Title: Lives of Poor Boys Who Became Famous
Author: Bolton, Sarah K.
Language: English
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  LIVES
  OF
  POOR BOYS WHO BECAME FAMOUS.

  BY
  SARAH K. BOLTON.


  "_There is properly no History, only Biography._"
                                                  --EMERSON.

  _Human portraits, faithfully drawn, are of all pictures the
    welcomest on human walls._
                                                  --CARLYLE.


  _FORTY-FIRST THOUSAND._

  NEW YORK
  THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO.
  PUBLISHERS



  _Copyright,_
  BY THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO.
  1885.


  Norwood Press:
  J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith.
  Boston, Mass., U.S.A.



  TO
  MY ONLY SISTER,

  Mrs. Halsey D. Miller,

  IN REMEMBRANCE OF
  MANY HAPPY HOURS.



PREFACE.


These characters have been chosen from various countries and from varied
professions, that the youth who read this book may see that poverty is
no barrier to success. It usually develops ambition, and nerves people
to action. Life at best has much of struggle, and we need to be cheered
and stimulated by the careers of those who have overcome obstacles.

If Lincoln and Garfield, both farmer-boys, could come to the Presidency,
then there is a chance for other farmer-boys. If Ezra Cornell, a
mechanic, could become the president of great telegraph companies, and
leave millions to a university, then other mechanics can come to fame.
If Sir Titus Salt, working and sorting wool in a factory at nineteen,
could build one of the model towns of the world for his thousands of
workingmen, then there is encouragement and inspiration for other
toilers in factories. These lives show that without WORK and WILL no
great things are achieved.

I have selected several characters because they were the centres of
important historical epochs. With Garibaldi is necessarily told the
story of Italian unity; with Garrison and Greeley, the fall of slavery;
and with Lincoln and Sheridan, the battles of our Civil War.

                                                    S. K. B.



CONTENTS.


                                                 PAGE

  GEORGE PEABODY              Merchant              1

  BAYARD TAYLOR               Traveller            13

  Captain JAMES B. EADS       Civil Engineer       26

  JAMES WATT                  Inventor             33

  Sir JOSIAH MASON            Manufacturer         46

  BERNARD PALISSY             Potter               54

  BERTEL THORWALDSEN          Sculptor             65

  WOLFGANG MOZART             Composer             72

  SAMUEL JOHNSON              Author               83

  OLIVER GOLDSMITH            Poet and Writer      90

  MICHAEL FARADAY             Scientist            96

  Sir HENRY BESSEMER          Maker of Steel      112

  Sir TITUS SALT              Philanthropist      124

  JOSEPH MARIE JACQUARD       Silk Weaver         130

  HORACE GREELEY              Editor              138

  WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON      Reformer            156

  GIUSEPPE GARIBALDI          Patriot             172

  JEAN PAUL RICHTER           Novelist            187

  LEON GAMBETTA               Statesman           204

  DAVID G. FARRAGUT           Sailor              219

  EZRA CORNELL                Mechanic            238

  Lieut.-General SHERIDAN     Soldier             251

  THOMAS COLE                 Painter             270

  OLE BULL                    Violinist           284

  MEISSONIER                  Artist              303

  GEO. W. CHILDS              Journalist          313

  DWIGHT L. MOODY             Evangelist          323

  ABRAHAM LINCOLN             President           342



[Illustration: GEORGE PEABODY.]

GEORGE PEABODY.


If America had been asked who were to be her most munificent givers in
the nineteenth century, she would scarcely have pointed to two grocer's
boys, one in a little country store at Danvers, Mass., the other in
Baltimore; both poor, both uneducated; the one leaving seven millions to
Johns Hopkins University and Hospital, the other nearly nine millions to
elevate humanity. George Peabody was born in Danvers, Feb. 18, 1795. His
parents were respectable, hard-working people, whose scanty income
afforded little education for their children. George grew up an
obedient, faithful son, called a "mother-boy" by his companions, from
his devotion to her,--a title of which any boy may well be proud.

At eleven years of age he must go out into the world to earn his living.
Doubtless his mother wished to keep her child in school; but there was
no money. A place was found with a Mr. Proctor in a grocery-store, and
here, for four years, he worked day by day, giving his earnings to his
mother, and winning esteem for his promptness and honesty. But the boy
at fifteen began to grow ambitious. He longed for a larger store and a
broader field. Going with his maternal grandfather to Thetford, Vt., he
remained a year, when he came back to work for his brother in a
dry-goods store in Newburyport. Perhaps now in this larger town his
ambition would be satisfied, when, lo! the store burned, and George was
thrown out of employment.

His father had died, and he was without a dollar in the world. Ambition
seemed of little use now. However, an uncle in Georgetown, D.C., hearing
that the boy needed work, sent for him, and thither he went for two
years. Here he made many friends, and won trade, by his genial manner
and respectful bearing. His tact was unusual. He never wounded the
feelings of a buyer of goods, never tried him with unnecessary talk,
never seemed impatient, and was punctual to the minute. Perhaps no one
trait is more desirable than the latter. A person who breaks his
appointments, or keeps others waiting for him, loses friends, and
business success as well.

A young man's habits are always observed. If he is worthy, and has
energy, the world has a place for him, and sooner or later he will find
it. A wholesale dry-goods dealer, Mr. Riggs, had been watching young
Peabody. He desired a partner of energy, perseverance, and honesty.
Calling on the young clerk, he asked him to put his labor against his,
Mr. Riggs's, capital. "But I am only nineteen years of age," was the
reply.

This was considered no objection, and the partnership was formed. A year
later, the business was moved to Baltimore. The boyish partner travelled
on horseback through the western wilds of New York, Pennsylvania,
Maryland, and Virginia, selling goods, and lodging over night with
farmers or planters. In seven years the business had so increased, that
branch houses were established in Philadelphia and New York. Finally Mr.
Riggs retired from the firm; and George Peabody found himself, at the
age of thirty-five, at the head of a large and wealthy establishment,
which his own energy, industry, and honesty had helped largely to build.
He had bent his life to one purpose, that of making his business a
success. No one person can do many things well.

Having visited London several times in matters of trade, he determined
to make that great city his place of residence. He had studied finance
by experience as well as close observation, and believed that he could
make money in the great metropolis. Having established himself as a
banker at Wanford Court, he took simple lodgings, and lived without
display. When Americans visited London, they called upon the genial,
true-hearted banker, whose integrity they could always depend upon, and
transacted their business with him.

In 1851, the World's Fair was opened at the Crystal Palace, London,
Prince Albert having worked earnestly to make it a great success.
Congress neglected to make the needed appropriations for America; and
her people did not care, apparently, whether Powers' Greek Slave, Hoe's
wonderful printing-press, or the McCormick Reaper were seen or not. But
George Peabody cared for the honor of his nation, and gave fifteen
thousand dollars to the American exhibitors, that they might make their
display worthy of the great country which they were to represent. The
same year, he gave his first Fourth of July dinner to leading Americans
and Englishmen, headed by the Duke of Wellington. While he remembered
and honored the day which freed us from England, no one did more than he
to bind the two nations together by the great kindness of a great heart.

Mr. Peabody was no longer the poor grocery boy, or the dry-goods clerk.
He was fine looking, most intelligent from his wide reading, a total
abstainer from liquors and tobacco, honored at home and abroad, and very
rich. Should he buy an immense estate, and live like a prince? Should he
give parties and grand dinners, and have servants in livery? Oh, no! Mr.
Peabody had acquired his wealth for a different purpose. He loved
humanity. "How could he elevate the people?" was the one question of his
life. He would not wait till his death, and let others spend his money;
he would have the satisfaction of spending it himself.

And now began a life of benevolence which is one of the brightest in our
history. Unmarried and childless, he made other wives and children happy
by his boundless generosity. If the story be true, that he was once
engaged to a beautiful American girl, who gave him up for a former poor
lover, the world has been the gainer by her choice.

In 1852, Mr. Peabody gave ten thousand dollars to help fit out the
second expedition under Dr. Kane, in his search for Sir John Franklin;
and for this gift a portion of the newly-discovered country was justly
called Peabody Land. This same year, the town of Danvers, his
birthplace, decided to celebrate its centennial. Of course the rich
London banker was invited as one of the guests. He was too busy to be
present, but sent a letter, to be opened on the day of the celebration.
The seal was broken at dinner, and this was the toast, or sentiment, it
contained: "EDUCATION--_a debt due from present to future generations._"
A check was enclosed for twenty thousand dollars for the purpose of
building an Institute, with a free library and free course of lectures.
Afterward this gift was increased to two hundred and fifty thousand
dollars. The poor boy had not forgotten the home of his childhood.

Four years later, when Peabody Institute was dedicated, the giver, who
had been absent from America twenty years, was present. New York and
other cities offered public receptions; but he declined all save
Danvers. A great procession was formed, the houses along the streets
being decorated, all eager to do honor to their noble townsman. The
Governor of Massachusetts, Edward Everett, and others made eloquent
addresses, and then the kind-faced, great-hearted man responded:--

"Though Providence has granted me an unvaried and unusual success in the
pursuit of fortune in other lands, I am still in heart the humble boy
who left yonder unpretending dwelling many, _very_ many years ago....
There is not a youth within the sound of my voice whose early
opportunities and advantages are not very much greater than were my own;
and I have since achieved nothing that is impossible to the most humble
boy among you. Bear in mind, that, to be truly great, it is not
necessary that you should gain wealth and importance. Steadfast and
undeviating _truth_, fearless and straightforward _integrity_, and an
_honor_ ever unsullied by an unworthy word or action, make their
possessor greater than worldly success or prosperity. These qualities
constitute greatness."

Soon after this, Mr. Peabody determined to build an Institute, combining
a free library and lectures with an Academy of Music and an Art Gallery,
in the city of Baltimore. For this purpose he gave over one million
dollars--a princely gift indeed! Well might Baltimore be proud of the
day when he sought a home in her midst.

But the merchant-prince had not finished his giving. He saw the poor of
the great city of London, living in wretched, desolate homes. Vice and
poverty were joining hands. He, too, had been poor. He could sympathize
with those who knew not how to make ends meet. What would so stimulate
these people to good citizenship as comfortable and cheerful
abiding-places? March 12, 1862, he called together a few of his trusted
friends in London, and placed in their hands, for the erection of neat,
tasteful dwellings for the poor, the sum of seven hundred and fifty
thousand dollars. Ah, what a friend the poor had found! not the gift of
a few dollars, which would soon be absorbed in rent, but homes which for
a small amount might be enjoyed as long as they lived.

At once some of the worst portions of London were purchased; tumble-down
structures were removed; and plain, high brick blocks erected, around
open squares, where the children could find a playground. Gas and water
were supplied, bathing and laundry rooms furnished. Then the poor came
eagerly, with their scanty furniture, and hired one or two rooms for
twenty-five or fifty cents a week,--cab-men, shoemakers, tailors, and
needle-women. Tenants were required to be temperate and of good moral
character. Soon tiny pots of flowers were seen in the windows, and a
happier look stole into the faces of hard-working fathers and mothers.

Mr. Peabody soon increased his gift to the London poor to three million
dollars, saying, "If judiciously managed for two hundred years, its
accumulation will amount to a sum sufficient to buy the city of London."

No wonder that these gifts of millions began to astonish the world.
London gave him the freedom of the city in a gold box,--an honor rarely
bestowed,--and erected his bronze statue near the Royal Exchange. Queen
Victoria wished to make him a baron; but he declined all titles. What
gift, then, would he accept, was eagerly asked. "A letter from the Queen
of England, which I may carry across the Atlantic, and deposit as a
memorial of one of her most faithful sons," was the response. It is not
strange that so pure and noble a man as George Peabody admired the
purity and nobility of character of her who governs England so wisely.

A beautiful letter was returned by the Queen, assuring him how deeply
she appreciated his noble act of more than princely munificence,--an
act, as the Queen believes, "wholly without parallel," and asking him to
accept a miniature portrait of herself. The portrait, in a massive gold
frame, is fourteen inches long and ten inches wide, representing the
Queen in robes of state,--the largest miniature ever attempted in
England, and for the making of which a furnace was especially built. The
cost is believed to have been over fifty thousand dollars in gold. It is
now preserved, with her letter, in the Peabody Institute near Danvers.

Oct. 25, 1866, the beautiful white marble Institute in Baltimore was to
be dedicated. Mr. Peabody had crossed the ocean to be present. Besides
the famous and the learned, twenty thousand children with Peabody badges
were gathered to meet him. The great man's heart was touched as he said,
"Never have I seen a more beautiful sight than this vast collection of
interesting children. The review of the finest army, attended by the
most delightful strains of martial music, could never give me half the
pleasure." He was now seventy-one years old. He had given nearly five
millions; could the world expect any more? He realized that the freed
slaves at the South needed an education. They were poor, and so were a
large portion of the white race. He would give for their education three
million dollars, the same amount he had bestowed upon the poor of
London. To the trustees having this gift in charge he said, "With my
advancing years, my attachment to my native land has but become more
devoted. My hope and faith in its successful and glorious future have
grown brighter and stronger. But, to make her prosperity more than
superficial, her moral and intellectual development should keep pace
with her material growth. I feel most deeply, therefore, that it is the
duty and privilege of the more favored and wealthy portions of our
nation to assist those who are less fortunate." Noble words! Mr.
Peabody's health was beginning to fail. What he did must now be done
quickly. Yale College received a hundred and fifty thousand dollars for
a Museum of Natural History; Harvard the same, for a Museum of
Archæology and Ethnology; to found the Peabody Academy of Science at
Salem a hundred and forty thousand dollars; to Newburyport Library,
where the fire threw him out of employment, and thus probably broadened
his path in life, fifteen thousand dollars; twenty-five thousand dollars
each to various institutions of learning throughout the country; ten
thousand dollars to the Sanitary Commission during the war, besides four
million dollars to his relatives; making in all thirteen million
dollars. Just before his return to England, he made one of the most
tender gifts of his life. The dear mother whom he idolized was dead, but
he would build her a fitting monument; not a granite shaft, but a
beautiful Memorial Church at Georgetown, Mass., where for centuries,
perhaps, others will worship the God she worshipped. On a marble tablet
are the words, "Affectionately consecrated by her children, George and
Judith, to the memory of Mrs. Judith Peabody." Whittier wrote the hymn
for its dedication:--

    "The heart, and not the hand, has wrought,
      From sunken base to tower above,
    The image of a tender thought,
      The memory of a deathless love."

Nov. 4, 1869, Mr. Peabody lay dying at the house of a friend in London.
The Queen sent a special telegram of inquiry and sympathy, and desired
to call upon him in person; but it was too late. "It is a great
mystery," said the dying man feebly; "but I shall know all soon." At
midnight he passed to his reward.

Westminster Abbey opened her doors for a great funeral, where statesmen
and earls bowed their heads in honor of the departed. Then the Queen
sent her noblest man-of-war, "Monarch," to bear in state, across the
Atlantic, "her friend," the once poor boy of Danvers. Around the coffin,
in a room draped in black, stood immense wax candles, lighted. When the
great ship reached America, Legislatures adjourned, and went with
Governors and famous men to receive the precious freight. The body was
taken by train to Peabody, and then placed on a funeral car, eleven feet
long and ten feet high, covered with black velvet, trimmed with silver
lace and stars. Under the casket were winged cherubs in silver. The car
was drawn by six horses covered with black and silver, while corps of
artillery preceded the long procession. At sunset the Institute was
reached, and there, surrounded by the English and American flags draped
with crape, the guard kept silent watch about the dead. At the funeral,
at the church, Hon. Robert C. Winthrop pronounced the eloquent eulogy,
of the "brave, honest, noble-hearted friend of mankind," and then, amid
a great concourse of people, George Peabody was buried at Harmony Grove,
by the side of the mother whom he so tenderly loved. Doubtless he looked
out upon this greensward from his attic window when a child or when he
labored in the village store. Well might two nations unite in doing
honor to this man, both good and great, who gave nine million dollars to
bless humanity.

[The building fund of £500,000 left by Mr. Peabody for the benefit of
the poor of London has now been increased by rents and interest to
£857,320. The whole of this great sum of money is in active employment,
together with £340,000 which the trustees have borrowed. A total of
£1,170,787 has been expended during the time the fund has been in
existence, of which £80,903 was laid out during 1884. The results of
these operations are seen in blocks of artisans' dwellings built on land
purchased by the trustees and let to working men at rents within their
means, containing conveniences and comforts not ordinarily attainable by
them, thus fulfilling the benevolent intentions of Mr. Peabody. At the
present time 4551 separate dwellings have been erected, containing
10,144 rooms, inhabited by 18,453 persons. Thirteen new blocks of
buildings are now in course of erection and near completion. Indeed,
there is no cessation in the work of fulfilling the intentions of the
noble bequest.--_Boston Journal_, Mar. 7, 1885.]



[Illustration: BAYARD TAYLOR.]

BAYARD TAYLOR.


Since Samuel Johnson toiled in Grub Street, London, literature has
scarcely furnished a more pathetic or inspiring illustration of struggle
to success than that of Bayard Taylor. Born of Quaker parentage in the
little town of Kennett Square, near Philadelphia, Jan. 11, 1825, he grew
to boyhood in the midst of fresh air and the hard work of farm-life. His
mother, a refined and intelligent woman, who taught him to read at four,
and who early discovered her child's love for books, shielded him as far
as possible from picking up stones and weeding corn, and set him to
rocking the baby to sleep. What was her amazement one day, on hearing
loud cries from the infant, to find Bayard absorbed in reading, and
rocking his own chair furiously, supposing it to be the cradle! It was
evident, that, though such a boy might become a fine literary man, he
could not be a successful baby-tender.

He was especially eager to read poetry and travels, and, before he was
twelve years old, had devoured the contents of their small circulating
library, as well as Cooper's novels, and the histories of Gibbon,
Robertson, and Hume. The few books which he owned were bought with money
earned by selling nuts which he had gathered. He read Milton, Scott,
Byron, and Wordsworth; and his mother would often hear him repeating
poetry to his brother after they had gone to bed. He was always planning
journeys in Europe, which seemed very far from being realized. At
fourteen he began to study Latin and French, and at fifteen, Spanish;
and a year later he assisted in teaching at the academy where he was
attending school.

He was ambitious; but there seemed no open door. There is never an open
door to fame or prosperity, except we open it for ourselves. The world
is too busy to help others; and assistance usually weakens rather than
strengthens us. About this time he received, through request, an
autograph from Charles Dickens, then lecturing in this country. The boy
of sixteen wrote in his journal: "It was not without a feeling of
ambition that I looked upon it; that as he, a humble clerk, had risen to
be the guest of a mighty nation, so I, a humble pedagogue, might, by
unremitted and arduous intellectual and moral exertion, become a light,
a star, among the names of my country. May it be!... I believe all poets
are possessed in a greater or less degree of ambition. I think this is
never given without a mind of sufficient power to sustain it, and to
achieve its lofty object."

At seventeen, Bayard's schooling was over. He sketched well, and would
gladly have gone to Philadelphia to study engraving; but he had no
money. One poem had been published in the "Saturday Evening Post." Those
only who have seen their first poem in print can experience his joy. But
writing poetry would not earn him a living. He had no liking for
teaching, but, as that seemed the only thing at hand, he would try to
obtain a school. He did not succeed, however, and apprenticed himself
for four years to a printer. He worked faithfully, using all his spare
hours in reading and writing poetry.

Two years later, he walked to Philadelphia and back--thirty miles each
way--to see if fifteen of his poems could not be printed in a book! His
ambition evidently had not abated. Of course no publisher would take the
book at his own risk. There was no way of securing its publication,
therefore, but to visit his friends, and solicit them to buy copies in
advance. This was a trying matter for a refined nature; but it was a
necessity. He hoped thus to earn a little money for travel, and "to win
a name that the person who shall be chosen to share with me the toils of
life will not be ashamed to own." This "person" was Mary Agnew, whose
love and that of Bayard Taylor form one of the saddest and tenderest
pictures in our literature.

At last the penniless printer boy had determined to see Europe. For two
years he had read every thing he could find upon travels abroad. His
good mother mourned over the matter, and his acquaintances prophesied
dire results from such a roving disposition. He would go again to
Philadelphia, and see if the newspapers did not wish correspondence from
Europe. All the editors politely declined the ardent boy's proposals.
Probably he did not know that "unknown writers" are not wanted.

About to return home, "not in despair," he afterwards wrote, "but in a
state of wonder as to where my funds would come from, for I felt certain
they would come," the editor of the "Saturday Evening Post" offered him
four dollars a letter for twelve letters,--fifty dollars,--with the
promise of taking more if they were satisfactory. The "United States
Gazette" made a similar offer, and, after selling a few manuscript poems
which he had with him, he returned home in triumph, with a hundred and
forty dollars in his pocket! "This," he says, "seemed sufficient to
carry me to the end of the world."

Immediately Bayard and his cousin started on foot for Washington, a
hundred miles, to see the member of Congress from their district, and
obtain passports from him. Reaching a little village on their way
thither, they were refused lodgings at the tavern because of the
lateness of the hour,--nine o'clock!--and walked on till near midnight.
Then seeing a house brilliantly lighted, as for a wedding, they
approached, and asked the proprietor whether a tavern were near by. The
man addressed turned fiercely upon the lads, shouting, "Begone! Leave
the place instantly. Do you hear? Off!" The amazed boys hastened away,
and at three o'clock in the morning, footsore and faint, after a walk of
nearly forty miles, slept in a cart standing beside an old farmhouse.

And now at nineteen, he was in New York, ready for Europe. He called
upon the author, N. P. Willis, who had once written a kind note to him;
and this gentleman, with a ready nature in helping others,--alas! not
always found among writers--gave him several letters of introduction to
newspaper men. Mr. Greeley said bluntly when applied to, "I am sick of
descriptive letters, and will have no more of them. But I should like
some sketches of German life and society, after you have been there, and
know something about it. If the letters are good, you shall be paid for
them; but don't write _until you know something_."

July 1, 1844, Bayard and two young friends, after paying ten dollars
each for steerage passage, started out for this eventful voyage. No
wonder that, as land faded from sight, and he thought of gentle Mary
Agnew and his devoted mother, his heart failed him, and he quite broke
down. After twenty-eight days they landed in Liverpool, strangers, poor,
knowing almost nothing of the world, but full of hope and enthusiasm.
They spent three weeks in Scotland and the north of England, and then
travelled through Belgium to Heidelberg. Bayard passed the first winter
in Frankfort, in the plainest quarters, and then, with his knapsack on
his back, visited Leipzig, Dresden, Prague, Vienna, and Munich. After
this he walked over the Alps, and through Northern Italy, spending four
months in Florence, and then visiting Rome. Often he was so poor that he
lived on twenty cents a day. Sometimes he was without food for nearly
two days, writing his natural and graphic letters when his ragged
clothes were wet through, and his body faint from fasting. But the
manly, enthusiastic youth always made friends by his good cheer and
unselfishness.

At last he was in London, with but thirty cents to buy food and lodging.
But he had a poem of twelve hundred lines in his knapsack, which he
supposed any London publisher would be glad to accept. He offered it;
but it was "declined with thanks." The youth had not learned that Bayard
Taylor unknown, and Bayard Taylor famous in two hemispheres, were two
different names upon the title-page of a book. Publishers cannot usually
afford to do missionary work in their business; they print what will
sell. "Weak from sea-sickness," he says, "hungry, chilled, and without a
single acquaintance in the great city, my situation was about as
hopeless as it is possible to conceive."

Possibly he could obtain work in a printer's shop. This he tried hour
after hour, and failed. Finally he spent his last twopence for bread,
and found a place to sleep in a third-rate chop-house, among sailors,
and actors from the lower theatres. He rose early, so as not to be asked
to pay for his bed, and again sought work. Fortunately he met an
American publisher, who loaned him five dollars, and with a thankful
heart he returned to pay for his lodging. For six weeks he staid in his
humble quarters, wrote letters home to the newspapers, and also sent
various poems to the English journals, which were all returned to him.
For two years he supported himself on two hundred and fifty dollars a
year, earning it all by writing. "I saw," he says, "almost nothing of
intelligent European society; but literature and art were, nevertheless,
open to me, and a new day had dawned in my life."

On his return to America he found that his published letters had been
widely read. He was advised to put them in a book; and "Views Afoot,"
with a preface by N. P. Willis, were soon given to the world. Six
editions were sold the first year; and the boy who had seen Europe in
the midst of so much privation, found himself an author, with the
prospect of fame. Not alone had poverty made these two years hard to
bear. He was allowed to hold no correspondence with Mary Agnew, because
her parents steadily refused to countenance the young lovers. He had
wisely made his mother his confidante, and she had counselled patience
and hope. The rising fame possibly smoothed the course of true love,
for at twenty-one, Bayard became engaged to the idol of his heart. She
was an intelligent and beautiful girl, with dark eyes and soft brown
hair, and to the ardent young traveller seemed more angel than human. He
showed her his every poem, and laid before her every purpose. He wrote
her, "I have often dim, vague forebodings that an eventful destiny is in
store for me"; and then he added in quaint, Quaker dialect, "I have told
thee that existence would not be endurable without thee; I feel further
that thy aid will be necessary to work out the destinies of the
future.... I am really glad that thou art pleased with my poetry. One
word from thee is dearer to me than the cold praise of all the critics
in the land."

For the year following his return home, he edited a country paper, and
thereby became involved in debts which required the labors of the next
three years to cancel. He now decided to go to New York if possible,
where there would naturally be more literary society, and openings for a
writer. He wrote to editors and publishers; but there were no vacancies
to be filled. Finally he was offered enough to pay his board by
translating, and this he gladly accepted. By teaching literature in a
young ladies' school, he increased his income to nine dollars a week.
Not a luxurious amount, surely.

For a year he struggled on, saving every cent possible, and then Mr.
Greeley gave him a place on the "Tribune," at twelve dollars a week. He
worked constantly, often writing poetry at midnight, when his day's
duties were over. He made true friends, such as Stedman and Stoddard,
published a new book of poems; and in the beginning of 1849 life began
to look full of promise. Sent by his paper to write up California, for
six months he lived in the open air, his saddle for his pillow, and on
his return wrote his charming book "El-dorado." He was now twenty-five,
out of debt, and ready to marry Mary Agnew. But a dreadful cloud had
meantime gathered and burst over their heads. The beautiful girl had
been stricken with consumption. The May day bridal had been postponed.
"God help me, if I lose her!" wrote the young author to Mr. Stoddard
from her bedside. Oct. 24 came, and the dying girl was wedded to the man
she loved. Four days later he wrote: "We have had some heart-breaking
hours, talking of what is before us, and are both better and calmer for
it." And, later still: "She is radiantly beautiful; but it is not the
beauty of earth.... We have loved so long, so intimately, and so wholly,
that the footsteps of her life have forever left their traces in mine.
If my name should be remembered among men, hers will not be forgotten."
Dec. 21, 1850, she went beyond; and Bayard Taylor at twenty-six was
alone in the world, benumbed, unfitted for work of any kind. "I am not
my true self more than half the time. I cannot work with any spirit:
another such winter will kill me, I am certain. I shall leave next fall
on a journey somewhere--no matter where," he wrote a friend.

Fortunately he took a trip to the Far East, travelling in Egypt, Asia
Minor, India, and Japan for two years, writing letters which made him
known the country over. On his return, he published three books of
travel, and accepted numerous calls in the lecture-field. His stock in
the "Tribune" had become productive, and he was gaining great success.

His next long journey was to Northern Europe, when he took his brother
and two sisters with him, as he could enjoy nothing selfishly. This time
he saw much of the Brownings and Thackeray, and spent two days as the
guest of Tennyson. He was no longer the penniless youth, vainly looking
for work in London to pay his lodging, but the well-known traveller,
lecturer, and poet. Oct. 27, 1857, seven years after the death of Mary
Agnew, he married the daughter of a distinguished German astronomer,
Marie Hansen, a lady of great culture, whose companionship has ever
proved a blessing.

Tired of travel, Mr. Taylor now longed for a home for his wife and
infant daughter, Lilian. He would erect on the old homestead, where he
played when a boy, such a house as a poet would love to dwell in, and
such as poet friends would delight to visit. So, with minutest care and
thought, "Cedarcroft," a beautiful structure, was built in the midst of
two hundred acres. Every flower, every tree, was planted with as much
love as Scott gave to "Abbotsford." But, when it was completed, the old
story had been told again, of expenses going far beyond expectations,
and, instead of anticipated rest, toil and struggle to pay debts, and
provide for constant outgoes.

But Bayard Taylor was not the man to be disturbed by obstacles. He at
once set to work to earn more than ever by his books and lectures. With
his characteristic generosity he brought his parents and his sisters to
live in his home, and made everybody welcome to his hospitality. The
"Poet's Journal," a poem of exquisite tenderness, was written here, and
"Hannah Thurston," a novel, of which fifteen thousand were soon sold.

Shortly after the beginning of our civil war, Mr. Taylor was made
Secretary of Legation at Russia. He was now forty years of age, loved,
well-to-do, and famous. His novels--"John Godfrey's Fortunes" and the
"Story of Kennett"--were both successful. The "Picture of St. John,"
rich and stronger than his other poems, added to his fame. But the
gifted and versatile man was breaking in health. Again he travelled
abroad, and wrote "Byways in Europe." On his return he translated, with
great care and study, "Faust," which will always be a monument to his
learning and literary skill. He published "Lars, a Norway pastoral," and
gave delightful lectures on German literature at Cornell University,
and Lowell and Peabody Institutes, at Boston and Baltimore.

At last he wearied of the care and constant expense of "Cedarcroft." He
needed to be near the New York libraries. Mr. Greeley had died, his
newspaper stock had declined, and he could not sell his home, as he had
hoped. There was no alternative but to go back in 1871 into the daily
work of journalism in the "Tribune" office. The rest which he had longed
for was never to come. For four years he worked untiringly, delivering
the Centennial Ode at our Exposition, and often speaking before learned
societies.

In 1878, President Hayes bestowed upon him a well-deserved honor, by
appointing him minister to Berlin. Germany rejoiced that a lover of her
life and literature had been sent to her borders. The best of New York
gathered to say good-by to the noted author. Arriving in Berlin, Emperor
William gave him cordial welcome, and Bismark made him a friend. A
pleasant residence was secured, and furniture purchased. At last he was
to find time to complete a long-desired work, the Lives of Goethe and
Schiller. "Prince Deukalion," his last noble poem, had just reached him.
All was ready for the best and strongest work of his life, when, lo! the
overworked brain and body gave way. He did not murmur. Only once, Dec.
19, he groaned, "I want--I want--oh, you know what I mean, that _stuff
of life_!" It was too late. At fifty-three the great heart, the
exquisite brain, the tired body, were still.

    "Dead he lay among his books;
    The peace of God was in his looks."

Germany as well as America wept over the bier of the once poor Quaker
lad, who travelled over Europe with scarce a shilling in his pocket,
now, by his own energy, brought to one of the highest positions in the
gift of his country. Dec. 22, the great of Germany gathered about his
coffin, Bertold Auerbach speaking beautiful words.

March 13, 1879, the dead poet lay in state in the City Hall at New York,
in the midst of assembled thousands. The following day the body was
borne to "Cedarcroft," and, surrounded by literary associates and tender
friends, laid to rest. Public memorial meetings were held in various
cities, where Holmes, Longfellow, Whittier, and others gave their loving
tributes. A devoted student, a successful diplomat, a true friend, a
noble poet, a gifted traveller, a man whose life will never cease to be
an inspiration.



CAPTAIN JAMES B. EADS.


On the steamship "Germanic" I played chess with the great civil
engineer, Captain Eads, stimulated by the thought that to beat him was
to defeat the man who had twice conquered the Mississippi. But I didn't
defeat him.

The building of a ship-canal across the Isthmus of Suez made famous the
Frenchman, Ferdinand de Lesseps: so the opening-up of the mouth of the
Mississippi River has distinguished Captain Eads. To-day both these men
are struggling for the rare honor of joining, at the Isthmus of Panama,
the waters of the great Atlantic and Pacific; a magnificent scheme,
which, if successful, will save annually thousands of miles of dangerous
sea-voyage around Cape Horn, besides millions of money.

The "Great West" seems to delight in producing self-made men like
Lincoln, Grant, Eads, and others.

James B. Eads was born in Indiana in 1820. He is slender in form, neat
in dress, genial, courteous, and over sixty years of age. In 1833, his
father started down the Ohio River with his family, proposing to settle
in Wisconsin. The boat caught fire, and his scanty furniture and
clothing were burned. Young Eads barely escaped ashore with his
pantaloons, shirt, and cap. Taking passage on another boat, this boy of
thirteen landed at St. Louis with his parents; his little bare feet
first touching the rocky shore of the city on the very spot where he
afterwards located and built the largest steel bridge in the world, over
the Mississippi,--one of the most difficult feats of engineering ever
performed in America.

At the age of nine, young Eads made a short trip on the Ohio, when the
engineer of the steamboat explained to him so clearly the construction
of the steam-engine, that, before he was a year older, he built a little
working model of it, so perfect in its parts and movements, that his
schoolmates would frequently go home with him after school to see it
work. A locomotive engine driven by a concealed rat was one of his next
juvenile feats in mechanical engineering. From eight to thirteen he
attended school; after which, from necessity, he was placed as clerk in
a dry-goods store.

How few young people of the many to whom poverty denies an education,
either understand the value of the saying, "knowledge is power," or
exercise will sufficient to overcome obstacles. Willpower and thirst for
knowledge elevated General Garfield from driving canal horses to the
Presidency of the United States.

Over the store in St. Louis, where he was engaged, his employer lived.
He was an old bachelor, and, having observed the tastes of his clerk,
gave him his first book in engineering. The old gentleman's library
furnished evening companions for him during the five years he was thus
employed. Finally, his health failing, at the age of nineteen he went on
a Mississippi River steamer; from which time to the present day that
great river has been to him an all-absorbing study.

Soon afterwards he formed a partnership with a friend, and built a small
boat to raise cargoes of vessels sunken in the Mississippi. While this
boat was building, he made his first venture in submarine engineering,
on the lower rapids of the river, by the recovery of several hundred
tons of lead. He hired a scow or flat-boat, and anchored it over the
wreck. An experienced diver, clad in armor, who had been hired at
considerable expense in Buffalo, was lowered into the water; but the
rapids were so swift that the diver, though incased in the strong armor,
feared to be sunk to the bottom. Young Eads determined to succeed, and,
finding it impracticable to use the armor, went ashore, purchased a
whiskey-barrel, knocked out the head, attached the air-pump hose to it,
fastened several heavy weights to the open end of the barrel; then,
swinging it on a derrick, he had a practical diving-bell--the best use I
ever heard made of a whiskey-barrel.

Neither the diver, nor any of the crew, would go down in this
contrivance: so the dauntless young engineer, having full confidence in
what he had read in books, was lowered within the barrel down to the
bottom; the lower end of the barrel being open. The water was sixteen
feet deep, and very swift. Finding the wreck, he remained by it a full
hour, hitching ropes to pig-lead till a ton or more was safely hoisted
into his own boat. Then, making a signal by a small line attached to the
barrel, he was lifted on deck, and in command again. The sunken cargo
was soon successfully raised, and was sold, and netted a handsome
profit, which, increased by other successes, enabled energetic Eads to
build larger boats, with powerful pumps, and machinery on them for
lifting entire vessels. He surprised all his friends in floating even
immense sunken steamers--boats which had long been given up as lost.

When the Rebellion came, it was soon evident that a strong fleet must be
put upon Western rivers to assist our armies. Word came from the
government to Captain Eads to report in Washington. His thorough
knowledge of the "Father of Waters" and its tributaries, and his
practical suggestions, secured an order to build seven gunboats, and
soon after an order for the eighth was given.

In forty-eight hours after receiving this authority, his agents and
assistants were at work; and suitable ship-timber was felled in half a
dozen Western States for their hulls. Contracts were awarded to large
engine and iron works in St. Louis, Pittsburgh, and Cincinnati; and
within one hundred days, eight powerful ironclad gunboats, carrying over
one hundred large cannon, and costing a million dollars, were achieving
victories no less important for the Mississippi valley than those which
Ericsson's famous "Cheese-box Monitor" afterwards won on the James
River.

These eight gunboats, Commodore Foote ably employed in his brave attacks
on Forts McHenry and Donaldson. They were the first ironclads the United
States ever owned. Captain Eads covered the boats with iron: Commodore
Foote covered them with glory.

Eads built not less than fourteen of these gunboats. During the war, the
models were exhibited by request to the German and other governments.
His next work was to throw across the mighty Mississippi River, nearly
half a mile wide, at St. Louis, a monstrous steel bridge, supported by
three arches, the spans of two being five hundred and two feet long, and
the central one five hundred and twenty feet. The huge piles were
ingeniously sunk in the treacherous sand, one hundred and thirty-six
feet below the flood-level to the solid rock, through ninety feet of
sand. This bridge and its approaches cost eighty millions of dollars,
and is used by ten or twelve railroad companies. Above the tracks is a
big street with carriage-roads, street-cars, and walks for
foot-passengers.

The honor of building the finest bridge in the world would have
satisfied most men, but not ambitious Captain Eads. He actually loved
the noble river in which De Soto, its discoverer, was buried, and fully
realized the vast, undeveloped resources of its rich valleys. Equally
well he understood what a gigantic work in the past the river and its
fifteen hundred sizable tributaries had accomplished in times of
freshets, by depositing soil and sand north of the original Gulf of
Mexico, forming an alluvial plain five hundred miles long, sixty miles
wide, and of unknown depth, and having a delta extending out into the
Gulf, sixty miles long, and as many miles wide, and probably a mile
deep. And yet this heroic man, although jealously opposed for years by
West Point engineers, having a sublime confidence in the laws of nature,
and actuated by intense desire to benefit mankind, dared to stand on the
immense sand-bars at the mouth of this defiant stream, and, making use
of the jetty system, bid the river itself dig a wide, deep channel into
the seas beyond, for the world's commerce.

Captain Eads, who had studied the improvements on the Danube, Maas, and
other European rivers, observed that all rivers flow faster in their
narrow channels, and carry along in the swift water, sand, gravel, and
even stones. This familiar law he applied at the South Pass of the
Mississippi River, where the waters, though deep above, escaped from the
banks into the Gulf, and spread sediment far and wide.

The water on the sand-bars of the three principal passes varied from
eight to thirteen feet in depth. Many vessels require twice the depth.
Two piers, twelve hundred feet apart, were built from land's end, a mile
into the sea. They were made from willows, timber, gravel, concrete, and
stone. Mattresses, a hundred feet long, from twenty-five to fifty feet
wide, and two feet thick, were constructed from small willows placed at
right angles, and bound securely together. These were floated into
position, and sunk with gravel, one mattress upon another, which the
river soon filled with sand that firmly held them in their place. The
top was finished with heavy concrete blocks, to resist the waves. These
piers are called "jetties," and the swift collected waters have already
carried over five million cubic yards of sand into the deep gulf, and
made a ship-way over thirty feet deep. The five million dollars paid by
the United States was little enough for so priceless a service.

       *       *       *       *       *

In June, 1884, Captain Eads received the Albert medal of the British
Society of Arts, the first American upon whom this honor has been
conferred. Before his great enterprise of the Tehuantepec ship railroad
had been completed, he died at Nassau, New Providence, Bahama Islands,
March 8, 1887, after a brief illness, of pneumonia, at the age of
sixty-seven.



[Illustration: JAMES WATT.]

JAMES WATT.


The history of inventors is generally the same old struggle with
poverty. Sir Richard Arkwright, the youngest of thirteen children, with
no education, a barber, shaving in a cellar for a penny to each
customer, dies worth two and one-half million dollars, after being
knighted by the King for his inventions in spinning. Elias Howe, Jr., in
want and sorrow, lives on beans in a London attic, and dies at
forty-five, having received over two million dollars from his
sewing-machines in thirteen years. Success comes only through hard work
and determined perseverance. The steps to honor, or wealth, or fame, are
not easy to climb.

The history of James Watt, the inventor of the steam-engine, is no
exception to the rule of struggling to win. He was born in the little
town of Greenock, Scotland, 1736. Too delicate to attend school, he was
taught reading by his mother, and a little writing and arithmetic by his
father. When six years of age, he would draw mechanical lines and
circles on the hearth, with a colored piece of chalk. His favorite play
was to take to pieces his little carpenter tools, and make them into
different ones. He was an obedient boy, especially devoted to his
mother, a cheerful and very intelligent woman, who always encouraged
him. She would say in any childish quarrels, "Let James speak; from him
I always hear the truth." Old George Herbert said, "One good mother is
worth a hundred schoolmasters"; and such a one was Mrs. Watt.

When sent to school, James was too sensitive to mix with rough boys, and
was very unhappy with them. When nearly fourteen, his parents sent him
to a friend in Glasgow, who soon wrote back that they must come for
their boy, for he told so many interesting stories that he had read,
that he kept the family up till very late at night.

His aunt wrote that he would sit "for an hour taking off the lid of the
teakettle, and putting it on, holding now a cup and now a silver spoon
over the steam, watching how it rises from the spout, and catching and
condensing the drops of hot water it falls into."

Before he was fifteen, he had read a natural philosophy twice through,
as well as every other book he could lay his hands on. He had made an
electrical machine, and startled his young friends by some sudden
shocks. He had a bench for his special use, and a forge, where he made
small cranes, pulleys, pumps, and repaired instruments used on ships. He
was fond of astronomy, and would lie on his back on the ground for
hours, looking at the stars.

Frail though he was in health, yet he must prepare himself to earn a
living. When he was eighteen, with many tender words from his mother,
her only boy started for Glasgow to learn the trade of making
mathematical instruments. In his little trunk, besides his "best
clothes," which were a ruffled shirt, a velvet waistcoat, and silk
stockings, were a leather apron and some carpenter tools. Here he found
a position with a man who sold and mended spectacles, repaired fiddles,
and made fishing nets and rods.

Finding that he could learn very little in this shop, an old
sea-captain, a friend of the family, took him to London. Here, day after
day, he walked the streets, asking for a situation; but nobody wanted
him. Finally he offered to work for a watchmaker without pay, till he
found a place to learn his trade. This he at last obtained with a Mr.
Morgan, to whom he agreed to give a hundred dollars for the year's
teaching. As his father was poorly able to help him, the conscientious
boy lived on two dollars a week, earning most of this pittance by rising
early, and doing odd jobs before his employer opened his shop in the
morning. He labored every evening until nine o'clock, except Saturday,
and was soon broken in health by hunger and overwork. His mother's heart
ached for him, but, like other poor boys, he must make his way alone.

At the end of the year he went to Glasgow to open a shop for himself;
but other mechanics were jealous of a new-comer, and would not permit
him to rent a place. A professor at the Glasgow University knew the
deserving young man, and offered him a room in the college, which he
gladly accepted. He and the lad who assisted him could earn only ten
dollars a week, and there was little sale for the instruments after they
were made: so, following the example of his first master, he began to
make and mend flutes, fiddles, and guitars, though he did not know one
note from another. One of his customers wanted an organ built, and at
once Watt set to work to learn the theory of music. When the organ was
finished, a remarkable one for those times, the young machinist had
added to it several inventions of his own.

This earning a living was a hard matter; but it brought energy,
developed thought, and probably helped more than all else to make him
famous. The world in general works no harder than circumstances compel.

Poverty is no barrier to falling in love, and, poor though he was, he
now married Margaret Miller, his cousin, whom he had long tenderly
loved. Their home was plain and small; but she had the sweetest of
dispositions, was always happy, and made his life sunny even in its
darkest hours of struggling.

Meantime he had made several intellectual friends in the college, one of
whom talked much to him about a steam-carriage. Steam was not by any
means unknown. Hero, a Greek physician who lived at Alexandria a century
before the Christian era, tells how the ancients used it. Some crude
engines were made in Watt's time, the best being that of Thomas
Newcomen, called an atmospheric engine, and used in raising water from
coal-mines. It could do comparatively little, however; and many of the
mines were now useless because the water nearly drowned the miners.

Watt first experimented with common vials for steam-reservoirs, and
canes hollowed out for steam-pipes. For months he went on working night
and day, trying new plans, testing the powers of steam, borrowing a
brass syringe a foot long for his cylinder, till finally the essential
principles of the steam-engine were born in his mind. He wrote to a
friend, "My whole thoughts are bent on this machine. I can think of
nothing else." He hired an old cellar, and for two months worked on his
model. His tools were poor; his foreman died; and the engine, when
completed, leaked in all parts. His old business of mending instruments
had fallen off; he was badly in debt, and had no money to push forward
the invention. He believed he had found the right principle; but he
could not let his family starve. Sick at heart, and worn in body, he
wrote: "Of all things in life there is nothing more foolish than
inventing." Poor Watt!

His great need was money,--money to buy food, money to buy tools, money
to give him leisure for thought. Finally, a friend induced Dr. Roebuck,
an iron-dealer, to become Watt's partner, pay his debts of five thousand
dollars, take out a patent, and perfect the engine. Watt went to London
for his patent, but so long was he delayed by indifferent officials,
that he wrote home to his young wife, quite discouraged. With a brave
heart in their pinching poverty, Margaret wrote back, "I beg that you
will not make yourself uneasy, though things should not succeed to your
wish. If the engine will not do, _something else will; never despair_."

On his return home, for six months he worked in setting up his engine.
The cylinder, having been badly cast, was almost worthless; the piston,
though wrapped in cork, oiled rags, and old hat, let the air in and the
steam out; and the model proved a failure. "To-day," he said, "I enter
the thirty-fifth year of my life, and I think I have hardly yet done
thirty-five pence worth of good in the world: but I cannot help it." The
path to success was not easy.

Dr. Roebuck was getting badly in debt, and could not aid him as he had
promised; so Watt went sadly back to surveying, a business he had taken
up to keep the wolf from the door. In feeble health, out in the worst
weather, his clothes often wet through, life seemed almost unbearable.
When absent on one of these surveying excursions, word was brought that
Margaret, his beloved wife, was dead. He was completely unnerved. Who
would care for his little children, or be to him what he had often
called her, "the comfort of his life"? After this he would often pause
on the threshold of his humble home to summon courage to enter, since
she was no longer there to welcome him. She had shared his poverty, but
was never to share his fame and wealth.

And now came a turning-point in his life, though the struggles were by
no means over. At Birmingham, lived Matthew Boulton, a rich
manufacturer, eight years older than Watt. He employed over a thousand
men in his hardware establishment, and in making clocks, and reproducing
rare vases. He was a friend of Benjamin Franklin, with whom he had
corresponded about the steam-engine, and he had also heard of Watt and
his invention through Dr. Roebuck. He was urged to assist. But Watt
waited three years longer for aid. Nine years had passed since he made
his invention; he was in debt, without business, and in poor health.
What could he do? He seemed likely to finish life without any success.

Finally Boulton was induced to engage in the manufacture of engines,
giving Watt one-third of the profits, if any were made. One engine was
constructed by Boulton's men, and it worked admirably. Soon orders came
in for others, as the mines were in bad condition, and the water must be
pumped out. Fortunes, like misfortunes, rarely come singly. Just at this
time the Russian Government offered Watt five thousand dollars yearly if
he would go to that country. Such a sum was an astonishment. How he
wished Margaret could have lived to see this proud day!

He could not well be spared from the company now; so he lived on at
Birmingham, marrying a second time, Anne Macgregor of Scotland, to care
for his children and his home. She was a very different woman from
Margaret Miller; a neat housekeeper, but seemingly lacking in the
lovable qualities which make sunshine even in the plainest home.

As soon as the Boulton and Watt engines were completed, and success
seemed assured, obstacles arose from another quarter. Engines had been
put into several Cornwall mines, which bore the singular names of "Ale
and Cakes," "Wheat Fanny," "Wheat Abraham," "Cupboard," and "Cook's
Kitchen." As soon as the miners found that these engines worked well,
they determined to destroy the patent by the cry that Boulton and Watt
had a monopoly of a thing which the world needed. Petitions were
circulated, giving great uneasiness to both the partners. Several
persons also stole the principle of the engine, either by bribing the
engine-men, or by getting them drunk so that they would tell the secrets
of their employers. The patent was constantly infringed upon. Every hour
was a warfare. Watt said, "The rascality of mankind is almost past
belief."

Meantime Boulton, with his many branches of business, and the low state
of trade, had gotten deeply in debt, and was pressed on every side for
the tens of thousands which he owed. Watt was nearly insane with this
trouble. He wrote to Boulton: "I cannot rest in my bed until these money
matters have assumed some determinate form. I am plagued with the blues.
I am quite eaten up with the mulligrubs."

Soon after this, Watt invented the letter-copying press, which at first
was greatly opposed, because it was thought that forged names and
letters would result. After a time, however, there was great demand for
it. Watt was urged by Boulton to invent a rotary engine; but this was
finally done by their head workman, William Murdock, the inventor of
lighting by gas. He also made the first model of a locomotive, which
frightened the village preacher nearly out of his senses, as it came
puffing down the street one evening. Though devoted to his employers,
sometimes working all night for them, they counselled him to give up all
thought about his locomotive, lest by developing it he might in time
withdraw from their firm. Alas for the selfishness of human nature! He
was never made a partner, and, though he thought out many inventions
after his day's work was done, he remained faithful to their service
till the end of his life. Mr. Buckle tells this good story of Murdock.
Having found that fish-skins could be used instead of isinglass, he came
to London to inform the brewers, and took board in a handsome house.
Fancying himself in his laboratory, he went on with his experiments.
Imagine the horror of the landlady when she entered his room, and found
her elegant wall-paper covered with wet fish-skins, hung up to dry! The
inventor took an immediate departure with his skins. When the rotary
engine was finished, the partners sought to obtain a charter, when lo!
The millers and mealmen all opposed it, because, said they, "If flour is
ground by steam, the wind and water-mills will stop, and men will be
thrown out of work." Boulton and Watt viewed with contempt this new
obstacle of ignorance. "Carry out this argument," said the former, "and
we must annihilate water-mills themselves, and go back again to the
grinding of corn by hand labor." Presently a large mill was burned by
incendiaries, with a loss of fifty thousand dollars.

Watt about this time invented his "Parallel Motion," and the Governor,
for regulating the speed of the engine. Large orders began to come in,
even from America and the West Indies; but not till they had expended
two hundred thousand dollars were there any profits. Times were
brightening for the hard-working inventor. He lost his despondency, and
did not long for death, as he had previously.

After a time, he built a lovely home at Heathfield, in the midst of
forty acres of trees, flowers, and tasteful walks. Here gathered some of
the greatest minds of the world,--Dr. Priestley who discovered oxygen,
Sir William Herschel, Dr. Darwin, Josiah Wedgwood, and scores of others,
who talked of science and literature. Mrs. Watt so detested dirt, and so
hated the sight of her husband's leather apron and soiled hands, that he
built for himself a "garret," where he could work unmolested by his
wife, or her broom and dustpan. She never allowed even her two pug-dogs
to cross the hall without wiping their feet on the mat. She would seize
and carry away her husband's snuff-box, wherever she found it, because
she considered snuff as dirt. At night, when she retired from the
dining-room, if Mr. Watt did not follow at the time fixed by her, she
sent a servant to remove the lights. If friends were present, he would
say meekly, "We must go," and walk slowly out of the room. Such conduct
must have been about as trying as the failure of his engines. For days
together he would stay in his garret, not even coming down to his meals,
cooking his food in his frying-pan and Dutch oven, which he kept by him.
One cannot help wondering, whether, sometimes, as he worked up there
alone, he did not think of Margaret, whose face would have brightened
even that dingy room.

A crushing sorrow now came to him. His only daughter, Jessie, died, and
then his pet son, Gregory, the dearest friend of Humphry Davy, a young
man of brilliant scholarship and oratorical powers. Boulton died before
his partner, loved and lamented by all, having followed the precept he
once gave to Watt: "Keep your mind and your heart pleasant, if possible;
for the way to go through life sweetly is not to regard rubs."

Watt died peacefully Aug. 19, 1819, in his eighty-third year, and was
buried in beautiful Handsworth Church. Here stands Chantrey's
masterpiece, a sitting statue of the great inventor. Another is in
Westminster Abbey. When Lord Brougham was asked to write the inscription
for this monument, he said, "I reckon it one of the chief honors of my
life." Sir James Mackintosh placed him "at the head of all inventors in
all ages and nations"; and Wordsworth regarded him, "Considering both
the magnitude and the universality of his genius, as perhaps the most
extraordinary man that this country has ever produced."

After all the struggle came wealth and fame. The mine opens up its
treasures only to those who are persevering enough to dig into it; and
life itself yields little, only to such as have the courage and the will
to overcome obstacles.

Heathfield has passed into other hands; but the quiet garret is just as
James Watt left it at death. Here is a large sculpture machine, and many
busts partly copied. Here is his handkerchief tied to the beam on which
he rested his head. The beam itself is crumbling to dust. Little pots of
chemicals on the shelves are hardened by age. A bunch of withered grapes
is on a dish, and the ashes are in the grate as when he sat before it.
Close by is the hair trunk of his beloved Gregory, full of his
schoolbooks, his letters, and his childish toys. This the noble old man
kept beside him to the last.



SIR JOSIAH MASON.


One sunny morning in June, I went out five miles from the great
manufacturing city of Birmingham, England, to the pretty town called
Erdington, to see the Mason Orphanage. I found an immense brick
structure, with high Gothic towers, in the midst of thirteen acres of
velvety lawn. Over the portals of the building were the words, "DO DEEDS
OF LOVE." Three hundred happy children were scattered over the premises,
the girls in brown dresses with long white aprons: some were in the
great play-room, some doing the housework, and some serving at dinner.
Sly Cupid creeps into an orphan-asylum even; and the matron had to watch
carefully lest the biggest pieces of bread and butter be given by the
girls to the boys they liked best.

In the large grounds, full of flowers and trees, among the children he
so tenderly loved and called by name, the founder, Sir Josiah Mason, and
his wife, are buried, in a beautiful mausoleum, a Gothic chapel, with
stone carving and stained-glass windows.

[Illustration: SIR JOSIAH MASON.]

And who was this founder?

In a poor, plain home in Kidderminster, Feb. 23 1795, Sir Josiah Mason
was born. His father was a weaver, and his mother the daughter of a
laborer. At eight years of age, with of course little education, the boy
began the struggle of earning a living. His mother fitted up two baskets
for him, and these he filled with baker's cakes, and sold them about the
streets. Little Joe became so great a favorite, that the buyers often
gave him an extra penny. Finally a donkey was obtained; and a bag
containing cakes in one end, and fruit and vegetables in the other, was
strapped across his back. In this way, for seven years, Joe peddled from
door to door. Did anybody ever think then that he would be rich and
famous?

The poor mother helped him with her scanty means, and both parents
allowed him to keep all he could make. His father's advice used to be,
"Joe, thee'st got a few pence; never let anybody know how much thee'st
got in thee pockets." And well the boy carried out his father's
injunction in afterlife.

When he was fifteen, his brother had become a confirmed invalid, and
needed a constant attendant. The father was away at the shop, and the
mother busy with her cares: so Joe, who thought of others always before
himself, determined to be nurse, and earn some money also. He set about
becoming a shoemaker, having learned the trade from watching an old man
who lived near their house; but he could make only a bare pittance. Then
he taught himself writing, and earned a trifle for composing letters and
Valentines for his poor neighbors. This money he spent in books, for he
was eager for an education. He read no novels nor poetry, but books of
history, science, and theology.

Finally the mother started a small grocery and bakery, and Joe assisted.
Many of their customers were tramps and beggars, who could buy only an
ounce or half-ounce of tea; but even a farthing was welcome to the
Masons. Later, Josiah took up carpet-weaving and blacksmithing; but he
could never earn more than five dollars a week, and he became restless
and eager for a broader field. He had courage, was active and
industrious, and had good habits.

He was now twenty-one. He decided to go to Birmingham on Christmas Day,
to visit an uncle whom he had never seen. He went, and this was the
turning-point of his life. His uncle gave him work in making gilt toys;
and, what was perhaps better still for the poor young man, he fell in
love with his cousin Annie Griffiths, and married her the following
year. This marriage proved a great blessing, and for fifty-two years,
childless, they two were all in all to each other. For six years the
young husband worked early and late, with the promise of succeeding to
the small business; but at the end of these years the promise was
broken, and Mason found himself at thirty, out of work, and owning less
than one hundred dollars.

Walking down the street one day in no very happy frame of mind, a
stranger stepped up to him, and said, "Mr. Mason?"

"Yes," was the answer.

"You are now, I understand, without employment. I know some one who
wants just such a man as you, and I will introduce him to you. Will you
meet me to-morrow morning at Mr. Harrison's, the split-ring maker?"

"I will."

The next day the stranger said to Mr. Harrison, "I have brought you the
very man you want."

The business man eyed Mason closely, saying, "I've had a good many young
men come here; but they are afraid of dirtying their fingers."

Mason opened his somewhat calloused hands, and, looking at them, said,
"Are _you_ ashamed of dirtying yourselves to get your own living?"

Mason was at once employed, and a year later Mr. Harrison offered him
the business at twenty-five hundred dollars. Several men, observing the
young man's good qualities, had offered to loan him money when he should
go into trade for himself. He bethought him of these friends, and called
upon them; but they all began to make excuse. The world's proffers of
help or friendship we can usually discount by half. Seeing that not a
dollar could be borrowed, Mr. Harrison generously offered to wait for
the principal till it could be earned out of the profits. This was a
noble act, and Mr. Mason never ceased to be grateful for it.

He soon invented a machine for bevelling hoop-rings, and made five
thousand dollars the first year from its use. Thenceforward his life
reads like a fairy-tale. One day, seeing some steel pens on a card, in a
shop-window, he went in and purchased one for twelve cents. That evening
he made three, and enclosed one in a letter to Perry of London, the
maker, paying eighteen cents' postage, which now would be only two
cents.

His pen was such an improvement that Mr. Perry at once wrote for all he
could make. In a few years, Mason became the greatest pen-maker in the
world, employing a thousand persons, and turning out over five million
pens per week. Sixty tons of pens, containing one and a half million
pens to the ton, were often in his shops. What a change from peddling
cakes from door to door in Kidderminster!

Later he became the moneyed partner in the great electro-plating trade
of the Elkingtons, whose beautiful work at the Centennial Exposition we
all remember.

Mr. Mason never forgot his laborers. When he established copper-smelting
works in Wales, he built neat cottages for the workmen, and schools for
the three hundred and fifty children. The Welsh refused to allow their
children to attend school where they would be taught English. Mr. Mason
overcame this by distributing hats, bonnets, and other clothing to the
pupils, and, once in school, they needed no urging to remain. The
manufacturer was as hard a worker as any of his men. For years he was
the first person to come to his factory, and the last to leave it. He
was quick to decide a matter, and act upon it, and the most rigid
economist of time. He allowed nobody to waste his precious hours with
idle talk, nor did he waste theirs. He believed, with Shakespeare, that
"Talkers are no good doers." His hours were regular. He took much
exercise on foot, and lived with great simplicity. He was always
cheerful, and had great self-control. Finally he began to ask himself
how he could best use his money before he died. He remembered his poor
struggling mother in his boyish days. His first gift should be a home
for aged women--a noble thought!--his next should be for orphans, as he
was a great lover of children. For eight years he watched the beautiful
buildings of his Orphanage go up, and then saw the happy children
gathered within, bringing many of them from Kidderminster, who were as
destitute as himself when a boy. He seemed to know and love each child,
for whose benefit he had included even his own lovely home, a million
dollars in all. The annual income for the Orphanage is about fifty
thousand dollars. What pleasure he must have had as he saw them swinging
in the great playgrounds, where he had even thought to make triple
columns so that they could the better play hide-and-seek! At eight, he
was trudging the streets to earn bread; they should have an easier lot
through his generosity.

For this and other noble deeds Queen Victoria made him a knight. What
would his poor mother have said to such an honor for her boy, had she
been alive!

What would the noble man, now over eighty, do next with his money? He
recalled how hard it had been for him to obtain knowledge. The colleges
were patronized largely by the rich. He would build a great School of
Science, free to all who depended upon themselves for support. They
might study mathematics, languages, chemistry, civil engineering,
without distinction of sex or race. For five years he watched the
elegant brick and stone structure in Birmingham rise from its
foundations. And then, Oct. 1, 1880, in the midst of assembled
thousands, and in the presence of such men as Fawcett, Bright, and Max
Muller, Mason Science College was formally opened. Professor Huxley, R.
W. Dale, and others made eloquent addresses. In the evening, a thousand
of the best of England gathered at the college, made beautiful by
flowers and crimson drapery. On a dais sat the noble giver, in his
eighty-sixth year. The silence was impressive as the grand old man
arose, handing the key of his college, his million-dollar gift, to the
trustees. Surely truth is stranger than fiction! To what honor and
renown had come the humble peddler!

On the following 25th of June, Sir Josiah Mason was borne to his grave,
in the Erdington mausoleum. Three hundred and fifty orphan-children
followed his coffin, which was carried by eight servants or workingmen,
as he had requested. After the children had sung a hymn, they covered
the coffin-lid with flowers, which he so dearly loved. He sleeps in the
midst of his gifts, one of England's noble benefactors.



BERNARD PALISSY.


In the Louvre in Paris, preserved among almost priceless gems, are
several pieces of exquisite pottery called Palissy ware. Thousands
examine them every year, yet but few know the struggles of the man who
made such beautiful works of art.

Born in the south of France in 1509, in a poor, plain home, Bernard
Palissy grew to boyhood, sunny-hearted and hopeful, learning the trade
of painting on glass from his father. He had an ardent love for nature,
and sketched rocks, birds, and flowers with his boyish hands. When he
was eighteen, he grew eager to see the world, and, with a tearful
good-by from his mother, started out to seek his fortune. For ten years
he travelled from town to town, now painting on glass for some rich
lord, and now sketching for a peasant family in return for food.
Meantime he made notes about vegetation, and the forming of crystals in
the mountains of Auvergne, showing that he was an uncommon boy.

[Illustration: BERNARD PALISSY.]

Finally, like other young people, he fell in love, and was married at
twenty-eight. He could not travel about the country now, so he settled
in the little town of Saintes. Then a baby came into their humble home.
How could he earn more money, since the poor people about him had no
need for painted glass? Every time he tried to plan some new way to grow
richer, his daily needs weighed like a millstone around his neck.

About this time he was shown an elegant enamelled cup from Italy. "What
if I could be the first and only maker of such ware in France?" thought
he. But he had no knowledge of clay, and no money to visit Italy, where
alone the secret could be obtained.

The Italians began making such pottery about the year 1300. Two
centuries earlier, the Pagan King of Majorca, in the Mediterranean Sea,
was said to keep confined in his dungeons twenty thousand Christians.
The Archbishop of Pisa incited his subjects to make war upon such an
infidel king, and after a year's struggle, the Pisans took the island,
killed the ruler, and brought home his heir, and great booty. Among the
spoils were exquisite Moorish plates, which were so greatly admired that
they were hung on the walls of Italian churches. At length the people
learned to imitate this Majolica ware, which brought very high prices.

The more Palissy thought about this beautiful pottery, the more
determined he became to attempt its making. But he was like a man
groping in the dark. He had no knowledge of what composed the enamel on
the ware; but he purchased some drugs, and ground them to powder. Then
he bought earthen pots, broke them in pieces, spread the powder upon the
fragments, and put them in a furnace to bake. He could ill afford to
build a furnace, or even to buy the earthenware; but he comforted his
young wife with the thought that as soon as he had discovered what would
produce white enamel they would become rich.

When the pots had been heated sufficiently, as he supposed, he took them
out, but, lo! the experiment had availed nothing. Either he had not hit
upon the right ingredients, or the baking had been too long or too short
in time. He must of course try again. For days and weeks he pounded and
ground new materials; but no success came. The weeks grew into months.
Finally his supply of wood became exhausted, and the wife was losing her
patience with these whims of an inventor. They were poor, and needed
present income rather than future prospects. She had ceased to believe
Palissy's stories of riches coming from white enamel. Had she known that
she was marrying an inventor, she might well have hesitated, lest she
starve in the days of experimenting; but now it was too late.

His wood used up, Palissy was obliged to make arrangements with a potter
who lived three miles away, to burn the broken pieces in his furnace.
His enthusiasm made others hopeful; so that the promise to pay when
white enamel was discovered was readily accepted. To make matters sure
of success at this trial, he sent between three and four hundred pieces
of earthenware to his neighbor's furnace. Some of these would surely
come back with the powder upon them melted, and the surface would be
white. Both himself and wife waited anxiously for the return of the
ware; she much less hopeful than he, however. When it came, he says in
his journal, "I received nothing but shame and loss, because it turned
out good for nothing."

Two years went by in this almost hopeless work, then a third,--three
whole years of borrowing money, wood, and chemicals; three years of
consuming hope and desperate poverty. Palissy's family had suffered
extremely. One child had died, probably from destitution. The poor wife
was discouraged, and at last angered at his foolishness. Finally the
pottery fever seemed to abate, and Palissy went back to his drudgery of
glass-painting and occasional surveying. Nobody knew the struggle it had
cost to give up the great discovery; but it must be done.

Henry II., who was then King of France, had placed a new tax on salt,
and Palissy was appointed to make maps of all the salt-marshes of the
surrounding country. Some degree of comfort now came back to his family.
New clothes were purchased for the children, and the overworked wife
repented of her lack of patience. When the surveying was completed, a
little money had been saved, but, alas! the pottery fever had returned.

Three dozen new earthen pots were bought, chemicals spread over them as
before, and these taken to a glass-furnace, where the heat would be much
greater. He again waited anxiously, and when they were returned, some of
the powder had actually melted, and run over the earthenware. This added
fuel to the flame of his hope and ambition. And now, for two whole years
more, he went between his house and the glass-furnace, always hoping,
always failing.

His home had now become like a pauper's. For five years he had chased
this will-o'-the-wisp of white enamel; and the only result was the
sorrow of his relatives and the scorn of his neighbors. Finally he
promised his heart-broken wife that he would make but one more trial,
and if this failed, he would give up experimenting, and support her and
the children. He resolved that this should be an almost superhuman
effort. In some unknown way he raised the money for new pots and three
hundred mixtures of chemicals. Then, with the feelings of a man who has
but one chance for life, he walked beside the person who carried his
precious stock to the furnace. He sat down before the mouth of the great
hot oven, and waited four long hours. With what a sinking heart he
watched the pieces as they were taken out! He hardly dared look, because
it would probably be the old story of failure. But, lo! some were
melted, and as they hardened, oh, joy unspeakable, they turned white!
He hastened home with unsteady step, like one intoxicated, to tell his
wife the overwhelming truth. Surely he could not stop now in this great
work; and all must be done in secret, lest other potters learn the art.

Fears, no doubt, mingled with the new-born hopes of Mrs. Palissy, for
there was no regular work before her husband, and no steady income for
hungry little mouths. Besides, he must needs build a furnace in the shed
adjoining their home. But how could he obtain the money? Going to the
brick yard, he pledged some of the funds he hoped to receive in the
future, and brought home the bricks upon his back. Then he spent seven
long months experimenting in clay vessels, that he might get the best
shapes and quality to take the enamel. For another month, from early
morning till late at night, he pounded his preparations of tin, lead,
iron, and copper, and mixed them, as he hoped, in proper proportions.
When his furnace was ready, he put in his clay pots, and seated himself
before the mouth.

All day and all night, he fed the fire, his little children bringing him
soup, which was all the food the house afforded. A second day and night
he watched the results eagerly; but the enamel did not melt. Covered
with perspiration, and faint from loss of sleep and food, with the
desperation of hope that is akin to despair, for six days and six
nights, catching scarcely a moment of sleep, he watched the earthen
pots; but still the enamel did not melt. At last, thinking that his
proportions in his mixtures might have been wrong, he began once more to
pound and grind the materials without letting his furnace cool. His clay
vessels which he had spent seven months in making were also useless, so
he hastened to the shops, and bought new ones.

The family were now nearly frantic with poverty and the pottery madness
of the father. To make matters quite unbearable, the wood had given out,
and the furnace-fires must not stop. Almost wild with hope deferred, and
the necessities of life pressing upon him, Palissy tore up the fence
about his garden, and thrust it into the furnace-mouth. Still the enamel
did not melt. He rushed into the house, and began breaking up the table
and chairs for fuel. His wife and children were horrified. They ran
through the streets, crying out that Palissy was tearing the house down,
and had become crazy. The neighbors gathered, and begged him to desist,
but all to no purpose. He tore up the floors of the house, and threw
them in. The town jeered at him, and said, "It is right that he die of
hunger, seeing that he has left off following his trade." He was
exhausted and dried up by the heat of the furnace; but still he could
not yield. Finally the enamel melted. But now he was more crazy than
before. He must go forward, come what might.

With his family nearer than ever to starvation, he hired an assistant
potter, promising the old promise,--to pay when the discovery had been
perfected. The town of Saintes must have become familiar with that
promise. An innkeeper boarded the potter for six months, and charged it
to Palissy, to be paid, like all the other bills, in the future.
Probably Mrs. Palissy did not wish to board the assistant, even had she
possessed the necessary food. At the end of the six months the potter
departed, receiving, as pay, nearly all Palissy's wearing-apparel, which
probably was scarcely worth carrying away.

He now felt obliged to build an improved furnace, tearing down the old
one to recover the bricks, nearly turned to stone by the intense heat.
His hands were fearfully bruised and cut in the work. He begged and
borrowed more money, and once more started his furnace, with the boast
that this time he would draw three or four hundred francs from it. When
the ware was drawn out, the creditors came, eager for their share; but,
alas! there was no share for them. The mortar had been full of flints,
which adhered to the vessels; and Palissy broke the spoiled lot in
pieces. The neighbors called him a fool; the wife joined in the
maledictions--and who could blame her?

Under all this disappointment his spirit gave way, and he fled to his
chamber, and threw himself upon the bed. Six of his children had died
from want during the last ten years of struggle. What agony for the fond
mother! "I was so wasted in person," he quaintly wrote afterwards,
"that there was no form nor prominence of muscle on my arms or legs;
also the said legs were throughout of one size, so that the garters with
which I tied my stockings were at once, when I walked, down upon my
heels, with the stockings too. I was despised and mocked by all."

But the long lane turned at last. He stopped for a year, and took up his
old work to support his dying family, and then perfected his discovery.
For five or six years there were many failures,--the furnaces were too
hot, or the proportions were wrong; but finally the work became very
beautiful. His designs from nature were perfect, and his coloring
marvellous. His fame soon spread abroad; and such nobles as Montmorenci,
who stood next in rank to the King, and counts and barons, were his
patrons. He designed tiles for the finest palaces, ideal heads of the
Saviour, and dainty forms from Greek mythology.

Invited by Catherine de Medicis, wife of King Henry II., Palissy removed
to Paris, and was thenceforward called "Bernard of the Tuileries." He
was now rich and famous. What a change from that day when his
half-starved wife and children fled along the streets of Saintes, their
furniture broken up for furnace-fires! And yet, but for this blind
devotion to a single object, he would have remained a poor, unknown
glass-painter all his life. While in Paris, he published two or three
books which showed wide knowledge of history, mines, springs, metals,
and philosophy. He founded a Museum of Natural History, and for eight
years gave courses of lectures, attended by all the learned men of the
day. When his great learning was commented upon, he replied, "I have had
no other book than the sky and the earth, known to all." A wonderful man
indeed!

All his life Palissy was a devoted Huguenot, not fearing to read his
Bible, and preach to the people daily from it. Once he was imprisoned at
Bordeaux, and but for his genius, and his necessity to the beautifying
of palaces and chapels, he would have been put to death. When he was
seventy-six, under the brutal Henry III., he was shut up in the
Bastille. After nearly four years, the curled and vain monarch visited
him, and said, "My good man, you have been forty-five years in the
service of the Queen my mother, or in mine, and we have suffered you to
live in your own religion, amidst all the executions and the massacres.
Now, however, I am so pressed by the Guise party and my people, that I
have been compelled, in spite of myself, to imprison these two poor
women and you; they are to be burnt to-morrow, and you also, if you will
not be converted."

"Sire," answered the old man, "you have said several times that you feel
pity for me; but it is I who pity you, who have said, 'I am compelled.'
That is not speaking like a King. These girls and I, who have part in
the kingdom of heaven, we will teach you to talk royally. The Guisarts,
all your people, and yourself, cannot compel a potter to bow down to
images of clay."

The two girls were burnt a few months afterward. The next year, 1589,
Henry III. was stabbed by a monk who knelt before his throne; and the
same year, Palissy died in the Bastille, at the age of eighty.



[Illustration: THORWALDSEN.]

BERTEL THORWALDSEN.


A few months ago we visited a plain old house in Copenhagen, the boyhood
home of the great Danish sculptor. Here he worked with his father, a
poor wood-carver, who, thinking his boy would be a more skilful workman
if he learned to draw, sent him to the Free Royal Academy of Fine Arts
when he was twelve years old. At the end of four years he took a prize,
and the fact was mentioned in the newspapers. The next day, one of the
teachers asked, "Thorwaldsen, is it your brother who has carried off the
prize?"

Bertel's cheeks colored with pride as he said, "No, sir; it is I." The
teacher changed his tone, and replied, "Mr. Thorwaldsen, you will go up
immediately to the first rank."

Years afterward, when he had become famous, he said no praise was ever
so sweet as being called "Mr." when he was poor and unknown.

Two years later, he won another prize; but he was now obliged to stay at
home half the time to help support the large family. Obtaining a small
gold medal from the Academy, although so modest that, after the
examination, he escaped from the midst of the candidates by a private
staircase, he determined to try for the large gold medal. If he could
obtain this, he would receive a hundred and twenty dollars a year for
three years, and study art in Italy. He at once began to give
drawing-lessons, taught modelling to wealthy boys, and helped illustrate
books, working from early morning till late at night. He was rarely seen
to smile, so hard was the struggle for daily bread. But he tried for the
medal, and won.

What visions of fame must have come before him now, as he said good-by
to his poor parents, whom, alas, he was never to see again, and, taking
his little dog Hector, started for far-away Italy! When he arrived, he
was so ill and homesick that several times he decided to give up art and
go back. He copied diligently the works of the old masters, and tried in
vain to earn a little money. He sent some small works of his own to
Copenhagen; but nobody bought them. He made "Jason with the Golden
Fleece," and, when no one ordered it, the discouraged artist broke it in
pieces. The next year he modelled another Jason, a lady furnishing the
means; and while everybody praised it, and Canova said, "This young Dane
has produced a work in a new and grand style," it did not occur to any
one to buy the statue in marble.

An artist could not live on praise alone. Anxious days came and went,
and he was destitute and wretched. He must leave Rome, and go back to
the wood-carving in Copenhagen; for no one wanted beautiful things,
unless the maker was famous. He deferred going from week to week, till
at last his humble furniture had been sold, and his trunks waited at the
door. As he was leaving the house, his travelling companion said to him,
"We must wait till to-morrow, from a mistake in our passports."

A few hours later, Mr. Thomas Hope, an English banker, entered his
studio, and, struck with the grandeur of his model of Jason, asked the
cost in marble. "Six hundred sequins" (over twelve hundred dollars), he
answered, not daring to hope for such good fortune. "That is not enough;
you should ask eight," said the generous man, who at once ordered it.

And this was the turning-point in Bertel's life. How often a rich man
might help a struggling artist, and save a genius to the world, as did
this banker! Young Thorwaldsen now made the acquaintance of the Danish
ambassador to Naples, who introduced him to the family of Baron Wilhelm
von Humboldt, where the most famous people in Rome gathered. Soon a
leading countess commissioned him to cut four marble statues,--Bacchus,
Ganymede, Apollo, and Venus. Two years later, he was made professor in
the Royal Academy of Florence.

The Academy of Copenhagen now sent him five hundred dollars as an
expression of their pride in him. How much more he needed it when he was
near starving, all those nine years in Rome! The bashful student had
become the genial companion and interesting talker. Louis of Bavaria,
who made Munich one of the art centres of the world, was his admirer and
friend. The Danish King urged him to return to Copenhagen; but, as the
Quirinal was to be decorated with great magnificence, Rome could not
spare him. For this, he made in three months his famous "Entry of
Alexander into Babylon," and soon after his exquisite bas-reliefs,
"Night" and "Morning,"--the former, a goddess carrying in her arms two
children, Sleep and Death; the latter, a goddess flying through the air,
scattering flowers with both hands.

In 1816, when he was forty-six, he finished his Venus, after having made
_thirty_ models of the figure. He threw away the first attempt, and
devoted three years to the completion of the second. Three statues were
made, one of which is at Chatsworth, the elegant home of the Duke of
Devonshire; and one was lost at sea. A year later, he carved his
exquisite Byron, now at Trinity College, Cambridge.

He was now made a member of three other famous academies. Having been
absent from Denmark twenty-three years, the King urged his return for a
visit, at least. The Royal Palace of Charlottenburg was prepared for his
reception The students of the Academy escorted him with bands of music,
cannon were fired, poems read, cantatas sung; and the King created him
councillor of state.

Was the wood-carver's son proud of all these honors? No. The first
person he met at the palace was the old man who had served as a model
for the boys when Thorwaldsen was at school. So overcome was he as he
recalled those days of toil and poverty, that he fell upon the old man's
neck, and embraced him heartily.

After some of the grandest work of his life in the Frue Kirke,--Christ
and the Twelve Apostles, and others,--he returned to Rome, visiting, on
the way, Alexander of Russia, who, after Thorwaldsen had made his bust,
presented the artist with a diamond ring.

Although a Protestant, accounted now the greatest living sculptor, he
was made president of the Academy of St. Luke, a position held by Canova
when he was alive, and was commissioned to build the monument of Pius
VII. in St. Peters. Mendelssohn, the great composer, had become his warm
friend, and used to play for him as he worked in his studio. Sir Walter
Scott came to visit the artist, and as the latter could speak scarcely a
word of English, the two shook hands heartily, and clapped each other on
the shoulder as they parted.

When Thorwaldsen was sixty-eight years old, he left Rome to end his
days among his own people. The enthusiasm on his arrival was unbounded.
The whole city waited nearly three days for his coming. Boats decked
with flowers went out to meet him, and so many crowded on board his
vessel that it was feared she would sink. The members of the Academy
came in a body; and the crowd took the horses from the carriage, and
drew it themselves through the streets to the Palace of Charlottenburg.
In the evening there was a grand torchlight procession, followed by a
constant round of parties.

So beset was he with invitations to dinner, that, to save a little time
for himself, he told his servant Wilkins, that he would dine with him
and his wife. Wilkins, greatly confused, replied, "What would the world
think if it found out that the chancellor dined with his servant?"

"The world--the world! Have I not told you a thousand times that I don't
care in the least what the world thinks about these things?" Sometimes
he refused even to dine with the King. Finding at last that society
would give him no rest, he went to live with some friends at Nyso, seven
hours by boat from Copenhagen.

Once more he visited Rome, for a year, receiving royal attentions all
through Germany. Two years after, as he was sitting in the theatre, he
rose to let a lady pass. She saw him bending toward the floor, and
asked, "Have you dropped something?"

The great man made no answer; he was dead. The funeral was a grand
expression of love and honor. His body lay in state in the Royal Palace,
laurel about his brow, the coffin ornamented with floral crowns--one
made by the Queen of Denmark; his chisel laid in the midst of laurel and
palm, and his great works of art placed about him. Houses were draped in
black, bells tolled in all the churches, women threw flowers from their
windows before the forty artists who carried the coffin, and the King
and Prince royal received it in person at the Frue Kirke.

Then it was borne to the large museum which Copenhagen had built to
receive his work, and buried in the centre of the inner court, which had
been prepared under his own hand. A low granite coping surrounds the
grave, which is entirely covered with ivy, and on the side is his boyish
name, Bertel (Bartholomew) Thorwaldsen.



MOZART.


The quaint old city of Salzburg, Austria, built into the mountain-side,
is a Mecca for all who love music, and admire the immortal Mozart. When
he was alive, his native city allowed him nearly to starve; when he was
dead, she built him a beautiful monument, and preserved his home, a
plain two-story, stuccoed building, for thousands of travellers to look
upon sadly and tenderly.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born Jan. 27, 1756, a delicate, sensitive
child, who would ask a dozen times a day whether his friends loved him,
and, if answered in the negative, would burst into tears. At three, he
began to show his passion for music. He would listen intensely as his
father taught his little sister, Nannerl, seven years old; would move
his playthings from one room to another, to the sound of the violin; and
at four, composed pieces which astonished his sire.

[Illustration: W. A. MOZART.]

Two years later, the proud father took Wolfgang and his sister on a
concert tour to Vienna. So well did the boy play, that the Empress Maria
Theresa held him in her arms, and kissed him heartily. One day as he
was walking between two of her daughters, he slipped on the polished
floor and fell. Marie Antoinette, afterward Empress of France, raised
him up, whereupon he said, "You are very kind; I will marry you." The
father was alarmed at this seeming audacity; but the lovely Princess
playfully kissed him.

The next year he was taken to Paris, and here two sets of sonatas, the
works of a boy of seven, were brought out, dedicated to Marie
Antoinette. The children sat at the royal table, poems were written
about them, and everywhere they excited wonder and admiration; yet so
excessively modest was young Mozart, that he cried when praised too
much. In London, Bach took the boy between his knees, and alternately
they played his own great works and those of Handel at sight. Royalty
gave them "gold snuffboxes enough to set up a shop," wrote home the
father; "but in money I am poor." Wolfgang was now taken ill of
inflammatory fever; but he could not give up his music. A board was laid
across the bed, and on this he wrote out his thoughts in the notes.
Finally, with ardor dampened at their lack of pecuniary success, Leopold
Mozart took his dear ones back to quiet Salzburg.

Here the cold archbishop, discrediting the reports of the boy's genius,
shut him up alone for a week to compose an oratorio, the text furnished
by himself. Mozart, only ten years old, stood the test brilliantly. The
next year a second tour was taken to Vienna, to be present at the
marriage of the Archduchess Maria Josepha. The bride died from smallpox
shortly after their arrival: and poor Wolfgang took the disease, and was
blind for nine days. When he recovered, the musicians, moved by envy and
jealousy, would not be outdone by a boy of twelve, who was equally at
home in German or Italian opera, and determined to hiss off the stage
whatever he might compose. Sad at heart, and disappointed, again the
Mozarts went back to the old home.

Two years later, after much self-sacrifice, the father took his boy to
Italy for study. The first day in Passion Week they went to the Sistine
Chapel to hear the famous "Miserere" of Allegri, which was considered so
sacred, that the musicians were forbidden to take home any part of it,
or copy it out of the chapel, on pain of excommunication. Wolfgang, as
soon as he reached his lodgings, wrote it out from memory; which
remarkable feat for a boy of fourteen astonished all Rome. So
wonderfully did he play, that the audience at Naples declared there was
witchcraft in the ring which he wore on his left hand, and he was
obliged to remove it. At Milan, when he was nearly fifteen, he composed
the opera "Mithridate," conducting it himself, which was given twenty
nights in succession to enthusiastic audiences. After this came requests
for operas from Maria Theresa, Munich, and elsewhere. He was busy every
moment. Overworked, he was often ill; but the need for money to meet
heavy expenses made constant work a necessity. All this time he wrote
beautiful letters to his mother and sister. "Kiss mamma's hand for me a
thousand billion times," is the language of his loving heart. He could
scarcely be said to have had any childhood; but he kept his tenderness
and affection to the last of his life.

After their return to Salzburg, finding the new archbishop even less
cordial than the old--the former had allowed Wolfgang the munificent
salary of five dollars and a fourth yearly!--it was deemed wise to try
to find a new field for employment. The father, now sixty years of age,
must earn a pittance for the family by giving music-lessons, while the
mother accompanied the son to Paris. The separation was a hard one for
the devoted father, who could not say good-by to his idolized son, and
poor Nannerl wept the whole day long. Mozart, now twenty-one, and
famous, well repaid this affection by his pure character. He wrote: "I
have God always before me. Whatever is according to his will is also
according to mine; therefore I cannot fail to be happy and contented."

Stopping for a time at Mannheim, he attempted to gain the position of
tutor to the elector's children, but was disappointed. Here he fell in
love with Aloysia Weber, a pretty girl of fifteen, whose father, a
prompter at the National Theatre, earned only two hundred dollars yearly
for the support of his wife and six children. The girl had a fine
voice; and Mozart, blinded by love, asked no higher joy than to write
operas in which she might be the star. The good old father, who had
spent all his life in helping his son to win fame, was nearly
heart-broken when he learned of this foolish affection, and wrote him
tenderly but firmly: "Off with you to Paris; get the great folks on your
side; _aut Cæsar, aut nihil_. From Paris, the name and fame of a man of
great talent goes through the whole world."

The young man, carrying out his childish motto, "God first, and then
papa," reluctantly started for Paris. Here he did not meet with great
success, for scores of applicants waited for every position. His loving
mother soon died, perhaps from over economy in her cold, dark lodgings;
and the young musician took his lonely way back to Salzburg, begging his
father's consent to his stopping at Mannheim to see the Webers. Finding
that Aloysia had gone upon the stage at Munich, he hastened to see her.
She had been offered a good salary. Meantime Mozart had won no new
laurels at Paris. He was small in stature, and poor; and the girl who
wept at his departure a few months previously professed now scarcely to
have seen his face before. The young lover, cut to the heart, yet proud,
seated himself at the piano, and played,

    "I leave the girl gladly who cares not for me,"

and then hastened away to Salzburg. Aloysia married a comedian, and
lived a most unhappy life, gaining some fame from singing the music
which Mozart wrote for her.

He remained at home for a year and a half, till called to Munich to
write the opera "Idomeneo," and later to Vienna. Here, unfortunately, he
met the Webers again, and, their father having died, he boarded in their
house, and gave lessons to Constance, a younger sister of Aloysia. She
was a plain, good-hearted girl, without much energy, but with a great
appreciation of her gifted teacher. The result came naturally; he fell
in love with the penniless girl, and, despite the distress of his aged
father at his choice, married her when he was twenty-six and she
eighteen.

Henceforward there was no hope of any thing save the direst poverty. To
marry without love is a grave mistake; to marry simply for love is
sometimes a mistake equally grave. He could of course do nothing now for
his aged father or sister. Unsteady employment, a rapidly-increasing
family, and a wife ill most of the time, made the struggle for existence
ten times harder than before his marriage. Once when he had prepared to
visit his father for the first time after the wedding, and had waited
months for the necessary funds, he was arrested for a debt of fifteen
dollars, just as he was stepping into the carriage.

The Emperor Joseph said to him one day, "Why did you not marry a rich
wife?" With dignity Mozart at once replied, "Sire, I trust that my
genius will always enable me to support the woman I love"; but
unfortunately it did not. He wrote after his marriage: "The moment we
were made one, my wife as well as myself began to weep, which touched
every one, even the priest, and they all cried when they witnessed how
our hearts were moved." How little they dreamed that they should weep
more seriously when hunger stared their six children in the face!

From the time of his marriage till his death, nine years, says Rev. Mr.
Haweis, "his life can be compared to nothing but a torch burning out
rapidly in the wind." It was a period of incessant, astonishing labor.
He dedicated six quartets to his dear friend Joseph Haydn, who said,
"Mozart is the greatest composer who has ever lived"; wrote "Figaro"
when he was twenty-nine, which had the greatest popularity, "Don
Giovanni" at thirty-one, and the "Flauto Magico" gratis, for the benefit
of the theatre director, who was in want. The two latter creations were
hailed with delight. Goethe wrote to Schiller later of "Don Giovanni,"
"That piece stands entirely alone; and Mozart's death has rendered all
hope of any thing like it idle."

Whenever he appeared at the theatre, he was called upon the stage from
all parts of the house; yet all this time he could not earn enough to
live. He received only a hundred dollars from his "Don Giovanni," and
less for the others. He gave lessons every hour he could spare, concerts
in the open air, borrowed from his friends, scrimped himself, to send
money to his sick wife at Baden, pawned his silver plate to make one
more unsuccessful journey to win the aid of indifferent princes, and
fainted often at his tasks after midnight. Still he wrote to "the best
and dearest wife of my heart," "If I only had a letter from you, all
would be right," and promised her to work harder than ever to earn
money.

When Constance was at home with him, if he left her in the morning
before she awakened, he would leave a note for her with the words,
"Good-morning, my darling wife. I shall be at home at -- o'clock
precisely." Once when she had been ill for eight months, and Mozart was
composing beside her as she slept, suddenly a noisy messenger entered.
Alarmed lest his wife should be disturbed, he rose hastily, when the
penknife in his hand fell, and buried itself in his foot. Without a word
escaping his lips, he left the room, a surgeon was called, and, though
lame for some time, the wife was not told of the accident.

His compositions found few purchasers, for the people generally could
not comprehend them. Publishers' shops were closed to him, unless he
would write in the popular style. "Then I can make no more by my pen,"
he said bitterly, "and I had better starve and go to destruction at
once." So poor had his family become, that, with no fuel in the house,
he and his wife were found by a friend, waltzing to keep warm.

About this time a sepulchral-looking man called to ask that a "Requiem"
be written on the death of the wife of an Austrian nobleman, who was to
be considered the author, and thus his intense grief be shown, though
manifested through a lie. Mozart consulted with his wife, as was his
custom, and, as she indorsed it, he accepted the commission for fifty
dollars. Overworked, harassed by debts which he could not pay, hurt at
the jealousies and intrigues of several musicians, disappointed at the
reception of his new opera at Prague, his hopeful nature forsook him,
and he told Constance that the "Requiem" would be written for himself.

In the midst of this wretchedness their sixth child was born. The poor
wife forgot her own sorrows, and prevailed upon him to give up work for
a time; but the active brain could not rest, and he wrote as he lay on
his sick-bed. On the day before he died, Dec. 4, 1791, at two o'clock,
he persisted in having a portion of the "Requiem" sung by the friends
who stood about his bed, and, joining with them in the alto, burst into
tears, saying, "Did I not say that I was writing the 'Requiem' for
myself?" Soon after he said, "Constance, oh that I could only hear my
'Flauto Magico!'" and a friend playing it, he was cheered.

A messenger now arrived to tell him that he was appointed organist at
St. Stephen's Cathedral, a position for which he had longed for years;
but it came too late. Death was unwelcome to him. "Now must I go," he
said, "just as I should be able to live in peace; I must leave my
family, my poor children, at the very instant in which I should have
been able to provide for their welfare." Cold applications were ordered
by the physicians for his burning head; he became delirious for two
hours, and died at midnight, only thirty-five years old. Constance was
utterly prostrated, and threw herself upon his bed, hoping to die also.

Mozart's body was laid beside his piano, and then, in a pouring rain,
buried in a "common grave," in the plainest manner possible, with nobody
present except the keepers of the cemetery. Weeks after, when the wife
visited the spot, she found a new grave-digger, who could not tell where
her beloved husband was buried, and to this day the author of fourteen
Italian operas, seventeen symphonies, and dozens of cantatas and
serenades, about eight hundred compositions in all, sleeps in an unknown
grave. The Emperor Leopold aided her in a concert to raise fifteen
hundred dollars to pay her husband's debts, and provide a little for
herself. Eighteen years afterward she married the Danish councillor,
Baron von Missen, who educated her two sons, four other children having
died. Salzburg waited a half-century before she erected a bronze statue
to her world-renowned genius, in the Square of St. Michael; and, seventy
years after his death, Vienna built him a monument in the Cemetery of
St. Mark. History scarcely furnishes a more pathetic life. He filled the
world with music, yet died in want and sorrow.



[Illustration: SAMUEL JOHNSON.]

DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON.


In a quaint old house in Lichfield, England, now used as a draper's
shop, Samuel Johnson, son of a poor bookseller and bookbinder, was born.
Here, as in Westminster Abbey, a statue is erected to his memory. Near
by is the schoolhouse where Addison and Garrick studied.

When Samuel was two and a half years old, diseased with scrofula, his
good mother, with ten dollars sewed in her skirt so that nobody could
steal it, took him to London that, with two hundred others, he might be
touched by Queen Anne, and thus, as superstitious people believed, be
healed. On this journey she bought him a silver cup and spoon. The
latter he kept till his dying-day, and parted with the cup only in the
dire poverty of later years.

The touch of the Queen did no good, for he became blind in one eye; with
the other he could not see a friend half a yard off, and his face was
sadly disfigured. Being prevented thus from sharing the sports of other
boys, much time was spent in reading. He was first taught at a little
school kept by Widow Oliver, who years after, when he was starting for
Oxford, brought him a present of gingerbread, telling him he was the
best scholar she ever had. After a time he studied Latin under a master
who "whipped it into him." The foolish teacher would ask the boy the
Latin word for candlestick, or some unexpected thing, and then whip him,
saying, "This I do to save you from the gallows!"

Naturally indolent, Samuel had to struggle against this tendency. He
had, however, the greatest ambition to excel, and to this he attributed
his later success. He was also inquisitive, and had a wonderful memory.
When he wore short dresses, his mother gave him the Prayer-Book one day,
and, pointing to the Collect, said, "You must get this by heart." She
went up stairs, but no sooner had she reached the second floor than she
heard him following. He could repeat it perfectly, having looked it over
but twice. He left school at sixteen, spending two years at home in
helping his parents, and studying earnestly. One day, his father, being
ill, asked him to go to a neighboring town and take his place in selling
books at a stall on market-day. He was proud, and did not go. Fifty
years afterward, in his greatness, then an old man, he went to this
stall, and, with uncovered head, remained for an hour in the rain where
his father had formerly stood, exposed to the sneers of the bystanders
and the inclemency of the weather. It showed the repentance of a noble
soul for disobedience to a parent.

At nineteen, he entered Pembroke College, Oxford, where he acted as
servant. He used to go daily to his friend Taylor, and get lectures
second-hand, till his feet, showing through his worn-out shoes, were
perceived by the students, and he ceased going. A rich young man
secretly put a pair of new shoes at his door, which he indignantly threw
out of the window. He was willing to work and earn, but would not
receive charity. At the end of three years he became so poor that he was
obliged to leave college, his father dying soon after.

After various experiences, he sought the position of usher at a school,
but was refused because it was thought that the boys would make fun of
his ugliness. He finally obtained such a place, was treated with great
harshness, and left in a few months. Strange to say, the poor, lonely
scholar, only twenty-six, now fell in love with a widow forty-eight
years old. After obtaining his mother's consent, he married her, and the
union proved a most happy one. With the little money his wife possessed,
he started a school, and advertised for pupils; but only three came, and
the school soon closed. In despair he determined to try London, and see
if an author could there earn his bread. In that great city he lived for
some time on nine cents a day. One publisher to whom he applied
suggested to him that the wisest course would be to become a porter and
carry trunks.

A poem written at this time, entitled "London," for which he received
fifty dollars, one line of which was in capital letters,

    "SLOW RISES WORTH BY POVERTY DEPRESSED,"

attracted attention; and Pope, who was then at the height of his fame,
asked Dublin University to give to the able scholar the degree of M.A.,
that he might thus be able to take the principalship of a school, and
earn three hundred dollars a year; but this was refused. Out of such
struggles come heroic souls.

When he was forty, he published the "Vanity of Human Wishes," receiving
seventy-five dollars, asserted by many to be the most impressive thing
of its kind in the language. The lines,

    "There mark what ills the scholar's life assail,
    Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail,"

show his struggles. A drama soon after, played by the great actor, David
Garrick, brought him nearly a thousand dollars; but the play itself was
a failure. When asked by his friends how he felt about his ill success,
he replied, "Like the monument," meaning that he continued firm and
unmoved, like a column of granite. Fame was coming at last, after he had
struggled in London for thirteen years--and what bitterness they had
brought!

For two years he worked almost constantly on a paper called the
"Rambler." When his wife said that, well as she had thought of him
before, she had never considered him equal to this, he was more pleased
than with any praise he ever received. She died three days after the
last copy was published, and Johnson was utterly prostrated. He buried
himself in hard work in his garret, a most inconvenient room; but he
said, "In that room I never saw Mrs. Johnson." Her wedding-ring was
placed in a little box, and tenderly kept till his death.

Three years afterward, his great work, his Dictionary, appeared, for
which he received eight thousand dollars; but, as he had been obliged to
employ six assistants for seven years, he was still poor, but now
famous. The Universities of Oxford and Dublin, when he no longer needed
their assistance, hastened to bestow their degrees upon him. Even George
III. invited him to the royal palace,--a strange contrast to a few years
before, when Samuel Johnson was under arrest for a debt of thirty
dollars! When asked by Reynolds how he had obtained his accuracy and
flow of language in conversation, he replied, "By trying to do my best
on every occasion and in every company." About this time his aged mother
died, and in the evenings of one week, to defray her funeral expenses,
he wrote "Rasselas," and received five hundred dollars for it. He wrote
in his last letter to her, "You have been the best mother, and I believe
the best woman, in the world. I thank you for your indulgence to me, and
beg forgiveness of all that I have done ill, and of all that I have
omitted to do well." His last great work was "The Lives of the Poets."

He received now a pension of fifteen hundred dollars a year, for his
valuable services to literature, but never used more than four hundred
dollars for himself. He took care of a blind woman of whom he said, "She
was a friend to my poor wife, and was in the house when she died, she
has remained in it ever since," of a mother and daughter dependent upon
an old family physician, and of two men whom nobody else would care for.
Once when he found a poor woman on the street late at night, he took her
home, and kept her till she was restored to health. His pockets were
always filled with pennies for street Arabs; and, if he found poor
children asleep on a threshold, he would slip money into their hands
that, when they awakened, they might buy a breakfast. When a servant was
dying who had been in the family for forty-three years, he prayed with
her and kissed her, the tears falling down his cheeks. He wrote in his
diary, "We kissed and parted--I humbly hope to meet again, and part no
more." He held, rightly, that Christianity levels all distinctions of
rank.

He was very tender to animals. Once, when in Wales, a gardener brought
into the house a hare which had been caught in the potatoes, and was
told to give it to the cook. Dr. Johnson asked to have it placed in his
arms; then, taking it to the window, he let it go, shouting to it to
run as fast as possible. He would buy oysters for his cat, Hodge, that
the servants, from seeing his fondness for it, might be led to treat it
kindly.

He died at the age of seventy-five, such men as Burke and Reynolds
standing by his bedside. Of the latter, he begged that he would "read
his Bible, and never paint on Sundays." His last words were to a young
lady who had asked his blessing: "God bless you, my dear!" He was buried
with appropriate honors in Westminster Abbey, and monuments are erected
to him in St. Paul's Cathedral, and at Lichfield. The poor boy, nearly
blind, became "the brightest ornament of the eighteenth century."



OLIVER GOLDSMITH.


On a low slab in a quiet spot, just north of the Church of Knight
Templars, in London, are the simple words, "Here lies Oliver Goldsmith."
The author of the "Vicar of Wakefield" needs no grander monument; for he
lives in the hearts of the people.

Oliver Goldsmith was born in Pallas, Ireland, in 1728, the son of a poor
minister, who, by means of tilling some fields and assisting in a parish
outside his own, earned two hundred dollars a year for his wife and
seven children! When about six years old, Oliver nearly died of
smallpox, and his pitted face made him an object of jest among the boys.
At eight he showed great fondness for books, and began to write verses.
His mother pleaded for a college education for him, but there seemed
little prospect of it. One day, when a few were dancing at his uncle's
house, the little boy sprang upon the floor and began to dance. The
fiddler, to make fun of his short figure and homely face, exclaimed,
"Æsop!" The boy, stung to the quick, replied:--

    "Heralds, proclaim aloud! all saying,
    'See Æsop dancing and his monkey playing;'"

when, of course, the fiddler became much chagrined.

[Illustration: OLIVER GOLDSMITH.]

All his school life Oliver was painfully diffident, but a good scholar.
His father finally earned a better salary, and the way seemed open for
college, when, lo! his sister, who had the opportunity of marrying a
rich man, was obliged--so thought the public opinion of the day--to have
a marriage portion of $2,000, and poor Oliver's educational hopes were
blasted. He must now enter Trinity College, Dublin, as a sizar
(servant), wear a coarse black gown without sleeves, a red cap,--the
badge of servitude,--sweep the courts, carry dishes, and be treated with
contempt, which nearly crushed his sensitive nature.

A year and a half later his father died, and his scanty means ceased
from that source. To keep from starving he wrote ballads, selling them
to street musicians at $1.25 apiece, and stole out at night to hear them
sung. Often he shared this pittance with some one more wretched than
himself. One cold night he gave his blankets to a person with five
children, and crawled into the ticking of his bed for warmth. When a
kind friend, who often brought him food, came in the morning, he was
obliged to break in the door, as Goldsmith could not extricate himself
from his bed.

Obtaining a small scholarship, he gave a little party in his room in
honor of the event. A savage tutor appeared in the midst of the
festivities, and knocked him down. So incensed was Goldsmith that he ran
away from college, and with twenty-five cents in his pocket started for
Cork. For three days he lived on eight cents a day, and, by degrees,
parted with nearly all his clothes for food.

Though wholly unfitted for the ministry, Goldsmith was urged by his
relatives to enter the church, because he would then have a living. Too
young to be accepted, he remained at home for two years, assisting his
brother Henry in the village school; and then offering himself as a
candidate, was refused, it was said, because he appeared before the
right reverend in scarlet trousers! After being tutor for a year, his
uncle gave him $250, that he might go to Dublin and study law. On
arriving, he met an old friend, lost all his money in playing cards with
him, and, ashamed and penniless, returned and begged the forgiveness of
his relative.

A little more money was given him, and with this he studied medicine in
Edinburgh for over a year, earning later some money by teaching.
Afterward he travelled in Italy and France, begging his way by singing
or playing on his flute at the doors of the peasants, returning to
England at twenty-eight years of age without a cent in his pocket.
Living among the beggars in Axe Lane, he asked to spread plasters, or
pound in the mortars of the apothecaries, till, finally, a chemist hired
him out of pity. Through the aid of a fellow-student, he finally opened
a doctor's office, but few came to a stranger, and these usually so
poor as to be unable to pay.

Attending one day upon a workman, he held his hat close to his breast,
so as to cover a big patch in his second-hand clothes, while he felt the
patient's pulse. Half guessing the young doctor's poverty, the sick man
told him about his master, the author of the famous old novel, "Clarissa
Harlowe," and how he had befriended writers. Goldsmith at once applied
for work, and became press corrector in Salisbury Court, Fleet Street.

Later he was employed as a reviewer on a magazine. Being obliged to
submit all his reviews to an illiterate bookseller and his wife, the
engagement soon came to an end. He lived now in a garret, was dunned
even for his milk-bill, wrote a book for a college friend, under whose
name it was published, and began a work of his own, "Polite Learning in
Europe," writing to a wealthy relative for aid to publish, which letter
was never answered, though it was greatly regretted after Goldsmith
became famous.

With no hope in London, he was promised a position in the East Indies.
Life began to look bright, though his Fleet Street garret, with one
chair, was surrounded by swarms of children and dirt. The promise was
not kept, and he applied for the position of hospital mate. His clothes
being too poor for him to be seen on the streets, he pledged the money
to be received for four articles, bought a new suit, went up to the
court of examiners, and was rejected! Had any of these positions been
obtained, the world, doubtless, would never have known the genius of
Oliver Goldsmith.

He went back to his garret to write, pawned his clothes to pay the
landlady, who was herself to be turned out of the wretched lodgings,
sold his "Life of Voltaire" for twenty dollars, and published his
"Polite Learning in Europe," anonymously. The critics attacked it, and
Goldsmith's day of fame had dawned at last. "The Citizen of the World,"
a good-natured satire on society, next appeared, and was a success. Dr.
Johnson became his friend, and made him a member of his club with
Reynolds, Burke, and other noted men. The "Traveller" was next
published, with an immense sale. Goldsmith now moved into the buildings
which bear his name, near Temple Church, and, for once, had flowers and
green grass to look out upon.

He was still poor, doubtless spending what money he received with little
wisdom. His landlady arrested him for room-rent, upon hearing which, Dr.
Johnson came at once to see him, gave him money, took from his desk the
manuscript of the "Vicar of Wakefield," and sold it to a publisher for
three hundred dollars. This was the fruit of much labor, and the world
received it cordially. Some of his essays were now reprinted sixteen
times. What a change from the Fleet Street garret!

The "Deserted Village" was published five years later, Goldsmith having
spent two whole years in reviewing it after it was written, so careful
was he that every word should be the best that could be chosen. This was
translated at once into German by Goethe, who was also a great admirer
of the "Vicar of Wakefield." He also wrote an English History, a Roman,
a Grecian, several dramas, of which "She Stoops to Conquer" was the most
popular, and eight volumes of the "History of the Earth and Animated
Nature," for which he received five hundred dollars a volume, leaving
this unfinished.

Still in debt, overworked, laboring sometimes far into the morning
hours, not leaving his desk for weeks together, even for exercise,
Goldsmith died at forty-five, broken with the struggle of life, but with
undying fame. When he was buried, one April day, 1774, Brick Court and
the stairs of the building were filled with the poor and the forsaken
whom he had befriended. His monument is in the Poets' Corner at
Westminster Abbey, the greatest honor England could offer. True, she let
him nearly starve, but she crowned him at the last. He conquered the
world by hard work, kindness, and a gentleness as beautiful as his
genius was great.



MICHAEL FARADAY.


In the heart of busy London, over a stable, lived James and Margaret
Faraday, with their four little children. The father was a blacksmith,
in feeble health, unable to work for a whole day at a time, a kind, good
man to his household; the mother, like himself, was uneducated, but neat
and industrious, and devoted to her family. The children learned the
rudiments of reading, writing, and arithmetic at school, and then, of
course, were obliged to earn their living.

Michael, the third child, born 1791, became, at thirteen years of age,
an errand-boy in a bookseller's shop. His first duty was to carry
newspapers in the morning to customers, who read them for an hour or two
for a trifle, a penny probably, and then gave them to the newsboy to be
re-loaned. Often on Sunday morning the patrons would say, "You must call
again," forgetting that the next place might be a mile away, and that
the young boy was quite as desirous as they, to go to church with his
parents. Years after this, when he had become famous the world over, he
said, "I always feel a tenderness for those boys, because I once
carried newspapers myself."

[Illustration: MICHAEL FARADAY.]

The following year, 1805, he was apprenticed to a bookseller for seven
years, to learn the trade of binding and selling books. Here was hard
work before him till he was twenty-one; not a cheerful prospect for one
who loved play as well as other boys. Whenever he had a spare moment, he
was looking inside the books he was binding. Mrs. Marcet's
"Conversations in Chemistry" delighted him; and when he was given the
"Encyclopedia Britannica" to bind, the article on Electricity seemed a
treasure-house of wonders. He soon made an electrical machine,--not an
expensive one,--simply a glass vial, and other apparatus of a similar
kind; and afterwards with a real cylinder. These cost only a few pence a
week, but they gave a vast amount of pleasure to the blacksmith's son.

One day he saw in a shop-window a notice that a Mr. Tatum was to give at
his own house some lectures on Natural Philosophy. The charge for each
was twenty-five cents. No bookseller's apprentice would have such an
amount of money to spend weekly as that. However, his brother Robert,
three years older, himself a blacksmith, with some pride, perhaps, that
Michael was interested in such weighty matters, furnished the money, and
a lodger at the home of the bookseller taught him drawing, so that he
might be able, in taking notes, to illustrate the experiments. He
attended the lectures, wrote them out carefully in a clear hand, bound
them in four volumes, and dedicated them to his employer.

A customer at the shop had become interested in a boy who cared so much
for science, and took him to hear four lectures given by Sir Humphry
Davy at the Royal Institution. This was an unexpected pleasure. He was
beginning to sigh for something beyond book-binding. "Oh, if I could
only help in some scientific work, no matter how humble!" he thought to
himself. He says in his journal, "In my ignorance of the world, and
simplicity of my mind, I wrote to Sir Joseph Banks, President of the
Royal Society." No answer was ever returned to the request for a
situation. Could the president have realized that some day ten thousand
people would know the name of Michael Faraday where one knew the name of
Sir Joseph Banks, probably he would have answered the boy's letter.
Blessings on the great man or woman who takes time, however briefly, to
answer every letter received! Such a man was Garfield, and such is
Whittier. A civil question demands a civil answer, whether the person
addressed be king or peasant.

About the time his apprenticeship ended, in 1812, he summoned courage to
write directly to the great Sir Humphry Davy, sending the full notes he
had made at that gentleman's lectures. Sir Humphry, possibly remembering
that he, too, had been a poor boy, the son of a widowed milliner, wrote
a polite note, saying, that "Science was a harsh mistress, and, in a
pecuniary point of view, but poorly rewarding those who devoted
themselves to her service;" that he was going out of town, but would see
if he could some time aid him.

Meantime Michael was making crude galvanic experiments. He bought some
malleable zinc, cut out seven plates, each the size of a half-penny,
covered these with the copper half-pennies, placing between them six
pieces of paper soaked in a solution of muriate of soda, and with this
simple battery, decomposed sulphate of magnesia. So pleased was he that
he wrote a letter to one of his boy friends, telling of the experiment,
and adding, "Time is all I require. Oh, that I could purchase at a cheap
rate some of our modern gent's spare hours, nay, days! I think it would
be a good bargain, both for them and for me." The youth had learned the
first secret of success,--not to waste time; not to throw it away on
useless persons or useless subjects.

He had learned another secret, that of choosing right companions. To
this same young friend, Abbott, he wrote, "A companion cannot be a good
one, unless he is morally so. I have met a good companion in the lowest
path of life, and I have found such as I despised in a rank far superior
to mine.... I keep regular hours, and enter not intentionally into
pleasures productive of evil." London's highest circles possessed no
purer spirit than this young mechanic.

Faraday now began work at his trade of book-binding for a Frenchman in
London, who, having no children, promised him the business, if he would
remain with him always; but the employer's temper was so hasty that the
position became almost unbearable. The young man was growing depressed
in spirits, when one night, just as he was preparing for bed, a loud
knock on the door startled him. On looking out of the window, he espied
a grand carriage, with a footman in livery, who left a note. This was a
request from Sir Humphry Davy to see him in the morning. Was there,
then, the possibility of a place in the Royal Institution? Between
conflicting hopes and fears, he went to sleep, and in the morning
hastened to see the great chemist. The result was an engagement at six
dollars a week, with two rooms at the top of the house! He was to clean
the instruments, move them to and from the lecture-room, and in all ways
to make himself useful. Now he could say good-by to book-binding; and,
though six dollars a week was not a munificent sum, yet he could
actually handle beautiful instruments,--not copper half-pence and bits
of zinc,--and could listen to stimulating lectures.

And now work began in earnest. He joined the City Philosophical Society,
an association of thirty or forty persons in moderate circumstances, who
met each Wednesday evening, one of their number giving a lecture. Then a
half dozen friends came together once a week to read, criticise, and
correct each other in pronunciation and conversation. How eagerly would
such a young man have attended college! There was no opportunity to hear
polished talk in elegant drawing-rooms, no chance to improve manners in
so-called "best society." He did what is in the power of everybody,--he
educated himself. Did he not need recreation after the hard day's work?
Every person has to make his choice. Amusements do not make scholars:
pleasure and knowledge do not go hand in hand. Faraday chose the topmost
story of the Royal Institution, and books for companions, and immortal
fame was the result.

The experiments with Davy soon became absorbing, and often dangerous.
Now they extracted sugar from beet-root; now they treated chloride of
nitrogen, wearing masks of glass upon their faces, which,
notwithstanding, were sometimes badly cut by the explosions. Seven
months after this, Sir Humphry decided to travel upon the Continent, and
asked Faraday to be his amanuensis. This was a rare opportunity for the
young assistant. For a year and a half they visited France, Switzerland,
Italy, and Germany, climbing Vesuvius, enjoying art-galleries, and
meeting the learned and famous of the age. The journey had its
disagreeable side; for Faraday was made more or less a servant by Davy
and his sometimes inconsiderate wife; but it had great and lasting
advantages for one who had never been but twelve miles from London.

His heart turned longingly back to the poor ones he had left behind. He
wrote to his mother, "The first and last thing in my mind is England,
home, and friends. When sick, when cold, when tired, the thoughts of
those at home are a warm and refreshing balm to my heart.... These are
the first and greatest sweetness in the life of man.... I am almost
contented except with my ignorance, which becomes more visible to me
every day." And again, "I have several times been more than half decided
to return hastily home: I am only restrained by the wish of
improvement." To his sister he wrote, "Give my love with a kiss to
mother, the first thing you do on reading this letter, and tell her how
much I think of her." To Abbott he wrote something intended for his eyes
only, but headed, "I do not wish that my mother should remain ignorant
of it. I _have no secrets from her_." His heart bounded with joy at the
prospect of meeting them again, and "enjoying the pleasure of their
conversation, from which he had been excluded." No absorption in science
could make him outgrow his parents and his humble home.

On his return to England his salary was increased to $500 yearly, and he
was promoted to Laboratory Assistant. He was now twenty-four. He had
noted carefully Davy's researches in iodine and chlorine, had seen him
develop his safety-lamp, which has proved an untold blessing to miners,
had made many experiments from his own thinking; and now he too was to
give his first course of six lectures before his friends in the City
Philosophical Society, on Chemical Affinity, and kindred topics. He
wrote them out with great care; for whatever he did was well done. This
year he published his first paper in the "Quarterly Journal of Science"
on caustic lime. Encouraged by the approving words of Sir Humphry, the
following year he wrote six papers for the "Quarterly," giving his
experiments with gases and minerals, and gave another course of lectures
before the Philosophical Society. To improve himself in delivering
these, he attended lectures on oratory, taking copious notes.

Seven years had now gone by in his apprenticeship to Science. He had
published thirty-seven papers in the "Quarterly," had a book ready for
the press, on the alloys of steel, and had read a paper before the Royal
Society itself, on two new compounds of chlorine and carbon, and a new
compound of iodine, carbon, and hydrogen. But the young and now
brilliant student had other weighty matters in hand. Five years before
this, he had written in his diary:

    "What is't that comes in false, deceitful guise,
    Making dull fools of those that 'fore were wise?
                                          'Tis love.
    What's that the wise man always strives to shun,
    Though still it ever o'er the world has run?
                                          'Tis love."

But now, whether he tried to shun it or no, he became thoroughly in love
with Sarah Barnard, an intelligent and sweet-tempered girl, the
daughter of a silversmith. Distracted by fears lest he might not win
her, he wrote her. "In whatever way I can best minister to your
happiness, either by assiduity or by absence, it shall be done. Do not
injure me by withdrawing your friendship, or punish me for aiming to be
more than a friend by making me less."

The girl showed this to her father, who replied that love made
philosophers say very foolish things. She hesitated about accepting him,
and went away to the seaside to consider it; but the ardent lover
followed, determined to learn the worst if need be. They walked on the
cliffs overhanging the ocean, and Faraday wrote in his journal as the
day drew near its close, "My thoughts saddened and fell, from the fear I
should never enjoy such happiness again. I could not master my feelings,
or prevent them from sinking, and I actually at last shamed myself by
moist eyes." He blamed himself because he did not know "the best means
to secure the heart he wished to gain." He knew how to fathom the depths
of chemical combinations, but he could not fathom the depths of Sarah
Barnard's heart.

At last the hour of her decision came; and both were made supremely
happy by it. A week later he wrote her, "Every moment offers me fresh
proof of the power you have over me. I could not at one time have
thought it possible that I, that any man, could have been under the
dominion of feelings so undivided and so intense: now I think that no
other man can have felt or feel as I do." A year later they were married
very quietly, he desiring their wedding day to be "just like any other
day." Twenty-eight years later he wrote among the important dates and
discoveries of his life, "June 12, 1821, he married,--an event which,
more than any other, contributed to his earthly happiness and healthful
state of mind. The union has nowise changed, except in the depth and
strength of its character."

For forty-seven years "his dear Sarah" made life a joy to him. He rarely
left home; but if so, as at the great gathering of British Scientists at
Birmingham, he wrote back, "After all, there is no pleasure like the
tranquil pleasure of home; and here, even here, the moment I leave the
table, I wish I were with you IN QUIET. Oh, what happiness is ours! My
runs into the world in this way only serve to make me esteem that
happiness the more."

And now came twenty years in science that made Faraday the wonder and
ornament of his age. Elected an F.R.S., he began at once twelve lectures
in Chemical Manipulation before the London Institution, six on Chemical
Philosophy before the Royal Society, published six papers on
electromagnetism, and began a course of juvenile lectures which
continued for nineteen years. This was one of the beautiful things of
Faraday's life,--a great man living in a whirl of work, yet taking time
to make science plain to the young. When asked at what age he would
teach science, he replied that he had never found a child too young to
understand him. For twenty years he lectured at the Royal Academy at
Woolwich, became scientific adviser to the government with regard to
lighthouses and buoys, not for gain, but for the public good, drew all
London to his eloquent lectures with his brilliant experiments, Prince
Albert attending with his sons; and published one hundred and
fifty-eight scientific essays and thirty series of "Experimental
Researches in Electricity," which latter, says Dr. Gladstone, "form one
of the most marvellous monuments of intellectual work; one of the rarest
treasure-houses of newly-discovered knowledge, with which the world has
ever been enriched."

He not only gathered into his vast brain what other men had learned of
science, but he tested every step to prove the facts, and became, says
Professor Tyndall, "the greatest experimental philosopher the world has
ever seen." He loved science as he loved his family and his God, and
played with Nature as with a petted child. When he lectured, "there was
a gleaming in his eyes which no painter could copy, and which no poet
could describe. His audience took fire with him, and every face was
flushed."

In his earlier discoveries in compressing gases into liquids, he
obtained from one thousand cubic feet of coal gas one gallon of fluid
from which he distilled benzine. In 1845 the chemist Hofman found this
same substance in coal-tar, from which come our beautiful aniline dyes.

After eighteen years of studying the wonderful results of Galvani's
discovery at the University of Bologna, that the legs of a dead frog
contract under the electric current; and of Volta, in 1799, with his
voltaic pile of copper, zinc, and leather, in salt-water; and of
Christian Oersted at the University of Copenhagen; and Ampère and Arago,
that electricity will produce magnets, Faraday made the great discovery
of magneto-electricity,--that magnets will produce electricity. At once
magneto-electric machines were made for generating electricity for the
electric light, electro-plating, etc. This discovery, says Professor
Tyndall, "is the greatest experimental result ever attained by an
investigator, the Mont Blanc of Faraday's achievements."

Soon after he made another great discovery, that of electric induction,
or that one electric current will induce another current in an adjoining
wire. Others had suspected this, but had sought in vain to prove it. The
Bell telephone, which Sir William Thompson calls "the wonder of
wonders," depends upon this principle. Here no battery is required; for
the vibration of a thin iron plate is made to generate the currents.
After this, Faraday proved that the various kinds of electricity are
identical; and that the electricity of the Voltaic pile is produced by
chemical action, and not by contact of metals, as Volta had supposed.
The world meantime had showered honors upon the great scientist. Great
Britain had made him her idol. The Cambridge Philosophical Society, the
Institution of Civil Engineers, of British Architects, of Philosophy and
of Medicine, and the leading associations of Scotland had made him an
honorary member. Paris had elected him corresponding member of all her
great societies. St. Petersburg, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Berlin, Palermo,
Modena, Lisbon, Heidelberg, Frankfort, and our own Boston and
Philadelphia had sent tokens of admiration. Eminent men from all the
world came to see him.

How proud his mother must have felt at this wonderful success! She was
not able to enter into her son's pursuits from lack of early education;
but she talked much about him, calling him ever, "my Michael"; and would
do nothing whatever without his advice. He supported her in her
declining years; and she seemed perfectly happy. His father had died in
his boyhood; but Faraday ever honored his occupation. He used to say, "I
love a smith-shop, and anything relating to smithing. My father was a
blacksmith."

He was now forty-nine. The overtaxed brain refused to work longer.
Memory was losing her grasp, and but for the sweet and careful presence
of Sarah Faraday, the life-work would doubtless have been finished at
this time. She took him to Switzerland, where he walked beside the lakes
and over the mountains with "my companion, dear wife, and partner in
all things." For four years he made scarcely any experiments in original
research, and then the tired brain seemed to regain its wonted power,
and go on to other discoveries.

An Italian philosopher, Morichini, was the first to announce the
magnetizing power of the solar rays. Mrs. Somerville covered one-half of
a sewing-needle with paper, and exposed the other half to the violet
rays. In two hours the exposed end had acquired magnetism. Faraday, by
long and difficult experiments, showed the converse of this: he
magnetized a ray of light,--an experiment "high, beautiful, and alone,"
says Mr. Tyndall. He also showed the magnetic condition of all matter.

He was always at work. He entered the laboratory in the morning, and
often worked till eleven at night, hardly stopping for his meals. He
seldom went into society, for time was too precious. If he needed a
change, he read aloud Shakspeare, Byron, or Macaulay to his wife in the
evening, or corresponded with Herschel, Humboldt, and other great men.
In the midst of exhausting labors he often preached on the Sabbath,
believing more earnestly in the word of God the more he studied science.

When he was sixty-four the great brain began to show signs of decline.
Belgium, Munich, Vienna, Madrid, Rome, Naples, Turin, Rotterdam, Upsala,
Lombardy, and Moscow had sent him medals, or made him a member of their
famous societies. Napoleon III. made him commander of the Legion of
Honor, a rare title; and the French exhibition awarded him the grand
medal of honor. The Queen asked him to dine with her at Windsor Castle,
and, at the request of Prince Albert her husband, she presented him with
a lovely home at Hampton Court.

At seventy-one he wrote to Mrs. Faraday from Glasgow, "My head is full,
and my heart also; but my recollection rapidly fails. You will have to
resume your old function of being a pillow to my mind, and a rest,--a
happy-making wife." Still he continued to make able reports to the
government on lighthouses, electric machines, steam-engines, and the
like.

And then for two years the memory grew weaker, the body feebler, and he
was, as he told a friend, "just waiting." He died in his chair in his
study, August 25th, 1867, and was buried in Highgate Cemetery.
Westminster Abbey would have opened her doors to him, but he requested
to be buried "in the simplest earthly place, with a gravestone of the
most ordinary kind." On a plain marble slab in the midst of clustering
ivy are his name and the dates of his birth and death. One feels a
strange tenderness of heart as he stands beside this sacred spot where
rests one, who, though elected to seventy societies, and offered nearly
one hundred titles and tokens of honor, said he "would remain plain
Michael Faraday to the last."

Wonderful man! great in mind, noble in heart, and gentle in manner,
having brought a strong nature under the most complete discipline. His
energy, his devotion to a single object, his untiring work, and his
beautiful character carried the blacksmith's son to the highest
success.



SIR HENRY BESSEMER.


A little way from London, England, at Denmark Hill, looking toward the
Crystal Palace, is a mansion which is fit for royalty. The grounds,
covering from thirty to forty acres, are beautifully terraced, dotted
here and there with lakelets, fountains, and artificial caverns, while
the great clumps of red rhododendron, yellow laburnum, pink hawthorne,
and white laurel make an exquisitely colored picture. The home itself is
spacious and inviting, with its elegant conservatory and rare works of
art. The owner of this house, Sir Henry Bessemer, is cordial and
gracious; and from his genial face and manner, no one would imagine that
his life had been one long struggle with obstacles.

Born in Charlton, a little county town in Hertfordshire, Jan. 19, 1813,
he received the rudiments of an education like other boys in the
neighborhood. His father, Anthony Bessemer, an inventor, seeing that his
son was inclined to mechanics, bought him, in London, a five-inch
foot-lathe, and a book which described the art of turning. Day after
day, in the quiet of his country home, he studied and practised turning,
and modelling in clay.

[Illustration: SIR HENRY BESSEMER.]

At eighteen years of age he went to London, "knowing no one," he says,
"and myself unknown,--a mere cipher in a vast sea of human enterprise."
He soon found a place to work as modeller and designer, engraving a
large number of original designs on steel, with a diamond point, for
patent-medicine labels. A year later he exhibited one of his models at
the Royal Academy. His inventive brain and observing eye were always
alert in some new direction. Having ascertained that the Government lost
thousands of pounds annually by the transfer of adhesive stamps from old
deeds to new ones, he determined to devise a stamp which could not be
used twice.

For several months he worked earnestly, at night after his daily tasks
were over, and in secret, thinking how richly the Government would
reward him if he succeeded. At last he produced a die of unique design,
which perforated a parchment deed with four hundred little holes. He
hastened to the Stamp officials to show his work. They were greatly
pleased, and asked him which he preferred for his reward, a sum of
money, or the position of Superintendent of Stamps, with a salary of
three or four thousand dollars a year. He delightedly chose the latter,
as that would make him comfortable for life. There was another reason
for his delight; for being engaged to be married, he would have no
solicitude now about daily needs: life would flow on as smoothly as a
river.

At once he visited the young lady, and told her of his great success.
She listened eagerly, and then said, "Yes, I understand this; but
surely, if all stamps had a _date_ put upon them, they could not at a
future time be used without detection." His spirits fell. He confessed
afterward that, "while he felt pleased and proud of the clever and
simple suggestion of the young lady, he saw also that all his more
elaborate system, the result of months of toil, was shattered to pieces
by it." What need for four hundred holes in a die, when a single date
was more effective? He soon worked out a die with movable dates, and
with frankness and honor presented it before the Government officials.
They saw its preferableness: the new plan was adopted by Act of
Parliament; the old stamps were called in and new ones issued; and then
the young inventor was informed that his services as Superintendent of
Stamps, at three thousand dollars a year, were not needed.

But surely the Government, which was to save a half million dollars a
year, would repay him for his months of labor and thought! Associations,
like individuals, are very apt to forget favors, when once the desired
end is attained. The Premier had resigned; and, after various promises
and excuses, a lawyer in the Stamp Office informed him that he made the
new stamp of his own free will, and there was no money to be given him.
"Sad and dispirited, and with a burning sense of injustice overpowering
all other feelings," says young Bessemer, "I went my way from the Stamp
Office, too proud to ask as a favor that which was indubitably my
right."

Alas! that he must learn thus early the selfishness of the world! But he
took courage; for, had he not made one real invention? and it must be in
his power to make others. When he was twenty-five he produced a
type-casting machine; but so opposed was it by the compositors, that it
was finally abandoned. He also invented a machine for making figured
Utrecht velvet; and some of his productions were used in the state
apartments of Windsor Castle.

A little later his attention was accidentally called to bronze powder,
he having bought a small portion to ornament his sister's album. The
powder, made in Germany, cost only twenty-two cents a pound in the raw
material, and sold for twenty-two dollars. Here was a wonderful profit.
Why could he not discover the process of making it? He worked for
eighteen months, trying all sorts of experiments, and failed. But
failure to a great mind never really means failure; so, after six
months, he tried again, and--succeeded. He knew little about patents,
had been recently defrauded by the Government; and he determined that
this discovery should be kept a secret. He made a small apparatus, and
worked it himself, sending out a travelling-man with the product. That
which cost him less than one dollar was sold for eighteen. A fortune
seemed now really within his grasp.

A friend, assured of his success, put fifty thousand dollars into the
business. Immediately Bessemer made plans of all the machinery required,
sent various parts to as many different establishments, lest his secret
be found out, and then put the pieces of his self-acting machines
together. Five assistants were engaged at high wages, under pledge of
secrecy. At first he made one thousand per cent profit; and now, in
these later years, the profit is three hundred per cent. Three of the
assistants have died; and Mr. Bessemer has turned over the business and
the factory to the other two. The secret of making the bronze powder has
never been told. Even Mr. Bessemer's oldest son had reached manhood
before he ever entered the locked room where it was made.

For ten years the inventor now turned his attention to the construction
of railway carriages, centrifugal pumps, etc. His busy brain could not
rest. When frequent explosions in coal-mines occasioned discussion
throughout the country, he made, at large expense, a working model for
ventilating mines, and offered to explain it to a committee of the House
of Commons. His offer was declined with thanks. A little investigation
on the part of great statesmen would have been scarcely out of place.

At the great exhibition in London in 1851, he exhibited several
machines,--one for grinding and polishing plate glass, and another for
draining, in an hour, an acre of land covered with water a foot deep.
The crowd looked at them, called the inventor "the ingenious Mr.
Bessemer," and passed on. Two years later he made some improvements in
war implements, and submitted his plans to the Woolwich Arsenal; but
they were declined, without thanks even. Some other men might have
become discouraged; but Mr. Bessemer knew that obstacles only strengthen
and develop men.

The improved ordnance having been brought to the knowledge of Napoleon
III., he encouraged the inventor, and furnished the money to carry
forward the experiments. While the guns were being tested at Vincennes,
an officer remarked, "If you cannot get stronger metal for your guns,
such heavy projectiles will be of little use." And then Mr. Bessemer
began to ask himself if he could not improve iron. But he had never
studied metallurgy. This, however, did not deter him; for he immediately
obtained the best books on the subject, and visited the iron-making
districts. Then he bought an old factory at Baxter House, where Richard
Baxter used to live, and began to experiment for himself. After a whole
year of labor he succeeded in greatly improving cast-iron, making it
almost as white as steel.

Could he not improve steel also? For eighteen months he built and pulled
down one furnace after another, at great expense. At last "the idea
struck him," he says, of making cast-iron malleable by forcing air into
the metal when in a fluid state, cast-iron being a combination of iron
and carbon. When oxygen is forced in, it unites with the carbon, and
thus the iron is left nearly pure. The experiment was tried at the
factory, in the midst of much trepidation, as the union of the
compressed air and the melted iron produced an eruption like a volcano;
but when the combustion was over, the result was steel.

Astonished and delighted, after two years and a half of labor, Bessemer
at once took out a patent; and the following week, by request, Aug. 11,
1856, read a paper before the British Association, on "The manufacture
of malleable iron and steel without fuel." There was great ridicule made
beforehand. Said one leading steel-maker to another. "I want you to go
with me this morning. There is a fellow who has come down from London to
read a paper on making steel from cast-iron without fuel! Ha! ha! ha!"

The paper was published in the "Times," and created a great sensation.
Crowds hastened to Baxter House to see the wonderful process. In three
weeks Mr. Bessemer had sold one hundred thousand dollars worth of
licenses to make steel by the new and rapid method. Fame, as well as
great wealth, seemed now assured, when lo! in two months, it being found
that only certain kinds of iron could be worked, the newspapers began to
ridicule the new invention, and scientists and business men declared
the method visionary, and worse than useless.

Mr. Bessemer collected a full portfolio of these scathing criticisms;
but he was not the man to be disconcerted or cast down. Again he began
the labor of experimenting, and found that phosphorus in the iron was
the real cause of the failure. For three long years he pursued his
investigations. His best friends tried to make him desist from what the
world had proved to be an impracticable thing. Sometimes he almost
distrusted himself, and thought he would give up trying, and then the
old desire came back more strongly than ever. At last, success was
really assured, but nobody would believe it. Every one said, "Oh, this
is the thing which made such a blaze two or three years ago, and which
was a failure."

Mr. Bessemer took several hundredweight of the new steel to some
Manchester friends, that their workmen might try it, without knowing
from whence it came. They detected no difference between this which cost
thirty dollars a ton, and what they were then using at three hundred
dollars a ton.

But nobody wanted to buy the new steel. Two years went by in this
fruitless urging for somebody to take up the manufacture of the new
metal. Finally, Bessemer induced a friend to unite with him, and they
erected works, and began to make steel. At first the dealers would buy
only twenty or thirty pounds; then the demand steadily increased. At
last the large manufacturers awoke to the fact that Bessemer was
underselling them by one hundred dollars a ton, and they hastened to pay
a royalty for making steel by the new process.

But all obstacles were not yet overcome. The Government refused to make
steel guns; the shipbuilders were afraid to touch it; and when the
engineer of the London and North-western Railway was asked to use steel
rails, he exclaimed, excitedly, "Mr. Bessemer, do you wish to see me
tried for manslaughter?" Now, steel rails are used the world over, at
the same cost as iron formerly, and are said to last twenty times as
long as iron rails.

Prejudice at last wore away, and in 1866, the "Bessemer process," the
conversion of crude iron into steel by forcing cold air through it for
fifteen or twenty minutes, was bringing to its inventor an income of
five hundred thousand dollars a year! Fame had now come, as well as
wealth. In 1874, he was made President of the Iron and Steel Institute,
to succeed the Duke of Devonshire. The Institute of Civil Engineers gave
him the Telford Gold Medal; the Society of Arts, the Albert Gold Medal.
Sweden made him honorary member of her Iron Board; Hamburg gave him the
freedom of the city; and the Emperor of Austria conferred upon him the
honor of Knight Commander of the Order of Francis Joseph, sending a
complimentary letter in connection with the jewelled cross and circular
collar of the order. Napoleon III. wished to give him the Grand Cross of
the Legion of Honor, but the English Government would not permit him to
wear it; the Emperor therefore presented him in person with a gold medal
weighing twelve ounces. Berlin and the King of Wurtemburg sent him gold
medals. In 1879 he was made Fellow of the Royal Society, and the same
year was knighted by Queen Victoria. In 1880 the freedom of the city of
London was presented to him in a gold casket; the only other great
discoverers who have received this distinction being Dr. Jenner, who
introduced vaccination, and Sir Rowland Hill, the author of penny
postage. In the United States, which gives no ribbons or decorations,
Indiana has appropriately named a flourishing town after him.

It is estimated that Sir Henry Bessemer's one discovery of making steel
has saved the world, in the last twenty-one years, above five thousand
million dollars.

When his patent expired in 1870, he had received in royalties over five
million dollars. In his steel works at Sheffield, after buying in all
the licenses sold in 1856, when the new process seemed a failure, the
profits every two months equalled the original capital, or in fourteen
years the company increased the original capital eighty-one times by the
profits.

How wise it proved that the country lad did not obtain the permanent
position of superintendent of stamps, at three thousand dollars a year!

Rich beyond his highest hopes, the friend of such eminent and
progressive men as the King of the Belgians, who visits Denmark Hill,
Sir Henry has not ceased his inventions. Knowing the terrors of
sea-sickness, he designed a great swinging saloon, seventy feet by
thirty, in the midst of a sea-going vessel named the "Bessemer." The
experiment cost one hundred thousand dollars, but has not yet proved
successful. In 1877, when sixty-four years old, he began to devote
himself to the study of Herschel's works on optics, and has since
constructed an immense and novel telescope, which magnifies five
thousand times. The instrument is placed in a comfortable observatory,
so that the investigator can either sit or stand while making his
observations. "The observing room, with its floor, windows, and dome,
revolve and keep pace automatically with every motion of the telescope."
This is accomplished by hydraulic power.

No wonder that Bessemer has been called the "great captain of modern
civilization." He has revolutionized one of the most important of the
world's industries; he has fought obstacles at every step,--poverty, the
ridicule of the press, the indifference of his countrymen, and the
cupidity of men who would steal his inventions or appropriate the
results. He has earned leisure, but he rarely takes it. His has been a
life of labor, prosecuted with indomitable will and energy. He has taken
out one hundred and twenty patents, for which the specifications and
drawings fill seven large volumes, all made by himself. The world had at
last come to know and honor the boy who came to London at the age of
eighteen, "a mere cipher in a vast sea of human enterprise." He made his
way to greatness unaided, save by his helpful wife.

Sir Henry died on the fifteenth of March, 1898, leaving an immense
fortune, which, nevertheless, was not inordinate when compared with the
services rendered by him to mankind; and a stainless name. The unfair
treatment which had embittered his earlier days had been atoned for by
the Queen granting him a title in recognition of his invention accepted
by the Post-Office, and he had come to be regarded as one of the
greatest benefactors of modern times. Such a life, crowned with such a
success, is calculated to be a mighty inspiration to every ambitious
youth.



SIR TITUS SALT.


I spent a day, with great interest, in visiting the worsted mills and
warehouses at Saltaire, just out from Bradford, England, which cover
about ten acres. The history of the proprietor, Sir Titus Salt, reads
like a romance. A poor boy, the son of a plain Yorkshire man, at
nineteen in a loose blouse he was sorting and washing wool; a little
later, a good salesman, a faithful Christian worker and the
superintendent of a Sunday school.

At thirty-three, happening to be in Liverpool, he observed on the docks
some huge pieces of dirty-looking alpaca wool. They had long lain in the
warehouses, and becoming a nuisance to the owners, were soon to be
reshipped to Peru. Young Salt took away a handful of the wool in his
handkerchief, scoured and combed it, and was amazed at its attractive
appearance. His father and friends advised him strongly to have nothing
to do with the dirty stuff, as he could sell it to no one; and if he
attempted to make cloth from it himself, he ran a great risk of failure.
Finally he said, "I am going into this alpaca affair right and left, and
I'll either make myself a man or a mouse."

[Illustration: SIR TITUS SALT.]

Returning to Liverpool, he bought the whole three hundred bales for a
small sum, and toiled diligently till proper machinery was made for the
new material. The result was a great success. In three years over two
million pounds of alpaca wool were imported, and now four million pounds
are brought to Bradford alone. Employment was soon furnished to
thousands, laborers coming from all over Great Britain and Germany. Ten
years later Mr. Salt was made mayor of Bradford; ten years after this a
member of Parliament, and ten years later still a baronet by Queen
Victoria,--a great change from the boy in his soiled coarse blouse, but
he deserved it all. He was a remarkable man in many ways. Even when
worth his millions, and giving lavishly on every hand, he would save
blank leaves and scraps of paper for writing, and lay them aside for
future use. He was an early riser, always at the works before the
engines were started. It used to be said of him, "Titus Salt makes a
thousand pounds before others are out of bed." He was punctual to the
minute, most exact, and unostentatious. After he was knighted, it was no
uncommon thing for him to take a poor woman and her baby in the carriage
beside him, or a tired workman, or scatter hundreds of tracts in a
village where he happened to be. Once a gypsy, not knowing who he was,
asked him to buy a broom. To her astonishment, he bought all she was
carrying!

The best of his acts, one which he had thought out carefully, as he
said, "to do good to his fellow-men," was the building of Saltaire for
his four thousand workmen. When asked once what he had been reading of
late, he replied. "Alpaca. If you had four or five thousand people to
provide for every day, you would not have much time left for reading."
Saltaire is a beautiful place on the banks of the river Aire, clean and
restful. In the centre of the town stands the great six-story mill,
well-ventilated, lighted, and warmed, five hundred and forty-five feet
long, of light-colored stone, costing over a half million dollars. The
four engines of eighteen hundred horse-power consume fifteen thousand
tons of coal per year. The weaving shed, covering two acres, holds
twelve hundred looms, which make eighteen miles of fabric per day.

The homes of the work-people are an honor to the capitalist. They are of
light stone, like the mill, two stories high, each containing parlor,
kitchen, pantry, and three bedrooms or more, well ventilated and
tasteful. Flower beds are in every front yard, with a vegetable garden
in the rear. No broken carts or rubbish are to be seen. Not satisfied to
make Saltaire simply healthful, by proper sanitary measures, and
beautiful, for which Napoleon III. made him one of the Legion of Honor,
Mr. Salt provided school buildings at a cost of $200,000, a
Congregational church, costing $80,000, Italian in style,--as are the
other buildings,--a hospital for sick or injured, and forty-five pretty
almshouses, like Italian villas, where the aged and infirm have a
comfortable home. Each married man and his wife receive $2.50 weekly,
and each single man or woman $1.87 for expenses. Once a year Mr. Salt
and his family used to take tea with the inmates, which was a source of
great delight.

Believing that "indoor washing is most pernicious, and a fruitful source
of disease, especially to the young," he built twenty-four baths, at a
cost of $35,000, and public wash-houses. These are supplied with three
steam engines and six washing machines. Each person bringing clothes is
provided with a rubbing and boiling tub, into which steam and hot and
cold water are conveyed by pipes. The clothes are dried by hot air, and
can be washed, dried, mangled, and folded in an hour. In Sweden, I found
the same dislike to having washing done in the homes, and clothes are
usually carried to the public wash-houses.

Perhaps the most interesting of all Mr. Salt's gifts to his workmen is
the Saltaire Club and Institute, costing $125,000; a handsome building,
with large reading-room supplied with daily papers and current
literature, a library, lecture-hall for eight hundred persons, a "School
of Art," with models, drawings, and good teachers, a billiard-room with
four tables, a room for scientific study, each student having proper
appliances for laboratory work, a gymnasium and drill-room nearly sixty
feet square, an armory for rifle-practice, and a smoking-room, though
Mr. Salt did not smoke. The membership fee for all this study and
recreation is only thirty seven cents for each three months. Opposite
the great mill is a dining-hall, where a plate of meat can be purchased
for four cents, a bowl of soup for two cents, and a cup of tea or coffee
for one cent. If the men prefer to bring their own food, it is cooked
free of charge. The manager has a fixed salary, so that there is no
temptation to scrimp the buyers.

Still another gift was made to the work-people; a park of fourteen
acres, with croquet and archery grounds, music pavilion, places for
boating and swimming, and walks with beautiful flowers. No saloon has
ever been allowed in Saltaire. Without the temptation of the beer-shops,
the boys have grown to intelligent manhood, and the girls to virtuous
womanhood. Sir Titus Salt's last gift to his workmen was a Sunday-school
building costing $50,000, where are held the "model Sunday schools of
the country," say those who have attended the meetings. No wonder, at
the death of this man, 40,000 people came to his burial,--members of
Parliament, clergymen, workingmen's unions, and ragged schools. No
wonder that statues have been erected to his memory, and that thousands
go every year to Saltaire, to see what one capitalist has done for his
laborers. No fear of strikes in his workshops; no socialism talked in
the clean and pretty homes of the men; no squalid poverty, no depraving
ignorance.

That capital is feeling its responsibility in this matter of homes for
laborers is one of the hopeful signs of the times. We shall come,
sometime, to believe with the late President Chadbourne, "The rule now
commonly acted upon is that business must be cared for, and men must
care for themselves. The principle of action, in the end, must be that
_men must be cared for_, and business must be subservient to this great
work."

If, as Spurgeon has well said, "Home is the grandest of all
institutions," capital can do no better work than look to the homes of
the laborer. It is not the mansion which the employer builds for
himself, but the home which he builds for his employé, which will insure
a safe country for his children to dwell in. If discontent and poverty
surround his palace, its foundations are weak; if intelligence has been
disseminated, and comfort promoted by his unselfish thought for others,
then he leaves a goodly heritage for his children.



JOSEPH MARIE JACQUARD.


The small world which lives in elegant houses knows little of the great
world in dingy apartments with bare walls and empty cupboards. Those who
walk or ride in the sunshine often forget the darkness of the mines, or
the tiresome treadmill of the factories.

Over a century ago, in Lyons, France, lived a man who desired to make
the lives of the toilers brighter and happier. Joseph Jacquard, the son
of a silk-weaver who died early, began his young manhood, the owner of
two looms and a comfortable little home. He had married Claudine
Boichon, the daughter of a goldsmith who expected to give his daughter a
marriage portion, but was unable from loss of property. Jacquard loved
her just as devotedly, however, as though she had brought him money. A
pretty boy was born into their home, and no family was happier in all
France. But the young loom-owner saw the poor weavers working from four
in the morning till nine at night, in crowded rooms, whole families
often bending over a loom, their chests shrunken and their cheeks
sallow from want of air and sunlight; and their faces dull and vacant
from the monotony of unvaried toil. There were no holidays, no walks in
the fields among the flowers, no reading of books, nothing but the
constant routine which wore out body and mind together. There was no
home-life; little children grew pinched and old; and mothers went too
early to their graves. If work stopped, they ate the bread of charity,
and went to the almshouse. The rich people of Lyons were not
hard-hearted, but they did not _think_; they were too busy with their
parties and their marriages; too busy buying and selling that they might
grow richer. But Jacquard was always thinking how he could lighten the
labor of the silk-weavers by some invention.

The manufacture of silk had become a most important industry. Seventeen
hundred years before Christ the Chinese had discovered the making of
silk from silk-worms, and had cultivated mulberry-trees. They forbade
anybody to export the eggs or to disclose the process of making the
fabric, under penalty of death. The Roman Emperor Justinian determined
to wrest this secret from China, and thus revive the resources of his
empire. He sent two monks, who ostensibly preached Christianity, but in
reality studied silk-worms, and, secreting some eggs in two hollow
reeds, returned to Justinian, and breaking these canes, laid the eggs on
the lap of the beautiful Empress Theodora. From this the art spread into
Italy, and thence into France.

The more Jacquard thought how he could help the silk-weavers of France
the more he became absorbed, and forgot that money was needed to support
his family. Soon the looms had to be sold at auction, with his small
home. The world ridiculed, and his relatives blamed him; but Claudine
his wife encouraged him, and prophesied great fame for him in the
future. She sold her little treasures, and even her bed, to pay his
debts. Finally, when there was no food in the house, with tears in his
eyes, Jacquard left his wife and child, to become a laborer for a
lime-burner in a neighboring town. Claudine went to work in a
straw-bonnet factory; and for sixteen years they battled with poverty.

Then the French Revolution burst upon Lyons in 1793. Her crime before
such murderers as Robespierre and Marat was that she was the friend of
Louis XVI. Sixty thousand men were sent against her by the so-called
Republicans, who were commanded to utterly destroy her, and write over
the ruins, "Lyons made war upon liberty; Lyons is no more." Six thousand
persons were put to death, their houses burned, and twelve thousand
exiled; among them Jacquard.

His only child, a brave boy of sixteen, had joined the Republican ranks,
that he might fight against the foreign armies of England, Austria, and
Naples, who had determined, under Pitt, to crush out the new government.
At the boy's earnest request his father enlisted with him, and together
they marched toward the Rhine. In one of the first battles a
cannon-ball struck the idolized son, who fell expiring in Jacquard's
arms. Covered with the blood of his only child, he dug a grave for him
on the battle-field; and exhausted and heart-broken went to the hospital
till his discharge was obtained.

He returned to Lyons and sought his poor wife. At last he found her in
the outskirts of the city, living in a hay-loft, and earning the barest
pittance by spreading out linen for the laundresses to dry. She divided
her crusts with her husband, while they wept together over their
irreparable loss. She soon died of grief, but, with her last words, bade
Jacquard go forward in developing his genius, and have trust in God, who
would yet show him the way of success. Blessed Claudine! A sweet,
beautiful soul, shining like a star in the darkness of the French
Revolution.

Jacquard with all earthly ties severed went back to the seclusion of
inventing. After his day's work was done as a laborer, he studied on his
machine for silk-weaving. Finally, after seven years,--a long time to
patiently develop an idea,--he had produced a loom which would decrease
the number of workmen at each machine, by one person. The model was
placed at the Paris Industrial Exposition in 1801; and the maker was
awarded a bronze medal. In gratitude for this discovery he went to the
image of the Virgin which stood on a high hill, and for nine days
ascended daily the steps of the sacred place. Then he returned to his
work, and seating himself before a Vaucanson loom, which contained the
germ of his own, he consecrated himself anew to the perfecting of his
invention.

Jacques de Vaucanson, who died when Jacquard was thirty years old, was
one of the most celebrated mechanicians of France. His automatons were
the wonder of the age. He exhibited a duck which, when moved, ate and
drank like a live one. The figure would stretch out its neck for food,
and swallow it: walk, swim, dabble in the water, and quack most
naturally. His musician, playing the flageolet with the left hand, and
beating the tambourine with the right, executing many pieces of
difficult music with great accuracy, was an astonishment to every body.
He had been appointed inspector of silk-factories at Lyons, and, because
he made some improvements in machines, he was pelted with stones by the
workmen, who feared that they would thereby lose their labor. He
revenged himself by making a machine which wove, brocaded, and colored
at the same time, and was worked by a donkey!

It remained for Jacquard to make the Vaucanson loom of the utmost
practical use to Lyons and to the world. After a time he was not only
able to dispense with one workman at each loom, but he made machinery do
the work of three men and two women at each frame. The city authorities
sent a model of this machine to Paris, that the Emperor Napoleon might
examine it. So pleased was he that he at once sent for Jacquard to come
to Paris. The latter had previously invented a machine for making
fishing-nets, now used in producing Nottingham lace. When brought before
Bonaparte, and Carnot the Minister of the Interior, the latter asked,
"Is it you then, who pretend to do a thing which is impossible for
man,--to make a knot upon a tight thread?"

Jacquard answered the brusque inquiry by setting up a machine, and
letting the incredulous minister see for himself.

The Emperor made Jacquard welcome to the _Conservatoire des Arts et
Metiers_, where he could study books and machines to his heart's
content, and gave him a pension of about twelve hundred dollars for his
discovery. When he had, with his own hands, woven a magnificent brocaded
silk dress for the Empress Josephine, he returned to Lyons to set up the
Jacquard looms. His name began to be lauded everywhere. Claudine's
prophecies had at last come true. She had given her life to help him;
but she could not live to share his honors.

Soon, however, the tide of praise turned. Whole families found
themselves forced into the street for lack of work, as the looms were
doing what their hands had done. Bands of unemployed men were shouting,
"Behold the traitor! Let him provide for our wives and children now
driven as mendicants from door to door; or let him, the destroyer of
the peoples' labor, share in the death which he has prepared for us!"
The authorities seemed unable to quell the storm, and by their orders
the new loom was broken in pieces on the public square. "The iron," says
Jacquard, "was sold as old iron; the wood, for fuel." One day he was
seized by a crowd of starving workmen, who knocked him down, and dragged
him to the banks of the Rhone, where he would have been drowned at once,
had not the police rescued him, bleeding and nearly dead. He left the
city overwhelmed with astonishment and sorrow. Soon Switzerland,
Germany, Italy, and America were using the Jacquard looms, largely
increasing the manufacture and sale of silk, and therefore the number of
laborers. The poor men of Lyons awoke to the sad fact, that by breaking
up Jacquard's machines, they had put the work of silk-weaving into other
hands all over the world; and idleness was proving their ruin. They
might have doubled and trebled the number of their factories, and
benefited labor a thousand-fold.

The inventor refused to take out a patent for himself, nor would he
accept any offers made him by foreigners, because he thought all his
services belonged to France. He loved the working people, who, for
twenty years, were too blind to see it.

He removed to a little home and garden at Oullins, near Lyons, the use
of which had been given him for life, where he could hear the sound of
his precious looms on which he had worked for sixty years, and which
his city had at last adopted. Here he attended his garden, and went
every morning to early church, distributing each day some small pieces
of money to poor children. As old age came on, Lyons realized the
gratitude due her great inventor. A silver medal was awarded him, and
then the grand distinction of the cross of the Legion of Honor.

People from the neighboring towns visited Oullins, and pointed out with
pride the noble old man at eighty-four, sitting by his garden-wall,
dressed like a workman in his long black tunic, but wearing his broad
red ribbon with his cross of honor. Illustrious travellers and statesmen
visited him whose fame was now spread through Europe and America.

Toinette, a faithful servant who had known and loved Claudine, watched
over the pure-hearted Jacquard till death came, Aug. 7, 1834. Six years
after, Lyons, which once broke his machine and nearly killed him, raised
a beautiful statue of him in the public square. The more than seventy
thousand looms in the city, employing two hundred thousand workmen, are
grander monuments even than the statue. The silk-weavers are better
housed and fed than formerly. The struggling, self-sacrificing man, who
might have been immensely rich as well as famous, was an untold blessing
to labor and to the world.



HORACE GREELEY.


Among the hills of New Hampshire, in a lonely, unpainted house, Horace
Greeley was born, Feb. 3, 1811, the third of seven children. His father
was a plain farmer, hard-working, yet not very successful, but aided by
a wife of uncommon energy and good spirits, notwithstanding her many
cares. Besides her housework, and spinning, and making the children's
clothes, she hoed in the garden, raked and loaded hay to help her
husband, laughing and singing all day long, and telling her feeble
little son, Horace, stories and legends all the evening. Her first two
children having died, this boy was especially dear. Mrs. Greeley was a
great reader of such books as she could obtain, and remembered all she
read. It requires no great discernment to see from whence Horace Greeley
derived his intense love for reading, and his boundless energy.

[Illustration: HORACE GREELEY.]

He learned to read, one can scarcely tell how. When two years old, he
would pore over the Bible, as he lay on the floor, and ask questions
about the letters; at three, he went to the "district school," often
carried through the deep snow on the shoulders of one of his aunts, or
on the back of an older boy. He soon stood at the head of his little
class in spelling and reading, "and took it so much to heart when he did
happen to lose his place, that he would cry bitterly; so that some boys,
when they had gained the right to get above him, declined the honor,
because it hurt Horace's feelings so."

Before he was six years old he had read the Bible through, and
"Pilgrim's Progress." Their home contained only about twenty books, and
these he read and re-read. As he grew older, every book within seven
miles was borrowed, and perused after the hard day's work of farming was
over. He gathered a stock of pine knots, and, lighting one each night,
lay down by the hearth, and read, oblivious to all around him. The
neighbors came and made their friendly visits, and ate apples and drank
cider, as was the fashion, but the lad never noticed their coming or
their going. When really forced to leave his precious books for bed, he
would repeat the information he had learned, or the lessons for the next
day, to his brother, who usually, most ungraciously, fell asleep before
the conversation was half completed.

When Horace was nearly ten years old, his father, who had speculated in
a small way in lumber, became a bankrupt; his house and furniture were
sold by the sheriff, and he was obliged to flee from the State to avoid
arrest. Some of these debts were paid, thirty years afterward, by his
noble son. Going to Westhaven, Vt., Mr. Greeley obtained work on a farm,
and moved his family thither. They were very poor, the children sitting
on the floor and eating their porridge together out of a tin pan; but
they were happy in the midst of their hard work and plain food. The
father and the boys chopped logs, and the little sisters, with the
mother, gathered them in heaps, the voice of the latter, says Mr. James
Parton, in his biography, "ringing out in laughter from the tangled
brushwood in which she was often buried." Would there were thousands
more of such women, who can laugh at disaster, and keep their children
and themselves from getting soured with life. Everybody has troubles;
and very wise are they who do not tell them, either in their faces or by
their words.

Horace earned a few pennies all his own; sometimes by selling nuts, or
bundles of the roots of pitch-pine for kindling, which he carried on his
back to the store. This money he spent in books, buying Mrs. Hemans's
poetry and "Shakspeare." No wonder that the minister of the town said,
"Mark my words; that boy was not made for nothing."

He could go to school no longer, and must now support himself. From
earliest childhood he had determined to be a printer; so, when eleven
years of age, he walked nine miles to see the publisher of a newspaper,
and obtain a situation. The editor looked at the small, tow-haired boy,
shook his head, and said, "You are too young." With a heavy heart the
child walked the long nine miles back again. But he must do something;
and, a little later, with seventy-five cents in his pocket, and some
food tied in a bundle, which he hung on the end of a stick, slung over
his shoulder, he walked one hundred and twenty miles back to New
Hampshire, to see his relatives. After some weeks he returned, with a
few more cents in his purse than when he started!

The father Greeley ought to have foreseen that such energy and will
would produce results; but because Horace, in a fit of abstraction,
tried to yoke the "off" ox on the "near" side, he said, "Ah! that boy
will never get along in the world. He'll never know more than enough to
come in when it rains." Alas! for the blindness of Zaccheus Greeley,
whose name even would not be remembered but for his illustrious son.

When Horace was fourteen, he read in a newspaper that an apprentice was
wanted in a printing-office eleven miles distant. He hastened thither,
and, though unprepossessing, from his thin voice, short pantaloons, lack
of stockings, and worn hat, he was hired on trial. The first day he
worked at the types in silence. Finally the boys began to tease him with
saucy remarks, and threw type at him; but he paid no attention. On the
third day, one of the apprentices took a large black ball, used to put
ink on the type, and remarking that Horace's hair was too light, daubed
his head four times. The pressman and editor both stopped their labors
to witness a fight; but they were disappointed, for the boy never turned
from his work. He soon left his desk, spent an hour in washing the ink
from his hair, and returned to his duties. Seeing that he could not be
irritated, and that he was determined to work, he became a great
favorite.

When at his type, he would often compose paragraphs for the paper,
setting up the words without writing them out. He soon joined a debating
society, composed of the best-informed persons of the little town of
East Poultney,--the minister, the doctor, the lawyer, the
schoolteachers, and the like. What was their surprise to find that the
young printer knew almost every thing, and was always ready to speak, or
read an essay.

He was often laughed at because of his poor clothes, and pitied because,
slender and pale as he was, he never wore an overcoat; but he used to
say, "I guess I'd better wear my old clothes than run in debt for new
ones." Ah! they did not know that every penny was saved and sent to the
father, struggling to clear a farm in the wilderness in Pennsylvania.
During his four years' apprenticeship he visited his parents twice,
though six hundred miles distant, and walked most of the way.

Soon after he had learned his trade, the newspaper suspended, and he was
thrown out of work. The people with whom he boarded gave him a brown
overcoat, not new, and with moistened eyes said good-by to the poor
youth whom they had learned to love as their own. He remained a few
weeks with his family, then walked fifty miles east to a town in New
York State, where he found plenty of work, but no money, and in six
weeks returned to the log-cabin. After trying various towns, he found a
situation in Erie, taking the place of a workman who was ill, and for
seven months he did not lose a day. Out of his wages--eighty-four
dollars--he had used only six, less than one dollar a mouth! Putting
fifteen dollars in his pocket, he took the balance of sixty-three in a
note, and gave it to his father. A noble son indeed, who would not buy a
single garment for himself, but carried the money home, so as to make
the poor ones a trifle more comfortable!

He had become tired of working in the small towns; he determined to go
to the great city of New York, and "be somebody." He walked a part of
the way by the tow-path along the canal, and sometimes rode in a scow.
Finally, at sunrise, Friday, Aug. 18, 1831, he landed close to the
Battery, with ten dollars in his pocket, knowing, he says, "no human
being within two hundred miles." His first need was a boarding-place.
Over a saloon, kept by an Irishman, he found room and board for two
dollars and a half a week. Fortunately, though it was the almost
universal custom to use liquors, Horace was a teetotaler, and despised
chewing or smoking tobacco, which he regarded "as the vilest, most
detestable abuse of his corrupted sensual appetites whereof depraved man
is capable;" therefore he had no fear of temptation from these sources.

All day Friday and Saturday he walked the streets of New York, looking
for work. The editor of the "Journal of Commerce" told him plainly that
he was a runaway apprentice from the country, and he did not want him.
"I returned to my lodging on Saturday evening, thoroughly weary,
disheartened, disgusted with New York, and resolved to shake its dust
from my feet next Monday morning, while I could still leave with money
in my pocket, and before its almshouse could foreclose upon me." On
Sunday he went to church, both morning and afternoon. Late in the day, a
friend who called upon the owner of the house, learning that the printer
wanted work, said he had heard of a vacancy at Mr. West's, 85 Chatham
Street.

The next morning Horace was at the shop at half-past five! New York was
scarcely awake; even the newsboys were asleep in front of the paper
offices. He waited for an hour and a half,--a day, it seemed to
him,--when one of the journey-men arrived, and, finding the door locked,
sat down beside the stranger. He, too, was a Vermonter, and he
determined to help young Greeley, if possible. He took him to the
foreman, who decided to try him on a Polyglot Testament, with marginal
references, such close work that most of the men refused to do it. Mr.
West came an hour or two later, and said, in anger, "Did you hire that
fool?"

"Yes; we need help, and he was the best I could get," said the foreman.

"Well, pay him off to-night, and let him go about his business."

When night came, however, the country youth had done more and better
work, than anybody who had tried the Testament. By beginning his labors
before six in the morning, and not leaving his desk till nine in the
evening, working by the light of a candle stuck in a bottle, he could
earn six dollars a week. At first his fellow-workmen called him "the
ghost," from his white hair and complexion; but they soon found him
friendly, and willing to lend money, which, as a rule, was never
returned to him; they therefore voted him to be a great addition to the
shop. As usual, though always scrupulously clean, he wore his poor
clothes, no stockings, and his wristbands tied together with twine. Once
he bought a second-hand black suit of a Jew, for five dollars, but it
proved a bad bargain. His earnings were sent, as before, to his parents.

After a year, business grew dull, and he was without a place. For some
months he worked on various papers, when a printer friend, Mr. Story,
suggested that they start in business, their combined capital being one
hundred and fifty dollars. They did so, and their first work was the
printing of a penny "Morning Post," which suspended in three weeks, they
losing sixty dollars. The partner was drowned shortly after, and his
brother-in-law took his place.

Young Greeley, now twenty-three, and deeply interested in politics,
determined to start a weekly paper. Fifteen of his friends promised to
subscribe for it. The "New Yorker" was begun, and so well conducted was
it that three hundred papers throughout the country gave it
complimentary notices. It grew to a subscription list of nine thousand
persons; but much of the business was done on trust, times were hard,
and, after seven years, the enterprise had to be abandoned. This was a
severe trial to the hard-working printer, who had known nothing but
struggles all his life. Years after this he wrote, "Through most of this
time I was very poor, and for four years really bankrupt, though always
paying my notes, and keeping my word, but living as poorly as possible.
My embarrassments were sometimes dreadful; not that I feared
destitution, but the fear of involving my friends in my misfortunes was
very bitter.... I would rather be a convict in a State prison, a slave
in a rice-swamp, than to pass through life under the harrow of debt.
Hunger, cold, rags, hard work, contempt, suspicion, unjust reproach, are
disagreeable, but debt is infinitely worse than them all. Avoid
pecuniary obligation as you would pestilence or famine. If you have but
fifty cents, and can get no more for a week, buy a peck of corn, parch
it, and live on it, rather than owe any man a dollar."

Meantime the young editor had married Miss Mary Y. Cheney, a
schoolteacher of unusual mind and strength of character. It was, of
course, a comfort to have some one to share his sorrows; but it pained
his tender heart to make another help bear his burdens. Beside editing
the "New Yorker," he had also taken charge of the "Jeffersonian," a
weekly campaign paper published at Albany, and the "Log-Cabin,"
established to aid in the election of General Harrison to the
Presidency. The latter paper was a great success, the circulation
running up to ninety thousand, though very little money was made; but it
gave Mr. Greeley a reputation in all parts of the country for
journalistic ability.

President Harrison died after having been a month in office; and seven
days after his death, Mr. Greeley started, April 10, 1841, a new paper,
the "New York Tribune," with the dying words of Harrison as its motto:
"I desire you to understand the true principles of the government. I
wish them carried out. I ask nothing more." The paper had scarcely any
money for its foundation,--only a thousand dollars loaned by a
friend,--but it had a _true man_ at its head, strong in his hatred of
slavery, and the oppression of the laboring man, and fearless in the
advocacy of what he believed to be right.

Success did not come at first. Of the five thousand copies published and
to be sold at a cent each, Mr. Greeley says, "We found some difficulty
in giving them away." The expenses for the first week were five hundred
and twenty-five dollars; receipts, ninety-two. But the boy who could
walk nearly six hundred miles to see his parents, and be laughed at for
poor clothes, while he saved his money for their use, was not to be
overcome at thirty years of age, by the failure of one or of a dozen
papers. Some of the New York journals fought the new sheet; but it lived
and grew till, on the seventh week, it had eleven thousand subscribers.
A good business-manager was obtained as partner. Mr. Greeley worked
sixteen hours a day. He wrote four columns of editorial matter (his
copy, wittily says Junius Henri Browne, "strangers mistook for diagrams
of Boston"), dozens of letters, often forgot whether he had been to his
meals, and was ready to see and advise with everybody. When told that he
was losing time by thus seeing people, he said, "I know it; but I'd
rather be beset by loafers, and stopped in my work, than be cooped up
where I couldn't be got at by men who really wanted to and had a right
to see me." So warm as this were his sympathies with all humanity!

In 1842, when he was thirty-one, he visited Washington, Niagara, and
his parents in Pennsylvania, and wrote delightful letters back to his
paper. How proud the mother must have felt of the growing fame of her
son! What did Zaccheus think now of his boy of whom he prophesied "would
never know more than enough to come in when it rains"?

The years passed on. Margaret Fuller came upon the editorial staff; for
Mr. Greeley was ever the advocate of the fullest liberty for woman in
any profession, and as much pay for her work as for that of men. And now
came a great sorrow, harder to bear than poverty. His little son Pickie,
called "the glorious boy with radiant beauty never equalled," died
suddenly. "When at length," he said, "the struggle ended with his last
breath, and even his mother was convinced that his eyes would never
again open upon the scenes of this world, I knew that the summer of my
life was over; that the chill breath of its autumn was at hand; and that
my future course must be along the down-hill of life." He wrote to
Margaret Fuller in Italy, "Ah, Margaret, the world grows dark with us!
You grieve, for Rome is fallen; I mourn, for Pickie is dead." His hopes
were centered in this child; and his great heart never regained its full
cheerfulness.

In 1848 he was elected to Congress for three months to fill out the
unexpired term of a deceased member, and did most effective work with
regard to the mileage system and the use of the public lands. To a high
position had come the printer-boy. At this time he was also prominently
in the lecture-field, speaking twice a week to large audiences all over
the country. In 1850 his first book was published by the Harpers, "Hints
toward Reform," composed of ten lectures and twenty essays. The
following year he visited England as one of the "jury" in the awarding
of prizes; and while there made a close study of philanthropic and
social questions. He always said, "He, who by voice or pen strikes his
best blow at the impostures or vices whereby our race is debased and
paralyzed, may close his eyes in death, consoled and cheered by the
reflection that he has done what he could for the emancipation and
elevation of his kind."

In 1855 he again visited Europe; and four years later, California, where
he was received with great demonstrations of honor and respect. In 1860
he was at the Chicago Convention, and helped to nominate Abraham Lincoln
in preference to William H. Seward. Mr. Greeley had now become one of
the leading men of the nation. His paper molded the opinions of hundreds
of thousands. He had fought against slavery with all the strength of his
able pen; but he advocated buying the slaves for four hundred million
dollars rather than going to war,--a cheaper method than our subsequent
conflict, with enormous loss of life and money. When he found the war
inevitable, after General McClellan's defeat at the Chickahominy, he
urged upon Mr. Lincoln immediate emancipation, which was soon adopted.
The "New York World" said after his death, "Mr. Greeley will hold the
first place with posterity on the roll of emancipation."

In the draft riots in New York, in 1863, the mob burst into the Tribune
Building, smashing the furniture, and shouting, "Down with the old white
coat!" Mr. Greeley always wore a coat and hat of this hue. Had he been
present, doubtless he would have been killed at once. When urged to arm
the office, he said, "No; all my life I have worked for the workingmen;
if they would now burn my office and hang me, why, let them do it."

The same year he began his "History of the Civil War" for a Hartford
publisher. Because so constantly interrupted, he went to the Bible
House, and worked with an amanuensis from nine in the morning till four
in the afternoon, and then to the "Tribune" office, and wrote on his
paper till eleven at night. These volumes, dedicated to John Bright,
have had a sale of several hundred thousand copies.

After the war Mr. Greeley, while advocating "impartial suffrage" for
black as well as white, advocated also "universal amnesty." He believed
nothing was to be gained by punishing a defeated portion of our nation,
and wanted the past buried as quickly as possible. He was opposed to the
hanging of Jefferson Davis; and with Gerritt Smith, a well-known
abolitionist, and about twenty others, he signed Mr. Davis's bail-bond
for one hundred thousand dollars, which released him from prison at
Fortress Monroe, where he had been for two years. At once the North was
aflame with indignation. No criticism was too scathing; but Mr. Greeley
took the denunciations like a hero, because he had done what his
conscience approved. He said, "Seeing how passion cools and wrath
abates, I confidently look forward to the time when thousands who have
cursed will thank me for what I have done and dared in resistance to
their own sanguinary impulses.... Out of a life earnestly devoted to the
good of human kind, your children will select my going to Richmond and
signing that bail-bond as the wisest act."

In 1872 considerable disaffection having arisen in the Republican party
at the course pursued by President Grant at the South, the "Liberal
Republicans," headed by Sumner, Schurz, and Trumbull, held a convention
at Cincinnati, and nominated Horace Greeley for President. The
Democratic party saw the hopelessness of nominating a man in opposition
to Grant and Greeley, and accepted the latter as their own candidate.
The contest was bitter and partisan in the extreme. Mr. Greeley received
nearly three million votes, while General Grant received a half million
majority.

No doubt the defeat was a great disappointment to one who had served his
country and the Republican party for so many years with very little
political reward. But just a month before the election came the
crushing blow of his life, in the death of his noble wife. He left his
speech-making, and for weeks attended her with the deepest devotion. A
few days before she died, he said, "I am a broken down old man. I have
not slept one hour in twenty-four for a month. If she lasts, poor soul,
another week, I shall go before her."

After her death he could not sleep at all, and brain-fever soon set in.
Friday, Nov. 29, the end came. At noon he said distinctly, his only
remaining children, Ida and Gabriella, standing by his bedside, "I know
that my Redeemer liveth;" and at half-past three, "It is done." He was
ready for the great change. He had written only a short time before,
"With an awe that is not fear, and a consciousness of demerit which does
not exclude hope, I await the opening, before my steps, of the gates of
the eternal world." Dead at sixty-one! Overworked, not having had "a
good night's sleep in fifteen years!"

When his death became known, the whole nation mourned for him.
Newspapers from Maine to Louisiana gave touching tributes to his
greatness, his purity, and his far-sightedness as a leader of the
people. The Union League Club, the Lotos, the Typographical Society, the
Associated Press, German and colored clubs, and temperance organizations
passed resolutions of sorrow. Cornell University, of whose Board he was
a member, did him honor. St. Louis, Albany, Indianapolis, Nashville,
and other cities held memorial meetings. John Bright sent regrets over
"our friend, Horace Greeley." Congress passed resolutions of respect for
his "eminent services and personal purity and worth."

And then came the sad and impressive burial. In the governor's room in
the City Hall, draped in black, surrounded by a guard of honor composed
of the leading men of New York, the body of the great journalist lay in
state. Over fifty thousand persons, rich and poor, maimed soldiers and
working people, passed in one by one to look upon the familiar face.
Said one workman, "It is little enough to lose a day for Horace Greeley,
who spent many a day working for us." Just as the doors of the room were
being closed for the night, a farmer made his way, saying, "I've come a
hundred miles to be at the funeral of Horace Greeley. Can't you possibly
let me in to have one last look?" The man stood a moment by the open
coffin, and then, pulling his hat low down to hide the tears, was lost
in the crowd.

From there the body was taken to Dr. Chapin's church, where it rested
under a solid arch of flowers, with the words, "I know that my Redeemer
liveth"; and in front of the pulpit, "It is done." The coffin was nearly
hidden by floral gifts; one of the most touching being a plow made of
white camelias on a ground of violets, from the "Tribune" workmen,--a
gift to honor the man who honored labor, and ennobled farm-life at his
country home at Chappaqua, a few miles from New York.

And then through an enormous concourse of people, Fifth Avenue being
blocked for a mile, the body was borne to Greenwood Cemetery. Stores
were closed, and houses along the route were draped in black. Flags on
the shipping, in the harbor, were at half-mast; and bells tolled from
one to three o'clock. Two hundred and fifty carriages, containing the
President of the United States, governors, senators, and other friends,
were in the procession. By the side of his wife and their three little
children the great man was laid to rest, the two daughters stepping into
the vault, and laying flowers tenderly upon the coffin.

The following Sabbath clergymen all over the country preached about this
wonderful life: its struggles succeeded by world-wide honor. Mr.
Greeley's one great wish was gratified, "I cherish the hope that the
journal I projected and established will live and flourish long after I
shall have mouldered into forgotten dust; and that the stone which
covers my ashes may bear to future eyes the still intelligible
inscription, 'Founder of the NEW YORK TRIBUNE.'"



WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON.


For a great work God raises up a great man. Usually he is trained in the
hard school of poverty, to give him courage and perseverance. Usually he
stands alone among a great multitude, that he may have firmness and
endurance.

William Lloyd Garrison was born to be preëminently the deliverer of the
slave. For two hundred years the curse of African slavery had rested
upon one of the fairest portions of our land. Everybody thought it an
evil to keep four million human beings from even the knowledge of how to
read and write, and a cruelty to sell children away from parents, to
toil forever without home or kindred. Everybody knew that slavery was as
ruinous almost to master as to slave; that labor was thereby despised,
and that luxury was sapping the vigor of a race. But every slave meant
money, and money is very dear to mankind.

[Illustration: WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON.]

Before the Declaration of Independence, three hundred thousand slaves
had been brought to this country. Some of the colonists remonstrated,
but the traffic was not stopped till 1808. The Quakers were opposed to
human bondage from the first, and decided, in 1780, to free all their
slaves. Vermont had freed hers three years previously, and other
Northern States soon followed. Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton,
and others were outspoken against the sin; but it continued to increase
till, in 1810, we had over a million slaves.

Five years before this time, in a plain, wooden house in Newburyport,
Mass., a boy was born who was to electrify America, and the world even,
on this great subject. William Lloyd Garrison's father was a
sea-captain, a man who loved books and had some literary ambition; the
mother was a noble woman, deeply religious, willing to bear all and
brave all for conscience' sake, and fearless in the path of duty. She
early taught her boy to hate oppression of every kind, and to stand
everywhere for the right. Very poor, there was no chance for William,
either in school or college. When he was seven, his mother, having found
work for herself as a nurse for the sick, placed the child with a deacon
of the town, where he learned to split wood and other useful things. At
nine, the careful mother put him to the shoemaking trade, though he was
scarcely large enough to hold the lap-stone. He was not happy here,
longing for something that made him think.

Perhaps he would like to build tables and chairs better, so he was
apprenticed to a cabinet-maker; but here he was no more satisfied than
with the monotony of sewing leather. At his own request, the dealer
cancelled the agreement, and the boy found a place to set type on the
Newburyport "Herald." At last he had obtained the work he loved. He
would some day own a paper, he thought, and write articles for it. Ah!
how often poor boys and rich build air-castles which tumble to the
ground. It is well that we build them, for life soon becomes prosaic
enough to the happiest of us.

At sixteen he wrote an article for the "Herald," signing it "An Old
Bachelor." Imagine his surprise and delight when he saw it really in
print! Meantime his mother, who was six hundred miles away, wrote him
devoted letters, ever encouraging and stimulating him to be upright and
temperate. A year later she died, and William was left to fight his
battles alone. He missed the letters,--missed having some one to whom he
could tell a boy's hopes and fears and temptations. That boy is
especially blest who has a mother to whom he can confide everything;
such a boy usually has a splendid future, because by her wisdom and
advice he becomes well fitted for life, making no foolish experiments.

Reading as much as possible, at nineteen William wrote some political
articles for a Salem paper, and, strange to say, they were attributed to
Hon. Timothy Pickering! Surely, he could do something in the world now;
so when his apprenticeship was over and he had worked long and
faithfully, he started a paper for himself. He called it the "Free
Press." It was a good title, and a good paper; but, like most first
literary adventures, it proved a failure. Perhaps he ought to have
foreseen that one can do little without capital; but youth is about as
blind as love, and rarely stops to reason.

Did one failure discourage him? Oh, no! He went to Boston, and found a
place in a printing office. He soon became the editor of the "National
Philanthropist," the first paper established to advocate total
abstinence from intoxicants. His motto was a true one, not very popular,
however, in those days, "Moderate drinking is the down-hill road to
drunkenness." He was now twenty-two, poor, but God-fearing and
self-reliant. About this time there came to Boston a man whose influence
changed young Garrison's whole life,--Benjamin Lundy, a Quaker,
thirty-nine years of age. Leaving his father's home at nineteen, he had
spent four years at Wheeling, Va., where he learned the saddler's trade,
and learned also the cruelties of slave-holding. After this he moved to
Ohio, and in four years earned three thousand dollars above his living
expenses. When he was twenty-six he organized an Anti-slavery Society at
his own house, and, promising to become assistant editor of an abolition
paper, he went to St. Louis to dispose of his stock of saddlery.
Business was greatly depressed, the whole region being agitated over the
admission of Missouri as a slave State; and, after spending two years,
Lundy returned to Ohio, on foot, in winter, his property entirely gone.

None of his ardor for freedom having abated, he determined to start a
monthly paper, though poor and entirely ignorant about printing. This
sheet he called the "Genius of Universal Emancipation," printed twenty
miles from his home, the edition being carried on his back, each month,
as he walked the long distance. He moved shortly after to East
Tennessee, walking half of the eight hundred miles, and gradually
increased his subscription list. Several times his life was in danger;
but the slight, gentle Quaker kept quietly on his course. In 1824 he set
out on foot for Baltimore, paying his way by saddlery or
harness-mending, living on the poorest fare; and he subsequently
established the "Genius" there. While he was absent from home, his wife
died, leaving twins, and his five children were divided among friends.
Deeply sorrowing, he renewed his resolve to devote his life to worse
than motherless children,--those sold into bondage,--and made his way as
best he could to Boston. Of such material were the foundation stones of
the anti-slavery cause.

At his boarding-place Lundy met Garrison, and told him his burning
desire to rid the country of slavery. The heart of the young printer was
deeply moved. He, too, was poor and unknown, but he had not forgotten
his mother's teachings and prayers. After some time he agreed to go to
Baltimore, and help edit the "Genius of Universal Emancipation." Lundy
was in favor of sending the slaves to the West Indies or Africa as fast
as their masters would consent to free them, which was not very fast.
Garrison said, "The slaves are here by no fault of their own, and do not
deserve to be sent back to barbarous Africa." He was in favor of
immediate freedom for every human being.

Baltimore had slave-pens on the principal streets. Vessel-loads of
slaves, torn from their homes, were sent hundreds of miles away to
southern ports, and the auction-block often witnessed heart-rending
scenes. The tender heart of Garrison was stirred to its very depths. In
the first issue of his paper he declared for Immediate Emancipation, and
soon denounced the slave-trade between Baltimore and New Orleans as
"domestic piracy," giving the names of several citizens engaged in the
traffic, among them a vessel-owner from his own town, Newburyport. The
Northern man immediately arrested Garrison for "gross and malicious
libel," and he was found guilty by a slave-holding court, and fined
fifty dollars and costs. No one was ready to give bail, and he was
thrown into prison. The young man was not in the least cast down, but,
calm and heroic, wrote two sonnets on the walls of his cell.

Meantime, a noble young Quaker at the North, John G. Whittier, was
deeply anxious for Garrison. He had no money to pay his fine, but,
greatly admiring Henry Clay, whom he hoped to see President, wrote him
urging that he aid the "guiltless prisoner." Clay would doubtless have
done so, but Arthur Tappan, one of New York's noble men, sent the money,
releasing Garrison from his forty-nine days' imprisonment. Wendell
Phillips says of him, "He was in jail for his opinions when he was just
twenty-four. He had confronted a nation in the very bloom of his youth."

Garrison had not been idle while in prison. He had prepared several
lectures on slavery, and these he now gave when he could find a hearing.
Large churches were not opened to him, and nobody offered him two
hundred dollars a night! The free colored people welcomed him gladly,
but the whites were usually indifferent or opposed to such "fanatical"
ideas. At last he came to Boston to start a paper,--that city where
brains and not wealth open the doors to the best society. Here, with no
money nor influential friends, he started the "Liberator," with this for
his motto, "I will be as harsh as truth and as uncompromising as
justice. On this subject I do not wish to speak or write with
moderation. I am in earnest. I will not equivocate; I will not excuse; I
will not retreat a single inch--_and I will be heard!_"

The North was bound hand and foot by the slave-trade almost as
effectually as the South. The great plea was the fear lest the Union
would be dissolved. Cotton factories had sprung up on every hand, and it
was believed that slave-labor was essential to the producing of cotton.
Some thought it would not be safe to free the slaves; that
assassinations would be the result. The real secret, however, was that
each slave meant several hundred dollars, and freedom meant poverty to
the masters. Meantime, the "Liberator" was making itself felt, despite
Garrison's poverty. The Vigilance Association of South Carolina offered
a reward of $1,500 for the apprehension and prosecution of any white
person who might be detected in distributing or circulating it. In
Raleigh, N.C., the grand jury found a bill against the young editor,
hoping to bring him to that State for trial. Hon. Robert Y. Hayne, of
South Carolina, having received a paper by mail, wrote to Harrison Gray
Otis, Mayor of Boston, to ascertain the sender. Mr. Otis caused an agent
to visit the office of the "Liberator," and returned answer to Mr.
Hayne, that he found it "an obscure hole, his only visible auxiliary a
negro boy; and his supporters a few very insignificant persons of all
colors."

And where was this "obscure hole"? In the third story of a business
block, "the walls dingy," says Mr. Oliver Johnson in "Garrison and his
Times"; "the small windows bespattered with printers' ink; the press
standing in one corner; the long editorial and mailing table covered
with newspapers; the bed of the editor and publisher on the floor--all
these make a picture never to be forgotten." Their food, what little
they had, was procured at a neighboring bakery.

Soon Georgia passed a law offering $5,000 to any person arresting and
bringing to trial, under the laws of the State, and punishing to
conviction, the editor or publisher of the "Liberator." What a wonder
that some ruffian at midnight did not break into the "obscure hole," and
drag the young man off to a slave-vessel lying close by in the harbor!
The leaven of anti-slavery was beginning to work. Twelve "fanatics"
gathered one stormy night in the basement of an African church in
Boston, and organized the New England Anti-Slavery Society in 1832.

The following year, as the managers of the American Colonization Society
had sent an agent to England, it was deemed best to send Garrison abroad
to tell Wilberforce and others who were working for the suppression of
slavery in the West Indies, that it was not a wise plan to send the
slaves to Africa. It was difficult to raise the money needed; but
self-sacrifice usually leaves a good bank-account. The "fanatic," only
twenty-eight, was received with open arms by such men as Lord Brougham,
Wilberforce, Clarkson, and Daniel O'Connell. Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton
gave a breakfast in his honor. When the guests had arrived, among them
Mr. Garrison, Mr. Buxton held up both hands, exclaiming, "Why, my dear
sir, I thought you were a black man!" This, Mr. Garrison used to say,
was the greatest compliment of his life, because it showed how truly and
heartily he had labored for the slave. A great meeting was arranged for
him at Exeter Hall, London. How inspiring all this for the young
reformer! Here he met the eloquent George Thompson, and asked him to
visit our country, which invitation he accepted.

On his return the American Anti-Slavery Society was formed, Dec. 4,
1833, at Philadelphia, delegates coming from eleven States. John G.
Whittier was chosen Secretary. The noble poet has often said that he was
more proud that his name should appear signed to the Declaration of
Principles adopted at that meeting than on the title-page of any of his
volumes. Thus has he ever loved liberty.

The contest over the slavery question was growing extremely bitter.
Prudence Crandall of Canterbury, Conn., a young Quaker lady, admitted
several colored girls to her school, who came from Boston, New York, and
Philadelphia. The people were indignant at such a commingling of races.
Shopkeepers refused to sell her anything; her well was filled with
refuse, and at last her house was nearly torn down by a midnight mob.
Lane Theological Seminary, Cincinnati, Western Reserve College, Hudson,
O., with some others, were nearly broken up by the conflict of opinion.
Some anti-slavery lecturers were tarred and feathered or thrown into
prison. In New York, a pro-slavery mob broke in the doors and windows of
a Presbyterian church, and laid waste schoolhouses and dwellings of
colored people. In Philadelphia, the riots lasted three days, forty-four
houses of colored people being nearly or quite destroyed.

In Boston, a "most respectable" mob, composed, says Horace Greeley, "in
good part of merchants," dispersed a company of women belonging to the
Female Anti-Slavery Society, while its President was engaged in prayer.
Learning that Garrison was in the adjoining office, they shouted, "We
must have Garrison! Out with him! Lynch him!"

Attempting to escape by the advice of the Mayor, who was present, he
sought refuge in a carpenter's shop, but the crowd drew him out, and
coiling a rope around his body, dragged him bareheaded along the street.
One man called out, "He shan't be hurt; he is an American!" and this
probably saved his life, though many blows were aimed at his head, and
his clothes were nearly torn from his body. The Mayor declaring that he
could only be saved by being lodged in jail, Garrison pressed into a
hack, and was driven as rapidly as possible to the prison, the maddened
crowd clinging to the wheels, dashing against the doors and seizing hold
of the horses. At last he was behind the bars and out of their reach. On
the walls of his cell he wrote:--

"William Lloyd Garrison was put into this cell on Wednesday afternoon,
Oct. 21, 1835, to save him from the violence of a respectable and
influential mob, who sought to destroy him for preaching the abominable
and dangerous doctrine that 'all men are created equal,' and that all
oppression is odious in the sight of God. Confine me as a prisoner, but
bind me not as a slave. Punish me as a criminal, but hold me not as a
chattel. Torture me as a man, but drive me not like a beast. Doubt my
sanity, but acknowledge my immortality."

The "respectable" mob had wrought wiser than they knew. Garrison and his
"Liberator" became more widely known than ever. Famous men and women now
joined the despised Abolitionists. The conflict was growing deeper.
Elijah P. Lovejoy, the ardent young preacher of Alton, Illinois, was
murdered by four balls at the hands of a pro-slavery mob, who broke up
his printing-press, and threw it into the river. A public meeting was
held in Faneuil Hall to condemn such an outrage. A prominent man in the
gallery having risen to declare that Lovejoy "died as the fool dieth," a
young man, unknown to most, stepped to the rostrum, and spoke as though
inspired. From that day Wendell Phillips was the orator of America. From
that day the anti-slavery cause had a new consecration.

From this time till 1860 the struggle between freedom and slavery was
continuous. The South needed the Territories for her rapid increase of
slaves. The North was opposed; but in the year 1854 the Kansas-Nebraska
Act, devised by Stephen A. Douglas, repealed the Missouri Compromise of
1820, which had prohibited slavery north of latitude 36° 30', the
southern boundary of Kansas. Kansas at once became a battle-ground.
Armed men came over from Missouri to establish slavery. Men came from
New England determined that the soil should be free, if they spilled
their blood to gain it. The Fugitive Slave Law, whereby slaves were
returned without trial by jury, and slave-owners allowed to search the
North for their slaves, made great bitterness. The brutal attack of
Preston Brooks, of South Carolina, on Charles Sumner, for his speech on
Kansas, and the hanging of John Brown by the State of Virginia for his
invasion of Harper's Ferry with seventeen white men and five negroes,
calling upon the slaves to rise and demand their liberty, brought
matters to a crisis.

Garrison was opposed to war; but after the firing on Sumter, April 12,
1861, it was inevitable. For two years after Abraham Lincoln's election
to the Presidency, Garrison waited impatiently for that pen-stroke which
set four million human beings free. When the Emancipation Proclamation
was issued, Jan. 1. 1863, Garrison's life-work was accomplished.
Thirty-five years of untiring, heroic struggle had not been in vain.
When two years later the stars and stripes were raised again over Fort
Sumter, he was invited by President Lincoln, as a guest of the
government, to witness the imposing scene. When Mr. Garrison arrived in
Charleston, the colored people were nearly wild with joy. Children sang
and men shouted. A slave made an address of welcome, his two daughters
bearing a wreath of flowers to their great benefactor. Garrison's heart
was full to overflowing as he replied, "Not unto us, not unto us, but
unto God be all the glory for what has been done in regard to your
emancipation.... Thank God, this day, that you are free. And be resolved
that, once free, you will be free forever. Liberty or death, but never
slavery! While God gives me reason and strength, I shall demand for you
everything I claim for the whitest of the white in this country."

The same year he discontinued the publication of the "Liberator,"
putting in type with his own hands the official ratification of the
Thirteenth Amendment, forever prohibiting slavery in the United States,
and adding, "Hail, redeemed, regenerated America! Hail, all nations,
tribes, kindred, and peoples, made of one blood, interested in a common
redemption, heirs of the same immortal destiny! Hail, angels in glory;
tune your harps anew, singing, 'Great and marvellous are thy works, Lord
God Almighty!'"

Two years after the war Mr. Garrison crossed the ocean for the fourth
time. He was no longer the poor lad setting type at thirteen, or
sleeping on the hard floor of a printing-room, or lying in a Baltimore
jail, or the victim of a Boston mob. He was the centre of a grand and
famous circle. The Duke and Duchess of Argyle and the Duchess of
Sutherland paid him special honors. John Bright presided at a public
breakfast given him at St. James' Hall, London. Such men as John Stuart
Mill, Herbert Spencer, and Prof. Huxley, graced the feast. Mr. Bright
said in his opening address, concerning Mr. Garrison: "His is the
creation of that opinion which has made slavery hateful, and which has
made freedom possible in America. His name is venerated in his own
country; venerated in this country and in Europe, wheresoever
Christianity softens the hearts and lessens the sorrows of men."
Edinburgh conferred upon him the freedom of the city, an honor accorded
to one other American only,--George Peabody. Birmingham, Manchester, and
other cities held great public meetings to do him reverence.

On his return, such friends as Sumner, Wilson, Emerson, Longfellow,
Lowell, Greeley, and others presented him with $30,000. The remainder of
his life he devoted to temperance, woman-suffrage, and every other
reform calculated to make the world better. His true character was shown
when, years before, appointed to the London Anti-Slavery Convention as a
delegate, he refused to take his seat after his long journey across the
ocean, because such noble co-workers as Lucretia Mott, Mrs. Wendell
Phillips, and others, were denied their place as delegates. Thus
strenuous was he for right and justice to all. Always modest, hopeful,
and cheerful, he was as gentle in his private life with his wife and
five children, as he was strong and fearless in his public career. He
died at the home of his daughter in New York, May 24, 1879, his children
singing about his bed, at his request:

    "Awake, my soul, stretch every nerve,"

and,

    "Rise, my soul, and stretch thy wings."

At sunset, in Forest Hills, they laid the brave man to rest, a quartette
of colored singers around his open grave, singing, "I cannot always
trace the way."

    "The storm and peril overpast,
      The hounding hatred shamed and still,
    Go, soul of freedom! take at last
      The place which thou alone canst fill.

    "Confirm the lesson taught of old--
      Life saved for self is lost, while they
    Who lose it in His service hold
      The lease of God's eternal day."



GIUSEPPE GARIBALDI.


Few men come to greatness. Most drift on with the current, having no
special plan nor aim. They live where their fathers lived, taking no
thought beyond their neighborhood or city, and die in their little round
of social life.

Not so a boy born in Southern France, in 1807. Giuseppe Garibaldi was
the son of humble parents. His father was a sailor, with a numerous
family to support, seemingly unskilled in keeping what little property
he had once acquired. His mother was a woman of ambition, energy, and
nobility of character. If one looks for the cause of greatness in a man,
he seldom has to go further than the mother. Hence the need of a highly
educated, noble womanhood all over the world. Such as Giuseppe Garibaldi
are not born of frivolous, fashionable women.

Of his mother, the great soldier wrote in later years, "She was a model
for mothers. Her tender affection for me has, perhaps, been excessive;
but do I not owe to her love, to her angel-like character, the little
good that belongs to mine? Often, amidst the most arduous scenes of my
tumultuous life, when I have passed unharmed through the breakers of
the ocean or the hail-storms of battle, she has seemed present with me.
I have, in fancy, seen her on her knees before the Most High--my dear
mother!--imploring for the life of her son; and I have believed in the
efficacy of her prayers." No wonder that, "Give me the mothers of the
nation to educate, and you may do what you like with the boys," was one
of his favorite maxims.

[Illustration: GIUSEPPE GARIBALDI.]

Giuseppe was an ardent boy, fond of books, loving to climb the lonely
mountains around his home, and eager for some part of the world's
bustle. Sometimes he earned his living among the fishermen on the
Riviera; sometimes he took sea-voyages with his father. He had unusual
tenderness of heart, combined with fearlessness. One day he caught a
grasshopper, took it to his house, and, in handling it, broke its leg.
He was so grieved for the poor little creature, that he went to his room
and wept bitterly for hours. Another time, standing by a deep ditch, he
discovered that a woman had fallen from the bank as she was washing
clothes. With no thought for his own life, he sprang in and rescued her.

His parents, seeing that he was quick in mathematics and the languages,
desired him to study for the ministry; but he loved the sea and
adventure too well for a sedentary life. Becoming tired of study, at
twelve years of age, he and some companions procured a boat, put some
provisions and fishing-tackle on board, and started to make their
fortune in the East. These visions of greatness soon came to an
inglorious end; for the paternal Garibaldi put to sea at once, and soon
overtook and brought home the mortified and disappointed infantile crew.

At twenty-one, we find Garibaldi second in command on the brig
"Cortese," bound for the Black Sea. Three times during the voyage they
were plundered by Greek pirates, their sails, charts, and every article
of clothing taken from them, the sailors being obliged to cover their
bodies with some matting, left by chance in the hold of the ship. As a
result of this destitution, the young commander became ill at
Constantinople, and was cared for by some Italian exiles. Poor, as are
most who are born to be leaders, he must work now to pay the expenses
incurred by this illness. Through the kindness of his physician, he
found a place to teach, and when once more even with the world
pecuniarily, went back to sea, and was made captain.

He was now twenty-seven years old. Since his father had taken him when a
mere boy to Rome, he had longed for and prayed over his distracted
Italy. He saw what the Eternal City must have been in her ancient
splendor; he pictured her in the future, again the pride and glory of a
united nation. He remembered how Italy had been the battle-ground of
France, Spain, and Austria, when kings, as they have ever done,
quarrelled for power. He saw the conqueror of Europe himself conquered
by the dreadful Russian campaign: then the Congress of Vienna parcelling
out a prostrate people among the nations. Austria took Lombardy and
Venice; Parma and Lucca were given to Marie Louise, the second wife of
Napoleon; and the Two Sicilies to Ferdinand II., who ruled them with a
rod of iron. Citizens for small offences were lashed to death in the
public square. Filthy dungeons, excavated under the sea, without light
or air, were filled with patriots, whose only crime was a desire for a
free country. The people revolted in Naples and Sardinia, and asked for
a constitution; but Austria soon helped to restore despotism. Kings had
divine rights; the people had none. No man lessens his power willingly.
The only national safety is the least possible power in the hands of any
one person. The rule of the many is liberty; of the few, despotism.

Garibaldi was writing all these things on his heart. His blood boiled at
the slavery of his race. Mazzini, a young lawyer of Genoa, had just
started a society called "Young Italy," and was looking hopefully, in a
hopeless age, toward a republic for his native country. Garibaldi was
ready to help in any manner possible. The plan proposed was to seize the
village of St. Julien, and begin the revolt; but, as usual, there was a
traitor in the camp: they were detected; and Garibaldi, like the rest,
was sentenced to death. This was an unexpected turn of events for the
young sea-captain. Donning the garb of a peasant, he escaped by mountain
routes to Nice, his only food being chestnuts, bade a hasty farewell to
his precious mother, and started for South America. He had learned,
alas, so soon, the result of working for freedom in Italy!

He arrived at Rio Janeiro, an exile and poor; but, finding several of
his banished countrymen, they assisted him in buying a trading-vessel;
and he engaged in commerce. But his mind constantly dwelt on freedom.
The Republic of Rio Grande had just organized and set up its authority
against Brazil. Here was a chance to fight for liberty. A small cruiser
was obtained, which he called "The Mazzini," and, with twenty
companions, he set out to combat an empire. After capturing a boat
loaded with copper, the second vessel they met gave battle, wounded
Garibaldi in the neck, and made them all prisoners.

A little later, attempting to escape, he was brutally beaten with a
club, and then his wrists tied together by a rope, which was flung over
a beam. He was suspended in the air for two hours. His sufferings were
indescribable. Fever parched his body, and the rope cut his flesh. He
was rescued by a fearless lady, Senora Alemon, but for whom he would
have died. After two months, finding that he would divulge nothing of
the plans of his adopted republic, he was released without trial, and
entered the war again at once.

After several successful battles, his vessel was shipwrecked, nearly all
his friends were drowned, and he escaped as by a miracle. His heart now
became desolate. He says in his diary, "I felt the want of some one to
love me, and a desire that such a one might be very soon supplied, as my
present state of mind seemed insupportable." After all, the brave young
captain was human, and cried out for a human affection. He had "always
regarded woman as the most perfect of creatures"; but he had never
thought it possible to marry with his adventurous life.

About this time he met a dark-haired, dark-eyed, young woman, tall and
commanding, and as brave and fearless as himself. Anita belonged to a
wealthy family, and her father was incensed at the union, though years
after, when Garibaldi became famous, he wrote them a letter of
forgiveness. They idolized each other; and the soldier's heart knew
desolation no longer, come now what would. She stood beside him in every
battle, waving her sword over her head to encourage the men to their
utmost. When a soldier fell dead at her feet, she seized his carbine,
and kept up a constant fire. When urged by her husband to go below,
because almost frantic with fear for her safety, she replied, "If I do,
it will be but to drive out those cowards who have sought concealment
there," and then return to the fight. In one of the land-battles she was
surrounded by twenty or more of the enemy; but she put spurs to her
horse, and dashed through their midst. At first they seemed dazed, as
though she were something unearthly; then they fired, killing her
animal, which fell heavily to the ground; and she was made a prisoner.
Obtaining permission to search among the dead for her husband, and, not
finding him, she determined to make her escape. That night, while they
slept, she seized a horse, plunged into the forests, and for four days
lived without food. On the last night,--a stormy one,--closely pursued
by several of the enemy, she urged her horse into a swollen river, five
hundred yards broad, and seizing fast hold of his tail, the noble
creature swam across, dragging her with him. After eight days she
reached her agonized husband, and their joy was complete.

After a year or more of battles and hardships, their first child,
Menotti, was born, named for the great Italian Liberal. Garibaldi,
fighting for a poor republic, destitute of everything for his wife and
child, started across the marshes to purchase a few articles of
clothing. In his absence, their little company was attacked by the
Imperialists, and Anita mounted her saddle in a pitiless storm, and fled
to the woods with her twelve-days-old infant. Three months later the
child came near dying, the mother carrying him in a handkerchief tied
round her neck, and keeping him warm with her breath, as they forded
swamps and rivers.

After six years of faithful service for the South American Republic,
Garibaldi determined to settle down to a more quiet life, with his
little family, and sought a home at Montevideo, where he took up his
former occupation of teaching. But he was soon drawn into war again, and
his famous "Italian Legion," of about four hundred men, made for
themselves a record throughout Europe and America for bravery and
success against fearful odds. The grateful people made Garibaldi
"General," and placed a large tract of land at the disposal of the
Legion; but the leader said, "In obedience to the cause of liberty alone
did the Italians of Montevideo take up arms, and not with any views of
gain or advancement," and the gift was declined. Yet so poor was the
family of Garibaldi, that they used to go to bed at sunset because they
had no candles; and his only shirt he had given to a companion in arms.
When his destitution became known, the minister of war sent him one
hundred dollars. He accepted half for Anita and her little ones, and
begged that the other half might be given to a poor widow.

Fourteen years had gone by since he left Italy under sentence of death.
He was now forty-one, in the prime of his life and vigor. Italy had
become ripe for a revolution. Charles Albert, King of Sardinia, had
declared himself ready to give constitutional liberty to his people, and
to help throw off the Austrian yoke. Garibaldi believed that his hour
had come, and saying good-bye to the Montevideans, who were loathe to
part with him, he took fifty-six of his brave Italian Legion, and sailed
for Nice, in the ship Esperanza. His beloved Anita improvised a
Sardinian flag, made from a counterpane, a red shirt, and a bit of old
green uniform; and the little company gave themselves to earnest plans
and hopes. They met a hearty reception on their arrival; Garibaldi's
mother taking Anita and her three children, Menotti, Meresita, and
Ricciotti, to her home. General Garibaldi at once presented himself
before Charles Albert, and offered his services. He wore a striking
costume, consisting of a cap of scarlet cloth, a red blouse, and a white
cloak lined with red, with a dagger at his belt, besides his sword. The
King, perhaps remembering that the brave soldier was once a Republican
in sentiment, made the great mistake of declining his aid. Nothing
daunted, he hurried to Milan, only to find that the weak King had
yielded it to Austria. Charles Albert soon abdicated in favor of his son
Victor Emmanuel, and died from sorrow and defeat.

Meantime Rome had declared herself a Republic, and Pius IX. had fled the
city. Garibaldi was asked to defend her, and entered with his troops,
April 28, in 1849. England and France were urged to remain neutral,
while Rome fought for freedom. But alas! Louis Napoleon, then President
of the French Republic, desired to please the Papal party, and sent
troops to reinstate the Pope! When Rome found that this man at the head
of a republic was willing to put a knife to her throat, her people
fought like tigers. They swarmed out of the workshops armed with weapons
of every kind, while women urged them on with applause. For nearly three
months Rome held out against France and Austria, Garibaldi showing
himself an almost superhuman leader, and then the end came. Pius IX.
re-entered the city, and the Republic was crushed by monarchies.

When all was lost, Garibaldi called his soldiers together, and, leaping
on horseback, shouted, "Venice and Garibaldi do not surrender. Whoever
will, let him follow me! Italy is not yet dead!" and he dashed off at
full speed. By lonely mountain-paths, he, with Anita and about two
hundred of his troops, arrived on the shore of the Adriatic, where
thirteen boats were waiting to carry them to Venice. Nine were soon
taken by the Austrians, the rest escaping, though nearly all were
finally captured and shot at once. The General and his wife escaped to a
cornfield, where she lay very ill, her head resting on his knee. Some
peasants, though fearful that they would be detected by the Austrians,
brought a cart, and carried the dying wife to the nearest cottage,
where, as soon as she was laid upon the bed, she breathed her last,
leaning on Garibaldi's arm. Overwhelmed with the loss of his idol, he
seemed benumbed, with no care whether he was made a prisoner or not. At
last, urged for the sake of Italy to flee, he made the peasants promise
to bury Anita under the shade of the pine grove near by, and, hunted
like a robber from mountain to mountain, he found a hiding-place among
the rocks of the Island of Caprera. There was nothing left now but to
seek a refuge in the great American Republic.

Landing in New York, the noble General asked aid from no one, but
believing, as all true-minded persons believe, that any labor is
honorable, began to earn his living by making candles. What a contrast
between an able general working in a tallow factory, and some proud
young men and women who consent to be supported by friends, and thus
live on charity! Woe to America if her citizens shall ever feel
themselves too good to work!

For a year and a half he labored patiently, his children three thousand
miles away with his mother. Then he became captain of a merchant vessel
between China and Peru. When told that he could bring some Chinese
slaves to South America in his cargo, he refused, saying, "Never will I
become a trafficker in human flesh." America might buy and sell four
millions of human beings, but not so Garibaldi. After four years he
decided to return to Italy. With the little money he had saved, he
bought half the rocky island of Caprera, five miles long, off the coast
of Sardinia, whose boulders had once sheltered him, built him a
one-story plain house, and took his three children there to live, his
mother having died.

Meantime Cavour, the great Italian statesman, had not been idle in
diplomacy. The Crimean War had been fought, and Italy had helped England
and France against Russia. When Napoleon III. went to war with Austria
in 1859, Cavour was glad to make Italy his ally. He called Garibaldi
from Caprera, and made him Major-General of the Alps. At once the red
blouse and white cloak seemed to inspire the people with confidence.
Lombardy sprang to arms. Every house was open, and every table spread
for the Liberators. And then began a series of battles, which, for
bravery and dash and skill, made the name of Garibaldi the terror of
Austria, and the hope and pride of Italy. Tuscany, Modena, Parma, and
Lucca declared for King Victor Emmanuel. The battles of Magenta and
Solferino made Austria bite the dust, and gladly give up Lombardy.

At last it seemed as if Italy were to be redeemed and reunited.
Garibaldi started with his famous "Mille," or thousand men, to release
the two Sicilies from the hated rule of Francis, the son of Ferdinand
II. The first battle was fought at Palermo, the Neapolitans who
outnumbered the troops of Garibaldi four to one being defeated after
four hours' hard fighting. Then the people dared to show their true
feelings. Peasants flocked in from the mountains, and ladies wore red
dresses and red feathers. When the cars carried the soldiers from one
town to another, the people crowded the engine, and shouted themselves
hoarse. Drums were beaten, and trumpets blown, and women pressed
forward to kiss the hand or touch the cloak of the Lion of Italy. He was
everywhere the bravest of the brave. Once when surrounded by four
dragoons, who called upon him to surrender, he drew his sword, and said,
"I am Garibaldi; you must surrender to me."

And yet amid all this honor and success in war, and supremacy in power,
as he was the Dictator, he was so poor that he would wash his red shirt
in a brook, and wait for it to dry while he ate his lunch of bread and
water, with a little fruit. No wonder the Sicilians believed him to be a
second Messiah, and the French that he could shake the bullets from his
body into his loose red shirt, and empty them out at his leisure! The
sailor boy had become the hero of all who loved liberty the world over.
When the war was ended, he resigned his Dictatorship, handed the two
Sicilies over to his sovereign, distributed medals to his devoted
soldiers, and returned to his island home at Caprera, with barely three
dollars in his pocket, having borrowed one hundred to pay his debts. How
rarely does any age produce such a man as Garibaldi!

But Rome was not yet the capital of Italy. The hero could not rest while
the city was governed by a Pope. At last, tired of waiting for the king
to take action, he started with three thousand men for Rome. Victor
Emmanuel, fearing to offend France, if the Pope were molested, sent the
royal troops against Garibaldi at Aspromonte, who badly wounded him,
and carried him to a prison on the Gulf of Spezzia. The people,
indignant at the Government, crowded around him, bearing gifts, and
kissing the hem of his raiment. They even bored a hole in the door of
the prison, that they might catch a glimpse of their idol, as he lay on
his iron bedstead, a gift from an English friend.

After his release and return to Caprera, he visited England in 1864, the
whole country doing him honor. Stations were gaily decorated, streets
arched with flowers, ladies dressed in red; the Duke of Sutherland
entertained him; London gave him the freedom of the city; Tennyson made
him his guest at the Isle of Wight; and crowds made it scarcely possible
for him to appear on the public thoroughfares. He refused to receive a
purse of money from his friends, and went back to Caprera, majestic in
his unselfishness.

Again Italy called him to help her in her alliance with Prussia against
Austria in 1866, and again he fought nobly. The year following he
attempted to take Rome, but was a second time arrested and imprisoned
for fear of Napoleon III. When that monarch fell at Sedan, and the
French troops were withdrawn from the Eternal City, Victor Emmanuel
entered without a struggle, and Rome was free.

In 1874, after helping the French Republic, the brave Spartan was
elected to Parliament. He was now sixty-seven. As he entered Rome, the
streets were blocked with people, who several times attempted to remove
the horses, and draw the carriage themselves. Ah! if Anita had only
been there to have seen this homage of a grateful nation. He entered the
Senate House on the arm of his son Menotti, and when he rose in his red
shirt and gray cloak to take the oath, so infirm that he was obliged to
be supported by two friends, men wept as they recalled his struggles,
and shouted frantically as he took his seat.

Seven years longer the grand old man lived at Caprera, now beautified
with gifts from all the world, the recipient of a thank-offering of
$10,000 yearly from Italy. Around him were Francesca, whom he married
late in life, and their two children whom he idolized,--Manlio and
Clelia. He spent his time in writing several books, in tilling the soil,
and in telling visitors the wonderful events of his life and of Anita.

On June 2, 1882, all day long he lay by the window, looking out upon the
sea. As the sun was setting, a bird alighted on the sill, singing. The
great man stammered, "Quanti o allegro!" How joyful it is! and closed
his eyes in death. He directed in his will that his body should be
burned; but, at the request of the Government and many friends, it was
buried at Caprera, to be transferred at some future time to Rome, now
the capital of united Italy. Not alone does Italy honor her great
Liberator, whom she calls the "most blameless and most beloved of men."
Wherever a heart loves liberty, there will Garibaldi's name be cherished
and honored.



JEAN PAUL RICHTER.


Vasari, who wrote the lives of the Italian painters, truly said, "It is
not by sleeping, but by working, waking, and laboring continually, that
proficiency is attained and reputation acquired." This was emphatically
true of Richter, as it is of every man or woman who wins a place in the
memory of men. The majority die after a commonplace life, and are never
heard of; they were probably satisfied to drift along the current, with
no especial purpose, save to eat, drink, and be merry.

Not so with the German boy, born in the cold Pine Mountains of Bavaria.
His home was a low, thatched building, made of beams of wood, filled in
with mortar, one part for the family, and the other for corn and goats.
This is still the custom in Switzerland, the poor caring as tenderly for
their dumb beasts as for their children. Jean Paul was born on the 21st
of March, 1763: "My life and the life of the spring began the same
month," he used to say in after years, and the thought of robin
red-breasts and spring flowers made the poor lad happy amid the deepest
trials.

His father was an under-pastor and organist in the little village of
Wunsiedel, and lived on a pitiful salary; but, generous to a fault, he
stripped off his own garments to clothe the poor, and sent the
schoolmaster a meal every day, because, if possible, he was poorer than
the preacher. In school, Jean Paul was a studious boy, almost envying
every one who said his lessons well, and fond of his teachers and mates;
but one of the boys having cut Paul's hand, the father at once took him
home and became his instructor. A painstaking and conscientious man, he
showed little aptness for his work, when he gave his boy, at nine years
of age, a Latin dictionary to commit to memory! For four solid hours in
the morning, and three in the afternoon, Paul and his brother learned
grammatical lessons and Latin verses of which they did not understand a
word. Still the boy grew more and more fond of books, and of
Nature,--made clocks with pendulums and wheels; a sun-dial, drawing his
figures on a wooden plate with ink; invented a new language from the
calendar signs of the almanac; and composed music on an old harpsichord
whose only tuning-hammer and tuning-master were the winds and the
weather.

When Paul was thirteen, the family moved to Schwarzenbach, where he made
the acquaintance of a young pastor, Vogel, who owned quite a valuable
library, and encouraged him to educate himself. Given free access to the
books, he began to read eagerly. Thinking that he should never own
volumes for himself, he made blank-books, of three hundred pages each,
from his father's sermon-paper, and began the almost interminable labor
of copying whatever he thought he should need in law, medicine,
philosophy, theology, natural history, and poetry. For nearly four years
he worked thus, till he had quite a library of his own, and a wealth of
information in his brain, which proved invaluable in the writing of
after years. Such a boy could not fail of success.

Paul's father, meantime, had become despondent over his debts, small
though they were, and died when his son was sixteen. The grandfather on
the mother's side dying soon after, Frau Richter became entitled by will
to his property. The remaining brothers and sisters at once went to law
about the matter, preferring to spend the estate in the courts rather
than have a favorite child enjoy it. Two years later, at eighteen, Paul
started for college at Leipzig, hoping that in this cultured city he
might teach while pursuing his own studies. Alas! scores had come with
the same hope, and there was no work to be obtained. He found himself
alone in a great city, poorly dressed, timid, sensitive, and without a
hand to help. Many boys had brought letters of introduction to the
professors, and thus of course received attention. He wrote to his
mother, "The most renowned, whose esteem would be useful to me, are
oppressed with business, surrounded by a multitude of respectable
people, and by a swarm of envious flatterers. If one would speak to a
professor without a special invitation, he incurs the suspicion of
vanity. But do not give up your hopes. I will overcome all these
difficulties. I shall receive some little help, and at length I shall
not need it." All honor to the brave boy who could write so
encouragingly in the midst of want and loneliness!

He longed to make the acquaintance of some learned people, but there was
no opportunity. Finally, getting deeper and deeper into debt, he wrote
to his mother, "As I have no longer any funds, I must continue to be
trusted. But what can I at last expect? I must eat, and I cannot
continue to be trusted. I cannot freeze, but where shall I get wood
without money? I can no longer take care of my health, for I have warm
food neither morning nor evening. It is now a long time since I asked
you for twenty-six dollars; when they come, I shall scarcely be able to
pay what I already owe. Perhaps the project I have in my head will
enable me to earn for you and myself." Poor lad! how many hearts have
ached from poverty just as did his. The mother was also in debt, but in
some way she managed to obtain the money; for what will a mother not do
for her child?

Paul worked on, but was soon in debt again. He could tell nobody but his
devoted mother: "I will not ask you for money to pay my victualler," he
wrote, "to whom I owe twenty-four dollars; nor my landlady to whom I am
indebted ten; or even for other debts, that amount to six dollars. For
these great sums I will ask no help, but for the following you must not
deny me your assistance. I must every week pay the washerwoman, who does
not trust. I must drink some milk every morning. I must have my boots
soled by the cobbler, who does not trust; my torn cap must be repaired
by the tailor, who does not trust; and I must give something to the
maid-servant, who of course does not trust. Eight dollars of Saxon money
will satisfy all, and then I shall need your help no longer."

He was keeping up courage, because he was writing a book! He told his
mother, with his high dreams of young authorship, that he should bring
home all his old shirts and stockings at vacation, for he should buy new
ones then! It is well that all the mountains seem easy to climb in
youth; when we are older, we come to know their actual height. The
mother discouraged authorship, and hoped her boy would become a
preacher; but his project was too dear to be given up. When his book of
satirical essays, called "Eulogy of Stupidity," was finished, it was
sent, with beating heart, to a publisher. In vain Paul awaited its
return. He hoped it would be ready at Michaelmas fair, but the publisher
"so long and so kindly patronized the book by letting it lie on his
desk, that the fair was half over before the manuscript was returned."
The boyish heart must have ached when the parcel came. He had not
learned, what most authors are familiar with, the heart sickness from
first rejected manuscripts. He had not learned, too, that fame is a hard
ladder to climb, and that a "friend at court" is often worth as much, or
more, than merit. Publishers are human, and cannot always see merit till
fame is won.

For a whole year Paul tried in vain to find a publisher. Then he said to
the manuscript, "Lie there in the corner together with school exercises,
for thou art no better. I will forget, for the world would certainly
have forgotten thee." Faint from lack of food, he says, "I undertook
again a wearisome work, and created in six months a brand-new satire."
This book was called the "Greenland Lawsuits," a queer title for a
collection of essays on theology, family pride, women, fops, and the
like.

Paul had now gained courage by failure. Instead of writing a letter, he
went personally to every publisher in Leipzig, and offered his
manuscript, and every publisher refused it. Finally he sent it to Voss
of Berlin. On the last day of December, as he sat in his room, hungry,
and shivering because there was no fire in the stove, there was a knock
at the door, and a letter from Voss was handed in. He opened it hastily,
and found an offer of seventy dollars for the "Greenland Lawsuits."
Through his whole life he looked back to this as one of its supreme
moments. It was not a great sum, only three dollars a week for the six
months, but it was the first fruit of his brain given to the public. He
was now nineteen. What little property the mother had possessed had
wasted away in the lawsuits; one brother in his despair had drowned
himself, and another had entered the army; but Paul still had hope in
the future.

After a short vacation with his mother, he went back to Leipzig. The
second volume of the "Greenland Lawsuits" was now published, and for
this he received one hundred and twenty-six dollars,--nearly twice that
given for the first volume. This did not take with the public, and the
third volume was refused by every publisher. His money was gone. What
could he do? He would try, as some other authors had done, the plan of
writing letters to distinguished people, telling them his needs. He did
so, but received no answers. Then, spurred on by necessity, he took the
manuscript in his hand, and presented it himself at the doors of the
learned; but he was either not listened to, or repulsed on every
occasion. How one pities this lad of nineteen! How many wealthy men
might have aided him, but they did not! He wrote a few essays for
various periodicals, but these brought little money, and were seldom
wanted. His high hopes for a literary career began to vanish.

It was evident that he must give up college life, for he could not get
enough to eat. He had long discontinued his evening meal, making his
supper of a few dried prunes. His boarding-mistress was asking daily for
her dues. He could bear the privation and the disgrace no longer, and,
packing his satchel, and borrowing a coat from a college boy, that he
might not freeze, he stole away from Leipzig in the darkness of the
twilight, and went home to his disconsolate mother. Is it any wonder
that the poor are disconsolate? Is it any wonder that they regard the
wealthy as usually cold and indifferent to their welfare? Alas! that so
many of us have no wish to be our "brother's keeper."

Perhaps some of the professors and students wondered where the bright
lad had gone; but the world forgets easily. Frau Richter received her
college boy with a warm heart, but an empty purse. She was living with
her two children in one room, supporting them as best she could by
spinning, working far into the night. In this room, where cooking,
washing, cleaning, and spinning were all carried on, Paul placed his
little desk and began to write. Was the confusion trying to his
thoughts? Ah! necessity knows no law. He says, "I was like a prisoner,
without the prisoner's fare of bread and water, for I had only the
latter; and if a gulden found its way into the house, the jubilee was
such that the windows were nearly broken with joy." But with the
strength of a noble and heroic nature, he adds, "What is poverty that a
man should whine under it? It is but like the pain of piercing the ears
of a maiden, and you hang precious jewels in the wound."

The family were so needy, however, that they must look somewhere for
aid, and hesitatingly Paul applied to Vogel, the young pastor, who
loaned them twenty-five gulden. Very soon the boarding-mistress from
Leipzig appeared, having walked the whole way to Hof, and demanded her
pay. In his distress Paul sent her to another friend, Otto, who became
surety for the debt.

Richter now began to work harder than ever. His books of extracts were
invaluable, as were his hand-books of comical matters, touching
incidents, synonyms, etc. He made it a rule to write half a day, and
take long walks in the afternoon in the open air, thinking out the plans
for his books. Poor as he was, he was always cheerful, sustaining by his
letters any who were downhearted. One of his best friends, Herman, who
had become a physician through much struggle, died about this time,
broken on the wheel of poverty. Despite his own starving condition, Paul
sent him five dollars. Having an opportunity to teach French to the
brother of a Leipzig friend, he accepted; but at the end of three years,
through the disappointing character of the pupil, and the miserliness of
the father, Paul returned to his mother, broken in health and
dispirited. His heart ached for those who like himself were suffering,
and now he made a resolution that changed for life the course of his
writing. He would write satire no more. He said, "I will not pour into
the cup of humanity a single drop of gall." Henceforward love, and hope,
and tenderness, breathe upon his every page.

He now wrote ten essays on "What is Death?" asking the noble-hearted
Herder to send them to Weiland for his magazine, lest they be overlooked
in his mass of papers, if Richter, unaided, should venture to ask the
favor. They were overlooked for months; but finally Herder procured the
insertion of one essay in a different magazine, but Richter never
received any pay for it. Three years had passed, and all this time the
third volume of the "Greenland Lawsuits" had been journeying from one
publishing house to another. At last it was accepted, but little money
came from it.

Again he taught,--this time at Schwarzenbach, where he used to go to
school. Here his tenderness, his tact, and good cheer won the hearts of
the pupils. There was no memorizing of Latin dictionaries, but the exact
work of all was kept in a "red book" for parents to see. He instructed
them orally five hours a day, till they were eager for astronomy,
history, and biography. For four years he taught, "his schoolroom being
his Paradise," every Sunday walking to Hof to see his mother. Well might
he say, "To the man who has had a mother all women are sacred for her
sake."

Paul now determined to write a novel, and though he had little knowledge
of any sphere of life save that in which poverty held sway, he would put
his own heart into the work. The "Invisible Lodge" was written and sent
to the Counsellor of the town, asking, if the work pleased him, that he
would assist in its publication. At first Counsellor Moritz was annoyed
at the request; but as he read he became deeply interested, and said,
this is surely from Goethe, Herder, or Weiland. The book was soon
published, and two hundred and twenty-six dollars paid for it! The
moment Richter received the first instalment of seventy dollars, he
hastened to Hof, and there, late at night, found his mother spinning by
the light of the fire, and poured the whole of the gold into her lap.
The surprise, joy, and thanksgiving of the poor woman can well be
imagined. Her son immediately moved her into a small but more
comfortable home.

The new novel began to be talked about and widely read. Fame was really
coming. He began at once to work on "Hesperus," one of his most famous
productions, though when published he received only two hundred dollars
for the four volumes. Letters now came from scholars and famous people.
One admirer sent fifty Prussian dollars. What joy must have swelled the
heart of the poor schoolteacher! "Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces"
followed shortly after, and Richter was indeed famous. Learned ladies of
Weimar wrote most enthusiastic thanks. With his reverence for woman,
and delight in her intellectual equality with man, these letters were
most inspiring. Request after request came for him to visit Weimar. Dare
he go and meet such people as Goethe, and Schiller, and Herder, and
Weiland, whom for twelve long years he had hoped sometime to look upon?
At last he started, and upon reaching Weimar, was made the lion of the
day. His warm heart, generous and unaffected nature, and brilliant and
well-stored mind made him admired by all. Herder said: "Heaven has sent
me a treasure in Richter. That I neither deserved nor expected. He is
all heart, all soul; an harmonious tone in the great golden harp of
humanity." Caroline Herder, his wife, a very gifted woman, was equally
his friend and helper. Noble and intellectual women gathered about him
to do him honor. Some fell in love with him; but he studied them closely
as models for future characters in his books, giving only an ardent
friendship in return. He was even invited to court, and gathered here
the scenes for his greatest work, "Titan." How grand all this seemed to
the poor man who had been hungering all his life for refined and
intellectual companionship! So rejoiced was he that he wrote home, "I
have lived twenty years in Weimar in a few days. I am happy, wholly
happy, not merely beyond all expectation, but beyond all description."

He was now thirty-four. The poor, patient mother had just died, but not
till she had heard the fame of her son spoken on every hand. After her
death, Paul found a faded manuscript in which she had kept the record of
those small gains in spinning into the midnight hours. He carried it
next his heart, saying, "If all other manuscripts are destroyed, yet
will I keep this, good mother." For weeks he was not able to write a
letter, or mention the loss of his parent.

His youngest brother, Samuel, a talented boy, was now ready for college;
so Jean Paul determined to make Leipzig his home while his brother
pursued his course. What changes the last few years had wrought! Then he
was stealing away from Leipzig in debt for his board, cold, hungry, and
desolate; now he was coming, the brilliant author whom everybody
delighted to honor. When we are in want, few are ready to help; when
above want, the world stands ready to lavish all upon us. After spending
some time in Leipzig, he visited Dresden to enjoy the culture of that
artistic city. During this visit, Samuel, who had become dissipated,
broke into his brother's desk, stole all his hard-earned money, and left
the city. He led a wandering life thereafter, dying in a hospital in
Silesia. Paul never saw him again, but sent him a yearly allowance, as
soon as he learned his abiding-place. What a noble character!

He now returned to Weimar, dedicating his "Titan" to the four daughters
of the Duke of Mecklenburg, one of whom became the mother of Emperor
William, the famous and beautiful Louise of Prussia. He visited her
later in Berlin, where he writes, "I have never been received in any
city with such idolatry. I have a watch-chain of the hair of three
sisters; and so much hair has been begged of me, that if I were to make
it a traffic, I could live as well from the outside of my head as from
what is inside of it."

In this city he met the woman who was to be hereafter the very centre of
his life. He had had a passing fancy for several, but never for one that
seemed fitted, all in all, to make his life complete. Caroline Myer, the
daughter of one of the most distinguished Prussian officers, was a
refined, intellectual, noble girl, with almost unlimited resources
within herself, devoted to her family and to every good. Paul had met
women who dressed more elegantly, who were more sparkling in
conversation, who were more beautiful, but they did not satisfy his
heart. In his thirty-eighth year he had found a character that seemed
perfection. He wrote, "Caroline has exactly that inexpressible love for
all beings that I have till now failed to find even in those who in
everything else possess the splendor and purity of the diamond. She
preserves in the full harmony of her love to me the middle and lower
tones of sympathy for every joy and sorrow in others."

Her love for Richter was nearly adoration. Several months after their
marriage she wrote her father, "Richter is the purest, the holiest, the
most godlike man that lives. Could others be admitted, as I am, to his
inmost emotions, how much more would they esteem him!" Richter also
wrote to his best friend, Otto, "Marriage has made me love her more
romantically, deeper, infinitely more than before." At the birth of
their first child, he wrote again to Otto, "You will be as transported
as I was when the nurse brought me, as out of a cloud, my second love,
with the blue eyes wide open, a beautiful, high brow, kiss-lipped,
heart-touching. God is near at the birth of every child."

On Caroline's first birthday after their marriage, he wrote, "I will be
to thee father and mother! Thou shalt be the happiest of human beings,
that I also may be happy."

"Titan," now ten years in progress, was published, and made a great
sensation. The literary world was indignant at the fate of "Linda," his
heroine, but all pronounced it a great book,--his masterpiece.

Soon after he removed to Bayreuth, and settled down to earnest work.
Almost every day he might be seen walking out into the country, where he
rented a room in a peasant's house for quiet and country air. Whenever
the day was pleasant he worked out of doors. A son had now been born to
him, and life seemed complete. Now he played with his home-treasures,
and now talked at table about some matter of art or science that all
might be instructed. He was especially fond of animals, having usually
a mouse, a tame spider, a tree-frog, and dogs. So good was he to his
canary birds that he never left the house without opening the door of
their cage that they might fly about and not be lonely. Often when he
wrote, they walked over his manuscript, scattering water from the vase
and mingling it with his ink.

His son Max, a boy of sixteen, had entered school at Munich. He was a
beautiful youth, conscientious, sensitive, devoted to study, and the
idol of the household. At first he wept whole nights from homesickness,
denying himself sufficient fire, food, and clothing, from a desire to
save expense to his parents. He was a fine scholar, but distrusted his
intellectual gifts. At the end of a year he came home, pale and worn,
and died at the age of nineteen.

To Richter this was a death-blow. He went on writing, while the tears
dropped upon his page. He could never bear the sight of a book his boy
had touched, and the word "philology," his son's favorite study, cut him
to the heart. At the end of three months he wrote to a friend, "My being
has suffered not merely a wound, but a complete cutting off of all joy.
My longing after him grows always more painful." Broken in health he
visited Dresden; but the end was near. The sight of the left eye at
first failed him, then the right, till he was left in complete darkness.
He still hoped to finish his autobiography, and the "Immortality of the
Soul," begun on the very day Max was buried; but this was denied him.
Once only did his sorrows overpower him, when pitifully looking toward
the window, he cried out as Ajax in the "Iliad":--

    "Light! light only, then may the enemy come!"

The devoted wife and two daughters grew unspeakably dear to him. When
tired with thinking, he would seat himself at the piano, and play till
he, as well as those who heard him, would burst into tears. On the 14th
of November, 1825, he sat in his chamber, his youngest child climbing on
the back of his chair, and laying her face against her father's. It was
only noon, but thinking it was night, Richter said, "It is time to go to
rest." He was wheeled into his sleeping apartment, and some flowers laid
on the bed beside him. "My beautiful flowers! My lovely flowers!" he
said, as he folded his arms, and soon fell asleep. His wife sat beside
him, her eyes fixed on the face of the man she loved. About six the
doctor arrived. The breath came shorter, the face took on a heavenly
expression, and grew cold as marble. The end had come. He was buried by
torchlight, the unfinished manuscript of the "Immortality of the Soul"
being borne upon his coffin, while the students sung Klopstock's hymn,
"Thou shalt arise, my Soul." His more than one hundred volumes and his
noble, generous life are his monuments. He said, "I shall die without
having seen Switzerland or the ocean, but the ocean of eternity I shall
not fail to see."



LEON GAMBETTA.


On January 6, 1883, Paris presented a sad and imposing spectacle. Her
shops were closed; her public buildings and her homes were draped in
black. Her streets were solid with hundreds of thousands, all
dispirited, and many in tears. A large catafalque covered with black
velvet upheld a coffin shrouded with the tricolor. From a vase at each
corner rose burning perfume, whose vapor was like sweet incense. Six
black horses drew the funeral car, and two hundred thousand persons
followed in the procession, many bearing aloft wreaths of flowers, and
shouting, "Vive la Republique! Vive la Gambetta!"

The maker of the Republic, the brilliant, eloquent leader of the French
people, was dead; dead in the prime of his life at forty-five. The
"Figaro" but voiced the feeling of the world when it said, "The Republic
has lost its greatest man." America might well mourn him as a friend,
for he made her his pattern for his beloved France. The "Pall-Mall
Gazette" said, "He will live in French history among the most
courageous"; and even Germany courted him as the bravest of the brave,
while she breathed freer, saying in the "Berlin Press," "The death of
Gambetta delivers the peace of Europe from great danger." The hand that
would sometime doubtless have reached out to take back sobbing Alsace
and Lorraine was palsied; the voice that swayed the multitude, now with
its sweet persuasiveness, and now with its thunder like the rush of a
swollen torrent, was hushed; the supreme will that held France like a
willing child in its power, had yielded to the inevitable,--death.

[Illustration: LEON GAMBETTA.]

Leon Gambetta was born at Cahors, April 2, 1838. His father was an
Italian from Genoa, poor, and of good character; his mother, a French
woman, singularly hopeful, energetic, and noble. They owned a little
bazaar and grocery, and here, Onasie, the wife, day after day helped her
husband to earn a comfortable living. When their only son was seven
years old, he was sent to a Jesuits' preparatory school at Monfaucon,
his parents hoping that he would become a priest. His mother had great
pride in him, and faith in his future. She taught him how to read from
the "National," a newspaper founded by Thiers, republican in its
tendencies. She saw with delight that when very young he would learn the
speeches of Thiers and Guizot, which he found in its columns, and
declaim them as he roamed alone the narrow streets, and by the quaint
old bridges and towers of Cahors. At Monfaucon, he gave his orations
before the other children, the mother sending him the much-prized
"National" whenever he obtained good marks, and the Jesuits, whether
pleased or not, did not interfere with their boyish republican.

At eight years of age an unfortunate accident happened which bade fair
to ruin his hopes. While watching a cutter drill the handle of a knife,
the foil broke, and a piece entered the right eye, spoiling the sight.
Twenty years afterward, when the left, through sympathy, seemed to be
nearly destroyed, a glass eye was inserted, and the remaining one was
saved.

When Leon was ten years old, the Revolution of 1848 deposed Louis
Philippe, the Orleanist, and Louis Napoleon was made President of the
Republic. Perhaps the people ought to have known that no presidency
would long satisfy the ambition of a Bonaparte. He at once began to
increase his power by winning the Catholic Church to his side. The
Jesuits no longer allowed the boy Leon to talk republicanism; they saw
that it was doomed. They scolded him, whipped him, took away the
"National," and finally expelled him, writing to his parents, "You will
never make a priest of him; he has an utterly undisciplinable
character."

The father frowned when he returned home, and the neighbors prophesied
that he would end his life in the Bastile for holding such radical
opinions. The poor mother blamed herself for putting the "National" into
his hands, and thus bringing all this trouble upon him. Ah, she wrought
better than she knew! But for the "National," and Gambetta's
unconquerable love for a republic, France might to-day be the plaything
of an emperor.

Meantime Louis Napoleon was putting his friends into office, making
tours about the country to win adherents, and securing the army and the
police to his side. At seven o'clock, on the morning of December 2,
1851, the famous Coup d'état came, and the unscrupulous President had
made himself Emperor. Nearly two hundred and fifty deputies were
arrested and imprisoned, and the Republicans who opposed the usurpation
were quickly subdued by the army. Then the French were graciously
permitted to say, by ballot, whether they were willing to accept the
empire. There was, of course, but one judicious way to vote, and that
was in the affirmative, and they thus voted.

Joseph Gambetta, the father, saw the political storm which was coming,
and fearing for his outspoken son, locked him up in a lyceum at Cahors,
till he was seventeen. Here he attracted the notice of his teachers by
his fondness for reading, his great memory, and his love of history and
politics. At sixteen he had read the Latin authors, and the economical
works of Proudhon. When he came home, his father told him that he must
now become a grocer, and succeed to the business. He obeyed, but his
studious mind had no interest in the work. He recoiled from spending his
powers in persuading the mayor's wife that a yard of Genoa velvet at
twenty francs was cheaper than the same measure of the Lyon's article at
thirteen. So tired and sick of the business did he become, that he
begged his father to be allowed to keep the accounts, which he did in a
neat, delicate hand.

His watchful mother saw that her boy's health was failing. He was
restless and miserable. He longed to go to Paris to study law, and then
teach in some provincial town. He planned ways of escape from the hated
tasks, but he had no money, and no friends in the great city.

But his mother planned to some purpose. She said to M. Menier, the
chocolate-maker, "I have a son of great promise, whom I want to send to
Paris against his father's will to study law. He is a good lad, and no
fool. But my husband, who wants him to continue his business here, will,
I know, try to starve him into submission. What I am about to propose is
that if I buy your chocolate at the rate you offer it, and buy it
outright instead of taking it to sell on commission, will you say
nothing if I enter it on the book at a higher price, and you pay the
difference to my son?" Menier, interested to have the boy prosper,
quickly agreed.

After a time, she called her son aside and, placing a bag of money in
his hand, said, "This, my boy, is to pay your way for a year. A trunk
full of clothes is ready for you. Try and come home somebody. Start
soon, and take care to let nobody suspect you are going away. Do not
say good-bye to a single soul. I want to avoid a scene between you and
your father."

Ambition welled up again in his heart, and the bright expression came
back into his face. The next morning he slipped away, and was soon at
Paris. He drove to the Sorbonne, because he had heard that lectures were
given there. The cab-driver recommended a cheap hotel close by, and,
obtaining a room in the garret, the youth, not yet eighteen, began his
studies. He rose early and worked hard, attending lectures at the
medical school as well as at the law, buying his books at second-hand
shops along the streets. Though poverty often pinched him as to food,
and his clothes were poor, he did not mind it, but bent all his energies
to his work. His mother wrote how angered the father was at his leaving,
and would not allow his name to be mentioned in his presence. Poor
Joseph! how limited was his horizon.

Leon's intelligence and originality won the esteem of the professors,
and one of them said, "Your father acts stupidly. You have a true
vocation. Follow it. But go to the bar, where your voice, which is one
in a thousand, will carry you on, study and intelligence aiding. The
lecture-room is a narrow theatre. If you like, I will write to your
father to tell him what my opinion of you is."

Professor Valette wrote to Joseph Gambetta, "The best investment you
ever made would be to spend what money you can afford to divert from
your business in helping your son to become an advocate."

The letter caused a sensation in the Gambetta family. The mother took
courage and urged the case of her darling child, while her sister, Jenny
Massabie, talked ardently for her bright nephew. An allowance was
finally made. In two years Leon had mastered the civil, criminal,
military, forest, and maritime codes. Too young to be admitted to the
bar to plead, for nearly a year he studied Paris, its treasures of art,
and its varied life. It opened a new and grand world to him.
Accidentally he made the acquaintance of the head usher at the Corps
Legislatif, who said to the young student, "You are an excellent fellow,
and I shall like to oblige you; so if the debates of the Corps
Legislatif interest you, come there and ask for me, and I will find you
a corner in the galleries where you can hear and see everything." Here
Leon studied parliamentary usage, and saw the repression of thought
under an empire. At the Café Procope, once the resort of Voltaire,
Diderot, Rousseau, and other literary celebrities, the young man talked
over the speeches he had heard, with his acquaintances, and told what he
would do if he were in the House. An improbable thing it seemed that a
poor and unknown lad would ever sit in the Corps Legislatif, as one of
its members! He organized a club for reading and debating, and was of
course made its head. It could not be other than republican in
sentiment.

In 1860, at the age of twenty-two, Gambetta was admitted to the bar. The
father was greatly opposed to his living in Paris, where he thought
there was no chance for a lawyer who had neither money nor influential
friends, and urged his returning to Cahors. Again his aunt Jenny, whom
he always affectionately called "Tata," took his part. Having an income
of five hundred dollars a year, she said to the father, "You do not see
how you can help your son in Paris, it may be for long years; but next
week I will go with him, and we shall stay together;" and then, turning
to her nephew, she added, "And now, my boy, I will give you food and
shelter, and you will do the rest by your work."

They took a small house in the Latin Quartier, very plain and
comfortless. His first brief came after waiting eighteen months! Grepps,
a deputy, being accused of conspiracy against the Government, Gambetta
defended him so well that Crémieux, a prominent lawyer, asked him to
become his secretary. The case was not reported in the papers, and was
therefore known only by a limited circle. For six years the brilliant
young scholar was virtually chained to his desk. The only recreation was
an occasional gathering of a few newspaper men at his rooms, for whom
his aunt cooked the supper, willing and glad to do the work, because she
believed he would some day come to renown from his genius.

Finally his hour came. At the Coup d'état, Dr. Baudin, a deputy, for
defending the rights of the National Assembly, was shot on a barricade.
On All-Soul's Day, 1868, the Republicans, to the number of a thousand,
gathered at the grave in the cemetery of Montmartre, to lay flowers upon
it and listen to addresses. The Emperor could not but see that such
demonstrations would do harm to his throne. Dellschuzes, the leader, was
therefore arrested, and chose the unknown lawyer, Gambetta, to defend
him. He was a strong radical, and he asked only one favor of his lawyer,
that he would "hit hard the Man of December," as those who hated the
Coup d'état of December 2, loved to call Louis Napoleon.

Gambetta was equal to the occasion. He likened the Emperor to Catiline,
declaring that as a highwayman, he had taken France and felled her
senseless. "For seventeen years," he said, "you have been masters of
France, and you have never dared to celebrate the Second of December. It
is we who take up the anniversary, which you no more dare face than a
fear-haunted murderer can his victim's corpse." When finally, overcome
with emotion, Gambetta sank into his seat at the close of his speech,
the die was cast. He had become famous from one end of France to the
other, and the Empire had received a blow from which it never recovered.
That night at the clubs, and in the press offices, the name of Leon
Gambetta was on every lip.

It is not strange that in the elections of the following year, he was
asked to represent Belleville and Marseilles, and chose the latter,
saying to his constituents that he was in "irreconcilable opposition to
the Empire." He at once became the leader of a new party, the
"Irreconcilables," and Napoleon's downfall became from that hour only a
question of time. Gambetta spoke everywhere, and was soon conceded to be
the finest orator in France. Worn in body, by the confinement of the
secretaryship, and the political campaign, he repaired to Ems for a
short time, where he met Bismarck. "He will go far," said the Man of
Iron. "I pity the Emperor for having such an irreconcilable enemy." The
"National," under Madam Gambetta's teaching in childhood, was bearing
fruit.

Napoleon saw that something must be done to make his throne more stable
in the hearts of his people. He attempted a more liberal policy, with
Émile Ollivier at the head of affairs. But Gambetta was still
irreconcilable, saying in one of his great speeches, "We accept you and
your Constitutionalism as a bridge to the Republic, but nothing more."
At last war was declared against Prussia, as much with the hope of
promoting peace at home as to win honors in Germany. Everybody knows the
rapid and crushing defeat of the French, and the fall of Napoleon at
Sedan, September 2, when he wrote to King William of Prussia, "Not
having been able to die at the head of my troops, I can only resign my
sword into the hands of your Majesty."

When the news reached Paris on the following day, the people were
frantic. Had the Emperor returned, a defeated man, he could never have
reached the Tuileries alive. Crowds gathered in the streets, and forced
their way into the hall of the Corps Legislatif. Then the eloquent
leader of the Republican ranks, scarcely heard of two years before,
ascended the Tribune, and declared that, "Louis Napoleon Bonaparte and
his dynasty have forever ceased to reign over France." With Jules Favre,
Ferry, Simon, and others, he hastened to the Hotel de Ville, writing on
slips of paper, and throwing out to the multitude, the names of those
who were to be the heads of the provisional government. Cool, fearless,
heroic, Gambetta stood at the summit of power, and controlled the
people. They believed in him because he believed in the Republic.

Meantime the German armies were marching on Paris. The people fortified
their city, and prepared to die if need be, in their homes. Before Paris
was cut off from the outside world by the siege, part of the governing
force retired to Tours. It became necessary for Gambetta, in October, to
visit this city for conference, and to accomplish this he started in a
balloon, which was just grazed by the Prussian guns as he passed over
the lines. It was a hazardous step; but the balloon landed in a forest
near Amiens, and he was safe. When he arrived in Tours there was not a
soldier in the place; in a month, by superhuman energy, and the most
consummate skill and wisdom, he had raised three armies of eight
hundred thousand men, provided by loan for their maintenance, and
directed their military operations. One of the prominent officers on the
German side says, "This colossal energy is the most remarkable event of
modern history, and will carry down Gambetta's name to remote
posterity."

He was now in reality the Dictator of France, at thirty-two years of
age. He gave the fullest liberty to the press, had a pleasant "Bon jour,
mon ami" for a workman, no matter how overwhelmed with cares he might
be, and a self-possession, a quickness of decision, and an indomitable
will that made him a master in every company and on every occasion. He
electrified France by his speeches; he renewed her courage, and revived
her patriotism. Even after the bloody defeat of Bazaine at Gravelotte,
and his strange surrender of one hundred and seventy thousand men at
Metz, Gambetta did not despair of France being able, at least, to demand
an honorable peace.

But France had grown tired of battles. Paris had endured a siege of four
months, and the people were nearly in a starving condition. The
Communists, too, were demanding impossible things. Therefore, after
seven months of war, the articles of peace were agreed upon, by which
France gave to Germany fourteen hundred million dollars, to be paid in
three years, and ceded to her the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine.

Gambetta could never bring himself to consent to these humiliating
conditions, and on the day on which the terms were ratified, he and his
colleagues from these two sections of the country, left the assembly
together. Just as they were passing out, the venerable Jean Kuss, mayor
of Strasburg, staggered up to Gambetta, saying, "Let me grasp your
patriot's hand. It is the last time I shall shake it. My heart is
broken. Promise to redeem brave Strasburg." He fell to the floor, and
died almost immediately. Gambetta retired to Spain, till recalled by the
elections of the following July.

He now began again his heroic labors, speaking all through France,
teaching the people the true principles of a republic; not communism,
not lawlessness, but order, prudence, and self-government. He urged
free, obligatory education, and the scattering of books, libraries, and
institutes everywhere. When Thiers was made the first President,
Gambetta was his most important and truest ally, though the former had
called him "a furious fool"; so ready was the Great Republican to
forgive harshness.

In 1877 he again saved his beloved Republic. The Monarchists had become
restless, and finally displaced Thiers by Marshal MacMahon, a strong
Romanist, and a man devoted to the Empire. It seemed evident that
another coup d'état was meditated. Gambetta stirred the country to
action. He declared that the President must "submit or resign," and for
those words he was sentenced to three months' imprisonment and a fine of
four hundred dollars, which sentence was never executed. MacMahon seeing
that the Republic was stronger than he had supposed, soon after resigned
his position, and was succeeded by M. Grevy. Gambetta was made President
of the Assembly, and doubtless, if he had lived, would have been made
President of the Republic.

There were not wanting those who claimed that he was ambitious for the
supreme rule; but when death came from the accidental discharge of a
pistol, producing a wound in the hand, all calumny was hushed, and
France beheld her idol in his true light,--the incarnation of
republicanism. Two hours before his death, at his plain home just out of
Paris at Ville d'Avray, he said, "I am dying; there is no use in denying
it; but I have suffered so much it will be a great deliverance." He
longed to last till the New Year, but died five minutes before midnight,
Dec. 31, 1882. The following day, fifteen thousand persons called to see
the great statesman as he lay upon his single iron bedstead.

Afterward the body lay in state at the Palais Bourbon, the guard
standing nearly to their knees in flowers. Over two thousand wreaths
were given by friends. Alsace sent a magnificent crown of roses. No
grander nor sadder funeral was ever seen in France. Paris was urgent
that he be buried in Père la Chaise, but his father would not consent;
so the body was carried to Nice to lie beside his mother, who died a
year before him, and his devoted aunt, who died five years previously.
Every day Joseph Gambetta lays flowers upon the graves of his dear ones.

Circumstances helped to make the great orator, but he also made
circumstances. True, his opportunity came at the trial, after the Baudin
demonstration, but he was ready for the opportunity. He had studied the
history of an empire under the Cæsars, and he knew how republics are
made and lost. When in the Corps Legislatif a leader was needed, he was
ready, for he had carefully studied men. When at Tours he directed the
military, he knew what he was doing, for he was conversant with the
details of our civil war. When others were sauntering for pleasure along
the Champs Élysees, he had been poring over books in an attic opposite
the Sorbonne. He died early, but he accomplished more than most men who
live to be twice forty-five. When, in the years to come, imperialists
shall strive again to wrest the government from the hands of the people,
the name of Leon Gambetta will be an inspiration, a talisman of victory
for the Republic.



[Illustration: D. G. FARRAGUT.

(From his Life, published by D. APPLETON & CO.)]

DAVID GLASGOW FARRAGUT.


The possibilities of American life are strikingly illustrated by the
fact that the two names at the head of the army and navy, Grant and
Farragut, represent self-made men. The latter was born on a farm near
Knoxville, Tennessee, July 5, 1801. His mother, of Scotch descent, was a
brave and energetic woman. Once when the father was absent in the Indian
wars, the savages came to their plain home and demanded admittance. She
barred the door as best she could, and sending her trembling children
into the loft, guarded the entrance with an axe. The Indians thought
discretion the better part of valor, and stole quietly away.

When David was seven years old, the family having moved to New Orleans,
as the father had been appointed sailing master in the navy, the noble
mother died of yellow fever, leaving five children, the youngest an
infant. This was a most severe blow. Fortunately, soon after, an act of
kindness brought its reward. The father of Commodore Porter having died
at the Farragut house, the son determined to adopt one of the
motherless children, if one was willing to leave his home. Little David
was pleased with the uniform, and said promptly that he would go.

Saying good-bye forever to his father, he was taken to Washington, and
after a few months spent in school, at the age of nine years and a half,
was made a midshipman. And now began a life full of hardship, of
adventure, and of brave deeds, which have added lustre to the American
navy, and have made the name of Farragut immortal.

His first cruise was along the coast, in the _Essex_, after the war of
1812 with Great Britain had begun. They had captured the _Alert_ and
other prizes, and their ship was crowded with prisoners. One night when
the boy lay apparently asleep, the coxswain of the _Alert_ came to his
hammock, pistol in hand. David lay motionless till he passed on, and
then crept noiselessly to the cabin, and informed Captain Porter.
Springing from his cot, he shouted, "Fire! fire!" The seamen rushed on
deck, and the mutineers were in irons before they had recovered from
their amazement. Evidently the boy had inherited some of his mother's
fearlessness.

His second cruise was in the Pacific Ocean, where they encountered a
fearful storm going round Cape Horn. An incident occurred at this time
which showed the mettle of the lad. Though only twelve, he was ordered
by Captain Porter to take a prize vessel to Valparaiso, the captured
captain being required to navigate it. When David requested that the
"maintopsail be filled away," the captain replied that he would shoot
any man who dared to touch a rope without his orders, and then went
below for his pistols. David called one of the crew, told him what had
happened, and what he wanted done. "Aye, aye, sir!" responded the
faithful sailor, as he began to execute the orders. The young midshipman
at once sent word to the captain not to come on deck with his pistols
unless he wished to go overboard. From that moment the boy was master of
the vessel, and admired for his bravery.

The following year,--1814,--while the _Essex_ was off the coast of
Chili, she was attacked by the British ships _Phoebe_ and _Cherub_.
The battle lasted for two hours and a half, the _Phoebe_ throwing
seven hundred eighteen-pound shots at the _Essex_.

"I shall never forget," Farragut said years after, "the horrid
impression made upon me at the sight of the first man I had ever seen
killed. It staggered and sickened me at first; but they soon began to
fall so fast that it all appeared like a dream, and produced no effect
upon my nerves.... Soon after this some gun-primers were wanted, and I
was sent after them. In going below, while I was on the ward-room
ladder, the captain of the gun directly opposite the hatchway was struck
full in the face by an eighteen-pound shot, and fell back on me. We
tumbled down the hatch together. I lay for some moments stunned by the
blow, but soon recovered consciousness enough to rush up on deck. The
captain seeing me covered with blood, asked if I was wounded; to which I
replied, 'I believe not, sir.' 'Then,' said he, 'where are the primers?'
This brought me completely to my senses, and I ran below again and
carried the primers on deck."

When Porter had been forced to surrender, David went below to help the
surgeon in dressing wounds. One brave young man, Lieutenant Cowell,
said, "O, Davy, I fear it is all up with me!" He could have been saved,
had his leg been amputated an hour sooner; but when it was proposed to
drop another patient and attend to him, he said, "No, Doctor, none of
that; fair play is a jewel. One man's life is as dear as another's; I
would not cheat any poor fellow out of his turn."

Many brave men died, saying, "Don't give her up! Hurrah for liberty!"
One young Scotchman, whose leg had been shot off, said to his comrades,
"I left my own country and adopted the United States to fight for her. I
hope I have this day proved myself worthy of the country of my adoption.
I am no longer of any use to you or to her; so good-bye!" saying which
he threw himself overboard.

When David was taken a prisoner on board the _Phoebe_, he could not
refrain from tears at his mortification.

"Never mind, my little fellow," said the captain; "it will be your turn
next, perhaps."

"I hope so," was the reply.

Soon David's pet pig "Murphy" was brought on board, and he immediately
claimed it.

"But," said the English sailor, "you are a prisoner and your pig also."

"We always respect private property," the boy replied, seizing hold of
"Murphy"; and after a vigorous fight, the pet was given to its owner.

On returning to Captain Porter's house at Chester, Pa., David was put at
school for the summer, under a quaint instructor, one of Napoleon's
celebrated Guard, who used no book, but taught the boys about plants and
minerals, and how to climb and swim. In the fall he was placed on a
receiving-ship, but gladly left the wild set of lads for a cruise in the
Mediterranean. Here he had the opportunity of visiting Naples, Pompeii,
and other places of interest, but he encountered much that was harsh and
trying. Commodore C---- sometimes knocked down his own son, and his
son's friend as well,--not a pleasant person to be governed by.

In 1817, Chaplain Folsom of their ship was appointed consul at Tunis. He
loved David as a brother, and begged the privilege of keeping him for a
time, "because," said he to the commodore, "he is entirely destitute of
the aids of fortune and the influence of friends, other than those whom
his character may attach to him." For nearly nine months he remained
with the chaplain, studying French, Italian, English literature, and
mathematics, and developing in manliness and refinement. The Danish
consul showed great fondness for the frank, ardent boy, now sixteen, and
invited him to his house at Carthage. Failing in his health, a horseback
trip toward the interior of the country was recommended, and during the
journey he received a sunstroke, and his eyes were permanently weakened.
All his life, however, he had some one read to him, and thus mitigate
his misfortune.

The time came to go back to duty on the ship, and Chaplain Folsom
clasped the big boy to his bosom, fervently kissing him on each cheek,
and giving him his parting blessing mingled with his tears. Forty years
after, when the young midshipman had become the famous Admiral, he sent
a token of respect and affection to his old friend.

For some years, having been appointed acting lieutenant, he cruised in
the Gulf of Mexico, gaining knowledge which he was glad to use later,
and in the West Indies, where for two years and a half, he says, "I
never owned a bed, but lay down to rest wherever I found the most
comfortable berth." Sometimes he and his seamen pursued pirates who
infested the coast, cutting their way through thornbushes and cactus
plants, with their cutlasses; then burning the houses of these robbers,
and taking their plunder out of their caves. It was an exciting but
wearing life.

After a visit to his old home at New Orleans,--his father had died, and
his sister did not recognize him,--he contracted yellow fever, and lay
ill for some time in a Washington hospital. Perhaps the sailor was
tired of his roving and somewhat lonely life, and now married, at
twenty-two, Miss Susan Marchant of Norfolk, Virginia.

For sixteen years she was an invalid, so that he carried her often in
his arms like a child. Now he took her to New Haven for treatment, and
improved what time he could spare by attending Professor Silliman's
lectures at Yale College. Now he conducted a school on a receiving-ship,
so as to have her with him. "She bore the sickness with unparalleled
resignation and patience," says Farragut in his journal, "affording a
beautiful example of calmness and fortitude." One of her friends in
Norfolk said, "When Captain Farragut dies, he should have a monument
reaching to the skies, made by every wife in the city contributing a
stone to it." How the world admires a brave man with a tender heart!

Farragut was now nearly forty years of age; never pushing himself
forward, honors had come slowly. Three years later, having been made
commandant, he married Miss Virginia Royall, also of Norfolk, Va. At the
beginning of the Mexican War, he offered his services to the Government,
but from indifference, or the jealousy of officials, he was not called
upon. The next twelve years were spent, partly in the Norfolk Navy Yard,
giving weekly lectures on gunnery, preparing a book on ordnance
regulations, and establishing a navy yard on the Pacific Coast. Whatever
he did was done thoroughly and faithfully. When asked by the Navy
Department to express a preference about a position, he said, "I have no
volition in the matter; your duty is to give me orders, mine to obey....
I have made it the rule of my life to ask no official favors, but to
await orders and then obey them."

And now came the turning-point of his life. April 17, 1860, Virginia, by
a vote of eighty-eight to fifty-five, seceded from the United States.
The next morning, Farragut, then at Norfolk, expressed disapproval of
the acts of the convention, and said President Lincoln would be
justified in calling for troops after the Southerners had taken forts
and arsenals. He was soon informed "that a person with those sentiments
could not live in Norfolk."

"Well then, I can live somewhere else," was the calm reply.

Returning home, he announced to his wife that he had determined to
"stick to the flag."

"This act of mine may cause years of separation from your family; so you
must decide quickly whether you will go North or remain here."

She decided at once to go with him, and, hastily collecting a few
articles, departed that evening for Baltimore. That city was in
commotion, the Massachusetts troops having had a conflict with the mob.
He finally secured passage for New York on a canal-boat, and with
limited means rented a cottage at Hastings-on-the-Hudson, for one
hundred and fifty dollars a year. He loved the South, and said, "God
forbid that I should have to raise my hand against her"; but he was
anxious to take part in the war for the Union, and offered his services
to that end.

The Government had an important project in hand. The Mississippi River
was largely in the control of the Confederacy, and was the great highway
for transporting her supplies. New Orleans was the richest city of the
South, receiving for shipment at this time ninety-two million dollars
worth of cotton, and more than twenty-five million dollars worth of
sugar yearly. If this city could be captured, and the river controlled
by the North, the South would be seriously crippled. But the lower
Mississippi was guarded by the strongest forts, Jackson and St. Philip,
which mounted one hundred and fifteen guns, and were garrisoned by
fifteen hundred men. Above the forts were fifteen vessels of the
Confederate fleet, including the ironclad ram, _Manassas_, and just
below, a heavy iron chain across the river bound together scores of
cypress logs thirty feet long, and four or five feet in diameter, thus
forming an immense obstruction. Sharpshooters were stationed all along
the banks.

Who could be entrusted with such a formidable undertaking as the capture
of this stronghold? Who sufficiently daring, skilful, and loyal? Several
naval officers were considered, but Gideon Welles, Secretary of the
Navy, said, "Farragut is the man." The steam sloop-of-war, _Hartford_,
of nineteen hundred tons burden, and two hundred twenty-five feet long,
was made ready as his flag-ship. His instructions were, "The certain
capture of the city of New Orleans. The Department and the country
require of you success.... If successful, you open the way to the sea
for the Great West, never again to be closed. The rebellion will be
riven in the centre, and the flag, to which you have been so faithful,
will recover its supremacy in every State."

With a grateful heart that he had been thought fitting for this high
place, and believing in his ability to win success, at sixty-one years
of age he started on his mission, saying, "If I die in the attempt, it
will only be what every officer has to expect. He who dies in doing his
duty to his country, and at peace with his God, has played the drama of
life to the best advantage." He took with him six sloops-of-war, sixteen
gunboats, twenty-one schooners, and five other vessels, forty-eight in
all, the fleet carrying over two hundred guns.

April 18, 1862, they had all reached their positions and were ready for
the struggle. For six days and nights the mortars kept up a constant
fire on Fort Jackson, throwing nearly six thousand shells. Many persons
were killed, but the fort did not yield. The Confederates sent down the
river five fire-rafts, flat-boats filled with dry wood, smeared with tar
and turpentine, hoping that these would make havoc among Farragut's
ships; but his crews towed them away to shore, or let them drift out to
sea.

Farragut now made up his mind to pass the forts at all hazards. It was
a dangerous and heroic step. If he won, New Orleans must fall; if he
failed--but he must not fail. Two gunboats were sent to cut the chain
across the river. All night long the commander watched with intense
anxiety the return of the boats, which under a galling fire had
succeeded in breaking the chain, and thus making a passage for the
fleet.

At half past three o'clock on the morning of April 24, the fleet was
ready to start. The _Cayuga_ led off the first division of eight
vessels. Both forts opened fire. In ten minutes she had passed beyond
St. Philip only to be surrounded by eleven Confederate gunboats. The
_Varuna_ came to her relief, but was rammed by two Southern boats, and
sunk in fifteen minutes. The _Mississippi_ encountered the enemy's ram,
_Manassas_, riddled her with shot, and set her on fire, so that she
drifted below the forts and blew up.

Then the centre division, led by the _Hartford_, passed into the
terrific fire. First she grounded in avoiding a fire-raft; then a
Confederate ram pushed a raft against her, setting her on fire; but
Farragut gave his orders as calmly as though not in the utmost peril.
The flames were extinguished, and she steamed on, doing terrible
execution with her shells. Then came the last division, led by the
_Sciota_, and Commander Porter's gunboats. In the darkness, lighted only
by the flashes of over two hundred guns, the fleet had cut its way to
victory, losing one hundred and eighty-four in killed and wounded.

    "In a twinkling the flames had risen
    Half-way to maintop and mizzen,
      Darting up the shrouds like snakes!
      Ah, how we clanked at the brakes!
        And the deep steam-pumps throbbed under
        Sending a ceaseless glow.
    Our top-men--a dauntless crowd--
    Swarmed in rigging and shroud;
        There ('twas a wonder!)
    The burning ratlins and strands
    They quenched with their bare hard hands.
        But the great guns below
        Never silenced their thunder.

    "At last, by backing and sounding,
    When we were clear of grounding,
      And under headway once more,
    The whole Rebel fleet came rounding
      The point. If we had it hot before,
      'Twas now, from shore to shore,
      One long, loud thundering roar,--
    Such crashing, splintering, and pounding
      And smashing as you never heard before.

    "But that we fought foul wrong to wreck,
      And to save the land we loved so well,
    You might have deemed our long gun-deck
      Two hundred feet of hell!
    For all above was battle,
    Broadside, and blaze, and rattle,
        Smoke and thunder alone;
      But down in the sick-bay,
      Where our wounded and dying lay,
        There was scarce a sob or a moan.

    "And at last, when the dim day broke,
    And the sullen sun awoke,
        Drearily blinking
    O'er the haze and the cannon-smoke,
    That even such morning dulls,
    There were thirteen traitor hulls
        On fire and sinking!"

                    --_Henry Howard Brownell_

       *       *       *       *       *

"Thus," says the son of Farragut, in his admirable biography, "was
accomplished a feat in naval warfare which had no precedent, and which
is still without a parallel except the one furnished by Farragut
himself, two years later, at Mobile. Starting with seventeen wooden
vessels, he had passed with all but three of them, against the swift
current of a river but half a mile wide, between two powerful earthworks
which had long been prepared for him, his course impeded by blazing
rafts, and immediately thereafter had met the enemy's fleet of fifteen
vessels, two of them ironclads, and either captured or destroyed every
one of them. And all this with a loss of but one ship from his
squadron."

The following day, he wrote:--

"My dearest wife and boy,--I am so agitated that I can scarcely write,
and shall only tell you that it has pleased Almighty God to preserve my
life through a fire such as the world has scarcely known. He has
permitted me to make a name for my dear boy's inheritance, as well as
for my comfort and that of my family."

The next day, at eleven o'clock in the morning, by order of Farragut,
"the officers and crews of the fleet return thanks to Almighty God for
His great goodness and mercy in permitting us to pass through the events
of the last two days with so little loss of life and blood."

April 29, a battalion of two hundred and fifty marines and two
howitzers, manned by sailors from the _Hartford_, marched through the
streets of New Orleans, hoisted the Union flag in place of the
Confederate on the city hall, and held possession till General Butler
arrived with his troops on May 1. After the fall of the city, the forts
surrendered to Porter.

From here Farragut went to Vicksburg with sixteen vessels, "the
_Hartford_," he says "like an old hen taking care of her chickens," and
passed the batteries with fifteen killed and thirty wounded. Three
months later he received the thanks of Congress on parchment for the
gallant services of himself and his men, and was made Rear-Admiral. He
remained on the river and gulf for some months, doing effective work in
sustaining the blockade, and destroying the salt-works along the coast.
When the memorable passage of the batteries at Port Hudson was made,
where one hundred and thirteen were killed or wounded, the _Hartford_
taking the lead, his idolized boy, Loyall, stood beside him. When urged
by the surgeon to let his son go below to help about the wounded,
because it was safer, he replied, "No; that will not do. It is true our
only child is on board by chance, and he is not in the service; but,
being here, he will act as one of my aids, to assist in conveying my
orders during the battle, and we will trust in Providence." Neither
would the lad listen to the suggestion; for he "wanted to be stationed
on deck and see the fight." Farragut soon sent him back to his mother;
for he said, "I am too devoted a father to have my son with me in
troubles of this kind. The anxieties of a father should not be added to
those of a commander."

Every day was full of exciting incident. The admiral needing some
despatches taken down the river, his secretary, Mr. Gabaudan,
volunteered to bear the message. A small dug-out was covered with twigs,
so as to resemble floating trees. At night he lay down in his little
craft, with paddle and pistol by his side, and drifted with the current.
Once a Confederate boat pulled out into the stream to investigate the
somewhat large tree, but returned to report that, "It was only a log."
He succeeded in reaching General Banks, who had taken the place of
General Butler, and when the fleet returned to New Orleans, he was
warmly welcomed on board by his admiring companions.

Farragut now returned to New York for a short time, where all were
anxious to meet the Hero of New Orleans, and to see the historic
_Hartford_, which had been struck two hundred and forty times by shot
and shell in nineteen months' service. The Union League Club presented
him a beautiful sword, the scabbard of gold and silver, and the hilt set
in brilliants.

His next point of attack was Mobile Bay. Under cover of the forts,
Morgan, Gaines, and Powell, the blockade was constantly broken. A good
story is told of the capture of one of these vessels, whose merchant
captain was brought before Farragut. He proved to be an old
acquaintance, who said he was bound for Matamoras on the Rio Grande! The
admiral expressed amazement that he should be three hundred miles out of
his course, and said good-naturedly, "I am sorry for you; but we shall
have to hold you for your thundering bad navigation!"

And now occurred the most brilliant battle of his career. Aug. 4, 1864,
he wrote to his wife,--

"I am going into Mobile Bay in the morning, if God is my leader, as I
hope He is, and in Him I place my trust. God bless and preserve you, my
darling, and my dear boy, if anything should happen to me.

"Your devoted and affectionate husband, who never for one moment forgot
his love, duty, or fidelity to you, his devoted and best of wives."

At half past five on the morning of Aug. 5, fourteen ships and four
monitors, headed by the _Brooklyn_, because she had apparatus for
picking up torpedoes, moved into action. Very soon the _Tecumseh_, the
monitor abreast of the _Brooklyn_, went down with nearly every soul on
board, sunk by a torpedo. When the _Brooklyn_ saw this disaster, she
began to back.

"What's the trouble?" was shouted through the trumpet.

"Torpedoes."

The supreme moment had come for decision. The grand old admiral offered
up this prayer in his heart, "O God, direct me what to do. Shall I go
on?" And a voice seemed to answer, "Go on!"

"Go ahead!" he shouted to his captain on the _Hartford_; "give her all
the steam you've got!" And like a thing of life she swept on over the
torpedoes to the head of the fleet, where she became the special target
of the enemy. Her timbers crashed, and her "wounded came pouring
down,--cries never to be forgotten." Twice the brave admiral was lashed
to the rigging by his devoted men, lest in his exposed position he fall
overboard if struck by a ball. The fleet lost three hundred and
thirty-five men, but Farragut gained the day. When all was over, and he
looked upon the dead laid out on the port side of his ship, he wept like
a child. The prisoners captured in the defences of Mobile were one
thousand four hundred and sixty-four, with one hundred and four guns.

On his return to New York he was welcomed with the grandest
demonstrations. Crowds gathered at the Battery, a public reception was
given him at the Custom House, and fifty thousand dollars with which to
buy a house in New York. Congress made him Vice-Admiral. Prominent
politicians asked him to become a candidate for the Presidency; but he
refused, saying, "I have no ambition for anything but what I am,--an
admiral. I have worked hard for three years, have been in eleven fights,
and am willing to fight eleven more if necessary, but when I go home I
desire peace and comfort."

At Hastings-on-the-Hudson, the streets were arched with the words "New
Orleans," "Mobile," "Jackson," "St. Philip," etc. Boston gave him a
welcome reception at Faneuil Hall, Oliver Wendell Holmes reading a poem
on the occasion. At Cambridge, two hundred Harvard students took his
horses from the carriage, and attaching ropes to it, drew him through
the streets. On July 25, 1866, the rank of admiral was created by
Congress, and Farragut was appointed to the place. Honors, and
well-deserved ones, had come at last to the brave midshipman.

The next year, in command of the European squadron, accompanied by Mrs.
Farragut, who went by special permission of the President, he visited
France, Russia, and other countries.

Napoleon III. welcomed him to the Tuileries; the Grand Duke Constantine
of Russia, Duke of Edinburgh, and Victor Emmanuel each made him their
guest; he dined with the King of Denmark and the King of Greece, and
Queen Victoria received him at the Osborne House. Two years later he
visited the navy yard on the Pacific Coast, which he had established
years before.

He died Aug. 14, 1870, at the age of sixty-nine, universally honored and
regretted. Congress appropriated twenty thousand dollars for his statue
on Farragut Square, Washington, and the work has been executed by Vinnie
Ream Hoxie.

Success was not an accident with the Christian admiral. It was the
result of devotion to duty, real bravery, and a life distinguished by
purity of character and the highest sense of honor.



EZRA CORNELL.


In the winter of 1819 might have been seen travelling from New Jersey to
De Ruyter in New York, a distance of two hundred and fifty miles, some
covered emigrant wagons, containing a wife and six children in the
first, and household goods and farming utensils in the others. Sometimes
the occupants slept in a farmhouse, but usually in their vehicles by a
camp-fire in the woods.

For two weeks they journeyed, sometimes through an almost uninhabited
wilderness and over wellnigh impassable roads. The mother, with a baby
in her arms,--her oldest child, Ezra, a boy of twelve,--must have been
worn with this toilsome journey; but patient and cheerful, no word of
repining escaped her lips. Elijah Cornell, a frank, noble-hearted
Quaker, was going West to make his living as a potter and farmer
combined.

Like other pioneers, they made ready their little home among the sterile
hills; and there, for twenty years, they struggled to rear a family that
grew to eleven children, instead of six. The boys of the family were
taught the simple mysteries of pottery-making early in life, and thus
formed habits of industry, while their limited income necessarily made
them economical.

[Illustration: EZRA CORNELL.

(From his Biography, by Gov. A. B. Cornell.)]

The eldest boy, Ezra,--now sixteen,--was growing anxious to be something
more than a potter. He was nearly six feet tall, thin, muscular, and
full of energy. He was studious, reading every book within his reach,
and desirous of an education, which there was no money to procure.
Determined, if possible, to go to the common school one more winter, he
and his brother, fifteen years of age, chopped and cleared four acres of
heavy beech and maple woodland, plowed, and planted it to corn, and thus
made themselves able to finish their education.

Soon after the father engaged a carpenter to build a large pottery. Ezra
assisted, and began to think he should like the trade of a carpenter.
When the structure was completed, taking his younger brother to the
forest, they cut timber, and erected for their father's family a
two-story dwelling, the best in the town. Without any supervision, Ezra
had made the frame so that every part fitted in its exact place. This,
for a boy of seventeen, became the wonder of the neighborhood.
Master-builders prophesied a rare carpenter for posterity.

It was evident that the quiet town of De Ruyter could not satisfy such a
lad, and at eighteen he started away from his affectionate mother to try
the world. She could trust him because he used neither liquor nor
tobacco; was truthful, honest, and willing to work hard. If a young man
desires to get his living easily, or is very particular as to the kind
of work he undertakes, his future success may well be doubted. Ezra
found no carpentering, as he had hoped; but in the vicinity of Syracuse,
then a small village, he engaged himself for two years, to get out
timber for shipment to New York by canal. The following year he worked
in a shop making wool-carding machinery, and being now only twenty miles
from De Ruyter, he walked home every Saturday evening and back Monday
morning. Twenty miles before a day's work would have been too long for
most boys. There was no danger that Ezra would grow tender, either of
foot or hand, through luxury.

Hearing that there was a good outlook for business at Ithaca, he walked
forty miles thither, with a spare suit of clothes, and a few dollars in
his pocket. Who would have said then that this unknown lad, with no
capital save courage and ambition, would make the name of Ithaca, joined
with that of Cornell, known round the world?

He obtained work as a carpenter, and was soon offered the position of
keeping a cotton-mill in repair. This he gladly accepted, using what
knowledge he had gained in the machine-shop. A year later, Colonel
Beebe, proprietor of a flouring and plaster mill, asked young Cornell to
repair his works; and so pleased was he with the mechanic that he kept
him for twelve years, making him his confidential agent and general
manager. When a tunnel was needed to bring water from Fall Creek,
Cornell was made engineer-in-chief of the enterprise; when labor-saving
machinery was required, the head of the enterprising young man invented
it.

Meantime he had married, at the age of twenty-four, an intelligent girl,
Mary Ann Wood, four years his junior, the second in a family of eleven
children. As the young lady was not a Quaker, Cornell was formally
excommunicated from his church for taking a person outside the fold. He
was offered forgiveness and re-instatement if he would apologize and
show proper regret, which he refused to do, feeling that the church had
no right to decide upon the religious convictions of the person he
loved.

He soon purchased a few acres of land near the mill, and erected a
simple home for his bride. Here they lived for twenty years, and here
their nine children were born, four of whom died early. It was happiness
to go daily to his work, receive his comfortable salary, and see his
children grow up around him with their needed wants supplied. But the
comfortable salary came to an end. Colonel Beebe withdrew from active
business, the mill was turned into a woollen factory, and Cornell was
thrown out of work. Business depression was great all over the country.
In vain for months he sought for employment. The helpless family must be
supported; at the age of thirty-six matters began to look serious.

Finally, he went to Maine in the endeavor to sell the patent right of a
new plow, recently invented. He visited the "Maine Farmer," and met the
editor, Hon. F. O. J. Smith, a member of Congress, who became much
interested. He tried also to sell the patent in the State of Georgia,
walking usually forty miles a day, but with little success. Again he
started for Maine, walking from Ithaca to Albany, one hundred and sixty
miles in four days, then, going by rail to Boston, and once more on foot
to Portland. He was fond of walking, and used to say, "Nature can in no
way be so rationally enjoyed, as through the opportunities afforded the
pedestrian."

Entering the office of the "Maine Farmer" again, he found "Mr. Smith on
his knees in the middle of his office floor, with a piece of chalk in
his hand, the mould-board of a plow lying by his side, and with various
chalk-marks on the floor before him."

Mr. Smith arose and grasped him cordially by the hand, saying, "Cornell,
you are the very man I want to see. I have been trying to explain to
neighbor Robertson a machine that I want made, but I cannot make him
understand it. I want a kind of scraper, or machine for digging a ditch
for laying our telegraph pipe under ground. Congress has appropriated
thirty thousand dollars to enable Professor Morse to test the
practicability of his telegraph on a line between Washington and
Baltimore. I have taken the contract to lay the pipe at one hundred
dollars a mile."

Mr. Cornell's ready brain soon saw what kind of a machine was needed,
and he sketched a rough diagram of it.

Without much hope of success, Smith said, "You make a machine, and I
will pay the expense whether successful or not; if successful, I will
pay you fifty dollars, or one hundred, or any price you may name."

Mr. Cornell at once went to a machine shop, made the patterns for the
necessary castings, and then the wood-work for the frame. The trial of
the new machine was made at Mr. Smith's homestead, four yoke of oxen
being attached to the strange-looking plow, which cut a furrow two and
one-half feet deep, and one and one-fourth inches wide, and laid the
pipe in the bottom at the same time. It worked successfully, and Mr.
Cornell was asked to take charge of the laying of the pipe between
Baltimore and Washington. He accepted, for he believed the telegraph
would become a vast instrument in civilization. The loss of a position
at the Beebe mill proved the opening to a broader world; his energy had
found a field as wide as the universe.

It was decided to put the first pipe between the double tracks of the
Baltimore and Ohio railroad. With an eight-mule team, horses being
afraid of the engines, nearly a mile of pipe was laid each day. Soon
Professor Morse came hurriedly, and calling Mr. Cornell aside, said,
"Can you not contrive to stop this work for a few days in some manner,
so the papers will not know that it has been purposely interrupted? I
want to make some experiments before any more pipe is laid."

Cornell had been expecting this, for he knew that the pipes were
defective, though other officials would not permit Morse to be told of
it. Replying that he would do as requested, he stepped back to his plow,
and said, "Hurrah, boys, whip up your mules; we must lay another length
of pipe before we quit to-night." Then he purposely let the machine
catch against a point of rock, making it a perfect wreck.

Mr. Cornell began now, at Professor Morse's request, to experiment in
the basement of the Patent Office at Washington, studying what books he
could obtain on electrical science. It was soon found to be wise to put
the wires upon poles, as Cooke and Wheatstone had done in England. The
line between Baltimore and Washington proved successful despite its
crudities; but what should be done with it? Government did not wish to
buy it, and private capital was afraid to touch it.

How could the world be made interested? Mr. Cornell, who had now put his
heart into the telegraph, built a line from Milk Street, Boston, to
School Street, that the people might see for themselves this new agent
which was to enable nations to talk with each other; but nobody cared to
waste a moment in looking at it. They were more interested in selling a
piece of cloth, or discovering the merits of a dead philosopher. Not
delighted with the indifference of Boston, he moved his apparatus to New
York in 1844, and constructed a line from opposite Trinity Church on
Broadway, to near the site of the present Metropolitan Hotel; but New
York was even more indifferent than Boston.

The "Tribune," "Express," and some other newspapers gave cordial notices
of the new enterprise, but the "Herald" said plainly that it was opposed
to the telegraph, because now it could beat its rivals by special
couriers; but if the telegraph came into use, then all would have an
equal opportunity to obtain news! During the whole winter Mr. Cornell
labored seemingly to no purpose, to introduce what Morse had so grandly
discovered. A man of less will and less self-reliance would have become
discouraged. He met the fate of all reformers or inventors. Nobody wants
a thing till it is a great success, and then everybody wants it at the
same moment.

Finally, by the hardest struggle, the Magnetic Telegraph Company was
formed for erecting a line between New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore,
and Washington, and Mr. Cornell for superintending it was to receive one
thousand dollars per annum. So earnest was he for the matter that he
subscribed five hundred dollars to the stock of the company, paying for
it out of his meagre salary! Such men,--willing to live on the merest
pittance that a measure of great practical good may succeed,--such men
deserve to win.

The next line was between New York and Albany, and Mr. Cornell, being
the contractor, received his first return for these years of labor six
thousand dollars in profits. The tide had turned; and though afterward
various obstacles had to be met and overcome, the poor mechanic had
started on the high-road to fame and fortune. He next organized the Erie
and Michigan Telegraph Company, supposing that the Western cities thus
benefited would subscribe to the stock; but even in Chicago, which now
pays three thousand dollars daily for telegraphic service, it was
impossible to raise a dollar.

A year later, the New York and Erie telegraph line was constructed
through the southern part of New York State. Mr. Cornell, believing most
heartily in the project, obligated himself heavily, and the result
proved his far-sightedness. But now ruinous competition set in. Those
who had been unwilling to help at first were anxious to share profits.
To save all from bankruptcy in the cutting of rates, Mr. Cornell and a
few others consolidated the various interests in the Western Union
Telegraph Company, now grown so large that it has nearly five hundred
thousand miles of wire, employs twenty thousand persons, sends over
forty-one million messages yearly, and makes over seven and one-half
million dollars profits.

For more than fifteen years he was the largest stockholder in the
company; it was not strange therefore, that middle life found Ezra
Cornell a millionnaire. This was better than making pottery in the
little town of De Ruyter. It had taken work, however, to make this
fortune. While others sauntered and enjoyed life at leisure, he was
working early and late, away from his family most of the time for twelve
years.

In 1857, when fifty years of age, he purchased three hundred acres near
Ithaca, planted orchards, bought fine cattle and horses, and moved his
family thither. He was made president of the County Agricultural
Society, and in 1862 was chosen to represent the State Agricultural
Society at the International Exposition in London. Taking his wife with
him, they travelled in Great Britain and on the Continent, enjoying a
few months of recreation, for the first time since, when a youth, thirty
years before, he had walked into Ithaca.

During the war he gave money and sympathy freely, being often at the
front, in hospitals, and on battle-fields, caring for the wounded and
their families, and aiding those whom the war had left maimed or
impoverished. For six years he served acceptably in the State
Legislature. Self-reliant, calm, unselfish, simple in dress and manner,
he was, alike the companion of distinguished scholars, and the advocate
of the people.

The great question now before his mind was how to spend his fortune most
wisely. He recalled the days when he cleared four acres of timber land,
that he might have three months of schooling. He had regretted all his
life his lack of a college education. He determined therefore to build
"an institution where _any_ person can find instruction in _any_ study."
Preparatory to this he built Cornell Library, costing sixty-one thousand
dollars. A workman, losing one of his horses by accident in the
construction of the edifice, was called upon by the philanthropist, who,
after inquiring the value of the animal, drew a check and handed it to
the man, remarking, with a kind smile, "I presume I can better than you
afford to lose the horse." A man with money enough to build libraries
does not always remember a laborer!

Mr. Cornell's first gift toward his university was two hundred acres of
his cherished farm, and five hundred thousand dollars in money. The
institution was formally opened in 1868, Hon. Andrew D. White, a
distinguished graduate of Yale and of the University of Berlin, being
chosen president. Soon over four hundred students gathered from over
twenty-seven States. Mr. Cornell's gifts afterward, including his saving
the Land Grant Fund from depreciation, amounted to over three million
dollars. A wonderful present from a self-made mechanic! Other men have
followed his illustrious example. Henry W. Sage has given three hundred
thousand dollars for the building of Sage College for women, and the
extensive conservatories of the Botanical Department. Hiram Sibley, of
Rochester, has given fifty thousand dollars for the College of Mechanic
Arts, and John McGraw, one hundred thousand for the library and museum.
Cornell University is now one of the most liberally endowed institutions
in the country, and has already sent out over one thousand graduates.

Mr. Cornell did everything to enrich and develop his own town. He
brought manufactories of glass and iron into her midst, held the
presidency of the First National Bank for a dozen years, made her as far
as possible a railroad centre, and gave generously to her churches of
whatever denomination. The first question asked in any project was,
"Have you seen Ezra Cornell? He will take hold of the work; and if he is
for you, no one will be against you, and success is assured, if success
be possible."

Dec. 9, 1874, at the age of sixty-seven, scarcely able to stand, he
arose from his bed and was dressed that he might attend to some
unfinished business. Shortly after noon, it was finished by an unseen
hand. His body was carried to Library Hall, and there, the Cornell
Cadets standing as guard of honor, thousands looked upon the renowned
giver. The day of the funeral, public and private buildings were draped,
shops were closed, and the streets filled by a saddened throng. The
casket was borne into the cemetery between lines of students, who owed
to his generosity their royal opportunities for scholarship. Various
societies in various cities passed resolutions of respect and honor for
the dead.

Froude, the English historian, well said of him, "There is something I
admire even more than the university, and that is the quiet,
unpretending man by whom the university was founded. We have had such
men in old times, and there are men in England who make great fortunes
and who make claim to great munificence, but who manifest their
greatness in buying great estates and building castles for the founding
of peerages to be handed down from father to son. Mr. Cornell has sought
for immortality, and the perpetuity of his name among the people of a
free nation. There stands his great university, built upon a rock, built
of stone, as solid as a rock, to endure while the American nation
endures. When the herald's parchment shall have crumbled into dust, and
the antiquarians are searching among the tombstones for the records of
these departed families, Mr. Cornell's name will be still fresh and
green through generation after generation."

Overlooking Ithaca and Cayuga Lake stands his home, a beautiful Gothic
villa in stone, finished a year after his death. His motto, the motto of
his life, is carved over the principal entrance, "TRUE AND FIRM."



[Illustration: P. H. Sheridan.

(From Appleton's Annual Cyclopedia).]

LIEUTENANT-GENERAL SHERIDAN.


It is sometimes said that circumstances make the man; but there must be
something in the man, or circumstances, however favorable, cannot
develop it. A poor lad, born of Irish parents in the little western town
of Somerset, Ohio, working at twenty-four dollars a year, would never
have come to the lieutenant-generalship of the United States, unless
there was something noteworthy in the lad himself.

Philip Henry Sheridan, a generous, active boy, after having studied
arithmetic, geography, and spelling at the village school, began to work
in a country store in 1843, at the early age of twelve, earning fifty
cents a week, fortunately, still keeping his home with his mother. He
was fond of books, especially of military history and biography; and
when he read of battles, he had dreams of one day being a great soldier.
Probably the keeper of the store where Philip worked, and his boyish
companions, thought these dreams useless air-castles.

After some months, quickness and attention to business won a better
position for him, where he obtained one dollar and a half a week. So
useful had he become, that at seventeen he acted as bookkeeper and
manager of quite a business for the munificent wages of three dollars a
week.

He had not forgotten his soldier ambition, and applied to the member of
Congress from his county, Perry, for appointment to West Point. Hon.
Thomas Ritchey was pleased with the boy's determination and energy, and
though most of these places were given to those whose fathers had served
in the Mexican War, Philip was not forgotten. He took a preliminary
examination in the common branches, and much to his surprise, received
the appointment. Feeling greatly his need of more knowledge, his
room-mate, Henry W. Slocum, afterward a major-general, assisted him in
algebra and geometry. The two boys would hang blankets at the windows of
their room, and study after the usual limit for the putting out of
lights and retiring.

Graduating in 1853, he was made second lieutenant in the United States
Infantry, and assigned to Fort Duncan on the western boundary of Texas,
which at that time seemed wellnigh out of the world. Here he came much
in contact with the Apache and Comanche Indians, warlike and independent
tribes.

One day, as Sheridan was outside the fort with two other men, a band of
Indians swooped down upon them. The chief jumped from his horse to seize
his prisoners, when Sheridan instantly sprang upon the animal's back,
and galloped to Fort Duncan. Hastily summoning his troops, he rushed
back to save his two friends. The enraged chief sprang toward him, when
a ball from Sheridan's rifle laid him dead upon the ground. His ready
thought had saved his own life and that of his friends.

Two years later he was made first lieutenant, and sent to Oregon as
escort to an expedition surveying for a branch of the Pacific Railway.
The region was wild and almost unknown, yet beautiful and full of
interest. This life must have seemed inspiring compared with the quiet
of the Somerset store.

Chosen very soon to take charge of an Indian campaign, his fearlessness,
his quick decision and cautiousness as well, made him a valuable leader.
The Indians could endure hardships; so could Sheridan. Sometimes he
carried his food for two weeks in his blanket, slung over his shoulder,
and made the ground his bed at night. The Indians could scale rocks and
mountains; so could the young officer.

A severe encounter took place at the Cascades, on the Columbia River,
April 28, 1856, where, by getting in the rear of the Indians, he
completely vanquished them. For this strategy, he was especially
commended by Lieutenant-General Scott. However, he won the confidence of
the Indian tribes for probity and honesty in his dealings with them.

When the Civil War began, he was eager to help the cause of the Union,
and in 1861 was made captain and chief quartermaster in south-western
Missouri, on the staff of Major-General Curtis. He was quiet and
unassuming, accurate in business matters, and thoroughly courteous.
Perhaps now that he had learned more of army life by nine and a half
years of service, he was less sanguine of high renown than in his boyish
days; for he told a friend that "he was the sixty-fourth captain on the
list, and with the chances of war, thought he might soon be major."

It required executive ability to provide for the subsistence of a great
army, but Sheridan organized his depots of supplies and transportation
trains with economy and wisdom, for the brave men who fought under
Sigel. With a high sense of honor, Sheridan objected to the taking of
any private property from the enemy, for self-aggrandizement, as was the
case with some officers, and asked to be relieved from his present
position.

Fortunately he was appointed on the staff of General Halleck in
Tennessee, a man who soon learned the faithfulness and ability of his
captain; and when the Governor of Michigan asked for a good colonel for
the Second Michigan Cavalry, Sheridan was chosen. After sharing in
several engagements around Corinth, he was attacked July 1, 1862, at
Booneville, by a force of nine regiments, numbering nearly five thousand
men. He had but two regiments! What could he do? Selecting ninety of his
best men, armed with guns and sabres, he sent them four miles around a
curve to attack the enemy's rear, and promised to attack at the same
time in front. When the moment came, he rushed upon the foe as though he
had an immense army at his back, while the handful of men in the rear
charged with drawn sabres. The Confederates were thrown into confusion,
and, panic-stricken, rushed from the field, leaving guns, knapsacks, and
coats behind them. Sheridan chased them for twenty miles.

This deed of valor won the admiration of General Grant, who commended
him to the War Department for promotion. He was at once made
brigadier-general. Perhaps the boyish dreams of being a great soldier
would not turn out to be air-castles after all. Men love to fight under
a man who knows what to do in an emergency, and Sheridan's men, who
called him "Little Phil," had the greatest faith in him.

In the fall, he was needed to defend Louisville against General Bragg.
This Confederate officer had been told that he would find recruits and
supplies in abundance if he would come to Kentucky. He came therefore,
bringing arms for twenty thousand men, but was greatly disappointed to
find that not half that number were willing to cast in their lot with
the Secessionists. General Buell, of the Union army, received, on the
contrary, over twenty thousand new soldiers here. Bragg prepared to
leave the State, sending his provision train ahead, and made a stand at
Perryville, Kentucky. Here Sheridan played "a distinguished part,
holding the key of the Union position, and resisting the onsets of the
enemy again and again, with great bravery and skill, driving them at
last from the open ground in front by a bayonet charge. The loss in
Sheridan's division in killed and wounded was over four hundred, but his
generalship had saved the army from defeat."

Bragg determined now to make one great effort to hold Tennessee, and
Dec. 31, 1862, gave battle at Stone River, near Murfreesboro'. General
Rosecrans had succeeded Buell as commander of the Army of the
Cumberland. Being a Romanist, high mass was celebrated in his tent just
before the battle, the officers, booted and spurred, standing outside
with heads uncovered. The conflict began on the right wing, the enemy
advancing six lines deep. Our troops were mowed down as by a scythe.
Sheridan sustained four attacks of the enemy, and four times repulsed
them, swinging his hat or his sword, as he rode among his men, and
changing his front under fire, till, his ammunition exhausted, he
brought out his shattered forces in close column, with colors flying.
Pointing sadly to them, he said to Rosecrans, "Here is all that are
left, General. My loss is seventeen hundred and ninety-six,--my three
brigade commanders killed, and sixty-nine other officers; in all
seventy-two officers killed and wounded." The men said proudly, "We came
out of the battle with compact ranks and empty cartridge-boxes!"

Even after this Sheridan recaptured two pieces of artillery, and routed
the same men who had driven him. For noble conduct on the field he was
made major-general of volunteers.

General Rosecrans says of him in his official report, "At Stone River he
won universal admiration. Upon being flanked and compelled to retire, he
withdrew his command more than a mile, under a terrible fire, in
remarkable order, at the same time inflicting the severest punishment
upon the foe. The constancy and steadfastness of his troops on the 31st
of December enabled the reserve to reach the right of our army in time
to turn the tide of battle, and changed a threatened rout into a
victory."

General Rosecrans showed himself dauntless in courage. When a shell took
off the head of his faithful staff-officer, Garesché, riding by his
side, to whom he was most tenderly attached, he only said, "I am _very_
sorry; we cannot help it. This battle must be won." Dashing up to a
regiment lying on the ground waiting to be called into action, he said,
while shot and shell were whizzing furiously around him, "Men, do you
wish to know how to be safe? Shoot low. But do you wish to know how to
be safest of all? Give them a blizzard and then charge with cold steel!
Forward, men, and show what you are made of!"

After the day's bloody battle, the troops lay all night on the cold
ground where they had fought. "When," says the heroic General Rousseau,
"I saw them parch corn over a few little coals into which they were
permitted to blow a spark of life; when they carved steak from the loins
of a horse which had been killed in battle, and ate, not simply without
murmuring, but made merry over their distress, tears involuntarily
rolled from my eyes."

At midnight it rained upon the soldiers, and the fields became masses of
mud; yet before daylight they stood at their guns. "On the third day,"
says Rosecrans, "the firing was terrific and the havoc terrible. The
enemy retreated more rapidly than they had advanced. In forty minutes
they lost two thousand men." All that night the Federals worked to
entrench the front of the army. Saturday hundreds of wounded lay in the
mud and rain, as the enemy had destroyed so many of our hospital tents.
On Sunday morning it was found that the Confederates had departed,
leaving twenty-five hundred of their wounded in Murfreesboro' for us to
take care of. Burial parties were now sent out to inter the dead. The
Union loss in killed and wounded was eight thousand seven hundred and
seventy-eight; the enemy's loss ten thousand one hundred and
twenty-five.

Sheridan's next heavy fighting was at Chickamauga. The battle was begun
by Bragg on Sept. 19, 1863. The right of our army had been broken to
pieces, but General Thomas, the idol of his men, stood on the left like
a rock, Sheridan assisting, and refused to be driven from the field.
General Henry M. Cist, in his "Army of the Cumberland" says, "There is
nothing finer in history than Thomas at Chickamauga." Sheridan lost over
one-third of his four thousand men and ninety-six officers. The Federal
loss was over sixteen thousand; the Confederate, over twenty thousand.

There were heroic deeds on this as on every battle-field. When a
division of the Reserve Corps--brave men they were, too--wavered under
the storm of lead, General James B. Steedman rode up, and taking the
flag from the color-bearer, cried out, "Go back, boys, go back, but the
Flag can't go with you!" and dashed into the fight. The men rallied,
closed their column, and fought bravely to the death. Even the
drummer-boy, Johnny Clem, from Newark, Ohio, ten years old, near the
close of the battle, when one of Longstreet's colonels rode up, and with
an oath commanded him to surrender, sent a bullet through the officer's
heart. Rosecrans, made him a sergeant, and the daughter of Secretary
Chase gave him a silver medal.

Two months later, the battle of Chattanooga redeemed the defeat of
Chickamauga. Near the town rises Lookout Mountain, abrupt, rocky cliffs
twenty-four hundred feet above the level of the sea, and Missionary
Ridge, both of which were held by the enemy. On Nov. 24, Lookout was
stormed and carried by General Hooker in the "Battle above the Clouds."
On the following day Missionary Ridge was to be assaulted. Sheridan held
the extreme left for General Thomas. Before him was a wood, then an open
plain, several hundred yards to the enemy's rifle-pits; and then beyond,
five hundred yards covered with rocks and fallen timber to the crest,
where were Bragg's heaviest breastworks. At three o'clock in the
afternoon the signal to advance--six guns fired at intervals of two
seconds--was given. As Sheridan shouted, "Remember Chickamauga!" the men
dashed over the plain at double-quick, their glittering bayonets ready
for deadly work. Says Benjamin F. Taylor, who was an eye-witness, "Never
halting, never faltering, they charged up to the first rifle-pits with a
cheer, forked out the rebels with their bayonets, and lay there panting
for breath. If the thunder of guns had been terrible, it was now growing
sublime. It was rifles and musketry; it was grape and canister; it was
shell and shrapnel. Mission Ridge was volcanic; a thousand torrents of
red poured over its brink and rushed together to its base.

"They dash out a little way, and then slacken; they creep up, hand over
hand, loading and firing, and wavering and halting, from the first line
of works to the second; they burst into a charge with a cheer, and go
over it. Sheets of flame baptize them; plunging shot tear away comrades
on left and right; it is no longer shoulder to shoulder; it is God for
us all! Under tree-trunks, among rocks, stumbling over the dead,
struggling with the living, facing the steady fire of eight thousand
infantry, they wrestle with the Ridge.... Things are growing desperate
up aloft; the rebels tumble rocks upon the rising line; they light the
fusees and roll shells down the steep; they load the guns with handfuls
of cartridges in their haste; and as if there were powder in the word,
they shout 'Chickamauga' down upon the mounters. But it would not all
do, and just as the sun, weary of the scene, was sinking out of sight,
with magnificent bursts all along the line, the advance surged over the
crest, and in a minute those flags fluttered along the fringe where
fifty rebel guns were, kennelled.... Men flung themselves exhausted upon
the ground. They laughed and wept, shook hands, embraced; turned round,
and did all four over again. It was as wild as a carnival."

Grant had given the order for taking the first line of rifle-pits only,
but the men, first one regiment and then another, swept up the hill,
determined to be the first to plant the colors there. "When I saw those
flags go up," said Sheridan afterward, "I knew we should carry the
ridge, and I took the responsibility." Sheridan's horse was shot under
him, after which he led the assault on foot. Over twelve hundred men
made Missionary Ridge sacred to liberty by their blood.

All seemed heroes on that day. One poor fellow, with his shoulder
shattered, lay beside a rock. Two comrades halted to bear him to the
rear, when he said, "Don't stop for me; I'm of no account; for GOD'S
sake, push right up with the boys!" and on they went, to help scale the
mountain.

When the men were seen going up the hill, Grant asked by whose orders
that was done? "It is all right if it turns out all right," he said;
"but if not, some one will suffer." But it turned out all right, and
Grant knew thereafter how fully he could trust Sheridan.

The following spring Sheridan was placed by Grant in command of the
cavalry of the Army of the Potomac, numbering nearly twelve thousand
men. Here he was to add to his fame in the great battles of the
Shenandoah Valley. From May to August Sheridan lost over five thousand
men in killed and wounded, in smaller battles as he protected Grant's
flank while he moved his forces to the James River, or in cutting off
Lee's supplies. Meantime General Early had been spreading terror by his
attempt to take Washington, thus hoping also to withdraw Grant's
attention from Lee at Richmond.

The time had come for decisive action. Grant's orders were, "Put
yourself south of the enemy and follow him to the death. I feel every
confidence that you will do the best, and will leave you as far as
possible to act on your own judgment, and not embarrass you with orders
and instructions." About the middle of September Grant visited Sheridan
with a plan of battle for him in his pocket, but he said afterward, "I
saw that there were but two words of instruction necessary, 'Go in.' The
result was such that I have never since deemed it necessary to visit
General Sheridan before giving him orders."

The battle of Opequan was fought Sept. 19, 1864, Early being completely
routed and losing about four thousand men, five pieces of artillery, and
nine army flags, with an equal loss of men by the Federals. The fight
was a bitter one from morning till evening, a regiment like the One
Hundred and Fourteenth New York going into the battle with one hundred
and eighty men, and coming out with forty, their dead piled one above
another! Sheridan at first stood a little to the rear, so that he might
calmly direct the battle; but at last, swinging his sword, and
exclaiming, "I can't stand this!" he rode into the conflict. The next
day he telegraphed to Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War, "We have just
sent them whirling through Winchester, and we are after them to-morrow.
This army behaved splendidly."

This battle quickened the hope and courage of the North, who begun to
see the end of the devastating war. "Whirling through Winchester" was
reported all over the land. Abraham Lincoln telegraphed, "Have just
heard of your great victory. God bless you all, officers and men!
Strongly inclined to come up and see you." Grant ordered each of his
two Richmond armies to fire a salute of one hundred guns.

The next day Sheridan passed on after Early, and gave battle at Fisher's
Hill, the Confederates losing sixteen guns and eleven hundred prisoners,
besides killed and wounded. Many of these belonged to Stonewall
Jackson's corps, and were the flower of the Southern army. "Keep on,"
said Grant, "and your good work will cause the fall of Richmond."
Secretary Stanton ordered one hundred guns to be fired by various
generals, fifteen hundred guns in all, for Fisher's Hill. Early was now
so thoroughly beaten, that the Richmond mob wrote on the guns forwarded
to him by the South the satirical sentence, "General Sheridan, care of
General Early!" Grant's orders were now to lay waste the valley, so that
Lee might have no base of supplies. Over two thousand barns filled with
grain, over seventy mills, besides bridges and railroads were burned,
and seven thousand cattle and sheep appropriated by the Union army. Such
destruction seemed pitiful, but if the war was thereby shortened, as it
doubtless was, then the saving of bloodshed was a blessing.

Oct. 15 Sheridan was summoned to Washington for consultation. Early,
learning his absence, and having been reinforced by twelve thousand
troops, decided at once to give battle at Cedar Creek. His army marched
at midnight, canteens being left in camp, lest they make a noise. At
daybreak, Oct. 19, with the well-known "rebel yell" the enemy rushed
upon the sleeping camps of the Union army. Nearly a thousand of our men
were taken prisoners, and eighteen guns. A panic ensued, and in utter
confusion, though there was some brave fighting, our troops fell back to
the rear. Sheridan, on his way from Washington, had slept at Winchester
that night, twenty miles away. At nine o'clock he rode out of the town
on his splendid black horse, unconscious of danger to his army. Soon the
sound of battle was heard, and not a mile away he met the fugitives. He
at once ordered some troops to stop the stragglers, and rushed on to the
front as swiftly as his foaming steed could carry him, swinging his hat,
and shouting, "Face the other way, boys! face the other way! If I had
been here, boys, this never should have happened." Meeting a colonel who
said, "The army is whipped," he replied, "You are, but the army isn't!"

Rude breastworks of stones, rocks, and trees were thrown up. Then came
desperate fighting, and then the triumphant charge. The first line was
carried, and then the second, Sheridan leading a brigade in person.
Early's army was thoroughly routed. The captured guns were all retaken,
besides twenty-four pieces of artillery and sixteen hundred prisoners.
Early reported eighteen hundred killed and wounded.

Again the whole North rejoiced over this victory. Sheridan was made a
major-general in the regular army "for the personal gallantry, military
skill and just confidence in the courage and gallantry of your troops
displayed by you on the 19th day of October at Cedar Run," said Lincoln,
"whereby, under the blessing of Providence, your routed army was
reorganized, a great national disaster averted, and a brilliant victory
achieved over the rebels for the third time in pitched battle within
thirty days." General Grant wrote from City Point, "Turning what bid
fair to be a disaster into a glorious victory stamps Sheridan what I
always thought him, one of the ablest of generals."

Well wrote Thomas Buchanan Read in that immortal poem, "Sheridan's
Ride":--

    "Hurrah! hurrah for Sheridan!
    Hurrah! hurrah for horse and man!
    And when their statues are placed on high,
    Under the dome of the Union sky,
    The American soldier's Temple of Fame,
    There with the glorious General's name,
    Be it said in letters both bold and bright,
    'Here is the steed that saved the day,
    By carrying Sheridan into the fight
    From Winchester, twenty miles away!'"

The noble animal died in Chicago, October, 1878.

"In eleven weeks," says General Adam Badeau, "Sheridan had taken
thirteen thousand prisoners, forty-nine battle flags, and sixty guns,
besides recapturing eighteen cannon at Cedar Creek. He must besides have
killed and wounded at least nine thousand men, so that he destroyed for
the enemy twenty-two thousand soldiers."

And now the only work remaining was to join Grant at Richmond in his
capture of Lee. He had passed the winter near Winchester, and now having
crossed the James River, April 1, 1865, was attacked by General Pickett
at Five Forks. After a severe engagement about five thousand prisoners
were taken by Sheridan, with thirteen colors and six guns. His magnetic
influence over his men is shown by an incident narrated by General
Badeau. "At the battle of Five Forks, a soldier, wounded under his eyes,
stumbled and was falling to the rear, but Sheridan cried, 'Never mind,
my man; there's no harm done!' and the soldier went on with a bullet in
his brain, till he dropped dead on the field."

From here he pushed on to Appomattox Court House, where he headed Lee's
army, and waited for Grant to come up. Richmond had surrendered to Grant
on the morning of April 3. On the 7th of April Grant wrote to Lee, "The
result of the last week must convince you of the hopelessness of further
resistance on the part of the Army of Northern Virginia in this
struggle. I feel that it is so, and regard it as my duty to shift from
myself the responsibility of any further effusion of blood, by asking
you to surrender that portion of the Confederate States Army known as
the Army of Northern Virginia." Lee replied, "Though not entertaining
the opinion you express on the hopelessness of further resistance on the
part of the Army of Northern Virginia, I reciprocate your desire to
avoid useless effusion of blood, and therefore, before considering your
proposition, ask the terms you will offer on condition of its
surrender." The reply was the only one that could be given. "The terms
upon which peace can be had are well understood. By the South laying
down their arms they will hasten that most desirable event, save
thousands of human lives, and hundreds of millions of property not yet
destroyed."

At one o'clock, April 9, 1865, the two able generals met, and at four it
was announced that the Army of Northern Virginia, with over twenty-eight
thousand men, had surrendered to the Army of the Potomac. Memorable day!
that brought peace to a nation tired of the horrors of war. In July,
Sheridan assumed command of the Military Division of the Gulf. Ten years
later, June 3, 1875, when he was forty-four years old, he married Miss
Irene Rucker, the daughter of General D. H. Rucker, for years his
friend. She is a fine linguist, and a charming woman. Their home in
Chicago has many souvenirs of war times, and tokens of appreciation from
those who realize General Sheridan's great services to his country.

He was made Lieutenant-General, March 4, 1869, and when General Sherman
retired from the position of Commander-in-Chief of the Army, Nov. 1,
1883, Sheridan moved to Washington, to take his place. The office of
"Lieutenant-General" expires with General Sheridan, he being the last of
our three great and famous generals,--Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan. In
this latter city he has a home purchased by thirty-one of his leading
friends from Chicago. He is devoted to his wife and children, honest,
upright, and manly, and deserves the honors he has won.

       *       *       *       *       *

General Sheridan was taken ill of heart disease about the middle of May,
1888. After three months, he died at Nonquitt, Mass., near the ocean, at
twenty minutes past ten on the evening of August 5, 1888. He left a wife
and four children, a girl of eight, a boy of six, and twin daughters of
four. After lying in state at Washington, he was buried with military
honors at Arlington Heights, on Saturday, August 11, in the midst of
universal sorrow.



THOMAS COLE.


Four of my favorite pictures from childhood have been Cole's "Voyage of
Life." I have studied the tiny infant in the boat surrounded by roses,
life's stream full of luxuriant vegetation; the happy, ambitious youth,
looking eagerly forward to the Temple of Fame, steering the boat
himself, with no need of aid from his guardian angel; then the worried
and troubled man, his boat tossing and whirling among the broken trees
and frightful storms that come to all; and lastly, perhaps most
beautiful, the old man sailing peacefully into the ocean of eternity,
the angel having returned to guide him, and the way to heaven being
filled with celestial spirits. I have always hung these pictures near my
writing-table, and their lesson has been a helpful and inspiring one.

No wonder that Thorwaldsen, the great sculptor, said when he looked upon
them in Rome, "O great artist! what beauty of conception! what an
admirable arrangement of parts! what an accurate study of nature! what
truth of detail!" He told Cole that his work was entirely new and
original, executed in a masterly manner, and he commended the harmony
of color.

These pictures are hung in thousands of homes; but how few persons know
the history of the artist! Born in England, Feb. 1, 1801, the only son
in a family of eight children, and the youngest but one, we find him
when a mere child, in some print-works, learning to engrave simple
designs for calico. His father, a woolen manufacturer, had failed in
business, and the family were thrown upon themselves for support. He was
a kind and honest man, always hoping to succeed, but never succeeding;
always trying new scenes to build up his fortune and never building it.
Like other fathers, especially those who have been disappointed in life,
he had hopes that his boy would accomplish more than himself.

He wished to apprentice him to an attorney or to an iron manufacturer,
but Thomas saw no pleasure in Blackstone, or in handling ponderous iron.
A boy of tender feelings, he found little companionship with his
fellow-operatives, most of whom were rough; and he enjoyed most an old
Scotchman who could repeat ballads, and tell of the beautiful hills and
lakes of his native land. When he had leisure, he wandered with his
sister Sarah into the surrounding country; and while she sang, he
accompanied her with his flute.

With little opportunity for school, he was a great reader; and when
through with designs for calico for the day, he buried himself in
books, especially about foreign countries, and in imagination clambered
over high mountains, and sailed upon broad rivers. He talked much to the
family of the wonders of the New World; and when he was eighteen, they
all sailed for America. The father rented a little house and shop in
Philadelphia, and began to sell the small stock of dry-goods which he
had brought with him, while Thomas found work with a person who supplied
woodcuts for printers.

The father soon became dissatisfied with his prospects, and moved his
family to Steubenville, Ohio, where he hoped to find a land flowing with
milk and honey. Thomas remained behind, working on some illustrations
for Bunyan's "Holy War," keeping up his spirits with his beloved flute;
going to Steubenville the next year, walking almost the entire way from
Philadelphia.

Here he worked in his father's small manufactory of paper-hangings; yet
he had longings to do some great work in the world, as he wandered alone
in the wild and charming scenery. He loved music, architecture, and
pictures, but he hardly dared breathe his aspirations save in a few
verses of poetry. How in that quiet home a boy should be born who had
desires to win renown was a mystery. Nobody knows whence the perilous
but blessed gift of ambition comes.

About this time a portrait-painter by the name of Stein came to the
village. He took an interest in the poetic boy, and loaned him an
English illustrated work on painting. Thomas had already acquired some
skill in drawing. Now his heart was on fire as he read about Raphael,
Claude Lorraine, and Titian, and he resolved to make painting his
life-work. How little he knew of the obstacles before a poor artist!

He set to work to make his own brushes, obtaining his colors from a
chair-maker. His easel and palette were of his own crude manufacture.
The father had serious misgivings for his son; but his mother encouraged
him to persevere in whatever his genius seemed to lie. As a rule, women
discover genius sooner than men, and good Mary Cole had seen that there
was something uncommon in her boy. His brushes ready, putting his scanty
wearing apparel and his flute in a green baize bag, hung over his
shoulder, the youth of twenty-one started for St. Clairsville, thirty
miles distant, to begin life as a painter. He broke through the ice in
crossing a stream, and, wet to his breast, arrived at the town, only to
find that a German had just been there, and had painted all the
portraits which were desired.

However, a saddler was found who was willing to be painted, and after
five days of work from morning till night, the young artist received a
new saddle as pay. A military officer gave him an old silver watch for a
portrait, and a dapper tradesman a chain and key, which proved to be
copper instead of gold. For some other work he received a pair of shoes
and a dollar. All these, except the dollar, he was obliged to give to
his landlord for board, the man being dissatisfied even with this
bargain.

From here Thomas walked one hundred miles to Zanesville, and to his
great sorrow, found that the German had preceded him here also, and
painted the tavern-keeper and his family. The landlord intimated that a
historical picture would be taken in payment for the young stranger's
board. Accordingly an impromptu studio was arranged. A few patrons came
at long intervals; but it was soon evident that another field must be
chosen. What, however, was young Cole's astonishment to find that the
historical painting would not be received for board, and that if
thirty-five dollars were not at once paid, he would be thrust into jail!
Two or three acquaintances became surety for the debt to the
unprincipled landlord, and the pale, slender artist hastened toward
Chillicothe with but a sixpence in his pocket.

After walking for three days, seventy-five miles, he sat down under a
tree by the roadside, wellnigh discouraged, in the hot August day; but
when the tears gathered in his eyes, he took out his flute, and playing
a lively air, his courage returned. He had two letters of introduction
in his pocket, given him at Zanesville, and these he would present,
whispering to himself that he must "hold up his head like Michael
Angelo" as he offered them. The men who received them had little time
or wish to aid the young man. A few persons sat for their portraits, and
a few took lessons in drawing; but after a time he had no money to pay
for washing his linen, and at last no linen even to be washed. Still
enthusiastic over art, and with visions of Italy floating in his mind,
yet penniless and footsore, he returned to Steubenville to tell his
sorrows to his sympathetic mother. How her heart must have been moved as
she looked upon her boy's pale face, and great blue eyes, and felt his
eager desire for a place of honor in the world, but knew, alas! that she
was powerless to aid him.

He took a plain room for a studio, painted some scenes for a society of
amateur actors, and commenced two pictures,--Ruth gleaning in the field
of Boaz, and the feast of Belshazzar. One Sunday, some vicious boys
broke into the studio, mixed the paints, broke the brushes, and cut the
paintings in pieces. Learning that the boys were poor, Cole could not
bear to prosecute them; and the matter was dropped. He soon departed to
Pittsburgh, whither his parents had moved, and began to assist his
father in making floor-cloths. Every moment of leisure he was down by
the banks of the Monongahela, carefully drawing tree, or cloud, or
hill-top.

Finally the old longing became irresistible. He packed his little trunk,
his mother threw over his shoulders the table cover, with her blessing
and her tears; and with six dollars in his purse, he said good-bye to
the family and started for Philadelphia. Then followed, as he used to
say in after years, the "winter of his discontent." In a poor quarter of
the city, in an upper room, without a bed or fire or furniture,
struggled poor Thomas Cole. Timid, friendless, his only food a baker's
roll and a pitcher of water, his only bedding at night the table cover,
he worked day by day, now copying in the Academy, and now ornamenting
bellows, brushes, or Japan ware, with figures of birds or with flowers.
Sometimes he ran down a neighboring alley, whipping his hands about him
to keep his blood in circulation, lest he be benumbed. He soon became
the victim of inflammatory rheumatism, and was a great sufferer. He
still saw before him, someway, somehow, renown. Meantime his pure, noble
soul found solace in writing poetry and an occasional story for the
"Saturday Evening Post." After a year and a half he put his goods on a
wheelbarrow, had them carried to the station, and started for New York,
whither his family had moved.

He was now twenty-four. Life had been one continuous struggle. Still he
loved each beauty in nature, and hoped for the good time to come. In his
father's garret in Greenwich Street, in a room so narrow that he could
scarcely work, and so poorly lighted that he was "perpetually fighting a
kind of twilight," he labored for two years. Obstacles seemed but to
increase his determination to persevere. Of such grand material are
heroes made!

His first five pictures were placed for exhibition in the shop of an
acquaintance, and were sold at eight dollars apiece. Through the
courtesy of a gentleman who purchased three of these, he was enabled to
go up the Hudson and sketch from nature among the Catskills. This was
indeed a great blessing. On his return, he painted "A View of Fort
Putnam," "Lake with dead trees," and "The Falls of the Caterskills."
These were purchased at twenty-five dollars apiece by three
artists,--Trumbull, Dunlap, and Durand.

Trumbull first discovered the merits of the pictures, buying the "Falls"
for his studio, and invited Cole to meet Durand at his rooms. At the
hour appointed the sensitive artist made his appearance, so timid that
at first he could only reply to their cordial questioning by
monosyllables. Colonel Trumbull said, "You surprise me, at your age, to
paint like this. You have already done what I, with all my years and
experience, am yet unable to do." Through the new friends, attention was
called to his work, and he soon had abundant commissions. How his hungry
heart must have fed on this appreciation! "From that time," said his
friend, William Cullen Bryant, "he had a fixed reputation, and was
numbered among the men of whom our country had reason to be proud. I
well remember what an enthusiasm was awakened by these early works of
his,--the delight which was expressed at the opportunity of
contemplating pictures which carried the eye over scenes of wild
grandeur peculiar to our country, over our arid mountain-tops with their
mighty growth of forest never touched by the axe, along the banks of
streams never deformed by culture, and into the depth of skies bright
with the hues of our own climate; such skies as few but Cole could ever
paint, and through the transparent abysses of which it seemed that you
might send an arrow out of sight."

The struggles were not all over, but the "renown" of which the
calico-designer had dreamed had actually come. Down in the heart of Mary
Cole there must have been deep thanksgiving that she had urged him on.

He with a few others now founded the National Academy of Design. He took
lodgings in the Catskills in the summer of 1826, and worked diligently.
He studied nature like a lover; now he sketched a peculiar sunset, now a
wild storm, now an exquisite waterfall. "Why do not the younger
landscape painters walk--walk alone, and endlessly?" he used to say.
"How I have walked, day after day, and all alone, to see if there was
not something among the old things which was new!" He knew every chasm,
every velvety bank, every dainty flower growing in some tanglewood for
miles around. American scenery, with its untamed wilderness, lake, and
mountain, was his chief passion. He found no pleasure, however, in
hunting or fishing; for his kind heart could not bear to inflict the
slightest injury.

The following spring he exhibited at the National Academy the "Garden of
Eden and the Expulsion," rich in poetic conception; and in the fall
sketched in the White Mountains, especially near North Conway, which the
lamented Starr King loved so well. In the winter he was very happy,
finishing his "Chocorua Peak." A visitor said, "Your clouds, sir, appear
to move."

"That," replied the artist, "is precisely the effect I desire."

He was now eager to visit Europe to study art; but first he must see
Niagara, of which he made several sketches. He had learned the secret,
that all poets and artists finally learn,--that they must identify
themselves with some great event in history, something grand in nature,
or some immortal name. Milton chose a sublime subject, Homer a great
war, just as some one will make our civil war a famous epic two
centuries hence.

In June, 1829, he sailed for Europe, and there, for two years, studied
faithfully. In London, he saw much of Turner, of whom he said, "I
consider him as one of the greatest landscape painters that ever lived,
and his 'Temple of Jupiter' as fine as anything the world has produced.
In landscapes, my favorites are Claude Lorraine, and Gaspar Poussin."

Some of Cole's work was exhibited at the British Gallery, but the autumn
coloring was generally condemned as false to nature! How little we know
about that which we have not seen!

Paris he enjoyed greatly for its clear skies and sunny
weather,--essentials usually to those of poetic temperament, though he
was not over pleased with the Venuses and Psyches of modern French art.
For nine months he found the "galleries of Florence a paradise to a
painter." He thought our skies more gorgeous than the Italian, though
theirs have "a peculiar softness and beauty." At Rome, some of his
friends said, "Cole works like a crazy man." He usually rose at five
o'clock, worked till noon, taking an hour for eating and rest, and then
sketched again till night.

There was a reason for this. The support of the family came upon him,
besides the payment of debts incurred by his father.

He felt that every hour was precious. In Rome, he found the Pantheon
"simple and grand"; the Apollo Belvidere "the most perfect of human
productions," while the Venus de Medici has "the excellence of feminine
form, destitute in a great measure of intellectual expression"; the
"Transfiguration," "beautiful in color and chiaroscuro," and Michael
Angelo's "Moses," "one of the things never to be forgotten."

On his return to New York he took rooms at the corner of Wall Street and
Broadway. Here he won the friendship of Luman Reed, for whom he promised
to paint pictures for one room, to cost five thousand dollars. The chief
pictures for Mr. Reed, who died before their completion, were five,
called "The Course of Empire," representing man in the different phases
of savage life, high civilization, and ruin through sin, the idea coming
to him while in Rome. Of this group, Cooper, the novelist, said, "I
consider the 'Course of Empire' the work of the highest genius this
country has ever produced, and one of the noblest works of art that has
ever been wrought."

In November, 1836, Mr. Cole was married to Maria Bartow, a young lady of
refinement and loveliness of character. Soon after, both of his parents
died. The "Departure and Return" were now painted, "among his noblest
works," says Bryant, followed by the "Voyage of Life," for Mr. Samuel
Ward, who, like Mr. Reed, died before the set was finished. This series
was sold in 1876 for three thousand one hundred dollars. These pictures
he had worked upon with great care and intensity. He used to say,
"Genius has but one wing, and, unless sustained on the other side by the
well-regulated wing of assiduity, will quickly fall to the ground. The
artist must work always; his eye and mind can work even when his pen is
idle. He must, like a magician, draw a circle round him, and exclude all
intrusive spirits. And above all, if he would attain that serene
atmosphere of mind in which float the highest conceptions of the soul in
which the sublimest works have been produced, he must be possessed of a
holy and reasonable faith."

The "Voyage of Life" was well received. The engraver, Mr. Smilie, found
one morning before the second of the series, "Youth," a person in middle
life looking as though in deep thought. "Sir," he said at length, "I am
a stranger in the city, and in great trouble of mind. But the sight of
these pictures has done me great good. I go away from this place
quieted, and much strengthened to do my duty."

In 1841, worn in health, Cole determined to visit Europe again. He wrote
from Kenilworth Castle to his wife, "Every flower and mass of ivy, every
picturesque effect, waked my regret that you were not by my side.... How
can I paint without you to praise, or to criticize, and little Theddy to
come for papa to go to dinner, and little Mary with her black eyes to
come and kiss the figures in the pictures?... My life will be burdened
with sadness until I return to my wife and family." In Rome he received
much attention, as befitted one in his position.

On his return, he painted several European scenes, the "Roman Campagna,"
"Angels Ministering to Christ in the Wilderness," "Mountain Ford" (sold
in 1876 for nine hundred dollars), "The Good Shepherd," "Hunter's
Return," "Mill at Sunset," and many others. For his "Mount Etna,"
painted in five days, he received five hundred dollars. How different
these days from that pitiful winter in Philadelphia!

He dreaded interruptions in his work. His "St. John the Baptist in the
Wilderness" was destroyed by an unexpected visit from some ladies and
gentlemen, who quenched the fire of heart in which he was working. He
sorrowfully turned the canvas to the wall, and never finished it. He had
now come to the zenith of his power, yet he modestly said, "I have only
learned how to paint." He built a new studio in the Catskills, in the
Italian villa style, and hoped to erect a gallery for several paintings
he had in contemplation, illustrating the cross and the world, and the
immortality of the soul.

But the overworked body at forty-seven years of age could no longer bear
the strain. On Saturday, Feb. 5, 1848, he laid his colors under water,
and cleansed his palette as he left his studio. The next day he was
seized with inflammation of the lungs. The following Friday, after the
communion service at his bedside, he said, "I want to be quiet." These
were his last words. The tired artist had finished his work. The voyage
of life was over. He had won enduring fame.



OLE BULL.


In the quaint old town of Bergen, Norway, so strange with its narrow
streets, peculiar costumes, and open-hearted people, that no traveller
can ever forget it, was born, Feb. 5, 1810, Ole Bull, the oldest in a
family of ten children. His father was an able chemist, and his mother a
woman of fine manners and much intelligence. All the relatives were
musical, and at the little gatherings for the purpose of cultivating
this talent, the child Ole would creep under table or sofa, and listen
enraptured for hours, often receiving a whipping when discovered.

He loved music intensely, fancying when he played alone in the meadows,
that he heard nature sing, as the bluebells were moved among the grasses
by the wind. When he was four years old, his uncle gave him a yellow
violin, which he kissed with great delight, learning the notes at the
same time as his primer. Although forbidden to play till study-hours
were over, he sometimes disobeyed, and was punished both at home and at
school.

[Illustration: Ole Bull.

(From his Memoirs, by SARA C. BULL.)]

Finally, at eight, through the good sense of his mother, a
music-teacher was provided, and his father bought him a new red violin.
The child could not sleep for thinking of it; so the first night after
its purchase he stole into the room where it lay, in his night-clothes,
to take one peep at the precious thing. He said years after, with tears
in his eyes at the painful remembrance, "The violin was so red, and the
pretty pearl screws did smile at me so! I pinched the strings just a
little with my fingers. It smiled at me ever more and more. I took up
the bow and looked at it. It said to me it would be pleasant to try it
across the strings. So I did try it, just a very, very little, and it
did sing to me so sweetly. At first, I did play very soft. But presently
I did begin a capriccio, which I like very much, and it do go ever
louder and louder; and I forgot that it was midnight and that everybody
was asleep. Presently I hear something crack! and the next minute I feel
my father's whip across my shoulders. My little red violin dropped on
the floor, and was broken. I weep much for it, but it did no good. They
did have a doctor to it next day, but it never recovered its health."

Pitiful it is that sometimes parents are so lacking in judgment as to
stifle the best things in a child's nature! Guiding is wise; forcing
usually ends in disaster. In two years, Ole could play pieces which his
teacher found it impossible to perform. He began to compose melodies,
imitating nature in the song of birds, brooks, and the roar of
waterfalls; and would hide in caves or in clumps of bushes, where he
could play his own weird improvisations. When he could not make his
violin do as he wished, he would fling it away impetuously, and not
touch it again for a long time. Then he would perhaps get up in the
middle of the night, and play at his open window, forgetting that
anybody might be awakened by it. Sometimes he played incessantly for
days, scarcely eating or sleeping. He had no pleasure in fishing or
shooting, on account of the pain inflicted,--a feeling seemingly common
to noble and refined natures,--though he greatly enjoyed anything
athletic.

At fourteen, having heard of Paganini, he went to his grandparent, of
whom he was very fond, and said, "Dear grandmother, can't I have some of
Paganini's music?"

"Don't tell any one," was the reply; "but I will try to buy a piece of
his for you if you are a good child."

Shortly after this an old miser, of whom the Bergen boys were afraid,
called Ole into his house one day as he was passing, and said, "Are you
the boy that plays the fiddle?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then come with me. I have a fiddle I bought in England, that I want to
show you."

The fiddle needed a bridge and sounding-post, and these the boy gladly
whittled out, and then played for the old man his favorite air, "God
save the King." He was treated to cakes and milk, and promised to come
again. The next afternoon, what was his surprise to receive four pairs
of doves, with a blue ribbon around the neck of one, and a card attached
bearing the name of "Ole Bull." This present was more precious than the
diamonds he received in later years from the hands of royalty.

Ole's father, with a practical turn of mind, urged his being a
clergyman, as he honored that profession, and well knew that music and
art usually furnish a small bank account. A private tutor, Musæus by
name, was therefore engaged. This man had the unique habit of kneeling
down to pray before he whipped a boy, and asking that the punishment
might redound to the good of the lad. He soon made up his mind that
Ole's violin and theology were incompatible, and forbade his playing it.
Ole and his brothers bore his harsh methods as long as possible, when
one morning at half past four, as the teacher was dragging the youngest
boy out of bed, Ole sprang upon him and gave him a vigorous beating. The
smaller boys put their heads out from under the bed-clothes and cried
out, "Don't give up, Ole! Don't give up! Give it to him with all your
might!" The whole household soon appeared upon the scene, and though
little was said, the private feeling seemed to be that a salutary lesson
had been imparted.

At eighteen, Ole was sent to the University of Christiana, his father
beseeching him that he would not yield to his passion for music. On his
arrival, some Bergen students asked him to play for a charitable
association.

"But," said Ole, "my father has forbidden me to play."

"Would your father prevent your doing an act of charity?"

"Well, this alters the case a little, and I can write to him, and claim
his pardon."

After this he played nearly all night at the home of one of the
professors, saying to himself that his father would be pleased if the
Faculty liked him, and the next morning failed in his Latin
examinations! In despair, he stated the case to the professor, who
replied, "My good fellow, this is the very best thing that could have
happened to you! Do you believe yourself fitted for a curacy in Finmark
or a mission among the Laps? Certainly not! It is the opinion of your
friends that you should travel abroad. Meanwhile, old Thrane having been
taken ill, you are appointed _ad interim_ Musical Director of the
Philharmonic and Dramatic Societies." A month later, by the death of
Thrane, he came into this position, having gained the pardon of his
disappointed father.

But he was restless at Christiana. He desired to know whether he really
had genius or not, and determined to go to Cassell, to see Louis Spohr,
who was considered a master. The great man was not sufficiently great to
be interested in an unknown lad, and coolly said, when Ole remarked
politely, "I have come more than five hundred miles to hear you," "Very
well, you can now go to Nordhausen; I am to attend a musical festival
there."

Ole went to the festival, and was so disappointed because the methods
and interpretation were different from his own, that he resolved to go
back to classic studies, feeling that he had no genius for music. Still
he was not satisfied. He would go to Paris, and hear Berlioz and other
great men. Giving three concerts at Trondhjeim and Bergen, by which he
made five hundred dollars, he found himself in possession of the needed
funds. When he arrived in this great city, everybody was eagerly looking
out for himself. Some were in pursuit of pleasure; but most, as is the
case everywhere, were in pursuit of bread and shelter. Nobody cared to
hear his violin. Nobody cared about his recommendations from far-off
Norway. In vain he tried to make engagements. He had no one to speak for
him, and the applicants were numberless.

Madam Malibran was singing nightly to crowded houses, and the poor
violinist would now and then purchase one of the topmost seats, and
listen to that marvellous voice. His money was gradually melting away.
Finally, an elderly gentleman who boarded at the same house, having
begged him to take what little money he possessed out of the bank, as it
was not a safe place, stole every cent, together with Ole's clothes, and
left him entirely destitute.

An acquaintance now told him of a boarding-place where there were
several music-teachers, and gave security for his board for one
month,--twelve dollars. Soon the friend and the boarding-mistress grew
cold and suspicious. Nothing tries friendship like asking the loan of
money. At last his condition becoming known to a person, whom he
afterward learned was Vidocq, the noted Chief of Police, he was shown by
him to a gaming-table, where he made one hundred and sixty dollars.
"What a hideous joy I felt," he said afterward; "what a horrid pleasure
to hold in the hand one's own soul saved by the spoil of others!" He
could not gamble again, though starvation actually stared him in the
face.

Cholera was sweeping through the city, and had taken two persons from
the house where he lodged. He was again penniless and wellnigh
despairing. But he would not go back to Christiana. The river Seine
looked inviting, and he thought death would be a relief. He was nervous
and his brain throbbed. Finally he saw a placard in a window, "Furnished
rooms to let." He was exhausted, but would make one more effort.

An elderly lady answered his query by saying that they had no vacant
rooms, when her pretty granddaughter, Alexandrine Félicie, called out,
"Look at him, grandmamma!" Putting on her glasses, the tears filled her
eyes, as she saw a striking resemblance to her son who had died. The
next day found him at Madam Villeminot's house, very ill of brain fever.
When he regained consciousness, she assured him that he need not worry
about the means for payment. When, however, the Musical Lyceum of
Christiana learned of his struggles, they sent him eight hundred
dollars.

Becoming acquainted about this time with Monsieur Lacour, a dealer in
violins, who thought he had discovered that a certain kind of varnish
would increase sweetness of tone, Ole Bull was requested to play on one
of his instruments at a soirée, given by a Duke of the Italian Legation.
An elegant company were present. The intense heat soon brought out the
odor of assafoetida in the varnish. The young man became embarrassed
and then excited, and played as though beside himself. The player was
advertised, whether Monsieur Lacour's instruments were or not; for
Marshal Ney's son, the Duke of Montebello, at once invited him to
breakfast, and presided over a concert for him, whereby the violinist
made three hundred dollars. The tide had turned at last, and little
Félicie Villeminot had done it with her "Look at him, grandmamma!"

As the Grand Opera was still closed to him, he made a concert tour
through Switzerland and Italy. In Milan, one of the musical journals
said, "He is not master of himself; he has no style; he is an untrained
musician. If he be a diamond, he is certainly in the rough and
unpolished."

Ole Bull went at once to the publisher and asked who had written the
article. "If you want the responsible person," said the editor, "I am
he."

"No," said the artist, "I have not come to call the writer to account,
but to thank him. The man who wrote that article understands music; but
it is not enough to tell me my faults; he must tell me how to rid myself
of them."

"You have the spirit of the true artist," replied the journalist.

The same evening he took Ole Bull to the critic, a man over seventy,
from whom he learned much that was valuable. He at once gave six months
to study under able masters, before again appearing in public. He was,
however, an earnest student all through life, never being satisfied with
his attainments.

At Venice he was highly praised, but at Bologna he won the celebrity
which continued through life. Malibran was to sing in two concerts, but
feigned illness when she learned that the man she loved, De Beriot, was
to receive a smaller sum than herself, and would not appear. The manager
of the theatre was in despair. Meantime, in a poor hotel, in an upper
room, Ole Bull was composing his concerto in the daytime, and playing on
his violin at night by his open window. Rossini's first wife heard the
music, and said, "It must be a violin, but a divine one. That will be a
substitute for De Beriot and Malibran. I must go and tell Zampieri" (the
manager).

On the night of the concert, after Ole Bull had been two hours in bed
from weariness, Zampieri appeared, and asked him to improvise. He was
delighted, and exclaiming, "Malibran may now have her headaches,"
hurried the young artist off to the theatre. The audience was of course
cold and disappointed till Ole Bull began to play. Then the people
seemed to hold their breath. When the curtain fell, he almost swooned
with exhaustion, but the house shook with applause. Flowers were
showered upon him. He was immediately engaged for the next concert; a
large theatre was offered him free of expense, one man buying one
hundred tickets, and the admiring throng drew his carriage to the hotel,
while a procession with torchlights acted as guard of honor.

Ole Bull had stepped into the glory of fame in a single night.
Henceforth, while there was to be much of trial and disappointment, as
come to all, he was to be forever the idol of two continents, drawing
crowded houses, honored by the great, and universally mourned at his
death. He had come to fame as by accident, but he had made himself
worthy of fame.

Malibran at first seemed hurt at his wonderful success in her stead, but
she soon became one of his warmest friends, saying, "It is your own
fault that I did not treat you as you deserved. A man like you should
step forth with head erect in the full light of day, that we may
recognize his noble blood."

From here he played with great success at Florence and Rome, at the
latter city composing his celebrated "Polacca Guerriera" in a single
night, writing till four o'clock in the morning. It was first conceived
while he stood alone at Naples, at midnight, watching Mount Vesuvius
aflame.

Returning to Paris, he found the Grand Opera open to him. Here, at his
first performance, his a-string snapped; he turned deathly pale, but he
transposed the remainder of the piece, and finished it on three strings.
Meyerbeer, who was present, could not believe it possible that the
string had really broken.

He was now twenty-six, famous and above want. What more fitting than
that he should marry pretty Félicie Villeminot, and share with her the
precious life she had saved? They were married in the summer of 1836,
and their love was a beautiful and enduring one until her death
twenty-six years afterward. Though absent from her much of the time
necessarily, his letters breathe a pure and ardent affection. Going to
England soon after, and being at the house of the Duke of Devonshire at
Chatsworth, he writes, "How long does the time seem that deprives me of
seeing you! I embrace you very tenderly. The word _home_ has above all
others the greatest charm for me."

In London, from three to seven thousand persons crowded to hear him. The
"Times" said, "His command of the instrument, from the top to the
bottom of the scale--and he has a scale of his own of three complete
octaves on each string--is absolutely perfect." At Liverpool he received
four thousand dollars for a single night, taking the place of Malibran,
who had brought on a hemorrhage resulting in death, by forcing a tone,
and holding it so long that the audience were astonished. Ole Bull came
near sharing her fate. In playing "Polacca," the hall being large and
the orchestra too strong, he ruptured a blood vessel, and his coat had
to be cut from him.

In sixteen months he gave two hundred and seventy-four concerts in the
United Kingdom. Afterwards, at St. Petersburg, he played to five
thousand persons, the Emperor sending him an autograph letter of
affection, and the Empress an emerald ring set with one hundred and
forty diamonds. Shortly after this his father died, speaking with pride
of Ole, and thinking he heard divine music.

On his return to Norway, at the request of the King, he gave five
concerts at Stockholm, the last netting him five thousand dollars. So
moved was the King when Ole Bull played before him at the palace, that
he rose and stood till the "Polacca" was finished. He presented the
artist with the Order of Vasa, set in brilliants.

In Christiana, the students gave him a public dinner, and crowned him
with laurel. He often played for the peasants here and in Bergen, and
was beloved by the poor as by the rich. At Copenhagen he was presented
at Court, the King giving him a snuff-box set in diamonds. Hans Andersen
became his devoted friend, as did Thorwaldsen while he was in Rome. He
now went to Cassell, and Spohr hastened to show him every attention, as
though to make amends for the coldness when Ole Bull was poor and
unknown. At Salzburg he invited the wife of Mozart to his concerts. For
her husband he had surpassing admiration. He used to say that no mortal
could write Mozart's "Requiem" and live.

While in Hungary, his first child, Ole, died. He wrote his wife, "God
knows how much I have suffered! I still hope and work, not for
myself,--for you, my family, my country, my Norway, of which I am
proud."

All this time he was working very hard. He said, "I must correspond with
the directors of the theatres; must obtain information regarding the
people with whom I am to deal; I must make my appointments for concerts
and rehearsals; have my music copied, correct the scores, compose, play,
travel nights. I am always cheated, and in everlasting trouble. I
reproach myself when everything does not turn out for the best, and am
consumed with grief. I really believe I should succumb to all these
demands and fatigues if it were not for my drinking cold water, and
bathing in it every morning and evening."

In November, 1843, urged by Fanny Elssler, he visited America. At
first, in New York, some of the prominent violinists opposed him; but he
steadily made his way. When Mr. James Gordon Bennett offered him the
columns of the "Herald," that he might reply to those who were assailing
him, he said in his broken English, "I tink, Mr. Bennett, it is best tey
writes against me, and I plays against tem." Of his playing in New York,
Mrs. Lydia Maria Child wrote, "His bow touched the strings as if in
sport, and brought forth light leaps of sound, with electric rapidity,
yet clear in their distinctness. He played on four strings at once, and
produced the rich harmony of four instruments. While he was playing, the
rustling of a leaf might have been heard; and when he closed, the
tremendous bursts of applause told how the hearts of thousands leaped
like one. His first audience were beside themselves with delight, and
the orchestra threw down their instruments in ecstatic wonder."

From New York he took a successful trip South. That he was not
effeminate while deeply poetic, a single incident will show. After a
concert, a man came to him and said he wished the diamond in his violin
bow, given him by the Duke of Devonshire. Ole Bull replied that as it
was a gift, he could neither sell it nor give it away.

"But I am going to have that stone!" said the man as he drew a bowie
knife from his coat. In an instant Ole Bull had felled the man to the
floor with the edge of his hand across his throat. "The next time I
would kill you," said the musician, with his foot on the man's chest;
"but you may go now." So much did the ruffian admire the muscle and
skill of the artist, that he begged him to accept the knife which he had
intended to use upon him.

During this visit to America he gave two hundred concerts, netting him,
said the "New York Herald," fully eighty thousand dollars, besides
twenty thousand given to charitable associations, and fifteen thousand
paid to assistant artists. "No artist has ever visited our country and
received so many honors. Poems by the hundreds have been written to him;
gold vases, pencils, medals, have been presented to him by various
corporations. His whole remarkable appearance in this country is really
unexampled in glory and fame," said the same newspaper. Ole Bull was
kindness itself to the sick or afflicted. Now he played for Alice and
Phoebe Carey, when unable to leave their home, and now for insane and
blind asylums and at hospitals. He loved America, and called himself
"her adopted son."

On his return to Norway, after great success in Spain, the Queen
bestowing upon him the order of Charles III. and the Portuguese order of
Christus, he determined to build a National Theatre in Bergen, his
birthplace, for the advancement of his nation in the drama and in music.
By great energy, and the bestowal of a large sum of money, the place was
opened in 1850, Ole Bull leading the orchestra. But the Storthing, or
Parliament, declined to give it a yearly appropriation,--perhaps the
development of home talent tended too strongly toward republicanism. The
burden was too great for one man to carry, and the project did not prove
a success.

The next plan of the philanthropist-musician was to buy one hundred and
twenty-five thousand acres of land on the Susquehanna River, in
Pennsylvania, and "found a New Norway, consecrated to liberty, baptized
with independence, and protected by the Union's mighty flag." Soon three
hundred houses were built, a country inn, store, and church, erected by
the founder. To pay the thousands needed for this enterprise he worked
constantly at concert-giving, taking scarcely time to eat his meals. He
laid out five new villages, made arrangements with the government to
cast cannon for her fortresses, and took out patents for a new
smelting-furnace.

While in California, where he was ill with yellow fever, a crushing blow
fell upon him. He learned that he had purchased the land through a
swindling company, his title was invalid, and his fortune was lost. He
could only buy enough land to protect those who had already come from
Norway, and had settled there, and soon became deeply involved in
lawsuits. Hon. E. W. Stoughton of New York, who had never met Ole Bull
personally, volunteered to assist him, and a few thousands were wrested
from the defrauding agent.

On his return to Norway he was accused of speculating with the funds of
his countrymen, which cut him to the heart. A little later, in 1862, his
wife died, worn with ill health, and with her husband's misfortunes, and
his son Thorvald fell from the mast of a sailing-vessel in the
Mediterranean, and was killed.

In the autumn of 1868 he returned to America, and nearly lost his life
in a steamboat collision on the Ohio. He swam to land, saving also his
precious violin. Two years afterward he was married to Miss Thorp of
Madison, Wis., an accomplished lady much his junior in years, who has
lived to write an admirable life of her illustrious husband. A daughter,
Olea, came to gladden his home two years later. When he was sixty-six
years old, he celebrated his birthday by playing his violin on the top
of the great pyramid, Cheops, at the suggestion of King Oscar of Norway
and Sweden.

In the Centennial year he returned to America, and made his home at
Cambridge, in the house of James Russell Lowell, while he was Minister
to England. Here he enjoyed the friendship of such as Longfellow, who
says of him in his "Tales of a Wayside Inn":--

    "The angel with the violin,
    Painted by Raphael, he seemed,

       *       *       *       *       *

    And when he played, the atmosphere
    Was filled with magic, and the ear
    Caught echoes of that Harp of Gold,
    Whose music had so weird a sound,
    The hunted stag forgot to bound,
    The leaping rivulet backward rolled,
    The birds came down from bush and tree,
    The dead came from beneath the sea,
    The maiden to the harper's knee!"

The friend of the highest, he never forgot the lowest. When a colored
barber in Hartford, a lad who was himself a good fiddler, heard Ole Bull
play, the latter having sent him a ticket to his concert, he said,
"Mister, can't you come down to the shop to-morrow to get shaved, and
show me those tricks? I feel powerful bad."

And Ole Bull went to the shop, and showed him how the wonderful playing
was accomplished.

In 1880 Ole Bull sailed, for the last time, to Europe, to his lovely
home at Lysö, an island in the sea, eighteen miles from Bergen. Ill on
the voyage, he was thankful to reach the cherished place. Here, planned
by his own hand, was his elegant home overlooking the ocean; here his
choice music-room upheld by delicate columns and curiously wrought
arches; here the shell-roads he had built; and here the flower-beds he
had planted. The end came soon, on a beautiful day full of sunshine.

The body lay in state in the great music-room till a larger steamer came
to bear it to Bergen. This was met by a convoy of sixteen steamers
ranged on either side; and as the fleet approached the city, all flags
were at half-mast, and guns were fired, which re-echoed through the
mountains. The quay was covered with juniper, and the whole front
festooned with green. As the boat touched the shore, one of Ole Bull's
inimitable melodies was played. Young girls dressed in black bore the
trophies of his success, and distinguished men carried his gold crown
and order, in the procession. The streets were strewn with flowers, and
showered upon the coffin. When the service had been read at the grave by
the pastor, Björnson, the famous author, gave an address. After the
coffin had been lowered and the mourners had departed, hundreds of
peasants came, bringing a green bough, a sprig of fern, or a flower, and
quite filled the grave. Beautiful tribute to a beautiful life!



[Illustration: MEISSONIER.]

MEISSONIER.


The old maxim, that "the gods reward all things to labor," has had fit
illustration in Meissonier. His has been a life of constant, unvaried
toil. He came to Paris a poor, unknown boy, and has worked over fifty
years, till he stands a master in French art.

Jean Louis Ernest Meissonier was born at Lyons, in 1811. His early life
was passed in poverty so grinding that the great artist never speaks of
it, and in such obscurity that scarcely anything is known of his
boyhood. At nineteen he came to Paris to try his fate in one of the
great centres of the world. He, of course, found no open doors, nobody
standing ready to assist genius. Genius must ever open doors for itself.

The lad was a close observer, and had learned to draw accurately. He
could give every variety of costume, and express almost any emotion in
the face of his subject. But he was unknown. He might do good work, but
nobody wanted it. He used to paint by the side of Daubigny in the
Louvre, it is said, for one dollar a yard. Now his "Amateurs in
Painting," a chef-d'oeuvre of six inches in size, is bought by Leon
Say for six thousand dollars. Such is fame.

Time was so necessary in this struggle for bread, that he could sleep
only every other night; and for six months his finances were so low, it
is stated, that he existed on ten cents a week! No wonder that the
sorrows of those days are never mentioned.

His earliest work was painting the tops of bon-bon boxes, and fans. Once
he grew brave enough to take four little sepia drawings to an editor to
illustrate a fairy tale in a magazine for children. The editor said the
drawings were charming, but he could not afford to have them engraved,
and so "returned them with thanks."

His first illustrations in some unknown journal were scenes from the
life of "The Old Bachelor." In the first picture he is represented
making his toilet before the mirror, his wig spread out on the table; in
the second, dining with two friends; in the third, being abused by his
housekeeper; in the fourth, on his death-bed, surrounded by greedy
relations; and in the fifth, the servants ransacking the death-chamber
for the property.

For a universal history he drew figures of Isaiah, St. Paul, and
Charlemagne, besides almost numberless ornamental letters and headings
of chapters. Of course he longed for more remunerative work, for fame;
but he must plod on for months yet. He worked conscientiously, taking
the greatest pains with every detail.

His first picture, exhibited in 1833, when he was twenty-two, called
"The Visitors," an interior view of a house, with an old gentleman
receiving two visitors, all dressed in the costume of James I.,
admirable for its light and shade, was bought by the Society of the
Friends of Art, for twenty dollars. Two years later he made
illustrations for the Bible of the Sieur Raymond, of Holofernes invading
Judea, and Judith appearing before Holofernes. For "Paul and Virginia"
he made forty-three beautiful landscapes. "They contain evidence of long
and careful work in the hot-houses of the 'Jardin des Plantes,' and in
front of the old bric-a-brac dealer's stalls, which used to stand about
the entrance to the Louvre. And how admirably, with the help of these
slowly and scrupulously finished studies, he could reproduce, in an
ornamental letter or floral ornament, a lily broken by the storm, or a
sheaf of Indian arms and musical instruments."

In 1836, his "Chess Players," two men watching intently the moves of
chess, and "The Little Messenger," attracted a crowd of admirers. Each
sold for twenty dollars. He had now struggled for six years in Paris. It
was high time that his unremitting and patient work should find
approval. The people were amazed at so vast an amount of labor in so
small a space. They looked with their magnifying glasses, and found the
work exquisite in detail. They had been accustomed to great canvases,
glowing colors, and heroic or romantic sentiments; but here there was
wonderful workmanship.

When the people began to admire, critics began to criticize. They said
"Meissonier can depict homelike or ordinary scenes, but not historic."
He said nothing, but soon brought out "Diderot" among the philosophers,
Grimm, D'Alembert, Baron Holbach, and others in the seventeenth century.
Then they said he can draw interiors only, and "on a canvas not much
larger than his thumb-nail." He soon produced the "Portrait of the
Sergeant," "one of the most daring experiments in the painting of light,
in modern art. The man stands out there in the open by himself,
literally bathed in light, and he makes a perfect picture." Then they
were sure that he could not paint movement. He replied by painting
"Rixe," two ruffians who are striving to fight, but are withheld by
friends. This was given by Louis Napoleon to the Prince Consort.

Meissonier also showed that he could depict grand scenes, by "Moreau and
Dessoles on the eve of the battle of Hohenlinden," the "Retreat from
Russia," and the "Emperor at Solferino." Into these he put his
admiration for Napoleon the Great, and his adoration for his defeated
country. In the former picture, the two generals are standing on a
precipice, surveying the snow-covered battle-field with a glass; the
trees are bending under a strong wind, and the cloaks of the generals
are fluttering behind them. One feels the power of this picture.

In painting the "Retreat from Russia," the artist borrowed the identical
coat worn by Napoleon, and had it copied, crease for crease, and button
for button. "When I painted that picture," he said, "I executed a great
portion of it out of doors. It was midwinter, and the ground was covered
with snow. Sometimes I sat at my easel for five or six hours together,
endeavoring to seize the exact aspect of the winter atmosphere. My
servant placed a hot foot-stove under my feet, which he renewed from
time to time, but I used to get half-frozen and terribly tired."

He had a wooden horse made in imitation of the white charger of the
Emperor; and seating himself on this, he studied his own figure in a
mirror. His studies for this picture were almost numberless,--a horse's
head, an uplifted leg, cuirasses, helmets, models of horses in red wax,
etc. He also prepared a miniature landscape, strewn with white powder
resembling snow, with models of heavy wheels running through it, that he
might study the furrow made in that terrible march home from burning
Moscow. All this was work,--hard, patient, exacting work.

It had now become evident to the world, and to the critics as well, that
Meissonier was a master; that he was not confined to small canvases nor
home scenes.

In 1855 he received the grand medal; in 1856 he was made an officer of
the Legion of Honor; in 1861, a member of the Institute; and in 1867,
at the International Exhibition, he received the grand medal again. When
the prizes were given by the Emperor, the "Battle of Solferino" was
placed in the centre of the space cleared for the ceremony, with the
works of Reimers, the Russian painter, Knaus of Prussia, Rousseau, the
French landscape-painter, and others. This painting represents Napoleon
III. in front of his staff, looking upon the battle "as a cool player
studies a chess-board. On the right, in the foreground, some
artillery-men are manoeuvring their guns. The corpses of a French
soldier and two white Austrians, torn to rags by some explosion, show
where the battle had passed by."

Meissonier's paintings now brought enormous prices. His "Marshal Saxe
and his Staff" brought eight thousand six hundred dollars in New York;
the "Soldiers at Cards," in 1876, in the same city, eleven thousand five
hundred dollars; in 1867, his "Cavalry Charge" was sold to Mr. Probasco
of Cincinnati, for thirty thousand dollars; and the "Battle of
Friedland," upon which he is said to have worked fifteen years, to A. T.
Stewart, of New York, for sixty thousand dollars. Every figure in this
was drawn from life, and the horses moulded in wax. It represents
Napoleon on horseback, on a slight elevation, his marshals grouped
around him, holding aloft his cocked hat in salutation, as the soldiers
pass hurriedly before him.

Edmund About once wrote, "To cover M. Meissonier's pictures with gold
pieces simply would be to buy them for nothing; and the practice has now
been established of covering them with bank notes."

"The Blacksmith," shoeing a patient old cart-horse, perfect in anatomy;
"La Halte," some soldiers at an inn, now in Hertford House gallery; and
"La Barricade," a souvenir of the civil war, are among the favorite
pictures of this famous man. And yet as one looks at some of the
exquisite work about a convivial scene, the words of the great Boston
painter, William Hunt, come to mind. Being shown a picture, very fine in
technique, by a Munich artist, of a drunken man, holding a half-filled
glass of wine, he said, "It's skilfully done, but _what is_ the _use_ of
_doing_ it! The subject isn't worthy of the painter."

Rarely does a woman appear in Meissonier's pictures. He has done nothing
to deprave morals, which is more than can be said of some French art.
His portrait of Madame Henri Thénard was greatly admired, while that of
Mrs. Mackay was not satisfactory, and was said to have been destroyed by
her. Few persons, however, can afford to destroy a Meissonier. When told
once that "he was a fortunate man, as he could possess as many
Meissoniers as he pleased," he replied, "No, no, I cannot; that would
ruin me. They are a great deal too dear."

He lives in the Boulevard Malesherbes, near the lovely Parc Monceau, in
the heart of the artists' quarter in Paris. His handsome home, designed
by himself in every detail, is in the Italian Renaissance style. He has
two studies,--one a quiet nook, where he can escape interruptions; and
one very large, where are gathered masterpieces from every part of the
world. Here is "a courtyard of the time of Louis XIII., brilliantly
crowded with figures in gala dress; a bride of the same period, stepping
into an elegant carriage of a crimson color, for which Meissonier had a
miniature model built by a coach-maker, to study from; a superb work of
Titian,--a figure of an Italian woman in a robe of green velvet, the
classic outline of her head shown against a crimson velvet curtain in
the background; a sketch of Bonaparte on horseback, at the head of his
picturesquely dressed staff, reviewing the young conscripts of the army
of Italy, who are cheering as he passes;" and many more valuable
pictures. Here, too, are bridles of black leather, with silver
ornaments, once the property of Murat.

One picture here, of especial interest, was painted at his summer home
at Poissy, when his house was crowded with German soldiers in the war of
1871. "To escape their company," says M. Claretie, "in the rage that he
experienced at the national defeat, he shut himself up in his studio,
and threw upon the canvas the most striking, the most vivid, the most
avenging of allegories: he painted Paris, enveloped in a veil of
mourning, defending herself against the enemy, with her soldiers and
her dying grouped round a tattered flag; sailors, officers, and
fusiliers, soldiers, national guards, suffering women, and dying
children; and, hovering in the air above them, with the Prussian eagle
by her side, was Famine, wan and haggard Famine, accomplishing the work
that the bombardment had failed to achieve."

His summer home, like the one in Paris, is fitted up luxuriously. He
designed most of the furniture and the silver service for his table.
Flowers, especially geraniums and tea roses, blossom in profusion about
the grounds, while great trees and fountains make it a restful and
inviting place. The walls of the dining-room are hung with crimson and
gold satin damask, against which are several of his own pictures. An
engraver at work, clad in a red dressing-gown, and seated in a room hung
with ancient tapestry, has the face of his son Charles, also an artist,
looking out from the frame. One of Madame Meissonier also adorns this
room.

Near by are his well-filled stables, his favorite horse, Rivoli, being
often used for his model. He is equally fond of dogs, and has several
expensive hounds. How strange all this, compared with those early days
of pinching poverty! He is rarely seen in public, because he has
learned--what, alas! some people learn too late in life--that there is
no success without one commands his or her time. It must be frittered
away neither by calls nor parties; neither by idle talk nor useless
visits. Painting or writing for an hour a day never made greatness. Art
and literature will give no masterships except to devotees. The young
lady, sauntering down town to look at ribbons, never makes a George
Eliot. The young man, sauntering down town to look at the buyers of
ribbons, never makes a Meissonier. Nature is rigid in her laws. Her
gifts only grow to fruitage in the hands of workers.

Meissonier is now seventy-four, with long gray beard and hair, round,
full face, and bright hazel eyes. His friend, Claretie, says of him,
"This man, who lives in a palace, is as moderate as a soldier on the
march. This artist, whose canvases are valued by the half-million, is as
generous as a nabob. He will give to a charity sale a picture worth the
price of a house. Praised as he is by all, he has less conceit in his
nature than a wholesale painter."

       *       *       *       *       *

January 31, 1891, at his home in Paris, the great artist passed away.
His illness was very brief. The funeral services took place at the
Church of the Madeleine, which was thronged with the leaders of art and
letters. An imposing military cortege accompanied the body to its last
resting-place at Poissy, the summer home of the artist, on the Seine,
ten miles from Versailles.



[Illustration: GEORGE WILLIAM CHILDS.]

GEORGE W. CHILDS.


The "Public Ledger" of Philadelphia, and its owner, are known the world
over. Would we see the large-hearted, hospitable millionaire, who has
come to honor through his own industry, let us enter the elegant
building occupied by his newspaper.

Every portion is interesting. The rooms where editors and assistants
work are large, light, and airy, and as tasteful as parlors. Alas! how
unhomelike and barren are some of the newspaper offices, where gifted
men toil from morning till night, with little time for sleep, and still
less for recreation. Mr. Childs has thought of the comfort and health of
his workmen, for he, too, was a poor boy, and knows what it is to labor.

He has also been generous with his men in the matter of wages. "He
refused to reduce the rate of payment of his compositors,
notwithstanding that the Typographical Union had formerly sanctioned a
reduction, and notwithstanding that the reduced scale was operative in
every printing-office in Philadelphia except his own. He said, 'My
business is prosperous; why should not my men share in my prosperity?'
This act of graciousness, while it endeared him to the hearts of his
beneficiaries, was commented on most favorably at home and abroad. That
his employés, in a formal interview with him, expressed their
willingness to accept the reduced rates, simply augments the generosity
of his act." Strikes among laborers would be few and far between if
employers were like George W. Childs.

Each person in his employ has a summer vacation of two or more weeks,
his wages being continued meantime, and paid in advance, with a liberal
sum besides. On Christmas every man, woman, and boy receives a present,
amounting, of course, to many thousands of dollars annually. Mr. Childs
has taken care of many who have become old or disabled in his service.
The foreman of his composing-room had worked for him less than twelve
months before he failed in health. For years this man has drawn his
weekly pay, though never going to the establishment. This is indeed
practical Christianity.

Besides caring for the living, in 1868 this wise employer of labor
purchased two thousand feet in Woodlands for a printers' cemetery, and
gave it to the Philadelphia Typographical Society, with a sum of money
to keep the grounds in good order yearly. The first person buried beyond
the handsome marble gothic gateway was a destitute and aged printer who
had died at the almshouse and whose dying message to Mr. Childs was that
he could not bear to fill a pauper's grave. His wish was cordially
granted.

But after seeing the admirable provision made for his workmen, we must
enter the private office of Mr. Childs. He is most accessible to all,
with no airs of superior position, welcoming persons from every clime
daily, between the hours of eleven and one. He listens courteously to
any requests, and then bids you make yourself at home in this elegant
office, that certainly has no superior in the world, perhaps no rival.

The room itself in the Queen Anne style, with exquisite wood-carving,
marble tiles, brass ornaments, and painted glass, is a gem. Here is his
motto, a noble one, and thoroughly American, "Nihil sine labore," and
well his life has illustrated it. All honor to every man or woman who
helps to make labor honored in this country. The design of the ceiling
was suggested by a room in Coombe Abbey, Warwickshire, the seat of the
Earls Craven, fitted up by one of its lords for the reception of Queen
Elizabeth. Over a dozen valuable clocks are seen, one made in Amsterdam
over two hundred years ago, which, besides the time of day, gives the
phases of the moon, the days of the week, and the month; another, a
clock constructed by David Rittenhouse, the astronomer of the
Revolution, in the old colonial days, which plays a great variety of
music, has a little planetarium attached, and nearly six thousand teeth
in wheels. It was made for Joseph Potts, who paid six hundred and forty
dollars for it. The Spanish Minister in 1778 offered eight hundred for
it, that he might present it to his sovereign. Mr. Childs has about
fifty rare clocks in his various homes, one of these costing six
thousand dollars.

Here is a marble statuette of Savonarola, the Florentine preacher of the
fifteenth century; the little green harp which belonged to Tom Moore,
and on which he used to play in the homes of the great; a colossal suit
of antique French armor, one hundred and fifty years old; a miniature
likeness of George Washington, handsomely encased in gold, bequeathed by
him to a relative, a lock of his hair in the back of the picture; a
miniature ship, made from the wood of the _Alliance Frigate_, the only
one of our first navy, of the class of frigates, which escaped capture
or destruction during the Revolutionary war. This boat, and a silver
waiter, presented after the famous battle of New Orleans, were both the
property of President Jackson, and were taken by him to the Hermitage.
Here, also, is a photograph of "Old Ironsides" Stewart, in a frame made
from the frigate _Constitution_, in which great victories were achieved,
besides many portraits given by famous people, with their autographs.

After a delightful hour spent in looking at these choice things, Mr.
Childs bids us take our choice of some rare china cups and saucers. We
choose one dainty with red birds, and carry it away as a pleasant
remembrance of a princely giver, in a princely apartment.

Mr. Childs has had a most interesting history. Born in Baltimore, he
entered the United States navy at thirteen, where he remained for
fifteen months. At fourteen he came to Philadelphia, poor, but with
courage and a quick mind, and found a place to work in a bookstore. Here
he remained for four years, doing his work faithfully, and to the best
of his ability. At the end of these years he had saved a few hundred
dollars, and opened a little store for himself in the Ledger Building,
where the well-known newspaper, the "Public Ledger," was published.

He was ambitious, as who is not, that comes to prominence; and one day
he made the resolution that he would sometime be the owner of this great
paper and its building! Probably had this resolution been known, his
acquaintances would have regarded the youth as little less than crazy.
But the boy who willed this had a definite aim. Besides, he was never
idle, he was economical, his habits were the best, and why should not
such a boy succeed?

In three years, when he was twenty-one, he had become the head of a
publishing house,--Childs & Peterson. He had a keen sense of what the
public needed. He brought out Kane's "Arctic Expedition," from which the
author, Dr. Kane, realized seventy thousand dollars. Two hundred
thousand copies of Peterson's "Familiar Science" were sold. Allibone
dedicated his great work, "Dictionary of English and American Authors,"
to the energetic and appreciative young publisher.

He had now acquired wealth, sooner almost than he could have hoped.
Before him were bright prospects as a publisher; but the prize that he
had set out to win was to own the "Public Ledger."

The opportunity came in December, 1864. But his paper was losing money.
His friends advised against taking such a burden; he would surely fail.
But Mr. Childs had faith in himself. He expected to win where others
lost. He bought the property, doubled the subscription rates, lowered
the advertising, excluded everything questionable from the columns of
his paper, made his editorials brief, yet comprehensive, until under his
judicious management the journal reached the large circulation of ninety
thousand daily. For ten years he has given the "Ledger Almanac" to every
subscriber, costing five thousand dollars annually. The yearly profits,
it is stated, have been four hundred thousand dollars. All this has not
been accomplished without thought and labor.

Fortune, of course, had come, and fame. He built homes, elegant ones, in
Philadelphia and at Newport, but these are not simply places in which to
spend money, but centres of hospitality and culture.

His library is one of the most charming places in this country. The
wood-work is carved ebony with gold, the bookshelves six feet high on
every side, and the ceiling built in sunken panels, blue and gold. In
the centre is a table made from ebony, brought from Africa by Paul du
Chaillu. One looks with interest upon the handsome volumes of the
standard authors, but other things are of deeper interest.

Here is an original sermon of Rev. Cotton Mather; the poems of Leigh
Hunt, which he presented to Charles Dickens; the original manuscript of
Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Consular Experiences"; the first edition of the
"Scarlet Letter," with a note to Mr. Childs from the great novelist;
Bryant's manuscript of the "First Book of the Iliad"; James Russell
Lowell's "June Idyl," begun in 1850 and finished eighteen years
afterward; the manuscript of James Fenimore Cooper's "Life of Captain
Richard Somers"; and Edgar Allan Poe's "Murders in the Rue Morgue,"
seventeen pages of large paper written small and close.

Here is an autograph letter from Poe, in which he offers to his
publishers thirty-three short stories, enough to fill two large volumes,
"On the terms which you allowed me before; that is, you receive all
profits and allow me twenty copies for distribution to friends." From
this it seems that Poe had the _usual_ struggles of literary people.

One of the most unique things of the library is the manuscript of "Our
Mutual Friend," bound in fine brown morocco. The skeleton of the novel
is written through several pages, showing how carefully Dickens thought
out his plan and his characters; the paper is light blue, written over
with dark blue ink, with many erasures and changes. Here are also
fifty-six volumes of Dickens' works, with an autograph letter in each,
from the author to Mr. Childs. Here is Lord Byron's desk on which he
wrote "Don Juan." Now we look upon the smallest book ever printed,
Dante's "Divina Commedia," bound in Turkey gilt, less than two and
one-fourth inches long by one and one-half inches wide.

The collection of Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall, now the property of Mr.
Childs, letters and manuscripts from Lamb, Hawthorne, Mary Somerville,
Harriet Martineau, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Browning, and hundreds of
others, is of almost priceless value. In 1879 Mrs. Hall gave the Bible
of Tom Moore to Mr. Childs, "an honored and much loved citizen of the
United States, as the best and most valuable offering she could make to
him, as a grateful tribute of respect, regard, and esteem."

Another valuable book is made up of the portraits of the presidents,
with an autograph letter from each. Dom Pedro of Brazil sent, in 1876, a
work on his empire, with his picture and his autograph. George Peabody
sat for a full-length portrait for Mr. Childs. The album of Mrs. Childs
contains the autographs of a great number of the leading men and women
of the world.

One could linger here for days, but we must see the lovely country-seat
called "Wootton," some distance out from the city. The house is in Queen
Anne style, surrounded by velvety lawns, a wealth of evergreen and
exquisite plants, brought over from South America and Africa. The farm
adjoining is a delight to see. Here is the dairy built of white
flintstone, while the milkroom has stained glass windows, as though it
were a chapel. The beautiful grounds are open every Thursday to
visitors.

Here have been entertained the Duke and Duchess of Buckingham, the Duke
of Sutherland, Lord Rosse, Lord Dufferin, Sir Stafford Northcote,
Herbert Spencer, John Waller, M.P., of the "London Times," Dean Stanley,
Thomas Hughes, Dickens, Grant, Evarts; indeed, the famous of two
hemispheres.

With all this elegance, befitting royalty, Mr. Childs has been a
constant and generous giver. For his own city he was one of the foremost
to secure Fairmount Park, and helped originate the Zoölogical Gardens,
the Pennsylvania Museum, and the School of Industrial Arts. He gave ten
thousand dollars for a Centennial Exposition. He has been one of General
Grant's most generous helpers; yet while doing for the great, he does
not forget the unknown. He gives free excursions to poor children, a
dinner annually to the newsboys, and aids hundreds who are in need of an
education.

He has placed a stained glass window in Westminster Abbey, in
commemoration of George Herbert and William Cowper; given largely to a
memorial window for Thomas Moore at Bronham, England; for a stone to
mark Leigh Hunt's resting-place in Kensal Green; and toward a monument
for Poe.

Mr. Childs has come to eminence by energy, integrity, and true faith in
himself. He has had a noble ambition, and has worked towards it. He has
proved to all other American boys that worth and honest dealing will win
success, in a greater or less degree. That well-known scientist, Prof.
Joseph Henry, of the Smithsonian Institute, said, "Mr. Childs is a
wonderful man. His ability to apply the power of money in advancing the
well-being of his fellow-men is unrivalled. He is naturally kind and
sympathetic, and these generous feelings are exalted, not depressed, by
his success in accumulating a fortune.... Like man in the classification
of animals, he forms a genus in himself. He stands alone; there is not
another in the wide world like him."

       *       *       *       *       *

Mr. Childs died at 3.01 A.M. February 3, 1894 from the effects of a
stroke of paralysis sustained at the Ledger office on January 18. He was
nearly sixty-five years of age. He was buried on February 6, in the
Drexel Mausoleum in Woodland Cemetery beside his life long friend.



[Illustration: DWIGHT L. MOODY]

DWIGHT L. MOODY.


"There's no chance to get in there. There's six thousand persons inside,
and two thousand outside."

This was said to Dr. Magoun, President of Iowa College, and myself,
after we had waited for nearly an hour, outside of Spurgeon's
Tabernacle, in London, in the hope of hearing Mr. Moody preach. Finally,
probably through courtesy to Americans, we obtained seats. The six
thousand in this great church were sitting as though spellbound. The
speaker was a man in middle life, rugged, strong, and plain in dress and
manner. His words were so simple that a child could understand them. Now
tears came into the eyes of most of the audience, as he told some
touching incident, and now faces grew sober as the people examined their
own hearts under the searching words. There was no consciousness about
the preacher; no wild gesture nor loud tone. Only one expression seemed
applicable, "a man dead in earnest."

And who was this man whom thousands came to hear? Not a learned man,
not a rich man, but one of the greatest evangelists the world has ever
seen. Circumstances were all against him, but he conquered
circumstances.

Dwight Lyman Moody was born at Northfield, Mass., Feb. 5, 1837. His
father, a stone-mason and farmer, died when the boy was four years old,
broken down with reverses in business. His mother was left with seven
sons and two daughters, the eldest a boy only fifteen. What happened to
this lad was well told by Mr. Moody, a few years since. "Soon after my
father's death the creditors came in and took everything. One calamity
after another swept over the entire household. Twins were added to the
family, and my mother was taken sick. To the eldest boy my mother looked
as a stay in her calamity; but all at once that boy became a wanderer.
He had been reading some of the trashy novels, and the belief had seized
him that he had only to go away, to make a fortune. Away he went. I can
remember how eagerly she used to look for tidings of that boy; how she
used to send us to the post-office to see if there was a letter from
him, and recollect how we used to come back with the sad news, 'No
letter!' I remember how in the evenings we used to sit beside her in
that New England home, and we would talk about our father; but the
moment the name of that boy was mentioned she would hush us into
silence. Some nights, when the wind was very high, and the house, which
was upon a hill, would tremble at every gust, the voice of my mother was
raised in prayer for that wanderer, who had treated her so unkindly. I
used to think she loved him better than all of us put together, and I
believe she did.

"On a Thanksgiving day she used to set a chair for him, thinking he
would return home. Her family grew up, and her boys left home. When I
got so that I could write, I sent letters all over the country, but
could find no trace of him. One day, while in Boston, the news reached
me that he had returned. While in that city, I remember how I used to
look for him in every store--he had a mark on his face--but I never got
any trace. One day, while my mother was sitting at the door, a stranger
was seen coming toward the house, and when he came to the door he
stopped. My mother didn't know her boy. He stood there with folded arms
and great beard flowing down his breast, his tears trickling down his
face. When my mother saw those tears, she cried, 'Oh, it's my lost son!'
and entreated him to come in. But he stood still, 'No, mother,' he said,
'I will not come in until I hear that you have forgiven me.' She rushed
to the threshold, threw her arms around him, and breathed forgiveness."

Dwight grew to be a strong, self-willed lad, working on the farm, fond
of fun rather than of study, held in check only by his devotion to his
mother. She was urged to put the children into different homes, on
account of their extreme poverty, but by tilling their garden, and doing
some work for their neighbors, she managed to keep her little flock
together. A woman who could do this had remarkable energy and courage.

What little schooling Dwight received was not greatly enjoyed, because
the teacher was a quick-tempered man, who used a rattan on the boys'
backs. Years after, he told how a happy change was effected in that
school. "After a while there was somebody who began to get up a movement
in favor of controlling the school by love. I remember how we thought of
the good time we should have that winter, when the rattan would be out
of school. We thought we would then have all the fun we wanted. I
remember who the teacher was--a lady--and she opened the school with
prayer. We hadn't seen it done before, and we were impressed, especially
when she prayed that she might have grace and strength to rule the
school with love. The school went on several weeks, and we saw no
rattan; but at last the rules were broken, and I think I was the first
boy to break them. She told me to wait till after school, and then she
would see me. I thought the rattan was coming out sure, and stretched
myself up in warlike attitude. After school, however, she sat down by me
and told me how she loved me, and how she had prayed to be able to rule
that school by love, and concluded by saying, 'I want to ask you one
favor, that is, if you love me, try and be a good boy;' and I never
gave her trouble again."

He was very susceptible to kindness. When an old man, who had the habit
of giving every new boy who came into the town a cent, put his hand on
Dwight's head, and told him he had a Father in heaven, he never forgot
the pressure of that old man's hand.

Farming among Northfield rocks was not exciting work enough for the
energetic boy; so with his mother's consent, he started for Boston, when
he was seventeen, to look for work. He had the same bitter experience
that other homeless boys have. He says, "I went to the post-office two
or three times a day to see if there was a letter for me. I knew there
was not, as there was but one mail a day. I had not any employment and
was very homesick, and so went constantly to the post-office, thinking
perhaps when the mail did come in, my letter had been mislaid. At last,
however, I got a letter. It was from my youngest sister,--the first
letter she ever wrote me. I opened it with a light heart thinking there
was some good news from home, but the burden of the whole letter was
that she had heard there were pickpockets in Boston, and warned me to
take care of them. I thought I had better get some money in hand first,
and then I might take care of pickpockets."

The homesick boy finally applied to an uncle, a shoe-dealer, who
hesitated much about taking the country lad into his employ. He agreed
to do so on the conditions that the boy would heed his advice, and
attend regularly the Mount Vernon Church and Sunday-school. The
preaching of Dr. Kirk, the pastor, was scholarly and eloquent, but quite
above the lad's comprehension. His Sunday-school teacher, Mr. Edward
Kimball, was a devoted man, and withal had the tact to win a boy's
confidence. One day he came into the store where young Moody worked, and
going behind the counter, placed his hand on the boy's shoulder and
talked about his becoming a Christian. Such interest touched Dwight's
heart, and he soon took a stand on the right side. Years afterward,
Moody was the means of the conversion of the son of Mr. Kimball, at
seventeen, just his own age at this time.

His earnest nature made him eager to do Christian work; but so poor was
his command of language, and his sentences were so awkward, that he was
not accepted to the membership of the church for a year after he had
made his application. They thought him very "unlikely ever to become a
Christian of clear and decided views of gospel truth; still less to fill
any extended sphere of public usefulness." Alas! how the best of us
sometimes have our eyes shut to the treasures lying at our feet.

He longed for a wider field of usefulness, and in the fall of 1856, when
he was nineteen, started for Chicago, taking with him testimonials which
secured him a place as salesman in a shoe store. He joined Plymouth
Church, and at once rented four pews for the young men whom he intended
to bring in. Here, it is said, some of the more cultured assured him
that his silence would be more effective for good than his speech!
Certainly not encouraging to a young convert.

He offered his services to a mission school as a teacher. "He was
welcome, if he would bring his own scholars," they said. The next
Sunday, to their astonishment, young Moody walked in at the head of
eighteen ragged urchins whom he had gathered from the streets. He
distributed tracts among the seamen at the wharfs, and did not fear to
go into saloons and talk with the inmates.

Finally he wanted a larger field still, and opened an old saloon, which
had been vacated, as a Sunday-school room. It was in the neighborhood of
two hundred saloons and gambling-dens! His heart was full of love for
the poor and the outcasts, and they did not mind about his grammar. A
friend came to see him in these dingy quarters, and found him holding a
colored child, while he read, by the dim light of some tallow candles,
the story of the Prodigal Son to his little congregation. "I have got
only one talent," said the unassuming Moody. "I have no education, but I
love the Lord Jesus Christ, and I want to do something for him. I want
you to pray for me."

Thirteen years later, when all Great Britain was aflame with the sermons
of this same man, he wrote his friend, "Pray for me every day; pray now
that the Lord will keep me humble."

Soon the Sunday-school outgrew the shabby saloon, and was moved to a
hall, where a thousand scholars gathered. Still attending to business as
a travelling salesman, for six years he swept and made ready his
Sunday-school room. He had great tact with his pupils, and won them by
kindness. One day a boy came, who was very unruly, sticking pins into
the backs of the other boys. Mr. Moody patted him kindly on the head,
and asked him to come again. After a short time he became a Christian,
and then was anxious about his mother, whom Mr. Moody had been unable to
influence. One night the lad threw his arms about her neck, and weeping
told her how he had stopped swearing, and how he wanted her to love the
Saviour. When she passed his room, she heard him praying, "Oh, God,
convert my dear mother." The next Sunday he led her into the
Sabbath-school, and she became an earnest worker.

He also has great tact with his young converts. "Every man can do
something," he says. "I had a Swede converted in Chicago. I don't know
how. I don't suppose he was converted by my sermons, because he couldn't
understand much. The Lord converted him into one of the happiest men you
ever saw. His face shone all over. He came to me, and he had to speak
through an interpreter. This interpreter said this Swede wanted to have
me give him something to do. I said to myself, 'What in the world will
I set this man to doing? He can't talk English!' So I gave him a bundle
of little handbills, and put him out on the corner of the greatest
thoroughfare of Chicago, and let him give them out, inviting people to
come up and hear me preach. A man would come along and take it, and see
'Gospel meeting,' and would turn around and curse the fellow; but the
Swede would laugh, because he didn't know but he was blessing him. He
couldn't tell the difference. A great many men were impressed by that
man's being so polite and kind. There he stood, and when winter came and
the nights got so dark they could not read those little handbills, he
went and got a little transparency and put it up on the corner, and
there he took his stand, hot or cold, rain or shine. Many a man was won
to Christ by his efforts."

In 1860, when Moody was twenty-three, he made up his mind to give all
his time to Christian work. He was led to this by the following
incident. He says, "In the Sunday-school I had a pale, delicate young
man as one of the teachers. I knew his burning piety, and assigned him
to the worst class in the school. They were all girls, and it was an
awful class. They kept gadding around in the schoolroom, and were
laughing and carrying on all the while. One Sunday he was absent, and I
tried myself to teach the class, but couldn't do anything with them;
they seemed farther off than ever from any concern about their souls.
Well, the day after his absence, early Monday morning, the young man
came into the store where I worked, and, tottering and bloodless, threw
himself down on some boxes.

"'What's the matter?' I asked.

"'I have been bleeding at the lungs, and they have given me up to die,'
he said.

"'But you are not afraid to die?' I questioned.

"'No,' said he, 'I am not afraid to die; but I have got to stand before
God and give an account of my stewardship, and not one of my
Sabbath-school scholars has been brought to Jesus. I have failed to
bring one, and haven't any strength to do it now.'

"He was so weighed down that I got a carriage and took that dying man in
it, and we called at the homes of every one of his scholars, and to each
one he said, as best his faint voice would let him, 'I have come to just
ask you to come to the Saviour,' and then he prayed as I never heard
before. And for ten days he labored in that way, sometimes walking to
the nearest houses. And at the end of that ten days, every one of that
large class had yielded to the Saviour.

"Full well I remember the night before he went away (for the doctors
said he must hurry to the South); how we held a true love-feast. It was
the very gate of heaven, that meeting. He prayed, and they prayed; he
didn't ask them, he didn't think they could pray; and then we sung,
'Blest be the tie that binds.' It was a beautiful night in June that he
left on the Michigan Southern, and I was down to the train to help him
off. And those girls every one gathered there again, all unknown to each
other; and the depot seemed a second gate to heaven, in the joyful, yet
tearful, communion and farewells between these newly-redeemed souls and
him whose crown of rejoicing it will be that he led them to Jesus. At
last the gong sounded, and, supported on the platform, the dying man
shook hands with each one, and whispered, 'I will meet you yonder.'

"From this," says Mr. Moody, "I got the first impulse to work solely for
the conversion of men."

When he told his employer that he was going to give up business, he was
asked, "Where will you get your support?"

"God will provide for me if he wishes me to keep on, and I shall keep on
till I am obliged to stop," was the reply.

To keep his expenses as low as possible, he slept at night on a hard
bench in the rooms of the Young Men's Christian Association, and ate the
plainest food. Thus was the devoted work of this Christian hero begun.
He was soon made city missionary for a time. Then the civil war began,
and a camp was established near Chicago. He saw his wonderful
opportunity now to reach men who were soon to be face to face with
death. The first tent erected was used as a place of prayer. Ministers
and friends came to his aid. He labored day and night, sometimes eight
or ten prayer-meetings being held at the same time in the various tents.

He did not desert these men on the field of battle. He was with the army
at Pittsburgh Landing, Shiloh, Murfreesboro', and Chattanooga. Nine
times, in the interests of the Christian Commission, he visited our men
at the front, on his errands of mercy. He tells this incident in a
hospital at Murfreesboro'.

"One night after midnight, I was woke up and told that there was a man
in one of the wards who wanted to see me. I went to him, and he called
me 'chaplain,'--I wasn't a chaplain,--and he said he wanted me to help
him die. And I said, 'I'd take you right up in my arms and carry you
into the kingdom of God, if I could; but I can't do it; I can't help you
to die.'

"And he said, 'Who can?'

"I said, 'The Lord Jesus Christ can. He came for that purpose.' He shook
his head and said, 'He can't save me; I have sinned all my life.'

"And I said, 'But he came to save sinners.' I thought of his mother in
the north, and I knew that she was anxious that he should die right, and
I thought I'd stay with him. I prayed two or three times, and repeated
all the promises I could, and I knew that in a few hours he would be
gone. I said I wanted to read him a conversation that Christ had with a
man who was anxious about his soul. I turned to the third chapter of
John. His eyes were riveted on me, and when I came to the fourteenth
and fifteenth verses, he caught up the words, 'As Moses lifted up the
serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up:
that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal
life.'

"He stopped me, and said, 'Is that there?' I said, 'Yes;' and he asked
me to read it again, and I did so. He leaned his elbows on the cot and
clasped his hands together, and said, 'That's good; won't you read it
again?' I read it the third time, and then went on with the rest of the
chapter. When I finished his eyes were closed, his hands were folded,
and there was a smile on his face. Oh, how it was lit up! What a change
had come over it. I saw his lips quiver, and I leaned over him, and
heard in a faint whisper, 'As Moses lifted up the serpent in the
wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever
believeth on him should not perish, but have eternal life.'

"He opened his eyes and said, 'That's enough; don't read any more.' He
lingered a few hours, and then pillowed his head on those two verses,
and went up in one of Christ's chariots and took his seat in the kingdom
of God."

On the 28th of August, 1862, Mr. Moody married Miss Emma C. Revell, a
most helpful assistant in his meetings, and a young lady of noble
character. A daughter and a son came to gladden their simple cottage,
and there was no happier home in all Chicago. One morning he said to his
wife, "I have no money, and the house is without supplies. It looks as
if the Lord had had enough of me in this mission work, and is going to
send me back again to sell boots and shoes." But very soon two checks
came, one of fifty dollars for himself, and another for his school. Six
years after his marriage, his friends gave him the lease of a pleasant
furnished house.

This home had a welcome for all who sought the true way to live. One day
a gentleman called at the office, bringing a young man who had recently
come out of the penitentiary. The latter shrunk from going into the
office, but Mr. Moody said, "Bring him in." Mr. Moody took him by the
hand, told him he was glad to see him, and invited him to his house.
When the young man called, Mr. Moody introduced him as his friend. When
his little daughter came into the room, he said, "Emma, this is papa's
friend." She went up and kissed him, and the man sobbed aloud.

When she left the room, Mr. Moody said, "What is the matter?"

"Oh sir," was the reply, "I have not had a kiss for years. The last kiss
I had was from my mother, and she was dying. I thought I would never
have another kiss again."

No wonder people are saved from sin by visiting a home like this!

In 1863, those who had been converted under this beloved leader wanted a
church of their own where they could worship together. A building was
erected, costing twenty thousand dollars. Four years later, Mr. Moody
was made President of the Young Men's Christian Association, and Farwell
Hall was speedily built.

He was loved and honored everywhere. Once he was invited to the opening
of a great billiard hall. He saw the owners, and asked if he might bring
a friend. They said yes, but asked who he was. Mr. Moody said it wasn't
necessary to tell, but he never went without him. They understood his
meaning, and said, "Come, we don't want any praying."

"You've given me an invitation, and I am going to come," he replied.

"But if you come, you needn't pray."

"Well, I'll tell you what we'll do," was the answer; "we'll compromise
the matter, and if you don't want me to come and pray for you when you
open, let me pray for you both now," to which they agreed.

Mr. Moody prayed that their business might go to pieces, which it did in
a very few months. After the failure, one of the partners determined to
kill himself; but when he was about to plunge the knife into his breast,
he seemed to hear again the words of his dying mother, "Johnny, if you
get into trouble, pray." That voice changed his purpose and his life. He
prayed for forgiveness and obtained it.

In 1871, the terrible fire in Chicago swept away Moody's home and
church. Two years later, having been invited to Great Britain by two
prominent Christian men, he decided to take his friend, Mr. Ira D.
Sankey, who had already won a place in the hearts of the people by his
singing, and together they would attempt some work for their Lord. They
landed in Liverpool, June 17. The two friends who had invited them were
dead. The clergy did not know them, and the world was wholly
indifferent. At their first meeting in York, England, only four persons
were present, but Mr. Moody said it was one of the best meetings they
ever held. They labored here for some weeks, and about two hundred were
converted.

From here they went to Sunderland and Newcastle, the numbers and
interest constantly increasing. Union prayer meetings had been held in
Edinburgh for two months in anticipation of their coming. When they
arrived, two thousand persons crowded Music Hall, and hundreds were
necessarily turned away. As a result of these efforts, over three
thousand persons united with the various churches. In Dundee over ten
thousand persons gathered in the open air, and at Glasgow nearly thirty
thousand, Mr. Moody preaching from his carriage. The press reported all
these sermons, and his congregations were thus increased a hundred-fold
all over the country. The farmer boy of Northfield, the awkward young
convert of Mount Vernon Church, Boston, had become famous. Scholarly
ministers came to him to learn how to influence men toward religion.
Infidels were reclaimed, and rich and poor alike found the Bible
precious, from his simple and beautiful teaching.

In Ireland the crowds sometimes covered six acres, and inquiry meetings
lasted for eight hours. Four months were spent in London, where it is
believed over two and a half million persons attended the meetings.

Mr. Moody had been fearless in his work. When a church member who was a
distiller became troubled in conscience over his business, he came and
asked if the evangelist thought a man could not be an honest distiller.

Mr. Moody replied, "You should do whatever you do for the glory of God.
If you can get down and pray about a barrel of whiskey, and say when you
sell it, 'O Lord God, let this whiskey be blessed to the world,' it is
probably honest!"

On his return to America, Mr. Moody was eagerly welcomed. Philadelphia
utilized an immense freight depot for the meetings, putting in it ten
thousand chairs, and providing a choir of six hundred singers. Over four
thousand conversions resulted. In New York the Hippodrome was prepared
by an expenditure of ten thousand dollars, and as many conversions were
reported here. Boston received him with open arms. Ninety churches
co-operated in the house-to-house visitation in connection with the
meetings, and a choir of two thousand singers was provided. Mr. Moody,
with his wonderful executive ability and genius in organizing, was like
a general at the head of his army.

Chicago received him home thankfully and proudly, as was her right. A
church had been built for him during his absence, costing one hundred
thousand dollars.

For the past ten years his work has been a marvel to the world and,
doubtless, to himself. Great Britain has been a second time stirred to
its centre by his presence. His sermons have been scattered broadcast by
the hundreds of thousands. He receives no salary, never allowing a
contribution to be taken for himself, but his wants have been supplied.
A pleasant home at his birthplace, Northfield, has been given him by his
friends, made doubly dear by the presence of his mother, now over eighty
years old. He has established two schools here, one for boys and another
for girls, with three hundred pupils, trained in all that ennobles life.

The results from Mr. Moody's work are beyond computing. In his first
visit to London a noted man of wealth was converted. He at once sold his
hunting dogs and made his country house a centre of missionary effort.
During Mr. Moody's second visit the two sons at Cambridge University
professed Christianity. One goes to China, having induced some other
students to accompany him as missionaries; the other, just married to a
lord's daughter, has begun mission work among the slums in the East End
of London.

The work of such a life as Mr. Moody's goes on forever. His influence
will be felt in almost countless homes after he has passed away from
earth. He has wrought without means, and with no fortuitous
circumstances. He is a devoted student of the Bible, rising at five
o'clock for study in some of his most laborious seasons. He is a man
consecrated to a single purpose,--that of winning souls.

       *       *       *       *       *

Mr. Moody died at his home at East Northfield, Mass., at noon, Friday,
December 22, 1899. He was taken ill during a series of meetings at
Kansas City, a few weeks previously, and heart disease resulted from
overwork. He was conscious to the last. He said to his two sons who were
standing by his bedside: "I have always been an ambitious man, not
ambitious to lay up wealth, but to leave you work to do, and you're
going to continue the work of the schools in East Northfield and Mount
Hermon and of the Chicago Bible Institute." Just as death came he awoke
as if from sleep and said joyfully, "I have been within the gate; earth
is receding; heaven is opening; God is calling me; do not call me back,"
and a moment later expired. He was buried Tuesday, December 26, at Round
Top, on the seminary grounds, where thousands have gathered yearly at
the summer meetings conducted by the great evangelist.



ABRAHAM LINCOLN.


In Gentryville, Indiana, in the year 1816, might have been seen a log
cabin without doors or window-glass, a dirt floor, a bed made of dried
leaves, and a stool or two and table formed of logs. The inmates were
Thomas Lincoln, a good-hearted man who could neither read nor write;
Nancy Hanks, his wife, a pale-faced, sensitive, gentle woman, strangely
out of place in her miserable surroundings; a girl of ten, Sarah; and a
tall, awkward boy of eight, Abraham.

The family had but recently moved from a similar cabin in Hardin County,
Kentucky, cutting their way through the wilderness with an ax, and
living off the game they could obtain with a gun.

Mrs. Lincoln possessed but one book in the world, the Bible; and from
this she taught her children daily. Abraham had been to school for two
or three months, at such a school as the rude country afforded, and had
learned to read. Of quick mind and retentive memory, he soon came to
know the Bible wellnigh by heart, and to look upon his gentle teacher as
the embodiment of all the good precepts in the book. Afterward, when
he governed thirty million people, he said, "All that I am or hope to
be, I owe to my angel mother. Blessings on her memory!"

[Illustration: ABRAHAM LINCOLN.]

When he was ten years old, the saintly mother faded like a flower amid
these hardships of pioneer life, died of consumption, and was buried in
a plain box under the trees near the cabin. The blow for the girl, who
also died at fifteen, was hard; but for the boy the loss was
irreparable. Day after day he sat on the grave and wept. A sad, far-away
look crept into his eyes, which those who saw him in the perils of his
later life well remember.

Nine months after this, Abraham wrote a letter to Parson Elkins, a good
minister whom they used to know in Kentucky, asking him to come and
preach a funeral sermon on his mother. He came, riding on horseback over
one hundred miles; and one bright Sabbath morning, when the neighbors
from the whole country around had gathered, some in carts and some on
horseback, he spoke, over the open grave, of the precious, Christian
life of her who slept beneath. She died early, but not till she had laid
well the foundation-stones in one of the grandest characters in history.

The boy, communing with himself, longed to read and know something
beyond the stumps between which he planted his corn. He borrowed a copy
of Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress," and read and re-read it till he could
repeat much of it. Then some one loaned him "Æsop's Fables" and
"Robinson Crusoe," and these he pored over with eager delight. There
surely was a great world beyond Kentucky and Indiana, and perhaps he
would some day see it.

After a time Thomas Lincoln married a widow, an old friend of Nancy
Hanks, and she came to the cabin, bringing her three children; besides,
she brought what to Abraham and Sarah seemed unheard-of elegance,--a
bureau, some chairs, a table, and bedding. Abraham had heretofore
climbed to the loft of the cabin on pegs, and had slept on a sack filled
with corn-husks: now a real bed would seem indeed luxurious.

The children were glad to welcome the new mother to the desolate home;
and a good, true mother she became to the orphans. She put new energy
into her somewhat easy-going husband, and made the cabin comfortable,
even attractive. What was better still, she encouraged Abraham to read
more and more, to be thorough, and to be somebody. Besides, she gave his
great heart something to love, and well she repaid the affection.

He now obtained a much-worn copy of Weem's "Life of Washington," and the
little cabin grew to be a paradise, as he read how one great man had
accomplished so much. The barefoot boy, in buckskin breeches so shrunken
that they reached only half way between the knee and ankle, actually
asked himself whether there were not some great place in the world for
him to fill. No wonder, when, a few days after, making a noise with some
of his fun-loving companions, a good woman said to him, "Now, Abe, what
on earth do you s'pose'll ever become of ye? What'll ye be good for if
ye keep a-goin' on in this way?" He replied slowly, "Well, I reckon I'm
goin' to be President of the United States one of these days."

The treasured "Life of Washington" came to grief. One stormy night the
rain beat between the logs of the cabin, and flooded the volume as it
lay on a board upheld by two pegs. Abraham sadly carried it back to its
owner, and worked three days, at twenty-five cents a day, to pay
damages, and thus made the book his own.

The few months of schooling had already come to an end, and he was
"living out," hoeing, planting, and chopping wood for the farmers, and
giving the wages to his parents. In this way, in the daytime he studied
human nature, and in the evenings he read "Plutarch's Lives" and the
"Life of Benjamin Franklin." He was liked in these humble homes, for he
could tend baby, tell stories, make a good impromptu speech, recite
poetry, even making rhymes himself, and could wrestle and jump as well
as the best.

While drinking intoxicants was the fashion all about him, taught by his
first mother not to touch them, he had solemnly carried out her wishes.
But his tender heart made him kind to the many who, in this pioneer
life, had been ruined through drink. One night, as he was returning from
a house-raising, he and two or three friends found a man in the ditch
benumbed with the cold, and his patient horse waiting beside him. They
lifted the man upon the animal, and held him on till they reached the
nearest house, where Abraham cared for him through the night, and thus
saved his life.

At eighteen he had found a situation in a small store, but he was not
satisfied to stand behind a counter; he had read too much about
Washington and Franklin. Fifteen miles from Gentryville, courts were
held at certain seasons of the year; and when Abraham could find a spare
day he walked over in the morning and back at night, listening to the
cases. Meantime he had borrowed a strange book for a poor
country-lad,--"The Revised Statutes of Indiana."

One day a man on trial for murder had secured the able lawyer, John A.
Breckenridge, to defend him. Abraham listened as he made his appeal to
the jury. He had never heard anything so eloquent. When the court
adjourned the tall, homely boy, his face beaming with admiration for the
great man, pressed forward to grasp his hand; but, with a contemptuous
air, the lawyer passed on without speaking. Thirty years later the two
met in Washington, when Abraham Lincoln was the President of the United
States; and then he thanked Mr. Breckenridge for his great speech in
Indiana.

In March, 1828, the long-hoped-for opportunity to see the world outside
of Gentryville had come. Abraham was asked by a man who knew his honesty
and willingness to work, to take a flat-boat down the Mississippi River
to New Orleans. He was paid only two dollars a week and his rations; and
as a flat-boat could not come up the river, but must be sold for lumber
at the journey's end, he was obliged to walk the whole distance back.
The big-hearted, broad-shouldered youth, six feet and four inches tall,
had seen in this trip what he would never forget; had seen black men in
chains, and men and women sold like sheep in the slave-marts of New
Orleans. Here began his horror of human slavery, which years after
culminated in the Emancipation Proclamation.

Two years later, when he had become of age, Abraham helped move his
father's family to Illinois, driving the four yoke of oxen which drew
the household goods over the muddy roads and through the creeks. Then he
joined his adopted brothers in building a log house, plowed fifteen
acres of prairie land for corn, split rails to fence it in, and then
went out into the world to earn for himself, his scanty wages heretofore
belonging legally to his father. He did not always receive money for his
work, for once, for a Mrs. Miller, he split four hundred rails for every
yard of brown jeans, dyed with white walnut bark, necessary to make a
pair of trowsers.

He had no trade, and no money, and must do whatever came to hand. For a
year he worked for one farmer and another, and then he and his
half-brother were hired by a Mr. Offutt to build and take a flat-boat to
New Orleans. So pleased was the owner, that on Abraham's return, he was
at once engaged to manage a mill and store at New Salem. Here he went by
the name of "Honest Abe," because he was so fair in his dealings. On one
occasion, having sold a woman a bill of goods amounting to two dollars
and six and a quarter cents, he found that in adding the items, he had
taken six and a quarter cents too much. It was night, and locking the
store, he walked two or three miles to return the money to his
astonished customer. Another time a woman bought a half pound of tea. He
discovered afterward that he had used a four-ounce weight on the scales,
and at once walked a long way to deliver the four ounces which were her
due. No wonder the world, like Diogenes, is always looking for an honest
man.

He insisted on politeness before women. One day as he was showing goods,
a boorish man came in and began to use profanity. Young Lincoln leaned
over the desk, and begged him to desist before ladies. When they had
gone, the man became furious. Finding that he really desired to fight,
Lincoln said, "Well, if you must be whipped, I suppose I may as well
whip you as any other man," and suiting the action to the word, gave
him a severe punishing. The man became a better citizen from that day,
and Lincoln's life-long friend.

Years afterward, when in the Presidential chair, a man used profanity in
his presence, he said, "I thought Senator C. had sent me a gentleman. I
was mistaken. There is the door, and I wish you good-night."

Hearing that a grammar could be purchased six miles away, the young
store-keeper walked thither and obtained it. When evening came, as
candles were too expensive for his limited wages, he burnt one shaving
after another to give light, and thus studied the book which was to be
so valuable in after years, when he should stand before the great and
cultured of the land. He took the "Louisville Journal," because he must
be abreast of the politics of the day, and made careful notes from every
book he read.

Mr. Offutt soon failed, and Abraham Lincoln was again adrift. War had
begun with Blackhawk, the chief of the Sacs, and the Governor of
Illinois was calling for volunteers. A company was formed in New Salem,
and "Honest Abe" was chosen captain. He won the love of his men for his
thoughtfulness of them rather than himself, and learned valuable lessons
in military matters for the future. A strange thing now happened,--he
was asked to be a candidate for the State Legislature! At first he
thought his friends were ridiculing him, and said he should be defeated
as he was not widely known.

"Never mind!" said James Rutledge, the president of their little
debating club. "They'll know you better after you've stumped the county.
Any how, it'll do you good to try."

Lincoln made some bright, earnest stump speeches, and though he was
defeated, the young man of twenty-three received two hundred and
seventy-seven votes out of the two hundred and eighty cast in New Salem.
This surely was a pleasant indication of his popularity. It was a common
saying, that "Lincoln had nothing, only plenty of friends."

The County-surveyor needed an assistant. He called upon Lincoln,
bringing a book for him to study, if he would fit himself to take hold
of the matter. This he did gladly, and for six weeks studied and recited
to a teacher, thus making himself skilled and accurate for a new
country. Whenever he had an hour's leisure from his work, however, he
was poring over his law-books, for he had fully made up his mind to be a
lawyer.

He was modest, but ambitious, and was learning the power within him. But
as though the developing brain and warm heart needed an extra stimulus,
there came into his life, at this time, a beautiful affection, that left
a deeper look in the far-away eyes, when it was over. Ann Rutledge, the
daughter of his friend, was one of the most intelligent and lovely girls
in New Salem. When Lincoln came to her father's house to board, she was
already engaged to a bright young man in the neighborhood, who, shortly
before their intended marriage, was obliged to visit New York on
business. He wrote back of his father's illness and death, and then his
letters ceased.

Mouths passed away. Meantime the young lawyer had given her the homage
of his strong nature. At first she could not bring herself to forget her
recreant lover, but the following year, won by Lincoln's devotion, she
accepted him. He seemed now supremely happy. He studied day and night,
eager to fill such a place that Ann Rutledge would be proud of him. He
had been elected to the Legislature, and, borrowing some money to
purchase a suit of clothes, he walked one hundred miles to the State
capitol. He did not talk much in the Assembly, but he worked faithfully
upon committees, and studied the needs of his State.

The following summer days seemed to pass all too swiftly in his
happiness. Then the shadows gathered. The girl he idolized was sinking
under the dreadful strain upon her young heart. The latter part of
August she sent for Lincoln to come to her bedside. What was said in
that last farewell has never been known. It is stated by some that her
former lover had returned, as fond of her as ever, his silence having
been caused by a long illness. But on the twenty-fifth of August, death
took her from them both.

Lincoln was overwhelmed with anguish; insane, feared and believed his
friends. He said, "I can never be reconciled to have the snow, rains,
and storms beat upon her grave." Years after he was heard to say, "My
heart lies buried in the grave of that girl." A poem by William Knox,
found and read at this time, became a favorite and a comfort through
life,--

    "Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?"

Mr. Herndon, his law partner, said, "The love and death of that girl
shattered Lincoln's purposes and tendencies. He threw off his infinite
sorrow only by leaping wildly into the political arena." The memory of
that love never faded from his heart, nor the sadness from his face.

The following year, 1837, when he was twenty-eight, he was admitted to
the bar, and moved from New Salem to the larger town of Springfield,
forming a partnership with Mr. J. P. Stuart of whom he had borrowed his
law-books. Too poor even yet to pay much for board, he slept on a narrow
lounge in the law-office. He was again elected to the legislature, and
in the Harrison Presidential campaign, was chosen one of the electors,
speaking through the State for the Whig party. To so prominent a
position, already, had come the backwoods boy.

Four years after Ann Rutledge's death, he married, Nov. 4, 1839, Mary
Todd, a bright, witty, somewhat handsome girl, of good family, from
Kentucky. She admired his ability, and believed in his success; he
needed comfort in his utter loneliness. Till his death he was a true
husband, and an idolizing father to his children,--Robert, Willie, and
Tad (Thomas).

In 1846, seven years after his marriage, having steadily gained in the
reputation of an honest, able lawyer, who would never take a case unless
sure he was on the right side, Mr. Lincoln was elected to Congress by an
uncommonly large majority. Opposed to the war with Mexico, and to the
extension of slavery, he spoke his mind fearlessly. The "Compromise
measures of 1850," by which, while California was admitted as a free
State, and the slave-trade was abolished in the District of Columbia,
the Fugitive Slave Law was passed, giving the owners of slaves the right
to recapture them in any free State, had disheartened all lovers of
freedom. Lincoln said gloomily to his law partner, Mr. Herndon, "How
hard, oh, how hard it is to die and leave one's country no better than
if one had never lived for it!"

His father died about this time, his noble son sending him this message,
"to remember to call upon and confide in our great and good and merciful
Maker, who will not turn away from him in any extremity. He notes the
fall of the sparrow, and numbers the hairs of our heads; and He will not
forget the dying man who puts his trust in Him."

In 1854, through the influence of Stephen A. Douglas, a brilliant
senator from Illinois, the Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed, whereby
those States were left to judge for themselves whether they would have
slaves or not. But by the Missouri Compromise of 1820, it was expressly
stated that slavery should be forever prohibited in this locality. The
whole North grew to white heat. When Douglas returned to his Chicago
home the people refused to hear him speak. Illinois said, "His arguments
must be answered, and Abraham Lincoln is the man to answer them!"

At the State Fair at Springfield, in October, a great company were
gathered. Douglas spoke with marked ability and eloquence, and then on
the following day, Abraham Lincoln spoke for three hours. His heart was
in his words. He quivered with emotion. The audience were still as
death, but when the address was finished, men shouted and women waved
their handkerchiefs. Lincoln and the right had triumphed. After this,
the two men spoke in all the large towns of the State, to immense
crowds. The Kansas-Nebraska Bill worked out its expected results. Blood
flowed in the streets, as pro-slavery and anti-slavery men contested the
ground, newspaper offices were torn down by mobs, and Douglas lost the
great prize he had in view,--the Presidency of the United States.

When the new party, the Republican, held its second convention in
Philadelphia, June 17, 1856, Abraham Lincoln received one hundred and
ten votes for Vice President. What would Nancy Hanks Lincoln have said
if she could have looked now upon the boy to whom she taught the Bible
in the log cabin!

An incident occurred about this time which increased his fame. A man was
murdered at a camp-meeting, and two young men were arrested. One was a
very poor youth, whose mother, Hannah Armstrong, had been kind to
Lincoln in the early years. She wrote to the prominent lawyer about her
troubles, because she believed her son to be innocent. The trial came
on. The people were clamorous for Armstrong to be hanged. The principal
witness testified that "by the aid of the brightly shining moon, he saw
the prisoner inflict the death-blow with a slung shot."

After careful questioning, Mr. Lincoln showed the perjury of the
witness, by the almanac, no moon being visible on the night in question.
The jury were melted to tears by the touching address, and their
sympathy went out to the wronged youth and his poor old mother, who
fainted in his arms. Tears, too, poured down the face of Mr. Lincoln, as
the young man was acquitted. "Why, Hannah," he said, when the grateful
woman asked what she should try to pay him, "I shan't charge you a cent;
never." She had been well repaid for her friendliness to a penniless
boy.

The next year he was invited to deliver a lecture at Cooper Institute,
New York. He was not very well known at the East. He had lived
unostentatiously in the two-story frame-house in Springfield, and when
seen at all by the people, except in his addresses, was usually drawing
one of his babies in a wagon before his door, with hat and coat off,
deeply buried in thought. When the crowd gathered at Cooper Institute,
they expected to hear a fund of stories and a "Western stump speech."
But they did not hear what they expected. They heard a masterly review
of the history of slavery in this country, and a prophecy concerning the
future of the slavery question. They were amazed at its breadth and its
eloquence. The "New York Tribune" said, "No man ever before made such an
impression on his first appeal to a New York audience."

After this Mr. Lincoln spoke in various cities to crowded houses. A Yale
professor took notes and gave a lecture to his students on the address.
Surprised at his success among learned men, Mr. Lincoln once asked a
prominent professor "what made the speeches interest?"

The reply was, "The clearness of your statements, the unanswerable style
of your reasoning and your illustrations, which were romance, and
pathos, and fun, and logic, all welded together."

Mr. Lincoln said, "I am very much obliged to you for this. It throws
light on a subject which has been dark to me. Certainly I have had a
wonderful success for a man of my limited education."

The sabbath he spent in New York, he found his way to the Sunday-school
at Five Points. He was alone. The superintendent noticing his interest,
asked him to say a few words. The children were so pleased that when he
attempted to stop, they cried, "Go on, oh! do go on!" No one knew his
name, and on being asked who he was, he replied, "Abraham Lincoln of
Illinois." After visiting his son Robert at Harvard College, he returned
home.

When the Republican State Convention met, May 9, 1860, at Springfield,
Ill., Mr. Lincoln was invited to a seat on the platform, and as no way
could be made through the dense throng, he was carried over the people's
heads. Ten days later, at the National Convention at Chicago, though
William H. Seward of New York was a leading candidate, the West gained
the nomination, with their idolized Lincoln. Springfield was wild with
joy. When the news of his success was carried to him, he said quietly,
"Well, gentlemen, there's a little woman at our house who is probably
more interested in this dispatch than I am; and if you will excuse me, I
will take it up and let her see it."

The resulting canvass was one of the most remarkable in our history. The
South said, "War will result if he is elected." The North said, "The
time has come for decisive action." The popular vote for Abraham Lincoln
was nearly two millions (1,857,610), while Stephen A. Douglas received
something over a million (1,291,574). The country was in a fever of
excitement. The South made itself ready for war by seizing the forts.
Before the inauguration most of the Southern States had seceded.

Sad farewells were uttered as Mr. Lincoln left Springfield for
Washington. To his law partner he said, "You and I have been together
more than twenty years, and have never passed a word. Will you let my
name stay on the old sign till I come back from Washington?"

The tears came into Mr. Herndon's eyes, as he said, "I will never have
any other partner while you live," and he kept his word. Old Hannah
Armstrong told him that she should never see him again; that something
told her so; his enemies would assassinate him. He smiled and said,
"Hannah, if they do kill me, I shall never die another death."

He went away without fear, but feeling the awful responsibility of his
position. He found an empty treasury and the country drifting into the
blackness of war. He spoke few words, but the lines grew deeper on his
face, and his eyes grew sadder.

In his inaugural address he said, "In your hands, my dissatisfied
fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war.
The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without
being yourselves the aggressors.... Physically speaking we cannot
separate."

The conflict began April 12, 1861, by the enemy firing on Fort Sumter.
That sound reverberated throughout the North. The President called for
seventy-five thousand men. The choicest from thousands of homes quickly
responded. Young men left their college-halls and men their places of
business. "The Union must and shall be preserved," was the eager cry.
Then came the call for forty-two thousand men for three years.

The President began to study war in earnest. He gathered military books,
sought out on maps every creek and hill and valley in the enemy's
country, and took scarcely time to eat or sleep. May 24, the brilliant
young Colonel Ellsworth had been shot at Alexandria by a hotel-keeper,
because he pulled down the secession flag. He was buried from the east
room in the White House, and the North was more aroused than ever. The
press and people were eager for battle, and July 21, 1861, the Union
army, under General McDowell, attacked the Confederates at Bull Run and
were defeated. The South was jubilant, and the North learned, once for
all, that the war was to be long and bloody. Congress, at the request of
the President, at once voted five hundred thousand men, and five hundred
million dollars to carry on the war.

Vast work was to be done. The Southern ports must be blockaded, and the
traffic on the Mississippi River discontinued. A great and brave army of
Southerners, fighting on their own soil, every foot of which they knew
so well, must be conquered if the nation remained intact. The burdens of
the President grew more and more heavy. Men at the North, who
sympathized with the South,--for we were bound together as one family
in a thousand ways,--said the President was going too far in his
authority; others said he moved too slowly, and was too lenient to the
slave power. The South gained strength from the sympathy of England, and
only by careful leadership was war avoided with that country.

General McClellan had fought some hard battles in Virginia--Fair Oaks,
Mechanicsville, Malvern Hill, and others--with varying success, losing
thousands of men in the Chickahominy swamps, and after the battle of
Antietam, Sept. 17, 1862, one of the severest of the war, when each side
lost over ten thousand men, he was relieved of his command, and
succeeded by General Burnside. There had been some successes at the West
under Grant, at Fort Donelson and Shiloh, and at the South under
Farragut, but the outlook for the country was not hopeful. Mr. Lincoln
had met with a severe affliction in his own household. His beautiful son
Willie had died in February. He used to walk the room in those dying
hours, saying sadly, "This is the hardest trial of my life; why is it?
why is it?"

This made him, perhaps, even more tender of the lives of others' sons. A
young sentinel had been sentenced to be shot for sleeping at his post;
but the President pardoned him, saying, "I could not think of going into
eternity with the blood of the poor young man on my skirts. It is not to
be wondered at that a boy raised on a farm, probably in the habit of
going to bed at dark, should, when required to watch, fall asleep, and I
cannot consent to shoot him for such an act." This youth was found among
the slain on the field of Fredericksburg, wearing next his heart a
photograph of his preserver, with the words, "God bless President
Lincoln."

An army officer once went to Washington to see about the execution of
twenty-four deserters, who had been sentenced by court-martial to be
shot. "Mr. President," said he, "unless these men are made an example
of, the army itself is in danger. Mercy to the few is cruelty to the
many."

"Mr. General," was the reply, "there are already too many weeping widows
in the United States. For God's sake, don't ask me to add to the number,
for I won't do it." At another time he said, "Well, I think the boy can
do us more good above ground than under ground."

A woman in a faded shawl and hood came to see the President, begging
that, as her husband and all her sons--three--had enlisted, and her
husband had been killed, he would release the oldest, that he might care
for his mother. Mr. Lincoln quickly consented. When the poor woman
reached the hospital where her boy was to be found, he was dead.
Returning sadly to Mr. Lincoln, he said, "I know what you wish me to do
now, and I shall do it without your asking; I shall release your second
son.... Now _you_ have one, and _I_ one of the other two left: that is
no more than right." Tears filled the eyes of both as she reverently
laid her hand on his head, saying, "The Lord bless you, Mr. President.
May you live a thousand years, and always be at the head of this great
nation!"

Through all these months it had become evident that slavery must be
destroyed, or we should live over again these dreadful war-scenes in
years to come. Mr. Lincoln had been waiting for the right time to free
the slaves. General McClellan had said, "A declaration of radical views,
especially upon slavery, will rapidly disintegrate our present armies";
but Sept. 22, 1862, Mr. Lincoln told his Cabinet, "I have promised my
God that I will do it"; and he issued the immortal Emancipation
Proclamation, by which four million human beings stepped out from
bondage into freedom. He knew what he was doing. Two years afterward he
said, "It is the central act of my administration, and the great event
of the nineteenth century."

The following year, 1863, brought even deeper sorrows. The "Draft Act,"
by which men were obliged to enter the army when their names were drawn,
occasioned in July a riot in New York city, with the loss of many lives.
Grant had taken Vicksburg on July 4, and General Meade had won at the
dreadful three days' fight at Gettysburg, July 1-4, with a loss of more
than twenty thousand on either side; but the nation was being held
together at a fearful cost. When Mr. Lincoln announced to the people
the victory at Gettysburg, he expressed the desire that, in the
customary observance of the Fourth of July, "He whose will, not ours,
should everywhere be done, be everywhere reverenced with profoundest
gratitude." He reverenced God, himself, most devoutly. "I have been
driven many times upon my knees," he said, "by the overwhelming
conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom and that of all
about me seemed insufficient for that day."

On Nov. 19, of this year, this battle-field was dedicated, with solemn
ceremonies, as one of the national cemeteries. Mr. Lincoln made a very
brief address, in words that will last while America lasts, "The world
will little note, nor long remember, what we say here; but it can never
forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be
dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have
thus far so nobly advanced. It is, rather, for us to be here dedicated
to the great task remaining for us, that from these honored dead we take
increased devotion to the cause for which they gave the last full
measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall
not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new
birth of freedom, and that the government of the people, by the people,
and for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

Emerson says of these words, "This, and one other American speech, that
of John Brown to the court that tried him, and a part of Kossuth's
speech at Birmingham, can only be compared with each other, and no
fourth."

The next year, Feb. 29, 1864, the Hero of Vicksburg was called to the
Lieutenant-Generalship of the army, and for the first time Mr. Lincoln
felt somewhat a sense of relief from burdens. He said, "Wherever Grant
is, things move." He now called for five hundred thousand more men, and
the beginning of the end was seen. Sherman swept through to the sea.
Grant went below Richmond, where he said, "I propose to fight it out on
this line if it takes all summer."

Mr. Lincoln had been re-elected to the Presidency for a second term,
giving that beautiful inaugural address to the people, "With malice
toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God
gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are
in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne
the battle, and for his widows and orphans; to do all which may achieve
and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all
nations." On April 9, 1865, Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox, and
the long war was ended. The people gathered in their churches to praise
God amid their tears. Abraham Lincoln's name was on every lip. The
colored people said of their deliverer, "He is eberywhere. He is like de
bressed Lord; he walks de waters and de land."

An old colored woman came to the door of the White House and met the
President as he was coming out, and said she wanted to see "Abraham the
Second."

"And who was Abraham the First?" asked the good man.

"Why, Lor' bless you, we read about Abraham de First in de Bible, and
Abraham de Second is de President."

"Here he is!" said the President, turning away to hide his tears.

Well did the noble-hearted man say, "I have never willingly planted a
thorn in any man's bosom."

Five days after the surrender of General Lee, Mr. Lincoln went to Ford's
Theatre, because it would rest him and please the people to see him. He
used to say, "The tired part of me is inside and out of reach.... I feel
a presentiment that I shall not outlast the rebellion. When it is over,
my work will be done."

While Mr. Lincoln was enjoying the play, John Wilkes Booth, an actor,
came into the box behind him and fired a bullet into his brain; then
sprang upon the stage, shouting, "Sic semper tyrannis! The South is
avenged!" The President scarcely moved in his chair, and, unconscious,
was taken to a house near by, where he died at twenty-two minutes past
seven, April 15, 1865. Booth was caught twelve days later, and shot in a
burning barn.

The nation seemed as though struck dumb; and then, from the Old World
as well as the New, came an agonizing wail of sorrow. Death only showed
to their view how sublime was the character of him who had carried them
through the war. While the body, embalmed, lay in state in the east room
of the White House tens of thousands crowded about it. And then,
accompanied by the casket of little Willie, the body of Abraham Lincoln
took its long journey of fifteen hundred miles, to the home of his early
life, for burial. Nothing in this country like that funeral pageant has
ever been witnessed. In New York, in Philadelphia, and in every other
city along the way, houses were trimmed with mourning, bells tolled,
funeral marches were played, and the rooms where the body rested were
filled with flowers. Hundreds of thousands looked upon the tired, noble
face of the martyred President.

In Oak Ridge Cemetery, at Springfield, Illinois, in the midst of a dense
multitude, a choir of two hundred and fifty singing by the open grave of
him who dearly loved music,

    "Children of the Heavenly King,"

Abraham Lincoln was buried, Bishop Simpson, now dead, spoke eloquently,
quoting Mr. Lincoln's words, "Before high Heaven and in the face of the
world I swear eternal fidelity to the just cause, as I deem it, of the
land of my life, my liberty, and my love."

Charles Sumner said, "There are no accidents in the Providence of God."
Such lives as that of Abraham Lincoln are not accidents in American
history. They are rather the great books from whose pages we catch
inspiration, and in which we read God's purposes for the progress of the
human race.

       *       *       *       *       *



BOOKS BY SARAH K. BOLTON.

  "_Mrs. Bolton never fails to interest and instruct her
  readers._"--CHICAGO INTER-OCEAN.


  POOR BOYS WHO BECAME FAMOUS
  GIRLS WHO BECAME FAMOUS
  FAMOUS MEN OF SCIENCE
  FAMOUS AMERICAN STATESMEN
  FAMOUS ENGLISH STATESMEN
  FAMOUS AMERICAN AUTHORS
  FAMOUS ENGLISH AUTHORS
  FAMOUS EUROPEAN ARTISTS
  FAMOUS TYPES OF WOMANHOOD
  FAMOUS VOYAGERS AND EXPLORERS
  FAMOUS LEADERS AMONG MEN
  FAMOUS LEADERS AMONG WOMEN
  FAMOUS GIVERS AND THEIR GIFTS
  EMERSON
  RAPHAEL
  FROM HEART AND NATURE (Poems)
  THE INEVITABLE (Poems)


  _For Sale by all Booksellers. Send for Catalogue._

  NEW YORK:
  THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO.
  PUBLISHERS.

       *       *       *       *       *



TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:


Punctuation has been standardised.

Minor printer errors (e.g. omitted, superfluous & transposed characters)
have been fixed.

 Page 72, "Amodeus" changed to "Amadeus" (Amadeus Mozart was)

 Page 134, "tamborine" changed to "tambourine" (beating the tambourine)

 Page 186, "capitol" changed to "capital" (capital of united Italy)

 Page 241, "enterprizing" changed to "enterprising" (enterprising young)

 Page 273, "sadler" changed to "saddler" (a saddler was found)





*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Lives of Poor Boys Who Became Famous" ***

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