Chapter XXVI: Introduction (24)

It was a superb sight to see the spirited animal, one moment standing motionless at a safe distance from Jack, and the next, leaping about the field, mane and tail flying, and every action telling of a defiant enjoyment of freedom. Soon, two grazing horses in the same field caught her spirit; even Don’s pony, at first looking soberly over a hedge in the adjoining lot, began frisking and capering about on his own account, dashing past an opening in the hedge as though it were as solid a barrier as the rest. Nor were Jack and the boys less frisky. Coaxing and shouting had failed, and now it was an open chase, in which, for a time, the mare certainly had the advantage. But what animal is proof against its appetite? Clever little Fandy had rushed to Mr. Reed’s barn, and brought back in his hat a light lunch of oats for the mare, which he at once bore into her presence, shaking it temptingly, at the same time slowly backing away from her. The little midget and his hatful succeeded, where big man and boys had failed. The mare came cautiously up and was about to put her nose into the cap, when Jack’s stealthy and sudden effort to seize the bridle made her start sidewise away from him. But here Donald leaped forward at the other side, and caught her before she had time to escape again.

Jack was too proud of Don’s quickness to appear surprised; so, disregarding the hilarious shout of the Danby boys, he took the bridle from the young master with an off-hand air, and led the now gentle animal quietly towards the stable.

But Dorothy was there before him. Out of breath after her brisk run, she was panting and tugging at a dusty side-saddle hanging in the harness-room, when Jack and the mare drew near.

“Oh, Jack!” she cried, “help me to get this down! I mean to have some fun. I’m going to ride that mare back to the field!”

“Not you, Miss Dorry!” exclaimed Jack. “Take your own pony, an’ your own saddle, an’ it’s a go; but this ’ere mare’d be on her beam ends with you in no time.”

“Oh, no, she wouldn’t, Jack! She knows me perfectly. Don’t you, Lady? Oh, do, Jack! That’s a good Jack. _Please_ let me! Don’s there, you know.”

Dorry said this as if Don were a regiment. By this time, the side-saddle, yielding to her vigorous efforts, had clattered down from its peg, with a peculiar buckle-and-leathery noise of its own.

“Won’t you, Jack? Ah, _won’t_ you?”

“No, miss, I won’t!” said Jack, resolutely.

“Why, Jack, I’ve been on her before. Don’t you know? There isn’t a horse on the place that could throw me. Uncle said so. Don’t you remember?”

“So he did!” said Jack, his eyes sparkling proudly.

“The Capt’n said them very words. An’,” glancing weakly at the mare, “she’s standin’ now like a skiff in a calm. Not a breath in her sails――”

“Oh, do――_do_, Jack!” coaxed Dorry, seizing her advantage, “quick! They’re all in the lot yet. Here, put it on her!”

“I’m an old fool,” muttered Jack to himself, as, hindered by Dorry’s busy touches, he proceeded to saddle the subdued animal; “but I can’t never refuse her nothin’――that’s where it is. Easy now, miss!” as Dorry, climbing up on the feed-box in laughing excitement, begged him to hurry and let her mount. “Easy now. There! You’re on, high and dry. Here” (tugging at the girth), “let me tauten up a bit! Steady now! Don’t try no capers with her, Miss Dorry, and come back in a minute. Get up, Lady!――get up!”

The mare left the stable so slowly and unwillingly, that Jack slapped her flank gently as she moved off. Jog jog went Lady out through the wide stable doorway, across the yard into the open field. Dorry, hastily arranging her skirts and settling herself comfortably upon the grand but dingy saddle (it had been Aunt Kate’s in the days gone by), laughed to herself, thinking how astonished they all must be to see her riding Lady back to them. For a moment she playfully pretended to be unconscious of their gaze. Then she looked up.

Poor Dorry! Not a boy, not even Donald, had remained in the field! He and the little Danbys were listening to one of Ben’s stories of adventure. Even the two horses and Don’s pony were quietly nosing the dry grass in search of green tufts.

“I don’t care,” she murmured gayly, overcoming her disappointment. “I mean to have a ride, any way. Get up, Lady!”

Lady _did_ get up. She shook her head, pricked up her ears, and started off at a beautiful canter across the fields.

“How lovely!” thought Dorry, especially pleased at that moment to see several figures coming toward her from the Danby yard; “it’s just like flying!”

Whether Lady missed her master’s firm grip upon the rein, or whether she guessed her rider’s thought, and was inspired by the sudden shouts and hurrahs of the approaching boys, can never be known. Certain it is that by the next moment Dorry, on Lady’s back, was flying in earnest,――flying at great speed round and round the field, but with never an idea of falling off. Her first feeling was that her uncle and Jack wouldn’t be pleased if they knew the exact character of the ride. Next came a sense of triumph, because she felt that Don and the rest were seeing it all, and then a wild consciousness that her hat was off, her hair streaming to the wind, and that she was keeping her seat for dear life.

Lady’s canter had become a run, and the run soon grew into a series of leaps. Still Dorry kept her seat. Young as she was, she was a fearless rider, and at first, as we have seen, rather enjoyed the prospect of a tussle with Lady. But as the speed increased, Dorry found herself growing deaf, dumb and blind in the breathless race. Still, if she could only hold on, all would be well; she certainly could not consent to be conquered before “those boys.”

Lady seemed to go twenty feet in the air at every leap. There was no merry shouting now. The little boys stood pale and breathless. Ben, trying to hold Don back, was wondering what was to be done, and Charity was wringing her hands.

“Oh, oh! She’ll be thrown!” cried the girls.

“Not a bit of it!” insisted Donald. “I’ve seen Dot on a horse before.” But his looks betrayed his anxiety. “See! the mare’s trying to throw her now! But she can’t do it――she can’t do it! Dot understands herself, I tell you,――Whoa-o!――Let me go!” and, breaking from Ben, he tore across the field, through the opening in the hedge, and was on his pony’s back in a twinkling. How he did it, he never knew. He had heard Dorry scream, and somehow that scream made him and his pony one. Together, they flew over the field; with a steady, calm purpose, they cut across Lady’s course, and soon were at her side. Donald’s “Hold on, Dot!” was followed by his quick plunge toward the mare. It seemed that she certainly would ride over him, but he never faltered. Grasping his pony’s mane with one hand, he clutched Lady’s bridle with the other. The mare plunged, but the boy’s grip was as firm as iron. Though almost dragged from his seat, he held on, and the more she struggled, the harder he tugged,――the pony bearing itself nobly, and quivering in eager ♦sympathy with Donald’s every movement. Jack and Ben were now tearing across the field, bent on rescue; but they were not needed. Don was master of the situation. The mare, her frolic over, had yielded with superb grace, almost as if with a bow, and the pony was rubbing its nose against her steaming side.

♦ ‘smypathy’ replaced with ‘sympathy’

“Good for you, Dot!” was Donald’s first word. “You held on magnificently.”

Dorothy stroked Lady’s hot neck, and for a moment could not trust herself to look up. But when Jack half-pulled, half-lifted her from the saddle, and she felt the firm earth beneath her, she tottered and would have fallen, had not Donald, frightened at her white face, sprung to the ground just in time to support her.

“Shiver my timbers!” growled Jack, “if ever I let youngsters have their way again!” But his eyes shone with a strange mixture of self-reproach and satisfaction as he looked at Dorry.

NOTED JOURNALISTS AND MAGAZINE CONTRIBUTORS

Illustration: NOTED AMERICAN JOURNALISTS AND MAGAZINE CONTRIBUTORS.

HORACE GREELEY • MURAT HALSTEAD • ALBERT SHAW
LYMAN ABBOTT • CHAS. A. DANA • HENRY W. WATTERSON
WHITELAW REID • JULIAN HAWTHORNE • RICHARD HARDING DAVIS

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HORACE GREELEY.

THE FOUNDER OF MODERN JOURNALISM.

THE men of whom we love to read are those who stand for some great principle, whose lives and deeds exemplify its power. When we think of patriotism, the figure of Washington rises before us, as the man whose life, above all others, was controlled by pure love of country. Practical wisdom, shrewdness, and thrift are embodied in Benjamin Franklin. Astor and Girard represent the power of accumulation; Stewart, Carnegie, and Pullman, the power of organization; and so, when we consider the power of the press, the image which comes up before our mental view is that of Horace Greeley. In almost every personal quality there have been men who far surpassed him,――men who were greater as politicians, as organizers, as statesmen, as speakers, as writers,――but in the one respect of influencing public opinion through the press, of “making his mind the mind of other men,” no man in America has ever wielded such power as the great editor and founder of the New York “Tribune.”

Horace Greeley was one of the poor country boys who have afterward become the bone and sinew of the Republic. He was born in Amherst, New Hampshire, in 1811. His father, Zaccheus Greeley, was a struggling farmer. He moved to Vermont in 1821, and a few years later to the western part of Pennsylvania. Horace was a precocious child; and his mother, Mary Woodburn, who was of Scotch-Irish stock, used to recite to him ballads and stories, so that he really acquired a taste for literature before the age at which many children conquer the alphabet.

In his fifteenth year Horace felt that he could endure farming no longer, and at last procured from his father a reluctant consent that he should definitely seek employment as a printer. He found the longed-for opportunity at East Poultney, Vermont, in the office of the “Northern Spectator.”

In 1830, before Horace’s apprenticeship ended, the “Spectator” collapsed, and he was again set adrift. His father had removed to Western Pennsylvania, and the boy turned his face in that direction. After working for a few months on different country papers, he resolved to try his fortune in New York, and went to that city in August, 1831.

After two years of labor as a printer, so arduous that during much of the time it extended to fourteen hours a day, Mr. Greeley commenced his first editorial work upon a weekly paper called the “New Yorker” of which he was part owner and which lasted until March, 1841, when it went under, with a credit on its books of $10,000 due to Mr. Greeley for editing the paper, all of which was sunk with the wreck.

In the famous campaign of 1840, when Harrison was “sung and shouted into the presidential chair,” Greeley started a small weekly called the “Log Cabin.” He threw all his spirit and energy into it; he made it lively, crisp, and cheap. It attained an almost unheard-of success, reaching editions of eighty and ninety thousand. It was continued for several months after the triumphant election of Harrison, and then merged into the New York “Tribune,” which Greeley started at this time, the first issue appearing April 10, 1841.

The new enterprise soon became successful. It was helped at the start by a bitter attack from the “Sun,” then in the hands of Moses Y. Beach. The defense and rejoinders were equally pungent and amusing. Mr. Greeley always throve best upon opposition. His spicy retorts, and especially his partisan enthusiasm, forced the attention of the public, and the subscription-list of the “Tribune” soon rose from hundreds to thousands; by the third week in May it had 10,000 names on its books.

One thing in particular gave the “Tribune” eminence; that was Greeley’s policy of employing as contributors the best writers of the time. To name all the able men and women who thus won fame for both themselves and the “Tribune,” would make a list too long to print; but among them may be mentioned Bayard Taylor, whose “Views Afoot” first appeared in the form of letters to the “Tribune;” Margaret Fuller, whose articles gave her a wide reputation; George Ripley, Moncure D. Conway, Sydney Howard Gay, and George W. Smalley; and for years Thomas Hughes, the popular author of “Tom Brown at Oxford,” sent frequent and able letters from London. The result of this liberal policy was to make the “Tribune” indispensable to people of intelligence, even though utterly opposed to its political views.

In 1848 Mr. Greeley was elected to Congress, but his strength was as a journalist, not as a legislator. At the close of his brief term he retired from Congress, and during the stormy decade preceding the Civil War he made the “Tribune” a mighty power. He warmly espoused the cause of freedom, and denounced the Fugitive Slave Law, the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, and the endless aggressions of the slave power with a vigor and pertinacity which made him one of the best-hated men in America. His course was not always consistent; and he often brought upon his head the wrath of friends as well as enemies. Moreover, in the conduct of a great daily paper much must be left to the judgment of subordinates; and all their mistakes were, of course, laid to the charge of their chief. Many of the old readers of the “Tribune” supposed that every line in the paper was actually written by Horace Greeley. He rarely took the trouble to justify or explain; and, therefore, while in one sense one of the best-known men in the country, he was one of the most misunderstood. Mr. Greeley had no time or thought for personal explanations; he was bent upon saving the country,――individuals could take care of themselves.

During the war Mr. Greeley’s course was somewhat erratic and unstable, but he kept a hold upon a large class of readers who believed in him, to whom he was a mental and moral lawgiver, who refused to believe any evil of him; and, if some visitor to the city――for a large proportion of “Tribune” readers were country, and particularly Western, people――on coming back, reported that in an interview with Mr. Greeley the editor had indulged in unlimited profanity, the unlucky individual was incontinently discredited and voted a calumniator.

In the years following the war, Greeley’s pen was more busy than ever. Beside his editorial writing in the “Tribune,” he prepared the second volume of his war history, “The American Conflict,” and his delightful autobiography, “Recollections of a Busy Life.” He was always intensely interested in the growth of the West, where he had made a memorable tour in 1859, extending to Salt Lake City; and now he unceasingly advocated western emigration. His terse advice, “Go West, young man, and grow up with the country,” became a sort of national watchword, and many thousands of Eastern people resolved to turn their faces toward the empire of the West.

In 1872 a curious political combination was made. Probably such a surprise was never sprung upon the country as the nomination of Horace Greeley for the Presidency, by a convention of “Liberal Republicans” and bolting Democrats. That he should be defeated at the polls was inevitable. He worked hard through the canvass, traveling and addressing meetings; body and mind suffered from the fatigue and excitement. To add to his troubles, Mrs. Greeley, who had been out of health for a considerable time, died at this period; his health gave way; he became unable to sleep; and sleeplessness was followed by inflammation of the brain, which soon ended his life.

Horace Greeley sleeps in Greenwood Cemetery, Long Island, on a hill overlooking the beautiful bay of New York, and within sight of the great city where his busy life was spent.

* * * * *

A DEBTOR’S SLAVERY.

(FROM “RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE.”)

THE _New Yorker_ was issued under my supervision, its editorials written, its selections made for the most part by me, for seven years and a half from March 22, 1834. Though not calculated to enlist partisanship, or excite enthusiasm, it was at length extensively liked and read. It began with scarcely a dozen subscribers; these steadily increased to 9,000; and it might under better business management (perhaps I should add, at a more favorable time), have proved profitable and permanent. That it did not was mainly owing to these circumstances: 1. It was not extensively advertised at the start, and at least annually thereafter, as it should have been. 2. It was never really published, though it had half-a-dozen nominal publishers in succession. 3. It was sent to subscribers on credit, and a large share of them never paid for it, and never will, while the cost of collecting from others ate up the proceeds. 4. The machinery of railroads, expresses, news companies, news offices, etc., whereby literary periodicals are now mainly disseminated, did not then exist. I believe that just such a paper issued to-day, properly published and advertised, would obtain a circulation of 100,000 in less time than was required to give the _New Yorker_ scarcely a tithe of that aggregate, and would make money for its owners, instead of nearly starving them, as mine did. I was worth at least $1,500 when it was started; I worked hard and lived frugally throughout its existence; it subsisted for the first two years on the profits of our job-work; when I, deeming it established, dissolved with my partner, he taking the jobbing business and I the _New Yorker_, which held its own pretty fairly thenceforth till the commercial revulsion of 1837 swept over the land, whelming it and me in the general ruin.

I had married in 1836, deeming myself worth $5,000, and the master of a business which would thenceforth yield me for my labor at least $1,000 per annum; but, instead of that, or of any income at all, I found myself obliged throughout 1837 to confront a net loss of about $100 per week――my income averaging $100, and my inevitable expenses $200. It was in vain that I appealed to delinquents to pay up; many of them migrated; some died; others were so considerate as to order the paper stopped, but very few of these paid; and I struggled on against a steadily rising tide of adversity that might have appalled a stouter heart. Often did I call on this or that friend with intent to solicit a small loan to meet some demand that could no longer be postponed nor evaded, and, after wasting a precious hour, leave him, utterly unable to broach the loathsome topic. I have borrowed $500 of a broker late on Saturday, and paid him $5 for the use of it till Monday morning, when I somehow contrived to return it. Most gladly would I have terminated the struggle by a surrender; but, if I had failed to pay my notes continually falling due, I must have paid money for my weekly supply of paper――so that would have availed nothing. To have stopped my journal (for I could not give it away) would have left me in debt, beside my notes for paper, from fifty cents to two dollars each, to at least three thousand subscribers who had paid in advance; and that is the worst kind of bankruptcy. If anyone would have taken my business and debts off my hands, upon my giving him my note for $2,000, I would have jumped at the chance, and tried to work out the debt by setting type, if nothing better offered. If it be suggested that my whole indebtedness was at no time more than $5,000 to $7,000, I have only to say that even $1, 000 of debt is ruin to him who keenly feels his obligation to fulfil every engagement yet is utterly without the means of so doing, and who finds himself dragged each week a little deeper into hopeless insolvency. To be hungry, ragged, and penniless is not pleasant; but this is nothing to the horrors of bankruptcy. All the wealth of the Rothschilds would be a poor recompense for a five years’ struggle with the consciousness that you had taken the money or property of trusting friends――promising to return or pay for it when required――and had betrayed this confidence through insolvency.

I dwell on this point, for I would deter others from entering that place of torment. Half the young men in the country, with many old enough to know better, would “go into business”――that is, into debt――to-morrow, if they could. Most poor men are so ignorant as to envy the merchant or manufacturer whose life is an incessant struggle with pecuniary difficulties, who is driven to constant “shinning,” and who, from month to month, barely evades that insolvency which sooner or later overtakes most men in business; so that it has been computed that but one in twenty of them achieve a pecuniary success. For my own part――and I speak from sad experience――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.

Let no young man misjudge himself unfortunate, or truly poor, so long as he has the full use of his limbs and faculties, and is substantially free from debt. Hunger, cold, rags, hard work, contempt, suspicion, unjust reproach, are disagreeable; but debt is infinitely worse than them all. And, if it had pleased God to spare either or all of my sons to be the support and solace of my declining years, the lesson which I should have most earnestly sought to impress upon them is――“Never run into debt! 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!” Of course I know that some men must do business that involves risks, and must often give notes and other obligations, and I do not consider him really in debt who can lay his hands directly on the means of paying, at some little sacrifice, all that he owes; I speak of _real_ debt――which involves risk or sacrifice on the one side, obligation and dependence on the other――and I say, from all such, let every youth humbly pray God to preserve him evermore.

* * * * *

THE PRESS.

LONG slumbered the world in the darkness of error,
And ignorance brooded o’er earth like a pall;
To the sceptre and crown men abased them in terror,
Though galling the bondage, and bitter the thrall;
When a voice, like the earthquake’s, revealed the dishonor――
A flash, like the lightning’s, unsealed every eye,
And o’er hill-top and glen floated liberty’s banner,
While round it men gathered to conquer or die!

’Twas the voice of the Press, on the startled ear breaking,
In giant-born prowess, like Pallas of old;
’Twas the flash of intelligence, gloriously waking
A glow on the cheek of the noble and bold;
And tyranny’s minions, o’erawed and affrighted,
Sought a lasting retreat from its powerful control,
And the chains which bound nations in ages benighted,
Were cast to the haunts of the bat and the mole.

Then hail to the Press! chosen guardian of Freedom!
Strong sword-arm of justice! bright sunbeam of truth;
We pledge to her cause (and she has but to need them),
The strength of our manhood, the fire of our youth;
Should despots e’er dare to impede her free soaring,
Or bigot to fetter her flight with his chain,
We pledge that the earth shall close o’er our deploring,
Or view her in gladness and freedom again.

But no!――to the day-dawn of knowledge and glory,
A far brighter noontide-refulgence succeeds,
And our art shall embalm, through all ages, in story,
Her champion who triumphs――her martyr who bleeds,
And proudly her sons shall recall their devotion,
While millions shall listen to honor and bless,
Till there bursts a response from the heart’s strong emotion,
And the earth echoes deep with “Long Life to the Press!”

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CHARLES A. DANA.

THE FAMOUS EDITOR OF THE “SUN.”

THE man who with Greeley made the New York “Tribune” one of the greatest powers in the land, and who, from 1868 to 1897, was the chief and managing editor of the New York “Sun,” is certainly entitled to rank among our foremost men. Charles A. Dana lived a remarkable life, a life of strenuous effort and of continuous and notable achievement. He was born at Hinsdale, New Hampshire, in 1819, but his early life was passed at the village of Gaines, in Western New York, in Buffalo, and at Guildhall, Vermont. One of his earliest recollections was of being tied to a post with his mother’s garter because he had run away and gotten himself very muddy, thus displaying, at three years old, the restless spirit of enterprise which did much to make him the man he was. When he was eleven years old he returned to Buffalo to be a clerk in his uncle’s dry goods store. He was very successful as a salesman, and remained in the establishment until the failure of the business, in 1837, when he determined to prepare himself for college. He said that he found the elements of Latin very hard and disagreeable work, and he had the greatest difficulty in remembering the paradigms. Two winter terms at a country school, in his early boyhood, and two years at Harvard completed Mr. Dana’s systematic education, as too close application affected his eyesight, and he was obliged to withdraw from college at the end of his sophomore year. He had cultivated such a taste for languages, however, that no year since passed which he did not devote in part to serious study, and he became master of most spoken languages except the Slavonic and Oriental, and he began, at the age of seventy-five, the study of Russian. Harvard College afterward conferred upon him the degree which he was prevented from earning in the regular way, and is proud to count him among her most honored sons.

After leaving college Mr. Dana joined that remarkable body of men and women who conducted the Brook Farm experiment. He distinguished himself as one of the very few practical men among that band of philosophers, and gained, while at Brook Farm, a little experience in the newspaper business in conducting a publication known as “The Harbinger,” which was the organ of the association.

In 1844 his eyes had sufficiently recovered to enable him to do regular work, and he obtained employment under Elizur Wright, better known as an insurance actuary than as an editor, but who then conducted “The Chronotype,” an orthodox newspaper, which was a great favorite with the Congregational ministers of New England. Mr. Wright used to enjoy telling how “Dana always had a weakness for giving people with fixed convictions something new to think about,” and how he illustrated this weakness during the absence of his chief by writing strong editorials against the doctrine of a bill. This piece of enterprise involved the editor-in-chief in the labor of writing a personal letter to each of his ministerial subscribers, and to many others explaining how the paper “had been left in charge of a young man without mellow journalistic experience.” Mr. Dana’s compensation was five dollars per week, and at this amount it remained until 1847, when he joined the staff of the New York “Tribune” at ten dollars, a figure which was gradually increased to fifty dollars, which was the highest salary he ever received on the “Tribune.” Many delightful stories are told of the intercourse of Dana and Greeley. The part they took in politics, the fight against slavery, the organization of the Republican Party, Mr. Dana’s loyal support of Greeley’s aspirations for political preferment, all these are a part of the political history of our country. Just before joining the “Tribune” staff Mr. Dana was married to Miss Eunice MacDaniel, of New York. Of his delight in family life no testimony can be stronger than his own words written during a brief interval of leisure: “I have been busy with my children, drawing them about in old Bradley’s one-horse wagon, rowing and sailing with them on the bay and sound, gathering shells on the shore with them, picking cherries, lounging on the grass with the whole tribe about me. There’s no delight like that in a pack of young children of your own.... A house without a baby is inhuman.”

During these busy years Mr. Dana, together with Mr. Ripley, edited “The American Cyclopedia,” a work which is a monument of his care and learning and patient labor; and he also prepared and published a “Household Book of Poetry,” one of the very best collections of its kind, and one which has found its way into a very large number of American homes and contributed in no small measure to further the cause of good literature. In 1862 there came about a radical difference between Mr. Greeley and Mr. Dana as to the proper policy of the “Tribune” in regard to the war. The result was Mr. Dana’s withdrawal from the paper. He was immediately asked by Mr. Stanton to audit a large number of disputed claims in the quartermaster’s office at Cairo. This led to his appointment as Assistant Secretary of War, which position he held until the end of the Rebellion. About one-third of his time during this period was spent with the armies at the front. In this way he served as the confidential agent of the administration, and was once styled by Mr. Lincoln “the eyes of the Government at the front.” His reports were remarkable for their unconventional form, their brevity, and the completeness and accuracy with which they placed Stanton and Lincoln in possession of the exact facts. “Miles of customary military reports,” says a recent writer, “were worth less to Lincoln than half a dozen of Dana’s vivid sentences.”

After the close of the war Mr. Dana spent one year in Chicago as editor of “The Republican.” He had been deceived about the financial basis of the enterprise, and was in no way responsible for its failure. Returning to New York, he organized the company which purchased the old “Sun” property, and started the paper on a long career of success and of influence. He was probably the most independent man who ever managed a great newspaper. He possessed the power of working without that conscious effort which characterizes the activity of most men, and which seems to be the source of so many early break-downs. He was not easily disturbed. At the “Sun” office, they like to tell a doubtful story of the old days when the work of the paper was conducted in four small rooms. The city editor came hurriedly in exclaiming, “Mr. Dana, there’s a man out there with a cocked revolver. He is very much excited. He insists on seeing the editor-in-chief.” “Is he very much excited?” said Mr. Dana, hardly looking up from his work, “if you think it worth the space, ask Amos Cummings if he will kindly see the gentleman and write him up.” A noted sensational clergyman once volunteered to write, under an assumed name, for the “Sun.” He foolishly tried to adapt himself to what he imagined was the irresponsible tone of a Sunday paper, and there can be no doubt that Mr. Dana enjoyed writing in blue pencil across the back of his first article, “This is too wicked.”

During the winter the great editor occupied his house on Madison Avenue and Sixtieth Street, but his summer house was on a little island, two or three miles from Glen Cove, which his wide knowledge of trees and fruits and flowers enabled him to make a singularly delightful spot. In the summer of 1897, when Mr. Dana was approaching his eightieth year, and still continued to manage his great newspaper, surrounded by a corps of trained and efficient men, he was attacked with a serious illness, and passed away on the afternoon of October 17th. It is doubted whether any other man has left his mark more deeply on the nineteenth century than has the famous editor of the “Sun.”

* * * * *

ROSCOE CONKLING.

(THE NEW YORK “SUN,” APRIL 18, 1888.)

THE most picturesque, striking, and original figure of American politics disappears in the death of Roscoe Conkling. Alike powerful and graceful in person, he towered above the masses of men in the elasticity of his talents and the peculiarities and resources of his mental constitution as much as he did in form and bearing. Yet his career cannot be called a great success, and he was not a great man.

But he was an object of great love and admiration to an extraordinary circle of friends, including not alone those who shared his opinions, but many who were utterly opposed to them. He was by nature a zealous partisan, and it was his inclination to doubt the good sense and the disinterestedness of those who were on the other side; but, nevertheless, the strongest instinct of his nature was friendship, and his attachments stood the test of every trial except such as trenched upon his own personality. This he guarded with the swift jealousy of most intense selfhood, and no one could in any way impinge upon it and remain his friend. Then, his resentments were more lasting and more unchangeable than his friendships. This, in our judgment, was the great weakness of the man. Who can say that in his innermost heart Conkling did not deplore it? At any rate, the candid observer who sums up his history must deplore it for him. “And the recording angel, as he wrote it down, dropped a tear upon the word and blotted it out forever.”

For a long period Mr. Conkling was a great political power in New York and in the country. This was during the culmination of General Grant. Originally Conkling was not friendly to Grant, and when the latter appointed his first Cabinet, the Senator’s condemnation was unreserved and stinging. This attitude was maintained during nearly the whole of Grant’s first year in the Presidency. At that time Senator Fenton stood near the President and dispensed the political bounty of the Administration. This Conkling could not endure, and when Congress met in December, 1869, he was full of war. But it soon got abroad that Fenton was a candidate for the Presidency. This settled the difficulty and brought the rival Senator into intimate relations with the President. This position he ever afterwards maintained, and it formed the most successful and to him the most satisfactory portion of his life. When Grant was finally defeated at Chicago in 1880, and all hopes of his restoration to the White House was obliterated, the Senator soon abandoned the field of his renown, and went back to the disappointments and struggles of private life.

As we have said, friendship was the greatest positive force in Mr. Conkling’s character, and there never was any hesitation or any meanness in his bestowal of it. In this respect he was the most democratic of men. He was just as warmly devoted to persons holding low places in the social scale as to the great and powerful, and he was just as scrupulous in his observation of all the duties of a friend toward the one kind of people as toward the other. There was nothing snobbish about him. He would go as far and exert himself as greatly to serve a poor man who was his friend as to serve one who was rich and mighty. This disposition he carried into politics. He had very little esteem for office-giving as a political method; but if a friend of his wanted a place, he would get it for him if he could. But no important politician in New York ever had fewer men appointed on the ground that they were his friends or supporters. His intense and lofty pride could not thus debase itself.

It is esteemed a high thing that with all the powers he wielded and the opportunities opened to him under a President the least scrupulous ever known in our history as regards jobbery and corruption, Mr. Conkling never pocketed a copper of indecent and dishonorable gain in the course of his public life. It is a high thing, indeed, and his bitterest enemies cannot diminish the lustre of the fact. The practice of public robbery was universal. Thievery was rampant everywhere in the precincts of the Administration. The Secretary of the Navy plundered millions. The Secretary of War sold public places and put the swag in his pocket. The Secretary of the Interior was forced by universal indignation to resign his ill-used office. The private secretaries of the President dealt in whiskey and defrauded the revenue. The vast gambling scheme of Black Friday had its fulcrum within the portals of the White House, and counted the President’s own family among its conspirators. It was a period of shameless, ineffable, unblushing villainy pervading the highest circles of public power. And while all Republican statesmen, leaders, and journalists knew it, condoned it, defended it even, the best they could, Mr. Conkling was the special spokesman, advocate, and orator of the Administration which was the creator of a situation so unprecedented and revolting. But while he thus lived and moved in the midst of corruption, he was not touched by it himself. The protector of brigands and scoundrels before the tribunal of public opinion, he had no personal part in their crimes and no share in their spoils. As the poet went through hell without a smutch upon his garments, so the proud Senator, bent chiefly upon the endurance of the Republican party, came out of that epoch of public dishonesty as honest and as stainless as he entered it.

In the records of the higher statesmanship it can be said that there is very much to the credit of Mr. Conkling’s account. As a parliamentary champion he had perhaps no superior; but others appear to have originated and perfected the measures to which in either House of Congress he gave the support of potent logic, fertile illustration, aggressive repartee, and scathing sarcasm. We do not recall a single one of the great and momentous acts of Congress which were passed in his time, of which he can certainly be pronounced the author. Yet his activity was prodigious, and it was a strange freak of his complicated character to bring before the House or Senate, through others, propositions which he thought essential. His hand could often be recognized in motions and resolutions offered on all sides of the chamber, and often by members with whom he was not known to be familiar.

The courage of Mr. Conkling, moral as well as personal, was of a heroic strain. After his mind was made up, he feared no odds, and he asked no favor. He dared to stand out against his own party, and he, a Republican, had the nerve to confront and defy the utmost power of a Republican administration. There was something magnanimous, too, in the way he bore misfortune. After the death of a distinguished man, with whom he had been very intimate, it was ascertained that his estate instead of being wealthy, was bankrupt. Mr. Conkling was an endorser of his notes for a large sum of money, and saying calmly, “He would have done as much for me,” he set himself to the laborious task of earning the means to pay off the debt. He paid it in no long time, and we don’t believe that any man ever heard him murmur at the necessity.

In social life Mr. Conkling endeared himself to his intimates, not only by the qualities which we have endeavored to describe and indicate, but by the richness of his conversation, and the wit and humor――sometimes rather ponderous――with which it was seasoned, and by the stores of knowledge which he revealed. His reading had been extensive, especially in English literature, and his memory was surprisingly tenacious. Many of the most impressive passages of oratory and of literature he could repeat by heart. He was fond of social discussion on all sorts of questions, and liked no one the less who courteously disagreed with him.

As a lawyer, we suppose that his great ability was in cross-examination and with juries. The exigencies and the discussive usage of political life prevented that arduous, persevering application to pure law which is necessary to make a great jurist; but his intellectual powers were so vigorous and so accurate that he made up the deficiency of training and habit and no one can doubt that, if he had given himself to the law alone, he would have gained a position of the very highest distinction. As it was, the most eminent counsel always knew that he had a formidable antagonist when Mr. Conkling was against him; and every court listened to his arguments, not merely with respect, but with instruction.

We shall be told, of course, that the supreme fault of this extraordinary mind was in perfection of judgment; and when we consider how largely his actions were controlled by pride and passion, and especially by resentment, we must admit that the criticism is not wholly without foundation. There was also in his manner that which might justify the belief that often he was posing for effect, like an actor on the stage; and we shall not dispute that so at times it may have been. But there are so few men who are entirely free from imperfection, and so many who inherit from their ancestors characteristics which ought to be disapproved, that we may well overlook them when they are combined with noble and admirable gifts. And after all has been said, even those whom he opposed most strenuously, and scorned or resisted most unrelentingly, may remember that we are all human, while they let fall a tear and breathe a prayer to heaven as the bier of Roscoe Conkling passes on its way to the grave.

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LYMAN ABBOTT.

PASTOR OF PLYMOUTH CHURCH, EDITOR OF “THE OUTLOOK.”

WIDE sympathies and broad Christian charity are potent factors in the uplifting of men, and there have been many in America who have exhibited these characteristics, but few possess them to a greater degree than the present pastor of the Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, Lyman Abbott. He comes of good New England stock, and was born December 18, 1835, at Roxbury, Massachusetts. He is the third son of Jacob Abbott, so dear to the children of the past generation, as the author of those books which were the delight of the childhood of many still living――the “Rollo Books,” the “Jonas Books,” and the “Lucy Books.” The plain, practical, broad common sense in Jacob Abbott, which dictated the composition of these attractive realistic stories, has been inherited in large measure by his son. Lyman Abbott was graduated from the University of the City of New York, in 1853, then studied law and was admitted to the bar. He soon found that the ministry had greater attraction for him than the law, and after studying theology with his uncle, John S. C. Abbott, so well-known as the author of the “Life of Napoleon Bonaparte,” he was ordained in 1860, a minister of the Congregational Church. He went the same year to take charge of a congregation at Terre Haute, Indiana. After five years’ work he became discouraged, for there seemed to be little or no fruit from his labors. He came to the conclusion that, after all, he had mistaken his calling, and so in 1865 he accepted the position of Secretary to the American Freedman’s Commission, an office which took him to New York. Returning to Terre Haute on a visit, he saw that his previous labors had not been in vain, but had brought forth abundant fruit in the lives of former members of his congregation. It was perhaps this fact that induced him to re-enter the ministry, and for three years to be the pastor of the New England Church in New York. He did not, however, lay aside the literary work he had taken up while connected with the Freedman’s Association. He conducted the “Literary Record” in “Harper’s Monthly,” and became editor of “The Illustrated Christian Weekly” in 1871. Resigning his connection with other papers he became joint editor with Henry Ward Beecher of the “Christian Union” in 1876, and its chief editor in 1881. After some years the name of the paper was changed to “The Outlook,” as indicating more nearly the character of the journal. In October, 1887, after the death of Henry Ward Beecher, he was chosen temporary Pastor of the Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, and later he was invited to remain permanently at the head of that large congregation. He has written much, and has published a number of volumes, nearly all upon religious subjects, but his influence has been chiefly exerted through the pulpit, and especially through the columns of the “Christian Union” and “The Outlook,” one of the most ably conducted weeklies in the country. Popular in its presentation, trenchant in its comments upon contemporary men and events, clear and unmistakable in its position, few papers have a more decided influence upon their readers. Its tone is high, and its view of what is going on in the world is wide and comprehensive. All subjects are treated fearlessly and independently, and truth, purity, and earnestness in religion and politics are insisted upon. Not the least interesting columns of the paper are those devoted to “Notes and Queries,” where, in a few well-chosen words, the difficulties of correspondents are answered, and at the same time valuable lessons are enforced. Lyman Abbott is one of the leaders of liberal Christian thought, is sympathetic with every movement for the advancement of mankind, a strong believer in practical Christianity, and a hater of all kinds of cant.

As a speaker differing widely from his great predecessor in the Plymouth pulpit, Lyman Abbott’s success is due to the clearness with which he presents his subject, to his earnestness, and to his practical way of putting things.

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THE JESUITS.¹

(FROM “DICTIONARY OF RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE.”)

¹ Copyright, Harper & Bros.

JESUITS is the popular name of a Society more properly entitled “The Society of Jesus”――of all the Religious Orders of the Roman Catholic Church the most important. The Society of Jesus was founded in 1554 by Ignatius Loyola. He was a Spanish cavalier; was wounded in battle; was by his wounds, which impaired the use of one of his legs, deprived of his military ambition, and during his long confinement found employment and relief in reading a Life of Christ, and Lives of the Saints. This enkindled a new ambition for a life of religious glory and religious conquest. He threw himself, with all the ardor of his old devotion, into his new life; carried his military spirit of austerity and self-devotion into his religious career; exchanged his rich dress for a beggar’s rags; lived upon alms; practiced austerities which weakened his iron frame, but not his military spirit; and thus he prepared his mind for those diseased fancies which characterized this period of his ♦extraordinary career.

♦ ‘extraordinay’ replaced with ‘extraordinary’

He possessed none of the intellectual requirements which seemed necessary for the new leadership which he proposed to himself. The age despised learning, and left it to the priests; and this Spanish cavalier, at the age of thirty-three, could do little more than read and write. He commenced at once, with enthusiasm, the acquisition of those elements of knowledge which are ordinarily acquired long before that age. He entered the lowest class of the College of Barcelona, where he was persecuted and derided by the rich ecclesiastics, to whose luxury his self-denial was a perpetual reproach. He fled at last from their machinations to Paris, where he continued his studies under more favorable auspices. Prominent among his associates here was Francis Xavier, a brilliant scholar, who at first shrunk from the ill-educated soldier; yet gradually learned to admire his intense enthusiasm, and then to yield allegiance to it and its possessor. Several other Spaniards were drawn around the ascetic. At length, in 1534, Loyola, and five associates, in a subterranean chapel in Paris, pledged themselves to a religious life, and with solemn rites made sacred their mutual pledges to each other and to God.

Loyola introduced into the new order of which he was the founder, the principle of absolute obedience which he had acquired in his military career. The name given to its chief was the military title of “General.” The organization was not perfected, so as to receive the sanction of the Pope, until 1541. Its motto was _Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam_――“To the greater Glory of God.” Its vows embraced not only the obligations of Chastity, Poverty, and Obedience, but also a pledge on the part of every member to go as missionary to any country which the Pope might designate. Loyola was himself the first General of the new Order. Its Constitution, due to him, is practically that of an Absolute Monarchy. The General is elected by a General Congregation, selected for the purpose by the whole body of professed members in the various Provinces. He holds his office for life. A Council of Assistants aid him, but he is not bound by their vote. He may not alter the Constitution of the Society; and he is subject to deposition in certain contingencies; but no instance of the deposition of a General has ever occurred. Practically his will is absolute law, from which there is no appeal.

The Jesuits are not distinguished by any particular dress or peculiar practices. They are permitted to mingle with the world, and to conform to its habits, if necessary for the attainment of their ends. Their widest influence has been exhibited in political circles, where, as laymen, they have attained the highest political positions without exciting any suspicion of their connection with the Society of Jesus; and in education they have been employed as teachers, in which position they have exercised an incalculable influence over the Church.... It should be added that the enemies of the Order allege that, in addition to the public and avowed Constitution of the Society, there is a secret code, called _Monita Secreta_――“Secret Instructions”――which is reserved exclusively for the private guidance of the more advanced members. But as this Secret Code is disavowed by the Society――and since its authority is at least doubtful――it is not necessary to describe it here in detail.

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THE DESTRUCTION OF THE CITIES OF THE PLAIN.¹

(FROM “OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS.”)

¹ Copyright, Harper & Bros.