Part 35

aper, Eli Whitney's Cotton-Gin, and Colt's Revolver. Peabody backed Doctor Kane with a gift of twenty thousand dollars in his search for Franklin. He established various libraries; and gave a quarter of a million dollars to his native town for a Peabody Institute. Danvers can yet be found on the map, but Peabody is a place of pilgrimage for those who reverence that American invention--a new virtue--the Art of Giving Wisely. Joshua Bates, through whose generosity Boston secured her Free Library, was an agent of Peabody's, and afterward his partner. Later, Bates became a member of the house of Baring Brothers, and carried on a business similar to that of George Peabody. There is no doubt that Bates got his philanthropic impulse from Peabody. In Eighteen Hundred Fifty-six Peabody visited his native town of Danvers after an absence of more than forty years. There were great doings, in which all the school-children, as well as the Governor of the State, had a part. At Washington, Peabody was the guest of the President. The House of Representatives and the Senate adjourned their regular business to do him honor, and he made an address to them. The Judges of the Supreme Court invited him to sit on the bench when he entered their Chamber. For twenty years he was America's unofficial chief representative in London, no matter who was Consul or who Ambassador. Every year on July Fourth he gave a dinner to the principal Americans who happened to be in London. To be invited to this dinner was an event. Peabody himself always presided, and there was considerable oratory sometimes of the brand known as Southwestern, which Peabody tolerated with gentle smiles. On one occasion, however, things did not go smoothly. Daniel Sickles was Consul to London and James Buchanan, afterwards our punkest President, was Ambassador. Sickles was a good man, but a fire-eater, and a gentleman of marked jingo proclivities. Sickles had asked that Buchanan preside, in which case Buchanan was to call on Sickles for the first toast, and this toast was to be, "The President of the United States." At the same time Sickles intended to give the British lion's tail a few gratuitous twists. Peabody declined to accede to Sickles' wish, but he himself presided and offered the first, "To the Queen of England!" Thereupon Sickles walked out with needless clatter, and Buchanan sat glued to his seat. The affair came near being an international episode. Peabody was always an American, and better, he was a citizen of the world. He loved America, but when on English soil, really guest of England, he gave the Queen the place of honor. This seems to us proper and right, and at this distance we smile at the whole transaction, but we are glad that Peabody, who paid for the dinner, had his way as to the oratorical guff. The Queen offered Peabody a knighthood, but he declined, saying, "If Her Majesty write me a personal letter endorsing my desire to help the poor of London, I will be more than delighted." Victoria then wrote the letter, and she also had a picture of herself painted in miniature and gave it to him. The letter and portrait are now in the Peabody Institute at Peabody, Massachusetts. When Peabody died, in Eighteen Hundred Sixty-nine, Queen Victoria ordered that his body be placed in Westminster Abbey. The Queen in person attended the funeral, the flags on Parliament House were lowered to half-mast, and the body was attended to Westminster Abbey by the Royal Guard. Gladstone was one of the pallbearers. Later, it was discovered that Peabody had devised in his will that his body should rest by the side of his father and mother, in Harmony Grove, the village cemetery at Danvers, and in a spot over which his boyish feet had trod. The body was then removed from the Abbey and placed on board the British man-of-war "Monarch," in the presence of the Prime Minister, the Secretary of Foreign Affairs, and many distinguished citizens. The "Monarch" was convoyed to America by a French and an American gunboat. No such honors were ever before paid to the memory of a simple American citizen. Well did the Reverend Newman Hall say, in his funeral oration: "George Peabody waged a war against want and woe. He created homes; he never desolated one. "He sided with the friendless and the houseless, and his life was guided by a law of love which none could ever wish to repeal. His was the task of cementing the hearts of Briton and American, pointing both to their duty to God and to humankind." A. T. STEWART The merchant of the future will not only be an economist and an industrial leader--he will also be a teacher and a humanitarian. --_A. T. Stewart, in a Letter to President Grant_ [Illustration: A. T. STEWART] When His Excellency Wu Ting Fang was asked what country he would live in, if he had his choice, his unhesitating answer was, "Ireland!" The reply brought forth another question, as his secretive and clever Excellency knew it would, namely, "Why?" "Because Ireland is the only country in the world in which the Irish have no influence." Also, it might be stated, although it has nothing to do with the case, that the Jews are very much more influential in New York City than they are in Jerusalem. The Turk is to Palestine what the English are to Ireland. The human product has to be transplanted in order to get the best results, just as the finest roses of California are slipped near Powers' Four Corners, Rochester, Monroe County, New York, and are then shipped to the West. A new environment means, often, spiritual power before unguessed. The struggle of the man to fit himself into a new condition and thus harmonize with his surroundings, brings out his latent energies and discovers for him untapped reservoirs. It was Edmund Burke who said, "The Irish are all right, but you must catch them young." When England wants a superbly strong man she has to send to Ireland for him. Note Burke, her greatest orator; Swift, her greatest satirist; Goldsmith, her sweetest poet; Arthur Wellesley, her greatest fighter--not to mention Lord Bobs--all awfully Irish. And to America comes Alexander Turney Stewart, aged twenty, very Irish, shy, pink, blue of eye, with downy whiskers, intending to teach school until he could prepare himself for the "meenistry." It was the year Eighteen Hundred Twenty; and at that time the stars of the Irish schoolmaster were in the ascendant. For a space of forty years--say from Eighteen Hundred Five to Eighteen Hundred Forty-five--eighty per cent of all graduates of Trinity College, Dublin, came straight to America and found situations awaiting them. Young Stewart had been at Trinity College two years, when by the death of his grandfather he found himself without funds. His father died when he was three years old, and his grandparents took him in charge. His mother, it seems, married again, and was busy raising a goodly brood of Callahans, several of whom in after-years came to New York, and were given jobs at the A. T. Stewart button-counter. Young Stewart could have borrowed money to keep him in college, for he knew that when he was twenty-one he would come into an inheritance from his father's estate. However, on an impulse, he just sold his books, pawned his watch and bought passage for America, the land of promise. The boy had the look of a scholar, and he had dignity, as shy folks often have. Also, he had a Trinity College brogue, a thing quite as desirable as a Trinity College degree. Later, A. T. Stewart lost his brogue, but Trinity College sent him all the degrees she had, including the LL. D., which arrived on his seventieth birthday. The Irish built our railroads, but Paddy no longer works on the section--he owns the railroad. Note the Harrimans, the Hanrahans, the McCreas, the McDougalls, the O'Donnells, the O'Days, the Hills--all just one generation removed from the bog, and the smell of peat-smoke still upon them. The Irish schoolmasters glided easily from taking charge of the school into taking charge of our municipal affairs--for a consideration--and their younger brothers, their cousins, their uncles and their aunts, found jobs yawning for them as soon as they had pushed past the gates of Castle Garden. One year of schoolteaching in New York City, and A. T. Stewart reached his majority. He had saved just two hundred dollars of his salary; and he sailed away, back to Ould Ireland, a successful man. Now he would go back to Trinity and complete his course, and be glorified. He had proved his ability to meet the world on a fair footing and take care of himself. All of which speaks well for young Misther Stewart, and it also speaks well for his grandparents, who had brought him up in a good, sensible way to work, economize and keep a civil tongue in his Irish head. His grandfather didn't exactly belong to the gentry--it was better than that: he was an Irish clerque who had become a scrivener, and then risen to a professorship. A. T. Stewart was heir to a goodly amount of decent pride, which always kept him in the society of educated people, and made him walk with the crown of his head high and his chin in. He thought well of himself--and the world is very apt to take a man at his own estimate. A year in "The States" had transformed the young man from a greenhorn into a gentleman. The climate of the West had agreed with him. He himself told how on going back to Belfast the city seemed to have grown smaller and very quiet. He compared everything to Broadway, and smiled at a jaunting-car compared to a 'bus. When he went to Trinity College, and saw his class, from whom he had parted only a year before, all thought of remaining two years to graduate faded from his mind. An ocean seemed to divide him from both teachers and pupils. The professors were stupid and slow; the pupils were boys--he was a man. They, too, felt the difference, and called him "Sir." And when one of them introduced him to a Freshman as "an American," Freshy bowed low, and the breast of A. T. Stewart expanded with pride. Not even the offer of a professorship could have kept him in Ireland. He saw himself the principal of an American College, "filling" the pulpit of the college chapel on Sunday, picturing the fate of the unregenerate in fiery accents. The Yankee atmosphere had made him a bit heady. The legacy left him by his grandfather was exactly one thousand pounds--five thousand dollars. What to do with this money, he did not know! Anyway, he would take it to America and wisely invest it. In New York he had boarded with an Irish family, the head of which was a draper. This man had a small store on West Street, and Alexander had helped tend store on Saturdays, and occasionally evenings when ships came in and sailors with money to waste lumbered and lubbered past, often with gay painted galleys in tow. The things you do at twenty are making indelible marks on your character. Stewart had no special taste for trade, but experience spells power--potential or actual. With five thousand dollars in his belt, all in gold, he felt uncomfortable. And so on a venture he expended half of it in good Irish lace, insertions and scallop trimmings. Irish linens, Irish poplins and Irish lace were being shipped to New York--it could not be a loss! He would follow suit. If he was robbed of his money he could not at the same time be robbed of the drapery. And so he sailed away for New York--and Ireland looked more green and more beautiful as the great, uplifting, green hills faded from sight and were lost to view in the mist. * * * * * On the ship that carried Stewart back to New York was a young man who professed to be an adept in the draper's line. Very natura