him friend, 
 without planning for him ; but the directing 
 and governing he loved were never built on the 
 reduction of liberty anywhere, but always on 
 liberty conveyed or enlarged. Another's respon- 
 sibility was distinctly more to him than his own 
 wealth ; his very suggestions ceased wherever 
 their utterance could in the least degree re- 
 semble interference, and his ability to let those 
 to whom he had delegated any power or office 
 win successes, and even make failures costly to 
 him, while he looked on in silence, seemed 
 almost a separate talent. He never forgot that 
 responsibility and liberty make, together, the 
 vital breath of all efficient service. 
 
 It was natural that such a mind should be 
 deeply religious. It could not easily suppose 
 an unplanned and automatic universe ; nor a 
 revelation of its Creator's will finished in past 
 ages and totally committed and confined to
 
 Roswell Smith 
 
 writing and print; nor a Providence either 
 unsolicitous for, or wholly undeputized to, the 
 children of its creation. The sacred Scriptures, 
 daily in his hand, were to him a treasury not so 
 much of promises as of eternal principles ; their 
 precepts were prophecy enough for him. 
 
 One day, in Indiana, traveling on horseback 
 in company with a stranger who, he had just 
 been told, was a hot-tempered skeptic, he took 
 pains, by quoting the Bible, to draw from him a 
 fierce assertion of total disbelief of the whole 
 book — " every word of it." 
 
 " But that is not really so," he persisted ; " you 
 actually do believe a great deal of it." 
 
 The stranger challenged him fiercely to repeat 
 anything whatever from Scripture which he, the 
 stranger, would admit to be true. 
 
 " Well," was the reply, "don't you believe 'a 
 soft answer turneth away wrath' '? " 
 
 The man, with restored good nature, said he 
 did, and his companion closed the discussion 
 with the advice, " Search the Scriptures for what 
 you can't deny, and keep its commandments 
 when you can't honestly break them." 
 
 When Roswell Smith, years afterward, visited 
 the same region again, a man prominent in the 
 
 lO
 
 Roswell Smith 
 
 church and community for piety and good 
 works said to him, " I am the man whom you 
 once reminded that the Bible is good for what 
 we already believe in it." 
 
 In Roswell Smith's belief — at least in the 
 assumption of his daily life, whether he ever so 
 formulated the belief or not — divine revelation 
 was continuous and familiar. He read, as it 
 seemed to him, on the ever-turning pages of 
 his own life's constant happenings, God's daily 
 will and plan concerning his very self; and 
 whether on the page of Scripture or on that of 
 daily incident, his eye was ever in search not of 
 God's permissions, but commissions. Baffled 
 in any project, his cheerful, quick interpretation 
 was sure to be, " The Lord did not want it done 
 that way." 
 
 It is somewhat strange that there should be 
 so little to recount of the social life of one so 
 full of human feeling. But we know how often 
 men appointed by nature to wide public use- 
 fulness show but a moderate zeal for private 
 society, or are tardy even in the domestic im- 
 pulses. For Roswell Smith the pleasures of 
 mere social acquaintanceships and activities 
 were not deep enough to satisfy, even in young 
 
 II
 
 Roswell Smith 
 
 manhood, his kindly, strenuous temperament, 
 his overflowing fullness of beneficent purpose. 
 He was very soon too busy seeking the world's 
 good, to seek, at all busily, its company. And 
 this, especially in his earlier Indiana days, a 
 rather rude fraction of the world near about 
 him could not quite forgive. 
 
 But of home, household, and friends he was a 
 true and intense lover. He married before he 
 was twenty-three. In this alliance there is yet 
 another hint of that largeness with which the 
 lines of his opening life were being projected. 
 We have seen how, from boyhood, he had been 
 related to one of the world's most far-reaching 
 methods of enlightenment, and had acquired 
 by contact, if not by inheritance, the ruling de- 
 sire to measure the field of his usefulness by no 
 narrower bound than the whole province of the 
 printing-press and its marvelous adjuncts. His 
 uncle was the author, his father the seller, of 
 a group of school-books, " Smith's Grammar " 
 among them, which in that day were found in 
 the hands .of a larger number of teachers and 
 school-children than was any similar work save 
 only the world-renowned Webster's spelling- 
 book. His removal to Indiana brought him 
 
 12
 
 RosweU Smith 
 
 under the roof, as a member of the household, 
 of Commissioner Ellswordi, the first head of that 
 great national office whose stimulating rewards 
 have done so much to make Americans the 
 most inventive nation in the world. From 
 this household death had removed the wife 
 and mother, and the daughter was absent in 
 the East when RosweU Smith became one of 
 its number. It was some months before the 
 daughter returned. When she did so, expecting 
 to be met at the station by her father, in his 
 stead she saw awaiting her the young stranger, 
 tall, slender, forceful, and exceptionally hand- 
 some, so well known to her by report, but 
 hitherto unconsidered and unseen. Realizing 
 that they were to be almost the sole inmates 
 of one small house together, the question must 
 have been uppermost in the mind of each, what 
 degree and phase of intimate relation they would 
 find best and most tolerable. But so looking 
 each on each, in the same moment, — as many 
 a time, in after years, they reverently confessed 
 to each other, — the word came to her heart, 
 " Yonder stands my destiny," and to his, " I am 
 for that maiden and she for me." They came 
 at once, at the family board, by the fireside, 
 
 '13
 
 Roswell Smith 
 
 under the summer vine or evening lamp, in 
 readings together, in musings side by side, daily 
 and hourly, into congenial companionship sur- 
 rounded by a state of society that could offer 
 very little such to either of them ; and it was 
 with a significance as happy as the event was 
 natural that in his choice of a wife his love 
 fixed here upon Annie, granddaughter of the 
 illustrious Oliver Ellsworth, Chief Justice of the 
 United States Supreme Court, the young girl 
 by whose hand that famous first electro-tele- 
 graphic message was sent, between Baltimore 
 and Washington, across the inventor Morse's 
 wire, "What hath God wrought I " In her 
 Roswell Smith found a spirit ever wifely, sym- 
 pathetic, and supremely faith-giving and loyal. 
 Prompt and highly trained in all the real duties 
 of the social world, the pleasures of her fullest 
 choice were yet, as his were, those gentler ones 
 that are found nearest the hearthstone. The fire- 
 side companionship with which their common 
 life began was still very much the largest part 
 of it when his death brought it to an earthly 
 end ; and in forty wedded years, says the one 
 best able to know, he never spoke an unkind 
 word to the partner of his life. 
 
 14
 
 RosweU Smith 
 
 Their early pathway led through many sharp 
 vicissitudes. They trod upon the stones and 
 thorns of poverty. The world — fortunate if 
 not one's kindred, too — charges (maybe it 
 is best it should) a heavy entrance-fee to an 
 exalted spirit rich in self-reliance but poor in 
 material resources. The people among whom 
 the young pair chose, or found, their lot were 
 more than willing to let the husband feel, even 
 professionally and pecuniarily, that if they were 
 not of his kind it was at least partly his misfor- 
 tune. Neither law nor land business brought 
 him more than the most meager returns. When 
 they found it best to set up their own home, the . 
 total cost of the house they built was five hun- 
 dred dollars. Here children were born to them: 
 children that brought them joy for a time and 
 then died, only one, a daughter, surviving. The 
 husband's health gave way ; one lung was said 
 to be quite gone; the wife, too, was feeble, and, 
 turning all his means into a few hundred dol- 
 lars, he started with the mother and child for 
 San Antonio, Texas, the refuge of consump- 
 tives. At New Orleans, waiting for a promised 
 remittance from his father, he became absolutely 
 penniless. But concealing his distress from his 
 
 IS
 
 Roswell Smith 
 
 delicate wife, and walking in the streets the bet- 
 ter to keep it to himself, he chanced upon two 
 men whom he had slightly known in Indiana, 
 who were bound, as he was, for the Rio Grande, 
 and who, having more money on their persons 
 than they thought it safe to carry, without know- 
 ing anything of his strait, begged him to take 
 care of it. He told them, thereupon, his whole 
 case, and arranged with them to be the bor- 
 rower instead of custodian of their money, and 
 so reached his destination. 
 
 The air of San Antonio proved unfavorable ; 
 but when he went upon a ranch some distance 
 further north, and began in that wild region 
 to live entirely out of doors, his health and 
 vigor, that had seemed wholly lost, completely 
 returned, and he presently found his life threat- 
 ened not subtly, by disease, but wordily, by 
 men from whom he would not conceal that he 
 favored the abolition of slavery. 
 
 His affairs by and by called him back to La- 
 fayette, and he resumed business there under 
 new conditions that made marked changes in 
 his fortunes. He only partly resumed the 
 profession of the law, acting as counselor, but 
 never again pleading in court. The death of 
 
 i6
 
 Roswell Smith 
 
 his wife's father filled his hands with new inter- 
 ests both hers and his. Some of the lands still 
 retained turned out, or had turned out already 
 before falling to their inheritance, to be rich in 
 coal. Certain family matters required him to 
 revisit the East, and while there he quite ac- 
 cidentally became most pleasantly acquainted 
 with Dr. J. G. Holland and his family. Re- 
 turning to the West, the burden of his swiftly 
 growing affairs was again bearing seriously upon 
 him — for he had not only intricate and perplex- 
 ing financial problems to meet, but the active 
 opposition of strong and hostile wills to over- 
 come — when, on a visit to Cincinnati compelled 
 by business, he fell ill again, this time of typhoid 
 fever, and was soon to all appearances nearer 
 than ever to the brink of the grave. But just 
 at that brink the path of life turned sharply and 
 led into wider fields; for the noted physician 
 who attended him assured him he could not 
 live in the climate of the Ohio Valley, and ex- 
 acted from him a solemn pledge, while his re- 
 covery was yet in doubt, that if his life was 
 spared he would leave that region and settle 
 permanently in the East. 
 
 This promise, as soon as his strength would 
 
 4 17
 
 Roswell Smith 
 
 allow, he set about to fulfil. He made final 
 surrender of the profession of law, turned his 
 land business over to others, and, in order to 
 a more complete recuperation, arranged for a 
 tour of Europe. This juncture of his life is re- 
 markable. The great work which is now his 
 monument lay yet in the germ. The choicest 
 wish of his nature, the desire to concentrate all 
 his powers to the dissemination of right ideas 
 through the medium of the printed page, was 
 taking the form of a definite purpose, but the 
 purpose was almost totally without plan; and 
 when in after life he looked back to this period, 
 he seemed to himself to have been, just here, 
 more passively than ever before or after, guided 
 by what some of us call fate, but he, Providence. 
 But a strong, clear purpose, always timely, 
 patient, and courageous, can afford to let the 
 turn of events shape its plans. To Roswell 
 Smith the turn of events was the very text 
 of God's commission. He tried simply to read 
 and obey. 
 
 He was now in his fortieth year, a man's 
 second majority, and was not only commis- 
 sioned, but equipped, accoutred. He had seen 
 at close view the three great sections of our 
 
 i8
 
 RosweU Smith 
 
 vast country, and been a sagacious and sympa- 
 thetic student of their diverse conditions and 
 interests. He had been for nearly twenty years 
 a lawyer, had shown himself a financier of rare 
 skill, had a most thorough knowledge of men, 
 both intuitive and acquired, was as free from 
 cynicism as from credulity, and with the fresh- 
 ness of a natural bent still retained, from the 
 days of his boyhood's three years' apprenticeship 
 in the New York publishing-house and from his 
 later contact with his father and uncle, a habit- 
 ual studious scrutiny of the field and methods 
 of the publisher's business. "Even when we 
 first sat together by my father's fireside," says 
 she who was then Annie Ellsworth, "constant 
 readers of the comparatively slender 'Harper's 
 Magazine ' of those times, he always read and 
 handled it with speculative scrutiny as to how 
 it was made and sent forth, and how it might 
 be made or sent forth better." And the daugh- 
 ter of their early married life says, " I cannot 
 remember ever having seen my father, even in 
 church, take up an unfamiliar book without, by 
 a kind of only half-conscious instinct, passing 
 his eye and hand over the various features of its 
 workmanship, first the outward, then the in- 
 
 19
 
 RosweU Smith 
 
 ward, and turning last to the title-page and 
 publisher's imprint." 
 
 Moreover, he was now, at length, abundantly 
 able to put aside the Franklinian counsel given 
 him by his uncle when he was starting West, 
 and which he still quoted with approval thirty 
 years afterward, "Keep your own bank-account, 
 if you have to borrow money to do it." For he 
 had gathered a more than comfortable fortune. 
 How essential this was to the effectiveness of 
 a man of his peculiar sort he knew full well. 
 While always abounding in a fraternal spirit 
 that was ever ready with the word of apt and 
 kindly counsel, and which kept the hand of ma- 
 terial succor constantly outstretched to others, 
 his nature could never allow him to be for a 
 moment, in whatever manner, the younger bro- 
 ther of any man. Beyond doubt this quality, in 
 the years of his adversity, stood in the way of an 
 earlier but less illustrious success. 
 
 Nevertheless, Roswell Smith had in rare de- 
 gree tlie gift of choosing wisely all needed asso- 
 ciates, whether equals or subordinates. He was 
 a man of energetic instincts, and had a cordial 
 belief in them. Except a certain fierceness in 
 his purity, this was probably the only femi-
 
 Roswell Smith 
 
 nine trait in his mind or character. Yet his 
 choosings ot co-workers were not sudden in- 
 spirations. Rarely, if ever, did he make such 
 a choice without close, even prolonged, study 
 of all the requirements of the place and of all 
 traits and capacities of the person; and yet, 
 on the other hand again, he always finally 
 allowed a distinctly controlling value to his 
 unreasoned intuitions. Indeed, no one ever, by 
 whatsoever merit of conduct, persuaded him 
 — though he might visibly wish to be per- 
 suaded — to put those intuitions quite aside. 
 When, in 1868, he was contemplating his trip 
 to Europe, his purposes for the future had so 
 far taken form that he was revolving the thought 
 of buying and conducting, on his return, some 
 Eastern newspaper. He must have been casting 
 about in his private counsels then for the right 
 allies in a work which, whatever its ultimate 
 form, would be great enough, he planning it, 
 for the collaboration ot many minds, and of 
 kindred, yet diverse, natures; and an intuition, 
 however indefinite or partly conscious, was 
 most likely an influence with him when he 
 arranged to make both the ocean voyage and 
 the Continental tour with his esteemed but 
 
 21
 
 Roswell Smith 
 
 not yet intimate acquaintance, Dr. Holland. 
 Each of them was to be accompanied by his 
 family. 
 
 The Doctor was ten years the senior. He 
 had been, until a short time before, a noted 
 journalist, having lately retired from the 
 "Springfield Republican." His earlier books, 
 " Bitter-Sweet," " Letters to the Young," and 
 other strong, high-minded, sympathetic pen- 
 preachings on manners and conduct in every 
 relation of life, had made him, in this country, 
 one of the most widely read authors then writ- 
 ing, and had drawn him to the public-lecture 
 platform, and so to the West. Still earher in 
 life he had lived in Vicksburg, Mississippi, 
 and thus, like Roswell Smith, had seen and felt, 
 as we may say, the three great parts of our 
 country and nation. His ambitions were large 
 and chivalric, and though physically he had 
 no such hold on life as his junior, he had yet 
 enough to say often to him in tones of manly 
 lamenting, "Ah, if I were only where you 
 are I " We see, then, how much there was 
 to draw the two men together. Both were 
 cutting loose from old moorings, and, with 
 similar motives, and in much the same direc- 
 
 22
 
 Roswell Smith 
 
 tion, were silently making ready for a new 
 dedication of their strength and fortunes to 
 higher uses than before. 
 
 "Before we finally decide this," said Dr. Hol- 
 land one day, — meaning their project to see 
 Europe together, — "we ought to have one 
 point plainly understood, I am a very punc- 
 tual man, always at a place exactly at the hour 
 appointed. I hope you are so." 
 
 " No," said Roswell Smith ; " I never arrive 
 at the hour." 
 
 " Then I do not think we had better travel 
 together," replied the Doctor. 
 
 "Maybe not," said his friend; "for I am al- 
 ways half an hour ahead of time." And the 
 decision was that they would not separate. 
 
 Difficulties unforeseen prevented them, how- 
 ever, from sailing on the same steamer, and they 
 had to content themselves with the agreement 
 for Dr. Holland and family to sail without the 
 other group, and for the two friends with their 
 families to join company at a later date, fixed, 
 in Geneva, Switzerland. And so the hour came 
 which was ever afterward to be stimulating to 
 the spirit, and oftenest recurrent in the remi- 
 niscences, of both men : an hour that must ever 
 
 23
 
 Roswell Smith 
 
 be notable in the history of our nation's — shall 
 we not say of the world's *? — literature. 
 
 " I have often heard both Dr. Holland and 
 Roswell Smith allude to the memorable night 
 when, standing upon one of the bridges that 
 span the rushing Rhone at Geneva, Dr. Holland 
 outlined to his friend a project which he had 
 been maturing, of a monthly magazine devoted 
 to American letters and American art. The 
 emphasis rested upon the adjective : the work 
 was to be done in America, by Americans, for 
 Americans ; it was to be a popular educator of 
 the highest grade. Roswell Smith promptly 
 seized upon the project." So writes Dr. Glad- 
 den in the magazine whose world-wide pre- 
 eminence celebrates that hour. 
 
 As Dr. Holland at that time set forth the 
 scheme, it was one to which he was not yet 
 irrevocably committed, but which he was still 
 weighing: an expansion in his own thought 
 and wish of a simpler proposition made to him, 
 shortly before sailing for Europe, by his near 
 friend Charles Scribner, the publisher of his 
 books. But upon Roswell Smith's so ready 
 enlistment his own resolution became final, and 
 ere long the two friends returned to America, 
 
 24
 
 Roswell Smith 
 
 perfected arrangements with Messrs. Charles 
 Scribner and Co., and "founded the corpora- 
 tion which now bears the name of The Cen- 
 tury Co., and began the publication of their 
 magazine." 
 
 How much larger that constant, yet ever 
 more and more honored, visitant of hundreds 
 of thousands of American homes, and of every 
 clime where the English tongue is spoken — how 
 much larger it is, and how much larger it began 
 from its first day to be, than any mere mercan- 
 tile adventure and phenomenal commercial suc- 
 cess, scarce one of a thousand knows of those who 
 enjoy, directly or indirectly, its superb yet un- 
 burdensome beneficences. But from this time 
 the life and work of Roswell Smith is so inter- 
 woven with the labors and achievements of those 
 with whom he associated himself, that to distin- 
 guish exhaustively or exactly what was his, and 
 what theirs, is as impossible to us as it would 
 have been distasteful to him. He joined him- 
 self to all co-workers in a spirit almost as of 
 wedlock, and so long as ends were achieved 
 neither he nor they ever wasted time to decide 
 by any minuteness of measure in what degree 
 each had furnished the elements of success. 
 
 5 25
 
 RosweU Smith 
 
 Indeed, so intimate and constant was and has 
 ever been the harmony pervading this always 
 increasing group of co-laborers, that only in the 
 most initial conception of any feature of their 
 multiform work could, or can, anything be cred- 
 ited to a single brain or one pair of hands. 
 And this very fact must be credited largely — 
 most largely — to him to whom these pages are 
 dedicated. He established from the first an 
 identity of spirit, a unity of interest, between the 
 editorial and the counting room upon the broad 
 and sure foundation of a common aim pointing 
 toward the highest ideals, whether of commerce, 
 ethics, or art. It was from beginning to end his 
 own clear, unvarying choice to make his com- 
 mercial and financial management a well-spring 
 of faithful and inspiring counsel to the edi- 
 torial rooms, yet never to let it hinder their ut- 
 terance or dominate their policy. He made it 
 understood at once and ever afterward, that the 
 editors might depend with certainty upon the 
 counting-room to be bold in enterprise, firm in 
 peril, and faithful in adversity. More : passing 
 over into the editorial department with the 
 cordial freedom and confidence which he en- 
 couraged and maintained on every hand, he 
 
 26
 
 Roswell Smith 
 
 gave the whole force of his most ardent approval 
 to whatever there tended to make the whole 
 world's good, and nothing less, the policy of the 
 magazine. In the magazine itself, Mr. Gilder 
 writes : 
 
 Behind every successful enterprise one may be sure 
 that there is somewhere at work, even if not always prom- 
 inently in sight, a powerful personality. The personal 
 force — alert, original, full of initiative, insistence, and 
 enthusiasm — which has been from the beginning, in 1870, 
 up to the past year or two of illness, behind the publishing 
 corporation now known as The Century Co. was that of 
 Roswell Smith. Others may express in these pages their 
 impression of the man in the various phases of his aspi- 
 ration and activity. It is, perhaps, only necessary for 
 the present writer to record here the grief of all associated 
 in business with our late President at his untimely de- 
 parture, and to say a word regarding especially his rela- 
 tion to " The Century Magazine." 
 
 We do believe that Roswell Smith came nearer realizing 
 the strictest editorial idea of what the publisher and chief 
 owner of a periodical should be to that periodical than 
 has often been seen in the literary and publishing world. 
 Trusting the persons chosen to take editorial charge in a 
 manner to call out all the energies and abilities of those 
 so generously confided in, he spent no part of his energy 
 in thwarting or diverting their control, but set all his 
 great strength to the task of enthusiastically cooperating 
 with the plans of the magazine — making possible, by his 
 
 ■27
 
 Roswell Smith 
 
 appreciation, courage, and loyal and liberal support, 
 enterprises in their way of unprecedented cost and im- 
 portance. 
 
 It was always an idea — always the ideal — that, ap- 
 pealing to his imagination, drew forth his deepest and 
 most active sympathies. It was especially ideas of use- 
 fulness, of patriotism, of humanity, which commanded his 
 most practical and zealous activities. The famous War 
 Series of " The Century " could not have been carried on 
 with a publisher of a timid and time-serving disposition. 
 
 The authorized Life of Lincoln was made available to 
 the great mass of the people largely through the liberaUty 
 and determination of Mr. Roswell Smith. When George 
 Kennan was gathering in long and painful journeys the 
 material for his great work on the Siberian Exile System, 
 his most frequent and most sympathetic correspondent, 
 outside of his own family, was the busy President of The 
 Century Co. 
 
 He not only earnesdy supported the most costly and 
 wide-reaching plans, but from his direct suggestion came 
 magazine enterprises of breadth and moment. Nor was 
 it only in large matters that his mind was active and 
 helpful. In many details connected with the appearance 
 of the magazine he made improvements : for nothing to 
 him was unimportant that tended in any way to the per- 
 fection and good repute of the publications with which 
 The Century Co. was identified. More important than 
 everything else, in addition to his sympathetic attitude, 
 his suggestiveness, his faculty of invention, the fertility 
 of his resources, — there was for all near him a constant 
 inspiration and spur to highest effort coming from his 
 
 28
 
 Roswell Smith 
 
 fervid faith in God and man ; his unswerving confidence 
 in the success of generous methods and lofty and benefi- 
 cent ideas. 
 
 Other memorials of his life, beautiful and enduring, can 
 be pointed out [says Dr. Gladden], but it is in this maga- 
 zine that the fairest and most permanent results of his 
 work will abide. Si nwnumentmn requiris, circumspice . 
 To have borne so large a part in originating and estab- 
 lishing an agency like this would be a sufficient distinc- 
 tion for any man. . . . Roswell Smith gave his life to 
 "The Century Magazine"; we might almost say that he 
 gave his life for it. 
 
 Few men, not contributors to literature, have had [is 
 the testimony of the New York "Evangelist"] so much 
 to do with the development of a national literature as the 
 founder of The Century Company, and one of the foun- 
 ders of the great magazine which now bears that name. 
 If Augustus Caesar could say that he found Rome of brick 
 and left it of marble, the men who projected the earlier 
 "Scribner's Magazine" ["Scribner's Monthly"] have surely 
 the right to say that they found American literature in- 
 choate, and left it a thing of beautiful form and splendid 
 promise. For what the old "Knickerbocker Magazine" 
 essayed but failed to do for American letters, that America 
 owes to-day to the magazines of which the early " Scrib- 
 ner's " set the type, and " The Century " to-day maintains 
 the standard. And of these magazines Roswell Smith was 
 one of the creators, and for long years the sustaining spirit, 
 
 29 1
 
 Roswell Smith 
 
 Few men [says the "Christian Union"] have accom- 
 phshed results so great in a Hfe so brief. He did not enter 
 the pubUshing business until he was forty-one years of age. 
 He retired from active participation in it nineteen years 
 later, at sixty. In the mean time he had created The Century 
 Company. "The Century Magazine," the "St. Nicholas," 
 "The Century Hymn-Books," and "The Century Diction- 
 ary " may all be characterized as the children of his brain. 
 That other men of commensurate ability cooperated with 
 him does not detract from, but adds to, his honor. • For it 
 reflects the greater credit on his ability that he gathered 
 about him men who supplemented his business sagacity 
 with literary, editorial, and business skill of rare quality. 
 The burdens he carried and the energies he expended in 
 the battle of life told upon a constitution naturally good, 
 and never impaired by excesses except in work. For the 
 last three years of his life he had been laid aside from 
 active business, and his death was not unexpected. 
 
 It is not chiefly, however, as a man of business genius 
 that Roswell Smith will be remembered by those who 
 knew him best. Goodness is more enduring than great- 
 ness ; love is longer-lived than admiration ; and Roswell 
 Smith will be remembered by all who knew him be- 
 cause they loved even more than they admired him. He 
 carried Christian principles into his business life. He 
 proved that consistent adherence to those principles does 
 not interfere with, but promotes, the highest success. He 
 practically repudiated the doctrine embodied in the pagan 
 motto, " Buy in the cheapest market and sell in the dear- 
 est." In all his literary deaUngs he paid, not the least 
 sum that was necessary to secure the wares, but the sum 
 
 30
 
 Roswell Smith 
 
 which, in his judgment, fairly represented the author's 
 proportion of the profits. In one instance within our 
 knowledge he voluntarily paid a literary colaborer two 
 and a half times the price which the author had himself 
 suggested. He carried the same spirit into all dealings 
 with his employees, and so administered his business that 
 they shared with him in its enlarged and enlarging pros- 
 perity. He trusted to the honor of his subordinates rather 
 than to pains and penalties. One young man obtaining 
 employment in his office, and asking for the rules, was 
 told there were none. V/hen the young man expressed 
 surprise, and asked how he could know what was expected 
 of him, he received for answer, "Carry out the principles 
 of the New Testament. When you have understood and 
 fulfilled those, you may come to me for something more." 
 The spirit of trust and confidence which Mr. Roswell 
 Smith manifested toward those who cooperated with him, 
 and his generous desire that they should share in the pros- 
 perity which his genius made possible, aroused an enthu- 
 siasm which a more worldly and selfish method of dealing 
 never could have created. This spirit of enthusiasm, the 
 product of a mutual respect and a mutual cooperative 
 interest, is the secret of that remarkable growth both in 
 usefulness and commercial prosperity which has charac- 
 terized The Century Company. The world is better and 
 happier because Roswell Smith lived in it. How much 
 it owes him the readers of his pubhcations probably never 
 think, and, indeed, cannot really know. 
 
 Mrs. Mary Mapes Dodge, bearing witness 
 in the pages of "St. Nicholas," which "never 
 
 31
 
 Roswell Smith 
 
 would have had an existence but for the faith, 
 enterprise, and foresight of its founder, Mr. 
 Roswell Smith," writes : 
 
 Throughout his career he was ambitious for the work 
 in hand rather than for himself. His successes were 
 those of a brave, able, honorable, and just-minded Chris- 
 tian, who did with his might whatever he found it right 
 to do. The very titles of the two little stories that he 
 wrote for "St. Nicholas" seem now to have a special 
 significance : " The Boy who Worked," and " Little 
 Holdfast." 
 
 Roswell Smith had passed out of his earlier 
 occupations not because of any insufficiency for 
 them, but rather of their insufficiency for the 
 peculiar quality of his great talents. From his 
 earliest manhood he had shown unusual ability 
 for the law. The eminent lawyer in whose 
 office he read — for law offices were then the 
 law schools — stated that he was the best student, 
 the most promising young man, and the most 
 useful assistant he had ever had in his office. 
 In Indiana he had had, for so young a lawyer, 
 many important employments, and in later life, 
 when he had been long withdrawn from legal 
 practice and at no pains to keep up a know- 
 ledge of the law, he constantly surprised his 
 
 32
 
 Roswell Smith 
 
 legal advisers by his great familiarity with the 
 principles of law, his apt citations of them with- 
 out quoting text-books or cases, and the wisdom 
 with which, from them, he deduced the rules 
 properly governing any matter in hand ; though, 
 with the exception of a single earlier expe- 
 rience, his business affairs during this period 
 were the most difficult, perplexing, and impor- 
 tant with which he was ever connected. A 
 considerable portion of them involved the pro- 
 gress of The Century Co. from a highly re- 
 spectable and fairly prosperous corporation to 
 the very great proportions, influence, and suc- 
 cess to which it had attained at the time of his 
 death. " In that regard," writes Mr. Cephas 
 Brainerd, for the last fifteen years of Roswell 
 Smith's life his principal and intimate legal 
 adviser, and from whose memoranda these facts 
 are almost literally quoted, "he was one of 
 the most helpful clients whom I have ever 
 known." 
 
 His ability as a draftsman of legal papers 
 was extraordinary. " In all my practice," writes 
 Mr. Brainerd, " I have never fallen in with a 
 business man who could make so complete a 
 draft of a complicated contract as did he on 
 
 6 33
 
 Roswell Smith 
 
 many occasions. Such a paper prepared by 
 him generally expressed the legal effect of an 
 understanding between parties in such language 
 and with such clearness as to meet the views of 
 all concerned, and to require only slight changes 
 of phrase to satisfy conflicting feelings. Long 
 after disease had begun to tell upon him, a con- 
 dition arose which threatened a suit in equity 
 to protect important interests in which others 
 were concerned with him. There had been 
 some consultation between us, and much cor- 
 respondence. While we were all considering 
 what position it were best to take if driven to a 
 suit, I received from him the outline of a bill 
 of complaint, covering many pages, character- 
 ized by the utmost care, skill, and complete- 
 ness, and worthy of a good lawyer in the largest 
 practice on the chancery side of the court." 
 
 His innate intimacy with the spirit of the 
 law, as well as his familiarity with its forms and 
 processes, was marvelously illustrated in per- 
 plexing questions arising out of differing senses 
 of injury, dignity, and moral right held by op- 
 posite parties maintaining antagonistic claims. 
 His quick discernment and prompt adaptation 
 of ethical principles involved in the law, in 
 
 34
 
 Roswell Smith 
 
 short, his diplomatic skill, enabled him to dis- 
 pose of many serious difficulties that otherwise 
 would have risen to the dignity of important 
 suits at law. It rendered it possible for The 
 Century Co. to make its prodigious progress 
 through all the years of his presidency without 
 a single litigation, and, as a rule, without the 
 production of permanent harsh feeling any- 
 where. He saw at once what was legally valu- 
 able in any discussion of interests, and wasted 
 no time and no thought upon what was unim- 
 portant : while as to what was important he was 
 strenuous, but politic. He certainly was am- 
 bitious. His purpose being ever of the highest, 
 he was determined and aggressive, untiring in 
 his effort to increase the strength and power of 
 The Century Co. But his methods were both 
 just and generous, even to those who sought 
 to obstruct his way, and he never sought to in- 
 jure others, even to secure the realization of any 
 of his highest hopes. 
 
 During the progress of the movement for 
 international copyright, a suggestion that the 
 whole matter could be accomplished by treaty 
 had been much discussed in the newspapers, 
 and diplomatically considered, to some extent, 
 
 35
 
 Roswell Smith 
 
 between our own Government and that of Great 
 Britain. A projet of a treaty had been pre- 
 pared and perhaps exchanged for consideration. 
 At this juncture Roswell Smith, in an elaborate 
 letter to an important personage connected with 
 this initiated negotiation, suggested — and "so 
 far as I have been able to learn," says Mr. 
 Brainerd, "the objection originated with him. 
 In the first consultation I had with him on the 
 subject, he had in hand a draft of a letter ex- 
 pressing his views " — that the Constitution did 
 not permit any such arrangement as was con- 
 templated ; in short, that the treaty-making 
 power was quite too circumscribed to compass 
 the adjustment of the difficulties involved in 
 the subject. The result of this letter was that 
 the thought of a treaty was given up, and re- 
 course was again had to Congress, with final 
 success. 
 
 "Diligent in business, fervent in spirit, serv- 
 ing the Lord " was the precept that hung, 
 printed in gold, just above his office desk. 
 But his practice was yet better; he rarely led 
 in mirth, full of cheer as he ever was, but 
 maybe all the more for that he was a very 
 happy man, and it was one of the richest 
 
 36
 
 Roswell Smith 
 
 sources of his daily happiness to be not dili- 
 gent simply, but chivalrous in business. It 
 happened often that, a matter having turned 
 out more profitably than he had anticipated, he 
 would cause to be added an unsolicited bonus 
 of hundreds of dollars to its originally stipu- 
 lated price. 
 
 An artist, at the time of the occurrence poor 
 and uninfluential, demanded for some illustra- 
 tions twice what the art editor thought he 
 should be paid. The art editor brought the 
 matter privately before Roswell Smith, who 
 asked promptly : 
 
 "Do you think he is trying to overreach 
 you?" 
 
 " Consciously, by no means. He believes 
 they are worth what he asks." 
 
 " Then pay him his price ; we can't afford 
 to have him think we are stingy." 
 
 No man ever more wholly or joyfully be- 
 lieved in the commercial value of doing busi- 
 ness on principles of Christian unselfishness. 
 He used to say laughingly that the Lord never 
 gave him time to enjoy any self-complacency 
 over any act of generosity in business. He "al- 
 ways made it pay so well and so quickly." 
 
 37
 
 Roswell Smith 
 
 Neither did any man ever know better than 
 Roswell Smith the value of routine ; but none 
 knew better the evil and loss of yielding to the 
 spirit of routine. To him routine was a mere 
 base of operations, a point of perpetual de- 
 parture upon countless radii of enterprise and 
 improvement. He seemed ever to be stirred 
 from within by the spirit of Emerson's words: 
 " Nothing stands still in nature but death ; the 
 whole creation is on wheels, in transit, always 
 passing into something else, streaming into 
 something higher. . . . Thin or solid, every- 
 thing is in flight; . . . everything undressing 
 and stealing away from its old into new form, 
 and nothing fast but those invisible cords which 
 we call laws, on which all is strung." 
 
 The invention of new schemes, new meth- 
 ods, the opening of new fields, became the de- 
 light of his fancy. These were new machinery; 
 routine was the old. He never tired of the old 
 because it was old, or changed to new for nov- 
 elty's sake ; but he bore in mind the fact that 
 millions constantly do. And therefore, though 
 never quixotic or fantastical in any act, no plan 
 or thought, from within or without, could be so 
 new or unusual as to be turned away uncon- 
 
 38
 
 Roswell Smith 
 
 sidered by his hospitable mind : while from 
 himself came a ceaseless stream of new sug- 
 gestions, often fanciful to a degree, and evi- 
 dently brought forward simply to keep up the 
 war against the spirit of routine. 
 
 There were doubtless other causes, but this 
 is certainly one, that from the day of his en- 
 trance into the business of magazine-making, 
 whether for adults or children, dates the revo- 
 lution in aims and methods which has made 
 American magazines the admiration of the 
 world. Almost or quite his initial declaration 
 as he entered into the work was that the general 
 fashion of making a magazine an adjunct to a 
 book-publishing business was not necessary even 
 if it were — which he doubted — legitimate. No 
 organ of universal truth, right, welfare, and cul- 
 ture, he maintained, could fulfil its very largest 
 destiny while held in leash by interests not es- 
 sential to its own being. He would make a 
 magazine the possible mother of any such in- 
 terest, but never its daughter; and when he 
 laid down the work, he left the great magazine 
 he had done so much to create the majestic 
 convoy of a heavily and costly freighted book- 
 publishing business. With his associates, he 
 
 39
 
 Roswell Smith 
 
 claimed for the magazine of his and their con- 
 ception no more, no less, than this — a field as 
 wide as all human interests, a responsibility as 
 wide as that field, and a liberty as wide as that 
 responsibility. 
 
 When they began their work there was in 
 our country a distance, an estrangement, be- 
 tween culture and religion, between author and 
 preacher, artist and common people, scientist 
 and Bible student, that is now not easily rea- 
 lized. To remove that gulf, to draw these ele- 
 ments, by a kind and faithful energy, nearer to 
 one another, was recognized as one large article 
 of the magazine's great commission. Of this 
 high aim, and of the specific steps taken to 
 fulfil it, Mr. Charles Scribner was the earnest 
 supporter and seconder. But while the work 
 was still almost in its beginnings he died, and it 
 is significant of the boldness and energy of those 
 he left behind, that in this sad event the more 
 conservative elements, especially of the religious 
 press, censoriously found their explanation of 
 the magazine's audacious progressiveness. For 
 it turned not away with prudential silence from 
 any pressing question of politics or religion if 
 only the interest were, or could and should be 
 
 40
 
 RosweH Smith 
 
 made, wide enough to justify its presentation by 
 a publication whose field was the world. In 
 order that it might be, in noblest guise, for 
 Americans, by Americans, it essayed to be, 
 and under Roswell Smith's presidency it be- 
 came, a voice of truth — of all truth, civic, scien- 
 tific, esthetical, ethical — from the whole world 
 to the whole world, by the avenue of American 
 publication. 
 
 To realize fully how much the life of Roswell 
 Smith and the history of the magazine he took 
 part in founding signify, each to other, we need 
 to remember that almost ever since it began to 
 be "The Century" he was the only survivor of 
 its three founders. With almost arithmetical 
 exactness the gravestone of Dr. Holland, its 
 first editor-in-chief, marks the half-way bound 
 between its first issue, in November, 1871, and 
 the death of The Century Co.'s first president 
 in April, 1892; for Dr. Holland was taken in 
 October, 1881. The monumental achievements 
 that have made ""The Century Magazine" a 
 factor in American history date within the last 
 ten years; yet no one so eagerly as Roswell 
 Smith attributed them to the staff of younger 
 men under his wise and loving leadership. 
 
 7 41
 
 RosweU Smith 
 
 To have work in common with RosweU 
 Smith was the key to the whole wealth of his 
 personal friendship and solicitude. Those who 
 had not this key now and then misunderstood 
 and undervalued him, because work too com- 
 pletely preoccupied him to leave room for the 
 cultivation of indiscriminately winning ways. 
 But to have work with him was to love him, 
 as well as to be loved by him. In spirit he 
 seemed ever saying of all who were in any 
 way related to him as colaborers, "Behold my 
 mother and my brethren." 
 
 Comparatively slight acquaintances could 
 bear witness that " all the force of such a char- 
 acter was combined with a personal kindliness 
 which everywhere called out answering esteem 
 and regard," that he "was a man to call out 
 much personal affection on account of the 
 heartiness of his nature and the nobility of his 
 character," "a man of large ideas and of large 
 charity," " a courteous and most agreeable gen- 
 tleman," or that "he carried his religion into 
 his daily work, and abounded in acts of charity 
 and benevolence." But the nearer men were to 
 him the more abundant was, and is now, the 
 measure of their praise, reverence, and love. 
 
 42
 
 Roswell Smith 
 
 What tliis measure was let the following offer- 
 ings signify : 
 
 To its president The Century Co. was truly an indi- 
 vidual, beloved as a favorite child. There was hardly a 
 waking hour of his life, especially after the company 
 entered upon a separate existence, in which he was not 
 pondering on and planning for its enterprises present and 
 to come. . . . 
 
 . . . He took his pleasure in his labors as they 
 went on; and he had so poured his individuality into the 
 corporate life which was largely his creation that he 
 seemed to see much of his own personal energy and in- 
 dividuality existing along the future in forms of usefulness 
 to mankind. 
 
 Roswell Smith had somewhat of the reserve attributed 
 to the New England character, and his mind was con- 
 centrated on the principal work of his life with peculiar 
 intensity. Yet collectively and individually his business 
 associates and employees have all and each at various 
 times, and in many an hour of stress and trouble, found 
 in him a kind, sympathetic, and generous friend. There 
 are men of letters in this country whose lives have been 
 made smoother and brighter because of his faith in them, 
 and because of his friendly and substantial encouragement, 
 proffered in all respect and manhness. He has done a 
 good work in many ways; in a sense no one can "take 
 his place " : but the spirit in which he labored will not soon 
 fail of inspiration for his survivors and successors. 
 
 R. W. Gilder. 
 
 43
 
 Roswell Smith 
 
 . . , As the result of less than a single score of 
 years of business activity in New York, Roswell Smith 
 left two monumental achievements, either of which is 
 large enough to have engaged a lifetime. These are 
 "The Century Magazine" and "The Century Diction- 
 ary," which, on their business side, were distinctly his 
 work. Much of Roswell Smith's success was due proba- 
 bly to good fortune in literary and business associates. 
 But without his ever-fresh originahty in business methods, 
 his largeness of plan, and that momentum by which he 
 overbore all difficulties, success so large and complete 
 would have been impossible. 
 
 Every man has his limitations, and Mr. Smith's were 
 apparent. He was by nature restricted to large under- 
 takings. He had no relish for success by detail — for a 
 victory made up of successful skirmishes. He told me once 
 that he thought himself personally unfitted for ordinary 
 book-publishing. Besides those enterprises that he en- 
 gaged in with varying success, he contemplated and ne- 
 gotiated regarding others that came to nothing, but the 
 very conception of which was enough to take the breath. 
 One might say that he had a passion for undertakings of 
 the cosmical sort. 
 
 A remarkable example of his liberality in expenditure 
 and the expansiveness of his ideas is to be found in the 
 history of "The Century Dictionary." As at first pro- 
 jected it was to cost a trifle of twenty thousand dollars to 
 revise the English " Imperial Dictionary," and to adapt it 
 to American use. But the ideal of a vastly greater work 
 grew by degrees, and the ultimate cost was, I suppose, 
 nearer to a million than to the first estimate. There was 
 
 44
 
 Roswell Smith 
 
 a conservative caution in his character, and in some 
 moods he shrank from the boldness of his own enterprises. 
 When he had added to his original third of " The Century 
 Magazine " almost the whole of the other two thirds, he 
 found himself burdened with a financial responsibility that 
 seemed appalling, and he thought of selling again a con- 
 siderable block of the stock; but he quickly regained his 
 nerve, and held his course with most fortunate results. 
 At a later period, when the full measure of the expen- 
 diture needed to complete the dictionary became evident, 
 he explained to me as a friend how it had grown to such 
 vast proportions, with the avowed intention of making it 
 possible for me to do him justice if financial disaster 
 should result. But again his foresight was justified by 
 the event. . . . 
 
 Among his interests was a large share in a coal-mine. 
 Hearing that the miners were dissatisfied, he repaired to 
 the place, and found them holding a meeting in the woods 
 at an inclement season. He persuaded them to adjourn 
 to a hall in the village, the rent of which he defrayed for 
 them, learned the grounds of discontent, and came to 
 an understanding with them. It was and is the habit 
 of corporations owning mines to conduct stores, from 
 which the workmen are obliged, by one device or 
 another, to buy at exorbitant rates; but Mr. Smith set 
 up a store at which no man was under any compul- 
 sion to buy, and which furnished the men their sup- 
 plies at much lower rates than they had been paying 
 to the village merchants. In one mine he retained an 
 interest after his removal to the East, and a resident of 
 the region told me that Mr. Roswell Smith sent a copy 
 
 45
 
 Roswell Smith 
 
 of one of his magazines into the household of every work- 
 man in the mine. 
 
 In The Century Co., under Mr. Smith's presidency, 
 the heads of every department had opportunity to be- 
 come stockholders. At one time of exceptional pros- 
 perity a portion of the profits was divided among the 
 employees, down to the humblest. An amusing story is 
 told of the wife of a man employed in a non-literary 
 capacity by The Century Co. She was quite unable to 
 believe her husband's account of the dividend, and she 
 lay awake all night, distressed with suspicions of his dis- 
 honesty. I do not know whether Mr. Roswell Smith re- 
 tained to the last the conviction I have often heard him 
 express, that such cooperative methods were profitable in a 
 business sense. They have their advantages and their in- 
 conveniences, but they certainly tend to do away with the 
 unhappy conflict between labor and capital, and to " make 
 the earth wholesome." Roswell Smith was a conspicuous 
 and active member of a church, but it is much more to 
 the point to say that there are very many who cherish a 
 grateful remembrance of his generosity. He probably 
 gave like others to remote philanthropies, but it is far 
 higher praise that those whose lives were most closely 
 associated with his own found him magnanimously 
 thoughtful of their welfare. 
 
 Edward Eggleston. 
 
 In seeking to gather up for grateful recognition some 
 of the finer qualities of Roswell Smith, my thought first 
 rests upon a certain largeness of conception which char- 
 acterized all his undertakings. He liked to do great 
 
 46
 
 Roswell Smith 
 
 things; he had the courage that is not appalled by diffi- 
 culties, and the faith that removes mountains. The " St. 
 Nicholas Magazine " was started in the very moment of 
 wide-spread commercial depression. His plans for the 
 extension of the sale of the magazines were bold and 
 enterprising ; his ambition was to make them as good as 
 they could be made, and he grudged no outlay for this 
 purpose ; his confident expectation was that the best 
 thing would turn out to be the most profitable. His 
 residence in the West had given him large ideas respect- 
 ing the publisher's field ; he thought that the West and 
 the South as well as the North and the East were cardi- 
 nal points in the publisher's compass. When the maga- 
 zines had won their footing on this continent, he boldly 
 carried them to England; what was good enough for 
 Americans was good enough for Englishmen. This was 
 the first invasion of the British market by the American 
 periodical. The large success of the undertaking opened 
 the way for other publications ; and American magazines, 
 now on sale on every bookstand, have exerted an impor- 
 tant influence upon English opinion concerning America. 
 The quality of his mind is illustrated by the project of 
 " The Century Dictionary." This was purely his own. 
 The scheme of owning and publishing a great dictionary 
 of the English language laid hold upon him many years 
 ago. "It is an open question with us " — so he wrote 
 eleven years ago — " whether it is best for us to buy one 
 of the leading dictionaries and build on that, or to organ- 
 ize the scholarship of the English-speaking world and 
 make a new one. There must be one English language, 
 and a common standard of the English tongue." He 
 
 47
 
 Roswell Smith 
 
 saw no reason why this should not be pubhshed in New 
 York. The purchase of the right to revise and repubUsh 
 " The Imperial Dictionary " in America laid the founda- 
 tion of this enterprise. It was thought at the outset that 
 a " slight revision " would fit the four volumes of " The 
 Imperial " for the market ; but the scope of the work at 
 once began to broaden, and before anything had been 
 realized from the sale of the dictionary, nearly fifty times 
 as much money was expended as had been provided for 
 in the original estimate. In all this his courage never 
 faltered. The ambition to " make it what it ought to 
 be" was far stronger than any financial consideration. 
 His satisfaction in the perfection of the work, his sense of 
 its value to the world, were to him a great reward. It 
 was precisely in such concerns as this that the peculiarity 
 of his mind appeared. The importance of a work like 
 the making of a great dictionary was obvious to him. 
 He could see its relations to all science, to the spread 
 of accurate knowledge in the world. He knew that lan- 
 guage is the instrument of thought, the medium of com- 
 munication, the vehicle of truth ; that whatever makes it 
 more precise, more luminous, more perfect, is a great 
 benefit to all men. How many of the disputes that have 
 disturbed the Church and convulsed the State have 
 grown out of verbal ambiguities. How much of the 
 dogmatism that infects philosophy as well as religion 
 would disappear if men would only study and under- 
 stand the history of the words they are using. An im- 
 proved and perfected philology, based upon historical 
 research, which gives us the elements of the words that 
 are in our mouths every day, and shows us how they have 
 
 48
 
 Roswell Smith 
 
 come to stand for the ideas which we assign to them, is 
 certainly not less important to civiHzation than the new 
 chemistry, which reveals to us the elements of which phys- 
 ical bodies are composed. And the ambition to carry this 
 work of linguistic exploration and analysis to the very 
 highest perfection, so that the English language may be 
 known in all its roots and branches, and all its terms may 
 be used with the greatest possible precision, was certainly 
 a lofty ambition. The rank which has been assigned to 
 this publication among literary enterprises in this country 
 is well known. It is only important to remember what is 
 said about it, in the preface, by its distinguished editor: 
 "The design originated early in 1882 in a proposal to 
 adapt ' The Imperial Dictionary ' to American needs, 
 made by Mr. Roswell Smith, President of The Century- 
 Co., who has supported with unfailing faith and the largest 
 liberality the plans of the editors as they have gradually 
 extended far beyond the original limits." 
 
 An instance of his large administrative ability is seen 
 in the reform which was made several years ago, at his 
 suggestion, in the method of handling second-class 
 matter by the Post-office Department. Formerly the 
 postage on all periodicals passing through the mails was 
 paid by subscribers ; or, if prepaid by publishers, a sepa- 
 rate account was made of every copy. Roswell Smith 
 proposed to the authorities that the periodicals be 
 weighed in bulk and prepaid by the publisher. The 
 simplification of the method saves an indefinite amount 
 of petty detail and annoyance to both publisher and sub- 
 scriber, and doubtless has introduced into the Department 
 a considerable economy, 
 
 8 49
 
 Roswell Smith 
 
 Roswell Smith's mind was not only large in the scope 
 and range of its activity, it was exceedingly fertile. His 
 brain was teeming with new enterprises and new methods; 
 suggestions poured into every department of the busi- 
 ness. These were not all practicable; and when they 
 were not, discussion generally revealed the fact to him. 
 His mind was as bountiful as nature herself in producing 
 varieties of ideas; under the natural selection of free 
 debate, he expected the fittest to survive. His friends, 
 in all callings, are indebted to him for many quickening 
 hints. His vital mind tended to fructify every theme 
 that it touched. In my work as a pastor he has often 
 given me useful suggestions, and the most popular con- 
 tribution that it has been my fortune to make to " The 
 Century" — "The Christian League of Connecticut" — 
 sprang from a request made by him. " I want you," he 
 said, " to write a kind of a story showing how the Chris- 
 tian people of some town got together and learned how 
 to cooperate in Christian work." The elaboration of the 
 idea was my own, but the idea was his, and justice to 
 him requires this acknowledgment. 
 
 To " The Century Magazine " Mr. Smith's only literary 
 contribution was a brief poem published in one of the 
 early numbers; but he found pleasure, as did many of 
 his young readers, in two short stories which he wrote 
 for " St. Nicholas." 
 
 Mr. Roswell Smith was deeply interested in all the 
 current movements of politics and religion. The failure 
 of the Independents in 1884 to organize a new party he 
 greatly deplored ; it seemed to him that the time was 
 ripe for a new grouping of the political elements. The 
 
 50
 
 Roswell Smith 
 
 attempt to keep the fires of sectional hatred burning was 
 utterly distasteful to him; he strongly desired that the 
 North and the South should come to a better under- 
 standing. The series of papers on " The Great South," 
 published in the magazine under its old name, was sug- 
 gested by Roswell Smith to Dr. Holland, and it aided, 
 no doubt, in bringing about a better state of feeling. 
 Yet this wish for more amicable relations between the 
 two regions was not due to any lack of interest in the 
 welfare of the Southern negroes, as his work for Berea 
 College amply testifies. This institution, on the borders 
 of the mountain district of Kentucky, in which both 
 sexes and both races are educated together, was one of 
 the special objects of his care; the broad humanity of its 
 foundation, and the directness of its ministry to the 
 neediest human beings, commended it to his sympathy. 
 
 Roswell Smith's interest in rehgion was deep and abid- 
 ing. His faith was as simple and unquestioning as that 
 of Faraday ; his appeal to divine guidance in every matter 
 of importance was as natural and habitual as that of 
 General Gordon. The direct intervention of the divine 
 power in human affairs was to him a living reality. The 
 institutions of religion were his special care. Though of 
 Congregational origin, he was for the greater part of his 
 life a member of the Presbyterian Church, and the Memo- 
 rial Church of that denomination in New York (now the 
 Madison Avenue Church) owes much to his brave finan- 
 cial leadership. He was not, however, the kind of man 
 whom any sect can monopolize : for many years he was 
 the president of the New York Congregational Club, and 
 he worshiped during the last years of his hfe with one of
 
 Roswell Smith 
 
 the Reformed churches. The wish for a closer and more 
 practical unity among the churches, which found expres- 
 sion in the suggestion about the Christian League, was 
 always in his heart. He was a vice-president, I think, of 
 the American Congress of Churches, which undertook to 
 do something for Christian union in this country; and as 
 an officer of the American Tract Society, he strove to 
 rejuvenate the life and to enlarge the function of that 
 venerable institution. " Parish Problems," one of the 
 books published by The Century Co., revealed Roswell 
 Smith's desire " to do something to help the minister." 
 His motive in undertaking the publication was to make a 
 book in which the people could be shown how to coop- 
 erate in the work of the local church. He wished thus 
 to say to the members of the church many things which 
 they greatly need to hear and which the minister cannot 
 say ; it was to be a treatise in parish theology, to offset 
 the instruction in pastoral theology which the minis- 
 ter receives in the seminary. This desire to serve the 
 churches found expression in a movement, to which he 
 lent his influence and his personal co5peration, to lift the 
 load from churches which were burdened by debt. Ros- 
 well Smith entered upon this work with enthusiasm, and 
 had the satisfaction of seeing a number of churches set 
 free from their encumbrances. 
 
 It is not to be supposed that this great publisher was 
 beyond the influence of the motives which usually control 
 men of business. He wanted to succeed in his business. 
 To the expectation of wealth his mind was not inhospita- 
 ble; but he meant to conduct his business in an honorable 
 way, and, more than this, he was glad to make it tributary 
 
 52
 
 Roswell Smith 
 
 to higher interests. If he could see that a given venture 
 was Hkely to aid the churches, this fact added greatly to 
 its attractiveness. The publication of hymn and service 
 books, in which he has been a leader, was not wholly a 
 matter of business with him ; the purification and eleva- 
 tion of the psalmody of church and Sunday-school en- 
 listed his enthusiasm. In the last serious conversation 
 which I had with him, he opened to me a great scheme 
 with which his mind was laboring — to organize the best 
 Biblical scholarship of this country for the translation and 
 publication of a popular edition of the Bible. He pro- 
 posed to follow mainly the suggestions of the American 
 revisers; perhaps also to make such judicious selection of 
 Biblical material as would better fit the Sacred Scriptures 
 to be read through in families. No man had a deeper 
 reverence for the Holy Book ; but he was of the opinion 
 that its value for popular use might be increased by a 
 careful collection of its more nutritious parts. I sought 
 to dissuade him from the enterprise, which he was in no 
 condition of health to undertake; but the bent of his mind 
 appears in the proposition. 
 
 It is not, however, in these specific plans that his re- 
 ligious purpose was realized so much as in his deeper 
 intention to make all his work as a publisher serviceable 
 to that kingdom for whose coming he prayed. He desired 
 that the two magazines, especially, should be powerful in- 
 struments of righteousness ; that the tone of them should 
 always be elevated; that nothing impure or unworthy 
 should be allowed to appear in them; that they should 
 never be permitted to assail or undermine genuine faith 
 or pure morality; that they should pour into the com- 
 
 53
 
 Roswell Smith 
 
 munity a constant stream of refining influence — this was 
 his central purpose, his lofty ambition. The efforts of his 
 editors in this direction he always heartily supported. I 
 know well, from many conversations with him, how deep 
 and serious was this desire. I should do my friend a great 
 disservice if I tried to convey the impression that he was 
 not a keen, far-sighted business man ; but I believe that 
 he was something more than this, and that all his thoughts 
 about business were affected and, to some good degree, 
 shaped by the wish and the hope to do something for the 
 improvement of the world in which he lived. He meant 
 to be, and he believed himself to be, a co-worker with God. 
 The issues of the presses that he had set in motion were 
 spreading light and beauty, truth and love, among men ; 
 they were helping to make the world better every day. He 
 knew it, and gloried in it. With all the personal satisfac- 
 tion which he derived from the success of his business 
 ventures was mingled the deeper feeling of thankfulness 
 for the privilege of serving the higher interests of his 
 
 fellow-men. 
 
 Washington Gladden. 
 
 Roswell Smith, from early manhood a life-member of 
 the American Tract Society, was quickened to a new in- 
 terest in its affairs when his pastor, the Rev. Dr. Robin- 
 son, became editor of its "Illustrated Christian Weekly," 
 which interest culminated at the annual meeting of 1886, 
 when, on his motion, a committee was appointed " to in- 
 quire into the practical workings of the society, and to 
 recommend such changes in its constitution, methods, and 
 management as may seem desirable." Declining to be- 
 
 54
 
 Roswell Smith 
 
 come the chairman, he accepted the position of secretary 
 of the committee. The resolution directed the committee 
 " to make a thorough examination of all the affairs and 
 business of the society," and as executive secretary the 
 burden of the duty and responsibility fell upon him, though 
 the whole was shared by his associates, the Hon. Nathan- 
 iel Shipman (chairman). General Wager Svvayne, the Rev. 
 Talbot W. Chambers, D. D., Chancellor MacCracken, the 
 Hon. James White, and Mr. Robert Colby. 
 
 Their report was thorough and comprehensive. It in- 
 troduced vital changes in the constitution and methods 
 of the society. Though not inerrant, after consideration 
 and full discussion in two public meetings it was in the 
 end adopted, June i, 1887, with (evf if any dissenting 
 voices. The five subsequent years of practical working 
 have attested in the main the wisdom of the changes then 
 made. At the annual meeting of the same year Roswell 
 Smith was elected a member of the Finance and Executive 
 committees, in which he continued by succeeding elec- 
 tions until his decease. 
 
 His peculiar gifts as a publisher, which placed him 
 easily in the front rank of the men in that sphere, added 
 to his desire to make the most of his life for the Lord, and 
 for his fellow-men for Christ's sake, were the prime ele- 
 ments in the quickening which occurred about 1887. The 
 opportunity now brought to him to put his hand to the 
 execution of the plans which he had desired and the so- 
 ciety had adopted, came to him as a providential call to 
 service, and, if need be, to sacrifice; and thenceforth, 
 whatever were the enactments of his own extensive busi- 
 ness, his time was freely given to the interests of the society. 
 
 55
 
 Roswell Smith 
 
 His practical knowledge of the publishing business, fertil- 
 ity of suggestion, sound judgment, and large acquaintance 
 with and love for missionary effort, made him a most help- 
 ful member of the committee/ 
 
 He was a truly catholic Christian. One of his cher- 
 ished purposes, to which he gave much thought and 
 personal work, was a plan for close co5peration, or even 
 a union on some general basis, between all the great 
 American undenominational publishing societies. But 
 serious illness overtook him, and of necessity he was 
 constrained to remove his hand from what he hoped 
 would be the means of furthering and demonstrating the 
 unity of all evangelical Christians. 
 
 As weariness and weakness in the past two years 
 stealthily crept over him, from time to time he recalled 
 with peculiar delight his association with the men whom 
 he esteemed and loved as members of the committee, 
 and his satisfaction in the retrospect of his work in con- 
 nection with the society. It is almost needless to add 
 that this view is most cordially reciprocated by the offi- 
 cers and members of the American Tract Society, to 
 which his decease is an irreparable loss. 
 
 (Rev.) G. L. Shearer, 
 Financial Secretary of the American Tract Society. 
 
 For six years Roswell Smith was the honored president 
 of the Congregational Club of New York and vicinity. 
 For most of that time he was a member of the Memorial 
 Presbyterian Church, but his membership in that church 
 was determined by his personal relations with its pastor, 
 the Rev. Charles S. Robinson, D. D. His sympathies 
 
 56
 
 Roswell Smith 
 
 were heartily with the Congregational churches, and his 
 gifts for benevolent work chiefly through their missionary 
 boards. Soon after the organization of the club he was 
 elected to its membership, and in 1883 was chosen presi- 
 dent. The outlook of the club at that time was not 
 promising. No permanent and desirable place for its 
 meetings had been found, and that, with other facts, had 
 discouraged many of its members. When Mr. Roswell 
 Smith assumed its presidency a new and brighter era 
 began. He brought to the office large practical wisdom, 
 wide knowledge of men, and exceptional opportunities 
 for securing speakers. From the beginning of his admin- 
 istration to its end the Congregational Club offered the 
 best program of any club in New York the primary object 
 of which was the discussion of topics of current interest. 
 The platform was always free; speakers were encouraged 
 to give their honest thought, and were not asked whether 
 it coincided \vith the views of the president or member- 
 ship. One subject in particular had an especial interest 
 for our president. Some time before his election the fol- 
 lowing question had been discussed, " Is it possible to do 
 business on Christian principles?" A very prominent 
 banker, who was also a prominent church member, main- 
 tained that Christian principles were one thing and busi- 
 ness principles another. I have never seen Mr. Roswell 
 Smith more indignant than when referring to that discus- 
 sion, and he was not satisfied until it had been considered 
 again, and he had borne emphatic testimony to his faith 
 that the only way in which business can be conducted 
 with prospect of permanent success is by a strict adher- 
 ence to the teachings of Christ. 
 
 9 57
 
 Roswell Smith 
 
 The publisher of ** The Century," of course, had un- 
 equaled facilities for securing the participation of eminent 
 authors and public speakers in the discussions of the 
 club, and few, if any, persons whose names were promi- 
 nent in the pages of " The Century " during his presi- 
 dency of the club failed, at some time, to appear at its 
 meetings. In his intercourse with its members Mr. Ros- 
 well Smith was always the urbane Christian gentleman ; 
 in his conferences with its officers he was always courteous 
 and considerate. We felt that he gave to us his best 
 thought, and the club had unquestionable evidence that 
 while it honored itself by choosing him as its president, 
 it always had a large place in his heart. In 1889 failing 
 health compelled him to decline reelection to the office, 
 and while he has seldom been seen at the club since that 
 time, his name has often been mentioned with sincere 
 and reverent regard ; and in no organization of which he 
 was a member will his memory be more fondly cherished 
 and his loss more deeply mourned. In all the years of 
 his connection with the Congregational Club, during 
 most of which he was its president, its members will 
 recall not a single act or word that was not courteous 
 and Christian, and its present conspicuous success is uni- 
 versally regarded as very largely due to his wisdom and 
 devotion to its interests. 
 
 (Rev.) Amory H. Bradford. 
 
 Mr, Roswell Smith's first gift [to Berea College], one 
 thousand dollars, was sent through the American Mis- 
 sionary Association in 1884 for our current expenses. In 
 June of the following year he, with George W. Cable, 
 
 58
 
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 ^,^^==^. ^!/ te^k^--- 

 
 Roswell Smith 
 
 attended our commencement. He saw our urgent need 
 of a suitable building for class-rooms, library, etc., and re- 
 marked that we should begin making bricks. One of our 
 workers mentioned the difficulty of making bricks with- 
 out straw. Mr. Roswell Smith at once replied, " Put me 
 down for five thousand for straw." We began making 
 bricks that summer, and in the end he put twenty-five 
 thousand dollars into a new building for us. One of the 
 most characteristic letters from the large correspondence 
 had during the progress of the building was written Jan- 
 uary 7, 1887, in which he says, " I hope the college will 
 get on without calling on me for more money, bid I shall 
 be ready to respond to calls as fast as may be neces- 
 sary to keep the work in progress, and I wish you to call 
 on me freely for that end." 
 
 When the building was nearly completed we asked him 
 to christen it. He wrote to call it " Lincoln Hall," in 
 memory of the poor white boy of Kentucky who had won 
 the hearts of his countrymen and the highest honors they 
 could give. 
 
 After we had been in the building a few months, the 
 following letter was received : 
 
 New York, Nov. 24, '87. 
 
 My Dear Mr. Dodge: I am glad to know that the building — 
 Lincoln Hall — meets your needs and gives you so much pleasure. 
 I have a picture of it in my office, and it certainly gives me more 
 pleasure at present than my new house, which I am trying so hard 
 to get into, and can't. 
 
 I have written to Mr. Hartley about the bas-relief of Lincoln, and 
 shall doubtless be able to advise you in that matter within a few 
 days. I am very sincerely yours, 
 
 Roswell Smith. 
 
 59
 
 Roswell Smith 
 
 Mr. Roswell Smith wished a bas-relief of Lincoln to be 
 placed in the vestibule of Lincoln Hall. His next letter 
 was in reference to that, and is as follows : 
 
 New York, Nov. 29, '87. 
 My Dear Mr. Dodge : I have purchased from Mr. J. S. Hart- 
 ley a bronze cast of the Lincoln head, duly framed, and suitable for 
 hanging up indoors in Lincoln Hall. ... I hope it will reach you 
 before Christmas. 
 
 Will you kindly thank Mr. E. H. Fairchild for his letter of 
 Thanksgiving Day, and tell him that he is unduly alarmed as to my 
 health? As Mr. Lowell said yesterday, in his address on Copyright, 
 " We are all of us, always, just beginning to live." 
 
 I am very sincerely yours, 
 
 Roswell Smith. 
 
 Besides the new building, we received from him four 
 thousand dollars for current expenses. His last gift and 
 last letter came after the exciting political campaign of 
 
 four years ago : 
 
 New York, Dec. 31, '88. 
 My Dear Fellow-worker for Christ : I wish you a Happy 
 New Year, and I send you a thousand dollars for your work, which 
 please use (after consulting Pres. Fairchild) " Where it will do the 
 most good," as the pohticians say, and may the Divine Master's 
 blessing go with and attend its use. 
 
 I am yours sincerely, 
 
 Roswell Smith. 
 
 Our sympathies are with the family and friends of this 
 good man. Very truly yours, 
 
 P. D. Dodge, 
 Secretary and Treasurer. 
 
 Berea College, Ky., April 21, 1892. 
 
 60
 
 Roswell Smitb 
 
 There was, if I may judge correctly, something states- 
 manlike in his conduct of the business interests of which 
 he was at the head, while there was also something ro- 
 mantic in his feeling about them. To his mind The 
 Century Co. was not a concern for making money, but 
 an organization for the advancement of civilization, . . . 
 This was the spirit in which he conceived and carried on 
 the work of his life. And it imparted itself to those who 
 were associated with him. He was justly proud of their 
 friendship, confidence, and loyalty, and they in turn bear 
 testimony to the inspiration of his stimulating leadership. 
 The many volumes which have been brought out by the 
 company of which he was the president are in one sense 
 a monument to him ; but the influence of his strong 
 personality on the minds and characters of those who, 
 through these years, have been working with him, will 
 doubtless continue when all these volumes shall have 
 ceased to be read. . . . 
 
 It is not only in the offices where he will be no more 
 seen that he will be gratefully remembered. . . . He bore 
 his part of the work of some of the most important of the 
 benevolent societies of the church. . . . The shadows of 
 death have been gathering around him for many months, 
 and he entered into them bravely, patiently, without a 
 murmur. And now, out of the unwearied and loving 
 ministries which attended him to the last moment, he 
 has passed to the freedom and the peace of that larger 
 life on which no shadows fall. . . . 
 
 Rev. Dr. Edward B. Coe. 
 
 (Funeral Address.) 
 
 6i
 
 Roswell Smith 
 
 Here where I, sitting in my place, 
 So oft have seen you at the door, 
 
 A lad comes with indifferent face 
 To tell me we shall meet no more. 
 
 The Old World pity of slow ships 
 Was kinder than this flashing speed ; 
 
 The first short sigh on Western lips — 
 I hear it plainlier than I need. 
 
 The paper flutters to the ground. 
 
 Cold wastes of ocean scarcely part 
 Your voiceless mouth that makes no sound, 
 
 And silence of my beating heart. 
 
 In this first hour, while thought is blank, 
 I dwell on all that made you dear ; 
 
 And for the gracious past I thank 
 Whatever now can feel or hear. 
 
 The gentle mode, so subtly leagued 
 With moral power and mental health, 
 
 The courteous patience unfatigued, 
 The cordial wish to please by stealth ! 
 
 That lifelong flame which rose and fell 
 By purest purpose still was fanned ; 
 
 That stringent will which planned so well — 
 For others, not for self, it planned. 
 
 62
 
 Roswell Smith 
 
 Vain, vain are words! I sit alone 
 And helpless sorrow westward send. 
 
 Roar louder, London's central moan, 
 My world is poorer by a friend. 
 
 Edmund Gosse. 
 London, April 20, 1892. 
 
 As I complete the hurried grouping of these 
 testimonials, I am moved to venture a word, the 
 briefest, and merely for emphasis, on four or 
 five traits in the character of Roswell Smith, 
 which seem, in the moment of tribute-offering, 
 to have been eclipsed by the luster of more 
 imposing qualities. 
 
 And first, the almost poignant longing with 
 which he clung to the days of best strength 
 as they glided relentlessly through his grasp. 
 He was as much too wise to be avaricious of 
 time as he was too noble to be so of money; 
 and yet he yearned toward every parting hour. 
 How often did he say to intimates younger 
 than himself, " You think you know the value 
 of time ; but you do not — no young man can." 
 
 In the years of his great achievements he 
 was hale, well knit, broad of frame, strong in 
 features, and of majestic yet most inviting 
 
 63
 
 Roswell Smith 
 
 presence ; " a remarkably fine-looking man, 
 and the very embodiment of energy and intel- 
 ligence." I never saw in him the most cov- 
 ert sign of personal vanity, or saw him resort 
 to the most momentary expedient to deceive 
 himself or others as to his advancing years. 
 And yet it was touching to observe the silent, 
 or nearly silent, intensity with which he craved 
 departing youth. Oftenest it betrayed itself 
 in a certain robust sadness with which he laid 
 upon some younger friend the tender accusa- 
 tion, " You, too, are getting old." 
 
 I might give a trivial incident that illustrates 
 both this and the manly purity of his mind. A 
 companion, his junior, said laughingly, as they 
 parted with some fair young friends after a 
 moment's greeting, he had made the sad dis- 
 covery that he had arrived at the stage of life 
 where girls were no longer afraid of him. Ros- 
 well Smith's answering smile was faint, grave, 
 and soon gone as he said, "You 've another 
 stage to reach, and a sadder discovery to make 
 — the day you find you 're no longer afraid of 
 the girls." 
 
 Probably the explanation of this trait is that 
 almost with the first of the series of his great 
 
 64
 
 Roswell Smith 
 
 successes there set in a slow, and for a long time 
 very slight, but steady and conscious decline 
 of his physical powers, which followed his every 
 step, an ever-darkening shadow. He did not 
 take age unkindly, but he took death, when at 
 length he plainly saw it approaching, kindlier 
 than he could take the thought of an enfeebled 
 age. He was so invincibly bent on keeping his 
 spiritual life whole that a flaw in his physical 
 perfections was to him as the fall of some out- 
 post in his soul's defenses. 
 
 This leads me to note, as a second trait, his 
 moral indignation. Among all the soul's arma- 
 ment no other one thing, I take it, is so effective, 
 so needful, or so rare, as a strong, quick, aggres- 
 sive, and even implacable indignation against 
 the remotest approach of temptation, the first 
 apparition of evil. It is our moral nature's long- 
 range artillery, and holds the soul's enemies be- 
 yond besieging distance. Roswell Smith was of 
 so tender a sentiment, and so believed in tender- 
 ness, that he could hardly tell a touching inci- 
 dent without his eyes filling with tears and his 
 voice faltering. Yet to the author of an ignoble 
 proposition or an unfair deed he could be as rude 
 as a thunder-cloud. He was patient with error, 
 
 lo 65
 
 Roswell Smith 
 
 even when it arose from the most criminal weak- 
 ness or from the grossest moral deformity. He 
 could forgive and forbear with the largeness with 
 which he did all things; but with men of stal- 
 wart immorality he would have no relations, no 
 dealings, whatever, social, civil, or commercial. 
 I would note, too, the great depth of his feel- 
 ings. To conceive largely, to execute largely — 
 it may be that with such gifts must go always 
 also the capacity to enjoy and suffer in like 
 measure. A ready anger, even when readiest 
 against evil, may come of a lack of depth ; a 
 constant cheerfulness may arise from a spirit that 
 will not, or can not, carry grief's burdens. But 
 Roswell Smith's affections, — his friendships and 
 loves, — though rarely demonstrative, and almost 
 barren of caresses, were deep seas ; his sorrows 
 were agonies. He could smite, for the rights of 
 others and even for his own, — though these he 
 often waived, — with stern prowess. Indeed, al- 
 most every period of his life was marked by 
 some such struggle. But every blow that fell 
 upon him left an inward wound, and every blow 
 that he struck cost him deeper pain than it cost 
 any adversary. There is no room to doubt that 
 his griefs, and particularly the griefs that all strifes 
 
 66
 
 Roswell Smith 
 
 cost him, made his life shorter than it need have 
 been. But maybe a hte so broad and deep 
 could the better afford to end so far short as it 
 did of threescore and ten. 
 
 One day, a few years ago, — and this incident 
 brings again to mind his yearning after spent, 
 although such well spent, years, — The Century 
 offices took fire. The fire was checked without 
 having destroyed the rooms, but not until the 
 letter-books of the president, though not de- 
 stroyed, had yielded to some chemistry of fire, 
 water, or both, and the entire record of his years 
 of correspondence was obliterated. His sorrow 
 for these lost letters was of a depth and poi- 
 gnancy as great as if they had been children. 
 Yet he never let a darkened mood cast from 
 him its shadow upon the spirits of others, and 
 no sorrow or despondency ever disennobled 
 him, or made him less a Christian or less a man. 
 
 We say his loves were deep seas : their deep- 
 est deep — and this is the last trait of his char- 
 acter to which we shall refer — was his love ot 
 family and kindred. For it he had few words 
 and almost no gestures; it really was wanting 
 in emotional demonstration. And still it was as 
 real, as obvious, as constant, as seemingly an 
 
 67
 
 Roswell Smith 
 
 essential part of his existence, as his breath. To 
 those whom God had joined to him he no more 
 needed to say, " I love," than, " I live." It was 
 all one; they were a part of him, he of them, 
 like members of one body; and he was forever 
 doing, doing, doing for them as if, of that body, 
 he were — as he was — the heart. Yet, again, 
 his love, for all its pent fondness, never took 
 form to belittle; it always sought to aggrandize 
 spiritually as well as materially those whom it 
 rested on, and there was ever present in his 
 mind a silent punctiliousness as to the moral 
 effect of every favor, however lavishly bestowed. 
 Having at one time decided to make, gradu- 
 ally, to one of his nearest, a gift equal in total 
 value to an independent fortune, he took pains 
 to have its price paid step by step, month by 
 month, thousand after thousand until they were 
 tens and scores, by another's cheque ; never by 
 his own. 
 
 His widow, his daughter, and he whom he 
 made so much more son than son-in-law — these 
 cannot forget the riches of his love and worth. 
 His young grandchildren can know its full mea- 
 sure only from their seniors ; how perpetually they 
 dwelt in his mind and heart; how fondly — with 
 
 68
 
 Roswell Sini'fb 
 
 what hope and devotion — he studied their every 
 feature of face, form, and character through every 
 new day of their unfolding growth. May his 
 memory be to them, and to us all who knew him, 
 a power to make our lives the more nearly after 
 the likeness shown by his Master to him.
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 Los Angeles 
 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below.
 
 UC SOUTHERN RFGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 AA 000 481 647 6 
 
 S64C2
 
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