Chapter XI: A Citizen of the World: Herbert C. Hoover 295 (3)

The stranger smiled and patted him on the shoulder in a way more friendly still. Just at that moment they came to a door where a red-liveried lackey stood at attention. He bowed low as they entered and Jacob, bowing back, turned to his new friend with a delighted smile:

“There is another example of what I mean, sir,” he said. “Would you believe it, now, that I have never seen that man before?”

The gentleman laughed, and, pointing to a door, told Jacob he would find his brother there. While the boy happily recounted his adventures, particularly the story of his kindly guide, the handsome gentleman passed through the room and nodded to him with his twinkling smile.

“There is my jolly gentleman,” said Jacob, as he nodded back.

His brother jumped to his feet and bowed low.

“Good gracious!” he said, when the stranger had passed out. “You don’t mean to say he was your guide? Why, boy, that was the King!”

So Jacob learned that in Denmark even a king, whom he had always thought of as wearing a jeweled crown and a trailing robe of velvet and ermine held by dainty silken pages, could go about in a plain blue overcoat like any other man, and be just as simple and neighborly.

In Copenhagen the king of his fairy-book world was a neighbor, too. Hans Christian Andersen was a familiar figure on the streets at that time. Jacob and his companions often met him walking under the lindens along the old earthen walls that surrounded the city.

“Isn’t he an ugly duck, though!” said Jacob one evening, as the awkward old man, with his long, ungainly neck and limbs and enormous hands and feet, came in sight. Then the merry young fellows strung themselves along in Indian file, each in turn bowing low as he passed, and saying with mock reverence, “Good evening, Herr Professor!”

But when the gentle old man, with the child’s heart, seized their hands in his great grasp and thanked them delightedly, they slunk by shamefacedly, and, while they chuckled a little, avoided meeting each other’s eyes. For in their hearts they loved the old man whose stories had charmed their childhood, and they knew that the spirit within the lank, awkward body was altogether lovely.

All the time that Jacob was working with hammer and saw, he was, like that first Jacob of whom we read, serving for his Rachel. From the time he was a clumsy lad of twelve he knew that his playmate Elizabeth, with the golden curls and the fair, gentle looks, was the princess of his own fairy-tale. Like all good fairy-tales, it simply _had_ to turn out happily.

When his apprenticeship was over and he had learned all about building houses for people to live in, he hurried at once to Ribe to build his own house. It seemed, however, that nobody realized that he was the hero who was to marry the princess. Why, Elizabeth’s father owned the one factory in town, and they lived in a big house, which some people called a “castle.” Small chance that he would let his pretty daughter marry a carpenter!

Since working faithfully for long, busy years had not brought him to his goal, Jacob threw aside his tools and decided to seek his fortune in a new country. In America, surely, a true man might come into his own. The days of high adventure were not dead. He would win fame and fortune, and then return in triumph to the old town--and to Elizabeth.

It was a beautiful spring morning--surely a prophecy of fair beginnings--when this young viking sailed into New York Harbor. The dauntless Northmen, who pushed across the seas and discovered America, could not have thrilled more at the sight of their Vineland than did this Dane of our own day when he saw the sky-line of the great city. This must indeed be a new world of opportunity for strong men.

It took only a day of wandering about the crowded streets, however, to convince this seeker that a golden chance is as hard to find in the New York of to-day as gold was in those disillusioning days of the early explorers. The golden chance, it seemed, was to be won, if at all, as is the precious metal--only after intelligent prospecting and patient digging.

How utterly alone he felt in that crowd of hurrying strangers! Very different it all was from his cozy little country where every one was a neighbor, even the king himself.

Out of sheer loneliness and the desire to belong to somebody he threw in his lot with a gang of men who were being gathered together to work in a mining-camp on the Allegheny River. Perhaps the West was his Promised Land, and Pennsylvania would be a start on the way.

The young carpenter was set to work building houses for the workers in the mines. He could not content himself, however, in this shut-in country. To one used to the vastness of a level land stretching as far as eye could see, it seemed as if the hills and forests hedged him in on every side--as if he could not breathe. To ease the restlessness of his homesick spirit, he determined to try his fortune at coal-mining. One day was enough of that. In his inexperience he failed to brace the roof properly, and a great piece of rock came down on him, knocking the lamp from his cap and leaving him stunned and in utter darkness. When at last he succeeded in groping his way out, it was as if he had come back from the dead. The daylight had never before seemed so precious. Nothing could have induced him to try coal-mining again.

At this time, 1870, news came of the war between Germany and France. It was expected, moreover, that Denmark would come to the assistance of the French, since only a few years before, in 1864, Germany had seized some of the choicest territory of the little North Sea kingdom--Schleswig-Holstein, the section through which the important Kiel Canal has been built. Every Dane longed to avenge the wrong. Jacob Riis at once left his tools and his work. He would win glory as a soldier.

He reached New York with but a single cent in his pocket, only to find that no one was fitting out volunteer companies to send to France. Here he was longing to offer his life for the cause, and it was treated like a worthless trifle. Clothes and every cherished possession that his little trunk contained were soon pawned to pay for food and a roof over his head.

There followed months when the young man wandered about the great city, homeless, hungry, vainly seeking employment. Too proud to beg, he yet accepted night after night a plate of meat and rolls which a French cook in a large restaurant handed him from a basement window. It seemed as if that was a part of the debt France owed her would-be soldier.

He was part of a weary army of discouraged men hunting for work. He knew what it meant to sleep on park benches, in doorways, in empty wagons, and even on the flat stone slabs of a graveyard. There were, in New York, friends of his family who might have helped him, but he was too proud to make himself known in his present sorry plight. He even destroyed the letters to them, lest in a moment of weakness he might be tempted to appeal to their charity.

This time of hardship, however, was destined to bear fruit. Jacob Riis came to know the shadows of the great city--all the miserable alleys and narrow courts of the East Side slums. Then and there, weak and starving though he was, the boy who had given his Christmas money to help Rag Hall vowed that he would some day work to remove those plague-spots from the city’s life. “How true it is,” he said, “that one half of the world doesn’t know how the other half lives! If they only knew, things would be different.”

At last the chance for which he had been longing came. Hearing that a new reporter was wanted by the News Association, he applied for the position. After looking the haggard applicant over for a moment doubtfully, the editor was moved to give him a trial. The starving man was sent to report a political banquet. When he turned in his “copy” at the office the editor said briefly:

“You will do. Take that desk and report at ten every morning, sharp.”

So began his life as a reporter.

Perhaps you know something of his success as a newspaper man. He knew how to gather news; and he knew how to find the words that make bare facts live. The days and nights of privation had been rich in experience. He was truly “a part of all that he had met.” Something of his intimate acquaintance with all sorts and conditions of existence, something of his warm, understanding sympathy for every variety of human joy and sorrow, crept into his work. Besides, the young man had boundless enthusiasm and tireless industry.

“That chap just seems to eat work,” said his fellow-reporters.

One day a very special letter came from Denmark, which told him that his gentle Elizabeth was quite convinced that he was indeed the prince of her life story. So, as it turned out, he didn’t have to make a fortune before he was able to bring her to share his home in New York. With her it seemed that he brought the best of the old life into the new--

Brought the moonlight, starlight, firelight,
Brought the sunshine of his people.

The only homesick times that he knew now were the days when his work as a reporter took him to the streets of the miserable tenements. All his soul cried out against these places where the poor, the weak, and the wicked, the old, the sick, and helpless babies were all herded together in damp, dingy rooms where the purifying sunlight never entered. During his years of wandering in search of work he had gained an intimate knowledge of such conditions. He knew what poverty meant and how it felt. Afterward, when he saw this hideous squalor, he shared it. These people were his neighbors.

“Over against the tenements of our cities,” he said, “ever rise in my mind the fields, the woods, God’s open sky, as accusers and witnesses that his temple is being defiled and man dwarfed in body and soul.”

He knew that the one way to remove such evils and to force people to put up decent houses for the poor was to bring the facts out in the open. When he described what he had seen, the words seemed to mean little to many of the people that he wanted to reach. Then he hit upon the plan of taking pictures. These pictures served to illustrate some very direct talks he gave in the churches. Later, many of them made an important part of his book, “How the Other Half Lives.”

“These people are your neighbors,” said Jacob Riis. “It is the business of the fortunate half of those who live in our great cities to find out how the other half lives. No one can live to himself or die to himself--

‘If you will not grub for your neighbor’s weeds,
In your own green garden you’ll find the seeds.’”

Through his persistent campaigning, one of the very worst parts of New York, known as Mulberry Bend, a veritable network of alleys which gave hiding to misery and crime untold, was bought by the city, the buildings torn down, and the spot converted into a public park.

Several years later, when Roosevelt was President, he asked Mr. Riis to investigate the conditions of streets and alleys in Washington. It developed that within three squares of the Capitol there was a system of alleys honeycombing a single block where a thousand people were crowded together under conditions that made a hotbed of misery, crime, and disease. The good citizens of the National Capital, who had read with horror about the evils of New York and Chicago, were rudely shaken out of their self-complacency. That square is now one of Washington’s parks.

Jacob Riis early learned the power of facts. His training as a reporter taught him that. He was also willing to work early and late, when the need arose, to gather them. At one time when there was a cholera scare in New York, he happened to look over the Health Department analysis of the water from the Croton River, and noticed that it was said to contain “a trace of nitrites.”

“What does that mean?” he asked of the chemist.

The reply was more learned than enlightening. The reporter was not satisfied. He carried his inquiry farther and discovered that “nitrites” meant that the water had been contaminated by sewage from towns above New York. Riis then took his camera and explored not only the Croton River to its source, but also every stream that emptied into it, taking pictures that proved in the most convincing way the dangers of the city. As a result, money was appropriated to buy a strip of land along the streams, wide enough to protect the people’s water-supply.

Another great work that Jacob Riis was enabled to carry through had its beginnings in that stormy chapter of his life when he found himself a vagrant among vagrants. He learned at first hand what the police lodging-houses for the homeless were like. At that time this charity was left in the hands of the police, who had neither the ability nor the desire to handle these cases wisely and humanely and to meet the problems of helping people to help themselves. Jacob Riis worked shoulder to shoulder with Theodore Roosevelt, who was then police commissioner of New York, to make the organized charity of the city an intelligent agency for relieving suffering and putting on their feet again those who were, for some reason, “down and out.” Many were brought back to wholesome living through the realization that they had “neighbors” who cared.

In the same way he worked for parks and playgrounds for the children. He saw that the city spoils much good human material.

“We talk a great deal about city toughs,” he says in his autobiography. “In nine cases out of ten they are lads of normal impulses whose possibilities have all been smothered by the slum. With better opportunities they might have been heroes.”

Many honors came to Jacob Riis. He was known as a “boss reporter”; his books gave him a nation-wide fame; the King of Denmark sent him the Crusaders’ Cross, the greatest honor his native land could bestow; President Roosevelt called him the “most useful American” of his day. But I think what meant more to him than any or all of these things was the real affection of his many “neighbors,” especially the children.

Many times he gathered together boys and girls from the streets to enjoy a day with him in the country.

“This will help until we can give them trees and grass in their slum,” he would say, “and then there will be no slum.” His eyes grew very tender as he added, “No, there will be no slum; it will be a true City Beautiful--and the fairest blossoms there will be the children.”

Riis called the story of his life, “The Making of an American.” While his life was in the making he helped to make many others. He was in truth a maker of Americans.

Do you not think that he lived a life as truly adventurous as the vikings of old--this viking of our own day? They lived for deeds of daring and plunder; he lived for deeds every whit as brave--and for service.

A PIONEER OF THE OPEN: EDWARD L. TRUDEAU

Oh, toiling hands of mortals! Oh, unwearied feet, traveling ye know
not whither! Soon, soon, it seems to you, you must come forth on
some conspicuous hilltop, and but a little way further, against the
setting sun, descry the spires of El Dorado. Little do ye know your
own blessedness; for to travel hopefully is a better thing than to
arrive, and the true success is to labor.

STEVENSON: _El Dorado_.

When you read in your history the stories of the men who discovered America, did you ever think that not one of them found that for which he searched when he sailed unknown seas and braved the perils of an unbroken wilderness? Columbus tried to find a sea-way to the Indies, and stumbled upon a new world. Henry Hudson, in seeking a short cut to the Pacific, found New York. De Soto, hunting in vain for gold, was little comforted by the sight of the muddy waters of the Mississippi. And so with Ponce de León, Balboa, La Salle, and all the rest. Each journeyed in search of one thing and found another.

Nor did any of these discoverers know what he had found. De Soto had no vision of great plains of golden grain, food for millions of men, along the shores of his river. Henry Hudson never dreamed of the city of New York. These men only blazed the trail. It was for those who came after to understand and use what they had found.

Each year men were finding, and helping others to find, a new land. Some of these men were the pioneers who cleared the ground and planted farms; some were those who built roads and bridges; some were those who took iron, coal, and oil from the ground; some were those who taught the children of the new land in the little bare school-houses. All of these people helped to discover our America.

Did you know that the work of discovery is still going on? Ten years from now many changes will have come to pass; in a hundred years a new world will have been found.

This is the story of one of the greatest discoverers of our day--the story of a man who found a new world in the North Woods of New York. But like the other discoverers, he searched for one thing and found another, and he spent many years of patient work in trying to understand and use in the best way what he had found.

Edward Livingston Trudeau was born with a love of the woods and the life of the open. In his father, Dr. James Trudeau, the call of the wild was so strong that again and again he would leave the city and his work to lose himself in the great forests of the West far from the world of men. He used to say that it was only when he could lose himself in this way that he seemed to find himself. Once he lived for two years with the Osage Indians, learning their woodcraft and their skill in riding and hunting. In 1841 he went with Frémont, the explorer, on his great expedition to the Rocky Mountains. And it was never hard for his friend Audubon, the famous naturalist, to persuade him to shut up his office and fare forth with him into the wilds. He was always restless and ill at ease within walls; only when out under the open sky did he feel fully alive.

Of course, this uncertain, wandering life ruined his chances of success in his profession. He gave up his office in New York, and, leaving his children with their grandfather, returned to his earlier home in New Orleans, thinking that perhaps it would be easier to settle down there to a more regular and ordered life. But he was never able to resist for long at a time the craving for the freedom of the great outdoors.

Edward Trudeau’s childhood was spent in large cities--New York first, and then Paris; he never knew his father, and yet he shared his strong love for a wild, outdoor life. He used often to say that it was strange how the trait which in his father had wrecked his career as a physician saved the life of his son, at a time when he was so ill that he could live only in the open air, and really led to his success as a doctor by showing him that fresh air and sunshine are often a sure cure where medicines fail.

Did you know that only a very few years ago many people were afraid to open their windows? That was the time when so many were dying of tuberculosis that it was called “the great white plague.” It was as mysterious and terrible as the Black Death, which, we read, once carried off half the people of England, because this “white plague” was an enemy that never withdrew. No one knew what caused the trouble, but they thought it must be due to a chill of some kind, so they carefully shut out the fresh air. Every child to-day knows that they were shutting out the one thing that could cure them. But do you know that it was Edward Trudeau who taught us that? He was really the discoverer of the importance of fresh air as a cure for many ills, and, still better, as a means of keeping well. Besides this, he lived the life of a true hero. Listen to his story and see if you will not say with me that his was as brave a fight as that of any hero of battle. And his victory was one in which the whole world has a share.

Though Edward Trudeau was born with his father’s love of the open, most of his early life, as we have said, was spent in big cities. When he was a child of three, his grandfather, Dr. Berger, a French physician who had earned renown not only in his own country but also in New York, took him and his older brother to Paris, where they lived for fifteen years. Here he was like a wood-bird in a cage, looking at a strange life and strange people through the bars.

Sometimes the bits of life he saw were very gay and fascinating, for this was the time of the Second Empire, when the capital was always a-flutter over some occasion of royal pomp or brilliant celebration. Napoleon III (whom Victor Hugo wittily dubbed “Napoleon the Little” in contrast with his uncle, Napoleon the Great) tried to make the splendor and glitter of extravagant display take the place of the true glory of great deeds. One of his “big brass generals,” who was always quite dazzling in gold lace and gleaming decorations, lived on the first floor, immediately below Dr. Berger’s apartment, and Edward Trudeau felt, as he watched from the window this ideal figure of military power dash up to the porte-cochère on his spirited horse, all splendid, too, in gold trappings, that here truly was one of the great race of heroes. He trembled with delight when the great man took notice of his small, hero-worshiping self, and they became friends after a fashion. But General Bazaine was, as events proved, much more within his capabilities when sitting tall on a prancing, gold-caparisoned horse at a royal review of the troops than when leading the forces of France against the German army. When the Franco-Prussian War came in 1870 it was largely through his tactical blunders, and cowardly treachery, perhaps, that Sedan was surrounded and the French army obliged to surrender to the victorious Germans. When Edward Trudeau read in the papers the news of the French defeat his heart was sad over the fall of his boyish idol, but the truth entered his soul that the real victors of real battles are not always those magnificent ones who look most unconquerable.

Another vivid memory of his childhood days in Paris brought home the same truth. One day, as he watched at the window, he was thrilled to see a gorgeous equerry from the Palais Royal ride up in state to his door and hand a parcel to the butler. This package, he learned, contained the Cross of the Legion of Honor which the emperor had sent to his grandfather. Afterward, he noticed that his grandfather always wore a little red ribbon in his buttonhole. But when the small boy questioned him in regard to the reason for his wearing the decoration, he only smiled quizzically and said, “_Pour faire parler les curieux, mon enfant_” (“To give the curious a chance to talk, my child”). As for himself, this modest French physician preferred to let his deeds alone speak of what he had done.

The small boy who could scarcely remember the time when he did not live in France and whose relatives were all French did not forget for a moment that he was an American. The toy boats which he sailed in the fountains of the Tuileries all bore the Stars and Stripes. And his favorite playmates at the Lycée Bonaparte, where he went to school, were hardy American boys whose parents were living in Paris.

During the years at the French school the vague, inner yearning for a freer, more natural life, found vent in many pranks and covert rebellion not only against the class routine, but also, more openly, against the established order of things on the playground. Here some of the delicately aristocratic French boys were much disconcerted by the blunt and wholly effectual way in which Edward Trudeau and his chums, the Livingston lads, settled questions by argument straight from the shoulder.

When he returned to New York at eighteen, Edward could speak only broken English, but he felt so truly American that he wondered why his cousins laughed when he said, “Ze English is so hard a language to prononciate.”

Then came his “wander years” in which he tried, with a deep, unsatisfied longing after he knew not what, to find his proper niche in life. Something of the memory of the stirring day when the American lads in Paris had thrilled over the news of the capture of the privateer _Alabama_ by the United States cruiser _Kearsarge_ off the coast of France led him to think that he wanted to enter the Navy. So he went to a preparatory school at Newport, as the United States Naval Academy had been, on account of the war, removed from Annapolis to that city, together with the historic old ship _Constitution_, which furnished quarters for the cadets.

At the very moment when he was prepared to enter the academy, Fate decided otherwise. His only brother, Francis, whose delicate health had always been a cause of much anxiety, became alarmingly ill. Though Edward was several years younger, he had always, as far back as he could remember, tried, at school and on the playground, to take care of this frail brother. He learned to know by the signs of the paling face and blue lips when the weak heart was missing its proper beat, and he was always at hand to say: “Steady, old fellow, steady! Let’s drop out of the game and rest up a bit.”

Most of the thrashings that he had dealt out to the school bullies were given on his brother’s account. But if Frank was not able to hold his own when it came to fisticuffs, in other encounters Edward learned to rely on the strong character and high ideals of this brother, who seemed a tower of strength when it came to battles of the spirit against doubts, fears, and wild gusts of temptation.

Now these two, who were so closely united by the strong double bond of mutual dependence and protection, had come to the great parting of the ways. The white plague had Francis in its terrible grip. During the last months of the hopeless struggle Edward watched with him night and day, drinking strong green tea to keep himself awake, and, by the doctor’s orders, carefully keeping all the windows closed, since the outside air was supposed to aggravate the painful cough.

The man who was to cure many by the simple means of fresh air learned his first lesson in that sick-room where he watched the one he loved best struggle for breath, and where he himself caught the seeds of the dread disease. This first great sorrow was really the first stage on his great journey of discovery--the discovery of a new world of life, restored to many who believed that they were nearing the “Valley named of the Shadow.” But how often is it true that the seeker after El Dorado searches for one thing and finds another. How often must the fortunate ones who at last arrive at the great goal travel by ways they know not.

Edward Trudeau had not yet found his lifework. He studied for a few months at the school of mines before he realized that he was not destined to be an engineer. This was but one of many false starts. Indeed, his early path was strewed with so many bits of wreckage from his spasmodic trials and failures that when one of his friends announced to a group at the Union Club that he had entered the College of Physicians and Surgeons, a fellow-member said, “I bet five hundred dollars he never graduates.” And not one of the companions who knew and loved him so well was ready to take up the bet.

These merry companions of his youth, who thought they knew Edward Trudeau better than he knew himself, loved him well; for he ever had the gift of friendship with man and beast. Dogs and horses at once felt his comprehending hand and heart. And as for the human kind--were they great masters of finance like Edward H. Harriman, gay young men about town like the Livingstons, or sturdy mountain guides like Paul Smith and Fitz-Greene Halleck--all and each were not only boon companions when the opportunity served, but lifelong friends whom neither time nor circumstance could change. When Dr. Trudeau used to say with feeling, “No one ever had better friends than I have,” we always thought, as we looked into his kindly eyes, so alive with understanding sympathy and ready cheer, “How true it is that the best way to win a friend is to be one.”

The best friend of all from beginning to end, however, was Miss Charlotte Beare, who became his wife as soon as he had graduated from the medical school and had spent six months as

Edward L. Trudeau]

house physician in The Strangers’ Hospital. When he wrote, toward the close of his life, a record of what his experiences had meant, he gave the book this dedication:

TO MY DEAR WIFE
EVER AT MY SIDE
EVER CHEERFUL AND HOPEFUL AND HELPFUL
THROUGH THESE LONG YEARS
DURING WHICH
“PLEASURE AND PAIN
HAVE FOLLOWED EACH OTHER
LIKE SUNSHINE AND RAIN.”

It was through his love for her, he said, that he was able to keep steadily at work during his college days, when close application to study and the confinement of city life were telling not only upon his health but also wearing away the inner soul that ever craved, with a deeper and more poignant longing, the freedom of open spaces and the breath of the life-giving woods.

It was a very different story from those light-hearted, familiar ones where “they married and lived happily ever after.” The rain followed the sunshine very soon after the young doctor had returned from his wedding-trip and settled down to practice in New York. After months of struggle against what he thought was a sort of stubborn malaria, together with the old rebellion against a shut-in life, the doctor who had worked so bravely to fit himself to cure others came face to face with the truth that he himself had a disease which no doctor could cure. The world seemed dark indeed when he thought he must soon leave his loved wife, the little Charlotte and baby Ned, and all that he had hoped to accomplish in the future.

He little realized that he had but reached the second stage in the journey that was to prepare him in a way he could not understand to be the “Beloved Physician,” one destined to save many who, like him, had met death face to face and trembled before the thought of separation from those they loved.

A faint light seemed to shine in the blackness of the night that had closed about him when the resolve came to go away from the city into the still woods--where he had felt the keenest joy in “mere living” on brief hunting-trips to the Adirondacks. His dear wife should be spared seeing the terrible, hopeless fight, and he should before the end have a bit of that free life for which his tired spirit longed. And so, though it meant separation, perhaps forever, from those he loved best, he prepared to go to Paul Smith’s hunting-lodge, which was forty-two miles from the nearest railroad in the heart of a still country of mountain lakes and vast, untroubled forest.

It took three days for the sick man to make the journey. His friend Lou Livingston, who accompanied him, tried in vain to persuade him to give up going to such a rough, remote place. A mattress and pillows were arranged in the two-horse stage, in which they had to travel the forty-two miles of rough mountain road to the hunting-lodge, and the sick man was made as comfortable as possible; but when at sunset he caught sight of the house through the pines he was too weak with fever and the jolting of the long trip to stand or walk. A hearty, mountain guide picked him up as if he had been an infant, carried him up to his room, and, as he laid him on his bed, remarked comfortingly:

“That’s nothing, Doctor! You don’t weigh no more than a dried lambskin.”

The invalid might well have been depressed by these words, but the magic of the country had already begun its work. He ate a hearty meal with the keenest relish he had known in weeks and fell asleep like a tired child.

“When I thought I had come to the end, it proved but the turn in the road,” said Dr. Trudeau. “I went to the mountains to die--I found there the beginning of a new life.”

As the weeks passed and left him not losing ground, but actually gaining day by day, the truth gradually dawned upon him that fresh air and rest were doing what doctors despaired of.

After proving what a few months could accomplish, and finding that even a short visit to his home meant an alarming setback, Dr. Trudeau and his wife decided that they must go to the mountain country to live. Can you imagine what spending a winter in the Adirondacks meant at that time, when the only houses were hunting-lodges and the cabins of the guides? Once, when making the journey to their winter quarters, the family was caught in a blizzard. When the sweat of their struggling horses was turned to a firm casing of ice and they all had hard work to keep faces and ears from freezing, they left the cutter, put blankets on the horses, wrapped the children in buffalo-robes and buried them in the snow, while the men tramped ahead and made a track up the hill for the weary horses. At last, when it was clear that the animals could go no farther, Paul Smith set off to the hut of a guide for fresh horses. As he left the little family buried in the snow, he said with his hearty laugh which seemed to put new life in the anxious travelers:

“Doctor, don’t you know Napoleon said, ‘The dark regions of Russia is only fit for Russians to inhabit’?”

Altogether these Napoleons were three days making the journey through the snow to their winter haven at Paul Smith’s hunting-lodge.

For several years Dr. Trudeau lived with his family in this wilderness where he had found health and happiness. His skill as a physician was given mostly to caring for the lumbermen and guides for miles about and for their dogs and horses. Of course there were, too, the people of the summer camps. And the story of his cure led a New York doctor to send a few patients to try the same life. The number of these people increased, and gradually the colony of health-seekers began to grow.

One day, when Dr. Trudeau was on the side of Mount Pisgah, near Saranac Lake, he fell asleep while leaning on his gun and dreamed a dream. He saw as in a vision the forest on the shore of the lake melt away, and the whole slope covered with houses, built, as it were, inside out, so that most of the life of the people could go on in the open. As he said years later, when he was making an address at the twenty-fifth anniversary of the building of the Adirondack Cottage Sanitarium at Saranac Lake, “I dreamed a dream of a great sanitarium that should be the everlasting foe of tuberculosis, and lo, the dream has come true!”

But Dr. Trudeau was a man who knew that, if good dreams are to come true, one must have the faith to pray as if there were no such thing as work, and the steady resolution to work as if there were no such thing as prayer. Much faith and much hard work went into the beginnings of that City of the Sick near Lake Saranac.

There was the time of small things, when the chosen spot, with its scant grass and huge boulders, looked more like a pasture for goats than a building-site. Faith, however, can not only move mountains, it can turn them into building material; faith, too, can move the hearts of men and make many work together as one for a great cause. The guides whose families the Beloved Physician had tended without price gave sixteen acres on the sheltered plateau where he had seen his dream city arise.

“We shall build not a great hospital where many are herded together, but cottages where those who seek refuge here may each have his zone of pure air and something of the rest and freedom of home,” said Dr. Trudeau. He talked to his friends, he talked to friends of his friends--to all who would pause in their busy lives to listen. His glowing faith kindled enthusiasm in other hearts. Day by day, not only through the large gifts of the few who could give much, but also through the small gifts of the many who could give but little, the fund grew. The doctor’s dream became a reality.

When we hear the stories of the heroes of old--the men of might, the grand of soul--does it seem as if our little day gives no chance for great deeds? Look at the Beloved Physician of Saranac, with his frail body, his cheerful smile, his unconquerable hope. See him going about with loving care among those whom life seemed to have broken and cast aside. See him in his little laboratory struggling hour after hour, through weeks and months and years, with no apparatus save that of his own contriving, with no training in scientific method, to lure the germs of the white plague within the field of his microscope, and force them to give up the secret of their terrible power. Surely there is no heroism greater than that of such brave, patient labor against all odds, against all ills, in spite of sorrow and loss and the fear of failure.

I like to picture this hero, with his genius for taking pains, at work over his test-tubes when his famous patient, Robert Louis Stevenson, came to visit the laboratory. Dr. Trudeau held out a little tube of liquid with the words,

“Here is our enemy fairly entrapped at last. This little scum is consumption, the cause of more human suffering than anything else.”

The discoverer of “Treasure Island” turned pale with disgust and backed out of the laboratory with these words, “Yes, Doctor, I know you have a lantern at your belt, but I don’t like the smell of your oil!”

The brilliant imagination of the great writer failed to understand the steady light of the imagination that seeks patiently after scientific truth in spite of discouragements and years of fruitless work.

In the last public address which Trudeau made, in 1910, before a gathering of physicians and surgeons, he said these words which show that he had caught the gleam of Stevenson’s lantern:

Let us not quench our faith nor turn from the vision which, whether
we own it or not, we carry, as Stevenson’s lantern-bearers, hidden
from the outer world; and, thus inspired, many will reach the goal;
and if for most of us our achievements must fall short of our
ideals, if, when age and infirmity overtake us, we come not within
sight of the castle of our dreams, nevertheless, all will be well
with us; for, as Stevenson tells us rightly, “to travel hopefully
is better than to arrive, and the true success is to labor.”

One of Trudeau’s most cherished possessions was a fine copy in bronze of Mercié’s statue “_Gloria Victis_,” given him by one of his patients. The sculptor created this statue in 1871, after the crushing blow inflicted on France by the German arms, to console and inspire the French people with the hope of triumph through defeat. It shows a young gladiator who has received his death-wound while facing the foe, lifted up and borne onward by a splendid Victory with outstretched wings. He has fought the fight and still holds his sword in his lifeless hand. In losing his life he wins his victory, that of one of the “faithful failures” who marched toward the new day whose dawn is not for them but for those who come after.

Dr. Trudeau, ever in the grip of the enemy that could be held at bay, but never conquered, labored year after year to save the lives of others. Many he was able to cure through rest and the life-giving air of the place he had found and made to be the battle-ground against tuberculosis. In many more he succeeded in arresting the disease and giving years of useful life, with restrictions--days and nights in the open, eternal watchfulness. And always, so conditioned himself, he worked, while often laboring for every breath he drew, to find the real cure--a something that would be able to destroy the terrible germs. He never lived to find it, but he prepared the way for others, who will go on with his work and carry it to success.

Shortly before his death, in November, 1915, Dr. Trudeau tried to explain what the statue “_Gloria Victis_” had meant to him:

“It typifies,” he said, “many victories I have seen won in Saranac Lake by those whom I had learned to love; the victory of the spirit over the body; the victories that demand acquiescence in worldly failure, and in the supreme sacrifice of life itself as a part of their achievement; the victory of the Nazarene, which ever speaks its great message to the ages.”

“THE PROPHET-ENGINEER”: GEORGE WASHINGTON GOETHALS

A man went down to Panama,
Where many a man had died,
To slit the sliding mountains
And lift the eternal tide:
A man stood up in Panama,
And the mountains stood aside.
PERCY MAC KAYE.

When a boy has a name like George Washington Goethals he must have something out of the ordinary about him to let it pass with his companions on the playground. Should he prove a weakling, should the other boys discover any flaw in the armor of his self-confidence, such a name would be a mockery and a misfortune.

Is there any one who cannot recall certain rarely uncomfortable moments of his childhood when he wished that the fates had provided him with a Christian name that the other chaps couldn’t send back and forth like a shuttlecock, with a new derisive turn at each toss? One expects to endure a certain amount of “Georgie Porgie” nonsense, which has the excuse of rime if not of reason, but when one also has a last name that nobody ever heard of before, he finds himself wishing sometimes that he had been born a Johnson or a Smith.

“I don’t believe that I quite like our name,” remarked little George Goethals in the confidence of the family circle one evening. “It is a bit queer, isn’t it?”

“It’s a name to be proud of, son,” was the reply. “It’s a name to live up to. For more than a thousand years it has been borne by strong, brave men. It belongs to the history of more than one country and century, and the way it was won makes a pretty story.”

“Tell me the story!” begged the boy, breathlessly, his eyes dark with interest.

“In the days when knights were bold, a man named Honorius, whose courage was as finely tempered as his sword, went with the Duke of Burgundy from Italy into France. In a fierce battle with the Saracens he received a terrible blow on the neck which would have felled most men to the ground, but his strength and steel withstood the shock and won for him a nickname of honor--Boni Coli (good neck). Later, when he was rewarded for his valor by a grant of land in the north country which is now Holland and Belgium, this name was changed after the Dutch fashion into _Goet Hals_ (_good_ or _stiff neck_), and became the family name of all that man’s descendants, who made it an honored name in Holland. When your ancestors came to America they hoped that it would become an honored name in the new country, and it must be your part to help bring that to pass.”

The boy’s eyes grew thoughtful. “For more than a thousand years it has been the name of brave men,” he repeated to himself. “But it is an American name now, isn’t it?” he added anxiously.

“Yes, son, it is just as American as it can be made,” his father returned with a laugh. “We call it Gō´thals,--there is nothing more truly American than a thing that has _go_, you know,--and we’ve given you the name of the first American to go with it.”

“I’ll show that an American Goethals can be as brave as any Dutch one,” George boasted.

“Strong hearts and brave deeds speak for themselves, son,” he was reminded, “and they are understood everywhere, whether the people speak Dutch, English, or Chinese.”

As the boy’s school-days went by, it seemed that he had made that truth his own. In his studies he showed that common sense and thoroughness are better than mere dash and brilliancy. On the playground he let others do the talking, content to make his reply when he had his turn at the bat--or not at all. And the knightly baron of old who won the name of Good Neck could not have held up his head and faced his world with a stronger and more resolute bearing than did this American school-boy.

To those who knew him it was no surprise when he entered West Point; and it was no surprise to any one when he graduated second in his class.

“Of course, he wouldn’t be first,” one of his classmates said; “that would have been too showy for G. W. I don’t know any one to whom just the honor of a thing means less. He’s glad to have done a good job, and of course he’s glad to be one of the picked few to go into the engineer corps.”

As if unwilling to part with the young lieutenant, West Point kept him as an instructor for several months before sending him on to Willett’s Point, where he remained in the Engineering School of Application for two years. He soon proved that he had the virtues of the soldier and the leader of men--loyalty and perseverance; loyalty, that makes a man able to take and give orders without becoming a machine or a tyrant; and perseverance, that makes him face each problem with the resolution to fight it out to the finish.

There were years when he was detailed to one task after another. Now it was the development of irrigation works for vast tracts of land in the West where only water was needed to make the section a garden spot of the continent. Then, when his system of ditches was fairly planned out, he was ordered off to cope with another problem, the building of dikes and dams along the Ohio River to curb the spring floods and to make the stream a dependable servant to man. Always he was “on the battle-front of engineering,” facing nature in her most obstinate moods and conquering obstacles that stood in the way of achievement.

Sometimes when he was sent to a new point on the firing-line, leaving others to carry his work to completion, he would say to himself a bit ruefully, “What would it be like, I wonder, to stay by a job till the day of results?” But always his experience was the same. This year, orders took him to canal work along the Tennessee River; the next, perhaps, found him detailed to the work of coast fortifications at Newport. He was sent for a time to the Academy at West Point as instructor in civil and military engineering, and for a while he was stationed at Washington as assistant to the chief engineer of the army. Everywhere he showed a love of work for the work’s sake, a passion for a job well done. But what was rarer still, he showed a reach of understanding that was as broad as his practical grasp was firm. He always saw the relation between his own job and a greater whole.

“While he keeps his eye on the matter in hand, it doesn’t shut out a glimpse of the things of yesterday and to-morrow. That’s why he’s so reasonable and why his men will follow wherever he leads,” it was said.

When the Spanish-American war broke out he went to Porto Rico as chief engineer of the First Army Corps. There his initial task was to construct a wharf where supplies could be landed, while a war vessel, which had been detailed for the purpose, stood guard over the operations. When the chief engineer looked at the heavy surf breaking on the beach his eye fell upon some flat-bottomed barges which had been captured by the warship, and a plan for quick and effective construction recommended itself on the instant.

“Fill the barges with sand, and sink them as a foundation for the wharf,” was his order.

Only one, however, had been so appropriated when the amazed admiral in command of the man-of-war sent his aide to direct the engineer to call a halt in his extraordinary proceedings.

“I am acting upon orders from my commanding officer and can take none from any one else,” replied Major Goethals, while the work with the second barge went on merrily. In a trice the aide returned with the warning that unless the orders were obeyed, the man-of-war would open fire on the rash offender.

“You’ll have to fire away, then,” was the reply, “for we shall not stop until we have completed the work we were sent here to do and landed the stores.”

The admiral did not send a shot after his threat, but he did forward a complaint to the engineer’s commanding officer, who directed that lumber be employed instead of the barges.

Major Goethals sent back the reply that there was no lumber to be had, and, while the offended admiral darkly threatened a court-martial, completed the wharf.

“It was pretty uncomfortable during the time the admiral passed by without speaking, was it not?” a brother officer asked the major.

“Well--we landed the supplies,” returned the engineer, quietly, as if that was the only thing that mattered after all. As usual, he was content to let results speak for themselves.

All of the work that this master engineer had done up to this time, however, was really unconscious preparation for a mighty task that lay waiting for a man great enough to face with courage and commanding mind and will the difficulties and problems involved in the biggest engineering job in America, or, indeed, in the whole world--the digging of the Panama Canal. Ever since Columbus made his four voyages in the vain hope of finding a waterway between the West and the East, ever since Balboa, “silent upon a peak in Darien,” gazed out over the limitless expanse of the Pacific, it had seemed as if man must be able to make for himself a path for his ships across the narrow barrier of land that nature had left there as a challenge to his powers. At first it seemed that it must be as simple as it was necessary to cut a canal through forty miles of earth, but time showed that the mighty labors of Hercules were but child’s play compared to this.