Part 32

his brain is at its best. Most hopeful sign of all, he can laugh. He can even laugh at himself. If this counts for anything at all, it means sanity and length of days. GEORGE PEABODY The great deeds for human betterment must be done by individuals--they can never be done by the many. --_George Peabody_ [Illustration: GEORGE PEABODY] George Peabody was a noted American merchant and banker. He was born in the village of Danvers, Massachusetts, in Seventeen Hundred Ninety-five. He died in London in Eighteen Hundred Sixty-nine. In childhood, poverty was his portion. But he succeeded, for he had the persistent corpuscle, and he had charm of manner--two things which will make any man a winner in the game of life. He gave away during his lifetime eight million dollars. When he died he had four million dollars left, which was distributed, by his will, largely for the betterment of society. The fact that Peabody left so much money was accidental. He intended to give this money away, under his own personal supervision, but Death came suddenly. Has the world made head the past forty years? Listen, Terese; it has made more progress during the past forty years than in the two thousand years preceding. The entire fortune of George Peabody, including what he gave away during his life and what he left, was twelve million dollars. This is just the income of Andrew Carnegie for six months. We scarcely realize how much civilization smells of paint until we remember that George Peabody was the world's first philanthropist. No doubt there were many people before him, with philanthropic impulses, but they were poor. It's easy to sympathize with humanity when you have nothing to give but advice. The miracle comes in when great wealth and great love of mankind are combined in one individual. In the Occident, giving to the poor is lending to the devil. The plan has always been more or less of a pastime to the rich, but the giving has usually been limited to sixpences, with absolute harm to the poor. All any one should ask is opportunity. Sailors just ashore, with three months' pay, are the most charitable men on earth--we might also say they are the most loving and the least lovable. The beggars wax glad when Jack lumbers their way with a gay painted galley in tow; but, alas, tomorrow Jack belongs to the poor. Charity in the past has been prompted by weakness and whim--the penance of rogues--and often we give to get rid of the troublesome applicant. Beggary and virtue were imagined to have something akin. Rags and honesty were sort of synonymous, and we spoke of honest hearts that beat 'neath ragged jackets. That was poetry, but was it art? Or was it just a little harmless exercise of the lacrimal glands? Riches and roguery were spoken of in one breath, unless the gentleman was present--and then we curtsied, cringed or crawled, and laughed loudly at all his jokes. These things doubtless dated back to a time when the only mode of accumulating wealth was through oppression. Pirates were rich--honest men were poor. To be poor proved that you were not a robber. The heroes in war took cities, and all they could carry away was theirs. The monasteries were passing rich in the Middle Ages, because their valves opened only one way--they received much and paid out nothing. To save the souls of men was a just equivalent for accepting their services for the little time they were on earth. The monasteries owned the land, and the rentals paid by the fiefs and villeins went into the church treasuries. Sir Walter Scott has an abbot say this: "I took the vow of poverty, and find myself with an income of twenty thousand pounds a year." But wealth did not burden the monks forever. Wealth changes hands--that is one of its peculiarities. War came, red of tooth and claw, and the soldiery, which heretofore had been used only to protect the religious orders, now flushed with victory, turned against them. Charges were trumped up against churchmen high in authority, and without doubt the charges were often true, because a robe and a rope girdle, or the reversal of haberdashery, do not change the nature of a man. Down under the robe, you'll sometimes find a man frail of soul--grasping, sensual, selfish. The monasteries were looked upon as contraband of war. "To the victors belong the spoils," was the motto of a certain man who was President of the United States, so persistent was the war idea of acquiring wealth. The property of the religious orders was confiscated, and as a reward for heroic services, great soldiers were given great tracts of land. The big estates in Europe all have their origin in this well-established custom of dividing the spoils. The plan of taking the property of each or all who were guilty of sedition, treason and contumacy was well established by precedents that traced back to Cain. When George Washington appropriated the estate of Roger Morris, forty centuries of precedent looked down upon him. Also, it might be added that if a man owned a particularly valuable estate, and a soldier desired this estate, it was easy for this soldier to massage his conscience by listening to and believing the report that the owner had spoken ill of the king and given succor to the enemy. Then the soldier felt it his "duty" to punish the recreant one by taking his property. And so the Age of the Barons followed the Age of the Monasteries. And now the Barons have given way to the Age of the Merchant. The Monks multiplied the poor by a monopoly on education. Superstition, poverty and incompetence formed the portion of the many. "This world is but a desert drear," was the actual fact as long as priests and soldiers were supreme. The Reign of the Barons was merely a transfer of power with no revision of ideals. The choice between a miter and a helmet is nil, and when the owner converses through his head-gear, his logic is alike vulnerable and valueless. So enter the Merchant, whose business it is to carry things from where they are plentiful to where they are scarce. And comes he so quietly and with so little ostentation that men do not realize the change. And George Peabody, an American, gives three million dollars to the poor of London. This money was not tossed out to purchase peace, and to encourage idleness, and to be spent in strong drink and frills and finery, and the ways that lead to Nowhere, but to provide better homes for men, women and children. "Lay hold on eternal life," said Paul, writing to Timothy. The proper translation we now believe should be, "Lay hold on the age to come." Philanthropy now seeks to lay hold on the age to come. We are building for the future. The embryo has eyes, ears and organs of speech. But the embryo does not see, nor hear, nor speak. It is laying hold on the age to come--it is preparing to live--it is getting ready for the future. The past is dead, the present is dying, and only that which is to come is alive. The life of George Peabody was not in what he gave, but in what he taught the millionaires that are to be. He laid hold on the age to come. * * * * * George Peabody is another example of a boy who succeeded in spite of his parents. The rigors of climate and the unkindness of a scanty soil may be good things. They are good, like competition, very excellent, provided you do not get more than your constitution requires. New England has her "white trash," as well as the South. The Peabodys of Danvers were good folks who never seemed to get on. They had come down from the mountains of New Hampshire, headed for Boston, but got stuck near Salem. If there was anything going on, like mumps, measles, potato-bugs, blight, "janders" or the cows-in-the-corn, they got it. Their roof leaked, the cistern busted, the chimney fell in, and although they had nothing worth stealing the house was once burglarized while the family was at church. The moral to little George was plain: Don't go to church and you'll not get burgled. Life was such a grievous thing that the parents forgot how to laugh, and so George's joke brought him a cuff on the ear in the interests of pure religion and undefiled. A couple of generations back there was a strain of right valiant heroic Peabody blood. Among the "Green Mountain Boys" there was a Peabody, and another Peabody was captain of a packet that sailed out of Boston for London. To run away and join this uncle as cabin-boy was George's first ambition. People in the country may be poor, but in America such never suffer for food. If hunger threatens, the children can skirmish among the neighbors. The village of Danvers was separated by only a mile or so of swale and swamp from Salem, a place that once rivaled Boston commercially, and in matters of black cats, and elderly women who aviated on broomsticks by night, set the world a pace. Fish, clams, water-lilies, berries, eels, and other such flora and fauna were plentiful, and became objects of merchandising for the Peabody boys, bare of foot and filled with high emprise. Parents often bestow upon their progeny the qualities which they themselves do not possess, so wonderful is this law of heredity. George was the youngest boy in the brood, and was looked after by his "other mother," that is to say, by an elder sister. When this sister married, the boy was eleven years old. To the lad this marriage was more like a funeral. He could read and write and count to a hundred, having gone to school for several months each Winter since he was seven. He could write better than his father or mother--he wrote like copperplate, turning his head on one side and chewing his tongue, keeping pace with his lips, as the pen glided gracefully over the paper. His ambition was to make a bird with a card in its bill, and on this card, written so small no one could read it, the proud name, G. Peabody. This ability to write brought him local fame, and Sylvester Proctor, who kept a general store in the village, offered to take him on a four years' apprenticeship and teach him the trade of green grocer and dealer in W. I. Goods. The papers were duly made out and signed, the boy being consulted afterward. What the consideration was, was not stated, but rumor has it that the elder Peabody was paid twenty-five dollars in "W. I. Goods" and also wet goods. Proctor was a typical New England merchant of the Class B type. He was up at daylight, shaved his upper lip, and swept off the sidewalk in front of his store. At night he put up the shutters with his own hands. He remembered every article he had on his shelves and what it cost. He bought nothing he could not pay for. There was one clerk besides the boy. After George came, the merchant and his clerk made all the memoranda on brown paper, and the items were duly copied into the ledger by George Peabody. I have been told that a man who writes pure Spencerian can never do anything else. This, however, is a hasty generalization, put forth by a party who wrote a Horace Greeley hand. A country store is the place for a boy to learn merchandising. In such a place he is never swallowed up by a department. He learns everything, from shaking down the ashes in the big stove to buying and selling fadeless calico. He becomes an expert with a nail-puller, knows strictly fresh eggs from eggs, and learns how to adapt himself to the whims, caprices and notions of the customers who know little and assume much. George Peabody slept in the attic over the store. He took his meals with the Proctor family, and used to wipe the dishes for Mrs. Proctor. He could wait on store, tend baby, wash a blue wagon, drive a "horse and team" and say "backsshe!" in a way that would